Money Can't Buy Happiness

'Twas Beauty killed the Painter of Light:

[Thomas] Kinkade, 54, was found by Pinto-Walsh dead in his bed the morning of April 6. The coroner determined he died of a lethal level of alcohol after a night of heavy drinking and popping Valium. In an interview with this newspaper shortly after his death, Kinkade's brother, Patrick, said that the artist had been an alcoholic, and while he had made an effort to remain sober for the previous few months, he relapsed. Patrick Kinkade also said his separation from his wife and four daughters two years earlier had taken their [sic] toll as well as criticism from the fine art world that his fairy-tale images of pastoral scenes and lampposts were kitsch.

Anything that I could say about this story would be in such poor taste that I could get rich selling it to Kinkade's fans.

Encounter at Farright

Via Sadly, No!, we learn that Instacracker's other half, "Doctor" Helen Smith, is penning a tome:

In my upcoming book with Encounter Publishing entitled “Male Strike: Why Society's War Against Men is Suicidal and What to Do About It," I discuss these Uncle Tim types (those who put down other men) whose life is [sic] made easier by pandering to women and other men who are either Uncle Tims themselves or White Knights trying to save a damsel in distress.

The actual name of the "Doctor's" publisher is Encounter Books, shrunken organ of the Roger Kimball media empire.

The "Doctor" shouldn't feel too bad about misidentifying her wingnut welfare officer, though, as Encounter Books hasn't even heard of Smith. Oh, but they will, when she shows up at Kimball's office, screeching "I will ... NOT ... BE ... IGNORED!

Smith's book will appear in bookstores, propping open the back door while employees take their cigarette breaks, sometime in 2013.

Rich Lowry Regrets His Own Existence

Standards at the National Review have sunk even lower since the mag sacked racist John Darbyshite.  Witness this abortion from Katherine Trinko, whose motto is, defame first, ask questions never:

I took down my earlier post on Elizabeth Warren plagiarizing from the book Getting On the Money Track. On Amazon.com, the Warren book All Your Worth is listed as having been published January 9, 2006. As it turns out, that is the paperback publication date; the hardback book was published in March 2005. As such, it appears that Getting on the Money Track (published in October 2005) plagiarized from All Your Worth, not the other way around. I apologize for the error.

And by error, she means getting caught.

Darb Overboard

John Derbyshire has been keelhauled from the National Review Cruise.

Thank G-d William Saletan is available to tell us where Darb went wrong. (Hint: The first rule of White Club is.... )

Mess of the Darbyphiles

Those wishing to comment on Darbyshite's dismissal from National Review can address comments to G-Man Rich Lowry here. My screen is asking me to enter the verification code "ace of spades" before posting. Purely random, I'm sure.

Right now, the criticism of Rich Lowry is divided (unequally) between the opinions that Lowry caved to P.C. pressure and that National Review is a tool of the Jews. One member of Team Pasty wonders if Darb was on drugs (presumably not crack), and there is a difference of opinion as to whether Darb is Juan Williams or Joe Sobran. Why can't he be both?

Farting Stays

As Michael Kinsley didn't once say, "A gaffe is when John Darbyshite says what the National Review was founded upon."

The 'shite has been shat out.

The Daily Choler and FOX Talk Radio have their checkbooks ready.

p.s. -- Is this going to make the National Review cruise in November incredibly awkward or what?

Grand Old Police Blotter: White Power Edition

Via Jalopnik, here's the story of an entitled Teabagger who thinks the laws don't apply to him:

Stanislaus County prosecutors Friday charged Riverbank City Councilman Jesse James White with drunken driving and causing an injury to his 4-year-old son, as well as hit-and-run driving and resisting a police officer in connection with a Feb. 20 traffic accident.

Prosecutors allege White's blood-alcohol level was 0.24 percent, three times the limit at which a driver is considered to be under the influence.

White, 23, wrecked his Corvette about 1 a.m. Feb. 20 in Oakdale. Police claim he crashed into a parked car on F Street and then tried to flee before being tackled and held by bystanders until officers arrived.

His 4-year-old son was in the Corvette and suffered a bloody nose. White, who is not in custody after posting bail, entered an alcohol abuse treatment center this week, according to his attorney. He is scheduled to be arraigned March 21.

"He is going to be in court for his arraignment and plead not guilty to all the charges," said Modesto attorney Mary Lynn Belsher, who represents White. Belsher said prosecutors have overcharged her client.

...

He was arrested in May 2010 on drug possession charges after sheriff's deputies said they found small amounts of marijuana and cocaine during a probation search of White's apartment and car. He resolved that case by pleading guilty to a misdemeanor last year. He also was required to complete a 20-hour drug-and-alcohol education class, which he did in the fall.

White has survived two attempts to recall him from office.

In his most recent case, he is charged with the felonies of driving under the influence, causing an injury and making an unsafe turn; hit-and-run driving with an injury; and permitting a child to suffer under circumstances likely to cause great bodily injury or death.

He also is charged with the misdemeanors of hit-and-run driving and resisting a police officer by means of threats and violence. Bystanders and police have said White told them he was Jesse James White and they would regret their actions.

According to his website, J.J. is all about "sticking to my guns for less taxes, less government, personal responsibility, and your Second Amendment right to keep your guns too." (Those felonies might make that a little more difficult for you on the last one, J.J.) J.J. is also known to associate with criminals like James O'Queef.

Hit-and-run drunk driving, drug possession, child endangerment, resisting arrest and threatening police officers -- and he's still walking around. Talk about White privilege.

You Don't Shake Your Moneymaker

The question of whether National Review will fire John Darbyshite is laughable. "Darb" brings money to the magazine. He's a featured speaker on National Review next fundraising cruise:

John Derbyshire's columns appear in National Review and New English Review and cover a broad range of political-cultural topics, including immigration, China, history, mathematics, and race. Derbyshire's 1996 novel, Seeing Calvin Coolidge in a Dream, was a New York Times "Notable Book of the Year". His 2004 non-fiction book, Prime Obsession, won the Mathematical Association of America's inaugural Euler Book Prize. A new political book, We Are Doomed: Reclaiming Conservative Pessimism, was released in September 2009.

If Derb could stay on the NR cruise all year 'round, he'd occupy the racial utopia of his dreams.

Derb will become the latest poster boy for conservative victimhood, and the National Review can't afford to lose such a prize to the Daily Choler.

National Review Makes The Case For Polygamy

Writing at NRO.com, Kevindy Williamson delivers an impassioned demand for equal rights for polygamists:

[Lawrence] O’Donnell denounced Romney as a guy who belongs to a church that

was created by a guy in upstate New York in 1830 when he got caught having sex with the maid and explained to his wife that God told him to do it. Forty-eight wives later, Joseph Smith’s lifestyle was completely sanctified in the religion he invented to go with it, which Mitt Romney says he believes.

Thanks for the Muppet News Flash, Larry. The exact nature of Smith’s polygamy is contested  (his only children were from his first wife, leading some to believe that his polygamy was of a non-sexual nature), but, yes, he was a polygamist. So was Solomon. So was Abraham. And, oddly enough, Lawrence O’Donnell plays a polygamist’s attorney on television — there’s nothing quite so satisfying as profiting from the prurient interest in a subject you denounce. Charlemagne was a polygamist.

I agree completely, Kev. If polygamy is good enough for Abraham, Charlemange and the fictional client of a fictional character played by Lawrence O'Donnell on HBO, it's good enough for America.
Kev, it's not only your right but your responsibility to make things legal between yourself and Maggie Gallagher and her hubby.

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Fucker Carlson's Photoshop Fail

Fucker Carlson's Photoshop Fail

At the Daily Choler, Tucker Faye Carlson fiddles with a photo of George Zimmerman until a "laceration" is revealed, along with a glowing white aura surrounding both Zimmerman and a police officer. What Fucker thinks he has proven is that Zimmerman was injured during his attack on Trayvon Martin. What Fucker has actually proven is that Zimmerman and the police officer are ghosts, and thus appropriate sex partners for Matthew Boyle.

Meet Your Right Wing Media

From a rightwing clownblog called Twitchy:

Recognize these two people? If you don’t, we’ll help you out. The man on the left is George Zimmerman, the man accused of murdering the boy on the right, Trayvon Martin. The mainstream media won’t show you these two photos because they convey a message that no one else wants to take into consideration.

Correction, 8:56 pm ET March 25, 2012: We made a mistake. The photo on the right is not of the Trayvon Martin who was shot by Zimmerman. We apologize to our readers and to the Martin family.

No link to the slanderers.

It also should come as no surprise that the photograph used to slander Trayvon Martin depicts neither illegal activity nor violent activity. The message the clownblog wants the EMESSEM to convey is a simple one: Black-skinned teenagers deserve to die.

Story via ThinkProgress.

Dicky Dick-er

The good news is that former Vice President Dick Cheney successfully underwent heart transplant surgery on Saturday.

The bad news is that the donor was Andrew Breitbart.

The Bottom of the Barrel

Correction (3/22): When I read the Mediaite post, I read the quoted passage as referring to "I" (meaning the author, Tommy Christopher), and not "I.E." an individual Christopher was referring to. Although reference in Christopher's post could have been changed after my post was written, it is possible, and more likely, that I misread it. Thank you to John Borrego for pointing this out.

When last we saw Tommy Christopher, the clown who plays a liberal at Mediaite, he was exchanging e-mails about Anthony Weiner's dick with non-existent teens. Somehow this activity proved he was a better parent than Markos Molitsas, who wasn't exchanging e-mails about non-existent teens about Anthony Wiener's dick. Now, Tommy's found a way to make the tragic shooting of Trayvon Martin all about Tommy:

If I had met up with George Zimmerman (and Zimmerman somehow managed to avoid having that 9mm shoved up his ass), how different would this story be? What if he was shot dead, and instead of holding Skittles, he was holding a couple of joints? No grieving parents, no angelic file photo, no gut-wrenching cries for help.

That's mighty white of Tommy, acknowledging the slim possibility that Zimmerman might "somehow" have avoided being sodomized by Tommy if he'd tried that shit on him. Zimmerman might have managed to murder a healthy and intelligent seventeen year old, but there's no way he could have taken a developmentally disabled, chain smoking lard ass blogger twice his age. Here on earth, it's much easier (but equally pointless) to imagine that Mediaite, if not the world, would be missing one subliterate blogger who defines tragedy as not being the center of attention.

Tommy also previews his material for the cable teevee guest shot which will never come. "To be outraged by the conduct of the Sanford Police, who took Zimmerman's claim of self-defense at face value, without even asking 'From what? Hollow-point Skittles? Full Metal Snapple?'" rim-shot! It's funny because a young man died holding snacks, says Tommy.

P.S. to Tommy: Those photographs of Martin were not "file photos" because Martin was not a public figure or a media whore or a blogging wanna-be media whore. They were family treasures kept by humans who cared for persons other than themselves.

Faux Bono

Breitbart's brain interviews Not-Paul David Hewson.

One of these days, James O'Queef and Mattera will have a conversation while each is pretending to be someone else and their video exposes will be posted on Big Coronary simultaneously.

Plus ca change

Andy Sully, submitted without comment:

Just to note that the new owner of The New Republic and its current editor are both openly gay men and that's so routine it barely merits a mention. Two decades ago, it was a very different world.

Andy Sully, submitted with a great deal of laughter:

Having Chris Hughes new media experience is a huge plus for the magazine - and, I hope, will sustain its continued excellence into a new century.

Roger's Screening Room: Game Change

I don't subscribe to HBO, but I happened to be in a hotel on Saturday night, and the client was passed out in the bathroom, so I tuned in to the film adaptation of the execrable Heilmann/Halperin book, Game Change. Given the hours of positive promotion that Joe Scarborough and Chris Matthews had given to the film, I was certain the docudrama would suck harder than the A-Team movie which proceeded it.

I was not disappointed.

The film lost all credibility early on, when an scene of Steve Schmidt in a bucolic tree-filled park was labelled as taking place in "Sacramento." The filmmakers obviously have never been to Sacramento.

At least half the scenes were recreations of public events (or video clips thereof) and thus lacked the dramatic tension of a real-time reenactment of Super Bowl VIII. The scenes in which Julianne Moore chatted with stand-ins for the backs of the heads of Joe Biden, Katie Couric, et al. were the most riveting television since Patty and Cathy Lane dined alone. In contrast, the recreated private scenes were written by a team of libel lawyers who had never seen a film, play or real-life interaction between people.

Palin was portrayed as an idiot and an asshole, so HBO (like Heilprin) let her off easy. The rest of the Palins were non-entities, except for Track, who the movie claimed was serving in the vicinity of combat (is that true?) It was good to see Jamey Sheridan (who had to leave one of the Law and Order shows because he suffered from Bell's Palsy) in a featured role as Mark Salter, although he overplayed the role by depicting Salter as human. Wolf Blitzer was in the film for some unfathomable reason.

In the end, nothing was illuminated, no entertainment was had, and Howie Kurtz's pinchloaf criticisms of the film were without merit. Like everything Howie says.

Mickey Kaus' Version of Honesty

A bitter hack writes:

I would go so far as to say that Breitbart had an instinctive honesty -- pretty much the opposite of what Frum charges. I don't know the ins and outs of the Shirley Sherrod mess, in which Breitbart posted a video the end of which had been lopped off before he saw it. But I guarantee you Breitbart posted it because he felt it truthfully made a legit point (and he wasn’t aware what the rest of it would show).

It's telling that Kaus' proof of Dimbart's honesty is something Kaus admits he doesn't know much about. Yet Kaus is willing to "guarantee" Breitbart acted in good faith because ... well, Kaus doesn't say why ... so, using Breitbart/Kaus journalistic standards, we can speculate that Breitbart never stole Kaus' blow when he left it sitting on the nightstand.

It's even more telling that Kaus claims that Breitbart was honest because Breitbart felt he was making "a legit point," even though Breitbart knew he didn't have all the facts and did nothing to enlighten himself.

Those who, unlike Kaus, are interested in the truth about the "Shirley Sherrod mess" should read Ta-Nehisi Coates, who did bother to examine the facts of the matter.

Kaus also names "Wienergate" as Breitbart's "greatest triumph," and cites Breitbart's ass-covering when he thought he'd been fucked over by an anonymous source as an act of honesty. I guess when your biggest accomplishment in life is recalling a story about Arnold Schwarzenegger from your old copy of Oui magazine, you can't help but worship someone who was the recipient of a congressman's dick photos.

This, from the person who rendered articulate the lies of George W. Bush in service of the invasion of Iraq and the unnecessary deaths of hundreds of thousands of men, women and children:

Many of our most important public figures have gained their influence and power by inciting and exploiting the ugliest of passions—by manipulating fears and prejudices—by serving up falsehoods as reported truth. In time these figures will one by one die. What are we to say of this cohort, this group, this generation? That their mothers loved them? That their families are bereaved? That their fans admired them and their employees treated generously by them? Public figures are inescapably judged by their public actions. When those public actions are poisonous, the obituary cannot be pleasant reading.

Yours certainly will not be, David. At least in one sense.

And It All Comes Tumbling Down

As usual, TBogg says it best.

The real fun will be watching the parasites destroy each other trying to seize control of the empire. It will be the Game of Thrones played out in Toto Ltd.'s largest factory.