The Fifteen Biggest Bullshitters In America Today...

I believe it was the late George Carlin who once said, paraphrasing, that the biggest industry in America was the production, packaging, marketing and distribution of Bullshit.

Sometimes, when you look at the blasted heath that was once the landscape of this Great Nation, and you think about how it all devolved to deposit us at our current state of affairs, it's difficult not to agree with that cynical sentiment. You need look no further than the corridors of power in America for proof of this maxim:

President Obama is a bullshit artist.

Most members of Congress are bullshit artists.

Local governments are overflowing with bullshit artists, from the execrable personage of Mayor Michael Bloomdouche...errr...Bloomberg...of my great city of New York, to the "Honorable" Jerry Brown, governor of a bankrupt California which is rapidly becoming Mexico, only with indoor plumbing and food.

I began to wonder just how it was that we got to this sorry state of affairs, where every aspect of our lives seems contaminated by someone else's bullshit, and decided that the problem lies within us; we're all too easily swayed, we're all too easily led to the Abyss, and we're all too fucking lazy to engage critical thinking skills, typically right at the precise moment they're needed. If we're up to our collective waists in bullshit, it's our own fault; after all, we seem to invite more of it with each passing second.

While my little mental exercise led me to the conclusion that we, ultimately, are at fault for wanting to be lied to and for assiduously avoiding responsibility for as much as we possibly can, it soon evolved into an exercise in identifying the culprits. Once the perpetrators of the Great Crime of Being Full of Shit are identified, it becomes easier to avoid their persuasive, often heavily-focus-grouped, psychologically-tested arguments. One hopes that the identification alone serves as an inoculation against further bullshit assaults upon the collective psyche, but I'm not holding my breath.

Because I know damned well that there are people in this country who couldn't spell their own names properly if you spotted them the first 12 letters...on a good day...and that these are the people for whom bullshit is both crafted for, and for whom it is intended, mostly because there's more of these idiots running around than there are people with room-temperature IQ's.

Without further ado, here's my list of the 15 Biggest Bullshit Artists in America. Enjoy.

15. The Rah-Rah Billionaire: for example, Donald Trump. You know the type. This is the rich-beyond-your-wildest-dreams dickhead who lives the life you wish you could, and who shoves your nose in it as often as possible, all the while intimating that you too could be this stupid wealthy. Primarily, this cruel joke is perpetrated upon you behind the shield of Patriotism, in which the rich douchebag goes on a jag of American Boosterism, beginning as many sentences as possible with "Only in America..." or "Only in this great country...".

What is left unsaid is that very often these people are ruthless and uncaring when it comes to their quest for the Almighty Dollar, and in bed with as many politicians as their vast fortune allows them to buy and then keep in the stable. I have no doubt that a Donald Trump is a whiz in the real estate game, but I also am not laboring under the mistaken notion that he's come about his entire fortune ethically.

One of the lessons that I learned working on Wall Street for many years is that it takes more than money to make a man rich. Money is simply the grease which keeps the wheels turning. Rather, what is important is access -- to information, to the 'right people', to opportunities that the Average Man doesn't see come his way. The Rah-Rah Billionaire who is celebrating The American System is really lying to you, or perhaps he's more likely to be lying to himself: his fortune wasn't always built exclusively by the sweat of his own brow,  by the old fashion notion of a work ethic, but very often by being able to know things other people don't know, and by cozying up to people others can't get close to.

The Rah-Rah billionaire who's bullish on America is not telling you that you can be successful because America provides you all the freedom and legal protections you need to be so, but because the System, as it stands, is so easy to manipulate for those who have the money and the access to do it.

14. The "I'm Guilty, So Punish Me" Billionaire: And you know who you are, Warren Buffet and Bill Gates. This is someone who's so stinking rich that any government policy, any stupid ultra-leftard cause, any debate about how the Rich Pay No Taxes, invariably sees them become some sort of unofficial spokesman for it, a veritable class-warfare Quisling of convenience.

Whether it's Buffet clamoring for tax reform so that he can, at least symbolically, pay as much as his secretary does in taxes, or Bill Gates giving away his vast fortune to keep Africans -- who largely live in jungles, swamps and open cesspools, by choice -- from dying of malaria in staggering numbers, the I'm Guilty Billionaire typically has two motives behind his "Yes, take my money" advocacy.

The first is that he must be seen as "caring", as "giving something back", as someone who has reached a certain station in life that requires philanthropy on an unprecedented scale. This is an exercise in public relations. They know that that in the world today there's any number of people who would, if given the chance, kill them with a brick or sledgehammer over the head out of sheer jealousy, or because Professor Dipshit gave a really rousing lecture on the Evils of Capitalism (see: Occupy Wall Street). The idea behind giving away sums of money is intended to be a shield behind which they can safely hide. The money is buying them protection: politically and socially, so that when the day comes when the Red Revolution finally comes to America, the "I'm Guilty" billionaire is on record, somewhere, as being one of the "good" capitalists, which means he'll be executed last.

By which time, he hopes his vast fortune helps him escape to greener pastures.

The second motive has to do with something we discussed in 15, above. And that is in attaching oneself to a popular political movement -- and therefore, the politicians in the vanguard of it -- as a means of protection. Warren Buffet doesn't care if he has to pay the same tax rate as his secretary; if he had to, for he has enough money to easily do so, and still take a bath in gold and diamonds every day. But, he also doesn't want to as a matter of principle. After all, he's already paid good money to dodge income taxes legally. So a Buffet attaches himself to the idea of some kind of tax reform that keeps the Progressive Tax System in place (if only because at the present, the Progressives were in the ascendant, and he's learned to game it), and then use his considerable fortune and influence to guide the pace and direction of any reform. Warren Buffet's mea culpa on his tax rates is intended to endear him to those who will eventually dictate what those are, while his checkbook, personal prestige and behind-the-scenes contacts give him a say in the process.

He is, in fact, getting to plan his own execution, and rest assured that when that happens Warren Buffet will pay just as little (relatively speaking) in taxes then as he does now. For he will have, in effect, crafted the policies that eventually emerge from the process. I promise you, if the other party had been in power, Buffet's tune would be far different; for Warren this isn't about fair or ethical, it's about yanking chains because he can, and garnering good publicity for himself (he thinks) while he does it.

13. The Occupy _________ Douchebag: it is often said that most of the populist movements of the political Left are simply movements of the Well-Intentioned-but-Ill-Informed led by the Well-Informed-But-Ill-Intentioned, and nowhere was this adage ever proven truer than in the fiasco that was the Occupy ______ Movement.

It has largely petered out, but there are still a few stalwarts on the battlements, causing trouble, making nuisances of themselves, and generally giving what remains of the ultra-Leftard idealism a bad name and a rancid smell.

At it's core, what the OWS movement tried to do was to reproduce the political atmosphere of the 1960's. Back then, it was all about dodging responsibility, dispossessing the rich, Civil Rights, acid, hedonism, and recycled Socialist tropes, and this reincarnation bore many of the same hallmarks as it's predecessor. It was largely a movement of perhaps the second biggest group of doofuses in our society, the college kids (Celebrutards are the biggest group, more on them later), being whipped into a frenzy by their professors, the aging hippies, the radical ________'s, and the promise that society would be reordered in such a way as to make them -- the followers -- the recipients of all sorts of largely-imaginary rewards just for having the proper social and political attitudes, and doing what came naturally to them: getting drunk or stoned, misbehaving, fornicating in the streets, rioting and generally doing nothing useful.

The language is the same as it was in the 60's. The tactics are generally the same. The people behind the entire thing are the same too, for these are the people who back in the day, were the radical 'student leaders', the 'community organizers', the fringe political asswipes representing everything from Socialism to Anarco-Syndicalism to Communism, the false prophets of The Age of Aquarius. In short, the people who made complete assholes of themselves in the 1960's got to relive the more "romantic" aspects of the "struggles" of their youths, only this time from a position of leadership.

Because if political dissent in the 1960's was about anything, it was about the emotional, romantic and ultimately pointless aspects of "Struggle", often for it's own sake.

And despite all the revisionist history spiced with outright lies that are today regarded as fact about the Flower Children and the War Resisters of that era, OWS got pretty much the same results. Hippies still have a bad name, reputation and smell. Nothing has really changed, nothing was really accomplished, except that the tone of political dissent is now sharper and more acrimonious. That's what happens when you start out to "fight" for God-only-knows what (because the OWS people didn't seem to know what the hell they were fighting for, either) only to end the fight bitterly disillusioned, and perhaps worse off than you were before.

The Tune-in-Turn-on-Drop-Out generation that brought you Woodstock and the Summer of Love, despite their arrogant claim to the contrary, really accomplished nothing, They may console themselves with the misguided idea that they "spoke truth to power", fostered Peace, and that they "changed the System", and that they fought for noble ends, but the facts say different. They did not end the War in Vietnam, nor save the lives of a single American, Vietnamese or Laotian. They did speak their truth, which was largely gibberish and often immediately contradicted by their subsequent action,s or by their sense of situational ethics. They did not foster understanding and brotherhood, and perhaps left a bitter taste of rancor in the mouths of millions, both friend and foe, alike. The political and social unrest of the 1960's was really the temper tantrum, writ large, of millions of mollycoddled, spoiled-rotten, over-indulged douchebags whose main complaint was that they didn't want to go to Vietnam or grow up to have a job that entailed wearing a suit.

And the biggest indication of just how full of shit that generation was, and still is, is to be seen in their pantheon of so-called heroes, many of whom went on to infect the body politic from the inside, i.e. John Kerry, Nancy Pelosi, the Clintons, Jerry Brown, half of the Congressional Black Caucus. Those that "fought the Establishment" are now the Establishment, themselves, and they have carried with them the viruses of stupid idealism and intellectual laziness that has now infected most of our modern institutions.

12. The Celebrity Endorser: Do you really think Alex Trebek cares if old people have life insurance? Do you believe Robert Wagner gives a crap about reverse mortgages? Don't you think that a big financial concern that is offering to provide you with financial advice and security could find a better spokesman than G. Gordon Liddy, or William Devane, who, on a good day, must be recognized from that one Bad News Bears movie or Knot's Landing at least once every seventeen years?

Every day, we are subjected to a "celebrity" (and one wonders about most of these people, what, exactly, is being celebrated?) endorsement of everything from insurance policies to political ideas, and I'm often left wondering why it is we put such stock in these sorts of things, and the only answer I can come up with is that some people believe that fame equates to intelligence, and this makes them prone to do something because they were told to do so by "a famous person".

Quite frankly, I don't live my life according to the dictates of Angelina Jolie, nor am I  liable to pay attention to an issue because her face is attached to it. George Clooney's take on foreign policy doesn't interest me one little bit, because I don't believe he's that deep a thinker. Spike Lee endorsing Barack Obama is like a dog returning to his vomit; it's seems just the natural thing to do, even if the dog himself is not certain as to why he does it.

The truth is that George Clooney is an actor, which means he gets paid to pretend to be someone else, only he has the ability to do so more convincingly than the average person. Spike Lee makes movies, which is certainly something that I can't do, but it doesn't follow that makes him qualified to speak on Social Security Reform or Civil Rights, but maybe it does make him qualified to sell me laxatives in a 30-second commercial between innings. Angelina Jolie is a smokin' hot chick who generates envy in other women, and drooling adoration-tinged-with-sexual-fantasies in men. I cannot comment on their relative intelligences, but it would seem to me that if they had any real, productive talents, they would be making their livings by them.

So why should I take their word on anything? Unfortunately, many people do, because there is a a serious lack of critical thinking skills in the American Body Politic. We make the mistake of believing, often sans actual evidence, that because someone is "famous" it stands to reason that they are somehow greater than the norm, and possessed of an acuity that we mortals all too often lack. The truth is that I wouldn't follow Susan Sarandon through my own front door, even if she were naked, offering free booze and cash, and promising an outrageous sexual experience (Gah! My mind's eye is blind now!). I would no sooner do something just because Sean Penn says it's the right thing to do, than I would if the same advice had come from Adolph Hitler.

And speaking of Hitler, the ability of millions to disengage their braincases when confronted by the opinion or example of a "celebrity", whether it is expressed as a means of selling you on an insurance policy, an investment scheme, a political point-of-view, a candidate, a social cause, is a direct result of the so-called Cult of Personality. Just as Hitler cultivated this persona that drove millions to do unspeakable things in the name of an unspeakable ideology, so to do other personas drive us to drink milk, buy gold, vote a certain way, wear Brand X jeans, and so on and so forth. "Celebrities" cultivate a persona which often hides the fact that they are, more often than not, dumber than dogshit.

11. The Reality Television Star: Continuing along the lines of famous people and their ability to do real harm, we move onto the next level of fame, which is to say, a sort of temporary fame that is usually achieved by degrading yourself on national television. You know you do, Snooki.

And one wonders: how, exactly, does a girl come by a nickname like "Snooki", and what, pray tell, was she doing when she earned it? But, I digress...

The adjunct to the Celebrity Endorser is the Reality Television 'Star', which is sort of like being a famous person for people with short attention spans. We have created a culture which worships the mundane and inane; this becomes evident when one considers the caliber of our current political leadership. However, we've managed to take this one step further (I would also add, "lower") and made heroes out of people who have seemingly escaped from a Down's Syndrome Summer Camp.

The aforementioned Snooki, and her colleague, "The Situation". Paris Hilton. Johnny Fairplay. Half a dozen notable metro/homosexuals from shows like Dancing With the Stars, or American Idol. The Omarosas of the world. The Kim Kardashians, John and Kates, Dr. Drew, and a passel of Mob Wives and "Real" Housewives, have all conspired -- quite accidentally, because none has the wit to think themselves out of the proverbial wet paper bag -- to create a mini-tyranny of the immediate. It is the Proletariat Dictatorship of ADHD. These are the people who have somehow managed to set the tone for much of our popular culture, people who have become "famous for being famous". These are people who will, in a very short span of time, be forgotten by the majority of their most fervent followers, however, the amount of damage they can inflict upon the culture while enjoying their proverbial 15 minutes can linger for generations.

Do you believe that Snooki is a suitable example for your daughter? Would you take lessons in ethics and honesty from Omarosa or Johnny Fairplay? Would you hold the Kardashians or Gosselins up as the prototypical American family and draw lessons from them on how to raise healthy kids and comport yourself with dignity and integrity? Would you go to Dr. Drew...for anything?

You're damned right you wouldn't, if only because you possess superior intelligence. This has been established by the fact that you are here now, reading this. Yet, these people have an affect on young minds that goes beyond their staying power as a celebrity. The Situation and the Mob Wives make all Italians look bad (something they didn't really need help with, what with all the mob trash we generally love and celebrate). Paris Hilton makes high-flying-hard-partying-collect-as-many-bodily-fluids-as-you-can-before-AIDS-or-an-Overdose-kills-you seem like an attractive, and achievable, lifestyle choice. Shows like 16 and Pregnant glorify the unwed, teenaged mother.

It requires but a short exposure to this kind of behavior to embed it inside the skull of an impressionable youngster. Not only that, but one has to speculate about the peculiar mindset that finds such shows entertaining, that enjoys watching people eat hissing cockroaches on Fear Factor, that drives an otherwise attractive person who should have no difficulties in the dating/marriage department to make an appearance on The Bachelor or Take Me Out, or which simply cannot live without knowing the often salacious details behind the latest catfights-of-the-Fucked-My-Way-into-Rich-and-Stupid on Real Housewives.

Here's two schools of thought on the subject: either life in America has become barren, stale, sterile, isolated,  desperate, in some cases depraved to the point where some are entertained by watching other people degrade themselves in public, or we are in the midst of a cycle in which we are creating successive generations of genetic potato salad that one day will demand "Smell-o-vision", competitive nosepicking, televised bestiality, and college courses on How to Wipe Your Own Ass Properly. Snooki, then, is the harbinger of the Apocalypse.

10. The Television Talking Head: I consume an inordinate amount of television news and analysis. This makes me, I believe, somewhat better-informed than the average person, but it also causes me to be a great deal more cynical, I think, than need be.

Part of this stems from the fact that modern news reporting has evolved (at MSNBC, it has devolved) from a simple recitation of the facts, perhaps the (announced) expression of a particular point-of-view or editorial, free of garnish and ideological bias, into what it has become today; a minefield of conflicting, often acrimonious, swirling, nonsensical, sometimes deliberately-misleading sound and flashing lights from which one must make a conscious effort to retrieve ever-tinier nuggets of truth. The biggest, and worst, contributor to this fetid miasma of confusion has to be the Political Pundit, on both sides of the aisle.

These people are put on the air because they have acquired, we're led to believe, a certain expertise which is, sadly, all too obviously totally lacking. I cannot begin to count the number of times one of these professional pundits, paid attack dogs, campaign confederates, party hacks, the so-called "strategists" are trotted out to examine every possible detail of even the least-interesting and least-pressing subjects in minute detail, and to put a political 'spin' on it all. What's truly amazing, though, is that it often the SAME doofuses showing up all over the the same networks, one day uttering what they consider an undisputed fact, and the very next contradicting themselves without ever a) seeming to notice, or b) making an admission that they have changed a position or assertion.

This is Orwell's Doublethink in action, and it happens on the news channels from CNN to FoxNews. Whether it's a Chuck Todd, or a Larry Sabato, a Chris Cillizza, Bob Beckel, Eugene Robinson, the Cater-era retread, the Clinton-Era former deputy assistant spokesperson for the spokesperson, the Bush-era (and they largely cover both Bush eras because W often hired Daddy's guys) boosters, the Obama-ass-kissers, the Reaganite Retirees, matters not; the business of political commentary these days requires an veritable army of professional spinners, and an ability to distort, or even resist, reality.

Thus, we are treated to the spectacle of the Guy-who-defends-Obama-Against-a-Baseless-Charge-today, clamoring for civility, and that we not rush to judgement, who then accuses Mitt Romney of giving people cancer the very next day on the flimsiest of pretexts. We are exposed to the contradiction inherent in the lady who professes the most strident feminism on Monday who then pleads for a return to the more genteel treatment ladies used to get in the aftermath of another outrageous Michelle Obama statement, or another outrageous Hilary Clinton Lie. We get the guy who will defend the position that George W. Bush was a fiscal conservative while decrying the reckless spending of democrats, and the very next beg to have this or that misguided, super-expensive, ultimately-pointless Bush-era "program" saved, usually on the grounds of National Security or Anti-terrorism, or as a sop to cultural conservatives by a different name.

It explains the full-bore assertion of an Ann Coulter, who one one day advocates for a kind of Conservatism that seemingly went out with Poodle skirts and Saddle Shoes yesterday, and which ends with the endorsement of a Mitt Romney as the 'best hope for Conservatives' today. It explains the ability of an Alan Colmes to make the illegitimate argument that George W. Bush's Patriot Act was an assault upon traditional Civil Liberties, but that Barack Obama's Healthcare dictates are the hallmark of an enlightened society concerned with the human rights of the individual.

If you ever wondered why our politics seem so divided, so rancorous, acidic, silly and stupid, look no further than the Talking Head; he or she spends the entire day spewing complete bullshit, gets paid quite a bit to foster obfuscation, and often gives you the impression of not even believing what they're saying.

9. The New York Times Featured Columnist:This is self-explanatory, for anyone with enough awareness to prevent them from sticking their wet genitalia into a live electrical outlet can tell from a cursory read that the New York Times is, de facto and de jure, the official Mouthpiece of the American left.

We can begin with Maureen Dowd who is apparently always in high menstrual dudgeon, and seems to be suffering from the same almost-post-menopausal realization that a life lived according to the dictates of Modern Feminism means a wasted and empty existence. One gets the general impression that MoDo is depressed to find in her later years that the weaponized vagina that Bretty Friedan and Gloria Steinham said would liberate her, have instead spawned an unhappy hellion whom no man in his right mind would fuck with a stolen dick. MoDo's modus operandi is to rage, ineffectually, against the machine, with some argument that she -- and others like her -- are somehow, mystically "owed".

Gail Collins practically writes her own obituary every day. She is another of those ardent feminists and Libtards who labors under the mistaken impression that the reason the world she wants hasn't yet been created is because we haven't got enough government to tell us what to do, to steal from the productive to reward the non-productive, to cater to enough victimhood groups, or that we just haven't found the right sort of Liberal who has the ability to cut through all the bullshit and just adopt the full Stalinesque program, already.

Thomas Friedman is a joke. A cruel joke. And the mystery of it all is that the man, somehow, has made himself filthy rich in the publishing game by peddling complete and utter crap. This only goes to prove that Friedman's brand of leftoidism is some form of mental disorder, because reasonable people simply would not shell out great sums of money to read recycled newspaper columns reissued every so often under newer titles, every last one of them full to the brim with logical inconsistency, stupidity, and snobbery-disguised-as-enlightened-commentary.

It is amazing that Paul Krugman survives at all, for it was once axiomatic that living organisms that demonstrably stupid were typically doomed to extinction. For an economist, Krugman seems to know surprisingly little about the subject. For a commentator, one gets the general impression that the only thing Krugman is describing accurately is the fantasy world residing inside his own skull. It is amazing just how detached from reality Krugman is, and even more amazing how many times he tends to contradict himself, often achieving both within the same editorial piece. If Paul Krugman were an animal, and were to be released back into the wild, he'd be eaten by predators within seconds.

Frank Rich should be the poster child for Birth Control.

The New York Times has enormous influence, and sets much of the tone -- and often provides the talking points -- for much of the American media. As such, you would hope that it would be stuffed to the rafters with smart, responsible, engaged journalists with the highest standards of honesty and integrity. Instead, it is what it is, much to our detriment.

8. The Civil Rights Icon: There was a time in this country's history when those who suffered and struggled for the basic rights one would afford a stray dog were honest, admirable people. That changed a long time ago when the fight for Civil Rights ceased being about legal, political, ethical and philosophical ideals and instead became a cash cow to be milked by lesser men.

Je$$e jackson has probably been responsible for more blatant extortion than La Costra Nostra. Al Sharpton has the blood of a murdered man on his hands, and the unjustly shattered reputations of hundreds of others upon his conscience. Jackson has uttered the most racially-insensitive invective one might imagine (New York as "Hymietown", "Alan Keyes/Clarence Thoams/Barack Obama/Condoleeza Rice/Colin Powell/Ward Connerly, et. al. are not authentically black..."), and Sharpton has Tawanna Brawley, Freddy's,  and Crown Heights on his record.

There was, perhaps, a time when both men actually believed that what they did was for the advancement of their race, but somehow, something went awry. Perhaps it was the fame and notoriety that came with casting yourself as the "spokesman" for a lying teenager who was caught in her lie because she scrawled "KKK" on herself, in dog excrement, incorrectly, or that attached to you because you were in the right place at the right time to wave a dead man's bloody shirt. Maybe it was the money that came flooding in from guilty white libtards, or which has been provided by the taxpayers through political machinations, or perhaps it's the rush of power that follows in the wake of showing up outside someone's corporate headquarters with a crowd of paid protesters to demand a check because someone used the word "black" in a context you didn't agree with.

Or, more likely and frequently, because they used the word "black" in a way which you connived to give a negative connotation.

I don't mean to pick exclusively upon the Reverends, either. Julian Bond is an especially insufferable dipshit. We can forgive him this, if only slightly, because the NAACP long-ago ceased to be about the advancement of anybody, and now simply exists as NAACP Inc, surviving on the donations it gathers on it's past, glorious legacy, and the perception that it still speaks on behalf of the downtrodden.

There is a hue and cry in America today that we're still a racist country, despite the fact that I can show you the graves of 600,000 WHITE MEN who died to settle the question of Slavery in America, despite shiploads of Civil Rights Acts, Constitutional Amendments, Affirmative Action, the Welfare State, racial preferences in Law and Medical Schools' admission policies, and the elevation of a (half-)black man to the highest office in the land despite no obvious credentials or experience.

If racism still exists in America it is because some people have a vested interest in seeing that it sticks around to fatten their wallets. There has been much progress in our society in this regard, and every time we seem set to make another Great Leap Forward, along comes some douchebag reverend, some pseudo-psychotic dolt still living in the 60's, some self-interested little turd who wants to know why he/she should forgive a sin committed centuries ago, to fuck it all up.

Usually for money, or the power it gives them to influence an election, from whence more money and power comes from. If you ever want to know beyond a shadow of doubt whether or not an issue is truly a matter of civil rights, look for the usual suspects to argue in favor/against it, imagine how much they're making from their repeated beat-the-drum-of-discord television appearances and donations to their 'foundations', and how many in the media or politics pay serious attention to them. That's how you'll figure out it's all bullshit.

7. The Political Comedian: Much like the Reality TV star, the political comedian (ex: John Stewart, Steven Colbert, Bill Maher) are all, in their own ways, full of shit.

Maher is gratuitously smarmy and obnoxious, mostly because that's the audience he plays to, and the more obnoxious and slimy he gets, the better his paymasters like it. Nothing draws in the viewers like manufactured bullshit. And Maher is a master of the art form, turning what are becoming increasingly severe and vicious personal attacks against his enemies -- real and perceived -- into "jokes", which he believes a) insulate him from return criticism, and b) are funny.

Full-blown Ass Cancer is funnier than Bill Maher.

And I recall a time when Maher wasn't this obviously vicious and seemed a perfectly reasonable guy when he was doing "Politically Incorrect" on network television. Back them, one would have thought Maher witty, intelligent, informed, and straight-forward. Nowadays, one must regard Bill Maher as a male version of Maureen Dowd, that is, someone in serious need of getting laid, preferably without (one assumes) having to pay for it,or import hairless little boys from a foreign country.

I have to admit to actually enjoying John Stewart's "The Daily Show" because for all the GOP-and-conservative bashing that goes on there, it's still funny. And because Stewart does, occasionally, zing his own side, but only when the foible is too painfully obvious to be ignored. Otherwise, much political stupidity that Stewart could be lampooning falls by the wayside. Then again, this is probably what happens in a comedy situation where you have 35 writers doing material for you, and they all presumably have a political bias.
I give Stewart some credit for at least being honest in this regard, but it difficult to take him seriously on some other issues, especially those related to his stands on Social Justice, when one considers that Stewart is a rather wealthy man who would like you to forget that fact while he's pontificating on behalf of the so-called downtrodden in America.

I find Stephen Colbert to be a comedy genius. Uproariously funny, clever, quick-witted. Then you remember that he's doing it by satirizing Your Side, and that every once in a while he drops character and let's his personal biases show.Maybe he can't help that, for it cannot be easy to keep up that sort of diametrically-opposed-to-your-real-life persona for very long without either injuring yourself, or needing the services of a psychiatrist.

All three of these guys have an inordinate effect upon the popular culture. I would daresay that more people would make a serious, life-changing decision based upon Stewart's hyperbolic-comedy-with-an-editorial than would those who would get the advice of a doctor, lawyer or other expert in a particular field. I'm sure more people today believe that Stephen Colbert should be running for Congress, or even President, because while they know the news to be fake, they just enjoy the persona too damned much. Bill Maher reaches like seven people on HBO, so who gives much of a shit about his actual influence. He's been included here because he's a miserable, insufferable prick.

6. The Personal Injury Attorney: William Shakespeare once wrote (Henry VI) "The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers". He also wrote (King Lear) "A knave; a rascal; an eater of broken meats; a base, proud, shallow, beggarly, three-suited, hundred-pound, filthy, worsted-stocking knave, a lily-livered, action-taking knave".

And although the Elizabethan Era is long gone, the perception of the lawyer as a parasite upon the host society remains.

The worst of the parasites, however, is the personal injury attorney, who's stock-in-trade often seems to be getting people paid for being victims of their own stupidity, and then taking a third off the top.

Personal injury attorneys are the reason why every bottle of oven cleaner has an admonition not to spray the shit in your own eyes. They are why the cost of every good and service in America probably costs twice it's real value. They are the primary cause of out-of-control healthcare costs, being able to wield the power to convince juries (typically made up of the dumbest and least-busy people in America, as they seemingly often have no jobs or were so stupid as to NOT be able to avoid jury duty) that a doctor causes genetic mutations which result in Cerebral Palsy, cancer, or birth defects.

Whether we're talking your typical Slip-and-Fall Ambulance Chaser or John Edwards, former Presidential Contender, famous adulterer and denier of paternity and Ex-Breck Girl, the story is the same one. Some asshole insists on driving with a hot cup of coffee between her legs, predictably scalds herself, and someone has to be made to pay for it. Some dickhead decides to clean his contact lenses with Windex, blinds himself, and someone else has to be held responsible. A pair of parents give birth to a genetic fruit salad, and it's the fault of the doctor and hospital that delivered the child. Some mouth-breathing fucktard, for want of a red warning label, decides it's perfectly safe to light his gas grill with a blowtorch and burns his scrotum to a crisp, and likewise, it's someone else's fault.

The personal injury attorney is partly responsible for economic ruin, but bears a great deal more responsibility for upsetting the balance of Nature: in times past, stupid people who injured or killed themselves doing dumb things added chlorine to the gene Pool by prematurely dying. People who were once considered a burden by a society because of their impairment or defect, likewise, died young.. In this way, Nature kept a balance between those suited to reproduce and those who were genetic dead-ends. The personal injury attorney has thrown that delicate, Natural balance all out-of-whack, for now the stupid are sometimes deterred by bright red and specific warning labels not to stick their cocks into a running vacuum cleaner, or to not play hide-and-seek inside a refrigerator, or maybe even to read and think before using that nail gun or circular saw, or before they drink that fatal Drano cocktail.

I'm shocked that the environMENTALists haven't begun a campaign against Personal Injury Attorneys and their deliberate attempt to keep Gaia overpopulated.

And then there's the other end of it, too; how many people with an expensive health problem which make them a expensive burden upon their families and society are still here, prevented from an early death and an end to their suffering, because some lawyer crowbarred some money out of someone else's pocket to keep them alive? To what end?

The personal injury attorney (PIA) is why your healthcare system is super expensive. The PIA is why everything in America has the cost of a lawsuit already figured into it's manufacture.The PIA is why afternoon television sucks, what with all the commercials begging victims to come forward to ensure that life-saving drugs that perhaps killed a few scores of people while helping tens of thousands more are pulled off the market because of the 1-in-100,000 chance that your anti-cancer medication might give you a fatal dose of the Clap and bad breath.

5. The Socially Conscious Brother: Every office and classroom has one. He's the one who cannot go five minutes without making a statement that, if it had been uttered by a White Man, would see someone fired, arrested or otherwise socially barred. He's the guy who makes a great show -- usually among other black people -- of having all the answers to life's little problems. He knows his MLK and Malcolm X inside out. He makes a pretense of ostentatiously reading Langston Hughes and Maya Angelou in the cafeteria. He's the one who's always seeking office contributions for his "Youth Group", Church, Black Fraternal Organization, etc, etc. He's the guy who adopts an air of sophistication that is often directly disproportionate to his actual intelligence.

And he gets away with it because he's black, and he's "aware" of the goings-on in "the communitaaaay". He's the Brother that's "plugged in". He's the one who knows where it's at. He's the loudest voice in Diversity training, the first on line at the Black History Month exposition, the first to start the trend of listening (and pretending to enjoy) obscure South African Zulu Rap, and wear a dashiki shirt with casual slacks, and a baseball cap.

He's also incredibly full of shit, for the entire thing is a put-on, a stage act, a veil behind which Socially-Conscious Brother (SCB) goes about his real business, which is scamming girls, acquiring a positive reputation within his social circle that he doesn't truly deserve, and using his skin color as both a hammer and a wedge, as it suits his -- not his supposed brethren's -- purposes.

The first to file the baseless discrimination lawsuit with a settlement, and not the redress of the supposed grievance, as the desired result, too. I have seen more careers destroyed, more money that could have be reinvested in employees wasted, more rancor created where none should have ever existed, because of Socially-Conscious Brother. He's the guy who has left his fingerprints on everything, and then denies ever having had a part. He is a provocateur and prevaricator, a charlatan, and all of his self-righteous claptrap is merely the shield behind which he hides his true intent, which is something similar to that of the so-called Civil Right Icon (see above), which is to get something for nothing.

Or better, to get something for Simply Being Black.

SCB is the first to decry the practice of law enforcement to stop and frisk suspicious individuals as an infringement upon civil rights, and then the first to scream about the rapidly rising murder rates after the police stop doing it. He's an asshole in a pork pie hat and bow tie. He's the black community's answer to Joe Biden.

4. The Professional Agitator: It does not matter exactly just what name you identify them by: student protester, media flack, Think tank director, Chairperson of the Political-Flavor-of-the-Month Club, Community Organizer, Union Representative, the fact of the matter is this class of person is the same, regardless of political affiliation, and that is that they are professional soup-stirrers, gaining money, fame and influence from creating crises out of whole cloth.

A good, recent example of this phenomenon is on Sandra Fluke, the "professional" Ivy League Law student who can't be bothered to either stick a crowbar in her wallet and buy her own condoms, or say "No" every once in a while and keep her knees within the same zip code for an evening.

The Professional Agitator has but one goal: to avoid having to work for a living, and in the process, accumulate influence, whether in the media, politics, their little patch of the world, whatever. This influence brings with it some cash, some access to "important" personages, a measure of fame. We've seen a rash of professional agitators over the last decade, and they all follow the same trajectory: they appear, they get some attention, they soon become a political cause, and then they fizzle out return to obscurity, but int he meantime, they've managed to establish themselves as some sort of folk hero, which allows them to beg other people for money.

And it's not just the Sandra Flukes of the world, either. There's Cindy Sheehan (remember her?) the bereaved mother of a dead soldier. There's the Code Pink idiots, the Joe the Plumbers, Pastor Terry Joneses, the Planned Parenthood doofuses, the Gay Rights advocates, the Westboro Baptist Church morons, the Evangelical TV Minister who can't shut up about God's presumed punishments of America, nor keep it in his pants.

If we took these people out and shot them on national television, we'd be a much better society in the long run. They exist simply to whine, and in the process, wear the rest of society down until their particular pet peeves are seen to in just the way they want. They are the living proof of the adage about squeaky wheels and grease.

3. The Official Spokesperson Who Ultimately Says Nothing: I feel left out. In this day-and-age when everyone and everything has an Official Spokesperson, I have none. The President of the United States has spokespeople who interpret what he says for him for public consumption (based on the belief that we're all too stupid to understand that when Barack Obama says "lower the cost of healthcare" or "revive the American Economy" he means the direct opposite), every Big Business Entity has one to explain that the latest economic catastrophe is not the result of poor planning, bad strategy or rank stupidity, but the natural-but-unexpected result of "unforeseen economic factors" that they all insist they have the power to prophesy in their sales literature or prospectus.

By the standards of the day, I should have a full-time Official Spokesperson to explain to you that my inability to lose weight is somehow not my fault, or that my failure to quit smoking is the result of some devilish conspiracy.

It's bad enough that we often have to be subjected to the mind-boggling pronouncements of Official Spokespeople who are trotted out to explain that Congressman Weiner really didn't expose himself on the Internet when he so obviously had, or that Facebook stock is, indeed, worth the paper it's printed on despite the fact that it all appears otherwise, but the absolute worst, in my opinion, is having to listen to the Spokesperson Who Does No Speaking.

You usually find this particular type of asshole at a lectern NOT answering questions from reporters when some dingbat walks into a school and starts firing on full-auto. When some dipshit in a turban is caught trying to sneak an SUV full of C4 into Times Square and is only caught because he wired his bomb up incorrectly. Most likely of all, it's the jerkoff who has to explain-without-really-explaining why Micheal Bloomdouche...errr...Bloomberg, is such a bed-wetting, panty-waisted turd muncher.

The Official Spokesman Who Says Nothing is something of a modern anomaly. He or she is eagerly trotted out to reassure us, to give us some measure of being informed, to placate the Press or to maintain the illusion that someone is "on top of the situation", while simultaneously refusing to answer pointed questions that would back that assertion up. Their job is to purposely obfuscate while giving the illusion of disseminating information. It's a Potemkin display, often done out of a sense of grudging obligation, and by rote.

Far from informing the public of things they certainly ought to know, the Official Spokesman more frequently causes more confusion, and produces more misconceptions, and ultimately, lots of conspiracy theories. The only reason this ballet of the absurd continues is because there are 24-hour news outlets and the internet which have t be fed something with which to fill up airtime and waste bandwidth. For all the bad they do, these people would probably be more useful to society if they simply took a swan dive off the Sear's Tower.

2. The Diplomat: It was once said, I believe by Churchill, that diplomacy was more or less a waste of time, and could only be made to work where there was a commonality of interests between nations. Without that shared interest, actual agreement, and better still, lasting agreement, was impossible, but still, Winnie would insist, "better jaw-jaw than war-war".

If we take but a cursory glance at modern diplomacy, what do we see? After seven years of negotiations with Iran, and threat of sanctions, they're still going to get nuclear weapons, and continue to fund world-wide terrorism directed against Israel and the West.

After more than a decade of negotiations, bribes, and threat of sanctions, North Korean is, likewise, still working on getting nukes, and has become one of the world's largest proliferator of weapons of mass destruction and the means to deliver them.

After decades of negotiations between Trade Representatives of the United States and China, we're still running a huge trade imbalance, Chinese markets are still closed to many American products, we owe the Chinese our collective lungs.

Even though the Cold War is Over, and We Won, the Russians continue to work against us, the Europeans continue to castigate or thwart us at every opportunity.

Pakistan uses the United States as it's personal bank account, and then funds Al'Qaeda. The Saudis hide behind the shield provided by American power, and then still fund terrorists all over the globe, and export the Wahabbi influence that creates terrorists in the first place.

The Israelis and Palestinians are still fighting, despite decades of diplomatic efforts to settle their disputes.

The U.N. put the "fun" in "dysfunctional".

I rest my case.

1. The Current President of the United States...and Her Husband, Too: And that formulation, unfortunately, simply MUST be the explanation for the disaster that has been Barack Obama. The country, it would seem, has been led all along by a whining, menstrual, racist, vegetarian-for-appearances-sake-only, cast-iron bitch. 

The other possibility, that the American public erred in selecting an unqualified, unprepared ideological blockhead with a pair of fake autobiographies, is too terrible to contemplate. It must be Michelle who really runs things, while Barry is simply the mouthpiece.

There can be no other explanation, because if we are to believe that Barack Obama is, indeed, at least as intelligent as your common cocker spaniel, then the seeming inconsistencies of his reign, the contradictory quality between rhetoric and action, the disjointed policies, the inability to admit to mistakes, the stubborn refusal to face facts clearly and honestly, the over-the-top, reflexive negative reaction to justifiable criticism, the insistence despite evidence that down is up, and black is white, are all of them, the hallmarks of a woman.

And the completely unhinged woman suffering the ravages of a state of permanent PMS, at that.

Barack Obama claimed to be able to lower rising sea levels. An intelligent man would never claim that, and so we must assume that someone else put the words in his mouth..

Barack Obama claimed to be able to turn the American Economy around despite no practical experience in running a business, no degree in economics, no real idea of how money is actually made, and without ever having held an actual job in his entire life. Since a guy with at least a modicum of brains would never, ever make that sort of claim, then we must assume, again, that someone told him what to say.

Obama's first priority, despite the country being embroiled in two wars, laboring under economic hardship, being divided politically, was not to address those questions, but instead reshape the healthcare system in such a way as to ensure the plan is largely described in emotional terms, and which cannot be explained in reasonable, logical ones, and then to dodge questions on it for three-plus years. This, again, is not an indication that a man is truly in charge.

When oil was gushing from the floor of the Gulf of Mexico, Barack Obama did not visit the Gulf Coast and offer assistance or succor; he instead went on vacation, and left it to his underlings, notably Eric Holder, to go out and sue someone else to clean it all up. Intelligent men with political acumen do not behave this way.

When the Middle East erupted in a series of small-scale revolutions, Barack Obama did not lend his support to the more democratically-inclined and western-oriented reformers, fearing to give offense to the dictators then in charge, and by this omission encouraged the worst elements, both political and religious, to hijack or suppress whatever nascent democratic movements that may have emerged. Not saying anything for fear of giving offense is a most feminine quality.

As people in this nation suffer through unemployment, foreclosure, a loss of their savings and retirement plans, when they need reassurance that someone, anyone, is in charge, they instead get a lot of impassioned, inspirational talk, but little meaningful action. Women behave this way.

So this must be the secret as to why Obama has been such a bad President; it is, as he has always assured us, really not his fault. Someone else is coming up with the ideas, writing the speeches, crafting the spin with that condescending tone, with the quality that we grateful children should accept it as Bible truth, like when your Mother assures that the Easter Bunny and the Tooth fairy are real, but won't ever come to our house if you don't get to bed, or drink your milk, and do as I say.