In my endless, tireless…well, in my endless campaign to push Atlas Slugged AGAIN, the definitive parody of Atlas Shrugged now available for a limited time (until the heat death of the universe) here, I think I’ve hit upon a neat-o analogy linking two of America’s most notorious public figures from the 1950s.

Commenting on a blogger’s post on the Huffington Post, I wrote, “In Ayn Rand, capitalism got the pornographer it had been waiting for.”  Not bad, eh?  But that’s not even the best part.  The best part came when I suggested deep similarities between Rand and Hugh Hefner.  Both created a fantasy version of American society, which they then presented to the world nicely gift-wrapped in “a” “philosophy.”  Yes, Objectivism is Rand’s “Playboy Philosophy.”

I also noted that at least Hefner practiced what he preached.  Rand–that supposed champion of individualism, personal genius, and freedom from the limiting constraints of the mob–not only ruled her cult-like “Collective” with the kind of authoritarian diktats she had supposedly foresworn when she fled the Soviet Union, but also found a way to accept Medicare and Social Security from exactly the sort of quasi-”socialist” government programs she spent a career deriding.

What they have in common is the service they provide to the fantasists who derive pleasure from self-arousal via idealized images–and which of us, when we were 14-year-old teenage boys, wasn’t one?  And if you either are or were a 14-year-old teenage girl, perform the mutatis mutandis by noting that Atlas Shrugged is, among other things, the world’s longest romance novel, featuring no fewer than three (3) hunks of perfection vying for the favors of the beautiful, brilliant, etc., etc. protagonist and climaxing, like any mass market bodice ripper, in long-and-teasingly-delayed intercourse and, naturally, true love.

From Hefner we got the idealized image of the single, hetero man: successful seducer, hip to hi-fi and jazz and “modern art,” stylishly dressed and more than eager to read interviews with Vladimir Nabokov and Mort Sahl and–dig it–Jean-Paul Sartre.  From Rand, we get the idealized image of the individual in capitalist society: untrammeled by obligations to others, self-aware and unyieldingly true to his “code,” certain (with the certainty that comes from absolute certitude) of his genius and his vision, proudly willing to risk all that he might reap the rewards of his “achievement,” and asking only to be free of enslavement to leeches, moochers, parasites, and all the other members of the human race.

Both images are enticing.  Both speak to the needs we have, growing up in a society that grooms us to be, before anything else, sellers (of labor, “skills,” etc.) and buyers (in service to our “lifestyle”).  What Kind of Man Read Playboy (And, in The Fifties and Early Sixties, Bought the Whole Schmeer)?  The same kind who stares defiantly into his iPhone video lens and intones, “I am John Galt”–a man (or woman) aspiring to an identity, a sense of self, in which strength, fearlessness, and unique ability will be sufficient to defeat their opposites, i.e., the powerlessness, anxiety, and nobody/loser anonymity that comprise capitalism’s version of Original Sin.

“Make something of yourself” is the Prime Directive of the Industrial Revolution, and its implicit message (“…because until you do, you are by definition nothing”) is only partially mitigated by the contemporary command to go for, and don’t give up on, “your dream.”  What found a popular embodiment in the heroes of Horatio Alger reached its apotheosis in John Galt, Rand’s super-hero, the comic book reductio ad absurdum of self-made American manhood.

“We won the War.  We saved Civilization.  We’re entitled to some fun.  (And don’t worry–nice girls like sex, too.)” was the implicit theme of Playboy, itself embodied in “Hef,” with his ten thousand Pepsi’s a day and the pajamas, the pipe, the clean and cherubic bunnies, and the Mansion.

In either case, what’s not to want?  And, as long as you’re an adolescent either chronologically or emotionally, what’s to make you think it’s only a fantasy?

If depression is the result of repressed anger–and it is in our house, although very rarely–then liberals and progressives and even honest, intelligent centrists “depressed” by Anthony Weiner’s embarrassment should un-repress themselves and give vent to the real emotion.  Because there are plenty of worthy recipients for it.

Let’s start with the Congressman himself.  It’s one thing to be a Weiner, and another to be a dick.  Here he is, the hottest tamale on the Democratic menu, the most exciting speaker, the only person in all of D.C. (with the possible exception of Bernie Sanders, and he’s too nice, too) willing to address Republicans with the kind of withering contempt and disdainful sarcasm that they deserve; newly married to a gorgeous, accomplished (and, we hear, rich) wife; the fated mayor of NYC and, from that, who knows–governor?  Senator?  He’s the only public figure whose unvarnished disgust with that gang of liars, hypocrites, and thieves DBA “the Republican Party” seems to approximate one’s own–which, therefore, gives cause to believe that he was and is more aware than most just what a target he has made of himself for their smear machine…and THIS is what he does?

He texts co-eds.  He sends coy tweets and photographs of himself.  He flirts with college girls.   And all of it is done online, where cells of sniggering right-wing orcs are waiting to scoop it up and send it to their masters.   And all of it, without the at-least-understandable thrill and allure of actual sexual activity.

The mind reels, the gorge rises, the soul withers.  Then the mind says, “Snap out of it, soul.  This is not an illustration of the folly of humanity or the self-indulgences of ‘liberalism’ or the inherent hopelessness of investing any of one’s best emotions or thoughts in politics.  It’s the stupid, and probably unconsciously self-destructive, action of one man.”

One gropes for a theory and comes away with, “Well, look at him.  Maybe as an adolescent he was a skinny, Jewish-y,  brainy nerd, and never thought he’d be popular with the hot chicks.  Now he’s a rock star and can’t resist trolling for groupies.”  Having lived the first half of that scenario, I sympathize.  But he’s not only a public figure, he’s made it his business to become a controversial, attention-grabbing public figure.  We are in the realm, here, not of Twitter smarts or image management or online flirtation basics, but of psychopathology.

And of married-man morality.   However, unlike the pro-am moralists of the (endlessly hypocritical) conservative right, Weiner is not a pious pronouncer of how other people should behave.   He and his wife can negotiate the terms of his repentance, which otherwise is none of my, Chris Matthews’, or Fox News’ business.

In any case, and no matter how mad at Weiner I am, I hope he doesn’t resign.  I hope he stays in office and resumes his scalding floor-of-the-House manner. Because the people he excoriates are a thousand times worse, and sending tweets and pix of your dick and your pecs to chicks for kicks is nothing, compared to being a Republican.

As someone else has written, what galls in this most of all is the (temporary) legitimacy it bestows upon that bottom-feeding excrescence, Andrew Breitbart.  It’s not that he always lies, and, after all, the Enquirer was right about John Edwards.   But the right in America today consists of the powerful and the wealthy manipulating the credulous and the fearful, and Breitbart is their Hearst (who thinks he’s Joseph Pulitzer).

Somewhere I read that Shirley Sherrod is suing Breitbart, so put me down as offering an amicus brief on behalf of the plaintiff.  Sooner or later Breitbart will suffer some fatal embarrassment of his own, because he craves the respect of more than just the arrested-development adolescents who comprise his “operatives” and his fans, and that will lead him to over-reach.  Somebody, please promise me there’ll be footage of it when it happens.

Anthony Weiner should lie low, placate his wife, assure his constituents he’s a changed man (I bet he really is), and then get on with the public’s business.  The right, through their slavering minions, will attempt to flog this for as long as possible and then longer, but in the end it won’t matter, because they do that anyway.  They’ve spent thirty years lying, pearl-clutching, deploring, lecturing, and descending at an accelerating rate into self-parody.  There are only so many people in the U.S. who can be conned into thinking that Sean Hannity’s or Sarah Palin’s (or Andrew Breitbart’s) view of the world is accurate.  You’ll never appease them and you don’t need to.

Of course, it would be nice if other Democrats helped Weiner fend off the “outraged” slurs that will be sent his way.  And maybe some actually will.  As Dominick Dunne said when O.J. Simpson declared that he would spend the rest of his life looking for his wife’s “real” killer, “Let’s watch.”

Oh for Christ’s sake…

When I was growing up, “Weiner” was not a slang word for “penis.”  At worst it meant “hot dog.”  And bear in mind that, in those days–pre-Internet, pre-cell phones, pre-computers, pre-fax machines, pre-COLOR TV–”hot dog” did not mean “penis.”  It meant “frankfurter,” at a time in which “frankfurter” did not, in America, mean “a resident of Frankfurt, Germany.”   It meant “hot dog.”

My kids have a different story, though, and my daughter once explicitly complained to me about saddling her with the name “Weiner.”  (When, in a lovely pink cloud of naivete and earnestness, I informed my kids that my father’s father’s name had been Harry Weiner, they literally laughed, out loud and with robust noises, for five minutes.  I never mentioned it again.  It suddenly strikes me that I could have topped that by telling them–in truth–that Harry’s wife’s name had been Ida.  I think “Ida Weiner” would have won some laffs, too.  Maybe next time.)

Now comes Rep. Anthony Weiner (D–NY) and this whole…you know…”did you send a photo of your dick to a college student in Seattle” broohaha.  (To which I’d like to reply, “Hey, who hasn’t?”)  As of this writing (12:45 pm on Thurs., 6-2) Weiner has apparently not conclusively stated that the photo is not of his…um…dick.  He has said that he didn’t send the photo.

I find it hard to believe that he did.  Weiner is, with the failed re-election of Alan Grayson, perhaps the only Democrat in all of Congress capable of speaking the unvarnished truth.  This makes him an obvious target for the kind of rat-fucking hijinx of which the sniggering, emotionally-stunted nose-picking “operatives” of the right are so fond.  The fact that this story was first disseminated by Andrew Breitbart (“The Homer Simpson of Right-Wing Journalism”) makes its provenance all the more suspect.

But you know me–not only do I find it hard to believe Weiner sent the pic,  I also find it hard to believe that, in a private and much more understandable context, he may have taken photos of his tumescent shlong.  (Can I say that?  ”Tumescent”?)  Who does that?  Or am I the only one who doesn’t?  It’s the same thing with sex tapes.  Apparently just about every couple in the nation except for me and my wife has, at one time or another, made a video of themselves Doing It, albeit one not intended for worldwide distribution.

Anthony Weiner has lately been on a roll, mocking Republicans for wanting to destroy Medicare but lacking the guts to admit it, and criticizing the Supreme Court’s resident embarrassment, Clarence Thomas.  The fact that “suddenly” he finds himself embroiled in what, to me, is obviously a dirty-tricks prank, is the opposite of surprising.

Therefore I suggest he follow the counsel I gave my son when he was in high school, and the issue of his last name came up.  ”Be proud of it,” I said.  ”Next time your hooligan friends start giggling about your last name, look them straight in the eye and say, ‘Yes, it’s ‘”Weiner.”  That means my name is Mister Penis.  Got it?’”

(I don’t know if he ever did.  Anthony?  Care to try it?)

*****UPDATE*****

From blogger phenry at Daily Kos, dated Thursday, 6/2, at 10:22 am:

The blog Cannonfire, which closed the case yesterday on the so-called “Weinergate” affair when it demonstrated conclusively how anyone could use a simple technique to publish any picture they wanted to another person’s Twitter stream, now reports that yfrog.com has disabled the e-mail service that enables such exploits, thereby acknowledging the existence of a security problem and tacitly acknowledging that it has been abused. In short, it is no longer possible for a reasonable person to believe that Rep. Weiner was not framed by an outside party.

(Read the rest here: http://tinyurl.com/64ttmc8 )

Not to brag, but I’m on Sam Harris’s email list.  Okay, so are thousands.  You just sign up.  Still, that doesn’t mean it’s un-cool (even if I am).

Today I got an email touting Michael Shermer’s new book, to be found here.  It looks great and if I could drop everything and read it now, I would–even though I’m less in love with Shermer than I used to be because his performance in various discussion panels (e.g., “Does God Have a Future”, co-starring the insufferable Deepak Chopra)  struck me as somewhat etiolated and not as kick-ass vigorous as I would have preferred.

Still, dig those crazy blurbs.  I already pre-love this book.  But why?  I think for reasons that the book itself addresses directly, although I may be (as the book would confirm), forcing the issue.  Is that complicated enough?  Oh shut up, it is so.  I’ll start again.

I pre-love the book because I anticipate that it will prove me right: Conservatives are insane, even if it’s not entirely their fault.  Religious extremists are nuts, even if the basis of their nuttiness is hard-wired to/in their brains and out of their control.  These people believe patently false things, and ignore objective evidence under their moralistic noses, because of how the brain works.   I’m right to disdain their positions, and this scientist, or this amateur expert on the science, says so.

Except apparently he also says that the basis for my (correct) beliefs are no different–that, incontheevable though it may be, my wrongness to those (nutty, insane) people is as defensible from their p.o.v. as my opinion of them is to me.  This, of course, is intolerable.  I don’t want science to take everyone off the hook.  I want it to take me off the hook and leave them on the hook.

Note, of course, that I’m making this up in the pure vacuum of my complete ignorance of the book itself.  The point, then, is not what the book demonstrates, but what use I’ve already made of it.  I’ve pre-defined it as “proving” everything I go around seething or laughing about all the livelong day–which, I bet, is part of his point.

I don’t think Shermer ultimately concludes that nobody, or everybody, is right.  I think he’d say, e.g., that no matter how understandable it may be, that people believe Jesus was resurrected, there is no good reason to believe that it’s true and plenty of good reasons for believing that it isn’t.

We’ll see, i.e., I’ll read it and get back to you.  But Harris’s email promo for it just functioned as a little Rorshach blot into which I just read my pre-existing assumptions and needs.  But why not?  After all, I’m right!

I’m back from NYC, where seldom often occasionally is heard a discouraging word, and the skies are sometimes cloudy all day.  (And the humidity was brutal.)  Almost everyone I saw, ate with, played music with, or hung out with, has money problems.   If they have kids, they have kid problems.  If they have real estate, they have real estate problems.

Yes, yes, how could it be otherwise?  Still, there was a noteworthy sense of the unprecedented about it all: the travails were familiar, the categories of concern were the usual ones, but every discussion featured a sub-text, if not a text, of the ominous.

The point was not merely that this or that job was about to end or had not come through; the point was also that entire fields, and therefore careers, were in jeopardy.  The point was no longer that one didn’t know what to advise one’s child about what major to choose in college; one now didn’t know what to advise any kid about what to pursue in any college (or even about going to college at all), to prepare for a future that seems more than traditionally hazy.

News about health inevitably segued into head-shaking discussions about medical bills.  A conversation about publishing morphed into a conversation about Publishing.  A chat about layoffs in a single institution led smoothly and sensibly into an apocalyptic assessment of the future and very existence of the middle class.

Nonetheless, it was fun!  Nobody was other than their familiar upbeat and snappy self, for whom humor and a sort of free-floating optimism are essential aspects of personality.  No one seemed particularly crushed by or detached from what we all laughingly agree to call “reality.”  No one said other than ”yes,” or at least “yes, in a minute,”  t0 Life.

Or so everyone was in my presence, suggesting either that I have an unusually healthy/delusional cadre of friends, or everyone had pre-arranged with each other–never mind how; via Facebook or mental telepathy or something–to spare my feelings and put on a good show for the visitor in from L.A., the poor dear.

In either case: thanks, guys.  It worked!

Paul Simon invites a fan onstage to sing “Duncan” after she calls out that that’s the song she used to learn guitar.  Watch it here, and then consider the Thought Problem appended below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXBlY5CImUU&feature=youtu.be

Thought Problem: Why is this so delightful?  It’s not a particularly musical experience.  Rayna may or may not be able to sing, but the song is out of her range and, in any case,  she’s too petrified and ecstatic to be able to put it over.  But who cares?  Nobody in that Toronto crowd, or in Simon’s band, or Simon himself, or the zillion of us who watch it on computers from and beyond sea to shining sea.

It’s not quite a realization of the Fan’s Performance Fantasy, in which suddenly the drummer/third baseman/point guard/prima ballerina falls ill, a call goes out to the gallery, and you–YES, YOU–step up and perform brilliantly, saving the day and impressing the pros.  42nd Street (“Lissen, doll.  You may be going out there just another hoofer, but you’re gonna come back A STAH.”) it isn’t.

Similarly, it’s not just another American Idol/Miss America moment of, like the maniac says, WINNING!  Because Rayna has won nothing–no new career, no prize, no transformed future.  In fact, it’s the open pursuit of such prizes, by the polished/ruthless semi-pro’s that really do want to be Miss America or your next American Idol,  that makes our experience of their winning much more emotionally compromised (at least if we’re older than 14–which, believe me, we are) and much less touching.

I think we feel good for this woman because the entire event is pure in every aspect, and for that reason our emotional identification with it is pure.  Suppose this weren’t a Paul Simon concert but, instead, a college talent show.  The emcee summons Rayna to the stage and she sings for an audience of friends and strangers.  That’s nice, but hardly a circumstance to trigger the orgasmic thrill she has in this performance.

No, this is one of her heroes, happily–to the extent that Paul Simon is able to appear “happy”– ceding the stage to her without knowing if “she’s any good”, for no other apparent reason than he appreciates his fans, and he knows that The Music is a way of life, a blessing, a natural resource, a spell that hypnotizes players and audience alike into a single communal event.

(This reminds me of seeing Paul Simon on Letterman years ago.  Dave asked him what he was working on. Simon said he’d been working on a new song, and picked up the guitar and played what he had so far, stopping about halfway through.  He explained how he was tempted to go here with it (played a chord) or there (played a different chord).  What did Dave think?  It was, to me, at least, a niftily un-egotistical, un- and anti-mystifying display of honesty–the opposite of star posturing or the disingenuous faux modesty of most “geniuses.”)

We beam and kvell and tear up at Rayna’s unselfconscious ecstasy because we enjoy three or four minutes of unalloyed vicariousness–something actors and writers and directors spend a lifetime to elicit.  We feel good for her and with her in a context uncontaminated by matters of careerism, financial gain, or any other kind of market or professional consideration.  And we appreciate her performer’s courage, going through with it in front of everybody, in spite of being a beginner and totally and completely freaked out.

Of course, my wife explains it all succinctly with, “She’s a commoner, and he’s royalty.”  True, but then what?   Suppose he had told the band to lay out, and said to her, “Really?  Great.  Show us.”  Suppose Rayna had been up there strictly on her own, with her wavery voice and her rudimentary guitar.  It would have been excruciating for all concerned.  But the band kept playing the official arrangement, Simon conducted, and the whole thing had his imprimatur.

So maybe there is an aspect of the “magical” about it all–Cinderella being selected by the prince.  And, as in the fairy tale, the prince himself is affected.  It’s easy to assume that Paul Simon will remember this as fondly and as long as anyone else.

It was as though he had invited her into his home.  He personalized the artist/fan relationship voluntarily, on his own, without the formality (willing, or coerced) of a public book signing or a fund-raiser meet-and-greet.  He didn’t confer royalty upon her–she wasn’t knighted, or whatever the female equivalent is–but, rather, he invited her to share his. And, because no matter how flabbergasted she was, she rose to the occasion, we got to share it, too.

Readers and bloggers wondering what effect being acquired by AOL would have on The Huffington Post may now gaze with awe and dismay at one: Huff Po has abolished religion.

Or, rather, it’s eliminated “Religion,” its category for articles about what one authority, whose name not only has escaped me but has gotten away clean and now lives a normal life in an unknown location, defines as “matters of ultimate concern.”

Instead, topics of a religious nature are now listed under the namby-pamby, nanny-state eat-your-peas heading “Healthy Living,” within its question-begging, lowest-common-denominator topic “Spirit.”

What the Hell (so to speak) does religion have to do with “healthy living”?  Religion represents the institutionalization of unhealthy living: celibacy, martyrdom, suicide bombing, homicide bombing, pederasty, sexism, female genital mutilation–shall I go on?  Okay!–”honor killings,” anti-Semitism, Crusades, Catholic-vs-Protestant, Hindu-vs-Muslim, belief in the Rapture, belief in the Messiah, and the ritual drinking of Manischewitz “wine.”

As for “Spirit,” I say “fooey.”  ”Spirit” is what good thoroughbreds show, or what teenage girls in cheerleader outfits want to coax from the fans in the bleachers at high school basketball games.  We want RELIGION: magical (and wishful) thinking, hellfire and damnation, centuries of war in the name of love, dolorous saints riddled with arrows (or just fucking skinned alive), symbolic cannibalism (that’s the best kind), clapping-for-Tinkerbell, praying-to-God, and all the rest of it.

Instead, turn to Aol Healthy Living.Spirit, and it’s all New Age feel-good nicey-nice: “Love: It’s What You Are.”  ”Seven Secrets to a More Joyful Existence.”  ”The Spiritual Power of Dance.”  ”Channel Your Inner Wisdom” (by the author of Your Orgasmic Pregnancy, noch).  ”Can We Be Both Divine and Human?”  And, of course, “How to Apologize” by a “happiness expert.”

These aren’t matters of ultimate concern.  They’re matters of a therapist’s concern–worthy, yes, but not scary, which is what religion is supposed to be.  Think James Joyce would have written Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man or Ulysses if his childhood had been full of “Forgive Yourself and Let Go” or “Deepak Chopra’s Yoga Routine Now an iPhone App”?

Or put it this way: How can I feel courageous for being an atheist, when I click over to Aol Don’t Worry Be Happy (or whatever it’s called) in search of something to mock, and all I find are “Show Yourself Some Love” and “How Our Consciousness Affects the Environment”?

Keep your Spirit.  Gimme that old-time “Religion.”

Got a memo from Johnson over at the Institute for Applied Theoristics.  Get a load of this:

TO: EW

FROM: Johnson

RE: Our Latest White Paper

Childhood obesity: it’s a big fat problem!  Adult stupidity: It’s rampant, whatever that means.  Like “ramped-up” or something similar.

We’re tackling both these crises at once here at IAT.  The details are still TK, but I thought you’d be as thrilled as I am at this exciting proposal for making our children less fat-bodied and our grownups less fat-headed.

First, we yield to no one in our belief that the adults of tomorrow are the children of today.  The reason “the child is father to the man” (Whitman. Or Wordsworth.  Some W.) is, the child grows up, becomes a man, and then meets a lady and falls in love.  When he loves the lady very very much, the two of them make a baby (the other “child”).  Then the baby grows up into the man.

But everybody knows this, so never mind.  The essential thing is, adults come from children.  So we wanted to link childhood obesity to adult-onset stupidity by holding the two in dynamic tension.  Could we not only deal with both these modern scourges at the same time but, indeed, play them off against each other?  Could we somehow “leverage” each in opposition to the other so that, ideally, they could be manipulated or coaxed into beating each other up?

We could and we did.  Here’s the legislation we plan to propose on both the state and Federal level:

Until the age of 18, a child whose weight exceeds his or her I.Q. by more than ten percent (as determined in an annual review conducted by qualified experts or, if they be unavailable, unqualified experts) shall be sentenced to six months hard labor in an unpleasant or scary foreign country.

I.Q., you will recall, stands for “Intelligence Quotient,” and is calculated by dividing one’s mental age by one’s chronological age and then futzing with the decimal point.  For example, if my mental age is 32 and my chronological age is 16 (which at one point they almost were), we perform the arithmetical calculation 32/16 = 2.00.  We move the decimal point to the right two positions, and we obtain an I.Q. of 200.

Under our new breakthrough concept, then, an average child—whose I.Q. is, by definition, 100—may be permitted to weight up to 110 pounds.  Children of lesser intellectual ability will be required to weigh less, while more highly-endowed (intellectually) children will be allowed to weigh more.

So far, so exciting.  But note the genius of incentivization, if that is a word, in the scheme.

If a child wants to sit around and eat Hot Pockets, packing on weight and bringing disgrace to himself, his family, and the nation, he may do so—provided he spend his non-eating time raising his I.Q. Conversely, if he doesn’t fancy reading and learning and not being an embarrassment to one and all, he need not—provided he lay off the Cheetohs.

Obviously the implications are staggering.  Under pain of sentence to mining coal half a mile underground in Ukraine or stuffing life vests in an airless factory in rural China, America’s kids will begin to wise up and slim down—and, in so doing, becoming our next generation of smarter, or at least less stupid, adults.

As for the slogans for the campaign to promote this plan, they write themselves: “It’s Smart to Be Thin But It’s Also Fat to be Smart.”  “Read Up to Eat Up or See You in Six.”  “Get Your Numbers Up or Your Number’s Up.”  And so forth.

Of course there will be gainsayers and nay-sayers and nay-gainers and neener-neeners as our terms come under professional scrutiny.  “The I.Q.?” someone will ask.  “Nobody pays attention to that anymore.”  Or, “Okay, but which scale of measurement?  Stanford-Binet?  Catell?  Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing?”

Similarly, others will ask, “Weight, yes, but where?  On the moon?”  Or, “As measured how?  In pounds?  In pounds Sterling?”

All of these will be addressed in due course.  For now, however, we’re galvanized by the whole idea—unless that has something to do with sending electricity through the leg of a dead frog, in which case we’re something else that means “really excited.”

He’s been running for ONE DAY, and already with the whining.

Yes, the electrons displaying Newt “I’m The GOP Visionary, If You Can Believe It” Gingrich’s Tweet announcing his comic-relief candidacy for prez are still warm, and already the self-parodying Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man of politics is complaining:

President Obama, Gingrich told Fox News’ Sean Hannity Wednesday evening, “can’t afford to run in a fair election. If he was on an equal playing field, he’d lose.”

Why?  Oh, stop.  STFU, America.  You know why.

Obama, the Republican candidate said, however, has the advantages of the presidency, support from the “left-wing media,” and the backing of labor unions and billionaires like George Soros.

Gingrich, who formally announced his run Wednesday online, said he is not expecting much help from the press. “If you are a conservative, you have to start with an assumption that you’re not going to get an even break from the elite media,” he said.

Innat, as the Newster himself likes to say, “sad”?  That in colloquy with tough-as-nails, no-holds-barred, asks-the-hard-questions Sean Hannity, Newt got so feshtoodled (disoriented, confused) that he forgot how, if you are a conservative, you also have to start with the assumption that a) hardly anybody reads or watches “the elite media” (that’s what makes them “elite”); b) you’ll have an entire tv and radio network openly and covertly promoting you under the phony guise of “news,” and–if you act now!–c) you’ll have the Citizens United decision to enable corporations to charter over one million dump trucks to drive unlimited and barely-documented loads of campaign cash directly to your home or office.

There will be more of this–dog whistles (“left-wing media,” “labor unions”), cat whistles (“elite”), self-pity disguised as principled indignation, dimestore–sorry; K-mart–demagoguery, and the display of industrial-strength gall as the serial-adulterer seeks to claim and discourse from the moral high ground.  That’s why we love the poor bastard.  Trump may be a cartoon blusterer, Sarah Palin a sitcom nosy ‘n’ sassy-neighbor-next-door, Mitt a replicant who thinks he’s a real human, Ron Paul the kindly/crackpot dad from a YA series, and Huckabee the host of a Sunday morning Bible story show for kids (of all ages!), but there’s only one Gingrich.

Still, Newt.   Soros?   That’s so 2004.   Considering how good you are at trading in old wives for the newest models (and then blaming it all on your patriotism), can’t you modernize your bitching and upgrade your moaning?   Hey, here’s an idea: blame Google.   For everything.  They even sound like a scary child’s monster.  Your constituents will buy it retail.