Witness – just for example – Michael Savage, Glenn Beck, and Rush Limbaugh, who have recently come under fire for their use of the R-word. Here, according to Media Matters, are a few of the people or things they have recently compared to rapists: healthcare reform; the government of the state of New York; the Democratic party; the media; Nancy Pelosi; President Obama (frequently); and "the homosexual mafia".

Here is a partial list of the people or things these entities are said to be raping: America; American values; the American war in Iraq; the American private sector; Americans in general; the American residents of New York state specifically; and "children's minds". One assumes they are American children. Also, yes, since you asked, the "children's minds" are in fact what is being targeted for rape by the "homosexual mafia", at least according to Michael Savage, because there's really no point, apparently, in defending the age-old stereotype of gay men as child molesters – that might get you in trouble, seeing as how it is blatantly hateful and untrue, when you can just slip it in subliminally with a quick metaphor. (This isn't exactly new ground for Savage: in 2004 he quipped: "When you hear 'human rights,' think gays. When you hear 'human rights,' think only one thing: someone who wants to rape your son.")

Charming. Doyle explains that while Savage, Beck, and Limbaugh generally are not motivated to discuss the prevalence of violence against women, overuse of the rape metaphor ensures that their target audience continues to feed on fear and feel constantly under attack. However, Doyle warns against writing off the commentator's understanding of the seriousness of using rape to describe events outside of a sexually violent context:

It's customary to say that people who misuse "rape" as a metaphor for general unpleasantness don't take rape seriously. But I think Limbaugh, Beck, and Savage take it very seriously. They may not have educated themselves on how rape actually happens; they may not engage in anti-rape activism, and they may not make a point of raising audience members' awareness of actual rapes in the world; they may have less than no time to spare for discussing actual sexual assaults, in their catalogue of imaginary figurative rapes. Still, they trade on the public's terror of rape, and apparently respect the word's power to shock and horrify, if nothing else. Which is why these three leaders of men are working, as hard as possible, to create a mental link between that kind of gut-level fear and any or all progressive initiatives and figures.

In essence - they are very, very aware about how their words can be used to incite fear and revulsion by using a rape metaphor.

Thankfully, these pundits are starting to come under fire for their overuse of the term. Media Matters' video compilation from late last month was damningly to the point, illustrating how rape metaphors are trotted out for their verbal impact. Note all the carefully considered pauses and word stresses:

And, as Doyle points out, they've figured out a loophole:

It only becomes ineffective, really, if you use the word "rape" so often that it loses all meaning or power to shock. Which should be easy for Limbaugh, Beck, and Savage to avoid, given that they rarely speak with as much fervour about actual rapes that happen every day.

Trading On Our Fear Of Rape [The Guardian]

Earlier: Figure Of Speech
Why Do Republicans' Fantasies Involve Sex They Supposedly Abhor?

Savage is famous for telling a caller to MSNBC to "get AIDS and die, you pig," and, more recently, for making it onto an "undesirables" list compiled by the (now ousted) Home Secretary of the UK. How did Savage get himself on a list with a former KKK Grand Wizard, a neo-Nazi leader, and the Rev. Fred Phelps, whose church's slogan is "God Hates Fags?" Well, by saying things like this:

There is certainly a possibility that our dear friends in the Middle East cooked [swine flu] up in a laboratory, in a cave, and brought it into Mexico, knowing that our incompetent government would not protect us from this epidemic because of open-border policies.

And this:

The homosexuals have taken over every aspect of the culture. That's how we have the President that we have, because we've twisted everything into what it isn't [...] Diversity is a cover for perversity.

And this:

Obama hates America and the history of this country [...] Obama is raping America. Obama is raping our values. Obama is raping our democracy. And he's saying to you, who are you gonna believe, me, with this sonorous Kenyan voice, the con man in front of your eyes? Who are you gonna believe, me or your own eyes?

Savage is also a professional paranoiac, who claims to record his show from several "hidden locations" (he is aided in this by an executive producer named Beowulf Rochlen). This ad from his website pretty much sums up his attitude:

Given all these — and many more — wacked-out expressions of bigotry, it's odd that Sanneh finds Savage kind of charming. Savage says Sanneh looks like Obama (not true, but maybe he thinks all black men look alike?), but he also serves him tasty beer and waxes philosophical about the futility of it all. He tells Sanneh,

I watch shows where they're digging up the mummy from four thousand years ago, bothering his tomb. That person shaved, brushed his teeth with a stick, took a shit, got laid, whatever. And now what? Who the fuck knows what his politics were?

Savage talks a lot about his own death, and he seems to think he will die without truly making a difference. While Sarah Palin sees herself as a rebel leader at the head of "real America," Savage seems to cast himself in the role of Cassandra. In his rant about diversity and perversity (part of a larger ran about Carrie Prejean and Perez Hilton, "a man who hates women so much that he won't have sex with them"), he says "15 years I've tried to warn you [...] and I've failed." Tried to warn you about what? Well, gays, liberals, immigrants, anti-Americanism, all of which he links in one big web of evil that he doesn't really believe he has the power to untangle.

Demagogues (people like Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, and now Sarah Palin) often speak simply. They toss red meat to their base (i.e., calling George Tiller's assassination a "termination"), they try to inflame the opposition, they create slogans. Savage, by contrast, frequently rambles bizarrely. Here he is on his dog, Teddy:

My dog is only eleven pounds. What's shocking to me is that my dog's, like, hindquarter — I looked at it the other day, when he got wet... I looked at his leg. It looked like a large chicken leg. I got frightened. So I said, how could you eat a chicken, and savor it, and the dog's — I can't do it.

Savage's dog's leg has nothing to do with any conservative cause (and, for the record, he hates both animal cruelty and animal rights activists), but Savage doesn't necessarily let conservative causes, or any causes, dictate what he talks about. As Sanneh points out, despite his previous Times bestsellers, he chose to sell his 2008 book, Psychological Nudity: Savage Radio Stories, solely through his website. Sanneh asks, "What other political firebrand would self-publish a book of autobiographical anecdotes at the peak of election season?"

Michael Savage doesn't seem to be trying to impress people, or to rally a coalition around him. He may not even be trying to convince anyone. And while this I'm-just-an-independent-stating-my-opinions routine has been used dishonestly by others, in Savage it feels genuine. Conservative pundits frequently claim that they say out loud what everyone really thinks — Savage really thinks what other people say out loud. But given that what he thinks is so frequently hateful and bigoted, is this better or worse?

Party Of One [The New Yorker]
UK Publishes List Of 'Least Wanted' People [CNN]
Michael Savage Clips [MediaMatters]
MichaelSavage.com [Official Site]

• Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has decided the best way to lead the country while thousands of people are protesting the fraudulent elections is to tell them to shut up, accept the results or risk a violent crackdown. [MSNBC]

• Most of his people are concerned that his speech will embolden Iran's Basij militias, who operate in plainclothes to foment unrest and have a habit of beating and killing people simply because they can. [Washington Post]
• Meanwhile, we're boosting our defenses around Hawai'i, since Kim Jong Il has threatened it with a missile strike. [Associated Press]
• China is officially denying that its leadership met with Kim Jong Il's son and successor, Kim Jong Un, two weeks ago. You probably should take that piece of propaganda with a very large, ragged grain of salt. [UPI]
• Back in the States, Obama is more popular than Clinton or Dubya were at this point in their Presidencies. [Matthew Yglesias]
• The husband of the woman who was sexing John Ensign while he was separated went on to have a pretty lucrative career with companies close to the GOP Senator. [Politico]
• Ensign is denying he came forward because of a blackmail plot; he's not saying he just wanted to beat his former staff to the media punch. Also, when he reconciled with his wife, he fired his mistress and paid her severance out of his own pocket. [Las Vegas Sun]
• Crazy fucking conservative Michael Savage said, "The white Christian heterosexual married male is the epitome of everything right with America." The family of the guard, Stephen Johns, gunned down at the Holocaust Museum and George Tiller's family — just for starters — might disagree. [Media Matters]
• Stephen Johns' funeral is being held today. The Museum is being closed to allow all employees to attend, and they've set up a fund for his family. [Washington Post]
• The Supreme Court has ruled that there is no Constitutional right to post-conviction DNA testing. Apparently, "justice" is not about truth. Big surprise. [LA Times]
• The Court also issued a ruling throwing out an established age discrimination law, making it harder for anyone to ever prove ever again that they were dismissed or demoted as a result. [LA Times]
• Finally, the blogosphere is a-buzz that Sarah Palin follows John McCain on Twitter but McCain doesn't follow her back...as if their accounts weren't set up and maintained by their staff. [Mother Jones]

• Nancy Pelosi admits she knew about waterboarding, but says her job was to get Democrats elected... and accused the CIA of lying to her. [Washington Post]

• While you're in the midst of feeling disappointed, don't forget that Barack Obama has promised to keep prosecuting Gitmo detainees in special military tribunals. (And, in an undisclosed location, Dick Cheney jizzes in his pants.) [CBS News]
• BTW: The CIA is refusing to declassify the documents Cheney wanted. [Politico]
• Attorney Eric Holder admits they're keeping tribunals because Republicans have convinced people that, without military tribunals, Gitmo detainees will be chillin' in Kansas. [Newsday]
• Defense Secretary Robert Gates is way less gleeful than his predecessor, Donald Rumsfeld, about sending Americans off to die. [Time]
• We're still going to keep funding those wars! [Washington Post]
• By the way, that whole "insurers are going to gouge you marginally less" thing Obama was touting? The health insurance industry is now saying its not going to keep to it. [NY Times]
• Right-wing crazy Michael Savage wants Hillary Clinton to convince the British government that he's not a hate-monger. Ha! [ThinkProgress]
• Prosecutors will be interviewing Karl Rove today, and Karl Rove will say nothing useful to anyone but himself. [Washington Post]
• Arlen Specter's 2010 Democratic opponent has dropped out of the race. [Huffington Post]
• In unrelated news, Specter has indicated he'll probably be willing to back the Employee Free Choice Act for that sweet (and slightly-sweaty) union embrace. [Huffington Post]
• Oh god: Teabagging 2.0? [ThinkProgress]
• Not surprisingly, one of the founders of the "movement "is a tax cheat who really, really doesn't want to have to pay. [TeaBlogging]

LATOYA: Good Morning! I got a Gold Machine in my hand and I'm ready to face my day. And if I'm not ready, I'm totally faking it.

MEGAN: It would be a good morning, if I was still sleeping and under my covers. Otherwise, I'm only willing to admit that it's morning.

LATOYA: Morning is a start. Hey, did you check out my new favorite project, YA for Obama? Young adult writers really know their shit when it comes to politics. (Okay, yes, I am an adult reading YA Lit, and yes, I too miss Fine Lines. Lizzie, come back!!!)

MEGAN: There is no YA lit shame on Jezebel! I only don't because it would require that I buy a book, which I'm sort of loathe to do.

LATOYA: Scott Westerfeld's post, "Do the Math" was an amazingly clear breakdown of how economically fucked we get during Republican administrations. That's what you get for not investing in humans! Oh, and buy a damn book — they're seven to ten bucks. You can also get the at the library, but there's a long wait.

MEGAN: $10 buys me a bottle of wine. I have priorities, sort of like how Republicans have priorities. Only mine include maintaining a certain BAC level and not leaving a cute pair of shoes behind, and the GOP's include trying to prove we could've won in Vietnam even if requires sacrificing more American lives and cutting taxes for rich people, even if it requires running up huge deficits to maintain the spending they insist they swear they don't like.

LATOYA: Speaking of shoes, guess who else is on YA for Obama? Gossip Girl!

Is Barack Obama a Nate, a Dan, a Chuck, a Serena, or a Blair?
Barack Obama. First of all he’s adorable. You know his older daughter’s friends all have crushes on him, as do his wife Michelle’s friends. Okay, as do I. Actually, I have this little fantasy where Barack I go to Barneys and right away he’s mobbed by the gay men in Cosmetics so he’s wearing Carolina Herrera cologne and a Kiehls cucumber eye masque. He buys me a sweet little gold Me and Ro bracelet before we head into the men’s department to get him a new suit. Of course he already knows he looks best in dark gray and he picks out a pink shirt which make me love him even more and then he picks out the most unboring pair of shoes they have because his taste is impeccable and oh where did they find this guy because he’s just… perfect!

Okay, it's not exactly the hard hitting political discourse we were looking for, but I'll take what I can get.

MEGAN: I do feel her on the shoes thing, a man in ugly shoes is soooo Washington. This is my favorite line, though, and a reason to watch Gossip Girl if I ever heard one:

Wily, conniving, backstabbing, flamboyantly dressed Chuck. No way is Barack Obama a Chuck. Chuck would eat him for breakfast and spit him out into one of those monogrammed scarves he wears all the time.

LATOYA: Chuck is obviously a lobbyist. No offense, friend. You're a fly lobbist, you don't count. And you weren't there long enough to sell your soul.

MEGAN: Oooh, good call. And no offense taken, though I didn't have monogrammed scarves. I did indulge my shoe obsessions more.

LATOYA: But you know people that did. And those annoying ass monogrammed Brooks Brothers bags.

MEGAN: Nothing says "dirty unsexy money" like monogrammed cuffs, veneers and a tie tack. And expensive but ugly shoes.

LATOYA: Word! Speaking of conspicuous consumption, looks like Sarah Palin is going to revitalize the economy all by herself! The RNC has spent $150K for clothes and accessories since she started on the campaign trail, about 75K at Neiman Marcus. I guess the Joe Sixpack revolution will be accessorized.

MEGAN: I only ever knew one person who shopped regularly at Needless Markup, and that was my superrich frosh roommate, who also refused to ever clean because she had "people" to do that for her at home. I was supposed to be her "people," apparently, but I don't mind squalor and am extremely stubborn.

LATOYA: I tried to shop there once. That shit did not work out.

MEGAN: She also spent $10,000 at Macy's in Minneapolis, and probably got the same number of pieces as she did for $74K at Needless Markup.

LATOYA: I kept doing the stupid "how many hours worked" calculation in my head, which totally killed the mood.

MEGAN: Palin spent $800 at Barneys, which totally bought her exactly one item.

LATOYA: Well, in her defense, she does look damn sharp.

MEGAN: I know! I have been hating myself for loving her suits lately. But I have also, in my head, been going "That is not Kasper. That is not Tahari. That is not Anne Klein." (Yes, when I used to leave the house, I used to shop for suits a lot.)

LATOYA: I will give Sarah Palin exactly one prop — half a prop for fabulous sartorial skills and a half a prop for using the word "shout out" in a debate. If she drops a "bitch, please" before the election cycle is over, I'll upgrade her to two props. Oh, you wore suits? I guess that's the benefit for being a non government worker in a gov town — I spend money on dress hoodies. Ah, websites...

MEGAN: At this point, if she drops a "damn" I'll be happy. That's how you know her line about not being a Washington insider is true, because everyone here curses like a motherfucker.

LATOYA: You would too, if you saw what we did. Aw man — think good, happy hour thoughts. More news on the bear. Apparently, it was just a prank:

Officials say the students discovered the cub, which had been shot in the head, while camping over the weekend and brought it back to a gathering at an apartment near campus Sunday night. It was during that gathering, say officials, that a student suggested placing the bear at the base of a statue at the main entrance to the campus.

MEGAN: Um, ew. Also, um, ew.

LATOYA: They used the campaign signs to keep the blood from spilling into their truck.

MEGAN: Yeah, that's the part that made me shudder. That and the fact THAT IT WAS A LONG DEAD BEAR. Does not compute. Either the bear was long-dead when they found it, which is like, ew, or it wasn't AND HENCE THE BLOOD and they killed it. It's just too bad that even if they are charged with a felony, they won't be convicted in time to lose their right to vote for McCain.

LATOYA: Just disgusting. It's times like this when I understand PETA, as racist and sexist as they can be with their campaigns.

MEGAN: I don't understand how dumping dead animals — let alone dead baby animals that you and your big boy gun in your big-boy britches so valiantly slaughtered — is a fun "prank." I get equal revulsion, though, when shitty asswipes like noted dirty rim-jobber Michael Savage accuse white Obama voters of being race traitors. I mean, why doesn't he just come out and call us n*****-lovers and be done with it? It wouldn't be my first time hearing that, and GOD KNOWS it wouldn't be his first time using that word.

LATOYA: Oh — I guess y'all don't have reasoning skills either. So only certain less pigmented people have reasoning skills? These circles are getting smaller and smaller.

MEGAN: Well, we don't have reasoning skills because we haven't noticed that we are obviously locked in a war with people of color for hegemony or something. Also, none of y'all really like us anyway.

...it seems to Michael Savage that the only people who don't seem to vote based on race are white people of European origin. That's an interesting observation… So my biggest statement is about Powell, which is that the only people who don't seem to vote based on race are white people of European origin. And, you know, that becomes a philosophical question worth talking about. Why are white people of European origin the only people who don't seem to vote based on race? Is it because they're more tolerant? Is it because whites of European origin are more accepting and more tolerant of other races? I wonder if they're gonna be that way once they find out that not all — let's say, not all people love them as much as they may think.

Also, I hate people WHO refer to themselves in the third person, even if they aren't filthy racist bastards who suck the dirty balls of fetid white drug addicts while furiously whaling away at their own child-sized penises for sexual gratification. That's right, Michael Savage. I've seen you in the alleys off of Dupont Circle. I'm not going to keep quiet anymore.

LATOYA: I swear — I am so done with this damn election cycle and race. Yesterday, I find out that a former KKK member thinks Obama is "a potentially acceptable candidate" and urges people to look beyond skin color. And yet, someone writing for the National Review is still convinced we blacks just stick together, no matter what. She read Vibe, Black Enterprise, and Ebony, and that is definitive proof that blacks are only for Obama and don't know jack about the issues.

MEGAN: I would suggest that KatLo is not a regular reader of any of those magazines and only picked them up so that she could find something to put in her impassioned defense of Rush Limbaugh and also call all black people racists.

LATOYA: And she had the nerve to hail Ward Connerly and John McCain as civil rights leaders. Makes me want to smack someone through a computer screen.

MEGAN: But, Latoya, someone has to stand up for the rights of white people to never attend schools with people of color! It's a principle on which this country was founded! Brown v. the Board of Education didn't really overturn Plessy v. Ferguson, it just found that said facilities provided weren't equal. Strict constitutionalism! Um, I'm trying but failing to come up with other annoying Republican catch phrases that fit. Oh, wait! He's a MAVERICK that wants to shake up the entrenched system!

LATOYA: By denying MLK a holiday.

MEGAN: What did he ever do, anyway? LBJ signed the Civil Rights Act. It took a white President to give black people their freedom and he doesn't get a holiday.

LATOYA: That's because he's a race traitor.

MEGAN: Yes, we must both henceforth swear fealty to our differing melanin levels.

LATOYA: Man, this K. Lo person is annoying. It's obvious she didn't bother to talk to any actual black people before writing that mess. John Ridley already broke this down on the HuffPo:

Conservatives may argue that, well, none of those candidates was even worth Powell's attention. But if Powell is — if blacks are — just going to vote for a "darkie," then won't any "darkie" do?

None carried the black vote to any significance. Certainly not Keyes. Not Wilder and Braun, arguably the most qualified candidates at that time. Jackson had some strong showings, but could not come close to closing the deal.

And what about Sharpton? Shouldn't he be the closest comparison to Obama in terms of blacks just "giving him" their votes? Sharpton, too, gives a good speech and he ran most recently.

In 2004, in the District of Columbia primary, Sharpton came in second to Howard Dean. D.C. at the time was 70 percent minority. Sixty percent black. Yet the minorities and the blacks "gave" their votes to Dean. In South Carolina, only one in five blacks voted for Sharpton.

Clearly — more important, factually — most blacks don't vote for blacks just because they are black.

Yeah, but don't let facts get in the way, K.Lo.

MEGAN: Oh, "facts." Those are biased.

LATOYA: Seriously — like I said yesterday, it's only unfair when you're losing.

MOE: Whoa 8:45 on the dot!
ON THE NOSE.
MEGAN: That's impressive!
MOE: I'm never on time!
MEGAN: Me neither!
MOE: So guess what? I thought I made this reservation to fly to Seattle tomorrow and it turns out the reservation is for today and tomorrow's flight is sold out, and tonight's flight is sold out!
MEGAN: Hey, I've never been to Seattle and I've always meant to go and I totally actually did that once, only I didn't find out until an hour after the flight actually left. I felt like the world's largest idiot.
MEGAN: Anyway, so the British judges ruled in favor of the Nazi sado-masochistic orgy guy in his lawsuit against the tabloids, because I know we were all on the edges of our seats about that.
And Rudy Giuliani's annoying male progeny is suing Duke for kicking him off the golf team because it will ruin his plans to become a professional golfer. You know, his shitty golfing won't, but Duke cutting him would. Apple, tree in terms of sheer annoyingness and hubris.
MOE: Um, does his mean young people actually might bother voting in this election?
That's a story about an attack ad the Let Freedom Ring foundation is running on MTV. Um, do conservatives ever do youth outreach? Also, in this campaign? What? Also, as attack ads go, it's pretty tame. And cost like $13 to produce.
MEGAN: God, I love the names of bullshit conservative groups! There's always some play on freedom, freedom to own guns and have your religious beliefs imposed on others and to not pay taxes, just not freedom of speech and right of assembly and to IM without the government reading it and to have an abortion.
MOE: Duke is one of those schools that could probably turn a lot of decent impressionable young conformists into abject douchebags but Andrew Giuliani probably had an advantage. He's suing the Duke golf team for booting him off in a "bizarre scheme"…
A bizarre scheme otherwise known as "What can I say, I got sick of the little bitch."

The suit contends the new coach, O.D. Vincent, wanted to reduce the size of the team and trumped up or exaggerated "minor" incidents as an excuse to cut Giuliani. Vincent, who had caused a stir at UCLA when his team there posed naked - holding ball baskets - in Golf Digest, accused Giuliani of driving out of a parking lot too fast, tossing a putter, busting a driver and throwing an apple at a teammate during an argument.

MEGAN: I think that throwing shit at people is generally grounds for getting kicked off of shit.
MOE: I predict success for young Andrew, because it is Duke and as everyone knows money pretty much buys you whatever there.
MEGAN: Well, there and everywhere else.
MOE: Yeah Duke is just apparently particularly bad, according to that story about rich dumb kids whose parents get courted on special fundraising tours starting when they are like 12.

Cissy Bunn acknowledges her daughter didn't fit the academic profile of a Duke student. "She's bright, she had good grades, but she doesn't meet the superstar status," Mrs. Bunn says. "Did my normal child take the place of somebody who could really make a difference in the world? Sure, yes, to an extent. But there are so many things you can lose sleep over. I'm happy for me and my child."

MEGAN: My alma mater has a special 2-year program for stupid little rich kids (and the occasional person with actual potential). It gets them a group of students that will pay full tuition and doesn't need financial aid, but lowers the average SAT scores of the university so much that they take those students out when reporting it to US News & World Report, so the magazine won't rank us anymore.
MOE: Anyway, I just remembered that story because it was kinda truly gross. Like, if elite boarding school and private tutors can't land you a 1300 on your SATs I am sorry but nothing will and you belong fucking elsewhere.
(I say that as a former private SAT tutor who managed to coax 1300s out of some reeeeeally rambunctious kids.)
MEGAN: SATs are a bullshit test anyway. Standardized tests are a tool of the Man, which is why I did so well on them. It's a matter of whether you know or have learned how to game the system. I think it's not that someone like that isn't smart, it's that she doesn't feel like she has to try because she'll get what she wants anywhere, so there's no need to learn how to game the system.
MOE: (I didn't realize at the time I should have been buying their Ritalin off them.)
MEGAN: It's sort of like how financial institutions figured that even if they fucked up hard core the government would still bail them out, so there was no need to practice self-regulation or risk-management, since there was little risk.
MOE: That's a fair point. I mean, I personally hated the "system gaming" stuff because it was like, "No the point of this test is to see whether you know implicitly how to game the system." So I just basically told the kids CONCENTRATE. And focused on critical reading and vocab. One kid asked me if I had been watching too much Dawson's Creek.
I wonder what Maude Bunn is doing these days! I bet she's on Facebook.
MEGAN: I never watched Dawson's Creek. I think the WB didn't come in so well on my TV at college. But James VanDerBeek or whatever went to my sister's college before he made it, if being on one show is considered "making it."
I mean, it's better than I've ever done, but then I'm kind of a shit actor even when I'm a decent liar.
MOE: I think that's a big deal if only because without Dawson's Creek we never would have had Television Without Pity.
One of the most important cultural institutions of our time.
And I say that as someone who doesn't even watch TV.
MEGAN: Which sucks now that Bravo bought and redesigned it.
MOE: Well, that would suck even more if I watched TV. So did you check that Erik Wemple item about how the Washington Post's 97-part Chandra Levy series is quite possibly doing better pageview-wise than their Pulitzer-winning Walter Reed series? Although there is no actual data they are releasing to support this so it is fundamentally speculation? Speculation based on no underlying grievances or suspicions whatsoever??
MEGAN: Oh, by the way, Michael Savage is "clarifying" his shitty stupid assholic remarks on autism being a fake disease. It turns out that the uptick in diagnoses is due to doctors and drug companies peddling their wares like they did with ADHD, even though there are no drugs to treat autism. I hate that fucking guy. Fuck him, someone, please find him and beat him about the head.
Also, OF COURSE it's doing better, it's seriously written like at a 3rd grade reading level and published in like easily-digestable chunks and containing little in the way of actual new information. Like, you keep waiting to learn something and then never do if you read anything about it
MOE: I mean, is one thing to joke that, like, fibromyalgia or bipolar disorder is fake, but autism? Did he miss that Babysitter's Club? Also, in all seriousness, what are they prescribing to the autistic kids? I mean, I don't know nothing, but if it's SSRIs that's sort of a racket. Beyond that, regarding the Post, you know how carefully I monitor the Most-Viewed list because it provides a hilarious counterpart to the New York Times Most Emailed List. And right now Chandra is #5. I really think most of the Dana Priest investigations did better than that. The real mystery is Public Enemy Robert Novak, whose column — syndicated column! — is always like #1 or #2 for at least a few hours.
MEGAN: Also, you heard, the guy Bob Novak hit was a homeless dude? And he really did roll onto the hood and fall off and Novak drove away? I'm like, for real-real? You hit a guy at rush hour and figure no one will notice? What did he think this was, New York?
MOE: (Oh and guys! I know bipolar is real!! As is fibromyalgia! But it is true that bipolar is way over-diagnosed so the pharmas can maximize the profits on their schizophrenia meds before they lose their patents, so that is all I am saying!)
MEGAN: Also, I don't think that most autism patients are on medication. My cousin isn't. It doesn't really work like that, not that Michael Savage fucking knows because he knows so little about it.
MOE: You know who makes me appreciate our beloved commenters more? Yglesias's!
MEGAN: Oh, totally, his commenters all hate him. Oh, wait. Did I mention that I've been here long enough — 9 months since I first wrote for you guys — that I have commenters that hate me too?
MOE: Hahaha I thought they all loved you! They are always like "Megan is a captain of industry and Moe is the one who says outrageous shit that doesn't even make sense," which anyway, brings me to Savage, and his "autistic kids are just little brats who obviously need a good spanking" line of argument. And shit like this will resonate with folks who wonder what happened to the days when you used to grin and bear it and not belabor things — shit, not even talk about things — and everyone sort of fell in line, except that one kid in every family who just sorta became a "black sheep" or a hermetic spinster or an alcoholic or a suicide case…you know? And I basically think most of it comes back to the economy. Anyway
You got bumped off over there?
We should probs address the Berlin speech.
MEGAN: Yes, I got bumped off but I am back and, actually, that speaks to the issue in my family because my cousin who has Asperger's syndrome, his grandmother on the other side of the family was like, whatever, you're just coddling him, his father was the same way and everyone on our side of the family was like, ohhhhhhh.
Yes, Berlin. 200,000 screaming Germans. We should all be friends! Hooray.

• In an interview on Glamocracy (also known as "the other place I blog") with Glamour's Cindi Leive, Barack Obama said that he's infuriated by right-wing attacks on his wife. Maybe he and Bill will actually have something to talk about next time they talk. [Glamocracy]
• The Nation has a new sex columnist, JoAnn Wypikewski. JoAnn thinks that there are "legions of little girls jumping out of their panties" for Obama, which manages to be stupid, demeaning, creepy and sexist all at the same time! "Ugh" is right. [The Nation, Salon]
• Oh, and conservative talk show host Michael Savage thinks that autistic children are just "[brats] who [haven't] been told to cut the act." Why the fuck do people listen to this asshole again? [Media Matters]

• But the FDA says it's cool to eat tomatoes now, just not peppers. Fools, the last thing Americans need to be told by the government is to eat fewer fresh veggies. Right hand, left hand? [CNN]
• And the first Obamite to sell out is coming to town soon. Dan Shomon masterminded Obama's 2004 Senate campaign and is now selling his connections to Obama in Washington. He won't be the last, that's for sure. In Washington, Democrats sell out just as quick as Republicans. [Politico]
• China has issued new regulations by which artists will be allowed to perform there, following Bjork's Tibet shout-out. Guess a good Olympic half-time show is totally out. [NY Times]
• In good news, though, Kay Ryan is set to be this country's 17th poet laureate on Thursday. [NY Times]