Now, we know virtually no one listens to Glenn Beck's radio show (or, at the very least, that there's likely little overlap between his audience and ours). So you probably missed Toby Keith's groundbreaking appearance when he broke down the racial issues of the Presidential campaign for the intellectual betterment of us all. And, if you believe there's an iota of truth in that preceding statement, you obviously haven't heard Toby's seminal (heh) work "Courtesy of the Red, White & Blue". So between the truth about him, John McCain's lobbyist ties, how McCain's position on oil drilling has helped his fundraising and why Nancy Pelosi shouldn't be insulted by being asked how that bean soup is coming, Spencer Ackerman and I have had a busy morning.MEGAN: So, Spencer, I have a favorite new Internet game this morning. "McCain's Lobbyists" allows you to check out where he's getting his cash from BUT even better... every time you click a face or an issue area, the page goes "cha-ching" and moneybags pile up at his feet and that's the sort of thing that amuses me before 9 am. SPENCER: i clicked on Juleanna Glover Weiss! MEGAN: Me too! But mostly because she's Liz Glover's sister, and she was actually super nice to me when Liz and I worked together. SPENCER: who, in all due credit, I recently saw ask a genuinely-intellectually-curious question of a couple Iraqi parliamentarians oh no shit? i didn't know that MEGAN: Also, I clicked Kirsten Chadwick because I worked with her and she hated me and vice versa. SPENCER: anyway, the game says Juleanna profitted $9 million off a measely $1.3 million McCain donation by her clients what a titan MEGAN: And I'm just going to put this out there, she only ever got hired based on the strength of her connection (whatever it was) with Roy Blunt and couldn't actually run an issue up the flagpole herself or lift anything heavy legislatively without him (or his staff) doing all the work. (Kirsten, not Juleanna) SPENCER: except look at Rick Davis, who's McCain's campagin chairman: $2 million off a $625,000 client donation I'm going to be playing this when I should be working on Afghanistan stuff MEGAN: Kirsten's clients gave $1.5 mil and she (or her company) made almost $38 SPENCER: OK, Kristen clearly wins holy shit that's so much money MEGAN: I know! SPENCER: And McCain got a huge financial boost after he started calling for offshore drilling hang on while i google the stuff that my leftwing interlocutors email me... MEGAN: Which he would totally come back to vote for, even though he missed votes for FISA, the GI bill, the Ledbetter/equal pay bill, the Medicare reimbursement bill, the stimulus package (despite actually being in DC) and 15 energy/environment bills. SPENCER: Here's one of my favorite right-wing bloggers, James Joyner, on this shit:
The latest campaign kerfuffle is the shocking fact that John McCain is receiving significant donations from the oil industry. A new Obama ad says the amount is $2.1 million; FactCheck.org says it's a mere $1.33 million. Either way, it's about triple what the industry is giving to Obama. More damning, critics say, is that there has been an uptick in oil money flowing to McCain's coffers since he started pushing for offshore drilling, a position he previously opposed. Aha! Many on the Left seem to think this is a big winner.
well, yeah we do! McCain mortgaged America's coastline to boost his quarterly fundraising — that's kind of a big deal! MEGAN: Don't we all sort of love how the Maverick Campaign Finance Reformer is fundraising so prodigiously from the same money sources he was so keen to stamp out 6 years ago? SPENCER: This is the stuff that kills me, Megan — if McCain was a Democrat who'd gone through as many reinventions in order to run for president for the last 10 years, he'd be mercilessly mocked as the basest kind of opportunist but oh well, gotta get (get) that (that) dirt off your shoulder and speaking of, check out the ever-charming toby keith:
During Keith's appearance on the July 30 broadcast of Beck's show, he remarked, "I think the black people would say he [Obama] don't talk, act or carry himself as a black person."
MEGAN: That shit is fucked the fuck up. SPENCER: That's courtesy of my friend Max Blumenthal, he of the LOLtastic campaign videos even Glenn Motherfucking Beck was astounded:
"What does that even mean?" the audibly shocked Beck replied. "Well, I don't know what that means," Keith drawled, "but I think that that's what they would say. Even though the black society would pull for him I still think that they think in the back of their mind that the only reason he is in [the general election] is because he talks, acts and carries himself as a Caucasian."
MEGAN: I love how the fucker immediately backtracks on that shit. "Well, I don't know what that means..." Bullshit! SPENCER: i know, what a PUSSY when I want to take the temperature of black America, Toby Keith is my trusty thermometer who's blacker than Toby Keith? MEGAN: Toby Keith has probably met a black person or two in his time, and he totes has black friends so he knows what he's talking about. SPENCER: one of his bodyguards is totally black MEGAN: Can we make up some stereotypes about Toby Keith? SPENCER: Toby Keith still uses VHS like a real man Toby Keith attacks Keith Gessen on his Tumblr MEGAN: Toby Keith doesn't talk, act or carry himself like a homosexual Toby Keith knows how to plug in a computer but lets someone else press the keys because he doesn't want to get his hands dirty. SPENCER: Toby Keith's favorite Dallas Cowboy is Charles Haley MEGAN: Toby Keith doesn't like the Cowboys, anyway, he's a Pats fan. SPENCER: Toby Keith plays his guitar with finger guards because he can't develop calluses no matter how hard he tries MEGAN: Toby Keith used to root for the Yankees, but now he's part of the Red Sox Nation. SPENCER: Toby Keith wouldn't have actually put a boot in the Taliban's ass because his boots are Jimmy Choo MEGAN: But Toby Keith is intimately familiar with how to have things inserted in your butt with a minimum of pain. Speaking of having things up your ass... SPENCER: Toby Keith is upset that Jason Giambi shaved his mustache because he wanted to shave it oh yeah this shit i'd like your perspective, as a woman, on what the fuck Samantha Sault is upset with Pelosi for what's really at work here, Megan? MEGAN: The first thing I thought when reading it was that it was written by a petulant child. SPENCER: the Weekly Standard is an outpost of maturity, so that can't be right MEGAN: So, let's recap: 1. Bipartisanship means allowing John Boehner to get his way on everything and especially drilling off the coast of California where John Boehner doesn't live and Nancy Pelosi does, but that's her being mean. 2. Nancy Pelosi is on a book tour when she should be working even though it's August recess and, um, NO ONE is working because that's what happens during August recess. SPENCER: isn't the implication that, uh, Pelosi should lie back and take it from Boehner? MEGAN: Probably bend over, but maybe that's just a personal preference. SPENCER: she does always wear that pearl necklace MEGAN: 3. Also, Nancy Pelosi's book is short and uses big print because Nancy Pelosi is a 19 year old college student that thinks her professors don't notice font sizes. (not that Little Miss Sault knows anything about that) SPENCER: ok so Samantha Sault from the Standard doesn't like this about Pelosi:
Pelosi complains that when San Francisco mayor Joe Alioto phoned to ask her to join the city Library Commission, he asked if she was "making a great big pot of pasta e fagioli." He "assumed that the only thing I could be doing at five in the afternoon was cooking," she says—never mind that she happily stayed home "cooking meals for five children for 20 years."
i know! Who could possibly find that objectionable???? MEGAN: Also, Samantha doesn't like calling women "women," she calls them "girls." Oh, Spencer, there's nothing sexist about expecting a woman to cook all the time. I mean, not women, "girls." "Modern girls." SPENCER: she took her money/ and bought a do-nut/ the hole's the size of this whole world MEGAN: But Samantha does give her props for knowing her place and staying home with her kids until they were out of school, which is one of the big reasons that there aren't more women in politics. For every Adam Putnam who gets to play off the power of incumbency before his 30th birthday, there are, oh, wait, pretty much all the women in Congress who waited until they were more established. But what Samantha giveth, Samantha taketh away: Nancy Pelosi is a harpy for not picking up her husband's dry-cleaning or ever ironing his shirts. MEGAN: I offered, once, to pick up my ex-boyfriends dry-cleaning because we used the same dry-cleaner and he was horrified at the thought of me doing that. SPENCER: um, i would take someone up on an offer to pick up my dry cleaning the fucking place is always closing before i get home from work MEGAN: But he felt like accepting it was practically sexist. SPENCER: see, knowing a bit about the opinion-journalism game, i look at a piece like this and think a couple things: 1. Sault is apparently rather young MEGAN: Oooh, I nailed the petulant child thing! SPENCER: 2. Sault works at a right-wing magazine, and surely wants to succeed at it MEGAN: Right, and we all know that you can't possibly call women anything but "girls" there. Man, she even does it in her profile piece. How incredibly annoying. SPENCER: 3. The Weekly Standard is not exactly known for its surfeit of women writers — there's batshit-insane Noemie Emery, whom a Standardite once told me files her would-be-Peggy-Noonan pieces on yellow legal paper SPENCER: handwritten 4. so you scrape for a story wherever you can, and a rightwing magazine is going to feel innoculated if say, you have a woman attacking woman politicians for being too feministy and what better way to do that than to sift through Pelosi's book, find examples of her committing flagrant acts of feminism, and then clucking your teeth at her? That's going into pages for sure MEGAN: Does she even ever get around to attacking Pelosi's politics for anything other than being not bipartisan enough, which makes me breathless with laughter when Republicans accuse Democrats of that? SPENCER: her politics are too feministy, and that's Sault's problem with them
he says more women could run for office if they had access to "quality child care." She doesn't explain what this means or who will pay, although we can guess.
that's just fucking lazy, come on MEGAN: Sault should have a look at the masthead 30 years ago and reconsider what the problem with feminism is. SPENCER: or her masthead today MEGAN: Well, but that's obviously a meritocracy. Sexism doesn't exist anymore. SPENCER: whatever, the fact that she's getting criticized on Jezebel for her Pelosi piece will earn her lots of accolades from the other Standard staffers, who'll then expect a quick break-room handjob