Ryan Jackson's blog

In our last episode John McCain sang about bombing Iran set to the tune of the Beach Boys. Yesterday, John McCain responded. Somehow it’s way worse:

“Please, I was talking to some of my old veterans friends,” he told reporters. “My response is, Lighten up and get a life.” When reporters asked if the joke was insensitive, McCain said: “Insensitive to what? The Iranians?”

In a flash that seems to rip the soul out right through your eyes, you realize that all the jokes you’ve made are just a hollow sham compared to the unrelenting brutality of the naked truth: he’s completely fucking out of his mind. And not in the, “Haha, the internet makes fun of him for being elderly and probably senile,” way, but in the, “hearing voices, schizophrenic bouts of madness marked by a trail of burning nations and a foaming at the mouth President McCain pitch forking Cambodian children because it’s a war for survival of the species” kind of way.

John McCain’s campaign for president, which has thus far been a high speed death spin that’s as probably embarrassing for the people around him as it is hilarious for fans of hardcore, pornographic levels of schadenfreude, is rapidly entering the mythical heights of Rep. Dan Burton declaring that the gays put AIDS in his salad.

Sorry for lateness, as My Sunday Thing has slid this week into My Monday Thing and quite nearly Tuesday. Such is a life of casual brutality and 400-level classes deconstructing post-colonial literature. How about that for a pretentious opening? You’re all but required to read the rest to see if I recover.

This is also kind of a discussion piece on blogging, youth demographics, and bringing more people into the online process. For those looking for my usual content, “John McCain is old and crazy, Rudy Giuliani is a white supremacist, and the system is corrupt and must be skull fucked to death.” Neat.

Anyway, one of those things that have been eating at me has been something along these lines: this blog as a concept is supposed to serve as a rally point for youth political operatives looking to ferment serious change in their environments. It is a belief that the infrastructure being built, (democratized, low cost, and with the ability to reach mass audiences) will almost certainly lend itself to the 18-30 set that’s all but grown up anchored in the ins and outs of digital communication.

That attempt at appeal to youth, oddly enough, is completely at odds with the present system. The system, as it stands, is run for boomers.

The picture Bowers paints in his post regarding BlogAds demographic numbers is of a hyper politicized group of people in their late forties, brimming with excess wealth and massive educations just looking to crack some online political skulls. And this bears out in the reading; the content, tone, use of language, all tailors almost exclusively to a true believer, aging audience who want only to take the fight to the Rethuglicans and the Bush Crime Family and KKKarl Rove. The sense of humor is circa 1974, and I don’t mind being quoted that I can find four sharp objects sitting on the desk in front of me that I’d rather drive into my skull right now than read the daily “Cheers and Jeers” post at DailyKos.

The exception to this Boomer-run phenomenon, interestingly, is Wonkette.

For those looking to catch up on a busy week of Justice Department officials who just can’t seem to tell the truth about anything, here’s a timeline for this week of the fantastical verbal contortionists who appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee regarding the fired US Attorneys.

Think of it like Cirque du Soleil, except instead of whimsy and Frenchmen, it’s the executive branch of government raping our collective trust that there may be at least some area of government that hasn’t been corrupted into a political blunt instrument of the present White House.

March 24th: Justice Department liaison to the White House Monica “Buzz Saw” Goodling announces she will be taking an indefinite leave of absence from her current duties. As reported in the Legal Times, Buzz Saw’s interview technique for future US Attorney’s was to ask them on a scale of 1 to 10 how much they loved unlimited executive power, and then to dismiss any she thought lacked necessary loyalty to the Bush White House.

Oddly, Goodling appeared to have had a long history of being the savage right hand of many within the Republican National Committee, including RNC opposition research guru and Karl Rove aide Tim Griffin. Griffin later appeared as the White House pick to be US Attorney for Eastern Arkansas. The words you might be searching for are, “Oh snap.”

“The president continues to have confidence in the attorney general. As the Justice Department said last night, these new documents are not inconsistent with its previous statements.” - Deputy Press Secretary Dana Perino

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Hey, my name is Ryan Jackson, and I write the mildly unhinged political diatribe/blog ChugBleach. FutureMajority gave me my first readership boost, allowing me to cavort around the internet like a violence mad Viking prophet, and being given the chance to write here is both an honor and a privilege.

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I’ve been rolling this article around in my mind for the last four or so days, trying to put it into the full context of total coverage/final wisdom. Written by Lindsay Beyerstein, it details the Edwards attempt to hire her into what would finally be the doomed position of Campaign Blogger, and well:

It was already dark and drizzling when Bob and I left the church. Bob was telling me how John Edwards was going to be a different kind of candidate. We, a new generation of Internet-savvy activists, had finally come of age. We were going to help Edwards run a campaign that was totally outside the Beltway.

…

“I’m probably not … the person you want,” I said, finally. “I mean, I’m on the record saying that abortion is good and that all drugs should be legalized, including heroin. Don’t you think that might be a little embarrassing for the campaign?”

Bob assured me that my controversial posts weren’t a problem as far as the campaign was concerned. They were familiar with my work. And Bob did seem to know my writing. I didn’t get the impression he was a daily reader, but it was obvious he had been reading the blog for a while.

“That’s you, that’s not John Edwards,” he said.

So, just to throw some questions out there:

Was it pot brownie day at the Edwards campaign for the last two months? “That’s you, that’s not John Edwards.” She was going to be a paid representative of the campaign. She speaks for The Candidate.

“Decentralized campaigns” and giving the movement to the volunteers is probably a big part of the future of politics, but when does it just completely jump the shark? Could it be announcements on Edwards blog about his campaign office inside The Matrix being attacked, and people comparing it to the conspiracy behind 9/11?

Convential wisdom credits a great deal of the success behind the Bush campaigns in 2000 and 2004 to his absolute ability to maintain brutal message discipline. John Edwards spent a full week ignoring the Two Americas to endlessly deny he personally didn’t want to throat punch the pope. Can you really hope to integrate bloggers into a modern campaign without somebody accidentally saying what they really feel about what’s going on, and the candidate having to deny it for the next week?

Just some thoughts going forward, as we try to break down the Evil Monolithic Political Party Machine using nothing but pluck, Fervent Youthful Enthusiasm, and Facebook.