It’s the new year, so nu? What’s the point of leaving the old one at the top of this column? There is no point. It just signals my hangover — not from too many champagne toasts, but too few. There wasn’t much to celebrate unless it was the hope that 2007 will bring us closer to the end of our collective humiliation by the Bullshitter-in-Chief and his BananaRepublic.
It could happen. But the Bullshitter’s remarks about the Iraq war, as reported this morning in The New York Times, make it doubtful. “What I want to hear from you is how we’re going to win, not how we’re going to leave,” he is quoted as warning the military’s top brass. He still insists on talking about victory, the report notes (italics added), because, he claims, “It’s a word the American people understand.”
Sure. Why should he accept the blame for his own catastrophic failure? Blame everyone else. The warning and the victory talk merely reaffirm his arrogance, incompetence and deceit. Which leads to a niggling little matter. What should he be called these days? Given current conditions as shown by his highly unfavorable poll ratings, our customary term of reference may have outlasted its usefulness.
Does anyone out there have a suitably demeaning substitute for Bullshitter-in-Chief? The staff likes “Junior,” per Maureen Dowd, for its connotation of a lightweight. But I’d much prefer something that goes with the “head-up-his-ass” photo (originally posted here in 2005, when a staff conscript sent it per the ravages of Katrina).
