How’s this for Audacity: The Turban of Truth!

This guy’s so far left of the American mainstream that even New York State Commissar Clinton dipped into her sack of dirty tricks and pulled a stunt that must have the late, great Lee Atwater smiling on his throne up in heaven.

Willie Horton, meet Osama Obama!

All he needs is a Kalashnikov and a holy man’s beard, and we’re ready to roll.

Do we need to repeat ourselves? Rhymes with “Osama”

And remember: His middle name is Hussein.

Why America is Great, and Why Liberals Want to Deny it

Welcome to the first in an occasional political digression that is loosely conceived as an exploration of the divisive and disingenuous political culture of that defective species known as the American Liberal.

Of course, we might start with the fatuous bombast of the Academy Awards, which are nothing short of a self-congratulatory auto-erotic liberal orgy. But this is a serious blog, and if we want to conserve America for good Americans everywhere, we’ll have no time for such frivolity. Besides, I secretly want to touch myself in an impure manner when I hear the undulant strains of Nicole Kidman’s sexy Australian accent.

Let’s talk Obama, before it’s too late. Kudos to New York Times columnist and American hero Bill Kristol. One of the leading lights of the Neo-conservative movement, Kristol was one of the first visionaries to shred the balloon of liberal negativity and understand that our liberation of Iraq would become a smashing success and an inspiration to freedom-seeking peoples everywhere.

Fair, balanced and brilliant

This week, Mr. Kristol adroitly pointed out that not only has the liberal savior Barack Obama stopped wearing an American-flag pin on his lapel, but he’s using his considerable gift for shameless demagoguery to magically spin this anti-patriotic, blame-America-first fashion statement into some kind of elitist, pathetic, and hopeless I’m-so-much-better-than-you-that-I-don’t-need-to-wear-the-flag-on-my-sleeve gesture.

Hint: Rhymes with “Osama”

Wake up and smell the napalm burning, America! This guy’s middle name is “Hussein.”

Thankfully, true patriots like Bill Kristol and Rush Limbaugh stand vigilant at the ramparts of our republic in an effort to make sure that honest, hard-working Americans aren’t taken in by this madrassa-sleeper of a snake-oil salesman.

Sic Semper Tyrannus!

The existential beauty of the inconsequential blog

Yes, the best part of writing some bullshit random-strike blog is it frees the putative “writer” from the shackles of his own self-importance.

No time fretting and brainstorming and procrastinating in the desperate hope that your inner Gay Talese will emancipate itself from your outer Dave Barry, who of course owns a controlling interest in your soul. No time for that. And you know what, no matter what ill-considered concoction of brain-dead babble you send into the great vacuum, it will cause you no greater embarrassment than all those posts you labored over so assiduously.

And you can write virtually anything, and your utter invisibility will shield you from any sort of soul-damaging criticism.

You can toss out some innocuous rot like … the Unsportsmanlike Comment Sunday Night Award for sublime statement of the obvious goes to new Philadephia Phillies relief pitcher Brad Lidge. When asked how long it will take to recover from his recently suffered knee injury, Mr. Lidge said, ” … that will be based on how it feels.”

See. It’s stupid, it’s shallow, and nobody cares.

Which seems at this point to be the prevailing ethos of the blogosphere.

A misanthropic night at the God-forsaken Oscars!

With months of quixotic hope that the writers strike would spare us the annual ritual of narcissistic hogwash that is the Academy Awards summarily crushed, the moment is all the more painful to a self-hating iconoclast (like me).

Thankfully, the TV is clear across the room, and it’s a rather large room, so Jon Stewart’s I’m-so-dangerous-but-no-I’m-really-one-of-you performance has little power to inflame my already dissolute-unabomber-on-cheap-white-wine sensibilities.

All I can think is: Stephen Colbert will never host the Oscars. Sure, he’d accept, but he’ll never get the invitation. Fucker’s got that sublime White House correspondent’s dinner speech on his résumé. He’s persona non grata to the self-congratulatory, pseudo-left-wing mafia that is the Hollywood power elite.

God bless him for that.

As for predictions, I’ll take the Celtics over the Lakers in seven.

As for the Oscars, I’ve been too lazy to get to any movie house in the past year, though Juno and Into the Wild already hold spots of honor in my esteemed Netflix queue. And ever since I found out that some people called Three 6 Mafia won an Academy Award for something called “It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp,” well, I just have trouble giving a shit.

I’m sure the song was everything I can’t imagine it ever could be, but I know a group of newspaper copy editors once had great fun at an awards banquet with a parody called “It’s Hard Out Here on the Rim.” If those pint-sized hacks knew enough to spoof the song, how could I ever take it seriously, should I ever give it a fair hearing? Thankfully, fair hearings are anathema to the blogger culture.

(By the way, the “rim” is the abstract land copy editors inhabit when they’re at work. I’m not sure about the derivation, perhaps Ruth Etters could elucidate, but when copy editors “edit” a story and give it a headline, they don’t “edit” the story, they “rim” it. Don’t ask me. It sounds vaguely perverse.)

God, this post is worse than the fucking Academy Awards.

Good night, and good luck

2:45 EST, 11:45 PST, 7:45 GMT

Well, that was fun.

I’m going out on a limb here, but I feel safe in celebrating the fact that we’ve just pulled off the first live blog from a collection of corporate cubicles that went out to a grand total of zero readers. All while defying the ominous presence of a daily deadline.

Scoff if you will, but that’s not an easy trick to turn.

Here’s one last nugget for the road, contained in a stupefying college basketball lede that actually crossed our desk late tonight:

“University of X senior forward Angela Rimjob grabbed College Z’s missed 3-pointer as the final buzzer sounded, solidifying the Raging Cocktwisters 68-62 win over the Frigid Fatales on Friday at Memorial Fieldhouse.”

Only the names have been changed to protect the guilty. The rest is preserved in its singular glory.

Good night, no one.

Crunch time nears, and we’re nowhere near the red zone

1:43 EST, 10:43 PST, 6:43 GMT

So I guess it’s time to give 110 percent, leave everything in the cubicle and let the chips fall where they may.

As we approach the one-hour-to-deadline mark, here’s some barely palatable food for shallow thought:

Star of the day: Kelvin Sampson, of course.

Even on his way out, once again soiled in his own offal, he manages to slip in a bit of hackneyed, insincere boilerplate.

Take it, Kelvin: “… I’m saddened that I will not have the opportunity to coach these student-athletes …”

When it comes to the wondrously sleazy world of big-time college sports, there’s no cliché that can go toe-to-toe with “student-athlete.”

Bust of the day: Robert Swift

Robert is everything Bill Walton was, except magically talented and magisterially obnoxious.

He got the red hair, he got the length, he got the California pedigree, he got the never-ending knee injuries. Of course, he lacks the national championships, the 88 consecutive wins and the time logged touring with the Grateful Dead.

He’s had almost as many injuries as baskets since the Sonics took him with the 12th overall pick out of high school in 2004.

Yet Seattle GM Sam Presti, who inherited this 85-inch sack of bust, did his best to match Sampson’s score on the disingenuous meter:

“Robert is an important part of the Sonics,” Presti heard himself saying after Swift went down with yet another season-ending knee injury.

Well, that’s all we have time for. It’s 47 minutes to deadline, and It would be unethical to continue to post nonsense while my colleagues are in trouble.

And the phones begin to ring…

1:20 EST, 10:20 PST, 6:20 GMT

As deadline approaches and the night matures, the phone begins to ring. On the other end of the line? High School basketball coaches baby! They got scores. They want scores. And I can’t wait for the quid pro quo.

Add to that the fact that the Rube just hooked up the office with popcorn, and I can barely control my enthusiasm! Ain’t no place I’d rather be! I know you’re jealous.

What might’ve been: The Paterno-Castro nexus

12:48 EST, 9:48 PST, 5:48 GMT

Approximately three days ago, or 3 billion years ago in the will-o’-the-wisp kingdom of blogsylvania, Fidel Castro resigned.

And I thought: One down, one to go. Time to manufacture some ridiculously contrived cross-cultural blog post reflecting on the end of an era in Havana and the seemingly endless epoch in State College, Pa.

Yes, it would’ve been fun to consider Joe Paterno’s triumph in longevity over the Communist dictator who gave us the harrowing Cuban Missile Crisis, the sublime Teofilo Stevenson and that silly but enduring politician-in-military-fatigues look so that we would have a point of reference to reach back for when George “Top Gun” Bush landed on the USS Lincoln in ludicrous warlike regalia to celebrate our landmark victory in Iraq.

But someone else had beaten me to the punch. Many others, it seems. That’s what happens when you’re a lazy blogger and you’re too busy rifling your parents’ refrigerator so you’ll have nice snack to nosh on while watching Leno.

Yes, the parallels are striking. One’s a right-wing conservative, the other a left-wing revolutionary. Yes, Paterno and Castro were born in the same year. Yes, they were the enduring autocrats of their respective fields. Yes, they both have egos the size of the former Soviet Union.

It’s too late. It’s all gone.

It took me hours just to recover that sublime work of art that graces the top of this post. And I don’t even know whom to thank for that. It wasn’t easy. Google searches failed me, and I had to mine my Internet history from two days ago just to recover that image.

And while accomplishing that feat of technological dexterity, it became painfully clear how easy it will be for my bosses to compile an impressive dossier to wield against me when the time comes.

Because that time’s coming.

JoePa may reign forever, but my days are numbered.

I know that as sure as I know it’s 100 minutes to deadline.

Hoosiers booster ponies up $550,000 to get rid of phone menace Kelvin Sampson

11:58 EST, 8:58 PST, 4:58 GMT

A normally reliable source recently shared the lamentable news that basketball fever is on the wane in the Hoosier state.

Next thing you know, some Midwestern blue-blood, red-bleeding big shot digs into his designer pockets and pulls out $550,000 so dear, old IU can jettison serial windbag Kelvin Sampson with peace of mind. That sounds like passion to me. I’m talking Gene Hackman, Dennis Hopper, Jimmy Chitwood and unlikely-Hollywood-endings passion.

Perhaps, as a griping member of the desk-bound proletariat, I am in no position to fathom this anonymous donor’s generosity. And while the fourth estate’s defenders of public virtue struggle to put Sampson’s notorious weakness for NCAA-prohibited phone calls (577 in four years! Kelvin must be a world-class drunken dialer) into context against the polluted backdrop of college athletics, I got more pressing worries troubling my little mind.

Like 1) how much must a college basketball fan, however affluent, hate the incumbent coach to fork over more than half a million just to kill the guy off? And 2) how much anonymous cash would be required to take down Czar Joepa?

And 3) will this fuckwad with too much money and too little sense be getting the same $600 rebate that I’m gonna get in the spring?

Really, I need that $600 if I’m gonna do my patriotic part and get out to Wal-Mart and stimulate this sagging economy. A guy who can spend $550,000 just to kiss off Kelvin Sampson, he must have other resources when it comes to getting our economy back on its feet again.

Damn. It would be nice to have an offshore tax shelter worth in the mid-nine figures right about now. Wouldn’t it?

What were they thinking?

11:37 EST, 8:37 PST, 4:37 GMT

Damn it to hell, Rookie, I can’t believe my beloved Grand Prairie Airhogs have gone and signed Kieran Mattison.

Sure, the big right-hander struck out 55 in 35 innings last year for the Lewisville Lizards. But if he was so fucking great, how come that team folded?

Shit. I thought everyone understood that this guy’s a one-pitch pitcher.

Pity poor Pete Incaviglia. At least he’ll have a convenient scapegoat when the whole shithouse goes up in flames in the blazing August heat in the Metroplex of Hell.