Au revoir? I don't think so

Lest we forget

Withdrawal

My thanks to the Humor Archives for this (and the photo of Tony Blair on holiday in the post below).

A place for everything and everything in its place

Ever thought you'd like to insert George W. somewhere dark and warm and moist? Well now, thanks to Celebrity Butt Plugs, you can. And if you'd rather have Paris Hilton (with assquake battery effect!), or L. Ron Hubbard (with hypno eyes!) thrust snugly up your nether regions, the choice is yours. (Mel Gibson, oddly, has already sold out.) They don't look that comfortable, but comfort isn't everything. Think of the karma. Clench down.

By the way, don't miss the testimonials...

I wonder how long they'll keep us waiting for Eggs. Hey, maybe it'll double up as a holy water douche bag.

Gay Pride 2007: Eggs and, er, bacon

Benedict's beau, in case you don't recognise him from the manly chin, is Bush.

Oh yes, I'm talking about the bottom photograph. I've no idea who Eggs is dancing with in the top one, but despite his appalling colour sense he's certainly done all right for himself. (Don't tell Georg!)

And it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, and it's a hard...

It's a hard rain's a-gonna fall. And not only on Bush...

(Hi Dobby!!)

Once again, with thanks, from Bits and Pieces.

Footnotes

Two small footnotes to one aspect of Bush's wasteful and unnecessary visit to Rome. The day before he arrived someone scrawled an anti-Bush message on a stone designed to commemorate the murder of the Christian Democrat leader Aldo Moro and the five members of his escort by the Red Brigades, almost certainly with the connivance of some elements of the state. The message said Bush = Moro.

It would hard to imagine a more meaningless comparison. Moro was a master of the Byzantine art of Italian politics, the man who engineered the historic compromise between his own party and the Italian Communist Party, a man of culture and intellectual subtlety. I don't need to explain how far removed from all this the swaggering nincompoop who currently runs America is.

If the intention was merely to suggest that Bush should meet a similar end to Moro, of course, it's hard not to feel a little sympathy for the mystery graffitist, though I'd have appreciated something more focused. Interpretation, as we know, is all.

The other interesting thing about the business is the use by the Italian media of the word profane. Newspapers and television reporters all agree that the stone was profaned. According to Merriam-Webster, to profane is "to treat (something sacred) with abuse, irreverence, or contempt". Moro's death was a political crime of the worst kind, the slaughter of his escort both cruel and useless. But that doesn't make him, or them, sacred. Moro wasn't a saint and his death wasn't the death of a martyr, apart from anything else because it wasn't self-willed. Moro didn't choose to die.

This inappropriate use of the word is just another example of the way the line between church and state is being blurred. As ever, to the benefit of the church.

Democracy derailed

George Bush says that democratic reform in Rusia has been derailed. You can understand why he's worried. Rigged elections and the illegal disenfrachisement of voters. Prisoners held for years in subhuman conditions without trial. The economy held hostage by a gaggle of semi-legal oligarchs. The ever-growing threat of religious fundamentalism. Constant attacks on basic human rights. Global warming rampant and no political will to curb it.

And that's just the USA! Imagine what Putin's up to...

Slowly slowly

Anyone who's thought about humiliation knows that people can be brought to commit the most degrading acts if they're taken to them stage by stage, little by little, chipping away at their self-esteem until there's no trace of it left to protect them. Until what they still consider to be their self esteem has been utterly transformed into self delusion and abasement.

So maybe, after years of fawning around the rich and famous and powerful, not all at once of course but, as Liza Minnelli put it, man by man, from Ecclestone to Branson to Bush, ex-PM and ongoing lapdog Tony Blair will be ready to accept the new job he's being offered: Dean at Berlusconi's brand spanking new international university in Rome. Free bandanas supplied with every mortarboard.

Of course the place doesn't exist yet, but hey! it'll be handy for the Vatican. Something to keep him busy, in other words, until the next big job comes up.

Bye bye Eggs. Hi there Tony!

No, no regrets...

This cartoon is a wonderful example of the way in which the nature of what we understand when we see something can be gradually transformed by a series of minuscule shifts in representation. If you could find anyone in the enviable position of never having come across Bush or Blair in what’s fondly termed real life, I wonder if they’d recognise from photographs these wonderful caricatures that, to us, are such strikingly accurate portraits of the two mean vicious little men they represent. They’re accurate because we’ve been brought here, step-by-step, distoirtion by distortion, by Steve Bell, for me the most visually inventive political cartoonist working in Britain. It would be instructive to trace the history of Blair the poodle from his first appearance, some years ago, to this appalling creature panting slavishly beside his impatient master.