The Rake Magazine

It was on the far right, literally. A tiny block of space someone had purchased to help The Rake live another day. Pay up, and you can paste your sign/add your link/sing your song on my web page/television/telephone/window/door/floor/car/bus/butt/etc...

In the ultimate capitalist pervasion of everyday life, this heat-seeking piranha of an ad jumped at me, propelled by the finely tuned instincts of specialized software, somewhere in cyberspace, sensing Barack Obama's name on the page and inferring from it the presence of intellectual prey.

There I was, and there it was, so close:

"The Real Barack Obama (link) The truth behind the canditate (sic)" - "Barack Obama Exposed - Free!" (with another link)

I hesitated. The piranha bit down hard. I clicked!

...and could almost feel the blood rush:

"From his radical stance on abortion to his prominence in the corruption scandals that has been virtually ignored by the mainstream media, Barack Obama is not fit to be Senator -- not to mention the next President of the United States. Obama has declared his presidential intentions, but it is up to well-informed and energetic conservatives like you to spare our nation from the scourge of a far-left President Barack H. Obama."

Presidential politics is the grand stage of the most aggressive promoters, the truest believers. Neglect their theater and they will seek you out, seek to turn you out. I slept through the 2004 and 2000 elections. Even now, I was placidly detached. But this impassioned gnome of an ad leapt from the stage, snatched me from the placid pages of an innocent, literate webzine, and forced me, drove me, deep into its chosen thicket of passion and intrigue.

I was in the hunt. I clicked a link, then another, and got:

"It must be just me! I mean, does anyone else see the lying racist? The Obamination of this country is about to walk right into the Democratic nomination and no-one is doing a damned thing about it! PEOPLE...Obama hates this nation and WHITE people! HELLO! Is anyone out there? Are you folks so stupid and blind that it is already over? Is America already doomed from the inside out? Was President Lincoln correct when he said this nation will only be defeated from within?! Jesus people...can't you see what is happening here? Wake up! The man will not cover his heart during the National Anthem...oh god...I could go on forever!"

Hokey smoke! From clever, benign, literacy to full frontal attack in three clicks. I recalled twentieth century sites affixing Bill Clinton's name to the legends of dead people, many legends, many dead people - the Clinton Body Count, they called it. One page had animated graphic blood dripping down the sides. I remembered admiring the enthusiasm (and the graphics!) more than the argument. Had I convinced myself that towering invective was unique to Bill? The question begged for investigation.

I enlisted Google.

"Barack Obama exposed" brought 38,500 Google "results". Oh, my! A huge number. But compared to what? I tried for context.

"Hillary Clinton exposed" scored 12,600 pages, a bare third of Obama's total; "John McCain exposed" an almost negligible 2,350. It's an Obama phenomenon. But why?

My brain churned through the usual suspects. Is the web's free wheeling candor a cultural Petri dish, nurturing explosions of racist bacteria? Does Obama's generic celebrity merit the poisonous paparazzi pursuit of Paris or Britney? Are the White Knights of the Right so certain of their enemy that they write off Hillary as a dead woman walking?

Or was I, naive in the ways of The Web, missing the connotation of "exposed"? Perhaps it's that Obama is, how to put this delicately, hot? I tried something else.

"Barack Obama nude" brings 725 results, but "Hillary Clinton nude" launches 21,200 pages.

Aha! The light goes on. Sealing the deal, "John McCain nude" scores a pitiful 64. That's it!

It's about testosterone. The Bad Old Surfer Dudes want to see women naked and new kids trashed. What about McCain? 64 "results" close that question. Nobody cares about the old guy. He's not a threat.
I'd like to think elections are about ideas and principles, about who would do the best job. But there's waaaay more than that. Frank Luntz theorizes it's about talking to the reptilian brain: "80 percent of our life is emotion, and only 20 percent is intellect." I think I've found supporting evidence.

^{photo from Pander Watch}

(read aloud)

Obama!

Obama, mama!

Obama mama, blackjack!

Obama mama blackjack, jackpot! Smoke a lot?

Brain rot?

 

Minnesota

pep rally, rock show! Let's go! Cash flow!

Are we here? Do we know? Where to go? Say so!

Minnesota slam dunk. In the trunk. No junk.

Put it in the mix, punk!

 

Hoosier daddy

Indiana Tarheel store bought fortune wheel.

No more vacant lots. Hard fought short shots.

Jacka lacka jackpot. Spin the lever. Maybe not.

Don't forget to get the pot.

 

Summer winner?

Who knows? Who cares? Cash flows down stairs.

Hoosier daddy, where'd he go? Izzy at the rock show?

Scalpin' tickets on the street? Where to meet to beat the heat?

Save the country from the dogs, high hogs, rollin' logs.

Save the country sez you, home brew! Who to screw?

Are we in a hot spot? Be cool, somethin' new.

 

Tell a vision

Sunday morning on the tube. Am I just another boob?

Tell it to me wholesale. Rock The Nation; find the Grail.

Are ya lyin' press corps? Tell me just a little more.

Over under, what's the score?

Who's a whore?

 

Revolution,

is it real? Can you feel?

Buy a T shirt?

 

(not to be confused with "God Bless America")

 

In the wake of the Great War there was Dick Tuck, and Dick Tuck begat Donald Segretti, and Donald Segretti begat Karl Rove. Karl Rove's further begetting remains undisclosed.

Dirty tricks come to politics when politics become seriously political. Before Richard Nixon spends those Watergate dollars burgling Democrats' offices and spying on their psychiatrists, Nixon himself is dogged by campaign mysteries and malfunctions of suspiciously organized origin. Nixon's hound is Democratic political operator Dick Tuck (his real name; you can look it up).

Tuck begins his career with Helen Gahagan Douglas, Nixon's 1950 opponent for US Senate; later he squires for presidential crusades of Adlai Stevenson, Jack Kennedy and Bobby Kennedy. In each campaign, his best remembered assignment is to make Richard Nixon look foolish. Sometimes this is not a difficult task. After Nixon's first 1960 TV debate with John Kennedy, legend portrays Tuck hiring an elderly woman, who wears a large Nixon button, to greet Nixon as he exits a plane, plant a kiss on his cheek, and gush, "That's all right, Mr. Nixon. He beat you last night, but you'll win next time." In 1968, the lore continues, Tuck hires visibly pregnant women to carry signs with the Nixon campaign slogan, "Nixon's the One," at Nixon rallies. And so on.

Tuck's peculiar pleasure is Nixon's agony. Tuck is preoccupied with Nixon, but Nixon is obsessed with Dick Tuck. The emotional open window exposes Nixon's paranoid and vengeful soul. Hunter S Thompson, a darker, less balanced Nixon antagonist, later opines, "Nixon was so aggressively evil that he almost glowed at night. His political instincts were so dangerous that he made the politics of total opposition a very honourable trade for two generations of the best people in America." Whatever. Nixon decides to hire his own Dick Tuck.

From Nixon's Committee to Re-Elect the President (CREEP) in 1972, a friend offers Donald Segretti the job. Barely out of Vietnam and the JAG Corps, a young and impressionable Segretti stalks Democrats in "black advance." His object is to sow dissension among Democratic campaigns. Dragnetted in the larger Watergate scandal, Segretti's labors earn four and a half months prison time, on misdemeanor charges of dispensing false campaign literature ("campaign literature without proper attribution," he recalls), and a two-year suspension of his California law license. At trial, Democratic prosecutors flaunt a faked letter, on Democratic presidential candidate Ed Muskie's stationery, alleging fellow Democratic candidate Henry "Scoop" Jackson had an illegitimate child with a 17-year-old.

Karl Rove comes to CREEP after dropping out of school to become College Republican National Committee executive director. Rove labors for Segretti on the 1972 campaign. 28 years later and in full control of Sauron's scepter, "Bush's Brain" finds his old boss on the opposite side. Segretti is John McCain's 2000 Orange County campaign chair. Beyond irony, a South Carolina push poll of mysterious origin ravages McCain: "Would you be more likely or less likely to vote for John McCain for president if you knew he had fathered an illegitimate black child?" The beat goes on.

April 2008, BBC News reports: A helium filled giant pig, born one of Pink Floyd's Animals and now a metaphorical billboard for Roger Waters' political agenda, floats high over the crowd at the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival in Coachella (where else?), California. Its belly paint spells "Obama"; adjacent is a checked box (see approx 3:30 here). The BBC newsreader pauses, then muses whether thousands of stoner Floyd fans will vote for Obama per instructions from a flying pig.

Later reports say The Pig "broke free from its tethers" and "drifted away." After two days, residents of La Quinta, a country club community fingered by conspicuous consumption rag the Robb Report as "the nation's leading golf destination," wake to find the Capitalist Pig in pieces — "like pulled pork" says one of the finders — on their manicured lawns (no, I'm not making this up). Still later, CNN reports "organizers" had cut The Pig's mooring cables. This assertion is unconfirmed. Chris Willman of Hollywood Insider is thinking black advance. "Is it possible the shredded pig was blown out of the sky by a Clinton or McCain supporter with a rocket launcher?" asks Willman.

Home in Corona del Mar, two hours from Coachella, Donald Segretti denies knowledge of The Pig's abduction and apparent assassination. He's been out of the black advance business a long time. Segretti is forthright and more than contrite about the Nixon campaign work. He decries the South Carolina tactics in 2000 and those between Obama and Clinton campaigns in 2008. Why do it? "The job is to get candidates elected," he says quietly, "There is no second place." He avers his 2000 campaign work for McCain followed the credo "no negative campaigning". "You learn a lot as you go along in life." Out of politics, he allows he "wouldn't be unhappy" with an Obama presidency, provided the product is as advertised.

Dick Tuck is unrepentant at age 85. He won't confirm or deny legends about pregnant women. Tuck has published a political newsletter for over 30 years. He called it The Reliable Source until The Washington Post appropriated that moniker. "Don't even think about suing someone who buys ink by the barrel, " Tuck growls. Still a fouille-merde, he renamed his letter WashPostIt. Tuck has also set up DickTuck.com, but to date the site is pretty bare. He says, if it's worth his while to come, he'll reserve a men's room stall at the Minneapolis-St Paul airport main terminal for the Republican National Convention, but expects "a long line". He dismisses George W Bush as inconsistent: "He lied to get us into war; why not lie to get us out?" Tuck disavows personal knowledge of Coachella events, but claims, "If it had been twenty years ago, they would have blamed me."

Dead since 1994, former President Richard Nixon could not be reached for comment on The Pig's demise. Campaign finance reports indicate daughter Julie Nixon Eisenhower has maxed out on primary election contributions to the Obama campaign.

It's unclear whether these events are related.

Now that I have been in Scotland for a bit I have begun to notice the great shadow the infamous creator of Braveheart still casts over this hilly northern country. If you venture into any bargain store in Edinburgh or Glasgow you will find many bric-a-bracs aimed at spend-happy tourists. These items range from the relatively funny "kilt beach towel" to the aggravating "William Wallace doll." Now, there's nothing wrong with the historical figure of William Wallace. The man heroically stood against the English in order to defend Scottish independence, and this I can respect. And I really can't judge the people who are making money from the dolls themselves; far be it for me to begrudge anybody the right to strike gold by abusing national symbols.

No, the William Wallace doll is an abomination because it is just a little version of that big schmuck, Mel Gibson. It is a vivid rendering, capturing accurately even the most Jew-hating contours of the man's face (from an era before the expert ironist decided to grow a strange Abrahamic beard). I know Braveheart is one of the most profitable things that has happened to Scotland since whisky became the local manna, but when you hold a lil' Mel in your hands you do not want to fight for your freedom, you just feel sorry for all the civilizations Mel Gibson has ripped off and made a mockery of (e.g. Scots, Mayans, ancient Israelites, and counting).

I could forgive this if it were a phenomenon confined to shops that sell inflatable heart-shaped mattresses and "I'm not as think as you drunk I am" t-shirts, but unfortunately Mel Gibson has managed to worm his way into actual history. I went to the city of Stirling one day, and visited the National William Wallace Monument, a great 19^th-century century-built landmark perched loftily on a lovely, green hilltop. After making my way down from the summit, I encountered something that morphed my good feeling into outright disgust. By the foot of the hill stood a big stone statue of Mel Gibson, mace in hand, screaming triumphantly. It seemed like stone-Mel knew he was ruining my time in Stirling and that there lied his ultimate victory over me. The word "FREEDOM" carved into the rock mockingly reminded me of how very trapped I was in the Mel-universe.

Next to the statue there was a plaque with the story behind the work written on it. Some poor guy carved the thing because when he was down in the dumps (slowly dying from some horrible disease), he watched Braveheart, and the movie had been able to fill him with national pride and confidence. I thought it was strange how the one thing that made this sculptor so hopeful in his final days was the source of so much unpleasantness for me. Why couldn't the guy have seen The Mary Tyler Moore Show on his deathbed and carved a statue of its namesake, like the one that dazzles in the streets of the fine city of Minneapolis, Minnesota? I guess some people just aren't lucky enough to get Nick at Nite.