Science > Abortion > NeoCon Hugh Hewitt Too Stupid to Open up PDF File... So Claims Zogby Did Not Provide Him Info
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Science > Abortion |
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"Yang, AthD h.c, Kicking AWOLs Cocaine Snorting Ass" |
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04 Mar 2006 09:38:42 PM |
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NeoCon Hugh Hewitt Too Stupid to Open up PDF File... So Claims Zogby Did Not Provide Him Info |
Another moron NeoCon? I'm shocked!
http://crookedtimber.org/2006/03/04/the-men-who-knew-too-little/
Kevin Drum mocks Hugh Hewitt for his ‘it was in a PDF file that we
were only able to read after downloading a new version of Adobe’
defense. But the proper pop cult reference is not Perry Mason. Allow
me. Look to the man’s own site: "Hugh Hewitt is the Jack Bauer of talk
radio and the blogosphere." This is actually a good idea for a show.
‘In the next 24 hours, terrorists will make a major strike against an
American city. The only thing between all of us, and just a few of
them … is a complacent, partisan hack.’ In 90 minutes or less you
could play it strictly for Man Who Knew Too Little laughs. Subtler and
ultimately more satisfying would be a genuine, 24-karat gold-plated
imitation 24. In the first episode, "Download PDF For Murder",
terrorists have encrypted their plans in an email attachment that can
only be read using the latest version of Adobe Reader. Sweaty ‘which
wire do I cut?’ tension as the heroes race against time to crack the
main Adobe site. ‘This mouse has TWO buttons!’ ‘Just PICK one!’ [Adobe
Acrobat Reader starts dowloading, to the "Hackers"-inspired strains of
The Prodigy’s "Firestarter".] But then it all goes crazy. In the end
they confront a nail-biting moral dilemma. Should they torture the
Adobe executive, kidnapped in a daring, extra-judicial raid. He’s
screaming "Just DOUBLE-click!" The agents scream back: “You’re lying“
I have an idea for a TV series. I’m not the one to write it, so if you
steal my idea and make a million dollars, at least give me credit. I
thought of this months ago, talking to a friend – let’s call him John
Smith – who, post 9/11, wanted to put his mathematics Ph.D. to work
for his country. He applied for a job with an agency, a job that would
have required a high level of security clearance. That’s where the
trouble began. He’s nervous; been prescribed stuff for panic attacks.
As a result, apparently he can foil any lie detector. The questioners
were soon asking, ‘Are you SURE your name is John Smith?’ What struck
him was the mix of competence and incompetence he encountered on his
odyssey of not getting clearance. His impression was that one of the
people he would have been working with was brilliant, the others were
mediocrities who flunked out of academia into government work.
Likewise, those nosing into every inch of his life were a mixed bunch:
a shrewd, avuncular P.I. gives him sage advice about the process.
Another outside contractor, retired cop doing background checks, tries
to visit him without an appointment in his academic office – finds he
isn’t there, finds that his neighbors hardly know him – and gets a bee
in his bonnet that this is some kind of front. Just because he doesn’t
know it’s normal for academics to not be at their desks. Best were the
interviews: he had lived in Vienna for two years. ‘What’s Vienna?’
asks the interviewer. Later she tries to play both good cop and bad
cop. Another interviewer tries to ingratiate himself with the subject
by speaking math – that is, mixing lots of mathematical gibberish into
his questions.
Who knows whether my friend is a serial exaggerator. Not I. Anyway,
the conceit of my show is that it refuses to be a romance of
competence. As a rule, the spy/cop hero genre hinges on a
fundamentally romantic conception of the protagonist’s nature – and
the villain is the same. And this conception expresses itself as
omnicompetence, due to all sorts of implausible physical attributes;
but, in a moral sense, due to the ability to see, then step outside,
petty bounds of institutions, laws, conventional morals and manners.
Spies and action heroes – and villains – are attractively free and
clear-sighted. I could go on. Point is: we aren’t going to play it
that way.
The story has two main lines. A terrorist group forming up and making
plans. An anti-terrorist agency. The point is: they are both
para-competent at best. It’s like 24 meets The Office, but you don’t
play it for big laughs. More of a Coen brothers screwball tragedy;
where you realize that the problem with the plan isn’t that some one
crucial bit of clockwork won’t tick; rather the problem is that the
whole clock is a lurid, Daliesque mess. Somehow everyone had gotten so
used to it that they don’t notice it’s melted. But the series can
still be relatively low-key, because you are spreading it out over a
whole season.
You have some competent characters, no Jack Bauers. You have a few
characters who are bizarrely incompetent. The hero tells them that the
terrorists are on a plane to Vienna and they say, ‘what’s Vienna?’
Also, there are characters who are not competent enough to do their
jobs, because their jobs are such that you would have to be a
resourceful genius to do them well. Secrecy breeds confusion. You have
politicians, *****-coverers, time-servers and cranks. You have whole
elaborate sub-plots devoted to low-level corruption and fraud and
dereliction of duty. There is too much money sloshing around;
naturally, some isn’t ending up where it should. Serious hardball
politics is being played, with compromises made. Sweetheart deals are
being cut on the side, but the characters are also likeable – the very
worst not as bad as Tony Soprano. We warm up to these scamps after
several episodes. They work hard, are under stress, were probably
screwed up by their parents, and don’t think of themselves as
effectively neglecting, if not sabotaging, the patriotic duties they
are charged with performing.
Few of the characters are really focused on what the show is really
about, namely the real possibility of a major terrorist strike on
American soil. Mostly the show does focus on the anti-terrorist
agency’s internal doings, but the terrorists make occasional
appearances, in which they prove themselves similiarly incapable of
keeping their eye on the ball. Example: you could have an episode,
ripped from the headlines, in which a member of an antiterrorist unit
– who has managed to slice his sports car in two at high speed – tries
to play up his agency association to get off the hook. A couple of his
friends, who are worried about his drinking but want to help, agree to
help him mock-up some bogus scenario to shake loose the cops who are
investigating. They call in favors from local officials and
businessmen who have benefited from the agency’s lavish funding, then
from politicians who have gotten solid support from these businessmen
in exchange for supporting funding, all of whom think of this
incessant mutual backscratching as peripheral to their sincere support
for the agency and its noble efforts. There’s a blogger who is trying
to expose them all; but the blogger has the wrong conspiracy story
about it all. The episode has a hazy sort of ‘it all just got so
fucked up’ ambience. Meanwhile, the terrorists are trying to buy a
backpack nuke, but they get ripped off by some Russian mafia-types.
You would need to tell the story so that episodes devoted to office
politics, incidental corruption and incompetence, would have a sort of
train-wreck fascination. You infect the audience with the same disease
the characters suffer from: namely, they don’t mind forgetting about
how serious the big picture is, because the soap opera business of our
little lives is potentially so preoccupying. Then in the final
episode, LA blows up; or it doesn’t.
I could go back through this post and put in some Amazon links. I’ll
just point out that The Man Who Knew Too Little is only $6.99. "Please
don’t call me by my real name, it destroys the reality I’m trying to
create." I thought it was pretty funny. Not great, but good.
-----
Yang
a.a. #28
AthD (h.c.) conferred by the regents of the LCL
a.a. pastor #-273.15, the most frigid church of Celcius nee Kelvin
EAC Econometric Forecast and Sorcery Division
Proudly plonked by Lani Girl and Crazyalec (aka aka Yang's little poltregeist *****)
The Bush 'balanced' budget: 2 trillion and worsening
The Bush 'economic' policy: 12.5 million FEWER jobs than Clinton and counting
The Bush Iraq lie: -2299 GIs, one friend's co-worker's son and mounting
Having Bush ***** up my country: Worthless
-----
"Ahhhhhh, yessssssss, ummmmmmm - Alito, Alito, Alito"
-duke (duckgumbo@cox.net), aka PedophilEarl J Weber, 59
year old mateless, heirless biological failure
of Afton Oaks Apartment, Baton Rouge,who pussied
out of the Vietnam draft, showing his gay side
despite his avowed anti-gay bigotry
Contact duke's priest and ask
him why duke is such a racist:
http://www.stpatrickbr.org/
Father Gerard "Jerry" Martin
stpatrickbr<AT>bellsouth<DOT>net
Saint Patrick Catholic Church
12424 Brogdon Lane
Baton Rouge, Louisiana 70816
.
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| User: "stoney" |
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| Title: Re: NeoCon Hugh Hewitt Too Stupid to Open up PDF File... So Claims Zogby Did Not Provide Him Info |
07 Mar 2006 09:25:46 AM |
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On Sat, 04 Mar 2006 19:38:42 -0800, "Yang, AthD (h.c), Kicking AWOL's
Cocaine Snorting *****" <eacmole@/*AWOLBUSH*/mail.com> wrote in
alt.atheism
Another moron NeoCon? I'm shocked!
http://crookedtimber.org/2006/03/04/the-men-who-knew-too-little/
http://crookedtimber.org
Heimatunsicherheit?
Posted by Belle Waring
Then again, given Chertoff’s overall record, maybe they did place the
nation’s security first and foremost:
“I wouldn’t feel safe nowhere on this compound as an officer,”
former guard Derrick Daniels told The Associated Press. Daniels was
employed until last fall by Wackenhut Services Inc., the private firm
that protects a Homeland Security complex that includes sensitive,
classified information.
An envelope with suspicious powder was opened last fall at the
headquarters. Daniels and other current and former guards said they were
shocked when superiors carried it past the office of Secretary Michael
Chertoff, took it outside and then shook it outside Chertoff’s window
without evacuating people nearby.
I know life is meant to imitate art and all, but is it supposed to
imitate Benny Hill episodes? I can just imagine the guards running
around in fast-motion, shaking clouds of powder out just below a hacking
Chertoff’s window. And if a somewhat zaftig, topless woman in a nurse’s
uniform could be worked into an ensuing chase scene, then so much the
better.
Permanent Link · Posted 3/07/2006 :: 4:46AM in Humor,
/end
--
Fundies and trolls are cordially invited to
shove a wooden cross up their arses and rotate
at a high rate of speed. I trust you'll
be 'blessed' with a cornucopia of splinters.
.
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