THE NO SIN ZONE

Click on image to see a guide you can actually read:

. . . or a weak stomach for pointless bickering: If you are not up to speed on the current Democratic American Idol competition, knock back a fistful of Ritalin and watch this helpful primary primer:

WARNING: Grab your pearls tightly gals before watching this clip because it is such a shocking display of an appalling inability to blindly adulate!  Our entertaining President is not only willing to go on a starvation diet for his reputation’s salvation — completely free of notoriously high-in-glutton “reality” and “facts”  — he is also more eager to play dress-up than any schizophrenic queen who ever joined a community theater!  No, not the fabulous cowboy who’s a-skart of horses this time.  And, no, not the fighter pilot with a week’s worth of tube socks in his Fruit of the Looms.  No, this evening our glorious, truth-adverse President pretended to be a Major League baseball player!  It is a job he is supremely qualified for, in a sorta Hillary “I was standing nearby” Clinton magical osmosis-way. Why? Because his daddy’s friends once bought him his very own ball club to keep him out of Midland Texas’ crack dens — that’s why! And what do the churlish, ungrateful America-hating Americans watching do?  They loudly boo the poor, irritable, tetchy man!  Honestly, if he had wanted that type of reception he’d have gone up to Kennebunkport to see that scotch-swizzling viper he calls Mom!  

According to Mr. & Mrs. Clintons’ always selfless opinions, only Hillary Clinton and John McCain are qualified to be America’s Commander-in-Chief. Since only John McCain has actually been in the military, I was, of course, led to wonder what shared quality makes them so uniquely qualified. Jiminy Crickett, I think I’ve found it! Apparently, the only qualification for being Commander-in-Chief is going to a site of military activity and then lying about what you saw. George W. Bush flies into Iraq in secret, afraid to even use the bathroom light on his 747 First Winnebago, stays safely ensconced behind heavily fortified bunkers and then tells everyone back home how marvelously safe and festive things are back in fun, super-successful Iraq. Meanwhile, John McCain, pandering to the same Republicans addicted to such fanciful invention, famously strode under sniper and helicopter protection through a Baghdad marketplace and declared it as safe as slipping into a 7-11 in Flagstaff for a box of Depends.

Yes, an ability to lie without shame or reference to reality — and do it over and over again — is apparently what makes an ideal Commander-in-Chief. With such brazen military prevarication viewed by most Americans as the ideal, Hillary, always willing to adapt, probably felt that she was being too honest for the American people. So she lied about her experience in Bosnia. Only, in a novel twist, Hillary actually opted to make things sound worse than they were. As such, it’s lovely that Mrs. Clinton is bringing change to lying about our country’s military adventures.

Mr. And Mrs. McCain had an awkward Jennifer Flowers moment today. At a press conference they renounced a New York Times piece that claimed McCain staffers were concerned in 2000 that he was being Monica’ed (to mix mistresses, if not metaphors) by Vicki Iseman, a lobbyist 31 years his junior. But, unlike Monica, who only got dry cleaning bills for her efforts, Ms. Iseman supposedly got congressional action for her clients — and rides in corporate jets.

Of course, I have no idea if anything really did happen between the two. The image of McCain naked prevents me from even speculating. Jesus knows, but He isn’t telling — not until I explain to Him, once again, the point of praying to Himself, as he is wont to do in the New Testament and in picture frames over corduroy recliner couches throughout Middle America. But one thing struck me: Mr. McCain lays it on a bit thick, protesting a bit much. He claims: “At no time have I ever done anything that would betray the public trust or made a decision which in any way would not be in the public interest or would favor anyone or organization.” Oh, come now. Pretending to love George W. Bush and be even crazier than you are to pander to the base isn’t just the slightest betrayal, if only of yourself, and just ever so remotely not in the country’s best interest?

Hillary Clinton, who is rather practiced at pretending in public to like someone she yells foul invective about behind closed doors, was all cozy, even coquettish, towards Barrack Obama last night. With her husband muzzled and off camera, Hillary was free to flirt, with eyes that twinkled with an approximation of affection. Barrack responded with chivalry so self-consciously overt, he pulled out Hillary’s chair (this time, not out from under her) before the two held elbows and twittered into each other’s ears, as if at the end of a dreaded first date that had gone surprisingly well. “I’ll call you — and not the b-word this time.”

It was all so disappointingly convivial. More distressingly, it was also such a contrast to what is happening back at the only party God ever goes to — the GOP. Of course, it is no secret that John McCain loathes Mitt Romney. This dislike seems to spring from a resentment that Mitt is even more shameless than John in blithely jettisoning everything he has ever said to better pander to a base that is increasingly playing more hard-to-get. Let’s face it: they both are on a road that only yesterday suddenly careened and took a sharp right. These GOP frontrunners are the Kim Cattrall and Sarah Jessica Parker of politics, only this time Kim will probably wind up with top billing. Romney, the Don Draper of politics, is too wholly artificial to allow any genuine feelings to roil his slick veneer. As such, he doesn’t return McCain’s crotchety, palpably personal animosity.

Fortunately for Romney, that void has been more than filled. I’m not sure if it due to nature or lack of nurture, but the one thing Republicans can do well is hate. We hate reality. We hate foreigners. We hate Hillary Clinton. And we hate John McCain. Born-again James C. Dobson, of Focus on the Family, hates him. Fat-again Rush Limbaugh hates him. And, in an amusing twist, conservatives’ favorite spinster, Ann Coulter, announced that she would vote for Hillary Clinton over John McCain:

Since every syllable that escapes from Ann is said solely to garner attention, one can take this theatric proclamation with a pinch of salt — and a necklace of garlic. As I have long maintained, Ann Coulter is either a very devious, liberal performance artist — or mentally ill. And this latest stunt only serves to make me reevaluate the seemingly sound decision to lean towards the “mentally ill” option. In any event, when it comes to helpful endorsements, that odious blond creature claiming to support Hillary does more to help Obama than a whole Hyannisport compound of Kennedy endorsements.

At the State of the Disunion speech last night, Hillary Clinton very pointedly shook Teddy Kennedy’s hand, a hand still warm from patting Barrack Obama’s back all day. As she made this gesture of unruffled conciliatoriness for the watchful network pundits, she smiled and, no doubt, crushed Ted’s arthritic knuckles as she quietly hissed, “Et tu, Boozy?”

But just as Hillary was being BFFs with someone she can’t stand (kudos her!), she was dissed with the pointedly turned shoulder of Barrack Obama. The two were only one alcoholic senator apart, yet Barrack Obama’s body language telegraphed a rather snippy, “I’m not speaking to Miss Thing!”

Hillary, surely no stranger to pulling a silent ice-out after seeing more bimbo irruptions than the Grotto at the Playboy Mansion, probably took some comfort in Obama’s amateur mistake of showing authentic distaste. Because, like, being churlish while cameras are rolling is, like, so not fetch!

We have long known that there is an odd dynamic at work in the Clinton’s notoriously opaque marriage. And it’s not just a suspicion that we are the audience for a performance of affection, a performance that can be stopped as quickly as the cameras that record it. No, by now we’re quite used to seeing the steely resolve of for-public-consumption-only romance. After all, isn’t that why we have celebrity Scientologists? And much like the Cruises and the Travoltas, the Clinton’s performance of warmth seldom plays out very convincingly. In fairness, it’s a somewhat difficult role for the Clintons to pull off when they act as if they can’t stand to be in the same room with each other, right down to having His and Hers campaign states. But a palpable “I wish I were with someone else” energy hardly sets the Clintons apart. Indeed, it is a vibe given off by so many spouses, including Laura “Pickles” Bush – even on days when she has liberated countless Xanax from under a cotton ball of captivity — I use it as a rather reliable indication that a couple is actually married.

No, the Clintons have a somewhat inscrutable dynamic all their own. Somewhere along the endless campaign trails, an energetic co-ascendancy, the reliance on the other to win, turned into an icy co-descendantcy, a secret wish the other would lose. I don’t know if the Clintons actually want each other to lose — maybe they don’t even know — but it sure looks as if they do sometimes.

Hillary, fleeing a sinking South Carolina primary, did the one thing, she of all people, should know is a bad idea. She left Bill alone. As usual, he got up to mischief. He turned shrill and churlish over the increasing inevitability of an Obama win. And this was not the first time that Hillary has set Bill lose, only to watch him embarrass himself with fact-challenged and unseemly whininess. In doing so, Bill had gone a breathtakingly long way to undermining all of his recent efforts to rehabilitate his reputation, a reputation nostalgically burnished far less by what Bill didn’t do than by what his successor couldn’t do.

As such, Hillary has provided her husband with the perfect opportunity to tarnish his legacy. People are starting to see him as she probably has all along: an egotistical brat with no self-control. And he’s returning the favor, hurting her chance of victory by making everyone see her the same way he apparently does: as the ruthless, controlling, lesser spouse who would be nowhere without him.

They say revenge is best prepared cold. And it apparently serves two.