Hookergate Redux; Gratuitous Marx Reference

The fine-feathered folks at Sploid have a nice tease up about "Hookergate," the brewing prostitution-bribery scandal that involves already disgraced-and-convicted congressman Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, dismissed CIA chief Porter Goss, and now the CIA's number three honcho, Kyle "Dusty" Foggo.

I can't do justice to Sploid's diamond-hard prose, which squeezes in more innuendo and links into a few small paragraphs than is humanly possible--it's like Superman took a binful of coal and smushed into one baseball-sized gleaming diamond. So go read it here and follow its links to the outer limits of credibility on the World Wide Web.

In the meantime, let's be grateful for a scandal that may be lacking in any sort of definitive verification but more than makes up for it with incredibly idiotic nicknames for the principals.

And for a [fill-in-the-blank]-gate scandal in which the Watergate building actually plays a leading role. Which nicely closes the circle on one of the most-overused expressions in American politics and culture. Finally, at long last, we can move on to another designated suffix for scandal.

Wasn't it Marx who said that history repeats itself, first as a serious made-for-TV movie and then as an episode of Three's Company? How could a man so right about that been so wrong about the subjective theory of value? Didn't the guy ever go to a garage sale, fer chrissakes?

Comments

[emmajane]

Read the Sploid piece, followed the links. I need a shower.

[independent worm]

Oh my god. The sploid article links to a Scott Loughrey piece.

[joe]

"Didn't the guy ever go to a garage sale, fer chrissakes?"

Of course he did. Arguing for forty-five minutes with a guy in socks and sandals who refuses to come down from $200 for a ripped, orage vinyl couch would make you hate the bourgeoise, too.

[biologist]

was that Groucho or Zeppo that said that?

[Harpo]

[John DeWitt]

Heard on the radio yesterday:

"Seriously: if you were a Republican, would you ever go near the Watergate hotel? How suicidal can you be?"

[VM]

'"Seriously: if you were a Republican, would you ever go near the Watergate hotel? How suicidal can you be?"'

[insert joke about fundie christian conservatives not visiting the kennedy center here...] 🙂

[Kevin T.]

Even a blind pig finds an acorn occasionally.

[Mark Borok]

Nick,

Second paragraph needs work. You called the prose "diamond-hard" and then redundantly compared it to diamonds in the same sentence.

[jeremy]

Not only that, Nick, "for Chrissake" sounds like you mean for the sake of Chris. I think you mean "for Chrisake." Why not just write "for Christ's sake" and quit trying to replecate colloquial pronunciation? Surely you're trying to soften the blasphemy. How about "for the love of Ayn Rand"? Too blasphemous?

[Paul]

Arguing for forty-five minutes with a guy in socks and sandals who refuses to come down from $200 for a ripped, orage vinyl couch would make you hate the bourgeoise, too.

joe: Good comment.

Your comment also illustrates the difference between 'price' and 'value'.

However, I'd say that if one argues for 45 minutes over a ripped, orange vinyl couch, one must want it pretty bad. And no, it wouldn't make me hate the bourgeoise, it'd make me laugh at him as he takes the thing to the dump and pays the $25 disposal fee after he fails to get his $200.

Price, it's not what he says it is, it's what the market will bear.

[Adriana]

jeremy: Saying "for the love of Ayn Rand" puts you in danger of having to come through with stud service...