It’s Tim Russert.  The moment he said to Dennis Kucinich at a “debate” among Democratic presidential candidates, “This is a serious question,” you knew it wouldn’t be.  A responsible journalist might have asked, “Why do think that Dick Cheney should be impeached rather than George Bush?”  But Russert wanted to further marginalize Kucinich--to ridicule him in a flying saucer kind of way--and, like a trial lawyer who already knows what a defendant’s answer will be--his “serious question” was “Did you see a UFO?”

Kucinich tried to explain that the U in UFO means “unidentified” flying object.  He joked, “I’m moving my campaign office to Roswell, New Mexico and Exeter, New Hampshire.”  He pointed out that Jimmy Carter had seen a UFO, and  “More people--”  Russert interrupted him with a statistic: 14% of Americans had seen UFOs.  Kucinich asked him to repeat that number, as if to thank him for inadvertently providing him with the UFO sighters vote.  Russert repeated the number and, with the smug satisfaction of having generated a guaranteed sound bite, he said, “I want to ask Senator Obama...”

There was a predictable trickle-down effect.  Even Bill Maher mocked Kucinich, though Maher’s real target should’ve been Russert.  A few days later, I met a woman who asked me who my ideal candidate is.  “Dennis Kucinich,” I said.  She responded, “Isn’t he the one who said he saw some Martians?”  Of course, there’s a video of that encounter in the secret government implied-blackmail lock-box, along with the video of a threesome--Charles Schumer, Dianne Feinstein and a billy goat--and the video of Rudy Guliani performing an abortion on Pat Robertson’s mistress.

Ironically, Russert’s co-moderator, Brian Williams--in his capacity as host of Saturday Night Live--referred to the mainstream media’s proactive assumption that Hillary Clinton will win in the primaries and then in the general election.  Fundraising is the name of that particular political game, because the candidates with the most money will buy the most TV commercials and print ads.  Tim Russert gives a claymation face to that open conspiracy.  And in the process, that old saying and song, “There’s no business like show business,” lands in the outdated metaphors graveyard.  There is indeed a business like show business.  It’s the news.    

[In lieu of his "Assholes of the Week" installment, perhaps impelled by the High Holy Day spirit, Paul Krassner has written this poignant personal essay. -- ed]

I spent this past weekend at the 11th annual Earthdance celebration, a global festival for peace held in northern California, uniting with over 250 locations in 50 countries, providing a wide variety of live music, workshops, speakers, inspiration and a worldwide sense of community.

On Saturday, I was among a large group of men and women participating in the International Elders Forum. Each one had six minutes to share their wisdom with an overflowing crowd in the huge Electronica Dome. A native American, David of the Blackfoot tribe, would play the flute after five minutes of talk as a signal that there was one minute left.

When my turn came, I began, “Whatever wisdom I have to share is in the form of comic relief, but just remember, if you don’t laugh you’re only helping the terrorists.” After seven minutes, I still didn’t hear any notes from the flute, so I decided to pass the microphone on to the next person.

On Sunday afternoon, David told me that he had been laughing so hard he simply couldn’t play his flute. He tried again and again, yet the best he could do was spit into it. Of course, this was gratifying feedback to a stand-up satirist, but over lunch our conversation became deadly serious.

Last November, he wanted to sell a piece of equipment, and a man who saw the ad invited him to his apartment. There, David was told to help himself to a soda from the refrigerator, which he did. When he turned around, four guys--biker/skinhead/Aryan-Nation types--burst through the door and attacked him with 2-1/2 inch metal pipes, first striking him on the forehead, then beating and kicking him while calling him a “dog” and a “prairie nigger.”

He tried unsuccessfully to defend himself and finally dove out the first-floor window, landing in a carport. He pounded on somebody’s door--yelling “9-1-1!”--and collapsed in a puddle of blood. He regained consciousness in a hospital where he got 40 stitches for a cracked cranium and a head brace for his broken neck. His shoulder and hand were also injured. He was rescued by a friend and stayed at her home to heal. He could no longer do physical work, but she has since helped him open a small business.

Two weeks after the incident (the night before Thanksgiving), police arrested David for missing a court date on a traffic violation. He had missed the date because he was unconscious in the hospital. At the Sonoma County jail, the guards kicked him, removed his head brace, refused him all medical attention, placed him in solitary confinement, forced him to sleep on a concrete bed without a mattress, and did not allow him to shower for six days. They eventually brought him to court, chained to a wheelchair.

After he was released on probation, the district attorney demanded that David testify against the skinheads. Knowing the nature of the Aryan gang, he immediately expressed concerns about his safety, regardless of what his testimony might be. A couple of months later, the DA agreed to place him in a witness protection program. It turned out to be at the Pink Flamingo, a hotel in Santa Rosa, the same city in which he was attacked.

On the third day, he walked out of the hotel and saw a bunch of bikers and skinheads outside. Not knowing they were there for a tattoo convention, he panicked and smoked a cigarette in his no-smoking room. For that offense, he was taken out of the witness protection program and left homeless, afraid to put anyone he knew in danger. The DA made it very clear to him that “We have ways to make you testify.”

The day before the trial, David was arrested again, on the way to the Indian Health Center, for driving with a suspended license. Again, he was denied medical attention, his head brace was removed, and he was thrown into solitary confinement. A week later, he was again brought into court chained to a wheelchair--unbathed and looking like a wild Indian--and threatened with three years in jail. The DA was in the courtroom at his sentencing, pow-wowing directly with the judge.

Immediately before the sentencing, David’s friend stood up and asked to speak out on his behalf, since his court-appointed lawyer had done so little to defend him. With the bailiff bearing down on her and contempt of court looming, the judge surprisingly agreed to let her talk. She stated how jailing David was cruel and unusual punishment, because he would have to be placed in solitary confinement throughout his incarceration in order to avoid any contact with Aryan gang members, due to his status as a hate-crime victim.

Moreover, he was in violation of driving with a suspended license only because he couldn’t afford to pay the fines; his injuries prevented him from being able to work in his chosen field to earn the money to pay those fines. Was driving with a suspended license actually worth three years of anyone’s life, or was there another agenda lurking in the courtroom that needed such leverage to pressure David into testifying against the assailants? Was it justice to, in effect, condemn him for the heinous crime of poverty?

The judge weighed the case and the next day released David on probation, warning him not to drive. Almost a year later, the DA is still hounding David by phone and subpoena, putting his life in danger by coercing him to testify. And where was Victims Assistance during all this horror? A Victim Witness Advocate told David, “I can’t help you. You’re on probation. Our hands are tied.”

Since David was a victim, he does not have the right to an attorney. He was due to appear in court on September 18, but the case has been postponed for a month. He plans to say in court that he will not testify because, “If concern for my safety is not addressed, I could die.” He expects to be charged with contempt and, once again, to be put in solitary confinement.

Whatever you can do to help extricate him from this profane injustice would be most appreciated. His tormentors, DA Anne Masterson and her investigator Denise Urton, can be reached at (707) 565-2311. You can contact David at iamhollowreed@yahoo.com. I’m grateful to be in a position to communicate the details of this nightmare, none of which I would have known had David been able to play his flute after five minutes of laughing.

Senator Larry Craig, not only for the opening statement at his press conference--“Thank you all very much for coming out today”--but also for his silly rationalization that when he tap-danced on the shoe of an undercover cop in the adjoining stall, it was only because of his own “wide stance,” thereby breaking Rose Mary Woods’ excuse record. She testified that, while transcribing Richard Nixon’s tape, she answered a phone call, but when reaching for the stop button on the recorder, she mistakenly hit the record button next to it, [unnecessarily] keeping her foot on the pedal, resulting in the infamous 18-1/2-minute gap. When asked to replicate that position, her extremly awkward posture caused political pundits to question the validity of her explanation.

Senator John Kerry, for not ridiculing George Bush’s 180-degree turnaround concerning the comparison between the Vietnam and Iraq wars by labeling the president a flip-flopper.

Presidential candidate Mitt Romney, for championship pandering. Although he now wants to overturn Roe vs. Wade, when he was running for the Senate in 1994, he came out in favor of choice for women. He admitted to Mormon feminist Judith Dushku that “the Brethren” in Salt Lake City told him that he could take that position, and that in fact he probably had to, in order to win in a liberal state like Massachusetts.

Great Assholes of the Past: The Sunday School teacher who advised one of his students to write on his penis, “What would Jesus do?” Presumably, “Jerk off” was not considered to be the correct answer.

This is a special edition of these nominations.  They all have to do with religion.  Not included here, however, is the massacre of 175 civilians in the Yazidi community in Iraq.  The victims were mostly Kurds, though neither Muslim nor Christian, and are considered by some to be a demonic cult whose members don’t believe in God.  But to label the four suicide bombers as “assholes” would somehow trivialize the unspeakable horror and misery that they have caused.  Here, then, are the real Assholes of the Week.  Amen.

• Officials of the High Point Church in Arlington, Texas, for canceling a memorial service for a Navy veteran the day before it was scheduled, because the deceased man was homosexual.   They knew he was gay when they offered to host the service, but after his obituary listed his life partner as one of his survivors, it was called off.  Although also offended by a video tribute, which showed men “engaging in clear affection, kissing and embracing,” they refused to turn the other cheek.

• A mob of around 100 Islamic extremists in India, including three elected officials, for breaking into a news conference and assulting exiled novelist Taslima Nasrin, who has enraged many Muslims with writings that are harshly critical of their religion.  She has been the target of numerous death threats--some Muslim clerics have offered a $12,000 reward to anyone who kills her--and two policemen sit constantly outside the door of her apartment.  Salman Rushdie has revoked his offer to escort her to the prom.

• The Taliban, for kidnapping several South Korean church volunteers in Afghanistan and killing two of them.  The remaining missionaries, who were considered arrogant for trying to convert Muslims, apologized after being freed.  The Taliban, incidentally, received $43 million from the U.S. government five months before the 9/11 terrorist attacks.  The reason, stated Karl Rove--who has resigned in order to spend more time with the Manson family--was because the Taliban is a faith-based organization. 

• Presidential wannabe Tom Tancredo, for asserting that bombing holy Muslim sites would serve as a good “deterrent” to prevent Islamic fundamentalists from attacking the U.S.  This notion of a pre-emptive assault made it into a Latino-oriented comic strip, “La Cucaracha” by Lalo Alcaraz: “You’re watching ‘The U.S.’s Greatest Surprise Attacks’ on the Distorted History Channel.  Colorado Congressman Tom Tancredo issued a top-secret warning: ‘The U.S. should nuke Islam’s holy places!’”  The TV viewer responds, “It is wrong to threaten nations with terror--unless Tom Tancredo does it.”  In a previous strip, from a car radio: “President Bush has taken to calling himself the inelegant ‘Commander Guy.’  May we suggest the more graceful ‘Dicatator Dude?’”

• A Mexican priest, Rev. Dagoberto Valle Arriaga, for killing his son.  He was afraid that Catholic church officials would remove him from the priesthood if they learned about the child.  They suggested that he should’ve used a theologically correct condom with tiny holes in the reservoir tip so that the spermatazoa would have only a fighting chance to impregnate the mother.

• New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Robert Murray, co-owner of Utah’s Crandall Canyon Mine, and singer Sinead O’Connor, for anthropomorphizing the deity.  Bloomberg: “I don’t know that God had rush hour in mind when this storm hit.”  Murray, when asked if the trapped miners were dead or alive: “Only the Lord knows that.”  O’Connor: “In the end of the day, the person who gets brought into the most disrepute is God.  I kind of object to that.”

• Members of Decatur, Alabama’s Church of Leaning Christ, who complained about Rev. Billy Lee Halpin’s choice of rock music, which has been used in the church’s services for years.  “We started out with The Monkees song ‘I’m a Believer,’” he explained, “but then had to cancel that as many members were upset by the Use of The Monkees.  They felt it was a slap in the face to God, you know, with evolution and all.  So now we just use Pat Boone again.”

• Norway’s Princess Martha Louise, for claiming not only that she communicates with angels, but also for her involvment in an alternative school that aims to teach people how to get in touch with angels.  Sounds like a sitcom in severe need of a laugh track.

• The individual who successfully bid more than $1500 on eBay for a slab of concrete with a smudge of driveway sealant resembling the face of Jesus.

• An unidentified Major in Iraq--a fundamentalist Christian pretending to be a “freethinker”--for attending the first meeting of atheist service members under the umbrella of the Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers, then verbally berating the other attendees, accusing them of plotting against Christians and disrespecting soldiers who have died protecting the Constitution.  He threatened them with punishment, shut down the meeting and said that he would do whatever it took to shut down future meetings.  He forced attendees to stand at attention while he yelled, berated and humiliated them.  One attendee had fled when the shouting started, and he found a foxhole to hide in.

• China’s atheist leaders, for banning Tibet’s living Buddhas from reincarnation without permission.  According to the order, issued by the State Administration for Religious Affairs, “The so-called reincarnated living Buddha without government approval is illegal and invalid.”  The regulation  is aimed at limiting the influence of the Dalai Lama, who stated in his defense, “I used to believe in reincarnation, but that was in a previous life.”

• Those believers and secularists alike who have waged a battle against the teaching of meditation in publicly funded schools, as if slow, deep breathing is necessarily and automatically a violation of separation of church and state.

• Maritza Tamayo, principal of the Unity Center for Urban Technologies in New York City, for paying a woman to sprinkle chicken blood on the high school in order to cleanse it of negative energy, and to lead several Santeria religious rituals during a vacation break when students weren’t present.  Also, the Board of Education, for firing her.

                ANTI-ASSHOLES OF THE WEEK

• The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, for at least urging its bishops to refrain from defrocking gay and lesbian ministers who violate a celibacy rule, even though measures that would have permitted ordaining gays churchwide were rejected.

• Hooshang Torabi, an Irianian and a Muslim who lives in the San Fernando Valley in Callifornia, for donating one of his kidneys to Gaston Gonzales, a Cuban, a Catholic and a resident of the San Gabriel Valley.

• Journalist Helen Thomas, for calling attention to the “deafening silence” of the Church in regard to the enormities of the Bush administration.

• Two Roman Catholic priests--Franciscan Louis Vitale, 74, and Jesuit Steve Kelly, 58--who were arrested as they approached the gatehouse at Fort Huachuca in Arizona, headquarters of the U.S. Army Intelligence Center.  They intended to deliver a letter to Major General Barbara Fast, stating, “We are here today as concerned U.S. people, veterans and clergy, to speak with enlisted personnel about the illegality and immorality of torture according to international humanitarian law, including he Geneva Conventions.  We condemn torture as a dehumanization of both prisoners and interrogators, resulting in humiliation, disability and  even death.”

• The so-called Laser Monks in Wisconsin--whose online business selling printer cartridges and other products will gross about $7 million this year--for distributing 15% of their profits (the rest covers the costs of running the company and maintaining the abbey) to several dozen charities, including a Vietnamese school for orphans, a Costa Rican group that helps the children of impoverished farmers, a Minnesota summer camp for children with AIDS, and for funding their own Torchlight Foundation, which helps schools pay for courses that teach socially responsible business practices.

• Anybody who text messages while driving, unless the message being texted is, “Hey, what’s happening? I’m in my car now, just about to crash. Please say goodbye to my family. And if I cause someone’s death beside my own, would you sincerely apologize for me....”


• ABC News anchor Charles Gibson, for introducing a propaganda piece--“A bit of a surprise today. Two long and persistent critics of the Bush administration’s handling of the war today wrote a column in the New York Times saying that after a recent eight-day visit to Iraq they find significant changes taking place”--when in reality Michael O’Hanlon and Kenneth Pollock originally supported the war even before it began (Pollack’s 2002 book was titled “The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq”). The next day, Dick Cheney perpetuated that party lie on Larry King Taped without being challenged. Cheney also insisted that Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden were secretly married in Massachusetts, then adopted a Chinese baby.


• The Southern Baptist Convention and Focus on the Family, for writing this joint letter to the American Psychological Association for considering a public denunciation of any attempt by therapists to change sexual orientation: “We believe that psychologists should assist clients to develop lives that they value, even if that means they decline to identify as homosexual.” They were also concerned that such an APA policy could lead to so-called heterosexuals undergoing conversion therapy in order to return to their gay roots.


• The Israeli government, for offering an increase of a mere $20 increase in its monthly $487 stipend for Holocaust survivors to compensate for years of neglecting its 240,000 citizens who suffered through the Nazi concentration camps. Ironically, survivor groups charge that they are now treated better in Germany than in Israel.


• Retired Lt. General Philip Kensinger, for lying about when he became aware that former football star Pat Tillman’s death in Afghanistan was actually caused by friendly fire, a cover-up allowing the U.S. to portray him as a hero. Kensinger confessed that he had been brainwashed as an adolescent when he saw the Paddy Chayefsky movie, “The Americanization of Emily.”


• Pepsico, for selling its Aquafina bottled water with a drawing of mountains over the nameplate to imply that the source of the water was mountain springs, although it is actually tap water. Henceforth their bottles will be labeled P.W.S. for “public water source” or, if you prefer, “piss without sodium.”


• Capitalism, for causing profits to trump compassion--Johnson & Johnson cuts 4,800 jobs and shares rise; Unilever cuts 20,000 jobs and shares rise--while addicts to the system continue to snort the bottom line.


• Rupert Murdoch, for demonstrating so blatantly how money buys power. Be on the lookout for the new Wall Street Enquirer, featuring a cover story on the economic repercussions of Hillary Clinton’s cleavage accompanied by a life-sized photo.


• Republican Senator James Inhofe, for calling global warming a hoax.


• Anti-asshole of the week: Jeff Berkin, deputy director of the FBI’s Security Division, for replacing its hypocritical 13-year drug policy disqualifying applicants from becoming agents if they had used marijuana more than 15 times. He explained that it created problems for those who, when asked in polygraph exams, couldn’t remember how many times they had smoked pot.

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Paul Krassner is the author of “One Hand Jerking: Reports From an Investigative Satirist,” and publisher of the Disneyland Memorial Orgy poster, both available at paulkrassner.com.

• The parents of Jerry Yang and the parents of the late Tammy Faye Messner, for their strictness that went awry.  Jerry, who won $8.25 million at the World Series of Poker, was forbidden to gamble as a child, and Tammy Faye, known for her trademark false eyelashes and overbearing facial cosmetics, grew up in a rigid home where she was forbidden to wear makeup.

• National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell, for defending newly approved CIA torture boundaries--“If I announce what the specific [permissible] measures are,” he said, “it would aid those who want to resist those measures”--and an anonymous administration official, who parroted the party line that, if such tactics were not kept secret, it would “only enable Al Qaeda to train against those [methods] they know are on or off.”  Sample training moment: “All right, gentlemen, when you are given the water-boarding treatment, keep saying to yourself, ‘I’m not drowning, I’m not drowning....”

• Dick Cheney, for pretending that it was a sudden change for him to be in charge of the White House only during the 2-1/2 hours that the so-called president was under sedation for a colonoscopy.  Also, E-bay has confirmed that Cheney attempted to auction off the five polyps which were removed from Bush’s colon and diagnosed as benign despite their malignant host.

• Senators John D. Rockefeller IV and Daniel K. InInouye (both Democrats) for respectively sponsoring and fast-tracking a bill directing the FCC to maintain a policy that a single word or image can be enough to trigger indecency fines.  Bush reacted, “This shit has got to stop,” and Cheney said, “Go fuck yourself.”

• NBC producers for bribing police across the country, and those same police for accepting the bribes, to let “Dateline” film confrontations with suspects who were lured to homes with hidden cameras, including a suspected predator who was arrested and filmed at his own home after failing to show up at a rigged house 35 miles away, and killed himself as the cameras closed in on him.  A spokesperson for NBC had no comment except to announce the network’s upcoming new series, “Entrapped.”

• Dr. David Matlock, a pioneer in “boutique cosmetic gynecologic laser surgery,” for marketing the procedure--costing $6,000-$8,000--as enhancing a woman’s sexual experience.  What’s next: iPhone-2 will include a vibrating dildo.

• Purdue Pharmacy and three of its executives, for claiming to doctors that the prescription painkiller OxyContin was less addictive and less subject to abuse than other such medications, while the drug has resulted in hundreds of deaths each year.  True, their pain disappeared in the process.  However, prosecutors have dropped the charge that physicians were urged to suggest that patients pop the perilous pills with a Pez dispenser.

• The DEA, for sending threatening letters to landlords who rent space to medical marijuana dispensaries, causing many unnecessary and illegal evictions.  Although the 5,000-year-old weed has not caused any deaths, there have been fears that users would raid their neighbors’ refrigerators.

• The Chinese government, for not making use of its oil-buying leverage with Sudan to end the strife in Darfur.  Activists have threatened to brand the Olympic games in Beijing as the “Genocide Olympics” if China does not apply pressure on Sudan to stop the conflict.  Meanwhile, China insists that it is becoming more humane every day, and now allows slave laborers to listen to pirated CDs while they work.

• Former Hollywood madam Jody “Babydol” Gibson, for planning to testify in the Phil Spector trial that Lana Clarkson worked for her as a prostitute, even though Gibson’s “trick book,” which was seized as evidence in her own trial, had been doctored to include a fake Clarkson entry.  Concomitantly, People magazine has selected Spector as “the sexiest man alive.”

• Anti-Asshole of the Week: Rev. Reggie Longcrier, who YouTubed this question to John Edwards in the course of the, er um, debate on CNN: “Politicians have used religion to justify slavery, segregation and men-only voting.  So why is it still acceptable to use religion to deny gay Americans their full and equal rights?”  Edwards justified his own religious beliefs to explain his opposition to gay marriage, and Ann Coulter commented, “Okay, maybe he isn’t a faggot then.”

In the ’60s, “Assholes of the Month” was a feature in my satirical magazine, The Realist. In the ’70s, “Asshole of the Month” was a feature in Larry Flynt’s Hustler. Currently, on MSNBC’s Countdown, Keith Olbermann has a feature, “Worst Person in the World,” which is usually Bill O’Reilly. And now I’m posting “Assholes of the Week” in this cyberspace. I avoid targets like President Bush and Cardinal Mahony, because they’re such ongoing, obvious choices. The beauty of Comments is that readers can post their own asshole selections that I neglect to include. Here are mine for this week:

• Scholastic, publisher of the Harry Potter series, for setting midnight Friday as the opening salvo for sales of the latest book, thereby forcing countless children to stay up way past their bedtime. Just for that I’m going to reveal how it ends. Harry and his friends and enemies are all having dinner at the same restaurant, but when you turn over the final page, it’s totally blank.
• Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki, for telling reporters, “We say in full confidence that we are able, God willing, to take the responsibility completely in running the security file if the international forces withdraw at any time they want,” but the next day his advisor announced that Maliki meant that efforts to bolster Iraq’s security forces would continue “side by side with the withdrawal.” Dick Cheney had called to remind Malaki that those videos of him humping a camel during Ramadan were hidden away in a safe place.
  
  
• The unknown White House official who ordered Dr. Richard Carmona--George Bush’s Surgeon General for four years--to mention Bush’s name three times on each page of every speech he gave. He was fired for writing this sentence: “When it comes to abstinence, you can be sure that George Bush practices what he preaches.”
  
  
• Lousiana Governor Kathleen Babineaux, for signing legislation that penalizes doctors who perform a late-term abortion--they would face fines up to $10,000 and prison up to ten years--making her state the first to restrict such surgery since the federal ban in 2003. The new law allows the procedure only when a woman’s life would otherwise be endangered. However, it will be considered a crime if the pregnancy is expected merely to cause health problems. That’s not a joke.
  
  
• The owners of several medical marijuana dispensaries in California, for--if it’s true, as alleged by the Drug Enforcement Adminstration--profiteering from the illegal distribution of pot by charging patients two or three times the street value. Presumably, other government agencies will follow the lead of the DEA and coerce other businesses to stick to free-market protocols.
  
  
• Nebraska Judge Jeffre Cheuvront, for ordering a college student who was raped not to use the words “rape,” “victim,” “assailant” or “sexual assault” on the witness stand for fear of prejudicing the jury. Perhaps she can testify that “He stuck his thing in my thing against my will.” George Carlin is expected to introduce a bit in his next HBO performance about “The five words you can’t say in court.”
  
  
• Food and Drug Administration commissioner Dr. Andrew von Eschenbach, for insisting that the FDA’s decision to close seven of its 13 laboratories would enhance the agency’s ability to target unsafe food--this in the face of severe criticism from Congress--but he is as determined as salmonella swimming upstream.