Via Steve Benen comes this recollection of a new member of Congress:
“When I was a child, President Ronald Reagan was the nice man who gave us jelly beans when we visited the White House. I didn’t know then, but I know it now: The jelly beans were much more than a sweet treat that he gave out as gifts. They represented the uniqueness and greatness of America — each one different and special in its own way, but collectively they blended in harmony.”
I guess his dad most likely took him to meet the old geezer, but the weirdness of this recovered memory is just a bit creepy and odd–he seems to recall Reagan as a kind of a party clown plying his gullible audiences with jelly beans (instead of the more complicated balloon animals). And while that may not be very far from the truth, I can imagine these ‘jelly bean clowns’ had a tough go of it in the real world. I can see them easily getting their ass kick by the Shakes the Clown* and his pals from “The Twisted Balloon”. Hell, even Mime Jerry and his posse must of been able to bring the hurt to these ‘jelly bean clowns’ and their fans. Perhaps abuse by clowns is why these Reagan worshipers all became such dicks when they grew up, but I digress.
Quayle-the-Younger is a major idiot. As he gears up to compete in the great Wingnutopia Crazy Sweepstakes of 2011, I expect great humor from him. This entry is very promising.
Cheers
SFAW
Water is wet, usw.
Villago Delenda Est
The nut doesn’t fall far from the tree, does it?
Maude
He sounds like he got a bad dose of LSD.
Dennis G.
@SFAW:
Yep, it is a bit of repetition upon my part.
And in SATSQ news this exchange from today’s White House Press Briefing was pretty good:
Martin
What’s up with this ‘snowflake baby’ obsession with the GOP. Of course we’re all special. The only people that seem to need to write op-eds about the topic are the ones that spend all the rest of their time trying to build a ruling class. It’s like that ‘I’m not a racist, but…’ tic.
Calouste
Kid’s got insight, although probably not intentionally so.
Upper West
No wonder he liked jelly beans. All he usually got from his Dad was a potatoe.
freelancer
Two things, both of them from the Scorsese link.
One, Bobcat Goldthwait is a creative genius in his own right. If anyone here has yet to see “World’s Greatest Dad” or “Windy City Heat“, put them on your queue or must see list.
Two, Scorsese cast Harvey Keitel as Judas in “The Last Temptation of Christ” after Jeff Bridges wrote to him, begging for the part?! Marty, Marty, Marty, you’re killing me, son!
Calouste
@Martin:
Snowflakes are white…
Loneoak
@Villago Delenda Est:
Or the eye doesn’t sprout very far from the potatoe.
EDIT: Ahh, Calouste beat me to it. Well played.
sfinny
Wait a minute, America = Jelly Beans = Badly Flavored Sugar? Not understanding the exact metaphor, other than Quayle = idiot.
Well, I have Nixonland now and will catch up on the discussion group once I get done with tonight’s study of “Insurance Law: Regulating Complexity & Honesty” for continuing education. Hopefully it is a little bit more compelling.
Martin
@Calouste: Indeed.
Violet
“You’re my first clown!” Ah, “Shakes the Clown.” I love that film. A flawed film, but a great one. Bobcat Golthwait is a treasure.
And Quayle the Younger is an idiot. I hope at least he’ll provide entertainment.
mikefromArlington
I bet conservatives would pay to take a jellybean bath with Reagan.
Little Boots
it’s getting ugly down there, in Nixonland.
sfinny
@Little Boots: Is that a comment on the thread, or a comment on the Nixon admin. I was planning on reviewing the prior threads before the next book reading, but haven’t yet ventured into the threads.
jl
The anecdote has a sinister shade.
Wikipedia says jelly beans were invented during the U.S. Civil War as something to send to the troops, and caught on because they were easier to ship.
Maybe that is true, but Wikipedia does not mention (why not? a conspiracy?) the obvious fact that jelly beans are a kind of gumdrop. And gumdrops are a kind of soft jelly candy, which was perfected in MUSLIM countries, as represented most famously by Turkish lokum.
Was it America, or the New Caliphate, that Reagan was pushing? Huh?
Edit: I am going to the google to see what Gaffney says. After all, he knows that the U.S. Conservative movement has been infiltrated!
Little Boots
@sfinny:
there actually really interesting, every week. it’s kinda dead now, but you should come by next week. and Rick is really engaging everyone.
cbear
That’s the good news—-the bad news, for most of us, is his dad didn’t inadvertently drop him off at John Wayne Gacy’s place for a clowny suprise party.
MattR
Let me add to the lovefest for Shakes the Clown. I try to use the “Citizen Kane” quote whenever possible.
Omnes Omnibus
@Little Boots:IIRC the first Nixonland thread had about two hours of substantive discussion as well. It is a decent length of time for the task.
Martin
@Omnes Omnibus: So, what you’re saying is that it takes mclaren about 2 hours to realize something substantive is going on.
Mornington Crescent
There’s also Flunky the Clown:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujgXV4H8ByA
Little Boots
@Omnes Omnibus:
I’m greedy. I want everyone awake all night. Or maybe Sunday afternoon’s are best.
Little Boots
oh, come on, you people stay awake. what is this crap?
sfinny
@Little Boots: Thanks for the info that Rick is there. Love engaging authors. Just hope I haven’t missed too much, but with only a few chapters gone, I think I can catch up.
And I am trying to stay up, but the continuing ed material is putting me to sleep. Let’s talk about adhesion.
Mike in NC
And apparently he needed to move to Arizona in order to get elected to Congress. That says a lot.
Violet
@Mike in NC:
Says a lot about Arizona, anyway.
sfinny
Arizona? Well he will get elected just fine. Darn it.
Anya
How the hell did this moron win an election? An actual majority of the electorate voted for this idiot, that should be worthy of an outrage.
asiangrrlMN
@jl: I less than three your comments. I really do.
Has anyone ever tried to eat a bunch of flavored jelly beans in one mouthful? I have. It tastes horrible. Fuck his stupid metaphor with a rusty pitchfork.
@Anya: Say it with us now, “Arizona!”
Oh, and I fucking hate clowns. Creep. Me. The Fuck. Out.
@Little Boots: Quayle the Younger.
Little Boots
@Anya: wait, who, george or barack?
Caz
Geezer, creepy, dicks, idiot. It’s no wonder no one takes this blog seriously. Nothing but hate, arrogance, and ignorance. And it should be clear from the comments that the only ones that read this shallow crap are like minded ________. (insert choice of balloon-juice insult here).
Still, I find it entertaining to see how out of touch and filled with hate some some people are. I always wonder which patriots you will bash next. Keep up the good work, hatemongers!
Little Boots
@Caz:
you seem bitter. what happened? can we help? can we heal?
sfinny
What?
frosty
@Little Boots: I got there too late to answer your question about whether the 60s would have happened without the draft and Vietnam. Here’s my take:
Would the 60s have happened without Vietnam? I say yes. The 60s were well on their way before Johnson sent in the Marines in 1965.
I’d start the decade with the Kennedy assassination in Nov ’62 and the Beatles on Ed Sullivan in Jan ’63. Everything changed then. (Every guy in America woke up and wondered why the hell he had a crew cut.)
The Freedom Rides and civil rights campaign started before Vietnam as well.
My feeling is that the cultural revolution and the break from 50s conformity was going to happen regardless. Vietnam and the draft was just gasoline poured on the fire.
SFAW
Why would we bash liberals? I don’t understand what you’re getting at.
Oh, wait, I think I see … you’re thinking that the traitorous right-wingers (forgive the redundancy) are patriots? The same right-wingers who keep saying they’ll try to (metaphorically) destroy the President, right?
OK, now I get it. But doesn’t your cognitive dissonance push your purty little head dangerously close to the ‘sploding point?
S. cerevisiae
I got ‘cher clown right here
Citizen_X
Ooh, ooh! New tagline: “out of touch and filled with hate!”
Uloborus
@SFAW:
Goodness, no. I have discovered that Caz’s basic schtick is to tell you that black is white. For example, dismissing birtherism as unassociated with the Tea Party when polls show that over half of Tea Partiers believe Obama wasn’t born in the US.
jrg
I guess we can add “telling kids they’re special” to the long list of things that destroy America when liberals do it, but are the best things EVAH when “conservatives” do it. Remember when teh libruls were responsible for teen pregnancy five minutes before the 2008 Republican National Convention? Good times, good times.
Omnes Omnibus
@Martin: That’s about right.
@Little Boots: Dude, some of us need to sleep.
asiangrrlMN
@Citizen_X: I am really trying to twist that into some version of reach out and touch someone filled with hate, but my brain is addled with ague, and I can’t quite get there.
@Omnes Omnibus: Speak for yourself. I, myself, have been up since 4:30 a.m. You calmer today?
Anya
@asiangrrlMN: Arizona or the idiot lucked out. He ran when old white people were having their epic hissy fit.
Omnes Omnibus
@asiangrrlMN: I didn’t sleep well last night. Going to bed soon. Cheers.
Chris G
Quayle the Younger seems to have inherited mom’s looks and dad’s brains.
kdaug
“Yeah I got a problem. All my friends are assholes.”
General Stuck
I had a childhood phobia of Howdy Doody, so naturally, my older cousins acquired a Howdy Doody puppet to terrorize me with. One day, I found where they stored it and fixed that clown’s wagon good. Howdy Doody no mo.
kdaug
@Caz:
People take blogs seriously?
asiangrrlMN
@Anya: I say both.
@Omnes Omnibus: I bet. I’m actually gonna crash soon, too.
@General Stuck: Snicker. May he rest in pieces.
srv
Funny, Quayle the elder did at least leave the public sphere after his loss. I can’t remember reading or hearing about the guy. Maybe Sarah should take the hint.
burnspbesq
Re Ben Quayle:
You can hate on “The Bell Curve” all you want, but it is undeniable that dumb people tend to marry dumb people and produce dumb offspring.
This also helps to explain Rand Paul and Bristol Palin.
Suffern ACE
@srv: He left and joined Cerberus. Got richer from those public life connections (he was already rich). No one “retires.” That’s why we’re never rid of them.
bago
Caz blew it. We haven’t even started with the skullfucking kitten talk.
MikeJ
@bago: And many here are all talk. The true juicers practice what they preach.
PTirebiter
What about that time I quit drinking for thirty days?
Shakes, you were in a coma.
I think about Shakes every time I hear someone call Glenn Beck a Rodeo Clown. Beck couldn’t cut it as a Mime, much less a Party Clown or Rodeo Clown.
alwhite
@Little Boots:
So, basically brick head bill is back with a new handle?
mds
@Anya:
I’m with asiangrrlMN (not literally, alas). In Arizona, it’s become very difficult to untangle the two. Especially in a state where the urban cores at least lean Dem, there are substantial Hispanic and Native American populations, and yet most of the congressional districts are majority white and Republican (Quayle’s district is 85 percent white and PVI of R+9, and it still isn’t the most Republican district). So yeah, an election cycle dominated by stupid, greedy, racist, older theocratic shitstains would be quite an effective one in Arizona. One of the few faintly bright sides of the census giving them yet another House seat and electoral vote, is that they might not be able to pack any more liberals and minorities into the current Dem districts. We’re talking about a red state where Obama ran only 8.5 points behind one of their incumbent senators. Strictly by the numbers, it shouldn’t be as politically psycho as it is.
sacman701
Arizona’s districts are drawn by a commission and they’re pretty reasonable. It has 3 red districts (including Quayle’s), 2 heavily Hispanic blue districts, and 3 swing districts that were all red through 04, all blue after 08, and 2-1 red now. The swing districts range from R+4 to R+6 but this is distorted by McCain’s favorite-son run in 08: they’re really more like R+2 or R+3.
nina beans
“When I was a child, President Ronald Reagan was the nice man who gave us jelly beans when we visited the White House. I didn’t know then, but I know it now: The jelly beans were much more than a sweet treat that he gave out as gifts. They represented the uniqueness and greatness of America—each one different and special in its own way, but collectively they blended in harmony.”
what a maroon…seriously??
“collectively they blended in harmony”
who are some of these freaks?
i’m really getting a-scared for my countree
Kathy in St. Louis
Listening to the b.s. put out about Reagan while reading a serious book about FDR is not a good thing to do. FDR and his wife did more for this country and its people than any president since Lincoln, and this old wheezer (Reagan) is the one that people are gushing over and making plans to amend Mt. Rushmore for. No wonder we’re becoming a second rate country…we can’t even evaluate greatness anymore.