Also, he's  too intellective to find Stephen Colbert riotous and too cerebral to find Al Franken jocuse.

But I'm apparently too dumb to claw my way through the byzantine* logic behind his conclusions…

If you chance to like this sort of thing, then this is undoubtedly the sort of thing you will like. It certainly works very well with audiences who laugh not because they find something to be funny, but to confirm that they are — and who can doubt it? — cool enough to "get" the joke.

What you will not find, in any of this output, is anything remotely "satirical" about the pulpit of the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, or any straight-faced, eyebrow-raising (and studio-audience-thigh-slap-triggering) mention of, say, The New York Times's routine practice of captioning Al Sharpton as "the civil rights activist." Baudelaire wrote that the devil's greatest achievement was to have persuaded so many people that he doesn’t exist: liberal platitudinousness must be a bit like that to those who suffer from it without quite acknowledging that there is such a syndrome to begin with.

Fair enough. Fair enough. Just, I'd be a little more convinced if any of that made sense. Or if it was at all clear that he had ever watched more than two episodes of The Daily Show with which to reference. Or took into account that creating "satire" does not preclude one from having a world view or political bent.

In general, I'm a fan of Christopher Hitchens. But I prefer the Hitchens who knows from whence he speaks to the Hitchens that just decides to vamp on an unpopular theme for a dozen or so paragraphs to keep his reputation as a contrarian before calling it a day and hitting the liquor cabinet. (Remember his "Look at me!" treatise against vagina-bearing comedians?)

Now, I don't wanna give the impression that there's no room for criticizing Stewart, Colbert or Franken. (Actually, I have a lot of problems with Franken and his party-line Democrat attitude.) But this article, to me, comes off as shallow, uninformed and silly.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go throw poop** at a poster of Dick Cheney.

.

^{* I have no idea what that word means. I just mashed my palm onto the keyboard and that came out.}

** Don't worry. It's not my poop.

Christopher Hitchens — writing for Slate — approaches Iran's make-believe election from last week with the amount of not-make-believe bitchiness we've all come to expect…

Iran and its citizens are considered by the Shiite theocracy to be the private property of the anointed mullahs. This totalitarian idea was originally based on a piece of religious quackery promulgated by the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and known as velayat-e faqui. Under the terms of this edict — which originally placed the clerics in charge of the lives and property of orphans, the indigent, and the insane — the entire population is now declared to be a childlike ward of the black-robed state.

Thus any voting exercise is, by definition, over before it has begun, because the all-powerful Islamic Guardian Council determines well in advance who may or may not "run." Any newspaper referring to the subsequent proceedings as an election, sometimes complete with rallies, polls, counts, and all the rest of it, is the cause of helpless laughter among the ayatollahs. ("They fell for it? But it's too easy!")

Shame on all those media outlets that have been complicit in this dirty lie all last week. And shame also on our pathetic secretary of state, who said that she hoped that "the genuine will and desire" of the people of Iran would be reflected in the outcome. Surely she knows that any such contingency was deliberately forestalled to begin with.

For a minute there, I didn't think he'd be able to sneak in a dig at Hillary Clinton.

I don't know what I was thinking.

Here's a pretty decent uncut video interview of Christopher Hitchens — one of the only who actually makes me come close to rethinking my long-held and disgustingly-liberal views on the war in Iraq –  in which he…

* Accuses President Obama of being a fellow atheist who's too cowardly to admit it publicly

* Expresses his deep pride for initially and continually supportinghe U.S.'s invasion and occupation of Iraq

* Explains why he sought out people who would waterboard him, and how it's disingenuous to call it "simulated" drowning

* Admits that quitting smoking was even more unpleasant than getting waterboarded

* Hints at his plan to make God is Not Great as a funnier version of Bill Maher's Religulous

Try as I might, I just can't seem to figure out why Hitchens would doubt Barack Obama's much-professed Christian faith which just so happened to coincide nearly perfectly with the beginning of his political career.

Why would he be so jaded as that?

Change truly has come to the nation. Change of all kinds. Even some words are changing their meanings. Like, for example, "liberal."

Balloon Juice points us to this…

Forbes.com has its list of the “The 25 Most Influential Liberals In The U.S. Media“. Here’s some of the people on the list: Maureen Dowd, Tom Friedman, Chris Hitchens, Andrew Sullivan, Fareed Zakaria, Fred Hiatt.

Come on! Where's Christopher Buckley? He said something nice about Barack Obama once. What about Joe Scarborough? He's on MSNBC; that must qualify him as a liberal, right?

Wait a minute! Scott McClellan's not on the list? He wrote a book that was critical of his time spent in Bush's administration. If that doesn't make you a liberal, what does?

And, really, couldn't we get Sean Hannity on that list? He supports the Emancipation Proclamation. Doesn't that qualify him for consideration?

Jesus! The Republican Party sure is hemorrhaging conservative support as the last grains of sand twirl through the election hour glass.

Earlier today, we got news that former U.S. Press Secretary Scott "The Weasel" McClellan — who recently came out against the Bush administration's illegal activities in the Iraq debacle about six years too late — will be voting for Barack Obama.

Now we're finding out that an actual honest-to-god McCain campaign adviser, Charles Fried, has already voted for Obama. His rationale? Because of McCain's "choice of Sarah Palin at a time of deep national crisis."

And — since we're already feeling light-headed from the blood loss — we might as well go all the way and watch two conservatives give their reasons for voting against McCain from tonight's edition of Hardball: former Massachusetts governor and Mitt Romney supporter William Weld and the world's drunkest intellectual and Iraq War apologist, Christopher Hitchens. Weld, in his Obama endorsement, is very respectful of McCain. Hitchens is less so (and, therefore, more entertaining), calling McCain "weird" several times and implying that he might even be going senile. No, I correct myself… coming right out and saying that.

And that's just today. A few days ago, libertarian-conservative Christopher Buckley — who shares DNA with conservative icon William F. Buckley — sat down with Chris Matthews. After the jump…

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Wow! For a guy who's been off the political radar for about twenty years, you certainly have seen Michael Dukakis' name in the news lately!

The former Massachusetts governor and former Democratic nominee for president has been pretty much off the radar screen since losing to George H.W. Bush in 1988. Served on the Amtrak Board of Directors, a little college teaching… you get the idea.

But now he's back!

First off in countless articles previewing tonight's scheduled debate, which unfailingly mention his botched response in a 1988 debate to a bizarre question about the hypothetical rape and murder of his wife.

Then there was the harsh Christopher Hitchens piece in Slate, titled "Is Obama Another Dukakis?" and subtitled "Why is Obama So Vapid, Hesitant, and Gutless?" Ouch!

And finally there was a comparison of Obama to Dukakis by… Dukakis himself!

Seems he did an interview with PolitickerMA.com in which he warned the Democratic nominee against getting the same "Willie Horton" race-bating smears he suffered in 1988.

The only appropriate way to cap off this media blitz would be to take one more ceremonial ride in the tank!