The Tin Crank of Canned Do-Wop

Dick Fucking Durbin, I said at Thursday Night Pints, wants to grandstand on bounty-hunting in the NFL. Everybody bounty-hunts, said D. Always have, said L. In one form or another, sure, said K. I looked this up before I left, I said, Dick Fucking Durbin is on Appropriations, Defense, Labor committees, he wants to grandstand on bounty-hunting in the NFL. If you don't hit as hard as possible you lose your job, said D. If you hit hard spectacularly you're on SportsCenter, said L, make more money. Think of those tomahawk stickers Florida State puts on helmets, that's a reward for successful violent behavior, said K. I said, Dick Fucking Durbin is arguably one of the half-dozen most powerful professional Democrats, his gleeful desire to investigate the National Football League on bounty-hunting everyone blithely assumes has existed since Red Grange is so pathetically and transparently standard asshatery, it pisses me off so thoroughly I'm surprised, I haven't been so irrationally pissed at standard professional Democrat asshatery in months. D said, Mike Ditka said the way to get rid of concussions in football is to get rid of the helmet. I went and bought a round. The bartender wore a New Orleans Saints hat, CNN on the screen flashing Durbin news. Whatcha think, I asked, handing him cash. Showboating asshole, he said. Yup, I said.

• Ignorance is strength.
• No, they're not.
• Fred Hiatt says calling the Palins inbred weirdos is wrong, and he's right, though it's just pathetic and transparent standard asshatery and serves no purpose than the aggrandizement of Fred Hiatt.
• But Obama is a good assassin no matter what Rove says!
• Motherfucking Obama.
• Afghanistan and the myth of public opinion.
• Searching for false equivalencies.
• On the above.
• Using prejudice.
• Coercion, part two.
• His generation's greatest academic fraud. I say this admiringly.
• On two political books.
• Before and after science. You can thank Smut for today's musical selections.

PEEP SHOW

Meghan O'Rourke

Tokens in the slot:
ka-shot, shot, shot.
A figure in the darkness.
The tin crank
of canned do-wop.

Someone is always watching -
don't you think?
Duck, turn, and wink.
Bodies at a distance -
that's what we are,

raises, renovations, Florida,
dinner by the sea.
Look at you.
The waves go swiftly
out of sight -

a long ellipsis
of glaciers swallowing the sun -
come quick, not time for this,
the girls in thongs
are glancing at the clock.