Alberto Gonzales and corporal punishment

At times it was almost painful to watch.

I'll admit that I'm a knee jerk liberal--I always wanna root for the underdog. And after yesterday's grilling in the Senate it's hard to see Judge Gonzales as anything but down for the full count. In the bits of the embattled Grand Inquisitor's testimony that I could catch during breaks at work, I saw him squirm and blanche and fidget and blink. Other times he was poised, direct, almost believable in his assertion that he couldn't remember how he carried out the planning for weeding out the least loyal-Bushie-like of the nation's US Attorneys. In the end he had little to share but the constant reiteration of his faulty memory.

But short of reading his mind, I don't suppose anyone can actually prove that he's lying when he says, "I have no recollection" or "Believe me, I have searched my mind for what I remember." We don't live in an age of mind probes. The folks calling themselves "the Vulcans" from the Bush administration are, unfortunately, only using that name metaphorically (and are probably talking about different Vulcans than what I usually think of).

I suppose with the right techniques we could probably torture the truth out of him. Frankly, he doesn't seem like that hard a nut to crack.

He's quite unlike the administration's previous top liar, Rumsfeld, who could weave all manner of philosophical tapestries with his words and bamboozle his way through a Congressional inquiry without landing on that awkward moment of not saying, "Sure I'm a fuck up, but you can't make me admit it." He didn't fool anyone with his circumlocutions, but my God, it was a delight to watch ol' Rummy dance his way around the obvious.

Alberto Gonzales is another matter altogether. He's got no inventive way of saying up is down, he offers no forthright argument to defend the political replacement of political appointees, as his former chief of staff did. When Kyle Sampson faced the music, he stood on easily defended turf: firing someone for political reasons is the same thing as firing them for performance reasons when they're political appointees. That was ballsy. It was wrong, of course, but still ballsy. Sadly, Judge Gonzales didn't borrow a page from his chief of staff's script.

Instead, he went for the knucklehead defense: "I don't recall" reiterated so often that it became first a laughable nonadmission of guilt, then an easy joke to chortle at, and finally a blind persistence in child-like denials of the painfully obvious. His performance was so childish that it almost defies satire. (Still, I tried below)

At times I almost wanted to jump thru the TV screen, grab Gonzo by the collar and give him a pep talk. "Come on, man, you can do better than that! Let's cook up some believable dodge--anything better than this Gee, I dunno what I wuz doin' dat day! baloney!" I mean, what kind of lawyer can't talk his way out of a little abuse of prerogative? Apparently the same kind who can't remember that habeus corpus is a natural right and a cornerstone of English Common Law. Apparently the same kind who finds longstanding international treaties to be "quaint."

One couldn't watch Thursday's performance and not conclude that the highest law enforcement officer in the land is a profoundly stupid man who attained his post by sheer cronyism from a president who surrounds himself with mediocre sycophants. But the capper to it all isn't their incompetence, their abuse of power, their inability to lie about it cleverly, or even their frightening contempt for propriety and the rule of law. What is most jarring is that little sneer of arrogance that Gonzales could not contain as he left the hearing yesterday, captured so perfectly in this photo.
This, folks, is a man who is proud of himself. This is the smile of the school prankster leaving the principal's office when he's gotten off with just a detention. It's almost as if he didn't know he'd screwed up to the point that Republicans are now calling for his head. He and his boss are truly birds of a feather. There is no nice way to say this. Between the bogus "Gee, I don't know how I did it" routine and the unconstitutional fantasies of having dictatorial superpowers, the truth is plain.

This is not how a grown man acts. Alberto Gonzales, like his boss, is a child in an adult's body, a vandalizing neighborhood brat, hiding up in the tree house and refusing to come down to take his licks. The ending is all too easy to predict. My heart goes out to the little lost boy, in over his head and misled by his hoodlum friends. I want to shout up to him, "You'll have to come down eventually, Alberto. It's time to act like a man. Believe me, this is hurting me more than it's going to hurt you."




Anyway, here's my shot at satire.

Gonzales was whining today, ALL DAY!!! Couldn't you hear it in his voice??

"I'm channeling Reagan and I CAN'T RECALL!!!!!!!"


I was appalled!! I can't believe * appointed an 'actual' whiner!!!

He really WAS so squeaky! An absolute embarrassment!! Yikes!!

Soooooo unprofessional!! Unbelievable!! :wtf: Boggles the mind .... mine anyways!


:kick: & Recommended!

Some kickass writing!

His performance was a complete embarrassment. Hard to believe he prepped for days to be able to say, "I don't recall." Fredo has no gravitas at all. He comes off as a whiny creep.

Dubya is the Fredo Corleone of the Bush family. They're still crying over not being able to put Sonny, the "smart Corleone", in charge of the family "business" next.

You know, I've made this same joke maybe half a dozen times over the last six years and it just occurred to me: Poppy Bush is the Marlon Brando character... and Columba Bush is Diane Keaton!

~~ from the O.P.

A perfect summation of the problem in one sentence!

how long before Gonzo decides to quietly retire so's that he can "spend more quality time with his family?"

Excellent post <stands and salutes>

Kudos

And welcome to DU, Pete.

Absolute perfection!

:applause:

Compliments from accomplished ranters always make me blush

... a brilliantly woven tapestry of fact and snark!!!

LOVE IT!

And I love the pictures.

K & R