Shortly after I began writing for the HuffPost in July 2007, my dad did the same -- only instead of becoming a full-fledged blogger with byline and photo, he's chosen to stay in the shadows and limit his output to commenting on other people's posts.
Dad never told me what he was up to, but it didn't take me long to figure out the identity of the anonymous reader responding to all my posts. My father's got a unique voice and a way with words that served him well as a professional copywriter for decades. Now that he's retired, he hasn't lost a step. I find his Huffington responses to be as insightful, witty, and well-written as anything he's responding to, if not more so. It can take me 500 or 1,000 words to make my point; he'll make the same point in a paragraph or even a sentence, with humor and style, and without pulling any punches.
I'm not going to blow my dad's cover and reveal his true identity or even his pen name. But I want to put the spotlight on him, or at least his writing, for this special day. Whether or not you're familiar with the blogs to which these gems refer, if you appreciate good writing you're in for a treat.
Happy birthday, Dad!
On John McCain: Either he's a bit soft in the head these days or he's just an old and shopworn politico who no longer listens to what he himself is saying. I think it's a bit of both. And I won't bother giving the almost-obligatory homage to his former "heroism" as part of this comment.
Repubs are trading a president with oedipal problems for a candidate with oedipal problems. Both guys still in conflict with Daddy. Freud: where are you when we need you?
On booze: The request for a whisper of vermouth and other variants that called for hardly any vermouth was the macho affectation of a long-ago heavy-drinking lunch crowd now dead (too much gin) or in rehab (too much gin).
On Sarah Palin: I don't think Bush knows what the Bush Doctrine is. So it's no wonder poor Sarah was a bit puzzled even after hours of drill, drill, drill for her Charlie Gibson exam.
First look shows she's pretty cute. She's now a heart-throb away from the presidency.
On pop music: U2? Radiohead? R.E.M.? Gimme Barenaked Ladies any day.
On the GOP: Repugs are ridiculous in their enthusiasm for somebody they don't even know. If McCain had packaged horseshit and labeled it Toujour Manure they'd be singing praises of the new "beauty cream" even before dabbing a dollop behind each ear.
On Eliot Spitzer: Un-Fuckin-believable! I thought all along he was PROSECUTING not PROSTITUTING.
On George W. Bush: In a perverse way George Bush thinks himself more of a hero the lower his approval ratings drop. He's the man alone against the horde. When he's right he's RIGHT and history will prove him so (when we're all dead including him). He's feisty Truman. He's Churchill, Eisenhower, Reagan as the world will ultimately realize. The polls won't influence him on his path to ultimate vindication. He's too occupied with "deciding," for, after all, he Is The Decider.... He is one man alone, but by God, as there is a God in Heaven who speaks to him as He did to Moses, he has been cosmically reassured that he is trodding the path God has chosen for him. So approval rating be damned, says he, in full cockiness as the rest of us suffer on at the mercy of a pea-brained egomaniac.
On Rudy Giuliani: Whoever anointed this pygmy America's Mayor? What colossal nerve of this popinjay to begin believing a PR flack's creation ... to even THINK of the presidency. So glad America is perceptive enough to roundly reject this clown of a candidate now that they've gotten to know him as we New Yorkers do:as the selfish and mean-spirited fraud he is.
On Karl Rove: Rove is the fat puppetmaster of a frat-boy stand-in for a US President. And what was he ever elected to? His local Weight Watchers class?
Some choice one-liners:
If all the world's a stage where does the audience sit?
Change you can believe in: 4 quarters for a dollar. Take it to the bank!
What's the opposite of girly-man? Macho-girl?
What Harvard Bill Kristol needs is a dose of reality ... like an Iraqi bayonet up his arse.
Ironic isn't it: they'll impeach a guy for having a bit of clandestine White House sex but they're afraid to go after the runt and his Svengali who regularly screw the Constitution openly and in broad daylight.
On life: Revel in bitching. Rail against the world's lunacy and enjoy venting. Experience the rare pleasures of giving voice to what everyone knows is stupid, unfair, ridiculous, meaningless, overly complicated, useless, ineffective, simplistic, etc. etc. and is afraid to confront head on. "There go I," they'll say in recognition of what you've told them about themselves. They'll thank you for pissing and moaning for us all. At least I will.