Cunning Stunts

I missed this when it first came out a couple weeks ago, but this Taibbi campaign trail media-weasel parody is pretty hilarious.

A youngish kid with long hair and a red t-shirt in this crowd started telling me his story, about how he’d been busted for possession of drug paraphernalia. “It was a couple of pipes…” he began.

I waved him off and explained that, as a member of the national campaign press, I was here to write about what I wanted him to say, not what he wanted himself to say. “Look,” I said, holding up a bill. “I’m willing to pay twenty bucks to the first person who’ll say whatever I want him to say about Fred Thompson.”

About ten sets of hands flew up, including the kid in front of me. I held up the twenty.

“Name,” I barked.

“Gary Blakeman,” he said.

“Age,” I said.

“Seventeen.”

I wrote that down. “Gary, does Fred Thompson look like a pedophile to you?”

He looked at me pleadingly. “Yes, right?”

“Right,” I said.

“Yes, he does,” he answered.

“So what you’re saying, Gary,” I prompted, “is that you wouldn’t be at all surprised to walk into a room and see this candidate’s penis in a four year-old child?”

“Of course not!” the kid said. “Because he looks like a fucking pedophile, dude!”

“Mmm-hmm,” I said. “And what kind of face would you expect him to be making at that moment?”

The kid grit his teeth and strained his neck muscles. “He’d be like, unnnnhh!” he shouted.

“Thanks,” I said, handing him the twenty. He took it and walked off with his hands over his head in triumph. I looked over at the wire-service girl, who was still humping an old couple about the Hillary thing. Amateur, I thought.

Just think -- by the time '08 is finally, blessedly in the can, two full years of our lives will have been taken up with this shit. I assume this means that the '12 stumping will start in June '09, if only to keep the punditocracy busy.