D-bags in the news: Mike Huckabee

(CNN) – During a speech before the National Rifle Association convention Friday afternoon in Louisville, Kentucky, former Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee — who has endorsed presumptive GOP nominee John McCain — joked that an unexpected offstage noise was Democrat Barack Obama looking to avoid a gunman.

“That was Barack Obama, he just tripped off a chair, he’s getting ready to speak,” said the former Arkansas governor, to audience laughter. “Somebody aimed a gun at him and he dove for the floor.”

Rants

Lots of people like to hear the sound of their own voice — policemen, professors, politicians, your mom, the punditocracy, that guy from accounts, your wife, the boss — but how many of them are really d-bags? Your boss, def; ditto the cop who asks infuriating rhetorical questions (”Do you know how fast you were going?”). Being a self-absorbed ass is a necessary condition for being a d-bag. But it is not a sufficient condition. If it were, there would be no non-b-bags to be annoyed at the rest of us! To be a d-bag you must in some small way transcend mere human selfishness in order to get an edge on the losers (liberals, Enya fans, hipsters, soccer moms, etc.) who are forced by Nature to listen to a d-bag’s hatred, fear, and ridicule — in a word, their opinions.

Giving an opinion (a.k.a. opinionating, bloviating, blogging) is a necessary feature of a d-bag’s personality. And the appropriate vehicle for opinions is the rant. What exactly is a rant? According to Merriam Webster it is, “a bombastic extravagant speech”; the Cambridge dictionary describes it as, “a long, angry and confused speech”; and Microsoft’s Encarta describes it as, “loud and threatening speech: a very loud, aggressive, or bombastic speech that is usually long and repetitive” (like those definitions!). Be that as it may, all d-bags and non-d-bags need to know is that a rant occurs from the time the d-bag opens his mouth until everyone within the sound of his voice has capitulated to his higher wisdom.

There is a danger that when two d-bags meet in a state of nature they will try to talk over one another, raising their voices and bloviating until an actual fight breaks out. This may be avoided if one d-bag concedes the laurel of top d-bag to his opponent, or if they discover they are fraternity brothers.

It is likely, however, that the rant undertaken by one d-bag will be enthusiastically supported and extended by the other d-bag, in which case, rather than bickering the two d-bags will form a junta and will start recruiting other d-bags to gain “synergy” — a term the d-bag learns as a business major.

A select few d-bags have been able to turn every d-bag’s hobby into a profession. These happy few are not only raging wind bags whose pernicious opinions and downright mendacity threaten rational, free thought everywhere; they are also highly paid and well respected culture heroes for d-bags all over the world, particularly whites in the fly-over between the ages of fifty and ninety-five. Of course I am speaking of the charmed junta of Bill O’Reilley, Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh, the godfathers of d-baggery. These noble douches have raised the level of political discourse to a rarified rant — a very loud, aggressive, or bombastic speech that is usually long and repetitive, and punctuated with a couple of suggestive puffs on a looooong, fat, black cigar. (Watch out Obama!)

Dictionary of National D-bags: Denis Leary

It’s Thursday, and that means another addition to our Dictionary of National D-bags. Today’s honored d-bag is comedian, cop, fireman and all around hero Denis Leary.

Leary became famous in the early 90s for his “rants” and for popularizing the d-bag ethos with his his sardonic song about the American lower-middle-class male, “Asshole“.

Though in private Leary is often a decent guy, he maintains a d-bag public persona so that his core fan base is not disillusioned and stop patronizing the advertisers of cigars and erectile dysfunction cures advertized on his TV shows. If d-bags thought Leary was merely being ironic for satirical purposes, they might reflect on why being a d-bag is undesirable, which could lead them to promote peace, tolerance, and good grammar.

Classic rock

It’s time to get the Led out!!!

Never let it be said that white d-bags despise all manifestations of culture. We like corporate culture. We like juntas. And we love the classics.

Jeff Beck, Kiss, Pink Floyd, The Doors, Hendrix, Judas Priest, The Who, Kansas, Molly Hatchet, Deep Purple, Clapton, The Allman Bros., Aerosmith, The Eagles, Boston, Queen (only the stuff that rocks — not the gay stuff), CCR, The Rolling Stones, those two Steppenwolf songs, Black Sabbath, AC/DC, and Van Halen are essentials in any d-bag’s cultural education. Classic rock, cock rock, sometimes even yacht rock take up rows of shelf space in every d-bag’s CD collection.

But what makes a classic for a d-bag? The answer may not be as obvious as it seems. For example, classic rock does not have to come from the classical period (roughly 1967 to 1977). Conversely, not all rock produced during this period is classic. For example, the British rock group Sweet, though producing arguably classic rock songs like “Ballroom Blitz” and “Fox on the Run”, does not get airplay on classic rock stations; whereas Journey, whose music and lead singer Steve Perry are arguably pussy, are not only a FM rock staple, they are also (oddly enough) a band that many d-bags, who have been convinced by their GFs to go to the O’Flannery’s in the mall for Karaoke, choose for emulation and personal embarrassment. In the same way, jam bands like The Greatful Dead are not classic rock, but are a favorite of most bros who search for the classical roots of favorites like Jack Johnson.

Classic rock is an important category of cultural identification for white d-bags specifically because it screens out ethnic subsets of d-bags from mainstream d-bags. Country, Metal (and its many subsets: glam, hair, death, etc.), and Rap are categories that separate physically white d-bags from culturally white d-bags. The former group may be rural or urban rather than ex-urban; and though many d-bags are actively anti-intellectual, paradoxically many of them have university degrees, some from Ivy League institutions or their near correlatives. For the better sort of white d-bag, it is important to not limit oneself to genre music (Toby Keith, Eminem), but rather to embrace what has been acknowledged for generation(s) to be superior quality expressions of d-baggery: Led Zepplin, Pink Floyd, AC/DC or any non-American, Anglophone blues band who more or less crassly ripped off the music of SBM.

D-bags in the news: Mike Norman

It’s a presidential election year, and to d-bags that means party time!!! Our featured d-bag for today is Mike Norman, a sixty-three-year-old d-bag from Marietta, Georgia — a little town just outside of Atlanta.

As the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports, “The T-shirts are being peddled by … Norman at his Mulligan’s Bar and Grill in Cobb County. They show a picture of Curious Georgie peeling a banana, with the words ‘Obama ‘08′ underneath.”

Whereas some, notably white people, are offended by by this and are protesting, Mike’s defenders make clear that he is only a d-bag, which is not only not a crime — it’s a positive asset! Notice in the following excerpt from the AJC article how d-baggery is portrayed and valorized. Here are some clues:

• Being a d-bag is an honest response to Obama, as opposed to racially sensitive whites who are false and dishonest.
• D-bags are “real” because they engage in dangerous and callousing activities — like smoking — that test their stamina and masculinity.
• D-bags are sweet parents who take care of their families by teaching them core values — like degrading others as a means of improving one’s own self-image.
• D-bags have been granted the right to inflame hatred and pick fights, either by Nature or God.
• D-bags love tools — maybe because they resemble them.

“But his [i.e. Norman's] defenders are just as resolute [as his detractors]. Mulligan’s is a refuge, they say, in an otherwise hypersensitive world. Smoking isn’t only allowed at the bar, it’s expected.

“‘This place is a diamond in the rough,’ said Gene McKinley, a Woodstock engineer among the patrons Tuesday. ‘People here are genuine and honest. It’s the one place I can go without having to worry if I’m offending someone.’”

“He said he noted physical similarities between the Democratic front runner and the cartoon monkey while watching a Curious George movie with his grandchildren.

“The Tennessee native said he’s providing a public service of sorts, reminding people they have a right to offend.”

“‘This is my marketing tool,’ he said.”

Congratulations Mike, you are our d-bag of the day!

D-bags in the news: West Virginia

Off-white d-bags prefer Florida and Southern California; for true-blue d-bags, it’s West Virginia.

(I’m not kidding about the “blue” part neither.)

From the news wires: “Clinton’s largest margins, as expected, were registered among voters at the lower end of the socioeconomic ladder. Among white voters without a college degree, Clinton defeated Obama by 50 points. Among white voters making less than $30,000 a year, Clinton’s margin of victory was more than 60 points.”

“According to the surveys of West Virginia voters, about 95 percent of Democratic primary voters were white, about 70 percent did not graduate college, and about 55 percent had household incomes under $50,000.”

Though we want to open up the big tent of d-baggery to all races, West Virginia is a reminder that a d-bag’s strong resistance to the multi-racial, multi-culturalism of other white people precludes off-whites from getting a free pass to be a d-bag. As I have said before, we d-bags aren’t racists — we hate everyone equally. That’s why Mike Norman, a bar owner and d-bag from Georgia says, “the T-shirts he’s peddling, featuring a look-a-like of cartoon chimp Curious George peeling a banana, with ‘Obama in ‘08′ underneath, are not meant to offend. Norman acknowledged the imagery’s Jim Crow roots but said he sees nothing wrong with depicting a prominent African-American as a monkey.”

(More on d-bag hero Mike Norman soon!)

Juntas

When in the company of d-bags, be sure to have your national flag prominently displayed on a lapel or blouse.

D-bags are rugged individualists, and they like to bond with other rugged individualists, forming groups defined by a uniform, preferably with sparklies on it, something made of gold or brass.

Ritualized displays of masculinity are a central feature of d-bag culture. Though the outward forms of these rituals are different, d-bags all over the world follow the same basic outline to prove their masculinity.

First, d-bags congregate where they know there will be other d-bags. This is the first phase of a complicated screening process. A d-bag must feel confident that his brother d-bag would take a bullet for him if necessary, or a good slap on the ass. All “non-hackers” — those who cannot divorce themselves from feelings of sympathy for the enemy or the desire to make up their own mind what is in their best interests — must be weeded out before a d-bag is selected for membership.

This practice, known in North America a “hazing” takes place traditionally at University where young, white, male d-bags receive the cultural indoctrination necessary to make them captains of industry, corrections officers, leaders in global finance, Bruce Willis, directors of marketing, and successful bloggers. It must be recognized, however, that d-baggery is not exclusively the province of whites or men. Off-white d-bags also participate in ritualized affirmations of masculinity, notably Wahabist Muslims, Texas Mormons, and other devotes of the one, true God.

After the d-bag’s social group has been fixed, the strength of the group (”junta” in Latin) must be tested. This is accomplished when one group of d-bags searches out another group to engage in a contest. The ancient Greeks called it agon; contemporary d-bags call it “politics”. Though more glory is to be won by besting a strong, proud adversary, in a pinch a weak, helpless adversary will do. Truth be told, a d-bag never engages in what an outsider might call a “fair” political contest. The point of politics is not to hazard one’s status as an alpha d-bag to prove your worth; the point of politics is maintain and reinforce your power, however ill-suited you are to lead. That is why d-bags must carefully chose their battles. One loss will prove that the entire scaffold of strong masculinity that the d-bag has cultivated and projected onto the world is just a facade for insecure cowardice that hides behind bluster. If a d-bag does pick a fight that he eventually will lose, his only options are either disgrace, prison, or a job as a talking head on Fox News.

GGW

The Girls Gone Wild franchise, created by Joseph R. Francis, is a series by the production company Mantra Films, Inc. Girls Gone Wild producers and crews patrol a party-heavy area frequented by young adults in search of attractive young women who agree to expose their bodies for the camera, usually in exchange for a tank top and sometimes short pants. This involves exposure of breasts and/or buttocks and genitals, sometimes further removal of clothing, and sometimes the camera crew following a group of girls back to a hotel or other location and taping them engaging in additional sexual activities/intercourse.

This format appeals to d-bags of all ages, from “bro” to “Josef Fritzl” because it offers a d-bag vicarious enjoyment of pleasures such as but not limited to tits, thongs and reality TV, as well as suggesting cocaine use and/or cornholing.

Because the rule of d-baggery is “I deserve it” the commodification of women should obviously be something he enjoys.

The most famous “Girl Gone Wild” is Ashley Youmans, a.k.a. Ashley Rae Maika DiPietry, a.k.a. Ashley Dupre, a.k.a. Kristen who was the prostitute who serviced former New York Governnor Eliot Spitzer. This fact constitutes what is know to d-bags as “masturbation material” for several reasons. First, it proves that those letters to Penthouse actually are true; second, it shows that if you are a big enough d-bag you will be able to hit that class of punani; and third, it reaffirms in the mind of a d-bag that girls really are sluts fundamentally, court orders and Uma Thurman be damned.

GGW is part of a genre of porn that employs the conventions of reality TV to highten the voyeuristic thrill inherent in porn. This is also known as “gonzo porn” and “reality porn“. After a bro has graduated to d-bag-hood he may find more pleasure watching something more SAS than GGW, and fortunately there are many options for the consumer who says, “I deserve it.” One of the most successful and famous reality porn franchises is “Bang Bros“. The original idea was to travel around Miami trying to convince strangers to get into a van where they would be offered money to answer some questions, but with suggestive pressure would be coerced into sex with one or several members of the men in the van. At the end of the scene the men in the van convince the woman to get out of the bus (to get something at a store or to pee on the side of the road) and then the bus roars off before the men have given the woman the money promised for her participation. The site’s popularity quickly led to a diversification of the brand, and now Bang Bros has a score of sites with revenues of several million dollars a year. Other official Bang Bros offerings include Facial Fest, Ass Parade, Spring Break, Mom’s Anal, and Blowjob Ninjas.

The success of GGW and reality porn in general shows the ubiquity of bro culture that developed in frat houses in the nineties when the intersection of technology and homosocial eroticism was brought to bear on the bodies of all-too-willing young women. The story of GGW for bros is simple: you deserve it, so go ahead and take it. For women, GGW is a lesson: if you want to be noticed you have to get ahead.

Reality TV

The only fifty-cent word a d-bag should know is schadenfreude. It captures so much of what a d-bag likes.

Being in a media saturated environment (ex-urbs and Disneyworld are equidistant from reality) good, old sit-coms (Seinfeld, Friends) and dramas (CSI, 24) just don’t get the heart racing or wood growing in the forest. Fiction is too, um, fictional for most d-bags. More to the point, fiction is a nice place to visit, but a d-bag likes to live in “the Real World” — even if he has to build it from scratch. The fun of reality TV is the unpredictability of watching real people suffering real pain. And that’s the only way you know it’s real.

The same thing applies to sex. A woman can fake an orgasm, but she can’t fake pain. Sadly, a d-bag’s love of strong women often precludes acting on this sort of impulse, at least as soon as the honeymoon is over. Where can you get your rocks off — especially if you have to do it while the old ball-and-chain is sitting there next to you on the couch? You guessed it — reality TV.

Not all reality TV is alike! Be sure to pick the show that’s right for you. If you’re a chick, or a guy who might also be a chick, stick to the soft stuff. Anything on MTV or VH1 will do. If you’re a guy guy, you might enjoy some Survivor, or any show that makes chicks eat dead stuff and/or mule anus. Even if you don’t think of yourself as a d-bag (for example because you are an white, urban, professional, pillow-biter) there’s a show for you too! Try anything on Bravo. What if you work at Wal*Mart? Jerry Springer is probably to your taste. But of course, the ultimate reality TV infotainment is found exclusively on Fox News. (I didn’t bother trying to find anything funny for that link. Anytime you navigate to that site you’ll find something obscene to chuckle over.)

UPDATE!!!:

“This morning MTV announced it has greenlit the 21st season of The Real World. It will be filmed in Brooklyn, the reigning home turf of post-teen drama, and broadcast in 13 one-hour episodes in early 2009. No word yet regarding in which neighborhood the attention-seeking hopefuls will reside.”

See more here.

OMG! Which scenario would please a d-bag most? Probably to have the Real World Contestants live in GTA IV land (that’s Brooklyn, right?). Barring that the next best choice would be Brownsville or Bed-Stuy. That way the enterprising entrepreneurs living in the neighborhood could turn they asses out for paper, satisfying all a d-bag’s prurient, voyeuristic needs.

Dictionary of National D-bags: Penn Jillette

Comprising 83% of the comedy duo Penn and Teller, Penn Jillette is our honored d-bag of the week.

Born in Greenfield, Massachusetts, Jillette performs both magic and social science, the former on stage and the latter on Showtime. He acquired two masters degrees at the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Clown College, one in Anthropology and the other in Kitten Juggling. Jillette was introduced to Raymond Joseph Teller in 1974 who convinced Jillette to give up strangling kittens to focus more on the social theory side of his magic show. From 1974 to 1980 Jillette did the field work that would lead to his groud-breaking off-Broadway dissertation: The Red Fingernail: D-bag identities and the Iconology of Chocolate Starfish 1955 - 1975. (Note the red fingernail Jillette displays in the illustration above.)

After his first, critically acclaimed off-Broadway book The Impersonation of Cultures: Essays on the Las Vegas Cockfight in 1981, Penn was able to realize his life-long dream of owning and living in a house like a prison, so in that year Jillette purchased a home in Las Vegas and dubbed it “The Slammer”. From deep inside the undsclosed location of his own wonderful world of Oz, Jillette thinks up material for his Showtime lecture series, Bullshit! an appropriately titled periodical manifesto on all things Jillette considers to be “pussy.”

When not empathizing with the human condition, Jillette spends his spare hours inventing gadgets to make life for the underprivileged more bearable. His most famous creation is the Jill-Jet, (officially known as the hydro-theraputic stimulator) a fixture that can be installed in a hot tub to spray warm water directly onto a woman’s punani. This device is also handy for distracting a woman from the face Jillette makes when he comes to crisis (see illustration at right). As proof of the invention’s efficacy, Jillette has two children, Moxie CrimeFighter Jillette, a daughter and a son, Zolten Penn Jillette. It is rumored that Jillette is now working on a device that will remove the years of scarring that accretes on celebrity children
with ridiculous names. Early trials on Moon Unit Zappa and China Slick (daughter of singer Grace Slick) proved tragically unsuccessful (if highly erotic), but Jillette has re-entered the studio after a “breakthrough” with his therapist, and tells SWDBL that a new prototype will be functional by the time his kids enter junior high.

D-bags in the news: Bros Busted!

6 fraternities suspended in drug probe

at San Diego State U.

SAN DIEGO (AP) - San Diego State University has suspended six fraternities after a sweeping drug investigation that landed dozens of students in jail on suspicion of openly dealing drugs on campus.

The probe—prompted by the cocaine overdose death last year of a freshman sorority member—led to the arrests of 96 people, 75 of them San Diego State students. A second drug death occurred during the investigation.

*Bros

*Cocaine

Some other points of interest to d-bags: Southern California, Fraternities, “I deserve it” entrepreneurship.

The Ivy League

The Ivy League is expensive, exclusive, located in the North East, and features beautiful old buildings. All of these things are despised by white d-bags so logically it would seem that they all hate the Ivy League. But this is not true!

White d-bags have a tortured relationship with the Ivy Leagues, and if you broach the subject in the wrong way you can offend and even anger a white d-bag.

In the first place, many d-bags, white and off-white, did in fact attend an Ivy League school. Notable examples are Clarence Thomas, George Bush (41 and 43), and Richard Cheney (in his case only for one semester). But it is clear from scientific research that the Ivies are actually populated by liberal whites. So why are they such a source of fascination for d-bags?

Though d-bags have worked tirelessly for almost a century to found their own institutions of higher learning (Liberty University, University of Chicago, Stanford), the numbers simply stack up on the side of schools like Columbia (252-years-old), Princeton (262-years-old) and Harvard (372-years-young). No matter how petty and spiteful, d-bags fundamentally revere authority, and nothing says authority like 1) numbers and 2) elders. Mathematically it is impossible for a d-bag not to find an Ivy degree impressive.

Although a d-bag will generally believe any talking head on TV with a Ph. D. behind his name (Dr. Phil), d-bags with Ivy degrees get special deference — especially if they dropped out or got an MBA (see above). What d-bags don’t like is the Ivies’s reputation for culture, but this problem is easily solved in the mind of a d-bag if the person with the Ivy degree has the correct politics. In such a case the d-bag will proudly introduce himself or his friend as “Mr. D-bag, MBA from Harvard.” If the d-bag meets a Barack Obama supporter who went to Brandeis, however, he will assume 1) he attended an Ivy and 2) that he majored in either English or Anthropology.

When discussing the Ivies with a d-bag try to find out first if he attended one. This will be simple because he will either announce the fact within five minutes of the start of the conversation, or he will tell you he has a book deal. Next, pretend to be impressed and frustrated at this fact. To undercut a d-bag’s assumed authority by suggesting that his Ivy degree isn’t more valuable than the crown jewels is extremely offensive to Ivy educated d-bags. If he didn’t attend an Ivy, pretend he went to Stanford — to a d-bag it’s the same thing.

D-bags in the news: Hillary Clinton

(Above: Hillary Clinton calling on God for strength.)

“I want the Iranians to know that if I’m the president, we will attack Iran. In the next 10 years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them.”

You don’t have to prove your masculinity to us Mrs. Clinton! We know you’re a d-bag!

Strong Women

Deficit spending

God

Daniel Pipes

Hot cars

Cars, machinery, gadgets, tech, SUVs and sexy do-dads constitute the fabric of a d-bag’s personality, obvs. But Avis’s ad agency has come up with a brilliant piece of d-baggery that will sing in the heart of millions of American d-bags.

The ads imaginatively speak from the perspective of your old car. It’s like tech on tech porn with a soap opera plot thrown in. Your faithful old ride that used to zoom you all over town sits in a cold, heartless parking garage or parking lot while you go galavanting around the country, whooping it up in a little sexy rental. The ad “Three Days” is meant to appeal to chicks, so it moderates the full force of its d-baggery. In this scenario your girlfriend has been off in Miami for the portentious three days soaking up the sun and riding around in a new Prius. If this sounds like vanilla flavored, white people d-baggery, it is: she justifies cheating on her meat and potatoes, 23 mpg, classic, d-bag mobile by telling herself she’s buying up in prestige, and we imagine she’ll dump the old car for a Prius the first chance she gets. For a chick, d-bag impulses are restrained by her “conscience” which any d-bag knows is just a band-aid called hypocrisy.

But the ad “Conference” is a perfect tour of the d-bag imagination. In it, an old Buick sits in a iced-over parking lot patiently waiting for its old driver to get back from a trip to a conference in New Mexico. Chilly wind blows through a cracked window (open on purpose or through negligence?) and rattles the plastic draped over a naked wire hanger. The voice over, from the POV of the Buick tells us, “He said he had to go to Santa Fe for work — ‘big conference.’ Right. You know what’s happening. You know he’s with … another car, driving around, probably to some rock climbing wall or out on an expensive dinner. He’ll say it was with a client. It’s probably that red, Cadillac CTS from Avis … again.” The jokey subtext is that the Buick is the long suffering wife who picks up her man’s laundry and totes it around town. She has been frozen out of his sexual fantasies for a long time (she is, after all, a dumpy old Buick — good with kids but not the sort to wear a thong), and she knows even when he’s driving her he’s thinking of another car. Boy is it fun to put one over on that old battle axe! But here’s the really fun part! Avis is the pimp who set up our d-bag with some real crank-yanking action on his conference/sex holiday. Substitute women for cars (a fantasy inherent to d-baggery) and you have sex tourism, which the Department of Justice tells us on its web page is a huge industry inside as well as outside the United States. And don’t think it’s all just a bunch of Eliot Spitzers out there who are having all the fun! Estimates of the annual profits from d-bags who just want to get their bone on top 7 billion dollars. That’s more than half of Wal*Mart’s total yearly profits.

It’s all part of the “I deserve it” attitude of American corporate culture (known by the hipper sort of d-bag as “libertarianism”). Go on! Pamper yourself! Rent a Cadillac CTS, a Hummer, or a Punani for the weekend. A d-bag revels in perks, special privileges, and excess — especially when it hurts and humiliates a woman.

D-bags in the news: CNN

Sunday morning. Pour a cup of coffee, pick up the paper off the front porch. Smell the greening of May. Fire up the computer and navigate to CNN. Whoa! Check this sh*t out!!!

Girl carries secret baby to hospital, still attached

That is some fine journalism. Especially because it’s the lead story! These are the narrative highlights that appeal to d-bags:

* Voyeurism

* Family values

* Strong women

* Los Angeles

* Girls gone wild

To make it more accessible to d-bag reading levels the story is summarized in bullet points at the top right of the page.