America's laziest columnist wakes up, unfortunately

By A.J. Liebling
Meta-Content Generator

Just this week, The New York Times sent us an ominous envelope that in past years it has used to inform its remaining brain-dead print subscribers (like us!) that due to increasing costs including the publisher's alimony the price of your subscription would sadly rise oh-so-slightly to a yearly total that now has a comma in it.

So imagine how surprised we were when the letter within, signed by credulous columnist Nick Kristof, thanked us for supporting The Times' journalism and the efforts of its hard-carousing [Surely, hard-working? – Ed.] reporters.

That was nice.  Unfortunately today his even lazier colleague Maureen Dowd emerged from her Georgetown crypt to remind us what else our stack of Benjamins pays for: a full column of racist talking points supposedly issued by her brother “Kevin.”  Long-time Spy readers will recall that we had taken a close look at his previous effort here, here, and here.

It shut him up for a year, but like herpes, he flared up again with an all-new column carefully analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of the first 10 months of the U Bum Administration.

We're just f**king with you again.  Of course he didn't; he just recycled the racist bigoted talking points pinging around the Republican bullsh*tosphere.  We're still recovering from too much turkey so we can't spend too long on “Kevin”'s latest effort, but we thought we could put about as much effort into reviewing it as he and his sister put in composing it.

Kevin speak more good!

As you might have surmised,  “Kevin” thinks that the Grifter-in-Chief is the greatest thing since lynching bees.

He looks back with unconcealed white male glee at U Bum's colossal list of achievements, including installing Neil Gorsuch on the Supreme Court.  This was actually thanks to Mitch McConnell's refusal to allow Merrick Garland so much as a hearing, but that was OK with “Kevin,” because Gorsuch is already proving to be such a blazing success. What's the source of this bromance? Was it Gorsuch's apparent desire to read Baker v. Carr (outlawing malapportioned districts) out of the Court's body of precedent?  Who knows? Not “Kevin.”

“Kevin” is equally enthusiastic about the Grifter-in-Chief's demolition of real President Obama's “burdensome regulations.”  Which ones particularly chapped his sagging white butt?  Was it the one that prevented those with serious mental illnesses from obtaining lethal weapons? Or the one that protected us from dumping of lethal mine waste?  Or the one that requires employers to disclose their illegal mistreatment of employees?  Or the one that allowed killing bear cubs?  Don't ask “Kevin” – he heard Brian Kilmeade say this yesterday and that's good enough for him.

But what of course really floats “Kevin” out of his recliner are not the exiguous achievements of U Bum; it's the chance to rubbish Democrats.  Did you know that Democrats don't always treat women respectfully?  Now you do:

The dam has broken on sexual harassment and worse. It has already claimed Harvey Weinstein, Kevin Spacey and Charlie Rose and threatens to make a ghost town of Hollywood and the Capitol. It has also brought back Bill Clinton for an unwanted encore of his colorful past.

Is there any other figure in public life that might have a problem with his treatment of women?  Hello?  Maybe he could ask his sister, who has had any number of chummy interviews with the Groper-in-Chief.

There's more, or rather there isn't much more.  Among the topics that “Kevin” doesn't believe are worthy of discussion are proposed tax cuts for the idle rich and their mouth-breathing spawn, U Bum's ill-fated effort to steal health insurance from 23 million, the record of Russian collusion and Putin-scrotum-kissing that has made the United States the laughingstock of the world, the obstruction of justice that occurred when Comey was fired, the undermining of all efforts to save the planet from the devastation of global warming, and U Bum's endless hate-filled appeals to racists, Nazis, and bigots.

Actually, come to think of it, “Kevin” did have time to note approvingly any number of those rants.  Who isn't glad to know that the Grifter-in-Chief and his band of brownshirts were so successful in lighting “Kevin”'s tiki torch?

We just have one thought for the good folks who continue to pay Maureen Dowd to recycle third-hand disinformation: don't put “Kevin”'s musings in next year's thank-you letter to subscribers.  They might wonder if their $1000+ might be put to better use elsewhere.

Update Nov. 27: We don't know how we missed this steaming nugget although in our defense it was quite a pile, but “Kevin” pans for comedy gold by making fun of the ages of Democratic leaders: “The Democrats have their own issues. Their leaders are all on Medicare . . .”

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi is 77.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is 67.

“Kevin”'s choice for effective, energetic leadership, the Grifter-in-Chief, is 71.

Fall Review of Unreadable Books: Living in Fantasyland

Editors' Note: Every so often our Literary Editors, none of whom recall being forcibly kissed, groped, fondled or ridiculed by Leon Wieseltier, share with you, the innocent reader, their discovery of a book so dreadful, so empty, so clichéd that it cannot possibly be read.  We call these books “Unreadable” to warn the literate public (Alabamans can skip to the next item) not to go near them with a 95% off coupon.  Here's their latest find.

Fantasyland
by Kurt Andersen '76
Random House [How appropriate – Literary Ed.]
$30, already marked down to $20.28

Who among us fails to remember with fondness those long dinners in Dunster or Lowell with you and your brilliant friends and their brilliant friends and some graduate student in need of a shower and hairbrush sharing their brilliant take on the history of the world, the fate of humanity, or the inevitability of their brilliant career?  It was brilliant, right?

Whatever happened to those guys?  Some have faded into obscurity, by which we mean law or medicine or academia.  Some lied us into a lethal war of choice in Iraq.  Others used their legal talents and propensity for brown-nosing to reach the pinnacle of the American justice system, where they toil indefatigably to transform the U.S. Constitution into a vehicle for the exclusive protection of rich white reactionaries like themselves.

Others achieve literary fame and fortune, like the author of the instant unreadable book, an effort to explain why the United States finds itself enmeshed in a web of lies that have left democracy and the rule of law trapped and devoured by those in power.  Our author, Kurt Andersen '76, relies on his 30-year career as an intellectual and social historian conducting painstaking research and inquiry into the dark and treacherous waters of the American past.

Nah, we're just bullsh*tting you.  Our author has been f**king around New York City since graduation: editing a humor magazine, trying his hand at the occasional novel, and serving as the host of the well-known public radio program The Kurt Andersen Tower of Power Hour.  [Louise, get the name of his f**king show – Literary Ed.]

So it's no surprise that he pads out his almost 500-page compendium of trivia by starting with the first European settlers, who according to Our Historian embarked on their journey guided by their wild fantasies of what they would find.  This presumably distinguished them from the deeply rational, thoughtful churls they left behind in early 17th Century England.

A random walk through American bs

From there, it's a whirlwind journey through American bullsh*t, up to and including President U Bum, at the end of which Kurt concludes that there are a lot of idiots out there who didn't go to an Ivy League college so what after all can we expect?  And can you believe how much the co-op board is assessing us for a new boiler?  Jesus H. Christ!

Had he actually mastered American history in all of its tawdry sanguinary glory he might have noticed, as so many others have, that American insanity tends to run in entirely predictable and well-worn channels.  He might have have drawn a line connecting centuries of lies about those African folks brought to America in chains, a line as thick and unmistakable as the coffles of chained slaves sold down the river by the good fathers of Georgetown University for the profit of those white men who endowed the great Ivy League universities whose tables were graced by Kurt and his buddies.

He might have observed the uncanny similarity between the lies told in the 17th Century to justify enslaving said individuals to the lies told in the 19th Century by those who would betray their country to protect their interest in slavery to the lies told in the 21st Century by the immiserated yahoos of Johnstown Pa., who claim not to understand why black athletes protest before games but love to tell you that NFL really stands for N***** for Life.

Kurt might even have cast a glance back at his very own Alma Mater, which peddled eugenic nonsense and myths of racial superiority from the mid-nineteenth to the late 20th centuries.

Or he could have taken a look at the not just American tradition of treating women as property until the middle of the 19th Century, or in the case of Republican Senate candidates, repulsive movie moguls, and loathsome comedians, until deadline today.

Then having done so he might have noticed striking consistencies among the lies Americans, especially the white ones, have told themselves for centuries, but of course that would require research, rigor, and a willingness to face some unpalatable truths.  But if his classmate John Roberts doesn't think that racism remains a problem today, how could Kurt be expected to grasp truths obvious to those whose skin color or chromosomes differ from his?

What would it take for Kurt and classmates to understand?  Easy: they would have to be willing to shut up and listen.  Sadly that's the one skill they didn't teach these boys in college.

From the Archives, 2008: Normalizing the Unthinkable

Editors' Note: There's a lot of pixels being excited these days by the shocking outrages of the U Bum Administration and the danger of normalizing the criminality, brutality, and subversion of his gang, including his mouth-breathing offspring.  Some of the commentary comes from those who have loyally questioned the morality of prior Republican armies of destruction, but a surprising amount emanates from those whose sensibilities were once less easily offended.  Let's climb into the Waybac and see how some of these worthies normalized the apparently petty peccadilloes of George W. Bush and his co-conspirators.

By Robert Jackson
Contributing Editor, International Law

The increasing tempo of revelations about the grotesque and indefensible tortures employed by the Bush Administration has been met by an unyielding and relentless effort by Republican apologists and neocons to justify them as perfectly reasonable responses to an apparently endless and boundary-less “War on Terrorism.”

Kristol: 'Perfectly normal'

The Republican chattering class seems to have no difficulty accepting as normal and appropriate 183 acts of waterboarding against a terror suspect designed to elicit a false statement about the nonexistent ties between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, the torture and degradation perpetrated against random detainees at abu Ghraib prison, or the brutality, up to and including anal rape, practiced by the CIA against detainees at Baghram in Afghanistan.

The entire campaign of illegal torture and brutality, summed up brilliantly in Jane Mayer's new book, The Dark Side, has been regarded by all civilized Americans as abhorrent.  Here's one typical example, from History Professor Alan Brinkley (from his review of Mayer's book): “it would be difficult to find any precedent in American history for the scale, brutality and illegality of the torture and degradation inflicted on detainees over the last six years; and that it would be even harder to imagine a set of policies more likely to increase the dangers facing the United States and the world.”

But Republicans don't seem to have a problem with any of it.  For example, Republican spin doctor and concoctor of lies intended to justify the disastrous War in Iraq Billy Kristol, far from condemning the extra-legal torture practiced by the CIA and others, has called upon W. to pardon the torturers, apparently concluding that behavior that sufficed to justify the execution of Japanese generals as war criminals is now just another normal part of war, at least when the torturers are American.

Frum: 'Nothing to see here people'

He specifically urged the President to normalize waterboarding: “The CIA agents who waterboarded Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, . .  should not have to worry about legal bills or public defamation. In fact, Bush might want to give some of these public servants the Medal of Freedom at the same time he bestows the honor on Generals Petraeus and Odierno. They deserve it.”

Former Bush Administration coatholder David Frum similarly regards torture and brutality as nothing to get upset about.  In his world famous blog, the Frum Forum, he normalized the efforts of fellow mouthpiece John Yoo to define away torture by disregarding the definitions built into American and international law for at least two generations.  Frum said that Yoo's frivolous arguments were part of a good-faith dispute and demonized those who corrected Yoo's perversion of law as having “the incidental effect of recategorizing some of the most brutal enemies the United States has ever faced as pitiful victims.”  In other words, Frum thought that the degradation and torture defended by Yoo were a perfectly normal part of American government and jurisprudence.

Likud Party spokesgal Jennifer Rubin similarly sees nothing abnormal about throwing away the rules governing civilized warfare that predate the Nuremberg Trials.  Referring to torture by Bush's preferred euphemism, “enhanced interrogation,” she normalizes it by repeating the false claim that it helped in the fight against bin Laden.

Rubin: 'OK by me'

As for former impeachment hellhound and faithful family man Joe Scarborough, he has never used his morning gabfest to express outrage over the protracted torture campaign and its attempted cover-up.  Instead, he has consistently sought to normalize such vile conduct by claiming falsely that it is an effective and long-standing part of intelligence-gathering.

Further, his supposedly heavyweight panelists seem unable or unwilling to point out the truth.  For example, on Tuesday's show, Washington gasbag and Ladies' Man Mark Halperin joked that he'd be willing to be locked up and chained to the production intern with the “great yabbos.”  He was followed by creative writer Mike Barnicle, who told a story about how Whitey Bulger was caught because a Boston cop named Jimmy Burke beat the crap out of somebody in 1946.

Scarborough: 'As American as apple pie'

The danger of course is that conduct such as freezing detainees to death, stripping them and forcing them into a pigpile, and even raping detainees with enemas containing food becomes normal if those who should know better fail to speak out.  If we cannot even condemn obvious outrages like torture, what further attacks on our democracy and the rule of law can we expect?  Collusion with Russian efforts to subvert our elections?  Presidents subject to blackmail due to their escapades and financial dealings with Kremlin-backed gangsters?  An entire government devoted to protecting the personal wealth of a demented President?

Laugh if you like at these admittedly ludicrous examples, but if we let our government get away with torture, what else will we end up normalizing?

Also on Scarborough's malarkey festival with Halperin and Barnicle was busto casino operator Donald J. Trump, who was willing to disagree with the prevailing sentiments on at least one issue:  “Which one, Mark?  The one in the control room?  Hell, my daughter has a better rack than that.”

From the Archives, 1967: Who dares criticize a 4-star general?

Editors' Note: The recent effort by White House Press Secretary and Girl Who Blackballed You from Her Sorority Because Your Name Ended With a Vowel Sarah Huckabee to elevate a retired general to the level of infallibility enjoyed by the Pope reminded us that there were other times when those who dared question the wisdom of four-star Generals paid a rich price for their effrontery, as this dispatch from 1967 shows.

WESTY HAILS VIETNAM PROGRESS;
ANTIWAR PROTESTERS ASSAILED 
FOR QUESTIONING HIS JUDGMENT

By Douglas MacArthur
War Correspondent
with material from The New York Times News Service

WASHINGTON, Nov. 20 – General William Westmoreland, Commander of US Forces in Vietnam, today told Congress and the Administration that the United States was gaining the upper hand in Vietnam and at the current rate of victory more troops would be needed for another two years at most.

Westmoreland said he had “never been more encouraged in my four years in Vietnam,” as he stepped off his military jet in Hawaii on his way back to brief President Johnson and other Administration officials.

The New York Times reported that Administration officials had been hoping that Gen. Westmoreland's claims of steady progress would offset reports from fake-news media on the scene in Vietnam that the war was stalemated and victory was nowhere in sight.

At present there are 467,000 U.S. troops in Vietnam, with another 45,000 on the way.

Some are questioning Gen. Westmoreland's claims
of a great victory at Dak To

The optimistic assessments from Gen. Westmoreland come as news of the bloody, inconclusive battles in Dak To and the surrounding Central Highlands reached the U.S., with some questioning the value of sending U.S. forces into the back country as ambush bait and then withdrawing them from the militarily-useless hills and bases they had bought dear with their blood.

Appearing on Meet the Press, the highly-decorated four-star General told NBC News that U.S. and South Vietnamese forces were “winning the war of attrition” and said it was “conceivable” that troops could start to withdraw if the war continued at the same tempo for another two years.

His views were echoed by U.S. Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker, who also appeared on the venerable Sunday morning softball tournament.  Ambassador Bunker took the opportunity once again to bash the media for creating the “erroneous impression” that the U.S. was not winning the war.

The veteran U.S. envoy cautioned the media and anti-war protesters from second-guessing the statements or methods of General Westmoreland, saying that questioning a four-star general was disruptive, disrespectful, and arguably unpatriotic.  He praised the willingness of Gen. Westmoreland to take questions from reporters who were not themselves related to troops who had given their lives in Vietnam or elsewhere.

President Lyndon B. Johnson, in a testy news conference yesterday, relied heavily on Gen. Westmoreland's upbeat assessment in rallying support for the war, which has touched a new low of 23% in the Harris Poll.  The President responded to critics by citing the General, warning so-called “Nervous Nellies” not to question the judgment or integrity of a four-star general.

“There is nothing more dangerous in time of war than doubting the veracity of the generals who are fighting it, ” the President said.

Vietnam War boosters say that Gen.
Westmoreland wears his credibility
on his shoulders

But critics within the Pentagon point out that the North Vietnamese have committed only one-fifth of its 250,000-strong Army and think that up to 1,000,000 American troops may need to fight for five years to attain victory.

President Johnson told the nation that Gen. Westmoreland had personally assured him that such gloomy predictions were “about as stupid as thinking your landlord should run for President because you like the marble in the lobby.”

The public remains unconvinced that the Johnson Administration is on the right track, despite the optimism expressed by Gen. Westmoreland.  In fact, many appear to be largely oblivious to the war.  On Park Avenue, a young playboy of military age emerged from a limo, his arms under the minidresses of two young blonde women he introduced as as Svetlana and Tatiana, and said he wasn't worried about the war.

“I wish I could be in Vietnam fighting alongside all those schmucks who didn't have a rich father, but I got a deferment due to my sore bone.  Don't worry, it'll get better soon, believe me” said Donald Drump, 19, of Queens, N.Y.

All Hollywood wants to know: who will win the Harveys?

By Roscoe Arbuckle
Entertainment Editor

It's the most glamorous night of the year of the week tonight in Hollywood.  It's the Harvey Awards, and all Hollywood is preparing to party like it's 1925.  The show airs tonight on Fox News at 9 ET (6 PT, and 2 a.m. in Switzerland, where the eponymous Harvey Weinstein will be watching on the DL at the home of his best friend and legal adviser, Roman Polanski).  The show features an all-star line-up of hosts and presenters, including Mel Gibson, O.J. Simpson, Bill O'Reilly, and former President Bill Clinton.

To help you prepare for this glittering night of must-spew [Surely, see? –Ed.] TV, The Spy has provided this handy cheat sheet handicapping the nominees.

The Chaplin Silence is Golden Award.  This Award, celebrating those who enabled a toxic culture of sexual abuse by keeping silent, will be handed out by legendary director and worst prom-date ever, Woody Allen.  Ben Affleck was considered an early favorite for this award, but some think his lame Twitter apology to one of the women he groped was too loud.  This may allow Weinstein creation Matt Damon to snatch the coveted “Golden Shush.”

The Harveys are named after the famous movie mogul,
fresser, and plant benefactor Harvey Weinstein, shown
here in a private meeting with an aspiring actress

Best Performance by a Mouthpiece.  There were many outstanding nominees for this award, given to the lawyer or PR flack who most shamelessly tries to bury the news about his or her loathsome clients, but there are two clear favorites.  First is the glamorous Lisa Bloom, whose ridiculous claim that “many” of the claims against Harvey Weinstein were “patently false”  was utterly unrelated to Weinstein's picking up her script, but her chances were hindered by her last-minute withdrawal from defending the indefensible Weinstein.

This leaves Weinstein mouthpiece not named after an 80's porn star Charles Harder as the front-runner, for his thunderous performance as a shyster threatening to file a defamation suit against the Times for what appears to be a completely accurate and well-substantiated story, which has later been buttressed by reporting from numerous other outlets.

Sadly, Susan Estrich's smearing of the reporter who broke the Roger Ailes sexual abuse story occurred before the deadline for this year's Harveys, but fortunately she'll be presenting the award to this year's winner.

Best Hypocritical Performance.  One of the most hotly contested categories this year, the nominees for this award include Kellyanne Conway, for her feigned outrage over Hillary Clinton's supposedly lukewarm condemnation of Weinstein even as Kellyanne lies shamelessly for an admitted serial sex offender.  Many feel the brazen gusto with which she peddles this blatant hypocrisy makes her a shoo-in for this coveted award, although similar nonsense being peddled by any number of Fox News talking heads may split the vote, thus allowing the another Murdoch propaganda organ, the New York Post, to win for condemning Clinton while helping Weinstein smear actresses he had raped.

Although a late entrant, there's a lot of buzz around write-in Maureen Dowd, for her withering condemnation of Hollywood's mistreatment of women, while ignoring the sexual depredations of the Groper--in-Chief, whom she sat down with for jolly softball interviews throughout 2016.

Best Performance by a Female Enabler.  This award is given to the woman who does the most to betray the interests of women everywhere by blaming the victims for the crimes visited upon them by the Harvey Weinsteins of the worlds.   Kellyanne Conway and Katrina Pierson are nominated in this category, but the two favorites have nothing to do with politics.  Insiders expect this award may go to Donna Karan, who designs sexually provocative fashions for women and then says women are “asking for it” by choosing fashions that cause Weinstein's loins to boil over into the nearest potted plant.

As expected, Kellyanne Conway has
been nominated in multiple categories

But others think that adorable Hollywood veteran Mayim Bialik may take the award for her preposterous op-ed in the New York Times promoting her strategy of dressing like a frummie as the best way women can protect themselves against sexual predators.  This strategy is of course why sexual abuse is unheard of among Orthodox Jews.

Captain Renault Golden Whistle for Best Humbug.  This award, the highlight of the Harveys, features a number of Hollywood heavyweights, beginning with the ultra-prestigious studio pawn Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, which expelled Weinstein last week when news of his crimes became public and undeniable, and only 25 years after everyone knew about them but did nothing.

But many feel the leading contender has to be Bob Weinstein, who has rigorously insisted he had no idea that his brother and co-conspirator Harvey was regularly abusing women over more than two decades, but who now declares himself shocked, shocked over his brother's “sick and depraved” conduct.

Darryl F. Zanuck Lack of Humanity Award.  This award, given every year to the entertainer who has done the least to promote healthy respectful relationships between men and women, goes this year to Donald Trump.

Coming like never to The Spy

Exclusive to the Spy: an excerpt from the forthcoming best-seller Championship Baseball by Dave Dombrowski

You read it first in The Spy, Foggy Bottom edition

A former chief executive of Exxon Mobil, Mr. Tillerson has never found his place as a subordinate to the hard-charging, unpredictable president. He has bristled at being undercut, as he was over the weekend when Mr. Trump publicly said Mr. Tillerson was “wasting his time” by trying to open talks with North Korea. At the same time, Mr. Tillerson has alienated lawmakers, foreign policy veterans and the news media while demoralizing the State Department, and critics inside and outside the White House consider his troubles self-inflicted.

The president initially viewed Mr. Tillerson as a granite-jawed cabinet secretary who fit Mr. Trump’s requirement that top advisers look as if they came out of “central casting,” as he has put it. Mr. Trump regularly boasted about hiring the head of the world’s largest corporation — and in the presence of a profoundly uncomfortable Mr. Tillerson, whom the president for months referred to as “Mr. Exxon.”

But the deliberate, slow-talking oil executive has little personal chemistry with the quick-talking, impulsive Mr. Trump. Mr. Tillerson has avoided expressing his pique to the president. But aides and Trump associates who have been in the room with them said Mr. Tillerson’s body language, eye rolling and terse expressions left little doubt that he disapproves of Mr. Trump’s approach.

Mr. Trump, they said, has noticed how Mr. Tillerson slouches in his presence, particularly when he disagrees with a decision. When overruled, Mr. Tillerson often says, “It’s your deal,” to the president’s irritation, according to two former administration officials. . . .

“Rex Tillerson has been dealt a bad hand by the Potus & has played it badly,” Richard N. Haass, a State Department official for Republican presidents and now the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, wrote on Twitter, using the initials for president of the United States. “For both reasons he cannot be effective SecState & should resign.”

Mr. Tillerson has been frustrated for months, not just by Mr. Trump’s unpredictable policy positions but by his provocative leadership style. He publicly distanced himself when Mr. Trump blamed “both sides” for violence at a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va., and bristled when the president gave a political speech to the Boy Scouts of America, an organization Mr. Tillerson once headed. NBC reported that he was so offended by the Boy Scouts speech that he threatened not to return to Washington from a visit to Texas.

– The New York Times, Oct. 5, 2017

The sentient among us are supposed to buy Assistant Principal Mike Pence's line that [Rex Tillerson]'s qualified to serve as Secretary of State . .  . , because he ran a big oil company that did a lot of deals abroad, like with his BFF Vladimir Putin.

Now we've known a few CEO's in our day.  They shared a number of qualities:

1. An insane oversupply of unearned self-regard
2. A laser-like focus on next year's bonus
3. A proven record of relentless kissing up that brought them to their current pinnacle of success
4. A childlike love of barking orders and insults to subordinates
5. A paranoid belief that everyone is out to get them

Of those qualities, the only one that might be helpful to a Secretary of State is the last: a Secretary of State, especially in an Administration as dysfunctional and directionless as that presided over by the Grifter-Elect, needs to keep in mind what his enemies are doing to f**k him and how he can f**k them first.  And not just enemies: it's good practice for dealing with foreign states, whether they are our allies, like Russia, or our enemies, like France.

The other attributes, not so much.  Tillerson will trouser $200 million even if he sits on the Seventh Floor and plays pinochle.  The kissing ass will of course be required, but he'll have to take a ticket just to get anywhere near that sagging bronze butt. Of course, Tillerson will shit all over anyone and everyone in his Department, but that will only ensure that he is not informed about things he'd be better off knowing, like who else in the U.S. Government is trying to do him dirty.

The bigger problem is that the skill set so helpful to climbing the oily pole doesn't do you much good in Foggy Bottom.  You can throw your briefing book at foreign service officers or even foreign ambassadors, but that won't help you decipher the ever-more ominous pronouncements from China before the guns go off across the Straits of Taiwan, much less the Delphic emanations from the Pentagon that they will favor you with while muscling poor bespectacled State out of the way.  See Iraq, Victory in.

And if you're thinking that the former CEO of Exxon-Mobil doesn't have to take a call from, and do the bidding of, Santino, Fredo, or Michaela Trump, well, brother, you're going to be shot out of the saddle, because you're about as indispensable to the Grifter-in-Chief as Rudy Giuliani.

Beloved theatergoer and baseball fan Mike Pence says that Tillerson is qualified because he's a great negotiator.  Whether all those oil deals prove to be good, bad, or indifferent remains largely unknown.  The answer depends on a combination of luck, hunches, and the future prices of various types of energy.  In any case, those deals all came down to dough.  Guess what: that's not how it works when the sign in front of you reads UNITED STATES and not EXXON-MOBIL.

How on earth is Tillerson supposed to balance support for Taiwan against enlisting Chinese help to stop North Korea?  Dumping the Iran nuclear deal versus protecting tens of thousands of Boeing jobs?  Balancing concerns about energy supply and human rights in places like Angola?  Actually, we're just pumping your derrick: you know where Tex-Rex is going to come out with that one. . . .

The next-to-most-recent time the Presidency was entrusted to a Republican manifestly not up the job, the State Department was torn to shreds between the devious, paranoid Al Haig and the reactionary boob sent to babysit him, a former state judge from Reagan's California kakistocracy.  We remember how Judge Clark and his fellow red-hots thought that they could stop a Russian oil pipeline by yelling, screaming, and threatening European allies as if they were subordinates who could be booted out at whim.  It didn't go so well.  It took George Schultz years to clean up the mess, by which time St. Ronald Reagan and his BFF Mikhael Gorbachev had agreed to destroy their nuclear arsenals.

If our Senate had regard for anything except passing tax cuts for the rich and destroying health care for the poor (hi, Ambridge!), it would send this toxic nomination up the pipe and flare it off.  Instead, we suspect that Tillerson will be narrowly confirmed to take his place as another piece of unqualified and crazy that will make the next four years a burning clown car if we are lucky.  And if we are not, no one will be left to tell the tale.

 – The Massachusetts Spy, Dec. 13, 2016