yoo oughta know

When I was studying in Japan in 2001, I met a very handsome red-haired guy named Patrick.  He stood about 6′5" and was teaching English in Japan for the summer, then going on to Seoul, South Korea to teach for a British corporation.  Patrick was a study in Godlike American Hotness with his high cheekbones, square jaw, full lips and eyes so blue/green they were almost aqua.  All of the American girls were reduced to utter jelly when he would glide silently into the quad on his ten-speed, and Japanese girls would stop and stare gape-mouthed when they saw him coming, sometimes erupting into near-ultrasonic squeals and storms of uncontrollable giggling.

He was known as something of a Cassanova.  I asked him if he was being an American in Asia because he liked Asian women.

He shrugged and said, "Yeah, I guess.  When they’re good, they’re really good.  But, when they’re bad, they’re Christians."

Which brings me to tonight’s topic.  The Asian Honky.  I submitted my Malkin Rap on this topic, but will take the liberty of reproducing it for you here:

Asian Honky

Everybody, do the Asian Honky.
Everybody, everybody,
Throw your right wing in the air
And wave it like there’s no repercussions,
Having long and pointless discussions,
and cat-fights on the air.
I’m a cello-playing,
talking-point saying,
spelling bee-ing, overachieving,
smug, entitled, right-wing Asian Honky.

Everybody say Ramesh and Adam,
Yoo and Maglalang!

I’m on wingnut welfare.

I’m to the right of a Klansman.

I may be brown but I ain’t no nigga!
I’m highly strung
with a hair-trigger,
Everybody do the Asian Honky.
Everybody do the Asian Honky.

Yeaaaaaah, boyeeeeeee!!  Get down! 

I have not actually read the Terms and Conditions section of the Republican Shill Handbook, but apparently there is a paragraph that says if you are a non-white Republican, you must be the most racist, psychotic, reactionary Republican that you can possibly be.  (For examples see Malkin, Michelle; Ponnuru, Ramesh; Thomas, Clarence; and Yoshida, Adam.)

Every now and then a talking head or pundit comes along who instills in me such a visceral repugnance that whenever they cross my TV screen, all I can do is shout obscenities and throw sofa cushions.  Bill Frist is one such creature.  Tonight’s subject, John Yoo is another.  Something about his smug, fatuous, quaaluded-out expression, his prissy enunciation, and (oh, yeah!) his flagrant disregard for international law and human decency fills me incoherent rage, a sensation bordering on unbridled hate.

Yoo is, of course, the author of the infamous "Torture Memo", and the man who appears to have the most to lose from the Supreme Court’s Hamdan ruling.  Thanks to Christy for pointing me to this article in the NYT which gives us a glimpse of Yoo pitching a little tantrum because the judicial system is making big strides in undoing all his beautiful wickedness.  

The Supreme Court has spoken on the subject of Yoo’s legal arguments, much as God has spoken on the topic of Ken Lay.  Let’s go to the clip, shall we?

JOHN C. YOO, a principal architect of the Bush administration’s legal response to the terrorist threat, sounded perplexed and a little bitter on Thursday afternoon. A few hours earlier, the Supreme Court had methodically dismantled the legal framework that he and a few other administration lawyers had built after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

"What the court is doing is attempting to suppress creative thinking," said Professor Yoo, who now teaches law at the University of California, Berkeley. "The court has just declared that it’s going to be very intrusive in the war on terror. They’re saying, ‘We’re going to treat this more like the way we supervise the criminal justice system.’ "

Okay, now, let’s get something straight here, John.  "Creative thinking" is writing a poem.  "Creative thinking" is deciding to turn your garage into a recording studio.  If I decide I want an X-Box, but that I don’t want to pay for it?  Breaking into my neighbor’s apartment and stealing his is not "creative thinking".  It’s a crime.  Just like illegally detaining and torturing foreign nationals off of American soil isn’t "creative thinking".  It’s a direct violation of the rules of engagement and it’s AGAINST THE LAW.

The wholesale rejection of the administration’s positions in Hamdan may have its roots in part in judicial hostility toward the memorandums Professor Yoo helped prepare several years ago. The justices in the majority, said Professor McGinnis, "have been so skeptical of a variety of legal interpretations coming out of the executive branch, like the so-called torture memos, that they are not giving the president any deference."

(snip)

"Where, as here, no emergency prevents consultation with Congress," Justice Stephen G. Breyer wrote in a brief concurrence that three other justices joined, "judicial insistence upon that consultation does not weaken our nation’s ability to deal with danger. To the contrary, that insistence strengthens the nation’s ability to determine — through democratic means — how best to do so."

But Professor Yoo was not inclined to accept the decision as a triumph of the democratic process. Instead, he saw it as a judicial usurpation of the president’s power to protect the nation. "The court is saying we’re going to be a player now," he observed ruefully.

Oh, they are, are they?  The.  Nerve.  Right, Professor Yoo?  We don’t need no steenkin’ checks and balances!  Bush is GOD!  Anything he says is right!  How DARE the Supreme Court, with their stupid laws and their quaint and antiquated reverence for that old piece of paper, our Constitution, how DARE they meddle in the execution of the Preznint’s Great and Glorious War in Eurasia Eastasia?  

I can only hope that this marks the beginning of your much-deserved trip to the slag-heap of history, Johnnyoo, where you will join such humiliated and discredited shills as Judy Miller, Bob Novak, Joe McCarthy, Oliver North, and Ahmed Chalabi.   You guys can spend all of eternity arguing back and forth about Saddam’s WMD’s, who had the best nickname from Preznint Flightsuit, and who gets the last donut with sprinkles on it.  Your time is up.  And not a minute too soon.

Related posts:

  1. Fun With Dick And George? You Oughta Know
  2. Conservative Justices Roberts, Scalia, Alito, Thomas Say Virtually Bribing Judges is Okay
  3. FDL Book Salon Welcomes Christopher Eisgruber, The Next Justice: Repairing the Supreme Court Appointments Process
  4. Senate Debate on Sotomayor Continues; As Does “Bipartisan” Drumbeat
  5. Sunday Late Night: “A Marriage, If You Can Keep It”