Big-shot wannabe

Norm Coleman has joined the circus. Now, that may not come as a shock, as he has been wobbling on an electoral tightrope for a while now. On that issue, Coleman is insisting on a trial to back up his claim that the two-headed man double-counted Al Franken's votes.

Until that trial ends, however, the Falling Norminda has teamed up with the pathalogically dishonest troupe of trapeze artists known as the RJC, while still holding out hope that a trial court will save him and toss Franken's votes aside. Until then (which means, of course, forever), Coleman has decided to join forces with those bizarro-universe RJC Men on Wire who - unlike the original, Philippe Petit, the daring young man that carefully walked to fame by crossing a tightrope between the tops of the Twin Towers - instead recklessly stumbled their way to infamy by performing their high wire act on the rubble of those same towers, selling the myth that the disastrous post-9/11 policies of George Bush were good for both the United States and Israel.

From the RJC's press release: "Coleman will help the RJC as it plans for the future and looks at ways to continue its historic record of growth and success." And if wishes were horses, the RJC would have a stable of ponies. And they would promptly screw horns into the ponies' foreheads and call them unicorns. As the worst kind of hucksters, the type that really believes in their own scam, they'd swear that the unicorns are real, insisting that everyone who says that no, the ponies (imaginary ones, at that) are just ponies are, in fact, self-hating terrorist lovers. Because denying the unicorniness of pretend ponies would be a victory for Hamas.

And so the RJC clowns parade witlessly through the streets, amidts laughter from a crowd that they honestly believe is greeting them with flowers as liberators, so lacking in awareness that they don't realize that, along with the cream pies being tossed in their faces, the crowd is also tossing shoes at their heads. Because in their reality, they won. Sarah Palin is a great friend to Israel. Na-na-na-na, hey-hey, goodbye is an affectionate tribute to a loved former President, flying off into the sunset. Thank you very much, former-President Bush and Vice-President Strangelove, for servicing America.

And so, giving proof to the adage often attributed (incorrectly, to prove the point) to P.T. Barnum that "There's a sucker born every minute," but failing to understand the distinction between a performance and the real world, the RJC force-feeds its trayfe mix of artificial cotton candy-wrapped smear ad campaigns against President Obama and deep-fried funnel-cake push-polls of Jewish voters, passing off its lies as health food while gluttonously choking the truth under heaping plates of self-delusion and public deception.

The RJC has always made its name serving up this toxic swill. As I pointed out over the summer, when looking back at their freak show during the 2004 elections:

The consistently dishonest Republican Jewish Coalition spent 2004 distorting the words of Howard Dean, John Kerry and other Democrats to make them appear anti-Israel and "bad for the Jews," most prominently in a series of national advertisements prior to the 2004 elections.

Read the rest - I'm not going to repeat all of that here - but it forms the frame for this circus tent. In short, the RJC is a con, both neo and not so new, as it were.

But the show must go on. So, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, please direct your attention to Ring Number One, where you can witness the RJC's historic success of growing the size and bankroll of its organization while ushering in historically unmatched levels of abject electoral failure for the Republican party. How's that big tent working out?

Now step right up to Ring Number Two, for the baby elephant walk, where we can see the historic success of supporting torture (excuse me, "enhanced interrogation" or "negative reinforcement"), economic collapse and international embarassment. Of course, that's one of their dirty little secrets, that in a twisted mirror-image of the horrific way Ringling Brothers treats its own elephant mascots, which suffer abuse at the hands of their trainers, the Republicans, with pink elephants dancing in their heads - both behind the scenes where no one can see and in public as touted by its pathetic apologists like RJC headliner Bill Kristol ("I’m perfectly happy to defend most of [Bush's] surveillance, interrogation and counterterrorism policies against his critics.") - encouraging and glorifying torture while hiding behind a claim that it is all for the common good. Yet they never notice that their ears are not wings, and the feather in their trunk has no magic powers.

Without realizing that they're Barnum's real suckers, and aroused by the cheap thrill of abusing the defenseless, treated no better than circus animals, these neoconservative chicken-hawk voyeurs swoon at their own perversion of the Constitution. This is no family show. Peering through the peep hole at the masochistic snuff film it helped produce, sell and buy, in one of the most disasterous three-ring circle jerks in history, the RJC has ridiculously confused the growth of the base of their organ with the growth of the base of their organization.

All of that crosses the line of decency, which is just the point, making the RJC circus the perfect haunt for Norm Coleman. The question is, which circus performer job do you want, Norm? (Suspend your disbelief for a moment while I play the part of the elastic man and stretch my analogies a bit.)

How about the the Human Cannonball, crawling into that big tube so you can be shot out, sans helmet (that's Republican libertarianism - the freedom to screw up so bad that everyone else has to clean up your splattered remains) but donning a red cape proclaiming the RJC's historic success of distorting polling on the Gaza conflict to conclude that the "majority of Democrats oppose Israeli self-defense actions in Gaza"?

Or the lion trainer, carelessly sticking your head into the mouth of the King of Beasts to show your wisdom and judgement, by hailing the victory of Saxby Chambliss in the Georgia Senate race. The elephant trainer's charges, however, could never forget that this is the same Saxby Chambliss that took contributions from Jack Abramoff, and announced that homeland security would be improved if we "turn the sheriff loose and arrest every Muslim that crosses the state line." Those are, to the RJC, values. Nor could they forget this coward who avoided service in Vietnam through multiple deferments and then equated his 2002 Senate opponent, Max Cleland - who lost three limbs in service to America - with Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein in order to win a Senate campaign, for which this mouse of a man was even condemned by your elephant party's most recent (taking into account the exile of its leader-in-fact) standard-bearer, Senator John McCain.

What about the Ringmaster introducing the RJC's own General Tom Thumb, a small, small man, made up of small, small thoughts, the "Amazing Mark Steyn!" As highlighted today on the front page of the RJC's website, look right on at the mental acrobatics as the "amazing Mark Steyn comes to the defense of the Jewish people and simple decency." Simple decency is, through the RJC circus fun house mirror, the perfectly warped term to describe the consistently-wrong intellectual contortionist who refers to Muslims as "sheep-shaggers" and effectively shills for genocide against Muslims - none of that weak-kneed get-em Mr. Sheriff stuff that Saxby Chambliss condones, Steyn will do the job right, and for good. There you have it folks, the Amazing Mark Steyn, the smallest man to ever make a claim to simple decency and humanity.

Perhaps if you're man enough, Mr. Coleman, you can work the carnival sideshow, testing the limits of repressed gender boundaries like your other former Senate colleagues, taking a wide stance to shamefully exploit the bearded woman. From this brief history of bearded ladies:

Julia Pastrana, born in 1834, was a quite famous bearded lady as well. She was found in Mexico by Theodore Lent and traveled with him around the world providing hours of entertainment for people who loved to gawk. She had hypertrichosis terminalis, which causes black hair to grow all over the body and gives a deformed ape-like appearance. She died during childbirth, producing an offspring similar to herself that died three days later. Lent, her husband and the father of her child, had his late wife and child mummified where he continued to display them in his traveling show. He was later committed to a mental institution.

Which sums up the RJC pretty well, I think: the shameless exhibition of policies that are better off dead and buried, clinging to the edge of sanity and pretending to relevance.

So go ahead and climb into the clown car with all of your new friends, Norm, juggling the truth and tripping over yourselves to lay claim to the disaster you helped create over your first and last six years in the Senate.

Here's the thing, though, Norm.

The only truly honest job at the RJC circus of horrors is the guy who follows behind the elephants, with a shovel.

UPDATE: Post updated on 1/23 to add link to story on continuation of the recount trial.