BAKER STREET

by Eric J Baker

I was all excited to review the new Ashley Judd primetime drama, Missing, until I realized I’d actually have to watch it. Because how can a show about an ex-CIA agent turned MILF tracking down her kidnapped son possibly work? If she finds her son, the show ends. If she doesn’t find her son, she looks like an idiot.

I still love me some Ashley Judd (I watched Twisted in the theater, for Christ’s sake). In fact, she’s the most appealing Judd in the entertainment business, and that includes Jud from Oklahoma, the world’s most boring musical. But I just can’t get enthused for a TV series with plot inertia built into the premise. Maybe you should review it and let me do the reading for once. Could you be more selfish and lazy?

Besides, if I want to see idiocy, I can watch the freak show that is Sarah Palin’s retarded cousin, Rick Santorum, trying to win 2% of the most extreme Republican primary votes in the country. He’s like that oily, creepy, slightly effeminate kid in your old neighborhood whose mother made him wear black dress clothes in middle of July and who carried a little box around for weeks without telling you what was in it until you punched him and took it, only to discover it contained the desiccated body of a rat, which he found inside a rusty Kenmore refrigerator that someone had dumped in the woods… And now he’s running for president.

Every day that chucklehead spews something so absurd that I can only assume he’s trying to win a bet. I imagine him challenging Rick Perry six months ago: “Twenty bucks says that, by March, I can make you look sane in retrospect.” It’s as if he is trying to be the least electable candidate in U.S. history.

To wit:

Near the end of last month, Santorum said John F. Kennedy’s 1960 pledge to respect the separation of church and state made him “want to puke.” Fundies love to point out there is no explicit “separation clause” in the Constitution. True. Just like there is no mention of Jesus, God, or Christianity or any implication that our nation is a theocracy. Puke away, Rick.

About a week before that, Santorum told some drooling halfwits who came to see him in Ohio that President Obama leads with “a phony theology.” He must have been referring to that Constitution thingie, which doesn’t mention God or Jesus. Why do people who take their cues from the Bible claim to be staunch defenders of the Constitution, anyway? The two documents are nothing alike and often contradict each other. In fact, at least three of the Ten Commandments violate the first amendment.

In January, Santorum said that women who have been impregnated through rape should not be allowed to abort the pregnancy because said rape brought “a gift of human life” and that victims “should accept what God has given you.” You know, every year, I ask Santa Claus to throw me on the ground, beat me, rip my clothes off, violate my body at knifepoint, fill me with shame, and render me unable to enjoy romantic relationships for the next 10 years while I experience terrifying nightmares and spend tens of thousands of dollars in therapy to put my life back together. It turns out I was asking for that gift from the wrong imaginary figure. I should have been asking God.

Only last week the former senator (thanks a lot, Pennsylvania) said that carbon dioxide was not a pollutant because it’s good for flora. His exact quote is, “The dangers of carbon dioxide? Tell it to a plant.” The thought of someone so fundamentally stupid trying to become president of the world’s most powerful nation is scary. Luckily, China doesn’t want Rick Santorum.

A hallmark of religious zealotry, regardless of what god is being worshipped, is hatred of science and reason, because literal interpretation of any religious text is unreasonable. The refusal to change one’s views in the face of irrefutable, contrary facts is delusion and borders on self-inflicted schizophrenia. I’m talking to you, Republican primary voters who pulled the lever for Rick. Trust me: You don’t want to breathe carbon dioxide, even if I want you to.

Santorum’s latest pledge, via his website, is to banish pornography on the Internet and TV, as well as on home video. He cites “a wealth of research” showing that watching porn causes “profound brain changes.” This is the same candidate who, according to the home page of the same website, promotes economic freedom and growth, not more government. So what are all those guys with giant dicks going to do for a living now? Steal our women? Thanks a lot, asshole.

Back in 2008, prior to the election, a friend who had been a neo-con political science professor and worked for Bush’s campaign in 2000 said, over potato skins and beer at TGI Friday’s, that he was voting for Obama. Before I was able to call a doctor to schedule myself a hearing test, he clarified that he didn’t like the upstart Democrat, but the state of the GOP was so pathetic that he wanted to help burn the party down. “If the best they can do is McCain and Romney,” he said, “I want them to get trounced so they realize they have to get their act together.”

If this sounds startlingly similar to Jon Avalon’s Daily Beast piece that Killough quoted yesterday, it is, only it happened four years ago. This means two things: My buddy is way ahead of the curve when it comes to politics, and mainstream Republicans should be crying in their soup.

So my friend got the trouncing he wanted, but in the middle of the melee, some of the crazies managed to escape. And thanks to them, the current crop of GOP candidates is so dreadful that the 2008 batch looks… not as dreadful. Remember way back in 2000, when candidate George W. Bush came across as a pleasant simpleton who had no business running for the nation’s highest office? He’s probably looking at 2012’s crew and thinking, “Jesus, is these guys some kind of an idiots, or what? Heh heh.” And with Romney, Gingrich, and Santorum as our choices, Bush’s father is looking more like FDR every day.

The only thing needed to turn this primary season into a truly farcical reality show is Sarah Palin jumping into the race. Then we could do a crossover episode of Missing, in which Ashley Judd causes profound brain changes in Rick Santorum by kicking him in the head, pissed-off, ex-CIA-agent-cum-MILF style.

That I would watch.