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I don't know about anyone else, but the image that popped into my head this week was Ted Cruz drunk in some dive of a karaoke bar, doing his version of "I Fought The Law, And The Law Won."
While it may seem like that headline refers to yet another poll released which proves that Congress is held in lower esteem than dead bodies (dead bodies are actually now enjoying a resurgence of support, due to the proliferation of zombies in pop culture), it is in fact nothing short of literal. The U.S. Botanic Garden is currently experiencing record-breaking crowds eager to see -- or, more accurately, to smell -- the blooming "corpse flower" (or amorphophallus titanum, which -- no lie! -- translates to "giant, misshapen penis"). We merely note the event for those in the D.C. area who are inclined to visit the blossom before it shrivels up, and not to inspire any jokes in the comments or anything. I mean, how could you possibly joke about a corpse-like stench... the Nation's Capital... or "giant, misshapen penises"?
The news that Liz Cheney is going to run for a Senate seat in Wyoming has certainly provoked a number of interesting reactions from the inside-the-Beltway set. From the Right, there has been consternation over Cheney primarying a sitting Republican, which mostly focuses on the unseemliness of it all. From the Left, there has been a mixture that I would call "horrified fascination" over the prospects of Dick Cheney's daughter sitting in the upper chamber of Congress (that's the horror part), tempered by the unrestrained glee of watching an internal Republican knife-fight. One thing's for certain, this will be one of the closest-watched primary races in the country next year.
In this week's news, former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher died. As a result, Cher fans got a scare. The dangers of hashtag parsing -- because "nowthatchersdead" can be broken up two ways. The other pop culture result of the "Iron Lady's" demise was (you can't make this stuff up) the song "Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead" rocketing to the top of the British charts, even though it is three-quarters of a century old. Make of it what you will.
With that out of the way, we're going to take a quick overview of what the media considers the big stories of the week, and we're going to end up in the Talking Points section with all the stories you may have missed due to the media being distracted by this stuff, just for fun.
Welcome to the 250th Friday Talking Points column!
Our column's subtitle this week is a silent homage to guitarist Alvin Lee of the band Ten Years After, who sadly died this past week. Anyone who has seen the movie Woodstock knows of Lee's incredible talent on the electric guitar, and we just wanted to begin by noting that Alvin Lee is "Goin' Home" for the last time. Requiescat In Pace.
Welcome back to our annual year-end awards column!
Welcome to the seventh annual homage (which sounds so much nicer than "blatant ripoff," don't you think?) to the television show The McLaughlin Group, since they have the most extensive year-end award category list of anyone around. Since "extensive" is my middle name (well, not really, although I do tend to wander off into the parenthetical wilderness at times, do I not?), such a long list fits right in here.
While the entire political punditry world is caught up in yet another horserace -- this time around, the "who's up/who's down on the fiscal cliff talks" debate -- something astounding is happening within the ranks of the Republican Party. Because major tenets of the party's faith seem to be crumbling. The bedrock ideology of the party is revealing itself, in multiple ways, of having been built on sand all along. These are all rather polite ways of calling the Republicans enormous hypocrites, I realize. But when the shoe fits, the shoe fits, so I offer no apologies for doing so.