Great Man My Ass!!

"Heard your songs of freedom and man forever stripped,
Acting out his folly while his back is being whipped.
Like a slave in orbit, he's beaten 'til he's tame,
All for a moment's glory and it's a dirty, rotten shame"

           Bob Dylan, "Dirge"


If you want to read about someone pallin' around with actual terrorists, you need look no further than the new investigative piece by John Dinges in The Huffington Post. The article reveals, for the first time, John McCain's dirty little secret. That is, his friendly, private, undisclosed meeting back in 1985 with General Augusto Pinochet, the fascist military dictator of Chile.

What's especially remarkable is that McCain, a man who endured torture himself during his time as a P.O.W. in Vietnam, would go out of his way to meet with a dictator whose regime was known for one thing above all else: Torturing people to death.

A Hero In What Way Exactly?

Is it just me or is all this constant talk of John McCain as "The Great American Hero" more than just a little bit ridiculous? Not only did he do nothing to earn the title, he actually did things most people would consider to be the antithesis of heroic. I mean, seriously, since when did slaughtering civilians make you a great hero?

A Legacy For The Ages As Bush Wraps Up Title Of "Worst President Ever" In New Poll Of American Historians

Talk about a legacy! Talk about a performance! Talk about a Presidency! After years and years of hard work, dedication to his own vision, passionate defense of his own personal war, brilliant fear-mongering initiatives and, let's not forget, brave indifference, if not outright disdain, for domestic and worldwide public opinion, George W. Bush has finally done it. He's incontrovertibly clinched the title. He's made his own distinguished mark on History. Yes, people, as you may have already heard, the man now has an insurmountable lead in the race for the title of Worst President Ever and from this day forward no one can deny him his rightful place in History. Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, Fillmore, Pierce, Harding, Hoover and Nixon all put up a damn good fight, but in the end none of them could compete with the complete disaster, horrific train wreck and inane, inept, ideocracy/idiotcracy that is the Bush Presidency. But, hey, don't take my word for it, take the word of the 109 American historians who were recently surveyed on the topic by the History News Network.

And next in our continuing series of Famous Yet Pathetic Guys (or Guys You're Supposed To Think Of As Great But Who Were Actually Scumbags), let me present Charlemagne and the story of his God-like wrath in the name of his beloved Prince Of Peace.

"I am strongly in favour of using poisonous gas against uncivilised tribes ... to spread a lively terror"

      - Winston Churchill (May 1919)

Recently the BBC aired something they called "Great Britons", a series of shows featuring a contest in which viewers could vote for their own "Greatest Briton of All Time". The winner, as you might have guessed: Winston Churchill. I suppose it all comes down to how you define "great", because he certainly could be called a great big this and that, but the BBC couldn't really come right out and use language like that, now could they? Personally, I just want to know for which reasons exactly he was chosen.