The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

‘Dude, I’m So Wasted’

Posted on | March 10, 2010 | 21 Comments

It was nearly midnight in D.C., and I was sitting on the patio of the Dubliner with my friends Victor Morton and Pete Parisi of The Washington Times, when I saw Sean Pean walking past on F Street.

“Dude, that’s Sean Pean,” I said.

Pete and Victor turned to look, but Penn had his back to us, and they seemed doubtful of my celebrity-spotting ability.

“No, seriously, it’s him,” I said.

Evidently, while we had been enjoying our post-deadline refreshments at the Dubliner, Penn had been next door at Kelly’s Irish Times and was now departing, walking  eastward toward North Capitol Street. A gaggle of women who had been at the Irish Times caught up with Penn, and he stopped to have his picture taken with them.

I had my camera in my pocket, and didn’t want to miss the opportunity to add Penn to the “known associates” category (i.e., like former DNC chief Terry McAuliffe), but the Dubliner patio is surrounded by an iron fence, that separated me from the target.

I began preparations for scaling the fence when a woman sitting on the patio said, “No! Don’t try it.” The fence, about 3-1/2 feet high,  is topped with iron spikes, and the woman was obviously concerned that while going over the fence, I might impale myself in a most unpleasant way.

Indeed, on second glance, there was a real possibility of an accidental orchiectomy, and so I returned to the table with Victor and Pete — disappointed, but not disconsolate. Penn continued to the corner and caught a cab.

“You should Tweet this,” I said to Victor. He grabbed his iPhone to send out this message:

Was 10 feet from Sean Penn outside DC bar, had clear 2nd Am. view; all I did was hit my shoe against my head and say “dude, I’m SO WASTED”

Perhaps that reference to the Second Amendment was a bit hostile, but we’re professional journalists, after all, and we know what Sean Penn thinks of journalists:

First Amendment be damned . . . If Oscar-winning actor Sean Penn had his way, any journalist who called Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez a dictator would quickly find himself behind bars.
Penn, appearing on HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher” on Friday, defended Chavez . . .
“Every day, this elected leader is called a dictator here, and we just accept it, and accept it” said Penn, winner of two Best Actor Academy Awards. “And this is mainstream media, who should — truly, there should be a bar by which one goes to prison for these kinds of lies.”

Chavez is a Marxist thug, and Sean Penn is a ginormous douchebag. These are simply the neutral, objective facts.

My Big Day in D.C.

Perhaps this is as good a place as any to describe my experiences Tuesday, which were kind of weird. My plan was to go down to the Heritage Foundation for their weekly blogger briefing, just to show up and let my D.C. friends know I hadn’t fallen off the planet.

My 10:30 a.m. departure from Hagerstown would have put me in D.C. by noon, but I stopped at Sheetz to grab a sandwich, gas up the 2004 KIA Optima and put air in the right front tire. (Old tire with a slow leak. New tire, $75. Just sayin’ . . .) So it was past 11 before I got out onto I-70 and switched the radio to WARK 1490 AM.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?

Glenn Beck was on the radio, issuing a groveling apology to Michelle Malkin, but there was no context — Beck just rambled on, abasing himself, without saying exactly what he’d done that necessitated the apology. Rolling down the interstate at late-for-a-meeting speed, I grabbed my cellphone and started calling friends, trying to find out what this was about.

Eventually, of course, I discovered that Malkin and Beck had gone ’round over Beck’s coverage of Rep. Eric Massa:


Glenn Beck & Michelle Malkin disagree over Eric Massa
by therightscoop

Ed Morrissey at Hot Air and Michelle Malkin give the background, and there’s more at Memeorandum.

This is one of the conundrums of blogging. To stay up-to-date, I have to be online all the time, but that would mean never leaving the basement to go places and meet people. Just in the time it took me Tuesday morning to get ready for my D.C. trip, I’d missed this story, and now I was going to be out on the road  and offline — for several hours, because I seem to be the only person in the world who hasn’t gotten a Blackberry or an iPhone yet. 

En route to D.C., I got a call from Rob Ryan, spokesman for Doug Hoffman’s congressional campaign. Hoffman had announced his plan to run in NY23 again, but I hadn’t had time to blog it, because I’d been getting ready for this D.C. trip. See what I mean?

Blues Buddies and Tax Moochers

So I kept rolling, down I-70 to I-270 and onto the Beltway to the GW Parkway, across the bridge and up Constitution Avenue, over to Columbus Circle and past Union Station to Massachusetts Avenue, and I pulled up to the curb near the Union Pub across from the Heritage Foundation and parked illegally. As I was getting out of my car, who did I see on the sidewalk? D.C.’s hottest young blues pianist, Ian Walters of SwampKeepers fame.

“Dude, you here for the blogger briefing?” I asked.

“No, just waiting for Lisa,” said Walters, referring to CPAC Director Lisa DePasquale, who was inside at the briefing. During CPAC, Ian is media coordinator, in charge of setting up “Radio Row,” etc. — a very important job. But here he was, a vagabond drifter loitering on Massachusetts Avenue.

“Just make sure they don’t tow my car,” I said, as I jaywalked over to Heritage. I entered the bloggers briefing — now nearing its conclusion — helped myself to coffee and a free sandwich and sat next to Lisa, who has an iPhone and announced via Twitter:

uh oh, @rsmccain just showed up at #tbb!

You see that #tbb is the Twitter hashtag for “The Bloggers Briefing.” Rob Bluey was presiding, and I noticed several familiar faces around the table, including Tabitha Hale of FreedomWorks.

Perfect. I’d been planning to go by FreedomWorks after the Heritage briefing, as I needed to put a bug in Tabitha’s ear about Chris Cassone playing the April 15 Tax Day Tea Party. Now I’d be able to save myself the extra trip, with the traffic and parking hassles on Pennsylvania Avenue.

Also at the briefing was my old buddy John Berlau of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, who handed me a printout of his recent op-ed at BigGovernment.com: “Proxy Access: The Obama-Dodd-Alinsky Shareholder Jujitsu. Interesting stuff there. And there was more interesting stuff, a Heritage study by William Beach called, “The 2009 Index of Dependence on Government, which included this graphic:

Click here to see the chart full-size. In 2008, there were 48 million IRS tax returns with zero federal tax liability, so that more than a third of all Americans are getting a free ride. Uh, including me — because I’ve got six kids and blogging hasn’t yet become the lucrative gold mine of a six-figure income. But maybe if you hit the tip jar, we can get me off Uncle Sam’s tax moochers list. I’m just sayin’ . . .

Well, the rest of this story will have to wait for my memoirs. Events of Tuesday afternoon caused an unexpected furor at the media-gossip blog Fishbowl DC this morning, and I suppose there’s no point disputing these anonymous sources who seem to know everything: “Absolutely no way.”

Whatever. At least Sean Penn hasn’t put me in prison yet.

Category: Celebrities, Foreigners, Glenn Beck, Hollywood, Michelle Malkin, Neutral Objective Journalism, Tea Party

Comments

21 Responses to “‘Dude, I’m So Wasted’”

  1. Prophet Mohammed
    March 10th, 2010 @ 4:56 pm

    You are such a tourist McCain. Haven’t you cultivated that cool non-pulsed reaction of the fourth estate yet? What is this–TMZ? Hell, you guys only get fired up when there is an open bar and free food, not some B lister stumbling out of a bar like Jeff Spicoli.

  2. Prophet Mohammed
    March 10th, 2010 @ 11:56 am

    You are such a tourist McCain. Haven’t you cultivated that cool non-pulsed reaction of the fourth estate yet? What is this–TMZ? Hell, you guys only get fired up when there is an open bar and free food, not some B lister stumbling out of a bar like Jeff Spicoli.

  3. Robert Birch
    March 10th, 2010 @ 5:14 pm

    LOL, you are a comedian Mr.McCain. All these Hollywood actors supporting Hugo Chavez is freaking joke…that guy’s country is going down the tubes quicker than Montezuma Revenge!

    As a follow up, check out this…
    http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100028966/the-majesty-and-usefulness-of-recycling-captured-in-an-exquisite-hand-crafted-childs-toy/

    Please help me promote my Rabbit Y’all. It’s a green job parody…this link explains it well http://tinyurl.com/1337green

  4. Robert Birch
    March 10th, 2010 @ 5:14 pm

    LOL, you are a comedian Mr.McCain. All these Hollywood actors supporting Hugo Chavez is freaking joke…that guy’s country is going down the tubes quicker than Montezuma Revenge!

    As a follow up, check out this…
    http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100028966/the-majesty-and-usefulness-of-recycling-captured-in-an-exquisite-hand-crafted-childs-toy/

    Please help me promote my Rabbit Y’all. It’s a green job parody…this link explains it well http://tinyurl.com/1337green

  5. Robert Birch
    March 10th, 2010 @ 12:14 pm

    LOL, you are a comedian Mr.McCain. All these Hollywood actors supporting Hugo Chavez is freaking joke…that guy’s country is going down the tubes quicker than Montezuma Revenge!

    As a follow up, check out this…
    http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100028966/the-majesty-and-usefulness-of-recycling-captured-in-an-exquisite-hand-crafted-childs-toy/

    Please help me promote my Rabbit Y’all. It’s a green job parody…this link explains it well http://tinyurl.com/1337green

  6. Red
    March 10th, 2010 @ 1:10 pm

    Sean Penn will remain at most an anecdote in my memory as ‘Jeff Spicolli’.

  7. Red
    March 10th, 2010 @ 6:10 pm

    Sean Penn will remain at most an anecdote in my memory as ‘Jeff Spicolli’.

  8. Prophet Mohammed
    March 10th, 2010 @ 6:13 pm

    That Massa is a piece of work. What Navy did he serve in? No wonder Massa loved the Navy. Chalk up a point to Michelle Malkin on this one. Sorry Glenn, you got snookered.

  9. Prophet Mohammed
    March 10th, 2010 @ 6:13 pm

    That Massa is a piece of work. What Navy did he serve in? No wonder Massa loved the Navy. Chalk up a point to Michelle Malkin on this one. Sorry Glenn, you got snookered.

  10. Prophet Mohammed
    March 10th, 2010 @ 1:13 pm

    That Massa is a piece of work. What Navy did he serve in? No wonder Massa loved the Navy. Chalk up a point to Michelle Malkin on this one. Sorry Glenn, you got snookered.

  11. Cakeman
    March 10th, 2010 @ 8:26 pm

    On Beck and Malkin

    Massa has a gun in his ribs. We don’t see it but we can sense it. He can’t say he has a gun in his ribs either. And the gun is making sure he doesn’t do the Big Reveal, whatever that might be…and what Beck was gambling on. That’s what happened on Beck. Unfortunately Massa must have used the fact that he IS in up to his ears and would reveal something as a way to get on the show. I actually think he sounded ready for the breakdown lane at times…even suicidal.

    Michelle has it together and is not a whore for good tv as Beck is. Beck is selling everything that isn’t tied down, if you haven’t noticed. And I was the hugest Beck fan…he inspired me. With the Wilders smear, the Lincoln Memorial march (taking the air out of 9-11-2010 and Freedomworks) and now this, he is losing his importance with me at least.

  12. Cakeman
    March 10th, 2010 @ 8:26 pm

    On Beck and Malkin

    Massa has a gun in his ribs. We don’t see it but we can sense it. He can’t say he has a gun in his ribs either. And the gun is making sure he doesn’t do the Big Reveal, whatever that might be…and what Beck was gambling on. That’s what happened on Beck. Unfortunately Massa must have used the fact that he IS in up to his ears and would reveal something as a way to get on the show. I actually think he sounded ready for the breakdown lane at times…even suicidal.

    Michelle has it together and is not a whore for good tv as Beck is. Beck is selling everything that isn’t tied down, if you haven’t noticed. And I was the hugest Beck fan…he inspired me. With the Wilders smear, the Lincoln Memorial march (taking the air out of 9-11-2010 and Freedomworks) and now this, he is losing his importance with me at least.

  13. Cakeman
    March 10th, 2010 @ 3:26 pm

    On Beck and Malkin

    Massa has a gun in his ribs. We don’t see it but we can sense it. He can’t say he has a gun in his ribs either. And the gun is making sure he doesn’t do the Big Reveal, whatever that might be…and what Beck was gambling on. That’s what happened on Beck. Unfortunately Massa must have used the fact that he IS in up to his ears and would reveal something as a way to get on the show. I actually think he sounded ready for the breakdown lane at times…even suicidal.

    Michelle has it together and is not a whore for good tv as Beck is. Beck is selling everything that isn’t tied down, if you haven’t noticed. And I was the hugest Beck fan…he inspired me. With the Wilders smear, the Lincoln Memorial march (taking the air out of 9-11-2010 and Freedomworks) and now this, he is losing his importance with me at least.

  14. TR Sterling
    March 11th, 2010 @ 12:31 am

    RSM,
    1) You have Smitty so synchronize your monitor time?
    2) The only blogger capable of being everywhere at once is Pam Geller.
    3) (goes into Jackson5 song: Got to be there In the morn-nning, When she says hello to the world…) LOL wood eye, wood eye.
    4) Beck has his 50 Mil. same as Howard Stern (more or less) I would never follow after Howard Stern and I dont see that Beck is much different.

  15. TR Sterling
    March 10th, 2010 @ 7:31 pm

    RSM,
    1) You have Smitty so synchronize your monitor time?
    2) The only blogger capable of being everywhere at once is Pam Geller.
    3) (goes into Jackson5 song: Got to be there In the morn-nning, When she says hello to the world…) LOL wood eye, wood eye.
    4) Beck has his 50 Mil. same as Howard Stern (more or less) I would never follow after Howard Stern and I dont see that Beck is much different.

  16. Robert Stacy McCain
    March 11th, 2010 @ 1:03 am

    You have Smitty so synchronize your monitor time?

    Alas, TR, Smitty has a day job that prevents him from blogging except in the evening and on weekends.

  17. Robert Stacy McCain
    March 11th, 2010 @ 1:03 am

    You have Smitty so synchronize your monitor time?

    Alas, TR, Smitty has a day job that prevents him from blogging except in the evening and on weekends.

  18. Robert Stacy McCain
    March 10th, 2010 @ 8:03 pm

    You have Smitty so synchronize your monitor time?

    Alas, TR, Smitty has a day job that prevents him from blogging except in the evening and on weekends.

  19. Michael
    March 11th, 2010 @ 2:01 pm

    To be fair, even those who are paying 0 withholding are still paying social security and medicare taxes which amounts to 15% of their wages including the employer contribution.

  20. Michael
    March 11th, 2010 @ 9:01 am

    To be fair, even those who are paying 0 withholding are still paying social security and medicare taxes which amounts to 15% of their wages including the employer contribution.

  21. dustbury.com » Yet another taxing situation
    March 12th, 2010 @ 6:13 pm

    […] everything.” Not much has changed in the forty years since, though Stacy McCain observes that a smaller percentage of us seems to be paying them: In 2008, there were 48 million IRS tax returns with zero federal tax liability, so that more than […]