Warming Up The New Prick

Poor David Brooks!  He's struggling so valiantly to write something both conservative and intelligent, and he's just finding it to be impossible:

Bill Frist was his high school's class president. He was a quarterback on the football team and a member of the honor society, and lived amid the upper crust of Nashville society. He dated the head cheerleader, and while he was in med school they were engaged to be married.

But while interning in Boston, he met another woman, spent a dinner and a night with her, and fell in love. Two days before his wedding, he flew back to Nashville and broke off his engagement. "Everyone listened carefully to what I said, all the lame explanations I had that were and were not the truth," Frist later wrote, "and they nodded and dealt with it and I went on my way."

I've always admired that anecdote. It took guts to break off the grand wedding that was in the works - to risk alienating everyone he had grown up with for the sake of the woman he had suddenly come to love…

Yes, I admire that anecdote, too.  It did take some guts to wait until two days before your wedding, after your bride to be bought her wedding gown, after her bridesmaids bought their gowns, after the bride's family bought wedding cakes and flowers and food and liquor for guests;  after the bride's family arranged for a church, and a place for a reception, and a band, maybe rented a limo;  after all your friends and family made travel arrangements and bought gifts;  after announcements were published in the newspaper, it certainly did take a lot of guts to wait until two days before your wedding to screw everyone involved except your bride to be.

Her, you just humiliated.  But that takes guts, as well.

But, you know, I'm not making fun of Brooks or Frist because a wedding got called off.  Hell, if the generally accepted statistics about modern American marriages are to be believed, more than half of the weddings that take place should have been called off.

Nothing wrong with that.  Spare yourselves some tortured years, some messy divorce.  Spare some children from being born into a family without much love and hardly any decency or even peace and quiet.

Nothing wrong with that.

But what makes Frist especially admirable is that he had the guts to avoid that those kind of painful entanglements two days before his wedding.  Because he met another woman. 

That's true grit, baby.

What's even more admirable about Frist is that just before his wedding, he had the guts to be out there still dating!  Hey, Brooks!  I admire that myself!  I mean, just because you're engaged to be married is no reason a man shouldn't continue to test his commitment.  The only way to know for sure if you should call off your wedding is to continue to date right down to the bachelor party!

And maybe bang a stripper the night of.

Yes, that took guts.  It took guts to "risk alienating everyone he had grown up with for the sake of the woman he had suddenly come to love"--not to mention the guts it took to humiliate the woman he had promised to love!  What a guy!  How compassionate!

For old fashioned family values, that little story ranks right up there with Newt Gringrich handing his wife divorce papers while she's laying in a hospital bed with cancer.

Shit, no wonder traditional family values conservatives despise Bill Clinton!  Clinton, aside from being a first rate president, all that guy managed to do was to keep his little family together for about thirty years--through politics and the simple failings that more people than we'd like to admit suffer from.  What a pussy!

If he'd have had any guts, he would have dumped Hillary with a baby on her lap for a younger woman in a heartbeat, like Newt Gingrich, or Rush Limbaugh, or Ronald Reagan.  Sticking it out, no matter what problems you have in your marriage is for degenerate liberals.

For compassionate, old time, family values conservatives, putting "me" first shows guts, no matter how many friends, family, or loved ones you have to hurt or alienate to do it.

Frist's motto in his high school yearbook was, "But I don't like to rest." He excelled at everything and noted, "Not surprisingly, with the family emphasis on self-worth, I longed to be first in everything, to be king of the hill, the grammar school capo di capo. I imagine I was quite insufferable."

Hey, Fristy, you weren't just imagining it, baby!  You really are quite insufferable.

We won't even remark on Frist identifying excellence with the mafia.  We'll just let his record in the Senate speak for itself.

There were two things Frist was not: political and ideologically conservative. He barely voted before he ran for Senate…

Sometimes in their quests to perform greater acts of service, people lose contact with their animating passion. And the irony is that the earlier Frist, the Tennessee Republican, the brilliant and passionate health care expert, is exactly the person the country could use.

Oh, yeah.  The country sure could use a guy like Bill Frist--a guy with the guts to dump his fiance two days before the wedding.  A guy who had so much love and concern for his country, hell, he barely even voted before he ran for the Senate. 

The country sure could use a guy whose every big decision and action seems to be the answer to the question, "Hey, what's best for Bill Frist?"  A guy who's not afraid to hurt or abandon or alienate anyone to do what's best for Bill Frist.  A guy who's not afraid to be insufferable.

That is exactly the kind of guy this country needs.  Just as soon as we're done with the guy who's not afraid to hurt or kill, or lie to do what's best for George W. Bush.

Comments

[Margaret]

I don't understand why the Republicans are supposedly the party of family and moral values. How stupid or naive are most people? Don't they read these people's life histories?

[Jerry]

Hey, Frist, that's "capo di tutti capi." But you wouldn't know that, would you, what with never associating with low-life crooks, always hanging with the finest exemplars of all that is wholesome in America?

[Jerry]

...and not to mention his psychic, viewing-at-a-distance diagnostic powers! Wrong though they may be.

[Jim]

Thanks for sharing the story about Frist. I didn't know the engagement story but it will be great info to be armed with the next time one of my Republicans friends starts in on me about how wonderful he is. I really can't stand the guy and I would love to see him run for President and get beat.

[cookie]

What a jerk. First the cats, now this. He is so going to hell.

[cookie]

Silly me. I neglected to comment on the title of this post. "Warming up the New Prick" sounds kind of naughty.

Especially since I'm not sure if Brooks or Frist is the prick in question. Please clarify.

[DA]

Brooks REALLY wrote that crap, I went lookin', and sure enough. Has Brooks developed a crack or meth habit, maybe?

Wowzers, Tomlinson, over at CPB, mustta gotten a Woodrow readin' that Brook's drivel.

Anybody have Brook's fax # at the NYT? He's GOTTA read Ricky's post, lmao! ;-)

[cookie]

Here's his email: dabrooks@nytimes.com

Me and Dave, we go way back.

[ricky]

Frist is the new prick. Brooks is just a limp dick, gazing adoringly at the War Preznit's bulging flight suit crotch.

The Gee Oh Pee has a terrible problem right now. Their cupboard is bare. Ahnold is a flop in California. Every Republican in the House is far too repulsive to put on a national stage. And every one involved in the Bush administration is tainted with the awful stench of total, mindblowing incompetence.

The Gee Oh Pee has no purty mouth to run in front of its awful agenda.

They're floating Fristy as a possible candidate. They're trying him out. But he's such an awful person, and such a flawed candidate that turds like Brooks are trying to shape Frist's appalling lack of humanity into something resembling character.

Like they did with Bush.

The old prick. Fristy, some are hoping, will be the new prick.