August 23, 2017

WaPo's Dana Milbank has a urine-filled column about Bannon and Trump.

Dana Milbank reached all the way back to potty-mouthed Lyndon Johnson for a quote: "it’s probably better to have him inside the tent pissing out, than outside the tent pissing in." (LBJ was talking about J. Edgar Hoover.)

Now, I know from having read Robert A. Caro's "Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson III" that if you want to talk about politics and piss, LBJ is a good source. It's always amusing to whip this out:
“He would piss in the parking lot of the House Office Building,” says Wingate Lucas, a farm boy who represented Fort Worth. “Well, a lot of fellows did that. I did it. But the rest of us would try to hide behind a car or something. Lyndon wouldn’t. He just didn’t care if someone noticed him.” In fact, Lucas says, he seemed to want to be noticed. “I remember once, we were walking across the lot and some [female] secretaries were behind us, and he just stopped and began to take a piss right in front of them.” He would also urinate in front of his own secretaries— and since some of them were attractive young women, this, too, was startling to those who witnessed it. During the years in the House, he had a one-room hideaway office on the top floor of the House Office Building— without a toilet, but with a washbasin in the corner of the room, concealed behind a wood and green-burlap screen. While entertaining guests in the hideaway, or dictating to a secretary, he would pull the screen aside and urinate in the basin... And if ... a colleague came in, Johnson, finishing, would sometimes turn to him with his penis in his hand. Without putting it back in his pants, he would begin a conversation, still holding it, “and shaking it, as if he was showing off,” says one man with whom he did this. He asked another man, “Have you ever seen anything as big as this?”
Yes, LBJ — a Democrat, you know — was awfully crude, so how can Dana Milbank re-aim him so his piss witticism is about Trump and Bannon? Unlike LBJ with Hoover, Trump didn't keep Bannon on the inside.
And now Bannon, who only last week was boasting that his rivals within the administration were “wetting themselves,” is on the outside, fly unzipped.
Milbank must know that he looks crude and childish speaking of Bannon unzipping his fly, because he goes to the trouble of digging up something Bannon once said about peeing. It wasn't about peeing on anybody, just "wetting themselves." That's similar to Obama's famous quote about people in Washington getting "all wee-weed up."

Having established his piss metaphor, Milbank proceeds to describe the headlines at Breitbart.com as "a rhetorical golden shower." Milbank tries to wring comedy out of the piss he's given himself permission to splash everywhere, but he dribbles out stuff like:
Which way the flow goes now in these early days of the post-Bannon White House could well be determinative — not just for the Trump presidency but for the country as it grapples with a reemergence of white supremacists. 
He should have grappled with the flaccid structure of that sentence. He forced me to think about Bannon's cock peeing and the meat of the sentence is "could well be determinative." Didn't his writing class ever mention strong verbs? The closest he gets to piss-related strong language is "flow goes," a dumb unintentional rhyme.

Now, anything he writes that seems pee-related is going to stick out like Jumbo. (That's what LBJ called that thing about which he asked a guy if he'd ever seen anything as big as.) So it's piss I picture when Milbank writes "Can Trump control the wave of racism he has released?" And it's genitalia on view at the mention of "Bannon’s cockamamie idea," and the idea has to do with Blackwater, which seems like something one ought to consult a doctor about.

71 comments:

Unknown said...

Er, it certainly seems that Mr Milibank is obsessed with what some delicately call "water sports." A check of his Internet video viewing would certainly be interesting, IYKWIMAITYD.

traditionalguy said...

A pissing contest sponsored by Budweiser. And the winner has to put the toilet seat down. The days of mere leaking out of the White House are over. From now on the length of time, the arc, and the artistic splatter will all determine a winner.

Saint Croix said...

I really like the use of the verb "dribble" in this one.

Comedy gold!

So to speak.

Kevin said...

...and the meat of the sentence is "could well be determinative." Didn't his writing class ever mention strong verbs?

Strong verbs require actual reporting. As the above illustrates, you can't use them when writing fake news.

Matt Sablan said...

Is it really smart to bring up golden showers a second time to insult Trump? I thought the first had exhausted us of urine jokes.

Mike Sylwester said...

the country as it grapples with a reemergence of white supremacists

I don't perceive that the country is grappling with any reemergence of White supremacists.

Rather, I perceive that our country's Trump-haters have been trying to concoct a perception that White supremacists are reemerging -- and furthermore that Trump has "released" such a reemergence.

iowan2 said...

I wonder if these writers will look back of the 8 years of President Trump and be ashamed of their output?

The establishment has no idea of why the President was elected. If they did, they wouldn't be doubling down on the same tactics.

I have now taken this personally. Milbank is not attempting to denigrate President Trump, or his administration, he's personally insulting me. I don't appreciate it, and will strike back anyway I think will communicate my anger.

Mike Sylwester said...

President Kennedy too had his dick out and waving it around in front of young female staffers in the White House.

iowan2 said...

Kevin I noticed your avitar. AtFirst glance, I thought you pulled out the now iconic, Calvin peeing on something, like a Chevy logo.

Kevin said...

Is it really smart to bring up golden showers a second time to insult Trump? I thought the first had exhausted us of urine jokes.

My first thought was not Trump's dossier, but urine-filled bottles thrown at the cops by Antifa. I don't think that's an image the WAPO wants its readers to be conjuring.

Mike Sylwester said...

As it becomes more and more obvious to even the Trump-haters that RussiaGate is an absolutely bogus issue, the Trump-haters must focus their explanation of Trump's victory on "a reemergence of White racists".

Kevin said...

AtFirst glance, I thought you pulled out the now iconic, Calvin peeing on something, like a Chevy logo.

I prefer Calvin's outrage at recognizing the media's corruption. Drawn long ago yet evermore relevant.

MadisonMan said...

I wonder if these writers will look back of the 8 years of President Trump and be ashamed of their output?

In the bubble they live in? Hardly. They are all slapping each other on the back, applauding their own perceived smarts.

JML said...

A new spin on "yellow Journalism."

Big Mike said...

the flaccid structure of that sentence

@Althouse, you are in rare form this morning!

Ever since Trump's inauguration Democrat politicians have been getting more and more foul mouthed, throwing F-bombs around. I suppose Milbank is trying to keep up, in his own, tiny, way.

Kevin said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Kevin said...

I wonder if these writers will look back of the 8 years of President Trump and be ashamed of their output?

On the contrary. They'll tell their grandchildren how they purposely twisted the narrative to save the world.

We look at this as a shameful demise of the American media brought low by self-serving hacks.

In their minds, Trump gets up on stage and performs the verbal equivalent of siccing dogs on black people, and pointing fire hoses at peaceful counter-protesters. In their minds, rewriting his words to "reveal their true meaning" and not running pictures of Antifa attacking the cops and their fellow journalists, is their finest moment. It is exactly for them as if they marched with King at Selma.

I'm not kidding. That's exactly how they see themselves. They'd much prefer the "Trump is a racist and I resisted" line to "Trump was helped by Russia and I reported that fact".

One leaves them on the sidelines, while the other makes them an active and influential participant in the never-ending struggle for a greater world!

Professional lady said...

I think things are getting pretty desperate in bubble land. Trump simply will not play the game and prostrate himself before the PC altar. So we have to refight the Civil War to the point that a sportscaster of Asian ethnicity named Robert Lee is pulled off a UV game. Talking heads are reduced to making potty allusions. You couldn't make this stuff up.

Darrell said...

Yeah. Trump released the wave of racism. Saying both sides were to blame did it. Saying that there were some good people there did it.

Rob said...

'Scuse me while I whip this out.

Sebastian said...

"Can Trump control the wave of racism he has released?" No. Anti-white racism will grow regardless of what he does.

Ralph L said...

So it's piss I picture
We need a pee pun per word count for this post.

Tank said...

The NY Times, while always to the left, was once a great newspaper. Now they have Dana Milbank as a regular columnist.

Once upon a time they had William Safire, now they have Dana Milbank and Charles Blow !

Ralph L said...

Let Trump roll down like the waters, and Rightness like a never ending stream.

Big Mike said...

@Tank, Milbank writes for the Washington Post . Which also was a great newspaper a long home ago. These days I'm not sure you can even trust the baseball box scores.

Daniel Jackson said...

@Rob, my thoughts exactly. Pity more clips from Blazing Saddles are not in use.

In rare form today Madame is.

Bob Boyd said...

Pissin' in the wind, bettin' on a losing friend
Makin' the same mistakes, we swore we'd never make again
And we're pissin' in the wind, but it's blowing on all our friends
We're gonna sit and grin and tell our grandchildren

That the answer my friend is just pissin' in the wind
The answer is pissin' in the sink - Jerry Jeff Walker

Tank said...

Thanks Biggy, got my morons mixed up.

exhelodrvr1 said...

Just another Democrat dick

Mike Sylwester said...

Milbank's mention of golden showers reminds me of Christopher Steele's dossier.

When Steele was writing his dossier, he was stepping on his own dick when he wrote that a wealthy Russian named Aleksej Gubarev used malware and spyware to hack into Democrats' e-mails.

Now Steele is being sued for defamation by Gubarev. Good.

The Buzzfeed website stepped on its own dick when it published Steele dossiers with its accusations against Gubarev. Buzzfeed too is being sued.

Gubarev's lawsuit against Steele and Buzzfeed will provide the public with much information while Robert "The FBI White-Washer" Mueller strives to hide all explanations of Steele's dossier from the public until after President Trump has been removed from office.

Trump himself should be declassifying and releasing to the public all the US Intelligence Community's information about Steele's dossier.

Trump should begin today by declassifying and releasing to the public all information about efforts within the FBI and any other US intelligence agency to pay Steele.

Enable the public investigate the investigators!

Mike (MJB Wolf) said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Fritz said...

WaPo quietly settles age, race discrimination lawsuit

Ann Althouse said...

"'the flaccid structure of that sentence' @Althouse, you are in rare form this morning!"

It's not that hard.

rhhardin said...

You never stand in the same stream twice.

Flaccid is good when you're streaming. Women screw up the metaphors.

Men stream, women flow.

Michael K said...

"our country's Trump-haters have been trying to concoct a perception that White supremacists are reemerging "

Russ Feingold has settled the matter. All Republicans are white supremacists.

The lesson from Charlottesville is not how dangerous the neo-Nazis are. It is the unmasking of the Republican party leadership. In the wake of last weekend’s horror and tragedy, let us finally, finally rip off the veneer that Trump’s affinity for white supremacy is distinct from the Republican agenda of voter suppression, renewed mass incarceration and the expulsion of immigrants.

See ? Russia didn't work and now we are all Nazis.

I keep wondering if all this hysteria on the left is preparation for the disclosure in the Awan case that Pakistan's ISI has been running the Democrats' foreign policy for 8 years through the IT penetration.

That might be an explanation for Afghanistan and Iran.

MD Greene said...

This guy seems as absorbed with potty talk as a six-year-old boy. Maybe next week he'll call Trump a big poopyhead and think to himself, yeah, I sure showed him.

You put up with this from six-year-olds because they're juveniles. When grown men talk this way, it's juvenile AND vulgar.

And, yes, LBJ was an extremely vulgar man.

rhhardin said...

Male urination really is a kind of accomplishment, an arc of transcendence. A woman merely waters the ground she stands on. Male urination is a form of commentary.

Paglia Sexual Personae p21

virgil xenophon said...

AA@7:45AM

"It's not that hard." LOL. Solid commenting, AA. :)

Mike Sylwester said...

Until just a few months ago, I thought that the word flaccid is pronounced flassid. I was surprised to learn that the correct pronunciation is flaksid.

It's a word that I have heard pronounced only a few times in my life.

Michael K said...

I made the mistake of looking at the Arizona Republic to read about the rally last night in Phoenix.

Why does Arizona have two left wing newspapers? Wow that is another crazy bunch!

virgil xenophon said...

And for those of you who still have any faith left in Rolling Stones' reportage, they reported in summer of 67 that LBJ used to invite reporters into his bathroom and let them interview him while he was sitting on the john..

Steve M. Galbraith said...

It's not that hard.

It's impossible for a man to maintain his stream of consciousness when it's hard.

Okay, I need an editor for that. I'll send it to Milbank and see what he does to it.

Have you ever noticed that while men and women generally have different senses of humor that nearly all women love jokes about penises? At least in my experience.

Thuglawlibrarian said...

Can we go back to the wrestling memes and videos or even the two scoops of ice cream outrage? Please?

exhelodrvr1 said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
exhelodrvr1 said...

"It's not that hard."

Meade, that's just begging for a response.

Hagar said...

We are awash in s flood of racism all right, but t was not Trump who released it!

Known Unknown said...

Hillary suffered from electile dysfuntcion?

Ray - SoCal said...

When will the WP snd NYT understand they are just hurting the reputations with junk writings like this.

Just Deplorable.

Big Mike said...

This country's six worst presidents, from worst to less bad, are [drumroll]:

James Buchanan (argued that secession was illegal, but that it would be illegal for him to do anything about it)

Barack Obama

James Carter

Ulysses Grant (not personally corrupt, but allowed considerable corruption to take place during his administration)

Thomas Woodrow Wilson (segregated what had been an integrated government workforce, arguing that segregation is a "positive benefit to the Negro race," ran for reelection on a platform "he kept us out of war" while secretly angling to get the US into World War I)

Lyndon Baines Johnson (kudos for pushing civil right legislation through Congress, balanced by escalating the war effort in Viet Nam despite knowing that his military strategy could not possibly win)

It's been the sad lot for me and other Baby Boomers to live through the administrations of three of these six. I note in passing that only one of these gentlemen was a Republican (Grant, for those of you too lazy to look it up).

Had Hillary been elected I suspect she would have slotted herself somewhere between Buchanan and Carter, but above or below Obama is a question.

Mike (MJB Wolf) said...

Thank you for reminding us what a disgusting human being and rude man that president Johnson was. People who don't like Trump for what he says or, more likely today for what they are told he must believe, have forgotten all the klansmen, foul-mouthed hicks and other assorted flotsam that the democrat party has foisted on America.

Keep on writing, Dana, you tactless, brainless hack.

HoodlumDoodlum said...

Our Media betters sure are classy, huh?

JAORE said...

"Rather, I perceive that our country's Trump-haters have been trying to concoct a perception that White supremacists are reemerging -- and furthermore that Trump has "released" such a reemergence."

I think [with the destruction of a bust of Lincoln, calls to eradicate Jefferson and Washington as slave holders and idiots like Howard Dean declaring all Republicans racist] we may have reached peak insanity in this one area. At least I am convinced we have reached the point where the more the left squeals, the better it is for the right.

And in other news the statue of Gandhi is being threatened with removal in Ghana. Is this a success in American exports?

PB said...

A urine-filled column from a sack of excrement.

William said...

It's not physiologically possible to take a leak when you have a hard on. This is a metaphor for something, but my innate sense of tact and good taste does not permit me to explore it further.

William said...

The moment has passed. It's not possible for the press to piss on The Donald while they are trying so hard to fuck him over.

Michael K said...

Lyndon Baines Johnson (kudos for pushing civil right legislation through Congress, balanced by escalating the war effort in Viet Nam despite knowing that his military strategy could not possibly win)

After reading Caro's biography of Johnson, I might argue the sequence.

Johnson set off what has been consuming us all for 40 years.

Even Buchanan was less destructive,

James L. Salmon said...

Milbank is a piss poor excuse of a journalist who choose a piss poor metaphor for his piss poor article.

mockturtle said...

He should have grappled with the flaccid structure of that sentence.

:-)

mockturtle said...

Michael K asks: Why does Arizona have two left wing newspapers? Wow that is another crazy bunch!

I have noticed that more conservative cities have libersl newspapers. It's the nature of the beast to play the contrarian. However, I do remember when the Arizona Republic was decidedly conservative. Their motto was Where the Lord is, there is liberty.

buwaya said...

He is a propagandist doing his bit, and even in his case, as with editorial writers, working off a "line" he is given daily.

The point is that they (the media industry and its owners) are youalls enemies, Trump merely being an inconveniently placed agent of that deplorable portion of the popular will.

Wince said...

All this portends the left wing singularity, where all the Trump bugaboos come together.

"White supremacist Russians playing water sports in Trump's hotel room."

Ambulance Blues

You're all just pissin' in the wind
You don't know it but you are.

And there ain't nothin'
like a friend
Who can tell you
you're just pissin'
in the wind.

I never knew a man
could tell so many lies
He had a different story
for every set of eyes
How can he remember
who he's talking to?
Cause I know it ain't me,
and hope it isn't you.

Michael said...

For the record, the inside-the-tent quote was Churchill speaking of including Lord Beaverbrook in the War Cabinet. Much used since (and possibly before), of course.

johns said...

I was at a talk given by JK Galbraith in the late 70s. He told stories about LBJ from his (Galbraith's) time as a White House speech writer.
First, he said LBJ's comment that Gerald Ford "couldn't walk and chew gum" was actually "couldn't fart and chew gum" which is a lot funnier.
second, Galbraith said he was showing a draft of a speech on economic policy that he was quite proud of to LBJ, and Johnson's response was
"You know, Ken, it's kind of like pissing down your leg: you think it's hot stuff, but no one else does."

eLocke said...

Althouse, I think you need to create an "Althouse Loves Metaphors" tag for this.

Michael K said...

" I do remember when the Arizona Republic was decidedly conservative."

I do, too. I hadn't realized they had morphed into the LA Times.

Tyrone Slothrop said...

I'm disappointed in Milbank. He was such a whiz kid.

Jael (Gone Windwalking) said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
holdfast said...

This reminds me a bit of Joe Biden creeping out all the female secret service agents by swimming naked. It also reminds me of dealing with my penis obsessed six-year-old child.

Todd Roberson said...

So ... Is the Russian collusion thing over ... ?

tim in vermont said...

I remember a time when Milbank was funny, and I would look for his by-line. That was a long time ago, before he indulged his partisan preferences in every piece.

Anonymous said...

Public discourse is truly in the toilet.