The Spigot: A lesson in the banality of evil

Dick Cheney is a malignant bag-of-shit, obviously, but you hardly cause the universe to shudder by saying so. On the other hand, there are structures and systems enabling Dick Cheney and many others like him to thrive, and there’s some value in calling them out. Especially since those structures and systems theoretically exist to protect us.

There is, for instance, a very special place in Hell for the likes of Jonathan Karl, erstwhile senior political correspondent for ABC News and a walking-talking embodiment of the banality of evil if ever there was one.

Instead of submitting Cheney to a Voight-Kampff Empathy Test like a good journalist and asking him why he feasts on human suffering, Karl lets his power-boner do the walking as he tries to buddy up to the bored-sounding former VP in the clip below.

It’s a shameless display of authority-worship, fealty, and total self-abasement, but nothing out of the ordinary for U.S. media (and Canada isn’t far behind, as evidenced by these clowns discussing bullshit and fuck-all over a recent game of softball).

The great takeaway from Karl and Dick’s stiff little walkabout is that Cheney is going fishing “in Canada” instead of attending August’s Republican convention, if you consider that big enough news to whoop about.

I wouldn’t go either, but more to the point, Richard B. Cheney didn’t help direct the takeover of the U.S. government by the corporate-military-defense-intelligence-oil-and-shoot-you-in-the-face-sex-offender-complex just so he’d have to spend his twilight years rallying behind Mitt Romney’s injected-molded hair.

He did it so he could stink up Canada and go hand-to-hand with any fish left over from his decades long war on Gaia herself, and all things being equal, he’s earned the right. Karl, on the other hand—he’s just a lickspittle and a toad.

You can follow Adrian Mack's contribution to the lobotomizing techno-nightmare known as Twitter at @AdrianMacked.