The Illuminated Donkey

long-awaited return of the Ken Goldstein of the Week

the grand opening of the Ultra-Swanky-Deluxe KGP Superstore

There is a weird respect among Washington journalists for presidential candidates who come before their most loyal supporters and insult them. In 1992, candidate Bill Clinton spoke before a black audience at a meeting of Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Coalition. Rapper Sister Souljah, who had spoken to the group the evening before, had recently told The Washington Post that blacks would be justified in killing whites. Clinton criticized her for those comments, angering his audience and insulting Jackson.

The move cemented Clinton's reputation as a centrist Democrat who was not held hostage to his party's interest groups. The media cheered, and the phrase "Sister Souljah moment" was born. In subsequent campaigns, George W. Bush won praise when he criticized House Republicans for trying to "balance their budget on the backs of the poor," while pundits swooned for John McCain when he said his party was bought and paid for by corporate special interests.

So when the six Democratic presidential candidates spoke before a core Democratic interest group, NARAL Pro-Choice America, Tuesday night, one question that hung in the air of the Omni Shoreham ballroom was, which Democrat would "Sister Souljah" NARAL? The answer was nobody.

The first blogger or group to bestow just about any kind of award or honor on us here at The Donk will be rewarded with a three-dollar...oh, let's just call it a processing fee, as well as some other cool trinkets from Donk HQ.

(from Bruce McCall's "Saddam's Surprisingly Sentimental Last Will")

It is my long-standing desire, and certainly not part of some diabolical escape ploy, that my valuable private collection of false Iranian, Panamanian, Paraguayan, and Syrian passports [...] be immediately FedExed to the address written on the scrap of paper stuck between pages 201 and 202 of the paperback edition of "Hollywood Wives" in the private library of my office suite at the Hall of the Heroes, Baghdad [...].

If you're a real Crack Aficionado, chances are you're a busy man. You're out there making the deals, changing the world. You work hard and you play harder. And let's face it: if you're going to walk down to the corner with five bucks in your pocket, it's not gonna be to buy some magazine. CrackAficionado.com is your solution.

Jersey City is a town of ghosts. It is a shanty town of old ideas and dreams. It is an opportunistic spurt that grew like a stalagmite, a deposit from the seeping drip of commerce across the river. As I waited for the light rail to take me to Newport, I could not help but feel the emptiness of the place. Canyons of office buildings of recent build. In their desolate, hurried growth they looked like cardboard boxes made to resemble stone and marble. The storefronts, empty. People milled about in huddled clusters, never straying far from the doors they came out of.

"Denunciations of the invitation to the poet [Tom Paulin] began surfacing among several conservative Internet bloggers — among them Andrew Sullivan and opinionjournal.com, the online counterpart to the Wall Street Journal editorial page."

So, you me be asking, would it be okay if I cut my workout in half today, since I'm not really into it and American Idol is almost on and you can kind of count the walk to the exercise room as exercise since, you know, I'm walking and I promise to exercise twice as hard tomorrow?

The answer is: Sure, what the hell do I care, it's your life.

The Chelsea in the Sixties seemed to combine two atmospheres: a scary and optimistic chaos which predicted the hip future, and at the same time the feel of a massive, old-fashioned, sheltering family. That at least was the myth one nursed in one's mind, but like all myths it did not altogether stand inspection. The idea of family had limits. Unless one was drugged out, or spending one's days putting paint on canvas, words on paper, chisels on stone, or singing operatic arias at the piano, one found it difficult to hold [hotel owner] Stanley [Bard]'s attention. In fact, I cannot recall a single real businessman-guest, although some of that type may have frequented the regular all-night card games, like the one which caused a bit of a rumble when two hold-up men stationed themselves outside the room and robbed the happy winners as they emerged into the hallway.

But such mishaps were rare and would be denied by the management even though it gave the place a certain panache, or relief from real life's ordinary constraints. It was not, one thought, that Stanley cultivated weird people, potheaded layabouts and some extraordinary as well as morbidly futile artistic types, but simply that he seemed to think these dreamers were normal; it was the regular people who made him uneasy.

Curious how many more calories you'll burn off if the exercise room TV is showing something decent like The Simpsons or Jeopardy! rather than some blah-blah-blah show like the Nightly Business Report on PBS or Lou Dobbs or something, not that you couldn't ask the guy on the treadmill if you can change it but he seems kind of into the whole treadmill thing and you don't want to break his stride, so to speak?

The answer is: At least four-to-five times as many calories!

(We pick up the story as Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, accompanied by 40 Italian journalists, has landed in Libya for a one-day visit.)

As Berlusconi was whisked off to Qaddafi's headquarters in Bab el-Azziziya, the attendant journalists followed aboard a government-supplied bus. [...] Once admitted to the inner compound, the journalists were led across the grounds to the three-story ruins of Qaddafi's old home. Across its shattered facade, floodlights illuminated an enormous banner touting something called the Miss Net World beauty contest, with its hopeful slogan: ''Beauty Will Save the World.'' [...] Rather than being off somewhere hammering out a deal with Berlusconi, Qaddafi had apparently spent much of the evening chatting with the beauty contestants in his Bedouin tent.

''It was really great,'' exclaimed Tecca Zendik, a statuesque 19-year-old from Southern California who represented the United States in the pageant. ''He was very nice and really humble. They had put out this special chair for him, but instead he sat in this ordinary plastic chair like everyone else.'' ''And the tent was really amazing,'' added Miss United Kingdom, Lucy Layton. ''It had these beautiful carpets and these silk tapestries on the walls. It was like something out of 'Arabian Nights.'''

It appeared there had also been a bit of drama in the tent. When Qaddafi began a critique of American policy toward his country, including the 1986 air attack that killed his infant daughter, Tecca grew emotional and began to cry. Taking notice, Qaddafi moved her to the seat beside him and comfortingly patted her hand as he continued his talk. ''He wants me to come back again tomorrow night,'' Tecca said, looking as if she might start crying again. ''I mean, this is all kind of overwhelming. I've never been out of the States before, and here I am meeting Qaddafi.''

Wondering what percentage of calories consumed in an average chinese buffet lunch followed by a whole bunch of cookies and cake brought in for some accounting guy's birthday are burned off during a 30-minute workout on one of them ski-track exercise machine doohickeys?

The answer is: 100% of them.

Best (or worst) lie I've ever told:
'People like you. I mean people really like you. They really really like you. And I don't think you should let this UN shit get ya down. So get your chin up and go back out there and let 'em have it'

If I could be anywhere at the moment:
On the Tigris with 12 pack and some hand grenades.

The five items I can't live without:

1. Saddam
2. Tea
3. Hand Grenades (They really do make fishing a whole lot easier)
4. My Crew-everybody around me that makes things run smoothly: Tariq, Muhammed, Saddam Jr, and, of course, let's not forget Todd Oldham. Todd you're a sweeeeeeeeetie!
5. Bedpans

Fill in the blanks:Saddam is sexy; Sajida Talfah (Saddam's Wife) is sexier.

Why you should get to know me
I'm strong, sensitive, and I'm being fast tracked within the regime. You're looking at a star.

You are a jackass, obviously. Hope you evolve, maybe next life you will be a dung beetle. In your view I'm sure that would be progress!

"What are you doing back?" "I sat back and thought about the things we used to do. They really meant a lot to me. You mean a lot to me." "Do I really mean that much to you?" "Girl, you know it's true!"

[O]ver 4,000 Palestinian prisoners are presently incarcerated in concentration camps and being interrogated under torture. There is even a project underway to cremate not only the rotting corpses but also those still in a coma, or unconscious due to their treatment, so as to completely eliminate all evidence of torture.

January 6, 1993

Jim and Jennifer Stolpa were stranded by a blizzard on a desolate Nevada road with their five-month-old son, Clayton. Jennifer huddled in a tiny cliffside cave with Clayton while Jim trudged 48 miles through hip-deep snow to find help. Jennifer, who, like Jim, lost all her toes to frostbite as a result of the ordeal, says, “I can’t wear heels, I can’t wear sandals. I have to wear tennis shoes all the time. It kind of sucks.” Says Jim, “We really miss our toes.”

• Have you spent the last month trapped under a vending machine that toppled over during your failed attempt to save fifty cents by stealing a can of Diet RC Cola? Well, here's your chance to catch up on the movie everybody else has already seen with Molly Winter's Condensed Two Towers — it's heelarious!
• Sure, Mike Whybark's trying to distract us all by posting his interview with David Sander, the creator of Man Conquers Space, the fascinating documentary of the history of space travel that never was, but what all the little Whybarkians wanna know is: how did his first day of work at (cue theme music) DANGER ISLAND go?
• In answer to the numerous questions or comments: Yes, this will indedd be the 14th Annual Big Apple Blogger Bash (Admittedly, though, attendance for the first 12 was rather sparse.)
• I probably would have laughed just because it uses the work "wanker" and that's a funny word, Matt Olson's long-needed online style guide "How to Write Like a Wanker" would be worth reading even if it didn't.
• Boy, last week Barbie seemed all psyched that Robbie gave her a New Year's kiss, but she's forgotten all about him since then, spending her time shopping and planning Madison's surprise party. Frankly, she seems pretty fickle.