Satirists From The United States

"To meet someone with genuine political ideals was a rarity in Stoat's line of work. As a lobbyist, he had long ago concluded that there was no difference in how Democrats and Republicans conducted the business of government. The game stayed the same; it was always about favors and friends and who controlled the dough. Party labels were merely a way to keep track of the teams; issues were mostly smoke and vaudeville. Nobody believed in anything except hanging on to power, whatever it took. So at election time, Stoat advised his clients to hedge generously by donating large sums to all sides. The strategy was as immensely pragmatic as it was cynical. Stoat himself was registered independent, but he hadn't stepped inside a voting booth in fourteen years. He couldn't take the concept seriously; he knew too much. (Chapter 5)"

"Like many wildly successful Floridians, Francis X. Kingsbury was a transplant. He had moved to the Sunshine State in balding middle age, alone and uprooted, never expecting that he would become a multimillionaire. And like so many new Floridians, Kingsbury was a felon on the run. Before moving to Miami, he was known by his real name of Frankie King. Not Frank, but Frankie. His mother had named him after the singer Frankie Lane. All his life, Frankie King had yearned to change his name to something more distinguished, something with weight and social bearing. A racketeering indictment--seventeen counts--out of Brooklyn was as good an excuse as any. (Chapter 5)"

"In the past he had always counted on Christina to worry about the actual nuts-and-bolts journalism of the program. It was Christina who did the reporting, blocked out the interviews, arranged for the climactic confrontations--she even wrote the scripts. Reynaldo Flemm was hopelessly bored by detail, research, and the rigors of fact-checking. He was an action guy, and he saved his energy for when the tape was rolling. (Chapter 25)"

"Reluctantly Jake Harp had agreed to play nine holes. He didn't like golf with rich duffers, but it was part of the deal. Playing with Francis X. Kingsbury, though, was a special form of torture. All he talked about was Disney this and Disney that. If the stock had dropped a point or two, Kingsbury was euphoric. If the stock was up, he was bellicose and depressed. He referred to the Disney mascot as Mickey Ratface, or sometimes simply The Rat. (Chapter 13)"

"Honey, sometimes you’re going to be faced with situations where the line isn’t clear between what’s right and what’s wrong. Your heart will tell you to do one thing, and your brain will tell you to do something different. In the end, all that’s left is to look at both sides and go with your best judgment. (Chapter 13)"

"B.D. Harper had not risen to the pinnacle of his profession by making enemies. His mission, in fact, had been quite the opposite: to make as many friends as possible and offend no one. Harper had been good at this. He positively excreted congeniality. (Chapter 3)"

"I try not to stand on a soapbox and scream. That's boring. You've got to be funny sometimes. All my humor comes from anger. Satire is terrific therapy. Making people laugh is a joy, but making them think about something serious is the ultimate reward."

"It was then that he had gotten the idea to invite journalists, but not just any journalists: travel writers. Sparky Harper and the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce adored travel writers because travel writers never wrote stories about street crime, water pollution, fish kills, beach erosion, refugees, AIDS epidemics, nuclear accidents, cocaine smugglers, gun-runners, or race riots. Once in a while, a daring travel writer would mention one of these subjects in passing, but strictly in the context of a minor setback from which South Florida was pluckily rebounding. (Chapter 26)"

"The show's producers had strategically cultivated a fandom with two distinct segments: those who were cynically amused by the boorish culture of the Nance clan, and those who identified with it. Each week, the writers strived to portray the brothers on a social bandwidth halfway between harmless rednecks and odious white trash. It was a precarious tightwire. (Chapter 14)"

"Bass magazines promote the species as the working man's fish, available to anyone within strolling distance of a lake, river, culvert, reservoir, rockpit, or drainage ditch. The bass is not picky; it is hardy, prolific, and on a given day will eat just about any God-awful lure dragged in front of its maw. As a fighter it is bullish, but tires easily; as a jumper its skills are admirable, though no match for a graceful rainbow trout or tarpon; as table fare it is blandly acceptable, even tasty when properly seasoned. Its astonishing popularity comes from a modest combination of these traits, plus the simple fact that there are so many largemouth bass swimming around that just about any damn fool can catch one. (Chapter 2)"

"A Ph.D. in microbiology is not necessary to grasp the concept: Clean water is good. Poopy water is bad."

"At the stroke of eleven on a cool April night, a woman named Joey Perrone went overboard from a luxury deck of the cruise liner M.V. Sun Duchess. Plunging toward the dark Atlantic, Joey was too dumbfounded to panic. I married an asshole, she thought, knifing headfirst into the waves. (Chapter 1)"

"The pilot episode of Bayou Brethren was a major disappointment, the visual appeal of high-def hog shit having been seriously overestimated by a network vice president who was summarily promoted to a more harmless position. The new network vice president in charge of the project felt the brothers needed a more esoteric vocation, to distract from their unappealing personalities, a view shared by potential advertisers who'd screened the off-putting pilot. (Chapter 1)"

"Raven sighed to herself. She was accustomed to working around Derek's enormous ego, but there were times when she felt like reminding him that he was basically a tap dancer, not a grizzled woodsman. (Chapter 3)"

"Scientists are advancing a theory that human beings have stopped evolving because we've interfered with natural selection. Thousands of years ago, the fittest of the species endured, while the weakest stumbled into tar pits or got eaten by saber-toothed tigers. That doesn't happen much anymore, and consequently—these experts assert—humans are actually devolving, getting dumber and less fit. The hypothesis is bolstered by the popularity of daytime talk shows and psychic hotlines. More empirical evidence is supplied every Fourth of July, when alcohol and explosives are freely distributed among the populace."

"It would have been understandable for a mother at that moment to stare at her spoiled, hapless offspring and doubt herself, or at least feel hobbled with remorse. Yet long ago Janet Bunterman had willingly accepted the role of her daughter's primary enabler, exploiter, and apologist, reasoning that such duties were better handled within the family. The fact that the whole pathetic clan was financially dependent on Cherry was the galvanizing force behind her mother's devotion, though Janet Bunterman preferred a more noble rationalization. Even though Cherry didn't write her own lyrics, and the vocals were shamelessly overdubbed, her music still brought happiness to millions of loyal young fans. It was them for whom Janet Bunterman imagined herself sacrificing so tirelessly. (Chapter 16)"

"Local newscasts aired the pollution warnings for days, and displayed detailed maps showing which areas were unsafe for swimming. By dawn's early light on July 4, it was reasonable to assume that almost everybody was aware of the problem, and had relocated their picnic plans to a safe beach. Out of fairness, though, let's say a few sheltered souls remained clueless. Perhaps they didn't have a TV or radio. Fair enough. You pile the family into the car and head across the Rickenbacker Causeway. You park along Hobie Beach, unload the coolers, smear on the sunscreen, dash for the water … and there it is. A sign. DANGER, it says, in English and Spanish. Don't swim here. The water's contaminated! Now comes the moment of truth. You can almost hear Darwin's ghost. Surely these morons aren't going swimming in THAT crap! Not with their kids! Not with a warning sign right in front of their face! Wrong, Charlie baby."

"Eons ago, when man lived in caves, dumb moves were often fatal moves. The quick and the smart survived, the slow and the dimwitted didn't. If one member of the tribe ate a berry and died, the others henceforth avoided those darn berries. Over time, humans advanced and grew sturdier. Not anymore. Now we've got seat belts, air bags, antibiotics and stomach pumps to save fools from their own mistakes. That's all right. Caring for others is one of the nobler traits of our species. The result, ironically, is that the genetic future of mankind isn't so rosy. Stragglers once culled from the herd now (in the absence of saber-toothed tigers) operate motor vehicles, watch Jerry Springer, cavort in pollution and even breed. Darwin would be truly worried. The evolutionary gap between the bacteria and us is closing."

"I'm sort of fascinated by America's fascination with rednecks, the whole Duck Dynasty thing. Being a white guy from the South, I find it amazing that so many TV viewers are enchanted by beards, bad dentistry and moonshine accents. Also there’s this false notion that this is a regional phenomenon, when in fact every state in the union has hardcore rednecks. No exceptions."

"Most opinion columnists start out as street reporters, an experience vital to understanding how things really work as opposed to how they should. My own approach to the column — drawn from the incomparable , and others — was simple: If what I wrote wasn’t pissing off somebody, I probably wasn’t doing my job. Take a sharp-edged stand on any issue, and the other side seethes. Show me a columnist who doesn’t get hate mail, and I’ll show you someone who’s writing about the pesky worms on his tomato plants."

"He won the governorship running as a Democrat, but proved to be unlike any Democrat or Republican that the state of Florida had ever seen. To the utter confusion of everyone in Tallahassee, Clinton Tyree turned out to be a completely honest man. (Chapter 10)"

""You can't talk to me like that! You just remember who's the star." "And you just remember who writes all your lines, and who does all your dull, dull research. Remember who tells you what questions to ask, and who edits these pieces so you don't come off looking like a pompous airhead." Except that's exactly how Reynaldo came off, most of the time. There was no way around it, no post-production wizardry that could disguise the man's true personality on tape. (Chapter 5)"

"[Rudy] didn't give two hoots about certification by the American Board of Plastic Surgery, or the American Board of Facial and Reconstructive Surgery, or the American Society of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgeons. What were a couple more snotty plaques on the wall? His patients could care less. They were rich and vain and impatient. In some exclusive South Florida circles, Rudy's name carried the glossy imprimatur of a Gucci or a de la Renta. The lacquered old crones at La Gorce or the Biltmore would point at each other's shiny chins and taut necks and sculpted eyelids and ask, not in a whisper, but in a haughty bray, "is that a Graveline?" Rudy was a designer surgeon. To have him suck your fat was an honor, a social plum, a mark (literally) of status. Only a boor, white trash or worse, would ever question the man's techniques or complain about the results. (Chapter 30)"

"Like everything else at the Amazing Kingdom, the Vole Project had begun as a scheme to compete with Walt Disney World. Years earlier, Disney had tried to save the dusky seaside sparrow, a small marsh bird whose habitat was being wiped out by over-development along Florida's coastline. With much fanfare, Disney had unveiled a captive breeding program for the last two surviving specimens of the dusky. Unfortunately, the last two surviving specimens were both males, and even the wizards of Disney could not induce the scientific miracle of homosexual procreation. Eventually the sparrow fell to extinction, but the Disney organization won gobs of fawning publicity for its conservation efforts. (Chapter 2)"

"Malcolm J. Moldowsky did not hesitate to address United States Congressman Dave Dilbeck as "a card-carrying shithead." (Chapter 2)"

""But she's just a stripper." Moldowsky grabbed Dilbeck's shirt. "Fanne Fox," he said, "was 'just a stripper.' Donna Rice was just a model-slash-actress. Elizabeth Ray was just a secretary who couldn't type. Gennifer Flowers was just a country singer. Don't you get it? Ask Chuck Robb. Or that horny idiot Hart. Teddy Kennedy for pity's sake. They'll all tell you the same: in politics, stealing is trouble, but pussy is lethal." (Chapter 23)"

"Bodean James Gazzer had spent thirty-one years perfecting the art of assigning blame. His personal credo - everything bad that happens is someone else's fault - could, with imagination, be stretched to fit any circumstance. Bode stretched it. The intestinal unrest that occasionally afflicted him surely was the result of drinking milk taken from secretly radiated cows. The roaches in his apartment were planted by his filthy immigrant next-door neighbors. His dire financial plight was caused by runaway bank computers and conniving Wall Street Zionists; his bad luck in the South Florida job market, prejudice against English-speaking applicants. Even the lousy weather had a culprit: air pollution from Canada, diluting the ozone and derailing the jet stream. (Chapter 2)"

""In my business, fear is a sane and very healthy emotion. That's because death and disaster aren't abstractions. They're as goddamn real as real can be." (Chapter 5)"

"It was a buoyant and eager postgraduate who arrived at the Rosenstiel campus on Virginia Key, for he had grandly envisioned himself sailing the lazy tropics on a schooner, tracking pods of playful bottle-nosed dolphins. In this fantasy Chaz held binoculars in one hand and a frosty margarita in the other. (Chapter 5)"

"At heart Chaz Perrone was irrefutably a cheat and a maggot, but he had always shunned violence as dutifully as a Quaker elder. Nobody who knew him, including his few friends, would have imagined him capable of homicide. Chaz himself was somewhat amazed that he'd gone through with it. (Chapter 2)"

"Charles Regis Perrone was a biologist by default. Medical school had been his first goal--specifically, a leisurely career in radiology. The promise of wealth had attracted him to health care, but as a devoted hypochondriac he was repelled by the notion of interacting with actual sick people. Perusing x-rays in the relatively hygienic seclusion of a laboratory had seemed an appealing option, one that would leave plenty of time for recreation." (Chapter 5)"

"To me, in political terms, McConnell is actually far worse than the . The Grim Reaper only comes once in our lifetimes -- at the moment of death. In contrast, McConnell has been killing legislation for years. Add to that, McConnell has now gone beyond killing bills to helping embolden Donald Trump's worst instincts. [...] There's no way to stop the actual "Grim Reaper." But, with McConnell, there's one way to retire him. He is up for re-election in November 2020. And before you dismiss the notion that McConnell could lose, keep in mind that a recent poll from McConnell's home state of Kentucky shows him with about a 33% favorable rating, while over 50% hold an unfavorable view. The people of Kentucky may just have had their fill of McConnell, who appears to take joy in killing legislation that will help our nation. Kentucky voters could retaliate and act as the "Grim Reaper" -- bringing McConnell's political career to an end."

"Myla Goldberg sets a steady hand upon her brow Myla Goldberg hangs a crooked foot all upside down It comes around it comes around It comes around it comes around Pretty hands do pretty things when pretty times arise Seraphim and seaweed swim where stick-limbed Myla lies"

"I believe in the inherent power of language and letters and words. The world started with God saying something, because language is powerful."

"I don't want to make photographs ... I want to make windows."

"I don't have any odd rituals -- no candles to light, no offerings to the Muse. I simply write Monday through Friday for between 6 and 8 hours like any other working stiff."

"im little jesica. im dying because of obamas help care bill. im on my death bed and the doctor is ignoring me because my dady works hard"

"how do i get cowboy paint off a dog ."

"Welcome to the citadel of eternal wisdom. Behold, this crystal contains the sum of all human knowledge -- Except Rap And Country"

"one thing the gamer world is certainly agreeing of, is that halo infinite is sure to be the highest numbered halo game yet"

"icant come to work today.. on account of JERRY DUTY *SHoves every seinfeld disk into dvd player at once*"

"epic ; supreme court rules nabisco is legally allowed to label their products as "Homemade" after forcing the employees to live at the factory"

"i would rather go fuck my self than read one more post on the bird websitw"

"every generation deserves at least 5 movies named "Spider Man 2""

"i deserve th e most mentally ill president imaginable. 99 year old babbling doofus. Send us into the volcano sir"

"guys who get off on being humiliated used to expose themselves at the grocery store or something. now they pretend to be journalists on here"

"'im not owned! im not owned!!', i continue to insist as i slowly shrink and transform into a corn cob"

"they are going to start calling the damn gas prices "Gasp prices" because thats what i do when i see then"

"ive flattened the curve over 100 times. what have you pricks been doing"

"if you ask me many of Americans have been wearing the mask even before from covid 19. the mask i refer to is of course the clown's mask."