A BOOK BY A CROOK

Look, Scotty! My hands don't have blood!

Over the last few weeks, Bush ex-loyalist Scott McClellan's ubiquity on the press circuit has stirred quite the potpourri of emotions in me.

While I salivated over his forthrightness regarding the Bush Administration's Iraq War propaganda machine, I kept fuming over the fact that he -- the mouthpiece for the White House's lies -- would not fully acknowledge his complicity. I stomached four of his self-serving interviews and never once got the sense he was remorseful or regretful.

If I felt more comfortable using bad metaphors, I would compare my mixed feelings from listening to him to eating the most delicious meal while knowing that the meat came from my mother's arm.

Sure, Scotty bravely betrayed Bush and threw Bushies under a bus. But he used his own bloody hands to do it, when it was too late to do much. And then he used his spinning skills to momentarily convince me that his hands were clean.

If I felt more comfortable using bad metaphors, I would compare him to an awesome magician that saws my body in half, molests my lower half, and then uses his calm demeanor to convince me that the molestation was necessary to spread democracy.

Obviously, McClellan is profiting -- quite handsomely, I might add -- off his failures. Several weeks later, the book is still #2 on Amazon's bestseller list.

I do feel a tad better today, however, because he has agreed to testify before the House Judiciary Committee over the Plame leak. Maybe his late conscience can still do something good for the country.

--Junichi