It took me a long time to figure out just how bad at his job he was (one of his tactics was to make me feel like I was a moron and a failure, and, being new to the business I had no reason to doubt his opinion), but I finally did.

And then one day he called and said there was a lady visiting New York from Hollywood and she wanted to have a general meeting with me.

ME. A “general meeting,” what does that mean exactly?
IDIOT. She just wants to sit down and get to know you a little bit.
ME. So, should I have a pitch ready for her or anything?
IDIOT. Oh, heavens no, that would be the absolute wrong thing to do, please don’t do that.

I hung up the phone, sat down and, straight-away, wrote out pitches for five movies.

A few days later, I went to meet the lady from Hollywood at the William Morris offices. We met, shook hands and were shown into a conference room. Before she had even sat down, she said “So. Tell me an idea for a movie.” Luckily, I had listened carefully to my idiot agent’s advice and so proceeded to do the exact opposite thing, so I was prepared to pitch a whole bunch of stuff to the lady from Hollywood. That lady was Nina Jacobson, and that meeting, probably the most productive and important business meeting of my life, ended with our friendship beginning, and thenceforth to me having a real career in motion pictures.

My point is, I think we’ve reached that point with president Bush.

I think we’ve reached the point, at least two years gone now, where all we really need to do is, when we read a headline like “Bush Insists Al Qaeda in Iraq Threatens U.S.”, we can just go ahead and assume that Al Qaeda in Iraq does not threaten the US. And yet, the New York Times runs the headline they do, rather than post the more accurate “Power-drunk Man-child Babbles Incoherently Regarding Things He Knows Nothing About.” Why give the man any respect at all? Why is it that I, with no journalistic or poli-sci background whatsoever, can better see what this administration is doing than the editorial staff of the New York Times?

It’s simply exhausting, with this administration, to keep one’s level of outrage going. Watching Z the other night with

urbaniak

 , I kept thinking — “is this what it’s going to take, are Bush and Cheney going to have to actually murder their opposition leaders anyone says “Hey, what’s the deal with that President Bush guy?” before people will starting paying attention? Will Nancy Pelosi have to be clubbed to death by thugs hired by Cheney before people will begin to sense there is something going horribly wrong in this country? Will Al Gore have to be gagged and thrown into the back of a van and whisked off into the night before anyone notices that we’re not living in a democracy any more? (Note — the folks in Z, it should be noted, get away with murdering their opposition leaders, and a lot more other people too).

Here’s some headlines from just today:

Gonzales lets slip that there are other domestic spy programs, in addition to, you know, tapping everyone’s phones.

Gee, somehow, no matter what, oil prices just keep going up. Funny how that works.

You know how we said the surge was “a last chance?” Well, we had our fingers crossed. Suckers!

And, finally:

Bush’s lawyer vigorously defends Bush’s right to crush boys’ testicles if he wants to.

Now there’s a real measure of scary.  Just think: Bush is willing to go on public record insisting has the right to crush boys’ testicles.  Now imagine the stuff he doesn’t want us to know about. 

The saddest thing about the administration, of course, is that they don’t even have a plan for what happens after they’re gone. They don’t see how, for example, when their party inevitably falls from power, all their dismantling of the constitution will still be in effect, and will inevitably be used against them by their successors. They honestly haven’t thought that far, all their energy has been toward simply accruing as much power for themselves as possible, making a ton of money and screwing everyone.

I think the sooner we start treating Bush and his administration as I treated my idiot agent, the sooner we’ll all have the best, most productive meeting of our lives.