Our splendider-than-splendid 20th MISCiversary hullabaloo commences at 8 p.m. in the downstairs “Grotto” room of the Rendezvous, on Second Avenue between Battery and Bell in formerly-quiet Belltown.

INSTEAD OF REVIEWING Jay Leno’s non-starter of a segment with wingnut crashing-bore Ann Coulter, I’ll comment on Coulter’s Ally McBeal-esque rail-thinness. I’ve seldom if ever commented on a female celebrity’s physical appearance, but in this case Coulter’s countenance might be a key to her mindset.

Last week at a First Thursday art opening, my fellow Belltown Messenger scribe Gillian Gaar told me she thought Coulter looked anorexic. I don’t remember everything Gaar told me, but she essentially suggested Coulter was treating herself with the same judgmental cruelty she uses on non-Bushbots. I responded that I’d known right-wingers who were vegetarians, not for moral reasons but for the sake of personal perfection.

The shrinks and the self-help authors claim many anorexics are propelled by an obsession with attaining perfect beauty, and/or an obsession with an ethereal transcendence that both denies and overcomes the limitations of bodily existence.

I’ve known only one ex-anorexic personally. This woman, who’s doing much better these days, said that at the time she felt disgusted at the idea of putting anything into her body. You could call it the ultimate chastity, and it’s another kind of perfection-obsession.

Coulter, overtly, markets herself as a proud provocateur, a daring rebel, a valiant warrior. I happen to view her as none of these, but rather as a pompous bully, an insult comic who forgot to be funny. She’s like the screechingly pathetic MSNBC incarnation of Dennis Miller, without Miller’s wordplay or comic timing.

But back to her self-image. She clearly thrives on hate, both giving and receiving. She publicly treats criticism as proof of her greatness, just before she spouts another “joke” advocating her opponents’ violent murder. It’d be easy for an armchair psychologist to interpret Coulter’s emaciated physique as a sign that she gets off on punishing herself as much as she gets off on bashing anybody who doesn’t worship Bush. In BDSM lingo, that’s mean she was a dominatrix who’s also her own submissive.

But other intrepretations could also be in play. One can imagine Coulter rigorously maintaining the visual appearance of a brittle li’l waif, to make her verbal brutality seem somehow more “against type” and therefore more “truthful.”

But it still doesn’t work. Coulter just comes off as a spoiled princess, an upscale snot crassly harping about anyone poorer or less refined than herself. She’s no crusader; she’s just a schmuck.

Note: Neither Leno nor his other guest, George Carlin, made any serious attempt to call Coulter on her BS. But at the show’s end, musical guest KT Tunstall appeared with an acoustic guitar festooned with Woody Guthrie’s old slogan, “This Machine Kills Fascists.”

…what the Feds are doing locally to help or harm salmon recovery in our waterways? Sorry, that’s privileged information.

…in local controversy over its plan to abandon its historic downtown Seattle building, isn’t simply facing dwindling memberships due to suburbanization and “family flight.” The denomination’s also the target of a well-funded right-wing campaign to split it apart, along with the other old-line Protestant sects who might challenge the fundies’ claim to be the only real Christians. More on these allegations here, here, and here.

…I used to rail all the time against the “baby Bell” phone co. Qwest? The company that was so busy making junk sales calls to its own current customers that it couldn’t lay down phone lines in new subdivisions on time? Now there’s a reason to like Qwest. It declined to participate in BushCo’s unconstitutional mass civilian wiretapping scheme.

• “Hard-core GOP flee Bush, pollsters find.”
• Someone’s planning a cable-TV channel just for infants. Something tells me it’ll also find an outside-the-target-demographic audience of ravers and stoners.
• Stan Stapp, the pioneering neighborhood-newspaper publisher whose passing was announced yesterday, was one of the last old-time newspapermen. The North Central Outlook, which his family owned from 1922 to 1974, was fiercely devoted to both neighborhood coverage and to what used to be called “spot news.” Somehow, Stapp and his longtime associate editor Trudy Weckworth balanced homespun folksiness with an “if it bleeds, it leads” sense of priorities. This mix was most exemplified in Stapp and Weckworth’s notorious police-beat column, “Hash Ground Fresh Weekly” (which they periodically revived, either solo or as a collaboration, in several later papers).
• In the “Hash” spirit, here’s a nice heartwarming story about a stripper fighting back against police entrapment.

• Bill Clinton’s attached his name to a drive to get soda pop out of grade and middle schools. Remember: When being a Pepper is outlawed, only outlaws will be Peppers.
• We must say goodbye to financial reporter and early PBS star Louis Rukeyser. His pallbearers, I’m sure, will be “the elves who compile our technical market index.”
• The guy in charge of Ohio’s either incompetent or corrupt election system is now that state’s official GOP gubernatorial nominee. As if you’d expect him not to win somehow.
• Lay’s potato chips—now with “good” cholesterol.
• Sign of the Apocalypse #532: Mickey Mouse goes CGI.

…to remember the late, great John Kenneth Galbraith this week, let’s look at what his almost-as-great son James sez about the state of the nation. James writes in Mother Jones that the U.S. has become a “predator state,” with its upper classes feeding off of the declining living standards of everyone else.

Galbraith fils depicts a nationwide, pervasive culture of corruption. It’s a disease that can’t be simply lanced off like a boil by removing a few politicians from power. It’s more like marrow cancer, something parasitic, deeply rooted, and ultimately fatal to both parasite and host.

I tend to agree with this downbeat diagnosis.

Getting rid of Bush and/or Cheney won’t get rid of the whole rotten-to-the-core right-wing machine running all three branches of the federal government; it won’t get rid of the machine’s media whores; and it sure won’t get rid of the machine’s well-heeled sponsors.

I’d even call Bush expendable to the machine as it’s currently constituted. One fiercely obedient puppet ruler could easily be replaced by another.

So what is to be done? Galbraith fils asks that question at the end, and doesn’t answer it.

But I have a glimpse of what it would take. I saw that glimpse Monday afternoon.

The participants in Pro-Immigration March II: The Sequel had been coached beforehand, by Web sites and by preachers and by Espanophone talk radio, to present themselves as patriotic Americans who wanted to fully participate in their newly-chosen homeland. The participants followed this instruction with gusto. They chanted “U, S, A.” They waved American flags. They carried signs proclaiming their pride in their work in and for this land.

Several years ago (1994, to be precise), I wrote, “We don’t have to tear the fabric of society apart. Big business already did it. We need to figure out how to put it back together.”

That’s what the immigration advocates are attempting to do.

They’re presenting themselves as less cynical, more hopeful, and more constructive than the selfish boars now in charge of the federal apparatus.

In so doing, they created a protest march where the usual hangers-on and would-be leaders of protest marches (the Bob Avakian cult, et al.) looked like the backward-thinking nostalgists they were. They rendered the entire patchouli-reeking carcass of post-1970 “counterculture” politics superseded, a “version 1.0” to be remembered and archived but no longer relied upon in everyday use.

The May Day marches, like their April forebearers, proclaim a new “new left.”

A left based on active effort, rather than hedonism.

On unity-in-diversity, rather than separatist “identity politics.”

On working-class solidarity, rather than the supposed superiority of an enlightened few.

On folks getting together to liberate themselves, rather than depending upon some “vanguard” caste to take charge on their behalf.

On building a viable future, rather than bringing back some “spirit of the Sixties.”

There’s a heckuva lotta work still to do in the years to come, both in electoral politics and beyond it.

But we now have the rhetorical and cultural means with which to do it.

Bush attended the annual White House reporters’ banquet Saturday night. Faux-reporter and self-deemed superpatriot Stephen Colbert gave a shockingly satirical speech, totally in character.

The so-called “MSM” chose not to discuss the speech, preferring to report on the banquet with footage of Bush himself appearing in a comedy skit with a lookalike. But online videos and transcripts of Colbert’s performance spread all over. As have bloggers’ responses to it.

A freshly-minted “Thank You Stephen Colbert” fan-blog has logged more than 10,000 responses from grateful viral-video viewers. (Say that five times fast.)

…a sign that right-wingnut politicians, or some of them, are people after all. One of them apparently loves a great sex-work purchase as much as any hearty human.

…was so much fun, I think I’ll do it again:

• Right-wing hate radio: Now even more racist than ever?
• First preachers, now political operatives— just what is it about positions of authority and child abuse?
• One of my alma maters, Oregon State, is dumping its cheerleader squad. For once, no team-name puns here.
• Gene Pitney, one dead rock star who got to live a full life.
• Wal-Mart’s sales, profits sluggish— so much for the almighty juggernaut out to take over the world.
• Went to Drinking Liberally last nite; got to meet that week’s special guest star, Darcy “C.D.” Burner. She’s the highly touted Demo candidate in the 8th Congressional District (the Eastside). She’s smart, witty, and forward-thinking. She’s got a good chance of being a big part of taking back the House this fall.
• While there, one DL participant told me his little conspiracy theory about the U.S. government’s attempt to retain control of the Internet’s top-level domain names. This guy claims the Feds just might be preparing to use this power so they can crack down on lefty bloggers. I’m not so sure the Bushies are that smart. That conspiratorial perhaps, but not that smart.
• Tom Stewart, the former state GOP bigwig and medium-time sleaze, is “protesting” Washington’s estate tax by pulling his corporate offices to Arizona. I won’t miss his campaign-law violations or the ludicrously huge U.S. flag atop his Delridge office building. Now if we could only get the hipster and gay restaurants and bars in this town to stop feeding money to his Food Services of America….
• A longer version of my piece about the Capitol Hill shooting victims’ memorial is in today’s print version of the Capitol Hill Times, but not online, at least not yet.

• Are progressive teachers being witch-hunted by right-wing goon squads?
• My ol’ hometown is located within one of the most populous U.S. counties that doesn’t have a four-year college. That might change one of these years.
• Guess what? Initiative hawker and professional demagogue Tim Eyman’s behaving just like a lying, homophobic bigot.
• Is ex-Seattleite news anchor Lou Dobbs becoming a “mad prophet of the airwaves,” or is it just a big ratings stunt?
• Will right-wing corporate forces soon try to censor the Internet?
• Tom DeLay–out; the system of coordinated corruption of which he was a cog–still in.
• The ought-six Mariners: Looking pretty good, except for the bullpen.
• Daylight Savings Time is back among us, bringing sunsets after 7:30. Damn, it feels good.

…always been one of those pundits with whom I agree but whom I don’t like to read. His usual schtick is to proclaim there’s a Big Truth out there the mainstream media won’t tell you, but then to pontificate about the media’s failings rather than just tell us this supposed hidden Truth.

But now, for once, he’s gone ahead and told us the Truth as he believes it to be. Specifically, that the Iraq War would still be the wrong thing to do even if it weren’t so incompetently waged.

…periodic dinner-table moments of grumpiness, my father used to complain that the Catholics and the Mormons were to increase their numbers through hyperactive breeding, for the ultimate purpose of world domination. Now, others are making similar claims about red-state Republicans.

What with all the backward-thinking and dumbing-down of the body-politick these days, it was inevitable that someone on the edge of “mainstream” thought would bring up that ultra-right-wing notion that slavery was good for the slaves. I didn’t suspect the one to do it would be Adele Ferguson, the ancient local political commentator whom I didn’t even know was still alive.

…offers a handy roundup to the still-bubbling-under murmurs of the hope for a Bush impeachment.