Steve Sailer wrote July 24, 2005: “Mickey Kaus called Luke the “human Echelon Project, for the prodigious amount of interviewing and transcribing he does of who’s saying what around LA. Luke even interviewed me. But the bonus reason for reading Luke’s blog is so you can then read the libelously hilarious “Luke Ford Fan Blog.”
From the Luke Ford Fan Blog archives:
March 14, 2005:
I’m the sensitive-type, which is something of a mixed blessing. It’s good in that, unlike a lot of men, I have real emotions, including empathy. It’s not so good in that I’m sad a lot of the time. Not sad as in weepy or anything (I haven’t cried since junior high school) — more contemplative melancholia. For example, this afternoon I put on a flannel shirt and drove my Zamboni down to the beach as I listened to Gordon Lightfoot. I’d just read Matt Labash’s column in the Weekly Standard on left-wing Americans who want to emigrate to the Great White Waste of Time, and I wanted to make sure that no Michael Moore-types were trying to illegally sneak into my forward-thinking country. I have a horrible reoccurring vision of Alec Baldwin swimming to Canada and claiming refugee status. If this should ever really happen, I want to be down at the beach to greet him by screaming: “YANKEE GO HOME!”
Well, I didn’t see tubby Alec in his swimming trunks (thank God!), which, along with the blue sky, brilliant sunshine, unseasonably warm weather (low 60s), trees, sand, and waves, made me happy. But as I was communing with Nature, I got to thinking about a story I saw on the BBC news a couple of nights ago. A family out for a walk along a beach on the northeast coast of England was tragically swept out to sea by a freak wave. The mother and her 11 year-old son’s bodies have been found, but the 13 year-old daughter is still missing. (The “boyfriend” survived.) So I started to feel sad: family goes to the beach AND GETS SWEPT OUT TO SEA! Why?
Maybe My Moral Leader knows the answer?
April 1, 2005:
I caught Cathy Seipp on the Dennis Miller Show for the first time last night. She looked lovely in a red top, but I have to admit Cathy is no twenty-nine year old! I was a bit off on that. Sorry. No, she’s obviously about, oh, thirty-two! According to Cecile, the “varsity panel” was well-balanced with a liberal, a conservative and a libertarian, but what struck me was poor Dennis Miller having to defend Terri Schiavo against three pull the tube partisans, one of whom was Nick Gillespie of Playboy, er, Reason Magazine.
I’m surprised that Mr Gillespie is prepared to show his face in public so soon after having been bested by Luke Ford in a meeting of the minds a couple of weeks ago. Should not an embarrassed Mr Gillespie have retreated from public view for a long period of self-examination and repentance?
Apparently not because he was pontificating and sounding all authoritative last night. Unfortunately, I couldn’t follow his argument that the Schiavo case has nothing to do with the “culture of life,” because he kept waving his left hand in front of the camera. This was no nervous tick. Mr Gillespie was showing off to the television audience that he’s available and a libertarian. And we all know what that means.
For one thing, it means that I’m annoyed. I don’t like the idea that there are people out there having way more fun than me. It especially annoys me that these people are smart enough to concoct an entire ideology to justify their swinging lifestyle. Andrew Sullivan is a classic example of someone whose political philosophy is simply an extension of his voracious sexual appetite. At least Mr Sullivan got his comeuppance when his personal ad asking for large black men to play “top” to his “bottom” was plastered all over the Internet.
Okay that’s a bit harsh, but I do want to think that these sexual libertines are struggling with religious guilt. I don’t get that impression from Mr Gillespie. He obviously isn’t living his life in accord with Biblical values, since he can’t grasp “culture of life” arguments against the intentional killing of Terri Schiavo. So where was Luke Ford to set him straight? Why doesn’t Mr Ford get invited onto these shows to lecture the morally confused? It certainly isn’t because Luke is too unattractive for television. He looks a like a rolly polly version of Brad Pitt. Stick him behind a (large) desk and he’d be perfectly presentable.
I recall reading that Wonkette has to post (at least) ten items per day on her blog. Of course, she’s a professional and has her very own research assistant (of the opposite sex) to help, but still that’s impressive. I don’t have ten interesting thoughts in a year, let alone in one day. And if I had a research assistant (of the opposite sex) I’d hardly be spending my time blogging.
I wonder, though, could an amateur such as myself, someone who flunked English 101 in college, a non-writer lacking a research assistant (of the opposite sex) that I could boss around and make lewd comments to, could I possibly post ten items for my stupid blog in one day?
Why yes I think I can! I mean, really, how hard can it be?
Two
Why am I blogging again?
Good question. Okay maybe it’s not such a good question, but it’s about me and I find me interesting. So in my little universe it’s a good enough question.
Answer: a) I want to see if I can post ten items in one day (see above); and b) I’m being harassed by an Internet stalker and I need to blog for self-protection (see below). It’s all very scary, especially for a sensitive person, such as myself, who frightens very easily. Let me explain.
One night a couple of weeks ago, I couldn’t get to sleep. I tossed. I turned. I fantasised about my favourite blogger babes. But no luck. So I decided to grab my, er, laptop and check out Michelle Malkin’s blog – or, more accurately, the new picture of Michelle Malkin on her site. I love Michelle Malkin! She’s sooooooo pretty!
But I still couldn’t get to sleep. Probably because Michelle Malkin refuses to answer my charming emails or reciprocate my love in any way. She’s very strange. Very pretty. But very strange.
If looking at Michelle Malkin’s picture wasn’t going to do the trick, I thought, why not try something completely different? So I decided to check out Steve Sailer’s site. He’s not as pretty as Michelle Malkin, but he’s just as smart, which is really saying something because Michelle Malkin might be the smartest person in the whole wide world!
(Did I tell you that I’m in love with Michelle Malkin! Perhaps if I stop sending 500 emails a day to Michelle Malkin and instead play hard to get, sending only 50, okay, 10, emails a day to Michelle Malkin she’d love me back. That’ll work!)
I usually don’t read Steve Sailer’s site late at night because it upsets me. Mr Sailer is a paleoconservative with some less than cheery ideas about the WOT, immigration, race, etc. I’m not an “invade/invite the world” neocon, like William Krystal, but neither am I a Hobbesian paleocon — they’re so depressingly “realist.” I prefer a form of conservatism that’s rooted in the empirical and practicable but is also inspiring and makes me feel good about humanity, especially Michelle Malkin — she’s sooooooo pretty!
I’m reading Steve Sailer’s site when I see the words “Luke Ford.” My heart sinks. OH GOD, NOT HIM! Not the hovel-dwelling Moral Leader who promises so much and delivers so (very) little! I’d managed to completely forget about that dude, and now he’s metastasising across the Internet attacking one of my favourite sites. DAMN!
After reading Mr Ford’s interview with Mr Sailer on race (actually it wasn’t that bad — at least, Mr Ford didn’t ask completely off-topic questions about anal sex, like he usually does), I started to think about my old fan blog. Was that embarrassing or what? When I started, I was under the impression that Mr Ford was a moral leader for reals. I was going to chronicle and explicate his every aphorism, parable, and trope. I read the Luke Ford Family of Blogsâ�¢ (even the porn one) religiously, thinking that moral enlightenment was just around the corner. So I waited for Mr Ford to write something profound, something life changing. I waited. And I waited. And I waited. Then I waited some more. A year passed and I was still waiting, although at this point I was starting to get really pissed off. I began emailing Mr Ford with suggested topics for his moral elucidation. Maybe, I asked nicely, he could write about vegetarianism, because I was thinking about becoming a vegetarian for ethical reasons. Then I started copying and pasting entire articles from Commentary and First Things, sending them to Mr Ford thinking this might stimulate his massive intellect. He wrote back telling me he no longer has the attention span to read anything over 250 words, and I should knock it off. I kid you not, that’s what he told me!
At this point, I was starting to suspect that Luke Ford was a fraud — and frankly the porn blog thing wasn’t helping. Then I read his autobiography. Good grief!
(See next post.)
Three
Hey, I figured out a fun and easy way to maximise my blog posting output: split a long post into parts. Cool!
So where was I? Oh right, Luke Ford’s autobiography. So Mr Ford sends me a draft of his memoir and asks me to critique it. And critique it I do! I write back suggesting that he can’t finish the book by claiming that he has turned his back on porn blogging and is about to move to Israel to begin his new, morally clean, life, when, obviously, he’s still living in his hovel in Los Angeles and he’s porn blogging again. I mean, come on, dude! I’m an incredibly stupid person, but even I can Google “Luke Ford” and find the porn blog. This just won’t do, I explain all exasperated-like. Mr Ford ignores me. Angry, distraught, confused, I abandon my fan blog.
Then along came Rick Warren and the Assemblies of God Church. It really is true that when one door closes in your life, another (thank you Jesus!) opens up. To be honest, I don’t know where I’d be without my new Pentecostal friends. Sure they speak in tongues and every single one of them is an absolute moron, but at least they’re happy, and they’re humble, and they’re very, very nice — in fact, if anything, they’re too nice.
Although I’m now leading the “purpose driven life,” I still occasionally miss my old infidel friends: Mr Ford, Miss Seipp, and, of course, little Cathy Jr. Sure they’re not very nice people and, alas, they’re all going to hell, but it’s very interesting to read the blogs of a bunch of self-absorbed, narcissistic, arrogant, condescending, conceited know-it-alls. They’re the exact opposite of my Pentecostal friends! I mean, the heathens are smart, and funny, and argumentative (and they don’t play with snakes). Besides, I’m sure they’re not really so opinionated in real life. They’ve probably just created obnoxious personas for their blogs. In real life they’re probably normal, just like Pentecostals.
Or maybe not.
Four
After reading Luke Ford’s interview about race with Steve Sailer, and feeling a little bit nostalgic, I decided to checkout my old LFFB email account. I hardly ever look at it because it’s not my real email address. To my surprise I have thirty-odd emails. Cool! Except they’re all from Luke Ford. Oh. What does he want, I wonder. Apparently, Mr Ford has been emailing me every week over the past four months and I didn’t even know.
At first the emails are pleasant enough. He asks, nicely, when am I going to start writing about him again. Luke Ford — forever the narcissist!
Then the emails become increasingly desperate in tone. He’s soon pleading that I start up my fan blog: “Please write about ME!” Then the emails turn nasty: Susan Estrich-like screeds in all-caps demand that I relaunch my fan blog “OR ELSE!” Now I know how poor Michael Kinsley felt.
I got to thinking: I’m being harassed. This is cyber stalking! Aren’t there laws against this stuff? Why yes there are. And I could have Mr Ford arrested and sent to the LA County jail.
But the more I thought about it, the more I decided that this wasn’t such a good idea. Poor Mr Ford doesn’t have the money to bail himself out of jail. And God knows his best friend, Cathy Seipp, wouldn’t help — not after reading her appalling blog post demanding that Terri Schiavo be starved (i.e., tortured) to death. What would happen to a rolly polly white man like Mr Ford in the LA County jail? I shudder to think. Mr Ford isn’t a fighter. I can’t imagine he’d stand a chance.
I have no choice. I must relaunch my fan blog!
Five
Okay so now what do I write about? I haven’t read any of Mr Ford’s blogs in four months. I could just make stuff up. But that would be wrong. And as a good, um, Pentecostalist (is that right? I don’t even know what we are called) I could never do that. I must do what Jesus would do. I must start reading the Luke Ford Family of Blogs again. Maybe they’ve improved? I mean, they can’t be that bad, right?
I think I’ll start with the Luke Ford Seeks a Wife blog. Back in five minutes …
Six
Hmmm. Not much material there. Mr Ford hasn’t updated in over a month. Maybe he’s given up on ever finding his true love. So sad. And so thoroughly inexplicable.
One of the more recent posts is titled “I Need a Chinese Wife (Mexican Just Won’t Do)” and contains all sorts of tips that I can use to seduce Michelle Malkin. Thanks! I thought my problem was that I was being too aggressive, what with all my emailing, but now I see I haven’t been aggressive enough. You can never be too obnoxious. I think this is Mr Ford’s helpful advice when it comes to women (and everything else).
Then there are the posts from last summer when Mr Ford was contemplating whether it was time “for me to go yellow” and “should I go for some yellow cake?” Apparently, he failed to find a single Asian woman who was willing to allow him to let her date with him. Shocking!
Seven
Okay, enough about Luke Ford. I think I’ll blog about Luke’s best friend, Miss Seipp, specifically her appearance on the Mr KABC radio show on Thursday, March 17th. I was going to live blog the event but it was on awfully late.
In retrospect, it’s probably a good thing I didn’t write about Cathy at the time. Over the past couple of weeks, she’s been taking quite a drubbing from her critics at the unofficial Cathy Seipp fan blog at Onanism Today, and the laddies behind Martini Republic. (I think it’s safe to assume that they’re all homosexuals, although it’s hard to tell with liberal “men.”)
So, what is it about neocon Cathy and the gay left?
I suspect that most of the hostility is rooted in politics. Leftists subscribe to a world view that divides people into two groups: those who believe in “social justice” (i.e., leftists) and those who believe, apparently, in social injustice (i.e., conservatives).
(Actually there is a third, unimportant, group — the masses. The majority of people, according to leftist theory, suffer from “false consciousness” and require an enlightened vanguard to do their thinking for them. This allows leftists to feel morally superior to conservative thinkers and intellectually superior to the rabble. Since leftist, at root, are people who hate themselves, and, through projection, their society, this formulation helps them deal with their feelings of guilt, envy, and rage.)
Conservatives, according to the left, reject “social justice” because they’re selfish. Leftists thus think that it’s acceptable to treat such people with contempt. The wonderful thing about being a leftist is that you can consider yourself to be a good person without actually doing anything about it in practice. All that is required is that you subscribe to the “correct” world view.
Over time, of course, the “correct” position on various matters tends to change. What was once the proper perspective on, say, race has shifted 180 degrees from a belief in colour blindness to one of racial consciousness. And then there was all that socialist theory about nationalising industry and central planning that contemporary “progressives” would like the rest of us to forget.
The point is that leftists don’t define being a good person as requiring treating their political opponents with respect. Why should they? Conservatives are not just wrong: they’re ghouls.
The other part of the hostility directed at Miss Seipp, I suspect, is a manifestation of a particular type of misogyny found amongst gay men. Cathy is a self-confident, strong-willed, and independent woman. This is problematic. Once you remove the element of sexual attraction, men are really only interested in women as mother figures. Heterosexual men are willing to put up with an awful lot from their wives and girlfriends, including going shopping (which we hate) and listening to them talk about their feelings (which we couldn’t care less about), just because of the sexual vibe. Many gay men live in social worlds almost devoid of women. Save for gay men who are especially feminine, and interested in especially feminine women as role models, most gays have little use for women who are not their mothers. It’s significant that much of the abuse directed at Cathy by her gay critics focuses on her alleged failings as a mother to little Cathy, Jr.
Okay, let’s go to the tape. Mr KABC introduces Cathy Seipp as a blogger — a big no no. But Cathy holds her tongue. She sounds so lolitaesque. How old is Cathy? Fourteen? No, that can’t be right. Cathy Jr is fifteen. I’m guessing Cathy Sr is, oh, about twenty-nine.
Cathy begins with a joke about Bubbles the Hippo, “for people who are old enough” to understand the reference. I have no idea who Bubbles the Hippo is — probably a cartoon from the early ’80s when Cathy was growing up. Mr KABC laughs, so I guess it’s a good joke for the twentysomething set.
Cathy reviews the disagreement between Susan Estrich, feminist law professor, and Michael Kinsey, editorial editor at the LA Times, about the relative absence of female op-ed columnists in the Times. It becomes quickly apparent that Miss Seipp is an excellent interview. She doesn’t digress and repeat herself. Nor does she speak in a monotone. Instead, Cathy speaks clearly, concisely, and quickly with just the right amount of emotion.
At the five minute mark, however, sweet Cathy shows another side, saying: “Her [Susan Estrich’s] column is very badly written … not that the LA Times is against running bad articles. [Mr KABC: “hahahaha”] It’s pretty lame.”
Then Miss Seipp makes a snarky comment about how the fifty Hollywood wives (and ex-wives) supporting Ms Estrich are threatening to cancel their newspaper subscriptions unless they get their way. Cathy remarks: “Then they said, ‘we’ll also boycott the advertisers. We buy a lot of Clinique.'” At which point poor Mr KABC almost wets himself he’s laughing so hard. So much for Mr Gay Chronic Masturbators’ claim that men don’t find Cathy Seipp enchanting.
In fact, things are going so well — Mr KABC is laughing at every single one of Miss Seipp’s jokes — that I’m starting to think: late night dinner date and, possibly, freaky sex after the show. Maybe this is just how my mind works, but the two are getting along famously.
Next Mr KABC reads to Cathy a letter from Susan Estrich where the latter says that she didn’t even know that Cathy lives in Los Angeles. OMG! This is going to be gooooood! Poor Susan Estrich, she has no idea who she is dealing with. Let’s face it. What makes Cathy such a good interview — the fact that she isn’t at all nervous: she’s calm and collected — is because of her boundless self-confidence. Although not quite a narcissist to the Luke Ford degree (and, really, how could she be?), it’s obvious that Cathy is annoyed because a) Susan Estrich doesn’t know Cathy lives in Silver Lakes, and b) Mr KABC just called Cathy a blogger again.
What is Mr KABC thinking? Luke Ford is a blogger. Cathy Seipp is an internationally distributed and renown essayist and commentator. (I remember reading one of Miss Seipp’s columns in Canada’s National Post, the newspaper that used to carry the equally fabulous Mark Steyn, before, that is, they messed up, but I digress because I’m not a leading intellectual like Cathy Seipp!) The point is there will be no memorable late night dinner date, etc., for Mr KABC if he keeps making silly mistakes.
It soon becomes obvious that Mr KABC has no idea how to seduce a woman. He mentions Susan Estrich’s demand that she will appear on a KABC radio show but only with a female interviewer. Obviously, she’s an idiot, but so, too, is Mr KABC because he starts whining about how unfair it is that his “male genitalia” (a phrase he uses twice) are preventing him from getting an interview with Prof Estrich.
Never, ever talk about you genitals, let alone your genitalia, to a woman you’ve just met. This is a classic mistake. It’s probably the biggest mistake a man can make. Trust me on this one. It never works. NEVER! Okay maybe it works with porn stars, the kind of women Luke Ford hangs out with, but with a public intellectual like Cathy Seipp? I don’t think so. (Although she is “friends” with Luke Ford … No, she couldn’t possibly be that kind of girl.)
Then Mr KABC (what kind of ridiculous name is “Mr KABC” anyway?) starts screeching “I’m a feminist! I’m speaking as a feminist!” Talk about shooting yourself in the foot. No woman, let alone a conservative woman, wants to date a man who calls himself a feminist. That’s even more self-defeating than referring to your “male genitalia.” Mr KABC really is a twat!
Contra Mr Gay Chronic Masturbator, Miss Seipp doesn’t have a problem seducing men. God knows she was trying very hard with Mr KABC for about ten minutes, until, that is, he started going on (and on) about his naughty bits. No, it’s the men Cathy is dealing with that have the problem. I mean really! What’s up with LA men? Cathy needs to move back to Winnipeg. Or at the very least she should tell the men of Los Angeles to checkout the Luke Ford Seeks a Wife Blog and pick up some tips on how to speak romantically to women. Mr Ford is a pro — I mean that literally (see his autobiography).
At the 11 minute mark Cathy starts — finally — to unload on Mr TWAT for calling her a “blogger” at the beginning of the interview, pointing out that it’s “annoying because, as you know, I have a column in the National Review.”
This is the sort of behaviour that gets Cathy in trouble with her critics. But she has a point, and she only turned on Mr TWAT after he made one boneheaded comment after another. The girl deserves a reward for patience.
Cathy’s increasing frustration starts to show as she criticises Susan Estrich for “blowing smoke out of her ass,” for being “nuts,” for spewing “nonsense,” and not being as good at putting her children to bed as Cathy is with Cathy Jr. But you know Cathy’s also angry at Mr TWAT, because the dude just won’t shut the f#ck up!
Mr Twat asks: “Am I to conclude from you Cathy that you believe that this is really an effort to get Susan Estrich’s column covered in the …” Cathy interrupts: “Oh not necessarily!” Good grief, Mr TWAT, Cathy just said less than one minute earlier in the interview that the point of Susan Estrich’s letter writing campaign was to see more left-wing female columnists in the LA Times, but not necessarily her own column. Are you deaf, Mr TWAT? Or just a very, very stupid man?
Then Mr TWAT said something so idiotic that I was on the floor laughing hysterically for about thirty minutes. For reals! He asks Cathy if the reason that Susan Estrich’s column isn’t in the Times is “because it just isn’t up to the standards of the LA Times?” Cathy responds: “It’s a terribly written column. I’m surprised that it’s still carried by Creators Syndicate. I mean you’ve seen it. It’s that badly written.”
Mr TWAT responds: “Yeah, for someone who is a law professor at USC, I’m sort of surprised at the punctuation.”
Good grief! Mr TWAT has confused Susan Estrich’s unpunctuated email that she sent to the KABC radio station with her syndicated weekly column, which, of course, is punctuated!
Alas, I couldn’t listen to the rest of the interview, what with the “water” damage to my underpants.
Please, Cathy, come back to Canada. You’re twenty-nine, right? Assuming good health, you’ve sixty years left. Don’t waste them living in America surrounded by morons like Mr Gay Chronic Masturbator and Mr TWAT. Become a Pentecostalist and run away with me. Don’t worry about Cathy Jr. She can move into the hovel with Luke Ford. Really, he’s harmless. (I think.)
Update: I’ve just listened to the end of the KABC interview and I missed the best part. After calling Georgetown linguist Deborah Tannen’s recent column on gender differences “idiotic,” “lame,” “extremely stupid,” and “dishonest from beginning to end,” Cathy summarises Prof Tannen’s argument using a little girl voice: “The reason why there aren’t as many female opinion writers is because women have a better way of dealing with things. They don’t like to attack.” You have to listen to the tape. A man would have to be gay not to become lightheaded listening to Cathy pretending to be a schoolgirl. OMG!
I’m sorry, I can’t blog anymore tonight. I have a big problem that I have to take care of — immediately. (And I only got up to seven entries.) Blogging is, um, hard!
April 21, 2005:
Cecile DuBois has an advice blog. You ask her questions, and she solves your problems. Cool! This is just what I need, ‘cuz I got problems and questions. A lot of ’em. But where to begin? Let me think …
Well, for one thing, I’m suffering severe existential angst. It sucks being an atheist at the best of times. With all the excitement over the new Pope (good choice, by the way), I’m feeling especially alone in the meaningless universe of random pointlessness. But that’s not my question. (Debating the existence of God and the meaning of life is a little heavy for a kid.)
Here’s my question: I have a friend (no, not Luke Ford, who I don’t really even like, what with the p— blog thing and all) who started a political blog about nine months ago. It’s really bad. I mean really, really bad. He can’t write. His spelling is atrocious. All he does is copy and paste stuff from elsewhere on the Internet, and then adds his own completely lame-o comments. It’s just awful. And yet he posts five to ten times a day, seven days a week. And every time he updates, he emails me and a dozen or so of his friends to tell us, as if we care. For awhile I stopped getting his emails. Then I checked my spam filter and found that one of his “friends” had blocked his emails, meaning the rest of us Hotmail users were prevented from receiving his updates. It’s pretty bad when even your friends are blocking your emails as spam.
Okay, here’s the thing. Now the guy is all over InstaPundit getting links and everything! Rather than being excited for him, I feel annoyed. And angry. And very, very bitter. I know it’s wrong for me to feel this way, but his blog sucks … a lot. And Glenn Reynolds totally ignores me when I email him asking for links, although I chalk this up to his complete, total, and absolute LOATHING of all things Luke Ford, which I can fully understand (see above comment re: p— blog). But still Mr InstaPundit could at least acknowledge my emails, no? But that’s not my question.
Here is my question (sorry for being so long-winded): My talentless friend’s success has prompted me to wonder: What part of success is due to hard work? What part is the result of natural ability? And what part comes down to luck? I have to know. I think if I know the answer, it will help me become a better person and a better blogger.
I use to think that success was about 80 per cent natural ability, 19 per cent hard work, and 1 per cent luck. I still don’t think luck plays much of a role, but maybe I’ve been underestimating the importance of steely determination and unflagging perseverance? Then again, no amount of hard work is going to get me playing centre for the LA Lakers, right? Or teaching mathematics at MIT. So god-given ability has to play a significant role, no? Oh, I don’t know.
Please help me on the path to success.
Sincerely,
Beleaguered in British Columbia
A week (or so) ago, Cecile DuBois asked me about the Canadian government sponsorship scandal.
Scandal? What scandal?
It’s hard being a faux intellectual. You have to keep up on all sorts of topics, including Canadian politics, which is something I avoid because, well, it’s hopeless. Canada is a one party state ruled by a corrupt (i.e., French) political class with their well-fed Liberal snouts forever in the public trough.
Not knowing the details, I bluffed and said in a knowing tone, “Oh, those Liberals! I hate them. They’re all crooks, liars, and scoundrels!”
Cecile nodded approvingly: “I hate liberals, too! Like Michael Moore! And Howard Dean! And that horrible Rosie O’Donell woman!”
“Yeah,” I said, “those three are awful and they’re not even French! Just imagine what happens when you combine liberalism with the French.”
“Yucky!” Cecile screamed.
Then we laughed.
Later I turned on the television to find out exactly what awful things those Canadian Liberals were up to.
I seldom watch television, because, well, it’s beneath me as a faux intellectual, so imagine my horror when the first thing I saw (I turned on an American channel) was a close-up of Arlen Specter, the dude from the Clarence Thomas Supreme Court nomination hearings. Remember him? Remember how handsome he was back in 1991? No? Well I do! He used to look a lot like Robert Redford, circa 1969. And now? Um, not so much with the handsomeness. I mean, talk about letting yourself go. What happened to his hair? Nowadays Arlen Specter looks like Luke Ford. They could be twins, or something.
(You know, it’s so depressing looking at pictures of people you haven’t seen for awhile. Yesterday, I saw a recent photo of Morrissey, from my favourite ’80s band The Smiths. He’s now living in LA. Pushing fifty. Fat. And gross! Just like … oh hold on, I already have my required on-topic reference in this blog post.)
So, I quickly turned the channel and who should appear? None other than Robert Redford! What are the odds of that?
OMG! What happened to Robert Redford’s face? He used to be so handsome, like Arlen Specter, circa 1991. Now Mr Redford looks scary … very, very scary.
Going up and down the television dial shrieking “Ooh, he’s gross!” wasn’t getting me any closer to learning about the sponsorship scandal, so I decided to go directly to the CBC. I picked the perfect time, too, because the now almost bald, but still fabulous, Peter Mansbridge was hosting a news special on the scandal. (Canadians age much better than Americans — must be something to do with our annual 53 weeks of winter!) It was an “ask the experts” programme featuring ordinary Canadians. Cool! I’m an ordinary Canadian, so this won’t go over my head, I thought. Well, I lasted one question. Some goober asked: “Will anyone be held responsible for stealing millions of dollars from the taxpayers?”
Good grief! This is Canada. The Liberals have ruined the country. They’ve turned Canada, a once proud member of the Anglosphere, into freakin’ Belgium! Liberals don’t believe in individual responsiblity. It’s not the Liberal way. The Liberal way is cheating, stealing, lying and getting away with it. That’s what Liberals do. I mean, come on Mr Goober! It all started with Pierre Trudeau back in 1968. And you still haven’t figured it out? No wonder these things keep happening.
As I understand the latest corruption scandal, the Liberals decided after the very close secession … whoops, I mean, “sovereignty association” referendum in Quebec in 1995, that, in the interest of national unity, the federal government should start sponsoring various cultural and sporting events throughout the province. Advertising firms were hired to promote these events making sure that the word “Canada” was prominently displayed.
Good grief! Do the Liberals really think that Quebec secessionists, whoops, I mean sovereignty associationists, are so stupid that they’ll turned into happy federalists if they see that a documentary on Maurice Richard was sponsored by the federal government?
Well, apparently not because it turns out the whole thing was a scam. The advertising firms involved were connected to the Liberal Party. They were awarded contracts in exchange for donating money to the Liberals — after taking millions of dollars for themselves, of course. For example, one of ex-Prime Minister Jean Chretien’s friends, Jacques Corriveau, made $7 million dollars as a “consultant,” which included, according to one invoice, $35,000 for surfing the Internet. I kid you not!
Liberals. I hate them!
And now I keep reading stories in the local paper about American liberals moving to Canada to get away from George W. Bush. Just when you think things can’t get any worse.
Soon there will be a new federal election. Hopefully, the Conservative Party will win. And Quebec will secede. (Good riddance!) Then, during the economic chaos, all those horrible American liberals will go back home. I can dream.
April 25, 2005:
I spoke with a friend Sunday evening about Luke Ford. Here’s a transcript of our conversation:
Luke Ford Fan Blogger (LFFB): So, Luke Ford phoned me Friday. He was quite agitated.
Luke Ford Fan Blogger’s Friend (LFFBF): Who’s Luke Ford?
LFFB: Oh, some blogger on the Internet.
LFFBF: You mean like Andrew Sullivan?
LFFB: Yeah, he has a lot in common with Andrew Sullivan.
LFFBF: I hate Andrew Sullivan. He’s always PMSing and changing his political positions — throwing hissy fits and carrying on like an emotional wreck.
LFFB: Yeah, I stopped reading Sullivan’s blog after he started handing out the “Michelle Malkin Award” for hysterical, over-the-top political commentary. Like he’s David Brooks or something. The dude’s such a hypocrite.
LFFBF: I don’t know how he can show his face in public after that personal ad scandal a couple of years ago. I guess some people have no shame. Did you see Sullivan’s ad?
LFFB: Yeah, I was mortified — going on about his butt muscles and how big his penis is. And there were nekkid pictures, too!
LFFBF: Ewww! So what was this Luke Ford dude so annoyed about?
LFFB: He was mad at me for mentioning his p— blog on my website. He kept saying “I’ll fix your wagon” over and over.
LFFBF: What’s a p— blog?
LFFB: I don’t really know. I’ve only looked at it once or twice — and then only briefly. I gather he just surfs around the Internet looking at p— message boards. Then he copies and pastes some of the posts onto his blog.
LFFBF: You’re joking?
LFFB: Not at all.
LFFBF: And people read it?
LFFB: Apparently.
LFFBF: Why?
LFFB: I guess they’re bored.
LFFBF: I’ll say. Why don’t they read First Things. All the back issues are online — for free. That’s a much more productive use of one’s time than reading some p— blog.
LFFB: I don’t know. Maybe they’re moral degenerates or something.
LFFBF: Are there pictures?
LFFB: Of Luke Ford?
LFFBF: No, of p— stars?
LFFB: Maybe.
LFFBF: So what was this about “fixing your wagon”?
LFFB: I’m not sure. Perhaps Luke Ford thinks I drive a station wagon and he wants to come over and fix it?
LFFBF: But you said he was agitated?
LFFB: Yes, very much so.
LFFBF: It sounds like he’s threatening you.
LFFB: Really?
LFFBF: Yeah. Perhaps he’s threatening you with bodily harm if you mention his p— blog again?
LFFB: I don’t think so. I know I’m not allowed to mention his p— blog, but I don’t think he would hurt me even if I did mention his p— blog. Besides, I’m not going to mention his p— blog ever again, so I think I’m pretty safe.
LFFBF: How can you be sure?
LFFB: Well in his autobiography …
LFFBF: He has an autobiography?
LFFB: Yep.
LFFBF: I thought you said he was a p— blogger?
LFFB: He is.
LFFBF: I guess p— blogging is bigger than I’d thought.
LFFB: Well, his memoir was self-published.
LFFBF: Good grief! Luke Ford self-published an autobiography about being a p— blogger?
LFFB: Yeah. But it didn’t sell very well.
LFFBF: I can well imagine. Did you buy a copy?
LFFB: No, he gave me one.
LFFBF: And you read it?
LFFB: Not really. I just paged through it — quickly — what with all the stories about Luke Ford “dating” older women. It was kinda creepy.
LFFBF: Older women? You mean Luke Ford dates women in their forties?
LFFB: No, older.
LFFBF: Women in their fifties?
LFFB: No, older.
LFFBF: Women in their sixties?
LFFB: Yeah, and older still.
LFFBF: Luke Ford dates women in their sixties and seventies?
LFFB: He use to.
LFFBF: Why did he stop?
LFFB: I don’t know. Maybe because he got fat.
LFFBF: Why did he get fat?
LFFB: Because of the lithium.
LFFBF: What lithium?
LFFB: The lithium he takes for his NPD.
LFFBF: What’s NPD?
LFFB: Narcissistic Personality Disorder.
LFFBF: What’s that?
LFFB: I don’t know exactly, but I think it’s a condition where a person thinks that the entire universe revolves around them.
LFFBF: That would explain the self-published autobiography.
LFFB: Yep. He’s quite shameless. In his memoir he goes into all sorts of detail about his sex life. I mean, he wasn’t just “dating” these older women.
LFFBF: Huh?
LFFB: He was having, um, “irregular” sex with them.
LFFBF: What on earth is “irregular” sex?
LFFB: It’s when you put your …
LFFBF: On second thought, don’t tell me.
LFFB: Well, it’s all in his autobiography if you’re interested.
LFFBF: I think I’ll pass. So why was he “dating” these women?
LFFB: Rent money for his hovel.
LFFBF: Luke Ford lives in a hovel?
LFFB: Yeah.
LFFBF: Any pictures?
LFFB: Of the hovel?
LFFBF: No, of Luke Ford having “irregular” sex with older women?
LFFB: No.
LFFBF: Thank God! Maybe I’ll read his book, as long as there aren’t any pictures. It sounds interesting — in a trainwrecky kinda way.
LFFB: Well if you do, you’ll find out that Luke Ford has only been in one fight in his life. That was in, like, elementary school or something. He lost. So I’m not too scared. Plus, he lives in LA. I have a two thousand mile buffer zone for protection.
LFFBF: How did you get mixed up with this character?
LFFB: Well, it’s my goal in life to get mentioned on Instapundit. So I needed a blog. Luke Ford seemed as good a subject as any. I mean all the really good topics were taken and I was sorta scraping the bottom of the barrel for ideas.
LFFBF: I think so.
LFFB: In retrospect it hasn’t worked very well, ‘cuz I keep sending Glenn Reynolds emails whenever I update my blog hoping for a link and he keeps ignoring me.
LFFBF: Why do you care? I mean all Reynolds does is link to other sites and adds “Heh!” It’s ridiculous. And to think he’s made enough money from his stupid blog to buy a new Dell 700m laptop. It just isn’t fair.
LFFB: I know. But for whatever reason he’s, like, the number one blogger. I just want to get a link, then I can die happy.
LFFBF: Maybe you need to set your sights higher. Like have a bigger goal in life than getting a link on Instapundit.
LFFB: No, that’s my goal in life. All I want is to get mentioned on Instapundit. But I don’t know how.
LFFBF: You need a big story. A scoop.
LFFB: You mean like a sex scandal?
LFFBF: Yeah, a sex scandal.
LFFB: Oh, I don’t know. I think if there was some sort of big sex scandal involving Luke Ford, he would have mentioned it in his autobiography. I tell you, the dude is shameless.
LFFBF: But what if there is something so embarrassing that even a shameless narcissist like Luke Ford wouldn’t mention it?
LFFB: Wow! That would really have to be some scandal.
LFFBF: And if you do some investigative reporting, discover the scandal, and publish the findings on your blog there’s no way Glenn Reynolds could keep ignoring you.
LFFB: That would be so cool! I mean for me. For Luke Ford … not so much.
LFFBF: Why do you care?
LFFB: Well, I don’t think Luke Ford is such a bad person.
LFFBF: Please! You said he’s just like Andrew Sullivan. I remember reading somewhere that everybody who knows Sullivan just hates him. Apparently, he’s an arrogant jerk.
LFFB: Maybe. But Luke Ford is different. People who know him say that in real life he’s actually very nice.
LFFBF: No, the problem is you’re too nice. No wonder Glenn Reynolds keeps ignoring you. Listen to me: if you want to be successful in life and get mentioned on Instapundit you have to be ruthless. Did you read Rebecca Schoenkopf’s recent mauling of Tawny Kittaen in the OC Weekly.
LFFB: OMG! That was so mean. I almost felt sorry for Kittaen. Then I remembered that she dated OJ.
LFFBF: Exactly! These celebrities — Kittaen, OJ, Sullivan, Ford — they’re all the same. They’re monsters. That’s how they became celebrities. You don’t think they stepped on people — and worse — on their climb to the top? That’s how the world works, I’m afraid.
LFFB: I guess. I just don’t know where to begin my research.
LFFBF: Why not start with Andrew Sullivan?
LFFB: Huh?
LFFBF: You said Luke Ford has a lot in common with Andrew Sullivan.
LFFB: Yeah, they both seem to have dual personalities and lead double lives.
LFFBF: There you go. Maybe Luke Ford has an embarrassing personal ad on some website?
LFFB: You think?
LFFBF: Perhaps.
LFFB: You mean with nekkid pictures?
LFFBF: Perhaps.
LFFB: On a gay website?
LFFBF: Perhaps.
LFFB: Soliciting black men to … um …
LFFBF: Perhaps.
LFFB: Oh my.
June 30, 2005:
“Veronica” emails to say she is not a leftist. That’s good. But is a feminist. That’s not so good. Apparently, and I did not know this, you can be a feminist without being a leftist.
Whatever!
“Veronica” is so yesterday.
My Moral Leader has moved on to, oh, let’s call her “Lindy.” He hasn’t sent me any pictures of “Lindy” yet, but he claims that she’s a very beautiful, yellow Ford Mustang-driving, 6′ tall blonde 24 year-old PhD student. I see a problem right there. Mr Ford is only 5’6¾” so “Lindy” towers over him, all emasculating-like.
So many women! So many aliases for me to keep track of! It’s all very confusing. I do know one thing: I was very wrong to claim (based on no evidence whatsoever!) that Mr Ford — so long as he stays on his meds — is a sensitive, caring gentleman.
Not true! Not even close to being true! What was I thinking?
Meds or no, Our Moral Leader is a womanizing scoundrel! What kind of behaviour is he role-modelling for all his young and impressionable followers? I haven’t been so disappointed in Mr Ford since that awful escapade with Kitten Natividad — you know the one where Horrid Boy stuck his ______ in Kitten’s ___. Gross!
Mr Ford insists I update my blog. He also insists I don’t discuss his new girlfriend, despite the fact that he keeps sending me pictures of her and asking if I think she’s beautiful.
Hey, you can’t do this to me, Luke. I must write about your fabulous new girlfriend. It’s big news. Every Luke Ford fan wants the inside story on Our Moral Leader’s love life. We find it fascinating! Absolutely FASCINATING!! ABSOLUTELY, TOTALLY, COMPLETELY FASCINATING!!!
Oh, don’t fret Mr Ford. I’ll be discreet.
Yes, Mr Ford’s new girlfriend is very beautiful. She’s also well-educated, with serious intellectual interests, making her, I’m sure, an engaging conversationalist. Mr Ford is very smart (IQ 185) and very chatty (for a dude), so this is all very, very important.
It certainly looks as if Luke’s ship has come in. Just in time, too. Next year, Mr Ford will be too old to attend the Young Jewish Singles Nights where he meets all his twentysomething lovelies. Instead, he’ll be stuck hitting on blue-haired grannies at the local Senior Citizen Center’s Lonely Hearts (i.e., Loser’s) Nights. And if you’re familiar with Mr Ford’s autobiography, and didn’t skip over the chapters about how Our Moral Leader use to make extra cash when he first moved to LA, you’ll know he’s been down that well-worn path many times before.
While Mr Ford is overjoyed at his good fortune, and I am sincerely happy for him, I do have some doubts about, um, oh, let’s call her “Veronica.”
First, does Mr Ford really want to move to Indiana to be with his new love? What’s the job market like in Indiana? Is there a shortage of moral leaders? One can’t just up and move out of the hovel. It’s important to think about the logistics involved. And just think how difficult it would be for Mr Ford to leave behind “Best Friend” Cathy, and his little flock of wayward teen p— stars who drop by the hovel once a week for their hands-on group counselling session.
Second, it appears, from my research on the Internet, that “Veronica” is a feminist. (What is it about Jewish women and feminism?) She’s also apparently very left-wing. (What is it about Jewish women and left-wingism?) This is going to be a problem because Our Moral Leader is known for his less than progressive political views — and he has quite the paper trail to prove it.
Of course, it can be fun to date a leftist. There’s lots of potential for teasing. You can wave around your copy of The Road to Serfdom and win every argument because, well, leftists are twits. They can’t defend their arguments with reason, because leftism has nothing to do with facts or logic. It’s all about emotion. So when your left-wing girlfriend starts droning on about how wonderful socialism is, respond by pointing out that Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich von Hayek proved way back in the 1930s that a socialist economy can’t possibly work. And keep going on and on about this — yell, if necessary — and don’t stop until you’ve made your left-wing girlfriend cry. Trust me, it’s a lot of fun!
Of course, then she’ll dump you for being “mean” and “horrible” and a “jerk.” So, on second thought, don’t do this. Instead try the following:
The key thing to understand about most women is that their lives revolve around their relationships. What most women want, more than anything else, is to love and be loved. Love and affection are all important for them. For men? Not so much. We’re perfectly happy just to sit and watch ESPN Classic TV for hours and hours (and hours). This is our great advantage over women, and if you’re a cruel, selfish monster, you can take advantage of women by playing on their need to be loved. Fortunately, Mr Ford is NOT a monster — notwithstanding his NPD (Narcissistic Personality Disorder). Oh, and his ADHD (Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder). And, of course, his appalling misogyny. At the end of the day, he’s really not such a bad guy. In fact, when he’s on his meds, Mr Ford is the sensitive, caring type. The key, though, is to combine sensitivity with creativity.
Do you write poetry, Mr Ford? Better yet can you play a musical instrument (preferably a guitar, although a piano will do) and sing? Women love this.
If you’re not very creative don’t settle by showing her the lyrics to your favourite Air Supply song. No, no, no, NO! That’s lame. Instead, steal a few lines from some long-dead, obscure poet whose work can’t be Googled, and tell “Veronica” you wrote them all by yourself — just for her! And it took hours and hours (and hours)!
Women love shopping. Women love having stuff bought for them. Better still is if you can make something for your girl. Can you whittle, Mr Ford? What about metal work? Are you good at metal working, Mr Ford? Or better yet painting. Can you paint, or maybe sculpt? If not, don’t worry. Just buy some trinket from a gift shop and give it to “Veronica” and say you made it yourself — just for her! And it took hours and hours (and hours)! If she asks how you made it, quickly change the topic and say: “My your hair looks especially beautiful today. Is that a new colour, or something?”
Do you like opera, Mr Ford? Women love high culture. And no Air Supply isn’t high culture. Get cultured, Mr Ford, molto rapidamente. Study Italian. Take art, music, and food appreciation courses at your local community college. Go to the symphony and practice staying awake. Learn about flowers and gardening and boring shit like that.
Women love physical affection. Can you be physically affectionate, Mr Ford, without being sexual? Can you hold your girl and not grope her naughty bits?
Finally, role model good dating behaviour for Cathy Jr. by being faithful. Don’t give up on your relationship with “Veronica” just because you hit a rough patch. Think long term: there are few things worse than growing old all alone.
Good Luck, Mr Ford!
July 6, 2005:
Luke Ford
(aka Mr Ford, My Moral Leader, Our Moral Leader, Chaim Amalek, Rabbi Gadol, Khunrum, Duke Floored, Dear Friend Tom, et al.)
Today I begin a series of profiles of leading Jewish public intellectuals. This will help me learn more about the people I hope to soon join. What kind of people are the Jews? How do the Jews, practising and non-practising, conceive of themselves relative to Christians, Muslims, and others? What are their moral values and politics? What, for example, is the relationship between diaspora Judaism and leftism, Zionism and conservatism? These are complex and fascinating issues. I will start, of course, by profiling the Great Luke Ford, and proceed to other leading figures across the political spectrum, such as Bertell Ollman, Dennis Prager, Noam Chomsky, Melanie Phillips, Mark Steyn, Rebecca Schoenkopf, David Horowitz, Christopher Hitchens (and his little brother Peter), “Best Friend” Cathy Seipp, and many more.
Most of the material for my profile of Luke Ford comes from his best-selling autobiography, XXX-Communicated: A rebel without a shul, supplemented by a number of frankly bizarre telephone conversations (Mr Ford blurts out the darndest things), and even stranger email exchanges. (Mr Ford has recently taken to sending me, for reasons I can’t begin to fathom, detailed descriptions of his creepy sexual fantasies about “Best Friend” Cathy. I kid you not! He stopped, thankfully, after I threatened to publish them on my blog. If Mr Ford wasn’t a world famous Moral Leader, I’d suspect that there was something wrong with him, you know, in the head — in addition, that is, to his NPD and ADHD.)
Luke Ford is 5′ 6¾” and weighs 235 pounds.
He claims to be 39 years old and to have been raised by a tribe of wild aborigines in the Australian outback. Critics reject both assertions, arguing that Mr Ford is actually much older and lies about his age so he can continue to attend Friday Night Live For Young Jewish Singles at Temple Sinai. The latter claim, although more plausible, is widely believed to be simply an excuse for his strange eating and sleeping habits. (Mr Ford always eats with his fingers and sleeps on the floor.)
It’s true that Luke Ford is an Australian. He was, in fact, born into an Australian family of deeply-committed Seventh Day Adventists, a millennialist Christian sect that preaches the imminent Second Coming of Jesus Christ. The Seventh Day Adventists Church was founded in the mid-19th century in America. Mr Ford’s family moved to California for religious reasons when Luke was about 10 or 12. (I can’t remember the exact details as I’m working from memory. I read XXX-Communicated about two years ago, and because I’ve set myself the difficult task of profiling all the leading contemporary Jewish public intellectuals, I don’t have the time to go back and re-read Mr Ford’s memoir. But, I think, I have the gist of My Moral Leader’s life story. I trust you will forgive me for any minor error of detail.)
Luke Ford was a sensitive boy. He liked to read and listen to his record collection, his favourites being Air Supply, ABBA, the Village People, Donna Summer, Gloria Gaynor, Bette Midler, and fellow countryman Peter Allen.
A great catastrophe occurred in Mr Ford’s life when he was a boy. His mother died tragically of cancer. This event devastated young Luke and deeply affects him to this day. I suspect it helps explain his adult conversion to Judaism, a religion based on a covenant, i.e., conditional relationship, between G-d and His people. This perhaps reminded Luke of his family life. Luke’s father expressed his love for his family by creating a very structured environment with many rules and regulations that Luke found a challenge to consistently follow. Conceivably he misinterpreted his father’s parenting style as an absence of unconditional love, which combined with the loss of his biological mother, led him to a lifelong search for affection that deep inside he doesn’t feel he always deserves.
Mr Ford attended UCLA and hoped to major in economics. Unfortunately, he found the experience difficult — not intellectually (Luke has a self-reported IQ of 185), but emotionally. He felt lost and lonely on a large, impersonal campus. Claiming to be suffering from debilitating exhaustion (diagnosed as Chronic Figure Syndrome [CFS], although later thought to be an expression of his NPD), and needing the care and attention of his family, Mr Ford returned home where he remained essentially bed-ridden for the next six years.
During this period, Mr Ford spent much of his time listening to the radio, specifically a talk radio station that featured Jewish moral leader Dennis Prager. Mr Prager soon became the dominant figure in Luke Ford’s life.
Luke Ford began studying Judaism in an attempt to understand why Mr Prager was such a brilliant thinker, writer, and lecturer. The more Luke studied, the stronger he felt. It seemed that he gained energy just from listening to Mr Prager and studying Torah. Soon Mr Ford decided to become a Jew, just like his moral leader. Luke Ford wrote to Mr Prager informing him of this momentous decision. Mr Prager responded positively:
Dear Dude,
Kool!
Peace,
DP
This was the most encouraging, and longest, letter Mr Ford had ever received from anyone. Now a bundle of energy, Mr Ford knew he had made the right decision.
Luke Ford continued to correspond with Mr Prager over many months. One day Mr Prager asked Luke to move to Los Angeles to become his research assistant for $6,000 per year. Mr Ford was overjoyed. This was his dream job: to be research assistant to the Great Dennis Prager. Alas, it was too good to be true.
Mr Ford travelled to Los Angeles and found a hovel (now known as The Hovel™) appropriate to his modest budget and close to Dennis Prager’s radio studio. But when an enthusiastic Luke Ford showed up at work on his first day, Mr Prager told him his services weren’t needed:
Luke Ford: Good morning, sir. What a wonderful, wonderful day it is. I’m so excited to be here. What would you like me to research first, sir?
Dennis Prager: Who the fuck are you?
LF: Luke Ford, sir. Your new research assistant, sir.
DP: Huh?
LF: Your new research assistant, sir. I’m the chap with CFS that you’ve been corresponding with over the past couple of years during my conversion to Judaism …
DP: [eyes rolling]
LF: … and you offered me the position of research assistant. Remember?
DP: Vaguely.
LF: Well, here I am!
DP: Well, you can fuck off because I don’t need you!
LF: What?
DP: Yeah, I decided that having a dude for a research assistant is fucking gay.
LF: It is?
DP: Yeah, dude. So I’ve hired a slutty 19 year old community college girl, instead. She’s 44FF-14-34 and smoking hot!
LF: Oh.
DP: So, fuck off!
LF: You know, sir, you’re much different in person than on the radio.
DP: You mean the whole moral leader thing?
LF: Yeah.
DP: Well, dude, it’s all an act.
LF: So you don’t want me to be your research assistant?
DP: That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you for the past five minutes. What’s wrong with you? Are you a fucking moron, or something?
LF: No, I’m just shocked and disappointed. I mean I moved to Los Angeles to work for you. Now what am I supposed to do?
DP: Why the fuck should I care?
LF: [sniff]
DP: Oh cheer up, dude. You’re here in LA, so why don’t you become an actor?
LF: An actor? I don’t know anything about acting.
DP: Okay. How about a model?
LF: A model? Really? You think I could be a male model?
DP: Yeah, why not?
LF: Well, I’m rather chubby. I’ve been bed-ridden for the past six years. I weigh 235 pounds.
DP: Ever heard of plus-sized modelling, dude?
LF: No.
DP: Check it out. In the meantime get the fuck out of my office or I’ll kick your ass!
Mr Ford was devastated after meeting Dennis Prager in person. The Great Dennis Prager turned out not to be so great after all. In fact, he was a creep, just like the actor Jeff Goldblum. (The stories about that guy … my oh my!)
But Luke Ford was still partially under the sway of Mr Prager. Mr Ford continued to listen to the Dennis Prager Radio Show religiously and even tried his hand a plus-sized male modelling, just as Dennis Prager suggested.
In America there are fat people all over the place. (I don’t think I’ve ever seen a fat person in Britain or Canada. But cross the border and you see 300 pounders everywhere you look. It’s incredible.) Fortunately, Mr Ford got lots of modelling gigs, but it just wasn’t satisfying work for a man of Luke’s intelligence.
One day after posing in an ad for one of those Husky Man-type clothing stores that are ubiquitous in American shopping malls, a sad Mr Ford noticed a poster on a bulletin board. A p-rn convention was happening in his neighbourhood. Mr Ford, a devout Seventh Day Adventist-turned-Orthodox Jew had never seen p-rnography. He knew that it was forbidden. And it was unclean. And very, very evil. But Mr Ford was also VERY, VERY HORNY! After six years of being confined to a bed, and then the self-esteem destroying job of being a professional plus-sized male model, Mr Ford had never actually dated a girl. He wondered: what did their naughty bits look like?
In a moment of weakness, Luke Ford returned to The Hovel™, put on his raincoat, and made the fateful decision to join all the other losers standing in long lines waiting to get a signed photograph from a real life p-rn star.
TO BE CONTINUED …
(Soon, Luke Ford becomes a p-rn journalist, gets his ass kicked by Dennis Prager, stops being a p-rn journalist, meets “Best Friend” Cathy, and returns to the world of p-rn.)
Luke Ford’s greatest claim to fame, besides being a world famous moral leader and role model, is his tremendous skill as an interviewer. Mr Ford has interviewed the high and the low, from grizzled Hollywood producers to 18 year old p-rn lovelies. My Moral Leader then writes fascinating profiles, sometimes short and snappy, occasionally long and meandering, which he posts on the Luke Ford Family of Blogs™ or publishes in one of his many books. Contra cretin Ira Stoll of the New York Sun, these are not mere “transcripts” — no, no, no! — but carefully edited interviews with contextualising commentary by the Great Mr Ford himself.
To be the subject of a Luke Ford interview and profile is to be blessed by intimately experiencing one of the true masters of the craft of interview journalism. I have never been so honoured. But one day, I hope (and pray) that My Moral Leader will interview ‘lil me: the world’s number one Luke Ford fan! Perhaps when I start my p-rn blog, Mr Ford will phone me up and kindly ask for an interview. Perhaps! Of course, I’d probably just faint, what with the excitement, and all.
In the meantime, I will work on my profile writing skills. I can never hope to be as skilled as My Moral Leader. He’s a professional journalist with oodles of talent, and I’m a mere amateur just starting out. But I do have the world’s leading profile writer as my role model.
Luke Ford is my moral leader. He’s a wonderful influence on my life — a true role model! One day I want to live in a hovel, drive a serial killer van, and write a p-rn blog just like him.
Setting goals is very important in life, otherwise you kinda drift and don’t end up accomplishing much. I just hope I haven’t set my goals too high. What if I don’t succeed in life and end up living a hovel, driving a serial killer van, and writing a p-rn blog? Hold on, those are my life goals!
And yet I foresee a problem. The hovel and serial killer van, I just might be able to accomplish. But the p-rn blog? Now that might be too difficult for me. Frankly, I’m a bit of a germaphobe. Actually, I’m a lot of a germaphobe. I just can’t see myself going to p-rn sets to interview actresses right after they’ve shot a scene. Think of all the germs! I’d be too petrified to even move. I mean what if I stepped in a puddle of … Oh, it’s just too scary to contemplate.
How does my moral leader do it?
Well, it’s because he’s a practising Jew. Mr Ford is strengthened by the knowledge that he’s bringing ethical monotheism to the very people most in need of transcendental guidance: the unclean wretches who make p-rnography. Really, it’s an uplifting story of My Moral Leader’s dedication and determination in the face of public opprobrium and horrifying health risks.
If I’m going to become a p-rn blogger, I must first convert to Judaism! It’s the only way I will be able to overcome my immobilising fear.
But how does one go about converting? Is it not a difficult process requiring much study? I think so. It seems so daunting. Fortunately, Mr Ford’s life story will be my guide. It will give me the encouragement I need on my long journey to become a successful p-rn blogger — just like My Moral Leader!
July 12, 2005:
The Luke Ford Story™ (Part Two)
So where were we? Ah, yes, Luke Ford had just returned to The Hovel™ to pick up his raincoat and head off to see Fluffy Cumsalot at the friendly neighbourhood p-rn convention.
At 5-11¾ and 105 pounds, measuring 44-14-34, with golden tresses down to her waist, milky white skin, and full (surgically-enhanced) red lips, the nineteen year old Fluffy Cumsalot was (and is) Luke Ford’s ideal woman; i.e., the dude is really shallow!
Mr Ford joined a long line of thousands of horny losers waiting to get a personally autographed photograph of Ms Cumsalot. After hours of waiting patiently (thank goodness Mr Ford always carries a book with him), he finally got to meet Fluffy — and what a life-changing shambles of a meeting it was:
Fluffy Cumsalot: NEXT!
Luke Ford: I love you!
FC: That’s so sweet. What’s your name, hon?
LF: Um, Fuke Lord. I mean, Flick Floored, I mean, Dack Doored … Oh no, I can’t even remember my own name.
FC: My, you are happy to see me!
LF: Please marry me!
FC: Hold your horses there, Dack.
LF: I love you!
FC: Hey, is that a banana in your pocket?
LF: Oh, that’s my “Pocket Torah.”
FC: Good one!
LF: You’re soooooo beautiful! You’re the most beautiful girl in the whole entire world …
FC: Thanks, Dack.
LF: … the most beautiful girl who has ever lived …
FC: You think?
LF: … who will ever live …
FC: Well, I don’t know about that.
LF: … in the entire universe, including extraterrestrial women …
FC: Ever met an extraterrestrial, Dack? ‘Cuz I’m thinking maybe you think you have.
LF: Yes. Er, no. But I’m a billion, trillion, zillion percent positive that they couldn’t possibly be more beautiful than the fantabulous Fluffy Cumsalot!
FC: Soooooo, changing the subject, what do you want me to say …
LF: Huh?
FC: … on my photograph. I mean that’s why you’re here, to get a signed photograph of “the fantabulous Fluffy Cumsalot,” right?
LF: Luke!
FC: What?
LF: That’s it! My name is Luke! Luke Ford!
FC: Lovely, babe, but we really have to be moving along here. What do you want me to write, Mr Ford?
LF: How about you give me your home phone number, so I can call you this evening for a date, and pick you up in The Serial Killer Van™, and take you back to The Hovel™, and …
FC: SECURITY!
After being thrown out of the neighbourhood p-rn convention by half-a-dozen none-too-friendly security guards, Mr Ford walked home — humiliated — to plot his revenge; i.e., he really is vindictive like that.
“A pox on all their houses,” he kept shrieking, as fellow pedestrians scattered.
Back at The Hovel™, Mr Ford brainstormed: “How can I get back at that bitch Fluffy Cumsalot? Ooooh, I hate her so much!”
After days of flowcharting and whatnot, it finally came to him: Luke Ford would build a website (this was in the days before blogging) where he would disclose to the world the real names of Fluffy Cumsalot and all the other shameless hussies in the world of p-rn.
And Mr Ford made it so.
And it was good!
Well, at least it felt good to Mr Ford because, unbelievably, his grossly offensive little website got lots of visitors. Luke Ford would constantly check his hit counter, and the more visitors he got, the healthier and more energetic he felt. He was getting revenge on Fluffy Cumsalot and beating his CFS (really NPD — ed).
And yet, Mr Ford wondered if what he was doing was ethical. Yes, the Good Book taught him that these p-rn hussies were unclean and should be shamed by decent society. But was it proper for Mr Ford, of all people, to be so judgmental?
If Luke Ford was still a Christian (cf. Jesus’ parable re: casting stones at p-rn hussies) probably not. But for the newly Jewish Luke Ford, it was cast away with both hands, baby!
But what about the ads? Mr Ford was making money off the same p-rn hussies that he was berating in his posts.
Ever the self-justifying narcissist, Luke Ford convinced himself that his website (including the truly appalling banner ads) was merely part of a larger project. He would write the definitive study — informed by Biblical values — of the history of p-rn.
Of course, in order to write such a great and necessary book, Mr Ford would have to do a lot of research. And research costs money. He would need to buy religious books, subscribe to relevant academic periodicals, and travel to interview the important players in the p-rn world. The more readers he brought to his website, Mr Ford rationalised, the more he could charge for the distasteful banner ads, and thus the more money he could collect to complete his book project.
And this brings us to the important role played by Kitten Natividad in The Luke Ford Story™. Please skip over this bit if you are under the age of 21, because it’s just awful. Really, truly, appallingly awful. Really!
Luke Ford genuinely needed to interview Kitten Natividad, then the world’s leading granny p-rn star, and, more importantly, someone who had been around the sex biz since the 1950s. Nobody knows more about p-rn than the Great Kitten Natividad.
So, on a stormy, wind-swept night in 1997, Mr Ford drove the Serial Killer Van™ to Kitten Natividad’s house, where … Again, people, I’m warning you: Please, please do not continue reading if you are: a) 21 years of age or younger; b) someone of modest to high moral standards; or c) someone who has just eaten a large (or modestly-sized) meal. Who are we kidding — someone who has eaten any food at all over the past 24 hours. This is your final warning: Turn Back Now!
The interview with Kitten Natividad went well. Luke Ford got lots of useful information for his book. As he was about to leave, Kitten asked if Mr Ford could look at her computer. She was trying to setup AOL, but not being a very technical person she couldn’t get it to work properly, and she so wanted to check out her many fan sites on the Internet.
Mr Ford, although not being a very technical person himself, was more than happy to help. Thanks to his superior natural intelligence (self-reported 185 IQ), Luke and Kitten were soon on the Internet, surfing around looking at nekkid pictures of Ms Natividad back in the day, before she, er, hit the wall — or whatever happened to her.
Mr Ford started to get a feeling in his underpants. Something was moving down there. What was it, he wondered? Mr Ford, in his early thirties in 1997 and still a virgin, didn’t know much (if anything) about sex — what with his strict religious upbringing as a Seventh Day Adventist, followed by his conversion to Orthodox Judaism. It’s true, Luke Ford had never actually watched any of the material he was writing about.
Luke Ford was feeling lightheaded as blood rushed from his massive (self-reported 185 IQ) brain toward his less than massive naughty bits. He asked Ms Natividad if she, with her many years of experience in-and-around stripping and p-rn and all things sex-related, could please explain the birds and the bees.
And she did!
In fact, she did much more than offer a few words of explanation; she provided a complete demonstration! Which is to say, they did it. In fact, they did more than it. They did it and then some. I can’t go into the details here, even if I wanted to — which I don’t — because I fear that not all 21 year old and younger readers heeded my previous sincere warnings and stopped reading a few paragraphs earlier — like they should have! But let’s just say that Kitten Natividad is a three input kind of a woman. For the relevant (and excruciating) details see Mr Ford’s autobiography. (Again “mature” audiences only, please.)
When an ecstatic Mr Ford got back to The Hovel™, he started emailing all his friends (and enemies) about what had just happened. All his enemies (and friends) were thoroughly disgusted and ignored him — all, that is, save for Mr Ford’s moral leader: Dennis Prager.
There is a bit of a backstory here that I should briefly explain. Even after Mr Ford’s terrible first meeting with Dennis Prager (see post below), which Fanboy chalked up to catching the Great One on a particularly bad day, Luke continued to faithfully listen to the Dennis Prager Radio Show. He emailed his moral leader constantly to tell him how fantabulous he was. These emails were never answered … until Mr Ford — all stalker-like — started The Unofficial Dennis Prager Fan Site. And Luke Ford being Luke Ford (i.e., someone who takes everything to the nth degree) insisted on writing about Mr Prager’s personal life; i.e., his children and finances. This infuriated the intensely private, and extremely volatile, Dennis Prager.
Let’s be honest here. What kind of loser creates a fan site on the Internet for some pseudo-celebrity/self-proclaimed moral leader? I mean, come on dude! It’s awfully hard to respect someone like that. In fact, I hate those kind of people! Dennis Prager was fully justified in being upset. What Mr Prager did to exact his revenge — now that’s an entirely different matter. To wit:
Dennis Prager emailed Mr Ford congratulating him on getting his cherry popped by the world’s number one granny p-rn star, and inviting Luke to lunch the next day to celebrate. Never one to pass on free food, Fanboy accepted. They were to meet outside Dennis Prager’s radio studio at noon. Mr Ford put on his best (and only) black suit and ran like a schoolgirl to meet his moral leader, whose building is just down the street from The Hovel™.
Luke Ford knew something was terribly wrong as soon as he saw Mr Prager. Face beet red, arms flailing wildly, Dennis Prager charged toward Mr Ford, screaming obscenities, something about the “Unofficial Dennis Prager Fan Site.” Overwhelmed by fear, Luke Ford started to shake (and cry) uncontrollably, all babygirl-like. And, really, who could blame him? Dennis Prager might look small on the radio, but in real life he’s a mountain of a man: at least 6-8¾ and 325 pounds. Mr Ford? Not so much in the height department, although he certainly is, um, “husky.” At just 5-6¾, Luke has never been much of a fighter, what with the reach disadvantage, and all. (Spending countless hours listening to Air Supply songs hasn’t helped, either.)
Fanboy tried to run. He got but one step when his moral leader’s massive left mitt grabbed the ‘lil fella around the neck. With his right hand, the Mountain Man picked Mr Ford up by his underpants. Holding him horizontal to the pavement, Dennis Prager started using Luke Ford’s bulbous (self-reported 185 IQ) head as a battering ram against a conveniently located lamppost.
Ouch!
One might think that a pedestrian or motorist seeing this spectacle would have tried to do something — anything — to stop the ass-, I mean, head-whooping. But no. You see, Luke Ford was well-known in the neighbourhood by his nickname “Horrid Boy,” reflecting his penchant for constantly berating his neighbours for their moral failings, real and imagined. In fact, all that was heard from passersby was the occasional: “About time!”; and “I’m surprised it took so long for Horrid Boy to get his just deserts, and who better to dish it out than moral leader Dennis Prager!”; and “Look mommy at the rolly polly midget getting his head bashed-in by that giant greyhaired dude!”
After the longest 15 minutes in Mr Ford’s life, Dennis Prager’s arms grew tired. He dropped Luke Ford’s lifeless body to the ground and went back to his moral leadering radio show.
Still no one rendered assistance to the helpless Mr Ford. A couple of hours later, Luke Ford regained consciousness. He staggered back to The Hovel™, repeating over and over: “Oh my head, she hurts.” (Apparently heads are feminine, like boats. Or so I’ve been told.)
During the next couple of days of convalescing in The Hovel™, Luke Ford had an epiphany. Rather than start a feud by seeking revenge against his moral leader, Fanboy came to see the “lamppost incident,” as he now refers to it, as a message from an angry G-d who, acting through His moral agent on earth, the Great Dennis Prager, was telling Mr Ford that now was the time to end his association with all things p-rn.
Mr Ford had just published his scholarly monograph, A History of X: 100 Years of Sex in Film, but the reviews were brutal; in fact, it’s widely believed Luke Ford’s “effort” is the most poorly reviewed book in the history of publishing since the invention of the printing press by Johann Gutenberg in 1450. But post-beating, Mr Ford came to an understanding: he had tried as best he could to bring the Biblical perspective to the evil world of p-rnography. If the p-rn peddlers and their raincoat-wearing consumers refused to listen to him, and change their immoral ways, it was up to G-d to punish them as He saw fit. Mr Ford would wash his hands of the whole sordid business.
Luke Ford knew that the transition to civilian life would be difficult. Making ends meet as a freelance journalist is very hard, even for the most talented of writers. And Mr Ford realised he wasn’t the most talented of writers — not by a long shot, what with the blockquoting and all!
How would he support himself without the p-rn ads? By using his interviewing skills developed during his p-rn journalism days, that’s how, he thought. And living in Beverly Hills, it seemed to Mr Ford, at the time, that he could enter the world of legit journalism, and make a decent living, by interviewing Hollywood celebrities. In fact, he soon decided that his next, better book would be about Hollywood producers.
And so Mr Ford set out to improve his writing skills. He asked around to see if any local freelancers would help him. Everyone ignored him, not wanting to associate with an infamous ex-p-rn reporter — everyone, that is, save for Cathy Seipp.
Tomorrow (or sometime this week) in the next installment of The Luke Ford Story™ find out what happens when a Beverly Hills narcissist and a Silver Lake egomaniac become best friends. (Hint: lots of Google-ego-checking, lots of blog-hit-counter-comparing, and lots and lots of the phrase: “Enough about you, already. Let’s talk about ME!“)
July 20, 2005:
The Luke Ford Story™ (Part Three)
I’ve been procrastinating writing the next part of The Luke Ford Story™ because we’ve reached 2001, the year when Mr Ford’s memoir, XXX-Communicated: A rebel without a shul, ends. So far it’s been an easy job for me. I’ve pretty much just been copying passages verbatim from Mr Ford’s autobiography. Now things get difficult. Mr Ford is a stickler for fairness and accuracy, both in his own profiles of celebrities and journalists, and when people write about him. Fortunately, according to Luke Ford, parts one and two of my series have been 100 percent accurate. That’s a relief because in the past whenever I’ve written something that has been just the tiniest bit wrong, Mr Ford has completely lost his rag, constantly telephoning me, including in the middle of the night, to scream obscenities of complaint. And then the lawyers. Good grief, the lawyers! If you start a Luke Ford fan blog, which you’ve probably been contemplating, much of your time will be taken up in endless meetings with attorneys haggling over the most ridiculous and insignificant details, like the occasional misspelling (or misplaced comma).
Anyhoo, I promised to continue my telling of The Luke Ford Story™ and I will — with some trepidation over my lack of sources, but a continued commitment to complete and total accuracy.
It’s 2001 and Mr Ford has just sold his naughty website for $250,000. He has never had so much money and predictably, albeit foolishly, he goes on a month long binge of smoking crack and banging hookers, at the end of which he has but $10,000 left of the nestegg he’d planned to use to break into legitimate journalism. Luke Ford is consumed with self-loathing.
One day at shul, Mr Ford overhears some of his “friends” talking excitedly about their upcoming six month spiritual retreat to Israel. “That’s exactly what I need,” Mr Ford says, contemplating his recent immoral descent into elicit drug use … oh, and the hookers, can’t forget the hookers!
Mr Ford asks: “How much?”
“$10,000” is the response.
“Perfect,” Mr Ford says. “I’m coming, too!”
Mr Ford’s “friends” let out a collective groan. They were so looking forward to visiting Israel, but the thought of traipsing around with Luke Ford in tow was just too much. They all cancel — all of ’em — every last one.
After a wonderful, albeit somewhat lonely, six months in Israel, Mr Ford returns to Los Angeles refreshed and renewed. He gets to work researching his book on Hollywood producers. Mr Ford anticipates that this project will take two to three years to complete, at which point he collapses.
Early the next morning Mr Ford’s Mexican maid, Consuela, arrives for her thrice weekly day-long cleaning of The Hovel™. (The Hovel™ may be small, but Luke Ford is very messy.) Consuela sees Mr Ford lying on the floor. She rushes toward his unconscious body convinced that he has succumbed to a drug overdose, or perhaps a horrible STD.
Unable to revive him, a distraught Consuela telephones for an ambulance. Mr Ford is rushed to hospital. Attended by scores of emergency room doctors and (pretty) nurses, he regains consciousness. Luke Ford tells his doctors not to worry: he probably just had a CFS attack. But they insist on keeping him in the hospital for more tests. “Cool!” Mr Ford says, anticipating many a sponge bath provided by (pretty) nurses.
The doctors find nothing physically wrong with Luke Ford and decide to send him to the nearby psychiatric hospital for further evaluation. Mr Ford is very concerned. “Does this mean no more sponge baths?” he asks. “Yes,” he’s told. “There is nothing physically wrong with you. You’re perfectly capable of bathing yourself.” Mr Ford cries.
During his hospital stay, Mr Ford’s condition is, at last, properly diagnosed. Luke Ford never had CFS. Rather, he’s been suffering from a particularly acute case of NPD. Mr Ford’s doctors prescribe mega-doses of lithium. He is sent home but told to return everyday for a two hour counselling session with a team of psychiatrists.
Mr Ford enjoys his daily visits to the mental hospital. He gets to check out the (pretty) nurses, and talk about himself, but now people are actually (kinda) listening. One day as Mr Ford is prattling on and on about himself, as is his wont, he mentions the details of his recent NPD attack. He remembers collapsing exactly at the point when he realised how long his Hollywood book project would take, and thus how long it would be before the reviews, and the attention, would roll in. In the past, Mr Ford explained, he had a very naughty website, from which he received lots of attention. He would check his hit counter at least 60 times an hour, and constantly do the Google Ego Check to see if people were talking about him somewhere on the Internet.
Mr Ford’s doctors suggested that as part of managing his condition, he should consider ways of receiving a steady stream of attention. Mr Ford agrees but feels that he has moved beyond Internet journalism. He would very much like to write essays for periodicals, like Commentary Magazine, in addition to working on his scholarly monograph. His team of doctors agree.
Luke Ford had never tried essay writing before. This was all very new (and exciting), but he would need help. Mr Ford decided to contact local freelance writers to see if they could give him some tips on how to write for popular magazines. Mr Ford persisted through hundreds of rejections until he telephoned Cathy Seipp.
Luke Ford: Hello, is this Cathy Seipp, the freelance journalist?
Cathy Seipp: ARE YOU A TELEPHONE SOLICITOR? BECAUSE IF YOU ARE I’M CALLING THE POLICE!
LF: No, no, I’m Luke Ford, scholarly monograph writer and aspiring freelance essayist for popular periodicals.
CS: What? Are you sure you’re not selling something? Because if you are I’M CALLING THE POLICE!
LF: Relax, lady. I’m Luke Ford: intellectual/writer. Perhaps you’ve heard of me?
CS: Er, no.
LF: Well, I was wondering if you could be so kind as to assist me …
CS: It’s 8:57 pm. Hurry up, buddy. G-d help anybody who tries to talk to me on the phone after 9pm!
LF: Okay, ma’am, I’ll be quick. I understand that you’re a successful local freelance writer and I was wondering if you could tell me about yourself …
CS: [excitedly] Talk about myself?
LF: Yes, I was hoping that you’d tell me about how you became a freelance writer, because I’m looking to break into the field.
CS: Cool! When would you like me to come over and talk about myself?
LF: Well, talk about yourself in the context of being a successful freelance writer …
CS: When? Tomorrow? Could I come over tomorrow?
LF: Sure, tomorrow is good.
CS: Should I bring slides?
LF: Slides?
CS: Yeah, my slide collection. You know of family vacations of when I was a kid, and stuff.
LF: Well, I don’t know if that will be necessary. I mean, I guess if you really what to …
CS: Yes, I really want to!
LF: But what I’m really interested in is how you became a freelance writer. I’m mostly looking for tips, advice, and contacts.
CS: Whatever, dude. I’m going to come over and talk about myself at five o’clock. Is that okay?
LF: Sure, I’ll see you tomorrow evening, then, Miss Seipp.
CS: No, no, I’m coming over at five o’clock in the morning! This will give us the whole day to talk about me and look at my slides. See you then. Bye!
LF: But … Hello, hello, are you still there? … Miss Seipp? … Miss Seipp? …
Apologising for being early, at 4:37 am the next morning Cathy Seipp arrived at The Hovel™ with her slide collection, projector, screen, and pointing stick. Mr Ford tried his best to pay attention: although, in truth, he did doze off a few times; and he did surreptitiously pull out his “Pocket Torah” for a couple of hours of religious study; and he did leave The Hovel™ for 2½ hours in the afternoon to attend his daily psychiatric counselling session at the local mental hospital. Miss Seipp didn’t notice any of this.
By Mr Ford’s bedtime (9pm), they were only up to looking at the slides of Miss Seipp’s second birthday party. With so many slides still to see, she suggested that Mr Ford come over to her house at 5am for Sunday dinner. He agreed somewhat reluctantly. Miss Seipp has many contacts with local writers and editors, Mr Ford reasoned. He really couldn’t pass up this opportunity, even if it meant pretending to look at her slide collection. Besides, they did have a lot in common. They both love the Google Ego Check, convinced that someone (anyone), somewhere (anywhere), is saying something (anything) about them on the Internet.
Miss Seipp drove home to Silver Lake thrilled with her new, best friend: “Finally, I’ve found a man who actually listens to me,” she said to herself.
Next Sunday Mr Ford arrived at Cathy Seipp’s house. She showed him passed the “ABSOLUTELY NO SOLICITING OR I’LL CALL THE POLICE” sign on the front door, and introduced her new, best friend to her then thirteen year old daughter Cecile DuBois.
Cathy Seipp: Cecile, come here. I want you to meet my new, best friend … um … what’s you name again?
Luke Ford: Mr Luke Ford, ma’am.
CS: Right, Luke Ford. You’ll love him, he’s such a wonderful listener.
Cecile DuBois: Hi, I’m so glad to …
CS: Come along, then, we’ve got plenty of slides to look at.
CD: Oh G-d no, not the slides. Anything but the slides.
And thus began Mr Ford’s long and mutually enriching friendship with Cathy Seipp and Cecile DuBois. Of course, it wasn’t all about looking at slides. Miss Seipp also became Mr Ford’s career coach and professional advisor.
She gave him a book about ethics in journalism for his birthday, and suggested possible essay ideas.
Luke Ford tried as best he could to become a popular magazine essayist, but Miss Seipp isn’t a miracle worker and his progress was slow. Commentary Magazine kept rejecting his submissions and Mr Ford’s confidence, and energy level, started to wane. Miss Seipp suggested that he set his sights a little lower, and perhaps try writing for a local alt-weekly. “Alt-weekly?” Mr Ford huffed. “I’m not writing for some communist rag that nobody reads. I want to be in Commentary Magazine. It’s Commentary Magazine or bust!”
And bust it was. Rejection piled up on top of rejection. Soon Mr Ford’s health had deteriorated to the point he no longer had the energy necessary to leave The Hovel™. Cecile DuBois would drop by weekly to deliver groceries and keep Mr Ford company. One day Cecile was surfing the Internet on Mr Ford’s computer, as he lay on the floor. (Mr Ford doesn’t have a bed.) She read an article about a new phenomenon called blogging. “Blogging? What’s that?” Mr Ford murmured, no longer strong enough to raise his voice above a whisper.
“A blog, or web log,” Cecile answered, “is a type of web page that serves as a publicly accessible personal journal. It’s typically updated daily, with the most recent post at the top.”
“I used to have one of those,” Mr Ford muttered. “Years ago.”
“You did? That’s so cool, Mr Ford,” Cecile said. “Maybe you invented the web log?”
“Yeah, I probably did. And just think of all the attention I’d be getting if people recognised that I was the world’s first blogger,” Mr Ford said angrily, his voice now rising.
“What was your proto-blog about?” Cecile asked.
“Um, … er, … the Human Condition, or an aspect thereof,” Mr Ford answered sheepishly.
“Wow, you’re so smart, Mr Ford!” Cecile chirped.
“You could say that, you definitely could say that,” Mr Ford said triumphantly. “I’m like one of the leading contemporary Jewish public intellectuals, or so I’ve been told.”
Cecile agreed: “I can believe it! You know, Mr Ford, you should join, or should I say, rejoin the blog revolution. Think of all the attention you’d receive: the world’s first blogger returns to write about the Human Condition, or an aspect thereof.”
“No, I don’t want to write about that again. That’s in my past. I think I’d write about my new interest: Jewish theology,” Mr Ford said, gaining strength with each passing word.
“Hey, no need to shout, Mr Ford,” Cecile responded.
And so Mr Ford set up his new blog on Jewish theology. The first thing he did was add a hit counter. He posted feverishly and the hits started to come in. No, his web traffic didn’t begin to approach the 20,000 to 30,000 hits per day that his old naughty website received, but it was a start. As his energy level rose, in addition to working on his blog, Mr Ford returned to researching his scholarly monograph on Hollywood producers.
Influenced by Luke Ford’s success, Cecile started her own blog. Miss Seipp became jealous. She wasn’t happy that her daughter and best friend were getting so much attention. She wanted to blog, too. The first thing Miss Seipp did when creating her blog was set up a hit counter. Then she bought expensive IP address tracing software, so she could learn more about her readers and email them, asking “Why do you read my site, and why do you love me so much?”
Miss Seipp used her column on the National Review website to promote her blog. She also made radio and television appearances to publicise “Cathy’s World.” She wrote to Glenn Reynolds at InstaPundit asking for, and receiving, links, something the evil Mr Reynolds would never do for Luke Ford. Soon her hit totals towered over Mr Ford’s and Cecile’s.
Cecile tried to take the high road, but Mr Ford became very upset. It wasn’t fair. Cathy’s was a general interest blog, whilst his was a serious site devoted to Jewish theology. He tried to get on the Dennis Miller Show but was rebuffed. Even Mr KABC ignored him.
Then Miss Seipp started printing out (using a very large font) a list of the IP addresses of all the visitors to her blog over the past week. Every Sunday, when Mr Ford came to visit for their weekly dinners, Miss Seipp would wave her printout in Mr Ford’s face, saying “My, my, look how big it is. It’s a whopper. And yours in comparison, it’s so small and unimpressive.” Mr Ford felt inadequate. His energy level fell precipitously. “At least,” he reasoned, “Cecile hasn’t been linked by InstaPundit. I don’t know what I’d do if that happened,” he cried.
One Sunday Mr Ford’s worst nightmare was realised. Cecile DuBois rushed into the dining room to announce the big news: InstaPundit had just linked to her website. She’d been InstaLanched! Moments later Mr Ford collapsed to the floor.
Does Mr Ford survive his latest, and most severe, NPD attack? Find out in the next installment of The Luke Ford Story™.
August 11, 2005:
The Luke Ford Story™ (Part Four)
This is the fourth part in my series on the life and times of Luke Ford: public intellectual, scholar,
essayist… oops, not an essayist … blogger, science correspondent, interviewer, raconteur, moral leader, role model, man-about-town, playboy, and, of course, severe NPD sufferer.
It’s the year 2003ish and Mr Ford’s good friend, Cecile DuBois, has just triumphantly announced over Sunday dinner that her blog has been linked by Glenn Reynolds of InstaPundit.com. Luke Ford (self-reported IQ of 185) does a quick zero sum calculation in his massive head and, overcome with NPD, promptly collapses in a heap.
I would like to say that young Cecile and her mommy, Luke Ford’s best friend, Cathy Seipp, immediately rushed toward Horrid Boy, as they affectionately call him, to administer mouth-to-mouth resuscitation — or whatever one does for a NPD attack victim. But, alas, I can say no such thing.
With Mr Ford as my guide to all things journalistical, I must report honestly and accurately (just as My Moral Leader™ does in his wonderful profiles of p-rn stars and lady journalists) that young Cecile spent the rest of the evening literally floating on air, thanks to her inflated head, banging into walls and ceilings, totally oblivious to her good friend’s plight. Meanwhile, Miss Seipp rushed not toward the lifeless body of her best friend but her computer workstation, where she spent the evening, and well into the early morning, bombarding Mr InstaPundit asking, pleading, begging for a link: “Please link to me.” “Please!” “Anything for a link: ANYTHING! Do you understand? A-N-Y-T-H-I-N-G!” “PUH – LEASE!” “PLEASE … PLEASE … PLEASE!!!”
The poor thing was so flustered that she forgot about the time difference between Los Angeles and Knoxville, Tennessee. Professor Reynolds had gone to bed, unable to respond to Miss Seipp’s 19,763 desperate emails until the next day. Cathy collapsed on top of her workstation at 3:19am from exhaustion, or was it a broken heart caused by no linky-love from the evil Glenn Reynolds. Heh!
I would like to say that first thing the next morning Good Friend Cecile™ and Best Friend Cathy™ came to the aid of Our Moral Leader™. But, alas, I must continue to report honestly and accurately on this most terrible of events. Young Cecile, head back to normal size, decided to do some topless sun tanning in the backyard, whilst mommy dearest went about her normal busy workday.
It wasn’t until late afternoon that the dog discovered Mr Ford’s lifeless body in the dining room. This was some 20 hours after his NPD attack, and try as they might Cecile and Cathy (and the dog) were unable to resuscitate The Narcissist From Down Under™.
At the hospital, Mr Ford’s team of doctors pumped the chubby ethicist’s body full of lithium. Within days, a team of blonde supermodels were flown in from Sweden. Dressed in nurses uniforms, they gave Mr Ford a twelve hour sponge bath, repeating his name over and over, all sing-songy-like. But it was to no avail. Distraught, the doctors and nurses wheeled Luke Ford over to the nearby hospice. After connecting a feeding tube, they said: “We’ve done all we can. He is in G-d’s hands now.” Then, fearing the worse, they cried.
I would like to say that Cecile and Cathy were at the hospice everyday keeping Mr Ford company by playing charades, reading the latest updates from their blogs, and chatting about their many feuds with journalists, teachers, schoolmates, tenants, neighbours, et al. Alas, I can say no such thing (see above for the reason). Oh sure, they did telephone every couple of weeks, but only to inquire: “Pulled the plug yet? Don’t you think you should? Stop dilly-dallying around and get on with it, already!”
Cathy and Cecile are proponents of the quality of life, rather than culture of life, argument. They contend that a life without Cathy’s World and Sky Watching My World is a life not worth living. Perhaps. They do seem to have been vindicated in the Terri Schiavo case. But not here, because a few weeks later a television in the hospice was tuned to a channel showing Entertainment Tonight. Luke Ford shot out of his bed like a rocket, rushing toward the television screaming: “ME! ME! ME! ME! It’s ME on the telly!”
And so it was. ET was repeating a programme featuring Horrid Boy discussing his scholarly monograph on the history of p-rn. Hospice staff, with tears of joy in there eyes, gathered around Mr Ford saying “You’re awake! It’s a miracle! There is a G-d, after all!”
When the television programme ended, Mr Ford collapsed to the floor. Fortunately, his team of psychiatrists knew exactly what to do. In place of a feeding machine, Mr Ford was hooked up to a television with a built-in VCR that showed his various TV appearances in a continuous loop. With Luke Ford’s energy-level artificially restored, it was time for an intervention.
Luke Ford’s Team of Mental Health Professionals: You know why you’re here?
Luke Ford: To talk about me?
LFTofMHP: Yes.
LF: Cool!
LFTofMHP: But more specifically, we are here to talk about what you’re doing with your life.
LF: Well, I’m trying to get published in Commentary Magazine, remember?
LFTofMHP: And how much success have you had in that endeavour?
LF: Not much so far, I’m afraid. They keep returning my manuscripts — something about blockquoting. I don’t understand it.
LFTofMHP: Well, you do tend to use a lot of blockquotes.
LF: I do?
LFTofMHP: Er, yes.
LF: Oh.
LFTofMHP: Here’s the thing: we were very fortunate to bring you back to life after your last NPD attack. Entertainment Tonight happened to be showing one of your old interviews. Next time we might not be so lucky. In fact, we fear that your NPD has progressed to the point that your next attack will most certainly be your last.
LF: Oh, no.
LFTofMHP: Yes, your condition is that severe.
LF: I’ve been trying so hard to get attention through my writing, but people don’t seem to be very interested.
LFTofMHP: Your Jewish theology blog is quite good, but it just doesn’t have wide enough appeal to satiate your pathological need for attention. Have you thought about anything else you could do as a career, rather than writing?
LF: I don’t know. Growing up I always wanted to be a professional athlete. Perhaps I should try that?
LFTofMHP: What sports do you play?
LF: None really. But it would be so cool to be, like, an NBA player — what with the groupies and all!
LFTofMHP: But you’re in your mid-30s, 5-6¾ tall and weigh 235 pounds. The NBA is hardly a realistic career goal.
LF: Yeah, I guess you’re right. Perhaps, I could be a jockey?
LFTofMHP: Perhaps, if you lost 100 pounds. Even then jockeys aren’t really very famous.
LF: No groupies?
LFTofMHP: Probably not.
LF: Darn!
LFTofMHP: Have you thought about returning to p-rn journalism? That seems to have been the healthiest period in your life, probably because of all the television interviews.
LF: Yeah, I was on TV a lot. I even had my own Internet radio programme. But, no, I could never return to p-rn journalism.
LFTofMHP: Why not?
LF: Because of my religious faith, silly! I’m a proud convert to Orthodox Judaism.
LFTofMHP: But you did it before?
LF: Yes, but that was only because I was working on a scholarly monograph about the history of the p-rn industry. That was my moral justification, and even then I was still thrown out of seven Shuls for unclean activity. And in truth, it’s awfully difficult to reconcile ethical monotheism with p-rn journalism.
LFTofMHP: Ah, but as an Orthodox Jew you believe in the culture of life, correct?
LF: Yes, very much so. According to Dennis Prager, practising Jews embrace the culture of life as a deep religious commitment, something about a reaction to the death obsession of the Ancient Egyptians. I don’t fully understand it, but whatever Mr Prager says, I say. He’s my moral leader!
LFTofMHP: Cool!
LF: Thinking is hard and Dennis Prager seems so good at it, I figure it’s easier to have him do all my thinking for me.
LFTofMHP: And what would Mr Prager do if he was presented with a stark alternative between choosing life and choosing death?
LF: He would choose life, of course.
LFTofMHP: Well, Mr Ford that is your choice. And you must do what Dennis Prager would do: you must choose life. You must do the only thing commensurate with your talents that offers the level of attention you need to keep your NPD under control. You must return to p-rn journalism.
LF: But what about Shul?
LFTofMHP: We will give you a doctor’s note explaining the severity of your NPD and how this line of work will keep you a productive, functioning member of society, rather than bedridden, or much worse.
LF: I guess, you’re right.
Mr Ford returned to The Hovel™ and with some trepidation set up his p-rn blog. The first thing he did was add a hit counter. Posting under the clever nom de guerre Dack Doored, thereby hiding his real identity from his friends, Torah study mates, and Jewish theology blog readers, he started posting about Kitten Natividad, Kendra Jade, et al., and the hits piled up. At first a hundred, and then a thousand hits per day. Soon Mr Ford had tens of thousands of visitors each day to his p-rn blog. And on the occasions when his real name was discovered, Horrid Boy would whip out his doctor’s note, saying: “Don’t worry, I’m a p-rn blogger for medical reasons only. It in no way reflects my true moral character.”
Luke Ford’s health improved dramatically. He was a bundle of energy. In rapid succession he published his autobiography, a book on Hollywood, and a book on Jewish journalism. Mr Ford even returned to Cathy Seipp’s house for Sunday dinners.
I would like to say that Best Friend Cathy™ and Good Friend Cecile™ learned from their past mistake and supported Mr Ford by failing to mention that they, too, were popular bloggers. But, alas, I can say no such thing. (See above.)
On the contrary, Cathy and Cecile would wait at the front door for Mr Ford to arrive. At which point they would start jumping up and down, waving their visitor IP address printouts, shouting: “People Love Us! People Love Us!”
The new, healthy Mr Ford would sweep passed unperturbed, confident in the knowledge that the hit total for the Luke Ford Family of Blogs™ far surpasses that of his friends. Of course, 99.9 per cent of his hits are from the naughty blog. But does he not have a doctor’s note to explain this? Yes, he does! Mr Ford thus sits back, relaxes, and smiles serenely in the face of the shrieking and blog-visitor-IP-address-printout-waving bedlam of his friends.
And yet the Great Mr Ford’s blogging success wasn’t enough. In truth, no amount of attention is enough for a severe NPD suffer. Luke Ford still had to put up with Miss Seipp’s constant references to her guest radio interviews and regular appearances on the Dennis Miller television programme. Best Friend Cathy™ knew Mr Ford had no answer to her taunts:
Best Friend Cathy Seipp: Hi, Luke, I just wanted to phone you to say that I’ll be appearing on the Glenn Sacks radio show tomorrow night. I’m sure you will want to listen, since, as you know, I’m quite good as a radio interview guest.
Luke Ford: Okay.
BFCS: Hey, maybe I’ll put in a good word for you with my friend Glenn. If he plans one day to do a segment on Jewish theology, he might be able to use you. It’s a long shot, but I’ll do what I can. I mean, I am your best friend. Hahahahahahahaha!
LF: [click]
Then one day “it” happened. “It” being a narcissist’s dream come true. 60 Minutes (pre-Dan Rather Bush National Guard story fiasco) called. “YES, YES, YES!” Luke Ford screamed before Steve Kroft had an opportunity to explain that he wanted the blogger to be a guest expert during a special story on the p-rn industry.
Mr Ford was so thrilled that before the report aired on CBS, he emailed all his friends and enemies announcing that 60 Minutes was doing a story — an unprecedented two segment story during sweeps, no less — about the Great Luke Ford. Friends were thrilled — enemies stunned. Horrid Boy had apparently made it big!
Mr Ford telephoned his best friend to announce the news:
Luke Ford: Hi, Cathy, Luke Ford here.
Best Friend Cathy Seipp: It’s 8:57pm. Make it fast, buster. You know I don’t talk on the phone after 9pm.
LF: Guess what?
BFCS: You’ve had a relapse and you’re smoking crack again?
LF: Er, no.
BFCS: Thanks to the miracle of modern medical science, octogenarian p-rn star Kitten Natividad is having your baby?
LF: Er, no. Give up?
BFCS: No, this is fun. Let me think …
LF: I’ll stop you right there. I’m going to be on 60 Minutes as a guest expert. Take that, Best Friend Cathy Seipp™!
BFCS: Get out!
LF: It’s true!
BFCS: Oh my G-d. This is awful … I mean, I’m so happy for you … I guess.
LF: Hey, maybe I can put in a good word for you with my new friend Steve Kroft. Perhaps 60 Minutes is working on a story on the Gilmore Girls, or maybe Everwood, and they could use you as an expert. I mean it’s the least I could do for my best friend. Hahahahahahahahaha!
BFCS: Okay, Luke, what exactly are you going to be an expert on? … Huh?
LF: [click]
Mr Ford’s Jewish theology blog readers were convinced that 60 Minutes was going to profile their Moral Leader. About time, too! What will he lecture us on, they wondered. Vegetarianism, perhaps?
Finally the big day arrived. With pen and paper in hand, Mr Ford’s legit fans prepared to take notes on their Moral Leader’s appearance — an unprecedented two segments during sweeps, no less — on 60 Minutes, CBS’s flagship news programme.
The report began with Steve Kroft at a p-rn convention.
“That’s weird,” Mr Ford’s Jewish theology blog fans thought. Why is 60 Minutes doing a story about Luke Ford’s biblical values approach to vegetarianism from a p-rn convention?
In the fifth and final part on the Luke Ford Story™, I explain: the Luke Ford Fan Blog; my numerous feuds with Mr Ford, including our row over the removal of my site from his blogroll; why Mr Ford will no longer talk to me (hint: he doesn’t really weigh 235 lbs); Luke Ford’s love life; and the never before told story of Showtime’s aborted plan to make a movie-of-the-week based on Mr Ford’s memoir.
Septmber 9, 2005:
The Luke Ford Story™ (Part Five)
[I’ve removed the opening paragraphs as originally posted from this blog entry. They were ill-conceived, poorly written, and caused My Moral Leader great emotional distress, for which I offer my sincere apology.]
Soon after the publication of XXX-Communicated, the American cable network Showtime contacted Mr Ford to inquire if he would be interested in selling the television rights to his book for $500,000. Showtime wanted to turn Mr Ford’s memoir into a movie. Luke Ford eagerly agreed, and proceeded to tell everyone that he was about to become even more famous, and would soon be off lithium, which he takes in megadoses to manage his NPD, for good. That’s the last I heard of the matter.
It’s my goal in life to become just like My Moral Leader, sans the NPD (and lithium). This means, of course, becoming a p-rn blogger. I can’t wait, but I’m not quite ready. It’s one thing to interview celebrities and VIPs, such as Mr Ford, on the telephone, but it’s quite another to conduct face-to-face interviews. This is where I need practice if I’m going to maintain my composure when asking actresses at p-rn star karaoke profound questions about the Human Condition, just as My Moral Leader does.
Thursday morning, September 8, 2005, I headed off to the Los Angeles headquarters of Showtime Networks in the hope of interviewing CEO Matt “I’m Jewish — we’re into projects that are too political, too religious, too black, too gay” Blank.
I charmed my way into Mr Blank’s office, and much to my surprise he was willing to meet with me. In fact, he was desperate to talk to someone about his experience with Luke Ford. Wonderful, I thought, I’m going to practice my interviewing skills, and find out what happened to the much anticipated television movie project on the life and times of the Great Luke Ford.
Matt Blank: Please take a seat, Mr Fan Blogger.
Luke Ford Fan Blogger: Thank you. It’s ever so kind of you to take time out of your busy day making morally corrupting movies about communists, Jews, blacks, and homosexuals to speak to me.
MB: To be honest, I need to talk to someone about Luke Ford. Call it an opportunity for catharsis.
LFFB: You found dealing with the Great Luke Ford difficult?
MB: “The Great” who? What are you talking about?
LFFB: I’m talking about the Great Luke Ford: Jewish theologian, moral leader, role model, p-rn blogger, severe NPD-sufferer, author of XXX-Communicated, etc., etc.
MB: Yeah, that’s the one. “The Great Pain In the Ass,” you mean.
LFFB: But surely you’ve dealt with the highly sensitive, temperamental artiste-type before?
MB: Of course, but nothing could have prepared me for Luke Ford. What a piece of work …
LFFB: You seem to be hyperventilating, Mr Blank. Perhaps you should sit down, and start at the beginning. Please explain how you first became familiar with Mr Ford?
MB: Let me think … Well, one of our employees brought to my attention the memoir of a p-rn blogging Jewish theologian, and suggested I take a look at it. That sounds like just the sort of provocative, intellectually challenging material that Showtime is interested in, I thought.
LFFB: So did you find Mr Ford’s autobiography provocative and intellectually challenging?
MB: Provocative? Yes, especially the chapter about Kitten Natividad. Intellectually challenging? Not so much.
LFFB: But on the whole you liked it, no?
MB: On the whole? Er, no.
LFFB: That’s surprising.
MB: Really?
LFFB: Absolutely. I loved it — well, except for the Kitten Natividad chapter. That was kinda yucky.
MB: That was my favourite part. I especially liked it when Luke Ford stuck his …
LFFB: Stop it! Stop it! Please, you’re talking about My Moral Leader.
MB: Your what?
LFFB: My Moral Leader. Luke Ford is My Moral Leader.
MB: Are you a crazy person?
LFFB: I don’t think so. Why do you ask?
MB: Forget it. So, back to the book. I thought it had potential. Turning it into an acceptable movie script would take a lot of work, but it had a good dramatic arc, some violence, and, of course, plenty of sex. I gave my staff the go-ahead to begin negotiations with Mr Ford, and think about set design, a potential director, casting — all the usual stuff.
LFFB: Great!
MB: And that was when the wheels started to fall off the project.
LFFB: Already?
MB: Yes, it became immediately obvious that working with Mr Ford was going to be a problem.
LFFB: How so?
MB: He’s an idiot for one thing.
LFFB: I beg to differ! Mr Ford has a self-reported IQ of 185!
MB: So he told me — many, many times. Empirical evidence for Mr Ford’s genius, however, is rather scant.
LFFB: Rubbish!
MB: Let me explain. We told Mr Ford that his memoir required major rewriting if was to be successfully turned into a screenplay. He suggested that he could write the screenplay all by himself.
LFFB: Luke Ford can write screenplays?
MB: Of course not. He thought that all he needed to do was cut and paste from his memoir, and that the screenplay would be ready in no time. We had to explain that it doesn’t work that way. The screenwriter needs to create dialogue, for one thing. Besides, the storyline needed to be rethought.
LFFB: What was wrong with it?
MB: As everyone knows, Mr Ford has returned to p-rn blogging. But XXX-Communicated ends with him turning his back on the p-rn world and heading off to Israel to begin his new life as a chaste Orthodox Jew. In other words, the ending is highly deceptive.
LFFB: Yeah, I pointed that out to him at the time. He let me read a final draft, and I tried to explain that he needed a new, more honest ending before publication.
MB: What did he say?
LFFB: He told me to “Fuck off!”
MB: Lovely!
LFFB: Yeah, unfortunately My Moral Leader has quite a mouth. It’s “F- this” and “F- that” all the time
MB: I noticed the same thing. He should go into the construction trade. He’d fit right in.
LFFB: Hahahaha!
MB: So we finally convinced Mr Cut-and-Paste that a screenwriter would have to be hired and the ending of the story changed.
LFFB: And he agreed?
MB: After he stopped swearing and throwing things around my office, yes, finally he agreed.
LFFB: And the new ending?
MB: We liked the basic arc of XXX-Communicated. Sweet little Australian boy grows up to be a lost young man in America. Suffers severe NPD. Is confined to a bed for six years. Plays his Air Supply, Abba, Village People, Donna Summer, Gloria Gaynor, Peter Allen, and Menudo records endlessly. Discovers Dennis Prager on the radio. Converts to Orthodox Judaism. Starts a naughty website. Is ejected from seven shuls. Has an epiphany. The end. Except in our ending rather than moving to Israel, Mr Ford gets married.
LFFB: Interesting. And who does he marry?
MB: Granny p-rn star Kitten Natividad, of course!
LFFB: Cool!
MB: Kitten moves into The Hovel™ after becoming Mrs Ford. Together the happy couple adopt 26 orphans from Mexico. Kitten Natividad is originally from Mexico, you know.
LFFB: I did not know that. And all 28 of them live in The Hovel™ together?
MB: Yep, it’s crowded but love conquers all.
LFFB: That’s so touching. I have tears in my eyes just thinking about it. And Mr Ford was content with this ending?
MB: Mr Ford has a thing for granny p-rn. So, yes, he seemed quite happy with how the Showtime version of The Luke Ford Story™ was going to end.
LFFB: But there were more problems to come, I gather?
MB: Very much so. Actually, the problems had just started.
LFFB: Explain, please?
MB: Mr Ford wanted to direct. In fact, he insisted.
LFFB: Luke Ford can direct a movie?
MB: Of course not. But he claimed to have experience, saying that he’d already directed a documentary film called “What Women Want.”
LFFB: Luke Ford knows what women want?
MB: Of course not. I told one of my staff to check it out to see if Mr Ford was telling the truth about having relevant experience. He came back saying that the so-called documentary film “What Women Want” was actually a p-rn video.
LFFB: That can’t be!
MB: I’m afraid so.
LFFB: My Moral Leader directed a p-rn video?
MB: Not only did he direct a p-rn video, but he starred in it.
LFFB: I’m feeling ill.
MB: Just be thankful you haven’t seen it. Then you’d really be sick.
LFFB: You watched it?
MB: A couple of minutes of it. That’s all I could stand. It was gross. Just appalling.
LFFB: Oh my. This is all news to me.
MB: I’m sorry, I thought you knew.
LFFB: No, not at all. I guess I’ve lived a sheltered existence.
MB: Welcome to the real world, buddy. Things are not always as they seem.
LFFB: Apparently. Don’t tell me Mr Ford wanted to act in Showtime’s The Luke Ford Story™, too?
MB: No, but he certainly had suggestions as to who should play Luke Ford in the movie.
LFFB: Such as?
MB: Brad Pitt.
LFFB: BRAD PITT? That’s ridiculous!
MB: I know. Mr Ford doesn’t look anything like Brad Pitt.
LFFB: What was Horrid Boy thinking?
MB: I have no idea. Besides, we couldn’t afford Brad Pitt. Our entire budget was projected to be $10 million. Brad Pitt gets at least double that for a movie.
LFFB: What was Mr Ford’s response?
MB: Then he suggested Jude Law.
LFFB: JUDE LAW? That’s ridiculous!
MB: I know. Mr Ford doesn’t look anything like Jude Law. And we couldn’t have afforded Jude Law. So we tried to explain to Mr Ford, again, that our movie was to be a small artistic piece for cable television, not a major motion picture for the theatres.
LFFB: What did he say?
MB: Then he suggested Pierce Brosnan.
LFFB: PIERCE BROSNAN? That’s ridiculous!
MB: I know. Mr Ford doesn’t look anything like Pierce Brosnan. And again, Mr Brosnan was well outside of our price range. This went on and on for weeks. It was endless. At one point Mr Ford suggested Marcus Schenkenberg. We explained that Marcus Schenkenberg is a model not an actor.
LFFB: What did Luke Ford say?
MB: He said: “Well, Marcus Schenkenberg is very pretty. Maybe he can learn to act.”
LFFB: Good grief. I feel for you. I really do.
MB: It was awful. And I haven’t even gotten to the really bad part. My therapists say it will be years before I completely recover from the experience.
LFFB: It gets worse?
MB: I’m afraid so.
LFFB: Oh my.
September 28, 2005:
Say It Ain’t So
With Our Moral Leader hanging out with teenage girls across England (and now Paris) it’s up to us, his many followers, to start thinking for ourselves. But, alas, thinking is hard — at least it is for me. So, I’ve been forced to search the Internet looking for articles on religion and morality as I await Mr Ford’s return to regular blogging.
I’ve found four interesting articles: the first laments the loss of Biblical literacy; the second, by a post-Marxist, points to the Biblical foundations of modern democratic politics; the third contrasts Jewish and Christian ideas on the morality of hate; and, lastly, an article from the BBC (of course!) suggesting that religion, and by inference Biblical morality, is bunk.
Unfortunately, I regard the last article to be the most persuasive of the four. You see this is what happens when the Great Luke Ford puts his holidaying pleasures above tending to the moral needs of his flock — we get tempted by dangerous ideas, like science, secularism, and fantasies about partying with hot English (and Parisian) teens!
1) In “The Bible Tells Me So: Biblical illiteracy is a shame” the Wall Street Journal’s Adam Nicolson writes:
Up until, say, 100 years ago, biblical literacy would have been practically mandatory. If you didn’t know what “the powers that be” originally referred to, or where “the writing on the wall” was first seen, or what was meant by “the patience of Job,” “Jacob’s ladder” or “the salt of the earth”– if you didn’t know what an exodus was or a genesis, a fatted or a golden calf — you would have been excluded from the culture. It might be said that a civilization consists, at its core, of these easily transmitted packages of implication. They are one of the mechanisms by which cultures can be both efficient and rich. You don’t have to return to first principles every time you wish to communicate … Without the set of archetypes and fount of wisdom in the Bible, our lives would be thinner and poorer. I know my own life would have been immeasurably less if I had never encountered the majestic language of scriptural stories, as told in the King James Version.
2) History professor Richard Wolin discusses left-wing German philosopher Jurgen Habermas’ interest in the role of Judeo-Christian belief in a healthy democracy:
Among 19th-century thinkers it was an uncontestable commonplace that religion’s cultural centrality was a thing of the past. For Georg Hegel, following in the footsteps of the Enlightenment, religion had been surpassed by reason’s superior conceptual precision. In The Essence of Christianity (1841), Ludwig Feuerbach depicted the relationship between man and divinity as a zero-sum game. In his view, the stress on godliness merely detracted from the sublimity of human ends. In one of his youthful writings, Karl Marx, Feuerbach’s most influential disciple, famously dismissed religion as “the opium of the people.” Its abolition, Marx believed, was a sine qua non for human betterment.
Habermas, in contrast, points to “the Judaic ethic of justice and the Christian ethic of love” as the necessary basis for Western political ideals of fairness and equality:
The “contract theory” of politics, from which our modern conception of “government by consent of the governed” derives, would be difficult to conceive apart from the Old Testament covenants. Similarly, our idea of the intrinsic worth of all persons, which underlies human rights, stems directly from the Christian ideal of the equality of all men and women in the eyes of God. Were these invaluable religious sources of morality and justice to atrophy entirely, it is doubtful whether modern societies would be able to sustain this ideal on their own … religion, as a repository of transcendence, has an important role to play. It prevents the denizens of the modern secular societies from being overwhelmed by the all-encompassing demands of vocational life and worldly success. It offers a much-needed dimension of otherness … Religious convictions encourage people to treat each other as ends in themselves rather than as mere means.
3) In the Catholic journal First Things Rabbi Meir Soloveichik of Yeshiva University explores the Jewish idea that it’s sometimes virtuous to hate one’s enemies:
[Jesus] acknowledged his break with Jewish tradition on this matter from the very outset: “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous … Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” God, Jesus argues, loves the wicked, and so must we.
[…]
For Christians, God acted on humanity’s behalf, without its knowledge and without its consent. The crucifixion is a story of a loving God seeking humanity’s salvation, though it never requested it, though it scarcely deserved it. Jews, on the other hand, believe that Gods covenant was formed by the free consent of His people. The giving of the Torah is a story of God seeking to provide humanity with the opportunity to make moral decisions. To my knowledge, not a single Jewish source asserts that God deeply desires to save all humanity, nor that He loves every member of the human race. Rather, many a Jewish source maintains that God affords every human being the opportunity to choose his or her moral fate, and will then judge him or her, and choose whether to love him or her, on the basis of that decision. Christianity’s focus is on love and salvation; Judaism’s on decision and action.
[…]
The Protestant theologian Harvey Cox, who is married to a Jew, wrote a book on his impressions of Jewish ritual. Cox describes the Jewish holiday of Purim, on which the defeat of Haman is celebrated by the reading of the book of Esther. Enamored with the biblical story, Cox enjoys the tale until the end, where, as noted above, Esther wreaks vengeance upon her enemies … he is disturbed by Jewish hatred. It cannot be a coincidence, he argues, that precisely on Purim a Jew by the name of Baruch Goldstein murdered twenty innocent Muslims engaged in prayer in Hebron. There is something to Cox’s remarks. The danger inherent in hatred is that it must be very limited, directed only at the most evil and unrepentant.
See also Jeff Jacoby’s comment on Soloveichek in a piece titled “When Hatred Is Necessary.” Jacoby notes: “Jewish tradition holds, with Ecclesiastes, that there is a time to love and a time to hate.”
Reading Soloveichek and Jacoby it may appear that Christian morality is clearly superior to the Jewish alternative. But hating one’s enemies, and doing them harm, is a pragmatic philosophy in a way that turning one’s cheek is not. Jesus’ teachings should be understood within their intended (narrow) context. Jesus was an apocalyptic prophet. He told His followers to behave as if they were already living in the Kingdom of God: to love their enemies, give up their material possessions, leave their families, if necessary, and follow Him, for the world was about to end.
Now if that sounds nutty consider the following.
4) In “God on the Brain” Liz Tucker points to the scienfitic evidence that the very religious, especially those claiming to have experienced religious visions, suffer from a brain disorder:
Controversial new research suggests that whether we believe in a God may not just be a matter of free will. Scientists now believe there may be physical differences in the brains of ardent believers. Inspiration for this work has come from a group of patients who have a brain disorder called temporal lobe epilepsy. In a minority of patients, this condition induces bizarre religious hallucinations …
[…]
Professor VS Ramachandran, of the University of California in San Diego, believed that the temporal lobes of the brain were key in religious experience … So he set up an experiment to compare the brains of people with and without temporal lobe epilepsy … What Professor Ramachandran discovered to his surprise was that when the temporal lobe patients were shown any type of religious imagery, their bodies produced a dramatic change in their skin resistance.
[…]
Scientists now believe famous religious figures in the past could also have been sufferers from the condition. St Paul and Moses appear to be two of the most likely candidates. But most convincing of all is the evidence from American neurologist Professor Gregory Holmes. He has studied the life of Ellen G White, who was the spiritual founder of the Seventh-day Adventist movement. Today, the movement is a thriving church with over 12 million members. During her life, Ellen had hundreds of dramatic religious visions which were key in the establishment of the church, helping to convince her followers that she was indeed spiritually inspired. But Professor Holmes believes there may be another far more prosaic explanation for her visions.
He has discovered that at the age of nine, Ellen suffered a severe blow to her head. As a result, she was semi-conscious for several weeks and so ill she never returned to school. Following the accident, Ellen’s personality changed dramatically and she became highly religious and moralistic. And for the first time in her life, she began to have powerful religious visions.
I remember reading a similar explanation for the religious visions of Mohammed in Will Durant’s The Age of Faith (1950). So, I guess this argument has been around for awhile. But now, apparently, there is scientific proof that moral leaders Moses, Jesus, Mohammed, Ellen White, Joseph Smith, et al., were fruitcakes, and so, too, presumably, the Great Dennis Prager and, horror of horrors, the Great Luke Ford.
Oh my.
Mr Ford isn’t going to be pleased to find out that he may be suffering from yet another medical condition. I’ll have to ask him about this when he returns from Europe. Assuming, that is, that he does return. I have a terrible fear that Mr Ford forgot to pack all his (many) medications, and in a moment of unmedicated weakness he will do something stupid with, or worse to, one (or more) of his teenage admirers, and just like Roman Polanski, he’ll never be allowed to return to America (and The Hovel™).
Let us pray that a) the Great Luke Ford isn’t a fruitcake, and b) that he proves this by returning from his European vacation with his morals safely intact.
October 3, 2005:
Luke Ford was most displeased with my stint as a guest blogger. So much so he refuses to pay me the $100 I’m owed.
I’m thinking of pursuing the matter legally — this seems a more mature approach than my first reaction, which was to scream obscenities into the telephone non-stop for 45 minutes. For some reason that didn’t work.
I do feel somewhat guilty at the thought of trying to extract $100 from the piggy-bank of a hovel-dweller, but there’s an important principle involved. I’m not sure what that principle is. I just know it’s important.
My Moral Leader is offering what he calls a “fair compromise.” I’m to make a public apology for sucking so badly as a guest blogger; spend a few days in deep reflection and self-questioning as to why I was so awful; and then, if sufficiently contrite and reformed, Mr Ford is holding out the possibility for atonement during a second stint of guest blogging when he visits Tampa next week. If I succeed, he promises to pay me all monies owed.
I really don’t want to self-abase myself all Larry Summers like. The way I look at it, the fact that Luke Ford got the vapours from my “offensive” blogging is at least partially his fault. He shouldn’t have asked me to blog for him in the first place, especially after de-linking me for some previous transgression. If my fan blogging was worthy of a cruel de-linking, what was he thinking when he ask me to guest blog?
I’m not even sure what I did that got me de-linked. Whenever I ask for an explanation, Mr Ford just repeats: “You know what you did wrong.”
Er, no I don’t. 
I can only guess. I think it might have something to do with Kitten Natividad. He was certainly adamant that I don’t mention Ms Natividad during my guest blogging. He told me at least 20 times: “Whatever you do, don’t write about Kitten Natividad, and don’t post that picture!”
And I didn’t.
Why is Mr Ford so sensitive about the matter? I mean, he devoted an entire chapter in his autobiography to the night when he, then 36 years old, lost his virginity to granny p-rn star Kitten Natividad, but when I mention the same subject he has a fit.
Then again he is Luke Ford: intellectual, scholar, role model, and the world’s number one moral leader — now with a rapidly expanding fan base (mostly of horny teenage girls) in Europe, so I suppose I should trust him.
I shall thus spend the next few days reflecting on my many sins and failings. I should be happy that I’m getting a second chance.
Now if only Mr Ford would give me more blogging guidance than just listing the topics I’m not allowed to discuss. If I can’t mention My Moral Leader’s sexual relations with granny p-rn stars, what am I supposed to write about?
October 6, 2005:
Luke Ford has asked me to guest blog for him (again). I reluctantly agreed (again) — knowing full well that I was about to get screwed (again).
Because some people think I lie — which is rubbish — here, in full, is Mr Ford’s original email sent to me before his trip to Europe: “Would you like to guest blog on Lukeford.net?”
Mr Ford is certainly a man of few words, and those few words clearly state that I was offered to blog on his main site, not his backup blog: a blog with a horrible template; a blog that nobody reads; a blog that I didn’t even know existed until he told me that he had changed his mind that I wasn’t to pollute his precious Lukeford.net site with my potentially offensive scribblings. And now he’s doing it to me again — and, worse still, making no announcement whatsoever that there will be guest bloggers during his Tampa trip.
What is My Moral Leader thinking? Is he trying to humiliate me? Was I too understated in communicating my displeasure at being banished here during Luke Ford’s Euro Teen Tour 2005?
According to Kate Fox, as cited by Luke Ford:
Ideally, the English male would rather not issue any definite invitation at all, sexual or social, preferring to achieve his goal through a series of subtle hints and oblique manoeuvres, often so understated to be almost undetectable. This “uncertainty” principle has a number of advantages: the English male is not required to exhibit any emotions …
That sounds just like me! Apparently Mr Ford’s Cro-Magnon Australian brain doesn’t get subtlety. Obviously I have been overly oblique and emotionally restrained. So I will put things in terms that Mr Ford can understand:
HOW DARE YOU TREAT ME — YOUR NUMBER ONE[ish] FAN — THIS WAY, YOU BASTARD!
I’m so furious. I can’t even think straight. My blogging will be even more lame than usual.
I wouldn’t mind it so much if I could get a straight answer out of the dude. He still won’t tell me why he de-linked my fan site. He won’t tell me when, or if, he will pay the $100 he owes me from my first stint as a guest blogger. He wouldn’t even explain to me why he’s going to Tampa. When I pressed him, he answered obliquely, almost English-like, something about a big convention for moral leaders.
“Oh really?” I said. “I suppose your moral leader, the Great Dennis Prager, will be attending?”
“I don’t know, maybe …” Rat Bastard mumbled.
“Speak up,” I demanded.
Rat Bastard said: “I gotta pack. Bye.”
Well, I’ve been doing some research on the Internet about this moral leader conference. And, yes, indeed such a meeting is taking place between October 6-11 in Tampa, Florida. It’s a convention of leading Jewish theologians from across America. All the different branches of the Jewish family will be there: Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, Reconstructionist, Humanistic (i.e., atheist), Judeo-Pagan.
The Judeo-Pagan delegation especially caught my eye. They’re all females. That’s a bit strange, I thought.
Then again the Judeo-Pagans are different. They don’t observe the Halakhah. They don’t even believe in the Jewish G-d. Rather, they believe in doing whatever you feel, whenever you feel like it, which kind of defeats the purpose of religion doesn’t it? You’d think.
A lot of them seem to be converts, or at least that’s the impression I got from looking at the names of the various Judeo-Pagan rabbis set to speak. Some like Rabbi Katie Gold and Rabbi Daphne Rosen are presumably ethnic Jews, but others I’m not so sure about. Rabbis Mari Possa, Rita Faltoyano, and Flower Tucci sound ethnic Italians. Rabbi Carmen Luvana could be Cuban, but there’s a small Jewish community in Cuba, so it’s difficult to know for sure. Rabbi Courtney Cummz, who will be lecturing on the concept of Tikkun Olam, doesn’t sound Jewish at all. I’ll have to ask Mr Ford about this when he returns from the conference — assuming he’s still talking to me.
Crossposted to Luke Ford’s Your Moral Leader Blog
October 11, 2005:
The Humiliation Continues
Apparently I’m a girl.
Here’s my picture. Does that look like a girl to you, Bill?
I didn’t think so. Thanks for the compliment about my writing, though.
Of course, I know full well just how worthless male compliments are when the intended recipient is a woman, or thought to be a woman. This is not to say that men lie to women, although we do (a lot); it’s more a comment on male gullibility.
A year or so ago there was a controversy about the lack of big name female bloggers. Male writers, supposedly, were failing to link and promote the many talented women political bloggers. At least this is what some women (i.e., lesbians) thought.
A lot of women (and not just lesbians) don’t understand the male mind. As if men are going to ignore women who write about politics (or sports, or computers, or cars). Ever heard of Michelle Malkin? Or consider the case of Libertarian Girl. A young man worked very hard on his political blog for months on end. But he just couldn’t generate traffic. So he decided to call himself “Libertarian Girl,” added a picture of a blonde woman (from a Russian mail order bride service), and immediately his hit total went through the roof. Why? Because men are stupid.
I had a similar experience a few years ago. I was watching a reality show and started to post comments on a message board. I thought my comments were interesting and thoughtful, but hardly anyone seemed to agree. I’d start a new thread and … nothing. I was being ignored. I hate that!
So, as an experiment, I created a new account with a female name. I started posting exactly the same kind of observations and, as if by magic, other posters (i.e., men) started to respond enthusiastically to my comments, saying how interesting and thoughtful they were. It didn’t stop there, though. Some started emailing me to compliment me on my perceptiveness. One creep even wanted me to go over to his place and …
Eeeeewwwww!
Men are gullible, stupid, and gross.
Why do women put up with us? Perhaps because we enjoy spending money on them. I’d really be interested to find out how much money Michelle Malkin makes from her blog. I bet she doesn’t live in a hovel.
Men are incredibly foolish when it comes to women and money. There’s even a columnist for a weekly magazine in Orange County (who will go nameless, but here’s a pic), who constantly asks men to send her money and presents. And guess what? They do! Why? Because men are gullible, stupid, gross, and pathetic.
You’d think lots of men would start political blogs pretending to be attractive young women, complete with bogus pictures. Just add a Paypal button and … easy money. I’m sure of it.
This was my mistake, because I’m still waiting for Luke Ford to pay me the $100 (actually, I think it’s now up to $140) that he owes me for guest blogging. He’s giving me the run around. Now he tells me he just doesn’t have the money to pay me. This is an outrage! How can someone who goes on one fabulous vacation after another (London, Paris, and Florida), turn around and say he can’t pay his guest bloggers? Next week he’ll probably announce that he’s going on a year-long world cruise, and taking a half-a-dozen teenage girls with him.
I really think that you (Bill), me, and Al should get together and launch a class action lawsuit. It’s the only way we’ll get paid … unless we’re prepared to undergo sex change operations.
Crossposted to Luke Ford’s Your Moral Leader Blog
October 17, 2005:
Fans of Luke Ford Donation Drive
Mr Ford emailed me yesterday asking for money. I wish I could say that I’m joking but I can’t.
Apparently after two vacations, replete with boozing and whoring, Our Moral Leader is, in his own words, “completely tapped out.” I guess this means that he won’t be able to pay me the $140 I’m owed for guest blogging.
Although I’m a compassionate soul, I’m not a Christian and I’m not prepared to turn the other cheek. So here is my plan. If you would like to help Mr Ford, please email me. I will give you the details of my Paypal account. Send whatever you deem appropriate — just remember that it’s for a good cause. Not only does Mr Ford require rent, food, and prescription drug money, he’s also in desperate need of a tummy tuck and breast reduction surgery (and perhaps, if he continues to fail his diet, stomach stapling surgery). I will put aside the first $250 received for myself: $140 for 7 guest blogging entries; a $100 surcharge for the emotional distress caused by Mr Ford’s lying to me about where I would be guest blogging; and $10 in interest). All monies received above this amount will be sent directly to Luke Ford (minus a modest handling charge).
Please give generously. Post-surgery, a new, improved and greatly slimmed down Mr Ford will be in a better position to find a wife (Kitten Natividad?) who will take care of him emotionally and financially.
Thank you for your kind support in Horrid Boy’s hour of need.
October 25, 2005:
After weeks of demanding that I send him money, Luke Ford is now asking me to go into the desert with him. We’ll be studying Torah, he insists. He also insists that I take my wallet. Why? Is there something I need to buy that’s only available in the desert?
Call me paranoid, but I don’t like the sound of this. I bet that as soon as I turn my back to look at a cactus, or iguana, or whatever they have in the desert, My Moral Leader will plonk me on the head with a rock. And when I regain consciousness, my wallet will be missing — all suspicious-like.
Upon returning to civilisation, i.e., The Hovel™, I’ll ask Mr Ford: “What happened in the desert? My head hurts, my money and credit cards are all gone, and why did you leave me out there all by myself? I could have died of exposure, or an iguana bite, or whatever people die of in the desert.” Alas, I guarantee Mr Ford won’t give me a straight answer. Just like he still won’t tell me why he cruelly delinked me. (I think it might have something to do with my frequent references to granny p-rn star Kitten Natividad, but I’m not 100 per cent certain.)
I therefore decline to go into the desert with Mr Ford … until: 1) his cruel delinking of my site is terminated; and 2) he promises not to assault and rob me.
Even then I don’t think it’s a good idea. Besides Torah study, which sounds incredibly boring, what are we going to do? We’re not going to bang drums and read Robert Bly poetry are we? Because I’m really not into that. It sounds gay, notwithstanding My Moral Leader’s protestations to the contrary.
Tell you what, Mr Ford, I’ll go to the desert with you if, in addition to meeting my previous two demands, your old flame, the fabulous Kitten Natividad, comes with us. I’ll feel more comfortable going camping in mixed company. Otherwise, I’ll just stay home, sit on the couch in my underwear, eat chips, drink beer, burp, fart, and watch the NHL Channel on cable TV.
November 3, 2005:
I’ve lost it. “It” being my mind. I’m now checking out each of the Luke Ford Family of Blogs™ (including the naughty one) at least ten times per day. Why? To read Mr Ford’s latest totally fascinating and utterly captivating interview with a 19 year old p-rn star? Er, no. I’m checking to see if My Moral Leader has come to his senses and re-linked me. I’m so desperate that I’d be thrilled to bits just to get a link at the very bottom of Mr Ford’s rather embarrassing Air Supply SuperFan Blog.
So, who’s more pathetic? And more to the point, who’s more to blame for my plight? The cruel de-linker or the hapless de-linkee?
I use to think that Mr Ford should be happy that he even has a fan blog. And I ought to be able to write whatever I want. If I want to write about Mr Ford’s old girlfriend, granny p-rn star Kitten Natividad, he should suck it up and stop complaining that I’m making him look bad to potential dates. 
But after reading an excerpt in the Times from AA Gill’s latest book, I’m beginning to have some doubts. Maybe my de-linking was right and proper. I’m English and, according to Mr Gill, we are a mean, nasty, and very angry people who use humour to bully the vulnerable.
Most people share a joke, the English aim them.
A sense of humour is as necessary to being English as a sense of the past. To accuse an Englishman of lacking or losing his sense of humour is to question the very id of his being. To banish him from his tribal Blightiness.
[…]
You can divide humour into two schools. There is Jewish humour and there is English humour.
Jewish humour is a comedy of the oppressed. It is the escape of the bullied and is told behind the back of the bully, and it is often self-analytical, self-lacerating, inverted, doubtful and mordant. English humour is far more robust. It’s aggressive, bombastic and extrovert. Jewish humour is intimate and personal, English humour loud, gangish and general.
[…]
The English teeter on the edge of not being able to take anything seriously. The ability to be solemn or even appropriate, reflective or sad in public, is so uncomfortably embarrassing that they’re forced to giggle or snigger … [I]t’s a terrible indictment of a culture that is really only comfortable with two public emotions — fury and sniggering. And that’s really the point of English humour. An awful lot of it is anger in fancy dress.
If I understand Mr Gill correctly, I should not have teased Mr Ford about needing breast reduction surgery. I really do feel bad about broaching the subject. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with Mr Ford’s breasts.
Hopefully my sincere apology will get me back into My Moral Leader’s good book. It’s a start at least. From now on I’ll stick to harmless Jewish humour. For example,
Luke Ford is having a session with his psychiatrist. Doctor Cohen draws a picture of a triangle and asks Luke what it looks like to him.
Luke shows some excitement and says, “It looks like a man and woman in bed.”
“Hmmm,” says Doctor Cohen, stroking his beard. He then draws another picture, this time of a square, and again asks Luke what it looks like to him.
Luke gets more excited and says again, “It looks like a man and woman in bed.”
Again Doctor Cohen says “Hmmm,” strokes his beard and then draws another picture, this one a circle. He asks Luke what this looks like to him.
Luke is agitated and replies, “It looks like a man and woman having intercourse.”
Doctor Cohen says, “Young man, I think you have too much sex on your mind.”
Luke replies, “That’s unfair –- it’s you who’s drawing the dirty pictures.”
