"AMERICAN LIAR" CAPTIVATES AUDIENCES

by Steve Young

It's down to seven.

On this past week's "American Liar," the Fox show that has captured the imagination of U.S. audiences and has every school child thinking, "I could be the next American Liar," fan favorite, "Bucky" Powell, was voted off the show for slipping up and admitting that U.S. mistakes in the invasion of Iraq led to the current insurgency and sectarian fighting. "It was an amateur blunder that you would more expect at some Holiday Inn karaoke night than during a National School Board Association conference," shouted judge Howard Dean.

This made the second week in a row that a voter-favorite was bounced from "American Liar." Last week, Condi "Shoes" Rice hit a sour note when she admitted that the administration had made "thousands of mistakes" in its Iraq invasion. Her attempt to save her performance by saying she was just speaking "figuratively," didn't sit well with the judges. "You can't put the genie back in the bottle," said irascible judge Helen Thomas. "A lie is a lie no matter how you try to reframe it."

The seven other "Liar" contenders continued with whoppers o'plenty during this week's fabrication-fest:

Bill O'Reilly returned to his strength, culture wars, by attacking SP's (secular progressives) for saying that there was no evidence of anyone believing that Easter should be called, "Resurrection Sunday." "That he could say that in the face of the fact that a simple Google-search found over 77,000 results shows that Billy will be an 'American Liar' who won't be easy to out-lie," murmured judge Al Franken.

Scottie McClellan kept pace by defending President Bush's "oversight" for ignoring the evidence that so-called Iraqi WMD biolabs were in actuality, hydrogen production facilities for weather balloons. Going to his favorite canard that "this was rehashing old news," McClellan's attacking the press for spreading the news, was classic Scottie.

Odds-on favorite, Donald Rumsfeld, barely broke a sweat dismissing the "two or three or four generals, out of thousands," who are dissing him.

But the best performance of the week was President Bush's defending his declassification of the National Intelligence Estimate as not a political ploy to besmirch former Ambassador Joe Wilson and out CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson, but because he "wanted people to know the truth."

Bush's piled it on, establishing himself as force to be reckoned with. by explaining to a college audience that he had no idea what laws govern the actions of military contractors that do not fall under military or civilian law, yet were dispatched to Iraq by the Bush administration.

Last year's "American Liar" champ, Dick Cheney, whose virtuoso "insurgency is in its last throes" still stands as perhaps the all-time fly-in-the-face-of-fact performance, proved that he hasn't lost a thing, by showing up at the Washington National home opener to throw out the first pitch which he said was met with overwhelming cheers.

Next week, the "American Liar" theme will be "Lies From Iraq That Can Be Applied To Iran."

Writing about other columnists reminds me of when O'Reilly brings on right-wing talkers or "Foxperts" (Stephanie Miller Show's Jim Ward euphemism). It's a bit like self-gratification -- without the gratification. But Jonah Goldberg is an exception, especially when he makes news. And that's exactly what he did on Sunday's CNN's Reliable Sources, on a panel with the unfreaking credible, John Aravosis of Americanblog.com -- someone we need to see more of, at least on HBO's "Real Time." Listening, Bill?

In attempting to provide trivial business as usual cover, Lucianne's son, looking more and more like mom, said that the U.S. has developed plans to attack Canada. Amazingly, it was not meant as a joke, as he said he reiterated that he "knew they have plans." That host Howard Kurtz let that one fly by without an intercepting followup deserves a followup itself.

Perhaps it was a White House or Pentagon-inspired leak meant as a first salvo to warn Canada to keep Universal Healthcare north of the border. Maybe Canada has looked into purchasing back-bacon yellowcake or their Zamboni-delivery systems are ready to release "Hockey Night in Canada" onto ESPN.

Goldberg has run his lineage and National Review connection into some sort of right-wing opinion legitimacy that far left venues like the LA Times print weekly. I still believe that the Times prints Goldberg for the same devious reason they printed David Gelertner -- not as balance but to offer right-wing inanity to prove right-wing inanity.

But while I usually don't pay that much attention to Goldberg, this Canada thing has got me going. If Canada is a danger to be reckoned with, I fear we'll be soon spreading our military so thin that we won't be able to deal with the threats from Switzerland and Monaco.

And don't get me started on Trenton.