The First Annual Golden Duke Awards!
And The Winners Are...
TPM is pleased to announce the winners of the First Annual Golden Dukes! The Golden Dukes are given in recognition great accomplishments in muckiness including acts of venal corruption, outstanding self-inflicted losses of dignity, crimes against the republic, bribery, exposed hypocrisy and generally malevolent governance.
The awards are named in honor of Congressman-turned-inmate Randy "Duke" Cunningham. It's been a heady few years for Muckraking, what with the meta-Abramoff scandal and so much more. But here at TPM we still believe that Duke is the iconic modern scandal. Few so well combine outlandish corruption, national security, sex, and sheer cartoonish ridiculousness.
First, we asked you to help us choose categories. Than we awaited your nominations. Finally, we turned your choices over to our distinguished panel of judges and waited with baited breath.
And the winners are. . .
For Best Testimonial Trainwreck: Sara Taylor
Hendrik Hertzberg: Sara Taylor
Dahlia Lithwick: Sara Taylor
John Dean: Alberto Gonzales
Matt Yglesias: Sara Taylor
Susie Bright: John Tanner
For Outstanding Achievement in Improbable Forgetfulness: Bradley Schlozman
Hendrik Hertzberg: Bradley Schlozman
Dahlia Lithwick: Alberto Gonzales
John Dean: Sara Taylor
Matt Yglesias: Bradley Schlozman
Susie Bright: Bradley Schlozman
For Outstanding Achievement in Corruption-based Chutzpah: Larry Craig
Hendrik Hertzberg: Larry Craig
Dahlia Lithwick: Larry Craig
John Dean: Larry Craig
Matt Yglesias: Larry Craig
Susie Bright: Larry Craig
For Best Scandal -- Local Venue: Bob Allen
Hendrik Hertzberg: Richard Roberts
Dahlia Lithwick: Rachel Paulose
John Dean: Michael Carona
Matt Yglesias: Bob Allen
Susie Bright: Bob Allen
For Best Scandal -- Sex and Generalized Carnality: David Vitter
Hendrik Hertzberg: David Vitter
Dahlia Lithwick: Bob Allen
John Dean: David Vitter
Matt Yglesias: Glenn Murphy
Susie Bright: Richard Curtis
For Best Scandal -- General Interest: George W. Bush
Hendrik Hertzberg: George W. Bush
Dahlia Lithwick: Alberto Gonzales
John Dean: George W. Bush
Matt Yglesias: George W. Bush
Susie Bright: George W. Bush
Here are the e-mails we received from the judges, explaining the rationale behind their choices:
Hendrik Hertzberg:
First choice: Sara Taylor
Second choice: Lurita Doan
I found myself torn between Sara Taylor and Lurita Doan—the Betty and Veronica of the Rovian project to turn civil servants into Republican wardheelers.
Ms. Doan’s testimony was dominated by eye-rolling contempt for her questioners. But this cut both ways for me. On the one hand, it highlighted her amorality. On the other, though, it showed a certain kind of strength—not strength of character, exactly, but the strength that comes from mindless attachment to one’s tribe. It doesn't have that much to do with politics per se. Doan is a Republican the way some people are Shiites or Sunnis or Serbs or Albanians. Or Mafiosi. She obviously believes that she did nothing wrong; indeed, she exudes contempt for the very idea of right and wrong in the context of partisan warfare. From her point of view, she was playing the game, her questioners are playing the game, and they’re a bunch of pious hypocrites for pretending otherwise.
Nevertheless, I prefer Taylor’s sullenness to Doan’s smirky condescension. I like the way she hides behind her blonde curtain, pouting like a teenager whose parents have found a joint in her underwear drawer. (It’s the exact opposite of Peggy Noonan’s airily confident hair flip.) I also like the way she throws around sophomore-year phrases like “broader political intelligentsia” in her attempts at bamboozlement.
But what singles her out as deserving the Dukie is her belief that she had taken “an oath to the President.” This sums up much of what is wrong with the Bush Administration, from its cult-of-personality code of allegiance to the Leader to its ignorant disregard of the Constitution. One is reminded of some of the indelible pratfalls of Watergate days, such as press secretary Ron Ziegler’s description of his previous denials of White House involvement as “inoperative” and Nixon’s own pithy “I am not a crook.”
Outstanding Achievement in Improbable Forgetfulness
First choice: Bradley Schlozman
Second choice: Alberto Gonzales
In this category, I have to say, I fell in love with Bradley Schlozman. He has a David Horowitz-like whininess that I found irresistable, especially combined with the faux-Trotsky, junior-college-professor beard. Throw in the overly fastidious manner, the Mel Blanc voice, and the all-around cravenness, and you’ve got a winner, in my view. I also liked Sara Taylor again. It’s a wonder the White House didn't send her to Baghdad to oversee five or six Iraqi ministries.
Outstanding Achievement in Corruption-based Chutzpah
First choice: Larry Craig
Second choice: Rudy Giuliani
My only reservation on Craig is that his motives seem to be less corruption-based than those of the other nominees. Intellectual corruption, yes. Moral corruption, yes—especially if you consider hypocrisy to be a serious moral failing. (I regard it as only a venal sin.) But is Craig guilty of financial corruption or even political corruption, narrowly defined? I don’t think so. However, I agree with Josh that the sheer audacity and breathtaking comprehensiveness of Craig’s chutzpah carries the day. I have a feeling that God isn’t finished with Larry Craig yet.
My choice of Rudy for second place is really based more on lifetime achievements than on the Shag Fund alone. Also, I may be somewhat influenced by New York chauvinism.
First choice: Richard Roberts
Second choice: Rachel Paulose
The Richard Roberts case had several attractive features. It was a timely reminder of the moral squalor of many “Christian leaders” (they're not all nice guys like Mike Huckabee) and of the absurdity of institutions of higher learning named after televangelists (only in America). Roberts is the feckless son of a more accomplished father. (Sound familiar?) And he comes out of the “private sector,” which is otherwise unrepresented in the Golden Duke short list.
Rachel Paulose gets my fallback vote for her astounding, unworldly cluelessness and for casting a pitiless light on the qualities her superiors thought fitting in a United States Attorney.
Best Scandal -- Sex and Generalized Carnality
First choice: David Vitter
Second choice: Bob Allen
This is sort of a “Best Supporting Bad Actor” category, and the actor Vitter supported was, of course, Larry Craig. It was in contrast to the fond indulgence accorded Vitter’s whoremongering that the stampede to the smelling salts over Craig’s sad signaling could be seen in its full grotesqueness.
Bob Allen’s implosion had all the angles—the poorly executed bathroom sex and racial dimwittedness angles, of course, but also an unattractive facial hair angle and an underlying overeating angle. Persuaded by Josh’s preemptive video, I was originally prepared to give Allen the top spot in this category. But then I realized that I had misheard what Josh said. I thought Josh said that Allen tried to appease the “heavy-set black man” (actually a plainclothes policeman) by offering him twenty bucks for a blow job. That would have been tantamount to telling the big guy, “How would you like to be my paid bitch?”—a somewhat more foolhardy move than what Allen actually did, which was to propose that he, Allen, do the fellating.
Best Scandal -- General Interest
First choice: George W. Bush
Second choice: Ted Stevens
I’m mindful that in Hollywood, the Best Picture Oscar goes to the producer or producers, not to the director, screenwriter, actors, and other creative types. The producer is the one who creates the conditions under which the people with the talent can do their best work. As Josh says, this is a category where you’ve got to put together the big picture, so to speak. This may be our last chance to honor Bush, who has given so much of himself over the past seven years. It would be a shame to allow his presidency to expire without presenting him with a cheesy statue of Randy “Duke” Cunningham. probably, although there may be some good ones in his ex-Presidency.
My second choice would be Ted Stevens, who has been berry, berry good to Talking Points Memo.
Dahlia Lithwick
Sara Taylor. It wasn't just beautifully styled -- the beleagured witness slumped forward over the table, sheepdog bangs almost obscuring the huge circles under her eyes -- although that part was artful. It was the completely bizarre dance of asserting (apparently on behalf of the President?) sweeping Executive Privilege and then answering the Senators' questions anyway. For three hours she razzle-dazzled with sheer incoherence. But ultimately I give this one to Sara for the sheer gorgeousness of her Stepford Wife Freudian slip: "I took an oath. And I take that oath to the president very seriously."
Runner Up: Lurita Doan. Painful, horrifying, trainwreck
Outstanding Achievement in Improbable Forgetfulness
Fredo. How can this go to anyone BUT Gonzales? He claimed to have seen no memos and been involved in no discussions about the US Attorney firings, then he remembered he'd lied. He claimed not to have discussed the firings with anyone. Then he remembered he'd lied. He claimed not to have any idea who this senior leadership of the department who reside in Kyle Sampson's desk drawer really were. He misremembered the FISA briefings as well as the hospital visit to rough up on a critically ill John Ashcroft. He couldn't even remember to resign until several months after he'd sullied and disgraced the whole Justice Department.
Runner up: Brad Schlozman
Outstanding Achievement in Corruption-based Chutzpah
Larry Craig. It was like a blur of chutzpah-based brazening it out. Did he or didn't he have a wide stance? Did he or didn't he resign? Did he or didn't he accept responsibility? Who knows? Masterful.
Runner up: Murkowski
I have to give this to Rachel Paulose. Ok so its not a sex scandal. But the whole Barbie Coronation thing? And the racial slurs? Plus the mass staff revolts? The religious zealotry? All of it topped off by her breathless claim, when it all hit the fan that this was all a result of "The McCarthyite hysteria that permits the anonymous smearing of any public servant who is now, or ever may have been, a member of the Federalist Society; a person of faith; and/or a conservative (especially a young, conservative woman of color." As Eric Black observed that day: "Paulose, in a single 48-word sentence, played the race card, the gender card, the religion card, the age card, the ideology card, the Federalist Society card, and the Joe McCarthy card. That's a large percentage of the cards available in the victimology deck." Brava.
Runner Up: Richard Roberts
Best Scandal -- Sex and Generalized Carnality
Has to go to Bob Allen. Here we have the trifecta: rabidly moralistic legislator, plus cut-rate anonymous bathroom sex, plus the most moronic (and racist) excuse ever proffered. The Daily Show made a Herculean effort but even they couldn't gild this comidic lily
Runner Up: Larry Craig
Best Scandal -- General Interest
Alberto Gonzales. I know, I know, you think I'm too close to it because I sweated through the hearings. But I swear to you, there is just no scandal as pitch-perfect as this one. It's a national story, sweeping in not just the nine fired US Attorneys but some of the scuzzy ones left behind. With the whole twenty-somethings-runbning the asylum leitmotif it has a sort of quirky Melrose-Place quality. Yet it also sweeps in Rove's evil genius. You've got the Hatch Act violations at the Justice Department, as well as the devastation of the Departmnent in general. And it's shot through with strings of vote fraud and vote caging and vote supression. Ignore all the navy suits and it's positively Shakespearean -- clueless, absurd Gonzales dodges and deceives through hearing after hearing until he finally quits in disgrace, with bodies massed around the stage.
Runner Up: Larry Craig
John Dean
Alberto Gonzales -- Not only because of his self-serving self-contradictions, along with his pitiful parsing and his disingenuous deceptions relating to NSA's warrantless wiretapping, torture, and the firing of U.S. Attorneys, but because Gonzalez repeatedly and regularly provided evidence of the true meaning to the metaphor "empty suit" – doing it in a fashion unequaled in the Office of the Attorney General of the United States since President Warren Harding's friend Harry M. Daugherty was forced out of that post.
Runner Up: Sara Taylor for the reasons stated below.
Outstanding Achievement in Improbable Forgetfulness
Sara Taylor – Ms. Taylor appeared far brighter than the other nominees. She, indeed, reminds me of former White House chief of staff Bob Haldeman, who not withstanding his iron-clad memory in his job, which was not surprising for the Mensa he was, suffered terrible amnesia before the Senate Watergate committee. It was so bad it earned him an indictment and conviction for perjury simply because he could not remember.
Runner Up: Alberto Gonzales for the reasons stated above.
Outstanding Achievement in Corruption-based Chutzpah
Senator Larry Craig – The classic description of "chutzpah" is that quality found in a man who kills his parents then throws himself on the mercy of the court because he is an orphan. There is nothing corrupt about being gay. It is certainly not corrupt to take a wide-stance in a bathroom stall. Nor is it corrupt to resign from the U.S. Senate after pleading guilty to soliciting sex in a public place and then changing your mind. It is corruption based chutzpah, however, to pledge allegiance to Republican Party's family values and demand them of others, and then single-handedly show the corruption-based chutzpah of the entire GOP establishment by proving he was no orphan. That was an outstanding achievement.
No Runner Up: None of the other nominees come close to who I would nominate – Conrad Black, the perfect biographer for Richard Nixon.
Michael Corona – The Orange County (CA) Sheriff is articulate, attractive, and was a fast rising star in the California Republican Party. Notwithstanding his federal corruption indictment he has refused to resign. When the Bush Justice Department indicts a future Republican leader it means the stench has gotten really bad. While Sheriff Corona is innocent until proven otherwise, for those of us living in California we want this terrible odor to stop polluting the state.
Runner Up: Richard Roberts, who is clearly acting like authoritarian conservatives with his do as I say not as we really do life style.
Best Scandal -- Sex and Generalized Carnality
I see from my notes I voted for Vitter with the runner up being Craig. As for comments, I defer to Susie Bright, it is not my area of expertise. But I can spot hypocrisy when I see it.
Best Scandal -- General Interest
President George W. Bush – While the nomination is for his "general politicization" of the federal government, one must read the subtext of that term. Bush's politics have done for good government what war does for peace, what famine does for hunger, what Alzheimer's does for memory, what Lee Harvey Oswald did for Dallas – you get the idea. This president has done more to damage our system of government, and weaken us around the world, than any of his predecessors. Bush is America's worst president ever, only equaled by the abetting of his partner, Dick Cheney.
No Runner Up: Again, no other nominee comes close to my winner, so I must nominate Dick Cheney and select him for the identical reasons I would select Bush – they are interchangeable in this category.
Matt Yglesias
Beyond the content of the testimony, Taylor wins here on style points -- she looks and sounds a bit like she forgot what she had for breakfast because she's two days into heroin withdrawal.
Outstanding Achievement in Improbable Forgetfulness
Back in college, my friend Danny Schlozman used to tell me about this one nutty right-wing relative of his. I never really thought anything would come of it, but then along came Bradley.
Outstanding Achievement in Improbable Forgetfulness
Larry Craig. Unresigning is a whole new trick, an innovation in scandal that will likely reverberate through the ages.
Bob Allen: sex sells.
Best Scandal -- Sex and Generalized Carnality
This goes to Glen Murphy for taking us as close to the proverbial "caught with a dead girl or a live boy" as we've seen in quite a while.
Best Scandal -- General Interest
George W. Bush -- the coassacks work for the czar.
Susie Bright
This was a tough, and surprising contest-and I'm not talking about the relative strengths of the crooked competitors.
I thought this was going to be "fun" competition. I thought I'd howl in laughter at the video clips, that I'd chortle my way through my verdicts.
Instead, I didn't get halfway through the "testimonial train-wreck" category before tears came to my eyes. These people are horrible!
Witnessing their hypocrisy, mendacity, and prejudices, en masse, sent me into a depression you'll need a steam shovel and a hot thermos of ethics to dig me out of.
If you had dared print their salary figures- the hundreds of thousand of dollars these people were paid in taxpayer money to rape and plunder- maybe that would instigate the riot I long for.
While I relish the chance to rub these villain's noses in their own fecal distress, I would rather see a swell of activism in this country that would make "The Dukes" contest irrelevant. Vote these fuckers and their lackeys out of office, and never let me see their miserable mugs again.
But because I promised to uphold my duty... I stumble on, toward rendering some kind of judgment. The beauty pageant cliche, "I only wish everyone could win," never seemed truer.
For my picks, I was torn between measuring the buckets of blood dripping off the most powerful candidate's hands, versus scaling the tomfoolery of the other penny-weights who didn't kill anything other than their own future in public life.
If the buck stops somewhere, then it's Gonzalez and Bush who've presided over an internment camp in Guantanamo, a worldwide torture scene that makes De Sade look like a powder puff, an insupportable Oil War, an environmental scorched-earth policy, and a Constitution that fluffs up like the litter in a hamster cage. Doesn't suspending habeas corpus count for something? Any Senator in the contest faces the next line of culpability, and then all the pathetic political appointees round up the line.
But if you're looking for sheer entertainment value, the standards change, don't they? Some people fall apart on television better than others.
Okay, here we go:
My pick: John Tanner
I don't think Tanner ever had to speak to an African-American in authority in his entire life, and the look on his face shows he'll never get over it.
Runner Up: Lurita Doan
Doan so obviously relished being a Mean Girl, and is so affronted that she had to deny it.
Outstanding Achievement in Improbable Forgetfulness
My pick: Bradley Shlozman
Weasel-Wiener Par Excellence. I wouldn't buy a roll of toilet paper from this guy.
Runner Up: Gonzalez
I'm just following the Lady MacBeth Logic. He'll always win the body count vote. Don't get me started, or I'll have to reverse my choices.
Outstanding Achievement in Corruption-based Chutzpah
My pick: Larry Craig
Everyone wants to focus on Larry's sex life, but it's his scheming ego that goes beyond rudimentary closet-case maneuvering. No one saw that non-resignation" resignation coming until it was a fait accompli. Not only does he have a wide stance... he thinks the whole Senate is his oyster shooter. "I Am Not Gay," indeed. He isn't even of this planet. Cognitive dissonance, thy name is Larry Craig.
Runner Up: Scott Bloch
Bloch's the Internet version of the Watergate Plumber.
My pick: Bob Allen
Allen is is my personal Favorite Mess of the Year. He brings a whole new meaning to the GOP's Southern Strategy- where you not only destroy other candidates through race and queer-baiting, but you actually rationalize your own hard-on with the same hateful bile.
Here's a guy, who, if I may use the plain language of personal ads, "will pay to suck your gorgeous black cock," pretends that HE's a victim of racism, and the last true crusader against homosexuals everywhere. This man's whole career is based on prudery legislation!
Allen's downfall was such a Beauty and the Beast moment: the cop Allen propositioned is so good-looking he could be the new heart-throb on The Wire- while Allen is so homely, you'd feel sorry for him... if he wasn't such a self-loathing disgrace.
Runner up: Rachel Palouse
Gee, I didn't even know about Fumo, so he gave me pause. But I'm giving him some slack for not being a raving holy-roller hypocrite... just your garden-variety Catholic on the take. I mean, that's frickin' tasteful, at this point.
Instead, I'll give my runner-up vote to Rachel Palouse, because she is offensive to everything the populist spirit of Minnesota represents, and my Twin-Cities-bred mother is surely rolling in her grave.
Best Scandal -- Sex and Generalized Carnality
My pick: Richard Curtis
If I choose sheer trashy lunacy, something that would make Britney Spears look like a novitiate, then I have to pull my lever for Richard Curtis. This married, fundie Christian Republican legislator and world-class hater, the joke of Western Washington, shows up one night in his negligee and stethoscope to have some hard-to-picture bareback sex with a down-on-his-luck porn star, named Cody Castegna. Curtis had picked up this kid at a local casino. Dude bargains the boy down to $1000 to have unprotected anal sex- that's the part that makes me cry- then has the nerve to stiff Cody, and call the police to complain a whore ripped him off!
WTF! It strains credibility that Curtis could have done any of this sober, and I am still waiting for the drug investigation- this has "meth fiend" written all over it. Really, the only thing missing was an inflatable sheep, and that might've just been left off the report.
(I almost gave my nod to Bob Allen, but I already knighted him in the Best Local category. See how nice I am?)
Runner Up and Possible Reversal: David Vitter
I have a giant caveat in this category, in case you obtain a smoking gun before the 31st.
If there is hard evidence that Senator Vitter is not only a prostitute-lover, but also a diaper fetishist- beyond the call girl hearsay we've read so far- then that revelation, along with his hilarious "Pampers Daddy" re-election video, would cinch the whole shit-faced glory of this award's intent.
Vitter is my "if only" winner. You can make him my runner up. Give the straight man his due.
Best Scandal -- General Interest
My pick: George W. Bush
I lost all sense of humor on this one. W.'s the decider, and if we ever nail down what he's been up to, it'll make all this other stuff look like dryer lint. This man thinks he's ordained by someone he calls "God," and that's the most outrageous scandal of all.
Runner-up: Fredo
Gonzalez gets second place for being a pathetic toadie and amoral criminal. Throw the key away.
