The Trials of the Stache

There are moments, rare though they may be, when you have to be at least reluctantly impressed by this administration's giant metaphorical testicles. John Bolton as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations? What the fuck, was Michael Savage busy? What about Oliver North, I hear he is looking for a decent nine-to-five gig between playing night-vision-goggled grab-ass with America's heroes overseas? Maybe I am being a little nitpicky here, but doesn't hating the underlying principle of an organization preclude you from working there? Obviously not. It's almost as if, and here is where you have to be slightly impressed, the administration tried to locate the person least appropriate on earth for the job and appointed him. I thought Negroponte was some kind of a bad joke, but now they're just fucking with us. Other than out of hypnotic deference to Bolton's mysterious and monstrous mustache, why would anyone within the international political community take him even slightly seriously? It's not that his ideological positions are remarkable for a Washington hack; it's just that they might be less appropriate in those great sissified halls of the pinko U.N. Some there might disagree a bit with some of Bolton's main arguments - i.e. that international law is for homos, that the Security Council should be four countries lighter, that all of the African countries' seats should be moved to the back row of the general assembly and that the 10 floors housing the ambassadors of the non-Israeli Middle East countries be vaporized to bring freedom to future generations of Arab ambassadors (I know, I am not sure exactly how it works either). What progress can we expect from a man that has to build relationships with those he clearly despises? I presume that is the very point - to make the U.N. the gridlocked, ineffective organization that Bolton has long claimed it to be. Can this administration do more to show how little it gives a shit about the U.N. First they bug your offices, then they send Colin Powell with some shitty pictures of mobile homes, childishly forged documents and a healthy lack of ethics to lie to your over-diversified faces and, as if that wasn't enough, they appoint the loudest, most ludicrously-mustached, critic of the fundamental premise of international multilateralism as the host ambassador. Baseod on this strategy, I shall be waiting with baited-breadth for a call from the Vatican to be the next Pope.