There's a Machiavellian Plot to Rule the World... In My Pants!
While Your Reluctant Bartender has a personal policy of stringent, non-partisan distrust of all Power Seekers, there is nonetheless bar to be tended. (Whatever that means.)

We could argue that it's a case of fighting fire with fire against the acidic sexism displayed by the candidate himself, described by Herr Doktor Blume in this space just the other day. But no, when we at I Like [image of pie], Spot speculate about the status of John McCain's private parts, we're just cravenly playing the same game that has been played since that one time in the garden of Eden, when God gave Adam the penis bigger biceps than Eve. It's a game whose rules were concisely recorded back in the early 15's by Nicolò Machiavelli when he contrasted "effeminate and cowardly" unfavorably with "bold and brave" in terms of qualities subjects attribute to their rulers.

In the chapter entitled "That One Should Avoid Being Despised And Hated" of Machiavelli's tome The Prince, we find this advice:

It makes him contemptible to be considered fickle, frivolous, effeminate, mean-spirited, irresolute, from all of which a prince should guard himself as from a rock...

Which our rulers today certainly take to heart, though not so much as a way to avoid being despised themselves. Rather, it seems they read the chapter heading as something more along the lines of "That One Should Ensure Their Opponent Cannot Avoid Being Despised And Hated." Which in practice is fantastic for Waveland in terms of entertainment value, though on the whole, tends to make a farce out of concepts like "consent of the governed," "will of the people," "representational democracy," ...

While I confess we may have allowed ourselves at I Like [image of pie], Spot! to be prodded into pumping the story, it wasn't here that the topic of John McCain's genitals first came up. It was on no less a forum than Meet the Press, where no less than Tom Brokaw, (though quoting a third party, on the topic of Senator McCain's solution for Social Security,) uttered the words, "This isn't a flip-flop. It's a sex-change operation." Words which were rebutted by none other than Democrat Senator Joe Lieberman with the unequivocal rejoinder, "John remains all male. There's no question about that." Perhaps Brokaw's complicity is part of a Waveland conspiracy to somehow recapture the dynamic that so enthralled the country during the Democratic primaries: 'Obama is just black black black!' vs. 'She's a man, baby!'*

We at I Like [image of pie], Spot! are only a tiny cog in this big, sexist machine. We regret any confusion that may have resulted from our actions. In no way did we intend to imply that Presidential Candidate John McCain has had a sex change. --Montag.

BONUS MATERIAL:

Where else, we might ask, can we see our current rulers' misguided interpretations of Machiavelli's admonitions on 'effeminate-ness' in action?

...when a prince acquires a new state, which he adds as a province to his old one, then it is necessary to disarm the men of that state, except those who have been his adherents in acquiring it; and these again, with time and opportunity, should be rendered soft and effeminate; and matters should be managed in such a way that all the armed men in the state shall be your own soldiers who in your old state were living near you.

Look, it's the road map for success in Iraq!


*Oddly, 'She's a man, baby!' seems to turn Machiavelli on his head: perhaps "effeminate-ness" isn't the vice he thought it was, so much as the "icky-ness" when a Prince's gender doesn't precisely align with his or her anatomical dirty bits.

Machiavelli, Nicolò (Trans. W. K. Marriott) (1908). The prince. Retrieved August 7, 2008, from The Constitution Society Web site: http://www.constitution.org/mac/prince00.htm

Ask Herr Doktor Blume
Installment #1. “Tell Me About Your Marvelous Ape”
Dr. Blume has degrees in Logotherapy from the Österreichische gesellschaft für logotherapie nach Victor Frankl in Vienna and in Nail Technology from the Schilling-Douglas School of Hair Design in Newark. Every week, he answers your questions about will to meaning, pedicures, and especially libido.

Q. Dear Dr. Blume,
Why is it when John McCain was asked “How do we beat the bitch?” he called it an “excellent question” and talked about how he was ahead of Hillary Clinton at that point in the race? - Hilda in Helsinki

A. This is an excellent question. One might assume that Mr. McCain was a misogynistic freak, perhaps because his mother forced him to wear a dress for the first twelve years of his life or some such reason. However, this would just be the pinnacle of the iceberg.

In my esteemed professional opinion, Mr. McCain suffers from a psychological response sometimes seen in prisoners who show loyalty to the captors. We Logotherapists have coined the term “Stockholm syndrome” to describe this response. Take this joke told by McCain at a meeting of the National League of Cities and Towns in March of 1986:

Did you hear the one about the woman who is attacked on the street by a gorilla, beaten senseless, raped repeatedly and left to die? When she finally regains consciousness and tries to speak, her doctor leans over to hear her sigh contently and to feebly ask, “Where is that marvelous ape?” [Tucson Citizen, 10/27/86]

Now, at first you would think that this is nothing but repellant sexism. Joking about rape is the type of thing that men who fantasize about sexual violence are wont to do, and the fact that the woman was “beaten senseless” attests to almost pathological misogyny. But coupled with his war experience, we begin to wonder if this is not also symptomatic of a more general issue. Note that at the end of the joke, the woman appears to enjoy her beating and sexual violation, and ask: who is this marvelous ape?

Where Mr. McCain was beaten senseless by the Viet Cong, the woman was beaten senseless by a powerful gorilla, a King Kong, if you will. Perhaps this is a clue to the identity of that marvelous ape?

Now, let us move forward to something Mr. McCain said to Larry King more recently:

I don't think they do. In fact, it is very interesting to see a change in attitudes and comments on the so-called Arab street now. The Arab countries in the region that, at first were very sympathetic to bin Laden and very critical of the United States and our actions, and now there seems to be a very different tune being played there, in sort of a acceptance of the fact that the United States is doing what is right and necessary, not only for the United States but for, frankly, these moderate regimes as well. [Larry King Live, 11/28/01]

Again, the countries subject to the superpower grow to love the superpower, a Stockholm syndrome-type argument. Women and Arabs, which initially rejected their oppressor, end up being grateful for being dominated, for someone to do what is “right and necessary” to them.

This of course opens up the possibility that John McCain is not only a deviant sexist, but is also doing what we Logotherapists call “projecting”. Perhaps he himself feels this way towards his oppressors. At this point you want to ask John McCain, as you should ask yourself “Who is your marvelous ape?” And why not, while you are thinking about this, stop in for a manicure or a pedicure at Dr. Blume’s Logotherapy und Nagel-Technologie-Handelszentrum. We have seven locations to serve you, six of them conveniently located in Steglitz von Berlin.