Dick Cheney may have dodged the Reaper, temporarily, but yesterday another Watergate co-conspirator was less successful:
Charles W. Colson, who as a political saboteur for President Richard M. Nixon masterminded some of the dirty tricks that led to the president’s downfall, then emerged from prison to become an important evangelical leader, saying he had been “born again,” died on Saturday. He was 80…
Mr. Colson was sent to prison after pleading guilty to obstructing justice in one of the criminal plots that undid the Nixon administration. After having what he called his religious awakening behind bars, he spent much of the rest of his life ministering to prisoners, preaching the Gospels and forging a coalition of Republican politicians, evangelical church leaders and Roman Catholic conservatives that has had a pronounced influence on American politics…
Few played political hardball more fiercely than Mr. Colson. When a deluded janitor from Milwaukee shot Gov. George C. Wallace of Alabama on the presidential campaign trail in Maryland in May 1972, Nixon asked about the suspect’s politics. Mr. Colson replied, “Well, he’s going to be a left-winger by the time we get through.” He proposed a political frame-up: planting leftist pamphlets in the would-be killer’s apartment. “Good,” the president said, as recorded on a White House tape. “Keep at that.” …
In 2000, Mr. Colson was a resident of Florida when Gov. Jeb Bush restored his rights to practice law, vote and serve on a jury — all of them having been lost with his federal felony conviction. “I think it’s time to move on,” Mr. Bush said at the time. “I know him. He’s a great guy.”
With that, Mr. Colson re-entered the political arena. In January 2001, six days after President George W. Bush’s inauguration, a Wall Street Journal editorial praised Mr. Colson’s prison work as “a model for Bush’s ideas about faith-based funding.”…
I know John Cole prefers that any immediate notice of someone’s death be respectful and positive, but Chuck Colson was a wholly malign influence on American life and politics for more than forty years. The only respect he deserved was that you’d grant a rabid wolverine, and I am positively glad that he can’t do any more harm.
***********
Speaking of diseased mustelids, the “Los Angeles County coroner’s office… ruled that the cause of [Andrew] Breitbart’s death was heart failure and hypertropic cardiomyopathy with focal coronary atherosclerosis, or hardening of the arteries.” Natural causes, especially for a middle-aged male in what may politely be called a high-stress career, double especially if he was taking medication for ADHD. Of course, Breitbart’s Breitbrats are accepting this verdict with all the grace and reason you’d expect; TBogg, reading these idiots so we won’t have to, provides a world-class buffet of nutpicked grievance… and a photoshop that puts Loesch’s ‘tribute’ to (even more) shame.
Little Boots
wow, did not know this.
WereBear
Unhinged rage can damage the heart. Color me surprised.
And what can anyone say about Chuck Colson? That he was no E. Howard Hunt? I suppose, just as Nixon claimed it wasn’t illegal if the President did it, Colson would say it’s not evil if he did it in the name of Jaysus.
Little Boots
how weird. yeah, have no idea what to feel here. can’t say I’ll miss the old fraud. can feel bad for his loved ones, assuming there are any.
Matoko Borgia-Steeler
Hammer and stake time. Make sure the old thug is really nailed down for good. It worked for Tricky Dicky, didn’t it?
Little Boots
@Matoko Borgia-Steeler:
or this.
we can go with this.
Matoko Borgia-Steeler
@Little Boots:
I see it as a preview for Nailin’ Palin II. One shallow, self-obsessed right-wing crook is much the same as another, after all.
Little Boots
@Matoko Borgia-Steeler:
this is true.
Cacti
RIH Chuck
May Satan never tire of stabbing you and Tricky Dick in the ass with his pitchfork.
Nutella
“he’s going to be a left-winger by the time we get through.”
I hadn’t heard that one but somehow it doesn’t surprise me at all.
Colson was most famous for saying he’d run over his own grandmother to get Nixon re-elected.
Nutella
@Cacti:
Is that like Rih Santorum?
handy
Chuck Colson is the reason all you people hate Christianity.
Hyberbole? Maybe, but not by much.
Edited to clarify: That’s not a compliment for ole “I’d Run over my own grandmother for Tricky Dick” Colson.
calliope jane
For some reason, I’m curious when the NYTimes wrote the Colson obit. Not sure why.
I saw this earlier and mentioned it to a friend she said “at least he went to jail.” When I read further and said “but only for seven months for Daniel Ellsberg.” Response: “Well, that doesn’t count at all.”
From the obit, they describe the switch from “Nixon hatchetman” to minister with a coalition of evangelicals, conservatives, etc. that “cleared the path for a political and cultural alliance that has reshaped the political debate in America, adding fuel to a rightward turn in the Republican Party and a rising conservative grass-roots movement” as: “It was a remarkable reversal.”
Yeah, that’s really, really not a reversal.
freelancer
“You wanna know the first rule? You’d know if you ever spent a day in your life: You NEVER open your mouth until you know what the shot is.”
The second rule was spelled out when humanity applied thought to language:
Two dead wingnut assholes who failed at the mere basics of humanity and decency are dead. They aren’t the first and they won’t be the last. As long as there are people in the world carrying the fire, leaving the simple message of simple human compassion, there will be malcontents who rail against them. May they all be struck down by “natural causes”, lives abbreviated due to their own hate an bitterness.
Haters.
Fuck ’em.
Suffern ACE
What he is really was one of the big signs that a certain class of people (call them the retreads) could never be driven out with sticks. We can’t get rid of them. Doesnt matter if they cause Savings and Loan collapses, or sell arms to Iran, or fuck over HUD, or lead us into disastrous wars, or drive off the road drunk killing a mistress in the process, or have fathers who plotted actual coups against a president, or whatnot. We can’t ever get rid of them. It was a lousy generation of manor lords, and they’ve only just finally started dying off.
Mnemosyne
I can’t find the reference online now, but I could have sworn I read somewhere after his death that Breitbart was a diabetic (type I) who did not monitor his blood sugar very well. One of the major complications of diabetes is — you guessed it — hardening of the arteries leading to heart attacks.
Or, as G said tonight, “He died because he was hard-hearted? Yeah, that sounds about right.”
mdblanche
You know, based on the first half of your title I was expecting this post to be about Bill O’Reilly.
MikeJ
@handy:
I don’t hate Christianity. I’m pretty meh on it. I also don’t hate Aesop’s fables.
Christians tend to be douchebags though. Sturgeon’s Law certainly applies, as it does to members of all other religions and the non religious too.
Narcissus
Wait so heart disease is a conspiracy now
Joseph Nobles
@freelancer: That amazing quote isn’t from Plato.
http://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/06/29/be-kind/
It seems to me that Plato missed a hell of an opportunity to have said it, though.
karl
Laurie seems to imply that Dick Cheney was a Watergate co-conspirator. I don’t remember any such connection.
karen marie
@Joseph Nobles: Very nice!
fedupwithhypocrisy
I don’t remember who said it, just what they said after he was imprisoned and had his Christian conversion: If Charles Colson is going to ask for forgiveness from all he’s wronged, he’s going to have worse knees than Dick Butkus.
WereBear
@karl: This link might help:
Cheney was Rumsfeld’s deputy.
The prophet Nostradumbass
All I have to say about Colson is:
R.I.P, S.O.B
Karl The Crap Blog Detective
Clearly Breitbart’s death means that Obama has a Death Note!
Suffern ACE
@Karl The Crap Blog Detective: Oh. Why. Why would Ryuk give the notebook to the powerful who already have the CIA available? And the manner of death then is just cold. Heart attack? He could come up with more interesting scenarios than that. I’m actually a little disappointed in the implications of your hypothesis.
Cacti
@Nutella:
Not exactly.
The first letter stands for Rot. I’m sure you can deduce the rest.
bob h
The usual epitaph applies here: He did his worst for his country.
Villago Delenda Est
Colson’s “redemption” wasn’t much, considering that a member of the Bush crime family gave him the pardon and he promptly went to work for the fascist filth of the Rethug party.
He was dogshit from start to finish.
gelfling545
At one time I would have been happy to hear Colson was gone. Now I’m standing too close to the exit myself to rejoice at anyone’s passing. Still, we can spare him better than others we’ve lost.
kay
@Suffern ACE:
It doesn’t matter if the manor lords die off, because there’s a line of succession.
Dick Cheney was hugely powerful at 34 years old. His daughter has already been crowned his successor, and the bar is getting lower.
Cheney at least was elected to the House. No one has ever voted for Liz Cheney.
chrome agnomen
@gelfling545:
shit, i’m close myself, but i still rejoice when i hear that one of these pieces of crap has been pinched off by mother earth. gives me another reason to live.
Chris
@calliope jane:
Colson joins Nixon and George Wallace on the list of people who, once they’d been so completely and irredeemably compromised, simply had to play the “born again” card to wipe their entire slate clean.
But if anyone’s curious about whether that guy ever felt any remorse for Watergate, all you need to know is that when Deep Throat’s identity was revealed, Colson expressed his disapproval that the guy had leaked to the press.
WWBreitbartD
No retraction Anne Laurie?
St. Andrew of the Righteous Indigestion
So how am I now disillusioned?
I suspect disillusionment over coroner’s report is on confined to progressives (lead by Anne Laurie and ABL) who are on their way to becoming Breitbart truthers.
Lojasmo
@WWBreitbartD:
I don’t see anything that requires retraction. Breitbart was a waste of carbon.
Sally Rakowski
May they all be struck down by “natural causes”, lives abbreviated due to their own hate an bitterness.
Haters.
Fuck ‘em.–freelancer
Sounds like enough hate in that statement that you’d almost be hoping for the same fate to befall you.
Breitbart’s death should be a reminder to all political junkies who spend their days and nights sitting in front of a computer blogging, cruising the internets and watching the news in the background… it’s not good for you. Blaming it on anything else because you hate him might be consoling to you, but it’s nonsense.
Matoko Borgia-Steeler
@Lojasmo:
I suspect that the troll is desperately ignoring the howls of rage from the right-wing doucheocracy after they discovered that obesity and bad habits killed Breitbart, rather than a ninja assassin sent by the Communo-muslimo-libero-fascist Kenyan Usurper. They were so pathetically obviously hoping to find evidence that something other than a fat gut and self-indulgence caused Breitbart to join the Satan’s Spitroast Club. As usual, they lose.
Mino
The idea of outsourcing the safety net to faith-based institutions was one of the worst we ever implemented. Ol’ George really snuck one past us and I doubt that we will ever be able to get their hands off tax monies. The connection is totally corrupting.
General Stuck
@Sally Rakowski:
Breitbart tried too hard and probly needed a long vacation
Dan
As to whether one should be respectful of Colson in death, well, probably; it’s better than he was able to do when Mark Felt died.
zoot
although it will be a great relief for humanity when the grim reaper catches cheney, the pomp, accolades, and lionization that will follow for weeks declaring him a great statesman when the reality is that he is truly the devil incarnate – the poster child for all the worst characteristics a human could possess all rolled into one carcass, will be insufferable.
Mike in NC
@Nutella:
Who could ever forget the “Committee to Re-elect the President”, or CREEP, as it was called with no bit of irony?
dr. bloor
Well, that explains why they didn’t find the cocaine in his system that we were expecting. The shit would have just harshed his mania.
As for Colson, fuck him with a rusty devil-fork. I really hope Satan has the perverse sense of humor necessary to decide a fitting eternal fate for Colson, Tricky Dick and that lot. You can point to the Reagan Revolution as the starting point of the economic/political/cultural shitslide we’re on, but Watergate was the incubator.
quannlace
Of all the Breitbert outrage/conspiracy howls, this is my favorite.
Uh, yeah. Could the clouds be parting and some of his Breitbrats might finally be realizing that all his ‘ruthless truth seeking’ was nothing but empty air.
dr. bloor
@quannlace:
No, it’s far more likely that they’ll come to the conclusion that Barry took all the really damning evidence after he whacked BigRigor with his “heart attack gun,” whatever the hell that is. You’re forgetting that in BreibartWorld, the absence of evidence is absolute confirmation that it exists.
Sally Rakowski
Just curious, has anyone collected on the $100,000 offer Breitbart made to the United Negro College Fund for video or audio evidence of someone yelling the n-word at Congressman John Lewis?
gnomedad
Does anyone on the right even understand the concept of “nutpicking” well enough to accuse the left of it? I doubt it.
Also, Colson changed his M.O., that’s all.
Matoko Borgia-Steeler
@gnomedad:
The right wing thinks that nutpicking follows teabagging. They are an insanitary bunch.
gnomedad
@Matoko Borgia-Steeler:
Haha, while I was posting, I typed “nutlicking” and corrected it. Truth.
GregB
I can’t wait until World Net Daily does an investigative report proving that President Obama was secretly forcing Breitbart to eat at Five Guys, Dennys and McDonalds.
Matoko Borgia-Steeler
@GregB:
Not to mention bribing that penguin to viciously savage the sacred digit of the Once and Future Leader (possibly) of The Civilized Forces. (Or do I mean Farces?)
http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2012/04/newt-gingrich-penguin.html
Villago Delenda Est
@Matoko Borgia-Steeler:
That flightless bird should be a national hero.
Geeno
This actually ties back to when Dennis Miller was still occasionally funny …
“He spends 30 years being the biggest prick in Washington, gets popped for Watergate, and as he’s being carted off to get sodomized for 10 years in a Federal Prison, he FINDS Christ.
I guess that’s cause Christ didn’t see him first.
‘Oh man, it’s that prick Colson, probably wants to turn his life over to me’ …”
This was the same bit in which referred to being born again as “ecclesiastical whiteout”
SRW1
… saying he had been “born again,”
Well it’s OK then not to be agrieved. He must be at a better place.
I’ll consult Dante when I have time.
Matoko Borgia-Steeler
@Villago Delenda Est:
It ought to get a Time cover at the very least.
lacp
@GregB:What was Obama shoving down his throat?
lacp
Favorite wingnut comment from Tbogg’s collection:
“His death is the start of many breibarts following his example.”
If only that were true….
Matoko Borgia-Steeler
@lacp:
There are indeed many blubbery, ethically-challenged, white rage-junkies out there. All demanding that the government stay out of “their” Medicare.
Mickey
He may be gone but he inspired a whole new generation of rat fuckers.
I would be VERY surprised if we didn’t see some big time rat fucking this election. From robocalls in the middle of the night claiming to be from Democrats to voter machine tampering to everything in between.
The big question is how much damage they manage to do and if they will ever be caught/prosecuted.
karl
@WereBear:
Your link is completely irrelevant, Rumsfeld had no role in Watergate — not everyone in the Nixon White House was involved with Watergate.
jharp
Chuck Colson, RIP
By Rich Lowry
April 21, 2012 5:07 P.M.
Comments
5
“A great man passes.”
lacp
@jharp: Passes what? Gas? The potatoes? Three cards, face down? Fuck Colson – from smarmy crook to smarmy godbotherer, no loss whatsoever.
Lex
@calliope jane: Yeah, that was written by a reporter who clearly doesn’t know much about Christianity, or at least about Christ.
My one real-life experience with Chuck Colson, in ’96, was that he went so far off the reservation at a Promise Keepers event that even the Promise Keepers had to disavow him, lest their tax-exempt status be revoked.
At least the good folks at the Brookings Institute can rest easy tonight.
Beauzeaux
Any year in which Colson and Breitbart both die cannot be a total loss no matter what happens in the next eight months.
dr. bloor
@Beauzeaux: Tweaking the FSM with assertions like these can only lead to Very Bad Things.
jharp
@lacp:
I was quoting Rich Lowry over at National Review. Apparently Rich thinks he was a great man.
Jay C
My feelings at Chuck Colson’s passing are summed up by a comment I read recently on the ‘Net – which I think was referring to Andrew Breitbart’s passing as well:
He’s in a better place, now…
And so are we.
Beauzeaux
@dr. bloor:
The FSM does not mess with true pastafarians such as moi.
Matoko Borgia-Steeler
@Beauzeaux:
“Bless the Maker and all His Water. Bless the coming and going of Him, May His passing cleanse the world. May He keep the world for his people.”
lacp
@jharp: Sorry – I wasn’t imputing Starburst Dude’s words to you. Unclear from my post.
swearyanthony
My only regret is that HST didn’t live long enough to write an obituary for him. The world is a better place for Colson not being in it. If you ever go back and look at why US politics is in the horrid state that it’s in, you will find his name.
Yes, I know normally the correct form of words is to say “oh gosh, the poor family” – no. As with Phelps, Norquist, Robertson. Fuck em. Dance on the grave. Dance with uninhibited joy. Because the world is a better place.
swearyanthony
And now I am going to re read Great Shark Hunt and laugh, bitterly
kindness
The Coroners Report on Breitbart I read had a curious statement. It said it found no ‘illicit’ substances in Breitbart’s system. I’m wondering why they didn’t list the ‘legal’ drugs in his system.
Ruckus
Malicious Glee in Others’ Passing
My glee is not malicious, it is delicious.
Colson and BigRag were people who wanted to make everyone else worse off than them and would do anything to make it so. Just because there is a one in an infinities chance that I may have to spend eternity with them in hell doesn’t diminish what they did here.
And to add, Getting old(er) has it’s drawbacks, that’s for sure. One of the pluses is living long enough to see assholes get theirs. Sure I may be in the same line as them but still.
Gex
And this write up doesn’t even cover his later years anti-gay bullshit. What a piece of work.
It’s nice to know that even though we have evidence of how the right turns right wing anti-government violence into a left wing issue, we still have that happening and they still get away with triggering lone wolf psychos.
Catpause
Come on Liddy and Dean! Almost the whole gang is metabolically challenged.Soon…
TenguPhule
Now to find the grave and shit on it.