Former CIA Director Doesn’t Know Sports

h, baby, there’s being a girl and then there’s being a girl—know what I’m saying? Take as an example former CIA Director George Tenet, the man who complains in his new book At the Center of the Storm that he became a poster boy for the fuck-up in Iraq and that his comment "It’s a Slam Dunk, Mr. President," was used as grounds for the Iraqi invasion and taken out of context. Now it turns out that, according to Tenet’s new book, the problem is trying to use sports terminology in the workplace without knowing shit about sports.

Like a lot of women out there, this reporter only watches sports for the unspoken erotic tension between the players and the frequent male touching. But honey, at least I watch. Which leaves straight boys like George Tenet trying to fumble (another sports term) around the office to describe international situations in a language the president can understand. If he don’t know sports and the president don’t know international politics, they might as well be speaking Swahili and German to each other, sweetie.

In Tenet’s new book, the freshest alibi that testifies he’s someone else who didn’t do shit to cause the unpopular war in Iraq, the former CIA Director tells how he responded to the president’s question about the intelligence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (WMD is so 2003 now), to which Tenet replied with the damned expression "Slam Dunk." But Tenet says the case against him is not so clear.

"The president likes to receive all of his briefings in language that the public can understand," Tenet wrote of his former boss and frequent sly critic. "This makes it easier for the razor-sharp mind of President Bush to prepare information for his press conferences—with so many things on his plate like writing a balanced budget, researching the privatization of health care, and his late-night situation meetings, sports terminology can get the point home to the American people without the president complicating the matter with the convoluted jargon familiar to President Bush, but strange to our ears.

"In this matter, I incorrectly clarified the intelligence case for Iraq’s possession of weapons of mass destruction as a ’Slam Dunk.’ I have very rarely ever seen a football game, so using this terminology was my mistake. I should have gone with ’home run,’ which is at least familiar to me because of dating slang. I did not mean that the ball was knocked out of the park. I meant that that thing happens where—what’s the term for when a player pretends to throw the ball, but you’re not sure he did, and any player could have or not have the ball? A ’clusterfuck,’ maybe? Whatever that thing is, that’s what I meant to say. Boy, I must have really messed up my sports lingo, though."

Tenet’s book further criticizes politicians out there, including the White House, for making him the scapegoat for the war because of the "Slam Dunk" comment. When the intelligence for Iraq was revealed as faulty, detractors pointed to Tenet as the face for the flawed intelligence system and put the burden on him and his people for a war that many accusers say was initiated only by the president’s interests. Tenet goes on to describe the process as "just plain mean."

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was uncharacteristically frank in her response to Tenet’s charges in her response with Wolf Blitzer on CNN Sunday.

"George screwed the pooch and he knows it," said Rice. "That’s not a sports term, so maybe I won’t have to translate it for him. We should send him to the penalty box for his knocking us over it all, but he wouldn’t know where the fuck it is anyway."

Turkey to Block Offensive Websites; commune Offers Pre-Emptive “Fuck You”

Obama to Change Spelling of Name to oBAMa for Maximum Impact

Oasis, Killers Combine Forces to Ruin Sgt. Pepper’s for Everyone

Global Warming Poses Threat to National Parks, Says WWF’s “Machoman” Savage

"No one within shouting distance of the Hartwig home will ever forget the year dad got in trouble with the Olympic Committee for claiming that he invented tennis. It turned out that the game had been around for hundreds of years and bore only a passing resemblance to the game dad had invented at home with a couple of picture frames and a tomato. We went through the whole thing all over again a few years later with table tennis, but the Chinese had dad beat on that one, too. He tried to argue that they'd stolen the tomato part from him, but in the end dad was never able to prove that a tomato had ever been used in a regulation tournament.

The whole tennis debacle soured dad on inventing sports for several years, until Uncle Otto sold him the rights to his idea for a no-holds-barred fighting tournament. Dad worked out the kinks using my brother Goose and I as human guinea pigs, as per our usual role in the family. This lasted until the school counselor suggested to my dad that the ongoing 'Fight for Your Supper' tournament might be affecting Goose's scholastic performance. Few believed that Goose's grades could have possibly sunk below their customary level, so it was widely assumed that Goose had been caught stealing food from the cafeteria. This made sense, since he had gone 0 –for-17 so far in the tournament, even losing to Stephanie on several occasions.

Some in the neighborhood blamed me, and suggested that I could have let him win every once in a while. But until Goose figured out how to cut eyeholes into his mask, there wasn't much I could do to keep him from coldcocking himself on the banister and missing dinner every night.

Eventually dad sold the idea to another entrepreneur who had more resilient kids, and he reluctantly moved on to other pursuits. It was probably for the best, though, since Mom was getting tired of sanding teeth marks out of the banister every year."

º Last Column: Uncle Bing
º more columns

Few popular hand gestures have as varied a meaning around the globe as the ubiquitous "thumbs-up" gesture, a poorly-named motion since it rarely, except in the case of huge assholes, is performed with both thumbs. But while the dual thumbs-up means "I'm a cock" in nearly every corner of the globe, the single-thumbed variety can mean anything from "I've recovered from my head injury" to "I think this would fit up your ass." Knowing the differences in local translation can save one not only from social embarrassment, but massive anal trauma as well.

Most modern historians place the gesture's origin in Roman times, when coliseum crowds would determine a fallen gladiator's fate by giving either a thumbs-up ("Fuck 'em!") or a thumbs-down ("Kill the shit out of him!"). The gladiator would die either way, but people in those days liked to feel like they had some say in things, whether they actually did or not. The only way the gladiator could actually be spared would be if the Caesar gave the dreaded "He's kind of cute!" hand-waggle, in which case the gladiator's wounds would be treated and he'd be dressed in a muscle shirt for the pleasure of the Caesar.

Art historians and the strange souls who have dedicated their academic lives to the study of hand gestures often argue and get into bar brawls over the meaning of the Roman thumbs–up/down gestures, some believing that thumbs-down meant "swords down" and others arguing that it meant "you're a dick." Confusing the matter further are the various gladiatorial paintings from the era, which depict Caesars sparing injured gladiators via both the thumbs-up and the thumbs-down, and one rare instance of a Caesar giving the coliseum crowd the finger. Historians say this incident was triggered by the Caesar's chariot being dinged in the coliseum parking lot the day before. Most believe that a gladiator was commonly spared with the thumbs-down gesture, and the one outstanding painting indicating the opposite was the result of a lazy French painter who just couldn't paint the thumbs-down without it looking weird.

All of this is hardly relevant, however, since the thumbs-up had already been in use for centuries, dating back to prehistoric times, when those cavemen who were slight of build used the gesture instinctively in an attempt to hitch a ride on the backs of larger cavemen. Modern hitchhiking has changed little, though due to advances in transportation technology, modern man has less time to yell insults after being turned down for a ride.

During Medieval times, Europeans would seal transactions by licking thumbs and pressing them together, fist-to-fist, a tradition they learned from Oriental traders who were only fucking with them. Nevertheless, this bogus Oriental custom survived for hundred of years in Europe, until people began to realize it was greatly facilitating the spread of the plague, and nobody could come up with a way to make thumb condoms that didn't unpleasantly reduce sensation.

Eventually, the thumbs-up gesture came to be used by American pilots in WWII to communicate with the ground crew since they were covered in so much Darth Vader bullshit that their thumb was about the only body part that could still move. This was in stark contrast to WWI pilots, who didn't even wear helmets, and were only issued two pieces of safety equipment: a book on birds and a bible.

The WWII pilots would give the thumbs-up to the ground crew when they were ready to take off, meaning "Everything's cool." This is what the ground crew chumps thought anyway, the inside joke among the pilots was that the gesture actually meant "I stuck this thumb up your girlfriend's ass last night." Thankfully for inter-Air Force harmony, none of the ground crew guys ever found out about this or the "You're an a-s-s-hole/OK" dual-purpose hand gesture either.

The ground crew guys, however, were about the only ones not in on the joke, and as the gesture spread around the globe wherever the pilots traveled, coming to mean "Up your ass" all around the world. Thanks to the uptight 1950's, Americans never caught on to the double-meaning, and continued to use the gesture to mean "Super." One notable exception was actor Henry Winkler, whose father had been a WWII pilot and who used his inside knowledge to give a counterculture edge to his character of Fonzie on the 70's sitcom Happy Days. Whenever Fonzie would give someone the thumbs-up and sneer "Heeeey, sit on it!" Air Force pilots and stoners everywhere had a good laugh at the expense of mainstream America.

Today the gesture is as popular as ever among Americans and foreigners wanting to secretly insult Americans. Though in all likelihood having your thumb stuck up someone else's ass would be even more unpleasant for you than it was for them, the thumbs-up gesture goes down next to "Go fuck yourself!" in the annals of nonsensical insults that still pack a punch.

º Last Column: Hey, Fuck You: A Brief History of Hand Gestures
º more columns