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."

Pope Swears God Will Punish Drug Dealers With Poor-Quality Shit

Vintage Dell to Grace Smithsonian's New What the Fuck Were We Thinking? Wing

Isaac Hayes Recognized on Bad Mother’s Day

'Paris Hilton Autopsy' Sculpture Signed to Three-Picture Deal

Well, it looks like Pete Rose might never get into the Hall of Fame now, which is a bummer for him since I hear he has a lot of money riding on this. Apparently in his new book he admits he gambled on baseball back when he was a manager, only never on Sundays. I don't know what in the hell that's supposed to prove. Rose also said he never bet against the Reds, which I'll only believe if they can prove he hasn't gambled since around 1990. My God do the Reds suck.

Rose thought the deal was that they'd let him into the Hall of Fame if he would admit to gambling, but in reality they were just waiting for him to get a decent haircut. Keep waiting guys. It was a hilarious joke on Rose back in the 80's when they told him he was "banned" for gambling, nobody actually expected him to believe that skylark. Then it became this running joke over the years to see when he'd finally catch on. Eventually everybody got tired of waiting and decided they should come up with a new way to tease Rose in 2003, hence the whole "fess up and we'll let you in, Petey" gag.

After all, everybody in baseball gambles. The double play was invented on a bet, you think those lazy bastards would have thought that up on their own? The commissioner himself almost won fifty bucks two years ago after he bet a drinking buddy he could contract two teams without anybody noticing. Hell, if he'd picked the Expos and Brewers he'd be $50 richer today. Bet that keeps him up at night.

As for Rose, nobody has the heart to tell him he's not in the Hall of Fame because he's an asshole and nobody likes him. I hear next year they're going to say he can't go into the Hall of Fame because he masturbates too much. That guy'll believe anything, I swear.

Some argue that Rose belongs in the Hall since he holds the career hits record, but he only ended up with that because he kept hanging around the clubhouse for years after he should have retired and nobody had the heart to tell him he wasn't on the team any more. He was like baseball's annoying little brother who can't take a hint. It'd be sad if it wasn't so funny.

The gag on Rose last year was that if he admitted his wrongdoing, they'd sneak him in the back door of the Hall with a coat thrown over his head. So he writes this book, which is about 300 pages of Rose bullshitting about how he was a hero in Vietnam and two paragraphs were he says yeah, he bet on baseball and lied about it for 20 years, but it was all the losing teams' fault anyway since if he'd always won then it wouldn't have been gambling. To that, all I can say is forget the Hall of Fame, get this guy some kind of Hannibal Lecter award for convoluted logic. This guy's a miracle.

So Pete thinks he's in like Flynn now, but of course the rest of the Hall of Famers don't want to put up with his bullshit stories and catastrophic lack of class at HoF functions for the rest of their lives, so they have the commissioner tell Pete that the book was nice and all, but oops! He forgot to say he was sorry. Damn, sorry Pete. They all know full-well that Rose types with two fingers and used up all his good gook jokes in his latest book, so it'll be another ten years before they hear from him again. Then somebody will have to actually read the "Pete Rose's Big Book of Sorta Sorry" book before they can dream up another snipe hunt to send this guy on.

Cruel? Maybe. But you haven't seen the kinds of sport coats Pete Rose wears. Sweet pastel Jesus.

º Last Column: Nickname At Your Own Risk
º more columns

Good is the news and the news is good (as they say in the Philistines), I've got Friday off. That's right, all it took was a ball gag and three tubes of astroglide, and Joe Friday was crowing like a rooster. I- yeeeeeeeich- Uhm, yeah. So the camping is on.

It shall be a grand old time, where I shall commune with nature, and be blacklisted as a communist agitator, never to work in Hollywood again. I shall fish, and bird... and ferret. I shall canoe... and I shall car. I shall stand at the edge of the great woods, look in, and say: "I think something died in there. Yuck."

And just so you can win (or lose) your office betting pool over how I got the time off, thanks to Nootles not being here yet I mustered up the extreme courage (while I did mustard my sandwich) to call Bagel at home, to interrupt his vacationary reverie and to have him, after near seconds of deliberation, say unto me, pass on the immortal words that shall be carved in a goblet of pure gold to stand watch over the mantle place for future generations to come: "Yeah, sure."

It was a grueling battle, a hard-won victory that shall not be taken lightly, that shall stand for generations as a pure golden example of human potential in the face of unthinkable adversity, of personal triumph against sterilizing odds, and as my alibi for why I couldn't have possibly caused that blueberry stain on the rug. On a totally unrelated side note, blueberry cheesecake is very good.

So to you gentle reader, I implore you to take this brave step with me, to, in fact, rise to your highest potential and throw mortal fear to the wind, requesting, with great hubris, Friday off as well. It's done wonders for my confidence, and my complexion, and has given me a whole new outlook on life. Realizing this, I say why not have a day where we all leave the shackles of employment behind us, fling our undershorts to the wind, and all go camping. Not all together, mind you, because I share my lite beer with no one, but we should each camp individually in our own local campitoriums, and revel in the outdoorsiness of it all. I know in my various bones that we'll all have a new lease on life once we've secured our freedom for this coming Friday. It shall be a towering beacon of courage in this squalid, meek little world. And it is my sincere hope that, once you've fought the good fight, once you've slew the demons of ignorance with the short-sword of courtesy, once you've plumbed the darkest depths of the human soul and soared to it's loftiest peaks, that you, too shall hear these noble words intoned: "Yeah, sure."

I leave you to your task. Godspeed.

º Last Column: Welcome to the Machine
º more columns