The appearance versus the reality of bad-assedness

Curmudgette nails it:

We are now a country that worships at the altar of Jack Bauer and venerates idiocy as long as it looks really bad-ass.

There it is.

The authentic bad-asses in our history, the ones who, when the chips were down, did what had to be done, even at the price of bad karma or even life itself--Ethan Allen, Daniel Morgan, the 54th Massachusetts, William Tecumseh Sherman, Gall, Crazy Horse, Alvin York, Lawrence Joel, Randy Shughart and Gary Gordon--would bitch-slap into insensibility AWOL Junior, Five-Deferment Dick, Mr Torture-via-television, Little Billy Kristol, Child-Molester Rush, and every other chickenhawk who talks bad while 3000 miles behind the combat zone.

And then piss on them.

[ETA 10/9/07 0200 GMT]: Quantzalcoatl points us toward Tom Tomorrow.