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L. Neil Smith's THE LIBERTARIAN ENTERPRISE Number 275, June 13, 2004 "The Sovereign in this country is the people themselves"
Eric Dondero Rittberg, The Real-Life "Master Shake"?
Exclusive to TLE For a few months now, I've been a fan of a cartoon series called "Aqua Teen Hunger Force." Think of it as a sophisticated, surreal Beavis and Butthead, or a really gross form of South Park. Either way, it's pretty funny (it helps to have a twisted sense of humor). You might want to check out the show's page on adultswim.com, as I'll be referring to it in a moment: http://www.adultswim.com/shows/athf/index.html The character I'll spend the most time with here goes by the name Master Shake, or just "Shake". He's a talking milkshake, about five feet, six inches. He's also a complete asshole and moron. Some examples: Once, Shake sells his roommate Meatwad to the circus for two FRN, telling him that he's going to "computer camp." The other roomie, Frylock, buys a toy for Meatwad. Shake grabs it instead, thinks it's a real computer, then asks "Which one do I buy stock with—the chicken or the piggie?" Shake and neighbor Carl split the cost of getting a mail-order bride from Chechnya, then fight over who gets to marry her. Shake flushes the Aqua Teens' monthly bills down the toilet, then complains about the electricity and cable TV getting cut off, blaming the cut-off on the other two. Shake offers heavy metal musician Zakk Wylde 1.4 million FRN to rewrite "Happy Birthday" into a headbanger tune. When Frylock asks him "Where the hell are you gonna get that kind of money?" Shake says that he'll pay it out of royalties collected from future sales. Shake then plans to debut this masterpiece with Wilde playing it alongside two six-foot plastic scorpions in an abandoned and trashed party hall. Sound familiar? If you're familiar with the name Eric Dondero Rittberg (and variants thereof), it should. Dondero-Rittberg has been a perennial whiner in libertarian ranks. I first came across "Shake" Dondero-Rittberg on the [libertarian_culture] Yahoo list, where he was complaining that we weren't libertarians but actually anarchists. He was also whining that he was "purged" from the Libertarian Party in the late 1980's or early 1990's by the "extremist faction." When I pointed out that George Worthless Bush was a con artist when it came to Second Amendment issues (among other things), Eric the Shake suggested that I join the Taliban or move to Castroist Cuba, and that "You are no American!" Fast-forward to this year, when lo and behold, I find that Eric the Shake was seeking the LP's vice-presidential nomination. This bid was rather short-lived, as he is still a member of the Republican Party and a fan of Bush II, making it very unlikely that he'd win. So then he joins Gary Nolan's presidential campaign as an aide, fresh out of Ron Paul's office. When Nolan lost the nomination to Michael Badnarik, Eric threw another of his temper tantrums, complaining that Badnarik is "only" a "semi-employed Computer Programmer," has "no college degree" (so what?—neither does Bill Gates), has no military service record, and is a possible plant from the FBI. Etc., etc. For what it's worth, Dondero-Rittberg says that anyone not with him but still professing to be a libertarian is an anarchist (again, so what?): "You people make me embarrassed to be in the same movement. Why don't you all just change your names to Anarchists. You are not real libertarians. You don't even know the meaning of the word. "Go away and get the hell out of the libertraian movement. You are doing SERIOUS DAMAGE TO OUR CAUSE! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !" Hmmm... What's this "our cause" BS all about? Since Badnarik got the LP's nod, Dondero-Rittberg went back to being a Bushevik camp-follower, saying that Worthless "must have some libertarian instincts" and that his brother Jeb is a "solid mainstream libertarian." Is this the same Jeb Bush that pitched the Matrix data-mining program to the FBI/CIA ferals in Washington? As for Worthless' "libertarian instincts," they sure weren't showing when he campaigned with NRA money in his war chest while promising to re-authorize the Clinton-era "assault weapons" ban, as it expires on 13 Sept 2004. How about when he said that he supported "ending the 'gun show loophole'" by making private firearm sales illegal? And never forget that immediately after the events of 11 Sept 2001 (some call it "9-11"), the neo-conservatives were up in arms that the Air Force didn't have F-16's and F-15's ready to intercept and shoot down the hijacked airliners. At the same time, they were also complaining that "airport security" wasn't "tight enough." So when it comes down to brass tacks, the Busheviks would rather shoot down a plane with 90-100 people on board who haven't hurt anyone else on the plane—turning them into 600-mph hamburger as their bodies are shredded by the explosion of an air-to-air missile and/or 20-mm or 30-mm cannon-fire—rather than let those same people carry the most effective means of self-defense onto the aircraft. So much for their support of the Second Amendment. I guess I'll have to live with being an "Anarchist" then.
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