Pied Piper Pitt Day Essay Contest

I'm the place where celebrity worship goes to die. ---William Rivers Pitt

It is just 24 business hours away from May 12 ---Pied Piper Pitt Day. Yes, I know there are at least a couple of other dates that could qualify as Pied Piper Pitt day such as June 16, the Day When Everything Finally Changed. That was the date in 2005 when William Rivers (Pied Piper) Pitt helped organized a rally in Lafayette Park in Washington, D.C. to protest about something to do with the now totally forgotten Downing Street Memos followed by a non-authorized Congressional hearing that tanked the moment some nutcase witness opened his mouth. Then there was the day in September of that same year when Pitt made a big hoopla of helping organize an anti-war demonstration in D.C. (Disclaimer: Pitt never ever had anything to do with the sponsors of that demonstration, the Communist A.N.S.W.E.R. organization even though they controlled the entire agenda.) Unfortunately, it never made it onto the TV news because hurricane Rita hit Texas that same day. However, the date of May 12 seems to have become strongly associated with Pitt due to his bold claim last May that Karl Rove had already been indicted by Patrick Fitzgerald. It was not only this claim but also the widespread acceptance of it that has entered political lore as one of the biggest but most hilarious blunders of all time. Even Hillary Clinton and the Michigan Democrats cheered the "news" of Rove's indictment when it was announced. Therefore this year and in all subsequent years, May 12 shall be Pied Piper Pitt Day.

I worked for a litle while as the Kucinich Press Secretary during the '04 run, as some of you might recall. Thanks to a variety of outside and internal circumstances, combined with my own utter lack of experience and what has to be called my rank incompetence in a position I had no grounding for, I am pretty sure you can pen me into The Book as the Worst National Campaign Press Secretary In The History Of All Known Universes.

In honor of the first Pied Piper Pitt Day celebration, I hereby announce a Pied Piper Pitt Day Essay Contest. The prize goes to whoever writes the best Pitt parody essay. The deadline for the entries is May 12 and there is a 100,000 word limit on the essays. Entries should be posted either here on the Blog or over on this Free Republic DUFU thread. The winner will receive a DUmmie FUnnies T-Shirt. I had been planning to put out a line of DUmmie FUnnies T-shirts later this summer but I will either up the T-shirt printing date or have a special DUmmie FUnnies shirt embroidered for the essay contest winner.

I have been told a thousand times at least, in the years I have spent reporting on the astonishing and repugnant abuses, lies and failures of the Bush administration, to watch my back. "Be careful," people always tell me. "These people are capable of anything. Stay off small planes, make sure you aren't being followed." A running joke between my mother and me is that she has a "safe room" set up for me in her cabin in the woods, in the event I have to flee because of something I wrote or said.....In case I disappear, remember this. America is an idea, a dream, and that is all. We have borders and armies and citizens and commerce and industry, but all this merely makes us like every other nation on this Earth. What separates us is the idea, the simple idea, that life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are our organizing principles. We can think as we please, speak as we please, write as we please, worship as we please, go where we please. We are protected from the kinds of tyranny that inspired our creation as a nation in the first place.

So how should you prepare for this essay contest? My recommendation is that you carefully study (after drinking several pots of coffee to stay awake) the overlong writings of Pitt as chronicled here in the DUmmie FUnnies. To parody the Pied Piper Pitt style you need to imitate Pitt with his overly wordy, pompous, self-righteous, self-pitying, contradictory, narcissistic, and dull yet with hilarious flashes of unintentional humor rantings. Perhaps the classic Pitt post in this regard was his Hockey Puck geopolitical thesis about the rise of the Third American Empire:

It is difficult to pinpoint exactly when the third American empire came into being, but a hockey game will suffice as a marker. On February 2, 1980, the American Olympic hockey team came from nowhere to defeat the unbeatable Soviet squad in Lake Placid. The subsequent eruption of nationalistic fervor, augmented by the American squad’s victory over Finland in the final round to capture the gold medal, led to an outpouring of public emotion that no sporting event had ever created.....It was at Lake Placid that the now-familiar chant of “U.S.A.! U.S.A.!” was born. The American people had been well-trained during the second empire to expect being on top, and the years prior to Lake Placid had been hard. Something so simple as a win on that ice was enough to strike sparks again, to ignite the long fuse that has been this third American empire. The American people were mesmerized by the vision of their flag rising next to but just a little higher than the red Soviet banner. It was their first taste of what would become a long and uninterrupted stretch of total global dominance.

Should you not care to spend a lot of time to hunt down Pitt's many writings, then you can access a wealth of Pitt material simply by checking out his partial birth "apology" for perpetuating the May 12 Karl Rove indictment scam at Pied Piper Pitt Performs Endless "Penitence" At DUmmie Canossa. Believe me, there are VOLUMES of endless Pitt material just in that one post. As soon as you think he is done, Pitt opens up with yet more chapters of his self-pitying rant. Here is just one brief excerpt from that endless Pitt post:

I have been here for a long time. I started here exactly like just about everyone else: I staggered in the front door, found a roomful of like-minded people, and said "Oh thank God." I used this place to vent, to unwind, to get unhinged, to get informed, to inform where and when I could, to sharpen my debating skills, to void my bladder on the occasional invading Freep...but at the beginning and the end, I posted here to be with and to plan with and to commiserate with people who saw the same writing on the wall I did..... Somewhere in the last couple of years, I became a name. I worked very hard to make that happen, to be sure. 18 hours a day, 350,000 miles across to and from pretty much every state in the nation...hell, we all started here wanting to do something about what was happening, and I did my small part to take up that call, and in the process managed to become a writer and a speaker that others looked to. I wouldn't be doing *any* of this, probably, if it wasn't for DU. I decided to try to do something, and managed to work myself into a position where I could..... The sticky part came when I forgot that I could no longer be "just another DUer" and couldn't let fly whenever I chose. You know what I mean, because if you've spent any time here, you've done this. Yes, you have. You get angry about the news, the state of things, some Democratic failure to act, and maybe you get a glass of wine into you, and you flame away on the keyboard...and then come back the next day hoping nobody remembers or gives a damn that you were throwing haymakers and acting the fool..... The stickier wicket, aw hell, let's be honest and call it the stickiest wicket, came when I posted the truthout story that Karl Rove had been indicted. Another thread in big block letters..... For clarity: Truthout stands by this story, today as yesterday, as described on the blog page. Period, end of file. I am not speaking for them in any official capacity, because this is a personal thread, but I can read the TO blog as clearly as you can. If you want more than that, consult an astrologist, or talk to someone besides me. Read the first sentence of this paragraph again if further clarity is required on the basic premise.

The key to winning the Pied Piper Pitt Day Essay Contest is to put yourself into the mind of Pitt. The best way to do this is to not sleep for several days, consume several pitchers of beer, and then make your post entry at about three in the morning when you are in a very bad and/or morose mood. And just as musicians and singers briefly tune up their instruments or voices before making their performances, feel free to post just a few sentences of Pittiana here before your final entries. Oh, and one of your mericifully brief practice posts might actually be a winner since there is no limit on the number of entries you can make. However, due to space and time requirements I am going to have to be firm on the 100,000 word limit. Difficult as it may be when doing a Pitt parody, please confine your entries to that length limitation. So stand up next to a mountain and start posting your entries for the Pied Piper Pitt Day Essay Contest!

I am about to crack 30,000 posts. I've been here since May of 2001. I have gone through a hundred evolutions in that time, regarding candidates, priorities, beliefs, hopes, fears, personal issues - had a marriage blow up on me while I was here, and the agony of that lasted more than a year - etc..... Look. I'm just another activist who happens to write well enough to get a message through. At some point I crossed a terminator and became a 'personality' here, and out there. For a long, long time, I fought it. I just wanted to post like any other DUer, to vent my spleen like anyone else and to be obnoxious like anyone else and to be contradictory like anyone else. This place was myIn the last year I have forced myself to understand that I can't do that anymore, and believe me, it has been hard. When I came here, I was NOBODY, just another poster needing help and support. Sometimes I fail at it these days, but not nearly as much. You are right to say that I have been an ass here on many occasions, but a lot of people here are asses on many occasions, yourself included. I didn't want to deal with the added burden. I hope that makes sense. security blanket, where I could freak out (!!!!111) and enjoy the catharsis.....

And one final tip when writing your entries. Please keep in mind that Pied Piper Pitt is always auditioning himself, whether for acclaim from his fellow DUmmies or for some candidate for whom he desperately wants to be a player. So if you add that ulterior motive to the equation, it will definitely help in writing that winning entry. And don't forget--- You must keep your entries to less than 100,000 words.