Spokane7
68°
September 21, 2011 in City
WAKE UP! Susie skewers online commentary
The meeting took a couple weeks to arrange through a shadowy intermediary. Terms and conditions were negotiated. We met at an undisclosed location, and eventually found ourselves talking – in low, conspiratorial tones – in a dim basement room with a single light.
My contact wore a press-on mustache, wig and dark glasses. Really. He would not tell me his name, even when I promised not to reveal it to anyone. “In my world,” he said, “there’s no such thing as off the record.”
We were there to discuss a secret whose mystery, ultimately, I was not able to penetrate. A mystery that has been intriguing and amusing the Spokane online world for a while now. A mystery that goes by the name soccermomsusie.
In case you don’t know, Susie is the online name of a cranky, prolific, George W. Bush-loving, Obama-hating, Bible-misquoting, exclamation-point-and- ALL-CAPS-deployment specialist – a deft satirical voice that skewers a certain kind of online blowhard.
Here she is, opining about a Spokesman-Review story about higher education costs: “Education = Elitism. Haven’t we had enough of educated people running our country, performing our surgeries, flying our airplanes, designing our bridges, etc? How much education does Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck have? Not very much I would think. Yet, they speak for our nation because THEY ARE NOT EGGHEADS! Are the elitists considered “smart” just because everything they say contradicts the way I feel? All you need is ONE BOOK (the Bible or something from Ann Coulter) and an AM radio. Two turntables and a microphone? I don’t think so! HEAR OUR VOICE!!!”
Soccermomsusie has taken the dispossessed rage of the far right, the tone and nature of anonymous online commentary, and the potential ironies of both to create a running commentary. She’s not the only one doing this – there’s a pretty funny Twitter account called AngryNIdaho – but she’s doing it well, using a kaleidoscopic barrage of ironies that sometimes makes it tough for people to figure out whether she’s serious. Just how funny you find this depends on how seriously you take the tea party – her detractors make their feelings known on any given comment thread at this paper’s website.
Susie started commenting at spokesman.com a couple of years ago. In the last of couple months, she’s migrated to Twitter, where she is a natural, sometimes needling politicians like Cathy McMorris Rodgers directly: “@cathymcmorris Cathy, thanks for standing up against union workers who ridiculously ran back into the WTC on 9-11. Thanks for the oligarchy!”
But who is she? Is she even a she? Does it matter? I tried to contact her and see if I could find out. I heard back from her “sensible nephew” – who she sometimes refers to as a “libitard.” He said he’d meet with me on Susie’s behalf.
Let me make this clear: At no point did I make it through the façade. At no time did anyone drop out of character. Not only did I get nowhere near the truth, I was dragged even further into this fiction.
Which was kind of fun.
The “nephew” showed up in the aforementioned disguise. Susie, he said in a hushed manner, was a program designed during the Nixon administration to employ language to move the population rightward. The strategy is to mainstream and euphemize ideas to make them more palatable – something like renaming torture, which is illegal and inhumane, as enhanced interrogation, which sounds like you’re getting a bonus. Susie was mothballed after the Nixon administration, he said, but mysteriously has arisen – and perhaps even become “self-aware” – in the realm of social media.
Susie’s guiding principle is that George W. Bush was the best president ever – “the man who was smart enough to keep all his wars off the books, so it didn’t cost anybody anything, except for some human lives.”
She hates the aquifer, for some reason. She loves a certain view of the Bible that supports low taxes for the “blessed” rich. She celebrated the birthday of the Constitution with gin and Geritol. She insists that government keep its hands off her Medicare. She lacks a certain sensitivity on matters of race. She calls the president Barry O’Kenyan – “a slight against the Irish people and the Kenyan people.”
If you find yourself having to wade through much online commentary, Susie is oil on the water, a satirical lance pricking the boil of self-righteousness, cognitive dissonance and runaway capitalization. Sensible Nephew suggests that she’s not the only conservative voice out there with some ulterior motivation.
“The one that has us befuddled is George McGrath,” he said, referring to the local talk-radio host and weekly critic of the City Council. “We kind of think he might be a Manchurian Candidate. Every Monday, a phone rings in his house at 5:30 and he hears a series of faxlike sounds, and he’s programmed to go down to City Hall.”
Like so much of what soccermomsusie has to say, that is awesomely ridiculous. Delightfully absurd. Like a press-on mustache and a skewed wig. A ludicrous disguise, meant to be seen through.
HEAR HER VOICE!
Shawn Vestal can be reached at (509) 459-5431 or shawnv@ spokesman.com. Follow him on Twitter at @vestal13.
The draw of the unknowable 
Dave Laird on September 21 at 2:53 a.m.
Good morning, Shawn…
You simply have to give readers a bit of advance notice when you’re writing such stuff as soccermomsuzie. Otherwise we tend to spill our coffee on the keyboard from laughing hysterically, especially the part about George McGrath. O Lord have mercy, but this piece left me in stitches.
Dave
BlondeSquawker on September 21 at 8:06 a.m.
Hear Our VOICE!
BlondeSquawker on September 21 at 8:10 a.m.
…and
Where’s my tax cut?
Where’s Hawken?
Where’s Maria?
brianrbreen on September 21 at 8:12 a.m.
Shawn,
Who are you trying to kid? Everyone knows Soccermomsusie is really Doug Clark.
HEAR OUR VOICE
rosehips on September 21 at 8:37 a.m.
lol, congrats, susie for making it to the big time of print media. Sounds like you deserve it! :0
ChefGus/ John Olsen on September 21 at 8:46 a.m.
I think I am in love with “Susie”… at least until the gender identity/preference is figured out…. Susie “Rocks”…. Gus
idahocity on September 21 at 9:05 a.m.
http://joyerickson.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/sarcasm.jpg
She? has a gift of/for sarcasm.
AngryNIdaho on September 21 at 9:13 a.m.
Wait, what?
BlondeSquawker on September 21 at 9:25 a.m.
Shawn said you’re not doing it right, Angry.
Elkay on September 21 at 10:22 a.m.
Soccermomsusie isn’t who she says she is? Shawn, say it ain’t so.
soccermomsusie on September 21 at 11:08 a.m.
I try to keep my life private, but now that I am feeling somewhat exposed, I will tell you how I found out about this “story.”
Two years ago, I was diagnosed with Lactose Acquiescence. To be blunt - Lactose Intolerance is to harmonica as Lactose Acquiescence is to nitrous-powered, sulfur-belching pipe organ. My doctor said the “cure” was to participate weekly in a Yoga program. This participation was always to be preceded by a meal heavy in cheese, milk, cream/irish cream. The idea was to create as much gas as possible, before my attempts to hold unbelievably long poses of beauty and stoicism.
I went ONCE to a Yoga class. The new age, fruit-loopy instructor was bad enough. But she concluded the session with a Mexican language prayer - Nama Stay! Yuck. I don’t know which Mexican god Nama is, but I would not take part in any more of their Picante Paganism. Turns out, I think they were going to ban me anyway. People are so clueless about the Lactose Acquiescive.
Luckily, my church had just started a Christian form of Yoga called Pontius Pilates. There, I found a home. It was a struggle. Internally and externally - always a big turnover on instructors and students.
This morning, we started out with some “Holy Lances of Longinus” (John 19). One of the other ladies suddenly transformed this beautifully sacred exercise into a jangly robotic dance of some ilk. The others joined in. They laughed. One asked how my “batteries were holding up.” I did not get it until I read the paper this morning.
Stupid, liberal, libertard, lumpkin lunkhead nephew. I don’t know if I can come to your house on Thanksgiving - eat your turkey, borrow your medications or drink your bourbon. I am that angry and hurt.
And you SHAWN VESTAL! I can’t believe that you routinely do such fact-finding hard news reporting in your “The Slice” column, yet you were so easily taken in by my dimwitted relation.
HEAR OUR VOICE!!!
shawnv on September 21 at 11:11 a.m.
Angry — I did not mean to say you’re not doing it right, by any stretch. But I can see how that sentence would leave that impression. Sorry. Don’t be angry.
MrNatural on September 21 at 11:31 a.m.
Excellent!…
All hail the irrefutable infinite wisdom and skew of soccermomsusie
AngryNIdaho on September 21 at 2:11 p.m.
shawnv - No worries. I have NO IDEA what you’re yammering on about anyway. What with all the “kaleidoscopic barrage of ironies” and “satirical lance pricking the boil of self-righteousness, cognitive dissonance and runaway capitalization” WORDS.
bdr on September 21 at 5:37 p.m.
Funny , you missed her yammering about Obamatron2000?
Since Susie has made the Vestal page. I was wondering what she thought about Tricky Dick Nixon? I wonder if he rises second best president of all time (since he brought us free trade with China that is now killing us even worse than GWB’s deficit)?
SMARTGUY on September 21 at 5:43 p.m.
I think the soccermomsusie commentary is stupid and a waste of time, stopped reading it after the third post. The attempts at satire are clumsy and usually incomprehensible.
Orphan on September 21 at 6:14 p.m.
What SMARTGUY said, what a waste of cyber space.
BlondeSquawker on September 21 at 7:25 p.m.
Who cares what you and SG think, Orphan? OR should I call you the Debbies Downer?
Evil_vortex_of_Spokane_politic on September 21 at 10:07 p.m.
I bet the meeting was in the basement of the lock down ward at Spokane Mental health.
George McGrath..has his house paid off, doesn’t own a cell phone nor a computer and a great off the cuff orator. He speaks his mind, right or wrong, knows where every penny goes at City Hall. Dislikes the lies, smoke and mirrors at the weekly Joe Shogun dog, pony show and anger management fest.
Something ALL of us should aspire to become.
Bush 2.0? I wonder if suzie has a tattoo of Condelessa Rice on one buttock and Dick Cheney on the other.
IGNORE HER CRAZED VOICE!! and the man behind the curtain…
greenlibertarian on September 21 at 10:47 p.m.
Soccermomsusie is one of the most brilliant satirists the Inland Armpit has EVER seen. She’s been around in many incarnations, and ALWAYS fools TPTB. Ya”ll have NO idea…
Great job, Susie.
HEAR OUR VOICE!
And Semper Fi.
ChefGus/ John Olsen on September 22 at 6:03 a.m.
Love you “Susie”…. keep it up… Semper Fi… J