Rick "Major Kong" Santorum

Yesterday I commented on Rick Santorum's op-ed in the Washington Post re: short-sightedly overturning years of Senate precedent to confirm a few federal judges, and I referred to the junior senator from Pennsylvania as "the nuclear option's own Major Kong." I meant of course the character of that name played by Slim Pickens in the classic 1964 Stanley Kubrick film "Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb" (still available from Amazon, thankfully).

I made the comparison sort of off the cuff, but the more I've thought about it over the past day or so the more apt I think it is. Major T.J. "King" Kong is the captain of a rogue nuclear-missile bomber plane who misses the orders from his cooler-headed superiors to abort a misguided bombing run and continues trying to complete his mission and destroy a Soviet nuclear installation. When the missile malfunctions, Kong climbs into the bomb bay and ends up releasing the nuclear payload while he's still holding onto it. As Wikipedia puts it, Kong "inadvertently ends up riding [the missile] down to global destruction - with Kong cheering all the way. Kong straddles the bomb, gripping it with one hand and waving his cowboy in the air with his other in an homage to rodeo bullriding technique." (There's a reasonable image here of the moment).

Pretty scary comparison, I know, but it seems to be fitting better with each passing day.

[Update: I finally found a video clip of Kong riding the bomb down. It's available here. --7:45 p.m.]