Archive for the ‘Celebrity Halfwits’ Category

George Carlin R.I.P.

Monday, June 23rd, 2008

As a South Park Republican I’m divided about the departure of Mr. Carlin. I kind of see it Sister Toldjah‘s way, and I kind of see it Locomotive Breath‘s way.

I lean a little bit in the direction of LB, because in the end, ingratitude makes me sick. Carlin did very well in his country, and it wouldn’t have killed him to save a few kind words about it.

He was pretty sure Obama would get assassinated. He made the mistake of saying so out loud, but being a lefty, he got away with it. Of course. Like most atheists who brag about being atheists, the man had a lot of faith about things he never would’ve been able to prove if he tried to.

On the plus side, this routine stands out in my head as one of the funniest things I saw in my childhood. Mister Carlin, if I were Our Father Who Art In Heaven, I’d say this is just enough to topple you into the pearly gates. But, of course, I’m not Him and that’s not up to me. Hope you’re doing alright.

“There’s Something Really Disturbing About You”

Wednesday, January 16th, 2008

Yeah, I’d say creepy was the right word.

Eco Warriors Are Biggest Polluters

Wednesday, January 16th, 2008

Read it and weep.

Geoff Wicken, the author of the report, said that people who claim to be environment friendly have some of the biggest carbon footprints because they are still hooked on flying abroad or driving their cars.

In contrast, their adherence to the green cause is mostly limited to small gestures, reports the Telegraph.

Such people are called eco-adopters, and they are most likely to be members of an environmental organisation.

They buy green products such as detergents, recycle and are devoted to green issues.

However, the survey of 25,000 people, conducted by the market research company Target Group Index, showed that eco-adopters are seven per cent more likely than the general population to take flights, and four per cent more likely to own a car.

HT: Boortz.

You realize the possibility this opens up?

It is now worthy of consideration that now — contrasted with, say, ten years ago — we’re chewing through more energy and associated resources on an everyday basis, even while basking in the glow of this wonderfully enlightened knowledge that we shouldn’t be.

No, I don’t think we’re cruising toward some ecological Armageddon. Although we’re well on our way to sort of an intellectual one. We’re going stark-raving crazy. A bunch of preachy Laurie Davids waggling their fingers at everybody else, hopping into Gulfstream jets and spewing away without a second thought. It’s not just a lifestyle for the uber-rich. It’s the way you’re supposed to do it now.

Drive a modest-size four-banger — or simply walk somewhere on foot — people look at you funny. Trust me on this. You’re supposed to drive something big. While bitching about the environment.

Just nucking futs.

The First Time I Ever Felt Sorry For Britney

Tuesday, January 15th, 2008

Just plain nutsI’ll make sure and bookmark it

Britney Spears To Spend A Month Without Her Kids

Britney Spears’ apparent no-show in court in Los Angeles on Monday has cost the troubled pop star dearly – she will go a month without seeing her two young sons.

Spears arrived at Los Angeles Superior Court for a crucial custody hearing four hours late and then reportedly refused to enter the courthouse. The singer left, only to return minutes later appearing briefly before an army of paparazzi and then speeding off again.

I think we just crossed the dividing line between nurture and nature here. There’s some gears stripped and some sprockets popped and some cotter pins sheared, but when the machinery gets just-so-bollywonkers you have to say, maybe it’s not a matter of having been a spoiled brat child-star — at some point, you have to say the material was flawed at the very beginning.

And it kind of makes an impression on me, as well, that I’m suddenly feeling sorry for KFed. And the boys. This is awful…you couldn’t wish such a situation on your very worst enemy.

Oh, and now for the uber-painful, reality-based, obvious stuff. I could very well be wrong about the “nature over nurture” stuff. The possibility exists, and it is not a remote one, that you can emerge from the womb perfectly healthy and whole and get this screwed up just-because. You can be estranged from reality through such an obdurate and sustained ordeal that is what passes for your “life,” that you can everlastingly lose your ability to deal with either reality, OR life.

There is a degree of likelihood involved in that. If that is the case, let the rest of us look well upon the lesson.

Lions for Lambs

Sunday, November 11th, 2007

Lions for LambsWow, what the hell’s going on here? I thought for sure that in late 2007, if you wanted to put out an America-bashing, “hooray we’re liberals aren’t we so wonderful” type of movie you’d have to be a little subtle about it. A little sly.

Well, perhaps that is so, but someone in Hollywood doesn’t necessarily agree. As we learn from new sidebar addition Yolo Cowboy, CEO of The Roughstock Journal, the “user reviews” on Lions for Lambs are in…and those users are pretty pissed.

Pure Garbage…..
I had the opportunity to see this last week during a free screening (my wife got the tickets through work). I think I was robbed. About 20% of the audience…
TO LEFT LIKE EVERYTHING ELSE IN HOLLYWOOD…
THIS COULD HAVE BEEN A REALLY GREAT FILM IF THE ENTIRE CAST AND CREW DID NOT HAVE THIS LEFT WING AGENDA AGAINST EVERYTHING MILITARY, GOVERNMENT, AND EVERYTHING ON THE RIGHT….
If you Hate America, You’ll love “LFL”- Awful!!!
I’m sooo disgusted with this film. These are actors (Streep, Redman, & Cruse) who are popular enough to ‘choose their own projects’ and they actually got paid for this Anti-American…
I WANT MY MONEY BACK
HAVING SPENT 10 MONTHS IN AFGANISTAN THIS MOVIE DOES NOT COME ANYTHING CLOSE TO REALITY,THE DETAILS OF THE MILITARY ACTION LEAVE MUCH TO BE DESIRED, AS DOES THE DESCRIPTION OF…
Dripping With Liberal Bias and Lies… F- !
I’m not “pro” war, nor am I “pro” imperialism, but I am defintely “pro” reality, and this film contains zero reality, although it would have you believe that it IS…

And it goes on from there.

Interesting.

This is why I think our next President might very well be a Republican, maybe even governing with a friendly Congress. America’s liberals aren’t known for saying to themselves “okay, that’s enough hard-left visceral liberalism for now, let’s tone it down a little.” They just don’t do that. Hard-left liberalism begats more hard-left liberalism, and hateful liberalism begats more hateful liberalism.

The election campaign of 2008 began earlier than any in modern history. What kind of crap is our most devoted left-wing ideological segment going to be pushing by late October of ’08? What kind of hardcore hippy movies will have come out that summer?

This is not stuff for which mainstream America has an enduring apetite. Maybe in extreme situations “middle America” might get fooled into electing a Nancy Pelosi. Just like you might like wasabi with your sushi…but you wouldn’t like an entire Thanksgiving turkey made out of wasabi, would you. I haven’t seen the movie, but I’ll bet my bottom dollar that this, or something a lot like it, is why you have all those scathing reviews up there. Blue-blood left-wing Hollywood just doesn’t police itself, restrain itself, dilute itself or even show good manners. I’ll save this into my Netflix queue, but I’m not anticipating any major surprises.

The users are complaining about BOREDOM. Uh, the movie’s an hour and a half long. Robert Redford is getting panned…and who on earth has a built-in fan base, if not Mr. Sundance? No, I’m not sitting on the edge of my seat waiting for this thing.

Not In It For The Attention, Mind You… X

Tuesday, September 25th, 2007

On Saturday morning, I had defined what I see are the two most important issues of next year’s elections, all-but-guaranteed to stay in those top two slots between now and then.

The single most important issue of the presidential elections next year: Who is going to bring me the the biggest pile of dead terrorist carcasses over the next four years?
:
Coming in at a close second, and I do mean a close one, is a big package of interrelated sub-issues all knotted together. They have to do with the people who are actually proud to call themselves “liberals,” not in the classic sense, but in the post-modern sense…Are liberals crazy, or just stupid? Do we really have to let them vote even when they so obviously lack the level of maturity one would be expected to achieve by age eighteen?
:
What exactly is this well-funded advocacy group that I continue to call “Move On From Some Things And Dwell Endlessly On Other Things Dot Org”? For whom do they speak? Now that we all understand they’re a bunch of all-but-certified nutcases, when they tell us their nutcase things are they speaking on behalf of Hillary? Obama? Edwards? Kerry? Kennedy? Anybody else who will be invested with the authority to decide important, life-altering things, should we opt to put the kiddies from the kiddie-table in charge again next year? What about Michael Moore, does he speak for anybody? How cozy is his relationship with the “Inmates Should Run The Asylum” party?

In posing this as an open question to be decided, I speak recklessly, since I speak for others. I gather many who feel the obligation of exercising their civic duties, are all-but-decided that the Republicans have been in charge long enough. But they aren’t getting a warm-fuzzy out of the prospect of putting the donks in the White House. They know there are consequences. They know, for four years at least, we’ll be buried in phony solutions to non-problems, sky-high inflation, race-baiting, feminist-weeping, tyrant-coddling.

For myself, it’s not an open question. It’s an item of concern.

And I’ll tell you what really concerns me about this, what really makes it almost as important — but not quite — as the “who’s gonna deliver the biggest number of dead-terrorist-bodies” issue. It’s the donks themselves. They aren’t ready to accuse me of sliming and slandering them; not some among them, anyway. These donks don’t disagree with me about what they are, or might be. To plagiarize Sally Field for just a second: They’re nuts. They’re really, really nuts.

My first reminder of this was not long at all in coming. Fellow Webloggin contributor Teri O’Brien managed to capture an item from the 9/11 anniversary that had smoothly flown in under my radar, which falls squarely into this second-most-important issue and in fact helps to highlight how important it really is. Veteran actor James Brolin, famous for a long and stellar movie career and for marrying whats-her-name, made just about as big an ass out of himself as could be managed under a tight schedule. Appearing on WPLR radio to promote his new film, The Hunting Party, he managed to get himself a little sidetracked. The film, you’ll notice, has something to do with the CIA not being able to find bad guys. Brolin, perhaps wishing for a peaceful domestic existence, or whatever, went out of his way to find some parallels in real-life — and the radio guys had to remind him what today’s date was.

Brolin thought this was worthy of a sarcastic, genuflecting comment: “Happy 9/11.” Too bad there wasn’t someone around to remind him he was really on the radio, and his words weren’t being confined to a cozy cloister of his crazy left-wing anti-war buddies, an audience to which I’m gathering he’s somewhat better accustomed. You decide:

Now, as I said, half-cocked brain-dead comments like this one, may or may not be representative of the donk party that wishes to be placed in charge of more things next year, and that, to me, is the open question on the second-most-important issue. What is a democrat? Is it someone who’s going to do what the electorate has in mind when it votes for democrats…just shave off the most prominent and offensive protrusions of the Republican platform, maybe save America from becoming a theocracy one more time? Rescue some little old ladies from having to choose between medicine and dog food?

I’m not asking about what registered democrat voters intend to have done when they are punching ballots. That and a buck-fifty will get you a coffee. I want to know what democrat leaders do when they are voted in. Are they all about repealing unwanted extremist conservative policies?

Or are they about a bunch of crazy crap. Like actor Brolin. Do they all live in their little tiny worlds, places where the worst attack ever launched against the United States since Pearl Harbor, and perhaps ever, is nothing more than inspiration for a sarcastic joke and a couple of yuks. In short, I’m wondering the same thing about Brolin that I wonder about Michael Moore. The donk activists, no doubt, will pour out of the woodwork with their “yes but” nonsense, e.g., “yes we all know that was offensive and absurd, but he makes some good points…”

Does Brolin represent the donk politicians who want to be put in charge of things next year?

Well in trying to answer that, I stumbled across this…

…and I would have to say, this is even more of a kick to the figurative solar plexus than the first item. He comes on The View, pretends to do a high-five with token Republican Hasselbeck, who dutifully falls for it…and then turns around and ingratiates himself with the “mainstream” with a not-so-humorous high-level anecdote about his background: All his relatives were Republicans, but he learned to think for himself.

Ouch! That’s gonna leave a mark!

And you don’t even have to ask for examples, either. The very next thing out of his mouth, is a plug for this website. This is what Brolin thinks about when he thinks for himself? Yes, it is…or that’s what Brolin wants me to think…assuming he’s ready and able to think through the messages he intends to convey, which is something I have to doubt for obvious reasons. But he seems pretty enthused about this goofy website. I didn’t see anything to the effect of a disclaimer, or limitation, or “just because I think you should hit that website doesn’t mean I agree with everything on it.” I saw nothing like that.

And the website is about all the usual bullshit. The towers were demolished from within, look at the puffs of smoke, inside job, thermite, pretext for war, blah blah blah.

So James Brolin, I must conclude, is enough of a crazy whackadoodle that he believes in the “Nine One One Was An Inside Job” line. He advertises it, in fact, to show how much he’s learned to think for himself since his grandmother tried to bully him into voting Republican. That’s some good independent thinking there, Jim.

And the donks who want to run for the White House…well, I still don’t know. This “inside job” stuff surfaces fairly often, and it’s comparatively rare that a donk candidate, for any office, will forcefully repudiate any of it. So is it an official — or all-but-official — platform of the donk party that there were no terrorists, and George W. Bush the big stupid idiot cowboy moron managed to wire the World Trade Center with blocks of C4 and then hide all the evidence?

This seems like a laughable supposition. But, again, the Ass Party doesn’t forcefully distance themselves from this, and their failure to distance is substantially just as good as endorsement. It’s the votes. They need them.

And this would have to mean the second most important issue, has a direct bearing on the first. You want to be President, Mr. or Ms. donk. To be President, you sell your soul to Brolin and to whack-jobs like him, who think the skyscrapers were brought down by explosives. Which can only mean…we never had any terrorists to chase. The nineteen men who hijacked those planes must have been undercover agents for the CIA, or something. So on the first-most-important issue — my sense is going to have to be that you’re not going to be exactly gumming up the pipelines with those dead-terrorist bodies, huh? It’d be back to the good ol’ days of “my cruise missile missed him by a couple of hours” every year or two.

To the donks, and by that I mean, the power-players who decide how elections will be run, there is a different Number One issue: We haven’t been hearing anyone talk about Al Gore’s “Social Security lock box” for seven years now. Before all this terrorism stuff, you talk about Social Security, and donks win elections. That’s the way it’s supposed to work. Ooh, your gramma’s not going to get her checks if you put a Republican in charge — donks win elections. Ooh, here we go again, Republicans going to take her house away…every two years, the same stuff.

Terrorism kind of puts a damper on that. It’s tough to get worked up about how much old people with vacation homes can fleece thirty-something apartment rats, when we have very young men and women going into harm’s way and coming back wearing prosthetics. Or, in flag-draped coffins. That’s the big secret. The flag-draped coffin is supposed to be dealing an enormous blow to Republican “credibility,” but really it’s the donks who have something to sell us, that they can’t sell us while we’re still seeing these coffins roll in.

The donks don’t really want us to lose the war, per se. They just want it over. They want us to stop thinking about anything beyond the water’s edge…with the exception of some nifty healthcare system Sweden has that we don’t have. They want us to go back to agonizing about minimum wage, women-minorities-hardest-hit, and glowbubble wormening. And to make that happen, they’ll sell out to the Brolin maniacs who think the September Eleven attacks are just a big joke, and that the skyscrapers were brought down by Watergate burglars.

To Brolin, I owe a profound thanks for helping to prove my point. People who are considering voting for donks next fall, need to think long and hard about what that means. Are the donks teetering on the edge of insanity, or have they fallen headlong into the chasm, like you sir?

American DigestI owe an equally profound, and somewhat more sincere, thanks to somebody else too. Since I put up that original post, my traffic has tripled and after three days is going strong. This is because I was linked by my Number One blogger hero, Gerard Van der Leun, who somehow saw fit to scoop up an assortment of entirely-unrelated Morgan ravings and highlight them for the benefit of his own audience. Every subject imaginable, from cowardly anti-war yokels, to Marilyn Monroe’s shapely torso, to Wikipedia.

Gerard, I can’t thank you enough. We’re not so much into pumping up traffic here…this is The Blog That Nobody Reads, after all. But the prospect of making some new friends is always a promising one, and it’s a high honor indeed to have earned this kind of attention from your direction. In these parts, you’re a legend — the guy who thinks up new ways of saying things that desperately need to be said. In this corner of the ‘sphere, you’re always going to be the guy who thought up the phrase American Castrati.

So this is kind of like Jack meeting Cher. Kind of. Not really. Maybe we should let that one go. Anyway, thanks again, m’friend.

We do have some polite disagreement to make on the whole Bollinger thing, but that’s a story for another day. And I will say it’s a credit to the right-half of the “blogosphere” that you are calling out your teammates. Rather tough to envision The Left doing the same thing, to say the least.

Taryn Wants Hillary

Friday, July 6th, 2007

This girl has an amazing body. Watch her use it to try to push the platform of a candidate with nothing to say. By far the highest-profile candidate running from any party, who’s been out on the national stage for sixteen years now, and in all that time, apart from her own initiatives has never once been for anything. It is mind-boggling how toxic Hillary Clinton is. As I said about her a week ago

Hillary Clinton remains as consistent as I expect [Sen. Barack] Obama will be, but in a different way. “If HIV-AIDS were the leading cause of death of white women between the ages of 25 and 34 there would be an outraged, outcry in this country.” Clinton is amazing this way…her political tactic has always been the same: Someone’s overly-privileged, someone’s gotten away with shenanigans, and Hillary’s here to take ‘em down a peg. If the issue under discussion is missing this kind of villain, Hillary will inject a villain into it. You could adjust a precision timepiece by watching her do this. In my lifetime, I don’t think I’ve become aware of a more negative candidate, male or female, for anything.

Hillary was speaking about the Supreme Court decision on the Seattle school district. She was making the point that affirmative action is still needed because the country has a racial divide. She chose to zoom in on white women between the ages of 25 and 34. Now, just think about that for a minute — she could have handled this any one of a zillion ways. If she wants to pimp the whole affirmative action racket, and talk about oppressed people who need it, she could have confined her comments to the desperate situations some people are in…and leave it at that. The way our liberals used to do it, and some still do to this day. What is up with this irrational impulse to single out villains all the time?

She can’t help it. It’s her schtick.

Hillary gets away with this, because — and only because — she is a woman. And a Democrat. John Kerry would not be able to do this. Condoleeza Rice would not be able to do this. None of the candidates running in ’08, besides Hillary, can do this. Sooner or later, they actually have to be for something. Or someone. Hillary just carps. Her critics, and her fans, have long ago stopped expecting her to ever do anything different, no matter what the situation. If ever she’s for something…it’s only because she’s against something else.

Taryn wants Hillary because Hillary has ovaries. Taryn wants a woman in the White House. Not a single peep about what she wants Hillary to do…except maybe be bisexual.

Fantastic-looking body aside, Taryn is in the company of millions and millions of people who don’t look as good from the neck down. Flubbery, blubbery, ditzy people. People who’ve completely lost hope in government actually doing anything productive, and aren’t willing to admit it.

Exactly the way most of us felt about government, right before we got Carter. Boy, there’s a sign of good times ahead, huh? Except Hillary has a much better idea of what she wants to do, once she’s elected, than Carter ever did. And that’s not good either.

Fire Melts Steel?

Wednesday, May 23rd, 2007

Found this clip on Flopping Aces. Immensely funny stuff. But decide that for yourself, I guess.

Worthress

Friday, April 20th, 2007

What a dick.

Maybe I shouldn’t judge him so harshly. There is, after all, a brotherhood among men who have split with the mothers of their children and are trying to make the best of things. I got my laminated membership card, and so does Alec Baldwin.

But I wouldn’t say this shit, especially to my kid. Especially about his Mom…that’s just over the line. And Lord knows, I’ve been put in the same situation. Which is to say, once in awhile, now and then, I get a reminder that some other people have other things to think about on this great big planet besides li’l ol’ me. Perhaps that isn’t quite as enormous of a surprise to someone like me as it is to someone like Baldwin.

But he’s entitled to his privacy, is he not? If our situations were reversed, Baldwin would respect my privacy, would he not? Perhaps. Unless I was important enough to stand in the way of something Baldwin wanted to have happen, politically. And then he wouldn’t. Take it to the bank. What if Rush Limbaugh yelled at a little girl this way and his ravings were caught on tape, what would Alec do about that?

Come to think on it — as gifted as an actor as I regard Alec Baldwin to be, the thought occurs to me. His most shining contributions to his chosen craft seem to have something to do with the angry monologue. Can’t think of an exception to this. Real talent would have given him a respectable range, but maybe he’s just been using the tried-and-true Leonardo DiCaprio “accept roles similar to what you are in real life” ploy. Which might explain why his characters are almost always assholes. Maybe Henry Hyde should take out a restraining order.

Let Rosie Talk

Saturday, March 17th, 2007

I’d like to take a minute or two to argue on behalf of Rosie O’Donnell’s free speech rights. I know that’s a little like fighting to protect the right of the sun to rise in the East, or of the Angel of Death to come along and nip us all someday…the prospect of Rosie spouting her latest snippet of foolishness, has a certain inevitability to it. She may lose this right tomorrow, and you could still set your watch by her doing it anyway.

But it isn’t enough, for me, that Rosie actually do some talking. I want to make sure she is everlastingly allowed to do so. I want her comments to be given sanction. No, more than that: visibility. I want Rosie O’Donnell on a pedestal.

In fact, my principle objection to her spot on The View, is that the forum is improper. There are three other ladies on that show, and in the clips I’ve seen, every once in awhile one of those three just might get a word in edgewise. Not fair!

I’m thinking a radio show. Every Saturday, twelve hours in a row. And a federal law that all kids in public school, from the fourth grade up to the tenth, have to ponder every Monday morning what Rosie said that weekend.

Why do I want this? Because I think people are starting to figure out, finally, what’s been happening to them. What “stars” like Rosie have been doing to them. Try this. Go to the Hot Air page about her latest embarrassments and view the first video clip. Rosie is going to introduce the latest event, with Kalid Shiekh Mohammed’s confessions to thirty-or-so failed & attempted terrorist attacks around the world…your target is, almost precisely, the halfway point.

At that halfway point, something exceedingly exceptional happens, someone besides Rosie gets to say something. Elisabeth Hasselbeck, the one that I and all the other red-blooded men would actually like to sleep with, asks “Well you have– you don’t believe he had ties to any of this?” And Rosie sez

I think the man has been in custody of the American government, in secret CIA torture prisons in Guantanamo Bay, where torture is accepted and allowed, and he finally is the guy who admits to doing everything. They finally found the guy. It’s not that guy bin Laden. It’s this guy they’ve had since ‘93. And look, this is the picture they released of him. Doesn’t, he look healthy?

See what I mean? Rosie is a national treasure. She’s like a walking monument to all the idiocy there is and ever was.

So first of all — and I think people are starting to get this about people like Rosie — she didn’t answer Hasselbeck’s question. She goes off on this tangent about prison and torture, to deliberately change the subject because she knows she has to. She argues that we’ve had this fellow in our custody for a very long time, but misstates that by a decade. She’s got some kind of argument that’s built around the notion that we’ve been leaning on this greaseball really hard for a long time, but it’s not an argument sufficiently durable to actually be stated from stem-to-stern, because one gathers that if it was strong enough to bear up under that kind of weight, she woulda-done it. But then to buttress this argument that doesn’t actually lead anywhere, she shows off this picture of the greaseball. Oops. The picture was taken when we first caught ‘im. Not after we got done leaning on ‘im. Nice try.

But the money-shot is when she’s articulating the words “tooorrrtttuuuuuuurrrreee” and “seeeecccrrreeettt ppprrriiisssooonnns,” scanning around the audience with that “can I get an Amen here” look on her doughy face, and coming up mostly empty.

Hasselbeck’s question, when you think about it, is devastating. It can be scrutinized in detail, or ignored entirely — it makes a great point either way. Mohammed confessed to thirty-one nasty things, and it’s generally agreed, may have exaggerated some of them. My understanding is this fellow is given to boasting, so if Rosie seeks to instill doubt about some of these, maybe even a huge chunk of the list of 31, in my book she doesn’t have much work to do.

But Elisabeth wants to know if Mohammed is guilty of none of them. I mean, ponder this for a little bit. Mohammed is actually guilty of one item on the list…or all but one item. Between those two extremes, is there any practical difference?

I submit not. Which means what Rosie is contributing, amounts to just so much noise. What’s meaningful about this latest incident, is now we’ve got a situation where more people understand this is all Rosie is contributing.

This unflattering light, furthermore, is being scattered off in the direction of all those other people who sound just like Rosie. We, as in the “Big We,” are finally starting to get that they aren’t contributing much more than noise, either.

Now outside the political realm where perception-equals-reality, when we step into the more concrete plane of reality-is-reality and look at what’s real, we see: The situation’s unchanged. Islamic weirdo greaseballs want to kill us. We’re killing them instead — and taking them prisoner, and getting information out of them about more Islamic weirdo greaseballs who want to kill us, and how we can capture and kill them too. This is good work. Not purely good work; you can smear it if you try. And that’s exactly what these “dissenters” are trying to do. Trying like the dickens. Trying, trying, trying…and it really isn’t much help to anybody.

Mohammed himself, like Rosie, is a good representation of a broad class of people just like him. He’s guilty of some of the things on his confession list, and probably most of the things. I’m given to understand we have a lot of other folks in custody just like that. What they know, that we have not yet learned, may be of some value. So it becomes a worthy question to ask: What do we do with those folks?

The way I see it, after we consign the compulsive subject-changers and tangent-chasers to the kiddie table and deliberate like adults, we have four options.

One, we can do what I call “torture.” What it means to me. Fire and steel. When people say “we should not torture, because it compromises our esteem in the world community,” this is what they’re talking about. They may think they’re talking about Item #2, below. They’re not. They’re talking about yanking arms out of sockets, and stuff like that.

Two. We can do what the Rosie O’Dumbells call “torture.” Asking questions of people, in a way you wouldn’t want to have questions asked of you. Things that don’t involve physical damage. Waterboarding. Psy-Ops. “Your leaders have abandoned you, who do you think you’re protecting?” Sleep deprivation. Let’s face it: People in the much-vaunted “World Community” who hate us because we do these things, are “friends” we don’t need. They aren’t ready to start liking us again if/when we refrain from doing this. Who the hell do they think they’re kidding?

Three. We can go ahead and ask terrorists the way you would like to have people ask you for things. Like borrowing a cup of sugar. Kindly tell us, please, Mister Terrorist? As soon as we’re about as obnoxious as a Jehovah’s Witness on your front porch, we back off. Maybe check back in a couple months.

Four. We don’t ask them squat.

Is there a fifth option? Maybe someone else can come up with a fifth. I don’t see one. From where I sit, we are limited to those four. And the last two of those four, in my mind, are completely unacceptable. Furthermore, I don’t think anyone of sane mind would find those last two acceptable. If either of those last two appeal to you, you’re just drinking way too much anti-war kool-aid — and, yes, anti-American kool-aid — you have some kind of assurances that terrorists will never ever harm one hair on your head, or anyone in your family or circle of friends, preceived assurance, or imagined. You either believe the “there is no terrorist threat” hype, or else you are one evil narcissistic sonofabitch.

And because national security does have something to do with good relations, I think we should lop off Option One as well.

That leaves Option Two, which Rosie says she doesn’t like. But it’s the only option left. And I think most people are starting to get that. Slowly. There simply are no sane alternatives. We waterboard, and we waterboard like there’s no tomorrow.

We conclude this post with yet another Rosie O’Donnell “Moment of Zen.” Like I said, let her talk. People need to be reminded how stupid and dangerous people like Rosie really are, and what a mutually estranged and distant relationship these people have with what the rest of us call “reality.”

Mad As Hell

Tuesday, March 13th, 2007

Grrrr!Olby keeps a copy of the monologue from Network on his iPod. Yes, that monologue. Brags about it, even. But you knew that already, didn’t you?

Olbermann’s rants, which he quaintly labels “special comments,” are filled with sound and fury. His wrath is genuine, he says, never simulated.

Still, for inspiration, Olbermann keeps in his iPod a clip of the famous “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore” speech by Peter Finch’s crazed anchorman Howard Beale from the 1976 film Network.

“In madness, Beale was expressing some great truth,” he muses. “It was beautifully written, eloquent, forceful. Anger as a means of expressing truth resonates with me.”

So…what’ll it take to make this guy happy? And if there isn’t anything, then what’s the point of listening to him?

Thing I Know #52. When angry people make demands, the ensuing fulfillment never seems to bring a stop to their anger.

Kanye West Doesn’t Care About Poor People

Tuesday, March 6th, 2007

Really.

Beck Responds to Olbermann

Thursday, March 1st, 2007

I don’t think there’s too much that’s worthy of comment here. Keith Olbermann said stuff, Glenn Beck said some stuff back. Neither one of them said much that was substantial.

I just think this comment is a real hoot. And representative of what passes for discourse nowadays, particularly among those with more sympathy for Keith than for Glenn.

beck did not comment on the CONTENT of anything Keith said.
this is a very typical right-wing tactic, attack so they don’t have to address issues.
the right-wingers are starting to get worried and it shows.

The content of anything Keith said? And that would be what, exactly?

I’m thinking somewhere, out on DailyKOS or maybe one of those mass e-mails from Howard Dean, a talking point has gone out that when liberals argue with conservatives, what the liberals need to do is trot out the adjectives “desperate” and “worried” and affix those descriptors to the conservatives. I notice for the last two years they’re employed where they don’t fit very well.

I could come up with some shining examples of this if I really put some thought into it, and some time I don’t necessarily have at the moment. But the situation at hand demonstrates things well enough. Once again…all you have to do to devastate a silly idea, is take it seriously. Let’s take this one seriously and see what happens.

Beck is “worried.” You can tell because he’s taking the time to respond to Olbermann, instead of ignoring him. Huh. Okay, perfectly sound logic so far…a little bit skewed, a little anxious to come to the conclusion desired, but alright let’s go with it.

Now then, who is Keith Olbermann? He’s a guy who rants on some television show called “Countdown,” and his rants come out in clips five or six minutes long promptly uploaded to YouTube with dizzying speed. Among these clips — do any of them say things that aren’t already said in some of the other clips? Not really. Not much. They say bad things about President Bush, and anyone who might defend him. There’s some variety in whatever late happening inspired the content of the clip, but not much of that either — nine times out of ten, or better, it’s something President Bush said. And a good portion of that remaining one-tenth of inspiring phenomena, is something said by someone defending President Bush, or someone who has been known to do so in the past.

What would you say about extended-family relatives who conducted themselves in this way? “Morning Grandma, isn’t it a wonderful day!” “It would be, if President Bush didn’t give me a leak in my roof.” Eh, I shouldn’t say that…a lot of us have relatives just like this.

Desperate? Well. Whether that fits or not, I’ll leave to the readers to decide. Point made, I think.

On The View

Sunday, February 11th, 2007

I do not like to comment on topics in which my knowledge is limited; especially when my knowledge is far inferior to the knowledge possessed by just about everyone else. And I do not like to “blog” about cool ideas. Cool ideas, to me, are for Palm Pilots. If they make it to the blog, they make it there after being sanded and polished and polished again. Even then, of course, one should be ready for an education. Perhaps somewhere on the globe, someone else has been finding new and better ways to get the turbocharger on a Porsche 911 working just a little tiny bit better, while he himself has been struggling to make a stone wheel round. In front of a large audience, that is the risk you run. And what is the “blogosphere” besides the ultimate in large audiences.

But…such a humiliation can be educational. And some ideas are so just plain cool that I do not care if someone else has already thought of it…if they haven’t, I don’t really care if someone steals mine. The important thing is to jot it down.

This is just cool.

I’ve been reading the comments on this post over at The Jawa Report about that reprehensible television show called “The View”. I do not know very much about The View. I have seen clips from it on YouTube and…you know, that is just about it. And I suppose I’m getting a tainted sampling by seeing clips of the show on YouTube. I’m imagining there may very well be a staggering amount of footage that contains less talk and more common sense, and for that reason never makes it to YouTube. Like, I only have an opportunity to become aware of the most brain-dead sludge from all the show has had to offer. Would it then be fair to form an opinion? Hmmm.

Well, that would depend on the opinion. Like: It’s freakin’ impossible to carry on a reasonable conversation with everyone talking over each other like that. And Rosie O’Donnell is a dense loudmouth bitch.

Am I in need of a more scientific method of sampling of the available footage, which in turn might negate or mollify some of that sentiment? Really? There don’t seem to be any indicators that this is the case. Lacking any such indicators, I have to presume that I know pretty much everything I need to know. It’s not as if the subject matter is terribly deep to begin with? I haven’t heard anyone say The View is terribly complex or multifaceted. So…

…here is my idea…I understand the ratings issue continues to be a crisis…

…so let us say I’m the producer who runs everything.

We continue to depend on Rosie O’Donnell as our ratings savior. We just change the format a little tiny bit. Rosie’s doing most of the talking, right? Okay, we have her start off the show. Every single episode. Someone just tosses out the topic, and we get to hear what Rosie as to say. Blah blah blah, sentence after sentence.

From inside a soundproof booth. We get to hear her through loudspeakers. Yadda yadda yadda…and of course, while Rosie’s inside the soundproof booth, the other three gals are outside. They have their thumbs pressing down on dead-mans’ switches, and while they press the buttons Rosie can still be heard. On and on she goes — but when two of the three outsiders decide Rosie has said something that demands a response, and stop pressing the switches, the loudspeaker goes OFF.

Rosie is silent. And the other three gals can talk over each other responding to what Rosie has said.

For added fun — Rosie has no way to know if her switch has been cut, or not. All she can do is keep on moving those lips and gums, blah blah blah. The other three girls would be free to critique Rosie’s sentence structure, her analytical skills, her etiquette, and…then…maybe they could take an informal vote about whether it’s too soon to let Rosie talk again. Or to be heard again, rather.

I’m tellin’ ya — I would miss a freakin’ court date to catch an episode of that. I think a lot of other people would like to see it, too.

Babba Wawa, you can have that idea for free. You’re welcome.

Kermit the Blitz

Friday, January 26th, 2007

Everybody else is posting it, I might as well too.

NO, I do not think the question was “outta line.” But the response certainly wasn’t either. Cheney’s was a class act. There’s a lot of “whodya root for” moments going on out there; this is not one of them.

Now, That’s What I Call Focused

Friday, January 19th, 2007

A little bit too focused.

I would call the situation somewhat grim. President Bush says we need to deploy more troops to Iraq, and that the success of the mission depends on it. A lot of people are saying this isn’t going to do the trick. There is some powerful evidence that both are correct, and you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that if both are correct, something bad is about to happen.

Too focusedAnd via Boortz, we learn that Miss Perky Perky had some comments about her press gathering. It makes me wonder how many people completely depend on her to find out what’s going on in the world, whether they realize it or not; and among those who do, what all they’re missing.

Last Wednesday, President Bush gave his address to the country about “the new way forward” for Iraq, and lots of journalists—including me, of course—were in Washington to cover it. But before the Big Speech, there was the little-known Big Meeting.
:
As I was looking at my colleagues around the room—Charlie Gibson, George Stephanopoulos, Brian Williams, Tim Russert, Bob Schieffer, Wolf Blitzer, and Brit Hume—I couldn’t help but notice, despite how far we’ve come, that I was still the only woman there. Well, there was some female support staff near the door. But of the people at the table, the “principals” in the meeting, I was the only one wearing a skirt. Everyone was gracious, though the jocular atmosphere was palpable.

The feminist movement that began in the 1970’s helped women make tremendous strides—but there still haven’t been enough great leaps for womankind. Fifty-one percent of America is female, but women make up only about sixteen percent of Congress—which, as the Washington Monthly recently pointed out, is better than it’s ever been…but still not as good as parliaments in Rwanda (forty-nine percent women) or Sweden (forty-seven percent women). Only nine Fortune 500 companies have women as CEO’s.

That meeting was a reality check for me—and not just about Iraq. It was a reminder that all of us still have an obligation to ask: Don’t more women deserve a place at the table too? [emphasis mine]

Okay, one…at…a…time:
All of us have an obligation to ask — all of whom, exactly? People who vote for the President? Or people who hire and promote news executives? It would seem the second of those is more germane to the complaint, but it’s the first one that is more compatible with a sweeping pronouncement of “all of us.” Does Ms. Couric really mean to imply that by voting in a guy she doesn’t like, we “all” gave some kind of license for the gals to be crowded out away from “the table”?

Obligation? To who? What is the worst that happens if we don’t ask this? The Perkolator will frown upon us disapprovingly, with her lower lip stuck out? What’s the best that happens if we do ask? As Katie points out, we already started asking this 40 years ago. We don’t see starship captains on TV anymore whacking a “Yeoman” on her miniskirted ass when she brings him 23rd-century coffee. And if you’re in a position to hire or promote one candidate over another, and you exclude someone just because she doesn’t have a penis, all it takes is for someone to prove it and your career is at an end.

From that position, where exactly are we supposed to go?

Sixteen out of a hundred senators, and Katie’s unhappy. It’s clear we can only make her happy by means of a seventeenth senator…and some more and some more. I’m going to go way out on a limb here: If I get to pick how these new lady senators do their voting, and it seems I should be able to do this because Couric doesn’t even begin to address the issue — I will be much, much happier with the 35 new female senators than Couric herself. So her statement of what, exactly, has cheesed her off here, is a bit imprecise.

We’ve all done imprecise jobs of articulating what’s causing us distress. What’s remarkable is that just speaking for myself, if I’m noticing something’s still broken after forty years of fixing stuff, I’m going to put lots, and lots, and lots of effort into noticing just where we might have gone wrong. I might not succeed. But I’ll put in the effort. If we go forty-five or fifty years without fixing it, I’ll put in even more effort next time.

Couric doesn’t even try. Skirts are missing at the table. No fair. Whine whine whine.

And then. What are we to do about this, exactly? Why the silence on this aspect of it…when it ought to be the whole point, if the whining is worth doing in the first place? I see one of the commentors, “joycewest,” took the time and energy to research Rwanda’s situation in Parliament. One third of it must be female by law. Huh. The Perkolator went out of her way to cite Rwanda; I wonder how many other countries with legislative chambers she passed over to get to that one. Does she want a similar quota here? She says we have “an obligation to ask” something and she must realize, simply asking it is obviously not going to solve anything, especially since we have already been asking it.

Speaking of the “obligation”…what about choice? Aren’t we suffering a little bit of scope creep here, if the feminist movement was supposed to be about womens’ choice? Maybe, just maybe, Katie’s the only lady in the room because she’s one out of just a few who would make the decision to be there in the first place. Doesn’t she approve of the choices other women might have made, not to be there?

Let’s face it, it’s at least possible some women would make decisions different from the decisions Katie would make if she were they. It is possible…not only that, but among all the artificial means of keeping “skirts” away from the table, that’s the only one that can take place in this country that is legal.

Finally, I see this is an exercise in CALWWNTY. Does Katie Couric really intend to sound the call for yet-another march in the womens’ movement, now entering the fifth decade of progressive feminism? Is this really something she herself would find inspiring, if someone else was blowing the bugle and bellowing those magic, insulting words…Come A Long Way, We’re Not There Yet?

Really?

As Tom Cruise might say…Katie, Katie, Katie, you’re glib. We’ve opened up choices for career-minded women. We’ve outlawed discrimination against them, and we’ve even rearranged our cultural norms and taboos. Most remarkable of all, our society has made the new choice for women about whether to work a career, or stay home, into a real choice. And from the ladies who’ve made decisions differently than the one you made for yourself — you have profited handsomely. Come to think of it, among the folks who define some level of personal income as “obscene,” I can’t think of anyone who wouldn’t qualify you yourself for that; provided, of course, they were only told what you make, and not who you are.

Well hey, some of us understand that when you send a woman into an important meeting like that, there are women who will pick up on the big stuff. There are these Islamomaniacs, you see? They’d just as soon stone you to death for letting an inch or two of tantalizing knee show above those fashionable tall boots of yours during the morning news show — and by the way, they want to kill Americans. They will go out of their way to do it. Will die to do it. As many Americans as possible. Some of us understand there are women who will keep track of the big picture. Some of us realize there are women who will maintain this sense of perspective, at least as well as any man.

But if you want to remind us that there are exceptions, well go ahead. Twist my arm. But I fail to see how that advances the womens’ movement any further.

It Didn’t Start Five Years Ago

Saturday, December 30th, 2006

This one goes into the “required viewing” file. Just click and watch. Make sure the sound is turned on or your headphones are plugged in.

And there’s some quality video-blogging going on below. I can’t endorse every single word because it’s a critique of a movie I’ve not seen, but I like Jimmy’s use of rhetorical questions and skeptical thinking.

Healthy cynicism, folks. It’s not just something to throw in Halliburton’s direction. Save some for the Hollywood “Peace Love Rock-n-Roll” types.

Whodya Root For

Friday, December 22nd, 2006

I’m rooting for Donald.

I don’t think he’s really going to sue, though. This isn’t the stuff you say before you sue somebody.

But it occurs to me, with this recent widespread attack on bloggers for — assuming I understand the charges against us correctly? — having opinions about things and then jotting them down…Rosie O’Donnell is everything we are supposed to be. She’s got opinions that nobody is willing to stick their neck on a block and say, “Rosie really knows what she’s talking about.” Nobody thinks that, nobody’s saying that. The woman’s a dimwit, and the more she has to say about a given topic, the less she seems to know.

Nobody’s ever been more of a “captive audience” to any blogger, anywhere, than we all have been to Rosie. She demands, and is given credit for, simply having her opinions. Her ignorant, costless opinions, in a land where neither she nor anybody else is punished for having them.

Harmless? I’m not so sure. We seem to have this rule in place that because Rosie is so “courageous,” she and people like her must always have a bedrock amount of influence on our public policies…no matter how tired we are of her. Case in point, she wants us to think “both wars” were things we should not have done — Afghanistan, and Iraq. She’s not part of the “Since there were no WMDs in Iraq, that was a mistake” plank of the left. She opposes Afghanistan too. She doesn’t think we should have done anything about it. She’s part of the “bend over, take it up the ass, and ask for another” brigade.

Let her talk, by all means. Give her enough rope to hang herself. But when we all consciously understand her ravings are just so much crap, let people tune her out. Well…you know, she’s ugly. And fat. And gay. And tuning her out, isn’t quite acceptable. So she keeps babbling away with all her crap, and people keep listening to her. She doesn’t want the country to defend itself. There is potential damage in this. I’m not saying shut her up — I’m saying stop broadcasting her from every little corner, when the people who still want to listen to her, are whittled down to just a microscopic few.

Best information I have, is that if Trump proceeds with his lawsuit, that may be the only way to get that done. Besides, he’s got a good point about her being dangerous to The View. Maybe if he goes forward with it, it’ll be a cheap lesson for them.

Update: Barbara must be feeling the heat, going by this transcript of a CNN newscast from yesterday. Called in to the show from her vacation to say “We cherish them both and hope the new year brings calm and peace.”

I’m hearing reports from third-hand that Rosie had obviously been talked to and advised to shut up. You’d have to see the show, but you’d know it if you saw it. Mmmkay, I believe that…I believe a “been told to shut up” Rosie looks different from a noisy Rosie, and not subtly so.

I still don’t think he’s going to sue. And yet, as good as she is for the show’s ratings, I strongly doubt she’ll be there for long. Shows like this, make their living from looking like something they really aren’t: Bold, opinionated, courageous, willing to take on controversial topics, come hell or high water. Guess what? You can’t do that for real if you need friends, and all television shows need friends.

I think she’s gone. She’s not going to be sued, the show isn’t going to be sued, but her fat ass is out of there. She did way too good a job of revealing what the show really is: Controversial only when & where it can afford to be.

Timeframe? I dunno. The next move is obviously going to be to put Rosie on a lower profile and wait for this thing to blow over. If that works, it could take years. If not, she’s out before Groundhog Day.

Spicoli Thinks You Are A Protein Stain

Friday, December 22nd, 2006

You Dick!Pictured at right is Sean Penn uttering the famous line to the My Favorite Martian guy in “Fast Times at Ridgemont High.” It is the limit of his existence. Oh, I’m sure he’s had more money in the bank since then and he’s lived in bigger houses since then. But the point is, this is where he banked his capital, and everything he’s done since then is just a withdrawal from that capital. He can go to Iraq for P.R. purposes and he can play tragic parents in Mystic River and he can do any one of a number of things, but the reason he became what he is, is because of his successful portayal of a buffoon. That is his claim to fame. Even the most slavish, slobbering Sean Penn fan is going to stop short of suggesting he knows something special about Iraq, just because he’s been there. And that was supposed to be the purpose of being there. We were supposed to be surrounded by fawning Sean Penn fans, indignantly demanding of us “Have YOU been to Iraq, like Sean Penn has?” And it’s not happening. It’s not happening because, if we want to get a picture of what things are really like in Iraq, we can ask some of the soldiers coming back from there who had the job of being there. Pro-Bush soldiers, anti-Bush soldiers, pro-war, anti-war…they’re all out there. Some of them will share the opinions they have. And all of them have insight that is worth more than Mr. Penn’s.

Which poses a problem for Sean Penn. And his solution to it, is to show his anger and righteous indignation. Thanks to TheSaloon.net, we see he does this by uttering the following…while accepting an award. Hey, classy.

Let’s put his administration under oath. And then if the crimes of treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanours are proven, do as Article 2, Section 4 of the United States Constitution provides, and remove the president, vice president, and civil officers of the United States from office….If the Justice Department then sees fit to bunk them up with Jeff Skilling, so be it. So look, if we attempt to impeach for lying about a b*** j**, yet accept these almost certain abuses without challenge, we become a c** stain on the flag we wave.

You know what’s really amazing about this? It proves beyond any doubt, that Sean Penn lacks the intellectual depth necessary to relate to a mindset embracing a slightly different system of beliefs.

Assuming he’s sincere, what is it he seeks to do here? I would hazard a guess that he’s trying to address people who think President Clinton did something worse than anything President Bush did, and seek to change their minds. Okay. Hey that’s no big stretch for me…so let’s say he’s trying to change my mind. So here I am thinking President Clinton did something bad and deserved to be impeached — which I do. Sean Penn’s going to try to change my mind with his brilliant logic about semen stains. Okee dokee.

Finger WagglingWhy do I think President Clinton did something wrong? Because it’s conduct unbecoming. Sex in the Oval Office, and then lying about it. It diminishes the office he held. His actions turned the Presidency, and all the trust vested in that office, into a puerile thing. You go into a high school classroom and say the name “Clinton!” — and you get a lot of giggling. So there’s a dignity issue. And then there’s a separate issue involving trust; trust based on truth. The nature of what we call “truth” is changed forever. Presidents, for the rest of my natural existence, can waggle their fingers as much as they want — Presidents! — and the expectation that they are telling the truth, and stand to lose something important if it subsequently turns out they are not, is history. Before Clinton, we knew our officials could lie, but we expected that once they got caught lying they would go away for good. Not so anymore. There’s something damaging about that.

So I think President Clinton changed our nation’s culture with regard to what’s true and what’s not true, what’s mature and what is prurient. What was unacceptable before he came to power, became fair game afterward. He lowered the bar, in ways we can’t really afford to have it lowered.

Spicoli is going to change my mind, by grappling with my prejudices with seminal-discharge analogies, while accepting the Christopher Reeve First Amendment Award — betraying everyone who entrusted him with the microphone for those few seconds.

You know, he ultimately does very little to make me reconsider my initial leanings. In fact, if he himself doesn’t provide them with reinforcement…I dunno what does.

It’s called manners…you dick.

Those Stupid Dr. Laura Questions

Friday, December 22nd, 2006

This summer I had commented on that silly episode of The West Wing from October of 2000 when the show’s writer, Aaron Sorkin, decided to properly skewer Dr. Laura. He chose to do this the way he skewers everybody else, as I understand it: To position a ridiculous caricature of the chosen target opposite the blisteringly self-important Martin Sheen, and construct a highly improbable “dialog” between the two, most of which is worked over by Sheen himself, rushing through his pre-constructed lines at a jackrabbit pace.

This episode is often cited as a display of the show’s brilliance, which is odd because the whole thing is pretty far from being original. It had been passed ’round the innernets like a hooker at a stag party some five months before the show aired. A model of Sorkin’s brilliance? It seems the selection of a different model would be in order, but lots of West Wing fans don’t think so. You can get a transcript of the scene from many places, including here.

But the point is, just because you seldom hear of a response to those stupid questions this fictitious President is hurling at Dr. Laura, doesn’t mean the responses don’t exist or are somehow not probable. The responses are more reasoned and straightforward than you might think, and someone has taken the trouble to put them together. Really, they’re just the kind of responses a reasonable person would expect them to be, for the most part. Example…

Q. Leviticus 25:44 states that I may buy slaves from the nations that are around us. A friend of mine claims that this applies to the French but not to the Scots. Can you clarify? Why can’t I own Scottish people?

A. It doesn’t actually say slaves, it says ‘bondmen and bondmaids’. People who were poor bonded themselves or their children to someone wealthy. It was a form of social security. It is also written (Exod 21:16) that anyone who steals a man to sell him shall be put to death. So those Muslim slavers who took and sold black slaves to the white man were flat out of order and worthy of death. Don’t forget that the man who had slavery outlawed in Britain was William Wilberforce, an evangelical Christian. Atheists were quite happy with slavery.

Zing.

But come on. Who really thought the best answer that Christians would have to give to Aaron Sorkin’s oh-so-brilliant recycling of innernet urban-legends, would be just a bobbing up-and-down of the Adam’s apple and a deer-in-the-headlights look? Maybe a fun fantasy for you if you really hate Christians, I suppose. But back here in the plane of reality…situation’s unchanged. It always pays to get both sides of the story.

Her Opinion And She’s Entitled To It

Monday, December 4th, 2006

PaltrowAs long as that’s what she really believes, I have no problem with her saying it. She’s in the right place as far as I’m concerned.

…[Gwyneth] Paltrow said in an interview with Portugal’s weekend magazine NS that she prefers Britian to America.

“I like living here, because I don’t fit into the bad side of American psychology,” the “Shakespeare in Love” star said. “The British are much more intelligent and civilized than the Americans.”

The 34-year-old actress lives in the mother country with her British hubby, Coldplay frontman Chris Martin, and the couple’s two children.
:
“I love the English lifestyle, it’s not as capitalistic as America,” she said. “People don’t talk about work and money. They talk about interesting things at dinner.”

I wish the article went on to discuss what those things were. Not that I doubt that our friends across the pond can talk about interesting things; I’ve seen ’em do it personally. They’re a fun crowd, and I would tend to agree that on the whole they tend to think things through better than most Americans. At least, if you were to draw your samplings from both countries according to who does the most talking.

But when it comes to people visiting countries and taking in broad samplings of the social strata there, and gradually accumulating a competence to speak on what this country talks about at dinner and what that country talks about at dinner…Hollywood starlets don’t float to the top of my list. I’ve been educated for the last five years, more than I ever wished to be, on how blue-blood Hollywood thinks. To say I’ve gathered the impression that Hollywood likes to hang out with its own — that would be a gross understatement. Now, poor Gwyneth has been subjected to people talking about work and money at American dinner tables. Hmmm. I’ve eaten at American dinner tables. I’ve not had this problem. Where in America has she eaten dinner? With whom? People in Butte? Laramie? Walla Walla or Wewahitchka? Ah…could it be…Tinseltown. How many people in America would be graced by Ms. Paltrow’s presence at dinner, who don’t work in entertainment? How many people in the UK who aren’t in the movie business? Maybe that’s the answer; an apples-and-oranges comparison. Maybe. I don’t know. But it seems like something she’d want to explore, either in public or in private, if she was noodling this through.

Paltrow thinks she knows what a country with 300 million people, wrapped around seven time zones, from the Arctic tundra to the Gulf of Mexico, talks about at dinner. That could be a testament to her broad traveling experiences or it could speak to an abject lack of humility. Three guesses and the first two don’t count. What’s frustrating is that if the article went on from there to explore what Paltrow finds “interesting” about table talk, we wouldn’t have to speculate. We’d know for certain.

Somehow, I don’t think it very much matters.

I’m giving her the benefit of the doubt here, that she has some personal experience at all to back this up. And I wouldn’t bet a lot of money on even that.

“Our job as actors is to read the newspapers, and repeat what we’ve read on TV, like it is our own opinion.” — Janeane Garofalo in “Team America: World Police” (2004)

Update 12-6-06: Okay, so now she’s backtracking. Here and here you’ll find references to the whole thing being a Spanish-translation mix-up of some kind.

“I felt so upset to be completely misconstrued and I never, ever would have said that.

“This is what I said. I said that Europe is a much older culture and there’s a difference. Obviously, I need to go back to seventh-grade Spanish.”

I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt on the translation mix-up. I’m not buying the “never ever would have said that” bit. Bashing America is very trendy right now, and Paltrow’s bought into it before.

The Shakespeare in Love beauty, who lives in London with her rock star husband Chris Martin and daughter Apple, admits she is amazed by the locals’ courage in the face of adversity.

She says, “I find the English amazing how they got over 7/7. There were no multiple memorials with people sobbing as they would have been in America. There, they are constantly scaring people but at the same time, people think nothing of going to see a therapist.”

There ya go. If the event from 2005 took place but she was misquoted just now, then the fact that she was misquoted just now means very little. Even if she was misquoted both times, there’s a pattern at work here and as far as I’m concerned, where there’s smoke there’s fire.

You know, like I said at the very beginning, she is perfectly entitled to all these opinions. She’s a somewhat attractive actress who gives a somewhat decent level of performance, is more talented than most, and is known for making movies that usually don’t appeal to me. So I don’t really have a dog in the hunt.

And as an American, I can certainly survive pea-brained comments about my country from abroad. What gets under my skin is the intellectual laziness of it — the tired, threadbare comparisons between such-and-such a country and America. If Paltrow didn’t say stuff like this, other people have; if she did say it, she’s in a lot of company. But there’s so little sincerity in all this criticism of America. It seems everybody means something different from what they’re saying.

“Women go topless to the beach in xxx-country because xxx-country isn’t sexually repressed — like America.” That means, hey, it’s great that women can go topless to the beach in xxx. That’s what that means. Mentioning America at all, has nothing to do with the subject at hand. But people do anyway. That’s what’s fashionable. Such-and-such a country makes great blueberry pancakes, you just aren’t being chic when you compliment their blueberry pancakes unless you tack on to the end, “they’re not like those cow patties you have to buy with good money over in Ameeeeerica!” And speaking of money, anybody who criticizes America over money can just go pound sand as far as I’m concerned. To criticize us for having it, is an exercise in pure, petty jealousy; to criticize us for wanting it, is an exercise in projection. To simply bring up the subject of money, after all, is to make a priority out of it; and wanting it is a natural consequence of making a priority out of it. And so this is the pot calling the kettle black.

And there’s always this wonderful solvency about anyone who criticizes America for being too “capitalistic.” It seems most of the middle-class, have more important things on their minds. So many among the “shame on America for being a blood-sucking capitalist” set, are…happy, healthy, comfortable and successful capitalists. More often than not, thanks to the time they spent living in you-know-where.

But hey. It’s great news that someone is getting in trouble, and realizing the necessity of backpedaling, over negative comments about America. That’s the silver lining to this cloud. Maybe, just maybe, America-bashing is going the way of the Cabbage Patch Doll. Maybe Paltrow’s mea culpa will have an effect of pushing it off in that direction more quickly. If that’s the case, she should be thanked.

But I’m only believing half of what I read, and at a certain point I stop noticing it and just go to work. That’s what makes me an American.

Get Over It?

Thursday, November 16th, 2006

Throughout the 2004 and 2006 campaign seasons, I’ve been trying in vain to find out what the Democrats would do about the Islamo-fascist weird-beards around the world who want to kill us. In all that time, the best I’ve been able to achieve, is to come up with the individual hopes of each Democrat I’ve been asking. “George Bush doesn’t have a plan [either]”; “regime change begins at home”; “support the troops by getting them out of there”; “what about ecological terrorism?” Some of them are so famous, I can’t ask them anything, but nevertheless I get to hear what they think. Those with the highest name-recognition, seem to think America is unworthy of winning this thing or anything else. I haven’t been able to find any hard evidence that these, or any others, are official party positions.

This is understandable. Millions of people voted for Democrats, and their feelings on the War on Terror, while mostly negative, nevertheless flail out in all kinds of directions. Democrats can’t afford to alienate any of them. I’ve been figuring, now that they’ve won, maybe it would be a little easier to get an answer to my question.

Well, guest what. Now that they’ve won, their position has become even more cloudy. Oh, it’s a lot less confused, alright, but things are far less clear. Last month, the order of the day was confusion, and this month it seems to be all about secrecy. The plan to deal with murderous goat-molesting crazy-men who want to crash planes into our buildings has been reduced down to five words, as I understand it:

You lost. Get over it.

The YouTube entry for this clip is accompanied by the following description:

After hearing lots of teeth gnashing from right wing voters over the results of the ’06 election I decided they needed a reminder about how democracy works. You lost, GET OVER IT. The republicans in this video found out just how voters felt about them. Sure this video is gloating, but hey to turn Bush’s words back on him, The Dems won political capital, and now they should spend it.

Mmmmkay. Now, I’m not sure what that has to do with bringing me the bodies of more dead terrorists, so my question stands. But almost without exception, I’ve been handed these five words by someone-or-other, who doesn’t seem to appreciate me asking the questions, whenever I want to know what the new plan is for fighting terrorism.

It doesn’t help me to get “over it,” it has an opposite effect. I want to know more. I was told, growing up, that “QUESTION AUTHORITY” was a favorite liberal catch-phrase. Okay…I’m questioning it. Why the terse dismissal? Shouldn’t power be transparent? Don’t the liberals want to stick to their knitting?

Well, I’ve been learning this over and over again about left-wingers through the years. A lefty doesn’t tell you what he thinks; when you hear him tell you something, you’re hearing what he feels. When you hear the same thing from two lefties, you’re hearing what they told each other to feel. When you hear the same thing from three or more, you’re hearing what a powerful lefty told a bunch of other lefties they feel. I’ve heard “get over it” from three or more, so I’m gathering some kind of post-campaign campaign must be underway. Maybe a “Fahrenheit 912” sequel just started showing at the box office, or something of the like.

Perhaps it’s tit-for-tat. I remember back in late 2000 the liberals were told “you lost; get over it” by several tighty-righties. Maybe I was one of the tighty-righties who said that. Maybe the chickens have come home to roost. That ought to show me.

…if only it applied now, though. Democrats were told they lost, and that they should get over it, after the umpth-frazillionth time they wanted a recount. You know what? I’m not going to pretend to be unbiased here…my name isn’t “Dan Rather” after all…but in the scenario from 2000, it just seems to fit. I demand a recount, I demand a recount, I demand a recount, I demand a recount — you lost, get over it.

Gee, here it is 2006, I just want to know where we’re going. I’m sitting in the passenger seat, wondering why we just drove past the most obvious exit, do we know how far we have to go to reach the next one? What’s the plan to get gas and sandwiches, maybe a potty break? And all I get back, is a reminder that I’m not driving. Well no shit, Sherlock. Back to my question: What’s the plan?

Some of the folks within America’s borders, it seems, want her to lose the war. Many others say this is the only way outstanding affairs can be shepherded to a harmonious closure, and we need to just face up to it. Others claim to be dogged by a persistent uncertainty about what they want to have happen. Clearly, we’re about to get a new course for how to deal with this thing, something taking a hairpin-turn from the status quo; to whose preferences will that new charting be best suited? Theirs? I mean, at the very least, it seems like a fair question to ask.

Can’t make a plan, if you don’t define the goal. Nothing Republican or Democrat about that rule; it’s something that is simply true. What’s the goal?

Yeah, I’ve gotten over it. That’s the question that popped in my head as I was getting over it. Does anyone have an answer?