Headlines That Make You Do A Double-Take

Every once in a while, a string of headlines pops up on the radar that make it impossible to blog properly.

Conservatives may buck Charlie Crist
Moderate right-wing Republican Charlie Crist, often rumoured to be, well, not strictly heterosexual, has announced for the Senate seat being vacated by Mel Martinez of Florida.

One wonders if the editor at Politco was being coy.

Actor Gary Sinise floated as possible GOP savior
Well, hiring a washed up actor worked once before, and since the GOP seems determined to trot out every single dusty old meme in opposition to the Democrats...

Lieberman breaks with Cheney: ‘We’re not less safe’ under Obama.
Truly, a "man bites dog" moment in recent politics.

Jon Stewart to Make History Special
The man who raised faux news to an art form has set his sights on completing what he started with his book: a faux history.

It's going to be hard to top Mel Brooks, Jon.

California shortfall $21.3 billion if measures fail
People who were surprised by the defeat of Proposition 8 allowing for same-sex marriages have not been paying attention the California electorate, I'm sad to say. However, the conservative streak that runs strongly away from the coastline is about to come home to roost, as this budget shortfall almost surely means the repeal that most noxious of "tax cutting" propositions, 13.

Police arrest NJ man in college popcorn prank in Connecticut
You'd better go read this one.

Why The Right Wing Needs An Enema

First, let me say this: I have no desire to see Mamma Mia!; I did not want to see it (despite having had an offer for opening night tix) on stage and likely will not see the movie unless I'm sick or something and it's on cable.

I had enough of ABBA music in the 70s, thank you. I wouldn't, for example, want to see a musical based on Phil Collins' music, either.

However, I think there is reviewing a movie on its merits and reviewing a movie self-referentially. To-wit, Pajamas Media

Firth keeps saying things like, “I’d quite like to freshen up” and “Might I be shown my room now?” and “There wouldn’t by any chance happen to be a trouser press down here?” No doubt you are correcting me in your mind: “Not gay. Just British.” I’ve forgotten so please remind me: what exactly is the difference?

There are times when Mamma Mia makes Hairspray seem like Magnum Force by comparison. I have no reason to suspect Meryl Streep is a gay man, but did RuPaul write her dialogue? Wielding a power drill, she is asked if she’s “getting any,” at which point she powers up the drill and says, “Down boy!” She also worries about “A crack in my courtyard,” but do we really want to hear about her crack?

Much of the talk is far worse. Did I really hear the words, “I won’t be muzzled by an ejaculation?” And, “Harry’s talked Tanya into water sports!” and “He’s all mouth and no trousers” and “Get the meat out of the heat”? Still, I could praise all of this and more if only the movie had provided me with a warning to avert my eyes before it provided a shuddery glimpse of Skarsgaard’s butt cheeks.

The Streep character and her battle-ax friends (Julie Walters, Christine Baranski) sing into vacuum cleaners and hair dryers in Dancing Queen, then strut around in pyramid formation. Everyone and everything is “fabulous” or “gorgeous” or “a little minx,” and at a, well, climactic moment a geyser busts out of the floor and bare-chested boys revel in it, in slow motion. Walters is definitely onto something when she says, “It’s very Greek.” Really, what kind of movie borrows its plot from the 80s miniseries Lace? All that is missing is a scene in which the bride asks, “Which one of you three bitches is my father?”

OK, class, now let's count up: I see two overt accusations of "teh gay", one RuPaul, cross-dressing reference, one reference to a Freudian image of a woman castrating a man (with a jackhammer, no less), and several presumably straight (pun intended) faced schoolboy jokes about double entendres and innuendoes (again, pun intended). Not to mention having to drag Dirty Harry (pun intended) Callahan's monster gun into it.

And then it gets worse: poor Kyle, apparently he's never been inside a locker room at a country club (or the airport restroom in Minneapolis), because the sight of an aging male ass has him practically quivering with delight anxiety! An orgasm of outrage fairly explodes out of Smith's keyboard (typing one-handed, probably)!

The denouement, the afterplay, if you will, speaks of sex toys and "fag-hagging" (really, Kyle, you can say it! No one likes you anyway...).

*WHEW*

I'm spent just having read my critique of his review!

A Tale Of Too Shitty

Compare and contrast:

This:

Drug Use Increasingly Common in All Countries

TUESDAY, July 1 (HealthDay News) -- The United States has one of the highest lifetime rates of tobacco and alcohol use and the highest percentage of people who reported using marijuana or cocaine at least once in their lives, a new survey shows.

Researchers from the World Health Organization analyzed alcohol, tobacco and illegal drug use in 17 countries in the Americas, Europe, Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Oceania.

Among the major findings:

The use of all types of drugs in the survey is becoming increasingly common in all the countries. Males were more likely than females to have used all drug types in all countries and all age groups.Younger adults were more likely than older adults to have used these substances.People with higher incomes were more likely to have used legal and illegal drugs.Alcohol has been used by most survey respondents in the Americas, Europe, Japan and New Zealand, compared to smaller percentages of respondents in the Middle East, Africa and China.Alcohol use by age 15 was far more common among Europeans than among those in the Middle East or Africa.Lifetime tobacco use was most common in the United States (74 percent), Lebanon (67 percent), Mexico and the Ukraine (60 percent and 61 percent) and the Netherlands (58 percent).

With this:

Survey Finds U.S. Leads World in Substance Abuse

The U.S. leads the world in marijuana and cocaine experimentation, as well as in lifetime tobacco use, according to a survey released this week by the World Health Organization.

For the survey, which was partially funded by a division of the U.S. National Institutes of Health, researchers at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia looked at drug, alcohol and tobacco use in 17 countries throughout North and South America, Europe, Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Oceania. More than 54,000 people participated in the survey.

"The United States, which has been driving much of the world's drug research and drug policy agenda, stands out with higher levels of use of alcohol, cocaine, and cannabis, despite punitive illegal drug policies, as well as (in many U.S. states), a higher minimum legal alcohol drinking age than many comparable developed countries," the authors wrote in the study, which was published in the July 1 issue of the journal PLoS Medicine.

"The Netherlands, with a less criminally punitive approach to cannabis use than the U.S., has experienced lower levels of use, particularly among younger adults," they added.

Does it seem odd to you that the more reasonable, and more honest, headline is over the more sensationalized story, while the zanier headline is over the more upfront fact laden piece?

Here's the kicker: the first story was taken from the Washington Post, the second from....drumroll, please...FoxNews.com!

There's something wrong with this picture, as well as right, when FOX has the better story (wrong), and the Washington Post has the more accurate headline (right).

The implications of this study are fairly clear and it is ironic that this study is released the same day John McCain visits Colombia for photo ops with the drug interdiction forces: tougher drug laws do not discourage drug use.

The percentages are staggering: in the US, over 40% of respondents said they had used marijuana at least once in their lifetimes. In the Netherlands, which has far more liberal drug policies 9so you would think they'd be nothing but pot heads), less than 20% of respondents reported using pot even once.

Too, arguments against smoking laws can be made here as well: the US leads the world in tobacco use (76% of respondents had tried some form of tobacco at one point or other. The next highest percentage was Lebanon, with 67%), despite some of the toughest anti-smoking laws on the books, particularly when it comes to advertising.

The trouble with both of these conclusions, of course, is that it would be hard to discern the effects of a recent smoking ban in, say, New York City with someone who is, say, 50. I smoked, but do not anymore. If I had been born 30 years later, I likely would not have smoked.

Similarly with marijuana, drug criminality was made harsher during my lifetime. It's possible that people born after the Rockefeller laws, and certainly after "three strikes" were passed, might see a far lower percentage of drug use.

Personally, the libertarian in me would like to see all drug laws rethought and the liberation of about 1.5 million people currently serving jail sentences for smoking a joint.

A Quickie

Which news organization is represented in this fictional vignette?

On Monday, dozens of gay couples planned to rush down to their county clerk's office Monday evening to be among the very first to say "I do" under the historic court ruling making California the second state to allow same-sex marriages...and Tim Russert wasn't here to comment on it!

*SOB*

My god, two days wasn't enough to mourn this jackass? Three? We have to make it an even four?

Mother Theresa didn't get the kind of coverage that some fat-ingesting tub of goo with a weak heart got! Even this morning, there was ol' Luke Russert, Timmeh's son, on air for twenty minutes reminiscing not about Dad but about how nice everyone at NBC had been about reminiscing about his dad!

Good lord, there was less pandering at Reagan's funeral....from Republicans!

What makes it worse is to watch the Obombers in their supposed "let's change the political landscape" suck up to this fat bastard's memory, when a year ago (and they were supporting Kucinich), it was all about how "Timmeh" doesn't get it and "Timmeh" is a fat bastard and "Timmeh" is evil incarnate!

Astounding

The major gripe among the blogosphere today: ABC News spent way, way too much time drilling Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama about their stumbles on the campaign trail instead of focusing on policy issues.

Bloggers at the liberal Daily Kos (which has a heavy Obama following) dedicated the most electronic ink against ABC’s Charles Gibson and George Stephanopoulos, the debate moderators.
One of the writers, Hunter, went so far as to say their handling of the debate was “so deeply embarrassing to the nation that it will be pointed to, in future books and documentary works, as a prime example of the collapse of the American media into utter and complete substanceless, into self-celebrated vapidity, and into a now-complete inability or unwillingness to cover the most important affairs of the nation to any but the most shallow of depths.”

Admittedly, I did not watch the debates last night (Go Rangers! Go Mets!), but how many debates have we had on the issues since December of 2007? 20? 30? 300?

Have any of them drawn any type of sharp contrast between the two candidates?

No. So what's the point?

The debate was clearly structured to try to draw some drama out of the proceedings, to put both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama on the hot seats about something and to let people see how they handle the stresses and strains of the campaign trail.

In that respect, it was a bit of an eye-opener, from nearly all accounts: Hillary Clinton handled herself like a pro, while Barack Obama could barely contain his frustration and contempt.

Guess maybe he knows now why a typical white person in Pennsylvania might cling to his religion and his guns, huh?

The only reasoned critique I've read of the debate comes from Will Bunch:

You implied throughout the broadcast that you wanted to reflect the concerns of voters in Pennsylvania. Well, I'm a Pennsylvanian voter, and so are my neighbors and most of my friends and co-workers. You asked virtually nothing that reflected our everyday issues -- trying to fill our gas tanks and save for college at the same time, our crumbling bridges and inadequate mass transit, or the root causes of crime here in Philadelphia. In fact, there almost isn't enough space -- and this is cyberspace, where room is unlimited -- to list all the things you could have asked about but did not, from health care to climate change to alternative energy to our policy toward China to the deterioration of Afghanistan to veterans' benefits to improving education. You ignored virtually everything that just happened in what most historians agree is one of the worst presidencies in American history, including the condoning of torture and the trashing of the Constitution, although to be fair you also ignored the policy concerns of people on the right, like immigration issues.

Fair enough.

So let me ask the journalists involved, and the bloggers and even Mr. Bunch: what have you been covering for the past seven months?

How many blogposts, columns, news analyses, prime time segments, have been devoted to any of the issues that Bunch delineates?

Not nearly as many about the debacle in Afghanistan over the past year, I'd wager, as have been written over Obama's "bitter" comment in just these past five days.

Even Bunch, later in his column, points out how many column inches have been devoted to Reverend Wright, and the Bosnia trip and Obama's foot-in-mouth disease...does anyone else wonder how an eloquent man can have so many "misspokes" and "inartful phrasings"? What kind of scam is Obama running on us?... but one wonders why so many column inches haven't been devoted to, say, the PTSD problems of returning Iraqi and Afghani vets?

I picked that topic because, you know, Katrina and I at Simply Left Behind have both been all over it these past four years. I'd bet not many other blogs have been.

It's kind of disingenuous to whine about ABC's debate format when in fact, they are merely responding to the vox populi: all of us, myself included, have harped on these niggling issues at the expense of the larger stories around us.

For myself, I claim a lack of time and an interest in increasing my hit counter.

And so what does that tell you, all of you who are complaining about ABC's dismal performance? People aren't going to read about oil prices. People are going to read about Obama's bigotry and Clinton's prevarications.

End of discussion. Now shut the hell up about it.

Interesting Story, More Interesting Comments

I happened to run across this rather interesting little tidbit along the journey through the news today:

"Foreign policy is the area where I am probably most confident that I know more and understand the world better than Senator Clinton or Senator McCain," Obama said, according to the Huffington Post.

"It's ironic because this is supposedly the place where experience is most needed to be Commander-in-Chief. Experience in Washington is not knowledge of the world. This I know. When Senator Clinton brags 'I've met leaders from eighty countries' -- I know what those trips are like! I've been on them. You go from the airport to the embassy. There's a group of children who do native dance. You meet with the CIA station chief and the embassy and they give you a briefing. You go take a tour of a plant that [with] the assistance of USAID has started something. And then -- you go."

"You do that in eighty countries," Obama said, "You don't know those eighty countries. So when I speak about having lived in Indonesia for four years, having family that is impoverished in small villages in Africa --knowing the leaders is not important -- what I know is the people...I traveled to Pakistan when I was in college -- I knew what Sunni and Shia was [sic] before I joined the Senate Foreign Relations Committee."

This last part -- a college trip to Pakistan -- was news to many of us who have been following the race closely. And it was odd that we hadn't hear about it before, given all the talk of Pakistan during this campaign.

So I asked the Obama campaign for more information.

Apparently, according to the Obama campaign, In 1981 -- the year Obama transferred from Occidental College to Columbia University -- Obama visited his mother and sister Maya in Indonesia. After that visit, Obama traveled to Pakistan with a friend from college whose family was from there. The Obama campaign says Obama was in Pakistan for about three weeks, staying with his friend's family in Karachi and also visiting Hyderabad in Southern India.

Now, no big deal, right? I mean, after all, college kids travel and while many kids went off to the Bahamas or Florida, Barack Obama travelled to visit relations and friend's relations in South Asia.

But Tapper's point is interesting: given how Obama all but included either an invasion of Pakistan or a nuclear bomb drop on it in his vision of the Global War on an Emotion, you'd think at some point this little item would have come out from the candidate's camp long before this.

More intriguing is this comment in replies to the piece:

Jake, you said you were surprise (sic) to suddenly learn about this Obama trip, this goes a long way to show that the media has looked the other way while another arrogant and incompetent man runs close to the whitehouse (sic). While salivating and drooling, the media has failed to vet this man, just as they failed to ask GOP and Bush/Cheney tough questions about Iraq. It is the massive disinformation of the nation, stupid. Obama is a mediocre, smart but too shallow. His chances in this race is an indictment (sic) on the media's bias and incompetent.

- Posted by: Ed Banks | Apr 8, 2008 9:33:25 AM

Obama has gotten a pretty fair shake by the media, practically kid gloves and all.

I recall that, when Obama was first gearing up his candidacy, many darkly shaded questions about his Muslim background were raised: that he was schooled in a Madrassah, that he's sworn allegiance to the Koran and converted to Christianity as a front.

OK, all crackpot theories, to be sure, but all deserving of at least a little fact-checking, you'd think. After all, this is the same media that went gangbusters when it was revealed during the 1992 campaign that Bill Clinton had travelled to the Soviet Union as a college student!

How does a college trip to Pakistan a) pass under the simple fact-check of asking Barack Obama, "So where have you been in your life that you feel you can speak to foreign affairs issues?" and b) pass without mention in any of the books Obama has written to demonstrate his bona fides as a President?

Come on, it's not like Pakistan suddenly blipped on our radar in 2002 after the September 11 tragedies! During the 2000 campaign, much sport was made regarding the fact that George Bush couldn't even name the new dictator president of Pakistan, Pervez Mussharraf, despite the fact that, oh, THEY DETONATED NUKES JUST TWO YEARS EARLIER!

All these months, when people have harped and harangued on Obama about his inexperience and lack of foreign affairs standing, we're only just finding out now that he took a vacation in Islamabad and is claiming that as a notch in his bedpost????

This is pretty embarrassing, to be frank. How the media could miss this kind of at once laughable-yet-important story is beyond my understanding.