DON'T CRY FOR $HIRLEY $HERROD. SHE DOESN'T NEED THAT GOVERNMENT JOB. THE GOVERNMENT'S ALREADY GIVEN HER 13 MILLION DOLLARS.

This story is getting more and more ridiculous.

For the moment, I will not address the video of Shirley Sherrod speaking of not helping a white farmer as much as she could have, and whether or not she was being racist and smug in sending him to someone "of his own kind," or simply describing her attitude prior to an epiphany. I will not address whether or not Andrew Breitbart was duped into believing she is a bigot or has a jiu-jitsu media strategy that will take days to unfold.

For now, I'm just going to let everybody know that you don't have to worry about Shirley. Thanks to some digging by Washington Examiner reporter Tom Blumer, it has been discovered that Shirley Sherrod was appointed by Agriculture Secretary Vilsack for her USDA post on July 25, 2009, just days after she and her husband received from Vilsack as a cash settlement payment in a 1999 class action discrimination suit (...wait for it...) $13,000,000.00.

As explained at RuralDevelopment.org, circa July 2009:

The cash award acknowledges racial discrimination on the part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture for the years 1981-85. (President Reagan abolished the USDA Office of Civil Rights when he became President in 1981.) New Communities [the Sherrods' farming trust] is due to receive approximately $13 million ($8,247,560 for loss of land and $4,241,602 for loss of income; plus $150,000 each to Shirley and Charles [Sherrod] for pain and suffering). There may also be an unspecified amount in forgiveness of debt. This is the largest award so far in the minority farmers law suit (Pigford vs Vilsack).

From my quick, shallow research done in the wee hours of the morning, it appears to me that the Sherrods are one of the biggest beneficiaries of continual extraction of Congressional cash through the Ag Dept on behalf of black farmers who were (according to the 1999 Pigford v. Glickman consent decree) victims of discrimination during the Reagan Administration.

That settlement (known in D.C. shorthand as "Pigford Farms") is a sore subject to fiscally-minded legislators. Here's C-SPAN video of Steve King of Iowa, who sums up the Pigford Farms case on the House floor (May 13, 2008) by saying Pigford class action claimants had skyrocketed from around 3,000 estimated black farmers at the time the suit was filed to 96,000 after the announcement of the settlement, and that the money designated for the settlement will exponentially be increased, shuttling taxpayer funds to people who never actually suffered discrimination. In another C-SPAN video, Iowa Republican Senator Chuck Grassley refers to the phenomenon of Pigford Farms settlements paying off dead people.

Indeed, King's fears came to pass, as you can see here as Secretary Vilsack (former Iowa Governor) appeared alongside Jesse Jackson at a Rainbow/PUSH event ("Urban Stimulus") in which he explained that the original plans for the Pigford settlement, the discriminated farmers would receive on the average $50,000 apiece. But, he added, there were complaints from tens of thousands of alleged discriminated black farmers who somehow didn't understand the instructions about how to get paid. To accommodate them, Vilsack said, the Obamastration authorized an eventual 1.25 BILLION dollars, and left the door open for even "a bigger pot of money."

Oh, the date of that Vilsack explanation? June 28, 2009. Less than a month later, he would welcome Shirley Sherrod aboard for a government job that she apparently thought she would have as long as she wanted it. But according to the Rural Development press release, Sherrod was starting up New Communities, Inc. again, picking up where she left off when it shut down in 1985. Which is it? Either? Or both?

THE T-PARTY VS. THE C-WORD: A Coffee Party Fan Drops The C-Bomb on Michelle Malkin

Hey, folks, remember the "Coffee Party" movement begun by liberals/progressives/whatever as an effort to counter the Tea Party movement as the ObamaCare vote was coming to a head? In case you've forgotten as much as the participants apparently have, their credo was the following:

Our Vision: Reason and civility in public affairs; A gov't of public servants accountable to the People; A People committed to the Common Good & Civic Virtue.

One of the people with high hopes for the Coffee Party Movement was Jim Weatherwax of New York City. Here's what Jim wrote about it on its Facebook page March 15, 2010:

Heck, I like coffee better than tea anyway. Hope that coffee gives the Dems more balls to do the things they promise!!!!!

Jim seems to be like many of your neighbors (or, if you're living in a liberal conclave, most): He likes Mad Men, he loves cats, he hates puppy mills and the use of dogs as bait for sharks (which I didn't even know was going on), and supports ObamaCare. He doesn't like Sean Hannity or Glenn Beck, believes Debbie Schlussel only long enough to buy her debunked allegations about Sean Hannity, and thinks that "conservative talking heads" really don't like Obama "because he's African American."

Obviously, Jim also doesn't think much of the Tea Party movement. Here's what Jim wrote on March 22:

Can u really call it a tea party when u hurl racial epithets and homophobic comments?

(Set aside for the moment that there exists not a shred of evidence -- despite a $100,000.00 bounty -- that any racial epithets were spoken in that supposed incident at the Capitol building in which Democratic Congressmembers attempted to provoke acts of incivility.)

When Jim's sister Ellen Nelson joined the Facebook group "1,000,000+ people who disapprove of building a mosque at Ground Zero," Jim posted a note detailing the loss of Muslims in the attacks, and ended with this comment:

It is up to all of us to always promote tolerance and not hate and bigotry.

So, you would think that intolerant, hateful name-calling when debating political issues seems like something that Jim is totally against.

Right?

Well, it turns out, not so much.

Jim Weatherwax was one of more than a few liberal partisans who were motivated to recently write conservative columnist Michelle Malkin -- a daughter of Filipino immigrants to the U.S. -- with hateful notes loaded with profanity, sexually-charged Asian and Filipino racial stereotypes, and wishes of death and harm. Here's what Malkin posted earlier today from her hate mail bag:

from James Weatherwax jameslwax@yahoo.com
to writemalkin@gmail.com
date Thu, Jun 24, 2010 at 6:09 AM
subject Your comments
mailed-by yahoo.com
signed-by yahoo.com
hide details Jun 24

You’re just an angry cunt. Your vitriol towards this President and the administration goes a lot deeper than on just a political level. You might want to look into some good therapy.

I just shake my head and go enjoy my day.

Now, it would seem Jim is lying here. If he was being truthful, he would have written, "I just shake my head, write an angry email with a vulgar slur in it, and then go enjoy my day."

It seems to me this is the reason why the Coffee Party never got percolating: The HuffPo/DKos/Comedy Central people who were supposed to make it a force to be reckoned with couldn't tolerate the lofty "reason and civil[ity]" aims. Their type is more used to things like calling Malkin a "Filipino prostitute," a "slut right-wing whore" or hope she and her family die in a traffic accident. And now that so many outspoken conservatives are female, how they love to drop that C-bomb.

Maybe it's the coffee that has gotten you all jittery, tense, and nervous, and some tea would do you good.

Now, some might suggest we all write Jim Weatherwax and give him a piece of our minds.  I say, let's NOT.  I have a better idea: Send a note of support to Jim's sister, Ellen Nelson, who mildly countered her brother's support of ObamaCare (which had passed moments before) in these exchanges (In reverse order chronologically; the 219 that Jim references is the number of House votes the Senate bill finally received after the Stupak betrayal). 

Ellen was able to do something her brother was not: Disagree with someone else without being disagreeable. Let's continue to encourage that.

(Cross-posted at L.N. Smithee's Facebook Page.)

HOW LOST FINALE WAS LIKE A BEATLES REUNION (WITH A TWIST)

The following is my reaction to The Daily Caller's Jim Treacher, whose blog post "Just One Question For Lost Fans" asked, "So what did you hate about it?"

I have always preferred non-fiction to fiction. I feel cheated when I am asked to care about non-existent people in a perturbing situation and how they willl end up and how the situation will be resolved only to find that the creator of the scenario decided to leave things up to the reader's own interpretation in the end.


EXCUSE ME?


You've been stringing me along, twisting my emotions around your little finger, making me anticipate the answers to the questions your tale raises, and then you want ME to help you write YOUR ending for you? THAT'S YOUR JOB! IMHO, that's just a hedge against upsetting some readers who want things to be resolved in a definite manner one way or another. It's not creative, it's lazy and cowardly.


As I tweeted earlier, I had expected the Lost finale to be something mildly mysterious like Orson Welles' timeless 1941 masterpiece Citizen Kane (spoiler video here; no embed available) and got instead an ending more akin to Donnie Darko, the vastly overrated 2001 teen angst-fueled time-travel crazy quilt that writer-director Richard Kelly (The Box) is still trying to successfully follow up:






But since then, I've come up with a better way to describe my feeling.


Imagine, for a moment, that John Lennon was never assassinated and that George Harrison hadn't passed away, and the Beatles had resolved their differences long enough to have ONE more concert. You are in the front row as they are playing "A Day In The Life" for the first and last time live. They play and sing flawlessly heading up to the iconic final "endless" E chord.






Lennon drops his guitar, and heads for a grand piano on the stage. McCartney sets down his bass, and another grand is rolled up for him. Ringo tears from behind his drum set to get behind his own, and finally, Harrison follows suit. The crowd goes wild, waiting for the Fab Four to re-enact one of pop music's most amazing moments.


Lennon gives the signal to the others, they look down at the ivories, lift their hands over their shoulders, drop them down with ferocity, and play...


..."Shave and a haircut, two bits."


How would you process this? You must count yourself lucky to be one of the few to witness the Beatles in person, but at the same time, you also have to figure, why supply such a stupid, insipid ending to a legendary song?

For the record:  Treacher actually enjoyed the finale, despite its flaws.

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IS NANCY PELOSI'S PRIEST FATHER GUIDO SARDUCCI?

It's well documented that Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) considers herself an "ardent practicting Catholic" (albeit one that holds views regarding the value of unborn life that are the diametric opposite of the Vatican). Rarely, though, does anybody ask who advises her regarding issues of faith. Who is Congresswoman Pelosi's Reverend Wright?  Her Jim Wallis? 

A fair indication of who that person might be is the way that the woman born a Democrat Party princess likes to highlight the way that the artistic community could benefit from ObamaCare. 

Here is Pelosi  on May 13, 2010, as she explains in a speech before the Asian-American & Pacific Islander Summit that ObamaCare would allow musicians to (ahem) forego conventional employment:

 

"[I]f you want to be creative, and be a musician, or whatever, you can leave your work, focus on your talent, your skill, your passion, your aspiration, because you will have health care, and you don't have to be job-locked."

Surprising?  Not really.  This is just an extension of the line of reasoning "reasoning" she expressed in her interview on MSNBC's Rachel Maddow Show on March 16, 2010:

"Think of an economy where people could be an artist or a photographer or a writer without worrying about keeping their day job in order to have health insurance..."

Where could such views on the lifestyles of artists come from? Maybe this is an indication of whom she recognizes as her spiritual leader: This gentleman, who did this commercial back in 1982:

That Father Sarducci's view of the artistic community might have influenced parishioner Pelosi makes about as much sense as anything regarding her.  But of course, most people who know of Father Sarducci from the early years of Saturday Night Live are aware that he is, in fact, not a priest; he is comedian Don Novello, who created the brilliantly deadpan Sarducci character after purchasing the priest outfit from a thrift store operated by the St. Vincent de Paul Society. In 1981, Novello actually was arrested in Vatican City for "impersonating a priest" while trying to conduct a Sarducci photo shoot where picture-taking was prohibited. 

Fortunately for Ms. Pelosi, in Washington, D.C., there are no such laws prohibiting impersonating a competent public servant.

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FAN OF "LOS SUNS" EJECTED FROM GAME AFTER REFUSING TO TURN PRO-ARIZONA SHIRT INSIDE OUT

Video from http://www.abc15.com, Copyright 2010 The E.W. Scripps Co.

This is the kind of nonsense that happens when you start getting partisan fights involved with sports. Unlike politics, spectator sports truly unifies diverse groups of people. The President of the Suns reversed this particular situation, showing he has more sense than the owner, upon whose order the "LOS SUNS" statement was made.

This is a step in the right direction, but the sports media majority -- which is, after all, a subsidiary of the MSM - are egging the politicization on, pushing to make every arena, field, and stadium a left vs. right battleground. ENOUGH! This schtuff's gotta stop, and it's gotta stop right now.

MASTERS' BLAST AT TIGER WOODS IS OUT OF BOUNDS

On Wednesday, April 7, 2010, Augusta National Golf Club chairman Billy Payne socked it to Tiger Woods the night before his return to professional golf.  Woods today ended his self-imposed hiatus to participate in the Augusta National's Masters tournament, and Payne let it be known that he is disappointed in Tiger (although I don't recall anybody saying they were really interested in knowing how he feels).  Here's video from Golf Channel coverage of the statement, via YouTube:



National Review Online's Kathryn Jean Lopez's approving comment, below:




Here's what I emailed K-Lo in response:

You wrote of Billy Payne's slap at Tiger Woods: "As someone who has done some defending of Augusta in my past, it made me smile."  That's very interesting to me.  Why were you pleased by Payne's "appropriate welcome," as you put it?  Would you like to see such media statements to follow Woods all over the PGA tour?  Is it your opinion that Payne said something new that had not been said in at least a million different ways?


And exactly who is Billy Payne to make such remarks?  (I mean it -- who IS he?  I never heard of him!)  Is he now setting himself up as moral arbiter not only of the game of golf, but of its players as well?  Are we to believe that Tiger is the first man to tee off at Augusta that has cheated on his wife multiple times?   If Payne was so wounded by learning the truth about Tiger that he had to tell the world all about it, why didn't he just tell Tiger he wasn't welcome there any more?


I am no defender of Tiger's lifestyle, but his troubles are all personal, and only tangentially related to the game of golf.  If he had been found to have used performance enhancing drugs, that would have been a different matter altogether, and one in which Payne's opinion would be relevant.  As it stands, it just seems Payne felt the need to focus a spotlight on himself so that the people around the world who don't dig Tiger any longer can hear him say "Me too!"

I have not received a response from Ms. Lopez, whom I agree with much of the time.  I don't expect to get a note in return, as she probably is deluged with mail on many other issues of more lasting import.   But Payne ticked me off so much I had to say something about it.

MEDIAITE: JOKING ABOUT RUSH DYING? FUNNY! JOKING ABOUT TEDDY'S BUTT? YOU'RE OUT!

Well, isn't this interesting.  For the first time since I discovered Mediaite.com, the media industry blog founded by former MSNBC reporter Dan Abrams, a comment of mine has been deleted.

Mediaite's Senior Editor Glynnis MacNicol, the rabid leftist former Air America co-host who poses as a news writer, authored a thread linking to an op-ed on the The Onion bylined by "Rush Limbaugh."  It is beyond a doubt satirical, but she pointedly accentuated her clear warning that Rush didn't write it by adding this: "though [it's] likely there are parts to it some folks very much wish were real ..." 

She doesn't specify which parts she means, but there are a lot to choose from that would be right up her alley, which is located in the heart of the Hate-Rushbury neighborhood.  For example, the part in which The Onion's "Rush" writes:

What I should really do is just commit suicide. I have this little Sunday ritual I started around the time I publicly compared the torture at Abu Ghraib to a fraternity prank, where I climb into my Jacuzzi and put a gun in my mouth. But I can never work up the guts to pull the trigger. A few times I came close to overdosing on prescription pain pills, but my g--damn doctors were always there to save me.

(snip)

You know what? I wish someone would just kill me. I'm serious ...

As can be observed in my first comment on the thread, I was unable to access the Onion piece because it is blocked by my employer, and was blissfully unaware of the extent of its malice -- although I suspected it was what it turned out to be.  You see, like too many progressives, Glynnis loves herself some profane rants about conservatives. A recent example: Her breathless approval of potty-mouthed so-called journalist Matt Taibbi's poison-penned response to moderate conservative David Brooks' views on the history of Haiti's government.

Frequent leftist Mediaite commenter "The Real Royal King" has a similar mindset.  He wrote that he "enjoyed the part [of the Onion piece] where the Reflective Rush describes his fans along his funeral procession" after succeeding his goal of achieving death, which he followed up with some pedestrian jibes about Rush's weight (which is in a down cycle currently).  At that point, I thought it was a perfect opportunity to illustrate the hypocrisy of people who pretend Rush is as cruel to other people as they are to him.  So when RRK wrote ...

Remember the pre-gastric collar Rush at his blubbery zenith, adorned in an Orson Wells (sic) all black ensemble, sweating, wildly and spastically jumping up and down and thrashing his arms all about? That was a self-parody even the Onion couldn’t hope to mimic. I understand Haiti is in desperate need of tents. Rush should be a mensch. Hundreds of people could be housed under that fabric.

...I knew I could make him pop off by just slightly tweaking that remark, and replied:

They’re doing fine with Ted Kennedy’s old swim trunks.

This predictably got the following irony-free reaction out of RRK:

How nice to joke about a much-adored deceased individual.

Of course, that is what RRK was doing just about an hour before -- joking about a much-adored individual (i.e., Rush, a living broadcasting legend), "enjoy[ing]" imagining he was a victim of suicide.  When I turned his insult on one of his own heroes, he cried foul, never realizing I was doing no more than holding a mirror to his ugly attitude. 

When I revealed my gambit, showing RRK he was "a hypocrite with a capital HIPPO," I wondered how he'd react.  He didn't reply, but I got a reply in a sense when my comment was deleted, presumably by Ms. MacNicol. 

I find this to be ironic in the extreme, and here's why: According to someone who loved Ted Kennedy, he also liked to joke about himself. And Ted was also known to have a laugh at the expense of "a much-adored deceased individual."

You may have heard of that person. Her name was Mary Jo Kopechne.

Kopechne was the forever 28-year-old young woman that Senator Edward M. Kennedy literally drove to her drowning death off of a bridge coming from Martha's Vineyard's Chappaquiddick Island in 1969.

Where did I get the idea that Ted was in the habit about laughing about Chappaquiddick, you might ask?  Rush?  O'Reilly?  Beck?  Alex Jones?

Uh, no. National Public Radio.

The morning after he passed away, NPR's Katty Kay interviewed former Newsweek magazine editor Ed Klein on The Diane Rehm Show.  Klein said the following as he concluded his reflections on Teddy's life:

KATTY KAY, NPR HOST: Ed Klein, that's what I'm hearing today, that people are sad at his passing, and yet celebrating this huge life and its huge long list of accomplishments.


ED KLEIN, FORMER NEWSWEEK EDITOR: I think he'd be the last person who would want us, those he's left behind ... to, um, be, uh ... morose and, and full of bathos. I think he, he --

KAY: He would come in with a big guffawing laugh and make us laugh too.


KLEIN: He would, yes. You're so right, he would. And he'd probably have a joke to tell as well.


KAY: At his own expense.


KLEIN: Well y'know, he, I don't know if you know this or not but, one of his favorite topics of humor was indeed Chappaquiddick itself. And he would ask people, "Have you heard any new jokes about Chappaquiddick?" I mean, that is just the most amazing thing. It's not that he didn't feel remorse about the death of Mary Jo Kopechne, but that he still always saw, um, the other side of everything and the ridiculous side of things, too.


KAY: Ed Klein, former foreign editor of Newsweek, and author of a new book on Ted Kennedy ... We are remembering the life of Senator Ted Kennedy, who died last night after a battle with brain cancer at the age of 77.  Do stay listening.

I'm sure there are some other people out there who listened or read what Klein said, and it makes perfect sense to them; Kennedy could somehow solicit jokes about the incident that killed a passenger in his car without being a ghoul.  If you are one of those people, I invite you to comment on this thread and tell me why you think so.  Enlighten me.

There are a lot of reasons one could poke fun at Ted Kennedy: His weight, his libido, his drinking problem, his being the runt of the Kennedy litter. I've joked about those things in the past, but some years ago, I decided that it wasn't cool to joke about Chappaquiddick.  Not only because it trivialized the life of Mary Jo Kopechne, but because the joke wasn't so much on Ted as much as it was on the rest of us.  The fact that he never served time in prison and was not expelled from the Senate by his colleagues is a classic miscarriage of justice.  He escaped punishment because the regal aura of the Kennedy clan overwhelmed any sense of equity that would have seen him treated as would any other man who drove off of a bridge, left his passenger to die, made himself scarce until the next morning, and spun a preposterous story.

Many progressives feel that Kennedy's life of public service atoned for his complicity in Kopechne's demise, with one even suggesting that Mary Jo was the "catalyst for the most successful Senate career in history ... Who knows -- maybe she'd feel it was worth it."  New York Times writer and Kennedy biographer Adam Clymer actually wrote (in 1999): “[His] achievements as a senator have towered over his time, changing the lives of far more Americans than remember the name Mary Jo Kopechne.”  How sick is that?  Mary Jo was a human being who deserved a full life.  Through his negligence (to put it mildly), Ted Kennedy ended her life. But when she becomes the topic, some people use themselves as human shields to protect Kennedy from accepting responsibility as if he were their own child.

I suppose the motive for my comment's deletion was disrespect for the recently departed.  IMHO, my mild disrespect shown to Ted Kennedy (which was only to make a point about the hypocrisy of being delighted by death fantasies about Rush Limbaugh) pales in comparison to the disrespect shown to Mary Jo Kopechne's shortened existence by Kennedy cultists eager to dismiss her as a nothing but a right-wing talking point.  I thought at first I might suggest in the memory of Teddy, people who think of Mary Jo as an obstacle to his majestic memory ought to get a check-up to make sure they don't have brain cancer, but on second thought, it seems more like a symptom of heart disease.

.

"MASS IS NOT GOING TO ELECT A REPUB TO REPLACE A KENNEDY."

This is from the excellent blog Le-gal In-sur-rec-tion, written by Cornell Law Professor William A. Jacobson.

Jacobson was one of the prime movers of the Scott Brown uprising, who not only donated to the Brown campaign, but who traveled to Needham, MA to help out.

When word leaked out that left-friendly polls were showing Brown within the margin of error, The Boston Globe released a poll suggesting Coakley was up by as much as 15%.  This impressed "BUCKJOHNSON," the resident gadfly of the blog.

The moral of this story: Never make a bet on a tip from BUCKJOHNSON.
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MOZILLA: NEVER MIND THE HAITIANS, HERE'S THE LEMURS

I signed on Sunday evening, opened Firefox, and found this (click to enlarge):


Am I being unfair, or does this seem pretty darn tone-deaf in the light of recent events?

American Red Cross Haiti Relief

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"HONEST INJUNS" AND DISHONEST DEMOCRATS

The following is my reaction at Mediaite.com to the hubbub over Harry Reid's comments as quoted in the new book Game Change.

_____________________________________

You can bet your raspberries that had Mitt Romney said what Reid said, the leftweb and BSNBC would be attributing it to his devout Mormonism, throwing that atop their bogus circumstantial case that Obama opponents are racists. Meanwhile, there are probably tens of millions of Dem partisans who don’t even know Reid is an LDS member.

Regarding [RNC chairman Michael] Steele saying “Honest Injun” — it shouldn’t have been uttered simply for the sake of avoiding controversy, but it’s crystal clear that he wasn’t going out of his way to be offensive. When you actually, y’know, think about the phrase, it isn’t meant to be a slur (like “squaw”) or demeaning and slanderous (like “indian giver”) — it’s a way of saying that you’re telling the truth in the same way Native Americans had among many a reputation for honesty. In other words, Steele was in effect saying “You could trust my words as if I was an Indian.”

Speaking as a black man, my belief is that Reid’s quote is not so much insulting to Obama or to black people in general as it is to the black electorate. Remember what Reid said about Obama not displaying “Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one”? Why else would Obama “want to have one” unless it was to fool some black voters into thinking he was NOT “too white”?

Indeed, this is something that you can watch Obama doing early in his campaign. Watch him on March 7, 2007 in Selma, AL in this speech.






Obama spoke at the famous Brown A.M.E. Church from which the 1965 protest began, and talked about how black women decided “wurr gow-na walk instedda ride the bus” (1:00), how his white mother said “there’s some good crazaness goin’ ow-an” (2:45) “stirrin’ across tha cunt-tra” (3:00), and portraying the Selma marches as the impetus for his very existence! Obama’s descendant-of-slave-owners mother and his goat-herding father met as a result, he said, of the Kennedy family’s grant to Africans to help them emigrate to America. When they met, their marriage and his birth were deemed feasible because their attitudes were changed when the Selma marches took place. “I’m here,” Obama told the congregation, because “y’all sacrificed for me.”

Of course, that’s pure compost: Obama was born in 1961, and he was three years old when the first Selma march took place. His father arrived in the United States because of that scholarship program, but before the Kennedys got involved with the funding of it. Here’s the kicker: By the date of the first Selma march on March 7, 1965, Barack Obama Sr. and Stanley Ann Dunham had been divorced for almost a year (March 20, 1964).

The narrative of Selma sending “ripples of hope” that made his birth possible makes no sense whatsoever unless Obama took Dr. Emmett Brown’s DeLorean to get to the Brown A.M.E. Church.

DON'T MENTION IT, COLBY HALL (UPDATED)

Take a close look at the Mediaite.com web page about Rush Limbaugh's chest pains as it was captured late night, December 31, 2009.



Here was my post to the thread minutes later:


This is the way the thread looked this morning:


It's called a "hat tip," Colby. I know, you just couldn't remember the phrase for it.

You're welcome.

UPDATE: Colby Hall responds on the thread:


*

SOUNDTRACK FROM FLIGHT 253 - THE MOVIE

James Brown - "Hot Pants"

AC/DC - "TNT"

Bruce Springsteen - "I'm On Fire"

Buster Poindexter - "Hot Hot Hot"

Debbie Harry - "Backfired"

Queen - "Put Out The Fire"

Madonna - "Burning Up"

Tony Camillo's Bazuka - "Dynomite"

and the one you knew was coming...

Jerry Lee Lewis - "Great Balls of Fire"

DUTCH DIRECTORS JASPER SCHURINGA AND THEO VAN GOGH: THE ANGLE THE MSM WILL DELIBERATELY IGNORE

I was shocked to discover that the man who doused the flames begun by self-described Al-Qaeda operative Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab in his apparent attempt to blow up Northwest Flight 253 over American soil was, of all people, a "Dutch video director" named Jasper Schuringa (at right in a Facebook photo). Why? Because it was another Dutch director whose untimely demise on November 2, 2004 set the current tone of cowardice in the art world toward criticism of Islamist extremism.

Director Theodor "Theo" Van Gogh, great-grandnephew of legendary painter Vincent Van Gogh, died on an Amsterdam sidewalk after being shot off of his bicycle, stabbed in the chest multiple times as he begged for his life, shot and stabbed again, and finally, having a knife plunged in his chest by his assailant.

What provoked the deadly attack? Van Gogh had directed and co-produced a 10-minute film titled Submission (which is "Islam" translated into English) from a script written by Dutch Member of Parliament Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Somali-born woman who rejected Islam. The film portrayed a composite veiled Muslim woman (wearing a partially transparent burqa) speaking aloud the prayers of four females mistreated by faithful Muslim men in their lives in seeming accord with the Qu'ran. Passages that purportedly condone or authorize whipping as punishment for fornication, forced marriage, domestic violence and sexual molestation are written across parts of women's beaten bodies in the film.

As a prominent politician, Hirsi Ali was entitled to some sort of security. Civilian Van Gogh, on the other hand, received death threats after the film's release, but didn't take them seriously, dismissing the idea that he should employ a bodyguard. Obviously, he should have; the knife that you can see sticking out of Van Gogh's chest as he bled to death on the street was more than just the murderer's coup de grace, it attached a five-page document to him that included an open letter to Hirsi Ali. The message: You're next.

Who killed Van Gogh? A radical Muslim Dutch-Moroccan named Mohammed Bouyeri (below in mugshot), then 26, who was apprehended soon after he fled the scene of the crime. He was wearing a djelleba, a long traditional Muslim formal garment, and on his person, he had a copy of a poem anticipating his glorious death in a shootout, which, of course, didn't work out for him (sound familiar?)

Bouyeri refused to speak in his own defense at his trial because he didn't recognize the authority of the Dutch government. He did have this to say to Van Gogh's mother after he was sentenced: "I don’t feel your pain. I don’t have any sympathy for you. I can’t feel for you because I think you’re a non-believer." No regrets from Bouyeri either: "I take complete responsibility for my actions. I acted purely in the name of my religion ... I can assure you that one day, should I be set free, I would do exactly the same, exactly the same." He was sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole, the most severe sentence the Netherlands could have given him.

The brutal murder of Van Gogh and the deadly Islamist violence that targeted Denmark and Danish interests after the publication of political cartoons satirizing the prophet Mohammed have served to muzzle artists around the world who pride themselves on being bravely acerbic on the topic of religious fanaticism. Their generally-agreed upon standards of artistic integrity ought to have them shining a light and holding a magnifying glass over the terrorism, oppression, and violent abuses against women radical Islam tolerates. Instead, with the image of Van Gogh's corpse sprawled on a downtown Amsterdam street fresh in their minds as if yesterday (if their memories of the fatwa against novelist Salman Rushdie were forgotten), they cower and surrender the principles they want you to believe they value more than anything.

Producers and directors' fear of reprisals for treating Muslim terrorists the way they regularly target (and often slander) Christians and Jews has made itself manifest in many ways. Just a sample: The switch of the nuke-wielding Palestinian terrorists of Tom Clancy's novel The Sum of All Fears to neo-Nazis in the film version; Clancy protege Vince Flynn revealing that none of his best-selling spy novels had yet been turned into movies because he demanded that the terrorist villains remain Arab fanatics and not -- in one change proposed by a studio executive -- Filipinos (not making it up, folks); Viacom's Comedy Central cable channel allowing the animators of South Park to splatter an image of Jesus Christ in excrement, but censoring an image of Mohammed simply standing in a doorway (more on that here and here); director Roland Emmerich's admission that while St. Peter's Basilica and the massive Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro were OK to CGI-obliterate in his latest end-of-the-world flick 2012, he pulled his punch when it came to the Grand Mosque in Saudi Arabia.

Call it serendipity, call it synchronicity, call it karma, call it divine intervention, call it what you want. That one Dutch film director should be killed by a Muslim terrorist while another Dutch film director possibly saved at least hundreds of lives from a Muslim terrorist is a remarkable coincidence. And one that you will likely read about only in places like mine, an unremarkable blog, because the mainstream media is also caught up in the same political-correctness game as the so-called art world.

THE KEVIN GOTKIN PROBLEM: Mediaite.com Columnist Plays The "You Really Hate Me!" Game

NOTE: The following is my reaction to this editorial from Mediaite.com's Kevin Gotkin, who takes on the Wall Street Journal's Peggy Noonan after she wrote this December 19, 2009 column titled "The Adam Lambert Problem" regarding the controversy over the shocking performance by the 2009 American Idol runner-up on ABC-TV's live broadcast of the 2009 American Music Awards.

Mr. Gotkin:

Before reading your column, I read the Peggy Noonan piece at your link. Then I returned and finished reading your reaction, and noted this comment:

This is [a] story of poor journalism.

I agree wholeheartedly. But the poor journalism is not Noonan's, it's yours. (Not that this is new to Mediaite).

First of all, the illustration you chose to accompany your editorial would be fitting if you were taking on Rev. Pat Robertson, Dr. James Dobson, or Phyllis Schafly, whose objections to the expanding influence of the gay rights movement are deeply based in religious belief. Peggy Noonan is not of that sandwich-board ilk, and it's dishonest of you (or the person who chose that image) to imply that she is somehow.

Then, you employ the deceitful device used increasingly by professional opinionators left and right: “code language.” That is, to make the words of someone with whom you disagree seem more objectionable to the uninformed by suggesting the reader shouldn't believe the words that were actually spoken. No, readers should ignore the actual meaning of words, and instead embrace your perception of what their darker inner thoughts must be.

You wrote, “Noonan’s problem is that she hinges on homophobia.” Then, after quoting a paragraph in which Noonan almost apologizes for making Lambert's perverted display the topic of a column (“I don't mean to make too much of it”) you wrote:

“Translation from poorly codified indiscretion: Gay people are ruining America.”

Those are just your warm-up pitches, as you continue:

I can’t ignore disturbing shorthand homophobia. It’s a not-so-subtle way of talking that allows people of like minds to say just about everything except the offensive things they actually want to say.

Of course, Kevin, it never seem to occur to people like you that perhaps the reason why they don't say “the offensive things” is because they actually don't want to say them.

This is eerily reminiscent of another writer who hears things that weren't actually said – The New York Times' Maureen Dowd, who made a fool of herself when she wrote that “Fair or not,” she “heard” Congressman Joe Wilson silently call President Obama “boy” in his “You lie!” outburst in Obama's health care speech. Dowd can be found on that Pulitzer Prize list you linked, and her continued presence on it devalues its prestige.

This is also the main weapon used by the likes of Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, and other race hustlers (let me interject at this point that I am a black man); they are cocked and ready to accuse people of bias or bigotry without a shred of evidence, sometimes demanding a ransom of millions (in “donations”) to remove the tar they've slathered on their targets.

All such arguments are predicated on the idea that one knows what other people are really thinking if they don't accept (or openly reject) your values. Joe Wilson calls Obama a liar (accurately)? He's a white guy from South Carolina, so he's a bigot – he just doesn't say “boy” out loud. A cartoonist draws up a gag about a mad chimpanzee being the author of the stimulus bill? Obviously, the chimp represents Obama, even though Obama didn't write the bill, and the cartoonist said that wasn't his intent at all. Carrie Prejean doesn't think same-sex marriage should be instituted into law, so that must mean that she secretly despised the gay men that helped her win Miss California USA.

See, there's so much you can learn about people's true motives and feelings by what they don't say. Right?

Your argument against Noonan falls apart like a Jenga puzzle when you start defending gay values. I'm not saying that gays don't have values, I'm saying that in her piece Noonan never accused gays of not having them. Once again, that was your perception of Noonan, fair or not. She was specifically focused on the deliberately provocative performance by Lambert ("faux oral sex" featuring "S&M play," "bondage gear," "same-sex makeouts" and "walking a man and woman around the stage on a leash”) and the fact that it all took place on broadcast – that is to say “free” -- television. As Noonan wrote well before she specifically addressed Lambert:

For years now, without anyone declaring it or even noticing it, we've had a compromise on television. Do you want, or will you allow into your home, dramas and comedies that, however good or bad, are graphically violent, highly sexualized, or reflective of cultural messages that you believe may be destructive? Fine, get cable. Pay for it. Buy your premium package, it's your money, spend it as you like.

But the big broadcast networks are for everyone. They are free, they are available on every television set in the nation, and we watch them with our children. The whole family's watching. Higher, stricter standards must maintain.

You responded by suggesting this was evidence of Noonan's "poor journalism" because of her shaky "reasoning," and that:

Without distrust for the “alternative” lifestyle Adam Lambert now represents, Noonan’s piece comes across as aloof and out of touch. But with it, she rallies the base. Proof? That fact that she didn’t write this article after the Britney and Madonna kiss.

If you knew as much about Peggy Noonan as I do, you would know that she's not a big fan of "rallying the base" -- she did just the opposite a year ago, joining a chorus of urban intellectual conservatives in extolling the potential of Barack Obama to be a great centrist Chief Executive. I knew that wouldn't happen.

I never went to J-school, (I'm presuming that you did, Kevin -- maybe I'm wrong) but I always try to check my facts. Sometimes I fall short, and write something that is technically inaccurate, but I always try to get the big honking hippopotamus facts right. Such as the fact that the Britney-Madonna liplock was NOT on broadcast television, it was ... on cable, specifically the 2003 MTV Video Music Awards.

Another huge error of yours was linking a 1993 Andrew Sullivan NYT editorial about gays serving in the armed services openly as an example of "Gay Values, Truly Conservative." I won't go into the salacious details of Mr. Sullivan's values in practice (all of you who have the stomach for that can Google his name with the phrase "milky loads" or "power glutes"), but I wouldn't cite a man obsessed with Sarah Palin's uterus as a good way to get people OVER homophobia.

But I guess such dead-end rhetorical devices are a part of what you call "journalism that speaks through ingenuity instead of ignorance..." Is that what you believe you've accomplished here, Mr. Gotkin, this collection of prejudicial, presumptive, stereotypical assertions based in a gelatinous foundation? You are mistaken.

EWWWW: REAL LIFE IMITATES CREEPY 1965 COMEDY RECORD

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Man dug up wife's corpse and slept beside it for five years 'for hugs'

Published Date: 26 November 2009

A Vietnamese man dug up his wife's corpse and slept beside it for five years because he wanted to hug her in bed, an online newspaper says.

The 55-year-old man from a small town in the central province of Quang Nam opened up his wife's grave in 2004, moulded clay around the remains to give the figure of a woman, put clothes on her and then placed her in his bed, Vietnamnet.vn said.

The man, Le Van, told the website that after his wife died in 2003 he slept on top of her grave, but about 20 months later he worried about rain, wind and cold, so he decided to dig a tunnel into the grave "to sleep with her".

His children found out, though, and prevented him from going to the grave. So one night in November 2004 he dug up his wife's remains and took them home, Vietnamnet reported.

The website carried a photo of Van with the figure of his wife, which is still in his home.

The father of seven said neighbours did not dare visit the house for several years.

"I'm a person that does things differently. I'm not like normal people," he was quoted as saying.

"Not like normal people?" No (ahem) kidding, Sherlock.

Just as weird as this story is (if it's true - for all I know, this is a joke on everyone who can't read Vietnamese), it's even weirder to those of us who have heard what has been called one of the worst songs (albeit a novelty song) ever recorded: "I Want My Baby Back" by Jimmy Cross, released in 1965. It was a parody of the mini-trend of pop songs in the era about young romances that came to sudden and violent ends ("Teen Angel" by Mark Dinning, "Last Kiss" by Wayne Cochran, and "Leader of The Pack" by The Shangri-Las, among others).







A bit of additional trivia about "I Want My Baby Back": Directing the music behind the singing and narration of Cross were Gil Garfield and Perry Botkin Jr. Botkin later worked behind the scenes as an arranger for such luminaries as Barbra Streisand, Bobby Darin, Carly Simon, and the vastly underrated Maureen McGovern, but is best-known for the song millions hear every weekday: The theme song of the long-running CBS soap opera The Young & The Restless (written with collaborator Barry DeVorzon) which was released as a single in 1976 under the title "Nadia's Theme" and peaked at #8.

If you're still creeped out by the Nam dude, you may want to cleanse your palate by listening to "Nadia's Theme" and watching the great Nadia Comaneci in action.

BRITNEY SPEARS SINKS TO NEW LOW... AND GOES RIGHT TO THE TOP

So you're an ambitious but barely-talented singer with a voice that gets annoying in large doses. You got away with being cute and playfully naughty early in your career, but your protestations that you were preserving your virginity like a good Christian Southern girl should went up in smoke when your Lotharian ex-boyfriend (who also is a singer with an annoying voice) blew the whistle.

Faced with the fact that there are other pretty singers on the scene popping up regularly, what can you do to stay relevant?

Obvious answer: You act like a you're a whore on stage and in your videos. Stuff like cooing squeaking your uncontrollable desire for some guy while wearing almost nothing and carrying a snake around (get it?). You lock lips with a 40-something woman on national television who is already known worldwide as a whore. Then on your next CD you include a song about pleasuring yourself, even though that's been done before by more accomplished songstresses.

But what if that gets old, you get older, and the talented (some more than others) youngsters keep coming to steal what you believe is rightfully your thunder?

You act like a whore in real life, too -- going out to clubs while your (second) ex-husband cares for your two young children, being very careful to be seen getting out of automobiles wearing a miniskirt and nothing underneath. Soon enough, there is a minimum five-figure bounty on pics of you in states of undress, and breathless paparazzi follow you around as if they were pigeons and you were a leaking bag of bird seed. You capitalize on that by releasing a collection of songs about your hyperdriven notoriety as if this wasn't what you should have known you were cultivating all along.

But now, there's another girl who has become the belle of the ball; not only is she another good Southern girl, she actually cut a Christian pop CD that barely sold any copies. She took a page out of your book, sluttied up her image, changed her last name and became a heroine to teen girls experimenting with lesbianism.

And she is a better singer than you are. She needs just a little bit of computerized sweetening -- she doesn't have to sound like an android to hit the right notes like you do.

What are you going to do to stay on top?

Apparently, this. From Billboard.com:

Britney Spears is making the most of her sex symbol status, again. This morning (Sept. 29), the one-time Disney Channel child star whose personal life has at times eclipsed her musical output ["at times??"-LNS], premiered "3," a new single about the pleasures of polyamory, on New York radio station Z-100. The song goes to radio everywhere today and is part of "Britney Spears The Singles Collection," a hits compilation due Nov. 24 on Jive.

Produced by Swedish hitmaker Max Martin (Katy Perry, Kelly Clarkson), "3" finds Spears singing about the racy subject of a ménage a trios (sic) with her signature coy delivery. "Three is a charm, two is not the same," Spears coos seductively on the verse. "I don't see the harm, so are you game?"

Here are some more of the lyrics:

Merrier the more
Triple fun that way
Twister on the floor
What do you ... say?

Are ... you in
Livin' in sin is the new thing (yeah)
Are ... you in
I-I-I-I am countin'!

(Chorus)
1, 2, 3
Not only you and me
Got one eighty degrees
And I'm caught in between

1, 2, 3
Peter, Paul & Mary
Gettin' down with 3P
Everybody loves [edited]

(snip)

Three is a charm
Two is not the same
I don't see the harm
So are you ... game?

Lets' make a team
Make 'em say my name
Lovin' the extreme
Now are you ... game?

(snip)

What we do is innocent
Just for fun and nothin' meant
If you don't like the company
Let's just do it you and me
You and me...
Or three....
Or four....
- On the floor!

Yeah, that's the stuff. Never mind pussyfooting around with smooching girls while boozing. No silly games of strip poker. You're going for a threesome, and maybe even a foursome! Let's see the newbies top THAT!

Never mind that it's likely that kind of activity (by you and others around you) that has made your life a shambles when you're off stage. You know, your "real" life. The one in which you treated marriage like it was meaningless, made a foolish decision about whom you chose to father your children, which you almost lost due to your literally insane behavior.

Never mind that you're promoting promiscuity as innocent fun. It's not like it hasn't been done before, and besides, you're not responsible for the influence you wield on your devoted fans.

Keep telling yourself that. I mean, it's not like you were influenced by Madonna, or something.

But seriously, can the strategy work? Is making a hit record really as easy as being really, really, really easy?
.
Looks like it.

"3" has entered Billboard magazine's Hot 100 on top of the chart, making it the first recording NOT featuring an American Idol finalist to achieve #1 in its first week since 1998 ("Doo Wop (That Thing)" by Lauryn Hill, whose CD The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill swept the Grammy Awards).

All this despite the fact that "3" is a crappy record. Even for you.

God only knows what the video will look like.

P.S. to Chris Crocker: No, I won't. Deal with it.

.

MEMO TO S.F. CHRONICLE'S CARLA MARINUCCI: YOU LIE!

The following is my reaction to San Francisco Chronicle writer Carla Marinucci's whitewashing of that profane outburst against Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger (RINO-California) by California State Assemblyman (and former stand-up comedian) Tom Ammiano (D-San Francisco), a flamboyant homosexual.

The original comment can be found here, if it hasn't yet been deleted by a Chron moderator (who have in the past abused their own TOS to delete posts critical of reporters).

____________________________________________________

Carla, Carla, Carla, you're a liar.

How dare you call yourself a legitimate journalist and pretend that Tom Ammiano said something as benign as "Kiss my gay ass" when in fact, he said "Kiss my f*ggot ass." Twice. And then he took the podium and dropped the f-bomb. Twice. You didn't even mention that part.

This is how stupid you think your readers are, Carla: You posted the video on your blog that proves you're a liar! You obviously thought nobody would think to click on it and listen (or at the least READ THE CAPTION)!




BTW, don't try to tell us that you couldn't publish the word "f*ggot" in the Chron -- back in March 2007, when Ann Coulter used the slur to make an unfunny joke about Democrat Presidential candidate John Edwards, the word was printed in full. Here's a link to such a story, this one written by a Chron writer you might be familiar with: "Carla Marinucci."

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/03/05/BAGUHOFHC01.DTL



Even worse than lying about what was said is the way you spin it as a tee-hee-hee lighthearted only-in-San Francisco incident: "Looks like a good time was had by all." Yeah, right -- I'm sure you would have been just fine with a South Carolina newspaper laughing off Joe Wilson's "You lie!" shout like that.

Leftitorialists all over the nation were ascribing Wilson's rude outburst to racism and his Southern heritage. Would it be fair, then, to suggest Ammiano was motivated by a desire to systematically destroy the nuclear family?

The NY Times' Maureen Dowd wrote that she "heard" Wilson call Obama "boy." You, Carla, want us to believe you DIDN'T hear Ammiano say "f*ggot." I think you both should either get cochlear implants, or better yet, start only writing about what you actually hear, not what you *wish* you heard!

INDOCTR-O-NATION CONTINUES IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS - Another Pro-Bama Children's Hymn Revealed

Brian Griffith of Red Maryland has revealed how a Columbia, MD public elementary school had children sing one of those paeans to the greatness of Barack Obama. In response to the revelation, Patti Caplan -- a spokesperson from the school district of Howard County, MD -- issued a terse statement criticizing an unnamed parent for publicly distributing the lyrics of the song, and refused to address criticism of the song as "worshipful" to Obama:

The Howard County Public School System respects the right of individuals to disagree with the words of the song and/or even the use of the song in this context. However, the idea that a public school system would have a “policy” to force students to “worship” the President is so ludicrous it deserves no response.

Oh, it deserves a response. Ms. Caplan only says that it doesn't because she can't possibly provide a response that doesn't lead to more questions.

For example: Caplan asserted earlier in her statement "The focus of the lesson was on the children and positive behavior, not the President. There was no intention or attempt to glorify or worship the President."

Uh huh.

Here's a sample of the lyrics to this song:

"Barack Obama--Oh yes he rates,
The first Black President in the United States!
He's smart and he's--so so good!
He'll lead this country as he should!
He wants us all to work together,
To make this country even better!
Prez' Obama says--'Yes We Can!'
Make the US better--hand in hand!"

It apparently never occurred to the educators involved in approving this song that perhaps the parents of Longfellow Elementary students voted for John McCain, and don't share their enthusiasm for Obama's leadership. Well, they should have; Howard County election records show that of the 667 votes cast at the school on election night 2008, 166 were for the McCain/Palin ticket. At least 24.92% of the people who walked through the doors of Longfellow on election night -- that's nearly one-fourth, for you poor math students -- didn't vote for Obama. Nobody thought that some of those voters might have been parents of Longfellow pupils?

Perhaps the people who conceived of the song just didn't care what the parents think, or thought they could just get away with it because what happens in the classroom usually stays in the classroom. It's not without precedent. On October 9, 2003, the Wall Street Journal's James Taranto made note of an unintended glimpse into the ways some teachers introduce unsuspecting children to agitprop. The October 2003 issue of the journal Teacher described this scene at the U.S. Institute of Peace after a speech by pacifist educator Colman McCarthy to an audience of teachers (bold and emphasis mine):

McCarthy reluctantly wrapped up his speech at the 45-minute mark and was mobbed by several teachers who wanted to buy his books. Another group gathered in the back of the room to discuss what they'd just heard. While agreeing that McCarthy's in-your-face comments wouldn't fly with most school boards or parents, they excitedly talked about how radical pacifist ideas could enliven their own classes.

An elegant-looking teacher in her 40s wandered up and joined the conversation. The truth, she said conspiratorially, is that when you close your classroom door, you're in charge and there's a lot you can get away with. The others nodded in agreement.

Suddenly, the teacher registered with alarm that a reporter's tape recorder was running. She declared that her comments were off the record and abruptly walked away from the group. Reconsidering their candor, one by one other teachers in the circle requested that their comments, too, be considered off the record. Peace may have a chance in America's schools. But at least for now, the revolution will not be broadcast.

Once again, Taranto's chronicling of this attitude (which was not a surprise to many of us) was five years ago Friday. A lot has changed in those five years -- Obama was on nobody's radar back then, and now he's The Leader of The Free World. Maybe the broadcast of a revolution is in the works as we speak.

LETTERMAN'S OFFICE SQUEEZE ISN'T FUNNY EITHER - To Dave, She's a Thriller; To Me, She's a Show-Killer (VIDEOS UPDATED!)

Details are emerging about David Letterman's sexcapades with women in his employ other than his acknowledged longtime girlfriend Regina Lasko, mother of his now five-year-old son Harry.

CBS News producer Robert J. "Joe" Halderman, the man who was arrested for allegedly attempting to extort $2,000,000 out of Letterman by threatening to write a screenplay detailing uncomfortable aspects of Dave's dalliances, is a former boyfriend of Stephanie Birkett, a former Letterman personal assistant.


I have already gone on record as saying that after watching Letterman going back to my days working graveyard in the eighties, I gave up on him and his show after he became more focused on persecuting George W. Bush than being funny. As things deteriorated to that point, Late Show fans were introduced to Ms. Birkett in an unbelievably lame weekly segment called "Know Your Current Events." The premise: Members of the audience are selected to pretend they know the answer to unknowable questions on the index cards Dave has in his hand. In fact, the guests are simply reading (off camera) the punchlines Dave's writers have provided. Bringing prizes when the attendees correctly answered was Birkett, who would give her best shot at acting, failing miserably every time.

Here is a video of one of Birkett's appearances in "Current Events" circa 2005 via YouTube (It's subtitled by the YT user in Norwegian, or something):





Here's another example of Birkett's show-killing skills, as she re-enacts an embarrassing dance an old college boyfriend of hers used to do. This just cracks Dave up to no end, and he scuttles the planned gag ("Would You Like To [ahem] Eat a Sandwich In Dave's Office?") so viewers can be treated to Birkett and other Late Show regulars imitating her monkey-dancing ex ... again and again and again.

(NOTE: The original clip of this scene -- which ran over five minutes at least -- was deleted from YouTube due to a copyright claim by CBS. Below is a shorter video of the failed bit, still online as of June 3, 2011.)





On the right of the screen is Dr. Louis Aronne, whom Letterman credits with having saved his life by recognizing in him the hereditary heart condition that killed his father at an early age (Letterman has now lived longer than his father had). Within days, Dave had emergency bypass surgery, which sidelined him for weeks in 1999. It's only fitting that Birkett be alongside Dr. Aronne because she is about as funny as a heart attack.

It wasn't always like this with Letterman. Back in his NBC days, he pioneered the formula: Find non-professionals and/or crew members with no training as performers (at least, none discernible), give them the opportunity to make fools of themselves, and enjoy the results. Just thinking about the past work of Dave's stage manager Biff Henderson and associate director Pete "Who Gives a Rat's ..." Fatovich gives me the chuckles. Of course, the anti-superstar of Letterman's early years was the late Calvert DeForest (aka Larry "Bud" Melman), the bespectacled, elderly, pudgy drug counselor whose appearance in a short student film led to an acting career -- sort of -- in his twilight years.







Beating Letterman at his own game nowadays is Jimmy Kimmel, whose Jimmy Kimmel Live! show makes great use of the broken English of Guillermo Diaz, his lovably dorky Mexican parking lot attendant. Unlike many professional comedians nowadays (hello, Jay Leno), Guillermo is unafraid to go to great lengths for a laugh, always up for dressing in outlandish costumes or in drag.





But even Guillermo pales before Kimmel's real-life uncle, former NYPD officer Frank Potenza, who may be the unintentionally funniest man alive.




I am sure many who find Birkett uninspiring (to say the least) might be tempted to say something along the lines of "We know how she got to be on TV," and I can't argue that it's an unfair question. But the possibility that human Clinton-joke factory Letterman has a casting couch somewhere in the Ed Sullivan Theatre is not as big a deal to me as his apparent decision years ago that his personal satisfaction is more important than the quality of his product. In other words, Dave has shown contempt for his audience: I'll plop anything on a plate, call it "comedy," and you dummies will lap it up because it has my name on it.

It is that attitude has led to the rapid cooling-off of many a hot comedian (Jerry Lewis, Chevy Chase, Keenan Ivory Wayans, Jim Carrey, Robin Williams, etc.) It is yet to be seen if a sexy scandal (as opposed to a full-fledged Woody Allen-like sex scandal) can fell a funnyman in post-Polanski Hollywood.



_____________________________________________________________

P.S. For all the praise Dave has lavished on his glamorous female guests over the decades, it's seems that in real life, he tends to prefer his women (Merrill Markoe, Regina Lasko, Birkitt) to be on the plain side. FWIW.

.