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.
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.
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.
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!
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?
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.
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.
To the surprise of nobody who is paying attention, tonight actress/writer Tina Fey won a 2009 Primetime Emmy Award (Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series) for her portrayal on Saturday Night Live of her doppelganger, former Alaska Governor and GOP Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin.
IMHO, Fey's victory was a foregone conclusion before the nominations were even released. While her performance was skillful and spirited, the key component of its impact was not Fey's talent, it was the fact that her demeaning lampoon of Governor Palin crossed over from the entertainment world into the nightly newscasts. Fey's turns as a clueless caricature of Palin -- aided greatly by the uncanny physical resemblance between the two -- largely became the commonly-repeated narrative among the general public still learning about Palin, taking the place of Palin's rapid and unlikely rise from PTA volunteer to Mayor of Wasilla, AK, to Alaska Oil & Gas Conservation Commissioner to Governor of America's largest state.
An illustration of how Fey's negative Palin impersonation overtook reality can be seen in the 2009 documentary Media Malpractice: How Obama Got Elected and Palin Was Targeted, produced by radio talkhost John Ziegler. What became that film began with Ziegler setting up a camera up outside a polling place on Election Day 2008. He invited people who had just finished voting for the Obama/Biden ticket questions a reasonably well-informed citizen would know. The topics: The balance of power in Washington, the leadership and power-brokers of the political parties, and historical information about the candidates for President and Vice President. Ziegler also asked where they got the bulk of their news.
This is the result.
To counter accusations from a chorus of leftist bloggers that he had cherry-picked the responses seen in his video, Ziegler commissioned a third party --respected poll organization Zogby International -- to determine how informed Obama voters actually were.
Obama voters did not fare [] well overall when asked to answer questions about statements or stories associated with Obama or Biden -- 83% failed to correctly answer that Obama had won his first election by getting all of his opponents removed from the ballot, and 88% did not correctly associate Obama with his statement that his energy policies would likely bankrupt the coal industry. Most (56%) were also not able to correctly answer that Obama started his political career at the home of two former members of the Weather Underground.
It's already legendary how the mainstream media cast aside its cynicism and investigative instinct and openly cheered for a historic Obama victory, and that's reflected in the ignorance about chinks in Shining Knight Obama's armor. When it came to questions about Palin, the story was different. The overwhelming majority of folks surveyed knew all the negative stuff about her.
Even negative stuff that wasn't true.
Ninety-four percent of Obama voters correctly identified Palin as the candidate with a pregnant teenage daughter, 86% correctly identified Palin as the candidate associated with a $150,000 wardrobe purchased by her political party, and 81% chose McCain as the candidate who was unable to identify the number of houses he owned. When asked which candidate said they could "see Russia from their house," 87% chose Palin, although the quote actually is attributed to Saturday Night Live's Tina Fey during her portrayal of Palin during the campaign...
As I noted in my previous blog entry inspired by David Letterman's disgusting remarks about Palin's daughter(s),it would be an understatement to say that Barack Obama has gotten an a free pass from serious, stinging satire. Saturday Night Live's writers are no different from their gag-writing brethren in their eggshell walk through Barack Obama's candidacy and Presidency. Even as BHO's approval rating sank to below 50% in some polls recently, almost no TV comedy shows can bear to treat him as they did George W. Bush when his numbers took a similar downturn. But according to the Zogby results, Fey's Palin did more than make viewers laugh; it made (ahem) underinformed people think -- knowingly or not -- they were being seriously instructed about Palin's true nature.
[...] From the Friday before the skit on SNL aired to the following Tuesday, Palin’s approval rating dropped ten points. Coincidence? I think not. After all, people in this country are tending to be more influenced by who or what they see on entertainment television, more so than on broadcast news or in print. Americans tune into Jon Stewart for their political appetites more than ever (and why not). So when you, Ms. Fey, don your Palin wig, you influence millions of voters more than Charles (”Charlie”) Gibson or Brian Williams, Paul Begala or that anorexic blond McCain spokeswoman ever could.
And I think its your responsibility to do so, or else we face the consequence of a woman in the White House who would strive to take away your daughter Alice’s right to choose along with every other woman’s in this country.
Most of us who read the Post are already scared out of our wits of what this woman could “accomplish,” should she reach the Vice Presidency or beyond. Abortion outlawed even in the case of incest or rape. Global warming research dismissed. Polar bears left unprotected, not to mention moose murder celebrated.
But you, Ms. Fey, have the ability, with just a wink and a smirk, to change the minds of millions of casual viewers and even more casual voters, to educate them.
[...M]any swing-state voters get their information and cue from you, Ms. Fey, and you need to provide as much of it as one woman possibly can, before the election is upon us and it is too late.
Comedy can cure and comedy can enlighten, but it must be a constant to reach enough ears to change the hearts and minds of this country, Ms. Fey, and not a minute more can afford to be wasted. So smear on your lipstick, get that slightly crazy look on your face, sharpen your No. 2 shotgun and get to work…
That's what made Fey a shoo-in from the moment she stood alongside Amy Poehler doing her impressive Hillary impression: It was a cathartic moment for Hollywood's overwhelmingly leftist creative community, the people who do the voting for the Emmy Awards. Most of you don't need a Weatherman to know which way the wind blows when it comes to politics in La-La Land (or, for that matter, "Live from New York!"): Among the glitteratti, Republicans aren't popular at all.
But if you are in need more evidence of that fact, consider what happened in January 2009 at the last Golden Globe Awards ceremony, when there was an award (Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in a Series, Mini-Series or Motion Picture Made for Television) given to different actress for her insulting portrayal of another conservative woman slimed by the left as a menace to society. I'm talking, of course, about former GOP Congresswoman Katherine Harris, who was the Secretary of State of Florida in 2000.
It was SoS Harris that stood up for the rule of Florida law against Democrat Party demands that she refuse to certify the pivotal Florida victory of GWB over Al Gore. Saturday Night Live had a lot of fun trashing Harris at the time, but that was nothing compared to the outrageous whacking she took from scenery chewing hack-tress Laura Dern in HBO's Recount, a laughably partisan imagination of the dramatic days between Election Night 2000 up to the Bush vs. Gore Supreme Court decision that affirmed Bush had been legally elected President.
Here's a representative sample of Dern's shameful mocking of Harris:
Now, witness the towering intellect of Ms. Dern on display in the post-ceremony photo session and press conference, in which she gladly received two questions demeaning Governor Palin (and gushed like a schoolgirl about the "real" Michelle Obama):
Pollack died the morning after Recount made its May 25, 2008 debut on HBO. But for all its firepower with its all-star cast (Kevin Spacey, Tom Wilkinson, Bob Balaban, Ed Begley Jr., Denis Leary, John Hurt, and Dern), the viewing public didn't give a rat-tail comb seven and a half years later. Recount drew approximately one million viewers that night, a woeful showing for an HBO movie promoted as heavily as it was. It's likely more people watched The O'Reilly Factor. America at large has long gotten over Florida. Hollywoodniks still haven't, and have shown no sign they will any time soon.
P.S.: In my previous post quoting Ms. Shuster, I called her "proudly ill-informed." What else could one say about someone who notes the significant percentage of the American public that gets its news from Jon Stewart by saying "why not?" Apparently, such a responsible approach to newsgathering has led Suzy to believe there is a basis for her suggestion that President Palin could somehow have "outlawed" abortion. In reality, no President has the power to do such a thing. Shuster's hysterical charge (can I say that?) is reminiscent of Cameron Diaz's 2004 pleato female Oprah viewers to vote (Democrat) if they didn't want to see rape become legal. No, I didn't make that up.
If Shuster knew a maddog thing about Roe vs. Wade, she would know that abortion was not outlawed throughout the nation before that fateful day in 1973 and would not be in the event that Roe was overturned. On the other hand, perhaps Ms. Shuster is fully aware of that fact, and just intended to scare the living daylights out of her libertine friends who mistakenly think the legal right to abortion infanticide of the pre-cute could end with a stroke of a pen or a single slam of a gavel.
About the celebration of "moose murder" and "polar bears left unprotected," only Shuster herself knows what the devil she's blathering on about. And they call Palin crazy!
At left is the handiwork of Politics Daily writer Christopher Weber, who on the morning of August 1, 2009 dutifully carbon-copied unsourced, anonymous and detailed rumors suggesting that Sarah and Todd Palin were headed for divorce.
I was formulating my second comment on the thread when I hit "Preview" and discovered the article had been flushed down The Memory Hole by Politics Daily. Fortunately, I had the screen still active in another tab of my browser. Sorry, Christopher Weber, the plunger will do you no good -- it's here to stay, to your everlasting shame.
Meghan Stapleton, Sarah Palin's official spokesperson, smacked down the rumor with great prejudice within hours. Strangely, she has been chided (along with her boss) by Politico.com's Jonathan Martin and other MSM figures because she, it is implied, unnecessarily stooped to respond to totally baseless rumors that the former Governor of Alaska was leaving her husband of two decades.
You see, the leftist, media elitist Palin critics -- the same ones that had trouble containing their hot-and-runny enthusiasm for the candidacy and election of Barack Obama -- don't appreciate being "bashed." They act as if they are perpetually blameless, and complain that she is unfairly tarring responsible "journalists" by saying they are in the habit of "making things up" about her. Their defense is, in part, that she is in reality responding to less-reputable non-professional sources, and lumping professionals in among them.
By having her spokeswoman repeat the charges to rebut them in a public form (sic), Palin effectively guaranteed coverage from the mainstream media that otherwise would not report claims attributed to unnamed sources on an anonymous blog.
Last month, just after announcing that she would resign, Palin similarly had her attorney issue a stinging letter threatening news organizations with defamation lawsuits if they reported on blog rumors that she was facing federal indictment. In doing so, Palin’s attorney recounted in detail the issue at the center of the accusations – that as Wasilla mayor she embezzled money from the construction of a town sports arena. Until the letter, the rumor had been confined to blogs. (Justice Department officials subsequently said there was no investigation.)
Going public with denials of these sort of charges may represent an odd sort of preemptive defense.
Maybe it's "odd" to a longtime Washington writer, but to this longtime news consumer, not so much. What is so strange about rooting out the chaff from the wheat before the public can't tell the difference? After all, in the thick of 2008 Presidential campaign, Mr. Martin (along with his Politico colleague Ben Smith) wasn't at all critical of the Obama campaign when it first took direct action against viral emails alleging that the then-freshman Senator was either Muslim, unpatriotic, or foreign-born.
From The Politico, May 21, 2008:
The main obstacle standing between Barack Obama and the White House was distilled into five words by a local television correspondent in South Charleston, W.Va., earlier this month.
Prefacing a question about the challenges of winning over white, blue-collar voters, the reporter offered this observation: “They think you are un-American,” he said.
Such questions, asked by reporters and plainly on the minds of voters in Appalachia and elsewhere, are the fruits of an unprecedented, subterranean e-mail campaign.
What began as a demonstrably false attempt to cast Obama as a Muslim has now metastasized into something far more threatening to the likely Democratic nominee. The spurious claims about his faith have spiraled into a broader assault that questions his patriotism and citizenship and generally portrays him as a threat to mainstream, white America.
(snip)
[T]his [anti-Obama smear campaign] would be a shameful but largely irrelevant mark on this historic election but for one thing: Voters widely and repeatedly cite information that has been gleaned directly or indirectly from the e-mails to explain why they won’t support Obama.
It seems that Martin & Smith and their media brethren felt compelled to take action to debunk, disprove, and expose (and perhaps malign) spreaders of internet inaccuracies about Obama. On the other hand, when it came to the sliming of Sarah Palin, they felt they were acting professionally and responsibly by simply by refusing to relay the lies, leaving it (for the most part) to the McCain campaign to play Whack-a-Smear all by itself. And now, more than a year later, Palin is not supposed to be preventing people from "cit[ing] information that has been gleaned directly or indirectly from the e-mails" slandering her.
Perhaps Mr. Martin can explain what is "odd" about Palin's recent aggressive strategy, since this latest malicious divorce rumor would be far from the first time scurrilous, sensational Web rumors and/or grievous factual errors about Palin and her family crossed over into the world of professional "journalism."
The most famous example of how web-borne anti-Palin propaganda leached into "legitimate" news is the way ABC News anchor Charles Gibson, in his ballyhooed first in-depth TV interview with the newly-crowned Vice Presidential candidate aired September 11, 2008, falsely suggested that Palin might believe that the Iraq War was -- in his words, not hers --"a holy war."
Below are video evidence of how The Big "Task From God" Lie went from the Internet to the MSM to right in front of Sarah Palin's face, with Charles Gibson demanding she explain why she said something she never said, and how ABC News covered up how it was duped into believing it.
Here is the way ABC News first presented this portion of the full interview on the September 11, 2008 edition of ABC World News with Charles Gibson:
NOTE: The full transcript of that part of the Gibson interview revealed that Palin rightly disputed he was quoting her correctly. ABC News either knew or should have known by World News' air time 9/11/08 that Gibson's characterization of her remarks was deceptive, but ran that portion of the eagerly-anticpated interview anyway.
Giving Gibson the benefit of the doubt that he did NOT deliberately attempt to smear the Governor or edit the video to distort her meaning, he at the very least had fallen for a deceptively-edited YouTube video of her June 2008 appearance at a commencement ceremony at Wasilla Assembly of God church. That video clip is used to this day by Obama supporters to bolster other dubious anecdotes to portray Palin as a "bible thumper" who would -- should she become President -- wage "holy war" based on her personal interpretation of God's will (a hysterical charge made against every Republican Commander-in-Chief since Reagan).
Here is the original video of her statement, in context, followed by my verbatim transcript:
“My oldest, my son Track, he's a soldier in the United States Army now, he's an infantryman. And, uh, and so Track sends his love also, to his former nanny, Christie (sp?). And Track -- Pray for our military! He's going to be deployed in September to Iraq. Pray for our military men and women, who are striving to do what is right. Also, for this country, that our leaders, our national leaders, are sending them out on a task that is from God. That’s what we have to make sure that we’re praying for, that there is a plan and that that plan is God’s plan. And so, bless them with your prayers, your prayers of protection over our soldiers."
To any intelligent, intellectually honest observer, it's crystal clear that Palin was taking a moment out of her planned remarks to the graduates to request prayers to God to 1) protect American soldiers in Iraq, and 2) to "also" guide the decisions of the nation's leaders in Washington. No honest interpretation of her words suggests that Palin was in her remarks endorsing the Iraq War as "a holy war." But that ridiculous idea was promoted from Net Natterings to Important Issue before a national TV audience by none other than NBC anchor Brian Williams.
Here's video evidence of that fact. The video goes over ground covered above because it is cross-posted on YouTube, and the details are new to folks who haven't read this blog entry.
(NOTE: This video contains scenes from John Ziegler's 2009 documentary Media Malpractice: How Obama Got Elected and Palin Was Targeted, available on DVD at HowObamaGotElected.com)
Joe Klein's inaccurate claim that Palin "tried to ban books" in Wasilla's Public Library was traced to a solitary emailer -- an anti-Palin Wasilla resident -- and it got embellished as it was retold in "Telephone Game" fashion until a lengthy list of books Palin supposedly wanted removed from the shelves criss-crossed the web. The rumor started losing steam when it was pointed out that the "ban list" contained books published AFTER Palin's terms in Wasilla ended.
So for Jonathan Martin and all those who suggest that Sarah Palin was actually spreading the divorce rumor further and faster than "legitimate" news sources would have allowed, here are the facts (as if you didn't know): Palin news is gold. It spreads like wildfire regardless of the gravitas of the source. Everybody seems to have a desire to either report or opine about her, professionals and amateurs alike. This is not limited to the National Enquirer & Us Weekly crowd, as much as a lot of reports regarding her belong there; "hard" news loves Sarah Palin just as much because she stirs up passion, positive or negative. That translates into magazine and newspaper sales and web traffic. To wit: For most of the month of July, the front page of ABCNews.com had a "Sarah Palin" link right next to its "Michael Jackson" link. That's right, next to the late King of Pop. Not bad for someone that -- according to conventional wisdom -- is a has-been that nobody serious took seriously.
If Mr. Martin from The Politico wants to argue that a story in Politics Daily (operated by America Online, America's third-largest Internet Provider) isn't the same as if it was in, say, The Politico, he should consider -- or, to be more precise, acknowledge -- that since AOL's MediaGlow division introduced Politics Daily in April, its readership has shot like a rocket past that of The Politico.
Here's analysis from ComScore, published on TechCrunch.com June 20, 2009. Click to enlarge and look at the chart. See the red line? That's the readership of Politico.com dating back to May 2008. It's like a roller coaster, peaking in late October 2008 at about 2.4 million unique views, and sliding down after the November election to slightly over the million view-level since then. Now, take a look at that blue line all the way to the right of the chart. THAT is Politics Daily, and its trajectory is like a rocket, zooming up to 2.4 million in less than two months. Based on that information, it is possible that more people read Politics Daily writer Christopher Weber's shameful re-routing of the blog-borne Palin divorce rumors (before it was deleted later that afternoon) than Martin's half-hearted quashing of the rumor on The Politico.
Probably even more read the of the divorce fantasy via Jeanne Devon (aka AK Muckraker), a rabid anti-Palin blogger cross-posted on the (inexplicably) popular Huffington Post. Devon was one of those Alaska bloggers who published promises that Palin's resignation would eventually be proved to be due to that apocryphal Federal investigation into embezzlement by the Palins. No less an authority than the FBI ended those rumors by saying there was no truth to them and that the Palins were and are NOT under investigation. This time around, Devon did publish Stapleton's complete and categorical denial of the divorce rumor, but she pretended it was only partial.
The tech revolution that makes every individual a potential journalist -- or, at the least, a widely-read writer -- cuts the old news source/news consumer paradigm with a two-edged sword. When you sign on to the Wild Wild Web, you might find yourself the beneficiary of a private individual who scoops the entire world (a la Matt Drudge's tip on The Lewinsky Affair, or the Iranian Tweeters) or the victim of someone who goes off half-cocked and hits "send" too early (Drudge falsely claiming Clinton staffer Sidney Blumenthal was arrested for domestic violence, false Tweets that actor Jeff Goldblum died). Remember that most people heard about the death of Michael Jackson from TMZ.com, which was the first to confirm it, but weeks later, TMZ falsely confirmed that the alive-and-well "mixed martial arts" fighter Kimo Leopoldo had died.
(For a thorough decimation of the haters' sewerful of lies about Palin, there's only one place to go: Conservatives4Palin.com).
The democratization of publishing that began with Johannes Gutenberg's loosening the grip of the clergy on the Holy Bible has now diluted the traditional monoliths' authority as news sources. There once was a time when there was the newspaper, there was television, and there was the Internet, and never the three would meet. No more. Print and video have given way to the modern miracle of the Internet, and must be assimilated to assure their survival in a hypercompetitive market. Because all the news now comes out of the same pipeline as malicious mendacities penned by bilious bloggers, what was once was easily dismissed by most as mere gossip is accepted by too many as pure gospel.
Mark Twain is credited with saying that that "A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes." Ponder the fact that during most of Twain's existence, the fastest communication medium was the telegraph! Maybe Mr. Martin thinks it only sporting to grant the Palinphobes a head start. Governor Palin -- that is, Mrs. Palin, current and future --has little left to lose at present, and has no problem rewarding those charging from the blocks before the starter's pistol with a warning shot of her own. Get used to the sound, Mr. Martin -- Click, click! BOOM!
Lest someone think that the failures of uncredentialed web scrawlers is a case for the continued dominance of the self-righteous J-schoolers of the media titans, not so fast. Walter Cronkite has passed away, but even before his heart stopped beating, the concept of an individual being deemed "The Most Trusted Man in America" beat him to his grave. The general public has no handbook giving them guidance as to which information source out of the new myriads are believable and which are not. Such a publication would have come in handy when weeding out the Charles Foster Kane-era "Remember the Maine" reports from Hearst newspapers, Walter Duranty's Pulitzer-winning Potemkin Village reports for the New York Times, Janet Cooke's Pulitzer-winning fictional pre-teen smack addict story for the Washington Post, Stephen Glass's amazing tales of conservative decadence and idiocy for The New Republic, and Jayson Blair's NYT eyewitness reportage by "remote viewing." "The news" is now more than ever unworthy of being consumed so thoughtlessly.
Even if there was such a handbook, it likely wouldn't have prepared the public in 2004 for CBS News' living legend Dan Rather (and its signature broadcast 60 Minutes) using forged Texas Air National Guard documents to smear President George W. Bush a month-and-a-half before Election Day. The last thing that idyllic guide would have done is predict that Free Republic -- a commonly-condemned "right-wing" news forum -- would expose Rather and CBS News, leading eventually to his resignation in disgrace, and causing damage to the CBS brand that endures to this day.
Watch yourself, Jonathan Martin. You don't want to be the next Dan Rather. Ask Christopher Weber.
I had high hopes for the third season, and while they haven't been exactly dashed, let's just put it this way: Starting pitcher Matthew Weiner (series creator and sole writer of Sunday's episode) wasn't properly warmed up, and had a rough first inning. Really rough. There's plenty of time left in the game, but the home team has to rally -- the sooner the better.
SPOILER ALERT!
I had to hit "Replay" on my DVR at least a dozen times to figure out what the Sam Hill was going on with Don/Dick's flashback, which wasn't really a flashback because he wasn't around to view his own accidental conception and birth. I mean, what is, this, The Dead Zone?
Think that months of preparing to be a father for the third time by a woman who took him back after a disgraceful affair might have tempered Don's passion for illicit flings? Apparently not. On a short trip to Baltimore, he gives in to a beautiful but bimbonic stewardess with the subtlety of a steamroller. He doesn't seem to be conflicted for even a second until she confesses in her soused state that she's engaged. Might Don put on the brakes as well? If he even tapped them, he then hit the gas in telling her it's his birthday. Then she gets into her birthday suit.
The cringe when we were shown a second of viewing a stillborn child was nothing compared to the never-ending makeout scene with Sal and The Bellboy With Industrial-Strength Gaydar. "Aw geez, here it comes...it is over yet? Ahhh! ... Oh, for crying out loud! ... Ewwww! ... Make it stop!" Thank goodness for that fire alarm! Talk about "saved by the bell!" But Don and his hostess hottie escape through the window (Huh? Was that SOP back then?) and somehow, he knows just where the window in Sal's room is from the outside. Holy Wee Willie Winkie, Batman! Was it that easy to be a Peeping Tom back then?
That situation does bring up a bit of intrigue, since Don already knew Sal's secret. But, how does he actually handle the knowledge of what Sal was up to in his hotel room? In the early sixties, is Don such a libertine that he thinks nothing of it? Evidently. When Sal thinks the boom is going to be lowered on him (whatever implications that might have), it just turns out Don is simply pitching his concept for a print ad. Or is he? Time to hit the replay button again! "Limit your exposure" -- is that some sort of code?
Well, I guess. But then the ad Don pitched is drawn up by Sal and he gets compliments for it as if it is genius. IMHO, it stinks! How is a young woman flashing on a subway car supposed to sell raincoats? It doesn't make any sense at all, which is very un-Don Draper, and very un-Mad Men.
(Also un-Mad Men is the inclusion of contemporary expressions in a show set two full generations ago. I want to know when the word "gynocracy" was first recorded in print. Somehow, I doubt it was during the Kennedy Administration.)
It all had the feel of the pique of political outrage in Hollywood borne out of the placing of Proposition 8 (the same-sex marriage repeal) on the California ballot, which seemed to inspire the creators of Boston Legal and The New Adventures of Old Christine to marry their main characters to their best friends. Prop 8 passed, of course, and it looks like the first thing on Weiner's agenda was to do as much as he could for the cause within Mad Men's retro framework. He will probably get away with that self-indulgence with critics and industry insiders, since Weiner can do no wrong to them; the highly-acclaimed but low-rated reigning Best Drama Series is lined up for more Emmy trophies next go-round than any other program. How unsuspecting, uninitiated first-time viewers will react may be a different story.
P.S. As much as I enjoy Mad Men, I believe Breaking Bad is a superior show. It kills me that while FOUR episodes of Mad took up all but one of the writing nominations for a drama series, John Shiban didn't get an Emmy nod for his screenplay for the Breaking episode "Peek-a-Boo," which made the latest TV Guide "100 Greatest Episodes Ever" list and is one of the most magnificent hours of television I have ever witnessed.
This is my reaction to a Patterico's Pontifications comment in this thread on the topic of what is acceptable commentary on the brief arrest of Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates on charges of disorderly conduct by Cambridge, MA police. In his July 23, 2009 press conference pushing for universal health care, President Obama said the police "acted stupidly."
voiceofreason2 wrote:
The most disappointing thing for me about Obama is the lost opportunity he had to really bridge some of the gaps in our racially sensitive society. Had he focused on the fact that he is biracial and been willing to acknowledge that all racial groups have bad apples whose behavior is not acceptable he would have won me over.
Contrast him with Tiger Woods who has been notably absent in the “national dialog” on race because it is just not that important to him. He accomplished his feats through hard work and perserverance and is a good role model for anyone.
I wasted about a year rooting against Tiger Woods because I thought that if he was as successful as he has turned out to be, he and his father Earl would do for golf what the Williams family has done for tennis: make it a racial battleground on which everyone who doesn’t cheer their in-your-face attitude is suspected — or flat out accused — of being a bigot…
(snip)
[Tiger] has gained the admiration and respect of his peers not just because of his extraordinary talent, but because of his classiness … [On] his way up, he never engaged in the Williamsian taunting of the game’s reigning players, and his talk about his chances for winning whatever tournament he was in never seemed like an attempt at chest-beating intimidation — not when he would time and time again back up what he said by winning as he predicted.
It is my belief that had it not been for Tiger Woods, Obama wouldn’t have become President. I am incapable of proving it, but I am sure that if you hooked up Obama’s mentors and imagemakers to a sodium pentathol drip, they would admit their “high concept” of his candidacy took into consideration the admiration and respect the articulate, tall, half-black, and nearly unflappable Woods has generated for himself across not only America, but the entire planet.
Here’s the problem: Barack Obama isn’t Tiger Woods. Woods’ raw talent garnered multi-million dollar endorsements which he parlayed into a billion dollar empire (and a $30 million dollar charitable foundation) by first meeting and then far exceeding all reasonable expectations.
Since she was ten years old, Wie was heavily promoted as The Female Tiger, bound to shatter gender barriers the way Woods did racial ones. In 2005 — having not won a tournament in two-and-a-quarter years — the statuesque Wie, after turning pro at the tender age of 15 on the strength of her otherworldly 300-yard-long tee shots, was handed an approximate 22 million in endorsement cash. Instantly, she was one of the world’s richest teenagers. But as golf fans know, the game isn’t just about hitting the ball far away, it’s about hitting it into a four-and-a-quarter inch diameter hole far away, which is harder. Compounding her obstacles were her ambitious parents, who allowed her to pursue her folly of entering men's tournaments rather than going against other women. She not only never credibly competed for a title in her attempts to beat men, she made a cut only once, finishing at or near the bottom several times. Wie did enter some major LPGA events, but only contended for a win one time. Accomplished female pros were either silent or supportive at first, but as Wie continued to blow off women’s tournaments only to bring up the rear battling the men, they grew weary of the way she sucked all the air out of the small room reserved for them. Neither did they appreciate her treatment of the women’s tour as being almost irrelevant. All of this, mind you, while getting paid more than any female individual athlete in history who hadn’t won a darn thing.
Now, the irrelevant one is Michelle Wie. While the sports world’s cameras were focused on the supposed future of women’s golf shanking, bogeying, and losing against men, other young ladies were actually, y’know, winning on the LPGA tour. Paula Creamer won a tourney the age of 18 years, 11 days, and Morgan Pressel took a major LPGA event at 18/313. This year, finally concentrating solely on the women’s tour, the improving yet winless Wie will turn 20 in October, too old to be worthy of the years of hype and dozens of millions of dollars. That’s money and attention she’s never going to see again unless she rallies and becomes the greatest golfer in history. But thusfar, she hasn’t proved she’s capable of overcoming her mistakes.
That’s where Obama is now. He’s been treated as if he’s the Tiger Woods of Presidents. But he’s sliced himself into a trillion dollar sand trap, and will be have to be extremely lucky to save par.
After two decades and two networks, I stopped watching David Letterman on television on a regular basis when it became apparent to me that his Bush-bashing jokes were more than just him doing his job as the guy who makes fun of the powerful — he hated GWB with a passion, and there was nothing good-natured about the jibes during the final four years. It wasn’t that I was a huge Bush fan, because there was a lot I didn’t admire about him, and his woeful speaking skills made him ripe for lampooning. But Bush was still the President, and Letterman went out of his way to show him disrespect.
The final straw for me was the October 14, 2005 edition of Late Show with David Letterman, when announcer Alan Kalter referred to the President of the United States as a “bitch” in a pre-recorded joke. From a transcript on the Late Show website at CBS.com:
LATE SHOW WEEK IN REVIEW
Amidst everything that has gone wrong for President Bush recently, he has had some success regarding North Korea. People are optimistic about this week's negotiations. We take a look.
Announcer:
"The U.S. and North Korea have begun direct talks on nuclear weapons. The U.S. is encouraged Kim Jong Il has halted his nuclear program. In exchange, President Bush has agreed to this." (we see photo of Bush in Kim Jong Il wig and glasses) "You gotta wear this for 6 months, bitch!" Kim Jong Il - Still crazy as a loon!"
I invite you to consider the circumstances under which David Letterman would allow Barack Obama to be referred to as "bitch" even in a joking manner.
A perfect illustration of Letterman’s severe case of BDS is what happened at the 2006 Emmy Awards broadcast. As is now a custom, the nominees for Writing for a Music, Variety, or Comedy Program are not read by the presenters; they are read by announcers over a comedic snippet created by the nominated programs. Nominated along with Late Show with David Letterman were The Colbert Report, Daily Show with Jon Stewart, Late Night with Conan O’Brien, and Real Time with Bill Maher.Colbert, Stewart, and especially Conan all turned in funny stuff. Maher’s bit, which used as its theme Sen. Larry Craig’s bathroom trolling, was disgusting, but at least it was original. Letterman’s crew simply sent a video collection of GWB pratfalls and funny faces, titled it “Please enjoy our favorite George W. Bush moments,” and backed it with a soundtrack of stock circus music.
The Obama Obsession didn’t just effect the news media, but the entertainment media as well, and in the late-night comedy shows, the two converge on a daily basis. In case you’ve forgotten, the New York Times noticed as early as July 15, 2008 that “The One” was getting a free pass (bold mine):
“The thing is, he’s not buffoonish in any way,” said Mike Barry, who started writing political jokes for Johnny Carson’s monologues in the waning days of the Johnson administration and has lambasted every presidential candidate since, most recently for Mr. Letterman. “He’s not a comical figure,” Mr. Barry said.
(snip)
Jay Leno, David Letterman, Conan O’Brien and others have delivered a nightly stream of jokes about the Republican running for president — each one a variant on the same theme: John McCain is old.
But there has been little humor about Mr. Obama: about his age, his speaking ability, his intelligence, his family, his physique. And within a late-night landscape dominated by white hosts, white writers, and overwhelmingly white audiences, there has been almost none about his race.
“We’re doing jokes about people in his orbit, not really about him,” said Mike Sweeney, the head writer for Mr. O’Brien on “Late Night.” The jokes will come, representatives of the late-night shows said, when Mr. Obama does or says something that defines him — in comedy terms.
(snip)
There is no doubt, several representatives of the late-night shows said, that so far their audiences (and at least some of the shows’ writers) seem to be favorably disposed toward Mr. Obama, to a degree that perhaps leaves them more resistant to jokes about him than those about most previous candidates.
“A lot of people are excited about his candidacy,” Mr. Sweeney said. “It’s almost like: ‘Hey, don’t go after this guy. He’s a fresh face; cut him some slack.’ ”
Justin Stangel, who is a head writer for “Late Show With David Letterman,” disputed that, saying, “We always have to make jokes about everybody. We’re not trying to lay off the new guy.”
But Mr. Barry said, “I think some of us were maybe too quick to caricature Al Gore and John Kerry and there’s maybe some reluctance to do the same thing to him.”
(snip)
[Stephen] Colbert said he had been freer to poke fun at Mr. Obama than other late-night hosts because “my character on the show doesn’t like him. I’m expected to be hostile to him.”
(snip)
Mr. Burnett of the Letterman show said, “We can’t manufacture a perception. If the perception isn’t true, no one will laugh at it.”
Obama’s rise to the Presidency is commonly compared to that of John F. Kennedy, whose fans were also over-the-top at times. But back then, that didn’t stop the comedy. Kennedy satirist Vaughn Meader sold an astonishing seven and a half million copies of his LP The First Family, released in 1962.
Nixon was needled by (among many) David Frye and Rich Little. Then, Ford by Chevy Chase. Carter by Dan Aykroyd. Reagan by John Roarke (of Fridays — that’s when SNL totally sucked). H.W. Bush by Dana Carvey. Clinton by the late great Phil Hartman, and later by Darrell Hammond. W. Bush by Will Ferrell.
Fred Armisen’s Obama?
That’s not needling, that’s a deep tissue massage.
ABC's Jimmy Kimmel, also quoted in the article as reluctant to take on Obama due to racial sensitivity concerns, at least acknowledged the issue directly on his show. Here's Kimmel going to a barber shop in South Central Los Angeles to survey the African-American staff about what's acceptable when joking about Obama:
On the other hand, Letterman's response to those who have noticed his aversion to joking about Obama was to reach back and bash Bush yet again. From the May 8, 2009 edition of Late Show:
Take special note of what Letterman’s writer Mike Barry was quoted as saying: “I think some of us were maybe too quick to caricature Al Gore and John Kerry and there’s maybe some reluctance to do the same thing to [Barack Obama].”
Think about that for a moment.
Barry openly admits he has regrets about helping Letterman sock it to Gore and Kerry. He seems to be implying caricaturing both of those Democrats played a role in Bush being elected to two terms, and that was a mistake he wasn’t going to allow this go-around. To that end, having already cast John McCain as The Cranky Old Guy, Dave and his writers had no such qualms about caricaturing Governor Palin, as is evidenced by Dave's regularly rattling off a list of gravitas-free women to compare her with in back in September 2008:
I kind of like that Sarah Palin. You know, she reminds me, she looks like the flight attendant who won't give you a second can of Pepsi. No, you've had enough. We're landing. Looks like the waitress at the coffee shop who draws a little smiley face on your check. Have a nice day.
[...]
I like that Sarah Palin. She looks like the lady in the dental office who gives you the keys to the restroom.
Sarah Palin looks like the weekend anchor on Channel 9. She looks like the hygienist who makes you feel guilty about not flossing. She looks like the relieved mom in a Tide commercial.
She looks like the lady at the bakery who yells out, “44! 44! 45!”
Sarah Palin looks like a real estate agent whose picture you see on the bus stop bench.
Sarah Palin looks like the lady who has a chain of cupcake stores.
Sarah Palin looks like the mayor of a small town that’s banned dancing.
This eventually culminated in Letterman’s June 8, 2009 Top Ten list in which he amended his previous flight attendant remark to say she has a “slutty flight attendant look.” That on top of the implications that (taking him at his word) Palin's 18-year-old daughter is either a tramp or a whore.
Eight months have passed since McCain & Palin were defeated by Late Show’s new idol, and Letterman still can’t let Palin go for a second.
Perhaps Letterman, Barry, Burnett, Stanger, and their gag-writing brethren are taking seriously what proudly ill-informed ABC sports reporter Suzy Shuster (I never heard of her either, before this) wrote on the Huffington Post on September 23, 2008 (bold mine):
[...] From the Friday before the skit on SNL aired to the following Tuesday, Palin’s approval rating dropped ten points. Coincidence? I think not. After all, people in this country are tending to be more influenced by who or what they see on entertainment television, more so than on broadcast news or in print. Americans tune into Jon Stewart for their political appetites more than ever ( and why not). So when you, Ms. Fey, don your Palin wig, you influence millions of voters more than Charles (”Charlie”) Gibson or Brian Williams, Paul Begala or that anorexic blond McCain spokeswoman ever could.
And I think its your responsibility to do so, or else we face the consequence of a woman in the White House who would strive to take away your daughter Alice’s right to choose along with every other woman’s in this country.
Most of us who read the Post are already scared out of our wits of what this woman could “accomplish,” should she reach the Vice Presidency or beyond. Abortion outlawed even in the case of incest or rape. Global warming research dismissed. Polar bears left unprotected, not to mention moose murder celebrated. But you, Ms. Fey, have the ability, with just a wink and a smirk, to change the minds of millions of casual viewers and even more casual voters, to educate them. [...M]any swing-state voters get their information and cue from you, Ms. Fey, and you need to provide as much of it as one woman possibly can, before the election is upon us and it is too late.
Comedy can cure and comedy can enlighten, but it must be a constant to reach enough ears to change the hearts and minds of this country, Ms. Fey, and not a minute more can afford to be wasted. So smear on your lipstick, get that slightly crazy look on your face, sharpen your No. 2 shotgun and get to work…
I once had a civics teacher who had escaped the Soviet Union. I never forgot his stories of how risky it was to joke about Stalin, Khrushchev, or Brezhnev. What above-ground humor there was that wasn’t folksy and benign had to be aimed at the correct targets; in other words, it was used as a political weapon by supporters of the government. Here, in the United States of America, “the land of the free and the home of the brave,” I never had a thought that such cowardly thinking could possibly take hold. But, it seems like we’re heading in Moscow’s direction — humor-wise, and otherwise.
Look, I know in America the new favorite past time is being outraged, but this was just a dumb stunt.
The article should be IGNORED and it will go away. I subscribe to playboy and I doubt I would have seen the article if it was not posted here.
The article was in poor taste. It was removed. The more you talk about it here, the more the AOL guy talks about it, the more it is out there. If YOU and CONSERVATIVES stop talking about it, it will go away.
Why are you giving Playboy so much credibility? Is their influence so great that every word they write is a literary movement? You ask why MSNBC talks about Rush all the time. This is a dumb non-story that will go away as soon as we are finished with our favorite past time of being outraged - which should be common in a free country.
Hey, Thacker, maybe you've been too busy with your one-handed "reading" to notice, but the leftist practice of demeaning conservative women through fantasies of forced sex is by no means a new phenomenon. It has been "out there" for at least a decade on the Internet, and probably before then. However, until that Playboy.com piece, it had been limited to the world of individual orifices who sent hate mail/email or posted in newsgroups and free-for-all leftist blogs (Hello, Matt Taibbi). The lovely Michelle Malkin had been the subject of "hate f*ck" screeds (commonly referring to her Asian and/or Filipina heritage) long before they had that name. That was even before she had her own site and her detractors had only a tiny .jpg atop her syndicated columns to (ahem) work with.
Even Hustler's self-aware sleazebag founder Larry Flynt, in all his years of sliming Christians, Republicans, and decent people in general in deliberately shocking fashion, hadn't published anything (to my knowledge) targeting political opponents for rape fantasies. I presume that Flynt's porn movie parody of Sarah Palin doesn't involve her being raped, because that would have (I think) have gotten out. But it was the relatively prudish Playboy that actually dug deep, plumbed the depths of the liberal soul, and gave a mainstream imprateur to the idea that speaking of fantasies of sexually sullying women you "hate" is acceptable political discourse.
Anne Schroeder Mullins, a Politico.com blogger, all but endorsed the idea by excising the misogyny from the Playboy piece with a scalpel and pretended it was about "Hat[ing] to Love" beautiful conservative chicks. That is not shocking to me, because liberal women have commonly tolerated sexism practiced by men who are sympatico with their most valued ideal: the right to abortion on demand. Uber-feminist Gloria Steinem, among the loudest voices targeting then-SCOTUS nominee Clarence Thomas for destruction (ostensibly) due to contradictory sexual harassment allegations, authored a editorial published in the New York Times on March 22, 1998 titled "Feminists and the Clinton Question" defending pro-choice then-POTUS Bill Clinton against more credible allegations of harassment by implying that every boss is -- and always has been -- entitled to one free shot at hired hotties:
[...]The truth is that even if the allegations are true, the President is not guilty of sexual harassment. He is accused of having made a gross, dumb and reckless pass at a supporter during a low point in her life. She pushed him away, she said, and it never happened again. In other words, President Clinton took "no" for an answer.
In her original story, Paula Jones essentially said the same thing. She went to then-Governor Clinton's hotel room, where she said he asked her to perform oral sex and even dropped his trousers. She refused, and even she claims that he said something like, "Well, I don't want to make you do anything you don't want to do."
Why can't you find it in the New York Times' archives? Because some people -- likely Steinem herself -- wants it to "go away." Why? Because it reveals her to be a fool and a hypocrite. She knows that if that editorial stayed within easy access, the next time she opened her trap about sexual harassment, it would be held in her face like she was a dog learning to be housebroken. And rightly so. Playboy.com, Politico.com, and everyone else who is suggesting that this should just be allowed to blow over should be made to take a deep breath and inhale their handiwork, with the reminder that's what they can expect every time they cross that line.
Saying "if CONSERVATIVES stop talking about it it will go away" is an argument that Playboy understands well, because it doesn't want to face the consequences of its contribution to the coarseness of the political debate. On the other hand, LIBERALS never stop talking about misstatements and errors conservatives make, and aren't above simply making schtuff up out of thin air and pretending it's established fact. Just in the past week, Katie Couric furthered the lie that Sarah Palin said she could see Russia from her house, and Rachel Maddow -- defending Judge Sotomayor -- repeated a specious, Wikipedia-sourced, apochryphal alleged decade-old quote from Rush Limbaugh that Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassin should have been given the Congressional Medal of Freedom.
You may enjoy the double-standard of "being outraged." I don't. Conceding the internet and the airwaves to dirty liars on one side of the debate may be for you, but it's not for me. If you've got nothing to say, get outta the way.
You may now resume your "reading," Thacker. Lock your door and close your blinds.
UPDATE: Anne Schroeder Mullins has given a half (ahem)-hearted mea culpa on her giggly post on the Playboy list and the link to the later-deleted post. Here's what has replaced her original post of the list of "10 Conservative Women We Hate to Love":
I don't buy her story as 100% truthful, but can't disprove it. What it does prove is how sloppy and lazy Ms. Schroeder Mullins and/or her editors are. Yet another example is how Mullins -- either by design or in an attempt to cushion the blow of the outrage -- refers to the list of women Playboy "love to hate" when in fact, it was the women they "hate to love."
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.
Looks like it.
