They’re peeling off the keepers one by one, until they reveal the humiliated loser at the end of the show. First keepers are Lance and Lacey. They did a Quickstep that had some nice style and speed, but Lance’s carriage wasn’t up enough. But they’re still up near the top, in my personal book.
As if I didn’t feel dirty enough just having done my first recap of that inferior dancing show, my blog is apparently now overrun with Republican sex addicts.
My visitor counter allows me to see the path that readers took to get to this site. Apparently, Yahoo has listed me as a source for viewing b*ikini photos of S*arah P*alin. (The reason I’m asterisking things is because I don’t want to provide even more grist for the Google mill.)
So today I am somewhat inundated with people who have arrived looking for small-swimsuited Evil-Governor hypocritical soccer pitbulls. With lipstick.
If you saw the entry in which I posted that photo, you’d know it was an ironic gesture. (And no, I’m not linking back to it. Stop that.)
Normally, I’d optimistically hope that all visitors — coming here for whatever reason — might check out a few pages and decide they like it here. But I’m profoundly doubtful that those longing for gun-totin’, Alaskan-Mama cleavage are going to be fascinated by the real tone of this site. Sigh.
Yes, I know how to spell “week”; this is my early editorial comment about this series. I dunno how long I’m gonna be able to recap this show, kids. I’m only in the second dance, and already I’m feeling overwhelmed with mediocrity. The thing is, there’s not a whole lot of real dancing here, so I won’t necessarily be talking about dancing. Reader beware.
This is one of the most eloquent appraisals of the McShrivel/Sarracuda situation. And to think it came from the op-ed section of the Salt Lake City Tribune. (I love the phrase “sunny brand of extremism”…it makes me want to jump up and shoot a moose.)
Examination of Sarah Palin’s fitness to run the U.S. government - the only proper test for a vice presidential nominee - is compromised by her continuing negotiation with John McCain about which interviewers are safe for her to talk with, and what she may say to them.
This is no surprise, given Palin’s extremist views. While Palin’s ascension may delight the fundamentalist right, Republican political operatives seeking to retain power fear the electorate will turn against Palin’s sunny brand of extremism if the implications of her views become known. That would sink McCain’s bid for the White House, since he selected her.
So the Republican ticket concentrates on myth-building regarding Palin’s purported confrontation with the “old boys network” while she served first as a small-town mayor and, recently, as Alaska governor. They couple that effort with staccato distortions of Barack Obama’s positions and statements. That “blizzard of lies,” as New York Times columnist Paul Krugman recently noted, foretells the kind of administration McCain and Palin would form, one whose use of dishonesty as a tool to manipulate public opinion would rival that of the Bush White House.
Thanks to Brilliant at Breakfast for finding this.
I love this tech news story:
Metadata found on Microsoft’s creative copy used in its ‘I’m a PC’ ad reveals that the graphics were actually produced using Macs running Adobe Creative Suite 3. After the details were published on the Flickr photo sharing site, Microsoft scrambled to polish off the embarrassing details last night.
Just goes to corroborate: once you go Mac, you never go back.
This post was written . . . (wait for it) . . . on a Mac.
Here in sunny and gay-marriagey California, we are no longer allowed to hold our cell phones to our ears while in the car. And you know how much we sunny and gay-marriagey Californians are in our cars. So everyone’s been bluetoothing themselves (not as painful as it sounds). I don’t often play shopping advocate, but I am very pleased with the hands-free car kit I got, which plays the caller’s half of the convo through the car stereo and announces incoming calls in a stern-yet-sexy British lady’s voice. Sort of Mary Poppins Dominatrix.
It’s by Motorola, who I’ve just decided is one of my New Favorite Corporations thanks to this commercial. Funny and sexy. (That’s what he said.) (Well…if I were dating anybody, that’s what he’d say. Maybe.)
Do you know what the Russian newspaper, Pravda, called Sarah Palin?
“Mrs. Nobody know-it-all shrieking cow from Alaska”
Watch out, Putin . . . she can see your house from there.
(They use expressions like “pith-headed” and “guttersnipe” too. I think I’d like to down some wodka with these people.)
I seem to have a soft spot for gay television producers. I don’t know if that soft spot is above or below the equator, but that’s not the point. I’ve already waxed eloquent about Greg Berlanti; I’m not sure if that was here or in the newspaper column . . . I’m too old and wizened-of-brain to remember. But today’s featured gay producer is Bryan Fuller, who is interviewed in a delightful fashion on AfterElton.com.
Of particular interest — besides the fact that he laterally admits an admiration of hairy-chested men — is his mention of Kristin Chenoweth, when asked about her “public service ad” for crystal meth:
Kristin Chenoweth is fearless. She is somebody who I hope that I am working with for many years to come, beyond Daisies and into our twilight years. She is one of the brightest, cheeriest, most pleasant people I have ever had the pleasure of working with. She has such a great sense of humor and is a wonderful Christian woman that believes in her Lord and doesn’t use that as a weapon in any way. She just uses it as two open arms to hug whoever comes across her path. And the fact that here is this woman who is a Christian and such a good soul, and she is singing this song about crack and sucking dick. It just shows you, it’s very telling about her as a human being.
Which brings me to my second favorite person of the mo’ (’mo?). I’ve always loved La Chenoweth’s talent — how could one not, particularly one of the gay-caballero persuasion? — but that nutshell tribute from Mr. Fuller fills me with hope for the state of our union, spiritually and otherwise.
This is your hairy-chested tributer, signing off for the mo’ (’mo?).
Well . . . I didn’t expect there’d be a clip that had commonality between the “Politics” category and the “So You Think You Can Dance.” But here it is:
Props to Gabriel for disseminating the following. It explains — incredibly well — what’s going on. In case you’d like to know what we’re really up against.
OBAMA AND THE PALIN EFFECT
by Deepak Chopra
Sometimes politics has the uncanny effect of mirroring the national psyche even when nobody intended to do that. This is perfectly illustrated by the rousing effect that Gov. Sarah Palin had on the Republican convention in Minneapolis this week. On the surface, she outdoes former Vice President Dan Quayle as an unlikely choice, given her negligent parochial expertise in the complex affairs of governing. Her state of Alaska has less than 700,000 residents, which reduces the job of governor to the scale of running one-tenth of New York City. By comparison, Rudy Giuliani is a towering international figure. Palin’s pluck has been admired, and her forthrightness, but her real appeal goes deeper.
She is the reverse of Barack Obama, in essence his shadow, deriding his idealism and turning negativity into a cause for pride. In psychological terms the shadow is that part of the psyche that hides out of sight, countering our aspirations, virtue, and vision with qualities we are ashamed to face: anger, fear, revenge, violence, selfishness, and suspicion of “the other.” For millions of Americans, Obama triggers those feelings, but they don’t want to express them. He is calling for us to reach for our higher selves, and frankly, that stirs up hidden reactions of an unsavory kind. (Just to be perfectly clear, I am not making a verbal play out of the fact that Sen. Obama is black. The shadow is a metaphor widely in use before his arrival on the scene.) I recognize that psychological analysis of politics is usually not welcome by the public, but I believe such a perspective can be helpful here to understand Palin’s message. In her acceptance speech Gov. Palin sent a rousing call to those who want to celebrate their resistance to change and a higher vision
Look at what she stands for:
Palin reinforces the overall message of the reactionary right, which has been in play since 1980, that social justice is liberal-radical, that minorities and immigrants, being different from “us” pure American types, can be ignored, that progressivism takes too much effort and globalism is a foreign threat. The radical right marches under the banners of “I’m all right, Jack,” and “Why change? Everything’s OK as it is.” The irony, of course, is that Gov. Palin is a woman and a reactionary at the same time. She can add mom to apple pie on her resume, while blithely reversing forty years of feminist progress. The irony is superficial; there are millions of women who stand on the side of conservatism, however obviously they are voting against their own good. The Republicans have won multiple national elections by raising shadow issues based on fear, rejection, hostility to change, and narrow-mindedness
Obama’s call for higher ideals in politics can’t be seen in a vacuum. The shadow is real; it was bound to respond. Not just conservatives possess a shadow — we all do. So what comes next is a contest between the two forces of progress and inertia. Will the shadow win again, or has its furtive appeal become exhausted? No one can predict. The best thing about Gov. Palin is that she brought this conflict to light, which makes the upcoming debate honest. It would be a shame to elect another Reagan, whose smiling persona was a stalking horse for the reactionary forces that have brought us to the demoralized state we are in. We deserve to see what we are getting, without disguise.