First Draft

Friday Catblogging: Della Street Meets Drew Brees

Della Street is a typical New Orleanian. She's a Drew Brees fan so when he's on teevee she pays attention even when the lighting is a bit on the surreal side.

 

Someone Put A Guard In The Basilica of St. Clare In Assisi

'Cause S&M Jesus is at risk from morons like this.

(Ripped off from Cole's place.)

Abuse Of Discretion

Every once in a while I see a story that reminds me of my past life as a lawyer. I didn't like the law but I got a kick out of some of the terminology. Abuse of discretion is right up there with officious intermeddler as one of my all-time favorites. And abuse of discretion describes what some cracker judge in Mississippi just did:

A Mississippi judge ordered an attorney to spend several hours in jail Wednesday after the attorney chose not to recite the Pledge of Allegiance in court. The Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal reported that Chancery Judge Talmadge Littlejohn told a court audience to rise and say the pledge. People in the courtroom said Danny Lampley of Oxford stood but did not say the words.

Records show Lampley was booked into the Lee County jail at 9:40 a.m. and released about 2:30 p.m. on the judge's orders.

Lampley did not immediately return a call to The Associated Press.Littlejohn was not immediately available through his office in New Albany or the court administrator's office in Tupelo.

Littlejohn? Maybe he was disoriented and thought lawyer Lampley was Prince John or something. 

Seriously, it's well established precedent (at least until the Roberts Court gets its hands on it) that one cannot be compelled to recite the POA. This is a particularly egregious example because the guy was willing to stand; hardly a contemptuous gesture. Of course, any judge who does something this malakatudinous deserves all the contempt and scorn they get.

Bite me, Judge Littlejohn. Go take it out on Sir Guy of Gisborne or the Sheriff of Nottingham.

 

Wanted: Jethro Bodine

Not really but one of the NRSC's consulants recently put out a casting call for an actor with a "hicky blue collar look" for an ad in the West Virginia Senate race. I wonder if any of them were ever double knot spies or international playboys?

The ad has been pulled from YouTube but if it turns up, I'll post the varmint as Granny Clampett would surely say.

Halal Soup

Assclowns

I got a halal chicken once because some Muslim friends were coming over and there's a halal grocery/butcher within easy driving distance. Roasted it with rosemary and some lemon, thing was frigging delicious. Didn't feel particularly inclined to love Mohammed more after eating it nor don a veil, though. Kosher hotdogs? Tasty. A bit disappointed I couldn't speak a word of Hebrew after I took them off the grill. Last night, had this steak frite at a French place, but this morning I am no more French than, say, Della or Oscar.

I'm getting really bummed out here. Was planning to order takeout at some point this weekend, but if that doesn't make me instantly Asian I'm done and it's nothing but Lean Cuisine from here on out.

A.

Fox and Friends and Batboy

From Album3 It's one thing for Fox to get duped by a Weekly World News article, that's not surprising...what IS frustrating is to realize that if, heaven forbid, the "librul" media got caught in a similar mistake, the noise machine would be incessant. Hell, look at the howling over Dan Rather's botching of an otherwise accurate report that George W. Bush opted for early retirement from what was already a Champagne Brigade slot. Or, more recently, consider how Alan Grayson is getting slammed for admittedly "creative editing" of a commercial -- which doesn't misrepresent his opponent's views at all.   If there's going to be a standard, fine. Hold Grayson accountable, hold Rather accountable. But apply the same standard across the board...and hold the wingers accountable, too.

Come Together Goes To Church?

Here's a clip that's floating around the interweb of a preacher performing John Lennon's nonsense dadalike tune, Come Together, at some mega-church in Plymouth, Michigan. Hey maybe that's it: when I think Plymouth I think of the rock and the Beatles were rockers. Hallelujah. Wait a darn minute, I'm still confused:

 

WTF are they on about? The lyrics are highfalutin gibberish a la Jabberwocky. Praise be to Brothers John, George, Ringo and Macca. Woo.

Via Bill Corbett of MST3K and Rifftrax's twitter feed.

This weird use of a Beatle song and all the Jesus posts here yesterday, implanted an earworm but it's not Come Together. Instead, it's a Lennon tune that features this lyrical refrain: "Christ you know it ain't easy, you know how hard it can be. The way things are going they're gonna crucify me."

 

 

On This Tribune Piece

The whining about the horror becomes tiresome.

Behind the collapse of the Tribune deal and the bankruptcy is a classic example of financial hubris. Mr. Zell, a hard-charging real estate mogul with virtually no experience in the newspaper business, decided that a deal financed with heavy borrowing and followed with aggressive cost-cutting could succeed where the longtime Tribune executives he derided as bureaucrats had failed.

And while many media companies tried cost-cutting and new tactics in the last few years, Tribune was particularly aggressive in planning publicity stunts and in mixing advertising with editorial material. Those efforts alienated longtime employees and audiences in the communities its newspapers served.

“They threw out what Tribune had stood for, quality journalism and a real brand integrity, and in just a year, pushed it down into mud and bankruptcy,” said Ken Doctor, a newspaper analyst with Outsell Inc., a consulting firm. “And it’s been wallowing there for the last 20 months with no end in sight.”

Spare me stories about the glory days, Springsteen, and spare me the pearl-clutching about the innocence of the Trib being defiled by these pigs. My problem isn't that this stuff doesn't suck but that the place was ever some kind of temple of virtue, journalistic or otherwise.

For what it's worth, the Tribune has always suffered from journalistic arrogance, by which I mean they thought they were better just because they were the Tribune. They had nothing to prove. They were the Tribune. Whatever they did, it would be the final definitive word on the subject. Whatever one of their editors said, it would shape the coverage everybody else would provide or they'd know the reason why.

They acted like the whole city should bend down and kiss their ring just because. They were fat and lazy and occasionally they were good enough to earn the kind of deference they expected as a matter of course, but only occasionally. I can't say I'm shocked this was Zell's impression. It was everybody's. This is what happens to every large company that gets complacent. This is what happens to every big shot who forgets there's always somebody else out there who wants it more.

As far as the frat-house shit is concerned: 

In turn, Mr. Michaels remade Tribune’s management, installing in major positions more than 20 former associates from the radio business — people he knew from his time running Jacor and Clear Channel — a practice that came to be known as “friends and family” at the company.

One of their first priorities was rewriting the employee handbook.

“Working at Tribune means accepting that you might hear a word that you, personally, might not use,” the new handbook warned. “You might experience an attitude you don’t share. You might hear a joke that you don’t consider funny. That is because a loose, fun, nonlinear atmosphere is important to the creative process.” It then added, “This should be understood, should not be a surprise and not considered harassment.”

The new permissive ethos was quickly on display. When Kim Johnson, who had worked with Mr. Michaels as an executive at Clear Channel, was hired as senior vice president of local sales on June 16, 2008, the news release said she was “a former waitress at Knockers — the Place for Hot Racks and Cold Brews,” a jocular reference to a fictitious restaurant chain.

Let's not be mistaken here. If anyone thinks the pre-Michaels Tribune hired on merit alone, I have a bridge in Alaska to sell you. And far be it from me to defend unfunny jokes about boobies, but everybody's talking shit about it now because the Tribune is still financially and journalistically fucked. If the Tribune was stuffed full of cash and kicking everybody's ass in town and wasn't visibly flailing every which way in desperate search of a trend it could ride to profitability, Michaels' sexually harrassing profane shit would be a sign of his lunch-pail mentality and old-fashioned hard-workingness and it would be charming and funny to the media bigwigs and everyone else would keep their mouths shut. Everybody at the Tower would be having a chuckle over returning to the good old days of poker, pin-ups and cigars in the city room. The Tribune's in a hole, though, so it's gross and unprofessional and suddenly we care. 

When you're winning, nobody really cares how it's happening or who has to get stepped on to make that happen. When you're losing, things like asking a waitress to show you her tits gets, how shall we say, less of a pass than it used to. That's not right, but tell me I'm wrong. I hate everyone involved in this story, pretty much, but I will say what it definitively says is that the Internet isn't the problem. That's farther than Carr is willing to go in his story, but it's pretty much the inescapable conclusion. I wouldn't hire these people to bake me a potato, but those bloggers who link to stuff are destroying a noble craft.

A.

List of Ways You're Doing It Wrong

When the KKK shows up to cheer you on:

*takes out list of "100 signs you may be on the wrong side of an issue"*

Huh, that's weird. "The KKK is throwing a rally to back you up" is, like, half of this list just repeated over and over again.

The rest of the list:

NASCAR/Northwestern/Raiders fans accuse you of being too into your sport

Sarah Palin thinks you should calm down with the God stuff already

Emeril tells you to lay off the butter in your cooking

I remark that you've really got kind of a gutter mouth

A.

 

No right to their privacy

I've been thinking a lot about something Dan Savage said recently, and not just because he's been in the news a lot lately, though more power to him for It Gets Better. A frequent guest on Olbermann, Savage was on last week to opine about the bonehead in Saxby Chambliss' office who posted "All Faggots Must Die" in comments over at Joe My God.

This is par for the course. This is what they believe. This is how they talk about us in private, when they think no one's looking and no one's tech savvy enough to trace their hatred back to their office.

It's no surprise. Saxby Chambliss is a homophobe and he employs homophobes, and this is, I'm sure, how they talk about gay and lesbian Americans who are serving in the military when they think it's no one but them in the room listening.

They hate us. Does anyone out there doubt this? They hate us, they revile us, they even exploit the deaths of our young to amplify their hate and ignorance. And when we talk about them doing it, we need to call it by its name, not use polite words like "cultural differences," "conservative values," or other carefully coded phrases that make it sound reasonable, like there is an understandable equivalency between our experience of their hatred and violence and their expression of it.

There is no equivalence. One side is on the wrong side of history. Speaking of history, no one calls this an expression of cultural differences any more. It's been decades since anyone tried to call this family values.

There is no equivalence. One side is wrong, is full of hate for us, is actively inciting more violence and death, is bent on our destruction. This is how they talk about us in private and we need to talk more honestly and frankly, in public, about how they do so. And not just on MSNBC and the dirty hippy blogs, either.

 

Jesus With Boobs? Seriously?

That's Jesus with boobs. Folks, it only goes downhill from here.

So I'm sure all of you good people read our Lord and Savior Athenae's post below; if you haven't, shame on you.  Also say 20 Hail Lombardis, and think about what you haven't done.  It turns out that some religious dopes you'll never meet are outraged that some art gallery you've never heard of in a town you'll never visit is daring--daring!--to show something that might not validate all of their stupid religious beliefs.

For the life of me, I don't know how a crowd of these god-botherers isn't following me around every day.  I can't go 30 minutes without "disgrac[ing] the God of all creation."  I have toothpicks made from the True Cross.  I use the shroud of Turin as a piddle pad for dogs.  I'd use Bible pages for toilet paper, but those gilt edges will give you cuts you can't believe in places you don't want 'em.  And that's just what I do for Christians.  Before breakfast.  On Tuesday.

Anyway, I don't know what they're bitching about.  Their religion and their god is a lot freakier than depicted in those photos.  And I don't mean that vanilla shit like hanging out with hookers.  That's what I do after breakfast.  On Tuesday.  It's quite routine, and there's nothing scandalous about it.  No, I'm talking about some pretty serious S&M.  From hairshirts to flagellants to straight-out martyrs, Christians have been into serious S&M and bondage shit for two millennia now.  Think about that.  For longer than Catholic priests have been raping little boys, Christians have been all about emulating suffering, and what do they call the feeling they get when they've suffered enough?  Ecstasy.  I mean, they're not even trying to hide it.  Of course, it's not like they're not taking their cues from the guy who kicked off the whole party, either.  Check this shit out:

 

If this doesn't get Bill Donohue after me, I don't know what will.

That is the Cross of San Damiano, courtesy of Wikipedia.  Like all medieval representations of Jesus, it is 100% accurate.  Take a good look at Jeebus there.  Above the loincloth.  I'll wait.

 

 

Holy shit!  Did you see that?  I think they crucified him because they were scared of his dick! 

That Jesus was into the wildest-ass masochism this side of the women who vote Republican.  Forget "why did you forsake me;" this guy was saying "Father, forgive them, because this has me hotter than the Fourth of July.  Which hasn't been invented yet."

So I don't know what these people are so upset about.  The image they're pissed at is tamer than what might as well be a photograph of their god.  Is that the problem, after all?  "This is an outrage--our god was WAY kinkier than that!"

Damn.  If that's so, I've been way too harsh with these people.  Maybe they're alright, after all.

Blackened Out

Last night, Dr. A and I joined assorted NOLA bloggers and friends of Dangerblond for her birthday dinner at a wee Mid-City restaurant called Katie's. The core of the party were the Rising Tide committee of "people who get shit done" and our sweeties. The food was excellent and the staff remarkably patient given the fact that our table was a 97 top (only a slight exaggeration) and we all have VERY LOUD VOICES. Just ask Virgo Tex: prolonged exposure to NOLA bloggers is a leading cause of deafness in the 504 area code, uh, area. In short, it was cacophony at its most cacophonous. Former Mayor (and current Urban League honcho) Marc Morial was there for dinner as well. His table was much quieter than ours. We were louder than vuvuzela blowing futbol fans. Honk, honk, honk.

On to the point of this post: food. New Orleans is a city of conversation and the main topic of conversation is food. There's an increasingly lively food blogging community here to guide us on our path to gluttony. When you talk to someone about a wedding in NOLA, the first question you *always* ask is, how was the food? Not was the bride gorgeous? Or did the best man get drunk and make a pass at the bride's mother? Food. But I do digress. It is, after all, what I do.

Anyway, back to food blogging in New Orleans. My current favorite is Blackened Out. It's written by longtime friends, Peter and Rene. They hit all the usual foodie notes but they season everything liberally with snark and wit. These guys are fucking funny and excellent writers, y'all. I follow BO-uh oh, better spell it out-Blackened Out on the tweeter tube and whichever one of the boys tweets during LSU and Saints games is hilarious. I resisted the temptation to steal of some of his lines in my Les Miles post. I'm no Milton Berle: I neither wear frocks for laughs nor steal jokes.

Here's the beginning of a spirited exchange between Peter and Rene on the subject of eateries that do not accept credit cards:

Rene: If any menu item on your menu is over $8, you have no business being a cash only restaurant. Now listen, many restaurants and food purveyors will tell you they are cash only to keep their prices down. The theory is if they don't have to pay the credit card companies 3-5% a month for the right to take credit cards, they can pass the savings on to you. But when was the last time you walked into a cash only restaurant and said, "Hey this po-boy shop's prices are 3-5% lower than the one that is cash only." If you are a snowball stand, bakery, or coffee shop, I'm fine with you being cash only. Otherwise, the 21st century is paging you, please take cards.

Peter: You are beginning to sound like the Dean. Case in point, this quote from his restaurant review of Ciro's Cote Sud on July 7, 2010: "The cash-or-check payment policy is an absurd inconvenience to enforce upon customers, and causes one to order less food and wine than one otherwise might. (How much cash is in your pocket right now?)" Saving that 3-5% may not be manifested in lower prices on the menu, but it is certainly recognized as a value to the customer in some other manner. How do you know? Because if Restaurant A consistently charged 3-5% more for the same exact food as Restaurant B next door, all other things being equal, which would you go to and which would be closed down in a matter of months? Let consumer preference determine if cash only is a make or break point of contention for diners. Last time I checked, Mandina's and Casamento's were not hurting for customers.

I'm with Rene on this one. In the modern economy you need to take plastic. I own a small business and I hate paying the fees BUT it's the price of doing business in a way that's convenient for your customers.

So, if you're looking for NOLA restaurant tips or for the perfect way to roast a chicken, check out Blackened Out.

Guys? Jesus Has Boobs in This Picture

I think the blow job is the least of our canon problems.

A.

WWTFUS: you can't carry it with you if you want to survive

If this doesn't wake you up, check your pulse.

Survival: Caprica Thread

Jacob:

After the first death, Amanda spent years screaming, building her bridge back to the world. It took nearly three years to complete. To rise up from the water again. These were the keystones: Her daughter, her home, her husband, their life, the Gods, her career. The righteous joy of stability and the place where medicine and art intersect. And then her daughter died, and her home went cold, and their life burned down, and the Gods abandoned her, and she gave up her career.

Survival is punishment, for leaving things unsaid. To live is to bear that punishment.

Crowd Comparisons

Relentless inescapable marketing:

The main point of contention regarding the two rallies is crowd size, a measure that’s apparently more elusive than Sasquatch. Beck estimated his own crowd at around 500k, but one estimate, based on aerial photography, pegged it as low as 87,000. Interestingly, TheNewsofToday.com reports the exact same estimate for “One Nation.” Apparently, the science of crowd estimates is based on the work of Rain Man.

For the purpose of this discussion, however, let’s accept the premise that there were more people at Beck’s rally, even that there were twice as many. When making this comparison, however, it is important to remember that Beck benefited from relentless promotion, not only from the #1 cable news network, but also from MSNBC and CNN. A TV Eyes search for each rally shows that, up until the day before each event, “Restoring Honor” was mentioned 2,877 times, versus 520 mentions of “One Nation Rally.”

A.

Mad Men Thread: Go Chase A Hearse

I have high expectations when I watch Mad Men. I expect them to blow my socks off every week. This time around my socks didn't even slip and fit as snugly as a Playtex glove. I thought that they advanced the meta-storyline of the possible demise of SCDP fairly well BUT there were a series of misfires along the way. This episode was good whereas most of this year has been great. Oh well, nobody's perfect...

I'm not crazy about the whole Peggy-Abe thing. It feels like the longest meet-cute in Hollywood history, which makes it cliched and I've rarely used that word about anything to do with Mad Men. This whole thing of hating the one you love is trite and, hopefully, if they insist on keeping Abe around, they'll do something more interesting with them as a couple. I must admit that the thought of Peggy bringing a Jewish boy home to her virago mother is most amusing.

I enjoyed the other Peggy elements of the show; especially her successful presentation to the Playtex people. That scene contained this week's funniest moment: when the Playtex guy licks his teeth to warn Peggy that she has lipstick on her choppers. Peggy and us viewers initially think that the dude is making like Stan and picking up on Peggy's sexytime vibe. The usually clueless Harry interrupts his celebrity reveries and tells the Pegster to her relief and our's.

Another scene that I'm lukewarm about was the Don-Meghan tryst. It felt forced and implausible. We're supposed to believe that Don would let her stay for a lesson on how to be a mad man when his firm is teetering on the edge of a catastrophe? I, for one, don't buy it. Yes, Don is major horndog but he's too clever to make this same mistake again. Hell, he's able to get Faye to sell out her principles so he should stick with her if he's capable of doing so. But that remains doubtful: Don lives on the cheating side of town, after all.

The once dapper Roger Sterling continues to unravel. He's acting like a 7 year old whose mother ran off with the mailman. Is it just me or did anyone else wonder why nobody in Roger's office noticed that he wasn't actually calling the feckless and faithless Lee Garner Jr. It looked pretty obvious to me but perhaps they're saving that for later. Roger looks more and more like a potential suicide. They may not go there but something horrible is bound to happen to Roger. His delight in a rival ad man's demise may be foreshadowing or it could be a red herring worthy of Ngaio Marsh. But something's got to give.

My favorite moments of The Chinese Wall involved Pete Campbell. Vincent Kartheiser is such a wonderful actor and he excelled this time around. While everything else around Pete is dying, the plucky Trudy gives birth and shortly thereafter Pete toddles off to the shallowest memorial service I've ever seen. The room was full of mad men trying to vulture accounts from the corpse's firm. They're not the only vultures circling: uber-malaka Ted Chaough shows up at the hospital dangling promises of partnerships and Alfa Romeos to Pete. I think Pete is quite right to think that Ted's sole aim is to bust Don's chops. It's not much of a hobby but it's Ted's.

I'll let Trudy's father have the last word this week: "There's no business in here, son."

"Vote Republican"

I hope no one had a coronary upon seeing the post title. Here's further proof that irony is not dead:

 

Via birthday girl Dangerblond.

Print is Dead, Again

Newspapers are over and we should all just go home:

• Smaller papers were never as dependent on print classifieds as their big-city brethren, thus taking a proportionately smaller hit as classified revenue declined 70 percent over the last decade.

• Competition from free ad services (see Craigslist) and from digital startups is likely to be less intense. In rural areas, even broadband access has arrived slowly.

• National advertising is less of a factor. The local merchant base at the core of the community newspapers' franchise has been reluctant to embrace digital alternatives  -- though the smaller papers do see future opportunity in digital.

Higher rates of circulation penetration support the case that these publications are an essential buy for local businesses.

Emphasis mine. The big thinkers are really, really quick to dismiss print entirely because THEY all have iPhones and superfast Interwebs and hey, if they do, everybody does, right?

A.

Debating the Ethics

We're no longer calling in-vitro fertilization a sci-fi freakshow for the same reason that all but the most radical pro-lifers keep their movement's opposition to it on the down low: It requires demonizing affluent women who are desperate to get pregnant. It's politically unwise from a campaign contribution standpoint, and it makes you look like an asshole.

Via Atrios.

A.

O'Donnell's Bozo No No

It's a great time to be alive and an American internet smart ass. The crazy can be pretty goddamn funny sometimes. That wacky meatball loving, masturbation denying, teabagging wingnut cupcake, Christine O'Donnell, is dishing up more straight lines than Zeppo Marx, Bud Abbot or Ed McMahon did in a lifetime of second bananahood. Or is that bananadom?  Yeah, I know, Zeppo was a fourth banana but he was the straight man.

Now where was I? Not only has the Delaware ditz released a teevee ad that begins with "I'm not a witch" and ends with "I'm you" but her kinfolks have injected the name of a revered American icon into this election cycle. That's right: Bozo the Clown. Is nothing sacred?

Apparently, Ms. O'Donnell's brother has been claiming that their father was Bozo in the City of Brotherly Booers. Pater O'Donnell has clarified this pressing matter:

“Who told you I was Bozo?” he wanted to know.

“Your son,” I said, at which point he confirmed that yes, he was Bozo, but not an official, full-time certified Bozo, more of a part-time Bozo.

“To be an official Bozo, you had to go to a special school in Texas,” explained Mr. O’Donnell. He never did. Instead, he was asked to fill-in for the official Bozos whenever they would have to travel out of the Philadelphia area for acting gigs.

“They would leave, I would come in and work for two or three weeks, whatever, until the regular Bozo came back,” Mr. O’Donnell said. “I was the fill-in Bozo.” He worked out of a local station in Jenkintown, Pa., he said, adding that station employees did his make-up and hair. He would also do remote appearances, got to supermarkets, meet kids, sign autographs and ride around in the Bozo Mobile. His son Daniel was his assistant.

Damn, he got to ride around in the Bozo Mobile? That's almost as good as driving the Wiener Mobile. I am so fucking jealous, man. I always wanted to be a backup Bozo. Oops, that came out wrong...

After writing that last paragraph, I paused to pinch myself. We're talking about the United States Senate: an august, albeit impotent, chamber full of pompous windbags and we're debating Bozo the Clown? Sounds right to me.

Once again, Firesign Theatre says it best:

I wish I could have some scrumptious bozoberry jam right now but I doubt that they still make it, he said, too lazy to use the Google. It may have been removed from the market because it gave diners an  overwhelming desire to don white face, rubber noses and mince about in shoes too big even for Shaq.

Repeat after me: mmm, bozoberry jam.

State Of Confusion

The post about Les Miles' dumbassery has given me a raging earworm, which, when it involves the Kinks, is okay with me. Bring on the warring Davies brothers:

 

 

 

Tales of privatization

Burn, baby, burn; Ayn Rand style:

The homeowner, Gene Cranick, said he offered to pay whatever it would take for firefighters to put out the flames, but was told it was too late. They wouldn't do anything to stop his house from burning.

Each year, Obion County residents must pay $75 if they want fire protection from the city of South Fulton. But the Cranicks did not pay.

The mayor said if homeowners don't pay, they're out of luck.

This fire went on for hours because garden hoses just wouldn't put it out. It wasn't until that fire spread to a neighbor's property, that anyone would respond.

Turns out, the neighbor had paid the fee.
[...]
It was only when a neighbor's field caught fire, a neighbor who had paid the county fire service fee, that the department responded. Gene Cranick asked the fire chief to make an exception and save his home, the chief wouldn't.

Gret Stet Of Confusion

Okay, sports fans, you may have heard of the Bizzaro World ending of the LSU-Tennessee game. I was on the tweeter tube (#firemiles) while watching and many a barb was fired LSU Coach Les Miles' way. I once called David Vitter the luckiest man in Louisiana but the title realy belongs to Les Miles. Miles may be the worst game coach in football history. His teams never seem to know how much time is left on the clock and have lost several games because of Miles' stupidity.

The stupid seemed to be contagious at the end of Saturday's game. The Vols thought they had pulled an upset BUT they had 13 men on the field for LSU's seemingly disastrous final play. The video below calls it a miracle finish but it was really a clusterfuck. It was so horrible that Tiger fans want Les' stupid head on a pike even though we're 5-0. Holy dumbassery, Batman.

 

Today on Tommy T's Obsession with the Freeperati - Miles O'Tool - er, O'Keefe edition

Geez - I may have to take another hiatus - just woke up from a dream where I was attending a Congressional inquiry meeting, Tony Stark-style, except they were gonna take me out afterwards and shoot me.

A Steve-King-style wingnut was talking wingnut crap, and irritated me enough that I started riffing on him MST3K-style into my mike, and ended up unmasking him as an alien (a real extraterrestrial, not the kind Meg Whitman gets caught employing), yanking off the wig and sunshades on camera, and then vaporizing him with his own ray gun.

It got weird after that.

OK - you kind of know how the reactions in Freeperville were going to come down after "Fake Acorn pimp" got caught with his wig and sunglasses off, but hey - knowing that Schwartzenegger/Stallone/Bruce Willis was going to win in the end never stopped me from going to a popcorn movie, so let's suit up, enter the inner chamber, and yank the lids of a few barrels of Freeper Funnies!

I can almost picture the discussion in the Editorial inner sanctum over the wording of this headline (it changed several times over the course of the day)

 

Fake pimp from ACORN videos tries to 'punk' CNN correspondent
CNN ^ | Sept 29 2010 | Scott Zamost,

Posted on Wednesday, September 29, 2010 11:03:07 AM by worst-case scenario

Lusby, Maryland (CNN) -- A conservative activist known for making undercover videos plotted to embarrass a CNN correspondent by recording a meeting on hidden cameras aboard a floating "palace of pleasure" and making sexually suggestive comments, e-mails and a planning document show.

James O'Keefe, best known for hitting the community organizing group ACORN with an undercover video sting, hoped to get CNN Investigative Correspondent Abbie Boudreau onto a boat filled with sexually explicit props and then record the session, those documents show.

The plan apparently was thwarted after Boudreau was warned minutes before it was supposed to happen.

"I never intended to become part of the story," Boudreau said. "But things suddenly took a very strange turn."

O'Keefe is best known for making a series of undercover videos inside ACORN offices around the country in 2009. The 40-year-old liberal group was crippled by scandal after O'Keefe and fellow activist Hannah Giles allegedly solicited advice from ACORN workers on setting up a brothel and evading taxes.

**********************

Put aside your natural dislike of CNN ... and read this story. It's hilarious!

What's really the best part is O'Keefe's written plans for this "CNN Caper." http://www.cnn.com/interactive/2010/09/specials/cnn.caper/index.html

I hope Breitbart isn't paying this guy too much money. What a maroon! He must have had beginner's luck with the ACORN catch.

1 posted on Wednesday, September 29, 2010 11:03:11 AM by worst-case scenario

.

To: worst-case scenario

What a maroon! He must have had beginner's luck with the ACORN catch.

Have you seen the outrageous 1970s SuperFly pimp and hooker outfits those two wore? He wasn't lucky, the ACORN workers were just unusually clueless.

2 posted on Wednesday, September 29, 2010 11:10:39 AM by Yo-Yo (Is the /sarc tag really necessary?)

.

These yo-yos still think O'Queefe actualyl wore that stupid rig into the Acorn offices.  P. T. Barnum was right.

.

To: worst-case scenario

I don’t think we need to insult a guy who almost single-handedly exposed one of the most vile, corrupt LeftWing government institutions in History...

3 posted on Wednesday, September 29, 2010 11:12:21 AM by Maverick68

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So helping poor people register to vote now constitutes "vile"? I think the mocking has just begun, and I predict your rapid disappearance from this thread.

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To: worst-case scenario

This guy has to give this stuff up. He’s making a fool of himself now.

4 posted on Wednesday, September 29, 2010 11:12:37 AM by camerongood210

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I thought he was you guys' knight in shining armour? And in case you didn't notice it, he's not just making a fool of himself.  By proxy, he's making a fool of every wingnut in Freeperville.

Next we have the deniers:

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To: worst-case scenario

The 40-year-old liberal group was crippled by scandal after O'Keefe and fellow activist Hannah Giles allegedly solicited advice from ACORN workers on setting up a brothel and evading taxes.

Don't they have the whole thing on tape? And it's still "allegedly."

How many times was the word "allegedly" used in the "koran-in-the-toilet" story, or countless other media attack pieces targeted at conservatives?

5 posted on Wednesday, September 29, 2010 11:14:04 AM by Steely Tom (Obama goes on long after the thrill of Obama is gone)

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To: Steely Tom

Time-Lies Boycott Time-Warner-Turner-CNN.

18 posted on Wednesday, September 29, 2010 12:49:24 PM by a fool in paradise (Ask yourself,where does Saudi Arabia fit on a scale of "passive" to "moderate" to "extremist" Islam?)

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Hey - this might even be a "false flag" operation!  Nah - that's too crazy, even for Freepers.

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To: worst-case scenario

You sound as if you have a vested interest in bringing him down.....

17 posted on Wednesday, September 29, 2010 12:48:17 PM by Maverick68

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Derp.

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To: worst-case scenario; Maverick68

This is an embarrassment to Conservative causes.

Is it possible that, all along, O'Keefe has been attempting to embarrass conservatives?

23 posted on Wednesday, September 29, 2010 1:57:22 PM by Walts Ice Pick

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OK - that's too crazy for some Freepers.

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To: worst-case scenario

O'Keefe needs to take a step back and re-think his approach to this work. He chalked up a nice hit his first time out of the box, but it has been downhill ever since. If he wants to have a "career" (who knows what the media will look like 10 years from now) in this business, he should concentrate on finding real wrong-doing as opposed to trying to create it out of whole cloth.

15 posted on Wednesday, September 29, 2010 12:22:03 PM by Major Matt Mason (Never trust a liberal...or a GOP moderate.)

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And still the DeNile deniers dany (there are two threads at Freeperville on the subject, so this is a mashup)

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To: jessduntno

No idea what these asshats at CNN are alleging ... but it seems little weird that they would devote all this, air time and all the other resources to say that there was a “plot” to try to seduce a CNN reporter. Why? What would that have proved?

That wingnuts are stupid and blinded by their own ideology?

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They are getting pretty desperate over at the Communist News Network.

2 posted on Wednesday, September 29, 2010 11:18:23 AM by jessduntno (9/24/10, FBI raids home of appropriately named AAAN leader Hatem Abudayyeh, a friend of Obama.)

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Communist News Network?

CNN? 

I get it!

How startlingly original and witty !   Wolcott will soon be out of a job, no doubt.

Post of the unsurprisingly-quiet thread!:

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To: Maverick68

“almost highhandedly” ... if you include Breitbart, several skillful tape editors, and the entire FNC apparatus.

I wonder if Fox will cover this fiasco - and how they will explain it.

Wonder no more!

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Hey, FOX - you used to have this nincompoop on fourteen times a day.  Wha hoppen? How did he suddenly become an unperson?

Maybe O’Keefe should just do a reality show on MTV, one the follows him around while he works out these brilliant schemes. Call it “O’Keefer Madness.”

14 posted on Wednesday, September 29, 2010 12:19:45 PM by worst-case scenario (Striving to reach the light)

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Ba-da-bump!

More Freeper follies after the dotted line...

On Getting Better

Building on Doc's bullying post, this:

They see Ellen and Adam Lambert and Neil Patrick Harris. They’re good folks and important public figures, but those are gay celebrities. What are the odds of becoming a celebrity? What kids have a hard time picturing is a rewarding, good, average life for themselves. Becoming Ellen is like winning the lottery. But there are a lot of happy and content lesbians who we don’t see or hear from ever. Those are the people teens need to hear from right now. When a 15-year-old kills himself, he’s saying he can’t picture a future that is decent enough and happy enough to stick around for. Gay adults can show our present lives and help them picture a future.

It gets better. I freely admit as a straight white middle class chick I don't know jack about the battles LGBT teens face, except from the outside, where I feel profoundly sorry and angry we aren't making a better world in which they can grow up. I don't know what it was like being a gay teenager. But I know what it was like being a teenager, period, and a solitary, socially awkward teenager, and I can't imagine a better message for anybody who feels alone than that.

 

I saw this girl in the airport two years ago. I've never forgotten her face. She was standing beside her parents and two younger boys I assumed were her brothers. They were engaged in a screaming fight over some toy in a bright green box. Her parents were doing that marital guerrilla warfare thing where Dad snaps things like, "No, RITA, you put it there, YOU go get it," and Mom looks weary. The girl was holding a video game device of some kind, wearing ill-fitting jeans and a pink sweater, her complexion was pockmarked, and she fidgeted with everything, like she was trying to crawl out of her skin or deeper inside it. Her hair was stringy and her expression was one of total misery.

 

It's not that she was the first alienated-looking teenager I'd seen in public. I work near a high school and I see them every day in the sandwich place, sitting by themselves, maybe with a book or a laptop or a notebook. But something about her thousand-yard stare, her whole body saying GET ME THE HELL OUT OF HERE, the picture of completely ordinary dejection she presented made me want to go up to her and hug her and say, "It will get better."

 

It will get better. You'll grow up. Your skin will even out. Your body will become what it's meant to be. You'll either figure out clothes or not care that you haven't figured out clothes. You'll learn to deal with your Difficult Hair. You'll have someone teach you makeup, or teach it to yourself, or not give a damn anymore. You'll be beautiful, in some way you haven't figured out yet, the way everybody's beautiful in ways they don't always know, always.

 

You'll find work you love, work that lifts you up and makes you more than you are and you'll throw yourself into that work and you'll be good at it. You may not be as successful as you once dreamed, but you'll be good at it and that will be enough. You'll find things to fill your extra time, art or music, reading, sports, volunteer work. You'll get a cat or two or a dog or a fish or a robot hamster or a plant. You'll go out. You'll stay in. You'll find love, and lose it, and find it again. Your days will take a shape you can't see right now, and they'll be good days and bad days, like everybody else's. They won't be perfect, but you won't feel they're wasted.

 

You'll go to your high school reunion, and laugh because all those horrible kids who were so mean to you are just people now, and you don't have to be afraid of them and you don't have to care what they thought of you then or what they think of you now. One of them will corner you, drunk, in the bathroom, and slur at you that you've really changed. You'll smile and go on your way, not because you've forgiven them for their cruelty but because you don't care anymore. Hating them and feeling sorry for your old self and sorting out who was really to blame for what is so much work, and you've got so many other things to do.

 

You'll think to yourself, I would not be fifteen again if you put a gun to my head. You'll think people who say youth is wasted on the young are idiots. You'll dance on your 30th and 40th birthdays. You'll glory in your adulthood, in turning the key in the lock of your own apartment or house, in coming home from a job you'll be doing with your own hands earning money you get to spend however you like. You'll survive something else tough, a job loss, an illness, a death, and you'll think about how much stronger you are than you ever thought you'd be. You'll get knocked down, a lot, because it's how you learn caution, but you'll never forget what it felt like to be reckless and you'll try to live like that as much as anyone possibly can.

 

Your squabbling siblings? They'll be people who get the jokes no one else gets, who find things funny that to anyone else sound horrifying. They'll hold your hand at family funerals. They'll be your constants in a changing world. Your parents, snapping at each other? You'll see your father looking at your mother one day and the love in his eyes will take your breath away. You and your family may not ever truly get each other, bone-deep and blood-simple, but you will work through what you don't get, because shared history has a power best heeded, absent all other impediments.

 

And speaking of shared history, you'll have friends you haven't met yet. God, will you have friends. Friends whose faith will give you faith, whose strength will awe and inspire you, whose company you'll glory in. You'll be courageous with them beside you. You'll laugh so hard your sides hurt. You'll go to baseball games and football games and plays and farmer's markets and out to dinner and brunch and to movies and plays together. They'll come to your parties. You'll go to theirs. They'll e-mail you four times a day and you'll drop everything to answer. You'll babysit their kids and love that their kids know your names. You'll pick them up from the airport and they'll cook for you when you're sick. They'll follow your life like a soap opera and you'll follow theirs. You'll go for months without speaking but think of them every day. You'll think, every day, how lucky you are to have found them. You'll wonder, every day, why they put up with you and sometimes you'll get down and feel broken and unworthy, and they'll come around, and they'll lift you up again.

 

You'll fill your house with them whenever you can, and as you're in the other room getting drinks you'll hear them laughing and talking. The paint might be peeling and you didn't get a promotion and nobody's making enough money, and everybody in the room is fighting some kind of battle every day and so are you, but you'll hear these people talking and laughing in your home and the love you feel will almost choke you. You'll feel ten feet tall. You'll think to yourself, "I have the life I wanted." And your greatest fear will not be that you'll never get there but that it will all be taken away.

 

I don't know anything about that girl in the airport. Maybe she was a brilliant kid, class president and head cheerleader, having a crappy day. Maybe she just didn't feel like smiling. Maybe she was some kind of pyro sociopath and was the cause of all her family's fighting. Maybe she was absolutely fine and that's just how her face looked. But if I could go back to that day, to that girl, I'd go up to her and tell her exactly what I needed to hear, all those years ago. What everybody needs to hear, when they're someplace they can't get out of, when they're stuck somewhere miserable and can't see the end of it. When they've been knocked down so hard they can't imagine getting up.

 

It will get better.

 

It will get so much better.

 

A.

Saturday Night Music: Only A Memory

It was a gorgeous day in Debrisville and somehow this song came to mind. As earworms go, it's a pleasant one. It was not quite cool enough to weather a leather jacket and pose like Pat Dinizio but it was pretty darn nice.

The Smithereens - only a memory
Uploaded by jesus_lizard. - See the latest featured music videos. 

 

Weekend Question Thread

What place in your house is absolutely filthy?  

I've got a couple of closets nobody is allowed to look in because GOD KNOWS what is at the bottom of them. And I only really vaccuum under the couch when there's a party and somebody might drop something and have to look under there.

A.

Saturday Blogwhoring Thread

Posted this on Facebook this week and Virgo asked for it here:

Post away.

A.

Thank you...

... from the gang here at First Draft, both human and critter, for your generosity and support. Hmm, I'm not sure where Jude fits in but we'll figure it out eventually. My forte is comic relief but I'm not as a funny as a ferret in a silly hat or a cat wrestling a toy spear. But can they pun? Hell no.

Speaking of thankfulness, here's Sylvester Stewart, Larry Graham and company: