My daughter came home from work yesterday evening and, to accompany Thai food, she wanted to watch "Easy A". Oh, well, I've been the only owner of a Y chromosome in a movie theater. Twice. "Thirteen Going on Thirty" and "The Princess Diaries". One good, one bad, so...
"Easy A" is hysterical. Maybe I laughed too loud. At least I was only embarrassing at home.
It occurred to me about halfway through that our modern media culture is a perfect match for North Ojai High School, all gossip, rumor, and sensation, perception is reality, who cares what's true, image rules.
Typically, Hollywood slaps a happy ending on the triumph of bullshit. Olive's webcast, guerrilla marketing and all, we're supposed to believe, is good enough to shovel it out of her young life. It's a comedy, after all. And Facebook won't follow you all the days of your life.
I suppose I should take some joy from this movie metaphor. If I really can stretch it, it means that media is not channelling middle school pubescent angst and might be mature enough for high school adolescent angst. But I'm not feeling the joy.
Emma Stone's Olive wasn't having sex. We, on the other hand, are fucked. The Supreme Court's wingnut majority continues to hand wealthy people and corporations bigger and bigger megaphones, as if they needed them, to drown out the free speech of everyone who can't go toe-to-toe with whichever billionaire bogeyman is currently most prominent in financing the conservative con-game whose basic message is that we'd all be happier as peons in thrall to their every whim. Because they're so rich, they must be the greatest people who ever lived.
But I didn't let these dark thoughts spoil my viewing pleasure. I've been repressing reality a lot lately.
Thursday, June 30, 2011
No sex, lies, and video (digital)
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Wait, you mean torture's a crime?
Apparently, torture is illegal. Who knew the U.S. would prosecute it?
Torres said that if Nezirovic is convicted of the naturalization fraud charges, the immigration office will take him into custody and start deportation proceedings after he serves any prison sentence handed down by the federal judge. ... Nezirovic could then be tried for detainee abuse in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Torres said.Oh, it's not the torture, it's the lying.
Sunday, June 26, 2011
Saturday, June 25, 2011
Why liberals think bigots prefer the Republican Party
Because they do.
Today at the supermarket, an asshole proud to be an asshole wore a T-shirt that said, "George Bush, Love him or hate him, he killed a ton of Arabs."
This is what the bullies want - not justice, not even law, they want to be the Whitey Bulgers of geopolitics. They want to be vicious, tribal, loyal, and most deadly. The ideals America was founded on? Who gives a shit about ideals? They want the realities - pogroms and genocide against native Americans, enslavement and abuse of forcibly imported Africans and their descendants, extirpation of all linguistic minorities, and elimination of everyone different in thought or behavior.
In short, scoundrels taking their last refuge in sociopatriotism.
Friday, June 24, 2011
Thursday, June 23, 2011
Another pro-lifer who's lying
In the sorry state America is now in - perhaps our death-spiral - Teapublicans such as Rand Paul don't really believe in life:
Mary Jane Koren, a geriatrician and vice-president of the Commonwealth Fund, noted that seniors often suffer health problems and are put in nursing homes after falling down. Poor nutrition leads to decreased muscle strength, meaning a higher chance of falling—and weaker seniors are more likely to be gravely injured in such a fall. Koren noted that by 2020, the annual cost of medical care for seniors who fall is expected to reach $54.9 billion—many magnitudes more than the approximately $2 billion per year the federal government spends on nutrition assistance for senior citizens.The simple premise that's missing from Paul's "logic" is that this anti-hunger program saves money if you assume you actually want to save lives. Paul wants to cut taxes so bad that he doesn't care whether old people die. And they voted for him.
Senator [Rand] Paul, however, explicitly rejected this logic. “It’s curious that only in Washington can you spend $2 billion and claim that you’re saving money,” he said. “The idea or notion that spending money in Washington somehow is saving money really flies past most of the taxpayers.” Instead, Paul touted the “nobility of private charity” as opposed to government-funded “transfer programs.” He suggested privatizing Meals on Wheels and other government assistance for hungry seniors
Of course, in Teapublican world, seniors should have planned better. If they had just taken care to be more economically viable, they wouldn't have to choose between food and medicine. Losers!
If you vote for Republicans, this is what you get. Good luck with that.
Saturday, June 18, 2011
Friday, June 17, 2011
Sex rated R, violence a lovely PG-13
Think of the graphic, frightening violence we permit in our entertainment and our foreign policy. But a penis is out of bounds. That's the wrong kind of first person shooter.
Again, I'm not defending what Anthony Weiner did or the complete foolish narcissism of the way he did it. I just think, as Glenn Greenwald does, that our response to Weiner's peckerdilloes should have been derisive laughter and an immediate move to the next topic. Instead, moving on is what we did on behalf of Bushists who openly admitted doing things that in all previous circumstances had been war crimes. Ho hum, we said.
What the wealthy call socialism, I call a healthy middle class
Update: More from Robert Reich:
The President should advance ideas that work, and go to battle for them.
Supply-side economics doesn’t work. It’s been tried for thirty years, to no avail. And now, when our continuing economic crisis is so palpably being driven by inadequate demand, it’s more bogus than ever.
The last thing we need is for the President to go over to the supply side.
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
Can't trust Republicans with money
The financial failures alone should have been enough to remove Darth and Duhbya from their locations, disclosed and undisclosed, to Leavenworth. Because they abhor accountability of any kind, $6.6 billion was simply pilfered in Iraq.
Who knows how much of it was five-finger discounted by overpaid mercenaries from the likes of Blackwater (now Xe).
Maybe Ahmed Chalabi is thrilled not to have become President of Iraq. It always seemed as though he was in the whole three card monte with the neocons in order to get rich. Maybe it was just a failure of imagination on his part. By now, he may realize that being President only paints a bigger bullseye on your chest.
Then there are the billions we spent putting coats of paint on rubble and calling it public works. We could really use that money to create a few stopgap jobs right about now.
Sunday, June 12, 2011
Saturday, June 11, 2011
Why liberals think Fox harbors racists
Because they do.
How else would they pander to the racists who make up a good chunk of their audience?
Tongue in cheeks
I've tried to think of a dick joke subtle enough to be original. But I haven't. Too oxymoronic a quest. So...
Really, what kind of narcissistic prick photographs his own penis? Right, self-answering...
Of course, we all know that every woman in western civilization wants one thing above all else, and that's high-res digital pix of what has to be the least aesthetic visible part of the male body. If you're so in love with your own package that you want to show it to everyone, chances are you're also very proud when you make doo-doo in your diaper.
Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-putz) could have sent around pictures of his tongue. Take a lesson from Ashley Dupré - she's a pro, after all. From a man, a lingual shot would have been evidence of a sense of humor and an eagerness to please at the same time. That could have brought thumbs up on the online dating sites. (Up where? The P spot? How does that geometry work?)
Look yet again at the difference between Democrats and Republicans. A Democrat commits ludicrous peccadilloes, and that's enough to provoke hissing fleeing abandonment. On the other hand, Newt Gingrich (R-when's Callista's expiration date?) is a serial and ugly adulterer in the party of abstinence, and yet his political people only abandon him because he's mailing it in from a luxurious cruise in the Mediterranean and is too lazy to do the work of touching hoi polloi in Iowa.
Weiner is tweeting his 'nads, while Gingrich wants to tweet his ads. Oh, and Gingrich is fatter than Al Gore, but the media are forbidden from noticing.
Last, I am forced by my contract with the Bloggers' Labor Organization (protector of American BLO jobs) to observe that this is David Vitter watch, day 1441. After getting caught in prostitution scandals twice, which by the way is a crime, unlike tweeting your shlong, however weird that may be, Vitter got re-elected as a family values Republican, and the republic hasn't fallen. Yet.
Friday, June 10, 2011
Tuesday, June 7, 2011
Palin denies jumping the snark
... no matter how much the snark wants her to:
[S]he saved her most fulsome praise for her favorite American hero, Paul Revere: “In his famous cry, ‘One if by land, two if by sea,’ Paul Revere proved that you don’t have to know how to count higher than two to be a great American.”
Monday, June 6, 2011
Friday, June 3, 2011
Signature madness
The louche douche Lyndon LaRouche has young people circulating petitions at the Massachusetts Democratic Party's annual convention. The first is a call for restoration of Glass-Steagall - not such a bad idea, actually. But it's a lead-in for their call to remove President Obama from office, on the grounds that he's "the same as George W. Bush."
Uh, no.
These are the same weirdos who held signs in 2008 portraying Obama as Hitler. Credible!
Paul Revere, Second Amendment fundamentalist
Just when you think she can't possibly be that ignorant, something like this comes along. Sarah Palin can't even keep track of the mythic legends of American history that conservatives normally love (this one with the added benefit of being true). She just makes up bullshit to suit her own weird inchoate opinions.
Why don't all Americans laugh her out of the room?
