Month: October 2003 (Page 5 of 7)

Legitimacy

Read an interesting defense on Dean Esmay’s site of why liberal celebrities talking about politics are shooting their mouths off, but conservative celebrities running for office with no qualifications but their celebrity is A-OK.

Apparently, it’s because when they run for office, that gives them “legitimacy.”

Yeah. That’s the ticket.

Pop culture quote of the week

“I’ve always thought of Siegfried and Roy as sort of like Akbar and Jeff. Are they friends? Are they brothers? Are they lovers? Or all three?”

-Lisa D.

In reading about Gov. Arnold today, I’ve seen again and again variations on “At least he’s not a career politician.” I love how if you don’t like someone, he’s a “career politician.” But if you happened to like someone who’d spent a long time in politics, you’d say he “spent his life in public service.”

Words mean things.

Shameless

Grover Norquist, an anti-tax right wing lobbyist thought to be the architect of President Bush’s giant tax cuts, compared the estate tax (or the “death tax” in rightie parlance) to the Holocaust.

The transcript is truly chilling. These people have no shame.

Sounds great to me

“I envision a day when all elected officials have electrodes implanted in their chests, and if every morning, a majority of registered voters don’t press the large green ‘LIVE’ button on the dashboard of their cars, that officeholder’s heart will explode.”

-Stephen Colbert on “The Daily Show,” with some cogent thoughts on the future of democracy in the wake of Gov. Schwarzenegger’s election

Memo to Florida

Congratulations! You’re no longer the laughingstock of the country. Those wacky Californians just elected a sexual predator movie star as governor – in a landslide! The heat is off, for now. Enjoy it. Just don’t go and do something like elect a shiny metal toaster as your governor, and you should be able to coast into the elections next year without people snickering when your name is brought up.

This reminds me of when I first moved to Muskegon, Michigan. It was right around the time of the infamous Money Magazine article Michael Moore talks about in “Roger and Me,” where Flint was ranked 300th out of 300 American cities. What didn’t get as much press as Flint’s ranking was Muskegon’s, at 299. Being a new resident and a smartass, I suggested to my colleagues in the newsroom that Muskegon’s new slogan should be, “Muskegon: At Least We’re Better Than Flint.”

That didn’t go over well.

The White House has declared next week, Oct. 12-18, “Marriage Protection Week.” Oct. 12 is the anniversary of Matthew Shepard’s murder, and Oct. 11 is National Coming Out Day.

As a commenter on MetaFilter said, “Some days I wonder whether it’s worth crawling out from under my rock to fling feces at this kind of thing…”

“Quit using My name as a justification for feeling superior to everyone else. You aren’t. You are actually among the dumbest people on the planet. Don’t think so? Name the president of Mexico. See? Ask anyone else in the world the name of the leader of the country next to theirs and they can tell you who it is.”

–Michael Moore, channeling God

I am extremely embarrassed to admit that I didn’t know the name of either the President of Mexico or the Canadian Prime Minister. (I possibly could have gotten the Prime Minister’s name, if given a little time.) I feel shame. Do you know them?

BONUS: Moore’s questions for the President. (links poached from The Smirking Chimp)

“What’s the matter with conservatives?”

Good question. Great writing from Katha Pollitt in The Nation.

Scariest pop culture moment of the week

Thumbing through the TV Guide, and happening on a photo of the plastic-surgery-damaged Mary Tyler Moore with granny glasses and a grey wig, playing an 80-year-old woman in the TV movie “Blessings.” Yeow. I want to open up my head and use a scrub brush to get this image out of my mind.

I was going to scan it and show it to you, but flames started shooting out of the scanner, so I stopped.