Category: words mean things (Page 35 of 223)

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.

Things I learned watching “Thirteen”

1. I’m never going to have children. Ever.
2. If I was 13 today, I don’t think I could hack it. I really don’t.
3. I’ve finally forgiven Holly Hunter for “The Piano.”

This movie is an Afterschool Special on crack. You jump from one confrontation to the next, without a break; the jumpy digital video camerawork emphasizes the uneasiness. I had a similar reaction to this as I did to “Magdalene Sisters” – it would have been more effective if they would have dialed back everything a few notches. As it was, I felt numb by the halfway point. That’s not good for a movie where there’s really no one to root for.

There’s good performances by Holly Hunter as the bohemian hairdresser mother and Evan Rachel Wood as her daughter. But that’s not enough to counter the unrelenting dread that unspools without much of a purpose.

Since the allegations of sexual misconduct and Hitler admiration by California gubernatorial candidate Arnold Schwarzenegger have surfaced, his candidacy has resembled nothing so much as the confirmation of Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court.

I said at the time that Thomas’ confirmation should have focused on his qualifications (or lack of them) to join the highest court in the land, not whether he told Anita Hill he had a pubic hair on his Coke. But those allegations became the central (and really only) issue in his confirmation. That was wrong.

Plus, it became a “Witness for the Prosecution” situation with Thomas. If those irrelevant accusations are discredited, he’s OK to join the court. Well, no.

And with Arnold, I remain amazed that no one – not the press, not the voters – has ever asked, what makes this man qualified to be governor of the most populous state in the union? These allegations against Arnold allow both sides to occupy their time with pointless debates about things like, was his behavior “assaultive” or “playful”? That’s rubbish, frankly, when you’re talking about handing the reins of a huge state with serious problems over to a guy with absolutely zero qualifications other than celebrity.

Memo to Bill O’Reilly

Apologize.

UPDATE: Even though they’ve finally admitted there are no WMDs in Iraq, they still want $600 million to keep searching. Isn’t that like giving money to the “Help O.J. Find The Real Killers Fund”?

The “West Wing” last night was OK, but not great, I thought. If it were me, I would have extended the kidnapping/interim president story one more episode, and given us a less anticlimactic ending than “we just up and found her somewhere, here she is, now everything’s back to normal.”

But what was brilliant about the whole arc, as I said last week, was how it mirrored our current situation with the “war on terror” and the Iraq conflict in particular. Especially good was the scene right at the beginning, when Leo McGarry talks to a pollster about the situation with the president’s daughter.

“If she’s found dead, his numbers will go through the roof,” the pollster says ruefully.

That made me think of our “real” President, and how his poll numbers have fallen back down to pre-9/11 levels. Isn’t it sad to think that should there be some sort of attack in this country, his poll numbers would shoot back up again? And the larger and more horrible the event, the bigger the bump?

He was the same guy on 9/12/01 as he was on 9/10/01. This magical transformation from Moe Howard into Churchill just didn’t happen, and it won’t happen if something bad hits us between now and election time next year, either. We just don’t learn, do we?

This just in

I was right all along. I’m like Nostradamus or something. With fish.

Just a few headlines recently:

–Uproar over Halliburton puts administration on defensive
–Ashcroft ties may undermine inquiry
–Lawsuit to be filed over loan by actor
–Harassment allegations dog Schwarzenegger
–Limbaugh resigns from ESPN

Pinch me – I must be dreaming.