Sadly, No!

Meanwhile in Canada, Mark Steyn manages to work in this little nugget in a review of former Prime Minister Jean <strike>Poutine</strike> Chrétien’s memoir:

Even Chrétien’s chum Chirac, who opposed the war, never disputed the fact that Saddam had WMDs, if only because he had a big bunch of the relevant receipts.

So pretty much the war on Iraq was justified on the basis of weapons that no one has found and for which there also exists as-of-yet untraceable paperwork.

We’d also discuss at length, if it weren’t for the fact that this is required for writers of Steyn’s calibre, that there is a gratuitous mention of Teh Clenis which allows the author to throw in this gem:

The Slick Willie endorsement need not detain us long: that’s just standard sentimentalized Clintoblathering schmoozeroo.

Being a wingnut can’t be easy.

We’re working on a get-together in Boston, probably at People’s Republik in Cambridge. But while we get it, as it were, together, that Barry Kobama guy is going to be at Boston Common tomorrow, and while we don’t know if we’re going to vote for him or anything, if you’re near here, you should come along and see him with us.

What: A Rally in Boston with Barack Obama and Governor Deval Patrick

When: Tuesday, October 23, 2007 — Gates Open at 5:30PM

Where: Parkman Bandstand on Boston Common
Corner of Tremont St. and Boylston St

How: The event is free and open to the public. Tickets are not required, but an RSVP is strongly encouraged. For security reasons, do not bring bags. No signs or banners allowed.

That’s bad because our “I’m straight, but my dick is gay” banner is gathering dust since Mitt Romney hopped town…

Back on track: RSVP with the event folks here, and send a note here so we’ll know to look out for you.

It seems unlikely that any of Ace’s people will try to tag along and cause trouble, especially since firemen would have to come and chop away their door frames with axes to haul them out, etc., but in any case, they’re not very smart and will be thwarted if we give the directions in code:

Above: We meet up at Pert Skater

Above: “B4B Casino: Biggest
Craps In Town”

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Mark Noonan is talking about running against Harry Reid in 2010.

[T]aking on Reid is nothing to be entered into lightly. Reid has a mean streak a mile wide and he simply will leave no stone unturned in attempting to destroy any Republican who runs against him. Running against Reid will take immense moral courage and the confidence of a man (or woman) who simply doesn’t care what people say about him.

Gavin adds: That’s our Mark!

I think everyone here needs to make the appropriate sacrifices to whatever heathen gods they follow to ensure that this munificence ensues. In other words – Go Mark, Go!

Incidentally, this wouldn’t be the opening salvo for your side in that civil war you think we’re going to have, is it? Because that would just be extra-special funny if it were.

The last week in September every year is the American Library Association’s Banned Books Week. This means that the obscene idea of banning books has had just enough time to metastasize into something comically foul — and sure enough, Jim Dobson’s Citizen’s Link comes through with a defense of book banning.

Parents Unite Against Offensive Books
from staff reports

Is Banned Books Week about censorship or parents’ rights?

Let’s help them out here, shall we? Banned Books Week is about censorship. If you don’t want your child to read a book, then you simply forbid them to check it out from the library. If they disobey you and read it anyway, then you have a parenting problem. Perhaps you failed to follow the good Dr. Dobson’s childrearing advice, and you didn’t shower with your son so he can look at your penis. I’m sorry you’re a bad parent, but that’s not really my problem.

But when you try to get a book removed from a library, you are then telling everyone’s children what they can and cannot read. Telling other people, people with whom you have no relationship whatsoever, what they can and cannot read is usually called “censorship” – if for no other reason than it saves on typing.

Candi Cushman, education analyst for Focus on the Family Action, said the complaints over books are well-founded.

“Most of these books don’t end up actually being removed,” she told Family News in Focus. “The few that do end up being removed are being removed mostly because they have sexual themes or are explicit.”

The book that topped the list this year was And Tango Makes Three, the story of “gay” penguins. It’s the second year in a row that a book with gay themes drew the most ire from parents.

“Parents have a right to object to their kids being exposed to material that they don’t feel like their child is psychologically prepared to handle,” Cushman said.

Of course parents have a right to object to such material. But that right only extends to their children. Why is this so hard to understand? Have these people ever been to a library? It’s not like the books leap off the shelf and attack you, chaining you to a chair and forcing you to read them. Sadistic librarians do not roam the stacks in vinyl stiletto boots, rounding up hapless patrons and giving interpretive readings of Venus in Furs. You have to choose books to read – the books do not choose you.

And, predictably, they’re kvetching about And Tango Makes Three, the story about the penguins at the Central Park Zoo who had a same-sex relationship and raised a baby penguin. And now I see why! Look at this! Look at the redacted portions of the pictures! The book obviously contains multiple scenes of penguin orgies! Who would expose a child to such things?

Guys…don’t let the CitizenLink crew know about this, but there’s an interesting feature about penguin genitalia. Really, it’s an interesting feature about all bird genitalia. Birds don’t have distinct excretory and reproductive openings: they have what is commonly called a “vent”, or a cloaca. This means that when birds have sex — even heterosexual sex — it is an instance of genito-excretory contact, which is just a fancy way of saying “sodomy”. I actually do worry that if this fact ever dawns on these dimwits, they’ll try to get biology classes cancelled on the grounds that such classes are promoting sodomy.

Over the years, 71 percent of the challenges have been to material in schools. Sixty percent of the challenges were brought by parents, 15 percent by patrons, and 9 percent by administrators.

David Miller of Ohio’s Citizens for Community Values called Banned Books Week a farce.

“They have made up a Banned Books Week,” he said, “where they try to focus attention on the fact that parents are getting involved in their kids’ education.”

“Getting involved in their kids’ education”….by banning books. Which is highly educational. If you are trying to raise fascists, that is. I can’t recall ever running across the “teach children by denying them access to reading materials” educational theory in any of the classes I’ve taken on this topic. But then again, I don’t think that fathers showering with their sons so their sons can look at Dad’s penis helps to make boys straight, either, so what do I know?

The Pundit of Poca, WV

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When Don Surber, the brightest guy in West Virginia and the dimmest guy in journalism, read that Albus Dumbledore was gay, he was beside himself. He spit a partially-chewed Slim Jim Moonpie on his computer monitor and tossed an almost full can of Fanta Grape soda RC Cola across the room in a rage unparalleled since he heard that the Dukes of Hazzard was being cancelled. So Don cleaned off his monitor, saving the larger bits of the Slim Jim Moonpie for later consumption, and fired up an outraged blog post for the Charleston Daily Mail:

The author of the Harry Potter books told an audience at Carnegie Hall that Albus Dumbledore, master wizard and Headmaster of Hogwarts, is gay. He’s also a fictional character.

I’m not quite sure why Don added the last sentence. Maybe he’s worried that his readers were scared off by all the multisyllabic words in the Potter books and might have no idea who Albus Dumbledore is. Or, more likely, he was making the subtle metaphysical point that fictional characters can’t be gay; they are, you know, just make believe and can’t really have sex. Betcha didn’t know that Don had been brushing up on Jacques Derrida lately, did you?

Anyway, the gay thing wasn’t what had Don most outraged:

“Dumbledore is gay,” the author responded to gasps and applause. Why would people applaud?

OMG. They applauded. Instead, Rowling should have been herded off the stage by an angry mob and, if not stoned or pushed over a cliff, at least put on a plane and sent back to that homo-ridden country of hers.

Why would it be necessary to have this as a back story?

Apparently all that brushing up on Derrida has turned Don into a literary critic in addition to simply being a loopy wingnut blogger. Don also wants to know why on earth Melville had to make Captain Ahab one-legged. And who the fuck ever heard of a white whale anyway?

Of course, Don has an answer to why it was necessary and it isn’t pretty:

Maybe the final paragraph in the AP story explains it: “Not everyone likes her work, Rowling said, likely referring to Christian groups that have alleged the books promote witchcraft. Her news about Dumbledore, she said, will give them one more reason.” Yes, knock the Christians. That will sell books.

You know, I miss the old days where you at least had to suck cock or do something more than put a gay character in a book to be an affront to Christianity.

UPDATEAnd be sure to read the comments on Don’s post. They’re all whipped up about the gay business too. It’s a real corn-dog and fried Snicker fest over there.

Jillian adds: Right. Because there’s never been anything even slightly gay in any of the Harry Potter novels before this revelation.

Clif adds: Post edited to reflect Don Surber’s actual food preferences.

I know this isn’t something I typically blog about, but I was just scanning Metacritic’s list of upcoming CD releases, and I found several noteworthy items. Among them:

ITEM: Britney Spears’ latest album is called “Blackout.” To my dismay, its cover does not feature her passed out on the couch holding a half-eaten bucket of KFC wings.

Britney does, however, look much more gothy than she has on previous albums. Perhaps we can expect a sprawling, introspective dark-night-of-the-soul musical suite a la Neil Young’s “Tonight’s the Night” or, uh, every Leonard Cohen album?

ITEM: Zeppelin rulz, but their compilations are too long. Their latest one, like all the ones before it, seems to think that “All My Love” is actually a good song, that “No Quarter” has held up well over time, and that “Hey Hey, What Can I Do?” does not belong in the band’s official canon, despite being one of their best-evar songs. I made a little mix of favorite Zep songs last summer that goes a little somethin’ like this: “Whole Lotta Love,” “Black Dog,” “Kashmir,” “Immigrant Song,” “D’yer Maker,” “Heartbreaker,” “Hey Hey, What Can I Do,” “Good Times, Bad Times,” “The Ocean,” “Over the Hills and Far Away,” “When the Levee Breaks,” “How Many More Times,” “Going to California,” “Stairway to Heaven.” None of the synthy shit from their later albums, no overlong epics about the winds of Thor and Lord of the Rings, just 75 minutes of bad-azz bloooozy RAWK’N’ROLL (and some pretty ballads to keep things interesting).

ITEM: Trent Reznor is releasing a Nine Inch Nails album called “Y34RZ3R0R3MIX3D” (“Year Zero Remixed”). Th4t’$ pr3tty t3h l4m3, Tr3nt.

ITEM: Not related to music, but Boston has a new folk hero, a man who shall forevermore be known as “J.D. OCTOBAH!!!!1″ It’s become clear that Mr. Drew was merely toying with the opposition all season, lulling them into a false sense of security that he would do nothing but pull harmless double-play balls to second base, strike out looking on fastballs right down the pike, or punch weak foul-outs near the first-base dugout. No, that EQA of .270 and WARP of 2.8 were just an elaborate ruse to leave his opponents unprepared for the unmitigated fury that J.D. OCTOBAH!!!!1 was preparing to unleash on the unsuspecting Indians pitching staff. Mark my words, peeps: he is a ONE-MAN WRECKING BALL who is LOCKED IN and getting ready to CARRY THE SAWX ON HIS BACK to GLORY!!!!!

(Though as much as I’ve trashed Drew this year, he’s actually been much better than Julio Lugo, who’s EQA-ing .225 and WARP-ing an astonishing 0.1.)

And with that, I bid you a good Sunday.

It’s Saturday, and I’m feeling an overwhelming need to relax and be unserious for a day. I just can’t handle any more stories about Congress denying health care to children, or the possibility of Turkey invading the only relatively stable region in all of Iraq, or the continuing spinelessness of the Congressional Democrats today. I just want a quiet, pleasant afternoon filled with lighthearted, relaxing…..ooh, look!

Above: ‘Womangry’ about teh ghey

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Renew America has a column up by Marsha West about metrosexuals and fashion. That should be both less serious and fun to mock! Yay Saturday! Let’s take a look:

There’s good news within the popular and consumer culture. “Metrosexual” is out “menergy” is in. For those who aren’t familiar with the term “metrosexual” it applies to testosterone challenged, narcissistic, heterosexual males whose primary focus is on their physical appearance.

Yes. Caring about your appearance makes you “testosterone challenged”. Because guys that look like this obviously have masculinity issues.

Soccer player David Beckham, who has been tagged the “ultimate metrosexual,” has helped break masculine codes.

“Beckham may be captain of the English soccer team [currently captains the Los Angeles Galaxy], but he wears sarongs and nail polish, and has even posed for gay magazines. As the American online magazine Salon said, he has admitted that he likes to be admired, and does not care if it’s by women or by men.”

David Beckham seems to be more like the “ultimate weirdo.” Beckham is a prime example of how advertising execs have succeeded in turning males into self-absorbed girlie men.

This is definitely the girliest girlie-man I’ve ever seen. Why would any woman ever be attracted to that?

The latest fashion trend is a return to the macho man. During Milan Fashion Week Horacio Silva of the New York Times coined the term “menergy” to describe what he called “a campy contraction of ‘men’ and ‘energy’ that sounds like the name of a congenital bachelors’ bar but encapsulates the anti-metrosexual, hypermasculine vigor coursing through men’s wear, ‘Praise the gym gods: the menergy crisis is over,’ or, ‘Seriously, the menergy at Dolce & Gabbana was palpable'”

In other words, John Wayne is making a comeback. (You remember movie legend John Wayne. He was called Duke by his friends and was the “absolute all-time movie star.” It’s been said that he was as much a hero in real life as he ever was on-screen. John Wayne was the epitome of the man’s man.)

Welcome back, Duke!

According to Silva, “Menergy is trickling into advertising, where gender ambiguity is losing its appeal to bona fide fellas. Take Dolce & Gabbana model David Gandy. He’s the hard-bodied hunk seen reclining in a Speedo the size of an eye patch to hawk the brand’s new fragrance, Light Blue.”

Let me see if I have this straight. The point of this column is supposed to be that “metrosexuality” is just a lame excuse for men to be wimpy femmeboys, but luckily this satanic trend is on its way out because it’s being replaced by something called “menergy,” which is the sort of thing John Wayne embodied.

Except the reporter who coined the term is using “menergy” to refer to the Dolce & Gabbana show at Milan Fashion Week. Because John Wayne was the type of guy to wear D&G. Or something. And, wait — John Wayne was “campy”?

I’m just going to operate on the assumption that Marsha West has never heard of Dolce & Gabbana before, and that she’s probably never seen any ads for their clothing, either. Otherwise, I doubt she’d be using an article about their products to prove that “real men” are coming back into fashion.

And as far as some new D&G model destroying the identity-ambiguity that metrosexuals supposedly evoke, take a look at David Gandy for yourselves, and decide if there’s anything here that might possibly appeal to a gay man:

Read the rest of this entry »

In Dan Riehl’s topsy-turvy world, 12-year-old Graeme Frost wasn’t the one who got smeared in the S-CHIP debate. No, it was Mitch McConnell who was smeared by a lying pack of lefties and their running dog MSM lackeys! (Also, in Dan’s world, Big Macs are health food and carrots are cancer sticks. And it was Whitney Houston who was the bad influence on Bobby Brown.)

Dan makes this claim in his whimsically-titled post “S-CHIP: Anatomy Of A DSCC / Media Smear On Sen. McConnell.” Just from the title alone you know that this is going to be really riehly entertaining.

First, there was absolutely no genuine smearing of 12 year-old Graeme Frost. Not one media outlet fueling that charge has produced a single line written by any reputable Right-side blogger to support the false claim.

Somebody has obviously been huffing his computer duster can again. How else could Dan have so quickly forgotten what he himself wrote about young Graeme. He called Graeme a “moppet” that his mother and father “dropped” into the world thinking “let someone else pay for it.” Graeme, said Dan, is also a “victim” of “spoiled brats who became parents and never felt compelled to take responsibility” for him. And, in his crowning act of kindness and consideration for young Graeme, he called Graeme the son of a “simpleton and loser who had more kids than he could afford.”

Now, we can surmise that Dan is already squealing in protest that he never called Graeme any names (well, except maybe for “moppet”) but only called his father names. Okay, then, Dan you surely won’t mind if we say that you are the son of a washed-up junkie who was once seen dressed in nothing but a leather thong, fellating a donkey while being sodomized by a diseased bonobo in a mafia-controlled nightclub in Tijuana.

So much for the smear campaign against the Frosts; let’s see what Dan has to say about the supposed smear campaign against Mitch McConnell:

Think Progress accused the Senator’s office of “propagating the (non-)smear campaign” when all staffer Don Stewart did was alert some mainstream journalists to the buzz on the blogs. That’s something any responsible staffer should do when it comes to breaking political news given the impact of new media, including blogs, today. Stewart made no charges, but simply pointed out what was being said on the blogs … .

You see repeating something isn’t propagating it. It’s, er, uh, er, well, you know, just repeating it, dammit! And it would be irresponsible not to propagate, er, repeat the shit you read on blogs because they’re like the new media and everything. So, if you read on this blog, which is part of the new media, that Dan Riehl’s favorite taste treat is goat semen on rice cakes it would be irresponsible for you not to repeat it. And if anybody said that you were smearing Dan by saying he had goat semen breath, they would be smearing you, because you are, after all, just repeating what you heard here.

Above: Also insuring his cigars against fire

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Mel Martinez is stepping down as RNC chairman a little early. His reason for doing so is fairly peculiar, if I do say so myself:

Martinez, a prominent Cuban-American who is up for re-election in 2010, said he was relinquishing the job to spend more time focusing on his Florida constituents. He also said the RNC had achieved the objective he set when he assumed the job in January.

(emphasis added)

Oh? What “objective” was that, Mel? Denying little kids health insurance? Smearing twelve year olds? Lying about the fact that you authorized torture after telling everyone that you didn’t authorize torture? Politicizing the Justice Department by firing attorneys who didn’t toe the line? Commuting the sentences of the cronies in your party who did hatchet jobs for the Executive office, and reinforcing the popular opinion that y’all think you’re above the law? Kicking puppies in the head?

The idea that anyone in the Republican party can use a phrase that means “Mission Accomplished” in relation to what they’ve done over the last ten months is just a staggering admission of hubris and stupidity. Keep it up, guys! We’re all rooting for you. I have some solid intelligence that this website is a prime gathering location for al Qaeda terrorists who support universal healthcare – I strongly urge you to round up everyone you find pictured here and send them to Guantanamo for waterboarding. That’ll show everyone exactly what you stand for!

Gavin adds: Will the last Hispanic in the GOP please turn the lights off? Kthxbai.

‘Fall TV Preview for Red Staters’

Above: On the lookout for things which may suck, but look rightward

• Tired of being “programmed” by politically correct television? Turn back the clock with these new shows, where even the camera angles are conservative.

‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard.

The comments to this column are like the sort of focus group I’d like to impanel. A couple of readers get the conversation started by noting some possible political problems with Dancing With The Stars:

Mark Cuban is on it, and he’s bankrolling that Brian DePalma Marine-Rape movie… that’s why I’m not watching this season.

and

It’s not just the skimpy costumes that bother me, but the dancing becomes more and more erotic as the season goes on.

More and more, eh? Another reader lists his sci-fi faves, past and present, prompting this reader’s riposte:

I am a fellow Trekkie, but must admit that Gene Rodenberry’s universe embodies some of the most liberal concepts on TV. Back in the 60’s, of course, they were way ahead of the game on race relations, and featured the first interracial kiss — and that’s a good thing. Of course, it fit in with the Republican agenda of the time…

It’s been said that a person’s television viewing habits offers a window into their psyche, but I’ve rarely seen personality so fully sketched in so brief a listing:

As for what I watch: movies if I can find one I do not actually own; How It Works (how everyday products are made); Mythbusters; Unwrapped (how junk food is made); and the Gaither Gospel Hour. That is pretty much it, besides news and the occasional special like The War.

Sometimes, on the other hand, a person’s personality is suggested not so much by the programs they watch, but by their response to them:

There is NOTHING on prime time worth looking at. I tried “Are you smarter than a 5th grader” but after a couple of shows I figured that the questions really were not 5th grader questions and it appeared to be rigged.

As for me? I keep my television at work tuned all day to Fox News, with the volume down, and apply directly to the forehead.