Sadly, No!

I strongly recommend picking up this month’s issue of Harper’s to read Kevin Baker’s extraordinary essay called “Stabbed in the Back! The past and future of a right-wing myth.” If you want to understand the intellectual well that’s currently being tapped by people like Jeff Goldstein, then this piece is essential reading.

Uh-oh. The Dixie Chicks are in big trouble now. It seems that Pat Boone has decided to call them out:

Music legend Pat Boone is ripping into the Dixie Chicks for withdrawing their apology for a previous attack on President Bush.

Hmm. I don’t think that copy is quite accurate. It should read, “Pat Boone, who is legendary for taking songs written by real musicians and making them suck, is ripping the Dixie Chicks for being 100% right about everything.”

“I have four daughters, and I taught them to respect their elders, even if they weren’t president of the United States,” Boone told Fox News host Neil Cavuto today.

Hey, since bin Laden is older than I am, does that mean I have to respect him too? I’m not sure I like the objectively pro-terror message you’re sending here, Mr. Boone.

“I think it’s outrageous for any of these performers to be bashing our president the way they are.”

And since P-Boo is so influential with today’s youth, all you anti-Bush performers had better heed his advice and knock it off if you want to work in this town again.
Read the rest of this entry »

So I just heard a Virgin Airlines ad on the radio featuring none other than former Sex Pistols guitarist Steve Jones, who informed me that any “bloke” who doesn’t fly on Virgin is a “wanker.” I think it’s safe to say that nothing is sacred in punk rock anymore.

(‘Course, the whole point of the Sex Pistols was to sell out in first place- see The Great Rock’n’Roll Swindle for more on this theme- so I don’t think punk has ever been sacred. Which is what makes it so damn fun.)

Anyway, I’m thinking of starting a Drinking Liberally chapter here in Boston. There’s supposedly already a chapter here, but they never do anything. Which is lame. E-mail me if you live in the Boston area and you’re interested- I’m thinkin’ the Milky Way in JP would be a fun place to meet- they’ve got two pool tables, a bowling alley and a Ms. Pac-Man machine. Plus, the food is wicked good.

UPDATE: Mal de mer writes:

I never liked Punk at all, even though I was sympathetic to its sensibility. It had absolutely no sense of humour about anything, even itself.

Please. Ever listen to the Dead Kennedys? “Holiday in Cambodia?” “California Uber Alles?” That’s some funny-ass shit right there.

Also: YANKEES LOSE!!! THAAAAAAAAA’ YANKEES LOOOOOOOOOOOOOSE!!!!

Analogy time- “Republicans : Homosexuals :: Dixiecrats : Black People”:

To address conservatives, who have been key to his election victories but have grown disenchanted with the administration, Bush and Senate Republicans are reviving their fight with Democrats over judicial nominations and last week voted out of committee a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage to set up a floor vote next month.

They know this amendment isn’t going anywhere, but that’s not the point. The point of the Federal Marriage Amendment is to fire up the Christian Right and make them believe the GOP is actually trying to transform America into a “Christian Nation” where Biblical morality is enforced by state power. The FMA will quietly disappear if the GOP holds onto Congress in November, and will be trotted out again in 2008, or whenever the GOP desperately needs to win an election. In the meantime, gay people will be further scapegoated and stigmatized. I hope Mary Cheney is proud of supporting this shit.

Kaye, seemingly “threatens” herself in… her latest, “column”:

Speak English . . . or else!

Kaye Grogan
May 20, 2006

Okay it’s official — I hope! It has taken 200 plus years for English to become America’s official language. Maybe we missed something here. Did another boat come in behind the Mayflower with people speaking in unknown tongues?

Say, wasn’t America “discovered” by a Spanish-speaker long before the pilgrims came over?

If the current language dispute wasn’t so serious, it would be right up there with “Comedy Central” for being funny. Wow! . . .out of 300 million people in the United States of America — there are around 215 million who speak English. Well, shut your mouth!

But I’m talkin’ ’bout Shaft!
Read the rest of this entry »

Not only Finnish, but from Lapland. And they won against a Russian (second-place winner Dima Bilan). Oh yes, this is quite an upset on so many levels. If you think there might be some drinking and exuberance going on tonight in Rovaniemi, Alta, and other northern locales, you are certainly correct.

Folks, this is Denmark’s Sidsel Ben Semmane — a typical Eurovision ’06 entry:

And now, ladies and gentlemen, witness the transcendental glory that is the awesome and/or atrocious Lappish killdozer, Lordi:

See, among other things, Gwar might’ve made up fake stories about being from Antarctica, but as the second-best metal band from Rovaniemi, these guys actually are from the Arctic Circle. Their claims about being undead space demons might therefore be true as well. And whatever the case, Eurovision ’07 promises to be quite interesting indeed, with countries like Latvia or Romania reacting to the ’06 results by fielding their own bombastic metal bands. Truly, good has won tonight.

Update: Finland gone mad, naked people running through streets of Helsinki, according to magenta-haired Finnish journalist:
Read the rest of this entry »

We often forget that it’s liberals who lack a sense of humor:

DaimlerChrysler Marketing Bashes America […]

Take DaimlerChrysler, for instance. In the US, their marketing tends to be bland. But elsewhere, it tends to be virulently anti-American:

Virulently — are you ready for some virulence?

That seems to be what DaimlerChrysler, a multinational conglomerate that includes US companies [sic], is doing in the promotion of their ‘Smart Car‘ brand auto line [it’s actually an ad for a smart forfour.] Smart, a green [sic] car [sic] that is compact, runs on diesel fuel [sic] and will be featured prominently in Opie’s ‘The DaVinci Code’, [it was also in The Pink Panther -S,N!] is using the slogan “German engineering, Swiss innovation, American nothingâ€? on billboards in (at least) South Africa

This would be funnier if you didn’t also know that i) the smart forfour is no more “green” than any other compact car, ii) it comes with one’s choice of diesel or non-diesel engine. As for the “American nothing” part, well we’ve got news for you: it’s a joke! [Too crunchy for you?] And it’s funny… because it’s real. Indeed, the only US-based car manufacturer not in deep shit is Chrysler (you know, the one owned by a German company.)

Michelle Malkin opens up a can of whining about something or other:

Pat yourselves on the backs, you tolerant liberal bastards.

***

This is hardly
the first
time
liberals
have
made Asian whore ping-pong ball jokes
about me.

But Wonkette has now mainstreamed it. And I’m sick of it. Are you proud of yourselves? Do you get a bonus from Nick Denton for scraping the bottom of the barrel?

You have to go over there (if you dare) to see that the post is “full” of links to “liberals” making ping-pong ball jokes about Michelle. If by “liberals” you mean unknown people posting comments on a few threads at lefty blogs. Now there’s evidence of liberal intolerance — you dumb ass bitch. At least she’s found someone willing to swallow the balls and report on their deliciousness:

Agree with her, like her, or not, Michelle is effectively out on her own building a seemingly successful independent media operation enabled by the latest in Internet technogy and buzz …

Empire? [We say empire, you say operation.] 117,000 visitors a day v. 72,000? As for Hot Air, it brings in 47,000 a day. Out on her own? Seemingly successful seems about right.

Slow day in wingnuttia, so allow us to share a couple of anecdotes from a meeting we attended yesterday, a spur(-m) of the moment event on a Friday afternoon at 3 called by the big boss.

Responding to a request for suggestions of how to achieve free advertising for our products (after countless worthwhile suggestions were dismissed out of hand), we told the boss:

Why don’t you kill someone — then we have a shot [sic] at getting coverage on the evening news.

Asked why a particular product wasn’t selling well:

Everything we did with this product, from beginning to end, was wrong: the initial price was shit, the communication was shit, the delay to launch was shit.

We’ll be sure to ask for a raise on Monday.

Hmmmm…

Sorry, Hitch, but even when he’s got your shitty haircut, Tom Hanks is still a billion times more attractive. Plus, he’s so much less of a wanker, it’s not even funny.