Blue hand. Just keep thinking about the blue hand.
And, I'll by offline until Tuesday (possibly) or Wednesday (more than likely).
In the meantime, the clip widget thingy from ABC.com is after the jump and I'll see you on the back end of my move.
Continue reading "Video -- Tonight's FlashForward Preview, And My Last Post Before Moving" »
From The Onion, natch.
Mother of the victim: "There's no harder thing than having Glenn Beck outlive your child."
Question of the Day: Does Beck's audience know he's a Mormon? Because my impression is that the Fox Noise audience was key in quashing Mitt's Presidential bid in 08.
Talk amongst yourselves, clip after the jump.
Tears courtesy Vicks Vapo-Rub. Details at this link.
Continue reading "Report -- Car Crash Victim Unfortunately Not Glenn Beck" »
Tim Surette has all the details, I'll excerpt him with the exception of the name of the actor and the role he plays, but it is someone in the image above (and not Hayden, which is the image TV.com used for some reason):
According to the site, blankblankblank who plays blankblankblank, has been "let go" (a nice way of saying "kicked to the curb and left to die a slow impoverished death").
E! Online, which broke the initial mystery-death report, says blankblankblank is ticked off about the decision and found out about it the hard way: by reading an upcoming script.
(snip)
So why kill blankblankblank now? Some say it's for budgetary reasons, but it seems more like the writers backed themselves into a corner and just needed to end this storyline.
Harsh, huh? Well, blankblankblank should have considered the tales of Jess Alexander and Jeph Loeb, producers/writers that got the very public heave-ho last year. They don't play nice on Heroes, it must be all the ill will that comes with watching your hit show go to shit.
Here's the link to Tim's piece, click at your own peril.
The Onion's AV Club tears apart the latest episode at this link.
The spoiler I want to read about is the one that tells me exactly what happened that turned this TV phenomenon into the most discouraging reminder of how broadcast TV can fail in recent memory. I think it might be time to add Heroes to a list that includes both Supertrain and Manimal, classic NBC flops from the Fred Silverman and not Ben Silverman era.
(Yes, I know, Fred inherited Supertrain from his predecessor ... but he didn't have to run the damned thing. And, Silverman, if you're out there reading, I haven't even touched the TV crime that was Pink Lady & Jeff, so you better just sit there and take it. TAKE IT I SAY!)
Great great stuff today from TMZ, but only because it points out the hypocrisy of the right wing, Fox News, the God people and all that ...
That's fine, I certainly don't need to see yet another blonde California Republican Conservative Christian woman have sex on video, though if she has a hot brother who likes the gym and a little leather ...
... How you doin'? Awright!
Harvey, however, kinda makes me feel like I need to take a shower, and not in a good way.
How graphic is "extremely graphic" anyway? Because I think we should maybe have some color coded system like Bush's terror alert system, with red being "smokin' hot" and green being "not using too much energy and maybe just laying back and getting ... served."
And some faaaabulous pinks and lavenders in between.
Go ahead, click over to TMZ, read about it, but be gracious enough to feel some self-loathing afterward, like I am right now. Maybe take a shower yourself.
"Out, damned spot."
Katharine Rust writes about the A-Rod as centaur story at TheAtlanticWire.com at this link.
Photo montage by me, from online sources.
And, bonus, if you read my Mad Men post from today already the beginning of this will completely freak you out.
Okay, maybe not, but it freaked me out that after I spent a couple hours writing about the Kennedy Assassination and 9/11 that they should be referenced in the first ten seconds of this show.
Watch the whole thing tonight at 8, of course, and click over the jump for the aforementioned clip and two Hulu exclusive interviews, one with Elizabeth Mitchell and the absolutely adorable Morris Chestnut and the other with absolutely adorable Scott Wolf and Morena Baccarin.
Joel Gretsch from The 4400? Also absolutely adorable and pictured in the image at the top of the post (all the way to the left wearing the priest garb ... is it wrong to objectify an actor dressed as a priest? I guess I'll burn in hell.)
Caught glimpses of the original series over the weekend on Syfy. Those lizard heads are laughable, they made me think of Sid and Marty Kroft.
Reviews have been for the most part good. Mary McNamara in the LA Times was especially impressed and Shawna Malcom did a quick feature on Mitchell, at this link and this link.
Linda Holmes at the NPR blog Monkey See:
What I'm saying is that some alien stories have very interesting
ideas about visitors, about us and them, about the way the unfamiliar
is confronted, and about the way the promise of something good
conflicts with fear of the unknown. This isn't really that kind of a
show. This is really just a show about alien-human fighting.
So far. She hasn't seen more than the pilot. We haven't even seen the pilot. ABC, why don't you love me in the same way CBS, NBC, TBS, TNT and Fox do and send me screeners? I'm a good guy and careful with copyrighted content!
Whatev, I'll be watching tonight. Clips after the jump.
He smiling at me, not at you. I'm talkin' to you, Zoe Louise!
The big big news from BBC.com, because I figure they have more of the inside scoop:
The former Doctor Who will star as a top Chicago lawyer who suffers from panic attacks and coaches his clients to represent themselves in court.
The NBC hour-long show is titled Rex Is Not Your Lawyer.
Nice premise for him. I guess he'll be yet another Brit coming across the pond with a US accent in his mouth. That's the only shame of it, I love Tennant's native Scottish accent which you hardly ever hear short of interviews.
And, though it's not a film, and it's been bandied about since the announcement that he's be leaving Doctor Who that he left to pursue a film career, it works for me. TV comes right to my house, movies require driving and drinking expensive soft drinks.
More from Nellie Andreeva at the Hollywood Reporter:
There's still the issue of the Doctor Who movie, and that requires some coordination with the Billie Piper schedule, and I'm still on it like paparazzi on an Olsen twin.
I worry about it being for NBC. Didn't Steve Moffat tell Tennant how NBC treats the talent? He knows, he should have shared. Maybe it was just too good to turn down.
It's from Berman/Braun. I, of course, can't think about "Lloyd Braun" without remembering how many computers he sold for George Costanza's father.
And thank you, Jennifer, for the heads up.
UPDATE: If you really wanna freak out, consider that I wrote this this morning and then watched the first few minutes of V online at Hulu (you can do the same at this link) and the first 10 seconds of V references both the Kennedy Assassination and 9/11.
(Hi, remember me? I used to blog here multiple times daily, then I went away for a while. I'm not back for good, unfortunately. I just happen to have a short break in the "action" of packing and moving and thought it would be nice to stop by and flex this muscle again. I have some of today and tomorrow for fun and then back to the grind of transferring the contents of one's life to a new address ... details to follow.)
Certainly for me the assasination of John F. Kennedy is something I can only slightly touch with memory ... I was just a month older than three years and it's all very fuzzy, and those memories actually might be made from my imagining what it might have looked like on our TV on Mineola Ave. in Valley Stream.
(Ah, my first TV. It was a black and white Zenith with a plastic champagne-colored exterior, not unlike Harry Crane's office TV. I don't even think there was a color called "champagne" back then, not a popular color with Long Island's middle class, but our TV was the color of the stuff that Andre sold besides Cold Duck -- the first alcoholic beverage I ever consumed. Later in life my parents bought a champagne-colored car and I still remember wondering why there wasn't a Cold Duck-colored vehicle in the driveway ... like the blush of the beverage was our team color.)
Of course JFK was followed by MLK and then RFK and then Munich. It was King's assassination that really burns in the memory for me. It happened right before I lost the ability to walk for a short period of time due to childhood rheumatic fever and still I was completely mesmerized by the wall-to-wall network coverage of the event. First time I saw all the TV channels basically playing "the same show."
I was seven years old. I had about five minutes of upset over not being able to watch The Flying Nun, Bewitched and Batgirl on ABC -- yup, gay even then -- before I realized this was a really big deal and that the preacher guy who was gonna make sure the black people were treated right wouldn't be making any more speeches on TV, which I knew about because they were on TV and TV was my pal.
Even then.
The picture up at the top of this post really sums up my experience with major world events. Like most of us I'm usually not there on the spot but experience it through the ever-expanding window that is my TV.
Ever-expanding indeed, and in so many ways.
We now see these things as they happen or at least moments later, as everyone has the power to record live events, most of us with our phones which are omnipresent. Not only that, there are more than enough ways to see those events ... network, cable, internet ... and each outlet not only has a different physical angle on the action but their own ideological slant as well.
More after the jump.
Continue reading "Mad Men and the Kennedy Assassination as Analogue For 9/11" »
I agree. That's some great real estate ... and the stuff inside is worth some serious coin.
Mouths fed, bodies clothed, roofs built ... it's a winner of an idea.
Plus, I betcha she could get Christopher Hitchens on board. Just earmark a few bucks for an open bar at the demolition ceremony and he'll be there.
I don't think she's kidding. I'm not. Why does the Pope wear Prada?
If you wanna read some hateful anti-Jewish comments, though, you can click to the YouTube page and read some really horrific stuff coming out of the mouths of Christians. Stupid Christians that can't spell, but Christians still. They suggest that Sarah sell Israel, as if she owns it. You know, because she's a Jew.
I don't even think Sarah's that observant a Jew, but that doesn't matter to these people, they have aliases and a YouTube account and they hate Jews. That's license to be a bigot in 2009.
Clip after the jump. Remember that my comments are moderated, btw. And Sarah's not suggesting that the Catholic Church be sold or destroyed or anything like that, she just thinks that one of the world's great religions should put their money where their faith is.
I think.
Continue reading "Video -- Sarah Silverman Wants to Sell the Vatican to End World Hunger" »
I'm done. It's over.
And, I don't even have to tell you all why, which is just lovely because the more I think about it the more annoyed I am with myself about sticking with it so long.
I will say this ... you know how stimulant users love that first line or bump or pill or ... whatever? I think I've kept watching Heroes after season one in the same way stimulant users are always chasing that first outstanding, live-changing high that they got from that first time.
Ever since, it's just not been the same. In fact, much like the stimulant user, I've just been pissed at myself at the end of most episodes after the first year because it could never "get me high" the way it once did.
My apologies if anything I said here guided you down the same road.
Bye cheerleader. Bye, Senator. Bye, crazy then not crazy then crazy again watch repair technician.
Bye cutie nurse/paramedic. Bye Company Man. Bye pretty effed up mom with the dreams.
Bye Rob Buckley fave Ali Larter (who's been so many things I'd have to give her her own paragraph if I was being fair ... oh, but wait, I already did give her her own paragraph).
And, btw, I think I'm leaving just ahead of the whole thing going away, anyway.
Two weeks. I give it two weeks.
Spent all of yesterday watching Mad Men, every episode I hadn't seen yet from this current season. As you'll remember I watched the premiere but then the broadcast networks started their seasons early and all those bright, shiny shows full of promise presented themselves.
(And some of them misrepresented themselves on the first date. Hey, TV shows are just like people!)
So yesterday (and a bit of the night before) I watched all the Mad Men episodes on my DVR, just in time to see Don look at Salvatore with contempt and use the phrase "you people " after Sal's run-in with the Lucky Strike guy, Lee Garner, Jr., in the edit bay.
Is Don a bigot, a product of his time and the prevailing wisdom, or does he have some history that has created this contempt in him?
Quick story ... I was the editor of a martial arts magazine in the mid-80s (I know! Me!) and our cover subject the second month I was there was a young, very goodlooking actor who was starring in a movie of said genre and we put him on the cover.
Cover shoot done, we (me, art director, photographer, ad sales guy) took him to lunch, where I had to spend an hour listening to this guy tell me how these "fags in Hollywood" were following him around the gym, into the locker room, into the steam room ... how he hated that, and them, and "fag this fag that fag the other."
I was too young and too scared of losing the job to even know how to deal with such things. I let it go. I probably wouldn't, today, but I was just a kid.
Has the dapper Draper had the same issue? Not that I would for a second excuse Don's derisiveness, especially since Salvatore did everything right. It's like I should have said to the guy on the cover of my second issue of that magazine, "Not all of us want to have sex with you, some of us just want you on the cover of the magazine we work for."
More after the jump.
Continue reading "My Mad Men Marathon, Just In Time to Find Out That Don Draper is a Homophobe" »
You probably saw the scene in the second episode of FlashForward where the guy who bore quite the resemblance to WWE star The Undertaker quotes anti-slavery activist and Archbishop of London from the late 1700s Beilby Porteous.
Of course, I think the reason both the guy in the office of that doll factory in episode two who said, "He who foresees calamities, suffers them twice over" looks like The Undertaker (seen here to the right) as does that figure in the sports stadium that skulks around ominously during everyone's flash forward is because of the uniform.
I'm pretty sure the body in the shadows of that doll factory was wearing a black trenchcoat as was the Oxide Stadium observer which looks a lot like The Undertaker's duster which also looks like ... a black trenchcoat, as in the Trenchcoat Mafia (?!?) from ... well you know.
(So, ominous indeed. Thanks for borrowing that visual and making me feel all the more creepy about these people that gave people this 137-second long glimpse of their futures.)
And, what about this idea from the multiverse theory that every decision we make creates a slightly different version of our world and how will that play out when some people see their futures as needing fixing because of what they did (or in the case of Agent Noh) didn't see?
But, back to Beilby Porteus, there are a few sources on the web to start with, one being this Porteus family website (at this link, curated -- if you will -- by Bruce Porteus of Norwich, England) and particularly this page on the Archbishop, which provides a wealthy of background material.
Interestingly, this year on May 13 (but not April 29, which we know is a critical day for the show) is the bicentenary of the death of the Bishop.
Hmmmmm.
The bishop, btw, and obviously a number of other bishops are given the educational degree designation D.D., Doctor of Divinity, which I think might have something to do with the whole D.D. Gibbons thing. Possibly Thomas Gibbons? He was a contemporary of Porteus who like him had lived in England and in the Colonies before the American Revolution. Gibbons wrote about Calvinism and the Nonconformist churches of England who were looking to separate from the Anglican church right around the same time Porteus was advocating for that church to take a position on the horrendous conditions suffered by African and Carribbean slaves. He also worked in the House of Lords toward the abolition of slavery.
(Robert J. Sawyer, who wrote the book which the series is based on, is blogging about the show and his other projects and the world in general from his perspective at this link. Interesting, not spoilery so far, and I'm adding him to my links list to the right today. He lives in Mississauga, Ontario, home of Musclemag International, not that that means anything, it's just one of those random pieces of unremovable ephemera in my brain.)
I know, I know, I'm the king of digression. More about Porteus as we go forward. There are a few Porteus quotes with some real oomph to them not yet used, you can check them out at this link. Two preview clips for the next episode of FlashForward are in the widget from ABC.com after the jump.
Continue reading "ABC's FlashForward -- Exactly Who Is Beilby Porteus Anyway?" »
The first time I saw Wanda Sykes was in a VH1 Stand Up Spotlight episode in the late 80s, long before VH1 found the winning formula for the skankiest dating shows the world would ever see. Then, the next time I saw her, it was a standup special on Comedy Central was in 1998 when she was Wanda Sykes Hall, because she was married at the time to David Hall.
The marriage was over for her the same year. No more "Hall," just Wanda Sykes.
Now, Wanda Sykes is more herself than ever in her new HBO special I'ma Be Me. She's remarried to a woman (they are two of the fortunate Californians who jumped at the offer early as most of the rest of us didn't think there was a sunset date on full civil rights for all Americans), they have twins and Wanda talks about it all tonight at 10 eastern.
The special was recorded at the Warner Theatre in DC. The last time Wanda was in DC with a big gig was the White House Correspondents Dinner this past year which she'll talk about a bit tonight. Karl Rove called her performance there nasty, vicious, mean and ugly.
I think he was just looking in a mirror myself, but then I agree with her. Rush Limbaugh should get kidney failure and die. I would dance on his grave, in fact.
Funny thing is I wouldn't be alone, I can name 50 people from my personal life in about two minutes who would carry me, a sizeable man, on their backs to do that dance from anywhere in the country. In fact, it's the only time I am permitted by California law to dance.
That's how not pretty it is.
(Just 'cause he has a radio show and friends who can get on Fox News to spout off about his enemies doesn't mean he shouldn't die of kidney failure ... though I imagine it would be easier to protest if he weren't a fat fuck with a radio show who took so much OxyContin that he endangered those kidneys and rendered himself deaf.)
So if the reviews are such from Karl Rove, don't you think you should see her? Watch two clips after the jump (including some interview footage), watch the show tonight at 10 eastern, watch it again on HBO on Demand starting tomorrow and then buy the DVD when it comes out.
Because doing so just might prevent another fat fuck who lies on the radio for a living from destroying his body and ruining his hearing.
It's up to you, America. You never know when Mark Levin might discover pudding and hillbilly heroin.
The third clip is from the White House Correspondents Dinner. Eat it up, gang.
Ironically, Wanda's next project is a late night show, at Fox (not the news channel but their more creative, free thinking brother in the entertainment division that's unencumbered by ideology).
The weekly talk show will start Saturday, November 7 at 11 eastern. More on that at this Fox.com link.
Continue reading "Clip Bonanza -- Tonight on HBO, Wanda Sykes is More "Wanda Sykes" Than Ever" »
That's Tim Gunn filling in for Aquaman, who's "off with his so-called Super Friends."
That bitch!
The clip's after the jump. Chris (not Dave) does look good, it must be the scuba gear.
Craig's memoir is #4 on the NYT Best Sellers list this Sunday. "I know!"
As you may remember, I broke up with The Office this season. Unlike many people who break up with others, I didn't see fit to continue to honor my commitment to attend Pam and Jim's wedding last night, so I just stayed out of the way.
(The picture? I thought you guys might like it. Always thinking of you.)
(I'm sure it wasn't so incredibly cringeworthy as usual -- of maybe not, who can tell -- but I figure you should only show up to the party if you put in the time and I hadn't so I just watched infoMania from current on my DVR during that time).
However, I did catch up with Parks & Recreation and with Community (now at its new 8 pm slot on NBC Thursday) and there were some really funny bits and some lovely moments. I have clips after the jump.
I was reminded of such when I read TV.com's Conor Griff today in a piece titled, "Parks and Recreation: Too Good for Deathwatch" which also mentions our friends at TV By the Numbers today:
It's possible that audiences have dismissed Parks and Recreation after its inconsistent start last season. I was skeptical at first, because it seemed to be an inferior carbon copy of The Office. But I was wrong, and since it returned a month ago, every episode has been great. While P and R does use the same documentary-style format as The Office, and a shared sense of humor, the shows are very different. Amy Poehler's character of Leslie Knope is not a female version of Michael Scott, and the tone of the show, unlike The Office, stays away from "look how stupid these people are."
Instead, the tone is more "look how mean these people are," in the vein of Arrested Development or It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. And that tone is actually better! Last night's episode started with a politician confessing to an affair. "All I can say is, I wasn't just having sex," he says, "I was making love. To a beautiful woman. And her boyfriend. And a third person whose name I never learned. Furthermore, it was wrong for me to say I was building houses for the underprivileged, when I was actually having four-way sex in a cave in Brazil." This incites a contest at the Parks department to see who can dig up the most dirt on a co-worker. It turns ugly quickly and hilariously.
Go there and read the rest, it's a good piece.
And about those ratings, click over to TVByTheNumbers.com for all that statistical goodness.
Community actually gave me an ah-ha moment last night with Abed's explanation why he waited 26 hours for the test he was recruited for by Annie. He makes complete sense to me now.
It was a warm moment in an NBC comedy, which thanks to the events on P&R discussed above by me and TV.com isn't as rare as it used to be.
I get that it's the comedy meme of the decade, the cringe-inducing thing and all, I just don't love it all that much.
Watch the Abed revelation and the Officer Dave scene from the end of Parks & Rec that matched it in that lovely, gooey warmth (ew, did I say that?) after the jump.
Louis C.K. is a great addition to the show, even if he's only recurring. And the Mark Sanford-inspired Parks & Rec subplot featuring the councilman was genius.
Hey gang, 30 Rock returns in less than a week now. Are you kvelling? Me too.
I don't know, however, that that's a good thing.
"Don" is not so nice and not meant to be a role model, certainly. The self-involved usually are like that.
Sorry about the dearth of Mad Men coverage lately. I haven't kept up, and because of that I haven't been to Basket of Kisses, the Deb and Roberta Lipp blog on the show (and in fact I've been not even reading their Facebook pages because the episodes are all stacking up on my DVR hard drive).
Hey, nothing personal, D & R Lipp. Sometimes I'm not getting even the most cursory Maddow watching in, and you know how I love my Rachel Maddow.
Click to Basket of Kisses at this link but don't tell me what's going on there or on the show.
Click this link for the AskMen.com feature.
Gazing at the result of the freaky nature of genetics that makes Jon Hamm just so, um ... yowie zowie ... can happen right here without a click involved.
I'm not a huge fan of the show, but I did check in to see what Ed Westwick did with the gay character crushing hard on newly-minted Professor Moody the other night, not that I watch Gossip Girl, either.
Westwick is just, uh ... intriguing, to me. Let's leave it at that. Check out a clip from his guest shot at this link.
Anyhoo, women of a certain age (that age being near mine) ... check out Rick Springfield in the clip after the jump. He plays a new client of Evan Handler's Charlie character in an arc that starts this Sunday on Showtime at 10 after Dexter.
Yes, he's still pretty dreamy. And Jessie's Girl is a great pop song, still, after all these years, and it's the second clip after the jump.
One thing about Madeleine Martin who plays Hank's daughter ... when do we get a Hallmark Hall of Fame Goth movie starring her and NCIS star Pauley Perrette? Or, maybe just a pictorial shot by Kelly Lind? Inquiring minds want to know.
(Visit Kelly's site, Erotique Digitale, at this link. Site NSFW, subscription required, taste of Kelly's work at his personal site at this link, he's a self-taught photographic genius in my estimation who will be huge, soon.)
Continue reading "2 Clips -- Rick Springfield On His Role on Showtime's Californication" »
Oh, he'll never live this down. If Matt Smith (seen with his back to you above with companion Karen Gillan and the tool in question) never works again after playing the Doctor and has to spend the rest of his life doing conventions for spending cash (hey, it happens!) he will have to answer for this forever.
The Sun has all the details and an image of the event as it happened, but since they never have any news I'm just gonna tell you about it and have you click this link so that you can experience what it's like to read actual news from a British tabloid, which is rare indeed.
Turns out Smith was holding his sonic screwdriver a bit too close to an umbrella in the rain and caught some sparks and burnt his hand a bit.
That's what you get, BBC, for cutting corners and hiring a kid to do a man's job.
(Okay, okay, I know, I didn't have a frickin' idea who David Tennant was before he took over in series two so I shouldn't bitch ... but c'mon, you were thinking the exact same thing.)
And I guess Smith will work after being the Doctor no matter how long he plays the role. If Sylvester McCoy can get work I guess he can too.
(I'm posting this because it's important for me to amass some gay points during the baseball post-season. I forget sometimes about "my people and our events" especially this year while I'm cheering on both local home teams. I'm wearing my deluxe Angels jersey right now.)
Funny how the deteriorating music industry and the failure of radio to play much else other than Li'l Wayne makes for strange bedfellows.
A year ago I saw James Taylor on QVC hawking his new album. Now, tonight on BBC America (and it's already aired in the UK) Jonathan Ross has a full hour with Barbra Streisand.
The thing is ... I don't think they'd get along in real life. He's a bit, uh ... invasive for her tastes.
This is Streisand's first live performance on British TV ever (which I guess speaks to the star power of "Wossy" in the UK) and I have some of it for you right here.
I am by virtue of my sexual orientation obliged to note Streisand appearances, so check out the clip after the jump and if you'd like (and Streisand fans actually do still by CDs) to buy her new one, the number one album in the country this week, click the Amazon icon below.
Continue reading "Tonight on BBC America, Jonathan Ross For a Full Hour With Barbra Streisand" »
Note: I'm in the Pacific time zone and I was watching what they made a point of calling "a west coast edition of Today at 7 am."
So, what I first saw was Meredith and Matt in the studio and then a quick throw to Gregory and this, below.
If Matt Lauer ever starts a sentence with the words, "Not to be rude here, but ..." leave the room, 'cause nothing nice is gonna be said about you or anyone else.
And Lauer, one more thing, about your being of the mind that this Nobel Peace Prize is a double-edged sword ... first of all, it's a peace prize, would you prefer he won a war prize? And even more more thing ... people who would complain about a President of the United States seeking peace are crazy people not worth our attention.
Since when is seeking peace not a good thing?
And now the biggest thing ... Barack Obama could invent a way that only Republicans would be able to shit $50 bills out their asses and Republicans would complain that they weren't $100 bills.
Give me a fuckin' break. Then Lauer says, "Nobel Prize isn't getting healthcare passed." No one said it was, asshole.
Did you wake up with a smaller penis than yesterday, Matt?
Just for a couple minutes I wanted to enjoy that someone said something nice about the President, who shares my international worldview, and so in turn I felt the world was saying something nice about my international worldview.
Just a couple minutes to enjoy that, that's all I wanted.
And, while all kinds of member of Congress with "R"s after their names are going overseas and breaking that tradition that partisanship ends at our own borders it was nice to see that it wasn't taken too seriously by people you can respect.
And don't get me wrong here, I don't think he really deserves this yet, either. There's still no habeus corpus at Bagram, Gitmo is not yet closed and there's talk of lots more troops in Afghanistan and I mean "Shinseki at the beginning of Iraq"-style numbers.
I think if the Nobel committee could have given the award to the American people who voted for Barack Obama they would have. I think the intention, whether mentioned or not, was to encourage the goals and desires that Obama and his supporters embraced during the campaign.
(I also believe that a country with a long and troublesome history of race relations finally elected an African-American President and that might have had something to do with the decision.)
If that's true, Obama's acceptance of this award as a call to action for all nations to work toward the goals for peace and nuclear disarmament is an appropriate response.
Watch your President humbly accept the honor in the CNN clip after the jump, with thanks to Talking Points Memo and their YouTube acct.
Talking trash about this turn of events, though, is akin to those people in that astroturf group Americans for Prosperity funded by the Koch brothers cheering when Chicago didn't get the Olympics.
I have to point out here that no one opposed to healthcare reform could p0ssibly do an entire hour on the subject without seriously compromising their position. Why? Because when you lie to support your argument, and the only way to defend one's objection to healthcare reform that includes a public option or even a single-payer system (which isn't even on the table, dammit) is to lie, the more you talk the more your house of cards falls in on itself.
Do you have 42-plus minutes to learn the facts about the healthcare reform debate? Click this link and watch Keith's entire hour on the topic.
After the jump, watch Keith's emotional, heartfelt pledge to show his support for American health reform by donating to the National Associations of Free Clinics to offer a free clinic every week in the capitol cities of the states of the six Democratic senators standing in the way of health reform in the Senate.
Who are those six senators?
Those links will take you to their Senate websites.
I'll go one further than Keith ... if you live in one of those states and it was your US Senator that blocked healthcare reform, make sure he or she knows that you are actively searching for a primary challenger for their next election.
Yes, even the majority leader. He may be a keen backroom negotiator but I've had serious issues with his "leadership style" since he got the post.
And, details for MSNBC Countdown viewer participation will be forthcoming.
Clip after the jump.
He's gonna be a huge star. First time out and he's acting, reacting and working with the leads -- amazing!
More of this guy please! Who is he? My research team tells me that his name is Jim Wilson. And he's versatile, too. In a different scene in a different shirt and glasses you would think he's a completely different guy!
Everyone, write to ABC and get on those forums and demand more Jim Wilson, not just in this show but in every show on the air. He can do it all.
His scene, which will always be known from here on in as the Jim Wilson scene in a clip from Hulu (and further explanation) after the jump.
Continue reading "World Exclusive -- ABC's The Middle Discovers TV's Next Big Star" »
