Who knew that The Financial Times could be so funny?:
This doctrine… recalls the classic episode of the TV comedy Seinfeld, “The Oppositeâ€, in which George Costanza temporarily improves his fortunes by rejecting all the principles according to which he has lived his life and doing the opposite of what his training indicates he should do…. The Iraq policy pursued by the Bush administration satisfies the Costanza criterion: it is the opposite of every foreign policy the world has ever met.
E! has had a bomb threat called in, possibly against Ryan Seacrest, possibly in relation to the fact that the uber-cute but not uber-talented Sanjaya Malakar has remained on Idol.
No wonder the pandas of the world don’t want to get it on, with or without the encouraging videos:
I’ve been forced to squeal for the FBI, and I’m not allowed to talk about it!
As Brad Delong and others have said numerous times, “I’ll stop calling it Orwellian when they stop using 1984 as a playbook.”
As you might or might not know, the Pakistani national team’s cricket coach was murdered after his team’s surprising loss in the Cricket World Cup.
Michelle Malkin, of all people, has mentioned it (I came across her post while putting together a TTS page on cricket). Now, everything else on her blog is vitriolic and politically charged, but this is just a note about what happened. Where’s the racism? Where’s the insulting Pakistan, cricket, and Muslims? It’s totally out of character! I’m totally confused.
The Too Much Beyonce? video conversation hasn’t stopped– and it’s spilled over to this blog, too, where someone has said: “Remember, homosexuality IS NOT A RACE OF PEOPLE. They’re mentally twisted individuals that pray upon the weak-minded innocent mislead youth. Unfortunately, that young boy in that video is already halfway to being a full fledged homosexual because His MOTHER made him that way.”
Many of the comments argue that it is only right and just to beat any gender-ambiguity out of our young. Others lament the “decline of the African-American male,” and combine it with the persistent fallacy that absent fathers cause homosexuality. Whatever they do, they need to blame someone for how that kid dances, because any kind of gender ambiguity makes them feel really uncomfortable.
All this just because he danced funny for five minutes– I imagine he’s going to get scolded and beaten and mocked until he acts just like everyone else. Just a reminder of how people don’t handle difference well… and specifically, the way it is a double burden to be both black and gay.
The whole attorney case is bringing up a lot of questions. Questions like Is Tony Snow ashamed of his flip-flop now that the shoe is on the other foot, and what other legal issues has the Bush Administration deliberately forfeited?
The one I haven’t heard yet is “why the hell are US attorneys appointed by patronage, anyway? Shouldn’t this be a job with a nonpartisan hiring process based on skills and experience?”
Finally, We’ll be getting subpoenas of White House staff on the issue of politically motivated prosecutor firings. And while on the subject of Bush administration crimes, we’ve got some interesting clues on CIA torture and the Iraq war– not enough to indict or impeach, I’m afraid, but at least a neurological explanation: a specific kind of brain damage that affects moral reasoning.
Perez Hilton will appear on Courteney Cox’s show Dirt tonight. This is a real milestone for him. He’s been working steadily toward this moment of apotheosis, when he sloughs off the carapace of a celebrity-obsessed blogger and becomes a celebrity in his own right. He’s already abandoned his brains and ethics– the only thing left is botox and surgery to make him look like all the other Ken dolls in LA.
Here’s a cute video of a little boy dancing and being silly. Click through to read the dozens of comments arguing about how his father must have abandoned him, how he needs to be playing football instead of dancing, whether he’s been abused, and so forth, plus prayers about shielding our children from the negative influences of BET.
Sure, I think we can all agree that BET is fucked up and that pop stars are not good role models. I agree that it’s a little odd to see a kid dancing in what is basically a sexualized and provocative manner. But at the same time, there’s nothing wrong with a kid dancing and singing and playing around. Kids play at being grownups, and that includes dancing like the grownups they see on TV.
I mean, when I was about ten one of my favorite songs was “Darling Nikki.” I had no idea what it was about– I just knew it sounded good. When I tried to enter a summer-camp lip synch contest and do that, they wouldn’t let me and I didn’t know why. It was perfectly right for the counselors to stop me from doing that, but if they hadn’t it wouldn’t have meant anything. Only in retrospect, with adult knowledge, does that kind of behavior seem unwholesome. The kid dancing in the video has probably forgotten it, and moved on to playing Superman or Tyra Banks or cops and robbers.
Secretly Ironic 