Happy 9/02/10

In honor of the occasion:

Of course I loved a show in which three of the main guys were a Steve, a Silver and a Minnesotan. And yes, I had sideburns back then too.

Quote of the Day

Tom Scocca on the Discovery Channel hostage-taker:

James J. Lee's political position was too esoteric to have fun playing football with. A radical environmentalist who decides that the crisis is best understood as a Manichean struggle between Good, represented by Al Gore's movie, and Evil, represented by the Discovery Channel—well, for someone who wanted to inspire a global movement, Lee had maybe dug a little too rigorously into the nuances of his own personal logic-space. He was the Armond White of ecoterrorism.

Ruining Alaska

Alaska native Marty Beckerman complains that Sarah Palin has ruined his home state. I know how he feels- the "you betcha" and "doncha know" accent used to be associated with Minnesota, specifically because of "Fargo," although now it's tied to her.

The Third Amigo Arrives

Noah writes about his brand new cousin in his latest blog post.

The Twins' Ups and Downs

Minnesota's Sports on Demand goes round and round:

Quote of the Day

Taibbi on the great summer freakout:

There’s nothing in the world more tired than a progressive blogger like me flipping out over the latest idiocies emanating from the Fox News crowd. But this summer’s media hate-fest is different than anything we’ve seen before. What we’re watching is a calculated campaign to demonize blacks, Mexicans, and gays and convince a plurality of economically-depressed white voters that they are under imminent legal and perhaps even physical attack by a conspiracy of leftist nonwhites. They’re telling these people that their government is illegitimate and criminal and unironically urging secession and revolution

(Oops- wrong video earlier. This is the right one.)

My favorite is the person who said they heard Obama has made it illegal to pray at monuments. First of all, this hasn't happened- there's no news story about anything like that. Second of all, why would it? Third of all, how would such a ban be enforced? And fourth of all, who prays at monuments?

"The Waterworld of White Self-Pity"

Hitch on the Glenn Beck rally:

In a rather curious and confused way, some white people are starting almost to think like a minority, even like a persecuted one. What does it take to believe that Christianity is an endangered religion in America or that the name of Jesus is insufficiently spoken or appreciated? Who wakes up believing that there is no appreciation for our veterans and our armed forces and that without a noisy speech from Sarah Palin, their sacrifice would be scorned? It's not unfair to say that such grievances are purely and simply imaginary, which in turn leads one to ask what the real ones can be. The clue, surely, is furnished by the remainder of the speeches, which deny racial feeling so monotonously and vehemently as to draw attention.

Making It Fresh

My review of the surprisingly good comedy "The Switch"is online at Philly.com. In posting the review, by the way, I broke a tie on the movie's RottenTomatoes page, which had been 50/50, and personally knocked it into the "fresh" category. I feel like Joe Biden.

Bill Kristol is a Liar

Again and again and again.

Quote of the Day

Adam Serwer, on a poll showing that more than 50 percent of Republicans believe that "Barack Obama sympathizes with the goals of Islamic fundamentalists who want to impose Islamic law around the world":

The poll result is also another example of the remarkable ability of the conservative base to hold two entirely contradictory impressions of a person at the same time -- on the one hand Obama is a social libertine who wants to teach sex ed to children, end discrimination against gays and lesbians in the armed forces and allow women unfettered access to abortion, and on the other he's part of a global conspiracy to institute a repressive interpretation of Islamic law that would prohibit all of those things.

The Onion got this right earlier in the week.

Laughing Ricky

A decade of Ricky Gervais' great laugh:

That's about a hundred times more than I laughed at "The Invention of Lying."

Nice Video, Goober

This made me laugh for some reason:

Since I left New York I haven't heard anyone say "I'm right in the middle of your shit so what the fuck."

And At Least 50 People Came Up to Him and Said "Niger" Was the Wrong Spelling

The Glenn Beck rally, living up to MLK's legacy!

Quote of the Day

Serwer, again:

Rauf's statement about Iraq sanctions is not a religious statement. It is a political statement. Rauf could have said this while being an extremist, he could have said it while scarfing down a half smoke covered in chili and cheese and washing it down with a Red Stripe. If Douthat wants to read Rauf's books and have a theological argument about Islam, or argue with Rauf about his views of American foreign policy, that's fine. But what conservatives are doing at this point is not looking for evidence of religious extremism but policing Rauf's political views for things they find objectionable and then presenting them as evidence of religious extremism. .. These are two completely different things, but conservatives need to conflate them because "man with lefty views on American foreign policy tries to build community center in Lower Manhattan" isn't as objectionable as "Islamic extremist builds mosque at Ground Zero." Agreeing with the Republican platform shouldn't be a prerequisite for building an Islamic community center without the threat of widespread, organized political opposition. We don't hold any other kind of religious leaders to those kinds of standards.

The NFL Name Game

Thanks to this GQ piece, I finally know how to pronounce "Ndamukong Suh" and "Nnamdi Asomugha."

Quote of the Day

Daniel Larison on the idiocy of the mosque opposition:

It has been an exercise in manipulating public anger and using it for the purpose of waging an ostensibly anti-Islamist political campaign by organizing against harmless Muslims and their organizations. A distinctive American culture isn’t under threat from this mosque, the Cordoba Initiative or Imam Abdul Rauf. Rauf and those like him do represent a threat to lazy conservative anti-jihadism that treats every Muslim to “the right” of Ayaan Hirsi Ali as a potential fifth columnist and would-be enforcer of creeping shari’a.

When Tony Met Rex

KSK details an accurate-sounding meeting between the two famous NFL coaches.

Sports Radio Moment of the Day

A caller to the (thankfully Cataldi-free) WIP morning show today lamented that "the unions" are to blame for the out-of-control behavior of baseball's umpires, such as the ump that taunted Ryan Howard the other night, leading to Howard's ejection and the necessity of Roy Oswalt playing left field in the 15th and 16th innings.

Now, I know that some radio callers in Philly, especially on WPHT, have a tendency to blame absolutely every problem in the universe on "the unions." But in fact, baseball's umpires union is pretty weak, and was broken completely about a decade ago* when they tried an ill-advised mass-resigation strategy. One of the umps fired in that purge, the late Eric Gregg, used to come on the morning show frequently, but it didn't appear any of them remembered that.

*Check out the byline on that 1999 story- it's WIP's own Anthony Gargano! Surprisingly, the story doesn't mention "The Sopranos" or food.

Haters' Guide!

This is the hardest I've laughed at anything in a long time. Drew Magary is literally inches away from taking over the universe.

Ken Comes Out

Former RNC chairman and '04 Bush campaign chief Ken Mehlman announced this week that he is gay. It's not the biggest surprise- rumors to that effect have been out there for years, and CNN even drew fire a few years ago for editing out a segment in which Bill Maher mentioned that Mehlman was gay.

I admire him for doing so now, as it was clearly something he's struggled with, and he's pledged to work for same-sex marriage. But it might have been nice for him to do something back when he was in a position to influence the president.

Anyway, now that Mehlman has come out, it's time for Ryan from "The Real World: New Orleans" to do the same. I mean, in last week's episode he literally ran away from a naked woman in order to hide in a closet. The producers somehow resisted the temptation to show him coming out of it.

TV Critic Quote of the Day

Alonso Duralde, via Twitter:

I just figured it out: The Real Housewives franchise is pro wrestling for women.

Seriously- if Bethanny Frankel were a fictional character, she'd be rejected out of hand as way too obvious an anti-Semitic caricature.