Larry King live
(CNN)
Joy Behar, co-host of ABC’s The View, impersonating
a cute little girl for the master of the late-night interview,
Larry King:
You know the one thing that I don’t think anybody’s said yet is
that she’s very mean to animals, this woman. Why does she have it
in for these poor polar bears and caribou? And she aerial kills
wolves. That’s a very mean thing to do. I think that that’s an
important point.
(September 9, 2008)
American Prospect
Good News! Sarah Posner, the American Prospect’s
chief writer on theology and aerobics, finds evidence that Vice
President Sarah Palin will finally bring to the White House a
Kenyan witch-hunter, after all these years:
Sarah Palin’s anointing by Kenyan witch-hunter Thomas Muthee has
received a tiny fraction of the media coverage heaped on the Rev.
Jeremiah Wright last spring. Wright, acting in the prophetic
tradition of questioning authority, was deemed to be unhinged and a
threat to the Republic. Muthee, who fretted that the future
governor of Alaska might need his intercessory help battling the
devil, is just a funny man with a foreign accent.
Muthee may well be influenced by some homegrown superstitions,
but driving out witches and demons is a hallmark of many
Pentecostal and charismatic Christian churches all over the United
States. Dismissing Muthee’s practices as not representative of
American religion, as the usually well-informed Michael Crowley did
on Hardball last week, is ignorant and naive.
(October 1, 2008)
The Progressive
Friday night among the neurotics, as reported by a heavily
sedated Kate Clinton:
My head feels like the terrorists have won. Last Friday, we went
to a friend’s house for dinner and the debate. My gal-pal was
quickly driven out of the TV room by McCain’s smarmy opening gambit
about Ted Kennedy’s hospitalization. Unable to sit still, she
nervously cleaned our friend’s kitchen to a gleam it had not seen
in years. Her Mrs. Clean efforts did not preclude periodic screams
from the kitchen….
(September 29, 2008)
Rolling Stone
The bleak consequences of 130-degree summers in sunny L.A.
as extrapolated by lachrymose Beach Boy Brian Wilson in
RS, handbook for the arrested adolescent:
A few days after his 66th birthday, Brian Wilson cruises along
Mulholland Drive in his black Mercedes coupe, listening to an
oldies station and thinking about global warming. There’s a heat
wave on in L.A., with temperatures in the high 90s and wildfires
burning up the coast. “It’s not supposed to be this hot in June,”
Wilson mutters. Hot wind blows through the car’s open windows, and
torn-up receipts fly around the floor. “What if it gets to be 130
degrees in July? Would you consider that to be a disaster? I’d say
that’s a disaster.” He sighs deeply. “It could be the end of
L.A.—the end of life. This could be it! Oh, my God, it’s
terrible.”
(September 18, 2008)
(Special thanks to Wayne Gibson of Etobicoke, Ontario, which
doesn’t have an oldies station.)
Memphis Flyer
Someone calling himself, herself, or perhaps itself Glinda
Watts sends an obvious crank epistle to the editor of the
correspondence page of MF and the credulous galoot
actually publishes it:
I have been intimately involved with local plant populations for
nearly 20 years. I have obtained food, medicine, oxygen, and
sustenance for the soul from the plants of our region. I have
watched in sorrow as their numbers, their diversity, and their
habitat have all declined. Whether the rest of us realize it or
not, all of life is dependent on the green world. Life on this
planet would not be possible if not for plants. They even learned
how to have sex before we did!
—Glinda Watts, American Herbalists Guild, Memphis [Makes you
want to reach for a bottle of Roundup Super Concentrate or your
handy cordless weed whacker, no?—Ed.]
(September 11-17, 2008)
(Our thanks to Steve Palmer of Germantown, Tennessee, for
this bouquet.)
MSNBC
Keith Olbermann leads Chris Matthews in a duet for stooges
minutes after the Prophet Obama subsides at a recent reenactment of
the Nuremberg Rallies:
Olbermann: For 42 minutes—not a sour note and spellbinding
throughout in a way usually reserved for the creations of fiction.
An extraordinary political statement. Almost a fully realized,
tough, crisp, insistent speech in tone and in the sense of cutting
through the clutter….I’d love to find something to criticize about
it. You got anything?
Matthews: No. You know I’ve been criticized for saying he
inspires me, and to hell with my critics!…You know in the Bible
they talk about Jesus serving the good wine last. I think the
Democrats did the same.
(August 28, 2008)
CNN
Just minutes after the Prophet Obama’s Oration in C Major at
the Democratic National Convention and Séance held in Denver,
Colorado, commentator David Gergen breaks into a homoerotic
rhapsody:
In many ways it was less a speech than a symphony. It moved
quickly. It had high tempo, at times inspiring. Then it became more
intimate, slower— all along sort of interweaving a main theme about
America’s promise…. Echoes of Lincoln, of King, even of Reagan and
of Kennedy….It was a masterpiece.
(August 28, 2008)
The Nation
The venerable Nation’s resident Woman of the
Fevered Brow, Miss Katha Pollitt, flaunts her encyclopedic
knowledge of Governor Sarah Palin, mere days after that cute little
number caught the eye of Senator John McCain:
Nothing would suit them [Republicans] better than for the media
to spend the next two months spellbound by the wacky carnival on
ice that is the Palin family: Todd, aka the First Dude, the kids,
Levi the hunky bad-boy dad-to- be—well, maybe not him so much after
his expletive-adorned MySpace page briefly came to light (“I’m a
f—kin’ redneck”; “I don’t want kids”—whoops). The snowmobiles, the
moose burgers, the guns, the hair, the glasses that are flying off
America’s shelves (starting at $375 a pair, and she has seven).
(September 29, 2008)
From the Archives: Timeless Tosh from Current Wisdoms
Past
(November 1988)
Washington Times
Dr. John Elvin, resident historian of the Good
Times, chronicles one more high-toned yawp from Liberalism’s
rightful heir to Demosthenes, The Rev. JJ:
Jesse Jackson mentioned on a recent C-Span talk show that George
Bush “has this habit of name calling and cursing, whether he’s
cursing Mrs. Ferraro after a debate, or calling me a Chicago
hustler, [or] cursing about his declaration for Quayle. Usually
when people curse like that, it reflects a kind of constipation of
the brain and diarrhea of the mouth. And he ought to stop that kind
of talk.”
(September 5, 1988)
New York Times
Cinematic drama as envisaged by a New Age Puritan amuck in
Princeton:
To the editor: Something fundamental has been left out of the
new literate movies such as “Bull Durham.” There is plenty of
humor, satire, baseball and sex. The beautiful, passionate heroine
says that “there’s never been a baseball player slept with me who
didn’t have the best year of his career.” How come we see this role
model for teen-agers going to the baseball games, taking the
pitcher to her bed but never taking her birth-control pills after
breakfast or encouraging the use of condoms in the bedroom? She
never worries about becoming pregnant or getting a sexually
transmitted disease. Isn’t it time that movie producers gave young
people sexually responsible heroes and heroines who know how to
avoid having unwanted pregnancies or sexually transmitted
diseases?
—Evelyn Geddes
Princeton, N.J., Aug. 23, 1988
(September 4, 1988)
