What She Said

I like this woman! Politico's "Arena," where important questions are met by talking points and press releases from a diverse group of hacks, lobbyists, publicists, and other compulsive faxers, today asked if it was "refreshing" that John Boehner and Mitch McConnell had promised an agenda of total, nihilistic obstructionism rather than "the usual platitudes about bipartisanship and working across the aisle." Harvard sociologist Theda Skocpol decided to pull the rug out from under the question and rose to the occasion with the best, sassiest, most withering answer I've ever seen on the site:

Is this question a joke? When one of the country's two major political parties announces that it has no intention of joining in trying to solve the major problems the nation faces, that is an obvious scandal. POLITICO is enabling U.S. decline by implying otherwise. No country with 10+ percent unemployment, decaying infrastructure, major wars to fight and educational and health crises can survive the sort of political extremism for obstructionist purposes that the GOP is willfully and proudly engaging in. Only the super rich who want mansions in enclaves at home or abroad benefit from this.

Americans of all persuasions have said they do not want this, but media outlets continue to use fake "debates" like this for marketing purposes.

Don't you just want to give her a hug?

PaladinLOL

(Photographer uncredited, via this Tumblr)

Haw, this has got to be my favorite "head blocks part of word, thereby creating different, funnier word" shot EVER.

It just goes to show, though, that if you use the word "country" in your slogan, you are basically feeding filthy jokes to comedians and you should be ashamed of yourself.

Sharron Angle: Anti-Divorce

Your next senator from Nevada? She's crazier than you even think! Ms.  –sorry, Mrs.– Angle spoke to a church recently, and maybe she was pouring on the Jesus sauce a little too heavily, but gosh, she sounds like the real thing to me.

Actually, Sharron Angle is the type of Christian extremist I've been waiting for in politics: the kind that goes beyond mere abortion decrying and hairdresser bashing and into the much more rarefied air of preaching against alcohol, gambling, contraception and, in Angle's case, divorce:

"I confess that we are a nation who has killed our children. I confess that we are a nation who has walked away from the family and allowed divorce, even among our ranks. We have walked away from the biblical definition of marriage: one man, one woman, the two become one flesh."

She then goes on to make a Biblical case for ending Social Security and Medicare. Clever!

Get ready for Senator Angle! This should be fun!

(Photo: Conjoined twins Violet & Daisy Hilton with a suitor, from the motion picture Freaks)

Quickie: Vanity Fair Discovers Photoshop, Fails To Find Color Adjustment Features

There is something inherently humorous about Vanity Fair's Republican Beefcake Calendar, a fake "hunk of the month" type deal featuring such horrors as John Boehner in a Speedo. My only problem is that the Photoshopping is really, REALLY bad! None of them look as convincing as, for instance, my Dirty Pictures of Dick Cheney™, and I'm hardly a master of the art of the head-swap. I have to assume that Vanity Fair can afford to hire a better Photoshopper, so who is to blame for this embarrassment? An intern? Or did they do it badly on purpose?

The Tea Party Guide To Civil Liberties: Handcuff Them, Knock Them Down, Stomp On Their Heads

A rally participant holds up a pocket sized copy of the U.S. Constitution during a health care rally by The American Grassroots Coalition and The Tea Party Express on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, March 16, 2010. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

Ah, yes, the Constitution. Tea Partiers sure do love their Constitution! And you better love their Constitution, too, or else they will stomp on your head. Basically, if you are defending the Constitution, you can do anything. It's all right there in the Constitution! Yay!

I just think, you know, if you're going to protect Joe Miller's or Rand Paul's freedom of speech, as guaranteed by the Constitution,  maybe you're going to have to stomp on some heads, that's all.

Random Nancy Panel: Metaphor For The Religious Right?

Ben Stein Not A Big Joe Miller Fan

Oh, OW. Ben Stein, who you will recall is an absolutely ridiculous person, an immaculately conservative pundit with impeccable Nixonian credentials, looked upon Alaska's Joe Miller and, lo, found him lacking. The erstwhile game show host was somehow given space in the Alaska Dispatch to write one of the most delightfully mean things I've ever seen about a candidate:

Someone's been listening to "Send in the Clowns" a little too often. "Don't bother, they're here," is what keeps occurring to me. Only this is a dangerous, stupid clown. Time for him to go home and cool off.

Haw, coming from a goofball like Ben Stein, that's gotta sting.

Joe Miller: a dangerous, stupid clown.

I Like What You Like

(PSP flashback to 09-14-08: The McCains campaign at a NASCAR event)

I knew I shouldn't've read it! That thing at the Washington Post I linked to this morning? The one where the Bell Curve guy warns against the New Elite? OMG, it has been just melting my brain all day.

What kept nagging at me was the growing realization that this is a kinda new way to wage the "culture war." See, the old icons of the culture war, homos and abortions, have become a little too complicated: they're linked a little too strongly to the religious right, kids don't fall for them like their parents (or grandparents) do, and too many ordinary folks just don't see them as bêtes noires like they used to.

What Charles Murray, the author of yesterday's Washington Post outrage, and others of his ilk are doing is much more subtle than using gays, guns and fetuses as a rallying cry. The new enemy is The Elites, understood to mean big city liberals. Why does Murray care whether or not we'd be caught dead in Branson, Missouri, or dislike Harlequin Romances, or openly admit to having evangelical Christian friends? What does any of this matter?

Well, it matters because they are using these cultural stereotypes to send out a quasi-subliminal message to the people they're trying to convince: those things you like? The Elites hate those things, and if they remain in power they will take them away from you and replace them with those awful things The Elites like that you hate/don't understand. The Elites will come for your "Left Behind" books and replace them with esoteric biology journals; they will cancel your NASCAR events and replace them with ballet marathons and French film festivals; they will seize your pork rinds and cram arugula down your throats. Drew Carey on The Price is Right? The Elites will replace him with that guy... you know, that really gay guy on Will and Grace? Him.

And, of course, it's all nonsense. NASCAR will continue to exist no matter how many Democrats are elected. What's fascinating, though, about this new "us versus them" strategy, especially as seen in Charles Murray's WaPo op-ed, is that all the scare-mongering is centered around entertainment preferences and recreational activities rather than the pulpit, the firing range, and the bedroom. It strikes me as very effective, because it takes a less "hot button" approach and personalizes the threat of "the other," and furthermore cleverly casts "the other" as pretty much anybody who was ever mean or ever snubbed or lectured the perceived victim of this insidious "new" threat.  It really is the shallowest and most primitive form of politics ever, so I'm deeply impressed and fascinated.

Keep an eye open for this new kind of "I like what you like; they don't" politicking. It's so hot right now!

Would You Want To Be Part Of A Club Which Would Have You As A Member?

Are you ready for the New Elite? Are you, perhaps, part of the New Elite? If you're not sure, you may or may not want to read this thing at the Washington Post, a bizarre and foreboding op-ed by the infamous Charles Murray, co-author of the bizarre and foreboding The Bell Curve. Basically, the New Elite are people who live in cities and college towns and don't care about things like NASCAR and Christian fraternal societies like the Rotary Club or whatever. Do you read lots of books but not Left Behind? You you enjoy skiing but not football? Do you take "interesting vacations" but not in an RV? OMG, do you feel like you're looking into a mirror held up by Mr. Murray yet? It turns out that you are what's wrong with America. I just thought you should know.

Or.... or maybe you are, hilariously, Charles Murray himself, and you've seen all this "Tea Party" stuff, and you're thinking to yourself, "Hey, that looks good, I want some of that!" And then you wave your hands in the air and you say, "Guys! Hey, Tea Party guys! Have you seen my book about how the blacks are genetically dumber than us? Would you like to hire me to speak at your events? Please? I know things and stuff about Ayn Rand!" And then you go back to your office at the American Enterprise Institute and think of other ways to save the country from The Elites. (Image via Getty Images.)

Photoblogging: Real Food: Sticky

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Quickie: Christine O'Donnell's Name Misspelled On Her Own Website

via Gawker.

Head Coverings In The News

(Above: PSP-on-Wonkette flashback to 10-26-07)

Here's a theme I haven't touched on for a while: everybody agrees that writing about political figures' clothing and hairdos is shallow, and yet these topics are amongst the most treacherous to navigate, and politicians ignore them at their own peril. These things "don't matter," and yet they are written about –passionately!– all the time! Hey, tell it to John Edwards, OK? Ah, but these things do matter to a lot of people. Make one wrong sartorial move and BLAM! Trouble.

And that brings us to the latest story in this saga: Obama may not visit some place in India because in order to do so, he might have to slap a scarf on his head. This is a big deal (Google News Search for "Obama Head Covering" brings back 134 news articles)! This will require meetings and negotiations and delicate diplomatic maneuvering and whatnot and at first blush seems so silly but, like I said, put the wrong thing on your head and you're in for a world of hurt.

And can you imagine? Imagine if Obama didn't put much thought into it and chose the wrong thing to place on his head! The US Chamber of Commerce would probably blow that picture up and rent the Times Square Jumbotron for a month to show it; Fox News would put it in the corner of their screen until November, 2012; Pam Geller would, you know, have twenty aneurysms. Enough digital ink would be spilled over this to make the Gulf oil spill seem like a bathtub full of Valvoline.

Head coverings! Gosh! Scarves in the news! Again!

Ugly Tour Bus Photoblogging: Lime Green

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Condi Met With Obama Friday, But Photographers Were Not Present, So I'm Forced To Use This Unflattering Shot From Earlier In The Day

Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice speaks at a luncheon at the National Press Club in Washington, Friday, Oct. 15, 2010. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

Ugh, I really didn't want this to happen, so I waited and waited, assuming the White House Flickr page or somebody else would come to our rescue with nice shots of Condi 'n' Obama in a nicely staged matching armchairs photo, but no. It didn't happen, so we're stuck with Klingon Kondi. Tsk.

What did Condi and Barack talk about? "Books and foreign policy" are about as specific an answer as we're going to get. ABC News says they discussed a "wide range" of foreign policy issues, but the meeting was only 30 minutes, so wow, wide range. Oh, Condoleezza, you are so boring these days! I mean, I suppose I didn't expect her to be swinging from chandeliers during her book tour thing, but still! Loosen up, girl!

Speaking of the book, the LA Times finally reviewed it, and the phrase "readers hoping for candor and insight might not find much" pretty much says it all. Indeed, the reviewer only managed to squeak out seven tiny paragraphs about the thing before falling asleep. The only takeaway from it is that we learn that other mean kids called her "watermelon head," not because she was black, but because she was a nerd with a big head. And speaking of big heads, this is telling:

She scored 136 on an IQ test at age 6, she reveals, "good but not Mensa level." It was a rare setback (and one reason, she notes, that she doesn't trust standardized tests).

So there you go: Condi thinks she's a genius.

Real Food: Half & Half Not

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Quickie: Bill O'Reilly Marvels That Even Though Condi Was A Black Girl, She Wasn't "A Little Thug – A Little Thugette"

Condi book tour continues! She was on with the O'Reilly person yesterday, and, ha, did he ever try to bait her! So funny, but you can't catch the Condibot in that old trap. Bill, Dr. Ferragamo has never said anything controversial out loud and she never will.

Does the following seem a little... like a repeat of Bill O'Reilly marveling over how an African American restaurant was actually civilized and nice? Because it does to me:

O'REILLY: So that's tough. I mean, you know, when you're in a family and you have to perform as a child, you had to perform.

RICE: But I didn't feel that way about it. I felt that they were giving me every possible opportunity, and I was taking advantage of some and not of others.

O'REILLY: But they -- you correct me if I'm wrong. They structured your day so that you had to study, you had to do the piano, you had -- or what was it, the instrument?

RICE: Piano.

O'REILLY: Piano, right. You had to do this stuff, and you weren't allowed, you know, to be -- I wasn't really allowed. I just did it. But you weren't a little thug -- a little thugette?

RICE: I was actually a little tomboy.

She was black but wasn't raised to be a thugette! Well done, Condiparents!

Condibook Non-Reviews Come Trickling In

How does Condi elicit such charity? That, Pony Pals, is one of the central mysteries behind this blog's Condicoverage, and one I've never been able to solve.

And so it is with the first major review, in the New York Times, natch, of "Things and Stuff about My Parents" or whatever her book is called. This is certainly the type of review I expected: lukewarm and descriptive rather than actually analytical. Does the book have any literary merits (I've heard that book reviewers often ponder this question)? NYT's Dwight Garner simply doesn't address the issue, opting instead to merely summarize the book's contents. "The memoir is teeming with fascinating detail," he writes, but nevertheless his frustration with its feather-lightness becomes clear soon enough:

For all this, “Extraordinary, Ordinary People” is often aloof. There are few unguarded moments, little humor. There’s rarely a hair out of place. (She does talk about several of her boyfriends over the years, including, in the mid-1970s, the Denver Broncos kick returner Rick Upchurch.) Like so many public figures and those in government and politics especially, Ms. Rice is not especially reflective. Her energy is directed out, not in.

It’s frustrating. Here’s a woman, you think, who has been secretary of state and provost of Stanford University. During the fall of the Berlin Wall, she was George H. W. Bush’s adviser on Soviet policy. Her doctoral dissertation was published by Princeton University Press. Surely there’s a keen and kaleidoscopic mind in there. But that mind is rarely apparent in this softly flowing book. Reading it, from the perspective of ideas and intellect, is like watching a Toyota Prius compete in the Indianapolis 500.

By the end of the review, though, Garner admits that "the takeaway from Extraordinary, Ordinary People is the image of a confident woman — “Young, Gifted and Black,” as the Nina Simone single put it — who owed everything to her parents, whom she spoke with every night on the telephone until their deaths."

I'm sure that's enough for Oprah. Moving along.

How about the Amazon reviews? Not much there: two suspicious raves, a third rave by somebody who is reviewing Condi's life ("inspirational!") rather than the book, a complaint about the Kindle price, and this, my favorite:

3.0 out of 5 stars Pretty good memoir, October 12, 2010
By Stevie - See all my reviews
This review is from: Extraordinary, Ordinary People: A Memoir of Family (Hardcover)
Lots of photos (one of her as a kid in front of the White House!) and Rice presents her own sometimes painful recollections of her childhood and early adult years! The part of the book I found the most interesting is when she describes her meeting with President George H.W.Bush and how his administration did a good job in 1991 in ousting bad Saddam from Kuwait but how, as Saddam was allowed to stay in power, the Iraqi stayed a menace to his neighbors! Rice didn't elborate but that menmace bit was because in 1994 Saddam tried to reinvade Kuwait but he was stopped by Bill Clinton in the White House at the time!

This review was helpful to me!

Here's This Condi Video Interview Thing!

So! There you go: Condi was actually able to name a Led Zeppelin song after claiming she loves "hard rock." She also bravely admits, "Of course, I loved Motown... Aretha Franklin... and the whole Motown scene." FYI, here's an abridged list of record labels Aretha never, ever recorded for: Motown.

But who cares, because it's CONDIBOOK DAY! The holy book has descended from above, and all is right with the world. Now, finally all Americans will know what it's like to be teen Condi, trapped in a locked room with nothing but a piano teacher for sustenance while terrible violent racism swelled right outside her door.

I can't find any credible reviews yet, just puff pieces, but then again, why, after all, should Condi journalism be any different today from any other day? I'll keep a lookout. Oh, and maybe I'll purchase and read the thing. Haw, I doubt it.

Random Nancy Panel

Oh, hello! I'm really sorry, because I'm totally, like, EW about politics right now, so I haven't been posting much, and then I was all, fully, OMG, that's why I hooked up my scanner! So I'll try to get scantastic again for your enjoyment (?). Anyway! So that's Nancy's tragic liposuction overreaching for you. Tsk.

Washington Post Risks Exposing Male Readers To Fashion Again

To catch you up: the Washington Post writes about fashion for men maybe once or twice a year, because lord knows fashion for men is gay and there are no gay men in Washington and THIS IS NOT THEIR READERSHIP, OK? So anyway, last time they featured six whole items, including pleated shorts from J. Crew and bow ties and Sperry Topsiders. This time they scaled it back to five things because, you know, ow, strenuous. On the fashion-forward menu this season for the adventurous male: hair pomade, Levi's skinny jeans ("Turn up the cuff to bring the look firmly into 2010," they suggest with a straight face), V-neck sweaters from J. Crew, Bass saddle shoes (edgy!), and three-piece suits (SO edgy!). The end. I'm not linking to the slide show because 1. I just spoiled it and 2. it starts with a 40-second ad from BP.

LOLDonnell

I'm sorry.

Condibook Comes Out Next Week, Has Different Cover

Oh, yes, I'll be lining up bright 'n' early to purchase the long-awaited Condibook which "drops," as the kids say (annoyingly), next Tuesday. Actually, that's totally a lie, because it sounds so utterly boring and covers all the stories she's brought up over and over already for years. Snore. But anyway, it has a different cover than the one I showed you earlier this year, which is a relief, because that was really a bad design. They changed the photo for one with a slightly older Condibot, and made it duotone green rather than sepia, a tacit admission that Condi was not born in the 19th Century. Gone is the dumb "distressed" edge, but the pointless curlicue, which I earlier described as "graphic designer's dandruff," remains. All the type has been shuffled around, and her name, surprisingly, has been pushed to the bottom. It's still not a great cover, but it's a lot better.

My prediction: the reviews will be charitable but lukewarm, and it will sell shitloads of copies, about 20% of which will be read all the way through. 

Photoblogging: Calder Goes Mobile

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How do you move a huge Alexander Calder sculpture? Verrrry carefully. Even if it's only going two blocks.

Ugly Tour Bus Photoblogging: Cloudy Sky

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Gimme

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I would hardly call myself a besotted fan of Michelle Obama, but OMG, do I want this bag? Yes, I want this bag.

UPDATE: Holy cow, here it is for sale.

Familiar

OK, so Talking Points Memo has this thing about some lawyer lady, the improbably named Cleta Mitchell, who's, like, totally defending Sharron Angle and Christine O'Donnell from people calling them retarded 'n' stuff. The article is fully ugh, boring, impossible to read. What made it doubly impossible for me to read was that I kept staring, transfixed, at the picture of her:

(image via TPM)

All I could think was HOW DID SHE GET CONDI'S SUIT? Condi, check your closet! You've been robbed!

Ugly Tour Bus Photoblogging: More From Friday

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Well, another Ugly Tour Bus season is winding down, but there are plenty still out there. This series has quite a ways to go yet. I've been thinking of asking the drivers if I can shoot the awful upholstery inside the busses. Possibilities!

Ugly Tour Bus Photoblogging: Tribute To Derek Jarman

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One More Picture From West Virginia & Bonus Self Portrait

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