The stupider that you act, the more the media will pay attention to you. This immutable law of media is proven daily by the likes of the Kardashian family, The Situation, Snooki and… Sarah Palin. All of them are masters at appealing to idiots. Fellow idiots relate to them. Dum-Dums think they’re “cool.” They are icons of idiocy and they are handsomely remunerated for their trademarked brands of frivolity and foolishness.
Palin co-hosted Fox and Friends yesterday, and just like Miss Utah over the weekend, in her own inimitable way she managed to chip away just a lil’ teensy bit at America’s collective IQ. Even if you weren’t watching.
Last night on The Daily Show, fill-in host John Oliver suggested that we all start ignoring the snowbilly grifter and give ourselves a national “brain enema.”
Outgoing GOP crazypants Rep. Michele Bachmann of MN seems to have accidentally taken some sodium pentothal before sitting down for this recent interview with WorldNutDaily. In it, Rep. Bachmann states, with no equivocating (as is her wont), that if immigration reform passes, there will never again be a Republican President or a GOP ruled Senate and that they’ll eventually lose the House for good, too.
Oh, how I love these rare moments of Republican candor! But Bachmann, as true as what she is saying really is, misses the equally valid flip-side of her statement: If immigration fails to pass, there won’t be another Republican President ever again either! Win/win!!!
The Republicans, are, of course, fucked in every respect and they have only themselves—and their staggeringly stupid brand of politics—to blame. Instead they’re probably just going to point the finger at “Mexican anchor babies,” but to no avail.
You snooze you lose. For the politically tin-eared Rip Van Winkles of the Republican Party, it’s already too late.
But that’s no going to stop Reps. Bachmann, Steve King and Louie Gohmert who are reportedly planning a revolt in the House over immigration reform legislation forcing additional debate (likely to prove highly embarrassing with those three clownjobs leading the charge) on the immigration bill they say will have “dire consequences for the country.”
The minute immigration reform gets passed, you can put a fork in the Grand Old Party. Even the reddest of redneck states will start turning blue very, very quickly and there is nothing the Republicans can do about it, either. Talk about being caught between a rock and a hard place. These assholes are staring down a demographic tidal wave that is going to DROWN THEM.
Admittedly, although a one-party rule by the Democrats doesn’t sound like much of a prize—it has been pretty great for California, though, hasn’t it?—that party will be increasingly easier to reason with once the GOP—so pathologically impervious to reason, obviously—has suffered continuing electoral humiliation and diminishment at the vote of a rapidly changing American electorate.
“Princess, Daddy wants you to wear your pink gown on our date. You look so pure in that one.”
This sort of mindset simply does not compute outside of Christianist fundie circles: The Legacy Institute, run by sexual “purity” advocate Carrie Abbott, is holding a father and daughter “Purity Ball” cotillion in Kenmare, WA next week—it’s already sold out—that promises to be a dads and daughters celebration of intact hymens.
The Purity Ball is only for fathers (or “key male guardians”) and daughters who are aged 12-19. An event celebrating virginity with a strong undercurrent of (hopefully) repressed incest issues. WOW. (Consider for one nanosecond the even WEIRDER proposition of escorting a young virgin who is not even your own biological offspring to such an event as her “key male guardian.” FREAKY DEAKY.)
I get the “good girls” want to meet “fine, upstanding Christian boys” at a chaperoned dance kinda thing, but this? This is fucking demented.
I fervently hope a documentary crew will be on hand to shoot this:
Dads, escort your daughter to an unforgettable event where hundreds of young ladies dressed in formal attire and their dashing fathers will celebrate purity!
This extraordinary evening includes an elegant atmosphere, pictures, gourmet dinner and dessert, flowers, music and other surprises sure to delight both father and daughter.
Legacy’s President and popular speaker, Carrie Abbott, will deliver a unique message to dads and daughters and our Master of Ceremonies will facilitate a purity covenant.
This will be a powerful and life-changing event!
Now that I doubt, but the overall cumulative effect that having this sort of horseshit drilled into their heads for years is probably going to have quite the opposite influence on these young ladies than is intended. Want to insure that your daughter will remain virginal and pure until she’s married in the eyes of God, Christian dads? Then you might want to consider backing off creepy shit like “purity covenants” and breathtakingly twisto events like this one!
As I hail from a rural agricultural town, I completely understand the political disaffection of country life, and I think a lot of it is merited. Almost no one can make a living on a family farm, and the regions are frequently economically depressed, their problems largely ignored by urbanites. Moreover, that fresh, clean, country air is not always so fresh, since the “not in my backyard” environmental policies in this country meant I grew up around factories. These steel mills intended to bring jobs, though they paid poorly.
That being said, some disaffected country folk are just super-insular, unsophisticated batshit crazy crackpot nutjobs, with no concept of their political or economic relationship to the world around them.
Take, for example, Weld County Commissioner Sean Conway. In early May, Conway attempted to evade state gun control laws, arguing that Weld County law holds more water. Weld County is actually a “home rule” county, meaning they can pass local laws and establish their own internal government structure, but only within the limits of state laws, obviously.
Before that, Conway made a stir pushing for hydrofracking, a gas-drilling technique associated with earthquakes that has left quite a few folks with flammable tap water. He also argued against emissions standards during an undignified appearance on The Scooter McGee Show (whose tagline is “Paranoia IS patriotic,” and show summary is “Is there a New World Order agenda? Can we stop Globalism? Anything goes and all bets are off when it comes to the TRUTH behind the stories of the headlines of the day!”).
More recent attempts to curb oil and gas drilling with green energy programs as substitutes appear to have been the last straw for this great leader of men and his fellow pioneers.
Between environmental regulation and gun control (in addition to what I’m sure is some weird internalized nostalgia for the American “frontier” and/or libertarian isolation fetish) Conway and other CO county commissioners (and including pols from Nebraska) think they have a case to push for secession, not from America, but from Colorado and Nebraska because they don’t believe in the laws. These people want to make their own state. According to Detroit Free Press, “North Colorado” (I can’t believe I just typed that), would take about 7% of Colorado’s overall population, making it the least populous state in the country. The second least populous, Wyoming, would still have 40% more people. It would be, as you might be expect, overwhelmingly white, Republican and have an incredibly low gross domestic product.
What could possibly go wrong?
Below, a local news report on the proposed new state of “North Colorado”—that’s sure some nutty hairpiece Sean Conway’s got, isn’t it?
A man has denied trying to film up a woman’s skirt, claiming he may have been trying to light a fart.
Brian Whitehead entered a bar in Bristol, England, where he was seen to place a “mystery object under a woman’s clothing as she stood at the bar.”
Whitehead claims to have no memory of the incident, but told police:
“Maybe I was trying to light a fart. It could have been a joke.
“Maybe someone says ‘I bet you a fiver if you light her fart’.”
He was later arrested after he being identified on the bar’s CCTV footage.
At his trial, where Whitehead denies a charge of “committing an act outraging public decency, by placing a camera under a skirt in September last year,” Bar manager Alexander McEvoy Williams, said he was “shocked” when he saw Whitehead’s actions, as the Bristol Post reports:
...Williams told the jury he had been collecting glasses outside the Wetherspoon’s bar when he came back inside and saw a man standing close behind a woman who was chatting at the bar.
He said: “As I approached from outside I saw the male with a black object in his hand. As I drew closer I saw it to be some sort of electronic device with a screen and buttons, either a camera or a mobile phone. I saw the male place the device under the woman’s skirt as she was leant forward, looking at something on the bar. When I saw what happened I initially was so shocked I couldn’t believe what I had just seen. I put the glasses down and I asked the woman if she had seen anything, and she said ‘no’.”
Mr Williams said he went to check the bar’s CCTV to be absolutely sure of what occurred. He said: “I couldn’t believe it, it was so blatant. Another manager has seen it and he said ‘Did you just see that?’
“The CCTV confirmed what we had just seen.”
A picture of Whitehead was displayed at the bar, and when he returned and was recognized, he was arrested. Despite the CCTV evidence to the contrary, Whitehead denies his actions were lewd, insisting he had been drunk. He also denied using a camera or having a sexual motive.
“I don’t remember it clearly. I don’t know what I was doing. I believe I had a Clipper cigarette lighter, a black one. I think it was still in my hand after just having a cigarette,” Whitehead told the court.
Dignity, schmignity! Who am I kidding, the man is shameless! Watch in slack-jawed boredom as Glenn Beck interviews himself, in a kind of idiotic (or demented, if you prefer) Swedish Chef impression.
Glenn Beck lost his mind (and the vast majority of his audience and influence) a while ago, but has Beck the showman lost his mojo, too?
He’s not even trying here. Well, he’s trying to take up airtime, I guess, but not much else. I can’t imagine too many people, not even stupid ones, would subscribe to this, or continue their subscriptions if this was the quality of the programming they would receive for their hard-earned dough. There aren’t enough hours in the day and this doesn’t even rise to the occasion of lame.
Slavoj Žižek might just be the world’s foremost intellectual prostitute, but it still feels novel to hear him riff on these bulwarks of relatively recent mass culture, not to mention relate “Gangnam Style” (“your first reaction is maybe, ‘fuck them stupid Koreans’”) to his beloved Jacques Lacan.
And who’d have thought he’d seen Kung Fu Panda five times!
A Craigslist ad from the infamously post-industrial city of Youngstown, Ohio advertises a sad DIY gamer’s “Personal Gaming Module” for $2,500, with the following specs:
Personal Gaming Module. aka “The Box”
Weatherproof Camo Exterior
Solid construction.
Custom seating for one or two adults.
900 watts 5.1 Dolby Digital surround with fiber optic connections.
100 watt powered subwoofer.
HD LCD TV on adjustable Omnimount
XBox 360 with protective enclosure.
Rubber lined spill proof floor.
Black fleece inner wall lining.
A/C and Heat.
Steel casters for easy moving, around garage, driveway, etc.
Original Model available. One of a kind Military Theme.
Serious inquiries only.
$2500 delivered within 100 miles of Youngstown.
I want to rag on this thing as the nadir of a gormless gamer culture, but I just can’t bring myself to do it. Maybe it’s the fact that I admire ambitious utopian projects, and this feels akin to one. It could be the opus of a dreamer, someone with tenacity and a resourceful mind.
Maybe it’s the solidarity I felt with gamers ever since that year of unemployment after college, spent doing virtually nothing but applying for jobs, accruing mass, and playing “Twilight Princess.”
Maybe the idea of sequestering technological entertainment in a creepy fallout shelter leaves me concerned for the socialization of its would-be inhabitants. The ”Custom seating for one or two adults“ feels like some sort of tragic Waiting for Godot optimism. And don’t even want to speculate on why they might need a “Rubber lined spill proof floor.”
Or maybe it’s the fact that it’s in Youngstown, Ohio—a city so depressing its latest survival technique (in addition to hydrofracking) is bulldozing its abandoned houses like the amputation of gangrenous limbs.
I don’t really know, but the thing leaves me with an uneasy melancholy, so I’m just going to hope that whoever ends up with this creation, this audiovisual womb, is soothed and entertained to the fullest extent.
Papa’s got a brand new conspiracy theory: Glenn Beck, the teary-eyed, former alcoholic Mormon “patriot” and multi-millionaire conspiracy theory media mogul believes (or, rather, *ahem*, says he believes) himself to be the target of, what else, a conspiracy to call him a conspiracy theorist.
Heavy meta!
It sounds like I am making this up. I am not making this up. Via Raw Story:
Conspiracy talk radio host Glenn Beck [see what he did there?] said Tuesday that he isn’t sure why he’s been labeled a conspiracy theorist in the media, but he’s pretty sure it’s the result of a “concentrated effort” somehow coordinated by the White House.
Building on his theory that CNN secretly orchestrated an incredibly awkward moment between host Wolf Blitzer and an atheist survivor of the Oklahoma tornadoes, Beck told listeners on Tuesday that it’s just another example of the media’s conspiracy to push a hidden agenda, in this case atheism.
“The media has their own agenda,” he said of CNN. “And if the media has a storyline, it just writes it in. And currently the storyline is ‘conspiracy theorist.’” Then, without irony, he asked: “Why is it a concentrated effort now to label me a conspiracy theorist?”
Fantabulosa! The man surely knows how to enthrall his audience of cud-chewing cows, does he not? They subscribe to this shit, baby! Pay the man a monthly fee to put stupid ideas in their heads. It’s genius, the best gimmick for separating fools from their money since televangelism or Scientology!
Glenn Beck is so gangsta, motherfucker, countin’ those stacks o’ Benjamins!
