ALARM !!! ALARM !!! ALARM !!!

MUST CREDIT SMYTHE

ALARM !!! ALARM !!! ALARM !!!

I have it from an unimpeachable source that Babel will win the Oscar for Best Picture. My source is the ultimate insider for this sort of thing. Let's just say that it's as if she's already opened the envelope, if you catch my drift...UPDATE: Never mind. She's telling me she's just guessing, and has no real clue who's going to win. I'm such an idiot for believing her.

Back when variety shows were ubiquitous on American TV, occasionally you would see pairings like this one, between two giants:

I believe this might have been Dylan's debut on network television....

An opinion of a non-Academy voter:

"A lot of the mannerisms were right. But the problem was the walk -- Forest didn't get that. My father strides and his hands would go like a paddle because of his wide shoulders. Whitaker is knock-kneed -- my father was bowlegged."

--Jaffar Amin, son of the late Ugandan dictator Idi Amin. He returned to Uganda in 1990, and now makes a living, swear to Kobe, doing voiceovers for advertisements. My essay on other scions of deposed dictators can be found here.

Rabbi Haggard? The Rude One is on to something, concerning this quote from a Michael Medved op-ed:

Tim Hardaway (and most of his former NBA teammates) wouldn’t welcome openly gay players into the locker room any more than they’d welcome profoundly unattractive, morbidly obese women. I specify unattractive females because if a young lady is attractive (or, even better, downright “hot”) most guys, very much including the notorious love machines of the National Basketball Association, would probably welcome her joining their showers. The ill-favored, grossly overweight female is the right counterpart to a gay male because, like the homosexual, she causes discomfort due to the fact that attraction can only operate in one direction. She might well feel drawn to the straight guys with whom she’s grouped, while they feel downright repulsed at the very idea of sex with her. (emphasis added)

Besides the offensive bit of racial stereotyping ("love machines of the National Basketball Association"?), Medved seems to have a complete lack of knowledge about what straight men are doing when they take a shower in a public place. They're trying to wash up after a game or work-out, not hoping that some Charlize Theron-lookalike will walk by and give them some complimentary wood while they're soaping up with the boys. Who wants to advertise their shortcomings to the world? It's a question of modesty.

The New York Times is reporting that former Mass. Sen. Edward W. Brooke is still alive. Others who this day yet live include him, her, him, her, him, her, him, her, and him. Him too.

Rocky Roid.

Did you know there's actually a country where the children of the nation's leaders go and fight when their country goes to war? It's called, "The United Kingdom." Kinda blows your mind....

Melissa McEwan, the "other blogger" in l'Affaire Marcotte, has been getting the bum end of the stick in this whole controversy. Unlike Marcotte, she never posted anything that could conceivably be termed extreme or bigoted against the Catholic Church (a point reiterated by that noted lefty blogger, Patterico), and her role in this matter seems to be that she was just another woman whom Tom Donahue and the other bundists of the far right could bully. Her opinions may have been left-liberal, and she may have taken no prisoners on her blog, but surely that cannot be justification for seeking to blackball her from mainstream political activities.

But the post-resignation articles all seem to lump the two of them together, as if her calling the Pope on the Church's recent history of anti-gay persecution, or decrying what she termed the "Christofascist" element of the GOP, was somehow indistinguishable from a blogpost denigrating the Virgin Mary. Death threats, never justifiable no matter how rancid the commentator (right wing or left), are especially odious when targeted against someone who has done nothing to merit any sort of scorn. It doesn't take a Cal Tech grad to figure out that lumping her and Marcotte together may have less to do with what they had written and everything to do with the fact that they were young, talented, and blunt women.

Ladies and gentlement, the ever-credulous Howard Kurtz....

Fox to Air Fake News Show: How will we tell the difference?

And now, the feel-good hit of Spring 2007:

Mensteala: It's hard to watch this video and not feel sorry the guy, no matter how wealthy or famous he is. Like watching Jerry Lewis, or Adam Sandler, or seeing Whoopi Goldberg host the Oscars....

An interesting take on the problems Mitt Romney will have with the GOP base, which have got nothing to do with his flip-flops on abortion or gay rights.

It's not a blanket slam on Catholic dogma, nor a foul-mouthed tirade clothed in self-righteousness, but this is my effort to forever disqualify myself from working on a Presidential campaign:

Nacht und Nebel: A prof from one of the SEC's finest law schools has a modest proposal to solve the Iranian Problem: Death Squads.

Marcotte Resigns: No surprise there. A campaign blog, or any sort of corporate/institutional blog, has to be bland and inoffensive by its very nature. And she was clearly not that. The only other justification to hire her would be if she had a proven ability to manage and format a weblog, something that Kos has almost patented; obviously, if Pandagon was "losing" half of her controversial posts because its archives were busted, then she's not the person to bring in to set up an entirely new website. Having her "resign" after the heat has died down (while keeping the other blogger, who doesn't appear to be guilty of anything other than being anti-Christianist) allows the Edwards camp to claim they put up the good fight against the Giant Fascist Noise Machine without having to worry about losing Pennsylvania or Ohio the next time their spokeswoman decides to mock the Immaculate Conception.

UPDATE [2/13]: And now the other blogger has resigned. Since there was no recent post on her weblog that would justified any further right wing outrage, the proximity of the two resignations is most curious.

Francis Urquhart Dies: Ian Richardson, the star of the one of the greatest black comedies ever to air on television, "House of Cards" (and two fine sequels), passed away over the weekend. Dame Helen Mirren paid tribute to him last night after accepting her BAFTA honor, calling him her "mentor", and tearfully saying that she doubted she would be where she was today without his help early in her career. He also played the treacherous mole opposite Sir Alec Guinness in "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy", and starred in both the movie and the original theatrical production of Marat/Sade. But he will always be remembered for the line, "You might well think that. I, of course, could not possibly comment," which F.U. would always repeat whenever he was called upon to give an off-the-record (and invariably false) slur upon the reputation of one of his rivals in the "House of Cards" series.

What a start for the Obama Campaign !! First John Howard, now Cornell West, who thought that the election of George Bush in 2000 would be better for black America than Al Gore. All Barack needs now is to get denounced by Tony Blair, and he'll have poodles in three different countries yelping at his heels. [link via Steve Gilliard, who is very disappointed that Obama is trying to win the Presidency, rather than appeal just to black voters, and that he chose to announce his campaign at the home of that noted racist cracker, Abraham Lincoln]

The Order of the Phoenix: Ralph Fiennes, who when last we met had just ended an eleven-year relationship with a 62-year old woman, has apparently joined the Mile-High Club with a 38-year old Qantas stewardess. [link via HuffPost]

OBAMA !!! What's not to like? He was right from the start on the war, he doesn't employ wackjob bloggers whose opinions would have been more at home in some nineteenth century anti-Fenian salon, and his campaign says this, about the empty suit running Australia:

"If Prime Minister Howard truly believes what he says, perhaps his country should find its way to contribute more than just 1,400 troops so some American troops can come home," he said. "It's easy to talk tough when it's not your country or your troops making the sacrifices."

That was in response to John Howard's assertion that if he was "al Qaeda", he would praying be praying for an Obama victory in the first primaries in March, 2008. Howard faces a new election himself later this year.