Friday, June 10, 2005

A flip Wilson

That’s Brian Wilson, of Fox News.

John’s post from last night has been confirmed today by CJRDaily.

The issue, James, is not about incredibly pointed questions, it’s that those on the Right who are so concerned with setting the tone, should live by it themselves.

Does respected cultural critic William Bennett condone this kind of behavior?

Oh, never mind.

***
Reasoned criticism from Joe Gandelman (and my response).

The rumor is false

I bet the Scaife funded promotion machine for The Clinton Wars, er, The Truth About Hillary, which has so far been proven to have gotten the facts wrong not once, but twice, loves the lesbian angle:

“The Truth About Hillary,” to be published by Penguin’s right-wing Sentinel imprint this month, makes much of Clinton’s supposed lesbian affinities. Klein says that she “embraced” lesbianism and that it “shaped” her politics in a profound way.

Klein also makes much of Clinton’s friendship with Nancy Wanderer, a classmate who came out of the closet. He recounts an episode at their 25th reunion when Clinton - who, Klein says, was “widely rumored” to be a lesbian herself - fondled Wanderer’s buzz-cut hair.

I’d like to take this opportunity to explain that even though my college friend Marco did in fact recently marry, and his wife was seen stroking my bald head, there’s no truth whatsoever to the rumor that I am a heterosexual.

Via Atrios: ...by Klein’s standards (Oh my! she touched the lesbianic hair of a lesbianic lesbian!) Bush is a power bottom.

London’s latest fashion

They’re talking about extending London’s congestion pricing (a concept I favor) to all of the UK. Meanwhile, London drivers have shown a fondness for spray-on mud:

It’s sold as a must-have accessory to give urban SUVs a whiff of the outback. But U.K. officials say drivers who use spray-on mud to avoid identification by police speed cams face hefty fines for obscuring their license plates.

Targeting self-conscious 4x4 owners whose rugged vehicles seldom see obstacles bigger than a speed bump, the enterprising British e-tailer behind Sprayonmud sells the scent of the countryside in a squirt bottle.

Culture warriors on the move

No news here, depressing nonetheless:

Emboldened by the political right’s growing influence on public policy, opponents of school activities aimed at educating students about homosexuality or promoting acceptance of gay people are mounting challenges to such programs, at individual schools, at statehouses and in Congress.

Chief among the targets are sex education programs that include discussions of homosexuality, and after-school clubs that bring gay and straight students together, two initiatives that gained assent in numerous schools over the last decade.

In many cases, the opponents have been successful. In Montgomery County, Md., for example, parents went to court to block a health education course that offered a discussion of homosexuality, while in Cleveland, Ga., gay and lesbian students were barred from forming a high school club of gay and straight youths.

Well, maybe if the gays weren’t so blatant...

Madonna, an idiot

I love it when the rich tell us that money can’t buy happiness:

Once upon a time, there was a book party for MADONNA’s fifth children’s book, “Lotsa de Casha,” the story of a rich yet unhappy greyhound who learns the value of sharing when he finds himself stranded without any money.

The party was at Bergdorf Goodman. Socialites and artists mingled and sipped wine amid the Hermès scarves and Kenneth J. Lane jewelry and Isabella Fiore handbags…

“It’s an interesting juxtaposition,” the book’s illustrator, RUI PAES, said of the fancy party celebrating a book about how money doesn’t buy happiness. He emphasized that it was all for a noble cause. “One must see that one is able to do good while living in luxury.”

Apparently.

So has being a rich celebrity made Madonna a children’s author?

“I think she makes the same mistake every celebrity author makes: They think they can write children’s books,” said Ilene Cooper, children’s book editor of Booklist, the review journal of the American Library Association.

“Generally it’s just awful, beyond awful,” said Cooper of efforts by celebrities-turned authors.

I liked her better as a pop star, which she characterizes now as part of the painful process she went through on her way to realizing, in Ladies’ Home Journal no less, that she was an idiot.