McCAIN: IRAQI INSURGENTS WILL FOLLOW US HOME

In the first day since his official rollout, John McCain is already sounding tired and regurgitating the lamest right wing talking points:

"If we leave Iraq there will be chaos, there will be genocide, and
they will follow us home," the Arizona senator said, calling the war
against al-Qaida "a struggle between good and evil."


I saw the McCain make the statement, and it was worse even than is sounds reading it.

Looking frankly exhausted, McCain said as if he didn't really believe it, like he was bored and just reciting something if "had to say" to win. He also came across a little bitter and condescending, like he can't believe he has to subject himself to questions like from journalists about whether the Iraq war he had supported wholeheartedly is going well, when it's about larger issues like good vs. evil.

And this is the first day of the campaign.

I think McCain, deep down, is beginning to realize it just isn't in the cards this time.

When the day you begin your campaign you start by offering an explanation as to why you're going to lose, that's not a good sign.

In the interview he said it would be worth losing the Presidency rather than give in on because it's the biggest issue of time, nothing less than good vs. evil, etc..

So if he loses the Presidency, it's because he's so fucking principled, unlike the rest of you ungrateful bastards.
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GEORGE LUCAS AND MARK HAMILL TO REUNITE STAR WARS SPOOF

LOS ANGELES, California (Hollywood Reporter) -- George Lucas and Mark Hamill will reunite for "Robot Chicken: Star Wars," a 30-minute stop-motion animation special for Adult Swim, Cartoon Network's late-night programming block.

The special spoofs key scenes and favorite characters from the "Star Wars" universe. It was done in collaboration with Lucas' production company Lucasfilm. Lucas, the creator of the "Star Wars" franchise, will voice a cartoon version of himself, and Hamill will resurrect Luke Skywalker.

The special, set to premiere at 10 p.m. on June 17, comes from "Robot Chicken" creators Seth Green and Matthew Senreich. Green directed.

The voice cast also includes Conan O'Brien, Seth MacFarlane, Robert Smigel, Malcolm McDowell, Hulk Hogan, James Van Der Beek, Donald Faison, Abraham Benrubi, Breckin Meyer and Joey Fatone.

The special stems from three "Star Wars" skits on "Robot Chicken," including the popular "Emperor's Phone Call," featuring Darth Vader calling Emperor Palpatine to tell him that the Death Star has been blown up.

Sounds like fun!
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White House Correspondents Association Dinner - Why Bother?

The theme of the 2007 White House Correspondents Association Dinner was, essentially "we have to laugh."

Really?

I think it's safe to say while many words might describe tonight's dinner, "funny" was not one of them. At least not intentionally so.

This is not just because they had as host a man who was barely funny three decades ago, or the Virginia Tech tragedy. It's an endemic and growing problem. The Beltway media are too thin-skinned and sensitive (with reason, given their recent failures) to laugh at themselves, they won't laugh at any incumbent politicians for fear of losing access, Bush refuses to "be funny" due to current events (and the heat he's taken for seeming to be lighthearted in the midst of whatever ongoing tragic event was occuring at the time) -- so what is the point, exactly?

I'm not bashing them for being too cozy with the the figures they cover, I'm bashing them for being so paralyzed by concern out of offending anyone that they can't even by funny.

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SANJAYA TO ATTEND WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENTS' DINNER

GREAT MOMENTS IN JOURNALISM

"Sanjaya Malakar, who was just voted off "American Idol," could meet President Bush on Saturday. Malakar is attending the White House Correspondents Association Dinner in Washington. He will be a guest of People magazine."

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Don Imus Was Not Lynched

Dear Patrick J. Buchanan,

When you have sole control of a major cable news channel for several hours every day, and a radio show syndicated to dozens of stations with tens of millions of listeners, and you are paid ten million dollars per year to say get people to listen to these stations, and buy the products advertised, and the owners of these businesses decide to go in a different direction with their programming because what you are saying is driving people away from these stations, and away from the advertisers - that is not a lynching.

This is a lynching:




See the difference?
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Barnicle To Replace Imus During Suspension

Apparently CBS looked high and low for Least Appropriate Person to replace Don Imus and came up with.... Mike Barnicle.

Washington Post:

CBS Radio said former Boston Globe columnist Mike Barnicle would replace Imus during his suspension. Barnicle, who left the Globe in 1998 after questions were raised about the existence of his sources, has his own troubled broadcast history. In 2004, while hosting a radio program in Boston, he described the interracial marriage of Janet Langhart and former defense secretary William Cohen as "Mandingo," a reference to a 1975 movie in which a black male slave and a white woman have sex. After the NAACP protested, Barnicle apologized on the air.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/11/AR2007041101767_2.html?hpid=topnews


Great job, guys.

Prepare for a "national conversation" on race, rap, hymietown, Tawana Brawley, and one assumes, the occasional rosary.
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Don Imus and Our National Conversation

This morning we learned from Mike Barnicle that the women of the Rutgers basketball team are here to save white men from their own ignorance, sent by God to offer Don Imus and Mike, and presumably the other guests who frequent the show, a chance, in the twilight of their lives, to redeem their wretched lives. Yes, this is "teachable moment" where he talk about race and poverty and just it is the best idea to call teenage girls, someone else's daughters, "nappy haired hos."

But it's going to be a great moment for the ladies too - they're going to come out this mature teachers of us all, kind of like Will Smith's character in . But there's more! We in America have to have a national conversation about race - also poor schools, drugs, poverty in inner city neighborhoods, lack of economic opportunity, and probably hair and prostitution. Don, you see, really did us all a favor, by exposing not just the language of hip-hip and rappers for the destructive force it really is, but is going to allow us to finally get equality of education in this country!

Yes, as Mike Barnicle explained, in a larger sense, we are all guilty of what Imus did, and we've all sinned, and this being Easter and Mike carrying around a set of Rosary beads everywhere he goes, this is not the time to be worried about who called who a "nappy haired ho." Plus a quarter of a century ago Jesse Jackson said the word hymietown and no ever mentions that.

Another wider conversation we could have is about how prominent journalists, not to mention some of this nation's most powerful politicians, think it's a great idea to pay homage to a man who routinely, as he himself says, makes outrageously offensive statements about randomly targeted people. This time he appropriated language from some rappers who say bad things. Next time it will the worst statements made by people who can be in another category, and then all those people can be blamed for making Imus say those no other decent person would ever say.

I suppose his defense for calling Hillary Clinton "Satan" will be to quote Milton.

The issue is Don Imus, hero to the political elites like Tim Russert, Chris Mathews, Norah O'Donnell, Brian Williams, David Gregory, Joe Biden, Chris Dodd, Joe Lieberman, John McCain, Rudy Giuliani, Rick Santorum, and many, many more, is not a good person. He is a mean, thoughtless, mindless, cruel, bigoted, sexist, immature person. In the end, it doesn't matter if he is fired, or if he keep his sponsors. Both is job and his income are dependent on the fawning attention he gets from people who would like control our discourse and make this country's laws.
Should we not expect a little more from them than craven supplication to a man who finds humor in the most disturbing ethnic and sexual slurs as applied to high achieving college students young enough to be his children?

Imus' Megalomania on Display

Imus' buddy is on now, mentioning more of Imus' charitable work, which usually just involves getting on the radio and asking people to give money for whatever disease catches his attention. Which is commendable. He says "it's a sin" that people don't know Imus better.

This is one the more bizarre aspects of this scandal, which has now moved into the phase where his celebrity friends vouch for his good heart. These people need to get this through their head: It's not our job to get to know Imus. We know him from his radio show. And it's pretty much three hours of hate, cruelty and ignorance. That's the Imus we know, and that's apparently who he is. For three hours of every day. When he has a national platform.

Don Imus, today: "I'm the one who got the death benefit raised for soldiers."

This incident has become an almost textbook study in gradiose self pity raised to megalomanic levels. Just the other day Imus pompously, angrily, announced that he had never had Hillary Clinton on his show, and "he would never have her on." Because Imus has standards.

Of course Hillary should not go on, and she has no "civil right" to go on. Nor does he have a right to have a daily radio show, be on tv every day, get paid millions of dollars, or have the most powerful media and political figures in this country pay him homage every day of the year.

Imus is not a serious person. If he keeps his show, it should be remembered that this a guy who does not take politics seriously, ethics seriously, or apparently, have any proper regard for decent human behavior.

Imus Continuts to Offer Context and Apologies

Don Imus mentioned this morning that he will be going on Al Sharpton's radio show today, although Sharpton is one of the people calling for people to be fired.

Imus also offered some "context" to his remarks about the Rutgers basketball team this morning, that he "makes fun of everybody." Not out of offering an excuse, as he said, or excusing what he said, especially since the girls from the team did not deserve to made fun of, a concept that seems to have previously eluded him.

He mentioned that he has black friends and that many of the children at his ranch for kids with cancer are black, although at 10% that seem proportionate to the population. Also he has Hispanic, Asian, other minority children on the ranch.

Mentioned he had occasionally asked a politician about increasing spending on research for cancer and sickle-cell anemia. Other incidents, like attending black children's funerals, etc.

The upshot is that he is "a good person who said a bad thing". Getting almost tearful, he said he received hate mail from white racists calling him a n***** lover because he supports Harold Ford. (Really?)

Clearly, bloggers and others have pointed out Imus' hateful remarks on a variety of subjects for years, but this, both for what he said and how he said it, and most especially who he said it about. While his remarks about Hillary Clinton and Al Gore are frequently grotesque and insane, political insults of a broad kind have a long history. And most of the people Imus attacks are relatively high profile figures or people in the news for other reasons.

But Imus and his gang frequently engage in the most extreme rhetoric, especially when it comes to racial and ethnic minorities. They clearly seem to think this is funny. As Imus himself said today, anyone who did not know who him, who heard what he said, who have to assume he was a hate-filled white supremacist, and a vulgar one at that.

It has seemed to me for a while that Imus may be a good person - he has occasionally show decent instincts and has his charity, but of course he is known by the rest of us a radio personality, and he makes millions of dollars a year making cruel and hateful statements, and he knows it.

It also seems to me that Imus, on his show, is often making of the "idea of being racist." Making racist jokes, nowadays, is often hidden behind the "idea" of what a stupid racist "would say" (ha ha) but of course the person saying isn't really a racist. Having black friends, liking one black politician, caring about kids with cancer, advocating for a cure for sickle cell anemia, all is assumed to forgive an endless stream of patently racist jokes because they are mocking the "idea" that someone would the Rutgers basketball team "nappy headed hos."

But as I've said before, if you spend three hours a day, every day, cracking hateful jokes about all kinds of people, are you making fun of the idea of being nasty, stupid, and cruel, or does it just make you a jerk?

GREATEST. HOAX. EVER.

New York Times:

From the poles to the tropics, the earth’s climate and ecosystems are already being shaped by the atmospheric buildup of greenhouse gases and face inevitable, possibly profound, alteration, the world’s leading scientific panel on climate change said Friday.

In its most detailed portrait of the effects of climate change driven by human activities, the panel predicted widening droughts in southern Europe and the Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa, the American Southwest and Mexico, and flooding that could imperil low-lying islands and the crowded river deltas of southern Asia. It stressed that many of the regions facing the greatest risks were among the world’s poorest.

The group, the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, also noted that the climate shifts would benefit some regions — leading to more rainfall and longer growing seasons in high latitudes, open Arctic seaways and fewer deaths from the cold.

The 1,572-page report, finished here on Friday, was prepared by more than 200 scientists, and a 21-page summary was endorsed by officials from more than 120 countries, including the United States.

The conclusions came after four days of revisions by scientists and then an often rancorous all-night debate with government officials. In a sign of shifting geopolitics on global warming, scientists who worked on the report criticized China for weakening some language in the summary, while they credited the United States, which had for years stressed uncertainty in the science, with playing a mostly constructive role.

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Iran to Release British Soldiers

Via NYT:

Iran to Release 15 Britons Held Since March 23

Iran’s President said today he would immediately release 15 British sailors and marines who have been held captive in Iran since March 23.

They made their point: Don't mess with Iran
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McCAIN: I'M WALKING HERE!

How appropriate that John McCain is now a famous streetwalker:

McCain Strolls Through Baghdad Market, Accompanied By 100 Soldiers, 3 Blackhawks, 2 Apache Gunships

Sen. John McCain strolled briefly through an open-air market in Baghdad today in an effort to prove that Americans are “not getting the full picture” of what’s going on in Iraq.

http://thinkprogress.org/2007/04/01/mccain-iraq-stroll

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