John McCain conceded the 2008 election before a crowd of supporters that sometimes interrupted him with their disappointed shouts. But the Republican presidential nominee offered a genuinely conciliatory speech, emphasizing the historic nature of Obama's win and pledging to work together with the president elect.
Want to watch North Carolina gyrate to a hip-hop beat? Tune into Current, Al Gore's user-generated cable channel. I don't mean people dancing in the streets; I mean an outline of North Carolina pulsating. The channel is carrying, on live TV, headlines you could read on Digg and messages you could read on Twitter, along with video snippets from current viewers. Other than that, it's offering the same kind of exit-poll projections you could get on CNN, but in hot pink and cyan instead of the traditional red-blue-gold color scheme. Digg founder Kevin Rose pops up occasionally with live updates from a San Francisco night club where Current, Digg, and Twitter are hosting an election-night party. It's Web 2.0 in your living room — and it makes me wish I could Brillo-pad the "vision" out of "television."
The Republican party is spreading the word "this thing is over," reported CNN, attributing its information to a "GOP insider." Ohio was the nail in the coffin, said correspondent Tara Wall, who got the scoop. We imagine dissections of the McCain campaign's mistakes and precious few moments of glory have already started on barstools throughout the nation. Video after the jump.
The saddest thing about the scene at John McCain's headquarters "party" in Columbus has to be the "Victory in Ohio" sign, captured in an near-poetic camera pan at the end of this video. The klieg lights probably aren't helping the McCain crew with its depression. Might we suggest bourbon?
Oh, adorable. The ice rink at Rockefeller Center is a big Map, tonight, and they are painting it red and blue, like the states, in this election! Hey they can go ahead and paint New York blue. SHOCK: New York just went for Obama. Below, losers in Times Square, the worst place to celebrate anything, let alone an election, watch the results come in.
Here's Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol, setting the mood for conservatives tonight on Fox News. He thinks it could be the worst election night for Republicans in 50 years, the second election in a row where the party loses seats in the Senate and House of Representatives, followed by a loss of the White House.
There comes a point in every cable network exec's career when they stare long and hard into a bathroom mirror, and ask, "I've already greenlit a show called Hurl! that pits players against each other in a battle to retain the contents of their stomach. Where is there left to go from here?" Well, if you happen to work at G4, the answer lies outside the box—or the home, car, hotel room, airplane fuselage, or any structure brothers Craig and Paul Pumphrey are willing to destroy using nothing but their own bodies. We'll let the Human Wrecking Balls press release take over as we gingerly step out of the way:
A Gawker tipster brought word this morning that liberal firebrand/trail mix smuggler Tim Robbins caused a scene at a Manhattan polling place today, accusing the poll worker of voter intimidation until a volunteer called the police. Now, Robbins has done what's expected of every responsible citizen whose democratic rights are in peril: he's blabbed all to a TMZ paparazzo!According to Robbins, the polling place he's used for the last decade didn't have his name on the register, and he certainly wasn't about to fill out a provisional ballot like a common plebe! Sadly, Robbins handled the issue not with pleasant, Bob Roberts-style folk songs but with a high-octane argument that brought the NYPD (though they couldn't prevent him from decamping for City Hall to find a judge who could prove his case). Was the actor simply listed on voter rolls under "Tom Ribbons," or is this a Susan Sarandon-aimed revenge from jilted New York senator Hillary Clinton? Developing!
There are two "Black Panthers" standing outside of one polling location in Philadelphia. One of them has a billy club. It's kind of the most hilarious story ever. Fox is all over it. Below, raw live unedited footage of these two American Heroes, who just arrived from that Life on Mars show. Anyways! Race war, guys, let's all head to Ricky's and take advantage of these post-Haloween bargains on Manson Family costumes.
It's over! It's all over! Tomorrow the campaign will be done! No more caring about what crazy things John McCain and his bitchy friend said on the news, no more feeling bad for him despite yourself, no more checking 538 (sorry Nate Silver, you're obsolete now!), no more forwarded YouTube clips from your mom, or your coworker, or some lunatic internet person. Boy, if we were assholes, we'd write something about how this was "the YouTube election." But instead we will just post the YouTubes themselves, from 2004 through the never-ending primaries, through the finally ending general election. All your favorites are here! Come pal around with crying Hillary the Senator, stare deep into Mike Gravel's eyes, and don't look your opponent in the eyes, after the jump. Back in 2004, this guy named Barack Obama gave a really really good speech at the Democratic National Convention. Watch it again, if you haven't lately, because it's really good. Can you believe we're gonna elect this guy?
In a YouTube video, Wikipedia cofounder Jimmy Wales opines about foreign policy. We love how the video producer added in visuals for every "err." We wonder: Is Wales stumbling over his words because he doesn't really believe what he's saying?Wales has long been an Objectivist, a follower of the writings and political philosophy of Ayn Rand, who thoroughly rejected altruism. Wales's statements in the video thoroughly contradict Objectivist thinking on foreign policy, which boils down to "an eye for an eye" and "screw the United Nations." He also contradicts his own privately expressed political views. But that just makes him a clever capitalist: He knows he can get more speaking gigs overseas by feigning Euroliberalism.
We noted yesterday yet another shitstorm brewing behind (and in front of) the scenes of ABC's Grey's Anatomy, as a still shell-shocked Brooke Smith told EW.com about her character's abrupt dismissal from the series. She plays Dr. Erica Hahn—who, it's worth noting, replaced Isiah Washington's ejected character as head of cardiothorasic surgery—and who had recently embarked upon a McLesbiany relationship with Callie, played by Sara Ramirez. It began with a sweet kiss, but soon after the writers took it further, with dialogue about exploring "undiscovered country," and at least one postcoital monologue on the joys of ladyfruit harvesting (above). The relationship—what AfterEllen points out is the only depiction of a lesbian couple currently on primetime TV—was developing rapidly. Now Smith has been informed, in the vaguest terms, that her character won't be returning to Seattle Grace after this week's episode. She explains:
Sarah Palin voted in Wasilla, Alaska. She took questions from the press, with her husband Todd. The press asked who she voted for, and she said, "I am also exercising my right to privacy and I don't have to tell anyone who I voted for, nobody does, and that's really cool about America, also." She wrote in "Sarah Palin 2012," obviously. Here's the clip! Watch it now! Ha, of course, upon re-watching, the question is about whether she voted for convicted felon Senator Ted Stevens, from Alaska. She won't say, of course, because she still has to go back to Alaska when she's done with this little vacation, and "Uncle Ted" is still a powerful figure, and she "stood up to corrupt old boy politics" by not even admitting that she probably still voted for him.
It was around 8 am this morning, John Heilemann reports, that Barack Obama first learned of the passing of his grandmother, a longtime guardian central in his upbringing. The Democratic presidential nominee maintained his composure throughout the day, including during an enthusiastic speech in Jacksonville, Florida. But he could not contain all outward signs of grief tonight at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. After a break in a rain storm, Obama delivered a speech that, in part, eulogized his grandmother. It would be hard, in the attached video, to see that this remembrance moved the candidate to tears, but for some dabs of the cheek, so steady and familiar was the candidate's rhythm as he spoke.
· "Now you listen here, mister. You get your teeth out of my Sookie this instant, or there will be Hell to pay! OK then, don't say I didnt warn you!" · Eater LA has a list of all the local restaurants and businesses offering Election Night specials to anyone wearing a "I Voted!" sticker · Here's a gallery of spooks and ghouls spotted around town on Halloween. Next year we're definitely going as Shirtless Food Grilling Hunk! · EW.com reports one half of Grey's Anatomy's only gay couple, Dr. Erica Hahn (aka actress Brooke Smith), has been ordered removed from the series by ABC, who "'had issues' with...the explicit direction" her relationship was taking. · Assault and battery claims leveled against Keanu Reeves by an allegedly squished paparazzo have been tossed, but the photographer can still pursue a negligence claim.
You've now had several hours to absorb the news that Deanna Pappas and Jesse Csincsak will not spend the rest of eternity together in a state of cross-eyed lovers' bliss—the very thing they pledged to us, the passively interested Bachelorette viewer, during that live broadcast of After the Final Rose. Pappas said in a statement that she "slowly came to realize that we are two totally different people and it wasn't going to work out," but what was Jesse's side of the story?He tells Extra via webcam declaration that Pappas "told some of our business associates" of the breakup before telling him. "She came back to Colorado [after some time away] and told me, ‘I love you, but I’m not in love with you.’…I picked her up from the airport and she told me while I was getting her bags." If there was ever any question whether or not real feelings were involved, wait until you see a tearful and confused Csincsak apologizing to his thwarter "for whatever I did to make you not want to be with me.” Honestly, Jesse? Screw her. You can do way better—and will! On The Bachelor's Revenge: The Revenge-Seeking Bachelorette's Bachelor Bites Back!. Then you'll have your own six-week stab at rooting through a pile of ring-hungry hotties until you find the perfect one. (Of course, you'll have to wait your turn until that other dude she sent packing gets his.)
Last night's Treehouse of Horror episode of The Simpsons featured a direct homage to Mad Men—the familiar strings accompanying a silhouette of Homer tumbling down the side of a building on whatever Springfield's answer to Madison Avenue is.(Probably the place that came up with this ingenious Kwik-E-Mart campaign, replete with a real live Comic Book Guy!) The Halloween episode scored the highest ratings in five years for the animated series. Unfortunately, the Mad Men parodying ended at the title sequence; as much as we wanted to hear Homer say, "It’s not called a wheel, it’s called a donut. Round and a round, and sprinkly delicious. Arhghghllll....dooonuttttt. To a place where we know we are loved," instead we got Homer on a bizarre celebrity killing spree that cost us Prince and George Clooney.
John McCain was reasonably funny on Saturday Night Live last night, but the show's most entertaining moments came during Tina Fey's Sarah Palin impression in his opening sketch. One was a joke about Palin's $150,000 wardrobe, the other about how she wants to run in 2012. It's funny because Palin's a terrible, out-of-control pick of a running mate and because McCain is broke and doomed. Ha.... ha? In the attached clip, McCain says the SNL gig was to "humanize" him with people who don't watch Meet The Press, but instead it's already being read as a "big... 'fuck you'" to Palin. Credit should probably go to Fey: She's a charmer but will most definitely cut you. Sort of like Palin. Sketch highlights are after the jump.
In exchange for his late-to-the-party endorsement of Barack Obama, Google CEO Eric Schmidt got a spot on Obama's prime-time infomercial last night. Note how Schmidt explains his decision, made only after Obama took a substantial lead in the polls: "When I read his economic plan and saw the people endorsing it, Warren Buffett, I thought, 'This is the right plan for America.'" In other words, Schmidt didn't endorse Obama until he saw it was popular with the right people, and might help Google get its search deal with Yahoo passed under an Obama administration. Brave! We still don't think you'll get that government job, Eric.
