Quiz: Some people you knew back in your hometown send you friend requests on Facebook. You don't really like them. Do you A) accept requests, B) deny requests, C) have an existential crisis?
Are you quite enthusiastic about the upcoming release of the new Tom Cruise WW2 thriller Valkyrie? We are, if only for the myriad Tom Cruise posts it will inspire. And you know who else is? The Razzies people, who pick the worst movie of the year. Early reviews have them thinking they just might have a surefire winner here!: Choice quotes from an early MSNBC review:
For crazy people convinced that secret government agents are stalking them with electromagnetic mind control devices, the invention of the internet was a great thing. It allowed them to form like-minded online communities of government mind control victims. It also made them even more convinced that their oppression was real, since they found so many other clinically insane people out there who told the same stories. The whole thing is actually very tragic! This far-flung group of paranoid psychosis-ridden conspiracy theorists bent on evading imaginary government spies has, however, found one staunch ally: a Republican elected official. Naturally:
Oh hmm interesting, long-ago rock person Ted Nugent is talking once again about some mixture of guns and Republicanism. You've found your niche, Ted! He thinks the problem with the Republican party is all the sellouts "compromising values and cutting deals with the socialist prankster punksters." "My specialty is making Fedzilla punks squirm and turn into a puddle of sweat and drool," adds Ted. A funny occurrence would be if a prominent socialist prankster punkster NObama supporter such as former Steelers running back Jerome Bettis were to punch Ted Nugent until he, ironically, was drooling upon himself. [Human Events via Opinionator]
Ashley Todd, a crazy woman who carved a backwards 'B' on her face for some reason that almost made some sort of sense a few weeks ago, is apparently bumming around Pittsburgh hanging out at the Barnes & Noble. She's presumably stuck in Pittsburgh—perhaps the wrong side of Pittsburgh!—because she's still undergoing that mental health treatment the judge sentenced her to. [Wonkette]
What? Why... why is this happening? What is Keith Olbermann doing on The View? Look, there he is, looking weird and uncomfortable. He told them all he doesn't vote (!), and they all yelled at him. All of them! Even stupid Elisabeth Hasselbeck yelled at him, for this not voting, and she is actually totally in the right. Keith does this "not voting is a symbolic stand" thing because he is obsessed with the idea that he is a Big Serious Important Old-Timey News Man. You know who else makes a big point of saying he is so non-partisan that he doesn't vote? Len Downie, the former executive editor of the Washington Post. Len, in the words of Michael Kinsley, "does not even allow himself the luxury of deciding whom he would vote for if he was into that sort of thing." We'll freely admit that it is stupid and unfair to say "Keith Olbermann is a big fat liberal" just because he hates George W. Bush with great intensity. It is quite possible to intensely hate George W. Bush as a conservative, a moderate, a libertarian, an Anti-Federalist, a Whig, or a fascist. It is reductive and stupid to equate hatred of George W. Bush and the modern ruling Republican party with any political ideology beyond an affinity for competence and morality in government. And, you know, genuinely unbiased objectivity does sometimes mean saying "Jesus Christ this administration is terrible." That's not a political statement if it's true! But, Keith, it does not make you Serious to say you don't vote. It doesn't change the fact that you would've voted for Obama. It doesn't actually fool anyone, either. None of those View ladies would have any of it! You disappointed Whoopi. So we'll agree that we honestly have no idea what Keith Olbermann's political leanings are beyond hating George Bush if he'll stop pretending to be too Serious-Minded to participate in the vast voting conspiracy. And hey, maybe we'll get a chance, in an Obama administration, to figure out what Keith Olbermann's politics actually are! Because he just signed on through Obama's re-election campaign, hosting Countdown on MSNBC through 2012. NBC even gave him primetime "essays" on the network news and he gets two specials a year on regular NBC. Man. NBC had to give him network gigs to keep him from taking his show and moving to another channel, supposedly, though there is not a channel left, on the TV, that Keith Olbermann has not already worked at. And he left nothing but bad blood at all of them.
What's going on at The Corner, National Review's online peek into the id of the Conservative base? Jonah Goldberg, in his role as television-raised idiot manchild of The Right, has been posting weird movie clips all day. Kathryn Jean Lopez, Fairy Queen of NRO, has just been posting the crazier selections from her amazing inbox. Mark Hemingway doesn't really understand the laws surrounding "politcking" very well. And this is a particularly admirable example of "the polls are wrong" wishful thinking:
The LA Times has a videotape of Obama at a luncheon with known Arab Rashid Khalidi. They say they won't release it because they promised their source they wouldn't. We said that somebody there should release it just so they can claim the $150,000 bounty offered for it and buy essential office supplies, such as toilet paper. Times are tough. But National Review's mongering blog The Corner has figured out that this conspiracy is way bigger than $150,000; $14.685 billion bigger! Break it down, crazy man: See, they figure it like this: LAT is owned by Tribune, which is $14.7 billion in debt, and the incoming Obama administration is gonna have $500 billion of government bailout funds to dole out, and $14.7 billion is "a very small proportion" of $500 billion (this is actually included in the reasoning) and if you keep Hussein Obama happy now then, hey, who's to say he won't give Tribune Co. $14.7 billion when he gets on the inside? Read the signs, people, they're all around you. The Corner also points out:
Pamela "Atlas" Geller Oshry is a conservative blogger previously notable only for having vlogged in a bikini, once, and for being totally obsessed with mustachioed former UN ambassador John Bolton. Today, she announced that Barack Hussein Obama is not, as previously reported, the son of Barack Hussein Obama, Sr., but rather the illegitimate son of Malcolm Little, a.k.a. El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, a.k.a. Malcolm X. Yes, she is serious. Honestly? It is too much work to comb through her insanely long and convoluted post in order to write some sort of summary, so we'll just post some random excerpt from her fascinating investigation:
Ashley Todd is the moronic young college Republican who thought it would be a fantastic idea to, while volunteering for the McCain campaign in Pittsburgh, stage her mugging and facial mutilation by a large black Obama supporter. She drew a B on her face, backwards, because she did it in the mirror, and the rest is history. She is an American Hero. Paraded before the press in handcuffs, a faint B still visible on her face, we all knew no jail could hold Ol' B-Face. And we were right! Todd has been released from jail and will be "required to undergo mental health treatment." Then her record will be expunged, so she can still act as campaign manager for Bristol Palin's historic 2036 presidential campaign.
Ye gods, somehow it will only get worse from here. In Des Moines, as Sarah Palin spun a wonderful science fiction tale about the terrible post-apocalyptic Red Dawn communist future Barack Obama has in store for us, a rally-goer seemed to shout a racial slur. (It sure sounds like "he's a nigger," to us, at about 30 seconds in.) Meanwhile, the ATF says it's uncovered a plot by two neo-Nazis to rob gun stores and shoot 100 black people. Also part of their plan? An almost comical "assassination" of Barack Obama:
This is wonderful. Commentary, which is basically the most Ridiculous Serious Journal Ever, has decided to tentatively endorse a Palin/Bachmann 2012 ticket! That would be Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann, the Minnesota Congresswoman recently in the news for asking that Barack Obama and her fellow Congresspeople all be investigated to determine which ones are anti-American. She floated this idea on television, of course. She was previously famous for kissing President Bush creepily, baby-farming, and hiding in a bush while she spied on a gay marriage protest. Now Bachmann is apologizing and the GOP has basically cut her off and left her on her own. Related: Michael Weiss explains that you are not allowed to compliment W. H. Auden or use the phrase "fossil record" in the pages of Commentary. [Commentary via Andrew Sullivan]
Yesterday the New York Times had an anthrax scare at its headquarters. White powder in an envelope! The lobby was closed. People were barred from the main elevators. Who knows how many grammatical errors were made by scared and distracted reporters? Turned out the white powder was "some kind of pebbles." You know what? All this irrational anthrax fear is going to have to stop. Think about it: A lone nut was able to effectively seal off the entire New York Times building—and get an entire floor evacuated—by filling up an envelope with some fish tank pebbles or something. The same thing happened to the Times a month after 9/11, and they evacuated the entire newsroom. Also, "since then, there have been several other cases of suspicious materials being sent to The Times. None turned out to be harmful." It doesn't take much extrapolation to figure out that you could cost the NYT millions of dollars over the course of a year with just a box of safety envelopes and two scoops of baking soda. (And the Times can't afford it!) And really, is anthrax still a thing? It takes an incredibly sophisticated scientist to produce weapons-grade anthrax, and we haven't had any real anthrax attacks since that one rash we had several years back. It's basically the skyscraper equivalent of being made to remove your shoes when you go on planes. One single dude ruined it for everyone. So our suggestion: If you receive some powder in the mail, calmly call the cops. Don't shut down the building. Don't evacuate everyone. A decent actuary will tell you that, hey, in the long run your odds are extremely good. And that's what the New York Times stands for: facts, statistics, and a life chained to a desk. Back to work! [We reserve the right to change our minds when we receive anthrax here.]
Boy, there are some real wackos out there, right? And this election, whoo, it really brings out the worst in the crazies. Stuffed monkeys with Obama stickers, shouts of "kill him," insane email forwards, there are countless examples from this miserable election of outright racism. But those are just fringe losers—bunch of racist nobodies, right? That's why it's fun that this week's three worst examples of outright bullshit hate-mongering all come from professional, official Republican party staffers!
