Month: January 2006

"This is almost as good as being an Oprah book … I was not turned off by such an endorsement. I’m not repulsed, and I’m not going to pretend I am," – far left author, William Blum, reacting to support for his book by mass-murderer, Osama bin Laden.

A lot of this blog is hilarious. I especially liked this summary of Will Ferrell’s "Kicking and Screaming" movie:

INT. SPACIOUS MALIBU HOUSE – EVENING.

Will Ferrell comes home after a long day of not being funny. His wife is stretching after a Pilates work out.

WILL: Honey? Do you think it will be funny if I make a movie where I’m the coach of a peewee soccer team full of retards and kids with sclerosis?

WIFE: No.

WILL: Do you think Universal will give me 20 million dollars to make it anyway?

There is a long pause as Will’s wife wonders if half that money is worth sitting through the premiere.

WILL: Or maybe we could do one where I’m like a championship bar-b-q chef or the world’s oldest synchronized swimmer? And the world’s oldest synchronized swimmer?

WIFE: Kill me.

Poifect.

This story gets weirder. The comments responding to Washington Post ombudsperson, Debbie Howell, are brutal, personal and rude. But most of them are making a legitimate point; and I don’t see much profanity in the removed posts. Just the usual hyperbole and hysteria from the pent-up activist left (not that the pent-up activist right is usually any better). If you’re going to have open postings, this is what you should expect. Alas.

The philistines at Media Matters translated John Gibson’s use of the term "inamorata" as "enamorada." I thought it was Latin, then found out it is Italian, and now there’s more. From a reader:

Inamorata is not only feminine, but singular. It means "in Love," and its ending depends on the person doing the loving. You or I would inamorato. My wife would be inamorata.

Heath and Jake would use "inamorati," the masculine, plural ending.

Maybe Gibson was slyly impugning their masculinity. Or, er, maybe not. But it all reminds me of my favorite ever rhyme for "inamorata." It comes in a song by the British musical humorists, Flanders and Swann, about a besotted hippopotamus:

Mud, mud, glorious mud
Nothing quite like it for cooling the blood
So follow me follow, down to the hollow
And there let me wallow in glorious mud
The fair hippopotama he aimed to entice
From her seat on that hilltop above
As she hadn’t got a ma to give her advice
Came tiptoeing down to her love
Like thunder the forest re-echoed the sound
Of the song that they sang when they met
His inamorata adjusted her garter
And lifted her voice in duet …

The rhyme is better in an English accent.

I know that trying to read and understand the public comments of a religious fanatic is a mug’s game. But Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s recent return and return to the Jewish question, the new appeal to Europe to take Israel’s Jews, his commitment to "wipe Israel off the map," and his pursuit of nuclear weaponry … don’t they all suggest something to you? When you put it all together with his eschatological theology, it’s not very, shall we say, reassuring.  We always kick ourselves for not taking warnings seriously. But some warnings are not in code, or intercepted by NSA wiretaps. Some are made in the light of day on a very large megaphone.

It was forty-five years ago today that John F. Kennedy became president. Here’s Alistair Cooke’s commentary on that day.

"[W]hat you watch carefully and what you track are inside those numbers – where they’re coming from, what’s driving them, where they’re growing. And we have been for the past four weeks both stunned into a kind of waking stupor, but also very proactively astonished at the numbers coming out of places like Little Rock, Arkansas or Fort Worth, Texas, or Pittsburgh or Columbus. The stereotype would be that you would continue to get huge grosses out of San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles, etc. And then as you expand you’ll get these smaller numbers from so-called "less sophisticated" markets. But, when you’re doing $40,000 weekends on screens in Salt Lake City, you better catch up to reality fast! We’re seeing this in every corner of America, and that’s the real story." – James Schamus, producer for "Brokeback Mountain."

A reader comments:

I think we should pay homage to perhaps the first Post-PC comedian, who in fact pre-dates the Post-PC period.  He actually pre-dates the PC period.  That great man is Mel Brooks.  In movies such as Blazing Saddles and The Producers (the original), he would make racial, religious, gay, etc. jokes, knowing very well some would be offended, but also knowing that he was willing to suffer their slings and arrows if the rest of the audience would get the joke.  Perhaps, that is why The Producers is successful again in this Post-PC world.  Can you picture any other comedian writing "Springtime For Hitler" in the 60s?

Yep, he blazed a trail.

"Which is harder to watch, the pulling out the fingernails of "Syriana" or Heath [Ledger] and Jake [Gyllenhaal] inamorata in this?" – Fox News’ John Gibson, preferring to watch grotesque torture than same-sex love. Gibson, of course, hasn’t seen the movie. And the Latin Italian word he uses refers to a feminine object of attraction, not a masculine one.

If Pat Robertson is so far out of the mainstream, why does Fred Barnes keep going on his show?