The Dish

In the interest of further illumination of this Anglicized version of hip-hop-white-trash pop-culture, here is the real thing, Lady Sovereign, and here is a surprise chav on British television hijacking a softball interview with a boy-band. The best fictional version remains Little Britain’s "Vicky Pollard." Money quote:

Vicky Pollard is a teenage delinquent who lives in the town of Darkly Noone. Her incomprehensible rambling has exasperated, confused and generally annoyed everyone from her teacher, social worker and court barristers. This is a girl who smokes in the swimming pool and has swapped her baby for a Westlife CD, when her social worker visits and can’t believe what she has done, Vicky replies "yeah I know, they’re rubbish". "No but yeah but yeah but yeah no but yeah no but yeah… …but no because I’m not even going on the pill … because Nadine reckons they stop you from getting pregnant."

Enjoy.

How creepy is Tom Cruise? The Washington Post asks; and readers answer. All I can say is: after the way this guy treated South Park, we owe it to ignore him and any movie with which he’s associated. The Boycott "MI:3" movement starts here. Blogospheric solidarity much appreciated.

So Dick Cheney has no issues with his openly gay and partnered daughter; and George W. Bush has sometimes sung the Star-Spangled Banner in Spanish. Good to get to know them a little better, isn’t it? Now imagine if this were true of a Democratic duo. Can you imagine the attack ads that Karl Rove or his surrogates would be preparing?

"You’re my daughter, and I love you, and I just want you to be happy," – vice-president Dick Cheney, to his lesbian daughter, Mary, when she told him she was gay.

It’s what every good parent would say. And it’s so tragic that, at the same time, this man helps lead a party dedicated to excluding members of his own family from full equality under the law and dignity in society.

A reader dissents:

Anyone who thinks Classic Coke is conservative needs a root canal. It’s not; it’s a repellent High Fructose Corn Syrup-based abomination. Real "classic" Coke is made with sugar, as it still is in Mexico and other places. Leaving aside the fact that corn-growing (and the economic subsidization, petroleum-based fertilization, and grotesque environmental depredations of same) is destroying America, the stuff tastes like ass. So does Classic Coke.
Give me a Tab any day. Of the more modern drinks, Diet Pepsi with Lime is the clear winner.

Another Tabbie. They’re out there, I tell you.

Hitch explains.

An unusually profound pleasure.

Speaking of welfare reform, I just got back from a long lunch with Hitch. It was one of those rare occasions when I was able to introduce him to a new word: "chavs." It was quite the rage in London when I was there. Chavs are a sort of English combination of ghetto bravado and white trash delinquency: the worst of American pop-culture, bundled into one white, English underclass package. They are also known as Hoodies, Neds, Townies, Kevs, Charvers, Steeks, Spides, Bazzas, Yarcos, Ratboys, Kappa Slappers, Skangers, Scutters, Janners, Stigs, Scallies, Hood Rats. They have a dress code. They have a website. If I had a son and I were a chav, I’d call him Jake Gary; if I had a girl, she’d be called Jade Chardonnay. Are you chav or not? You can find out. Where does the term come from? Like all great words, no one really knows. This is Wiki’s best shot:

The Collins English Dictionary suggests that it derives from a distortion of the Anglo-Romany word chavi meaning "child". In contrast, the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary suggests that the word derives either from a nickname for "Chatham girls" or from the Romany word chavo (boy), which is also the source of the Spanish word chaval. It also reports that the word can be used as an adjective e.g. "The bus was full of chav kids." …
Many folk etymologies have sprung up to explain the origins of the word. These include humorous backronyms such as "Council Housed And Violent". Another commonly cited false etymology derives the word from Cheltenham Ladies’ College. Here, it is claimed, the term was coined from the words "Cheltenham Average" (Ch-av), used by the young women of the school to describe less desirable young men of the town.

Chavtastic.

We forget now how adamantly the old left opposed it; Kay Hymowitz helps us remember. Money quote:

Marion Wright Edelman of the Children‚Äôs Defense Fund called the bill ‘national child abandonment’ and likened it to the burning of Vietnamese villages. Immediately after President Clinton signed the bill, some of his top appointees quit in protest, including Edelman‚Äôs husband, Peter, who let loose with an article in The Atlantic Monthly titled, ‘The Worst Thing Bill Clinton Has Done.’ No less appalled, the Chicago Tribune seconded Congresswoman Carol Moseley Braun’s branding the bill an ‘abomination.’

It was the Clinton-Gingrich combo at his best – the high watermark of conservative reform in the 1990s. But more work, of course, still needs to be done.