Check out one of the best Daily Show clips ever:
Here’s a comic I did for the Phoenix about the recent kerfuffle over Hugo Chavez’s UN speech.
If America is going to be the bully of the world, its citizens need to grow a thicker skin. Jerry McDermott and everyone else who’s mad that Hugo Chavez said mean things about the president are a bunch of pussies.
Go ahead and protest Citgo because Chavez is a dink, but if you have no problem with buying Saudi oil, you are a moron and giant fucking hypocrite. Also, the Citgo sign is way cooler than the weather lights on the Old Hancock Tower.
Speaking of the Citgo sign, lets look back to an old cartoon that it’s featured in. Though I caution that Red Sox fans may get sad when they see it and remember how low the team has sunk in just two years.
So I’m at a panel-slash-conservative happy hour hosted and attended by the A-list of DC’s right-wing blogosphere, and the first person I see as I walk in the door is Jeff Gannon. Awesome; six seconds in and I’ve met my first porn star.
Thanks (?) to a generous heads-up from Tom Tomorrow I had the chance to attend a panel at the National Press Club sponsored by Pajamas Media entitled “How Partisan is Too Partisan?” For the uninitiated, Pajamas Media is a collective of several dozen bloggers, almost all of which are right-wing conservatives. Their lineup includes co-founder Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs, a weblog containing so much vitriol against the Arab world it’s often considered a hate site, and professional racist Michelle Malkin. So you can of course imagine who’s going to end up being blamed for partisanship in the media.
To their credit, PJM is smart enough to keep their big-name hyper-partisans out of the public eye. Glenn "Instapundit" Reynolds, notorious for his self-proclaimed "moderate" position by way of merely linking to right-wing blogs on a daily basis instead of offering the viewpoints himself, served as moderator (Reynolds’ money quote of the evening was his description of his nonpartisanship: "My dream is a world where happily married gay couples have closets full of assault weapons," which… yes, I believe is still frightening.) The extremists who might have, you know, made the hypocrisy of the event’s premise embarrassingly blatant were kept in the shadows- or the audience, as proven by Pamela of Atlas Shrugs, who volunteered as the event cheerleader, responding to the panel and various answers with ecstatic cheers throughout the evening- think a typical audience member on TRL, then add thirty years, two drinks and an intense hatred of Muslims.
As you can expect, the answer to the question “how partisan is too partisan?” involved that pesky specter of conservative hatred known as “the MSM,” otherwise known as “The New York Times.” Seriously, the Times being partisan and detrimental to media in general was one of the two recurring themes of the event- the other was the mantra of “yes, but liberals are worse.” For some reason, any attempt to note that conservatives are also partisan writers was paired with an aside that they’re not as bad as the left: after all, as noted by panelist and former RNC communications director Cliff May, “because the MSM is liberal and won’t admit it, conservative have had to face liberal opinion, whereas liberals can ghettoize themselves.” Much like the Fox News concept that a perceived left-wing bias in media means a blatant right-wing bias on their network makes them “balanced,” May and his fellow Pajamhadeen (their term, not mine) bemoan a form of “partisanship” that means perceived leftist media makes their right-wing rhetoric the voice of moderation.
Speaking of which, the voice of moderation at the panel ironically was Fox News’ Jane Hall, who varied from the other panelists with radical, outrageous ideas such as not believing every writer at the Times has a hidden motive, and requesting that panelist Michael Barone actually provide evidence of his claim that 90% of all college professors are “avowed leftists.” Continuing the "New York Times is partisan" mantra, May exclaimed the problem with partisanship isn’t Fox News or bloggers, but the "MSM" (again, meaning the New York Times) because "it is partisan but doesn’t admit it." May explained that he would prefer media that admits partisanship rather than one that "pretends." You are more than welcome to take five seconds to scroll up the page and re-read what the intended purpose of the evening’s panel was supposed to be about, then return to bat your eyes a few dozen times at that one. Go ahead, I’ll wait.
As I said before, PJM’s backers are smart enough to keep their extremist draws out of the media spotlight, which is ultimately why the cocktail hour preceding the event drew more partisan snark and swipes at "the left" than the actual panel. Luckily, the right-wing blogosphere has these level-headed pseudo-intellectuals to wrangle them all- a benefit not granted to us rowdy leftists, as I gathered from an overhead comment by Michael Totten to Pamela: "these liberal kids, they go from job to job, and they have no time to study… no wonder they have no idea about spreading democracy."
The whole evening, there’s a small dessert table, with the prominent feature a gigantic, heaping bowl of Marshmallow Fluff. I’m thinking it might be PJM’s new mascot.
Cross-posted at Campus Progress
The national actions by World Can’t Wait are coming up October 5th!
Drive out the Bush regime!
It may not be enough to solve huge problems like the murder of our entire planet, but it would sure help pave the way for further necessary actions!
“Eyes on the Prize” is an amazing documentary on the Civil Rights movement. It hasn’t been aired on television in over ten years, and will finally again see the light of day this weekend on PBS.
However, if you live in the DC area, you can check out part of the series tonight at the E Street Cinema, courtesy of Campus Progress.
If we don’t give school principals the right to strip-search students, the terrorists have won.
Even In Winter, Arctic Ice Melting, San Francisco Chronicle.
Green Bloggers Ask McDonald’s for Hybrid Vehicle Happy Meal, Environmental Working Group.
That freak storm that came through the Bay of Bengal, killing many fisherpeople, also flooded Swapan’s parents’ house in Dhaka.
