Alcohol

The president has always denied being an acoholic, though he's copped to "drinking too much" back in his callow youth (which lasted until his 40s, by the way, when he had his convenient religious reawakening). The alcohol provided a convenient excuse for his being a no-good fuckup for his entire 20s and 30s, and the religious awakening and supposed sobering up helped him gain forgiveness for youthful indiscretions like his disorderly conduct arrest and his 1976 DUI.

Anyway. Billy Graham showed up in 1985. In July of 1986, according to the lies he told in 2000, Bush quit drinking for good.

Here is a video of George W. Bush at a wedding that supposedly took place in 1992:

When the president "choked on a pretzel" in 2002, the White House took the step of having the White House physician announce to the press that "There was absolutely, positively, no suggestion on physical examination that any alcohol was involved." He just choked on a pretzel, during a football game, and lost consciousness.

Graydon Carter sez he knows a guy who sez Bush's blood alcohol level was quite high when he was hospitalized after the pretzel incident.

(Around the same time, a number of nuttier lefty sites began blowing up and enhancing photos of the president's face to point out all the burst capillaries that proved his continued reliance on booze.)

Cocaine

The rumors made the rounds in 1999: George W. Bush did coke! This was before 9/11, when everyone started doing coke again, so it was a big deal. If it was true! Proving it became quite difficult when the person with the most damning-sounding "proof" of drug use turned out to be an unreliable criminal (much like how the people with the best proof that Bush went AWOL from the national guard were using questionable documents, FUNNY HOW THAT WORKS). So. Here are some of the rumors:

• Bush was arrested for drug use in the "late '60s or early '70s" but the arrest was expunged from his record after he performed community service. That community service may have been his stint at Houston's Project P.U.L.L. in 1972.
• But that charge comes from the book by J.H. Hatfield. Hatfield was a convicted felon. The book was pulled from shelves. Hatfield turned up dead of an apparent suicide in 2001. He claimed all along that his sources for the cocaine story included Karl Rove, who's known to talk off the record to journalists of all stripes.
• In 2004, Eric Boehlert floated the theory that Bush ditched the air force because they were instituting random drug tests. This seems like grasping at straws (lol) to us, but whatevs. It's out there.
• Bush has simply never denied using cocaine.
• If you take Scott McClellan's diagnosis at face value, Bush probably did plenty of drugs in his college days and beyond, and then more or less convinced himself that he can't even remember if he did or not. Because he's turned into a simple-minded fool.

Amusingly (to us, perhaps, and probably no one else), we now have a major candidate who's admitted to cocaine use... but that admission itself is suspect. Barack Obama famously admitted to experimenting with coke in his first memoir, Dreams From My Father. "Pot had helped, and booze; maybe a little blow when you could afford it. Not smack, though," Obama wrote in the more-than-decade-old book. The New York Times spent god knows how long trying to find anyone from Obama's adolescence who remembered him doing drugs but they came up short. Everyone remembered him as basically a square. He smoked a little weed.

We're forced to ask if Obama didn't exaggerate his drug use for the sake of a compelling narrative!

(We've come so far.)

I was an intern for Charlie Rose back in '03, and at that time David Gregory was a frequent guest, usually on remote from Washington. I would watch the less-than-congenial, highly abusive, and generally abrasive Rose do the usual pre-show banter with Gregory; whereby they'd both bask in their own sense of self-satisfaction for a while, then make jokes about President Bush (not that everyone doesn't, but it did destroy the illusion of journalistic objectivity for me).

My best guess is Gregory is definitely taking 'star' lessons from the diva/mentor himself, Charlie.

The dude is a total jerk.

Once, I was hanging with some friends in DC and we decided to go to the Capitol. We agreed to meet at a certain point at the front steps when we were done. There were maybe 8 of us. Well it turns out that David Gregory was reporting from the lawn of the Capitol around the spot where we were meeting up. The guy did his report, turned around, and proceeded to berate us and curse at us for being fame seeking assholes for ruining his shot and then asked if we wanted his autograph.

Whiner, arrogant, pious, self centered puke - that's him!!

And Fitted Sweats asks the important question: what if you were stranded on a tropical island with him?

David Gregory would insist being stranded was all your fault in the first place. He'd make a weird headband from an old dress shirt. Go jogging. Then start asking about what Presidents you've met. "Come on," he'd say. "Has to be at least one, right?" You'd say no. Meekly. Then he'd say "What was your GPA in college?" And spend the whole time undermining you. And being his typically douchey prematurely gray self. If he dies, after writing some bad poetry on a cave wall with a rock, he's too pasty to cannibalize.

Not the awkward disaster of Stephen Colbert's too-mean performance nor the intriguingly terrible anachronistic trainwreck of Rich Little's live death of last year. Ferguson's not a political comedian, or an attempted satirist, and he didn't do a political routine. He did, in a little reversal, spend most of his routine bashing the newsmedia. They eat that shit up.

Ferguson first mocked employees of the beleaguered LA Times, but he reserved his most stringent material for the New York Times, who this year decided, a number of years too late, that the schmoozy dinner looks a little improper to folks not in tune with the friendly DC scene, in which the media and the government largely consider themselves to be equals in importance and power. So the Times didn't buy a table. And Ferguson told them all to go to hell. And the crowd applauded.

(You can watch the entire dinner here if you're a masochist or just incredibly bored.)

First, Mead emails Malkin, repeatedly, to no response at all. Then they try her editor at the New York Post—nothing. Then Remnick tries!

Dear Michelle Malkin,

I am the editor of The New Yorker magazine, and I believe that you have received some sort of contact from our office, but I just wanted to assure you that our desire to write about you is serious and genuine. I can be reached through email above or [phone number redacted].

Best regards,
David Remnick

On 2/16/08, Michelle Malkin wrote:

Thanks.

Dear Ms. Malkin, "Thanks..." but can we talk? I am at home at [phone number redacted]. Best, David Remnick

OMG, the home number! Malkin finally responds: she has "neither the time nor inclination to sit down with your staff Jane Goodall and serve as an anthropological specimen for The New Yorker's readership."

Ok, Michelle. Whatever.

Hilariously she was more than happy to be profiled by Washington Post Media "critic" Howard Kurtz last year.

Why the Hell Would The New Yorker Want to Write a Profile of Michelle Malkin [Bloggasm]

The rappers have good reason to praise Obama. He has at times been an apologist for their "music." His complicity with rappers dates back to at least 2006.

Late that year he met with the rap giant Ludacris in his Chicago office. Ludacris, who Pepsi dropped as a spokesman in 2004 after Fox News Channel host Bill O'Reilly exposed his putrid lyrics, said afterwards that Obama felt like family to him. In March 2007 Ludacris, whose hit songs include "Move B—--," headlined an Obama fundraiser in Atlanta.

Obama even recorded a voice over for a new album out this June from rapper Q-tip. Will it contain lyrics like these sonnets from another Q-tip song? "Close the door, 'ight let a n—-- rock. Cause we 'bout to eat real s—-, not s—- slop."

Further research indicated that those weren't even in proper sonnet form! And that Q-tip is black!

Obama thus far has equivocated on rappers. He has criticized their language, but adamantly refused to denounce the whole sordid genre as the unique cultural problem that it is.

He refused to denounce De La Soul's 3 Feet High And Rising even after it was pointed out that one of the group's members has been photographed in baggy jeans!

Where else but rap do you hear words like these from Obama supporter Jay-Z in his song "99 Problems?"

Now once upon a time not long ago

A n—-- like myself had to strong arm a hoe

This is not a hoe in the sense of having a p—-

But a p—-- having no God Damn sense

Besides Jay-Z, Obama has also won support from rap mogul Russell Simmons, rapper Nas, whose new album is titled "N—-—" and 9/11 conspiracy theorist Mos Def.

All confirmed rappers. Except Russell Simmons. Coincidence?

It's high time the media ask some tough questions. Why has Obama collaborated with rappers? Is he familiar with their words? How could he not be? The senator's spokesperson said that when he and Ludacris met the two men found common ground on AIDS prevention. How do you find common ground on sexual behavior with someone who calls women "b—-—-?"

Ludacris and Obama both like b—-—-!

Evan Gahr, shut your bitch ass up, hoe bag!

[via NJ.com]

Politico is owned by Allbritton Communications. If you haven't heard of Allbritton Communications, it may be because you don't watch channel 41 in Harrisburg, PA, or channel 60 in Tulsa Oklahoma, two of the 8 mostly small-market local ABC affiliates that make up the rest of Allbritton's holdings. 8 TV stations and a hype-ful New Media political news organization, from a company that made its fortune with a bank that once laundered money for Augusto Pinochet. In the 1970s, they bought and killed the Washington Star. That was the end of Allbritton's newspaper daze until this Politico thing.

The Politico is now, apparently, launching a weekly television show, which will air on most of those Allbritton TV stations (though not in New York). It will be fast-paced and hard-hitting and EDGY.

"When we think of Politico, we're always talking about, well, it would be nice to build the ESPN of politics," said Mr. VandeHei. "I think part of that would be treating politics like sports, blending in more stats, dusting down the numbers and getting inside the strategy."

Except ESPN makes money, doesn't it? There isn't, we're told, a lot of advertising money, on this Internet, for pure political coverage. Denton describes political reporting as "toxic to advertisers." And what money there is for it will dry up once this presidential election is done. HuffPo is raking it in, supposedly, but there's a good reason why they're expanding their lifestyle and health sections—and trying to be seen as less of a rabidly partisan left-wing niche political site.

So this whole Politico thing? We've been skeptical since day one, primarily because representatives like Mr. VandeHei sound like terrible parodies of hype-spewing hucksters when they talk about the revolutionary new way they cover politics (they HAVE A WEBSITE and SOME AMATEURISH VIDEOS everything is different now!), but they hired enough talent to produce a good product. It's just not a money-making product, on its own. Which means, since they continue to throw more resources at it, that it's a vanity project. For someone. We're just not sure who! Because Allbritton, as amusing as their history is, has not exactly demonstrated a strong interest in becoming a BIG MEDIA PLAYER.

And once the presidential thing is done, Politico will have to go back to what we thought it'd be in the first place—a wonkish, Roll Call-like little trade paper for Congress-watchers and DC insiders. In real newspapers, the political reporting is subsidized by the "fluff." One cannot build a profitable brand on politics alone.

So if anyone smarter than us at this money thing wants to take a stab at explaining to us the economics of Politico, we're all ears.

Slate's ever-griping press critic, Jack Shafer, has already made the point that the Pulitzer judging process is arbitrary. "There's no real science or even fairness behind the picking of winners and losers, with the prizes handed out according to a formula composed of one part log-rolling, two parts merit, three parts 'we owe him one,' and four parts random distribution."

And the former journalist who created HBO's Baltimore drama, The Wire, made one of the last season's villains an editor who boasted of his understanding of Pulitzer judges, because he had once been one. The Wire's semi-fictional Baltimore Sun pretended that its reporting had influenced Maryland's policies with regard to the homeless, because that would prove the impact of its reporting.

But the newspapers' Pulitzer-chasing is most damaging because it distracts newspapers from their real challenge. Rather than impress colleagues with the seriousness of their reporting, US newspapers need to engage a readership that is drifting off to television and the internet. Pulitzer-winning journalism will win Pulitzers; it won't save an industry which is experiencing double-digit annual declines in advertising revenue.

Take a look across the Atlantic. The British Press Awards are so lacking in respectability that, after a particularly rowdy show in 2005, several newspaper editors decided to boycott the awards. A shocked New York Times reporter wrote: "last night's ceremony — a mind-numbing parade of awards in 28 categories — was not a mutually respectful celebration of the British newspaper industry fuelled by camaraderie and bonhomie. It was more like a soccer match attended by a club of misanthropic inebriates."

And yet the British newspaper industry is in much more robust health. To be sure, circulations are in gradual decline. And standards of journalism are as sloppy as ever. But newspapers such as The Guardian have a much greater share of the online audience than their American counterparts. And the papers, while lacking much of the worthy reporting that wins Pulitzers, are way livelier.

The connection? The respect of peers is a luxury that US newspapers have enjoyed because, for much of the second half of the 20th century, they were local monopolies. They could afford to be respectable, because they didn't need to pander to readers. In the UK, by contrast, 12 national dailies are in vicious competition. Editors fear the loss of their jobs, not their honor.

It is not as if the New York Times and Washington Post can magically invigorate themselves by eschewing the Pulitzers. America's vastness, which mitigates against national newspapers and produces smaller local markets which can only support one title, is an unalterable fact. But, while the Washington Post and other winners may celebrate today, they should recognize a harsh truth: the same monopolies which have allowed a public-service mentality to flourish have also left newspapers unprepared for new competition. These Pulitzers are the totem poles of the newspaper industry; beloved relics of former glory.

• And right on cue: Seattle Times announces it is cutting about 200 jobs.

Burson-Marsteller is perhaps the premier, old-line brand name in all of PR. Its founder, the grandfatherly Harold Burson, is still around, and has assumed a position as the Grand Old Man of the PR industry. His kindly demeanor doesn't mean that the firm doesn't have just as many unsavory clients in its past as all the other major PR agencies, including the obligatory millions of dollars worth of work on behalf of the tobacco industry.

Penn got the job as Burson's CEO in late 2005, and was a surprising choice. He'd never run a PR firm like Burson before, and didn't have any particular reputation as a great manager. Do you think the company had one eye on the 2008 elections when they picked Penn? Of course. Can you imagine the value of the halo effect Penn would have on a firm like Burson—which does plenty of political and lobbying work—if Hillary were to get elected, even if Penn resigned from the agency to work in the White House?

It's a moot point now. Clinton should have insisted from the beginning that Penn resign his job with Burson in order to work on the campaign. The very idea that he could do both at once, without Burson deriving a great deal of unseemly influence from his position, is insulting to the intelligence of everyone. He, and Clinton, were rightly criticized every time Burson handled a high profile controversial client, like mortgage disaster Countrywide or private paramilitary firm Blackwater. The argument that Penn could simply recuse himself from working on such clients is a canard—he is the face of his firm, and his connection to Clinton can remain totally unspoken in new business meetings, while still doing its silent part to draw in clients hoping to capitalize on it.

For a while, Penn was talked up as the Democratic version of Karl Rove. That's not something to which any Democrat should aspire, but it turned out to be a moot point as well—Rove's work for Bush was politically superior to Penn's work for Clinton. And if she loses in her bid for the presidential nomination, not only will Penn's reputation as a political savant suffer, but Burson will have to ask itself whether they really want him running the firm if his direct line to the White House, which was his greatest potential selling point, fails to materialize.

If there's any lesson in all this, it's that there should be a solid divide between politicians, who espouse ideals, and the PR industry, which is definitively one big amoral hired gun. Having a PR consultant is one thing; turning your entire campaign over to a man who is also working as a rainmaker for one of the most high-powered PR firms in the world is quite another. The fact that the Colombian government—which gave Burson the contract that got Penn dropped from the campaign—then summarily fired the firm because of Penn's "lack of respect" as he tried to apologize for meeting them is all the illustration necessary of the fundamental incompatibility of his two roles.

You fools.

Out Magazine, putting the Times' "gay mafia" at number 12 in its power list, names nine Times reporters and editors: Richard Berke, Ben Brantley, Frank Bruni, Stuart Elliot, Patrick Healy, Adam Nagourney, Horacio Silva, Stefano Tonchi, and Eric Wilson.

But Intelligencer's Chris Rovzar thinks the gay magazine has underestimated the true extent of the network. "But come on, Out editors — there are hordes of other gays working in high-powered positions at the Times. You could only come up with nine?" (The list does indeed omit Jeff Zeleny, Sewell Chan, Michael Barbaro, Jeremy Peters and Denny Lee, for instance.)

"Have you slept with no one lately?" asks Rovzar. The 27-year-old Intelligencer writer, pictured right, certainly has: willowy Rovzar's an expert on Times gays in part because he dated Patrick Healy and, by all accounts, broke the political reporter's heart. (Healy's to the left.) We don't feel particularly guilty exposing Healy's private life; he won the enmity of Hilary Clinton's campaign with his enthusiastic coverage of the candidate's problematic marriage.

Incidentally, all three national political reporters for the Times—Healy, Nagourney and Zeleny—are gay. Just saying, in case social conservatives need any more reason to question the political objectivity of the Gray Pink Lady.

Our assailer, Marine Corps veteran and big cock-haver Matt Sanchez, made his name in the right-wing blogosphere by complaining last year about the terrible mistreatment he was receiving at the hands of those vicious military-hating students at Columbia, where he was an undergrad. The fawning over him by conservative media outlets died down a bit after his former career as gay porn star "Rod Majors" came out. But he says he doesn't like men anymore because gays are like Islamic jihadis, or something! Republicans are so complicated.

One thing all the sites at the extremes have in common: the more partisan the appeal of the site, the less attractive its proposition to advertisers. That doesn't matter too much to owners like Matt Drudge: his news link site still only employs two people. But, once the election campaign is done, sites like the Huffington Post—worth $200m, we're told—will struggle. ($200m? Guffaw.)

[Source: Nielsen, January 2008]

You've literally given up your cyber-identity to a politician. If Stalin were alive in the time of Facebook, even he wouldn't demand that young Russians change their Facebook pictures to images of him. You're saying to the Facebook community that at first glance, they should think of you as a Barack Obama supporter, not as someone who enjoys social drinking or who has recently visited the Grand Canyon.

What is the intention of a Facebook picture of Barack Obama? Do these Obamanics think that before I saw their Facebook picture, I thought Hillary Clinton was a viable candidate who is treated harshly by the press but could ultimately be a good leader, and after seeing their Facebook profile picture endorsement, I will catch the fever?

The diehards are just reinforcing the stereotype that Obama's appeal is purely a cult of personality. That may work for Ron Paul, whose supporters are genuine zealots, but this election is more complicated than a Facebook picture.

Because no one wants to be seen as enough of a rube as to be impressed by fancy talk anymore, everyone needs to point out niggling flaws in the Great Race Talk.

John Dickerson (who liked it) says he mentioned Geraldine Ferraro too many times (we thought the mentions were diplomatic and smart) and that it wasn't fair to decry YouTube when YouTube made him have to deliver this awesome speech.

New Republic senior editor Michael Crowly says "Barack Obama gave a brilliant, inspiring, intellectually supple speech—but one that may have done little to solve his festering problem with working class white Americans."

Writing at WPNI's new black-oriented Root, political science professor Michael C. Dawson says a similar thing, but makes the point that Obama's deft comparison of black resentment to white working class resentment is a bit too kind to the racist attitudes that pervade the latter. Though of course he'd say that, he's black.

The "straight news" write-ups of the speech, if Times scribe Jeff Zeleny's piece is any indication, will focus largely on Obama's repudiation of Wright, which we read (and saw) as a mere intro to the points he was actually making. It was also the weakest part of the speech, especially when he reminded everyone that he loves Israel and hates the terrorists (but, as we said, that was an aside).

(Amazingly, professional asshole blogger Mickey Kaus, who just wanted Obama to throw the entire Black community to the curb, was basically dead-on in his prediction that Obama would toss the "anti-PC" crowd a bone in the beginning and then move on.)

Rich Lowry, writing in The Corner, has already declared it "The Throw Your Grandmother Under the Bus" speech, and we award him our first annual award for outstanding achievement in the field of purposefully and hilariously missing the point and trying to hurt America.

We saw the speech as an attempt to rebuild the way we talk about race as a nation, a way that is still fractured—one way for these mythical "whites at the dinner table", one way for blacks in churches, one way for academics and liberal arts students, and finally the depressing hand-wringing OJ trial way it's "discussed" in the media. The pundit reactions all seem to acknowledge the necessity of that discourse-altering goal, but none of the reactors have Obama's rhetorical tools, so we're just stuck back in the feedback loop.

Obama totally defused the "pastor" thing as a press issue, but no one who doesn't read the damn speech for themselves will have any idea of what he was actually saying.

Back when Spitzer was a crusading Attorney General, he was maybe the most respected and beloved man in New York politics, especially by the sort of New York City residents who both ignore Albany politics and are exhaustingly cynical about New York politicians (this is the Bloomberg electorate). But how could we not love our tough-talking liberal fighter? He seemed as happy in a scrap as mean old Giuliani, but unlike Giuliani, he went after the fucking banks, not modern artists and ferret-owners.

Spitzer waged high-profile campaigns against AIG and investment banks and even anti-abortion "crisis pregnancy centers." He was the great hope of reform in Albany and he won his gubernatorial election in a landslide. With his reputation the way it is today, it's hard to remember how much he was beloved back then. The Daily News even wrote a story on how to deal with your straight man-crush on him.

Then he was suddenly the Governor of New York and everything went to hell for him. He immediately came up against a state assembly full of life-long gridlock enthusiasts who refused to change the way they did business and hated newcomers. They frustrated him, and the real Spitzer emerged. He's an angry asshole, it turns out, who doesn't play well with others. The fact that starry-eyed New Yorkers hadn't noticed this when he was "crusading" (i.e. expanding the purview of his former office to take on high-profile cases that endeared him to said starry-eyed New Yorkers) says more about them than him.

30 days into his Governorship, Spitzer said to Assembly Minority Leader James Tedisco, "I'm a fucking steamroller, and I'll roll over you and anybody else." That remark, immediately and widely reported in the tabloids, proved to be as utterly untrue as it was impolitic. Spitzer has accomplished nothing but the creation of bullshit scandals (gold star to the first commenter who can succinctly explain STATE TROOPERGATE, in a way that actually makes it seem worthy of a "-gate" suffix). All of these things, from the Steamroller comment to the flap over his plan to give licenses to illegal immigrants, were the mark of a man who, it turned out, was not actually all that good at politics. But this? The hooker thing? The mark of a man who's a fucking idiot.

As AG, Spitzer had prosecuted prostitution rings. He knows, especially with the classy ones, that the client lists are well-maintained, and they get out, eventually. So to head down to DC and hook up with a whore the night before a CNBC appearance (at 7 a.m.!) and a Congressional appearance is the height of abject stupidity. D.C. is quite boring, in Eliot's defense, but still.

Now he's maybe retiring, and everything in Albany will return to normal, and the Democrats probably won't pick up that Senate seat they need to secure a majority and force reform bills through. But you know what? We think he should stick around. Not even just to piss off Joe Bruno.

2010 is a long, long, long ways away, especially in politics, and especially in New York politics. If he doesn't resign, he can redeem himself (after the storm of boring moralizing bullshit that is sure to follow). How long could it be before the golden boy long since brought down to size would be able to recast himself as a changed, meeker man, human as everyone else, and enjoy a quiet resurgence in the polls? And Jesus, what better way is there to get everyone to forget the bullshit of his first year in office than this? Doesn't he see? Getting caught up in a high-class prostitution ring could've saved Spitzer's legacy!

From the Times:

"What my head tells me is that we’ve got a very sizable delegate lead that is going to be hard to overcome,” Mr. Obama said. “But, look, she is a tenacious and determined candidate, so we’re just going to make sure we work as hard as we can, as long as it takes.”

From MSNBC:

Clinton campaign communications director Howard Wolfson, in a conference call with reporters Monday, euphemistically called the seven-week hiatus “an interesting new phase” in the struggle between Obama and Clinton. He suggested the phase would be filled with questions fired from Clinton about Obama’s relationship with indicted Chicago businessman Tony Rezko whose trial on federal corruption charges is now underway in Chicago.

MSNBC: After Ohio, a long puzzling hiatus

In the clip above, Senator Clinton mercilessly savages Barack Obama's cheerful message of vague Hope with a genuinely funny routine mocking his stump speech. The only problem with that tack is elucidated by Jon Stewart, when he takes the routine to its logical conclusion: HILLARY CLINTON KNOWS THIS WORLD IS MADE OF SHIT, AND YOU ARE JUST LYING TO YOURSELF IF YOU THINK WE CAN CHANGE IT. Not a very helpful strategy for convincing people to vote for you! And that's the problem with genuine sarcasm. It's off-putting, and mean. Comedy hurts.

Hillary Clinton clearly is funny, but she must do her damndest to hide that fact if she wants to save her campaign. Especially because when she tries to be light-heartedly funny, she comes off as self-pitying, over-rehearsed, and repetitive. As in the pillow joke, which she thought was sooo clever, she used it twice:

Ugh.

But following on the heels of Hillary's charmingly self-deprecating Us Weekly slideshow, Barack Obama's in one of those amazing "they're just like us" galleries. He poses for photo-ops! He possesses old photos of himself! He enjoys hot sauce! But careful with that last one, chief—you think that'll play in Ohio? We're from the midwest, flavor is for foreigners.

Barack Obama: He's Just Like Us! [Us Weekly]

First up is BARACKULA! It's a completely unforgivable musical short film about Barack Obama as a vampire and that is really about all there is to say about it. Someone noticed that "Barack" almost sounds like the beginning of "Dracula" and also there was that movie "Blackula" and why not make it a musical? Thanks, internet!

"Barack Obama cancelled My So-Called Life."

This nutty clip combines clips from camp classic Mommy Dearest with ABBA's "Mamma Mia." This is somehow a Clinton attack.

And finally, BANNED BY YOUTUBE for reasons that will become immediately apparent, "A 2008 Voting Guide From Your Friends... In the Porn Industry." NSFW, obv.

The clip comes from someone named CamPain2008 and he is some sort of genius. Here's another classic:

We're soliciting ideas for our very own exclusive internet attack ad, and we welcome your suggestions, in the comments or the inbox. Remember: his middle name is Hussein, he's a secret turban-wearing Muslim, and he loves blow. Just like all of you!

For a decent grounding in the myths and realities of the NAFTA Superhighway story, here's the Washington Post's Fact Checker taking on the crazy musings of Republican presidential candidate and Emperor Of World Of Warcraft Ron Paul. For a more entertaining look at the issue, consult respected internet publications of record like World Net Daily and TownHall.

According to World Net Daily, the fact that money was allocated to build a portion of an interstate in Tennessee is incontrovertible proof that the battle against Mexicanadamerica has already been lost. (And did you know that Giuliani is involved??)

Take a look at this stirring letter from Ron Paul:

The ultimate goal is not simply a superhighway, but an integrated North American Union—complete with a currency, a cross-national bureaucracy, and virtually borderless travel within the Union. Like the European Union, a North American Union would represent another step toward the abolition of national sovereignty altogether.

Your children will be spending Ameros on disgusting Mexican candy on their way to drug cartel meetings. Also some Canadian stereotypes will be involved. (Sklar?) Even Red China will oppress us on the Hell Highway! Unless hero of the working man Lou Dobbs has anything to say about it!

Dobbs has been fighting the NAFTA Superhighway since whenever one of his producers found it on an anti-immigration message board (probably), railing repeatedly against the Unconstitutionality of this terrible road. Even avuncular loon Pat Buchanan takes cues from Lou regarding this menace to our freedoms.

The highway is especially dangerous, as Pat notes, because the Mexicans commit lots of crimes, shoot guns at children, and probably lust after white women.

Lou's role in exposing this injustice-in-the-making is so key that he's the star of this insane and awesome YouTube clip we found:

Eager to discuss what we learned about the Fox-Bush Autobahn, we clicked over to our favorite message board ever, the Americans for Legal Immigration PAC forum. In the thread called WATCH LOU DOBBS ON NAFTA SUPERHIGHWAY TUESDAY, we eagerly read the words of our fellow patriots.

In the immortal words of poster butterbean: "POOR LOU - HE IS JUST 1 MAN, WITH JUST 1 HOUR, AND SO MUCH NEWS TO COVER."

And, as GeorgiaPeach writes:

I got the impression that he was really serious about keeping the public informed about the NAFTA Superhighway. On YOUTUBE there are several videos of the segments done on Lou Dobbs in regards to the Nafta Superhighway if someone has not viewed them yet.

Ephesians 4:32
_________________
http://www.wethepeopleofamerica.org

It's true! Lou is very serious about "keeping the public informed about the NAFTA Superhighway," which is crazy code for "dazzling the rubes with imaginary threats." Lou Dobbs, friend of the little guy, is surely personally outraged that longshoreman and truckers will maybe end up out of work a dozen years from now, theoretically, once the upgrade of the existing interstate system leads to the middle of the nation becoming the continent's center of commerce. It keeps him up nights! He can barely stand to listen to his daughter talk about her horses anymore! (Please click that link. Harvard sophomore Hillary Dobbs: "my horses are jumping the best they have ever jumped.")

Yes, Lou truly cares about the fate of the working man, where the working man is defined as the white working man, and where all the threats to his livelihood involve Mexicans.

Here's more clips of Lou on the NAFTA Superhighway to Hell:

Tom Beck, Deep Impact

President Lindberg, The Fifth Element

While the Post works out of historic downtown DC, washingtonpost.com is out in the suburbs of union-unfriendly Virginia (no Guild fights out here!), a 15 minute drive in fantastic traffic. Also newspaper and web counterparts at various analogous positions hate each other, certain sections of the paper are buried in the website in favor of promotion of washingtonpost.com-employed substitutes, and the many old people of the paper have no clue what to do about nasty anonymous comments. Its the problems of every newspaper website magnified tenfold, and played out in the relative public of meta-media criticism.

From our time in DC, we're well aware of tensions between the paper and the web. The whole enterprise is astoundingly wasteful, unfair to web-only reporters who don't get real bylines in the paper and print people whose work is hidden on the site beneath web-exclusive content. But the Post has ended up as a web-friendly publication, beating the Times to the blog revolution and often quite effectively engaging in online political conversation, all while the stodgy paper itself loses ad revenue, circulation, and income.

(And concurrent to trend-ish anecdotes like the web's burying of sections like Style has been the Post's inexcusable dumbing down of that once-respected section into typical USA Today lifestyle bullshit, though maybe that's neither here nor there.)

(Also neither here nor there: City Paper editor Erik Wemple is known, fairly or not, for hating blogs, bloggers, and the internet as a whole.)

(The City Paper story also features a sped-up video of editor Wemple pretending to be a Post employee driving from the paper's office to the web office. With acting and everything! It's like Grand Theft Auto: Vendetta-Based Media Crit.)

One Mission, Two Newsrooms [City Paper]

[TVNewser]

This one's from 1992, and it's Bill yelling at some Gay who wants him to cure AIDS.

In this now-classic video, Bill Clinton gets upset with a reporter who wants to know why the Clintons don't want to let all the casino workers vote for Barack Lolbama.

In this clip, Bill Clinton is angry that people have hope.

Above, Bill Clinton says "shame on you" to some reporter who has no shame.

(Please forgive the lack of a "YouTube has changed the nature of modern campaigning" think piece here, as we are not Howard Kurtz.)