Obscanity: You'll know it when you see it

Adam Lambert: I’m ‘proud of my sexuality’ – CNN.com.

Biggest shocker of the year! Gee golly! Who saw that coming? That said… between him and Clay Aiken, if you told me only one of them was gay I’d have had to pick Clay Aiken. *snickers*

See, I thought Maggie Gallagher and the NOM folks were just trying to do some damage control. Turns out that conservative wingnuts really don’t get that he’s joking.

Two-time Emmy Award winner Bea Arthur dead at 86 – CNN.com.

Now that’s better! None of this 4 measly paragraphs business.

RIP, Bea Arthur!

`Golden Girls’ star Bea Arthur dies at 86.

RIP. 🙁 We were just watching my “Golden Girls” DVDs last night. 🙁

p.s. WTF is up with CNN’s itty-bitty blurb about her death? The woman was a groundbreaker! She deserves more than a few terse sentences.

Commentary: Miss California, thanks for being honest – CNN.com.

My take:

My problem with her answer was not that she expressed her opinion about what marriage *should* be, but that she displayed an ignorance of the reality faced by same-gender couples. For most of us, the “choice” of same-sex marriage is not available. We don’t live in a country where people get to choose opposite-sex marriage or same-sex marriage; we live in a country where people like Miss California get to make that decision FOR people like me. So to me, it sounded like she was either completely misinformed as to whether same-gender couples can actually marry in America, or was saying, “Hey, you chose to be gay, so you don’t get to be married.” Either way, her answer was far from honest. An opinion is an opinion, but she flat out lied.

Scottish Singer Susan Boyle’s Web Popularity Is at Numbers Never Seen Before – washingtonpost.com.

The thing to bear in mind, though, is that MANY people have watched this video MANY times.

I only hope she lives up to this in her second performance, or the “backlash” will be really awful.

Joe. My. God.: Wingnuts Call For Firing Of Anderson Cooper Over Teabagging Joke.

LMAO.

a) uh, since when is this a gay thing?
b) LMAO.
c) Sorry, these people walked RIGHT into this joke. If you don’t want to hear jokes about teabagging, don’t theme your national protest around teabags, particularly when your camp is also launching a campaign called “2M4M,” and PARTICULARLY when your camp tends to be extremely prudish and sexually repressed/oppressive. SRSLY.

The Colbert Coalition’s Anti-Gay Marriage Ad | April 16th | ColbertNation.com.

On “Mad Money,” Cramer back to normal – War Room – Salon.com.

Most disturbing:

The man himself wasn’t the only one trying to minimize the “Daily Show” interview on Friday. TVNewser reports that producers at Cramer’s sister network MSNBC were asked not to cover it during their own shows.

Uh, isn’t this similar to the very bullshit Jon Stewart was criticizing? This is news. Sorry, but it is. You don’t get to suppress it just because you’re a little embarrassed that it took a cable comedian to call your network to task for its role in the current economic meltdown.

Stewart seen as winner in showdown with Cramer – CNN.com.

I don’t know why anybody is surprised by this – Jon Stewart always takes his guests to task when he doesn’t agree with them.

In any event, I (and most people I know) have been saying all along that Jon Stewart provides the best news/commentary on TV right now… glad to see he’s still going strong post-election. His coverage of the 2008 election was the only thing that kept me sane throughout the whole ordeal, even as it drove me crazy to see what was going on. The man deserves a prize.

Watch the full episode of The Daily Show with guest Jim Cramer.

Joss Whedon: Slayers, Dolls And Singing Villains : NPR.

Usmagazine.com | News – EXCLUSIVE: Katherine Heigl, T.R. Knight Leaving Grey’s Anatomy, Says Costar.

Everybody seems to think they’re leaving because they couldn’t get enough money. I’m more inclined to think they’re leaving because of the extremely homophobic executive jackassery that has been affecting the writing of the show so deeply the past season or so. They made them purge storylines, change storylines, change character paths… I’d want the hell out of a show if the directors didn’t want storylines depicting people like me, too.

Holy bloody hell! Grey’s Anatomy: The Complete Fourth Season is on sale at Amazon.com for $19.99!!!!!

You can also get Weeds seasons 1-3 for only $59.99, or $19.99 apiece.

But OMG, Grey’s for $19.99?!?!?!?! I’m SO there!

…and boy, did they let her off easy. They didn’t give her a chance to wow America with her superior script-reading, word-parroting skillz, but they also didn’t really give her room to mess it up for herself. They pretty much wrote her a few snarky lines, and let her off the hook. Frankly, I’m kind of disappointed. I would have loved to see her trying to do improv or something.

Tina Fey, though, was hilarious, as usual. “The real one? Byee!” I wonder if they talked after the show, because onstage they barely made eye contact.

Tina Fey As Sarah Palin In VP Debate On SNL – October 4!.

Wow. John McCain’s campaign has been putting out some pretty desperate ads, but this one just takes the cake.

This ad pretty much crystallizes one of the key differences between Republican and Democratic thinking, at least in the present climate of divisive politics. Democrats – or at least, the kind of Democrats who support Obama – recognize that for any given issue, there is a black, and there is a white, but there are also countless shades of gray, and typically the truth falls somewhere in that ambiguous area. Not always, of course, but when it comes to certain issues, you cannot simply boil it down to a Right and a Wrong. After all, as they say in “Wicked,” “There are precious few at ease with moral ambiguities, and so we act as though they don’t exist!”

On the other hand, for many Republicans, especially the knee-jerk Republicans we seem to see as mainstream candidates these days, there is only a Right and a Wrong, and a Yes and a No, and if you even pause to THINK about the complexity of the issue, or about the space between Yes and No, then you are part of the No. They don’t understand that you can be right AND wrong. They don’t understand that two people can agree about a problem and disagree about a solution.

For a Democrat like Obama, it would seem natural, in a debate, to acknowledge when the opponent is right about certain things, and follow up with an explanation of why their interpretation of those things is still not the best, why some of the details are wrong, why something has been mischaracterized, or why they disagree with the solution to fixing those things, if they’re broken. For Obama to say, “John is right, but…” or “John is right, and we agree on that issue…” seems perfectly natural to us.

For the kind of Republicans who patched this ad together, this is a sign of weakness. The willingness to recognize the skill or knowledge of your opponent makes you a bad leader, in their eyes. Cooperation is weakness. Diplomacy is weakness. Mediation is weakness. Politeness is weakness. To them, you have to be a pit bull in lipstick. You can’t work things out; you have to WIN, at any cost. To them, there is a right, and there is a wrong, and for every Good Guy, there is a Bad Guy. There can’t be two Good Guys who are just different. One of them has to be Bad. And it’s true that sometimes this is the case – but sometimes you’re just talking about two people who want to do good but disagree on the meaning of “good,” or two people who want to fix the same problem but have very different solutions.

This is setting aside the reality that every single one of Obama’s acknowledgments of McCain’s accuracy on a point was followed by a “but,” which was meticulously edited out by the commercial’s creators. Never mind that it mischaracterizes Obama’s opinion of McCain’s beliefs and strategies (and tactics) and completely ignores that he had a strong rebuttal for each point. As far as I’m concerned, that is the obvious problem with the ad, and I don’t think people will fall for it. Not most people, anyway. For me, more problematic is the implication of the ad itself – that to them, the very fact that he was willing to concede a single inch, or say something positive about McCain, even just acknowledge that McCain is at all informed or intelligent or, you know, a human being, makes him a failure and serves as proof of his inability to lead. For them, if Obama acknowledges that McCain is right about one thing, it necessarily follows that 1) McCain is right about all things, and 2) Obama is wrong about all things.

I think that says a lot about what kind of administration McCain would run. It’s pretty much the same administration Bush ran – you’re either with us, or you’re against us. You’re either Christian, or you’re going to hell. You want every zygote to turn into a human, or else you’re a raving baby-murderer. You either support the nuclear family, or you’re a child molester who wants to undermine society and demolish the institution of marriage or marry your pet goat. If you aren’t a conservative, then you’re a radical left winger. You can either put complete and utter faith in the free market, or you can fess up to being a rabid socialist. You’re a blind supporter of US policy, or you’re a terrorist. You’re either a Republican, or you hate your country. If you try to reach over to the other side… you are weak. Oh, and you hate your country.

This most recent ad proves that John McCain will bring more of the same. After all, he’s John McCain, and he approves of this message.

Courtesy of my friend C:

Letterman keeps up McCain tirade – CNN.com.

Noting that McCain wanted to postpone Friday’s first debate with Obama, Letterman said running mate Sarah Palin wanted to put off her debate with Democrat Joe Biden until after Election Day. Letterman said Palin’s meeting with world leaders at the United Nations was like “take-your-daughter-to-work day.”

Oh, glee! I love it when people see through transparency.

As you probably already know, yesterday John McCain cancelled his appearance on David Letterman’s CBS late night talk show, claiming that he had to rush back to Washington because the economy was about to crater. Letterman was informed that McCain was rushing off to the airport and was about to board a plane immediately.

Well, about six and a half minutes into this video, you’ll see where McCain really had to go. Well, it turns out that while he was supposed to be on a plane, McCain was having his nose powdered on the set of Katie Couric’s CBS Evening News. Does he think nobody is going to catch him? Seriously? I mean, this is all on camera. In the public eye. What, Letterman just wasn’t going to notice the national broadcast? From the same building???

Of course, the benefit to McCain is that while some of us may see right through this blatant transparency, I guarantee you that the rightwing defense will be, “So what? Letterman isn’t important; the economy is!” To which the correct response is, of course, and now, which is more important, Katie Couric, or the economy? Because McCain put one of these first yesterday, and it wasn’t the economy.

The first couple minutes are not the main point, so if you are pressed for time, skip the intro and the praise for McCain’s war service, and start at 2:22. Or if you’re REALLY pressed for time, skip to 6:35, when things get really interesting. (But if you can, just watch the whole clip.)

McCain bails on Letterman

He was, you know, for it, before he was against it… yeah.

Everybody regurgitating the Republican-fed sheep-talk needs to see this video. EVERYBODY.

Sarah Palin Gender Card | The Daily Show | Comedy Central.

Well, he did it. He’s the man of the hour! Michael Phelps won his 8th gold medal earlier this week, meaning he has won more gold medals than any other athlete at a single Olympiad. The record was previously held by Mark Spitz.

In other news, does anybody else think that Nastia Liukin was robbed of that gold medal on the uneven bars? What was up with that tie-breaking method? I still want to know how China expects us to believe that tiny kid who won is really sixteen. I don’t believe it for a minute. Ah well. At least Liukin got her all-around gold.

There are a few entertaining bits in this Daily Show clip – but the most entertaining for me is that FAUX News has resorted to showing 8-year old clips of McCain’s Election 2000 press conferences so they can get a shot of him looking younger.

I am SO excited to be linking to Things From Another World (TFAW), partially because they have a TON of really awesome merchandise, but at least for now, mainly because they’re a retailer for the new Buffy comic.

I’m very excited about the pending arrival of this new comic. If it could just come five minutes ago, that would be good. Did I mention I’m excited? More Buffy! Buffy Season 8! An eighth season of my FAVORITE show ever! It’s supposed to pick up where the television series left off. Not that this gap hasn’t been filled by a million fanfic writers, but still – this comes from the TOP: Joss Whedon himself (well, in concept anyway).

Through TFAW you can preorder the next few issues, and see the cover art, which is already posted. They also have lots of Buffy memorabilia and other fun stuff, including the DVD box sets of Buffy AND Angel.

Check out more Buffy stuff!

Even if you’re not into Buffy, I hope you’ll take a moment to check out the store and see if they have anything that does interest you. 😀