I laughed harder at this clip than I have at something in quite a while:
Category: Videos
[digg-reddit-me]As a preview to this Keith Olberman video, here’s quick review of the background on this: Andrew Sullivan wrote a post comparing the adopted hero of the right-wing, Winston Churchill, and current creature of the right-wing, Dick Cheney – specifically on the issue of torture. Sullivan explained that Churchill refused to torture German prisoners even with Britain being bombed daily by the Germans. He cited one of Britain’s chief interrogators during World War II on torture:
[He] did not eschew torture out of mercy. This was no squishy liberal: the eye was made of tin, and the rest of him out of tungsten. (Indeed, he was disappointed that only 16 spies were executed during the war.) His motives were strictly practical. “Never strike a man. It is unintelligent, for the spy will give an answer to please, an answer to escape punishment. And having given a false answer, all else depends upon the false premise.”…
Barack Obama then cited Churchill’s refusal to torture during a press conference – and aides later confirmed he reads Andrew Sullivan’s blog and had come across this information shortly before he brought it up at the press conference.
Immediately, the right-wing press began to try to reclaim Churchill as their hero re-branding him as a torturer and war criminal.
Take it away, Keith…
[digg-reddit-me]A small step away from the blog’s usual fare, here’s a clip from a high school play:
“I’m simultaneously horrified and fascinated.”
That about summarizes my feelings about Hamlet 2 as well – and this number, “Rock Me Sexy Jesus.”
[digg-reddit-me]Watching John Boehner demonstrate his ignorance when asked about global warming on This Week with George Stephanopoulos was surprisingly painful:
The huge amount of waste gasses from livestock do in fact contribute to global warming significantly; and of course it is silly to call carbon dioxide a carcinogen – but that’s very different from calling it a potentially dangerous greenhouse case in significant quantities. The fact that Boehner doesn’t even know the basic terms of this debate is disturbing if telling – as the only way to explain his rejectionist position is a combination of ignorance and greed for fundraising dollars.
[digg-reddit-me]Saturday Night Live’s tribute this weekend to Amy Poehler included this great (and newly relevant) skit that I missed back in 2005:
[digg-reddit-me]I’d heard this quote often, but never saw the video:
It’s interesting how the younger and less constrained Obama is able to flatly state the fact that the War on Drugs has been an utter failure and that marijuana should be decriminalized while still maintaining his opposition to legalization.
I’m all for gradual steps and half-measures that push our society in a positive direction – rather than abrupt shifts that prompt backlashes. And I think Obama has the politics of this right, if not the policy – decriminalization must come first and separate from legalization. But once pot is decriminalized, the logic of it’s legalization becomes inevitable. The problem is that decriminalization could just as easily aid the Mexican drug cartels in the short term – as they take advantage of the gray area in which marijuana would exist legally. Of all 7 positive effects that would be possible if marijuana were legalized, only 3 of them would be partially accomplished by decriminalization.
The prudent political path then is to make the case for legalization while pushing for decriminalization – with the knowledge that the latter will lead to the former.
[digg-reddit-me]Eliot Spitzer, in what is becoming a must-read column for Slate, gets to the nub of the real scandal of AIG:
The AIG bailout has been a way to hide an enormous second round of cash to the same group that had received TARP money already.
As I’ve quoted former Governor William Weld before:
There’s no one so brave and wise as the politician who’s not running for office and who’s not going to be…
Yet it is almost as likely that former Governor Eliot Spitzer is following an alternate path that seems similar but has a different conclusion. Let me propose a corollary to Weld’s statement:
A bit braver and a little less wise than the politician who’s not running for office and who’s not going to be is the chastened politician who seeks redemption in the form of speaking truth to power from his exile until he has established his moral bona fides enough to be allowed back in.
A bit less snappy though. Meanwhile, Jay Leno has his own suggestion for how to deal with the AIG bonus issue (the one that Spitzer points out is a side issue):
You have to appreciate the subtle balance Jay manages here – and the craft and delicate political sensibility that goes into a joke like this. Aiming for a mass audience, he can’t offend either Democrats or Republicans. Yet a political joke that is offensive to no one just isn’t funny. So Jay manages to cram two alternate jokes into one – with one interpretation for Democrats and the other for Republicans, and a certain cognitive dissonance allowing both interpretations.
On a superficial level, Leno is chastising the Obama administration and saying that it should emulate the Bush administration.
But he undermines this suggestion by invoking as a fact – which it is, even if the mainstream media does not often acknowledge it – the lawlessness of the Bush administration – and perhaps even mocking their oft-used Jack Bauer defense.
Yet on another level, what he is proposing – that Obama just forget the law and go after AIG – has a certain elemental satisfaction to it – and would probably be a popular move. There would be a catharsis there, instead of the interminable responsibility of the Obama administration.
As I mentioned above – there is a certain craft to this. Often, Leno’s monologues are seen as without edge but when they work, they allow multiple edges such as this joke does.
As a side note to all of this – once something becomes the premise of a joke by Jay Leno, you know it has been popularly accepted as true – or true enough. The fact that the premise of this joke was Bush administration lawlessness is pretty significant in that regard.
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I have to admit – I had my doubts about Fallon as a late night host – but he seems to be off to a good start – not least of all with this.
Best non-Jon-Stewart take on this weeks events I’ve seen.
[digg-reddit-me]Yesterday, I tried to take on some of the opposition to Obama’s handling of the financial crisis. I think I did a fine job – but I’m certainly no Jon Stewart. Pointing out that the stock market tanked after Ronald Reagan became president and after we won World War II, he takes on this farcical idea that the stock market is some sort of rational indicator of economic conditions:
(I’ll post full links when TDS posts them.)
The stock market isn’t a rational creature – it is subject to panics and irrational exuberance and sour moods and churlishness and massive misjudgments. To judge whether an economic plan is working or not requires time and wisdom – neither of which are found in the daily results of the Dow Jones Industrial Average.
Of course, Stewart founds some time to mock Rick Santelli on the way:
Humor makes it all go down so much easier.
There’s no denying the inchoate anger, not fully formed, matured, directed, or realized, that some seek to target Obama with. The problem is that these Santellis and these Limbaughs and the rest of them have no more to offer than the mythical Howard Beale of Network – whose famous rants clearly inspired Santelli’s on-air persona:
Watching this famous clip today is eerie – as it echoes into our own time – and makes Santelli’s performance seem all the more post-modern.
In the end, it comes down to this:
As a nation we have a choice to do nothing, to let Obama implement his plan, or to come up with a better one. In my opinion, Obama’s opponents have yet to offer a serious alternate plan. Which is why I’m sticking with him on this, at least for now.