New GOP Spokesman: 50 Cent

Let's just say you can find him in da country club. New York's hardest, whose flow is bonkers (all the other hard rappers, they come from Yonkers) is quoted in our no. 32 link today bestowing high praise to President Bush — 50 Cent says Bush is like "a gangsta." The quote comes as opposition to remarks by the Chicago South Side enfant terrible Kanye West, who threw one of his trademark fits not long ago and said the federal government's slow response to Hurricane Katrina was proof that Bush "hates black people." Normally, when rappers feud, they argue over which one has rocked the most rhymes, cocked the most nines, etc., but these days you almost expect to see 50 Cent on Scarborough Country shouting down West, who because he's on a delayed satellite link, can't shout back. For his part, West writes — in an excerpt quoted here — that it was NBC's fault because they took his comments out of context, wah wah wah. The California Conservative was pleased with 50 throwing his support behindn the president: "Does this mean Republicans will finally get a good rap?" Well, no, probably not. And we ain't sayin' they're gold diggers...

Posted by Philip Ewing at 10:24 AM | Permalink

Category: Celebs

How Much Is Enough, Harry?

As is our custom, we took a look at the stories and reports today from this past weekend at the box office, which we expected would be a little different from usual because of the holiday. Different indeed — our inescapable nemesis Lt. Col. Harold Potter, USMC, had not only been in America's top spot for two weekends in a row, he had pulled in a grand total of some $201 million. (Take a look yourself at the full report here.) Now that's, as they say, a spicy meat-a-ball-a! One thing that isn't different about this iteration of the Potter franchise is the articulate devotionals from bloggers, whose ability to annunciate their love for Harry & Co. is legendary. Here's an example: "k i dunno why every1 is sayin harry potter sucked but I THOT IT TOTALLY ROCKED!!!!! i wont give much away in case sum1 didnt watch it yet...but i thot it was awsome." Mmm. Profound. And take a look at this one, for perhaps a less nuanced but equally intent summation. And some of Harry's fans do actually come close to complete sentences... sort of. And if you've seen the latest Potter flick, you'll want to check this out, to take things to the next level.

Posted by Philip Ewing at 03:55 PM | Permalink

Category: Moving Pictures

What We're Thankful For. Or Is It Who?

A post this morning over at Defamer reminds us just how much we owe TomKat for helping the BlogPulse entertainment blog come into its own. Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes may not even get married until after their baby is born — at least that's the story — and we thought we'd take today to reflect on just how important their relationship has been to us. It may not look too hard to come up with japes about rich, famous movie stars, but it's a grueling, grueling job: some quips need hours of careful noodling and rewriting before they're snippy or biting enough. But from the earliest days of summer 2005, when Cruise started acting wierd and people wanted to boycot his movies, he and Katie were always there for us. When he brainwashed her, we had the story, and we already were lamenting his frequent lapses from the limelight by August, when grand dame Lauren Bacall dissed him. The list goes on and on. From his F-14 flying in Top Gun to his psychic detective work in Minority Report to his far-reaching personal exploits, Cruise has never let us down. This Thanksgiving, we're thankful for him. What are you thankful for? We'll be back Monday — go eat a turkey.

Posted by Philip Ewing at 11:12 AM | Permalink

Category: Celebs

Geeks, Geeks, Geeks, Geeks, Geeks All Over The Globe

As mainstream as many thinkers would like to say the Internet has become — and it has, to a large measure — it still originally the province of guys who talk about horizontal HTPC enclosures. Here's another way to put it: we found, after perusing The Guardian's list of the top 20 English-language geek novels that is today'd top link, that whereas we had read a full 45 percent of them, we had no idea what a horizontal HTPC enclosure was. Only those who do, and who've read Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon, are the true masters of the Internet. The rest of us are just sort of trespassing. You can see rumblings of it in various blogs, as posters gloat about how many of the books they've read, or criticize the Guardian's list for being too mainstream: "From the books that I know on the list, apparently, “geek” only means scifi, which rules out a ton of books that would have displaced others here on the list. American Gods is a vastly inferior novel to Gaiman’s own Neverwhere." Ha ha! Of course it is, sir, of course it is. Less quibbling and more discussion of the existing list is available here, but this blog is home to a rather elitist dismissal: "It's not so much what's on the list as what's missing. The books are a snapshot of mid to late 20th century sci-fi, as if the readers were ignorant of anything that predated the Great War. Where are the books that started the genre, like The Time Machine, Gulliver's Travels, and Frankenstein? Yes, where indeed? Where indeed.

Posted by Philip Ewing at 10:11 AM | Permalink

Category: The Dead-Tree Scene

Potter Triumphant, Revisited III

Britain's tiny wizard stands astride the movie world like a colossus, caring neither for finglefrat or buzzlethrub nor leapsnepper. In a season when big movies seldom recoup the money it took to make them — let alone pile profit on top of that — Harry Potter's flick The Goblet of Fire made more than $100 million in its opening weekend, setting the BlogPulse record for the most rapidly lucrative film this blog has yet recorded. (Full report, as always, is here.) If this were a normal weekend, we'd be talking about Walk the Line, the new Johnny Cash biopic that pulled in $22 million, but with Harry Potter, nothing is ever normal. We shouldn't laugh, but NewsDrunk did came up with a particularly crude way of saying this: "Estimates from multiple sources indicate that Warner Bros.’ Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire not only dominated the box office this weekend, it neatly lined up all other movies and raped them one by one." Quite. But for the full gamut of reaction, all you have to do is go to our Key People and click the top name.

Posted by Philip Ewing at 09:05 AM | Permalink

Category: Moving Pictures

A Blockbuster Weekend at the Box Office

Few indeed are the Fridays when the weekend releases all are getting raves from the msm. Fewer still are the weekends when the adventures of our old and venerable nemesis, US Rep. Harold Potter (R — Wisc.), are comitted to celluloid and sent out to theaters for all his slavish fans to enjoy. Ah, Harry, BlogPulse's most talked-about man. Is there any critic your imaginative yet accessible adventures haven't yet charmed? Is there any pound sterling your creator hasn't yet accumulated? This Microblogger compares you to Shakespeare. People write reams and reams of fan fiction about you. What more is there to say, Harry? Perhaps only this: "HHHHHHHHHHHHH! 13 HOURS UNTIL HARRY POTTER!!!!AAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!" Or, perhaps, this: "AHHHH!!! I'm going to see Harry Potter tomorrow!!!!!!!!!" Not to be confused with: "Yay no school tomorrow! Harry Potter HAHAHA." What do you do to these people, Congressman Potter?

Posted by Philip Ewing at 10:08 AM | Permalink

Category: Moving Pictures

Not Your Older Brother's XBox

One of the greatest days in our life, it's fair to say, was the torrentially rainy night in 2003 when, flush with lucre from an internship, we strode dripping into a Circuit City and ordered the pimple-faced attendant to get an XBox out of the case, we'd be taking it home, thank you. Since then it (and others, belonging to friends) has afforded us thousands of hours of transcendently awesome fun, meaning the stakes couldn't be higher for the new XBox 360, which drops soon. BlogPulse's no. 17 top link today investigates the innards of one of the new machines, in the new Internet tradition of dissecting new gadgets so that timid, penniless geekoids can get their jollies without having to actually plunk down their own cash. For XBoxes this is especially pertinent, as many people loved modifying the original machines to save games, use as basic PCs, etc. The reaction seems to be pleasant surprise, becuase Microsoft swore the 360 model would be immune from meddling. Joystiq: "Listen up future 360 modders, ‘cause they provide step-by-step instructions for splaying your console wide using only standard tools and a couple of metal sticks." Pocketfactory is a little less enthused about Microsoft's new hardware, which, despite earlier promises, won't necessarily be backwards-compatible with old games, unless you pay $100 for the "premium" version: "Now, with backwards compatibility costing you that extra hundred bucks in the XBox 360, the people who own many games will have to get the $400 XBox 360 so they can play their old stuff. Of course, you can keep both consoles, but then, what's the point of an upgrade?" What indeed? Can the 360 model promise transcendent awesomeness, or just different games?

Posted by Philip Ewing at 10:16 AM | Permalink

Category: The Gadget Scene

Old Stuff Made New, New Stuff Made "Buzzy" (For Lack of a Better Descriptive Term)

Sometimes, folks who like to tinker with stuff create new stuff out of old or they dream up accessories that no one has dared yet fathon. Which is the case today in the blogosphere, where the day's 23rd most-cited blog post describes a new-from-old creation from Ben Heckendorn, whose previous creations have included a portable Nintendo 64 set. This time, it's a jerry-rigged Atari laptop (really), as captured by Engadget. Do you suppose it plays Pong?

As for new-thing enhancements, the UK's Sun Online copy desk probably meant no Freudian slip (or did it?) with this headline: "Huge buzz for iPod gizmo" (today's 6th most-cited news story). It's an attachment, let's say, that provides libidinous pleasure and movement when hooked up to an iPod. And it's called an iBuzz. "This goes on the Christmas list just because it's genius!" raves one LiveJournaler. "Hell, almost makes me wish I was a woman" intones another. "Probably not safe for work," cautions another. Although in all honesty, that admonition could depend on your line of work.

Posted by Sue MacDonald at 11:50 AM | Permalink

Category: The Gadget Scene

It's About Time For A Little Restitution Here

The gizmo standard-bearers at Engadget are reporting today that Sony is yanking the incompetently realized DRM-protected CDs that we've been railing against in our never-ending campaign to topple the old music industry. Sony says it will replace any of the malware-ridden CDs it sold over the past year — it made about four million of them, and sold 2.1 million — this has satisfied Engadget (and us). The post continues: "Looks like this might pinch ‘em in the pocketbook more than a little, but if this whole fiasco is what it takes to teach the industry a lesson about the pitfalls of poor practices in DRM, then so be it." Elsewhere on the Web, Sony-related statements are getting more extreme and more dire, as has been the case for the last couple Sony-related posts at Slashdot, infamous for the endless flame wars on its discussion boards. Most recently, they're linking to a piece that even predicts the company's downfall. Even the msm, in this Fortune piece, is getting in on the act. Can Sony sell enough Vaios, Playstation 3s and Jagged Edge CDs to stay ahead of this growing discontent?

Posted by Philip Ewing at 10:21 AM | Permalink

Category: The Soundscape

Conspiracy Theorists, Take Note

Ever since the National Security Agency's infamous "Echelon" system was publicly revealed a few years ago — it's the ultra-secret surveillance system that literally monitors every electronic transmission — many people have been justifiably worried that the US government is sending secret mind-control radio signals directly into their brains. Some, in response, have taken to wearing makeshift helmets made of aluminum foil, in hopes of deflecting the mind-control signals. But a new experiment, documented with scientific precision in our No. 5 top link today, reveals that aluminum foil probably is a poor choice to protect against mind-control rays. Using the standard-grade Reynolds aluminum foil in three distinct configurations ( our favorite is the "fez" design) researchers at America's top engineering university determined that, in fact, not only do aluminum foil helmets not disrupt radio signals, they can, in fact, amplify them. Meaning that, if you're one of those people out there who think They haven't gotten to you yet, THEY ALREADY HAVE. We're through the looking glass, here, people. Black is white. White is black. These findings aren't without controversy, however, and there is a rebutting counter-study worth your careful consideration. That is, if you have any capacity left for independent thought.

Posted by Philip Ewing at 12:08 PM | Permalink

Category: The vast electric lunchroom

This One Belongs To The Kiddies

We talked Friday about that board game-based flick Zathura and how bloggers were all over the map on it, and it made $14 million this weekend in second place at the box office. That's about right for one of these contemporary flicks, with their low-grossing openings and quick banishments to DVD. But the real story is Disney's computer-animated non-fable Chicken Little, which is in its second week of release and so far has made $80.7 million. (Full report is here.) A kid's movie about some computer-animated farm animals who evidently are invaded by those aliens from the gumball machine in Toy Story, it represents one of the most lucrative pictures we've seen since we've been doing this — all the more interesting because people don't seem to like it that much. The Circus Trilogy has the box-office-take story and reacts this way: "Well, whatever it is, it still doesn't change my impression of "Chicken Little" — rather, the title character — as being a really irritating movie. Bleah." Bleah? Devastating. But a corollary follows. This 25 year-old Ohio mother saw it with her kids and wrote, "It was very cute. The girls really enjoyed it! Me too." Ah hah! Enough American children wanted to see that bespectacled, golf ball-headed little squab that it was the top movie two weeks in a row... and they're kids too young to have blogs. (That's how it slipped under the blogdar.) But y'know, kids, you're never too young to have a blog. We can call them "klogs," for kid-blogs.

Posted by Philip Ewing at 10:11 AM | Permalink

Category: Moving Pictures

Here's Your First Problem: Kids Don't Play Board Games Anymore

Americans will have the opportunity to see a peculiar movie this weekend, a flick about two bored little boys who root around in their basement and find a magical, magical board game called "Zathura" that takes them on a magical, magical adventure! The msm seems pretty satisified with another installment in the board-game-based-adventure franchise started by " Jumanji," of which this is some kind of official unofficial sequel. (Clue was not part of that franchise.) As has been the case for the past couple Fridays, it's difficult to get a bead on what bloggers think about "Zathura." The MovieBlog is hot and cold: "With the first trailer I thought Zathura looked just plain silly... but by the time the last Zathura trailer came out I found myself oddly interested in seeing it." SpankGranny could not generally be considered a fan, saying there are quite a lot of similarities to "Jumanji:" "There’s not much difference between either film, so chances are if you didn’t like the first movie, you should stop reading this right now. If you liked 'Jumanji,' however, read on to see if 'Zathura’s' worth the ten bucks." (Ultimately, according to that review, it isn't.) All this talk about game-based movies got us thinking about a screenplay we've been shopping around — hey, this blog thing is ok, but it ain't gonna put a down payment on a house in Malibu — called "Trivial Pursuits," about a group of multi-colored, anthropomorphic plastic discs trapped in a magical world where they're asked questions in order to collect pieces of pie that fit in them. The lukewarm reception to "Zathura" made us thought we might want to option a different game, so we ran the numbers... here's what the data says will test the best:

Posted by Philip Ewing at 10:19 AM | Permalink

Category: Moving Pictures

Perhaps You've Heard The Term "Meathead?"

One of the things about this blog gig is that you get to see things you probably never imagined you would see — and not, "oh, gosh, Dick Cheney's chief of staff wrote a smutty roman a clef" — but, rather: "have you seen those Japanese girls who strap meat to their foreheads and then stick their heads through holes onto a table where a carnivorous lizard is prowling about?" Well, have you seen anything like that? Now you can: our no. 21 top link is a Google Video file of exactly that happening. There are cultural things at work here, too, including Japanese cultural misogyny, traditional Japanese reverence for lizards and the modern Japanese penchant for combining the two. Bloggers are all over the place on this one; we'll start with Japundit, which writes: "Well, never underestimate the ability of Japanese TV to tap new lows." Noted. Other responses include this Metafilter response list, where one wit has asked: "Man. Why can't we get American pop stars to participate in such tomfoolery?" For our part, we would pay admission to see Hillary Duff take part in this exact same program. Still other posters expressed sympathy for one of the humiliating things about this game show: "Oh no! How embarrassing for those girls! They all showed up to the show wearing the same meat hat! That fashion faux pas would make me scream, too."

Posted by Philip Ewing at 10:01 AM | Permalink

Category: The vast electric lunchroom

A Personnel Change For The Ages

Tom! How long has it been? We haven't heard from you since it was announced that you had sinned against the Lord by impregnating a woman out of wedlock. (But is that a sin against Xenu? You make the call!) Yes, Tom Cruise has returned to us, thankfully, by making a decision that can only bode well for him: He fired his sister, Lee Anne DeVette, as his publicist and got a new one. Lee is our burstiest person today. Her term was marked by such gaffes as Cruise's ridiculous Oprah couch-jumping episode; Cruise's ridiculous Brooke Shields-criticizing episode; and Cruise's ridiculous brainwashing-his-girlfriend-and-then-letting-her-do-an-interview episode. But all that's behind us now. Showbiz insiders who know, and the blogger outsiders who don't, but act as though they do, are all praising this change for Cruise. Writes The Bosh: "Tom Cruise is finally making some good decisions. He's decided to dump his publicist and is now represented by Paul Bloch." But not everybody is so unqualified in their compliments... after Cruise berated Matt Lauer about prescription drugs, this blogger wonders how effective a change it'll be: "I'm afraid that 43-year-old men who have been in the public eye since they were teenagers and haven't figured out for themselves that doing these things might hurt their image need more than a good publicist." Quite. And Heckler Spray sums up what all of us in the blog game are thinking: "In the future, people will look back and see that Summer 2005 was a golden time - the time when Tom Cruise went completely berserk. It was a fascinating thing to watch." We already miss it.

Posted by Philip Ewing at 10:18 AM | Permalink

Category: Celebs

Videos Of Guys Falling Down Weren't Enough To Placate Some, Evidently

Our no. 29 link today is a movie that spells out, in hilarious and clear terms, the backlash out there building against the spyware and grainy video depot eBaum's World, the site that brought you videos of guys catching fire, guys crashing their cars, guys slipping on ice, etc., etc. A message after the "eBaum sucks" movie claims that eBaum hosts copyrighted video and other content and puts its own logo on the stuff, and that if you're the rightful owner and you e-mail asking them to take it down, nothing happens. eBaum's World, for its part, has proud pages full of the various hate messages and cease-and-desist letters it's gotten, so reform is unlikely. But in the court of blog opinion, there is a very detectable groundswell of resentment. Writes DoubleViking: "Finally, someone else out there who agrees with what I’ve been saying over the last couple of years: 'Ebaum’s World is a sham and should be removed from the Internet.'" They're more fatalistic on this metafilter page, and this blogger may sum it all up with this closing sentence: "It's all petty, but there is money and much attention at stake." And the Internet wars rage on.

Posted by Philip Ewing at 10:51 AM | Permalink

Category: The vast electric lunchroom

That 'Enter Sandman' Joke Is Too Good To Pass Up

We couldn't let this one slip by, so we reached backwards in time to yesterday's top links for this photograph of actor Thomas Haden Church as Sandman in the new "Spider-Man" movie. Man, he looks simultaneously cool and authentic, and promises to be a better villain in the movie than he tended to be in the comic books. We were very pleased with Alfred Molina's Dr. Octopus in the most recent "Spider-Man" installment, so we know to expect great things from this production team. Spider-Man's villains, to be perfectly frank, tend be awfully lame, including the Vulture (a bald dude with wings) Rhino (a guy in a rhino suit) Shocker (a guy who shocks you with electricity) and, our personal least favorite, Mysterio (a guy with a fishbowl for a head who somehow creates illusions). But we also weren't fans of the comic book Doc Ock, and he turned out all right in the movie, meaning Sandman's probably gonna be all right. Some bloggers agree so far. These guys are pleased as they kick around the old peanut about the Church pic, but these guys think the movie should've featured Venom. Now there, as we like to say, is a villain you can really set your watch by.

Posted by Philip Ewing at 10:04 AM | Permalink

Category: Moving Pictures

He's Baaaack...Sir Harry, That Is

Every day, month after month, a certain boy wizard (who's now entered the joys of adolescence), sits atop the list of personalities most discussed by bloggers, the king of buzz. That would be Harry Potter, whose Goblets of Fire movie trailer (today's No. 10 top link) was released at a London premiere over the weekend, certain to create a continuing cauldron of crooning among loyal fans. It takes a pretty momentous event to kick Harry out of the No. 1 spot on that personality list, mostly because of blog influence of those crazy kid/teen bloggers. DeeDee from RambleOn blogged about the premiere while pining for London town and watching it via video feed; another blogger can't believe his own status as a "fanboy."

Spidey's new bad guy...
And in other news, as they say in the news biz, Thomas Haden Church (today's 5th-burstiest person) has been tapped to play villain Flink Marko (today's No. 11 most-shared link) in the next Spiderman flick. One blogger's review: "he looks amazing."

Posted by Sue MacDonald at 08:16 AM | Permalink

Category: Moving Pictures

Sony Gives Everybody Yet Another Reason To Love The Music Industry

It's hard not to break into a goofy grin these days when the subject turns to that crazy music industry — those scamps! They're always railling against file-sharing and illegally paying radio stations to play their awful music? Well guess what: as reported by our no. 37 news story today, now Sony is embedding poorly-coded, virus-like programs on listeners' computers! In fact, the BBC quotes one expert as saying "Sony might be inadvertently provoking piracy as consumers irritated by the anti-copying system rip the tracks to get around the restrictions." Ha ha ha! Nice work! At last, we can respect and take the music business seriously again. Now, do you think bloggers will be pleased to learn that new consumer DRM-protected CDs will be installing malware on their computers? Let's ask Angwe: "That's crap-tastic. All the more reason to stop buying CDs from RIAA companies." Writes this blogger: "Because, of course, the best way to fight 'piracy' is to punish the people who paid the fully-bloated MSRP for a CD and thought they could play it on any computer or media player they also rightfully purchased." What next, music industry? Maybe you oughta go back to pressing LPs — those are really hard to upload to Grokster.

Posted by Philip Ewing at 12:14 PM | Permalink

Category: The Soundscape

Oooh-Rah!

Though it seems like the trailer has been out there for months and months, only now, this weekend, is Sam Mendes' new flick Jarhead marching into theaters. An adaptation of Anthony Swofford's memoir about being a leatherneck in that last war we fought in the desert against Saddam Hussein (you remember), the movie stars Jake Gyllenhaal and Jamie Foxx as US Marines who want nothing more than to idly kick around, get into mischief, and maybe plink some tin cans with their rifles. According to the msm, that's all they do, anyway. This movie hasn't been getting outstanding reviews, but it's got the right mix of action, star power, and violence to account for itself honorably this weekend. Blogs are mixed. Gothamist called it "the major must-see," but Cinematical links to a post criticizing it for being "the gayest war movie of all time," as in, homosexual, not, y'know, "bad." They write: "The writer here does a nice job of offering both specifics to support his/her theory and a sense of humor, which always makes readings like this much more palatable. The writer's fairly convincing conclusion is, essentially, that the film sexualizes war." Well, it wouldn't be the first time a director did that.

Posted by Philip Ewing at 10:18 AM | Permalink

Category: Moving Pictures

More In An Endless Stream Of Bad News For The MSM

It saddens us to bring you this story from today's top links, but we would be remiss if we did not: For newspapers, 2005 will be the worst year ever, like we say here on the web, as their advertising dollars and circulation dwindle. Fewer and fewer people are in the habit of reading physical newspapers these days, and more and more are in the habit of looking at their online versions or just gleaning news from a broad range of sites across the web. (Most intelligent readers, for example, now make daily visits to BlogPulse.) It's too soon to say what effects the slow death of newspapers is having on our democracy, but it's not too soon for bloggers to issue their reactions. "Who can be surprised? It will be just that much harder for the media to control what the population thinks," writes AffectingMyLife. Some are slightly more charitable: "But newspapers and online media should not be seen as competitors–they should be looked at in a sybiotic relationship. Bloggers need newspapers (because they get access and have the time to gather “facts”) and newspapers can benefit from bloggers–for story ideas, to keep them honest, and to know what smart people in their communities are thinking about," submits the Boi from Troy. Fair enough.

Posted by Philip Ewing at 11:40 AM | Permalink

Category: The Dead-Tree Scene

Get Willis On The Phone. It's For Real This Time.

Just so nobody tries to link our government's response to one natural disaster with its potential response to another, be sure you click on today's no. 26 top news story, which details NASA's plan for destroying an Earth-bound asteroid. As many people know, the asteroid 99942 Apophis, which has an orbit that will twice swing it precariously close to our planet over the next 40 or so years, is the second such threat our people have faced since 1998 — for details check out the Jerry Bruckheimer documentary "Armageddon", in which a squad of roughnecks-with-hearts-of-gold, led by Bruce Willis, flew on a daring suicide misison to an asteroid hurtling towards earth, drilled a nuclear bomb deep into its core, and destroyed the thing. 99942 Apophis is not nearly as big as the asteroid from "Armageddon," so NASA's plan for destroying it isn't nearly as cool (it would involve striking it with a gigantic copper slug to break it apart) but that's not enough for some bloggers: "I'd just like to know how one deflects a giant rock?" RandomLinkage replies: "Do not panic, Bruce Willis is on standby." Good. He's got experience with this sort of thing.

Posted by Philip Ewing at 10:20 AM | Permalink

Category: The vast electric lunchroom

Warning: For Mature Republicans Only. Seriously.

BlogPulse's no. 14 news story today will produce strong reactions across the board, so let's just get right to the heart of this thing: A lot of conservatives, including the indicited former vice presidential chief of staff Lewis "Scooter" Libby, write trashy, trashy sex books. In this piece from The New Yorker, reporter Lauren Collins takes us through copulative encounters as penned by Safire, Buckley, Erlichman and O'Reilly, all of which seem pretty tame compared to Libby, whose 1996 book "The Apprentice" involves deer, bears, and Japanese people. Collins calls these books by conservative operatives "an outlet for ideas that might not fly at, say, the National Prayer Breakfast." Uh, yeah. And if you thought these might stay isolated from politics, our response is ha ha, because you're in the blogosphere, Jack: at least one poster asks, "Can you say hypocrisy?" and writes: "Lucky this administration isn't getting indicted for sex. Only the Dems can be castigated for their sexual deviance. But the GOP is much better at it." Quite. Here's a different take, asked straightforwardly: "Does anyone else get the idea that perhaps the hyper-moralizing anti-sex positions of the Republicans might stem less from moral conviction than from a paralyzing fear of people realizing that they have no idea how it's supposed to work?" An interesting theory, but how might Newt Gingrich respond?

Posted by Philip Ewing at 10:08 AM | Permalink

Category: The Dead-Tree Scene