MeMo

February 20, 2008

MeMo unplugged

Evil Dwight here.

No, MeMo has not been fired. She's taking some well-earned, much-needed R&R; in a remote, undisclosed location, where there are no worries and not much online access, either.

Since several of you have been kind enough to express some concern, she asked me -- during one of the few moments when the stars aligned and the Internet cafe opened -- to assure you that she's not dead, just resting.

That is all. Carry on.

Posted by Dwight at 03:22 PM | Comments (1)

February 13, 2008

Hungry for HGH

I dunno. All this testimony is making me hungry for HGH. Man, that stuff sounds great, and you get six-pack abs, too! I'll take the three-liter bottle.

Meanwhile, want to see the cute thing in the whole world? Here: I heart this piglet.

Posted by Kyrie at 01:58 PM | Comments (6)

February 12, 2008

Another crack at David Shuster

Much thoughtful (and some not so thoughtful) commentary has been expended on L'affaire David Shuster.

I guess I want to revisit some of it, having digested an indecent amount of verbiage on this topic. The links herein are to some of the more telling pieces.

1. Is MSNBC a boys' club? I don't know. I'm just a viewer. I will say that Chris Matthews and the recently departed Don Imus, for all their strengths, set a creepy tone long before Imus took his bus over the cliff. So, for that matter, does my fake crush Keith Olbermann. I'm not sure I'd want to have any one of them in charge of my career.

2. That having been said, journalism is always a boys' club: hierarchical, macho, competitive -- and that's the nice part. Much has changed since, in my first newsroom, the men held up "ratings" for visiting women climbing the stairs, as if they were figure-skating judges. But not very much. I am somewhat inured to all but the worst of it, because that's the pond I've swum in.

3. Are the Clintons treated fairly by the media? Again, I don't know. They have such a complicated history that one can never be certain when they're being sincere and when they're being, well, Clintonish. I thought Sen. Clinton's New Hampshire tears were real, and maybe her ire in the Shuster case is, too. But they're undeniably manipulative at times. I just don't know which times.

4. I wish Chelsea Clinton herself had complained. She's too old to have Mommy make the call for her.

5. Some people have made the point that I'd be more irritated if any other family figure had had the phrase used against him or her. Really? The irrepressible Romney boys? Some words, used against some people, are either more or less damaging, depending on who the person is. We all know that. So?

6. All that having been said, I like discourse. I like ideas exchanged, intemperate things said, people pushing the edge. That's when you learn things and decide what you yourself think. That's why I sometimes watch even the loathsome Tucker Carlson, to whom even I want to give a wedgie. It's interesting. They could sure as hell use a couple more women in that boys' club, but I'll still peek in the window.

Posted by Kyrie at 03:09 PM | Comments (13)

Color them stupid, too.

As you know, one of my pet peeves is
pink for girls and blue for boys -- and now a study says that shibboleth actually dates from the post WWII era.

There's a cute scene in Juno in which the Jason Bateman character muses about the specious choice of yellow as the "neutral" color for every as-yet-unsexed baby-to-be. No guy ever picked yellow, he says. Is that true?

Oh, here's another myth: that Americans are the only participants in the rapidly emerging Idiocracy. Here is a survey saying one quarter of all Brits surveyed believe Winston Churchill and King Richard the Lionhearted to be mythical characters.

The survey found that 47 per cent thought the 12th Century English King Richard the Lionheart was a myth.

And 23 per cent thought World War II prime minister Winston Churchill was made up.

The same percentage thought Crimean War nurse Florence Nightingale did not actually exist.

Three per cent thought Charles Dickens, one of Britain's most famous writers, is a work of fiction himself.

Indian political leader Mahatma Gandhi and Battle of Waterloo victor the Duke of Wellington were also in the top 10 of people thought to be myths.

Meanwhile, 58 per cent thought Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's fictional detective Sherlock Holmes actually existed.

Glad they're still in the Coalition of the Willing Stupid!

Meanwhile, this Variety article is the most comprehensive I've seen in telling the fates of TV shows in hiatus owing to the writers' strike.

Bottom line, for me: No Heroes until fall, but a chance at a third season of Friday Night Lights.

Posted by Kyrie at 01:49 PM | Comments (5)

February 11, 2008

Free David Shuster

I gave this idea to my semi-friend Frenemy Mcadu, but I can use it too.

Free David Shuster.

By now you may have heard that last week one of my favorite political reporters, David Shuster of MSNBC -- who always had an interesting perspective and a fast wit -- got taken down, suspended indefinitely, for a perhaps too-free use of a common idiom.

Shuster, on an MSNBC talk show, asked a guest if Chelsea Clinton was being inappropriately "pimped out" by her mother's campaign to do phone-calling to gather delegates.

Here is video of Barbara Walters saying almost what I might say -- except I'm not sure I'd do more than a mild apology.

The Clintons have come down on MSNBC like a ton o' bricks, threatening to pull debates, among other things.

They are Sister Souljah-ing David Shuster, a fine reporter who doesn't deserve to get hit with the Clinton bus for the Clintons' own oblique purposes.

Now, my life is so sorry and I've spent so much time in hotel rooms recently that I saw the incident live. It was nothing. Nada. There was me and 12 other people in hotel rooms watching.

And it's generational. I guarantee you Chelsea Clinton, who is a big grown-up 28, for cry-eye, not 12, was not offended. I bet she's used the P-word for 10 years. It no longer has a sexual context to a new group of users. It means "using for gain" or "using inappropriately", not, you know, pimping.

That's so Clinton, to take down a reasonable person trying to do his job in order to gain false sympathy for themselves. The Clintons have more verbal gaffes between them than you and I have vocab words. But why should they be kind or understanding?

But I have to say I appreciate it, because it means I have only three or four people now to choose from in the presidential stakes, not four or five.

Posted by Kyrie at 02:58 PM | Comments (12)

Was it plane lust or a serious affair? Read and see

You will have to forgive me for not paying attention to anything at all, but I have been watching http://www.amctv.com/originals/madmen/Mad Men.

I missed almost all of the first season of Mad Men on AMC, but I downloaded it onto my laptop and, frankly, haven't been the same person since. I began watching Mad Men on a plane, initially. At first I thought maybe it was a case of plane lust, that passion you get for anything -- a book, a magazine, a movie -- that can take you out of yourself and stop you from confronting the reality that the man in front of you has tilted his seat all the way back in such a way that by the laws of several countries it constitutes common-law marriage.

But it wasn't plane lust. Upon landing, I also watched it during meals, before bed and -- most disturbingly -- while I was watching TV. This is upsetting even by MeMo standards. Small screen, meet big screen. Coexist.

Anyway, Mad Men is like the best thing evah. If you have any affiliation with 1960, when it takes place, you will be awed by how precisely and lovingly it reconstructs every detail, not only physical but sociological. There's a scene where a dad, at a kid's birthday party, slaps a kid in the face -- and it's not his kid. Then, that was normal. Today, that gets you breakfast on the county.

Oh, and there's Jon Hamm and January Jones, two human beings so attractive I feel compelled to personally volunteer not to be in the same species.

And you know what Hamm gets exactly right? In 1960, the men had haunted eyes.

Posted by Kyrie at 01:27 PM | Comments (6)

February 07, 2008

Dave the dog takes a taxpayer-funded trip

So now I'm in Phoenix! They tell me the Super Bowl here was last week, but I think if I ask enough people nicely we can have a rematch, maybe tomorrow. This time it'll come out right.

I'd tell you how my poor cat is, but I don't strictly know. Via phone, the BARC people say he's OK, but I'll believe it when I see it. For the record, the kittens are indoor animals, but this big cat knows how to work the dog door, so really, tell me how I'm supposed to keep him in. (I'm not getting rid of the dog door, not with my work schedule.)

This is my fave story o' the day:

VP's Pooch Gets Presidential Escort To Vet

WASHINGTON -- A motorcade caused its expected commotion in northwest D.C. Wednesday afternoon, speeding down a street and stopping traffic, but it wasn't for a politician or a dignitary. It was for the vice president's dog.

At about 4 p.m., the motorcade -- complete with Secret Service, motorcycles and two limousines -- was escorting Dick Cheney and one of his two dogs -- the 10-year-old yellow Lab, Dave -- to Friendship Hospital for Animals, News4's Jackie Bensen reported.

Cheney and his dog were escorted into the hospital through a garage entrance, and Secret Service agents filled the waiting area.

People were allowed to come and go at the hospital, and the street was not closed.

The vice president's office confirmed it was a routine trip to the vet for Dave.

There's video of it, too. Dave is a weird name for a dog.

Posted by Kyrie at 04:19 PM | Comments (11)