Which liberals would give Obama a run for his money in a primary? Scroll forward for NRO’s top picks . . .
Anthony K. “Van” Jones: America needs the Van with the plan.
Hillary Clinton: It’s 3 a.m. in America.
Howard Dean: Obama’s presidency is enough to make a man scream.
Rahm Emanuel: A crisis is a terrible thing to waste.
Jimmy Carter: Why go lite when you can have the real thing?
Josiah Bartlet: Liberals prefer fiction.
Keith Olbermann: Here’s the outrage.
Matt Damon: He can recite his lines without a teleprompter.
Paul Krugman: He’ll give us what we need — good and hard.
The Barack Obama of 2008: That guy was awesome.
Three Martini Lunch
Rubio’s Eloquent Debt Warning11:32
Geraghty & Corombos08/04 11:51 A.M.
Cartoon of the Day
Capt. America ’11
Michael Ramirez08/04 4:00 A.M.
On Video
Rep. Joe Walsh: Hey Obama, I’m No Terrorist2:48
On Video
Bachmann Pitches from Ames0:30
Slideshow
Happy Birthday, MTV
MTV has been a major influence on popular culture — for good and for ill — for three decades. Here’s a quick tour of how the music channel has evolved over the past 30 years.
MTV’s format is designed and its launch shepherded by Warner-Amex Sattelite Communications executive Robert Pittman.
The Beatles’ 1964 film A Hard Day’s Night is said to be one of the earliest inspirations for the concept of the music video.
On Aug. 1, 1981, at 12:01 A.M., MTV officially begins broadcasting with the words “Ladies and gentlemen, rock and roll,” spoken over a pastiche of footage from the Apollo 11 landing.
Appropriately enough, “Video Killed the Radio Star” by the one-hit wonders The Buggles, becomes the first video played on the station.
Less widely known is the second ever video played by the station: Pat Benatar’s “You Better Run.”
The stations original lineup of video jockeys, or “VJs”, includes Nina Blackwood, Mark Goodman, Alan Hunter, J. J. Jackson, and Martha Quinn..
MTV is criticized by the likes of CBS and Rick James for its dearth of black artists, which execs claim is due to its rock-centric format.
In 1983, Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean” becomes the first video by a black artist to make a major impact on the station.
In 1986, MTV premieres 120 Minutes to feature low-rotation “alternative music.” The show will run until 2003.
On Aug. 1, 1987, Dire Straits’ “Money for Nothing”, which features Sting repeating the line “I want my MTV”, becomes the first video played on MTV Europe.
Following the smash success of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” in 1991, MTV enters its full-on Alternative phase, putting artists like Pearl Jam and Smashing Pumpkins in heavy rotation.
In 1993, MTV introduces the world to Beavis and Butthead, a dim-witted pair of teenage nihilists. Frequent references to pyromania are removed after the show is blamed for a five-year-old burning down his family’s house.
By the late 90s, Britney Spears and the “boy bands” reign at MTV. Total Request Live, a teeny-bopper countdown show hosted by Carson Daly, becomes a new generation’s American Banstand.
From 2000 to 2002, MTV airs Jackass, which showcases low-rent daredevils engaged in various acts of sado-masochistic stupidity. It features a legal disclaimer.
Beginning with 1992’s debut of The Real World, MTV meets success with the young “reality show” format. Such programs will eventually eclipse music videos altogether.
In 2005, the Parents Television Council releases a report entitled MTV Smut Peddlers. PTC president L. Brent Bozell III decries the channel’s “incessant sleaze.”
The Jersey Shore premieres in 2009 and becomes the channel’s signature program. It follows the exploits of a band of shallow, narcissistic, promiscuous, and frequently inebriated 20-somethings.
In 2010, Real World alum Sean Duffy is elected to Congress as a Wisconsin Republican. Duffy met his wife Rachel Campos-Duffy on an MTV reality show in 1998.
At 30, MTV operates dozens of channels across the world, from Israel to Indonesia, Pakistan to Turkey, the Ukraine to sub-Saharan Africa.
President Obama links GOPers and hostage takers: “I think it’s tempting not to negotiate with hostage takers, unless the hostage gets harmed.”
Sen. Harry Reid laments, “[It’s] hard for me to understand why [Republicans are] so fixated on destroying our government, our economy.”
Rep. Nancy Pelosi warns that Republicans “want to destroy your rights” and “undermine government.”
Rep. Mike Doyle complains that Republicans “have no compunction about blowing up the economy to get what they want.”
Vice President Biden says tea-party Republicans acted “like terrorists” during the debt-limit negotiations.
Rep. Luis Gutierrez calls tea partiers “arsonists” and denounces their “slash and burn lunacy.”
Rep. Emanuel Cleaver calls the debt deal “a Satan sandwich, there’s no question about it.”
Sen. Bernie Sanders takes to the Senate floor to declare the debt deal “immoral, grotesque, unfair.”
LOW POINTS OF THE DEBATE
On Video
Matthews Amazingly Still Blames Bush!0:36
Slideshow
From the Creator of Blacky McBlackman . . .
Bill Maher recently accused tea partiers of not caring about spending until “Blacky McBlackman” became president. Scroll forward for more gems from the Real Time host.
In 2007, Maher said of Vice President Dick Cheney: “I’m just saying if he did die, other people, more people would live. That’s a fact.”
The next year, Maher accused the pope of being a former Nazi and called the Catholic Church “the Bear Stearns of organized pedophilia.”
In March 2011, Maher called former governor Sarah Palin a “dumb tw**.”
Of Bristol Palin, Maher joked, “The s**t doesn’t fall far from the bat.”
Of the Republican presidential field, Maher joked, “If Bachmann and Palin get in, that’s two bimbos.”
During Weinergate, Maher commented, “”We are a childish country and if somebody has their peepee in the news, then it’s going to be a top story for a lot of people.”
In June 2011, Maher compared the Casey Anthony–trial jury with the GOP: “It is pathetically clear who’s killing the middle class, but you keep letting them get away with murder.”
In July, Maher commented that Palin was “a bully who sells patriotism like a pimp, and the leader of a strange family of inbred weirdos straight out of The Hills Have Eyes.”
After 9/11, Maher ridiculed the argument that the hijackers were cowards, saying, “We have been the cowards, lobbing cruise missiles from two thousand miles away.”
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