The election of the first United States president of African descent signals the start of a new day. This is a primarily a political blog with occasional forays into celebrities and other types of feature stories.
Sunday, November 16, 2008
Remembering the 2008 Elections: The Last Word
A Newly-Minted Celebrity Whose 15 Minutes of Fame Should End Now That the Elections are Over
Joe Wurzelbacher a.k.a. Joe the Plumber
Best Response to Sarah Palin Giving Simultaneous Interviews to the Television Networks One Week After the Elections Ended
This online petition calling on Sarah Palin to STFU and go back to Alaska.
On that note, I like to say that I'm going to take a several weeks off from this blog. This Tuesday (November 18, 2008) I'm undergoing a hip replacement and I have a few weeks of rehab ahead of me. I will probably return sometime in January just in time for the Inauguration.
Best Attempt to Comfort a Conservative's Fears of an Obama Administration
Jon Stewart tries to mollify Bill O'Reilly's fears of an Obama Administration with hot cocoa and a stuffed teddy bear that Bill O'Reilly keeps on calling a "panda bear".
Best Graphics of the Elections
Shepard Fairey designed the now-iconic Obama "Hope" picture.
...which inspired this parody.
When John McCain first selected the much younger Sarah Palin as his running mate, this McCain/Palin parody graphic featuring the late Anna Nicole Smith and her ninety-something second husband J. Howard Marshall began making its rounds throughout the Internet.
A Simpsons-inspired take on the same theme started to circulate.
When Sarah Palin made the following quote in an interview, this graphic also made its rounds through the Internet: "As Putin rears his head and comes into the air space of the United States of America, where do they go? It's Alaska."
Ron Howard did this nostalgia-tnged video urging people to vote. He not only revisited two television series that he became famous for (The Andy Griffith Show and Happy Days) but he also got two of his former co-stars, Andy Griffith and Henry Winkler, to appear as well.
Saturday Night Live hit its stride this election season with frequent skewering of the politicians. Its new creative peak started off during the primary campaign season when the Obama Girl parlayed her Internet fame into an appearance on Saturday Night Live.
Then Amy Poehler as HIllary Clinton appears alongside the real Hillary Clinton.
When Sarah Palin first came on the national scene, many people felt that she resembled Tina Fey, who had recently left the cast of Saturday Night Live. Well, in a genius stroke of casting, Tina Fey was allowed to return to the show playing only one character: Sarah Palin. Thanks to her, the writers, and the election itself (which provided plenty of fodder for satire) the show had its best ratings in years.
Tina Fey's first appearance as Palin came when she appeared alongside Amy Pohler as Hillary Clinton in this hilarious sketch.
The following week Fey and Pohler teamed up again to provide this scathing parody of Sarah Palin's disasterous interview with CBS' Katie Couric. Ironically, Tina Fey basically recited word-by-word Palin's actual words in that interview while doing the occasional over-the-top comic punctuation.
Queen Latifah makes a special guest appearance as moderator Gwen Ifill in this parody of the vice president debate.
President Bush endorses John McCain and Sarah Palin.
The real Sarah Palin meets her doppelganger...
...then makes an appearance on "Weekend Update".
The real John McCain also makes an appearance on the show with Tina Fey portraying his running mate.
Like his running mate before him, John McCain also makes an appearance on "Weekend Update".
The real Sarah Palin makes a return appearance on Saturday Night Live where she talks about what she will do to NBC when she gets sworn in as Vice President.
John McCain also makes a return appearance.
Not to be overlooked, Barack Obama also makes an appearance on the show as he attends the Clintons' Halloween party.
Then there is the scathing parody of MSNBC's Keith Olbermann (played by Ben Affleck) who starts off by trying to portray George W. Bush as a Nazi and ends the sketch by making a special comment against the New York co-op who denied his application on the basis of his cat, Miss Precious Perfect.
The Obama Supporters That Gave the Barack Obama Campaign a Bad Name
In the name of fairness, here is the only two incidents that I can find involving a few Obama supporters that were just as bad as the actions of some of McCain's supporters. First there was a Daily Kos blogger who made this post claiming that Sarah Palin's 17-year-old daughter, Bristol, is really the biological mother of Sarah's infant son, Trig. The original entry has since been deleted but a YouTube video about the rumor still remains.
Most of the evidence supporting this rumor was circumstantial at best and it seemed so unseemly to be gossiping about two minors (a 17-year-old and an infant) who aren't child stars and who didn't choose to be in the public spotlight. It seemed like it was unfair ganging up on two minors because of who their mother is. Things really went crazy when Sarah Palin issued a public statement that not only denied the rumor but added the information that Bristol is pregnant and she plans on having her baby and marrying her baby's 18-year-old father.
The Obama supporters pretty much left Bristol Palin alone after Barack Obama issued a statement saying that he had no intention of making an issue out of Bristol's pregnancy. However, that hasn't stopped gossip websites from trying to learn anything new about Bristol Palin, whose baby is due sometime this winter.
There is one other ugly incident involving an Obama supporter that I could find that comes close to rivaling the excesses of some of John McCain supporters. Wait until Keith Olbermann gets to the #1 Worst Person in the World to see the story of Chad Michael Morrisette, a guy whose Halloween decorations included a Sarah Palin dummy being hung by a noose and a John McCain dummy that looks like he's on fire in the chimney.
The McCain Supporters That Gave John McCain's Campaign a Bad Name
McCain supporters act like a bunch of right-wing war-loving racist rednecks during a rally in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania on October 8, 2008.
The supporters at a Sarah Palin rally in Richmond, Virginia are simiarly scary.
A supporter yells "Obama bin Ladin" at a rally while Sarah Palin kept on speaking about Barack Obama.
Then there is the supporter who yell out the "N" word while Sarah Palin kept on speaking and said nothing about it.
Supporters yell out "Terrorist!" and "Kill Him!" when John McCain speaks about Barack Obama
The frequent emphasis of the campaign that there is a "real" America located in the rural areas of the so-called Red States that are majority white has led to some supporters to spread this idea that there is only one "real" America and make their own YouTube videos like this one.
Rev. Arnold Conrad, a pastor at a McCain rally, prays that God must ensure a McCain win because other people are praying to their God and if McCain loses then God's reputation will be ruined and someone else's God will prevail.
On top of all that is Ashley Todd, a John McCain campaign volunteer who claimed that a big black male Barack Obama supporter attacked her at an ATM machine in an attempted robbery and branded a letter "B" on her face when her attacker saw a John McCain bumpersticker on her car. The big problems with her story are that the letter "B" was written backwards (which suggested that Todd wrote the "B" herself while facing a mirror) and the camera at the ATM machine where she said she was attacked didn't show any images of her taken on the night that she said she was attacked. Ashley Todd finally admitted that she made the whole story up and she also said that she has a history of mental problems.
But the McCain supporter who really takes the grand prize of "The Worst Supporter Who Gave the McCain Campaign a Bad Name" is Shirley Nagel, who, on Halloween night, refused to hand out candy to any trick or treaters whose parents supported Barack Obama. That's right, she took out her disdain of Obama on innocent children, some of whom were way too young to understand anything about the presidential election or even current events.
John Cleese speaks out on Sarah Palin by saying that she could've been a character in a Monty Python sketch. He also said that his former Monty Python cohort Michael Palin is no longer the funniest Palin.
Worst Expression of Admiration for Sarah Palin
Rich Lowry made this notorious post on the National Review Online about Sarah Palin's performance at the vice president debate is enough to make even the most devoted Sarah Palin fan feel grossed out after reading it. Here's the juicy quote:
A very wise TV executive once told me that the key to TV is projecting through the screen. It's one of the keys to the success of, say, a Bill O'Reilly, who comes through the screen and grabs you by the throat. Palin too projects through the screen like crazy. I'm sure I'm not the only male in America who, when Palin dropped her first wink, sat up a little straighter on the couch and said, "Hey, I think she just winked at me." And her smile. By the end, when she clearly knew she was doing well, it was so sparkling it was almost mesmerizing. It sent little starbursts through the screen and ricocheting around the living rooms of America. This is a quality that can't be learned; it's either something you have or you don't, and man, she's got it.
Keith Olbermann does the best and most appropriate reading of the above quote in this video.
After a segment with NBC's Chuck Todd ended, Republican consultant Mike Murphy and Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan were caught on a live mike expressing their true opinions about Sarah Palin.
Larry Flynt, the publisher of Hustler magazine, came out with a porn movie titled Nalin' Palin starring a woman who looked a lot like Sarah Palin.
Worst Publicity Stunt
John McCain announced that he was temporarily suspending his campaign to help deal with the financial crisis and called on Barack Obama to do the same. This publicity stunt proved embarrasing when McCain canceled his appearance on David Letterman's show at the last minute on the grounds that he had to fly back to DC to vote when, instead, he actually appeared on The CBS Evening News, which is shot in the same building as Letterman's show. Letterman had his revenge when he turned his cameras to the feed from The CBS Evening News that showed John McCain being prepared for his interview with Katie Couric at the same time that Letterman's show was being taped.
Here is Sarah Palin's infamous speech at the Republican National Convention where she disses community organizers and makes that joke about the difference between a hockey mom and a pitbull. (The answer: lipstick.)
Here is the notorious CBS interview that Sarah Palin did with Katie Couric where she performed very badly.
During the campaign it was revealed that Sarah Palin attended an Assembly of God church whose pastor once fought against witches and witchcraft in Kenya. Then this video surfaced that shows the pastor praying over Sarah Palin for her political victory and to protect her from witchcraft. Yes, witchcraft!
Sarah Palin thinks that being Vice President means that the person is in charge of the U.S. Senate, contrary to what is said in the U.S. Constitution.
Sarah Palin speaks in front of a friendly audience at a campaign rally and she describes a domestic energy policy that sounds totally convoluted to the average person.
Sarah Palin thinks that New Hampshire is located in the Northwest.
Sarah Palin describes a "real America" and the "pro-America" areas, which are basically small rural towns.
Sarah Palin disses the idea of doing basic scientific research using fruit flies because "they have little or nothing to do with the public good." As Adam Rutherford, writing in The Guardian, explains in this article: "Why do we study this particular irritating fly for humankind's benefit? Well, because we can. Many of the pathways from gene to disease in humans can be easily reproduced in flies, or are similar enough to be incredibly useful models for understanding how diseases evolve. That's how we learn to treat them."
Here's a video that provides evidence that what she said in her campaign speeches were totally bogus (such as her claim--later proven untrue--that she opposed the infamous Bridge to Nowhere by telling Congress "thanks, but no thanks").
But the biggest Palin misstep is the one where she falls for a prank phone call by two Montreal deejays, one of whom was pretending to be French President Nicholas Sarkozy. The best part comes when the fake Sarkozy said that he really loved her documentary Nalin' Palin (which is really the title of a porn movie starring a Sarah Palin lookalike that was produced by Larry Flynt of Hustler magazine fame).
John McCain sings The Beach Boys' "Barbara Ann" using the lyrics "Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran".
John McCain couldn't remember how many houses he owns.
During the last presidential debate, John McCain kept on bringing up Joe the Plumber, a man who encountered Barack Obama during one of his campaign stops expressing his concern that Barack Obama's plan for taxing people making over $250,000 a year would hinder his efforts to purchase the company where he currently worked as a plumber.
McCain's frequent references made Joe Wurzelbacher into an instant celebrity until the media did some digging and found that Wurzelbacher didn't have a plumbing license, was nowhere near purchasing any plumbing business, may not have paid some of his taxes, and he may have even spent some time on welfare in the past despite the fact that he said that he didn't like the government providing money to people without working for it.
Barack Obama was pretty sharp in responding quickly to the negative campaign ads directed against him compared with John Kerry doing very little to respond to the attack ads against him that were put out by the so-called "Swift Boat Veterans for the Truth" in 2004. But a certain celebrity who is usually depicted in the media as an airhead is the one who had the best response to one of John McCain's negative campaign ads. Here is the infamous negative campaign ad, which spliced in images of Britney Spears and Paris Hilton to imply that Barack Obama is just another vacuous celebrity.
That ad inflamed Paris Hilton's parents, Kathy and Rick, because, ironically, they made a donation to the McCain campaign a few weeks before the ad was made. But it was Paris Hilton who got the last laugh, as shown in this video.
Best Line Uttered by a Politician During a Presidential Debate
During the Democratic primary season, Senator (now Vice President-Elect) Joe Biden made this quip explaining how former New York mayor-turned Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani was so unqualified to be president that his campaign consists of "a noun, a verb, and 9/11".
The Hillary Clinton nutcracker. Yes, you actually place the nut between her legs. All you need is the Bill Clinton corkscrew and you'll have the complete tacky set.
Next Tuesday I will undergo hip replacement surgery on my left hip. (Basically I was born with a dislocated hip. The doctors fixed it while I was an infant and there are baby photos of me with a big cast on my leg. When I was 12, I sprained that same hip in a roller skating accident. I recuperated nicely and things were fine for the next few decades until last year when people around me noticed I was limping. My left hip became increasingly stiff and the orthopedic specialist said that a hip replacement is my only option.) Right now Barack Obama is busy selecting his cabinet and most people in the U.S. are preparing for Thanksgiving and the major December holidays. So things will be basically quiet.
On that note, I think it's a fine time to take a look back at the recent elections to praise or laugh at some of the bizarre things that went on. Now that the U.S. has picked a new president, we can now look back at these events with a more lighthearted sense of humor than before.
