Oh, what? You thought blindness would be an effective antidote to the old "wandering eye" problem? Wrong! Being blind just means crap taste in hotels. But here's the part we don't get: why, after you've been illicitly screwing some broad at the 94th street Days Inn do you take your wife back there? And what's more highbrow, Days Inn for a blind man in New York, or T.G.I. Friday's for a closeted gay and his orgy club in New Jersey? Is any of this as highbrow as getting called "guido" by the Jersey shore posse of Ashley Alexandra Dupre? Glamocracy's Megan Carpentier and I discuss all this, Obama's mystery brother in RED CHINA, and how the unprecedented JP Morgan-Bear Stearns-Fed bailout came together because the JP Morgan investment banking chief and the new Bear Stearns CEO were frat brothers at Duke. Oh yeah, and Obama is about to address the subject of his insane pastor who thinks white people control everything. That's happening now! Liveblog it, folks!

MEGAN: So, apparently, fidelity is just a big fat lie for everyone now.

MOE: It's biology!
Don't you love political sex scandal-pegged science stories?

MEGAN: Best pun by a scientist ever: "Infants have their infancy; adults, adultery."
But can we have a moment of silence for the end of my nascent crush on brand new NY Governor David Paterson?

MOE: Did you like the detail about how he took the mistress to Day's Inn, but he's also taken his wife to the same Day's Inn? Here she is. Isn't she a beauty? Though to be fair, I've stayed in places about four diamond ratings beneath that place in this town. And I have, like, 20/30 vision.

MEGAN: Like, ok, this I need to understand. Why if he and his wife live in Harlem, did he take her to the Days Inn to fuck her? Like, that's about 30 blocks from the Harlem line, right? So it's not even very far.

Like, I can totally see taking your mistress there, but your wife?

MOE: Yeah I lived in Harlem. That's like a two and a half mile walk and I lived up at 149th.
I bet the fuckin marriage counselor recommended it.

MEGAN: Oh, God, you're so totally right. Men are creatures of habit. He was probably like, I had a ton of great sex in that hotel, I'll just go back there! Rather than, like, shelling out for the W or something.
David, I have seen your wife. She deserved some high thread count sheets and strawberries and champagne from room service, I'm just sayin'.

MOE: I bet you can get "room service" from that hotel. It just comes from the local diner and they will totally mess up your order but as a plus they'll charge you $7.95, no matter what you got. I wonder if the Day's Inn is one of those hotels where there is a microwave in every room and free microwave popcorn with an advertisement for a Grey Line Bus tour on the packaging.

Soooooo...should we talk about Pastor KKKRazy?

MEGAN: Ah, The Reverend Not-Wright

MOE: The Reverend Wright wing conspiracy!
According to Fox News, he's sorta like Hitler.
Hitler did some great things1

MEGAN: Well, he does have a 'stache, I guess that seals it. I mean, except for the whole part where he's black and stuff.

MOE: He fixed the economy!

MEGAN: By starting a war!

MOE: Yeah well! Nicer guys have tried that and failed!

MEGAN: Well, several years into Hitler's war the economy in Germany tanked, too. Apparently, it's not that great for the economy unless you win and stuff.

MOE: So anyway, Obama is supposed to address the problem of the pastor who changed his life being some sort of Stalinist Che Guevara Islamofascist black supremacist firebrand and it's happening this morning at the Constitution Center in Philadelphia, which is only about two blocks away from my old apartment (sigh!) and I hope they air it on Fox News because, for one, the sound isn't working on any of my other news channels and two, I love Fox News. They just interviewed Mr. Feeley from Mr. Roger's Neighborhood. Can you IMAGINE naming a character on a kid's show "Mr. Feeley" now? No! It's unthinkable! Anyway, let's really get into the Pastor Wright thing. I feel like no one in the media has a real opinion about this guy because everyone has had at least one boyfriend who has made more ridiculous utterances and, you know, it's not like Obama touched dicks with this dude. On the other hand, he's supposed to be some sort of spiritual adviser. But, like, "spiritual adviser" — what do any of us know about that? So we're all circling around one another, trying to figure out whether anyone cares, whether this is going to totally sink his campaign or just fly over their heads and... and...I still don't know what I think.

In other news, Obama has a black Chinese math nerd brother by another mother. Maybe if the Dalai Lama steps down the Chinese government can make him the official reincarnated Dalai Lama.

MEGAN: Well, CNN keeps running the clip where he says that Hillary Clinton doesn't know what it's like to be a black man in a country run by rich white people and I'm sort of failing to see that as being controversial. Are we arguing that the country isn't run by rich white people? The median income in this country is less than $45,000 a year and Congressmembers make more than $150,000 and the President makes more than $200,000.
Well, but the Dalai Lama would still be the Dalai Lama, only he just wouldn't be the political-leader-in-exile anymore.
MOE: No but he's apparently going to step down from his exiled title if the violence doesn't stop.
I'm not sure what the succession plan is but I would really love it if it involved an Obama.

MEGAN: That would be too much for me to handle in the morning.
MOE: I do love how Roger Cohen paints the picture of this guy as a "potential problem" for Obama. Because the Clinton clan is full of such upstanding citizens.

MEGAN: Lovely people, even.

MOE: Anyway, so...what is the worst thing this guy Wright has said anyway? "God Damn America" or that the government created AIDS? Did you ever date one of those guys who told you crack cocaine was invented in a CIA lab? Because I have. And this was before Wikipedia, so I finally had to Nexis the fucking story and all the ensuing retractions to shut him the hell up. Not that I really felt like defending the CIA! But the thing is, it took a lot of time for me to get it up to want to refute any of the retarded things he said, even though I loved him, and I sort of feel like that must be Obama's thing, like...blah blah blah. Anyway, as it turns out it doesn't seem like Obama spent that much time in church anyway.

MEGAN: Oh, but he used to say he went every week! I can't say that I dated a guy who thought crack cocaine was a CIA plot against white people (although, hello? FBI would've made more sense conspiracy theorists) but I've definitely heard it and it totally still holds sway among many people in this country. And, hell, fucking South African President Thabo Mbeki thinks we hatched AIDS to keep Africans from breeding and shit, so, you know, apparently it's pretty widely believed that we're coordinated and shit.

MOE: Oh man I just rewound my Fox and they were interviewing that black republican ex Lt Governor of Maryland and he was talking about how a "spiritual adviser" is a really important force in your life, he knows because he used to be in a monastery. Um, was Barack Obama in a monastery? Because I don't remember that part. It's like his Chinese African brother! (Oh my god, Chinese African! Do you think he is involved in Sudanese blood oil??) Anyway, whatevs! I'm about to change the subject. Can you handle this?
I actually read almost the entire account of the Week That Shook Wall Street and I have a takeaway.
MEGAN: Wow, no wonder we got started late. That's longer than Crappy Hour itself!

MOE:

Chief Executive Officer Alan Schwartz was out of pocket. Although Bear Stearns had been struggling with mortgage-related losses and problems in its wealth-management unit, Mr. Schwartz was hosting a Bear Stearns media conference in Palm Beach, Fla. On Wednesday morning, he left the conference briefly to do an interview with CNBC in an effort to deflect rumors about liquidity issues at the firm.

Steve Black, co-head of J.P. Morgan's investment bank, returned early from vacation in the Caribbean, spearheading the bank's efforts with his J.P. Morgan counterpart in London, Bill Winters. Mr. Black's role was pivotal. He was a longtime associate of J.P. Morgan Chief Executive James Dimon. And Mr. Black had a long relationship with Bear's CEO, Mr. Schwartz, dating back to the 1970s, when the two were fraternity brothers at Duke University.

Okay, so we've got two paragraphs. Palm Beach. Media conference. Media companies paying New York-based media employees to stay in Palm Beach and eat Bear Stearns-financed weak hotel coffee and fruit plates and report on what New York-based Bear Stearns has to say to the public! And what are they saying on Wednesday in Palm Beach? Oh, they're "deflecting" liquidity rumors. All right, fast foward, Friday. In the Caribbean. A much deserved vacation! Fraternity brothers at Duke University.

At 5 a.m. Friday, Mr. Geithner, Mr. Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, calling in from home, joined a conference call to debate whether Bear should be allowed to fail or whether the Fed should lend it enough money to get through the weekend. At 7 a.m. they settled on the lifeline option.

Would it have been so bad to just let this shit fail? You know, and let the MARKET SORT IT OUT?
MEGAN: Why did we decided that they shouldn't be allowed to fail? What fraternity were they in... and WHAT FRATERNITY WAS BERNANKE IN? Maybe it's a faux-Greek cabal on Wall Street.
MOE: Don't they only have, like, finals clubs at Harvard? I don't know. I dropped out. Fuck Harvard. To Ben's credit, he "worked as a waiter" throughout college. This was in the seventies, when food service positions were not so highly coveted.
MEGAN: Food service positions at Harvard (or anywhere) are definitely still not highly coveted. I drove the drunk truck at my college to get out of working food service.
But I don't know about Greek at Harvard.