• That compromise bailout plan intended to save the economy? Yeah, it failed. [Washington Post]
• The Dow proceeded to drop 778 points, the largest one-day loss in nearly 2 decades. Many people just kissed their asses and life savings goodbye. [Washington Post]
• Republicans blame Nancy Pelosi for giving an offensive speech before the vote, which included partisan remarks like recognizing that Bush inherited surpluses and now the economy sucks. [Politico, Swampland]
• Barney Frank responded to those criticisms thusly: "Because somebody hurt their feelings, they decide to punish the country." Fucking crybabies. [Huffington Post]

• McCain economic adviser Douglas Holtz-Eakin blamed Democrats for preventing his boss from saving this great nation. Even my mom rolled her eyes at that shit. [Talking Points Memo]
• Others think that if McCain was so willing to take credit for the bailout yesterday, he should grow a pair and take credit for the failure today. My mom wiped tears from her eyes when she was done laughing at that one. [Marc Ambinder]
• Sarah Palin is looking forward to winning the debate because Joe Biden rooted for his home state football team, thus continuing her streak of WTF comments. [NY Times]
• The new Sarah Palin interview clips that will be on today and tomorrow on CBS are from Palin's second, brand-new interview with Katie Couric. Apparently, the fun can continue. [LA Times]

MOE: Morning boo! Time to get onerous?
MEGAN: Maybe ponderous?
MOE: I was checking Drudge last night on the way to a bar and there was this bizarre bunch of headlines as to Obama's 5 a.m. Western Wall visit and I thought, damn, that is early for the hecklers to be waiting.
MEGAN: Yeah, I don't heckle anyone before 10:30 at least. Luckily the Germans have the Obamania, so I don't expect too many hecklers there.
MEGAN: We should probably take a moment to defend our Attackerman on his reporting on how McCain fucked up when he said the Surge predated the Anbar Awakening, because Joe Scarborough accuses him and other bloggers of eating Cheetos while frantically Googling to play gotcha. Because I have never once seen him eat or heard about Spencer eating Cheetos, and I'm pretty sure he knew about the timing without having to Google since it's his job to know shit like that, being a national security reporter and all. It ought to also be McCain's job — or McCain's policy staff's job — to not just make shit up that isn't true.
MOE: That is hilarious. You name your whole show after a popular morning beverage and you get on us for eating extruded snack food? Speaking of which my own Awakening here has yet to be followed by my morning joe so I am a little slow. Do you think CBS was seriously trying to cover up McCain's ignorance though? Or are the video editors basically, half-Awake themselves?
MEGAN: Yeah, um, I haven't had any caffeine either because I needed to hydrate first this morning... I mean, I don't know if CBS did it to cover up what they knew was a wrong answer, or because someone on McCain's staff knew it was wrong, but why would you splice in an answer he gave to another questions completely randomly?
So, yes, personally, I think it was deliberate. I don't think you do it at that moment, for that question, for that answer, if it's not deliberate.
MOE: They were like "oh god this McCain senility thing has gotten too fucking hard to watch" or whatever?
MEGAN: This is why I wonder if it wasn't a quiet word from someone within the McCain camp, someone who realized the size of the gaffe and asked nicely or not-so-nicely and CBS complied. Because that's what I'd do if I worked for McCain.
CBS is saying that they "edited it for time,", which totally doesn't explain anything.
MEGAN: Anyway, so, onto other things, Nas rapped on Colbert last night, which he was on to promote his petition against racism Fox News and looking, dare I say, fucking hot as shit.
MOE: Well speaking of Subtle Mainstream Media Tricks To Save Politicians From Themselves That Are Completely Ineffective, John Edwards and Rielle: why make the story of the day "Why The Mainstream Media Is Ignoring This Urgent Sex Scandal" when you could just, like, run a bunch of stories saying the National Enquirer seems to have stalked John Edwards and boy, what a shameless douchebag! (They would probably spell it "douche bag.") Because my future colleague over at Gawker has a point here, even if the "Constitutionally Protected jobs" thing is an unbelievably warped jab to make considering the last time fucking anyone in newspapers had any fucking sense of job security was the Reagan administration, but that's neither here/there.
MEGAN: Well, but then you'd have to cover the National Enquirer. And they're probably still smarting over Gennifer Flowers or something.
Oh, well, if we're going to be like the real media, we should probably totally change the subject now and I would like then to point readers to Dana Milbank's column today which is about the House's Don't Ask Don't Tell hearing yesterday in which psychotic Elaine Donnelly testified about lesbian rape gangs and shit and just about everyone there was shocked that she thought it was appropriate but she always, always does. Also, she doesn't want women serving in the military for the sake of the men. And in 1950, she probably wasn't so keen on integration either. She's a scary bitch, yo.
I might have once implied in print that she herself is just scared of her own lesbian tendencies. Because I'm a mean bitch like that.
MOE: Dude, someone watching that hearing got a totally dope plotline for his next thrasher movie though. I love Vic Snyder for calling her testimony "just bonkers" because I can't really do better, this woman's just totally completely nuts and the thing we always forget is THERE ARE MORE OF THEM LIKE THIS OUT THERE MANY MANY MORE.
MEGAN: Yeah, there totally are more people like that out there. Speaking of more of "them," Steve Doocey weighed in on sexism yesterday. That guy is so dumb I think it probably rubs off.
MOE: And don't forget they're not just any lesbian rape gangs they are black lesbian rape gangs. Because white lesbians in the military are too busy planning their weddings while watching the L Word and styling their expertly layered hair to bother raping anyone?
MEGAN: Oh, right, black lesbians are waaaay scarier. Did I ever tell you how I once ended up at a black lesbian bar in D.C.?
My friend made me get on one of those party shuttle buses for her bachelorette, but the organizers were from out of town and ended up taking us to a black lesbian club. Best. Bar. The. Whole. Night.
Great DJ, appropriate level of air conditioning, super nice people. After dancing with strangers for 40 minutes I realized the bride and all her friends were huddled in a corner and talking about me.
MOE: Omg I went to a black gay coke bar last weekend and although or maybe because the coke was probably not really coke but crushed up No-Doz cut with laxatives it was the Best Night Ever Too. Musically, muscle tonally, etc. Anyway, we need to find some site about this alleged black lesbian rape gang attack in 1974. If only to WARN THE READERS.
MEGAN: I'll do that while you read about Lieberman comparing creepy Catholic-hating crazy pastor John Hagee to Moses and saying that bloggers would've shit all over Moses and Miriam, too.
MOE: Well, you gotta admit bloggers will shit on anything, they are like junkies that way. Remember Pastor Pfleger? That guy was so clearly Down with God but the haters wanna hate, you know?
Lieberman is such an idiot.
MEGAN: I mean, is he trying to flame out? Like, can he be recalled by voters or something? Because I don't understand when he went batshit.
MOE: I CAN'T FIND ANYTHING ABOUT THIS CYNTHIA YOST LESBIAN RAPE THING does this mean I have to nexis?
MEGAN: Ok, so, the lesbian rape story is only available in Elaine's testimony. This woman, Cynthia Yost, claims that she was hugged and rubbed by a group of black women she knew to be lesbians but never reported it until now.
MOE: because my nexis is down.
MEGAN: Page 10, by the way.

“Some of them were ethnic minorities, and it was a group of black lesbians who decided to gang-assault me. I don't know what else you would call it. This incident happened in the spring of 1974, at Fort Jackson, South Carolina. We were riding crowded together in a "cattle truck", and suddenly they all began groping my crotch and breasts through my fatigues, talking suggestively, rubbing my thighs, hugging me tightly around the waist and shoulders, and giggling.
“This was in 1974, when the military brass lived in terror of accusations of racist attitudes among military personnel. It was assumed that any white person hitting or attacking a black one for any reason, even in self-defense, was, ipso facto, a racist. Such an incident, reported, meant a letter of reprimand in one's permanent record, and many tedious hours of "race relations" classes.
“…I didn't report the assault because I wanted to keep my record clean, and I didn't defend myself from their physical assault for the same reason. I didn't want a permanent label of "racist" to derail my military career. So, I restrained my nausea and outrage, and just kept pushing their hands and arms off me and telling them to please stop. They finally did, when they were tired of it.

MOE: dude that description is totally from a porn.
MEGAN: Totally. Homophobic rantings about homosexuality are always pornographic for some reason. Frankly, like, why was it important that her alleged assaulters were black in that context.... if it wasn't important to her?
MOE: Yeah and call Lizz Winstead but this so-called gang rape does NOT SOUND THAT TRAUMATIZING. I mean, also, like, this is just nuts. I wonder where Cynthia Yost is now. I bet if we teepee-d her house she'd call it a hate crime.
MEGAN: We hate her for her heterosexuality, because we're just a bunch of fucking dykes.

New York Times:

Great sex, like a good deed, never goes unpunished, and there is a melancholy undertone to the series’s playfulness. Swingtown pokes at the invisible rifts and emotional costs that come with unfettered liberty; in other words, all the consequences that were ignored by self-affirming manifestos that became best sellers in the ’70s, like I’m OK — You’re OK and Fear of Flying.

New York Magazine:

Since Swingtown isn’t even peekaboo, much less dirty, I wish I could say that it’s played for laughs. But I don’t know what it’s played for. Most of the time, it seems as sincere as Roger. And all of the time these people are, well, gaping at each other. By which I mean they wear rapt looks, as if they were Easter Island monoliths, or stoned on Thorazine. This is especially true of Parker’s Susan. She was a delight in Deadwood. Here, with her fine red hair and freckle scatter, she seems stuck in reaction shots. You want to drag her out on the lawn and remind her that the seventies also consisted of Stephen Sondheim, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Gloria Steinem, and Shaft; of Jonathan Livingston Seagull, Billie Jean King, and Robert Altman’s Nashville; of not just Roots but also Jaws. But she is full of dopey wonderment, as if sex were a cult.

The New Yorker:

Swingtown recalls any number of movies and TV shows, from Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice to The Ice Storm, with its parents and teen-agers living parallel lives and a smart, odd teen-age girl riding around alone on a bicycle… Swingtown, as part of its fetish for authenticity, has impeccably and precisely horrible costumes and sets, but, to a serious fault, it makes use of the most overplayed music of the period. “Dream Weaver,” “Dancing in the Moonlight,” “Come and Get Your Love,” and other such beige tunes are thrown one after another onto the soundtrack, until your ears are crying.

Washington Post:

Swingtown obviously belongs to the tabloid tradition that has given us many other fabricated communities, going back at least to that lively little hot spot Peyton Place. The formula is almost foolproof: Pull back the drapes and reveal the lustiness going on in private little homes protected by electronic security systems. It's rather a bold, retro step for CBS to attempt this kind of show in the era of reality television and domestic fights that appear to be actual and spontaneous rather than cooked up by a writer. But the airwaves are so choked with reality that a return to fantasy seems strangely refreshing and, ironically, even more realistic.

Chicago Tribune:

But there’s a complicated, darker undercurrent to the show, which could use a bit more dramatic tension in the early going but is still thoughtful and intriguing. One of the local kids spends a lot of time in the woods because of her mother’s drug problem and erratic behavior.

Variety:

Perhaps foremost, Swingtown manages to be about sex without showing much of it, reclaiming the notion that eroticism and explicitness don't automatically go hand in hand.

The Kansas City Star:

One of the interesting dynamics of Swingtown is how women’s lib plays out against a backdrop of male domination. AMC’s Mad Men is also exploring this same ground but is set 15 years earlier and has a whole different mood (unlike this show, there are no teenagers in the cast). Swingtown suggests that the ’70s were more like the ’50s than unlike. The airline that employs Tom is run completely by guys who wink at stories of his roving eye, not unlike the skirt-chasers on Mad Men.

'Swingtown' premieres tonight at 10 p.m. on CBS.

•Natalie Portman, Wuthering Heights: Portman is slated to play Catherine Earnshaw, the female lead, in this new adaptation of Emily Bronte's novel. Catherine is in love with her adopted brother, Heathcliff, but marries a more suitable man and is then driven to madness over her decision. Verdict: Catherine is a variation of a hooker, marrying for stability and then being punished for it.

•Elsa Pataky, Giallo: Spanish actress Pataky (who is perhaps better known to American audiences as Adrien Brody's girlfriend) is set to play Celine, the kidnapped sister of an American flight attendant. Verdict: Beautiful kidnapped woman? Victim, duh.

•Marcia Gay Harden, The Tower: In this new CBS drama, Harden will star as a millionaire who buys a newspaper where the journalists not only break stories but also solve mysteries! Verdict: The plot might sound a bit boring, but Harden's character might come out OK, for the time being.

•Paz Vega, Triage: Vega, from Talk to Her and Spanglish, will play the girlfriend of a a colleague of Mark (Colin Farrel), a photojournalist, who investigates the mysterious disappearance of her boyfriend. Verdict: While the details are skimpy, the tragic girlfriend character just screams "Victim."

Two Female Leads [XKCD]
Portman Set For 'Wuthering Heights'[Variety]
Adrien Brody To Topline 'Giallo'[THR]
Harden, Logue Pick Pilot Projects[Variety]
Colin Farrell Makes Three For 'Triage' [THR]

Earlier: Valentino In Vogue: Models With Ennui Playing Invisible Croquet
Why Don't I Love Shoes? An Exploration In Photos

Washington Post:

If nothing else, "Kid Nation" will teach them the value of money. Or at least that pursuing it is the noblest activity available to humankind... Once they were divided into teams, the kids became instantly territorial (or so it was made to appear), prompting one boy to shout, "Screw the blue team!" One wonders if the mighty arm of the Federal Communications Commission will swoop down and slap that kid with a hefty fine for using bad language. Those children may not have a nanny, but the United States does.

What the hell do they do with all these badass kids? The answer is the only thing logic, common sense, and the producers could dictate: gangs. After assigning colors, bandannas, and graffiti taggers, and before you could say 'Boyz n the Hood', they were off on their first 'Survivor'-tyke mission... How troubling was it to see a 14-year-old learnin' the wee ones on ''the three dance moves that will get you through life''? How soon till she escalates from nickels to dollars, and graduates from the street to the pole? Don't look at me like that. I'm not the one who taught that child to dance for money.

Small, cute creatures were definitely in danger on the Wednesday premiere of "Kid Nation." No, it wasn't the 40 kids on the CBS reality show. Some children on the program decided to go jackrabbit hunting, but when they threw rocks, their aim wasn't great. Be assured that, in the first episode anyway, no fluffy bunnies were hurt during the making of "Kid Nation"... There was one brief shoving match on the program, in which a 15 year old "got in the face" of an 11 year old, but most of the program was pretty sedate, if not a bit bland.

Watching the CBS reality show, which premiered after months of anti-hype, was as much fun as baby-sitting overtired tots who've had one too many Sweet Tarts... "Kid Nation" will in no way truly represent what children would do left to their own devices in a deserted town. There are cameramen and medical professionals on hand, of course, and also host Jonathan Karsh... And how can we enjoy rooting for someone's downfall, or making fun of someone's shortcomings, when they're just a kid? The show puts viewers in a bad position.

CBS' controversial 'Kid Nation' finally debuted Wednesday night, and the show's first episode was alternatingly uncomfortable, inspiring, and awkward. Its cast of teenagers and pre-teens were sometimes mean, frustrating, or annoying, but they also proved themselves to be remarkably self-sufficient, smart, articulate, and funny. In short, they were real, and rather entertaining... 'Kid Nation' has proven that once in the situation, the kids can function, and maybe teach the rest of us something along the way.

Last night's premiere of 'Kid Nation' was a thundering bore... The first show was manipulative and rang false. Nobody could possibly believe a word of it....The youngsters uttered lines that seemed supplied by the network, but that happens on all these shows. They cried for their parents or just wandered around. What a downer this one quickly turned out to be.

Would the creators of 'Kid Nation' please go to their room for a time-out and come up with something more original?... Part of the fun of any reality show is having a laugh at the adults who participate. But even though 'Kid Nation' presents its players as smart, spunky and resourceful, it's not very amusing to see them get teary over missing their moms or to watch them being edited into the familiar stereotypes — the bully, the earnest leader, the class clown — that populate reality TV.

Like any good reality show, Kid Nation's strengths are in its characters, and the most remarkable aspect of these characters so far is their intellectual superiority to adults on reality shows — they use big words and make funny jokes! And if we can swallow our unease with the values these stage-parent offspring "from all walks of life" are learning (hint: they're all striving to be labeled "upper class") and the fact that the show bears more than a passing resemblance to long-running Saturday-morning staple Discovery Kids: Endurance, it should be a fun ride, like summer camp (albeit one located in a deserted mining town with no adults in sight).

Separate from any controversy about child-labor laws or Draconian legal waivers, parts of the show are a bit creepy. In the debut, the kids are told that they can decide to "give up" and leave at the town halls (tribal councils?), a phrase loaded with "You don't want to be a quitter, do you?" peer pressure. And while there's nothing new about the kid who misses his parents and cries a lot at summer camp, there is something intrusive about having a camera shoved into that kid's face.

Indeed, I cannot even profess to be shocked - shocked! — to find TV executives acting like TV executives, thinking up new ways to make the most money from the least investment and covering their hindquarters with a contract written like a gazillionaire's pre-nup, designed to protect them utterly in case of disaster, disease or discontent. What does remain strange to me - I won't even call it alarming - is what people will sign in order to be on television, the flagpole-sit of our day. Even stranger, that they will sign it in the name of their children....The appeal of the series is rooted in the fact that adults habitually underestimate the sophistication of children, while children don't recognize the degree to which their sophistication is tempered by inexperience. Whatever else it is, or may be, it is adorable; to the extent that it's disturbing onscreen...