Jezebel
crappy hour
Posts Tagged “
Christopher Hitchens
”
crappy hour
I'm not going to be around for the morning Crappy Hour but the big news is apparently the "subtle makeover" of Michelle Obama's image currently underway. Like everything else spurred by the (ignoble, ignorant, inane) ideological right I'm sort of out of things to say about this. Like Thomas Frank to Tom Delay today I'm left (heh) to mainly gawk, unsure where to start. With the spooky readiness to believe educated black professionals readily throw around the term "whitey"? With the bizarre and near-inexplicable way an entire movement seems able, on the basis of her blackness and some egging on from the eminently soberminded quarters of their foremost Anglo enabler, to project their own festering rage onto her, while simultaneously professing to be shockedshockedshocked — and so deeply offended — that anyone would deign to label the white working class "bitter"? Oh Jesus I'm going to miss my plane. [IHT]
crappy hour
Mama Said There'd Be Days Like This But Please God Only Like 200 More Right?
God, where to begin today. Maybe with the fact that while your mortgage payment was tripling, Goldman Sachs's earnings fell a whole entire 11% ?? Or like, while the Justice Department was systematically sacking any and all prosecutors whose decisions on things like habeas corpus and torture and crap fell anywhere to the rational side of "automated Bush surrogate," the Pentagon was firing an official for the grave offense of noticing a billion dollar overage on a KBR invoice? Or how even as the net income necessary to join the Top 400 plutocrats, adjusted for inflation, has tripled since the beginning of the Clinton Administration, the McCain campaign is dissing on Obama's economic policy proposals for their inadequate FAITH IN THE MARKETS??? (Wait, was that a question? I don't even know anymore.) Megan and I babble about who should get taxed more and how — and she nominates Hitchens — after the jump. More »
truths
Bohemian Rhapsody? Not In New York.
A couple of days ago I visited some friends, all artistically-inclined, who live in a converted factory in a remote corner of Brooklyn. They have a tree house and no bathroom door and someone plays the lute. It was all very countercultural and very bohemian and Vogue would have adored it. I was reminded of this as I read through this month's Vanity Fair, in which Christopher Hitchens waxes nostalgic about his days as a youngish Trotskyite living la vie boheme in Soho and the Village. The piece is a meditation on the vanishing world of bohemia, and a call to save the Greenwich Village block (Seventh/Greenwich/11th/13th) threatened by a massive and soulless hospital building. "Every successful society needs its Bohemia, a haven for the artists, exiles, and misfits who regenerate the culture," claims the piece. More »
Funny Girls
So what does Jeze-crush Lily Tomlin think about Christopher Hitchens' insistence that women can't be funny? "He's not the first to say that. There was a big fracas about Jerry Lewis doing it, too. That's been going on since the beginning of comedy. Here's one of my favorite stories from back in the early '60s, when I was working at the New York cabaret Upstairs at the Downstairs. Backstage in the dressing room, this actress who played the beautiful ingenue had me doubled over with her stories. So funny. She could make her hair expand by her own will. When I asked her why she didn't put it into her acting, she said, 'I wouldn't want anyone to think I was unattractive.' That was the thing, you couldn't be both funny and pretty." [Minneapolis Star-Tribune]
news roundup
Laura Bush Talks Myanmar, Marriage
- Laura Bush gave a speech about Burma a.k.a. Myanmar and disaster preparedness and Jenna's wedding. Her lipstick was very well-applied. More than 10,000 people may die as a result of the cyclone. Harry built a limestone altar in Texas especially for the wedding. It will be "permanent" in contrast to many of the structures in Myanmar, where limestone and most other things are in short supply. The ruling junta is holding a referendum this weekend to solidify its control of their dirt- poor, isolated disaster zone and I guess this means they win. Governments that are more efficient when it comes to killing citizens than warning about floods always win in the short term. And also the medium term. [Huffington Post]
- Hey, speaking of nuptials/Third World personalities! Mariane Pearl might be Angelina Jolie's maid of honor. [Times Of India]
- The primary was so ugly, John and Cindy McCain couldn't bring themselves to vote for a candidate in 2000. [Huffington Post]
- Kind of similar situation with John and Elizabeth Edwards and Hillary and Obama. [TPM]
god/delusion
Ayaan Hirsi Ali Vs. Irshad Manji: Which Infidel Would You Rather Have A Beer With?
Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Irshad Manji are two pals who were born Muslim and have spent the intervening few decades critiquing the religion's legacy of bad things. They've both written bestselling books and acquired British intellectual blowhard pundit advocates — Chris Hitchens backs Ali, Andrew Sullivan is more a Manji person — and today they're compared/contrasted in a New York Times piece that is sure to hit home for anyone who ever struggled with a baseless/stubborn/eroding belief in a Higher Power! See, Ali is an atheist; Manji is a Muslim. Like her boy Andrew Sullivan, Manji has clung to her faith even though she is gay and the institution deems that grounds for damnation; she roots her problems with Islam in "Arab tribal culture" and says the "Koran has the raw materials to be thoughtful and humane," while Hitchens "believes that it's a self-defeating exercise for a declared lesbian to try to bring about an Islamic Reformation." More »
crappy hour
Dear Cindy McCain, We Love You Just The Way You Are Made Up
Dear Cindy, we are sorry. We did not mean to belittle your pain over being called a vagina sixteen years ago. We were just sort of distracted. Distracted by the fact that John used the word "trollop," which, in the context of a rebuttal to a subtle jab about how fucking old he was, was kind of unintentionally hilarious. And by your makeup, and additionally, your steely expressions and rigid hairdos, which sometimes appear as their own sort of counterparts to the torture your husband endured in Vietnam. After the jump, Megan and I are going to go back and explore that famous McCain marital spat of 1992 for the true meaning of calling someone the c-word, but only after we explore the famous Andrew Sullivan-Chris Hitchens L-word spat, and briefly discuss how seven-year-olds are behind the latest Obama endorsements, John Cleese could be behind the next epic Obama race speech, the Washington Post is officially the best paper in America; too bad journalism is dead. Enjoy! More »
news roundup
50 Cent Learns About Racism, Loses Interest
- "I heard Obama speak. He hit me with that he-just-got-done- watching-'Malcolm X,' and I swear to God, I'm like, 'Yo, Obama!' 'I'm Obama to the end now, baby!," says 50 Cent, who originally supported Hillary Clinton. He has since "lost interest." [MTV]
- One of the girls who tormented Megan Meier under the tutelage of evil mom Lori Drew is going to be on TV tomorow talking about how Lori turned out to be a crappy "mother figure." Um, yeah. [ABC]
- You know how after 9/11 the government consolidated all these government functions into the Department of Homeland Security, which was probably an expensive waste of time? Well they are sort of doing that with all the regulatory agencies that are supposed to keep track of how much money all of these sophisticated "security" things are worth so the economy doesn't find itself with a hole the size of the Russian economy in it. It will take a long time, and probably not work. [WSJ]
- Obama has his widest gap in the Gallup tracking poll of Democrats of any candidate since February. February! That is almost the month before last! [Wonkette]
clips
Vanity Fair Celebrates Funny Girls
Just a little over a year after it published an essay in which Christopher Hitchens asserted that women aren't funny, Vanity Fair has come out with an issue acknowledging the current generation of female comedians, actresses and writers who are proving that women are actually quite hilarious. (Hitchens has a rebuttal here.) The video above, taken during the photo sessions for the issue, is like girl crush central, and includes Sandra Bernhard, Susie Essman, Tina Fey, Jenna Fischer, Chelsea Handler, Leslie Mann, Amy Poehler, Maya Rudolph, Amy Sedaris, Sarah Silverman, Wanda Sykes, and Kristen Wiig. Unfortunately, the lineup is a little too white. Where's Mo'nique? Or Margaret Cho? Jenna Fischer beat out both of them?
Chicks With Schticks [Vanity Fair]
Who Says Women Aren't Funny? [Vanity Fair]
