Jezebel: glamocracy

Barack Obama Would Rather Be Shooting Dunks And Fathering Illegitimate Children. (Duh!)

Moe — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 10:00:00 EDT

In a telling interview with the erudite Philadelphia radio program The Angelo Cataldi Show, Barack Obama said he would rather be Dr. J than president. (Hillary Clinton, meanwhile, gave some speech comparing herself to Rocky Balboa while wearing a fuchsia blazer.) Feminist hero Heidi Montag of The Hills announced her endorsement of John McCain, and her on-again boyfriend Spencer Pratt immediately shot back that he didn't think "anyone cares who Heidi Montag votes for." Well shit, Spencer, you know better than anyone that at least as many people care about Heidi's political stances as the fact that John McCain thinks Muqtada al Sadr is the one who came begging for a ceasefire, and that's way more than the number of people who care about the release of some 2003 Bush Administration memo authorizing torture-esque torture strategies, and even that is wayyyy more than the number of people who will sit still long enough to watch Errol Morris' new movie so...where was I? OMG EVILDOERS TRIED TO BLOW UP DISNEYLAND! Glamocracy's Megan and I are soooooo glad they didn't succeed.

MOE: Okay dammit, I can't find that John McCain clip. I'm refusing to take meds today because I've got all this work to do later, and I'm all over the place. On one side of me this woman on Fox News is saying we're not in recession, that the media and a vast Hugo Chavez-led left-wing conspiracy has formulated this whole con to get people to hate business and the free market, and I seriously want to reach into the TV and strangle her. Also, bitch is so young she looks like Enron collapsed before her first Purity Ball. Also, and this is shallow, but the hair: needs a blow out. Who are you, Southern-accented apologist for the plutocracy? Maybe you should spend a little time reading business news before you go on airing your conspiracy theories!!!
MOE: But anyway John McCain went on Letterman and made some funny cracks (and some nine-times-warmed-over ones but no one seems to be clipping those) and meanwhile Barack Obama has been bro-ing down with the sports talk radio guys on Philadelphia's WIP.
MEGAN: Do you mean this clip? The thing I hate about candidates on late night talk shows is that I don't really need to know that they can be "funny" anymore. They're just sort of not.
MOE:

After Obama spoke about former Sixers legend Julius Erving - Dr. J - being a boyhood idol, Cataldi asked whether Obama would rather be the president or Dr. J.
"The Doctor," said Obama. "I think any kid growing up, if you got a chance to throw down the ball from the free throw line, that's better than just about anything."

MOE: can you ask her to get timestamps if it's too long
MOE: because the clips are really long
MEGAN: So, not that I know anything about basketball, but how soon until a Penna NBA team gives him that chance to throw some free throws?
MOE: The Sixers. Does Pittsburgh have a bball team? I'm thinking. Pittsburgh...Tribune-Review, Steelers, Warhol...can't think of an NBA team. Although if they have one, you know some dude out there in internet world is thinking to himself, "She's kidding, right? TELL ME SHE'S KIDDING." Also, incidentally, Obama, in agreement with Shepard Smith, does not think we need Congress investigating steroids, and he picked three out of the Final Four, although I don't know when that was. But...I feel like this conversation is getting so serious. Could we maybe get a link up in here to bring some levity to this terribly somber conversation?
MEGAN: I think the thing I'm still laughing at is the clip Jon Stewart showed last night of Rep Emmanuel Cleaver telling the oil comps that they approval ratings were lower than Congress's, meaning they were really "down low." I can't believe no one else thought that was funny.
MOE: Oh yeah the John Yoo torture memo, not to be mistaken for the John Woo torture memo. What's torture? You thought it had a pretty nebulous definition right?

The victim must experience intense pain or suffering of the kind that is equivalent to the pain that would be associated with serious physical injury so severe that death, organ failure or permanent damage resulting in a loss of significant body functions will likely result

MEGAN: Oh, God, my replacement CH dude, Spencer Ackerman, sent me something about that this morning. I can't do torture on an empty stomach, and the MSNBC people spent 10 minutes talking about pancakes at the same time.
MOE: I didn't see John Stewart last night. Dumb question: what is the fucking point of bringing in these former CEOs and shaming them in hearings no one watches for no discernible reason? Do they actually ask good questions ever? Can former CEOs even answer questions? What do they even know?
MEGAN: They make the news, Moe!
MEGAN: There's no other reason. Cameras come, their faces end up on TV and they get to be seen unloading on the boogeymen. That's it. There's no other purpose.
MOE: Oh so also, how do you inflict pain commensurate with organ failure, without actually causing organ failure? Also, how do they know what organ failure feels like?
MOE: Is that in the memo? Because that wasn't in the Times story.
MEGAN: You know what's sick? That was my first thought, too.
MEGAN: Like, how does one quantify the pain of organ failure?
MEGAN: And, which organ?
MEGAN: Like, can your brain fail?
MOE: Yeah like ...appendicitis hurt like a bitch, but is that even an important enough organ?
MOE: Appendicitis can't possibly hurt as much as kidney failure, can it?
MOE: And why do paper cuts hurt so much?
MEGAN: Stepping on glass hurts like a motherfucker. Yes, I used to take my shoes off after a night of clubbing in Boston.
MOE: And would it be more or less humane if they could devise some sort of way of artificially instilling deep emotional pain like your first really evil college boyfriend?
MEGAN: Oh, God, I mean, if they did that to me, I doubt I could confess to anything between the crying.
MEGAN: Oh, dude, MSNBC just showed some tennis player muffing a serve and then beating himself about his head with his racket until he bled.
MOE: Oh man I have done that before.
MOE: Maybe not with the bleeding.
MOE: I am to tennis as Obama is to bowling
MEGAN: I'm to bowling like Obama is to bowling and tennis, too. Pretty much all sports with balls I suck at. I can ski pretty well, though.
MOE: Even Wii tennis, which is the really disgraceful thing. Anyway, there's a bunch of shit going on that I feel duty-bound to try and approach today, namely because of this story in the Washington Post about all the lonely unwatched Iraq war documentaries.

Perhaps you can feel it in the strange way that the war is beginning to feel increasingly like a distant, historical event in two very different films. In Ellen Spiro's "Body of War" (co-produced and co-directed by Phil Donahue), video of the October 2002 congressional debate on the Iraq war resolution has that familiar-but-foreign quality of things now slipping into the near past. Politicians hector each other, with faces less wrinkled, hair less gray than they have today. Names that were once so familiar you felt like they were family (what happened to Phil Gramm?) are slipping into the realms of amnesia. The urgency of the threat of weapons of mass destruction — announced by the president and parroted by the Congress — feels odd, too, not just because no WMDs were found but because the very foundations of the war have shifted so many times over the past half-decade.

MEGAN: Phil Gramm retired from Congress and uses his name to bring attention to conservative tax groups. I think he might do some lawyer-y stuff, too.
MEGAN: I mean, I think to a great degree that's why most Americans want to end the war but are easily distracted by the economy and the elections and the sale at the mall to the point where they don't do anything about it other than express their opinion to pollsters.
MEGAN: It's the perfect PR strategy — make sure that virtually nothing changes for the vast majority of people except for those who "volunteered" and no one will care because most Americans are inherent self-obsessed and selfish.
MOE: Okay and five years later McCain gets shit brazenly wrong on the sequence of events that led to... well, whatever is happening in Basra right now, which again, I can describe only in terms of "Shiite majority" and "names I haven't gotten to the point of being to spell without thinking." There is some ceasefire, arranged in Iran with Moqtada al Sadr, and McCain is acting like Sadr was begging for it when really, hello, Sadr is in Iran, what does he care?
MOE: And meanwhile Fox News is reporting something on vicious killer bees.
MEGAN: Also, Sadr asked for it because it makes him look better and gives him more political power.
MOE: And killer Botox
MOE: And killer third graders.
MEGAN: Oh, Jesus, killer bees? Again.
MEGAN: The third graders thing is all over MSNBC. They said the teacher's whole class "mutineed" as though they were on the HMS Bounty.
MOE: And killer swarthy Jamaicans
MOE: Bees!
MEGAN: Wait, so, like, aren't the other killer bees African?
MOE: Okay you know what? I think I am going to have to succumb to the adderall today. All the static is making me despondent. Oh, and we haven't even heard about Hillary's little Rocky stunt! There is this picture on the front page of two guys sitting on a dirt road in Zimbabwe listening to the shortwave radio for news about the elections. It looks pleasant there, and sunny. Not taking meds makes me want to sit on a dirt road and listen to the radio for a little while.
MEGAN: Actually, that would be cool.
MEGAN: Zimbabwe seems like it was a lovely place before Mugabe decided he didn't want to leave office
MEGAN: But it looks like he may actually leave office this time, so maybe we can hope that unlike the opposition leader in Kenya — who beat the Powers That Be and took office in reform but got addicted to power and started a little ethnic cleansing to keep it — the new guy in Zimbabwe will actually be good for the country.
MOE: I'm starting to totally get why Obama would be Dr. J.
MEGAN: No one scrutinizes Dr J's pastor or asks if he's black enough or too black.
MEGAN: I mean, that last part is really awful, now that I think about it.
MOE: Ha ha classic Obama basketball footage. Isn't the Internet grand?
MEGAN: I sat in on an interview yesterday that an interracial radio producer friend of mine conducted with an interracial professor who studies race issues, and they talked about the weird humiliation of calling yourself multiracial, or of being identified more by how you look than how you feel. It was like being in a conversation I had no business being in and it was fascinating.
MEGAN: And the professor mentioned that in surveys (racist) people will talk about how difficult it will be for kids of such unions because they know better than to talk about how the unions themselves make them (the racists) uncomfortable.
MEGAN: Which is an awkward segue to the Hillary backer who says that us white people just like Obama because he's "articulate" because we don't know anything about "articulate" black people. Oh, and the backer is African-American Congressman Emmanuel Cleaver.
MOE: Yeah racism is weird. That's about all I have to say today. I gave my big race speech yesterday.
MEGAN: Ah, well, I'll keep going.
MEGAN: Or not, I am sort of inarticulate in my rage against his statements.
MOE: Wait, also, I want to rant a second about some commenter who hated on me for being an anti-intellectual.
MEGAN: HAHAHAHA
MEGAN: Ok, seriously, there's the laugh line for the day. You're an anti-intellectual?
MOE: Yeah and having something against Beckett.
MOE: I wish Beckett had written a novel from the perspective of a blogger.
MOE: No blogger would have the attention span to read it but the first 10 pages would have us all in tears anyway.
MEGAN: Wait, so, if you don't like Beckett, you're an anti-intellectual?
MOE: I do like Beckett, that's what was confusing.
MOE: Then the commenter admonished me for not reading enough and I was like, LADY, IF YOU CAN'T FUCKING FOLLOW MY SENTENCES TO DETERMINE MY ACTUAL MEANING, MAYBE YOU ARE THE ONE WHO NEEDS TO READ MORE.
MEGAN: You know what, who reads enough?
MEGAN: Nobody reads enough.
MOE: I know a few people. Insufferable ones mostly.
MEGAN: Ok, maybe I do, too, but a very small number of them.
MEGAN: But, really, even those people tend to read a lot in a genre.
MEGAN: I like literature. I like poetry. Big biographies, non fiction thought books? I have to force myself and I already work the rest of the day.

Meet Bikini Blogger Pamela Geller. She Is Like Ann Coulter Meets The Real Housewives. She Is Amazing.

Moe — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 15:00:00 EST

We are not going to beat around the, uh, pubes: we did not really dive into a piece on "5 Female Conservative Bloggers" expecting to find new role models/heroines for Jezebel readers to admire/encourage/etc.. But HOLY SHIT, how did we never hear of Pamela Geller? Pamela's blog is called Atlas Shrugs. She has an MBA. "I'm not a feminist, I'm an anti-feminist," she tells Right Wing News."That whole movement...is rooted in Marxist-Leninist propaganda." Today's post is basically about how Barack Obama is the tool of Colombian paramilitary drug cartels, Hugo Chavez and Al Qaeda. (Wait, actually, every post is about that.) But her big claim to internet fame came when she posted a video blog entry while wearing a bikini back in the summer of '06. See, she was in Israel, and she felt it was important to illustrate the fact that although the scrappy little underfunded self-defense outfit of Israel was in the throes of a bloody war with a colossal superhuman enemy no mortal thought they could ever beat, she wasn't yet being forced to don a burka. "They haven't declared Sharia law yet!" she says. Oh, please go watch this. Her accent is SO PRICELESS.

Apparently that turned her into some sort of conservative sex symbol. PLEASE ALLAH GRANT THIS WOMAN A REALITY SHOW NOW. In fact, put them all in the middle of Gaza and take away their passports and make them try to find food and cooking oil without crossing the border back into Israel. Oh look! She's friends with Coulter. Coulter can come! And Amanda Hasselbeck 2.0 Carpenter, you too. You think we missed your astute query over at Glamocracy the other day as to whether Mike Huckabee had ever witnessed a miracle? Nah, we just didn't get to it. You know, you always forget to pray to God until the moment comes that you need him to intervene and perform a miracle. Well God, that time is NOW. Get Divello on this shit. He's got some atoning to do.

Blogging While Female [RightWingNews]
Bikini Vlog [Atlas Shrugs]

Deconstructing Angelina Jolie's Inner Neocon

Moe — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 10:00:40 EST

So Lara Croft turns out to be a no-longer-closeted neocon. Now will Brad's red-state mom acknowledge her at the Thanksgiving dinner table? Will Scarlett Johansson compose a dis track for her next album on the perils defining victory downward? And now that terror has struck one of the four Las Vegas ExtendedStay Suites locations, is it safe to assume the Breezewood, Pennsylvania La Quinta Inn is next? How high-profile must the targets of the evildoers get to convince such haters (of America) as Michelle Obama that, hey, maybe it's not just a fear bomb John McCain is hanging over your head but FUTURE OF THE FREE WORLD???? Does any of this make sense? Try the REST of the compelling exchange between me and Megan Carpentier of the blogGlamocracy, after the jump.

MOE: Hahahaha your status message
It's like you're READING MY SOUL.
MEGAN: I might've gotten drunk and listened to depressing music last night....
MOE: What if we spent the entire crappy hour talking about the real tragedy of the universe that is our love lives, lack thereof department
MEGAN: 'Tis the reason for the season, or THE CRAP
MOE: And then everyone who has hurt us would SEE it and KNOW.
MEGAN: If they read, not that they do, because they DON'T CARE ABOUT US
MOE: It is the ultimate tragedy that JENNIFER ANISTON IS TOTALLY READING ANGELINA NEOCON'S COLUMN RIGHT NOW and realizing that yes, tis true, those who take a dark and cynical view of human nature are the ones that get ahead in this world.
MEGAN: And being like, goddamn Brad, marrying a bitch whose mission on earth is apparently to show me up in every way.
It's so hard to choose, would you rather a dude end up with someone prettier and more accomplished or someone uglier and hateful and stupid. Because you're jealous of the first and then like, oh, dude, really? about the second.
Also, this is the song from whence the status message comes. [Warning: I'm a little bit country]
MOE: Ah yes...I think you exposed this to me while drunk.
MEGAN: ahem. I have a pattern.
MOE: Oh my god, and this guy just came online who I, like, kind of somewhat fucked over a few months back. Thank you, karma deities. We had this very amorous one-night stand wherein the amorousness made me uncomfortable and I basically froze him out. I remember seeing the movie Ocean's Thirteen with him. Which is, of course, why I mention it, because it brings the conversation back to BRAD PITT AND ANGELINA JOLIE AND DAVID PETRAEUS AND THE WAR AND THE IMPORTANT THINGS IN LIFE AND THE BALANCE OF POWER AND THE FUTURE OF AMERICAN HEGEMONY ETC. ETC. ETC.
MEGAN: Which YOU could totally talk to him about because he didn't block your chats and/or signs in occasionally and totally isn't avoiding you or ignoring you or not speaking to you even if you did freeze him out, which is better than, say, letting someone in who says that he has serious feelings for you and then falls off the face of the earth because you having feelings back makes him feel insecure so it's of course, all your fault BUT WHO CARES BECAUSE ONE PERCENT OF THE COUNTRY IS IN A PRISON NOT OF THEIR OWN MAKING.
MOE: Well the interesting part about this guy is that I did this post on this thing Esquire was touting called "radical honesty." And he sent me an email subject headed "Radical Honesty" with like ?????? in the body text.
So I emailed him back and was like "False intimacy creeps me out," which, to be radically honest, was a line I cribbed from Don. Wait, am I actually going to post this IM? It is so Summer of '07 Gawker. But with fewer exclamation points.
MEGAN: Too late to stop now!
MOE: Hey, guess what? There's no time not to. Okay, so ...should we talk about the troop surge?
MEGAN: Well, if you're going to admit your embarrassing Jezebel secrets, let me admit mine. This rap email? It was sent to me. And then I told someone who told someone and it got back to the aforementioned guy who I dated for 4 years and first he wanted to kill the dude and then he asked me why I would sleep with a douchebag like this instead of him and I might've cried a bunch because I was like... that guy hurt me but you broke my heart and then he felt worse and now I think he might not be speaking to me either.
MOE: Good grief. Can we discuss why this month had to have an EXTRA day in it??????
MEGAN: Like things will get better in March? But, actually, I know the reason for that! It's sort of half the Romans' fault and half the Catholic Church's!
Fucking Catholic Church.
Did you know the Pope is coming here?
MOE: Did you know McCain just endorsed some guy who calls the Catholic Church an "apostate church," and "a false cult system" — and also "the Great Whore" but I think that's a compliment. I guess with Angelina Jolie's tacit endorsement he doesn't need the Catholic League anymore.
MEGAN: Ha! Bill Donohue can suck it! Suck it Bill Donohue! Who you gonna vote for now? Hillary?
MOE: She's got Ann Coulter and Bill Cunningham! did you ever dream Hillary would get so many, like, protest votes from Republicans? It's really awesome. And yesterday even Bush warned Obama about Hillary. Did you see that? Again, weird.
MEGAN: I think they're all just fucking with us (oh, wait, right, we were moving on to a different theme). Although, really, I haven't met a real Republican who isn't salivating at the thought of running against Hillary. I don't get it, but there it is.
MOE: Nothing makes sense! It is all inexplicable! Angelina is a neocon. I wonder if Scarlett Johansson will come out and write a counterpoint piece now.
MEGAN: It would be good publicity for that inescapable movie.
MOE: Okay we have to talk about something. Did you get that I am totally worthless today? It is Friday. And it is a Friday that shouldn't have existed but for this idiotic "Leap Year" thing.
MEGAN: No, I'm worthless too
MOE: Look, consumer spending accelerated last month! That's positive news. Keep it pumping!
MEGAN: Yay spending! Also, the cops found ricin in Vegas.
MOE: oh god that's RIGHT. THE POISON. was it terrorism??? Because that would be an amazing target, an Extendedstay suite near the Vegas Airport. Who would have pegged it, you know? Didn't we find ricin a few years back in Japan? Yes right? On a subway? Where's my head at? Oh yes, in another chat window. Busted again!
MEGAN: I'm calling home grown wackos, but I'm usually wrong on these things.
Also, gay pron twins arrested in burglaries! I guess it doesn't pay that well after all!
MOE: Oh look and John McCain must have read Crappy Hour yesterday!
MEGAN: Dammit! Which one of the commenters is a McCain plant! Witch hunt!
MOE: Do you get Renzi mixed up with Rezko too or is that just me???
MEGAN: No, but only because I used to be a lobbyist and I heard of Renzi first, but it's not surprising

Amanda "Hasselbeck 2.0" Carpenter Thinks Taxes Are "Too Tough" For Pink Feminazi Pinkoblogs

Moe — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 15:00:29 EST

Some props before I launch into today's galactic hatefest: Glamour, you done good with Glamocracy. God, that is a fucking imbecilic name, but not only do your political blogs' commenters prove that not all your readers are as dumb as your editors seem to assume, but some of the women you've chosen to write are pretty sharp. Now for the one who makes me reach for the sharp objects: Conserva Calendar Girl Amanda "Hasselbeck 2.0" Carpenter. Oh god she is a witty one:

The feminist blogosphere is up in arms because Mike Huckabee pardoned a rapist and signed a petition that asks women to "submit graciously" to their husbands, but these same bloggers give him a free pass on taxes. This make me think of that terribly stereotypical Teen Talk Barbie from a few Christmases back. "Math class is tough!" she said. I'd hate to think that taxes are too "tough" for the Barbie blogs to address today.

Okay Larry Summers, let me make this easy on you. Taxes are tough. The most refreshing least fascistic tenet of Huckabee's campaign is that he wants to actually acknowledge that.

Put simply, the people with the best accountants in the country send the lowest percentage of their income to the IRS. Just ask Warren Buffett:

Warren E. Buffett was his usual folksy self Tuesday night at a fundraiser for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) as he slammed a system that allows the very rich to pay taxes at a lower rate than the middle class.
Buffett cited himself, the third-richest person in the world, as an example. Last year, Buffett said, he was taxed at 17.7 percent on his taxable income of more than $46 million. His receptionist was taxed at about 30 percent.

Unfortunately, most rich people don't have quite as strong morals as Warren Buffett — see Jeff Skilling; Jeff Epstein; any rich guy named "Jeff", the career of Eliott Spitzer — so instead they funnel gobs of untaxed dollars to anyone who will preach — in church, in congres, whatevs — the ideology of small government and low taxes while systematically undermining said ideology in whatever cases (war, telecoms legislation, ethanol subsidies, whatevs) it can line their pockets. Said ideology distracts motherfucking Barbies like you from recognizing the fact that there is absolutely no societal benefit to recklessly perpetuating the ever-widening income gap. I just hope your daughters don't have to grow up to be stripper webcam cheerleaders for you to get that through your motherfucking head. No really, I hope they don't. I'm not into schadenfreude like that around the holidays.

New Glamour Blogger Amanda Carpenter Is Totes Hasselbeck 2.0

Moe — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 18:00:44 EST

We totally missed the launch of Glamour's awesome political blog "Glamocracy" a few days ago, which is actually okay since I really needed to post something and I'm glad it doesn't have to involve constructing a more complex thought than "yay hate!" You see, they have a multitude of bloggers at Glamocracy, among them a Latina, a black...and a red-haired Hasselbeck! Her name is Amanda Carpenter, and she is not a fan of the poors:

Gains among the Gennifer Flowers set aren't surprising—Hillary has doggedly pitched programs (which are obviously unappealing to a conservative like me) such as universal healthcare, universal paid leave, and even $5,000 "baby bonds" to rally the low-income, uneducated women she enjoys strong support from. Her campaign even has a special name for them: "women with needs." Labels like this make me think Hillary is the woman in "need". As in, she "needs" taxpayer money to give to the women she "needs" votes from.

Oh, is that how that works? Too bad she never learned from your party how not to be so beholden.

Annnnnyhow, obviously this bitch is a total cunt, and please don't be offended by that word, not that I care. I would say I don't understand how they convince women to become Republicans, but that would be a lie because I totally do; the plain fact is that some women are totally evil and evil people like becoming Republicans, and I would say that explains this one. I don't, for the record, think that explains Coulter, who is somehow fun for me. No, this chick is just your run of the mill racist pretty Satanist Christian airhead born without the empathy gene, I'm pretty sure, though that could be fun for me too. Whatever! I'll think about it on Monday. TChristIF!

Glamocracy