Dear Barack: Don't Piss Off Anne Hathaway

Anne Hathaway is a little peeved at Obama, Rick Warren is concerned about a humanitarian crisis at home, Roland Burris brings the crazy, Virginians are barred from D.C. and it’s not even Friday!

Ms. Hathaway, whose strong public support during the campaign for President-elect Obama totally pushed him over the edge with voters, would really like him to explain the selection of Rick Warren to give that prayer at the Inauguration and is speaking up now because there’s no downside. The fundies, however, have unearthed a video of Rick Warren saying that denying marriage rights to the LGBT community is a “humanitarian” issue because that’s a good idea right now and unlikely to piss off Obama’s base again, and, Rick Warren, I don’t think that word means what you think it means.

Larry Flynt is up to his old tricks and, no, I’m not talking about making porn or pissing off Republicans, I’m talking about engaging in a little political stunt for media attention. This year’s entry is his push for a piece of the stimulus pie to save some all-American porn jobs, a stunt he’s wanking away at with Girls Gone Wild founder and tax evader Joe Francis because Joe Francis figures that if the banks can pull the wool over Treasury’s eyes, so can he. They are right about American job losses, though, as the new unemployment numbers are out and things are not only bad but Macroeconomic Advisers Chairman Joel Prakken calls them about to be “gruesome,” which is how I describe Joe Francis most of the time.

In the meantime, there’s plenty of hue and cry at the Hay Adams Hotel, where Obama is staying, because he really, really, really wants to keep his Crackberry after he becomes President and no one else wants to let him. He, Michelle and the girls are staying there, you’ll recall, because the place that President-elects generally stay before the Inauguration — Blair House — was “previously booked” according to President Bush’s people. It was booked, apparently, for former Australian Prime Minister John Howard so he can accept the Presidential Medal of Freedom from his good friend Bush — but lest you think that Howard had to stay there, former British PM Tony Blair and current Colombian President Alvaro Uribe are getting the same award on the same day but managed to find somewhere else to stay.

Speaking on snubs, China is now snubbing American debt in favor of keeping its money at home in China during the world financial crisis and the Inauguration planners have decided to close every single bridge from Virginia into (and out of) D.C. for the Inauguration — but not most of the Maryland crossings, so that’s apparently what Virginia gets for going blue. But no one got snubbed yesterday at the confab between the former Presidents, the about-to-be-former President and the about-to-be President which made headlines but no real news.

Roland Burris is still sort of being snubbed by the Senate but they’ll probably stop doing so next week when enough of the TV lights turn towards the Inauguration and Harry Reid figures he won’t look as much like a wimp for doing so. Burris himself, though, seems determined to prove true what people in Illinois said about anyone who would accept an appointment to the seat by Blagojevich — that he much be crazy. He’s not quite as crazy as Bobby Rush yet, but he’s only been in D.C. for a couple of days.