Rick Warren can only barely keeping from fucking you, but Ana Marie Cox and I will protect one another and the nation's 4-year-old lottery winners from harm with our new Jon Favreau TV show.
ANA MARIE: I think i caught whatever you have! Darn internets.
MEGAN: Man, this newfangled technology will transmit viruses so quick... I'll stop with the techie jokes.
ANA MARIE: And I even have a Mac! So. Is inauguration over yet?
MEGAN: No, you'd have to sleep longer for that. But official Washington has heard our pleas, and ordered up 5,000 porta-potties for the inauguration.
ANA MARIE: Well, I guess that's good about the porta-potties. Though I cringe to think about the situation nonetheless. It's an awesome, inspiring, history making occasion, and yet I suspect we'll have some very ugly scenes. Ugly, smelly, disease-carrying scenes.
MEGAN: I think it's fair to say that, at the very least, some people will be peeing in bottles. But if you want to talk about ugly, disease-carrying scenes, let's talk Nobel corruption scandal.
ANA MARIE: Over HPV no less. Yowza. That's just really depressing. Not keeping-a-childrens-hospital-from-getting-money depressing, but right up there.
MEGAN: There's also all-expenses paid trips to China to "explain how the process works," which I'm pretty sure is the international phrase for "collect more bribes."
ANA MARIE: Also, a kind of poetic synecdoche: The trip to explain how it works was itself an example of how it works.
MEGAN: Scary how the Chinese already understood.
ANA MARIE: And yet it's not like they care about the HPV vaccine. Or, you know, girls.
MEGAN: Well, sure, I mean, men can't get cervical cancer.
ANA MARIE: So I'm actually starting to feel some sympathy for the Caroline Kennedy back-backlash. I still can't really get behind her but the piling on is kind of ugly.
MEGAN: I've lost track of what I'm supposed to think of her candidacy today, actually.
ANA MARIE: I just spent all day listening to to cable folks mock her for not talking to the press which just reminded me of how IMPORTANT THE PRESS THINKS THEY ARE.
MEGAN: Also, apparently she failed to vote in some mayoral primaries in the nineties, so I'm guessing New Yorkers think they're almost as important as the press.
ANA MARIE: Or, rather, NYC mayoral primary candidates do. The whole thing reminds me more of Hillary than anything Camelot-y. And it really doesn't remind me of Palin... should it? I'm sort of serious.
MEGAN: Kathleen Parker says no, since a Senator can be good by just raising money and getting attention and Palin was running for the opportunity to be President if John McCain kicked the bucket.
ANA MARIE: I suppose that's a useful distinction.
MEGAN: A less useful distinction: the line of crap the Bush Administration is using to explain its unwillingness to sign a UN declaration calling for the worldwide decriminalization of homosexuality. States rights!
According to some of the declaration's backers, U.S. officials expressed concern in private talks that some parts of the declaration might be problematic in committing the federal government on matters that fall under state jurisdiction. In numerous states, landlords and private employers are allowed to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation; on the federal level, gays are not allowed to serve openly in the military.
Man, when was the last time we claimed states rights didn't allow us to combat discrimination...?
ANA MARIE: Way to go out in style. I have a friend on the WH beat who tells me that the Bushies really believe "they've left the world in a better state than they found it." To which I can only reply: I guess that depends on the STATE OF YOUR MIND.
MEGAN: Between that and making sure no one has to give us heathens our birth control, I'm sure they do think it's better. I mean, Saddam Hussein is dead, the Saudis and Egyptians can keep executing their gays as God intended, and maybe us libidinous sluts won't tempt men as much if we can't get constant abortions.
ANA MARIE: I was about to object to being included in the "us libidinous sluts" team but then I remembered this quote from Rick Warren JUST THIS MORNING:
CURRY: If science finds that this is biological, that people are born gay, would you change your position?
WARREN: No, and the reason why is because we all have biological predispositions. I'm naturally inclined to have sex with every beautiful woman I see. But that doesn't mean it's the right thing to do.
MEGAN: Eww. Rick Warren, STOP THINKING ABOUT MY HOOHA!!
ANA MARIE: WE ARE ALL LIBIDINOUS SLUTS, I guess. EVEN RICK WARREN. What bizarre logic. I can't quite get my head around it, because, you know, actually, I don't think that's how human (hetero) sexuality works!
MEGAN: What, you don't walk around with the female equivalent of semi-chub looking at attractive men all the time?You aren't not continuously having sex with strangers by sheer force of will?
ANA MARIE: I guess he obviously thinks that gays have are "biologically predispositioned" to have sex with every hot same-sex thing they see, or that's just what he tells himself while he's furiously masturbating in his car over the pleasant looking woman that just bagged his groceries. How awful it must be to be Rick Warren!
MEGAN: I mean, if he masturbates that much it can't be that bad.
ANA MARIE: Well, I had sort of been inclined to like the guy, actually, given the other evangelical options, but this is such a crazy interpretation of what it means to be gay — or to be sexual, period — that I'm now kinda scared!
MEGAN: I'm just going to put this out there, despite it being the obvious end point, because it's a rainy Friday and I'm all about the cheap jokes on rainy Fridays. Maybe that's Rick Warren's interpretation of what it means to be gay and sexual because it's Rick Warren's experience with what it means to be gay and sexual.
ANA MARIE: Yikes. Except of course, he is gay for beautiful women.
MEGAN: Bisexuality is an option, yes.
ANA MARIE: I can't wait to her what Andrew Sullivan has to say about this. (And when is the last time anyone wrote that sentence!)
MEGAN: Definitely before he got obsessed with what Sarah Palin did/did not last have in her uterus. I think we need a chaser, and I nominate the 4-year-old New York girl who got tickets to the inauguration, because I'm hoping there will be pictures of the cute.
ANA MARIE: OMG PONIES! Yes, I am hoping too. Love how her dad was all, "She's taking me." Just keep her away from the porta potties, dad. You'll be fine.
MEGAN: Awww there is a picture, of her kissing Chuck Schumer.
ANA MARIE: That's the closest Schumer has gotten to cute since he got between Sasha and Malia and a microphone. Also? The little girl's name is "Lou." She totally needs to have a cameo in the Jon Favreau dramedy we're pitching to AMC after crappy closes (:))
MEGAN: Yes, they have to meet cute at the Inauguration. And she's lost and in the midst of the most important day of his life, he helps her find her daddy. Or is that too Sorkin-esque? It felt very Josh Lyman.
ANA MARIE: She's there with her age-appropriate but hot cousin and JF has to intervene when Rick Warren can't resist his biological urges!
MEGAN: Rick Warren, teeth bared, bounds off the platform and races like an animal on all fours straight for the cousin! (Wait, now I've seen the Wolverine trailer too many times)
ANA MARIE: "Lou" witnesses the horrible scene and Favreau takes the whole family to meet with Obama who delivers a heartfelt apology for underestimating Warren's self control. "Next time, I'll pick a gay guy," says Obama, "they don't think with their..." And Favreau does a "zip it, boss!" move, leading the adults to laugh at the avoided truth... until little Lou goes, "think with their biological urges?" And everyone laughs. And scene. Next episode: JF and hot cousin on a date!
MEGAN: With pratfalls, of course! Everyone loves a pratfall! Not as much as a crotch injury, but those are less prime-time friendly.