Pat Bagley, Salt Lake Tribune

This cartoon is licensed to appear on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited. All rights reserved.

Adam’s people were reluctant to let him appear on the cover. They only let it happen if it was a group shot, preferably including someone straight. (This even though Out was first in line, ages ago, in asking for a Lambert cover. Somehow Details was granted a crack at him first, presenting the singer caressing a barely clad woman and talking about kissing girls, though he did also manage to get in the fact that he’s gay).

And when Shana Naomi Krochmal arrived at 19 Entertainment’s chic office on Sunset Boulevard offices to conduct the interview:

I briefly met Adam, and then the publicist and I walked out to the balcony, at which point I was cautioned against making the interview “too gay,” or, “you know, gay-gay.” Specifically I was discouraged from asking about the March on Washington that upcoming weekend or other political topics… It was pretty awkward, as if we were discussing two totally different people — an Adam who doesn’t seem to have any real filter when talking about his life or his opinions, and an Adam who could somehow be contained, made safe for mainstream America.

It’s true that the Rolling Stone interview was the kind of free-for-all that’s a publicist’s nightmare. But, says Krochmal, “Out is a magazine whose primary audience is gay men. Is anyone confused about that?”

Krochmal was angry. Madder still, Out editor Aaron Hicklin, who gives Lambert a piece of his mind in his editor’s letter for the issue:

We’re curious whether you know that we made cover offers for you before American Idol was even halfway through its run. Apparently, Out was too gay, even for you. There was the issue of what it would do to your record sales, we were told. Imagine! A gay musician on the cover of a gay magazine. What might the parents think! It’s only because this cover is a group shot that includes a straight woman that your team would allow you to be photographed at all — albeit with the caveat that we must avoid making you look “too gay.” (Is that a medical term? Just curious.) Luckily, you seemed unaware that a similar caution was issued to our interviewer.

Perhaps we should have had you and Cyndi in a tongue lock. That would be radical. It’s odd, because this magazine has done covers with Pete Wentz and Lady Gaga — getting straight men and women to do Out is easy these days. It gives them cred. Getting gay stars like yourself is another matter. Much easier to stick you in Details, where your homosexuality can be neutralized by having you awkwardly grabbing a woman’s breast and saying, “Women are pretty.” So are kittens, Adam, but it doesn’t mean you have to make out with them.

Lambert’s tweeted retort:

Dear Aaron, it’s def not that deep. Chill! Guess ya gotta get attention for the magazine. U too are at the mercy of the marketing machine. Until we have a meaningful conversation, perhaps you should refrain from projecting your publications’ agenda onto my career.

Yes it does get attention for the magazine. Still it’s pretty ham-handed handling. Daily Intel:

It’s a bold move by Hicklin, who has pulled up clever publicity stunts in tandem with his big issues before — remember when he put “Anderson Cooper and Jodie Foster” on the cover of their “Power 50″ issue? On the one hand, picking a fight with a major celebrity is great for getting attention. On the other hand, severing a relationship with one of America’s most mainstream openly gay performers may come around to haunt the magazine in the future. Either way, he’s on pretty firm footing with his complaint. And a word to Adam: A publicist that sloppy can hurt a star’s career far worse than one bad magazine cover can.

EW’s review is here. You can hear For Your Entertainment now here.

A “dog warning card” arrived with my mail today. Thanks to a New Jersey branch of the National Association of Letter Carriers, you can see the form online. The form provides invaluable advice, such as “Do not deliver mail if you feel endangered by an animal.”

For a better understanding of the threats faced by America’s letter carriers, I recommend the following passage from The Postal Employee’s Guide to Safety (August 2006 edition), Section IX D:

Animals and Insects
1. General Rules
You are not required to deliver mail when an animal threatens you. Use extra care in making deliveries when dogs or other animals are loose on your route…

Neither antagonize nor attempt to pet dogs. If a dog rushes toward you or takes you by surprise, do not run. Retreat very slowly, facing the dog. Keep your mail satchel between you and the dog as a first line of defense. Be careful not to stumble over objects as
you retreat.

Use dog repellent spray only if you are attacked. Spray it directly at the dog’s eyes, nose, and mouth. Do not use dog repellent indiscriminately or when there is danger of spraying children or adults.

When delivering mail through a door slot, keep your fingers out of the slot; an animal may be on the other side.

Yikes.

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly

It wasn’t unusual that he mixed a few facts with opinion and outright lies in his three-hour daily show. Fact checking for the man who calls himself “America’s Truth Detector” is as rare as union organizers working for Walmart.

What is unusual is that Rush Limbaugh, whose web site shows a picture of him carrying a large gold-fringed American flag on a six-foot staff, spoke out against the Constitution of the United States.

Because logic and reason avoids his black-clad bouncy body, he may not have even known he was attacking the history of the United States and its Constitution. But on this Friday the 13th, the forces of evil spewed forth from his unfettered microphone mouth.

The United States had announced it was removing five persons accused of plotting the 9/11 terror from Guantanamo Bay and putting them into the federal judiciary system. Attorney General Eric Holder, at a press conference in Washington, D.C., had announced, “After eight years of delay, those allegedly responsible for the attacks of September the 11th will finally face justice. . . . I am confident in the ability of our courts to provide these defendants a fair trial just as they have for over 200 years [before] an impartial jury under long established rules and procedures.” He announced that the Department of Justice would “prosecute these cases vigorously,” and would seek the death penalty in each case. President Obama had said earlier that day he was “absolutely convinced that Khalid Sheik Mohammad [the alleged mastermind behind 9/11, and the other defendants] will be subject to the most exacting demands of justice. The American people insist on it, my administration will insist on it.”

Limbaugh called the decision a “disgusting travesty perpetuated here by Barack Obama.” That was just the beginning of his rant. Over the next few minutes, Limbaugh said the decision to bring terrorists to trial was solely “to satisfy the rabid, radical, far left that hates this country; that hates George W. Bush; that hates the U.S. military.”

Limbaugh opposed the use of lawyers; several times he branded them as leftist and Marxist, disregarding the reality that membership in the American Bar Association skews to the right. Although he came from a family of lawyers, he disregarded Constitutional guarantees that require even the most heinous of criminals to be assured their rights, including the right to be represented by an attorney. While erroneously claiming that terrorists have no rights, Limbaugh also objected to providing the defendants “fairness,” because in what he called the “new America,” fairness is something created by “a bunch of radical leftists.” He claimed that the defendants didn’t even deserve lawyers because, in the world of Rush Fairytale Logic, the lawyers would use the courts to attack the United States.

He attacked the federal judiciary, claiming, “There are a bunch of radical leftists on our federal bench,” all of whom apparently, if you believed the Mouth That Roared, are governed by such mundane and useless rules like—well—the Constitution of the United States. What Limbaugh didn’t say, possibly because the facts didn’t agree with his own distorted version of reality, is that there are more conservative judges than liberal judges in the federal judiciary. About one-third of all federal judges were appointed by George W. Bush, with a majority of all judges appointed by Ronald Reagan and the two Bushes. Limbaugh, in his deliberate distortion of facts also didn’t point out that 62 percent of all appeals court judges were appointed by Republican presidents, and that conservatives are the majority on 10 of the 13 appeals courts. He also failed to point out that six of the nine Supreme Court justices were appointed by Republican presidents. The Republican-dominated federal courts have cut down several unconstitutional provisions of the PATRIOT Act; the Republican-dominated Supreme Court has twice rebuked the Bush–Cheney Administration for procedures that are blatantly unconstitutional. In one major decision, conservative Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, speaking for the majority, ruled, “Any process in which the Executive’s factual assertions go wholly unchallenged or are simply presumed correct without any opportunity for the alleged combatant to demonstrate otherwise falls constitutionally short . . . [T]he constitutional limitations safeguarding essential liberties . . . remain vibrant even in times of security concerns.”

Like most conservative radio hosts and their teabag party followers, Limbaugh several times had blasted the Department of Justice for even thinking about bringing the terrorists onto the mainland, claiming the men were so evil that they would endanger all Americans. Unsaid by the talking mouths and empty heads was that the Department of Justice successfully prosecuted numerous gangsters, serial killers, and terrorists, and then successfully imprisoned them without danger to civilians.

For emphasis about how he thought a trial for the 9/11 terrorists would be unfair, Limbaugh threw veiled anti-Semitic attacks upon a possible jury pool. “Before it’s all said and done you’re going to find some whack nut jobs on the Upper West Side of Manhattan that are going to be on this jury,” said Limbaugh. The Upper West Side is largely identified as a community that was settled by refugee Jews, and which still has a significant percent of Jews.

Several times, Limbaugh stated that since the defendants had already “confessed,” the need for a trial was not necessary, and would only embarrass the U.S., placating those “leftists,” and exposing the entirety of the American intelligence community. This, said Limbaugh, is the “hidden agenda” of the Obama Administration. “They want the United States on trial,” Limbaugh cried out. Disregarding the absurdity of his own remarks, Limbaugh never acknowledged that the “confessions” were made only after severe torture. Bringing criminals, who have been subject to torture, to trial, who have confessed, said Limbaugh “is yet another internal assault on the fabric, the traditions, the institutions that have made this country great,” he told his equally rabid listeners.

Having attacked the President, the Attorney General, lawyers, judges, the Department of Justice, and Jews, Limbaugh put Rep. Joe Sestak (D-Pa.) into his cross-hairs. Sestak, said Limbaugh, is “a dangerous left-wing radical ideologue.” What drew Limbaugh’s rage was that Sestak not only supported the prosecution of the 9/11 terrorists in federal court, but that on Fox News, he argued that “Most studies have shown that [torture] does not give you evidence as readily or as credible as other means.” Persons who are tortured, said Sestak, raising concerns about the legitimacy of the terrorists’ “confessions,” will often confess to anything in order to stop the torture.

What Limbaugh didn’t tell his audience was that Sestak was a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, a retired vice-admiral who had led a carrier battle group, and was the first director of the Navy’s anti-terrorism unit after 9/11. Sestak’s views are the same as John McCain’s, also a Naval Academy graduate who had led an air squadron. Listeners could now choose between two war heroes, one of whom had suffered torture as a prisoner of war, and a college drop-out who, said his mother, flunked almost all of his classes in his only year in college, was declared 4-F in the draft, and now hails on 600 radio stations as the mouthpiece for the right-wing fringe.

“We are in the process of destroying American ideals; we are in the process of subordinating America’s greatness, America’s exceptionalism,” Rush Limbaugh wailed.

The reality is that flag-waving fact-impaired Rush Limbaugh has no idea what American ideals are, nor does he have respect for the legal history of the United States or the power of the Constitution.

[Walter M. Brasch, an award-winning former newspaper reporter and editor, is a syndicated social issues columnist, author, writer-producer, and professor of journalism at Bloomsburg University. His latest books are Sex and the Single Beer Can, a probing and humorous look at the nation's media; and Sinking the Ship of State: The Presidency of George W. Bush, with a focus upon the shredding of Constitutional protections. Both books are available at amazon.com, and other bookstores. You may contact Dr. Brasch through his website, www.walterbrasch.com.]

Sarah Palin’s magical mystery book tour has begun — a media blitz in which she’ll appear far and wide, and get interviewed by all and sundry. The immediate, short-term goal: to hype up interest in her new book and sell a zillion copies.

She’ll be appearing with the likes of Oprah Winfrey and Rush Limbaugh — the ying and yang of modern American media. You can rest assured that many conservatives will defend, call her fascinating and say those who criticize her are afraid of her future political power and trying to discredit her if the dare criticize her or call into question the book’s accuracy. Most liberals will call her a living caricature, say she deserves criticism and claim they are wishing she run in 2012 so the GOP can be obliterated — a sign of an assumption that some say is a risky one. Meanwhile extensive fact checking is going on (and some have cast doubts on its accuracy).

The AP calls her book “a tame affair.” But the prevailing question is going to be: will the unfolding Palin book blitz be something that will make her a more serious candidate or solidify her current status as a political celebrity whose future for political office seems grabbed from the card deck?

One thing is certain: already leaked quotes of her book have led some to say it is mostly a payback, lash-out aimed at Arizona Sen. John McCain and his staff for the way they “dissed” her when she ran as Veep on the McCain-Palin 2008 Presidential ticket. Usually books by candidates who seek the Presidency tell an affirmative story about the candidate; Palin’s book already has gotten the reputation of containing a big chunk telling the story of her as victim, battling short-sighted, not-nice McCain aides — and it has set off a brouhaha between Palin and the former McCainites (as the Palin Levin Johnston tabloid style feud rages on...).

CBS’s Bob Schieffer flatly predicts Palin has no future in elected politics:
Click here to view the embedded video.
Conservative New York Times’ columnist David Brooks, who has never been a Palin fan, dismisses here as “a joke:”

Speaking the day before Palin’s new book, “Going Rogue,” is slated to be officially released, Brooks scoffed at the notion that the ex-governor was somehow ready to be the face of the GOP.

“She’s a joke,” he told ABC’s “This Week.” “I mean, I just can’t take her seriously. We have got serious problems in the country. Barack Obama is trying to handle war. We just had a guy elected Virginia governor who is probably the model for future of the Republican Party, Bob McDonnell: Pretty serious guy, pragmatic, calm, kind of boring. The idea that this potential talk show host is considered seriously for the Republican nomination, believe me, it will never happen. Republican primary voters are just not going to elect a talk show host.”

But, once more, the question is whether Palin’s critics who say or suggest she is a joke get the ostensible joke? Could it be that the book will solidify her status in the GOP with the talk radio political culture conservatives and tea party protest movement at a time when the GOP seems increasingly re-adjusting (some say downsizing) the size of its tent?

But does winning the hearts and minds of the GOP base signify a key in the nomination battle and, if it goes that far, an election? The longtime conventional wisdom is: that’s unlikely,unless Democrats pay the game they play every few election cycles of deciding to teach their party leadership a lesson by staying home (and later learning a lesson about how elections have broader consequences when they’re not in power and complaining about GOP environmental policies, judicial appointments and other issues)? Newsweek Editor John Meacham sees Palin as having already had an impact on the party’s tone:

Now comes Sarah Palin, an heir to the Goldwater tradition, to try to harness the conservative discontent abroad in the land. Her political celebrity is so powerful that it has reduced a large part of the Republican Party to irrationality and civic incoherence. According to Gallup, Republicans are more likely to say they would seriously consider voting for Palin for president (65 percent) than to say she is qualified for the job (58 percent). At the moment she is promoting a book. But she is also, inevitably, promoting a distinctive political sensibility.

What Obama advisers privately refer to as “Palinism” has created a climate of ideological purity inside the GOP. To deviate from the anti-Obama line at all—that is, to acknowledge that politics is the art of compromise—risks the censure of the party. Pure ideologues will argue that this is a good thing; others like, say, South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, a close friend of Palin’s onetime champion John McCain, think differently. Graham was denounced last week by the Charleston County Republican Party for working with Democrats on issues such as climate change; the senator’s office replied by invoking President Reagan’s belief that “elected officials need to find common ground and work together to solve difficult problems.”

He believes Reagan wouldn’t cut it with Palin’s fans today:

…the Reagan style was one that might not have passed muster with Palin’s adoring fans. Reagan realized that movement conservatives like him needed moderate conservatives to win and ultimately to govern. In 1976, in his challenge to President Ford, Reagan announced that he would run with Pennsylvania Sen. Richard Schweiker, a Rockefeller Republican. It never came to that, but four years later, in Detroit, Reagan seriously considered only two men for the ticket: Ford and George H.W. Bush, both men from the middle, not the far right, of the Republican Party. It is difficult to imagine the 2012 nominee choosing a more moderate running mate, not least because there are so few moderates left in the GOP. Even those of centrist inclinations are finding it virtually impossible to work with the administration for fear of a backlash from the base.

…We are at our best as a country when there is something approaching a moderate space in politics. The middle way is not always the right way—far from it. But sometimes it is, and a wise nation should cultivate a political spirit that allows opponents to cooperate without fearing an automatic execution from their core supporters. Who knew that the real rogues in American politics would be the ones who dare to get along?

But “moderate” is now a dirty word to some in both parties, while others approach it from their own anchor (any idea that is to the left of someone means the other person is not a moderate; an idea that is the right of someone means that person is not a moderate). TAnd, in national terms, “moderate” center may shift to the right or left in a given election cycle or two.

How is Palin doing with non-base voters so far? A new poll suggests that rather that going rogue, she’s going south:

The buildup to her new book hasn’t eased Sarah Palin’s political challenges: Just over half of Americans in a new ABC News/Washington Post poll have an unfavorable opinion of her overall, as many say they wouldn’t consider supporting her for president and more – six in 10 – see her as unqualified for the job

.
Basically, the polls show that she has not changed the kinds of numbers she gets. She has not expanded her constituency:

Today 43 percent of Americans express a favorable opinion of Palin overall, while 52 percent see her unfavorably. Favorability is the most basic measure of a public figure’s popularity; in politics, where majorities win, it’s trouble when it goes negative, as it’s been for Palin since October 2008.

Intensity is against her as well: considerably more see her “strongly” unfavorably, 34 percent, than strongly favorably, 20 percent.

Fifty-three percent say they definitely would not vote for Palin if she were to run for president in 2012; that compares with 9 percent who say they’d definitely support her, while the rest, 37 percent, would consider it. (For comparison, in a 2006 ABC/Post poll fewer flatly ruled out Hillary Clinton, 42 percent, and fewer still wouldn’t consider John McCain, 28 percent.)

Palin moreover fails a basic hurdle on the road to the White House, were she to choose to take it: Just 38 percent of Americans see her as qualified to serve as president; 60 percent think she’s not qualified for the job.

The Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza looks at the poll and writes:

Since she was plucked from near total obscurity by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) last summer, Palin has emerged as one of the most divisive figures in the country — serving as a sort of cipher for how people view themselves and their relationship to politics.

Think Washington is out of touch with your values and ideals? To you, Palin is a truth-teller, a fresh face who doesn’t talk like or think like other politicians. (And, that’s a good thing.)

See politics as serious business that needs to be conducted by deep thinkers with long intellectual pedigrees? Then Palin is a dangerous force in the country, woefully unprepared and not sufficiently serious to run just about anything.

Palin’s problem is that while the intensity surrounding her is good for book sales, a look inside the numbers suggests she has significant political weaknesses as a result of it.

Rassmussen finds Palin hugely popular within today’s GOP:

Fifty-nine percent (59%) of Republican voters say former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin shares the values of most GOP voters throughout the nation.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that just 21% of Republican voters disagree and think the 2008 vice presidential candidate does not share their values. Twenty percent (20%) are undecided.

By contrast, 74% of Republicans say their party’s representatives in Congress have lost touch with GOP voters nationwide over the past several years. Only 18% of Republican voters believe their elected officials have done a good job representing the base.

The question for Palin is not whether she’s going to be praised by Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity; be defended and praised by websites and blogs that can always count on to praise and defend her and attack those who don’t; be the darling of those who think the GOP should not run or should marginalize those who don’t adhere to a strict 21st century conservative line. The question is what inroads she makes among other voters even some Republicans who reject the idea of smaller-tent Republicanism.

Can she expand her constituency or will her career be centered on consolidating it?

Even so, are all the polls and conventional wisdom on the right, left and center (including the assumptions in this post) missing something? Could it be, in fact, that Palin is well-positioned to win the GOP nomination? Walter Shapiro (an excellent political analyst) says don’t write her off:

More than two years before the 2012 Iowa caucuses, presidential speculation should come with a soothsayer’s money-back guarantee. But what all the discussions of Palin’s future miss is the way that Republican Party rules are made-to-order for a well-funded insurgent named Sarah to sweep the primaries before anyone figures out how to stop her. If Palin can maintain, say, 35-percent support in a multi-candidate presidential field, then she is the odds-on favorite for the GOP nomination.

The secret of Palin’s presidential potential is the Republican Party’s affection for winner-take-all primaries…….If Palin launches a 2012 race – and survives the South Carolina primary with her aura intact – she could theoretically sweep the winner-take-all states without ever winning a majority anywhere. The Republican establishment (the congressional leadership, the governors, the major donors and national consultants) could all agree that Palin would be an electoral disaster against Obama in November and still be powerless to halt her juggernaut.

The best way to stop Sarah would be for GOP insiders to rally quickly around a single anti-Palin candidate. But such cabals rarely work in politics because there are too many egos involved. Would, say, Romney be so panicked about Palin that he would prematurely abandon his presidential ambitions to support a potentially more winnable candidate like maybe Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty? Not bloody likely. For that matter, would populist Huckabee drop out in favor of a big-business Republican like Romney to prevent Palin mania? Yeah, sure…Jiggering with the primaries might be the first manifestation of a top-down Stop Palin movement. Otherwise, winner-take-all Republican primaries may speed the nomination of the most polarizing presidential nominee since the Democrats picked George McGovern in 1972.

Meanwhile, The Christian Science Monitor says: get ready for the Sarah Palin blitz since it will accelerate:

If you follow book headlines (or headlines of any kind), brace yourself in preparation for this week. Pretty much what you are going to be hearing and seeing is all Sarah Palin, all the time. Her memoir “Going Rogue: An American Life” (on sale as of tomorrow) is already a bestseller. And the chatter surrounding it is only going to get more intense.

….But you can bet that the media will be following her wherever she goes.

At the same time, the media and the blogosphere are already electric with dueling accounts of what is accurate in her book. “Going Rogue” apparently paints an unflattering picture of some former aides t0 the McCain campaign, blaming them for some of Palin’s missteps during the campaign.

But now, the McCain camp is firing back. Various former aides are speaking out, and one has released to ABC News e-mails that appear to contradict some of the accounts in Palin’s book.

Whether you are a Palin supporter or not, there will be no avoiding her image this week – at least, not unless you turn off TV, radio, and swear off the Internet for a minimum of a week.

And there will be no avoiding her image for some months (or years?) to come..

Here are a few more takes on Palin and her book:
–Rick Moran:

The question before us is can the narrative regarding Palin be altered to make her a viable candidate for 2012? With 60% of the American people currently dead set against voting for her for president under any circumstances, it would seem to be a very tall mountain for her to climb in order for her to achieve the respect of the voters; something she never had to begin with among a majority and seems to have damaged herself further by abandoning her office. Her tabloid like-presence in American culture has also dragged her down, as has the fact that very few of the elites in the Republican party take her seriously as a party leader.

And well they shouldn’t. They may fear her influence with the 20% or so of the party who would support her aspirations in 2012, but beyond that, they and most of the rest of us find it difficult to take one so shallow and uninformed seriously. As far as I can tell, she has done little in the intervening year since the election to rectify her appalling ignorance of the world, and even domestic issues like health care. The author of the “death panels” remark may have succeeded in scaring old people to death but if I were her, I would hardly stand on that as an accomplishment.

Her fan base – and indeed many on the right – applauded her fear mongering because they believe it slowed down the legislative process and got conservatives back in the game. I believe they are overstating her influence as there were other factors, including senior citizens both Democrat and Republican who were already up in arms over the proposed Medicare cuts who showed up in droves at town hall meetings and voiced their concerns. In effect, Palin may have simply tossed some nitro on an already volatile situation.

–Andrew Sullivan has been making a list of Palin…inaccuracies…for months:

And by the way, governor Palin, since you clearly read this blog: which of the 32 lies we have already documented can you rebut? We’d be delighted to give you a platform to clear up any factual inaccuracies or misunderstandings that we might have unwittingly published by merely relying on the public record. Presumably, you have more facts at your disposal that could disprove these odd untruths. Any time you want to make your case, we will happily publish your response in full with no edits so you can explain the vast discrepancy between observed reality and your version of it.

Or is this offer libelous as well?

--Say Anything:

Personally, I wish she hadn’t decided to re-open her issues with the McCain campaign staffers in the book. I think it’s obvious to any honest observer that they mishandled her and, after the campaign, outright attacked her. But is it really helpful for Palin, and even conservatives in general, to re-live those not-especially-proud moments from last year?

I understand Palin’s impulse for some for-the-record retribution, but the most it’s going to result in is McCain’s former campaign staffers going on all the talking head shows and ripping her to shreds for journalists who are all but cheering them on.

Sometimes it’s best to let sleeping dogs lay. Palin, at least from the tone of this review, would have been better served focusing on her biography, policy and the future than digging up corpses from the 2008 campaign.

--My DD’s Charles Lemos:

Since being plucked from obscurity for the Vice Presidential slot on the GOP ticket fifteen months ago, Sarah Palin has captivated and bemused the nation though not necessarily in a good way. To her fans she is Sarah, the second coming of Ronald Reagan which is grossly unfair since whatever his faults Reagan could at least speak in complete sentences using his training as an actor to muddle through whatever uncomfortable scene there was to perform or failing that resort to his charming self-deprecating humor. Palin is devoid of such talents. When challenged, she is nothing but a vindictive victim. That’s the drama being played out now one serious lashing out at all things McCain….

Hers is a fifteen month train wreck in the making but she is seemingly not done. Perhaps she thinks that she is capable of a resurrection. With the release of her gospel according to Sarah of the Delusions, the I can’t be bothered to finish to my one term stint as Governor in Juneau descends upon the lower 48 where raptured and raucous crowds surely await her as she spouts inanities about death panels, free markets and pipelines to nowhere. While David Brooks is lucid enough to dismiss her as a joke, others on the intellectual side of the GOP equation, such the Weekly Standard’s Matthew Continetti, seem to think that whatever Sarah’s foibles in the past they are remediable. Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Mr. Continetti assures us that if she can just win over a few percentage points among independents that they will be “serving moose burgers in the White House” come 2013.

The cartoon by Taylor Jones, Politicalcartoons.com is copyrighted and licensed to run on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited. All rights reserved.

Well, Ok, yesterday the Longhorns got lucky, again, and beat the Baylor Bears 47-14.

And yes, yesterday the Aggies happened to face some misfortune, again, and lost against the Oklahoma Sooners by a mere 55 points. (My local newspaper said something about “atrocious,” but what do they know.)

While for some reason, the Aggies don’t appear in the Top 25 rankings this week, I understand that Texas does—somewhere around # 2, or so.

I also understand that the Longhorns are 10-0 this season. (For some reason, I couldn’t find the stats for my alma mater)

But in what is probably the biggest college rivalry in the nation, none of this matters. We still have the big, traditional Thanksgiving game to come, where and when anything is possible, including redemption for the Aggies by just beating the Longhorns.

In preparation for the Big Game, the Aggies and the Longhorns are performing all kinds of feats to show off their prowess.

It has been rumored that a few weeks ago, Longhorn quarterback Colt McCoy threw a pass to his favorite receiver, Jordan Shipley, while Shipley was in a boat going 45 mph.

Two plucky Aggies not only recreated the alleged Longhorn feat, but surpassed it.

A couple of days ago I received a YouTube video from a friend.

The video shows Aggie Jeremy Adrian catching a pass from fellow Aggie Drew Flanagan while on a boat doing 50 mph.

Now, if we can replicate this on Kyle Field’s terra firma, we’ll be OK on Thanksgiving.

Gig’em Aggies!

By Daryl Cagle

I’m holding my breath. I’m now into my third month of waiting for Apple to approve my iPhone app. Yesterday I heard from Apple that they need more time to think about it.

My app is pretty cool; it is called “MSNBC.com Cartoons” and it features a real time news feed of political cartoons by top cartoonists from around the world. My app will be supported and promoted by MSNBC.com along with their other iPhone apps … that is, if Apple approves it.

It seems I have plenty to worry about. Apps for the iPhone have been multiplying at an exponential rate, with over 100,000 now approved. Developers are looking to strike it rich with the next “iFart,” but as the sheer numbers of apps explodes, the chance of an app being a hit becomes more remote and frustration with Apple’s app approval process grows. Developers have to invest in creating a finished app before submitting it to Apple, which can arbitrarily trash the investments and hopes of aspiring developers – as happened to a friend of mine this week.

My buddy Tom Richmond, the brilliant Mad Magazine artist, just finished drawing 544 caricatures of members of congress for an app called “Bobble Rep.” The app works as a directory of every congressman, displaying their contact information by zip code or by the GPS location of the iPhone user. Shake the iPhone and the rep’s head “bobbles.” It is a cute app, and the caricatures are not unflattering. Apple rejected “Bobble Rep.”

A letter from Apple explained the rejection:

“… We’ve reviewed Bobble Rep – 111th Congress Edition and determined that we cannot post this version of your iPhone application to the App Store because it contains content that ridicules public figures and is in violation of Section 3.3.14 from the iPhone Developer Program License Agreement which states:

“Applications may be rejected if they contain content or materials of any kind (text, graphics, images, photographs, sounds, etc.) that in Apple’s reasonable judgment may be found objectionable, for example, materials that may be considered obscene, pornographic, or defamatory.”

A screenshot of this issue has been attached for your reference.”

Ray Griggs, the producer of the “Bobble Rep” app, suffered a blow as he saw his investment in programming and in 544 Tom Richmond cartoons arbitrarily flushed away. Griggs writes, “I wonder if they saw my website (www.iwantyourmoney.net) that promotes the iPhone app and rejected the app because I am making a Republican Documentary. Are they trying to shut me down? (Just speculation. However, it is uncanny that the “offensive” page image they sent me is of the California reps.) Is there anything on this page that could possibly be found offensive?”

My cartoonist buddy Tom Richmond writes, “Clearly this app does not ‘ridicule public figures’ and is violating nothing, but Apple has decided the world must be protected from the insidious subversiveness this would force upon the public and the brutal, heinous ridicule that my cruel, cruel caricatures would subject these politicians to.

Hard to believe that anybody could be this blind. Maybe they just have a monkey doing the approval of their apps, and he throws a dart at a dartboard with “approved” and “rejected” targets on it and whatever it hits is the fate of that app. That would explain how they could approve an app with a cartoon baby picture and when you shake the phone hard enough the baby dies. Yes, that one got through only to be yanked after some outraged people complained, but no way are a bunch of flame-throwing caricatures going to get through!!!

Unbelievable.”

Prolific iPhone app developer Brian Stormont has this advice for hopeful app applicants:

“Don’t make any jokes about political figures, past or present, in either your app or the description in iTunes. Apple will most-likely reject your app.”

Apple would seem to be a bi-partisan offendee. App developer Brandyn Brosemer reports that his “iBush” app was rejected for the same reason. The app was a collection of actual George W. Bush quotes that the reader could scroll through.

Another Apple political app rejection is “MyShoe” which allowed users to throw shoes at President Bush.

Studies show that people use the iPhone differently than other mobile devices – they read news content on the iPhone and tend not to do so on other phones. The iPhone’s market share for news and opinion is dominant, while all other phones have an insignificant market share. Although any publisher can decide what content he wants in his own publication, Apple’s phone-news monopoly brings with it a public trust and responsibility in controlling content for a whole category of media.

And with my own political cartoons app review dragging on, I’m still holding my breath.

Turning blue now.

Daryl Cagle is a political cartoonist and blogger for MSNBC.com; he is a past president of the National Cartoonists Society and his cartoons as well as 50 other cartoonists, at www.caglecartoons.com are syndicated to more than 850 newspapers, including the paper you are reading. Daryl’s books “The BIG Book of Campaign 2008 Political Cartoons” and “The Best Political Cartoons of the Year, 2010 Edition” are available in bookstores now. His column is copyrighted and licensed to run on full on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited. All rights reserved.

Apple cited this image as “objectionable” in a rejection letter to “Bobble Rep” developer Ray Griggs.


And here are screenshots from the “Bobble Rep” app, ©RG Entertainment, Ltd., Artwork by Mad Magazine’s Tom Richmond.

As a little boy, I used to crawl on the floor for hours setting up dozens of dominoes in various patterns, only to topple them down—and doing it over and over again.

Well, the Dutch have taken this pastime to new levels.

Today, “Domino Day,” they set a new world record—again—for the most consecutive dominoes to fall in succession, using over 4.5 million dominoes in a fantastic array of displays, including the Statue of Liberty and “Yes We Can.”

Thought you would like to know, and watch, on a weekend, up to now, fortunately void of any other earth-shaking news.

We’re seeing a lot fewer mad scientists in major Hollywood films today, and a lot more scientist heroes. In 2012, the hero is Adrian Helmsley (Chiwetel Ejiofor) who is–and this cracked me up–a “deputy geologist” at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Well, at least they got the office name right, though geologists have their own agency. Later, Helmsley becomes the top science adviser to the president. And for good reason: He is the guy who makes the US government wake up and see the catastrophe that is coming; he is the guy who runs the models to try to figure out just when it will arrive and how bad it will be–even though these models aren’t perfect and often have to be revised, always in the it’s-even-worse direction (an interesting analogy with climate change models). Helmsley’s virtue–a uniquely scientific one–lies in the fact that he fully and honestly admits as much. In one moment that anybody who cares about science in policy will love, Helmsley explains one of these recalculations to POTUS (Danny Glover) in the Oval Office, and admits, “I was wrong.” The president replies (these are not his exact words) “That’s the first time anybody has ever said that in this office.” Yup, that’s the virtue of having scientists in government.

I’m seeing the movie later tonight. The WaPo gives it 4 stars, calling it a perfect disaster, “enormously satisfying, astonishingly accomplished, reprehensible-yet-irresistible ‘2012,’ the crowning achievement in Emmerich’s long, profitable career as a destroyer of worlds.”

As it happens, I had lunch in LA today. Wired says that I will thoroughly enjoy seeing it destroyed:

Much of this film is animated, but it’s virtually impossible to tell. In particular, the destruction of Los Angeles is a visual feast. It is an accomplishment in action filmmaking. This scene highlights Emmerich’s childlike glee as a filmmaker: It’s impossible for a car to fly as the ground crumbles underneath, but it happens in this world. Truth be told, it’s a cinematic representation of Nintendo’s Mario running across collapsing bridges. Above all, it’s funny.

The Seattle PI is less enamored, saying it’s only slightly more big and fun than dumb. The NYTimes’ Manohla Dargis had no fun. She found the film’s formulaic destruction a tired retread:

[Emmerich] cracks the planet like a nut, splitting its crust, toppling its mountains and cities, and laying its every creeping thing to inevitable tedious waste. Maybe he’s angry. (His last movie, “10,000 B.C.,” was widely panned.) To judge from the similarity with which he stages the multiple disaster sequences in “2012” — a limo, a camper, a plane, a bigger plane and some really big boats, by turns, race ahead of the impending doom — he seems exhausted.

So far the folks at Rotten Tomatoes agree. At a lowly 37%, it gets no tomato!

Meanwhile, Newsbusters is busting-a-nut over their assertion that 2012 star John Cusack may (or may not) have dropped an f-bomb on The Morning Show. I’m in the not camp, “Some mornings yeah, uh I can feel…”

Claude Lévi-Strauss, who died on October 30th (aged 100), made the study of anthropology as fashionable as philosophy and poetry. The Economist pays a tribute: “Before Claude Lévi-Strauss revolutionised the discipline, anthropology in France, and generally elsewhere, was a matter of ill-attended lectures in small, cold halls, and the collection of feathers and fish-hooks as evidence of the quaint divergences of the ‘primitive’ tribes of mankind…

“As he faded, he mourned the vanishing of the tribes. ‘Primitive’ man was not nobler or purer than he was, but they were, in the deepest sense, connected: for universal laws linked his thinking, in all its book-lined complexity, to that of the Indian clad only in tree-bark, trailing a deer along a forest path…

“Mr Lévi-Strauss, throwing down the gauntlet in ‘La Pensée Sauvage’ in 1962, saw nothing primitive about the tribes he studied. Totemism, for example, was a system as complex as the Linnaean classification…”

More here…

Levi-Strauss drew comparisons between American Indian myths and the story of Cinderella; demonstrated how some Amazonian tribes divided their villages into rival halves that synthesize through marriage; and tracked diverse folk tales through Latin America to show how they were related in form, says Bloomberg.

“Intellectuals such as Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida cited Levi-Strauss’s methods in their social analyses. Seminal French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre engaged him in debate over the issue of personal freedom, while feminist Simone de Beauvoir agreed with his human-kinship theories, which focused on the social exchange of females in non-Western societies.” More here…

Levi-Strauss left France as a result of the anti-Jewish laws of the collaborationist Vichy regime and during World War II joined the Free French Forces, reports Associated Press.

“Levi-Strauss also won worldwide acclaim and was awarded honorary doctorates at universities, including Harvard, Yale and Oxford, as well as universities in Sweden, Mexico and Canada.

“A skilled handyman who believed in the virtues of manual labor and outdoor life, Levi-Strauss was also an ardent music-lover who once said he would have liked to have been a composer had he not become an ethnologist.

“He was married three times and had two sons, Matthieu and Laurent.” More here…

While in New York, Lévi-Strauss immersed himself in the great body of anthropological accounts of North and South Amerindians that early US anthropologists and linguists had been accumulating for more than a century, says The Guardian obituary. “The data collected from the Amerindians and its complexity delighted him, and made him react permanently against reductionist explanations of culture, which implicitly denied the intellectual achievement that indigenous mythology and social thought represented.

“The basis of the structural anthropology of Lévi-Strauss is the idea that the human brain systematically processes organised, that is to say structured, units of information that combine and recombine to create models that sometimes explain the world we live in, sometimes suggest imaginary alternatives, and sometimes give tools with which to operate in it.

“The task of the anthropologist, for Lévi-Strauss, is not to account for why a culture takes a particular form, but to understand and illustrate the principles of organisation that underlie the onward process of transformation that occurs as carriers of the culture solve problems that are either practical or purely intellectual.

“For him anthropology was scientific and naturalistic, that is scientific in the way that structural linguistics had become scientific. By looking at the transformations of language that occur as new utterances are generated, by using the tools that a particular language makes available, structural linguistics was able, so Lévi-Strauss believed, to understand not only the irreducible specificities of a particular language, but also the principles that made their production possible.

“In this way, linguistics, as he understood it, was a branch of the humanities and a natural science that is able to connect directly with psychology and neurology.” More here…

So Hannity apologized…and Stewart had some reaction to that as well:

P.S. Sean Hannity is to accuracy what a banana split is to dieting.

As a longtime former reporter, I can attest that when a news source in a forum where it is not on background or off the record says “No comment” — except for those who love, support or are allied to that news source — the news source comes off as not answering due to having something to hide or being embarrassed. Stripping away the inevitable ideological rhetoric of right and left and on this story, this appearance didn’t enhance her image. There are a zillion evasive ways to answer a tough question: just turn on the Sunday morning TV shows and watch politicians on those programs. Or bank CEOs before Congress or CEOs of insurance companies when grilled on health care questions.

Not a good P.R. move and whoever heard of someone suggesting Larry “So waddayathink…How do ya feel?” King who has thrown more softballs than all the softball leagues in America combined is an unfair, tough,”gotcha” interviewer? Anyone who did his or her advance prep could have handled this question — which was handled with the equivalent of someone sticking their fingers in their ears. Those who support her for partisan reasons may call it a masterful performance but that is spin and wishful thinking. (Perhaps it’ll start a new approach for talk show guests who don’t like questions: call it inappropriate, take off your mike and just sit there talking without a microphone and scold the host.)

This qualifies as “good television” due to the emotion — but it is lousy p.r. indicating poor advance preparation:
Click here to view the embedded video.

UPDATE: Here’s some other media reaction (views below do not necessarily reflect the opinion of TMV or its many writers):
–LA Times:

We’d like to call it “inappropriate” too. And maybe even throw a “misleading” for good measure. In the entertaining three-minute clip, Prejean becomes agitated when King repeatedly asks her why she dropped her claims of libel, slander, and religious discrimination against the Miss USA pageant. TMZ has reported that Prejean decided to strike a deal only after the lawyer for the pageant revealed a homemade sex tape of a 17-year-old Prejean.

King wasn’t asking about the particulars of the settlement, just why she settled, mind you. But Prejean repeatedly called him “inappropriate,” took off her microphone, and appeared to want to leave. She never really owned that moment, we should add. She fumbled, looked around the room, and stayed sitting in the chair, even though she had removed her mike.

And then after the commercial break — which you don’t see on the clip that hit cyberspace last night — Prejean is still in her seat. She didn’t go anywhere. There was still her new book, “Still Standing” to promote. So she forgave King for his other violation — Prejean’s publicist had set some rules: no phone calls and King had turned to his phone lines when she refused to answer his “inappropriate” questions.

–Baltimore Sun blog:

Prejean, who is selling a book, has this rap she’s also selling in recent interviews as to how “conservative women” are treated poorly by the “liberal” press.I think her primary goal is to somehow link herself to Sarah Palin whom she mentions a lot. And so, last night, she decided to do a little agit prop playacting, even though Larry King is one of the nicest, kindest interviewers on the face of the Earth, let alone TV. There was absolutely nothing “inappropriate” about what he asked. She later said it was inapprorpiate for him to take phone calls, even though that is what the Larry King show almost always does.

–New York Daily News:

No one’s voting Carrie Prejean for Miss Congenialty, thanks to a temper tantrum on “Larry King Live” last night.

During the televised interview, the 22-year-old beauty queen refused to answer King’s questions about her lawsuit settlement with the Miss California organization.

Asked about the motivation for the settlement itself (and if it might have anything to do with her recently released sex tape), Prejean answered through pursed lips, “Larry, you’re being inappropriate.”

It’s a mantra she repeated many times to the venerable show host before he opened the phone line to callers.

The moment the first caller said, “I’m a gay man,” Prejean began unhooking her microphone from underneath her sweater and whispering to someone in the wings before staring blankly at the camera.

“I can’t hear you,” she said, like a six-year old on a playground.

“That’s because you took the mic off,” King replied.

“I think you’re being extremely inappropriate right now, and I’m about to leave your show,” Prejean repeated before flashing a bright white pageant smile.

With all this talk of propriety, Prejean may keep in mind that she is currently starring in both a sex tape and nude photos that are making the rounds.

--EOnline:

Larry King got the fallen beauty queen so fired up on CNN’s Larry King Live last night, she walked out on the show.

Prejean is in the middle of a publicity bonanza hawking her new book, Still Standing, which details her clash with Donald Trump, Shanna Moakler and the rest of the Miss California organization.

After she showed off the tome and talked about her love for Sarah Palin—she considers herself “Palinized”—King began to ask about Prejean’s recent settlement with the pageant organizers. She continued to spout her party line…that is, until she called King inappropriate and ripped off her microphone…

…..After a quick commercial break, she claimed King and her publicist had agreed that she would take no viewer questions. He said he was unaware of that agreement and so ended the episode of Inappropriate King Live.

To think—he didn’t even ask if she was going to take the million-dollar porno deal!

Wonder what she’ll say to her ex-boyfriend—the one who dropped the bombshell sex tape—when she hears he told TMZ that she urged him to “lie” and say she was 17 in the raunchy video. He claims, however, to have received the tape in 2007, when she was 20-years-old.

--CBS News frames it this way:

Former Miss California USA Carrie Prejean made a short but dramatic appearance on Larry King Live Wednesday, in which she refused to answer an openly gay caller and threatened to walk off the show, after King asked questions about the role a sex tape may have played in a lawsuit settlement.

And of course it was argued by left and right with predictable positions (defend or blast) on The View.

1) Memphis is a great city. Beale Street has the best blues clubs in the country. Graceland was interesting but I have a question: Why is U.S. 51 named for Danny Thomas in town but Elvis Presley outside of Memphis? Is the King not good enough to have the entire road named for him?

2) Happy Veterans Day! I know it was yesterday, but as a veteran, I was too busy eating my free meals at Denny’s and Applebee’s to write yesterday. Seriously, to all of my fellow veterans, Thank You for your service.

3) The FBI is on my dump list today. How could they put the lives of our men and women in uniform in jeopardy by not telling the Army that they had Nidal Hasan under surveillance for over a year? The agents involved should be brought up on charges to prevent this kind of turf war from happening again. Bureaucratic turf wars that cost the lives of innocent people serving their country is wrong!

4) As a Baltimore Raven fan, if the Steelers and the Colts play in the playoffs, who do you root for? The Steelers or the Colts with Matt Stover as their kicker?

However, there is plenty of commentary out there about how amazing the program is and how much of an impact it has had on society as a whole, so I thought we might focus on the more personal. The impact the show had on us, or on our children, grandchildren, etc.

Or perhaps we could share memories of some of our favorite parts of the show.

For me there was just something magical about that hour we’d spend with Ernie, Bert, Grover, Oscar, Cookie Monster, Big Bird and company. I even find myself today as an adult still enjoying a quick visit back.

I’ve added a couple videos that still make me smile.

Feel free to add your own links

This post brought to you by the letter A and the number 40.