This is one of the funniest things I’ve seen in a while—which, considering some of the screwy things that have come out of this election season, is saying quite a bit.
HT: Eric Trager(NB: I’m going to try to find a copy of this video without the little ad for M90.org on it; apparently that’s not the sort of site I’d want to endorse, to put it mildly, so I recommend you not go exploring. Thanks to Tyler Dawn for letting me know about that; see her comment for more information.)
For your consideration, footage of a media strategy session on how to deal with Governor Sarah Palin now that she’s been selected as the Republican VP nominee:
(Do you realize how hard it is to talk with your tongue in your cheek?)
I just got the chance to watch last night’s Tonight Show, which was a great one; Jay Leno was at the top of his form. (I especially enjoyed his crack that he had John McCain and Dara Torres on “not for politics and the Olympics, but just because I like being around people who’ve been told they’re too old for the job.” Nice shot at NBC there.) It was interesting to note the dead silence from the audience when Leno mentioned Joe Biden, and interesting too to see how well Sen. McCain connected with them; it underscored the point folks have made that he’s much better in an informal, unscripted setting than he is in a stump speech. (That, I imagine, is the reason Barack Obama has refused to do the town hall meetings with him, because Sen. Obama is the other way around.) I expect it helped that this was Sen. McCain’s 13th appearance on the show—I got the sense from watching him and Leno that there’s a fair degree of friendship between the two of them, as they seemed to enjoy talking with each other. They cracked a few jokes—some at Sen. McCain’s expense, a couple at Sen. Biden’s—but they also had some serious discussion, and I think some worthwhile points were made. In particular, I appreciated his response to Leno’s question about the dollar that the first thing we need to do is “stop sending $700,000,000 a year to countries who don’t like us,” which was the beginning of his argument for expanded domestic energy production—drilling, nuclear, hydrogen, the works. (Perhaps my biggest surprise of his appearance: he got applause from the audience for calling for offshore drilling.)If you didn’t get the chance to watch Sen. McCain on Leno, the video is below.
One last comment: might I just add how much I hope to see Gov. Sarah Palin sitting in that chair a few weeks from now as the Republican VP nominee? I think she’d rock the show.
This is weird, but it’s funny. (At least, I think so; I’ll let you judge for yourself.)
If we can’t laugh at our politicians, who can we laugh at?HT: Carlos Echevarria
Well, I’m back to work, the kids are back in school, and we finally have our vehicle back (which necessitated a five-hour round trip to return the rental van and pick it up), so at least theoretically, we’re back to the normal routine; here’s hoping that, at the least, we don’t get any more unpleasant surprises for a while. (Pleasant ones would make a nice change, but I’m not getting my hopes up.)On another note, my brother-in-law recently introduced us to I Can Has Cheezburger?, a large collection of cat pictures (and the occasional pic of other animals) with funny captions; we’ve gotten some good laughs out of them. Here’s a few examples:
Making fun of politicians is not only our right as Americans, it’s our duty. After all, somebody has to keep those guys (relatively) humble if we’re going to preserve democracy. Unfortunately, those who lead us in this important cultural responsibility—our late-night talk-show hosts—have been falling down on the job, unable to find a good way to poke fun at Barack Obama. Part of that is the candidate’s own resistance, which is worrisome; do we really want a president who won’t let us laugh at him? We’ve had presidents before who were bad at laughing at themselves (think Nixon), which was bad enough—but not to be able to laugh at the President? It’s positively un-American. Part of this too is that audiences are resistant, which is equally concerning; if we’ve started taking politicians, even one politician, too seriously to be able to laugh at them, something is seriously out of whack with us.Fortunately, there are a few people riding to the rescue. Andy Borowitz was good enough to pass along a list of five “campaign-approved Barack Obama jokes,” and Joel Stein (in the Los Angeles Times) has collected a list of suggestions for the rest of us. We also, thank goodness, have JibJab:
With their help, it is to be hoped that we can go forth and redress the humor balance. We’d certainly better, because Maureen Dowd is right:
if Obama gets elected and there is nothing funny about him, it won’t be the economy that’s depressed. It will be the rest of us.
(As a side note, I have to admit, I feel a little sorry for Sen. Obama. Not so much because of his touchiness, although I think being able to laugh at oneself is one of life’s great blessings; it’s because of his initials. People keep wanting to refer to him by his initials, and certainly as a Democratic presidental candidate, you want to be able to hang out with FDR and JFK—though maybe not so much LBJ; but he doesn’t want to be referred to as BHO, because that reminds people that his middle name’s Hussein, and that’s bad, or something. And yet, not even Barack Obama can make BO cool. What’s the guy to do?)HT for the Stein column: Bill
If you’ve ever flown Aer Lingus, the national airline of Ireland, you might want to take a moment and say a prayer of gratitude that you made it home. As Lindsay Watt noted recently on her blog Random Dispatches, for an airline, they seem to have a small problem with geography. Apparently upstate New York has moved to Québec without telling us, taking Maine with it:
You may also notice, down in the corner, that they’ve relocated New Orleans. Nice of them to do that, but maybe a little late. Pittsburgh, meanwhile, appears to be somewhere in Ohio. For the whole map from Aer Lingus’ inflight magazine, check out the original post.HT: Strange Maps
Bishop N. T. Wright went on The Colbert Report last night, and the results weren’t what I would have expected. Stephen Colbert (as some have complained) wasn’t at his funniest, but it seems to me that that’s because he was actually interested in having a serious discussion with Bishop Wright about his book, Surprised by Hope. It’s probably just as well, since it seemed to me the good bishop got a bit testy as it was—I’m not at all sure he would have handled an all-out Stephen Colbert assault. Taken all in all, I think it’s a pretty good discussion, with some of the trademark Colbert humor and a pretty good exposition of Bishop Wright’s understanding of the concept of heaven (which I don’t agree with, though I still appreciated the clip); seeing a little of Colbert’s serious side as a man of faith, as I think we did, was a bonus.
He doesn’t look all that natural in front of a TV camera, and when he smiles, he tends to look as if he were doing an impression of Jack Nicholson playing the Joker, but John McCain has a good sense of humor for all that; he dropped by SNL recently for a brief bit on Weekend Update, encouraging Democrats to keep the primary contest going. Take a look:
