'Best of TBH Politoons'
Baron Dave Romm
Be Nice!
By Baron Dave Romm
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A lull in the negativity is good -- a polite reality check is better
When Republicans win, they lord it over everyone. After squeaking out dirty victories in 2000, 2002 and 2004, many on the hard right predicted that Democrats would be the "permanent minority party". The best you can say about this playground taunt is that it was wrong. And they should have known; politics goes in cycles. Now, those same braggarts and playground bullies are on the outside looking in. At least for the foreseeable future.
We are not above a little gloating. Still, I think it's wise to be nice to Republicans, at least for a while. We have something they don't: Class. Not too much, but enough. They're going to accuse us of all sorts of things that aren't true. Crying "Wolf!" only goes so far. It's up to us to behave like adults.
My strategy for now: Don't take shit from anyone, but don't pick fights. Continuing to point out hypocrisy is not picking a fight. I'll be gentle in this column, but not so gentle that they won't know what hit 'em. The whining from the right is getting even louder. They just don't get it, and they can't take a tenth of their own rhetoric back in their face. Tough.
It's hard to be nice when Bush is working so hard to be arrogant and stupid
Bush said he wanted to work with the Democrats, and acted all nice and semi-humble... for about 36 hours. He then proved he didn't hear the voters and renominated Bolton to be Ambassador to the UN. This, after lying about Rumsfeld.
Republicans don't know how to do anything but lie
Bush's firing of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is a good example. If Shrub had fired Rummy ("I've accepted his resignation") than much of the anger over Iraq would have been ameliorated and a few close races might have gone for the GOP. Instead, Bush lied to reporters (and smirked about it later) then fired an incompetent manager after the political damage was done.
Bush is replacing Rumsfeld, a person his father hates from their days in the Ford administration, with one of his father's cronies. This must rankle Shrub. Regardless of what's happening in the dysfunctional Bush family, you should be pissed off at the thought of Iran-Contra figure Bob Casey as Defense Secretary. Once again, Bush cares more about PR than he does our soldiers. He cares more about elections than winning wars. Casey, whose background is the CIA not the military, isn't qualified to be Defense Secretary. He's in to get generals to shut up. Not to win, but to get the soldiers to be sitting ducks quietly.
Be afraid for 2008: Bush is proud that the elections weren't cancelled.
Bush's Radio address of Nov. 11, 2006: "Whatever your opinion of the outcome, all Americans can take pride in the example our democracy sets for the world by holding elections even in a time of war." Hey Georgie, does that mean you were considering canceling the election? Good G_d. Robert Heinlein was right to warn of Nehemiah Scudder.
New Republican Political Correctness: The Democrats won by being conservative.
This is a lie in two ways.
First, it's a lie because most Democrats never were as far to the left as Karl Rove and Rush Limbaugh would have you believe. Many strong Democrats look liberal compared to extremists like former Senators Santorum and Allen. Finger pointing from the extremes doesn't change the position of the middle. The GOP is living in its own echo chamber. They've been lying to each other for so long, they desperately need a reality check. The media needs a reality check as well.
Second, because it's not true. Most of the newly elected Democrats are fairly liberal, and even the more conservative ones don't go along with the radical Republican agenda.
Anger gets people to the polls
Everyone claims to hate negative campaigning, but they don't shut off the tv. This election was the most expensive ever for a midterm, more expensive than all but the most recent presidential year campaigns, and features a lot of mud slinging. It also boasts some of the highest voter turnouts in any recent midterm election. I think the two are connected. Some people view voting as a chore, and need anger to motivate them. I hope it's a habit.
So... be nice. For a while. The extremists are going to accuse us of all sorts of nasty things, completely forgetting all the nasty things they said over the years. Let 'em. This election proved that fewer and fewer people are buying it. Don't you let them have the last word.
Baron Dave Romm is a conceptual artist and a noble of Ladonia who produces Shockwave Radio Theater, writes in a Live Journal demi-blog, plays with a very weird CD collection and an ever growing list of political links. Dave Romm reviews things at random for obscure web sites. You can read all his music recommendations from Bartcop-E. Podcasts of Shockwave Radio Theater. Permanent archive. More radio programs, interviews and science fiction humor plays can be accessed on the Shockwave Radio audio page.
Thanks to everyone who has sent me music to play on the air.
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Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Tristan Taormino: Riding the Shortbus (villagevoice.com)
Tristan recounts her experience as a "sextra" in the provocative indie flick
Election 2006: Women's eNews Election Returns (womensenews.org)
A Gallery of Fallen Religious Leaders (beliefnet.com)
Click through our photo gallery to learn about ... fallen spiritual leaders and how their communities coped with the revelations.
Kim Ficera: Don't Quote Me: House of Hatred (afterellen.com)
Remember when Dr. Phil "Get Real" McGraw was a voice of reason and personal accountability, not a purveyor of sensationalism and a wielder of lie detector machines? I do. I remember when he was the anti-Springer, the polar opposite of Povich, and the contra-Montel. But the canyon of rationale that once separated him from the land of garrulous hosts, piquant confessions and psychobabble has shrunk to the size of a line break in the Hippocratic oath. The doctor has become exactly what he once rose so far above.
GREG HERNANDEZ: The Artist's Way (frontierspublishing.com)
During the height of his soap-opera fame, Thom Bierdz remembers making personal appearances where he would be mobbed by female fans who were smitten after seeing him as Phillip Chancellor on The Young and the Restless. But for a closeted star, it wasn't exactly the thrill it should have been.
Craig Young: Borat: What's in a Satire? (afterelton.com)
More than a few times during a recent screening of Borat in New York, one audience member found herself laughing, but catching herself, she would say "no" and cover her mouth as if she had acted in a socially inappropriate manner. When you watch Borat, you may also catch yourself laughing as the title character crosses from somewhat poor taste into downright vulgar. Like the audience member at the screening, you may want to fight your urge to laugh. Don't. Go with it. The movie is in bad taste, but it's also 100 percent, grade-A funny.
Michelle Garcia: Careful, or Maxine Lapiduss will sing about you too
Q: Do you really have a thing for Condi Rice?
A: I have a thing for the fact that she needs to be out of our government as soon as possible. I saw a poll in Vanity Fair with a bunch of men asking who you'd most like to have dinner with. She was number 1. I just thought it was interesting. Men have this fantasy about her that she's just this weird bondage chick and she's this wild woman. She's just so brilliant and astute. But what the hell? If she is so smart, what is she doing with these bozos?
Maxine Lapiduss (maxinelapiduss.com)
Watch my show-stopping lesbian love lament to the Secretary of my Tortured State, Condoleezza Rice.
Commentoon: Speaker Pelosi (womensenews.org)
Ward Sutton: Why Did You Vote Republican in 2006? (Cartoon)
Live in Douglas County, Colorado? Borrow Bruce's Books.
Search for "Funniest People."
Hubert's Poetry Corner
GHOST SOLDIERS OF McLENNAN COUNTY
ONE MAN'S PERPETUAL PRIVATE FUTURE HELL?
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Sunny, but cool.
Auction Brings $2.9 Million
Steve McQueen
Bidders looking for a piece of the "King of Cool" shelled out six figures for motorcycles and paid more than $70,000 for one pricey pair of shades in an auction of items that once belonged to actor Steve McQueen.
Cars, trucks, motorcycles and memorabilia from McQueen's widow Barbara and other collectors were put up for sale by Bonhams and Butterfields at the Petersen Automotive Museum on Saturday. The entire auction brought in $2.9 million.
A 1937 Crocker "Hemi-head" V-Twin motorcycle brought in $276,500, the biggest price of the day and a world record for a Crocker motorcycle, said auction house spokesman Levi Morgan. A 1934 Indian Sport Scout went for $177,500, and a 1920 Indian Powerplus Daytona brought in $150,000.
Steve McQueen
Keeps Laughs Coming
Big Dog & Poppy Show
They're separated by more than 20 years, they come from opposing political parties, and one evicted the other from the White House. But Bill Clinton and George Bush act like a team, a pair of touring comedians with a well-honed act.
The two former presidents even have their entrance down pat, striding in with arms aloft, music pounding, lights flashing, the crowd standing and going wild.
The pair addressed more than 25,000 people attending the National Association of Realtors convention on Saturday, drawing at least six standing ovations and almost continuous applause.
Big Dog & Poppy Show
Creations Out Of Cans
Canstruction
It's a can-do event. Architects and engineers recently gathered at Canstruction, an annual event held in New York and other cities, to build giant sculptures made from full cans of food. The show is meant to raise awareness of hunger issues.
This year's top winners in New York included a "canstruction" of a lion and a lamb lying down together. It was built by the team from Butler Rogers Baskett Architects.
The sculpture, titled "If They Can, We Can," was made of Bush Bean cans and meant to send a message of peace among adversaries to Washington, D.C., said Cheri Melillo, president and executive director of the event. It was made of about 5,500 cans, she said.
Canstruction
Carries On Despite Setbacks
Molly: Ivins
You'd expect Molly Ivins -- syndicated columnist, best-selling author, and veteran eviscerator of the pompous and mendacious -- to freely offer her opinions to a reporter, and she does, even suggesting this lede: "Molly Ivins Still Not Dead."
The third recurrence of the breast cancer she has been battling since 1999 (and which recently claimed her good friend, former Texas Gov. Ann Richards) has left the 62-year-old Ivins with precarious balance, minimal hair, and no illusions about the redemptive quality of life-threatening illness. "I'd hoped to become a better person from confronting my own mortality," she laughs. "But it hasn't happened."
What has happened, and continues to happen, are her two columns a week, syndicated in hundreds of newspapers, wittily skewering Republicans and "Republican-lite" Democrats with her trademark, Texas-size sense of humor, politely referred to as "ribald" in some quarters. (She contends she was fired from The New York Times back in 1982 for, among other things, referring to a community's annual chicken-killing festival as a "gang pluck.") Her passion for newspapers, and the good they can do, remains undiminished. As chair of the Texas Observer board, she's especially intent on helping to keep alive the print media's small, independent voices.
Molly: Ivins
Is It A Sandwich?
Burrito
Is a burrito a sandwich? The Panera Bread Co. bakery-and-cafe chain says yes. But a judge said no, ruling against Panera in its bid to prevent a Mexican restaurant from moving into the same shopping mall.
Panera has a clause in its lease that prevents the White City Shopping Center in Shrewsbury from renting to another sandwich shop. Panera tried to invoke that clause to stop the opening of an Qdoba Mexican Grill.
But Superior Court Judge Jeffrey Locke cited Webster's Dictionary as well as testimony from a chef and a former high-ranking federal agriculture official in ruling that Qdoba's burritos and other offerings are not sandwiches.
The difference, the judge ruled, comes down to two slices of bread versus one tortilla.
Burrito
Sold For 3,594 Pounds
Austrian Urinals
Four urinals shaped like a woman's lips were sold on eBay on Sunday for a total of 5,343 euros (3,594 pounds) after their owner removed them from a public toilet in Vienna following protests that they were sexist.
Designed by Austrian artist Rudolf Scheffel for the "toilet-bar Vienna" next to the National Opera, the urinals featured lips covered in red, orange or blue lipstick, a bright red tongue and gleaming white teeth.
One of the two red-lipped urinals proved most seductive in the auction, raising 1,510 euros from Austria-based eBay user "abv06". The other three went to another bidder in Austria, according to the eBay online auction web site.
Austrian Urinals
Billionaires Set To Fight Over
L.A Times
Like a train wreck or a car accident, when rich people do battle, everybody stops to watch. Billionaires Ronald Burkle, Eli Broad and David Geffen haven't taken off the gloves but all signs point to them fighting for ownership of their troubled hometown newspaper, the Los Angeles Times. The fortunes of the Times, the nation's fourth-largest daily newspaper, are being watched closely by a newspaper industry beset by sales, staffing cutbacks and circulation drops.
Last week Burkle and Broad teamed up to bid for Chicago-based Tribune Co., which acquired the paper in 2000 when it bought Times Mirror Co. Details were not disclosed. It's believed that if they succeed they would sell off Tribune's other newspapers, TV stations and its baseball team - the Chicago Cubs - and keep just the Times.
Geffen, who has feuded with Broad for years, has not submitted a bid but is known to be extremely interested in the Times and could seek financing for the estimated $15 billion or more it might take to purchase Tribune Co. to get it.
L.A Times
Hollywood Takes Care Of Its Elders
MPTF Home
A stroll around the landscaped grounds of the Wasserman Campus, as the 44-acre MPTF home and hospital in the suburb of Woodland Hills is known, makes it plain that this is a place full of industry folk.
Residents regale visitors with career anecdotes, and campus facilities are dotted with plaques acknowledging gifts from famous MPTF benefactors. Film star photos line corridor walls, interspersed in one space with snapshots of a campus acting troupe. A 250-seat cinema, programmed weekly by a residents committee, shows a discernible skew toward serious movie fare, often of the art house variety.
But the 85-year-old Fund finds itself at a significant crossroads, fraught with challenges despite continuing signs of vitality, like the $19 million Saban Center for Health and Wellness set to open in late spring. Part of the challenge is generational.
MPTF Home
World's Fastest Text Messager
Ang Chuang Yang
A Singaporean student broke the Guinness World Record for the shortest time needed to type a 160-character SMS message on Sunday after whizzing through the task in less than 42 seconds in a competition.
Sixteen-year-old Ang Chuang Yang typed the SMS (short message service) message in 41.52 seconds, beating the previous record of 42.22 seconds set by American Ben Cook in July, according to Singapore Telecommunications, organisers of the competition.
"I'll try for 39 seconds next year," said Ang, adding that the trick to speedy text messaging was to use a mobile phone with larger keys on the dial pad.
Ang Chuang Yang
Impressed By Daniel Craig
Dame Judi Dench
Dame Judi Dench has lavished praise on Daniel Craig's manhood, insisting the James Bond actor's penis is "an absolute monster".
The Oscar winner, who plays M in the 007 movies, used a trailer opposite Craig during the shooting for Casino Royale, and was surprised to find the 38-year-old actor wandering naked outside one day.
Dench recalls fondly, "It's an absolute monster. Sorry, I shouldn't say that, should I? How uncouth of me."
Dame Judi Dench
In Memory
Benny Andrews
Benny Andrews, a painter and teacher whose work drew on memories of his childhood in the segregated South, has died. He was 75.
Andrews painted socially conscious works that addressed issues including the civil rights movement, the Holocaust and the forced relocation of American Indians. Even in an era dominated by abstract art, he exhibited his work in galleries and won awards and prizes including a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in 1974.
Andrews was born in Plainview, Ga., in 1930 into a family of sharecroppers. He was one of 10 children who all worked in the cotton fields. In 1948 he became the first member of his family to graduate from high school.
He served in the Air Force from 1950-53 and used the G.I. bill to attend the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
He moved to New York in 1958 and had his first solo exhibition, at Forum Gallery, in 1962.
Andrews taught art at Queens College from 1968 to 1997 and established an art program in New York state's prison system. He traveled to the Gulf Coast this year to work on an art project with children displaced by Hurricane Katrina.
Benny Andrews
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