'TBH Politoons'
Freshly Updated!
Humor Gazette
The Georgia bride-to-be who disappeared days before her wedding and told police
she had been kidnapped has vanished again, this time leaving a note saying she
had been abducted by two alien beings in a blue spaceship.
Jennifer Carol Wilbanks, 32, hopped a bus to Las Vegas last week and turned up
Friday in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where she faces charges of false reporting
of a crime and yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theater.
For the rest:
Happy 86th Birthday
Pete Seeger
Reader Comment
Re: Bald-Heads
Marty:
As a daily reader of Bartcop E, I notice more and more anti-gay bigotry sneaking into the page(s) of your otherwise great Web site. A recent example was yesterday's "review" of the Friday episode of Real Time with Bill Maher by Purple Gene. I wonder if his cruel comments would be acceptable if they were directed at, say, Elton John or George Michael or Boy George, etc. Or Rosie O'Donnell? Because my I.Q. approaches triple digits, I've discerned a pattern: gay-bashing is okay in Bartcop E if the target is a political conservative but not okay if it's anybody else. Bigotry is always wrong, and it doesn't matter to whom it's directed.
Instead of mean-spririted comments on somebody's looks or sexuality, Mr. Gene ought to focus on making a point and then presenting reasoned arguments in support of it. Just my two cents worth.
Oh yes, speaking of Rosie O'Donnell --- did you hear her latest acting gig is playing a big-forheaded retard? Now there's a stretch!
EJ2E
Jeez, Ed.
We're old friends, but the rest of my readers need to made aware that a close relative of yours is a Chimpy apppointee, working within the White House.
We all acknowledge that things have changed since 9/11, and supposedly security has been beefed up, like at airports - that's why my dad, an 80 year-old decorated WWII veteran isn't trusted to board a plane without taking off his shoes.
Jimmy/Jeff Guckert/Gannon couldn't get a press pass to cover Congress, but was able to score one at the White House, under an alias, with the ability to come & go as he chooses, without logging or out, with the new security?
This administration is making major hay pushing homophobia to the faith-based crowd (a crowd, which fundamentally believes Mother Theresa is burning in hell).
However, Jimmy/Jeff Guckert/Gannon is a self-outed gay prostitute.
A self-outed 'Top', who charged $1200 for a weekend, flitting in & out of the White House with impunity?
Do you remember Bill Clinton? And the uproar over Monica Lewinsky - to the point of dragging her poor mother to court?
Aren't you curious as to whom Jimmy/Jeff Guckert/Gannon services in the White House?
It isn't that he's gay, or a pretend Marine, or a fake reporter, or even that he's a prostitute. It should be, but there's the hypocrisy.
Monica only had a blue dress - how much of the White House upholstery has Jimmy/Jeff Guckert/Gannon 'stained'?
BTW, 'forehead' has 2 e's.
Recommended Reading
from Bruce
DON VAN NATTA Jr.: U.S. Recruits a Rough Ally to Be a Jailer (New York Times)
Seven months before Sept. 11, 2001, the State Department issued a human rights report on Uzbekistan. It was a litany of horrors.
Paul Krugman: A Gut Punch to the Middle
(Click on "Columns," then on "A Gut Punch to the Middle.")
By now, every journalist should know that you have to carefully check out any scheme coming from the White House. You can't just accept the administration's version of what it's doing. Remember, these are the people who named a big giveaway to logging interests "Healthy Forests."
ROGER EBERT: Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room
This is not a political documentary. It is a crime story.
ROGER EBERT: Dwarfs, Little People and the M-Word
The following exchange, reprinted here in its entirety, began with an e-mail to Ebert's Movie Answer Man column.
How to Lose Money
The Local Girls (Music)
Reader Comment
Re: Bill Maher
Sometimes you just have to let people talk. I watched the Gannon interview last Friday night, and I would have to say the guy on the screen didn't make much of an impression on me. He was evasive, he blinked incessantly, as if he were lying through is teeth and couldn't hide it very well. He was your typical garden-variety Bush stooge, and it showed. What do you do? Ask him a bunch of snarky questions and have him storm off in a huff? No, you let him bury himself by talking freely. I seriously doubt Gannon made very many converts last Friday.
In short, rumors of Bill Maher's having sold out have been GREATLY exaggerated.
way2muchsense
Thanks, excellent point!
Marty Explanation
Re: Savion Glover
Got a note from one of the smartest people I know asking about my
Savion Glover remark yesterday.
Simply put, Savion Glover is a tap dance God.
I'll try to work on less obscure references in the future.
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Overcast morning, sunny afternoon. 'June Gloom' a month early.
Bill Clinton is a guest on 'Good Morning America' today.
Having computer problems - ack.
R. Gregory Stevens
No More Mister Nice Blog
R. Gregory Stevens, a gay man who was a Republican operative for most of his adult life, died of a drug overdose at the home of Carrie Fisher on February 26 of this year. A little more than two months later, The New York Times examines his life and death, in
an article that appears not in the main news section, but in the Arts & Leisure section.
Do I need to tell you that if a lifelong gay Democratic operative with a long history of cocaine abuse died in the home of a Hollywood celebrity with her own history of substance abuse, that death would have been the subject of 128-point-type headlines on the Drudge Report, wall-to-wall coverage on talk radio and cable news, and endless think pieces in the "respectable" press about the Democrats' troubling embrace of the values of Hollywood rather than of the American mainstream?
Stevens' brother, Grant, told investigators that he began using cocaine at age 18, according to the Times story. That would have been in 1980. In the ensuing years, Stevens added the following to his resume:
* In 1984, he became intern to former transportation secretary Drew Lewis in Ronald Reagan's reelection campaign.
* In 1988, he was employed in the Bush-Quayle campaign.
* In 1989, he became the White House liaison to the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
* In 1990, he worked in the campaign of California's GOP governor, Pete Wilson.
* In 1992, he went to work for Black, Manafort, Stone & Kelly, a Republican lobbying shop.
* A few years later, he went to work at the lobbying firm Barbour Griffith & Rogers, which was run by former Republican National Committee chairman (and current Mississippi governor) Haley Barbour.
* In 2000, he helped run the entertainment committe for the Bush-Cheney inaugural.
For the rest, No More Mister Nice Blog
N.J. Folk Music Fest to Honor
Woody Guthrie
A summer folk music festival on the grounds of Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital will pay tribute to one of its most famous former patients: Woody Guthrie.
The August concert will also celebrate the acquisition of 300 acres of former hospital land as Morris County parkland.
Tentative plans call for concert to be held Aug. 14. Guthrie, whose best-known song was "This Land Is Your Land," was a patient at Greystone in the 1950s.
Woody Guthrie
Completes Long-Awaited Opera
Roger Waters
After almost a decade, Pink Floyd co-founder Roger Waters has finished his opera and he hopes it's not just another brick in the wall.
Waters is considering a November performance "Ca Ira" live with a symphony and chorus in Rome, coinciding with its release as a double CD this fall, Rolling Stone reported April 29.
"Ca Ira" was inspired by the French Revolution.
Roger Waters
Hosting 2005 BET Awards
Will & Jada
Will Smith and his wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, will host the 2005 BET Awards telecast on June 28.
Denzel Washington and his wife, Pauletta, will receive the humanitarian award, and Gladys Knight will be honored with a lifetime achievement award during the ceremony at the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood, Calif.
Will & Jada
Farewell Ends at Hollywood Bowl
Cher
Belly dancers, a dancing elephant and a video montage of her lengthy career marked the end of Cher's three-year farewell tour.
Cher, 58, played to a sold-out crowd Saturday at the Hollywood Bowl and insisted that this final concert on her 325-stop tour really was the end.
Her final show was vintage Cher, who made her entrance from above decked out in a silver coat and hood. She kicked off the show with her standard opening song, a cover of U2's "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For," and ditched the coat as she hit the stage to reveal a skimpy G-string outfit.
The show, which included about a dozen costume changes, ended with fireworks that spelled out her tour's expletive-laden tagline, "Follow this, you (rhymes with witches)!"
Cher
16th Annual Media Awards
GLAAD
Fox Searchlight's "Kinsey" and HBO's "Six Feet Under" nabbed top honors Saturday at the 16th annual GLAAD Media Awards, which honor depictions of the lesbian, gay and transgender community.
The Los Angeles portion of the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation Media Awards unveiled winners in seven top categories during the Kodak Theatre ceremony. Other GLAAD awards were handed out March 28 at a ceremony in New York, while the remaining honors will be presented at an event scheduled for June 11 in San Francisco.
The nod for best individual episode of a TV series went to the WB Network's freshman drama "Jack & Bobby" for the episode "Lost Boys." Showtime's "Jack," about a young man who has to grapple with his parents' divorce just as he's decided to come out of the closet, won in the made-for-TV movie category.
The competition in the reality TV field ended in a tie between Bravo's "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" and MTV's "The Real World: Philadelphia." Univision's newsmagazine "Aqui y Ahora" was recognized in the Spanish-language TV journalism category.
Among the highlights of Saturday's ceremony was a performance of "What Makes a Man a Man" by Liza Minnelli, who also was saluted as the recipient of GLAAD's Vanguard Award.
GLAAD
Refuses to Record for Warner
Linkin Park
The band Linkin Park wants to end its contract with Warner Music Group Corp. because it is unhappy with the financial implications of the company's impending initial public offering, the band said Monday.
The band, which blended rap and rock on best-selling albums like Hybrid Theory and Meteora, is not going forward with plans to record its next Warner album, due in 2006. The group has a contract for four more albums with the record label.
The group claimed that it became concerned about Warner's ability to promote the band due to cost-cutting efforts at the company and the financial terms of its IPO, which is set to come to market this month.
Linkin Park
Underrepresented On TV
Asian Actors
"The King of Queens" is set in a New York City borough where almost one in five residents is Asian American - yet none of the CBS sitcom's regular characters is Asian. And of the dozens of regular characters in CBS' entire prime-time line-up, not one is Asian.
At most other networks, the situation is slightly better.
A study of Asian Americans in prime-time television, released Monday, shows that Asians, who make up 5 percent of the U.S. population, play 2.7 percent of regular characters. It also shows virtually no Asian actors are on situation comedies, and the characters they play in dramas tend to have less depth than most regulars, with minimal on-screen time and few romantic roles.
The study, conducted by sociologists at the University of California, Los Angeles, examined about seven weeks of prime-time programming on ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, UPN and the WB. It looked at patterns based on gender, characters' occupations and relationships and whether an actor was a multiracial Asian or wholly Asian.
Asian Actors
Ad for Carl's Jr. Too Hot for TV
Paris
Paris Hilton, who rose to infamy on the strength of an amateur video that never appeared in theaters or on TV, has shot a commercial for Carl's Jr. that also may never run on television.
CKE Restaurants, which has a reputation for politically incorrect advertising, tapped the sexy socialite for a new Carl's Jr. TV spot. The problem, according to a source, is the spot is meeting with some resistance from network executives. "It couldn't be more pornographic," said the source. "It's about as racy as I've seen."
Set to the song "I Love Paris in the Springtime," the 30-second spot, via Mendelsohn/Zien in Los Angeles, shows Hilton washing a car "with hoses shooting everywhere and her soaping everything up," said the source. Touting the BBQ Six Dollar Burger, it plays off her catch phrase, "That's hot."
Paris
Town Angry Over Unflattering A&E Show
'City Confidential'
Residents of this eastern Kentucky town (Pikesville) are demanding an apology from the A&E network after an episode of "City Confidential" that they say was unflattering and unfair.
"Obviously, being labeled the town from hell can not be interpreted in any way as positive," City Manager Donovan Blackburn wrote in a letter to the network.
Blackburn said local residents cooperated in the production of the documentary show, which revolved around murders committed by a group of occultists, after a producer told them the town would be portrayed positively.
"It was not the intention of A&E Network to malign the town of Pikeville, but rather to examine it through the eyes of people who live in that community and who were affected by the particular case we were profiling," the network said in a statement last month. "We are deeply sorry that the mayor's office of the city of Pikeville was offended by the portrayal."
'City Confidential'
Dog Butler
Steve Relles
Computer programmer Steve Relles has the poop on what to do when your job is outsourced to India.
Relles, one of a rising number of Americans seeking new opportunities as their work shifts to countries with cheaper labor, has spent the past year making his living scooping up dog droppings as the "Delmar Dog Butler."
"My parents paid for me to get a (degree) in math and now I am a pooper scooper," Relles, a 42-year-old married father of two told Reuters. "I can clean four to five yards in a hour if they are close together."
Relles, who lost his computer programming job about three years ago, got the idea of cleaning dog dirt from people's back yards from Mark Booth, a friend in Buffalo, New York.
Relles has over 100 clients who pay $10 each for a once-a-week cleaning of their yard.
Steve Relles
