A too-typically lame sketch from Saturday Night Live about allegedly dishonest McCain ads. Nothing to lie awake nights about -- but one does long for some equal-opportunity shot-taking at his messianically mockable rival.
The sketch is too weak to warrant much tooth-grinding amongst Republicans, except for the fact that it was apparently the "inspiration" of former SNL writer/performer, and current Minnesota Democratic Senate candidate Al "Stuart Smalley" Franken, a man known both for his limitations and his mean-spiritedness even before he left the show for the second time in 1995.
And another SNL effort, which is taking mucho heat on the grounds that it was aimed, yet again, at Sarah Palin and her family.
Sorry -- I'm in the camp that says it was instead a total burn on the New York Times and its insulated, snobby, deeply ignorant readership. Like much modern satire, it's so close to the truth it's almost not funny.
The controversial "incest" element was, however, unnecessary and should not have passed network self-censorship. that having been said, it did accurately reflect exactly the kind mindless bigoted filter through which the urban chattering classes see the heartland people about whom they understand absolutely nothing. Pulled by NBC -- an attack of decency? Who Knew!
IN OTHER ENTERTAINMENT NEWS
The lowest-rated Emmy award broadcast in history was the occasion of celebrity idiocy on a grand scale. I only watched it while channel-hopping, so I wasn't aware of the full depths of horror purveyed by the five-person reality-tv hosting team, but I gather they SUCKED hugely.
What I did see was Laura Linney -- a beautiful woman wearing o
ne of the ugliest and most ill-fitting dresses I've ever seen an award-winner in who was dressing to be taken fashion-seriously [meow]-- accepting her award for the privilege of playing the towering Abigail Adams. In so doing, she delivered her well-rehearsed innocuous-sounding lead-in to the deranged punch-line that the Founding Fathers of the United States were "community organizers."P-U-U-H-H-L-E-E-E-Z-E.
As someone famous (me) once said, Try this on, Laura: the Founding Fathers "organized" their "community" under one condition certainly NOT shared by metrosexual Harvard boys lately from Chicago: the threat of being captured during the revolution they fomented, and being HUNG for treason. Every one of them risked their lives, whether or not they were ever in an army or militia.
Then we had the spectacle of brain-fried old hippie Tommy Smothers further tarnishing our happy memories of his once-comic persona by babbling anti-war gibberish with spasmodic howls of victimology, as he accepted a fantasy award allegedly delayed by forty years or so, from back when the Brothers' show was cancelled because they skated too near the edges of blasphemy (courtesy of David Steinberg) as much as political tub-thumping.
Oh, Tommy, boo-hoo.
Why didn't you find something else to do?
CANADIAN POLITICAL MIND-BOGGLE
Just saw shreikin' Sheila Copps on Steve Paikin's Agenda, defending the Sarah Palin choice and speaking quite calmly and sensibly, about sexism in electoral politics and about the prospect of La Palin being elected. Carumba. I believe pigs may fly.
THIS TOO
Former British PM Tony Blair put his swell suit in the chair at Jon Stewart's Daily Show tonight. I couldn't watch more than about 30 seconds. I'm sorry. There are some things for which Stewart's excessive glibitude is just too lightweight -- stupid questions about how he (Tony) and Bush decided to go to war. Blair replied that this was a serious decision, not made lightly.
People are dead -- history has been changed forever. Get with it, Stewart. Not the time to sacrifice all other considerations to your need to be cute and clever.
