OK, we know that by now everyone's as tired of Sarah Palin as the wolves the Alaskan governor uses airplanes to chase to the furthest reaches of her snowy state. But this Daily Show clip – an infuriating tally sheet of conservative mendacity – is simply too good not to post.
And before anyone starts to complain about how we've grown into single-minded meanies, note that this clip knocks the media much more than it does Sarah Palin.
Celebrity photographer Anne Leibovitz, who's convinced everyone from John Lennon to Miley Cyrus to get naked for her camera, is allegedly as greedy as she is increasingly trite. To wit:
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MID-EAST BILLIONAIRES GIVE US BACK SOME OF OUR MONEY "Flush with cash, Abu Dhabi is spreading its wealth around the movie biz. The Abu Dhabi Media Co. is launching Imagenation, a production outfit with $1 billion to spend on developing, financing and producing feature films over the next five years in partnership with three American producers. Media reports today say the company has a mandate to produce eight features a year for the worldwide marketplace with a majority of the titles in the English language and targeted to mainstream audiences."
New Kids on the Block, a group composed entirely of men well into their 30s, releases its first album in 14 years today. Tonight, the new version of 90210 premieres. Which of these 90s phenoms is going to crash and burn here in 2008? One, the other, or both?
Ouch. Another major mistake took place in front of a global audience yesterday evening, but this one isn't as funny as accidentally calling John McCain "that depthless prick currently in the Oval Office." (Accidentally!)
The Bloomberg financial newswire updated and then unintentionally published its pre-written obituary for Apple CEO Steve Jobs. Jobs has battled pancreatic cancer for years now, but he's not dead yet. (In fact, as we speak he's probably inventing some new gadget people will rush out to buy only to have it immediately shatter in their hands.) Bloomberg soon realized its mistake, took down the obit and issued a retraction.
Investors were shitting themselves, of course; not because they were worried about Jobs, mind you, but because they were concerned by what his death meant for their glorious, glorious gobs of money. We hope Jobs realizes this, gets legitimately pissed and screws over all those bastards royally before leaving this increasingly dusty planet.
SURPRISE: MAINSTREAM MEDIA UNDERHANDED! "'Hillary Rodham Clinton is still seething about losing the nomination.' 'Michelle Obama doesn’t like her country and is an angry black woman.' 'Bill Clinton continues to dis Barack Obama privately.' While hardly definitive, that’s some of the undercurrents swirling in much of the news coverage — particularly television news, some say — at the Democratic National Convention. 'I’m just amazed at the negative coverage, all the negative innuendo of things that do not exist,' former Clinton adviser Terry McAuliffe told Daily Variety. 'It’s all press invention.' … A veteran network producer said she has been 'mesmerized by the negative coverage. It’s unbelievable.'"
Fox News' efforts to cover the "far left" groups gathering in Denver were met with a bit of creative criticism, like a crowd chanting "Fuck Fox News." Hold onto your hairdo, Griff Jenkins!
Good god, we've just seen the worst blind item the New York Post has ever run:
Which hunk in a summer movie is a violent, closeted homosexual? The heartthrob snuck into his ex's apartment a few months ago and raped him so violently, the ex ended up in the hospital - and the actor paid him $500,000 to keep his mouth shut.
Now, if the Post is printing this, isn't it saying that it has good information about a brutal rape that's gone unpunished—information it's keeping secret in order to drive up Web traffic and sell papers? And if it's not saying that, isn't it instead saying it will print unfounded bullshit just as long as it's alarming and salacious? New lows every day, people!
Oh, it's rumored that the violent sexual predator the Post is protecting is Will Smith.
America must have passed around some sort of petition saying they wanted their next Rupert Murdoch to have frosted tips and a tiny snub nose, because how else would you explain why Ryan Seacrest is becoming the next media mogul? Sorry, not mogul, "media player," which is what happens when someone like Seacrest decides to split from William Morris and take his agent with him (that's a buy out) to start his own empire.
THE BATTLE FOR IDIOT BOX SUPREMACY "Fewer Americans are reading newspapers and are instead getting their news online, but television remains the leading source of news in the country, according to a survey released Sunday. Not surprisingly, younger people tend to get more of their news on the Internet, while older folks use traditional media such as television and newspapers, the Pew Research Center's biannual survey on news consumption habits said. … Pew found that the largest group of news consumers — 46 percent of those polled — have a 'heavy reliance' on television for their news at all times of the day. This group is the oldest, with a median age of 52, and least affluent, with 43 percent unemployed. They are unlikely to own a computer or go online for news."
TRIBUNE COMPANY CONTINUES DOWNWARD SPIRAL "How bad is the business outlook for Tribune Co.'s newspapers? Bad enough for the company to take a $3.8 billion goodwill writedown on the value of its newspaper assets, which include the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Baltimore Sun and Orlando Sentinel. In all, Tribune saw a $4.5 billion loss in its second quarter, according to figures the company released Wednesday. The red ink was fueled by the newspaper writedown, costs associated with its sale of the Long Island-based newspaper Newsday to Cablevision and an 11% decline in revenues in its publishing division, or an $83 million drop from the same period last year to $701 million."
Know what's been missing from all the postmortems about the mainstream media not covering the John Edwards scandal? Some input from religious types! Other than Bill O'Reilly!
Generally, the devout frown on the cheating-on-your-wife thing, and especially the cheating-on-your-ill-wife thing. And the Catholics, who spend much of their time warning followers about spending eternity in hell, are quick to point out sins. Including those made by the media at large. Hope you've got your holy water in a bottle with a squirt spout top!
MAGAZINES FEEL THE RECESSION "Add magazines to the list of things Americans are foregoing due to the rising cost of living. Based on the Audit Bureau of Circulation (ABC) numbers released today, sales of U.S. magazines dipped 6.3 percent according to the Associated Press' Jeremy Herron. … the magazines that faired the best were those aimed at older readers: AARP Bulletin, AARP The Magazine (whose Web site boasts it's the "World's Largest Circulation Magazine"), and Reader's Digest. AP reports that two magazine's that actually saw increases were Time Inc.'s People, which has a 5.2 percent newsstand increase (thanks a million, Knox and Vivienne) and In Style."
This is a reminder that when we wrote about John Edwards' (formerly) alleged affair last week, citing the National Enquirer as a source, common commenter response was as follows:
lols the enquirer couldn’t get this to stick last fall and they can’t get it to stick now. andrew young has already said he’s the father of reille’s baby. lols
and
Here’s another shocker from the National Enquirer. It’s a good thing they reported on this and it came to light in such a big way in 2005.
http://www.nationalenquirer.com/celebrity/63426
We'll say it again: one should note that the Enquirer isn’t always wrong.
Sunday papers continue to be the most popular source of coupons: 53 percent of households clip coupons from the Sunday newspaper, as opposed to 35 percent from advertisements that arrive in the mail, the next most popular source.
Oui! Oui! Oui! Whereas we deep-fried Americans are inclined to lounge behind computers and blog angrily ("I'ma break this fuckin' MacBook, y'all!!!1!) when news about Angelina Jolie and her ubiquitous brood overtakes all the other headlines, those fabulous Frenchman take to the fucking rues and let the world know they're pissed:
Protestors began picketing outside of the Fondation Lenval hospital this week, where the [Jolie-Pitt] twins were born on Saturday.
… Nice residents are upset the mayor has failed to address the case of a local murder victim in lieu of celebrating the American movie stars and their new additions.
Following the birth, Mayor Christian Estrosi showed off the children's birth certificates on the steps of the hospital, describing the birth of Knox Leon and Vivienne Marcheline as "a pride to Nice and all its citizens."
Vive la France!
Thanks to some new research by AOL Latino, we can finally say for certain that wearing makeup causes women to look different than they would otherwise. Amazing, right? Also amazing: the bullshit that schadenfreude will compel people to sit through.
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