Last night, Bill O’Reilly showed footage of Rev. Jesse Jackson saying disparaging words about Barack Obama during a break. Ok, he threatened to cut his nuts off.
Jackson claims he thought the microphones were turned off. Likely excuse. The reporter beside him totally knew the mics were on, you can see it on his face.
Jesse has already apologized and Obama has already accepted his apology.
The View discusses:
I think Obama let him off too easy — and it’s obvious Rev. Jackson is envious of Obama’s campaign success — he wasn’t so fortunate.
As I was sorting through my Sunday Washington Post so that I could throw everything but the Parade and Washington Post Magazine my wife reads into the recycle bin, my attention was grabbed by this photo montage on the front of the Style section:
For a second, I thought they had juxtaposed Barack Obama with Malcolm X (the newsprint version is grainier than the digital one). But the Obama as Will Smith and John McCain and John Wayne comparison is more apt.
Wonderful moment in John Ford’s “The Searchers,” from way back in 1956: John Wayne, as the surly, violent Ethan Edwards, signals to his young compadre that it’s time to move on in their pursuit of Scar, the Comanche chief who’s murdered their family and kidnapped the youngest daughter, Debbie.
“Let’s go, blankethead,” he scowls to the young Martin Pawley.
I love the Duke’s pronunciation of the word “blankethead”; it radiates contempt for the young and the untested. Ethan is using the blast of scorn to tell the young man not only to get going to his horse but to get going in growing up, to acquire sand, grit, salt and all the other granular metaphors for old-guy toughness and savvy. Blankethead: It’s a three-syllable telegram on the theme of the fecklessness of youth, and nobody but Wayne could turn it into poetry.
But in the same instant, I remember Will Smith in the original “Men in Black.” The hotshot young cop has been recruited to an alien-hunting team secretly HQ’d in a New York bridge, and now he’s working for Tommy Lee Jones and Rip Torn. Torn and Jones are babbling about something and not paying attention to Smith. There’s a moment of frustration on the young face, and he interrupts with his own blast of scorn: “Hey, old guys!”
It’s a voice full of impatience, annoyance, even contempt, suggesting they haven’t the energy, the quickness or the attention span to take care of business. It’s on him, now, the new guy, the kid: He’s got to keep them from wandering off, losing track, drifting as the old are wont to do.
Presenting The 25 Funniest People in America. From Conan O’Brien to Stephen Colbert, Tina Fey to Craig Ferguson, let’s count down the names of the entertainers who make us laugh the hardest.
25. AUGUSTEN BURROUGHS
Burroughs’ best-selling memoir Running with Scissors — about being raised by a nutso shrink who studies his poo and rents the back shed to a pedophile — is unbelievably disturbing. And sidesplitting. At first we felt guilty giggling at his adventures with an electroshock therapy machine, but Burroughs knows that laughter is the best antidepressant. Much better than booze, which the author struggles to kick in his equally effervescent follow-up, Dry.
24. CATHERINE O’HARA
After her run on SCTV in the late ’70s, Hollywood didn’t know what to do with O’Hara. Fortunately, Christopher Guest did. In Waiting for Guffman, she and Fred Willard are tracksuit-wearing answers to Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire; in Best in Show, she’s a onetime floozy with a prize terrier and a torrid past; and in A Mighty Wind, O’Hara shows off a subtler comic touch, proving that humor doesn’t always mean a pie in the face.
23. SARAH SILVERMAN
The Lenny Bruce of the 21st century might be this hot, foul-mouthed, button-punching stand-up. Silverman is ruthlessly funny about topics like sex, the Holocaust, and 9/11, which may be why The Sarah Silverman Program has a permanent slot on our DVR. Oh, and if you hadn’t heard, she’s f—ing Matt Damon.
22. DAVE CHAPPELLE
The fact that Diamond Dave is all but absent from the comedic stage these days doesn’t invalidate his funny. After all, Chappelle’s revered Comedy Central show — on which the wiry comic gleefully engaged in crass T&A humor, swore like a sailor, and mocked everyone in the multiculti rainbow, confronting race in a way that is positively Pryor-esque — is still the best sketch comedy this country has seen in more than a decade. For that alone, he deserves a spot on any list like this.
21. DEMETRI MARTIN
You know what’s funny? Palindromes and anagrams. ”Shut up, Grandma,” you say, but we say shut up yourself and watch Demetri Martin work a stand-up mic. ”A drunk driver’s very dangerous. Everybody knows that. But so is a drunk backseat driver — if he’s persuasive.” The floppy-haired heir to Steven Wright won a prestigious award at last year’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe, taking him from the comedy underground to…the comedy slightly less underground.
20. DIABLO CODY
Not to be partial, but the newly minted Oscar winner showed off her comedic — and emotional — chops with her debut screenplay for Juno. Did we mention it won an Oscar?
19. CRAIG FERGUSON
Late night is the province of the mono-name. Jay! Dave! Conan! Then there’s that Scottish guy, two-name ID required: Craig Ferguson. You know, the one who can’t quite be pinned down. Since taking over CBS’ Late Late Show from Craig Kilborn in 2005, Ferguson has brought a fresh burst of energy to the format. He’s reinvented the opening monologue, doing away with most of the topical jokes and just ad-libbing about his life. Along with fresh energy, he’s brought something else — ratings. Ferguson, 45 and a brand-spanking-new U.S. Citizen, doesn’t get as much media attention as time-slot competitors Jimmy Kimmel or Conan, but with an audience of just under 2 million, the great Scot outperforms the former and has climbed within 500,000 viewers of the latter.
18. JACK BLACK
Black is an entirely new classification of human: the frenetic slacker. Before his turn as doofus band reject/inspirational teacher Dewey Finn in School of Rock, he was the Ritalin-deprived half of Tenacious D (along with his partner, Kyle Gass) and the list-obsessed record-shop shlub in High Fidelity. He is, inarguably, the coolest fusion of music and comedy since Spinal Tap. (And, if Tropic Thunder is as good as we’ve been led to believe, we’ll forgive him that whole Nacho Libre business.)
17. DAVID LETTERMAN
With a receding hairline and a jogger’s grim jowls, Dave is no one’s idea of a hip comic, and he likes it that way. New-school gone old-school, the upstart who first pumped irony into the talk show still rails against the stupidity of the powerful and yet has the charm to melt Julia Roberts.
16. AMY SEDARIS AND DAVID SEDARIS
Big brother is the best-selling author of the sublime autobiographical essay collections Me Talk Pretty One Day and Naked, full of terrific riffs about stuff like his cuckoo-clock North Carolina clan and his midget guitar teacher. Little sis was the rubber-faced star of Comedy Central’s truly strange Strangers With Candy, as well as coauthor of the book Wigfield.
15. WILL FERRELL
See, there’s this man-child who latches onto Will Ferrell in most every role he plays — and good luck getting the little guy to let go. As a result, we are treated to inspired displays of dolt-trapped-in-the-headlights hijinks, be it in the form of Old School’s keghead Frank the Tank (who goes from repressed to regressed to undressed) or Talladega Nights’ Ricky Bobby, the dumbest, most earnest NASCAR driver on the circuit — who’s also the most comfortable with his sexuality.
14. RICKY GERVAIS
Okay, so he doesn’t spend all that much of his time in America. We don’t care. Whether as the creator of The Office and Extras, a supporting actor in movies like For Your Consideration or Night at the Museum, or doing killer stand-up (as seen most recently in Grand Theft Auto IV), he’s still as funny as the dog’s bollocks.
13. ELLEN DEGENERES
DeGeneres, whose career seemed all but kaput a few years ago, has earned back adoration simply by being her affably dry self on the Emmy-winning The Ellen DeGeneres Show. Whether it’s her circuitous monologues, her deadpan celebrity interviews, or that vocal turn as Dory in Finding Nemo, she remains one of the cleanest, coolest funny ladies around.
12. DAVID CROSS
All conversations about his genius start here: Along with Bob Odenkirk, he created the cunning HBO sketch series Mr. Show, which routinely put SNL to silly shame. And not only does Cross work little miracles in supporting roles (remember his role as feckless freak-job Tobias on Fox’s Arrested Development?), he can drop some pretty fearsome stand-up (who else talks about being raped by the Virgin Mary?). Simply put, this dude never kowtows for his funny.
11. CONAN O’BRIEN
Smarty-pants isn’t usually a compliment, but O’Brien wears them so well. When this Harvard geek isn’t riffing on Muammar Gaddafi in his monologue, he’s making absurd innovations in low-brow comedy. Now, let’s see if those absurd innovations will play on The Tonight Show….
The Saturday Night Live scene-stealer has found her stride in her third season, thanks to breakout characters like the Target clerk and the obsessively competitive Penelope, as well as spot-on impressions of Jamie Lee Curtis and Suze Orman.
9. LARRY DAVID
Because he’s a balding, neurotic, self-consumed, multimillionaire malcontent who reacts to most social interactions as if he just took a whiff of some really bad cheese. Because the only thing he hates more than these situations is himself. Because he’s the most hilariously doomed white-guy antihero we’ve ever seen, and has no problems taking on every sacred cow. Because we have no idea how much of this Larry David — from the HBO comedy Curb Your Enthusiasm — is swiped from the real Larry David. And because both Larry Davids co-created one of the best comedies ever, Seinfeld.
8. AMY POEHLER AND WILL ARNETT
The funniest married couple on the list. (Sorry, Judd Apatow and Leslie Mann.) When they’re apart (she, on Saturday Night Live and in Baby Mama; he, late of Arrested Development and currently guesting on 30 Rock), they’re great. But when they’re together, as when they played brother-and sister figure skaters in Blades of Glory, they’re resplendent. So let’s get those crazy kids together more often, shall we?
7. MATT STONE AND TREY PARKER
Now in their eleventh season of South Park, these potty mouths with a purpose continue to remind us what full creative control gets you: moments so wrong, they’re right (Ben Affleck falling in love with Cartman’s hand comes to mind). Added bonus: The ninth season episode, ”Trapped in the Closet” contains the most sober explanation of the background of Scientology you’ll ever hear.
6. CHRIS ROCK
Television failed him (Saturday Night Live didn’t know what to do with his bright-bulb humor, and his HBO talk show couldn’t contain him). The movies didn’t get him (though this is as much Rock’s fault as anyone’s, given he wrote and directed his most recent starring vehicles, the underperforming Head of State and I Think I Love My Wife). But on the stage, Rock is a man on a mission, mercilessly tackling race, religion, money, and relationships. And his missionaries are legion.
5. STEVE CARELL
Sometimes, it hurts so good. The pain, the discomfort, the agony of watching Carell’s Michael Scott work himself into another awkward scenario on NBC’s The Office…and almost work himself out. And the fact that we don’t hate Michael — on the contrary, we feel a warm, chocolatey pity for him — is a testament to Carell, who leavens the bald incompetence with wide-eyed awe.
4. JON STEWART AND THE ‘DAILY SHOW’ TEAM
The Daily Show with Jon Stewart is the most consistent laugh machine on TV — and the only news source for scores of cynics and slackers. It’s not often that a comedy show can tackle politics, embrace a cogent point of view, and still maintain its anarchic spark. The scribes at The Daily Show pull it off four nights a week. As the heart and soul of the show, Stewart is evenhanded but never meek; as an interviewer, he can make his guests comfortable even as he’s taking them apart. Then there’s his gang of ”correspondents,” who soldier straight-facedly into the great American absurd and take no prisoners. Empirically speaking, there’s nothing funny about what’s going on in the world right now. Yet here we are each week, chortling.
3. TINA FEY
It takes a certain self-confidence to play a woman who accidentally dates her third cousin, erroneously assumes her neighbor is a terrorist, and gets called the C-word by a colleague (especially when said character is based on you). ”I love going to those uncomfortable places,” says Fey, who stars as 30 Rock’s workaholic TV maven and is also the NBC show’s creator and exec producer. ”I’ll go down any weird avenue.” Maybe this year’s surprise Emmy win for best comedy will empower Fey to pursue some dreams for her alter ego. ”Liz Lemon could do an international adoption for a Russian baby and get the paperwork wrong with the European dates and somehow end up with a huge, muscular 13-year-old. Yeah, I could see that.” Hopefully we will too.
2. STEPHEN COLBERT AND THE ‘COLBERT REPORT’ TEAM
The once (and, we’re sure, future) presidential nominee, author, and dedicated windbag also happens to be one of the smartest satirists working today. Heck, if all the dude had on his resume was the legendary 2006 White House Correspondents Dinner, he’d go down in comedy history. But week-in and week-out, Colbert takes aim at the political-industrial complex — and I don’t care if there’s no such term — and spins the facts into truth. Or truthiness. Whichever’s easier.
1. THE JUDD APATOW POSSE
Can you even remember what movie comedy looked like before writer-director-producer Judd Apatow and his ever-expanding comedy clan (including Seth Rogen, Leslie Mann, Jonah Hill, and Paul Rudd) came along last summer with two stiff shots of cathartic humor — the oops-she’s-preggers romp Knocked Up and the high school raunchfest Superbad? Today, when studio execs have a comedy that feels flat or formulaic, the call goes out to ”Judd it up” — sweet irony for a man once best known for critically beloved flops like TV’s Freaks and Geeks. ”It was always my dream to become a verb,” Apatow deadpans. ”That’s what I wrote in my high school yearbook.”
Barack Obama and Bill Clinton had a meeting to smooth out hard feelings remaining from a bitter campaign.
I was, however, more distracted by Bill’s hideous outfit. Who dressed him, Stevie Wonder?
Sure, it’s summer. A bright green shirt is a bold choice, although one that would have worked better with a darker suit. But, egads, that tie! Technically, they go together — the shirt has a lime green stripe that matches the shirt — but it’s godawful.
Just say No, Bill!
If you actually care about the meeting, they made nice:
In Obama’s first comments about his widely-covered phone conversation with the former president Monday morning, the Illinois senator said the two did not dwell on the prolonged and at times divisive primary race.
“We did not belabor the primary season,” Obama told reporters Tuesday. “I think what we both acknowledged is, is that when you’re in a tough primary battle you say things that afterward you may end up thinking, that may have been a little intemperate. But that’s the nature of political campaigns.”
Obama also said he wants Clinton to become a staple on the campaign trail next fall, even though the former president’s periodic outbursts and at-times aggressive promotion of his wife’s candidacy drew widespread criticisms. “I absolutely want Bill Clinton campaigning for me,” Obama said, adding, “He is one of the most gifted public officials of our generation and has been one of the most successful presidents that we’ve had in my lifetime.”
How sweet! I bet Obama wore a nicer shirt, though.
Illinois senator and presidential hopeful Barack Obama has been transformed into a muscle-bound toy action figure by an American firm Herobuilders.
The company says its “Beach Blanket Obama” doll - on sale now for $21.95 USD - was inspired by paparazzi-style photos of the 46-year-old politician running on the beach in Hawaii earlier this year.
Over the last few years, aides have winced at repeated tabloid reports about Clinton’s episodic friendship and occasional dinners out with Belinda Stronach, a twice-divorced billionaire auto-parts heiress and member of the Canadian Parliament 20 years his junior, or at more recent high-end Hollywood dinner-party gossip that Clinton has been seen visiting with the actress Gina Gershon in California.
Instead of standing beside Hilary as she battles the campaign trail — Bill is off cavorting around the country, bedding young females. Surprising? I think not.
Bumpshack says, “Last time I checked Gina is a lot more attractive than Monica Lewinsky or Gennifer Flowers. So I guess Bill’s taste has at least improved since leaving office.”
More on Gina Gerson:
Sultry, dark-eyed, brunette leading actress Gina Gershon mixes a muscular toughness with her seductive femininity. Born the youngest of five children, raised in Los Angeles’ San Fernando Valley, Gershon gets her exotic looks from her French, Russian, and Dutch heritage. After high school, she decided she wanted a more sophisticated image than those usually attributed to Valley Girls like herself and so moved to the Big Apple, to earn a bachelor of arts degree at New York University. While in New York, she studied acting with such well-known teachers as Sandra Seacat, David Mamet, and Harold Guskin. She started out in theater and worked on both coasts.
[Click thumbnails for a larger view]
Since the mid-’80s, Gershon has carved out a living as a reliable character actress on both the big and the small screens. Her most notable role on the tube was that of Nancy Sinatra, the famous wife of Old Blue Eyes himself, in the CBS miniseries Sinatra (1994). Gershon made her feature film debut playing a small role opposite Molly Ringwald in 1986’s Pretty in Pink, and graduated to the jucier role of of Coral opposite Tom Cruise in Cocktail (1988). Through the 1990s, Gershon vascillated between high-brow and low-brow fare, the former exemplified by her memorable turns in John Sayles’s City of Hope (1991), Robert Altman’s The Player (1992), and Michael Mann’s The Insider (1999); the latter, by her gleeful, scenery-chewing work in Best of the Best 3 and the infamous Showgirls (both 1995). Gershon’s signature role, however, was a synthesis of B-movie pulp and indie smarts, courtesy of the Wachowski brothers’ twisty 1996 neo-noir Bound. Cast as a woman falling in love with an abusive gangster’s moll, Gershon was able to radiate an intelligence, sexuality, and power not afforded her by previous scripts, and the lead part would go a long way in establishing her screen persona into the new millenium
Alec Baldwin as the governor? Not even a movie could I believe this. Yet Alec would like your vote for governor of California. Scarey huh? Alec has diarrhea of the mouth and would probably start a war with Canada or Mexico. If he can go off on a little girl that he claims to love the rest of us had better look out.
“There are other things I want to do besides acting” he tells Morley Safer on “60 Minutes” this Sunday. “In a matter of weeks, I’m going to be 50.” Baldwin was thinking of running for governor two years ago. Just before he went nut-so and left a voice mail for his daughter Ireland, then 11, calling her “a rude, thoughtless little pig.”
When asked if he wanted a chance to apologize for calling Kim Basinger’s lawyer, Judy Bogen, a “300-pound homunculus with a face like a clenched fist,” Baldwin replied, “I was being kind, Morley.”
In the past, Baldwin has done nothing to hide his brand of politics. He has called the vice president Dick Cheney a terrorist, then said he wasn’t a terrorist but rather “a lying, thieving oil whore and murderer of the U.S. Constitution.” Wasn’t Alec the one who said he would move to Canada if George W. Bush was elected President? Guess he couldn’t find a flight!
source: Alec Baldwin Coming to an Election Near You? [CitizenSugar]; Political Office In Alec Baldwin’s Future? [cbs news]
Would you believe that Mariah Carey is bigger than Elvis? Me neither. But she has actually had more number one records than The King.
With her 18th chart-topper “Touch My Body,” Mariah Carey has passed Elvis Presley for the most No. 1 singles on the Billboard singles chart, and is now second only to the Beatles. But while the diva was in full celebration mode after learning of her latest milestone, she was also quick to put her accomplishment in perspective.
“I really can never put myself in the category of people who have not only revolutionized music but also changed the world,” Carey told The Associated Press on Tuesday via phone from London. “That’s a completely different era and time … I’m just feeling really happy and grateful.”
That’s both the right standpoint to take from a PR standpoint and, well, right. Still, there have been a lot of big stars and she’s in rarified company:
Carey’s single is the new No. 1 single on Billboard’s Hot 100 singles chart: The song also is No. 1 on the trade magazine’s digital download chart thanks to a precedent-setting 286,000 downloads in its debut week. She had been tied with Presley with 17 No. 1 singles; the Beatles are the all-time leaders with 20. (Madonna also beat a Presley record this week, surpassing the King for the most top 10 hits with her 37th for her hit “4 Minutes.”)
But, of course, there’s the politics of identity:
Carey said being in such company was gratifying not only because of her personal success, but what it meant for women and minorities. “For me, in my mind the accomplishment is just that much sweeter,” she said. “In terms of my ethnicity, always feeling like an outsider, always feeling different … for me it’s about saying, ‘Thank you Lord, for giving me the faith to believe in myself when other people had written me off.’”
Goodness yes. She was 20 years old before she made it big. It’s amazing she persevered so long.
Following in the footsteps of the Bush Twins, Meghan McCain is a young hottie likely to cause problems with dad’s conservative base. And she’s definitely more Jenna than Barbara.
She recently sat down with GQ’s Greg Veis. She made quite an impression.
Meghan McCain arrives at the door to her apartment out of breath and wobbly in calf-high boots. It’s a seventy-five-degree February afternoon in Phoenix, and the 23-year-old daughter of the presumptive Republican nominee for president is wearing a black leather jacket over a scarf and gray scoop-neck T-shirt. I extend my hand to introduce myself, but she knocks it down and wraps me up in a bear hug.
“I’ve never had anybody fly across the country for me who I wasn’t dating,” she says. “I’m so flattered!”
But he didn’t get lucky:
Alas, the tour stops here. Meghan won’t show me her bedroom—it’s too messy, she says. Besides, she’s starving, and she really wants to take me to lunch at one of her favorite restaurants ever, Garduño’s Margarita Factory.
Looking to wine and dine her?
Meghan’s cultural tastes are pretty straight down the middle for a recent college grad. She went crazy for Superbad, Knocked Up, and The Big Lebowski (“I fucking love that movie”). On TV she’s currently riveted by MTV’s A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila. “It’s a bisexual-dating show!” she cries. “It’s hilarious!”
When she ticks off a list of celebrities she’s into, she offers a surprising pick: the burlesque stripper Dita Von Teese. “I know she’s not someone you would expect the daughter of a Republican candidate to like, but I love her,” she says. “I love the way she dresses. If I could look like that all day, I would…in her day clothes, I mean.
“And, yes, I know she’s a fetish star, but”—she lowers her head for this—“I think that’s rock ’n’ roll.”
Pretty hot, right?
“You want to hear a hilarious story?” she asks. “I guess you can print this if you want, but it’s not my finest moment. Once, this guy at Columbia was talking to his friends. He was like, ‘Meghan McCain this’ and ‘Meghan McCain that,’ going on, saying that he’d slept with me and that it was great. I just happened to be walking by at the time. I was like, ‘Hi, I’m Meghan McCain. I didn’t realize that we’d met.’ He turned ghost white, so I showed him my ID, and I was like, ‘I’m glad you were sharing our passionate love story.’ ”
So, what’s it going to take to get in this babe’s pants?
“I like bad boys for the most part,” Meghan adds. “In the past, I have liked tattooed guys who wear Converse. But I’d be open to anyone as long as you have a sense of humor. I have also dated totally normal guys who look like you, I guess—D.C.-looking guys.”
“I’m an acquired taste,” Meghan says matter-of-factly. “I’m a daughter of a Republican senator. I started dating this guy, and he wouldn’t date me anymore because he found out who my dad was. He says, ‘I don’t agree with his politics.’ Isn’t that terrible? That’s why you’re dumping me? We only went on two dates, but still. Not everybody wants to go out with somebody so high-profile. If they do, they’re investment bankers. Seriously. Ugh! If you’re an investment banker, don’t hit on me. You can quote me. I’m not interested.”
If you manage to get past all that — and the Secret Service detail — you at least shouldn’t have to put up with a lot of games.
Meghan puts it more succinctly: “I’m almost incapable of bullshit. He’s the same way.”
You can see more of Meghan at the McCainBlogette blog, which has lots of photos and some hot, sexy videos. Well, actually, the videos are pretty tame — no nudity or anything like that — but she’s pretty hot.
The boys at GreenMountainPolitics think so too. They’ve got a photo of her bare feet with a little tatoo of a star on them.
Aging movie star Jack Nicholson tried to put together a video endorsement of Hillary Clinton using clips from his old movies, but just ended up creating this weird creepy thing that doesn’t really help the struggling Democratic presidential nominee.
The idea was that Nicholson’s characters would say things that, ripped from the original context, sound vaguely supportive of Hillary. But of course no one can forget the original context.
“I, by choice, am not an activist at this point,” Nicholson said. “I think Sean Penn is the greatest living American in a certain way, because he’s a man of action. … I feel by being a neutralist in this area, in my actual field of endeavor I can be more effective.”
In Obama’s first comments about his widely-covered phone conversation with the former president Monday morning, the Illinois senator said the two did not dwell on the prolonged and at times divisive primary race.
Over the last few years, aides have winced at repeated tabloid reports about Clinton’s episodic friendship and occasional dinners out with Belinda Stronach, a twice-divorced billionaire auto-parts heiress and member of the Canadian Parliament 20 years his junior, or at more recent high-end Hollywood dinner-party gossip that Clinton has been seen visiting with the actress Gina Gershon in California.
“I, by choice, am not an activist at this point,” Nicholson said. “I think Sean Penn is the greatest living American in a certain way, because he’s a man of action. … I feel by being a neutralist in this area, in my actual field of endeavor I can be more effective.”
