Shepherd Smith gets NSFW

The web is buzzing today with video of Fox News anchor Shepherd Smith getting so angry during a conversation about the torture memos that were just released that he swears on live TV twice.

First, I should say that I agree with Shep 100%. We are the United States, and we do not fucking torture. Or at least we wouldn't have if ol' shit-for-brains hadn't been President for the last 8 years.

But what's really going on here? This is not the first time that Shep has gone off the FNC script, so it begs the question whether he's been a closeted moderate who has just gotten sick of shoveling the Fox News crap to us every day...or if this is all a well-timed faux conversion to let us know that Shep is one of us, part of the new zeitgeist ushered in by Obama, to turn him into Fox's version of Keith Olberman.

I find the first scenario entirely believable. If someone who wasn't a true believer in the right wing bullshit had worked at Fox News for a decade and had to repeat the talking points every single day, he just might eventually snap. He just might eventually be unable to avoid calling bullshit at some point when it all got to be too much.

But sadly I also find the second scenario frighteningly believable. Fox's relevance is in serious challenge right now, as they are looking more and more like Paranoid Fringe Network. What if the 2008 election really did signal a sea change that will lead to a corresponding drop in ratings for conservatively slanted news? What if Shepherd Smith senses that his media power and relevance might go down unless he either abandons ship to another network or sends out a few signals that wink wink nudge nudge, he's in on the joke that is his network and he's going to laugh along at it with all of us?

Who knows which is the right answer. But I wouldn't be so quick to laud Shepherd Smith as our new hero just yet. The proof may well be in whether he is punished by Fox for his on-air slip. Dropping the F-bomb on live TV shouldn't be taken lightly, even with an Obama-run FCC monitoring things.

Quote of the Day

In a world gone mad, can you really afford to NOT give money to the troops, if it means that Sean Hannity gets waterboarded by the star of the Great Muppet Caper?

--Jason Linkins at Huffington Post.

Yes, Sean Hannity apparently agreed without thinking to let Charles Grodin waterboard him. They could put this on pay per view and make a trillion dollars.

(Via Left on Lanier)

Brilliant Takedown

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Today's Funny

When Saturday Night Live hits the right pitch in a political sketch, the result is pure brilliance. Such is the case with this weekend's opener featuring Tina Fey as Sarah Palin. Just watch.

Ineptitude

If you watched John McCain's speech last night, as I suspect most did, you probably wondered why he spoke in front of a green background for much of the first half of the speech. Originally it was a bright lime color, then it appeared to morph into green vomit camouflage, and eventually it turned bright blue before the speech ended. You may have seen that when the camera pulled back from the bright blue, it was actually a blue sky with an image of an American flag waving on the far right. But as for the green, was that a malfunction by the television? Why no, it was not.

The first bright green image was of Walter Reed Middle School in California, and the green was the grass in front of the middle school. Why was a random middle school shown during McCain's speech? Because some idiot was assigned the task of getting an image of Walter Reed Army Medical Center, and doesn't know how to Google. And apparently nobody else on the convention production team ever reviewed the background images, saw this image of what appears to be a large mansion (very fitting for McCain to be featured in front of one of those) and thought "hey, that doesn't look like a VA hospital."

When the image shifted a darker splotchy green, it was apparently actually a picture of rows of corn. Why the McCain campaign thought corn was an appropriate image for the senator from Arizona, who has absolutely zero to do with corn other than opposing ethanol subsidies, is a mystery.

It's obvious that whoever staged this convention did not think about how the closeups of the speakers would come across on television.

(Via Wonkette.)

Today's Funny

I can't write about Sarah Palin's speech last night yet...still too angry. But what I can do is share with you the best moment of the night as captured on CNN and C-Span. My dad and I laughed so hard when this happened, we cried. I won't share the wildly inappropriate joke my dad made that demonstrated exactly where my twisted sense of humor comes from.

Enjoy.




(Sent by Darcey. Thanks!)

Why I love Jon Stewart

I really should watch Sportscenter more often

Just now, watching the 11pm Sportscenter, there was a story about whether the Minnesota Vikings committed tampering by talking to Brett Favre about coming out of retirement and playing for them while he is technically still under contract with Green Bay. Scott Van Pelt then said with a completely straight face something along the lines of "Favre wasn't interested in the job and the Vicodins...Vikings weren't offering one."

No grin or pause for effect, so I don't think it was intentional. Total Freudian slip.

Bwahahaha! I can't stop laughing right now.

XOXO

NY mag has a fantastic write-up of why you should be watching Gossip Girl and not feeling the slightest bit ashamed about it.

I discovered the show when it premiered and have been trying to get others to watch it ever since. Seriously, you don't know what you're missing!

The article, however, fails to mention one of the main reasons I watch: because I find the love story between the 2 parents to be really bittersweet, heartfelt and well-acted. I' m a sucker for a good tale of star-crossed lovers who can't seem to get each other out of their heads and hearts.

The show returns soon for a final 5 episodes, and back episodes are apparently available on the CW website or via iTunes. Check it out.

The Early Show's Harry Smith...Asshole.

I really can't believe the audacity and lack of common decency of some people. This morning Ted Kennedy appeared on the Early Show to talk about his endorsement of Obama for President. Smith had the gall to ask him if he was afraid of Obama being assasinated, being that Ted Kennedy knows a little something about agents of change becoming targets:

SMITH: I just, I think what I was trying to say is, sometimes agents of change end up being targets, as you well know, and that was why I was asking if you were at all fearful of that.

Process that for a second. This scumbag just asked this question of a man who had two of his brothers assasinated by gunmen within a decade of each other, as they both worked tirelessly in quests to improve our country.

What would possess someone to ask a question like that in such an insensitive fashion, let alone at all?

I'd like to point out to Mr. Smith that thanks to terrorism and our little quest to bring democracy to the Middle East, our current president has probably been the frequent target of far more determined and dangerous assassins than Obama would be. Our Secret Service has managed to keep him from getting his ass shot, so far, so why should we assume that Obama would be any more likely to be shot than George W. Bush? Or any other U.S. president given our volatile international image?

And why is it ever, ever acceptable to ask someone who lost two of his brothers to assasination if he is fearful of a colleague being assasinated? Would you ask someone who had two sisters raped and murdered if they were afraid that other friends of theirs might be raped and murdered, given that they're such an expert on the subject?

I cannot, simply cannot, fathom the GALL and the complete lack of judgment, taste and sensitivity required to ask such a question and then try to follow up on it when Kennedy didn't take the bait the first time.

Smith should be ashamed of himself.

Political Funny

I absolutely adore this list of the GOP presidential candidates as Buffy villains. Particularly apt are Romney, Huckabee and Thompson's equivalents.

Total Douchebag!

My Boys on TBS is the funniest show that none of you are watching. Check out this lovely scene as transcripted by Jen for an example of what you are missing. I about wet myself at the line "P.S. I don't understand your girl jeans."

Updated to add a link to the clip in question: Watch, laugh, cry.

How cool is this

So, earlier this year I finally succumbed to the Battlestar Galactica obsession by way of purchasing all of the DVD sets. When I did, the third season had just ended and I unfortunately did not realize that it would not be available on DVD for quite some time. So, I watched all of the episodes through the end of season 2.5 and then suddenly discovered that I would have to wait an eternity to see what happens next because they STILL have not announced a release date for Season 3.

But instead of waiting for an eternity, I found another way. Amazon.com now has episodes of shows that aren't yet available in DVD sets that are nevertheless available for computer download via their "Unbox" system...including Battlestar Galactica season 3. I just paid my $28 and the entire season 3 is downloading as I write this. That's frakkin awesome!

Maybe everyone already knew about this service except for me, but if so don't destroy my joy, people. I'm about to watch episode 1 while I (gulp) get on the treadmill.

Careful, I'm spoiled

I don't have plans for this Friday night, because I am a Potter widow. I will most certainly NOT be standing in line, possibly in garb, at a bookstore anxiously awaiting the stroke of midnight and the arrival of the final Harry Potter book. Most of my friends will be, hence the lack of plans. But me, I have a natural aversion to runaway trends like this and I have managed to successfully avoid reading a single word of the HP series. Oh, I've watched most of the movies either with Potter-obsessed friends or on HBO, and they aren't bad. But that is where I draw the line.

I'm amused to no end by my friends who are avoiding the internets for this entire week out of fear that they might accidentally stumble onto a spoiler as to the ending of the final book. I've never liked waiting spoiler-free to find out the answer to any mystery, and if I were a Potter fan I'd have hunted down the spoilers everywhere I could find them by now. (I'd read a complete synopsis of the Sopranos finale several days before it aired, though I didn't actually know it was legitimate until it aired because of doubts that they would end the series in such dumb fashion...boy was I wrong!)

My spoiler days go back many years, and include a dirty part of my past that I'm finally ready to come clean about. You see, back in 2000 when I was studying for the Massachusetts bar I decided that I needed a diversion to take the stress off. At the time I was living with my a boyfriend who ruled the TV remote with an iron fist. So, if he was at home he wouldn't let me watch that new television sensation Survivor that I found so fascinating, but I could sure as hell read about it online. I found a site calls Survivor Sucks, where people were spoiling the outcome of the first season game by analyzing screen captures of future clips included in commercials and promos, as well as information provided by people who claimed to have knowledge of the outcome. As someone who hates a mystery I was instantly hooked and was soon reading brilliant detective work by other obsessed spoilers for hours a day.

When season two rolled around, the challenge was even bigger because the producers of the show had learned from the first season's experiences about the importance of confidentiality agreements and ensuring secrecy among the production team. I returned to that same website, but after a few episodes their traffic was so severely overloaded that they threatened to shut down. A small group of us who were particularly dedicated moved on to a private forum that one user set up, and fortuitously brought along most of the people who had shown particular prowess in spoiling the show, and soon we had nearly 200 members.

I'm not going to go into the nitty gritty sordid details here, but that little enterprising group of spoilers accurately predicted who would be kicked off the show every single week from episode 7 when we originally created the group, all the way through the finale of season 2. We got a fair amount of national press attention by the end of that season, and were a frequent target of an angry public opposed to spoilers that would actually TELL them what was going to happen when they preferred to make educated guesses. The world seems to be divided pretty equally into the spoilers, always want to know what happens ahead of time, and the anti-spoilers who cannot understand why anyone would want to know ahead of time and who are openly hostile to the very concept of spoiling. And oh how we acquainted ourselves with the latter. I have some stories.

One of the members of that group had a saying, "information wants to be free." It has always made perfect sense to me, from that day until this one when people moan and sigh about the dangers of bloggers lacking credibility and accountability and having the power to ruin people's lives by throwing theories and unsubstantiated rumors on the wall without the editorial constraints of "true" journalists. But information does want to be free, and the truth will always find its way out to the public before too long. Those who try to control its flow are fighting an insurmountable tide, and would be better served in controlling how and where the information is released than simply trying to convice people not to read spoilers, not to read gossip sites, not to take anyone who's not a real journalist seriously.

Today, a quick perusal of the internets shows that some enterprising person claims to have put digital images of every single page of the new Harry Potter book online. These images may or may not be from the real book, but if they are then I say it's just the cost of trying to keep a secret. Do we actually believe for a second that some people won't buy the book or won't enjoy it as much if they do because they heard a rumor that Hermione is Voldemort? (I'm making that up for the paranoid among you, even though I have read HP spoilers and could ruin you with a sentence right now if I wanted to! Ha!) Realistically, the spoiler hunt only increases the PR frenzy surrounding this final book and even the release of true spoilers are unlikely to actually negatively impact the book's sales or the enjoyment of the fans.

As we saw from the Survivor experience, even having accurate predictions days in advance of who would be kicked off the show every week and who would win the series in the end did nothing to dampen the ratings of the second season. In fact, ratings have dwindled over the last few seasons just as people have stopped caring about spoiling the show's outcome anymore. It's funny, because the whole notion of "spoiling" the show started out with disdain for the quality of the program and a desire to hurt its ratings by ruining the suspense, but exactly the opposite happened. And those who are releasing information ahead of time about the end of the Potter series may be doing so with harmful motives but they are feeding directly into the frenzy that the publisher and author desire.

So yes, I know how it all ends but I won't ruin it for you here. I respect your desire not to know ahead of time. But information wants to be free, and it will find you eventually. Besides, you'll know all the answers by Saturday anyhow. And I promise, you'll still enjoy reading it and obsessing over it and seeing the movie in 2 years, and re-reading it, and dressing up like the characters and all that stuff you Potter people do. (No, I'm not making fun of you. Remember, I just confessed to having been a Survivor spoiler back in the day, so I have no room to talk.)

Grief, Sopranos style

I don't normally love Ann Althouse but she gets it right in this post about the "five stages of mourning the Sopranos." Here's the first 3:

1. Denial. What the hell? The cable cuts out now? Now of all times?!

2. Anger. I watched 6 seasons for this? Damn you David Chase! I'm canceling my HBO!

3. Bargaining. Can we have a "Sopranos" movie now?

Now her next post about whether men and women have different capacities to understand the show's subtleties, and which equates reactions to the show to reactions to failing to reach orgasm? Notsomuch on that one.

Now I don't even want the cannoli

So angry about that big ending to the Sopranos that I could spit. I actually thought my cable connection had gone out.

David Chase is full of shit when he said he had 2 or 3 different endings and that he conceived of this big ending when he first started the series. FULL. OF. SHIT.

Take the gun, leave the cannoli

All week I've been thinking about having an Italian feast and Sopranos finale-watching party, but the only reason I really wanted to do that was to have an excuse to cook an old world feast. Well, I talked myself out of the party, but I could not resist the call of the cannoli. I've been craving it all week, probably because I saw an old Sopranos episode on Monday in which Tony was eating cannoli. So, in my quest to satisfy the craving, I went on a mission to find cannoli earlier today. Thankfully, Publix makes decent cannoli and now I'm all set for the finale. I would've tried to make cannolis but my understanding is that the shells are very difficult to master, and I'm not confident enough in my skills or my oven to get them right on the first try.

Meanwhile it's killing me to count down the hours to 9pm! I can't wait to see how they decide to send this show out; I've hated this final season until last week which redeemed it all singlehandedly. I submit that last week's episode was the best of the series.

I think Tony survives the finale, but I don't think things will be left wide open for a movie. Just my hunch.

Social Media is everywhere

Apparently 2 screen shots from a critical scene from the top secret Sopranos finale showed up on, of all places, Facebook. See Television Without Pity (warning, there be spoilers there!)

There's some discussion about them being photoshopped but it appears doubtful. I think someone got their hands on some screen caps and chose what they know, Facebook, as the method of dissemination.

My how time flies

So I was thinking back to when the Sopranos first began airing, and how I didn't watch it at first and had to go back and catch up through reruns on HBO. And then I wondered why didn't I watch it when it first began? Oh yeah, because my boyfriend at the time had this belief that anything popular must be crap and he refused to watch it. And we only had the one TV, so it was nothing but History channel documentaries, Discovery channel documentaries, and movies when I was at home. (God were those boring times.) And then I realized how incredibly long ago that must've been, if I was still living with him. We lived together from the beginning of 1996 to the end of 2001, so that was an incredibly long time ago if I remember him steadfastly refusing to watch it. I just looked it up and the Sopranos debuted in January of 1999. Has it really been that long? That seems like an eternity ago. Before I graduated law school (2000). Before I knew my friend Samantha was living in Boston (that happened in 2001). Before I met my friends Jen, Jehan and James through means I prefer to keep to myself (that also happened in 2001.) Before I turned 25!

Yet more proof that I am incredibly old.

Sopranos Speculation

(This post will contain spoilers for the current season of the Sopranos, including this past Sunday's penultimate episode. If you haven't seen it yet, don't read. However, nothing in here is known to be spoilery about the upcoming finale.)

Holy crap was this week's Sopranos a great episode! That final scene was just perfect on every single level, and made up for a lot of the aimless wandering we've seen this season. I have high hopes for Sunday's finale now, and am even thinking I might host a viewing party complete with an Italian dinner first. We'll see if I feel up to that as the week wears on.

I have read much speculation in the blogosphere and elsewhere so far about Paulie being the rat in Tony's crew, and I would not be surprised at all if that were true. However, this is my wide-eyed speculation of how the finale will go down. If I'm right, I'm brilliant, and if I'm wrong...well, I won't be disappointed because I would hate for the finale to be obvious on a show as good as this.

So, here's my guess:

Even though he's not expected to recover, Silvio pulls through but it's obvious he'll never really be the same. Tony strikes back next week and manages to off Phil Leotardo, but only in revenge for the collateral damage of the death or injury of a Soprano family member, probably AJ. That comment he made to Carm, "you know families are never touched," just really stood out for me as foreshadowing of something to come. But the successful hit on Phil won't matter, because Little Carmine's been feeding info on both families to the feds, who are ready to roll in with arrests and put everyone up on RICO charges before they all kill each other and make all of the FBI's investigation of this gang moot. (While they might like to see the leaders off each other, the reality is they are then back to the drawing board with a new group of up-and-comers to start investigating from scratch.) Agent Harris presents Tony, who he's always had a soft spot for, with a choice of turning federal witness, or going to jail for the rest of his life. Either way, it's all over for Tony, the family, and the show. The end.