Open Thread: Lighter Than Helium
President Obama is scheduled to appear on The View on Thursday! Hasselbeck jokes are all over the left-of-far-right blogosphere, but my favorite crack comes from Wonkette, where commentor Canmon (the Inadequate) says:
Andrew Sullivan is trying to get Sarah Palin to do a DNA maternity test on ‘Maury’.
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If the space-time continuum survives that epic event (which tapes Wednesday, in case you’re waiting for the earth to sunder and showers of frogs to fall from the skies), we can start looking forward to August 12, when RNC Chairman Michael Steele and ‘conservative activist’ Andrew Breitbart are scheduled to co-headline the Welcome Reception at the Republican National Committee’s “Election Countdown” in Beverly Hills (via TPM). I’m thinking that means neither individual was considered enough of a draw to merit guest-of-honor status, because certainly Beverly Hills Republicans have advanced beyond “nobody wants one of Those People sitting at their table”, right?
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And if you just can’t take any more politics, Gawker reports there will be a fourth Pirates of the Caribbean movie (booo!), which seems to be based on Tim Powers’ fantasy novel On Stranger Tides (yay?). Keira Knightley and Orlanda Bloom are offsky (also good), and Ian McShane will play Blackbeard (EPIC!).
July 27, 2010 3:16 am
Posted in: Clown Shoes, Open Thread
28 Comments
28 Responses
Yutsano - July 27, 2010 | 3:24 am · Link
Ladies and gentlemen, playing the part of Mary Hart tonight, your fearless blog hostess, Anne Laurie!
I have zero doubt that Obama will find some way to make Elisabeth look like even more of the brainless twit than she already is. But it’s Joy who will really concern me. She’s gonna go gaga and get some firebagger points in there at the same time.
Proper Gander - July 27, 2010 | 3:51 am · Link
It’s about time that Tim Powers got one of his novels adapted. That being said, Stranger Tides was one of his weaker efforts IMHO. I’d rather see Last Call, Declare, or Dinner at Deviant’s Palace movified, preferably by Gilliam or Nolan.
edited to add: Anubis Gates would be a lot of fun too.
Prospero - July 27, 2010 | 4:00 am · Link
It’s not going to be a faithful adaptation anyway. Which is a shame…
asiangrrlMN - July 27, 2010 | 4:13 am · Link
Yuck. Yuck. Never heard of him. Excellent. Neat.
roshan - July 27, 2010 | 4:18 am · Link
Are the blacks being racist towards Fox News?
fucen tarmal - July 27, 2010 | 4:19 am · Link
i have to give credit where credit is due; usually a third string quarterback married to a 4th string talk show host, fresh from a reality tv show back when that stlll meant something, dammit(!), would just be a couple of who-bags to me, but i actually know who elizabeth and tim hasselbeak are…that is saying something.
Sock Puppet of the Great Satan - July 27, 2010 | 4:22 am · Link
Powers’ is excellent, and On Stranger Tides Is a great book. Other of his books are very complex in plot and scenario and would be better made into mini- series.
asiangrrlMN - July 27, 2010 | 4:24 am · Link
@roshan: I’m surprised it’s that high, frankly.
roshan - July 27, 2010 | 4:27 am · Link
@asiangrrlMN:
Now that’s just racist. Go ahead now and lynch Fox News.
Yutsano - July 27, 2010 | 4:33 am · Link
@roshan: I see we need a refresher course about how racist matters should be discussed. Okay so I just wanted an excuse to post that again.
Oh and h/t to Anne Laurie for front-paging that.
And I’m spent. Night y’all.
roshan - July 27, 2010 | 4:38 am · Link
@Yutsano:
I agree with the video, but seriously worry for my country due to the criminal shortages of fainting couches and the clutching-variety of pearl necklaces.
asiangrrlMN - July 27, 2010 | 5:03 am · Link
@roshan: Pretty please with sugar on top?
@Yutsano: Sweet dreams.
I’m out, too. Night.
WereBear (itouch) - July 27, 2010 | 6:15 am · Link
Breitbart and Steele. Don’t be saying Steele doesn’t suffer for the party. It’s not all dominatrix nightclubs and whipped cream, ya know.
(Yes, I know Steele, wasn’t there, just signed off on expenses. So he was okay with it!)
kommrade reproductive vigor - July 27, 2010 | 7:05 am · Link
I strongly suspect the person who came up with the Disney ride (on which the entire franchise was based) was inspired by OST. Nice that Powers will get some cash out of it this time.
roshan - July 27, 2010 | 7:19 am · Link
Interesting Wikileaks Afghan news dump chart, via Reddit.
debit - July 27, 2010 | 7:23 am · Link
I would go see this movie if I had any assurance Ian McShane’s character would call someone a cocksucker. Otherwise, meh.
ChrisS - July 27, 2010 | 7:30 am · Link
And if you just can’t take any more politics, Gawker reports there will be a fourth Pirates of the Caribbean movie
All the cool kids are waiting for HBO’s A Game of Thrones.
JGabriel - July 27, 2010 | 7:46 am · Link
@asiangrrlMN:
It makes sense, really. 1.38% is close to one tenth of the ~12% of the population that is black, and about one tenth of the black population votes against Democrats in federal elections.
So it’s pretty much where you’d expect it to be if Fox News is perceived (accurately) by blacks as a propaganda arm of the GOP. Maybe a little high – I’d have guessed about 1% +/- .3 – but not by much.
What’s actually surprising, given the unreliability of small subsamples in polling pools, is how close Nielsen’s number is to what you’d expect.
.
Bobby Thomson - July 27, 2010 | 7:48 am · Link
Keith Richards played Blackbeard in the third POTC - badly.
Maybe we can all pretend that never happened.
Allison W. - July 27, 2010 | 8:26 am · Link
I can’t believe he’s going to spend the entire hour with them. Will he be the same after its over?
ET - July 27, 2010 | 9:09 am · Link
I am sure E.H. will do her darnedest to look like a twit – not that she really has to work for something that comes so naturally.
Tom Hilton - July 27, 2010 | 9:27 am · Link
@ChrisS: This. Although some of us cool kids will be passing the time with Boardwalk Empire while we wait.
And didn’t Ian McShane already play Blackbeard? In that HBO series, what was it called…Deadwood?
Tom Hilton - July 27, 2010 | 9:28 am · Link
Doesn’t that violate the Hatch Act?
QuaintIrene - July 27, 2010 | 9:48 am · Link
Or if he was gonna sing.
Oh, hell, any McShane is bonus.
cmorenc - July 27, 2010 | 10:32 am · Link
That the RNC is having Breitbart as a marquis speaker at an electoral strategy event so soon after being the one behind a video fraudulently edited to maliciously misrepresent Mrs. Sherrod as a racist, speaks volumes about the GOP hierarchy’s true attitude about the matter. In their minds the basic story line that the NAACP, Obama, and even Mrs Sherrod are racially prejudiced is true, and it’s merely an awkward inconvenience that the Breitbart video didn’t turn out to be the proof of that notion it initially purported to be. The only thing wrong with this episode in their mind is that Breitbart and Fox got unlucky that the deliberate misrepresentations got exposed so quickly, prominently, and irrefutably, before the intended meme of Sherrod-and-NAACP-as-racists had already long been deeply established by frequent media repetition. Usually the true facts don’t come out until the media has already moved on several other shiny objects forward, and media dissemination of the misrepresentations and truth don’t get nearly the play the original propaganda got.
The GOP is perfectly happy for Breitbart to continue churning out fraudulent videos, so long as their propaganda effect turns out to be more effective than counterproductive. Keeping him as a speaker indicates two things: they’re betting this episode won’t prove to be long-term crippling to his effectiveness in promoting future videos; or, even if he individually proves too badly wounded to further serve as an effective source to sew propaganda in the media, that others will see this as encouragement to take his place, with the advantage of not yet having yet had their credibility tainted.
Hal - July 27, 2010 | 10:34 am · Link
I can only imagine the questions Hasselcrack is furiously trying to memorize in order to seem like she knows what she’s talking about. Someone should ask her when she’s done, who suggested those questions, cause you know anything she asked would not have been her own idea.
SiubhanDuinne - July 27, 2010 | 11:09 am · Link
O/T but I just read this slashdot piece and laughed until I cried and now my eyeliner is all smeared and I look awful and I have a luncheon appointment but it was SO worth it:
http://www.27bslash6.com/missy.html
0whole1 - July 27, 2010 | 11:47 am · Link
IMO, On Stranger Tides is the best SciFi book I’ve ever read. The best example of Tim Powers’ style of stitching together two or three disparate threads into a believable whole. I couldn’t get into electricity + ghosts + drug addiction of Expiration Date; the tarot + quantum physics/mandelbrot sets + old gods of Last Call was just ok; the pirates + voodoo + amalgam of old world cultures of On Stranger Tides was great.
I can only imagine it won’t translate all that well into a movie, but at least it can’t be a worse adaptation than The Postman.
Right?