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Highest Rated SNL Ever?
I will certainly be watching this one:
Betty White fans, your prayers have been answered. The former “Golden Girl” will appear on “Saturday Night Live” in the near future, she confirmed to PEOPLE at Elton John’s annual Oscars viewing party on Sunday night.
Fans have been clamoring for White, 88, to do “SNL” — an idea she called “ridiculous” just a few weeks ago — ever since her comic turn in a Snickers ad during the Super Bowl. One Facebook page devoted to the cause has attracted half a million fans.
I forget what I was watching a couple years ago when I was completely shocked (and pleasantly surprised) with how obscene Betty White was.
Another Open Thread
New Southland tonight on TNT, for those of you who are interested (10 pm EST).
Also, I saw this smoothie on Good Eats last night, made one today, and it was delicious. Anyone have an estimate of how many calories are in it? Trying to regain my girlish figure (or at least acquire one that looks less like Rosie O’Donnell) after sitting on my ass for six weeks.
Chuck Open Thread
Thank goodness the Olympics are over.
“If Obama’s A Socialist, He’s Dyslexic”
John Cook at Gawker has a point-by-point teardown of Fox News’ “fair and balanced” editing of the underwhelming-on-the-air “faceoff” between Jon Stewart and Lord Falafel. “I’m Not Saying Your Mother’s A Whore: How Fox News Censored Jon Stewart vs. Bill O’Reilly” :
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Fox News has generously placed the full, unedited conversation between Bill O’Reilly and Jon Stewart online, so we can see precisely how unfairly and deviously Fox edited the interview in order to weaken Stewart’s case: A lot!
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Last night on his show—Part Two of a ludicrously overhyped “faceoff” between O’Reilly and Stewart in which Stewart attempted, among other things, to present a critique of Fox as a fear-mongering GOP messaging operation—O’Reilly boasted that his edit of their 42-minute interview for broadcast was “a fair cut” and invited viewers to have a look at the unedited version online to judge for themselves: “Some of these idiots in the press who hate us, ‘O’Reilly cut the interview to make Stewart look’—OK, all of that is bull. It’s a fair cut. And then when you watch the cut and watch the whole interview you’ll see it.”
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So we took him up on the offer, and guess what? If by “fair cut” O’Reilly means “cut in a manner that left some of Stewart’s best lines, most effective arguments, and most convincing evidence out of the interview and hidden from the broadcast audience,” then he’s absolutely right…
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And to watch the Fox News cut of this exchange, you’d think O’Reilly scored a minor point by mocking Stewart’s repeated use of the word “cyclonic”
__O’REILLY: Cavuto sane?
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STEWART: Being the thinnest kid at fat camp. So let’s just get that straight. Here is what Fox has done through their cyclonic, perpetual…
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O’REILLY: We’re back to the cyclonic.
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STEWART: Their cyclonic perpetual emotion machine that is a 24-hour a day, 7-day a week. They’ve taken reasonable concerns about this president and this economy and turned it into a full-fledged panic attack about the next coming of Chairman Mao. Explain to me why that is the narrative of your network?__
Here’s what Stewart really said about Neil Cavuto’s practice of raising “Is Obama a Stalinist?”-style questions:
__I know what this is. I come from Jersey—it’s the same thing: “I’m not saying your mother’s a whore. I’m just saying she has sex for money. With people.” [F]ox News used to be all about, you don’t criticize a president during wartime. It’s unacceptable, it’s treasonous, it gives aid and comfort to the enemy. All of a sudden, for some reason you can run out there and say, “Barack Obama is destroying the fabric of this country.”
Ah yes — the Cavuto Mark in all its glory!
Read the whole thing. The Gawker staff deserves great credit for, as the saying goes, watching these idiots so we don’t have to, and for exploring Fox’s bad-faith chop job at length. Comments are well worth reading, too — including, I suppose, the Fox apologist who whines “The rife condescension in this thread is exactly why more people watch Fox than the Big Three. Obviously, the bulk of Fox’s viewers don’t really sweat the fact it’s a right-leaning outlet, just like the Big Three viewers don’t sweat the left-of-center bias. Fox’s viewers watch Fox because it’s the one place in the MSM they don’t get called stupid all day long.”
Early Morning Open Thread: Everything Old Is…
John’s busted shoulder has left Tunch’s many fans desperate for a feline, er, fix… yet my tech skills are limited to stealing others’ work.
Photo courtesy of commentor Mr. Whipple, who says: “How about some Punkatude?… He goes by Punky, Punky’s Whips, Mr. Whipples, Whippy whip, Orange whip, Booj, Stinkbutt, Mr. Crusty, Nipples and Champ. Those are the ones I can remember offhand.”
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On a very different topic… HBO is “eyeing” a biopic about anti-gay activist Anita Bryant.
“Sex and the City” creator Darren Star is on board to direct the film, which is being written by “Runaway” creator Chad Hodge. Star also is executive producing with Dennis Erdman. “She is a fascinating person on every single level,” said Hodge… “The twists and turns of her life are incredible.”
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In 1959 and ’60, she was a major pop star with three million-selling records. After marrying and settling in Florida, she reverted to Christian music and, projecting a wholesome image, began plugging such blue-chip companies as Coca-Cola, Kraft Foods and Holiday Inn. Her most famous celebrity endorsement gig was for the Florida Citrus Commission, for which she sang in a series of TV commercials, closing each ad with the tag line, “A day without orange juice is like a day without sunshine.”
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… In 1977, she switched to political activism, launching a crusade to repeal a new Miami-Dade County ordinance prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation…
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“As a mother, I know that homosexuals cannot biologically reproduce children; therefore, they must recruit our children,” she said. Her Save the Children coalition got the new law overturned within a year, and it took 20 years for it to be reinstated.
Early Morning Open Thread: Everything Old Is…Post + Comments (50)
Lost Open Thread
I’m sure a few of you are going to be into this, so here is a thread. I watched season one a couple years ago because it had a lot of the same writers as Alias, another show I loved, but they lost me shortly into season two when it just went off the rails for me. I suppose in a couple years I will go on a kick and watch all the seasons on dvd over the span of a few months, because that appears to be how I watch most tv these days.
For those of you not watching Lost, Frontline’s 90 minute episode on the web looks really good tonight.