June 30, 2004
Insane TV
I like mean reality TV shows. When I was in college, I loved the show ‘Change of Heart’. It featured a couple coming on the show to test their relationship by going on dates with other people. Great idea, right? At the end of the show, each gets to decide whether they want to stay together or whether they’ve had a change of heart. Brutal. People would start crying when their partner had the change of heart while they wanted to stay together. I loved it.
I also really enjoyed ‘Paradise Island’. It had a similar theme. Couples would come on the show and be put on separate island with tons of attractive members of the opposite sex. They would then go on dates with other people and snippets of the date would be shown to their significant other. Of course, the snippets would be the worst, most misleading bits of the date and their partner would often get mad enough to get busy with their own date (and then the video would be shown to the other partner, leading to a vicious, vicious cycle).
But, on my first night in Georgia, I saw the meanest show ever. It’s called Cheaters and it goes like this: a woman suspects her husband/boyfriend is cheating on her. She calls the show and they do a stakeout to confirm or ease her worries. The two segments I saw both had the men actually cheating. The show sets it up so that the women catch the men in the act (in the second case, the man was in bed with the other woman in the apartment he shared with his girlfriend). Insanity ensues. The first one was crushed, hysterically sobbing. The second woman is angry and punching her boyfriend and the broad in her bed. The camera people and staff are all there for the confrontation. It’s so funny. The man in the bed started yelling at the host ‘how you gonna sell out a fellow man like that, how you gonna come to my crib and set me up like this’. The show is a cross between Jerry Springer and Oprah because the host tries to talk to the cheatee and tell her how much better off she’ll be without the guy and he actually provides security for the second girl because he is afraid her boyfriend will return that night. It’s not just women calling the show either. They showed an update on a previous show in which a man catches his girlfriend cheating. It was hilarious/horrifying. I hope the show expands to other markets because you guys have got to see this.
Question
The news yesterday about William Buckley saying that he wouldn’t have supported the war in Iraq if we ‘knew then what we know now’ surprised me. See, I never got the impression he supported the war in the first place. In fact, most of the stuff he wrote for National Review at the time was very ‘have we thought about this’, ‘what about this’ and never did I get the impression that he was Lowry-esque in his support. Am I wrong?
Um?
Who knew you could joke about killing your spouse and then have it be used as evidence should it ever really happen? For the record, it was a teenage Dawn who came up with the idea to kill our future husbands in a freak fishing accident, not me.
The mustest must read.
I read the most amazing piece on anti-Americanism yesterday and I particularly recommend it to pseudo-intellectuals (you know who you are) who think they seem smarter when they put down America and talk up Europe as the promised land. For the record, the writer of the piece has as much criticism for, admittedly one of my favorite writers, Dinesh D’Souza as he does for idiot leftist writers (is it me or do the words ‘idiot leftist’ just sound right together?) who criticize America. It’s a long piece, about 27 pages, so do yourself a favor and print it out. But make sure to read it, it’s the best writing I’ve read in awhile.
Via Vodkapundit.
June 29, 2004
Michael Moore doesn’t hate America, just Bush
Uh, sure:
“We Americans suffer from an enforced ignorance. We don’t know about anything that’s happening outside our country. Our stupidity is embarrassing.”
“That’s why we’re smiling all the time,” he told a rapturous throng in Munich. “You can see us coming down the street. You know, `Hey! Hi! How’s it going?’ We’ve got that big [expletive] grin on our face all the time because our brains aren’t loaded down.”
“You’re stuck with being connected to this country of mine, which is known for bringing sadness and misery to places around the globe.” In Liverpool, he paused to contemplate the epicenters of evil in the modern world: “It’s all part of the same ball of wax, right? The oil companies, Israel, Halliburton.”
In an open letter to the German people in Die Zeit, Moore asked, “Should such an ignorant people lead the world?” Then he began to reflect on things economic. His central insight here is that the American economy, like its people, is pretty crappy, too: “Don’t go the American way when it comes to economics, jobs and services for the poor and immigrants. It is the wrong way.”
All of these are from David Brooks’ NY Times column.
Appeasement?
I saw this headline ‘Three Hostages Held in Iraq are Freed’ and was nervous for a moment that Turkey had cut some deal with the terrorists to free their hostages. Well, it turns out that a deal was indeed made but it wasn’t the Turkish government making it. A Turkish company has agreed to stop doing business with the U.S. military in Iraq. I don’t know what to make of this. It’s appeasement, definitely. But, it’s a private company and so I feel they can do what they want. I do worry about the message being sent and I worry that the employees of other companies in Iraq have more to worry about than ever.
Let me get this straight
Andrew Sullivan has shunned Bush over gay marriage. While he hasn’t explicitly endorsed Kerry, unless he is sitting this one out (which I doubt), he will do at some point. Today, he quotes a Hillary line, ‘we’re going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good’, and notes that it’s the essence of today’s liberalism. But, honestly, the Clintons make Kerry look like Nader or Kucinich. If they are liberals, what is John Kerry? And, what exactly will Andrew Sullivan have to accept in order to cast a vote for him? How important is gay marriage to him (especially considering that Kerry is against gay marriage) and how can it trump everything else?
Questions for an anti-Zionist
I don’t actually believe ‘anti-Zionists’ exist, but Beliefnet has an interesting post featuring questions to an anti-Zionist.
Iraqis on their new freedom
Michele has got the quotes and they’re amazing.
I just report it.
Headline: Weight gain may not be as bad for blacks.
And Dawn Summers was all worried.
June 28, 2004
How to tell you love your job
Someone says ‘wow, you did all that today?’ and that doesn’t make you stop working for the rest of the day.
Free Stuff
When people come over to my house and see copies of Maxim or Stuff laying around they ask ‘why do you have those’ and I answer ‘Gary at View From The Wing provided links to get free subscriptions.’ Gary has a whole list up at the moment of freebies so go get yourself some questionable stuff too.
Quote of the Day
‘Any attack carried out from this day forward will unmistakably be one against the Iraqi people.’
-Robert Alt
Via BOTW.
History in pictures
Michael King has some really cool photos of Bush hearing the news that Iraq was now sovereign. I love the looks on his and Tony Blair’s faces. I highly recommend taking a look.
Less Moore
Spot On’s favorite liberal Dawn Summers saw Fahrenheit 911 and didn’t think it was all that.
Two details that I was privy to that she left out: Michael Moore greeted the line waiting to see the film (Dawn sent me a photo mocking me that I wasn’t there to spit at him) and that Dawn was reading ‘The Official Handbook of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy’ by Mark Smith in line as she met Moore.
Oh, and also, my brother called Fahrenheit 911 ‘propaganda’, another detail she leaves out.
