To continue our theme from Friday’s ‘Women, Know Your Limits’ video, we turn to the Women’s Interest Lifestyle section of CNN.com, where we find this gem:
Plus, Michelle Obama knows just what to pack!! I think I’m getting the vapors.
Well it looks like SOMEBODY is campaigning pretty hard for the Jim Bunning Outspoken Lunatic Award. Not 24 hours after calling on AIG execs to resign or commit suicide, Grampa Chuck has something to say about “sucking on the tit of the taxpayer.” As a taxpayer myself, let me be the first to say DO. NOT. WANT.
(Pro tip: If you’re looking for more on this story, DO NOT Google “Grassley tit.” Srsly.)
According to our friends over at FishbowlLA, there’s a bit of an internet fracas brewing between Mattel and a coalition of worked-up mommybloggers over the company’s decision to “magically transform” girl-hero Dora the Explorer into, well, something of a slut.
The mommymob fears that the new, skankified Dora will influence their daughters to develop body image issues, eschew books in favor of makeup and spread their legs for every two-bit SpongeBob on the block, which is probably true since I grew up playing with stuffed animals only to become an unrepentant furry.
Anyhow, the Concerned Women for Chaste Cartoon Characters (CWCCC) is sending around a petition demanding that Mattel suspend Dora in her pre-pubescent glory, forever. Sign up here.
Not that there’s been a particular uptick in idiocy lately, but I thought now would be as good a time as any to pay tribute to some of the news-making idiots who perform the grand public service of making us all feel better about ourselves.
We’ll kick things off with 15-year old douchebucket McKay Hatch, who is apparently trying to eliminate any chance he may have of ever getting to third base by founding the ‘No-Cussing Club’ two years ago at his Pasadena middle school and has now managed to convince local legislators to proclaim this week ‘No Cussing Week’ for all of Los Angeles County. Captain Awesome here is the author of ”The No Cussing Club: How I Fought Peer Pressure and How You Can Too,” and says that naughty words “just make me feel really offended and stuff. It just doesn’t make me feel good.” Well, um, fuck that.
And lest we forget that dolls can make us feel almost as sad as dirty words do, let’s honor West Virginia Delegate Jeff Eldridge, who has introduced legislation to ban the sale of Barbie dolls in the state. Eldridge says the dolls influence girls to place too much importance on physical beauty, a notion clearly supported by all of the smoking hot women coming out of West Virginia these days. He also expresses concern for girls’ healthy development, and no doubt the Barbie ban will do more for their well-being than, say, addressing deficiencies in health care, fair pay or domestic violence prevention that led the National Women’s Law Center to give West Virginia a resounding F on its most recent Women’s Health Report Card.
Finally, we have Andy Rooney. What can you say about Andy Rooney except that the poor old man has gone completely ’round the bend and needs to be put out to pasture, or sent to the the big tee vee network in the sky? On Sunday, Rooney tackled the pressing and divisive issue of how months are spelled:
And this? This is just wrong:
As a card-carrying, lily-livered, bleeding-heart, bed-wetting liberal, both reproductive choice and social welfare programs are at the core of what I believe in. So I feel like I should be a lot more comfortable with the recent birth of octuplets in Bellflower, CA.
But I’m not. Choosing to carry eight babies to term is tantamount to neglect. Even if the mother, who has not been identified, did have the resources to provide for her brood of 14—estimates for absolute basics for the octuplets alone range from about $2.5 to $3 million—it is simply not possible for one person (or two people, it’s not clear if the mother is married or has a partner) to simultaneously nurture eight infants to the extent they need to develop normally.
That’s the thing about “choice”—Your right to chose ends when it starts taking choices away from somebody else. In this case, the mother’s choice to have eight viable embryos implanted invariably limits the choices of her friends and neighbors, her extended family, social services providers, her six older children who will inevitably be the ones caring for these babies, and of course the octuplets themselves.
No one, in the primate family at least, has octuplets by accident. This is not a matter of a young woman who makes some poor choices and ends up needing food stamps to get by. Instead, it is the case of a person who, for whatever reason, has insisted on having her way, regardless of the consequences and at everyone else’s expense. Her children have my sympathy.
Seriously, Lance Armstrong, you are such a whore.
Please, please, please, please, please let this be true.
Talent Shops Courting Palin
Sarah Palin won’t be vice president, but she won the hearts of talent scouts and literary agents who are scrambling to sign her to multimillion-dollar contracts.
CAA, ICM, William Morris, Paradigm and other agencies “smell books, talk shows and commentary for Fox and CNN” as possibilities for the Alaska governor, West Coast PR man Hal Lifson told us.
“There are several of our imprints who are eager to talk to Governor Palin,” Random House spokesman Stuart Applebaum said. “She clearly has a constituency and we know books by conservatively-centered politicos usually sell very, very well.”
Public-relations powerhouse Howard Rubenstein added, “She’s poised to make a ton of money.” But he warned, “She ought to keep an eye on what her goals are for 2012. If she plays a game and looks foolish, if she sounds like she doesn’t know what she’s talking about – like saying Africa is a country – she may talk herself out of a political job.”
Linda Mann, president of Mann Media, which books celebrities and fashionistas for TV, noted, “Her buzz is incredible. She has car-wreck appeal. You’re compelled to watch, hoping she’ll say the dumbest things possible. I’d propose a show combining her love of fashion and lack of brainpower – ‘Project Dumbway.’ “
What kind of money can Palin expect? “That’s an interesting question because everybody will compare what she gets to the book deal Tina Fey reportedly made – $6 million,” said one high-ranking publishing source. “No matter what it is, the betting is she’ll sign a deal by the end of the month.”
One agency not expected to pursue Palin is Endeavor, for the simple reason that its founder, Ari Emanuel, is a rabid Democrat and brother of Illinois Congressman Rahm Emanuel, who has been tapped as Barack Obama’s chief of staff.
Elisabeth Hasselbeck’s pro-Sarah Palin point of view could be put to work this weekend. ABC confirms that “The View” star has been invited by the Republican vice presidential nominee to appear at two weekend rallies.
A rep for Hasselbeck confirms that she’ll be attending two rallies in Florida on Sunday, one in Tampa at noon and one in Kissimmee at 3 p.m. Hasselbeck will be introducing Palin at the rallies.
This wouldn’t be the first time Hasselbeck has appeared at an event in an official GOP capacity; during the Republican National Convention, she hosted a lunch for Cindy McCain.
Okay, nevermind that vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin got duped by a third-grader, or that she seems to believe that the VP is “in charge of the Senate,” but seriously, though, what the hell kind of red leather zip-up cowgirl space suit is she wearing there?
I know we’re not supposed to talk about lady candidates’ “clothes” because we’re supposed to be taking them “seriously” or whatever, but my god, what IS that?
