FunctionalAmbivalent

It's Like a Nightmare You Can't Wake Up From

As if to illustrate that even smart people never learn, ABC is rumored to be considering Roseanne Barr to fill the fat/obnoxious chair on cat chat The View, empty since Rosie O'Donnell left to seek other opportunities.

The surgically modified Barr, who has spent hundreds of millions of dollars to make herself look like a Carnaby Street go-go dancer, is like O'Donnell in every way except that A) she's not a lesbian and B) her voice sounds like a bandsaw cutting galvanized metal.

Other candidates currently inspiring table talk in New York media circles are plastic surgery horror story Joan Rivers, Whoopi "what am I famous for" Goldberg, and Connie Chung Povitch.

I'm reminded of the story of Brandon Tartikoff, President of NBC, who, while hospitalized with cancer, actually watched his own network during the day, when he would otherwise have been working. What he saw horrified him so much that he quit television entirely.

The Republican Comeback Is Going To Rise From the Grassroots

Best blogging buddy NewMexiKen links to this story about a local meeting of not-at-all-insane Republicans in Utah:

Utah County Republicans ended their convention on Saturday by debating Satan's influence on illegal immigrants...Don Larsen, chairman of legislative District 65 for the Utah County Republican Party, had submitted a resolution warning that Satan's minions want to eliminate national borders and do away with sovereignty.

In a speech at the convention, Larsen told those gathered that illegal immigrants "hate American people" and "are determined to destroy this country, and there is nothing they won't do."

Illegal aliens are in control of the media, and working in tandem with Democrats, are trying to "destroy Christian America" and replace it with "a godless new world order -- and that is not extremism, that is fact," Larsen said.

At the end of his speech, Larsen began to cry, saying illegal immigrants were trying to bring about the destruction of the U.S. "by self invasion."

It's going to be hard to resurrect any semblance of a sane, principled conservative party when the building blocks are so consistently divorced from anything resembling reality.

The Nice Thing Is, Tourists Won't Be Bothered By a Bunch of Freedom-Loving People

China is apparently using the 2008 Olympic Games as an excuse to get rid of a lot of political dissidents and other undesirables. According to Amnesty International:

The report said the August 2008 Olympics was "a catalyst for a continued crackdown on human rights defenders, including prominent rights defense lawyers and those attempting to report on human rights violations".

It also said there were fears that "abusive systems", such as the ability to jail a crime suspect for up to four years without trial, were being used to detain petty criminals, vagrants and drugs addicts in an effort to "clean up" Beijing for the Games.

During the process that awarded the games to China, the Chinese government assured the International Olympic Committee that it would improve its human rights record. Which makes, at this juncture, the Chinese government the Bode Miller of the 2008 games: Lots of talk, not much production.

A Well Defended Offensive Player

Over-hyped Notre Dame quarterback Brady Quinn learned the difference between media fawning and the free market in yesterday's NFL draft when he went not as the first or second pick, but as the 22nd.  Quinn blamed his plummeting draft status on resentment of his alma mater.

The love-hate relationship comes from going to Notre Dame. It’s like the Yankees, you either love ’em or hate ’em.

It's doubtful, of course, that the heartlessly analytical NFL scouts downgraded Quinn because they don't like Notre Dame. But keep telling yourself that, Brady.

Here's an Interesting Question

Will George W. Bush be the last Baby Boomer President?

We're all pretty much sick of the status quo, right? The next Presidential election could be one of those huge, generational change elections, putting Barak Obama, for example, into the White House while throwing all the familiar Boomer faces out in the street.

Obama himself is a marginal Boomer, born in 1961, but he would be much more of a harbinger of the multicultural Gen X than he would be a flag bearer for the Me Generation.

So I'm just asking: Are Bill Clinton and George W. Bush the sum total of Boomer Presidents the country will tolerate?

In Which We Once Again Visit the Vectors of Fame

Richard Gere is in a tiny amount of trouble for planting a kiss on the cheek of Bollywood actress Shilpa Shetty. India, with a population of  1.129866154 billion (according to the CIA), is apparently doing everything it can to keep its people from reproducing, and the government is worried that Gere's back-bending kiss might cause the population to rise even more, so they've charged him with committing an obscene act in public.

Which is fine; there's nothing really new about an actor being charged with a minor sexual crime. It happens every day. And any time Richard Gere uses his lips on something -- even dialog -- you can make the argument it's obscene.

The interesting thing is where the crime took place: Gere was appearing, according to Reuters,  "at an event in New Delhi last week to promote AIDS awareness among Indian truck drivers."

Not exactly an A-List venue, was it?

I Think We've All Been There

From MSNBC:

British firefighters said Wednesday they came to a boy's rescue after he got a toilet seat stuck on his head.

The toddler, 2 1/2, and his mother walked into a fire station in Braintree, Essex, on Tuesday saying the boy had put his head through a small trainer seat for the toilet and could not remove it.

Apparently, It's Not a Really Great School

Former New Jersey Governor Jim McGreevy, who resigned his office after admitting a long-running extramariatal affair and having installed his totally unqualified boyfriend as state Homeland Security Director, is teaching an ethics course at Kean University.

Will This Trigger a Trade War?

Australia has banned Snoop Dog from visiting because he "doesn't seem the sort of bloke we want in his country," according to Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews.

It's rumored that the United States will retaliate by deporting Mel GIbson, who isn't really all that entertaining anymore anyway.

Why Dusty Baker Should Stay In Broadcasting

The Cub Reporter, a blog dedicated to the Chicago baseball team that has gone 98 years without winning the World Series, notes that ace pitcher Carlos Zambrano is only slightly behind last year's marginal start:

If Carlos Zambrano can pitch 21-1/3 scoreless, hitless innings tonight, striking out 17 while walking four, he’ll have the same pitching line in ’07 as he did five appearances into 2006...

Hey, it could happen. Or, Zambrano's collapse could be the horrible, inevitable conclusion of one of baseball's saddest stories.

Zambrano is the Last Ace Standing of the Cubs' formerly young pitching staff, which looked like it might mature into one of the best pitching staffs ever. Yeah, well, it doesn't look that way anymore. Fireballer Kerry Wood is on the disabled list and hoping to salvage something of his career as a middle reliever; Mark Prior is in the minors struggling to get his 80 mile-an-hour fastball under control; and Matt Clement shipped off a couple of years ago to Boston, where he sits today on the DL with no word on when he might take the mound again.

The burning-out of those four young arms is one of the great tragedies of Dusty Baker's unsuccessful stint as Cub manager. Pitchers loved Dusty because pitchers are stupid and don't realize that the best thing for them is to throw 95 pitches or so and hit the ice packs. Dusty indulged his young pitchers, letting them throw and throw and throw. Those extra innings made for lots of macho, dramatic late innings battles, but they also caused lots of extra wear and tear on arms not engineered to throw 95 mile-an-hour fastballs and big league curves. The result is shorter -- in this case, radically shorter -- careers.

Dusty is in the broadcast booth now. That's a good place for him to stay.