Hilarious.

Because anything that can make me laugh at a time when the idea of a sudden fatal heart attack is an appealing thought, deserves to be posted.

Idiots.

Would someone please tell the holiday weekend crew over at Fox Nation that The Onion is SATIRICAL?

Most people recognize The Onion as the Peabody Award-winning satire machine that it is. Some people, however, don’t. Which is why we get a story like this every few months. Of course, it’s sometimes easy to mistake an Onion article for the real thing since the writers make sure to skew as close to their targets as possible. It also doesn’t hurt when real news outlets reprint the satirists’ work and decide not to let their readers know it’s a joke, as Fox Nation did today.

Yes, the Fox Nation editors were apparently so enamored with an Onion piece from today entitled “Frustrated Obama Sends Nation Rambling 75,000-Word E-Mail” that they reposted the first two paragraphs in their culture section with nary a sign as to its fictional nature. The only clue that this wasn’t real (besides a quick peek at your inbox to confirm that Barack Obama hasn’t been emailing you) was a link at the bottom instructing readers to go to TheOnion.com for the real story. This tiny link was, unfortunately, not enough for the vast majority of FN readers.

The same way that Rush Limbaugh has to paint the Pilgrims as Randian capitalists -- nothing....NOTHING...is beyond the ability of the right to turn everything into an ideology-driven screed.

It looks like the "article" has been taken down, but there's still this:

Poor Bill Yosses. He's the White House pastry chef. He makes desserts for a living. He works for Barack and Michelle Obama. They talk about healthy eating. All the time. Sounds like a recipe for disaster, right?

Not at all. Yosses' creations -- especially his pies -- have won over even the Obamas. The president calls him "The Crustmaster."

Yes, Barack Obama does have a pastry chef. And a regular chef. And a staff full of people who clean and organize his household. He flies around on a private plane. He doesn't do his own yard work, either. It's because he's the fucking PRESIDENT, morons. And even George W. Bush, hero of said morons, had the very same things.

Sorry, but people who watch Fox, who read Fox's web site, who have anything to do with Fox, are idiots. Period.

If he can turn lemons into lemonade, does that make him Jesus?

D.C. Douglas, formerly the Geico voiceover guy, shows there IS life after blacklisting. Hysterically funny life at that, too:

The Greatest Daily Show Bit You Have Ever Seen

Lately it's often seemed that Jon Stewart really doesn't enjoy his job anymore. It's hard to be funny when it's just not funny anymore. I mean, when crazy people who talk about grandma not being shovel-ready are actually making law and policy, we're so clearly looking down The Abyss of Stoopid™ that it's hard to be funny.

But even from his apparent slough of despond, sometimes Stewart and the rest of the Daily Show writers can still not only rise to the occasion, but produce brilliance. And this is right up there with Colbert's White House Correspondents Dinner masterpiece:

Heh. Imagine what Sarah Palin would do with this one

Now that Seth McFarlane is making a side career out of baiting Sarah Palin, let's see what she (or any other Jeebofascist politician) has to say about this:

OK, so it took about 24 hours

Here at Casa la Brilliant, we are fairly regular viewers of Family Guy. Mr. Brilliant likes it more than I do, since the show features a fair amount of "guy humor" -- fart and sex jokes. I like it for the Brian/Stewie dynamic. Brian is one of the great cartoon characters of all time -- the erudite family dog who's smarter than the people he lives with, behaves more like a human than a dog, but then will for no reason at all chase a ball or lick his own privates. Brian is Cleo from the 1950's show The People's Choice updated for a more ironic time. And then there's Stewie, the bratty gay aspiring song-and-dance baby of the Griffin family, who used to be homicidal towards his mother, but now is mostly just your standard id-driven baby on steroids. In fact he WAS on steroids in one show. The pair is also prone to bursting into song for no particular reason, and the songs, written for the show, are finely-crafted Broadway-style showstoppers.

The show is definitely twisted. It pushes the envelope so far that it often makes me angry, with its relentless abuse of Meg, the teenage daughter, and jokes about the libidinous Quagmire putting date rape drugs into women's drinks. But I understand what the show is trying to do, and it is some really nasty, wicked social satire.

So when the story line on Sunday involved Chris, the dim-witted Griffin son falling for the mentally-challenged girl at school, and on their first date the girl announced that "my father is an accountant and my mother used to be governor of Alaska", I said to Mr. Brilliant, "So how long do you think it's going to take?"

Now, Fox is ferocous about making sure that none of its properties shows up on YouTube, so I can't show you the clip in question, or indeed any sample clips from the show. But you have to be able to visualize Seth McFarlane sitting at home, watching Sunday night's show, and the minute that line was uttered, looking at his watch and starting to count: "One....two....three....four....", etc. Because if you watch the show, you know that's exactly what he was doing. So for the uninitiated, some Seth McFarlane snark. Here he introduces a censored episode on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim:

And like clockwork, Sarah Palin did not disappoint:

In recent weeks, Fox News analyst Sarah Palin has waged a high-profile war on the “r-word,” calling for White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel’s resignation after he called liberal activists “f-ing retarded.” Her latest target is the Fox cartoon Family Guy. In a recent episode, the character Chris Griffin dated a girl with Down Syndrome. “My mom’s the former governor of Alaska,” she told Chris. Calling it “another kick in the gut,” Palin and her daughter Bristrol took to Facebook to attack the show:

People are asking me to comment on yesterday’s Fox show that felt like another kick in the gut. Bristol was one who asked what I thought of the show that mocked her baby brother, Trig (and/or others with special needs), in an episode yesterday. Instead of answering, I asked her what she thought. Here is her conscientious reply, which is a much more restrained and gracious statement than I want to make about an issue that begs the question, “when is enough, enough?”:

When hate radio host Rush Limbaugh used the word “retarded” over 40 times on a recent show, Palin gave Limbaugh a pass because “he was using satire.” “I agree with Rush Limbaugh,” Palin told Fox News host Chris Wallace, referring to Limbaugh’s belief that he was just joking. Family Guy is “best known for combining controversial topics with off-color jokes

I can't imagine that the Roberts court would vote the same way, but John Roberts was not on the Supreme Court when Hustler Magazine, Inc. v. Falwell was decided in 1988:

Held: In order to protect the free flow of ideas and opinions on matters of public interest and concern, the First and Fourteenth Amendments prohibit public figures and public officials from recovering damages for the tort of intentional infliction of emotional distress by reason of the publication of a caricature such as the ad parody at issue without showing in addition that the publication contains a false statement of fact which was made with "actual malice," i.e., with knowledge that the statement was false or with reckless disregard as to whether or not it was true. The State's interest in protecting public figures from emotional distress is not sufficient to deny First Amendment protection to speech that is patently offensive and is intended to inflict emotional injury when that speech could not reasonably have been interpreted as stating actual facts about the public figure involved. Here, respondent is clearly a "public figure" for First Amendment purposes, and the lower courts' finding that the ad parody was not reasonably believable must be accepted. "Outrageousness" [p47] in the area of political and social discourse has an inherent subjectiveness about it which would allow a jury to impose liability on the basis of the jurors' tastes or views, or perhaps on the basis of their dislike of a particular expression, and cannot, consistently with the First Amendment, form a basis for the award of damages for conduct such as that involved here. Pp. 50-57.

And for the record, anyone who watches the show on a regular basis recognized that while the character in question was clearly mentally-challenged, and certainly bossy and obnoxious, her mental disability was not even the butt of standard Family Guy targeting. Sarah Palin's outrage is even more disingenuous because she has a daughter around the age of Meg, the show's teenage daughter who gets so much crap shoveled on her by the show's other characters that it's often painful. But there's not as much political hay to be made among Palin's frothing, drooling minions in defending teenaged girls from being portrayed as the butt of "ugly jokes."

Meanwhile, Seth MacFarlane, who's undoubtedly going to be invited onto every late-night talk show this week, is sitting there with that Cheshire-Cat grin. Because you can't BUY this kind of publicity. And his employers, who also employ Sarah Palin, know it.

Bread, circuses, etc.

Are you sure this is just satire?

Somehow I think this is adapted from an actual transcript:

And they even brought back Nixon from the grave...

(h/t)

The only thing I'm going to miss about the Bush years

Get Your War On is now officially retired.

Say goodnight, Gracie. Sometimes you have to sacrifice for the greater good.

(h/t: Skippy)

The Clairvoyance of The Onion

Eight years ago, on January 17, 2001, The Onion posted arguably the greatest -- and in retrospect, eeriest -- snark ever posted to Teh Intartoobz:

Bush: 'Our Long National Nightmare Of Peace And Prosperity Is Finally Over'

"My fellow Americans," Bush said, "at long last, we have reached the end of the dark period in American history that will come to be known as the Clinton Era, eight long years characterized by unprecedented economic expansion, a sharp decrease in crime, and sustained peace overseas. The time has come to put all of that behind us."

Bush swore to do "everything in [his] power" to undo the damage wrought by Clinton's two terms in office, including selling off the national parks to developers, going into massive debt to develop expensive and impractical weapons technologies, and passing sweeping budget cuts that drive the mentally ill out of hospitals and onto the street.

During the 40-minute speech, Bush also promised to bring an end to the severe war drought that plagued the nation under Clinton, assuring citizens that the U.S. will engage in at least one Gulf War-level armed conflict in the next four years.

"You better believe we're going to mix it up with somebody at some point during my administration," said Bush, who plans a 250 percent boost in military spending. "Unlike my predecessor, I am fully committed to putting soldiers in battle situations. Otherwise, what is the point of even having a military?"

On the economic side, Bush vowed to bring back economic stagnation by implementing substantial tax cuts, which would lead to a recession, which would necessitate a tax hike, which would lead to a drop in consumer spending, which would lead to layoffs, which would deepen the recession even further.

Good reasons to vote Republican

Via Sam Seder:

"You know....morons."

C&L reaches new heights of Blog Coolness

...when the thinking woman's sex symbol, John Cusack, pays a visit to promote his new movie, War, Inc..

I am SO there.

I can't wait. So sue me

Yes, it's going to be full of penis jokes, appalling sexist humor, and equally appalling, adolescent-style homophobia. That's what it takes to get some of the people who most need to know about what the paranoia of the post-9/11 world actually means into the theatre. But if it's as smart as Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle in its treatment of racism, it'll be worth it:

“Our top priority was to make people laugh,” Mr. Schlossberg said in a recent telephone interview. “But the secondary priority is that there’s something a little smarter below the surface. I guess in a certain way it’s our reaction to post-9/11 paranoia.”

The new film, which opens Friday, picks up where the first left off, with the two pot-loving roommates — a Korean-American corporate desk jockey Harold Lee (John Cho) and an Indian-American ex-pre-med slacker Kumar Patel (Kal Penn) — en route to Amsterdam having satisfied a killer case of the munchies. Kumar, despite being harassed by airport security, manages to smuggle a stash of weed onto the plane. A bungled attempt to light up in the lavatory — not helped by the fact that “bong” sounds like “bomb” — lands the guys in Gitmo on terrorism charges. The homeland security official overseeing the case, a paragon of belligerent idiocy played by Rob Corddry, takes one look at our heroes and concludes that Al Qaeda and North Korea are in cahoots.

In devising the plot the filmmakers borrowed from Mr. Penn’s own travel experiences since the Sept. 11 attacks. “That’s probably one of the only parallels between Kumar and me,” Mr. Penn said. “We both get pulled out of line at airports.”

This became a routine occurrence when he and Mr. Cho were flying around the country to promote the first film. “Once we were with a friend of mine — he’s the same age, same height as me, except he’s white,” Mr. Penn recalled. “I was stopped at security, but he went through even though he had a hunting knife that he forgot to take out of his backpack. They were so focused on pulling out the brown guy, they didn’t even notice.”

[snip]

The signal achievement of both Harold and Kumar films is that they make race incidental without taking racism lightly; they presuppose an enlightened audience. “When we start to write, we’re under the assumption that everyone knows racism is bad,” Mr. Schlossberg said. “If you don’t know that, you’re a moron. Harold and Kumar’s attitude toward racism is more frustration at having to deal with idiocy than moral outrage. We try to create a world where racism is stupid.”

I'm also waiting for Part III: Harold and Kumar Run for President. Coming to a television set near you this fall.

Around Blogtopia (® Skippy)

Debunking the spin machine: Cernig digs into a new U.K. Times poll on Iraq attitudes and finds a very different story from that being spun in the wingnut blogosphere.

Mahablog on counterprotests in DC yesterday, and speculating on whether the so-called acts that triggered these counterprotests either didn't actually happened or were perpetrated by plants from astroturf groups.

On a lighter note (unless you've ever lived with fighting cats), Amanda deals with the trials and tribulations of a combined household -- on cats.

Fellow Jamaicophile Hoffmania links to this article indicating that Jamaica may have oil off its south coast. I can't help but think that Jamaica holding America's balls in a vise might be a nice change.

Those of you who remember West Side Story might enjoy Driftglass' re-imagining here, here, and here.

Tobasco Da Gama says some nice things (I think) about Your Humble Blogger and weighs in on the catch-all culprit, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

Jay writes about how Republican infighting led to the Walter Reed debacle.

Here ya go, trolls....here's some red meat for ya

Grab your knickers, cuz this is gonna put 'em in a twist:

(courtesy of Nicole at C&L)