From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
Late Night Snark Goes to Tampa
"This year the theme of the Republican convention is '50 Shades of White.'"
---David Letterman
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Clip of RNC Chair Rience Priebus at the GOP convention: President Obama's never run a company. He hasn't even run a garage sale or seen the inside of a lemonade stand!
Jon Stewart: I gotta say, if the tone you were goin' for there is "angry drunk guy," you nailed it. … I'm beginning to think this guy's name isn't Rience Priebus, it's Ryan Peterson and he's always too fucked up when he says it to people."
---The Daily Show
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"Tonight is the vice-coronation of vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan: the man who has electrified the party base with his homespun, down-to-earth way of telling the poor to suck it up."
---Stephen Colbert
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I'm giving President
Obama an upgrade
"It's been reported the Republican convention decided not to show a hologram of Ronald Reagan for fear it would overshadow Mitt Romney. It's never a good sign when your candidate is in danger of being overshadowed by something that technically doesn't make a shadow."
---Conan O'Brien
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"At the convention tonight, the surprise speaker was Clint Eastwood. What's more surprising than a grumpy old white guy at
the Republican convention?"
---Craig Ferguson
One year ago (and even truer today):
"President Obama’s new slogan is: 'I Thought We Could, But It Turns Out The Other Guys Are Assholes.'"
---Jon Stewart
By the way, remember when I warned you during the Memorial Day weekend not to blink because if you blinked it would be Labor Day weekend? And then you blinked and here we are? I. Hope. You're. Happy.
Your west coast-friendly edition of Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Friday, August 31, 2012
Note: Here's the schedule for the Labor Day weekend. C&J will be not be writing or posting (i.e. laboring) on Monday. We will be writing but not posting on Tuesday. We will be both writing and posting on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. And on Saturday we start working on our Marcus Bachmann barbarian costume for Halloween. (I hope I don’t run out of sequins.)
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til Steven Spielberg's Lincoln (see the new poster here): 70
Days 'til the 66th annual Navajo Nation Fair in Window Rock, Arizona: 2
President Obama's lead over Mitt Romney on honesty: +11
President Obama's lead over Mitt Romney on likeability: +35
(Source: NBC News/Washington Post poll)
Date on which Congress made the first Monday in September a legal holiday: 6/28/1894
Age of the youngest people who worked in mines and factories in the late 1800s: 5-6
(Source: Forbes)
Percent of Americans who suffer from hyperhidrosis---excessive sweating: 1.5%
(Source: The Week)
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NEW! Friday Joe Lieberman Wanker Walk Countdown:
Joe Lieberman will end his Senate reign of error in 137 days.
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Brody
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CHEERS to teeing up the ball for our side. After three nights of almost shocking venom and false accusations hurled at Democrats in general and President Obama in particular, last night Republicans nominated---in true Republican fashion---the guy "whose turn it was." Speaking about his family, his family and his family, (mitt romney) of the (romney)-RYAN ticket promised Americans cheesy grits in every pot and a car elevator in every garage. There were stories today about how he never mentioned war, but of you read his eye blinks they clearly were spelling out B-O-M-B I-R-A-N. A few other insights from last night:
> Republicans have a habit of erupting in applause whenever a speaker utters a sentence in Spanish. It's as if they've just seen a mind-bending Penn & Teller magic trick. It's odd, especially considering their overt hostility to Hispanics in general.
> Marco Rubio, the Luke Skywalker aka The New Hope of the Republican party, was good. But he scowls a lot, even when he's talking about good things, as if someone just hit him in the back of the head with a spitwad. Oh, wait…now that I think of it, that was probably Clint Eastwood shooting spitwads at the whippersnapper from offstage.
"I invited Dirty Harry and they
sent me Shecky Green?!!"
> Ah yes, that brings us to Clint. Clint has always seemed befuddled by the evolution of society and the strange modern ways of the world. That's nothing new. Keep in mind that he's still acting and directing, both of which require great physical and mental dexterity. He's fine. But what he was last night was just sloppy. He flew in unprepared with a bad Vaudeville routine (I'll talk to an empty chair---Ha!!!) that made the twitterverse explode but which was, essentially, a boring sight gag that only served to prove that a political convention is a terrible place to practice your improv skills. Last night he wasn't the good or the ugly---he was just bad. Lesson learned: along with the economy and health care and foreign affairs and civil rights and just about everything else, humor is best left in the capable hands of liberals. When conservatives pick up a schtick, they usually poke their eye out.
But at least they didn't fuck up the balloon drop. That counts, right?
CHEERS to September! We're just hours away from the official start of "Where The Hell Did Summer Go?" season. Congress straggles back to work after a month of hiding from their pissed-off constituents. The kids are back in school. Labor gets its day Monday. 9/11 turns eleven (as if it needs to be said, that is not included in the cheer). NFL season kicks off (Ha Ha Ha!) next weekend, with New England calling dibs on the Super Bowl trophy this year. Shoppers jam stores looking for the perfect Autumnal Equinox, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur and Mexican Independence Day gifts. ("Dilbert Socks? You shouldn’t have. Really.") New England turns insanely beautiful while hurricanes continue to turn petty and vindictive. And I feel confident enough to make the following prediction: Clint Eastwood won't be speaking at the Democratic Convention. (But I wouldn’t mind seeing the conversation Betty White would have with "Mitt Romney" in an empty chair.) Farewell, August---you were respected, impressive, grand, majestic, lofty and sublime. If only there was a word for all that.
CHEERS to seeing things close-up. On this date in 1842, the U.S. Naval Observatory was created by an act of Congress. (What? Congress actually did something useful? Ma, fetch the smelling salts!) Their first weekly report was brief: "We see London. We see France. We see President Tyler's underpants! Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha!!" Now you know why he scowled so much.
CHEERS to the highlight of the weekend. Here in Maine, medicinal marijuana is legal, and tomorrow there's going to be little get-together in Deering Oaks park called Atlantic CannaFEST. It's pretty cool---there's been no pushback from city residents and the police say they're not going to do anything out of the ordinary during it. People planning to go will find it pretty easily. Just look for the area of the park where the food vendors outnumber attendees two-to-one.
Sometimes you feel like a Nutt...
CHEERS to historic ringy-dingies. Happy (early) Emma Nutt Day! On September 1, 1878, the first female telephone operator in the U.S.---the aforementioned
Mrs. Nutt---started working for the Telephone Dispatch Company of Boston. She was brought in after the existing operators---a bunch of male telegraph tappers who turned into snotty unhelpful little twits when they started talking to actual people---were fired. And on September 2nd, 1878 they used those skills to form the first customer service call center.
CHEERS to home vegetation. Remember when the Jerry Lewis MDA Telethon was a round-the-clock event that bounced back and forth between national and local studios as ruffle-shirted stars sang and joked for donations and viewers held their collective breath as Ed McMahon cued the timpani as he announced the new tote-board total? Well, now Jerry's been sidelined and whole affair is down to three pre-taped hours. So that'll leave plenty of time for other stuff to watch on the tube this weekend. On HBO's Real Time, Bill Maher actually dares me not to watch, as he books Cheney automaton Ron Christie and birther weasel liar asshole (I choose my words with great precision) Dinesh D'Souza. They're "balanced" by Jason Alexander, Soledad O'Brien and Walter Kim. New DVD releases include Battleship, season 2 of Boardwalk Empire, and the Blu-Ray of Quadrophenia. Your MLB schedule is here. (The Red Sox have clinched the next-to-last slot in the AL East! "We're #4! We're #4!) On 60 Minutes, that member of SEAL Team 6 who was on the bin Laden raid talks about why he's spilling the beans.
Don't miss GOP and Dem convention analysis weekend mornings on Up! With Chris Hayes and Melissa Harris-Perry, the latter to whom we send our strongest "dammit, dammit, dammit" on the loss to Hurricane Isaac of the house she'd just bought in New Orleans.
And here's your Sunday morning lineup. Last week we counted 19 Republican guests and 5 Democrats ahead of the Tampa convention. Let's see what the ratio is this week ahead of the convention in Charlotte (names without a D or an R indicate no official party affiliation):
Meet the Press: Rahm Emanuel (D); roundtable with Newt Gingrich (R), Carly Fiorina (R), historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, Tom Friedman, and Tom Brokaw. Democrat/Republican Tally: 1/2
This Week: David Plouffe (D); roundtable with George Will (R), Priorities USA co-founder Bill Burton (D), Romney adviser Kerry Healey (R), Donna Brazile (D) and Matthew Dowd (R). Democrat/Republican Tally: 3/3
Face the Nation: Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley (D), former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson (D) and White House campaign firebrand Stephanie Cutter (D); roundtable with the Washington Post's Dan Balz, Bloomberg's Trish Regan, Michael Eric Dyson (D) and CBS News' John Dickerson. Democrat/Republican Tally: 4/0
Under Bill's microscope
this weekend: Ralph Reed
Bill Moyers & Company (link): "The Resurrection of Ralph Reed" with author Mike Lofgren, author of The Party is Over: How Republicans Went Crazy, Democrats Became Useless, and the Middle Class Got Shafted. Democrat/Republican Tally: N/A
Washington Week: Convention analysis with Jeff Zeleney (NYT), Karen Tumulty (WaPost), John Harwood (CNBC) and Alexis Simendinger (RealClearPolitics) Democrat/Republican Tally: N/A
CNN's State of the Union: L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa (D), NC Governor Bev Perdue (D), and MD Governor Martin O’Malley (D); Robert Gibbs (D) vs. Eric "Etch A Sketch" Fehrnstrom (R). Democrat/Republican Tally: 4/1
Fox GOP Talking Points Sunday: Last week Chris Wallace visited one of Mitt Romney's mansions to watch him make pancakes and otherwise fawn all over him and the missus. Does Wallace do the same with the Obamas this week? Hell no!!! Instead we get David Axelrod and L.A. Mayor and Dem convention chair Antonio Villaraigosa. The roundtable remains a mystery, but we'll be generous and say they'll have two Republicans and two Democrats. Like I said: generous. Democrat/Republican Tally: 4/2
Final tally: 16 Democrats and 8 Republicans…a 2-to-1 ratio, versus last week's 4-to-1 ratio in favor of Republicans. The liberal media strikes again. Happy viewing!
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And Just One More: Five years ago in C&J: August 31, 2007…
CHEERS to Bill in Portland Maine Theatre. Five years ago, on August 31, 2007, Karl Rove worked his last day at the White House as "Bush's brain." C&J was sneaky back then, and we secretly recorded Bush and Rove's last conversation in the Oval Office. Here is the transcript of that bittersweet moment:
So this is it.
Guess so.
I just wanted to say…
I know. It's okay, you don't have to say it.
This is hard.
Yeah.
To prevent retina burn, we replaced the photo
of Bush and Rove with a lovely basket of eggplant
Write me?
Sure, boss. Every day.
Cool.
I... I should prob'ly get goin'.
Yeah. Long drive.
Long drive.
You, uh... You got everything?
Yeah.
Need gas money?
I'm good.
Okay then. Pinky shake?
Pinky shake.
Attaboy. Say, Karl...
Yes, Mr. President?
You think we'll ever get the chance to fuck over this many people again?
I doubt it. But it was fun while it lasted.
Damn right.
Savor these last sixteen months, sir. Tempus fugit.
Yeah. Tempered widget. I hear ya.
Five years later, Turdblossom's stench lingers on...
Have a happy Labor Day! And if you plan to give birth on Monday, have a happy labor day Labor Day! Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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