Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Trouble in frozen Camelot

Bristol Palin, America's favorite symbol of failed abstinence-only education, granted an interview with Fox News this week. I was so giddy about this story that I nearly crashed into Planned Parenthood as I read it on my way to work. Ah, irony:

Bristol Palin has a difference of opinion with her famous mother, saying teen abstinence is "not realistic at all."

"Everyone should be abstinent, whatever, but it's not realistic at all," the 18-year-old mom said in an interview with Fox News' Greta Van Susteren, who pressed her on why.

"I don't want to get into detail about it," Palin said, before explaining that sex is "more and more accepted now... among kids my age."

She hopes other teens will learn from her story.

"You should just wait 10 years," she said. "It would just be so much easier."

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is a strong advocate of abstinence-only education, a position that drew attention and sometimes scorn when the family announced, soon after John McCain named Palin as his running mate, that Bristol was pregnant at 17.

One of the things teens can avoid by waiting to have sex is a very awkward talk with their parents. Palin said she enlisted the baby's father, Levi Johnston, and her best friend to tell Todd and Sarah Palin she was pregnant. But getting the words out, she said, was "harder than labor." Eventually her friend "blurted it out."

The 18-year-old said her son brings her so much joy that she doesn’t regret having him at all. She’s engaged to Johnston, the baby’s father, and said her fiance sees their son every day.

She also said she didn't regret the birth of 8-week-old Tripp, and that the decision was hers, not her mother's.

"I wish it would happen in like 10 years so I could have a job and an education and be like prepared and have my own house and stuff. But ... he brings so much joy. I don't regret it at all."

She added: "I hope that people learn from my story and just like — I don't know, prevent teen pregnancy, I guess." -- From The Seattle PI

Well, so much for Sarah Palin's storied keep-my-family-out-of-it whine fest. Kinda hard to argue that the media are maliciously targeting your brood when your daughter volunteers for it.

Hilariously, Bristol Palin's intent was, like, to totally, like, inform America's troubled youth about the bummer of, like, teen pregnancy. In the process, I'm guessing she was hoping to help the abstinence cause. Then she dropped the bombshell: Abstinence doesn't work! Uh-oh. She must have a fundamental misunderstanding about which part of the interview the media would find more delicious: Her honorable efforts at informing America's youth, or her rejection of abstinence-only education, which as we know is a major part of the failed Sarah Palin platform.

And by the way, when your chief quality as a dad is that you bother to show up on a daily basis to see the baby, it might be time to reconsider the whole fatherhood thing. Any idiot can do that; it takes real skill to assure that the baby doesn't grow up to be a raving hick with a five-word vocabulary.

So pinch me now if I'm dreaming, friends, because this is almost too good to be true. I never thought these two words would ever appear in the same sentence: Bristol Palin, you're my new hero. Not only have you directly contradicted your own batshit crazy governor mom on a hot-button political issue, but you've slapped every last abstinence-only advocate right in the face with some truth. Nice work (no joke!).

Sunday, February 15, 2009

Celebrity journalists should all get ass cancer. That's right, I said it.

Our culture has officially cratered into an abyss of mindless superficiality, petty judgments and worthless bottom-feeding celebrity gossip drivel.

I'm talking specifically about the latest on Jessica Simpson, a story that has gained surprising steam among what I once considered to be legitimate realms of journalism. This whole Jessica-Simpson-is-fat thing is a sorry chapter in our grocery-store-line mentality. It's a hilarious depiction of classic American laziness and self-satisfaction, where bored, truly obese housewives with 27 children can feel better about themselves because the gossip mongers have declared that a member of the Celebrity Elite is insufficiently anorexic. It gives a flicker of blissful hope to that mind-numbingly stupid section of society that actually believes this shit matters.

OK, I'll bite. Briefly.

First of all, Jessica Simpson is a talentless hack who has clawed her way to notoriety through a variety of failed enterprises that grow increasingly annoying as time passes, painfully and slowly. I haven't actually enjoyed a single piece of entertainment sap that she's ever created, and if it were up to me, she'd be working at the local Muchas Gracias and serving up beef tacos to drunk frat boys at 4 a.m.

But despite the the fact that I hate everything she does and says -- including her bullshit religious rhetoric that she obviously uses to win fans -- and her douchebag of a dad who whores her out to the masses like low-quality crack, I'm compelled to concede two things:


First, Jessica Simpson is not fucking fat. Are you kidding me? Look at that picture. In a culture that crams Big Macs like hot cakes and salutes the corporate KFC flag like it was raised at Iwo Jima, you're telling me that THIS counts as fat? A bad choice of pants, perhaps, and a healthy amount of meat on the bones, but not fat. No, idiots, let me show you overweight, not that it even matters:


Good. I'm glad we could clear that up. Moving on to concession #2:

Hey celebrity "journalists": Asserting in every dirt Web site, crappy gossip rag and mindless Hollywood TV show that Jessica Simpson is obese is a sure sign that your life has officially been equated to a steaming pile of dog shit. The "journalists" who continue to perpetuate this false reality that 35 pounds and 0% body fat is the average American image of beauty can all die of ass cancer. Do you hear me? Ass. Cancer.

Jessica Simpson, I still hate your music, movies, TV shows, clothing lines and fragrances. But you don't deserve to have your moderately enlarged butt pedaled around these idiot magazines like a two-dollar hooker, and it especially isn't fair for a bunch of second-rate gossip mongers to capitalize on the falsification of beauty and the bastardization of female body image. Now look at me, I sound like a militant feminist. God I hate you celebrity "journalist" jackasses. Go back to your scummy holes and meaningless Bill O'Reilly internships, you insignificant flecks of journalistic afterbirth.

FACE.

Sunday, February 8, 2009

Palin Watch '09: Nobody Cares Anymore Edition


Is it just me, or is Sarah Palin the only person who continues to bring up the whole who's-the-real-mother-of-Trig fiasco? For fuck's sake, somebody in Alaska needs to tap her on the shoulder and inform her that nobody cares anymore. Nobody really believed it in the first place -- although it was hilarious -- and now it's just getting ridiculous.

In a recent interview with Esquire, in which the late VP pick continued to mischaracterize her own candidacy, Palin would have us believe that a legitimate newspaper in Alaska is still calling her office to ask about it. Riiiiight.

Palin: "I'll tell you, yesterday the Anchorage Daily News, they called again to ask — double-, triple-, quadruple-check — who is Trig's real mom," Palin told Esquire. "And I thought, 'Okay, more indication of continued problems in the world of journalism.'"
In the interview, Palin also decried how she was handled by the McCain campaign, saying she should have let them know she'd be "callin' some of the shots." Palin indicated that a lack of understanding led to her limited role. Personally, I think it's because she's a worthless, pandering symbol of batshit crazy fundamentalism who the campaign could strut out on stage like a show horse and then lock in a hotel room so she wouldn't speak. Yet in true Palin form, the good governor continued to take her own quotes out of context to make herself look like the real brains of the operation. Here's what she had to say about her famous Alaska-Russia link (Emphasis included):
Palin: You have to let it go. Even hard news sources, credible news sources — the comment about, you can see Russia from Alaska. You can! You can see Russia from Alaska. Something like that — a factual statement that was taken out of context and mocked — what you have to do is let that go.
I think Palin's fatal flaw is that she hasn't discovered the wonders of fact checking, which is sad considering this woman has a journalism degree. We didn't laugh at her for stating that one can gaze upon Russia from the shores of Alaska; we laughed at her for saying that the proximity qualified as foreign policy experience. Is she so stupid that she doesn't even realize why her quote was so ridiculous? For somebody who seems to care so much about the media using context, she certainly doesn't grasp the concept very well. Here's her quote, in context:
"As Putin rears his head and comes into the air space of the United States of America, where– where do they go? It's Alaska. It's just right over the border." --Sarah Palin, explaining why Alaska's proximity to Russia gives her foreign policy experience, interview with CBS's Katie Couric, Sept. 24, 2008
You just can't make this shit up, people. It's a wonder I made it through this interview with my sanity intact. She wrapped it all up with a telling quote:
Palin: Everything I've ever needed to know I learned through sports.
Oh really?