Yes, not so sadly

Some on the left have complained for years that the righty folks can be just so much more entertaining. Funny, witty, incisive, and penetrating. You know, like Rush Limbaugh.

Ooohhh-kaay. So even a lot who lean his way find that mocking the desperately ill is not such a slap-the-knee happy-fest. Scratch that, start over.

I've found that a lot of folks on the left can be incredibly funny, witty, incisive, and penetrating, but it tends to be online, not on the air. I've found that a blog called Sadly, No! is hugely amusing, not just because of the guys who run it, but because of the fabulously clever bunch of commenters who hang out there.

I was delighted by their collective dissection of a column by this right-wing religious wingnut, talking about the Mark Foley scandal, and how it obviously means all gays are pedophiles.

The title of this article by a Dr. David Noebel is, "Will the Real Sodomy Party Please Stand Up?" The sodomy party? Really? Who do you think he's referring to? The party that for over ten years sheilded a ranking congressman with a hankering for young men subordinate to him? No?

But the Sadly, No! folks do have such fun with him.

mmm...lemonheads said,

Wasn’t that an Eminem song?

Will the real sodomy party please stand up?
Please stand up?
Please stand up?

Dr. Noebel starts his article with:

One has to shake the head violently to see if the neurons are still connected to believe that all of a sudden the Republican Party is the party of Sodom and Gomorrah.

What? Who is saying that? Has anybody been saying that? Not the Democrats, they don't have to say a word. It's more like the Repubs have been the party that condemned someone else as the party of Sodom & Gomorrah, the party that actually likes to have sex. Shocking. But now one of their guys got caught with his hand in the cookie jar. Or his hand..... not gonna go there.

Moving on. I like Lalasnake's comment:

“One has to shake the head violently to see if the neurons are still connected. . . .”

Oh gods no! Please don’t tell me that Bertie Wooster has become a Wingnut!

Then Dr. Noebel comes up with this glorious statement:

Through this experience and a number of others also involving Tulsa, Oklahoma I have come to the personal conclusion that pedophilia and gayness go together like Mary and Mary’s little lamb.

One of the Sadly, No! bloggers added this bloody brilliant verse:

Gavin adds:

Mary had a little lamb,
They went around together;
While Mary played with little boys,
The lamb was into leather.

But I have to ask: Tulsa??

Wanted: Briar Cane

We just ordered a DVD set of the complete "Upstairs, Downstairs." If you don't know what that is, I'm not going to bother explaining it. Use Google. I've seen a lot of the shows, but never the whole thing, and working our way through that should pass the time for quite a while.

The two top spotlight reviews on Amazon had these interesting bits:

Before buying this set I would strongly encourage you to use a web search tool for '"Upstairs, Downstairs" US DVD' and see for yourself just how bad the picture is on these DVDs. . . . I own over 400 DVDs, have rented many more than that, and have never seen a worse transfer to DVD.

The next comment said:

I have no idea why some of the reviewers are complaining about the audio and video quality of these DVDs. . . . I suppose, if you are some type of audio/video expert you might find a few reasons to complain, but this is a 35 year old British TV show. If you expect special effects, buy Star Wars, not Upstairs Downstairs.

I am with the second guy. Jeez, these things were done in the early 70s on videotape, because it was a fairly new medium at the time and cheaper than film, and the people producing this for the BBC had very little money. I first saw these when I was in high school watching Masterpiece Theater, and later saw occasional reruns. The box set hasn't arrived yet, but I'm not expecting garish production values, just the terrific stories and acting that I remember. Yeah, I know about the limitations, and the need to use your imagination, since the doorways in this grand London mansion barely clear the actors' heads. But it's the human drama I want, not spectacle.

Which means I have reached the point where I can honestly say, "You damn kids just don't know how good you've got it." I am officially entering old coot-hood.

What Will the Democrats Do?

This has certainly been one of the more ... interesting ... mid-term elections I've ever seen. I didn't comment on the Mark Foley affair before now because I was just too gobsmacked with astonishment at first. By now there's not much left to be said. Like Sullivan, I just hope that this will finally force the Republicans to confront their hypocrisy on this issue. Privately they've long had no problem with gays as friends and valued staffers, while publicly they vilify us and demonize us to attract the religious right and win elections. I don't think they're going to be able to pull that off any more.

Anyway, the big question is whether this will throw control of the House, and maybe even the Senate, into Democratic hands. There's a lot of glee in some quarters about how much will change if that happens, but there's one area where I think very little will change, and it's the area where so many people want change so badly: the war in Iraq.

The administration's unwillingness to see the disastrous mess in Iraq, its insistance that despite what we see on TV everything's going pretty darn good over there, has gone way beyond being a joke and is now just a tragedy. But if they do suffer an electoral setback in a few weeks, if the Democrats do take some measure of control, all they have to do to turn defeat into advantage is to just start noticing what everyone else has seen all along.

So if a Democratic Congress forces the withdrawal of so much as one platoon ahead of schedule and something bad happens, even at the same level it's already happening, look to see Bush on the news knitting his brows and shaking his head about how terrible it all is over there. One roadside bomb goes off, one dead civilian is found, and listen to the chorus of "WE TOLD YOU SO!!!" coming from the GOP. This of course would be rankest hypocrisy, but go back and re-read paragraph one.

This means that even if the Democrats do win in a few weeks, I think they'll be very cautious about demanding troop withdrawals. Surely they're not stupid enough to take control away from the Republicans, only to hand it back in two years. Then again, with these guys, you never know.

It CAN??

This bit from Jon Stewart's show on 10/05 is just too fuggin funny to not link to. And as many have gleefully noted about this clip, whenever rightie fundies say they have just too much respect for the divine sanctity of womanhood to let actual women do things like, say, control their own bodies, we should reflect on what Mr. Knight is quoted here as saying. Gives the game away, doesn't it?

Slow Kylie = George Michael

One Cheer For Me

Today is my fiftieth birthday. It's not really a huge achievement, as all I've done to attain it is keep breathing til now. But it's a nice little milestone.

My mother was here to share it with me, on her way to a scholarly conference on quilting somewhere back east. I hadn't seen her for far too long, so that was very fine.

I suppose I'll have to update my profile now.