Glee Thinks You're Lucky You're In Love

This week's episode was rightfully and not confusingly titled "Duets," and consisted of a competition between the Glee Club-bers as to who could perform the best duet, the prize being dinner for two at Breadstix, a thinly veiled reference to Olive Garden with its never-ending salads and breadsticks (Santana: "It's, like, illegal for them to stop giving you breadsticks. One time I brought a wheelbarrow to fill up and when they made a fuss, I called corporate and got them fired."). Overall, the episode was successful because it not only included a great song selection, but that it was a theme episode that wasn't forced on us like Artie was forced to lose his virginity. But how did some of the characters fare overall?

Rachel & Finn: B+
Rachel and Finn are still going strong romantically, and decided to be altruistic this week by throwing the competition. Although, as Finn pointed out, they did this solely so that Sam-I-Am could win the duet competition and feel better about himself so he'll stay with Glee Club. So they scrap their delightful "Don't Go Breaking My Heart," in favor of "With You I'm Born Again," a pretty terrible song made worse by their costumes- pretending to be a school girl and a priest (pictured, hilariously, above) in love generally doesn't win you points in the awesome category. But they were cute when they tried to hide their shock at losing the competition.

Brittany & Santana: D
Ouch. After essentially dumping Brittany after twelve hours of celibacy with Puck in juvi (about time, but what's up with that? THEY NEED PUCK, OKAY?), Santana aims to be one of the two baddest bitches in the school by teaming up with Mercedes in a jaw-droppingly amazing cover of "River Deep, Mountain High." Brittany, on the other hand, decides to go after a vulnerable Artie, and they quickly start "dating" for about three days before Brittany takes Artie's virginity to help him get over Tina and he breaks up with her, both in life and Glee Club, telling her that something as simple to her (sex) is complicated and special to him, since after his accident he didn't know if he'd ever be able to have sex. It's a bittersweet scene, especially when Brittany tells Artie she wanted them to win so they could share an extra long piece of spaghetti á la Lady and the Tramp, and that she had even practiced moving a meatball around with her nose.

Quinn & Sam: A-
AWWW, these two are so cute! I love them and their blonde hair and her big eyes and his big mouth. It was also nice to see the shy side of Quinn, the side in which she's damaged from her pregnancy, her season 1 romances, and her fall from grace like Satan. Ugh, they're just so cute I can hardly stand it, and "Lucky" was really good, too. You can tell Sam is trying really hard, and that's what makes it so endearing. Also, Sam really does dye his hair! You can never fool Kurt.

Kurt: B
Kurt, like Quinn, is damaged goods, but in a different way- he ruined his father's relationship with Finn's mother, he professed his love to Finn in an inappropriate way, and now he has to deal with the consequences. He's lonely, too, which makes it hard to watch- who doesn't want Kurt to find a soulmate and be happy? He did a heartbreakingly good cover of "Le Jazz Hot" from Victor/Victoria as a duet with Harvey Dent/Two-Face-esque costume. And, in the end, he realized that it's okay to be alone, but that having friends is even nicer, as he and Rachel's "Happy Days Are Here Again/Get Happy" mash-up  shows.

Oh, yeah, and Mike Chang "sang." Overall, and the internet seems to agree with me, this was a good episode hopefully to get Glee out of its theme rut.

Politics Continues to Resemble Dan Brown Novels

After that whole exciting escapade in July with the Russian spies in New York (recently name-dropped in Gossip Girl, so you know it is dead), the whole finding sexy Russian spies in America thing kind of died out. Until it came out that there was a whole money laundering scheme based in New York. Pictured left, coed Kristina Svechinskaya, 21, is the new Anna Chapman. She's an Eastern European girl over here on a student visa. She was part of an 80 member hacking ring that managed to create a computer virus that relocated $9 million into other accounts from businesses and bank customers. Svechinskaya managed herself to siphon $35,000 dollars. New York magazine reports that she showed up in court crying and in skin-tight jeans, asking the question on everyone's mind- "But is Kristina SEXY enough to become a star?"

In other science fiction novel news, a computer worm is currently ravaging the computers in Iranian nuclear plants, stalling all development in the enrichment of uranium. The computer worm is called Stuxtnet, and the Iranians working on a resolution to the conflict claim that, not only is the worm foreign born, but it also appears to be from Israel, due to a name located deep inside the worm's code. The New York Times can explain it with the appropriate drama:

Deep inside the computer worm that some specialists suspect is aimed at slowing Iran’s race for a nuclear weapon lies what could be a fleeting reference to the Book of Esther, the Old Testament tale in which the Jews pre-empt a Persian plot to destroy them.

While Israel, at the moment, is the most likely candidate for Most Evil Country, it is also possible the worm originated from any country with their sniper rifles on Iran's pretty head, including the United States. Or, in some M. Night Shyamalan-esque (back when he was still good) twist, it could have been created by Iran to have an excuse to target Israel even more than usual. But that is a little too much like a Bond film for comfort.

So, Dan Brown, when you are ready to write a new novel, just open up a newspaper.

Guest Op-Ed: The Tea Party Brewing Discontent

This guest post comes to you from Indigo, a friend of Erik and Kayla's. She played on academic team with them, where her specialty was literature and ignoring math questions. She was not voted "Most Likely to Become President" like they were, but she got "Best Eyes," which is pretty much the same. She attends college in Vermont.

They are the Nickelback or Twilight of political fronts: so easy for us to make fun of that it’s hardly worth doing so. We mock them on The Daily Show and walk around in shirts that read, “Hillbillies drink tea?!” There are efficient little blogs and Flickr accounts devoted to displaying pictures of men in tri-cornered hats holding misspelled signs so that we can laugh and dismiss their protests as sheer madness. They are the Tea Party, and they are political cartoons unto themselves.

Considering the people that Tea Partiers choose as their leaders, it is not all that difficult to understand why so many people fail to take the group seriously. Glenn Beck, a pundit for Fox, encouraged early protests and continues to serve as major figure in the movement. But Beck is little more than an alarmist standing in front of a blackboard, grasping at straws to spread unfounded claims. While obnoxious, Beck is only slightly more radical than the politicians aligned with the Tea Party. Joe Miller, the Republican nominee for senator in Alaska, is running on a platform of reducing foreign aid and eliminating the Department of Education. Christine O’Donnell of Delaware staunchly maintains that that homosexuality is an “identity disorder.” In Nevada, Sharron Angle decries the United Nations as “the umpire on fraudulent science such as global warming,” as well as to say that 13-15 year-old girls raped by their fathers have the opportunity to turn “a lemon situation into lemonade” by refusing abortion.

It’s tempting to immediately discredit these opinions—to label Miller, O’Donnell and Angle part of the lunatic fringe and move on. But all three of these would-be senators are endorsed by not only the Tea Party, but the Republican party as well. The fact is, there are enough voters who agree with them that the GOP was willing to sell out more moderate candidates, some of whom had been in office for more than a decade. Americans who have been ignoring the Tea Party out of disdain must now come to the conclusion that it is totally irrelevant whether or not its members are uninformed or even stupid. Tea Partiers are changing the face of our political system, and it’s time to start taking them, or at least their impact, seriously.

To anyone who looks beyond the factual errors and blind outrage, it’s obvious that the Tea Party is part of a much larger trend in American attitude toward Washington. As Obama’s approval ratings sink and the House and Senate prove as ineffective as ever, more and more citizens find themselves frustrated with not only the opposing party, but their own as well. As Mark McKinnon, a Republican consultant who worked to promote George W. Bush’s 2000 and 2004 elections, says, “It’s gotten to the point where people don't even like their own representatives anymore. They want them all out, they want to start from scratch. They want to burn the house down. It's ugly.”

Disappointment in bipartisanship is something common to moderate Americans, and a grassroots organization was the inevitable conclusion. Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately), the Tea Party isn’t really an organization. The views of its supporters are so dissimilar and their policies so impractical that, were Tea Partiers ever to seize control of the government, they wouldn’t know what to do with it. It is a fundamentally flawed crusade, but that doesn’t make its existence any less potent. At the very least, it is the manifestation of Americans’ dissatisfaction with the way that their government functions.

When a nation’s political spectrum is reduced to a single scale on which its people and politicians must lean to one side or the other, political opinion is reduced to pure reaction. The fumbles of one party simply push support into the other, regardless of whether the second party has actually done anything, and this process is repeated ad nauseam. But personal politics should have more depth than the hit-and-run philosophy too many of us employ. We express ourselves with angry signs and clever bumper stickers so that we can subject others to our opinions without the threat of being challenged. Americans seem to have forgotten that the foundation of real democracy is discourse. When we scream at each other with our fingers in our ears, we accomplish nothing and our system stagnates. This is the real value of the Tea Party: to remind us that we as citizens have the ability to affect radical shifts in our government. Don’t like what the Tea Partiers have to say? Good. Talk about it. That’s the whole point.

No Cookies for You, Laura Ingraham!

Recently my attention was drawn to the existence of a woman named Laura Ingraham. Wikipedia tells me that she has her own Republican radio talk show and that she is a correspondent to Fox News. My friend said she's "the Ann Coulter that's not Ann Coulter," revealing that she was, in fact, a blonde right-wing propaganda-ist. Like her counterpart, she's written a book bashing the Obama administration, called The Obama Diaries, which is sitting pretty at the number one spot on the New York Times nonfiction bestseller's list. The book is a mock-diary format of life in the White House from Obama's, Michelle's, Biden's, and even (?) Vladmir Putin's viewpoints. She was recently on The Colbert Report and got subtly slammed by Stephen Colbert about said book. Watch the clip below:

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Laura Ingraham
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes 2010 Election Fox News

Dear Ms. Igraham,


As the head of the Irish Banshee Committee of Ireland, I take great offense to your claim that banshees are a part of Native American culture when it is clear to anyone who has either a) read Harry Potter, or b) owns a computer and can look up stuff on Wikipedia, that banshees are a part of Irish folklore and not, in fact, the very general "Native American folklore" that you cite. Additionally, we do not appreciate being used as a blatant defense against your probable racism. Much like the poor defense, "I have an African American friend so I can't be racist", saying "You called me a banshee and they're Native American so you're the real racist here" is not only dead (ohoho) wrong, but also entirely inappropriate. Please consider educating yourself before, Mórrígan forbid, you write another book or appear in public.


Thank you,
Fionúir O'Hara,
President of the IBCI


P.S. I look forward to personally wailing outside your home and washing that horrid scarlet dress as an omen of your death.

And if you didn't like that, here's a picture I made of what Laura Ingraham would look like as a banshee!

Pop Goes African (And So Can You!)

The World Cup notwithstanding, when was the last time we heard anything good about Africa? The problem is that this continent, riddled with poverty, disease, and violence is the only Africa that makes the newspapers. And while it is of course important to recognize the problems that plague Africa as a continent so that the world can help them solve these issues (genetically bred, malaria-resistant mosquitos, anyone?), it is also important to note that Africa is a land of many different cultures and beauty, nor should they be reduced to fleeting trends at Forever 21. That is where Pop'Africana comes in. Pop'Africana is a brand new art, fashion, and culture magazine based in New York City "dedicated to delivering a rejuvenated image of Africa and Africans in the Diaspora and a robust and educative guide documenting the endeavors and achievements of Africans, home and abroad." Or, in other words, this magazine aims to show Africa and Africans in a new light, while not ignoring Africa itself: as the website for the magazine says, it is "an antidote to global opinions of the African." Pop'Africana aren't the first to want to shed light on the other side of Africa and Africans: a popular blog The Real Africa aims to do just that, calling itself "The Africa they never show you." The lesson here: don't judge a continent by its problems.

buy a copy of Pop'Africana

That's Not a Pocahontas Costume, Mom!

Israeli Settlements via Google Images

The history of the Israeli state has for years been uniquely intertwined with the continued success of the United States on the world stage. American diplomats have joined their Israeli counterparts in walk-outs of United Nations working groups on racism when zionism was proposed as a possible component of greater injustices. President George W. Bush often lauded Israel as a special friend of the United States noting,

"We will stand up for our friends in the world. And one of the most important friends is the State of Israel."

While some may argue that the current administration's stance on most Israeli issues is vastly out of touch with greater American sentiment, at least they can see that a change has been made, a resolute foreign policy transformation that may well signal a new era in Middle East geopolitics.

Noting President Obama's repeated condemnations of Israeli aggression and settlement building as he prepares to launch into new negotiations with Palestinians leaders over a more comprehensive peace plan, perhaps even including a two-state solution, it would therefore appear odd that many Americans are circumventing their government to directly influence Israeli domestic politics. Yet, as a July 5th New York Times article investigated, it's exactly the case. By taking advantage by IRS loopholes and apparent negligence, common citizens are making tax-deductible donations to non-profit organizations with the clear aim of reinforcing militant Israeli settlers.

To place this conversation in context, let's first cover the extent of settlements. Since a war with its Arab neighbors in 1967 Israel has maintained claims to certain disputed territories. Moreover, despite concessions to Palestinians leaders which allows limited autonomy in Gaza and the West Bank, Israeli settlers frequently travel into traditionally Palestinian regions with the clear aim to root them out through the construction of new homes, small businesses, and large community facilities. In an attempt to placate the Palestinian leadership and encourage new rounds of negotiations, President Obama convinced Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to freeze settlement activity. However, as the Times piece points out, this official order has not deterred certain settlers from continuing to stake claims in "off-limits" territories.

These donations, which have reached upwards of $200 million, are not small-change. In fact, a concerted effort to wage violence against Palestinians is being sanctioned by a criminally negligent IRS. Some of the funds go to Jewish academic and athletic organizations naturally, but money is also funneled to pay, "...for more legally questionable commodities: housing as well as guard dogs, bulletproof vests, rifle scopes, and vehicles to secure outposts deep in occupied areas." The non-profit operated by lobbyist Jack Abramoff:

"...shipped a camouflage sniper suit in a box labeled 'Grandmother Tree Costume for the play Pocahontas':-- other groups are more open. Amitz Rescue and Security, which has raied money through two Brooklyn nonprofits, trains and equips guard units for settlements. Its website encourages donors to 'send a tax-deductible check' for night-vision binoculars, bulletproof vehicles and guard dogs."

In its thirst for violence this radical Israeli movement has encouraged unprecedented violence. As journalists Isabel Kershner and Myra Noveck discovered, one particular movement deemed "Price Tag" instituted an eye-for-an-eye policy whereby official Israeli moves to counter settlement expansion is met by proportional attacks on innocent Arabs. The worst part of this entire debacle is the fact that many American donors don't even realize the violence being encouraged by their donations due to vague website descriptions. If anything, the IRS's logical response to this issue would be to overhaul existing regulations in terms of tax law in order to cut off the funding these Americans are giving to enemies of US interests abroad.

The main issue with regard to these American donations is their ability to undermine the peace process. In my personal opinion, a two-state solution, that is a solution involving sovereignty for both Palestinians and Israelis is the only viable option at present. Ideally, these two factions would be able to function in a single cooperative state, yet I realize how ridiculously idealistic that statement remains. In all actuality, the Israeli people did suffer tremendous hardships-- the loss of 6 million Jews (at minimum) during the Holocaust and a tradition of anti-Semitism throughout recorded history have no doubt given them much to gripe about (and rightly so). However, when those feelings of victimization translate into a subsequent attack on an established people (the Palestinians) and forces thousands to become refugees, all claims of moral superiority are rendered null and void. Like President Obama has noted again and again a two-state solution would allow Arabs in the Middle East to see a concrete example of Western tolerance, no Western care for their welfare. Although negotiations will of course be tense, with neither side willing to concede on any front, they must be pushed through. Think for a moment of the apropos West Wing episode where Middle East peace is at least hesitantly achieved by creating a UN peace zone throughout the city of Jerusalem. My point: there are solutions. We need to seek them out no matter how ridiculous they might seem.

Teen Vogue Declares Gay Best Friend Latest Accessory

Sometimes I wonder how untactful a blogger must be before someone says, you know,  I think that's a little inappropriate. Teen Vogue is making headlines across the internet today for publishing a silly little article on GBF's, or, for the uninformed, Gay Best Friends, declaring them to be the next trend for girls everywhere, much like clogs or Ray-Bans and not like people at all. Here are some actual quotes from the article in question:

"A few years ago, all the popular, pretty girls were walking hand in hand with a preppy jock," she says. "Now you'll see them in hallways with a Mulberry bag on one arm and a Johnny Weir look-alike on the other." She says one girl at her school even recently tweeted: "OMG, watching Glee makes me wish I had a guy like Kurt in my life."

And while everyone wishes they had a Kurt in their life, that doesn't make it okay to objectify gay man as an accessory, as commenters and everyone with a soul was quick to point out. Even if they do sing awesomely.

And, just in case you weren't aware of famous GBF's in pop culture, Teen Vogue has kindly added a supplementary slideshow to educate y'all. Luckily, post author Amy Astley added an explanation to the horrid article:

Ed note: Friendships with other girls--even the healthiest and most supportive of relationships--are always a teeny bit complicated. I hate to admit it, but I feel like a tiny troll next to one of my besties, who is as tall and stunning as a supermodel; another good pal is so outrageously successful that one can't help but seem a bit of an underachiever in comparison. And that's the problem: We girls compare ourselves to one another, and it can just get a bit . . . intense. Thank goodness for gay best friends. I treasure my GBFs--I live in New York City; I have many, many!--because they are noncompetitive and nonjudgmental, and we make each other feel accepted and cherished. As Lindsay Talbot reports, gay guy-straight girl friendships may be trendy right now in pop culture (think Glee), but no one deserves to be treated like a passing fad or arm candy. If you are lucky enough to have a GBF in your life, enjoy the lovefest but remember to fight for his rights to be treated equally in our society. --AMY ASTLEY, editor in chief.

Hot Topic: Gay Best Friend (GBF) [Sound Off/Teen Vogue]

Guys, This Isn't A James Bond Movie

People love James Bond movies, because they love sexy spies. Unfortunately, time has proved again and again that spies don't look like Tatiana Romanova, and they certainly aren't supposed to look like Anna Chapman, pictured left. She's become the poster child for the seemingly useless Russian spies captured by the US Justice Department last week, mostly because she is a socialite that insists on flitting around Manhattan in Hérve Léger bandage dresses. Chapman, the daughter of a "Russian diplomat" (code word for former KGB agent, of course), is just the cherry on top of this somewhat hilarious ordeal. She's not the brightest of the Russian spies, reportedly emailing her handler sensitive information while he was standing right outside the café she was emailing him from. An email, we might add, that was confiscated by the Feds pretty quickly. She also signed up for a cell phone under the address "99 Fake Street" (no, I'm not kidding) and fell for the undercover Fed with their silly codeword exchange:

The undercover instructed her on how she would recognize her fellow spy and how to report back on the handoff, the feds said.

"Haven’t we met in California last summer?" the spy expecting the fake passport was supposed to say. Chapman was to respond, "No, I think it was the Hamptons," according to the FBI.

Not only this, but her ex-husband is an accused rapist. Can it get any better? Yes, actually, and Sean Connery is laughing that this is actually more campy than Goldfinger. There are more agents than Chapman, of course, and the other agents have been busy being more successful by spying in suburban backyards. The Daily Intel worries that when they return to Russia they will be able to "divulge all the secrets they've gathered about holding backyard barbecues and shopping at Banana Republic." One of the spy's neighbors reports, "They couldn’t have been spies, look what she did with the hydrangeas!” The spies were also quick to push off quirks with the flimsy excuse that they were from Canada.

Of course, commenters on the issue were quick to report that perhaps the spies' real mission was to assimilate into American culture and thus able to see weaknesses that Americans have been familiar with forever yet seemed insignificant to Russians. However, the Russians should have picked up on the weakness that one of the states, namely Alaska, is very close to Russia (Mhhmm, a Sarah Palin joke).

Russia got very upset when we cracked their little spy ring and offered to trade ten American spies captured by Russia for Anna Chapman & Co. The US seems to be getting the better deal in this spy swap, since the ten agents that Reuters reports the Russians are planning on returning to the US for the captured Russians are not hot and therefore actually spies who accomplished something besides being terrible spies and gardening.

UPDATE: The US is swapping the ten self-confessed spies (with the serious money laundering charges dropped) for four real American spies captured by the Russians, ones who have significantly more espionage that the Russian ring, except that one guy who still insists he's innocent.

Russian Spies' Dumbest Mistakes [Daily Intel]
Factbox: Candidates for possible U.S.-Russia spy swap [Reuters]

Not Quite "Self-Reflexive": Work of Art S1E1 recap

At this point in time, Bravo has exploited almost all of the arts: fashion, culinary, aesthetic design, hair styling, modeling. It was only a matter of time until they went for the big one right? Work of Art's debut was met with more criticism than most of these reality shows are: is the world not ready for something as highbrow as art to be watered down into a reality show? It worked with Project Runway, and, in my opinion, it works for Work of Art. Despite the slightly cheesy title, Work of Art is successful in what it aims to do: bring the attention of the art world mainly reserved for the New York Times to the American public.

Now, onto the recap. It doesn't take very long for this show to quickly resemble Project Runway, but why fix it if it ain't broke? A breakdown of our contestants via stereotypes: the crazy hippie Peregrine, grown-up hipster Trong, the vegetarian chain-smoking altbro Ryan, slightly ditzy Nicole, the token bitch Nao, the textbook hipster Miles, "that guy" Mark, "representative of the Baby Boomer era" Judith, some guy who I forgot about until this moment John, she of the fashionable clothes Jaime Lynn, "you wouldn't expect someone like me to be an artist" Jaclyn, amateur hour Erik, changed-jobs-from-something-slightly-more-dangerous Amanda, and down-to-earth Abdi. All of these people are exactly who I say they are and this perfect for reality tv. The contestants get a swanky studio to work in (yet not so swanky as to include a darkroom?) and a swanky (but not too swanky) apartment to live in. Oh, and guess what? Sarah Jessica Parker is an executive producer! You didn't know that! Really? You know what I liked about the producers on Project Runway? THEY STAYED OFF THE SHOW. Speaking of authority figures, China Chow is adorable! Her Wikipedia page doesn't say much, but I love her clothes and her nonchalant knowledge of the art world. All of the judges seem to be looking at the art from a critical and/or sellable  viewpoint, which I like, because if there was an actual artist judging there might be some bias toward a certain type of art.

The assignment was simple: create a portrait of a person you were "randomly" paired up with. The artists were pretty low-key. Only Miles ran around like crazy, but that just who he is, right? Now, onto the fun part: the critiques. For now I'll just do the ones brought to the attention of the judges for extra critiquing because there's quote a lot of artists.

BEST OF THE BEST

From left to right: Mile's portrait of Nao, Mark's portrait of Erik, and Abdi's portrait of Ryan. I liked the idea of Miles' death photograph, although he acted like it was a new form of art when many modern artists had been doing it before. But no art is really original, so we'll move on. I liked finally being able to kind-of she how a screen print is done. The middle photograph, Mark's, is interesting because it's a different medium than everyone else. He's the only photographer on the show, and it's odd to see someone creating art from behind a computer screen instead of behind an easel. But that's where the money is nowadays: through Photoshop and graphic design. The graphic is nice, very commercial, but it sets it apart from, say, Miles's. I think Miles might end up being the judges' darling this season. Okay, last of the best: Abdi's. This one was my favorite, but I'm a little biased because I love paintings, I love color, and I love pop culture influences. This looks like it could be poster art from a Tarantino movie. I wish that Abdi would have won, but I can understand why the judges chose Miles to win; it's not a bad piece, sans the annoying plastic coming out from the side.

WORST OF THE WORST

Left to right: Amanda's portrait of Jaime Lynn, Nao's portrait of Miles, and Erik's portrait of Mark. Let's start on the left: Amanda's portrait was, well, not really a portrait. For a project that supposed to be about "the inner workings of your partner," she kind of made an abstract piece based on jewelry Jaime was wearing. To be fair, it's probably harder to sell your point as an abstract artist, but I'm sure there's something she could have done that would be more portrait-y. The middle one is a mess, too, but this would sell for form loft somewhere. Subtly chic, this portrait's only downfall was it's inability to look like a portrait (and its creator's bad attitude). And last, but not (?) least, Erik's. The judges and his fellow contestants were right: this looks like a high school art piece (I would know, I'm in a high school art class). It's not bad as much as it is... amateury? Creepy? Poorly put together? Okay, it's just bad. And Erik got all defensive, " I've never had any training," like he could slip that excuse under the judges' noses and make them smell the sympathy. Unfortunately for him, they didn't bite, but they did make excellent comments on how he basically painted a portrait of serial killer John Wayne Gacy.

This show has promise. It was only the first episode, after all. And I saw multiple sledgehammers in the season preview, so I'm in.

The Evolution of Lady Gaga's Music Videos

The more I think about it, the more I realized that we were all tricked by Lady Gaga. And not that I have an issue with it, but it's important to realize that, through her music videos, we were lured into a false sense of security, of familiarity, and before we realized it was too late, that this wonderfully weird and different artist had crept into the top charts along with rappers and Taylor Swift. That is a good thing- pop music would be a whole lot more boring without her. Since her latest video- "Alejandro"- is due to come out tomorrow, I thought it would be interesting to take a retrospective look back on her other music videos and her evolving creativity >>

M.I.A. Wants To Be Summer's Most Interesting Person (But The NYTimes Does Not Agree)

There was once a time when the letters M.I.A. only referred to their original meaning of missing in action. But then Slumdog Millionaire came out, and hipsters all over the world were heartbroken to discover their favorite Sri Lankan female rapper splashed all over the iTunes top 100 charts. And since then, all M.I.A. (real name: Maya) could do was make headlines: she insulted Lady Gaga, she ragged on Justin Bieber, she made a video about redhead genocide, she told Nylon that Facebook and Google are evil tools of the government. She came her new album, out July 13, an un-Google-able name: /\/\/\Y/\. She complained the US was trying to stop her from travelling out of the country. But now, it appears, she's just lost her mind: after being interviewed for a profile piece for the New York Times and feeling insulted by it herself, she tweeted the journalist's telephone number and encouraged her fans to call it. The article points out several parts of Maya's lacking personality traits: her desire to perform at the Grammy's last year after her baby's due date ("The combination of being nearly naked, hugely pregnant, singing incendiary lyrics and having the eyes of the world upon her was too much to resist."), her polarizing stance on Sri Lankan politics ("She only made the situation worse. What happened in Sri Lanka was not a genocide. To not be honest about that or the Tigers does more damage than good. When Maya does a polarizing interview, it doesn’t help the cause of justice."), and her comments on terrorism (" 'All of what I’m wearing is American,' Maya said. 'If I was a terrorist, I wouldn’t be wearing American clothing.' "), among other things. Maya responded by posting the author's private phone number to the web, in a classic case of not being able to take what you dish out.

How will tonight's LOST stack up against other season finales?

Okay, after my last, rather hate-filled post about LOST, I promise to be nicer. I can't stay mad at you, LOST. Not this close to the end. Season finales are usually always good- they have to be, it's in their definitions. LOST finales in particular are very good at sending curveballs to us in their last moments. How will tonight's episode, the sixth season finale and series finale, rank among the others?

SEASON ONE:

What happened: Danielle Rousseau, the French woman, attacks Claire and steals her baby, hoping to make a trade with the Others, only to find them gone when she gets there. Locke, Jack, Kate, and Hurley successfully  blow open the hatch as a possible shelter from the Others. Michael, Walt, Jin, and Sawyer sail away on the raft. They are a found by a fishing boat and, thinking they've been rescued, celebrate. The Others on the boat steal Walt and shoot Sawyer before blowing up the raft.
WTF Factor: 6. Although everyone was a little disappointed they'd have to wait until next season to find out what was in the hatch, the event on the raft more than made up for it. "We're going to have to take the boy," can still send shivers up your spine. This was also our complete confirmation of Others on the island, and that they weren't the survivors' friends. However, compared to later episodes, this almost seems tame.

SEASON TWO:

What Happened: Michael, Jack, Hurley, Kate, and Sawyer are all captured by the Others and brought to a dock, where they discover Ben is their leader and that Michael has been working with the Others. Hurley is released. Sun, Jin, and Sayid use Desmond's sailboat to try and meet Jack, discovering the four-toed statue. Locke and Desmond are successful in preventing Eko from pressing the button in the hatch, but when they realized it was a mistake, Desmond is forced to use the failsafe key, causing the Island to emit a strong electromagnetic emission. This is noticed by scientists in the Arctic, who call their employer, Penelope Widmore, Desmond's lover.

WTF Factor: 6. There were some mighty odd things in this episode. The four-toed statue, the purple light, and most of all, the fantastic ending with Penny. But while everything was odd and interesting, it was not necessarily shocking.

SEASON THREE:

What happened: Charlie is taken captive by the Others in the Looking Glass station underwater while trying to turn off the jamming equipment. He is successful, contacts Penny, only to discover that the rescue boat they believe to be hers is not. Charlie is killed by a grenade blowing out the window to the underwater radio room, leading to the most tragic Sharpie writing on hands ever done. Naomi is stabbed in the back (literally) by Locke, who doesn't want rescue to come. We see Jack, fully bearded, struggle with substance abuse, only to discover that this is the 3 years after leaving the island.

WTF Factor: 9. Charlie death, while we were warned about it again and again by Desmond, was unexpectedly sad. The stabbing of Naomi sets up interesting battle lines between our survivors as they are torn apart by the belief of the goodness of those on the rescue boat. But what made this finale most successful was the flash-forward, which no one saw coming. The survivors would get off the island, but for some reason, it was very important for them to return. 

SEASON FOUR:

What Happened: A group of the survivors manage to get to the rescue boat, only for it to blow up in front of them. The Oceanic Six, as they would be known, manage to find Penelope Widmore's boat and use her lifeboat to make it to a small Pacific Island, where they are rescued. Ben is forced to move the Island using a donkey wheel, making it look like the rescue boat had disappeared and all hope was gone. In the future, Ben confronts Jack and tells him that they all need to return to the Island, including Locke, who is dead. 

WTF Factor: 4. This was a good episode, clearly, but nothing was especially shocking. We already knew the survivors would get off the island; perhaps the most shocking thing was the explosion of the rescue boat and the "death" of Jin and Kate taking custody of Aaron. Locke's death was also surprising but not entirely shocking- after all, there weren't many people that it could have been. Oh, and the Island moving thing. Yeah. That. How does Locke get off the Island? Maybe this episode was more shocking then one would think....

SEASON FIVE:

What Happened. I cried. Oh, in the show. We finally get to see Jacob's adversary, the Man in Black. We also see, off the Island, Jacob touching each of our remaining survivors sans one: Juliet, who is tragically killed while she, Kate, Jack, and Sawyer try to set off the hydrogen bomb and reset time to 2004. Juliet manages to hit the bomb with a rock and a white light is emitted, and every LOST fan twiddles their thumbs for nine months. We also see Jacob being killed by Ben under the orders of who we think is Locke but is actually the Smoke Monster/MiB.

WTF Factor: 8. This finale asked a lot of questions: Who is the MiB? Why does he want to kill Jacob? Why did Jacob touch some of the survivors? How did the MiB take Locke's form? Why does Sawyer hit on Kate when he had a fulfilling life in 1977 with Juliet? Why did Juliet have to die? Why? WHY?

Internet Explodes After Last Night's LOST

There's no denying that last night's episode of LOST was, well, umm... it's actually hard to say. Because the internet has FREAKED OUT. Over polarization. Of last night's episode. And you know what... I have to agree with everyone.

The Man in Black is angry... over last night's episode. (Image from ontd_lost) 

While half the internet complaining about how last night's episode answered barely anything and what it did answer seemed kind of cop-out-y, the other half is smugly calling themselves the minority and saying that the writers can do whatever they want. I apologize if I sound a little biased; I'm a member of the former. To be honest though, I was kind of okay with it until I read an interview by Alan Sepinwall with the LOST producers (and the figureheads to be blamed for everything) Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse. In which they are kind of complete jerks. Some highlights:

on not giving the Man in Black a name:

Okay, you've now said at a couple of points here that you're not going to reveal the name of the Man in Black. Is there a significance to that, or you've just decided you prefer the air of mystery it gives the character to not give him a name?

CC: I think for us to explain why we're not giving him a name veers too far into the territory of explaining things that we don't feel the need to explain.

on the famous "outrigger scene" from episode 5x04, "The Little Prince:"

Okay, finally, I have to ask, simply because it's been driving me nuts for a year and a half: what's going on with showing the other half of the outrigger shootout? 

CC: The outrigger shootout is not something we're bending around in gyrations so we can solve it. In the grand scheme of the show, that is a fairly obscure piece of the show. It is your particular obsession...

DL: ...and you're not alone in it.

CC: You're not alone in it. And yes, it would have been great if we had had the opportunity to close the time loop. But you can't get everything done and keeping the narrative going in a straight line. This is one of those things where we made a very conscious choice to ask, "What are the big questions? And most importantly, what are the paths of these characters? Where do they lead?" And we followed those paths and tried not to trip ourselves up getting too diverted from that. We felt that that's the thing that's ultimately going to make the finale work or not work. We got to the point where we made the finale we wanted to make, that was our approach, and I think it was the only approach we could take. We sat here in my office, had breakfast every day for six years, talked about the show, and we used this gut check methodology, where if we both loved something and thought it was cool, that would go in. We applied that same methodology to the finale, and that was the only way we could do it. We came up with a finale that we thought was cool, that was emotional and one we really liked. That's the best we could do.

DL: When we wrote that scene and somebody started shooting at them, we knew exactly who was shooting at them. That is not a dangling thread that we don't know the answer to. That being said, as we started talking about paying that off this season, it felt like the episode was at the service of closing the time loop, as opposed to what the characters might actually be doing in that scenario. It never felt organic. We decided we would rather take our lumps from the people who couldn't scratch that itch than to produce an episode that was in service of putting people in an outrigger and getting shot at.

and on something that particularly bothered me:

You've said many times that when people find out who Adam and Eve are, we'll all realize just how long you've been planning the mythology. Well, I went back and watched the "House of the Rising Sun" scene, and Jack says that the clothing looks like it's 50 years old. Is he just not very good at calculating the rate of decay on fabric?

CC: Jack is not really an expert in carbon dating.

DL: He's not really a forensic anthropologist. We need to bring in Bones.

CC: Or Charlotte. She's an anthropolgist.

DL: The other theory that I would like to throw out there is that Jacob and his mother were just expert craftsmen. They made those clothes on that loom so well, it would appear that they were only 50 years old in decomposition, when in fact it's several thousand.

CC: Or perhaps the fabric is magic. A lot of theories there, Alan.

Besides the obvious point that Charlotte wasn't really a forensic anthropologist either, just someone who could identify polar bear bones in Tunisia, what really grinds my gears is how jerk-y they are being about some of these things. How smug they say that they know information and are just choosing not to give it out. Way to get cocky guys!

Way to get opinionated, author.

Beyonce: Why Don't You Love the 60s?

I feel like music videos are going to get better ever since Lady Gaga upped the standards, especially with someone who has worked directly with her: Beyonce. Beyonce released a video for her new song "Why Don't You Love Me?" today, and it is way better than most videos. It's a clever throwback to classic Bond Girls, Valley of the Dolls, and, of course, vintage pin-up girls (the latter almost in excess). It's a charming video that, while not featuring the best song ever, manages to become art more than just something to put on MTV (like MTV plays music anymore).

Movie Review: The Trotsky

Looking for something to do on a weekend instead of studying for AP tests? Well watch an indie movie of course. Last night, moved by sheer apathy, I rented "The Trotsky" ondemand under a Tribeca Film Festival category that I didn't even know existed. Thankfully, I was not disappointed. In fact, I give this effort rave reviews. Given audience awards at both the Sofia and Tokyo International Film Festivals, this tale of a renegade youth leading a movement to unionize students at his Montreal High School is both humorous and inspiring. The main character, Leon Bernstein, played by Jay Baruchel, believes he is the reincarnation of Soviet hero Leon Trotsky. Obsessed with his destiny as Trotsky incarnate he even constructs a "destiny board" complete with possible allies and wives. A witty and articulate character, Leon first attempts to lead a strike against his own father's factory. Then, upon entering public school, he takes his principal hostage in an act of defiance.

All in all, I came away from this movie thoroughly amused and inspired by this incredibly life-like teen. Take some communism, a ridiculous number of Che posters and add in a dash of french, what's not to like?

Music Monday: Marina & The Diamonds

DISCLAIMER: Okay, I had to translate the blog post I got this information from, so hopefully it's all correct. Marina & The Diamonds, an English export by the likes of Kate Nash or Florence + The Machine, is releasing her second album Family Jewels sometime this year. She... and... whatever. Translate it with Google. Here's a single, "Girls."


Marina & The Diamonds - Girls by the ruée

Music Monday: The Return of Uffie

20th century blog queen turned electropop artist Uffie is back with a new track that Hipster Runoff calls "a crossover." You see, Uffie is straying from her hipster It Girl roots by featuring mainstream artist Pharrell Williams. Mainstream or not, "ADD SUV (featuring Pharrell)" is a fun song sure to be a hit inthe electro/club scene. As music blog DISCODUST wrote, "fingers crossed for Uffie kicking some Ke$ha ass."


uffie featuring pharrell - add suv (full track)byDISCODUST

Music Match-Up: Ke$ha VS Leighton Meester

Do you know how hard it is to find a good picture of Ke$ha? VERY Hard. Photos via last.fm

AHH! It's time for our first ever music match-up! It all started when I was just minding my own business, listening to the radio in my car, when what do I hear? Leighton Meester (of Gossip Girl and Cobra Starship fame) singing her new single, "Your Love's A Drug." That's funny, because I could have sworn that Ke$ha (of general promiscuity and alcohol abuse fame) had a single out called, "Your Love is My Drug." Hmmm, two songs connecting love and substance abuse? Normally, I would trust Ke$ha on a subject like this, but you have to listen to them both to pick the true winner >>

Op-Ed: Why I Haven't Fallen For Chat Roulette... Yet.

Last night, I finally tried out Chat Roulette. And I'll admit, I was a little disappointed. Not by the number of male genetalia (no, there were plenty of them!), but by how BORING everyone was. Is that how the world perceives me? As a boring Chat Roulette user? Anyway, I'm not about to be plunged into a self-esteem crisis.

The internet is afire with stories and screenshots of hilarious and awkward encounters via Chat Roulette (see left). Unfortunately, I encountered none of those. Many of the people I met said nothing but "Hi," a simple, albeit plebeian, phrase. The most interesting people my friends and I met were these two guys who commented that my friends picture was far too high up on the wall to be a satisfying interior design.    Other than that, it was mostly penises, lonely girls, and creepy old men. There was one guy that saw my Hawaiian flower earrings as I bent over to text and complimented them. I hurriedly replied, "Thanks ;)" and hit enter before I could see the horror of the winking/flirting emoticon I sent some random middle aged man with a terrible haircut. I didn't get a "BOOBS OR GTFO" partner, which I hear is all too common, although a guy from Spain told me to kiss my (female) friend, in both English and Spanish (how kind of him).

And it was all so ordinary. There was an excess of awkward staring and lame replies. I don't think I'll be venturing on CR anytime soon. I prefer Omegle, on which you can optionally use a webcam (I don't) and is basically an anonymous chat room. Last night I pretended to be a pretentious Yale student and, on a seperate occasion, fooled some 17 year old girl into thinking I was Mexican, Spanish and all.

MORE CHATROULETTE FUN: This professional troller trolls Chat Roulette, saying things both meanly and cleverly.

Link of the Day: "Catholicism 2.0"

I haven't posted in so long that I had to look up the html to space this post correctly. Down to business:

With accusations ranging from corruption to criminal conspiracy, the Catholic Church's holy week isn't looking so, you know, holy. Maureen Dowd, an excellent columnist at the New York Times had a scathing retort to the Church's failure to publicly admit the extent of its wrongs. She makes excellent points against the church's rampant homophobia, medieval stance on birth control, and gender inequality. If you are really fired up head over to the comments thread!

My favorite comment (by someone named Malcolm in NYC):

Catholicism 2.0 is full of bugs and keeps crashing. It is time for Catholicism 2.1. Installation instructions:

Step 1. Select 2.0 version. Remove Hierarchy, including Pope and Cardinals.

Step 2. Delete the following files: Gays are Bad; Priests should be Celibate; Don't Use Birth Control; Conceal Pedophiles; Blame the Victims; and No Women Priests. You may delete further files that you find offensive at this point.

Step 3. Thoroughly disinfect remaining files.

Step 4. Install 'Gospels' . (This was missing from the 2.0 version, and may be the main reason it kept malfunctioning).

Step 5. Install new operating system.

This system should operate much better than the old one.

Prada Japan Under Fire for Firing 'Ugly' Employees

After claiming last week she would file a lawsuit against the apparently discriminatory Japanese division of Prada, Rina Bovrisse (pictured right), a former retail manager for Prada Japan, is now suing her former employers because she says they forced her to fire employees the Prada Japan CEO deemed unappealing. She was fired after refusing to do so.This is not the first time this has happened. Earlier, a woman who applied for a job at Prada Japan told The Cut she believed she was turned down because the supervisor did not like her personal appearance. And in August of last year, American Apparel was under fire for only hiring pretty people.

Bovrisse has set up a Facebook fan page, and she explains, "The level of harassment is beyond human understanding. My responsibility is to protect hard-working women and make sure their working environment is safe...I think Japan is a developed country but in terms of sexual harassment and human rights for females, especially in the workplace, it's very behind. It’s almost like 50 years ago in the United States."

Lady Gaga Defends "Telephone" Video

It has been over a week since Lady Gaga has released the video for her current single "Telephone" (also, "Alejandro" has made it to the radio- confirmed!), and since then, conservative Americans are getting all riled up over what they call a "disgusting" brainwashing video on sadomasochism and homosexuality! As if this video hasn't been troubled enough with the whole "banned-on-MTV/not-banned-on-MTV" thing. Watch the video where two women from (wait for it...) FOX News discuss this "sado-masochist porn," or as the rest of the world knows it, the "Telephone" music video:

Gaga responded:

"There are transsexual women and transgender women and suddenly it becomes poisonous and something else because there are some people in this world that believe being gay is a choice. It's not a choice, we're born this way. That's why for me this video is groundbreaking because it has one foot in the art community and one foot in the commercial world.

I told Beyoncé this after it aired, you'll see this video is not just great now but six months from now what this video will mean. Hearing people say the video is sadomasochistic or that the video promotes murder for young people, it's my personal belief that the video is getting so much attention, not because of those themes because I've done those themes before, haven't I?

There are no rules or limits when it comes to love. But I see love as separate from sex."

Gaga, who has told the public that she is bisexual, is clearly upset that she is being attacked for a video featuring homosexuality and murder (but, let me note the murder is not graphic, and it is done in an artful way. And trust me- I know artful murder, I'm a Tarantino fan), but I applaud her for being so graceful about the whole thing. [Perez Hilton]

DVD of the Week: Funny Games

(DVD of the Week is a new column by Kayla. Since I watch so many movies, and usually once a week [but hardly ever new releases], I thought it would make a good column and/or help other people discover new movies.)

Funny Games (2007)
Directed by: Michael Haneke
Starring: Naomi Watts, Tim Roth, Michael Pitt, Brady Corbet

I will always trust the critics' quotes movie producers put on the front of DVD boxes from now on. Because the ones for this movie was spot on: this movie does not "play nice, easy, or fair."

If I had to give you a basic summary of the plot, it would be this: a well-to-do bourgeois family of three heads to their summer home for the summer. Instead of a nice vacation, however, what they get is two sociopaths playing "games" with them over the duration of one horrific night. However, this being an art-house film, there's so much more than that. This movie is horrifying, but it is important to note that it is not gory. Much like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, a lot of the horrific things in this movie happen off-screen. However, unlike Massacre, this movie has more of a point then "what they don't show is usually the scariest." The whole point of this film is to parody the audience. People, especially Americans, revel in violence on television and in movies. I'm especially guilty of this, being an avid fan of Tarantino and his religion of artful gore. What Funny Games aims to do is, by promising everything (or, in this case, a torture porn film worthy of A Clockwork Orange or Hostel), yet gives us, the anxious audience waiting for gore, nothing.

It's easy to pass this film off as the country club version of The Strangers. There is even a similar line: "Why are you doing this to us?" And while The Strangers fufills the audiences' thoughts that these invaders are indeed crazy buy having them answer, "Because you were home," Funny Games plays an even darker game with, "Why not?"

Lady Gaga: "Telephone" Brings Jails, Sandwichs, and Tarantino

After watching Lady Gaga's video for "Bad Romance" about a hundred times, I became convinced it was the best music video ever! Or at least the most fashionably outrageous video ever. That's why I was hard to believe that she could continue topping it for her later videos.



While I'm not convinced it's better than "Bad Romance," the world premiere of the video for "Telephone" is certainly more fun. A basic summary of the video would that Lady Gaga is in jail after killing her boyfriend in the "Paparazzi" video. She spends some time singing, but Beyonce bails her out and together they go on a murderous, Tarantino-inspired rampage. I give her props for using Quentin Tarantino's infamous prop from Kill Bill Vol. 1, and it's my opinion that the music video is better in its second half, after Gaga is released from jail. Watch it and read what Gaga has to say about it after the jump >>

More Gaga news: Confirmed next single is "Alejandro."

Even MORE Gaga news: Check out the poster for the "Telephone" video! It's wonderfully vintage.

Sunday Shows: Fareed Zakaria GPS

image from google

I'll admit it- I'm tired of healthcare debates. This morning I decided to watch the only show not featuring congressmen rallying against (or for) the healthcare bill. So, instead of watching Kathleen Sebelius I tuned in for an interview of General David Petraeus, Commander US Central Command, with Fareed Zakaria.

My own father is a Petraeus fan so I decided that it'd be beneficial for me to at least understand what made him so "great." I have to say that Petraeus has had an excellent career; graduating at the top of his class at West Point he went on to earn a doctorate in international relations at the Woodrow Wilson School. He's served around the world in a variety of support and command positions. Most recently, as the commander of multinational forces in Iraq, Petraeus became a front-man for the Obama administration's terror policy. While I was not completely taken in by Petraeus's arguments I must agree that he is relatively articulate, aware, and politically savvy. I'm weary of his demonstrated support for the surge and continued US presence in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Now there has been a lot of speculation within the beltway and across the country that General Petraeus might attempt a 2012 presidential run. He has claimed numerous times that he has no political ambitions. However, would I be surprised to see him form an exploratory committee? Absolutely not. In fact, he does have a vaguely presidential voice. His interview gave you a sense that he understood the nuances of current events, politics, and his area of operations but left many of his answers intentionally vague. With coaching I think he could become a strong and potentially competitive Republican primary challenge.

Sunday Shows: This Week

ABC News

Okay. I'm sick of "bipartisanship." Completely done with it. Every politician seems to think its a magical buzz-word that will negate any suspicions of political maneuvering or Congressional roadblocks. In my opinion, partisanship is exactly what the founders wanted. A democracy has, without fail, a majority and a minority. They are supposed to act independently, and, at times, together. The Democratic party maintains control of the White House and Congress for the first time in years. Why aren't they taking advantage of it? I thought the Obama election was supposed to represent a mandate. I think it's time that mandate was seized firmly.

Today as I watched "This Week" and saw Elizabeth Vargas's interview with Speaker Pelosi I couldn't help but shuffle to the edge of my seat--just waiting for her to say "We're going to get them passed with or without them." It's time for them to stop being conciliatory. The President and the Speaker (AND FOR THAT MATTER THE MAJORITY LEADER) need to wrestle some arms. Yes mid-terms are coming but healthcare reform has been on the Democratic platform for decades. The conditions are finally here to do something about it and all I see is internal party politics. A strong leader of the Democratic party needs to emerge. He or she needs to demand results and show the public that something can be done within Washington's gridlock. I'm tired of seeing my party flounder in national tracking polls and continue to accept absurd Republican amendments. We have a majority. If a Democrat is too cowardly to vote "yay" then restrict his or her DCCC funding. Cut them off. It's time to see who lives up to the name "Democrat" and who is simply masquerading. If anything, today's Sunday shows made me furious that nothing had been done since this entire healthcare debacle emerged months ago. Only just now releasing an online copy of his "new" proposal puts President Obama months off pace. I'm incredibly worried that with all the in-fighting the Senate seems plagued with absolutely nothing will get done before this summer. The message here: Get yourself together and lead. Now.

Link of the Day: The Best Duplex Ever

google images

As a personal addict of NYTimes slideshows I have to admit that I am not a fan of their new layouts. Adding repetitive full-screen ads for Sotheby's, the Times forces you to click the aggravating "skip this ad" button to progress. Just my two cents.

However, on a more pressing matter, I wanted to point out a particularly interesting slideshow concerning a contemporary Toronto duplex. Complete with a terrace, Juliet balconies, high industrial ceilings, and a strikingly modern kitchen, the property is priced above one-million dollars yet I already want it for myself. Having visited Toronto this past summer, I can vouch for the incredible construction projects springing up across the city. I have to admit that this is one of the finest I've seen so far. If you like this slideshow I'd suggest looking at others on the "Great Homes and Destinations" page, including a milk depot remodel in London.

Sunday Morning (Literally)

google images

So once again I'm back to the Sunday Morning Shows Review. Instead of featuring a political talk show I decided to hone in on another venerable morning address, the news documentary show with an apt title "Sunday Morning."

I'll be honest; usually I ignore "Sunday Morning" entirely. My dad's watched the show every week since the nineties. Rather than an entertaining show, it's become more of an awkward household nick-nack. From Charles Osgood to the other reporters whose faces I've tried desperately to forget, they all seemed to signal that it was time for me to go read, do homework, do anything at all really.

Here's my point: I was reminded today that "Sunday Morning" has SOME redeeming qualities. Towards the end of the program today I watched a segment where astronauts spun an inflatable globe in the International Space Station and, without looking, pointed out a spot that they wanted the producers to research, all in an effort to achieve a greater sense of global understanding. It was truly interesting to watch a reporter go to India, Latvia, and even Oman in an effort to interview just one person. Randomly selecting names out of phone books, the reporter found an elderly blind man in India living with 13 family members who all share the same bank account, a Latvian body builder who achieved great success in his sport after suffering hepatitis at a young age, an Omani man who earned a fortune in the oil business after growing up in a small mud apartment. I thought the program was simple yet inspiring, a human interest story with international flair that boiled life down to the basics-- that the lifestyles of these individuals were all relatively similar and that, like the view of the Earth from space, they were all indistinguishable from their brethren. (by the way this last part was the sign-off and not my own musings).

I tried to find a link to this segment but alas it's not posted. If you're interested in "Sunday Morning" I'd refer you to their website, here.

Link of the Day: Barbie is Officially a Nerd (Sorta)!

After half a million Barbie fans voted, her new career will be that of a computer programmer. This marks a long way from 1992, when she was programmed to say "Math class is tough." While Barbie will keep her inhuman body, she adds a binary code t-shirt, a laptop, and a Bluetooth headset to her outfit. While this may mark improvement in a field where female participation has been dwindling,  Caroline McCarthy at CNET writes, "being a woman in technology is about more than picking out a pair of cute pink glasses to match your iPhone case." [Bits]

GRAND OPENING: The Cut's Style Blog

Aware of the increasing irrelevance of my fashion posts to the rest of this politically-focused blog, I had decided to create a new blog for my fashion ramblings. Don't worry, it will be über-professional; so professional, in fact, that I'll have to stop using the word über.

Avatar is China's Bad Wake-Up Call

Avatar, director James Cameron's fantastical 3-D epic, has done amazingly well in the international box office, earning about $2.21 billion. And it will probably have done equally well in the Chinese box office as well, if Chinese officials had not yanked the 2-D version from theaters. While China claims it was, as Asia Times Online reported, "drawing audiences away from the officially approved film Confucius," Western audiences are claiming that it is due to a striking metaphor to the government land-grabs in China. Since a law passed in 1991 China has been able to take property away from people, causing riots and cries of protest. Avatar, since it is a movie, ends happily, but can it end happily for Chinese citizens? Yes, apparently, since their protests of the movie being ripped from screens was heard and Avatar is back in theaters.

Palin and Tea Parties

Google images

The headlines “Tea Party Draws Hundreds to Participate” or “Patriots Defy Government” don’t necessarily seem to fit with our modern age. Indeed, some would even deem such publications anachronistic by nature. However, they actually describe events from the last year rather than the famous act of protest that took place in Boston more than 200 years ago. Today’s modern-day “Tea Partiers” are members of a far-right grassroots organization dedicated to a purer American republic, a return to the principles of democracy as set forth by the founding fathers. The popular organization Tea Party Patriots describes their own mission statement as: “The impetus for the Tea Party movement is excessive government spending and taxation. Our mission is to attract, educate, organize, and mobilize our fellow citizens to secure public policy with our three core values of Fiscal Responsibility, Constitutionally Limited Government, and Free Markets.” Drawing thousands of members to regional organizations across the country, the Tea Party movement has gained traction over the last year in response to President Obama’s deficit spending and costly legislative agendas including TARP and healthcare reform. As the Tea Party movement’s leadership as well as a band of loyal followers gathered in Nashville, Tennessee beginning February 5th for a national conference, this once small band of conservatives staging ironic protests has now become a political force in terms of fundraising, mobilization, and volunteer organization.

Announcing at the beginning of their conference the formation of a political action committee (PAC) labeled “Ensuring Liberty,” Tea Party organizers are preparing themselves for a massive fundraising drive with campaign management potential in support of approved candidates across the United States. Tea Party spokesman Mark Skoda remarked in the New York Times with regard to his organization’s expansion into the financial arena of American politics, “Let us not be naïve here. The notion of holding up signs does not get people elected.” Given such a vehement statement, it is easy to see how some pundits have characterized the apparent rise to power of the Tea Party movement as potentially beginning a new age in American politics marked by a powerful third-party. While such ideas remain, for the most part, speculation and are even denied by organizers, the radical swing of the Republican Party to the far-right is clear. Take for instance the primary loss of New York assemblywoman, Dede Scozzafava, who, though a self-proclaimed Republican was attacked by a third-party Conservative candidate who split the republican vote. Along with Tea Party radicals and even the rise of Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin to prominence, the Republican Party does seem to be establishing a new political base in the far-far-right.

Actually, the intersection of Tea Party supporters and so-called “Palin-Republicans” is closer than you might think. Palin, who was amassed an impressive number of speaking engagements since her loss to President Obama in November 2008, spoke at the Nashville organizing conference February 6th—reportedly a main factor in the over $500 admission fees to the conference. Now directly influencing 1.3 million Facebook fans on a daily basis as well as endorsing Republican candidates across the United States and writing the occasional newspaper column, Palin is positioning herself for an unknown but assuredly successful future. Recently contracted as an analyst for Fox News, Palin is fueled by daily briefings from an experienced political staff that has remained with her following the 2008 Presidential campaign. The New York Times writes of Palin’s popularity that, “Ms. Palin represents a new breed of unelected public figures operating in an environment in which politics, news media, and celebrity are fused as never before.”

The question then remains whether or not the Tea Party movement and the ascension of Sarah Palin to a yet-to-be-defined role in conservative politics illustrates a broader trend among the American people. Are Americans simply more “Republican” then they were in 2008? Did the election of Republican Scott Brown to the late Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat represent a referendum on President Obama’s healthcare program? Personally, I feel that they demonstrate two separate things: a growing pragmatism across the country and the failure of Democrats to effectively market their agendas.

Facing unemployment hovering around ten percent and a growing distrust of Wall Street investors, I believe most Americans are retreating to what is seemingly a fiscally-minded party without taking the time to research the actual policy positions espoused by the candidates. Granted, some will always believe in the theory of tax cuts after tax cuts to stimulate the economy. However, an overwhelming fraction of economists agree that the deficit spending President Obama pushed through Congress to combat this recession is exactly what an economy as large as ours requires, in fact, Nobel Prize-winning economist and professor Paul Krugman has even declared that he believes TARP to have been too limited. The American populace forgets that Reaganomics has not led this country to prominence on the world stage. In fact, the most economically stable period in recent history was under the Clinton administration. The presidency of George W. Bush alone can serve as a glaring indicator that Republican administrations that pledge to cut costs and give money back to “the people” are in fact successful.

Secondly, it appears that Democrats across the board are failing to instill in Americans the reasons their agendas are necessary. They have not connected on a personal level to the electorate in order to persuade them of the absolute necessity of universal healthcare. Gubernatorial candidates in New Jersey and Virginia were unable to sell economic efforts on the part of national democrats to revive a sluggish job outlook. However, I still do not believe that all is lost for the Democratic Party. Is it incredibly important that Democratic agendas succeed, at least partially, before the 2012 Midterm elections? Yes. Is there time for at least a moderate recovery? Yes. In my opinion at least the country has a lot more too lose in the face of rising conservative banter from Ms. Palin and the Tea Partiers than from the current Democratic administration. Limiting the rights of women, eliminating the power of the federal government, and ignoring the division of church and state Sarah Palin could be a much wore President than Obama anyday.