I worry that this might set a dangerous precedent, or result in a President Omarosa, but it'd be the logical next step for the evening...
This mantle is several sizes too large!
But Santorum.
Where to begin? I wrote about this a few months back, when Santorum made the extremely well-advised choice to attempt to use this as a fundraising tool. Here is the breakdown of what happens when you send an email out saying, "Hey, there's a strange advice columnist who is bullying me on the Internet and has made my name quite literally mud! Send money!" 1) Everyone Googles you, even people who had no idea that you had a Google problem. 2) Possibly some of them send money, but that visual will remain with them as long as they live.
This is really one of the worst things you can do to a candidate. You could see when someone was surging because he or she would suddenly be in Google trends. First Bachmann, then Cain, and now Newt.
This will not happen to Santorum, because everyone will Google him and murmur, "Eugh" and decide to give that Huntsman another once-over.
Santorum the neologism, in spite of his best efforts, is still beating out Santorum the non-neologism in the google annals.
But the flip side of this was that Dan Savage appeared strangely obsessed with Santorum in contrast to the rest of America, who ignored him unless he showed up outside our homes with his family asking if we wouldn't mind hearing him out for a minute or two.
TLDR: Funny? I think it's funny, if only to the extent that anything scatological is funny, and in the Hey-Look-We're-Actually-Getting-Away-With-This form of stunt-funny.
I wonder, though, if this will ever be able to happen again. It only works because it started years before he thought of running for president and the term was so memorably, oddly specific.
Get an early lunch and go off to work on my novel!
Actually, there's a mortification of riches right now, so I spend the entire day alternating yelling at the screen and typing frenetically.
Some think it's more difficult when we're living so close to the edge, but I like it; it's fun trying to figure out just how little you have to push to point out the absurdity. Sometimes all you have to do is quote people verbatim.
You've delved even further than I did!
Question for everyone: is it puppetist or something to conflate Sesame Street characters and muppets? I keep wanting to, but I don't want to be the one Kate Monster yells at.
I'd watch that! He'd be terrified of the color red and keep yelling about how to identify ducks by their duck-like walking and quacking.
I did enjoy the brief Muppet Movie montage clip of Sam the Eagle working at Fox News...
A friend who is close to Glenn Beck told me that Beck was secretly given a movie script that confirms the Muppets will in fact do a revival of The Battleship Potemkim. Can you confirm this?
This appears to be an accusation of private, alleged consensual conduct between adults - a subject matter which is not a proper subject of inquiry by the media or the public. No individual, whether a private citizen, a candidate for public office or a public official, should be questioned about his or her private sexual life. The public's right to know and the media's right to report has boundaries and most certainly those boundaries end outside of one's bedroom door.
It is not only OK but strongly encouraged! That's great!
Last week you asked about ridiculous Christmas songs. I don't know if you've ever visited X-Entertainment (not a pr0n site, I promise), but Matt has a Christmas jukebox that plays lots of festive favorites, such as O Come All Ye Faithful-Twisted Sister I Hate Christmas-Oscar the Grouch The Hat I got for Christmas is too Big-Speedy Gonzalez I figured it might be up your alley. I'd say it's in your carthouse, but some other chatter got indignant the last time I used that word.
Oh no, the first thing it plays is "Simply Having A Wonderful Christmas Time!" But I'm enjoying the rest.
I have been listening to all 200 of the covers of Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas available on online radio in order to find an upbeat rock cover I heard two years ago and have been unable to locate since. It's been slightly rough going, but I've learned a lot about arrangement as an art.
Did you just conflate Yoda with the mup-- yes, I know Frank Oz is behind both of them, but that still sounds pretty muppetist to me.
Ooh, that's tough. He reminds me of the Count, if only because once you start him off it's difficult to get him to halt.
Relatedly, here's a video that has been making the rounds lately. I didn't find it that funny on its face, but it's kind of morbidly hilarious when you reflect that one of the participants has been deceased for over a decade and the other one is running for president...
That's a question I have to ask as I stare into the mirror each morning. This is before my daily ritual (it's only been three days, but so far, so good) of breaking down into tears and murmuring, "Why, Herman, why?"
Then again, now I have to work for my keep rather than simply transcribing Cain's remarks, always an exciting challenge.
I only find them when I've invited people over and they sit in underused chairs and I hear the faint crack of vinyl breaking in half.
It's been described as "legal, but unusual." I have no idea why it would take $100,000 when all you have to do, in my experience, is drop your laptop down one flight of stairs, but maybe Romney knows something I don't.
Their headline (or a close approximation of it): Extramarital affair ends presidential campaign of man who didn't know China has nuclear weapons.
I miss that man so much!
Yes, and puppets made from recycled paper bags are stealing the jobs of America's cloth puppets!
Okay, good! I knew Kermit used to go both ways, but I wasn't sure about anyone else!
I love that because it's the Emperor's New Quote -- if you say, "Well, actually, he sounds smart to me," you're automatically identifying yourself as Paul Krugman's idea of a stupid man.
I did see that he'd co-written the screenplay... Hey, if it worked for Woody Allen!
I think he's endearingly cheery!
One of my favorite lines in the Muppet movie was the throw-away line from Kermit to Fozzie, "Gee, your life seemed very different in the Christmas cards." Maybe Segel was responsible for that one!
Well, 9-9-9 is Cain's trademark number, and the recent flurry of scandal around him suggests that he might be more than happy to perform a breast examination...
Plus I'm just glad the numbers have found work again, even if it's not in the venue they might have imagined.
It's a toss-up between Newt's avoirdupois and his height, but I think he'd be Douglas.
I think they are expecting Bachmann to show up and argue for slavery, but she has demurred, pointing out that that was just one petition one time and that she didn't actually mean that slavery preserved two-parent families, which is wise of her.
Perhaps we can revise this muppet to be red-green colorblind so he can be equally upset all the time at what will appear to him only as shades of gray.
Maybe she wants them to make much of time. That takes discipline!
Kermit and Yoda are perfectly free to get married, as long as they marry Michele Bachmann.
Oh hey, what a relevant link!
Then again, Mulan also had a cricket, and all it did was encourage her to cross-dress.
I'm so glad you fell off the Oscar Wilde wagon. So what candidate does this describe best? "Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation."
Oof, that's a devastating quote! I think I saw that in one of George Will's Romney columns...
"I am trying to live up to my China," by the way, is Huntsman.
That's one of my favorite justifications of anything, ever, with the possible exception of the Marion Barry classic "[Beach] set me up!" After it surfaced I've had to spend a lot of time consumed by worry that I do not love my country enough.
I did a hair recap of the candidates earlier (Cain never ranked high, so I think the rankings are safe) but I don't think I ranked them, so gird your loins for some controversy!
1) Huntsman. Sure, it branded him as the Photoshoot Candidate, but it's distractingly magnificent.
2)Romney. Consistently excellent. Less excellently consistent, to the point that even his barber has suggested shaking it up.
3) Bachmann. Glossy and professional.
Perry. He's moved down a bit because he seems to be involuntarily greying.
Gingrich. Not terrific, but stately; a reassuring 90s throwback.
Santorum. It's a bit flat.
Ron Paul. I mean no disrespect when I characterize this as "grandpa hair."
Herman Cain. Or rather, N/A.
Ha! +5
I think a bag of frozen peas --
Oh, more ridiculous?
Some have suggested Snooki, but as a New York Times bestselling authoress I think she would have too much gravitas.
Perhaps we could get some fictional characters to moderate the debate? I know that Donald Trump has spent the majority of his life attempting to become a fictional character through sheer force of will, but if we brought in, say, Darth Vader or Kermit or Yoda, there would at least be the potential for someone to be lightsabered or felted within an inch of his life.
You ought to alert Fox to that! See, it's not all a screed! Wayne and Wanda are there!
That sounds like a good plan. I think we need more purple muppets! I was attempting to construct some sort of metaphor about red vs blue muppets, but Elmo kept coming along and wrecking it...
So often the case!
This reminds me of one of the greatest things I've ever seen!
Quick order of business: next week, is there any interest in a Choose Your Own Adventure chat? An actual, honest-to-Betsy, "Behold the door to the left! Behold the door to the right!" Choose Your Own Adventure chat? I think it might be fun...
I have a lot of mainly angry thoughts about Lady Gaga after watching her video for Marry The Night, which compared unfavorably to that scene in a Clockwork Orange where they force Alex to watch images of horror because at least in A Clockwork Orange those images are accompanied by good music.
But, hey, it might add some spice to the other end of the ticket...
Worth a try! His daughters have already gone rogue, and they seem wildly popular...
Yes!
Or a Benjamin Harrison reenactor I once met at the Benjamin Harrison house in Indianapolis. Did you know they have those? They're like Taft impersonators but less, you know, mainstream.
Or we could get a psychic to summon the Founders and have them host the debate, although that might depress everyone involved.
Oh, but the War on Christmas is one of my favorite traditions of the Holiday Season! It's second only to Eggnog and Things That Are Supposed To Taste Like Eggnog But Don't Really.
Oh, that's true! But they're occasionally art critics, so who knows...
Glad to help! I actually still need a tree decorating theme, since all my friends suggested was, "Uh, Star Wars, like everything else in your apartment" and I felt like I was being typecast... I was going to put a red jacket on it and call it the Royal Tannenbaum, but that seemed too quirky.
What's worse is I went out and bought the book.
It was a while ago, though. The title is "A Shore Thing." It's got some intensely vivid prose, in the sense that the sight of a dog's head split open with a meat cleaver is intensely vivid.
And Tinky Winky, speaking of the Culture Wars!
Oh, huzzah! That may have been one of the sneakily smartest innovations the Founders came up with! Sure, 40 is the new 20. But the requirement that the president be drawn from the Likely Unhip category is a nice, if ultimately not wildly useful, buffer.
"And Dan Savage," Rick Santorum says, helpfully.
"Why?"
"Just Google me. I mean, er, don't Google me."
It's Atlasphere, the dating site for fans of Ayn Rand!
I used to know one, but the last time I saw him he was out talking in the rain for several hours in an inadequate jacket and I haven't seen him since.
Two Lady Gagas?
*In retrospect I may be a little unclear as to how this age restriction works.
Thank you! I'm taking it one day at a time!
After this and a few other accords, I have arbitrarily decided we'll give it a squeeze, see if it works!
It ain't over 'til the fat lady comes forward with allegations of sexual harassment...
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