Something Requisitely Witty and Urbane

Say Hello To....

I've linked to StefiSpice before, but it's been a while.  Stephanie Sparer (Has No Life) is one of those blogs that I sometimes forget about (mostly because she has no RSS feed), but when I check back with her, she never disappoints.

I started reading her as she was finishing up her senior year in a Southern California high school, and her writing ability exceeded her years.  Now she's started college, and her stuff is just getting better.  Here's a good example:

I have a few friends who like to act as my tour guide in the Museum of Human Sexuality, my docents, if you will.

“I’ve only known him about three weeks, but I really, really like him,” D smiles from the G4 next to me in the computer lab.
“Enough to sleep with him?" I ask. I am Miss Morals. She giggles and turns red. I have my answer. “How was it?”
For the next twenty minutes I get far more information than I need or care to hear, and D exudes a confidence I could only hope for as she explains positions and different ways to moan to really “get him off”. She’s only been laid once “and a half… kinda”, but the girl is ready to re-write The Joy of Sex for the Myspace generation.
“It was…” she trails off at a loss for words.
“That good, huh?”
D just laughs, “Yeah,” then adds, “Well, except for that almost second time.”
How does she even know if it was good? Who is she comparing it to? That fantasy of Brad Pitt she’s had since she was thirteen?

F is just as bad. She’s been seeing her boyfriend just over a year, but over the summer dropped the Jesus from her life and found “OH GOD!”.

Or at least, that’s how she told it to me. Bad puns and all.

“I used to be like, a good little girl and go to church and I was in youth groups, but Scott kept telling me what we were missing out on,” she shrugs. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that her “adorable” boyfriend tricked her into losing her virginity and then got her addicted to sex.

“My boyfriend and I get a work out.” F giggles. I giggle with her, pretending like I know exactly what she’s talking about. And I do, sorta, because I’ve seen Sex and the City.

Anyway, she's definately worth the read, and I've added her, in long overdue fashion, to my sidebar.  Check her out.

Culturally Charged

Bill Clinton, from Davos Switzerland:

Klaus Schwab, the forum's founder and organizer, asked Clinton to advise the next U.S. president, noting that this person might either be married to Clinton or listening in the audience _ an apparent reference to Sen. John McCain, seated in the first row along with Microsoft's Bill Gates and other invitees.

"In this world full of culturally charged issues I think we should make it clear that Senator McCain and I are not married," Clinton joked as the audience burst into laughter.

This zinger aside, Clinton continues to prove that he was the real Great Communicator.  Read the whole article.

Fun With Compilation Albums

Am I the only one that thinks "Don't Speak Ill of the Dead" sounds like it could be pretty good?

The Passion of the Colbert

Ann Althouse pointed to this interview with Stephen Colbert, but only after she has a pretty interesting discussion with herself about comedy and the way it handles religion.

It's more difficult to be comical around a subject you respect, and working through a difficulty makes what you do more interesting. By contrast, when George Carlin jokes about religion, his comedy on the subject feels cheap and thin, because it's just flat-out obvious that he hates religion. I'd much rather listen to Colbert on the subject, and not just because I'm not entertained by hate. Colbert has to struggle with a problem, and he chooses to make comedy out of a subject that is complicated for him. I love that.

Of course, there's a distinct difference: Colbert is playing a character whereas Carlin always played himself.  Ann goes to great lengths to point out Colbert's personal statements on his faith in interviews before, and she's right, it does provide an interesting insight into Stephen Colbert as a person, but it doesn't somehow make his comedy more enlightened.  Carlin's comedy plays thin now because he's no longer funny, but back in the day, he was lambasting sacred cows.  He was the first of the Post-PC comedians, he just happened to do it in a Pre-PC world.

I don't disagree with Ann, but I think she's, perhaps, making too fine a point.

Filibustering

John Kerry has announced today that he will lead a filibuster of Samuel Alito's nomination.

I mentioned, during the John Roberts hearings, that though I disagreed with his politics, I was more than impressed with his answers, and his obvious mastery of constitutional politics.  I did not feel the same about Alito.  I found him to be evasive, running most often from himself, self-deprecating to a fault ("I'm no expert on antitrust law"), and none of that even mentions that I oppose his politics.

But I'm not sure a filibuster is a great idea.  This seems to be an action outside of any public desire.  It will, very likely, fail (I'm not sure it will even pass cloture), and it's failure will be bad for the headway that Democrats have made in the past year.

For John Kerry, however, it seems to be an "all-in" gamble.  It is fairly apparent that Kerry fancies himself a political resurrection in 2008.  Leading the filibuster that stops a weakened president's nominee would reestablish his image as a party leader.

But failure, to me, reaffirms to the public at large that he is no longer affective, and losing that image hog-ties itself to his presidential aspirations.

In order for Kerry to survive this, he has to make salient, legitimate points that opposing Alito is the correct choice, not for Democrats, but for America.  He'll need great speechwriters (better than he had in the campaign), and he'll need to throw fire that will end up on the evening news and stick in the public mind.  We're talking "thousand points of light", "you're no Jack Kennedy" territory here.

This seems, on its surface, to be a near impossible battle.

Bullies

In the "catching up, if only to mention a well-crafted phrase" category, eRobin brings this gem, from Molly Ivins, to our attention:

War brings out the patriotic bullies. In World War I, they went around kicking dachshunds because they were "German dogs." They did not, however, go around kicking German shepherds.

Scourging

Another entry in my "catching up on the blogs" series, SRWU's friend, Aldahlia has an interesting post up from Monday:

The couple of minutes of the movie in the documentary are full-on pornographic, and they pretty much confirm my opinion that The Passion was to the Crucifixion, what Saving Private Ryan was to WWII. That is, if you are the type that doesn't really empathetically think about the things you hear, then maybe the visualization will actually hit you in the heart. I have to wonder about the kind of person that claimed to be Christian before seeing The Passion, but came away from the movie with re-newed faith. I mean, it's not like the scourging story is sunshine and cupcakes. What kind of Christian can keep thier "eyes on the Lord," and still need a Mel Gibson snuff film to drive the point home? I don't get it. I didn't grow up in a Christian household. For the most part, the only times I actually heard the Beating > Nailed > Rock > Ascension story was at school. Maybe, your average Christian only really thought about it while pigging out on sacrilicious chocolate crosses on Easter?

Her reading of The Passion, without having seen it, is much like my reading of it having seen it.  Don't know that I have much to add, except to point out that it is some really good writing.  Go read.

Post-PC

In part of my blog catch up, the newly redesigned Andrew Sullivan, last Thursday:

I'd put "South Park" firmly in the post-PC category, as well as Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert and Dan Savage. When Colbert asked me in all seriousness on his show last Tuesday, "When did you choose to be gay?" no one believed for a second that he was anti-gay. Everyone in the twenty-something audience laughed. This is all a great development, and a generational one - a sign that the humor-free PC '90s have melted into something much funnier, much more honest, and yet also inclusive. The other key figure, I think, is Dave Chapelle, a comic genius who has somehow managed to create comedy that is ferociously close to the edge politically and in clumsier hands could be discounted as bigoted or dealing in the crudest of stereotypes. And yet, we're all in on the joke - black and white, male and female, straight and gay, stoner or crackhead.

I'm fond of using a Sara Silverman anecdote as an example of this.  A few years ago (I'm not sure how long, but she ended up getting into an argument with the president of the Asian Defamation League about it on Politically Correct, so it's been a while), Sarah Silverman told a story on Conan about getting jury duty, and really wanting to get out of it (at which point she issues the genius "The only funny part about jury duty is the 'doodie' part").  A friend suggested that she write something outrageously racist like "I hate chinks" on her questionnaire.  Silverman, not wanting to be mean however, decided to write "I love chinks" instead.

After telling this story, the Asian Defamation League issued a release condemning her use of "chink" as a racist comment, and blasted her for having used it.  This led to Maher inviting the president and Silverman on PI, etc, etc.

The point that the ADL missed was that her joke was about racism.  Call it politically correct deconstructionism.  A joke which, at its core, points out the extreme power we imbue these words with when they are, in fact, just words while still acknowledging their hurtful nature is not only a well-crafted joke, but a socially aware one.

I'm as sensitive to the insensitivity of language and the offensive nature it can have as any other white, middle class male, but there is a point when we have to realize that we can't talk about the underlying issues which make the language offensive if we are simply not allowed to talk about the underlying issues because the language has been made offensive.

It's why I think people like Howard Stern, who can spend 2 hours talking about lesbian sex, Dave Chappelle, who can spend 2 hours talking about race in a racially insensitive way, and Jon Stewart, who can spend a 5 minute segment talking about that tender area between the scrotum and the anus, are touching on more than just ribald humor.  Their edginess doesn't come simply from their willingness to use shocking, potentially offensive language (that legwork has already been done by the Lenny Bruces and Richard Pryors of the world), but because they use the shocking and potentially offensive language to underline the fact that the language is shocking in the first place, and there is a reason.

I for one, will welcome our new, politically incorrect comedic overlords.

Checking In

I promise that I'll come out of my self-induced blog coma in short order.  The combination of Girlfriend (a welcome change to the norm of my everyday life), starting school and stopping managing has rendered blogging a lower priority than it used to (UPDATED to mention that I am in no way blaming my lack of blogging ON my girlfriend, only on the fact that having a girlfriend has made me... nevermind.. I'm just lazy).  I do miss it, however, and will be back soon.

One of the things I missed in my absense, however was this:

After almost exactly six years as a blogger, about three of them at this domain, I believe it’s time for me to bow out. My dedication to my writing here has waned and I am tired of the oddly daunting responsibility of owning a website that runs significant traffic with my name attached. Running this blog takes far more time and dedication than I’d like to admit, and it’s time and dedication I can no longer afford to expend now that I am out of college. This is a decision I made some time ago and grappled with up until I hit publish on this post.

This is, as most have probably already heard, written by Lauren of Feministe.  Lauren played a particularly significant role in the life of SRWU, when she asked me to guestblog for her during a busy time in her life when blogging didn't have the priority it normally did.  Through that stint guestblogging, I garnered a level of exposure that I hadn't achieved up to that point, and it opened the door to a much wider audience than I'd ever expected.  To this day, some of the posts I wrote on her site were some of the pieces I'm most proud of.  I also met some of my favorite bloggers over there.

Lauren is a thoughtful, distinctive and honest writer - traits which are only matched by the generosity she has shown to many of us, both in sharing her space and in bringing to a wider audience the things that people write in their own spaces.

Lauren, thanks for what you've contributed to the blogosphere and, more specifically, the opportunity you gave me.  I, for one, will sincerely miss your voice.

Taint taint a word, cause your momma's gonna faint...

Via Ty, who directs us to the funniest Daily Show clip I've seen in a while.