Category Archives: Celebrity

Don’t Go Changing, ‘Mad Men’

Barack Obama, Celebrity, Education, English, Feminism, Film, History, Hollywood

Why of course “Mad Men” is superb television. It is produced in Canada, by Lionsgate Television, whose studios I’d pass almost daily when I lived in North Vancouver, British Columbia. Canada makes quality, understated films.

“Mad Men” is a “cable period drama” about an advertising agency on Madison Avenue, Manhattan (New York), easily the most magnificent place I’ve ever been to.

The nostalgia the production triggers is a nostalgia for the days when women did not look and sound like Meghan McCain—had soothing, soft voices, spoke in complete sentences, and seemed so much smarter and refined than their modern-day, emancipated shrew sisters. Men were men, unapologetic, bold, unafraid and purposeful.

Don Draper fell in love with just such a lady. Or so its seemed. It was all so dreamy and romantic.

But all is not perfect. The lovely Megan Draper has begun to sound whiny and silly. Like her 2012 sisters, a good deal of sibilance has crept into her once pleasant voice.

Cringe factor rising. The not-to-be-mistaken current usage, “I feel like,” has crept into the dialogue.

HELP!

Bitchy Betty Draper (otherwise played by a very convincing actress) said, “I feel like something or another” in the course of a weight-loss coven. Others on the show have repeated this linguistic barbarity. I’m listening to the tapes of that great First Lady Jacky Kennedy in the car. Believe me, no one said “I feel like” in the 1960s.

Another recent, Mad-Men English abomination which gave me the shudders: “Like [a pregnant pause follows], I know that…”

Oh, and Peggy Olson holds her pen as do members of America’s much younger Idiocracy. And that includes our president, BHO, although footage of this sign of illiteracy has been removed from the Internet (something that happens all too often).

Adults of that era were taught as kids to hold a pencil on the first day of school. You graduated to a pen after perfecting your cursive in pencil.

Don Draper is, of course, still divine.

UPDATED: A Toilet Flushed; Kim Kardashian Flashed a Smile

Barack Obama, Celebrity, Hollywood, Journalism, Media, The Zeitgeist

In a spoof on the president’s hot-mic malfunctions, BHO engages in weak banter with an aide in the next room. A toilet flushes, and it becomes clear that Barack Obama was supposed to have been relieving himself during the “witty” repartee, which was overheard by the rapt crowd attending the 2012 annual White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner.

A repulsive sequence, befitting a revolting crowd: Jimmy Kimmel was seated with the First Couple; porn star Kardashian crowed in the crowd. The press itself is minimizing the cringe factor. After all, practically every anchor person on the networks began his broadcast by brandishing a personalized gold-embossed invitation. “See what a top dog I am?”

During the sickening specter, some of the most pretentious, worthless people in the country—in politics, journalism and entertainment—get together to revel in their ability to petition and curry favor with one another, usually to the detriment of the rest of us. The annual pimping of the office is nothing new. This low culture has been cultivated by successive administrations

Those gathered at the annual White House correspondents’ dinner are not the country’s natural aristocracy. Rather, this is a bunch of people who make their living pretending to be something they are not. Poseurs and parasites all.

Granted, actors do not coerce the citizenry to patronize their (mostly) lousy flicks. However, when they use their celebrity to push unconstitutional, naturally unlawful policies—then they are acting as enemies of the people. (Every time I turn around a “celebrity” is preaching and propagandizing for the leftist cause du jour.)

Like nothing else, the annual White House Correspondents’ Dinner is a mark of corrupt politics. The un-watchful dogs of the media have no business frolicking with the president and his minions. This is co-optation. And when did the phonies of Hollywood become a fixture in this event?

The toxic “tradition” began in 1920, and, as far as I know, is sponsored by THE WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENTS’ ASSOCIATION, which was formed in 1914 as a liaison between the press and the president.”

The event and the invited tell a great deal about the Association, its ethics and code of conduct.

UPDATE: Some of Kimmel’s jokes were really good. He was not as offensive as Wanda Sykes, who, in 2009, began her routine with some good material and then descended into vulgarity and sheer spite.

UPDATE II: Racial Rogering?

Celebrity, Homeland Security, Race, Racism, Terrorism

Amassed is a critical mass of images in which TSA workers, very often members of a protected species (a minority), are feeling up and humiliating white Americans. My naive, liberal-minded readers insist that absolutely no racial animus is involved in the ongoing rogering at the nation’s airports. Yet not one of these readers has risen to the challenge. And it is this:

Send on footage of TSA agents [black or white] frisking black sisters, black tots, and elderly and crippled black old ladies. We understand probabilities. Blacks, at 12 percent of the population, represent a smaller subset of travelers than whites. But nobody has shown me that, when they travel, blacks too are subjected to the same violative searches by the many brothers and sister of the TSA as are whites.

The latest famous invertebrate to subject himself to this ritual is actor George Clooney.

MINORITY MOLESTER. Parents deliver a gorgeous little girl into the arms of another “minority” molester, who chooses to touch the child inappropriately. The parents look on—and are interviewed about it—instead of walking off. Where is Bill O’Reilly on “The Children”? The news anchor, idiot that she is, mouths that the TSA is following protocol, doing what she must. But this molester has a choice. She does not have to choose this tiny little child as her plaything.

UPDATE I: Weeping four-year-old girl accused of carrying a GUN by TSA officers after she hugged her grandmother while passing through security.

UPDATE II: “Family Misses Flight After TSA Gives Pat-Down To Girl With Cerebral Palsy.”.

As a mother—as a human being with a heart—it is particularly hard seeing children subjected to the cruelty of strangers. Watching footage of the kids down whose miniature trousers TSA goons have been reaching is heartbreaking.

As I advised in ‘It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp,’ “Footage of the victims is everywhere, but the agents—the stars in these horror films—remain nameless and faceless. Name, shame, and dissociate from them.”

“Saying ‘I’m a Socialist’ = Saying ‘I’m a Massive idiot'”

Britain, Capitalism, Celebrity, Fascism, Hollywood, Socialism

“About the only people who haven’t figured out that saying ‘I’m a socialist’ is the same as saying ‘I’m a massive idiot’ are Western academics and zillionaire celebrities.”

Nice, pithy blog post at ProfessorBainbridge.com, as to why “aging ex-supermodel Elle MacPherson,” who professes socialism, is known as “the Body” and not “the Brain.”

I disagree that the US and UK continue to enjoy capitalist economies, as Professor Bainbridge cheerily asserts, but his point about the stupidity of a well-rewarded celebrity class is well-taken (and well-made).

What MacPherson desperately needs is for the proto-angel from It’s a Wonderful Life to take her on a tour of what MacPherson’s life would have been like if she had been born in, say, East Germany or the Soviet Union in, say, 1955. Maybe they’d have time for a quick visit to the Gulag Archipelago. Or the angel could show her what her life would have been like if she had lived in Cambodia in the late 1970s.

Besides, we hear a lot about undue corporate influence on politics, but precious little of Hollywood’s access to the Idiocoracy in DC.