Category Archives: Celebrity

Crashing The Trash House

Barack Obama, Celebrity, Etiquette, Pop-Culture

TRASH people crash the White House. So what? The place is packed with nasty, noisome parasites. An extra pair makes no difference. At least not to me. Therefore, I’m unexercised by the specter of Tareq and Michaele Salahi frolicking with Rham, Barack, and Biden. There’s something apropos in a couple of reality-show exhibitionists brazenly elbowing their way uninvited into a party of ponces.

This is a party thrown by a president who was launched by the Queen of Kitsch (Oprah). This is the place where Bono came to petition Bush for loot. Before him, Clinton used the space for his nefarious dealings. All in all, from the White House are issued shake-down schemes that make Bernie Madoff look like “a mere babe in grand larceny boot camp.” So it’s entirely fitting that a nation of reality-show viewers should have representatives at the Trash House who themselves “have left an extensive paper trail in federal bankruptcy and state court filings.”

You get the drift: the White House has long since lost the dignity of the office. Trash people crashing a party there completes the picture.

As for security: The president has very few real risks; the huffing and puffing over the alleged danger he was exposed to is just that: a whole lot of hooey.

What you can be sure of is that heads will role over this faux paux. The responsible parties will be made to fall on their swords way faster than will the cogs in the military machine who facilitated the eventual death of 13 servicemen and women at Fort Hood, at the hand of the jihadi Major Nidal Hasan.

Update II: Wear A Turban, Not A Tux (Transparency)

Barack Obama, Celebrity, China, Democrats, Foreign Policy, Government

Wikipedia: “A state dinner is a dinner or banquet paid by a government [read: taxpayers] and hosted by a head of state in his or her official residence in order to renew and celebrate diplomatic ties between the host country and the country of a foreign head of state or head of government who was issued an invitation.”

In the tradition of celebrating “crap countries” (Ali G. vernacular), BO’s first state dinner is in honor of Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

Why not? One of BO’s first major addresses as president was delivered in “Egypt’s capital, early in June. There, the president prostrated himself before the Muslim world, offering up prolix praise for the religion of peace.”

President Bush hosted a glittery gala for the same Singh only four years ago.

You the taxpayer most certainly cannot press your nose against the White House windows to get a glimpse of the well-fed, celebrity guests. You’ll have to be content to read about them HERE.

To give credit where its due, when asked “about the tense relationship between India and Pakistan,” Obama said “it was not the role of the United States to intervene and solve such problems.”

That’s all well and good, but then what is he doing beefing up American presence in Afghanistan?

Update I: On the other hand, here’s the neoconservative foreign-policy perspective on Indian-American bond from The Heritage Foundation, chief of which is “the Indo-Pakistani regional rivalry,” terrorism, and, of course, an acknowledgment of the Chinese threat:

“President Obama rightly took advantage of an opportunity to reaffirm ties to India and recognize the U.S.-India partnership as one of the “defining partnerships of the 21st century.” The two countries now need to follow through on their leaders’ pronouncements on a range of issues including education, trade, health, energy, defense, nuclear nonproliferation, space, and the environment.” …

“President Obama hopefully took the opportunity in his private meeting with Singh to provide reassurances that the U.S. is attuned to Indian strategic concerns vis-à-vis China, particularly their ongoing border disputes and Chinese efforts to extend its influence into South Asia. Over the last three years, China has increasingly pressured India over their disputed borders by questioning Indian sovereignty over the state of Arunachal Pradesh and by stepping up probing operations along different parts of their shared frontier.”

Update II (Nov. 25): Transparency. Don’t expect it. Yesterday, the adoring sycophants at CNN—in particular, Anderson Cooper’s fittingly dim sidekick—were salivating for footage from BO’s party, only to be told by a fawning colleague that the administration was not allowing the press to take pics of the prez and his party. Feasts and festivities amid hunger and hardship across the country don’t make for the best optics.

Onward & Downward The Blond Squad

Celebrity, Conservatism, Etiquette, Feminism, Gender, Intelligence, Media

As was said over these pixelated pages, “brains are a hindrance to advancement in the age of the idiot; being a lightweight blond is helpful.” The blond squad is everywhere in American politics. Not even the libertarian faction—my own—has spared us the specter of a dime-a-dozen dames. Dumbing down is to the detriment of all.

Watch this clip of the cretin Carrie Prejean lord it over Larry King (who, I must say, behaves demurely and perfectly politely).

Can you say pretentious, plastic cow?

Whoopee Goldberg is correct. Here’s another empty head, Elisabeth Hasselbeck, defending the trail-blazing Prejean.

Blond-squad watch:

“Conservatives Add Another Blond To The Brain Trust”

A Cow Is Born

Elizabeth Hasselbeck

Updated: Bring Back The Silent Steely Type

Celebrity, Feminism, Film, Gender, Hollywood, Pop-Culture, The Zeitgeist

Steve Sailer: “After the Tom Cruise generation of boyish, small, and energetic stars, it’s refreshing to see a Golden Age of Hollywoodish leading man like tall, dark, and handsome Jon Hamm, who plays creative director Don Draper as the strong, silent type” in “the cable period drama Mad Men.”

Too true, but bless Steve: In an article about “Mad Men” the series, this is one of the few mentions the MM get.

I’ve watched Mad Men a couple of times, mainly for the Draper character. He’s perfect. As is evident from his tender affair with a teacher, the viewer recently discovered that this complex character (now that’s a novelty) would probably not be quite such an incorrigible philanderer were his beautiful wife not so icy and hostile. Poverty, military service, and a marriage of necessity—these are all interesting facets revealed recently about the Draper character.

I watch it, when it doesn’t get too tedious, for the nostalgia the production triggers—nostalgia for the days when women had soothing, soft voices, spoke in complete sentences, and seemed so much smarter and refined than their modern-day, emancipated shrew sisters.

One more thing: The Cruise generation has been followed by a slew of androgynous, unisex actors supposedly in possession of the Y Chromosome. For example, Ryan Phillippe. Yuk. Unwatchable. Or Leonardo DiCaprio; a fair actor, but frightfully undeveloped physically. I hope Hamm makes a lot of films, thrillers, especially. Maybe a couple of new-generation “Dirty Harry” flicks.

Steve’s spot on: “the show relentlessly exposes the sexism of pre-feminism men like Don Draper, seemingly for today’s women to cluck over.”

MadMan_med

Update (Oct 31): Oh for heaven’s sake: “Perfect” to describe the Draper character is meant to compliment his dashing looks, manly demeanor, and complexity. There is a lot of good about him.

Asserted and assimilated by men in the Comments Section is the feminist truism whereby saying that a man would be a good husband if he only had a loving wife is an excuse for the man’s innate badness.

Given the profile of the average woman—leftist, whining, romance-reading, Oprah-watching idiot—it makes perfect sense to feel sorry for a lot of men.

I have only to watch couples purchasing homes on the “House and Garden” channel to marvel at why more men don’t stray. The average woman shopping for a home:

“The dog would love this yard. This yard is not large enough for the dog.” Here’s a fem checking over a $1.3 million home: “my couch will go well in this living room; no, I can’t fit that grand sofa I purchased at Target in here.”

And I’m saying to Sean: “The agent is kind of cute. She gets that you don’t purchase a home to accommodate your ugly old furniture. Or dog! He should go for her.”

It’s also possible that TV reflects the worst of America.

However, certain verbose individuals should take a cue or two from the silent steely type. Never shutting up; never censoring yourself—spewing forth with every infarct of a thought the misfiring brain produces: now that is bloody off-putting.

Draper does not talk a lot. My favorite people ration speech.

An exchange with writer Rob Stove produced these BAB memories/thoughts some time ago:

“When my daughter was seven-years old, her school assigned her the task of describing her parents. On her father, daddy’s darling heaped unrealistic praise (the tables have since turned. Excellent!). For her affection-starved mother, the little lady reserved a matter-of-fact appraisal. ‘My mother,’ she wrote in her girlie cursive, ‘is a quiet woman who speaks mainly when she has something to say.’ (Rob’s riposte: ‘if everyone rationed speech thus, the entire mainstream punditocracy would cease to exist.’ Amen.)”

Pinpointed by my perceptive chatterbox of a child, this economy explains the lack of gush in my writing. Cutting and slashing at a column are one of the best things a writer can do. That’s my advice to budding writers (or people who believe they are writers). Slash mercilessly.