Notes on Pop Culture: New Flicks 'Friends With Kids' & 'Game Change'

I really liked Jennifer Westfeldt's new film, Friends With Kids about two best pals who decide to have a baby together, a movie in which Westfeldt starred, as well as wrote and directed.

In my review of the movie -- which also stars Adam Scott from Parks & Recreation and features Bridesmaids alums Maya Rudolph, Kristen Wiig, Jon Hamm and Chris O'Dowd-- I compared it to When Harry Met Sally, only with a whole lot more profanity and a bunch of kids running around. This comparison is a good thing because a) I love When Harry Met Sally and b) When Harry Met Sally is a classic. An excerpt of the review on CliqueClack Flicks:

"Friends With Kids is a sharp indie which offers insight, humor, heart and a really nasty Jon Hamm scene without ever veering into garden variety, rom-com slop territory. It's a film that sincerely dramatizes how parenting can alter a relationship and how wading through the happy, maddening and messy moments of child-rearing can make or break a couple.

. . . Amidst the occasional ugliness and bouts of heartbreak, Friends With Kids actually winds up delivering a charming message about parenting, romance and the joys of sharing a life with someone, even when your kid gets explosive diarrhea all over you and the wall. The parenting experience can forge a bond between partners . . . or send the fleeing in the opposite direction. It also puts to the test Billy Crystal's famous When Harry Met Sally adage, 'Men and women can't be friends because the sex part always gets in the way.'"

If you're in the mood for a funny and poignant film that takes a hard look at the impact of parenting on romance and relationships, this film is for you.

Meanwhile, HBO is premiering its original film Game Change this weekend. Your opinion of this rendition of Sarah Palin's selection as John McCain's running mate in the 2008 presidential campaign will depend upon your political leanings. If you're a Democrat and don't like Palin, you'll cackle throughout the film and have a blast watching her make gaffe after gaffe (oh, that Katie Couric interview) and see her admit that she didn't know why the United States had troops in Afghanistan. If you're a Republican and like Palin, though there are a few moments featuring the positives Palin brought to McCain's ticket (stupendous convention speech, solid debate performance, increased donations and huge bump in attendance at rallies), it's hard to overlook the film's meta-message that Game Change pounds home in between a handful of sympathetic Palin scenes: Palin had no business being picked; she was incompetent, emotionally unstable and, at times, imperious.

I've lamented on this blog on a number of occasions the negativity and condescension to which political women are subjected in the media and this movie is no exception to this unfortunate trend. But the fault lies in the source material, Game Change the book which villainized all the women in the book from Palin to Hillary Clinton, from Cindy McCain to Elizabeth Edwards. Only Michelle Obama emerged from that bestseller relatively unscathed.

That being said, Game Change's acting was top-notch. Julianne Moore was perfection and I didn't know Woody Harrelson had it in him to make me forget that it was Woody playing a high-powered political consultant. No matter your political leanings, Game Change is an entertaining ride, though if you're of the Republican/Palin fan ilk, you'll likely be indignantly fired up the movie's end. If you're of the mind that female politicians get a raw deal in the media, you may well be as fired up as the Republicans. My review of the film can be found here.

Image credit: Phillip V. Caruso/HBO.

Misogynists R Us: They're Republicans AND Democrats

Rush Limbaugh deserves every single shred of vitriol that's being thrown at him for his repeated, vile and reprehensible attacks which he hurled at a Georgetown University law student who testified before a congressional panel arguing that contraception should be covered by health insurers, calling her, among other things, a slut and a prostitute.

Rush, you have philosophical differences of opinion with Sandra Fluke, the law student. So go ahead, slice and dice her arguments, her rationale, her point of view as it relates to the government's role in contraception coverage. But keep it about politics, not the person. Yet, Rush didn't do that and he got himself into "heap big trouble," as he might say. And the trouble was of his own making. He shouldn't be surprised that calling a woman a "slut" and suggesting that she post sex videos of herself on the internet to justify her pro-contraception coverage argument would make his advertisers queasy and prompt them to flee his show like the Titanic, despite his apologies (made only after sustaining serious pressure from his sponsors, thereby nullifying their authenticity).

But as Daily Beast columnist Kirsten Powers pointed out this week, Limbaugh isn't the only bombastic talk machine who's a misogynist and who has gone after a woman on a sexual or physical basis rather than the woman's argument, invoking coarse, sexist language that seems designed to drive women out of the marketplace of ideas, to keep them in their place, which is to serve as wives, mothers and/or sex objects.

So in the wake of Limbaugh's moronic tangents about Fluke, I decided to use Powers' column, which details liberal/Democratic examples of misogyny, as a jumping off point for a little quiz. See if you can discern which sexist attack came from the lips of a liberal/Democrat and which came from a conservative/Republican:

1. Who called a female national radio talk show host a "slut" because he disagreed with her criticism of the president who was drinking brewskis in Ireland as a tornado was ransacking Missouri? A liberal/Democrat or a conservative/Republican?
2. Who used the phrase "bimbo alert" in reference to a female politician shortly after she was named to a prominent position? A liberal/Democrat or conservative/Republican?
3. Who referred to a high profile female politician as a "dumb twat" and the C-word?
4. Who stood by and chuckled as a supporter referred to a female U.S. senator as a "bitch?"
5. Who said of a female politician, "There's just something about her that feels castrating, overbearing and scary?"
6. Who referred to a female politician as a "she-devil" who looked "witchy," referred to her as "Nurse Ratchet" and remarked that her voice "can grate on some men when they listen to it, fingernails on a blackboard?"
7. Who asked a female politician on a national news program, "Breast implants, did you have them or not?"
8. Who suggested that a powerful female politician should be taken into a room by a presidential nominating convention super-delegate "and only he comes out?"

Answers:

1. The liberal MSNBC host Ed Schultz called conservative talk show host Laura Ingraham a "talk slut" and a "right-wing slut."
2. Again, our friend Schultz in 2008, days after she was named as John McCain's running mate, called Sarah Palin an "empty pantsuit" who was a walking "bimbo alert," according to the Washington Post.
3. Comedian/talk show host Bill Maher, who donated $1 million to President Obama's Super-PAC, hurled those epithets at Palin, according to Mediaite.
4. Republican Arizona Senator John McCain said, "That's an excellent question," after a supporter asked him during the last presidential campaign, "How do we beat the bitch?" referring to fellow U.S. senator Hillary Clinton, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported.
5. Conservative Republican then-MSNBC host Tucker Carlson attacked Clinton as "castrating," the Post-Intelligencer said. 
6. Liberal MSNBC commentator Chris Matthews has, on a number of occasions, slammed Clinton in a sexist fashion, according to the Daily Kos.
7. Fox News Channel talk show host Greta van Susteren asked Palin about the "buzz" on the internet about whether she had breast implants, the Huffington Post reported.
8. Then-MSNBC liberal talk show host Keith Olbermann said this about Clinton, the Huffington Post said.

The conclusion:

There's rampant, over-the-top sexism and a focus on women as a collection of body parts and sexual objects in the media and American political arena. Period. (Watch the documentary Miss Representation if you question this.) And, for all the justified criticism directed at Limbaugh, it needs to be noted that the sexism comes from both the left and the right. They are equal opportunity offenders when it comes to women and we should, together, turn all of these misogynists into pariahs, not just the conservative/Republican ones. All of them.

Image credit: Name It, Change It.

Notes on Politics: Ingraham ‘Just a Pretty Girl,’ Sexism Hurts Female Pols, Pining for Hillary & Political Moms

Talk Show Host Ingraham ‘Just a Pretty Girl?’

While filling in for the vacationing Bill O’Reilly on The O’Reilly Factor last week, pundit Laura Ingraham was grilling Democratic Congressman Charles Rangel by lobbing a series of tough, rapid-fire questions his way, many of which went off the original topic. Rep. Rangel’s response, after he said Ingraham was simply issuing “mini-speeches” instead of questioning him, was to say this: “Bill O’Reilly told me he had a secret weapon. I didn’t know it was just a pretty girl that they’d bring in.” At the tail-end of the interview, he “apologized” by saying, “I’m sorry I said you were attractive.”

This was just last week. In the year 2011.

Just.

A.

Pretty.

Girl.

Sexism Hurts Female Politicians

If you scroll down on the Mediaite web site, where I first read about Rangel’s comments to Ingraham, you’ll see that many of the comments degenerated from discussing the actual content of Rangel and Ingraham’s words, to Ingraham’s looks (both positive and negative), comparing her appearance to those of other political women, calling her sexual slurs and suggesting that she had sex with another famous TV pundit.

It’s comments like the ones directed at Ingraham based on her gender that, when directed at female politicians, actually have a measurable negative impact on those women’s chances of getting elected, even if those comments are flattering, like calling someone “pretty” or “hot.” That’s the centerpiece of my pop culture and politics column this week, that even when people call Sarah Palin or Michele Bachmann attractive, or put Bachmann on the cover of Newsweek looking crazy after a pundit had asked her if she was a “flake” not too long ago, or when a fashion “guru” criticizes Hillary Clinton’s clothing selections using gender-specific language, that type of commentary erodes people’s confidence in the female candidates:

“Last fall, a study conducted by the Women’s Media Center, the WCF Foundation and Political Parity found that demeaning female political candidates with sexist language and images ‘undercuts her political standing,’ USA Today reported. The Democratic pollster who ran the survey told the newspaper, ‘I was stunned at the magnitude of the effect of even mild sexism.’ What kind of effect? The survey found that in a hypothetical campaign between a male and a female and the female was criticized or depicted in a sexist way: ‘The female candidate lost twice as much support when even the mild sexist language was added to the attack’ and ‘the sexist language undermined favorable perceptions of the female candidate, leading voters to view her as less empathetic, trustworthy and effective,’ USA Today said.”

This is why, while I was researching this piece, I was happy to come across the web site Name It. Change It. whose sole goal it to point out and speak up when they see women candidates, of all political stripes, assailed by misogynistic remarks in the media. They do not let it lie. And neither should we.

The 2012 presidential race isn’t off to such a great start, as far as sexism and the media are concerned. Let’s hope the folks at Name It. Change It. can help improve matters.

Pining for Hillary

Are those who voted for Barack Obama in 2008 over Hillary Clinton in the Democratic presidential primary suffering from buyer’s remorse? That’s what Rebecca Traister suggested in her column in the New York Times Magazine this past weekend in a piece entitled, “If Hillary Were President.”

“Three years after that intense and acrimonious time, in a period of liberal disillusionment, some on the left are engaging in an inverse fantasy,” she said. “Almost unbelievably, they are now daydreaming of how much better a Hillary Clinton administration might have represented them.”

And Traister wants those who are idealizing the could-have-been Hillary Clinton administration to cut it out: “. . . [T]o say it [that they wish Clinton had been elected] – much less to bray it – is small, mean, divisive and frankly dishonest. None of us know what would have happened with Hillary Clinton as president, no matter how many rounds of W.W.H.H.D. (What Would Hillary Have Done) we play.”

Of Political Moms

Speaking of women in politics, I just received my review copy of Joanne Bamberger’s new book, Mothers of Intention: How Women & Social Media are Revolutionizing Politics in America. Bamberger goes by the handle “PunditMom” online.) I’ll report back here after I’ve read it.

Image credits: Name It Change It, Amazon.

Tell Me That This Provocative Trailer Doesn't: 1) Move You & 2) Make You Want to See Documentary

This documentary, Miss Representation, about the impact of the media's depiction of women in sexual terms, was featured at the 2011 Sundance film festival and is now being featured in select screenings around the country.

While it's slated to air on the OWN network -- Oprah's station -- in the fall, the filmmakers are making the DVD available to civic groups for educational purposes. From the documentary's web site:

"As one of the most persuasive and pervasive forces in our culture, media is educating yet another generation that a woman’s primary value lay in her youth, beauty and sexuality — not in her capacity as a leader, making it difficult for women to obtain leadership positions and for the average girl to feel confident herself. Stories from teenage girls and provocative interviews with politicians, journalists, academics, and activists like Condoleezza Rice, Lisa Ling, Nancy Pelosi, Katie Couric, Rachel Maddow, Rosario Dawson, Jackson Katz, Jean Kilbourne and Gloria Steinem build momentum as Miss Representation accumulates startling facts and statistics that will leave audiences shaken and armed with a new perspective."

I'm hoping to get a screener because, as a mother of a young girl, this trailer completely to got me.

Notes on Pop Culture: More Betty White Adoration, Carell & Rudd Mock Lebron, Bristol & Levi Again?

Another Reason to Love Betty White
Add to the many reasons why Ms White is deserving of affection include the answers to this Vanity Fair questionnaire:

Vanity Fair: What is the quality you most like in a man?

Betty White: Sense of romance.

VF: What is the quality you most like in a woman?

White: Sense of humor.

VF: What is your most treasured possession?

White: My golden retriever.

VF: What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?

White: Big parties.

Carell & Rudd Mock Lebron's 'Decision'

I didn’t watch the ESPN Awards (even though I am a fan of Seth Meyers, who hosted the show) but I got a kick out of watching the video of Steve Carell and Paul Rudd lampooning Lebron James’ big “The Decision” ridiculousness.



Bristol and Levi: Tying the Knot?

“I’m here now and I’m gonna make it right,” Levi Johnston, who last year lampooned the Palin family, said of being with his ex-girlfriend and their son.

After last year’s tabloidesque insanity involving the Palin family and self-made rogue Levi Johnston – including Johnston posing with a photo cut-out/mask of Sarah Palin and dishing on all things intimate about his kid’s grandmother in Vanity Fair -- Levi “Playgirl” Johnston is now going to marry Bristol Palin?

Apparently so. And, to make this story even more unbelievable, the two lovebirds told Us Weekly before telling Sarah Palin.

In a statement, Bristol’s parents, Sarah and Todd Palin said: “"We obviously want what is best for our children, but Bristol is ultimately in charge of determining what is best for her and her beautiful son. Bristol believes in redemption and forgiveness to a degree most of us struggle to put in practice."

The elegantly snarky New York Times columnist Gail Collins said this news brings together all types of people to rally ‘round Sarah Palin:

“Johnston has proven to be the only person in the world who can make me feel sympathy for Sarah Palin. He told Us Weekly that he broached the subject of marrying Bristol at the same family meeting where he apologized to Sarah for telling the national news media that she was money-hungry, insensitive, a bad housekeeper, an indifferent mother and a bad shot.”

Image credits: Vanity Fair and Us Weekly.

Notes on Politics & Pop Culture: Palin & Feminism, 'HawthoRNe' Premieres, Fallon Mocks 'Twilight's' R-Pat Again

Palin & Feminism

I donned my protective gear as soon as I hit “send” and e-mailed my latest Pop Culture and Politics column to my editor at Mommy Tracked. The piece is about the anger expressed by liberal feminists over the fact that conservative women have said they want to call themselves feminists and cultivate a conservative version of feminism, as embodied by Palin’s reference to “Mama Grizzlies.”

Feel free to weigh in over on the site as I assert that having powerful women on the left AND the right running for and holding elected office while embracing the term “feminism” is a good thing for women.

Speaking of “Mama Grizzlies” . . . Republican Nikki Haley, who faced allegations of infidelity and a slur against her Indian-American background, won the South Carolina GOP runoff for the governor’s seat. She will face Democratic state Sen. Vincent Sheheen in the fall. If she won, she'd be her state’s first female governor.

HawthoRNe Season 2 Premiere

I was disappointed with the season two premiere of the TNT drama HawthoRNe starring Jada Pinkett Smith and Alias’ Michael Vartan. The first season was okay – it certainly was no Nurse Jackie – but this season’s premiere does not bode well for the quality of the second season. Not at all.

I reviewed the premiere at CliqueClack TV and expressed hope that episode two of season two will improve.

Jimmy Fallon Mocks R-Pat Again

Yeah, they’re goofy and Jimmy Fallon’s way too old for the role, but his “Robert Pattinson is Bothered” spoof videos (where Fallon pretends to be Twilight heartthrob Pattinson and climbs into a tree to vent about things that bother him) amuse me. This week, Fallon/Pattinson addressed why the World Cup is neither a cup nor representative of the world.



Speaking of Twilight, Jimmy Kimmel is having a Twilight/Eclipse special tonight. The new film premieres next week.

Image credit: TNT.

Notes on Politics: Election Night as 'Ladies' Night,' Obstructing Oil Spill News Coverage, Goodbye 'Chevy' & Is Feminism Label for Liberals Only?

Election Night as ‘Ladies’ Night’

Several female pols prevailed in primary elections on Tuesday night, causing many pundits to grope around for some kind of clever, all-encompassing storyline around which they could wrap the election results, given that the anti-incumbency line didn't seem to work out too well. Invoking the term “Ladies Night” appeared to be the media favorite. Check out Jon Stewart’s take on the media’s gal power declaration on The Daily Show:



Obstructing Oil Spill News Coverage

Whenever I hear reports from BP execs and federal officials about the status of the Gulf coast oil spill, I’m pretty skeptical and assume that I’m not being told the whole story for whatever reason, figuring that the money and political capital at stake, prohibiting the real story from coming out. So I give a jaundiced eye to their reports about how much oil is really being released into the Gulf of Mexico and the true impact of it -- and the chemical dispersants -- on the environment and the economy. I prefer, instead, to sample a variety of news reports from organizations which lean left, right and somewhere in the middle to try to get a real sense of what’s going on.

Then I read this story on the front page of the New York Times today, about BP and government officials obstructing the media’s access to affected areas, including threatening a New York Daily News reporter and a CBS News crew with arrest for trying to gain access to a public beaches where oil was washing ashore. The Times reported:

“Journalists struggling to document the impact of the oil rig explosion have repeatedly found themselves turned away from public areas affected by the spill, and not only by BP and its contractors, but by local law enforcement, the Coast Guard and government officials.”

Yeah, this is comforting.

Goodbye ‘Chevy’

Also on page one of today’s New York Times, is a piece about how G.M. execs want to stop using the nickname “Chevy” for their vehicles, preferring, instead, to use the full, formal name, “Chevrolet.”

“On Tuesday, G.M. sent a memo to Chevrolet employees at its Detroit headquarters, promoting the importance of ‘consistency’ for the brand, which was the nation’s best-selling line of cars and trucks for more than half a century after World War II,” the Times reported. "And one way to present a consistent brand message, the memo suggested, is to stop saying 'Chevy,' though the word is one of the world's best-known, longest-lived product nicknames."

Bet that’ll go over about as well as when federal government officials tried to re-label the swine flu by the more clinical, “H1N1 disease.”

Is ‘Feminism’ Label for Liberals Only?

There’s been a spirited debate over the past few weeks spawned by the fact that Sarah Palin has started embracing the word “feminist.”

Several bloggers for feminist/liberal-leaning writers took great umbrage to Palin claiming this word as her own, pointing, in particular, to their belief that if a woman does not favor abortion rights, she can’t be considered a feminist. Writing in the Washington Post, Jessica Valenti wrote, “Palin's ‘feminism’ isn't just co-opting the language of the feminist movement, it's deliberately misrepresenting real feminism to distract from the fact that she supports policies that limit women's rights.”

On Salon Rebecca Traister wrote:

“There has to be a move toward ownership from other Democrats, from those women and men who have perhaps not yet named themselves feminists . . . but who also do not want to see ‘women's rights’ come to mean the exaltation of fetal life over female life and religion over science, who don't want to see ‘women's liberation’ divorced from notions of equal opportunity and instead reframed as Ayn Rand-ian survival of the richest or most privileged.”

Meanwhile others have pushed back against the outcry over the notion that conservatives are calling themselves feminists including writer Cathy Young who tossed out the most recent volley on this subject in the Boston Globe:

"Who owns feminism today? Many feminists are incensed when the label is appropriated by women who question the Violence Against Women Act, or who argue that the pay differential between women and men is due largely to women’s more family-focused personal choices, not discrimination. Yet critiques of the conventional feminist paradigms of such problems as domestic violence and the gender gap in pay have been made both by many dissident feminists and by many scholars and researchers. To reject them out of hand as incompatible with feminism is not only ideologically intolerant, it also suggests an unwillingness to even consider factual claims that are at odds with dogma.

. . . Yet the audience for a different kind of feminism — one that seeks individualistic and market-oriented solutions, rather than big-government-driven ones, and focuses on women’s empowerment rather than oppression — is clearly there. The women who embrace it are likely to transform both feminism and conservatism. The feminist movement ignores them at its peril."

'SNL' Had Best Spoof on the Census Yet

I finally caught up with the latest episode of Saturday Night Live hosted by Tina Fey and featuring the Teen-Boy-Who-Needs-a-Haircut-But-Doesn't-Shave-Yet.

Thought chocolate husband bit was stupid. Wasn't a fan of the Tiger Woods sketch. Thought the Sarah Palin TV network thing was mildly amusing. (Fey didn't look as much like a Palin Doppelganger this time. I couldn't put my finger on why. The hair, something just didn't look right.) The hot for teacher/Justin Bieber/Fey-wants-to-give-him-a-bath-thing got me to crack a smile amidst my discomfort. (If they did that kind of a sketch with a 15-year-old girl it would be just gross.

My favorite moment? The opening about the census and how it's not a conspiracy by the federal government to pry into your personal life. Priceless.

Notes on Politics: 'Game Change' Caricatures the Women in the 2008 Presidential Election

While the nation's political chattering classes are busy buzzing about Republican Scott Brown's "epic upset" (I've seen this phrase in many news stories) over Democrat Martha Coakley in the Massachusetts U.S. Senate race to fill the remaining term of the late Sen. Ted Kennedy, it's worth taking a step back from the day's news (and the woefully inept Coakley campaign which blew a substantial lead and had once been considered a lock) and looking at how women in and around national politics are treated by the media.

I spent the bulk of last week plowing through the lengthy and riveting expose of the 2008 presidential election, the best selling Game Change, written by two journalists who declined to reveal who they interviewed for their book and who gave them what pieces of information. (That, to me, is problematic from a journalism ethics point of view, but that's grist for another rant on another day.) When I was done reading the book, I was so steamed about how the women were treated that I dedicated my Pop Culture and Politics column to it. With the exception of Michelle Obama, the female spouses of the candidates and the two female candidates -- Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin -- were described in an abysmal, sexist fashion. One had her reactions to bad news stories about her family labeled "hysterical" and another was dismissed as being a "beauty queen" who "flounced" back home after a disagreement with her husband, that's when she wasn't said to be weeping. One woman was depicted as having "hissy fits" and "conniptions," while another was maligned (guess which woman) as "Napoleon in a navy pantsuit and gumball-sized fake pearls."

Adding to my irritation were the cartoonish illustrations which accompanied a Game Change excerpt published in New York Magazine which portrayed Elizabeth Edwards as a monster (in one image, one of her hands was curled up so that her fingers looked like claws as spit came out her mouth), John Edwards' mistress was a smitten flirt and John Edwards himself was shown shouting and then sweating as news of his affair broke. Elizabeth Edwards, by far, came out looking the worst.

After taking this all in, I had to wonder: Were the authors simply relating the viewpoints of the blabber-mouth, disloyal former campaign aides who dished about these women, or were these words selected independently by the reporters and reflect their own opinions? Or, frighteningly, both?

Image credit: Nathan Fox/New York Magazine.

Noteworthy People/Things/Events of 2009

The Notes from the Asylum list of noteworthy people, things and events of 2009, in no particular order . . .

Barack Obama inaugurated. That moment of national pride upon seeing the first African-American president sworn into office seems like a very long time ago. Since that cold January day in Washington, D.C. we’ve seen the president highlighted in the news for:

• The First Family’s search for a dog
• The Professor Gates imbroglio
• The question of whether Obama and the French president actually checked out a teenager’s booty in full view of the media
• A congressman shouting, “You lie” at the president during his address to Congress about the health insurance reform legislation
• The swine flu vaccine debacle (not enough vaccines despite government promises) and nationwide H1N1 scare (aided and abetted by Vice President Joe Biden’s I-wouldn’t-put-my-family-on-an-airplane-right-now comment on the Today Show)
• The contentious debates and town hall meetings about the health care legislation
• A controversial stimulus bill, with federal money being spent on some, um, controversial items
• The likes of AIG honchos getting mega-bonuses while unemployment numbers climb into the double-digits
• The federal government’s attempts to help revive the ailing U.S. automotive industry inspiring the nickname “Government Motors”
• The massacre at Fort Hood
• Tens of thousands of US troops being sent to Afghanistan
• The president killing a fly on camera.

Yes, it’s been a very long, weird freshman year for President Obama.

Sarah Palin, the former VP nominee who resigned the Alaska governorship this year. Hey, who says books are dead? Palin’s autobiography and well attended book tour events says books aren’t quite dead yet. At least all the attention paid to her book and her Oprah interview took the immature daddy of her grandson off out of the news, for a little while.

The season finale of Mad Men. Coupled with “The Gypsy and the Hobo” episode -- where Don finally confessed almost all of his dirty little secrets to his wife Betty -- these two episodes set the bar impossibly high for what it means to deliver intelligent, riveting, quality television. Completely. Besotted.

Morning Joe. The MSNBC talk show, which is always on in the kitchen as I get the kids ready for school on weekday mornings, boasts a lively mix of liberal and conservative ideologies, smart discussion and bar room humor all in one. It has had a great year and has earned my viewer loyalty.

Jon Hamm on SNL. Take note other celeb would-be Saturday Night Live hosts: Jon Hamm may have made being funny in the unevenly written sketch show LOOK easy when he hosted, but it’s not. Just ask his Mad Men co-star, January Jones. Oh, and those two actors being photographed by Annie Leibovitz for Vanity Fair earlier this year . . . those images constituted my favorite photo shoot of the year.

The Gosselin saga. Eight is enough apparently . . . especially when you throw some girlfriends into the mix. This was a sad, sad chapter in American pop culture lore where parents put their eight cute children in front of TV cameras for TLC's Jon & Kate Plus 8 and were then dismayed when those cameras wound up capturing the disintegration of their marriage. One might’ve hoped that this private-moment-made-public would’ve caused other parents to reconsider putting their kids on reality show programs. Alas, it didn’t.
 

Women Pols -- of Both Parties -- on Receiving End Sexist Attacks

Last week, it was Sarah Palin who Newsweek editors put on the cover of a newsweekly in running shorts to coincide with the release of her memoir, Going Rogue. The editors argued that the photo was the most "interesting" one they could've selected from the thousands of Palin to place on their cover.

The cheap shots at Palin -- which were not about her policy positions -- prompted me to write this column about how powerful women pols like Palin and Hillary Clinton, when she was running for president, have been subjected to sexually oriented attacks which don't get lobbed at their male counterparts. (I also complained that, if you actually go around and tell people that it's wrong for women to be judged by their bodies, make-up, clothing and sexual attractiveness, you're obliged to object when women on both sides of the political aisle are subjected to it.)

Now comes this photographic commentary from Time Magazine: A Photoshopped image of a female Democratic senator with a pretend glob of semen in her hair, a la There's Something About Mary. A male journalist decided it'd be funny satire to depict Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu, whose vote is considered pivotal to the health care legislation, looking like Cameron Diaz in the slapstick movie. Broadsheet writer Tracy Clark-Flory wrote this about it thusly:

"On November 19, the image was posted to The Page blog, which is written by Mark Halperin, and ran with the caption, 'Senator Landrieu's latest position on proceeding on health care debate here.'

As Media Matters points out, this only adds to 'a broader, sexist right-wing narrative that the U.S. Senator from Louisiana is, as Glenn Beck put it yesterday, 'a high-class prostitute' engaged in 'hookin' -- all because she lobbied Senate leadership for expanded Medicaid funding for Louisiana in the Senate health care bill in what was characterized by the media as an exchange for her 'yea' vote to proceed with floor debate on the bill.'

. . . So fellas, you've already illustrated her with ejaculate in her hair and called her a prostitute -- what's next? I shudder to think."

Over on the Huffington Post, the response went a little something like this, ". . . Mark Halperin is the worst and should be publicly scorned."

I do, however, disagree with Media Matters when it argues that this "sexist narrative" is applied to women only by conservatives. It's applied to women by women and men from both sides of the political spectrum, and to pretend that it's only conservatives who do the sexist attacking is turning a convenient blind eye.

Image credit: Broadsheet.

Cheap Shot: Palin on Newsweek Cover in Shorts

Seriously? Shorts?

Sure, dissect Sarah Palin's speeches, her book (being released this week), her interviews, her political point of view. All of that is fair game. (I’m going to be among those ODing on Palin-Palooza this week because I’m working on a column about the former GOP VP candidate.)

But putting Sarah Palin on the cover of a NEWSweekly while she’s wearing shorts (and I don’t care if the photo originally appeared in the pages of Runners World where males AND females are in running shorts; context is key) wreaks of sexism, as if they're trying to undermine her by the fact that she’s in shape and looks great. When was the last time Newsweek ran a photo of a male politician in shorts on its cover?

This spring I loudly griped when the Washingtonian ran the beefcake shirtless paparazzi shot of President Obama on its cover (the photo was taken when Obama was at the beach with his family, again, context). I thought that that cover was a disrespectful choice for editors at a magazine of Washingtonian’s ilk to make.

Last time I looked, Newsweek wasn’t gunning for the lad mag Maxim audience.

Image credit: Newsweek.

Column in Which I Tell Jon Gosselin and Levi Johnston to "Man Up and Shut Up"

I went a little nutty this week in my Pop Culture & Politics column over on Mommy Track'd.

You see, I was more than a tad annoyed, by Levi Johnston, who dumped all over his kid's family in the October issue of Vanity Fair, and by Jon Gosselin, who has whined to ABC News' Primetime, telling the world that he "despises" the mother of his eight children and that he lost his 20s to childrearing. Cry me a river Jon. None of the pregnancies were accidents. I used to be sympathetic to you, dude. No more.



And as for Levi, the 19-year-old tattletale, what a portrait of class and chivalry, dumping all over his son's grandparents to a national magazine, dishing dirt about Sarah and Todd Palin's sex life and complaining about THEIR parenting, or lack thereof. Yeah you're gonna be a great specimen of parental excellence Levi.

Suburban Mom's Political Fix: Palin's Meta-Working Mom Tale & Women on the Supreme Court

Palin's Meta-Working Mom Tale

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's shocking resignation continues to generate comment, analysis and interest. An image of Palin signing a toddler's dress takes up a third+ of the top half of the front page of the New York Times, 10 days after her ambiguous July 4 Eve press conference. The Times story paints a woman who's feeling so besieged and stressed out that her hair has thinned and her friends worry that she's become underweight.

I joined the fray of analysts and deconstructed Palin's resignation in my Pop Culture column this week by saying that what you think about her and her decision to quit mid-way through her term, depends largely upon your political perspective and your life's experiences. For me, I view her story through a working mom prism.

Women on the Supreme Court

The only female jurist currently sitting on the Supreme Court, Ruth Bader Ginsberg gave a fascinating interview to the New York Times Sunday Magazine in which she talked at length about her experience on the Court and how being female has affected her experience. Among the questions she fielded was about how having only one or two women on the Supreme Court affects deliberation.

When asked why it matters to have women on the Court, Ginsberg invoked the Sotomayor confirmation hearings saying, "It matters for women to be there at the conference table to be doing everything that the court does. I hope that these hearings for Sonia [Sotomayor] will be as civil as mine were and [Justice] Steve Breyer's were. Ours were unusual in that respect."

The exchange below I found particularly intriguing:

New York Times: Did you think that all the attention to the criticism of Sotomayor as being "bullying" or not as smart is sex-inflected? Does that have to do with the rarity of a woman in her position, and the particular challenges?

Ginsberg: I can't say that it was just that she was a woman. There are some people in Congress who would criticize severely anyone President Obama nominated. They'll seize on any handle. One is that she's a woman, another is that she made the remark about Latina women. [In 2001 Sotomayor said: "I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life."] And I thought it was ridiculous for them to make a big deal out of that. Think of how many times you've said something that you didn't get out quite right, and you would edit your statement if you could. I'm sure she meant no more than what I mean when I say: Yes, women bring a different life experience to the table. All our differences make the conference better. That I'm a woman, that's part of it, that I'm Jewish, that's part of it, that I grew up in Brooklyn, NY, and I went to summer camp in the Adirondacks, all these things are part of me.

Once Justice [Sandra Day] O'Connor was questioning counsel at oral argument. I thought she was done, so I asked a question, and Sandra said: Just a minute, I'm not finished. So I apologized to her and she said: It's okay, Ruth. The guys do it to each other all the time, they step on each other's questions. And then there appeared an item in USA Today, and the headline was something like "Rude Ruth Interrupts Sandra."

Ginsberg is likely to be joined soon by Sotomayor, who's going through the Senate confirmation process where she'll be asked to defend/explain some of her more controversial statements, particularly the Latina woman quip. One thing's for sure, the Court needs women. I cannot imagine what men would say or feel if the highest court in the land didn't have anyone representing the male half of the citizenry.

Image credit: Ruven Afanador/NYT.

Suburban Mom's Pop Culture Week: HawthoRNe, Two CBS Pilots, Mad Men, Time Traveler's Wife

News:

The dominant news story of the week -- Michael Jackson's memorial service -- was also dominant in my house as I had it playing on TV and am not ashamed to admit that I was moved by several aspects of it, from the displays of genuine emotion from usually polished performers, to the raw, heart-rending pain exhibited by Jackson's 11-year-old daughter. I downloaded some of Jackson's biggest hits to my three kids' iPods this week and have periodically found myself unconsciously humming either "Billie Jean" or "Wanna Be Startin' Something" as I feel as though I've been marinating in Jackson music.

Of course there was also the Sarah Palin bombshell dropped late Friday -- that not only was she not running for re-election, but that she was quitting the Alaska governor's post by the end of this month. I'll have more on that in my next Pop Culture & Politics column. Stay tuned.

In other pop culture/news for the week . . .

TV:

-- I caught up on TNT's HawthoRNe, starring Jada Pinkett Smith and Michael Vartan (Alias). I'm willing to give it a little latitude because I like both Vartan and Pinkett Smith. But other than laudably portraying a strong working mom role model, Nurse Christina Hawthorne seems too good to be a modern leading TV character.

I've grown way too accustomed to seeing leading characters who engage in anti-heroic behavior. Like Gregory House who's an excellent doctor -- someone you'd want to take care of you or someone you love in a medical crisis -- but he's got the social skills of a wasp, is horrifically inappropriate and is hooked on pain meds. (Plus he was sent to a mental institution at the end of the season.) Then there's Showtime's Nurse Jackie who's a dedicated nurse who'll do whatever it takes for a patient even if it means risking her job, but she's got a nasty Percocet habit and she's cheating on her husband. Her flaws make her seem more down-to-earth.

I'm not saying Pinkett Smith's Hawthorne has to start drinking (a la Rescue Me's Tommy Gavin), taking drugs or behaving in wildly inappropriate ways, but I tend to gravitate toward more realistic, flawed character. Let Hawthorne get a little more messy, and I'll be on board. Plus I like Vartan, did I say that already?

-- I watched screeners for two new CBS shows premiering in late September. Loved one of the pilots and need to see more before rendering a judgment on the second.

The Good Wife, starring the always-compelling Julianna Margulies (ER), Chris Noth (Sex and the City) and Josh Charles (Sports Night), is gonna be a regularly DVRed show in my house. I was really disappointed last year when Margulies' gritty Canterbury's Law was canceled after only a few episodes. That show -- set in Rhode Island about a troubled lawyer who was in the midst of divorcing her husband after the pain of their young son's disappearance became too much for them to bear -- was fantastic but the ratings, eh, not so much.

I'm hopeful that The Good Wife has better staying power. It seems to have a timely hook: Margulies plays a lawyer who gave up her practice as a defense attorney in order to raise her two children and to support her husband's -- Noth's -- political career . . . until his career as a state's prosecutor went down in flames following his affairs with prostitutes and criminal charges that he abused his office. After selling the family house to pay his legal fees, moving to an apartment and with her husband incarcerated, Margulies has to re-enter the workforce after having been out of a courtroom for more than a dozen years. She doesn't appear to be planning to divorce her lying and cheating spouse, but the sordid taint of his actions sticks to her professionally and personally. I have my fingers crossed for this one.



Accidentally on Purpose is a sitcom with an on-paper interesting premise: Jenna Elfman's Billie Chase is a thirtysomething newspaper movie critic who, after dating her newspaper's owner (Grant Show from Melrose Place) for three years, broke up with him when he said he wouldn't get married. In short order, she picked up a twentysomething boy toy at a bar and "accidentally" got pregnant. He moved into her tastefully decorated apartment because she didn't think she could, in good conscience, allow the father of her unborn kid to live in his beat-up van. Elfman's character is winningly fast-talking -- a la Lorelai Gilmore -- but the pilot seemed like was trying too hard and larded itself up with forced jokes about cougars and "young candy." The premise reminded me of the Uma Thurman movie Prime, only with too many bad puns. I'm going to wait to see more episodes to see if the forced artifice gets dialed back before I deciding whether this one will earn my regular viewing.

-- In preparation for the beginning of the third season of the exquisite Mad Men, I've been again watching season one episodes on DVD. I realized that I miss Rachel Menken and Midge Daniels. They had a lot more going for them than Bobbie Barrett, a character who I despised and who I think was an overt indication of the swirling despair into which Don Draper was sinking last season.

Books:

I'm almost to the end of my second reading of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and am kind of putting off finishing it. If you've read it, you know why I'm procrastinating. (I'm at the part in the cave, with the green liquid.) Once I've finished with the sixth Potter installment and feel prepared to compare and contrast the book with the film being released next week, I've pulled The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger from my bookshelf to re-read because the film's coming out next month. I haven't read it in years, so I'm wondering how much I'll remember.

What's been on your pop culture/news agenda this week?

Image credit: TNT.

Suburban Mom's Political Fix: Palin Stuns, Resigns

If any American governor were to announce a resignation the day before Independence Day, I would've bet you a bundle that it would've been South Carolina's head honcho who would've quit so he could spend more time in Argentina snogging with his gal pal.

I certainly didn't expect, in the 3 o'clock hour on the Friday before a holiday weekend when many people were already on vacation, to learn that Sarah Palin was quitting her gubernatorial post.

After watching the nationally televised speech made in her backyard -- intermittently disrupted by the sounds of a baby and various birds chirping in the background -- here's what I gathered: Palin's angry that she's been the subject of 15+ ethics investigations in Alaska that she said have cost the state in excess of $2 million and have cost her and her husband Todd personally $500,000 in legal fees to fight. (She pointed out that the charges were all dropped.)

"It's pretty insane," Palin said. "My staff and I spend most of our day dealing with this stuff."

Saying that she wanted to spare Alaskans the money and the distractions caused by the multitude of negative attacks aimed at her, Palin said she was removing herself from the ring. "I chose not to tear down and waste precious time," she said. ". . . Life is too short to compromise time and resources."

Palin also mentioned the emotional cost borne by her family -- she specifically mentioned folks recently "mocked and ridiculed" her baby Trig -- as yet another reason to resign and not spend time on "superficial, wasteful political blood sport."

"It hurts to make this choice," Palin added. It did not appear as though there were any members of the media present during her speech to pose questions.

When her speech ended, cable talking heads and political pundits were slack-jawed. Many called her decision "erratic," stunningly short-sighted and "political suicide" to appear to knuckle under to the pressure. Others said it was the first chess move for the 2012 presidential race that would enable her to concentrate on building political support "in the lower 48 states." Over on MSNBC, they've been quoting NBC vet Andrea Mitchell as saying that Palin is "out of politics for good."

Palin's Twitter account said, "We'll soon attach info on decision to not seek re-election . . . this is in Alaska's best interest, my family's happy . . . it is good. Stay tuned." I heard Palin's brother and spokeswoman on various TV interviews and neither would say exactly what Palin's plans are once she leaves the governor's office.

Palin has been in the news as of late following her highly publicized feud with David Letterman where she defended her daughters against some of his crude jokes, as well as for being the subject of a harsh Vanity Fair piece snarkily entitled, "It Came From Wasilla."

I'm stunned and will be interested and intrigued to see what comes next.

Image credit: The Drudge Report.

Suburban Mom's Pop Culture Week: Tommy Gavin, Jason Bourne, Harry Potter, Michael Jackson, Sarah Palin & Red Sox

When I haven't been catching up on the latest news stories about Michael Jackson, the unfaithful South Carolina governor who doesn't know when to shut up, U.S. troops leaving Iraq and about Red Sox third baseman Mike Lowell being put on the DL (!), I've been coping with sick kids and have been sick myself . . . but that hasn't stopped me from consuming pop culture and watching Sox games. Here's what I've been up to pop culture-wise this week:

TV:

-- Sox, Sox and more Sox. Mercifully, I didn't watch the entire game when the Sox blew a massive lead -- and "imploded" according to Jonathan Papelbon -- against the Orioles. Silly gal that I was, I thought they were going to win because they were up by so much, so I tuned in to other things, like Rescue Me.

-- I said this last week and I'll say it again this week: Rescue Me has been great this season and has drawn viewers into dark, twisty, unpredictable places. This season warrants a full blog post on its own, particularly given the blow torch scene. Damn!

-- Nurse Jackie: Jackie Peyton's kid is creating drawings sans colors, with no sun in the sky? Sounds like the recent weather around New England. Kidding aside, this dark show has me hook, line and obligatory sinker.

Movies:

-- Adored the Bourne Ultimatum which The Spouse and I saw on DVD. It sparked a heated discussion about who would take who in a fight: Jason Bourne or Jack Bauer. (I say Bourne. Bauer would be too busy yelling, "Dammit!" and trying to get patched in to Chloe on the phone.) While Ultimatum's handheld camerawork made me feel a bit nauseous at times (or it could've been the flu from which I was recovering), I was otherwise highly entertained.

-- What didn't I find so entertaining this week? Planning on watching the cerebral Frost/Nixon film by Ron Howard, only to find that I'd instead ordered from Netflix the ACTUAL Frost-Nixon interviews from the 1970s. At 10 p.m. on a Saturday, I could've stayed up to watch Ron Howard's hyped up dramatic version of the interviews, but I feared the real ones would've put me to sleep. It lies, still unwatched, next to the DVD player.

-- In preparation for a column in which I compare my kids' fascination with all things Harry Potter to my generation's fascination with all things Star Wars, I OD'ed on Potter films, specifically The Chamber of Secrets, The Prisoner of Azkaban and The Order of the Phoenix. I still tear up at the end of Phoenix.

-- In preparation for a different column for a different publication, I'm planning on going to the theater to see the Sam Mendes film starring The Office's John Krasinski called Away We Go. It's been a tad challenging to find it playing at a theater near me, seeing as though it doesn't have a massive, nationwide distribution. I can't decide whether to keep my expectations low or not, given that I really did NOT like the last Mendes film, Revolutionary Road.

Books:

-- I'm continuing to re-read Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince as we're now at T-minus two+ weeks and counting before the film version is released.

Magazines/Newspapers:

-- I've not yet read the Vanity Fair profile of Sarah Palin -- "It Came From Wasilla" -- but from what I've read on the internet, it sounds like it may well be a polarizing piece about a woman who's controversial herself. It's on my "must read" list.

-- I read a thought-provoking column in the New York Times over the weekend which mused about whether Michael Jackson is truly the last, worldwide mega-star who spans the generations. His music, the article suggests, was popular in the pre-internet days/pre-iTunes/pre-fractured pop culture world, when everyone watched MTV when it still played music videos. I tried to think of another cultural figure who is vastly popular with a wide swath of people, whose accomplishments affect people of varying backgrounds and nationalities, and who would cause people to spontaneously gather to celebrate and the only name that popped into my mind was Oprah. Do you think Times writer David Segal is right when he speculates that there will be no more mega-, multi-generational celebrities like Jackson?

Image credit: Vanity Fair/Risko.

Letterman Doesn't Get It

So David Letterman has now formally apologized to the Palin family for the joke he made about a Palin daughter getting "knocked up" by A-Rod. During his show last night, Letterman went on and on about how people just didn't seem to get the joke he told. He kept saying that he didn't realize that the daughter who appeared at the New York Yankees game with Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin was the Palin's 14-year-old daughter Willow. He thought the girl accompanying Gov. Palin was her 18-year-old daughter Bristol, the one who had the baby and who has appeared on People Magazine's cover offering herself up as a cautionary tale to other teens. (She told the magazine, "Girls need to imagine and picture their life with a screaming newborn baby and then think before they have sex. Think about the consequences.")

During his "apology" last night, Letterman said, "There's no getting around it, but I never thought it was anybody other than the older daughter, and before the show, I checked to make sure in fact that she is of legal age, 18." He added that after seeing a PBS commentator complain about the joke he thought, "Oh boy, now I'm beginning to understand what the problem is here. It's the perception rather than the intent." (Link to video here.)



Beyond the incompetence of Letterman's staff -- they didn't know which daughter was in Yankee Stadium, fact-checking always bites you in the behind if you don't do it -- there's the notion that, at the root of this, it's funny and okay and acceptable to mock an 18-year-old girl for having a baby, to shame her because of her mother's conservative politics and polarizing public persona. It's amusing to make sport of a life-altering mistake for which Bristol is trying to atone by telling fellow teens that life's no picnic now that she's a teen mom.

Letterman is not alone in using the teenaged Bristol Palin's pregnancy as a punch line. A writer at The Washington Post did some digging and discovered that other late night hosts used Bristol's pregnancy more often than Letterman:

"Through mid-March, Leno had made 15 jokes about the Palin daughter's pregnancy, Stewart had told four on 'The Daily Show,' and Letterman checked in with eight, according to an analysis of late-night humor by the Center for Media and Public Affairs, a nonpartisan research organization affiliated with George Mason University.

The comedian most likely to bash Bristol Palin? O'Brien, with 20 jokes at her expense."

Telling a joke that uses the offspring of a politician -- a teenager to boot -- as the butt of a joke, leaves a trail of slimy residue behind. The children of politicians shouldn't be fair game. Do all the jokes you want to about the politicians and celebs who make their living off of garnering public attention, but somewhere, there should be some boundaries which protect the children. (True Bristol's 18, but she can't even drink legally yet.) I'm all for cutting, edgy humor, but maybe the late night comics should choose their targets more wisely. Bottom line: Letterman's protestations and intent aside, he told a joke about a 14-year-old, not the 18-year-old. Not cool.

Suburban Mom's Political Fix: All Media Smackdown Edition, NYT/Daily Show, Stewart/Scarborough, Letterman/Palin

NYT Gets Slammed on Daily Show

Did the New York Times staffers who agreed to participate in a recent Daily Show segment about the future of the dying newspaper industry realize that the Daily Show is all about SATIRE? Did they not expect wacky questions? Sharp hey-dude-you're-so-toast darts to be thrown their way?

It doesn't appear as though those thoughts crossed their minds when they decided to partake in the piece. Judge for yourself by watching the segment below, a scathing portrait of out-of-touch editors, though Executive Editor Bill Keller's comment about how the Huffington Post can't and doesn't have bureaus in far-flung and dangerous locales because it doesn't have the money to do so was interesting, but only to a limited degree because you know what, the NYT shouldn't be bragging about having more money than anyone else right now, particularly when they're threatening to shutter the Boston Globe (which already eliminated a lot of its foreign bureaus because of costs) because of red ink. That last joke, about what's black and white and red all over: Killer. (Link to the video here):

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
End Times
thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Newt Gingrich Unedited Interview

Stewart and Scarborough Go Mano-a-Mano . . . Through Their TV Shows

I've been monitoring this (manufactured?) controversy between the Daily Show's Jon Stewart and Morning Joe's Joe Scarborough. (For the record, I'm a fan of both guys and their shows.) In a nutshell, Morning Joe recently decided to team up with Starbucks as a sponsor, seeing as though the anchors, Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski are conspicuous consumers of Starbucks products during their news casts. This made them big, fat, irresistible targets for spoofing. Cue: Stewart. This resulted in the anchors going back and forth was various and sundry sniping.

Yesterday, in discussing Stewart, Scarborough called him an angry man and suggested he had a Napoleon complex. Stewart responded last night by calling Scarborough "watered down and stupid" and then did a skit which I'd venture to say was funnier in the writers' room than in its execution. Stewart brought out all manner of faux-branded coffee products -- like a box of "Taster's Choice" tissues -- had mascara running down his face while he pretended to cry, fled the stage, asking for his Napoleon hat and coat as he climbed on top of a small horse. When he was "talked back" into returning to the stage, he did so shouting, "Rage on! Rage on!" (Link to the video here.)

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Jon's Napoleonic Complex
thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Newt Gingrich Unedited Interview

Did Letterman Go Too Far?

That's the question du jour regarding Letterman's jokes about Sarah Palin's recent appearance at a New York Yankees game, where she brought her 14-year-old daughter along with her. Letterman made jokes about a Palin daughter, including about A-Rod knocking up a Palin daughter during the game, and about keeping a Palin daughter away from disgraced former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer. Why do I keep saying, "a Palin daughter?" Because the 14-year-old daughter was the one in New York at the game with her mom but, apparently, Letterman thought it was the 18-year-old daughter who recently had a baby, the one who was on the cover of People Magazine with her infant. Last night, Letterman explicitly said that he wasn't talking about the 14-year-old. He said he was talking about the 18-year-old. But that's not exactly how it came across when he told the jokes.

Palin got ticked. Told him off indirectly by spouting off to journalists and issuing a statement, which resulted in Letterman issuing a caustic clarification last night which, I guess in a comedian's world, constitutes an apology of some sort. During Morning Joe this morning and later on The View, the question was raised by Brzezinski and by Elisabeth Hasselbeck as to whether Letterman would've gone after Palin's teenaged kids if she were a Democrat instead of a very conservative Republican. Barbara Walters added during The View's discussion that politicians' children should be off the table as far as lampooning goes, unlike panelist Joy Behar who said that because the Palins "traipsed" her pregnant daughter out in public, the family deserves what it gets. (See The View debate here.)



UPDATE: While listening to various folks discuss the Letterman/Palin situation this afternoon, I heard a local radio commentator make an interesting analogy: Invoking the suspension of MSNBC's David Shuster in 2008 after he suggested that twentysomething Chelsea Clinton was being "pimped out" by her mother as she went out on the campaign trail talking up Hillary Clinton's presidential candidacy, the commentator asked why Shuster was suspended for making a comment about an adult and used the words "I apologize," while some folks are brushing off Letterman's comments about a 14-year-old daughter of a Republican vice presidential nominee.

Happy New Year's: JibJab Takes on 2008

The animators at JibJab -- who first made national names for themselves with their satire of the 2004 presidential election -- have released their take on 2008's news events.

Earlier this year, they created a sharp video spoofing the presidential election and I've been a huge JibJab fan for years. But the 2008 wrap-up just didn't do it for me this time around, maybe it was the different style. Wish they'd done more with Sarah Palin and mentioned Joe the Plumber, Tina Fey, Joe the Gaffe Machine and other pop culture nuggets from 2008 besides Miley Cyrus in Vanity Fair and Daniel Radcliffe nude on stage.

The video (link here) is NOT work-safe and is inappropriate for the kiddos.