Sunday, December 05, 2004

Biscuits and Gravy - Dec. 5, 2004

Belmont Club
The Franco-American alliance is quite robust and likely to last a long time. The French have always been there when they needed us.
Steve Martin
It does strike me as ironic that the song has become the standard reference work on the subject of King Tut. Many of the lines in the song are now believed to be fact. In this article I should - as a serious scholar - set the record straight:

King Tut was not "born in Arizona."

He did not live in a "condo made of stone-a."

King Tut did not "do the monkey," nor did he "move to Babylonia."

King Tut was not a honky.

He was not "buried in his jammies."

The song does, however, make a valid assertion that scholars still regard as a breakthrough: King Tut was, as explained in the song, "an Egyptian."
Maureen Dowd's Holiday Blues - Modo is cranky for all the usual reasons including Michael Douglas:
It might be exacerbated by the stress I feel when I think of all the money I've spent on lavishing boyfriends with presents over the years, guys who are now living with other women who are enjoying my lovingly picked out presents which I'm no doubt still paying for in credit card interest charges.
But here's something to cheer her up
In certain lucky locales, America's marketers and shock jocks are ministering to this spiritual deficit with an innovative enhancement program called "The Breast Christmas Ever." Female seekers enter radio promotion contests and the winners get free breast augmentations. Banish Scrooge with a boob job. Is this a great country or what?
The Democrats' Marketing Mistake
Next to President Bush, few things anger liberals more than Wal-Mart and Detroit's Big Three automakers. The liberal intelligentsia views Wal-Mart as the most frightening force in corporate America because it maintains a non-union workforce. The Big Three are scorned because they make trucks and SUVs that consume copious amounts of gasoline. Liberals believe America would be a much better country if more of us drove Toyota Priuses to Whole Foods each week instead of hopping into Ford F-150s to get our groceries at Wal-Mart.

The problem for the left is that the majority of middle class America disagrees. Wal-Mart is the world's largest corporation for a reason. One hundred million Americans shop at its stores to benefit from its everyday low prices. A working family can save more than $500 a year at Wal-Mart on groceries alone. This is latte money for liberals, but it makes a real difference to middle-class families who have to stretch each paycheck to make ends meet. Americans also like to drive big trucks and SUVs. The top three selling vehicles in the United States through October 2004 were the Ford F-150, the Chevy Silverado, and the Dodge Ram--all pick-up trucks. Despite the best efforts of Tim Robbins, the Prius is a mere blip on the automotive radar screen.
Actually the leftoids want the proles to live in towering big-city apartment complexes where they won't need cars as they'll be able to pick up everything they need from little shoppes and the weekly Gaia ceremony in the courtyard. But I digress.

But there will be "culture"
And then the crowning moment: Vanity Fair's Youngest Hollywood issue, which displayed on its cover nine underaged vixens in various states of get-up-and-go, along with a headline proclaiming: "It's TOTALLY Raining Teens: And it's, like, so a major moment in pop culture."
And they get cranky when the proles ignore the cultural pearls strewn before them
It's terribly unfair to draw conclusions from one story in a foreign newspaper, but it's so much fun. The London Independent is warning Britons that Americans are really as value-crazed as they fear. Why, it's gotten to the point where they're refusing to pay money to see interminable movies about bisexual military leaders!
...
Just because people don't want to see a movie about an omnisexual world-beater from the smocks-and-sandals era doesn't mean they're homophobic, any more than the dud status of "The Polar Express" means conservative America is deeply conflicted about rail travel.

And it's not as though the movie has no hetero appeal; it has great dollops of Angelina Jolie, America's favorite demonstrably unhinged sex bomb. A great many red-state-blooded American males would sit through a six-hour documentary about the Gay Men's Chorus if they knew Angelina showed up naked in the final reel.