Yo mama

Oh my. An election-related game of the dozens breaks out on Twitter:

fernandorizo: hey twitter, @anildash , @mathowie , and @loresjoberg are saying hell of yo mama jokes up in here. no limits no knuckles style, exactly.

loresjoberg: @anildash Yo mama so fat, when she suspends her campaign they have to bring in a crane.

loresjoberg: @anildash Yo mama so ugly, Sarah Palin knows how to field dress her.

fernandorizo: @anildash yo mama's such a ho, she said she'd sit ON Ahmedinejad with no preconditions

loresjoberg: @anildash Yo mama so fat, she got an endorsement from General Mills.

loresjoberg: @anildash Yo mama's so ugly, Obama said "You can put lipstick on a pig and it would look a lot like yo mama on dollar margarita night."

anildash: @mathowie Your moms so nasty Joe the Plumber had to tell her to stop "sharing the wealth".

gesteves: @anildash, yo momma’s so fat, John McCain looked into her eyes and saw three letters: KFC.

anildash: @fernandorizo well played! Your mama so nasty Bill Ayers wouldn't pal around with *her*.

O tempora, O mores

A study by University of Maryland economists makes the case that her endorsement alone was worth more that one million votes in the Democratic primary.

Life in the post-political age

Over at Joe Bageant's place, an "anonymous political consultant" asserts that we are now in a post-political age:

It should not come as a surprise that the dominant ideas and mores of popular culture have become the dominant ideas of our society. Popular culture is the breaker of customs, prejudice, tradition and relevant historical knowledge.

It is a result of this dynamic that the two consistent winners in American politics over the last 30 years have been the cultural left and the economic right. Despite the massive organizing drive of the religious right over the past three decades, they are further away from reversing the cultural liberalization of American society than when they started. 

On [the other] side of the ledger, organized labor outside of a few urban pockets and industries is no longer a relevant force in American life. The ever greater electoral activism of both of these groups is generally misunderstood as a show of strength; in fact, it is the exact opposite. It is the desperate fight of the losing side of the American economic, cultural and political scene.

In essence the same forces that make it possible for the rapid acceptance of ideas such as gay marriage are the same force which can create a society that will accept massive social inequalities.

Joe Bageant: Life in the Post-Political Age

The 50 Greatest Comedy Sketches of All Time

This has been getting heavy coverage in the blog-o-mo-sphere, but on the off chance that you might have missed it (or passed up a chance to look):

The highbrow cinemaphiles at IFC and the brainy sex kittens at Nerve have combined resources to write their Top 50 list for television sketch comedy:

There's no more sure-fire way to kill something's intrinsic comedic value than to try to examine what makes it funny. The minute you start thinking, you stop laughing. So why, then, have Nerve and IFC.com devoted an enormous amount of time, manpower, monetary resources, server space and posh catered lunches to the pursuit of ranking the boob tube's finest sketch comedy offerings?

In part, we're here because magical new technology (*coughYouTubecough*) allows us to do more than just pontificate for paragraphs on end — now we can pontificate for paragraphs on end and provide audio-visual evidence to back up those pontifications. We provide the context, share our thoughts and feelings and let you commence with the guffawing and, naturally, the disagreeing. After all, the comedy sketch — short, sweet, completely silly or shot through with social commentary — worms its way into the public mind like nothing else, and has easily made the leap to the web when other forms have faltered.

This list is a lot of fun.

IFC: 50 Greatest Comedy Sketches
Nerve: 50 Greatest Comedy Sketches

Of *course* Sammy Hagar has his own line of tequilas...

A-list celebrities don't really pimp food products. It's like doing TV commercials—it's okay in Japan, out of sight, but it seems far beneath the likes of Tom Cruise or Russell Crowe to do something so gauche in America. The exception is Paul Newman, whose vast food empire is about more than releasing a quickie, crappy product. The A.V. Club's Tasha Robinson has had a bottle of Olympia Dukakis-brand salad dressing (brought to you by the same defunct company that once foisted Erik Estrada corn chips on the world) on her desk since 1999: Inspired by that, we dug up some currently available products endorsed by marginal celebs.

Nectar of the demigods: B-list celebrity-endorsed foodstuffs (The A.V. Club)

Flowchart: Should you watch the Grammy Awards?

Service journalism from New York Magazine's Vulture blog.

Excerpt:

Ask Vulture: Should You Watch Sunday Night's Grammy Awards? (7 February 2008)

Comedy is hard

Albert Brooks notoriously tried and failed to find comedy in the Muslim world.

He should have checked out metro New York:

Maysoon Zayid, a stand-up comedienne, has her work cut out. "Your typical female comic is walking on stage talking about being fat, having her period, boy problems or being a lesbian," she explained to me. "In general I'm talking about Israeli soldiers and what it means to be a virgin at 30—things that people haven't heard before."

On the beer-stained stages of New York comedy clubs, she is a rare presence. "I'm a 30-year-old Palestinian-American virgin from New Jersey with cerebral palsy. And if you don't feel better about yourself, maybe you should." This is the sucker-punch that usually begins her set. There is usually a surprised pause, and then a lot of laughter.

More Intelligent Life: The 30 Year-Old Virgin

And here I thought R2D2 was just a beeping fireplug

John Cloud isn't all that impressed by J.K. Rowling's declaration before a group of Harry Potter fans in New York City that Dumbledore was gay:

Yes, it's nice that gays finally got a major character in the sci-fi/fantasy universe. Until now, we had been shut out of all the major franchises. Tolkien, a conservative Catholic, wrote a rich supply of homoeroticism into The Lord of the Rings—all those Men and Hobbits and Elves singing to each other during long, woman-less quests. The books and their film versions feature tender scenes between Frodo and Samwise. But in the end Sam marries Rose Cotton and fathers 13 children. Thirteen! You'd think he had something to prove.

Other fantasy worlds have presented gay (or at least gay-seeming) characters, but usually they are, literally, inhuman. George Lucas gave us the epicene C-3PO and the little butch R2-D2, and their Felix-Oscar dialogue suggests the banter of a couple of old queens who have been keeping intergalactic house for millennia. But their implied homosexuality is quite safe. There is no real flesh that could actually entangle, just some electrical wiring...

...So along comes Rowling with Dumbledore—a human being, a wizard even, an indisputable hero and one of the most beloved figures in children's literature. Shouldn't I be happy to learn he's gay? Yes, except: Why couldn't he tell us himself?

Put Dumbledore Back in the Closet (John Cloud, Time, October 22, 2007)