Tag: bill o reilly

I Called It! w00t! w00t!

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As I predicted, we got our patooties totally whupped in the 2008 Weblog Awards by the very professional and extremely good Ars Technica.

As always, I find inspiration and comfort through our master, teacher, guiding light, and source of all truthiness, Stephen Colbert. Colbert himself once faced a similar crushing defeat at the hands of a certain “musician,” but found triumph in having predicted his own defeat. I will let Stephen speak for me here.

The Colbert ReportMon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Manilow’s Emmy

Later, in an act of unbelievable selfless graciousness, Colbert healed the nation by forgiving Manilow and letting Manilow place the Emmy in joint custody.

I want to Michael Thompson, Matt Lasar, Nate Anderson, and all my other friends over at Ars that any time they want to share the Weblog 2008 Best Technology Blog Award with me, I will be equally gracious.

Stay tuned . . . . .

Back In the NCMR: Pappa Bear Comes To Town!

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So here I am at the 2008 National Conference on Media Reform, and I have the most exciting news: the FOX NEWS TEAM IS HERE for Bill O’Reilly. (No doubt he is in town to endorse Al Franken in his bid for the Senate.)

Woo hoooo!!!! Talk about your status symbols. We have really made the big time if Poppa Bear himself has come to town to pay his respects. As for me, it’s as if the Goodfeathers had fallen into a catnip truck then accidentally wandered into a cat show.

I understand that some folks, however, may be nervous talking to the good folks at Fox News. Here is my advice: keep confusing O’Reilly with Stephen Colbert.

So for example:
Fox News: Can we interview you for O’Reilly Factor.
Person: Great! I’ve always wanted to be on the Colbert Show!
FN: That’s not us. This is Bill O’Reilly.
Person: Oh yeah. I saw him on the Colbert Show once.
FN: Anyway —
Person: Do you think O’Reilly can get me on Colbert?
FN: No. Now —
Person: Because Stephen Colbert is just a god, you know. A. Total. God. O’REilly should definitely try to get on Colbert again. You know, for the Colbert bump.
FN: We want to talk to you about —
Person: Did you know Stephen Colbert was just given the distinguished “Understandable Vanity Award by the Princeton University Class of ’08 (Go Tigers!). Did O’Reilly ever go to college?
(Persist until FN people quit in disgust.)
Person: Wait! Come back! Does this mean O’Reilly won’t introduce me to Stephen Colbert?

Stay tuned . . . .

Jet Blue and me

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I live on the island of Martha’s Vineyard, which is served by Cape Air. Cape Air owns planes that seat nine passengers.

I fly to San Francisco airport (“SFO”) on business about eight times a year. I’m making this post from a lonely hotel room 7 miles from SFO right now, as a matter of fact.

Often I fly to Boston on Cape Air, & then catch a flight from Boston to SFO (although sometimes I take the boat & then drive or take the bus to Boston). I’ve taken about 8 round trips between Boston and California on Jet Blue in the last 2 years.

Recently Jet Blue did two things that greatly increased their attractiveness to me when booking my round-trip flights Boston/SFO: they partnered up with Cape Air to make it easier to book flights and check baggage, and they initiated direct service from Boston to SFO (until recently I had to fly into San Jose or Oakland if I wanted to take Jet Blue).

Their prices are good, their airplanes are clean and comfortable, they offer a lot of legroom (which is very important to me, as I’m 6’3″), and they have nifty in-flight TV. So while I have never been a crazy JetBlue fanboy, I have certainly been willing to give them my business.

Alas, no more.

As Google can tell anybody who’s interested, JetBlue has decided to cast its lot with Bill O’Reilly and the radical right.

Good for them. Let them spend their dollars as they see fit. As will I.

Unless and until Jet Blue changes its policy, I’ve taken my last flight with them. It should be interesting to see how their kowtowing to the radical right plays out. Who knows, it may be a money-making decision for them. That would surprise and sadden me, but stranger things have happened. I would suspect that demand for seats on their Boston-SFO routes will go down, but maybe not enough so they’ll notice. In any event, they’ve pissed on me and mine, so they can kiss my travel dollars goodbye.

So it goes.

Stunning Announcement! Ward Churchill appointed to Hoover Institution!

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We all remember Ward Churchill, poster boy for the “blame America first” crowd, who basically wrote about the September 11, 2001, attacks that “we (Americans) had it coming to us.” In particular he slandered the actual dead who had worked in the World Trade Towers as “little Eichmans.”

His invitation to speak at Hamilton College caused a national stink (google can tell you all about it), even though he had been invited to speak on another topic and the person who invited him had no prior knowledge of his controversial opinions about September 11th. (I paid some attention to this stink because I’m a Hamilton alumnus, and also because the person who invited him to Hamilton is a good friend and former professor of my sister Muggs, who is also an alum.)

Well as anybody who has spent any time at wetmachine at all knows, I’m a left-leaning liberal pinko Christo-athiest from Massachusetts; you can hardly get any further away from Bill O’Reilly and the other torchbearers who kept Churchill from speaking at Hamilton (the death threats which the State Police deemed ‘credible’ kind of forced the college president’s hand, according to her letter to the community). Yet even I am no defender of Ward Churchill, and I find his remarks scandalous and cruel. ANYWHO, imagine, then, my surprise, upon learning that the conservative Hoover Institution, a right wing “think tank” closely associated with Stanford University, had appointed this hate-filled, blame-America nut job, Ward Churchill, to its prestigious faculty! Ward “Blame America First” Churchhill on the faculty of the Hoover Institution!

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Every Republican is a Bush Republican

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A short political announcement, and then we can get back to the usual Wetmachine technophilc-phobic goodness. (Warning: Extreme Metaphor Mashup Alert!)

Now that Preznit Bush’s poll numbers are permanently pegged in the Nixonian range, and with White House scandals, travesties, abominations and shotgun blasts to the face dominating the news, we see the predictable yet despicable and revolting spectacle of Republicans slithering off the good ship George W. Bush — or trying to, at least.

The Great Republican “Oh Shit!” (GROS) kind of crystallized with the Dubai Ports fiasco, when the warm waters heated up by years of Arab-bashing xenophobia met the cool air of Cheney-Rice Boogeymanophobia and gave rise to perfect storm Hell No. So much potential energy was bound up in Hell No — the equivalent of 30 MegaLou Dobbs — that the very levies of Washington DC were imperiled– and remain so. Iraq teeters on the edge of the abyss, and signs abound that the mythical people of the heartland are starting to wake up and ask what the fuck that’s all about. And so Republicans with hearts full of dread must face the harsh reality that Bush himself has become their New Orleans, and their Dunkirk.

And so they try to make their escape.

Well, let’s just watch them, shall we?

But remember: Every Republican is a Bush Republican. Every Republican is an Abu Grahib Republican, a Katrina Republican, a trillion-dollar-deficit Republican, a Haliburton Republican, a Yellow Cake Republican, a Claude Allen Republican, a Plame-outing Republican, a stonewall-the-911-commission Republican, a Bill O’Reilly sexual predator Republican, an Ann Coulter murder-the-judges Republican, a Jack Abramoff hitman-in-Miami Republican, an 8.8 billion missing dollars in the Green Zone Republican, a twenty-five-hundred dead soldiers Republican.

Mitt Romney is a Bush Republican. John McCain is a Bush Republican. Bill Frist is a Bush Republican. Newt Gingrich is a Bush Republican. Colin Powell is a Bush Republican, and Michael Powell is a Bush Republican. Olympia Snowe is a Bush Republican and Chuck Hagel and Lincoln Chafee too. They’re all complicit in this, the imperial reign of our delusional Nero: any one of them who has run for office in the last five years with an (R) behind his or her name. Now just watch them sing!