It’s been a bonanza week for news commentators, with earthquakes, tell-all books, people saying “negro” two years ago—everything that makes a vibrant political discourse thrive. The big news, though, was that a certain someone jumped from national electoral politics to the big show: cable news commentating. When Bill O’Reilly welcomed Sarah Palin to Fox News, he told her that she had acquired a powerful tool, a bigger megaphone that she could at last use to shout back at her critics. The implication was that being a Fox commentator was a position of greater power than being governor of Alaska. And was he wrong? Sarah Palin is more popular now than she was when she had the full might of the Republican Party behind her. Rush Limbaugh has outlasted the Contract With America, three Presidents and presumably dozens of minor coronaries. And Glenn Beck can’t think. Powerful men all, and it’s hard to argue that they wield less influence over the American people than do Pelosi, Boehner and Reid. Perhaps that is as it should be. I, for one, welcome our new and increasingly bloated masters, and urge them to form a new government of Real Americans and questionable analogies to Hitler just as soon as they can. Won’t you join me in considering the beautiful world they’re creating? No? Okay, back to cat videos, then. I’ll see the rest of you after the jump.
News you can use: Should I make a deal with the devil?
Howdy, folks! What's it going to take to put you into a river of maggots and burning feces today?
If you’re a human being who can still experience what our pre-Facebook ancestors once called empathy, you probably felt briefly sorry for the people of Haiti, whose country was struck by a terrible earthquake on Tuesday. Then you tuned into The 700 Club and saw Pat Robertson explain that the earthquake was Haiti’s fault because they made a pact with the devil. For those of you who do not live with your elderly grandparents, I quote: “Something happened a long time ago in Haiti, and people might not want to talk about it. They were under the heel of the French. You know, Napoleon III and whatever. And they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said, ‘We will serve you if you will get us free from the French.’ True story. And so, the devil said, ‘OK, it’s a deal.'”
You know that’s true, because Robertson is an ordained minister and also he said “true story” at the end. We don’t have to feel sorry for the people of Haiti, because it turns out that, like the developmentally disabled and people who have lost their jobs, the whole thing is their fault. The Haitian people have been free from slavery for almost 200 years, so they can’t really say that the devil hasn’t held up his end of the deal. On the other hand, Haiti is beset by endemic poverty, has one of the highest AIDS exposure rates of any nation in the western hemisphere, and is right next door to the Dominican Republic—which means constant merengue music no matter what time it is. Diabolic servitude or not, they’ve clearly had a hard time of it. Haiti made a classic error: they forged a blood pact with the dark lord Mephistopheles, which was great, but they forgot to be specific. When you’re dealing with the devil, it’s critically important that everything be specified. Because once he says, “Okay, it’s a deal,” that’s it.
Second biggest idiot of his age, Michael Steele soldiers on
Michael Steele and, ironically, the only entity in his life he hasn't called "dog."
Now must be a hard time to be an idiot in the American press. You go to all the trouble of writing a book that says the party whose national committee you chair isn’t ready to lead, get yourself on Hannity and make a bunch of invidious comparisons, then wrap up your remarks with an old-timey ethnic slur, only to be bumped from the national snarklight by Sarah Palin. You just can’t compete with that bitch. It seems like every time a prominent political figure does something stupid, Sarah Palin jumps in and yells that FDR faked polio so he could sit down all the time or whatever. Sometimes it feels like the incompetence of major political figures exceeds demand, and guys like Michael Steele—who would be saying crazy shit at Wisconsin Right To Life rallies in any other incompetence economy—are forced to practice their art in obscurity. Poor Michael Steele. When it comes to being a complete jerkoff, he’s Salieri to Palin’s Mozart.
Sarah Palin joins Fox News, delighting/terrifying nation
"Everything is very simple, and people who say it isn't are lying."
By now you have probably heard that Sarah Palin has joined Fox News as a contributor, and will be providing “her political commentary and analysis across all Fox News platforms,” which by 2012 will presumably include blimps and children’s mouths. This is the kind of news event that makes so much sense, once it has happened, that you feel like you were time traveling and have suddenly caught up with the actual present. Why hasn’t Sarah Palin been working for Fox News since she graduated from college? It’s like watching Joseph Goebbels fuck The Riddler: difficult to see coming, but once it starts happening you know that only circumstances kept them apart for so long. “I am thrilled to be joining the great talent and management team at Fox News,” Palin said in a press release. “It’s wonderful to be part of a place that so values fair and balanced news.” And so it begins.
Netflix rental patterns: Is taste a luxury good?
Netflix rental frequency of "Paul Blart: Mall Cop" in the New York metropolitan area. Redder areas indicate greater popularity; note the near total absence of "Paul Blart: Mall Cop" from the richest little island in America.
The New York Times issued a compelling argument that web pages are better than newspapers yesterday, when they published this interactive graphic of the most popular Netflix movies in major US cities. Fascinating trends abound, from the predictable—the distribution of Obsessed turns out to be a handy map of where black people live—to the predictable-in-retrospect: the Reneé Zellweger vehicle New In Town, about a big-city girl who moves to Minnesota for some reason, is fantastically popular in Minneapolis and nowhere else. (For those of you who find the slider irritating, as I do, New In Town is just to the right of the second hash mark. Things that are not related by quantitative induction, where each element n cannot be said to have an n+1, should not be arranged on a slider. Leviticus 14:5.) At right, you will see the map for Paul Blart: Mall Cop, a movie that I did not see but which I am going to assume, based on the preview, was not exactly Citizen Kane. Those of you wondering where the line is between upper Manhattan and the South Bronx need look no further than the sharp red-white delineation between highways 9 and 1. Also, if you’re wondering which parts of Brooklyn are nice now, there you go. Hint: not Gravesend.