TELEVISION AVAILABLE SIX DAYS A WEEK IN UTAH.
Actual Conversation I Had
FRIEND (after observing nametag): This is a Cuban restaurant and that waiter's name is German.
ME: What is it?
FRIEND: German.
ME: What's his name?
FRIEND: It's German.
ME: What is it? "Kurt?"
FRIEND: His name is German.
ME: Wait, his name is G-E-R-...?
FRIEND: Yes.
ME: We just had a Who's on First thing there.
FRIEND: We really did.
DECEMBER 24: The White House posts a video Christmas statement from the President and his wife. It is listed on the White House website’s Statements and Releases page as “WEEKLY ADDRESS: The President and First Lady Thank our Troops for their Service as we Celebrate the Holiday Season.”
DECEMBER 27: Right-wing blogger Jim Hoft (aka Gateway Pundit) posts a screenshot of the Statements and Releases page that includes the link to the December 24th Christmas statement. Hoft titles his post “Obama Skips Christmas Statement But Issues Statement for Fake Holiday Kwanzaa.” The link to the President’s December 26th Kwanzaa statement is shown on the screenshot three links above the December 24th Christmas statement. (Hoft previously demonstrated his powers of observation when he blogged that the Jumbotron closed-captioning at Obama’s Tuscon speech was an applause prompt.)
DECEMBER 28: Donald Trump tweets a link to Hoft’s post.
In the spirit of the holiday, Jesus Christ.
Multiple Fails of the Day
Newt Gingrich fails to collect 10,000 valid signatures in his adopted home state and is disqualified from the Virginia primary ballot. Campaign director Michael Krull blames Virginia’s “failed system” and vows a write-in campaign, presumably unaware Virginia does not allow write-in campaigns. Later on Facebook, Krull amends the blame to Virginia’s “cumbersome process” and says the setback is “not catastrophic” and that “Newt and I agree that the analogy is December 1941,” presumably unaware that that is a completely idiotic analogy.
“A funny woman, no matter how conventionally lovely, generally has to accept that she’ll also be perceived as a little bit funny looking. When she gets a laugh, she risks subliminally conveying the message that she’s making up for some hidden deficiency, that she’s sad or irreparably broken.”
-Meghan Daum, Christopher Hitchens Gets the Last Laugh, L.A. Times
Totally, categorically, unquestionably, misguidedly, brain-crushingly, empirically, ludicrously false. Signed, a man.
A couple of days after Herman Cain’s campaign website deleted the much-mocked stock photo on its Women For Cain page (the ladies giving thumbs up were not only not actual Cain supporters but possibly not actual Americans), the newly launched TheCainSolutions.com features a stock photo of a farmer in Quebec. (Here’s a blog post from March by Montreal photographer Nicolas McComber about his discovery that another photo from his farmer series was used in a Canadian political ad, which he regarded as an infringement of iStockphoto’s licensing agreement.)
