There has got to be meaning to this juxtaposition :

James Brown, the hardest working man in show business who took shit from nobody and represented the emerging black powered pop culture revolution. He dies on Christmas day.

Gerald Ford, the man who had to clean Richard Nixon's shit while nurturing the emerging white supremacist neo-con movement introduced by his presidency. He dies the day after Christmas.

James Brown, no matter how fucked up his situation, he always seemed to be able to overcome through hard work and determination. His foibles? Pardonnable because even though he was superhumanly talented, his shortcomings and humble beginning just made him more like us.

Gerald Ford, on the other hand, never seemed to break a sweat. His photographs in the White House make it look like he is more like a vacationer than a president; just passing time before his time to go. And his biggest foible? Pardoning Nixon, and letting him skip free from the consequences of his corrupt actions.  read more »

Today's big stink is centered around a 4 minute piece on The Today Show, produced by Matt Lauer. Take a look :

In many of my presentations about blogging I have made the point that right now we are in the middle of a semantic warfare and that Google and blogs are the tools of semantic guerrilla warriors like me.

Here's the deal : Big Media was the tool of the powerful. When people talk about "Top-Down Politics" or hierarchical politics, it really doesn't start in Washington DC. Top-Down politics starts in New York City addresses like One Rockefeller Plaza and 229 West 43rd Street.

The magazines, TV shows and advertisments produced over at Madison Avenue, 6th Avenue (or Avenue of the Americas) and 10th and 11th Avenues have only one purpose : To influence "the demographics". It isn't a coincidence that politicos and advertisers use the same term to describe "the people" who end up shopping with their votes and voting with their wallets. The delusion is that Power in the United States is purveyed only by those who have control over what "the demographics" read, listen, wear, eat, like.

If you control desire/information/knowledge, the maxim used to go, then you control Power. So how are we to understand Matt Lauer's move?

Howard Kurtz on the linguistic missile :

I'm still working on the part where NBC gets more power if the conflict is viewed as a civil war. Because the network would be seen as galvanizing support for a pullout? All because of the use of the C-word? Is American support for the war so shaky that a single network's phraseology can cause that support to crumble?

[...]

I have no problem in using the phrase. But I don't think every news outlet needs to have an edict from on high.

I continue to believe that the day-to-day coverage of the carnage in Iraq is more important in terms of swaying public opinion than the label that the MSM chooses to slap on the conflict. Did most people think this wasn't a civil war before Lauer et al made the switch? I don't think so.  read more »

You never know how much you love New York until you go away for a few days and return a turkey-fattened, tryptophaned, cranberried and essentially immobile victim of the SUV lifestyle, or perhaps merely of the holiday spirit.

But in any event, here's a clip, from the broadcast last Wednesday on NBC, of Madonna performing "I Love New York"; the bleeped-out part should be rendered "and you can suck George Bush's ....".

Please, do enjoy.

DailyKos: Speaker Pelosi will keep the House in session in January, a break with established practice that is likely to provoke howls of outrage from lazy republican lawbreakersmakers not used to, like, really working for their government handout.

ThinkProgress: George Allen says buh-bye with a bill that would allow the carrying of concealed weapons in the National Parks. No, seriously.

The New Republic is frightened of black people with power. Now imagine what they'd say if they had seen Yvette Clarke's new and improved hair.

Unhappy days in the Vice-Royalty of Iraq; the UN notes that the civilian death toll is at an all time high, with 3,709 killed in October.

The New York Times doesn't get Madonna.

On Room 8, in case you didn't know, the Thanksgiving holiday is explained as a celebration of capitalism, the corporation, loosened church-state separation, military dominance and all those other warm and fuzzy things dear to the right.

And lastly, The Washington Post has video on how to carve a turkey.

That's all for today, folks. Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours. There's so much to be thankful for this time around.  read more »

Let's do snark instead! Via PerezHilton.com comes this magazine cover.

No, I don't quite know what to say, either.