George Will's "Journalism" is worse than my "cooking"

George Will had a column today about how Jim Webb is an asshole who's disrespectful to the President. His main evidence is this account of an encounter between Webb and Bush:

When Bush asked Webb, whose son is a Marine in Iraq, "How's your boy?" Webb replied, "I'd like to get them [sic] out of Iraq." When the president again asked "How's your boy?" Webb replied, "That's between me and my boy."

So, Webb does sound a little curt. But here's how the original Post article, which Will cited as his source, described the encounter:

"How's your boy?" Bush asked, referring to Webb's son, a Marine serving in Iraq. "I'd like to get them out of Iraq, Mr. President," Webb responded, echoing a campaign theme. "That's not what I asked you," Bush said. "How's your boy?" "That's between me and my boy, Mr. President," Webb said coldly.

"That's not what I asked you"! Snap, Mr. President! You tell that man with a son whose life is put in danger every day by your policy decisions how he's allowed to feel about about it!

Kind of embarassing for George Will, though, that the actual facts screw up the point he was trying to make. You'd hope that after this snafu, the Washington Post will start to supply its writers with computers on which the cut-and-paste functions work, so they wouldn't be forced to resort to paraphrasing earlier news stories to themselves via smoke signals.

TomKat gets married--in 1987

What in God's name is going on with Katie Holmes here? The very short spiky bangs, the odd clumps of hair by the ear, and the somewhat square shape of her head all point to one thing: a bridal mullet, which is either insanely '80s or (one hopes) never actually existed in the world before today.

And the dress! The eye is so distracted by the irregular tufts of tulle jutting out from her shoulder area that you might at first not notice the off-the-shoulder-dress-PLUS-bra-strap combination that has not even been manufactured since before the invention of cellular telephones.

(For instance, the stunner to the left will set you back $44.95 if you Buy It Now!, because it's vintage, you see.)

The only explanation, I think, is that an actual friend of Katie's talked her into this getup in a desperate attempt to jolt her into realizing that she's lost her mind. The friend thought that maybe, just maybe, Katie would look in the mirror and think, "Who is that girl with hair like a wrestler wearing a costume from a Molly Ringwald movie preparing to marry an alien disguised as an over-the-hill movie star in a Scientology ceremony ending with a three-minute kiss? Omigod, it's ME!! NOOOO!"

Well, apparently it didn't work, but was a valiant effort, Anonymous Friend of Katie's. If someday Katie thanks you for it, I think that will make the opening of the Pandora's Box of Bridal Mullets worth it for us all.

New stylist, same electorate

I don't want to call myself The Biggest Genius Since Einstein, or anything, but may I humbly point out that I totally, 100% called it: Britney's filing for divorce was a sign that the electorate was going to kick the bums to the curb. Go BritneyMerica!

Now that Britney is officially the oracle of our national consciousness, though, I must admit that I am having a little trouble sleeping at night. For one thing, we can tell ourselves 'til we're blue in the face that Britney's a legal genius for filing for divorce before she owed K.Fed a year's worth of alimony at "Britney's touring" rates rather than "Britney's reproducing, eating Cheetos, and walking into public restrooms without shoes on" levels. But if she's so insightful, why did she marry her slack-jawed backup dancer to begin with? And what's to stop her from doing it again? The possibilities are non-encouraging:

1. She finds white-boy cornrows dreamy.
2. She's a traditional girl who believes in "staying the course" despite all evidence that the enterprise is doomed, at least for a couple of years.
3. She thought Iraq had something to do with September 11.

And then there are the ta-tas. The soon-to-be-former Mrs. Federline hired a stylist to give her an "I'm back" makeover, to which I say, smart move, doll . . . but then why, in every public appearance she's made since her big announcement, do her ladyparts appear to be engaged in a desperate, primal struggle to escape from her clothing, from one another, from this gravitational plane? To wit:


















Britney's breasts clearly have something to say about our nation. "You may think your electoral system is bouncing along nicely now, nurturing other fledgling democracies and all," they say, "but if you don't address the structural inequalities here, your hopeful-young-nation bubble is gonna start to deflate, and you're going to be left with a sagging, wrinkled husk of a republic."

Britney has convinced me: in 2008 I won't be hiding under the couch with a bottle of wine when the election results come in. I'll be out in some actual state, volunteering for a get-out-the-vote drive: The support bra for the electoral college!

As Britney does, so does the nation?

After many long years Britney Spears is finally throwing her moronic, self-congratulatory, incompetent bum of a husband out. Surely voters will be as smart as Britney and do the same on a national scale?

Ahh, I recall when we used to call it "it"

Massage--is that what the kids are calling it these days?

An Open Letter to Anna Nicole

Dear Anna Nicole Smith,

I will admit that our relationship began by accident. I was very excited when I was invited to join a Fafarazzi Celebrity Fantasy League, and I will admit I immediately began entertaining grandiose visions of a "Shock and Awe" type victory.

But as Donald Rumseld would tell you if he weren't such a dickhead, sometimes pride prevents you from planning carefully enough. My fatal misstep was failng to fully grasp the "ranking" element of the "draft pick" system. Thus I squandered my first-round pick on you, rather than a higher-point-scoring celebrity like Lindsay Lohan or Paris Hilton.

But as disappointed as I was, you have really stepped up to the plate, undergoing tragedy after bizarre tragedy in order to score points for me. Of course, that hasn't stopped me from being dead last in my league. (As inspiring as your efforts were, they couldn't rally the rest of my bedraggled team--Brandon Davis, Mary-Kate Olsen, Nick Carter, and it just gets worse from there--to do anything more exciting than your standard getting-caught-peeing-on-someone's lawn kind of thing, and that only gets you one point.

Plus, how could you have forseen the heights to which other celebrities would climb in the last few weeks? How were you to know that Nicole Richie would commit herself to an undisclosed "it's sure not for an eating disorder though" treatment clinic, collapse at a bar, and discharge herself from treatment all in a single weekend? Or that Madonna would catapault herself back to her circa 1989 banned-from-MTV levels of fame via constant blathering about her sketchy poor man's Angelina-type adoption? Or, God save us all, that Kevin Federline would be all over the gossip blogs like flies on the carcas of our culture's self-regard?

But anyway, Anna Nicole, yesterday you really outdid yourself. You were hospitalized for pneumonia on the very same day that one of your possible baby daddies accused you of dyeing your infant's hair in order to disguise its paternity. Shakespearian, my dear.

And so I know you must have been as crushed as I was when Fafarazzi failed to give you ANY POINTS AT ALL for that ingenious double-whammy. They're all, You can have one point for something Patrick Dempsey's ex-wife said about him, but baby-hair-dyeing . . . meh?

Anyway, ANS, I just wanted to let you know that it's not the points that matter to me anymore. I know that you've given me your all, and there's nothing more I could ask of you. (You, on the other hand, Tori Spelling--WHERE is the drama?) Please just know that I appreciate your efforts. Now go get some rest.

Love,

T&A Lady