NP: Everlast, White Trash Beautiful (CD)

Catching up on the news today, so this will be all over the place.

I'm still pretty flabbergasted that so much political hay is being made out of Teresa Heinz Kerry's "shove it" comment. If her use of strong language to a reporter means her husband isn't qualified to be president, and Dick Cheney telling a member of Congress to go fuck himself or calling a reporter a "major-league asshole" is okay, you have to figure that the GOP doesn't deserve a single female vote in 2004. Because the only possible rationale is that it's somehow less appropriate for a woman to use strong language than for a man to use language that would bring a $500,000 fine from the FCC.

And lest you think I'm being overly partisan here, I think the reaction to Arnold calling Democratic lawmakers "girlie men" was completely ridiculous.

Elsewhere on the campaign trail, the New York Times tries hard to look objective by saying of DemCon keynote speaker Barack Obama, "after a primary victory in Illinois of startling dimensions, and with his Republican opponent having suddenly dropped out, Mr. Obama stands a good chance to win a seat from the Republicans." A good chance? A bit of an understatement, no?

It's not nearly as painfully obvious as Bob Novak commenting on the 'bad timing' of the Sandy Berger investigation. The timing is the whole story, ferchrissakes. The investigation has been going on for nearly a year. And seriously, the guy should know a little something about leaking news, shouldn't he?

On the heels of the 9/11 Commission's report, I was very happy to see this. It's become de rigeur to blast both Clinton and Bush for what they didn't do, but it seemed like too many people forgot what happened when Clinton actually did try to do something. The same could probably be said of enforcing the no-fly zones in Iraq, also held up as evidence of distracting us from Monica, when it turns out they were getting the job done containing Saddam Hussein.

And if you think I like this story a lot simply because it talks about two of my favorite news-related personalities, you'd be right. Saw the Wonkette bit on CNN last night, but couldn't figure out if MTV was just going to show periodic updates or what, seeing as how I haven't watched MTV since they cancelled Beavis and Butthead. Stewart is definitely getting his licks in during the convention, which is good to see.