Download | play Download | play (h/t David and BillW)

Once again, it takes a comedian to point out the absurdity of the Republican stance against gay marriage, something no journalist appears willing to take on. In presumably an attempt to appeal to the young vote, Republican presidential nominee John McCain appeared on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, and Ellen wasted no time talking about the "elephant in the room."

McCain didn't dance on the Ellen DeGeneres Show, but he did field some tough questions on Ellen's upcoming marriage to actress Portia de Rossi in a newly legalized California civil ceremony. [..] She told the senator and the audience that she will be soon marrying her longtime girlfriend. She said she was planning on marrying her before the state made it legal and asked McCain what his thoughts are on the same-sex marriage issue.

McCain said, "I think that people should be able to enter into legal agreements and it's something that we should encourage, particularly in the case of insurance and other areas and decisions that have to be made. I just believe in the unique status of marriage between a man and a woman and I know that we have a respectful disagreement on that issue."

Ellen responded, "I think that it is looked at and some people are saying the same that blacks and women did not have the right to vote. Women just got the right to vote in 1920. Blacks didn't have the right to vote until 1870 and it just feels like there's this old way of thinking that we are not all the same. We are all the same people. All of us. You are no different than I am. Our love is the same. To me, what it feels like, I will just speak for myself, it feels like when someone says, 'You can still have a contract and you'll still have insurance and you'll get all that' -- it sounds like you can sit there, but you can't sit there. That's what is sounds like to me."

Cliff Schecter:

What McCain had to say was interesting in many ways--including his lack of honesty on his position regarding domestic partnerships. He told Ellen he opposed gay marriage--or her "position" on that issue, a strange way to put it when it is not a "position" to her, but an issue that affects her everyday life as she intends to marry her partner now that the California Supreme Court has asserted the legality of the practice.

But then he went on to once again redefine his position on the issue:

 

McCain, who also opposes an amendment to the Constitution to ban same-sex unions, said people should be encouraged to enter into legal agreements, particularly for insurance and other areas where decisions need to be made.

The problem is that McCain himself not only supported an amendment to the Arizona Constitution in 2006 that would have banned any "legal agreements" including "insurance" for domestic partners, but he cut advertisements for the measure (which failed). He also told prominent campaign supporter the late Jerry Falwell--who blamed 9/11 on gays and lesbians, among others--that if state constitutional measures such as this one were struck down by the courts, he would then support a federal gay-marriage ban.

*Gasp* Say it ain't so! Could this be another McCain flip-flop LIE????

I've never watched an episode of Dancing with the Stars, but after seeing football great Jason Taylor say this about ending the war with Iraq, I'm rooting for him to win.

Taylor: The boys and girls in Iraq are coming home. I wish I could make that happen, unfortunately I can't, but we're hoping for it.

He's looking to make it in Hollywood. Good luck, Jason.

  Download | play   Download | play   (h/t Bill W)

SNL offers their take on this week's Senate hearings with Gen. Petraeus, skewering everything and anything, from Petraeus's obsequiousness, to John McCain's lack of knowledge on Iraq, to Hillary Clinton's attempts to spin her AUMF vote, to Code Pink protesters, to the cult of Obama that eclipses everything else in the room. A skit sure to get under everyone's skin, no matter whose camp you're in.

I swear, this show makes me weep for the future.  What is with the hosts of this show?  

In yet another episode of "Conservative (Non-)Thinker gone terribly, terribly wrong," co-host Elizabeth Hasselbeck equates Rev. Jeremiah Wright with Jeffery Dahmer eating peanut butter sandwiches when it's pointed out to her that she is making judgments against him based on cherry-picked snippets of the most inflammatory rhetoric over a decades-long ministry and a history of good work.

"Would you say, ... I'm sure at some point Jeffrey Dahmer ate peanut butter sandwiches doesn't make the fact that he ate people any less wrong."

Congratulations, Elizabeth.  You've succeeded in making your colleague Sherri Shepherd actually seem smarter than you. 

Download | play Download | play (h/t Heather)

Chris Matthews was invited to go on the Ellen Degeneres Show and like other guests, encouraged to dance with Ellen into their segment. Tweety was game but the producers may want to reconsider this choice unless Ellen want to be pawed and dropped by their fatally unfunky guests.

In honor of the day that Dick Cheney shot someone in the face, and of course was let go—I pulled this clip of TDS from my great C&L archives.

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Jon Stewart was having a very boring weekend and he was really, really sad. Nothing had been getting his blood boiling lately and he just wasn’t excited to be alive anymore-Until–Dick Cheney shot a man in the face. How quick life can tun on a dime.

“Sewart: Whittington was mistaken for a bird.” “Harry Whittington, seasoned to an inch of his life.”

“Don’t let your kids go hunting with the Vice President. I don’t care what kind of lucrative contracts they’re trying to land or-energy regulations they’re trying to get lifted. He’ll shoot them in the face.”

Rob Corddry joined in.

Corddry : “Jon, tonight the Vice President is standing by his decision to shoot Harry Whittington. Now according to the best intelligence available, there were quail hidden in the brush. Everyone believed at the time-there-were-quail in the brush. And while the quail turned out to be the 78 year old man. Even knowing that today, Mr. Cheney insists-he still would have shot Mr. Whittington in the face.

Arguably the best show on teevee, The Wire opened Sunday night with its fifth and final season. This series is as close an experience to reading a book as there ever has been on television. In this season--- print media (The Baltimore Sun) is included into the dynamic of the series. I'm so used to power cycling through a whole season in like two days that it'll be difficult to have to watch it week to week, but that's the breaks.

Season 5 is the culmination of brilliant, nuanced storytelling, exceptional acting and the fearlessness of Simon and his writers from the get-go in telling novelistic stories on television without pandering.... As for this grand finale, "The Wire" doesn't disappoint (has it ever?)

Christy has a really nice post on it....

If you haven't watched The Wire, you really should. The scripts are genius, the acting is sublime, and the research on the various characters -- decent cops and broken ones, drug dealers and their long-suffering and/or grasping families, community leaders and sell-outs, flawed politicians and the people who bribe them -- has been so spot on, beyond anything you usually see in the sterilized, shorthanded, cardboard cut-out "cop and law" shows.

Some of you know I've been getting over a nasty virus. Lucky for me I have a Netflix account and decided to "power cycle" through the first season of Battlestar Gallactica while resting up. What I mean by "power cycling" is that I watched the whole season in about a week. It's one thing to check out a series from week to week, but speeding through it like that is a completely different experience. I came up with the term "power cycle"---call it what you like--it's a great way to get through an illness, but it also breathes incredible depth and clarity into the characters and stories.

BA is just another reason why we need to support the WGA strikers. The writers barely see a penny from the sale of a single DVD, let alone a package of 3-6. The success of "FireFly" after it was prematurely cancelled by FOX on DVD promoted millions of dollars to be poured into Whedon's "Serenity," a most excellent movie version of the series. Dexter and The Wire are a couple of other shows to cycle through fast and furious. You won't be disappointed.

(h/t Scarce)

Wall Street Journal:

Every Monday night at 10 o'clock, Iranians by the millions tune into Channel One to watch the most expensive show ever aired on the Islamic republic's state-owned television. Its elaborate 1940s costumes and European locations are a far cry from the typical Iranian TV fare of scarf-clad women and gray-suited men.

But the most surprising thing about the wildly popular show is that it is a heart-wrenching tale of European Jews during World War II.

The hour-long drama, "Zero Degree Turn," centers on a love story between an Iranian-Palestinian Muslim man and a French Jewish woman. Over the course of the 22 episodes, the hero saves his love from Nazi detention camps, and Iranian diplomats in France forge passports for the woman and her family to sneak on to airplanes carrying Iranian Jews to their homeland.

On the surface, the message of the lavish, state-funded production appears sharply at odds with that sent out by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has repeatedly called the Holocaust a myth.

In fact, the government's spending on the show underscores the subtle and often sophisticated way in which the Iranian state uses its TV empire to send out political messages. The aim of the show, according to many inside and outside the country, is to draw a clear distinction between the government's views about Judaism -- which is accepted across Iranian society -- and its stance on Israel -- which the leadership denounces every chance it gets.

That's right, kids.  We're in an seemingly endless occupation of a foreign nation that wants us out and our civil liberties are eroded every day.  Our great-grandchildren will still be grappling with the debts accrued during this administration. As horror author Stephen King points out, we're still debating whether waterboarding is torture.  But what we all want to know about, according to our incisive media, is what the presidential contenders watch on TV.  Here's Chris "Life is a Campaign" Matthews' take, but keep in mind he was joined by every other outlet as well.

  Download | play   Download | play   (h/t Heather)

I actually heard a talking head on a morning talk show call Hillary Clinton "elitist" for saying that she likes to watch HGTV and Obama "safe and kind of gutless" for saying he liked to watch SpongeBob with his kids.  But they left the obvious jokes of Mitt Romney's choice of Lost and McCain's Prison Break alone.  Talk about safe and kind of gutless.

I have to say that the thought that anyone might be swayed in their vote by this information sickens--but does not surprise--me.

(AP) — NBC's "Last Call with Carson Daly" is about to become the first late-night talk show to defy the writers strike and resume production. ...(read on)

That's just so not cool. Get to know some of the writers who Carson Daly is planning on dissing in this mini-documentary Who’s On The Line by Peter Hyoguchi, and if you want to know what this writer's strike is all about summed up nicely, check out the video Voices of Uncertainty from the "good guys at United Hollywood."

Download | play Download | play (h/t BillW) D'oh! Correct video added.

Willie Geist on MSNBC's Morning Joe looks at Keith Olbermann's guest turn on The Simpsons, in which he names Marge as the Worst Person in the World (worse than Satan and Mr. Burns? D'oh!) for skipping commercials while watching TV.

Gosh, I guess all Keith has to do is get on South Park and he's hit the animated cultural icon trifecta.

Jon gets his early dose of crazy from the brown hair guy who's not Steve Doocy on FOX & Friends, who says he was "traumatized" by Barbara Eden's sexy outfit on "I Dream Of Jeannie" back in the 60's, and blames her for all the slutty Halloween costumes of today.

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Jon: "Luckily for my pre-conceived notions about the FOX network, the conversation soon got back on the express to Crazy Town."

Brown hair guy who's not Steve Doocy: "Here's the problem, though. In 1970 or '68, Barbara Eden lowered the bar by wearing that sexy outfit, traumatized me as a child, and then every kid wore the Barbara Eden outfit..."

Jon: This is Barbara Eden's fault?! Yes, I too remember the trauma caused by Barbara Eden's genie outfit. I could sometimes remember watching I Dream of Jeannie and traumatizing myself two or three times an episode. And that was before TiVO.

Discussing Kucinich with the Beaver...No, I'm not making that up. Hilarious.  From The 35 Percenters:  

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I really believe that the Republican party should send out Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ) to represent them as often as possible.  It just makes my job that much easier.  Remember this gem? 

Rep. "I know how to memorize talking points" Franks appears on C-Span's Washington Journal, unintentionally proving the argument that there should be at least a minimum IQ requirement to be an elected representative, to discuss the FISA fix currently under discussion in Congress, and dismissing any concerns of this administration abusing citizens with illegal wiretapping with the challenge (the same one verbatim that I've heard from a whole bunch of Republican mouthpieces, curious that) to name anyone in the US who has been illegally wiretapped.

Ah, but this is what happens when you send the third-stringers out to represent you on a channel dedicated to political wonks like myself: the challenge is answered...remember the news reports of the Quakers being wiretapped?

 Ooops!