The Bullshit Observer

Wolf Blitzer's Situation Room Much Like Every Other Room

Here's the situation: Wolf Blitzer has been usurped by the media establishment and is shilling for the man. Who isn't, right? Well, okay, but it's still irksome to me that this media hero of the first Iraq war is now hosting a show called "The Situation Room" that would have you believe that everything he talks about is, "a situation."

Webster defines situation as: A state of affairs of special or critical significance. They define a Situation Room as: a room at a military or political headquarters where the latest information on a military or political situation is channeled.

And what passes for a critical state of affairs in Blitzerland?

• Situation: Comedian Bill Maher is critical of President Obama in a funny and slightly quirky, but still lovable way. Brought to you by Duracel.
• Situation: Latinos Praise Sotomayor and Tamaflu and Rainbows. Brought to you by The World Games 2009.
• Situation: Wife of failed Presidential candidate John Edwards speaks out. This is actually Oprah, but is playing in The Situation Room because it was only 9 months ago when we would have cared even in the slightest what she has to say.
• Situation: Obama and Biden go for burgers. Obama wears red tie, Biden...blue tie. News at 11.

The show title sells us on the idea that they will be covering significant, maybe even critical events of the day. Then, when you arrive or tune in, you get the lady's solon gossip and political rubbernecking from a guy who just 15 years ago was ducking Patriot missiles whilst single-handedly launching the CNN brand into the world. Sigh. So disappointed.

Trusting In CNBC: Jon Stewart's Advice

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

CNBC Gives Financial Advice

Daily Show Full Episodes
Important Things With Demetri Martin

Political Humor
Joke of the Day

Here'a really nice breakdown of all the CNBC BS that came before the financial crash about how things were just fine and dandy as far as you know. Special thanks to Jon Stewart for this entire segment and this post in general.

Saturday Night Live Bringin' It

Before the election season, I wouldn't have been able to tell you the last time SNL was funny. But this shit...this is just funny. And you do have to hand it to Gov. Palin. She may be a liar and book-burner, but she ain't stiff.

Converting To Digital

Brand America

For those of us who've lived and worked outside the US, we understand how a county's brand perception can have a direct impact on our well-being. Rightly or wrongly, how you are regarded within a foreign society is partly related to how your country is regarded throughout the world (particularly if you're not fluent in the language).

For the last 6 years, our name has been mud.

But the deterioration of brand America has much broader implications from an economic standpoint. A country's brand perception often influences the sale of their goods. It can play a subtle, but very real role in whether US companies get contracts in other countries - or even the proper licenses and certifications to conduct business. It can effect whether consumers in other cultures buy our goods. It can play into negotiations. Bad brand perception can be detrimental to America's standing in business communities within these other countries. It can influence whether foreign companies enter into partnerships with American companies. Our country's continued prosperity is partly tied to the health of our national brand.

A brand that Bush and Cheney have completely trashed.

With Abu Ghraib torture photos, Guantanamo Bay's stain on due process, and the U.S.'s perceived ineffectiveness from Iraq to Hurricane Katrina, Brand America is hurting bad.    

Perhaps an important questions we should be asking ourselves is this: "Is the way that we're conducting this war on terror, our stance on the environment, our unwillingness to sit down without pre-conditions, and other policies counterproductive to the wider agenda of the nation?" I'm not saying our goals are wrong necessarily. I'm not saying we should back down. But the tough-guy cowboy screw-you-all politics of the White House is a style that is doing far more harm than good.

As for the brand implications in the upcoming elections, I think Americans would do well to choose the candidate that will protect their interests while working to restore their relationships. In other words, the candidate most unlike Bush. Someone with a smooth touch, a silver tongue, a persuasive ability. Someone not John McCain.

Vice Presidential Debates - With Truth Added By Comedians

Thanks to Georg Kuhn for sending. You can actually hear some members of the audience laughing so hard that they're crying. Ironic.

Aaron Sorkin's advice to Barak Obama Via Fictional Character

(copy/pasted without alteration from the New York Post Op-Ed Columnist Maureen Dowd)

A hypothetical conversation between Jed Bartlet, former President of the West Wing, and Barak Obama....

OBAMA The problem is we can’t appear angry. Bush called us the angry left. Did you see anyone in Denver who was angry?

BARTLET Well ... let me think. ...We went to war against the wrong country, Osama bin Laden just celebrated his seventh anniversary of not being caught either dead or alive, my family’s less safe than it was eight years ago, we’ve lost trillions of dollars, millions of jobs, thousands of lives and we lost an entire city due to bad weather. So, you know ... I’m a little angry.

OBAMA What would you do?

BARTLET GET ANGRIER! Call them liars, because that’s what they are. Sarah Palin didn’t say “thanks but no thanks” to the Bridge to Nowhere. She just said “Thanks.” You were raised by a single mother on food stamps — where does a guy with eight houses who was legacied into Annapolis get off calling you an elitist? And by the way, if you do nothing else, take that word back. Elite is a good word, it means well above average. I’d ask them what their problem is with excellence. While you’re at it, I want the word “patriot” back.

McCain can say that the transcendent issue of our time is the spread of Islamic fanaticism or he can choose a running mate who doesn’t know the Bush doctrine from the Monroe Doctrine, but he can’t do both at the same time and call it patriotic. They have to lie — the truth isn’t their friend right now. Get angry. Mock them mercilessly; they’ve earned it.

McCain decried agents of intolerance, then chose a running mate who had to ask if she was allowed to ban books from a public library. It’s not bad enough she thinks the planet Earth was created in six days 6,000 years ago complete with a man, a woman and a talking snake, she wants schools to teach the rest of our kids to deny geology, anthropology, archaeology and common sense too? It’s not bad enough she’s forcing her own daughter into a loveless marriage to a teenage hood, she wants the rest of us to guide our daughters in that direction too? It’s not enough that a woman shouldn’t have the right to choose, it should be the law of the land that she has to carry and deliver her rapist’s baby too?

I don’t know whether or not Governor Palin has the tenacity of a pit bull, but I know for sure she’s got the qualifications of one. And you’re worried about seeming angry? You could eat their lunch, make them cry and tell their mamas about it and God himself would call it restrained. There are times when you are simply required to be impolite. There are times when condescension is called for!

Meet The New Guy on HBO

He's honest, he's quirky, and he's a line drawing. Meet Tim. He's a guy that has more than his fair share of awkward moments and misunderstandings. Rather than being a bunch of contrived awkward moments like most of the stuff on TV, these awkward moments are the kind that really happen in life. It's just that they happen to him every single goddamn day. Poor fella. Feel free to laugh at his expense. He's just a caricature, after all. A stunt double for your life.

The Life and Times of Tim starts Sept 28th at 10pm on HBO. You might be able to catch it other places as well. Here's a clip of Tim getting the 'ol feel up by the doctor to check for prostate cancer. But this one goes a little weird.

Tony Blair. Funnyman?

With the ex-Prime Minister of Britain appearing on the American late night comedy "news" program "The Daily Show - With Jon Stewart" on Thursday of this week I did some digging to find out if Tony Blair is, in fact, a funny guy. I needed to know why this man was chosen for such an important role.

Yes, I wondered what, aside from misleading the British people into a ridiculously stupid war alongside America in Iraq, might qualify him for this particular position. Surely, it's not easy to run a super power. But it's even harder to appear alongside Stewart on come off as even half as funny as he. I should know, I watch the Daily Show all the time and imagine myself as the guest. I can't even do it in my imagination. And I can be kinda funny sometimes. 

So I searched for information about his sense of humor. I read personal essays from Britons who met the Prime Minister before the nasty Downing Street Memo business. Jessica Watts of Kent was left with the strong that, "When he steps into the room you know he's there." Which, with the subtle use of a verb, definitely makes him funnier than most inanimate objects. Most.

Chris Heathcote of Cheshire said that he looked tired, but nonetheless gave an amusing speech. This could easily mean that he has good speech writers. But what of his improv skills? You gots to be quick on your cerebral feet when you're on the Daily Show.

Nizamuddin Yusuf of Blackburn had lunch with the Prime Minister in his living room and described the PM as having, "A great sense of humor." He even described a wisecrack that Mr. Blair told involvling Mr. Yusuf's football allegiences and how Jack Straw would not approve - a joke that when told by Yusuf sounded about as funny as chemists making wisecracks about the periodic chart of the elements. (Yawn) Boron.

Update: Here's the clip of him on The Daily Show. I was right. He's not funny.

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