I'm Jerry Seinfeld and I'm an Ass....

One of few people who I find more annoying than Barry Bonds is... Jerry Seinfeld. While I love the show Seinfeld, I think that Seinfeld the person in a pompous ass. Case in point:

During the US Open last night, one of the announcers from the USA network interviewed Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David, mainly because Curb Your Enthusiam's sixth season begins this Sunday. (The YES network showed Larry David, discussed Curbed your Enrthusiam, and David's appearance on Centerstage-- and YES Network show-- during the Yankkes game on Tuesday Night...And yes, this means I watched the Yankeed to know this.)

During the Interview, Seinfeld and David were not happy to be interviewed while Venus Williams as playing. While I understand that it is not a good idea to interview someone while they are watching a match, there still seems little reason for Seinfeld's comments. As the interviewer discussed the new season of Curb Your Ethusiam and the Seinfeld episode where Kramer is a ball boy, the interviewees seemed less than interested. When the interviewee asked Seinfeld and David what they had been laughing over during the match, Seinfeld replied they were "private jokes." When the interviewee asked Seinfeld what was the funniest thing he has seen at a tennis match, his reply was "Not You." The interview promptly ended after this comment.

Overall, it as bad decorum to interview during a match; worse, Jerry Seinfeld was a jackass during the interview.

To Jerry: people, wrongly, think you are interesting becuase you are funny; people find you annoying because you're Jerry.

More Love For Bonds, and a Fond Throwback to the Pete's Couch Posts

The last time Harrogate linked to mzmeg's entertaining Left Coast blog, Baseball and Brioche, the subject was Pete's Couch, and it was due in large part to Board Members' excellent analyses of those commercials that The Rhetorical Situation won its first of what are now 17 major international awards.

Now, almost a year later, Harrogate again tips the cap to Baseball and Brioche for its undiluted tributary handling of the Great Barry Bonds. A tasty snippet:

So last night, under the full moon, a messenger was sent, probably the lord's second son; barefoot, longhaired and smiling, this messenger catapulted himself onto the outfield grass and walked briskly towards a smiling Bonds

Those who enjoy culturally-aware sportswriting will find the prose to be as compelling as the picutres.

In all likelihood, Barry Bonds will retire after this season. So chortle all ye want, doubters and haters. Harrogate is going to enjoy the moment while it lasts.

News Satire Done Right

Okay, so "funny" isn't the right word for this. But then, satire doesn't have to be funny to ring true. Swift's "Modest Proposal" was hardly funny, though it certainly had some comedic elements. This Onion video is very much in the spirit of Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers. A question worth asking is, what in this Onion video, exactly, is being satirized? At first glance it appears to be the Cable News industry, but the more Harrogate thinks about it, the more he realizes that what is really being skewered here is US, the viewer. As, ultimately, was the case with Natural Born Killers.

Certainly this video has a truth to tell. By now we ought all to be sick to death with the whole Cult of the Missing White Woman thang, but we're not. It won't be long before another one is all over the news, the lead story, eclipsing Iraq, the Health Care crisis, and even Larry "Thunder Mug" Craig's bid to restore his "good name."

Before hitting "Play" check out the frozen ticker. Queen Elizabeth II voted Q.U.I.L.F.? Indeed. Try throughout the video to catch some of the rolling ticker on the bottom, such as at the beginning when we are told that Letters from Hillary Clinton to Santa Claus reveal she may be a selfish President, or towards the end with the announcement that Russ Feingold has just been voted "most succesful guy named Russ."

Larry "Thunder Mug" Craig May Not Be Resigning, After All

Here's the latest from the vaunted AP. Harrogate finds it interesting that Craig got Michael Vick's lawyer, Billy Martin.

So. Craig's gonna fight back, is he? Good God Harrogate hopes that waste of breath tries to keep his Senate seat. Please, Larry. Please stay in. Protect your "good name," you fucking hypocritical bloody-handed viper.

Anywho. Harrogate hopes this stays in the news for a long time, hopes the whole thing gets lots and lots and lots of publicity.

An Absolute Commitment to Free Speech... or...

A commitment only when it is conveniant.

It seems that The Washington Post and other quality newspapers, censored, er I mean...decided not to publish two Opus Comics. Salon has the scoop on why the newspapers would not run the comics, as well as the cartoons. (If you do not want to click, they contain sex jokes and discuss Islam.) Here is the first and here is the second.

From Editor and Publisher:

Berkeley Breathed's Aug. 26 and Sept. 2 strips -- which comprise sort of a two-part series -- show the Lola Granola character wanting to become an Islamic radicalist (and wear traditional Muslim clothing) because it's a "hot new fad on the planet." Content also includes what Shearer described as "a sex joke a little stronger than we normally see."

Our commitment to free speech makes us different than many other countries and many other ideologies, except when it doesn't.

On Thunder Mugs and Nasty, Bad, Naughty Boys; In Which Janet Jackson Also Appears, Sans Nipple

For those few by now who haven't seen the thirty second clip of Larry Craig telling Chris Matthews in 1999 what a "nasty, bad, naughty boy" Bill Clinton is, this Thunder Mug's for ye!



Now remember, O Readers, this is a grown man, a United States Senator no less, actually putting these words together in sentence form on national television. It shouldn't have taken the THUNDER MUG incident to force him to resign. Craig ought to have been laughed right out of office after this interview.

Anyways, at the moment, in a slight disagreement with the esteemed Solon, what Harrogate personally thinks merits emphasis (Craig the Lawmaker--homophobe, enemy of civil rights, and proponent of police-state measures--deliciously reaping the fruits of his own rhetoric and actions) is getting a lot more play than those who, like Solon, understandably would like to see the THUNDER MUG incident turned into a teachable moment about closeting.

The reason Harrogate holds this position is that he hopes that from this deluge of GOP hypocritical spectacles, the American people will eventually lose its appeitite for the type of garbage that sealed the deal for that ghastly party in 2004. Maybe, O Readers, one day a Republican aspirant for higher office will stand in front of a podium trying to exploit hatred for transgressors of the Father Knows Best myth, only to stop speaking and be greeted by eerie silence. Until finally someone in the audience raises their hand. Perhaps a miner from Utah or a displaced person from New Orleans or a single mother with no health care or a family member of a soldier sacrificed in vain, or maybe even the father of a young man recently given a life sentence for marijuana possession. And when called on, that citizen might cry out for all to hear, enough pandering you indecent, disingenuous, smug blight of human skin. Enough already. Enough of the arsinic-laced Apple Pie. We're tired of it all. Say something that matters.


Finally, it is with terrific poetical justice that Harrogate here provides for your sublime enjoyment Janet Jackson's classic video "Nasty." (Her first name aint "Baby," it's Janet--Ms. Jackson if you're nasty.)

Harrogate supposes Larry Craig in 1999 felt confident channeling Janet Jackson's spirit since, at the time of his interview, she had yet to corrupt millions of children everywhere for a one millisecond bearing of her nipple on national television.

The effects of "Outing"

One of the dilemmas in the Larry Craig fiasco is how to treat people who closet themselves. On one level there is the “Schadenfreude” element where people find pleasure in Senator Craig’s misfortune, especially since his public actions and sentiments differ greatly from his private actions and desires.

Yet, there seems to be an overlooked ethical aspect of this: how do we understand and even help those who seem to lead closeted lives? (The same can be said of Ted Haggard, whose life-long desires have been cured.)

Let me pose the following questions to you:
(1) Does the public outings of Senator Craig and Ted Haggard entice or diminish the desire of some who lives in the closet to become public?
(2) By focusing on the hypocrisy, do those who attack Craig and Haggard become intolerant of those that they should be tolerant?
(3) What is the best way to help people in the public sphere become open with their identity?

I am not sure if I know the answers to these questions, but they may be an interesting starting point.

Ill-Advised expenditures

The University of Michigan paid Appalachian State $400,000 to play and destroy its season in the first week.