Sunday Musical Tribute

Smoother than a Beckett monologue, cooler than the Fonz.



And, absolutely 5 Stars for the album cover. The Visual Rhetoric of Family Values.

Tea-Bagging

Sen. David Vitter will tea-bag. Fox News will cover your tea-bag.... Do you tea-bag?

I probably shouldn't laugh at this...but I am.

Someone threw a carseat at the Octomom's minivan.

Newswriting & Public Humiliation: How Many Different Ways Can One Guy Get Messed Up Anyway?

After a string of highly serious posts (perhaps most emblemized by Harrogate's Walter Egan tribute) it is time perhaps for some fun, if slightly mean-spirited, celebrity gossip.

The first two words of the headline, "Madonna wins in custody row with Guy", are the most important words in this story.

In that context you gotta love the last sentence in the story. Hmmm. Which reminds Harrogate, A-ROD nowhere to be found in the sublime world of Madge these days. Maybe she discovered that the rumors about steroids "side effects" are not only true, but also not really what one would call a "side effect."

For Bristol Palin: A Rambling, Somewhat Boring, but Nevertheless Heartfelt Post about the dangers of Dogmatism

About three weeks ago, Harrogate triggered a barn-burner of a thread in relation to Bristol Palin's interview on Fox, particularly regarding Rightist reactions to her candid statement that abstinence-only education was not realistic. What was at stake in that thread for Harrogate anyway, was the alacrity with so called moral values pundits were willing to throw Bristol overboard as having no credibility on the issue, because she is a teenager.

While numerous other epistemic issues were raised by Situationers, for Harrogate what remains most interesting about the Rhetoric surrounding Bristol is the extent to which these so called "values" pundits are willing to subjugate any and everything to ideology. They are the type of people Harrogate fears. NOT because they believe in abstinence before marriage. NOT because they are religious. NOT because they are conservatives. But because they pass conviction-town and integrity-ville and then keep right on going up the road to doctrine-istan.

There is a class of person--and you can find them as well on the Left as on the Right, as easily in the secular sphere as in the religious--for whom the actual world, including the myriad human beings occupying it, are like proverbial flies in an otherwise perfect ideological ointment.


But anywho. Now we learn that Bristol and Levi may well be breaking up. What will happen as a result of this, in the Right blogosphere? How will the decision of two high-profile human beings, not to have a shotgun wedding, be received in the ideological matrices that lie in wait? Time will tell.


In the meantime, and on a related note, Harrogate found this recent column by Rebecca Hagelin interesting. Unlike other talking heads that Harrogate has recently linked to on this blog, Hagelin's column has the ring on human authenticity: the "Spring Break" that she arranged for her two college Sons sounds absolutely awesome, and you can tell from, her tone that this is a woman who is writing from a place of joy.

Sigh. But the column is also Heavy on the Doctrine, so much so that much of the value of the piece is lost. For example:

Face it: When an adult in authority stands in front of the classroom and directs graphic discussions of sex in every form, forces boys and girls to sit by each other throughout the humiliating lectures, and then further violates the child's natural tendencies to be private or modest, then you end up with kids who follow what they’ve been taught. On the other hand, when kids are treated with dignity, taught the value of abstinence, and how to avoid placing themselves in compromising situations in the first place, the research shows that more of them do, indeed, respond by adopting a lifestyle of self-control and more responsible behavior than those drowning in "sex ed".

This column is rhetorically interesting to Harrogate because it shows how a compelling piece of writing can be ruined by a tedious effort to make everything "fit."

HA HA!

Check this out.

Speaking of Gifts...

This might also work for Christmas.

Announcer: "Man, they look like they're having a great time"

Of course they are. The dude's getting a handy, for crying out loud.

I don't even watch football like this at home.

For Southpaw, Especially: World of Warcraft Forum Bloggers Debate Palin Sex Scandal

As far as we have gathered from Andrew Sullivan's objective fact-hunting, "Todd Palin's former business partner, Scott Alan Richter, who is now divorced and was reportedly accused of an Affair with Sarah Palin," tried--and failed-- to get an emergency measure for his divorce papers to be sealed. See the Salon story here (hat tip to salon for the Palin image).

Well, if the effort to get the papers sealed has failed, then Harrogate guesses we'll know soon enough whether the Enquirer just nailed its second political hide to the wall in a month.

See the World of Warcraft bloggers doing journalistic work, here