Posted 9:49 PM by Scoobie Davis

This looks interesting
click here

Posted 9:21 PM by Scoobie Davis

Quick Notes
I have been working on a film lately so I haven't been posting regularly. I'll tell you about it when the time is right.

I have a new blog devoted to Ann Coulter's forthcoming book Godless: The Church of Liberalism. Why am I doing this? Because Coulter's book is just one part of a concerted slime-and-defend effort on behalf of the sectarian right. I am expecting an advance copy of the book from a mainstream media friend. Hopefully I will receive it before the book is published on June 6. I plan to work on it over the weekend.

Posted 6:34 PM by Scoobie Davis

Jack Chick Stuff
Today's San Diego Union Tribune mentions the Chickster in an article on religous comic books by Mark I Pinsky, the author of The Gospel according to The Simpsons. . . Chick has three new tracts, "The Star" and African-American versions of "This Was Your Life" and "Somebody Loves Me" (The new titles are "It's Your Life" and "Hard Times").

Posted 1:26 PM by Scoobie Davis

New Google Bomb Target: John Gibson

More details on the Google Bomb Blog.

BTW, Mike of CallingAllWingnuts has a brief conversation with Gibson. On the issue of the War on Christmas, here's a Suicide Girls video.

Here's the Google Bomb:

1. Copy and paste the following to your web site or on an internet bulletin board:

<a href="http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1705">John Gibson</a>
<a href="http://archive.salon.com/letters/editor/2004/03/15/smear/index.html">John Gibson</a>
<a href="http://www.newshounds.us/2005/07/13/john_gibson_rove_should_get_a_medal.php">John Gibson </a>
<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jamal-simmons/fox-news-should-fire-john_b_20942.html">John Gibson </a>
<a href="http://www.taylormarsh.com/archives_view.php?id=2355">John Gibson</a>
<a href="http://mediamatters.org/issues_topics/search_results?qstring=john+gibson">John Gibson </a>
<a href="http://mediamatters.org/items/200510240015">John Gibson</a>
<a href="http://www.crooksandliars.com/2006/05/17.html#a8327">John Gibson</a>

The results will look like this:

John Gibson
John Gibson
John Gibson
John Gibson
John Gibson
John Gibson
John Gibson
John Gibson
From The Colbert Report

Posted 9:58 AM by Scoobie Davis

Film Stuff
1. I went to see Art School Confidential last night. The reviews were mixed so 1) I didn't have high expectations; and 2)I also figured that the reviewers might not appreciate Dan Clowes' and Terry Zwigoff's quirky styles. I enjoyed the film but didn't like it as much as Clowes' and Zwigoff's previous collaborative project Ghost World. Quick notes on Clowes and Zwigoff: the other day, I was at On Comic Ground in Hillcrest and got a copy of Clowes' Eightball # 17. I then went to the used bookstore next door and found a copy of Weirdo #12. The cover for Weirdo #12 was featured in Zwigoff's doc Crumb.



2. The other day I got a copy of The Independent. One of the things that caught my attention was an article about the subscription DVD magazineWholphin, that showcases short films. Wholphin No. 1 (available with the Dec/Jan 2006 issue of McSweeney's The Believer contains a short film that I love: Are You the Favorite Person of Anybody? When it was shown at the LA Film Festival, I was in a fit of uncontrollable laughter while viewing it.

3. Before the screening of Art School Confidential, there was a trailer for the one-night-only re-release of The Boondock Saints scheduled for tomorrow (5/22). I've seen the film on DVD (and not impressed with what I saw). However, I strongly recommend a film associated with it and its writer/director, Troy Duffey: Overnight.

Posted 3:01 PM by Scoobie Davis

From a Publication of George W. Bush's Favorite South Carolina University

Bob Jones University adds a whole new definition to minority involvement. No, I am not making this up:



This is from the March 1983 issue of BJU's magazine Faith for the Family. The aad above appeared on the back cover. The reason I had the magazine was that it had an article about controversies over Jack Chick's anti-Catholic comic books. The article was critical of Chick, but not of his anti-Catholicism (e.g., the author of the Chick article uses the prejoritive term "Romanist."

Posted 11:06 AM by Scoobie Davis

Working on a Blog-Related Project
Sorry about the dearth of posting.

Posted 6:38 PM by Scoobie Davis

Today's Required Reading
Media Matters on Tony Snow and the Daily Howler on the media and John McCain.

Posted 4:02 PM by Scoobie Davis

In Case You Missed It
My post on Sun Myung Moon was reprinted by American Politics Journal.

Posted 12:42 PM by Scoobie Davis

What I'm doing
I'm doing a new blog project. I'll have details at the end of the month. Also, I writing the script for a short film.

Posted 9:53 PM by Scoobie Davis

Ann Coulter Possibly Facing Voter Fraud Charges
Read all about it here. This is a possible felony which could not only lead to jail but disbarrment Karma is catching up with AC. Coulter previously had this to say about voting:

And apparently, black voters can also look forward to a lot of patronizing demagoguery from the Democrats, such as the claim that Republicans maliciously suppressed the black vote in Florida in 2000.

Kerry claims Republicans disenfranchised 1 million black voters in Florida in 2000, but neglects to mention that after extensive and expensive hearings, the U.S. Civil Rights Commission failed to name a single one of them. Can you name just one out of that "million," Sen. Kerry? We've found more WMDs in Iraq than we've found disenfranchised blacks in Florida.

Indeed – to the contrary! – in 2000, blacks composed 11 percent of registered voters in Florida, but made up 17 percent of those who actually voted. If that's how Republicans "suppress" the black vote, blacks are better off when Republicans attack them than when Democrats pretend to be nice to them.

Posted 2:10 PM by Scoobie Davis

New Google Bomb
Full information at the Google Bomb blog. Better later than never to target the Washington Post's Deborah Howell. Here's all you need to do:

1. Copy and paste the following to your web site or on an internet bulletin board:

<a href="http://mediamatters.org/items/200601150001">Deborah Howell </a>
<a href="http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/1/15/103720/317">Deborah Howell</a>
<a href="http://www.talkleft.com/new_archives/013787.html">Deborah Howell</a>
<a href="http://www.firedoglake.com/2006/04/15/deborah-howell-and-fred-hiatt-fact-free-and-loving-it/">Deborah Howell</a>
<a href="http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2006/01/two_lies_from_w.html">Deborah Howell</a>
<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jane-hamsher/deborah-howell-and-the-f_b_14221.html">Deborah Howell</a>
<a href="http://www.tpmcafe.com/story/2006/1/21/235152/306">Deborah Howell</a>

The results will look like this:

Deborah Howell
Deborah Howell
Deborah Howell
Deborah Howell
Deborah Howell
Deborah Howell
Deborah Howell

Posted 3:13 PM by Scoobie Davis

This is So Good!!!!
Listen to Rush being confronted about being a hypocritical pillhead.

Posted 10:36 AM by Scoobie Davis

More Fox News Horseshit

From this month's (June 2006) Playboy interview of Fox News operative Shepard Smith:

PLAYBOY: You broadcast from a network that has been charged with bending over backward in support of the president, but you're making a serious accusation against the Bush administration [about it's Hurricane Katrina efforts].

SMITH: When you talk about this sort of thing, some people are convinced that you're politically motivated and trying to bring down the government, that you want to hurt the president. But I do not come at life from tht place. I just think we as a country need to answer those questions before it's too late. As to bending over backward to support this administration, I don't toe anyone's line. No one in this building toes anyone's line. The moment they try to tell me to distort reality, I tell them to fuck off it has never happened.

PLAYBOY: Do you deny that Fox is conservative and pushes a conservative agenda?

SMITH: If you hear something enough, you come to believe it, [note from me: like "Fair & Balanced"?] and yes, some people have come to believe that we are right-wing and in the hip pocket of the administration. But I know better.

PLAYBOY: Have you seen Outfoxed, the documentary that purports to exposeFox News Channel's right-wing political agenda?

SMITH: I've never seen it.

PLAYBOY: How do you respond to its premise that Fox is a political tool for the right, backed by owner Rupert Murdoch and chairman Roger Ailes?

SMITH: I know the premise, and I know the truth. I'm real comfortable here. I sleep well at night.

PLAYBOY: That doesn't address the charge that the network has a political agenda.

SMITH: A lot of our critics come from the competition. No one cared until we started beating everyone. They think, Who the hell are you, getting these crazy numbers? Who are the hell are you, attracting all this attention from media all over the world. Why does everybody care? Here you upstarts come along with your damn Rupert Murdoch. That's what it comes down to.

PLAYBOY: Fox News Channel's slogan is "Fair & Balanced." Do you maintain that it is?

SMITH: It's our mandate.

In other news about the propaganda network, Fox News Democrat Tammy Bruce once again showed her true colors in her discussion of recent events revolving around US/Mexican relations. While she was discussing these matters on her weekly radio show yesterday, she played the Frito Bandito theme song. For those of you not familiar with him, the Frito Bandito was the cartoon mascot for the Frito Lay Corporation during the late 60's. He was a Pancho Villa-type character with a thick accent. He was dropped by Frito Lay after Mexican-American groups justifiably complained that the Bandito was an offensive ethnic stereotype. (quick aside: a little background on Bruce and US-Mexico relations, Bruce supported the congressional candidacy of American Independent party candidate and Minuteman Project founder Jim Gilchrist--he received 14.8 percent of the vote).

This isn't the first time Bruce engaged in crude stereotyping of minority groups. I had previously called Bruce on her offensive anti-gay stereotypical graphics that she put on her web site (Bruce is a lesbian). Some people don't learn.

Addendum: Blast from the past: Here and here are the transctipts of my phone calls to Bruce's radio show.

Whenever Playboy has a college pictorial, I usually write about it. Last month, they did The Women of the Top 10 Party Schools. I packed my issue when I moved and I can't find it right now. I will report on it later. This month they did a pictorial on the women of Myspace.com. My favorite: Carrie Vaughn (who according to the pictorial had recently graduated from Cal State Long Beach). Second place: Heather Lynn. Honorable mention (in ascending order) go to Jeska Vardinski, Chantal Alexandria, Heather Lutz, Jessica Difeo, Brittany Fuch, and Betty Lipstick.

Posted 9:17 PM by Scoobie Davis

Sometimes the Truth is Friggin' Bizarre
In David Brook's latest column titled, "The Paranoid Style," (read it free here) he writes:

Needless to say, [Kevin] Phillips's book [American Theocracy] is rife with bizarre assertions. [Phillips] writes that "many Orthodox Jewish females cannot even study the Torah," that the Rev. Sun Myung Moon "has been close to the Bush family," that the American Revolution was "in many ways a religious war."

Brook's flippant treatment of Phillips' claim about the Bush family and Sun Myung Moon illustrates how dysfunctional Washington culture is and how clueless the nation's press corps and punditocracy are about how Moon has become a huge power player in Washington.

For those of you reading this unfamiliar with Moon, here's a brief tutorial: Sun Myung Moon established the Unification Church in 1954 because he claimed that Jesus appeared to him and authorized him to do the work left unaccomplished after His crucifixion (Moon has since claimed that his messiahship was endorsed by Buddha, Muhammad, and every dead U.S. president). Moon's church grew rapidly in membership and funds even though Moon was arrested by South Korean authorities who were suspicious about Moon's rather convenient claim that God endowed his penis with the authority to "bless the wombs" of young women in his flock. In 1971, after amassing a fortune from the labors of his devotees and establishing close connections with Park Chung Hee's authoritarian regime in South Korea, Moon decided he had bigger fish to fry and moved to the United States. Throughout the 1970's, Moon courted the powerful (such as President Nixon) and the church spent millions spreading Moon's message of world unity to Americans. As a result, the Unification Church experienced a (small) influx of upper-middle class college students in its ranks.

However, by the end of the 1970's, Moon's effort to convert America to Moonie principles was a dismal failure; in a 1979 survey of American attitudes of 155 well-known people, Moon was ranked 154th--the only person ranked behind Moon was Charles Manson. The reason: Most Americans are sane people; the more they learned about Moon, the less they liked him. They didn't like the idea of a self-proclaimed messiah calling for the destruction of American democracy (which he calls "Satan's Harvest") and the establishment of a one-world theocracy in which Moon rules and dissenters are "digested." I suspect it also rankled many Americans that a messiah who had unleashed his divine blessing rod on the lotus blossoms of naive female devotees would claim that American women were descended from "a line of prostitutes." They didn't like the idea of their children being recruited to spend long hours hawking flowers and trinkets so that Moon could live like a king.

Starting in the 1980's, Moon significantly lowered his public profile and at the same time accelerated his efforts to gain power. The cult leader dumped a couple billion dollars into the quasi-newspaper The Washington Times (Brooks' colleague Paul Krugman rightfully called it the current Bush administration's "de facto house organ") and other questionable media ventures (Moon's acquisition of the news service UPI gave Moonie interests a seat on Air Force One). Moon also stepped up his efforts to court powerful politicians (overwhelmingly Republican). Former president Bush has received at least one million dollars and possibly as much as ten million dollars from the megalomaniacal would-be messiah to appear at Moonie events.

Moon has received a decent return on his investment: in addition to literally being treated as royalty on Capitol Hill, the elder Bush has given Moon credibility and video clips (Bush once called Moon, "the man with the vision") which the Unification Church uses to gain more recruits who then can solicit more money so that Moon can give more money to equally venal and cynical politicos (such as William Bennett, Jerry Falwell, Dan Quayle, and Oliver North) who, in return, appear at Moonie functions, thus giving Moon even more credibility with potential devotees (even Bob Dole--who in the 1970's held Senate hearings highly critical of Moon--recently appeared at a Moonie front group's prayer breakfast).

The current Bush administration has also accorded legitimacy to the cult leader. Under the Bush administration’s faith-based initiatives, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services gave a $475,280 grant to fund Free Teens USA, a Moonie-run after-school celibacy club that recruits people into the cult. (Quick note: on the issue of nonmarital sex, the former womb-blesser is now a sadistic puritan: "If your love organ," Moon once told his male followers, "does not listen to your conscience, then you should cut off the tip [with pliers].")

If what I wrote you strikes you as mondo bizarro, you get an A in Moonie Cosmology and Political Theory 101 because it is mondo bizarro. The story of Moon's emergence as a DC power player isn't just weird; it's Ann Coulter weird. Brooks' characterization of the claim that the Bush family is close to Moon as bizarre is correct, but not for the reasons Brooks gives. Brooks wants you to view Phillips' assertion as bizarre in the sense of its being absurd. It isn't. George H.W. and Barbara Bush have received compensation that is least in the six digits in order to do Moon's bidding. Unification church insiders note a quasi-familial relationship between the Moon and Bush families (more about this in a future post). The idea that the current Bush administration's cabinet level department responsible for public health would funnel our tax money to a front group run by a man who says that if a guys starts to think with his smaller head (about 95% of all men according to my estimates), he should lop it off clearly indicates a relationship with the current generation of the Bush family. Oh, and let's not forget Bush sibling Neil's relationship with the cult. Phillips' claim about the Bush family's closeness to the Moonies is a bizarre assertion only in the sense that it's bizarre that any rational person--much less a presidential family--would want to associate with someone like Moon.

What further compounds the freakiness of this situation is the relative lack of interest from the Washington press corps. I can understand why the fair and balanced network would not only turn a blind eye to Moon but give Washington Times staffers positions in their alleged news network. What is the excuse of real journalists for doing so few stories about a power hungry billionaire cult leader who has the ear of much of Washington? I wonder.

Addendum: This isn't the first time the right has misused historian Richard Hofstadter's concept, the paranoid style, for its own purposes. I wrote about how Daniel Pipes, funded by paranoid conspiracy theorist Richard Mellon Scaife, applied the label of cconspiracy theorist, not to Scaife, but to those tracking down and exposing Scaife's hired conspiracy theorists. Go figure. Remember back in 2000, when Rove and company were involved in the whisper campaign that John McCain was mentally unbalanced because of his confinement in a North Vietnam? El Rushbo made his contribution to that effort in the form of a comedy parody commercial (I use the term "comedy" lightly becuase it was as funny as a pediatric burn unit) titled "the McCain Mutiny" portraying McCain as the paranoid Captain Queeg.

Posted 10:29 PM by Scoobie Davis

Wish I Said It
Today on Ed Schultz's radio show, Senator Tom Harken succinctly told Ed why voters in November need to give Democrats control of Congress: Bush and Cheney "need adult supervision."

Posted 10:14 PM by Scoobie Davis

Lapdogs
Eric Boehlert tell it like it is.

Posted 10:02 PM by Scoobie Davis

Foot Fetishist to be the Commencement Speaker at my Alma Mater
The Dolphin queen, Peggy Noonan, will be be the speaker at Miami University's 167th comemncement on Saturday. Noonan, who writes for the worst editorial page not in a newspaper owned by a Korean ex-con who thinks he's the messiah, is rumored to discuss her obsession with the feet of powerful men.

Random notes about my MU experience: I went to MU right before Nick Lachey attended so I never met him. . . I learned my party crashing at MU. They partied like hell there but the school was so damn cliquish. You either used your wits and improvised or you had a didn't have a social life. I improvized a lot and I wish I were still there. . .Miami U is very Republican but more of a libertarian, don't-tax-me-and-let-me-party brand of Republicanism (though MU boasts a very active Campus Crusade for Christ branchand I knew a lot of unfun buzzkills who went there). . .MU has a very high female-to-male ratio (and is noted for having very attractive females). . .One professor I had once said that many students acted like they pulled themselves up by their bootstraps but would have to work overtime to fail. . .God I miss Miami.

Posted 10:38 PM by Scoobie Davis

My Busy Schedule

Sorry about the dearth of posting recently. I'm working on a blog project that should reach fruition soon.

Just last weekend, I did the following:
1) moved; 2) attended the LA Times Festival of Books (I could kick myself for missing the talk by Dr. Laura--she was introduced by Fox News Democrat Tammy Bruce); and 3) attended the book launch party for Kathy Preston's The One: Finding Soul Mate Love and Making It Last at Arianna's place. I know what some of you are thinking but I was invited.

I met some media luminaries and I saw several bloggers there: Skippy and Mrs. Skippy, John From Crooks and Liars, Pamela Leavey of The Democratic Daily, Mark Kleiman, and Steve Audio.

For the party, I was pimped out in an Express shirt that was untucked and unbuttoned. Underneath that was a black t-shirt. I had a dark pair of jeans and a pair of black ankle boots with a side buckle. A decent outfit for less than $60. How did I do it? The Express shirt was the only thing I bought retail and it was on sale:

Express shirt: $39.00 at the Horton Plaza Express(it was on sale for $20 off).
Nike black shirt: $1.00 at the Salvation Army.
Jeans: $3.95 at the AmVets thrift store.
Ankle boots $9.00 on Ebay
Total: $52.95

I have a habit of bringing a bottle of wine to parties--especially ones I'm not invited to (I explain this phenomenon here). I got Arianna a bottle of Sanford Pinot Noir (remember the line in Sideways: "Let's go to Sanford Winery. They make the best pinot noir in California"). Thanks to Debra the wine steward for helping me with my choice.