A Growing Controversy

The Villagers are in a snit:

Thursday’s Post reported about a growing controversy over the Justice Department’s decision to scale down a voter-intimidation case against members of the New Black Panther Party. The story succinctly summarized the issues but left many readers with a question: What took you so long?

Travelgate? Nothing there. Vince Foster? Nothing there. Whitewater? Nothing there. ACORN-pimp kerfuffle? Nothing there, unless you count the lawsuit against the pimp/whore filed by the guy who lost his job. Black Panther voter intimidation case? You tell me.

Another conservative tantrum over nothing.

Why the Silence from the Post on the Black Panther Story? [WaPo]
17 Comments

I can’t wait for the fake diary of these event as written by Laura Ingraham.

It’ll be hillllarioussss!

This, of course, is just the warmup for the full-on whining session come November. I’m sure we’ll see dozens if not hundreds of armed teabaggers loitering around polling stations, just *daring* the Obama DOJ to make them into martyrs.

BTW, linked from the sidebar of that post:

Bobby Jindal is butthurt

Apparently, in his zeal to whinge about the mean Obama people he forgot that we *do* regularly ground entire models of aircraft after a catastrophic failure…

@al2o3cr: Like the scaredy cats in the Air Force who grounded all their F-15s a few years ago after the wings started falling off due to metal fatigue (which is what I may have a touch of today *rimshot*).

Am I the only one who thinks Grace Kelly was overrated as an actress?

@al2o3cr: NTSB grounding has been in the back of my mind for weeks as a comparison, but it never moved to the front.

@TJ/ Jamie Sommers /TJ: The times were so different, I never know how to rate things like that. For example, I’ve never quite grasped Monroe as a sex goddess. I understand that she was by common assent, but I have to take their word for it.

@TJ/ Jamie Sommers /TJ: I never get tired of watching Rear Window, she and Jimmy Stewart are both so beautiful to see.

@SanFranLefty: In my humble opinion, the most beautiful screen actress ever.

@nojo: Comparatively speaking, I understand the allure of Monroe as a sex goddess. As an actress and an icon for actresses and non-actresses alike, I’m befuddled. The woman was a gawdawful mess. IMHO, she was someone to pity, certainly not someone to emulate or look up to.

@SanFranLefty: @Dodgerblue: I get that, but my question isn’t about her physical beauty; it’s about her skill as an actress.

@TJ/ Jamie Sommers /TJ: No. She was a movie star. And very beautiful and attractive as movie stars are but not an actress. Bear in mind, she was usually dressed by Edith Head. Eva Marie Saint does the Hitchcock Blond much better and in the one movie in which Kelly had to act, The Country Girl, she’s completely outclassed in the part created by Uta Hagen. A situation made worse when she won the Oscar instead of Garland for A Star Is Born. I think her best movie is To Catch a Thief.

I always thought Monroe was tiresome. She’s pretty good in Bus Stop but I never really got it. It’s all so manufactured. She was no Rita Hayworth. But then I never get the tingles in the dangly bits the way you’re supposed to when watching goddesses. I actually think Monroe was a lot like a very pretty drag queen. I think they’re tiresome too. There is a certain amount of fun to be had from watching Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, which is perhaps the campest movie ever made, but it’s mostly from wondering how Jane Russell manages to keep upright.

You can count the number of well-adjusted screen goddesses on one paw.

@Benedick: Rita Hayworth, probably the most popular pin-up girl of the WWII era.

I don’t know enough about acting to know whether Monroe was an actress or not, but I love The Misfits, and she seemed to be acting in that movie, with Clark Gable in his last movie, and he seemed to be acting, too.

What was it about Marilyn Monroe, well, she was beautiful, and sexy, and to me, she maybe attracts men through an arrested development thing, her vibe, to me, was that she lived in this sex bomb body, and jiggled it and moved it knowing it drove men crazy, but without any hint of being manipulative and using it, she gave off a vibe you only see in young girls who are just becoming aware of the power of their beauty and sex appeal, they have become aware of their attraction, but not yet of the power, and ability to manipulate, that it gives them, and they are still kinda still amazed by it. She gives the impression of being delighted by being thought so desireable and attractive, but has no thought of the potential for cynical use and manipulation that attractiveness gives them. Its not that she is helplessly naive, just that she is innocent, insofar as being uninterested in exploiting her sex appeal.

Of course, she was a Hollywood star, and absolutely had to be aware, and also, able to use it, but, she projected a harmlessness, and that would seem to be acting, just the ability to seem harmless, safe, when she was a dangerously beautiful woman.

Maybe the male version of the Monroe vibe is the incredibly handsome and manly, phsyically powerful man, who never exploits those attributes, there used to be male characters like that, the big, physical, powerful man, who would never resort to using his physical power, never resort to violence, never take advantage of women who were attracted to their looks and power. There used to be such characters.

Nowadays, as a culture, we cheer for the bullies, and the manipulative sex goddesses.

@Benedick: Mos def a movie star. “Made love to the camera” as they say.

ADD: Loved her self-deprecating humor in All About Eve. She was smart, and wounded.

@JNOV:
“smart and wounded” so my stepmonster is right?
that’s just what she thinks of ALL of here—misfits.
all together now: happy birthday mr. preeeeesidennnt……..

birthdays. mine is tomorrow.and DA the number cause i AT. it’s surreal.
i’ve been dropping hints like bricks that i want an iphone because i’m almost as old as my mum, benedick, and i’ll be dead soon.

@baked: Dollink, age cannot wither nor custom stale your infinite variety. Happy birthday, and may all your unbirthdays be even happier!

@Promnight: By movie star I mean someone who is a personality, you go to his or her movies knowing they will always be themselves; ie Angelina Jolie, Monroe, George Clooney, Jennifer Lopez – though she’s in a slightly different category since she can neither sing, dance or act. A MS can be a fine actor, Cary Grant, Henry Fonda, Bette Davis, or not. Point is that it is the personality that is important, everything else in the property is built to show off the star’s essential quality. Actors just act and play parts. They try to lose themselves in the part. Streep is sort of unusual being a genuine movie star who loses herself in parts while always retaining an essential streepness. Not unlike Bette Davis. Yes I do sit here and think about these things. Thank you for asking.

@baked: Just got back from the gym. My pecs are plates of steel. My ass is a rock. Happy B day tomorrow. Mine is in a few days.

she can neither sing, dance or act

lets not forget Arnold, John Wayne, Sylvester Stallone etc.
stars all.

have you ever seen the Hector Babenco film “Ironweed”?

Streep at her most unattractive and most luminous.
she is beyond brilliant. also, as Doubt cycles on cable I love it more each time I see it. she starts out as the most repulsive almost cartoonish character and you end up admiring her. watching her performance after you know the ending is wonderful.

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