“MSNBC said Friday that it is suspending ‘Morning Joe’ co-host Joe Scarborough for two days after he acknowledged giving eight previously unknown $500 contributions to friends and family members running for state and local offices during his tenure at the network, a violation of parent NBC’s ban on political contributions by employees without specific permission from the network president.” [Politico]

FOX News “journalists” shit all over Caribou Barbie during a commercial.

Whoops! The cameras were rolling.

And aren’t you glad to see that Judith Miller has found her true calling after printing WMD lies in the Times?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2hhtroS49I

ADD:
RML tips us off to a piece in AlterNet that says it was Fox News itself that originally posted this clip to YouTube. Discuss.

For as long as the Web has been public — we’ll date it from Netscape, since Mosaic was more of a geek plaything — the Fretting Class has fretted that it’s turning us into a nation of lonely sociopaths. The line seems to be that through the Eighties, American society was a marvel of public gatherings, which immediately ceased when online porn became readily available.

Either that, or it wasn’t, and the Web just exacerbated a Disturbing Trend that was crystallized in the landmark 1995 paper “Bowling Alone”. Which, now that we’ve gone to the trouble to find it online, outright lied about its fretspectacular premise:

The most whimsical yet discomfiting bit of evidence of social disengagement in contemporary America that I have discovered is this: more Americans are bowling today than ever before, but bowling in organized leagues has plummeted in the last decade or so. Between 1980 and 1993 the total number of bowlers in America increased by 10 percent, while league bowling decreased by 40 percent… The rise of solo bowling threatens the livelihood of bowling-lane proprietors because those who bowl as members of leagues consume three times as much beer and pizza as solo bowlers, and the money in bowling is in the beer and pizza, not the balls and shoes. The broader social significance, however, lies in the social interaction and even occasionally civic conversations over beer and pizza that solo bowlers forgo.

Did you see that move? If you’re not bowling in a league, you must be bowling by yourself. Untold years of bumper-sticker sociology were based on a false claim. (“Bowling With Friends” would have ruined everything.) Thank god Communitarianism was finally taken out behind the barn and shot.

Anyway, where were we? Ah, yes — lonely sociopaths:

Read more »

Governor Palin Applauds ‘American Idol’ For Their Highest Standards [Conservatives4Palin]

“On Thursday, [Fox News Chairman Roger] Ailes apologized to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) for describing NPR brass as ‘Nazis.’ He wrote: ‘I was of course ad-libbing and should not have chosen that word but I was angry at the time because of NPR’s willingness to censor Juan Williams for not being liberal enough.'” [Daily Beast]

Mitch McConnell, this morning:

“By preventing the accumulation of excessive power, the Constitution is designed to reduce the risk of tyranny or abuse at either the Federal or state levels,” McConnell told the audience of conservative legal scholars. “The health care bill would remove an important bulwark of this protection.”

Mitch McConnell, 2007:

Indeed, alarmist concerns notwithstanding, the Patriot Act is one of the most important and overdue pieces of legislation in a generation.

Yes, well, Alarmist Concerns about the Fourth Amendment sure are silly, aren’t they? Unlike Alarmist Concerns about the Individual Mandate, which surely will lead to Tyranny.

“Bristol Palin has been featured on ABC’s ‘Dancing With the Stars,’ but Sarah Palin has a few words for Fox’s ‘American Idol.’ She refers to ‘talent-deprived’ contestants who suffer from ‘the cult of self-esteem… No one they have encountered in their lives — from their parents to their teachers to their president — wanted them to feel bad by hearing the truth,’ she writes. ‘So they grew up convinced that they could become big pop stars like Michael Jackson.'” [AP, via Political Wire]