Lancelot Links

Sunday August 29, 2010

Lancelot Links

Must-read of the week: Jane Mayer's New Yorker piece on the billionaire, libertarian Koch brothers, Charles and David, out of Wichita, Kan., who are helping fund the anti-Obama and Tea Party movements. Listen to this rhetoric: Socialists will “infiltrate the highest offices of government in the U.S. until the President is a Socialist, unknown to the rest of us.” Except that's not their rhetoric. Replace “Socialist” with “Communist” and it's from a speech their father gave in 1963, a year in which he also warned of the colored man's use in this plot. Fred Koch was one of the original members of the John Birch Society, or Birchers, and now his kids are helping fund those who question Pres. Obama's birth certificate, or Birthers. That's the progress the extreme right has made in this country in the last 50 years: one letter.
You know what's really awful about the Koch brothers' rhetoric? It's working.
“America is better than Glenn Beck. For all of his celebrity, Mr. Beck is an ignorant, divisive, pathetic figure.” Bob Herbert takes the gloves off.�
Tim Egan takes off the gloves, too, on the Know Nothings of the Right.
Dan Savage makes the best point I've ever heard when arguing same-sex marriage with fundamentalists. “It's almost as if they don't trust God to persecute us after we die. Have a little faith, people!” Whole thing here.�
Must-view of the week: FOX-News wonders where the money for the so-called Ground-Zero Mosque is coming from. Jon Stewart answers: It's coming from FOX-News. Then he asks his own questions: So did the folks at FOX legitimately not know this...or did they not mention the name of the contributor because it didn't fit into their preconceived storyline? Are they evil or stupid?
Is the Web dead? Robb Mitchell on FB alerted me to this Wired article, which he poo-pooed for going for the iconic look of TIME magazine's 1966 “Is God Dead?” cover (see: “Rosemary's Baby,” doctor's waiting room), and which I initially poo-pooed because it seemed absurd. The Web not only doesn't seem dead, it seems as omnipresent as God. But Wired, of course, is talking web-Web, browsers and all, not Internet. The article is all about apps circumventing browsers. It's an interesting thought. Hey, one day, maybe writers will get paid again!
The profits of the have-nots in Major League Baseball, like the Pirates and the Marlins, are revealed. Turns out they have.
Best last line of a movie review this year (thus far) goes to A.O. Scott's review of “Piranha 3D.”
Nathaniel over at Film Experience rightly accuses the Academy of playing “Logan's Run” by hiding the old folks (your Francis Coppolas) in favor of baby-faced nothings like Miley Cyrus, but his greater point comes later: Why has it been 20 years since a woman presented Best Picture all by her lonesome? He then provides a list of those who haven't done this, including Meryl Streep, Michelle Pfeiffer, Jodie Foster, and Julia Roberts. The Academy should blush if the Academy could blush.
Finally, there's that rumor that Marion Cotillard, late of “Inception,” is being considered, or has been offered, or has turned down, the role of Catwoman in the next “Batman” movie. Why do I care about a mere rumor? I don't, really. I just wanted to post another picture of Marion Cotillard. You're welcome.