Saturday Night Comedy Video Open Thread

Last Saturday's comedy video open thread was the most popular yet with almost 6,500 reads. Sweet.

Tonight, as we're hours away from our nation's most highly-watched sporting event, it seems appropriate to focus on comedy in sports. As Archie Bunker used to say, can you folly that?

Readers are encouraged to submit suggestions to Noel and Warner via PM or EM (nsheppard@newsbusters.org, igcolonel@hotmail.com).

Our first offering is a collection of sports bloopers:

Here's an e-trade commercial you won't be seeing tomorrow courtesy NBer motherbelt:

A few funny animals, another one from Motherbelt

I have always loved this: The Argument Clinic

Newsweek’s Clift Bemoans Media Sexism Against Hillary, and Even Palin

A Commemorative Inaugural Edition of Newsweek arrived at the office in the mail this week, and it included a column by Eleanor Clift titled "Suffrage, Hillary Style" which touted Hillary Clinton’s "18 million cracks in the glass ceiling" and sang the same old song about how sexism is still more acceptable than racism:

Hillary’s campaign illustrates how far we’ve come and how far we haven’t come. The tone and tenor of the debate around Hillary, and around Sarah Palin, was far more personal and mocking than toward their male counterparts. Maybe the material was richer, but there was no attempt to dance around gender issues the way there is with race. As a society, we still condone sexism; we view it as a part of nature, a given that isn’t worth bothering our pretty heads about.

Bringing Palin in for sympathatic treatment on sexism is a little strange for Eleanor, since this is how she greeted the choice on The McLaughlin Group last year:

This is not a serious choice. It makes it look like a made for TV movie. If the media reaction is anything, it's been literally laughter in many places across news....In very, very many newsrooms.

Clift complained that the media clearly favored Obama over Hillary when she was "equally serious," but she didn’t ponder whether Hillary was equally smooth or equally appealing:

Older women whose lives and careers were constrained by sexism felt disrespected by a media captivated by a serious black candidate in a way they weren’t by the prospect of an equally serious woman contending for the job. Younger women who haven’t experienced as much sexism wondered why their mothers thought it was such a big deal;’ if not Hillary, there’ll be someone else.

Earlier, she illustrated the generation gap among women Clift knows: "A Hillary campaign worker who objected to a Hillary nutcracker with its stainless-steel thighs was chided by her own grown daughters for not having a sense of humor. "

Clift began by recounting the American history that recalls Obama reaching the White House before a woman:

The fact that she lost out to a black man recalls the hurt felt by the early suffragists when the 15th Amendment passed after the Civil War extended the vote to freed black males. Women were told it was "the Negro’s hour," and they should step aside. Allowing former slaves to vote while denying educated women the same right enraged suffrage leaders and divided the movement between those who accepted the disparity and those who raged against their second-class status. The rift last for 20 years, with bitterness far more deep-seated than the hard feelings exhibited by Hillary’s hardiest campaign supporters.

More Disparate Coverage From LAT in Coverage of Priest and Teacher Sex Scandals

As we reported a couple days ago, when a veteran middle-school teacher in nearby Santa Monica pleaded guilty last month to "multiple counts of illegal sex acts" and molesting nine young girls, the Los Angeles Times didn't print a single syllable about it in their paper. Not one. The teacher was sentenced to 14 years in state prison. Although the Times had reported the teacher's original arrest and some follow-up last May and June, the story of the teacher's guilty plea and sentencing only made it to the paper's blog.

Now look at the front page of today's Times' 'California' B section (Sat. 1/31/09). Prominently displayed on the top of the page are two color photos related to the sentencing yesterday (1/30/09) of a former Catholic priest. (The on-line edition shows only one photo; the print edition displays two, including one of the back of the victim.) Indeed, the abuse reported by the victims is terribly awful and sad. ("My family trusted you to teach me the ways of the Lord, not the ways of hell," one of the victims, now in his 30s, told Miller in a trembling voice.) However, it's not hard to not notice that the reported abuse took place 20 years ago, and Cardinal Mahony moved to defrock the man (successfully) a number of years ago.

As we've reported several times before (see below), the Times constantly appears to ignore or downplay current-day sex abuse scandals involving teachers and school districts, but trumpet cases that involve decades-old episodes of abuse by Catholic priests.

It's the awful abuse of children that should anger the Times and everyone, not just the job title of the perpetrator. Does anyone really think that the Times would have minimized the story of that sentenced child molester in Santa Monica if the man had the word "priest" in his job title? Of course not.

Double ... standard ... again.

+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+

Previous (partial list):

LAT Minimizes School Sex Scandals But Trumpets Flimsy Story on Cardinal Mahony (NB, 1/30/09)

Not the Catholic Church? (Part III): LAT Misses Further Sex Abuse Charges Against School Aide (NB, 10/26/08)

Not the Catholic Church? (Part II): L.A. School Sex Abuse Scandal Continues To Grow; Where's the MSM? (NB, 9/22/08)

Not the Catholic Church? MSM Mum About Huge L.A. School Sex Abuse Scandal (NB, 5/19/08)

LA Times Admits To False Reporting On Cardinal Mahony (NB, 6/15/07)

After Bogus Attack, Catholic Charities Debunks LA Times Columnist (NB, 2/25/07)

LA Times Slammed For Two Faulty Articles, 'Insulting To All Catholics' (NB, 4/1/07)

In This Case, Headline In LA Times Unfair To Cardinal Mahony (NB, 12/2/06)

LA Times Goes to Texas, Alaska Seeking Church Abuse Scandals (NB, 9/5/06)

Hall of Fame inductees announced

The NFL announced its Hall of Fame Class of 2009 on Saturday, and the list is full of no-brainers:

– Bruce Smith: The fearsome defensive end will be inducted on his first year of eligibility. You can debate whether he or Reggie White is the best DE of all-time, but you can’t debate with this stat: 200 career sacks, an NFL record.

– Rod Woodson: The defensive back also made it in on the first try. Woodson will be remembered for all those interceptions, as well as the inspiration for filmmaker Cameron Crowe, who wrote “Jerry Maguire.”

– Derrick Thomas: Had he not died in an auto accident in 2000, Thomas might have retired as the best outside linebacker in NFL history. He posted 126.5 sacks during his career and, impressively, forced 45 fumbles.

– Ralph Wilson Jr.: Besides being the sole owner of the Bills, Wilson was was an original founder of the AFL.

– Randall McDaniel: The Vikings featured a potent offense throughout the 1990s (unlike most of this decade), and McDaniel, a guard, was a big part of that unit’s success. He played in 12 consecutive Pro Bowls.

– Bob Hayes: An Olympic gold medalist sprinter-turned wide receiver, Hayes was part of the first Cowboys dynasty. NFL.com’s bio of him says the bump-and-run defense was developed to slow him down.

Missing from this list is receiver Cris Carter, who surely will be selected next year; Richard Dent, who I think will make it someday; Shannon Sharpe, who I think is worthy but might be getting overshadowed by Tony Gonzalez’s success at tight end; and former commissioner Paul Tagliabue; who supposedly and oddly isn’t getting a lot of consideration. Wait ’til 2010, when Emmitt Smith and Jerry Rice are shoo-ins in their first year eligible.

Hugh Hewitt: Habitat, Housing, Nukes and Ships: Rescuing the “Stimulus”

We Got Snow . . .

Well, we don't have snow, but we do have snow geese!

Steve Watson of Medford sent this awesome photo . . .

Photo by Steve Watson

Bozell: No Cussing Club Kid Gets Death Threats

Brent Bozell's culture column this week tackled the new F-bomb single from Britney Spears and the kid who received death threats for starting a No Cussing club:

McKay Hatch is a 15-year-old boy from South Pasadena, California who people clearly hate. He’s received over 60,000 negative E-mails, most of them vicious, some including death threats that have spawned police and FBI investigations. What has this boy done that’s caused such anger? Was he caught dealing drugs? Did he rage? Did he kill? No. He started a No Cussing Club.

And for that he is vilified. Hatch says some people are going out of their way to curse him at school, on the Internet and on the phone. They send him pornographic magazine subscriptions. Not long ago, someone ordered $2,000 worth of pizza delivered to Hatch's house. Then came the death threats.

Brent Hatch, the teenager’s father, told reporters one death threat in particular crossed the line. "I was at the hospital with my wife, we were visiting family, and some guy had called on my cell phone said, 'I know you you're gone, you're not there, and I'm in front of your house and I'm going to kill your family.’"

If the purveyors of profanity think that cussing is so harmless, why are some of them so unbelievably hostile to anyone suggesting a voluntary ban on the bleeps?

McKay Hatch isn’t buckling. "It's really scary, because people are calling us all night," he says. "Sometimes we have to unplug the phone. You know, at first it was really kind of scary, but they're just bullies and they want you to be scared. And so I'm not gonna let them win." His No Cussing Club now boasts 20,000 members.

Let me repeat something here. This boy is 15 years old. He didn’t just stumble into activism. It’s a family mission. McKay's parents are authors of a book titled "Raising a G-Rated Family in an X-Rated World." Profanity wasn’t allowed at home. Hatch says none of his friends in elementary school ever swore, but when they got to middle school, "everyone started cussing," he says. "The reason it bothered me the most is because it was something they were using every other word, kind of like the word 'the.' They kept using it and using it."

Hatch suggests that instead of cuss words, his school friends could use alternative exclamations when frustrations inevitably occur. He told Jay Leno his favorite was "pickles," but he also suggests "barnacles" and "sassafras." He even has a rap-music video on YouTube where he and some friends walk to the beat down the street in their orange club T-shirts and chant "Don’t Cuss." It’s severely at odds with the kind of language that usually permeates rap videos.

Sadly, most of popular culture seems headed in the opposite direction. Bubble-headed pop princess Britney Spears, desperate to stay in the spotlight after years of embarrassments and humiliations, has a new single coming out called "If You Seek Amy." If that doesn’t spell trouble, then pay a little more attention to Britney’s snappy lyric, as she claims "All of the boys and all of the girls are begging to If You Seek Amy." This lyric doesn’t make any grammatical sense, until you read it phonetically. She’s spelling out the F-bomb.

Britney’s now casting herself as the new Tila Tequila, the latest MTV temptress so fetching that she’s a poster girl for bisexual incontinence.

The record company's boasting more than 100,000 digital downloads of their F-track.

Freedom Eden has video of young McKay on a weekend Fox News show.

Construct an Outdoor Gun Rack

Courtesy of NSSF

Construct an Outdoor Gun Rack

Provide safe, orderly storage for long arms

By John Ross

Materials You’ll Need | Step-by-Step Directions | Printer-Friendly Layout | Video

There are many places at a gun club where providing a simple gun rack can be a convenience. A gun rack at ranges, at shooting stations or outside buildings where guns are not allowed inside can offer club members a safe place to rest their guns while they wait their turn or simply hang out and socialize.

Gun racks create an orderly appearance and protect guns from the hazards of being set on a table or leaned against a wall or a tree. Of course, all guns placed in a gun rack should be empty of ammunition and have the safety “on.”

The gun rack constructed for this article was designed for the covered porch of a local gun range’s clubhouse where firearms are not allowed inside. Within the first hours of being installed, the club members started using the rack. It saved them the hassle of casing their firearms or walking to their vehicles to store them.

The need for a gun rack was apparent, but not so obvious was the design, which we carefully considered to provide the most benefit. The construction details that are outlined here will accommodate a variety of situations but can also be easily modified as needed.

The rack was placed near the front door for convenience but does not crowd the area of foot traffic through the door or down the stairs. This reduces the chance that the rack will be inadvertently bumped or that loose clothing will snag the guns. For this reason the rack was also placed away from any coat racks or boot sweeps.

This rack accommodates six guns and is a little wider than three feet. If space is needed for more guns, two or more racks can be ganged together provided that they are securely fastened to each other and to the wall or another form of support.

Likewise the rack can be shortened to fit in a tighter space, but this, of course will limit the number of guns it can hold.

The framing consists of dimensional lumber purchased at a local Home Depot store and is held together with deck screws of a variety of sizes (see materials list). To protect the finish on the gun butts and barrels, the exposed edges and corners were rounded and smoothed with 100-grit sand paper. To further protect the gun finishes, felt left over from a Halloween costume, was incorporated in key areas of the top and bottom. For a rack not exposed to the outdoors, covering all the areas that contact the guns with felt would certainly offer more protection. The total cost of materials was $60.

This rack stands 36 inches tall and extends 18 inches from the wall. Most rifles and shotguns fit comfortably well with these dimensions. The slots for the butts are two inches wide and five inches from front to back. Both the larger shotguns and smaller rifles we tested for fit rested in the rack securely.

An outdoor gun rack can be constructed of readily available materials for $60 or less. The legs are 2×6s cut to length. A gun-butt carriage is assembled of 1×4 and 1×6 pine boards and short pieces of 2×4 lumber. The rack’s top cradles the muzzles between 2×2 blocks of cedar. Felt helps protect the guns’ finishes. This rack stands outside the front door of the range’s club house.

Stephen P. Murray resigns from Cabelas

Cabela's Incorporated
Investors:
Chris Gay, 308-255-2905
or
Media:
Joe Arterburn, 308-255-1204

Patterson picks Gillibrand for Senate Seat

The governor will announce his selection at noon in Albany. An aide to Ms. Gillibrand confirmed that she had accepted the appointment.

Ms. Gillibrand is largely unknown to New Yorkers statewide, but is considered an up-and-coming and forceful lawmaker in her district and has gained considerable attention from Democratic leaders in Washington.

Mr. Paterson made his final decision shortly before 2 a.m. Friday after a marathon series of phone calls and deliberations with his top aides, according to the person who spoke to him. He began making phone calls to other contenders about 9 p.m., and had notified most of the other contenders by midnight. By then, the only two candidates who had not heard from Mr. Paterson were Ms. Gillibrand and Randi Weingarten, the president of the United Federation of Teachers.

One of Mr. Paterson’s preferences had been to select a woman to replace Mrs. Clinton.

The governor continued to deliberate and discuss the matter with his advisers — despite earlier reports that he had settled on Ms. Gillibrand — until he made his decision, according to the person who talked to him. He then called Ms. Gillibrand, who had earlier in the evening been told to come to Albany to await an announcement, to let her know she was his pick.

If Mr. Paterson was hoping to quiet the tumult over the selection process by picking Ms. Gillibrand, there were indications that he may not get his wish. Ms. Gillibrand, who has been endorsed by the National Rifle Association, is controversial among some of the party’s more liberal leaders downstate.

Representative Carolyn McCarthy, a Long Island Democrat and ardent gun control activist, said Thursday that if Ms. Gillibrand got the job, she was prepared to run against her in a primary in 2010. Ms. McCarthy was elected to Congress after her husband was killed in a gunman’s rampage on the Long Island Rail Road in 1993.

Ms. Gillibrand’s selection was a careful political calculation by the governor, who will run for his second term as governor in 2010, when Ms. Gillibrand will also be on the ballot. The choice reflects Mr. Paterson’s thinking that his selection should be someone who can help him attract key demographics — in Ms. Gillibrand’s case upstate New Yorkers and women.

Next Page »