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Sunday, November 23, 2008
Stephen Colbert’s Xmas special … not so special
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
We just watched Stephen Colbert’s Xmas special. It was funny — good, but not great. The family consensus was that Colbert owes royalty payments to Pee-Wee Herman, because he “borrowed” so heavily in style, attitude and plot from Pee-Wee’s holiday special from ‘88, which honestly was a lot better.
Besides, Colbert didn’t have the heavenly intonations of the Del Rubio Triplets. Need I say more?
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The GOP’s crush on Sarah Palin
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
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PRINCETON, NJ — Republicans and Republican-leaning independents are most interested in seeing Sarah Palin, Mitt Romney, and Mike Huckabee run for the party’s presidential nomination in 2012. Those three received the highest scores among the 10 possible candidates evaluated in a recent Gallup Panel survey.
According to the poll, 67 percent of Republicans would like to see Palin run four years from now, with 62 percent favorable toward a Romney run and 61 percent toward Huckabee.
And which potential candidates would the party faithful least like to see on the ballot? The least popular by far was Jeb Bush — 61 percent said they would NOT want to see him run, a pretty strong indication of how badly burned the party feels by all things Bush. The second least popular was Newt Gingrich — 48 percent would not like to see him run.
But I have to confess: I am absolutely baffled by the continued GOP support for Palin. I do not get it. My best guess is that those who support her have a very different concept of the presidency than I do. I see the president as someone who actually has to run the country, so I value traits such as competence and knowledge. They see the presidency in more symbolic terms, which means they value those candidates who epitomize America as they wish to see it.
I acknowledge that those are not mutually exclusive categories, that every candidate represents a mixture of pragmatism and symbolism. It’s just a question of which is more important to you as a voter, and to my mind Palin backers have by definition stated that competence and knowledge are less important to them.
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Don’t worry, be happy and turn off that damn TV
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Do you folks watch the Sunday morning talk shows? What’s your favorite?
Personally, I don’t watch and never have and doubt I ever will. Maybe it’s because I deal with this stuff so much already that watching on the weekend seems like doubling your heroin intake. Then again, I also don’t watch during the week. Bill O’Reilly, for example, will always say something within the first 30 seconds to make me change the channel, and I’ve yet to see Keith Olbermann in anything but a sportscasting role.
And then there’s this:
“Happy people spend more free hours socializing, reading and participating in religious activities, while unhappy people watch 30 percent more television, according to new research on American life.
In a study that is among the first to compare daily free-time activities with perceptions of personal contentment, researchers found that television hours were elevated for people who described themselves as “not too happy.” On average, the down-and-out reported an extra 5.6 hours of tube time a week, compared with their happiest counterparts.”
