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Jan
31
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It’s about 15 minutes before the State of the Union address, and I have one question: Is this thing in high definition?
Yes, for a combined Christmas-birthday present I got an HDTV for my apartment. It’s nice. And bigger than I thought. And right now I’m watching American Idol in high def — and, well, the remote is all the way at the other end of the couch, so I’m planning on staying on Fox 29 for the SOTU as well. So is it in HD?
Eff what Dubya wants to say about health care or Iran or how squeamish he gets when he thinks about two guys doing each other. I only have one question before the State of the Union, and I’m just wondering if it’s in HD.
Also, lots of fat people have been made fun of on Idol tonight, and I’m expecting plenty of complaint press releases from the National Fat People Coalition or whatever.
Either way, join me here! A little before 9 p.m.! On Tuesday Tuesday Tuesday! For the State of the Union liveblog! I have a can of Yuengling with me, but no drinking games here: I plan on having half of it done at the end of this stupid speech. In the meantime, Matt Donegan has a new blog post up — and it’s predictably awesome — and somebody invited Cindy Sheehan to the SOTU. Oh, snap. Okay, one drinking game: If Sheehan rushes the stage, I’ll finish my beer.
After the jump, the minute-by-minute (or however often I come up with a one-liner) recap.
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dmac | 8:45 PM | 49 Comments
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Jan
31
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 If you’re going to be watching television for tonight’s State of the Union address, why not stop by Philadelphia Will Do for instant commentary, one-liners and possibly some poor typing if I do a drinking game during Bush’s address. (Don’t get your hopes up. I’m not going to. I have some journalistic standards.)
Barring technical difficulties like my laptop exploding or deciding to play Madden, I’ll be liveblogging Bush’s speech starting a little before 9 p.m. I promise only one thing: I will bash every single person who is mentioned in tonight’s speech.
Okay, maybe not Coretta Scott King. Hmm.
Anyway, 9 p.m. SOTU liveblogging. In the meantime, you can read this unfunny and overly predictable “advance copy” of Bush’s speech that was inexplicably labeled as coming from the Chicago Sun-Times on Google News.
2006 State of the Union Address (Advance Copy) [e.thePeople (oh Jesus Christ)]
State of the Union archives [C-SPAN]
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dmac | 4:27 PM | 0 Comments
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Jan
31
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The cover of today’s Inquirer:
And the cover of today’s Evening Bulletin:
Lest you think the Bulletini copied, I picked both up at the same time this morning at the newsstand. Which is kind of even weirder.
- Standard disclaimer: Daniel McQuade used to work at the Bulletin yadda yadda yadda &c. You get the idea, or you know this by now.
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dmac | 3:50 PM | 2 Comments
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Jan
31
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Coretta Scott King, wife of MLK, died Monday night in Baja California, Mexico. Sad news. And, as expected, leaders around the nation are expressing their sadness. (Bloggers, too.)
In Philadelphia, we had Philly NAACP head J. Wyatt Mondesire chiming in:
We don’t have those kind of people around anymore. And that’s the kind of void that we have to carry now, that a woman who was almost saintly is now gone. And who can carry that on? I don’t know. I just don’t know.
He then added, “But, you know, in recent years Ms. King had stopped running with the ball and tried to be too much like a white civil rights leader. Frankly, Coretta is a testament of fallen dreams who perpetuated a fraud while hiding behind excuses dripping in make-believe racial stereotypes.”
Coretta Scott King dies [CNN.com]
Phila. NAACP Head Remembers Mrs. King’s Legacy [KYW 1060]
Donovan McNabb: Mediocre at best [Philadelphia Sunday Sun]
PWD on Jerry Mondesire
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dmac | 3:09 PM | 0 Comments
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Jan
31
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I was a little surprised to hear some blog-related news out of Dover, the town with the weekly newspaper the Dover Post. I mean, I hadn’t thought of Dover since my friend left a job there. Do they even have computers?
I kid, I kid. It turns out, that they have a blog brouhaha on their hands in Dover. A reporter for the Post, Matt Donegan, was fired by editor Don Flood for comments he wrote on his own Myspace blog.
“I didn’t know anything about it,” Flood told The News Journal of Wilmington. “I looked at the site, and sure enough it was there. Immediately afterward I verified with [Donegan] that it was his site and this is what he had written,” Flood said. “And at that point I fired him… [some of the entries were] extremely offensive and just contrary to what we believe here.”
Oh, and what were those entries? Let’s go through a list of entries I combed through said Myspace blog of one Matt Donegan:
- “Thanks for that one, Doctor [King]. Now, because of you, I feel like I’ve been backed over by a black pickup truck today. Further, because of your life, it would be considered a racial crime for me (aka ‘The Man’) to shoot up a house full of black people who don’t know how to keep their car stereos, or voices, at a normal tone in a residential area in the middle of a black night…. It’s that kind of dick move by black people that turns all other people into racists. I bet James Earl Ray was woken up by black people yelling pointlessly in the streets the night before he killed your civil rights leader.”
- “But hey, what else is new? This God awful feeling that has stayed on me all day like semen after a mid-afternoon root-pulling session.”
- “I just typed a blog about my upcoming trip to wine country - the Finger Fucking Lakes - and this no good, cunt-faced, motherfucking whore bucket MySpace deleted it.” (Editor’s Note: Ahh, the sign of a true blogger — a post about deleting a previous posting attempt.)
- “At least I inherited the mighty fallace [sic] gene, and therefore have no need for computer knowledge, or smarts of any kind for that matter.”
- “This year, I: Started to really hate my job; didn’t get laid nearly enough (not by good looking girls, anyway);”
- “That gym was a god damned zoo. I can’t believe most of those animals are allowed out of the house. There was a mini-brawl between a couple of black fans (95% of them were black), some kid said he was going to steal my camera and half of the people there smelled like pot.”
- Bonus Myspace profile excerpt: “About me: I’m a reporter, like Superman, but I’m also a Superfreak! Want to find out more? You don’t? What a jerkoff! While you’re here, try reading my blog. Most of the entries are about horseshoes or cum shots, but read it anyway.”
Oh yeah, I didn’t see this, but the News-Journal wrote that one of his clubs was the “National Organization for Men Against Amazonian Masterhood” — or NO MA’AM. Of course, you may remember that from Married With Children.
I don’t think I need to tell you that Matt Donegan is officially the bestest blogger ever. He says his blog was meant to be funny, and with all that cursing and constant attempts to get laid via print, how could it not be?
Donegan wrote just yesterday on his blog that he was fired for “exercising freedom of speech.” An excerpt:
Foul language? You bet your fucking ass there is foul language. But racial slurs? Bashing the handicapped? Come on, people. It’s sickening to think that you can’t so much as joke about someone different than you nowadays without someone pinning a KKK hat on your head and calling you “Massa.” Seriously, lighten the hell up already. Political correctness is killing society, slowly but surely.
Of course, someone getting fired for what they wrote on their Myspace page is about the stupidest thing ever. (All around. I think someone getting fired for what they wrote on Myspace makes us all stupider.)
And, hell, is one of my interests really that big pun rap where he goes “I’m sick/ You couldn’t measure my dick/ with six rulers”? You bet your ass it is. So maybe that’s a bad example.
I previously said that Daylin Leach shouldn’t get killed for having a stupid unfunny blog online and I don’t think Matt Donegan should, either. But, obviously, if you write that the Spectrum’s haunted house was “darker than Martin Luther King Boulevard in Camden,” and you think nobody’s going to get pissed if they read it, then, well, you’re stupider than a room full of honkey dropouts.
Editor’s Note: It is NOT the official position of Philadelphia Will Do that black people woke James Edgar Ray up the morning before he assassinated Martin Luther King. Philadelphia Will Do believes he was awakened by a rooster.
Reporter fired for blog posts [The News-Journal]
Matt Donegan’s blog [Myspace]
Sept. 6, 2005: Your Daylin Leach wrap-up
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dmac | 2:33 PM | 59 Comments
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Jan
31
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 Ahh, I know that some of you must be bummed today as Sam Alito was confirmed for the Supreme Court. Yeah, yeah, he’s a conservative and you’re liberal, yadda yadda abortion presidential power blah blah blah. (I know you think I’m neglecting my readers who may come from a conservative standpoint, thinking they’d be celebrating Alito’s confirmation. Perhaps. But evidence shows that today conservatives — at least on conservablog The Corner — are complaining about the Oscar nominations. Strange world.)
But I digress. I, for one, celebrate this man’s nomination. Uhm, hello, he’s from the Philly area? We always support our own. I know, I know, maybe he doesn’t really jive with all my values — and he doesn’t — but that’s okay.
You see, Sam Alito is a Phillies fan. And what do the Phillies do? They disappoint you over and over and over again. I mean, Alito even got former Phillies pitcher (and senator) Jim Bunning’s autograph. And Bunning was on the 1964 team, which had the biggest collapse in sports history. Sam Alito may very well be the combination of Gene Mauch, Mitch Williams, Danny Tartabull and Randy Ready all in one.
As such, I expect conservative Sam Alito fans to feel just like Phils fans year after year after year… the only question is, can Supreme Court decisions be decided by a vote of 86-76 (and just miss the wild card)?
Alito Is Confirmed for Supreme Court in 58-42 Vote [New York Times]
RE: OSCARZZZZZZ [The Corner]
Philadelphia Phillies Team Index [Baseball-Reference.com]
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dmac | 1:06 PM | 1 Comment
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Jan
31
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 Okay, you all probably know this story by now, but I’ll run with it anyway. As usual, Dan Gross has the scoop on the offical news we all saw coming for a while: The Borgata is being sued for sexual harassment. Er, I’m sorry, for “a sexual and gender-hostile environment and sex discrimination.”
And how! Although males didn’t have uniforms, female “Borgata Babes” were given outfits they had to wear during their job. If they went back and requested a larger size, they were subject to a weigh in. Official rules had female staffers getting a suspension if they gained more than seven percent of their body weight and then being fired if they failed to lose said weight.
The particulars of this suit — in addition to the aforementioned work environment — come from the two plaintiffs, Renee Gaud, 36, and Trisha Hart, 28. Gaud alleges that she told the Borgata she has hypothyroidism and eating disorders, while Hart says she was denied sick time off for illness and her boss praised her pneumonia-related weight loss.
According to Gross, the pair allege that “the only medical leave acceptable to the Borgata was time off to get breast implants, which the complaint says was encouraged by supervisors.”
Obviously, there’s no doubt that “Borgata Babes” face sex discrimination. The job title would tell you that. And the whole “get fat and we fire you” thing is so bad it’s hilarious. But can a company really be faulted for wanting to keep their roster of attractive waitresses attractive? Isn’t that good business, even if they attempted to do it in a rehensible way? I don’t know. Probably not. Eh.
Dan Gross | Ex-servers sue Borgata [DN]
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dmac | 11:40 AM | 2 Comments
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