In Which We Discover That I Am Psychic...

This is seriously fucking weird and creepy. I'm unsettled.

From my sarcastic obit for Anna Nicole Smith yesterday:

The person who epitomized this phenomenon to me as a child was Zsa Zsa Gabor. I was too young to know that she and her sister had at one time actually performed in real, authentic vehicles of entertainment. I only knew there was this horrible old woman with a horror-movie accent that seemed to make a living being famous (and, on occasion, assaulting police officers).

Now, at the time, there had been no established connection made between Zsa Zsa and Anna Nicole. They are two totally separate public figures who simply shared a trait I wanted to note in passing - they were famous for no good reason.

Here's Yahoo! News from today...

The husband of actress Zsa Zsa Gabor said Friday that he had a decade-long affair with Anna Nicole Smith and may be her infant daughter's father.

Of all the celebrities in the world...MAN, that's an odd coincidence. But it gets even stranger.

The claim by Prince Frederic von Anhalt comes amid a paternity suit over Smith's 5-month-old daughter, Dannielynn. The birth certificate lists Dannielynn's father as attorney Howard K. Stern, but former Smith boyfriend Larry Birkhead is waging a legal challenge, saying he is the father.

"If you go back from September, she wasn't with one of those guys, she was with me," von Anhalt told The Associated Press in an interview Friday.

I can't imagine she'd turn to drug abuse, with such a secure, stable family life.

Gabor, a onetime sex symbol and star of such 1950s films as "Moulin Rouge" and "Queen of Outer Space," has been in declining health in recent years and suffered a stroke in 2005. She was partially paralyzed in a car crash in 2002.

Von Anhalt, who is Gabor's eighth husband, said he and Smith met in the 1990s when Smith was still married to elderly oil tycoon J. Howard Marshall II. He said Smith approached him and Gabor at the Plaza Hotel in New York.

"She was a very big fan of Zsa Zsa and wanted to be like Zsa Zsa," he said. "She wanted to be a princess."

Well, I think as my no-bit made perfectly clear, Anna Nicole did a fine job of stepping into Zsa Zsa's overpriced shoes. Except for the whole dying young thing...

He said the two started an affair soon after, meeting over the years in Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York. For much of that time, he said, Smith urged him to make her a princess like his wife.

But short of divorcing the actress, he said the only solution would have been adopting Smith. Von Anhalt said he did consider that and even filled out adoption papers, but Gabor refused to sign them.

He said he never admitted the affair to his wife, but that he's sure she knows. She would sometimes answer the phone when Smith called him, von Anhalt said.

"She was a very sexy woman," von Anhalt said. "To have an affair with her is the top, you know."

I don't know who's more pathetic. The recently deceased junkie who couldn't correctly identify the father of her child or this asshole. He was cheating on Zsa Zsa Gabor with fucking Anna Nicole Smith. I mean, I guess that's a little bit better, but we're still talking baby steps here. Doesn't his neighborhood have any attractive stray animals.

"To have an affair with her is the top"? What the fuck are you talking about, you deluded old weirdo? You weren't having a romantic affair! She was fucking you, then directly instructing you to give her money. How could that, in any way, represent the top? Because she had big cans?

Publicist Edward Lozzi, who said he handled publicity for Gabor when she was convicted of slapping a Beverly Hills police officer during a 1989 traffic stop, said he doubted von Anhalt's claim, calling him a "chronic fabricator."

"There are some people who are married to famous people and take advantage of it," said Lozzi, who said he dated Smith three times and spoke with her within the last year.

Man, this story has everything! Paternity mysteries, dead Playmates, pathological liars. Am I the only one who's curious how Ms. Smith could have been carrying on all these exciting, shadowy romantic entanglements when all the available video indicates that she had trouble standing up or walking a straight line?

Ronald Jason Palmieri, an attorney who has represented Gabor and von Anhalt for 15 years, was also skeptical about the paternity claim.

"I have to believe my client, but it's still surreal," he told the Los Angeles Times. "I would find it completely implausible that he is the father of that child, to put it lightly."

Oh, man, I hope Mark Burnett reads this blog. Here's what you have to do. You get Von Anhalt this baby, see, and then you turn it into a reality show. I'm thinking "The Prince and the Pooper," but hire some quality writers. I'm sure they can throw something together.

Hey, it's what Anna Nicole would have wanted!

Von Anhalt's royal credentials have been the cause of speculation over the years. According to stories in the British press, he was born Robert Lichtenberg, the son of a German policeman, and bought his title after being adopted as an adult by a bankrupt daughter-in-law of the last kaiser.

You can't really follow up something like that with a joke. There's no way to top a fraudulent, bankrupt prince who's jealous of a corpse. If Sam Kinison rose from the dead and immediately slumped over to the Laugh Factory to do his best 15 minutes on rigor mortis, it would still be easier to follow than a story about the son of a German policeman buying a title after being adopted as an adult by a bankrupt daughter-in-law of the last Kaiser.

RIP Vicki Lynn Hogan

There are all kinds of theories on celebrity worship. Some people feel that it's because Western Europe and America are no longer dominated by monarchies. Without royalty, we must focus our rapt attention on randomly selected alpha-specimens, based on looks or charisma or a host of other inscrutible attributes. This is a compelling theory.

But I think certain individuals capture the public's attention because they uncannily remind us of ourselves in ways we're not normally allowed to consider. Now, I don't mean people who are famous for a good reason, like talented or beautiful actors or musicians or news anchors or whatever. I mean, it's not hard to discern why Scarlett Johansson's famous. We've all seen Ghost World.

I'm talking about your Paris Hiltons, your Cisco Adlers, your K-Feds. The person who epitomized this phenomenon to me as a child was Zsa Zsa Gabor. I was too young to know that she and her sister had at one time actually performed in real, authentic vehicles of entertainment. I only knew there was this horrible old woman with a horror-movie accent that seemed to make a living being famous (and, on occasion, assaulting police officers).

But the phenomenon of famous-for-fame's-sake celebrities has really exploded now, what with YouTube and "American Idol" and MTV's entire line-up and the whole concept of celebrity meta-devouring itself. And I think that certain people become elevated to iconic status, sometimes overnight, because there is something familiar about them. They're social synechdoches - their accidentally exposed private parts stand for our whole.

Lindsay Lohan's totally like this. In fact, she plays the part of the perpetual adolescent so well, pivoting constantly between genuine grief over her vices and outrageous bouts of Dionysian indulgence, I occasionally feel like it must be an act. Surely, Lindsay's just the Andy Kaufman of our time, always inhabiting her rebellious junkie "persona" and never letting us know that she's in on the joke. How could anyone be this out of control for so long? It would be funny if it weren't so...Okay, it's funny.

Which brings me to Anna Nicole Smith, whose death from heart explosion today is not at all funny. So just forget I made that "heart explosion" crack.

If La Lohan reflects Americans' twisted nostalgia for the Girls (and, yes, Guys) Gone Wild they once were and Paris Hilton provides a safe outlet for our disgust at our own excesses, what service did Anna Nicole Smith's legend provide?

A high school dropout who worked at a fried chicken restaurant, a 26 year old stripper who seduced and married an 89 year old billionaire, an alcoholic whose negligence almost assuredly led at least in part to the death of her 20 year old son only months ago, Anna Nicole Smith has kept America captivated since my early teens.

Now, I'm not trying to bash the woman on the day of her passing. She had a tough time of it, particularly in the last year, and I felt badly for her more often than not.

I've followed her career largely via appearances on "The Howard Stern Show," on which she often seemed drugged, imbalanced and frequently incomprehensible. (Full disclosure: I have also seen many episodes of her ludicrous reality show, which mainly consisted of her waddling around, apparently doped up, while an extremely feminine interior decorator arranged cushions and set the cause of gay rights back a few decades.)

Clearly, Vicki Lynn aka Anna Nicole was the embodiment of the Gold Digger archetype. In essence, her life could be seen as a morality tale: It seems like getting money from that old man will make you happy, but it will only cause you grief. This only works if you're exceptionally small-minded, but we're not talking about conscious, rational connections here. We're talking about why several million Americans would give a shit about a wholly unremarkable and unappealing Texan. (They had already elected one President, after all, and that hadn't worked out too well.)

Speaking of Anna Nicole's gold, it's kind of odd, isn't it, that both she and her son have died within the span of a few months, leaving the future of J. Howard Marshall's billions uncertain? Could her shadowy lawyer and possible baby-daddy Howard K. Stern (not to be confused with the King of All Media) have done her and her heir in hoping to get his hands on the money? (This would explain the recently paternity kerfuffle as well...If he can establish that he and Anna were married and had started a family, he'd have a more compelling case for being cut in on the eventual deal.)

Or have the billionaire's children, who have long sought to gain access to the family fortune via the judicial system, given up on ever winning the day legally? Did they hire someone to get the obstacles out of the way and "make it look like an accident?" Two mysterious, sudden deaths with all this money at stake...Something must be up, right?

Now, I'm not saying that Anna Nicole Smith was definitely murdered and that I have the secret surveillance tapes to prove it, but I am saying that if you happen to represent a sleazy and disreputable tabloid newspaper, you should Paypal me $500,000 to find out. No! I mean, I'm saying that...well, I don't know what I'm saying. I just know that this is a sad and peculiar situation that somehow speaks to the tragedy that is modern American life.

She briefly represented glamour, then decadence, then physical and mental collapse. Like Kate Moss, only with curves and a more appealing, if somewhat regrettably dead, husband.

Drewzac? Braffymore?

Zach Braff and Drew Barrymore? I guess it's a match made in Heaven, because I can't quite determine who's stooping lower.

While Fabrizio Moretti gets slimy with Kiki Dunst, Drew Barrymore is reportedly hitting it with Zach Braff. Zach recently split up with Mandy Mooore and got caught “canoodling” with Drew at the SNL after-party this past weekend.

Can I just say that I hate the word "canoodling"? Perhaps this is because I'm not certain that I have canoodled, even once, in my life. At least, I'm certain that I've never consciously had the thought, "I think I'm gonna canoodle this chick." Perhaps it has happened, and I just didn't realize it at the time, but if so, I'm fairly certain it would have been somewhere private. I'm certainly not one to publicly canoodle.

Oh, and might I just add...G-ross.

A source said that Drew spent the night in the corner with Zach and “they were really focused on each other.”

"Well, okay," the source then admitted, "Zach was focused on Drew. Drew was focused on determining what number comes after 6 in counting, then wondering whether she had TiVOed the previous night's episode of 'Magic Time Albino Unicorn Slumber Party,' before remembering that that show doesn't exist."

Drew’s rep denies they are dating, but friends say they are definitely dating.

I'm sorry, New York Post by way of an online celebrity gossip website, but that's a bit ambiguous for me. I need to know if this match is definitely happening, so I can begin making plans to leave the country prior to the arrival of their autistic demon spawn.

Seriously, though, can you imagine what conversations between these two must be like?

"Say, Drew, have you heard the new Busdriver CD? It's blowing my mind. I'm totally getting into hip hop this year."

"Yes, Busdriver is totally amazing and magical. You're, like, so deep and culturally diverse, Zach."

"Seriously, I know. Did you know that I'm completely depressed all the time? Sometimes I sit around in my sweatpants, even! Like a tortured artist!"

"You're probably the smartest guy I've been with since Luke Wilson or that hairy dude from The Strokes."

All Better!

And now, the most hilarious thing I have ever read:

One of four ministers who oversaw three weeks of intensive counseling for the Rev. Ted Haggard said the disgraced minister emerged convinced that he is "completely heterosexual."

Haggard also said his sexual contact with men was limited to the former male prostitute who came forward with sexual allegations, the Rev. Tim Ralph of Larkspur told The Denver Post for a story in Tuesday's edition.

Bear in mind, it was intensive counseling. This isn't like Lindsay Lohan going to rehab. Ted actually spent three whole weeks ridding himself of inappropriate sexual thoughts. Now, I know that experts say a month is best when one is trying to readjust one's identity and sexual orientation, but what can I say? Ted's a dynamo.

What you people may not understand about Ted Haggard (or "The Rev," as his hipper congregants called him) is that he comes big or he doesn't come at all. No, wait, let me rephrase that. There's nothing half-assed about Ted Haggard. No, hang on, I can do this...

What I'm saying is that Ted Haggard gives all things 110%. When he's preaching, that means putting it all out there on the stage in honor of his fictional Lord. When he's curing himself of homosexual proclivities, he races through the entire life-altering psychotherapeutic process in a scant 3 weeks. And when he's having gay sex, it's hard and rough and with a prostitute and on methamphetamines. That's just how he fucking roles, okay? Y'all just been Haggarded.

"He is completely heterosexual," Ralph said.

I think it goes without saying. There is nothing more rugged and manly than facing some personal embarrassment and then disappearing for an entire month while having sycophants and PR types extoll your heterosexual, masculine virtue to Associated Press reporters.

What follows may be the single best twisty ludicrous public relations-style spin I have personally ever witnessed. Someone fire Tony Snow now because this guy needs to work for Karl Rove.

"That is something he discovered. It was the acting-out situations where things took place. It wasn't a constant thing."

You see, folks, it's simple. Just because he did speed and had sex with a man on multiple occasions does not mean that Ted Haggard is gay. He was jsut acting out situations where things were taking place.

Imagine you're at a trendy downtown nightclub and you happen to notice a very attractive member of your own gender dancing nearby. So you walk over to them and engage them in conversation. So far, I think we can all agree that there is nothing untoward or sexually inappropriate going on. Just two same-sex individuals conversing.

Now, imagine that this other individual of your own gender begins doing crystal meth and having sex with you. It is conceivable that you might simply walk away, but let's say, merely for the sake of argument, that you do not. Let's say, hypothetically, that you also do some of the crystal meth and have some of the sex. Does this make you gay, simply because your immediate situation involves sticky hot gayness going on that you may or may not (but, you know, are) taking active part in?

And that's what happened to Ted Haggard. See, he realized this during his little mountain retreat, and so he feels all better now and is ready to get back to being a fraud hustler mincing closet caricature insane hypocritical douchebag therapist.

Wow, really? I guess the strikeouts don't lie...

Haggard said in an e-mail Sunday, his first communication in three months to church members, that he and his wife, Gayle, plan to pursue master's degrees in psychology. The e-mail said the family hasn't decided where to move but that they were considering Missouri and Iowa.

Shouldn't it be Masters' Degrees? No one get's a Master Degree, and besides, we're talking about two degrees. Masters is plural so in the possessive it gets an apostrophe.

Ralph said the board spoke with people close to Haggard while investigating his claim that his only extramarital sexual contact happened with Mike Jones. The board found no evidence to the contrary.

"If we're going to be proved wrong, somebody else is going to come forward, and that usually happens really quickly," he said. "We're into this thing over 90 days and it hasn't happened."

So I'm reading this article and I'm wondering, do these guys really believe their own bullshit? It's so much easier for me to think of them as old-fashioned charlatans, snake-oil salesmen who know they're full of shit. Like in "The Music Man." Maybe even feel a little bad about it at the end of the day, you know? But, hey, that's the family business, everyone's gotta make a dime.

But what's the point of all this silly deception. Are they really fooling anyone with this "investigation" and his three-week "rehabilitation." I mean, they waited for 90 days and because a mob of closeted gay men didn't break down the doors of their church and announce ongoing affairs with Ted Haggard, they're declaring him free and clear of Teh Ghey. It's just insane.

I mean, it's such a mixed message. They spend months and months, years really, drilling into parishoners heads that there's a radical gay agenda, that San Francisco is overrun with evil gays who want to pervert America's children. Then one of them reveals that he's had lots of gay sex, but it's easily curable! So on the one hand, being gay makes you diseased and sick and evil, but it can go away faster than salmonella poisoning if only you read the Bible, like, every day for at least an hour.

Shadows and Hog

How could any reasonable person look at this picture and see a penis?

That does not look like a man holding his penis. First of all, penises don't usually have pointy arrow-shaped heads like that. I mean, there's a slight tapering off at the end of the organ, but it's a genital, not a common piece of Bronze Age weaponry. Also, most nude men don't have peculiar curly protrusions extending from their shoulderblade to their crotch. It would make wearing conventional pants all but impossible.

No, if I had to look at that picture, I'd say, "It looks like a man holding a crazily-shaped guitar. Possibly Prince." Because I know he's into that sort of thing. And of course, I'd be 100% correct.

In the sensitive post-wardrobe malfunction world, some are questioning whether a guitar was just a guitar during Prince's Super Bowl halftime show.

Prince's acclaimed performance included a guitar solo during the "Purple Rain" segment of his medley in which his shadow was projected onto a large, flowing beige sheet. As the 48-year-old rock star let rip, the silhouette cast by his figure and his guitar (shaped like the singer's symbol) had phallic connotations for some.


I mean, a lot of things have potentially phallic connections. The Washington Monument has phallic connections. And that tower on the Stanford campus? From afar, it looks like the entire city of Palo Alto has a hard-on. (Cut them a break though...Half Moon Bay is totally hot and dresses like a skank.)

Frankly, I'm still not seeing it here. Perhaps this was intentional - he gripped the neck of his guitar in sihlouette to suggest rubbing one out or something. Prince is pretty much a total perv, so I wouldn't put it past him necessarily. But if you were watching that Super Bowl halftime show and saw this fleeting image and suddenly went, "Oh my God it totally looks like a cock!," then you have cocks on the brain, my friend. It's got nothing to do with His Purpleness.

A number of bloggers have decried "Malfunction!" — including Sam Anderson at New York magazine's Daily Intelligencer. Daily News television critic David Bianculli called it "a rude-looking shadow show" that "looked embarrassingly rude, crude and unfortunately placed."

Bianculli, I'm looking in your direction.

Seriously, the dude is a television critic, and he thinks Prince's Halftime Show was crude and rude? (How could he forget "lewd," by the way? Those three always go together.)

We're talking about a medium in which Charlie Sheen is widely hailed as a mainstay of the Family Hour. Each weeknight, television invites Simon Cowell, Dr. Phil, Rachael Ray and Tyra Banks into our homes, so that they might slowly poison our minds with corporate propaganda and shallow psychobabble, choking us to death on a flavorful yet highly toxic cocktail of narcissism, greed and passionate, deeply-felt anti-intellectualism. One of the classiest, most universally praised shows on television right now could be easily summarized as "Gilligan's Island only with invisible monsters." That's pretty much the state of the medium.

But the outline of a rock star holding a guitar? OH MY GOD THE HORROR OF IT! To think, it almost sort of possibly looked like he was holding a portion of his body in his hand behind a curtain! How will David explain this phallus-related incident to his possibly autistic and apparently anatomically incorrect children? "You see, Timmy and Bernice, Prince was simulating the act of masturbating via the clever use of an elaborately-designed musical instrument, spotlights, a satin sheet and several million spectators. Hey, stop watching those commercials and poking one another, I'm trying to explain something to you about Prince's cock!"

CBS spokesman Dana McClintock said Tuesday that the network has received "very few" complaints on Prince's performance. CBS last aired the Super Bowl in 2004 when Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake's "wardrobe malfunction" sparked criticism and a subsequent crackdown on broadcast decency from the Federal Communications Commission.

But this time, it was the NFL that produced the halftime show (MTV had in 2004). Spokesman Greg Aiello said the league has received no complaints.

"We respect other opinions, but it takes quite a leap of the imagination to make a controversy of his performance," Aiello said. "It's a guitar."

Shit, it's this thing again. Truly, that was the Nipple Slip Heard Round the World. What's funny is that men AND WOMEN all around this country visit sites like Egotastic, The Superficial and Gorilla Mask each and every day purposefully seeking out photos of celebrity nipple slips. It's one of those unpredictable Internet cottage industries, genres of websites that popped up from a genuine and previously-unknown demand. (Hot or Not?)

But show them one (singular!) nipple slip, even a non-accidental one that's largely covered by jewelry and cut away from quickly, and there's still outrage two years later! "In this post-wardrobe malfunction world, even the outline of a man holding an electric guitar is enough to send shockwaves throughout America! Will we ever feel clean again?!?"

I think the attempt by our government and our corporate media to terrify the American public has worked too well. They just wanted complacency, a willingness on our part to look the other way so they could loot the Treasury and ship off our young people to foreign oil fields, but instead they've created something truly scary. A far more menacing threat than 50 al-Qaedas. Millions of panicky, ignorant, hopeless Americans, most of them heavily armed.

We saw it just the other day with this nonsensical Aqua Teen Hunger Force bomb scare in Boston. A Lite Bright of Err the Mooninite, I'm sorry, looks absolutely nothing at all like a bomb you fucking morons! Oooh, it has wires in it! Look out, it's gonna blow! Too late, your head a-splode!

Aren't there a lot of universities in Boston? Couldn't someone with half a brain have spoken up at some point? "Umm...Everyone? The Mooninites just like smoking cigarettes while they flip people the bird. And possibly stealing DVDs. And they do have a Quad Laser but it doesn't work very well. They mean you no physical harm unless you are a sentient meatball. Please go back to your heavy drinking."

But everyone in this stupid country's in such a constant state of vigilant catlike readiness, it doesn't take a lot to set them off. You can't just tell people they're about to die at any moment for five, six years without having some kind of mass psychic impact. We're like a couple hundred million little ticking timebombs waiting to explode all over some new cause or scandal or sovereign nation at any moment. Next, it'll be Iran (I've been calling that one since CBI started, by the way...) But I can't see how it's ever going to stop at this point, if all it takes is Prince's theatrics to shock and disgrace the Heartland. Everyone will just keep pivoting to the next existential threat, and off we go.

Was Prince's pose phallic?

"The short answer is, of course it is," says Rolling Stone magazine contributing editor Gavin Edwards, who points out that on Prince's "Purple Rain" tour in the mid `80s, he performed with a guitar that would ejaculate, squirting water out of its end during the climax of "Let's Go Crazy."

"All that said, it didn't seem like a sniggering little puppet show," adds Edwards. "I think it was one of those things because a guitar at waist level does look like an enormous phallus."

But that's a crucial, crucial separation right there. Something that, in a vague way, could potentially resemble a phallus is not inherently dirty or inappropriate. I would think that, without the suggestion of actual nudity or sexuality, there's no possible way to be offended by a phallic shape. Otherwise, you'd walk around horrified and appalled all day long. Pens, pencils, gear shifts and emergency brakes on cars, scissors, pill bottles (small penises only), soda cans, paint cans, long wooden spoons, pipes, cigars, cigarettes, Slinkies, garden hoses, cardboard paper towel tubes...They're all somewhat penile if you think about it.

But our minds are able to recognize that something is in the same shape as a dick without thinking, "Oh my god, gross! A dick!" Right? RIGHT?

By enlarging his shadow, it's possible Prince intended to accentuate this aspect of his solo, but it's just as likely it was accidental. (You can find videos of the halftime show at YouTube.com.) A message left with Prince's publicist Tuesday wasn't returned.

It's just as likely? You don't think it's a little more likely? That maybe Prince just meant to have a shadow appear on a sheet to make his performance a bit more dramatic, and then some undersexed TV critics tried to make it sound provocative and controversial? I mean, yeah, maybe that's it...or maybe Prince simply practices that most subtle form of seduction...

Stagecraft!

Your Moment of Zen

At last! It's "Red Eye," the Fox News answer to "The Daily Show"! Check out this exclusive clip, borrowed from Sadly No!, in which the wacky right-wing gang discusses Joe Biden's "clean" remark about Barack Obama.



Now, I don't know if you noticed how they zoom the camera in and out all the time, but it really makes the whole show youthful and edgy. Well, that and the one pundit's adolescent facial hair.

I think the inability of Republicans to find a single quality entertainer on their side has gone from hilarious to tragic. There was a time that it amused me to think of Hollywood-hating Republicans having no choice but to embrace Toby Keith, Larry the Cable Guy and Patricia Heaton for all their entertainmentual needs. But seeing these four "comedians" floundering around, desperate for ANYTHING even remotely resembling a punchline, just makes me ache. It's anti-humor, the kind of shrill, hacky wanklitude that ensures you won't be able to laugh at anything else for the rest of the day.

I mean, they're discussing Joe Biden complimenting Barack Obama on being articulate and clean! How can you not get at least one solid joke out of that? These guys have nothing. The whole bit becomes that one guy in the red shirt playing on the word "clean," suggesting that Biden really meant that people who don't shower can't be President. Well, hardy har har. Look out, Samantha Bee! Andy Samberg's ugly younger brother is coming for you!

It's not fair, really. Think about the crop of talent with which "The Daily Show" has had to work. Beloved comedian and chat show veteran Jon Stewart. The genius of Stephen Colbert AND Steve Carrell, two of the funniest men in America today. Newer cast members like John Oliver, John Hodgman and Rob Riggle. And let's not forget Rob Corddry, Ed Helms, FUCKING LEWIS BLACK, Mo Rocca, Beth Littleford, Dave Attell, A. Whitney Brown, Matt Walsh from "Upright Citizens Brigade," Paul F. Thompkins and Laura Kightlinger and Jerry Minor from "Mr. Show"...And I could keep going!

Conservatives would have to not only hire every funny Republican in history but convert a lot of hilarious liberals in order to compete with a stellar line-up of performers like that. Unfortunately, it looks like they just assembled the first four semi-youthful, loud Republicans they could find and seated them around a TV showing C-SPAN. Kind of like VH1's "I Love the '80s," only they couldn't even get Michael Ian Black to show! That's how long Fox has sunk.

Seriously, most of the "jokes" don't even make any sense! They're talking about how liberals are secretly racist, because they demand that all acceptable black people be light-skinned. (Of course, this requires that one make the rather absurd assumption that Joe Biden reflects the universal thinking of all American liberals, which if true would probably make him a viable candidate rather than a national joke.) So, while they're pretending to think that all liberals secretly hate teh blacks, one of the correspondants chimes in with this common:

"Well, it's affirmative action."

What does that even mean? What on Earth does affirmative action have to do with liberals favoring light-skinned blacks? Is that a joke?

When they're not being nonsensical, they're being vile and mean-spirited, and I think it's here that the comparison to "The Daily Show" becomes a bit more interesting. Stewart's show has some satirical bite, sure, and Stewart's style is definitely sarcastic, but he's rarely if ever caustic. The "host" of "Red Eye" looks like he desperately wants to punch a liberal in the face, if only he could get his hands on one. At the very end of the clip, he mocks Sen. Robert Byrd by commenting that he's "unable to stand," which is untrue, nonsensical (what's funny about his standing or not standing?) AND mean-spirited. All in one rank, unfunny package!

(And the thing is, there's a potential joke there! Biden said something racist, Byrd is a well-known virulent racist...Someone with a sense of humor and half a brain could put a quip together. But, no. Instead we get a "Robert Byrd is old and therefore infirm" joke and a lot of eye-bulging and fake laughter.)

This clip made me want to shoot myself. So, naturally, I figured I'd share it with all of you. Enjoy.