this cracks me up...

Benazir Bhutto (1953–2007)

Benazir Bhutto excelled at asserting her right to rule. In a male-dominated, Islamic society, she rose to become her slain father's political successor, twice getting elected as Prime Minister of Pakistan. She would also be exiled twice. In the end, Bhutto was better at rallying people to the idea of her power than at keeping them inspired by her use of it. (READ)

Gayest Sports Ad Ever

Five reasons why I loved/hated my TV in 2007

Whenever I see someone with one of those “Kill Your Television” bumper stickers, I feel two distinct emotions. One, shut up, Smuggy McSmugerson. I bet you don’t read the copies of The New Yorker in your bathroom either. And two, yeah, sometimes I do feel like taking a 12-gauge to the old idiot box. This year I got my usual mix of joy and pain from my television. The highs were so very fantastic. The lows so very sucktastic. Here's a rundown of my top and bottom five TV shows for 2007. (READ)

Britain's Queen Takes Up YouTube

Britain's 81-year-old Queen Elizabeth II, considered an icon of traditionalism, launched her own special Royal Channel on YouTube Sunday. (view her 2007 message)

The queen will use the popular video-sharing Web site to send out her 50th annual televised Christmas message, which she first delivered live to the nation and its colonies on Dec. 25, 1957.

Buckingham Palace also began posting archive and recent footage of the queen and other royals on the channel Sunday, with plans to add new clips regularly.

YouTube, which allows anyone to upload and share video clips, was founded in 2005 and bought by Google last year.

"The queen always keeps abreast with new ways of communicating with people," Buckingham Palace said in a statement. "The Christmas message was podcast last year." (READ)

--- personal comment.. the 81 year old Queen of England has a YouTube page, and our president calls it the "internets".. and thinks he might have used the maps thing one time.

Review: Fun 'Wilson's' at war -- with itself

Mike Nichols' undercover history of the liberation of Afghanistan, "Charlie Wilson's War," is so witty and light on its feet, it's a pity it pulls its punches.


A society matron (Julia Roberts) gets a congressman (Tom Hanks) involved in the Cold War in "Charlie Wilson's War."
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A deft condensation of George Crile's nonfiction best-seller, this is the story of how an obscure Texan congressman helped bring down the Soviet empire and -- indirectly -- the World Trade Center.

Universal seems at a loss as to how to market this truly tall tale -- but don't blame the publicity guys. The combined smarts of director Nichols, writer Aaron Sorkin, Tom Hanks and Co. haven't pinned down how they feel about Wilson or what he did.

The movie's tone is all over the place: sincere and celebratory one minute, caustic and ironic the next. There's nuance and complexity here, but it's doled out with broad farce and knee-jerk populist rhetoric. It's as if they want it to play inside the Beltway and hit below the belt, both at once.

Set during the Reagan era and resonating uneasily with current events, in many ways this is a deeply Clintonian movie: astute, pragmatic, equivocal and likely to prove highly contentious. (That's what you get if you put the director of "Primary Colors" with the writer of "The West Wing.")

It is fun, though. (READ)

First-Lady Extinction?

IF IT'S IMMINENT, HALLELUJAH.
By Timothy Noah, the Slate.com

In almost any campaign you may still see the wife in the skirted blue or red suit, the sensible pumps, accepting her wrist corsage from the 4-H club winner. But, behind its impregnable smiles and circle pins, the entire institution has been slowly crumbling. Increasingly, politicians' wives have jobs of their own or, cleanest of all, careers that have absolutely nothing to do with politics. Another reason political wifehood is dying is that men now are trying to be political spouses too, and they can't stand it. ... Sometime, in the not-too-distant future, we will acknowledge the passing of [the first lady's] role with the same amazement we felt at the fall of the Berlin Wall, crashing down so easily after standing for decades as an unbreachable certainty. Boy, we'll think; that sucker wasn't as strong as it looked. (READ)