REDISTRIBUTING HENDRIK

Does anyone else feel the tingling when they read Hendrik Hertzberg in The New Yorker? I'm just spreading his wealth around.

Hendrik Hertzberg in his Comment in the New Yorker this week:

During the 2000 campaign, on MSNBC’s “Hardball,” a young woman asked him why her father, a doctor, should be “penalized” by being “in a huge tax bracket.” McCain replied that “wealthy people can afford more” and that “the very wealthy, because they can afford tax lawyers and all kinds of loopholes, really don’t pay nearly as much as you think they do.” The exchange continued:

YOUNG WOMAN: Are we getting closer and closer to, like, socialism and stuff?. . .
MCCAIN: Here’s what I really believe: That when you reach a certain level of comfort, there’s nothing wrong with paying somewhat more.

For her part, Sarah Palin, who has lately taken to calling Obama “Barack the Wealth Spreader,” seems to be something of a suspect character herself. She is, at the very least, a fellow-traveller of what might be called socialism with an Alaskan face. The state that she governs has no income or sales tax. Instead, it imposes huge levies on the oil companies that lease its oil fields. The proceeds finance the government’s activities and enable it to issue a four-figure annual check to every man, woman, and child in the state. One of the reasons Palin has been a popular governor is that she added an extra twelve hundred dollars to this year’s check, bringing the per-person total to $3,269. A few weeks before she was nominated for Vice-President, she told a visiting journalist—Philip Gourevitch, of this magazine—that “we’re set up, unlike other states in the union, where it’s collectively Alaskans own the resources. So we share in the wealth when the development of these resources occurs.” Perhaps there is some meaningful distinction between spreading the wealth and sharing it (“collectively,” no less), but finding it would require the analytic skills of Karl the Marxist.

HOLY SQUARED

Last night I turned to CNN by accident, (I don't watch CNN now that Hillary's out of the race and there's nothing to talk about anymore) and what should I see??? A freakin' panel discussion with all their consistently inexpert experts talking about the new New Yorker cover!! Whaaa?? I'm glad The New Yorker is momentarily relevant again and people are talking about it, but really!

Clearly they have lost their minds. There is so much real news and they're talking about satire, arguing about what satire is like a bunch of first years! Do pundits really understand what satire is? Unless Oscar Wilde and Noel Coward can be reached by satellite I don't see the point.

What about the placenta? Who cut the umbilical cord? Was Brad there for the entire birth? Yes, he was. Angie was on an epidural so was awake during her C-section and Brad talked her through the whole holy blessed event. Did you know Angie's Ob-Gyn called Bradley his 'little helper'? Was Maddox filming it? That savvy little devil. Did Zahara scowl jealously into Angie's vagina? Don't worry, Zee, Mommy and Daddy are already wait-listed for a new African baby to even up the colour scheme.

Knox Leon Jolie-Pitt and Vivienne Marcheline Jolie-Pitt were born Saturday July 12 at around 7pm. Knox came in at 5.03lbs and Vivvie at 5lbs. If you sense a sarcastic tone to this I'm sorry---I cried a little happy tear when I heard, I have so much invested in it, more than if I had a child myself. Who cares about my ugly kids, all misshapen and plain and unimportant. The angels have landed, the messiah has come---somebody tell the Jews to stop reading!

CNN, get a clue for shitsakes.

photo courtesy: celebrityfix.com

GO TO BED WITH ITCHY BUTT--

Head butt, that is. Okay, so this is from the New Yorker. Don't roll your goddam eyes. When they're not reporting on flyfishing or pollution in the damn Yahtzee river, they have insane articles like this one. This woman had such an itchy head, she dug a hole in her skull while she was sleeping. Uh-oh, suddenly my balls feel itchy.

So, the article tells us most of the sensations we feel are "made up" in the brain, like you can get itchy by just thinking about being itchy. If you have a lot of nerve damage (she had shingles), or a missing limb, your brain gets so little input from the area it sometimes makes up something really bad happening. Like phantom pain, where people with a missing limb feel that limb is clenched or twisted or something similarly dire.

So what do doctors do about it? A neuroscientist in San Diego stuck people with only one arm in a mirrored box so it looked to the amputee as though they had two arms. The brain received visual input that everything was okay with that other arm, and after 6 weeks of therapy or so, the pain was gone. Jesus Christ, what will they think of next?

Okay, so the itchy chick had to be hogtied to a hospital bed for 2 years, and the neuroscientist only figured out a cure at the end of the article-- but still. I'm still trying to see how this miracle cure can be applied to me.

Okay-- mock up a mirror where I see myself surrounded by friends and laughing at parties and having great sex all day long, and stare at it for 6 weeks or longer...

Photograph by Gerald Slota, courtesy New Yorker.

WE LOVE TO FEEL COCKY ALL DAY LONG

They say black don't crack, but Jesus, Jada looks like she's going to break right up. That's one ropey bitch. Looks like beef jerky.

So, Fox News gave "Hancock" a crappy review, and the blogs seem to be falling over each other to foretell Willy's first July 4th trip-up. But has anyone read the review? You can judge the reviewer's taste for yourself, in that he loved "Independence Day" and "Men in Black." The main criticism-- it's not "family" enough. Imagine, a child says the word "asshole"! Willy doesn't play his normal, smarmy, cocky, robotic, perfect-candidate-for-Scientology-based self, but a drunk who may-or-may-not get involved in adultery! Why, it's perfectly un-American!

Not that anyone cares, but David Denby gives "Handcock" a fantastic review in this week's New Yorker. Most interesting for this Willy Smith-hater-- yes, even before he was associated with the dreaded E-meter-- is the description of Smith's performance:

For the first time in his life, Will Smith doesn't flirt with the audience. He doesn't smile and tease and drawl; he stays in character as a self-hating lonely guy.

Ooh, a Willy-pic where he doesn't show us that shit-eating smile? I'm SO there. I hope it's a big bomb, and everyone slags it like they do Amy Winehouse doing anything. We're very Devil's Advocate (a Charlize reference) at Peep_Hole-- we still want to buy that Scarlett Johansson album, hoping we'll love it!

Photo: AP