British comedian and radio talk show guy Joe Cornish has recorded a Quantum of Solace spoof song that isn’t half bad, especially since he sounds a whole lot like David Bowie. But the best lyrics have been tapped out by Cornish’s radio partner Adam Buxton: (a) “I want a quantum of solace, but just a quantum / I know they do big bags of solace, but I don’t want ’em” and (b) “I met a lovely lady, but found out she was a rotter, so we exchanged some saucy quips, I snogged her, then I shot her”.

“And now — right before she stumps for Obama tomorrow in Nevada — comes a YouTube clip of Hillary telling her supporters that she wants a ‘strategy’ to have her delegates heard at the Democratic convention. Watching the video clip, you can tell that Hillary still hasn’t gotten over losing, and given all of the people she had telling her that she’d be the next president, we can understand the denial; she had been preparing for this moment for nearly four years.

“But we’ve asked this question a million times and we ask it again: Would the Clintons have been as deferential (or be expected to be as deferential) to Obama if the roles were reversed? What has happened over the last few days has given Obama the high ground here. ” — from this morning’s “First Read” on MSNBC.com.
This also from Time‘s Karen Tumulty, filed ysterday (8.6): “Clinton has been giving tacit encouragement to suggestions that her name be placed in nomination at the convention, a symbolic move that would be a reminder of the bruising primary battle. ‘No decisions have been made,’ Clinton said when asked in California — to whoops and applause — about that possibility. Still, it was hard to miss what Clinton would like to see in the pointed way she added, ‘Delegates can decide to do this on their own. They don’t need permission.'”
I can’t resist posting this [edited] reader response on the “First Read” blog, to wit: “The Clintons have become like the Night of the Living Dead zombies. Hillary and Bill: take our advice. We are wealthy, white, middle-aged and female, but we REJECTED you. We are also well-educated and we know that Obama is the future and you are the past. When we do elect a woman, and we will, it will be one that has won on her own merits, not by staying married to a serial womanizer and saying anything to get elected.
“And just so you know, you are on the cusp of ruining any chance of a political future if you don’t STFU.” — LB, Virginia.

Slate‘s Mickey Kaus has written very strongly and (I have to admit, distasteful as this whole mess is) persuasively about why the mainstream media should be covering the apparently for-real John Edwards paternity scandal with his alleged girlfriend Rielle Hunter.
I heard months ago through persons I trust with close-to-the-source knowledge that this story is on the level. Photos and mounting evidence are included in this week’s National Enquirer. Read Kaus and tell me he’s wrong.

The Weinstein Co. has won its appeal with the MPAA ratings board over a disputed NC-17 previously given to Zack and Miri Make A Porno, resulting in an R-Rating. The less ferocious rating nonetheless stands for “crude sexual content including dialogue, graphic nudity and pervasive language.” Graphic nudity involving…? No, don’t even think it.

Great — another recycled Grindhouse-style B-movie from Quentin Tarantino starring the craziest and emptiest Holllywood ding-dong of the 21st Century. Beyond help, beyond redemption and out of control, Tarantino just keeps sinking deeper and deeper into the trash pit, a little bit like that Arab kid drowning in quicksand in Lawrence of Arabia. The fact that I can’t wait to see this is immaterial.

No question about it — John McCain’s admission yesterday that his wife Cindy might be good enough to win the Miss Buffalo Chop contest at the Sturgis motorcycle rally (“She could be the only lady to serve as first lady and Miss Buffalo Chip!”) showed he’s either a crusty old mysogynist or clueless about the actual nature of the Miss Buffalo Chip rites (wet T-shirts, orgasm simulating, etc.).

I suspect it was a half-and-halfer. McCain probably just meant to say that Cindy’s dishy enough to compete ina biker beauty contest, but he wound saying that she might just be good enough to beat out the other biker babes at pickle licking. Here’s a Daily Kos opinion from “Eagleeye“about the MSM’s coverage of this.

For those who responded the other day to that Carousel/”I Walk Alone” YouTube clip, here’s a wav file of Frank Sinatra (the first Billy Bigelow in the 20th Century Fox/Henry King film before he quit and Gordon MacRae was hired to replace him) signing Rodgers & Hammerstein’s “Soliloquy.” Sinatra was five times the singer that MacRae was — here’s proof.

Here’s another article about the Jon Voight brouhaha, except this one — written by Politico‘s Jeffrey Ressner — has a Voight quote: “It’s out of line to insinuate that we should blacklist people for speaking their minds. It’s an important time for people on the conservative side to speak out, [but] it’s a strange thing when people in this country can’t express their opinions without being attacked.”
I agree 100% that it’s wrong to insinuate that anyone should blacklist anyone for speaking their minds. I didn’t think I did that last week by confessing that if I was a producer making a film I might not hire Voight for it. I thought I was just speaking for myself by admitting to a momentary feeling of petty vengeance. Face it — it feels good to stick to people you don’t like or disagree with, but I wouldn’t recommend or advocate hostile get-backs as a general policy.
I’ve said repeatedly that there’s a big difference between (a) saying I “might” theoretically stick it to someone I disagree with by ignoring them or not giving them a job on a movie and (b) suggesting, much less advocating, that other liberal-minded industry types act on this feeling in reality. I’ve also stated a core belief that hiring actors should always be about what’s best for the film. But none of this matters because the right-wing hammers are going to make as much hay as they can out of the portions of what you’ve said that serve their agenda, and never the all of it.
Voight also told Ressner that “I don’tt want to make a big deal out of this. I made some very strong points, and you do expect that people are going to respond to it in a variety of ways. And that’s how it should be.”
Yesterday Glenn Beck went off on yours truly a little bit on CNN last night,. The usual torrent of wingnut hate mail followed. News cycles on a particular story are pretty short these days — 48 to 72 hours — but this thing has been going since last Tuesday or Wednesday. And it’s not over yet as I’ve agreed to come on CNN this afternoon and The O’Reilly Factor tomorrow sometime. O’Reilly will try and kick the stuffing out of me, but I’ll get a readership bump out of it so why not?

“How important is it for candidates to tell the truth?,” asks Elizabeth Kolbert in an 8.11 New Yorker essay. “Throughout his long career in politics, John McCain, who called his PAC Straight Talk America, has presented frankness as his fundamental virtue. [But] the past few weeks have seen a change in McCain. He has hired new advisers, and with them he seems to have worked out a new approach.
“He is no longer telling the sorts of hard truths that people would prefer not to confront, or even half-truths that they might find vaguely discomfiting. Instead, he’s opted out of truth altogether.
“Recent history suggests that Presidential campaigns don√¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢t reward integrity; the candidate who refuses to compromise his principles is unlikely to have a chance to act on them. Still, McCain’s slide is saddening. That he has sunk to the level of ‘Pump'” — the ad that more or less blamed Barack Obama for rising gas prices — “a full month before Labor Day really doesn√¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢t leave him — or the race — far to go.”
Added N.Y. Times columnist Maureen Dowd said in yesterday’s column that “McCain’s mouth is moving but the words coming out belong to his new hard-boiled strategist, Steve Schmidt, a Rove prot√ɬ©g√ɬ©, nicknamed ‘The Bullet’ for his bald pate. Schmidt has turned Mr. Straight Talk into Mr. Desperate Straits. It√¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s not a good trade. ”

Night of the Gun author and N.Y. Times guy David Carr paid a visit to MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” this morning to talk about his account of his turbulent druggy past. Asked how his confession of substance abuse in the ’80s squared with his present-tense employment with the straight-laced New York Times, Carr said his history was never “about journalistic malfeasance or professional degradation…I’m not one for missing deadlines or screwing up assignments.” Here, again, is my 7.19 piece on Carr’s book.