kimmy

I don't recall claiming that there was unanimity within the party on that viewpoint, just that there are a *lot* of Republicans and Republican supporters who believe that their party got the shaft in this campaign. Huckabee might not have much time for the argument, but I think there will be a lot who will be receptive. Ok, at this point I have to ask: did you actually watching the interview, or are you relying on the summary in the article you posted? She does talk about gender bias, particularly in questioning the extent to the gossip and rumors about her and her family were aired in the media. Full disclosure: I myself only bothered to actually watch the interview this morning. And I feel pretty foolish for having relied on the article's summary, because she only briefly mentions Fey and Couric at all, noting the positive turn their careers have taken, shrugging her shoulders, and moving on. It hardly comes across as the bitter hurt feelings that it's been portrayed to be, and she doesn't make any claim that either of the two did her any injustice, unless you feel it's implied by her use of the term "exploited". "Exploited" has a negative connotation... you could say that Fey and Couric "seized the moment" instead, but other than that I don't actually see much to argue with. In reference to the clip where Fey-as-Palin says "I believe that marriage is a sacred institution between two unwilling teenagers," Palin says that the "Mama Grizzly rises up" in her, as she felt like her kid was being ridiculed. And contrary to the way it's been portrayed, she doesn't make the claim that "Kennedy is getting treated with kid gloves." Palin says she'll be an interested observer in how Kennedy is portrayed in the media. Palin believes there was classism in the coverage she received (and I think she is right). Class also appears to be a factor in the Caroline Kennedy coverage, but in a way opposite to what Palin anticipated... the "silver spoon" thing is crushing Kennedy's hopes. I believe the CBC's rationale was explained as, more or less, that the popularity of this rumor was in itself news. They were not reporting the rumor itself, per se, they were reporting that this salacious rumor was circulating around the convention like wildfire. Which really came off looking as just an excuse to perpetuate the rumor, IMO. -k

Regret isn't exactly what I intended to convey. Just that yesterday's piece seemed to treat Obama with a degree of sobriety and caution that I hadn't previously heard on her program. I think that Canadians generally speaking lacked an objective view of what they were getting behind. I think Canadians generally speaking thought they were supporting hugs and rainbows, not protectionism. I think Canadians generally speaking thought Obama winning would mean "peace! no more wars! Canadian troops come home sooner!" I don't think many Canadians understood that Obama's Afghanistan policy is to call on America's allies for a stronger commitment in Afghanistan. -k

You keep saying "but everybody was parodied!" And I keep responding that it's not the fact that she was parodied, but rather the media saturation that the parody of her achieved. And you keep replying "but everybody was parodied!" It's like you're trying to create some kind of Abbott and Costello routine. I don't think anybody suggested Palin is a neutral observer. It seems as if you were trying to negate bias by invoking a Republican as a critic of Palin, but choosing Huckabee doesn't help that argument. There are undoubtedly plenty of Republicans who do believe Palin is an idiot and don't buy her claims that she was hard done by at all. And I do think that's ultimately the viewpoint that's going to carry the day as the 2012 nomination proceeds. Not sure about "like myself", but yes, that's who this message is designed for. Does the claim that Clinton faced gender bias have more merit than the claim that Palin faced gender bias? Does the claim that Caroline Kennedy faces gender bias have more merit than the claim that Palin faced gender bias? Not that I'm accusing you of that, but for some at least it seems as if the merits of claims of gender bias depend on the political affiliation of the woman running for office. One example I can give you right off the top of my head: the CBC ombudsman reviewed the Norm MacDonald's report on the sensationalist allegations that she wasn't Trig's mother. The ombudsman concluded that yeah, they kind of screwed the pooch on that one. There has been a considerable amount of discussion about how the mainstream media should address blogs and rumors, and the impetus for that has been the gossip about Palin that you mentioned earlier in this thread. Well, as the adage goes, "that which does not kill you makes you stronger." Personally, I just think she's going to get killed, that's all. -k

Remember Rod Blagojevich? The disgraced Illinois governor, the guy who was caught talking about plans to sell Obama's vacated Senate seat? "I've got a goldmine here and I'm not going to ****ing give it away", that guy? He gave away his goldmine this week. Everybody had been saying that anyone who Blagojevich chose would be tainted by the scandal. Everybody had said that Blagojevich should not nominate anyone. Everyone had been saying that principle demand that Blagojevich not be allowed to choose who sits in the vacated seat. However, in spite of the earlier outcry, the man Blagojevich nominated-- Roland Burris-- has been accepted and will be sworn in tomorrow. This, despite the possibility that Blagojevich may have been repaying an old buddy for past favors. Why? Well, Mr Burris is black. And pretty obviously, nobody wants to fight to keep a black man out of the Senate, tainted nomination or not. Mr Burris certainly appears to have excellent credentials, and will no doubt be a fine senator. However, one can only marvel at the speed at which the principle that had earlier been expressed regarding a tainted nomination evaporated when the nominee turned out to be a black person. -k

He was hardly campaigning against Obama during the interview yesterday. He was responding to issues raised by Tremonti, and gave what I thought were extremely careful, neutral, and balanced answers. If anything, Cellucci was complimentary of Obama, and hopeful that Obama will have the sense to resist the protectionist pressures that will be brought to bear from congress. I'm not suggesting that Tremonti was suddenly regretting that McCain didn't win. I was remarking on the dramatic difference tone of yesterday's episode of the program compared to prior coverage of Obama. I'm skeptical of the degree to which Canadians actually understood what they were cheerleading for. -k

Of course. It was logical, it made good sense for them, I'm sure there was no personal malice involved. It was done at Palin's expense, however. You're once again trying to turn the question from whether it happened to whether it was "fair", which is a debate I have no interest in... as I've already agreed, everything is fair. What do you mean "even people like Huckabee"? He's hardly a neutral observer. Not a person on earth has more vested interest in her failing than Huckabee. If she remains a darling of the God Squad wing of the party, his political future is toast. I think Palin's complaint regarding the NBC caricature has merit; her case against Couric is weak. My only comment on Couric is that if she wanted to be above reproach, she shouldn't have got coaching for her interview from Sam Nunn, who is part of the Obama team. That's a question for the Republican campaign strategists. I suspect the answer is that they realized that she was terrible, and were afraid that putting her in more interviews would just compound the damage. I think you'll find that a *lot* of people on the Republican side already feel the media was tilted in the past election, and will be a lot more receptive to what she's saying than you guys are. Of course not. Everybody can form their own opinion. But whether her comments resonate with Democrat supporters is pretty irrelevant. It's Republicans who'll decide if she's on the ticket in 2012, and that's the audience for this message. There's been some amount of media analysis of its own conduct during the past election. Addressing claims of gender bias and discussion of how much attention to give rumors from the blogosphere have been particular topics of public self-examination by the media. Next time, she won't be handed a spot on the ticket like she was this time. If she wants to win the nomination in 2012, she'll have to fight a vicious year-long campaign. And based on what I saw last year, I think the primaries are more vicious than the actual election. She'll have a couple of years to ready herself for that fight, but based on what we saw in the election campaign, I think she'll get crushed. -k

At least we're all on the same page now as far as her having faced something the other candidates didn't. Whether it killed the campaign is another question entirely (and of course it didn't.) As I've said a number of times in this thread, the concept of "fair" is completely irrelevant in this. Everything's fair. It's fair that Fey has scored a windfall from this. It's fair that NBC played the Palin caricature to saturation to promote their programs. It's fair for Couric to portray her interview with Palin as a journalistic milestone that changed the course of the election, even if it was actually just a powder-puff interview. Anything is fair as long as you can get enough people to buy in to suit your purposes. It's also fair for Palin to try to revise peoples' perceptions of how she was treated, or try to leverage whatever sympathy might be out there for her into support for her political future. It's fair for her to try to convince people that she wasn't a fuck-up, even if she was a total fuck-up. Anything is fair as long as you can get enough people to buy in to suit your purposes. Whether you guys have any sympathy for her doesn't matter. You guys are obviously not Palin's target audience. You guys would never vote Republican even if you were Americans. You're not the people she has to reach if she wants to have a political future. If I were an American, I'd be her audience: somebody who might conceivably vote Republican and who might have some sympathy for how the media dealt with her. And like it or not, there are certainly lots of people who do have doubts about how the media handled her. The media itself has expressed doubts about how it handled her. A lot of the people who she needs to reach if she wants to run in 2012, meaning Republican supporters, are already sympathetic to the argument that the media was tilted against the Republican ticket... so this is not a tough pitch for her to make. The target audience is already receptive to what she's saying. BTW, no, I don't think she'll ever convince enough people that she should get a second chance. As much as I had hoped she would be a good candidate... it became painfully obvious that she wasn't. Give her another chance in 2012, and she'll flounder again. -k

"Loitering." That's a very good question. The US has so far seemed determined to prosecute Khadr, and I can't see why Gitmo being closed would change that. I don't think it is likely that the new administration would see fit to interfere with cases already before the courts (and while the trial has been started and stopped a number of times, Khadr's case IS before the courts.) While I could envision Obama bringing Hope And Change to prisoners who've been held at Gitmo without charges, or who have been tentatively charged but have yet to face trial, it seems to me that intervening in a trial in progress would be a rather extraordinary step, and one Obama or his people will be unwilling to take particularly when a defendant as unsympathetic as Khadr is charged with slaying a medic. -k

As I've said a number of times already, Palin was singled out because the caricature of her was the only one which was heavily promoted by NBC. In the hour-per-week of NBC programming that I watch, Fey-as-Palin was on during every commercial break (with reminders that "If you can't get enough of Tina Fey, check out 30 Rock!") from the airing of the first sketch to the day of the election and beyond. She was singled out by circumstances rather than by malice, but she was obviously singled out. While all of the candidates were parodied, none achieved a fraction of the exposure that Fey's did. The impersonation of her was on TV almost as much as she herself was. Which was, yes, a unique situation for Palin compared to her adversaries. I asked people to provide an example of another politician who has been faced with a parody that took on this sort of stature... Morris suggests perhaps Bob Dole. I wasn't following politics closely in 1996, so I can't comment on that. -k

I certainly don't think they were complacent. "The Bradley Effect" was not a campaign strategy, it was a hope. And Ayers was hardly the basis of their campaign. It was one of many things that they threw at the wall and hoped would stick. And like everything else they threw at the wall, it didn't stick. Ayers got some traction with people who already hated Obama, which is probably one reason why it's one of the few memorable things about the Republican campaign. The other reason it's memorable is that it was Palin, rather than McCain, delivering the negative campaigning. Palin, whatever her faults, was able to deliver her material effectively (meaning that it got peoples' attention and people talked about it.) McCain, by contrast, I don't think anybody can recall much that McCain said during the campaign. Nothing they tried to campaign on had much appeal to anybody who wasn't already on their side. They were out-strategized and out-campaigned. Their negative campaigning may have had some effect, but none of their own platform struck a chord as McCain was more or less completely tuned out. -k

Well, Argus... social conservatives, moralists, and religious people have been complaining for decades that young women give up their virginity too cheaply. Seems like this woman is doing her best to drive up the price. -k

After months of breathlessly cheerleading for Hope and Change, it sounds as though some at the CBC are having second thoughts. Anna Maria Tremonti asked on this morning's show: "Could everybody's Dream President turn out to be our worst nightmare?" After noting that over 80% of Canadians supported Obama's election, Tremonti wonders aloud whether they'll be as excited once they read the fine print. She had former US ambassador to Canada Paul Cellucci on the show, as well as Anne Golden who is apparently some sort of economic policy analyst. Tremonti discussed with her guests a variety of concerns about what the Obama presidency will mean for this country. They discussed rising US protectionism and what impact that might have on Canada, particularly in regard to the auto sector and agriculture. A spokesman for a farmers association confirmed they're worried. Also discussed was Obama's Afghanistan policy, which Cellucci believes will have Obama calling on Canada to extend its mission beyond the planned 2011 withdrawal. With the state of the economy, trade was the primary focus on the show, and Paul Cellucci anticipates that the pressure on Obama from his own party to take action to protect American workers will be immense. Cellucci foresees pressure on President Obama to follow the path he indicated in the primaries on NAFTA (or as Cellucci puts it, "preshah on President Obamer to follow the path he indicated in prahmmeries on NAFTA") when Obama and Clinton were racing to see who could tear up NAFTA faster. However, he notes that reopening trade is not a one-way street but rather a negotiation, and that energy is Canada's big stick in those negotiations. Cellucci believes that a trade confrontation would work out badly for both countries and remains hopeful that cooler heads will prevail. Overall, while listening to Tremonti, it sounded like she's feeling buyer's remorse... that feeling you get when you're home from the store and try on those incredible pants again, and start to wonder if they make your ass look huge. The thing I am wondering... why didn't we get more of this sort of discussion earlier on? -k

I've never once blamed NBC or Fey for capitalizing on the situation. As I keep saying, they won the lottery. I don't blame them for making the most of it. What I've been saying is that Palin faced a situation none of her rivals did, and her claim to having been singled out has some merit as a result. I don't think a politician has ever had to deal with a parody that took on a life of its own the way Fey's did. I mentioned it earlier, but it's hardly current. Like, Mean Girls was made before Lohan had even been through rehab once. (hmmm... I wonder if Fey remembers the speech about girl-on-girl crime her character delivers in that movie?) Of course Fey was successful beforehand. Success isn't a binary state, it's a spectrum. "Bones" and "CSI" are both successful television programs. "Juno" and "The Dark Knight" are both successful movies. Tyra Banks and Oprah Winfrey are both successful tv personalities. In the past couple of months, Fey's place on that spectrum has taken a big jump for the better. We'll be able to quantify this soon enough. We'll be able to look at contracts Fey signed pre-Palin and contracts that she signs post-Palin, and compare the dollar figures, and we'll be able to put a dollar figure on it. I can't imagine why you'd dispute the extent to which Fey's career has benefited from this windfall. As I said early on, "fair" simply isn't relevant to any of this. I think there's certainly an argument to be made that Palin faced a situation that none of her contemporaries had to deal with, and I don't see why it's wrong of her to comment on it. -k

I was thinking about this a bit after I signed out yesterday, and there were a couple of interrelated points that I pondered a bit more before I went to bed: The movie business thrives on herds. They need a herd of people going through the wickets to see a movie during a short period of time. To be considered a box office success, a movie typically needs to sell $50 million in tickets in North America (much more, for expensive blockbuster productions, probably less for "smaller" movies that cost less to produce and promote, but $50 million seems like a good goalpost for some random film.) And they've only got a short time to reach that target. A movie opens in about screens in the US (and probably a proportionate number in Canada) and runs twice a day for about a month, after which the theatres take screens away from that movie to run a newer release. So the distribution scheme for movies calls for herds of people. Ideally they'd like everybody to go to their movie as soon as possible, so that they can get their money out of the movie quickly, pull it off the screens, and show the next movie. Creating herds of people requires marketting. Obviously, creating anticipation, showing promising clips from movies and telling people "you'll want to see this, because it's really great" are all tools that go into marketting, but another prominent marketting tool is "everybody is doing it!" And box office results can play a part in creating that herd. So, something that immediately jumps out about the potential of downloadable content is that the dilemna of scarcity is removed. The number of screens is no longer a limitation. The time-constraint-- getting people to see your movie fast because they need the screens for the next movie-- is removed. The requirement of creating a herd is removed. I think this kind of ties in with something that I've come across when discussing music with old-people (meaning, people older than roughly 35...) In the old days, as I hear it, with only a few music radio stations and a few music formats, everybody knew who the biggest stars were, and the most popular songs of the moment. I used to have these conversations with dad where he'd talk about how when he was young everybody knew that Elvis was the big star, and he'd ask me who was the big star now and I'd be completely at a loss as to what to say. With dozens of radio stations and a format for every musical taste, nobody can tell you with any certainty who the biggest star is or the most popular song is. In objective fact, it might be somebody from the country music station, or the urban station, or the pop music station... but the perception of what's big or popular at the moment is entirely a function of each individual listener's perception. Box office creates the same kind of thing for movies. Each week you can look at the box office results and see which films won the battle for the herd, and which stars are the darlings of the moment. Remove the dilemna of scarcity, the time constraint... and you also remove the herd. The prestige of winning the herd also vanishes. There might be some "direct to video" movie that has been viewed to some degree that would make it an immense success... but without the box office results and the battle for dollars in the timed-constrained domain of the theatres, that movie doesn't have the prestige that successful theatre releases gain from winning the battle for the herd. I think people are somewhat conditioned to view the battle for space on screens at movie theatres as kind of a screening process... if a movie studio wasn't confident enough in a movie to release it in theatres, it was probably a pretty weak movie to start with. And box-office failure is a further screening process that people rely on to some degree. A shift to downloadable content would remove 2 of the screening criteria that people have come to rely on in deciding what they want to watch. This is something people would have to get used to. But, the music business has undergone a similar change over the past 20 years or so... the market adapts, people get used to having more choices. -k

If you can't take the heat, you does got out of the kitchen. -k

Well, Bubber, if I'm boring you, feel free to go back to Protecting The Children ™. I was responding to Dobbins' claim that Fey didn't need Palin because she already had a low-rated sitcom and a modestly successful movie. Which is kind of like me saying that I don't need to win the lottery because I already make enough money pay my bills. Sure... but if Super 7 drops $10 million on me, I'm still taking it. To summarize: the Palin impersonation is the only political parody I know of that has been used to promote a program (30 Rock) that's completely unrelated to political parody. The extent to which NBC put Fey-as-Palin clips on prime time TV in advertising during the campaign is unprecidented (as far as I can recall) which gives merit to Palin's claim of having been singled out. -k

6) Obama did has so much campaign funding and did buying so much advertising very much also helping Obama beating McCain. k-

I was on the side of liberty before, but now I'm kind of on the "jail 'em" side. Hamsters are a line than should never be crossed. -k

Perhaps that is because he has not yet been convicted. Perhaps you should get back to us if he's still free after his conviction. I think you'll find that muggers, likewise, don't wind up in jail until after the part where they're convicted. -k

Good, good. Keep going. This is exactly the kind of information I need for the hydroponics venture I'm putting together. -k

I'm certainly not faulting Obama for that, if that's what you're asking. But as SNL themselves pointed out, Obama got an awfully soft ride. Why did their Obama parody fail to interest anybody? Who knows. Perhaps Fred Armesin just wasn't very good. Maybe they were unable to think of anything worthwhile to say. Maybe they were already so intimidated from the criticism they received for not casting a black man in the role that they were walking on egg-shells. Really, who knows. They'll have 8 years to figure something out, I guess. No, Dobbins, it's not much like that at all. "Baby Mama" doesn't really stack up against the more or less continual string of movies Ferrell has had out over the past 5 years, of which at least a few were major hits. I think we all recognize that it wasn't "Baby Mama" that boosted 30 Rock's audience by 35%. I think we all recognize that it wasn't "Baby Mama" that boosted 30 Rock from #94 show on TV to #44 show on TV. I think we all recognize that it wasn't "Baby Mama" that earned Fey the title of "Entertainer of the Year". Co-starring in the #49 movie of the year didn't make Fey a star. Having the #94 show on TV didn't make didn't make Fey a star. Having the absolutely, undeniably most-talked about entertainment performance of the year DID make Fey a star and a household name in a way she had never been before, and the resulting benefit for her network and her sit-com has been immense. The effect of the Palin-related publicity on 30 Rock has been night and day. The effect on Fey's profile as an entertainer has been epic. She's a household name right now. She never was before. Tina Fey was on the Barbra Walters "Most Fascinating People" special a few weeks ago, and Barbra wasn't showing clips from 30 Rock, and she wasn't showing clips from Baby Mama. Can you guess what they were showing clips of? Yeewwwww Betcha! I don't know how you could dispute any of this, unless you've suffered a concussion of some sort. Certainly Tina Fey is a talented and funny and likable performer. And certainly her career would have continued on without the Palin thing. But I am pretty sure that if you asked her if she'd be happier if 30 Rock remains on the air or was cancelled, she'd be much happier with it remaining on the air. I am sure that if you asked NBC whether they're happier with 30 Rock drawing 8.6 million viewers a week or 6.4 million viewers a week, they'd chose 8.6. And none of that happens without cashing in on Palin. They had Fey-as-Palin on TV 4 times an hour during primetime in the weeks leading up to the election as a means of hyping Fey and the return of 30 Rock. They knew they'd won the lottery. -k

It seems inevitable, in the same way that digital cameras have almost completely replaced conventional film cameras. Photography purists said, for a long time, that digital cameras were just toys for amateurs and that they could not compare to the quality of high-end photographic equipment. Which was true for a time, but technological advance bridged the quality gap. Now many or perhaps most professional photographers are using high-end digital equipment instead of high-end conventional film. And the same evolution is inevitable in cinema as well. I believe George Lucas was one of the first pushing this in distributing one of the Star Wars prequels. I believe LucasFilm even offered some sort of incentive to theatres to invest in equipment to show digital movies, though I can't swear to it. Theatre owners at the time were, of course, not interested in shelling out a bunch of money to upgrade to a technology that at the time nobody except Lucas was using. Distribution, not information, is the challenge. Clever marketting and creative use of the internet can create an amazing amount of interest in a project (the promotion of "The Blair Witch Project" is probably as cunning example of marketting as the movie industry has ever seen... the creators had created huge interest in their film before a single ad was run or a single trailer was shown.) One can look at YouTube videos that have had ten million views or more as evidence of the power of old-fashioned "word of mouth" combined with the new-fangled world of the internet and forums and social networking. You can get people interested in watching just about anything. But how do you get money? After all, the idea that film-making (and acting and writing and composing music and all of the other skills that go into creating a movie) are professions rather than hobbies kind of requires that the practitioners be able to earn a living at it, does it not? At present there's only a few ways you can get paid for creating a film. You can show it in theatres with paid admission. But in this situation the independent creator is still at the mercy of the big corporations. This means of distribution is almost completely controlled by an oligarchy. Theatre screens are a finite quantity, and these corporations tend to prefer that this resource be devoted to films they've invested a bunch of money in. You can sell your film to a broadcaster, who will presumably hope to receive advertising or subscription revenue from your film. But again, this means of distribution is controlled by an oligarchy, and as with theatre screens, airtime is a limited resource which broadcasters guard jealously. The other possibility is selling direct to the viewer, either by means of a distributable medium, or more recently in the form of downloadable content. "Direct to video" is a long-standing example of this: movies which no distributor thinks will be profitable enough to waste theatre screens on are put right on DVD and sold right to the consumer (...generally soliciting a response something like "huh... I never knew they made a sequel to that.") Downloadable content is now being explored by broadcasters as a means of reaching viewers who aren't interested in sitting through advertisements or who can't be bothered to be in front of their TV at a specific time. Rather than park themselves in front of their tv for an hour, a viewer can pay a few dollars, download an episode of a show, and watch it on their Ipod on the bus on the way to work. I don't know what sales are like for downloaded episodes of TV shows, but I would think that in the future this sort of thing might become more common. And I think that ultimately this is also a means by which independent film-makers will be able to sell their art. Online stores will facilitate the transactions for a modest fee, allowing consumers and film-makers to deal almost directly. It won't have the prestige or drawing power of a Hollywood movie at the MultiPlex, but it will be a viable option for independent film-makers to reach their audiences. People will still want to go see movies that everybody else went to see? That seems like a safe bet, August, unless humans stop being humans in the near future. -k

The extent to which NBC used the Fey's Palin impersonation to promote 30 Rock can certainly be considered exploitation by any reasonable definition. Clearly he was insinuating his story contains lurid content. And clearly, he has not insinuated anything at all about Malia and Sharia. I can't imagine why that's such a difficult concept to grasp. -k

While I confess to having no particular insight into home decor or styling small appliances, I am becoming increasingly baffled as to why everything has to have a freaking blue LED on the front of it. My coffee machine has an LCD display (clock, etc) which until yesterday had a bright blue LED backlight. The back-light was not just bright enough to illuminate the clock display, it was bright enough to illuminate my whole pad with an eerie blue glow. My coffee maker did double duty as a very short lighthouse. Yesterday, after months of wondering why the stupid thing has to be so damned bright, I disassembled my coffee maker, found the display, and clipped the wire on the LED. Now it is dark... still functional, still tells time and starts automatically... but no longer illuminating my whole living area with a macabre glow. Inspired by that success, I likewise disassembled the charging-stand for my universal remote, which likewise had an obnoxiously bright blue LED to indicate that the power was on. A little exacto-knife action on the circuit board, and that too has gone dark. My sound system subwoofer has a piece of tape over the bright blue LED, which was bright to the point of being distracting if I was was watching a movie with the lights off. My entertainment computer has sat with the power LED disconnected since day one, since the bright blue LED blazed with such intensity as to be blinding if the lights were off. My computer monitor has a right blue LED embedded behind the power switch, thankfully less obnoxious than the others. What gives? Did somebody in the home decor biz give a seminar on blue LED lights? Is there some kind of regulatory requirement or something? At what point did blazing blue LEDs become a standard part of small appliances and home electronics? Who actually wants an eerie blue glow illuminating their home when the lights are off? -k

It's exploitive because NBC had it on TV 4 times an hour every hour in an effort to build ratings for SNL and 30 Rock. I saw none of the other caricatures promoted to a fraction of this extent. Perhaps if Fred Armisen had his own struggling NBC sit-com, maybe his "FauxBama" impression would have been on TV as often as Tina Fey's Palin. We can only wonder. However, the fact remains that Fey's Palin caricature was the only one which was promoted in this way. Shady's only "insinuation" has been that he wrote a dirty story. Nothing about the Obama girls, as far as I have read, has been insinuated in the slightest. The point at which I'd be offended? That's easy. I'll be offended when he makes insinuations about the Obama girls. -k