Worst Music Video Ever

Stateofdisbelief said this clip is the worst music video ever.  I say hogwash!

How could it be worse than this or this? Or how about this clip featuring a 7 foot tall gender bender with an eyepatch?:

If you think that you can find worse music videos than that then bring it on!

Some basic rules – it’s gotta be a real music video, no clips from old television shows, concert home videos, covers or parodies.  We’ll make two categories, foreign and domestic (bcuz it’s not fair to expect English and American videos to compete with David Hasselhof videos from Germany)  Do everyone a favor and don’t just post a link in the comments, include the name of the song and the group or performer that made it.

I think I have the threadwinner.  It combines a bad disco song, bad choreography and bad karma:

Saturday: Stuff

Ivan Boesky: They don't bust them like they used to

I’m going to dinner in NYC this evening so I may miss part of the “Worst Music Video Awards” ceremony.  I have made my submission in the category of Worst International Music Video.  Myiq2xu has it.  It’s very promising.  Let’s just say that the disco era was not kind to India.

In the meantime, the economic crisis continues to slouch towards Gommorah.  Bill Moyers has an interview with William Black, senior regulator during the S&L crisis of the late 80’s.  It’s worth a listen because I get a sense that when Moyer’s asks Black whether he is disillusioned with Obama after having supported him last year, he is really expressing his own disillusionment.

I am disillusioned with Moyers.  His embrace of Obama seems to have been driven by his desire to fulfill Martin Luther King’s Dream than by any real sense of what might be good for America at this time and place.  Don’t get me wrong.  I am convinced on a daily basis that Obama’s victory in November has had a profound effect on African-Americans.  It is evident in everyday interactions demonstrated by a greater openness and friendliness that just wasn’t there prior to his election.  And if anything good can come out of Obama taking credit for the decades of work by more dedicated members of the Civil Rights Movement, then I guess we can console ourselves that it has done some good to heal the rift of race relations in this country.

But Moyers succumbed to a carefully planned assault.  Some young, testosterone poisoned males were targeted by misogynistic messages that allowed them to shuffle off the thin bandage our country had put on gender relations.  Some liberals were targeted with messages about corporatism and lobbying that linked Hillary with those two no-no’s inextricably.  They got under Moyers’ skin with civil rights.  Moyers came to Washington from Texas with the LBJ crowd.  I just finished listening to The Irregulars by Jennet Conant, about the British secret propaganda unit in Washington during WWII.  She covers  a lot of history regarding the liberal Texas establishment in wartime Washington.  In short, there were a lot of liberal, New Deal type of Democrats from Texas.  These were ruthless politicians but deeply sincere about liberal causes.  Moyers is from this stock.  He was a sitting duck.  More than this, he was just about the only truly credible, liberal journalist left to us on TV.  Capturing him was a prize.

Moyers is a cautionary tale.  We all have to be on our guard about who and what we listen to and how our emotions might be leveraged.  We all have triggers.  For example, that video that we posted last night of the Pakistani girl being beaten by the Taliban invoked in me the desire to bomb the whole no-man’s land of Waziristan back to the stone age.  Wherever the Taliban is, I want to hunt every one of those bastards down and cut their balls off.  The whole Taliban region should be made into a vast smoking crater and every Taliban mullah eliminated.  See where I’m going with this?

We don’t have to become as cold and detached as Michael Dukakis, but we need to sometimes pull back and think calmly about our intentions.  Maybe we need to question our sources.  Where did that video come from and why did it suddenly surface on YouTube?  Is it genuine or staged?  After all, we were suckered into the first Gulf War by a staged presentation in front of Congress by a well connected Kuwaiti girl who claimed to have personally witnessed dozens of premature Kuwaiti infants unceremoniously dumped out of their incubators by Iraqi soldiers.  Even as I was outraged at her testimony, the back of my mind wondered how Kuwait, a tiny country, managed to have so many premature infants in one hospital.

Now, the video in question looks authentic enough but until we know the answers to where it came from, I suggest we proceed with caution.  You never know who is trying to distract or for what reason.  If we’re not careful, we might end up stepping up and prolonging a war or take our eyes off the financial crisis ball.

Or end up electing a president whose only tangible asset was that he is black.

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POTUS w/o TOTUS

If you can’t stand to listen to Uh-bama or have trouble hearing what is said, here is a transcript (via Hot Air):

Nick Robinson: A question for you both, if I may. The prime minister has repeatedly blamed the United States of America for causing this crisis. France and Germany both blame Britain and America for causing this crisis. Who is right? And isn’t the debate about that at the heart of the debate about what to do now?

Barack Obama: I, I, would say that, er … if you look at … the, the sources of this crisis … the United States certainly has some accounting to do with respect to . . .  a regulatory system that was inadequate to the massive changes that have taken place in the global financial system …  I think what is also true is that …  here in Great Britain …  … here in continental Europe …  around the world. We were seeing the same mismatch between the regulatory regimes that were in place and er …  the highly integrated, er, global capital markets that have emerged … . So at this point, I’m less interested in …  identifying blame than fixing the problem. I think we’ve taken some very aggressive steps in the United States to do so, not just responding to the immediate crisis, ensuring banks are adequately capitalized, er, dealing with the enormous, er …  drop-off in demand and contraction that has taken place. More importantly, for the long term, making sure that we’ve got a set of, er, er, regulations that are up to the task, er, and that includes, er, a number that will be discussed at this summit. I think there’s a lot of convergence between all the parties involved about the need, for example, to focus not on the legal form that a particular financial product takes or the institution it emerges from, but rather what’s the risk involved, what’s the function of this product and how do we regulate that adequately, much more effective coordination, er, between countries so we can, er, anticipate the risks that are involved there. Dealing with the, er, problem of derivatives markets, making sure we have set up systems, er, that can reduce some of the risks there. So, I actually think …  there’s enormous consensus that has emerged in terms of what we need to do now and, er …  I’m a great believer in looking forwards than looking backwards.

I’ll leave it to Dakinikat or some other economysterian to figure out if he made any sense.  My eyes glaze over just reading that rambling word fog.

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What’s so special about Sarah?

Over at Liberal Values  in a post titled “The Palin Soap Opera Continues” Ron Chusid writes the following:

It would have been a horror story if Sarah Palin had been elected vice president, but for now we can sit back and enjoy the ongoing soap opera aspects. There are two new stories today, including one of pre-marital sex. Levi Johnston was interviewed for The Tyra Show.  The full interview, for those who really care to learn more about his sex life with Bristol Palin, will air on Monday.

Like any good soap opera, we have a whole crew of supporting characters. Today’s other major development was that Diana Palin, Todd Palin’s half sister, was arrested after breaking into a Wasilla home for the second time this week to steal money.

Ironically, Chusid’s blog header states “Defending Liberty and Enlightened Thought” underneath the name of the blog.  Do you see any liberal values, liberty or enlightened thought in that passage?  I sure don’t.

Politicians’ relatives have been embarrassing them for years.  Billy Carter embarrassed his brother Jimmy with his drinking, urinating in public and by registering as a foreign agent for Libya,  Roger Clinton got busted for drugs and Hugh and Tony Rodham (Hillary’s brothers) were involved in some financial dealings relating to Presidential pardons that didn’t quite break the law but created the appearance of impropriety.  It’s a bipartisan effort though – the Bush twins (Barbara and Jenna) got busted for underage drinking and Patti Davis (Reagan’s daughter) posed nude in Playboy.

In the case of Carter and the Rodham brothers some of their exploits were legitimate news because they raised ethical questions relating to their elected relatives.  The people have a right to know if the relatives of our elected officials are profiting from their relationships by exercising improper influence.  But what news value is there in minor crimes and juicy gossip that does not directly involve the politician?

In Palin’s case we see something unique.  Typically when a politician’s relative gets in trouble there is some snickering and snarkiness but no one blames the politician because we all know they have no control over the behavior of others and most likely disapprove of the conduct.  But we see Sarah Palin somehow being blamed for the conduct of her husband’s half-sister and even her daughter’s former boyfriend’s mother.

Remember when liberals and progressives said that the sex lives of politicians were nobody’s business?  Now they want to know about the intimate details of the sex life of Sarah Palin’s  daughter!  Talk about hypocrisy.

What’s so special about Sarah?  It can’t just be misogyny.  She’s not the only politician with a vajajay and some of her most fanatical critics have vajajays of their own.  Despite what her critics on the left say her politics aren’t radical – she’s a conservative but only moderately so.  She’s not a religious fanatic either – she attends a mainstream fundie church similar to thousands of others across the country.

She didn’t get born or marry into money or political connections.  She and her husband Todd built a successful life for themselves and their kids.  She’s popular in Alaska and has been a reformer.  Despite what her critics say she isn’t stupid or corrupt.  So why do they hate her so much?

Conservative blogger Ace of Spades thinks the media is determined to tabloidize her in order to make her unacceptable as a leader.  I tend to agree with him on that although not for the same reasons.  Remember, there is no such thing as “the liberal media.”  There is a corporatist media that does the bidding of the wealthy and powerful.  Sarah has been getting hammered by that media (including supposedly conservative members) because she is a reformer and an outsider.

She has also been getting relentlessly attacked by the Kool-aid bloggers because she scares the crap out of them, and not just because she has lady parts.  They saw the way she energized the GOP rank and file last year and they freaked out.  That was what motivated the Great Alaskan Panty-Sniff Raid and “Trig Trutherism.”  That’s also why they won’t let go of her despite their claims that they want her to go away.

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UPDATE:

For a thoughtful conservative point of view on this subject check out Conservatives4Palin