Is it only Wednesday? It already seems like this week has been too long. It’s open thread time, what’s catching your interest today?
I found this amusing – progressive activists crashed an organizing phone for the Teaparty Movement and conservative bloggers. Personally I think the progressive activists are lying, Sarah Palin told us that organizers don’t do any work unlike the mayor of Wasilla, Alaska.
On Tuesday evening, several organizers of the Teaparty Movement and of the ultraconservative website 73wire.com, including healthcare executive and conservative activist Michael Johns, hosted a telephone conference call for Teaparty activists. Twitter user @Strwbrry_Blonde learned of the call and enlisted Twitter-based community organizer @Shoq to disseminate the dial-in number. In the end, several liberal or satirical Twitter users, including Comedy Central’s Elon James White (@ElonJames), Daily Show co-creator Lizz Winstead (@LizzWinstead) and a few dozen other tea-party-crashers participated in the call, livetweeting comments among themselves under the Twitter hashtag #teapartycall.
[…]
The best parts, in terms of voyeuristic entertainment value, came in the last 10 minutes when the line was opened to questions. At one point, after a caller asked what she should blog about, an organizer told her to “watch Drudge.” Later, two other callers repeatedly interrupted each other with worries about the Obama administration’s “dithering! dithering!,” “terrorists,” “hesitation,” and “lying” — to the point that the organizers had to mute all participants’ phones.
At one point, a caller who identified herself as “Marge in Minnesota” — actually, Winstead — asked what issues she should care about. The organizers answered, providing her with conservative talking points.
You can listen to the call at the link.
Lindsay Beyerstein has an interesting take on the Palin/Newsweek controversy:
There’s nothing scandalous about Palin showing some skin, or wearing Spandex. But this cover image is deliberately styled to make the then-governor of Alaska look like a Vargas pinup girl. Unlike the other images in the series, this one references her status as a governor. As she poses like a swimsuit model, she’s clutching one icon of political power–the Blackberry–and leaning on another. The theme isn’t Sarah Palin, athlete. The theme is Sarah Palin, Sexy Governor. (As in: one of those dime store Halloween costumes: sexy cop, sexy lady bug, sexy sanitation worker…)
Predictably, Palin complained that Newsweek’s use of the image was sexist. Yes, the image was plucked from its original context. The whole point was that the picture was appalling it its original context. Newsweek is holding this picture up to the world and asking: Who does this?
The bottom line is that Palin’s a clown. She doesn’t get a pass because her chosen clown persona is stereotypically feminine.
She caricatures herself. Day in and day out. Good for Newsweek for pointing and laughing.
In the Runner’s World photo spread there isn’t one picture of Palin actually running.