"Am I the only one that looked at this and thought 'Oh my God, David Spade is having a stroke?'"

Heh.

Not since Napoleon XIV have psychotic individuals suffered such awful abuse from the pop culture.

Oh! Shame! Shame on Waunakee High School:

Waunakee High School's varsity dance team is headed to a state competition today, but advocates for the mentally ill are upset by what got them there — a "we get crazy" routine featuring all 18 dancers bouncing to hip-hop music, their hair wild, heavy black makeup on their snarling faces, and costumes made to resemble straitjackets and restraints with the words "Psych Ward" on them.

News of the routine spread fast this week after photos of the dancers in their costumes were published in the Waunakee Tribune. "The pictures are quite disturbing," says Hugh Davis, executive director of Wisconsin Family Ties. "We had parents and kids with mental health issues standing in the office with tears in their eyes. This brings up painful memories. It is incredibly insensitive."

Do you remember the terrible tizzy in 1966 over "They're Coming to Take Me Away"? We all loved it, thought it was hilarious, it was played on the radio... and then it was gone... squelched by political correctness back before we'd seen enough political correctness to say "political correctness."

Here's some guy's video of the song...



... which you can find on this nice collection of 21 songs by Napoleon XIV.

Football update: both 6-seeded teams have beaten 1 seeds and will go on to face 2 seeds.

It seems apt — right? — to regard these 2 erstwhile 6 seeds as the new #1 teams. So, let's predict that the Packers and the Jets will defeat those 2 seeds — the Bears and the Steelers — next week. As for the Super Bowl, let's remember what happened last time the Jets encountered the Packers:

Ugly. Sloppy. And, perhaps, a little rusty.

It all added up to one big dud for the New York Jets.

Mason Crosby kicked three field goals for Green Bay, and that was all the Packers needed as they held the Jets off the scoreboard for a 9-0 victory Sunday....

Embarrassing!

I got some help from Meade writing that, I confess. We were watching the Jets game, and I supported the Jets (in that game) based on my assessment of the costumes, which as you know, are very similar. However, in my view, the red faceguards on the Patriots helmets were garishly decorative (and possibly vision-impairing). After they won, the Jets, to my dismay, pranced off the field with their arms flung out and weaving around like a kid pretending to be an airplane. It was like those kids on the old PBS show "Zoom":



Embarrassing!

Now, let's dance!

Chip Ahoy gives us another entry in the "For civility's sake, let's change 'Don't Tread on Me'" challenge.

"Back in the 1960s, who'd have imagined that a septuagenarian white sheriff from Arizona with a hostility to free speech would one day become a hero to the left?"

Let's talk about Clarence Dupnik.

Dupnik made multiple statements drawing connections between conservative "rhetoric" and Saturday's crime.... At a time when most politicians were behaving responsibly, why was Sheriff Dupnik speaking with a reckless disregard for the truth...?...

The Arizona Republic reported Wednesday that Dupnik's department was "refusing to release a wide range of public documents about the man charged in Saturday's shooting rampage that left six dead and more than a dozen wounded." Later that day, the Republic reported, the department relented and released "12 sets of incident reports" about police calls to the Loughner home or Jared Loughner's high school....

It's quite possible that Dupnik simply enjoys shooting off his mouth. 

More likely he enjoys covering his ass. Shame on all the journalists who scurried forward with their big old newsrags to help him cover said ass.'

IN THE COMMENTS: Irene (who knows such things) says:

A juvenile point: the surname "Dupnik" derives from "Dupa," a word used in Slavic- and Baltic-speaking languages. The word "dupa" means "ass."

"Dupnik" can translate as "assman." There is a bawdy dance — usually done at vodka-infused weddings — called the "dupnik," during which the partiers "fist bump" their cheeks.

Chuck Berry — who is 84 but still plays "Sweet Little 16" in concert — collapsed on stage last night.

It was a packed house in Chicago:

The show had started promisingly. Taking the stage in a red sequined shirt, black slacks and a white sailor hat, Berry began with "Roll Over Beethoven"...

Although Berry played this and following songs - "Sweet Little Sixteen" and "School Days" -- at slower tempos than the original recordings, he filled them with his classic guitar riffs and sang them with weathered authority....

Things then quickly began going off the rails. Berry played snippets of blues songs and an unsteady version of " Memphis Tennessee," before taking an extended pause to try to retune his guitar, complaining that it was out of key with the piano. He made several unsuccessful attempts at "Let It Rock," in part seated at the piano, and performed disjointed bits of "Carol" and "Johnny B. Goode."

Berry revived to lead the crowd in a sing-along of "My Ding-a-Ling" and acknowledged things weren't going well, telling the crowd he'd try to do better at entertaining them. It was not to be. After a version of "Reelin' and Rockin'" they found the band gamely following his inconsistent tempo, Berry made his way to the piano, where the show came to an end completely at odds with the joy in his music.

He tried to resume playing, but paramedics arrived, and he was taken off for examination. The fans waited, and he came back again, thanked the people and left — "using a bit of his signature 'duck walk.'"



Chuck Berry.

"Are you serious?" — a constitutional law argument in the Bowers v. Hardwick tradition.

On Monday, I took Josh Marshall (and Nancy Pelosi) to task for resorting to constitutional argument by laughter. They were addressing the "individual mandate" — the federal law requiring private citizens to buy health insurance, which a federal judge said is beyond the reach of Congress's enumerated powers. In my post, I chided liberals and lefties about using their own sense of ridiculousness as a legal argument because "There was a time when people laughed at the idea of gay rights."

An emailer reminds me of the precise language that appeared in the Supreme Court's case that ruled that states could criminalize homosexual sodomy. In Bowers v. Harwick, Justice Byron White (a JFK appointee) wrote for the majority:

Proscriptions against that conduct have ancient roots.... In 1868, when the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified, all but 5 of the 37 States in the Union had criminal sodomy laws. In fact, until 1961, all 50 States outlawed sodomy, and today, States and the District of Columbia continue to provide criminal penalties for sodomy performed in private and between consenting adults.... Against this background, to claim that a right to engage in such conduct is "deeply rooted in this Nation's history and tradition" or "implicit in the concept of ordered liberty" is, at best, facetious.

When Bowers was reversed 17 years later, in Lawrence v. Texas. Justice Scalia — the liberals' least (or second-least) favorite Justice — saw fit to quote those words in his dissenting opinion.

My emailer was James Taranto, author of the Wall Street Journal's "Best of the Web," which quoted my blog post yesterday and said:

We recall a conversation with a young liberal lawyer we met at an event in late March, a few days after the House passed ObamaCare. When we pointed out that there were likely to be court challenges to the new law, particularly the mandate to purchase insurance, she was dismissive. She asserted that the constitutional questions were well settled. When we offered arguments to the contrary, she did not engage them but became emphatic to the point of belligerence, insisting that it was "crazy" to harbor any doubts about the constitutionality of ObamaCare.

Our position was not that ObamaCare was clearly unconstitutional or that it was likely to be struck down, merely that there were serious constitutional arguments against it that had some possibility of prevailing. This modest claim so shocked our new acquaintance that an initially pleasant encounter turned rancorous and left us feeling she had insulted our intelligence....

Well, you'll feel better if you dance like Fred Astaire:



Here's Fred with the words to the Gershwins' "They All Laughed."

They all laughed at Rockefeller Center
Now they're fighting to get in
They all laughed at Whitney
and his cotton gin
They all laughed Fulton and his steamboat
Hershey and his chocolate bar
Ford and his Lizzie
Kept the laughers busy
That's how people are
They laughed at me wanting you
Said it would be, "Hello, Goodbye."
But oh, you came through
Now they're eating humble pie

But speaking of Robert Fulton and his steamboat, and who gets the last laugh, Fulton was a famous loser in the most famous Commerce Clause case of them all, Gibbons v. Ogden, and Fulton was on the side that argued for the narrow interpretation of Congress's enumerated power.  Chief Justice John Marshall laid down the broad interpretation:

This power, like all others vested in Congress, is complete in itself, may be exercised to its utmost extent, and acknowledges no limitations other than are prescribed in the Constitution.... [T]he sovereignty of Congress, though limited to specified objects, is plenary as to those objects....

The wisdom and the discretion of Congress, their identity with the people, and the influence which their constituents possess at elections are, in this as in many other instances, as that, for example, of declaring war, the sole restraints on which they have relied to secure them from its abuse.

This is the beginning of the line of expansive interpretation of the Commerce Clause that the proponents of health care reform will rely on as they take their case up on appeal to the 4th Circuit and, presumably, to the Supreme Court. We'll see who's dancing and who's eating humble pie then.

Bristol Palin: "Going out there and winning ... would be like a big middle finger to all the people out there that hate my mom and hate me."

Awaiting the results on "Dancing with the Stars."

UPDATE: And the winner is...



Jennifer Grey. Bristol comes in third. Kyle Massey was second.

Sally Quinn — who says "Dancing is my religion" — denounces Bristol Palin's success on "Dancing with the Stars" as "unholy."

And this strangely sanctimonious journalist — she's writing in the always awful "On Faith" section of The Washington Post — condemns Palin voters for "cheating" 7 paragraphs after she confesses to doing something that is at least as much cheating as what the Palin fans are said to be doing.

My husband and I are "DWTS" fanatics.  We plan our social life around it, often regretting invitations that fall on the night of the show....

Ridiculous!

Not only that, but I vote.  Under the show's rules, you're allowed to vote five times on one line. I have six lines at home and my cell, so I vote as many times as I can for my favorite. 

So this lady, this longtime Washington powerbroker, has 6 phone lines, and she maxes each line out, each week, voting 30 times. But that's the show's rules. They can't tell how many individuals vote are voting. They can only see phone numbers. So if your family of 5 watches the show and you — you economic losers — only have one phone, you can make 5 calls. Sally Quinn happens to have 6 phone lines, so she gets 30 votes — under the rules.

This season, I'm voting for Jennifer Grey all the way. She is by far the best dancer on the show.

She's voting correctly. For the best dancer. You stupid people are voting for Bristol Palin. Lord knows why.

.... Brandy - a fabulous dancer -- was eliminated last week. She was definitely my runner up. (Jennifer has to win. She's head and shoulders above everyone else.) We were having a dinner party and I made my guests leave the table to watch the final half of DWTS. Norman Lear was with us. Norman is not a DWTS follower but got caught up in the moment too. As the music started and I waited breathlessly to see Bristol be told she was out. I was squeezing Norman's hand when Brandy, not Bristol, was sent home. I couldn't believe it. Neither could the judges and studio audience. Derek  and Jennifer's mouths dropped open. Boos could be heard.

Oh, the social life I'm missing! Norman Lear! Ah! And I'm stranded out here in the heartland where I can only imagine the sparkling, witty conversation. Perhaps: "The American voters are pretty damned stupid"... that sort of thing.

It seemed Bristol and her partner were just as surprised. Brandy cried. I have to confess I teared up. It just didn't seem right.

Bloggers, columnists and TV commentators jumped on the results.  There must be cheating going on, they said.  It was all a tea party plot. That could be the only explanation for this appalling miscarriage of justice.

Sarah Palin's detractors point to the Christian right as the culprits here. The say groups organized voting schemes to game the system and were telling each other how to cheat when voting at ABC.com.

Commenters on the conservative blog Hillbuzz.org said they had figured out how to enter more votes than the rules allow by creating fake e-mail addresses. One person posting on Hillbuzz said "Lord have mercy, I voted for three hours online! I got 300 in."

What is a "fake e-mail address"? The rules say you are allowed 5 votes from each email address, just as you are allowed 5 votes from each phone number. Some people have multiple phone numbers and some have multiple email addresses. What's the difference? All I can think of is that you have to spend money to have multiple phone numbers, and you can get multiple email accounts free. It feels so right for rich folk to get more. I love when liberals slip up like that.

I never remember all Ten Commandments off the top of my head, but there should be one that says, "Thou shalt not cheat while voting on 'Dancing with the Stars.'" Polls have shown that the majority of tea party members are conservative Christians. Are these Christians who are voting 300 times and not using valid email addresses? Doesn't it offend their sense of fairness, if not ethics and morals?

Well, that whole paragraph offends my sense of reason. You're just assuming that the votes are coming from Christians, imagining that these Christians pontificate about morality, and accuse them of cheating when they seem to be following the same rules that let you vote on 6 phone lines? You're blind to your own hypocrisy, even as you have a platform in the Washington Post where you can preen and try to look like you have something especially important to say about religion.

Anti-Palinites lay into Bristol Palin, who performs tonight in the "Dancing With the Stars" finale.

Feel the hate:

Palin, described by one online poster as “a block of wood in a dress,” is the easily the worst hoofer to ever make it to the finals in “Dancing’s” 11 seasons.

Her most remarkable trait is her ability to drift off in a fugue state while dancing....

In mixing a political figure amid its celebrities, the No. 1 prime-time show shot itself in the foot. A Palin win Tuesday night will prove connections trump talent. What celebrities will want to sign up in the future?...

Expect a lot of blather tonight about “the journey.” It’s a way to anticipate and temper the controversy over a Palin victory.

Whatever happens, keep your firearms locked up. Don’t follow the example of the Wisconsin man who shot up his TV last week after watching Bristol dance.

That's a Boston Herald columnist, a grown man, attacking a teenager... for dancing. Somehow it's an injustice if Jennifer Grey doesn't win. Jennifer Grey, supposedly she's a nondancer, eligible to be a contestant even though she danced famously in a very famous movie about dancing. Bristol wasn't even an entertainer, but she stepped up and exposed herself to all manner of embarrassment, trying to dance in front of an audience for the first time. And it's not as if Jennifer Grey has relied purely on dancing. Grey — with strong help from the show — vigorously milked emotions over the death of Patrick Swayze on "Dancing With the Stars." So I don't want to hear any of this "fairness" crap.

ADDED: Bristol was a teenager when the season began. She turned 20 in October.

As Bristol Palin makes the DWTS finals, the anti-Palin forces say look over here: It's Willow Palin's "homophobic rant."

The 16-year-old Palin was hanging out on Facebook:

Willow's target, a person named Tre who goes to school with the Palin kids, wrote a status update on the night of the show's premiere, which read "Sarah Palin's Alaska is failing so hard right now."

Willow quipped back, "Haha your so gay. I have no idea who you are, But what I've seen pictures of, your disgusting ... My sister had a kid and is still hot," referring to her 20-year-old sibling, Bristol.

She later added, "Tre stfu. You such a f*ggot," and "I'm sticking up for my family," TMZ reported.

Bristol then came to her family's defense, writing to Tre, "You're running your mouth just to talk sh*t."

Do decent people read a 16-year-old girl's Facebook page? But we've read it, so let's at least be decent enough to be fair to teenagers. It's common and casual speech to use the words "gay" and "faggot" like that. It upsets upright people, and it would better if the kids didn't do it — or so it seems, as we look down on the young from our lofty adulthood.

We might say that anyone who cares about gay people should strike those words from their vocabulary. But not everyone who hasn't already laundered their speech of those offensive words is "homophobic." (And not everyone who has, isn't.) You're "homophobic" if you actually feel antagonism toward gay people. There's absolutely zero indication that Willow has any negativity at all toward gay people. She's just pissed at Tre and talking like a teenager (or a "South Park" character). To tar her as homophobic is like saying if you call someone an "idiot," you hate persons with Down Syndrome.

So leave Willow alone, you creeps. And in saying "creeps," I mean no antagonism toward arthropods.

If we should be talking about the Palin kids at all today, we should be talking about Bristol. A complete underdog, Bristol Palin made it to the finals of "Dancing With the Stars." She had no experience as a performer, certainly not as a dancer, and it's incredible that she kept going at all, as the judges and others either tore her down or — when they saw the votes flowing in? — were modestly supportive. Week after week, she landed at the bottom of the judges' scores, but she made it up time and again as regular people called in enough votes to overcome the disadvantage the judges had imposed.

This week, the people bumped her ahead of the judges' darling Brandy:

Last night, Bristol Palin made the finals of Dancing with the Stars, and I think nobody was more shocked than Brandy, who got eliminated. Brandy was so shocked she didn’t even congratulate Bristol! Brandy really wanted that spot; in face earlier in the show, they had shown us a video tape of her saying how much she wants it, and that she “humbly” thinks she deserves it. Most people would agree with her, but Bristol beat her out anyway.

So whatever the reason: Tea Party Conspiracy, Brandy’s arrogance, Bristol getting all the teen votes, Bristol working her “butt off,” or Mark Ballas’ incredibly good teaching…the question remains: Can Bristol win DWTS season 11?

Maybe she will! Congratulations to the shy, unassuming teenager who didn't particularly ask to be thrust into the spotlight 2 years ago, who went through an accidental pregnancy in front of millions of people (many of whom didn't mind insulting her in any manner they found amusing), who didn't hide herself away in shame, and who tried, again, in front of all of us, to dance. How many of the people who snipe at her, are too big of a pussy to dance anywhere, including on crowded dance floor at a local club?

Yeah, I said "pussy." Does that make me a misogynist?

"Bristol Palin’s dancing on TV set off man in standoff..."

In Black Earth, Wisconsin.

According to the [criminal complaint filed in Dane County Circuit Court], [Steven N. Cowan, 66] and his wife were watching “Dancing with the Stars” when Cowan jumped up and swore as Bristol Palin appeared, saying something about “the (expletive) politics.” Cowan was upset that a political figure’s daughter was on the show when he didn’t think she was a good dancer, the complaint states....

Cowan went upstairs for about 20 minutes and returned, demanding his pistols, which had been taken by his daughter about a month ago for safety reasons. He was carrying a single-shot shotgun, which he loaded and fired into the television...

UPDATE: Bristol makes it to the finals.

The Obamas dancing with the kids in India.

[Click to play video.]

Should this joyous dance annoy anyone?
	Yes, Democrats who just suffered some terrible electoral defeats.
	Yes, Americans who are suffering in a terrible economy.
	Yes, Indians who are being used as political scenery.
	Yes, Republicans who are thinking look at us, we want to dance the joyous dance of victory for you!
	No, either you like Obama and therefore his photo-op or you're off dancing your own dance of vicjoy.
pollcode.com free polls

On "Dancing With the Stars," they really try to get Bristol Palin to smile...

... but even with an ape mask over her head part of the time, we see far too much of the poor girl's sad face:



Even when the judges come up with some nice things to say about her dancing, she can't smile. Please, let the girl go home! If you can bear — or ape — to watch the whole clip, you'll hear her, toward the end, say "I hate the jive." She means, presumably, the dance they were doing, "the jive." But wouldn't it be awesome if she were awake enough to mean all this bullshit I've been put through since as long as I can remember?

"'I go around and I talk about abstinence and then I'm here in my underwear doing a dance about sex and stuff, so hopefully it goes well -- hopefully I can pull it off."

Oh, Bristol.

By week four, we can pretty much say that Bristol has never looked happy to be here and we're beginning to suspect that somebody else talked her into doing this gig to serve, well, somebody else's ambitions. Bristol keeps bringing up the Big Contradiction in the Room, and she does it again tonight, in a rerun clip from Monday: "I go around and I talk about abstinence and then I'm here in my underwear doing a dance about sex and stuff, so hopefully it goes well -- hopefully I can pull it off," she's heard to say as we see her, wearing only a large white shirt and opaque stockings, preparing for Monday's dance. We can see her future speaking engagements: "Don't be like me girls. Don't get pregnant -- and don't go on celebrity dance competitions!"

I'm here in my underwear...  hopefully I can pull it off...

By the way, I really wish I'd titled this post "Let's take a closer look at that fleshy display."

"For now, let’s just assume that Palin’s dance was a ... complex critique of the Obama administration’s stance on the homeless."

Hmm.

"Man Walking Down the Side of a Building."

Where's the line between art/dance and stuntwork? Don't let the fact that the building is an art museum muddle your thinking.

(Video.)

"Florence Henderson and Corky Ballas find out they're safe and hug after Florence says something weird about locking hips with some guy. It sounds lude."

The Daily News reports on "Dancing With the Star" and sounds stoopid. Got some ludes?

Sarah Palin on "Dancing With the Stars" — and allegedly booed.

She looked beautiful, and the crowd is ready to cheer her when the camera is on her, so we can only guess what caused the booing that was heard from backstage. Whoever uploaded this video asserts that the audience booed Sarah. I don't think so. The smarter opinion says it was about the scores the judges gave to Jennifer Grey.

Bristol danced last and, again the song was a "mama" song. Last week, you may remember, she danced to "Mama Told Me Not to Come." This week it was... ugh!... I can't remember. Something about not having sex at too early an age. It wasn't "Mama Said"... which is the only other "mama" song that comes to mind at the moment. Bristol's not very good, but she's perfectly nice and has no attitude of entitlement whatsoever and she's taking the dancing perfectly seriously, which — I think I can tell after watching the show twice — is the way to win the support of the judges and the viewers who vote.

A political candidate displays his bloody wound.

Is this the way to argue that you should be governor?



We were talking about this ad in the comments to last night's live blog of "Dancing With the Stars," a show I was watching (for the first time) to see how Bristol Palin would be presented. Here in Wisconsin, in between the spangled, befringed, high-heeled prancers, we got an eyeful of Tom Barrett's gaping wound. Irene wrote:

In the Madison market, we were treated to an ad for Tom Barrett's campaign.

He's using the horrific beating he suffered as the theme of the ad.

He has an attractive wife with short hair.

He has a labradoodle.

I said:

I've seen that ad before and think it's quite awful. So he did what a decent person would do and got hit in the face. For that, he should be governor? Aren't there 100 war heroes in Wisconsin with more serious injuries? Why is Barrett ahead of them? And what's with foisting a picture of a bloody wound in our faces over and over? And his wife saying over and over that he is a good guy? Aren't there 100,000 good guys in Wisconsin whose wives will vouch for them on camera? What nonsense!