Bristol gets real, again

Per The Hollywood Reporter (hat tip to Lisa Graas):

Bristol Palin is filming another* reality show, this time for the Lifetime network (which, up to now, has been known to me mostly for Golden Girls reruns, men-are-evil movies, and Denise Austin).  In it, viewers will see the life of a non-glamorized single mother raising her three-year-old son, Tripp.

(Bristol Palin, image courtesy The Hollywood Reporter under Fair Use clause)

Lifetime announced Wednesday that Bristol Palin: Life's a Tripp will see a 10-episode run on the network later this year.

Focusing on the former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin's daughter's life as a single mother with son Tripp, the series will follow the young Palin's new life in her native Alaska after brushes with fame on Dancing With the Stars.

Good for Bristol.  I'd certainly be willing to watch this show (if I got Lifetime, that is).

Now, of course, this will bring out all Bristol's detractors yet again to waste inordinate amounts of time whining that Bristol isn't a star, or that she's a publicity hound (the actual term they would use is not suitable for this blog), or that her family is stupid (the perennial fallback insult), or whatever.  But Bristol, I think, has proven that she can handle her detractors just fine, and I don't think things will be any different now.  And it isn't as if she's just been waiting for someone to offer her a reality show; she's been working a regular job, as I understand it, and I'm sure this offer was unsolicited and probably welcome in that it will certainly help with raising her son.

And besides, what were you going to watch?   I guarantee you will see a better program watching Bristol than you would watching, say, mom-to-be Snooki.


* There was a previous show that she was filming with Dancing With the Stars competitor Kyle Massie, but apparently it was shelved.

Who Are These People?

It is common knowledge to this blog's dozens (half-dozens?) of readers that there are rather few comments posted here.  What is less commonly known (or cared about, really) is that many other comments having nothing to do with the topic at hand (which might, at any given time, be music, Palin, Austin, Palin, politics, or Palin) are also left here.  These comments are filtered by Blogger as spam, for which I am eternally grateful.

Most of the spam comments follow what one might expect:  a lot of gibberish, or a paragraph having nothing whatsoever to do with anything, followed by a link to a website, almost 100% of the time located on another continent, selling something I don't care to promote on my site.  (Those things I do want to promote are in the ads that do appear, and your humble host would very much appreciate it if you do all your St. Patrick's Day shopping through those links.  And thanks.)  That seems normal enough in today's internet.

What I do not understand are the spam comments that have no links to anything.  They are always left by "Anonymous", which obviously doesn't link to any sort of webpage (unlike, say, Blogger IDs), so I really don't know what the point of posting these comments is.

Maybe you can make sense of why examples such as the following are ever generated in the first place:

• Nice site!  I've just shared it on Facebook.  (Sure you have...)
• As a web site owner I think the material here is really magnificent.  I appreciate it for your time.  You must maintain it and keep it up forever!  Excellent work.  (I'm blushing...or not.)
• hi there every one - hope yous had a good christmas - pity we didnt get snow was all prepared wi sledges kids loving it any ways , all the best for the comming year - mick b  (This, perhaps, is the result of a newbie to the internets, so it may not fit in with the rest of these comments.)
• The above writing was excellent.  I stumble on it very exciting and I will certainly forward this to my buddies on the net.  Anyway, thanks for sharing this.  (I'm gonna guess that English is not this writer's first language.)
• Thanks for your review!  Actually I have never seen anything that cool.  (This was posted on a five-year-old, not-very-cool article.  I really don't get it.)

And here's my personal favorite:

I was impressed with the way you expressed your thoughts about Blogger:  Snowed In - Post a Comment.  I can not believe that somebody can write an amazing story like thet about I love Blogger:  Snowed In - Post a Comment.

Maybe the answer is the simplest explanation that comes to my mind, which is that some spammers simply aren't very web-savvy.

Last-second addition before publishing:  It has come to my attention before this entry was published but after I wrote all of the above that I am not the only one thinking along these lines today.  Randy Cassingham (of "This Is True" fame) also had something to say about spammy comments.  Though it should be noted that his spammy comments are signed, which means his is obviously a more advanced group of spammers.

Is it open season on Sarah Palin or something?

"Hey, let's go after Sarah Palin...it's what all the cool kids are doing!"

Enough already, people.

I have no idea why so many on the right, in an attempt to be relevant (which I have almost never been, politically speaking), have decided that the best way to do so is to attack Sarah Palin, who, you may recall, isn't presently running for anything.  But this behavior appears to be encouraged, based on the way some of it gets promoted.

Case in point:  Eddie Scarry, who writes for Mediabistro's FishbowlDC and The Blaze.

Mr. Scarry apparently took issue with a piece Gov. Palin wrote for Newsweek Magazine, an increasingly leftist-slanted magazine which very recently spotlighted an article by Andrew Sullivan, noted expert on Sarah Palin's uterus.  (I commented about that in a Facebook note, which is what I do sometimes when I don't have time to blog about things.  Of course, the dearth of posts on my Facebook page doesn't speak well for my use of my time either.  But I digress.)  In her note (entited "Life With Trig: Sarah Palin on Raising a Special-Needs Child"), Gov. Palin paints an almost-idyllic picture of the blessing her son Trig has been to her and her family.  (Note to readers:  You might want to follow my example and not read the comments...as usual, some of Newsweek's readers have displayed what appears to be a typical (for them) hatred.  Yes, I did read a couple of comments, and then I forced myself to stop, as they all appeared to be coming from a hive mind afflicted severely with Palin Derangement Syndrome.)

An example of what seems to have set Mr. Scarry and a bunch of angry commenters off:

God knew what he was doing when he blessed us with Trig. We went from fear of the unknown to proudly displaying a bumper sticker sent to us that reads: “My kid has more chromosomes than your kid!”

So, what in the world could someone who writes for a conservative site such as The Blaze have against Sarah Palin gushing, as any decent mother would, about her young son?  Well, Mr. Scarry got it into his mind, somehow, that Gov. Palin was supposed to be writing about Rick Santorum, who has his own special-needs child.  She wasn't, but Mr. Scarry based his four-paragraph rant (entitled "Somehow, Santorum’s family troubles relate to Sarah Palin") on this incorrect premise.  Hey, why fact-check this stuff when you can score cheap points against Sarah Palin, right?

A sample of his comments:

For more perspective, the names “Rick” and “Santorum” appear three times total and are all found in the first paragraph. The word “my,” in reference to Palin herself, appears 15 times throughout the rest. I didn’t bother searching for “I” and “I’ve.”

Thankfully, many people tried to correct the record about the reasoning behind Gov. Palin's piece.  Notable among these was Stacy Drake:

Now, while this blog does not care for the last term of endearment Ms. Drake used, it certainly did not deserve Mr. Scarry's response (courtesy Big Journalism, since Mr. Scarry has since whitewashed the following tweet):

(there used to be an image of a tweet calling Stacy Drake "whore" here, but it has since disappeared from Big Journalism's site)

I wonder how The Blaze's founder, one Glenn Beck, feels about that response.  I'm hoping he's a bit upset about it, but at this point, who knows?

Regardless, of course, Ms. Drake was right, as evidenced by the Huffington Post piece she linked:

[A] Daily Beast spokesperson says the Palin piece was assigned last week following the news that Rick Santorum's daughter, Bella, had been hospitalized and he was briefly leaving the campaign trail.

"We asked Sarah Palin if she would like to share her personal story about life with a child with special needs upon learning about Senator Santorum's decision last week to place his campaign on hold to be with his daughter," the spokesperson emailed. 

I couldn't sum up the issue any better than John Nolte at Big Journalism:

In other words, in the wake of what happened to Bella Santorum, Newsweek reached out to Sarah Palin — and I’m going to repeat this carefully for the Beck-impaired — to… share… her… personal… story… about… life… with… a… child… with… special… needs…

So what is Sarah Palin guilty of here? Writing the piece she was asked to write.

But what is The Blaze guilty of here? Again, telling a lie of omission and, just like Wonkette and Andrew Sullivan, using Palin’s family as a weapon against her. After nearly four years, this tactic is well-honed and easy to spot. Anytime the Governor writes about or speaks of or is seen with her family, some bottom-feeder weaponizes the event, weaponizes her own family, to beat her senseless with. And that’s exactly what The Blaze did.

As it turns out, though, Mr. Scarry has now added the following to his rant, which he left untouched otherwise:

UPDATE: Many Palin supporters have read this post and taken issue with the fact that it does not mention Palin was actually asked by “Newsweek” to write about her experience raising a special needs child. She did not approach the publication and that is a crucial piece of information that should have been included for BLAZE readers.

This post was a brief analysis of the perception I, among others, had of Palin contributing to a magazine she regularly criticizes. And though my thoughts on Palin’s column still stand, it‘s also important to acknowledge that Palin’s experience raising her son Trig is a fascinating story and is worth a read in her book “Going Rogue.” –Eddie Scarry, Eddie@theblaze.com

Some of the above does not ring true.  Mr. Scarry devoted one throwaway phrase ("a magazine she loves to hate") in his initial rant to the idea of Gov. Palin writing for Newsweek after having slammed it.  No, Mr. Scarry, the original post was a brief assumption that Gov. Palin had made something all about her when, in your mind, it should not have been.  The problem, of course, is that Gov. Palin's piece was indeed supposed to be about her own family, and you still haven't acknowledged that you were flat-out wrong about it.

But, as has increasingly been the case, facts don't seem to matter to those who want to take down Sarah Palin.  And a lot of the Palin-hatred, unfortunately, is coming from our own side.

Update:  Welcome, Conservatives4Palin readers!

Unfairly forgotten song #11: Erotica by Madonna

I can hear you now:  "Really, Snowed?  A Madonna song?  How can anything by Madonna be forgotten?"  (This may not in reality be what you are saying, but as this is my blog I get to assume that you are in fact saying these things just after reading the title to this entry, and so we'll proceed from that assumption.)

Well, if I were to consider Madonna's career in pop music--and of course this consideration has been brought on by her imminent halftime show performance tomorrow--I would say that the Erotica album/era is in fact the most forgotten portion.

And why is this?  Perhaps it is because Madonna was at that time infamous for making a coffee table book in which she was wearing very little, if any, clothing.  (Now she's just infamous for continuing to dress like she were still that age.)  Or it may have been because the songs from this album were not as successful as singles from other albums of hers.  Wikipedia* reports that no song from the album Erotica charted any higher than number three.  Or maybe the pop-music populace didn't care as much for the songs of that era in which, as Idolator.com says (in a list of the 10 most forgotten Madonna songs--in which "Erotica" does not appear), Madonna "gabbed through tracks rather than singing on them."

In any case, regardless of the reason, I personally do not believe that I have heard the title track on any radio station since its original run on the Hot 100 in late 1992/early 1993.  And this I find rather strange, since it had such a strong debut, per Wikipedia*; it debuted at number thirteen and reached its peak position of number three the next week.  It also reached number two on Billboard's airplay chart (debuting and peaking at that position on October 17, 1992), which makes it doubly strange to me that it now receives, as far as I can tell, absolutely no airplay now.

According to commenter "BLT" at SongMeanings.net, Madonna intended this song to serve as a fantasy of "crazy and nasty things that go through [one's] mind," but are never acted on.

The video, which may presently be found on YouTube, was banned by MTV for content reasons, which, given the high standards of MTV, should tell you a lot.  This video will not be presented here, sorry.  (No, this is not a SOPA thing, this is me not wanting to show it.)  A portion of the audio, however, is presented here for your pleasure through the courtesy of our friends at Amazon.com.



You can also buy the whole album here:



*Note:  some information in "forgotten songs" entries comes from the always-reliable Wikipedia; as such, its veracity may be questionable.

Second note: I get a pittance from Amazon sales through links from this blog.