Why are you fat?

Barbara Walters asks Chris Christie.

He doesn't know why, and if he could figure out why, he'd fix it. Then he says it doesn't mean he's not capable of serving as President. But, come on, when you're President, all the world's problems are yours, and you'd better be good at figuring out what's wrong. These problems are much more complicated than why he's fat! He not just a bit chubby. He's very fat. Whatever the subtleties of why people get fat, a good percentage of what he's carting around has got to be from just plain gorging himself. How can he sit there with a straight, sincere face and say "If I could figure out why, I'd fix it"? At least we have video showing us how he looks when he's lying.

"Lewinsky was 22 — and Chelsea Clinton 15 — when, with the flash of a thong, La Monica turned the commander-in-chief..."

"... into what she called her 'sexual soulmate' in a 'mutual relationship' that lasted approximately two years."

In a weird way, I hope she delivers an honest, introspective account of how she managed to clear away the emotional rubble, if indeed she has, and if indeed our celebrity-train-wreck culture will let her 14 years after her world imploded.

Yeah, Lewinsky has a book to sell, even though she "gave hours of interviews to Andrew Morton, Princess Di’s British biographer, for his 1999 book, 'Monica’s Story,' the same year she spilled her guts along with some tears in a long, unpaid ABC News sit-down with Barbara Walters." She has a book to sell because she's lived through a long expanse of years since the 1999 glossy media blitz that she might have imagined would get her life going on a rewarding new track.

What's it been like being Monica Lewinsky all these years? That's the new story. Monica, The Middle Years. Of course, she wants money, but she wanted money in 1999 when she gave away those interviews. She must have thought it would work out well. Now, she can tell us how she thought that and how it didn't go so well.

And of course, she can retell the old story, with new more honest/more lurid details, and with revelations about all the times she fudged the truth with Morton and Walters, to serve what she believed were her interests at the time.

She's also earned a master’s degree in social psychology from the London School of Economics. That along with the maturity of her advanced age (39) might bring some actual insight to the story of Monica and Bill — which is never going to go away.

IN THE COMMENTS: Rabel notes that the word "unpaid" — seen in the quote I extracted above — no longer appears at the linked article and provides, via Wikipedia, the information that "Lewinsky made about $500,000 from her participation in the book and another $1 million from international rights to the Walters interview."

Barbara Walters to Barack Obama: "If you were a superhero and you could have one super power, what would it be?"

Ridiculous premise for a question. He is a superhero.

Of course, Obama is smart enough to whip out the official, mentally healthy answer: "Flying." Only creepy people say "invisibility." Why am I saying that? Listen to the great old "This American Life" segment "Invisible Man vs. Hawkman."

ADDED: "If you could be any superhero, who would it be?" is one of the tricky job interview questions the Wall Street Journal has in its article today: "How to Ace a Google Interview/Brain teasers like the ones used for hiring by the Internet giant are spreading to other picky employers." What's the right answer to these questions? Who knows? What superhero? Uh... JobGettingMan.

Weird interview questions have become a meme, like a joke or a viral video. It's catchiness, rather than proof of their effectiveness, that keeps them in circulation at many companies....

The deep, dark secret of human resources is that traditional job interviews don't work very well.

By the way, I have an answer that would ace the Google question, which is: You're suddenly shrunk to the size of a nickel and thrown into a blender. "The blades start moving in 60 seconds. What do you do?"

I'd say: What is the basis of my knowledge of what's going to happen 60 seconds into the future? Every blender I've ever seen reacts instantly and only when somebody pushes a button. There must be person who threw me in the blender who is also informing me of what he intends to do in 60 seconds. But why would someone this evil tell me the truth? But whether he's lying or not, he's interested in what I will do in the next 60 seconds, rather like you, the interviewer, are interested in what I'll do in the next 60 seconds. Presumably, desperate flailing is not what will get me this job, keep evil blender truthteller from killing me, or influence the mysterious lying blender guy to let me out, so I think I should do a fascinating dance. I would tell a long, fascinating story, like Scheherazade — who delayed her execution — but I'm assuming there's a fairly soundproof lid on the blender, so I'm resorting to dance. Wanna see?

Bill Maher goes on "The View," begins with a suck-up to women, and gets feminist chill from Elisabeth Hasselbeck.

HuffPo just calls this "incredibly awkward." But it's a fascinating deployment and deflection of feminism:



Maher waltzes onto "The View" and delivers a prepared line that is obviously structured to reach out to the female daytime-TV audience. Joy Behar prompts him to talk about Sandusky, and Maher begins:

You'd like this...

(Because you're a woman.)

... Any institution where there's no women around — like The Church, like football, like the Middle East, like fraternities — it just goes to hell. You do need women as a moderating influence.

You? There's a feminist faux pas right in the middle of his effort at feminism. The audience is female, and he's saying "you" to them, but they are not the "you." Worse than that, seemingly without realizing it, he's dishing out old-fashioned male chauvinism: Women exist to moderate men. Men are the primary force in the world, but too much of that roiling, spewing masculine energy, and there's trouble. Come in, ladies, ground us, soothe us, care for us, tone us down, so our intensity doesn't boil over into destruction.

But Maher assumed — "You'd like this" — that female TV audience would feel flattered and not notice the message of subordination. And he assumed they'd enjoy hearing an insult to men. Quite aside from whether women appreciate negative stereotypes about men, underneath the insult was great pride in male achievements. Some men go too far, but maleness is central, even as femaleness is needed for moderation.

Nevertheless, Maher intended to appeal to women, to embed himself in the context of feminist values. He failed, even before Hasselbeck lit into him, but he did not realize that. He was perched in the center of the curved turquoise sofa, pleased at having presented himself as an admirer of women.

Hasselbeck begins: "That sounded very supportive of women." That is, she could see what he was doing, trying to seem feminist, though she doesn't say that it really was supportive: it sounded supportive.

"And I just want to go back to a time that bothered me... not for my own personal reasons... Forgive this idiotic Republican for bringing this to your brilliant mind..."

Talk about a moderating influence! She's stirring things up.

"In February of last year, Laura Logan was in Egypt and she was brutally attack by a mob there. She came back and said: 'There were hands raping me over and over again, tearing my body in every direction, trying to tear off chunks of my skull. I was in no doubt in the process of dying.'

"Now, prior to her coming back, Bill, you on your show said: 'Now that Hosni Mubarak has released Lara Logan, he must put her intrepid hotness on a plane immediately. In exchange, we will send Elisabeth Hasselbeck.'"

Hasselbeck sums up: "That wasn't that funny."

I'm virtually positive that Maher wasn't ambushed here. I think it was planned that Hasselbeck would read that indignant bit — it's all on paper, with 2 verbatim quotes — and sum up with an attack on the comedian's funniness. She did not cut more deeply. She could have said: You made a joke out of rape and you specifically thought it was funny to say that I should be raped. Is rape funny when it happens to a woman whose ideas you object to? You stood there on TV and named me as a person you'd want to hand over to a mob to be raped to death? That's your show, Bill?!

But she had it on paper, and it had her ending with a simple that's not funny. There's a female stereotype for you! It's the punchline to the old how many feminists does it take to screw in a lightbulb? joke. The "ambush" was gentle, and Maher was prepared:

"We do a comedy show for an audience that's perhaps different than your audience. You are a public figure. It was not aimed at you personally, but when you are a public figure, you are out there and you're fodder for comedians to make comments on."

Asked "Do you draw the line ever?" he responds, elegantly, "I do draw the line, but I also live on the line." He's a male, bursting with creativity and cutting recklessly, unmoderated by females, late at night, on HBO. "You have to be out on the edge to know where that edge is."

Hasselbeck scoffs, "Thanks for being the hero." That is: You're bragging about yourself. She's playing that moderating role assigned to women, dragging him down to earth. She demands an apology. The others on the sofa frame her complaint as a personal affront, because she was named, not a more general attack on Maher for making a joke out throwing a woman to a brutal mob to be raped to death.

If you had it to do over again, would you used that joke, Hasselbeck asks, "if you're so supportive of women"?, and Maher deflects her glibly, but still without acknowledging the gravity of wishing rape on his political opponent. He says: "If I had a crystal ball and knew I was coming here and had to spend my whole segment talking about it, no, I wouldn't. It really wouldn't be worth it."

That is, he still likes his joke, but it's such a pain having to fritter away his book-pimping spot dealing with her that it's not worth it. He brushes her off: "Worse things have happened to people." Worse than hands raping me over and over again, tearing my body in every direction, trying to tear off chunks of my skull? Yeah, it is true. Worse things have happened to people. Thanks for the info, Bill. And here you are,  talking to the women daytime TV has been explaining feminist issues to for decades!

Barbara Walters butts in to talk about herself. "I went through years of Baba Wawa. I survived." What a survivor! The message from Walters — who promotes feminism on most occasions, I think — is that Hasselbeck shouldn't take herself so seriously. She needs to learn to take a joke. Gilda Radner's delightfully charming imitation of Walters's speech defect is pretty much the same as Maher snarking about throwing Hasselbeck into a gang rape. Yeah. It's all comedy!

Hasselbeck claims some dignity in the end. She clarifies that it's not about her personal feelings, that she's "speaking on behalf of women," and that accountability is important. It's what she teaches her kids. Yeah, she's a mom. She's nice. She's folded back into the group, properly in place as one of the women on the turquoise sofa, arrayed sweetly around the man... moderating him.

"Freedom means freedom for everybody," says Dick Cheney, approving of same-sex marriage.

IN THE COMMENTS: pbAndjFellowRepublican said:

I wonder if his views have been influenced by his relationship w/ his daughter. I'd assume so. Presumably Althouse would be opposed to such decision making because it is influenced by personal experience. Or, maybe that anti-anecdote position is only for other people, re other issues? Where Althouse doesn't have her own anecdote.

I don't like argument/reasoning from anecdotes, and one's own personal experience is a subcategory of this. I don't think the argument for gay rights should hinge on whether you're gay or you know someone who is gay. If something is actually bad or morally wrong, you don't try to promote it by talking about the person in your family who does it. You may notice that I've been writing in support of same-sex marriage on this blog for more than 7 years, and I don't think I've ever bolstered the argument with anecdotes of personal experience. In fact, I think it cheapens the argument to blend that in.

Girl talk — Barbara Walters refers to Sarah Palin's "considerable weight"...

... and Sarah Palin calls the GOP — "these boys" — "silly." And "impotent and limp."



And I love when Walters gives Todd a chance to speak, limits him to 3 words, then scolds him for saying more than 3 words.

"Palin is still talking about how much she loves C. S. Lewis."

"What is up with this? Chunky Bobo is always talking about C. S. Lewis too. Is he the new Edmund Burke? I read a bunch of C. S. Lewis books when I was a kid and I don’t see what makes them so conservative, aside from all the Jeebus stuff."

Sayeth DougJ. For a couple of seconds, I was all "who's Chunky Bobo?" but I figured it out.

***

Here's there underlying story about Palin. (She's on Barbara Walters' "10 Most Fascinating People of 2010." Ah, but how influential is she in Madison ?)

Here's a really nice — giftable — book collecting the works of C.S. Lewis. And here's a "daily readings" collection. And here's "The Portable Edmund Burke."

How about a separate show: "Comeback Idol"?

Because this is ridiculous.

(And tell me if you're able to watch that Barbara Walters "It's not gonna be me Annie no more!" clip without laughing.)

AND: Speaking of alternate Idols, they could have an "All Stars" edition like "Survivor." Bring back 24 lively contestants from previous seasons. 

Barbara Walters interviews Rush Limbaugh.

Hot Air has the video -- and highlights the line "I love Sarah Palin" (adding "How does Huck expect to compete with her among the base when Rush, Hannity, Ingraham, et al. are head over heels for her?"):



Here's what Rush himself said about the interview on his Friday radio show. First, there's this observation about the difference between TV and radio:

[O]ne of the reasons, ladies and gentlemen, I am not enthusiastic about television is that it drives me nuts getting feedback every time I'm on television. When I had my own show, I would go home, I'd check the e-mail, whatever, and nobody was ever satisfied. Everybody always had a complaint. I never get complaints about this radio show. I never have people say, "What you shoulda said was… and why did you let 'em ask that? You shoulda thrown it right back in their face." I said, "What's the point? What's the point?" Nobody is ever satisfied with television because all that matters is how you look and nothing else matters. Nobody remembers what anybody ever says on television. I give you Obama. It's how you look; it's how you come off.

Well, Rush's style has evolved on the radio, and it's not so good on TV. I watch the radio show on the webcam sometimes, and I can see what the problem is. He puts his body into producing that voice. He doesn't worry about how it looks. It's all about producing the sound. And it doesn't look relaxed and natural. You can see the effort. It's tiring to watch it, but for listening, it fits the material perfectly. I think he's wrong in saying that TV is only about how you look, but his demeanor is so radio that when he's on TV, we're distracted by the unsuitable visuals. People on TV have honed their style. Walters is brilliant at what she does, and Rush ought to admit that great TV technique really is something, just as his radio voice is.

Next, he complains at length about the way they edited his answer about how much money he makes in a recession. They chose to air the funny line -- "I just choose not to participate" -- and to skip the economics lecture -- which is that all he gets is a percentage of what the show brings in. He claims they took it out because it didn't fit their script. They want to portray him as someone who's cold to the suffering of others. (Barbara stresses that he grew up rich.) He's right but only part right. They were also making him more interesting.

Rush goes on to emphasize that he -- and none of the other "10 Most Fascinating People" -- got Barbara laughing: "We were yucking it up and having a good time." I noticed that he had a strategy of laughing. He responded to almost every question by laughing. He also uses laughing a lot on his radio show. There's a difference between saying funny things that make us laugh and using your own laughing as a form of communication. Be aware: Rush loves to laugh in the face of liberals, to give the impression that whatever they say is plainly foolish. If Barbara laughed along with that, I suspect that she was following her own strategy, letting him feel like the 2 of them were just having a good time, so he'd spill something she could use. Rush said "There was nothing really confrontational about it." Ah, yes. How do you think Barbara does what she does? She helps you get comfortable. He saw that too, because he goes on to say: "The whole thing was a challenge."

Hmmm. Contradiction. It wasn't confrontational, but it was a challenge? That, my friends, is a typical Rush change of direction. He doesn't admit he's wrong when he sees he's wrong. He just starts saying something else. As a law professor, I'm very familiar with that technique. I know you can do it. You realize you're saying something that is wrong or off for some reason. You can either: 1. Shift to getting it right and pretend there was never a problem, or 2. Stop and deliberately point out the problem -- look, that's wrong and here's why -- and then go on to get it right -- to openly show your work as you get to the right way of putting it. I understand why commentators and politicians protect themselves by using #1, but I think #2 is the ethical approach.

Moderating Michelle — Michelle Obama to go on "The View" today. UPDATE: I live-blog the show.

There's a big effort these days to rebuild Michelle Obama's image. And today, Michelle Obama will be "one of the ladies" on "The View" — chatting with the rest of them, not as an interviewee.

"We're going to be interviewing Matthew Broderick, she will participate in that," [Barbara] Walters said. "Another segment will be what makes a good breakfast. It will be a normal show; instead of five, there will be six."

Chatter. You can learn a lot about a person by their chatter. Oh, how I would love to hear the behind-the-scenes chatter between Michelle and her handlers about going on the show. Did Michelle bitch about the need to soften herself for dimwitted American women in flyover states? Or did she think it would be fun to have a free-for-all with those smart, funny women? Did her people tell her that the important thing is just to smile and look comfortable and not say anything too smart or too stupid? Or did they tell her to be herself and enjoy this chance to let everyone see the Michelle Obama we all know?

Walters said the show was put together as normal, and guests booked in advance.

And, if today resembles the typical day on the popular daytime show, there will be plenty of give and take between the hosts on serious and not-so-serious topics.

What? Matthew Broderick was not a special selection for Michelle? I'm sorry, I find that impossible to believe. He's too perfect for the occasion, isn't he? Married, delightful, mild, warm... squishy yet masculine... white. Watch her not call him "whitey" — though the man is stark white.

And making a good breakfast? Come on! That's too perfect of a set-up for them to talk about — we all want to know! – what's Barack Obama like at breakfast?

You can really learn a lot about a man by seeing what he's like at breakfast. He's helping the girls find their mittens and testing them last-minute on their spelling words, I bet. Or is he grouchy? Is he all Why can't I just eat my waffle?



ADDED: The women walk out in pairs, with Michelle and Barbara Walters in the lead. Michelle is much taller than the others, and she looks fabulous in a fitted, black-and-white, floral print sundress. Her hair is neatly tousled, and she has pearl earrings and really pretty soft makeup. They sit at the table, Whoopi Goldberg enthuses an introduction, and Michelle says: "I have to be greeted properly. Fist bump, please."

All the ladies bump fists with her. Whoopi's all "I'm sorry. What'd that mean? Should I be worried about doing that with you?" in a Valley Girl voice. Barbara leans forward and yells: "It's a terrorist attack!" Michelle responds: "It's now my signature bump, but lemme tell ya. I'm not that hip. I got this from the young staff." Joy Behar says: "I thought it was for germ freaks." I'm thinking: good idea! And then: potential new smear: Michelle Obama, a germophobe!

Whoopi says they've got "a million questions" for her. Oh! So then, she's not just another co-host. She is being interviewed. Barbara waves the New York Times article that is the first link in this post. Is Michelle here on "The View" to soften her image after all these attacks? Michelle finesses this into the new introduction that the NYT said she is seeking. She grew up on the south side of Chicago, etc.

Barbara interrupts to ask what it causing the attacks? Michelle refers to the pervasiveness of the media and the competition of politics. And people are "tired" of all this hostility. Elisabeth Hasselbeck takes this as a cue to chatter about how the media think that she (Elisabeth) is going to be fighting with Michelle (and is enemies with the other View ladies). By this point, Michelle is visibly sweating. (If she weren't wearing a bare sundress, you wouldn't see it.) But she gamely talks about how she puts her heart out there, taking a risk by showing passion. And she's not worried. Over time, people will get to know who she really is.

Michelle is asked if she thinks there was any sexism against Hillary Clinton, and she says, "Yes, there's always a level of... people aren't used to strong women... We don't even know how to talk about 'em. So, yeah, there was obviously that. There was also, um, you know, there were elements of racism and that will go on." But she resisted veering into the subject of racism and, wisely, kept to the subject of sexism but ended on a positive note. Hillary had cracked the glass ceiling, and had made it so "my girls, they won't have to feel it [sexism] as badly."

Barbara asks if, then, Hillary should be the VP nominee. Michelle insists that she willl have "nothing to do" with the decision. Elisabeth breaks right in an offers an opportunity for Michelle to talk about getting away from politics and paying attention to the kids. A commercial break swiftly descends.

Sherri Shepherd wants to interrogate Michelle about her toned arms. Michelle is always going sleeveless, setting a trend that is rough on women who are flabby. But the subject is immediately shifted to how long it takes for a woman to do her hair and makeup in the morning. Whoopi starts riffing about how up until now all the black women we've seen on the news are toothless or have gold-rimmed teeth. (How many people did she just insult?!) What she's trying to say is that Michelle with be a good role model. Joy Behar has the classic "who farted?" expression on her face.

Barbara raises the hot topic of pantyhose. They say not wearing pantyhose makes you look young, so she (Barbara) went without pantyhose to some event and someone yelled "No pantyhose!" Funny, especially since Barbara Walters is nearly 80. But the point here is: Michelle Obama is not wearing pantyhose. Michelle says: "I stopped wearing pantyhose a long time ago because it was painful."

Much talk of raising the kids. Barack and Michelle think about their daughters "every single day." She quotes 10-year-old Malia saying — when asked how she deals with going in front of a big crowd — "I'm just a kid... They just think I'm cute, so I just wave and I smile and then I'm outta there."

There's talk about Barack Obama's Father's Day speech. Michelle says she's most touched when Barack says that "the greatest gift he can give to his kids is to not be who his father was."

Barbara asks if Michelle wanted Barack to run for President, and she says she didn't even want him to go into politics, because it's "a mean business":

I knew the man that I loved. He was sweet and pathetic. I thought...

Pandemonium! I think each of the 5 view ladies exclaims "Pathetic!" Michelle's all: "Right, I know, he's pathetic." She does a dismissive hand wave. I take a few TiVo passes at the chaos, there's a reference to a comma, and I figure out she was saying:

He was sweet, empathetic.

Whoopi spells out the whole word to the camera and makes big hand gestures to get the point across: Empathetic.

After the break, they bring out Matthew Broderick. I think he's wearing a bad wig. He's got a bulky black suit on and a red tie. He fist bumps everyone, and they sit down on little puffy gold chairs. He crosses his legs just like Joy Behar. He's not wearing pantyhose, but white and black striped socks. He has largish feet.

It's established that Broderick's 4-year-old son supports Barack Obama. Why? "He likes the man to beat the lady." Michelle makes a cute grimace then distances herself from that remark. Kids are drawn to Barack Obama, she says. Some think his first name is Baracko.

Michelle must sit through the promotion of 2 Matthew Broderick movies, which is slightly painful, especially since they show a clip that has him talking to a young woman who's prating about how easy it is to be a stripper. Michelle basically keeps her mouth shut here.

Fortunately, they go to commercials, and when they are back, Michelle, Joy, and Sherri are standing with some woman under a big orange sign that says "Best of BREAKFAST." The woman — Elizabeth Somer — has written some New York Magazine cover story about breakfast and she starts ranting about how people who eat breakfast are better than other people. She's a raving breakfastist. Guess what you can eat for breakfast? A bowl of cereal with milk in it. And have you heard? You can put fruit on your cereal and also drink a glass of fruit juice. Michelle asks a question about pomegranate juice. She looks uncomfortable, and she doesn't get a straight answer, just a warning about apple, grape, and pear juice. Michelle munches a nugget of Autumn Wheat cereal and pronounces it good.

Joy asks Michelle what she has for breakfast, and she says:

"Toast, fruit, and I do my protein as: bacon. We're bacon people."

Joy does a mini-cheer: "Bacon! Bacon!" The audience shows enthusiasm. Somers in all seriousness says if you're going to have bacon, you should have Bob Evans Canadian Bacon. Michelle and just about everyone laughs at her for that absurd suggestion. Somers also recommends turkey bacon and "smart bacon" — and much grumbling is heard. "Smart bacon" is soy. Michelle is all "soy, sounds good" as she elbows Joy Behar. Those 2 seem to be bonding over bacon. Whoopi sneaks over to join the group: "I'm just going to say leave the bacon alone. We'll eat anything, but don't touch the bacon." Ha ha. The health nannying is shot to hell. "Does Obama eat bacon?" Joy asks. Michelle: "He will eat the bacon." Ha ha.

Final shot at the table. Everyone's looking happy. I find myself smiling. Okay. Worked for me. Broderick and Somers were stodgy and dull, but Michelle was just lovely and excellent. Her one little flub/nonflub ("pathetic") was hilarious.

Time for me to go get some bacon.

ADDED: Plenty of video here.

She's the moderator, and she can't get a word in edgewise?

WaPo weeps for Whoopi, who kept getting "shouted down" by Barbara Walters, Joy Behar, and Elisabeth Hasselbeck on "The View." Ridiculous. It's obvious that the reviewer, Lisa de Moraes, just doesn't like the style of the show, which involves a lot of fast chatter and talking over. If Whoopi Goldberg doesn't want to put in the effort to keep up with the banter, why did she get the big job? Quit bitching the regulars and ask why Goldberg is coasting!

[Bad link fixed.]

"I was severely depressed and felt as if I was in a cage."

Said Paris Hilton, talking about jail and claiming that it's time for her to stop playing dumb. She might start by realizing that jail is a cage. And that everyone feels terrible about going there.

But I look forward to the new Paris Hilton, the one who says, "Now, I would like to make a difference. ... God has given me this new chance." I just hope this making a difference business doesn't involve adopting children or letting us know what's wrong with the government or... Actually, I might prefer the old Paris Hilton -- minus the drunk driving.

UPDATE: Okay, I allowed myself to be suckered into TiVo'ing "The View." Barbara Walters reports that Hilton said she's 26 and too old to act dumb anymore, that's it been "an act," and that she'd like to offer something better to the "young girls who've looked up to" her. (Did anyone actually look up to her?) "I have become much more spiritual." God has helped her. Elisabeth Hasselbeck approves: "God is there!"

Ah, the cause is not children or political: It's breast cancer or multiple sclerosis. Good choice. Hilton wants to build "a Paris Hilton Playhouse" for sick children. (Sorry, that sounds so wrong.)

She's got a spiritual advisor who apparently told her that "her spirit or soul did not like the way I was being seen and that is why I was sent to jail." (Sounds similar to a psychologist opining that she felt guilty and was seeking punishment.) "God has released me." Joy Behar: "But the judge hasn't."

She's reading books and newspapers. What book? Guess? Of course: "The Secret."

When Barbara Walters met Louie C.K.

I loved this AV Club interview with Louis C.K., which has a lot about why his HBO comedy "Lucky Louie" failed. The part about Barbara Walters is rich:

AVC: How did The View initially approach you to come discuss Lucky Louie? Did they say "Barbara Walters has seen your show, she thinks you're the antichrist, you're vulgar, and we'd like to have you on so you can defend yourself"?

LCK: Oh no. Wouldn't that have been nice, if that's what they did? I actually reached out to them, because I had been on the show before. Joy Behar used to do a thing called "Comedy Corner," where you'd sit with her and she would set you up and you'd do your jokes. They asked me to do that a bunch of years ago and I said no, because The View is not my crowd. But the producer of the show called me at home and said, "What are you doing Tuesday that you can't take a town-car and just go be on a ladies' TV show?" So I said sure, and I did it, and I had a great time. The thing about the audience there is, they're very enthusiastic, positive people. And I like ladies. I like all ladies of all different ages. Ladies 40-plus, they're a great target for Lucky Louie. They come up to me in droves on the streets. That's a big demographic of who comes up to me to say they love my show, these older ladies.

So I said, "Let's get on The View," and we called them, and they said sure. The producer told me, "Oh we got the tapes, and the shows are great. It's a great show, it's going to be so much fun, we're excited about it." And then I get there, and I meet Fonzie. He loves the show, and everybody keeps coming—people with headsets and in suits and clipboards keep coming by my dressing room to say that they just love the show. And then the segment producer comes in my dressing room and says, "Okay. I have to talk to you. It turns out Barbara and the ladies didn't really watch it 'til last night, and they were horrified, and Barbara's going to say something about it in her 'Hot Topics' moment." Then she turns on the f*cking monitor and I'm watching her, live, saying that it's a terrible show. So it was a bit of a sandbagging. I didn't expect it.

AVC: It wasn't just her saying, "I watched your show, it's not really my cup of tea," it was her saying it's vulgar, it's disgusting what your character does with his wife, the whole idea was sexist and racist…

LCK: Yeah, that made me really mad. She said that, and they told me this before, too, that her objection to the show was that we're having sex and my wife looks bored. This is what's f*cking wrong with c*nts like her, is that she thinks women should be depicted, you know, the way my wife on the show makes fun of. Like, with her hand on her head, "Oh, it should be romantic." And the idea of letting a woman—and, by the way, it's her story, it's the wife's story—letting her show what it's like to be bored in bed with your husband and trying to find something in bed without cheating on him, like f*cking Desperate Housewives and all these whorish shows that people like Barbara love… They love shows about cheating, they love soap operas, and on the segment before me, they're telling women how to eat malnourishing food while keeping their figure. I mean, it's just all so obscene to me. They do nothing for women, and then she goes and calls [my show] sexist. And yeah, we do an episode where we confront race, and we talk about the awkwardness of race relations, and she calls it racist. So inside, I was shaking. I was like, "I f*cking hate her right now."

(Asterisks added.)

They love my show, these older ladies. Yeah, Louie, I loved your show. Though I kind of hated it at first because it replaced "The Comeback," which was another great HBO comedy that not enough people got, and HBO didn't keep around long enough to let more people figure it out or just to support edgier sitcoms that some people love.

By the way, it's her story, it's the wife's story... Yes, isn't it interesting that people don't want to see the gritty reality of a married woman struggling with an inadequate sex life and not demanding more romance?

It's just all so obscene to me.... He's talking about "The View"!

ADDED: Video of the "View" appearance: Part 1 and Part 2.

Alec Baldwin has no idea how to get out of a jam.

Alessandra Stanley watched Alec Baldwin on "The View." He was trying to patch things up after that terrible publicity over his enraged phone message to his 11-year-old daughter:

Alec Baldwin said on “The View” yesterday that he wanted to quit that NBC sitcom to write a book about “parental alienation.”...

Mr. Baldwin told Barbara Walters and Rosie O’Donnell that he wanted to devote his life to exposing the injustices perpetrated on divorced dads, and that he hoped to publish a book this fall on divorce litigation. Mr. Baldwin’s long-winded, self-obsessed soliloquy on his usurped rights as a father and the fiendish acts of his ex-wife, Kim Basinger, was so impassioned that Ms. Walters had to remind him that his first concern should be his relationship with Ireland. (When he mentioned his daughter, it was to make a point about her mother’s perfidy.)

He was looking to persuade but was mostly painful to watch — a little like Captain Queeg melting down on the witness stand in “The Caine Mutiny.”

Oh, how painful. I wonder what ridiculous father's rights characters have taken him in, are writing the book for him, and think he'll be a good figurehead for their cause. And what's more "alienating" to the child than having a father blustering about how bad her mother is? The best way for Alec Baldwin to make us -- and, I'm guessing, the child -- love him is to do the thing he does so well: act. Put that wild passion into playing characters. Or is that too sad? No one loves him for the man he actually is. The book's not going to help though.

"She is going increasingly outlandish. I think she's trying to get whacked."

Dennis Miller on Rosie O'Donnell:

But Iger's got a real problem here with Rosie. Because I think Rosie wants to get fired. I don't think she's this paranoid. At the end of the day, I don't think she believes George Bush blew up the World Trade Centers.

But I do believe that Barbara Walters owns every back end piece of that show. Barbara might wear gloves up to her forearms. But the fact is she's got sharp elbows right above that. And Rosie has no back end on that show. She needs to get out of that deal. Because with the ratings spike she's brought to "The View", she realizes if she has part ownership in a daytime show she can print money.

So she is going increasingly outlandish. I think she's trying to get whacked.

So it's all about the money? That's oddly similar to O'Donnell's own political thought, seen here on "The View." And it's a fundamental part of the 9/11 conspiracy theory.



Click here to enlarge. This is a poster for a 2-day conference on the 9/11 conspiracy theory at the University of Texas. We see a 50s-style family watching the 9/11 attack on TV. One is saying "How does this happen?" and the other "Who benefits from this?"

Take your spouse to work day... for the next four years.

So Rudy Giuliani says to Barbara Walters:

Former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani told ABC News's Barbara Walters that he would welcome his wife, Judith, at White House Cabinet meetings and other policy discussions if he were elected president next year.

"If she wanted to," Giuliani said in the "20/20" interview to be broadcast tonight. "If they were relevant to something that she was interested in. I mean that would be something that I'd be very, very comfortable with."

Giuliani, who is leading the Republican field in early polling, called his wife an important adviser to him. His wife, a nurse, said that she would probably play an important role in developing health-care policy in a Giuliani administration.

[ADDED: Richard Perez-Pena has more in the NYT.]

Why is it that behavior that would be embarrassing or insane in the private workplace -- bringing your spouse along -- is considered not just acceptable but laudable in a President?

You want Judith Giuliani doing national health care policy? She was a nurse, you know.

Let's all vote for the most uxorious man to be President. Absurd!

And, yeah, I know there's a woman in the race. That's a whole other issue. And not because it will be weird to have a "First Man."

("First Man" sounds like a cave man, doesn't it? Or, for religion fans, Adam.)

It will be overwhelmingly strange to have a former President back in the White House in the spousal capacity. Can we talk about that a little? I think it's quite odd that we're talking about how Judith Giuliani will be contributing to national policy, but we're not talking about what Bill Clinton will be doing. Why the big silence?

"I'm worth billions of dollars, and I have to listen to this fat slob?"

Donald Trump expresses himself... about Rosie O'Donnell.

IN THE COMMENTS: Johnny Nucleo says:

This smackdown is the funniest thing since Borat, which I have not seen, but I understand it is very funny.

Rosie's shots are more polished than Donald's, but I think his are funnier because they are more like a kid's insults. It's stream of consciousness, everything but the kitchen sink stuff: "You're fat and ugly, and I'm going to steal your girlfriend, which will be easy, and Barbara Walters hates you, and I'm going to sue, and you're fat, and ugly too, and you are a loser, and nobody likes you, fatso." I was laughing all day at work and everyone thought I was high, which I was, but that was not why I was laughing. Watch the videos - hell, just read the transcripts - of Trump going off and try not to laugh.

Donald Trump is a treasure. I mean that. He is one of the most unintentionally funny human beings ever to walk the Earth.

"'Heaven' is a corny show. But heaven itself is corny."

Virginia Heffernan writes about Barbara Walters' TV show about Heaven.

The program says nearly 90 percent of Americans believe heaven exists; most of them, presumably, think they have a shot at it. It's a nice idea. As Mr. Albom, the best-selling author of "The Five People You Meet in Heaven," says, the idea alone can make life on earth better, sprinkling a little stardust on the drudgery and meaninglessness of daily life.

Mr. Albom goes on to describe the dysphoria of being ordinary: "If you're not a celebrity, you can start to feel like you don't matter."

So that's it. The implication is clear. In the American creed - the one articulated on network news programs like this one - heaven is a place where we all get to be celebrities. At last.

Why pick on Americans? Well, we're the ones who support the existence of TV networks that put on shows like this? I wonder, if Mahmoud Ahmadinejad got a look at this show, would he put it in his spiritual or his triteness category? That's a big problem with religion, isn't it? It's supposed to be the most serious thing going, but it's also always threatening to be the most ridiculous. And when it's religion on television, the chances of it coming out ridiculous are unusually high.

Lactivism.

Nursing mothers protest Barbara Walters. Walters dared to say she felt uncomfortable sitting next to a nursing mother on an airplane.

Lactivism has been rather successful:

[S]ix states have recently passed laws giving a woman the right to breast-feed wherever she "is otherwise authorized to be."

Got a problem with that? I don't.

I know what it's like to need to breastfeed and be in a situation where there's nowhere private to go. One time, back in the early 80s, I breastfed my baby at the Baseball Hall of Fame. I remember feeling I was doing something really wrong and that I was about to be discovered at any point and treated harshly. So I like these laws. What are you supposed to do on a plane? You can't occupy the bathroom that long, and anyway, that would be a disgusting environment for a baby.

Breastfeeding mothers, like anyone else who has a right to be in a public place, should attend to their and their babies' physical needs discreetly and try not to trouble people. That means minimizing how much you expose yourself and not going out of your way to sit right next to a stranger. It's not shameful to be breastfeeding, but that doesn't mean it's in good taste to flaunt it.

As a rough comparison, imagine if you needed to blow your nose and you were in the middle of a store or a restaurant. We'd think it was outrageous if the owner kicked you out for doing it and rude if the other customers gave you dirty looks -- assuming you did it discreetly. But it would be rude of you and you'd deserve those dirty looks if you blew your nose loudly and sloppily right next to someone.

UPDATE: If anyone had ever told me that one day they'll be talking on TV about about my breasts and the Baseball Hall of Fame, I would have been amazed. Amazed and perplexed. (Does he make it sound like I was looking for a place to breastfeed, so I went to the Baseball Hall of Fame? I was that desperate.)

That Nelson Mandela remark.

Everyone seems to be ridiculing Martha Stewart for referring to Nelson Mandela after Barbara Walters asked her how she would deal with going to prison.

"I'm a really good camper. I can sleep on the ground. There are many, many good people who have gone to prison. Look at Nelson Mandela."

You can find that quote at the beginning of this article in the Wisconsin State Journal. This article, which outlines and compares on a point-by-point basis the life of Stewart and the life of Mandela, decently concedes that Stewart did not literally compare herself to Mandela, but says "it took real guts and guile (or gall) for Stewart to invoke Mandela. A lesser human would never have been able to do [it] with a straight face." That observation strikes a chord: when Larry King gave her an opportunity to deal with the remark now that people had taken it the wrong way, she said: "I wasn't comparing myself to Nelson Mandela. I am not a Nobel Prize winner." I laughed out loud at that. It's widely open to the inference that she's his equal except for the fact that she has not been awarded the Nobel Prize.



On the other hand, isn't it perfectly ordinary, when faced with a difficult task or an unfair burden, to think of an admirable person who got through an even more difficult task or carried a more monstrously unfair burden? Does anyone think that the people who say "What would Jesus do?" are claiming to be the equal of Jesus or the perfectionists affected by the New Testament verse "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect" are claiming to be the equal of God? So leave our poor sentenced perfectionist alone about the Mandela remark.

[Larry King show caller:] Martha, I would like to ask you if you do have to do jail time and you come out do you -- will you bring some of your ideas from jail to your show?



STEWART: Wouldn't it really be better if I could take my ideas from my show to jail, I think that that might be a better thing.

Here is a woman profoundly dedicated to thinking in terms of how to do things well. Millions of people look to her for ideas about how to live, to the point where that caller was hoping she could extract some ideas for living out of the prison experience. In that light, one ought to be interested in her ideas about how to go to prison. We were given a chance to see that one of the things she did was contemplate Nelson Mandela. That's useful!