"I have no problem with people in this country trying to earn a profit..."

"... but I would ask them: Would they do this to their own children, in their own neighborhood, in their own home state?"

Leave West Virginia alone!

"Barry, baby, you see what I got here... Why, this is a box of pudding, Barry."

"It says 'cook and chill' and, baby, that's what I do every night. I cook and then I chill."

$240 Worth of Pudding - watch more funny videos

That's Thomas Lennon and Michael Ian Black playing Barry and Levon on the early 90s MTV show "The State." The music was originally Marvin Gaye's "Sexual Healing," but the DVD of the series did not get the rights to the music. Unfortunately, that means the voices had to be overdubbed too. So this should actually be much funnier. But anyway, I was just thinking about this clip this morning. You don't have to worry your pretty little head about why.

Now why is it that I can't just enjoy my pudding?

"Real World: Occupy Wall Street? MTV Issues Casting Call for Protesters."

Great idea. A protest itself is a lot like a reality show anyway. There's a lot posing and performing for cameras. With MTV involved, there will be better editing and more poking into the details of the motivations of individuals and the interpersonal friction. As they say on in the "Real World" introduction: find out what happens... when people stop being polite... and start getting real. Scoff if you like, but I bet it's more real than what we get in the news.

And, MTV? If you want some protest vibe for your show, how about "Real World Madison"?

Lady Gaga's Andrew Dice Clay routine — "Joe Calderone."

She's one of the guys.

All the big pop stars want to be actors, don't they? But only 2 have succeeded, by my count. Most fail, following Elvis... not that following Elvis is such a bad thing.

The lameness of Obama's stance on Don't Ask Don't Tell.

Here he is at the MTV "townhall" yesterday:

A Conversation with President Obama on MTV

First, I can't believe he said "you look like a student" to a woman who identified herself as a member of a university faculty. That is an irrelevant and, I would say, sexist remark. Not only is it equivalent to saying "gee, you're pretty," but it's revealing that you have a picture of what professors are supposed to look like and you don't mind derailing the conversation to say she doesn't look like one. I know it's supposed to be a compliment, but it's really clueless. Believe me, I've had people say "you don't look like a law professor" or some such thing to me thousands of times over the last quarter century, and I remain superficially polite, but I can tell you it is not appropriate in a professional setting. Unless we are in a social context where it would be welcome for you to say "you look beautiful," then you should not say "you look like a student." Okay?

Now, to the substance: The woman, Bridget Todd, asks the President:

I know that you’ve mentioned that you want the Senate to repeal it before you do it yourself.

My question is — you as the President can sort of have an executive order that ends it once and for all as Harry Truman did for integration of the military in in '48. So I wonder, why don’t you do that if this is a policy that you are committed to ending?

Obama responds with a lot of words:

First of all, I haven’t “mentioned” that I’m against Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. 

Oh, lord, he begins by getting all pedantic about words. I'll get pedantic back. She didn't say he mentioned that he was against DADT. She said he mentioned that he wanted the Senate to repeal it instead of doing something that he might be able to do on his own.

I have said very clearly, including in a State of the Union Address, that I am against Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and that we’re going to end this policy. 

Fine, so he's repeating the promise that some people feel very bad that he has not kept.

That’s point number one. Point number two, the difference between my position right now and Harry Truman’s, is that Congress explicitly passed a law that took away the power of the executive branch to end this policy unilaterally. So this is not a situation in which, with the stroke of a pen, I can simply end the policy.

Now having said that, what I have been able to do is for the first time get the Chairman of the Joint Chief’s of Staff, Mike Mullen, to say he thinks the policy should end. The Secretary of Defense has said he recognizes that the policy needs to change. And we, I believe, have enough votes in the Senate to remove to go ahead and remove this constraint on me as the House has already done so that I can go ahead and end it.

But, as the linked blog post (by Jane Hamsher) indicates, he doesn't have the votes in the Senate and he hasn't put the weight of the presidency behind getting Senators to vote for repeal. He seems like he's using the statute as an excuse, so that he can play both sides on this issue. I understand the political motivation for that, but it amounts to breaking his promise to end DADT.

Now we recently had a Supreme Court — a district court case — that said DADT is unconstitutional. I agree with the basic principle that anybody who wants to serve in our armed forces, and make sacrifices on our behalf, on behalf of our national security, anybody should be able to serve. And they shouldn’t have to lie about who they are in order to serve.

So don't appeal the case! Say you think the court got it right! Or say that you think DADT isn't unconstitutional. It's just bad policy, and you object to the judiciary taking over in this area.

And so we are moving in the direction of ending this policy. It has to be done in a way that is orderly because we are involved in a war right now. 

That's pretty much a cloaked statement that he thinks the court was wrong and that the policy is constitutional. It's not "orderly" for the court to strike it down. The judiciary shouldn't be supervising the military. I'm going to assert with confidence that that is his opinion.

But this is not a question of whether the policy will end. This policy will end, and it will end on my watch.

The arc of history is long! Keep waiting, oh captive voters. Who else are you going to vote for?

But I do have an obligation to make sure that I’m following some of the rules.

Some of the rules?! Man, if you are only following some of the rules, why not give gay people a break?

I can’t simply ignore laws that are out there. I have to work to make sure they are changed.

Pssst. The Constitution is law.

The return of "Beavis and Butt-head" ... with new episodes!

Reports the NY Post:

The return of "Beavis and Butt-head" will be a backdoor means for MTV to return to showing music videos -- something the network was founded upon but abandoned in the last decade to make room for popular reality shows....

Great! I love "Beavis and Butt-head." Back in 1993, when the show premiered, people really were watching a lot of music videos, and it was great to have a show that helped us view them critically. The big joke on us was that it took 2 idiots — Beavis and Butt-head — to make us more perfectly hypercritical of the stupid junk we'd been watching.

The basic plotline revolved around two shorts-wearing, spectacularly immature teenage pals whose banter was delivered against the backbeat of their constant idiotic laughter.

Key word: shorts-wearing.

ADDED: Heh. I got distracted by the shorts theme and forgot to make the point I was aiming at. When the show first came out, we'd been really into watching music videos. But, as noted in the article, MTV abandoned its video mission long ago. The new plan is to use the show to bring back to music videos. So The original design of B&B was to make us laugh at something we were caught up in — and, essentially, to laugh at the funniest thing: ourselves. Since we're not currently into music videos, indeed the point of bringing back B&B is to get music videos back onto MTV, we won't have that element of seeing the absurdity in something we take at all seriously. But presumably Mike Judge — the genius behind "Beavis and Butt-head" — will find new ways to make it good.

AND: "This sucks. Change it... It better start rocking or I'll really give them something to cry about."

"The internet's completely over... The internet's like MTV. At one time MTV was hip and suddenly it became outdated."

"Anyway, all these computers and digital gadgets are no good. They just fill your head with numbers and that can't be good for you."

Sayeth Prince.

"The Democratic disaster scenario would make absolute sense if it did not also require that the Republicans do something right."

"The whole world is expecting a cataclysm for the Democrats in November," Gail Collins concedes. But she notes what is obvious: You can't beat something with nothing. You can't run Not A Democrat. You have to dig up an actual Republican that real people will vote for. It's not so easy.

***

Also in today's NYT is this Jeff Zeleny/Adam Nagourney piece about how Democrats who've long held seats in the House of Representatives are finding their safe districts not so safe anymore.

Representative David R. Obey has won 21 straight races, easily prevailing through wars and economic crises that have spanned presidencies from Nixon’s to Obama’s. Yet the discontent with Washington surging through politics is now threatening not only his seat but also Democratic control of Congress.

Hey, Zeleny's in Ashland. Welcome to Wisconsin!

In the Seventh District of Wisconsin, which covers 17,787 square miles from the middle of the state to Lake Superior, signs of Mr. Obey’s service in Congress are found in new bridges, highway expansions and countless other projects. Yet there are fewer signs of Mr. Obey himself. At the Democratic Party office in Wausau, his hometown, campaign placards hang in the window for Senator Russ Feingold, but none for Mr. Obey.

When asked to discuss his re-election bid, Mr. Obey declined, saying that it was too early to begin talking politics and that he was focused on his legislative duties. “I have never met anyone who thought political campaigns were too short,” he said.

Can Obey take solace in the Gail Collin's theory about the dearth of Republican opponents?

Mr. Obey, 71, was elected two years before [Sean] Duffy, 38, was born. Mr. Duffy is widely seen as leading in the Republican primary — his opponent is the candidate who lost to Mr. Obey two years ago by 22 percentage points — and his race has drawn support from party leaders in Washington, Tea Party activists and Sarah Palin.

He has been elected four times as the district attorney of Ashland County, but the attention surrounding him began in 1997 when he was on MTV’s “The Real World: Boston.” 

"The Real World"! Were you still watching "The Real World" in 1997? I bailed after Season 5 (Miami). That show peaked in San Francisco (Season 3). Here's a list of all the seasons. Boston was Season 6.

He also is well-known here as a champion lumberjack sports competitor.

He said he decided to challenge Mr. Obey because of his leading role in the economic stimulus bill, health care legislation and the growth of government. “I know that I can have a serious impact on the direction of the country if I could take out Obey,” he said.

Take out?

But Mr. Obey, who has a campaign balance of $1.4 million compared with $400,000 for Mr. Duffy, is also emblematic of a bright spot for Democrats: a financial advantage.

That's something. But $400,000 is not nothing.

ADDED: Duffy is married to Rachel from "Real World" San Francisco. Now, that means something to me. Rachel, whose full name now is Rachel Campos-Duffy, was an out-and-proud Republican on the show. And Rachel and Sean now have 6 children: Evita Pilar, Xavier Jack, Lucia-Belen, John-Paul, Paloma Pilar, and MariaVictoria Margarita.