Obama makes an O.J. Simpson joke and he can't get the name of the SUV right.

"Elmo has been seen in a white Suburban!"

He turned the Ford into a Chevy. Maybe that was intentional, since he saved General Motors and not Ford.

Or did he pick Suburban because he hates suburbia? Stanley Kurtz has written a whole book on that subject, which he summarizes here. Excerpt:

The centerpiece of the Obama administration’s anti-suburban plans is a little-known and seemingly modest program called the Sustainable Communities Initiative. The “regional planning grants” funded under this initiative — many of them in battleground states like Florida, Virginia, and Ohio — are set to recommend redistributive policies, as well as transportation and development plans, designed to undercut America’s suburbs. Few have noticed this because the program’s goals are muffled in the impenetrable jargon of “sustainability,” while its recommendations are to be unveiled only in a possible second Obama term.

But jokes about "Sesame Street" characters are so much more fun to play around with right now... la la la... as we run up to the election.

Obama’s former community-organizing mentors and colleagues want the administration to condition future federal aid on state adherence to the recommendations served up by these anti-suburban planning commissions. That would quickly turn an apparently modest set of regional-planning grants into a lever for sweeping social change.

Big Bird... tee hee... Elmo... ha ha... woman with a slashed throat... blood everywhere....

"Having made the greatest legal blunder of the 20th century, he’s trying to blame it on a dead man."

A pithy pushback, from Alan Dershowitz to Christopher Darden, the erstwhile prosecutor who thought it was a good idea to ask O.J. Simpson to put on that glove.

The dead man is Johnnie Cochran:

"You return force with force when somebody assaults you. George was out of breath, he was barely conscious."

"There would have been George dead if he had not acted decisively and instantaneously in that moment when he was being disarmed."

Zimmerman's brother speaks:



Quoted in the linked article, at CNN.com, is Marcia Clark, the prosecutor who failed to convince a jury that O.J. Simpson was guilty. She's talking about the photographs of George Zimmerman, which people on the web are saying prove he didn't have a broken nose.

Suddenly, everyone's a doctor, the kind of doctor that does diagnoses through blurry web videos. Flashback: Remember when Senator Bill Frist — a Harvard-trained doctor — questioned the diagnosis of Terri Schiavo "based on a review of the video footage which I spent an hour or so looking at last night in my office"? He got slammed for that.

But here's Marcia Clark: "Anyone who's seen a broken nose is aware of the fact that the blood spurts. That leads to a lot of bleeding. You would have expected to see blood on the front of George Zimmerman's shirt collar. Blood — you know, in many more places."

Anyone knows. Of course, a broken nose is a veritable geyser. So says the expert on blood evidence. I know she's seen a lot of blood. Blood does gush from slashed throats. But a broken nose? I'm going to Google that. Here's a list of symptoms, according the Mayo Clinic website (boldface added):

Signs and symptoms of a broken nose may appear immediately or may take up to three days to develop. Signs and symptoms may include:

Pain or tenderness, especially when touching your nose
Swelling of your nose and surrounding areas
Bleeding from your nose
Bruising around your nose or eyes
Crooked or misshapen nose
Difficulty breathing through your nose
Discharge of mucus from your nose (rhinorrhea)
Feeling that one or both of your nasal passages are blocked

I am trying to fathom the depths of mendacity around the Trayvon Martin case. Why aren't people afraid of uttering statements that are so easily devastated?

For a prosecutor to make extreme and overconfident statements about evidence, when the statements are not even remotely accurate and the inaccuracy is detected through 5 seconds of Googling? I understand why people want to lie and deceive, but to throw away your credibility so carelessly?

"Casey Anthony's 'Not Guilty' Verdict..."

"...  summons O.J. Memories."

Did you know that the role of the Terminator was originally offered to O.J. Simpson?

And Cher rejected Thelma in "Thelma and Louise"?

"I could have turned everything into a crime scene like O.J., cutting everybody's throat."

"You live half a mile from the 20,000-square-foot home you can't go to anymore, you're driving through downtown Clearwater and see a 19-year-old boy driving your Escalade, and you know that a 19-year-old boy is sleeping in your bed, with your wife. I totally understand O.J. I get it."

O.J. Simpson gets at least 15 years in prison.

He said he was "stupid" and "sorry" and "didn't know [he] was doing anything illegal," that he thought he "was confronting friends" and "retrieving [his] things." But it will be at least 15 years for the 61-year-old football great.

Here he is in happier times.

Tom Cruise roasts Matt Lauer.

So Matt Lauer got one of those Friars Club roasts, and you wouldn't care -- would you? -- but Tom Cruise showed his adorable face, and he was hysterically funny:

"You know, I was just taking his advice. He told me, 'Nobody wants to hear about your dopey movie. Go crazy. People will love you for it.'

"Matt's great at giving advice. When Katie asked him if she should leave the 'Today' show for CBS, he said, 'Absolutely, you should definitely do that. People will love you for it.'

"Jay Leno was No. 1, but Matt told [NBC exec] Jeff Zucker to cut his contract. 'You'll be ahead of the curve before his ratings go down and you'll look like a genius. People will love you for it.' Leno's ratings never went down.

"A few months ago, he was talking to O.J. Simpson and he said, 'Juice, those guys in Vegas have all your stuff. Don't be a p---y, just go there and take it. Trust me, Juice. People will love you for it.'"...

"Matt and I are so close now, that if we can't be together, we talk on the phone three, four times a day. I'll call him up and ask, 'Are you watching this?' And he'll just say 'yeah,' and we'll watch the whole show together on the phone."

More here:

Cruise ended with a toast: "To our friend who we wake up to every morning only because we had the channel on NBC before we fell asleep." He then told Lauer, "Lose my number, you glib putz." And then signed off by finally saying, "Cruise out!" which was kind of unspeakably awesome. Lauer jumped up to the mike: "Tom, can you stay? We can get a booster seat."

Later, Lauer explained that he'd never been prepared for what a sensation the infamous 2005 interview would be, until he went home, "and someone told me what the word glib actually means. That burned my fucking ass!" Lauer also announced that he and Cruise have an interview scheduled for December. "So officially we have now buried the hatchet," he said. "But just between us, if he pulls that shit again, I will fuck him up. The guy is, like, five-foot-three. I will drop a building on his ass."

Do you love it when Lauer talks dirty to Tom?

This needs to be on YouTube, but it's not, so let's go back to Tom's wonderful old performance on "The Today Show" -- which will help you if you've lost track of the "glib" reference:



Ah! That never gets old.

So, finally, O.J. Simpson will go to prison.

Convicted of armed robbery and kidnapping:

The jury of nine women and three men deliberated for 13 hours, mulling weeks of testimony as well as hours of surreptitious audio recordings of the planning and execution of the event by Thomas Riccio, a memorabilia auctioneer who arranged the confrontation.

There were no blacks among the jurors, a concern of the defense that Mr. Simpson’s attorneys said would likely be part of an appeal. Eight of 12 jurors were black when he was acquitted in 1995 on charges that he stabbed to death his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend, Ronald Goldman....

“We don’t want people going into rooms to take property,” Mr. Roger said in his closing arguments on Thursday. “That is robbery. You don’t go in and get a gun and demand property from people.”

Four of the 24 witnesses who testified were the other men who had accompanied Mr. Simpson and Mr. Stewart, all of whom have accepted plea deals from prosecutors in exchange for testimony. Two of them, Walter Alexander and Michael McClinton, carried guns in the incident, and one, Mr. McClinton, testified that he did so at Mr. Simpson’s request.

Mr. Simpson said he did not know that the two would carry weapons and never saw any guns displayed during the incident....

[Simpson's lawyer Yale] Galanter attacked that issue in his closing, noting that Mr. Riccio’s recorder had picked up police officers at the crime scene seeming to exult in their chance to prosecute Mr. Simpson. He also noted that Mr. Riccio alone testified that he had made more than $200,000 in fees from the news media in exchange for interviews and rights to his recordings.

“This case has never been about a search for the true facts,” Mr. Galanter said. “This case has taken on a life of its own because Mr. Simpson’s involved. You know that, I know that, every cooperator, every person with a gun, every person who signed a book deal, every person who got paid money, the police, the district attorney’s office, was only interested in one thing: Mr. Simpson.”

Did O.J. Simpson get a fair trial?
	Yes! He committed robbery and kidnapping.
	Yes! He's a murderer.
	No. Those old murders infected this trial.
	Let the appellate court determine if there were errors.
pollcode.com free polls

"As things got heated, I just remember Nicole fell and hurt herself. And this guy kind of got into a karate thing."

O.J. Simpson describes the murders:

It was then, he says, that “I remember I grabbed the knife.” Later, asked about whether he had taken off a glove before handling the knife, Mr. Simpson says, “You know, I had no conscious memory of doing that, but obviously I must have because they found a glove there.”

According to the transcript, that moment is one of several during the interview in which Mr. Simpson, while maintaining that he is merely recounting a hypothetical narrative, says rather oddly that he cannot remember certain details.

Simpson's lawyer tries to explain. Simpson was bound by a contract with the publisher, and it required him to follow a script. The whole thing was meant as entertainment --"It was even more than entertainment... It was entertainment with a purpose, and the purpose was to sell the book." Stop, you're killing us.

Doesn't the O.J. Simpson book represent "a decision... to get such a book written and to get him to cooperate with it"?

Christopher Hitchens thinks so:

Of the many things I can remember about the trial... one detail that sticks in my mind was the incidental disclosure that Simpson can barely read or write. This is, in other words, not just a decision to publish "his" book. It is a decision, which must have been taken some time ago, to get such a book written and to get him to cooperate with it. The title is, of course, illiterate to start with ("If I Did It, Here's How It Happened" rather than "If I Had Done It, Here's How I Would Have") as well as an admission (because, however modified or qualified, the "Here's How It Happened" still stands on its own) but both of those offenses are quite possible in today's publishing. It would still be mildly interesting to know who cooked up the idea and who did the inducement and the ghosting. The only thing that definitely didn't happen, rather like his ongoing search for the real killer, was Simpson bringing in a manuscript and submitting it for publication.

Finally! It's the podcast!

Maybe you didn't think there would ever be a new episode of the podcast, but here it is, Audible Althouse #71. I talk about why I haven't been podcasting, the CNN "e-lection" night party, Bloggingheads.tv, Buster Keaton, Rod Stewart, O.J. Simpson, that guy who had sex with a deer carcass... etc., etc. It's a podcast, in other words.

Stream it right through your computer here. But all crazily busy people know it's best to subscribe on iTunes:

For $3.5 million, would you confess to murders for which you were certain you could not be prosecuted?

Ignore O.J. Simpson and his lurid, meaningless book. If you can.

"If I had a hammer, I am hammering in the morning."

Just an imagined song lyric, running through my head, as I think about grammar, on the occasion of seeing the TV show title: "O.J. Simpson: If I Did It, Here's How It Happened."

Mel Gibson, you are discredited forever.

Everything you ever did is now tainted.

"Freedom!" It has no meaning anymore.

What artist has ever crashed like this? Not Michael Jackson. Not Woody Allen. Not O.J. Simpson. You've shown an evil heart and it changes the meaning of all of your artistic work. How horrible! How painful! Try to imagine the penance you must do.

Aye, fight and you may die, run, and you'll live... at least for a while. And dying in your beds, many years from now, would you be willin' to trade ALL the days, from this day to that, for one chance, just one chance, to come back here and tell our enemies that they may take our lives, but they'll never take... OUR FREEDOM!

So sad to think of the Mel Gibson I thought existed.

IN THE COMMENTS: A lot of people are defending Gibson and complaining that people are criticizing him because he's considered right wing. I note that doesn't explain my position, which has nothing to do with his politics, whatever they're supposed to be. I concede that my comment about O.J. Simpson is extreme (and that Simpson isn't an artist, though it would be easy to make up some sports-talk bullshit declaring his athleticism artistic). My point is that what Simpson (presumably) did doesn't change the meaning of the achievements that made him a big star. Gibson, on the other hand, has revealed something loathsome about his mind that affects our interpretation of the works of art that sprang from that mind. In particular, it changes "The Passion of the Christ," which had to be defended at the time of its release from charges that it is anti-Semitic.

UPDATE: Details on the aftermath of Mel's meltdown. I note the restaurant where he'd been drinking is called Moonshadows. Do we really need to think about Cat Stevens here? Oh, if I ever lose my reputation, oh if.... I won't have to work in Hollywood no more.

"They're all liars!"

I just saw a clip of Robert Blake on TV. He's dramatically re-infused with life and talking like the tough guys he used to play. I wonder what we'll see of him now. Lots of interviews probably. But will people accept him as an innocent, falsely accused man or see him as a murderer on the loose? Did you hear Nancy Drake on CNN last night, scoffing at the jurors? "Who do they think killed her?" The written word cannot convey the outrage and scorn of the inimitiable Drake launching that question.

Like O.J. Simpson, he faces a civil suit, where the results are likely to be different. And Blake is so old and was so forgotten that it was hard to picture him doing anything other than slinking back into obscurity. But perhaps he's become an interesting current celebrity now. When I heard him spit "They're all liars!" I found him interesting.