What’s a liberal comic to do when it becomes harder every day to defend President Barack Obama?

Why, play the race card – even when it’s not even in the deck.

Comedienne Wanda Sykes, who refused to lay a humorous glove on Obama during her short-lived talk show, is now slamming Gov. Rick Perry for something he hasn’t done.

Sykes appeared on “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno” last night and tore into the GOP presidential field. Why bother speak truth to actual power – the president – when you can taunt your ideological foes?

But even by liberal standards Sykes’ shtick was out of line regarding Perry, who withdrew from the presidential field this week.

You know, he had to drop out,” she added, “because I’m pretty sure he was one more debate away from saying the N-word. He really was. Oh, he was right on the edge. He was like ‘Oh, I can’t speak in public anymore like that. One more debate, I’m just, it’s gonna fly out.’ He knew it.

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THR:

In his opening remarks, Obama recalled how he took Michelle to see Lee’s movie Do the Right Thing on their first date, according to the pool report.

Lee quipped: “Good thing you didn’t choose Driving Miss Daisy.” …

Mariah Carey and husband Nick Cannon are among the 45 guests at the $35,800-per-ticket dinner in NYC.

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All of President Barack Obama’s desperate outreach to Hollywood may end up going for naught.

Obama, who in recent days has sent out a wish list of celebrity surrogates he hopes will push his re-election campaign and assigned a special envoy to curry favor with Tinsel Town, now finds himself cut off from some of the fattest wallets in the industry.

Deadline Hollywood is reporting that some major movie moguls are refusing to cut the Obama campaign any more gaudy checks due to the administration’s refusal to back the MPAA’s online piracy legislation.

The blowup came after President Obama on Saturday dashed moguls’ hopes that he would remain on the sidelines in the dispute over the U.S. House Of Representatives’ Stop Online Piracy Act and the U.S. Senate’s Protect IP Act. In a posting on the White House web site, three of the Obama administration’s top officials for Internet and intellectual property matters said that they share many of the concerns that the Internet community has about the Hollywood-supported bills.

The trio said that they “will not support legislation that reduces freedom of expression, increases cybersecurity risk, or undermines the dynamic, innovative global Internet.” Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator Victoria Espinel, U.S. Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra, and Special Assistant to the President Howard Schmidt tried to soften the blow to Hollywood by acknowledging that that online piracy is “a serious problem that requires a  serious legislative response.” They added that they plan to host an online event “to get more input” on the matter….

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President Barack Obama inherited a mess, or so we’re endlessly told by Obama’s celebrity backers.

But the Commander in Chief apparently has enough time between fixing the economy, managing the war in Afghanistan and dealing with a near-nuclear Iran to send personal birthday greetings to a sitcom actress.

Obama fired off his best birthday cheer Jan. 9 to Zooey Deschanel, the adorable star of Fox’s “New Girl” sitcom.

Michelle and I send our warmest wishes for a happy birthday … I hope your day is filled with love and laughter, and I wish you all the best for good health and happiness in the year ahead.

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The following contains spoilers. You’ve been warned.

“Glee” was back last night after a month-long hiatus, which means that I’m back now – the morning after. Didja miss me? I missed you. And I missed “Glee” too. On what other show can I get my musical numbers and teenaged drama all wrapped in a giant bow of glorious propaganda?

There is no other.

This week, “Glee” was high on love, down on the military, and big on acceptance. Unless, of course, you actually want to join the military, in which case it’s all doom on you, and the military turns you into a drug addict and therefore your widowed mother into a liar.

Hmm… let me back up a moment.

Toward the beginning of the episode, Finn confesses to Mr. Schuester that he met with a recruiter… an army recruiter. The Glee Club coach appears troubled by the news, because you know, who joins the military unless they have to? (more…)

Poor celebrities. Don’t they ever learn their threats to leave the country if a Republican is elected president always come up empty?

Susan Sarandon still calls the U.S.A. home, as does Robert Redford.

Now, Sophia Bush is threatening to pack up her bags and flee if President Obama isn’t re-elected in 2012.

Who’s Sophia Bush? Good question. She’s a co-star on the long-running CW drama “One Tree Hill” and her impressive film resume includes “John Tucker Must Die” and the remake of “The Hitcher.”

Here’s Bush explaining her moving plans should the GOP take back the White House come 2012.

I’m afraid for our country that people like this [current Republican candidates] could even be thought of as the president. I live in a country where I believe all men are created equal, not just wealthy white guys. I believe all men, all women, regardless of race, gender, socioeconomic background, you deserve the same rights. If that’s not where our country is going, then I’ll leave. I don’t need to live here. I’m out! I’ll go to Canada, peace! See you later.

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BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN’S NEW ALBUM IS HIS ‘ANGRIEST’ YET

Like a new Stephen King novel, I miss being excited about upcoming Springsteen albums, and now even the ones I did enjoy (pre-2001) sound a little silly and simple. I haven’t even bothered to listen to his last few releases. Never thought that would happen. And it’s not Springsteen’s obnoxious politics, either. He just bores me, kind of like Wes Anderson’s “sensibility.”

Sinatra. Everything you need to know about life, love, youth, growing old, and what it means to be a man is found in the combined works of one Francis Albert Sinatra.

FIVE NEW POSTERS FOR STAR WARS: EPISODE I THE PHANTOM MENACE 3D

Unless the tagline reads: Watch It Suck In a Third Dimension!, a class action false advertising suit is imminent.

ARE BIOPICS BAD FOR US?

This captures some of the problem:

Indeed, I’m not actually sure The Iron Lady does have any meaning, and would rate it primarily as a simply a striking replication, hamstrung in its ability to be much else. It skips across themes of power, struggle, loss, aging and personal conviction but audiences aren’t going to get any depth, because they’re too distracted by the novelty of Meryl Streep’s uncanny makeup.

If you want movies with genuine character that offer affecting tales of strong female outsiders overcoming great difficulties you can watch, say, An Education, Whip It, Hanna or The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, to name a few diverse flicks of recent vintage. All of them are built around fictional lead protagonists but have way more soul, substance, human heart and authenticity than The Iron Lady.

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The Comedy Central series “Key & Peele” doesn’t debut until Jan. 31, but a sneak peek at their content suggests it’s yet another humor program protecting The One.

“Key & Peele” stars comics Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele in a new sketch comedy series that fills a void left by the old “In Living Color” series. “Saturday Night Live” has featured a mostly white cast for decades, but having two black performers front and center could open up some new comedic possibilities.

But how will the show treat the first black president?

If this clip is any indication, the answer is – with deference and defense. [warning: offensive language]

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Meryl Streep doesn’t think President Barack Obama has a spine of steel like a certain British Prime Minister.

Then again, who could be a tough, decisive leader in these challenging times, Streep argues during a new interview with The Huffington Post.

Streep, all but guaranteed to pick up another Oscar nomination for her turn as Margaret Thatcher in “The Iron Lady,” served up a lengthy excuse for Obama when asked what the president could learn from Thatcher’s political career:

It was a completely different world. The Huffington Post didn’t exist. [Today] you have to respond to the YouTube clip going over and over of the thing you said that morning … I think, in a way, that clarity was possible, that conviction politics were possible in a way that maybe they’re not. You’d hope to think they are.

I’ve heard people in government lament that cameras are everywhere because you can’t make those deals, you can’t as a conservative member of your district make a deal with somebody on the the liberal side because you’re dead. It’s photographed, it’s seen. We don’t get those Lyndon Johnson solutions anymore.

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For years, actors have been essentially insulting half their potential audience by trashing the right in press interviews and talk show appearances.

Just ask Kate Beckinsale, who told Entertainment Weekly regarding the 2008 elections – “And I was so shocked to see people admitting to being Republican on their front lawn!”

Now, The Hollywood Reporter’s Heat Index feature suggests the reason Matt Damon’s “We Bought a Zoo” flopped was … wait for it … because Damon dared to critique President Barack Obama. [Link behind paywall]

The actor’s media slams of President Obama and ‘Bourne Identity’ writer Tony Gilroy probably didn’t help ‘We Bought a Zoo,’ which has disappointed at the box office.

When was the last time a major press outlet blamed the death of the movie star on said stars mocking the people who pay for movie tickets?

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If Matt Damon is disillusioned with The One, Harry Belafonte is downright dismayed with President Barack Obama’s first term.

The Calypso crooner didn’t hold back during a recent radio chat on “Smiley & West,” co-hosted by Tavis Smiley and Cornel West, even if a rebroadcast of the program snipped out Belafonte’s most punishing comments, according to The Radio Equalizer.

“My question is, what legacy will he leave, having the opportunity to serve under such hugely dramatic circumstances and had such a huge impact on the universal state of things … how could he have had such a splendid opportunity to do more than most presidents would have ever been able to do, and he let that opportunity slip away from him.

I’m very cautious of the fact that those who think he has some second agenda and only if he could be given a second term for us to see the new light, new things will be revealed, new efforts will be made to take us to a place other than where we’ve been and where we languish. I just don’t trust that. I don’t believe that’s a safe way and accurate way to look at this scenario. If there was the kind of moral compass serving Barack Obama the way we hoped, the moral force would have helped him make choices, the absence of that force in his equations, that barometer to guide him when he has to make these decisions that are hugely complicated, he should have come to the table with the things that would have helped us in this moment of crisis.”

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Late-night host Conan O’Brien takes aim at President Obama’s plans to “streamline” the military through reduced defense spending while the rest of the Congressional budget inflates.

From Team Coco:

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Oscar winner George Clooney doesn’t think it makes sense for actors to campaign for their favorite politician.

Then why does everyone with access to a TV or web platform know of his undying affection for President Barack Obama?

Clooney, currently starring in “The Descendants,” chatted with former Clinton advisor George Stephanopoulos this week about the actor’s views on the current political climate. And while fellow liberal Matt Damon is willing to concede Obama’s first term hasn’t gone as he expected, Clooney refuses to stray off the Hollywood reservation, politically speaking.

“I’m a Democrat, I’m a believer in him.” Of Obama’s years in office he said, “I think he’s done a wonderful job, I think he’s having a tough time in a very difficult environment. So I root for him. I root for the president of the United States.”

On air to promote his flick, “The Descendants,” Clooney also talked about celebrity fundraising and campaigning for a politician. He clarified to Stephanopoulos that he had raised money but not campaigned for Obama. Said the actor, “I didn’t do any campaigning. I’m a big believer — I really don’t think it helps much to have well-known, famous people campaigning for you. I don’t think that does you a lot of good.”

So, campaigning is out of the question, but chatting up journalists about one’s affection for the president is grand, as is meeting with Obama personally to discuss various issues in a chummy fashion.

Just checking.

When then-Sen. Barack Obama promised Hope and Change, what he really meant was, “gimme eight full years” for the full array of said hope and change.

So thinks Janelle Monae, the young soul singer gearing up for her first Obama fundraiser.

Monae, whose hits include, “Tightrope” and “Cold War,” is all too eager to line the coffers of the Obama war chest. After all, who can get anything done in a mere four years?

Monae will perform at a fundraiser for the president’s re-election in the Windy City on Wednesday. Explaining her support of Obama on her Facebook page, Monae wrote: “President Obama is not finished. Let. the. man. finish.”

Unlike the corrupt mainstream media, Disney Studios has no obligation, moral or otherwise, to inform anyone about the White House throwing a lavish Hollywood-themed party during the depths of the Great Recession. But it is more than a little revealing that just prior to the release of a big-budget adaptation of “Alice In Wonderland,” the studio wouldn’t use a White House event ATTENDED BY THE PRESIDENT AND THE FIRST LADY to help promote the film.

The New York Post:

A White House “Alice in Wonderland” costume ball — put on by Johnny Depp and Hollywood director Tim Burton — proved to be a Mad-as-a-Hatter idea that was never made public for fear of a political backlash during hard economic times, according to a new tell-all.

“The Obamas,” by New York Times correspondent Jodi Kantor, tells of the first Halloween party the first couple feted at the White House in 2009. It was so over the top that “Star Wars” creator George Lucas sent the original Chewbacca to mingle with invited guests.

The book reveals how any official announcement of the glittering affair — coming at a time when Tea Party activists and voters furious over the lagging economy, 10-percent unemployment rate, bank bailouts and Obama’s health-care plan were staging protests — quickly vanished down the rabbit hole.

That was in October of 2009, five months prior to the film’s release in March of the following year. And yet, with over a hundred million on the line, the publicity-savvy Disney all but ignored an event that would’ve generated a ton of publicity towards the film and most certainly increased the all-important “awareness” studios crave most in the months leading up to the release of a tentpole such as this one.

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You would think a humor publication would find plenty to mock about Barack Obama.

After all, then-Sen. Barack Obama campaigned in 2008 alongside Greek columns and promised his election would be the moment “when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal …” And let’s not forget the plethora of broken campaign promises, battalions of straw men and class warfare that have come to define the last three years.

Instead, The Onion serves up faux news stories like this:

Obama Openly Asks Nation Why on Earth He Would Want to Serve for Another Term

Yes, the media narrative regarding Obama has officially arrived at a newspaper dedicated to political satire. Liberal humorists would rather protect their own than make us laugh and speak truth to power.

PITTSBURGH—Citing three years of exhausting partisan politics, constant gridlock in Congress, and an overall feeling that the entire nation has “completely lost it,” President Barack Obama openly asked a campaign-rally crowd Tuesday why he’d want to serve another term as president of “this godforsaken country.”

“My fellow Americans, I come to you today to ask, why?” Obama said to 1,200 people gathered inside a gymnasium at Taylor Allderdice High School. “Why can’t our congressional leaders work together to create jobs? Why can’t Wall Street ever be held accountable? And most important, why on God’s green earth would I voluntarily subject myself to this nonsense for another four years?”

Didn’t Obama campaign as a non-partisan healer who would rise above congressional gridlock? And didn’t he enjoy a Democratic Congress for his first two years in office that allowed him to pass virtually anything he pleased?

Now, here come the delusional talking points that could have been uttered by Bill Press or any other reality-challenged liberal pundit.

“I have a pen and some paper right here,” Obama said Wednesday morning at a town hall meeting in Ohio. “Let’s list the pros and cons of being president. Con: There are people out there who literally want to shoot you dead. Con: We live in a country seriously considering a Newt Gingrich White House. Con: You can help 40 million Americans receive health care, sign legislation that regulates a financial system run amok, give the order to kill Osama bin Laden, help topple Muammar Qaddafi’s tyrannical regime without losing the life of one American soldier, end the war in Iraq, repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, stave off a second Great Depression, take out more than 30 top al- Qaeda leaders, and somehow everyone still calls you the next Jimmy Carter.”

And what’s the video link currently at the bottom of the story page: Did the media treat Bachmann unfairly because she’s an insane woman?

Expect much, much more of this as the presidential elections come into sharper focus.

President Barack Obama had a Halloween to remember back in 2009, the same time the fledgling Tea Party movement was alerting the nation to Beltway waste and fraud.

The new book “The Obamas” by New York Times correspondent Jodi Kantor spills fresh dirt on a Oct. 2009 costume ball which included “Alice in Wonderland” star Johnny Depp and the film’s director, Tim Burton.

The event was kept from the public by the transparency-loving First Family for political reasons, Kantor says.

The book reveals how any official announcement of the glittering affair — coming at a time when Tea Party activists and voters furious over the lagging economy, 10-percent unemployment rate, bank bailouts and Obama’s health-care plan were staging protests — quickly vanished down the rabbit hole.

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I highly recommend the documentary “His Way” as a testament to one man’s persistence, the value of being optimistic and looking for opportunities when others see problems. In covering a man, Jerry Weintraub, for whom the Bush family helped end anti-Semitic policies at many Kennebunkport, Maine establishments in the 1960s and who counted both Ronald Reagan and Armand Hammer as friends, Douglas McGrath directed one of this past year’s best biographical documentaries.

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In these trying times, this story of one man’s unrelenting efforts to succeed can serve as an inspiration to many. I know “His Way” inspired me. After learning how Jerry cold-called Elvis Presley’s Manager, Colonel Tom Parker, every day for an entire year for the right to take Elvis on tour (for the first time in nearly a decade), I decided to roll the dice and take my own film out on the road to build an audience. Concluding our interview with Douglas McGrath, director of the documentary “His Way,” we talked about more of the film, including the amazing segments on Weintraub’s experiences with Elvis Presley and Colonel Tom Parker and Frank Sinatra.

KW: How did you go about choosing which stories or chapters to cover or not cover from the book?

DM: Well, I didn’t do it that way. I didn’t think of them in terms of chapters. I just thought of them in terms of stories. But, I knew we’d have ninety minutes, an hour and forty-five maybe at most and I just thought, there’s no way to go through everything. I just thought “I’m going to ask about all the stuff I liked the best and the things that were really the big tent poles of his life.” So, I thought I’d better go with the things that really tell us, without repeating it, what his magic was. And the Elvis story is emblematic of his whole career, you know, that tells you how he started with nothing, he persisted. He won the contract, so to speak, the right to take him. He almost blew it. When you think of 20th Century entertainment, particularly musical entertainment and particularly male musical entertainment — you know, you have Elvis and you have Sinatra. Those guys are the big tent poles in that story. (more…)

Sony Pictures and Academy Award-winning director Kathryn Bigelow have already had to deal with the nightmare that resulted from the cynical release date of their upcoming film surrounding the hunt for and the killing of Osama bin Laden. The original idea was for Sony to release the dramatization this October, just a few weeks prior to the presidential election. Lame, dishonest  protestations aside, obviously the goal was to use the film to give President Obama a reelection boost, not only with the film itself but also with the complicit news media using the film as an excuse to resurrect one of the President’s only successes (thanks to the Bush Administrations willingness to waterboard). Last month, Sony wisely blinked and pushed the release date to after the election, but that doesn’t change what might have happened prior to that move.

Many have speculated (including me) that Sony, Bigelow, screenwriter Mark  Boal, and the White House all got into bed together to create a propaganda film that would hit theatres with the kind of exquisite timing that is never an accident. It’s no secret Sony, like the rest of Hollywood, is deep in the tank for President FailureTeleprompter, and this $40 to $70 million propaganda film would most certainly serve as an in-kind propaganda contribution  that delivered the kind of deus ex machina that can only be dreamed up in Hollywood. Yesterday, and for very good reason, the story turned once again when the Pentagon and CIA got involved.

Apparently, it’s not just us extreme right-wing Republicans who are concerned over the possibility that the White House might have given the studio and filmmakers classified information they weren’t cleared to receive:

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The love between then-Sen. Barack Obama and the Hollywood elite was so deep Oscar winner Halle Berry proclaimed she would “collect paper cups off the ground to make his pathway clear.”

Director Spike Lee insisted history would be measured in two distinct times – “Before Barack and After Barack.”

For 2012, said love may be on the rocks. Why else would Obama dispatch a key lieutenant to mend the fences torn down by three years of his administration in action?

President Barack Obama’s top Hollywood fundraiser has resigned the ambassadorship to the Bahamas and returned to Los Angeles in the hopes of patching up the incumbent president’s battered relationship with the entertainment industry, The Hollywood Reporter has learned….

Sources told THR that Obama’s reelection campaign plans to use Avant as one of its top liaisons to the entertainment community.

These sources characterize the relationship between the Obama administration and Hollywood as tense and troubled, even though all of the president’s fundraisers in town have sold out and have been attended by a diverse array of industry leaders.

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