While Kathleen Parker props the latest phase of her PleaseGodLikeMe career next to a whore-monger and embarrasses herself nightly with dismal ratings of less than a half-million viewers (well below Campbell Brown), the former Governor of Alaska who inspired the dishonest and mercenary impulses that made Ms. Parker who she is today, shattered ratings records last night doing what she does best, just being herself:

Sarah Palin’s documentary / travelogue / reality / biopic shattered TLC ratings records Sunday night.   

The debut of Sarah Palin’s Alaska delivered a whopping 5 million viewers.

The first episode of the eight-part series was the most-watched program launch in TLC’s history.

No doubt Ms. Parker’s response to yet another Palin triumph will be to hammer out a new round of snarky, superior opinion columns that will prove once again (to at least the .05% of the population who watch Parker/Spitzer) that her ability to craft superior snark trumps anyone who successfully governed a large state, won the Republican nomination for Vice President, and is currently changing the face of American electoral politics one endorsement at a time.

So two nights ago CNN launched the chat show Parker/Spitzer, starring turgid gargoyle Eliot Spitzer and grinning rom-con Kathleen Parker. In it, former cokehead Aaron Sorkin, to the delight of both hosts, called Sarah Palin an “idiot.”

Here it is, and watch Spitzer’s response.

Hilarious! How odd is it that a dude who paid thousands to denigrate women takes pleasure in other men denigrating women!

And by odd, I mean, not surprising.

Not to be outdone, the next day the perverse and perhaps insane director Oliver Stone waddled onto the same show and called Palin a moron, comparing her to Father Coughlin and the KKK.

And, not in a good way.

Behold. (more…)

I didn’t think it was possible, I don’t think anyone did, but it appears that CNN can and has done worse than Sanchez! It’s not like the bar was set that high, I mean really, it was Sanchez. Now we have faux-conservative Kathleen Parker who has an odd paranoia concerning Sarah Palin.

It’s the first night of your big show, your chance to make something happen, to do something newsworthy! What do you talk about? For Parker the answer is simple: Sarah Palin. Okay, okay ,we can give her that for the first night. I mean, Sarah Palin is the only reason that anyone knows Parker’s name. It’s the topic that put her on the map. I get it. But in three separate interviews in two nights the number one question on Parker’s mind is Sarah Palin? Is this going to be a running thing?

Even more repellent than Parker’s unhealthy vitriol toward Palin is the lack of challenge to the most egregious, ill-informed and downright mean comments said about Palin — in the first two nights of the new Parker/Spitzer show. In her first interview, which kicked off the show, Parker asked Andrew Breitbart about Sarah Palin. After Breitbart responded that she is the conservative “Oprah” for the new media, fellow guest Thomas Frank went on to say that Sarah “captures a sense of grievance” that Americans identify with.

Not only was he not challenged on what he said about Sarah Palin, forcing him to give proof beyond the title of a book that someone else wrote about her, but he was never asked to defend his statements about what he implied about the American people. (more…)

Only two days on the air and already it appears as though CNN’s “Parker Spitzer” is going for a perfect record when it comes to inviting Elite Hollywoodists on to savage Sarah Palin. Last night it was Aaron Sorkin — who’s old man is quite the real American, donchaknow! Tonight it’s fading director Oliver Stone, who manages to make Sorkin look like a Tea Partier by comparison.

Stone not only calls Palin a “moron,” he intentionally and maliciously compares the former Alaskan Governor and her influential political movement to the anti-Semitic Father Coughlin and the Ku Klux Klan. By extension, he’s also labelling we unsophisticates who admire Palin as dupes, haters h8ers, or  both. And how effective is it for Mr. Jews-Dominate-The-Media to be referencing Coughlin — though that little piece of irony appears to have flown right by our hosts.

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Color me not shocked. Stone is a destroyer. That’s what he does. He’s never built or ennobled anything in his life. Whatever inadequacies and insecurities he suffers from, they are what drives this once great director to constantly tear down — by whatever lies necessary, that which makes him feel ashamed. Once upon a time this dark quality worked as a muse that produced marvelous cinema. Today, as it burns out, it produces only junk like “W.” and “Wall Street 2″ — the work of an old man shouting, get off my lawn.

Knowing this, you have to expect that when confronted with someone as centered, solid, vibrant and unaffected as Sarah Palin, that a bitter, aging nihilist like Stone (or Letterman) is going to spew as much hateful poison in her direction as he can, and at every opportunity. What I didn’t expect, however, even from a Kathleen Parker (who made her name criticizing Palin), was that Stone would apparently be allowed to make such ugly, indefensible, and cruel statements without be challenged on them. And I say “apparently” because obviously we’re not seeing the entire interview. But by the time the clip ends, the discussion has moved way beyond the Klan comments. (more…)

There’s a “new” old name suddenly in circulation that is both filled with ancient history and ripe with a revolutionary spirit for today’s game-changing events.

Zahra.

Well known to Muslims, Fatima az-Zahra was one of four daughters of the prophet Muhammad. Today, Zahra is also the name of two important, outspoken women of Iran.

One is Zahra Rahnavard, the courageous and charismatic wife of the allegedly defeated Iranian presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi. The other is Zahra Khanum, the equally courageous and charismatic woman portrayed in a new movie, “The Stoning of Soraya M.,” about the death of an Iranian woman on trumped-up charges of adultery.

Begging forgiveness for this confederacy of cliches, but we seem to have a perfect storm of tipping points. (more…)

[ed. note: a number of you have written requesting I invite T. Coddington Van Voorhees VII back for another analysis of the sad state of the conservative movement. After some cajoling and a bottle of VSOP, he agreed.]

T. Coddington Van Voorhees VII
Editor, the National Topsider
Membership Chairman, The Newport Club

Much has been written about the fate of the conservative movement in the months since last I corresponded with you. I won’t belabor the barrels of ink expended in the printing of its obituary, nor will I bore you with further reading of its entrails. Suffice it to say the grand old ship is in the doldrums, adrift in the electoral currents, with nary a harbor on the horizon. But it is time we leave such map room mopery aside and navigate a bold new course for the conservative armada. One needn’t have a 400-year old heirloom scrimshaw sextant for this task; but, fortunately, I do. (more…)