Terrific makeup. Top-flight impersonations. Impressive production values.

Actor Justin Long proves in his latest video that’s he’s not ready for prime time, “SNL” style.

Long is partnering with far-left MoveOn.org to play up the already discredited meme that former Gov. Mitt Romney likes to fire people. “SNL” beat Long to the punch, but the “Live Free or Die Hard” star doesn’t want to let it go.

The video doesn’t offer a single solid laugh, and the tax return gag is instantly moldy since Romney recently released them. Perhaps Long and his celebrity pals can show us their tax returns and compare how much they give to charity as opposed to Romney. It’s likely they’ll eclipse the cash doled out by President Obama, but that’s a pretty low ceiling.

I was in Austin Wednesday for the Texas Unions Day Off as they paraded around demanding state government keep its dirty paws off their pensions because, you know, we should keep cutting Child Support Programs and the Cancer Research & Prevention Institute so they can continue planning their retirement party in Jamaica, but whatever.

These two aren't going anywhere!

After the crowds dispersed to collect on the boxed lunch they were promised, I was approached by a guy who I immediately identified as a liberal, but not a union member (he wasn’t wearing a solid-color t-shirt, but he did reek of hipster).  We exchanged niceties and politely told each other what we did: I’m a conservative blogger and he works for Moveon.org.

Yah.

Niceties continued and he asked me if I’d mind taking a few minutes to speak with him on camera.  I believe both sides can engage in civil discussions and he was being very kind, so I agreed.

“What are some of your childhood Sesame Street memories?”
Um, what? Keeping up with the polite conversation, I answered about Elmo, Big Bird, counting – you know, Sesame Street stuff.

“Do you believe taking away federal funds for Public Broadcasting will rob future children of Sesame Street memories, like what you still clearly recall fondly today?”
Seriously?  We’re really still talking about Sesame Street funding?  14 trillion in debt…

“If Sesame Street were to be privately funded, do you think having a small group of people in charge would change the messaging and educational standards of the program?”
How on earth did you find a way to make letters and numbers partisan?

The questions went on and on, but he was being so nice about it that I continued to politely answer until I asked to be excused to make an appointment (which he kindly respected).  Overall, it was a very pleasant experience, except I just wouldn’t give him the answers that he wanted.

He lives in a trashcan. Would homeless really be that much worse?

If we de-fund Sesame Street, I promise you Oscar the Grouch won’t lose his trashcan.  Big Bird will still have his big ol’ nest and Bert & Ernie will still have that ambiguously awkward roommate situation.  The cultural icon that is Sesame Street will be snatched up by a private company, individual, or coalition of such for millions and millions of dollars.  There is a boatload of money to be made selling Sesame Street toys, clothes, books, DVDs, and live performance tickets.  Trust me, Sesame Street isn’t going anywhere.

As for the programming, well, there’s only so much room for interpretation of the alphabet and numbers, shapes and colors.  Sure, you can teach it in different languages and use flashy graphics, but the fundamentals of toddler education remain the same at home and abroad.  If, however, some Big Shot at 123 Sesame Street Corporate decided he wanted to change it up, I promise you that if he put one well-manicured toe tucked inside a Gucci ostrich loafer out of line, mothers around the world would retaliate.  If there is one group you don’t want to poke with a big stick, it’s new mamas.

That said, it’s evident to me that the market would drive the content of Sesame Street.  Parents will remain vigilant about the content, presentation, and products of the program regardless of who funds it, but perhaps even more so if it’s privately run.  Don’t put it past an infuriated mother to put the kid in the Pack-N-Play, make phone calls, write emails, and tell all of their mommy friends about the disgrace of Sesame Street if such a folly should occur.  The show’d be in the tank before it even knew it messed up.

So, with this great American icon in check, I say: Screw you, Big Bird. You’ve been living on handouts

Brush up your resume, dude - it's time to be a productive member of society.

long enough; it’s time for you to put your big bird pants on and go get a job, work for a living.  No more tax dollars, entitlements, or kickbacks.  You’re big enough to support yourself now, so get off your feathered hiney and go do it.  And take Snuffy with you – heavens knows he could use a haircut.

A note to Cole, the Moveon.org guy: Thank you so much for being so polite on and off camera.  Although I imagine we don’t agree on much of anything, I have great respect for you as an individual.

They trot out a rich, beautiful Hollywood actress set to star in a $170M Disney blockbuster and the guy from “The 40 Year Old Virgin” and put them in a PSA backed by a George Soros-funded advocacy organization to tell us, ever so subtly, that if we vote GOP this Tuesday, it could mean the end of humanity.

The irony may be lost on them, but it isn’t on us.  Is. It. Tues. Day. Yet?

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So, what’s a nice Catholic girl from Milwaukee doing in an ad like this? Graham admits, “My friends really wanted Obama to be elected so we all did a spell and then he got elected.”  Thanks for sharing.  Graham is a long way from that seemingly squeaky upbringing, having joined a coven of witches. But she becomes just the latest conjurer in a string of celebrity activists pushing ObamaCare.

The ad’s narrator is counter-culture hippie and actor Peter Coyote, and the message recalls another recent MoveOn ad starring Will Ferrell that lampooned insurance companies.  Ferrell, for his part, has a growing proclivity for turning up in more and more politically loaded advertising. Hardly surprising for a guy who owes his career to playing George W. Bush, but when asked to meet the President snapped, “I don’t want to meet that guy.”

The jury is still out on whether celebrities influence weighty issues like America’s health-care overhaul.  Surely, casting witches and clowns in ads won’t help.  Are these multi-million dollar campaigns that use comedy and sexual innuendo effective in persuading a skeptical public? If you’re George Soros, apparently so!  But then, “Track Meet” is a tortured ad that insults the very youth demographic it tries so hard to persuade.  An obvious play to Obama’s core of young followers, it contrasts the titillating, youthful Heather Graham against a pack of older suit-wearing health care big-wigs. But… is Graham supposed to be sexy or silly performing her ridiculous warm ups (or does it really matter)? Austin Powers might say: Oh, bee-have!

Most perplexing, the producers unwittingly put down the intended audience — one straight-laced woman villainously checks her e-mails and text messages… another executive eats a cheeseburger… another parties with champagne… more than a few go ga-ga over Graham — it’s like they were acting exactly like the age group they are targeting!

Until MoveOn grows up and gets serious, the kooky George Soros-financed outfit will be about as threatening as Doctor Evil in a room full of Mini-Me’s.

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The question none of these elites will ever answer is whether or not they’re willing to give up the Cadillac health benefits they currently enjoy through “evil” insurance companies, and accept the government-run ObamaCare they’re so eager to condemn the rest of us to.

When the  ”public option” puts our non-Cadillac plans out of business, when the “public option” makes the penalty for not providing health insurance cheaper for employers than providing it… Those of us who aren’t millionaires, celebrity and otherwise, will all be on rationed ObamaCare.

Which, by the way, is the Master Plan. And I know this because my President told me so. And so did Barney Frank.

If Will Ferrell’s willing to join us on the “public option” he’s so excited for … great!

Until then, he and his rich, privileged ilk are nothing more than the newest generation of Useful Idiots lobbying to hurt our families and strip us of our freedoms.

Greetings citizen! By now you may have heard scattered rumors of state and party officials encountering reactionary resistors at local health care reform information programs. Do not be alarmed, for our 5-year plan for citizen health proceeds without delay. Remain stalwart! The truth can be told at last, that these so-called “protests” are merely the desperate rear flank mob actions of dead-end bandits and saboteurs in the pay of enemy insurance agents.

Pay them no heed, for these outside agitators in no way represent any threat to our great patriotic push forward for increased citizen heathfulness! These well-dressed prep school gangsters of reaction seek only to frighten and demoralize and intimidate you, with their confusing “facts” and hob-nailed Sperry Topsiders. Unfortunately they are joined in conspiracy by a well-financed network of unlicensed blogs and talk radio traitors, who exaggerate their numbers and percolate disinformation — even cleverly staged YouTube videos of an impostor President Obama saying “quotes”!

Remain strong, citizen, for the day of their comeuppance is near! Patriotic spontaneous volunteers from MoveOn.org, Organizing For America, HCAN, SEIU, AFSCME, ACORN, NPR, and MSNBC have all pledged independent grassroots efforts to spread the word about the health-hating tricksters and their transparent astroturf agitation campaign!

You too can help by remaining ever-vigilant for health traitors in your local sectors. But beware: though small in number the state health reform enemy is clever, and well trained in subterfuge and disguise by his monopolist paymasters. Your job is to recognize his signs, and report any fishy-seeming protest or blog activities to me or other official authorities within the Health Care Truth Ministry. Here is a visual training course to help you in the execution of this important patriotic duty.

At the Health Care Town Hall

We have taken great care to insure that the site and times of local sector health care town hall meetings are known only to a specially-selected cross section of ordinary grateful citizens and responsible media outlets. Yet, in some cases, saboteur mobs have infiltrated and ruined the 11 PM news footage. Until we can find the fifth columnists who are leaking this classified information, it is important that you alert security forces to possible organized infiltrators before they enter the building and disrupt the applause sign schedule. Please study the following photos:

Here we see typical everyday hometown American citizens freely expressing their spontaneous health care opinions in an uncoordinated manner. Note the fine grassroots sanserif display font typography of their signs, spontaneously designed for maximum television legibility. Note that these citizens have coincidentally chosen their signage to color-match with their t-shirts. This will help independent grassroots organization leaders locate the citizens to distribute town hall seat assignments and bus departure schedules. You may also note that these hometown neighbors are carrying spontaneous chant cards.

Truly, this is Democracy in action. By contrast, let’s look at this set of photos:

Behold the face of infiltrators and saboteurs, citizen! Look at the surly anti-American anger and carefully practiced dishevelment. Note that their signs are scrawled, fiendishly tricking cameramen into closeups. All are expertly handmade, an expensive graphic design luxury only affordable to their puppet masters in the drug and insurance cartels. Note these mobs are so well paid for their agitation that they actually arrived in their own cars and expensive non-matching t-shirts. Fishy? You bet! Report them at once!

Online

Spotting potential health care traitors online at first seems trickier than in person, until you remember that behind every opponent site lies a web of anti-patriotic conspirators. Often these sites will mask their treachery behind a clever veneer of “sarcasm” and “CBO data.” A careful Google Image Search may be helpful in determining his true loyalties. First consider this photo of a random blogger.

Note how gaily he smiles behind the wheel of his decadent sporting-car, an obvious bauble provided by his oligarch masters in the pharmaceutical and blender industries. “Whee!” he seems to sing, blissfully ignorant to the plight his 47 million uninsured co-citizens. Calm your rage at his heartless insolence citizen — his tune will soon change!

And what of this blogger?

The days of your deviltry are numbered, well-dressed running-dog lackey of gangster insurance plutocrats! You and your $250 suit are now entered into our monitoring data base!

In addition to reporting suspected health care blogoteurs, it is important to remind your fellow citizens to practice “safe surfing” when looking for health care reform information. Links to approved, citizen-driven, spontaneous grassroots websites can be found at Organizing for America, Health Care for America Now!, and ACORN. Until further notice, all other health care opinions are considered hostile disinformation from highly coordinated state enemies!

In Your Home Sector

Rooting out the deceptive web of anti-health propagandists must not only take place at our town halls and on line. If we are to defeat the forces of reaction, we must expose and isolate these sinister elements in all local sectors. Be alert and report all telltale signs of membership in secret Republican cabals: elite extremist plutocrats…

Extreme Texans…

religious extremists…

Southern gun extremist…

and extreme religious gun extremists.

All are potentially dangerous, so report first and do not try to confront. Most of all, keep your eyes alert for the most diabolical cabal standing in the way of our great push forward for your health!

That is all, citizen! Remain steadfast in your grassroots vigilance, and a healthy tomorrow will be yours!

The Democratic Party’s attitude to elections is admirable: Win. And recent history has shown it will do anything to do so.

When, if not now, will Republicans develop such a fighting spirit?

Democrats invest – with taxpayer money, mind you – in groups like ACORN that, among other sordid tactics, seek out Skid Row bodies and wheel them to polling places. All the Democratic National Committee needs are vans and smelling salts. Pop culture and the “education system” have done the rest, making “D” the default choice on Election Day.

Democrats brazenly take policy positions – think government services and even amnesty for illegal immigrants – not because they are the right thing to do, but because they are time-tested demographic bribes. Forget cigarettes and beer, Democrats would distribute needles, methadone, medical marijuana and biscotti in voter goodie bags if they could get away with it.

Democrats long ago jettisoned America’s melting-pot ideal – E Pluribus Unum (“Out of Many, One”) – because it imperils their campaign for permanent rule. Splitting the country into separate identity groups and playing them against each other works a lot better. And anyone who disagrees is a racist.

Win. Win. Win.

One of the first things President Obama attempted to do after taking office was to take control of the Census Bureau, an act that could redraw congressional districts and ensure Democratic majorities for years to come. The new president also etched out an enemies list, focusing on conservative talk-radio hosts, including Rush Limbaugh. He also appears to have singled out Fox News. Comedians and mainstream journalists who are usually contemptuous of government bullying and First Amendment threats also continue to do the president’s bidding.

These overt political gestures were done amid economic chaos and mainstream media delirium to ensure permanent victory for a newly radicalized Democratic Party. Moveon.org, George Soros and the ghost of Saul Alinsky are in charge now. It’s not just “tea party” protesters who think we’ve tilted far left. Self-avowed anarchists and open socialists proudly brandished Obama placards at well-attended May Day parades.

When elected, the Democrats dole out billion-dollar bonuses to their core supporters at taxpayers’ expense. Witness the $787 billion stimulus package, an orgy of special-interest payback for labor unions, liberal activist groups and multinational corporations. One would be hard pressed to name a Democratic policy that is motivated more by principle than by winning.

Where is the media to expose this blatant corruption when the media are in the middle of the pile? NBC News, whose parent company General Electric is getting billions in stimulus cash to perpetuate Democrat-friendly “green” technologies and health care information systems, is at the forefront of a bizarre campaign to act as a check on the party that is out of power, not the party in power. NBC anchor Brian Williams bowed to the new president; MSNBC is a Fellini-esque exercise in liberal triumphalism.

You can read the column in full here.

However, lucky for me, I found the transcript, and what a balanced meal it was! Muslim outreach on one side of the plate, the Jews were the kosher meat of choice, 9/11 were the hash browns, with Al Qaeda the bitter, decorative sprig on top.

If you look at the response, you can’t say it was a bad speech. On one side there were Arabs who wanted more, and then there was CNN fondling themselves in public. Everyone else seemed okay with it.

Sure, if it were Ronald Reagan, he would have praised America more, as the “shining city upon a hill.” If it were Moveon.org, it would have been war crimes for Bush and praise for Hezbollah. If it were Joe Biden, it would have been all about Joe Biden. And it would have been hilarious, with or without Neil Kinnock’s assistance.

I can’t help but think, however, out of this buffet, what Obama’s favorite food is.

I mean, before he was President, I remember him bringing up that whole “root causes” business when it came to 9/11. I hated that.

But don’t get me wrong: I’m really glad he now brings up the horrors of 9/11 and the Holocaust, two things that tend to send certain Arabs into delight, or denial. But saying his role as President would be in part to “fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear”…that seems a little much, don’t you think? Wouldn’t it be better if, in that sentence, “Islam” were replaced with “Americans?” I mean, America’s view of Islam may be negative (according to recent polls), but it doesn’t drive us to blow up stuff. And there never was a real “backlash,” was there? Negative stereotypes of America, however, result in blood-soaked craters and beheadings.

But then again, I could be wrong. I actually hate breakfast. But I suppose I should fight against that feeling wherever it appears.

TONIGHT: Anna Gilligan, Rick Leventhal, Anthony Cumio and the awesome comedic actress Jane Lynch!

Robert Avrech’s lovely paean to the patriotism of Old Hollywood reminds me, by way of contrast, of a blink-and-you-missed-it scandal from seventeen months ago. Even in a cultural arena rife with liberal outrages against military families, it marked a new low. And although it was but one small battle in the culture war, it is worth recalling in the wake of Memorial Day as a reminder of just how far our popular media has fallen from the sterling ideals of our forefathers.

What does NBC stand for again? National Broadcasters against Conservatives? No Blessings for the Corps? On December 7, 2007, as the country solemnly remembered Pearl Harbor and the timeless sacrifices of soldiers long dead, one of our major television networks decided that running ads praising today’s modern armed forces constituted a bridge too far. The two thirty-second spots had been produced by Freedom’s Watch, a now-defunct conservative action group which aspired to be the MoveOn.org of the right, using “grassroots lobbying, education and information campaigns, and issue advocacy” to fight the good fight against the legion of hippy-dippy protesters, nihilists, and ideological bullies that perpetually rage (and increasingly reign) throughout blue-state America.

For years, organizations like Code Pink, A.N.S.W.E.R., and MEChA have inflicted lunatic be-ins on a horrified public, the collective psychedelic derangement of which makes The Rocky Horror Picture Show look like A Room With a View. But then Freedom’s Watch arrived on the scene — let’s call them Code Red, White and Blue — and they came determined to honor our troops, damn the cost. In August of ‘07, they first attempted to buy ad-time on major networks to run commercials supporting the war in Iraq. While Fox and CNN broadcast them without issue, NBC and its sister networks deemed them too controversial, which is liberal Pig Latin for too partisan, too outside the mainstream — in a word, too conservative. At the time, Freedom’s Watch president Bradley A. Blakeman wrote a polite letter to NBC, pointing out that the network has a long record of accepting ads from nakedly progressive groups without the slightest qualm.

(The Bob Hope display at the National Museum of the United States Air Force near Dayton, Ohio.)

He might also have added, “That plaintive whining sound you hear is Bob Hope spinning in his grave.” As Hollywood’s most beloved wartime icon, the British-born comedian spent a half-century enriching NBC’s coffers while praising our military at every turn. His 1970 and ‘71 Christmas Specials, filmed on the ground in Vietnam, still rank among the most-watched television shows of all-time. But save for an impressive schiltron of American flags displayed on holidays, Hope’s legacy long ago faded from 30 Rockefeller Plaza. In the end, the network’s wingtipped, Armani-clad Brahmins never deigned to answer Blakeman’s letter, quietly consigning his request for ad-time to the good ol’ circular filing cabinet, one with a metaphorical temperature edging dangerously close to Ray Bradbury’s dystopian 451 degrees.

Then in December of ‘07, Freedom’s Watch tried again with a pair of innocuous commercials that, to this viewer, soothed and fortified like exquisite mouthfuls of Mom’s home cooking. These new spots depicted people from all walks of life offering simple, heartfelt benedictions to our troops, and while their aura of optimism recalled Reagan’s “It’s Morning in America” ads, the underlying message was, by any reasonable standard, universal. Judge for yourself:

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Astoundingly, these too were rejected by a sober-faced NBC. The problem this time? Including FW’s web address on the tail-end of each ad, an act which apparently violated the network’s Standards and Practices.

Standards and Practices…boy, that’s rich. In recent years, NBC’s practices have famously included living the high life at the expense of the companies they cover, as well as manufacturing stories on everything from anti-Muslim hate crimes to exploding cars. In the process, they’ve degenerated from a once-proud news bastion into the peacock battalion of America’s fifth column, force-feeding viewers doom-and-gloom propaganda slickly masqueraded as unbiased news. Running a sincere message of hope in a time of war would indeed appear to go against everything they stand for these days, although — who knows? — it might help them reverse their agonizing slide into their lowest news ratings in over twenty years.

Freedom’s Watch president Blakeman promptly fired off a new letter of protest, but few believed he’d have better luck than last time — that is, until storm clouds started to form on the public-relations horizon. Cruising the conservative blogosphere in the days following the rejection, I could sense astonishment quickly hardening into genuine outrage. In forum after forum, the network began getting an earful from Americans with friends and family in the armed services. Soon the cacophony had grown to the point where NBC announced that it was reversing course and amending its (allow me to gird myself to say the words with a straight face) Standards and Practices.

And so, just like that, Freedom’s Watch won. Not an election or a court case, but merely the simple right to buy, at great expense, the time with which to say “thank you” to our heroic fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, friends and spouses fighting and dying in faraway lands. This confrontation proved instructive. As Robert Avrech’s Memorial Day post here at Big Hollywood showed, conservatives often pine for the olden days when America was largely united on patriotic matters. It seems possible to at least partially resurrect that (semi-mythical) time, but only if we insist on more from our shared broadcast media than the desiccated “standards and practices” of a corrupt liberal thugocracy.

During that holiday season of 2007, the NBC show with the most cultural buzz was Heroes, a sleeper hit about ordinary people mysteriously imbued with comic-book superpowers. It’s nice to know that — courtesy of Freedom’s Watch — America’s real-life heroes were honored on NBC during that Christmas as well. Granted, we only got it in precious little windows of thirty seconds each, but it was a start on the long road toward cultural recovery and renewal.

Freedom’s Watch was a victim of the collapsing economy of 2008, and there will be no new Christmas commercials from them thanking our troops. But one imagines that in December of 2007, somewhere in the heavens, Bob Hope cracked a smile at all of the people who twisted NBC’s corporate arm and said, “Thanks for the Memory.”

Those conservatives pining for a bit of that ol’ time patriotism can buy Bob Hope: The Vietnam Years (1964-1972).

A digital war has broken out, and the conservative movement is losing. Read the comment sections of right-leaning blogs, news sites and social forums, and the evidence is there in ugly abundance. Internet hooligans are spewing their talking points to thwart the dissent of the newly-out-of-power.

We must not let that go unanswered.

Uninvited Democratic activists are on a mission to demoralize the enemy – us. They want to ensure that President Obama is not subject to the same coordinated, facts-be-damned, multimedia takedown they employed over eight long years to destroy the presidency – and the humanity – of George W. Bush.

Political leftists play for keeps. They are willing to lie, perform deceptive acts in a coordinated fashion and do so in a wicked way – all in the pursuit of victory. Moral relativism is alive and well in the land of Hope and Change and its Web-savvy youth brigade expresses its “idealism” in a most cynical fashion.

The ends justify the means for them – now more than ever.

Much of Mr. Obama’s vaunted online strategy involved utilizing “Internet trolls” to invade enemy lines under false names and trying to derail discussion. In the real world, that’s called “vandalism.” But in a political movement that embraces “graffiti” as avant-garde art , that’s business as usual. It relishes the ability to destroy other people’s property in pursuit of electoral victory.

Hugh Hewitt’s popular site shut off its comments section because of the success of these obnoxious invaders. Breitbart.com polices nonpartisan newswire stories for such obviously coordinated attacks. Other right-leaning sites such as Instapundit and National Review Online refuse to allow comments, knowing better than to flirt with the online activist left.

During the Clinton impeachment scandal, a new group out of California called MoveOn.org employed a plan to get its members to dial into right-leaning talk radio shows with scripted talking points falsely claiming that they were Republicans. They said they would never vote for the GOP again if the case against Bill Clinton was pursued.

Rush Limbaugh was the first to isolate these “seminar callers,” whose mission during the Lewinsky mess was to fool the listening audience into believing they were outraged conservatives willing to cut their ties to the Republican Party if the GOP-led Congress continued

Eleven years later, “seminar callers” abound and call screeners are trained in the art of weeding them out. But the filtering does not always work. down the impeachment path.

You can read the column in full here.