That’s one of the many lines the screenwriters use to show off the cold personality of Rachel Kramer (Drew Barrymore) in the new film, “Big Miracle.” Adapted from the nonfiction book “Freeing the Whales” by Thomas Rose, “Miracle” presents Kramer as a hardcore Greenpeace activist who is unwilling to watch three whales die when they are trapped five miles inland in northern Alaska.

Unfortunately, the heavy-handed script — full of obnoxious lines like the one above — and Barrymore’s poor performance undercut what could have been a decent family film.

The story revolves around three whales trapped in the middle of an icy landscape. The magnificent creature need pockets of unfrozen land to breathe and none exist around them, so they are forced to remain in a little hole that could freeze up at any time. That is until a reporter named Adam Carlson (John Krasinki) brings the story to a local television network.

His report receives worldwide attention because– it turns out–Tom Brokaw has “a thing for whales.“ Brokaw includes the report on a national newscast and soon enough, members of the media are swarming Alaska to save three whales that would have died otherwise.

Throughout the film, the tree-hugging Kramer gets everything that she asks for because she plays the media against every political or business leader she can. When an oil man– played by an under-used Ted Danson– gets a permit to drill, Kramer interrupts the proceedings with a bullhorn. When the Alaskan governor doesn’t want to send in the national guard, Kramer criticizes him publicly for hating whales. But both the oil tycoon and the governor do what they can — putting lives in danger and money at risk — to save these three whales.

Even the Reagan administration comes in to help save the day. A White House staffer named Nancy Meyers swoops in to lend the president’s support to the cause. It seems that with George H.W. Bush running for president, Reagan wants to gain more admiration for his administration’s environmental record.

With all of this support from the unusual suspects, Kramer still isn’t happy. When it looks like — despite everyone’s best effort — the whales are going to die, Kramer has a plan. She tells a group of people who are helping her and trying to save the whales that if they die, she is going to tell the media that “Ronald Reagan killed those whales.”

Seriously. She says that.

And that’s the problem. Barrymore’s character is a shrill, obnoxious demagogue. And she’s the story’s hero. She’s the one we’re supposed to root for. Everyone else– the oil tycoon, the Reagan administration, even Carlson– are using the whale story for their own benefit. But Kramer is seen as simply trying to do the right thing.

Of course, if none of those other characters supported the endeavor, the whales would have died. But that doesn’t matter much to the film’s screenwriters.

It should be said that there are a few nice moments in the film. When the film’s environmental bias becomes too overt, there is a great scene where the Reagan administration official notes that Greenpeace is using the publicity from this story to rake in donations while the administration is taking major risks in taking on this case. Also, there’s a scene where Kramer tells McGraw that he isn’t as easy to hate as she thought. More anecdotes like that could have created a more stirring narrative and balanced out the story.

Unfortunately, Kramer’s character is too annoying to earn our sympathies. It’s hard to root for a character who is so manipulative and cold.

It turns out “Big Miracle” isn’t a miracle after all.

—–

Politico:

The video stars Kevin Spacey, Matt Damon, Sean Penn, Kristen Wiig, Ben Stiller, Jack Black, Ted Danson and Mary Steenburgen as part of the foundation’s celebrity division, pumping out ideas like not breathing to save the environment. There’s even a cameo from Bubba at the end.

More here.

—–

5.   The Screaming Viking from “Cheers”: 

The Screaming Viking comes from the first episode of Cheers to feature Kirstie Alley in her roll of Rebecca Howe.  Sam (Ted Danson), trying to purge anything that was associated with former flame, Diane (Shelly Long), out of his life, sold the bar, bought a boat, and planned on circumnavigating the globe.  The problem was that Sam was about as good at being a sailor as he was at being a MLB pitcher.  He sank the boat and returned to Cheers, penniless and looking for a job.  New manager, Rebecca Howe, hires him but must make room by either firing longtime Cheers assistant bartender, Woody (Woody Harrelson), or a new, but extremely talented bartender she had hired.  The new guy claimed he knew ever drink known to man, and made a bet that if a customer asked for a drink he was unfamiliar with, he would quit.  After some conspiring between the Cheers regulars, the fictional drink the Screaming Viking was born.  Obviously the new guy didn’t know what this concoction was, and left in disgrace.

After the defeated bartender leaves, everyone who had ordered the Screaming Viking spits it out.  This is probably the appropriate reaction to this drink.  The ingredients are vodka, dry vermouth, celery, lime juice, and a cucumber (bruised). 

This drink doesn’t make the list because it is good, but rather it delivers on its promise to be horrible.  When a bar full of people spit the Screaming Viking out, this is not a tremendous endorsement.  After the first three, you stop noticing the way the celery, alcohol, and cucumber slice seem to be completely at odds with one another.  After five of them, you stop noticing your brain stem (or it stops noticing you, either way it isn’t good).  After seven of these drinks, you can see through time.  When you get up past that you are risking a trip to the emergency room.  Overall this drink was an enjoyable experiment and one of the few times that fun could be had with a bruised cucumber that didn’t involve the 2AM scramble for companionship on bar night.

—–

4.   Milk and Pepsi from “Laverne and Shirley”:

Pop and milk in the same glass is not a new concept.  My grandmother used to make me a drink called a “Boston Cooler” (this drink is virtually unknown outside the borders of Michigan).  This drink consists of ginger ale and milk.  Being the Sicilian rebel that she was, grandma used a small Detroit brand named “Grillies” instead of Vernors.  Grandma also cured my sore throats by frying salt, putting it in a sweat sock, and wrapping around my neck and believed sugar cookies and cannoli were the answer to just about every problem life could throw at you.  So not every idea she had was a winner (save for the cannoli).  But the pop and milk thing worked when she did it.  Laverne Defazio from the show “Laverne and Shirley” was less successful with her milk and Pepsi concoction.

While the taste of ginger was strong enough to stand up to the milk, the cola taste in Pepsi was overwhelmed.  In a drink that is two parts Pepsi and one part milk, the taste of the cola was almost completely lost and the whole thing wound up tasting like sugar milk that had been sitting around at room temperature a little too long.  While that was the experience when the standard Pepsi product was used in the recipe, it actually tasted better when the “Throwback” Pepsi, the one that uses real sugar instead of corn syrup, was mixed in to the milk.  In order to be fair and balanced when testing this drink, a glass of milk and Coke was also experimented with.  This drink was much better than the milk and Pepsi.  The nutmeg taste in Coke didn’t fight the milk so much and it worked in a rather odd way.  While milk and Coke was surprisingly pleasant, chocolate milk and coke was a gastronomic holocaust. 

Those who want to try this drink need only pour one part milk and two parts Pepsi/Coke/RC/Jolt into a glass and enjoy. 

—–

3.  Spaghetti Tacos from “iCarly“:

Something seems very wrong about mixing the sort of food they serve at Olive Garden with a Taco Bell offering.  However when a massively successful show like iCarly advocates for Spaghetti Tacos, it is very hard to ignore.  The base recipe for this is exactly what the title implies: Spaghetti , marinara sauce (with meat), and common, corn based, taco shells from any grocery store.  While the base recipe tasted great, but the beauty of this food is in the versatility of it.  Like any proper taco, additional toppings can be added, such as jalapeno peppers (which really popped), Mozzarella cheese, tomato chunks, Pepper Jack Cheese, etc.  In short, if it belongs on a taco or pasta, it will fit in this a spaghetti taco.

The one drawback to the spaghetti taco was the “mess” factor.  Long, stringy, linguini style pasta eaten from a taco shell tends to be untidy.  I tried versions wit mostaccioli and shells.  I found those worked much better than the classic recipe with the long spaghetti.  Not only were they less messy, but the thicker, more concentrated pasta added a texture that was much more enjoyable than the linguini style spaghetti taco.  I am sure that the whole spaghetti taco thing started as a joke, but it turned out to be a great recipe.

—–

2.  Bacon Burger Dog from “The Cosby Show”:

If more people ate Bacon Burger Dogs, the world would be a less angry and violent place.  Mostly because there would be a lot fewer of us to do the fighting.  Those who survived this meat filled WMD would be way too happy, full, and emotionally content to be angry at anyone.  This recipe is the ultimate comfort food perhaps the Cosby shows greatest contribution to society. 

The success or failure of the Bacon Burger Dog depends heavily on the ingredients.  In short, if your meat plumps when you cook it, you are probably using the wrong hot dogs.  I experimented with this recipe using Kowalski hot dogs, an 80/20 mix of Angus  ground beef, and Dakin Farm Cob-Smoked Bacon.  If you just get some ball park franks, some rancid turkey bacon, and ground meat that may or may not be from an ungulate, well…you deserve what you get.  The Bacon Burger Dog should be served on a quality hoagie roll. 

—–

1.  The Upside-down Flint Rubble-Bubble Cake from “The Flintstones”:

Considering the fact that this year marks a half century of the Flintstones, we can’t ignore them.  They also came up with perhaps the most interestingly named confection in all of television history.  The Upside-down Flint Rubble-Bubble Cake is a recipe that Wilma and Betty came up with for a televised cooking contest, but due to a number of circumstances, Fred and Barney (in drag) wound up on the show actually making the cake.

The real recipe for is either a closely guarded or died with William Hanna and Joseph Barbera.  Well, if it was a closely guarded secret, it would have found its way to the New York Times front page or Wikileaks (especially if the cake can be damaging to national security and give aid and comfort to our Islamic enemies).  While there is no actual recipe for this, the mere mention of the cake sprinting out to the bakery in order to fill my desire for this item with Hostess products and the occasional cheesecake.  Oddly enough, even after a pastry bender, I feel strangely empty inside. 

This item is the number one television food item based on a really interesting name and its ability to inspire the sort of longing that not even an entire French Silk pie can satisfy.  If anyone has an actual recipe for this, please send it along.

And this isn’t an ideological thing. As morally and politically illiterate as many of my writer foes on the left are, at least they’re not boring.

—– 

Where was I? Oh, yes, the wagon circling. Other than nudging Obama to be even more socialist when it comes to the kind of regulation and oversight necessary to kill middle-class jobs and tax us all into poverty ensure this tragedy never happens again, not a single one criticizes the President for his mishandling of the spill. But guess who does rank a Babs mention?

Redford’s video above is a pretty fascinating piece of propaganda. Take special note of how he at first laments the  job losses caused by the spill but then closes by calling for even more job losses through an end to offshore drilling. It should go without saying that the Obama administration’s voting present throughout the 50-plus days of this disaster never comes up.

If you can manage to stay awake through all this learned smartfulness, here are some of the highlights:

Barbra Streisand:

The BP spill also brought to light the corruption and ineptitude in the Interior Department’s Minerals Management Service office. President Obama inherited most of this staff since many of the employees were placed into these regulatory roles during the eight years that Bush was President. Many of the regulators were already friends with industry officials and some had worked in the oil and gas business before their stint in government. These regulators apparently let the oil and gas companies fill out their own inspection forms in pencil and then traced over their writing in ink. In return for their leniency, regulators accepted invitations to hunting trips and tickets to college football games courtesy of the oil and gas companies. Basically, Bush put the foxes in charge of guarding the hen house! In addition, the Minerals Management Service frequently granted waivers to BP and other oil companies releasing them from providing regulators detailed environmental impact and safety contingency statements regarding the areas they planned to drill for oil. These waivers allowed oil companies to take short cuts, which ultimately lead to the kind of disaster we are now experiencing in the Gulf.

Robert Redford:

Recently, President Obama announced several measures that will reign in Big Oil’s influence. He strengthened regulations governing offshore operations and called on the Justice Department to examine BP’s role in this fiasco. He also imposed a moratorium on new offshore drilling while a commission investigates the spill. And although I welcome the president’s initial steps, some of these measures need to be stronger.

Ultimately, the only way to break the industry’s hold on political decision making is for America to shift to more fuel efficient cars, more public transit and other technologies.

These are the solutions that will break America’s addiction to oil and put more money in consumers’ pockets. Right now, there is a clean energy and climate bill before Congress that could help unleash these solutions. The time for passage of this bill is NOW, not later.

Ted Danson:

This week Obama announced a moratorium on new permits to drill new deepwater wells, and he suspended the planned exploration in Alaska, canceled a planned August lease sale in the western Gulf of Mexico and canceled a proposed lease sale off the coast of Virginia.

This is a huge step forward, but a six-month moratorium is not enough. We need a complete moratorium on offshore drilling, like the one that protected most of the U.S. coastline for 25 years.

Compare this to the left’s reaction to Hurricane Katrina. Calling for an end to off-shore drilling is like saying don’t rebuild the levees because they’ll just burst again; or don’t re-populate New Orleans because it will just flood again. Does anyone want to argue the flooding in New Orleans didn’t devastate that environment?

And laying all the blame for the oil spill on BP (and Bush!) and none of it on the Obama Administration’s incompetence is like blaming Katrina only on the builders and inspectors of those levees. 

But don’t completely laugh off these A-listers. Writing them off as fuzz-headed, liberal celebs is a mistake. Each is very wealthy, very powerful and politically connected. And each is lobbying hard both in print and behind the scenes to devastate an already devastated community with further job losses — and as they sit in their over-sized mansions – to undermine our standard of living with higher taxes and energy costs (which affect everything).

Babs, Bob and Ted  might compose their big thinks with a laughable sense self-seriousness, but the power and influence they wield to further their totalitarian agenda is not to be under-estimated.

But I think I speak for all of Hollywood when I say, thank gawd we elected the Community Organizer instead of that hick from Alaska who has actual experience in dealing with oil companies and spills.

Celebrities love causes. They love them for a couple of reasons: one, it makes them seem like “serious” people despite making a non-serious living as entertainers – or, as in the case of “professional reality show stars,” making a living by leeching off the system. Two, it’s free publicity. After all, you aren’t a celebrity if you aren’t being “celebrated” by an adoring public.

As such, celebrities often embrace “feel good causes” that enhance their PR value and their egos. Take “green living,” for instance. Why all the Hollywood hooh hah about carbon footprints and other such nonsense? Christopher Grey of WND has a theory:

Celebrities want attention, but they also want credibility because they typically don’t have any. Environmentalism is an easy cause for them to promote to get attention and at the same time appear somehow thoughtful and even educated because it is allegedly based on science. Of course none of this has anything do with reality, but this is the entertainment business. Reality is not important at all. Image is everything. Talking about recycling, stopping offshore drilling, solar power, and electric cars is a lot easier than really trying to do something for people in the world like feeding the hungry, helping abused children, or building houses for the homeless.

It also deflects attention from the obvious fact that celebrities are often some of the most wasteful, energy inefficient, materialistic, shallow, and superficial people in our society. A classic recent example was James Cameron, who talked about how his film, Avatar, was a shining example of environmentalism. Obama echoed this praise. This was the most expensive movie ever made about a war on an alien planet. What exactly about this movie helped to conserve resources or save our planet? The answer is absolutely nothing.

But like it or not, the celebrity cause is here to stay. And even easier than “green living” or adopting poor little Third World children is fund raising via live concert or telethon. Not only does it give them a chance to show how much they care about others, but gets them lots of face time and a chance to show off their talents. Sure, they could donate more of their own money than the average viewer, but that wouldn’t get them featured in all the celebrity rags you see at the supermarket checkout.

In recent years, there was a telethon to raise funds for those displaced by Hurricane Katrina, as well as a telethon and even an auction of celebrity clothing for the tsunami victims in Sri Lanka in 2004. Then there was a telethon to raise funds for the people of Haiti after the devastating earthquake in that island nation. Some celebrities even braved dangerous travel conditions and difficulty in keeping one’s hair and makeup intact by traveling to New Orleans and Haiti to help.

Sean Penn bails out in New Orleans; Angelina Jolie visits a Haitian child

So the obvious question is: When can we expect a telethon for the good people of Nashville? Back in early May, a weekend storm with record-breaking amounts of rain flooded parts of Tennessee, Mississippi and Kentucky, killing nearly 30 people in the region and submerging private homes, businesses, as well as the landmark Grand Ole Opryhouse and the Opryland Hotel. Hundreds of people had to be rescued by boat, as the flooding took the population by surprise. The damages in Nashville alone are expected to top $1 billion.

But aside from a number of country music stars stepping up to do their part (Nashville is the heart of country music, after all), there was nary a peep from Leftwing Celebrityville. Were these normally civic-minded entertainers taking a cue from the Community Organizer in Chief, who has said next to nothing publicly about this devastating natural disaster? Last time I checked, bitter clingers not only vote, but buy movie tickets, concert tickets and watch television – and lest we forget, they are people too.

Sheryl Crow and Laurie David rode a bus around the country to “save the planet.”

Speaking of bitter clingers dealing with natural disasters, what about Louisiana (and her neighbors)? Oil is now blanketing the coastline and shrimpers, fishermen and tourist destinations are feeling the economic pinch. When Hurricane Katrina hit, the stars were quick to donate precious face time raising funds, but that was then, this is now. Back in 2005, the dreaded George W. Bush was president and Louisiana had a Democrat in the governor’s mansion. Today Obama is in the White House and Republican governor Bobby Jindal has been pulling his hair out trying to get federal approval to build sandbars to keep the oil at bay. Coincidence? Perhaps. Yet one must wonder why this disaster, which has been in the news for weeks, hasn’t been publicly discussed by more than a few celebs:

• Ashton Kutcher took the opportunity to blame the spill on Republicans: “If you could go back to the Republican National Convention and look the guys in the eyes that were saying, ‘DRILL, DRILL, DRILL,’ at the Republican National Convention, those guys, there you go… that’s what we got, like, we did it, we drilled drilled drilled.” Good thing for Ashton, considering the monster truck he owns gets a mere 7 miles per gallon for its 70 gallon tank. But after conceding that his comment might have been a “low blow,” he continued: “But at the end of the day the truth is, is like, we got to think about the world we live in. I mean we have to be conscious. This is like not a right, it’s a privilege to be on this land and using its resources and we have to be smart about it.” Um, right. Demi Moore obviously married him for his high IQ and scintillating conversation.
• Bill Maher cracked unfunny jokes that said more about his closet racism than they did about the situation.
• James Cameron kvetched because BP turned down his offer to help them stop the leak. Being a movie director who makes films about the evil of mankind’s thirst for energy and an underwater filming expert somehow also makes him an expert on how to deal with an oil spill in the Gulf. Note to James: Just because the dingleberries at the EPA think you’re qualified to brainstorm about solutions doesn’t mean the people who actually have to do the work will think you’re qualified to do bupkus. I think there should be a new Academy Award division for Biggest Ego – Cameron’s a cinch to win.
• Ted Danson declared, “No more ocean drilling.” Okay, Ted, your word is law.
• Leonardo DiCaprio posted on Facebook that he has taken the “Save My Oceans” pledge – whatever that means. All snarkiness aside, I confess to being a bit worried about Leo, taking on such a challenge. I hope he’s eating properly, getting enough rest and taking vitamins to offset the strain.

Leonardo DiCaprio “saves” the oceans on Facebook. Whatta guy!

True kudos go to Kevin Costner, who has actually funded a team of scientists for the past 15 years, and who came up with a powerful centrifuge that they hope will clean up the mess. BP has agreed to give it a whirl. And a thumbs up can go to Spike Lee, who actually begged the president to drop his glacially cool demeanor and “go off” just one time. There was a fundraising effort, but it lacked A-list heft and only took in $350,000, although former Dallas star Victoria Principal donated $200,000 of her own money to the clean up efforts. When AOL and CNN actually notice, something’s amiss in Hollywood.

So what gives? Are these areas just not glamorous enough? Do celebs not want to further highlight The One’s pathetic response? Do they actually feel like hypocrites for their “live green” mantra while they live an oil-guzzling lifestyle? Or is it, as the AOL article linked above notes, because “award season isn’t for another nine months”? Feel free to expand upon these theories, or offer your own, in the comments section.

Whatever the reason, the American public is taking notice that the stars aren’t shining quite as brightly as they used to.

Glenn Close stars as Patty Hewes, a high-powered trial lawyer who takes on big corporations for massive damages. For the first couple seasons you couldn’t tell if she was a villain or a hero. Patty’s a legal shark and a world class poker player without the cards. Her manipulations and schemes are Machiavellian to the extreme, which is why Patty is at the top of her game.

In season one she hires Ellen Parsons (Rose Byrne), a young attorney out to make a name for herself by working with a top law firm. Her relationship with Patty is reminiscent at first of the John Grisham classic The Firm. What seems like a plum job soon becomes dangerous and you can’t tell if Patty’s out to murder her or it’s one of the defendants they’re trying to bring down.

Patty’s loyal lieutenant is Tom Shayes (Tate Donovan). Shayes gets things done for Patty but even he finds tackling the biggest game in town can put your life at risk.

Here’s the intro to season 3:

Patty Hewes is back in action, tackling the most challenging case of her illustrious career. Following up Patty’s decisive victory over corrupt CEO Arthur Frobisher (Ted Danson) in Season 1 and her decimation of Ultima National Resources in Season 2, Patty Hewes has recently been appointed by the U.S. government to recover billions of dollars in stolen assets from the largest investment fraud in U.S. history, a fraud perpetrated by the esteemed financier Louis Tobin.

Inspired by recent events in the world’s economic collapse, Season 3 showcases Damages signature legal-thriller storytelling as Patty Hewes takes on the Tobin family – a secretive clan determined to protect its interests at all costs

Patty is determined to bring Tobin to justice and find the money, but he commits suicide and now the question is, does his son know his father’s secrets. Campbell Scott plays Joe Tobin, who starts out hating his dad and wants to clear his own name by helping Patty. But his dad leaves him a packet of information that makes him change his tune. Martin Short plays the family attorney who may have criminal secrets of his own. Lily Tomlin plays the Tobin widow.

—–

When I saw two comedy actors were going to be in this season I wondered how they would do in such a serious show. I can tell you they’re doing great. Martin Short plays a very devious, shady character without a trace of his usual exuberance. He’s very low key and on the money. Tomlin is very believable and we’re left wondering what secrets she’s hiding herself.

One of the key aspects to this show is that it’s like a Russian Matryoshka doll with one secret nested inside another. You uncover a secret only to find another, and another inside. You wonder what will be in the center of it all. Each one is surprising. And the closer you get to the center of it all, the more intense the tension.

Damages also uses New York better than any other show I can think of. In fact, it takes Law and Order to school and shows them how it’s done.

The acting on Damages is stellar. It’s also a great show for women as it lacks the rote, typical female storylines and has smart, clever characters.

I missed the first season when it debuted and friends kept telling me how good it was, so about half way through season 2 I rented the first season and was so hooked I searched online for all the season 2 episodes I missed so I could get caught up. I burned through One and 1/2 seasons episodes in a week. It’s that addicting.

Damages airs Monday nights on FX. It’s well worth your time.

Fraser masterminds Woody’s campaign as a social experiment: He is convinced that anyone, even a bumpkin, can get elected, simply by spouting vague cliches. His advice to Woody? Don’t be specific on the campaign trail – just repeat empty slogans like “change.”

When I saw this, I burst out laughing – perhaps this is where Axelrod & Co. received their inspiration for Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign theme, I surmised.

In the show, Fraser’s guess proves accurate. Woody is elected. But in the aftermath of Woody’s victory, Fraser has a terrible foreboding of the future – Woody’s election to city council begins a long climb up the cursus honorum, and he eventually becomes president of the United States. Because Woody is stupid (in Fraser’s mind), this of course leads to a nuclear holocaust.

“Thanks Dr. Crane. I couldn’t have done it without you,” Woody tells Fraser at his victory party. “No one can prove that,” the psychiatrist responds, shaken by his vision.

But of course, avid Cheers viewers know Woody to be far from brainless. For instance, there was the time when owner-bartender Sam (Ted Danson) tried to cheat Woody out of an agreed upon raise – Woody sees through the ruse. Or the time Woody snookered a group of firemen out of their Dalmatian. And on and on.

Sure, Woody was sweet. Kind. Honest. But stupid? No way.

But to Fraser, Indiana-born Woody was clearly an idiot. Fraser, being a Harvard educated, Eastern seaboard-dwelling intellectual, naturally shared the prejudices of his breed; that anyone from fly-over country must be mentally deficient.

For my own part, if we had a Woody Boyd for president, I would sleep soundly. It is men like Fraser Crane, with their smug airs of moral and intellectual superiority, who think they know all and think they especially know what is best for others, who frighten me. It is rulers like that who bring ruin and call it “reform.”

Barack Obama may have campaigned like Woody Boyd. But he governs like a Fraser Crane. God help us.

–

UPDATE: My friend the Anchoress tweets on Ted Danson: “ …and he’s wearing his “smart” glasses, so we’d better listen.”

With his tired “wonderful entertainer” swipe, Ted Danson tries mightily to laugh off all-things Rush Limbaugh, but the bitterness is just too deep to keep the charade going for long; and let’s face it, Danson’s just not that good of an actor.

Longtime Limbaugh listeners know where Danson’s anger comes from. Who could ever forget this:

RUSH:  That’s how the media reacts to me, “You can’t say that, prove it!”  Ted Danson makes these claims, “Oh, oh, he cares so much.”  Well, last Friday on CNBC’s High Net Worth, the reporterette Jane Wells interviewed Ted Danson, and she said, “There was a time when you said the oceans are going to be dead in ten years.  They’re not dead?”

DANSON:  No.  They’re not.  But, I’m sure there was some hyperbole in what I said to draw attention to the issue, but you go to science journals now, 70% of the world’s fisheries are at a point of collapse.

RUSH:  Really?  Oh, you lied, it was just hyperbole.  So now after being proven to have lied, but, but, but 70% of the ocean’s fisheries or the world’s fisheries or whatever are at a point of collapse, 70%.  So he’s been proven wrong, throws another figure out there, wow, we’re in trouble, oh, no, 70% of the world’s fisheries are closed.  So Jane Wells then said — well, the answer she reported after — “Danson says some people have wondered, why listen to an actor? They make fun of celebrities taking up causes. He gets that.”

Rush made high-sport of Danson’s absurd claim for years, even before the ten-year deadline was up, and then in 2007 the “hyperbole” finally caught up to the “Cheers” star. What could be more humiliating for a lefty celeb than having to admit on national television that Rush Limbaugh was right and you were full of it.

Blessed with an epic lack of self awareness, Danson obviously hasn’t changed a bit. Here  he is, the guy who screamed from the rooftops that the oceans had ten-years to live accusing others of exploiting peoples’ fears.

I couldn’t help but remember a favorite story that my wife and I tell on each other from time to time. Years ago, we were going through some counseling about our relationship (we’re totally cured now, of course. Just ask my wife). We had two counselors who were partners, one of whom focused on us, but both of whom knew our story.  After a considerable number of sessions had come and gone with no tangible improvement, one day my wife stormed into their office in an obvious fury to see our guy. His colleague, a wonderfully grumpy man, glanced up at her and offhandedly said, “What’s your problem?”

“My husband’s an a**hole.”

He responded flatly, “Maybe you’re the a**hole.”

We’ve laughed about this many times over the years, but it was a strange little turning point for us.  We remember  it often to remind each other always to make sure our side of the street is clean before we start complaining about the other side.

But in Maher’s case, there is just no “maybe” about it.

When I read his column, I realized something about Maher that I also realized about Obama a couple months ago, when he so badly botched the Gates affair in Cambridge: To them, it’s all about race.  Obama admitted that he didn’t know the facts of the case when he decreed that the police acted stupidly, but he knew the only facts that mattered to him.  Gates was black.  The officer was white.  Case closed.  Let’s have a beer.

In his column, Maher is either willfully lying or he is, to use one of his favorite projections, stupid.  He claims that Obama fired Van Jones because Glenn Beck told him to, which would mark the first time in history that Barack Obama ever listened to someone who disagreed with him, and then multiplies the dumbness by claiming that the reason Beck told him to was because he called Republicans “a**holes.”

Everyone from Charles Krauthammer to Beck himself said that Jones’s “Republicans are a**holes” comment didn’t bother them at all, Krauthammer famously stating that he’d called members of his own family that and worse.  Krauthammer even went on to say that Van Jones’s describing himself as an “avowed Communist” didn’t matter, since we’ve had a few Communists in our government before (see Maxine Waters).

No, Bill, it was Van Jones signing on as a “truther” that scuttled him.  You see, in the Obama Administration, you can call the opposition names (Obama does it himself), you can advocate the destruction of free-market capitalism (see previous parenthetical), you can accuse white people of intentionally poisoning minorities who work in their agricultural industries, and you’ll still be a remarkable addition to the team.  But even Obama can’t have a lunatic around who agrees with idiots like Charlie Sheen and Rosie O’Donnell that President George W. Bush, the stupidest man who ever lived in their eyes, somehow pulled off the greatest crime and cover-up in history, by orchestrating the murder of 2,996 Americans and blaming it on Islamic terrorists, all so he could go into Iraq and avenge the attempt on his Daddy’s life made by Saddam Hussein. (Jonah Goldberg has a great takedown of this lunacy here.)

Maher loves to call people stupid as much as he loves to call people racists, as he made clear during his appearance on the Conan O’Brian show, where he said that Obama should just drag health care over the finish line with or without the support of the American people, because they are stupid.  Maher, like most self-righteous liberals,  pines for a nice a**hole dictator who would just ram whatever he wanted down the stupid peoples’ throats (assuming, of course, that said dictator is someone Bill Maher thinks is smart, like, say, Joe Biden).   To a third-grade mentality like Maher, Bush is stupid, Palin is stupid, Reagan was stupid, all the Tea Party protesters are stupid — everyone who doesn’t agree with Bill Maher is stupid.

I know you are, Bill, but what am I?

And in fact, Maher is provably so stupid that he wouldn’t know a truly ignorant, plagiarizing, buffoonish dolt if one bit him in the a** and then got his vote for Vice President. (Hey, wait a minute!)

But the racist label that Maher throws around is the true projection.  To him, Van Jones got fired because he became the “Scary Negro of the week on Fox News,”   and had nothing to do with his radical policies.

But the truth is that conservatives, independents, disaffected Democrats, and unlabelled Americans who disagree with the President do so on the basis of his policies and his philosophy. We look at the people he surrounds himself with and has throughout his life, and we listen to his stated opinions and intentions, and make a judgment based on them. Many of us who are old enough opposed Bill and Hillary Clinton’s health care plan back in 1994 in the same way we oppose it now.   It wasn’t racism then, and it isn’t now.

But the racist Bill Maher looks at Van Jones and Obama and only sees the color of their skin.  His recent disgusting skit based around the Drudge Report abbreviating Negatives to Negs featured racist jokes that we haven’t seen the likes of since Al Jolson sang “Going to Heaven on a Mule“  — or at least since Ted Danson wore blackface to impress Whoopi.

And to complete the projection trifecta, Maher calls others liars, while lying himself.  He says that Obama should stand up for the “70% of Americans who aren’t crazy.”   Where does  that figure come from?  I haven’t seen 70% in any poll about anything.  Maybe Bill just pulled that out of –well, I’m sick of those asterisks — the place on his body that he wants President Obama to become.

You know what, Bill?  Maybe we’re not all stupid lying racists.  Maybe we just disagree.

And the time for asterisks has passed, Bill.

Maybe you’re the asshole.

But no matter, as I watch CNN’s in depth coverage – the kind you’d never see them give to the murder of a soldier by a Muslim convert – I kept obsessing over one thing.

Am I wrong for not caring?

I mean, I know that soon there will be a movie about Tiller (not about William Long, of course), probably starring walking hairpiece Ted Danson. But I still don’t care. I mean, I know that killing Tiller is wrong. It’s murder. And if you’re against the killing of unborn children, you can’t just go out and kill a man, even if he kills unborn children.

But that still doesn’t explain why I don’t care. And I’m willing to bet that the rest of America – save the media – don’t care much either.

Why is that? It’s not about Tiller’s murder being wrong. I get that. That’s not the issue. This issue is, when you make priorities of “stuff that’s wrong” – is it more wrong to kill a dumpster full of viable babies, than to kill the doc who fills that dumpster?

And by posing that question, does that make me a crazy pro-lifer? I mean, I don’t march outside clinics waving grotesque posters of dead fetuses. I don’t hand out equally graphic pamphlets. I keep to myself mostly, and drink boxed wine.

But I do have some definition of what being “pro-life” is. It goes like this: if you look at the people you love – your child, your sister, your spouse – and cannot imagine them never being born, then you’re a prolifer. But if you can imagine your loved ones never being alive – then congrats, you’re a pro choicer – and I admire your gumption. Oddly, I’ve never met a pro-choice advocate who can say she wished she’d aborted her obviously adorable child (I’m still waiting!).

Anyway, before you call me a callous bastard for my ambivalence over Tiller’s murder, realize I already beat you to it. I am a callous bastard. But I guess, as Obama often points out, it’s all about empathy.

It reminds me of an old joke I wrote:

Knock knock!

Who’s there?

You’ll never know!

TONIGHT’S GUESTS: Andrew Breitbart, Mary Walter, Juliet Huddy, and Steven Emerson.