The Birdcage features a hysterical Guatemalan houseboy, played by Hank Azaria in the movie. I mentioned it at the end of post #93 as the character I think of when I hear “houseboy”.
TWEEET!!
The topic of whether calling Colin Powell a “houseboy” is racist is now off limits to this thread.
Anyone who wishes to continue that discussion may open up a new thread.
It has nothing to do with the actual OP of this thread.
[ /Moderating ]
“Did you see the size of that canary? Must have gone 800 lbs, easy!!”
“Talks too”
“Really?”
“Yeah, listen. ‘Here, kitty, kitty, kitty’…”
Q. Where does an 800-pound canary poop?
A. Anywhere he wants to.
“Whoa, Bob! There’s a flag on the play. Let’s listen in…”
“Unsportsman like conduct, number 17, offense. Topic ejected from the thread, 3rd down.”
“Well there you have it, Bob. Whenever the offence tries to play the old switch-er-oo, the refs are going to kick some butt.”
Sorry for the hijack, but I was just wondering as an aside, do we think there’s any chance Colin Powell will endorse Obama? 
I believe that to be a lifeguard whistle, rather as I wish G-d would use in the Middle East;** “OK, EVERYBODY, out of the pool!”**
What a novel question!
I’ve moved pretty far to the left over the last several years, so people may think this insincere, but–I used to vote GOP. And boy howdy, I feel so much the same way.
Even if I didn’t believe in economic redistribution & fear the anti-environmentalism of the Reaganite wing, I’d still think the GOP lost its credibility when they re-nominated Shrub in 2004 instead of saying, “Thank you for your service, but we now want someone else, say Mr. McCain, to run the war you blundered into.”
Obama is pretty conservative economically; he’s more Black Caucus than a populist after the fashion of Kucinich or even Edwards. He’s genuinely more attractive to a lot of people with historic GOP leanings than most of the current top-level GOP, who appear mostly to lack some combination of imagination, thoughtfulness &/or integrity. The ones that have a modicum of those three things are goofy economic radicals like Huckabee or R. Paul, not reassuring conservatives. (Not that Huck is thoughtful…)
But would that have got us anything? McCain suffers from the same blind spot Bush does, he wants “victory”. The “failure is not an option” sort of nut-scratching machismo. And when you’re fighting an insurgency that wants you dead or at least gone, you win by staying. Where you shouldn’t be and are not wanted.
We Americans, amongst many others, a suckers for military mush, the romantic fantasies of war. McCain is a Navy pilot, and a POW, this makes him qualified to single-handedly create a geo-political miracle and turn a cow patty into the Taj Mahal? Because he’s a tough guy, he can make miracles with steely eyed determination? Hes dropped bombs so he “understands” war? Any more than a supply sargeant at Fort Dix, or a medic on the line?
Its the oldest legend there is, the crap about a strong leader who can show us the way out of peril, nine times out of ten, they lead us straight into The Shit. With steely-eyed determination, as usual, they think “from the gut”, which is just like feminine intuition, but more reliable.
Fuck that shit. Out now.
I’m so sorry for making this very stupid joke about your post.
And I tried to make it not a hijack by putting it in a different thread, but then, I have to link to it here, so how is it not a hijack? What am I doing? Why can’t I stop myself?
-FrL-
Interesting topic. Maybe you should start a thread about it and see where it goes.
The whole thread, I was wondering why Liberal’s use of “whipping boy” didn’t raise any eyebrows at all.
But no, I don’t think Colin Powell will publicly endorse Obama. Powell is smart enough to know that such an endorsement could cut two ways. I wouldn’t put it past the talking heads to try to spin that into something. The wackos on the right — remember them, the ones who said, “Why don’t you tell the lie about the yellow cake? You’ve got good poll numbers, you could stand to lose a few points” — they sold him out, but they’re not above dragging his reputation through the mud if it could possibly be a weapon against Obama. “Look, Powell endorses Obama!” they’d say gleefully, “and we all know what a liar he is!” They’d conveniently forget who it was that handed that script of lies to Powell in the first place.
Powell’s too smart to endorse Obama publicly unless it can be done at a time, or in a way, that doesn’t hurt Obama’s chances.
No, I don’t remember who told him that. Can you refresh my memory?
According to the Washington Post, it was Dick Cheney who told him that:
So, from a joke you speculate that Cheney, who is not a talking head and whose approval rating is about on par with Satan, will tarnish Powell’s reputation if Powell endorses Obama? Got it.
At any rate, no one made Powell lie, and he didn’t have to say anything to the UN he didn’t want to say. Powell certainly had one of the best reputations of anyone in Bush’s cabinet, but as the SecState, he was the most logical person to make that presentation to the UN. The only other person who might have made sense would have been Bush himself.
I didn’t call Cheney a talking head. I called him part of the Wacko Right. Did you miss the em dash?
Some of the talking heads (also part of the wacko right) would gleefully try to taint an Obama endorsement with Powell’s lies. Do you disagree? Or are you just being disputaceous for the heck of it?
House boy is an insult but not racist.