Friday, May 04, 2012

It's a THREEFER! Star Wars, sports, and politics, all together at once. (If only there was some sexy way to refer to such a thing...)

One show, one clip, relevant to three of my blogs in one day.  I love/am insanely jealous of Stephen Colbert.  But I'm also indebted to him, because he did this:




I don't like to just post stuff without having something to say about it; I don't just spit back pop culture at you for no reason and call it a day.  I also try to sell you products and get paid through the advertising...  I mean, I try to comment intelligently on the subject of the post.

So here are some comments:

1.  (Politics) Why are Republican women so stereotypically ditzy?  I used to be a Republican, and I know some women who are extremely conservative and yet are smart.  Despite that, whenever you see a Republican woman in public -- Michelle Bachmann, Wisconsin's for-now-Lieutenant Governor Rebecca Kleefisch, "Dee Dee" the Republican commentator in that clip -- she appears to be a Barbie doll, only slightly dumber/more lobotomized.

I think it's indicative of the attitudes of today's Republicans that they and FOX continue to put forth a slightly-less-sexualized June Cleaver as their ideal woman.  But why do women put up with that? As Jon Stewart has pointed out, that particularly stupid-seeming Gretchen woman on Fox has a degree from Stanford, but she insists on acting like an NFL Today weathergirl.  Are they that desperate to be on TV, that they'd hide their intelligence?

For the life of me, I will never understand anyone backing a group, party, or political movement that openly denigrates them and forces them to be something they're not really.  (Gay Republicans, I am also looking at you in that sentence.)

2.  Sports:  It's kind of sad that if Notre Dame-USC was ever a truly great rivalry (was it? I don't know) it no longer is.  Notre Dame hasn't mattered to football since... I'll say 1972, when they still played football in black and white (in my mind, that is.)  USC hasn't mattered to football since Pete Carroll decided he wanted to openly be able to pay players for their performance. 

(USC's lack of mattering is indicative of the general weakness of the PAC-10 which is one of the reasons I think Andrew Luck may not actually be St. Peyton 2.0; everytime I say to someone what kind of competition did Luck face in college? Which good teams did he play? they look at me blankly and then mutter "Well he's really good," but what are you measuring that against?)

3.  Star Wars References:  Just to be clear: The Star Wars Reference category exists because Star Wars is the root of all Western culture and this clip shows that.  When he had to go to a film reference, Colbert immediately went for Star Wars; yes, there were other sci-fi shows mixed in, but the entire reference was built around Star Wars, because just as we all spring from DNA, or something, whatever, I'm not a scientist, culture all springs from Star Wars.

This is a joint post shared between Nonsportsmanlike Conduct!, The Best Of Everything, and Publicus Proventus.

2 comments:

Michael Offutt, Phantom Reader said...

I love Stephen Colbert. One really wise guy once said, "Mike, you are the Stephen Colbert of bloggers." I forget who that awesome guy was, but I'm sure he was pretty cool.

Andrew Leon said...

What did we have, in regards to culture, before Star Wars? I was really too young to remember.