The Wake

“Well I just think that it is so shocking that after all this time we thought we’d seen it all with Marilyn Monroe, and… here we go,” says Lara Spencer on CBS’s The Early Show.

The Marilyn Monroe sex tape has finally surfaced, thank God. The media was almost running out of living celebrity faux news fodder.

It is still a mystery why Spencer thinks this “news” is “so shocking.” In her lifetime Monroe made a name for herself as one of the most sensual and seductive stars on the planet, in addition to having rumored affairs with a number of celebrities and politicians. Further, wasn’t she on the cover of Playboy? Yeah, she was.

I’m personally glad that the person who bought the foreplay tape (no sex, just oral) has more integrity than the people reporting …

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Schlitz is Back!

Milwaukee beers get a bad rap, but heck don’t most of the Ameircan mega-brews. Schlitz was once at the heart of Milwaukee’s brewing powerhouse. But don’t be worried, there’s plenty of brews still being brewed in my hometown and a lot of them aren’t half bad.

The “Beer that Made Milwaukee Famous” is back and I just happened to have seen a few sightings and tasted the original recipe not to long ago. No, they’re not returning to the 1849 recipe, which would be awesome, but they have returned to the “classic” 1960’s recipe. Now I know we’re going to have detractors from both sides. Some may call the beer utter crap, but I have to say it …

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U.S. Senate candidate Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer

While most Minnesotans have stuck comedian Al Franken in their minds as the next Minnesota DFL Senate candidate, St. Thomas peace studies professor Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer is still vying for the party’s upcoming June nomination. Despite barely being mentioned in the local media, Nelson-Pallmeyer surpassed Mike Ceresi in the race and is slowly but surely winning over the most liberal sectors of the DFL. After looking into his campaign, I found out that Nelson-Pallmeyer is a more progressive, less elite alternative to Franken. Although Franken often mentions the late Sen. Paul Wellstone as his role model, Nelson-Pallmeyer’s grassroots campaign, stances on the issues, and intellectual demeanor (he’s an educator) resemble Wellstone much more …

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The biggest key to winning an election is projecting a public image. It surpasses where candidates stand on the issues, how they work with others, what their personalities are like, and just about every other necessary factor needed to run a successful campaign. Remember when then-Minnesota Attorney General and 2006 DFL gubernatorial candidate Mike Hatch called a reporter a “Republican whore” one week before the election? Hatch’s loss to Gov. Pawlenty shouldn’t have been that much of a surprise to in retrospect. The sad thing is, Hatch made best election performance by a DFL gubernatorial candidate in decades, according to St. Olaf College political scientist Dan Hofrenning. Remember that this was 2006, when the Democrats swept the national elections.

To be fair, it’s quite an assumption …

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A few weeks ago I wrote a post about Barack Obama’s former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and how his name and reputation in the Black Community was being undermined and exploited by a media circus centered on a few YouTube clips of him criticizing the U.S. government. Now that the circus is over and labeled as old news, it might be an opportune time to present Rev. Wright in his own words, words that were certainly suppressed in the coverage of his past sermons. What follows is a letter to the editor intended for, but never published in, the New York Times and a video of Wright making the case for his church on Hannity and Colmes a few weeks before he was all over the news.

In …

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For the few weeks before the looped YouTube videos of Rev. Jeremiah Wright shifted half of the Democratic Presidential coverage to racial matters (the other half of the coverage being focused on the sinking economy), the topic of the talk was the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The trade agreement, which was put into law by President Clinton in 1993, restricts obstacles that corporations used to face when they moved their goods between Mexico, the U.S. and Canada. It essentially made free trade easier, prompting many U.S. corporations like General Electric to relocate across the border and hire Mexicans at lower pay (starting pay for a Mexican engineer at GE is equal to one-third of a U.S. salary).

Upon NAFTA’s inception, major trade unions were immediately against it, arguing …

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It’s best to begin this post by noting that 81 percent of the United States believe this country is headed toward a bleak future. Only a third of people believe that the next generation will be better off than the current generation. Fewer than half of parents — 46 percent — expect their children to enjoy a better standard of living than they themselves do. The other day, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, whose job requires a basic sixth grade knowledge of stubbornness, finally acknowledged the possibility of a recession.

And it looks like some politicians in Washington are continuing to poorly execute what are otherwise decent ideas. Today, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid sent a letter to President Bush …

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Two of my professors here at school are surely to be some of the most memorable you could ever hope for.

One teaches my International Marketing course. He spends most of the time in class telling stories of his foreign excursions, which serve to illustrate his points. He’s been all across the world and knows a great deal about the nature of foreign relations. One Particular story of note involved his attempt to broker a deal with some businessmen in Nigeria. He explained that the only way to accomplish such a thing was to arrive with a brief case full of Rolex watches, and 3,000 dollars in American cash. He did just that, and upon paying his way through airport security, he crashed in his hotel room. The man whom he was to meet, a …

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I attended a club night north of London last night (Watford area to be exact). It’s a good 50 minutes outside of the city. I took the bakerloo to then end of its line, and was picked up from there in a car for the remaining 20 minute drive. We stopped by a house out in the London burbs. The kids there were watching Superbad, and we’re qute intrigued to meet someone who had actually owned a fake id. We took off from there and hit the main drag of clubs on Watford High Street. The evenings events reminded me of a particular song on the very subject of clubbing in England.

The song is called “From the Ritz to Rubble.” It was on the Arctic Monkey’s debut album. The song starts out with the lyrics, …

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Because I’m not that interested in writing today here is a history of why beer is great today and where it came from the New York Times.

Beer used to be easy: You were a Bud guy or Miller guy, maybe even a Schlitz or Ballantine guy. Not that it mattered much, since they tasted virtually the same.

But the days when American beer was all suds are long gone. In a great example of grass-roots renaissance, the American industry has been completely reborn in the last 30 years with the rise of craft beers. A trip to the deli can now offer some of the greatest beers in the world, characterized by freshness, vibrancy and depth of flavor.

Would you like an ale or lager? Brown ale? Red, golden, amber or pale? India pale? A porter …

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Sen. John McCain

In a time when consumers’ views of the economy are gloomier than they’ve been in five years, the Presidential candidates are devoting more and more rhetoric to fixing our stalled economy. While the Democratic candidates announced government remedies to help heal the situation, Republican candidate John McCain got more specific about his solution to the pending recession than ever before: let the market figure it out. Here’s an excerpt from his Tuesday speech in front of Latino businessmen:

“I have always been committed to the principle that it is not the duty of government to bail out and reward those who act irresponsibly, whether they are big banks or small borrowers.”

But last week, the Federal …

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Our celebrity-obsessed media has turned America into a high school full of stereotypes. There are cliques, opinion leaders, and, most of all, jealous but vicarious critics looking to bash but idolize the popular kids.

I frequent the pop culture blogs. I don’t do it because I care about the celebrities. I do it because I care about why so many people care about the celebrities. And to be honest, it seems to me like we’re carrying the same grudges and judgments held when we were 16.

Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian and Nichole Richie are the rich, popular kids with all the newest clothes and coolest stuff. They also have all these popular celebrity friends and boyfriends who have the coolest houses and cars. They all go to the coolest parties (to which we’re never invited) …

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In the past few days, news anchors, columnists and cable pundits have been rigorously masturbating over denouncing Obama’s pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the apparent anti-American jihadist. Decades after Marcus Garvey, Malcolm X and Huey P. Newton, white pundits are still acting as surprised as ever when they see a black man speak out radically against this country.

It’s 3.30 a.m. and I’m exiting through the back gate of Camden’s Roundhouse with several of my co-workers. We all bid each other farewell, and take off in our different directions towards home. Each one of is walking with a noticeable affliction given we’ve just left the all you can drink after party following the Supergrass party that night.

I’m walked with extra care and caution toward my bus stop across from Chalk Farm station to catch an N28 back to Kilburn. To protect me from the soft drizzle, four carry out boxes rest stacked atop my head. They’re filled with Chicken and Squid Paella, a Spanish dish of sticky, rice mixed with green and red peppers. It’s been wonderful, as I haven’t had to buy groceries for the last 2 and a half weeks thanks …

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Att. Gen. Lori Swanson

Minnesota Attorney General Lori Swanson is eliminating whatever remains from the Farmer-Labor Party in the DFL in a classic case of Democratic hypocrisy. Namely, 50 of her 135 or so assistant attorneys general left her office in the past year due to its constant atmosphere of stress and fear.

MinnPost.com reported this:

“Assistant Attorney General Amy Lawler said she has been put in situations that made her uncomfortable where she had to weigh her own ethical standards against pressure to help Swanson get favorable media coverage and portray herself as the friend of the downtrodden.”

This type of pressure convinced those working under Swanson to support a unionization drive for themselves, something Swanson remains …

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