There's a great video interview on Broadway World with Mad Men's Bryan Batt, who plays closeted ad exec Salvatore The out gay actor talks to producer/director Richard Jay-Alexander.

Via Andrew Sullivan:

As expected, one reason Proposition 8, stripping gay couples of marriage equality, is still viable in California is because of strong African-American support. Black Californians back the anti-gay measure by a margin of 20 points, 58 - 38, in the SUSA poll. No other ethnic group comes close to the level of opposition and black turnout is likely to be very high next month.

All this makes it vital, in my opinion, that Barack Obama strongly and unequivocally oppose Proposition 8 in California, rather than keeping mainly quiet as he has done so far.We need him to make an ad opposing it. This is a core test of whether gay Americans should back Obama as enthusiastically as they have in the last month. If he does not stand up for gay couples now, why should we believe he will when he is in office? And if black Americans are the critical bloc that helps kill civil rights for gays, that will not help deepen Obama's governing coalition. It could tear it apart.

Memo to Obama: make an ad. Speak loudly. Defend equality. Defend it when it might actually lose you some votes. Show us you are not another Clinton.

This is exactly what Obama needs to hear. The past few weeks (and today as well) I have been saying that we need Obama to stand up and tell the world that we are equal. Now he has been given a perfect opportunity. Step in to the ring, step up to the plate, step it up. Whatever analogy it takes, just do it.

Bush's Haunted House

Tom Toles, copyright 2008 Universal Press Syndicate

Obama seeks LGBT support in battleground state

Bill Clinton recommends . . . .

Obama shatters fundraising record

Meet Kay Hagan, the woman who's about to end Elizabeth Dole's senatorial career

And, of course, Colin Powell endorses Obama. You can watch Powell's appearance on Meet The Press in The Media Bar. Daily Kos thinks the endorsement "inflicted real damage."


John McCain Accidentally Left On Campaign Bus Overnight

In one of the Psychology Today blogs, Satoshi Kanazawa discusses two kinds of fallacies that many people often commit and the kinds of people who commit them:

[P]olitical conservatives are more likely to commit the naturalistic fallacy (“Nature designed men to be competitive and women to be nurturing, so women ought to stay home to take care of the children and leave politics to men”), while political liberals are equally likely to commit the moralistic fallacy (“The Western liberal democratic principles hold that men and women ought to be treated equally under the law, and therefore men and women are biologically identical and any study that demonstrates otherwise is a priori false”).

. . . It is actually very easy to avoid both fallacies – both leaps of logic – by simply never talking about what ought to be at all and only talking about what is. It is not possible to make either the naturalistic or the moralistic fallacy if scientists never talk about ought. Scientists – real scientists – do not draw moral conclusions and implications from the empirical observations they make, and they are not guided in their observations by moral and political principles. Real scientists only care about what is, and do not at all care about what ought to be.

Of course this remedy works only if all people simultaneously behave this way, otherwise, as soon as someone starts talking about how whatever is ought to be, someone else is going to say the exact opposite. Thankfully for me and this blog, people will never just talk about what IS (and even if they did, they'd never agree on what IS really is.). Which, um, is my way of saying that whatever I say IS is, it's right! And, anyway, talking about what ought to be is the only way to hop, skip, and jump from a bad IS to a new IS.

But that does not mean that we shouldn't be as rigorous as possible in our thinking of the world around us. Let's face it - we do commit fallacies, both the left and the right. And more often than not, it gets in the way of making any real headway.(Remember when Rachel Maddow said, "It's a fuzzy line between changing people's minds and changing the world.")

I think Kanazawa might agree with me. He says, "We can never devise a correct solution to a problem if we don’t know what its ultimate causes are." Which might just be another way of saying, "Sometimes what is is just not enough.

MIAMI – The American Civil Liberties Union of Florida announces that Heather Gillman has been selected by the Playboy Foundation to receive the Hugh M. Hefner First Amendment Award for "her fearlessness in speaking out on behalf of the rights of gay students" at her Ponce de Leon high school, located in Florida's Panhandle.

Gillman sued her school after her high school principal discriminated against her gay and lesbian friends. At trial, the principal testified that he believed clothing or stickers featuring rainbows would make students automatically picture people having sex, and he forbade students from wearing any sort of clothing, stickers, buttons, or symbols to show her support of equal rights for gay people.

Atta girl.

The lost Madonna tapes via The Daily Beast
Calling all smartphones! You need a new name.

Vampire Bill naked! (NSFW)

Mr. Blackwell dies at the age of 86

Thousands attend funeral of right-wing gay Austrian politician Joerg Haider

Sizing up gay celebrities' boyfriends

Traveling exhibit explores Nazi persecution of gays

Hustlaball catches fire (site NSFW)

The new search engine - SearchMe

Computers getting closer to passing the Turing test

Tennis's Jon Wertheim reviews the past week in tennis in his weekly
Ad-in/Ad-out

Via Charmants : "Evan Wadle was featured in last month’s edition, lensed by Randall Mesdon. The New Jersey model said he had no problem going naked for a gay audience."

Click thumbnails to enlarge. Bonus NSFW shot after the jump.

Maureen "Marcia Brady" McCormick is back! As part of her worldwide tour to promote her new book, "Here's The Story," Maureen has moved from the morning show confines of The Today Show to the free and nasty Howard Stern Show. Check out the clip the Language NSFW clip above. And then tell me you aren't going to rush out and buy her book.

An article in the November 4, 2008 issue of The Advocate asks if Obama or McCain will champion gay rights in American foreign policy.

“The U.S. hasn’t been as clear and insistent on LGBT issues as it has on issues like violence against women and human trafficking,” says Michael Guest, the gay former ambassador to Romania who now serves as senior adviser to the Council for Global Equality (formerly the LGBT Foreign Policy Project).

. . . But it’s up to the next president to lead the way. One of the key uses of presidential power is “to show moral leadership,” says Scott Long, head of the LGBT program at Human Rights Watch. “Saying something about [gay rights] would be an incredibly powerful message.”

. . . In fact, Obama was asked a question on the campaign trail this year about granting asylum to gay people from other countries, to which he responded by saying the United States has “both a legal and a moral obligation to protect victims of persecution based on sexual orientation or gender identity.” That opinion is in line with his support for gay rights domestically -- and his pattern of talking about gays and lesbians on the stump.

“The U.S. should start by changing its own policies regarding LGBT people -- only then will it have a legitimate voice with which to urge other countries to do the same,” says Paula Ettelbrick.

Obama, obviously, has a stronger record on LGBT issues, but as I wrote previously, a message is sent to everyone when our leaders refuse to publicly acknowledge that we are fully human.

This was disappointing. I love Kristen Wiig, and she's done her dead-on Suze Orman's impersonation before. But why was Orman's sexuality used as a punchline? Again? This isn't the first time Orman's sexuality has been pointed out in order to produce laughs. Enough with that already. Being gay isn't funny. It is not a joke, and it is not a punchline. SNL usually gets it right, but this one hit a sour note. Knock it off.

(I couldn't find the clip from this past Saturday. I'll keep looking. It's not even available on the NBC website -- maybe they got some complaints.)

I saw "W." this past weekend. In the movie, Oliver Stone humanized Bush in important ways (it's too easy to demonize him) by presenting Bush's large personality, his wanting to do better, his relationship with his family, and, most importantly, the relationship with his father. But Stone didn't do anything beyond that. He told us Bush was human, but that's something most of us already knew.

It's hard to tease out the good and the bad from a political movie with such a specific focus. Should it be judged as a movie entirely without factoring in the reality on which it is based? If it is factored in, where does a review of the movie become a criticism of the life it is based on? I'm inclined to do the former, to judge it as a movie removed from its inspiration, but every time I try to do that I find my thinking bleeding into the latter.

The movie is structured in a fragmented chronology, jumping backward and forward in time (like "Lost" or "Damages"). The fractures help to contain the largeness of Bush -- the movie holds what it can, and whatever it can't hold together, it lets leak out in between the time jumps. Josh Brolin's performance was very good, if not great, and he occasionally disappeared beneath the Bush character. Although, the times he wasn't able to disappear, I couldn't help but think of Will Ferrell doing Bush on SNL.

Review of "W." continued after the jump.

Thandie Newton, who played Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, was allowed by Stone to do a disservice to the real Rice. Newton's version was a bird-lik and sycophantic caricature, and she really did belong on SNL. That performance was a gaping hole in the cast of supporting characters. Scott Glenn as Donald Rumsfeld, Toby Jones as Karl Rove, Richard Dreyfuss as Dick Cheney potrayed their real-life counterparts with a finer-tuned understanding. Jeffery Wright (of "Angels and America") as Colin Powell seemed awfully young and did strange, distracting things with his voice, probably in an effort to add the gravitas that the real Colin Powell possesses naturally. As some of the portrayals morphed into impersonations, the difficulties of portraying living breathing people became more and more apparent.

As funny was this movie often was, Stone also did a disservice by keeping the exploration of Bush's character an external endeavor. Based on this movie, W.'s was intimidated and overwhelmed by his father while being simultaneously and remarkably competitive with him. W. used is relationship with his father to polish and sharpen his own claws, but Stone misses an opportunity to add dimension when he refuses to offer the internal, nearly-pathological motivations of a man like W. If W. blames his father for all of his problems, then what kind of mentality exists that would use his father in such a way? W's representation of his father is an excuse to misbehave, to fight, and, ultimately, to be President. W's ego led him to the presidency, and it is his ego that will force him out of it so disgracefully.

But Stone's focus on the Iraq war as the ultimate symbol of W.'s failure as a leader points to a misfired arrow by Stone, one that went more than just shy of the personality bullseye. The same man who could invade Iraq so recklessly is the same man who could refuse to lead us during the financial crisis. What we did learn from this movie, which comes out at a time when we are hungry for information, is that W. is human and not pschypathic. What we needed to know is how an unchecked ego and a sense of entitlement can lead us to where are now. We do get that, eventually, but only when we combine the fictions of the film with the rest of the facts of W.'s presidency.

Two new websites give voters a chance to see and hear the Republican candidates in an entirely new way.

Have some fun with Mccain, and then check out what Palin would say as President.

Someone, and someone real gay, in the Entertainment Weekly art department must have had a big ol'crush on one of the Savage Garden boys . . .

Although based on this, it might have been Spock himself:

Via Variety:

1. "Max Payne," $18 million.
2. "Beverly Hills Chihuahua," $11.2 million.
3. "The Secret Life of Bees," $11.1 million.
4. "W.," $10.6 million.
5. "Eagle Eye," $7.3 million.
6. "Body of Lies," $6.9 million.
7. "Quarantine," $6.3 million.
8. "Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist," $3.9 million.
9. "Sex Drive," $3.6 million.
10. "Nights in Rodanthe," $2.7 million.

I saw "W." this weekend. Check back in later today for my thoughts ont the movie.

In a brief but wonderful Q&A in the "Domains" section of the NYT Magazine, Rachel Maddow comes across as a charming combination of Huck Finn and one of the ad executives from Mad Men.

Favorite recent gift: A very old friend of mine gave me a fishing pole. I’d done a little fishing as a kid. Now, I have started fishing in the rivers around my house. I have my Massachusetts fishing license in my wallet and my pole in the shed.

Hobby: I am a hobbyist bartender. I have a liquor cabinet. I research classic drinks from the golden age of American cocktails and I make them for me and Susan.

This makes the longer NYT Magazine profile on Chris Matthews a few months ago look all the more humiliating for Chris Matthews.

SNL received its highest ratings in 14 years when Gov. Sarah Palin appeared on the show on October 19 and danced along while a pregnant Amy Poehler rapped (surprisingly convincingly) as a stand-in for the governor.

Here are the lyrics:

"one two three . . .

my name is sarah palin
you all know me
vice president nominee of the gop
gonna need your vote in the next election
can i get a ‘what what’ from the senior section
mccain got experience, mccain got style
but don’t let him freak you out when he tries to smile
cause that smile be creepy
but when i be vp
all the leaders in the world gonna finally meet me

. . . i’m jeremiah wright
cause tonight i’m the preacha
i got a bookish look and you’re all hot for teacha
todd lookin fine on his snow machine
so hot boy gonna need a go between
in wasilla we just chill baby chilla
but when i see oil lets drill baby drill

The complete lyrics after the jump.

"one two three . . .

my name is sarah palin
you all know me
vice president nominee of the gop
gonna need your vote in the next election
can i get a ‘what what’ from the senior section
mccain got experience, mccain got style
but don’t let him freak you out when he tries to smile
cause that smile be creepy
but when i be vp
all the leaders in the world gonna finally meet me

how’s it go eskimo
eskimos
tell me what you know eskimo
eskimos
how you feel eskimo
ice cold
tell me tell me what you feel eskimo
super cold

i’m jeremiah wright
cause tonight i’m the preacha
i got a bookish look and you’re all hot for teacha
todd lookin fine on his snow machine
so hot boy gonna need a go between
in wasilla we just chill baby chilla
but when i see oil lets drill baby drill

my country tis a
thee
from my porch i can see
russia and such

all the mavericks
in the house put your hands up
all the mavericks in the house put your hands up
all the plumbers in the house pull your pants up
all the plumbers in the house pull your pants up

when i say ‘obama’
you say ‘ayers’
obama. ayers. obama. ayers.
i built me a bridge - it ain’t goin’ nowhere.
[ohhh]

mccain, palin,
gonna put the nail in the coffin
of the media elite
she likes red meat
shoot a mull humpin moose, eight days of the week

[three gunshots]
now ya dead, now ya dead,
cause i’m an animal, and i’m bigger than you
holdin a shotgun walk in the pub
everybody party, we’re goin on a hunt
la la la la la la la la
[six gunshots]

yo palin, i’m out!"

Wake Up With These:

NYT Front Page 10/20 (4:45)
Summary of the Front Page

NYT Book Review (15:00)
Cartoonist Jules Feiffer recalls his Village Voice years; Motoko Rich calls in from the Frankfurt Book Fair; James McPherson discusses President Lincoln’s war powers; and Dwight Garner has best-seller news.

Meet the Press (44:00)
Colin Powell Endorses Obama

This American Life (55:00)
How to Win Friends and Influence People. Stories of people climbing to be number one, including a reading by David Sedaris. How do they do it? What is the fundamental difference between us and them?

Foreign Affairs (35:00)
Managing Editor Gideon Rose discusses the September/October 2008 issue with CFR.org Executive Editor Michael Moran.

Audio player after the jump. Or click here to launch the player in a new window so you can browse while you listen. Or, head over to The Media Bar and listen there.

Click below to jump the the full size players, or click here to launch them in a new window. Or just pull up a chair, hang out, and watch them in The Media Bar.

Today's Buffet:


Daily Song:
Start your week off nice and easy with Acoustic Monday. Amy Winehouse sings an acoustic version "Valerie" live.






Television:
Colin Powell Endorses Obama (7:25)




Movies:
Rachel Getting Married (2:25)




Politics:
Andrew Sullivan on The Chris Matthews Show (00:24). Sullivan briefly talks about ACORN.






Music Video:
Frankmusik "3 Little Words"


The players after the jump. Or click here to launch them in a new window or just pull up a chair and hang out in The Media Bar right next door.

Daily Song

Television (7:25)

Colin Powell Endorses Obama

Movies

Rachel Getting Married (2:25)

Politics

Andrew Sullivan on The Chris Matthews Show (00:24)

Music Video:

Frankmusik "3 Little Words"