White House press secretary Robert Gibbs spouts what keeps recurring as an especially jarring note in Obama’s mealy-mouthed nothings over the fraud and violence in Iran:

“He’ll continue to speak out in support of those that are seeking to demonstrate and do so in a way peacefully,” White House press secretary Robert Gibbs told FOX News.

Obama said this himself a few days ago:

What you’re seeing in Iran are hundreds of thousands of people who believe their voices were not heard and who are peacefully protesting and – and seeking justice. And the world is watching. And we stand behind those who are seeking justice in a peaceful way.

We “stand behind” and “speak out” only for those seeking to topple their violent, repressive, tyrannical government in a “peaceful” way. Because that’ll probably work, no?

Only two explanations occur to me for this particular idiocy. Either Obama really is of the no-exceptions “peace at any price” camp, an enemy of the freedom we enjoy in this country, which was bought with blood, or else he simply is too dim to understand that in Iran and places like it, fradulent elections don’t simply mean that one party yelps about it for a while and then it’s back to business as usual, complete with a peaceful transition. They mean that a party that has no qualms about ordering its thugs to kill its own people will stay in power with their thumbs, bootheels, and various other metaphorical appendages planted squarely on the metaphorical throats of the very real people. And while I think he’s dim, I don’t think he’s quite that dim. Which just makes him, potentially, very wicked. There’s nothing like protesting protests in the name of “peace” to confuse well-intentioned people into believing that what they want isn’t important enough to break the peace. And then, to quote one of C.S. Lewis’s less savory characters, one would have carte blanche.

Via Xrlq.

So that gives him a pass on calling soccer moms “brainless” and claiming people who live in the suburbs have “little to do and everywhere to drive.” Guess those soccer moms should’ve gotten off the highway and let him pass on his important business of, one hopes, leaving the state as quickly as possible.

His most recent story follows 17-year-old James Hoff through his troubling junior year of high school. He rants and raves about environmentalism and how we are all killing ourselves with our rolling smog machines. As he rages against society and capitalism, he yearns for the love of his ex-girlfriend Sadie. James’ soft side is slowly revealed in between his humorous rants.

One day after a mall visit he writes, “I love the rumor that the air in the malls is oxygen enriched to make you stupid and make you buy stuff. Why are you there if you’re not stupid and going to buy stuff?”

Soccer moms: Brainless. Mall shoppers: Stupid. Check-check.

As Nelson worked to craft the character and came up with the book’s unique narrative style (it is told as a series of journal entries, school essays and internet postings) he began to relate to his angry teenage character.

“The kind of stuff the guy does in the book is the stuff I did in high school,” he said. “I really felt like I was that kid. I was really in his brain.”

You mean, the author who thinks people who don’t live as he does are stupid can relate to a fictional teenager who thinks people who live the way he doesn’t want to are stupid? Pretty profound, you pretentious L.A. jerk.

Mr. Jonathan V. Last, here, seems very opposed to and disgusted by the idea of men in the delivery room during the births of their children. Other than that, and the fact that I too despise the expression “we’re pregnant,” I don’t know what the hell he’s talking about.

It wasn’t until the late 1960s that men began taking the last step. Urged on by books such as Robert Bradley’s “Husband-Coached Childbirth,” men started going the distance. By 1970, the delivery room had been pried open.

All manner of idiocy followed: tape recorders, cameras, video. Husbands huffing and puffing with the mothers. The expression “we’re pregnant.” Various fads have cajoled fathers into cutting the umbilical cord or playing catcher as the baby exits the birth canal or stripping off their shirts and clutching the newborn “skin-to-skin.” By the late 1970s, a man was considered something of a monster if he didn’t at least stand north of the equator during the delivery of his child.

He spends the first nine paragraphs loathingly reciting the history of how fathers went from off the scene entirely into the delivery room, and then spends the last three chapters wailing about society’s tolerance for absent or deadbeat fathers. While I sympathize on the last score, I wish he would explain to me what the hell one has to do with the other.

Yet today it is socially acceptable to father a child without marrying the mother or to divorce her later on if mother and father actually do bother to get hitched. And at the same time there is zero tolerance for a husband who says: “No thanks, I’ll be in the waiting room with cigars.” Ms. Leavitt’s fascinating history suggests that childbirth is just one more area where our narcissism has swamped our seriousness.

Whose narcissism, exactly? A birthing mother’s narcissism in wanting the person who, theoretically, is her companion and partner in all of life’s big decisions and events, in the room with her when a drastic, potentially uncontrolled event occurs resulting in the birth of his own child? A father’s narcissism in thinking his presence is necessary for this event? Who and what? And who cares? The idea seems to be that social norms now require the father present at the birth but let him off scot-free for the rest of the child’s raising. Does Mr. Last seriously believe that a father who stands ready to abandon his child and the child’s mother is going to feel constrained by customs requiring him to cut the umbilical cord? Does he really think the majority of the country both a) derides a man as less than a man if he fails to be present in the delivery room AND b) thinks it’s okay for him to then step out of his child’s life? Of course not. The bigger question is, just how does he propose “society” control the latter? The former, according to him, was brought about by an influential book that caught on into a trend and evolved into a norm. Great. If that method is so powerful, let’s use it on the deadbeats! Oh … you mean it won’t work on irresponsible trash like them? Huh. I thought Mr. Last said they could be found dutifully at the bedsides during the delivery. Weird.

Via Hot Air headlines.

Billy and third wife, 33-years-younger Katie Lee, are splitting. Why am I even surprised?

Sigh. Why do I sigh? Is it the continued bad news from the camp of the artist loved not wisely but too well during all of my high school and college years? Or because it’s actually been five years since he married her–when she was 22–and one of my college roommates said, “She looks like his daughter” and his wife, my other roommate, said “That IS his daughter. This one’s his wife.” Where is MY life going, that five years have gone by in a blink? Or do I sigh simply because I always thought of Christie Brinkley as the problem in his previous marriage, but now that the Piano Man’s got three strikes I have to wonder what’s going on with *him* in these marriages?

Whatever. Sigh.

Want to punish your ex’s new spouse? Move to North Carolina, where apparently they still have “alienation of affection” laws on the books:

Raeford, N.C. — A Hoke County woman owes her husband’s former wife $500,000 after a jury ruled that she broke up a 50-year marriage.

Laura Patterson sued Herlinda Basurto in December 2007, alleging alienation of affection and criminal conversation, a legal term for adultery.

Patterson blamed Basurto, 30, for seducing her husband, Alford Patterson, 69. The couple married in 1957 and divorced last year, and Alford Patterson and Basurto subsequently married.

…

“I don’t think that the jury knew what they were doing,” Alford Patterson said. “I mean, think about it. Half a million dollars, and Laura’s sitting at the beach now as if she’s going to get that, which she won’t. I mean, you don’t get something that isn’t there.”

He said the 50 years they spent together was anything but marital bliss.

“(We) had problems from Day 1,” he said. “Laura tried to portray this as being the most lovable marriage that ever hit the United States.”

Laura Patterson had several affairs of her own through the years, her ex-husband said.

She denied that allegation.

I actually started reading the comments, which I usually avoid on news stories. (Incidentally, the “Go Local” service that provides WRAL’s comments may have stumbled on a fitting name for most comment sections with its abbreviation: GoLo.) There’s everything in there from “if you’re going to cheat, move out of NC first” through “why blame the new wife? blame the husband” to “a woman on the jury has a cheating husband, so the verdict should be tossed.”

Via Overlawyered.

The Brits bring out a “pointless” knife in response to the wailing over kitchen knives in a country where stabbing seems to be the major means of homicide. I’m not sure the notch in the blade makes it “pointless” rather than actually sort of “double-pointed”–and as Lowering the Bar points out, that “skin-snagging” effect is probably a bug rather than a feature. But what cracks me up the most is that these are obviously meant to be real kitchen knives in every other respect–i.e. an edge sharp enough to dice carrots on the fly. Which makes the title quote, from the knife’s designer, ludicrous. Can’t kill anybody with a pointless knife, eh? Even though it’s sharp enough to slice a tomato, it won’t slice open somebody’s larynx and carotid artery? Okay, then.

1) Allow her to attend functions at a church you yourself do not seem particularly involved in.

2) Allow her to make her own commitments to that church, such as, for example, participation in an especially codependent music group.

3) Plan a surprise slumber party for her birthday on a Saturday night, before a big performance at church the next morning; suddenly realize, on the night of the party, that your daughter’s commitment to the previously mentioned music group will, GASP, ensure that there are three or four teenagers not of your own family lying around your house on Sunday morning without your daughter to keep charge of them, and phone the director of said music group to imply that her expectation that your daughter appear at both dress rehearsal (at a moderately early hour on Sunday morning) AND the performance (an hour after the rehearsal due to competition for rehearsal time in the sanctuary) is a bit extreme and inform her that she “may or may not see” your daughter at rehearsal, though she will be at the performance, because you don’t want to let the music group down “one hundred percent.” Only fifty percent; that’s acceptable, since of course this is YOUR convenience we’re talking about, and never mind giving your sixteen-year-old daughter the option of keeping or breaking her own commitments by the lights of HER priorities and good judgment.

And some people wonder why the director has bad dreams.

I have a voice in this too, you know. You are not Darth Vader–you can’t say “I’m altering the deal” with total impunity. You know what I’m talking about. Don’t pretend innocence. I can’t stand it in a guy and I won’t tolerate it in my state, either. We had a deal. Don’t act like your total control over the weather gives you the right to alter the provisions at any time.

Listen up: The deal was that you will provide me with warm, sometimes hot, dry summers that, while increasingly bad for my skin, are terrific for my hair. Not muggy, wet summers, either warm or cool. Consistent humidity, great for my skin and lousy for my hair, I could have in any of my more homelike states back east. You want to make it that much easier for me to depart for one of them? Keep this up.

Oh, you want to make nice now? Don’t want me taking my diversity-enhancing Republican self out of your left-wing-infested evergreen woods? You can start by NOT raining when my friend’s son is getting married outdoors tonight. From there, we’ll see.

How in the world did I forget (or, horror, did I not know?) that Kate Jackson was on an episode of Ally McBeal?

And in other “How did I not know that?” realms, only today did I get why it was such a big deal that Bruce Boxleitner plays Cap’n Awesome’s father on Chuck: Because BB was TRON. I still think it would have been even funnier if Kate Jackson had played Awesome’s mom, though. A little spy-show inheritance. Having learned this, I started thinking of maybe one more reason why Chuck is perennially on the bubble–it is just on the cusp of my generation (witness I’ve never seen TRON) and appeals to a small section of that generation, at that. Fingers crossed that they can get it moving in a growth direction without destroying the appeal …

And if you’re wondering how I got started on this line of thought, I spent a few minutes this morning watching some YouTube clips of Scarecrow and Mrs. King. Laugh all you want; it was a great show.

And Sony, for back royalties.

That’s a longtime relationship now apparently completely down the skids, if I may be allowed a mixed metaphor.

Could it be true that Joel hasn’t met his financial obligations? Sad and ironic if true; sad and lame if not true.

H/t J.

Those 13 episodes NBC ordered are apparently all they ordered–they won’t start till February, and there’s no way to sock a regular-length season into a semester. I don’t like the foreboding Jennifer Godwin’s use of the word “largesse” gives me, either: It sounds too much like Chuck is on seriously borrowed time.

Hopeful prediction: The show picks up viewers and returns to a solid full-season footing.

Dour prediction: The show stays the same, picks up no viewers, and is cancelled after the 13-run.

Dire prediction: The show peters out in confusion, loses more viewers, is cancelled even before the end of the 13-run, and I buy Season Two on DVD and pretend that Half-Season Three never happened. Veronica Mars may have been uneven, but at least it got three solid seasons and wrapped itself to a dignified conclusion.

Looks like a travesty. But potentially a hell of a fun one.

H/t J.

NBC has ordered 13 episodes, under the condition that they become cheaper per episode through budget cuts that include limited actor face time and writing staff:

That’s the good news. Here’s the bad news: The 13-episode pickup came after Warner Bros. agreed to make significant budget concessions, including scaling back the number of episodes several members of the show’s stellar supporting cast will appear in and, per one insider, possibly eliminating one actor altogether (R.I.P. Anna Wu?). The show is also expected to cut two of its staff writers.

The show has been set up to cut completely not only Anna Wu but also the entire Buy More team including Morgan–since Chuck quit the store and Morgan and Anna are moving to Hawaii, theoretically they could be dispensed with altogether. But if the Buy More angle is gone, what will replace it? This is part of the bigger question I have about Chuck: Can a parody show ever grow up? If not, I don’t see much future for the show despite the great characters. But if so, can it stay charming and funny?

Part of the show’s charm is the contrast between Chuck’s dull retail life, slumming out of his real element and surrounded by people who take the details of that life very seriously, and Chuck’s spy life, in which he is supposed to be out of his element and surrounded by people who take the details of that life very seriously. The play from one to the other constitutes a majority of the show’s humor. But it also leads to a rut. As season two went on, I found myself angry at Chuck for showing no growth whatsoever under the influence of his more “grown-up” life. When bullets have flown by your ears and people around you are giving and taking beatdowns for two years, you would generally tend to at least get hardened to those things if not actively involved and learning how to participate effectively, wouldn’t you? Yet Chuck kept cringing, yelping, rolling on the floor, and whining about how the government was ruining his life. I wanted him to grow up, and with his free choice to download Intersect 2.0 into his brain, based on the idea that he could make a real contribution to that grown-up life, I have some hope that he will. But Josh Schwartz seems to have a clear idea as to the next directions of the show, and I’m wondering how grown up either Chuck or the show itself will be:

TVGuide.com: These new flashes that give Chuck an ability, how long will each one last? Like, could he “forget” kung fu in the middle of a fight?
Schwartz: What I will say is that people who are concerned that these new powers will somehow change the tone of the show or of our guy, don’t be. There is a plan in place, and the tone of the show and Chuck’s underdog quality will remain intact.

TVGuide.com: Will he flash on, like, a foreign language one week? And then safecracking skills the next? That kind of a thing?
Schwartz: There are a lot of options, a lot of opportunities for us to go down different paths.

TVGuide.com: Might this make Casey, who’s used to being the bacon-saver, a bit jealous?
Schwartz: Certainly we’re always, always looking for ways to heighten conflict between Chuck and Casey. That’s a really fun dynamic for the show.

TVGuide.com: Will there be implications for Chuck and Sarah with this new development?
Schwartz: The most immediate way it impacts them is they can only be together if he is not the asset. That’s why they were able to move their relationship forward in the penultimate episode, because the Intersect was out of his head, and she was no longer going to need to protect him. But now…

So Chuck will remain an underdog even if he has phenomenal cosmic powers. It sounds like a bit of a tall order, but what concerns me more is the attitude towards the Chuck/Sarah relationship and the seeming marriage to the status quo. I know that older shows kept the leads apart for years and that the writers have probably not scratched the surface of what they can do to Chuck and Sarah, but Schwartz’s stated reasoning is a little bit tired at this point. The objection to Sarah being involved with the asset was that she would allow her personal feelings for Chuck to dictate her actions in missions, when the truth is those feelings already dictate her actions, as was acknowledged and embraced in the episode where Number Six almost became Chuck’s new handler. How could her feelings be any more influential if she were actually sleeping with Chuck as opposed to in love with him from two feet away?

The finale handled all this very poorly, as I remarked at Crosblog. In fact it appears that they had to engineer the finale very clumsily specifically to keep Chuck “the asset” without giving them any possible chance of being together in any other way. If Chuck wanted to be with Sarah so much, why would he turn down out of hand and without consideration, as he did in the finale, working as an analyst on the new Intersect project, of which Sarah was to be head? Are they seriously trying to tell us he had no idea what Sarah would do next until after he turned that down? Seriously trying to tell us that Sarah wouldn’t have said “Uh, Chuck, I’m actually going to be working on that project, and we can work together, wink-wink”? And what changed for Sarah in the sixteen TV minutes between when she told Chuck she was leaving and when she told Bryce she wasn’t going with him? And Bryce just runs happily away with his new “handler,” never having met this guy before, having no idea he could be a bad guy, and Beckman etc. don’t notice that Sarah’s not doing her job? The whole plot, and indeed a lot of the show itself, is premised on the idea that people don’t communicate properly, or at all, and that they will never notice certain obvious things right in front of them or draw any conclusions if they do.

But if the writers did manage to successfully pull off a more grown-up Chuck, where would the parody aspect go? Without the Buy More contrast, and with Chuck no longer able to whine that all this is happening to him against his will, where will the “nerd in an untenable situation” vibe that Schwartz seems determined to preserve even come from?

I’m concerned about the direction of the show, to say the least, and believe the writers are setting themselves firmly between a rock (keep the show’s jaunty, embarrassment-comedy vibe) and a hard place (do that while showing character growth). Judging by Schwartz’s comments it seems like they will continue the former at the expense of the latter, and given the budgetary constraints and the fact that shows produced by a company other than the parent network are tumbling like dominoes these days (Chuck is produced by Warner Brothers rather than anything owned by NBC), I’m concerned that these next 13 episodes will peter out in a confused tumble until NBC pulls the plug.

One of my childhood favorites, Scarecrow and Mrs. King, managed something of Chuck’s schtick for four seasons, but A) they didn’t proclaim up front that the leads were in love with each other, something we got to watch come about gradually, thus sparing us from the excuses that they couldn’t be together because they worked together and B) Amanda King was in her role because she had something to contribute that Scarecrow couldn’t easily get any other way. Her contributions were only partly an accident of timing and more largely turned on her personality and her willingness to step up out of her original comfort zone–and her character definitely grew along the way. The show ended when her character had grown to the point where she could no longer conceivably be painted as a bumbling housewife who might or might not have what it takes to be a spy. Chuck has now chosen of his own free will to be a spy and his character must grow through that or the show will die–but if he does grow, parts of the show will necessarily die and change the tone until the show either is cancelled or takes on a whole different vibe. Not an easy outlook either way. But don’t get me wrong: I definitely look forward to seeing how it will go, come what may. Josh’s final note of doom: More Jeffster. Help!