Yes, this is what’s on TV: wall-to-wall Nazis, prison porn, “true crime,” Sarah Palin and “When Vacations Attack!”

Everyone try to look surprised: “Two Indiana University scholars report that, for male viewers, ‘emphasis on the sexual attractiveness of female news anchors distracts from memory formation for news content.’ They found that ‘men’s cognitive mechanisms favored visual over verbal processing,’ which is a delicate way of saying their focus — and subsequent memory — are more on the broadcaster’s appearance than on the material she was delivering.” [Via]

by Abe Sauer

You fib!

You spin yarns!

You deceive!

Why, I do believe your case is unjust, my good sir!

You misstate!

You make incorrect statements!

You fabricate!

You bear false witness!

You prematurely declare a mission to be accomplished!

You erect fantasies!

You misconstrue!

You romanticize a situation!

You misspeak!

You fictionalize!

You disguise with untruths that which is true!

You invent truths!

You mythologize!

You should perhaps seek employment with either The New York Times, The Village Voice or The New Republic!

You falsify statements!

You prevaricate!

You perjure!

You fabulize!

You tell fairy tales!

Your pants, sir, may be aflame!

Hogwash!

Abe Sauer is looking forward to tonight’s display of American civility.

“As for Americans, we learn, as if we didn’t know, that due to the pressure of AIPAC, we simply lie about the whole conflict. We pretend that the Palestinians still need to make concessions for peace when there are none left to make. No matter what the provocation — the brutal attack on the Gaza flotilla, the blockading of Gaza, Israel’s lies about the Goldstone Report, the land grabs in Jerusalem, the shootings of innocent Palestinians, the monstrous behaviour of settlers — we are silent unless we can enthusiastically endorse Israel’s position. We are not an honest broker. We are no broker at all. Worst of all, we know (the Al Jazeera papers confirm this) that we are endorsing Israeli positions that we know not to be true. Why do we do it? The same reason we don’t ban assault weapons. A lobby (only in this case, the lobby of a foreign government) is dictating our policies with no regard for the greater American good. So what’s next? One, the US must now absolutely refuse to veto the UN resolution condemning settlements or demonstrate to the world that, despite the Al Jazeera revelations, we are still utterly in Israel’s pocket (I won’t hold my breath).”
 — Media Matters Action Network senior foreign policy fellow MJ Rosenberg gives his take on Al Jazeera’s Wikileaks-like release of “The Palestine Papers,” a cache of over 1,600 internal documents from the past ten years of negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

“So what’s your theme this week?”

It was a simple question from a friend, one that I laughed off, but privately sent me spiraling. As we all know, sports don’t have a new theme every week. This isn’t fashion with “a return to femininity!” or “urban lumberjack cool!” It’s basketball. Games are won, games are lost. Occasionally, if you get lucky, you can follow a group of players that behave, both collectively and individually, in an engaging and flamboyant manner and that creates its own good story.

The Miami Heat aka the Heatles, would certainly fall into that category. And yet, even when the players contribute with buffoonery, you’re still, more often than not, a modern-day Pat Hobby scrounging through a pile of scraps to find something that sounds interesting. And this week, man, I was knee-deep in scrap. I was even tempted to write about LeBron James’s upcoming animated series about a family of different-sized LeBrons, or something, though I decided against it at the last moment, since I thought the show was actually positive and remotely charming. Ergo, uninteresting.

Like a Ouija board with a dated headband and crummy tattoos, James is usually the one who obliges most frequently in providing me with some answers from his dispirit world. I can always count on him to coax some “not-nice” from me. Why? Because, in what actually what may be my meta-theme for this column, I’m kind of a dick.

How do I know that? Because I can read. (Trust me.) And also, because my mother, who watches basketball, called me to tell me just that during Sunday’s Jets game. “Ease up on him,” she advised, from her West Palm Beach condo-slash-cocktail lounge, over a din that suggested a bunch of deaf, old people shouting about roast beef. “You’re beginning to sound like a mental patient, hon.”

Anyway, let me just say this: I don’t think James is actually a bad person (although I’ve called him every third name in the book), and to be honest, if it weren’t for him, I’d be doubly screwed here. But sometimes I just want to shake him because he speaks before he thinks way too frequently. Even Antoine Dodson and three-fourths of the LeBrons know that.

On rare occasions, James’s cluelessness can also work in his favor, like last week, as the Miami Heat shuffled like a flu-ridden Pope Benedict through a losing streak that has seen each one of the big three pull up lame — James and Bosh with bad ankles and Wade with a balky knee and then a migraine headache. LeBron was able to smile and laugh it off, even though it sure looks like they’ve hit a wall. In lockstep, the local press managed to find a silver lining as well: it…gives…a…chance…for…the…awful…players…to…play? Not sure if I buy that exactly, but it’s called a silver lining, not a gold one, for a reason.

Amid the nicks and dings came at least a modicum of actual (as opposed to manufactured) positive news, with the return of Mike Miller, a player whose shooting range immediately makes the team a greater, and perhaps the greatest threat in the East. Miller was injured during training camp and so the team has, technically, never been at full strength. The Heat still isn’t clicking on all cylinders, and yet you can visualize how it will look — Bosh in the post, Miller on the perimeter, with Wade and Bosh alternating drawing the double-team and Coach Spoelstra making sure that Crimean war veteran Juwan Howard doesn’t die of old age on the bench.

At the base level, Miller immediately opens up the post for LeBron who, in Bosh’s absence, has promised to discover his inside presence, one that a player of his size should’ve learned in college from Roy Williams or one of those Italian coaches in the country music capitals. Beyond that, Miller can create his own shot, has a quick release, and, if he’s feeling it, can score in bunches, as he is beginning to do.

In a tangentially related story, the team certainly chose an odd week to tell season ticket holders that they will have to dig a little deeper next season. Personally, I don’t find the amount onerous or even unreasonable for a top-flight team who will be in the mix for a championship every year. Then again, my views could be tempered by the fact that my mother has recently discovered the Internet and, while she’s old enough to have actually owned an awl, she doesn’t really want a mental patient for a son.

Tony Gervino is a New York City-based editor and writer obsessed with honing his bio to make him sound quirky. He can also be found here.

Photo by Keith Allison, from Flickr.

In any other country this would qualify as irony, but in the lurid spectacle that is Italy it is simply another drop in the hooker bucket: “ENRAGED Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, hounded by the media over allegations of orgies and prostitutes, has ranted live on about ‘whorehouse television’ obsessed with the sex scandal.”

RT @edhenrycnn: Asked fave thing about President, McConnell says “that he’s supposedly quit smoking” // “Supposedly”! Snarky!less than a minute ago via Twitter for iPhone

Ana Marie Cox
anamariecox

Oh, Mitch McConnell, you scamp! Whatever are we to do with you? Still, we applaud your endorsement for those who are able to conquer this absolutely filthy — and dangerous — habit, even if you can’t resist the snark. It’s good to see that you’re putting the health of Americans first.

Unrelated: “Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is the all-time leader in reaping the tobacco industry’s contributions. Over the senator’s career, he has received $419,000 from PACs and individuals associated with major tobacco companies. Reynolds alone gave the Kentucky Republican $18,750 during the 2008 election cycle, while the industry as a whole gave the senator $132,400 during the same period.”

Downtown Cairo is essentially shut down. As our correspondent in Cairo suggested last week, public expressions of displeasure with the government have at last gone big in Egypt, with tens of thousands marching in the streets today. There are many pictures on the organizing Facebook site; people are using Twitter as well to share information about how to circumvent government Internet censorship and access information. The protests have turned violent in places, as police push back against crowds; they are using teargas and water cannons, and batons as well. From the AP: “Mothers carrying babies marched and chanted, ‘Revolution until Victory!’ while young men parked their cars on the main street and waved signs reading ‘OUT!’ inspired by the Tunisian protestations of ‘DEGAGE!’ this week. Men were seen spraying graffiti reading ‘Down with Hosni Mubarak.’” Protests are also taking place in Alexandria and other cities and in Lebanon. The Egyptian minister of the interior has issued orders to “arrest any persons expressing their views illegally,” which is pretty much everyone.

“Genghis Khan has been branded the greenest invader in history — after his murderous conquests killed so many people that huge swathes of cultivated land returned to forest. The Mongol leader, who established a vast empire between the 13th and 14th centuries, helped remove nearly 700million tons of carbon from the atmosphere, claims a new study. The deaths of 40million people meant that large areas of cultivated land grew thick once again with trees, which absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.”

While everyone is “upset” about Christopher Nolan not being nominated for best director for Inception, there’s way more fascinating news in today’s Oscars nominations announcement.

The good news:

• Waiting for Superman? Straight-up SNUBBED in the best documentary race. Hooray! The propaganda vehicle for the privatization of education can now slink off to die.

• Exit Through the Gift Shop, which is in some ways at least a documentary, though who knows which ways, nominated for best documentary, which, yay.

• Jacki Weaver, who is maybe possibly the last remaining delightfully aging camp diva of our time, nominated for best supporting actress to duke it out with the marvelous Melissa Leo. Thank God: this gives the gays something to fret about on Oscar night!

The hard choices:

• Jeremy Renner (The Town) v. Christian Bale (The Fighter) for Best Supporting Actor? This choice is unpossible. (Also more fretting amongst the gays.)

The bad news:

• The Best Actress race seems not that interesting, right? (That’s hard on the gays!)

• The Pat Tillman Story? SNUBBED for documentary. That’s total bullshit.

• Daft Punk’s soundtrack for Tron? Snubbed! Sad. (Though it picked up a nomination for sound editing, which seems fair!)

• Poor Ryan Reynolds put himself inside a box for a whole film in Buried and Hollywood didn’t care. 🙁

• Hey, you know what didn’t pick up any traction (AKA marketing) for awards? Please Give. Hmmph.

• The thing about the Academy is that it’s always like they don’t see so many movies. For instance, this year, four films took 38 of the nominations. This seems statistically pretty par for the course each year, and it’s boring. The only thing that suggests they saw more films than were mass-nominated were the costume design nominations for I Am Love and the screenplay nomination for Mike Leigh’s Another Year (which made $714,387 in the U.S.). Other than that, pretty much anyone in America could have picked this list with 85% accuracy. Except everyone lost a few points, because everyone had Nolan on their best director list. Surprise!