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Good 'Top Ten': Academy Awards

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Top Ten Things You Shouldn't Say In An Academy Awards Acceptance Speech

10. "This is for you, Kim Jong-Il"
9. "I've had sex with every woman in this year's dead actor montage"
8. "Take that, 99-percenters!"
7. "I'd like to take this opportunity to endorse the next President of the United States, Rick Santorum"
6. "I owe it all to my creepy religious cult"
5. "My wife drives a couple of Cadillacs"
4. "Now I'd like to say a few words about Cool Ranch Doritos"
3. "I share this award with my drug-mule, Hector"
2. "I'd like to thank my sham wife for not revealing I'm gay"
1. "I'll be in the men's room, 'polishing my statuette'"

Good 'Late Night' Jokes: Bieber and Oscars

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Late Night With Jimmy Fallon

• Happy Birthday to Justin Bieber, who turns 18 years old this week. You can tell he’s growing up because today he took down all his Justin Bieber posters.

Jay Leno

• It's leap day tomorrow. This is God's way of punishing us by making the election year even longer. 
• The new cast of "Dancing With the Stars" has been revealed. They're leaving one spot open for whoever loses on Super Tuesday next week.

Craig Ferguson

• Forty million people watched the Academy Awards last night. To give you an idea how many that is, take the number of people who saw "The Artist" and add 40 million.

David Letterman

• Today is the 100th anniversary of the Oreo cookie. For New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, it's a holy day.
• Ron Paul looks like the guy you see in the horse-racing movies on the back stretch with a stopwatch.
• Ron Paul announced earlier today his campaign is the only one that's entirely financed by moonshine.

Conan

• Last night "The Artist" won five Oscars. That works out to one Oscar for every person who saw the movie.
• Last night 82-year-old Christopher Plummer became the oldest actor to ever win an Academy Award. Of course, when the show started, he was only 79.
• As of today, Rick Santorum will be assigned Secret Service agents. This is the first time Santorum has agreed to use any kind of protection. 
• Mitt Romney has accused Rick Santorum of saying outrageous things just so Santorum can appeal to the most extreme voters. Santorum denied this and said, "That's exactly the kind of misrepresentation I'd expect from gay abortion doctor Mitt Romney."
• The CEO of Pizza Hut said that when he was in college, he used to bring his dates to Pizza Hut. When asked where he brought them on the second date, he said there were no second dates.
• In Louisiana a male chimpanzee named Conan is still getting female chimps pregnant despite the fact that he's already had two vasectomies. According to officials, this chimp is so masculine they've stopped calling him Conan.

David Brooks on the Republican Party

Look away! Look away! (Photo credit: Norm Walsh)

Republicans on the extreme ferociously attack their fellow party members. Those in the middle backpedal to avoid conflict. Republicans on the extreme are willing to lose elections in order to promote their principles. Those in the mainstream are quick to fudge their principles if it will help them get a short-term win.

In the 1960s and ’70s, the fight was between conservatives and moderates. Conservatives trounced the moderates and have driven them from the party. These days the fight is between the protesters and the professionals. The grass-roots protesters in the Tea Party and elsewhere have certain policy ideas, but they are not that different from the Republicans in the “establishment.”

The big difference is that the protesters don’t believe in governance. They have zero tolerance for the compromises needed to get legislation passed. They don’t believe in trimming and coalition building. For them, politics is more about earning respect and making a statement than it is about enacting legislation. It’s grievance politics, identity politics.

Of course, the professional politicians don’t want to get in the way of this torrent of passion and resentment. In private, they bemoan where the party is headed; in public they do nothing.

Related articles

• Where Were You in 1993, David Brooks? (delong.typepad.com)

Borowitz Report on Santorum's 'Sturch'

we say KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON never gets old (Photo credit: typebalance)

LANSING (The Borowitz Report) – Telling a crowd of supporters that the separation of church and state “makes me want to throw up,” GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum today proposed replacing church and state with a new entity he called “sturch.”

“Merging church and state into sturch will benefit all Americans,” he said.  “Except maybe Jews.”

Mr. Santorum said that the combined entity would offer greater convenience to the American people than the separation of church and state currently does, since Americans would be able to get salvation and motor vehicle renewals at the same place every Sunday.

Turning to another campaign theme, Mr. Santorum told the crowd, “I support the rights of the unborn child until it is born and wants an education."

He contrasted himself with President Obama on the education issue, stating, “Barack Obama speaks in complete sentences.  What a snob.”

Rio: 'The City of Samba'

The City of Samba from Jarbas Agnelli on Vimeo.

Maureen Dowd on Republicans' Five Stages of Grief

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Republicans are getting queasy at the gruesome sight of their party eating itself alive, savaging the brand in ways that will long resonate.

“Republicans being against sex is not good,” the G.O.P. strategist Alex Castellanos told me mournfully. “Sex is popular.”

He said his party is “coming to grips with a weaker field than we’d all want” and going through the five stages of grief. “We’re at No. 4,” he said. (Depression.) “We’ve still got one to go.” (Acceptance.)

The contenders in the Hester Prynne primaries are tripping over one another trying to be the most radical, unreasonable and insane candidate they can be. They pounce on any traces of sanity in the other candidates — be it humanity toward women, compassion toward immigrants or the willingness to make the rich pay a nickel more in taxes — and try to destroy them with it.

Borowitz Report on Polls

DETROIT (The Borowitz Report) – With just one day until the key Republican contests in Michigan and Arizona, a new survey of likely voters indicates that in a match-up between former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney and former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum, a majority would choose suicide over either candidate.

The poll, conducted by the University of Minnesota’s Opinion Research Institute, shows Mr. Romney drawing 21%, Mr. Santorum 18%, and various forms of suicide 61%.

“Throwing yourself in front of a speeding city bus” was the most popular means of suicide at 22%, with “jumping off the roof of a really tall building or bridge” coming in second at 17%.

Good 'Late Night' Jokes: Front Runners

David Letterman

• Mitt Romney has been the front-runner from day one but nobody likes Mitt Romney because he's not kooky enough.
• They're looking for somebody kookier so Rick Santorum is a pretty good choice. He does not believe in birth control. Does not believe in global warming. Does not believe in long-sleeve sweaters.
• The latest polls show Romney and Rick Santorum neck and neck. Not to be confused with Newt Gingrich, who is shown in the polls as chin to chin.

Best Actress Academy Award (Photo credit: cliff1066™)

Craig Ferguson

• President Obama is trying to come up with a new campaign slogan that would replace "hope and change." He's thinking of going with "I am not Mitt Romney."
• There are rumors that Mitt Romney will ask Ron Paul to be his running mate. He was originally going to reach out to Rick Santorum. But Rick's not crazy about other dudes reaching out for him.

Jimmy Kimmel

• Oscar night is the magical night where we sit around in sweat pants and criticize the way famous women are dressed.

Gail Collins on Michigan Trees and Romney

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Is it true that Romney told people in Michigan that their trees were just the right height?

Yes, he was trying to butter them up. He also said “I love cars!” This is yet another example of Mitt’s common touch. In Ohio recently, he told a long story about going to a friend’s wedding, taking some nail polish and writing on the soles of the groom-to-be’s shoes so that when he knelt at the altar, the congregation could read HELP.

This anecdote raises several questions. A) Do you think it actually happened? And B) If you found out it was true, would that make you like Romney more, or less?

What is the right height for a tree?

Not sure, but he said it again on Friday, adding that in Michigan “the streets are just right,” too.

Then he undermined all that hard work on the carpenter-dad angle by adding that his wife drives “a couple of Cadillacs.” The man has an army of political advisers who feed him with oppo research about Rick Santorum’s earmarks, but apparently nobody suggested downplaying the second Caddy.

Related articles

• Romney: My Wife Drives 'A Couple Of Cadillacs' (thinkprogress.org)