First it was that huge knife he pulled out, at random, on a video posted to his Twitter stream. Now he's admitted to keeping his sword from the Conan the Barbarian movies in his office, as well, and even uploaded a picture of the thing. We thought we'd seen it all in California politics but, honestly, who does this? Is it supposed to frighten his political opponents? Awe fans of 1980s muscle flicks?

We shudder to think what other implements of death the governor might be keeping in that office. This is the guy who starred in Predator, after all. We've let our imaginations run wild in the photo gallery below, showing a logical progression in gubernatorial arms.

The knife Schwarzenegger brandished in July. It CUTS fat from the budget, like education funding. Ha ha, get it??

The Conan sword Schwarzenegger just disclosed. He can really take a WHACK at spending with that thing!

Why not a grenade launcher mounted under an assault rifle? The governor could blow holes in the status quo with that thing. "Today, I am here to LAUNCH a new initiative. I think you'll find its potential is EXPLOSIVE."

A Gatling gun would be great for mowing down the naysayers in the press, right Arnold? "I've put a few new issues into the ROTATION, guys. I hope you don't mind if my answers sound a little CANNON-ED."

District 9's set in Johannesburg. Aliens in the film end up stranded in South Africa after not being able to get their ship off the planet. Years later, and they've been integrated into society there in a ghetto, in what basically amounts to an existence as a science experiment. Sound familiar? Anyway, they try to move the aliens further out, and then the aliens try to start some ruckus.

But this isn't the only film in which aliens and humans interact in a way in which something meaningful may be produced. There're plenty of these films! But these are the five I picked. If you've got any better ones, throw them in the comments, where the Alien-Evil factor, the Human-Evil factor, and the social message of these films shall be subject to intense debate. Aliens of the universe: live long and prosper, or die a shitty death. Just don't mess with humans.

District 9, 2009, directed by Neill Blomkamp.

How Bad Are The Aliens?: 3/10. Without spoiling too much, meh, not so bad. Like any oppressed people, they get worse the more they're encroached upon. They (supposedly, ooh) just want to go home!
How Bad Are The Humans? : 7/10. Total assholes! They put them in the ghetto and life sucks for them. A few people are alien rights advocates.
Social Message: 7/10. Apartheid's bad, most humans are inherently bad, but occasionally, there're a few people who will stand up for the rights of the oppressed.

Cloverfield, 2008, directed by Matt Reeves

How Bad Are The Aliens?: 8/10. Okay, so maybe just a monster, but it could be an alien! We don't know! The point here is that it's just another monster who wants our ass on a plate. Apparently, this one's been sitting off of Coney Island for a few hundred years - maybe - but he wakes up, is pissed, and decides to murder everything in sight. If I lived that close to Coney Island, however, I'd be pissed, too. He basically wrecks Manhattan and as far as we know, avoids Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island. I don't know if this makes him tasteful or despicable.
How Bad Are The Humans? : 4/10. I mean, they didn't do anything wrong, but at least one of them is a trust fund baby who lives in the Time Warner Center, and they're total downtown gentrifiers. Also, they're whiny.
Social Message: 8/10. It's incredibly subtle. Basically: if you gentrify/destroy New York of its culture, one day, karma - in the form of a thirty-story, hungry, pissed-off alien - will come and finish the job for you, stomping Manhattan, you, and your Beatrice Inn-missing friends out of existence.

Independence Day, 1996, directed by Roland Emmerich.

How Bad Are The Aliens?: 10/10. They want to kill us all. Somewhere, out there, there might be something that will bring the pain to all of us, and we're gonna have to unite to kill it.
How Bad Are The Humans? : 3/10. For the most part, we're pretty decent when we band together for a united cause. Like killin' some alien. Unfortunately, as it turns out, we were hiding alien tech in Area 51 forever, so, we kinda knew what was happening when the world was getting destroyed.
Social Message: 2/10. Basically: "The Fresh Prince Will Save Us All," which is true, kind of, but if an alien invasion like that actually happened, we'd all be completely fucked.

Alien Nation, 1988, directed by Graham Baker

How Bad Are The Aliens?: 4/10. Again, meh. Not so bad. Just as bad as your average human. How bad can an alien race in which one of them is played by Mandy Patinkin be? Exactly. But there're always a few bad eggs, you know? James Caan has to find this out the hard way.
How Bad Are The Humans? : 6/10. Think True Blood: we're curious, but there're a few human purists who want the aliens to go away. Which is to say: hicks are a time-honored American tradition, and that Americans are inherently bad.
Social Message: 4/10. Cliche, but basically: we should give all members of the universe an equal chance, because odds are they match up spiritually to every other member of the universe. Some are shitty, some are awesome, some are mediocre, and there're always gonna be hicks on every side.

E.T., 1982, directed by Steven Spielberg.

How Bad Are The Aliens?: 0/10. Are you fucking kidding me? They're cuddly wrinkled midgets whose tummies glow that are fascinated by Reese's Pieces. They come from the Planet Cute somewhere around the Solar System of Awesome in the middle of the Snuggle Galaxy.
How Bad Are The Humans? : 8/10. Total dicks! They try to take E.T. and make an experiment out of him. Luckily, some kid gets on his bike and E.T. makes it fly.
Social Message: 5/10. Special friends are special: did you know Spielberg invented E.T. as an imaginary friend during his parents' divorce? Humans are afraid of things they don't understand, like cuddlemonsters. That being said, the power of telecommunications, amongst other things, will save us all.

The Man Who Fell To Earth, 1976, Nicolas Roeg

How Bad Are The Aliens?: 1/10. David Bowie plays an alien who needs to save his home planet. He's pretty nice, but is over-reachingly weird. Think the boring version of Starman. The song, not the movie.
How Bad Are The Humans? : 8/10. David Bowie plays the pervy, less cuddly version of E.T., and humans do everything they can to make his tenure here suck, including but not limited to a bunch of experiments on him causing various levels of discomfort. But, spoiler alert: once he realizes he can't save his home planet, he becomes a nihlist alcoholic dick.
Social Message: 6/10. Meh. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em, while storied advice, is kind of old. So is the great "in times of trouble, resort to drinking" wisdom that's gotten many through rough times.

If Jennifer Siebel Newsom were a successful Hollywood player, her Tinseltown celebrity would surely help her husband's run for office. But she's not. Here's what Newsom's campaign site has to say about California's would-be First Lady:

Jennifer is also a working actress having starred in various shows such as NBC'S "Life," AMC'S "Mad Men," and CBS' "Numb3rs." She has performed in various studio and independent films such as "In The Valley of Elah," "Rent," "Something's Gotta Give" and she has an upcoming role on NBC's pilot "Trauma."

A glance at IMDB reveals that her acting career is not quite that elevated. She had one scene in one episode of Mad Men; she played a receptionist in Rent.

Oddly, Newsom doesn't mention the one movie in which Jennifer did legitimately play a starring role: The Trouble With Romance. The film, which had a brief theatrical run in New York City in February and March, showed her disrobing for a threeway. Just wait until the couple's offspring downloads that!

Yes, this Wednesday, when every other channel in the country is playing the president babbling about the Swine Flu Bailout Budget or whatever, you, the educated television viewer, will not have to miss one all-new minute of Lie to Me, a.k.a. "House But He Got to Keep His Accent and He Solves Crimes."

Has a broadcast network ever refused to air a presidential news conference before? Well yes, probably the WB. But god, we dream of a world in which Obama preempted the American Idol results show, forcing them to just fucking tell us who lost, during a commercial break, without K.C. and Lady GaGa and David Cook getting all up in our business.

(Unrelated:

The three networks have evaluated Mr. Obama very similarly: 57% positive comments on ABC, 58% positive on CBS, and 61% positive on NBC. But he fared far better in New York Times stories, where nearly three out of four evaluative comments (73%) by sources and reporters were favorable. And he fared far worse on Fox News, where only one out of eight such comments (13%) were favorable.

What a simplistic way of evaluating media coverage of a public figure! Also, Fox is evil and bad.)

Given that Spitzer is the focus of the frame, one gets the sense the cameraman knew this was no ordinary cutaway. Several viewers did, too.

Thanks to tipster Luke for sending in this screengrab.

And guess who is crazy: action film director John McTiernan. He's just directed The Political Prosecutions of Karl Rove, an inaction film of sorts about how his indictment in the Pellicano case was politically motivated.

See, McTiernan had Pellicano wiretap a producer he was fighting over money with and then the FBI called him about it, and McTiernan was all "nope I didn't do that," and, well, that is not legal, to make false statements to the FBI. McTiernan pleaded guilty and was sentenced to four months in proson. But then McTiernan got mad that he was the only rich Hollywood prick facing actual jail time over this mess, so he fired his lawyers and withdrew his plea and made this documentary, apparently. He's due to be reindicted.

Anyway. McTiernan has never really thought he should get any jail time for his crime, and he's made it clear from day one that because he is a rich and successful director who is also, at heart, a Good Person, he should not be punished for lying about having everyone wiretapped. How dare they prosecute a man who's always portrayed the FBI in a positive light?

She also scolded Mr. McTiernan for saying in an e-mail message to his previous lawyer that he was "offended" at the idea he could be prosecuted because he had "refused to make movies in which F.B.I. agents are the bad guys," and for complaining that his legal woes could get in the way of his making a "patriotic movie."

McTiernan apparently doesn't remember how when the FBI shows up in Die Hard they are all working from the old terrorist playbook, and Gruber is playing them for saps, and only McClane and lowly LAPD desk jockey Reginald ValJohnson are interested in actually stopping those sons of bitches. Remember? Agents Johnson and Johnson, no relation? God, that movie rules. Anyway. The FBI are not "bad guys" in that movie but they are getting in the way of McClane doing his job, dammit, which is why, 20 years later, director John McTiernan had to lie to them.

Sadly this new movie does not look as awesome as Die Hard, or Die Hard With a Vengeance, which is just as awesome. This new movie looks as bad as Rollerball, frankly.

According to The Political Prosecutions of Karl Rove, the entire Pellicano case was all about digging up dirt for an anti-Hillary Clinton campaign video, because that makes sense. Why else but to derail Hillary would anyone go after noted Great American Ron Burkle?

The film notes that the prosecution allowed federal officials to compel two of Mrs. Clinton's biggest contributors - the entrepreneurs Ron Burkle and Stephen Bing - to testify before a grand jury. Mrs. Clinton, the film says, was widely reported to have had help from Mr. Pellicano when her husband was accused in 1992 of having had an affair with Gennifer Flowers.

Now it is actually certainly true that politically motivated investigations and prosecutions of prominent Democrats were one of the many dirty deeds of the Bush administration, but they were more likely to go after people like Alabama Governor Don Siegelman than to target a scummy Hollywood private eye and the assholes who hired him.

We think McTiernan should cut a deal with the prosecutors: they will not re-indict him if he stops making weird conspiracy documentaries and signs on instead to Die Hard 5.

Halperin, who inflicted The Note on the world before moving to Time, sold an option HBO Films to turn into a movie his forthcoming 2008 campaign book Game Change, even though that book is effectively an extended correction on his last book.

The studio, which does projects for both the eponymous premium cable channel and the big screen, has already hired a writer (Charles Leavitt) to do the screen adaptation.

Halperin will serve as a consultant to the movie, alongside John Heilemann, the New York magazine political writer he's been blessed to have as a co-author on the book. HBO will need all the help it can get: Like the book, the film Game Change will attempt to track three campaigns and five politicians

Usually a movie like this would take you behind the scenes of a campaign, but there's only so deep you can go when you're hopping between Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Sarah Palin and John McCain. (Sad Joe Biden will apparently be reduced to a bit part.) Maybe HBO is thinking miniseries.

In any case, it will be fun to watch the casting decisions unfold, and to relive the 2008 campaign through the eyes of a man who thought John McCain was on fire the week he said "the fundamentals of our economy are strong." Maybe we'll find out he was right after all.

In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Penn says that he met Obama during the campaign and was since offered a position as a public liaison:

I got to know the President and some of the staff during the campaign and had expressed interest in working there, so I'm going to be the associate director in the White House office of public liaison. They do outreach with the American public and with different organizations. They're basically the front door of the White House. They take out all of the red tape that falls between the general public and the White House. It's similar to what I was doing on the campaign.

Penn says that's he's not necessarily retiring from acting, and that the time-span of his White House job is unclear, but that he does plan to pursue a career in politics for the long haul. So, good for him.

[EW]

A movie star can get away with a quote like that; worst-case scenario, the publicist issues a clarification the next day.

Barack Obama, though, is going to have to contend with furious advocates for the mentally disabled. That's why his press team was backing off the comments before Jay Leno's show was over. (A clip of the comment is above. Notice Leno stammering as he processes what just happened.)

This is just like that time Obama made a comment about Nancy Reagan convening seances at a news conference right after he was elected. Isn't Joe Biden supposed to be the gaffey one?

MSNBC talking head Keith Olbermann and Late Late Show host Colin Ferguson were wringing their hands over the Special Olympics comment earlier tonight (see video above).

Gotcha variety-show-watching aside, most Americans have bigger things to worry about than whether the president inadvertently offended the athletic prowess of the mentally disabled. But then they probably also have bigger things to worry about than the other topics covered by Leno and Obama: puppies, bowling or flying on Air Force One (see NBC highlights reel below). So net-net it's hard to see much upside in this Tonight Show appearance for Obama.

It's like the president recruited his image handlers from the Special Ol... well, like they're differently abled, adept at Beltway positioning, unprepared for Hollywood sound stages.

To recap: Bill was working as a vaguely defined "adviser" for some investment funds owned by Yucaipa, Burkle's company. Then his wife goes and runs for president so Bill publicly "severed business ties" with Burkle, presumably to avoid being photographed with more attractive young women on Burkle's plane.

But! Bill's consolation prize was that Yucaipa would pay him $20 million when he left. For what? Nobody's really sure! But there were lots of things that could blow up in Bill's (and by extension, Hillary's) face, politically:

Mr. Clinton was one of the three owners of the foreign fund's general partner, along with Mr. Burkle and Dubai Investment Group (YGP) Ltd., an entity that was part of the business empire of Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the ruler of Dubai.

The Yucaipa connection presented other potential difficulties for Mrs. Clinton, people familiar with the matter said. In late 2007, the foreign fund invested in a Chinese media company, Xinhua Finance Media Ltd., whose parent company had past ties to the Beijing government.

Oh you know who else was connected to Clinton via Burkle? Convicted scam artist Raffaello Follieri! So, my working theory here is that taking the money would have caused too much of a headache for Hillary in the press, and also, since Bill's payout was theoretically tied to how much he earned, maybe there wasn't all that much money there to be had anyhow. But if you know better, feel free to share. [WSJ]

A friend told the Post: "Ron Silver died peacefully in his sleep with his family around him this morning."

The actor started the left-leaning Creative Coalition in 1989 but switched to the GOP following the Sept. 11 attacks, speaking at the 2004 Republican National Convention.

His West Wing character Bruno Gianelli underwent a similar conversion on that TV show. Silver also took on movie roles, including 1990's Reversal of Fortune, in which he played constitutional scholar Alan Dershowitz.

Silver's cancer had not been previously publicized, judging from a quick Nexis search.

Silver had a son and a daughter, according to TV.com.

Government prosecutors say Smith's boyfriend and lawyer Howard K. Stern (pictured) funneled the model prescription drugs, as has been suspected at least since the time Stern arranged a creepy video of an apparently drugged-out Smith, in clown makeup, entertaining a frightened child.

Stern has been charged with eight felonies, as have two of Smith's doctors. One of them, psychiatrist Khristine Eroshevich, wrote prescriptions for Smith under false names, but claims that was only "done for privacy reasons."

When Smith died, there were 11 bottles of medication in her hotel room. Some 600 pills were missing from prescriptions issued over the prior five weeks, most in Stern's name, according to AP.

As irresistible as the case is to voyeurs and the news media, it's likely got some political upside as well: California attorney general Jerry Brown, likely running for governor soon, is pressing the case.

A newly-released cache of FBI documents reveals the bureau investigated Valenti following a bizarre 1964 tip from a caller who "read in the newspapers that Valenti swims in the nude in the White House pool." The investigation found Valenti was friends with a gay photographer in Houston, leading to rumors he himself was gay. The bureau found no proof of this, and Valenti had a reputation as a ladies man, so case closed.

It's harder to draw conclusions about the host of Bill Moyers Journal. The same FBI documents show Moyers, as a special assistant to President Lyndon Baines Johnson, requested the bureau "investigate two other administration figures who were 'suspected as having homosexual tendencies.'" An FBI official later discussed that request with Johnson, which seems odd given that Moyers told the Post the FBI might have sparked the investigation:

Moyers said by e-mail yesterday that his memory is unclear after so many years but that he may have been simply looking for details of allegations first brought to the president by Hoover.

Moyers is 74. People will probably forgive him trying to protect a pro-civil-rights president against then-lethal associations with gays. It will be harder for them to understand how he can keep working as a journalist if he can't even remember such behavior.

The Grammy Awards performance gave the New York Times a news hook on which to hang the issue. The paper noted that the tiger icon featured in the video for M.I.A.'s 2007 hit "Bird Flu" bears a striking resemblance to the logo for Sri Lanka's Tamil Tigers, described by the FBI as "among the most dangerous and deadly extremists in the world," pioneering suicide bombing techniques and killing world leaders. You can compare the logo above, from the video, with the group's logo below.

The paper also quoted Sri Lankans who say M.I.A., whatever her artistic merits, glorifies the Tigers. Her father is a leader in the Tamil separatist movement.

The thing is, M.I.A. is far from the first rapper to toy with paramilitary or violent imagery. Public Enemy had the Uzi-toting S1Ws; N.W.A.'s first mass album cover had a member of the rap group pointing a gun at the camera; Ice Cube dabbled in the Nation of Islam, incorporating some themes into his music; MC Ren did a song about ethnic cleansing in America. The cartoonish extremism mainly served to help make the music appealing to suburban white kids, but, as the cliche goes, that was before 9/11.

With terrorism perceived as a bigger threat these days, M.I.A.'s music will draw harsher scrutiny. But it will be hard to take her too seriously as a terror apologist now that she's marrying into a very rich family and is cashing big corporate checks from MTV and her record company.

(Below, find a critical cover of M.I.A.'s "Paper Planes" by Sinhalese rapper DeLon.)

What resulted was a quick, graceful deflection of every attempt to entrap her, with slights at O'Reilly, George W. Bush, and Fox News delivered for good measure (and with a smile). For most actors, we'd recommend staying out of politics, but it seems to bring out the best in Alba. Forget bombs like The Love Guru—it's time for her to sign for a sexed-up Frost/Nixon 2 (in which Frost's nubile daughter has her own encounter with Nixon—this time, with some very different interrogation techniques).

• 'Kind of an a-hole': Jessica Alba tells the truth about Bill O'Reilly [Crooks and Liars]

Publisher Andrew Breitbart had promised BH for a while, with a few early posts teasing us since Sunday. But now, with editor John Nolte's official welcome and a (literal) raft of vaguely movie-centric contributions from his like-minded associates, we have a better idea of what to expect. In short, this is your grandfather's Defamer.

We've scoured pretty much the whole site to date and recommend a sort of five-course, welcome-to-the-neighborhood meal for your own first visit:

· Hors D'oeuvre: "Hollywood Loves Higher Taxes," by Melanie Graham
Tasting Notes: Flaky, with sharp, bitter aftertaste. Goes down easy in 59 words, but eat too many (e.g. "It’s the hypocritical secret here - the lefty actors and writers all incorporate themselves to avoid higher taxes but expect everyone in Rube State America to pony up"), and you'll be full before you know it.

· Appetizer: "Big Hollywood Loves the Arts," by John Nolte
Tasting Notes: Tender, if slightly greasy: "[W]e believe the arts must improve, but know that’s an impossibility until the discussion includes the ideas and ideals of everyone."

· Salad: "Does Hollywood Love Christians Now?" by Dallas Jenkins
Tasting Notes: Salty, not too heavy, with unusual and intrepid flavor pairings: "When Sony released Brokeback Mountain, they didn’t shy away from a few explicit gay sex scenes, as that would have been compromising; one wonders if they would extend the same treatment to explicit prayer or churchy scenes in a faith-based film that had a budget above $5 million."

· Entree: "'C-List' Casting Call: Will Hollywood Conservatives Come Out to Play?" by Rep. Thaddeus G. McCotter (R-MI)
Tasting Notes: Robust and buttery. A bit overcooked but likely satisfying to discriminating palates:

Republican oriented artists, however, have been involuntarily subjected to Big Hollywood’s new version of the old “blacklist’: the “C-List” of conservatives who are marked for censorship and career ruin for deviating from Left-wing orthodoxy. Nonetheless, though our specific struggles differ, we are equally embattled and immutably bonded, because we suffer for our love of America.

· Dessert: "Where Are All the Cinema Heroes Today?" by Orson Bean
Tasting Notes: Sweet, soft, falls apart when you cut into it: "[T]he movies represented a lot more than escape to me. They represented moral guidance. What I learned at home was despair and hopelessness. What I learned at the pictures was don’t give up the ship, we have only begun to fight, it’s always darkest before the dawn."

Bon appetit!

• Big Hollywood

First, Baldwin blogged that Hillary Clinton's Senate spot ought to go to a woman (he suggested Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney), but shouldn't remain the "Celebrity Senate Seat" that Clinton transformed it into. Some of the HuffPo bloggers saw that as a veiled attack on potential seat-filler Caroline Kennedy, which Baldwin was not happy about:

Man-oh-man-oh-man! All of this tedious crap on the pages of this blog about how I do not love/appreciate Caroline Kennedy enough!

You're kidding, right?

My father was a Democratic committeeman in our home town. He took me to St. Patrick's for Senator Kennedy's funeral in 1968 when I was ten years old. I was bred to be a Democrat! I am friends with many members of that family. I am a fervent supporter of some of their individual causes. [...]

This is more about protecting a Democratic Senate seat than romanticizing it.

Appoint an individual (fine...man or woman) who has been elected to something. Something! Then there is a race in 2010, if I understand New York's electoral mechanics properly. That is not that long from now. Then certain New Yorkers could run. And probably win. I would probably vote for her (er...them).

Certainly, Alec knows a little something about the dynastic perils of politics; after all, were it not for his own good name, would we have had to deal with Stephen Baldwin's current right-wing punditry? Appoint Caroline Kennedy, and we could run the risk of a Senator with Miley Cyrus tattoos and a pressing need to give tax kickbacks to the Skinemax "erotic thriller" industry.

• Doing it with Care [HuffPo]

For the Obama Supporters In Need Of A New Hope
The American Idol machine lurches back to life in January, and that usually features a plucky minority with a gleam in their eye, a song in their hearts, and a terrorist at their dinner table (or at least that happened in that Mandy Moore movie.) But January is a long way off, so we suggest you try Top Chef, a Bravo cooking competition show now entering its fifth season. Why is this perfect for Obama supporters? Because it's smart, elitist, and is about people trying to make something good and palatable and revolutionary. You can root for the young upstart or the filthy foreigner, or the black-ish one! It'll be just like the last two years never ended, which to us sounds like a heaping plate of misery, but you crazy Obamanation people just might lurve it. Yes we candied yams!

For the Sad, Dejected, Utterly Despondent McCainiacs
Ol' Gramps McBiplane lost, yes. But you can still find the shambling, confused elderly on the TV! First there's Barbara Walters on The View, who, especially when dealing with crazed idiot Elisabeth Hasselbeck, looks increasingly like your wacky old Aunt Minerva did that time the whole ostrich-farm-in-New-Mexico idea squawkily blew up in her face. There is also Colonel Tigh on Battlestar Galactica (a very good show ABOUT POLITICS that returns this winter) who looks exactly like McKrang. Also sometimes Jessica Walter shows up, drunk and glorious, on the abysmally dreadful 90210 redux, and Anne Archer (who is 61! she now counts as an old!) is on that show about rich people or something, Privileged. I'm sure she gets befuddled sometimes! And, of course, there's the ultimate rage-simmering-just-beneath-the-surface old person, Larry King. Who is still on primetime! Yeah it's sorta newsy, but suspenders! You can also remember McCain's Navy days on the show NCIS, which is about grizzled Navy people solving crimes and blowing things up. Much like McCain's administration would have been. Sigh.

For the Real America
Are you someone who is sad that "Inuit Legend" Barbie Doll Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin won't be tarting up the Capitol with her folksy views on making rape victims construct the courthouse in which their case will be tried with their bare hands or sending all gay people out onto an ice floe and then setting the whole pile ablaze with a flaming arrow? Well, fret and boo hoo no more, because there is still The Hills! The blubbery reality sluice features Heidi Montag, who, much like Ms. Palin, is a hollow, media-tested husk of a McCain supporter from the frozen North. There is also Stylista, a disastrous competition show in which a woman of importance laboriously spews wooden catchphrases and buzz terms, to the cold delight of her clueless, adoring public. Those ought to hold you over until 2012, when the Empire (Waist Inaugural Gown Now Gathering Dust In The Closet) Strikes Back.

For The Fervent Joe Biden Supporters
Um... Della (Reese), where are you? If you liked Biden a lot, you'd probably enjoy Brothers & Sisters, which is about decent people saying decent things while the hint of a murderous glint flickers in their eyes.

For the People Who Voted "Yes" On Prop H8
If you are scared of married gay people because they will buttsex your children while teaching them about evolution and then burn down your church and put your minister in rape jail if you aren't careful, then you might enjoy Grey's Anatomy. You see they had a lesbo character on the show (played by the endlessly talented Brooke Smith) but then they kicked the dyke off 'cause she was just too darn gay. See, it's fine when they exist in your periphery and you can nod your head in approval in front of your more enlightened friends so you seem like a good person, but when they start stealing airtime from your precious McDreamy/Whispering Idiot lurve story or the People With Annoying Names Club (Izzie!), then it's gotta stop. Enjoy the H8terade.

So there you go. Television that's just like the political campaign that you and the cable news nets are going to miss so dearly. It's not the same, I know. But hopefully it'll do. Which is exactly what they said to Howard Dean when they asked him to chair the DNC! Politics!

Barack: This Dude Even Changed Comedy Tuesday
By Jordan Carlos

The political balance of power may not have been the only thing that shifted Tuesday. The world of comedy got a bit of a shake up too. Though it's difficult to predict the misty future with any certainty, Obama's win does beg a couple of obvious questions; namely, "Do Black comedians have much to complain about anymore?" Now before you tear my nuts off for asking this, let me say I'm just raising this extreme question for the sake of argument. I don't actually think Black people don't have anything to complain about anymore, though cabs were remarkably easier to come by yesterday in the city. But things have changed—and who are many comedians of color, if not people who point to the old saw of differences between white and Black and all the hi-larious inequalities surrounding those differences? Remove that brand of humor from the mix, and what's left for Black comedians to fall back on?

Plenty, of course. The world is full of comedic opportunity. But it will be intriguing to see how audiences will respond when a Black comic moans about the everyday racial politics he or she faces when a Black person holds the highest office in the land.

For anyone who can do an impression of Obama, congrats! Your stock just went through the friggin roof! Bush impersonators, report to your local soup kitchen or shanty town. Obama impersonators are guaranteed at least 4 years of career opportunity. For me, a fairer-skinned black dude with newly close-cropped hair and larger-than-average ears, things are looking up. I've already been able to do my impression for TV (once on Headline News and once on a Japanese morning TV show – Yeah, I know. What the F?) and I look forward to at least four more years of it. Though I was asked by the folks at Gawker to give my take on Fred Armisen's impression of Obama, I'm gonna have to pass. Other art forms encourage a lover's quarrel among artists – boisterous roundtables and bustling salons, etc. — comedy, not so much. Take it from me, comics are a sensitive bunch – me more than most (we're not talking Kanye West levels here, but you get where I'm going with this). We want to be liked (obveeez!!!). Did I dance around that enough? You can watch my Obama impression here, OK? [Ed.: And also here]

I think the existential question of what comedians can complain about now is shared by not only Black comedians, but also the good folks at The Daily Show and Real Time with Bill Maher. They got what they wanted, right? So now what? Feast on Obama like they did Bush? That would be kinda weird. Recently on his show Bill Maher declared a new rule: that President-elect "Obama must give comedians something to work with." When questioned about this statement by America's favorite old man, Larry King, Maher said, "But look, [Obama]'s going to be the president and we're going to have to get over our nervousness about making fun of a Black person. He's not a black person. He's the president." OK, Maher lost me at the whole, "he's not a black person" bit, but you get what he's trying to say. Eventually ALL comedians are going to have to take off the kid gloves and skewer the newly anointed commander in chief. How they do it will be something that I, for one, am interested to see. To me there's plenty you can make fun of when it comes to Obama:

— Because of him the high concept movie about a jazzy black dude being president is dead and over.

—People maybe just maybe expect too much from him.

—He's got huge, honking ears.

—You can make fun of the fact that it's hard to make fun of him.

—You kind of have to do a lot of self-deceiving to back the guy (doesn't believe in gay marriage, tough on immigration, tosses friends when they become political liabilities – Rev. Wright, Ayers).

—He may kinda owe Oprah a place in his cabinet.

—Does Jesse Jackson still want to cut his nuts off like he said? And why the hell was he front-row Chicago victory rally after saying something like that? Obama must have known he said that. Where's my front row seat? I didn't call for castration.

You could make sketches out of all that stuff and more if you've got the salt. You should always be able to laugh at your leaders – even if they're awesome people who happen to be Black.