John’s busted shoulder has left Tunch’s many fans desperate for a feline, er, fix… yet my tech skills are limited to stealing others’ work.
Photo courtesy of commentor Mr. Whipple, who says: “How about some Punkatude?… He goes by Punky, Punky’s Whips, Mr. Whipples, Whippy whip, Orange whip, Booj, Stinkbutt, Mr. Crusty, Nipples and Champ. Those are the ones I can remember offhand.”
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On a very different topic… HBO is “eyeing” a biopic about anti-gay activist Anita Bryant.
“Sex and the City” creator Darren Star is on board to direct the film, which is being written by “Runaway” creator Chad Hodge. Star also is executive producing with Dennis Erdman. “She is a fascinating person on every single level,” said Hodge… “The twists and turns of her life are incredible.”
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In 1959 and ’60, she was a major pop star with three million-selling records. After marrying and settling in Florida, she reverted to Christian music and, projecting a wholesome image, began plugging such blue-chip companies as Coca-Cola, Kraft Foods and Holiday Inn. Her most famous celebrity endorsement gig was for the Florida Citrus Commission, for which she sang in a series of TV commercials, closing each ad with the tag line, “A day without orange juice is like a day without sunshine.”
__
… In 1977, she switched to political activism, launching a crusade to repeal a new Miami-Dade County ordinance prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation…
__
“As a mother, I know that homosexuals cannot biologically reproduce children; therefore, they must recruit our children,” she said. Her Save the Children coalition got the new law overturned within a year, and it took 20 years for it to be reinstated.
Allison Waldman on TVSquad, where I first read about this, said: “Today, many people have no idea who Anita Bryant is. The Miss America contestant turned professional singer and commercial spokesperson turned anti-gay celebrity activist was a firebrand to a controversy that raged in the 1980s, but for an entire generation — maybe more — she’s unknown.”
I was 21 when Ms. Bryant and Jerry Falwell started that particular crusade. (Off my lawn, you kids get.) Wonder if I can find my IMMORAL MINORITY political pinback?
Waldman also speculates about which actor might be chosen to play Bryant. One of her commentors suggests: “Isn’t it obvious? I understand that Carrie Prejean is available.”
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And finally, John Cole will finally get to see new episodes of Southland on TNT starting March 2. There’s a sneak peak at the link. Looks good to me, and I hope enough people watch this abbreviated “second season” to bring this great team of writers and actors back for a good long run.
daryljfontaine
I completely understand about the 9000 Names of Cat. My 11-year old male is Zorro, but also Zoroaster, Big Z, Bubba, Bubba Bear, Little Man, Omoi (Japanese for “heavy”, usually when he stands on my chest in the middle of the night), Tallboy (when he stretches up against a wall), and occasionally Shithead (when he insists on standing on my laptop keyboard, which usually opens up six extra browser windows and an inexplicable Google search for “gfhjklkjfghjkjfdfgh”).
D
abo gato
That cat, no matter the name, is one fine looking kitty……with quite a bit of tude.
Uncle Glenny
Nice kitty!
Unmoderate my post in the antivaxnut thread or no tuna!
robertdsc-PowerBook & 27 titles
Why would anyone want to know about such a horrid creature?
GReynoldsCT00
@robertdsc-PowerBook & 27 titles:
My thoughts exactly. Unless it’s to highlight her odiousness, but I still wouldn’t waste my time on it.
GReynoldsCT00
Here’s some catitude via Blue, Boo-Boo, B-man…
Platonicspoof
@robertdsc-PowerBook & 27 titles:
Think of her as a 1977 Teabagger.
I have only a couple of years on you Anne, so I can remember the ridicule she got at college campuses, and I think, her tears under pressure.
Mary G
She was the Sarah Palin of the ’70s.
Hiram Taine
Well, *this* is a surprise..
Obama grows the drug war, with enforcement a clear priority
WereBear
@GReynoldsCT00: That’s a B-Man, all right. Love the melt.
What I heard is that Ms. Bryant got married, and it was his dim idea to jump on the antigay bandwagon as a form of promotion.
But still, she did it.
mai naem
@Mary G: So, can we hope Palin turns out like Anita Bryant -a divorced, bankrupt and washed up James Dobson wanna be?
Keith G
Spent a little bit of time serving as president of the OSU Gay Alliance in the late 1970s. Therefore, I got to expend energy confronting idiocy caused by Bryant.
She has left a wake of victims behind her. I do not like this person.
aimai
I agree with the “teabagger of 1977” and also a proto-Sarah Palin, except that she wasn’t stupid and I think, unlike Miss Thing Alaska 2008 she wasn’t particularly corrupt or insincere. I think she was thwarted, as much the product of her own limited economic, social, and professional horizons as anything else. An aging beauty queen? That’s a pretty unpleasant place to be. A child who is gay that you can’t accept? That has to produce a massive conflict that, apparently, she resolved by lashing out at gays rather than loving her own child. If the picture is done right we can hope it will be a moving portrait of a desperate and desperately hurtful woman set against the background of the damage she did. I think it could be worth seeing.
aimai
beltane
Re: Anita Bryant. When the Christian right talks about gays recruiting children, it makes me wonder for what unmentionable purposes do they themselves have children. What a sick, perverted woman Anita Bryant was.
Linda Featheringill
Anita Bryant allowed herself to be taken in by a man who was at the very least bisexual but did not want to admit it.
She was intelligent and educated and should have noticed that he protested too passionately against homosexuality.
It is my opinion that people who choose to be stupid deserve what happens to them. Unfortunately, such people can do a lot of damage to innocent bystanders.
Incertus
Any chance this idea is being pushed/bankrolled by some Christian nut who saw the success of “Milk” and thought “we need an anti-gay icon movie!”? It sounds just dumb enough to try.
Keith G
Interesting contrast though regarding the times in which we live.
1970s – Bryant: Beauty queen (former, ok) says something awful. A good deal of America listens.
2009 – Prejean: Beauty queen says something awful. Most of America laughs at her.
jeffreyw
Toby, Tobe, and Quit that!
mr. whipple
Thanks, Anne Laurie.
The Mrs. fell in love with Punk when she went to the pet store to get food for another cat. She comes home and says, ‘you have to see this cat’, so we both go back. I actually had my eye on another one, but as we were leaving I had bent down to give him some scratches through the bars, and he reached out with both paws and grabbed my finger and wouldn’t let go.
So, we arrange to adopt him on Monday. (This is a Friday.) And the plan is to pick him up, take him directly to the vet to be checked before we introduce him to our other cat. (Always, always, always do this.)
By Monday morning he was very sick, and has to stay at the vet’s for a week with IV fluids, antibiotics, etc. Ended up costing us $850. Worth every penny. He’s a joy, when he’s not being a shithead.
Woodbuster
Well, kudos to TNT and Southland! THAT is a teevee show worth watching. Anita Bryant movie? Not so much.
arguingwithsignposts
Thx for the open thread, and good morning, everyone. Looks like the IL primaries were tight. And Anne, relay to DougJ that we’re going to punch him in the neck if he puts up another anti-vax post right before all the FPers turn out the lights and go to sleep.
TR
If nothing else, Anita Bryant earned a spot in history for the scene in “Airplane” where the couple is vomiting their guts out from food poisoning and the woman says, “I haven’t felt this bad since we went to that Anita Bryant concert.”
WereBear
Did you miss yesterday’s Astronomy Picture of the Day?
You shouldn’t have.
Libertini
@aimai: I would have to disagree that being an aging beauty queen is an unpleasant place to be. Many former queens have aged gracefully and done positive things with the remains of the fame they earned in their youth. Bryant was also a talented singer, and her future didn’t have to take the turn that it did. However, you may have hit the nail on the head with the conflict over having a gay child. What kind of mother would be able to do that???? (Yet another comparison with Palin – I always wondered what kind of mom could expose her unwed teenager to the kind of exposure that running for VP was sure to bring.)
Of course, it’s easy for me to say since I’m not a Mom, but if I were, I think I could never do that to my child.
Ash Can
@arguingwithsignposts: That thread barrelled over the edge of the cliff and crashed in a flaming wreck in a hurry, didn’t it? When I saw BOB weigh in on top of everything else, I thought “Good grief, the asylum doors have been busted wide open. I’m getting the hell outa here.”
Libertini
@Keith G: I don’t think it’s a fair comparison – Prejean was never at the level in her career that Anita Bryant was, BUT accepting your premise as is, I’d chalk it up to the fact that Americans seem to enjoy pointing and laughing a lot more than they used to. Which is kind of sad.
Linda Featheringill
To GReynoldsCT00:
Blue looks very nice on my desk top. Just don’t tell my babies that I am admiring someone else.
Very Reverend Crimson Fire of Compassion
I recall her insistence that legalizing gay sex would lead to legalized necrophilia, and devoting hours (I was young and imaginative) trying to figure out what THAT connection might consist of.
Comrade Scrutinizer
@Ash Can: I’m not sure how everyone fighting with one dipshit who had his head in his ass == a thread full of trolls barreling over a cliff. Trolls should be ignored, not fed. They either shut up and go away, or they bloviate longer and louder while their little faces knot up and turn red and their blood pressure spikes and they stroke out from lack of attention to their oh-so-important revelation. Either way, it’s good.
Too many people feel the need to correct the numbnuts of the world.
GReynoldsCT00
@Linda Featheringill:
:)
Comrade Scrutinizer
@WereBear: Thank you.
geg6
@Incertus:
As directed by Darren Star? Ummmm, have you ever seen or heard of “Sex and the City?” I’m thinking aimai’s take on what this film will be is just right.
Comrade Scrutinizer
@Libertini: Don’t know that we enjoy pointing and laughing more than we did in olden days, I just think that the Intertron and the Idiot Box give us more to point and laugh at.
Still wondering when the Prejean tapes will leak. Another difference between Anita and Prejean? If Anita had a tape like that, I’d carve out my eyes rather than watch it.
Comrade Scrutinizer
@geg6: But what would be great would be if some anti-gay Christian thought that we needed a film to create an anti-gay idol, and then they got Star to direct.
Keith G
@Libertini:
Maybe not sad at all. Hopefully it is in part due to the growing societal irrelevancy of beauty contests. Being of s certain age, I remember the USA stopping and taking notice of the Miss America rodeo. Not a bad coup for what started as a chamber of commerce PR stunt in the 1920s.
Pointing and laughing at silliness is a good thing in my book.
Ash Can
@Libertini: There is absolutely nothing sad about Americans maturing to the point where they recognize Prejean’s anti-gay blather as crap and treat it as such. Quite the contrary; it’s very heartening in a day and age when far too much anti-gay prejudice lingers and festers in our society. Pointing and laughing at the beliefs that need to be pointed at and laughed at will help eradicate those beliefs in the long run, and it can’t happen soon enough.
Soul On Ice
I’d cast Megan Mullally as La Anita
Violet
@Libertini:
Disagree. We used to have sideshows at carnivals where you could go to point and laugh at the “freaks” – bearded ladies, Siamese (conjoined) twins, three-legged men, etc. All the poor unfortunates who were shunned by society earned their keep by being trotted out for others’ amusement. The whole point was for people to point and laugh, recoil with horror or whatever.
Libertini
@Comrade Scrutinizer:
I think you got it right.@Violet: But it’s not just unfortunates we are pointing and laughing at. And it’s not just at carnivals, it’s 24/7 on the teevee.@Ash Can If only it were her beliefs being pointed and laughed at. I don’t think that’s the case. (But I do agree that she’s earned the derision.)@Keith G: I guess Miss America has turned into a beauty contest. But it is a huge scholarship organization and therefore IMO, not at all irrelevant. ( I am biased. I am a pageant queen and director myself, and I also run a pageant information website.)
asiangrrlMN
Awwwwww, a cat thread. Love it. Punk and Blue and Toby are all magnificent cats, so I can start my day on a happy note. I love the Astronomy Picture of the day as well.
As for Anita Bryant, I will say this. I can feel for someone as a product of time and whatnot, but when that person starts inflicting copious amount of pain and damage and hurt on other people, then my compassion for said person fades in commensurate proportion to said damage. I would have no desire to watch this biopic.
Bad Horse's Filly
Didn’t she lose her commercial gigs because of her anti-gay rants?
wenchacha
From The Four Swallows in the late 70s:
“Sometimes I think I need a woman
Sometimes I think I need a man
Lord Knows I don’t need Anita
I’m just livin’, doin’ the best I can”
I can’t vouch for that last line. But the song got airplay on the same country station that played Drop-Kick Me Jesus (Through the Goalpost of Life.) My professor always had it on the air during ourdrawing and painting classes, and it made quite an impression. It made up for the incessant Teddy Bear trucker song by Red Sovine.
canuckistani
Anita Bryant… a name from another era. I’m going to cue up Moral Majority by the Dead Kennedys on my iPod in her honour.
Randy P
@Bad Horse’s Filly:
Did she have commercial gigs?
The only time I ever remember hearing of her was on those OJ commercials, and those were distant memories as I recall it by the time she re-surfaced on the anti-gay thing.
Paul L.
Time for you Obamabot progressives here to eat your own and denounce Matt Taibbi.
Appearing on the racist Don Imus show on Fox (Business)
brantl
I thought that Anita Bryant was perfectly encapsulated by the tee-shirt with her naked, sitting on an orange and the caption was “Squeeze a fruit for Anita!”. Nothing less than that comic a response did her fruitbaggery justice.
fraught
She was pretty much finished as a singer by the time she began her political work. She had very limited appeal during her singing career, mostly liked by oldsters who preferred Lawrence Welk to the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. The anti-gay thing turned her into a joke and she didn’t seem to realize that the joke was on her and that made her a bigger joke.
But she knew her constituency. The same retirees who believed that if they saw it on the TeeVee then it was true. Just like the teabaggers, low information folks who love rumor and conspiracy theories and former beauty contestants who tell them their kids are going to be gay if they don’t pass a law against them.
Randy P
@Paul L.: Actually, I believe Matt Taibbi is already the subject of fairly strong negative feelings, expressed many times in this and other forums. Attacking him would not be “eating our own”. Nice try though.
The Raven
In other news, some Tea Partiers oppose Citizens United.
Do we have to change our opinions now?
Joy
I have no recollection of this, but my mother tells me when I was little and Anita Bryant would come on to sing her orange juice song, I would cry and hide from the TV set. She scared me apparently. I could spot evil even as a little one.