In yet another career comparison that does him no favors, Joe Arpaio’s showbiz buddy attempts a role as the American Gerard Depardieu. From The Wire:
Action guy Steven Seagal weighed in on the international dispute over Russia’s annexation of Crimea this week. Spoiler alert: he’s siding with his friend Vladimir Putin and not with President Obama, whom the action star believes is one Benghazi revelation away from impeachment. In an interview with the state-run Rossiskaya Gazeta, Seagal called Putin “one of the great living world leaders,” adding that he “would like to consider him as a brother.” …
The paper adds that Putin and Seagal bonded in part over their mutual love for martial arts… In the interview, Seagal said that it’s possible he may “sometime” apply for Russian citizenship. Guess that means he’s done pretending to campaign for Arizona governor.
Truly, this would be a great loss to the arts … of America’s political cartoonists. One imagines Vlad and Stevie, watching gladitor movies together, maybe trying a little friendly arm-wrestling, as the winds sweep across the steppes and the telokhraniteli idly dream.
****************
Apart from tiny minds trying on semblances of vast purport, what’s on the agenda for the evening?
Brian R.
I heard Seagal was deeply touched when Vlad gave him a Soviet-era parachute. He thought it was a new kimono.
Cassidy
Seagal done pissed off the Brazilians so he might as well try Russia.
? Martin
I’m telling you, they’re going to find a way to get Putin on the 2016 ballot. If a Kenyan could run and win, why not a Russian?
jl
Giving Rodman a run for his money. At least Rodman didn’t fall in wuv.
Keith G
Ya think the Stevie might could find a better plastic surgeon in Moscow?
Nah
IowaOldLady
I realize the right’s Putin love results from hating on gays and Obama, but it’s still so strange that I feel like I’m in Upside Down World when I see it and have to avert my eyes.
Roger Moore
I’m waiting to hear that Seagal is in trouble with the IRS. It’s the logical next shoe to drop in this matter.
Southern Beale
Koch Bros. are in my town, messing with my mass transit.
God, will they not just GO the fuck AWAY?
Mike in NC
Looking forward to “Benghazi: The Musical” starring Steven Seagal and Chuck Norris.
? Martin
@IowaOldLady: Why, because Republicans are in love with a dictator wannabe, or that they’re in love with a former Lt Col of the KGB?
Actually I don’t find either particularly strange.
Southern Beale
@Roger Moore:
I was thinking some unpaid taxes on a home or two … you know, like John McCain.
Libby's Person
I’m doing the final prep for a fundraiser that will be held at my home tomorrow night. It’s for the NC House Democratic Caucus, which actually seems to have it’s act together for this year’s election. I don’t know how much of a chance they really have to gain the 5 seats they need to end the GOP supermajority, but they’ve identified enough ‘winnable’ seats and recruited good candidates. We in Durham are doing our best to help. So about 80 people will be here tomorrow night eating, drinking wine, listening to a jazz trio and donating to help turn NC back towards sanity. I’m hiding a bottle of wine to share with Libby’s other person afterwards – we’ll need it!
kideni
I’m basking in the satisfaction that on Friday, the judge tossed out the charges against me (and about 25 others) for expressing my dissent in a public building (“For the reasons well stated in State of Wisconsin v Michael W Crute, Dane County Circuit Court, Branch 1, ‘Decision and Order of Dismissal,’ the administrative rule sought to be enforced in this forfeiture actuion [sic] violates the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. Because an unconstitutional law is void and unenforceable, this action must be dismissed.”). There are still more than 100 people waiting for their cases to go through the system. The state will likely appeal (they’ve appealed a few of the previous dismissals), so it’s not completely over. Anne Laurie kindly posted about this whole situation a couple of weeks ago.
Also, one of the other arrestees, who happened to be a radio guy who was just taking pictures at the time, has filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the officers who arrested him (this article isn’t great, but it gives you the main points). Now it’s getting good.
p.a.
@IowaOldLady: Cleek’s Law.
Richard Shindledecker
When Vlad and Steve get together do they use condoms?
Bob In Portland
Here’s a good interview with Russ Bellant about America’s seventy years of history with Nazi collaborators and their inheritors, including some of the current faces in the Ukraine coup.
Also, here’s that Robert Parry piece I linked to on an earlier open thread.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Any Jeopardy fans here tonight?
danielx
I can imagine General J.C. Christian becoming so patriotic about this image that he has to look up that man in Seattle who wields the Terrible Spatula of Redemption.
Richard Shindledecker
Oops – forgot Vlad likes bareback..
mainmata
Anne, you are so clever in your selection of subjects. This is a good example You and Betty Cracker are my faves. Hilarious post.
chopper
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
perfect.
? Martin
PSA: April Fools starts in a bit over an hour for east coasters. For the next 24 hours or so, assume everything you read on the internet is complete bullshit. After that, continue to assume everything you read on the internet is complete bullshit, because most of it is.
Ash Can
Not nearly soon enough.
@kideni: Thanks for the update!
Warren Terra
In his Radio 4 series Thom Tuck Goes Straight To DVD, British Comedian Thom Tuck was amusing on the subject of Steven Segal’s oeuvre.
It’s available on iTunes, apparently.
PsiFighter37
I didn’t watch the show except for some reruns in syndication, but I decided to watch the finale of How I Met Your Mother. Probably the worst series finale I can recall seeing. I won’t ruin it with spoilers for anyone who cares, but even compared to series finales I thought were mediocre (e.g. Smallville, Alias, Chuck), this was just…ugh. The most common comparison I’ve read is that people feel as jilted as they did about the Lost finale.
the Conster
I’m enjoying watching the white male action figure id melt down. .
kc
The Malkinites have a new target for their poutrage.
Edit: Warning, the link goes to Twitchy. Today’s whine is about a joke Ken Jennings (Jeopardy champ) made about Breitbart.
amk
@Mike in NC: Both fucksticks still can’t act.
Roger Moore
@? Martin:
I find it odd that they use such homoerotic language when talking about a guy they supposedly like because he’s so harsh on Teh Ghey. They apparently miss the contradiction.
Gex
I am so confuzzled. First Bush looked into Putin’s eyes, saw into his soul, and determined he was a good guy. And the right wing was with him. Then Palin, seeing Russia from her back yard, and Romney both determined that Russia was our biggest geopolitical foe (wrong, that would be the GOP) and were an imminent threat. This view was further bolstered by any incident in which the US and Russia disagreed during Obama’s administration. And now he’s the good guy.
My head is spinning. The problem with operating under Cleek’s law is that their inability to understand anything but part of the surface of an issue compounded by the actual depth and complexity of issues means that they have to take 50 different opposing views on any given issue.
It makes my head hurt, yet they and their followers take it all in and believe it makes sense. Amazing.
kc
@amk:
I hate to be a grammar Nazi, but shouldn’t that be “Neither fuckstick can act?”
kc
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
The wingnuts are having fits.
Turk
AP is now reporting the ACA is scheduled to hit 7 million signups tonight. Wonder what the total is going to be on 4/15?
Howard Beale IV
As Putin, Segal and Norris are all martial artists, throwing them in a cage match would be slightly amusing to see who would come out on top.
? Martin
@Howard Beale IV: I think they’ll take turns coming out on top.
Roger Moore
@? Martin:
The way people on the right talk about Putin makes me think they’re natural bottoms.
lurker dean
@kc: jennings really has them foaming at the mouth, I had no idea he trolls the wingers. added him on twitter..
Bobby Thomson
If they are kindred spirits, does that mean Putin also has fraudulently claimed to be a U.S. Navy Seal?
amk
@kc: tomato / tomahto. Both are rotten eggs anyways.
opiejeanne
Beisbol!
Watching the Angels & Mariners game. King Felix vs. Jered Weaver.
Suzanne
My test is tomorrow and I am so stressed out that I want to puke. Arrrrgh.
kc
Haha, I love Colbert so much . . .
MattR
@PsiFighter37: Like you, I enjoyed the occasional episode in reruns. I also watched most of the final season out of curiousity to see how they wrapped things up. Luckily, the entire season lowered my expectations so I wasn’t too surprised by the crappy ending. I would have been pretty pissed if I was a hardcore fan who watched intently for all nine years.
Jay C
@PsiFighter37:
True this: HIMYM used to be one of more-consistently-funnier comedies on TV: IMHO, it took a dive into boring stale triteness after Season 7, blazed new frontiers in trite boring staleness in Season 8, scraped the bottom of the barrel for stale trite boringness for Season 9, and finished with one of the worst downers of a Series Finale I’ve ever been so unfortunate as to view.
You might guess I didn’t like it much….
MikeJ
@MattR: I saw it referred to as “How the writers lost interest in this show several years ago.”
MattR
@MikeJ: I was just reading an article about how they filmed the final scene with the children 8 years ago to make sure they looked the right age. I don’t know if I should be amazed that they were able to stick with their original ending after all this time or disappointed that that was the ending they came up with and they thought it was a good idea the whole time.
cckids
@kc: No kidding. THIS is how you respond to the whole RW freak-out over whatever bullshit that keeps coming up. Mock them until they cry.
Comrade Dread
@? Martin: I’m guessing it’s a barely repressed homosexual fantasy involving Putin dressing up in a KGB uniform and disciplining them for being naughty capitalists.
Then again, I think half of the pathologies haunting the conservative mind involve some sort of repressed sexual fantasy with a healthy dose of guilt and self-hate.
some guy
Team Obama leaks to Pravda that they are willing to release a treasonous spy from his life sentence for treason. Is it too late to call for the parole board to recommend a retroactive death penalty? Snowden Haters, remind me why this is a bad idea?
ruemara
@Libby’s Person: bless you, good luck and thank you.
Is there a way to send Seagal to Russia? A fund, perhaps?
Hill Dweller
@kc:
The entire first segment was brilliant.
I don’t know why people go at him. It never ends well for the challengers.
kc
@cckids:
Sadly, this particular freakout was started by a lefty, but Malkin sure jumped right on board.
“The Michelle Malkin Unpaid Internment Founfation,” hah.
some guy
some guy
former senior advisersa, the new al Qaeda #2
gwangung
@kc: Yeah, and she pretty much was siccing her followers on other Asian American activists.
Hm. Sounds like she IS following in the footsteps of Malkin.
ruemara
@gwangung: If you read the NYer piece on her, she does not come across well. At least, not to me. She admits she knew it was a satire piece & was doing it for… your guess is as good as mine.
? Martin
@ruemara:
I think a big catapult in Sarah Palin’s front yard would be sufficient.
cckids
@kc: I’m not sure I’d call her a lefty, more of a libertarian me-me-me firstian.
Elizabelle
@Suzanne:
Good luck Suzanne.
You’ll pass it. I have faith in you.
And then the Sprouts will treat you to songs from Frozen.
PurpleGirl
@PsiFighter37: The only show finale that I enjoyed and liked — and that was original — was the second Bob Newhart show. Making the whole of the second show a dream sequence for the first show was really great.
Mandalay
Speaking of Michelle Malkin, I was surprised to see that she supports the legalization of marijuana, and buys it for her mother-in-law who has skin cancer.
Good for her, but in an odd way she reminds me of Diane Feinstein being outraged about the NSA spying on her Intelligence Committee. AFAIK neither one of them gave a flying shit until they were personally affected.
Mnemosyne
@some guy:
It would help if you would learn how to link so people had some clue what the fuck you were talking about.
My 8-year-old niece knows how to copy and paste a hyperlink. How stupid are you, exactly?
YellowJournalism
Twitter going nuts that Colbert showed Suey Oark’s face, but I didn’t see it on my PVR’d episode. Even if he did…doesn’t she post her picture on Twitter and didn’t she go on HuffPo? If she was trying to stay anonymous and that happened, I’d be angry, but all I saw was her username. And he asked that people stop attacking her without naming her.
cckids
@PurpleGirl: I remember liking the M*A*S*H finale.
Lurking Buffoon
@Gex: I imagine it’s much easier to make sense of it all if you’ve always been at war with Eastasia. Cleek’s Law just fills in the details at that point, really.
SatanicPanic
@PsiFighter37: I remember one year when Frasier and some other popular sitcom were ending and I swear (I might be misremembering), but there were back to back ads saying “a very special last episode of Frasier with a wedding… and a baby” and the very next ad was “the final, very special episode of ____. with a wedding… and a baby.” There was like two years where every show ended that way.
ruemara
@YellowJournalism: Her twitter handle has always had her picture and she did an interview with Huffpost Live without asking for image protection. I had to drop a few people, since half my feed is super libs who obviously live on outrage and they are busy cosigning and reinforcing each other in the collective outrage. Sorry, but my view of her is rapidly dropping to worthless drama queen.
AxelFoley
Notice how just about all the action stars from the 70s/80s are right-wing nutjobs.
Segal, Stallone, Ahnuld, Chuck Norris.
gwangung
@ruemara: She’s taken to attacking all the older, more longer established Asian American activists who use twitter.
Tells me all I need to know.
AxelFoley
@IowaOldLady:
It’s funny, as a kid who grew up in the 80s, I remember how the Russians/Soviets were the bad guys in a shitload of action flicks back then. Now, muthafuckas that cheered us on killin’ Ruskies in those flicks are in love with an old KGB mark. Now they love them some Russians.
What could make them all of a sudden love Russia? Something…or someone near? I wonder…
AxelFoley
@? Martin:
So, basically same shit, different day.
AxelFoley
@Turk:
Oh, snap!
I wonder how the media will move the goalposts now?
YellowJournalism
@gwangung: I know who you’re talking about. I read a tweet where she claimed to be doing more now than he ever did in his years of activism. I thought that was pretty telling.
I just don’t buy the notion that putting yourself out in the public arena an being quoted and featured by networks with far larger viewerships is okay but if Colbert comments to defend himself, he’s putting you in danger. (Granted, she is receiving real threats and has been all weekend from assholes using Colbert as an excuse to be assholes and racist pricks.)
And I just see more twisting of Colbert’s and others’ actions or words to fit a certain narrative. Like the fact that he made the joke that he’s the most powerful man in the world or that he pointed out Malkin isn’t a great ally to have.
gwangung
@YellowJournalism: OH, she has more than one target….
And for all her righteous indignation, somehow Native Americans are being left out and ignored. Talk about hijacking and cultural appropriation….
Joel
Seagal’s a better actor. Brûler!
Mnemosyne
@YellowJournalism:
She’d better hope it wasn’t George Takei she tried to take on, because he will take her down without even breaking a sweat.
KevinNYC
Before he was hanging around Sheriff Arpaio playing cop and before he was hanging out with Putin and playing statesman, but AFTER he told people he worked for the CIA, Seagal used to hang out and play mafioso in Brooklyn and tell people he was Italian. They eventually turned the tables on the fake tough-guy and extorted him out of $700,000
They were able to get close to him because Seagal was so eager to be with them. One of the people who extorted him was his business partner and next door neighbor who was later convicted a running the largest steroid ring in NY.