News Roundup for 9/24/09

And he seems like such a nice fella, too...

-Headline of the day-
"Fox News commentator Glenn Beck throws a frog in boiling water (maybe)."

Right away, you knew things weren't going to go very well.

"You know the old saying ... if you put a frog into boiling water, he's gonna jump right out because he's scalding hot, but if you place the frog in lukewarm water and gradually raise the temperature, the frog won't realize what's happening and die," Glenn said to the audience of his FOX News show, Pretty Hats You Can Make From Tin Foil. "Let me get the frogs."

What ensued was as stupid as it was horrifying.

"Okay... All right ... So you have the little frogs. You have the little frogs here," he said. "Barack Obama has galvanized the country because of the sheer size of the bills he's proposed, and the number of the bills, the urgency he's been placing on the bills, he's forced us to think and get involved." I guess this "urgency" was supposed to be the boiling water. Or something. Really Glenn, leave the symbolism to the film students. You suck at this stuff.

According to the report, "That was the wind-up. The pitch -- quite literally, Beck threw a small item that his audience was left to assume was a live animal into a pot topped by rising steam -- was apparently not quite what he had in mind. When no tiny object leaped from the water (the dramatic effect one would assume he was trying to achieve), Beck gazed curiously at the rising steam before turning once more to the camera."

"OK, forget the frog," he said. "OK, I... I swear I thought they jumped right out, but they don't."

Was it a real, actual frog? Who knows? It's also a little unclear what the hell the point of all this Grand Guignol stuff involving boiling frogs was. I guess it proves that frogs are terr'ist Muslim communists -- like Hitler.

"Apparently someone taught Glenn Beck a metaphor, and already, there has been one known death," writes Wonkette.

What could I possibly add after that? (LA Times)


-Summer's over, folks-
From Wiley Miller's awesome single-panel comic, Non Sequitur -- make sure you see the whole thing:


Click to see entire comic

We have a saying here in Wisconsin; "Summer's over, back to normal"... OK, I have that saying. Still, it's back to normal.

Now shut up and go home, windbag. (GoComics.com)


-Bonus HotD-
"Bush Officials Objected To Awarding Medal To J.K. Rowling Because Harry Potter Books Promote Witchcraft."

I wasn't even aware that JK Rowling, a British author, got this nation's highest civilian honor -- The Presidential Medal of Freedom. Shows what I know, huh?

So I guess she did. She was made a bona fide American hero because she wrote books that sold a gazillion copies that got turned into movies that made a bazillion dollars that later were released as DVDs that sold a godzillion copies. It was such a cultural phenomenon that when she ended the series, the world economy collapsed and we all wound up living under overpasses.

Anyway, witchcraft is bad and probably satanic, so some Bushie's freaked out and thought this was just the worst thing ever. But she cast a spell on Bush and got the shiny gold medal anyway. Top that, prayer warriors!

Turns out that you can go ahead and kill hundreds of thousands of people for no good reason, but you can't give a medal to a lady who writes about wizards, because that'll make the little baby Jesus cry.

I just don't get this whole Christianity thing at all... (Think Progress)