Can’t make this stuff up, folks. I mean, you could, but everybody would think you were, well, making stuff up.

On tonight’s episode of Modern Family (perhaps TV’s best sitcom), one of the storylines deals with what happens when a young child starts using curse words. One of America’s more prominent gatekeepers of the public morality, the Parents Television council, immediately lurched into a galloping conniption. That they haven’t actually seen the episode, and hence, have no fudging idea what they’re screeching about, is beside the point.

“It’s not suitable language for a child that young in the real world, and it’s not suitable language for a child that young on television, either.” Full story »

As you may have heard, former ESPN football analyst Craig James is running for US senate. James originally rose to national prominence as a star running back for Southern Methodist during the years it was illegally paying athletes under the table, a practice that eventually made SMU the only football program to ever receive the NCAA’s infamous death penalty.

Unfortunately for James the candidate, he now finds himself embroiled in a controversy that has gone viral. Just Google “Craig James killed five hookers” and you’ll see what I mean. The story has even infiltrated a site dedicated to soliciting donations for James, with one donor insinuating a poem with a clever acrostic calling James a “hooker killer.” (Note the first letters in each line of the “Ramzy” item in the second screen grab below.)

Full story »

In case you missed it, the University of Alabama defeated LSU last night, winning the BCS national championship best-of-two series by a 1-1 margin. Congrats to the Tide.

Yep, the BS BCS fails again. Which it always does. But not everyone hates it. I mean, all the corrupt people who profit from it love the system. But there are regular fans who defend it, as well. I have a friend, for instance – let’s call him Bob – who staunchly believes that a tournament to determine the D1 national football champion wouldn’t be any better than the BCS. I think he’s nuts, but he’s a very smart guy. He points to the flaws in playoff systems (for instance, for those who hated last night’s rematch, he notes that the most recent NY Giant Super Bowl win was a rematch and that the Patriots had won the first meeting). And we can sit Old Chicago with fine microbrew and argue for hours, I’m sure.  Full story »

The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame is a joke. I think we all know this, but if you’re new to the issue a quick illustration should suffice: Madonna is in it. Rush, Kiss, Cheap Trick, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Deep Purple, Big Star, The Cure, Devo, Dire Straits, ELO, Hüsker Dü, INXS, Jethro Tull, Judas Priest, The Moody Blues, Motorhead, My Bloody Valentine, New Order, Peter Gabriel, The Replacements, Warren Zevon, XTC, Yes and Graham Parker aren’t. I could go on. And on. And on and on and on. But, in the interest of brevity, I won’t.

This is frustrating for a lot of people. Many of the artists would probably like to be acknowledged, and their fans no doubt take the slight personally. And the critics, gods, imagine trying to think about this if you’re a serious professional covering music. Full story »

Every once in awhile a new term/catchphrase/buzzword/meme catches fire here in the US. Sometimes it’s a function of the fact that our incredibly plastic language, with its myriad dynamic influences (everything from media to subcultural to ethnic to technological) sort of inherently generates new words. Other times the term is a result of political or PR craftiness, as was the case with “Japan-bashing” (and subsequently, any more generalized iteration of “______-bashing”). The lobbyist who made the phrase up later famously said ”Those people who use (the term) have the distinction of being my intellectual dupes.” Full story »

Hank Williams, Jr. said some stupid shit. Because, you know, he’s not exactly a rocket surgeon or a model of progressive, pro-human ideals. I can’t imagine that this comes as much a surprise to anyone. Now ESPN has done what they pretty much had to and kicked Hank to the curb. Read all about it.

Two quick thoughts.

First, that Monday Night Football intro sequence was getting tired. Five years ago, in fact. Full story »

I’ve been thinking about how modern society explains various phenomena, everything from simple everyday questions to the grand complexities that vex the lay thinker’s ability to make sense of a confusing world. More and more, it’s become clear that we’re relying on Fuckem’s Razor, the little-known Medieval principle of implausibility. I’d like to take a moment to explain this theory for those who haven’t encountered it before.

Wait, you say – don’t you mean Occam’s Razor?

No, but thanks for raising that. Occam’s Razor, in Newton’s formulation, says that ”We are to admit no more causes of natural things than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances.” Put more directly, this means that when trying to understand things, the simplest explanation is usually the right one. Occam’s Razor is credited to 14th century logician and Franciscan friar William of Ockham. Full story »

Sweet hell – can you believe they’re going to let Chaz Bono compete on Dancing With the Stars? What a travesty.

Oh, no. Not because of that. We’re perfectly down with a transgender competitor. That couldn’t bother us less. No, the issue is more essential: since when did Chaz Bono become a star? His Wikipedia entry calls him a “transgender advocate, writer, actor, and musician.” Yeah, he has earned a profile for the advocacy work, which is great, but if we’re being honest here, we have to admit that Chaz’s main claim to fame was being born to famous parents.

I mean, this show is about dancing with, you know, the stars. Full story »

News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch has issued a public apology for the News of the World scandal, which appears in several British national newspapers this weekend. The final text is available here.

For those unfamiliar with the exciting world of public relations, these kinds of official statements often go through a rigorous process of draft, revision, review, more revision, show it to legal, start over, and finally approval by the person whose name appears at the bottom. S&R has obtained a copy of Murdoch’s original draft and the redline revision produced by Edelman, the PR agency handling the crisis. Edelman, whose client list doesn’t include Charles Manson, Hitler, Simon Cowell or NAMBLA, but would if they showed up with a suitcase full of cash, is very highly regarded when it comes to the task of lipsticking rabid pigs. Full story »

In case you missed it, America’s newest official candidate for the presidency, Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, kicked off her campaign in her hometown of Waterloo, IA yesterday by confusing John Wayne with John Wayne Gacy. Honest mistake. Anybody could have made it.

I mean, it’s still odd. I know first-hand how attuned Iowans can be to their own local histories. Iowans by god know who was born in their town, and for Bachmann to mix up The Duke with a serial killer, to somehow mistake Waterloo for Winterset, well, that’s unusual.

Still, to her credit, Bachmann has offered up the most profoundly true statement we’re likely to hear from any candidate between now and November 2012 when she acknowledged that she’s not perfect. Which is true. She once explained that the founding fathers eliminated slavery. Full story »

This morning, a pop quiz. One question. Compare and contrast the following two videos.

First video (the money shot begins around 0:13).

Full story »

Every once in awhile a story comes along where it’s impossible to fathom what the fuck somebody could possibly be thinking. Usually it’s something political, but today it’s sports.

In case you haven’t been tracking along, FIFA, the governing body of world soccer, has been swamped with corruption allegations of late. It began with the decision to award Copa 2022 to Qatar instead of the US. Qatar might not have things like a football infrastructure or a world-class sporting organization or, you know, stadiums, but they did have what mattered the most: a suitcase full of cash. Full story »

It seems so very unlikely that I’ll ever get married again, but if I do I hope she’ll understand why wedding songs are requiems, why the confession of love cannot help connoting loss, betrayal, rejection. Love is the denial of these tragedies and only the existence of pain can give happiness meaning.

I hope she’ll forgive me this image of the misunderstood clown clutching desperately at a moment of contact with a stranger because he knows it may be all there is in the world. Full story »

You may have heard that the State of California is facing a monster deficit. Figures bounce around a bit, but most estimates have the shortfall at or near $28 billion, and the mess has Gov. Jerry Brown pondering Armageddon: enough posturing and arguing – he seems prepared to let the citizenry see how it feels about the reality of shutting it all down. Don’t want to pay for schools? Cool – we won’t have any.

One sympathizes with the people of the Golden State. They do contribute more in federal taxes than any other state, and the ideology of our times has us all convinced that paying taxes is the same thing as flushing perfectly good cash down the toilet. Full story »

Today would have been John Lennon’s 70th birthday. In his honor, S&R is hosting a monster mashup party. Let’s get it started in here.

Item 1: Guns? Screw guns. What we need is a mandatory five-day waiting period for the purchase of any audio or video editing software. Then again, happiness is a warm gun, they say. Although this is more about hammers and polyester than powder and hot lead.

Full story »

So, Rush Limbaugh just got married. Congrats, Rush – we wish you well.

We wanted to note this momentous occasion because, as you know, Rush is a big proponent of family values, and few things say family like walking down the aisle and publicly expressing your lifelong commitment to the person of the opposite gender that you love.

Especially when you’re so committed to traditional values that you do it four times. Wow.

Sir Elton John, whose raging queerness makes him incapable of family values, was allegedly paid $1M to play the reception. Full story »

Hey, I’m not making this stuff up.

We have met Neanderthals, and they are us – or about 1 to 4 percent of each of us.

That is one implication of a four-year effort to sequence the Neanderthal genome – essentially setting out in order some 3 billion combinations of four key molecules that together represent the Neanderthals’ genetic blueprint. (Full story…)

Interesting. So, if some folks have more Neanderthal slouching around their genome than others, who might these four percenters be? I have theories. Full story »

As anyone who remembers The 5th Estate, which was the Scholars & Rogues precursor, will recall, this community is founded on a strong sense of bipartisanship and the belief that much can be accomplished when the neo-conservative and staunch liberal talk honestly across the table.

We’ve gotten away from this ideal over the past couple of years, but we’ve taken note of the bipartisan successes driven by President Obama since he took office. So today we’re pleased to announce that S&R has entered into a strategic agreement with The Drudge Report, a site that literally defined the conservative alternative news industry when it was launched in 1996. Full story »

It started innocently enough:

A tea party organizer angry over Rep. Tom Perriello’s (D-Va.) vote in favor of health care reform published what he thought was the freshman member’s home address on a blog, in case any readers “want to drop by” and provide a “personal touch” to their views.

Unfortunately, mistakes were made: Full story »

The independently minded political animal always wrestles with times of transition, and the changeover from the Bush to Obama regimes has been worse than most. During the Dubya years it was easy to identify the enemy and to hate him with a blinding passion. Sweet Jesus, George II and his sidekick, The Dick Cheney, played their roles with less nuance than the bad guy in Rambo 12: Return of Ming the Merciless (directed by Roland Emmerich), making it easy to identify with the loyal opposition just on principle.

But it’s important to remember that the enemy of my enemy isn’t necessarily my friend. They might just be fighting over which one gets to eat my tender bits. Full story »