Game Change: Reid's Can of Worms and the GOP's Disrespect for Democracy

Recently, the media's been feasting on the recent release of the controversial Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin. (Released in the UK as Race of a Lifetime: How Obama Won the White House.) Based on interviews with over 300 people involved in 2008's political campaigning, it's full of behind the scenes insights and dirt on both sides. Most of the dirt, however, was nothing we weren't either aware or otherwise convinced of by now. Two particular stories have stood out from the book's revelations.

The right latched onto comments made by Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in private conversation during the campaign, and scandalized them. The objectionable comments in question were made to the effect of that Obama's "light-skinned" appearance and speaking patterns "with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one," would help him find success as a candidate. Yes, there are so many ways Reid could have articulated these thoughts far more gracefully, but the right attempted to latch onto these statements as outright racist, taking the use of the term out of context. The statements Reid made were not racist so much as an observation of that sadly, racism is very much alive and well in America. Racist sentiments have boiled under the surface like a festering sore and since Obama's rise to political prominence on the national level, American racism has very much exploded back into the cultural mainstream. (Lots of people also lack the cognitive faculties to realize that saying you're not a racist does not strip any racism from your beliefs or any statement prefaced by, "I'm not racist, but...")

Were Obama completely of black genetic descent (Though he does identify as black despite his mixed ethnic background - which itself represents American diversity more than any white president ever has.) and were his skin tone darker, given the amount of racism we're seeing now, it's certainly possible that that could have had an impact on some of the people who did ultimately vote for him. I can't make any definite statements here, but I wouldn't count out the possibility of lighter and darker skin tones potentially making an additional impact - it's purely speculative to discuss it either way.

As for speaking in a more "urban" vernacular, as Reid was alluding to, we can all be honest - that would have sunk Obama early in the primaries. (And Republican National Chairman Michael Steele has embarrassed himself on numerous occasions now, having talked about wanting to put a "hip hop" spin on the party and worked in references to such slang as "bling-bling" that would make anyone of any age cringe. A great example of how utterly out of touch both he and the Republican party are with youth culture - there's a reason why Gen Y is predominantly Democratic and actually further-left progressive-leaning. We've seen what the Republicans have done to the country these past few decades, and they've screwed us directly in many ways.) Older voters certainly wouldn't vote for anyone who spoke that way. We may respond to "dumb redneck," but the American people wouldn't give any serious consideration to someone speaking as though they're from the streets of Harlem. (Regardless of whether they actually were.) It is funny how we'd take the former seriously, though, and how most of the country would write off the latter as not taking the office remotely seriously. (Look at Sarah Palin! And she didn't know anything.)

Ultimately, Harry Reid did nothing with his comments but show his age and that he's not completely politically correct at all times as Democrats are often stereotyped as a negative. There was no bigotry or malice in his comments, "negro" having been the standard appellation during the Civil Rights Movement in the '60s, when Reid himself was young. Reid called Obama and apologized as soon as these comments became public, only to come under predictable fire from the Republicans, desperate to destroy their opponents' image. Obama accepted Reid's apology and told him that the issue was closed as far as he was concerned. Likewise, Reid has received support from other Democratic leaders in the party, as well as key African American leaders in Congress and the Civil Rights community. Even Daily Show correspondent Wyatt Cenac did a remote in Nevada the other night to find that the black community there was fully backing Reid, having been a good, supportive leader concerned with their interests.

In addition to the double standard over conservatives who come off as inarticulate hillbillies vs. anyone who might affect a more ebonics-oriented manner of speech (Yes, I'm showing my whiteness with even this articulation.), conservatives showed again that they don't seem to quite understand the whole "racism" thing here. A problem that goes to the roots of many of their supporters, along with the constant accusation of "playing the race card." This is a party full of people claiming that we're living in a "post-racial" society where racism is now nonexistent. These claims amount to political posturing aligning themselves against ethnic minorities in the American population and denying the existence of a very serious problem that anyone with basic observational skills cannot miss in our culture. They're more than happy to welcome all kinds of racists into their "big tent," and their propaganda arm, Fox News, works very hard to avoid showing much of the discussion going on at the teabagger movement's demonstrations - the very racism internet bloggers have had no problem exposing by quietly infiltrating these meetings as supposed normal attendees. (The demographic makeup? Overweight, unhealthy middle and lower class white people who don't actually understand what they're protesting beyond that there's a black man in the white house and they're mad. These people will deny being racist if accused as well, and claim you're just trying to slander them, of course, like any other casual racist who doesn't think they believe anything wrong. A very saddening lack of self-awareness.) Likewise, they'd defend the famous racists in their party and stand by anyone who made a comment like Reid's if they were Republican - and if they were Republican, there's a good chance we'd be looking at a very different statement. (And one in no way defensible. I don't even want to know what people have undoubtedly said about Steele. His own incompetence makes it pretty clear that his being made RNC Chairman was a stunt not unlike Sarah Palin's VP nomination - an attempt to change the party's image while leaving their core substance as rotten as ever.) "Negro" is itself often taken as a slur today, but it has a somewhat more complex history than other, more open slurs that couldn't be mistakenly used as anything but. Harry Reid isn't a young man, and the divide over public reaction to his statements? It's a matter of context - of who is actually paying attention to the substance if what he said and the context of the words he used, as opposed to who is simply picking a loaded word not commonly or appropriately used today and using it to blindly cast aspersions of racism. But then, a large number of Republicans seem to look at racism as someone "playing the race card" - in their eyes, unjustly attacking someone who leans to the right. (And who's inevitably white.) They want to play up a narrative of the wealthy and white as "victims," while insisting that racial and ethnic victimization and negative slants against the African American community (Amongst others, Muslims and Mexicans being major targets too.) no longer exist. It's dishonest in an incredibly absurd way. Another out-and-out case of conservatives trying to dumb down a very complex issue - one that isn't being approached with anywhere near enough maturity in this country - to something black and white that portrays them as battered victims of some progressive minority conspiracy. Rhetoric like that only contributes to America's tendency to run in circles in terms of progress and lack thereof. This is only part of why the rest of the world doesn't share in our self-aggrandizing delusion that we're "the greatest nation on Earth."

Going back to Palin, here's where things get especially interesting. Longer term Spiral Reverie readers may recall that back in August of 2008, I observed that Sarah Palin was obviously picked as John McCain's running mate solely because the Republicans were banking on her as a gimmick candidate. She was an insult to the American people as a whole because they didn't consider her - let alone choose her - based on any of her qualifications. She was an especially sharp insult to women as an open anti-feminist figure who'd openly used her appearance to get ahead in life and stood for basically turning the women's rights movement back a good 50+ years in her own politics. I stated that she was chosen because after the anger over Hillary Clinton's dropping out of the race and conceding the final candidacy to Obama, Republicans assumed that America's women were so stupid that they would vote for McCain solely because Palin was a woman, regardless of how strongly she stood against progressive women's politics. It was a cynical, misogynistic decision banking on massive ignorance in the American populace - which the Republicans often rely on quite openly and gain from it far more often than they should. As I also called, the McCain campaign was dead wrong, Palin ultimately playing a major part in the sinking of the presidential bid.

Senior McCain Strategist Steve Schmidt recently appeared on a 60 Minutes special where Anderson Cooper interviewed him about the book and campaign, and bombshells were dropped. Joe Lieberman was - as everyone already knew - McCain's personal choice for his running mate. You can easily see what a match they would've made when you consider how many times Lieberman's turned on the best interests of the American people - even just in the past couple of months - but it would have been campaign suicide to pick a Democrat running mate thanks to today's extremely polarized political environment, the right largely squabbling like children and insisting they have to have things their way and no one else can have anything. (See: Their entire voting philosophy since Obama and the Democratic majority House and Senate took office.) Palin was clearly a desperate attempt to cash in on women, and Schmidt admitted that they were specifically looking for a woman - confirming everything I said back in 2008. What's worse? McCain Campaign Manager Rick Davis conducted his last minute search on - wait for it - YouTube and Google. This is how far they've fallen, and how little they considered the best interests of the American people. It wasn't about finding the best possible running mate, as Schmidt admitted, and it wasn't about qualifications or vetting - as they certainly didn't do that with Palin either, and it showed. It was all about finding a last minute trigger that'd get every woman in America to vote for them. They thought so little of the entire process that they'd just hit a search engine and everyone's favorite corporate-meathook-laden viral video site and find a magic bullet. What they got was someone astonishingly ignorant and proud of her ignorance. Someone who would be legitimately dangerous in a position of real power. Someone happy to lie at every turn, who couldn't even get her opponent's last name right during the Vice Presidential Debate that fall, accidentally referring to him as "O'Biden" once on air, notoriously only calling him that when out of the press's view.

This is what the Republican leadership thinks of America.

Conan O'Brien vs. Jay Leno vs. NBC vs. Humor

As political wars wage across the country - the average American just trying to live their life, rather than being staunch conservative or progressive soldiers as we like to treat them (As newscaster Tom Brokaw reminded in a recent TV special) - a different kind of war has been waging on television in the wee hours of the night.

Let's start from the beginning. Six years ago, Conan O'Brien, NBC, and Jay Leno struck a deal for Leno to retire in 2009 and for Conan to finally realize his lifelong dream: taking over the Tonight Show. Late night TV fans have cause to be happy: after 17 years of Blandy McBigChin turning the Tonight Show into a forgettable snoozefest - the entire purpose of which amounted to little more than tucking the baby boomers into bed and helping them get to sleep with safe, boring, conservative humor - someone following in the footsteps of David Letterman and Johnny Carson was going to take the reins and bring the funny back. Leno announced that he was happy to retire and supported Conan as his successor back in 2004 when the deal was initially announced, not long after Conan's Late Night Ten-Year Anniversary Special.

The cutoff date neared and Leno began to get anxious. He didn't want to retire after all, but he couldn't back out from his contract. So now NBC had two choices - give Leno a new show, seriously undermining the changes they were about to embark upon, or risk Leno getting a show on another network at the same time and lose one of their only more profitable shows as the network continues its slide into 4th place. With that, The Jay Leno Show is conceived - an hour of boring jokes and bits at 10 PM for Jay, before the local news, replacing the usual scripted hour-long programs that traditionally take that time slot. It's Jay Leno and talk shows are far cheaper than scripted shows? How can cutting an hour of scripted programming for a new cheap Jay Leno show possibly go wrong? This is what Jeff Zucker and the other NBC executives asked themselves, ultimately concluding that it was a worthwhile risk.

The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien debuts and does well, but its ratings inevitably start to drop when the viewers who tuned in for the novelty stop watching. There are always those viewers with every launch of a new show - this is nothing new. The Jay Leno show hits a month later. Enough people watch for it to be profitable, but it's a massive drop from The Tonight Show. Viewers are fleeing and nobody's watching the local news on NBC. Things start looking bad for the affiliates. 10 PM is not bedtime. The Jay Leno Show isn't tucking anybody in and numbing their brain to sleep with lazy writing from a host who's been phoning it in for years and obviously doesn't have any real passion or excitement for what he does anymore - he just doesn't want to let go of it.

This is where things start getting particularly bad. Conan's ratings aren't terrible, but in his first half a year, Letterman is undeniably tough competition. Despite NBC's efforts to tone down Conan's wonderfully absurdist and often low brow humor from Late Night, the Leno crowd still doesn't like him. (These people don't tune in for the funny. Nor do they like change.) Conan's own audience is still backing him, but many aren't happy with the perceived taming of his comedy - especially following Conan's announcement that he wasn't going to change on the Late Night series finale in February last year. There weren't enough weird characters - even The Interrupter has only shown up once - and most of the beloved Late Night characters vanished entirely. (Including the particular fan favorite, The Masturbating Bear.) In their place, we got audience bits like Leno was known for - not so great, but still better than Leno's, at least - an amusing but somewhat lukewarm Twitter Tracker recurring sketch, and a few returnees from Late Night like Celebrity Survey, Noches de Pasion con Senor O'Brien, and the always-great Triumph the Insult Comic Dog. The surreal, out-of-left-field characters were mostly gone, as were the bits with the band, Pierre Bernard, Susie Santomauro, and Joel Godard's absence was definitely felt. (Andy Richter's just not the greatest announcer, though he's been gradually - and especially as the show nears its end now - returning to his rightful position on the couch by Conan as his sidekick.) Instead, we'd get comedian and writer Deon Cole appearing to comment on things - and Cole's funny, I've enjoyed his stand-up before, but like most fans from Late Night, I'd just rather see him doing more of a character sketch than a commentary bit. That would align more with the flavor of comedy Conan established so long ago.

If NBC had actually treated Conan properly - and they have a history of treating him like crap compared to Jay Leno and now Jimmy Fallon, who gets Late Night support the likes of which Conan never received - they would have had more confidence in him and let him keep doing the Tonight Show. Less taming of the humor, more of the Late Night style surreality and self-deprecation we all came to know and love. Every new host needs a few years to establish their audience, and at a different hour, The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien could have been so much bigger than even Late Night was. The younger audience - which tends to appreciate funny over bland - would have finally taken back the Tonight Show from a comedian who wasn't doing anything new, exciting, edgy, or even interesting with it, from an audience that isn't even watching for comedy.

Instead, NBC cancelled The Jay Leno Show, then made it clear they wanted to give him back the 11:35 Tonight Show slot for a later version of the same show they just cancelled. Jay was dragging the network down and actively hurting the affiliates, and instead of giving Conan a chance to establish a fuller Tonight Show audience, after only 7 months hosting it, NBC pulled the rug out from under his feet. Conan had two options: to take a stand for his show and his integrity as an entertainer who loves and cares about what he's doing, or to kowtow to NBC (Much like Jimmy Fallon and Carson Daly have to.) and let them bump the Tonight Show to 12:05, just after midnight. NBC chose to punish Conan for the damage Jay had done, and in the end, Conan made the choice to walk. For seven months, he's gotten to live his dream, and after 16 years hosting Late Night and all this hard work to reach his dream, all it took was one corporate executive decision to completely fuck him over.

TMZ has already reported that Leno has signed a new contract to take the Tonight Show back from Conan this spring following the Winter Olympics, all the way down to the name, knowing exactly what he's doing to Conan and going through with it anyway.

Conan has one week left ahead before The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien ends not even a full year after Late Night with Conan O'Brien. The internet is furious, to say the least, and like the rest of them, I'd like to see a sharp backlash against both NBC and Leno for this. The new Tonight Show with Jay Leno absolutely deserves to crash and burn hard for what they did to Conan. As for whether it will, I have a feeling that Leno's established 11:35 audience that hated Conan will be right back with Jay and both he and NBC will be laughing about this and continuing to try to blame Conan for what happened, revising history - as they've already begun to. (NBC Universal Sports' Dick Ebersol is already claiming this all happened because they "bet on the wrong guy," because Conan couldn't beat Jay's previously consistently always higher ratings in a mere 7 months, when the original plan was always to give Conan a real window in which to prove himself. He was never going to win over Leno's audience, but Ebersol was convinced that he could - or so he claims - and he's sore that Conan ignored his suggestions on making the show more "mainstream." Conan already attempted to make the show more accessible than the Tonight Show without completely selling out - what we have here is a sports division bigwig claiming that he knows how to run a mainstream comedy show, when he undoubtedly would have liked to have turned the Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien into a carbon copy of Jay's show, just with a different host that Jay's audience still wasn't keen on accepting. "Mainstream" and "accessible" are the death knell of good comedy - they're just another way of saying bland and inoffensive. Conan wouldn't have any integrity as a comedian - let alone a host - if he was interested in selling out his own sense of humor and comedy style to appeal to people who don't actually want their comedy shows to be funny.) Show business is a disgusting world.

So with the rest of Conan's fanbase online, I say, fuck you, NBC, and fuck you, Leno. This is why you're in fourth place, and the more celebrity and public backlash Leno gets for screwing Conan over like he did Letterman back in the '90s, the better. Leave late night to people with actual comedy talent. And baby boomers - if you need some help sleeping, try reading a book.

Even more sad is that Conan had chosen to stay with NBC in the past because he didn't want to lose his backlog of characters. And now that he's leaving NBC, he's completely screwed out of these characters and sketches, since NBC owns all of them. The best he could do on a new show is take some of the same premises and rename them. Like most fans, I would love to see him spend this last week of The Tonight Show bringing back every character possible, just to give them one last hurrah. And given that Robert Smigel created Triumph the Insult Comic Dog - and Triumph even had a major role in a couple of episodes of Comedy Central's short-lived TV Funhouse back in the early 2000s (Which Smigel created) - one hopes that NBC can't stop him from taking Triumph to wherever Conan ends up next.

After getting sandbagged by NBC, I wish all the best to Conan, Andy, Max, and the show's writers and crew that made a point of uprooting their families from New York and moving all the way across the country to LA only to get this. You guys have done a great job and made a quality show - what NBC's done won't be forgotten. Here's hoping that Conan gets a new show on Fox, ABC or anywhere else where he'll be treated properly within the next year or two and brings as many of you as possible with him. I'd love to see a full-on return to Late Night form - and Conan's nothing-left-to-lose bitterness these past few weeks has shown just how much was being comparatively held back, hilarious as he's been in the face of this corporate backstabbing - and undoubtedly so would his other fans. Conan, Andy, the band, Smigel, as much of the rest of the writers, staff, and crew as possible - whether still in LA, back in New York, or even elsewhere - on Fox, ABC, or anywhere else would be welcome. Wherever you guys go, you'll have Team Conan waiting eagerly.

To close, enjoy this footage of ABC's Jimmy Kimmel ripping Jay Leno apart on his own show from a couple of nights back.

Guess What I've Got For You in My Pants (It's a Bomb)

When Xmas Day arrived, so too did a gift for conservatives in the form of Umar Mutallab, a young Muslim Nigerian man - and son of one of the wealthiest men in Africa - who attempted to set off plastic explosives concealed in his underwear on a flight bound for Michigan from Amsterdam. His weapon malfunctioned and passengers subdued him, putting out the fire he started, and everyone walked away from the incident safely. And so, it was time for the American right-wing to grab the terror bull by the horns and ride it into the American people yet again.

As Daily Show host Jon Stewart recently articulated it well, another round of "Terrorball" has begun. What does Terrorball entail? Mostly Republican politicians and Fox News's right-wing propaganda machine "keeping score" on attempted terrorist attacks in this country with the intention of framing the discussion as one of Republicans being "tough on terror," while terrorists have been coming out of the woodwork since Obama took office. This argument also entails the claim that we somehow didn't suffer any attacks from Islamic extremists or anyone else during the Bush years - including going as far as to taking the precious political prop they've made the September 11th attacks into and insisting it was something that happened on Bill Clinton's watch and that no one can blame Bush for it when his administration had the intelligence necessary to act and prevent it and chose instead to do nothing.

The Republicans spent the George W. Bush years ruling with fear, insinuating that the September 11th attacks would unquestionably be repeated if the American people voted the Democrats into power again. This, of course, led to severe disillusionment with the party as the nation all but collapsed under their dangerous governance this past decade, and played a huge part in the Democratic sweeps in the 2006 and 2008 elections. Not that the Democrats actually got to properly check the Bush administration's power in many ways that counted in the final years, and as I'll discuss soon in a forthcoming post, even a majority hasn't helped the Democrats accomplish nearly enough since Obama took office.

The Republicans have exploited (And continue to exploit) every bit of paranoia they could, seeking to benefit from even the notion of terrorism. Fear-based politics subvert and smother real political dialogue, and following their 2006 and 2008 defeats, they're dead-set on continuing to use these disgusting tactics in a complete insult to both the American people and all those who've actually died on account of extremists.

The attempted December 25th attack has led to a focus on stepping up airport security with plans to expand the use of new body scanners that function like unwarranted strip searches, scanning through people's clothes. Naturally, many people are not so happy about this, what with all the additional violations of privacy we're introducing in the name of security. Not the first sacrifice we've made - and undoubtedly not the last - to supposedly make ourselves safer. Our civil liberties and privacy rights have been eroding by the year since the September 11th attacks, and we aren't standing up as a nation against this. As a moderate, Obama isn't going to stop it, either. All they have to do is wave the "Terrorists might get us unless we give these things up!" wand and everyone gives in. What we forget - what no one wants to address - is the fact that it's impossible to be 100% safe. No matter how many liberties and privacy rights we sacrifice, we will never be meaningfully safer for it. There is no 100% failsafe method to keeping the American people safe at all times.

Founding father Benjamin Franklin famously wrote, "They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." And now, that is our trajectory - Bin Laden and his cohorts don't need to actually attack or kill anyone to wreck this nation as is their goal - they just have to scare us every so often and we'll destroy ourselves. All the same, we remain constantly on the lookout for new "enemies" (Many on the right have already concluded that Yemen is the "next war" following our invasion, occupation, and wrecking of Afghanistan and Iraq, neither of which we're doing much long term good for, even when the Obama administration has made it clear that an invasion of Yemen isn't even on the table.) and, as you'd typically expect of Americans, in no way asking ourselves why it is that we have enemies at all, and why it would make sense that there are people who'd want to blow us up or fly planes into our buildings. Instead, we get right-wing talking points to the tune of that we're hated because "we're the greatest country in the world and they hate our freedom." Wrong answer. In reality, that kind of attitude is absolutely part of why we're hated - and naturally, this same crowd's angry that America's image has improved as much as it has abroad on account of the election of Barack Obama.

Our culture of fear is only going to drag this country into ruin.

Spiral Reverie Turns Three

Here we are, another new year, and now another decade. As you'd expect, people are arguing all over the internet over whether the new decade begins this year in 2010 or next year in 2011. The exact same argument the internet had over whether the new millennium began in 2000 or 2001 a good ten years ago. (Why do I still remember the internet ten years ago?) Of course, it's all arbitrary - technically every year is the beginning of a new decade as any block of ten random years is a decade. People just want to celebrate a shifting of the year's digits. Any excuse to make an even bigger deal out of a holiday about getting drunk. (Wait, that's every holiday.)

I've been less than reliable when it comes to post consistency as of late - not that I mean to be, mind you - and so, to start off the new year (There will be much more substantive content coming yet soon, plus a returning week-long feature from last year to look forward to in February.), have some mini-rambles! A handful of what you could consider cupcake equivalents of my usual ranting and rambling - a little bittersweet treat fit to give you mental indigestion. What more could you ask for?

Oh, of course! I know what you could ask for! The aforementioned mini-rambles turning into a series of several full-fledged posts instead! Because I don't know how to stop myself once I get rambling! (Otherwise it wouldn't be rambling. You can't control rambling. You'd just be holding it back then.)

Spiral Reverie had its third birthday on January 1st - and now, year four begins! (It's like Harry Potter, except it'll kill you inside. Also, less Dumbledore.)

Crimbozilla Appears: Festive Holiday Monster from Beneath the Sea!!

The ocean floor and its numerous volcanic vents have traditionally long since been one of the last things most human beings thought to concern themselves with - particularly around the holiday season. It's time to grab some wrapping paper and get your gift on, then maybe grab a little viscous courage in some egg nog and get your drink on. Upon imbibing enough of that courage, it's time to find some suspended leaves to hang out under and get your sexual harassment and slapped-in-the-face on. It's a holiday tradition. Most people need help.

This year, humanity could make no greater mistake than ignoring the wild realm of the bottom of the sea. No, the sand golems and see-through fish aren't rising up to enslave humanity for the fourth time - you'd think we'd have learned by now, but no - does the air pressure feel like it's drastically changed lately? Unless that happens, they're not coming back anytime soon. (Unless they invent some kind of specialized pressure-suits, in which case, we're all doomed.) The threat lurking beneath the waves at this, the end of the decade, is perhaps both the deadliest and most festive mankind has ever faced.

That is to say, the arrival of Crimbozilla! First detected by the USNOAA in 1997, the nature of Crimbozilla long remained a mystery until his sudden rise from the cover of miles of ocean to cross the Gulf of Mexico and set foot on land at the Florida panhandle. Local residents weren't sure what to make of the 100-foot tall red-and-green lizardman as it stomped their neighborhoods flat. Local gas station owner Vernon Hammett commented, "If that giant asshole ruins my light show, there'll be hell to pay!"

The scientific community was dumbfounded that such a creature as Crimbozilla could stalk the globe without their notice, having explored and mastered the seas in ways that would make Jacques Cousteau weep. As such, skepticism soon grew, leading scientists suspecting that Crimbozilla's timely holiday appearance and festively colored scales were planned - Crimbozilla had to have been engineered by some sort of nefarious Christmas mastermind.

When reached for comment at the North Pole, celebrated rogue Uncle Santa denied any link between himself and an aquatic genetic research lab recently discovered within the Great Pacific Ocean Garbage Patch - despite the elves that staffed it all being card-carrying members of SantaCorp. When he was questioned further, Uncle Santa became belligerent and hurled a bottle of his patented Ho Ho Holiday Lager at a journalist from Reuters and ended the press conference early.

Three more journalists were later hospitalized after they were beaten senseless by surly talking reindeer who discovered them snooping around the outskirts of Uncle Santa's heavily fortified arctic compound. Such extreme actions are legally permissible in the private territory of Santaland where SantaCorp is headquartered, but only when said actions are carried out by legal citizens of the territory.

As Crimbozilla made his way further inland, he stomped through the city of Tallahassee, pausing only occasionally to pelt the skyline with hails of candy canes he breathed. (As opposed to fire or ice or anything remotely useful to a gigantic rampaging monster.) The children were overjoyed even as highrises collapsed around them.

The US military attempted to mobilize against Crimbozilla as he crashed through Georgia, only to find that there wasn't a single enlisted man or woman willing to take up arms against the lovable behemoth. Lieutenant Nathan Portly told The New York Times that, "I just can't shoot at that guy. My kids love him too much." All other soldiers interviewed echoed his sentiments, many of them overwhelmed with childlike nostalgia at the sight of the festive lizard monster. "I just want to climb onto his back and live there forever!" said Cadet Lindsey Merrick. Cadet Merrick was referring to the actual gingerbread village populated by apparently sentient cookie-people that made their home on Crimbozilla's back.

As Crimbozilla went out of his way to demolish every major city in North Carolina, he scattered his surroundings with snow laced with hormones inducing joy in all those subjected to it, causing the notoriously cranky hill folk and notoriously corrupt banking executives alike to emerge from their respective burrows to fill the air with the cheerily discordant sound of improvised Christmas caroling. This was reportedly incredibly annoying to all who did not celebrate the holiday, as well as those who'd taken the time to cultivate a taste in music beyond "whatever's on the radio."

Crimbozilla neared New York City by late morning on December 24th, causing many to both celebrate and dread the prospect of a Crimbozilla rampage through the city perhaps resulting in the greatest Christmas in human history. Many wondered, how exactly could you could you top a giant monster who spread happiness and joy with every bit of destruction he caused? In England, a quiet ceremony was held where the Queen knighted Crimbozilla in spirit, having been unable to draw his attention away from his unrelenting trek across the eastern United States at a time when the British isles were facing a paralyzing shortage of holiday spirit in the face of a devastating figgy pudding shortage.

Early that morning, Japanese researchers mobilized their own artificial monster to subdue Crimbozilla - Kuwako the 90-foot silkworm moth. Demonstrating an astonishing lack of foresight in their choice of giant bugs to engineer, as a domesticated insect, the docile Kuwako showed no interest in leaving her massive silk cocoon and only responded to offerings of mulberry leaves from the SDF. As such, Operation Tone It Down, Buddy, was a nonstarter.

When Crimbozilla at last reached New York City, he took an unexpected turn - knocking several Long Island homes into the Atlantic Ocean - and instead trampled Rochester into the ground. Nuclear supermonster experts suggested that avoiding the Hollywood cliche of wrecking New York City indicated a previously undetermined advanced intelligence in the jolly holiday beast. Several rumors began to circulate on the internet that Crimbozilla held the secret of eternal life somewhere in the gumdrop castle atop his head.

Shocking Americans with the notion that their nation was not the only one in the world, Crimbozilla crossed the Canadian border, leaving Rochester behind as a pit of overwhelming joy and peppermint-scented death. Crimbozilla sneezed a torrent of expertly-prepared and carefully-wrapped gourmet chocolates down onto Winnipeg before setting his sights on Toronto.

Toronto mayor David Miller teamed up once again with actress, director, and political activist Sarah Polley and staged a protest, forming a circle around the vicinity of the city to make it clear to the incoming Crimbo colossus that while they appreciated the cheer he stood for, they were a culturally diverse people and would prefer he respect that - also, nobody was too keen on the rampant destruction he brought with him everywhere he went. So moved by this heartful protest was the nation's beaver population that they converged on the city and constructed a glorious impenetrable domed dam structure as so to hold off seemingly unavoidable holiday horror. That dome - constructed entirely from love, and also really sturdy logs and some twigs - was the only thing Crimbozilla could not pass.

Following this show of unprecedented solidarity - completely one upping that time that moose looked at a disgusted Republican tourist from America threateningly when he set foot outside of Alberta - Crimbozilla once again turned northward. Just barely missing Ottawa, Crimbozilla crunched his way through the frozen snows of Quebec. The American media stopped covering Crimbozilla at this point, as there were far more important things - like after-Christmas sales - to cover. Besides, who cares about a giant monster traipsing across part of the globe if they aren't on US soil anymore?

To much disappointing, Crimbozilla ignored Montreal and made a beeline for the Labrador Sea. As it became more apparent that Crimbozilla's destination was somewhere in the arctic, the scientific community once again hurled accusations - mostly conjecture - at Uncle Santa, insisting that he knew something the rest of us didn't. In response, Uncle Santa affirmed that it was sheer coincidence that Crimbozilla was heading toward his territory, suggesting that perhaps Crimbozilla wanted to meet the grand ruler of the holiday season himself. When a BBC reporter crossed a line by asking Uncle Santa if he'd ever stop treating the public like idiots, he threatened to use his time machine to go back and cancel Christmas that day. That shut everybody up.

Crimbozilla disappeared somewhere in the arctic, leaving many to wonder if we wouldn't perhaps see him emerge again in time for the holidays in 2010. By the end of Crimbozilla's rampage, the body count was somewhere between five and six million. Nobody really seemed to mind too much.

How Happy are the Forgetful

Hey, it's already Christmas Eve. I said there would be more posts, and this will be the first! Several more massively substantive ones are in the works, and I'm still trying to come up with a couple of holiday season ones for this week. To say the least, I'll be posting a lot more than usual to make up for lost time this and next week.

I could do a healthcare followup, but at this time of the year, most don't want to think about the sad turns that took, since we sacrificed many of the best things we were fighting for just to appease Joe Lieberman (Amongst others) in the Senate, and a large number of people will continue to go without healthcare access and inevitably die because of the compromises made. (It's kind of funny how when compromise comes up in government, it's always from the Democrats, while the Republicans seem to believe they can simply get away with outright obstructing government function now, showing how broken our congressional system is getting, as slanted against the interests of the American people as it now is.) We're turning "healthcare reform" into a giveaway to the insurance industry, propping up a system citizens need to be able to circumvent, as healthcare does not work as a for-profit industry. But of course, like all things noble, the right-wing would have to turn this into a farce, their interests vested elsewhere than the best interests of the people. At this rate, I'm a still pretty skeptical that anything will get passed and that we'll see anything resembling meaningful change due to obstructionists who couldn't care less about healthcare access as a human right. As a sort of federal Xmas gift for the American people, the Senate bill passed its final hurdle this morning - though even Howard Dean has said that it wasn't worth passing as it stood - so we've got something to expand coverage to another 30 million people. Likewise, getting something passed is technically a victory over obstructionists and lays the groundwork for future revision and work on improving our healthcare system, since even in having lost the public option at this point - one of the most important things previously on the table - that's not say we can't bring it back at some point, perhaps if we can elect a congress actually interested in representing the people instead of running the country into the ground for corporate profiteering. (This is me acknowledging that I probably will have to leave this country sometime in the next several years to have any hope of living in a decent first world nation where standard of living is actually considered important - more so than corporate money.) So overall, I'm displeased about what we've ended up with, but at the same time, my feelings are mixed - we're teetering on the brink of what is technically at least some sort of reform despite all the obstructionist efforts to stop it entirely, a lot of non-insurance industry people do still stand to benefit. (We still have to reconcile the House and Senate bills in the spring before we'll see anything cross Obama's desk, but we've got two bills passed now, in the least. And I have a feeling we'll see the right fight to hold onto the House bill's Stupak-Pitts amendment, which seeks to decisively eliminate a woman's right of choice by removing the ability to purchase health insurance that covers abortion. Downright misogynistic.) But it does have to be said that our obsession with corporatism and the idea of corporatism as the "free market" guiding everything winning against humane thought once again is never pleasant to see. That kind of thinking - and seemingly intense disinterest in reform in China - made the Copenhagen climate change summit into a sad farce as well, and I hate to think about how much shrieking we're going to hear about climate change legislation here next year. (Particularly from the crowd convinced that those leaked emails including terms like "trick" and "hide the decline" that global warming deniers want to take as proof that somehow industrial pollution is having no negative effect on the world at all and it's all a big hoax. All people who have no understanding of the science, nor any interest in the objective reality of what's happening in all its complexity - it's sad that these bottom of the barrel conspiracy theories have been brought into the mainstream by today's furious Republicans in this country. They wouldn't be so angry if they actually took the time to understand what it was Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and Sarah Palin were trying so hard to get them steamed up about.) Irate, further disillusioned political tangent over.

Time to cut to the chase instead of rambling as much. You're all overdue for another of my science posts. You can't get enough of them. In fact, I'm your only source for science news. (Don't ask me how I know that - I just know.) So it's time to drop a few more brain-factoids on you. Just like that one dream you had. You're weird.

Back in early November, a study was published in the Australian Science journal's November/December issue on the effects of good and bad moods. The study was carried out through inducing happy and sad moods in the research subjects through film viewings and recollections of positive and negative events.

Their findings included that people in negative moods were more attentive to and critical of their surroundings than happier people, who were more inclined to accept things they were told at face value. (You've heard it here first - happy people are suckers. All of them.) The findings also suggested that sadness "promotes information processing strategies best suited to dealing with more demanding situations."

Some of you happy-mongers out there might be yelling, "Hey, come on! Happiness can't be an altogether bad thing at your monitor right now!" Stop it. I can't hear you through the internet. See how happy people are!? Anyway, you should be happy to know that their findings also found that positive moods "promote creativity, flexibility, cooperation, and reliance on mental shortcuts." Good for you. You're more pleasant to be around and all these other good things - though good arguments can be made for unhappiness and creativity, as a post coming in the near future will also discuss. (Noticing the recurring trend of the power of negativity on this blog? Have a cookie.)

Despite these findings on happiness, they also found that "negative moods trigger more attentive, careful thinking paying greater attention to the external world." It almost seems to suggest that happiness forms sort of a shell around people that helps them filter and somewhat disconnect from the outside world. The rest of us are raw nerves who know exactly what's what. (Or so the findings in this one particular study seem to suggest. Let's all not forget to wear our critical thinking scientific method caps. The last time we forgot them, we decided getting hamsters to smoke cigarettes was a good idea - let us not repeat that tragedy.) Speaking of which, one the experiments that made up the study entailed asking the subjects to judge the truth of various rumors and urban legends, and - as you'd expect from the rest of these findings - those in negative moods were less likely to believe the statements presented to them.

Those in unpleasant moods were also found less likely to make snap decisions based on racial or religious prejudice - apparently happiness is inherently bigoted (Or that hypothetical 'happiness shell' makes you less likely to care about offending someone with your bigotry.), are you learning anything today? - and were also less likely to make mistakes when recalling events they witnessed. The happier you are, the more you forget, shrouded in your warm fog.

The sour were also found to be better at making their case in written arguments, that a "mildly negative mood may actually promote a more concrete, accommodative and ultimately more successful communication style." Is there no way in which misery cannot better us?

Concluding, study author psychology professor Joseph Forgas (University of New South Wales) stated that "Positive mood is not universally desirable: people in negative mood are less prone to judgmental errors, are more resistant to eyewitness distortions and are better at producing high-quality, effective persuasive messages."

Begrudgingly, I'll give you that it's probably healthiest for us to live a more centered life where we maintain some sort of balance in our moods - what of one we can - as so to enjoy the positives of the ups and downs of daily human existence. But would this blog be anywhere near as sharp, biting, incisive, and impossible to tear yourself away from if not for my unrelenting negativity? I submit that it would not!

See, wasn't some more negative-thinking science exactly what you wanted for Xmas Eve? Don't worry, I'm going to come up with something weird and comical for Xmas Day within these 24 hours. And I've got a good several quality, substantive posts on the way to close the year - and decade! - on a good note here. Look forward to something goofy and likely inevitably slapdash in the next 13-14ish hours and have an enjoyable holiday, readers!

Hey, Where Is That Guy?

Yes, I know what you're all thinking. (It's been established at least twenty or thirty times by now that I'm telepathic - through the internet.) This blog needs some more updates. Surely it does! And I have no excuse. November had a lot of stress and distractions, and there's not exactly a shortage of them in December, but I'm going to make a point of writing at least 5 or 6 posts of actual substance here this month.

I just wanted to come by and say that hey, this guy's not dead yet. I've got another goofy negative-humor science one in the pipeline - since midway through last month, technically - and I decided to spare you all another attempt at a Thanksgiving themed goofy short, mostly because last year's was pretty terrible and I couldn't think of anything worth writing this year that wouldn't have inevitably been some kind of stupid rehash. (Tofurkey II: The Tofurkeying: Starring Joe Tofurkey as the Tofurkey. Tofurkey.) You should be thankful I didn't try again.

I'm also undoubtedly going to chuck one or two holiday themed posts at you guys sometime this month. It's tradition, after all. Even if I probably used up all the good ideas the past two holiday seasons. Nothing like a little scraping the bottom of the barrel to flex those brain-fibers!

Also, I went from lurker to actual registered Something Awful goon the other day, so the internet can tremble in fear now as I pretty much just continue to lurk and read the forum instead of posting. I'm passive and observant like that. I trust you've all been surviving without your regular Spiral Reverie fixes. Perhaps getting clean and finding a new lease on life. I'll have to fix that.