Up Close and Personal - Palin under the Newaweek magnifying glass. No airbrush!

Republican VP candidate Sarah Heath Palin's defenders on Fox News have no notion of "warts and all" scrutiny, it seems, if their outrage over an unretouched Newsweek cover shot is any indication. It set them in a more frenzied than usual mode of media-baiting. A few under-eye wrinkles, magnified by the specs, plus the hint of a permenipausal 'stache has alarmed them. Not a very congenial way to treat an ex-beauty queen, they admonish. And an earlier Newsweek cover which showed a vintage shot of her with a shotgun, drew complaints because it showed careless handling of a firearm. Hmmm An even more embarassing look at Palin, which has gone viral online, is a photograph of her high school Scholastic Aptitude Test, which at 841 out of a possible 1600, ranks her as a woefully mediocre student. Incidentally, she scored grades of a D in foreign language, 2 Bs, and the rest Cs. This is Wasilla High, mind you, not the nation's most rigorous high school.

More letter grades for Ms Sarah: OMG! LOL GOP MILF

Murdoch doesn't get airbrushed

If anyone should complain about no airbrushing, it's FOX's owner, global press tycoon Rupert Murdoch. But each one of those Australian jowls and skinfolds is worth millions. The sun down under must be a tad crueler than in Alaska.


Rupert Murdoch is the CEO and majority stock-owner of Newscorp., a public company which owns major media enterprises, among which are the FOX broadcast network, the Fox News Channel , 20th Century Fox Film Corp., The New York Post, Reganbooks and HarperCollins Publishers, the BSkyb satellite company, The London Times, and many others around the world.

Did you know his first name, which he rarely uses, is Keith??

South American Election Strategy: Change your name--perferably to Barack Obama!

In Brazil, where politicians often adopt new names for
elections, six candidates had taken the name Barack
Obama. Other candidates called themselves Cattle Ana, Jeep
Johnny, Big Charlie Knives, Jorge Bushi, Chico Bin Laden,
DJ Saddam, King of the Cuckolds, and Kung Fu Fatty.

Maybe something gets lost in translation. These sound lke samba band leaders, not statesmen

Hat tip to Harper's Weekly

Dateline Wallachia - Clown King in Court

Love the Beeb. What other network has correspondents even in fictitious foreign countries? Had to share this report from an imaginary kingdom deep in the Czech Republic whose passports apparently are accepted in Palin's Alaska, but nowhere else.

A court in the Czech city of Olomouc is to deliver its verdict in one of the oddest legal disputes in the country's history.

Comic actor Bolek Polivka is suing former business partner Tomas Harabis over the rights to the fictitious Wallachian Kingdom.

The court must decide whether Mr Polivka is the true "king" of the fairy-tale realm.

"Wallachia is a real place with real people and real history," says Tomas Harabis, creator and "foreign minister" of the Wallachian Kingdom.

"But a lot of the attributes of the Wallachian Kingdom are not real," he adds.

We are standing on the top of a mountain, watching the sun cast its long evening shadow over a forest of maple and spruce. Tomas is trying to explain to me where the real Wallachia ends and the fictitious Wallachia begins.

It is a fine distinction, one somewhat blurred by the four glasses of Slivovica - Wallachian plum brandy - we've just downed in a local pub.

"What about the hat?" I ask, referring to the pointy black hat that features on many Wallachian symbols.

"Oh, that's real, that's a traditional Wallach shepherd's hat," says Tomas.

Mr Harabis says he got into Alaska with a Wallachian passport

"But the Wallachian passports, they're not real passports, they're fake, right?" I venture.

"They are fake. But I did get into Alaska with one."

The fake Wallachian passports were Tomas' idea. As was the make-believe Wallachian currency, the Jurovalsar. And the non-existent University of the Wallachian Kingdom, with its made-up Faculty of Distilling and Slivovica Science.


Wallachia, as Tomas says, is real.

It is a mountainous region in the south-east corner of Moravia about the size of Luxembourg. It was settled over many centuries by migrating Romanian shepherds called Vlachs, herding their sheep westwards along the mighty Carpathian mountain range.

The Wallachian Kingdom is not real. It was founded by Tomas and a couple of friends as an elaborate practical joke.

But as practical jokes go, it's a money-spinner.

Since its creation in 1997, the Wallachian Kingdom has grown into one of the most successful tourist ventures in the country.

Local hotels, restaurants and breweries quickly saw the potential of encouraging people to visit this little-known region. Last year, Tomas applied for, and won, EU funding.

Almost 90,000 people now own a Wallachian passport, and 10,000 or so are well on their way to becoming fully-fledged Wallachian citizens (a process that involves many, many glasses of Slivovica). The "kingdom" has "consulates" all over the world.

But all is not well in the Wallachian Kingdom. The foreign minister is being sued by the king.

In 1993, four years before the "kingdom" was created, Bolek Polivka - who is also a trained clown - had had himself crowned "Wallachian King, Boleslav I the Gracious, Forever" on his TV show.

When Tomas Harabis began casting around for a monarch to head his fictional kingdom, "King Boleslav" was the obvious choice.

It was a harmonious relationship at first. Bolek allowed his signature to appear in the passports, and presided over royal events organised by Tomas, including a lavish coronation ceremony in the town of Vsetin in 2000.

Soon afterwards, however, the relationship began to sour, and - listening to Tomas tell the story - the lines between fact and fiction once again become blurred.

"The moment when King Boleslav became king, he started confusing this fiction with a real position in the kingdom," he explains.

"He was trying to rule the economy of the kingdom, which was very important for the stability and the idea of the whole thing."

In other words, "King Boleslav" began acting like a real monarch.

In 2001, Tomas led a "palace coup", announcing that "King Boleslav" had been overthrown. A "Queen Mother" was appointed to rule the troubled kingdom in his place.


The "king's" lawyers were not amused. In 2002, they filed a lawsuit to stop Mr Harabis from using the Wallachian Kingdom trademark he had registered in 1998, claiming he was profiting unlawfully from Mr Polivka's name.

A series of phone calls, emails and text messages failed to procure an audience with "King Boleslav".

However, he had the following to say in an interview with Czech Television earlier this year: "For me the main thing is to stop Mr Harabis preventing us from having a laugh."

"He claims that because he owns the copyright to the kingdom, I am not the King of Wallachia, and that I'm misleading the public. I don't think he should be allowed to get away with it," Mr Polivka said.

In December 2007, Mr Polivka lost the case, and appealed. The Olomouc court is now due to issue its final verdict on that appeal.

It must decide whether Mr Polivka is truly "Wallachian King, Boleslav I, the Gracious", and whether he also owns the intellectual property rights to the Wallachian Kingdom as a whole.

Or whether Mr Polivka is living in the realm of fantasy, and King Boleslav exists solely as a figment of his imagination.

Correction of the Week - accent the positive!

As Colonialists, the French used to be known for their adventurous palates and few Frenchmen were adverse to trying out and adapting native cuisine, however odd it might appear to, say, an Englishman. In that light, check out the correction that the Israeli daily Haaretz ran today following their interview (in English) with the French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner:

The minister intended to say that Israel would "hit Iran" before it obtains a nuclear bomb, and not "eat Iran".

Hmmm. And the French must be "angry", rather than "hungry", about the all too typical misunderstanding. Perhaps this little mix-up helps explain why French used to be the language of diplomacy instead of English.
The op-ed page of that same daily warns the designated Israeli Prime Minister, Tzipi Livni, not to strike Iran out of political ambition, as a means to show aggressive ballsiness. The foremer Mossad operative has been criticised for her diffidence in making "cruel decisions", ie code for taking out Tehran's nukes in a pre-emptive strike.
Cross-posted from Israelitybites

Who'll be the top dog? Will press stop hounding candidates?

Gawker cried fowl when the rather staid Nature magazine inadvertently placed a back display ad that echoes the political front cover. Tongue in cheek, they wonder about racism, speciesism, whatever. Commenters say the yellow dog looks confused, the dark one hopeful. Wagging tales.
Don't you have a dog in that fight? Which dog don't hunt? Will an old yellow dog learn new tricks? The cliches go on and on.

Homer Simpson tries to vote for Obama

This viral video on YouTibe has been making the rounds, via HuffPo. Diebold industries links to possible vote rigging for the Republicans has been investigated by the British reporter, Andrew Gumbel, but has received short shrift from much of the American press. Can we expect some attention to this important wrinkle in the election beat? There should be a paper trail of all ballots!