Have you read John Seabrook's The Song Machine? The account of Kesha in that really supports everything you say in your second paragraph.

JEOPARDY OBJECTION

Holy shit I think we've found Maher's Disqus account

I would say, though, that Coulter kinda came up with Maher, and she's the first of the Leggy Blonde Republicans to make a name for herself before Fox News started cloning them. Coulter caught a lot of flak in her day, but I think people have long understood that she's mostly doing schtick, saying outrageous things to…

ANCIENTS OF MU MU

Enzo's 25-minute promo at the start of the Royal Rumble pretty much turned me off of him. Certainly a brilliant mic guy but you have to parcel that out.

FWIW, Kansas legislature (still majority Republican) just voted to raise taxes. A glimmer of hope that there is a point at which Republicans will observe the first law of holes. (Brownback will probably veto it, but it's a good sign that fiscal sanity will return to KS in a few years.)

Is Pearl S. Buck known as anything other than a Jeopardy! answer these days?

You never said it explicitly, but it's baked into the 'both sides' construction. And, being that we don't appear far apart on most issues, I can bluntly state my concern: 'both sides' constructions are and have always been particularly harmful to progressive causes. It's a way of blunting progressive ideas by equating…

I think Dragnet is more a 'How Did This Get Made' type of film.

Well, then say that rather than say that politics are dominated by two extremist 'sides' that occlude a sensible moderate center (which is what the 'both sides' construction that you used implies, whether you realize it or not). You're undermining the perfectly banal and trite observation you're trying to make!

That's my takeaway from that Facebook message. Funny how easy it is to remove the guise of being an in-your-face provocateur once it starts costing you money.

I think it came out when Gerard Depardieu still had a reputation as a great actor, so his presence gave it enough cover so that it wasn't so controversial. It was immediately forgotten, just like whatever that movie was that he did with Andie MacDowell that was supposed to make him a Hollywood star.

Piven with his old hairline too; that's good for 10 minutes of material right there.

Saying something is a problem for 'both sides' assumes an audience (usually a moderate audience) for which that isn't true. Which is false. Just say it's a problem.

Yeah, I never understood what the lottery was supposed to add. Particularly considering that they're fairly picky about the films they choose to cover.

That's the only one I'm looking forward to on this list…the others are more boring than bad fantasy/sci-fi films and WHM doesn't have a great track record with those.

Yeah, no. Being an anti-vaxxer means you lack fundamental critical thinking skills and can't properly evaluate arguments or evidence. It should disqualify you from being a commentator of any sort. Believing in the 'right' things doesn't ameliorate that–for one thing, people can come to the 'right' conclusion through…

Well that's noble and all but it's a human failing, not an ideological one.

I didn't know Apatow was involved with this, but I thought the opening scene played like an Apatow rip-off. So yeah, that feel is there. However, I thought things improved enormously when Arte Lange showed up. So I'll keep giving this a shot.