Americans, in an election year, (and, you know, not in an election year) are pretty bat-shit fucking insane. Bat-shit to a level of bat-shittery, where I don’t really bother anymore because seriously, what can I write that is as farcically stupid as the truth? Sometimes, when I’m reading about American politics – in actual, serious, respected publications – I need to just stop and lay down.  Just to let it all wash over me.  Then, when I wake up, I look at my hands to see if they’ve been replaced with deadly razor flippers.  Then I look out the window to see if we suddenly have two suns setting across the sand dunes, because honestly, becoming a deadly flipper-monster on the planet Tatooine makes about as much sense to me as people voting for Rick Santorum.   That is bat-shittery.

Rick Santorum is out now, and America finally has time to focus on the candidate that matters: Ann Romney. Ann Romney, as we all know because she is now officially the most visible person in the election campaign, is apparently running for Mitt Romney’s humanizer-in-chief.  Mitt Romney, a hypocrite with terrible ideas, has one problem that makes him unelectable in the United States: he’s not charming.  I have actually had the dubious pleasure of seeing Mitt Romney in person when he was on tour for his book No Apologies. While we were in Toronto at the time, the crowd at Indigo Books was 95% American and all Mitt had to do was spew some folksy bullshit about how great ‘murrica is to a crowd of ex-pats dying to feel exceptional again. He couldn’t even manage that.  He basically got up there and said that he doesn’t like Obama because of… isn’t it great to be here in Canada? Beautiful lakes.  But really America is just… it’s something special isn’t it (half-hearted cheers) and that’s why it doesn’t matter…. sure, there are dead Arab children now but America?…The Economy.  The end.  No, he didn’t take questions after; taking questions from hero-worshiping sycophants outside of an election cycle would just be too difficult. Thus, we have Ann Romney.  A crazy-eyed, over-reacting, under-achieving Real Housewife of Somewhere Stupidly High Income whose sole purpose in this campaign is to make Mitt Romney look human.

Her first project was to make him look like a goofball. On the campaign trail, when someone suggested Romney was “stiff”, Ann Romney said ”I guess we better unzip him and let the real Mitt Romney out”… So there is that. “That” being an awkward penis joke. For America. Then she referred to him as her “sixth son”, because being a child somehow makes him a good father?  But none of that matters anymore because she’s onto her second project, making Mitt appeal to women, which… grrrrrrrrrafufufugawwwwwwwwwd. I’m honestly as likely to have a tiny elf-sniper assassinating civilians from my left nostril as I am to agree with Ann Romney’s tactics here.

So these days the Romneys’ hate abortion, birth control, sex-ed, and pretty much anything that gives women free agency or treats sex like something less than a sacred God-boogie that spits baby miracles.  Naturally, most women are not down with Romney’s potential presidency for this reason.  Lucky for Mitty, his wife has been working around the clock to bring at least some women to the Republican base… and it looks like she’s going for the stupid ones.

A while ago Ann  Romney bravely said that it is actually Obama that hates women, because 90% of the jobs lost in the recession belonged to women.  This accusation was, of course, not true at all (remember how two years ago it was men we were supposed to feel sorry for? If not, why is “Man-cession” a part of my lexicon?) but at the time it just seemed like typical batshit American fact-inventing  and economy humping in order to distract people from caring about real things because that’s what batshit people do.  Then a woman named Hilary Rosen, who is a a left-wing commentator with absolutely no ties to the Obama White house, said that it was a bit rich to hear Ann Romney talking about the working women and the economy, as she’s never actually contributed to the economy beyond dropping dolla bills at Williams-Sonoma and has never actually worked a day in her life.  Which is true.  100% true.  Nevertheless, a shit storm arose because Ann Romney was a stay-at-home Mom which is like.. the hardest job in the world, OK?

I’m really not going into the whole raising kids issue, because I don’t understand it, but I’m pretty sure it’s not the hardest job in the world.  I’m going to go ahead and say it comes somewhere after being in the army, coal mining, underwater welding or, you know, having a job AND raising kids.  Which is what most people do.  Staying at home is the tough choice of the ridiculously privileged. Is it hard to be a stay-at-home parent?  Maybe, but you know what else is probably hard?  Sailing your yacht around the world, but I would love to have those sorts of problems.  Also, let’s not pretend that stay-at-home-parents are unduly criticized in the United States.  They don’t get half the judgement that working Mums do, so I hope they really enjoy milking the shit out of this non-issue because they will not get to be the injured party again.

The real point here is that Ann Romney is talking about the economy and she doesn’t know what the fuck she’s talking about.  She’s never worked.  Not while raising kids, not before raising kids, not after raising kids (her youngest child is 31 by the way, and yet, she’s still playing the Mommy card.)  Not only has Ann Romney never had a career, she’s never had a job at all.  Not even a rich-kid fake job, like life-guarding or being a camp councilor.  As my dear friend at the Scarlet Woman pointed out, bitch has never even filed a T4.  I don’t care if she raised five boys, her Mommy time has been bookended by stints of lazy fuckery.  She knows less about the economy than Michelle Bachman, who not only had a job and raised 5 children, but also had to do it with financial limitations.  This is supposed to attract women voters away from Barack Obama?  Who not only doesn’t want to turn the women of America into glorified baby-poopers but also has a smart, professional wife AND coaches Sasha’s basketball team on Saturdays?  IT’S BAT-SHITTERY I tell you, BAT-SHITTERY.

This is why I can’t deal with American politics.  Because it makes more sense for me to have a colony of sweet natured shrimp prostitutes turning tricks in my retinas then to have Ann Romney be a legitimate voice for women in the United States.

Here’s a link to some Ann Romney bumper stickers.  I know.  We should all probably just kill ourselves.

A while back (and by that, I mean soooo long ago.  This story has been sitting in drafts for a while..yeeeeah) Vladimir Putin almost certainly rigged the Russian presidential election so his floppy man-tits could have an extra eight years of blueberry-hill-singing, hymen-popping, journalist-killing good times in office.  Election fraud is bad, certainly, but in this particular case I’m a little bit relieved. I’m not happy that a population of 14s million now live under a government they did not vote for, but I sure am fucking glad they didn’t vote for this:

 I’m glad he HAD to steal the election. You know what is almost offensive than Vladimir Putin’s actions? His administration’s insistence that in Russia, not only does everyone vote for him, they also fucking worship him.  Women want him, men want to be him. He’s not just an information hiding, journalist suppressing, manipulative, heartless, throat -cutting, Bashir Al-Assad loving monomaniacal monster with long reaching ambitions for evil across Eastern Europe and Asia, he is also a tiger hunting, kudo-chopping, uzzi-shooting badass that makes everyone’s vagina tickle. Am I drawing too much out of this? Does he maybe just happen to like taking his tits out on horseback and it’s everyone else who thinks sex? Watch this ad.

Vladimir Putin is so potent, so virile, that he will be deflowering ALL THE VIRGINS

Last year, Christopher Hitchens wrote a rather good piece about the anger that was fueling the Arab Spring.  In the middle east, he suggested, they were not just angry about being oppressed, they were  angry at being obviously, visibly and cartoonishly oppressed. If you want to steal an election, maybe you shouldn’t pretend to get 90% of the vote when 60% will do.  If you want to pretend to be a populist, maybe you shouldn’t build palaces.  For your 49th born son.  To keep his Aston Martins in. People notice, and it gets them upset because it’s unfair, yes, but it’s also humiliating.

Articles like this offensive piece of crap I found on Cracked make the Russian nation look like this:

Isn’t it enough that he stole Russia’s freedom? Does he have to steal their dignity too?

Then I proceed to go home and not blog.

I don’t want to stop writing here.  In my own sick way, I’m kind of proud of Polonoscopy.  It’s never got me a job (which was why I started) nor has it ever been read by more than a handful of (smart, savvy, utterly sexy) people but I’ve always had a giggle here, and I hope you’ve had giggles too. Recently, however, I’ve become a little worried about what I can and cannot write, and frankly, the insecurity is cramping my style a bit.

As some of you may know, I recently relocated to Ottawa.  While any normal person would consider this ridiculous  (the Senators are a truly disgusting hockey team) I did so for good reason.  I have started a short internship with a small but well-respected paper that focuses on the political life here in Ottawa.  For a blogger with a blog named “Polonoscopy” I admit, there is something very special about living in the very sphincter of Canadian politics. Despite being a lowly intern, as a writer for this paper I have been given a Parliamentary press pass and a ridiculous amount of access to the (non-Conservative) people on the Hill (but no journalist really has access to the Conservatives… wait, can I say that anymore? Fuuuuuuck DO YOU SEE MY PROBLEMS?).  Obviously, I’m not going to work for these people forever, because I’ve never interned anywhere where they actually wanted to employ me, but while I’m here, I think I should just not talk about Canadian politics here for a while. I will write about Canadians politics, often and happily, on Twitter; but I just won’t be giving any topic the full benefit of my attention and vocabulary, in a blog post…. until I’m no longer interning there.

I feel a little bit sad holding back, because life in Ottawa is totally worth eviscerating in body-fluid imagery, but I’m really lucky to get this internship and I don’t want to fuck up my chances of being an actual parliamentary reporter one day.  I have never written this blog anonymously, or wanted to, but due to this I’m going to have to shuffle around any issues that might get me in trouble… for now.  Hopefully one day I will be able to write about all of this, my way, with a publication that expects it.  In the meantime, I will focus on international politics.  Which means I will post something about either Vladimir Putin or the Scottish separatism movement (maybe you guy can tell me what you’d rather read in the comments?).  Tomorrow.  Probably.

No really.. I will try.  Probably.

Definitely, probably going to try to try.

See you all tomorrow (maybe)!

Stripped of politics, lacking in history, barely touching on gender or character growth, The Iron Lady is really about an old woman in a nice apartment who suffers from dementia.  This was a controversial decision in itself, yes, but the overwhelming message of the film – it’s terrible to grow old – is much easier to express than one about politics in the 80s. Yes the writer, Abi Morgan, uses dementia as a reason for Thatcher to look back on her life, but all we get is a collage of dinner parties, quotable speeches, riots and the odd bomb. There is no context, there is no story, even Thatcher’s character gets lost in it all. To really have a story, the writer would have to ask her viewers to have an opinion, and opinions are divisive.  In order to offend no one, the writer and director have thrown out couple of dramatic scenes about a powerful woman who has lost it in her old age. Then they left it to Meryl Streep to act the shit out of them.

And she does- she acts the shit out of them. It’s mesmerizing to watch, really, but we all know that Meryl Streep is talented.  Meryl Streep’s is the greatest actor of a generation, her legacy is set in stone. But who is Margaret Thatcher? I get the feeling that no working on this movie really cares.

This face. In every goddamn scene.

When we’re introduced to old Maggie, she is buying milk in a noisy corner store and getting lost on the way home. But then through a flash back, we learn that she wasn’t always a timid old woman, she was once a timid young girl.  Yes – young Maggie, despite the fact that she saves the butter in her father, Ser Jorah Mormont’s shop during the blitz, and, ya know, becomes a hard-ballin’ PM, actually just begins as a stuttering young girl who’s extremely embarrassed when the other school girls laugh at her. Of course, this makes room for character development yes? Well… not really. Young Maggie says a lot of the same shit old Maggie says, except with frightened Bunny eyes.  We’re not sure why she wants to go into politics (although we do get the sense that her dad is in politics and that it’s just, part of her life I guess), or why the conservatives take a chance on a 24 year old woman in the first place, but after she looses her first election and her future husband, Viserys Targaryen – I mean Dennis of course (seriously though, I’m pretty sure the casting director wanted to just hire the whole Game of Thrones cast and call it a day) proposes to her, politics is something she’s decided she’s going to do.  They don’t include anything about her career in between the election in 1950 that she looses, and the one in 1958 she wins (she was a lawyer, BTW and Dennis, that lovable nerd, payed for her to go to law school) but dementia Maggie does eventually remember getting into the House of Commons and feeling left out of the backrooms of power because woman aren’t generally invited into brandy and cigar rooms.  It’s a very interesting topic that never really gets explored again, until she is the Cabinet. How does she get into the Cabinet if she is an outsider? Who the fuck knows.

The best moment comes when she is making a speech as Minister of Education and her opponents tell her to stop screeching.  As a woman who has had to raise my voice on occasion I was really cut up for old Maggie when someone told her to “calm down”.  Biology has given women a raw deal when it comes to raising our voices. It’s really the only moment in the movie where I feel as though Thatcher is being held back because of her sex.  Of course, any discussion of sexual politics would have been a bit more meaningful if the political men in this movie didn’t all blend into a one big balding hoard.

So then there are the politics, here presented as a laundry list of 1980s trivia. The IRA is mentioned, the Unions are discussed, the Cold war is alluded to. Their approach to the controversial Thatcher agenda to have her spew the odd catch phrase here and there, but never really go into the issues.  We just see a lot of riot footage. I do think that Abi Morgan could have attempted to touch on the issues with an even hand, perhaps explaining how out of control union leaders had become at the time, while portraying the reality of the very widespread suffering during the standoff, but they didn’t.  The writer really wasn’t that interested in politics, so she gets rid of them as quickly as she can.  Here, Thatcher’s economic policies, the center of her legacy, get boiled down into “My father was a shopkeeper! I know the price of milk!” her international policies are “we will stand on principal” (what principal? WHAT?) her moment of hubris is prompted by a spelling mistake.

Not sure what's going on here? That's ok, the writer doesn't think it matters that much

The wide brushstrokes and vast oversimplifications do an injustice to everyone because they make Thatcher’s job look easy.  They make her look like an interesting woman on a ride through history, not someone who deeply affected that history.  She did affect history, her policies continue to affect history which is why everyone has an opinion on her.  When you take away what makes her controversial, you also take away what makes her interesting.  Then there are the moments when the facts are just wrong.  They compare the Faulkland islands invasion to Pearl Harbour, they have shots of her dancing with Nelson Mandela. If I know one thing about Thatcher, it’s that the bitch HATED Mandela. This political content, however, only lasts about 15 minutes put together though. The writers would hate to distract you from all that dementia.

I will admit that I have not really been looking forward to this movie.  I really don’t like biopics, and I really don’t like biopics about people who are still alive.  When I wrote about the movie when it was in production, I was strongly against the dementia aspect. I felt it wasn’t fair to have a movie entitled “Iron Lady” but show someone soft and broken.  I take that back.  The dementia aspect was fine.  If this movie was just about an older, more powerful woman trying to defeat the demons of old age and hold onto herself, it would have been a lot better.  This whole “Margret Thatcher’ business just muddled that movie up.

This is why, ultimately, I do snark. They’re playing. If you want to pretend like being the Prime Minister’s top vagina means you have some kind of role to play as an ambassador for your country, then it’s gamefuckingon.

Samantha Cameron, by most accounts a smart, classy professional woman, decided her role in the Cameron Government was to be the hanger-in-chief. Now she spends most of her time putting awkward matron smocks on her body and getting them photographed. The Daily Mail, a very conservative British paper, has declared that this makes her a FASHION ICON.
Revisit some of her best looks here.

I’ve tried to blog as little as possible about American politics this year. Not because I don’t enjoy them…I do, A LOT; but because that shit gets played to death. I’m also finding more and more that, with even the most ludicrous stories, Americans always find a way to take it way too seriously.  They can be funsuckers, those guys.

One event that was pure fun was the unveiling of Arnold Swarzenegger’s love child. Ten years ago, Arnold, a loveable lug known for his roles in Pumping Iron and that one movie where Danny Devito knocks him up, bumped parts with a saucy little number named Mildred Patricia Baena. Patty, as she was affectionately known by Arnold’s wife, was working as a housekeeper in the Schwarzenegger family home at the time, and continued to do so until her son was ten, nervously giggling when Maria Shriver said, “Wow… how funny is it that your son looks just like my husband, the well known philandering, groping, steroid monkey I chose to marry despite knowing he was a juiced-up molestation machine? So funny right?”

This is all Polonoscopy relevant because, they tell me, Mr. Schwarzenegger was democratically elected to lead a rather populous and economically important American state… but that can’t be right…..

Revisit it here.

2011 was a year of big news stories. I’d go through them in a list right now, but I always end up forgetting something massive.  Remember that huge fucking Tsunami that wiped out Japan and nearly started a nuclear meltdown?  Totally forgot that happened this year.  Remember when a man from Norway went to an idyllic summer camp and murdered 69 children to prove how much he hated immigrants?  I think many people forgot that happened this year. So much happened that it makes me think 2012 might just bring the apocalypse, because that would be an appropriate way to follow 2011. But there were some moments of 2011 that were genuinely worthy of a giggle, or a fist pump, or they made you spit coffee at your monitor in righteous indignation – which I know you enjoy just as much.

I pick the best of 2011 based on some pretty lax criteria, but this first post is an easy one.  The Arab Spring was, without a doubt, the biggest news story of the year.  Some people have argued that the protests that set the Arab world on fire have already petered out; that change, if it comes at all, will be short lived and ineffective. But I think those people are 1) impatient and 2) bitter.

They are impatient because, like me, they spend way too much time on the internet, or watching cable news, where all the stories are !!!!!BREAKING!!!!! and then they !!!!GO VIRAL!!! and everyone obsesses over it for a while before moving on. Don’t get me wrong, I love getting caught up in this cycle, and I find it extremely entertaining. But it’s also important to remember that actual news, the kind that shapes a region and affects the lives of millions of people, takes time. You can’t expect the Arab Spring to fit into the same news trajectory as Anthony Weiner’s penis.

What’s especially important about the Arab Spring is that it contradicted everything we’ve been told about the Arab world in the last decade. Whether or not we actually believed what we were told during the aftermath of 9-11, we were all subjected to the argument that Arabs needed to be taught about freedom. The Arab world is despotic because it was ingrained in their ancient society, which is beset by tribalism and religious extremism. Whether or not you believed it, this idea was always on the table and a lot of people brought it up, smugly, and called themselves realists. These are the people who I call bitter.  This spring we learned that Arabs aren’t all living in the stone age. Some Arabs are reasonable people with cell phones and good ideas. Some cute Arab 20-somethings, who were invited onto the Daily Show, reminded everyone that their non-violent uprising had nothing to do with the United States, and they’d rather you stop analysing it through the lens of your already-outdated 400-level IR seminar.

Ok, so… I swear the rest of the list is way shorter. My point was… the Arab Spring was a big fucking deal and it will be for a long time. If you are so inclined, go ahead and revist my guide to a Feel Good Revolution.
And if you really want to make yourself either giggle or spit, read about the article that Vogue published in the middle of the Arab spring about Al-Assad’s wife. It was called “A Rose in the Dessert”…. yeah….

Besides learning that David Cameron has left-leaning policies in the pants department…. in my internet journeys I came across this article from German magazine DER SPIEGEL (yes, the title is constantly written in only capital letters. You won’t want the German language to accidental come across as soft and melodic now would you?). Believe it or not, it’s actually an interview with former Greek Prime Minister Giorgios Papandreou. You remember him right? He’s that guy everyone hates. Turns out that about five minutes after being kicked out of Government for being a general inconvenience to everyone everywhere, Papandreou marched out of that legislature, mustache high, told the haters don’t be hatin’ and is now attempting to solve Europe’s problems all by himself.

That’s right. What he couldn’t accomplish as the head of Greece’s government, he’s going to now do….. just as a guy. And if he can’t remember exactly why he failed, the reporter at DAS SPIEGEL has no trouble reminding him. Take this line of questioning, for example….

SPIEGEL: Nevertheless, if one is to believe the opinion polls, Greek voters yearn for a new conservative government, and your party faces a potential debacle in new elections.

Papandreou: We’ll have to see about that. The Greeks will understand that we have a systemic problem in Europe.

SPIEGEL: How did it feel, for you personally, to travel through Europe as a supplicant and beg for help and support? Did it change you?

Papandreou: This isn’t about me. As far as I’m concerned, the important question is whether I can save Greece from a financial catastrophe, and whether I can reform my country. I placed my own ambitions behind the national interests, the interests of my people.

SPIEGEL: It doesn’t look that way in a photo that was printed in the European media. It shows you standing in front of (German Chancellor) Angela Merkel, with sagging shoulders, at the G-20 summit in Cannes in early November. Had you already realized at the time that you had failed in your efforts?

Papandreou: No. The crucial battle still lies before us. We are fighting hard and I have the necessary fighting spirit. But for my country, not for myself.

(this only works if you do SPIEGEL is a German accent.)

SPIEGEL: How does if feeel to be a big failyah and have everyone hate you?

P: Oh…hate me… well… I don’t know about that…

SPIEGEL: How does it feel to beg for money on your stomach like a worm?

P: I was not a worm.

SPIEGEL: YOU WERE A WORM!!

Sarkozy has gone on the record briefly to say that they are “profoundly happy” about their daughter, even though they both previously went on the record to say that they wanted a boy, because they are classy like that.

Bruni and Sarkozy are being surprisingly low key about the bitch, and newspapers the world over (a good article is here) are throwing out ideas as to why that may be.  One theory is that Sarkozy reads his own opinion polls, and found out that while he thinks he’s a statesman/intellectual/love/fighter/baller, most people actually think he’s an egotistical little weenie.   Why court the press when no one is buying what you’re selling? The other theory is that the Sarkozy’s want to protect their daughter from the overzealous British tabloid press.

I’m not on board with either of these theories.

First of all, the British press thing seems…. convenient?  Too timely? It just feels like something politicians say in the wake of the Murdoch scandal.  It’s a political statement, not a reason.  The first theory is better, however it supposes something about Nick and Carla that we have no reason to believe is true – that they are self-aware.

Sarkozy isn’t going to apologise for his behaviour, he still thinks he’s pretty awesome. He’s been caught fame whoring enough times before, and he hasn’t changed.  When he collapsed in a jogging photoshoot, we laughed, but he still kept groping his wife in public.  When he was caught Photoshopping out his love handles in a bathsuit photo, we scoffed, but he continued to wear lifts and stand on his tip-toes when he was being photographed with taller world leaders.  The man is vain and proud and he doesn’t notice that you think he’s ridiculous.

In case you’d forgotten, this baby was planned over two years ago to maximize publicity before the election.  Nothing has changed for these people.  The only thing that took the bloom off their plans is that the Camerons pooped one out first.

So what’s my theory?  My theory is that this baby is a private, family affair… until Carla loses the baby weight.  Give it three months, then we’ll be seeing this baby.