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/balla, 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 a pretty awesome. He’s been caught fame whoring enough timesbefore, 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 of 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 looses the baby weight.  Give it three months, then we’ll be seeing this baby.

If you ignore Thatcher and Regan (who are still pretty sure he’s a terrorist) and a handful of white colonials who benefited from apartheid while they hunted endangered rhino with the chaps (pop-culture tells me this is how all white Africans behave), everyone loves Mandela.  He’s an enduring symbol of hope, of perseverance, of overcoming adversity, of forgiveness, and just generally of wrongs being made right and dreams coming true. Yes, I know South Africa has tons of problems still, but do you think of that when you look at Mandela? No, you think “wow, that man in the colourful shirt overcame so much to make the world a better place. What a bro.” If you don’t think that, you’re probably racist. Just sayin’.

But that might all be changing soon…

It is being reported this week that three of Mandela’s grandchildren are going to be starring in a new reality show. The idea came to life when the oldest of the granddaughters being featured, was chatting with her plastic surgeon. Really.

The still-to-be titled show, expected to premiere early next year, will take viewers into the fabulously glamorous lives of Zaziwe Dlamini-Manaway, 34, Swati Dlamini, 32 (both Zenani Mandela’s daughters), and 27-year-old Dorothy Adjoa Amuah (Maki Mandela’s daughter).

Leed said he was convinced that he should work on the show after meeting the young women earlier this year.

“They’re not into trash TV. They want something with dignity and this show will show authentic and modern South African women.”

“something with dignity… ” and the best you could do was reality T.V?

“This show will show authentic and modern South African women.” I should mention at this point that all three of the women were raised in Boston. So they’re authentic South African women in the sense that they have nothing in common with South African women, not even geography.

And of course, my favourite “it will take viewers into the fabulously glamorous lives of…” because the whole world needs to know that even a man like Nelson Mandela couldn’t help but spawn spoiled, fame-hungry descendants who would rather let cameras follow them around doing inane shit than get an actual job which may actually help the country which they claim to care about even through they don’t live there and are pretty much pissing on the only thing that makes them South African… the Mandela name.

Nelson, I know you’re 90 and you’ve got way better shit to do right now, but please… oh please… shut this down.

Reality T.V can never be dignified. Trust me, even done properly it just ruins everyone who goes near it. For example, I love Jamie Oliver. Love him to bits, have his cookbooks, they taught me everything I know about cooking, he’s just great…. but he had a horrible reality show. He cried about green beans, and talked about his feelings and it was just awful and I pitied him. I only tuned in after a while to watch the Americans on it talk shit about vegetables and be general ignorant assholes. This is the only reason anyone watches reality tv in the first place – to hate people and feel superior. Why would you want that for your family? Why?

Not a lot of people have almost universal love and Mandela needs to control his legacy while he can. He need more T.V specials about Apartheid, he needs to be featured in more heart-warming Olympic ads where people of all races hug and I cry. But more than anything, he needs to sweep those famewhore American grandchildren under the rug because they will make people hate him for spawning the children who spawned these children. It doesn’t matter how many people you brought hope to in the face of all the odds, as soon as your granddaughter has cameras following her on manipedi trips, climb off that pedestal, sir, you’re done.

Last week news outlets were reporting that Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi had been caught on tape saying something “unprintable” about German Councillor Angela Merkel.  This came as a bit of a surprise to me because, well, is there anything we could learn about Silvio Berlusconi at this point that would be unprintable?  His reputation in the media  before this incident was basically – and I’m paraphrasing- fascist rapist mobster tyrant corrupt money-laundering John asshole, using state money to wet his herpes stick in 14 year old indentured prostitutes while controlling the media. I think the damage is out there.  The difference now, however,  is not what he said, but who he said it about.

Silvio Berlusconi, whose country has gone from robust economy to sink-hole of failure under his tyrannous syphilis whore watch, has decided to call Angela Merkel, world-beloved, democratic, leader of one of the most successful economies in the world,  the ATM of Europe, the pincher of the purse-strings, an “unfuckable lard ass”.

Yes.  He did.

I don’t know where to even fucking start.  I guess I could go with obvious and say that Silvio Burlusconi is in no place to call someone fat and unfuckable.  He is, frankly, tubby as shit.  I’m not saying that he’s merely corpulant with greed in the metaphorical sense, I’m saying that if his ass isn’t full of lard,( and indeed, I’m sure he thinks it’s full of pure, man, hard, dick, strong, muscle) than whatever it is, it has learned to camaflage itself by taking on the consistancy of flubber.  (I don’t know if anyone here still watches Disney movies from the 60s, but FYI, Flubber is like jello, but ALIVE!!)

Then I’d like to point out that Angela Merkel has a husband, who I’m sure has sex with her often (I mean… those juggs) and for free.  That’s right, Silvio, who was the last person to fuck you without expecting jewlery/a tv show/a passport/a cabinet seat/ cash money/to not getting beaten by her pimp tonight?

Finally, I’d just like to say that I would fuck Angela Merkel.  Yes. I would fuck the shit out of Angela Merkel because I AM ATTRACTED TO TALENT.  Not only would I do her, but I would tell people about it.  And they would high-five me, Silvio… they would high-five me so hard.  When was the last time someone high-fived you? Oh, what’s that? No one high fives you because they know where your hands have been?  Yeah.  I thought so.

Silvio, may feel awesome because every now and then, you take that poxed, decaying flesh between your legs, fix it up with some Viagra, duct-tape and a popsicle stick, then purchase some poor, exploited women for the night so you can call yourself a loathario, but Angela Merkel is a woman of substance.  She is also a woman of means, in the international sense of the term, and you really need her. I know she’ll give Italy the money it needs regardless of whatever nasty shit you say, because she is a class act, but I hope she makes you beg.  I hope she makes you look beg and dance and lick her feet because she is more successful, more powerful and yes, more fuckable than you.

In Mr Cheney’s memoir, In My Time, he said [Condolezza Rice] ‘tearfully admitted’ that the Bush administration should not have apologised for a claim in Mr Bush’s 2003 State of the Union address on Iraq’s supposed search for uranium for nuclear arms.

Mr Cheney, who opposed a public apology for the unfounded claim, wrote that Ms Rice ‘came into my office, sat down in the chair next to my desk, and tearfully admitted I had been right’.

It’s always Condi isn’t it? Now don’t get me wrong, I think Rice is guilty of being a low-grade sycophant who ass-licked her way into the cabinet by giving credence to terrible ideas, but I do wonder why she has become the enduring fart joke of the Bush administration. Is it because she’s a woman? Or the race thing? Is it because she’s tall and sticks out in all the pictures? Or is it because, after her administration has officially been put into the embarrassing back-cupboards of American history, she has decided to stick around on television and be visible? W and Cheney have, for the most part, been quietly typing in their secluded rat holes, but Condi keeps popping up. And when she does…. it’s embarrassing.
First there was the Piers Morgan interview. This was in… I want to say winter 2011 (I can’t be fucked to look it up) and Morgan, aka “The Poor Man’s Simon Cowell”, a fat old coot who used to  judge America’s Got Talent, asked the former Secretary of State what she would cook for him if they were on a date. She actually condescended answer this question, and possibly gave the man a foot massage after the show, while hand-feeding him grapes.  Then, of course, she recently played a starring role in Muammar Gadaffi’s wank book. He used to call her his “Black African Princess”. I don’t know what’s more embarrassing, being Rice and knowing that your picture is hidden somewhere deep in Gadaffi’s sock drawer, or being Gadaffi, and thinking you are black.
Rice has since come out to condemn Cheney’s accusations. Not the accusation that she said he was right about something (which is far more offence, in my book) but the accusation that she did so tearfully.

“It certainly doesn’t sound like me, now, does it?”  she said.

I don’t know, Condi, does it? It’s not like you had some kind of preceding reputation for being a hard-headed, all-business kind of gal. I mean, you worked in the Bush administration. Those people lived by their emotions. Their stupid, panicky emotions. Iraq happened because Bush knew nukes were there, in his gut. Or he got bad advice from Cheney, who he trusted, with his gut. And Cheney wanted to go to Iraq so he could feel special, in his penis. So it makes perfect sense to me that you might have apologised to Cheney, with your tears, Condi. Not because you’re a woman, but because you’re a Bush.