Obama’s Circle of Life

Simba, Rocky, Newman from “Seinfeld” all make appearances in the best “Daily Show” segment of the year:

It’s Palin

The best thing about John McCain’s pick of Sarah Palin as his vice presidential candidate? Mitt Romney will be nowhere near the levers of executive power at any time in the foreseeable future. Even though running against Guy Smiley may have been fun, we can all be thankful for that.
The pick strikes me as highly risky, mostly because it eliminates the GOP’s ability to play the inexperience card against Obama. She has, after all, been in office for only two years, and has even less foreign policy experience than Obama. Sure, the pick may help the GOP pick off a few of the disaffected Hillary voters, but I’ve got a feeling that demographic is small, and getting smaller all the time.
Still, Palin seems like an impressive individual, and certainly has a compelling personal story. The next two months will tell…

Film Critic Quote of the Week

Sam Adams of the AV Club, on Disaster Movie:

The flood of scattershot references is so witless, it makes Family Guy look like Jonathan Swift. When the well runs dry (which, needless to say, is often), the movie falls back on fight scenes. Think the idea of Juno roundhouse-kicking Sex And The City’s Carrie Bradshaw is a hoot and a half? You’ve come to the right place.

And on top of that, the studio is getting slammed by some for releasing “Disaster Movie” on the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. Oops.

The Steak Rankings

Esquire has a fun list of what it calls the 20 Best Steaks in America. I’ve eaten five of them, oddly enough, even though I’ve only been a steak aficionado for a couple of years.
Just a couple of quibbles: both Arthur’s in Hoboken and Manny’s Steakhouse in Minneapolis belong both on the list and near the top, and Pat’s Steaks doesn’t even belong on a list of the 20 best cheesesteaks in Philadelphia, much less the best steaks in the country.

A Word I Don’t Think I Heard a Single Time All Week

“Superdelegate.”

Most Bizarre MSNBC Moment of the Convention (Including the Various Anchor Fights)

Chris Matthews’ post-speech interview with Jesse Jackson, during which Matthews praised Jesse for having “been so generous and kind to this young man, and so giving to something even more hopeful than yourself, that I salute you, sir.”
Well, except for the part where he went on national television and (literally) threatened to cut his nuts off. Very generous, except for that.

The Convention Media

CJR has an amusing look at the reporters hanging around the convention in Denver, most of whom had no reason to be there and did nothing. But man, I wish I had been one of those reporters.

The Speech

Wow, is all I can say. I’ll have more to say tomorrow, but I defer to Andrew Sullivan:

He took every assault on him and turned them around. He showed not just that he understood the experience of many middle class Americans, but that he understood how the Republicans have succeeded in smearing him. And he didn’t shrink from the personal charges; he rebutted them. Whoever else this was, it was not Adlai Stevenson. It was not Jimmy Carter. And it was less afraid and less calculating than Bill Clinton.
Above all, he took on national security – face on, full-throttle, enraged, as we should all be, at how disastrously American power has been handled these past eight years. He owned this issue in a way that no Democrat has owned it since Kennedy. That’s a transformative event. To my mind, it is vital that both parties get to own the war on Jihadist terror and that we escape this awful Rove-Morris trap that poisons the discourse into narrow and petty partisan abuse of patriotism. Obama did this tonight. We are in his debt.

Disastrous as this convention looked on the first night, it turned out quite well for the Democrats, I’d say.

Ebert vs. Mariotti

America’s most-loathed sportswriter, Jay Mariotti, up and quit the Chicago Sun-Times the other day. His erstwhile colleague, Roger Ebert, meanwhile, has laid the smack down. Good for you, Rog.

Stewart on MSNBC Infighting

Hee hee:

I especially like the second half, where two correspondents reenact both the actor fights and the primary itself.