The Black Guy from Predator

With all the political campaigning going on, you'd think it was an election year. You'd be wrong. We still have an entire year of politicking to endure until the next election. And while the presidential race is getting most of the attention, 11 states will also be electing a governor. I'm here today to appeal to the voters of those 11 states. You know who you are. Who am I kidding? Most of you probably don't even know who your governor is, let alone when he or she is up for reelection. No matter. If your governor is up for reelection next year, Carl Weathers wants your vote. You know Carl. He's Apollo Creed in most of the Rocky movies. You younger kids might know him better as Chubbs Peterson from Happy Gilmore. He's also the black guy from Predator, as he explains in this video (1:51) announcing his candidacy for governor. Though not quite as appropriately titled as The Running Man, the other movie featuring Govs. Schwarzenegger and Ventura, Predator does have Carl Weathers, the black guy from Predator. (Interestingly, it also has Sonny Landham who, not wanting to be left out, ran for governor of Kentucky in 2003). Weathers is great because of his ability to make fun of himself, which instantly lifts any actor's esteem in my eyes. A classic example of this is the three episodes of Arrested Development, where Carl played a sly, penny-pinching version of himself, as seen below (3:39). I especially like the plug for Burger King. So remember, if Election Day ever does arrive, don't forget to vote for Carl Weathers.

Tired of Keith Olbermann

It was recently announced that Keith Olbermann would be joining Bob Costas, Tiki Barber and The Bus on Football Night in America, the studio show that accompanies NBC's Sunday night NFL coverage. Let me be the first to say this sucks. Olbermann is a jackass. It doesn't matter on what side of the political aisle you sit, pundits are bad for America and Olbermann is right there with Rush Limbaugh among the worst. Those of you who have your SportsCenter blinders on and love everything ESPN, need to wake up and see Olbermann for what he is, a hypocrite. Case in point: A while back Donald Rumsfeld gave a speech equating Iraq War opponents to pre-World War II appeasers. Olbermann shot back saying "As a critic of the administration, I will be damned if you can get away with calling me the equivalent of a Nazi appeaser. No one has the right to say that about any free-speaking American in this country." I don't necessarily agree with Rumsfeld, but lets think about Olbermann's comment for a minute. What is free speech if not the right to say something about those who oppose you? Olbermann wouldn't bother me so much if he would pick a job and stick to it. As a pundit on MSNBC he's easy to avoid. Nobody really watches that channel anyway. It's when he ventures back into the sports world and airs his opinions that he comes off as unprofessional. Partisan punditry has no place in sports broadcasting. As a fan of the Dan Patrick Show on ESPN Radio, I have to change the station during the hour every day that Olbermann joins Dan. He's a poor broadcaster. He uses way too many words to get his point across and, politics aside, his opinions are usually way off. The fact that he's an admitted New York Yankee apologist doesn't help him either. As he joins Football Night in America, he will be in front of his largest audience ever. I would love to see him make a fool of himself and get yanked amid controversy. ESPN sure wasn't afraid to pull the trigger on firing Limbaugh from its Sunday morning NFL show after he said something stupid.

Ah, The Liberal Media

As Martin, my politically conservative brother-in-law, once said about the movie Shrek, "I used to like that movie until I found out who was in it: a bunch of liberals." My response to him was "Name another movie." It's no secret that if Hollywood were a state it would be about as blue as they come. Of course there are a few notable exceptions: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Clint Eastwood and Tom Selleck to name a few. This is an Entertainment News web log, so without trying to turn it into a political forum, I will say this, my main problem with the left is the hypocrisy that seems to underlie the liberal agenda. To sum it up, if they're so tolerant, why aren't they more tolerant of conservatives? The answer is the agenda is the driving force. I could give plenty of examples, but I will focus on two events that I find inconsistent. We're all familiar with Mel Gibson's drunken tirade berating Jews and basically digging himself into a fairly deep hole career wise. He doesn't seem to have a friend in Hollywood, and I'm not saying he should. The contrasting example concerns Michael Richards, aka Kramer from Seinfeld. He is in the news this week for losing his temper during a stand up comic routine and letting go a barrage of disparaging remarks concerning African Americans. He even used "The N Word." He is now trying to pick up the pieces of his career and appeared on Letterman last night via satellite to apologize. He's hoping this will all blow over, and it probably will. What it boils down to is both Gibson and Richards said some things they wish they could take back. They are trying to convince people that their comments don't represent their true opinions. Yet while Gibson has been blacklisted, Richards already has friends coming to his rescue (Jerry Seinfeld for one). On the Huffington Post, a web log noted for its liberal stance, Earl Ofari Hutchinson shifts some blame from Richards by saying "The obsessive use of and the tortured defense of the word by so many blacks gave Richards the license to use the word without any thought that there'd be any blow back for doing it." In other words, he's been around it and heard it so often, why should we be shocked when he uses it? Interesting. Yet somehow TV stations complain to the FCC when they get fined for letting profanity slip past censors. "The F-word should be allowed as long as it's not used in a sexual connotation." So you're telling me that an adult like Michael Richards is influenced by the vocabulary around him, but a kid who's watching TV at 8:00 pm and hears profanity isn't? See what I mean about the hypocrisy? I'm not trying to defend Gibson and condemn Richards, but Hollywood is the last group I want telling me what is right and wrong.