democracy
Presidential politics is but a blip on our radar most days at Defamer HQ, but every now and then a ping so rattles us from our afternoon stupor that we can't help but take notice. Today's wake-up call comes from angry activist and sometime actor Donald Sutherland, who just joined the stirring realms of downmarket punditry at The Huffington Post:
It is incomprehensible to me that Mrs. Clinton can seriously be touting the notion, with the support of the punditocracy of CNN and Fox, that she is leading in the popular vote and should therefore be seriously considered as the most electable candidate in the November election. ...
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famous families
Brangelina has yet to officially support any of the current presidential candidates, but now that they have learned that
they're related to two of them, we can expect that an endorsement (or two!) is forthcoming. According to the New England Historic Genealogical Society,
Brad Pitt is "ninth cousins" with
Barack Obama, and
Angelina Jolie is coincidentally "ninth cousins" with
Hillary Clinton. So will the couple happily add the Dems to their "soccer team" or will the wildly varying family trees tear 'em apart? After a bit of research, we discovered that even if the pair
did welcome them into their many homes with welcome arms, one of the candidates isn't quite as enraptured with the Jolie-Pitts as the rest of the world...
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all work and no play
If you haven't yet seen the bizarre Jack Nicholson ad for the Hillary campaign, well, feast your eyes on the video above, sure to be studied as the ultimate example of celebrity endorsements gone wrong by generations of poli-sci majors enrolled in "Hillary '08: Sketches In Failure." In it, a variety of trademark Nicholson psychopaths mumble vaguely pro-Clinton lines of out-of-context dialogue. (Good thing, too, as the line pulled from A Few Good Men, Gawker point out, is followed by the very un-presidential rumination, "Promote 'em all, I say, 'cause this is true: if you haven't gotten a blowjob from a superior officer, well, you're just letting the best in life pass you by.")
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tim gunns guide to he did not just say that
Ah, no one says it like Tim Gunn, revered style swami and champion of dandy diplomacy, who can tell you everything you need to know about the dumpy hunchbackwear you've got on with nothing more than a fist pressed to his lips and a deep furrowing of his Sharpei-like brow. If anyone can get away with skewering the sartorial challenges facing our past and present leaders, it is he. Appearing on Late Night with Conan O'Brien, Gun was utterly unwowed by what was going on below President Bush's ankles: Taken separately, a pair of black Crocs and Air Force One socks might work, but there was virtually no excuse for wearing the two together (short of perhaps currying favor with the German Chancellor at the next G7 Summit).
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Having long ago elected Barack Obama the President of Hollywood, how will the industry react to
Hillary Clinton's win in California's Democratic primary? Disappointed kingmaker
David Geffen, despite having prematurely predicted victory for Obama, is not yet abandoning ship, even if DreamWorks partner Steven Spielberg is stubbornly sticking out a passionless political marriage with Clinton. Indeed, maybe it's time Geffen starts thinking about his next move, like sitting down with Maureen Dowd for
another one of those fun interviews before all of his friends start getting crazy ideas about jumping on the Hillary bandwagon. [
Slate]
Roseanne Barr blogs her take on Oprah and
Barack Obama: "barak [sic] obama is an empty suit selling 'hope' in lieu of Truth. He has no ideas, no plan and nothing to add other than the cynical pacification of the masses with bedtime stories about hope, while calling Unions 'special interest groups' that need to be done away with...Oprah, you play the race card and the gender card too. You are a closeted republican and chose Barak Obama because you do not like other women who actually stand for something to working American Women besides glamour, angels, hollywood and dieting! It is historical that
Oprah Winfrey, beloved of women, chooses a flashy man with small credentials over a seasoned woman politician with 35 years of experience...and sells that to the female demographic who look to her for inspiration!" [
roseanneworld.com]
dear hillary
Alec Baldwin recently took the time to send a personal letter to
Hillary Clinton and her fellow senators, imploring them to vote no on a proposed $10 billion farm subsidies bill before that could potentially turn already overweight children into a generation of cream-cheese-and-donut gobbling gluttons with an upper-range life expectancy of 14. From the
NY Daily News:
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Handicapping the field of Republican presidential nominee hopefuls,
24 showrunner/televised-torture innovator
Joel Surnow says that Hollywood's half-empty-handful of conservatives are leaning Giuliani-ward, an expression of support that can't bode well for
Law & Order star
Fred Thompson's already-doomed candidacy. Also, he's not exactly bullish on
Hillary Clinton's electability: "'I'm not even sure that Hillary is a fait accompli [to win the Democratic Party nomination] as this point,' Mr. Surnow told a group of reporters and bloggers in a wide-ranging interview during the Young America's Foundation's (YAF) West Coast Leadership Conference. 'Are we nuts thinking Hillary Clinton could be president of this country? Honest to God, just stand back and think about it.'" And for those without the imagination to "just stand back and think about it," the upcoming season of his show (if it ever airs) should play out in thrilling detail the apocalyptic worst-case scenario that could face the nation if it follows 24-America in putting
a Hillaryesque president in the White House. [
Washington Times]
politics
If you're anything like us, you won't be making any decisions about which Democratic presidential candidate to support until they've run The View's political gauntlet, where they're forced to face a punishing inquisition at the hands of America's most influential panel of couchbound pundits.
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courting the velvet voters
Tonight, sandwiched between a rerun of Small Town Gay Bar and Freddie Mercury: Magic Remixed, TV history will be made, as Logo will air the first Democratic Presidential Forum devoted entirely to gay, lesbian, and fag-hag issues, broadcast right here from L.A. A number of frontrunners—brow-beaten from two solid hours of addressing where they stand on such hot-button issues as same-sex marriage, gays in the military, and how and when the U.S. government can justify invading Britney Spears' personal life—plan to celebrate the landmark political event with various soirees held around the city, including a $50-per-Gay viewing party for Hillary Clinton at The Abbey. Still, the invitation (above) offers no guarantees that you or anyone from your L Word viewing circle will be doing raspberry mojito shots off the candidate's suprisingly taut abdominal muscles.
coronations
Dealing a death blow to
once-trendy Democratic presidential candidate
Barack Obama's chances of landing the crucial entertainment industry endorsement that spurred Presidents Gore and Kerry on to historic White House tenures, show business deity Steven Spielberg
has officially anointed Hillary Clinton Hollywood's Savior, releasing a statement today indicating he's "convinced that [she] is the most qualified candidate to lead us."
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ain't no party like a hillhaven party
The battle for the entertainment industry's hearts, minds, and huge, filthy piles of cash raged on at the home of noted local political hacktivist
Brett Ratner, who on Wednesday night generously hosted a campaign fundraiser for Democratic presidential hopeful
Hillary Clinton. At the event, a mere $250 donation afforded Young Hollywood a rare chance to get close enough to the candidate to discuss matters of policy while gyrating to the strains of "It Takes Two" at Hillhaven Lodge's in-house disco, and an upgrade to the VIP level of patronage bought each Clinton supporter 90 seconds of face-to-face time with the senator in
Ratner's famous photo booth.
Var recaps the party,
including an obligatory roll call of attendees:
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obamamania
It seems that whatever evil rainmaking ritual
Hillary Clinton participated in during
her recent trip to the CAA Death Star (human sacrifice was presumably involved, as we're hearing reports they're still trying to power-wash the blood off Bryan Lourd's office walls) paid off handsomely, as the skies above billionaire Democratic cheerleader Ron Burkle's compound opened on Saturday night and showered the N.Y. senator's campaign with
a possible showbiz record $2.6 million in donations, according to Clinton fundraising group Let's Not Throw That Hollywood Victory Party Just Yet, Mr. Popular. The gauntlet has clearly been thrown at the feet of Chief
Obamamania Entertainment Industry Strategist David Geffen, who's faced with the difficult decision of whether to
throw another beach party for his political king, schedule
a new interview session with Maureen Dowd in which he shockingly reveals that he once saw Hillary kill a drifter with her bare hands (a crime her philandering husband assisted in covering up), or have troublemaking rival Burkle disappeared, hoping to cut off a source of future funds.
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hillary clinton
By now, everyone's aware of
the shocking attacks DreamWorks mogul and Democratic primary fixer
David Geffen made yesterday on
Hillary Clinton, her intern-despoiling husband, the White House's substandard lodgings for billionaire rainmakers, and all that is good and holy about civilized political campaigning in an attempt to demonstrate that all of Hollywood has fallen prone at the feet of
Barack Obama, ready to do the Chosen One's bidding. Now that most of the
factually inaccurate, post-attack bickering has been dispensed with, Team Hillary is regrouping today, ready to launch a Hollywood counteroffensive that includes trips to fundraisers hosted by her own stable of local billionaires, and, ominously, a trip to the CAA Death Star.
Says Var:
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obamamania
Not content to demonstrate his Democratic kingmaking power by throwing a beachside cocktail party/
Hillary Clinton effigy burning for
Hollywood Chosen One Barack Obama on the pristine sand behind his Malibu compound
last night, DreamWorks activist
David Geffen granted the
NY Times's Maureen Dowd an exclusive fireside chat, during which the power-mad billionaire stroked an overfluffed white cat while cackling his way through his plans to destroy his presidential-hopeful nemesis. The column is behind a subscriber wall, but here are some of the thoughts Geffen shared with Dowd about Hillary, Bill, the political hot water in which Steven Spielberg finds himself submerged for going along with the Obama fund-raiser,
and his luxurious sleeping quarters:
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politics
It's
a question threatening to tear Hollywood's most prominent, liberal-kingmaking billionaires apart at the gilded seams: Do they throw a fabulous fund-raiser aimed at continuing the spread
Obamamania, the sensation
sweeping the industry, or do they fall back into the calming, emasculating embrace of longtime Democratic stalwart
Hillary Clinton, a tragically unsexy, but arguably safer, choice? The answer, of course, is, "Why can't we do both? We have so much fucking money that no one can tell us to make up our minds until we're good and ready," but Slate notes that a recent Robert Novak column seemed to imply that the officially unbetrothed Steven Spielberg's hosting of a Clinton event means that he's already decided to abandon DreamWorks partners
David Geffen and
Jeffrey Katzenberg's desire to call forth from the heavens a deluge of showbiz cash that will carry their beloved Obama
to an easy nomination:
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