The Scanner

Carrie Prejean, Victim No Matter What

Sharon Pelletier — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 19:36:45 GMT

Blonde, curvaceous girls have enough trouble getting the world to take them seriously. Carrie Prejean’s new book and incoherent press tour to promote the same is doing nothing to help their cause. The former beauty pageant contestant, infamous for her dithering endorsement of “opposite marriage,” took her contested pair of mammaries on the talk show circuit to discuss her memoir, Still Standing: The Untold Story of My Fight Against Gossip, Hate, and Political Attacks, and dodge questions about a newly surfaced sex tape (which, she claims breathlessly, is not really a sex tape, but a private token of love and naked affection.)

That Carrie Prejean is even a public figure has been laughable from the start: fame-whore blogger asks beauty queen incendiary sociopolitical question; beauty queen stammers out a vague position not to the fame whore’s liking; conservatives and liberals rally behind the beauty queen and the fame whore, respectively; salacious photos surface, prompting pageant officials to fire beauty queen and sue her for the cost of her boob job; beauty queen sues the organization right back for “libeling” her due to her “religious beliefs.” Then … beauty queen writes memoir to “Give Americans, just, hope” in the survival of free speech against the biased media? Sounds to me like the beauty queen and the fame-whore have more in common than they realize.

After the jump, Prejean's false claims of victimhood and media bias.

The Hilarious Hijacking of MSNBC's Twitter

David Sessions — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 22:13:08 GMT

MSNBC's Twitter feed late Friday afternoon:

Jon Stewart on the Values Voters Summit

David Sessions — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 15:13:56 GMT

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c
Moral Kombat
www.thedailyshow.com

David Bazan Talks to God in New York

Jonathan Fitzgerald — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 03:22:33 GMT

Earlier tonight, our editor David Sessions and myself had the opportunity to attend an invite-only show at Pianos on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. In a small room packed mostly with music journalists and other industry types, Bazan and his band blasted through a 10-song set in just under an hour, still making time for his typical practice of Q&A.

The entire set was drawn from the new record, he played almost the entire album, with the exception of “Harmless Sparks” and the addition of “Cold Beer and Cigarettes” and “How I Remember” from the “Fewer Moving Parts” EP. I have had the opportunity to see Bazan many times in concerts in a variety of venues, and I can honestly say that I’ve never heard him and his band sound as polished and tight as they did tonight at Piano’s.

Perhaps what was most striking about his new songs and, subsequently, his performance, is that the motif that he has long relied on of writing lyrics that speak directly to God has not changed, though his belief in that God has flagged. In “When We Fell,” he even refers to “My Lord,” though the context makes the tone seem nearly mocking.

Conservatives Organize Against WorldNetDaily

Nathan Martin — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 15:28:30 GMT

If Patrol actually had thumbs, she (yes, the site is a female) would be raising them firmly to the sky. In the type of move that might cause that place down below to get just a tad colder, The Next Right is calling for conservatives to stand against insanity and boycott the far, far Right's Wal-Mart of Fear, WorldNetDaily.

This Week's Sign of the Apocalypse

Nathan Martin — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 14:51:43 GMT

How do I know the world's ending soon? Let me give you a hint, it doesn't involve controversial tornadoes, Iranian nuclear ambition, or the election of a president with Hussein as a middle name. Palo Alto played host to the first ever National Cougar Convention this weekend, and 7x7 has pictures to prove it.

Please be warned children, this is not for the decent or proper of heart.

Jennifer Knapp Starting to Write, Mgmt. Confirms

David Sessions — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 17:14:50 GMT

Jennifer Knapp's management has confirmed to Patrol that she is "starting to write and record again." There are "no major plans" to announce at the moment, and no shows scheduled after the L.A. show we reported last week. Updates will appear online, and "I'm sure there will be select shows popping up in the coming moments," Maximum's spokesperson said.

Jennifer Knapp Planning a Comeback

David Sessions — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 13:43:18 GMT

Jennifer Knapp, whose career in Christian music we lovingly eulogized a few months ago, has come out of hiding at last. Her official website, which has been down for years now, was updated with a new design, and her three-month old MySpace profile got a new a look as well. But best of all, she has listed a show: she's playing September 24 with the recently-returned Phillip LaRue at Hotel Cafe, a well-known acoustic venue Los Angeles. Her website lists information for new management and booking agents, so we know she is planning to go back into music on some scale.

So this is completely unexpected, but we couldn't be more excited to hear it. And most of all to hear where Jen has been, what she's been doing, and why she's back. All when she's ready to talk about it, of course.

Where Are Tornados When You Need Them?

David Sessions — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 17:45:23 GMT

I didn’t come up with that hilarious headline; credit goes to an Internet Monk commenter named Joe.

Christianity Today Totally Didn't Mean It

David Sessions — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 06:28:35 GMT

Last night, Christianity Today's Twitter feed broadcasted a new post: "Mandating Euthanasia: Health care bill offers doctors incentives to have "end of life" discussions." Annoyed by what sounded like a regurgitation of intentionally misleading conservative propaganda about the bill's "end of life" section, I replied irritably. Then I clicked the link.

What I read—a brief piece by CT blogger Rob Moll—was actually something quite different. In the first line of the the second paragraph, in seeming contradiction to the headline, Moll dismisses the paranoid extrapolations of the bill's "end of life" discussions: "The provision in the health care bill currently in the House, called Section 1233, is not really a big deal." Doctors might end up getting incentives to convince (presumably very) senior citizens to agree to a natural death via a "do not resuscitate" order. Some commentators think that could go somewhere disconcerting, Moll explains, as the elderly and the obese are common demographics where it's "tempting" to cut costs.

But rather than twist that possibility into spectres of "mandatory euthanasia," as less conscientious Obamacare critics do continually, Moll gently expresses reservations about the way we unnaturally prolong life in the first place.

Moll's quote and the stupid ensuing firestorm after the jump.