Who you callin' turkey?Even though we've devoted a lot of Upfront and WTF space to Alaska's most endearing governor Sarah Palin and we're pretty sure that 75 percent of readers would like nothing more to never hear her name again, we couldn't resist. Short of Palin actually dressing up in a stars and stripes bikini and shooting a moose with a rifle while waving to the Russians, Palin's recent "Thanksgiving Turkey Massacre" video, which has become a staple of YouTube e-mail forwards says it all.
Some background: As part of her duties as governor of the great state of Alaska, Mrs. Palin must pardon a Thanksgiving turkey. Unfortunately, the rest of the turkeys at the Triple D Farm & Hatchery outside of Wasilla, were not as lucky.
The scene: While Palin talks about her VP run and her appreciation for "good Americans who are just desiring of their government to kinda get outta the way and allow them to grow and progress and allow their businesses to grow and progress," a turkey is stuffed into a killing cone where its throat is slit and it's bled out into a trough. While Palin answers a question about budget cuts, another unfortunate fowl is crammed down the cone.
Palin claims she was unaware of what was going on behind her while the TV station is claiming she did. We're pretty sure even the most talented SNL writer couldn't have come up with such a gem of a Palin moment as this one.
Obligatory (Same) Sex Item
The stealth Christian dating website eHarmony - the one with annoyingly too-good-to-be-true TV testimonials - is getting into the matchmaking business for same sex couples. And it isn't happy about it. The company, which was founded by Evangelical Minister Neil Clark Warren, a fundamentalist Christian with ties to the anti-gay Focus on the Family, is a juggernaut in the online matchmaking world, sending more than 230 successfully paired "heterosexual partners" to the altar every day, according to CNN.com. But the company ran into trouble when Eric McKinley sued the company from excluding homosexual men and women from its services under New Jersey's anti-discrimination law. This week the company decided to settle with the state rather than go to the mat in a civil trial.
On Tuesday, eHarmony announced that it will launch a separate site called Compatible Partners aimed at pairing gay men and women.
"Even though we believed that the complaint resulted from an unfair characterization of our business, we ultimately decided it was best to settle this case with the attorney general, since litigation outcomes can be unpredictable," a company attorney told CNN.
Now if that isn't a ringing endorsement of the new business plan, Upfront doesn't know what is.
Not Backing Off Barack
Send more money, please.Is it just Upfront or did it sound this week like the honeymoon between Barack Obama and the left of center media was already coming to an end?
This week was a report by the non-partisan Campaign Finance Institute that punched a hole in the popular myth that Obama was swept into office by a wave of small donors. It's a great storyline about how Obama collected nearly half of his money from individual donors giving $200, or less. The only problem is that it wasn't, you know, true. In reality, most of the donors who gave, gave repeatedly pushing their individual contribution over the $200 benchmark. When all the double-donating is accounted for, Obama collected about half of the original 50 percent total from individual donors. That's more than McCain's 21 percent, but only on-par with the 26 percent that Bush raised from small donors in 2004 and well below the 38 percent that Howard Dean raised in his campaign from small donors.
Hey Bidder, Bidder
Upfront was hoping that we could hire one of those livestock auctioneers for this year's charity auction, but we couldn't convince the big wigs around here to flip for it. The good news though is that there's going to be a hell of a lot more than just heifers and half-broken horses up for grabs in this year's auction, which goes online next week at tsweekly.com. We've got cool stuff including overnight stays, spa getaways, a fishing trip with Upfront, tons of eats and drinks, and more, more, more. Last year the Source and its partners raised more than $5,000 for Arts Central. We're hoping to beat that mark for this year's charity, the Partnership to End Poverty. Yes we can!
