Campaign HoliDazed

With the holiday season and the presidential campaign season in full swing (okay, the presidential campaign season has been in full swing for what feels like three years) it's time to rate the contenders' holiday ads.
Mike Huckabee: As "Silent Night" plays softly in background, the Arkansas governor says in honeyed tones: "Are you about worn out of [sic] all the television commercials you've been seeing, mostly about politics? I don't blame you. At this time of year sometimes it's nice to pull aside from all of that and just remember that what really matters is the celebration of the birth of Christ, and being with our family and our friends. I hope that you and your family will have a magnificent Christmas season, and on behalf of all of us, God bless, and Merry Christmas."
The spot has drawn flak for its heavy religious content, but Upfront respects Huck's sincerity and likes the warm and fuzzy tone. ★★★
Rudy Giuliani: The former New York mayor, in marked contrast to Huckabee, shoots for yucks - and misses. "There are many things I wish for this holiday season," says Giuliani, wearing a red sweater vest and sitting in front of a Christmas tree. "I wish for peace with strength. Secure borders. A government that spends less than it takes in. Lower taxes for our businesses and families. And I really hope that all of the presidential candidates can just get along."
"Ho, ho, ho, ho," chimes in a white-bearded Santa Claus. "I was with you right up until that last one. Ho, ho, ho, ho, ho."
"Can't have everything!" Giuliani says.
Sorry, Rudy, Dave Letterman you ain't. Maybe it would've been funnier if you wore a dress. ★★
John Edwards: The former North Carolina senator takes a decidedly somber tone. Standing in front of Christmas tree in a rather dimly lighted set, he declaims: "One out of every four homeless people on our streets is a veteran. Thirty-seven million Americans live in poverty. Who speaks for them? We do. This is the season of miracles, of faith and love. So let us promise together: you will never be forgotten again. We see you, we hear you, and we will speak for you. In America, the chance to build a better life is a promise made to each of us, and the obligation to keep it rests with us all."
We like the populist message, but the delivery unfortunately is a snoozer. ★★★
Hillary Clinton: Even in a Christmas ad, the New York senator manages to come across as a boring policy wonk. Her ad shows a pair of hands putting cards on wrapped presents marked "Universal Health Care," "Alternative Energy," "Bring Our Troops Home" and "Middle Class Tax Breaks. Then Clinton says: "Where did I put universal pre-K? Ah, there it is. Happy Holidays." Sorry, Hill, this ad is tres lame. ★
Barack Obama: The Illinois senator's ad is the only real winner in the bunch. The whole Obama family is cozied up in front of a twinkling Christmas tree as Barack pronounces in his mellifluous baritone: "In this holiday season we are reminded that the things that unite us as a people are more powerful and enduring than anything that sets us apart. And we all have a stake in each other, in something larger than ourselves. So from my family to yours, I am Barack Obama and I approve this message."
"Merry Christmas!" says 9-year-old Malia. "Happy Holidays!" chirps 6-year-old Sasha.
The message manages to be inoffensive without being too bland, Obama covers all the bases by wishing people BOTH Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas, and you can't go wrong with two cute kids. ★★★★★

Bill Gates got a big lump of coal in his stocking this year from PC World magazine, which gave Microsoft's Windows Vista operating system the top spot on its list of "The 15 Biggest Tech Disappointments of 2007."
"Five years in the making and this is the best Microsoft could do?" the magazine mused. "It's not that Vista is awful. … It's just that Vista isn't all that good."
PC World's editors blasted Vista for being slower than its XP predecessor, for incompatibilities with earlier software and hardware, for its irritating security features and for its price tag – $399 for Vista Ultimate.
"No wonder so many users are clinging to XP like shipwrecked sailors to a life raft, while others who made the upgrade are switching back," the magazine wrote.
Despite all its shortcomings, the editors added, "We have no doubt Vista will come to dominate the PC landscape, if only because it will become increasingly hard to buy a new machine that doesn't have it pre-installed. And that's disappointing in its own right."
Megadittoes to that.
Some other prize Christmas turkeys on PC World's list:
#10 - Wireless Carriers. "Today's cell phone hardware is wildly innovative. … But innovative wireless service providers? Few and far between. Voice call quality still sucks, high-speed data networks are still scarce, and the companies still want too big a chunk of our wallets ($2.50 for a 20-second ring tone -exsqueeze me?). Worse, the inability to easily switch U.S. carriers but keep your phone is grating."
#9 - Microsoft Office 2007. "Many of us spent a decade learning how to use Microsoft Office. So now that we finally have it all down, Microsoft changes almost everything about the interface in 2007, and not for the better."
#8 - Apple's "Leopard" Operating System. "Maybe we just got spoiled by the iPod and iPhone, but the glow came off Steve Job's halo after this feline fleabag debuted."
#5 - The Apple iPhone. "… aside from minor flaws like a tiny touch keyboard and lack of Flash support, the phone itself is pretty terrific. But AT&T's broadband service? Definitely second-rate. And if you want to switch to a more reliable or faster carrier, you have to take your chances with the hackers."
#4 - Yahoo. " … there's one area where Yahoo can lay claim to being Number One: creating political prisoners. At least three times over the past five years, information supplied by Yahoo…has led to the incarceration of Chinese dissidents."
#2 - The High-Def Format War between Sony's Blu-Ray and Toshiba's HD-DVD technology. "Did we learn nothing from VHS vs. Betamax, CD-R vs. CD-RW, DVD-A vs. SACD, and so on down the line? At least the warring DVD camps worked out a compromise in the mid-90s that allowed everyone to profit from the new movie format (though it took them a while). Not so in HD land, where a take-no-prisoners attitude on both sides has left consumers cold. It will be a snowy day in Video Hell before we'll put our money down on either format."

There's some debate over the origins of the modern, red-suited, white-bearded Santa Claus.
His name, for example, is derived from the 4th century bishop St. Nicklaus of Mycea, who was known for his generosity. But other aspects of the modern Claus appear to be derived from German pagan traditions, his bearded visage more closely resembles that of the Germanic god Odin. And Santa's reindeer-powered transcontinental journey seems inspired by the tales of Odin's flying horse Sleipnir.
While there are plenty of points of contention about Santa's origin, there's one thing that people all around the world have agreed upon for some time - Santa is a big guy.
Recently that presumption has come under fire. Earlier this year a London newspaper reported that there was a push in that country to make the legions of seasonal Santa workers get in shape in order to set a better example for children. More recently the US Surgeon General Steven Galson told the Boston Herald that Santa did not provide a healthy role model for children. The Santa makeover effort has prompted somewhat of a backlash, led in part by a tongue-in-cheek campaign from local advertising PR firm DVA Advertising and Public Relations. The company launched a satirical website last week, www.keepsantafat.com in a lighthearted effort to counter the push for a PC Santa.
So far the group has secured roughly 3,400 signatories to its Keep Santa Fat online petition, gathering support from all 50 states and dozens of countries, said Justin Yax, DVA's public relations director. The website has received more than 8,000 hits since launching this past weekend, Yax said, and has been featured on ABC News and the New York Times. The company hatched the idea to do a web campaign about three weeks ago after watching the Santa weight controversy gather momentum, said Yax.
"Instead of doing a holiday card this year, we're doing this. This what we're putting our effort into," he said.
DVA has pledged to donate the equivalent of one pound of food to America's Second Harvest Food Bank for each signature, up to 50,000 pounds. Yax said DVA is currently looking for business and individual partners to match its donation.
The web campaign, which includes video spots by DVA in the Daily Show vein, was a group effort, said Yax.
The site includes an optimal weight chart for Santa, which Yax said puts him between 285 and 330 pounds. Oh yeah, and he's roughly 5 foot 8. For those keeping score that puts him at body mass index somewhere between 43 and 50. And well into the obese range, according to the National Institute of Health.
But then again, nobody's arguing that he isn't fat.
"We've been having fun with it and that's all we set out to do," Yax said.

The international community breathed the proverbial sigh of relief Monday at the news that the Sudanese teddy bear crisis has been defused.
Gillian Gibbons, a 54-year-old British school teacher who was working in the capital of Khartoum, was arrested last week after authorities learned she had allowed her 6- and 7-year-old students to name a teddy bear "Mohammed." (Although "Mohammed" in all its variations is one of the most common boys' names in the world, fundamentalist Muslims regard it as a gross insult to the Prophet to apply the name to an animal - evidently even a stuffed one.)
Following a hearing, Gibbons was sentenced to 15 days in prison - a ruling that provoked a near-riot in Khartoum by Muslims who wanted her to receive the maximum penalty of a year in prison and 40 lashes.
The case turned into a diplomatic cause celébre, with two Muslim members of Britain's House of Lords dispatched to intercede with Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir. On Monday, al-Bashir announced that Gibbons had been pardoned and would be allowed to return to Britain.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown welcomed the decision, saying he was glad that "common sense has prevailed." Sudan's ambassador to Britain, Khalid al-Mubarak, also was pleased with the outcome: "[Gibbons] is a teacher who went to teach our children English and she has helped a great deal and I am very grateful. What has happened was a cultural misunderstanding, a minor one, and I hope she, her family and the British people won't be affected by what has happened."
And, inevitably, some enterprising soul has come up with a way to make a buck off of the incident. You can buy "Muhammad the Tolerance Teddy" at cafepress.com for $20.

Neil Diamond has finally revealed the answer to one of the great unsolved mysteries of Western culture: Who was the inspiration for his hit song "Sweet Caroline"?
According to Diamond, it was none other than sweet little Caroline Kennedy.
"I've never discussed it with anybody before — intentionally," the 66-year-old singer-songwriter told The Associated Press last week. "I thought maybe I would tell it to Caroline when I met her someday."
The opportunity came when Diamond performed the song via satellite for the late President John F. Kennedy's daughter - now bearing the name Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg - at her recent 50th birthday celebration.
Diamond told The AP he was "a young, broke songwriter" when he chanced across a photo of Caroline in a magazine. "It was a picture of a little girl dressed to the nines in her riding gear, next to her pony," he said. "It was such an innocent, wonderful picture, I immediately felt there was a song in there."
The actual song, however, wasn't written until some years later. Released as a single in 1969, it went platinum and rose to Number 4 on the Billboard Hot 100 charts.
Frankly, Upfront couldn't help being somewhat skeptical about Diamond's story. Caroline Kennedy was just 12 years old when he wrote the song; he was 25. What normal 25-year-old man would write lyrics like this to a 12-year-old girl?
I look at the night / And it don't seem so lonely / We fill it up with only two / And when I hurt / Hurtin' runs off my shoulders / How can I hurt when holdin' you / Warm, touchin' warm, reachin' out / Touchin' me, touchin' you / Sweet Caroline / Good times never seem so good / I've been inclined to believe they never would
However, if Diamond says that's the way it was, we guess there's no choice but to believe it.
But we still want to know who "Cracklin' Rosie" was - and we refuse to buy Diamond's story that she was a bottle of wine.

Wayne Hauge and David Monson aren't your stereotypical dreadlocked, tattooed and multiply-pierced marijuana lovers - they're just a couple of farmers in North Dakota. But they're spearheading a court case that could be a milestone in the campaign for legalization of hemp.
This week, Monson and Hauge plan to ask a federal judge in Bismarck to force the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration to observe a state law that would allow them to start cultivating hemp. (As a state legislator - a Republican one, no less - Monson helped get the law passed.) Under present federal law farmers must get DEA approval to grow the plant. If Monson and Hauge win, they could clear the way for hemp production on a much larger scale in North Dakota and eventually the United States.

All you hipsters out there looking to clear bumper real estate for that "Colbert in '08" sticker, can cool your jets, because if you didn't hear, Comedy Central megastar and faux-pundit Stephen Colbert was denied access to the South Carolina Democratic primary ballot.
The "Colbert Nation," the name of Colbert's expansive and apparently active fan club, aren't taking too kindly to the fact that South Carolina's Democratic party executive council voted 13-3 to keep Colbert off the ballot. A posting on the ColbertNation.com website reads as follows: