Weekend Update - March 14th

• Watched some of the Oscars the other night and I saw that yet another manly war movie got "best picture." Listen to what Robert Scheer has to say about "The Hurt Locker." It is imperial hubris turned into an art form in which the Iraqi people appear as numbed bystanders when they are not deranged extras. It is a perverse tribute to the film's accuracy in portraying the insanity of the U.S. invasion -- while ignoring its root causes -- that the Iraqis are at no point treated as though they are important. Can't say I disagree with him.



• The Idiot Glenn Beck, as one wag puts it, "has certainly discovered the dangers of publicly practicing theology without a license." Question: Why Does Glenn Beck Hate Jesus?



• Gotta love this one: One the very day that gay marriage became legal in Washington, D.C., the Washington Post ran a front page picture of two guys smooching. You can guess what happened next. The tiny-brained homophobes of D.C. came out in force, threatening everything from canceled subscriptions (oh no!) to the death of every human soul for all eternity. Confused macho lugnuts and little old ladies alike began accusing the paper of promoting "the faggot lifestyle" and destroying all morality by, you know, showing two people in love. The horror. Mark Morford reports.



• The New York Times David Brooks has always been a calm voice of reason, and in his latest column he attempts to explain President Obama. Liberals are wrong to call him weak and indecisive. He’s just not always pursuing their aims. Conservatives are wrong to call him a big-government liberal. That’s just not a fair reading of his agenda. Click here for more.



• Theodore C. Olbermann, beloved father of Keith, passed away yesterday. Click here to read a very touching eulogy on Keith's blog.



• The Bad Hat Idiot of the Week Award goes to the Texas Board of Education. After three days of turbulent meetings, the Texas Board of Education on Friday voted to approve a social studies curriculum that will put a conservative stamp on history and economics textbooks, stressing the role of Christianity in American history and presenting Republican political philosophies in a more positive light. Mommy, did people really used to ride dinosaurs to church?



• The revisionist floodgates have opened with the simultaneous arrival of Karl Rove’s memoir and Keep America Safe, a new right-wing noise machine invented by Dick Cheney’s daughter Liz and the inevitable William Kristol. This gang’s rewriting of history knows few bounds. To hear them tell it, 9/11 was so completely Bill Clinton’s fault that it retroactively happened while he was still in office. The Bush White House is equally blameless for the post-9/11 resurgence of the Taliban, Al Qaeda and Iran. Instead it’s President Obama who is endangering America by coddling terrorists and stopping torture. A great column from Frank Rich.