Bizarrely, Madonna decided to preemptively ban Vice-Presidential candidate Sarah Palin from her concert tour. Learning that she won’t get to see a gristly grandma with an awful voice bump and grind must be have been a crushing blow for the beautiful, accomplished woman who may soon be the second most powerful person in the world.

Let us all pray that Governor Palin will emerge from this devastating setback stronger and wiser.

In a related story . . . Palin has also been banned from the Mangy Dog Scratching Olympics by the fleas.

. . . stayed married to the same woman for 50 years. That’s increasingly a rarity in America. It’s nigh unto freakish in demented Hollywood.

Well done, sir.

Equally rare is your brand of Hollywood liberalism – calm, gracious and rational. You’ll be missed.

. . . on the Daily Show. Tasty!

In Barack Obama, we now have the perfect fusion of the cult of celebrity and the cult of power. Behold this abomination of desolation:In this video, astonishingly bad singers warble while a worshiping throng chants the magic name that will usher in heaven on earth.Jessica Alba’s comment late in the video is revealing. “I would like the rest of the world to think highly of our amazing country.”This is a theme you hear a lot from Hollywood celebs. In their eyes, George W. Bush’s unpardonable sin was to make America “unpopular” in the world. And it stands to reason that a culture of people who live and die on the basis of how adored they are would view the world through the lens of popularity.  Not strength, not security, not rightness. Just popularity. That, in a celebrity cult culture, is the measure of all things.And that culture has found it’s candidate.

Over at the blog Blather. Wince. Repeat. we find, “It’s Springtime in Paris and the Idiots are Blooming.”  BWR is on the case of French Actress Marion Cotillard’s bizarre conspiracy theories.

Mark Hemingway on “The Trouble with Celebrity Endorsements.”

An excerpt:

For the record, I think this country is ready for a black president, though that’s a separate question than whether America should vote for Barack Obama. In fact, at the moment chief among my questions about his fitness for office is why he would want to stand on a stage next to Oprah Winfrey.

Sure, capitalizing on her popularity seems like an obvious move for Obama. But while Oprah’s legions may be loyal, but the fact they swallow what she’s selling says a lot about their collective intelligence.

I just came across a great little essay Eric Burns of Fox News Watch wrote back in 2003 about the gag-inducing celebrity worship that epitomized “Inside the Actors Studio.” In it, he mentions an episode in which James Lipton’s guest was Tom Hanks. At the end of interview, Lipton turns to the students in the audience and says, “Tonight, you have been privileged to spend a night with Tom Hanks.” Lipton then wags his finger at the students and says, “In the years ahead… earn this!”

Burns writes:

It is one thing to suck up to a celebrity. It is another to be told that it is a privilege to do the sucking. It is yet another to admonished that one must work hard in the years ahead to be worthy of that privilege. . . I would like to think as well that, when Hanks heard Lipton tell the students to “earn this,” he thought, if just fleetingly, just for a moment, that young Americans do not need to earn the right to be in the presence of actors, even superb, Academy Award-winning actors like Hanks. Rather, they need to earn the right to be in the presence of scholars and statesmen and people who have achieved notably in science and medicine and engineering and the management of civic affairs.They need to earn the right to be in the presence of men and women of character and conviction, of integrity and dedication. They need to earn the right to be in the presence of those who found charities and are in other ways boons to society.

Read the whole thing here.

Jonah Goldberg has a powerful column over on USA Today. An excerpt:

We’ve all heard the stories, many true, some apocryphal, of soldiers returning home from Vietnam only to be disrespected and shunned by an ungrateful nation. How many were called war criminals or spat upon is as controversial as it is unknowable. But there’s one thing we know our troops never experienced. We never filled the movie theaters during wartime with films calling them war criminals, rapists and, figuratively, spitting on them or on their mission.

Not so today.

Read the whole thing.

Michael Fumento writes:

Critics have labeled the new movie “Rendition” a “political thriller.” Whether it thrills or not is subjective. But “political”? Absolutely. It’s merely the latest in an unbroken series of major films about the war on terror that range from those seeking to assure us that Islamist terrorism isn’t the threat we might think, to those depicting the terrorists as no worse than those who fight them — and by implication the American people as a whole.

Read the whole thing here.

Sorry, but there is no other way to describe a man who has apparently been living in the liberal echo chamber that is today’s entertainment industry for so long, that the delicate flower can no longer bear to even sit in the same room with someone who does not share his moronic political views.

On his website, Manilow explained:

“I wanted to let you know that I will no longer be on The View tomorrow as scheduled. I had made a request that I be interviewed by Joy [Behar], Barbara [Walters] or Whoopi [Goldberg] but not Elisabeth Hasselbeck,” he wrote. “Unfortunately, the show was not willing to accommodate this simple request, so I bowed out.”

Sweet smoking Judas. . . what nonsense on parade.

As I’m sure you’ve heard, Manilow would only agree to come on “The View” if they removed Elisabeth Hasselbeck from the set so she couldn’t ask him any questions. Hasselbeck’s sin? She had occasionally attempted to stand up to Rosie O’Donnell’s bullying, and crazed Bush conspiracy frothing when Rosie was a panelist on the show. (Manilow and Rosie are buddies.)

So this is what it has come to now. Lib celebs used to at least pretend to be champions of free expression and the right to say unpopular things, blah blah, McCarthyism, yada yada, blackslists…etc.  Today, and increasingly, deep thinkers like Manilow want to make sure that, not only are they never even are exposed to ideas and view different from their own, they never even have to be in the same room with someone who holds them.

In recent days Barry stated that he “regrets” the whole controversy because it is all anyone wants to talk to him about. Of course, that’s not the same thing as regretting it because he made himself look like a jackass. But it’s something.