Something Awful's "Weekend Web" feature has been silent of late, unfortunately. The SA writers visit the horrific places on the internet so that you don't have to, plumbing the depths of furry fandom, racists, fetishists, fanbois, and freaks of every flavor, then favoring us with choice quotes from their forums. It's spellbinding (until they do a feature on you, that is — then you're all "what was wrong with that post? I was being perfectly reasonable!")

Anyway, Weekend Web comes roaring back this week with a feature on reactions to Obama's election. When Facebook becomes indistinguishable from StormFront, you've gotta think there are some damaged people out there. Laugh, so you won't cry.

My personal favorite — Eugene Gardner, businessman from Virginia, boasting that he will fire everyone who voted Democrat, for FREEDOM.

In an open letter to President-Elect Obama, Kathleen Seidel of the Neurodiversity Weblog puts a righteous smackdown on junk-science-promoter RFK Jr., explaining convincingly why Obama should not, under any circumstances, let him run the EPA. Check it out.

Say you write a piece for the Los Angeles Times about Obama's election and what it says about race in America, and include language like this:

Obama is what I have called a "bargainer" — a black who says to whites, "I will never presume that you are racist if you will not hold my race against me." Whites become enthralled with bargainers out of gratitude for the presumption of innocence they offer. Bargainers relieve their anxiety about being white and, for this gift of trust, bargainers are often rewarded with a kind of halo.

And you offer this author blurb at the end:

Shelby Steele is an author, columnist and senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution.

Hmm. Don't you think that maybe, just maybe, your readers might have wound up better informed if the author blurb had said this?

Shelby Steele is an author, columnist and senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. He advanced the same thesis about "bargainers" in his recent book A Bound Man: Why We Are Excited About Obama And Why He Can't Win. [Emphasis mine; wrongness in original]

Sure, maybe it's unreasonable to expect him to say "Look, you ought to consider the distinct possibility that I am full of shit, because these are the same theories that led me to publish and promote a book arguing that Obama would never become president." But wouldn't an author with a smidgen of self-respect or intellectual honesty have managed, at least, to sneak in a self-deprecating "Ooops. My bad!" in there someplace?

Via Wolcott.

Both Obama and McCain will be interviewed (recorded earlier) on Monday Night Football. Does anyone think this is a good idea? Has anyone been thinking "man, I wonder what sort of insights Chris Berman has on the presidential election?" Just imagine the forced banter..

John "MCCLOUD!" McCain. Or, "Barack Obama. From?" "Harvard." This can really only end in tears, or drudging boredom. Or both.

Yesterday my five-year-old daughter announced that she wants John McCain to win because he has white hair and she loves him. My seven-year-old son said he wants Barack Obama to win because he "totally rocks."

The nearly two-year-old is the swing voter. Judging from her polling results at a party last night, she'll vote for whoever allows her to smear frosting all over herself.

SUFFER NOT THE O-FLAG HERETIC TO LIVE!!!

In the past 24 hours, since news emerged that Obama is leading in a couple of polls in normally Republican North Carolina, I've gotten six calls from what are probably 527 proxies for one or another of Obama or McCain.

I guess I'll have to vote for Bob Barr to show them.

WTF is the Obama campaign thinking on the subjects of gun rights and free expression?

Obama doesn't like some NRA-sponsored radio advertisements in Pennsylvania and Ohio critical of his record on gun issues. He says the ads are inaccurate. So does he put out a competing advertisements? No. He has his lawyers write to the radio stations and tell them not to run the ads, and threaten them in a manner both unsubtle and bumptious:

"This advertisement knowingly misleads your viewing audience about Senator Obama's position on the Second Amendment," says the letter from Obama general counsel Bob Bauer. "For the sake of both FCC licensing requirements and the public interest, your station should refuse to continue to air this advertisement."

That's bullshit. Now, when the anti-Obama forces were wetting themselves because the Obama campaign asked its flying monkeys to write and call radio shows to counter anti-Obama talk, I had no sympathy. That's appropriate response speech, and the whiners who called it suppression of free speech are either spinning furiously or self-deluded about the bounds of free expression. The right to broadcast your asinine views does not include the right to be free of angry calls and letters calling you an ass.

But writing a radio station on behalf of a sitting Senator saying that the advertisement they are running is inaccurate and they ought to worry about their broadcast license? That's straight-up thuggery. What's worse, it's embarrassing, weak thuggery. How could the Obama campaign think this would do anything other than make them look like censorious, impotent asses, and draw much more attention to the advertisements?

To put it in Obamaesque terms, I hope that he changes it.

So John, how's that campaign finance reform working out?

Federal individual contribution limit per race per candidate receiving matching funds: $2,300.

Cost of dinner for one at Jon Bon Jovi's house, with special guest Barack Obama: $30,800.

Working to bring the Change We Need to Washington: Priceless.

As is my tradition, I spent way too much of my Thursday night keeping a running diary of Obama's acceptance speech. Also by tradition, I watch only the Fox News coverage, because Bill Kristol is hilarious and Charles Krauthammer is an indestructible robot sent from the future to kill us all. I'm taking the over on number of times the word "change" pops up in Obama's speech, but I'll be keeping a tally, just in case. Join me, won't you.

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If a potentially embarrassing brother is a presidential qualification, it's surprising that Barack Obama doesn't have more to say about George Hussein Onyango Obama.

The Illinois senator mentions his brother in his autobiography, describing him in just one passing paragraph as a "beautiful boy with a rounded head".

As George Obama describes himself:

I have seen two of my friends killed. I have scars from defending myself with my fists. I am good with my fists.

Sounds like George would fit right in with Billy Carter, Roger Clinton, and Neil Bush.

(Via)

That might depend on what the game is. Matt Lewis, of Townhall, thinks it's better to be an ugly winner, and is encouraging John McCain to go that route. Specifically, he's encouraging McCain to play the race card:

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Today the Wall Street Journal ran an headache-inducingly vapid column by Amy Chozick about whether Obama is too physically fit to win a Presidential race. It's every bit as bad as you think it is from reading that sentence.

Also today, Sadly, No discovered that Chozick researched that piece in part by soliciting quotes on Yahoo! Forums.

Does anyone out there think Barack Obama is too thin to be president? Anyone having a hard time relating to him and his “no excess body fat”? Please let me know. Thanks!

She also responds to someone posting on the threat:

Love your response and your username (onlinebeerbellygirl). Would you mind shooting me an email so I can ask you a few more quesitons? My email is [redacted] Thanks so much!

Good God.

The Associated Press, in an "analysis" of the McCain campaign's newest television ad which compares Barack Obama's celebrity (and media treatment) to that of some of the more vapid Hollywood celebrities, throws in a little too much information:

Jason Moore, a representative for Hilton, said McCain's campaign didn't seek permission to use her image.

"In reference to the recent John McCain ad, Miss Hilton was neither asked, nor did she give permission, for the use of her likeness in the ad, and has no further comment," Moore said.

Does anyone who's seen this ad (and I have though I can't find a linkable clip) honestly think that the most unflattering use of Paris Hilton is: a) with her permission; or b) that anyone, apart for people living in plastic bubbles and Paris Hilton, gives a damn?

I think it's a pretty clever ad, which Obama has invited upon himself. As for Miss Hilton, God only knows what she's invited upon herself.

Dear Ben Stein, what am I going to do with you? I love you like an uncle. You're a great pop writer on economics, and have actually done valuable work in the field. You're witty, in your snide yet avuncular way. You have great eyebrows. You hosted the cleverest and most challenging quiz show I've ever seen, a show I love not least because my wife won your money (and I got a spiffy t-shirt saying so in the bargain).

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