10. Brush your Shoulders Off (Jay Z) — Time passes, seasons change, the Electric Slide gives way to the Cha Cha Slide at weddings, but one thing remains: DJs and emcees always want you to do something. While some music may ask more of us than dance music does, no other sort has the gall to up and demand it in the lyrics.

At least Jay Z here had the courtesy to demand something simple and easy to do that doesn’t require you to move your feet or get your heart rate up above 60 beats per minute or so. You can even do it while you’re holding your drink! Now I understand why the man is so successful — he doesn’t waste energy. (And because Universal has embedding on lockdown, here’s the DJ Danger Mouse remix. It’s probably for the best)

There’s also the sense that Jay Z wants you to do it for your own good, which is a mixed blessing. On one hand, it’s courteous and encouraging. On the other, “Who do you think you are telling me what to do, Jay Z! Geez!”

Barack Obama.

We’ve seen him as a young co-ed.  We’ve seen him without his shirt on.  And, as of yesterday, we’ve seen him as the President of the United States of America.

But the same question is on everyone’s lips: where does Obama rank on a list of hot U.S. presidents?

Don’t worry.  I have the answer.

Last year during Presidents’ Week, I started the tradition of ranking presidents and their first ladies in order of hotness.  Before I reveal the top and bottom five of my list of hot presidents, let me first talk about my methodology.  I wouldn’t want you–or, indeed, these lovely presidents–to think I’m not academically rigorous.

My rules:

1. Judging is based off the hottest picture I can easily find of each president.
2. The judge should make all attempts to be objective when measuring hotness, but will also be aware that complete objectivity is impossible.
3. The judge will make all attempts not to be “time-ist.”  In other words, just because almost everyone in the 50’s and 60’s had awful crewcuts and wore disgusting glasses does not mean all politicians from that era are necessarily unattractive.  Conversely, just because a president from the late 1800s sports hot sideburns, it does not necessarily make him hot as a whole.

Presidents were rated based on the following scale, from most to least hot: Hot; Hot?; Okay; Ehh; and Not.

A final disclaimer: Yes, this post is written by the same person who wrote that article about feminism and how we should never judge female TV and film characters primarily by their appearances.

And now, the list…

WASHINGTON – Illinois Senator Barrack Obama accepted the Presidential Matrix of Leadership on Tuesday, bringing light to America’s darkest hour and vowing to transform the nation and the world.

The Matrix had previously belonged to human tractor trailer William Jefferson Clinton, who, after prevailing in battle against independent prosecutor Kenneth Star, slowly darkened and passed away, devastating America’s children.

At his bedside were Clinton’s long-time compatriot, then-Vice President Al Gore; his wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton; Obama, then a young State Senator on a school field trip; and car-carrying super-robot Ultra Magnus, voiced by the late Robert Stack.

(Continued in politics section)

And it’s not even *good* fanfic.   Obama and Palin are Mary Sues, the pair of them.

Let me be clear: Obama and Palin, the human beings, are as complex and irreducible as any other human beings.  But Obama and Palin, the candidates, are wholly illusory creations shaped by their respective party machines and depictions in the media, and are only similar to the humans that share their names in so far as it is expedient.  In short, they are fictional, and as such, they are subject to literary criticism of the particularly snarky kind that flourishes in the blogosphere.

So I ran them through a  Mary Sue test (there are many of these, which you can find using google – I chose this one).  I’ll admit that I was a little generous in some of my criteria…  “Is he/she from a country or world different from the other characters in the story?” Alaska, check.  Hawaii check.  “Does she have special/magical powers that none of the other characters have?”  Can field dress a moose, check.  Anyway, here’s the feedback the test gave me for Obama.

If political news was drugs, I’d probably be in Betty Ford right now. Or dead of a massive overdose.

I read way way too many blogs, both for the articles that buttress up my own opinions, and the ones that I violent disagree with. When things are going well for my guy, I want to bask in the elation. When things are going poorly, I spend even more time online, looking for people who will tell me, “There there, it’ll be alright. Shh.”

But the election won’t be decided by people like me, because people like me already know who we’re voting for. We’re not in play. It’ll be decided by the people that don’t have a side yet. And that’s what I can’t quite get: after two freakin’ years of non-stop politics, how can you still be Undecided?

Sean Tevis, who is running for State Rep in Kansas, had a brilliant idea to raise campaign funds: become viral on the Internet by doing an xkcd parody.

And it’s funnier than xkcd has been recently, which is an added bonus.

Let’s keep Sean Tevis’ comic popular so more politicians use webcomic parodies as advertising campaigns.  Think of the possibilities:

There’s a mid-to-large sized kerfuffle brewing over Barry Blitt’s cover art for the latest New Yorker (at left).  As you can see, it shows a caricature of Barack Obama exchanging a “terrorist fist jab” with his wife in the oval office.  His outfit is vaguely Muslim, hers is Sandinista chic (or possibly Black Panther chic).  A picture of Osama Bin Laden hangs on the wall, and the American flag burns in the fireplace.  Subtle it ain’t.

But it’s hard for me to understand why people find this picture offensive.   If I was a right-wing smearmonger, I suppose might be less than pleased with the cartoon’s message (basically, “You guys are dicks”).  But most of the outrage seems to be coming from liberals.   Do they think that the New Yorker is honestly suggesting that this is what an Obama presidency would look like?  Honestly, the New Yorker? A magazine whose editorial slant is two, maybe three steps to the right of Mother Jones?  A magazine, furthermore, as famous for its cartoons as for its liberal slant?  Come on now.  The title of the picture is  “The Politics of Fear,” and while you wouldn’t know that from looking at the cover, the message is still painfully obvious.  Maybe it needs a caption (sort of like the one in that one South Park episode) that says “THIS IS WHAT THE REPUBLICAN SMEAR MACHINE IS ACTUALLY TELLING PEOPLE.”*

But actually, most of the people complaining about this do seem to understand that it’s a joke.  They’re just worried that Joe Six-Pack McVotesalot is going to be too dumb to understand the subtext; an attitude I find both depressing and vaguely insulting.  Others have more generalized complaints:  a spokesman for the Obama campaign just called the thing tasteless and unfunny.  (This is probably to be expected:  political campaigns aren’t really allowed to find anything funny.)  Obama himself  has said that the cover is obviously protected by our right to free speech, but might be offensive to Muslim Americans.  There’s a kernel of truth to this.  It is offensive when people accuse Obama of being a Muslim as if it was a horrible thing.  It’s also offensive when people rush to defend him from the pernicious charge of Muslimhood.  It’s particularly offensive when Obama’s campaign prevents two women wearing hijabs from being photographed with Obama at a ralley. (Thankfully, as the link indicates, Obama has apologized long and hard for this last.) Still, it’s hard for me to see where this picture goes over the line.  Yes, it’s a fairly grim piece of satire, but it’s well within the bounds of what’s appropriate.  Look, people ARE making these claims – not just that Obama is a Muslim, but that he’s a radical Muslim, that he’s soft on terror, and that his wife is a dangerous Marxist.  Are we supposed to ignore that, and hope they’ll shut up before the election?  Are we supposed to engage them in intelligent debate, as if they deserve to be taken seriously?  Mockery is the only sensible response to this insanity; mockery is what the cover delivers.

Or am I off base?  Flame me in the comments if you disagree.

Slate, by the way, has some very good tangentially related stuff.  1:  Where the phrase “terrorist fist-jab” might have actually come from.  2:  The body language terrorists actually use to greet eachother.

23/6 has an excellent and comprehensive guide to moral outrage over the New Yorker cover.

* Except for the flag burning.**

** As far as I know.