What I Learned From TV This Week

4. That a kid named Demi Lovato is more popular than the idea of single-payer health coverage. I've seen both of these topics all over my non-HD screen lately, and Lovato is apparently the kind of tonic you drink that replaces the need for fancy "doctors" and "medicine" and other suspicious French-sounding shit like that. And no congressional reps (Democrats too, you fucking in-the-pockets-of-the-insurance-lobby traitors) get squinchy faces and talk nonsense about rationing when serious and important resolutions supporting the ongoing pop career of Demi are concerned. And speaking of bleak health care, Nurse Jackie is passing you by if you're not already on board. Seriously, watch this one, Showtime-havers. I already have a kind of scrubs-centric crush on big Thor.

5. That Rachel Maddow loves/hates Pat Buchanan so skillfully that he appears not to know up from down anymore. The second he wrote his crazy, whiny, racist "How to Handle Sonia" diatribe (that's Sotomayor, for you people who don't pay attention to anything), Maddow had him on her show, grilled him, then took him apart bit by bit on the next episode that wasn't about Walter Cronkite. Why are you still not watching this beautiful, brain-filled woman?

6. That there is not one good regular daytime talk show that's not in reruns right now. Tyra , Oprah , Martha,Ellen , almost all of them. Even The View seems to be taking weeks off at a time. Are they all at the same house in the Hamptons right now? I was so desperate for something to fold laundry to that I watched the wiener episode of Martha Stewart again just to see that gay dude in the lavender sweater make Martha crack up on the air about certain hot dogs being too big to put in your mouth. It was like the Ghost of Queer as Folk Christmas had come back to haunt my TV for a dozen soap-dropping seconds. Then Martha and the gay shared a hot dog covered in macaroni and cheese, which is way more my speed.

7. That people on the news talk shows are still diligently hunting for President Obama's elusive birth certificate. That makes me happy. I hate it that our president is from some other country I've never heard of, like Illegitimistan or something. I think that's what I heard someone say. Anyway, my favorite truth-seeker is Orly Taitz, an attorney and dentist from Irvine (So/Cal represent!) I saw on CNN and then again on The Daily Show . She sounds like what would happen if Arianna Huffington suffered a concussion that erased her memory and she became a telemarketer selling you extended warranties for cars you don't own. And her platinum blond wig technique is wacky as FUCK. She makes me want to start a fan club.