Since it’s apparently hip to interrupt these days, it was only a matter of time before a clever humorist decided to conjoin two of America’s most noteworthy departures from decorum – Congressman Joe Wilson’s “shout down” of President Barack Obama during a joint session of Congress last week and rapper Kayne West’s rude “diss” of country music star Taylor Swift during Sunday night’s MTV video music awards ceremony.

Yes, MTV still gives out video music awards … despite the fact the network no longer airs music videos.

Go figure.

Anyway, in all of its thirteen-second glory, here is the “Kayne West-Joe Wilson interruption remix,” via the website Gigwise:

U.S. First Lady Michelle Obama today fired back at the South Carolina Republican activist who referred to her as being descended from apes.

“It’s sad that there are those who still harbor such hate in their hearts, but I forgive him,” Mrs. Obama said.

Saying that forgiveness was “part of the change my husband and I believe in,” the First Lady quickly changed her tune, though, and went after Rusty DePass, the S.C. Republican activist whose unfortunate comment last Friday has once again put our state in the national spotlight … and not in a good way.

“It’s not his fault he lives in the most ass-backwards state in America,” Mrs. Obama said of DePass.

“Wowzers,” Sic Willie replied. “Wowzers, Michelle.”

“My husband and I went to Harvard,” Obama continued. “I bet most of the mouth breathers in this state can’t even spell Harvard.”

Of course … we’re obviously kidding.

The real Michelle Obama never said any of that.

(We repeat – the real Michelle Obama never said any of that).

A cartoon version of the First Lady did, though … in a taped appearance on the wildly-popular computer-generated South Carolina talk show, FITS Makes News.

Becoming the first guest to put the inappropriately-mouthy, computer-generated Sic Willie in his place, Mrs. Obama received wild applause from the audience as well as a rare, roof-raising serving of Dum Spiro Spero (South Carolina’s motto – “While I breathe, I hope”) from our founding editor.

It’s the FMN interview you literally cannot afford to miss …

Editor’s Note: Watch it again (and create your own movies) in high resolution over on XtraNormal.

Ready for more “ba-doom-chings” and cheap laughs at the expense of South Carolina politicos?

Good.  We’ve got you covered with our latest installment of “FITS Makes News,” the popular series featuring a cartoon version of our founding editor administering torrential tongue-lashings to his unsuspecting “guests.”

In this episode, Sic Willie rudely denies “Dum Spiro Spero” to Greg Foster, a.k.a. the “Speaker’s Speaker,” and accuses him and his boss of “Jackman-ing each other off” after watching the movie Australia.

It’s Sic at his best and “Foster” at his, um …

Previous Episodes

“FITS Makes News” – Judge Joseph Anderson
“FITS Makes News” – Nikki Haley

To thunderous applause and uncontrollable laughter, we debuted our new “FITS Makes News” series the other day via an exclusive “interview” with State Rep. Nikki Haley.

And while we got no feedback from the good Representative about our little movie, we assume that she thought it was funny.

Anyway, our original plan was to do one of these “interviews” each week (they take a little time to “direct”), but yesterday’s controversial decision by U.S. District Court Judge Joseph Anderson regarding South Carolina’s three “stimulus” lawsuits prompted us to bump up our schedule a bit.

Accordingly, here is Sic Willie’s riotously funny interview with the Judge …

PREVIOUS VIDEOS

“FITS Makes News” – Nikki Haley

We weren’t aware of this, but apparently when you joke around that some random white guy looks like a famous white guy (a la Sic Willie and Kyle Orton), it’s either considered humorous or worthy of serious contemplation.

When you say a black guy looks like another famous black guy, however, it’s considered “played out” and borderline racist. Or “racial.”

And thus we have the mea culpa being offered by MLB Network announcer Matt Vasgersian after he observed during a live broadcast that an emergency medical technician at Colorado’s Coors Field resembled Philadelphia Eagles’ quarterback Donovan McNabb.

From Kissing Suzy Kolber:

“I am an idiot .. Save the racial stuff which is just flat out wrong, almost all of what has been posted on my regrettably horrific timing is spot on .. It was a bad decision made on live tv and i can absolutely understand how that make an announcer sound insensitive. Bad on the spot judgment. Nobody feels worse about it than I do guys.”

What? He’s apologizing?

Vasgersian – who dropped the “F” bomb on the MLB Network earlier this year – shouldn’t have to apologize for anything here, least of all the fact that his broadcast colleagues (and apparently his producer) don’t have a sense of humor.

Does the dude in question look like Donovan McNabb?

Not really.

But again, we’re apparently not debating facts, we’re debating sensibilities.

As we first reported last week, a new TV ad is hitting select airwaves in South Carolina today imploring Gov. Mark Sanford to “take the money,” or to apply for a controversial $740 million pot of federal bureaucratic bailout funds.

Sanford has proposed using that money to pay down debt, an argument that doesn’t seem to have gained much traction publicly.

We would have advised him to use it on a tax cut, but that’s just us.

Anyway, the new ad – paid for by a group calling itself the S.C. Taxpayers’ Alliance – says that “we’re facing a crisis in South Carolina – our jobs, our homes, our savings, our future is in doubt.”

“The recession has already forced state government to cut over $1 billion,” the ad continues. “We need it, to keep prisoners behind bars, to educate our children and to prevent teachers from being fired. And yet Governor Sanford is on TV, promoting himself.”

As we’ve noted on several occasions in the past, we’ve got some issues with those claims, but the pop on Sanford is hard to criticize.

The governor is using this debate to enhance his national profile, which makes it easy for his opponents to level this line of attack.

And frankly, this ad does so in a very understated, very effective way – by simply asking the governor to “change his mind.”

Spoken by an attractive female narrator (think Rachel McAdams twenty years from now) and laced with snippets from other “just folks,” the ad is a 180-degree departure from Sanford’s spot earlier this month, which featured the governor in a coat-and-tie in front of a neatly-framed oil painting in the Governor’s mansion.

And just as Sanford’s ad was precisely what we would not have run to advance his position, this ad is precisely what we would have run to come after him.

How so?

Well, it’s regular people saying incredibly easy-to-understand (if not entirely accurate) things – whereas the governor’s position is much more convoluted.

The production value of the ad is also better than Sanford’s – which doesn’t happen often, for those of you familiar with the governor’s history of producing solid TV ads.

We attribute that to the role of our “web nemesis,” Bob McAlister, who despite having one foot in the grave seems to have squeezed off a nice round here.

What’s also interesting is that McAlister has partnered with Richard Quinn and Associates on this project, forming a new agency for the purposes of managing the ad buy – which we are told will be a six-figure run.

“McAlister, Quinn & Associates” is the name of the new agency, and The Palmetto Scoop’s Adam Fogle is serving as the organization’s Chairman.

S.C. Senator Greg Ryberg dropped a bomb on the S.C. General Assembly today when he revealed that twelve S.C. House members have failed to file state income tax returns in recent years.

Eleven of these lawmakers were “presumed to have a duty to file,” Ryberg said, quoting a letter he received from the State Department of Revenue.

Additionally, Ryberg said that three S.C. House members owed a combined total of just over $21,000 in unpaid individual income taxes.

Ryberg says he obtained the information after requesting it from the Revenue Department.

Ryberg did not identify the lawmakers but said that “the idea that any member of the General Assembly would hold the laws of this state in so little regard that they simple ignore them when they find them inconvenient truly offends me.”

You can view Ryberg’s shocking announcement here:

Ryberg has introduced legislation that would prevent anyone who has either failed to file or failed to pay income tax from holding office in the House or the Senate, or from serving in any statewide elected office or as a gubernatorial appointment.

Maybe this is just what the down side of stardom looks like.

You know, when you’re bitter at the world because no one cares about your loser “celebrity band” and you have to wake up every morning knowing there was once a time … way back when … when you were a successful actor who was stone cold enough to have Angelina Jolie tattoo your name on her body?

Willingly, people.

Anyway, such is the miserable existence of Hollywood ACTOR turned musician (and Jolie-ex) Billy Bob Thornton, who is such a little bitch in this interview that you seriously have to ask yourself if he deserves to continue sucking up any more of your oxygen …

What’s ironic is that this radio host actually goes out of his way in the minutes leading up to Billy Bob’s bitchfest (it starts getting really good around the 7:00 mark) to talk to these guys like actual musicians, and that Thornton’s infantile outburst only serves to highlight the very thing he is making such a stink about wanting to avoid.

Personally, our favorite part is the 9:30 mark when he derisively asks the interviewer “you wouldn’t say that to Tom Petty would you?”

Good Lord.

Oh, and it’s also funny to watch the pained looks on the faces of his band mates at the 9:08 mark. Seriously, they look like they want to strangle the asshole, and with good reason.

Look, folks. Billy Bob Thornton is famous for two things – talking like a retard in Slingblade and dating Angelina Jolie.

That’s it.

Since our founding editor has written his fair share of TV commercials for Gov. Mark Sanford, we like to think we know a bit about his exploits on the tube.

And more often than not, it’s a medium where the governor excels – effortlessly translating his folksy, “aw, shucks-ness” and tanned telegenic looks into paid media gold.

That’s why Sanford’s performance in his latest TV ad is so disappointing.

First, to the tape …

Alright, we’ve watched this four times now and keep coming back to the same conclusion – it’s one of Mark’s worst commercials ever.

And it’s a dud delivered at a time when Sanford really (some would say desperately) needed to connect with people, to convince them that his plan of paying down debt with “stimulus” funds is a better way to go than “taking the money.”

This ad doesn’t do that in our book. Not even remotely.

Seriously, Sanford is flat and uninspiring. He looks tired … old even. His hand gestures are staged and stuffy – much like the ad’s elitist backdrop. Even the commercial’s ‘money line,’ when Sanford says “the easy thing isn’t always the right thing” – comes off as canned and contrived.

Now don’t get us wrong, the script makes its fair share of good points, such as …

“More tax dollars will be spent in our state this year than ever before.”

“Going further into debt will not solve a problem that was created by too much debt.”

And our favorite …

“We have to finally restructure the broken ways our government operates.”

All true, but unfortunately these absolutely essential points are lost in (and we can’t believe we’re actually saying this) Sanford’s weak delivery.

No really. The governor had some decent (albeit not Sic Willie-caliber) material to work with, but he pulled up lame on this one.

It all starts with the tragically ill-conceived setting chosen for this ad – an elegant Victorian room with neatly-arranged picture frames and a friggin’ oil painting in the background.

Sanford references at the outset of the ad that “recent days have been difficult in our state and in our nation,” but whoever wrote the script obviously didn’t stop and consider how a line like that would mesh with a white guy in a suit and tie sitting (not standing) in Miss Marple’s study.

Also, there’s the issue of why this ad was paid for by Carolinians for Reform, which of course dredges up the whole NGA-Competitive Grant flap – one of the governor’s worst PR nightmares ever.

All in all, this was not Sanford’s best effort.

So what would we have done differently? You know, with a $25-50,000 production budget and quarter million dollar ad buy?

Glad you asked.

We’d have put Sanford outside. We’d have told him to ditch the coat and tie (which is typically how he rolls anyway). We’d have insisted he act like he has a pulse.

Of course much more fundamentally, we’d have made this ad a lot less about Mark Sanford and a lot more about the people who are ultimately on the hook for these billions.

For example, we would have devoted forty of the ad’s sixty seconds to non-Sanford footage, which would have no doubt included supportive testimonials from working folks as well as compelling shots of the ethnically-diverse children who are ultimately going to have to foot the bill for all this government boondoggling.

But hey, what do we know, right?

WEB EXTRA

Sanford’s Ad (YouTube)

Carolinians For Reform

Sanford Stands Up On Stimulus (Washington Post)

U.S. Rep. Barney Frank went after a college student wearing a yarmulke yesterday during a testy back-and-forth at Harvard University, where we mistakenly assumed that gay Congressmen whose policies ushered in economic holocausts were welcomed with open arms.

Apparently not, although it’s pretty obvious the Massachusetts Democrat was in front of a sympathetic crowd.

Anyway, the whole exchange began when this conservative, yarmulke-wearing student (seriously, at Harvard?) asked Congresslady Frank a fairly simple question:

“How much responsibility, if any, do you have for the financial crisis?”

Easy enough, right?

Wrong.

Frank totally ignored the question and launched into torrential attack against the young lad, berating him for being part of a vast right-wing conspiracy and incessantly interrupting him by demanding that he (the college student) explain what he would have done differently.

While the kid didn’t, um, “go there” with respect to Frank’s love affair with reckless government lenders … err, lending … he did have a pretty solid reply … you know, for a college student who didn’t actually create this crisis or bungle its solution. And who obviously isn’t an elected official responsible for dealing with this mess.

“For example, I think that instead of using the TARP money to simply roll through AIG and use it to pay out other banks to which it owed other obligations you could have monitored that before you choose to give them $700 billion in taxpayer money,” he said.

Nice.

Of course Frank interrupted him before he could finish his sentence and started jabber-jawing again about how the right wing is out to get him.

“Stop labeling him, just answer the question,” a kinky-haired, female British-accented student yelled at one point during the feisty, five-minute exchange.

No sh*t.

Yarmulkes and British accents are never wrong, people. Never.

Enjoy …