But are reporters really going to start spending a lot of time drawing wildly unjustified conclusions from minute changes to political websites? As if slight revisions made to website copy offers stunning insight into a politician’s unprincipled soul; the magic of Google Cache herein utilized as the deus ex machina of dickish reporting.

* “Pussyfooting” pops up so commonly in polite writing, it clearly must have evolved from pussy as cat rather than pussy meaning vag, which totally makes the word a lot less useful.

Women everywhere are having babies just to get a new Volkswagen minivan.

It’s a joke, yes, and, har har, potentially a funny were it presented by, I dunno, Lori Loughlin. But Brooke Shields had a very public struggle with a terrible disease, a debilitating depression centered around the overwhelming feeling that having a baby ruined her life.

I highly highly doubt these ads are intended to be taken in this way, but, then…why Brooke Shields?

I just can’t stop thinking about it: the horror of her condition, the sadness of the isolation, all brought to bear by the televised dramatization of Brooke Shields’ postpartum thoughts, as she stared aimlessly out the window, day in and day out, contemplating suicide and wrestling with immense self-loathing and a frightening indifference to her newborn child.

Man, I really shouldn’t have had a baby just to get a new Volkswagon.

Drawing attention to and normalizing postpartum depression was certainly a wonderful thing for Brooke Shields to do (as was making Tom Cruise look like a total dweebus). So good on Brooke for that.

But these ads just make me sad and somewhat panic-stricken. Which is totally not the mood I tend to be in before I buy cars.

(It probably would have been more effective for Shields to riff off of Suddenly Susan, thus leaving viewers feeling nostalgic and slightly annoyed, a much more consumeristic state of mind.)

Continuing in our season-long tribute to the legendary Video Music Box, tomorrow’s episode of The Bridge dips into hip hop’s Golden Era, 1987 to 1990.

Featuring: exclusive vintage interviews with Heavy D & the Boyz (1987) and Al B Sure! (1987), live performances by Public Enemy (1989), Biz Markie (1989) and KRS-One (1988), and classic videos by Big Daddy Kane, EPMD, and Eric B & Rakim.

The Golden Era is the greatest era of hip hop, it’s golden, and by greatest and golden I mean in the sense of the aesthetic and/or intellectual. Because, to be frank, though the Golden Era is universally lauded as the best era of hip hop, it’s not necessarily everyone’s favorite era.

Which isn’t to say Golden Era hip hop isn’t stand-alone amazing, because it absolutely is. Rakim is fucking ill, KRS-One live on stage will light your house on fire and punch you in the face (tomorrow’s episode of The Bridge has the craziest live footage of KRS performing South Bronx and Criminal Minded. Insane.)

But the Golden Era isn’t exactly what I reach for on the iPod in a walk through Prospect Park or a ride on the subway. That would generally be some early 90s proto-street era stuff; Tribe and Nas, Gangstarr and Stakes is High.

It’s a bit like jazz: everyone can go around saying Miles Davis Bitches Brew is the greatest jazz album of the 60s and 70s, but when you’re reaching for a record on an early Sunday morning, you’re much more likely to land on…I dunno, Winchester Cathedral? Bitches Brew is just too g.d. good to listen to. It’s legendary, it’s unreal.

Hip Hop works the same way. Bring the Noise is easily the crowning cultural achievement of the 20th century, but, man, I can’t listen to it everyday. It’s too good, too legendary. I’m happy enough just knowing it’s out there.

Which isn’t to say people shouldn’t watch tomorrow’s episode, ooobviously. How else could you know it’s out there without a local television show broadcasting visual evidence??

The Sunday Sample: A new series in which The Daily Squid digs through the YouTube crates in search of some of the hottest breaks of hip hop’s Golden Era.

Gang Starr - Just to Get a Rep

Who knew a pioneering French electro-music producer was behind one of the hardest-hitting street anthems of the early 90s (among many more)?

He did it just to get a baguette

There have been moments in the general election when the one-sidedness of our site–when nearly every story was some variation on how poorly McCain was doing or how well Barack Obama was faring–has made us cringe.

As it happens, McCain’s campaign is going quite poorly and Obama’s is going well. Imposing artificial balance on this reality would be a bias of its own.

VandeHarris is right.

Perfect example: Jake Tapper today points to campaign photography as an example of bias in the media; there are more flattering photos of Obama than there are of McCain.

He’s right to call out that atrocious photo of Cindy McCain (why run that?) but if McCain is simply much less photogenic than Obama, as one campaign photographer points out, then isn’t it fair and accurate to have less flattering photos of him in circulation? Going the extra mile to find more flattering photos of a less-photogenic candidate for the sake of balance is bias in itself.

To use an analogy from the sports world: you can’t accuse a sports writer of being biased against Barry Bonds because she writes more negative stories about Bonds than she does about Albert Pujols. Barry Bonds is a criminal and a dickhead, while Albert Pujols is a pretty alright dude. Bonds simply lends himself to more negative coverage.

Now, McCain isn’t quite the jerk Barry Bonds is, and he’s certainly not a criminal, but his candidacy has, by any objective measure, been much more lackluster than Obama’s. Why wouldn’t the coverage reflect that?

Whole new season, whole new episodes, whole new vibe: Old School Hip Hop is new again (again) on The Bridge!

Season four officially launched this past Saturday; 8 more episodes showcasing some of your favorite old school videos (from Public Enemy to Wu Tang, Salt N Pepa to Black Moon) alongside contemporary interviews with classic hip hop icons (Rakim, KRS-One, Marley Marl, CL Smooth, Wu-Tang, etc.)

I’ve been involved with The Bridge since it’s inception about three and a half years ago (from Associate Producer, to Producer, to Writer-Director), and each season has been an insane, somewhat surreal blast (meeting Rakim?!?!!?!? Interviewing RZA while an assistant braids his hair?!?!?!? Completely losing my face while attempting to nervously inform Dres from Black Sheep that “Flavor of the Month” is my favorite hip hop video of all time ever?!?!?!?).

This season, however, season four, I’m especially psyched out of my mind about. 2008 represents the 25th anniversary of the legendary Video Music Box, the original, pioneering video show first launched by our host, VJ Ralph McDaniels, on NYC television in May of 1983.

Video Music Box was the first television program (anywhere) to touch on hip hop, and this season, we at The Bridge have done our best to honor that pioneering status, digging into Ralph’s vault to unearth some pretty exclusive stuff: Tribe live at the Marc Ballroom in 91, KRS at the Fever in 87, vintage interviews with Special Ed, Whodini and LL Cool J, the original EPK for Nas’s Illmatic, and more more more.

And while all of the above is some fine promotional talk (and if you live in NYC, watch watch watch!) nothing can really touch on the shock, awe and…I dunno, honor is too strong a word, but seriously; for a white-bred beyond-rural kid, I just can’t fucking believe I actually get to touch this stuff.

It’s all been a magical dream come true, and I’m just waiting to get shot up at the Source awards before I finally wake up and kiss my pillow a thank you.

You can never dig too much out of a trailer, and this seems more like an initial teaser spot than anything else, so the benefit of the doubt is probably necessary. That said, I’m hoping the movie delves a little deeper than the smooth since days of underoos emphasis this preview takes. Biggie did indeed marry that ish while the rest of us remained merely engaged, but the nature of his death, and the larger implications of the mediated beef that lead to that tragedy, deserves a deeper inquiry.

The one big reason to believe that depth will be missed, however, is that release date. January 16th? No good movies come out in January; January is shit movie season, with rare exception. The Oscar push has ended and half the country is under 18 inches of snow, while every studio is holding off on its crowd-pleasing fare until the late Spring/Early Summer kicks off. January is for table scraps.

And Biggie deserves more than table scraps; he deserves some t-bone steak, cheese eggs and Welch’s grape. Which, in the language of movie release dates, translates into a late November/early December opening weekend. Any Biggie picture should obviously appeal more to the street than it does to A.O. Scott, but is it too much to ask to get a high-quality movie out of this dude’s life?

When you’re the greatest to do the greatest thing ever to be done, you deserve your own Oscar-baiting biopic.

That suggests an imbalance in the deference quotient between the younger man and the veteran senator — an impression reinforced by Obama’s frequent glances in McCain’s direction and McCain’s studied indifference to his rival.

Whether viewers caught the verbal and body-language signs that Obama seemed to accept McCain as the alpha male on the stage in Mississippi, I do not know.

So McCain came off as the alpha male by…avoiding all eye contact with Barack Obama? Really?

This seems to be the exact inverse of what is actually observed in social animal psychology, from feces flingers to feudal farmers.

Does the king avoid eye contact with his peasants, or is it the other way around? Is the big hunky monkey compelled into social deference while totally banging the nerd monkey’s girlfriend, or vice versa?

TPM was initially on the case, providing this reality check from their resident monkey scientist (be this scientist of monkeys or monkey who is scientist I’m not positive):

I think people really are missing the point about McCain’s failure to look at Obama. McCain was afraid of Obama. It was really clear–look at how much McCain blinked in the first half hour. I study monkey behavior–low ranking monkeys don’t look at high ranking monkeys. In a physical, instinctive sense, Obama owned McCain tonight and I think the instant polling reflects that.

The US got some jobs and tried to put some money away, but we got debt that no honest man can pay.

Or is Paulson the chicken man? No no, cause the favor guy blew up the chicken man. So I guess maybe the chicken man is…Saddam Hussein?

And the DA who can’t get no relief? Bush? Maybe that’s too generous. And if Saddam is the chicken man, then it’s really Bush who’s the favor guy; or, at least I suppose, the Bush administration, proper (and thus, Paulson, too).

And the broad putting the makeup on, fixin’ her hair up pretty? I’m thinking…Canada.

There’s no such thing as an iPod. The word “iPod” is a marketing tool for a hard drive with software that plays mp3s. Yeah, doesn’t sound so sexy now, does it you chimps?

Stupid evil corporations and their incessant naming of things!!!!!! Who are they to attach words to products?!?!?!? Where does the greed end?!?!

You chimps!!!!!!!

“We’re going to do a few new things also,” she said at a rally in Cedar Rapids. “For instance, as Alaska’s governor, I put the government’s checkbook online so that people can see where their money’s going. We’ll bring that kind of transparency, that responsibility, and accountability back. We’re going to bring that back to D.C.”

Great idea! If only someone had thought of this earlier!

Oh wait, someone already passed this into law. Some guy named Berock Osama. Or something.

I wonder what happened to him.

All this while forcefully attacking Obama (during the hurricane) over Obama supposedly attacking McCain (during the hurricane).

Three years ago this month, Sarah Palin was in the middle of her tenure as mayor of a city of 8,000 people (a position to which she was first elected with 909 votes), while Barack Obama was inspecting Russian warhead destruction facilities with Dick Lugar, on his way toward passing sweeping weapons nonproliferation legislation.

There’s just no comparison here; Sarah Palin makes Barack Obama look like Colin Powell.

2. Sarah Palin has an entire section on Polar Bears in her Wikipedia profile.

3. Palin once had constitutional beef with Alaska State Rep. John Coghill, R-North Pole, the Gentleman from Santa’s Workshop. (Is America ready for a VP on the naughty list?)

5. She apparently possesses a remarkable ability to autograph impossibly thin wooden dowels. A celebrity we can believe in.

6. Prior to this week, she and McCain were essentially complete strangers; they’d met once before and only spoken twice.

Once and twice! And he trusts her to lead the country, and, like, be the President? Of the country?

And we’re supposed to trust his quickie-rigged confidence in her quickie-assembled Presidential skills, when all we know about Sarah Palin is that she has beef with Santa and a strong associative connection to Polar Bears?

Never thought I’d miss the Mittster. : (

Bad pick, like a runny boogey.

P.S. The video for “C.R.E.A.M.” was produced and directed by none other than Ralph McdDaniels, host of The Bridge! Check out a whole new season, Saturday October 25th at 11:00 PM.