The Grouchy Editor

 

They are celebrating Robin Meade’s 15-year anniversary on HLN. I join in the celebration. She’s just about the only palatable presence on television news.

 

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We’ve gone seven months now with a vacant seat on the Supreme Court, and the world hasn’t fallen apart.

Maybe we could try going a few years without a president?

 

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On second thought, maybe we can recruit Colin Powell for the job. After reading his private e-mails, I think we can all agree that he has a refreshing way with words.

 

Powell on Hillary Clinton: “A 70-year-old person with a long track-record, unbridled ambition, greedy, not transformational, with a husband still dicking bimbos at home.”

Powell on former Vice President Dick Cheney and his daughter, Liz: “They are idiots.”

Powell on retired general Michael Flynn: “Gen. Flynn is a jerk. Got canned out of DIA.”

Powell on Donald Trump: “He is a know-nothing … a national disgrace … an international pariah.”

 

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TV Tidbits:

 

American Horror Story – The production design and look of the show are great, but FX needs to spend more time on the scripts. In other words, the show has the same problem it has pretty much every year. But we’ve only seen one episode, so let’s hope for the best.

 

Left to right: William Shatner, Terry Bradshaw, Henry Winkler, George Foreman, Jeff Dye 

 

Better Late Than Never – I have mixed feelings about this four-part series. On the one hand, the affection these geezers have for one another seems real and it’s infectious; it’s a lot of fun to watch them interact on their trip to Asia. On the other hand, most of the situations they find themselves in are obviously scripted. And in this age of income inequality, it’s a bit off-putting to celebrate four multi-millionaires spending NBC’s cash on an expensive vacation.

 

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Brit Hume

 

*****

 

 

Can’t believe Gary Johnson (above) hadn’t heard of Aleppo.

Everyone knows Aleppo was the fifth Marx Brother.

 

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A“basket of deplorables”?

I’m beginning to think that neither Trump nor Clinton wants to win this thing.

 

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More Mean Tweets

 

 

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Mean Tweets from Trump’s Evil Twin

 

 

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Some chick in Oregon named Jillian Henry (above) got photobombed by a naked man and his dog.

Her subsequent tweet with the photo (shown at the top of this post) went viral. I suspect that Jillian’s bikini posts, like the one shown below, might explain why the nude dude cast his rod in her direction.

 

 

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Speaking of bubble butts, hamster Michelle got booted out of the house on Big Brother. And so for her and for us it is … The End.

 

 

© 2010-2026 grouchyeditor.com (text only)

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Donnie’s Angels

 

I’m not sure what Donald Trump would do without his team of blond spokeswomen. On Wednesday, Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway (top right) held her own against Rachel Maddow. Nearly every night, Trump supporter Kayleigh McEnany (top center) is gang-tackled by liberals on CNN, but she generally comes off well. And then of course there is Trump daughter Ivanka (top left).

Makes me wonder why old foot-in-his-mouth doesn’t just drop out of the election and let one of these women run in his place.

 

*****

 

 

This guy is as dull as dishwater, but I am nevertheless appreciating Wolf Blitzer. Unlike everyone else in the media, at least he keeps his opinions to himself.

 

© 2010-2026 grouchyeditor.com (text only)

 

Haunted Houses!

 

Two ghost stories that aren’t particularly scary but man, do they know how to stage one helluva haunted house:  1999’s The Haunting and 2015’s Crimson Peak.

 

 

I will watch these movies repeatedly just to marvel at the sets. Pictured above, Crimson Peak. Pictured below, The Haunting.

 

 

*****

 

Politics!

 

There are news reports that Donald Trump received his first intelligence on Wednesday. It’s about time.

 

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Willa’s Butt!

 

 

Someone at MTV must admire Scream star Willa Fitzgerald’s cute bubble butt, especially in tight jeans, because we sure got to see a lot of it – not that I’m complaining.

 

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This dude in a scene from Amazon’s Alpha House also enjoyed Willa’s butt: 

 

 

Willa’s Butt, by the way, is also the name of a cactus indigenous to the American Southwest.

 

 

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Ashleigh Baker

 

Far be it from me to accuse A&E of turning its reality show 60 Days In into a women-in-prison flick, but this was a highlighted scene from the premiere of the second season:

 

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(click on pictures for larger views)

 

Poor Ashleigh Baker (above) was pressured to pull her pants down so a gang of drooling, salacious female inmates could ogle her ass.

I know I’ve seen this before, in either The Big Doll House or Chained Heat.

 

© 2010-2026 grouchyeditor.com (text only)

 

Don Lemon Week!

 

“We tend not to trust disagreeable people, in part because they’re not trustworthy.”

 

– Dan McAdams, professor of psychology at Northwestern University, stating the obvious while explaining Donald Trump to CNN’s Don Lemon.

 

 

 

 

– Donald Trump on Twitter, explaining Don Lemon to the world.

 

We noticed that Dandy Don wore his glasses this week during his show. Everyone knows that smart people wear glasses.

 

*****

 

I am currently reading a biography about Joseph Stalin and his reign of terror in Russia.

This is how I comfort myself with the fact that yes, politics have been worse than they are this year in America.

 

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I’ve been ignoring the Summer Olympics.

I just … don’t … seem to care.

 

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Andrea Tantaros joined the roster of women accusing Roger Ailes of sexual harassment at Fox News. 

 

Didn’t we (sort of) predict this a month ago?

 

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Revamp at Fox News!

 

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                       Moos                                     Crowley                                          Starr

 

As part of a major corporate-culture overhaul at Fox, the network announced its latest midday offering, Outweighed, in which portly TV journalists Barbara Starr, Jeanne Moos, and Candy Crowley will gang up on a different hapless male each day. The ladies’ first guest will be deposed Fox chief Roger Ailes, pictured at top.

 

Before we say goodbye to Roger, let’s take one more look at some of the talent he’s introduced to television journalism (click on thumbnails for larger view):

 

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             Andrea Tantaros                     Shannon Bream                      Jedediah Bila

 

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.Julie Banderas, Megyn Kelly         Jeanine Pirro                 Kimberly Guilfoyle

 

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.                 Tantaros                                     Bila                           Joanne Nosuchinsky

 

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.            Harris Faulkner              Diana Falzone                     Courtney Friel 

 

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.                   Stacey Dash                          Anna Kooiman         Elisabeth Hasselbeck

 

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Apparently this guy has never read the reviews for Tyler Perry movies.

 

 

© 2010-2026 grouchyeditor.com (text only)

 

I can’t understand why Democrats didn’t want this to be the face of their party.

 

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Stranger Things: If you like this miniseries, it’s an entertaining homage to 1980s kid-centric adventures. If you don’t like it, it’s a lame rip-off of superior movies. I think it’s a bit of both. The Spielberg-inspired fantasy has a lot going for it. The characters are generally engaging – especially the sheriff, the funny kid with curly hair, and the telekinetic girl – and the show’s ’80s vibe is fun. But there is also a great deal of plot silliness and material that feels overly familiar.

 

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I have a warped sense of humor, but I can’t be the only one who thinks the commercial with kids watching Trump rant and rave on TV is hilarious. Hillary, if you are so concerned about children being traumatized by Donald’s scary blathering, maybe you shouldn’t air this ad 500 times a day, which ensures that our precious snowflakes will get to see it.

 

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This gift to the world from Kanye West has been out for a month now, but we haven’t commented on it because it was only recently that our bad dreams stopped. Looking at it again, we can only assume that this is why some people join ISIS.

 

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Typo of the Week honors go to CNN:

 

 

© 2010-2026 grouchyeditor.com (text only)

 

 

Politics Pees on the Carpet

 

I walked into a room and the TV was on. Pundits were talking about someone with an “unstable personality” and a “disturbed nature.” Turns out they were discussing the French Tunisian who bulldozed pedestrians in Nice, France.

It’s a sad state of affairs when my initial hunch was that the pundits were analyzing one of our presidential candidates – either one of them.

 

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.                                  Greg Stillson                                          Mrs. Iselin

 

I look at Hillary and am reminded of Mrs. Iselin, the conniving political operative in The Manchurian Candidate: cool, calm, and calculating — always calculating.

I look at Donald and I see Greg Stillson, the psychotic presidential candidate in The Dead Zone: certifiably insane.

Should be an interesting four years … provided we survive them.

 

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“People don’t like to be treated like they’re fools.” – Republican analyst Steve Schmidt criticizing the Trump campaign’s head-in-the-sand denials that Melania Trump’s speech plagiarized Michelle Obama’s speech.

Here’s one man who hoped that we were fools:

 

.                                                                          Sam Clovis

 

Trump campaign chairman Sam Clovis explained to Wolf Blitzer that Melania’s speech was simply a case of coincidental language:

 

Blitzer:  So, what do you make of this these accusations of plagiarism?

Clovis:  I think that the language is common enough that it would not be impossible or a stretch to believe that they [Michelle and Melania] would come to the same conclusions or the same language. It is a little ironic that they are — that in some places they are exact. But we see this often.

Blitzer:  Because it would be one thing if there were just one or two little lines, but there were several — there were three separate passages that were extremely similar.

Clovis:  Yes, and …  I thought the thing that was interesting last night was, I was — I was absolutely spellbound when she came out on stage. One, she — there is no way to describe how striking she is. I mean, just in her physical presence.

 

When all else, fails, change the subject.

 

 

By the way, I think that’s a picture of Sam Clovis. Not sure. It might be Roger Ailes.

 

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Speaking of Ailes … so far, we’ve heard tales of women at Fox who rebuffed the dirty old man’s advances. But Ailes was the powerful head of the top network in news. Are we to believe that all of the 22-year-old cuties itching for career advancement said no to him? Some of them must have said yes.

I assume Donald Trump’s favorite news source, the National Enquirer, is on the job.

 

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CNN’s Ana Navarro, pictured above, was unhappy with Ted Cruz’s non-endorsement of Trump:

 

“If you get invited to a dinner party, you don’t show up, eat the food, drink the wine, and then piss on the carpet. And that’s basically what Ted Cruz did today.”

 

I don’t know. It seemed to work for Linda Blair in The Exorcist.

 

 

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I assume Geraldo is lamenting the reputed $40 million golden parachute Roger Ailes received as a reward for spending decades sexually harassing babes at Fox News.

 

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You know times are tough when even Stephen King can’t seem to write.

 

 

© 2010-2026 grouchyeditor.com (text only)

 

“I judge actors mostly not by the acting, but by the scripts they pick.” – Bill Maher.

Me, too. I used to admire Robert Downey Jr. and Jennifer Lawrence, but nowadays they seem more interested in superheroes and paychecks than in making good movies.

 

I don’t always agree with Maher. It’s grating when he goes on one of his rants about “stupid Americans,” as if all he needs to do is cross the border into Canada or Mexico or any other country to be immediately surrounded by Mensa members. I’m thinking Americans don’t have a monopoly on ignorance and foolishness, but you might not think that after listening to Maher. And I also get tired of his endless crusade to legalize marijuana.

But on the whole … the man is sharper and bolder than any other satirist on the television screen.

Now that I’ve praised him, he’s certain to make some boneheaded comment this week during the Republican convention.

 

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Say that again, and I’ll snap your head off!

 

“I’m going to be talking to white people.” – Hillary Clinton on troubled race relations. Yeah … that’ll learn us white people. We need to be educated about traffic stops that end with somebody in the morgue by a woman who hasn’t driven a car in years, and who thinks “ghetto” is the name of a Stevie Wonder song.

 

“People who are successful.” – Fox News describing anyone who is actually “rich.” The winner of a hot-dog-eating contest is successful. Bill Gates is rich.

 

“Undocumented workers.” – Most of the mainstream media adhering to the P.C. Bible. When I forget my card-key at home and can’t get into work, I’m an undocumented worker. Geraldo in the kitchen is an illegal alien.

 

*****

 

 

Freeform’s Dead of Summer isn’t likely to make anyone forget Halloween, or even Friday the 13th, but it might feature the most bodacious brunette in Slasherville since Debi Sue Voorhees wore her birthday suit in Friday the 13th: A New Beginning. Pictured above and below, Amber Coney struts her stuff in the most recent episode of Dead of Summer:

 

        

 

Below, Debi Sue Voorhees — just in case you needed a reminder:

 

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(click pictures for a larger view)

 

*****

 

 

I looked at the list of Emmy nominees and I noticed at least one glaring omission: You simply have to give a nomination to Vera Farmiga (above) for her work in Bates Motel. But they didn’t.

 

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