Alabama Liberal

Alabama Liberal Goes to China!

If that title wasn’t straightforward enough, let me confirm that, yes, I did just get back from a recent two week trip to China (specifically, Shanghai and then a shorter time in Hong Kong).

The next two weeks of the blog will be a deviation from the articles that usually run as I hope to talk about the trip. It’s pretty rare that I talk about much personal on here, so my apologies for this indulgence, but I’ll try to make it fun to read about even if you have no interest in ever stepping foot in America’s chief rival for global dominance.

This will hopefully be the next best thing as I plan to (hopefully) include pictures, video, an interview, many descriptions of tourist attractions, and, of course, some of the negative political things I observed there. It was an amazing time, but More >

A Final Roundup of Missed 2011 Movies including The Artist, Win Win, A Separation, Conan Can’t Stop, and More

So what in the hell does that awkward title mean? It means that I recently took a very long international roundtrip on an airplane (more about where I went tomorrow, but I think most readers will be in for a surprise) and one of the only things keeping you sane back in coach—-where I was seated next to, yes, a crying baby for a 15 hour flight, the ultimate cliche—-is being able to watch some movies. And since I was bored out of my mind and looking for any distraction, it was a great opportunity to watch ten movies that had somehow slipped through my fingers in the last year. So now, the finale ten 2011 movies I’ll bother you with…

1. We Need to Talk About Kevin: A real disappointment for me. I’ve heard raves about the book and of course there was a long time when it looked like Tilda More >

TV Review: I Recap the “Desperate Housewives” Series Finale, So You Don’t Have to Watch It

Dear Readers, there is a shameful period of my past that I’m none too happy about. No, I don’t mean any incidents in college or high school that may or may not involve elaborate pranks and debauchery, I mean the 2004-2005 television season when I, like just about anyone at the time who was watching television heavily, watched the majority of the first season of Desperate Housewives.

That’s right, the show that jump-started the obnoxious, selfish, gold-digging women movement was actually something I watched on a near weekly basis. I can’t remember if it’s something I ever actually enjoyed—-and I did have the eventual, painful realization that I hated all of the lead characters—-but I do remember the developments and have followed enough of the show since then (mostly through court cases by More >

Mom Joke: Collar on Backwards

A little boy got on the bus, sat next to a man reading a book, and noticed he had his collar on backwards. The little boy asked why he wore his collar backwards.

The man, who was a priest, said, ‘I am a Father’ The little boy replied, ‘My Daddy doesn’t wear his collar like that.’

The priest looked up from his book and answered, ”I am the Father of many.’

The boy said, ”My Dad has 4 boys, 4 girls and two grandchildren and he doesn’t wear his collar that way!’

The priest, getting impatient, said. ‘I am the Father of hundreds’, and went back to reading his book.

The little boy sat quietly thinking for a while, then leaned over and said, “Maybe you should wear a condom, and put your pants on backwards instead of your collar.”

Be the first to More >

Larger Editorial: Why We Need to Rediscover Economic Liberalism

Who is this ambiguous “we” in the title of this post? Democrats? Liberals in general? Bloggers? New Yorkers/San Franciscans/urban dwellers on both coasts? How about all of the above?

Democrats, liberals, liberal progressives, social liberals, whoever votes or has voted or will vote for a progressive cause in their lifetime desperately need to rediscover the virtues of economic liberalism, a.k.a. “the money.” I say this because for far too long it appears the leftwing has all but given up on economic causes and almost completely alienated the FDR New Deal Democrats that made up the Southeast at one time.

It’s not that gay rights or women’s issues or any of the social liberal agendas that have all but overtaken the leftwing aren’t important. It’s just that they can’t be the only thing More >

Entertainment Editorial: Five Shows Ruined By Success

In an age of a thousand TV channels, it’s become harder than ever to really break out and enjoy that fleeting sensation known as “success” in television—-the kind of thing that can get Mad Men’s Matthew Weiner and The Sopranos’s David Chase enough money to never have to work for five lifetimes—-and that can guarantee your favorite show can be on for many, many years to come. Still, for all the talk about TV shows that were “gone too soon” (I’ll miss you Rubicon, Brotherhood, Luck, and the recently deceased Bent), what about shows that were “gone too slow?” TV shows that started out promising and either 1. Were so successful they stayed on too long, or 2. Were so successful, they started coasting big time because they could. [We're already seeing "hits" like Person of Interest and Grimm More >

Why “Mad Men,” Gets the Difference Between the 60′s Fantasies of the Past and Realities of the Future

By now so many shows have been set in the 50′s and 60′s that they’re practically a sub genre of their own (albeit not usually a successful one). The “60′s set shows” often showcase intact nuclear families being as wholesome and perfect as the time allows while grappling through a series of “world changing events” that the show goes through like items on a history checklist (JFK assassination-check, Vietnam-check, Civil Rights-check) without really bringing them to life.

And you could definitely accuse Mad Men of the same type of historical name-dropping (Kennedy vs. Nixon, JFK dead, Vietnam, and Civil Rights have all been mentioned without the show actually digging deep into them or having a real concern for any of these events, particularly Civil Rights…so far). However, the show sets More >

TV Review: “Touch,” a Show Worth Saving

It’s that time of year when the broadcast networks (ABC, Fox, pitiful-ratings-wise-but-decent-creatively NBC, and pitiful-quality-wise-but-explosive-ratings-wise CBS) begin to schedule their shows for the upcoming Fall season, and that means that within a couple weeks we’ll know the fates of all the “bubble” shows that could either get renewed or get put out to pasture.

Now of course there are plenty of TV shows I’d like to see saved, and I created an Entertainment Editorial list a month ago that included NBC’s terrific, under-watched Awake, NBC’s equally under appreciated Community and Parenthood, ABC’s wholly original gem The River, and Fox’s perennial underdog Fringe. But I left out one show because, at the time, I thought it stood a really good chance of coming back for another More >

Mom Jokes: Running Naked

A woman was having a daytime affair with her boyfriend. One rainy day she heard her husband pull up outside while she was in bed with him.

“Oh my God, it’s him. You have to get out of here!”

“I can’t jump out the window. It’s raining out there!”

“My husband’s got a hot temper and a gun. If he catches us here, he’ll kill us both!”

So the boyfriend grabs his clothes, scoots out the window, and begins running down the street. As he does, he gets swept up in a marathon running down the same street, so he started running alongside the 300 people competing in the marathon.

Being naked, his clothes tucked under his arms, he tried to blend into the crowd as best he could, but after a while some of the other runners started jogging closer to him and checking him out suspiciously.

“Do you always More >