We're Back! The Cerebral Itch Scratch Pad Staff has been reunited!

I suppose apologies are in order.

Just like all stories of infidelity, they must begin with a chance meeting that accelerates into a torrid pleasure-fest where both parties ego's are being fed by paper-thin affections and co-dependence. And that was essentially us with the whole "Viva Chuck Todd" and "Viva Rachel Maddow" thing. If you have no idea what we're talking about, consider yourself lucky. For the lucky ones, we'll recap: Last year during the heat of the historic and wacky election season we thought it would be funny to start up a fansite for the doughy and intellectually alluring NBC Political Director, Chuck Todd. Well, somewhere around Memorial Day weekend 2008, MSNBC's morning show, Morning Joe picked us up and plastered the damn site all over the TV = massive traffic. Then Tim Russert died and because Chuck Todd was his Padawan, we got shit-hammered again on the traffic. Anyway, to make a long story short, we thought we'd hit a gravy train and could ride this sucker for all it was worth through election day and come out the other end lightin' cigars with $100 bills. We even went to Denver for the Democratic National Convention to meet these peeps and started a goddamn Chuck Todd fan club on our own dime.

Boy, is my ass sore.

Nothing came of our efforts (blogs, merchandise, e-cards, etc.) and at the end of the day we were maintaining three blogs while trying to get Cerebral Itch to turn a profit. Talk about taking your eye off the ball.

So here's the deal: No more Chuck Todd, no more Rachel Maddow, No more MSNBC. We're all about Cerebral Itch, riffing on pop culture and trying to get Veejay laid.

So with that said, we're sorry and we're back.

CHUCKTODD08.com Launches:Numbers rule and so should Chuck

Many readers of our companion blog Viva Chuck Todd have been lamenting the understandable absence of The Chuck. It has been cruel summer so far, but we think we found the right place to lift a Chuckolyte's spirits: Chucktodd08.com. A page with links to all you need to know about the ultimate political candidate of the season. There are new e-cards, polls, Chuck08 merchandise in which all proceeds go to Tim Russert charities and links to other supporters of this fine endeavor.

Let us know what you think about Chucktodd08.com. If we hear from enough of you we may actually get him to run.

Loudmouths: Compare and Contrast

One of the inescapable phenomena in today's political climate are the plethora of pundits that threaten to block out the sun with their sheer numbers. There are those that stand out from the rest due to their bombast, intellect or sheer stupidity. We know the all-stars: Limbaugh, Savage, Malkin, Hannity and Beck. On the Left side of the shoutin' match you got your Olbermann, Maddow and Rhodes. What many people don't realize is that the intellectual prowess of one side kicks the living shit out of the other. Ironically, the side with the most followers, has the fewest credentials proving they have a little more than a smooth brain in their head.

All of this was brought to the fore by a blazingly enjoyable moment on Hardball with Chris Matthews. A little known right-wing radio commentator named Kevin James (not to be confused with fat d-lister Kevin James of CBS King of Queens fame) was paired with AirAmerica owner, Mark Green for an on-air debate surrounding another Bush fuck-up in which our President so much branded an unnamed Democrat an appeaser using the context of Hitler in front of the Israeli Parliament. Chris Matthews who fancies himself an armchair historian took it upon himself to do a little history check to see if James could back up his high-volume declaration that Barack Obama was an appeaser on par with Sudetenland seller, Neville Chamberlain. Well, this is what happened (grab some Kleenex now, because you're going to need it from the tears of laughter you'll be shedding):



The fact that this moron couldn't give Matthews a high school freshman rundown of WWII history brought to mind the fact that practically all of the right-wing pundits should be changing tires at Sears Auto Centers or putting together Happy Meals. Allow me to illustrate:

Rush Limbaugh: Flunked out after two semesters at Southeast Missouri State University and soon entered radio where he got his big break replacing Morton Downey Jr. We'll leave it at that.

Michael Savage: Probably the most educated of all, except none of it is germane to politics or journalism. Michael Savage aka Michael Alan Weiner (sometimes you can't make this shit up) has a Ph.D. from Berkeley in nutritional ethnomedicine. Which led him to be a disciple of LSD prophet Timothy Leary. A fan of Lenny Bruce and Alan Ginsberg, Savage was quite liberal in his day and somewhere around 1980 he went right...hard. Today, words like "fascist", "homophobic" and "bigot" follow Savage wherever he goes. Savage's book titles speak volumes, no pun intended: The Enemy Within: Saving America from the Liberal Assault on Our Schools, Faith, and Military, Liberalism Is a Mental Disorder and The Savage Nation.

Okay, enough with the Right-Wing nutjobs, let's examine the more vociferous liberal media megaphones.

Keith Olbermann: Host of MSNBC's Countdown with Keith Olbermann. Olbermann's sails have caught the wind of Bush disapproval and as a more toned down love affair alternative to the likes of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. Olbermann is considered ridiculously bright as evidenced in his graduation from high school at 16 and entry into Cornell University. He has had a rocky relationship with his employers such as ESPN and MSNBC, but assuages the occupational bumps with substance and awards, like the Edward R. Murrow Award he received for reporting from the site of the 9-11 attacks for 40 days on ABC Radio and Los Angeles radio station KFWB. His recent Special Comment about Bush giving up golf as a personal sacrifice in light of his war has caught fire online and galvanized rancor amongst Republicans and Democrats alike.

Rachel Maddow: Host of the Rachel Maddow Show on Air America Radio and frequent MSNBC Political Commentator. Maddow is a Rhodes Scholar by way of Stanford and Oxford. I'll stop right there out of mercy for the rest. Oh, and formerly of Fox News, John Gibson likes to point out she's a lesbian. Kudos to Maddow for not pointing out that he's an ugly retarded heterosexual.

At this point I will refrain from shining a light on the rest only to tell you that the trend continues on both sides. The right-wing punditry is pathetically outclassed on the intellectual front. Does this invite cries of elitism and bleeding-heart liberalism? Sure it does. But please remember back to when your functional illiterate bullies in grade school always made fun of the geeks and fags.

Gone are the days of Will, Buckley, Vidal and Mailer. Their mantle has been seized by loudmouth assholes with little regard for topical fact, history and a cursory knowledge of the constitution. Extinct are the moments on Dick Cavett where the intellectuals would square off and piss each other off in a cerebral three-dimensional chess game of one-upsmanship under the cloud of war (Viet Nam) or social unrest (Kent State). Now, it's who can yell the loudest, blame the boldest and get the hell out of the way fastest so their mindless pitchfork and torch bearing masses can do the rest.

Fine, give me my pitchfork. I'm with the geeks and fags.

Olberman goes all Howard Beale on the President's Ass - and rightly so

Vituperative brilliance aimed at an awful and stupid man. Seeing that his world came true, Paddy Chayefsky must be quite melancholy in heaven these days.

Super Tuesday sidebar: Rachel Maddow chokes someone at MSNBC with an Apple

The one station that manages to stay on 24/7 here at the Cerebral Itch offices is MSNBC. It's our cable newstation of choice for a multitude of reasons. One, it happens to be half as crazy as FoxNews and twice as smart than CNN (not hard let me tell you). Plus, it's got the added suspenseful zing of Chris Matthews, the doughy drunk version of Network character Howard Beale and Tucker Carlson's career doing the Schiavo (He's gotta have pics of Dan Abrams doing something unholy). Most of all, we dig Olbermann. He speaks truth to power in a such a way that if "power" wasn't so goddamn moronic and knew how to use a dictionary, Keith could actually find himself in some trouble. But now we can add to that list of MSNBC cats we dig: Rachel Maddow.

Dr. Maddow (doctorate in political science and a Rhodes Scholar) is a well known radio host with her own show on Air America Radio. Her intellect and wit (along with crisp elocution) got her on Countdown. She obviously impressed the brass enough to get her the unenviable job of frequently sparring with Dickensian misanthrope Pat Buchanan on Hardball and election nights. So last night, there she sat. Holding her own with Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post, Joe Scarborough and Pat Buchanan on the MSNBC Super Tuesday battle bridge. Bond villain-esque acrylic catwalks, plasma screens as far as the eye could see and Rachel's little MacBook right in front of her and thus the comedy of this post. See, MSNBC is a joint-venture between NBC and Microsoft. Therefore, anytime Apple makes news it is covered begrudgingly. But there in plain view it sat, Rachel's MacBook with Apple logo glowing icy blue-white surrounded by a sea of Dell computers running Windows. Commence spit-take Microsoft executives.

The best part was twenty minutes later when Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann came back to the crazy quartet, Rachel's MacBook was folded at half-mast; Apple logo no longer visible. The subtle brand nonconformity was genius and soon quashed by some producer who probably just got his ass chewed off by MSNBC Marketing. All I can say is Steve Jobs should shower her in free iPhones and iTunes gift cards for getting past security and plopping his product down in the belly of the beast.

The whole thing almost made up for Hillary winning California.

On Notice

These two sicken us (Bush's yin to Karl Rove's yang, Karen Hughes and radio personality and misanthropic old queen, Michael Savage)