ChicagoCita

I used to work at a large corporation where they made the top salespeople the managers of the sales departments. While it makes sense in theory, it was awful. Having an assertive personality as a top salesperson did not translate into having the people skills necessary to managed 15 or 20 people. So that's my analogy to having an acclaimed and respected actress as panel moderator. Different set of skills. Someone who is used to selling herself as a product and brand is not someone who will have the patience to deal with people of differing opinions. Ditto for CCB for the same reasons -- she believes so strongly in what she believes that she can't deal well with people who believe otherwise. I feel like, in her mind, they are to be persuaded, not listened to. I'm beating a dead horse here, but I would have loved seeing Brooke Shields join The View. She's got a lot of facets in her life and I think most people could relate to at least some aspect of her. Of the remaining panelists, I could see Joy, Paula and even Padma being decent. A good moderator has to make it a forum, not sell her own beliefs to the exclusion of others'. Whoopi has too strong a personality to listen to anyone else.

Kit Screws! Or Erin Carson.

I FF'd through most of the show, but I have to say that Darlene Love kicked ass! What a show-stopper. Her voice is strong and still amazing. She's 74 and sounds better than ever. She's my new gold standard for aging performers. On BaWa's outfit, I share in the dismay. While I certainly have strong opinions about her, both good and bad, I've always enjoyed how she dressed: timeless and classic. This outfit -- just NO. Besides the travesty of the pants, she needs a better bra. I really think if she boosted the girls and wore simple black trousers, a disaster would/could have been avoided. (Being German and all that that entails in the boobage department, I can't say enough about good support. And that is all.)

They also make pure black ones. A friend decided to "tease" his wife by planting the front yard full of them on the occasion of her significant ends-in-zero birthday. Let's just say it did not go over well. At all. Here's an article about the man who invented them. He sounds like charming flake. Nothing is said specifically about them having to be pink.

Funny you should bring that up. Elisabeth, who proclaims to be such a Christian icon, might not have been paying a lot of attention to a little thing called The Sermon on the Mount. I'm really not here to thump a Bible or proselytize. I just find it kind of amazing how twisted some radical Christians are when confronted by the words and actions of the Dude himself. As far as I know, Elisabeth is all about "sounding the trumpet" and not so much about "give to the needy." In other words, all sizzle, no steak.

Scut Farkas? Who actually grew up to be pretty nice.

Brandon had that weird hand gesture at the beginning, but I liked him. Always have liked gingers, and that worked in his favor. I thought I would like any of them winning, and usually root for the woman (solidarity!) -- but her long pauses made me second-guess that. Hope it was simply a nervous habit and she gets over it.

Please please please -- let the first part be right!

I'm too lazy to look it up, but Biblically, I believe the one unforgivable sin is blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. All other sins are equally abhorrent to God. That's why it makes me roll my eyes when radical Christians focus exclusively on the "sin" of homosexuality (which is Biblically very iffy as a sin anyway) while totally ignoring all the other things that Christ focused on -- loving thy neighbor, feeding the poor, treating strangers as brothers, forgiving your enemy. Christians are taught that sin is not only offensive to God, but harmful to themselves. So all sin except the biggie is equally harmful, and equally forgivable. I think CCB is wayyyyy off-base in her assertion that only good works and deeds can come from Christianity. Wow. That's a pretty strong and unfounded (IMO) statement. She frightens me with her narrow dogmatic views. People all over the world do wonderful, moral, ethical things and live wonderful, moral, ethical lives. Some have never heard of Christ. Some choose not to follow Him. In fact, people were moral, kind and ethical long before 2000 years ago, when Christianity began. (My best friend is a vocal atheist, and while he and I disagree on just about everything having to do with religion, he is one of the kindest, most generous people I've ever known.) I laughed out loud when the mics caught Joy apologizing for not having enough time for Peggy Noonan. "Sorry. You got screwed." Love Joy!

What a day to get my TV sound back! Truly, who wants to watch a one-percenter get more gifts for an hour? Someone at The View has a very warped idea of what this viewer, at least, finds entertaining. Have to agreed with everyone who blinked at Raven's costume choice. She can look cute and quirky. Today, with the gas station roll of sanitized hand towels appearing as part of her outfit, wasn't one of them. I did a LOT of fast forwarding today.

My cable is back (no thanks to Comcast's help line). I have sound again! The weird thing is, all my shows taped, but it seems that the ones on ABC didn't record with sound, so The View and Jeopardy were basically silent movies. Thank you to everyone here for keeping me in the know. (I probably could have turned on the closed captioning, but that would have required paying close attention, and it didn't sound like I wanted to.)

Hah! This made me laugh (especially the juxtaposition with Jim and Susan). There are a *lot* of names that mean "Gift from God" which makes it even more hilarious to me. John, Jonathan, Ian, Matthew, Micah, Michael, Nathaniel, Sean, Simon, Theodore, even Zebidiah. I mean, there are literally a shit-ton of names that mean that. Poor kid. Technically, evangelical means sharing the good news about Christ to all who will listen. Technically, it's something all Christians are told to do. As someone who does not do well with being hard-sold or proselytized to, I don't do it (although I'm happy to talk about it if asked). I think the Christians who do evangelize tend to be more literal and fundamentalist in their Christianity, so there's an overlap with people who are conservative in their politics and social values. Unfortunately, the two traits tend to get intertwined and that's where you get the "God, Guns and Country" mentality. Just my opinion, but I can't think either God or the Founding Fathers look kindly on that. I accidentally sat on the universal remote last night and now my TV has no sound. (It's not the mute button.) Whatever combination of buttons got butt-pressed has rendered my TV viewing impossible. So I'm depending on y'all to get me through until it's fixed!

I was extremely stressed out as a teenager and developed chronic ulcers on my scalp from the tension. Wherever I got a persistent ulcer, my dark brown hair grew out pure white/silver. (An interesting look for a 16-year-old.) So I just kind of embraced it and used temporary stuff to streak different colors all over my hair. When I got older and had to enter the job market, I got layered haircuts and tried to cut the silver streaks shorter than the hair surrounding it. Now that I'm older, the rest of my hair has "caught up" to the streaks and it's not as noticeable, but I completely validate what you said about being difficult to color. It was like I had teflon-coated silver coming out of my head at random places.

NeNe Leakes seems to be the sort of person who can't live without drama surrounding her and who doesn't like other women much. The fact that she's still going on about it seems ... ugly.

Man, this panel drives me nuts. I personally don't WANT a President who freaks out, I want someone better than me. Someone who talks calmly with common sense to keep me from freaking out. CCB has said before that she wants Obama to show passion. I totally disagree. I want him to be the Calmer-in-Chief. And Candace, how he says something isn't important, it's what he does that matters. Does she not remember that the U.S. invaded the WRONG FREAKING COUNTRY and totally destabilized it a few minutes after 9/11 happened? That's what happens when Presidents act "with passion." Give me cool, calm and collected any day. On the same page, Whoopi was INSANE in her response to CCB's and Paula's criticisms of the President's speech. Another example of her losing her mind when someone dares to disagree with her. She is out of control. I am growing to dislike her extremely intensely. This is coming from someone who shares her admiration of Obama, but can't stand her bullying and irrationality when he is criticized. Or when anything she likes is criticized, or when an opinion of hers is not shared. Joy being gone somehow makes Whoopi act crazier than usual. "Joy-less" is coming to mean "joyless" for me! CCB is married to a Russian, so I believe she is pronouncing Maksim as he does.

I belong to a Protestant denomination started by Swedish Lutherans (Evangelical Covenant Church), and they tend to congregate in and adore Minnesota, particularly Duluth, so that's why I got it. I don't think I would have known, otherwise. Like Kelly, the Dakotas being in the clue made me suspect it was a Native American religion, except that the word "denomination" led me back around to Protestantism.

As for the woman who didn't get in, I wonder if the niece was underage? Audience members must be at least 16. Also, there are do's and don'ts for dressing. I really wonder if the woman and/or her niece didn't wear what was requested or wore all white or black?

I would certain recommend commenting on the www.abc.com site. I do every now and then when something on the show annoys the crap out of me. You can scroll to the bottom of the page to a "contact us" type link, then you choose what show you want to contact them about, and then you choose the content of your comment. You have about 500-700 characters to type in, so you must be succinct. I always get acknowledgments that I've commented, but no replies. I hope someone at ABC is taking those into account. In any case, it makes me feel better to vent, albeit politely and professionally.

Colin Quinn. He was an MTV game show host and the weekend anchor on Saturday Night Live in the '90s. He's someone who tends to be an acquired taste, too hip and esoteric to be mainstream. People pride themselves on being his fans, if that makes sense. I wasn't really paying attention, but I did like that he took AA's policy of anonymity seriously and wouldn't discuss the program, although it was obvious everyone knew he was in it. Other than that, nothing sticks in memory about the show except the counter breaking. Sorry for posting so much, I had coffee tonight. ;-)

Another thing that made me stabby today was CCB saying, in response to Joy's reminder that abortion is legal in this country, that she doesn't like her tax dollars going towards abortions performed by Planned Parenthood. It is well-documented that federal money cannot go towards abortions except in a very few cases (rape, incest, the health of the mother is in jeopardy). That's the law. (A few states allow state Medicaid funding for abortion, but that's only 17 of the 50.) Those are facts. Check the Hyde Amendment and many other laws. Joy said as much. CCB responded, "Well, we'll just have to agree to disagree on this." NO. NO. NO. There is no reason to "agree to disagree." Your beloved conservative politicians ensured that the vast majority of abortions cannot be paid for with federal funding. There is nothing to disagree about here. It is the truth. It's like some idiot baseball player said he disagreed with the "homosexual lifestyle." There is nothing to disagree with. It's like saying you disagree with the color orange, or the existence of coyotes, or snow. It exists. It is a fact. It is indisputable. Gah, these people who invent controversy out of thin air because something doesn't fit into their neat little closed minds drive me INSANE.

I knew this bunch of New Yorkers who would be hard-pressed to find Chicago on a map (Paula excepted, she worked here) would make my blood boil with their half-assed coverage. The whole thing makes me sad and disgusted, but there were reasons the tape wasn't released earlier, one being that it was at the request of the young man's family, who didn't want their son's execution to be played around-the-clock all over the world. (I still haven't seen the tape and don't want to, but it's hard to avoid. The young man didn't die so that I could be luridly entertained by that kind of footage.) They settled with the city for $5 million and the non-release of the tape was at their request as part of the settlement. It was only released because a judge ordered it to be released. They were quick to say Anita Alvarez, the Cook County States Attorney, was to blame for not filing charges more quickly. But the facts are that the FBI and DoJ are looking into filing federal charges and the Cook County States Attorney takes a back seat to them. Yet another reason for the delay that I've seen floated by friends who tend to know these things is that at the time the execution happened, the country was seeing destruction in Ferguson, Berkeley, and Baltimore. There is an argument being made that it was withheld in part to avoid similar riots and unrest during a hot Chicago summer. I don't know how valid that is, it's just a theory I've seen put forth. It's equally possible that the cynical point of view is correct: that the tape was withheld because Rahm was in a tight run-off election this year and this would have torpedoed his chance of being reelected (just as it will almost assuredly sink any chance Anita Alvarez has of being reelected in the upcoming March election). I guess what I'm saying is, there are a lot of moving parts to this story, and the two seconds The View gave it managed to ignore all that and piss me off in the little time they allotted. Even worse than Raven pretending she knew what was going on, while trying to side-eye Anita Alvarez's name off her blue card, was Whoopi saying "We'll keep you posted. When we know stuff, you'll know stuff." This --- EIGHT DAYS after the tape was released. SEVEN DAYS after protests began. FIVE DAYS after a massive protest shut down the main shopping street in Chicago on Black Friday. Yes, Whoopi, I always enjoy getting my current events from The View, staler than last year's Halloween candy and about as nuanced as a fourth-grade book report.

One of the first fights I had with my dad, circa 1970, was about dressing up in business attire for a flight (his view) versus dressing in jeans to be comfortable (my view). I usually dress for maximum coverage in case the plane has a problem, Because I'm a dork. Heavy jeans, long sleeves, sturdy shoes. As much cotton and linen as I can, no polyester. I saw an aviation specialist who said to dress in clothes that would protect you from flames in case you had to get off the plane in a hurry, and for some reason that stuck. My cousin and I are the same age and we both do it, while the older generation sits and laughs at us. I have friends who work for airlines, and they will upgrade us to first class if they can, but they tell us we better dress like we're going to the most important job interview ever. So we do. ;-) I'm finding that I'm liking Candace a lot more. Her voice still grates, but she's moved away from only talking about religion and family. The stick that was up her butt seems to have been removed. I noticed a few weeks ago she said she'd vote for Trump, but now she seems to be dissing him. I still don't trust her, but I'm not wanting to throw things at the TV when she's on, either.

I got all verklempt at the end with James Earl and Denise. It was good to see their relationship grow stronger as the race went on. I hope their re-found respect for one another endures.

Thank you! I was like, oh, a big score, and hit delete. Obviously tryptophan was coursing through my system... That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

I'm apparently in a turkey-addled state, and deleted the show right after Double Jeopardy instead of watching FJ. Can someone tell me the question/answer? I'm apparently in a turkey-addled state, and deleted the show right after Double Jeopardy instead of watching FJ. Can someone tell me the question/answer?