"The Campaign"

I wasn't planning to see this - Will Ferrell isn't really my thing - but my newspaper's social club picked it for our movie night and I had nothing else to do, so what the hell.

In "The Campaign" (or "Citizens United 101 for Frat Boys" as I like to think of it), Ferrell plays Cam Brady, a North Carolina congressman running unopposed for his fifth term until he accidentally leaves a sexually explicit message for his mistress on a Christian family's answering machine.

The Motch brothers, two corrupt billionaires blatantly based on the Koch brothers, see this as a chance to buy the election so they can sell the district to Chinese sweatshops and save on shipping.

They pick an associate's son, Marty Huggins (Zach Galifianakis), to run against Cam, putting millions of dollars into his campaign. "When you have the money," Jon Lithgow's Glen Motch smirks, "nothing is unpredictable." But Marty is fat and silly and sounds kinda gay, giving Cam plenty of opportunities to make gross Will Ferrell jokes.

Friendship and Politics

In the end it was probably inevitable.

I'm sad to notice that a rift has opened between one-time friends and colleagues Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann. The two of them were a big reason why I got into news and politics, and their apparent break-up is a reality check about the pressures of show business.

When Olbermann left MSNBC in January 2011, he and Maddow had kind words for each other. He called her "my dear friend" as he signed off, and she spent a brief segment of her show explaining that she would never have found a place on the network without his support.

Mika Brzezinski, Journalist/Pin-up

Okay, I realise this is Vanity Fair we're talking about, but whyyyyyy. If you insist on playing up the "they have so much on-screen chemistry" angle, then shouldn't Joe Scarborough be making googly eyes at Mika Brzesinski instead of ignoring her and striking his I'm A Savvy Manly Media Figure pose? They've reduced the daughter of Jimmy Carter's national security adviser to a silly teenager trying desperately to seduce an older man.