In case you’ve been living under a rock this year, a presidential election in the U.S. is fast approaching. That means all decorum is lost and the shit hits the fan—or, in the case of some political “art,” the bathroom.

A Republican Party convention in Montana this weekend featured highlights such as Newt Gingrich, a gun/shovel/duct tape raffle, and—oh, right! an outhouse fondly called “Obama’s Presidential Library.”

The portable creative work featured a fake Obama birth certificate stamped “Bullshit”, in reference to the racist and tiresome “debate” over whether he was born in America. Every outhouse has a little graffiti on the walls, and this one was no exception. On the side of the bathroom was written, “for a good time call 1-800-Michelle Hillary Nancy.”

Also, the outhouse was painted to look like it was hit with a slew of bullets.

“That’s So Gay”: Now Okay!

Surprise! It’s apparently okay to use the word “gay” to mean “stupid” or “weak” according to the Broadcast Standards Council.

The response has been split: on the one hand, it’s disappointing that a group of people can agree that “stupid” and “weak” are acceptable synonyms for a queer identity, and not see a problem there. At the same time, censorship has been a tool that often targets the queer community, so it’s generally something to avoid. Besides, people have said awful things on talk radio for a while now, much of which manages to “fit into” broadcast standard—so maybe we should be focusing on changing social norms, instead of policing people’s words.

After all, if we were to write up a “clean language” test, I’d definitely fail—I was just debating whether buying my dad a plant for Father’s Day was “too gay” this weekend.

Speaking of censorship, Google is reporting an “alarming” rise in censorship in the past half-year. The search engine has received more requests to remove political content—including from Western governments like Canada, the U.S., U.K. and Spain.

Question: Can men and women be friends?

Apparently the question is some matter of debate, according to NPR.

After all,

Some of the research indicates that men, in particular, are somewhat likely to both report some level of attraction to their female friends and to believe their female friends feel some level of attraction to them.

I’m not really sure what to say to that. So… we’re not allowed to be attracted to our friends? If we do find our friends attractive, how exactly does that render our bonds disingenuous, anyway? I particularly like Faith and Mario’s “but he’s gay!” argument as to how they maintain their friendship. Right, because no straight girl has crushed out on her gay friend ever.

Either way, I’m counting down the seconds until noon—I just have to hear this one for myself.

@Sweden… Well that was awkward.

Shortly after @Sweden got boatloads of New York Times buzz, the current Sweden started tweeting some very strange screeds. Check out the storify for the whole rundown.

If you missed the Daily Show this week, on Wednesday it offered a kind of condensed, sweetened version of the current political moment in the U.S., a methodical and droll demolition of the out-and-out insanity that has gripped the American right. In the segment—which, by the way, earns every ounce of smugness it exudes—the archives of Fox News are deployed against itself, showing clips that completely contradict one another, just a few years apart. The Daily Show’s thesis? Fox News personalities have become the “liberals” they so loathe.

The American right has essentially invited a vampire over the threshold, and is now being sucked dry: by giving legitimacy to the no-nothing fringe of kooks, racists, militiamen, birthers, and assorted other lunatic rumps that orbit the Republican Party, they diminish themselves. For a party that once declared it was “Morning In America,” the GOP today appears to be receding into a kind of senile twilight. The palpable glee with which people watched Barney Frank deliver a verbal bitchslap to that poor unsuspecting woman at a Dartmouth, Massachusetts health care reform town hall (see the YouTube clip, right), whiffed strongly of schadenfreude. After the long dark tunnel of the Bush years, it was pure catharsis for millions to watch an elected senator stand in front of a public microphone and call her a fool to her face.

Is this good, functional, meaningful, constructive politics? Hell no. But is it kind of fun to watch—from north of the border? You betcha.