Headline News Recap
The fifth anniversary of the worst attack on U.S. soil since Pearl Harbor happened on Monday. You might have missed it if you happened to be a deaf mute who lives in a cave, but if you’re a regular Joe/Jill American you are probably damn sick of the 9/11 imagery especially when it appears nearly every second of the day on neocon media. Do those bastards know how to whore a tragedy or what! Since it’s been five years I think we have to step back now and consider maybe a more tasteful way of commemorating the lives lost on September 11th rather than showing the smoking Towers and replaying the emergency call center audio.
Citizens of the U.S. take a lesson from the Jews. We’ve experienced enough genocide and mass murder that we’ve got commemorating it down to a pat. On the anniversary of the tragic day, you have everyone light a candle, hang their American flags, and on big anniversaries like the 10th, 20th, and so on, you do a quiet solidarity march. No more neocon mouthpieces broadcasting from the Towers, just some candle-lighting and quiet prayer. Given the fact that it was mainly New Yorkers that perished on 9/11, and New York is traditionally a Democratic state, we aren’t really letting the deceased rest in peace by allowing extremist wingnuts use their death for publicity purposes.
Speaking of the sick son of a bitch who masterminded 9/11, a new book by African feminist poet, Kola Boof, reveals that while on a date at a Moroccan café in the mid-90s, she was confronted by Osama bin Laden. Later that evening, he followed her back to her hotel, raped her then took her as his mistress and prisoner for six months. She details her six month imprisonment at a four-star hotel along with Sami’s quirks like the fact that he likes Van Halen and thinks Whitney Houston is the bomb (pun completely intended). She gives insight into his thinking and belief system and reveals a truly disturbed, scary man. Bombing foreign embassies is violent, brainwashing a bunch of dudes into flying planes into a building is depraved, but forcing your Sudanese sex slave to dance naked to the B-52’s “Rock Lobster” lets the rest of the world know that they are dealing with one sick fuck.
My two favorite people this week are Payton and Eli Manning. I don’t give a rat’s ass about football, but apparently when two quarterbacks on opposing teams happen to be brothers it attracts enough Americans to their game and away from that farce ABC decided to run called The Path to 9/11. Thank you Manning Brothers, you did the impossible and made a sports game up the collective I.Q. of the population.
I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t mention the tabloidesque story about Anna Nicole Smith’s son being found dead in the Bahamas. He was there for the birth of Anna’s second child, and slumped over dead after fluffing up pillows to help his mom get comfortable. Usually when Anna is in the news, we all laugh. Her life is the kind of thing that makes mentally retarded people feel better about their level of intelligence, but since I’m a mom I think this story is sad. Yes, the woman is an idiot, and spent the better part of her late 20s fondling the shriveled private parts of a really, really old guy, but nobody should ever bury their own kid.
In Local News
We vote to incorporate our little neck of the Pacific Northwest into a bonafide city this coming Tuesday. The taxes won’t be lower, but at least we’ll have more say over our destiny. It came out today that the opponents of the Fairwood initiative happens to be several King County builders associations. I guess they don’t want to have to deal with buying off a whole new group of people, so instead they paid a call center to telemarket the negative aspects of incorporation to people in Fairwood. They haven’t called me yet, but I really hope they do.
This Week’s “No Shit” List
The Iraqi Constitution is not holding up. Geez with the budding civil war, a leadership put into place by the occupiers who waged an illegal war, the lack of basic services such as water, security, and electricity, I don’t understand why things aren’t going so well.
Most guys are officially declaring that Brittney Spears is no longer sexy. What did her in? Was it the loser husband, the obsession with Cheetoes or the fact that she is a talentless idiot who no longer has the tight ass to provide eye candy thrills? I’m thinking it’s the last one.
GOP senators came out in support of warrantless wiretapping. After all, it would be such a burden if the companies that slip support money to these senators actually had to come up with a creative way to compete with their competition instead of getting “tips” on their marketplace strategies. C’mon, you know this is happening. Warrantless wiretapping isn’t just for terrorists anymore!
Quote of the Week
“If we had to do it over again, we’d do exactly the same thing.” – Vice President Dick Cheney on Meet the Press. Tim Russert asked Cheney if he still would have invaded Iraq knowing that there weren’t any WMDs and, of course, Cheney said “yes.” Forget the WMDs, it’s about the oil, baby, yeah. Can we please give these guys the boot soon!
7 comments:
The UK's Channel 4 ran a series of programmes on 9/11. One was about a vietnam vet security man at the World Trade Centre who predicted 9/11. As he got squashed when the towers came down as he was trying to rescue people. That's the kind of programme to show. Ordinary people being brave.
First, "Rock Lobster"... I nearly spit my coffee on my screen.
Second, I'm using you as a test run, I can't leave comments on anyone else's page.
Love the post though, serious overkill in the states. I started to scream maniacally every time a new special came on the TV "I can't fucking take any more of this shit!!!!" There is a fine line between paying tribute and exploitation.
I live in Indianapolis, so I was required by law to watch the Manning vs. Manning game. I opted out & watched the Simpsons instead.
I can't believe you skipped Bushie-boy admitting to secret CIA prisons. How much are people really willing to stand?
lucky for me i stopped watching tv news about 6 years ago.
i stop what i'm doing to watch "house", that's pretty much it.
i think your prescription for commemorating national tragedies is excellent, and obviously far too sober and self-reflective to catch on.
it's like for one month, maybe even just one week, we woke up and realized what mattered...thn went right back to sleep.
Jeze - I'm not making the "Rock Lobster" thing up, it was really in Kola's memoirs.
Betty - I did omit Bush coming clean about the secret prisons. Conveniently he did it right before the Sept. 11th hoopla, so that it couldn't receive too much press. I'll have more about this and the fact that he's trying to get the Senate to okay torture in a future essay. Sometimes I wonder if we (the people who think conducting a government like a South American terrorist cartel) are the only ones who realize what's going on.
If Pearl Harbor happened in our age of multimedia frenzy, do you think we'd be watching that every December 7?
I live in Manhattan; I was here, awake in time to see the 2nd tower fall in real time.
Most Americans don't understand why we as a country are so despised, because they have no concept of the fact that the world doesn't revolve around us.
As for innocence, we New Yorkers lost ours way before 9/11, and we can't help thinking the rest of America (especially the landlocked regions out there in Bush country) is foreign terrain.
I too live in Manhattan and on this anniversary, there was naturally a depressing energy surrounding everyone. Everyone I know had less than no desire to go to ground zero. Namely because the pain is still so raw. It really infuriates me (but of course doesn't suprise me in the least bit) that the networks were and are using it as a centerpiece for bringing in ratings. I watched Bush's speech Monday night on the treadmill at the gym and couldn't help but react to it outloud. I wasn't the only one tuned in in the cardio room. Everyone was disgusted at how he used this awful moment in history as a tool to justify the war in Iraq. It was his usual propaganda saturated swill.
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