Headline News Recap
The biggest story this week wasn’t the war, the colossal national debt, or even a natural disaster that hit someone somewhere. Hats off to the media for contributing nothing to the collective IQ of the nation as they went non-stop with O.J., O.J., O.J. This week O.J.’s book, which some speculate is a confession, was shelved by Judith Regan’s publishing company, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch’s evil empire, News Corporation. News Corporation also pulled the multi-hour interview special from its Fox channels, claiming that the whole exploitation would have been bad for the reputation of the company. Reputation!?! Considering that this is the same company that aired that midget dating show, this whole boycott of all things O.J. is pure bullshit. The book and the interview will come out, and due to the controversy, it will end up making five times the original income projections. Rupert Murdoch doesn’t give a flying fuck about offending people. This was the same guy who two weeks ago said that the loss of only 3,000 American troops was insignificant in terms of a war. O.J. is an asshole, but Rupert is an evil bastard, and neither one of them deserve a dime of hardworking people’s money.
A big blow to democracy and peace came this week with the assassination of Lebanese Cabinet Minister Pierre Gemayel. The anti-Syrian Gemayel was brutally gunned down in Beirut, making him the sixth anti-Syrian politician murdered in the past two years. Gemayel had a lot going against him; he was a Christian which rubbed the wingnuts in Hezbollah wrong, he was anti-Syrian which pissed off the Syrian occupiers, and he was a democratically elected official, which doesn’t seem to go over too well in that area.
Wednesday lactating mamas held “nurse-in” rallies at over 30 airports to protest an incident where a mom and her family were kicked off a Delta Airlines flight, because she offended a flight attendant by not throwing a bulky, smothering blanket over her nursing infant’s head during the breast-feeding process. The woman and her family were escorted off the plane and re-assigned to a different flight the next day. To the flight attendant who was offended I say, “Get a life, you miserable cunt!” and to Delta Airlines, “You are giving flight attendants way too much power.” There is a big difference between a possible terrorist and a mama who is nurturing her child in the most natural way. Sorry people, but boobies aren’t just for looking at.
Hunger no longer exists in the U.S. A new report by the U.S. Department of Agriculture has decided to drop the word “hunger” from its lingo claiming that the term “very low food security” was a more accurate description. Under this new U.S. government language re-assignment we can say that the Hurricane Katrina survivors aren’t “homeless” they are “currently in residential transition” and that America doesn’t have an “obesity problem” it simply has citizens who “enjoy a leisurely lifestyle and a chemically-enriched diet a little too much.”
Former Russian Spy, Alexander Litvinenko, died Thursday night after being poisoned nearly a month ago. He had been a vocal critic of Vladimir Putin’s government, and had been investigating the murder of a Russian journalist who was investigating Putin. I guess the old Soviet ideal of “shut the fuck up or we’ll kill you” isn’t dead after all.
In Local News
Last week’s Blackest of the Black tour was amazing. If you are on the West Coast and have a chance to see it, do yourself a favor! Jeff and I saw the movie, Borat, and laughed ourselves silly. The scene with the fat, naked guy is a little gross, but we nearly pissed ourselves through the entire flick. Do yourself another favor and see this movie.
Even though it’s Black Friday, and there are a lot of good deals, I’m not going shopping. It’s not the crowds or the competition or the long wait in check out lines keeping me away, it’s the Christmas music. If I had the choice between gouging my own eye out with a plastic spork from KFC or listening to two straight hours of “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree”, I would end up crying in a corner, babbling to myself like a crazy person, and fidgeting with the spork’s plastic wrapping. Seriously, that annoying song and “Santa Baby” make me want to gun down the mall elves.
Celebrities Who Amused Me This Week
Michael Richards, the actor who portrayed the beloved character Kramer on the show Seinfeld, became the darling of every morning zoo radio talk show this week. Apparently he was performing at a club where two black guys were heckling, and then Richards went off on an “n-word” laced tirade for several minutes. He is now pulling something of a Mel Gibson claiming that he isn’t a racist, and just lost his head. Michael, I’ve lost my head a few times, and like Mel, I’ve been pretty drunk, but unlike either of you, I have never gone off on a hateful, racist tantrum. Most of the time I’ve just ended up laughing myself silly, and making out with the ugly guy.
Fox News said there are plans in the works to come out with a right-wing version of The Daily Show. This will prove to be both interesting and challenging since right-wing lunatics usually don’t have a sense of humor.
Fox News seems to be on a roll this week as their own bespeckled blowhard Neil Cavuto claimed that the new kids movie about penguins, Happy Feet, was nothing more than an animated version of An Inconvenient Truth, because it had the nerve to feature an adult penguin with one of those plastic six-pack holder things stuck around its neck and talk about ice caps melting. Not since the whole “The purple Teletubbie is a fag” thing have I heard such asinine shit. However, there is a message to be heard, so for the last time; Fox wants nothing to do with truth, obvious, inconvenient or otherwise! No more truth!
So-called Magician, David Blaine, did another “trick” this week by escaping from a gyroscope hoisted above New York’s Times Square after two days of being strapped to the spinning device. As with all of David Blaine’s “magic tricks” I have to ask, ‘what about this is magic?’ If I wanted to see someone vomiting atop a building in New York City, I’d watch a model during her photo shoot lunch break.
Quote of the Week
“We’re going to have tough days ahead of us.” – Ken Johnson, spokesman for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America on the recent elections where many of their Republican allies lost House and Senate seats to Democrats.
Good! This was a whole article about how lobbyists who work for drug, oil, and environmentally damaging companies are shaking in their boots, because the Dems might not be as susceptible to the bribes for lenient legislation, unlike their Republican predecessors. I truly hope this is the case, because democracy isn’t democracy if they aren’t working for we the people. Besides, they’d better watch their ass, because when democracy fails, the politicians and the power elite are usually the first ones to get gunned down in a violent, citizen uprising. Alternative history books don’t lie; unlike the whitewashed shit they made us read at school.
6 comments:
Melanie,
I really like your blog, just one thing. If you hate the attention the media gives to unsignificant stories, why do you then give them even more attention by rehashing them in your posts. Maybe it would be cool to focus on the stories that aren't covered, which you usually just mentions in a sentence, instead of dedicating so much time to the stories that have been done to death during the week in news.That said, your blog is very amusing.
Anon - Herein lies my conundrum! I am a vocal critic of the media due to my background in media studies. I feel the need to call them on their bullshit, and point out their worship of sensationalism, yet by doing that I give attention to the very crap I detest. I do try and point out the more low key, interesting stories such as the "nurse-in", but if I ignore the mainstream then I wouldn't be giving an accurate critique. It is this constant Catch 22 that sucks. The only benefit is that it is easy to make fun of and laugh at.
Thanks for reading.
The British police have - at the time of commenting - no plans to start a murder investigation into the death of the former Russian spy. They suspect it was just an allergic reaction to a Big Mac. They could well be right...
OJ did it. He knows it, we know it, everybody knows it. If I decide to kill somebody I want his lawyer. Does he do credit?
4D - You're out of luck hiring O.J.'s lawyer unless you can bring the dead back to life. Johnny Cochrane died a year or so ago. As for the Russian spy, I heard Scotland Yard was investigating, but since Putin was the one who had him knocked off, no one is going to find that smoking gun, or smoking uranium pill, that is. Big Macs are definitely toxic enough to kill you, but they can do it less than a month.
Great post, Melanie. I think it's impossible to write a blog that comments on the news at all without sometimes giving more credit to the sort of people you'd rather not give publicity. They are, after all, the exact people that need to be ridiculed the most.
Love the story of the breastfeeding mum. Personally, despite being a nonparent and non exactly a lover of kids of planes, even I find this ridiculous. i mean, get a grip. It's gonna be over in a few minutes. You don't like it? Look away, dumb-ass!
Also loving the alternative language being employed by "your government". Wow, they really know how to downplay a shitstorm, huh?!
All good stuff. Thanks.
I'm with you on the spork motive. Every time I walk by a store during the holiday season I just flash back to the movie, "Koyaanisqatsi." We're just big, bulbous, vacuums of consumption and nothing brings out that sordid quality more than the holiday season.
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