In one of her more underrated songs, Pat Benatar once sang “You’ve got a burning desire to be the victim…” and that pretty much sums up Sarah Palin these days, because she’s milking her woe-is-me card for all it’s worth as she makes the rounds on the talk-show circuit plugging her new book. In it, Miss Winky-Dink predictably pisses and moans that Katie Couric was a big meanie to her in that infamous interview last fall, and that the so-called “liberal media” in general is out to get her. And now she’s bitching that the cover featuring her on the current issue of Newsweek is “sexist”—as if someone forced her at gunpoint to pose in those running shorts smiling from ear-to-ear. Sweetheart, if you really wanna be President, you need to knock off the drama queen histrionics and develop a thicker skin than this. She’s a politician, and by definition, a politician has critics, enemies and others looking to tear him/her down—it comes with the territory. What kind of a leader can she be when all she’s worried about is how the media treats her? In the eloquent words of Stewie Griffin, “Go suck on a railroad spike!”
DROWNING IN THE PREJEAN POOL
Anyone else out there as tired as I am already of this prissy Carrie Prejean Miss California prima donna? She got all huffy at Larry King last week as he hurled his usual softball questions at her, which she deemed “inappropriate” and walked off the set in mid-show. Meanwhile, it seems that not one, but eight some-odd videos have surfaced from her past of Prejean masturbating on camera, which naturally prompts little ol’ me to ask who the hell is Miss Homophobe to judge anyone’s else’s sexuality? And like Sarah Palin, she just loves to play the victim card too, saying the media has screwed her over. Uhhh, sounds to me more like she pretty much screwed herself, just like in her videos! Don’t go away mad, Carrie, just go away…
CIVILITY, THE LOST ART
I wish I’d written the following letter I read in the Op-Ed page of the K.C. Star this week authored by one Phil Kline of Gladstone, MO about the decline of constructive debate in our society:
“I decided to try an experiment. My idea was to watch CNN, MSNBC, and Fox between the hours of 5PM and 8PM. I would change channels when any of our highly revered public servants or the analysts who try to help us make sense of governance, got to shouting in brazen interruption of each other. Result: The battery for my remote is now dead, the logo is rubbed off the channel button, and I’ve made an appointment for my carpel tunnel surgery…Honestly, my pit bull displays more civility and social grace than do our leaders. Once Americans could listen, consider and converse. It appears now that we have descended into the pit of automatic contentiousness and programmed vilification.”
Nicely put, Mr. Kline. Unfortunately, all the rancor, shouting and bitch-slapping on political talk shows makes for great theater (albeit of the absurd), thus translating into high Nielsen ratings, hence why the networks encourage it and why it ain’t going away any time soon.
MR. POT, MEET MR. KETTLE (AGAIN!)
The ever-Flatulent One, K.C. Star sports columnist Jason Whitlock, has struck once again. In today’s column, he claims the reason why the Kansas University football team is having a bad season (they’ve dropped five straight games after starting 5-0) is because their head coach, Mark Mangino, is too fat. This coming from a guy who would need to remove all the padding to (barely) fit into the McDonald’s Grimace costume! While it’s true that Mangino is a massive myocardial infarction just waiting to happen—he easily weighs 400 pounds—and I do agree that he needs to take a little better care of himself (like I’m one to talk), this may well be Whitlock’s most bizarre claim in his 15 years at the paper.According to Whitlock: “The weight and the stress (of coaching) form a perfect recipe for depression. They can put your mind in a very negative place. They can make you moody and volatile…Mangino coaches from an angry place.” Hmmm, that didn’t seem to be a problem for anyone a couple years back when KU won the Orange Bowl over Virginia Tech, or when they hammered Nebraska for the first time since I was a small child. Whitlock went on to add, “If he spent two years away from football addressing his weight problem, applied for a job at 270 pounds, he would be a can’t miss BCS candidate. Heck, he would be a terrific choice to coach in the NFL. Every problem he experienced at Kansas could be blamed on his weight.” So, based on Jason’s twisted logic, if he himself would drop about 125 pounds, then his daily columns might be infinitely more insightful and thought-provoking than this heaping pile of yak droppings.
DUMB QUESTION, BUT…
… why does the media constantly report what Oprah Tweets, and why does Oprah even need to be on Twitter in the first place? She’s already the most powerful woman in America with a media empire that includes the most-watched daily talk show in the free world and a magazine named after herself—it ain’t as if she doesn’t already have a big enough forum/platform/outlet to make herself be heard…
KEN OBER, 1957-2009
Ken Ober, the host of MTV’s game show parody “Remote Control”, was an unexpected casualty this week from undisclosed causes. RC was one of the first non-music video programs that MTV ran in the late ‘80s, and it was pretty funny for the first year or so, but as usual with MTV from the late ‘80s onward, everything they touched turned to shit, and “Remote” was eventually neutered and rendered unwatchable by the end of its run. Rest in peace, Ken.
MOVIE REVIEW: MY SISTER’S KEEPER
I watched this one last night and found it mildly interesting. It’s the story of a young girl whom her parents gave birth to in order to have potential bone marrow donor for her older sister who was stricken with leukemia. When the younger girl gets old enough to realize she’s being used as a human pin cushion to save her sister, she rebels and attempts to emancipate herself from further invasive procedures on her own body by taking legal action against her parents, in particular, her obsessive be-yotch mother, played by the grossly-overrated Cameron Diaz. A rather convoluted, but apparently true, story—the movie had some good plot twists here and there, but the negative undertone throughout really bogged it down for me, as did how the film kept skipping back-and-forth in time with too many confusing flashbacks.
I do especially give kudos to young actress Sofia Vassilieva (from NBC's “Medium”) for daring to have her head (and eyebrows) shaved for the role of the cancer girl. Dakota Fanning was originally slated for the part, but bailed when they wouldn’t let her fake it with a bald-cap. Just as well—Fanning can’t act her way out of a paper bag anyway, as her only discernable talent is screaming hysterically, but I digress. Miss Sofia, who resembles a young Molly Ringwald with no hair in the movie, stepped up to the plate and made a brave sacrifice—pretty gutsy for a teenage girl. On the other hand, Diaz—a highly-paid grown woman—apparently didn’t have the balls to do the same, so she took the wussy way out by wearing a bald-cap when her character shaved her own head out of sympathy for her daughter. Unlike Sofia, Diaz’s “baldness” looked so phony—the bald cap made her head look twice as big, sorta like the humanoids on that “Alien Nation” show, minus the leopard spots. And even then, Diaz only appears “bald” in one brief scene as apparently her hair miraculously grew back overnight—so much for continuity—while young Sofia bares her head throughout practically the entire film. You go, girl!
As for the film itself, I give it about a 5.
GLAD I DIDN’T BET THE FARM…
…that they’d give the AL Cy Young Award to C.C. Sabathia, like I thought they would instead of the Royals’ Zack Greinke. It’s refreshing to see the East Coast Bias take a holiday for a change…
ANY PORT IN THE STORM?
It didn’t take long for former Chef Larry Johnson to get snapped up this week by the Cincinnati Bungholes, aka Rap Sheets ‘R Us, a team LJ should fit right in with. Since his last name is Johnson, #27 will no doubt go the Chad Ocho-Stinko route and legally change his name to Dos-Siete.
WORLD’S DUMBEST SONG LYRICS
“I Knew You Were Waiting For Me”—ARETHA FRANKLIN/GEORGE MICHAEL (1987) Haven’t done one of these in a while, but I heard this one again the other day: “Like a warrior that fights…” As opposed to a warrior that doesn’t fight? I believe that’s what they call a pacifist…
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