Obligatory Tiger Woods Post

So, by now everyone knows that Tiger Woods got his ass handed to him by his wife, the SUV he was in, a fire hydrant, and a tree as he tried desperately to evade the south end of a golf club being hurled in his direction.  In the days since the incident, the buzz has grown from gossip to gospel: Tiger Woods is a man slut.  Shock.  Surprise.  Mouth agape.  <yawn>  And so, America has once again thrust itself into a celebrity gossip induced seizure as “news” outlets foam at the mouth at the prospect of a bump in ad sales based on one man’s inability to keep Lil’ Tigger in his pants.  Not that we haven’t seen this episode of Falling Star before.  But whatever.

Female Officemate 1:  You know what my husband said?
Female Officemate 2:  Oh, Lord, here it come.
Female Officemate 1:  Just cause he can play golf, it don’t mean he know how to be a playa!
Female Officemate 2 and 3:  Oooooh girl!  He’s like Jamie Foxx!

Yes, the biting social commentary of Jamie Foxx.  As if I hadn’t received enough email forwards on the issue, the Tiger Woods situation has been upgraded to office squawk.  Why is it when something bad happens to a celebrity, people I don’t know that well feel it necessary to forward other people’s opinions on the matter to me?  The cover of the New Yorker with Obama in Muslim garb with Michelle toting an AK47 was meant to be straight satire, until your average Red State Hillbilly picked it up and yelped, “Ho!  Barack HUSSEIN Obama!  I knew he was a Muhzlam!”  I. Don’t. Care.

And still, I’ve received the following photo, clearly doctored, at least 4 times.  (3 as of the inception of this article, and then, as if to urge me to finish my complaint, another during.)

ZING.  No, really, I mean it.  ZING.  Look!  Look.  There… there’s his wife, ok?  And, ha, she’s holding a golf club, and, oh, wait for it!  There’s TIGER WOODS.  OK?  And he’s MISSING a tooth!  And he has FACIAL LACERATIONS!  Oh, this is just like RIGHT out of the news story.  Oh, oh. my. god.  Did you see his EAR?  HE HAS A GOLF BALL IN HIS EAR.  Genius.  Just… genius.

Honestly, the first time I saw it, I chuckled.  I thought, “Oh, internet… You’ve done it again.”  The second time I disregarded it.  The third time I let the offender know I’d seen it before, and told a friend I’d be even more clever and dissect the joke in an exercise of my own satire.  But as I wrote this, and the fourth email appeared in my inbox, I thought, “Why?”

Why are we obsessed with this?  The guy excels at a sport, and we worship him… that’s one thing.  That’s just messed up.  I mean, he plays a game hitting a tiny ball in a tiny hole for a living, and while that may require a skill I will never know, it is just that: a game.  So when we mock him, are we really just lashing out at ourselves for giving this guy the chance to do anything he wants, for doing essentially nothing?  Are we mad because we realize, “Hey, this guy’s wife is smokin’, and he’s out banging other chicks because he’s bored?”  Or are we mad because, “Hey, we allowed this guy to be a success story and get a super model wife, and he took it for granted?”  Or do we just worship every athlete and celebrity that comes along, because like a good joke, the setup is just as important as the punchline?

Never mind that their marriage is ruined, that this guy is a sleaze ball and we’ve all of a sudden realized this particular emperor was stark naked the whole time.  Never mind that there are kids involved.  It’s all sport, right?  Maybe someone will Photoshop a picture of his kids being hauled away by social services after they determine the Woods house unfit for children, what with the violence and bad driving.  LOL!  Right?

Right?

The Biggest Loser – Filling the Morbidly Obese Person Shaped Hole in Your Life.

Goodbye, Shay and Daniel. 

I don’t know what’s worse: being the only contestant to appear on TBL for two seasons, only to get knocked off because you couldn’t lose any weight, or being an orphan who’s weighed more than 300 lbs for the better (sort of?) half of your life, only to be kicked off of the program that touted saving your life.  OK, so I know which one’s worse.  (Shay.)  It’s actually tragic if you think about it.  Jillian’s constant barking at Shay urging her to recall her mother’s pathetic existence (tricks in front of her daughter, a heroin overdose that took her life) was only stopped short by her fellow contestants basically giving her back to society, now viewed as dead weight to the escalating contest that pits old against young.  Shay lost a whopping 17lbs this week, and was still cut loose like fat from short ribs.  Brutal.  The week before this, the team showed another cold hand, by letting Abby go.  You remember Abby.  The woman who lost her whole family in a car accident?  Yeah.  Also seen as dead weight.

And so tragedy knows no favor on TBL.  For all the producers’ efforts to highlight the contestants’ collective hopelessness, it turns out everyone on this show is pretty much a dick, set out to avenge their presumably awful upbringings upon people they call “family”, just so they can win some money and shed some pounds for health and vanity (I assume mostly vanity).  Contestants are selected with this tribe mentality in mind.  The strongest can be immediately identified by their cunning and tone.  Rudy was quiet in the beginning, but he’s emerged as a subtle Alpha male in the pack, and Danny’s jovial, Christianity-laced optimism disguises something darker… I mean, dude was in a band, and he had a pony tail.  I bet he’s actually a tough guy!  Ngh.

But Daniel - the second season vet who at this point in his weight loss resembles a melty stick of butter more than someone who’s gone through a sea change in weight loss – Daniel seems to have disappointed the most.  His “nice guys finish last, but so what, they’re still nice” mentality, initially infectious, became an annoyance.  How could someone so driven fail so miserably at the scale?  Was every last chance workout met with a serious binge thereafter?  Hidden away in his room at the ranch, did Daniel gorge himself on snack cakes and jerky?  Or did he just hit a wall physically?  Or does God hate him?  Whatever the case, Daniel lost, not based on votes, but because he fell below TBL’s latest plot forwarding device, the Red Line.  Where the Yellow Line identifies contestants in the running to be voted off, the Red Line eliminates immediately.  Strange then that the show’s previous heaviest contestant, who has lost a total of 250lbs since last season, would be counted out through this method. 

But let’s pause here for a minute. 

Has anyone noticed during the last few episodes that, almost randomly, some contestants don’t participate in the Pop Challenges due to “medical issues”?  What the hell is that?  I thought everyone on this show had medical issues, like, y’know, obesity and heart disease and diabetes and knees made of pork belly?  How can you have a show based on the premise that these individuals are unhealthy, then count them out of the competition because they are just that?  If contestants can’t participate in a competition based on strength and performance due to health issues, shouldn’t that inform the producers that the show is inherently flawed?  C’mon.  That’s like contestants on Survivor being told they can’t participate because they’re not good at surviving. 

Shay and Daniel did, however, show up for the last 30 seconds of their 15 minutes of fame on the Jay Leno Show, where Leno hosts his own celebrity purgatory.  Never have two worlds so mundane collided as they did Tuesday night, when Jay brought the outcasts on stage, their chubby faces poking through lifesize cutouts of their former shapes.  (NBC basically built Jay’s set, then saw the ratings, and cut him loose… and now he ’s forced to forge props from abandoned carnival grounds.  This explains why Kevin Eubanks now plays a washboard and spoons during the commercial break.)  Shay pops out from behind her cutout, and… oh.  Well.  She’s lost 100lbs but you… can’t… tell.  Jay quickly switches to Daniel, who has CLEARLY lost at least another person’s entire mass, as Jay points out.  “Wow!  You lost a whole me!”  Shay looks on like a dejected Shar-Pei. 

Sigh.

And then there were 5. 

I Hate Facebook.

“Initially Zuckerberg asked a small group of people to sign up to Facebook. At a certain point he told us to start inviting friends, and that is what we did on the first and second day which the site went up on the Web. We could only invite students enrolled at Harvard. In fact, if you did not have a Harvard e-mail address you could not sign into Facebook. At first, dozens of Harvard students registered. The numbers then reached the hundreds, and by the fourth day it had already reached the thousands. People were very enthusiastic about the site. It enabled them to know who took what courses and to meet new people. It conquered Harvard. In less than a week, some 4,000 students signed up for Facebook.”

- Arie Haset, Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg’s roommate.

When does something stop existing as a cultural phenomenon, and start perpetuating itself as simply an annoying reality?  For me, it was sometime middle of last year, when my gmail inbox seemed to be filled with Facebook update messages every morning. 

A friend has invited you to their cause!

A friend has suggested you be friends with another friend!

Someone tagged you in a photo!

A friend has thrown a chicken at you!

What the Christ?  Facebook never used to be this way.  Facebook was the place you went to when you got sick of Myspace users “blinging” out your comments section, or when you couldn’t stand bands you would never listen to spamming your inbox.  (I see you like MUSIC!  Well you’re gonna LOVE us!  We are MEAT STICK.  We ROCK the NORTHERN VIRGINIA area THIS TUESDAY… etc.) 

In the beginning, it was different.  You had to have gone to college to sign up, because you needed an email address with a .edu at the end of it.  Remember?  It made a difference.  I sincerely believe by having forced users to have had at least some higher education, Facebook mitigated a lot of the retarded mess we see now. 

So, the following is a list of things I’d love to see removed from Facebook.  Enjoy.

Complaints about the “new” Facebook.

About a year ago, Facebook transitioned from a slightly older format, where the site’s focus was the user’s “wall”, where friends could post dumb shit and literally just embarrass themselves, and frankly, humanity in general with the click of a mouse.  The site took on a new format, as the focus shifted to a more universal, top-down view of the profile, where the “wall” became part of a user’s “News Feed”.  The “new” Facebook pissed off a lot of those people who seemed to latch onto it because the “wall” had become a virtual watercooler, a place to talk and share ideas.  If by “talk and share ideas”, you mean MSPaint pictures of feces, or laughing about how wasted you got the other night. 

My point is, the “new” Facebook only took some getting-used-to because instead of being a linear place to share pictures of yourself peeing on a lamp post at 3am outside a Denny’s, it had become a slightly more complex linear place to share pictures of yourself peeing on a lamp post at 3am outside a Denny’s.   What’s worse is that this new environment has allowed even more annoying features to float in like raw, social networking sewage.  So, not only do I hate the “new” Facebook, I hate when people complain about it as if it somehow impedes users’ abilities to play Mafia Wars or throw animals at me or gift sex toys.  Because it doesn’t, so shut up.

Facebook Causes

Thanks to “Extreme Home Makeover” and Barack Obama’s historical election, every retard in America feels like “getting involved” is the cool thing to do.  Where “getting involved”  was once limited to a select group of concerned citizens, those dedicated to picketing government, voting, or engaging in intelligent debate, now any old schmuck can click a button and be part of a “cause” on Facebook.  You guys can blame the pathetic state of debate over healthcare on Republicans and the Right Wing all you want, but take one glance at Facebook user comments on the issue, and I think we can scratch out partisanship as the core issue here.  When stupid people get together to talk about smart things, it creates confusion.  And there are a LOT of stupid people on Facebook.

In my mind, nothing detracts more from an issue than when people say they’re for or against it, without really doing anything about it.  And that’s EXACTLY what Facebook Causes are.  From the Facebook Cause site itself:

“Facebook Platform presents an unprecedented opportunity to engage our generation, most of whom are on Facebook, in seizing the future and making a difference in the world around us. Our generation cares deeply, but the current system has alienated us. Causes provides the tools so that any Facebook user can leverage their network of real friends to effect positive change.”

Jefferson just threw up on himself in his grave, rolled around, then reversed his opinion on speech and slavery.  If Facebook is the crest of the wave of change Barack Obama was talking about, then count me out.  Do this comparison…

Look at the “causes” that came together to make this happen:

The American Heart Association, Inc.
Global Justice
Teach for America
Save Darfur
Etc…

Cool.  Real 501(c)(3)s getting together to help initiate this thing.  Now, take a look at some of the Facebook Causes that exist because of these idealists’ meddling in social networking:

Help Keep CHRIST in Christmas
[1,479,043 members - $4,363 donated]

FREE BROWNIE POINTS AND MORE GIFTS IN SORORITY LIFE
[66,156 members]

America’s 912 Project (Glenn Beck)
[3,817 members - $127 donated]

Poop Everywhere!
[20 members]

For every real cause that’s posted on Facebook by a real organization doing real work, there are 100 “causes” established that detract from the original intent of the Facebook Cause initiative.  (And, what happens when the evil Communist Left Wing takes Christ out of Christmas?  We all celebrate Mas?  Just call it Presents and Corn Syrup Day and get it over with.)

Facebook Suggestions

Facebook also made another transition  after disbanding the college requirement.  Based on the company you keep online, Facebook will compare data from profiles between you and your friends, and find common threads.  It will then go out into your friends’ friend lists and compare with that data.  Using this information, Facebook can “suggest” someone you may or may not be friends with.  This is an infinitely useless feature for one reason.

I am not friends with, and I don’t want to talk to the people Facebook suggests because I don’t like them.  I never did.  I probably never knew them.  And if I did know them, then, yeah, my life is probably better without them poking me or gifting me a magic carpet or whatever.  Facebook once suggested that I’d be a fan of Howie Do It, Howie Mandel’s recent Candid Camera ripoff.  I stared at the screen for awhile, trying to figure out which one of my friends was a fan, and if I was ready to commit murder on behalf of taste and decency. 

Then there’s the user aspect.  People you haven’t seen in 20 years are going to be different.  I am friends with people on Facebook I knew at one point in my life, but I have come to terms with the fact that they are not the same person in most cases.  I hope these people have matured since I last saw them in grade school, or even high school.  Maybe they’ve matured so much we would have absolutely nothing in common, since my daily interaction with people for the past 15 – 20 years has essentially shaped who I am as a person, and if they weren’t part of that, we’re probably not going to be best friends.  I might actually hate some of my friends on Facebook, and not know it, because our relationship is now limited to a profile picture and a few clever or not-so-clever comments on others’ pages.  I’m considering harvesting Facebook of people I don’t communicate with on a regular basis, but, thanks to “Suggest”, I’m sure they’ll just end up adding me back anyway.

Tagging Photos

I hate being tagged in photos.  There’s something weird about people I don’t know being able to see my face, and put a name to it.  I realize this is part of our obsession with celebrity; we all want 15 minutes.  Even if that 15 minutes means a random shot of us doing something awful and embarrassing, like climbing a fence into private property, going blackface to a Fraternity party, or throwing up on a church alter.  (I’ve seen two of these.)

If I want people to know who I am in a photo, I will tag myself.  And, for the record, more often than I not, I choose not to.  Facebook allows other users to tag me, and that’s an invasion of privacy.  (Though, it could be argued that Facebook in its current state is modeled after our collective discarding of the term ‘invasion of privacy’ and its definition.)  I am incredibly selective of the pictures I post on-line anywhere.  Some nights, I’ll take 200 – 300 photos, and only end up with 30 or so I want to use.  A lot of people just plug in their point and shoot and click ”upload”, and there it is, someone’s butthole around 80 shots in, tagged with their name.   No one wants to see your butthole.  No one is going to hover their mouse over your butthole to see who it is.  No one is going comment on the butthole.  It’s gross.  Maybe in some circles, that sort of picture is considered a work of art, but to me, it’s a butthole, and poop comes out of it.   

Facebook Itself

So I could go on and just rip apart Facebook’s many features.  I really could.  We all could, honestly.  I’ve never met someone who’s said, “I love Facebook!”  I know people who are avid users, and who frequent the site during downtime at work.  It seems that Facebook, originally a great idea for college kids who wanted to network and figure out where the next party or study group was, which then evolved into that generation’s way of keeping in touch post-college, has become a caricature of itself.  It has devolved into a system which caters to the lowest user, rather than a system that challenges us to stay connected with people we actually care about.  People wear their number of “friends” like fighter pilots wear their number of downed enemies, badges of notoriety to let other users know, “I’m connected” without really knowing what “connected” is.  Instead of a house-party where everyone knows each other and a person can circle a room and have 10 great conversations with 10 different people, it’s become a night club, where the things you say and believe in are muffled by the incessant drone of wordless computer music, and we’re all faces in a deepening crowd of uninformed, uninvolved, bandwagon-jumping, picture posing sketches of our real life selves.  And if that isn’t a bleak enough picture of what we’ve become as a society, take a trip over to Twitter.

And you thought Myspace was bad.

There’s nothing funny in the news.

…and hasn’t been for some time.  So I haven’t had much to write about.

Since this blog’s hiatus, the dollar has bottomed out, Afghanistan has gotten worse, Obama has won the Nobel Peace Prize (no really, when you consider the ramifications, that’s not funny either), health care has continued its evasion of common sense, and Congress is belly-up in political still-water.

So let’ s just look at some pictures.

 

 

It's sort of sad when the elderly cling to falsehoods, like everlasting life, and people loving them.

 

Democratic Gubernatorial candidate for Virginia Creigh Deeds is f-f-f-falling b-b-b-b-behind. (T-t-t-t-too soon?)

 

Hill staffers can accurately predict the weather based on the fluctuating density of Senator Byrd's frontal lobe. The more he looks like a zombie, the more likely it is you're going to need an umbrella.

 

Professor Mindy Slavert, seen here, will build the world's first time machine in 2023. Unfortunately, Professor Slavert's lack of knowledge of US history, coupled with her apparent inability to convey topical opinions vis-a-vis legible protest signs will cripple any successful results in her work studying the space-time contiuum.

 

"...and for 20 bucks, we'll turn your mugshot into a full blown 'wanted poster' or baseball cards, or, hell, both!"

 

Most ironic tiny protest sign ever.

 

Seen here playing "Tiny Dancer" by Elton John, like most little people before him, Nepal's Shortest Man simply embraces the humiliation.

 

This isn't her first time holding two microphones... if ya know what I mean.

 

SOMEONE GET HER A MICROPHONE SHE'S GOING FOR THE FRONT ROW

 

Nokia appears to be getting this whole 'mobile' thing wrong.

 

"...yeah, and, oh, over there, we got Osama Bin Laden HIMSELF locked up. Yup, 2012, we just take him out of the cage, snap some photos, and Obama's got it in the bag."

"Huh huh... are you serious?" Secretary of Education Arne Duncan discovers what happens when you enter 55378008 into a calculator and flip it upside down.

The Far Right Is Just Plain Stupid, and the Far Left Is F***ing Certifiable.

That’s all I really have to say… Dunno if I even need to post anything beyond that at this point.

A Quick One Before I Go…

Andy Richter tore up Celebrity Jeopardy last night, and absolutely wiped the floors with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer’s beard.  Awesome.  Take a look.

And note the resemblance. 

Have a good weekend.  See ya.

Jay Leno for President!

The past few weeks, I have been building to this moment, to announce my nomination and support of Jay Leno for the next President of the United States.  I know a lot of you are reading that as a joke, but it’s not.  I am completely serious.  Jay Leno, the Funniest Man in America, deserves his turn at the voting booth. 

For those you living under a rock, you may or may not have heard that Mr. Leno humbly resigned his position as King of Latenight earlier this year to allow a younger Conan O’Brien to take his slot.  NBC, realizing the less funny O’Brien would make an absolute mockery of the historic TV spot with his talking bear and masturbating dogs, begged Leno to come back and host an entirely NEW hour of comedy at 10:00pm!  Genius!  As I watched this unfold, I knew, deep down, that Leno would be the ultimate Presidential candidate… funny, attractive, bellowing voice, head-on logic… he is a Decider!  A true patriot!  Not afraid to take the fight to BOTH sides of the aisle!  

I have a 10 point plan to put the host of the famed 10 at 10 spot in the front of every other ticket for 2012.  And how did I come up with this brilliant plan?  I didn’t have to.  Leno already came up with it himself.  In his monologues.  Genius.  No wonder everyone in America loves him!  Everyone!  Even black musicians!  HE’S HIT EVERY VOTING AUDIENCE HARD!  Check out the following zingers:

On gay marriage:

“In honor of gay marriage now being legal in the state of Vermont, Ben & Jerry’s is now selling ‘Hubby Hubby’ ice cream. You know, if you want to name an ice cream after gay marriage, why not just call it ‘Ben & Jerry’s?’”  HILARIOUS.  He’s implying Ben and Jerry DO IT.  And!  They’re married!  What??!

On bipartisanship:

“Well, people are still talking about last week when President Obama gave his speech on healthcare and that Republican congressman yelled out, ‘You lie!‘  He yelled out, ‘You lie!’ to the President. So, at least the two sides are talking. You know, and that’s good. There’s dialogue.”  IT’S FUNNY BECAUSE IT’S TRUE.  You know that’s so true, it’s funny. That’s Leno in a nutshell!  Whacky stuff!

On the Wall Street Fat Cats:

“Yesterday in New York City, President Obama gave a tough speech to the Wall Street Executives. See, Wall Street is considered a safe place for Obama. You see, on Wall Street, if someone yells out ‘you lie,’ you could be talking to anybody.”  HA!  Because they lied to us!  Funny cures depression, folks, Google it.

On race relations AND terrorism (way to mix it up, Jay!):

“Well, listen to this. Here’s some good terrorist gossip. According to a Sudanese novelist who once lived with Osama bin Laden for four months, Osama bin Laden is a huge Whitney Houston fan which is surprising. I mean, considering the way those people treat women, you’d think he’d be a bigger Bobby Brown fan.”  Terrorist gossip??  More like INTELLIGENCE.

He is so ready to run.  I mean he’s primed.  He’s grown his hair out, he’s interviewing tough subjects like Miley Cyrus… he even pulled off a joint interview with Tom Cruise and that chick with the semen in her hair from “There’s Something About Mary”.  I mean, how do you get through an interview with someone who’s had semen in their hair??  He’s clearly ready for anything.

And what about that 3:00am call everyone  was so worked up about last year?  Well, ask yourself: if it’s 3:00am in our Nation’s capitol, then what time is it in LA?  Tha’ts RIGHT.  Midnight.  Just an hour after Jay gets home from shooting his latest awesome episode of The Jay Leno Show!  He’s not even TIRED.  He’s probably doing pushups in his garage, next to his 500 muscle cars.  OH, and that reminds me, Jay on the environment.

“I don’t give a f*** about the environment.”

AWESOME. 

So be ready, America.  Jay Leno isn’t going away.  And if he does, you can bet he’ll be back, in the spotlight, in front of whoever he’s decided he wants to be in front of.  He’ll take away the other candidates’ votes with jokes, and  you know what else?  KEVING F***ING EUBANKS.  Bam.  There’s your ticket.

This is my calling.

House Resolution 179: I Am Rubber You Are Glue

Whereas on September 9, 2009, during the joint session of Congress convened pursuant to House Concurrent Resolution 179, the President of the United States, speaking at the invitation of the House and Senate, had his remarks interrupted by the Representative from South Carolina, Mr. Wilson; and

Whereas the conduct of the Representative from South Carolina was a breach of decorum and degraded the proceedings of the joint session, to the discredit of the House; and

Whereas the fallout from this most egregious act has allowed the Representative from South Carolina to gain over $2 million in donations; and

Whereas the coverage on the Representative’s actions played on National Media over and over is pretty much free press; and

Whereas the rest of us are struggling with finding a solution to Health Care to minimal positive press coverage and donors practically retreating; and

Whereas this guy shows up and calls the President a liar, and all of a sudden he’s the most popular member of Congress; and

Whereas I held a town hall on health care last week, and some guy brought a gun, another guy told me I was a traitor, and there were pictures of the President with a Hitler mustache; and

Whereas my job has become a farce; and

Whereas Congress has devolved beyond return thanks to antics of all members, not just Mr. Wilson; and

Whereas this behavior is preceded by that of the Democrats in the House in 2006 and 2002; and

Whereas this also happens daily in England (and they have a Queen!): Now, therefore, be it

Resolved, That the House of Representatives disapproves of the behavior of the Representative from South Carolina, Mr. Wilson, during the joint session of Congress held on September 9, 2009.

This was going to be about ACORN. But, eh. Whatev.

From the ACORN website: 

“ACORN is the nation’s largest grassroots community organization of low- and moderate-income people with over 400,000 member families organized into more than 1,200 neighborhood chapters in about 75 cities across the country.  Since 1970, ACORN has been building community organizations that are committed to social and economic justice, and won victories on thousands of issues of concern to our members, through direct action, negotiation, legislative advocacy and voter participation.  ACORN helps those who have historically been locked out become powerful players in our democratic system.”

If you haven’t heard, and you probably haven’t (more on that later), ACORN is in a bit of trouble.  Though, to put that in context, I should mention that ACORN is hardly ever out of trouble.  The organization has up until recently been accused of engaging in a handful of illegal activites surrounding lobbying, elections, and various other criminal franchises.  The process of pundits on the Right coming after the ’grassroots community organization’ repeats itself with the election cycle, and rarely does anything come of it.  Because ACORN is, for all intents and purposes, a wholly Democratic (the party, not the ideology) organization, attacks from conservative groups seem politically motivated, allowing ACORN to scream ”victim”.  Yes, up until now, ACORN has been accused of some nasty things, and they’ve gotten away with it.

So, if you haven’t heard about it, don’t worry, it’s probably because, like ACORN, the media is at the teet of the Democrats.  If you can’t stand Fox News for being biased to the Right (and dear Lord, are they biased), then get off your laurels and start bitching about the Left and the rest of nightly and cable news.  I don’t watch the news, and somehow, I end up being able to form my own opinion about pretty much everything without Johnny Shouting Match telling me which way to walk when it comes to politics.  Funny how that works, reading… and thinking.  And writing.  Like I said.  Don’t worry. 

A couple of conservative ‘activists’ (Young Republicans for Breitbart) strolled into a several branches of ACORN and video’d their conversations with several staff members.  Posing as a pimp and a prostitute, these two were able to get ACORN staff to sign on to various plots to 1) create a tax shelter for income gained through illegal prostitution performed in housing sought through ACORN, 2) get advice on running said prostitution out of resulting housing and, most agregious, 3) start a child prostitution ring using illegal immigrants from South America.  (Find the videos here.)

Nothing pains me more than for me to have to reach to the far right wing blogs for information on a scandal.  I had to sit through an interview run by Sean Hannity to get the gist of this.  That’s like getting a rudimentary math lesson from Paula Abdul.  But this is how the new media movement works.  Fox News, owned by Rupert Murdoch, is the last televised bastion of the Conservative Movement of 2000 – 2004.  From this once looming empire spawned Breitbart News, a conglomerate run by conservative Andrew Breitbart, who hosts several news and blog sources linked to Matt Drudge’s news catch-all, The Drudge Report.  This pocket of conservative media enjoys a bigger audience than the networks and various other cable news sources and sites out there, and have survived this long for posing as a non-conformist, apolitical source for news.  The liberal news sources do this as well.  It’s just, somehow, the conservatives do it much better.  How do we measure that?  Audience numbers and ratings are the battleground results for any media outlet.  It doesn’t matter if Drudge gets 4 billion hits in a year from red states, that’s 4 billion hits. 

So it’s bittersweet, because I absolutely hate organizations like ACORN, and I hate biased media… But anytime one of them gets in trouble, I love to see them dragged across the coals.  The notion that people living in the poorest parts of the country need to be shuttled to the voting booth is insulting and denegrates the spirit of free elections.  If people don’t want to vote, they don’t have to.  Moreover, if people don’t how to vote?  Inform them.  Everyone knows they have a vote in this country, and hey, if they don’t?  Then fix the goddamn Department of Education, because that’s the bigger problem.  Until then, I don’t care who you are, if you put someone on a bus and tell them to vote for one party or the other it’s electioneering.  You know they do it, and if you don’t, you might as well start a religion based on the unicorn, seeing as how you have fully embraced a seperate dimension in which ‘grassroots community organization’ means anything else other than Democrat. 

It’s like the political circus tent broke, the rain got in, and all the worms have crawled out of their damp dark spaces to soak up the mainstream.  The Town Halls, for instance, where the Right Wingers are calling Obama Hitler, his army of volunteers brownshirts… I didn’t like it when the Left did it to Bush, and I don’t like it when the Right does it to Obama.  The birth certificate issue… like, really, do you know how much vetting goes into the Presidential Election?  You think the FIRST thing they’d check is the guy’s Constitutional validity!  But I shouldn’t be surprised.  People are bringing assault rifles to political rallies to simply make a statement.  Where am I?  It’s like some high school kid’s poorly written, post-apocayptic, West Wing fan fiction.   

So, anyway, a fake pimp and a fake prositute walk into ACORN and get video evidence of something we all assumed was possible, that when nutjobs on either side of the political spectrum get organized, the rest of us suffer.  And guess what?  When they get caught, nothing ever seems to happen.  Just as voting and running for office and speaking your mind and getting involved are all part of the American Way, so is the accompanying scandal, rule breaking, ham fisted protesting, and criminal action engaged by those who seek to take advantage of our first ten amendments to that imperfect document established to create a more perfect union.  It’s nauseating. 

From ACORN’s website:

 ”As a result of the indefensible action of a handful of our employees, I am, in consultation with ACORN’s Executive Committee¹, immediately ordering a halt to any new intakes into ACORN’s service programs until completion of an independent review.  I have also communicated with ACORN’s independent Advisory Council, and they will assist ACORN in naming an independent auditor and investigator to conduct a thorough review of all of the organizations relevant systems and processes.  That reviewer, to be named within 48 hours, will make recommendations directly to me and to the full ACORN Board.  We enter this process with a commitment that all recommendations will be implemented.”

Yeah.  Right.

It’s Not Like I Have Type II Diabetes – The Biggest Loser Returns

It feels like it’s been an eternity since NBC rolled out (literally) their last season of The Biggest Loser.  Like an old, sweaty, dehydrated friend, The Biggest Loser is back, now stuffed with even more exploitation of contestants’ grief, shame, and sorrow.  Last night’s debut was loaded with stories of loss and struggle, and the producers, once again, shamelessly exploited every aspect of contestant confessionals.  In a (very) round table, contestants were prodded as to why they thought they had jumped the rails, and, as a follow up, why they were here.  Blah, blah, blah, orphanage, blah, blah, blah, firefighter, blah, blah, blah, my family died in a car accident, bl… wait, what?

That’s right.  NBC brought Abby on, a teacher from Texas, at just under 250 lbs, who, when asked why she was the way she was, broke down as she shared the tragic loss of her husband, 5 year old daughter, and 2 week old son in a car crash.  A shockingly legitimate heartbreaking confessional on The Biggest Loser?  Say it ain’t so.  Still, as terrible as her loss is, we have to remind ourselves that Abby is now on a television show because she’s tired of being overweight, and wants to make right the wrong that is her current state… oh, and she’s in the running for a cash prize.  Moreover, the website indicates she was overweight before the accident, so, invoking her family’s loss as an excuse for being overweight kind of sends me mixed signals.  I suppose being involved in this trash heap of a show precludes things like dignity and respect, so I shouldn’t be surprised.  But really NBC?  When you interviewed her, did you consider that maybe this was unfair?  The woman needs more than a weight loss show to get her life back.  What zingers are Bob and Jillian gonna throw at her in the gym?  Will they invoke the car crash to get her back on that treadmill?  I wonder how the cast will react when they’re put in a position to vote her off down the line.  I feel disgusting already.

Speaking of disgusting, let’s move onto Shay, the social worker from California.  Shay is the show’s heaviest contestant ever, if you can believe it, weighing in at 474 lbs.  Shay’s claim to shame last night involved a story about her mother dying from a heroin overdose when Shay was just a kid, and her having to move into foster care thereafter.  She fought her way through that horrible abandonment, vowing never to give up, and put herself through college.  Shay did a lot of vowing last night, claiming she was a fighter, a motivater, a pusher, a mover, a shaker…. until she met Jacob’s Ladder.  Seriously, that’s what it’s called, Google it.

Not Shay.

Let’s rewind a bit.  I’m getting ahead of myself.

The show kicked off with a brief introduction of each contestant, each one fatter and seemingly sadder than the next, as the TBL Tour Bus rolled out in the California country side toward The Ranch, where hopefully these people would get some sense knocked into them.  Suddenly, the bus stops and lets the Losers out on the road, where Ali, the show’s resident birther, informed everyone they’d be racing the final mile to The Ranch.  SHOCK!  WORRY!  PANIC!  A MILE?!  But wait!  (Of course.)  There’s more! 

Daniel, after mistakening The Biggest Loser last season for a show he made up in his head, The Nicest Loser: Hugs Edition, shows up in a black sedan to inform everyone he’s back.  Seriously, this kid is the most positive MFer on the planet, and hopefully he’ll sweep this thing, because I didn’t like a single other person from last night’s cast roundup.  This is the same Daniel who brought his walking piece of fried chicken friend on the show, and was kicked off, because said piece of fried chicken continued to smoke and pound hot dogs like every meal was a contest when sent home to compete off The Ranch. 

And then there was Tracey. 

I understand that a mile might be difficult for these guys, but props to the ones who actually ran it.  (Daniel cleaned up at 14 minutes in first place, to give you an idea of the lethargy we’re dealing with this season.)  The last stretch of the run ended up on the beach, and Tracey here collapsed.  Didn’t seem genuine, honestly.  She screamed, “MY LEGS UR JELLY” before planting her zepplin like torso onto the sand.  She struggled a few times to get up, each time looking right into the camera, before a TBL medic approached her and tried to lift her.  “UM GONNA CRAWL!” she ranted as she clawed her way through the sand, until several more medics arrived to pull her to her ‘feet’.  Her eyes rolled back into her head before fixing themselves on the camera once again… she never finished the race and was rushed to the hospital.  Hey Tracey?  This isn’t an audition for More to Love.  It’s The Biggest F***ing Loser.  So unless your serious, go home.  We don’t need this prima donna BS.  No way your collapse was real.  I mean, Shay beat you.  SHAY. 

My favorite thing about a season opener on TBL is the visit to the Doctor Whatsisface at the Institute For Not Being So Goddamned Lazy and Fat.  (I made that up, btw.)  Doctor W. tells each contestant they’re sick, then he does a series of tests on each of them to show them just how effed up they really are, like blood tests showing their capillaries have been replaced by Ju Ju Bees, or that their sperm count now equals ‘hamburger’.  Sean, the youth pastor with an effeminate southern lisp (hmm) who just wants to “hug his wife” (hmmmmmm) sat with the doctor last night after he’d written on his medical history sheet that he simply had no medical issues.  The doctor giggled a little as he said, “How does a man at your weight keep a straight face when he hands over a sheet of paper that says he has no medical issues?”  Zing!  Sean replies, “It’s not like I have Type II Diabetes or nothin’.” 

The doctor leans back.  “Sean.  You have Type II Diabetes.”  SNAP!

Back to Shay, who was given a CAT scan in the zoological wing of the facility, to show how much of her body had been overrun with fatty tissue.  NBC had no problem showing the CAT image, and I had no problem taking a pic with my iPhone, as I wiped tears of laughter from eyes at the sheer audacity of the network to parade these poor people around.  I also have no problem producing said image, here, for your own viewing displeasure.   Seriously, the image on the left looks like the Hulk dressed up to go trick or treating as a skeleton.

The show rounded out with the typical last minute workout, and a hapless unknown first weeker severed from the cast (Alexandra.)  With more cast to review in the early parts of the season, the producers are forced to tone down the repetitive nature the show takes on later in the season, as NBC is forced to fill 2 hour blocks of fat people working out with some sort of drama or event.  The show is best at the front end, when we are treated to drastic weight loss weeks, people breaking down on machines, machines breaking down from people being on them, and the general hysteria that accompanies people being motivated beyond what they’ve thought they’re capable of. 

 Expect me to continue tuning in for more recaps and mockery of the show I love to hate.