Foreground & Background

Foreground & Background

Everyone—left, right, and center—are once again fixating on the Clintons. I can’t say I blame them entirely since Hillary blitz-krieged the Sunday morning shows last week and Billy did a lap dance or two today with George Stephanopoulos and Tim Russert. From last Sunday to this Sunday, it’s been a mainstream media, Clinton bookend bonanza. Extra, extra: Will Barack slam Hillary? Will Hillary slam Barack? Can Johnny be as tough as his wife on Hill? Will GQ remain emasculated or grow a pair to run that piece on Billary? NO WAY!: Rudy “call me” Giuliani will predicate his campaign on the ASSumption that he can beat Hillary? Wow, there’s a shocker.

Even in today’s New York Times, both Frank Rich, whose columns I savor, and mean girl Maureen Dowd, whose columns, as of late, tend to make me and several people I know sick, focus on none other than Hillary. It’s not that I mind the criticisms of the Clintons, or of Hillary, in particular. Quite frankly, many of them are fair and accurate—and not in a Fox fiction sort of way. It just amazes me how much the Clinton narrative, to borrow the rhetoric of Frank Rich, dominates the mainstream media foreground and all other narratives are assigned to the background, or better yet, to the media hinterland. Even Ahmadinejad’s crazy cameo—and even crazier claim of no gays in Iran—at Columbia had a short shelf life in the big, mainstream media scheme of things.

Meanwhile, in the media background more of our soldiers continue to die in Iraq and it seems that NO ONE—Democrat or Republican—has a lucid plan to get us the f**k out. Who knows what the deal is with the possibility of going to war with Iran? There continues to be “no-shows” of Republican candidates at minority-sponsored debates, although this IS the party of the BIG TENT—only if you’re white. Children in need might NOT get appropriate insurance because George W. Bush says that there’s a better way; remember: he’s the dude that insisted there WERE weapons of mass destruction. And who the heck knows what Condi’s up to; maybe she’s having more surgery finally to close that gap between her front teeth.

The bigger gap that concerns me is the enormous difference between the media foreground and background, between the OJ resurgence and the Iraq insurgence, between what’s over-emphasized and what barely registers as a blip, between the over-saturation of fake news and the drowning of real news…that should be “fit” to print.

"Holt" the Hacking

“HOLT” THE HACKING

While some of us resisted the recent fake news of Lindsay and the Astronauts, Starzilla’s gastric bypass surgery, and the really, really big news of Nicole Skinny being four months pregnant, we’ve tried to focus our minds on the real news that remains buried beneath the bull.

Yesterday, the mainstream media gave little attention to how researches at the University of California were able to hack into three electronic voting systems just as easily as Attorney Goneliar lies about his lies. Diebold anyone? Clearly, Starzilla coming back from the tabloid dead was far more important; after all, she does look freakier than Fred Thompson.

As The New York Times reports today, Congressman Rush Holt, Democrat of New Jersey, has sponsored a bill to help eliminate the many, many problems associated with electronic voting, including the strong possibility of electronic tampering during the 2008 elections; as we all know, desperate chimpletons do desperate things. According to the Holt bill, all electronic votes cast in a federal election MUST have a paper record and RANDOM audits would be conducted for the sake of quality—non Chimpy—control. Let’s hope this bill hits the House floor for a vote to “holt” the hacking.

SEX AS A WEAPON

SEX AS A WEAPON

Medea, Medusa, Cleopatra, Hedda Gabler, Margaret Thatcher, Camille Paglia—women from literature, history, and popular culture who know how to play hardball with men, who know how to attack, and, in some instances, who know how to win. In Thursday night’s first debate of Democratic presidential contenders, Hillary Clinton boldly showed that she can be one of these women.

Like her or hate her—I myself was none too pleased with the misleading “If I knew then what I know now” line of crap, Senator Clinton presented herself confidently, decisively, and with a sense of command. Sorry progressives and fellow bloggers on the left: our favorites, Obama and Edwards, didn’t do too well.

Obama stuttered and flopped his way through and Edwards truly seemed dazed and confused; that last response on morality was one momentary lapse too long; Edwards’ narrative of poor, Huckleberry me was re-used, 2004 rhetoric that should be gone.

Yes, Brian Williams channeled Maureen Dowd’s cattiness with the $400 haircut topic; the real “yes” moment went to Joe Biden for being laconic.

As Bill Richardson talked like Joe Biden better than Joe Biden, Kucinich and Gravel terrorized the rest with candor while being “frightened.”

Clinton and Dodd possessed the statesmanship, calm and reason to manage the storm. In this Ship of Fools of Chimpy, Cheney, Captain Lieberman, and “bomb, bomb, bomb Iran” McCainy, we desperately need a sane Commander-in-Chief to right some wrongs.

As we move closer to 2008, the American mainstream media does what it likes best: fake news on the debate, Alec Baldwin, and the rest. Meanwhile, Chris Matthews, Tucker Carlson, and several men drool: “what do we do now if America does NOT think she’s a shrew?” “We’ll use her sex as weapon to pick apart her clothes, to point out she’s too shrill, and to remind us of Rick Lazio.”

Funny, outside the U.S. they called the debate for Hillary. Thankfully, they are not as hung up on sex and gender and think Americans are far too silly.

WORKING OUT THE CONVENIENCE OF IGNORING

WORKING OUT THE CONVENIENCE OF IGNORING

Maureen, Maureen, MAUREEN. In a week in which America endured the Virginia Tech. tragedy—and continues to endure other on-going tragedies, like, oh, Iraq, the Bush administration’s dictorial-freak yearnings for a unitarian executive, and the eroding rights of women and of countless others thanks to the Judicial Branch & Fredo’s [In]Justice Department, Maureen Dowd focuses on what?: the hair cut of John Edwards. That-a-girl!

OD-ing on Bravo TV—not that there’s anything wrong with that—love Work Out, Mo—who seems to like Blow Out—uses today’s column to focus on the Edwards’ hairdo misstep as a platform to criticize the exorbitant spending and fundraising of the 2008 presidential contenders. Mo is right: John, you sexy beast, get with us working class folk: economize and spend less on the hair.

Mo is also wrong: After taking a pass of convenience on the Imus story probably for fear of being called a sissy or worse by a**holes like Bernard McGuirk or the I-man’s replacement, Mr. Cleanly Tolerant, Michael Smerconish, who foolishly banged on his chest at the huffingpost with his—I’m-in-touch-with-my-white,-male-know-it-all-self-so-that-allows-me-to-displace-my-white-male-fear-and-hurl-insults-like-sissy-at-everyone, Mo and her MSM friends seem to be running scared. Conveniently ignoring and not effectively questioning major domestic and foreign crises exploding all over home and abroad that deserve more attention, more scrutiny, and for Pat Roberts’s sake, more satire, the mainstream media shifts its focus to what it prefers best: fake news.

Perhaps Dowd and her ilk were hypnotized by McCain, the crooner, and his rendition of “bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran,” which might explain why they’ve been lured away from real news to the who-gives-a-poop news of blaming rap music for everything, Baldwin versus Basinger, and, yes, Edwards’ hair. But even bad singing has lost its appeal; alas, Sanjaya was voted off American Idol, and, interestingly, McCain’s performance was taken off YouTube. Are we turning a corner? Probably not. So instead of taking cues from Bravo TV’s reality shows on hair, Mo, you and your friends may want to check out Work Out, a show about a likeable, fearless woman, who fearlessly started her own fitness business, who fearlessly and thankfully shares with us her “alternative” lifestyle, and who shows that sometimes “cleanly tolerant,” sissy-calling wo/men are simply not necessary.

OF VICE AND MEN

Of Vice and Men

There was a disturbance in the force this week. At first I thought it was the temperature fluctuating. Then I thought it was the anxiety that comes with those family gatherings around the holidays. I considered other possible disruptive sources, including: tax time, college acceptance/rejection/realization—you pick, or Keith Richards claiming—yes, folks—that he snorted his father’s remains while indulging in some blow; gives new meaning to “Satisfaction,” huh? Something was definitely in the air; we know IT could've been in the blow.

For me it started Monday. I woke with a migraine, called out sick to work, only to discover that Captain Lieberman, formerly Oedipus Lieberman, formerly Joseph Lieberman, formerly a Democrat, now an “independent,” ever threatening to be…a Republican, still a supporter of Chimpy, docked himself in my area—a disturbance, indeed—for a photo-op with Congressman Courtney at the Pine Point School in Stonington. Hence, I self-diagnosed why I felt like someone put a chainsaw in my head and immediately sensed that I had a “bad feeling” about all of this.

The disturbance only got better or worse—you decide. Speaking of deciding, out came the manly “decider” to castigate the Democratic-controlled congress, of which Republicans are obviously members, for going on…vacation. This is beautiful coming from a man who has spent more than a year of his presidency on…vacation. Perhaps Chimpy was fantasizing about blow before that press conference. Who knows? But the decider did seem crazier than ever; let’s wait and see if he starts frantically itching his nose.

Of course, with Fredo’s forthcoming “whack,” with The Big K getting mobbed by students at American University— for his bullshit, not for his rap gig, and with the mainstream “liberal” media doing a bitch-hunt over Speaker Pelosi’s trip to the Middle East while conveniently downplaying she was part of a delegation including Republicans and completely neglecting the Republican one there recently, Chimpy did seem off his axis with all these disturbances in his life.

Thus Darth Cheney came out of his pod to send shockwaves throughout the galaxy. And Darth didn’t disappoint. First target: Pelosi. Five Deferment Dick—a real American man—spoke to anal cyst Rush Limpfart—another man’s man—to denounce Pelosi and to suggest that the Democrats on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee were, get this, “Stalinist,” for not supporting Sam Fox, a known contributor to the now debunked Swift Boat Veterans that shamelessly went after Senator John Kerry, someone who actually DID SERVE in Vietnam. Definitely disturbing.

But Darth Dick’s craziness didn’t stop there; was he, too, having blow-like fantasies? Next target: the American public. Darth went on to claim, once again, that there were links between Iraq and Al-Qaeda that we all now know were bogus. Cheney’s blatant posturing prefaced yet another man’s crusade to prove that he’s a man’s man: porn-star named Mitt Romney tried to convince us—and the conservative Ted Nugent base—that he’s a real hunter, a hardcore “rabbit” gunslinger who just proudly joined the NRA…last year. Come away from the dark side of the force, Mitt: didn’t you read the headlines that you outperformed your Republican challengers in fundraising?

In this fake era overpopulated with fake men over-determined to validate their fake manliness, when an aging rock star’s initial claim (possibly a fake one) that he snorted his father’s ashes along with cocaine seems more real and oddly genuine, America, we don’t have a disturbance, we have a serious problem.

AMERICAN BEAUTY

AMERICAN BEAUTY

It’s been a beautiful week, hasn’t it? The weather has been nice, temperatures are rising, and old man winter seems to have finished his gig. Too bad ol’ Chimpy hasn’t finished his.

If you tried to keep up with all the scandals, the “masking” of real news with fake news, and the rising tensions in Iran, you’d quickly realize that while the weather gets nicer, things in D.C. get uglier by the minute and most Americans are undoubtedly unconscious.

I myself started getting the heebie-jeebies when Secretary of No Education Maggie Spellings told Dana Perino, the deputy White House Press Secretary, who must fill-in for Tony Snow, that she should “Put [her] big-girl panties on." What could Maggie mean? Is she, too, into some sort of kink like other White House folks, in the spirit of Jeff Gannon-Guckert—you know: the gay prostitute who was a part of the White House Press Corps? Or are these Maggie’s sincere words of endearment? Maybe Maggie is beefing up her resumé as a hallmark greeting card writer? Or perhaps this is Maggie’s way of acknowledging that just like American students’ test scores, No Child Left Behind is in the toilet. In any case, Maggie’s brilliance once again had me envisioning the apocalypse.

But what really put me over the edge, though, was Rove the Rapper. WTF? Has the The Big K been reading 1% More Conscious? Was he a fan of “The Hollow Men?” Wishful thinking—I know, I know, I know. But, man, with Maggie Spidiot cheering and The Big K frontin’, I definitely saw the horsemen of the apocalypse comin’. So I did a little diggin’, some readin’, and a whole lot of thinkin’ to find that things are really fubar’d, or at least so they seem.

After listening to Karl Sampson say he couldn’t remember/recollect a thing, including whether or not he took a dump the morning of his testimony, only an idiot wouldn’t recognize that team Bush has grossly and unethically handled the justice department. Saudia Arabia, one of our few friends in the Middle East, has openly criticized our operations in Iraq and in the rest of the Middle East. Gas prices are once again soaring. The Iranians have captured members of the British navy, and the Internets (s intended and dedicated to: Chimpy) is abuzz with the prospect of a bombing campaign in Iran on April 6th known as Operation Bite. And poor Pat Tillman’s mother suspects that he was actually murdered because he became increasingly vocal against Chimpy’s war once he was in Iraq.

Meanwhile, most Americans are oozing out of March Madness, dealing with their taxes, and/or figuring out how to finance their kids’ college education now that most acceptance letters are out. Yet we are being informed about Marie Osmond’s divorce (who gives a shit?) and Courtney Love’s new body (yeah, she’s switched from heroin to other drugs). You’ve got to be kidding me?

So when Maggie talks about big-girl panties and The Big K has two turntables and a microphone, you know where it’s at: like the film American Beauty reveals about our culture, things are much, much uglier than what they seem.