Reality Gone Astray

Down the list on any indictment of American culture, but definitely on the list, would be its elevation of lowgrade scumballs to celebrity status. Through the avenues of music, sports, movies and television, the American pop-culture machine creates hundreds of new celebs a year, while most of the previous ones don’t seem to go away. All of this provides fodder for the tabloid media – whether it be print, TV or Net -- which burgeons ever-larger and louder.

With the advent of “reality shows,” and those misbegotten dating programs, an ever-growing number of these folks are not even talented, ie, don’t sing or act or anything. At least, before, the obnoxious brat making huge sums of money, and going hog-wild with drugs and power trips and maelstroms of maladjusted excess, could warble a little, or emote on camera, or throw/hit/catch/dunk a ball. Now it’s just, in a growing number of cases –- like Jon and Kate and Heidi and Spencer -- professional assholes being famous for being professional assholes. (Ohmaga! I’ve learned some of their names.)

I’ve only seen the promos for “I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here,” but they seem to be on the right track, i.e., ridiculing the ridiculous personages of American celebrityhood. But the drawback is that some of these “stars” will have their 15 minutes of fame extended beyond what is already terribly tedious. I think they need to have the island filled with man-eating lions and crocodiles, and full-size pythons and, what the heck, a few hungry polar bears. Then I’d watch, as would many others -- as a herd that needs it... finally gets thinned.



The biggest ongoing scandal that you never hear anyone complain about (with the exception of Bill Maher last week) is that in 38 states judges have to campaign for office. Which means sucking up to the business interests and being beholden to the various special interests for contributions.

The most glaring recent example of why this is bad for justice is the case in West Virginia where an appeals court judge received $3 million from a mining company then didn’t recuse himself from judging the case which sought to overturn a $50-million settlement against the company.

The judge sided with the mining company, but it ended up in the Supreme Court, which narrowly ruled the lower-court judge to be in the wrong. But it’s worth noting that the “conservatives” on the Supreme Court, led by Chief Suckmeister John Roberts, sided with the interests of the mining company. This is their standard practice, seemingly always voting for the wealthocrat class in any and every dispute with less-powerful entities or individuals.

(Sidenote on Maher: Ambrose has said an irritating number of times, “Are you sure Bill Maher isn’t you and Jane Fonda’s love child?” He knew about my one-nighter with Ms. Fonda back in the day, that not being a very exclusive club at the time. Not that I agree with Maher on everything, but I do appreciate his brass balls.)


Short Jabs

With some exceptions, a cool black guy is cooler than a cool white guy, Asian guy, or Latino. And a smart Asian guy (and I include Indians) is smarter than those from the other groups. But a rich white guy is almost always richer than the rich black, Asian or Latino. If that’s racist, then sue me. I think it’s just data assessment.


Americans have, with the active assistance of the media and politicians, wrapped themselves in a cocoon within another cocoon regarding, among other thing, the plight of the Third World, and progressive governments elsewhere.


From an early age, I knew I wasn’t a Republican because I wasn’t a cold-blooded reptile of a person. (Funny/true how Republican, reptile and reprehensible all start the same.)


Nipples. What’s with that? When and where and by whom was it decided that the female nipple (but not the man’s) is a dirty, dirty thing, and a criminal act to expose?

But now I’m just blathering, so I will desist from further comments for now.

Party Politics

The Democrats and Republicans both operate under a false presumption – codified error agendas that are directly the opposite of each other. For Republicans it’s “Government is the problem; free-market capitalism is the solution.” For Dems, it’s “Free-market capitalism is the problem; government is the solution." It’s no wonder that bipartisanship is DOA.

But which one do I think is worse? The answer is the Republicans, by far. They represent the worst elements of America: the military-industrial complex, the financial centers, the racists, the polluters, the fundamentalists, the gun nuts. Sure, some Democrats have weaseled in on parts of this territory, but it’s clearly the occupied terrain of the GOP.

Numero Uno

There has been a lot of public comment recently about America’s slippage in the various rankings – barometers of supremacy in which the U.S. once occupied the position of undisputed Number One

From per capita income to home ownership to literacy rates, America led the world, but now we are well down the ladder on most of those. Even in computer science and availability/speed of broadband Internet, the latest analyses show the U.S to be lagging behind most of Asia and half of Europe.

But there are still some areas that have America as Numero Uno. Some of these are gun ownership, murder, suicide, drug addiction, infant mortality, mercury pollution, prison population, STDs, cancer, heart disease, meat consumption, sugar consumption, TV viewing hours, military budget, WMD production and money spent on government officials to maintain the status quo.