Oprah, or Harpo?

Oprah looked a lot like Harpo the other day, pulling things out of her pocket that have no bearing to relevancy. After interviewing the loveable Michael J. Fox (who I admittedly enjoyed as an actor, and admire for his efforts in pursuing a cure for Parkinson's), Oprah stood in the Holocaust Museum and declared how unfortunate it is that Fox is getting headline coverage, instead of the number of soldiers dying in Iraq.

Grabbing her own spotlight, Cutsie Couric pops up on CBS News to introduce Fox as the unfortunate victim of a political controversy, simply because he wanted to promote a Democrat candidate whom he has probably never met in a state he has probably never seen. Poor guy. (Interesting that he was able to sit relatively still for Cutsie's interview.)

But back to Oprah's comment. Fox is getting headline news because he insterted himself into a political campaign of national importance. He is getting headline news because media folks like Oprah and Cutsie wanted to exploit what some talk-show guy they don't even listen to had to say about a Parkinson's sufferer who put himself smack-dab in the center of a political debate (with very few facts, I might add). And then, after shamelessly exploiting this American icon, they decry the very fact that they even had to bring this issue to our attention, when there is other, far more important matters of propaganda which should be our focus.

Oprah, look at your freakin' newspaper. Tell me, without opening the paper, how many soldiers died in Iraq today. Exactly. It's right there. Don't whine about the body count not being in the spotlight. It will not go away. Trust me. So long as it scores political points, it will not go away. And Cutsie will smile in her sad little way every time she gets to report a larger number.

Yikes!

The Dem's have finally come out with their "here's what we'll tell voters we will do after we win the elections" list. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061023/ap_on_el_ge/democrats_in_charge

And, suprise, it includes cutting and running, cutting the military, spending money on investigating the military, hog-tying the administration up in committee hearings (Dem's like committee hearings), and spend, spend, spend. Oh yeah, and spending other people's money along the way, in the form of a minimum wage increase. Wow, $7.25 an hour. Where in the he** did they get that figure? Is there some magic formula that you can plug some concrete numbers into and get a minimum wage? Or, while in the process of searching for their heads, did they just pull it out of their a**(butt)? I mean, sure, here in the heartland, that is not a bad increase. Still won't pay the bills, but it sure beats that old $6.25 or whatever it is now. But some place like California or Illinois, you can hardly buy a snort with that.

So you go, Nancy Pelosi. Yeah, you go girl. Way to set a priority. Before you can even increase taxes, you'll make sure you increase payrolls, plummet the stock market, and really stick it to those evil imperialist pigs who keep this economy rolling.

Vote Democrat. Then roll over.

Please Write Responsibly

Thought you might enjoy this letter to the editor of the Arkansas Traveler. I doubt it will be printed (it turns out it exceeded the wordcount). Enjoy.

Dear Editor,

Shame on you and your staff. You have taken what should be a quality student paper and turned it into nothing more than a shameless rag of propaganda. It is unfortunate that as a student I have no choice but to fund such a machine.

Let me direct your attention first to the visit of Carl Rove, the president's political advisor. One would think that the visit of a man of his position to Fayetteville, Arkansas would be the news story, whether you like him or not. Instead, how are we told of his visit? The front page screamed that he was met with protestors, accompanied by a large picture of two old people carrying three large signs. The article mentioned very little of the substance of his appearance, but seemed to relish in the notion that a few people were unhappy that he chose to come here to campaign for candidates that agree with his ideas.

Contrast that with Monday, October 23. Judge Wendell Griffen of the Arkansas Court of Appeals appears in a church on Sunday, to lecture about how evil Bush is, how much he loves his country, and how bothered he is that people of morals actually wish to promote those morals. It is, of course, his right to promote his morals (although people of morals shouldn't promote their morals politically?), but it would sure help if he would have incorporated a few actual truths into his ramblings (he must have forgotten that a large number of Iraqi dissidents and Kurds had been begging for the US to help get rid of Saddam Hussein for years). But in this instance, the substance of his irresponsible sermon is hailed on the front page of our school paper as a priceless lesson on the need for our nation to be more neighborly (the Good Samaritan was not in the process of battling terrorists who had just blown his right arm off). Interestingly, this appeared directly over an article about the rights of journalists and biases in the media. I wonder where these biases are born.

And then the Opinion page, of course, contains nothing more than further anti-war, Bush hating (or very strongly misliking) bluther, with more misguided references to the number of soldiers killed contrasted against the highly speculative high numbers of Iraqi casualties and more "just tell us the truth, Bush" commentaries. (Maybe you just can't handle the truth?) Interesting, what with the elections so close.

Freedom of speech is great. But please try to be a little more responsible with my fees.

Foley's Folly

Dennis Hastert should resign. It is, after all, his fault that Foley sent crude emails to a page. I mean, his name is Foley. Come on! Wasn't there some Saturday Night Live guy named Foley? Oh, it was Farley? (Close enough.) You know, Saturday Night Live... "SNL". Young page boys. Connect the dots. Jeesh, Hastert, you should have seen that one coming from a mile away.
You should have taken Foley's computer away from him last year, and hired an independent Democrat to conduct all of Foley's computer transactions. And then you should have hired a babysitter to sit with Foley at all times, and to read all of Foley's outgoing mail to be sure that the man did not attempt in any way to interact with young people. Heck, you should have just canned Foley right then, when it first came to your attention that Foley was inquiring into the well-being of a page who had been affected by Katrina. That should be enough to tip anyone off that he is a pervert looking to entice young men into a sexually explicit relationship. If you can't make that connection, then you just shouldn't be Speaker of the House.
So bye, bye Denny, you should have made that connection. At the very least, you should have gone to the House Democrat majority leader and at least told her then that there was some scandal going on in the House, and you think that maybe it was better if she just took over as speaker right then and there. That would have been the right thing to do.
Or maybe you should have just convinced Foley that if he wished to pursue that course of action, he needed to go ahead and jump sides then, so he wouldn't be held to the same standards as real people. In fact, if you had given him that advice, he could still have his seat right now. None of this would have come to light. And if it had, it would have been a mild, quiet little talk w/ Ms. Pelosi, and then maybe some public apology, and the calls for forgiveness would have gone out to have pity on this poor man who has been forced to suppress his pedophilia his entire life, and now that he is a Democrat, he is finally free to be what he has always been.
Yeah, Dennis. With all those options, you chose instead to confront the man and warn him to refrain from any further communications with the pages. You chose, instead, to remind him that that was a violation of the Congressional rules and that he must stop such actions immediately. You chose instead to heed the wishes of the parents of the page, and not pursue this publicly. Shame on you, Dennis Hastert, for your reasonable attempts to nip this in the bud right away.
Thank you, Washington Times, for being the first to call for his resignation. One with such an impeccable record of cleaning your own house of perverts should certainly be the first to throw stones inside your glass house.
And, of course, thank you, ABC News, for sitting on this information for so long, when the well-being of a young, high-school page was in jeopardy. Of course, we understand that the release of this information, which you had obviously had for quite some time (and which evidenced that a young high-school page was in jeopardy) only coincidentally came to light just as Congress was wrapping up its final session and getting ready to head into the campaign season. Being the responsible journalistic types that you are, this information (which you sat on for so long while the well-being of a young high-school page was in jeopardy) was of course made public with the sole purpose of informing the public that a young high-school page's well-being was in jeopardy, and something needed to be done right away (or months after it came to your attention that a young high-school page's well being was in jeopardy). There's a reason more people get their news from ABC News than from any other source. It is always so fresh!