I’m not big on topical stuff. I’m not slamming those who do it - and I’m not saying I'm above it. Some people are better than others at the "So what’s in the news today?" format than others. I guess - and again, this is my opinion, so take it with a grain of salt - I’ve just considered it to be a lazy approach. The newspaper (or in my case, news feed) comes everyday. In the case of television and the Internet, it’s a ‘round the clock feed. And I don’t think being able to respond to news stories with a couple snarky quips is particularly unique. I'm pretty sure, almost everybody is good at it - if only to amuse themselves. But I digress…
So what’s in the news today? What’s going on?
You hear about this one? Tiger Woods has beeen stricken with Wandering Cock Syndrome. And it turns out that he had multiple ongoing affairs. Wow! A famous athlete with tons of money who’s been told, practically since birth, that his shit doesn’t stink had an affair? Good fucking grief! No way! Tell me more!
Yeah, he does seem like a nice enough cat. But people tend to forget that he was a golf prodigy, and even as a kid, was already in the public eye. Kind of makes me wonder if his old man was like Joe Jackson.
SMACK!
"Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!!!"
"If you don't make that bogey, you little shit, I'm going to give you something to really cry about!"
But considering where that guy's life is at, I'm shocked only in that people are shocked. With that kind of money and (relative) power, I'm surprised he doesn't travel everywhere by parade. First, maybe a dozen or so dwarfs riding elephants; followed by 100 dancing girls; then, of course, some clowns; and the man himself on a chauffeur-driven Harley Davidson trike.
You see this one? Turns out a couple of star-fucking reality TV douchetards crashed a White House hootenanny? I guess it was a stunt of some kind to promote themselves, or their reality show, or... Holy fucking shit! Does anybody give a French-friend fuck about this? I guess someone does. Now they're having Congressional hearings about it. Let's see - the country is how many dollars in debt, the world itself is on the brink of fucking ecologic and economic meltdown and the people we elected to help run the country are wasting their time with what? Our tax dollars at work...
And Meredith Baxter (formerly Baxter-Birney) came out. The world stopped rotating for a split-second while a baffled nation paused to yawn and say, "Who's that?"
Now look, I know the totality of local news - praticularly in the City of Angles - makes The View look like a fucking MENSA meeting. Actually, though, it ain't a hell of a lot better when it comes to more "legitimate" news sources. You know, the "hard news" stations. I guess the main dividing line is that, every so often, when Anderson Cooper or Wolf Blitzer have to read fluff pieces as lead stories, you can see something behind their eyes...
"Today in the news, Britney Spears cooked her baby and put a turkey in a stroller and took it to The Grove. Sources close to the singer say that..."
Then Wolf pulls out a gun that would give Dirty Harry penis envy.
"I'M MAD AS HELL AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE IT ANYMORE!!! ET TU, GREY FOX?"
Then, a very sullen Anderson Cooper comes out and pulls a gun. He seems more like a Derringer kind of boy, though.
They both take aim at each others' foreheads, and scream "SIC SEMPER TYRANNUS!!!"
Freeze frame.
Cue the music.
Roll credits.
Now I know that the miasma of doom and death that is the world today isn't quite the thing most people want to wake up to. So I look the other way on clown-cars like The Today Show, or Good Day LA. I like an anchor team where Steve Edwards is the heavy news guy.
I think, however, Steve-ster's beleaguered routine is schtick. I'm not saying he doesn't do it well, I just think he took a couple night classes at The Adler Academy or something. If his "Why me, O Lord?" look was the real deal, he would have stabbed his co-tards in their throats by now, at the same time, with a couple of ninja tsais. His hair would spring back into its "magic afro" form he sported in the 80's
As the security guards jump, he'd scream, with a savage look in his saucer-eyes, "I'M RIGHT!!! I'M RIGHT!!! YOU KNOW I'M RIGHT!!! SIC SEMPER TYRANNIS!!! AAAAAAAAAAARGH!!! AAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
And with her last, dying breath, Dorothy Lucey asks, "Is that Spanish?" And croaks.
But you have to wonder if it's a chicken and the egg situation. TV is ratings driven, and I guess there's not a lot of commercial value to telling people how fucked up things really are and how, unless we really change how we do things as a planet and people, we're doomed. Well, not without doing it in the form of a History Channel doomsday prophecy piece. I guess mega-tidal waves and nuclear holocaust brought on by a character in The Bible are easier to process than the ramifications of climate change and global imperialism. I guess if we plunge into the abyss in a sexy, stylized, Roland Emmerich kind of way, we can say it wasn't our fault.
All right. There's a freeway chase on Fox I gotta go watch...
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