Tuesday, February 01, 2005

late evening

Idiot of the Day - High School Students

Don’t even tell me that this isn’t frightening:  “Yet, when told of the exact text of the First Amendment, more than one in three high-school students said it goes “too far” in the rights it guarantees. Only half of the students said newspapers should be allowed to publish freely without government approval of stories.” —from an article in the Seattle Times

I don’t even know where to begin.  Is it because these kids think that everyone is going to believe exactly as they do, so they’ll only be censoring the “wackos”?  Or maybe they don’t even bother to think that deeply about the question, figuring that it won’t matter in their lives.  Well, kids, listen up!  Unless you want to be living in Nazi Germany where everything was censored and “cleansed” (euphemism for genocide), you’d better start believing in the First Amendment.  And really, unless the government is sanctioning murder & mayhem, how on earth can anyone go “too far” in guaranteeing people rights?

Monday, January 31, 2005

lunch time

Idiot of the Day - Simon Cowell

“I’d make it compulsory for every women over 40.”—British music mogul Simon Cowell on plastic surgery.

Okay, yeah, this is kind of old, being a quote from last year and all, but it just appeared in the Las Vegas Review Journal today.  We’re right on top of the news, we are.  Anyway, no man with man-boobs ought to be talking about anyone requiring plastic surgery.  At least no man, outside the comfort of his own home, where one should be able to express their not-so-nice comments…even if they possess a pair o’ man-boobs.

Saturday, January 29, 2005

the wee hours

Idiot of the Day - Columnists PAID to Shill for Bush

This one was too easy.  A third columnist was discovered to have taken money from the Bush Administration for writing pretty words praising government programs.  Geezus, do their employers not pay them enough?  What the hell is wrong with them?  Didn’t taking the money make them feel icky inside, like calling in sick when you really aren’t.  Then again, right after you hang up that phone, the guilt washes off and you can have a nice day.  Perhaps the guilt washed off right after they cashed those Bush Whore Bux.

I don’t have a lot of readers.  I don’t have a lot of influence.  However, if someone would like to pay me to write some columns about crappy Bush programs that don’t work, well, I’m going to have to think long and hard about it…and take the cash.  I’ll write “Just kidding” or “Not!” at the end of each column though.  But I want the cash that Armstrong Williams got, $240,000.  Mike McManus should be so embarrassed by the measly 10k he got.  Even Maggie Gallagher got $21,500.  If I’m going to sell my soul, it better at least be enough payola for some desert landscaping in the front yard and some lawn for the pooches in the back.  Poor, poor, Mike McManus.  He has to call his mom and tell her that he sold out, for ten thousand bucks.  And Armstrong got almost a quarter of a mil.  Armstrong’s mom is bragging how important her son is and Mrs. McManus is watching the 700 Club and praying for a smarter boy.

Friday, January 28, 2005

mid-afternoon

Idiot of the Day - Dick Cheney

Hey, check out the dude that dressed inappropriately for the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.  Which country does he represent again?  Oh yeah, us.  Great.  A multimillionaire can’t find someone to advise him how to dress appropriately, even though the leaders (or their representatives) of EVERY OTHER COUNTRY IN ATTENDANCE managed to figure out how to be somber.  I really just cannot believe that he had his name embroidered on his parka.  It’s something Cartman would do.

You may be wondering about that asterisk up there.  For good reason.  I accidentally wrote “coats” and I thought it was too much trouble to rewrite everything on the picture, so I airbrushed the “s” out and added the * (no, I didn’t add Bush, silly).  Why the stuff in red is fuzzy, I don’t know.  All I know is, I’m no artist, man.  So, if you’d like to hire me for internet work (please do, I’m great with people in email—I don’t even subject them to my politics, I swear), don’t hire me to make graphics, unless you’re looking for 4th grade work.  Although, if you’re looking for that interesting amateurish angle, I’m yer gal.

Wednesday, January 26, 2005

evening

Idiot of the Day - Margaret Spellings, U.S. Secretary of “Education”

Homophobia is alive and well in Washington.  The incoming Education Secretary, her second day on the job, fired off a letter to PBS because they had the audacity to

show a lesbian couple making maple syrup in Vermont.  Apparently “Postcards from Buster”, a series about a rabbit who travels around North America learning about different cultures, is getting too edgy for the current administration.  As we all know, lesbians might convert little children and convince them that farming and making maple syrup is common and acceptable.

An excerpt from the letter: Spellings said “Congress’ and the Department’s purpose in funding this programming certainly was not to introduce this kind of subject matter to children, particularly through the powerful and intimate medium of television.” Spelling continued by encouraging PBS to return the money spent on the episode to the department “in the interest of avoiding embroiling the Ready-to-Learn program in a controversy.”

Will this never end?  We’re spending untold billions of dollars on the “war” in Iraq, trying to force our flavor of democracy down their throats, but the really important thing is…we mustn’t let children know that gay people exist and do stuff like make syrup. 

I’m horrified.  I’ve forgotten that our parrots watch PBS every day in the bird room.  Will I have to tell Blackjack that she can only learn about Fundamentalist Christians, Muslims, guys who make lowrider bikes, the Arapaho tribe, surfers, Inuit igloo builders, et al?  The ”...lesbian couple with adopted children in Vermont who accompany Buster to a sugarhouse, where maple syrup is made, and to a dairy farm, where they watch a cow being milked” will obviously be too much for my African Grey.  I know she’s smart, but is she smart enough to resist being turned into a lesbian by PBS?  Yes, her vocabulary is that of a two year old, but just the other day she splashed her water all over the floor - I’m sure that she’s going to want to milk a cow if PBS deigns to show that episode in Las Vegas.  Oh, the worries of a parrot in Vegas.  Gambling, liquor, showgirls and really hot summers.  Thank goodness the Secretary of Education is worried about television, instead of illiteracy.  And yeah, so what if those last couple of sentences didn’t flow?  I’m not the Secretary of Education, you know.