Current Events

Trick question: Which ones, if any, of the following statements qualify as news?

A. Tom Cruise is an excitable moron.
B. Mel Gibson is a bigoted drunk.
C. The government is run by lying thieves and incompetent whores.
D. The producers of “Survivor” are irresponsible racemongers.

Before you skip directly to the answer, let’s consider each item. “A” qualifies as news because Tom-Tom has alienated millions of his screen fans by using the talk-show circuit to trumpet his Scientology-warped world view. Of course, if you are not a Scientologist you cannot be expected to “get” Tom’s message, as you clearly have not pissed away all your money to this group of crackpots in order to become a “clear.”

Becoming a “clear” means more or less emptying your brain of anything of consequence. This used to be known as “brainwashing.” We should all thank Tom for serving as a prime example of how not to live your life.

Then we have the “news” of yet another cinema stalwart fencing with his demons in the most public way possible -- as a defendant in the criminal justice system. The specifics of Monkey Mel’s anti-Semitic remarks and contextually-displaced sexual aggression have been flogged beyond death already. Why? Because, just like Tom-Tom, multitudes of his teeming minions are disappointed and angry that part of their own self-image has self-imploded.

As for “C,“ there is no news here. Our system of representative democracy was actually designed to produce this result, although only a tiny fraction of a percent of the population is sufficiently erudite to have attained this level of historical knowledge. Journalists seem to think that tattling on the evildoers who are stupid enough to get caught will change things. This is their burden.

The latest in this list, “D,” qualifies because it is going to directly affect more people than the other three combined. When three times as many Americans know who won “American Idol” than who sits on the Supreme Court, this is a no-brainer on every level, from the producers who spawned this monster to everyone who supports it by watching. If I were smart I’d have a Chinese factory cranking out T-shirts, hats and bumper stickers right now demeaning each racial “tribe” thereby profiting handsomely from the latent and overt bigotry this show is bound to awaken and incite.

So sit back and enjoy the show, ladies and gentleman, playas and ‘ho’s and dudes and chicks. That stale, old homily, “ignorance is bliss,” is about to be tested on a huge public stage for the first time this century.

BTW, the answer is A, B and D