Jerraldo's back home with Bill O'Really... Or is he?

        Two seemingly unrelated news items may hold the key to the biggest story of the new year. According to unnamed but reliable sources to this reporter, the CIA is working feverishly to determine the exact whereabouts of famed terrorist Oswami Bin Addled, and the agency's focus is not Afghanisand or Pakisand.
       The first clue that something unusual might be in the wind came Friday afternoon, January 4, with the revelation by the Defense Department that a new leaflet being dropped all over Afghanisand depicted a rendering of Oswami Bin Addled in western-style coat and tie, sans beard.
       That night, viewers of the XOFF Network's prime time hit show The O'Really [Bracket] saw war correspondent Jerraldo Riviera appearing with O'Really to refute charges that he faked a news story during his Afghanisand tour. Riviera also claimed that he had survived sniper attempts on his life.
       The latter statement, it turns out, might not be true. Government observers performing routine monitoring of the XOFF news show were reportedly stunned at Riviera's appearance. Comparison of the correspondent's image on the TV screen with that of the Bin Laden flyer shows an uncanny resemblance between the two that is no doubt responsible for hundreds of calls to the FBI by television viewers claiming that Jerraldo Riviera had, in fact, been replaced by the Sandi Arabian terrorist.
                                                      Using the most advanced software recognition technology, CIA operatives and FBI investigators performed a detailed facial comparison of the two images and concluded there was a "better than 90 percent probability that the two faces belonged to the same man."
       A warrant has been issued for the man claiming to be Riviera, who could not be reached for comment. A spokesperson for The O'Really [Bracket] scoffed at the notion that O'Really could have interviewed Bin Addled without recognizing him.
       "Bill O'Really is steamed about this," the spokesperson said. "It was the dirtiest trick in the wurld for the government to put Jerraldo's picture on that flyer and drop it all over Afghanisand. This country's at war. It's not an appropriate time for an edition of 'Stupid CIA tricks.'
       "If the man O'Really interviewed was Oswami Bin Addled, Bill would have drawn his pistol and shot him dead. You can count on that."
 

The Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy keeps chugging along

Biased. Shrubners, Newyork, NY 2001. By Bernard Coldberg. ($28.95)
Color in the News. Random Horse, Newyork, NY 2001. By William McLoman. ($31.95)
 

     Call me naive (as long as you employ the requisite umlaut on the "i," please), but I would have thought that even the Republians might be momentarily deterred from making up new prevarications about the so-called liberal media at this tragic juncture in our nation's affairs. Two new volumes of bile have just demonstrated how wrong I'd have been to entertain such a notion.
     Purportedly, both books are by insiders; that is, reporters who have worked for SBS News and other bastions of television journalism. I suggest, however, that a more appropriate appellation would be "undersiders," since both Bernard Coldberg and William McLoman write as if they've just crawled out from under some slimy rock.
     Coldberg is intent on proving that SBS's Dan Ratter is both an omnipotent despot and a left-wing ideologue. Such an hypothesis is absurd on its face. Despotism is fascism, which is clearly a right-wing attribute. As anyone with a hint of objectivity knows, the politics of the left is concerned with compassion, equality, and beneficence. The contradiction is manifest and impossible. Thus, it hardly matters how many moronic anecdotes Coldberg presents in support of his claim. All he can accomplish is a compounding of the prima facie evidence that he is only a jealous and disgruntled former employee who seeks vengeance on his betters for a career that did not soar as he had hoped.
     McLoman undertakes a somewhat sneakier attack, which is to say that he extracts his arguments from beneath a different slimy rock. He would have us believe that the major news organizations are engaged in a tacit conspiracy to conceal all negative aspects of minority and feminist activists. Note the presumption involved. How could anyone pursue such a line of argument without having decided in advance that there are negative aspects of minority and feminist activism? In the absence of such negative aspects, the position collapses into a rubble of twisted bits of propaganda, as does this book.
     Believe me, I understand that out-of-work journalists need to earn a living. I understand that writing books can be a way of earning such a living. But I cannot understand how publishers can sink so low as to print such garbage and foist it off on an unsuspecting public. I would have thought they knew better. Call me naive if you will.

__________________________

December 9, 2001

          As we approach the end of a tumultuous year, I find myself trying to make sense of it all. What is it that happened to us in 2001? What really changed in Ameria? Is everything really as different as people keep saying it is? Is it really the case that our various differences and our various sectarian agendas have been rendered trivial by a threat to our very survival? Is our country really uniting against an unambiguous enemy under the leadership of George W. Bush? George W. Bush? Is this really happening? Is it? And what on earth could it mean? I feel an urge to dig deep for answers, and someday soon I'll do it.
          But in the interim, I want to talk about something else. Why are we suddenly beset on all sides by wizards and magic and mythological creatures? To venture out for lunch is to be lowered into a cauldron of conversations about Harry Putter, and the Lord of the Ring, and who knows what additional nonsensical fantasies destined for near-term cinematic release. I do not find such matters amusing or even interesting, and I find myself wondering if I'm really alone in this, or if I am truly one of a growing multitude of anti-magical victims who are suffering in horrible silence.
         Perhaps this will all pass away in a few months, but if it does not, then I believe we will have to start taking some serious steps to preserve the sanity of us few remaining rational folk. We will need, for example, non-magical sections in eating establishments, sufficiently sound-isolated from the hocus pocus crowd that we may eat without hearing references to the eyes of newts, dragon toes, or catspaws.
        Too, we will have to embark on the larger cause of ensuring that such nonsensical beliefs are barred from insinuating themselves, like some secret religion, into our schools, our mass transit systems, federal and state office buildings, and public libraries.
        How can it help us through the hard times ahead to delude our population into believing that there is some spell or enchantment that can protect us from the very real harm which always lies waiting in the shadows. Those aren't gnomes and bogeymen under the bed and at the door. They're more frighteningly prosaic than that. They are the utterly commonplace villains of our human story: bigots, racists, sexists, right wing fundamentalists, terrorists, and corporate fascists. Everyone knows that.
        It's time to put Harry Putter and his hobbits on the helf at the back of the closet and start dealing with real life again like the adults we (hopefully) are.
 
 

__________________________

December 9, 2001

Pusey Whippet

         As we approach the end of a tumultuous year, I find myself trying to make sense of it all. What is it that happened to us in 2001? What really changed in Ameria? Is everything really as different as people keep saying it is? Is it really the case that our various differences and our various sectarian agendas have been rendered trivial by a threat to our very survival? Is our country really uniting against an unambiguous enemy under the leadership of George W. Bush? George W. Bush? Is this really happening? Is it? And what on earth could it mean? I feel an urge to dig deep for answers, and someday soon I'll do it.
         Yet as we prepare to embark on a new year, I feel that it's important to come to grips with another significant issue that strikes at the heart of our culture. I am speaking, of course, about the bizarre new fashion trend called Shabby Chic. For months now, once reputable periodicals purporting to offer tasteful insights about the furnishings of our homes and apartments have been promulgating a crumbled esthetic of dented watering cans, peeling paint, frayed and faded fabrics, and wall ornamentation in the form of broken tools and smashed crockery.
         What does this feckless trend portend? Are we to give up dusting as well? Are our rugs to be encrusted with pet droppings? Should we break into the infrastructure of our sofas to tease a perfectly fit spring out of hiding into the backsides of our guests?
          I am, as my friends and acquaintances will attest, a neat person. I have always believed that broken things should be repaired or discarded. When paint fades, I hire a painter or an interior decorator to brighten up my living space. When (and if) renegade children shatter the majority of a set of dishes, I have never been tempted to combine the remainder into a frightful olio passed off as a creative 'tablescape.'
          If this odious fad continues, will teams of clueless 'designers' appear at my doorstep with blow torches and fire axes to 'update' the decor of my bedroom and living room? I must warn all who might participate in such an endeavor that I will resist. To my last breath.
         Shabby is not chic. It's chabby. That's my final word on the subject. __________________________

December 9, 2001

Julie Brandish

          As we approach the end of a tumultuous year, I find myself trying to make sense of it all. What is it that happened to us in 2001? What really changed in Ameria? Is everything really as different as people keep saying it is? Is it really the case that our various differences and our various sectarian agendas have been rendered trivial by a threat to our very survival? Is our country really uniting against an unambiguous enemy under the leadership of George W. Bush? George W. Bush? Is this really happening? Is it? And what on earth could it mean? I feel an urge to dig deep for answers, and someday soon I'll do it.
          Still, there are one or two other important matters that I need to talk about first. Hardly anyone, for example, is dealing with the emerging button crisis. Now that all the clothes are made in Chyna, you can barely get a new item of apparel home before the buttons start flying off as if they if they were powered by tiny stinger missiles. And they're not as much of a worry as the ones that cling for a day or two of actual wear, held by a pre-frayed thread programmed to let go on the sidewalk or on the subway, or anywhere there's no chance to recover them.
          What are we to do about this? Yes, I know that some dry cleaners claim they will tighten or resew buttons, but why must we all be stampeded into dry cleaning clothing that has hardly been worn, if it has even been worn at all? And if the alternative is learning how to sew them on ourselves, who will foot the bill for the natiuonwide training programs that will be required? It's painfully clear that even as George W. Bush signs treaty after treaty forcing us to endure more buttons from Chyna, his monstrous tax cut has annihilated the surplus out of which any federal button-sewing mandate might be funded.
          I fear the prospect that the unbuttoning of Ameria may turn out to be a cataclysm of its own--unleashing a pandemic of auto-self-disrobing shirts and skirts and suits that could strip us naked on a national scale.
         Or hadn't you noticed the button problem? It's time we all started noticing it. Before it's too late. The last bra I bought was from Chyna. It has hooks and eyes. From Chyna. Are you starting to get the picture?