Royal Flush

I have to admit I got some pleasure out of seeing this photo of Prince Charles and Camilla reacting to the recent student demonstrations in London, once the violence was directed at their noble personages firsthand. When a breach in police security lines piled a phalanx of protesters around the privileged twosome's Rolls Royce as they headed to the theatre, the shock suddenly registered on their Stonehenge-like countenances. Reports claim the students rocked the car and shouted "off with their heads" while someone even poked Camilla in the ribs with a stick, as though assessing the old horsewoman the way she might inspect a pony's fetlocks. I wonder if it was the first time either of them, in their well-sheltered lives, had been truly frightened.

The fact that these two are living out their storied lives together now, and may soon be king and something very close to queen, seems unfair. When the prince selected the 19-year-old Diana Spencer for his bride 30 years ago, she was naive enough to think she was marrying for love. The reality was that she'd been chosen for her virginity, fertility, and a lineage that went back many centuries. She was simply a brood mare to the royal family, and it wasn't long before she realized her specific role and the fact that her husband had never ended his relationship with the older woman. By the time she finally extracted herself from the family and began to define herself it was already too late.


Knowing the fate that would befall Diana, it's hard to watch this early interview when the engagement was announced. Seeing the prince caress her one finger, as though that represents affection to him, is quite sad. Worse still, though, is what comes after the 7-minute mark, when he is asked if they're in love. "Whatever 'in love' means," he responds.





Understandably, there's a lot of speculation as to whether a similar fate will befall Kate Middleton, the fiancee of Diana's son Prince William. It seemed a bad omen to use Diana's engagement ring to start this marriage, but maybe that's just superstition. Certainly the press will follow their every move, but the couple has already had a lengthy courtship and are both 28, on a more even footing even though Kate is considered a commoner. Let's hope that in this case history doesn't repeat itself. 

Getting the Scoop

Journalism is in a sad state when you're more likely to get breaking news from a check-out stand tabloid than the New York Times. But more and more, gossip rags like The National Enquirer, which once featured front-page stories on Bat Boy or Nostrodamus' predictions of world annihilation, are scooping their more esteemed colleagues in the Fourth Estate.


That was the case with the sad news that Motown legend Aretha Franklin is suffering from -- and most likely dying from -- pancreatic cancer. While other news agencies were gingerly approaching the subject of the singer's recent hospitalization, the Enquirer wasn't afraid to make the announcement -- just as it did with the revelation of John Edwards' affair and paternity issues involving his videographer. 


Fortunately, you can still count on wide-ranging journalistic takes on current events and celebrity news. Case in point: two side-by-side publications currently on the new stands:

Kut the Kards

Perhaps there’s hope for humanity, and the world isn’t composed entirely of idiots after all.

I’m referring to the epic failure of the Kardashian Kard, a prepaid debit card introduced earlier this month by the monumentally untalented Kardashian sisters of E! Network fame.

Before it was pulled, only 250 of the cards – or “Kards” – were purchased, meaning that even the financially unsophisticated target audience who supposedly aspires to emulate the lives of luxury, extravagance and unflinching exhibitionism that are the creed of Kim, Kourtney and Khloe weren’t biting. (And what is with prolifically-breeding nut job reality show families, like the Duggars of 19 and Counting, and their penchant for naming all of their children with the same first consonant?)

Complaints of egregious fees caused banking officials to look into the matter, quickly resulting in outcry from regulating agencies like the Consumers Union and Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal. Aside from having to prepay the card to use it, cardholders could have racked up an additional $100 in annual fees on top of charges to cancel the card, add money to it, withdraw funds from an ATM, or even speak to a phone representative.

The family’s provenance doesn’t exactly inspire fiscal responsibility, considering its fame was launched by a graphic sex tape leaked by oldest sister Kim. Or that these spoiled, sniping young women are the offspring of O.J. Simpson’s pal Robert Kardashion, who may have helped to discard the bloody clothing and weapon used in the murder of Simpson's wife Nicole and Ron Goldman. Or that these girls have made a very profitable career out of horrifying their wizened stepfather, former Olympic athlete Bruce Jenner, with their general vulgarity, shallow consumerism and tacky public hookups.


It’s almost like a biblical pronouncement, and for once the money lenders were swept out of the temple. What next, Kardashians?

A Grizzly Scenario

One of the most ludicrous pieces of delusional nonsense I've read lately comes from a conservative columnist named S.E. Cupp. Attempting to analyze the woefully unprepared former governor's supposed popularity, she writes:


The reason Palin has become such a lightening rod, a kingmaker and a punching bag, a celebrity and a power player, is simple. It's because she's so gosh darn happy.


(A kingmaker? What does that even mean?)


You only have to see Palin speak to detect the thin veneer of upbeat boosterism that frames every inane utterance. She trowels on the soccer mom platitudes, playing up to her image as a woman of the people; it was the mannered falseness of her delivery that Tina Fey isolated and satirized so successfully. 


This is not a woman who is happy, regardless of how "flippin' fun" she says all those calculated family outings on her reality series are. As a Vanity Fair profile recently illustrated, the town of Wasilla, Alaska is littered with the rubble of citizens and former friends so burned by Palin's self-serving machinations that most will only speak to the media anonymously for fear of retribution. Her own staff has had to advise her to back off on her attempts to eviscerate her online critics, and her handlers, during her candidacy for Vice President, soon realized she was a hot-headed horror-show that even the most experienced spin team couldn't sculpt into something that resembled a viable candidate. 


Former future son-in-law Levi Johnston, who had unlimited access to the Palin household, described her as a negligent, abusive wife and mother who issued draconian chores to her children, sparred constantly with and threatened to divorce her supposedly perfect husband Todd, and referred to her own Down's Syndrome child as "the retard." 


Here's more of Ms. Cupp's tragic misdiagnosis of the situation:


"...nothing raises the ire of cynical liberals more than a happy-go-lucky, totally unburdened, freethinking and self-assured conservative woman who has everything she wants and then some. And without anyone's help."


Here's how I would amend that blurb:


"Nothing sickens liberals more than yet another inexperienced failed politician being groomed to become another puppet of the far right."


No wonder we're cynical.

Stop Being Crazy

I’ve got news for you: you’re not that crazy. How do I know? If you were among the small percentage of the population currently wandering the streets in tattered ballet slippers pushing a baby stroller filled with colored Easter eggs shaped from your own excrement, you probably wouldn’t be reading this with anything close to comprehension. I’d even wager that the poopy-pushing nut job yodeling outside your local Starbucks isn’t nearly as insane he would like you and society at large to believe. He stops speaking in tongues long enough to open the door for you in expectation of a tip, doesn't he?

There’s no denying that life is difficult. Or that the chaos and confusion of the modern world exists way out of proportion to the ability of our marginally-evolved brains to process and absorb it. Recent advances in our technologically-enhanced culture may already be rewiring the way we process information and formulate thought, so that very soon the average person will have difficulty locating a hamburger joint around the corner without consulting the ubiquitous hand-held device downloading signals from orbiting global positioning satellites. Our elected officials don't seem to have our best interests at heart, and big business makes a show of ecological awareness while befouling our air and water. And, as a rapidly growing population teems across the imaginary borders of our tiny blue planet, it’s natural to be a bit anxious about the subsequent distribution of our dwindling resources in the face of inevitable warfare and climate change. But does that justify succumbing to the seduction of medication and mediation, succumbing to an industry for which society had no need just a few generations ago?

What would you say fuels your neurosis, your psychosis? Financial worries during a time of economic uncertainty? A parent that never loved you? The fear of dying alone? The inability to find fulfilling work? Unhappy childhood experiences, followed by an adulthood that has been less than satisfying? I’ve just described the human condition, and there has to be a better way to navigate it than for us to collectively shell out billions of dollars to supposed practitioners that will only pretend to listen to our woes without supplying any applicable answers and trick us into “feeling better” by dosing us with complex combinations of pharmaceuticals.

At this exact moment, there are thousands of relocated Somalian refugee families thriving in the once-abandoned industrial cities of northern New England. Are they filling the waiting rooms of the local psychologists and therapists to sob and obsess about the civil war that displaced them, the ethnic cleansing efforts that drove them from their ancestral homes onto the sleet-frozen streets of Lewiston, Maine to serve as taxi drivers and kitchen crews? Not generally. Like any of us who have survived torture and turmoil, they have nightmares, they exhibit caution in strange surroundings, and they apply themselves to make the most of the current situation in which they find themselves. What about the young Chinese and Indian adults who work seven days a week and must pay, out of their meager earnings, to reside in squalid factory dormitories owned by American retailers, so that our overweight, over-indulged children can slink off to school with $6 backpacks?  Do they doubt their self-worth, and trouble themselves into a state of emotional instability because of their circumstances? No, they seize the opportunity to provide for their poverty-stricken families back in their villages and home provinces, and embrace the one afternoon they have off each week to date, dance, and dream of better things to come.

The simple fact is that throughout history people have persevered because they must. Cultural mass-insanity is a by-product of a leisure culture, one with enough time on its hands to feel sorry for itself, to indulge in weakness and childishness, and, worse, to allow itself to become so insecure it seeks solace in false cures and foolish promises. In short: suck it up. Life is hard. And you can stop being crazy now.

Half-Baked Alaska

It's hard to image what, exactly, the intention could be behind the new reality series Sarah Palin's Alaska.

If she really has presidential aspirations -- and we know she does -- then why give us this intimate little glimpse into the Palin household? My guess is that the reasons are two-fold: first, she simply can't resist the revenue that her celebrity began generating just two years ago when John McCain tapped her as his vice presidential running mate. This is the woman, after all, who walked away from her role as governor of her supposedly beloved home state in mid-term -- a position that pays a paltry $125,000 a year. She's managed to rake in an estimated $12 to $15 million so far.

The second is that it provides an opportunity to project a carefully-controlled portrait of the Palin family. We see Sarah exposing her brood to the natural wonders of the Yukon -- not missing an opportunity to compare the local wildlife with her own "grizzly mama" persona, even though they were actually watching Alaskan brown bears. And we see her being the firm and attentive mom she'd like us to believe she is, telling daughter Willow that no boys are allowed upstairs in their home. Nice touch, considering that with daughter Bristol one definitely got through the gate.

What you won't see on Palin's reality program, however, is a heart-warming interaction between Sarah and her husband Todd. He coordinates the fishing trips and glacier hikes like some hired hand, but there's no sense of marital happiness here, because that kind of connection can't be scripted. She even has him build a hastily-constructed 14-foot-tall fence to block the view of the writer next door who Sarah says is working on a "hit piece" about her.

And the most appalling thing about the show? It was the biggest series premier in TLC's history, with over 5 million viewers.

Cover Up Your Sheep

If anyone needed proof that the American public is still complacent enough to accept even the most ludicrous spin from authorities about disturbing topics, here it is.

I'm not a conspiracy theorist. But it's pretty obvious to even the most casual observer that the so-called Mystery Missile seen ascending into the sky just off the coast of Southern California the other evening was not a plane. Yet today news web sites and newspapers across the country are proclaiming "MYSTERY SOLVED."

Even Ambassador Robert Ellsworth, the former Deputy Secretary of Defense who evaluated the footage, never considered that it might be a jet or plane. "It's definitely a big missile," he says, and attempts to determine just what type. Jets don't shoot into the stratosphere at right angles to the earth. And viewed from more than 35 miles away, they appear to hang in the sky despite traveling near the speed of sound -- they certainly don't tear through the atmosphere like an Apollo rocket heading for orbit. They also don't emit broad fantail plumes that track their entire course.

Take a look at the news footage.



What's really shocking about this incident isn't that NORAD and the Pentagon deny any knowledge of what had to be some sort of missile test or, God forbid, an accident or demonstration of might from a foreign nation with a submarine parked just off our shores. What's horrifying is the lack of public concern, the lethargy of our elected officials to find out the truth, and the lack of investigation by the press.

Right, it was just a plane. And I have a big orange bridge I can sell you cheap.