June 29, 2007

The Great American News Script

Amateur ad-makers, be advised: According to the June 27 installment of the Boston Globe's "Making of Mitt Romney" profile series, in 1983, before beginning the family's annual 12-hour drive from Boston to Ontario in their wood-paneled station wagon, a 36-year old Romney "put Seamus, the family's hulking Irish setter, in a dog carrier and attached it to the station wagon's roof rack."

Hours into the surely thrilling excursion, eldest son/primordial spawn Tagg spots something alarming:
A brown liquid was dripping down the back window, payback from an Irish setter who'd been riding on the roof in the wind for hours.

As the rest of the boys joined in the howls of disgust, Romney coolly pulled off the highway and into a service station. There, he borrowed a hose, washed down Seamus and the car, then hopped back onto the highway. It was a tiny preview of a trait he would grow famous for in business: emotion-free crisis management.
Man, doesn't that journalistic tour de force of an opener just make you want to go off and become a profile writer? Yeah, me neither.

Soon after the piece runs, ex-Wonkette Ana Marie Cox quotes PETA president Ingrid Newkirk calling the incident "a lesson in cruelty," and that "it is commonsense that any dog who's under extreme stress might show that stress by losing control of his bowels: that alone should have been sufficient indication that the dog was, basically, being tortured." Which, Cox reminds us, Romney supports with gusto for suspected terrorist humans.

Newkirk is them quoted by the Boston Herald saying that while PETA doesn't take positions on candidates, Romney may have "what neurologists call an 'absence of the mirror neuron,' a physiological condition in the brain which means they cannot feel basic compassion."

And just as She Who Is Not To Be Named on the far right only becomes relevant when John Edwards starts responding and fundraising, Romney has to turn around and give a press conference Thursday saying Seamus "enjoyed it" and that, I quote, "PETA is not happy that my dog likes fresh air."

Yeah, liberal media, it's not torture if the so-called victim likes it.

Full disclosure: Romney and his psychotic-Ken-doll brood creep the unholy hell out of me. But don't take it from me -- take it from Tagg, quoted on the New York Times' "Caucus" blog June 19, on how his father is running for president because, basically, he's just too perfect not to:
"I don't think you have a choice. I think you have to run. Look at the way your life has unfolded, and you're gifted, you're smart, you're intelligent, but you've also been extraordinarily lucky, and so many things have broken your way, that you couldn't have predicted or controlled. It would have been a shame not to at least try, and if you don't win, we'll still love you."
Now that's just plain inspiring. And something to motivate those of us trudging along the proverbial roadside as the Romneys of the world zip past in their silver Zephyrs... with incontinent Irish setters strapped on top.

Let the mighty eagle soar indeed.

June 19, 2007

Non-partisan fun with headline math

Senator Rick Santorum +/- mentally impaired voters = ex-Senator "Santorum involved in movie project"

(the present creepy candidate crop + the presidency) ≥ the past

President Bush + speaking out against flip-flops = anarchy

June 16, 2007

Dust in the wind, or just blowback?

Who among us didn't die a little more inside today upon learning that Pluto, the frigid dwarf formerly known as the ninth planet, has fallen victim to more rogue skullduggery, being "demoted yet again" by scientists to an even lower status?

Yes, kids, it's a cruel world out there -- even Target "has stopped asking its customers whether anyone would notice if they disappeared from the face of the Earth."

Accordingly, I've been hard at work monitoring the latest developments regarding our collective approach to life and death, probing the mysteries of mortality and wrestling with the really real.

Or maybe I've just been getting a bit too into the "Six Feet Under" DVDs, gorging on the veritable buffet of gallows humor spread out in the news lately and, primarily, looking for an excuse to use the word "skullduggery."

Either way, be advised that we now live in a culture in which:
  • To stay afloat financially, cemeteries are giving "Dead White Republicans" tours. This either means a monumental tradition is on its way to becoming a soulless victim of capitalism, or demand for spectral thespians to traumatize children and look effortlessly waiflike will skyrocket and I'll finally catch my big break.

  • People write to Dear Abby asking whether it's proper, after scattering her ashes, to re-purpose your dead wife's urn as a flower vase. And Abby not only answers the question asked, she lets you know how "discreet" about it you should be with any new flames you bring home.

  • Someone needs to write to Dear Abby and ask the proper etiquette for listing a dress code on funeral notices. "Bereaved-Casual?" "Somber-Formal?" "Presentable?" The grieving have enough to contend with without guests "dumbing it down, tarting it up" in their flip-flops and summer brights. At least try to look like you're honoring a life and mourning a passing, not merely making a grudging pit stop on the way to Applebee's.

  • More embarrassing than being caught dead in shabby attire, when you head out to scatter a loved one's ashes, you run the very real possibility of running into others with the same idea, dusting their own carion over your preferred, now tainted parcel. A funerary tourism industry can't be far behind.

  • If you've chosen to be cremated but haven't agreed upon a scattering place, your survivors, understandably, may not want the responsibility, or creepiness, of being eternal caretaker to your cremains. Who would? No one, that's who. You know, you should probably just kill yourself. But make sure you do it right and leave nothing behind. Plainly, no one here can be trusted.