Swine of the Week--Mid Season Report

(this is my best effort from my Newsvine blog. It was supposed to be 2 parts, but I didn't ever get around to continuing it)


Swine of the Week Unleashed!
More Swine--All of the Time!

I've been a bit lazy with any sort of regularity for the Swine of the Week, but now that the 4th of July has come and gone, we could review some of the more interesting candidates that have emerged all at once in the month of June and the first full week of July.

Let's just start with all of the easy cheap shots first, just to warm things up a bit...

I can't say anything about Michael Jackson has ever or would ever surprise me. I had just mentioned the gloved one the same day he died. Quite possibly at the same moment, so I feel good that there may be some Karma in the world. More platitudes have been thrown out for someone so undeserving of them than there have been for anyone since Kurt Cobain. Because let's face the real facts--MJ was a Performer, he wasn't really a musician. I don't really think he wrote much of, if any of the songs credited to him. I just cannot believe that he had the sort of dedication, discipline or craftmanship to sit down for a couple of hours every day and write songs. Maybe I'll be proven wrong, maybe the scraps of his unfinished work and drafts of his better known compositions will surface. But I doubt it.

Denis Leary's latest book has a whole section that talks about child stars and how none of them ever end up being normal. And MJ was a Prime Example of his theory. Indulged and spoiled, allowed everything and told nothing, his excesses are legendary and his taste in everything was child-like and immature. I suppose no one ever told Mike that eventually the Peter Pan schtick gets old. Thousands of single mothers in this country have probably seen the realization of the Last Chapter of the classic story--Wendy gets tired of Pete never being able to hold a job and hanging out with his also unemployable buddies and puts him on the street. You have to grow up, at least a little bit, eventually.

I'm proud to say I hated MJ when he was at his peak, and always thought he was nothing more than video star. He did not have a substantial influence on music, and his stuff won't be held up as an example of excellence. Video production? that's a different story, but even then, he was the goose that laid the golden egg and he killed himeself. No one had the time, money or creativity to top the stuff MJ did, and the fact that you'd be hard pressed to find music videos these days is proof enough of that fact.

I'm a bit surprised that he didn't have himself embalmed and put on display forever. Like a pop music Chairman Mao, always there to be adored and gazed upon. Maybe he actually had a sliver of good taste after all.

Bad taste isn't really a vice that is limited to show business. Just ask Sarah Palin. I don't know if Sarah doesn't actually know she's tacky and low rent, or if she's just keeping up the facade for an ironic counterpoint to what everyone says about her. Actually, I'm pretty sure she just doesn't know any better. 99 Thousand and ninety nine other mothers out of 100,000 would sense that it probably isn't a wise idea to keep on blabbering about abstinence when your own daughter doesn't know how to handle the business end of a condom. At least she's in the top 1% of something...

But make no mistake, Sarah has cashed her final check as a political figure in this country. She was already something like a 3-1 shot to ever win another election in Alaska, and 20-1 to even make it through Super Tuesday 2012. Now that she has no safety net and can run around spouting off without impugnity, she'll find herself even more marginalized and pigeon-holed as a dangerous windbag and white trash panderer.

I was actually just warming up for another season of the Wasilla Hillbillies (OK, I need to get the rights to this reality concept NOW!). Who knows what could happen with those silly Palins? Shucks, there could be more birthin babies in the future.
She's soon going to find out that if you're trying to run for office and you don't have a steady government job already, you're going to have a lot of problems. Even being the governor of the Biggest Welfare State in the World might have gotten her something. But now she'll have to make due with being Hockey Mom and we'll see how that fund raising angle works for her.

Bad time to be a governor about now, especially a Republican one. Mark Sanford forgot at least 2 Commandments, and his cover story as well. When the deal came down, he held up under questioning about 10 seconds longer than a waterboarded Al-Quada operative would have. But he still thinks everything is OK, and that God still loves him. He'd better hope so, because I don't think his wife and kids are going to be much of a comfort to him in his dotage. He's gonna need the Lord and a Good Lawyer before it's all said and done. I'd bet you a one way ticket to Buenos Aires that he still thinks he might have a chance to be President someday.

Speaking of one way tickets, I think Arnold Schwartzanegger probably wishes he had one back to Graz about now. He is a lame duck governor of a basically bankrupt state. And I'd bet a lot of the people who voted for him initially would like a do-over. Arnie came on with the idea that he was going to do things different, but soon realized that there was no way he could get around a couple of the biggest roadblocks--the fact that the state is virtually tapped out because of the inability to raise money through property tax, and while people may like him personally, they were never going to elect enough people who were of a similar persuasion to the legislature to allow Arnie to Terminate the entire politcal agenda.