Who's Hot and Who's Not!

The Iconcolast ^ | October 29, 2002 | Unkown

[Apolitical]

WHO'S HOT....

1. GORE VIDAL




Well, we don't need any further evidence to confirm our previous suspicions that controversial ex-patriate American novelist Gore Vidal has lapsed into permanent senility. In an op-ed in Britain's Observer, Mr. Vidal launched what the Guardian has excitedly called "the most scathing attack to date on George W Bush's Presidency." In a first-person, rambling demonstration of the damage that senile dementia can do to a once brilliant mind, Mr. Vidal called for an investigation into the events of 9/11 to discover whether the Bush administration deliberately chose not to act on warnings of Al-Qaeda's plans.

Yes, you got it right. Gore Vidal's 7000-word polemic, titled 'The Enemy Within,' claims that what he calls the "Bush junta" knew the 9/11 terrorist attacks were coming, deliberately did nothing to prevent them, and then used the al-Qaeda outrages as a pretext to enact a pre-existing agenda to attack that beloved bastion of freedom and democracy, the progressive Taliban regime in Afghanistan -- to say nothing of fulfilling a further evil plan to quash the civil liberties of unsuspecting Americans at home.

In particular, the aging author questions why George W. Bush, America's "Commander-in-Chief," stayed in a Florida classroom as news of the attacks broke. "The behaviour of President Bush on 11 September certainly gives rise to not unnatural suspicions," charges Mr. Vidal. Suspicions that are not unnatural for a career America hater like Gore Vidal, we suppose.

Vidal additionally draws comparisons between 9/11 and Pearl Harbor, evoking the long-dismissed libel that U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt had prior knowledge of the Japanese attack but deliberately chose to ignore the warnings in order to gain a pretext for American entry into the war against the Axis powers of Germany and Japan.

For Mr. Vidal, it's an opportunity to enjoy another fifteen minutes in the limelight, this time as the favorite bard of all the America haters in the U.K. Next we can probably expect a Vidal op-ed on how the Mossad and CIA teamed up to engineer the 9/11 jetliner crashes into New York City's twin towers and how all the Jews who worked in those buildings were tipped off and stayed away from work that day. After all, that's the kind of dementia that passes for journalism in left-wing circles in Europe and in Saudi Arabia these days.

3. PAUL WELLSTONE



Too bad no-one made a fuss over Democratic Senator Paul Wellstone while he was alive, the way they are doing now that he's dead. Could it be that a too-close-to call mid-term congressional election contest between Republicans and Democrats is impelling the mainstream media to transform the quirky Mr. Wellstone into a bona-fide saint and martyr? After all, why don't CNN, MSNBC, CBS, NBC and ABC simply flash "Let's Win This One For Paul" on our TV screens every night, rather than attempt to canonize the late Minnesota senator during every minute of available airtime, and constantly remind us about the only way to preserve his sacred memory -- electing "progressive," caring Democratic candidates, on November 5th, who are just like Senator Wellstone.

Not that we ever met Paul Wellstone, but he sounds like he was an amiable, irrepressible good guy -- regardless of the ridiculous stands he took on the issues of the day. But let's face it, he still didn't deserve the disproportionate amount of TV news time that's currently being dedicated to his untimely death. In particular, one suspects that if there weren't a crucial election on November 5th, in which Democratic control of the U.S. Senate is on the line, then saintly Senator Paul Wellstone would already be yesterday's news.

WHO'S NOT....

1. LARRY KING



The reign of prime-time cable's tyrannous rex may be over. Larry King has probably been around longer in talk radio and TV than Strom Thurmond has been in politics, but ratings for CNN's talk-show dinosaur have continued to flourish -- until recently, that is.

For the first time in six years, Fox News Channel's Hannity and Colmes talkfest has consistently beaten the Larry King Live snorefest in cable-TV's October ratings. Evidently, viewers aren't convinced that the cadaver-like King is indeed Live, but rather suspect the talk-show veteran is actually dead -- his body continuing to robotically interview guests out of pure force of habit. And they're turning the channel.

These latest rating numbers are just another sign of the continued ratings decline of CNN. Ever since Fox News overtook CNN as the number-one cable news network last January, King's 9 P.M. timeslot has been of the few ratings periods in which CNN still was able to outdraw Fox News. However, the rot continues, and the writing now seems to be on the wall. Ted Turner's unofficial Democratic Party news channel looks like it's about to go down for the count.

Just more evidence that Americans simply don't like their TV news slanted, Pravda-style. Which probably also accounts for the even more pitiful Fox News ratings rout of Donahue on MSNBC.

2. SOCIETY



Let's face it. It's really society's fault that John Allen Muhammad and his 17-year-old accomplice, John Lee Malvo, coldheartedly picked off and killed ten victims with a sniper's rifle, as if the victims were clay rabbits in a shooting gallery. After all, we all know that society just doesn't understand the pressures that homeless minority-group members face. Nor does it provide them with the appropriate social and emotional supports, especially when they have a compulsion to murder innocent convenience-store employees in Alabama and drivers filling up their cars at gas pumps in Maryland. (Not that we condone the act of driving a gas-guzzling, pollution-emitting automobile when it's so much more environmentally friendly to take a bus or hop on a commuter train. Heaven forbid!)

And while we're on the topic of society failing its most vulnerable members, who is responsible for every negative thing that happens to any gay person in America -- right down to the latest fashion disaster? Society, of course, with its rigid intolerance and lax human rights laws.

On the other hand, if we punished society and locked it away in some big giant prison for failed societies, and threw away the key, what would every troubled criminal, or special interest group, or New York Times editorial writer with writer's block, do when they didn't have society to blame anymore? The thought is too depressing to even ponder...........

[Apolitical]

Paul Wellstone is making more news dead than when he was alive.

[FourtySeven]

Paul Wellstone is making more news dead than when he was alive.

I've thought the same thing. Before his death, I knew nothing about him or his politics.

[SwinneySwitch]

Doesn't 2 come after 1?

I knew Wellstone was a DemonRat before he died!

[SwinneySwitch]

Sorry, I see Corbain was #2.