What would the right-wing bloviators have to babble before their core audiences said, “that’s over the line”?
Would Rush Limbaugh have to say: “Why should some poor working stiff nobody cares about have the same vote as me? I’m an important, influential multi-millionaire who owns a $44 million estate in Florida with 5 swimming pools and a $14 million apartment in New York City and yet I only get a single vote. That’s wrong. I’m rich, so naturally I’m better than you, so I should get something like 100,000 votes to the single vote of some dumb middle-class slob, like the idiots who listen to my show! That’s only fair! For that matter, why should some dope who makes below a million per even get a vote?”
Would Glenn Beck have to say: “We have to get rid of these evil progressive programs like Social Security and Medicare. If grandma and grandpa are poor or sick and dying, well, they’ve had a good life – let them die or kill themselves and get out of the way to make room for the future! Why should my tax money go to keep your grandparents alive? That’s communist socialism, folks, and we can’t have it here in the free-market capitalist Christian America I love! Hey, it’s a fact: Jesus hated the poor and loved the rich – just like me! If you aren’t rich then your proper place is to be a slave and do what you’re told by those who are – it says so in the Bible and the Constitution if you read them right!”
Would Bill O’Reilly have to say: “I don’t care, frankly, if I’m completely wrong about some historical event, if it helps me make my point. As long as I believe it and you believe it, who cares? I’m not some wimpy historian and I’m not in the business of telling you the truth. I mold opinions, even if they are usually based on pure crap I make up or something my employers tell me to say for political reasons. Facts are vastly overrated; it’s faith and ratings that count!”
Would Sean Hannity have to say: “Sure, I lied about where those donations to my college fund for the kids of dead veterans were going; it’s true, only about ten percent actually went to the families of military personnel killed overseas. So? I have a high-overhead life, folks, and I’m sure if those dead peasants – uh – vets were alive to say it, they’d tell you that they’d want your donations to go to keeping me and my family traveling in style. C’mon, I’m a TV star – these guys were little nobody’s! What, am I supposed to fly Business Class or even – ack! – Coach for this friggin’ charity? What are you, nuts?!? I’m a Republican – I’m in it for the money, people!”
Would Michael Savage have to say: “You know why I’m doing this, my friends? Because I failed at being a hippy-dippy herbal medicine and homeopathic healing book author. That’s right, I was as liberal as they come back then and called myself ‘Dr. Michael Weiner,’ but I couldn’t rub two dimes together. Ha, ha, I swam naked with homo beat poet Allen Ginsberg – did you know that? Then I noticed all the loot Limbaugh was raking in from you ultra-conservative bozos and jumped on the gravy train. So I changed my name and thought up the most outrageous, disgusting political stuff I could and here I am – rich and almost king of the hill! I don’t believe a word I say but I get a damn good laugh that you do! Hey, and I voted for Obama! Ha, ha, ha, ha!”
Would Neal Boortz have to say: “My fellow patriots, I have a lovely family, but you know what really gets me off? Sex with animals, particularly sheep. There’s nothing like a warm sheep to keep you company at night – why, I’ve even installed a small stable on the second floor of my mansion just to be near Maizie, one of my special favorites. It’s okay, my wife understands completely – I’ve even introduced her to a very handsome horse named Oater to see if she’d like to ‘go for a ride,’ if you know what I mean.”
© 2010 RS Janes. LTSaloon.org.
The Tattlesnake – Defending Charlie Sheen Edition
Is it crazy to stand up to corporations and media parasites that are trying to tell you how to live your life?
Charlie Sheen’s gotten a bum rap from the media lately because he refused to play the corporate and tabloid-TV game: the Shamed Celebrity is supposed to enter rehab and emerge contrite and chastened and just so gleefully grateful his corporate employer stuck by him during his time of need. Instead, Sheen called CBS and his producers on their ‘we care’ bullshit, and told the media hypocrites that parasitically cover celebrities to stuff it where the moon don’t shine. Here’s a news flash you won’t see on the MSM: When celebs enter rehab, it’s mainly for PR, career, or project-insurance purposes and there is no shortage of drugs and alcohol at any of the well-known rehab ranches that cater to the famous. What are they going to do, kick them out and lose all of that money? No, they turn a blind eye and cooperate in the fraud that the celebrity is ‘cured,’ and everybody goes home happy. Charlie Sheen just refused to indulge in this fetid game and, for that, he should be applauded.
Is he crazy? Maybe, but no more than most of us, and he’s not advising that we hurt or hate anyone. If you read his quotes below, he often makes considerable sense and he frequently lampoons himself, which the TMZ-style media are apparently too obtuse to recognize. He’s certainly more honest and lucid than the demented wolfpack of politicians and pundits that appear on Meet the Press every Sunday and are treated as sane and reasonable.
If a Hunter S. Thompson had given Charlie’s recent interviews, some of the same people pointing the ‘nutjob drug addict’ finger at Charlie Sheen and ‘tsk, tsk’ self-righteously shaking their heads over his sure demise, would be laughing with or praising him. But because he’s known as a film/TV actor, and many of them don’t want to offend Viacom/CBS for professional reasons, they toe the corporate line that Sheen is spinning out of control and needs help. Haven’t we learned by now that large corporations do not have compassionate souls that take pity on their employees, and neither do the heads of Hollywood production companies? It’s all about the money.
Aside from that, when did Charlie Sheen’s personal life become the concern of anyone but himself and those around him? How would you like your personal problems exaggerated and splashed all over the TV beast and the Internet?
As you read the poem below, pretend they are the words of a beat poet rather than a movie star. It might give you a whole different perspective; “Droopy-eyed armless children” by itself is a line worthy of a Jack Kerouac novel or Allen Ginsberg epic.
“Winning”
The words of Charlie Sheen edited into poetry
I so desperately wanted to be
Mr. Somebody.
Instead, I was the little brother…
As kids we’re not taught how to deal
with success; we’re taught how to
deal with failure.
If at first you don’t succeed,
try, try again.
If at first you succeed,
then what?
C’mon, bro, I won best picture at 20!
I wasn’t even trying.
I wasn’t even warm.
Fame is empowering.
My mistake was that I thought
I would instinctively know
how to handle it.
But there’s no manual,
no training course.
The run I was on made Sinatra,
Flynn, Jagger, Richards,
all of them look like
droopy-eyed armless children!
Sure, I did a lot of things in excess.
But if you look at the core,
the foundation of what I pursued,
what red-blooded young American
male in my position wouldn’t?
But you can’t focus on things
that matter if all you’ve been
is asleep for forty years.
Funny how sleep
rhymes with sheep.
(more…)