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Jesse James has checked himself into a treatment center. Well, I for one am thrilled. Maybe now he'll get the help he needs. Just one question...Who the ----is Jesse James? OK, I know he's married to Sandra Bullock and he fixes motorcycles on Spike TV (viewership skewing to the incarcerated) but since when did Hollywood infidelity rate so much ink? If extra-marital groping among celebrities was this newsworthy, Charlie Sheen would have his own daily newspaper.
James appears to be of particular interest because 1) he's married to a recent academy award winner and 2) the woman he was canoodling has more writing on her body than the walls of a Spanish Harlem bodega.
I'm not a fan of tattoos. Presumably, a small discreet butterfly or a coyly placed rose is harmless enough but people who have turned their bodies into a LeRoy Neiman painting creep me out. Like excessive piercings, I just don't get it. The woman Mr. James is accused of shtupping is actually a walking billboard for tattoos...literally. Michelle McGee bills herself as a tattoo model. Presumably Jesse was just admiring the painting and wanted to get the full effect. After all, you don't look at the Mona Lisa with a thong across the lower half, do you?
I suppose it's unfair to judge a person merely because they have permanently turned their body into a billboard but ask yourself: do you want your heart surgeon to display the entire White House Rose Garden on his chest? Would you be freaked out by your child's second grade teacher if he had the New York Yankee team from 1927 inked across his back? Folks with elaborate tattoos are screaming "Look at Me. I'm strange. I like being stuck with inky needles by a person who needs to check the sign over the door avoid misspelling 'tattoo". So ask yourself: Do you want this freaky guy married to America's sweetheart? or Do you want this freak fixing your carburetor?
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Sarah Palin has a TV show. Boy, no one saw that coming. The show, called Real American Stories is apparently designed to distinguish itself from the Real Housewives of Wherever. None of those "fake" stories about people dying without healthcare for Sarah. (What do you want to bet that one of her "stories" involves a gun?) The plan is to highlight American Exceptionalism because as we all know, there are no exceptional Frenchmen or Dutchmen. The very idea of exceptional Russians or Chinese is laughable. Naturally, the show will appear on the Fox News Channel after such "exceptional" Americans as Bill O'Reilly and Glenn Beck. The motto of Fox News is "We Distort. You Decide".
Norman Podhoretz wrote a scary column in The Wall Street Journal this week comparing Sister Sarah to Ronald Reagan...favorably. Podhoretz describes Reagan as an unfocused, intellectual light-weight who became (according to Podhoretz) the second coming of George Washington. Reagan was, as history tells us, introduced to millions of Americans as host of Death Valley Days on TV in the 50's. It therefore seems only correct that Sarah Palin host a TV show to remind Americans that the uneducated, platitude-driven, amateurish, unqualified, dim-witted people of the country need a champion too. (Like Beck wasn't already doing that job.)
Although people are invited to "log on and tell their stories", it appears unlikely that the show will air the tale of a young boy, educated in Indonesia who, despite bi-racial parents and modest means, was able to work his way through Columbia University and Harvard Law to become a U.S. Senator and President of the United States. After all, the show is called "Real American Stories" and, well, you know, there is that birth certificate thing...
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Representative Paul Broun, a Georgia Republican (express shock here!) introduced a bill that would establish "Ten Commandments Weekend". Seriously, this man actually drafted a law which would "acknowledge that the U.S.'s national character was shaped by The Ten Commandments". The proposed law has run into a few roadblocks on the road to passage. Several Republicans, including David Vetter and John Ensign, object to the inclusion of the Sixth and Ninth Commandments as too restrictive and an affront to freedom. Several Democrats are troubled by the Seventh Commandment. Representative Charlie Rengal demands a broader definition of "steal". Several Texas congressmen want the Fifth Commandment altered to include the phrase "unless a gun is involved". More than one Conservative Congressman is troubled by "keeping holy the Lord's day" as a possible excuse for additional union-sponsored holidays. Even Sarah Palin, who hasn't let her lack of standing as an elected official stop her from bombarding us with her opinion, has an objection. "Well golly shucks, coveting your neighbor's goods is what made America great. Our capitalist system only exists because we want what our neighbors have...and more of it. Any other idea is just plain socialism."
Muttering in dismay, Representative Broun plans to withdraw his legislation in favor of a bill to install a plaque inscribed with the Second Amendment in every inner-city emergency room in America.
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