Oh, I wish I was a congressman named Weiner, that is what I'd surely like to be...

After days of dominating a modern news cycle mutated by its own ubiquitous nature into a giant, sucking maw which devours and then disgorges random bits of information in waves, Anthony Weiner today held one last surreal, disastrous news conference in which he clumsily attempted to leave the stage but which itself turned into another in a series of unforgettably gonzo media happenings.  Unbelievably given the nature of his fame, Weiner has managed – unintentionally, surely – to take up more of the new media’s time and energy than the Arab Spring demonstrations that are changing the first quarter of the 21^st century.   His tragic, stupid, deranged story took up 17% of the news between June 6^th and June 12^th and was covered scrupulously to the point of repulsion by every major network till we all wanted to puke.   That is more coverage than anything else.  Think about that…

Wolf Blitzer, a man who has covered the majority of the history-making stories of the last 25 years, now has to suffer the indignity of standing beside a stage where this guy, who is famous for the same kind of stuff that gets winos arrested near elementary schools, bathed in sweat with camera lights bearing down on him unmercifully, tries his best to explain his leaving office as the result of some mysterious compulsion that is out of his control.  Shaaa…right.   George fucking Stephanopolous, senior political advisor to Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign has to stand in front of a camera doing a “Special Report”, interrupting The Young and the Restless, facing whatever viewers not yet retching uncontrollably and trying to put it in “perspective”.    How in the world have we come to this?   Chet Huntley, David Brinkley, and Walter Cronkite are not just rolling over in their graves; they are sitting together somewhere in their underwear, ashtray full of cigarette butts  slamming straight vodka shots until they pass out in a bleary-eyed despair, cursing quietly and trembling.

On another note almost too depressing to contemplate, we have the story out of Arizona about their top education official, a former Hitler-youth committee chairman named John Huppenthal, who has decided – against all available evidence – that an extremely successful Mexican-American studies program nonetheless is illegal because it, “"promotes the overthrow of the U.S. government, promotes resentment toward a race or class of people, are is designed primarily for pupils of one ethnic group or advocate ethnic solidarity.”  Arizona’s own education auditors reported that students enrolled in the class graduate at a higher rate than comparable students who didn’t take the class and that there was no discernable evidence to indicate that the class was in any way illegal or in violation of the law - which was passed last year - or exclusionary in any way.   Herr Huppenthal, however, insists that the classes are un-American and promote one culture to the detriment of all the others.   Now it may be because of old cowboy movies, spring training baseball and that Eagles song about “standin’ on a corner in Winslow Arizona…”  but I thought Arizona was a cool place.  Now with this Eva Peron wannabe, Jan Brewer, ruling with an iron hand, passing the stop, drop and spread ‘em immigration law and acting like half-mad Victoria Barkley, I think the place is an experiment in Aryan thinking run amuck.  That the whole god damned state is on fire might give me pause if I was the one who has set it on its current course;  maybe Mexicans are God’s children after all and  I pissed him off and need to rethink things.