Today at the back fence we’re taking a break from our usual focus on the misadventures of Satan’s Legion, otherwise known as the radical American right wing, for a feature I’m going to call, “Stories I Don’t Care About – or the confusion of the mainstream media”. As you might guess, I do a lot of reading and listening to various news outlets and commentary on a daily basis. From time to time there is a day when I garner absolutely nothing of interest from this practice and am left wondering in the end why the feature stories of the day became so prominent. Yesterday was one such day. So in descending order of irrelevance…remember if you dare that the UN estimates that 12 million people are in danger of starvation in the Horn of Africa...12 million...
Libyan rebels move on Tripoli and storm Khadafy’s compound. The story of the uprising in Libya, while an important part of the larger story of the Arab Spring, has always been far more important to Europe than it has to America, simply because, for all of his bombast and mad-sheik bluster, Khadafy has been small potatoes for years, ever since he pulled the covers over his head after the bombing of the Pan-Am flight over Scotland. Not to minimize the tragedy of that event, but afterwards he seemed to realize had gone too far and was going to get his ass kicked from one corner of the Med to the other so he decided to make nice and retreat to his luxury tent for some dates and seven-veil dancing. Now as the Libyan people take the opportunity presented by the uprisings across North Africa to oust this clown once and for all – a foregone conclusion once NATO started bombing his tanks, by the way – the international press has reported breathlessly every day on rebel advances and retreats, progress and defeat while, again, not to devalue human suffering, but the American public has had to stifle a collective yawn. And while our non-intervention intervention and the beltway clamor about it had a brief moment of prominence on the nightly news, for the most part we don’t care.
Now that happy, albeit, slightly crazed Libyans have set fire to his house, are drinking his 20 year old scotch and madly firing AK-47’s in the air in celebration, the news was dominated yesterday by various international pundits opining on what happens now and the big question; where is the rat bastard. I say if he has any brains at all he’s in Buenos Aires appearing as Bette Midler in a drag queen review, never to be seen on the African continent again and all the better for it. Meanwhile the nervous Europeans – especially the French and Italians – are sitting around chain smoking Gauloises and trying to figure out how they’re to deal with a woebegone country of multiple hostile tribes with no tradition of democratic institutions or history of unity aside from snatching the chance to chase Colonel K the hell out. Good luck with that…The only interesting part of the story was watching the Fox News Fascists stumbling over themselves trying to either blame Obama or down play the fact that his mini-intervention worked out as planned and one of their favorite villains had been kicked to the curb on his watch.
The second story that I really don’t care about is the Rupert Murdoch phone hacking scandal that seems likely to implicate most of British law enforcement and the entire political establishment for either ignoring or being stupid about the slimy tentacles of The News of the World slipping under every door at 10 Downing St. There is nothing new in the idea that Murdoch is capable of assuming that anyone can be bought and proceeding to prove it over and over again. Nor is it really shocking that he’s enough of a cold, heartless bastard to hack the voice mail of families of soldiers killed in the war in Iraq or victims of domestic tragedy. He’s proven to be a craven slut to a dollar over and over again as well, and almost nothing disreputable or callous or illegal or unethical should surprise anyone paying attention. So the story has itself become a sort of super-tabloid extravaganza – the tabloid story of a tabloid paper doing unthinkably egregious things in the interest of making money, multiplied by the royal family and raised to the nth degree by virtue of the entire bunch of powdered wig-wearing government types clearing their throats and desperately trying to think of excuses for why their number is turning up in Rupert's phone book. Once again, I think the media is a lot more interested in this than the American public, whose interest in Murdoch begins and ends with replaying the youTube video of him barely dodging the shaving cream pie in the court room because his trophy wife just about ripped the arm off the guy trying to splooge him. Now that’s entertainment, Rupert old shoe…
Finally, another tawdry drama played out in Southern California, where slut princess and professional celebrity Kim Kardashian married a professional basketball player and a seriously delusional young man with way too much money before 400 or 500 friends and the cameras of E! TV, who subsidized this ridiculous farce to the tune of 2.5 million dollars for exclusive rights to the pictures that a breathless nation demanded. Kris Humphries – the empty headed tall guy who somehow thinks he has found the woman of his dreams and spent 2 million bucks on a rock for her precious finger – stood nervously in front of the minister, shifting from foot to foot trying to remember his lines and praying for a short reception so he could climb back in the saddle and practice his...uh, footwork. The strangely macabre Bruce Jenner stood proudly with Kim’s mom by his side trying to remember where his eyebrows were while paparazzi helicopters roared overhead, Kourtney and Khloe, the booty sisters, scanned the crowd for their own tall guys and attendees placed bets on the marriage duration over/under. The whole scene reeked of a 21st century American sub- culture run amok and televised to keep the semi-sedated masses amused until the new American Idol starts up. It was a ripping fine show and as we ponder with anticipation images of the honeymoon – soon to be televised as a follow up series – we can only hope that the morbidly obese cast of The Biggest Loser lives up to standard they’ve set. The bar is pretty high…
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