The Grouchy Editor

My Emily Litella Moment

During the bomb scare this week in Times Square, I had to admit that the anti-Obama crowd was right:  Our president was showing an alarming lack of leadership.  I came to this conclusion after listening to news reports that “the president is busy on the golf course.”

This was an awful development.  He was playing golf during a possible terrorist attack?

“Obama is taking a tour of the golf course,” a TV anchor informed me.  And then I realized my Emily Litella mistake.  Obama wasn’t touring the “golf course. ” He was touring the “gulf coast,” in the wake of the oil spill.

As Emily would say, never mind.

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Sports writers are not to be trusted.  Now that Lawrence Taylor (above) is in trouble again, I am hearing  professional jock sniffers talk about what a horrible person he is.

Decades after revered Yankee Mickey Mantle retired, we found out what a drunken jerk he was.  Here in Minnesota, Kirby Puckett was baseball’s “ambassador” of good will — until we found out, years later, that he was busy chasing his wife around the house with a chain saw.

Sportswriters won’t tell you about any of this misbehavior until after a) the jock is traded to another city; b) the jock dies or has been retired for many years; or c)  said misbehavior can no longer be ignored.

But times might be changing, thanks to the Internet and cell-phone cameras.  Just ask Josh Hamilton (bottom), who can no longer enjoy a night out on the town without some bozo posting pictures.

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The television show du jour is Glee.  Fox’s weekly series has completely smitten the media, and said media will not rest until the rest of us embrace this show.  The hell with Glee.  I am against it on principle, partly because I am being told to love it and partly because I am an obstinate cuss.

In the 1990s, I was the only person in America who never saw Seinfeld, never saw Friends, never saw Cheers.  NBC made the mistake of labeling its Thursday-night lineup “must see TV,” and this rankled me.  I decided that Thursday night on NBC was must-not-see TV.

Turns out those long-ago sitcoms were actually pretty good, so I suppose I was only punishing myself by boycotting them.  But Glee?  A show about a high-school glee club, punctuated with Madonna songs?  No, thanks.

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Stephen Hawking has everyone in a tizzy because he believes that if there are little green men out there, they are probably hostile to humans.  If they visit us, Hawking says, we should not be surprised if the outcome is similar to what befell Native Americans when Columbus came to visit.

This leaves me with a dilemma.  When it comes to aliens, to whom do I turn for advice, Hawking or Dan Aykroyd?

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Obama’s in hot water for his YouTube appeal to young people, African-Americans, Latinos, and women — but not white men — to help Democrats in November’s election.

What a lot of people seem to forget, or ignore, is that for every Bill Gates, there are millions of white males without millions of dollars.  Some of us even eat lunch out of dumpsters.

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South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone got in trouble for daring to thumb their noses at Muslims by lampooning the prophet Muhammad — and Comedy Central decided to pull the plug.  Let me rephrase that:  Cowardly Central decided to pull the plug.

This is America.  If South Park or any other show chooses to picture Adolf Hitler on a ride at the new Harry Potter theme park, so be it.  And so, I am doing my small part by running this disrespectful picture of the prophet Muhammad:

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I vaguely recall all of the huffing and puffing back in 1992 when Irish singer Sinead O’Connor got everyone’s panties in a bunch by tearing up a photo of Pope John Paul II on Saturday Night Live.  O’Connor said she was protesting sex abuse within the Catholic Church.  Back then, a lot of us thought O’Connor was some bald nutcase.  Saturday Night Live apologized for O’Connor the following week, but now it looks like a lot of us should be apologizing to her.

Last night I was watching the news and O’Connor once again surprised me.  She thanked the American media for getting on the Vatican’s case about child abuse.  Let me repeat that:  “She thanked the American media.”  Wow.  I don’t believe I’ve seen that happen before.

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The NFL just wrapped up its annual draft.  Is there anything on God’s green earth more absurd than the hoopla over this non-event?

Oh, and that’s Randy Moss pictured above.  Moss was not a draft pick this year, but I’ve been looking for an excuse to run this picture.  You’re welcome.

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Seems clear that Larry King is out to convince the rest of us that the male midlife crisis does not strike until one reaches age 76.  Last night, Larry was on CNN talking to Willie Nelson about the joys of smoking pot.  A few weeks ago, the King of swing was out joyriding in L.A. with Snoop Dogg (above).  And now he is all over the gossip rags for allegedly having an affair with his wife’s younger sister.

Who says life begins at 40?

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Entertainment Weekly informs us this week that Oprah Winfrey is “America’s best girlfriend.”  Hmmm.

Apparently Entertainment Weekly doesn’t consider the male of the species to be American, because I have a hard time believing that many (straight) men consider Oprah Winfrey to be their “best girlfriend.”

*****

Some years ago there was a news story about a woman who suffered seizures whenever she heard Mary Hart’s voice on Entertainment Tonight.  Seemed unlikely at the time … but now I believe it, because I find myself uncontrollably frothing at the mouth every time Kim Serafin shows up on CNN’s Showbiz Tonight.  Why can’t this woman hold her head still?  Her bobble-head is driving me to distraction.

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Tiger Woods is a genius.  Tiger Woods is stupid.  Cable talk-show hosts keep asking guests to comment on Tiger Woods, and most of them say we should just leave him alone.  Well … this is what happens when you make millions off such a wholesome image.

Joy Behar made a good point the other night:  When are the media going to ask Tiger’s wife, Elin, how well she knew this philandering guy before she married him?  Could it be that she knew a lot?  (Same question for Sandra Bullock.)

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A low-level diplomat from Qatar tries to sneak a smoke in an airplane bathroom … and the FBI is summoned.  Isn’t this the kind of “crime” committed every day in junior high schools?

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About a month ago, I was watching Jimmy Kimmel’s show when he did a segment about a little girl who was infatuated with a teen pop star.  Kimmel arranged to have the pop star surprise the precocious tot with a visit on the show.  It was cute.  End of story, I thought.

Some time later, I noticed the pop star’s name, Justin Bieber, in the newspaper.  Then he showed up in Newsweek.  And in Time.  And in Entertainment Weekly.  And on Chelsea Handler’s TV show.  Now I see that the kid is slated to appear on Saturday Night Live.  Who the hell IS this kid?  God, I must be old.

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The Jerks of Summer

In high school, certain truths were self-evident:  Most of the “theater people” were gay, most of the jocks were jerks, and Karen VanderHaagen would not go out with me.

Life is not fair.  We continue to reward jocks with taxpayer-funded playgrounds, like new Target Field in Minneapolis, and with most of the pretty girls, like Karen VanderHaagen.

So I have mixed emotions about this multi-million dollar stadium in my back yard.  Spring is here, Minnesota’s lineup looks pretty good … but dammit, please stop telling me that “the Twins” built a beautiful new stadium.  The taxpayers built it.

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I guess I’m just another spoiled American, because I want an iPad.  Everyone has an opinion about these computer tablets.  Stephen King says reading books on them gives him an eerie sense of “not-thereness.”  Anna Quindlen assures traditional publishers that the iPad does not signal the end of the world as they know it.

I just know that I want one.  Buy me one.  I’ll bet pro jocks can afford lots of them.

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The balcony has closed on At the Movies, and Web sites like Rotten Tomatoes are shouldering some of the blame.  Apparently, a lot of folks prefer to get their cinematic guidance from people like Catherine, a 20-something from England who is one of my “friends” on Tomatoes and who lists movies like Ghost among her all-time favorites.  Sigh.

At least you can’t blame my reviews for the demise of At the Movies.  I’m guessing that my site gets fewer visits than Tiger Woods gets from his mother-in-law.

For me, At the Movies lost its must-see-TV status back in 1999, when Gene Siskel died.  It’s not that subsequent critics weren’t knowledgeable, it’s just that when Siskel and Roger Ebert ceased sparring, the magic was gone.  Perhaps Catherine can get her own show ….

*****

Tucker Carlson was on Red Eye carping about how all too often when we need to raise taxes, we raise it on whomever or whatever happens to be unpopular.  Carlson proposed, I assume facetiously, that we tax children, nuns, and mothers.

I might not go that far.  But as a smoker, I feel Carlson’s point and I can see how tanners might get burned up over a proposed tax on them.  On the other hand, look at the woman in the picture above.  Doesn’t she look smug?  I don’t like her.  Let’s tax her.

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Gutfeld’s Girls

No one who knows me would label me a “red guy” politically, but I’ll have to admit there is something lecherously appealing about Greg Gutfeld’s wee-hours free-for-all on Fox News, otherwise known as Red Eye.

Gutfeld does spew conservative venom in his “Greg-alogues,” but there’s a reason for that sparkle in his peepers:  the bevy of supermodel types that get booked to appear on the show.  You won’t find Liz Cheney on Red Eye, but you will find babes like (clockwise from top left) Megyn Kelly, Diana Falzone, Martha MacCallum, Reshma Shetty, S.E. Cupp, and Remi Spencer.

Gutfeld and his View-like panel, including the hilariously deadpan Andy Levy, are in such good humor that it’s hard not to smile.  Or, as Slate put it, “It’s all horribly watchable.”  Does that make me a racist homophobe?

*****

Saying goodbye to Nip/Tuck was a bit like dumping old breast implants.  At first they were good, but then they began to sag, and in the end you had to dump them.  This FX show — one of the hottest on TV just five years ago — went out with a whimper on Wednesday.  The finale was rather touching but, sad to say, I stopped watching Nip/Tuck a few years ago.  What was once a cutting-edge drama with bizarre twists eventually became bizarre, period.  But I used to like you, so thanks for the mammaries.

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