Giffords Shooting Follow-up:
If your political messaging traffics in rhetoric heavy on gun imagery and revolution of the overthrow-y sort, then when someone shoots a congressperson who you opposed, then guess what: You get to spend some uncomfortable moments in the spotlight being asked if it’s not reasonable to suspect a connection between your rhetoric and the actions of a shooter targeting someone you’ve opposed. You also get to spend time being asked if, in fact, your rhetoric isn’t overblown, simplistic and on balance detrimental to the nation’s body politic. Querulous complaints about the unfairness of this can be reasonably overruled by others; the time to complain about your bed is before you make it.
So quit whining, right wingers. You brought all this criticism on yourself.
Sunday, January 09, 2011
Palin's Latest Weird Tangent
Latest Newspaper Column
Does Sarah Palin want American kids to be fat? It might seem like it, considering her reaction to First Lady Michelle Obama's recent campaign against childhood obesity.
Obama, among others, supported legislation for healthier food choices in schools and praised parents for thinking about what kinds of foods their kids stuff down their greedy little pie-holes (I'm paraphrasing, of course). In a speech advocating good nutrition, she noted that she tells her children "dessert is not a right" and makes them eat balanced meals.
This, to the half-term governor of Alaska, is apparently some sort of harbinger of commie-socialist-Islamo-fascism. Or something. Whatever she thinks it is, she's served it up as her resentment du jour.
On a recent episode of her reality show, "Sarah Palin's Alaska," the Resigning Woman made a big ol' helping of s'mores. And since Palin is incapable of missing a chance to turn even a sweet gesture into an opportunity for sneering, she told the recipients the s'mores were "in honor of Michelle Obama, who said the other day we should not have dessert."
Obama, it should be noted, never said any such thing. But Palin is, after all, the woman who railed against nonexistent "death panels" during the health care debate, so we already know she has, let's just say, a flexible approach to the truth.
Palin continued her media snit when she went on Laura Ingraham's radio program: "What [Obama] is telling us is she cannot trust parents to make decisions for their own children, for their own families in what we should eat."
Again, this is exactly the opposite of what Obama has actually said, which is: "We know that ensuring that kids eat right and stay active is ultimately the responsibility of parents more than anyone else," and further, that "parents have a right to expect that their efforts at home won't be undone each day in the school cafeteria or in the vending machine in the hallway."
To Sarah Palin, however, anything any Obama is in favor of, even healthy food, is something EEEvil, to be opposed with all her might and main, and one doesn't quibble over little details like the truth when one is fighting EEEvil.
Remember first lady Laura Bush's ongoing campaigns for literacy? Good thing she wasn't a Democrat, I guess, or Mama Grizzly'd be going on Sean Hannity, lying that Mrs. Bush was trying to "tell us what we had to read" and burning books.
It seems, though, that Mama Grizzly may have just gone a little too far for even some members of her own party, such as Mike Huckabee, another former governor and potential presidential candidate. He told a radio talk show host, "Michelle Obama's not trying to tell people what to eat or not trying to force the government's desires on people. She's stating the obvious, that we do have an obesity problem in this country."
Huck should know; he himself dropped an astounding 110 pounds after his doctors told him he was going to die if he didn't. Nevertheless, wingnut blogger Ann Althouse, showing the class for which the far right is so well known, sniped at Huckabee for daring to criticize St. Sarah of the Snows by playing the Fat Card: "He's running [for president] against Sarah Palin. ... Ironically, Sarah Palin is the one who's thin."
Well, Ms. Althouse, Huckabee's the one who actually finished a full term as governor without quitting, so what's your point?
Mississippi's Haley Barbour, (another Republican governor who, unlike Palin, managed to finish his job) also praised Obama's efforts, as did former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, who called those efforts "a proper role for the first lady."
Meanwhile, Ben Smith at the website Politico.com has pointed out that, in her 2009 State of the State address, Palin seemed to be extolling the same things that Michelle Obama did, like nutrition and exercise.
So the answer to the question at the top of the column is: No, Sarah Palin does not want American kids to be fat. She's just a small and petty person, an unprincipled demagogue, a political hack who's willing to lie and even to contradict herself to avoid admitting that any Democrat, especially an Obama, might have a valid point about anything.
Does Sarah Palin want American kids to be fat? It might seem like it, considering her reaction to First Lady Michelle Obama's recent campaign against childhood obesity.
Obama, among others, supported legislation for healthier food choices in schools and praised parents for thinking about what kinds of foods their kids stuff down their greedy little pie-holes (I'm paraphrasing, of course). In a speech advocating good nutrition, she noted that she tells her children "dessert is not a right" and makes them eat balanced meals.
This, to the half-term governor of Alaska, is apparently some sort of harbinger of commie-socialist-Islamo-fascism. Or something. Whatever she thinks it is, she's served it up as her resentment du jour.
On a recent episode of her reality show, "Sarah Palin's Alaska," the Resigning Woman made a big ol' helping of s'mores. And since Palin is incapable of missing a chance to turn even a sweet gesture into an opportunity for sneering, she told the recipients the s'mores were "in honor of Michelle Obama, who said the other day we should not have dessert."
Obama, it should be noted, never said any such thing. But Palin is, after all, the woman who railed against nonexistent "death panels" during the health care debate, so we already know she has, let's just say, a flexible approach to the truth.
Palin continued her media snit when she went on Laura Ingraham's radio program: "What [Obama] is telling us is she cannot trust parents to make decisions for their own children, for their own families in what we should eat."
Again, this is exactly the opposite of what Obama has actually said, which is: "We know that ensuring that kids eat right and stay active is ultimately the responsibility of parents more than anyone else," and further, that "parents have a right to expect that their efforts at home won't be undone each day in the school cafeteria or in the vending machine in the hallway."
To Sarah Palin, however, anything any Obama is in favor of, even healthy food, is something EEEvil, to be opposed with all her might and main, and one doesn't quibble over little details like the truth when one is fighting EEEvil.
Remember first lady Laura Bush's ongoing campaigns for literacy? Good thing she wasn't a Democrat, I guess, or Mama Grizzly'd be going on Sean Hannity, lying that Mrs. Bush was trying to "tell us what we had to read" and burning books.
It seems, though, that Mama Grizzly may have just gone a little too far for even some members of her own party, such as Mike Huckabee, another former governor and potential presidential candidate. He told a radio talk show host, "Michelle Obama's not trying to tell people what to eat or not trying to force the government's desires on people. She's stating the obvious, that we do have an obesity problem in this country."
Huck should know; he himself dropped an astounding 110 pounds after his doctors told him he was going to die if he didn't. Nevertheless, wingnut blogger Ann Althouse, showing the class for which the far right is so well known, sniped at Huckabee for daring to criticize St. Sarah of the Snows by playing the Fat Card: "He's running [for president] against Sarah Palin. ... Ironically, Sarah Palin is the one who's thin."
Well, Ms. Althouse, Huckabee's the one who actually finished a full term as governor without quitting, so what's your point?
Mississippi's Haley Barbour, (another Republican governor who, unlike Palin, managed to finish his job) also praised Obama's efforts, as did former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, who called those efforts "a proper role for the first lady."
Meanwhile, Ben Smith at the website Politico.com has pointed out that, in her 2009 State of the State address, Palin seemed to be extolling the same things that Michelle Obama did, like nutrition and exercise.
So the answer to the question at the top of the column is: No, Sarah Palin does not want American kids to be fat. She's just a small and petty person, an unprincipled demagogue, a political hack who's willing to lie and even to contradict herself to avoid admitting that any Democrat, especially an Obama, might have a valid point about anything.
Saturday, January 08, 2011
Matt Taibbi Is My New Hero
Matt Taibbi's latest offering at Rolling Stone is absolutely savage. Entitled "The Crying Shame of John Boehner" it contains some of the most scorched-earth political writing I've seen since the glory days of Hunter S. Thompson. It's a long piece, but absolutely worth the time it takes to read. Some of the tastier bits:
John Boehner is the ultimate Beltway hack, a man whose unmatched and self-serving skill at political survival has made him, after two decades in Washington, the hairy blue mold on the American congressional sandwich.
And that's just the first sentence! It gets better...
The Democrats have plenty of creatures like Boehner. But in the new Speaker of the House, the Republicans own the perfect archetype — the quintessential example of the kind of glad-handing, double-talking, K Street toady who has dominated the politics of both parties for decades. In sports, we talk about athletes who are the "total package," and that term comes close to describing Boehner's talent for perpetuating our corrupt and debt-addled status quo: He's a five-tool insider who can lie, cheat, steal, play golf, change his mind on command and do anything else his lobbyist buddies and campaign contributors require of him to get the job done....
After all, the modus operandi for Bush Republicans like Boehner has always been to talk a good game on spending cuts, so long as the cuts were coming out of the food-stamp program or aid to Katrina victims — but they would never go so far, or be so radical, as to cut overall spending, which would require scaling back the industry handouts they have spent so much time putting together on the golf courses of America...
This was always going to be the model of how Republican Party hacks would deal with the Tea Party: Bash the living hell out of hated blue-state Gorgons like Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama, jack off the mob by incorporating the Tea Party's Constitution-and-liberty rhetoric, hand the Tea Party those reforms that the GOP's big campaign contributors want anyway (most notably, tax breaks for the rich and deregulation of big business), and then cough up a note from the doctor or some other lame excuse when the time comes to actually cut spending.
Really. Read the whole thing. I think I need to buy this guy's books....
John Boehner is the ultimate Beltway hack, a man whose unmatched and self-serving skill at political survival has made him, after two decades in Washington, the hairy blue mold on the American congressional sandwich.
And that's just the first sentence! It gets better...
The Democrats have plenty of creatures like Boehner. But in the new Speaker of the House, the Republicans own the perfect archetype — the quintessential example of the kind of glad-handing, double-talking, K Street toady who has dominated the politics of both parties for decades. In sports, we talk about athletes who are the "total package," and that term comes close to describing Boehner's talent for perpetuating our corrupt and debt-addled status quo: He's a five-tool insider who can lie, cheat, steal, play golf, change his mind on command and do anything else his lobbyist buddies and campaign contributors require of him to get the job done....
After all, the modus operandi for Bush Republicans like Boehner has always been to talk a good game on spending cuts, so long as the cuts were coming out of the food-stamp program or aid to Katrina victims — but they would never go so far, or be so radical, as to cut overall spending, which would require scaling back the industry handouts they have spent so much time putting together on the golf courses of America...
This was always going to be the model of how Republican Party hacks would deal with the Tea Party: Bash the living hell out of hated blue-state Gorgons like Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama, jack off the mob by incorporating the Tea Party's Constitution-and-liberty rhetoric, hand the Tea Party those reforms that the GOP's big campaign contributors want anyway (most notably, tax breaks for the rich and deregulation of big business), and then cough up a note from the doctor or some other lame excuse when the time comes to actually cut spending.
Really. Read the whole thing. I think I need to buy this guy's books....
Wednesday, January 05, 2011
Grover Norquist: Secret Muslim Agent?
Anti-Muslim wingnuts, ever vigilant for the looming threat that is "sharia law", and keeping a sharp lookout for those Sekrit Mooslims infiltrating our society to pollute our precious bodily fluids, are now turning on each other:
WASHINGTON – Another headache has emerged for the largest annual gathering of conservatives slated for next month.
With the Conservative Political Action Conferenceunder fire for allowing participation by a homosexual activist group called GOProud and for a financial scandal in which some $400,000 was misappropriated under the watch of current leadership, Frank Gaffney, a leader of the conservative movement for the last 30 years, charges that CPAC has come under the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood, which is working to bring America under Saudi-style Shariah law.
Gaffney, deputy assistant secretary of defense under Ronald Reagan...told WND that Islamism has infiltrated the American Conservative Union, the host of CPAC, in the person of Washington attorney and political activist Suhail Khan and a group called Muslims for America.
Wait, it gets better:
Gaffney also accuses another ACU board member, leading conservative political organizer Grover Norquist, of helping the Muslim Brotherhood spread its influence in the nation's capital.
Yes, you read that right. Grover Norquist, one of the Uber-wingnuts. the man who, very recently, was vetting potential RNC chairmen by asking them how many guns they own, is a Muslim Agent.
You cannot make this stuff up. It's like Roy Cohn suddenly accusing Joe McCarthy of being a Commie.
Sunday, January 02, 2011
Year in Preview, Part II (with Reader Mail From the Party of Love)
Latest Newspaper Column:
Happy Day after New Year's! I hope your post-celebration headaches have all subsided, because here it comes - the Year in Preview, Part II:
July: Members of the so-called "Birther" movement, in an apparent change of tactics in their crusade to prove that President Barack Obama was not born in the United States, file a federal lawsuit to nullify Hawaii's admission into the Union. "If Hawaii was never a state," claims prominent Birther Andrew Martin, "then Obama wasn't born in America. So there." The lawsuit cites as grounds for invalidating the admission that there is no specific provision in the U.S. Constitution allowing admission of an archipelago as a state. "Besides," one paragraph reads, "the whole place is full of foreigners."
August: In an eerie echo of last year's Chilean mine disaster, 27 mine workers are trapped by an explosion at the bottom of a mine in Alberta, Canada. In contrast to the Chilean disaster, however, no major U.S. network or news organization sends reporters to camp out outside the mine, and the story is relegated to the back pages of most major newspapers and magazines. "Trapped miners are so last year," explains newly appointed NBC News President Michael Bay. "We need to go bigger. Got anything that's still actually on fire?"
September: Florida Gov. Rick Scott, a former health care company CEO who promised to run the state more like a business, announces that he has solved the state's budget crisis by selling it to an Indian corporation. "It just wasn't cost-effective to remain part of the Union anymore," Scott explains. Millions of shocked Floridians are given pink slips and ordered to clean out their homes by close of business before being escorted to the Georgia border by state troopers.
October: Self-proclaimed investigative journalist Andrew Breitbart releases a YouTube video that he claims shows Attorney General Eric Holder telling an NAACP meeting that "I hate America, love socialism, and wish all white people were dead." Conservative talk-radio hosts and TV commentators immediately demand Holder be fired. Bowing to the pressure, the Obama administration announces Holder's resignation "to spend more time with his family." Closer review, however, reveals that the video is a clumsily edited montage of words from various speeches, as evidenced by the fact that in the 10 seconds of the video, Holder is seen wearing five different suits in front of six different backdrops. "Well, we did edit the video," Breitbart admits. "And no, Holder didn't say any of those things. But that's not really the point. The point is that the Obama administration are the real racists."
November: Right-wing blogger and anti-Muslim activist Pamela Geller goes ballistic when she finds out that the menu for the White House Thanksgiving dinner features crescent rolls. Noting that the flags of several Muslim countries contain a crescent symbol, Geller declares the dinner to be "yet another in a long series of capitulations to Islamofascism." Geller's campaign to restore what she calls "freedom biscuits" to the dinner is interrupted, however, when she runs off the stage shrieking in terror during a nighttime torchlight rally after looking up and seeing the moon.
December: Fred Phelps and his tiny flock at the gay-hating Westboro Baptist Church announce their plan to randomly protest pre-Christmas appearances by Santa Claus because, claims Phelps, Santa delivers presents to kids whose parents are (or might be) homosexual. The first demonstration, however, is disrupted when hordes of children charge the protesters and send them running for their lives back to Kansas. "I could've warned them," one parent tells the press. "My Brittany's a sweet little girl, but I'd walk into a threshing machine before I'd get between her and Santa."
Last week, in response to the first installment of predictions for 2011, an anonymous commenter on the paper's website added his own, which was that I would die in 2011 and everyone in my hometown would celebrate. Hey, you never know...
So I suggest that the Union Pines High School Band begin learning this song for the parade:
Happy Day after New Year's! I hope your post-celebration headaches have all subsided, because here it comes - the Year in Preview, Part II:
July: Members of the so-called "Birther" movement, in an apparent change of tactics in their crusade to prove that President Barack Obama was not born in the United States, file a federal lawsuit to nullify Hawaii's admission into the Union. "If Hawaii was never a state," claims prominent Birther Andrew Martin, "then Obama wasn't born in America. So there." The lawsuit cites as grounds for invalidating the admission that there is no specific provision in the U.S. Constitution allowing admission of an archipelago as a state. "Besides," one paragraph reads, "the whole place is full of foreigners."
August: In an eerie echo of last year's Chilean mine disaster, 27 mine workers are trapped by an explosion at the bottom of a mine in Alberta, Canada. In contrast to the Chilean disaster, however, no major U.S. network or news organization sends reporters to camp out outside the mine, and the story is relegated to the back pages of most major newspapers and magazines. "Trapped miners are so last year," explains newly appointed NBC News President Michael Bay. "We need to go bigger. Got anything that's still actually on fire?"
September: Florida Gov. Rick Scott, a former health care company CEO who promised to run the state more like a business, announces that he has solved the state's budget crisis by selling it to an Indian corporation. "It just wasn't cost-effective to remain part of the Union anymore," Scott explains. Millions of shocked Floridians are given pink slips and ordered to clean out their homes by close of business before being escorted to the Georgia border by state troopers.
October: Self-proclaimed investigative journalist Andrew Breitbart releases a YouTube video that he claims shows Attorney General Eric Holder telling an NAACP meeting that "I hate America, love socialism, and wish all white people were dead." Conservative talk-radio hosts and TV commentators immediately demand Holder be fired. Bowing to the pressure, the Obama administration announces Holder's resignation "to spend more time with his family." Closer review, however, reveals that the video is a clumsily edited montage of words from various speeches, as evidenced by the fact that in the 10 seconds of the video, Holder is seen wearing five different suits in front of six different backdrops. "Well, we did edit the video," Breitbart admits. "And no, Holder didn't say any of those things. But that's not really the point. The point is that the Obama administration are the real racists."
November: Right-wing blogger and anti-Muslim activist Pamela Geller goes ballistic when she finds out that the menu for the White House Thanksgiving dinner features crescent rolls. Noting that the flags of several Muslim countries contain a crescent symbol, Geller declares the dinner to be "yet another in a long series of capitulations to Islamofascism." Geller's campaign to restore what she calls "freedom biscuits" to the dinner is interrupted, however, when she runs off the stage shrieking in terror during a nighttime torchlight rally after looking up and seeing the moon.
December: Fred Phelps and his tiny flock at the gay-hating Westboro Baptist Church announce their plan to randomly protest pre-Christmas appearances by Santa Claus because, claims Phelps, Santa delivers presents to kids whose parents are (or might be) homosexual. The first demonstration, however, is disrupted when hordes of children charge the protesters and send them running for their lives back to Kansas. "I could've warned them," one parent tells the press. "My Brittany's a sweet little girl, but I'd walk into a threshing machine before I'd get between her and Santa."
Last week, in response to the first installment of predictions for 2011, an anonymous commenter on the paper's website added his own, which was that I would die in 2011 and everyone in my hometown would celebrate. Hey, you never know...
So I suggest that the Union Pines High School Band begin learning this song for the parade:
Sunday, December 26, 2010
2011: Here's the Year in Preview
Latest Newspaper Column:
Well, friends, another Christmas Day has come and gone. Meanwhile, serious professional journalists are hard at work on their columns looking back at the year just past, typing furiously to come up with the usual "Year in Review" piece. Not this columnist. I'm always looking ahead, because I'm a forward-thinking kind of guy. So once again, we bring you the high points of the year 2011, or, as we like to call it, the year in PREview.
January: The Republicans formally take control of the U.S. House of Representatives. California Republican Congressman Darrell Issa immediately springs into action, announcing that his House Oversight and Government Reform Committee will begin investigations into the alleged cost of President Obama's trips overseas (which the media dubs "Trip-Gate"), allegedly slipshod training of the Obama's dog ("Bo-gate"), alleged incidents of texting while driving among White House staff ("OMG-Gate"), and alleged use of foreign-made fertilizers in the White House vegetable garden ("Manure-Gate"). "We're gonna get those Obamas for something," Issa proclaims confidently as he signs a subpoena to compel the testimony of "Dog Whisperer" Cesar Milan for the "Bo-Gate" hearings. "Just you wait."
February: Fox News host Glenn Beck is apprehended at the National Cathedral, attempting to break into the tomb of former President Woodrow Wilson.
When questioned by police, Beck explains that he was going to show that the tomb is empty, because his "exhaustive historical research" has determined that Wilson was not only the founder of the Progressive movement that Beck despises, but he is also an immortal shape-shifting vampire who rose from the grave and disguised himself first as Adolf Hitler, then Barack Obama.
"Don't you understand!?" Beck shrieks as he's dragged off to a mental institution. "Income tax! Eugenics! Pearl Harbor! Health care! It's all connected! Let me get my chalkboard and I'll show you! Aaaaaaaahhhh!" Fox News immediately extends Beck's contract and gives him a $3 million raise.
March: Panic ensues when a lone terrorist tries and fails to bring down an Athens-to-New York flight by banging his head very hard against the plane window in hopes of breaking it and depressurizing the cabin. Despite the failure of the attempt, the Transportation Safety Administration institutes security measures that require passengers' heads to be secured firmly to their seats by leather straps, with Hannibal-Lecter-style masks over their faces for the entire flight.
"We understand that passengers may be inconvenienced by being treated like insane serial killers because some delusional lunatic failed to pull off a cockamamie stunt that had no chance of succeeding," says TSA head John Pistole. "But don't you want us to keep you safe? Huh? Don't you? Answer me when I'm talking to you!"
April: Country-pop star Taylor Swift, long known for her autobiographical lyrics, releases what she calls her "most personal album yet."
The record, called "Yeah, I'm Talking About You, Jerkhole," contains songs describing former boyfriends, music critics, a high school teacher who once made a sarcastic remark to her, and the dry-cleaner who ruined her favorite silk blouse. The first single, titled "Bite Me, Kanye West," becomes Billboard's No. 1 hit for 17 consecutive weeks.
May: Failed vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin inks a multimillion-dollar deal to star in a second season of TLC's "Sarah Palin's Alaska." At the same time, daughter Willow announces that she intends to follow older sister Bristol on "Dancing With the Stars," ABC announces that Bristol herself will be appearing on "Celebrity Apprentice," husband Todd signs on to do a five-episode guest spot on "Deadliest Catch," and Fox schedules a three-hour special on son Track's military career.
Palin then takes to her Facebook page to ask why the "lamestream media" won't respect her family's privacy.
June: Frustrated by continued lackluster performances on the golf course and correspondingly lackluster endorsement deals, Tiger Woods' management company, IMG Sports Management, takes out a full-page ad in Sports Illustrated pleading with Woods to start sleeping around again.
"We know it might seem crass," the ad reads. "But you can't deny it. You're a better player when ... well, when you're a player. Come on, man, we've got beach houses in the Hamptons to pay for here."
To be continued ...
Well, friends, another Christmas Day has come and gone. Meanwhile, serious professional journalists are hard at work on their columns looking back at the year just past, typing furiously to come up with the usual "Year in Review" piece. Not this columnist. I'm always looking ahead, because I'm a forward-thinking kind of guy. So once again, we bring you the high points of the year 2011, or, as we like to call it, the year in PREview.
January: The Republicans formally take control of the U.S. House of Representatives. California Republican Congressman Darrell Issa immediately springs into action, announcing that his House Oversight and Government Reform Committee will begin investigations into the alleged cost of President Obama's trips overseas (which the media dubs "Trip-Gate"), allegedly slipshod training of the Obama's dog ("Bo-gate"), alleged incidents of texting while driving among White House staff ("OMG-Gate"), and alleged use of foreign-made fertilizers in the White House vegetable garden ("Manure-Gate"). "We're gonna get those Obamas for something," Issa proclaims confidently as he signs a subpoena to compel the testimony of "Dog Whisperer" Cesar Milan for the "Bo-Gate" hearings. "Just you wait."
February: Fox News host Glenn Beck is apprehended at the National Cathedral, attempting to break into the tomb of former President Woodrow Wilson.
When questioned by police, Beck explains that he was going to show that the tomb is empty, because his "exhaustive historical research" has determined that Wilson was not only the founder of the Progressive movement that Beck despises, but he is also an immortal shape-shifting vampire who rose from the grave and disguised himself first as Adolf Hitler, then Barack Obama.
"Don't you understand!?" Beck shrieks as he's dragged off to a mental institution. "Income tax! Eugenics! Pearl Harbor! Health care! It's all connected! Let me get my chalkboard and I'll show you! Aaaaaaaahhhh!" Fox News immediately extends Beck's contract and gives him a $3 million raise.
March: Panic ensues when a lone terrorist tries and fails to bring down an Athens-to-New York flight by banging his head very hard against the plane window in hopes of breaking it and depressurizing the cabin. Despite the failure of the attempt, the Transportation Safety Administration institutes security measures that require passengers' heads to be secured firmly to their seats by leather straps, with Hannibal-Lecter-style masks over their faces for the entire flight.
"We understand that passengers may be inconvenienced by being treated like insane serial killers because some delusional lunatic failed to pull off a cockamamie stunt that had no chance of succeeding," says TSA head John Pistole. "But don't you want us to keep you safe? Huh? Don't you? Answer me when I'm talking to you!"
April: Country-pop star Taylor Swift, long known for her autobiographical lyrics, releases what she calls her "most personal album yet."
The record, called "Yeah, I'm Talking About You, Jerkhole," contains songs describing former boyfriends, music critics, a high school teacher who once made a sarcastic remark to her, and the dry-cleaner who ruined her favorite silk blouse. The first single, titled "Bite Me, Kanye West," becomes Billboard's No. 1 hit for 17 consecutive weeks.
May: Failed vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin inks a multimillion-dollar deal to star in a second season of TLC's "Sarah Palin's Alaska." At the same time, daughter Willow announces that she intends to follow older sister Bristol on "Dancing With the Stars," ABC announces that Bristol herself will be appearing on "Celebrity Apprentice," husband Todd signs on to do a five-episode guest spot on "Deadliest Catch," and Fox schedules a three-hour special on son Track's military career.
Palin then takes to her Facebook page to ask why the "lamestream media" won't respect her family's privacy.
June: Frustrated by continued lackluster performances on the golf course and correspondingly lackluster endorsement deals, Tiger Woods' management company, IMG Sports Management, takes out a full-page ad in Sports Illustrated pleading with Woods to start sleeping around again.
"We know it might seem crass," the ad reads. "But you can't deny it. You're a better player when ... well, when you're a player. Come on, man, we've got beach houses in the Hamptons to pay for here."
To be continued ...
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