What I Didn't Learn On My Summer Vacation

Ok.  I stole that headline, but I flipped it a little.

And I stole it from one of my favorite bloggers of all time, well, since March of 2005 anyway.  He is so awesome and such a great writer that I feel that if I'm going to steal anything, it might as well be from him.

(Neddie Jingo, don't be jealous.  I already told you I loved you today.  Now get your butt back to work!  Hee-hee-ouchies.)

The Unbearable Bobness of Being, or Father Bobness, as some of us call him, because he is an actual Ordained Minister of the Universal Life Church! just got back from vacation (just like me) and wrote  "Things I Learned on my Summer Vacation." 

His post was sweet and included thoughtful ponderings such as how his girlfriend (maybe an imagined girlfriend, one never knows) thinks he's got a cute/awesome/hot ass and how you have to be really quiet when you're having sex in a tent.  Now, come to think of it, if he's only imagining this girlfriend person, and he was alone in that tent -- well, this might be a little too much information.

Never mind all that.  I just love getting to know Father Bobness better.

Anyhoo.

When I was on my summer vacation (mine lasted 5 days -- actually 3 days if you subtract the actual travel days; Father Bobness's vacation lasted 3 weeks, but who's counting) I was out of the *news loop.*  We didn't watch much TV at all, which I considered a good thing.  I'm a news junkie so I did
experience moments of shaky withdrawal.  I sat at the ocean's edge and wondered to myself about London, John Roberts and the war in Iraq.  Then I immediately thought of our soldiers in Afghanistan, because I think they get ripped off.  The news hardly ever mentions them.  I wondered if Natalee
Halloway had been found.  Then I thought about her mom, which made me stare at my son intensely as he jumped the waves.  Then I started to think about the millions of moms who've lost millions of kids all around the world and I was getting a little too morbid (which is another trait I have) so, I
switched gears to the political pundit crowd.

I started to think about Ben Ginsberg.  Dirty, rotten, mumble-mumble-under-my-breath, gritted teeth, no good devil!  How did that scoundrel get a gig on Hardball?  Who is he?  Well, I know who he is.  Ick.  Ick squared.  Ick in triplicate.  Then, I thought about Anderson Cooper and his ridiculous reporting from some imagined eye of a hurricane which got my blood boiling so I flipped my news junkie button off.  Cable news gets on my nerves.

(Oh, by the way.  Father Bobness now accepts payments for his minister-type services:  $25 will get you 1 prayer to heal an acute non terminal illness and $100 will get you 2 - 4 prayers to get you in the sack with the hot secretary.  It's your choice.  Spend your money wisely.)

So, when I got home from vacation Sunday evening, my husband handed me the Sunday NYTs Book Review.  He wanted me to read the essay by Richard A. Posner called "Bad News."  It was pretty much stuff I had already read in one form or another about the state of our media today.  Which I loathe but am addicted to at the same time.  One thing though completely caught my eye. And made me feel proud to be a news junkie.  (We have so little to brag about.)  It is in this paragraph:

"Yet what of the sliver of the public that does have a serious interest in policy issues?  Are these people less well served than in the old days? Another recent survey by the Pew Research Center finds that serious magazines have held their own and that serious broadcast outlets, including that bane of the right, National Public Radio, are attracting ever larger audiences.  And for that sliver of a sliver that invites challenges to its biases by reading The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, that watches CNN and Fox, that reads Brent Bozell and Eric Alterman and everything in between, the increased polarization of the media provides a richer fare than ever before."

I so agree with this and am tired of conversations where my right-wing friends and family are all, "you never hear any good news out of Iraq, it's all bad!  It's all the liberal media's fault!"

Blah, blah, blah.  You can read anything you want about anything you want if you put your mind, ears and eyes to it.  Just stop acting like everyone else has to only hear and read what you want them to hear and read.

So, ok I felt vindicated, but the part I'm most proud of is being called a "sliver of a sliver!"  Yay!  This is my new title.  All this hard work has finally paid off.  The New York Times has personally recognized moi.

Such small things make me so happy.  And in this case it's a sliver of a sliver.  Very small indeed.

So, slowly I was easing back into my normal obsessive-compulsive news junkie ways and then I discovered the BIG NEWS I had missed, the BIG NEWS that I didn't learn on my summer vacation.  And of course, I learned it from the King Of All Fake Cable News, my man, Jon Stewart!

They played the re-run last night of The Daily Show from July 27, which meant I had been out of this loop for almost a week!  Blasphemous!

Bush & Co. changed the name of the mental state we have been living in for almost four years!

Used to be:  "The War On Terror!"

Now:  "The Global Struggle Against Extremists!"

Even though TIME reported it as:   "The Global Struggle Against Violent Extremists!"

Oooooh boy!  They.  Are.  In.  Trouble!  They made their tag line more complicated!  The media's not keeping it straight!

Even when Stewart was showing footage of Rumsfeld saying it, he couldn't even get it right!  He's like "The War, er, Struggle, er, er, er."  Then I think he launched into something like, "There are taglines I know, and taglines I don't know.  Some are knowable and some are unknown."   And then I
think I saw him kick a puppy.

In my opinion, "The War On Terror" is such a right wing line.  Very simple and pretty meaningless.

"The Global Struggle Against Violent Extremists!" is, while accurate and realistic, sounds more like a liberal wrote it.  It's a mouthful, isn't it?  Can you imagine if John Kerry would've said this during the campaign?  Ha!  The right would've been like, "Can he say that mouthful and wind surf at the same time?  Doubt it. Eh.  Eh.  Eh."

You know Rove focus-grouped it though.  TIME reports that they changed it because polls show a majority of Americans believe we are not winning the "War On Terror."  But a "struggle" indicates an on-going, never ending situation.  The Republicans will not be blamed for not winning the "War on
Terror" in 2008, but they hope to be applauded and re-elected for their efforts in continuing to struggle with a never ending struggle.

That Karl Rove.  He might've made things a little too complicated for "Rain Man," I mean Bush, to say.  We'll see.  Ahhh.  Learning is such fun sometimes.

And speaking of Rove.  Let me wrap this up with another post from the one, the only Father Bobness.  (I'm stealing the photo and everything.  I just re-read your disclaimer Bobness, and it doesn't say I can't.  Plus you deserve the exposure to my 142,000 less 141,992 weekly readership.) Take it away, Father Bobness:

No Mo' Thug Luv

"My only fear of death is coming
back re-incarnated as a fat white Republican political advisor"...Tupac Shakur

I haven't weighed in on the whole Karl Rove controversy.
I know the blogosphere has been trembling with anticipation for when I choose to do so.  Well kids, the wait is over.

First of all, I'm not going to parse every stupid detail of
what is being put out there. It changes every day, its all run through political/partisan lenses and filters anyway. I'm going to provide a fresh and unique interpretation.

Rove is dead meat. Toast. History. Down in hell, Lee Atwater is even shaking his head in disgust at Rove jumping the shark with his arrogant snitch mouth. You see, Rove has been screwing the Mainstream Media for years and he hasn't been buying them lunch afterwards. Now the MSM is getting ready to dry hump Rove's fat ass. He has no chance. For every John Gibson of Fox News saying Rove is a hero, there will be a dozen David Gregorys of NBC news telling Scott McClellan he's a lying bitch.

Plus, Rove has a rather aggressive special prosecutor on his tail. The real hero here is Patrick Gallagher, the prosecutor, who is going to indict Rove soon. It's funny and sadly predictable to watch Rove et al trying to spin counter theories and lame legalistic excuses (he said she was the wife of Joseph Wilson, he didn't say her name! ...reminds me of Clinton's defense of no not meaning no). Doesn't matter. He's going down. But he's not the only one, Judith Miller is eating jail food because she's protecting another administration source. This will only get more interesting. Yup. I smell the strong stench of conspiracy in the air. What did the president know? and when did he know it?

I'm just so sorry but I have not one atom of sympathy for people who go after someone's wife or out covert operators.  Karma comes after thugs.  (See: Saddam, see: Rove)

**********

Okay, loyal readers and Inky Wretches.  I know none of you are on vacation right now, so you don't have a good excuse not to go visit Father Bobness right now and learn more about him.  You'll be glad you did.

Comments

[bob]

Thanks for the awesome plug! She is a real girlfriend this time heh. Although my fake ones are kinda more intense but not a lot.

[blue girl]

I still really miss Bong-cha...

[Kevin Wolf]

I'll check out Bob's blog as soon as I finish this comment!

Oh, wait - I could have just gone right there...

[grishaxxx]

You're on a roll, girl! Bob is a find - I'm going to have to go back thru his archives. Think he can find me a male secretary (ahem - Ad. Assistant)? Not shy about looking hunky, is Bob?
Speaking of vacs - looks like I have one coming up next week. Just an ample weekend, but my first since 2/04. Amazing what even a short holiday can do for you - I'm already feeling the energy.
Glad you were finally able to give post at Res's!

[blue girl]

Oooh Grisha -- I'm so glad you are getting away. It does the spirit good.

And yes, Bobness is awesome -- looks great -- writes great. He's awesome. Do go back through his archives. I had a hard time last night writing that because I kept reading through all his old stuff.

And you never know about, ahem, the male secretary thing. Father Bobness does indeed possess special powers!