the comeback

Most people’s “least favourite Friend” Kudrow showed great courage creating an “American female David Brent” role…luckily, it works, as tragic heroine Valerie Cherish flashes a “forced” smile at all around, who give excellent support.  How this got just one season while “Everybody Loves Raymond” got nine, I’ll never know.

Technorati Tags: my fifty word review,Lisa Kudrow,The Comeback

the men behind the mosque

The right-wing media’s obsession with this non-story is similar to charity mugging in my book.

The way these “chuggers” are deployed create an impression that if you ignore them, you care nothing about the cause they’re collecting for.

Similarly, Faux News have flooded the American airwaves with an over-hyped, poorly supported argument that the building of an Islamic cultural centre two blocks from the scene of 9/11 is somehow insensitive.

And if you don’t agree with them, you may as well have flown the planes into the twin towers yourself.

Hey, if they can resort to hyperbole, why can’t I?

But since I’ve been forced to give some thought to this issue, let me look for precedent….

• there’s a Catholic Church in Omagh
• there are several Japanese cultural centres in Honolulu not far from Pearl Harbour.
• there’s plenty of “American cultural centres” (ie McDonalds et al) in Hiroshima.

PLEASE tell me how my examples there are any more ludicrous than that of the so-called “Ground Zero Mosque” which, as anyone who actually took 5 seconds to do proper research will know, ISN’T a mosque and ISN’T at Ground Zero?

I’ve found myself comparing news events to things I’ve seen my kids do a lot lately, and this is no exception.

Every so often my 16-month old son will fall over, as small children are wont to do. And like the rest of them, when he falls over, he engages in a brief thought process. Will I wail or not? Is it important for me to continue on to where I was headed, or will I give it up as a lost cause and get some sympathy from Mummy and/or Daddy instead?

THIS is how Murdoch’s media machine reacts when stories like this come on the radar. Can it be spun to attack the lefties? If so, let’s do it to the max!

And the genius of this ploy is that even when President Obama makes a speech which basically says “live and let live”, they still find a way to attack him with it, choosing in the end to claim he shouldn’t have gotten involved. You can be damn sure if he had said nothing they’d have been at him for that as well.

This is a HUGE non-story when stripped to its bare bones. Those who choose to lie on the ground banging their fists and wailing are doing nothing but fuelling hatred against people who aren’t any more terrorists than they are.

biffo taking the fifth

Most parents moan about having teenage kids and having two myself, I can relate.  Not that we don’t love them of course, just that they’re in that zone where they remind you of what you were like at that age and thus are guaranteed to drive you bananas at almost every turn.

But they do have their uses…and one of these is as providers of analogies for bloggers wishing to comment on current affairs.

I recently did an Audioboo on the whole Ivor Callely debacle, likening his defence of his actions to a teenager who claims they did something bad because you never specifically told them not to.

Now I see that Newsweek have only gone and placed our Taoiseach Without Mandate Brian “BIFFO” Cowen as high as FIFTH in their survey of the “World’s Greatest Leaders.”

Cue my teenage analogy…

Having not inspected it for ages, young Brian’s parents finally inspect his room and see it is an unholy mess.

“What is the meaning of this?” they demand of the young teenager.

“Oh, uh, these American brothers came over and messed it up, it’s not my fault, HONEST!” comes the tearful reply.

“Well, whoever did it, clean it up immediately, we have guests coming over!”

“OK, I’ll do it, but only on one condition…”

This makes the parents angry, but with the guests about to arrive, they have no choice but to listen.

“I’ll tidy my room now, and you can show it to your guests when they arrive, but you can’t inspect it properly until 2012!”

“*sigh* Deal!”

And as soon as they leave, Brian rings his classmate John who owes him a favour and he reluctantly agrees to come over and help him pick everything up and throw it in the closet, with so much stuff going in that the door is close to bursting.

When the guests arrive, the parents take them on a tour of the house, and as they pass Brian’s room, they look in.

“Wow! That’s quite a tidy room you have there, Brian!” they exclaim, “Shows what a neat individual you must be! We’ve been to other people’s houses and their teenagers don’t seem to know what it takes to keep their rooms this clean!”

And so the guests left the house believing that Brian was a good boy, even though his parents knew otherwise.

I could’ve stretched that out a lot further I know, but time was a factor.

Let’s just say I can’t wait to give final judgement of the state of Brian’s room in 2012.  Hopefully he’ll get a grounding he’ll never forget.