What A Wonderful World

It's 11:00, and all's mostly well. At least, it is from my vantage-point.

Egypt is falling to democracy. Bill O'Reilly got exposed as a disrespectful hack, by our president, on national TV. I'm acing calculus. The Green Bay Packers are Superbowl Champions again. And Keith Olbermann is coming back to TV.

Yes, Current TV (channel 226 on Time Warner Cable), the network co-founded by former Vice President Al Gore, is bringing Keith Olbermann back for a new news and commentary program, to be revealed later this year. You knew he'd get scooped up by a small network, which suddenly becomes a major network as a result. I hope MSNBC feels the fool for it.

But boy, Current TV needs Olbermann! Have you seen the lineup? Oh, sure, Current TV does have some cool stuff, like the documentary series, Vanguard. They also have The 50 Greatest Viral Videos, and Rotten Tomatoes Movie Reviews. But other than that? It's pretty much NPR television. And no Garrison Keillor! Some plot-driven thing called Bar Karma is supposed to magic-TV people into watching. There's a show called (I'm not making this up) Kill It, Cook It, Eat It, where the ones who eat the bacon actually butcher it themselves first. (Where's PETA when you need 'em?) They actually broadcast a television version of This American Life. This American Life! The radio program that has driven away more donors during pledge week than poverty, and it has its own television program!

Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot!

That does it. We demand a new Star Trek franchise! We demand the return of Firefly! We want all the programs that made Discovery and the Science Channel great back on the air! More Desmond Morris! More James Burke! Bring back Paleoworld!

I'm so sick of ghost-hunting, chopper-building, architectural, dirty-job, cash-taxicabbed, Stargated, cooking-show, deadly-catch, baby-bringing, truck-driving, Bear Grylls-pretending-he's-an-outdoorsman, pitch-men BULLSHIT on my television!

This American Life! Honestly! Craptacular on a cuestick!

If it wasn't for Mythbusters, I'd say raze the whole thing and start over!

Oh, wait, there's Brewmasters. I forgot. And some new show coming called Curiosity, which sounds good. There's hope yet!

Okay, I'm done ranting. Sorry about that.

So what else is going on? Well, in the midst of the pro-democracy Egyptian protests, while Muslims in Cairo prayed, they enjoyed the protection of a Christian-Coptic-Jewish bodyguard. And while Christians held mass, and Jews held synagogue, the Muslims, in turn, protected them. Prayer in the square! Egypt is so ready for democracy!

Now, if religion could only be like that all of the time. It would be a much happier world, wouldn't it?

Bill O'Reilly? Jeezus, he gave more respect to Jon Stewart than he gave to our president. Why is the non-serious guy taken seriously, while the serious guy is not taken seriously in O'Reilly's world? It could only be because he's the partisan-blinded fool we always knew him to be. And now, he's stepped in it.

During the WONDERFUL Superbowl victory, I got into it a little bit with some fool at the bar. Remember the KIA commercial? No, me neither. But it sparked this particular asshole giving a rant about foreign cars.

"Hang on," I said, "there's somebody in Kentucky who has a job building those cars,"

"Yeah," he yelled back, "But they sell us cars, and they refuse to buy any of our goods!"

I started to say that I wasn't too sure about that, but he interrupted me. "No! When Mr. Asshole went over there to do his treaty with South Korea, he gave away the store! They keep all the profits for themselves!"

I backed off, saying I hadn't researched it. "First I do the research, then I argue," I told him.

But what grated me was the "Mr. Asshole." part.

Look, when George W. was president, I hated his ass. Still do. But I respected him, and the Presidential office. Why? Because he was FUCKING PRESIDENT, that's why! Now it's the conservative's turn to give the respect absolutely due the office, and our president isn't being given the respect due a first-year state congressman.

Know what? FUCK that! I'm willing to call it the black-man-hating racist bullshit it is. It's time to call a spade-hater a spade-hater.

Take that, O'Reilly.

By the way, the guy was dead wrong. South Korea is one of our top buyers of grain and beef. Only China and the E.U. buy more. So they sell us the cars they pay American workers to build, while we sell them food. I like this deal.

Okay, speaking of cars, notice that a government commission found that nothing was wrong with Toyota after all? So what was the deal with all those Toyota cars going haywire with their accelerators?

I'm not much of a conspiracy theorist, but I find it an odd coincidence that this Toyota crisis just happened to take place just in time to save GM's ass, and that GM's ass got saved just in time to save the government's investment. Maybe I'm crazy, but there might be a connection, here. Again, I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but it might be worth looking into.

That's it for now. I'm done!

Eric