You Better Work

Johnny reports from our New Mexico news desk:

[The wife]'s boss breeds Abyssinian cats and wins Best In Show all the time. She just had to take an eye out of one, ending his show career, and she offered it around to the girls. [Ta's note: the cat, not the eye.] The wife took him. He is a pistol, already in charge of the house. Jack is of course trying to teach him the dragging-by-the-head game, but Giancarlo was one of a kind in that respect. Kitty's already-name, One-Eyed Jack, won't work because two Jacks is too many, not to mention one. All we can come up with that fits at all is Bubbahotep. Pictures follow.

I finally realized my dream of owning a blue plaid suit just like Johnny Rotten used to wear. Pictures follow.

Reading your blog makes my day even when I'm not in it. That's the highest compliment I know how to give. Pictures follow.

A three-legged dog named Jack. A one-eyed cat named Jack. I'm worried about the neighbors and Johnny's hot, smiling veterinarian wife.

Later, he emailed this crisp communique:










EEK!

Few hepcats in real estate offices can carry off this kind of badboy panache, but Johnny can. My new fear is random incidents of zoot-suiting and concommitant swing-dance riots. You know how this works, people. Admit it: you all saw Footloose.

I seldom tell anyone what TV shows I like. There's a good reason for this caution: not once, not twice but about a dozen or so times, when I've mentioned online I really like, love or find useful a television show it's yanked off the air within a matter of minutes. Thus, the last time I mentioned - in another place, under another name - my love of A&E's Nero Wolfe, A&E couldn't cancel it fast enough. I wrote them a touching bon mot and thanked them for lowering the bar. Bastards! That show was really well done!

Recently, I made the mistake of mentioning here my love of Gilad Janklowitz and his shows Bodies In Motion and Total Body Sculpt. It was stupid, I know. I should have realized nothing changes, and for this indiscretion there would be consequences. What I did not realize was that my love of one TV show can now kill entire channels: this morning, where FitTV was, there was a blue screen saying as of 31 March, I could kiss Cablevision's butt instead of re-shaping mine. Thus, you will understand why from now on, I'll be shouting from the rooftops how much I love the racist and nauseating Cops. It is a fearsome power I wield. This makes me wonder how often God slaps her forehead - if there is a God - and says, "No, no, we talked about this. Love thy neighbor, get it?"

Sir Arnold Bax said, "You should make a point of trying every experience once, excepting incest and folk dancing." The mainstream media should try discussing immigration like rational adults, rather than scandalized tinytown gossips. This is what a rational adult sounds like and we haven't heard many of those in a long time so don't be surprised that you're surprised:

14. Please remember that the least legal and least assimilable of American immigrants were...the English. And the only people who can claim to be true "Americans" are Native Americans.

15. Most Mexicans are Native Americans.

16. Shut up about this non-issue and get back to BEING JOURNALISTS, covering the REAL issues, like the illegal war in Iraq and the lies that got us there; the record-setting trade deficit; Bush's bankrupting of America; NSA's illegal wiretapping of American citizens; the fact that our public schools are MORE segregated than they were before Brown vs. the Board of Education; the fact that we as a nation have now slipped to having only the 27th freest press in the world; the Plame leak and the consequences of it being that Americans are much less safe than we were before Cheney and his friends played "revenge"; the disappearance of the American middle class and unions; the sorry state of the FAA; the rapid devaluation of the American dollar on the world market thanks to idiot leaders; the dismantling of the endangered species act by our administration; the rapid and unprecedented rise of a white underclass (the fastest rise in poor whites in American history has occurred under Bush); the enormous and growing gap between rich and poor in America.

Look, I'm sorry if you've been manipulated into believing this is a terrible problem about to tear us apart, but it's not. It's bold-faced racism and xenophobia. We don't have time, as the article points out, to turn on each other. We have real problems we need to address like grownups, like why we as a nation can be so easily separated from common sense and constructive political discourse. And good TV.