WTF

It's been a minute since one of these came out of me, but after watching the "fair and balanced" Fox"news" coverage of Obama's acceptance speech tonight, I really feel compelled!

Obamaliakos in the Mile High

As some of you know, I have a very good friend of mine who happens to be Greek. Every now and then I'll refer to him as "Nick the Greek", simply because of the fact that his mother is Greek and that he lives in Athens, Greece (not Ohio- or Georgia for that fact). Greece has been the inspiring bedrock of our democratic government since it's inception and has been credited with giving us the freedoms we love to this day. Tonight as I prepared to watch Obama's speech, I got a text from my most die-hard, conservative, Obama hatin' Republican friend "Oaktree". That's not his real name of course, his nickname stems from his height, but we go WAY back and although our ideologies are far from cohesive, I truly respect his opinions despite the fact that we rarely agree (his firebranded blog is to the right- "The World on your Screen"). His text message said, "A Greek Parthenon set Yahya? Come the fuck on man!" This set off a three hour long texting debate through the speech itself and ended up on the subject regarding the "sexy first ladies-to-be" but I won't quote anything from that conversation- it's a bit graphic. Anyway, I'm sitting here at midnight reading various analyses from the speech and I come across, "Obama set too much, says GOP." on CNN. What...the....fuck? That's the only thing they have on this guy? I can hear the right-wing pundits now,

"He gave a good speech, the one he needed to make, but he's inexperienced, his politics are non-existent and, ugh, did you see his set? Oh...my...god! It was too........historical for my tastes. I would have preferred a simple wooden dais with matching revolving sconces and a laced pastel floral arrangement!"

What is this, "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy- The Convention Edition!" Fox"n-n-n-news" was quick to point out that the set was built by the same guy who builds sets for Britney Spears. That's GREAT investigative journalism, let me tell ya! As I told Oaktree, "Would it have been better if his speech was given in a bar-b-q joint?" Would THAT symbolize the plight of the American middle class? I knew this election would be interesting, I just didn't know it would get so elementary school.

Hype-impics (yawn)

Now that all the histeria, euphoria and catharsis have settled from the Beijing Olympics, it's time for me to talk a little shit. First, let me say that I am happy for all the athletes from around the globe who trained hard, competed fairly (or unfairly) and won their prized medals, gold, silver and bronze. I am proud of our country's olympians who showed the world that American sports still dominate, and I'm proud of the feats by Michael Phelps, the NBA All-Star team, and all the other people who no one remembers and couldn't name if their life depended on it. I'm even proud of the protesters who dropped unwanted medals to the mat, filed official complaints and kicked referees in the face in disgust when they lost- but what the fuck! For 8.5 years of every decade, no one, and I mean NO ONE gives two shits about watching shooting, pole vaulting, breast strokes, archery, floor routines, 100,000 meter steeple chases, taekwanjudokarate, beach/sea/arena volleyball, field hockey, water polo, kayaking or all the other bullshit events that are featured in the Olympics. But NBC decides to air olympic events and it's the hottest thing since Chinese hookers.....for two weeks. Countries spend BILLIONS of dollars on infrastructure (and giving homeless people one way tickets out of town) just to have the honor of hosting the Olympics....for two weeks, and then after the Olympics leave town, it's back to business as usual. China shut down carcinogenic factories, cut the number of cars on the road in half and "fixed" it's insane air pollution problem...for two weeks. In a month, the skies over Beijing will be back to its familiar tinge of smog and China won't see commitment to the environment like that until it hosts the Olympics again- for two weeks.