Kim Jong Un, the baby-faced dictator of North Korea, tore up the non-aggression pact with South Korea and threatened to immerse Washington in a sea of flame. Thank goodness for Dennis Rodman. Rodman is doing international diplomacy these days, visiting North Korea, becoming Kim Jong Un’s BFF. Returning from Pyongyang he brings a message from KJU, namely if President Obama would just call him it could all be worked out. As Rodman said, “He don’t want to do no war, y’know.” Rodman said the pudgy potentate was a humble man. I guess throwing parades for yourself has that effect.
Justin Beiber, mop-topped Canadian pre-teen heart-throb, just turned an ancient 19 and partied late into the night in London; turned up two hours late for a concert where he complained that it was his worst birthday ever. Somebody neglected to give him a Grammy. See, all Canadians are not good mannered or pleasant, just most of them.
The popular press is all a’ Twitter (as is Twitter) with what a cow Ann Hathaway is. Hathaway is a talented young actress who won an Oscar for an amazing performance as an emaciated prostitute in Les Miserables. Hathaway has this problem; she keeps winning awards because she is so darned talented and cannot get the balance between joyful acceptance, a sense of entitlement and thanking the correct number of agents and accountants in her acceptance speeches.
Mitt Romney surfaced again to tell Chris Wallace that he sure wishes he was in the White House where he could fix this mess over the sequester. Ann Romney says she hurts for us all because he’s not there. How do we explain to Mitt that the Tea Party People didn’t like him and over 50% of the country shared that view, but for different reasons? His earnest explanation that African-Americans, Hispanics, Gays and almost anyone who wasn’t a captain of industry, or a certifiable WASP, didn’t understand was incredible. As a certifiable WASP, I assure you I fully understood what he was saying.
To Bradford, England, where a man dressed in a full Batman outfit delivered a wanted burglar to the local police station, then stuck around to make sure he was properly booked, before disappearing….on a bicycle. This underscores the cost of gas in England, making running the Batmobile prohibitive and raises the question: how does Commissioner Gordon’s authority extend to Bradford, England?
Our President confused Star Trek and Star Wars, setting off howls of nerdian anguish as a mind-meld got confused with something else. I would suggest that POTUS stick with clarity saying, “Them sumbitches too dumb to get it, doncha know. Dang, they needs a good kick in the britches, might get their minds right.” Then again, quoting Larry the Cable Guy, might not help either.
We are minus a Lieutenant Governor. She abruptly resigned, apparently too cozy with the operators of an Internet café operation which was allegedly engaging in money laundering and gambling. You think?
We have enjoyed a conclave in Rome. The cardinals picked a Pope from Argentina who doesn’t do the throne thing, prefers to ride the bus over a Popemobile, carries his own luggage and pays his own hotel bills. Do you get the sense they just elected John XXIII all over? A kindly, gentle man who turns the Roman apple cart over and lets the sun shine in and the gospel shine out?
Hugo Chavez’ corpse was going to be preserved and put on display permanently. However, it’s not to be. Seems they waited too long or it could be that they noticed the shelf-life of these pickled potentates is brief? Just ask Stalin, just another stiff under the Kremlin wall these days and somebody stole Eva Peron’s corpse, though one cannot imagine why. At this point only Lenin and Chairman Mao are still being kept fresh as a daisy after all these years. Maybe the powers that be in Venezuela figured him for a tourist attraction. “Would you rather go shopping or check out the corpse of El Commandante?” “You know, the mausoleum would be fun. Let’s do that!”
Here in the USA we embalm political careers in a different manner; ask Sarah Palin, she was at CPAC. She did a good set, long on funny lines, short on consequence or real ideas. Which brings us to CPAC, perhaps best described in the words of George Orwell, “... a kind of exciting heresy-hunt—a leaping to and fro of frenzied witch-doctors to the beat of tom-toms.”
The Daily Show is on hiatus, but if you look at the news just right it doesn’t really matter.
