[colored_box color=”red”]Dennis Rodman
We know that Dennis Rodman could dribble and talk at the same time, at least on the basketball court. Nicknamed “The Worm,” he is an NBA Hall of Famer after all. But when this cross-dressing, tattooed and body-pierced bizarro dude recently showed up in North Korea’s capital Pyongyang alongside dictator Kim Jon Un (both men in black), he drew a foul call heard ’round the world. The North Korean strongman is test-firing missiles, aiming at us, and threatening to start nuclear war while his own people literally starve. Yet Rodman tells Kim: “You have a friend for life.” So that proves the age-old adage: with friends like that, who needs enemies? Look, we know the Knicks need a power forward to boost their defense, but maybe even Jimmy Dolan would agree that this Worm has turned.
Margaret Sitte
What’s going on in North Dakota? State Sen. Margaret Sitte, a Republican, sponsored a bill to amend the state’s constitution by giving human embryos legal protection—and it will be on the ballot in 2014. By her thinking, the zygotes have constitutional rights. What’s next for them? Driver’s licenses? Voter registration? Jury duty? It’s amazing that conservative zealots like her and her colleagues in Fargo don’t mind messing with women’s wombs but turn a deaf ear to making life better for those who are actually born, perhaps providing improved public safety, increased infrastructure investment, more affordable health care, etc., etc. The “Roughrider State” has only one abortion clinic, and according to Huffington Post, it’s the worst state in the country for women. Sitte must be a misogynist—she’s taking power away from a mother and giving it to a fetus.
John Pistole
Interesting coincidence that John Pistole, the head of the Transportation Security Administration, has a name that sounds like a gun, considering his agency’s fixation on weapons. But his decisions about what to confiscate seem rather illogical. The 9/11 terrorists used box-cutters. The TSA has collected passengers’ pocketknives, corkscrews and even snow globes. The TSA permits scissors, knitting needles and screwdrivers. Now Pistole wants to let people board with knives less than 2.36 inches long, hockey sticks and golf clubs. Yet still no soda cans or shampoos. Chalk up a small victory for the Swiss Army Knife and a defeat for common sense. Who says a putter can’t kill?
Matt Lauer
NBC’s “Today Show” hasn’t been the same since J. Fred Muggs was their mascot. The chimpanzee made morning television must-see TV. But these days, should we decide to tune in, we have to endure that boring Matt Lauer, who is as appealing as a used banana peel. Last year he signed a contract reportedly worth $25 million a year. That’s not chimp change. Is he worth it? Certainly Ann Curry, his co-host that he allegedly threw under the bus because the “chemistry” wasn’t right, would beg to differ—if she could get a word in edgewise. The only network people benefitting from his hogging the airwaves are the rival producers of “Good Morning America.” Lauer should quit monkeying around.
Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell
The nation is looking for Congressional leadership on gun control in the wake of the Newtown, Conn., massacre. But instead of doing the right thing for the country, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, the Democrat, and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, the Republican, both bow to the NRA juggernaut. Reid pulls the assault weapons ban from the basic bill, saying he didn’t have the votes to ensure its passage. McConnell hopes he can exploit the issue to take over the Senate in November. Both Senators can do the math—if they don’t count the 20 murdered children and six adults gunned down at Sandy Hook Elementary School, let alone the other innocent people who’ve lost their lives to gun violence since December—seven Senators are retiring, and 35 Senate seats are up for grabs. Both leaders know that public opinion has swung behind the ban and in favor of expanded background checks of gun buyers. After all, the ban was the law of the land from 1994-2004. But rather than take on the unpopular gun industry, Reid has cowardly ceded the debate to Mayor Michael Bloomberg and his group, Mayors Against Illegal Guns, whose $12 million ad blitz will target Democratic Senators in rural states with gun-owners who are vulnerable to NRA propaganda. If Reid frames the issue properly so law-abiding gun owners are reassured, he has a chance to stop the rampage and make America a safer place. McConnell should remember the children who were shot to death. It’s a good thing these two spineless cowards weren’t in Congress when our country was fighting slavery.
Hugh Hefner and Crystal Harris
The 86-year-old “playboy” really does give a new dimension to the term “dirty old man.” Hugh Hefner just got married for the third time to Crystal Harris, who is 26. With their nuptials, the couple makes a mockery of marriage equality. That the media give them any notice at all for their nutty nuptials is pathetic. Why can’t Hef find a cave in the Himalayas to meditate in? If anybody should know something about the mind-body duality, it should be him, but the only wisdom he’s acquired is that of pubescence, not transcendence. He tells the April issue of Esquire magazine that he’s slept with thousands of women but he never cheated on his wife “when I was married.” Does he want a medal on his satin bathrobe? We don’t envy Harris her career move—in or out of the honeymoon bed. The sooner we forget Hef and her, the better.
Justin Bieber
The Biebs still has his hordes of girls behind him, but now that this white-bread teenage heartthrob has turned 19, his act is getting a little old. Since he broke up with singer-actress Selena Gomez, he’s been acting out in public. Maybe he’s miffed because she appeared in a video for Dustin Tavella’s “Everybody Knows (Your Boyfriend Is a Douchebag!”) and had a little too much fun with the chorus line. Hey, celebrity love sucks. We get that. But the Biebs is losing it big time. He got into a spat with the management of a London club and had to exit immediately. He took to strutting around chilly London without a shirt on while his purple pants were at half-assed. He began a concert two hours late, collapsed at another show and was hospitalized, and told paparazzi that he would “fucking beat the fuck out of you, man!” What a potty mouth! Perhaps, to overcompensate, he later went out on the town wearing a gasmask and a Brooklyn Nets cap under a pullover. We’ve wasted too many words on this has-been already. Enuff already.
Ghostinthedark Satania Blaze
For a career in the nursing profession, the choices that Ghostinthedark Satania Blaze has made don’t inspire much confidence that she’ll ever provide patients with the same level of care that Florence Nightingale would have expected. “I’m the soul thief,” says this woman, whose real name Swiss authorities haven’t released. Clearly, she is a very naughty nurse who should have left her S&M playbook at home before going to work at the nursing home. On her Facebook page, she praises “Satan,” posts photos of herself posing with a corpse and asks her fiends, we mean, friends, to guess “if she is asleep or is she dead?,” we assume Blaze means the elderly patient who is an unwitting prop in this sick person’s self-promotion.
Mark Burnett and Roma Downey
Apparently there isn’t a commandment against turning the Old and New Testaments into low-budget fodder for basic cable, but if there were, then Mark Burnett (“Survivor”) and Roma Downey (“touched by an Angel”) would have some serious atoning to do. As producers of the History Channel’s series, “The Bible,” they cast Mehdi Ouazanni as Satan. The resemblance to President Barack Obama is, as the tabloids say, “uncanny.” The husband-and-wife team claims it’s just a coincidence. Ouazanni is “a highly acclaimed Moroccan actor,” they say. Our beleaguered president has enough problems dealing with conservative Christians and Congressional Republicans who probably do think he’s the Prince of Darkness. Considering that all the other major actors in this misguided mini-series are either white Europeans or Americans, let’s just say that this pair’s casting call was a sin of commission.
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