Milking It for Fun and Profit: Shameless Exploitation 101

I am currently in Las Vegas, not exactly America's gilded throne of nuanced thought so I find it perfectly appropriate that my television viewing experiences are reflective of that.

My hotel has about six news TV channels outside of pay-for-porn, pay-for-movies. Fox, Weather Channel, CNN, local Las Vegas news, Headline News, MSNBC. For the last 24 hours it has been constant hurricane coverage whipped to whorish K2-esque heights by the likes of the bloviating Wolf Blitzer, the nearly 100% senile Larry King, pretty yellow slicker clad Anderson Cooper and force fed to us by transparant assholes like John McCain who have decided (for non-political reasons of course) to go to New Orleans and show how "presidential" he is by exploiting a very low level national event and delivering a speech. If it turned out to be a biblical proportion disaster I'm sure it would have been a great idea for relief services to deal with the massive entourage of John McCain, a presidential candidate, while trying to alleviate the suffering of the real people that live there. But it isn't a massive disaster, by any stretch of the imagination, and he still goes there to pander and get photo ops. Heartwarming photo ops will be so worth any trivial inconveniences the people of New Orleans may have to encounter because of his private-planed appearance. I can visualize it perfectly......John, basic starched (but not too starched) white button-down shirt with sleeves perfectly rolled up to emphasize satorial sensitive common man, (with common man shirt pointers from the previous head of FEMA, Michael Brown) handing out Red Cross packages to the misty-eyed, grateful citizens, thereby eliminating the previous images we have of FEMA's massive Katrina screw-fest. It says ..He cares for us, he's one of us. And it will work, middle America will see him as a strong leader who cares, polls will reflect that truth immediately. Except for the inconvenient reality that he and the trophy twenty something billionaire heiress wife that he left his middle aged not billionaire wife for have seven houses that he can remember, and a private plane to whisk their asses out of there pronto when the cameras are gone. He has contempt for you, us.

I need to understand why Anderson Cooper is standing on a wind-blown New Orleans street in his appropriately touseled wet silver hair when the "hurricaine of the century" has been downgraded to a Category 1 eight hours ago. It's practically a thunderstorm at this point. But they won't stop, the show must go on.

Anderson Cooper: "Right now, I'm going to show some pictures of tree branches that have fallen down, and behind me, and few shingles have been pulled from the roof of a church".

Wolf Blitzer (breathless with excitement): "Thank you for that fascinating report Anderson, please be very careful of flying debris, you might get hurt". Ooooh so dangerous, Anderson. Insipid regurgitation, repeated on the quarter hour. It's the news filler equivalent of Denny's $1.99 Grand Slam Breakfast for the masses. You're hungry fifteen minutes later, and slightly nauseous. Will the levees give way? Look! City streets with a few inches of water! See the wind, see the rain on my face! Look at my hair blow! Cut to the same loop of a levee with an incremental amount water sloshing over the top plays ad nauseum. I'd much rather pay for real porn than watch compris pseudo-verbal masturbation.

What I need is a good old fashioned Christian-value laden sex scandal for diversion, after all, I am in a town where you can get DD endowed hookers comfortably delivered to your hotel room in twenty minutes or less, which is proudly hucked on hundreds of billboards and pamphlets everywhere. In contrast to our pseudo news stations I appreciate media accuracy about what "service" is being provided

Sara Palin to the rescue. Now this is topical and worthwhile media. No one has the screaming brass balls to mention one obvious fact. Sara Palin's daughter was happily fornicating away in high school, getting knocked up when she was 17, which, last time I checked, would normally be a big family values problem for the no sex before marriage, abstinance Fascists. But no, no no. Sara's a Christian Right deified HERO for not running out to get her daughter a big scary metal coat hanger and finding a dark alley to abort her fetus. Right wing Christian values are so fabulous in their hypocricy. Mind you if Chelsea Clinton had been forceably abducted, chloroformed, raped and impregnated by giant space aliens, not to mention at the tender age of 17, she would be labeled as ultra slutty white trash and further proof of our liberal moral vacuousness

Just further representative proof of our Liberal moral shortcomings. We are defenseless against their spin. Sadly, we are weak, we will lose, and we will get the government we ultimately deserve.