Quick AM followup to that last story

If you trust the New York Times, AP really did misreport the story on the first release. The police didn’t kill any of the Army contractors:

The convoy, which included officials from the Army Corps of Engineers and was being escorted by a group of police officers on an anti-looting detail, was crossing the Danziger Bridge, 10 miles northeast of the French Quarter, when the shots were fired.

W. J. Riley, the assistant superintendent of police in New Orleans, said a gunfight ensued between the police and a group of six men.

“All our officers said the assailants all had guns,” Mr. Riley said. Later, he said all the assailants were “neighborhood thugs.”

“Five of the subjects were shot,” he said. “Two were killed, three were wounded.” The sixth gunman was arrested and charged with attempted murder of a police officer, but none of the gunmen were identified.

Okay, that’s it for the news. Not even 8 AM and, thanks to Kate’s link to this story about Americans not holding Boosh accountable, I’m already depressed.

Back to creating funny business.

D.

Can it get much worse?

Police kill army contractors

The army corps of engineers says the five or six people shot dead by police in New Orleans were contractors on their way to repair a canal.

I’m not sure why this is showing up first in the South African media, but I’ll wager it’s not a hoax.

No, I’m afraid it’s not a hoax. Here’s another link, this one from ABC news.

The story circling the blogiverse is: AP rushed to report the wrong story. Someone was shooting at the contractors; the police fired back, killing five of the shooters; none of the contractors was shot. Here’s the alternate story. Hopefully by tomorrow, we’ll have some sense of the facts.

P.S.: Thanks, Kate, for shouting out my bleached anus story. Personally, I think bleached assholes are a fine metaphor for the flock of ignorant Americans content with The Way Things Are. (Wasn’t that in Babe — “the way things are is the way things are”? And if a pig didn’t buy that logic, why should we? Ah, right. Babe was a smart pig.)

D.

Pucker up, pale face

So Lara Flynn Boyle got her anus bleached, and anal bleaching is all the rage in SoCal.

Let’s get back to that. My cortex still sizzles with political indignation over New Orleans, and anal bleaching figures prominently into this picture. First, let’s talk about Faux News, where Geraldo Rivera and Shepard Smith handed Sean Hannity’s head back to him when he tried to right-spin the disaster relief situation. What does it tell you when Big Brother’s Mouth spits vitriol in Big Brother’s face? (Yes, that is possible, given a stiff head wind. I’d say we have one, wouldn’t you?)

Last night, Karen and I talked about this, and she reminded me of the Wally George Show. George had one of the original right-wing-rage TV programs in the 80s. I think they continued to show reruns on into the 90s. Imagine O’Reilly with even fewer brain cells. George was a hideously ugly, feral subhuman with platinum blond helmut hair and a bile-bag for a brain.

Anyway. One day, he took a break from his usual parade of guests (transvestites, atheists, Planned Parenthood proponents, etc.) to interview a pair of women mud wrestlers. His all-male audience of Orange County cretins went wild. These gals came out in bikinis, oiled up from forehead to big toe, and they dished it back to George with humor and style. George initially did his usual schtick, spewing them with hatred, calling them wicked sluts and whatever else the censors would let him get away with, but they were unflappable. In a matter of minutes, they’d won over the audience. George’s face fell apart. He knew he was licked.

And he joined the other side.

He kidded those two women, did whatever he could to ingratiate himself, all because he couldn’t afford to lose his audience of Deliverance-era sycophants. And that, my friends, is the story at Faux News. What happens when a demagogue loses his audience? He changes his tune. How long before O’Reilly becomes openly critical of Mister Bush?

With the rats at Faux jumping ship, I know the end is near.

Speaking of ends.

Okay, so I can’t claim ownership of that asterisk-as-anus joke. Kurt Vonnegut beat me to it by several decades. Still, man. Still. Some jokes never get stale.

Why are women in Los Angeles getting their anuses bleached for $75 a treatment, and what connection does it have to the State of the Union? What photo-ops are these women expecting? And what other bits of precognition did Monty Python possess? (“Ano-Gum. To keep that OTHER smile white and bright.”)

I pride myself that I can get my head into just about any perversion imaginable. Not share that perversion, mind you, but understand it. And, yes, I can grasp the appeal of a bleached anus. If you’re engaged in sexual practices that require you to look at the blessed starfish, you don’t want to be reminded of its primary function. Dratted brown pigmentation! Isn’t there something you can do about it, doc?

Nevertheless, anal bleaching took me by surprise. I noticed a one-liner mention of it in this month’s Harper’s Magazine. Suspicious of a hoax, I googled ‘anal bleaching’. I invite you all to do the same. Go on, you know you want to. I’ll wait right here.

See? Satisfied?

Even though I can understand this latest thing, I can’t stop wondering what this implies for us as a civilization. Time for another detour.

I heard yesterday that doctors at Charity Hospital in New Orleans are having to decide who lives and who dies at the most fundamental level: apportionment of food and water. Despite what you might think of doctors, we really don’t want that kind of responsibility. My heart goes out to them, and I’ve done little but think (and fume) over their plight.

I also heard yesterday that evacuations were proceeding at New Orleans’ private hospitals, but had stalled for Charity. I’ve looked for recent news, and this report from Tuscaloosa’s WVUA is the best I can do. Admittedly, there may be a wealth of factors and problems here to which I’m not privy. But as best I can tell from this article, “patients, staff and family and guests” have been evacuated from Children’s Hospital and University Hospital, while “Charity Hospital’s evacuation stopped. [President and CEO of Acadian Ambulance Service Inc.’s Richard] Zuschlag said his pilots were afraid to land at the Superdome.”

Will someone please explain this to me? I can’t make heads nor tails from the WVUA article, but the mental picture I’m forming is mighty ugly.

Meanwhile, actresses in Los Angeles are getting their anuses bleached.

This morning, I had a long talk with my nurse anesthetist about this. (Yes, I’m working on a Saturday.) Dee had a great point. What happens when the upper crust of society has everything? Every wrinkle is collagen-injected or botoxed away; every food whim is satisfied; every sexual quirk can be begged for or bought; and we have a theopolitical government that says WE’RE NUMBER ONE militarily, religiously, culturally. (Sorry, Dee. Paraphrasing.) What does it say that we’re getting our anuses bleached at $75 a treatment while folks are dying by the thousands in New Orleans, and much of that suffering was preventable?

It says that our priorities, and our heads, are firmly up our puckered, bleached-white assholes.

D.