The Drama Builds

Rice eating Bush gaffes:
“You helped our nation celebrate its bicentennial in 17 – –”

Team America’s climatic monologue comes as an apropos parodistic proffering relative Bush's geopolitical rationale:
“There’s a difference between di<%s and a$$holes. Because there are terrorists – a$$holes – you’ve got to have di<%s, people who hunt down terrorists. Di<%s are bad, and it sucks to be a di<%, but it’s way worse to be an a$$hole, and because there are a$$holes, we need di<%s. So shut the fu<% up, all you pu$$ies!”

Mull over that with a can of Diet Coke Plus...

Pronunciation: 'ki[ng]k, So It Goes

Apropos…

In other unrelated news one of my favorite authors: Kurt Vonnegut, counterculture’s novelist, dies — below find article paraphrased excerpts:
The title character in his 1965 novel, “God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, or Pearls Before Swine,” summed up his philosophy:
“Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It’s round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you’ve got about a hundred years here. There’s only one rule that I know of, babies — ‘God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.’ ”
Mr. Vonnegut eschewed traditional structure and punctuation. His books were a mixture of fiction and autobiography in a vernacular voice, prone to one-sentence paragraphs, exclamation points and italics. Graham Greene called him “one of the most able of living American writers.” Some critics said he had invented a new literary type, infusing the science-fiction form with humor and moral relevance and elevating it to serious literature.
He studied for a master’s degree in anthropology at the University of Chicago, writing a thesis on “The Fluctuations Between Good and Evil in Simple Tales.” It was rejected unanimously by the faculty. (The university finally awarded him a degree almost a quarter of a century later, allowing him to use his novel “Cat’s Cradle” as his thesis.)
He was also accused of repeating himself, of recycling themes and characters. Some readers found his work incoherent. His harshest critics called him no more than a comic book philosopher, a purveyor of empty aphorisms.
In defense of his “recycling,” Mr. Vonnegut says, “If I’d wasted my time creating characters, I would never have gotten around to calling attention to things that really matter.”
During the Depression, the elder Vonnegut went for long stretches without work, and Mrs. Vonnegut suffered from episodes of mental illness. “When my mother went off her rocker late at night, the hatred and contempt she sprayed on my father, as gentle and innocent a man as ever lived, was without limit and pure, untainted by ideas or information,” Mr. Vonnegut wrote. She committed suicide, an act that haunted her son for the rest of his life.
He had, he said, a lifelong difficulty with women. He remembered an aunt once telling him, “All Vonnegut men are scared to death of women.”
“My theory is that all women have hydrofluoric acid bottled up inside,” he wrote.
His last book, in 2005, was a collection of biographical essays, “A Man Without a Country.” It, too, was a best seller.
It concludes with a poem written by Mr. Vonnegut called “Requiem,” which has these closing lines:
When the last living thing
has died on account of us,
how poetical it would be
if Earth could say,
in a voice floating up
perhaps
from the floor
of the Grand Canyon,
“It is done.”
People did not like it here.

*Kink
*“So it goes” is one of many Zenlike words and phrases that run through Mr. Vonnegut’s books . "SIG" became a catchphrase for opponents of the Vietnam war

40 Years in the Radio Business

RUEFUL INSOUCIANCE

Below find excerpts from: Networks Condemn Remarks by Imus

This is hardly the first time Mr. Imus has made racially insensitive remarks during a broadcast. In a 1997 interview with “60 Minutes,” he said he chose one white staffer to tell racial jokes on his show. He once referred to the PBS anchor Gwen Ifill as “a cleaning lady.” And in 2001 he took a pledge, guided by the Chicago Tribune columnist Clarence Page, to refrain from making further racist comments on his program.
Mr. Imus’s defenders say that he is actually an equal-opportunity offender: Jews, gays and Roman Catholics are also his frequent targets. Yesterday’s show, on Good Friday, included a song couplet that managed to rhyme the words “resurrection” and “erection.”
Mr. McGuirk characterized the women’s collegiate basketball championship Tuesday night, between Rutgers and the University of Tennessee, as “the Jigaboos versus the Wannabes.”

Below find excerpts from: MSNBC Drops Don Imus Radio Simulcast

NBC News has decided that its cable news channel, MSNBC will no longer simulcast the Don Imus radio program, effective immediately.
General Motors, GlaxoSmithKline and Ditech.com joined the growing number of companies that have pulled their advertising from disc jockey Imus' broadcasts.
American Express also cancelled its advertising with Imus, the Wall Street Journal reported. Late Tuesday, Proter & Gamble became the third advertiser publicly known to have pulled its ads, joining Staples and Bigelow Tea.
Imus' radio show originates from WFAN-AM in New York City and is syndicated nationally by Westwood One, both of which are managed by CBS Corp. MSNBC simulcasted the show on cable. MSNBC television and MSNBC.com are joint ventures of Microsoft and General Electric's NBC Universal News. General Electric is also the parent of CNBC.com.
Imus has apologized repeatedly for his comments. He said Tuesday he hadn't been thinking when making a joke that went "way too far." He also said that those who called for his firing without knowing him, his philanthropic work or what his show was about would be making an "ill-informed" choice.


*Cartoons courtesy of Daryl Cagle's professsional cartoon index