As we have noted time and again, Schadenfreude is a problematic practice to engage in. That said, we have been in a state of virtual euphoria watching one Republican after another going down — and we aren't just referring to Mark Foley, although he certainly has been quite the catalyst, his e-mail affairs exposing a good deal more than his and the Congressional pages' private antics.
We so love 24-hour TV news, because no tidbit goes unbroadcast. And there have been tidbits galore this week. Take Rep. Christopher Shays (R-CT). Please. Before this week, he was a veritable shoo-in for re-election. Much like Foley himself. But Shays, like so many Republicans, got caught up in the Sturm und Drang around Foley, and couldn't resist putting in his two cents for the cameras, defending House Speaker Dennis Hastert and his handling of the Foley scandal, which to us has looked pretty similar to how FEMA's Michael Brown handled Katrina.
Shays has always been a huffer and a puffer, so there he was, pulling himself up before the TV cameras and declaring that the Foley thing was being blown (no pun intended, we're certain) out of proportion by the Democrats and the liberal media.
According to CNN and Fox News, in response to his challenger's calls for Shays to return campaign money given to him by the Speaker, Shays noted, "I know the speaker didn't go over a bridge and leave a young person in the water, and then have a press conference the next day. Dennis Hastert didn't kill anybody."
Do we hear a rim shot?
Shays was referencing Sen. Ted Kennedy and the 1969 tragedy with Mary Jo Kopechne. Kennedy has been a strong supporter of Shays' Democratic challenger Diane Farrell.
Then, just in case this egregious statement didn't get enough coverage, Shays added a few more bon mots in his televised debate with Farrell on Oct. 11. Regarding new revelations about the Abu Ghraib torture scandal, Shays asserted, "Now, I've seen what happened in Abu Ghraib, and Abu Ghraib was not torture. It was outrageous, outrageous involvement of National Guard troops from [Maryland] who were involved in a sex ring, and they took pictures of soldiers who were naked. And they did other things that were just outrageous. But it wasn't torture. It was just a sex ring."
Farrell's office had transcripts of Shays' comments, which go further on Foley and Abu Ghraib, available by October 13, and was distributing them to the media. According to CNN, Shays' office did not dispute any of the Congressman's comments. Truthiness is stranger than fiction.
Oprah there
Speaking of truthiness, Oprah had an intense week between raising money for African AIDS relief with Bono and Alicia Keyes (Oct. 13) and spending a full hour with New York Times columnist Frank Rich discussing his new book, The Greatest Story Ever Sold: The Decline and Fall of Truth from 9/11 to Katrina (Oct. 12).
The Bono/Keyes event was vintage feel-good Oprah, where we see the diva of daytime do things the government cannot or will not do, like help people in need. Not a dry eye in the house.
The Rich hour was something quite different, as it had moments of tense contentiousness. Rich looked wonderfully queer, perched like a tubby little Truman Capote sans Fedora and sluriness on one of Oprah's high, uncomfortable stools. He spoke about the book and the state of American politics, and took questions from the audience. It was educational viewing on many levels.
It was a typical Oprah audience, mostly middle-class, mostly white, mostly well-informed, 98% women in their 30s and 40s. But the questions were far from typical and resonated with the dissension that plagues America today over the war, the Bush Administration and the endless scandals inside the Beltway.
For those who haven't read Rich's book (well-written and blunt as his columns), Rich gave a good overview (transcript at ABC's Oprah.com website) of what has happened to the media representation of politics since 9/11, and how the media redeemed itself with Katrina, but the Bush Administration acquitted itself execrably. Rich contends that the Bush Administration lies, and the corporate media, in particular Fox and CNN, most often repeat the lie, rather than exposing it.
The audience had mixed opinions on that theory. Some audience members were quick to note that they had loved ones in Iraq who were building schools (why is it always schools these people assert are being built? Doesn't Iraq actually need hospitals, given that more than 1,000 people a week are being killed, and another 2,000 injured?), but that the media only reports on the bloodshed (refer to the Lancet report last week, which stated that half-a-million Iraqis had been killed since the war began; the President dismissed that claim).
A young man stood up and said he had just been in Iraq, and this was indeed the case. But he acknowledged he was stationed on a base far outside the most egregious fighting. Another young woman stood up and said she, too, had been stationed in Iraq, and that the media does not report on how many soldiers are disenchanted with the war. Still another woman touted the Path to 9/11 line that Clinton was at fault for everything that led up to 9/11.
Our favorite moment came when a well-dressed woman in her 40s stood and wondered why, given the fact that WMDs were never found, the war was predicated on a lie, thousands of our soldiers had died and thousands more had been maimed, the President had never taken responsibility and apologized. The entire audience clapped after that question.
If the Oprah audience is a mini-cross-section of America women, then the controversial hour revealed a simmering frustration at the lies told by this Administration to the American people, and the failure of the media to tell Americans the truth. One young woman in her 20s wanted to know if people really were interested in the truth at all, since they never seemed to demand it. Peace out.
Falling star
Country singer Sara Evans has done the unthinkable and withdrawn from ABC's mega-hit reality show Dancing with the Stars . Now, we never understood how she got this far, but we did previously report that she was being backed by disgraced former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX) because she's a right-wing ideologue and evangelical. So since half the vote lies in audience call-ins, we assumed that what she failed to deliver on the dance floor, she made up for with DeLay's redistricting.
According to ABC, Evans, 35, filed for divorce from Craig Schelske on Oct. 12, and is leaving the show "to give her family full attention at this difficult time" because her divorce from the Republican politician got really ugly. Evans' divorce is not unlike the 2004 scandal with Shark 's Jeri Ryan and her former husband, Jack Ryan, the presumptive winner in a race with Barack Obama until the divorce papers hit ET and Extra, showing that Ryan was less than squeaky clean, sexually.
Apparently, Evans' hubby is another sexual profligate in moral majority clothing. (There seem to be a lot of these.) While Evans has been shaking her tush on the dance floor, her hubby has been (literally) shaking his thing at the computer screen, camera and TV. Porn is his first love, apparently, and when the couple's seven-year-old walked in on Daddy watching porn interactively, well. Evans' divorce papers, made public to ABC and various other news outlets on Oct. 13, note that Schelske watched porn obsessively and drank to excess (we see rehab in his future), and had more than 100 photos of himself in a "state of arousal." Ah, Schadenfreude .
Perhaps Evans will give Jerry Springer first dibs at an interview, now that the two have bonded on Dancing?
Speaking of sleaze, we were mesmerized by the series of interviews on Good Morning America between Diane Sawyer and Mel Gibson. Just in case anyone thought rehab was always successful, apparently the anti-Semite really has to want to change.
Gibson was slightly more in control in his forced mea culpa to Sawyer than he was when he was arrested for DUI. ("She's the wife of a Jew, director Mike Nichols," said E! star Joan Rivers, who is also Jewish. Rivers claimed last week that Sawyer's Semitism-by-association would grant Gibson an undeserved reprieve. "He should [@!&*] die!" Rivers said, with characteristic restraint.)
One thing rehab didn't do for Gibson was put him in touch with self-awareness or humility. In a mix of Tom Cruise on the couch with Oprah and Tom Cruise lecturing Matt Lauer on the evils of psychiatry, Gibson denied pretty much everything but the Holocaust, which he left in the capable hands of his father, the well-known Holocaust denier.
Gibson admitted drinking in the early morning after his arrest while telling his (seven) kids that Daddy had been arrested for drinking and driving and saying bad things about the people who killed Our Savior, Jesus.
He told Sawyer that he probably said those things about Jews not because he's an anti-Semite or because his father is an avowed Holocaust denier, but because the Jews said bad things about his anti-Semitic film, The Passion of the Christ.
Well, we're glad he cleared that up. Gibson's bug-eyed, sweaty-faced disclaimers were pathetic, arrogant and creepy in equal measure. We don't think this was the best move straight out of rehab, nor do we think 30 days was enough.
Apparently, neither did ABC's Nightline, which noted on its Oct. 13 telecast that alcohol is the new excuse for bad/criminal behavior, citing Gibson, Foley and indicted Republican Congressman Bob Ney. How does alcohol make you an anti-Semite, a pervert or corrupt? asked ABC reporter Jake Tapper, referring to the trio. Good question!
Finally, one last note from the right. The Oct. 13 Tyra Banks Show found Oprah's protégé, supermodel Tyra, in the midst of a Springer-like screamfest with Shirley Phelps, daughter of rabid homophobe Rev. Fred Phelps. Shirley's teenaged daughters added to the melee. Banks, a rational if vapid woman, clearly had no idea what she was getting into with the Phelps fanatics when she offered to discuss their "issues" with her on TV.
Shirley, her father's daughter to the core, called Banks a "fag enabler" who was "going to burn in hell" because she has a queer fashion expert on the show and has held transsexual fashion shows.
Okay. If Banks is a "fag enabler," what does that make Dennis Hastert?
Stay tuned.