Chocolate Peril

The following is the kind of headline and story that trips the b.s. detector of anyone who has been in journalism for a day. Stories like this abound, cooked up by mischievous desk sergeants and sometimes even grizzled news people.

Unfortunately for Mr. Smith, named below, it appears to be true, despite appearing in the headline "news" section of American Online.

Man Falls Into Vat of Chocolate, Dies
AP CAMDEN, N.J. (July 8) – Authorities say a man died after falling into a vat of melted chocolate in a New Jersey processing plant.

The Camden County prosecutor's office identified the victim as 29-year-old Vincent Smith II of Camden. He was a temporary worker at the Cocoa Services Inc. plant.

The accident happened Wednesday morning as Smith was loading chocolate into a vat where it's melted and mixed before being shipped elsewhere to be made into candy.

Prosecutor's spokesman Jason Laughlin says a co-worker tried to shut off the machine and two others tried to pull Smith out of the 8-foot-deep vat. He was hit and fatally injured by the agitator that mixes the chocolate.

Why do I think this is funny? Because it reminds me of an old Smothers Brothers routine about what to do if you should actually fall into a vat of chocolate and require assistance. Tommy Smothers pointed out one should yell, "Fire," because no one would respond if you yelled "Chocolate." Impeccable logic.

Which also reminds me ...

Once we were at cineplex when the fire alarm went off and the building had to be evacuated. As the firefighters were tending to an overheated popcorn machine, I got to live out a civil libertarian's dream and yelled "Theater" in a crowded fire.

A Brown Stain on Ivy

Brown University has always been a joke, having let the student body determine grading policies in the 1970s and producing generally poor academic scholarship. Let’s put it this way, the Hillary Clinton health care disaster was conceived and executed by a Brown graduate.

The latest example is the woman pictured below, one Dr. Tricia Rose, whose entire body of scholarship is about blacks and women in the 20^th century.

As chair of the university’s Department of Africana Studies (as opposed to “African?”), she caught the attention of the loony lefties who run MSNBC, and they can’t get enough of her explanation of Michael Jackson. Not content to call this pedophilic self-mutilating drug addicted hermit freakazoid a “hero,” she said to call Michael Jackson just a popular entertainer is like calling Jesus a carpenter.

Christian readers – please let Dr. Rose know what you think about that at Tricia_Rose@brown.edu

Amusingly, she also spoke of his influence on modern stars like girlfriend-abuser Chris Brown and accused (and acquitted) child rapist R. Kelly, who got off, so to speak, only because a jury couldn’t tell whether the person he was videotaped was actually 15.

And don’t forget Stevie Wonder and all the other stars in the entertainment firmament who publicly wept at the loss of a person they could have saved at any moment by being his friend before he died.

King of Pop, King of Poop , King of GOP, King of Hell

With all his plastic surgery and self mutilation, I wonder if Michael Jackson even had to be embalmed.

The spectacle of his death and the frenzy of fulsome flattering fools makes me tremble for America, much more so than from nuclear arms proliferation, economic ruin or even Sarah Palin.

Among the indecencies is the insertion of Al Sharpton into the proceedings and his calling out of the mass media for pointing out the obvious truth that Michael Jackson had “issues.”

Sharpton, as you will remember was, before he became self proclaimed king of black America, a charlatan rabble-rouser who claimed as fact that a troubled 13-year-old girl was raped and smeared with feces by white racists, defamed a cop and refused to pay libel judgment, sparked a riot in Brooklyn in which a man was killed because he was Jewish.

As a result of his first descent into infamy alone, Sharpton is the King of Poop.

I don’t know why black America, to the extent one can say it exists at all, keeps elevating moral monsters like Sharpton, O.J. Simpson and Michael Jackson -- a crazed narcissist who has done more damage than a street corner full of Jesse Jacksons; a stone cold murderer; and a pedophile who turned himself into a puke-inducing freak who made the Joker look normal.

Then there is Congressman Peter King, Republican of Long Island, who, crazy like a fox, told the truth about Michael Jackson. All other politicians and celebrities found something innocuous to say about Jackson, but not King, who said:

"He was a child molester. He was a pedophile. And to be giving this much
coverage to him day in and day out, what does it say about us as a country.
We're too politically correct. No one wants to stand up and say, 'We don't need
Michael Jackson.' … There are men and women dying today in Afghanistan. Let's
give them the credit they deserve.”

(As I try to point out to no one there, not even a chair, the men and women in uniform already are overglorified for doing their jobs. You cannot go to a public event without “our brave troops” being deified in a manner that suggests a daily nationwide Nuremberg rally.)

Even the right wing malefactor Patrick Buchanan said that when God puts his hand on someone (Jackson) it is time to take yours off. But Peter King, who has a long record of publicity stunts, said what he said because he wants to be senator from New York. And he is well aware that blacks don’t vote in the percentages that white people do.

So, call him the King of GOP.

The queen of GOP, of course, is Sarah Palin, whose rambling retreat from reality last Friday forever marked her as flat-out crazy. Many in public life are paranoid and narcissistic, but no one has been as politically incoherent or as wild-eyed and breathless. She makes Mark Sanford look viable as a Republican leader. Watch it and you decide.

Finally, Robert McNamara, personally responsible for 58,000 dead Americans, died yesterday and immediately joined Lyndon Johnson in hell.

Obamanipulation

Every president since Kennedy has tried to manipulate the news media. It is what they are supposed to do. And it is the job of the news media to resist, however futilely, and to bring to public attention the attempts.

As many readers know, I used to cover the White House and was an active, sometimes abrasive, participant in the daily briefings by the press secretary. But as in the production of sausages and of legislation, the process by which news is created ought not to be viewed by the weak-stomached. When the daily interchange between journalists and the White House press secretary went on TV some years ago, things went to hell, and it diminishes everyone.

The function of the White House press is not to dig up dirt or investigate government programs. It is to report what the president and his administration are doing on a short-term basis and, most important, to hold the president accountable by asking and receiving on-the-record answers from his spokespeople.

President Obama, however, is taking news management to a new level by selecting reporters and advising them they will be called upon at a press conference, staging town meetings the way Richard Nixon did at the behest of media adviser Roger Ailes and even arranging for a particular question to be asked.

It is his right to do so and it may advance his policies, which I am generally in favor of. But thanks to my mentor Helen Thomas and CBS’ Chip Reid, the public now knows how this manipulation of public opinion is being conducted.

The following Is from the July 1 White House briefing:

Q At today's town hall meeting, questions coming in on YouTube
and Twitter and such -- who decides what questions will be asked?

MR. GIBBS: I think a group over at New Media is shuffling through
questions. I think if you go on -- I did not do this today, but I think if
you go on our Web site you'll see some of those questions. And I think,
Chip, at the end of the day, when you -- I think the questions that will be read
to the President -- obviously he'll take some questions from the audience there
-- I think will be a representative sample of the issues in this debate that
we're dealing with.

Q And the audience is all preselected, right?

MR. GIBBS: No, we usually just generally hand out tickets on a
first come, first serve basis.

Q Well, I think in this case, the people were invited either by the White House or by the university -- I mean, invited by this community college, as it was explained to us.
MR. GIBBS: Well, if the university is --

Q It just feels very tightly controlled. It feels -- I mean, the concept of a town hall I
think is to have a open public forum, and this sounds like a very tightly
controlled audience and a list of questions. Why do it that why? Why
not open it up to the public?

MR. GIBBS: How about we do this -- how about you can ask me that question tomorrow based on what questions were asked rather than preselecting your question based on something that may or may not come through.

Q But why pre-select? Why not just open it up for people and allow any question to come in?

MR. GIBBS: Well, Chip, I think if you get on your computer from your e-mail address
--
Q I have. I have.

MR. GIBBS: Have you sent in your question?

Q I think that would be inappropriate. This is for the public.

MR. GIBBS: I'm sorry, I'm confused -- are you not a member of the public?

Q Well, I think if you were going to allow questions from the press you'd have us in a
prominent position over there and allow us to ask questions -- you haven't done
that.

MR. GIBBS: Let's not get into the notion of where you'd be sitting -- (laughter) -- if I let you ask a question, but
--
Q Well out of shouting range.

MR. GIBBS: Well, but you could e-mail.

Q Would you put my question in there? I don't think so.

MR. GIBBS: Maybe. Have you e-mailed?

Q I mean, this is a town hall.

MR.

GIBBS: It's a little -- if you haven't e-mailed.

Q This is an open forum for the public to ask questions, but it's not really
open.

MR. GIBBS: I couldn't agree more. Q But it's not open.

MR. GIBBS: Based on what?

Q Based on the information that your staff gave us on how the audience and the questions are being selected.

MR. GIBBS: The questions are being selected by people that e-mail on Facebook and Twitter.

Q Well, they're not deciding what questions actually get in.

MR. GIBBS: Well, Chip, I appreciate, again --

Q It just feels completely controlled
--
MR. GIBBS: I appreciate, again --

Q -- in a way unlike his town meetings all the campaign and --

MR. GIBBS: I appreciate the pre-selected question on your part.

Q Will there be dissenting views --

Q Yes, how about that?

MR. GIBBS: I think that's a very safe bet. But, again, let's -- how about we do this? I promise we will interrupt the AP's tradition of asking the first question. I will let you ask me a question tomorrow as to whether you thought the questions at the town hall meeting that the President conducted at Annandale --

Q I'm perfectly happy to
--
Q That's not his point. The point is the control
--
Q Exactly.

Q -- we have never had that in the White House. And we have had some, but not
--
Q This White House.

MR. GIBBS: Yes, I was going to say, I'll let you amend her question.

Q I'm amazed -- I'm amazed at you people who call for openness and transparency and --

MR. GIBBS: Helen, you haven't even heard the questions.

Q It doesn't matter. It's the process.

Q You have left open --

Q Even if there's a tough question, it's a question coming from somebody who was invited or was screened, or the question was screened.

Q It's shocking. It's really shocking.

MR. GIBBS: Chip, let's have this discussion at the conclusion of the town hall meeting. How about that?

Q Okay.
MR. GIBBS: I think --

Q No, no, no, we're having it now --

MR. GIBBS: Well, I'd be happy to have it
now.

Q It's a pattern.

MR. GIBBS: Which question did you object to at the town hall meeting, Helen?

Q It's a pattern. It isn't the question --

MR. GIBBS: What's a pattern?

Q It's a pattern of controlling the press.

MR. GIBBS: How so? Is there any evidence currently going on that I'm
controlling the press -- poorly, I might add. (Laughter.)

Q Your formal engagements are pre-packaged.

MR. GIBBS: How so?

Q Well, and controlling the public --

Q How so? By calling reporters the night before to tell them they're going to be called on. That is shocking.

MR. GIBBS: We had this discussion ad nauseam and
--
Q Of course you would because you don't have any answers.
MR. GIBBS: Well, because I didn't know you were going to ask a
question, Helen. Go ahead.

Q Well, you should have.

Q Thank you for your support.
MR. GIBBS: That's good. Have you e-mailed your question today?

Q I don't have to e-mail it. I can tell you right now what I want to
ask. (Laughter.)

MR. GIBBS: I don't doubt that at all, Helen. I don't doubt that at all.

Make Mine a Malden

David Carradine
Ed McMahon
Farah Fawcett
Michael Jackson
Billy Mays

What do they have in common, besides taking a dirt nap?

All together their talents and humanities add up to what Karl Malden had in his pinkie.

Honestly, I was surprised he was still with us until I read that he died at 97. The obits will talk of all his great roles, but the one I liked best was as the star of an ill-fated one-season TV drama called "Kaz," in which he played a steelworker.

He actually won an Oscar as supporting actor in a movie "Streetcar Named Desire" that everyone thought Marlon Brando would win "best actor" for. But Brando, much more famous, lost that year to Humphrey Bogart, no slouch.

In "On the Waterfront," Malden was part of a stellllllaaaar ensemble that including one of my favorite actresses Eva Marie (is she still alive?) Saint.

What gave him gravitas as an actor was the fact that he did not look like a leading man, and he never really was. He looked like anybody you might know, especially if his name were Mladen Sekulovich. But he could act, and the obits say his preparation for a role was legendary. In fact, he never left home without it.

Sanford and fun

Mark Sanford refused federal stimulus. Of course, he found his stimulus elsewhere. He should have stayed at home, or at least visited Myrtle Beach instead of Maria.

Random thought:

Why does this pattern persist among male politicians? Is it only a false perception based on the headline value of a small percentage of miscreants? Or is it something about politicians needing love, exercising power and believing the rules don't apply to them? Or are they just being men?