Maybe it’s just a post-Thanksgiving, pre-Christmas lull, but there didn’t seem to be any big news on Monday. There were more embarrassing revelations about Obamacare, and the stock market took a downturn on disappointing holiday sales figures as the economy limps along, and the nation’s foreign policy appears in disarray from the Senkaku Islands to the Iranian centrifuges, but nothing that dominated the day’s discussions.
Fortunately for the hard-core news junkie, there’s always a fix available at The Drudge Report. The widely-derided and far more widely-read website is remarkably astute in highlighting the most important stories of the day, and when there aren’t any it always finds fascinating filler. It’s most recent top headline concerned the latest Obamacare debacle, this time about the lack of security on the Healthcare.gov site where people are expected to reveal their Social Security numbers and dates of birth and most intimate health problems, but such outrages are now so commonplace that the real fascination lie further down page. Other Obamacare-related headlines had to do with citizens calling the cops on the beleaguered law’s door-to-door salesman, the Internal Revenue Service auditing a cancer patient who spoke out after losing his coverage, and a deliciously Drudge kind of stories about the prostitutes at a Nevada brothel calling the law “a blessing.”
There were more stories about the death of the star of the “Fast and Furious” movies in a car crash, an irresistibly ironic tale that Drudge has been following with rapt attention, but we haven’t seen any of the movies and have no reaction beyond the requisite condolences to the actor’s friends and family, assuming he has any. He was a fine fellow, for all we know, but the pictures indicate that he had that slightly-unshaven look we find so irritating and we doubt his pictures lived up to standards of the old Roger Corman “Fast and Furious” with the slick white convertible Jaguar.
We are fond of some of Bob Dylan’s music, however, and were therefore interested to see that the erstwhile Voice of His Generation is being charged with “fomenting hate” in France as the result of a year-old interview with Rolling Stone magazine in which he likened the Croats’ treatment of the Serbs with the Nazis’ treatment of their various enemies. Aside from the surprise of learning that Rolling Stone is still in publication, and that Dylan was simultaneously accepting the French government’s prestigious Legion d’Honneur, which is only bestowed on the likes of Jerry Lewis, the story also provided the satisfaction of knowing that ol’ Bob can still provoke the occasional contretemps. In the same interview that led to the charges he apparently griped that a significant numbers of his countrymen are pining for a return to slavery, but such absurd anti-Americanism isn’t likely stir French indignation or any controversy here.
The Drudge Report has an admirable willingness to report on racial controversies that the rest of the media would prefer to ignore, and Monday’s edition had headlines about the director of “The Butler” confessing his anger toward white people and another Jewish victim of the “knockout game” that has become popular among black youths.
News of the weird is another Drudge specialty, and his latest offerings include a lawsuit demanding “legal personhood” be bestowed upon a chimpanzee, mold and mildew being found on some samples of marijuana, and the state of Wisconsin’s recent problems with public sex on a nude beach. All seem intriguingly bizarre at first glance, but none are exceptional by contemporary standards. At a time when progressives are eager to deny personhood to any people who join together as a corporation it is not surprising to hear they would grant the honor to a chimpanzee. With the legalization of marijuana a growing trend it is inevitable that the authorities will find ample reason to regulate to an extent that pot-heads will soon yearn for the days when weed was illegal and out of reach of the authorities. Wisconsin’s worries about public sex on nude beaches have a prurient interest, but we expect it will all be solved by the onset of a Wisconsin winter.
These occasional absences of big news are a prime opportunity to present big ideas, but we’re fresh out of those at the moment and easily distracted by filler.
— Bud Norman
The Central Standard Times 