My version of the Zeitgeist Checklist.

A long time ago, the Zeitgeist Checklist (a sort of Top 10 of national/world events) used to appear in THE NEW REPUBLIC.  More recently, it surfaced on Slate.com.

This is in no specific order, but you're welcome to arrange it as you choose and add or delete events.

1. Lindsay Lohan, tabloid ingenue and occasional actress/singer, is allegedly found with cocaine.

2. Paul Newman, citing memory loss among other things (my guess is that a lack of good scripts is the primary factor), retires from film acting after an oft-distinguished 52-year career.

3. George W. Bush wants to keep staying the course in Iraq.

4. Dick Cheney wants to give war a chance re Iran.

5. Alberto Gonzales is still singing "And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going."

6. In Los Angeles, the Metropolitan Transportation Agency tells poor people to suck it up and pay a large-increase-over-two-years re bus passes. 

7.  The whitewash revisionism of Ronald Reagan's Presidency continues with Douglas Brinkley's Nancy-approved condensation of RR's White House diaries.

8. According to this month's VANITY FAIR, Susan Sarandon and Bruce Willis have forged an across-ideological-lines alliance to help Iraq War vets get better medical care.

9. Jordin Sparks wins AMERICAN IDOL; Blake, the blandest human beatbox on planet Earth, is the runner-up.

10. Bill and Hillary Clinton allegedly devised a "20-year plan" decades ago; this plan was to lead to both of them winning the Presidency.

BONUS ENTRY: Happy talk today (Tuesday, May 29th) on THE VIEW regarding the disappearance of Rosie O'Donnell; Barbara says Rosie's always welcome, Elisabeth talks about forgiveness and Whoopi Goldberg (possible replacement) shows up; from what I saw of the show, the edgiest talk consisted of the relatively safe topics of watching porn videos and seeing men naked--as Scott Fitzgerald said, more-or-less, boats against the current sliding back into the past.

The War President gets what he wants.

Here's an interesting sentence from a news article carried by AOL on the Democratic Party flip-flop re the current endless war led by Cowboy George:

In addition to jettisoning their plan for a troop withdrawal timeline, Democrats abandoned attempts to require the Pentagon to adhere to troop training, readiness and rest requirements unless Bush waived them.

No further comment except to say that Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid are chickendoves and the Democratic Leadership Council (the let's-imitate-Republicans wing of the Democratic Party) should receive equal condemnation as well.

CBS reality series: An accident waiting to happen?

There's a reality series called KID NATION coming to CBS next season which will take children (age not known at present) and set them up in a New Mexico ghost town to see how they'll carry on in a world without adult supervision.

Yes, there will undoubtedly be some kind of scripting and multiple takes (a reality show way of ensuring the kind of "reality" the producers and network want).  And it's a safe guess that this kind of social engineering will involve young people getting the kind of psychological damage which comes from humilation and bullying in a public forum (let's leave off the table the issue of "they wanted to do it" for now).

And since the participants will be younger than most reality series "stars", CBS will probably bully them further with don't-tell-or-we'll-bury-you nondisclosure agreements.

Maybe CBS could have a reality series where Les Moonves and other execs jump into a swimming pool filled with human and animal feces in order to grab a billion dollars in tax-free cash.

That's a series I'd rather watch.

Jerry Falwell's passing.

I haven't been listening to the eulogies for Jerry Falwell, godfather of the Moral Majority.

Instead I think of one of the greatest sight gags during Chuck Jones' tenure as architect of the Road Runner cartoons.

A cactus falls into a canyon.  Wile E. Coyote falls not long after.

Pause.

Then Wile E., screaming from cactus needles in the posterior, flies up towards the camera until the viewer sees a ultraclose shot of his face.

For all the arrogance, smugness, divisiveness (who can forget Jerry calling Ellen Degeneres ELLEN DEGENERATE?) and ham-handed insistence that his interpretation of Jesus' teachings spoke for all of Christianity, it's not that hard to replay that cartoon gag with Jerry Falwell standing in for Wile E. Coyote.

Back from Hawaii.

Sorry to have been away from blogging for so long.  My wife Valarie and I were vacationing in Hawaii and I stayed mostly computerless for the trip.

Later this week, I'll resume a more consistent schedule of posting.