And Then There Were None

It’s Monday night, time for a weekend rewind. I think I’m going to make this a regular feature. Every Monday I’ll take a look at the things that have happened during the past 72 hours, and if anything interesting happens during the week I’ll deal with that then.

Looks like the search for the miners in Utah has stalled indefinitely following another shaft collapsed, killing several rescuers. This is about the last thing anybody wanted to happen. Our hearts go out to the families of all the miners and the rescuers, and we hope against hope that this is not the final outcome. This may not be the time, but at some point this question needs to be asked; with all the seismic activity and instability at this mine, should anyone have been working there to begin with?

Wanting to keep the resignation train rolling, White House Press Secretary Tony Snow Announced he will be leaving his post before the end of the presidential term – possibly by the end of the month. With first the brain and now the voice of the current administration checking out early, one wonders how long the eyes, nose and ears will stick around before they decide it’s no longer worth being attached to the face. Mr. Snow cited “financial pressures” as his reason for stepping off the sinking ship into the lifeboat. I guess that means that $170,000 a year just doesn’t go as far as it used to. But I wish him the best in his ongoing battle with cancer, and hope his next position – wherever it is – will provide him with whatever financial security it is he is looking for. Press Secretary is a difficult job, regardless of who is in power. It cannot be easy to stand in front of a room full of skeptics with cameras and recorders every day and try to communicate things that they – and sometimes you – might not necessarily believe.

In a move surprising to no one, the White House decided it, and not General David Petraeus would deliver the September 12 Iraq war report to the public. After all, why would anyone want the public to have access to information unfiltered, unaltered and unrefined by the administration? That kind of information, in the hands of the voting public, could prove to be very dangerous. Must protect people from themselves.

Michael Vick decided to plead guilty to federal conspiracy and dog fighting charges, finally allowing us to end the overuse of the word allegedly in any football-related conversation. “Sources” claim the government wants him to serve between twelve and thirty-six months in prison, and that his lawyers are trying to get that reduced to less than a year. Yeah, I’d like to go upstairs and find Ashley Judd practicing yoga naked in my living room, but I don’t see that happening either. In addition to whatever sentence he receives from the feds, there are rumors of a one to two year suspension, state criminal charges and legal action to recover some of his $130 million dollar contract. I hope it was worth it Mike. I hope the enjoyment you got from drowning, electrocuting and hanging those dogs will tide you over during your stay in federal prison. And I hope it’s a prison in Georgia. I hear they’re really comfortable.

For some reason known only to powers much higher than myself, Fox has tapped Ryan Seacrest to host the upcoming Emmy awards. I might be stepping out on a limb to say this, but this Seacrest character could be America's first pity superstar. Face it, he is popular for two reasons only; middle-schoolers think he's cute, and people feel sorry for him. Every week during the torture that is American Idol, Simon Cowell splits his time between berating wannabe pop stars and abusing Ryan Seacrest, who stands slack-jawed before the cameras and takes it like the chump that he is. Of course the swooning, squealing, shreiking masses of tween and pre-teen girls and their parents who make up the audience love to hate Cowell. And since the enemy of thine enemy is thy friend, they rally to the aid of Seacrest, with cheers for his perk and polished white grin and jeers for his abuser. For as long as I have been watching television I have never seen anyone become famous on the level of what Ryan Seacrest has managed to attain, for what amounts to a weekly emasculation. And I hope I never will again.

Finally, “High School Musical 2” broke all kinds of cable television viewership records this past weekend. I have no idea what this thing is, but apparently over 17 million (I have to assume mainly younger) viewers in the United States alone watched this thing. It is a sequel to “High School Musical” (how original) and prequel to “High School Musical 3”, and part of a whole “High School Musical” enterprise consisting of stage shows, ice shows, soundtracks and video games. My wife (whom I’d like to think is a perfectly normal 28 year old woman) assures me that although the sequel suffers from tinny music and a vacuous plot, the original High School Musical was fantastic and something everyone should see. Maybe I’d feel a little different about it if my high school experience had involved the brainy, yet attractive female science genius bursting into song while roaming the halls with backing vocals and back-up dancers. And does anybody else find it a little odd that the star athlete in every Disney television show is a scrawny-looking white dude? So much for realism.