Legal Commentary

Almost Cut My Hair. Happened Just The Other Day.

By Kevin Funnell

Here a year or two ago me and Loretta went to a conference in Corpus Christi and got set next to this woman, she was the wife of somebody or other. And she kept talkin about the right wing this and the right wing that. I aint even sure what she meant by it. The people I know are mostly just common people. Common as dirt, as the sayin goes. I told her that and she looked at me funny. She thought I was sayin somethin bad about em, but of course that?s a high compliment in my part of the world. She kept on, kept on. Finally told me, said: I don?t like the way this country is headed. I want my granddaughter to be able to have an abortion. And I said well mam I don?t think you got any worries about the way the country is headed. The way I see it goin I doubt have much doubt but what she?ll be able to have an abortion. I?m goin to say that not only will she be able to have an abortion, she?ll be able to put you to sleep. Which pretty much ended the conversation.
---Cormac McCarthy, "No Country For Old Men"

Would all rants from right or left end so readily.

Channel flipping last night (actually, early this morning) while attempting to feed my insomnia, I happened across Fox News, where the infinitely annoying Sean Hannity, some moron from the American Civil Liberties Union, and another mental midget from a portion of the universe where the ACLU apparently is banned, were yelling past one another about plans to build a mosque somewhere in the vicinity of Ground Zero in New York City. It was literally impossible to make hide nor hair of anything they said because all three men were literally shouting at the same time, in extended outbursts that canceled out one another and made the entire sound a viewer heard one immense symphony of dissonance. I was momentarily confounded, then amused. No wonder the radical Islamists think they can beat us. We're a nation of babbling buffoons, and it doesn't matter what side of the political spectrum you view. It's all one long verbal rendering of Munch's painting "The Scream."

If that weren't proof that the apocalypse is nigh, the controversy this week over Shirley Sherrod is the clincher. The despicable antics of the right wing nut blogger who first posted the edited video and of Fox News, which jumped all over this lynching, were matched by the Obama administration's reprehensible actions in tossing her under a bus without investigating, and then unshackling the king of hubris, Robert Gibbs, to attack reporters who questioned the administration's rush to judgment. For me, though, the ongoing propaganda spins of the incident by both left and right that continue to this hour convince me that a pox should descend on all houses that flame with the blue-white heat of political partisanship.

Just as I was about to plunge into the abyss of existential despair over this putrescent stench of moral decay, I was wrenched upward into an almost orgasmic flush of restored faith in the basic goodness of this country's core "value proposition" when I read the news that Mel Gibson is receiving "counseling" from none other than that bundle of wisdom wrapped in a shaved head, Britney Spears.

According to a source, Spears has been talking to Gibson on the phone regularly since his abusive tirades against ex-girlfriend Oksana Grigorieva leaked online. "Mel was one of the only people who reached out to help Britney when she was at her lowest point," said the source, "and she believes that demonstrates what a loving and wonderful man he is. She wants people to give him a second chance -- just like he gave her one when everyone else turned away."

How bad must your personal situation be if you're receiving advice on "coping skills" from Britney Spears?

And my mother wonders why I so love my Hennessy XO.

This sad state of affairs makes me so mad that I almost cut my hair. Thank all that is right and holy that I pulled myself together in time to realize that those last three hairs are all I've got left, and once they're gone, I might as well consign myself to becoming Paris Hilton's next handbag hairless Tinkerbell.

Full post as published by Counseling Kevin on July 24, 2010 (boomark / email).