journalists at war, supporting jim frey, hamas, and the yellow lamp...

another journalist casualty of the war in iraq...and another example of how poorly we treat our brothers, sisters, sons, daughters, mothers, fathers, neighbors and friends in the military. i was on vacation, so i didn't catch much of the news this weekend, when i did there was a whole lot about an nbc reporter injured and in critical condition in iraq. normally i am all about the attention when something bad happens to someone, normally i feel it is inappropriate to take out anger on such an occassion...but i can't do it anymore. we have thousands of kids coming home in flag-drapped coffins, thousands more coming back without a limb, without sight, without the ability to live the life you and i take for granted...and we don't even pay for them to get the treatment they need. we give them a few thousand bucks and a free ticket to college and say thanks for giving the last full measure so that we can crush the ideals this country was founded on. we give them a moment of silence on the news, we watch as their names and pictures scroll across the screen and we get teary eyed because we realize that they were just babies...and now they are gone. but a reporter gets hurt by a roadside bomb as countless troops have...and he gets days of coverage, life stories and "thoughts and prayers" from the media. where are the days of coverage, life stories and thoughts and prayers for the kid down the street with a prosthetic limb now? where are they for the family of the 19 year old kid from the rural south that will never get to take advantage of the g.i. bill? shame on you for glossing over the men and women in the armed forces and giving days of attention to one of your own...maybe if you had done your job from the start your friend wouldn't have been in that position in the first place...

jim frey apparently got roasted on oprah...bullshit if you ask me. here we have a guy that wrote what apparently is a great story that has inspired and moved lots and lots of people. and suddenly he is public enemy number one because he called it a memior instead of a novel? bullshit. athletes cheat and we look the other way and pay them hundreds of millions of dollars for their lies, politicians lie and we sit down and thank them for spitting on us and ask them if they could please kick us while they are at it...and a struggling writer, a former drug abuser, writes a compelling story and sends it off to publishers who want no part of it...so he stops calling it a novel, and starts calling it a memior...suddenly it is picked up, and he is a best-seller. well good for you jim frey...your lies didn't hurt me, they really didn't hurt anyone else...no kid is running out injecting himself with horse hormones because you embellished...in fact, your lie just got people reading again. don't take oprah's shit...maybe she's forgotten what it's like to be a struggling artist...either way, she missed the fucking point...it was a good story, it inspired you lady, it inspired thousands of others...where is the harm?

i saw a sign this weekend....basically wondering why we are all up in arms over jim frey lying to us over the section of the library his book should be placed in when our president and government tells more lies that do more damage daily...just something to ponder...

hamas won. if i am to believe the media and the white house, nobody saw this coming...except anyone with half a brain that has paid any attention to the world over the last, oh, i don't know, 30 years, saw this coming. the part i love about it is the response of the united states...cut off aid. but why do they hate us? we beg and plead and prod for them to hold elections, to become democracies and allow the people to choose who they want their leaders to be and how they want to be governed...and so they do...and we respond with "well, we meant only if you pick the other guy...we aren't a big fan of this group...so if you want them, well, then great, you can have them, because we don't want to interfere with democracy, but...uh...now you starve and die from a cold." here comes another generation of evil-doers...

i was enthralled by a painting this weekend...the yellow lamp...and i forget the artist (which is bad, i know). a faceless woman standing leaning on a table with a yellow lamp, bay windows behind her looking out onto the cityscape, and a faceless man in a suit staring out those same windows...it made me sad...it made me really want to know what it was that he just couldn't do anymore...why was it over, where would he go, where would she go? i don't know why...but damn did i love that painting.

the bill of rights disintegrates because freedom just gets in the way...