Judging by the winner of the 2015 Miss Universe pageant, the Latino look is not going away anytime soon. I wish it would. The winner, Paulina Vega, pales compared to the exotic Miss Jamaica, Kaci Fennell. An irate viewer puts down the choice of Miss Colombia over the sublimely exquisite Miss Jamaica to a competition held in “a Latino place” coupled with a “jury that was Latino.” The common Latino look has dominates for some time, no matter where the competition.
Miss Jamaica:
The dilemmas faced by “a mulish military power which doesn’t know Shiite from Shinola” are enormous.
The Yemeni president, Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, resigned on Jan. 22, “after Houthi rebels seeking greater political power effectively seized control of the capital, Sanaa.” (Foreign Policy)
For years, Yemenis had felt the brunt of “U.S.-trained units of elite Yemeni special forces” combined with CIA drone strikes from above. Now the superpower must decide “whether, and how, to cooperate with the Houthis — who are widely seen as an Iranian proxy force — in the fight against al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), the Yemeni-based group that claimed to have orchestrated this month’s attack on the office of Charlie Hebdo.”
The Houthis hate al Qaeda, which is “a Sunni militant group that sees the Houthis and the Iranian as apostates.” So do we, the Americans, hate al Qaeda. But we also hate the Iranians (principally because Israel is threatened by Iran, which is no threat to the US).
Another dynamic is at play besides the Sunni-Shia dynamic. It is that between the forces of centralization, with which the US generally sides (witness Iraq), and the forces of decentralization, with which the Arab people with whom we meddle generally side, given the tribal, familial focus of their societies.
The Houthis are demanding greater regional autonomy (like the Kurds of Iraq); the US is inevitably looking to empower another puppet central power like Hadi’s so as to lord it over its Yemeni client state.
In the words of Sir Walter Scott, “Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive.”
While the media-political complex focuses exclusively on the storm engulfing the Northeast, the temperature is 64°F in our neck of the woods, in the great Pacific Northwest. Look out for each other; the political elites of Sodom and Gomorrah will surely look out for themselves.
UPDATE (1/27): BREAKING NO-NEWS. Yes, but is wicked weather a legitimate topic for non-stop “breaking News” coverage?! Only in America.
America, Critique, Hollywood, Pop-Culture, Pseudo-intellectualism, Sport
The satire “Idiocracy” predicted that in 2505, the age of the idiot, America would be enthralled by one of two seconds-long “films.” The first is “Ow my Balls!”
The Age of the Idiot, however, is already upon us. Witness the endless, empty, obsessive yakking about deflated footballs. For heaven’s sake, order a rematch between the alleged offenders, the New England Patriots, and the Indianapolis Colts. Check and store the balls before every future match. Case closed. There is good reason for calling “Idiocracy” a documentary—except that The Age of the Idiot is upon us:
To fully appreciate what afflicts America—the people, the presidency, the academy, the media, Hollywood—watch “Idiocracy.” The film is a product of Mike Judge’s genius (Beavis and Butthead, anyone?), and was backed and then spiked by the idiots at 20th Century Fox. It is easily one of the smartest and darkest satires.
Luke Wilson plays Joe Bowers, frozen by the military in 2005, “who accidentally wakes up in 2505 to find a broken-down, thuggish America where language has become a patois of football chants, hip-hop slang and grunts denoting rage, pleasure and priapic longing, where citizens are obese, violent, ever-horny and narcotised by consumerism,” to quote the Guardian.
The “dumb-ass dystopia” depicted in “Idiocracy” has evolved because the robust retarded have out-bred the intelligent (yes, Judge openly references IQ as a measure of intelligence). Consequently, nothing gets fixed. There are garbage avalanches. A Gatorade-like drink has replaced water for irrigation, so nothing grows. The most watched show on the “Violence Channel” is “Ow, My Balls!” The “highest grossing movie of all time is called ‘Ass,’ and consists of 90 minutes of the same naked, hairy butt on screen.” All enterprises are sexualized; Starbucks offers a “full body latte.” Costco is an Ivy-League law school. If you’ve watched Ann Coulter trying to explain to Bill O’Reilly what a syllogism is, you’ll appreciate “Idiocracy” for the cultural barometer it is.
From “2 Movie Gems Amid A Lot Of Hollywood Hooey.” (July 2007)