- What price do you pay for being a total dick on television? Apparently if you’re NBC talking head Tucker Carlson, the price you pay is your choice gig of hosting a one-hour program on the cable network each night. The bow-tie-wearing, über-arrogant conservative a-hole has been ousted from his customary slot in MSNBC’s nightly lineup due to the network’s desire to respond to heavier-than-normal interest in the political scene with the presidential election coming up later this year. David Gregory will be taking over Carlson’s vacated time slot but it was not immediately clear if he would also take over Carlson’s role of being the biggest dick on television. It would be tough to strike that right mix of condescension, small-mindedness, arrogance and rudeness, so if you can't quite put it together, no worries David. Just by treating your guests with a modicum of respect and class you can be a marked improvement over my boy T. Carlson. Gregory’s show will be called Race for the White House and you can keep an eye on your network listings to find it in your area. If you find yourself having dick-head withdrawal because Carlson’s show is no longer on, I advise you to turn on your radio and pick up Rush Limbaugh’s show, you should find it to be a satisfactory substitute.
- It hasn’t been a good spring training for the New York Yankees. First, they had backup catcher Francisco Cervelli plowed over by Tampa Bay (Devil) Rays baserunner Elliot Johnson in the ninth inning of an exhibition game and get his wrist broken in the collision. Yankee manager Joe Girardi was none too happy about a play most around baseball saw as a clean, legit play on Cervilli’s part. Girardi and former Yankee coach Don Zimmer, now a member of the Rays’ front office, exchanged angry words in the aftermath, but the situation was far from over. Next, the Yankees made asses out of themselves by signing washed-up, irrelevant comedian Billy Crystal to a one-day contract so he could try to grab some publicity, er, fulfill his lifelong dream of suiting up for the Yanks. Now, the team sparked a benches-clearing brawl in which its starting pitcher and two coaches were ejected in the first inning of a rematch with Tampa in an exhibition game in St. Petersburg, Fla. This was New York’s first chance for retaliation after the Cervelli-Johnson incident and although it came in a meaningless spring training game with about 1,000 people in the stands, the Pinstripers wanted to make their point: Your fourth-string players had better not go around hurting our third-string catcher or dammit, one of your minor league guys is getting drilled with a pitch from a guy who isn’t going to make our major league roster. Pitcher Heath Phillips beaned Rays third baseman Evan Longoria with a pitching in the first inning of yesterday’s game, sparking a brawl that saw Tampa outfielder Jonny Gomes and Yankees first baseman Shelley Duncan ejected, along with New York coaches Bobby Meachem and Kevin Long. I’m not sure what point that served, other than deepening the already intense hatred these two franchises have for one another. I just wish Tampa wasn’t so gawd-awful every year, because if they could actually break the .500 mark, this rivalry might actually mean something and be worth following.
- On one hand, wasting $12 billion a month on an unjustified, idiotic and unnecessary war should be reason for rioting. In a less civilized country, the leader responsible for that kind of atrocity would have his head on a pike and marched through the streets by angry villagers within a month. In the United States, we don’t do that sort of thing to our leaders, no matter how bad they are. On the other hand, is it wrong to have at least a little admiration for an administration so incompetent that it manages to find a way to waste $12 billion a month on anything? Throwing away that kind of money is hard to do, even if you’re Paris Hilton on a shoe, drugs and sex binge or if you’re a famous rapper looking to add a half-dozen more Bentleys to your fleet. Yet as the Mess O’Potamia, i.e. the war in Iraq, heads into its sixth f’ing year in 2008, $12 billion a month is what the United States is spending to finance this atrocity. That claim comes in a new book by Pulitzer Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz. The idiotic troop surge of last year is a major factor in allegedly tripling the cost of the war from its first few years to the present. Compounding this comedy of errors is the fact that W. and his stool pigeons are currently backpedaling from previous pledges to begin rolling back the number of troops in Iraq and backpedaling at an alarming rate. Carmelo Anthony didn’t backpedal this fast in trying to cower out of last season’s NBA brawl at Madison Square Garden between his Denver Nuggets and the New York Knicks (YouTube it, you’ll see what I mean). Between the sheer horror of these figures and the fact that the terror of a Hank Clinton presidency is still at least a possibility, I don’t think I need to tell you that this is one of the darkest, scariest times this country has had in its 232 years of existence. Keep fighting, America, and together we can turn this around.
- When a criminal assault takes place, you always hope there was a good reason for the brawl. You know, like someone looking at someone else’s girl the wrong way, someone momentarily leaning up against someone else’s car, one drunk dude accidentally spilling a beer on another drunk dude, etc. Thus, you can imagine that when a couple of Australian Navy sailors roll up on an American civilian in San Diego and administer a beatdown on the sidewalk outside of a bar, they also had a good reason. As it turns out, you would be right. Sailors Phillip Graeme Ferres and Kolis Barba were out on the town, having fun when some random guy crossed their path and an argument about the merits of American versus Australian Rules football. I’m not sure which side won the argument on the merits of their verbal skills, but I know that the two Aussie sailors won the physical side of things because they pleaded guilty this week to assault charges stemming from the November incident. Maybe I’m out of line here, but aren’t members of a country’s military supposed to represent the best that country has to offer and be men (and women) of honor? Either that or commit felonies on foreign soil because some American dude says that American football is better than Aussie football. Well done fellas, you did your country proud.
- John Daly has just about ceased to be the loveable train wreck that golf fans everywhere root for. J.D. is known for his larger-than-life lifestyle, replete with booze, cigarettes, gambling, multiple divorces and portly physique as much as he’s known for his monstrous on-course talent. He has more ability than any golfer outside of Tiger Woods, as evidenced by the two majors he has won despite being a drunk, a compulsive gambler and a compulsive eater. Through four divorces, innumerable gambling binges and multiple trips to rehab, fans have stood behind him and continued to cheer J.D. when he actually was able to sober up enough to play. However, the tide seems to be turning for Daly and this time the effects may not be reversible. Last week, Daly was playing at the PODS Championship in Florida when he decided it would be a good idea to let his buddy, Tampa Bay Buccaneers head coach John Gruden, be his caddy for a round. If you’re not a big golf fan, you might not understand the significance of the caddie, but suffice it to say that he consults with the player on club selection, gives him insights on course conditions, yardage to the hole and shot setup. In other words, the caddie is the player’s right-hand man, so having an experienced, knowledgeable caddie is a must. Having a pro football coach come and carry your bag for a day basically is equivalent to the L.A. Lakers bringing Jack Nicholson out of the stands to coach the team in a pivotal playoff game. The decision to bring in Gruden didn’t sit well with renowned swing coach Butch Harmon, an ex-Marine who is one of golf’s best swing gurus. He’s been working with J.D. to help get his game back on track, but when Daly brought in Gruden as his caddie, Harmon went off. “QUOTE HERE.” Wow. That’s as thorough a blow-up as you’ll see in golf or most any other sport, but even that comment and Harmon terminating his working relationship with Daly didn’t seem to get through to J.D. His downturn continued this week when he missed his tee time for the pro-am portion of the Arnold Palmer Invitational and was disqualified from the whole tournament. Worse yet, he was there on a sponsor’s exemption, which means one of the event’s sponsors gave him a chance to play even though he didn’t qualify because they thought he was worth having in their event. Instead, Daly went AWOL and got himself DQ’d, DQ’d from an event hosted by golf icon Arnold Palmer nonetheless. I have to admit that up to this point, I’ve been one of those willing Daly enablers, someone who rooted for him whenever he teed it up and hoped he would turn his life and his career around. Now, I’m becoming worn down by his constant screwing around, his refusal to own the responsibility for making changes in his life and his blatant disregard for everything in his life but booze and gambling. J.D., you’ve walked that thin line twixt greatness and disaster too long and you’ve finally fallen firmly onto the wrong side of the line. The difference this time as opposed to your past falls is that I really don’t believe you’ll ever make it back from this one…..
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