Ashley Alexandra Dupré, who provided companionship by the hour to now-former New York governer Eliot Spitzer, has a pathetic attempt at a, *cough*hack*cough*, recording career that could take off now that everyone knows who she is.

Of course, Dupré’s MySpace and Amie Street pages have exploded in popularity over the past week, as the same knuckleheads that watch Jerry Springer, Judge Judy and any one of a hundred craptastic reality shows on the airwaves now rushed to their cpus and marched like lemings to the two sites.  The same scandal that removed Spitzer from office could install Dupré as a pop star.  Once again too many of you have mistaken infamy for fame.

Some might see this as a natural progression, after all.  If a crew of strippers can qualify as a bonafide musical act, why not a New York callgirl?  Besides, she certainly wouldn’t be the first to release an album on the strength of a sex scandal, and sadly won’t be the last.

Billboard asked three major A&R executives about Dupré’s chances at pop stardom.  Highlights:

“I think her song is absolutely terrible. If people are interested in signing her, then they shouldn’t be in the music business.” -Chris Anokute, Senior A&R Director, Capitol Records

“Right now, she has a platform to reach the masses, which is the toughest thing for a new artist to attain. Whether it’s a good platform or a bad one, either way she has it. It all comes down to the music at the end of the day. If the music is good, she’ll be able to get it heard.” – Brian Bergen, A&R Manager, Atlantic Records

“She has a platform; its just a matter of spinning off negative and making it positive.”  – Conrad Dimanche, A&R Consultant, Bad Boy

“Girls Gone Wild” founder Joe Francis then reached out to Dupre, offering $1 million for her to appear in a non-nude spread for his company’s new magazine and a chance to join the “Girls Gone Wild” tour bus.

But in the last 48 hours Francis’ Mantra Films announced it had withdrawn the offer after it unearthed video of her shot in March 2003 in Miami. Dupré’s lawyer, Don A. Buchwald, immediately took steps to inform Francis that the New Jersey native, her birthday being April 30, 1985, was only 17 when the footage was taken.

But Francis tells E! News he’s going ahead with the release anyway, albeit not for at least a few days while his lawyers debate the repercussions.

“We are getting pressure from her lawyer,” Francis said at his Santa Monica, Calif., office Wednesday. “As soon as we withdrew the million dollar offer—he is just mad because her price has dropped. Even if she was only 17, we could still release it. There was no sexual contact. There’s only nudity.”

According to Francis, as long as there’s no sexual content, he can go ahead and post the footage online. He added that the video will be up “in the next couple of days.”

But as unsavory as that sounds, legal experts say there’s apparently something to his argument.

“I understand there is toplessness in this video, but no sexual conduct,” Loyola Law School professor Stan Goldman told E! News. “The federal case in Florida, Lane v. MRA Holdings, that [GGW] are relying on would be relevant because this video was shot in Florida.

“This case defines what minors are precluded from consenting to and from the language it does not appear to preclude her from appearing topless as long as she is not paid.”

A company rep said in a press release that Dupré signed the requisite paperwork before hopping aboard the GGW bus in 2003. Francis said that, in addition to topless shots of Dupré, he has tape of her kissing other girls.

“It would seem that he has a plausible legal argument to publish [the footage],” Goldman said. “I think he clearly has some cover in terms of prior case law. It would appear that he has a decent argument that she can consent to it even if she is under 18, which I understand they are not even sure that she was.

“This statute that they are referring to in this case lists 30 things that a minor cannot consent to and this [being topless] is not one of them.”

Lost in all this bullshit is the fact that it is just that…bullshit.  This god damn Roman Coliseum mob mentality we have is just dragging us down to the point of the lowest common denominator. Again.

We are creeping up on over 4,000 U.S. casualties in Iraq now, the cost of the war is estimated ( I say “estimated” because the Bushies do a marvelous job at fudging the numbers on this) at $1 trillion and the economy is absolutely in the shitter right now with a majority of experts predicting it will be late 2009 before we work our way out of it.

So will you people please, and I mean PLEASE, keep your eye on the god damn ball?  As long as you continue to soak up this smut, to tune into !E to watch the latest “news” while simultaneously reading your latest edition of your favorite scandal rag, none of the truly important issues will get the attention they deserve.

Here endeth the lesson.  Damn it.

Let’s observe a moment of silence for the first major awards show casualty of The One Strike To Rule Them All.

It seems the Hollywood Foreign Press Association couldn’t broker a David Letterman-type deal with the WGA to move forward with the Golden Globes with a full writing staff so they’ve been forced to scrap the program (and all of it’s subsequent fanfare). You might’ve heard about the 11 week old Hollywood talent strikes (alternately known as The Strike That Came From Hell and The Strike That Sent Our Asses To Reality Hell).

Basically the latest contracts for writers (followed by actors and directors) have expired, and they want to renegotiate for a better chunk of the cash studios tend to hide with shady accounting, plus protection for future profits with new media. To prepare for this possibility, studios had been stockpiling scripts and hustling projects into the pipe before they’re truly ready.

What this means to you as a moviegoer is that the next two or three years will see poorly crafted, craptastic product in even greater amounts than usual…oh joy. While we realize that the doomsday pronouncements now being issued with increasing frequency by both the Writers Guild and the Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers following bargaining sessions in which the only thing being discussed seriously is which side is more committed to destroying Hollywood contain their fair share of public posturing, that knowledge doesn’t stop our sphincters from reflexively tightening following each bellicose statement lamenting the possibility of no end in sight to the disastrous work-stoppage.

One of the latest installments of Variety’s “Strike Fever: Catch It!” series on the acrimonious contract-renewal talks contains more than its fair share of ass-puckering quotes from the writers, studio execs, and agents who all hope for peace (at least secretly), but who are quietly trying to figure out which of their children will fetch the highest price on the black market to help them weather the strike or lockout that could arrive in just three weeks. Reports Variety:

“We tried to get as much stuff as possible shoved through,” said one studio VP. “It’s as crazy as I’ve ever seen it. We had to assume that they would strike on Nov. 1, they did, and this is the hand we’ve been dealt.” On the feature side, studios are no longer taking writing pitches and are pretty much limiting themselves to making deals on fully developed packages. Warner Bros. and Universal, for example, have put out the word to agents: Don’t bring in any spec scripts until the situation resolves itself.

“I’d hate to see this turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy, like the Iraq war,” one agent lamented. “I’d like to see people trying to engage in some meaningful and constructive dialogue rather than making boisterous pronouncements, leading to a never-ending stoppage.”

You can always count on an agent to put an explosive situation in its proper perspective, as the run-up to the possible strike was exactly like the Iraq War. After months of tough talk about needing more time to study the financials of the internet fad and threats to blow up the residuals system that’s been in place for decades, the studios will have little choice but to bunker down within their studio lot Green Zones, hoping their surge of hastily produced movies and primetime network schedules consisting of nothing but episodes of American Gladiator, Fat March, The Singing Bee, and Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader? can keep the masses at bay.

This disastrous cancellation of the Globes will also have a less predictable effect on things. Several movies that most needed the Globes will feel the pinch. Such heavily nominated films as “Atonement” and “Sweeney Todd” have done respectable but not blowout domestic numbers — $19 million and $39 million, respectively — and if history is any predictor, they would have seen a spike after their clips and stars got Globes airtime. Ditto for “There Will Be Blood,” which is just beginning to widen.

Lauded performers who wouldn’t normally be high on awards season or entertainment media radars such as Casey Affleck (“The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford” & “Gone Baby Gone”) and Marion Cotillard (“La Vie en Rose”) could have seen career boosts from red-carpet exposure.

Not now it seems.

Let’s hope that this will trigger some sort of sense of urgency among all parties involved, otherwise this could very well be the first sign that the entertainment apocalypse is truly upon us.  Because the thought of even more disappointing feature films & an ever greater onslaught of reality television in the coming years puts me in a really friggin’ bad frame of mind.

Groupthink, a term coined by social psychologist Irving Janis (1972), occurs when a group makes faulty decisions because group pressures lead to a deterioration of “mental efficiency, reality testing, and moral judgment” (p. 9).  Groups affected by groupthink ignore alternatives and tend to take irrational actions that dehumanize other groups.  A group is especially vulnerable to groupthink when its members are similar in background, when the group is insulated from outside opinions, and when there are no clear rules for decision making.

Wikipedia, The free online encyclopedia editable by anyone prides itself on being a meritocracy. The site successfully harnessed the wisdom of crowds to build what’s probably the largest, most quickly-constructed body of knowledge ever assembled in human history. Not bad for something that didn’t even exist when the decade began.For much of its content, the model seems to work pretty well. Easily-verifiable facts like names, places and dates tend to be rendered accurately. And when they’re not, they’re easy to fix. With millions of eyeballs scanning everything, errors can be caught quickly.

But when the topic is a subject of debate or controversy, the natural human tendency to want to convince others of one’s rightness can lead to some nasty behavior, as evidenced by your average Trivial Pursuit game. And when that happens in Wikiland, not only is the quality of the product degraded, so is the trust people place in the collaborative editing process.

A spat between contributors that recently became public demonstrated this weakness in the Wikipedia model, The Register reports (in a somewhat sensationalist tone):

“To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle.”- George Orwell

Facebook is an insanely popular online social networking site that allows 20 million users to upload pictures of themselves and can include information about their favorite music, books, movies, their address, phone number, e-mail, clubs, jobs, educational history, hobbies, sexual orientation and even political affiliations.

Facebook attracts on average 80 percent of a given university’s undergraduate population. However, there are some questions raised regarding privacy concerns on the site, and when some ”soul searching” is done to find out who is really behind the site’s management, there are far more disturbing questions than enlightening answers.

The first venture capital money to come into Facebook, a cool half million clams worth, came from venture capitalist Peter Thiel, founder and former CEO of Paypal. A Stanford graduate and former columnist for the Wall Street Journal, Thiel is author of the book “The Diversity Myth,” an anti-multicultural argument which received praise from notable neo-conservatives such as William Kristol. Thiel is on the board of the uber-radical conservative group VanguardPAC.

Further funding came in the form of $12.7 million from venture capital firm Accel Partners. Accel’s manager James Breyer was former chair of the National Venture Capital Association (NVAC). Breyer served on NVAC’s board with Gilman Louie, CEO of In-Q-Tel, a venture capital firm established by the Central Intelligence Agency (that’s right, I said the See-Eye-Friggin’-A)in 1999. This firm works in various aspects of information technology and intelligence, including most notably “nurturing data mining technologies.”

Breyer has also served on the board of BBN Technologies, a research and development firm known for spearheading the ARPANET, or what we know today as the Internet. In October of 2004, Dr. Anita Jones climbed on board, becoming a part of a firm packed with leaders from other areas of Silicon Valley’s venture capital community, including none other than Gilman Louie.

But what is most startling is Dr. Jones’ experience prior to joining BBN. Jones herself served on the Board of Directors for In-Q-Tel and was previously the Director of Defense Research and Engineering for the US Department of Defense. Her responsibilities included serving as an advisor to the Secretary of Defense and overseeing the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). While the nearly $13 million that came from Accel to fund Facebook certainly looks suspicious (and ultimately disturbing after reviewing all of this information), the only problem on the surface seems to be the appearance of some incestuous relationships between the Pentagon, the CIA, and these venture capital firms.

But, as they say, looks can be deceiving. DARPA shot to national fame, or should I say infamy, in 2002 when John Markoff of the New York Times announced the existence of the “Information Awareness Office.” According to Wikipedia, “the IAO has the stated mission to gather as much information as possible about everyone, in a centralized location, for easy perusal by the United States government, including (though not limited to) Internet activity, credit card purchase histories, airline ticket purchases, car rentals, medical records, educational transcripts, driver’s licenses, utility bills, tax returns, and any other available data.”

Protests came from civil libertarians on both the right and the left who saw the IAO as a new Orwellian arm of the United States government. After Congress investigated DARPA’s project, funding was cut off and IAO was essentially dead in the water. The Information Awareness Office might have survived some of its original purposes in a mutated form, found in today’s Facebook. In fact, one of IAO’s original example technologies included “human network analysis and behavior model building engines,” a surprising echo of the social networking mapping that Facebook does using SVG visualizations. Add that to the information that Facebook collects and compare it to the startlingly similar goal of the IAO.

It appears at first glance that DoD, along with the CIA, has managed to circumvent its previous Congressionally-established limitations to find corporate sponsorship for its programs under the thin veil of a useful social network for unwitting college students.The “Privacy Policy” of Facebook includes a statement saying that they “may share your information with third parties, including responsible companies with which we have a relationship.”

It goes on to say that, “We may be required to disclose customer information pursuant to lawful requests, such as subpoenas or court orders, or in compliance with applicable laws. Additionally, we may share account or other information when we believe it is necessary to comply with law or to protect our interests or property. This may include sharing information with other companies, lawyers, agents or government agencies.”

Some of the aspects of the privacy policy are downright creepy and confusing. This particular gem is especially disturbing: “Facebook may also collect information about you from other sources, such as newspapers, blogs, instant messaging services, and other users of the Facebook service through the operation of the service (e.g., photo tags) in order to provide you with more useful information and a more personalized experience. By using Facebook, you are consenting to have your personal data transferred to, and processed in, the United States.”

While I realize that this conspiracy theory is venturing into the my brother’s-friend’s-sister’s-roommate’s-cousin Ray Ray territory, it can’t be denied that Facebook’s CIA links are somewhat disturbing. And It’s not just Facebook that threatens your privacy.

America Online recently stated that users of their instant messaging service AIM “waive any right to privacy,” meaning AOL reserves the right to republish any AIM conversation at any time. Furthermore, users of the Web site MySpace.com have reported that certain comments and profiles have recently been censored. Not-so coincidentally, MySpace was purchased by Rupert Murdoch, owner of a media empire that includes Fox News, around the same time period. 

Your privacy is worth fighting for, especially when the president claims the right to illegally wiretap U.S. citizens and demands that Google give up search records. In the Internet age we cannot afford to assume that our privacy is being respected. As Ben Franklin famously said, “Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

Ladies & gents, this is how bad the corporate media really are. They cannot even report accurately on an event they produced themselves.

Ron Paul comes along and gives by most accounts of honest grassroots Americans the best performance in the first televised debate between GOP presidential contenders. Exclusively broadcast by MSNBC, Ron Paul led MSNBC’s post election poll from start to finish with nearly a double digit margin over his nearest challenger Mitt Romney.   

An even more resounding defeat of the rest of the pack occurred in an ABC News poll which at first had been posted on-line with only nine names on it — Ron Paul’s being the one missing. Peeved Paul supporters who complained in the poll’s comment section at first saw many of their posts ominously deleted — some no doubt for language, others for editorial discretion bordering on the word that shall not be uttered…unless by me.  C E N S O R S H I P people! After someone posted the cell phone number of a Senior VP at ABC News, the Paul name was added to the poll.

With the silent treatment of Ron Paul becoming deafening, ABC News has now taken the “nothing to see here, move along” tact. Here is how they summed it up in their whitewash of the days that followed:

“Alex, it’s Scott Boras. You need to call me right now.”

“Alex, how’s it hangin’ man? It’s Scott … didn’t you get my message?”

“Hey A-Rod! It’s Scotty. How’s my billion dollar baby? Call me back, lil’ buddy.”

“Hey, Cynthia.  Scott here, you know, you’re husband’s agent.  Did he change his number by chance?”

“Uh, Mr. Rodriguez, sir? Um, it’s Scott, can you (feint sniffle) call me please?”

After what could go down as the single greatest case of someone having misread a market, I would imagine that sequence of phone calls is not that far from the truth in recent days.  Somewhere the baseball gods are smiling…

I  am, of course, referring to the recent A-Rod/Stay Rod/Gay Rod fiasco that seems to have come full circle in Gotham in recent days.

For those of you who haven’t paid much attention to this soap opera I’ll give you the hilight reel:

• After the sluggers MVP season ended, the Yankees were prepared to offer a five-year extension worth up to $150 million, but didn’t when Boras set the bar at $350 million over 10 years just for the privilege to talk with their third baseman.
• Rodriguez opted out out his deal and Boras got the word out on Oct. 28 as the Red Sox were completing their World Series sweep over the Rockies, infuriating MLB executives, the Red Sox and basically anyone on the planet with a respect for the game.
• After Rodriguez opted out, incensed Yankees senior vice president Hank Steinbrenner said: “I don’t want anybody on my team that doesn’t want to be a Yankee. We’re not going to back down. It’s goodbye.”
• However, like a Roger Clemens retirement, the door was always more than just cracked, and it opened when Rodriguez approached the Yankees through a third party and started with an apology to Steinbrenner for how he handled opting out of his contract with three years and $81 million remaining.

Steinbrenner was gracious and quite pleased Wednesday.

“Part of it is obviously proving he really wants to be a Yankee and I think he’s doing that, I really do.”

So far, if you take what Rodriguez has said publicly of the issue at face value, Steinbrenner may indeed be right.  Rodriguez posted this on his personal website yesterday:

“We know there are other opportunities for us, but Cynthia and I have a foundation with the club that has brought us comfort, stability and happiness,” Rodriguez’s statement continued. “As a result, I reached out to the Yankees through mutual friends and conveyed that message. I also understand that I had to respond to certain Yankees concerns, and I was receptive and understanding of that situation.

“Cynthia and I have since spoken directly with the Steinbrenner family. During these healthy discussions, both sides were able to share honest feelings and hopes with one another and we expect to continue this dialogue with the Yankees over the next few days.”

While we will never really know what brought about this mea culpa from the best baseball player on the planet, we sure as hell can take an educated guess here.  And frankly I am betting the completely beatdown his credibility/image have taken the last few weeks has more than a little something to do with it.

Peter Gammons, a Hall of Fame journalist, wondered forcefully if this sort of gauche hubris explained why Rodriguez hadn’t yet played in the World Series. A-Rod got hammered by print columnists, by Mike and Mike, by Mike and the Mad Dog, by Michael Kay in New York and Mike Felger in Boston and the Mad Dog in Lansing and Softy in Seattle.

A-Rod got hammered like a pinata in a room full of fat kids, after word of his decision to opt out of his record-setting contract leaked out in the middle of Game 4 of the World Series — an act for which his agent Scott Boras first blamed on the Yankees; then blamed on a clerical mistake; and then, probably chastised by his All-Star client, finally blamed on himself, acknowledging what everybody in the game thought anyway.

A-Rod continued to get hammered last week, after word came out that Boras had demanded an initial offer of $350 million from the Yankees, and as the Players Association – and what does it say about the state of baseball that I can actually utter this next phrase – raised the question of whether there was collusion against a player whom the Yankees had been prepared to offer the highest salary in the history of professional sports. If only Rodriguez had taken their call.

And the saddest part about all of this is there was absolutely no need for any of this to happen.  The Yankees wanted him.  The Yankees needed him.  They can ill afford to take the biggest right-handed bat in the game out of an increasingly lefty heavy lineup.  They have a new stadium to break in in 2009 and need to maintain an air baseball royalty and hat better way to do it than to field the man everyone fully expects to shatter some of baseballs most revered records?

The sooner the Scott Boras’s of the world stop being the cancers that they are, the better we will all be.  I fully appreciate the need for a fair market and I certainly feel the owners should not be the only ones reaping the financial rewards of this multi-billion dollar industry.  But this is the perfect example of how the Gordon Gekko “Greed is Good” mantra can taint the human soul. 

The absolute silver lining in this dark cloud has been that Boras’s rep has taken a huge hit prompting one major league executive to say on Wednesday, “This is the greatest day of my life, seeing Boras get put in his place.”

He literally had the world’s best baseball player, coming off of a historic season, in the prime of his career and still managed to screw it up.  Hopefully this public dressdown from his prize client will help him put his ego in check and finally bury the personal hatchet he as had with baseball (the institution) after his dreams of playing in the big leagues were dashed after just a few years in the minor leagues.

As for A-Rod, the biggest part of his motivation may very well be his understanding of baseball history. 

There’s one huge factor that must be considered: A-Rod walked into that meeting with the Steinbrenners in Tampa, Fla., on Wednesday because he wants to be remembered as one of the greatest Yankees of all time. He wants that monument in center field, right next to Ruth and Gehrig and Mantle and DiMaggio. That’s got to be just as important to A-Rod as wiping Barry Bonds’ name off the all-time home run record.

But the only way to be remembered as an all-time Yankees is to be a Yankee, now and forever. The deal that A-Rod will soon sign will be his last; he’s going to retire in pinstripes. For all that’s been said about the man — he’s vain, egocentric, hopelessly insecure — Rodriguez deserves credit for having the guts to admit he made a mistake opting out, and to do it without hiding behind his agent.

He had to have known Yankee fans would react like this.  He had to have.  He is, after all, the man who has spent the better half of the last 6 months trying to convince Americans that only he knew that something like 9/11 was bound to happen.  He is literally running on a platform where he is attempting to paint himself (contrary to what his own 9/11 commission testimony tends to indicate) as some sort of modern day prophet.  And he didn’t see THIS one coming?

A day after former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani said he plans to root for the Boston Red Sox in the World Series, two of the city’s tabloid’s offered their response.

“TRAITOR!” decried the Daily News.  “C’mon Rudy, How Could You Root For the Red Sox in Series?”

“REDCOAT”  screamed the New York Post.   ”Yank Fan Rudy Pulls for Bosox”

Perhaps it won’t matter. After all, it’s not like he’s rooting AGAINST my beloved Yankees, who once again failed to make it to the series. But the baseball faux pas is a jab in the eye to all those die-hard Yankee fans who have always thought they had Rudy in their corner.   After all, this is the man who has been accused of having spent more time at Yankee Stadium than at Ground Zero in this post-9/11 world. 

Do a quick google search (image tab mind you) under “Giuliani” and see how many hits it comes back with.  You will be amazed at how many of them involve the man either wearing some sort of Yankee attire or sitting at Yankee stadium.  Of course that will be after you get over the shock of how many different examples of Rudy Giuliani in drag are in the mix.

Hizzoner has always been such a fan. He even got into a bit of hot water earlier this year over questions about the four World Series rings that he owns — just like the players and coaches — courtesy of the franchise in response to his lifelong devotion to the ballclub.  Giuliani’s sudden change of heart about the nation’s pasttime has opened him up to charges of flip flopping and pandering.

Could it be that he is supporting the Red Sox because the team is so popular in neighboring New Hampshire, where, by the way, the nation’s first primary will be held sometime in January (or maybe even December)?

If you listen to the man that wants your vote the answer is “No”.

“I’m an American League fan, and I go with the American League team – maybe with exception of the Mets,” he said. “Maybe that would be the one time I wouldn’t, because I’m loyal to New York.”

But that answer may not satisfy everyone.

Kevin Madden, the spokesman for former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney despite being a long-time Yankee fan, offered this observation in his morning email to reporters Wednesday:

“For me,” Madden said, “baseball season ends when the Yankees play their last game. I don’t even root for the AL in the All-Star game!”

Giuliani’s willingness to root for the Sox appears to be a recent phenomenon. In June, he was asked the following by a political columnist for the Providence Journal-Bulletin:

“If the devil said you can be president if you become a Sox fan, would you do it?,” asked M. Charles Bakst.

The answer was typical Giuliani, which means, blunt.

“I’m a Yankee fan. My father made me a Yankee fan probably before I was born. I always believe it’s a sign of my being straight with people, about not wanting to fool them, that I was one of the first mayors to be willing to say I was a Yankee fan. Most mayors pretended they rooted for both sides. I have great respect for Mets fans, Red Sox fans. I have great respect for people who really are fans of the team they say they are fans of. But probably that’s a deal I could not make.”

Rudy Giuliani has made more than a few errors in his political career. This is, after all, the man who dumped his second wife on television.

But his latest questionable decision hits Americans where it really, really hurts: their sporting allegiances.

This week, he attempted to explain why he’ll be rooting for the Boston team in the impending World Series finals.   But his spin-job seems to be falling on deaf ears in New England.

The Boston Globe points out:

Recent history shows Massachusetts voters would sooner adopt Manhattan clam chowder as the state’s official food than vote Republican in 2008.

Ben Affleck, a rabid Red Sox fan, is a man that has made a career out of making bad decisions (J Lo or Gigli ring a bell?). His reaction to Rudy’s sudden change of allegiance went something like “If I was a politician I’d sooner admit to Satan worship than claim to be rooting for the Yankees”.

And that sentiment is pretty much par for the course when taken in the context of this rivalry.  This is the Sox and the Yankees!  Not Ohio State vs. Michigan.  Not Duke vs. North Carolina.  Not any one of many other epic sports rivalries.  This is the standard against which all other such sports conflicts are measured.

It’s bad enough that we live in the Sportscenter/Performance Enhancing Drug era, but now we have to have these two-bit politicians sullying our sports landscape? 

We live in an era where too many athletes favor style over substance while looking for a spot in a highlight reel, even if it costs their team a win.  Our most sacred of baseball records are being assaulted by pharmaceutic-ally enhanced phenoms on a daily basis.  Olympic heroes are being revealed to be nothing more than frauds.  And now this.

“…there is no joy in Gotham—mighty Rudy has copped out.”

I have never been homophobic, nor am I a big fan of the Harry Potter franchise, so I have been quite amused with the uproar caused by author J.K Rowling’s recent revelation concerning one of it’s most beloved characters sexuality.  I am, of course, referring to a recent Q&A session that found the world’s first (and only) billionaire author outting the paternal figure Albus Dumbledore.

The question was: Did Dumbledore, who believed in the prevailing power of love, ever fall in love himself?

JKR: My truthful answer to you… I always thought of Dumbledore as gay. [ovation.] … Dumbledore fell in love with Grindelwald, and that that added to his horror when Grindelwald showed himself to be what he was. To an extent, do we say it excused Dumbledore a little more because falling in love can blind us to an extent? But, he met someone as brilliant as he was, and rather like Bellatrix he was very drawn to this brilliant person, and horribly, terribly let down by him. Yeah, that’s how i always saw Dumbledore. In fact, recently I was in a script read through for the sixth film, and they had Dumbledore saying a line to Harry early in the script saying I knew a girl once, whose hair… [laughter]. I had to write a little note in the margin and slide it along to the scriptwriter, “Dumbledore’s gay!”

Needless to say, ever since she uttered those words news wires have been in overdrive, providing us with an abundance of opinions on the matter.  The homosexual community has expressed joy at what the consider “an acknowledgement of the obvious“, conservatives have lambasted the announcement as an example of an author pushing their own political agenda ( I absolutely CAN’T wait to hear Pat Robertson’s take on this one), and a great many others have seized the opportunity to have a good natured debate of all things in between.

In the end we are getting all worked up over an author’s take on her own fictional character.  Some people will argue that they saw it all along (that line starts right here by the way), while others will say this is just another case of the popular books subverting christian ideals.  The most cynical will say this is nothing more than a clever maketing ploy, while the academic community will debate whether an author has “proprietary rights over a character’s sexuality”…an argument I find to be inherently flawed.

Wherever you may stand on this one, I think it is safe to say that there are far more pressing issues to be dealt with in this day & age.  Homosexual rights proponents should be more concerned with pushing for a recognition of gay marriages, christian leaders would be better served in trying to diminish the mainstream perception that they have been hijacked by the extreme religious right, cynics should go find some joy in their lives and academics need to….well, debating silly stuff like that is kind of the point of academia so I am going to give ‘em a free pass on this one.

I guess my point is that just because something that has occurred is relatively new, that doesn’t mean that it is news.

I stumbled across something on the news wire today and couldn’t help but get a little irate as I read the thing.  It seems airports across the country are raising cane over new policies instituted by the Transportation  Security Administration.  The policies, which went into effect on October 1st of this year, include more extensive background checks for all airport employees, including janitors, store clerks etc…

The airports are complaining the vetting process takes entirely too long, and as a result this is creating longer delays in all aspects of their day to day business.  While I know firsthand just how annoying travelling can be, whether the delay is at the airline ticket counter or while just trying to grab a up of java in between flights, I find it rather disheartening to hear a story like this.

Are we really such a self-centered society of “I want it alls” that we are willing to forgo the most sensible of security processes merely for the sake of convenience?  Are the events of 9/11 that far behind us that we would be willing to stoop so low?  Sadly, for some, it appears that the answer is yes.

Frankly this is just yet another symptom of an ailment that has been plaguing this country for far too long.  I like to call it “Iamagreedybastarditis”.  And make no mistake, unless the government intercedes this disease is going to quickly become a plague of biblical proportions.

Now for those of you who either know me personally or are familiar with my writings, I am NOT the biggest fan of George W. Bush.  I never thought the guy had the mental capacity to hold the Office of the President and he has done little to change my opinion since being sworn in.  But please don’t take what I am about to say as “just more Bush Bashing”. 

Listen to my argument then come to a conclusion as to whether the argument is valid or not.  This former Republican (and yes, I am a conservative of the Reagan era that has become quite disillusioned with the GOP since Bush and Cheney started running it into the ground) thinks you may tend to agree with me in the end.

To me, one of his greatest “lost opportunities” came on the day the the now iconic picture above was taken.  It was at this time when he could have asked anything of our country and we would have complied.  Rather than ask us as a society to sign off on a dubious invasion of Iraq, and like it or not the preponderance of evidence now indicates that no one- including the administration itself- saw Iraq as a significant threat at the time of our invasion, he should have (and could have) asked us for so much more.

Rather than ask us to make the same kind of sacrifices our grandparents did during World War II, donating blood on a regular basis, rationing our fuel usage, recycling our precious metals and completely forgoing luxury items for the betterment of the war effort are but a few examples, we were asked to continue with life as usual, to be a “part of the growing economy”.  In other words we were told to “shop our blues away”.

While I fully understand the rationale behind needing a growing economy to fuel a war effort, this is merely another example of this administration “dumbing down” another complex issue.  Much like when he says “they hate us for our freedom”, President Bush is only touching on one of many factors in an issue.  Whether he thinks we don’t have the ability to understand the rest of the factors involved or just care not to, he is doing our nation a disservice every time he does this.

We as a people are not stupid.  Sure we can stumble across several examples showing the opposite simply by making a trip to the end of the driveway to check the mail, but collectively we have always shown the capability to accomplish great things.  And it’s not like self-sacrifice is an alien idea in western culture. The notion of personal sacrifice for the common good is a cornerstone of Christianity and has featured prominently in the rhetoric of previous wartime Presidents. But this brand of sacrifice is not supported by the President’s materialistic conservatism.

Not only did this President choose to be the first “wartime” president to NOT either raise taxes or drastically slash government spending in areas outside of the military budget to finance an ongoing conflict, he merely asked us for a more materialistic brand of sacrifice.

And even more disappointing, after a few years of that approach not really getting the job done, he refuses to see it’s shortcomings. 

This past January, PBS News Hour host Jim Lehrer interviewed President Bush. This encounter told us a lot about Bush’s brand of conservatism, in particular, his feelings about sacrifice.

Towards the end of the interview, Lehrer posed this question to President Bush:

[If the struggle in Iraq] is as important as you’ve just said… why have you not, as president of the United States, asked more Americans and more American interests to sacrifice something? The people who are now sacrificing are, you know, the volunteer military – the Army and the U.S. Marines and their families. They’re the only people who are actually sacrificing anything at this point.

The President said Americans had sacrificed “peace of mind,” then added:

Now, here in Washington when I say, “What do you mean by that?,” they say, “Well, why don’t you raise their taxes; that’ll cause there to be a sacrifice.” I strongly oppose that. If that’s the kind of sacrifice people are talking about, I’m not for it because raising taxes will hurt this growing economy. And one thing we want during this war on terror is for people to feel like their life’s moving on, that they’re able to make a living and send their kids to college and put more money on the table.

The PBS interview made it pretty clear clear that Bush’s notion of acceptable sacrifices is remarkably narrow: expecting Americans to pay more taxes would be asking too much.  This brand of conservative ideology argues that we’re all materialists: in other words, all Americans care about is money. 

I, for one, am both insulted and could not disagree more.  We are a proud, resilient people.  One only needs to look at the outpouring of support for the cities affected directly by the events of September 11th or to the quick response of charitable organizations in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.  Where FEMA failed the average American citizen rose to the occasion.

Even more disconcerting, for the past six years, Bush’s disdain for real sacrifice had a terrible impact on the American psyche. We have all been made keenly aware of Bush’s “war on terror”, but have been given no role to play other than to struggle to respond when the “threat level” was elevated from yellow to orange or red. This situation– being continuously informed that we are at risk from a terrorist attack, but given no concrete way to respond– has produced widespread public anxiety.

The Bush “no sacrifice” mandate has led to a variety of Administration policies that run counter to our core beliefs, the most notable of which was the decision to invade and occupy Iraq and not raise taxes. As a consequence, America went deeply in debt, and jeopardized the long-term viability of our economy. And yet our government continues to spend more than it earns; an economic condition replicated in the lives of average Americans, who also spend more than they earn–typically financing their debt with home equity loans.

The administration’s unwillingness to call for a real sacrifice produced a mentality where we have refused to deal with the long-term. As a result, the President has not prepared Americans for the coming decades of dramatic oil shortages and possibly devastating weather produced by global warming.

Experts leave little doubt that in order to prevent the worst consequences of both occurrences Americans must turn away from materialism and begin to conserve energy at an unprecedented pace. The conservation practices we could be asked to enact in support of the war in Iraq could serve as the first steps in this process.  Nonetheless, conservation remains a dirty word with conservatives.

President Bush and conservatives, in general, don’t like to talk about real sacrifice. They prefer to pretend that Americans can have it all: wage an expensive “war” on terror and continue to run a deficit economy fueled by tax cuts; enjoy artificially priced gasoline and ignore global climate change. They are materialists who prefer to focus on the present: argue that tomorrow is another day, and until then, personal sacrifice is unnecessary.

This shortsighted approach could very well be leading us down the road to ruin.  It’s time that our leaders see in us what we already know is there…the ability to accomplish great things when we are called upon to do so.

I have always loved that quote from Billy Walsh, a.k.a. the resident madman/genius of HBO’s Entourage.  Maybe it’s the fact that I have indeed walked a mile in the man’s shoes (on that issue at least)  or I just get to harness my inner-asshole by showing some love for Billy and Ari Gold.  It’s real a toss-up on that one my friends.

And right now I am really, and I mean REALLY, in Billy Walsh mode.  After a summer that brought us more disappointment than joy, and say what you want about The Bourne Ultimatum, Superbad and Transformers, the rest of the summer fare was a let down. Now it seems we are going to miss out on a little diamond in the rough called Gabriel. 

The atmospheric Australian action flick GABRIEL is one of those underdogs, a passion project made for less than what Brett Ratner probably gets for daily blow allowance during his productions. The story follows the archangel of the title as he journeys through a seedy city on a quest to smite the holy hell out of his former peers that have fallen from grace, and the result is a pretty slick-looking affair with plenty of action.

The film arrives this November in its home country of Australia courtesy of Sony and Screen Gems — unsurprising as they also released the UNDERWORLD flicks, which superficially have a similar tone even if GABRIEL’s premise is decidedly different (the flick is apparently closer to THE CROW or HIGHLANDER). The release will then expand based on its performance Down Under, so you Aussies check it out so the rest of us can see it.

Realistically, unless the thing is a runaway hit in the former penal colony, chances are our only hope of ever seeing this thing will involve bitorrent or a purchase from some Hong Kong website pushing craptastic quality dvds in the near future.  Neither of the those choices exactly excites the movie lover in me.

Some people have a little desire to watch smaller-budgeted genre indies, but I’d often rather see what aspiring filmmakers can concoct with limited resources, and a some big cojones, than some of the rubbish that gets made for $100 million.

After a summer where I was bludgeoned over the head with more mediocre sequels (Pirates of The Caribbean: At World’s End, Spider-Man 3, Rush Hour 3, Ocean’s 13, Daddy Day Camp, to name a few) than quality ones (Live Free or Die Hard, The Bourne Ultimatum and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix) it is infinitely disappointing to see Hollyweird turning it’s back on what looks like a cinematic breath of fresh air.

A big part of me is becoming more and more dissatisfied with the lack of quality in Hollywood movies. Hollywood is, obviously, run by Big Business (a.k.a. “fuckin’ suits”), and everyone hates and distrusts Big Business. Or at least they should. But the worst part is that the films are looking like they were built and packaged on an assembly line, devoid of any soul.   

What the world needs is for more visionary artists to draw a line in the sand and cry out “‘I won’t let you douche bags fuckin’ Aquaman-ify my movie you worthless suit”.