The World According To Newsweek

I still have a subscription to Newsweek, mostly out of habit after all these years. As I write, the present issue has the release of Sony's Playstation 2 on the cover, complete with an excited kid's face and a couple pictures of digital characters from a fight game. A small picture of Darva Conger is set in the upper right corner. In the diagonal feature band setting off her photo are the words, "The Rick and Darva Show" just above "Policemen Under Fire." The Policemen story qualifies as hard news, the rest is utter fluff. But that's okay. I'd rather have that than a war on the cover.

I guess I decided to write about all this when I made it to the table of contents and found Ms. Conger there again with a promo caption reading "The Darva Debacle." Debacle!? Really now. The word means a huge calamity, a disastrous lost battle. Hardly the right word to use for someone who knowingly Married A Millionaire on TV. I was interested enough to check the dictionary definition though. To my surprise I found that it could also mean a disaster of "ludicrous proportions". Definitely the case here; score one for Newsweek's word smiths. I didn't bother reading the story, though. I heard all I ever wanted to hear about Darva and her spoiled meal-ticket in the first ten seconds of a CNN newscast the week before. She is hoist with her own petard and I don't need Newsweek to regurgitate all this again.

I usually read a fair amount of each issue though, starting with the short bits in Periscope and the political quips and cartoons in the front, and sometimes My Turn. It wasn't a particularly good crop this time. More interesting was the coverage of the verdict in the Diallo case. I see it as more evidence there's too many damn guns in our country when cops are so fearful they can mistake a wallet for a gun. Murder in the first? Maybe it wasn't premeditated, but those cops are definitely guilty of manslaughter. I leave the story still wondering how they got a not guilty verdict.

Meanwhile a sidebar recounts some tidbits on our big LA cop story, the Rampart Scandal. Judgments may top $125 million dollars to rectify all the cases bad cops pushed through with planted evidence and bogus testimony. Woof. But the most interesting part of Rampart isn't here, or even in the LA Times coverage. I read the story of how the corruption came to light in a small weekly called New Times. Check out "Burying the Evidence" at www.newtimesla.com. Intriguing and very scary. They won't have this mess wrestled to the ground for years to come.

After the cops story there's a big feature on John McCain and how he does it, as if he'll march to the Republican nomination after a comeback win in Michigan. But alas, Newsweek is in a perpetual one week time warp. The late news from the campaign trail--McCain Thumps The Religious Right--is not here. Not Newsweek's fault though, that just happened Monday and the religious conservatives in Virginia who love Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson handed Bush a nice victory. They'll cover it next week and call it the End of the McCain Mutiny. Check it out and see if I'm not right. Too bad about McCain, he's way too truthful about his feelings. But he's going for the Republican nomination and he should know better. Republicans are not allowed to criticize men of the cloth, no matter how much they resemble horses' asses under that cloth. At least McCain got George Dubya to backpedal on his visit to Bigoted Jones, sorry, Bob Jones University. Wait, a minute. I take that back, I'm not sorry at all. Bigoted Jones must be where all these narrow minded bible-thumpers went to school. It was fun to hear them try to hot-foot rationalize their ban on interracial dating and anti-Catholic bias. Just another demonstration of why I dislike most Christian conservatives--they all pay homage to every screwy point of dogma so long as it spews from the direction of a pulpit.

I admire McCain for confronting the televangelists, but he is still way too conservative for me to help him out with my vote. It looks like McCain will lose Super Tuesday big time and Dubya will march to the nomination anyway. Actually I want George to win because he'll lose in the fall. He has absolutely no ideas other than a hefty tax cut. It didn't work for Dole and the Greedy Old Party four years ago; it won't work this time either. Let them whine and shout all summer. If the economy stays anything like what it is right now, Gore is a shoo-in. Don't get me wrong, I don't love the Democrats; it's just that I loathe the Republicans. McCain should really quit them. I hear the Reform Party has an opening.

Hmm, back up a bit. The economy, another story not in Newsweek. There were some big demonstrations by truckers recently over rising fuel prices; this could point to not-so-good economy next fall. Funny thing about the rise in gasoline prices, though: gas isn't the biggest cost to drive your car. Insurance is. Think about it. You get 20 miles per gallon and drive maybe a thousand miles a month for most folks. Let's say gas rises to $2 per gallon, that's still only $100 per month for gas. Lots of folks are paying $150 or even $200 a month in insurance before the car even moves. Where's the scandal here?

Another thing missing from Newsweek: the latest schoolyard shooting. This time by a six year old. How many does it take before you ban the handguns, America? Michael Moore points out that in England, where there's 60 million people with a long tradition of brawling, they had only twelve gun deaths last year. TWELVE. And none of them were shot by police in their own doorway. Most all police there don't even pack guns. Or plant guns to send people to jail unjustly. Sounds like heaven compared to here. Here they keep talking about trigger locks and smart guns to control gun violence. Trigger locks still have keys, and kids can certainly find the keys if they can find the gun. And smart guns are no solution at all! So, somehow the dumb guns just disappear? And nobody can open up a smart gun to make it dumb? Even a perfectly working smart gun will still shoot when its owner is drunk or blind with rage, or are we putting breathalyzers and temporary insanity detectors on them too? I've said it before, BAN THE BULLETS. The only safe gun is one that has no bullets.

By the way Senator McCain, I'd be happy to overlook your views on abortion and give you my vote if you would stop pandering to the NRA. Get out in front on this one. Campaign reform is a good thing, it's just not everything. But thanks for putting down Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson. That was brave, daring and hilarious. And oh yes, Mr. Falwell? You are right about one thing, Tinky Winky the tele-tubby IS gay. But it JUST DOESN'T MATTER. Stop trying to pad your donations by pushing the bigots' hot buttons.

Hopefully Newsweek will stop shilling for Sony and cover more of the important stuff next week. In a way, though, it's a sign of how well things are going when a game machine's release and a bimbo's marriage to a tainted tele-hubby are considered the biggest stories of the week.

Life's never perfect. There's always more than enough ugliness around to work on, so maybe it's good to take a break and wear Newsweek-colored glasses once in awhile. Just don't wear them all the time. Right now I need to go back into the closet to find my old Nintendo system, I've got this strange urge to blow a couple hours on video games. Thanks for reading and until next month the Closet is closed.


(C) 2000 Rusty Pipes

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OFFICIAL DISCLAIMER: Tinky Winky and the publisher and editors of Cosmik Debris are just good friends. The photographs were doctored. And shame on you for thinking otherwise. However, the photographs of Tinky and Falwell in that cheap motel in 1988 could be authentic. Or maybe not. Who knows?