Mr. Irresponsible's Bad Advice

Man to Nature: Take a hike, buddy

Reuters reports this morning that "Americans are less interested in spending time in natural surroundings like national parks because they are spending more time watching television, playing video games and surfing the Internet." To which a thinking person can only reply: Excellent! It's about time we abandoned our hypocritical embrace of so-called "Nature." What's "natural" about a meadow that's been sitting there unchanged since the late Pleistocene, taking up space like an out-of-style loveseat, while we humans have been furiously evolving? Isn't the point of the thing to get bigger and better, to develop our minds and the tools and gizmos which are the extensions of our minds, from automobiles to heavy construction equipment to television, video games and the Internet? Where's Nature been while we've been busting our humps to develop the infrastructure necessary for the large-scale high-speed free downloading of our fellow humans' copyrighted intellectual property? I'll tell you where: It's been taking a nap. It's been slumbering away in national parks and wildlife refuges and other wasted, fallow spaces like the oafish brother-in-law who came to stay a year and a half ago because he "just needed a place to crash for a couple days." Only it's much, much bigger and it has predatory birds. That's right: Killer birds. Big ones, with teeth the size of Bowie knives. Think about that the next time the Sierra Club calls for a mooching handout. Then turn back to the TV, confident that you're fulfilling Darwin's great prophecy of adaptation and improvement. And let that lazy-ass, shiftless ANWR fend for itself.

Graduation 2006

...We must build walls. A wall obviously across the entire southern border. That’s the answer. That may not be enough—maybe a moat in front of it, or a fire-pit. Maybe a flaming moat, filled with fire-proof crocodiles. And we should probably wall off the northern border as well. Keep those Canadians with their socialized medicine and their skunky beer out. And because immigrants can swim, we’ll probably want to wall off the coasts as well. And while we’re at it, we need to put up a dome, in case they have catapults. And we’ll punch some holes in it so we can breathe. Breathe free. It’s time for illegal immigrants to go—right after they finish building those walls...

Mr. Irresponsible isn't in the habit of quoting willy-nilly from other people, because I don't care for other people. There's so many of them, and the law of large numbers dictates that a lot of them are going to be mouth-breathers. But Stephen Colbert is firing on all cylinders these days. As evidence -- if his flame-throwing performance at the White House Correspondents' Dinner wasn't enough; say, did anybody blog on that? -- here's a transcript of his commencement speech at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois. The only mystery is why an A-lister like Colbert is talking to the graduates at Knox, while flavors-of-the-month like Anderson Cooper score the plum gigs at places like Yale.  Or, for that matter, why I myself ended up addressing the graduating class of someplace called St. Barney's Occipital Teachers College in San Diego (see yesterday's entry). Don't think I won't be having a stern talk with my agent about that.

I knew Michael McDonald. Michael McDonald was a friend of mine. And sir, you are no Michael McDonald.

I'd like to advance a theory: "American Idol" is less a television show than a gas or sub-atomic particle, or possibly some kind of virus. What other explanation is there for the fact that I have never seen a single episode of the show, this season or any other, and yet I know enough about Taylor Hicks to know that I hate him? I know that he has goofy hair, like Matt Damon in "Stuck On You." I know that he wears clothes the color of caustic chemicals. I know that he periodically shrieks the nonsense phrase "Soul Patrol" for some reason. And I gather that he is something of a screecher, in the manner of noted soul-killer Michael Bolton. How is it possible I know all this? There is only one plausible explanation: A kind of osmotic transfer of information at the cellular level.

I blame this Simon Cowell person. I believe he's been at work in the lab, and while the alchemical mechanism he's developed may well be the result of genius, it is surely an evil genius, like that of Michael Bolton. You know what this means, don't you? The Feds are looking everywhere for Doomsday devices, but they're looking in the wrong places. They shouldn't be wasting their time trying to find suitcase nukes or weaponized Ebola. They should grab up Simon Cowell and torture him until he gives up his twisted secrets. (Which he might not do. They should still torture him, though, because it would be funny.)

It's The Thursday Morning Grab Bag!

Mr. Irresponsible has just returned from a fact-finding tour of central Texas, where the principal fact to be found is that damn, margaritas are tasty. And what do I discover on my return, besides a desk chair which has been subtly but unmistakably canted out of position?* A whole raft of bad behavior from which to draw inspiring life lessons! Let's mangia!

-- The US Congress has banded together in an unprecedentedly bipartisan show of moral dudgeon over the Dubai ports deal. It's nice to see that our legislators still remember how to stand shoulder to shoulder in front of the cameras when there are sound bites of outrage to be expressed. Just one teensy problem: They're all wet. Life lesson: When the universe offers you a chance to get your name in the papers, don't let niggling things like facts get in the way.

-- One of the multicellular life forms in charge of distributing free goods to rich, famous celebrities tells the AP that $50,000 goody bags are actually a sort of compensatory mechanism for the inconveniences A-listers have to suffer. "They can't just go to the mall like a regular person," says the extravagantly-named Lash Fary. "Or," he adds, showing the gift for nuance that is so typical of bottom-feeders in the Hollywood ecosystem, "they can, but it won't be very much fun."  Life lesson: Celebrities are just like you and me, only less fortunate and pampered. Their lives should inspire not envy, but empathy.

-- Film nerds apparently have even more free time than previously suspected. A cabal describing itself as "an international group of lifelong James Bond fans" (or AIGLJBF, pronounced "Aig-la-jibbif," which is almost as memorable as SMERSH) is calling for a boycott of the upcoming "Casino Royale," a Bond film which, if memory serves, has been made about eleven times before. Their main beef appears to be the selection of actor Daniel Craig as the sixth screen 007, after Sean Connery, George Lazenby,  Roger Moore, Skitch Henderson and some guy named Al. (My notes may be a little sketchy on those last two.) How ridiculous a contretemps is this? Just this ridiculous: Among Craig's defenders is actor Toby Stephens, who (again from my notes) played super-criminal Jean-Jacques "Fromage" DuPlessy, The Man With The Golden Gums, in "I Loved You Tuesday." That's right, it's come to this: Bond villains are now defending Bonds against the depredations of Bond fans. Life lesson: Take your friends where you can get them, and then for Pete's sake get some sleep. That tequila hangover is killing me... um, you.

*Note to Debbie: Check the security tapes. If the intern's been using my desk, you know what to do.

Tryophobia

Okay, I know what you're thinking. You're thinking: "Hey, where's Mr. Irresponsible been? We miss his brisk, biting commentary on modern manners! Gosh, we hope he's okay! We hope he hasn't gotten trapped under something heavy, or been driven deep into a piano-shaped hole in the sidewalk by a falling piano!" I appreciate your good wishes. And I could tell you I've been out of town or down with the flu, but those would be lies. They would fall under the rubric of the "lifestyle lie," as sketched in my new book -- that is, a small deception designed to ease the teller out of some bigger social inconvenience. Because the truth is, I just haven't felt like working very hard this week. And I refuse to apologize for it. Some very fine people have been refusing to work hard lately. Judge Samuel Alito, for example, told the Senate Judiciary Committee that " ...if you start answering the easy questions you are going to be sliding down the ski run into the hard questions, and that's what I'm not so happy to do." Well, hell, judge, who is? The only surprising thing about this statement is the use of an athletic metaphor by Alito, who looks like he'd faint dead away from heat stroke if he ever actually stepped outside.

The new gold standard, though, in what I like to call tryophobia may be the imaginative stand taken this week by the Philadelphia police, a department known for thinking outside the box. Faced with a steeply accelerating murder rate, the Philadelphia PD took a look at the statistics and realized that, well, it could go out and patrol the streets and lock up bad guys and generally do the retail work of big-city policing, but that's just too hard, and it's cold outside, and those guys are always so cranky when you try to slap the iron on 'em.  So what they've elected to do instead is -- and you really have to admire the cups-and-balls-like dexterity of the misdirection -- tell the public that murder is good. This isn't precisely the way they're arguing the case, of course. Instead, they're putting out word through the almost unbelievably credulous pages of the Philadelphia Inquirer that "More than 70 percent of those killed last year had been arrested at least once, according to police statistics." Some, the Inky goes on to note with a scandalized quiver in its voice, were even "hard-core street thugs." Mercy! So look at it this way, the Philadelphia PD seems to be saying: It's technically true that you can't hear yourself think for the ringing of gunfire in the streets, and some nights you actually have to kick the spent shell casings out of your way to clear a path to the 7-11. But hey, look at the bright side! Most of these people are criminals! "It's bad guys on bad guys," Chief Inspector Joseph Fox told the Inquirer. Which makes the city's murder binge -- well, downright Darwinian! It's inspiring, in a way!

It's hard not to respect the ingenuity of this approach. In one stroke it re-frames the debate and disarms critics. ("Oh, so what are you, pro-criminal or something?") And it offers a sterling example for those in search of a societally acceptable approach to laziness: Frame it in terms of a larger good. If your boss bitches you out for being late, tell him that you've put yourself on flextime. Hell, you're showing initiative! And what is he, some ozone-happy friend of the oil companies who thinks everybody ought to sit in traffic stinking up God's green earth with their greenhouse gases? What does he, hate the earth or something? If your mother complains that you never call her, shake your head as if pained and tell her that you're just doing your bit to keep the nation's overtaxed phone system free for first responders. What is she, anti-fireman?   Does she hate firemen now, just like she hates America?

I could cite other examples, but that would take effort.

Big Crazy

Today's manners lesson comes to us from very far to the east, or maybe it's the west. Mr. Irresponsible was never big on geography. The point is, it's very far. And a good thing too, because these guys make our homegrown nutbars look like Sunday at the Jaycees. Yes, it's the democratically-elected government of the Islamic Republic of Iran! Specifically, the sixth president of same, former Tehran mayor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who told an audience in the Iranian city of Zahedan on December 14 that the Holocaust is a myth perpetrated by European Jews to justify the creation of Israel. The lesson: When you're gonna go crazy, go BIG crazy. There's no point in delicate, performance-art-like little cameos of eccentricity, not if you're going to draw the really big press. No, for that you need to hang it all out there, as I think we can agree Mr. Ahmadinejad has done. Want proof?  Even the Germans are outraged. This seems a conclusive indication that history may not have a sense of humor, but it sure does get a kick out of irony.  So the next time you're considering an act of public looniness, remember that its impact is sure to be lessened if you take anything off the pitch. Lean back and smoke that baby.

No Publicity, Please, We're British

If you broke into my lavish yet tasteful home and held a gun to my head, I would have to confess that I've only been dimly aware of the visit of Prince Charles and the former Camilla Parker Bowles to America. The good news is, dim awareness seems to be what the couple and their handlers are going for -- a USA Today/CNN/Gallup Poll found that only six percent of Americans are "very interested" in the royal walkabout, with a three percent margin of error. This means, statistically speaking, that you could drive around your neighborhood playing your car radio too loud and you'd impact a broader swath of US public opinion than the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall. It isn't all the prince's fault, either. The wife, poor thing, is still fighting something of an image problem. When The Daily Mirror's man in New York showed her picture to people in Times Square, some of them took her for Barbara Cartland. Ms. Cartland, it should be noted, passed away six years ago. So if wowing the States with the glamour of the monarchy is the goal, well, these two may not have the stuff. The only "Wows" they seem to be drawing are the kind contained in sentences like "Wow, could those people we don't care about be any dowdier?" or "Wow, Barbara Cartland came back from the dead!" Even an apparent strategy to light the couple up in the reflected glow of "a good cross-section of interesting and influential New Yorkers" seems ill-conceived when you consider that one of them is Kim Cattrall. ("I see. You acted in a terrible program on the telly and now you foist your fading sexuality on people in Barnes & Noble. How terribly interesting.")

Mr. Irresponsible yields to no one in his admiration for Britain, which has managed to sustain a relatively civilized culture even as its standing in the world has dwindled from titan of the seas to last-kid-picked-for-the-softball-team. But you know what? The next time the Brits want to make a splash on the American stage, they should send us Eddie Izzard. He's witty and he looks good in pearls.

Great Moments in Blame-Shifting

In case you missed it, let's use a card-playing analogy to describe former FEMA director Michael Brown's astonishing performance before Congress yesterday:

Say you're playing poker. Michael Brown is sitting across the felt from you. "I have a royal flush," you tell him in a loud, clear voice, and then you show him your cards to prove it. Without an instant's hesitation Brown, who is holding a deuce, a seven and a nine, all of different suits, and rounding out his hand with an old laundry ticket and a slice of bologna, pushes his one remaining chip to the center of the table. "I'm all in," he announces. "Now go f**k yourself."

Do you see what I'm saying? There's hubris, and then there's something so far beyond hubris that it could be called metahubris, or über-hubris (which is, in addition to being descriptive, a kick to say).  Summoned to Capitol Hill to "sit there like a block of wood and take whatever we feel like dishing up on your sorry, disgraced ass," as the Congressional summons put it, Brown chose instead to fight back. Unfortunately, his self-defense was mounted in more or less the same slipshod manner as FEMA's initial response to Katrina. Brown apparently didn't get the memo about operating under the high scrutiny afforded a presidential appointee, and so didn't seem to take into account the following matters of public record (helpfully provided by the American Progress Action Fund):

Brown to Congress: "Over the past few years [FEMA] has lost a lot of manpower."
Brown to CNN, September 2004: "... we have all the manpower and resources we need."

Brown to Congress: "FEMA doesn't evacuate communities."
Brown to CNN immediately post-Katrina: FEMA was conducting "rescue missions" and would "continue to evacuate all the hospitals."

Brown to Congress: He coordinated the evacuation of New Orleans by "urging the governor and the mayor to order the mandatory evacuation." Pressed by Rep. Chris Shays (R-CT) as to why he didn't do more, Brown snapped: "What would you like for me to do, Congressman?"
President Bush's disaster declaration, August 27:  FEMA was authorized to "identify, mobilize, and provide at its discretion, equipment and resources necessary to alleviate the impacts of the emergency."

So, you know... Oops.

Maybe it's expecting too much for a guy who field-promoted himself from "Assistant to the City Manager" to "Assistant City Manager," like Gareth in "The Office," to keep track of slippery little things like details. But Mr. Irresponsible is always on the lookout for lessons to be drawn in the quest for appropriate public behavior. So let's concentrate on the moral of Brown's historic hissy fit, which is this: It may be true that, as the adage goes, if you can't sing, you should sing loud. Just try not to do it in a room full of pitch pipes.

Maybe Not So Much For You With The Talking

Admiring kudos to former First Lady Barbara Bush for pointing out one of the week's less well-covered verities: The people driven from their homes in New Orleans and sheltered in Texas are probably better off. It's simple economics: "So many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway," Mrs. Bush told reporters on a walking tour of the Astrodome. "So this is working very well for them." (Hear it for yourself.)

Well, sure, as anybody who's seen TV this week can attest. It's just self-evident that the terrified displaced citizens of Louisiana would rather be living in a cavernous arena, eating MREs and longing desperately for homes to which they most likely can never return, than in the communities where they built lives, raised kids and put down roots... because they're poor, you see. I think anybody who's seen the video of people housed in the gaping, yawning emptiness of the Astrodome, their hollow eyes still registering the shock of what they saw as they ran for their lives, recognizes that it's a pretty sweet deal. I'm just glad somebody had the character to say it out loud, and the moral clarity to characterize the prospect that many of the displaced may stay in Texas as "scary."

In a totally unrelated story, Satan had his slavering minions prepare a chintz-covered four-poster bed and put some pretty little things around. "I can wait," he told reporters.