Dystopia — that’s a word we learned in high school when we read 1984. It means a society turned upside down, the negative inverse of Utopia, the perfect world.

In George Orwell’s masterwork of totalitarian government, giant televisions watch you. The news is fictionalized and history is contradicted (and then rewritten daily) to prop up the government.

It’s a place where the vision of the future is “a boot stamping on a human face — forever.” Where it is not enough to acquiesce to Big Brother, one must love him wholehearted too. One must, with one’s own free will, believe that 2 + 2 = 5, or 3, or 4, or all those answers at once — if Big Brother says it’s so. (more…)

“The Bush administration is beginning to look like the fourth season of Saved by the Bell, ” says Jace Monteith, a self-described “Jump the Shark” expert in an article on the Truthdig website.

Jumping the Shark — as bleary-eyed TV fans know — is when a long-running series runs dry and starts resorting to off-topic storylines. Examples:

• the Fifties greaser Fonzie on Happy Days suddenly goes watersking (in his leather jacket) and jumps sharks.
• The abrupt discovery of gigorgeous Patrick Duffy, alive and naked, in a shower on Dallas and its preposterous explanation: that the entire 7th season, in which Duffy had died, was Pam Ewing’s dream.
• Or, simply, the appearance last year of Faye Dunaway as a judge on a reality show — a warning sign, as if we needed one, of just how far into left field reality has moved. Each week on The Starlet, our Faye got to deliver her very own ice-cold tagline. “Don’t call us,” she’d say with leaping eyes and rictus leer. “We’ll call you!”

Thanks to the strong leadership of our President, Lion of Baghdad, Defender of Marriage, Savior of New Orleans, Protector of the Brain-Dead and the Unborn, who has improved us all with his manly resolve — as exhibited recently in this thoughtful statement: “Free societies are hopeful societies. And free societies will be allies against these hateful few who have no conscience, who kill at the whim of a hat” — yes this Man, this Man for All Seasons, has taken us all up and over that last and ultimate shark: (more…)

How ass-backwards are these people! Only Magritte’s La Reproduction Interdit (right) can capture the twisted logic that now dominates the Bush Administration’s “management” of science. You’d have to go back to the time of Galileo to find so much religious meddling and censorship.

According to an article in the current New Yorker, politically connected fundamentalists are prepared to wage the same war on an H.I.V. vaccine that they are waging on stem cell research, evolution, and, more pointedly, a critical vaccine against the Human Papilloma virus or HPV.

A vaccine exists against the HPV virus that would dramatically reduce the number of cervical cancer cases. The religious right opposes it as a mandatory childhood vaccination. Why? Because cervical cancer serves as a powerful “disincentive” to premarital sex. And in their malignant, Apocalypse-centric view of things, human misery is preferable to sin — especially the human misery of the “Other”, the non-Born-Again non-Christian. (more…)

How we do love a nasty tongue!

Each year a groovy alternative newspaper from Buffalo called The Beast brings out its Annual List of The 50 Most Loathsome People in America.

Oh the dizzy glee! The wicked chortles! The semi-wood we get when reading through this cavalcade of celebrity smackdowns and Republican bashings. Think Hardball, but hosted by Mr. Blackwell. Think the best and funniest of the early 90s Spy magazine and you’ll catch the wavelength.

Let us begin with everybody’s favorite heterosexual, Tom Cruise. Last year the Most Loathsome List stirred up a shit storm when it went on about Tomcat in Love. Threatening letters came from lawyers. Apologies, disclaimers, tails tucked between legs — all were demanded. The Beast gave them none of it.

And to everyone’s surprise, Team Cruise backed down. Perhaps the thought of an army of winged-monkeys with legal briefs flying in from Hollywood to crush a satirical publication in Buffalo seemed too obnoxious even for the litigious Tom. (more…)

In the words of the French philosopher:

GASP! GASP! Je GASP!

Fasten your safety belt. Hide all sharp objects. Get a friend to scrape you off the wall once you’re done!

From the New York Daily News:

STEAMED ABOUT RICE!
Russian pol unleashes rant
Russian pol Vladimir Zhirinovsky says
what Condi needs is a man.

Condoleezza Rice might want to see if there’s room in one of those “black site” terror-suspect prisons for Russian politician Vladimir Zhirinovsky. The wacko leader of Russia’s Liberal and Democratic Party has surpassed his earlier screeds with a misogynist attack on our secretary of state.

(more…)

The Indians were right. They believed photos captured the soul. How else to explain the soulful picture above: President Bush, making a speech from a beribboned balcony, appears to be wearing a big ole patriotic skirt. Something you’d expect to see on Miss America during a Miss Universe pageant. The only thing missing is the Statue of Liberty torch. (more…)

Barbara Bush bounced back today from her embarrassing faux pas last week at the Houston Astrodome.

As you recall, during a radio interview with American Public Media, Mrs. Bush surveyed the thousands of evacuees crammed into the arena and told the reporter: “What I’m hearing, which is sort of scary, is they all want to stay in Texas!” She could not contain her amazement. “Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality.” (more…)

"Just a quick observation," said Jon Stewart on the Daily Show last night. He had just shown a montage of nervous Republicans reciting the Karl Rove talking point that they didn’t want to “play the blame game” when questioned about the jaw-droppingly inept response of the Bush Administration to the Katrina disaster. "I think it’s something Aristotle said," Stewart continued. "When people don’t want to play the blame game — THEY’RE TO BLAME!" (more…)