PUBLIC ENEMY #1

TITLE:  Bush tops bin Laden, Saddam as villain of the year
AUTHOR:   The AUSTRALIAN
SOURCE:   http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,20989414-2703,00.html
BODY:

WASHINGTON (AP)- It has been many months since George W. Bush topped the polls, but the US President has outflanked both Osama bin Laden and former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein to seize the dubious honour of the ultimate villain of 2006.

If it’s any consolation for the beleaguered President, he also managed to take out the AP/AOL News Poll’s 2006 hero of the year, albeit by a much smaller margin.

Among entertainment celebrities, TV talk-show host Oprah Winfrey edged out actor Michael J.Fox as the best celebrity role model, while pop singer Britney Spears was the clear choice over Paris Hilton for worst.

Asked to name the candidate that first came to mind for “biggest villain of the year”, Bush won by a landslide, with 25per cent, followed by bin Laden, the al-Qa’ida leader, in second place with 8 per cent.

Rounding out the top five villains were Saddam, who is awaiting execution, with 6 per cent; Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, 5 per cent, and North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, 2 per cent — from the three countries Bush once designated as the “Axis of Evil.”

In the poll, 13 per cent named Bush as their favourite, while 6per cent chose the US troops in Iraq. The other top choices were TV talk-show host Oprah Winfrey, US senator Barack Obama, a possible Democratic presidential contender, and Jesus Christ — each with 3 per cent.

On the question of celebrity role models, Spears’s bad behaviour claimed worst honours with 29 per cent. The 25-year-old pop singer and mother of two young sons recently filed for divorce from Kevin Federline, her husband of two years. She then followed with highly publicised nights out with party girls Hilton and Lindsay Lohan, including photographic evidence of Spears wearing no underpants, which raised questions about her fitness as a parent, not to mention her fashion sense. Spears apologised on her website, saying she probably went “a little too far” with her new-found freedom.

Paris Hilton was the second-worst celebrity, attracting 18 per cent of the vote. The 25-year-old party girl and hotel heiress was arrested for drunken driving in Los Angeles in September while on a late-night hamburger run. Mel Gibson, 50, was third-worst celebrity with 12 per cent, no doubt as a result of his anti-Semitic tirade at police in Malibu, California, during his arrest on suspicion of drunken driving. He later apologised and said he harboured no animosity towards Jews. Rounding out the worst celebrity role model category were the couch-hopping Tom Cruise, 9 per cent; former Seinfeld star Michael Richards, 6 per cent; Nicole Richie, 5 per cent; Federline, 4 per cent; Lohan, 3 per cent; and Angelina Jolie, 2 per cent.

In the best celebrity role model category, 29 per cent of adults chose talk-show host Winfrey. The philanthropist and entertainment mogul contributed $40million ($50.5million) towards the establishment of the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls in South Africa. Fox, who has Parkinson’s disease, finished second with 23 per cent. Actor George Clooney, who has been advocating for refugees in the war-ravaged Darfur region of Sudan, finished third with 12per cent. Eight per cent chose Jolie and boyfriend Brad Pitt scored 2 per cent. Newlyweds Cruise and Katie Holmes tied at 2 per cent. Jolie and Cruise were the only celebrities to land on both the best and worst role model lists.

The telephone poll of 1004 adults was conducted December from 19-21 by Ipsos, an international polling firm.

A VERY SKURRY CHRISTMAS

SKERMANY: Teaching Germans about Christmas in the ‘Hood
by Shelbric Fuller, Foreign Correspondent
The Palmetto Patriot

As previously concluded in our last article, Germany is scary. Very scurry. However, as I inform my newfound countrymen as to life in America, it seems abundantly clear that they have no clue whatsoever.There is also no explanation for inner city American culture, and Germans are not happy when perplexed.

There is a great cry of shock and outrage as to why the American people go out and spend hundreds of dollars on Christmas decorations while completely ignoring devastated Hurricane Katrina victims. America spends billions on other things too: breaking treaties, building WMAs and oil pipelines; the Christmas giving spirit really does live on and on.

Anyway, I’ve reached deep into my trousers to whip out this slice of life, a visualization if you will, an experiment in linguistics, for the benefit of readers in any country to experience a proletarian oeuvre of ghetto living. So sit back in your chair, let the sounds of jingle bells and drive-by reindeer gunfire fill your mind and enjoy:

“DA NIGH’ FO’ CRIMMA’”
As Told by Rev. Wallace Kumquat to Shelbric Fuller

INTERIOR – CHRISTMAS – DILAPIDATED GHETTO HOUSE – NIGHT
We see the back of an old, torn up, ugly recliner facing a warm lit fire. The fireplace mantle is decorated with Christmas stockings and mistletoe, with a wreath hanging above. Next to the recliner is a small side table with a plate of brownies, an ashtray, and a forty of the Bull. Camera pulls around to the front of the recliner to reveal a fat, sloppy, joint-smoking, black Santa Clause with his belly hanging out of the bottom of his suit top. As soon as he sees the camera is watching him he puts out the Joint, exhales his last hit, trying to waive the smoke away with his hand, straightens up a bit, and clears his throat.

SANTA CLAUSE

Nah yall best shut up n lisen.

Santa picks up a carol book, opens it to the first page and starts reading out loud.

SANTA CLAUSE

Wuz de night befo Cremma an all ovah da hood,
Er body wuz sleepin, dey wuz sleepin good.
We hung up r stockin and hope like da heck
Dat ole Sandy Claw gona bring da welfare check.

All de family wuz lay in dey beds
While Funderberd wine dance in dey heads.
I passed out on de flo, right next to Ma,
When I hear such a fuss I tink it wuz de law!

I looked frew da bars dat covered ma doe,
Spectin da sheriff wif a warrant to show,
And what I seen den made me say “Look at DAT”
Dey wuz a huge wallamelon pulled by sum rats!

All ober de worl, Sandy Claw be white,
But he look like us niggaz come dis Cremma night!
Fastah dan a poleeze car de homeboy he came
He hollah at dem wharf rats, he call dem by name:

“On Leroy, On Roosevelt, Jonterious Lee,
On Willy, On Ray-Ray and Malcolm” – Dey’s summnin to see!
He landed dat melon out dere in da screet.
I knew fo sho den wuz de damdest I seent.

He ain’t come down no chimley
He picked de lock on ma doe
An I says to myself “Sheeit!
He dun dun dis befoe!”

He hat dis big bag fulla presents I spec,
Wif Air Jordans and bling to wear ’round ma neck.
But He lef no good presents, jus stoled all my shit,
Got ma drugs and ma guns and ma burgla kit!

Wif ma stuff in dat bag out da winda he flew
I wuda chased him but he dun took ma knife too!
He hop in dat melon and whooped out a switch
He were gone in one second – Dat Fat Sum a Bitch!

Next year I be hopin
A white Sandy we git
Cuz dat black Sandy Claw
He ain’t wurf a SHIT!
(Pause)

Aight, de end! Now git da hell outta ma house!

FADE OUT

[Ed. Note: 'Da Nigh Foe Cremma' was originally published in the pilot episode of "Don't Go There!" written and developed for television by DeGeorge, Fuller and Stoetzer, ©1999, 2006. Used by permission. Additional work on this article was provided by L. Grant Pooka]

MANNY G’s FLICK PICKS 2006

ENTERTAINMENT

FLICK PICKS FOR 2006
by Manny Gomez
The Palmetto Patriot

2006 hasn’t been a great year for film. I’ve been racking my head for the last few days to find ten films I thought were amazing, but for now I could only come up with a mere five. Please feel free to respond with your own lists, or maybe amend this one if you come up with something I haven’t seen, or perhaps forgot.

In some what of an order (but really what’s in a number?):

1. The Departed- Martin Scorsese returns to what he does best, being mean on the streets (pardon the pun). In what is perhaps his best film in years, Scorsese brings back the frantic pace, catholic guilt, brilliant use of music, character duality and explosive violence that marked his best films. It also features what maybe be Leonardo DeCaprio’s finest performance. Based on Hong Kong potboiler Infernal Affairs, The Departed elevates the street cop drama into a pathos driven story of two men who are living each other’s lives, hunting for each other, and in the end hunting for themselves. No one is spared in the film, and violence serves as a catharsis. The pacing is so tight that your jaw will drop open several times, right up to the bullet-in-the-heads-filled climax. The cast includes Martin Sheen, Matt Damon, Alec Baldwin, Mark Walhberg, and of course in a much talked about role, Jack Nicholson. Let’s hope that this one earns Marty the little gold man he’s been robbed over and over again.

2. United 93- Peter Greengrass serves up what might be the most emotional movie of the year. In this mostly improvised documentary style film, Greengrass puts us right in the cabin of that plane. The terrorists words are not subtitled, yet their reluctant moves and wide eyes talk more about uncertain feelings and fear, and paint them less as vile villains and more as men perhaps corrupted and manipulated into embracing an ideal they see as both heroic and worth dying for. The tension builds, and even though we all know how this sad story ended on September 11, we can help but gasp and shed tears as the plane goes down in the end. Short, tight, simple and beautiful, United 93 will perhaps go down as the defining movie of one of our country’s most tragic events.

3.Brick- ever since the much talked about year of the Independents, film fans always wait for the one small movie to come out that some how reinvents a genre or perhaps creates a new one. Brick takes the clichés and archetypes of pulp novels and film noir and flips them around by setting the whole damn thing in what appears to be a Southern California high school. This is 90210 by way of Phillip Marlowe and Dashiel Hammett. Essentially a re-working of The Maltese Falcon, the film is driven by sharp dialog (“Keep your specs on,” “It was you Angel,” “You ever read Tolkien?”) and characters that you will never forget, from the Rubik’s cube solving sidekick, The Brain. To the crippled, villainous and mysterious The Pin ( a gothed-up cane-wielding drug kingpin who orchestrates his drug deals and hits over snacks in his moms kitchen. Joseph Gordon Levitt, continuing from his brilliant work in Gregg Araki’s Mysterious Skin, skids, gets punched, talks back and investigates his way through a story that ultimately leaves him alone, wounded, and just a bit more jaded. This is film noir plain and simple.

4. The Three Burials Of Melquades Estrada- Tommy Lee Jones writes and directs this bloody tale of morality, male bonding, and what it means to keep a promise. A ranch owner agrees to carry the murdered corpse of his ranch hand to Mexico, dragging along the thuggish border patrol man who needlessly shot him. Like the film’s Peckinpah, (and obvious inspiration) Burial’s deals with men who are perhaps driven by codes and ideals from another time. Brutal in it’s justice and morality, the film isn’t one for the faint of heart no for some one seeking an easy answer to good and evil and the nature of man. Redemption isn’t easy in this world. It comes with blood, tears, and bullets. Barry Pepper pulls in an amazing performance, and Tommy Lee Jones shows us that perhaps he should step behind the camera more often.

5. Little Miss Sunshine- The indie darling of the tear, Little Miss Sunshine turns the family road movie on it’s head and raises it from the slums of Chevy Chase antic filled movies. Here we have a truly dysfunctional family who find out that they truly have no one but each other. It’s a lesson we all learn in life, that family be difficult, that maybe we don’t like them all the time, but we always love them and most certainly always need them. Steve Carrel gives and understated and subtle performance that shows you he has more in him that his equally funny over the top antics in his bigger roles (Anchorman and The 40 Year Old Virgin). This is a family movie of a new kind, and you’ll find yourself, laughing, cringing, smiling, and feeling satisfied as you would after any true family outing.

That’s the best of what I can remember. Some battery films where plain fun: Mission Impossible 3 turned out to be the best in the series, featuring a magnificent scene-chewing villain by Phillip Seymour Hoffman, and the best use of a McGuffin since old Hitchcock coined the term. Superman Returns was also very good, filled with an elegance and beauty rarely found in superhero movies. X-Men 3: The Last Stand was just that; the last stand for most fans.

I would like to add Volver to my favorite films of the year. This is Almodovar at his best. No one makes films about women like he does and the women in this film are quite unlike anything in any film period. Penelope Cruz is both breathtakingly beautiful and just plain amazing. Like the rest of his cinematic output, Almodovar fills the story with eccentrics and family, which as anyone can attest, the two go hand in hand. The film is about many things, but most importantly about returning (hence the title). Returning to a moment in your past, to your home, to your family and in a sense accepting what role you play in the lives of those you love. Haunting, giddy, beautiful and perfectly entertaining, Volver is the the type of foreign film that should achieve success not only in it’s homeland, but at US box offices as well.

Let’s hope 2007 knocks them out like last year.

LESBIAN COVER-UP DAMPENS RIGHT-WINGERS’ VERTICAL SMILE

CHENEY’S LESBIAN SCHISM: or, WEAK TICKERS vs. CARPET LICKERS
VP Cheney’s Pregnant Lesbian Daughter Casts Hypocritical Shadow on Conservative Right
by L. Grant Pooka
The Palmetto Patriot

MIAMI – The Palmetto Patriot has seized upon new information that Dick Cheney’s lesbian daughter Mary Cheney and her partner Heather Poe are expecting a baby, and that the GOP is focusing further scrutiny and melodrama on the issue by concerning themselves with “a fatherless child” according to Fox News.

“This could be it,” says Senior Correspondent Raul Padron. “We’ve been eagerly awaiting this time bomb.” GOP leaders, suffering in 2006 from the slings and arrows of dirty-style outings and rampant pederasty, have already had to jettison several major GOP players from the DC arena, severely weakening the party’s credibility, save as a bastion of rampaging closet homosexuality.

The party has even had to fill in the gaps of their imploding power-structure with the likes of old-school racist devil Trent Lott (R-MS). Combined with the perennial scandal of conservative media drug-fiends like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, the ethical and psychological questions of the party’s competence could create a schism between the GOP and the religious right.

“The two-mommy bomb isn’t a big one,” explains Padron, “but it’s well-placed over a very central political faultline.” The GOP’s spin doctors, including Jeff Ganon, the notorious omnisexual Internet-gigolo, have massively downplayed Cheney’s lesbian daughter, but Padron implies this is part of the backfire mechanism. “One day the GOP will wake up and find their backers view them as a cabal of crazed, racist, homosexual drug-addicts… hopefully a crippling schism.”

Doctors are closely montioring the pregnancy, but even more closely monitoring the Vice-President’s cardiovascular health, which after four heart attacks, bypass and angioplastic surgery, could be dramatically affected. “Cheney’s medical history reads like a Rhineland subway map,” Palmetto Patriot Health Advisor M.J. Stoetzer tells us, “another heart attack could prove fatal.”

Science Daily publishes that approximately 30% of cardial defibrillator implant patients, like Cheney, die within 5 years of the procedure. “The powerful VP could have his future grandchild in mind as a live organ donor,” Stoetzer opines, but advises Cheney to “just lay off McDonald’s, illicit drug use, and shooting people in the face with hunting rifles until this thing blows over.”

“This could be the big one,” beams Padron, “we’ve all been waiting for a miracle. Maybe we could get two for the price of one!”

MIAMI: SEE IT LIKE A FOREIGNER

EDITORIALS – POLITICS

MIAMI’S MELANGE MORTIFIES MONOLINGUALS
Republican Attacks on the Magic City Welcomed!
by L. Grant Pooka
The Palmetto Patriot

I have to agree with Mr. Tancredo’s recent attack on Miami. This city DOES look more and more like the third world every day, just take a ride on the Palmetto Expressway to see that for youselves. However, I am thrilled to be a native and resident, and fourth generation at that!

Rarely do I say that Miami is America. Frequently, I say Fort Lauderdale is the southernmost city of the continental USA. Miami is a cultural isolate, if not a political one, and highly independent of North American culture… and the Florida Keys are better known as the Conch Republic, so thus Homestead is an American enclave within our border. Miami is a VERY American city, it’s just that we frequently forget that America stretches from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego!

Foreigners love Miami, but why? Because Miami differs from the USA, a country which I consider mostly embarrasing. Why? Segregation, inbred WASPs, Red States, rampant monolingualism… anyway, when I travel abroad, I never say I’m American. I ALWAYS say that I’m from Miami, which opens all kinds of doors to me rather than if I were from, say, Colorado, or even California.

We forget that most foreigners view the USA as an illiterate mass of neanderthals, but not Miamians. I am glad to speak fluent Spanish and practice it every day at random. Most people in the US learn only English and stay limited their whole lives.

When people on the streets of Miami hear me speak fluent Spanish, they usually assume I’m descended from escaped Nazis in Argentina or Chile. Yes, I do get sick of hearing, “pero eres un gringo! Como hablas tan bueno?” Well, truth is I’ve taken more Spanish classes than most native Spanish speakers, but it’s ‘cuz I’m open-minded and I had the opportunity to learn instead of sitting on my fat ass learning no foreign language like many Miamians do, WASP, black and Hispanic alike!

Prejudice. Wrote a blog about it. Like to hear it? Hear it goes: I love to f*** with people, especially the orgullosos who refuse to speak English when I’m buying a small item at the goddam 7-11. If I’m in a wry mood, I’ll respond to them at first in Spanish, but then switch over to German. When they look exceptionally baffled at me, I go back to Spanish saying, “Si puede hablar el idioma de su gente, porque no puedo hablar el idioma de la mia tambien??” It’s only fair, equality for everyone, no?

And to be fair, this city must scare the bejeezus out of crackers like Rep. Tancredo (R-CO), whose own ancestors would have loved Miami for the ability to assimilate at their own pace. It seems that the Gentleman from Colorado has not only forgotten that we stole all of this land from the original natives, but that his own ancestors once gatecrashed our immigration department themselves! After all, Florida was owned by Spain for some 400 years, and France, and England. Viva democracy!

[L. Grant Pooka was born in Coconut Grove to a WASP family originally from Hialeah and Carol City. He is currently off medication.]