More MELANI Madness

I confess..... I just cannot leave this alone. LOL!!!

There's something so 'King Lear' about this story. I mean... just look at this 'declension' in quotations by Shakespeare and how they align with the Melani story... from his first temptation, right to the final fury at having been let go by Kindom Highmark.


1.-"Oh, that way madness lies; let me shun that." -



2.-"Die: die for adultery! no:
The wren goes to't, and the small gilded fly
Does lecher in my sight.
Let copulation thrive." -



3.-"I will do such things,--
What they are, yet I know not: but they shall be
The terrors of the earth."-


(and finally, with the securing of an attorney to plead his case)

-"I am a man
More sinned against than sinning."



And for a May/December romance. Good grief!





I never saw that Melissa movie, but it IS a real movie...



...and when something like that just JUMPS RIGHT OUT AT YOU, you grab it and run. Fly it like a kite. It's irresistably perfect! LOL!!!!



(Alas, I think it will take a long, long time and a lot of LITIGATION) -for Melani to see what a fool he's been and what exactly he's given up: insulated lo these many years while breathing the rarified air as a 'captain of industry', the man's lost touch, he's thrown it all away ..... he's


'Leared'


(The movie's TITLE up there reminds me of one of the most chilling scenes from 'The Omen': the one in which the maid gives up her life in a show of grandiose self-destruction





saying, "It's all for YOU, Damien!"

That's how it goes when a person tosses away everything... and in Melani's case, his downfall was the misguided belief in his own infallibility, a presumed 'protected' status--- and his rock firm conviction that things will 'simply fall apart' without him.



(And he's wrong.... on each count.... the old fool.)

Make 'em LAUGH, Make 'em LAUGH

You know..... I was going to stay mum on this whole insurance CEO scandal since EVERYBODY seems to be covering it (even the DAILY NEWS UK....even KDKA) but reports today that the two 'fraternizing parties' (to put it delicately) have now sought legal counsel in order to bring suit against their employer for 'sexual' and or 'age' discrimination, and perhaps 'discrimation of women in the workplace' as well, begs someone to be running some interference.

WTF??? LOL!!!!!

(Are THIS YEAR'S 'DARWIN AWARDS' sewn up yet?)

That kind of cheek is all it took for me want to join in and add my OWN contribution to this ridiculousness.

Therefore, I am offering this parody song


(Sung to the tune of 'Sweet Leilani')



If you are unfamiliar with this old tune, here's a Mantovani youtube to help you to get the melody into your head.








The cheat Melani

He hired his honey

Though they were wed to different people

He thought their love was in a deep hole

Safe from the light of day.




But to Melani

Things sure turned funny

-He didn't trust his hot young mistress

He thought her actions were suspicious

And so he had her tailed.




He learned his angel

Had been entangled

A time or two before he met her

And feared her husband would do better

At putting up with her.




And though her hubby

Was kind of chubby

Melani thought she might be slipping

Back to her house to have a dipping

In hubby's love again.




Melani's hunches

Soon led to punches

Police and newsmen had a field day

His wife and sister joined the melee

(He knew his goose was cooked.)




"It's just my money!"

Said cheat Melani

"I lost my job, my reputation

My CEO to your gyrations-

I am one stupid man."





I just figured that this so-called "news story" should be shown in light of the farce it is. When does an institution built on the public's trust NOT have the right to cut loose a high-profile executive who makes a complete ASS of himself?

If ROYALLY FAULTY JUDGEMENT is not 'cause' for dismissal when handling billions of dollars, what is???




Ok.


Back to the laughter.

(With THIS elephant in the room... it's the only response that makes sense.)

KDKA: Muzzling Of The News

The biggest news story in Pittsburgh for the past two days has been the ousting of the married CEO of Highmark Insurance due to an ugly punch-out fest with his married mistress' husband IN the husband's home. It's been EVERYWHERE on the airwaves. There's not an internet news site or TV news report that hasn't featured it as their headline story. All except.......



KDKA RADIO

Each morning as I get ready for work, I listen to KDKA Morning News with Larry Richert and John Shumway. Today there were stories about fires, about shootings, about the Republican race, what's going on in local sports...... and not ONE WORD about the very wealthy CEO's spectacular fall from grace, a man who also headed up one of their very large corporate sponsors.

Even later on "The Inside Story with Marty Griffin" (a PERFECT venue for highlighting the most talked-about scoop today)... nuthin. Silence. Not a peep.



It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that the intent was to sidestep the ire of the BEHEMOTH corporate moneymen whose commercials so often fill my morning ears with irritating jingles, smarmy 'feel good' radio ads replete with soft, soothing female voices touting the joys of great health insurance, but I'm SHOCKED that their hold extends to the news itself. Commercials are one thing, but having a blue-pencil say-so in what will and will not be reported in the news headlines is something else entirely It's CENSORSHIP..... and it smells really really bad.

I'm reminded of the words of Big Daddy from Tennessee Williams' 'Cat On A Hot Tin Roof' when I say it 'reeks' of mendacity.

"There ain't nothin' more powerful than the odor of mendacity...You can smell it. It smells like death."

R.I.P. KDKA

You lost this listener.

I don't believe in accidental omissions of top stories... this was 'corporate massage' of the highest order.

It's one thing to drone out your execrable 'THE MARCELLUS SHALE AND YOU' every Saturday afternoon as they shill for the drilling robber barons (and though I don't believe a reassuring word those PR-men spit out, they PAID for their programmed air time, and I can always turn it off) but NO one...... NO one 'owns' the hard news no matter how deep their pockets.

If every other radio station, every news media got the story of a rich guy chasing skirt spot on.... why was it CONSPICUOUSLY absent from KDKA radio?

KDKA, you've become the awkward dancing bear, chained to the coffers.



You just looked silly.




UPDATE:As of this morning, Monday April 2nd, KDKA is now reporting this story.

And why?

That's easy.

Highmark has fired their CEO effective Sunday morning, April Fool's day, thus cutting him loose from identification with their particular 'brand', and making him fair game for being reported in a negative light.

I propose henceforth, April Fool's Day be renamed KENNETH MELANI DAY. (It just fits, doesn't it?)

A Blowhard Is A Blowhard Is A Blowhard

Look at this fella.





That's CHARLES MURRAY, author of a new book called "Coming Apart", in which he acts as a latter day Cassandra warning us of the GREAT DIVIDE in current society. (By any rational standard, this would be called a propagandist 'tract'- but for the sake of argument I'll refer to it as a 'book'.)

In it, he's created two segments of WHITE society living in two ficticious towns- 'Belmont' and 'Fishtown'. Belmont houses those well-educated folks who are EMPLOYED and who make at least 100,000.00 per year, go to church regularly and marry BEFORE they have children, thus keeping the ideal of a 'traditional upper-scale American home' intact, whereas the obviously stinky name of 'Fishtown' features dropouts who are irreligous wastrels. They drag themselves to church 'perhaps' once a year, have children outside of marriage, make UNDER 50,000.00 per year and have men who are for the most part unemployed. Mr. Murray goes on to say that THIS IS THE GREAT TRAGEDY OF AMERICA TODAY, and that feeding dollars into a 'welfare state' is not the solution.



No....HIS solution is for the fortunate people of Belmont to EXTOL THE VIRTUES of their clean-living white life and to serve as 'examples'. To talk up civic pride... in other words, to proselytize and to crow about how civic-minded, WHOLESOME and BLESSED they are living in Yuppie-ville in order to LORD IT OVER the 'have nots', thereby convincing them to stay in school, keep their knees together, and by gosh, to PRAY LOTS lots more.

(Is Mr. Murray himself a religious man? He considers himself an agnostic, yet observes that uppercrust America is a church-going group- if only out of 'custom' or by simply doing 'what is done'. Successful people in this country make a great show of Sunday worship, and apparently it pays off.)



(The reason I mention 'white' so often in my description here is because Charles Murray is also the author of an early 90's book called "Bell Curve" that was patently racial in tone. It touted the superior intellect of the white race and the inborn inferiority of the black, and he was hounded on all fronts for his bigotry, so this time... he's playing it safe. Thus.... Mr. Murray's created two representative 'towns' that are 'whites only'.) How very sensitive of him.



As I was reading about his new 'book' today, I was struck by the uncanny resemblance of Mr. Murray to ANOTHER blowhard, albeit one from the silver screen.



Remember Fredric March as the bible-thumping Matthew Harrison Brady in the classic film adaptation of 'Inherit The Wind'? He starred opposite Spencer Tracy in a film about the Scopes Monkey trial, which pitted Darwinism against that 'Old Time Religion', and I find their RIGIDITY and POMPOSITY comically similar. Just LOOK at those two stony FACES....it's truly amazing.



Casting about for more info on Charles Murray, I came upon THIS picture of THREE WONDERFUL REPRESENTATIVES OF WHITE BIGOTRY, 'partying down' in tuxes and drinking it up at some shindig for...... (of ALL THINGS)..... "The Charles Darwin Research Institute".




And isn't it ironic that the same man who is now COVERING HIMSELF in religiousity is also in bed with.... Darwin? The same Darwin vilified by Brady in the movie? How contradictory is that?

I ask you, how can that be? Isn't the earth a mere 6000 years old and man created IN THE GARDEN, and withOUT- I might add- a 'tail'?

(By the way, the bozo on the left is none other than J. Phillipe Rushton of the 'Darwin Research Institute' who hails from Ontario. He's another racially maddened nutcase. He and Charles go WAAAAAAY back and love to cite each other.)

Alas..... the 'corpus' on the right, I have no clue. Only that he appears to be old, addled.... and drunk as a skunk. I'm thinking there had to have been a nice 'speakers fee' for Mr. Murray attached to that gala. I recently read Charles Murray was whining about the mere 75.00 he was paid for an 800 word magazine article.....Hey!..... BEING AN ASSHOLE IN 'BELMONT' DOESN'T COME CHEAP, YA KNOW!!



Help keep this moron in his golden cage. Throw all the money in the WORLD at him to keep him the hell away from the rest of us. We're happily distant in 'Fishtown'. I'll take the aroma of dead carp over a 'Neo-Nazi KKK in sheep's skin' any day of the week! Believe me, there are a lot worse smells than fish.

BULLSHIT is one of 'em.

How handy for Mr. Murray that the REPUBLICAN candidates are just now falling over themselves trying to find some 'center' for their political thrust, finally deciding it resides somewhere between 'WHITE family values' and 'financial stability'. There's a whole new national dream of a great GATED COMMUNITY out there like 'pie in the sky', where the 'darkies' (and ESPECIALLY THAT UPPITY PRESIDENT FELLA)... can't get in to spoil it.

I'll just bet you're prayin' real hard those Red States will take to your 'book' like, (dare I say it?) fish to chum. Murray, you are barking mad: you were in the 90's, and you've only 'ripened' with the years.

AS THE TWIG IS BENT, AS THE SAYING GOES

...'so grows the tree'.





The scandal is soul-breaking...

but the DAMNED RESPONSE FROM THE UNIVERSITY STUDENTS ruptures the spirit in a whole new way.

Their histrionic wailing, their self-pitying anger- NOT because of what the victims suffered, no -it's entirely about themselves and their reputations and their 'do-nuthin' Jo Pa --and it's enough to throw me right over the edge.

Rioting, mooning around in front of Paterno's house, in tears, in shock.... and all for themselves and how this unsavory CHILD MOLESTATION has put a crimp in the happy style of FOOTBALL town.



I think it's fitting that we say, now and forever on their behalf

---yes

WE ARE PENN STATE!


And in many ways, it's the whole bloody country with its skewed values and self-obsessing, juvenile behavior.

You wanna know their biggest fear... the university's, that is?

From what I've read, it's already happening. Their bond rating has taken a hit, so money will be more expensive for the university to borrow.

Companies who sponsored their events in the past want to distance themselves, so they've begun to pull away. Entities who make LARGE CONTRIBUTIONS to the university will be very unlikely to do so in the future, so it all comes down to, yep-- finances drying up.

Their coffers will take the biggest hit from this (to say nothing of the law suits ahead)- but few are paying any attention whatsoever to the IMPACT Mr. Sandusky has had on the boys whose childhoods he destroyed: administration is worrying about future funding and the student body is mourning the jettisoning of their old coach and the loss of their football edge.


It boggles the mind.


The sheer insensitivity of those marauding, furious BRATS turning over cars and filling the streets with their tantrums when they learned Paterno was fired was all I needed in order to gauge just what it is those young people have been learning from their association with Penn State, and it isn't trigonometry or philosophy- it's indulgent SELF-INTEREST, and it's EXTREME. As one Penn State student was quoted, "I love the school more than I hate what happened"... that says it all. Why doesn't she see that "what happened" --and the university itself-- are one and the same thing; that the sanctification of the game allowed the kind of cover-up that occurred?



The sad thing is.... I wouldn't have expected any other reaction. The students of football-centered colleges are usually creatures fixated in a selfish adolescence where winning is everything; as the saying goes, "pride goeth before the fall" -and fall they did. Rock bottom to these eyes.

I wish they'd get it through their thick skulls that THEY are not the victims.... eight boys were.

And those 10,000 students taking to the streets in anger? They raped them again... and the painting up there? It's by Francis Bacon.

(Like Sandusky, he was another sick f*ck for whom violence via male-on-male rape was particulary pleasing stuff.)


I don't know if he liked football or not.... and I don't think it's important.

The NEW FACE of the Boogeyman

Well, well, well......

America is in QUITE a quandary here.

The TWO THINGS we purport to love ABOVE all else, CHILDREN AND FOOTBALL, have clashed on the first page of the news.

What to do.....what to DO???


First off... I don't BELIEVE our national declaration of love for children.

If that were true, how then do we explain why so many poor kids, stuck in horrible living conditions with terrible schools now being STRIPPED of all funding and closing down, waiting for PRIVITIZATION to step in, a 'solution' which has NEVER done anything but electrocute our troops in their showers and give armed thugs carte blanche to kill civilians -why are we willing to stuff the pockets of those who would JUMP at handling the privitization of schools?

Do we love them? No.

(Oh, for the wealthier parents, we love to dress them up and show them off. Arrange "play dates" ...sign them up for extracurricular activities that will produce pictures to fill our hand-assembled scrapbooks (now all the rage) --but love? I don't think so.) No more than pets. No more than a new iphone or other things we consider 'fun fodder' for bragging rights. We love to say we love them.



Now here's the conundrum: one of our most revered football colleges has HARBORED a serial child molester for 20 years or better, and turned their heads while a HIGH PROFILE assistant coach indulged himself by buggering our "children at risk." The WEIRDO even wrote a self-congratulatory BOOK about the perfect cover he's been hiding behind in order to procure 10 year olds for eventual anal rape.

Betrayal? 'EVIL'? THY NAME IS SANDUSKY.









It'll be a long time (or maybe never) till the beloved NITTANY LIONS ... or PENN STATE... (or..... yes, even......omg!)





JOE PATERNO!

will be mentioned without shuddering in distaste. From this day hence, Paterno will be thought of as a high paid enabler who turned his head when all the alarms were going off about Sandusky's description of 'horsing around' in the campus showers. He's the man who 'did the MINIMAL thing required'- he reported it. NOT TO POLICE, but the lowest rung on the ladder he had to report to..... then forgot about it. How hideous. We expect more from someone who touts himself as an inspirational IDEALISTIC influence on youth. He failed. Joe failed.

He f*cked up bigtime.



(I'll not say another word about the other guy--- the criminal, who is the new face of the Boogeyman --who's done more harm over a score of years than can ever be calculated.) He's the MURDERER OF DREAMS- kid's dreams, our 'wholesome FOOTBALL dreams'. He's scuttled the holy American vision of an 'Andy Hardy world'-- Sandusky's shown us at our worst, and most frighteningly-- our worst is what we are.

This scandal casts a KLIEG LIGHT on a societal recipe that produces the kind of monsters who value REPUTATION over simple human decency; who would put a MONEY-making and a legendary team above the safety and protection of those most vulnerable.

It's hideously perfect, this dark marriage of football and hidden child abuse...it's somehow fitting. It's like a new Rosetta Stone.

It blows the doors off our high opinion of ourselves, with our fetishist love of VICTORY and our illusions of benevolence: we're left with an ugly truth. But so far... it's never set us free. It's never been allowed to... no profit in that. Nothing to sell. No sponsor would want it.

So we'll grope for a DIFFERENT scandal....

some horrible NEWS to chew on. Some late-breaking, LOUD distraction that can be plastered on the covers of the tabloids to pull our minds from collective shame and our own discomfort.

Some new gossip about Lindsay Lohan, or how WAS IT that Michael Jackson, the King of Pop-- could have died so young... (See? We haven't a clue.)

Our myths are KILLING us. Our myths are the reason WHY PATERNO TURNED HIS HEAD and why we're morally dead or dying: when you open a casket -one breath of air, a bit of oxygen, it corrupts. And that's what this story did: it was like Dracula caught in sunlight.

We'll do whatever we can do to either bury it ..... or TOP IT. That's who we are.

A happy lie is all we ever need.


It lets us sleep nights.

False Face of (ALL) Politics

After the escalation into Afghanistan, after the debacle of congressional wrangling over the federal budget, after seeing no CHANGE whatsoever, no matter how high the hopes in what could have been the biggest turnover in national ideological thrust-- I am throwing in the towel on all politics.

I no longer believe in democracy.

It doesn't exist.

There is only Capitalism cloaked in slogans. The wealthy have won and the rest of us don't matter. Free debate is a deceptive smog that layers everything and has no power whatsoever in affecting final outcomes.

2008 was the last election in which I will vote: I believe in nothing political. 2008 was our final chance and it was doomed from the start. We didn't know change was impossible once wealth is SO disproportionately placed (and has been since the Reagan 90's) once those who hold the wealth are so deeply embedded in the power structure itself, it becomes a thing immovable.

I feel like a child who believed in fairytales. I am beyond anger. I merely feel foolish.

Hope has been defeated at last by hype, who knew it all along.

We no longer have a two party system, we have a collective of rich men calling shots cannily enough to make it seem as though there is liberty-- while they self-serve, manipulating God and Religion and what they've defined as 'patriotism'- and 'We' no longer exist. The bastards control the whole Monopoly board. We can keep paying rent on 'Baltic', but they've got Park Place and all the utilities and the railroads we're landing on.....

one by one. The threat isn't terrorism, it's them. It always has been.