Jon & Kate + 8 .....Separate

So Jon and Kate Gosselin are getting a divorce. "Whoop-tee-DOOO!" Call me a Luddite. Call me an old man (I'm "only" 49); that so many people follow the trials and tribulations of so many hapless celebrities who are suffering from substance abuse, infidelity, narcissism and other things wreaks of Schadenfreude; it suggests that we have nothing better to do in our ho-hum lives but to watch as other peoples' lives fall apart, so we can feel better about ourselves and the predicament in which we find ourselves.

You can call me a cynic too, for I wonder if most of the so-called reality TV shows that have aired these past 10 years are little more than deftly stage managed pseudo-dramas; read that: latter day "Quiz Shows", where the participants are little more than actors strutting and fretting their hours upon the stage to be heard no more. I imagine that the TV audience in Deepest, Darkest America is waiting for the episode when "Jon" will come out of the closet and admit he's had sex with a gorilla; or his mother; or an alien.

And you just know that the TV audience "out there" would lap it up and ask for more. Can't you just hear the whispers, "Well you know, he DID have sex with a gorilla..." I guess that these fake lives and fake dramas do alleviate the tedium and anxiety of real-world challenges; but so does playing Monopoly ("He's a Luddite!" I hear you say). But I am no Luddite- I love technology and am a very progressive thinker- which is why I marvel at how easily we are entertained by such patently obvious melodrama.

Notice how I tactfully substituted the word "melodrama" for the term "crap". In case there is anyone out there still deluded by all of this: Jon and Kate are being very well paid for acting out this 3 Penny Opera. I believe they are married. I believe the 8 kids are in fact their children. Beyond that.......well that's where the mist meets the water. Perception is reality, I guess. Stay tuned for the gorilla episode. I may start watching if it gets THAT absurd.

Ig-Noblesse Oblige

.....a new term I have created that is a combination of "ignoble" (that which is base or common) and "noblesse oblige" (referring to the nobility's patronizing those less fortunate). I refer to the help that the "ig-noble" U.S. government has had to offer the ostensibly dashing aristocrats of Wall Street ("Masters of the Universe" just doesn't quite define them accurately anymore) in the last 9 months and to the unseemly ingratitude / outrage certain grandees in financial circles have expressed at the humilation of having to be rescued in the first place.

"How DARE you save me!". The image which flashes into my mind is that of a dissolute English Duke, who has fallen on his ass in a fox hunt after over indulging at lunch (for some bizarre reason I picture CNBC's Larry Kudlow, though he is not exactly the epitome of English landed gentry) and then venting his wrath at the poor footman who has had the temerity to help him up. Indeed there is a new found confidence among certain financial institutions on "Wall Street" that they don't need / no longer need or never needed any government assistence. "The worst is over! It's back to business as usual!"

...even though it's really not. This, in spite of the fact that everyone on "Wall Street" last September was in an "every man for himself" state of mind; thinking about raiding Costco for emergency suppies and of A) retreating to the woods of the Catskills or Apalachia (those earning from $500,000 to $ 3.5 million a year), and resorting to a hunter-gatherer way of life (the image of pasty-faced endomorphs fruitlessly pecking away at their Blackberries while foraging for nuts and berries is hilarious) or of B) feverishly burrowing into their climate controlled bunkers underneath their sprawling estates in Greenwich, C.T. (those earning $3.5 million > 100 gazillion + + + a year) to await the onslaught of the great unwashed.

This strange "on-again, off-again" disposition to accepting government aide is perhaps no better exemplified than by the "wild catters" in the east Texas of the 1930's virtually begging the federal government for intervention and help in regulating - REGULATING, the production of oil since rampant over production and the Depression made oil worth less than spit. How memories fade.