The Further Adventures of Captain Obvious.

Why does this man have a job?

When I was a teenaged driftglass, I took a young lady to a truly awful movie named, I believe, “Mother’s Day.” The reason I lured her to this particular cinematic offering was that I was a horny young idiot, and hoped to lead her step-by-step into a mutual, pants-jettisoning moment...and the movie was rated “X"; a relative rarity at that time and place.

So being no slouch when biological imperative is whamming at the door, and thinking that nothing amps up the chances of the pants-jettisoning like a little soft-core date-porn, I convinced this equally-clueless lass to accompany me to said film. I mean, there are such a lot of naughty-bad-fun carnal possibilities inherent in that title, no?

And the film turned out to be a rip-and-kill flick of the lowest order, given an adult rating apparently because it was so fucking nauseating. Just...charnellity, and it hit with such an startling, white-noise intensity when I was expecting a nice, family-friendly lesbian adventure that it simply didn’t register right away.

Truth is, I just couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I kept waiting for it to get better. For the joke to kick in. For the Army of Sappho to enter stage-right and make it all better. To turn that corner.

Never happened. It just went on and on, and my date and I looked at each other and then ran for the exit. I even demanded our money back, which is kinda tricky when you're a little under-age and are trying to puff up and come on as strongly affronted in front of your date that you didn’t get the Isle Of Lesbos Kickline and Leap Frog team you’d been expecting. Very complex situation.

In my memory I loom over the simpering theater manager and boom out, “Your trickery, sir, has cost me my time, my money and any hope of a pants-jettisoning interlude with this comely lass, and I demand satisfaction!"

And then, mercilessly exposed as the weasel that he is, he offers me cash and prizes and access to his polymorphically perverse sister, and humbly begs my forgiveness.

In retrospect, I'm pretty sure that’s not what actually happened, but why does this by Tom Friedman evoke that memory?

The Best Man for the U.N.
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

Published: April 27, 2005
My biggest problem with nominating John Bolton as U.N. ambassador boils down to one simple fact: he's not the best person for the job - not even close. If President George W. Bush wants a die-hard Republican at the U.N., one who has a conservative pedigree he can trust, who is close to the president, who can really build coalitions, who knows the U.N. building and bureaucracy inside out, who can work well with the State Department and who has the respect of America's friends and foes alike, the choice is obvious, and it's not John Bolton.
It's George H. W. Bush, a k a 41. No one would make a better U.N. ambassador for Bush 43 than Bush 41.
...
But there is actually an even better reason to prefer 41 over Mr. Bolton. The White House claims it needs the pugnacious Mr. Bolton at the U.N. to whip it into shape and oversee real reform there. I have only one thing to say in response to that pablum: Give me a break. We do not need a U.N. ambassador to "reform" the U.N. That is not what America needs or wants from the U.N. You want to reform the U.N.? You want to analyze its budgets and overhaul its bureaucratic processes, well, then hire McKinsey & Co. - not John Bolton. (Everyone knows he prefers to torch the place.)
...

Did I wander into the children’s section of the NYT?
The “special” children’s section?

For me, the factual correctness or lack thereof of any give topic that passes through Mr. Friedman’s alimentary canal isn’t even an issue anymore: it’s that retarded, mutant love-child-of-Elmo-and-Andy-Rooney Shouting Out Loud obviousness that positively leaps off the page at me.

Like a morbidly obese soprano singing incomprehensibly bad Aida, and you can’t believe how terrible it is, and you wonder how long the metal-shredding keening of this beast can possibly go on. And then she turns around and you see that she has not only tucked the backside of her costume into her panty hose, but has obviously soiled herself recently. It’s this degree of obliviousness that jumps it up into a different order of uber-idiocy. That, in this case, begs the question from the editors of the NYT for the umpteen-millionth time: Who in the fuck is Tom Friedman talking to?

The Shining Path Right, to whom any candidate left of Vlad Tepes would be considered a commie (and who are not exactly disposed to listen to any of the Children of Abraham whose last name doesn't rhyme with “Fleeberman” if you get my meaning)? So not those guys.

The Left, who have already sorta kinda looong ago figured this out already?

School children?

House plants?

You want to know why blogs are on the rise? And why the MSM is desperately trying to pivot itself around like the Exxon Valdiz 20 feet from shore and either appropriate or marginalize blogging?

Look no further than this.

Again we see on display on the once-sacred ground that was the Editorial Page of the New York Fucking Times, Mr. Friedman’s willingness to leap into the fray long after the fray has left town and bravely declare that...
…you know, if you slap an egg on your forehead it might break, so maybe you don’t want to do that.
...Green’s a nice color, don’t you think?
...WWII. Wow. Glad those Nazis lost, huh?
…smell my finger. No, go on, smell it.
…call me crazy, but I think that the Sun going nova would be, overall, a bad thing.

Like the hormonally impelled decision of my younger self to plunk down my hard earned coin only to find myself watching the almost inconceivably brutal and stupid "Mother's Day”, I buy my ticket to the NYT and sit down and expect…something.

Something insightful or witty or provocative. And not even every day, because I know that the Muse is a Tough Buck: just on-balance, give me something I better than I could have dashed off myself, hung over and face down in the pee trough in a Wrigley Field men’s room.

And yet what we get is the likes of Tom Friedman breathing the rarified air of the commanding heights, atop the tallest newspaper on Earth and using his sacred real estate to pontificate that a circle, you know, is round.
And that snow looks pretty cool.
And jelly doughnuts sure are tasty, but too many of them might make your tummy upset.

And I keep waiting for the punch line and a phalanx of agile, antic lesbians to come and right this terrible right this wrong, but they never arrive.

And at last I slouch out of the theater, heartbroken, that the New York Times has really, finally allowed itself to become such an enervated heap of flabby words.