$ports Betting 101

Breaking News…Natalee Holloway Alive! Cheerleaders Dead!

I’m still holding out hope that Natalee Holloway will be found alive, quivering in the corner of a dark room in a dirty whorehouse in South America after her third round of sex with a Venezuelan businessman in one night; a victim of the white slave trade rather than murder. Certainly that’s what Greta Van Susteren, and the other media leeches who are still trying to suck blood out of the story over two years after the fact, are hoping.

Perhaps Geraldo Rivera can pose as a john, infiltrate said brothel, throw the pretty young blonde white woman over his shoulders, and deliver her back to her media savvy mom. Just think of the ratings. It could run during the Super Bowl halftime and upstage the game.

By this point everyone is aware of and pretends to be disgusted by “Missing White Woman Syndrome”. One flooded Pi Phi sorority house would easily attract more news cameras than New Orleans’ Lower 9th Ward. When an attractive white woman meets her demise the media provides us with an endless feed of stale “breaking” news. We, the audience, condemn the obvious pandering for ratings and then, evidently, misplace the remote control.

One of my personal favorite examples of the shallowness of modern news (and the news devouring public) was the story of five high school cheerleaders from upstate New York who died in a fiery auto crash last year. Teen drivers die in crashes with an alarming frequency (almost ten a day in 2003), but these girls and their headshots were featured as the main news story on CNN.com for at least two days.

Contrast that with this accident in Alabama, which I didn't come across until researching this article. It made the national news sites because people will always click on a link that says “dead cheerleader”, but it didn’t have the legs of the original cheerleader death story. I can’t help noticing that the Alabama girls are a tad bit chubbier, less photogenic, than their New York counterparts.

I’m not upset that the media plays to this lowest common denominator. They are businesses with bottom lines. If the public wanted to read about poor people in the inner city getting murdered, and fat, unattractive people dying prematurely in car wrecks, then CNN would gladly give it to us. What I do mind is the hypocritical, holier-than-thou attitude of the people who try to denounce what they eagerly consume — like rubberneckers who bitch about the traffic jam they are causing.

Let’s just stop the charade. CNN and Fox News can start running a regular feature called “Premature Deaths of Good Looking Women”. It will feel good for all of us to come clean.

Is Hannah Montana the Antichrist?

Back in the old days (before say…1990), little girls were like miniature adults, taken to societal role-playing to have their fun, things like sitting down to mini grownup tea parties and nurturing baby dolls, while little boys spent their time killing small animals and playing video games.

They were the unspoiled demographic - mostly ignored by Madison Avenue, Hollywood, and the other assorted taste makers who define exactly what it is we want and need.

Back in those more innocent times, you would often hear that the women could be our salvation:

If women ran the world there would be no war. If women were in charge we would all eat three square meals a day, no one would spit or fart, and toilet seats would always be left down.

Now after almost two decades of bombardment from the heaviest artillery in MTV, E! Television, and US Weekly’s arsenals, that innocent little girl has been obliterated. A line that stretched from Laura Ingalls Wilder in her Little House on the Prairie…through “baby talk” Cindy Brady…all the way down to Drew Barrymore in ET, has been broken. Looking back Barrymore’s performance might have been the high watermark for pig-tailed innocence. When she fell, dramatically and publicly, she pulled all of our little girls down with her.

What has followed has been a steady stream of hyper-sexualized female role models; Lady Feminism has gone macho, like she took a shot of testosterone to the buttocks, grabbed her crotch, and took a seat on a bar stool in Reno, Nevada.

First there was Pam Anderson becoming the world’s most famous woman. Her constantly inflating and deflating breasts, questionable relationship choices, and public sexual escapades were an inspiration to a generation. Then came Christina, Paris, Lindsay, and Britney…

You would hope that the cautionary tale told by these new faces of feminism would scare the tweens currently coming of age. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to be working like that. The genie is out of the bottle (thanks Xtina for the metaphor). Today’s little girl knows that sex sells, that sex equals power, and she knows it before she can handle it.

The queen apparent of this new generation, Hannah Montana, the girl who came out of nowhere to suddenly be everywhere, appears to be mobilizing her army. Her minions are gearing up at your local mall, buying ever shorter skirts, and trading secrets on effective hand job techniques.

It would appear that tomorrow’s little boys don’t stand a chance, what with their raging hormones and all. The new girl-next-door, 10 years old and equipped with plastic C-cups, is far too formidable an opponent. I guess we’ll soon be seeing what the world would be like with women in charge. I, for one, will be making sure to put the toilet seat down.

To Win the War… Buy the Bonds

To help finance the enormous costs of World War II, the United States government issued war bonds to the American public. The various releases of these patriotic bonds were accompanied by “Bond Tours” – traveling pep rallies that featured politicians and celebrities waving flags to help sell them.

The largest of these affairs, the Seventh Bond Tour of 1945, raised over $26 billion. To help put that number in perspective, consider that there were 160 million people in the US at the time. That means the dollar investment per US citizen was roughly $162, or about $1800 dollars in modern day spending power! Do you suppose those people had a clear idea about what they were fighting (and paying) for?

In a capitalist society, the mandate for war should only come from the people and their voting dollars. The process is unbelievably simple, capitalism at it's most basic: the public sees a real and coherent threat (in this case Hitler and the Japanese) and they pay to have it eliminated. It wasn’t America’s uncommon valor, or God’s will that won World War II. It was American investment backed wholeheartedly by the American people.

What does a government do to raise money for a war if there is no clear public backing? When the true reasons for letting bullets fly are obscure, based more on special interests than national security?

They don’t ask us for it directly, that’s for sure. They take it after conferring amongst themselves. They use their incumbency to justify their actions. Since the Iraq war started in 2003, Congress has allocated somewhere in the neighborhood of $470 billion to the effort. Every one of these dollars has been reluctantly squeezed out of the nation’s coffers by oil-based special interest groups who wrap themselves in the American flag and use convenient terms like “spreading democracy”.

Perhaps there could be an American victory in Iraq (which, I suppose, would mean the elimination of every single insurgent and the building of a Starbucks on every other street corner). But it would take the true financial backing of the American people. The Average Joe would have to be willing to pledge a large chunk of his monthly income to see the Stars and Stripes flying over Baghdad. And unless we clearly understand why we’re fighting, that’s never going to happen.

How many of you would show up at an Iraq War Bond Tour (without a basket of rotten tomatoes)?

Death of the American Dream

As the world flocks to Southern California, lured by vague promises of the glamorous lifestyles lived by the citizens of Beverly Hills - 90210, Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County, Three’s Company, and The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, the demand for a physical piece of the pie keeps going up. A little chunk of uneven land in the right zip code, with barely enough space to fit a cramped two bedroom house and squeeze an Escalade and BMW 3 Series in the garage, can easily cost well in excess of one million dollars.

The people who were here before the latest land rush sit back and watch the annual rise in equity, using the money to buy newer BMWs, while the poor middle class schlubs struggling to make ends meet (realistically anyone making less than $150k per year), either become lifetime renters, shoehorn their wives and kids into little condos, or move their family to the distant land of Riverside County where they might be lucky to spend as many hours with their kids as they do in their daily commute.

In much of California, the American Dream of home ownership is dead. Even with the housing boom finally leveling off, the situation is too out of whack to be rectified. Say you’re a middle manager at a decent company making $80,000 a year; you’re college educated, you followed the prescribed formula for attaining the Dream, and you’re getting what many would consider a decent salary. The problem is, at best, you can maybe afford a $2500 monthly mortgage, which will get you a one bedroom condo (as long as it’s not too near the beach). Or maybe you can move to the ghetto and buy a run-down house (not a very popular choice). Most likely, you will keep renting, living like a little hamster on a wheel.

Now add some kids to that mix. What are your options now? Pack your things and say hello to the Inland Empire and a lifetime of traffic jams.

What happens when the majority of a populace becomes disenfranchised? When the people no longer have a stake in the society they live in? History tells us they revolt. How much further can we continue down this path before landlords’ heads begin to roll?