The Political Whore

I was out of the office (and to some degree, out of touch with the important breaking news of the day) for the past two days, so the whole flapdoodle over First Lady Michelle Obama wearing (gasp!) shorts on her family vacation to the Grand Canyon got right by me.

But this morning, I got gobsmacked by the “news” when I broke my prohibition against watching The Today Show and saw not only a produced package report on it but an interview about it with the author of an upcoming book on Mrs. Obama.

So I’m damned if I write about this nothingness (because by doing so I am just perpetuating the media echo chamber on this particular non-news item) but if I sit by and let this phenomenon continue to go unchallenged I look either a) out of touch or b) like I condone such piffle.

So let’s be clear: Blame the Internet, blame the increasingly content-hungry online news media who will write about anything as long as it gets pageviews and resonates and gets Reddit’ed or Digg’ed or whatever’ed. But mostly, blame ourselves, the consumers of this mental junk food, because if we weren’t eating it, they wouldn’t be feeding it to us.

Ever wonder how to make a viral video? The process has been boiled down to these nine easy yet mostly duplicitous steps.

• Reintroducing Michelle Obama.
• The All-New Barack & Hillary Show to debut next week with a joint appearance to (what else?) rally donors.
• Obama up by six over McCain. That stat leaves ABC News wondering if it’s panic time … for Obama.
• Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi disassembles the Straight-Talk Express.
• Florida prepares to overhaul the method of tabulation of high school graduation rates. Want to bet the numbers go down?
• Lock up the pharmacists? Prescription drugs do far more societal damage than illegal ones.
• R.I.P. Cyd Charisse. If you’re under the age of 50, you just went “who?”
• The Celtics bury the Lakers in six.
• In an ongoing effort to piss of the AP* and get them to sue us, I will be running long quotes from AP stories for the foreseeable future. Today’s quote is from a story about Gov. Charlie restoring voting rights to 150,000 ex felons:

More than 115,000 former felons who completed their sentences have had their civil rights restored since a new state rule went into effect 14 months ago, Gov. Charlie Crist said.

The rule by the Board of Executive Clemency, which Crist chairs, restored rights almost automatically, ending a policy of requiring the panel to act individually on every restoration of rights request. The rights include voting and the ability to get state and local licenses for certain types of jobs.

“Once somebody has truly paid their debt to society, we should recognize it,” Crist said Tuesday. “We should welcome them back into society and give them that second chance. Who doesn’t deserve a second chance?”

The 115,000 former felons Crist cited account for more than half of all former felons in the state who have had their rights restored during the last 14 years, according to the governor.

The governor made the announcement at a two-day summit of state officials, lawmakers, community activists, prison ministers and others to brainstorm ideas for keeping former inmates from returning to crime after their release.

* – I had originally put periods after the A & P in AP. Fortunately, AP’s #1 fan sent me an e-mail informing me of my mistake. Thank’s #1.