Piling on the big boys

(INT. Backstage on the set of Death to Cardboard)

(KID COMBUSTIBLE is toweling off after a grueling...um...blogging set)

Well, we sure have had a lot of fun at the expense of Yahoo! in the past weeks. Obviously they are a little quick to flip headlines (not just in this specific incident - I can't count the number of times that they have flipped a headline to mean essentially the opposite of what it did, but sadly at these times I was not co-running an omniblog). Yahoo! is the popular kid of the internet, but for very little reason. Their "news" is nothing but AP wire pulls, and their mail service is good but very average. Yet it remains the most visited site (or something close to that. I'm not looking that shit up). But what makes this popularity even more baffling is the almost single-minded suckocity provided by their headlines. Such as:



Now, the article is pretty lackluster, but it shares its' main problem with the headline itself. What we're supposed to think of, according to this article/headline/Yahoo!'s first goddamn thing you see, is that the plane crash that didn't kill Travis Barker and DJ AM is similar to the plane crashes that killed Buddy Holly, The Big Bopper, Richie Valens, Jim Croce, Otis Redding, Patsy Cline, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Glenn Miller, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Ray Rhodes, Aalyiah, Ricky Nelson, and John Denver. Which makes sense, of course. Stevie Ray Vaughan was arguably one of the most accomplished blues guitar players of all-time; DJ AM has been on TMZ a few times. Otis Redding had one of the most singular voices in the 60's soul scene; Travis Barker sometimes is in the Aquabats! I don't care if the relationship is tenuous - these people don't belong in the same lame Yahoo! article together, no matter how much steel and fire it took to kill them.

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Creative design with Yahoo! News

After Sarah Palin's speech to the Republican National Convention, I noticed that the front-page headline on Yahoo! News went from "Palin bashes community organizers, Obama campaign" to "Palin dubbed 'Rock Star' of RNC" in less than five minutes. I was willing to give Yahoo! the benefit of the doubt, write it off as a fluke, until the following image appeared on the page today (emphasis is my own.)



*slow clap*

Yahoo managed to turn a fluff piece on fashion sense into an (at first glance) expose on Fer "Notorious for Her Drug Abuse" Gie and Michelle "Not Tyra Banks" Obama shooting up in an alley on the south side of Chicago. Does anyone say "high marks" anymore? Wasn't there room for the word "marks" on the first line? No and yes, respectively.

Funny, since Michelle isn't the addict involved in this year's election.

Just sayin'.

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Broke-ass hoes, broke-ass hoes, broke-ass hoes, broke-ass hoes

Attending a private liberal arts college made me hate feminists for a while. That's the opposite of what's supposed to happen, isn't it? You're supposed to become deeply ensconced in women's issues, go vegetarian and develop an in intense love of short-haired indie rock chicks while protesting endlessly the use of the word "chick" to describe WOMEN because I am a WOMAN and I will not allow myself to be DENIGRATED by the heteronormative, chauvinistic corporate automaton and be told that I am a helpless baby bird that subsists on PREMASTICATED CORN NIBLETS and possesses no control over my UTERINE. CONTENTS.



People at private liberal arts colleges actually talk like that (well, sort of.) Which raises the question, if you're not a bird, why are you so fucking shrill?

Don't get me wrong, the women who devoted most of their time to the campus feminist group tended to be nice, reasonable people on a regular basis. I just couldn't listen to them talk about feminist issues because after a while, my ears would start to bleed mysteriously. Which is not something I'm proud of. I wanted to fit in. I wanted to learn about the raping penis and modern ways to hate it. I wanted to give my vagina a big cuddly hug. Unfortunately, my arms just weren't long enough, and confusion gave way to resentment. I retreated to the frat house to shake shake shake it to the dulcet tones of "Ass 'n' Titties" by DJ Assault.

But in Spring Term 2008, something amazing happened. Our own Kid Combustible pointed me to the blog Jezebel, and I've been obsessively refreshing the page ever since. The magic of Jezebel is that the site sells itself as "Celebrity, Sex, Fashion For Women. Without Airbrushing." Essentially, it's a pop culture blog that happens to be pro-women. Even better, it's a pop culture blog that I consistently agree with (and that doesn't happen often.) And they're feminists, so I guess that makes me a feminist too.

So. What's the point of this diatribe? Mostly, I've been galvanized by Jezebel's recent coverage of the Sarah Palin debacle. (That's not a Jezebel article, but it should be read nonetheless for reference.) Anyway, they dared to ask the question that has been on my mind since we first heard of Tina Fey's horrible evil twin: why does Sarah Palin blind normal, reasonable women with rage? Personally, I think it's because her spokesman is named Tucker Bounds. What the hell is up with that. Also, I have a hard time enjoying the company of people who are cool with torturing wolves with helicopters and then shooting them to death. Doesn't anyone collect bottlecaps anymore?

And if you're badass enough to aggressively interrogate lupine beasts from the skies, do you need a guy named Tucker Bounds to man your spokes?

But seriously folks. The pros did a good job of explaining why exactly I react so violently to the mere thought of Sarah Palin. And by react violently, I mean I could get pretty into an episode of CSI wherein the team investigates charred remains found in a deserted Alaskan woodland near a business that rents helicopters and AK-47s to wolves and librarians who are fired for allowing people to take out banned books.

I'm just saying, that episode of CSI sounds rather engaging. Think about it, CBS!!

Enough hate, though. The point of this post is to declare my love for Jezebel. For the aforementioned reasons, and also because they introduced me to the video series Target: Women with Sarah Haskins, which in turn led me to one of my favorite shows (albeit one that I can only watch online) InfoMania. Thanks, guys!

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