I'm going to stop reading Michael Medved's blog for a while. It's not the preening ignorance so much, it's the genocidal racism that gradually gets you down. It's not that it isn't funny; it's just that it isn't funny day after day.
An unpleasant aftereffect of his god-awful style was also felt. Active declarative sentences began to feel impossible to think in.
This doesn't mean you have to stop. And here's how you can keep it fun: You know that game with the fortune cookies, where you read your fortune and then add "...in bed?" (Or, at my house, "...in hell.") You can have the same laughs with Michael Medved by adding "... in my pants."
Last Friday's blog, for instance:
"Gay conjugal visits should cause the public to look past platitudes about love to focus on the raw actuality of male-male eroticism."
... in my pants.
Or Wednesday's:
"Instead (Surgeon General nominee James Holsinger) warned of the negative medical consequences associated with this element of gay male eroticism, and made the obvious point that it could never result in conception."
... in my pants.
Wednesday's column:
"First, and most obviously, the heavy television watcher gives so much attention to the tube..."
... in my pants.
See how it sort of takes the edge off the whole "hate-mongering thing?" Or maybe even that doesn't make it worth the time.
Perhaps if ignored, one can be said to just go away.
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Okay, One for the Road
From today's ("Michael Medved's just a regular fella") blog, "Recommending Beer"
"Bold indeed: the amazing aspect of this brew is the layers of taste and sensual experience that provoke your mouth and throat when you imbibe. At first, the beer goes down smooth and silky..."
... in my pants.
"... easy and light, but then moments later the hops explode..."
... in my pants
"... on you with jolting force: as fresh and edgy and stimulating as the morning's first cup of joe, but also stunningly, joyously, lip-smackingly bitter."
... in my pants.
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And a Bitter Aftertaste
"Dylan Thomas composed some of my favorite poems in a state of perpetual inebriation (he was Welsh, after all)."
Michael Medved doesn't know Dylan Thomas from Heather Thomas. Dylan Thomas never wrote a single word on an evening when he took a single drink. But why let a nettlesome fact get in the way of a really charming racial slur?
What did the Welsh ever do to Michael Medved? It would be nice if Richard Burton were alive, so he could beat the crap out of Michael Medved. Probably Kate Burton could do it.
How come Dylan Thomas is dead and Michael Medved goes on? How come Richard Burton is dead? Why does God hate us? What did we ever do to Him?
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For a few years as a teenager I went to - and had a perfectly nice time at -- the United Nations International School in New York. They're having a reunion tonight, and I wish I could be there but I can't. Kurt Waldheim was my ride.
I actually do wish I could go. A teacher of mine is retiring, and he was an awfully good teacher who offered me the chance to read Ignazio Silone and Carlos Fuentes and Andre Malraux and Jorge Luis Borges.
Someday I'll take him up on it.
Welcome back, Class of '82. And thank you, Frank Banton.