Tuesday, December 2, 2008

O Glittering Consumerism, O Baffling Ignorance

A: On Black Friday, a Wal-Mart employee was trampled to death by shoppers:



Patrick Purcell (Director of Special Projects for the United Food and Commercial Workers Union Local 1500) said this on Democracy Now!:


"It is not the local police’s job to control the situation. Wal-Mart knows our economy is on the decline, you’re handing out plasma TV’s reduced well below retail. Again, to us, you’re feeding the frenzy of the economic problems we’re having. They had to know there was a situation that could develop like this. And it bothers us even more that their response was, we’re sorry. Nothing more than we’re sorry. Not that we’re going to review procedures from the top down in every one of our stores throughout the country. Not that they’re going to set up a fund to take care of the worker. Their response was, we did the best we could, we’re sorry. And that’s a horrible response."

B: Yesterday, Variety reported that Shia LaBeouf (and an executive producer who's with him right now in the Middle East filming Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen) just got the green light from Paramount to star in an adaptation for The Associate, John Grisham's new legal thriller novel.

How new is Grisham’s novel? It won’t be published until January. Grisham’s rep took The Associate to four studio producers, hoping to nab a deal.

His book must be that bad. Grisham’s success has been leaning on the Hollywood Grisham-spaghetti machine for years. Never before has he depended on them preemptively.

C: Old news, but I just found out about this. In March, Oklahoma Senator Sally Kern called American gays and lesbians a more pressing threat than terrorists:



Those who obtained and posted the recording made sure that it was a public meeting and that the recording did not unfairly misconstrue her comments at the event. Although Senator Kern later claimed that the recording took her comments out of context, she has never apologized nor backed down from her claims; in fact, she reiterated her position, specifically the priority of the so-called gay threat, two weeks later in March and much later in October. Kern's statements caused a response from the Muslim community and the gay community...particularly from Ellen Degeneres:



Good ol' Dory - Ellen always makes me laugh. I love the audience, too.

1 comment:

  1. Hey, thanks for linking to my blog.I will do the same. Maybe we can get our Technocrati rating down below 4,000,000 or something. Down with Wal-Mart up with Ellen.

    ReplyDelete