The Promised Land
Is always just ahead.
You will not reach it
Ere you’re dead.

But your children’s children
By their children will be led
To a spot from which the Land—
Still lies ahead.

--Langston Hughes, undated


The only element of junk news I currently find appealing would be coverage relating to Martha Stewart’s release from the correction facility at Alderson, West Virginia.
I’m a big fan of Ms. Stewart and I look forward to her triumphant return to the pop media stage.
I just hope she’s learned a table-turning trick or two during her incarceration.

I’ve always felt that Ms. Stewart’s legal difficulties began in early February of 2001.
Cue Mr. Peabody to fire up the Wayback Machine…

I was in the midst of my post breakfast kitchen routine when a promotional tease for that morning’s Martha Stewart Living announced an exclusive White House tour.
I remember thinking that this seemed pretty quick work for a new First Lady and that Martha’s staff must have agreed on a timetable with the Bush’s staff prior to the President’s inauguration.
Gathering a steaming mug of coffee, and likely a homemade nibble, and even knowing in the back of my mind that Martha is a staunch Democrat, I sat down fully anticipating a unique MSO look at the new Bush White House.
A few short minutes into the program made it painfully clear that Martha’s surprise tour guide was not First Lady Laura Bush but First Lady Hillary Clinton and that the program had been taped prior to the recent Bush inauguration.
Quite literally, I was shocked!
It has been traditional that once a new President is sworn into office the old President and his family recede into a low to zero media-profile for a year or two or three.
I knew, then and there, that certain important people seated before their televisions would interpret this as a major slap.
I remember thinking, “Yikes, Martha! Are you trying to intentionally piss off a certain revenge-prone dynastic matriarch known for wearing pearls and the color blue?” all while visualizing various Bush-staffer-hot-coffee spit takes erupting across the federal city.
All told, the White House tour was lovely, informative and offered Hillary lots and lots of highly flattering post inaugural airtime.
In typical Martha fashion, viewers got to see various White House florists, chefs and calligraphers all in a fun-and-Hillary-packed half hour sure to foment Bush partisan apoplexy.
I knew despite the program’s fun and uplifting tone that a clock was ticking and that it was only a matter of time before my favorite cooking and decorative arts Godzilla was locked in a fierce hand to hand battle with a ConnectiTexan Megalon called Bar.
Magically, just a few months after the telecast, the announcement of a single government study slamming the anti cancer drug Imclone was leaked to the company's CEO Sam Waksil and Martha’s downfall began.
I thought it most interesting that shortly after Ms. Stewart’s trial concluded another single government study reported that Imclone wasn’t really so bad, a sort of government study version of Emily Litilla’s, “Nevermind.”
Games within games within games, as high-powered human history teaches, are merely tools for one royal’s use in dispatching another.
I guess we poor pitiful ordinary citizens, unconnected to the soon-to-be censor-prone political institutions, will just have to wonder about the “how’s and why’s”.
Surely it would come as no surprise to eventually see that who but another mega-wealthy empress would best know how to trick a similarly situated personage?
I hope, no matter what tricks reside up inside Martha’s hand-knitted sweater sleeve, that MSO pays closer attention to broadcast schedules and to always remember that some elephants have even longer memories than others.

Also
With lots of web speculation regarding Hunter Thompson’s suicide, I was interested by this curious death announcement in this morning’s Washington Times:

Republican media adviser R. Gregory Stevens, who recently served as co-chairman of the Bush/Cheney Entertainment Task Force, was found dead Saturday in the Hollywood home of actress Carrie Fisher… Mr. Stevens, who was an associate of the Washington powerhouse lobbying group Barbour, Griffith & Rogers, also helped orchestrate the firm's star-studded party for watching the inaugural parade…A flamboyant personality and bicoastal bachelor, Mr. Stevens was regarded as something of a misfit in the corridors of the buttoned-down lobbying firm.


Kaptur and Gannon

All this as, via AmericaBlog and the Toledo Blade, yet another politician makes a Gannon smear connection:

Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D., Toledo) believes…Jeff Gannon…used his seat in the White House press room to put a national spotlight on Miss Kaptur when he asked former press secretary Ari Fleischer why the President had not commented on the "offensive remarks by Democratic Congressman Marcy Kaptur, who likened Osama Bin Laden to our founding fathers?"… Miss Kaptur, though, believes there's more to the story…"It lit the fuse for the entire network of Bush propagandists around the country and their media affiliates to commit a backlash based on a lie.”

No one ever said being a right wing power closet-case would be a cakewalk.

PS
I want to thank you, kind reader, for revisiting this humble, and likely soon-to-be-quashed by the steel boot of FEC tyranny, blog after the lean posting accomplished during my multi-week bout with the flu.
Today's post was late but I'm still moving slowly and beg your kind indulgence as I juggle my sarcastically herculean rural portion of the blogswarm's vast liberal conspiracy.

Images: MSO, Toledo Blade
- posted by Sean @ 2:18 PM