What a Day!

Already we've got Mark Halperin going for the gold and calling the President "kind of a dick" on MSNBC's air. But then, as if the universe itself were trying to do bloggers and ironists a HUGE favor, I read this:

Chris Hansen, the host of NBC’s To Catch a Predator, was himself caught on camera with an apparent mistress in Florida. The sting was arranged by National Enquirer, and it shows Hansen, who is married with children, with Kristyn Caddell, a blonde television anchor 20 years his junior. He took her to a dinner at the Ritz-Carlton in Manalapan before spending the night at her apartment. The couple apparently met four months ago.

Oh, man.  So many directions to go with this one.  The irony is just...wow.  I suppose the only thing that could have made it better would have been if a disapproving, moralizing, middle-aged news anchor could have come up to the table and asked Mr. Hansen what he has to say for himself.  Or if his wife had been in another room watching the video and had come out to confront him.

And all of this the day after the President slapped down the Boehner/Cantor/McConnell cabal.  Shorter version: "I killed bin Laden, now let's make a freaking deal."  Shorter Boehner/Cantor/McConnell: "Take your deal and shove it."  And yet Mark Halperin thinks Obama's the one acting like a dick.  Oy.

Now, I fully appreciate that both of these stories aren't so much news as meta-news.  That is, they're stories about the people who make stories that matter.  But in this case, Halperin and Hansen have something in common, specifically, and I don't think this is just my opinion, they're both jerks.  Hansen was just begging for a fall after years of that disgusting television show that only got put out to pasture when it caused a guy to kill himself while the cameras rolled outside.*  Halperin, on the other hand, has always been an incredibly glib reporter (remember that he once said John Edwards thinks Obama is "kind of a pussy" so he has a history of just this sort of thing) and not a terribly good one to boot.

The way this day is going, maybe we'll get some karmic justice for Bill O'Reilly, Glenn Beck, and Sean Hannity as well!  Who can tell?

*For more on that subject, I highly recommend this article by Esquire's Luke Dittrich.

Bet he didn't see that coming...

Harold Camping had a stroke.

I normally don't like to indulge in schadenfreude, but in the case of morons who were only weeks ago telling the world to convert to their religion or suffer eternal damnation, I will happily make an exception.

Irony Watch

What if atheists get raptured and believers get left behind?

Just wondering.

Massive irony alert

This article in the MJS has to be a joke, right?

Nope, it turns out Scott Walker, friend of state employees, wants to tell them how we "can't thank them enough" for their efforts.

Walker wants workers to nominate colleagues for outstanding innovation, dedication and going the extra mile, though miles logged at the protest marches wouldn't count. And he's asking the public to nominate workers who gave excellent customer service.

If you want to know what some workers think about the idea, visit the comment section on YouTube under Walker's video. "We can't say thank you enough from one end of the state to the other, from one state agency to another," Walker said about his new State Employee Recognition Program a few days ago, just in time for State Employee Appreciation Week.

"I think I just sprained my eye-rolling muscles," was one of the many responses. As of Thursday, 15 people clicked that they liked what he had to say, and 681 disliked it.

"This is the moral equivalent of beating up your wife and then taking her out to dinner to make up for it," another wrote.

My reaction was to ask just what sort of an asshole thinks he can run an entire election campaign on denigrating state workers, and dedicate virtually his entire term in office thus far to screwing state workers, then turn around and give an award to express gratitude to those same people.  Not that state workers don't deserve our thanks and praise.  Of course they do, but Scott Walker is not the person to do it.  The sole purpose of this is to give Walker a nice photo op.

Honestly, I think the irony from this might be massive and dense enough that it threatens the fabric of space-time itself.