Friday, May 30, 2008

A couple of crazies

Perhaps one of the sillier stories to come out of the tragedy of the earthquake in China is this story where Sharon Stone made some off-hand and silly comment about the disaster and loss of life being, essentially, karmic payback to China for how they deal with Tibet.

First off, she's an actress and really, who cares what they think about things like this. But if we are going to care, for whatever reason, it's also possibly useful to remember that Stone suffered some brain damage back in 2001. So that might have had some impact. Stone has always been a touch nuts, even by the historically high craziness level that many Hollywood actresses tend to possess, but I think she's been even loopier since that incident.

So really, who cares. And the fact that people in China are paying any attention to it is almost as crazy. Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't you guys have something more important to deal with right now?

No, if you want to read something that will genuinely offend you in the world of pop culture, have a taste of this. Yes, Michelle Malkin a Conservative commentator, successfully browbeat Dunkin Donuts into pulling a commerical because they didn't like the scarf that spokeswoman Rachael Ray was wearing. It was, no kidding, too Muslim for them.

I'm not actually mad at Malkin about this. She's off in the lunatic fringe of conservative commentators. And it's not like there isn't a method to her madness. If that's how you want to make money, by appealing to the absolute lowest and most xenophobic parts of our psyche, well, it's your soul. And to take from the wisdom of Ms. Stone, I imagine karmic payback is a bitch.

There's always going to be a small group of euqally adled-minded people who will flock to her (John Rogers theory on 27% of the American public being crazy holds very true here. Actually, there's hope since she represents the views of considerably less than that number). And I've gotten to the point where I consider it good practice to ignore the views of deeply crazy people. If you don't, well, there's certainly the risk of bumping up that 27% crazy figure by a few fractions of a percent.

No, my real ire is at Dunkin Donuts. Seriously, this woman and her lunatic fringer get upset over a scarf that your spokeswoman wears and instead of saying "Go fuck yourselves, you bunch of lunatic, racist assholes" they go "OK, sure. Please don't be mean to us."

So here's my boycott. Granted, I don't know if there are any Dunkin Donuts in Canada, but if you read this and occasionally go there, stop doing it. Write the company a letter and tell them that until they grow a fucking spine and start running the ad again, you won't be buying their products.

All of this and I find Rachael Ray deeply annoying. I'd be happy to see less of her on TV. But not like this. This is just idiotic.

Last Five
1. Castor and pollux - Bob Mould
2. Sometime soon - Matt Mays*
3. Dance dance dance (live) - Neil Young
4. Fire (live) - Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band
5. Horse pills - The Dandy Warhols

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

The only thing I really know about this brew-ha-ha is from what I've very briefly read about on the FOX news websites. Guess I'm not surprised those crazies would pick up a story like this. At any rate, I'm not up on the latest so I must reserve comment.

I can tell you the only Dunkin' Donuts places I've seen were down in Windsor, Ontario during my university days. I'm sure a few other large Ontario centres must have the too.

I can only recall going into one one once during a donut emergency. Can't say as I was overly impressed with their fare. I'll take Tim Horton's over them any time.

Scarlet said...

A quote from Wiki about Rachel Ray:
Celebrity chef and Travel Channel personality Anthony Bourdain has referred to Ray's affiliation with Dunkin' Donuts as "evil" and is like "endorsing crack for kids".

Crack? huh? Anyway, if I were Ray I'd be pissed off enough about this to strangle Malkin with my scarf. Ray is irritating and annoying but I wouldn't mess with her. She has large thighs.

Just finished reading James Frey's new book "Bright Shiny Morning". I know he's an admitted liar but if karma was due anywhere it would be in the Los Angeles that he's portraying. Don't they have a lot of earthquakes there? Watch out Sharon.

towniebastard said...

Of all the links I put up there, the one linking to the reasons why Malkin does these kind of seemingly insane things is, I think, the most important.

Does she believe a lot of the crap she's saying? Probably. But she also sees money in being outrageous. Same with a lot of Conservative commentators, like Rush Limaugh and Ann Coultier.

Malkin is getting ripped by just about anyone with half a brain. But she's getting lots of headlines about how she just made a major US corporation her bitch. Try not to dwell on it too long because your brain might explode, but she just made a lot of money by making that stupid donut chain fold like that.

She's like spam. 95% of people might be smart enough to ignore it, but you only need the 5% who are stupid enough to take it seriously to make a profit off of it.

Mark said...

great post

Anonymous said...

The sad thing is that Dunkin' Donuts probably dropped it because they went "Oh my god, it does look muslim" I read things like this and I start bleed from my temples.

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