Dancing Contest Uproars

Holy crap, people are morons. Paste eatin', mouth breathin' morons. And not in a good way (like when you need someone to get rid of a lot of paste). I mean in the way that just makes me insane because it's so non-sensical. Here's the latest thing that's annoying me: People's reactions to the new cast of Dancing With The Stars. Specifically the issue of having Chaz Bono on there. (For those of you who have been under a rock for God only knows how long, Chaz Bono is the offspring of Cher and Sonny Bono (before he plowed himself into a tree whilst skiing, obviously). Chaz was born as a girl and named Chastity. She declared herself gay at some point, which really wasn't a shocker to anyone that had seen her. And then a few years ago, she had a sex-change and legally became Chaz. And while he's not fully biologically male (he had the top surgery, but has not yet had what I lovingly refer to as the addadicktomy), he is legally a male. Consider yourself caught up.) And thus, it begins.

I first saw a clip of Hoda Kotb (who needs to buy a vowel or something) talking with the nearly insufferable Kathie Lee Gifford on the equally insufferable Today show about Chaz. Kathie Lee said, "Chaz is going to have a female partner." And Yoda Hoda says (rather uncomfortably), "Yes. That's what's going to happen. So it's going to be interesting!" And then they both giggle like idiotic schoolgirls. Good Lord.

Why is that so funny, exactly? Considering that he's a man, baby (say that in an Austin Powers accent and it's a lot funnier), who would you have him dance with? Another man? Well, that would be just strange! Not to mention, wrong. Then again, maybe they're the same type of people that thought that Portia diRossi (should she have actually done the show) should have been paired up with another woman! How ridiculous does that sound?! Very. Very ridiculous. And idiotic. And anything but sane and reasonable.

And speaking of sane and reasonable, that's exactly what some folks are not being over this Chaz Bono announcement. See, I went over to the ABC website to see what folks had to say. Here are some excerpts:

From minnerl: "I believe Chastity Bono, is and always will be a woman. You cannot change what God designed. I will not watch the show now that she is on it. I will definitely skip this season."

From 49TRGll62: "My family and I will be boycotting DWTS this season. My kids love the show but I will not let them watch it this year. I AM TIRED OF THE MEDIA TRYING TO PRETEND THAT PEOPLE WANT TO EXPOSE THEIR YOUNG CHILDREN TO THIS LIFESTYLE! Young children do not even fully understand what it means to be straight yet. Some people still believe in morality and YES, it is something wrong with that lifestyle."

From patjoe55: "What do you think?I won't be watching this season either, as I also cannot agree with the homosexual agenda. I used to enjoy the show, all except for Bruno and his remarks and gyrating all over the place, especially toward the gay dancers. And lately, they are putting more and more gay people on, maybe for Bruno's benefit. No, thank you."


Jesus, where do I start. Here's what I want to ask these people: How have you felt about some of the people that have been on this show in the past who haven't been gay or transgendered, but have had an abhorrent lifestyle? Let's review:

Pamela Anderson: Let's be honest here, she's hot as hell. But she's posed for Playboy, makes a living off of her super hot body, was married to Tommy Lee (Lord only knows what that lifestyle was like) and has used drugs to the point where she contracted hepatitis C. Not exactly a role model, I wouldn't think. (But God, is she hot.)
Mike "The Situation" Sorrentino: Makes a living by getting drunk as can be every night (from what I can tell from the limited, yet torturous amount of time that I've logged with Jersey Shore) and bangs everything in sight that has a vagina. Abercrombie & Fitch offered to pay him money if he would STOP wearing their brand! What does that tell you about the boy?!
Kendra Wilkinson: For cryin' out loud! You people have a problem with Chaz Bono but not with Kendra?! She was whoring herself out to the ancient Hugh Hefner as one of his three girlfriends. And she marketed her own sex tapes! Oh, yeah. That's real family friendly there. Sure.

And let's not forget that also appearing in the upcoming season will be Ron Artest. Allow me to remind these holier-than-thou types that Ron Artest has been known to be an abhorrent human being. From being charged with everything from starving his dogs to jumping into the stands and starting a brawl that resulted in a year long suspension from the NBA. He's not exactly the most non-controversial chap out there. (Granted, he seems to be getting his act together, but I'm not totally convinced. The man wants to change his name to Metta World Peace. That should speak for itself.) Need I go on? (OK, maybe I do just a little bit. Kim Kardashian for cryin' out loud! She's famous because of her ass that was seen my millions on the Internet because of a sex tape!)


So, look. Just relax about the Chaz Bono thing. If you like to watch dancing contests, then watch. If you don't like to watch dancing contests, then don't. But if you're going to judge, at least be freaking consistent about what you're judging people on. Wow. Just wow. You morons.

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When Reunions Go Awry

ABC has this new show called "Find My Family" and it is just what it sounds like it is. People who have lost track of or who have never known family members (ie, kid gets put up for adoption and is searching for birth mother, or alcoholic father leaves family 25 years ago, but has now quit drinking and wants his family back, etc.) go on some sort of quest to find them. Actually, ABC goes on the quest and these people sit around and tearfully tell their story to the cameras. It's done by the people who do "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" so you know that you can expect the same sort of tragic build-up which culminates in some sort of spectacularly happy ending...only without the rusted plumbing and crumbling drywall. I think.

I kind of have an issue with this show. I'm not totally against families reuniting. But you have to admit that there are some people who are just better off without each other. Trust me, if you are separated from people who are related to you through no exodus of your own, there's a reason and it's usually not very pleasant. I'm not saying that it's always tragic, but you're going to have to define what that is to make that decision. Is getting knocked up as a teenager and moving across the country without telling anyone that you know what is going on and then giving birth to a child and giving it up for adoption immediately there in the delivery room and then going back across the country to resume your life, never having laid an eye on the child that just popped out of you and never telling a soul about it, is that a tragedy? I don't think that it is. It sounds kinda sad, but I don't think it sounds tragic. And just remember, I'm basing that assessment being the kid who popped out in that scenario. So it's not like I'm pulling all of this out of my arse like I do the majority of my posts. I have a little bit of investment in this sort of thing. I'm just saying.

I anticipate that this new show will focus on only the happy endings and will do absolutely zero follow up after the parties are reunited. Just because it's all great and tearful at first doesn't mean it's going to stay that way. I also highly doubt that this show will focus on the lives that the adoptees have had with their adoptive families. Someone, usually more than one someone, had to raise these people and I can only hope that their contribution to the searchers lives are not minimalized, though I doubt that will be the case.

Everything I've said up to this point pretty much sums up why I'm not exactly in favor of this show. This isn't someone's mortgage we're talking about, these are people's lives. And here's the perfect example of how this sort of thing could turn out, but that ABC is never in a million years ever going to air:

Meet Matthew Roberts:

According to The Sun, he had "...set about finding his biological parents with a mix of nerves and excitement." That seems reasonable. They also report that "...he hoped that discovering his father's identity would help him to work out what made him the man he had become." Yeah, see, I think that part is kinda crap.

He's hoping to learn about some dude that he's never met and understand how that made him grow up the way that he did? Um, shouldn't he be looking at the people who raised him for that knowledge? Yes, he should. Biology plays a pretty small role in how you turn out and I think that Matthew's case could really exemplify that position. See, Matthew did find out who his father was and it turns out, thank God, that Matthew was absolutely nothing like his father.

He learned that his father is in prison. Yikes. That's rough.

He learned that his father is in prison for the rest of his life. Um...uh-oh. (If this were a movie, that "pay attention" music would be playing right now.)

He learned that his father is Charles Manson. Oh, s**t.

ABC?? Calling ABC! Don't you want THIS on your little show?! Some guy who is searching for his biological parents finds out that his mother was raped and impregnated by Charles Manson during a drug fueled orgy! That sounds incredibly touching, doesn't it, ABC?! Hello? HELL-OH??

Huh. They don't seem to be paying attention to me. OK, back to Matthew. He looks an awfully lot like Mr. Manson, so I'm not really doubting his story all that much. Besides, it's not like something anyone would want to go around bragging about. "Hey, found my birth dad! Wanna guess who it is? Go ahead! You'll never get it. Nope. Nope. I'm just gonna tell you. It's Charles Manson. No, really! Charles MANSON! Yes! THAT Charles Manson. Hey, where are you going?"

But back to what I was saying about how it's more how you were raised than where you came from. Matthew says that "I'm not nuts but I've got a little bit of it. It's scary and upsetting. If I get worked up, my eyes get really big and that's really freaked some people out before....I don't even like the fact that I'm big. It makes me even scarier. My hero is Gandhi. I'm an extremely non-violent, peaceful person and a vegetarian." I'm not really sure what the vegetarian part has to do with any of this. It's not like Manson was a cannibal or anything. But I see what he's getting at. Manson was a guy who had a bunch of people killed and Matthew doesn't even have things killed for him to eat. Sure. I get that. Look, anything that the guy needs to come up with to convince himself and anyone else that he is not at all like Charles Manson, I'm thinking he gets to do that and he gets to do that however he wants. It's Charles Manson after all!

By the way, since learning of his offputting heritage, Matthew and Chuck have been exchanging letters. It's hard to tell what the letters actually say. Not because I haven't seen one of the letters, but because I can't read Chuck's handwriting enough to decipher his rantings. Behold!

It's a head scratcher. Here's the thing that Matthew says that I think ABC needs as a disclaimer on their show. "What I'm worried about is that you think you're going to meet your birth mother or father and they're going to love you and welcome you with open arms. But he's not that kind of person." No, I'd have to say that Charles Manson is not going to welcome you with open arms. A large butcher knife, perhaps, but open arms? Unlikely. I also think that Matthew is believing a lot of things that people in his situation, minus Charles Manson, of course, think when he says, "He's my biological father - I can't help but have some kind of emotional connection. That's the hardest thing of all - feeling love for a monster who raped my mother."

Matt...can I call you Matt? Matt, listen to me. I don't think that you are "feeling love" for the man whom you have accurately characterized as "a monster who raped (your) mother". I think you're still trying to filter out the "love" that you carried around all of these years for the father that you never knew. And now that you know, you haven't quite internalized how to deal with being OK with not loving the monster that is your father. Granted, I'm not a therapist or anything. Well, I'm not anymore. But if I still was, that's what I'd tell you.

I'm seriously hoping that this ABC show doesn't grow legs and stick around for very long. Don't get me wrong. I'm not going to protest or call ABC and claim to be offended or any sort of crap like that because I'm not offended. I just don't think that it's a great idea and I hope it goes away. At the very least, I'd like to hope that ABC would offer folks that participate in this circus act some sort of therapy before and after, but I think the chances of that happening would be slim to none. It's hard to say which would be more likely. Giving out the therapy or putting the Manson guy on there. Hmm. Definitely a coin flip.

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Shoes Speak Louder Than Words

Ashley Dupre (pronounced, for no other reason than that's how she chose to say it, as Do-PRAY), is someone you may be familiar with, even if you don't recognize the name right away. She was the "escort" that "escorted" former New York City Governor Idiot Eliot Spitzer. Yep, that's her. Eliot Spitzer's whore. (Which would be a fabulous name for a band, don't you think? Eliot Spitzer's Whore. I like it. Now I just need a band.)

She prefers the term "escort" (and if you're a whore, wouldn't you prefer to be called just about anything but "whore"?) as opposed to "prostitute", but she seems to be in her own little world most of the time, so don't be surprised if her next self-appointed title is "rocket scientist". Whatever you call her, someone over there at ABC seems to think that people are interested in what she has to say. They seem to be putting a spin on Spitzer being caught frequenting hookers as her "bringing him down". (Now, I'm sure that someone "went down" in that relationship, but I'm thinking it was her, if you know what I mean. If you don't, it's OK. You will someday. Maybe. If it seems to be taking too long, you can always get a whore to show you.) And it was under that pretense that Diane Sawyer felt the need to interview her for half an hour! What can a hooker talk about for half an hour?! Or, at least, what can a hooker talk to Diane Sawyer about for half an hour that would make people want to listen to her? Not a lot, yet the interview went ahead.

Several things about this interview annoyed me. The first of which is Diane Sawyer and her "poor, innocent person stricken by unavoidable tragedy" voice. Why is she speaking to her like something awful has happened? Granted, being a hooker isn't the best career move for most and I can only imagine that it would, in fact, be awful. But when it's the kind of awful that's your own doing, do you still rate the "we're so sorry this happened to you" voice? I don't think you do. I think you give up being talked to with that voice when you make the decision, of your own free will, to become a hooker. It might be tragic, but it certainly is not unavoidable. You can not be a hooker. It's possible. Look at me! Look at you! Right now. Both of us! NOT being hookers!

(Side note: Diane Sawyer needs to either darken her hair color or spend some time in Sarah Palin's tanning bed. She's blending all together there. You can't see where her face starts and where her hairline ends.)

Next was the chosen attire of a one Ashley Dupre (aka ESW. Eliot Spitzer's Whore.). She looked like she raided the closets at the FLDS ranch. Diane Sawyer had more skin showing than the hooker did! :::shudder::: Are we supposed to be convinced that she's really a very demure, very conservative, very prudish, very non-sexual woman in that get up? Very not-hooker-ific? Because had we all not known that she was ESW, it might have worked. But if that were the case, how would it be explained that she was giving an interview with Diane Sawyer about prostitution? Exactly. It wouldn't. So what's with the outfit there, Ashley?

ESW claims that she didn't know that Spitzer was the Governor. She said he "looked familiar". (Probably because he was the Governor, don't you think?) She also said that when she watched his press conference (where he gave the I-have-been-busted-doing-something-really-stupid-and-I-must-now-stand-here-with-my-stupid-wife-at-my-side-and-try-to-apologize-and-sound-like-I-mean-it speech) that she felt "connected" to his wife, Silda. (Silda? Um, pretty.) She said she didn't feel connected to him. Both clear indications that, for a hooker, it would seem as if she was doing it all wrong!

ESW said that she could feel his wife's pain, the pain that she saw in her eyes. But she was making it sound as if she had no idea, NO idea, that the men that she was "escorting" might, just might, have had a wife, a girlfriend, a female in their life that was not a hooker. She acted as if this was the first time that she was inclined to think that these men might, just might, be cheating on someone else. I'm sure she was shocked, just shocked, at this startling reality. Whatever. (You might notice that her title isn't "Eliot Spitzer's Really Good At Lying Whore.")

Come on, anyone who watched this when it aired (it doesn't count if you're watching it online after the fact, like I am) was watching it for one reason and one reason only and it wasn't to hear about ESW talk about her feelings. They were watching for some down and dirty details of how the Governor liked it. They wanted the kinky, they wanted the dirty. They didn't want the details of ESW's childhood memories. They wanted the details of ESW's "escorting" the Governor into all sorts of different positions; that's what they wanted! And is that surprising? No! Of course not! It's like I said earlier, why else are you going to listen to a whore?

What I got out of this whole "interview" was this: If you're going to be a hooker, you're going to have some thinking patterns that are just not quite right. You're going to have to come up with ways to justify this to yourself (and others, should you be involved in a public scandal that involves a state's highest elected official). ESW's methods of justification were...well...let's just say that it's a good thing she was partial to what she was doing, otherwise she would have told herself that she's full of crap. For example, her justification for "continuing her career" as ESW was "I really didn't see the difference between going on a date with someone in New York, taking you to dinner and expecting something in return. I really thought it was more of a trade-off. He's expecting something in return when you date, whereas, you know, being an escort, it was a formal transaction." Huh. Um, you know, you don't have to go out with a different guy every week. You don't have to have sex with your date after dinner. You could just go out with someone, not because they're a guy, but because you like them and because they like you as someone who is not a whore.

The overly whitened teeth are so obviously over whitened, they would glow purple if she opened her mouth in a room with a black light. (That's what happened to Ross on that one episode of 'Friends'.) See, that's the thing. No, not just the teeth. Everything is fake. Everything is pretend. And it's all being passed off as not only the truth, but as journalism and reporting! And in reality, it doesn't appear to be any of those. It's just a hooker and some broad asking questions, really.

I know she wants to come across as being honest (because, really, who wants to come across as a liar?), but she's just not all that convincing. It just seems like she's trying too hard. (Trust me. If you've ever met a person who is genuine, they speak and act in an effortless manner because they're real and because they're being honest. It's hard to explain, but you can just tell. Sadly, however, it's a rare trait that most people don't possess. But if you ever meet a truly genuine human being, consider yourself lucky because you're in for quite a treat. It's awesome. And so are they.) Things just don't add up.

From what she says to what she wears, it just strikes me as someone who, once again, is just blowing something, but this time it's all hot air instead of the Governor. Look, here she is when she did the interview with Diane Sawyer:

And here she is in the interview she did with People Magazine about a week before her little sit down with Diane:

Uh-huh. Well, there are some subtle differences between the two outfits, wouldn't you say?

Aside from that (and as long as I'm bagging on the choice of attire), there are her shoes. She's wearing this purple, long sleeve, polygamist-sect-wife-inspired dress o' chastity and yet on her feet are stiletto heels. Very stiletto. Look at those shoes:

I'm not a stiletto expert (oh, who am I kidding? Of course I am! I'm just not an expert about stilettos on me.), but those are easily four inch heels. Possibly five. And there's a name for heels like those. "F-Me Pumps" I believe is the slang term for them. And ironically, "F-Me Pumps" is the official name for them as well.

Her dress says "No", but her shoes say "Yes, baby, yes." That's it. I don't believe her. She's lying. She's just whoring herself out, this time to Diane Sawyer, to make a quick buck. (How much did she get paid for this anyway, I wonder?) It's all fake. She's just trying to make herself look good. And while she does look good and she might think that she's able to convince other people that she's no longer ESW, she's going to have to spend a little bit more time trying to convince herself that she's not ESW anymore either.

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