[ North Bay | Metroactive Home | Archives ]

The Byrne Report Me for Sale By JavaScript must be enabled to display this email address. I AM SO TIRED of the hypocritical media yammering about the U.S. Department of Education paying $240,000 to nationally syndicated columnist Armstrong Williams to praise the wonderful No Child Left Behind program. So what if PBS television reporter Karen Ryan pulled down a paltry $5,000 fronting for the greater government truth in the form of broadcast news reports? And when sports writer David Smith took 10 grand from the feds for inserting factoids into fish and game stories, who cared? Osama bin Laden? Since no one has offered to pay me not to write about them (hint, hint, threat, threat), I have a new business plan. It starts with holding an "Integrity Sale." The following stories are all up for auction. Neighborhood Casinos Are Good for Kids: Studies commissioned by high-ranking sources in the administration told this reporter that growing up in close proximity to a gambling den--I mean, gaming emporium--fosters self-reliance and entrepreneurship. When small children witness their parents committing suicide after pumping their home equity loan into a slot machine, 38 percent of the nimble-fingered ones are inspired to earn honest livings as Turkish rug weavers, courtesans and alter boys. Only 72 percent starve to death after their parents' passing--typically passive-aggressive acts which are only to be expected from the children of losers. Minimum bid: $997. The Local Daily Is a Real Good Newspaper: I know that a lot of folks around here think that the Press Democrat never saw a Chamber of Commerce boondoggle that didn't send the advertiser-run editorial department into serial orgasm. Left-leaning terrorist-types can go ahead and believe that the PD's venerable owner, the New York Times Company, could care less about corruption at city hall or the fate of underpaid Latino laborers in wine country. Perhaps the PD simply has bigger, well, fries to fry, such as the terrorist-financed film Super Size Me, which was effectively neutralized by the PD's recent stellar coverage of Mickey D's anniversary. "50 Years of McDonald's--Golden Arches Still Fast-Food Industry's King" headlined the business section on April 16. The story countered the food-police lie that McDonald's products cause cancer and heart disease. It concluded: "McDonald's refuses to take the blame for obesity and other health problems, saying those are the result of the choices people make. . . . At the same time, McDonald's has been a leader in the fast food industry in introducing healthier food." Now that's real journalism! Minimum bid: $6,666,666. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger Cares about Poor People: I know this seems absurd given that Arnold and Maria own hundreds of millions of dollars in energy and casino company investments. But Arnold is under vicious attack by California's axis of evil--nurses, firefighters, cops and homecare workers--because he wants to give the poor a chance to rise above socially engineered adversity and improve their genetic stock with a blond bias. The unions, which by definition are against the interests of the working class, are getting free publicity from the terrorist-liberal media, so of course Arnold has to go out of state to raise $50 million or $60 million from socially conscious corporations in order to combat the lies of these hypocritical (terror-friendly) do-gooders. Because he cares. Minimum bid; $1,000,000 (negotiable). 'People' Do Enjoy Free Speech in America: In May, the kind and generous Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice spoke to the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco, which is a group of kind and generous business folks who care a lot about freedom, democracy and alleviating poverty. In a really rude gesture, four antifreedom protesters stood up in the audience, wearing black hoods as if chilling at Abu Ghraib, chanting "Stop the torture! U.S. out of Iraq!" They were forcibly removed from the hall by the police, and cited. Rice continued her speech despite this hurtful insult, turning the personal attack into a moral lesson. "Isn't it wonderful that we live in a country where people are allowed to speak," she exclaimed. I second that. In most countries, these terrorist sympathizers would have been summarily shot for even thinking bad thoughts about gentle Condi. Minimum bid: $0.02 (this story was already done by the San Francisco Chronicle). We Find Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq!: Critics of our endeavor to free Iraqi oil will now have to eat sand. Despite the lying memos in Great Britain that claimed our kind, generous, God-instructed president set out to lie about the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq to justify the slaughter of innocents, the weapons have been found! Entire neighborhoods (including hospitals, schools, mosques) have been flattened by bombs in Baghdad, Fallujah and Najaf that Saddam forced us to drop. I also have evidence that 1 million Iraqis died prior to the war of liberation due to Saddam's refusal to allow food and medicine into the country. Minimum bid: free--just don't arrest me when the revolution comes. [ North Bay | Metroactive Central | Archives ]