GTV

On what Janice Crouse from Concerned Women for America is calling “a sad day for America,” Viacom is launching their gay-themed network, Logo, on Thursday. And in what can only be labeled the best reason to have the channel, Crouse went on to say that, like MTV, she sees it “as indoctrination of children to present the gay lifestyle as something that’s normal, as something they don’t have any choice over.”

Speaking as an “official gay” to any impressionable straight children out there who may be considering or are curious about becoming homosexuals, let me explain that actually, you can’t. Only gay people are gay. Ms. Crouse and her co-horts have what we adults call “a bug up their butts,” and, no, anal sex won’t dislodge it.

Logo isn’t the first gay channel, but it will be the most widespread, available to around 10 million homes via cable when it launches. So we can finally join all the other demographic groups and be advertised down to like the lowly, misunderstood minority we so long to be.

Like golfers and Donald Rumsfeld.

Commandment Fever!

Missing the point entirely — which is hardly unusual — Christian groups such as Washington-based Christian Defense Coalition are planning to install 100 Ten Commandments monuments, bringing the total to 1,000 commandments within a year following the Supreme Court’s ruling that non-religion-promoting religious displays do not violate the constitution.

Without actually reading anything or listening to anyone or, like, paying attention, the Rev. Patrick J. Mahoney said, “We see this as an historic opening, and we’re going to pursue it aggressively,” misunderstanding entirely that the single fact that they’re trying to promote Christianity with Christian monuments violates the very ruling they think allows them to do so, but whatever.

There are more than a few church-and-state issues left on the Sup’s docket, but they’ve called it quits until October. So we won’t find out whether, as one young Floridian wondered on her school mural before she was ordered to remove it, resulting in her suit against her school — “Jesus has time for you; do you have time for Him?”

Uh, no, actually, I don’t. But thanks for asking!

World wires short-circuit Bush

The San Francisco Chronicle goes out on the web to round up some of the more pithy comments that the world press has to say about the White House adminstration’s “weasel words on Iraq.”

And what they smell on the wind from Washington is more than a whiff of desperation. What they would like to hear more of is truth, and much less rhetoric. The news of death and destruction emerging daily from Iraq isn’t mirroring the more rosy and hopeful pictures that Bush & Co. keep spouting just as quickly, calling such comments “indefensible,” “desperate,” and “counterproductive.”

iTunes, uPhones

Apple released a minor update to iTunes today, coinciding with a decision to outfit all iPods with color screens. iTunes 4.9 adds support for podcasting as well and including some new directories aimed at Cingular’s reportedly upcoming Motorola iPod phone.

With yesterday’s decision by the U.S. Supreme Court that file sharing services could be liable for their customer’s violation of copyright law, iTunes moves up in class as one of the only viable, 100% legal digital audio (and video?) portals, and certainly the most successful. With color iPods the norm and iTunes-ready cell phones pending, Apple continues to be the pocket gadget leader to beat.

Confusing the matter

As the president’s war on terror Saddam Iraqi insurgents high oil prices continues unabated — and things look like they will get worse — Mr. Bush plans a prime time national address where, according to his White House spokesman, he will present a clear strategy for success in a manner that leaves him free of annoying questions from the liberal press and unbothered by radical judges or other talking points.

It’s a sure bet that he will once again site a connection between 9-11 and Iraq’s deposed regime that never existed, and label anyone opposing U.S. intervention into other countries we don’t agree with “terrorists,” whether or not they’ve ever actually attacked us.

By the way, please remember that the only way out is in, the only way forward is backward, and remember the words of Secretary Rumsfeld; that these “final throes” of the conflict should only last “for a number of years.”