This Is Going To Make Me Seem Very Mean and Catty, But…

I am not a fan of K*thie L*e Giff*ord and I am not thrilled that she joined the Today Show. Her trademark mix of self-deprecating humor and annoyingness has never appealed to me.

First, as I have said before, these news programs in general just bother me. All they talk about it the weather and traffic and the fluff pieces are beyond inane: Today on Today there was a segment on “How to Lose 10 Pounds in Six Weeks.” OK, I’ll bite. The advice? Eat only one serving of cereal in the morning (instead of two or three); don’t put mayo or cheese on your sandwich; skip the late-night dessert or snack (and brush your teeth instead!) and don’t put butter on your toast. Do all these things and in six weeks you will lose ten pounds. The thing is I don’t eat cereal, I don’t eat mayo, I don’t eat sandwiches, and I don’t have toast for breakfast. So I will lose exactly zero pounds. Not helpful. Besides, was this segment helpful to anyone? Did anyone learn for the first time that eating half a box of cereal is not the way to go? Or that ate-night trips to the fridge are a bad thing?

This segment is followed by another insipid segment on sneaking vegetables into your diet through purees, because we as a country can’t seem to just eat vegetables. The thing is, the things you need to sneak the vegetables puree into (guacamole dip, pasta sauces, etc) are probably things that you aren’t eating anyway if you don’t eat vegetables.

As you can see, these shows bother me yet I don’t turn the channel. There just isn’t anything else. CNN is too repetitive and I am not a fan of biased news. Plus I need the company in the morning and I want to know what is going on. The TV is on in the background and every 45 minutes or so I will sit down, fast forward through most of it and watch whatever segments seem interesting, so I am not a captive audience. But even in fast forward I find the news annoying.

So today the aforementioned woman started on the Today Show and it was so awkward to watch her throw donuts at the camera, complain about working two weeks and not getting paid, holding up hair extension pieces from her own head in the make-up room, pull out a football helmet that her husband used in some football game (lest we forget she is married to a football player), make jokes about her husband wearing adult diapers (he is like in his 80s so that isn’t that funny) and yell at a siren in the street, saying “Excuse me I am making my debut.” (I hope the person being rushed to the hospital in the ambulance apologized to her). She then interrupted her way through and interview with Harvey Firesten and was inappropriate when an audience member asked him “What is the first thing you notice about the opposite sex” and she said to him: “That isn’t the one you care about, right?” Harvey gets a comeback award for his response: “That doesn’t mean I don’t notice them.” Go Harvey. And of course there was a requisite fish-out-of-water piece that had K*athie wearing weird stilt-like things and fumbling around, pretending to fall, making exaggerated faces.

Other current events bothering me include the raid at the polygamist ranch. Over four hundred children in state custody. This is very much on my radar, since I read that polygamist escapee book. I feel so sorry for the children and women who are trapped in those walls and are taught that the outside world is evil. Those kids must be so frightened, being pulled from their homes and taken away from their environments. I know this will save children who are beaten, raped, and forced to marry at young ages, but still, imagine being seven and going through this.

That girl in Utah who was kidnapped (Elizabeth Sm*art) was taken by a extremist and was brainwashed in 9 months. Nine months. She was taken into public by her captor and wouldn’t run or reveal her true identity. Imagine what growing up in a community with hundreds or thousands of people can do to your head?

And, like I said recently, I am learning so much about the Mormons. They have been tortured, killed and brutalized since the religion began less than 200 years ago. In the 1800s, states (Missouri, I think) declared civil war on them. They were driven from town to town by angry mobs of people who didn’t like their religion. They were killed in cold blood. To me, it doesn’t mater what they believe in terms of Jesus, God and the afterlife: It is wrong to be killed for religious beliefs, period. We as a country condemn other countries for things like this, but, once again, our history isn’t exactly a paradigm of perfection.

And now Mormoms are always mentioned in the same breath as polygamy, which is an edict they turned away from so many decades ago. And they are always associated with these polygamist sects, which are extremist sects that break off from the main church and have nothing to do with Mormoms.

I want to know what is happening with those children and the women and how they are being treated. I want to hear discussions about separation of church and state. I want to hear people debate whether polygamy should be allowed to exist in private communities if it is done in a way that ensures women have a choice (and aren’t forced at age 14, like they are now). But the news covers none of this is on the news because they are devoting segments to “Secrets of K*athie Lee” and “How the Fabulously Rich Spend Their Money.”

The body image poll is neck and neck! It is reassuing to hear that at least half of women have a positive imagine. More on this topic another day....

Pictured above, post-dinner Maddie, pulling her shirt off. She ended up topless by the end of the night. Sounds like my nights of many, many moons ago.