Hello and welcome to 2011. If you were worried that this year won’t be as silly and dumb as 2010, the following clip should ease your mind:
That’s Norah O’Donnell with the shiny jacket, and aspiring writer Alex Pareene with the mustache and manly voith. In Pareene’s defense, he seems to realize that what he’s saying is very stupid and he kinda sorta doesn’t mean it probably. And yes, that’s a fairly accurate description of Pareene’s career so far.
Speaking of going on TV and blurting out things that make people say, “Yeah, um, I’m not so sure I agree with you there,” last week the boss said something that raised a few eyebrows. In case you missed it:
Okay, alright, the death penalty might be a bit harsh. Hasn’t Michael Vick been punished enough already, being sent to Philadelphia? Just kidding, Philly. Please don’t cut me.
Some people were more offended by Tucker’s outrageous statement about a dog-torturer than by the actual dog-torturing itself. One dimwit named Cerk Uglyer even compared dogfighting to hunting. Fortunately, we have smart people like Matt Labash to counteract all this dumbness:
Look, I know Tucker’s pronouncement wasn’t the least controversial thing in the world to say. So there was a predictable level of blowback: spittle-flecked denunciations, Tweets of outrage, stale bow-tie jokes, all three of which were perfectly embodied by public intellectual/TV weatherman Al Roker, whose iPhone damnation read, “Tucker Carlson’s bowtie has finally cut off oxygen to his brain. Only explanation for odious Michael Vick comment. Or maybe he’s an idiot.” This hardly seemed sporting – making a dated bow-tie joke a half decade after Tucker quit wearing one. It’d be like me making fat jokes about Al Roker, though he’s had his stomach stapled since 2002.
Roker has been defending himself on Twitter by saying that all the pictures of Tucker show him wearing a bow tie. In that case, we should judge Al Roker by all the old pictures of him wearing the Goodyear blimp. Anyway, read the whole thing Labash wrote. And be kind to animals. The President of the United States might not care, but the rest of us do.
P.S. Not content with defending the torture-killing of dogs, Roker tweets:
Al Roker hates dogs. Pass it on.
