THE OTHER SHOE DROPS: Updates To Previous Posts
† Chavez: T&A Appropriate For Kids, But Not Cartoon: First Homer Simpson and his dysfunctional – and fictional, let us remember – clan get kicked off Venezuelan TV for being a bad influence on the nation’s kids. Now “a snippet of dialogue from a recent installment is kicking up controversy in Argentina,” reports The Washington Post. The offending “Los Simpson” episode includes a scene at Moe’s Tavern where Homer and his friends are discussing the upcoming election over beers. Carl Carlson opines: “I'd really go for some kind of military dictator, like Juan Perón. When he 'disappeared' you, you stayed disappeared,” and Lenny adds: “Plus, his wife was Madonna.” “Most Argentines don't consider Perón a dictator,” notes the WaPo, “and they certainly don't blame him for the fact that up to 30,000 dissidents went missing during the country's ‘dirty war.’ Those disappearances are attributed to a military dictatorship that ruled from 1976 to 1983, after Perón's death.” Adding insult to insult, “The reference to Madonna also riled Peronistas. Perón's second wife, Eva, is so beloved here that her ardent backers launched protests after the pop star was cast to portray her in the 1996 movie ‘Evita.’” Former congressman Lorenzo Pepe, who heads the Juan Domingo Perón Institute, complains to the WaPo, “The part about Madonna - that was too much.”
† Skinny Is Out, Curvy Is In: The French National Assembly has approved legislation that makes it illegal for the fashion industry, advertisers and Web sites to “provoke a person to aspire to excessive thinness by encouraging prolonged food limitations.” The billm, which now goes to the French Senate, carries penalties of up to two years in prison and fines of up to $47,000, reports The Washington Post. Critics of the legislation argue that “the courts should not be the arbiters of health or beauty,” and Elle magazine editor Isabelle Maury tells the WaPo that “It may mean that we won't be able to publish anything. … If they decide to strictly implement [this law], it could mean that every fashion show and magazine will be banned or charged.” But Didier Grumbach, president of the French Federation of Couture, counters: “Fashion is not targeted by this bill. People who use the image of sick girls for advertising campaigns are.” By one estimate, 40,000 people in France – mostly young women – suffer from anorexia.
† The Stiletto Always Knew She Was A Princess: Boston Globe columnist Ellen Goodman writes, “I always thought that genealogy was for people whose blood ran blue. … for folks who traced their ancestry to the Mayflower or the American Revolution … so when the New England Historic Genealogical Society published the family connections between presidential candidates and celebrities, I was an amused bystander.” If you put any stock in this sort of thing, John McCain is supposedly the sixth cousin of Laura Bush, Hillary Clinton is the ninth cousin twice removed of Angelina Jolie and Barrack Obama is a Bush. D. Brenton Simons, who heads the NEHGS and found the links between Clinton-Jolie and Obama-Bush tells Goodman in an interview: “We all have tens of thousands of cousins. You can walk down the street right past a third or fourth cousin and not know it.” In other words, every human being on this planet is related to every other human being on this planet, if you research the genealogy or the genetics back far enough into antiquity. For all she knows, The Stiletto could be a Bush, though it’s equally likely she could be an Obama – who is a Bush.
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