By Scott Sullivan
Editor
So Called
Amazon ad affiliate Lavatory Lab ranks Michigan public bathrooms “Among America’s Worst!” — 20th of 50 states for rankest. What Jeff Bezos paid PoopCo for online opinion poll data: priceless.
Bottom of the bowl: Wyoming scored 3.5 out of 10. Michigan (5.1) was nearer the 5.2 average than whitehotpr.com’s “Worst!” teaser but it grabbed attention. Potty humor sells. Maine and Vermont were best at 8 apiece.
Bezos built his own rocket out of this $#*! show he helped create knowing when it comes to crap, people can’t buy enough. Trucks and boxes with Amazon Prime semi-smiles everywhere.
It’s incredible what some people think is credible. Take survey methodology. L.L. says based on 3,000 responses they came up with hard-number data. Don’t ask who was polled (60 in each state or, say, 2,950 in California, one in each of the others?). What questions were asked/how phrased? A pre-select study group assigns numbers to privacy, stench, untidiness? Nothing subjective there.
Who knows better than media we must eat to excrete, create? That’s why we get mass emailed feeder stories. Another example: I agree with the columnist who last week called for the Jan. “so-called insurrection” tapes” to be released. (By whom and to whom he didn’t specify). Sure enough, Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy last week released more than 40,000 hours of footage to Tucker Carlson.
Journalism 101 teaches sources have motives leaking information, as photographers know all good pictures are incomplete. When you call something “so-called” it prefaces the term it calls into question. Well thus poisoned, look out word that follows. “Sentence first, verdict later. Off with her head!” as the Red Queen said.
Select “tapes” — Do they use tape anymore? Not cyberdata? — leaked Carlson will be treated with doo-doo respect. Feed your friends, they excrete their thanks. One man’s “insurrection” is another’s getting a rise out of saying Americans believe many things; hear all sides.
Some, for instance, think QAnon Shaman-led patriots storming the Capitol Jan. 6 are heroes. Some think those who dissent from what they think must be silenced. Bye-bye Scott Adams’ cartoon Gilbert; it’s outrageous a satirist be outrageous, or newspapers use free-speech rights not to pay for nor propagate what they deem racist. Adams dared them, they took the dare. Most don’t think at all.
Take Adam Sandler. The Oregon-born man (not movie star) surfaced most recently scaring Santa Cruz, Calif., residents dressing up as The Cookie Monster from the TV show “Sesame Street.”
Police are warning residents not to engage with the Monster, who’s been charged with no crimes there so far but considered creepy, uncomfortable and known to badger people.
A 2016 Los Angeles Times story reported Sandler had faced criminal charges in New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles for threats against tourists and other street performers.
His antisemitic tirades have been reportedly caught on video (tapes or cyberfiles?) threatening residents. He was involved, say crime records, in an extortion case while computer programming for the Girl Scouts. Hard to resist Thin Mints, Trefoils and Do-Si-Dos.
In New York, where Sandler hung out in Central Park dressed as Elmo, he was captured on video in 2012 shouting antisemitic and xenophobic remarks, media there say. He pleaded guilty in 2014 in San Francisco to being a public nuisance and was banned from Fisherman’s Wharf, Union Square and the Embarcadero.
Of course you’d expect that in big-city, blue-state cesspools. Here in the hard-working, God-fearing Midwest where we defund not police but libraries for carrying LGBT materials and the Ottawa County Board replaces the motto “Where You Belong” with “Let Freedom Ring,” we might hear xenophobic and antisemitic sentiments too, but most come from respected leaders.
Which is why I have a new candidate for top spot in the bowl’s bottom: The Cookie Monster for Ottawa County’s board. They have John already but he’s splitting time with the other Gibbs — Bee Gees brothers Barry, Robin and Maurice. How deep is their love? Will they be stayin’ alive forever?
Whitehotpr wasn’t done with me. Two days later they told me “a shocking 11 percent of Michiganders” have committed illegal dumping per a PestDude.com poll. That’s less than most states, especially Montana where “a whopping 38 percent” of respondents confessed to doing so.
Thanks for the gratis adjectives, made-up websites. When I see “shocking” and “whopping” I ask, Does the writer lack confidence to let numbers stand for themselves?
Brother Bezos, come to Jesus! Eye not Hell from the rocket you’ve also built, but Eternity on Jeffrey Epstein’s forever-damned island. I still want to see the tapes.