Delaware Liberal

Open Thread Jan. 25: Horndogs and Tide Pods

We have an apparent blockade on real news this morning. The interwebs are clogged with stories about celebrities being accused of rape and sexual assault, a veritable cornucopia of horndogitude. Russell Simmons, David Copperfield, Nelly, even ugly-as-a-mud-fence porn star Ron Jeremy — which brings up the question, “Jesus, Ron, don’t you get enough of that at work?”

Poster boy for love-lorn old men, though, remains DelCo Congressman Pat Meehan, who took the admittedly tawdry story of his payout to a harassed aide and used it to turn himself into a national laughingstock. Every woman who writes a column now has a crack at him, and it isn’t pretty. This piece captures the general tone, and it demonstrates that there is one thing worse than having all the women in the country angry at you — having all the women in the country laughing at you. It brings to mind a famous quote by author Margaret Atwood, “Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them.”

Speaking of Atwood, she wrote this lament on the passing of author Ursula K. Le Guin.

In her 2014 essay “About Anger,” she writes, “Anger is a useful, perhaps indispensable tool in motivating resistance to injustice. But I think it is a weapon — a tool useful only in combat and self-defense. . . . Anger points powerfully to the denial of rights, but the exercise of rights can’t live and thrive on anger. It lives and thrives on the dogged pursuit of justice. . . . Valued as an end in itself, it loses its goal. It fuels not positive activism but regression, obsession, vengeance, self-righteousness.”

What are The Kidz up to these days? Apparently, eating Tide pods. This isn’t like the original problem with the little packets of detergent and bleach, which was that toddlers entranced by the look and smell were eating them. This is fueled by teens who want to go viral on YouTube. This being America, a bar in Pennsylvania has figured out how to make this work for them by inventing the Tide pod shot While it has the colors exactly right, it’s not exactly a taste sensation: The layers are formed by Bailey’s Irish Cream, vodka with orange food coloring and the blue citrus liqueur Curacao. “It’s terrible,” the bartender said. “But we’re a bar. We serve adults.”

In our quest to bring you Eagles-related news that matters not even a little bit to your life, journalists were given word yesterday that some mook bet millions of dollars on the Eagles at a Las Vegas sports book. Remember, the Birds don’t have to win for him to collect — they just have to lose by 4 points or less, which even Donovan McNabb managed in his crack at the Pats.

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