Chinese authorities released provocative artist and recent international cause célèbre Ai Weiwei late yesterday in Beijing after holding him without formal charges for more than 10 weeks. DCQ Arts + Architecture Editor Ali Rodberg was there in the wee hours to document the scene as Weiwei emerged from his home in Caochangdi — the suburban Beijing arts hub Weiwei helped master-plan as a grassroots alternative to the city’s tourist-friendly 798 District — to address a clamoring throng of mostly Western journalists.
Weiwei refused to answer substantive questions, explaining that he could not grant interviews since he was free “on bail” — a line of reasoning that suggests Chinese authorities demanded silence from the noted dissident in exchange for his release.
Ali, for her part, jumped and jumped, and managed to capture a clump of Weiwei’s matted beard (and is that an eyebrow?) with her point-and-shoot through the tall forest of accredited Caucasians.
Fortunately, DCQ pal Nick Gervasi swooped in with sharp elbows and long arms to capture this video of the poor guy, who clearly just wanted to drink a hot toddy and catch up on Treme:
Meanwhile, at least four of Weiwei’s less-prominent associates — along with innumerable other political prisoners — remain detained in unknown locations “at high risk” of torture, according to Human Rights Watch. Woohoo! Here, forget that bit of unpleasantness by watching this excellent short on Weiwei’s preparation for his “Sunflower Seeds” exhibit at London’s Tate Museum last year, wherein the artist put 1,600 Chinese villagers to work hand-painting hundreds of thousands of porcelain orbs to resemble the show’s namesake:
Disclaimer: Do not read this post unless you’ve got absolutely NOTHING better to do. Seriously. You will not feel better about yourself for knowing the following, though it may give you and your co-workers something to gab about over happy hour at Fuddrucker’s tonight.
Keith Olbermann just went public with what the conspiracy theorists among us have suspected for weeks: Charlie Sheen’s “meltdown” seems to be an act inspired by San Francisco Giants closer Brian Wilson.
It makes sense, and it’s not complicated: Wilson reportedly flew from spring training in Arizona to Los Angeles on Friday, February 18th, to meet with the actor and several former ballplayers — Kenny Lofton and Lenny “Ashtray Money” Dykstra among them. They all hung out at Sheen’s house. They reportedly did guy stuff. They probably ate things and said cuss words. Cocaine, alcohol, video games and/or prayer may have been involved. Who knows. Who cares. At some point, they allegedly watched Major League with some other Hollywood folks in Sheen’s private theater.
The details are irrelevant. What matters is the overarching plotline, and this can be boiled down to two all-important events:
February 18, 2011: Wilson jets to Sheenland for several hours of male bonding.
February 24, 2011: Sheen delivers the infamous rant; “meltdown” media frenzy ensues.
The common thread between the two happenings: As Olbermann observed, Sheen’s rant (and subsequent media appearances, hastily-produced online videos, etc.) reflect a persona that mimics Wilson’s in many ways. Peep the videos:
More than a passing resemblance.
Wilson told the press that he flew out to help Sheen understand the mentality and preparation that define a successful big-league closer — this in anticipation of the apparent unwarranted resuscitation of the Major League franchise (does nobody remember this?!). But Sheen’s vocabulary, cadence of delivery and overall demeanor in his subsequent meltdown productions suggest that the Wilson’s visit impacted the actor in a more immediate manner. The resemblance is too uncanny to be purely coincidental.
This assumption, then, prompts other questions: Is Wilson writing Sheen’s material? Did he help Sheen draw up the meltdown blueprint that fateful Friday night? Or did Sheen hijack Wilson’s persona without the pitcher’s permission? More importantly, did Dykstra wear shoes or arrive barefoot?
Then there’s the “Machine” angle. Wilson surpassed his teammates as the media fave last season thanks partially to the appearance of recurring masked S&M character “The Machine” (lifted from Nic Cage’s 8MM and reportedly reprised by teammate Pat Burrell) in televised interviews. As SF Weekly’s Peter Jamison points out, Sheen, playing himself in Being John Malkovich, is referred to as “Ma-Sheen” in once scene (a point not lost upon the creators of insta-site www.DreamMasheen.com). Tenuous, yes, but another similarity between the two.
The Sheen story is dumb, but that’s the point: He has capitalized on America’s celebrity obsession to reinvent his career, feeding his tabloid tormenters a perfect “Hollywood crisis” story — a paparazzo’s wet dream. True, Sheen may have lost millions by seemingly slamming the door on “Two and a Half Men,” but hey, now he doesn’t have to be on “Two and a Half Men.” Overnight, he again became relevant to the under-35 crowd (while simultaneously alienating millions of senior citizens who never bought into the radical notion of cable television). Let’s hope he can parlay this into meaningful projects and avoid becoming this year’s Betty White.
The extent of Wilson’s involvement in the saga may never be revealed, and Sheen may, indeed, prove to be mentally ill, but what’s clear is that there’s more to the story than People would have you believe. As with Banksy’s Exit through the Gift Shop and the Joaquin Phoenix faux-breakdown before, gamesmanship appears to be at play. The media, with its 24/7 emphasis on immediacy over accuracy (which encourages the publication of planted stories and devalues time-consuming endeavors like investigative journalism), are the enablers — though they also join the American public, once again, as the pawns.
Note: This post has run in a slightly different form in years past.
More important note: Recent paucity of DCQ Daily posts notwithstanding, we’re still working on things over here. Big things. Potentially monumental things. Just not the daily-blog-post sort of things. Please trust us. Your boundless loyalty will be rewarded in the not-so-distant future. Details coming soonish.
Pop quiz! Guess which of these Greenwich Village townhouses exploded exactly 40 42 years ago today…
a.) The one that looks different than all the others; or b.) One of the others
Answer: A! The building with the funky-angled protruding living room.
Yes, that’s the one. A few members of the Weathermen (l/k/a the Weather Underground) apparently mishandled some nails and dynamite and…yeah, kablooie. According to ever-reliable Wikipedia, it took nine days of body part collection to determine that three people had died in the blast. Two others survived and escaped arrest, with one remaining on the lam for more than a decade before getting pinched for pulling an armored car heist with Tupac’s stepdad. We are not making this up.
A slightly more thorough reflection from Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn here.
Remember BMG? When they offered “Ten CDs for the Price of One,” they must have assumed that most of the kids who enlisted were too hopped up on Pogs and Big League Chew to mail back the overprints they tried to foist upon you with every delivery. I was no such mark. I monitored the mailbox religiously and ‘returned to sender’ with abandon, collecting my ten damn CDs for the low damn price of one, just like the good folks at BMG had promised. Never mind the fact that I spent the next year scrawling ever-more-threatening letters in an ultimately successful campaign to make them stop sending me Kenny Loggins compilations — I had my treasure trove, and among the trendy (Nirvana’s In Utero), obligatory (Marley’s Legend), educational (The Cream of Clapton), peculiar (Green Jellÿ’s Cereal Killer Soundtrack), and Sinbad-ish (Heavy D’s Peaceful Journey), I uncovered an album that would influence my adolescence more than any other: Bad Religion’s Stranger than Fiction.
At turns uptempo and anthemic, the album is defined by Greg Graffin’s relentless, scathing vocals and driving guitar work led by Brett Gurewitz in his premature swan song with the band (he famously split with the band to lead Epitaph Records’ evolution into a major indie force). Half punk, half thrash, half rock opera (yes, this shit gets three halves), Stranger than Fiction recruited kids like me and my friends on pure aesthetics, with singles like “Infected” featuring singalong hooks conveying vague malcontent and others, like “Hooray for Me,” issuing messages that no youngster would reject: “Can you imagine for a second/Doing anything just ‘cuz you want to/Well that’s just what I do/So hooray for me…and fuck you!”
But the extent of Stranger than Fiction’s impact only began to reveal itself once “21st Century Digital Boy” got stale around the 30th repeat and we started listening carefully to the rest of the album: I would wager good greenbacks that Americans born between 1980 and 1985 learned more middle-school vocab from this album than from the oeuvres of Twain, Steinbeck and Judy Fucking Blume combined. This from “Inner Logic,” as told to a 12-year-old more accustomed to the diction of Penthouse Forum: “Graduated mentors stroll in marbled brick porticos/ In sagacious dialog they despise their average ways/ Betraying pomp and discipline, they mold their institution/ Where they practice exclusion on the masses every day.”
My discovery of Stranger than Fiction laid the groundwork for exploration of many sorts, from exhaustive encyclopedia research on all things “-theism” to the rest of Bad Religion’s work. Frustratingly, my efforts to complete the former were thwarted by the band’s expansion of the latter throughout the 1990s and into the 2000s as they continued to mine such common themes as oppression and alienation in the context of contemporary events (notably those of the political variety). Along the way there were moments of creative paralysis and subsequent rebirth (Gurewitz’s return in 2001 seen by some as a flash point in the band’s return to form). But no album, to my mind, has come close to eclipsing Stranger than Fiction.
So, then, it was to my great pleasure that Bad Religion, while touring to support their 15th studio album, Dissent of Man, dipped well into the past as it played a sold-out Regency Center in San Francisco last Friday night. In addition to early staples such as “Fuck Armageddon…This is Hell,” the band played a handful of Stranger than Fiction cuts for the heaving crowd, most of which was significantly younger than the artists (though a sprinkling of grayhairs lurked in the rafters, heads bobbing). Graffin stoked EssEff pride by launching into the ambiguously-spirited “Los Angeles is Burning,” eliciting middle fingers and hearty “Fuck LA” chants not long after proclaiming San Francisco the band’s “second city” and describing how he was once accosted by a transvestite here during an early tour. The singer, less physical a performer than he was in his salad days, nevertheless exhibited the same moxie that impressed so many young people a quarter-lifetime ago (and clearly continues to lure new generations), charging through 25-plus songs in the two-hour set and leaving the audience screaming for more even after a second encore.
I was trying to think of a clever closing line, but it’s 5:50 a.m., and goddammit, I have to get up at Doesn’t Matter tomorrow, so just enjoy these crappy videos and pipe down already:
Former Alaska senator Ted Stevens, killed Monday night in his second plane crash, will be remembered for a number of qualities: Longest-tenured Republican senator. Unrivaled purveyor of pork. On-again, off-again felon. Owner of The Hill’s hottest temper and most prominent collection of Incredible Hulk neckwear.
Within the Beltway and throughout the 49th state, where the legislature declared him “Alaskan of the Century” in 2000 and whose only major airport bears his name, Stevens’ legacy is immense, immeasurable — as vast as the landscape over which he once presided.
But everywhere else, for all intents and purposes, Uncle Ted’s legacy boils down to two glorious minutes and eight tubular seconds:
Note: This post ran in a different form on March 6, 2009.
Pop quiz! Guess which of these Greenwich Village townhouses exploded exactly 40 years ago today…
a.) The one that looks different than all the others; or b.) One of the others
Answer: a! The building with the funky-angled protruding living room.
Yes, that’s the one. A few members of the Weathermen (l/k/a the Weather Underground) apparently mishandled some nails and dynamite and…yeah, kablooie. According to ever-reliable Wikipedia, it took nine days of body part collection to determine that three people had died in the blast. Two others survived and escaped arrest, with one remaining on the lam for more than a decade before getting pinched for pulling an armored car heist with Tupac’s stepdad. I am not making this up.
A slightly more thorough reflection from Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn here.
We know, we know: The State of the Union played its typical role as an irrelevant exercise in smarminess and manufactured etiquette, and the iPad cooks blueberry pancakes while producing orgasms on command. We’re not going to talk about these things — we’ll leave that to everyone else in America.
We want to instead bring attention to a deserving topic the mainstream media has unconscionably abandoned in recent times: the plight of the Missing Young Reasonably-Attractive Blond White Woman (MYRABWW). The fact that most sane American media consumers suffered Natalee Holloway overload years ago hasn’t deterred Western Hemisphere evildoers from creating MYRABWWs (evildoers from other parts of the globe being more egalitarian in their kidnappings and slayings of Westerners). No, the epidemic has carried on with nary a stumble. After all, there are,like, other things going on. But while Anderson Cooper and his ilk have moved on to maintaining spectacular muscle tone (nohomo) in way-less-pretty Caribbean locales, one news outlet has steadfastly maintained its toehold on the stories that matter. It should come as no surprise that this outlet, as the only collection of newsgatherers brave enough to regurgitate the same below-the-fold story for three straight years, also happens to represent America’s last bastion of objective journalism; its last semblance of an independent media unshackled by governmental censorship; its last bearer of the torch of free speech; its last source…of hope. These descriptors can, of course, apply only to one Fox News.
This isn’t to say that others have failed for lack of effort: CNN, via a series of ever-dumber website redesigns and an increased focus on Anna Nicole Smith and her pitiful troupe of supporting characters/survivors, tried valiantly. I mean, they really tried. NBC fortified its all-news cable offerings with more talking heads, some of whom can scream almost as loud as Glenn Beck — the key word, however, being “almost.” No, the reasons for Fox News’ emergence as the paragon of free press become apparent as soon as one scoots over to their easy-on-the-eyes (read: a few giant words and a plethora of shiny photos) website: Awash in patriotic colors (signifying love of country manifested in intense scrutiny of a few America-hating politicians), the homepage alone betrays Fox News’ unmatched tenacity in thoroughly reporting stories (the ACORN Pimp, Sarah Palin) the whole lot of its capricious competitors have long since abandoned in pursuit of…whatever. So dominant, in fact, is the network in its coverage of breaking and long-since-broken news that it has seemingly set its sights on a burgeoning form of new media — fake news.
For the moment, however, Fox News’ looming standoff with The Onion is neither here nor there; this is about the MYRABWWs. And nowhere is the network’s MYRABWW prowess more evident than in its U.S. news section, a cornerstone of FOXNews.com that comprises unrivaled coverage of the Supreme Court, the H1N1 flu virus, and, in America’s Future, the four most important issues we’ll face going forward: Water, Security, Islam in America, and, of course, Textbooks. But the domestic news section’s ticket-puncher has long been and will, God-willing, continue to be, Crime. This is where you’ll find the news that shapes America. This is where you’ll find the MYRABWWs.
On that note, we’re pleased to report that, as observed in a random sampling taken earlier today, Fox News continues to hold itself to the same standards that brought us groundbreaking pieces on JWoww’s wardrobe transformation and the status of the eight-limbed Indian girl: Front and center on the domestic Crime page — nay, the entire U.S.homepage — is an update on the latest tragic twist in a case involving a Virginia MYRABWW. Kudos, Fox News. Keep us in the know (unless the victim’s black, brown, pudgy, big-nosed, brunette and not super-hot, over 30, freckly, foreign, or a man).
Ms. Nina Nilssen, rest in peace. Middle America never knew ya.
(Note: This post originally ran on March 9, 2009. We know, lame. Trust that we’re working on other projects intended to turn that frown into an upside-down frown. Enjoy.)
Everyone knows industry shills are gonna be industry shills (and sometimes, as Jon Stewart observed the other day, industry shills are gonna pose as cable news channels), but this is excessive: A preeminent ‘authority’ — the head cheese of the National Association of Realtors at the time — actually penned a book under this name in 2005:
Aside from winning the prize for Longest Subtitle That’s Really Two Sentences in One and In Hindsight Doesn’t Make Any Sense, David Lereah gets our vote for Dumbest Pictorial Metaphor on a Book Cover: You see, the home is rising, which is not unlike climbing, which represents an increase in the home’s worth. Just like it says in the Longest Subtitle! But the family that owns the house is looking as if maybe they’d like to go inside their home now, please, because little Tina has to pee and Norman’s missing the Jets game. But if it falls back to the ground, it’ll smash into pieces and maybe kill Tina and/or Norman! So either Tina’s gonna pee her pants and Norman’s gonna miss the game or someone’s getting impaled by a splintered 2x4. Then there’s the possibility that Lereah meant it the other way — that the family’s missing out on this so-called “boom,” likewise represented by the soaring value of the home they didn’t buy. It’s somewhat unclear, but I’m guessing he meant the latter.
Either way, that shit’s gonna break apart when it falls back down to the ground and the family will either be irate or relieved or impaled, and someone should sue Lereah anyway for putting that house up there and for writing such a poorly named and misleading book in the first place.
(Note: The bulk of this post originally ran on February 16, 2009.)
A year ago, our freshly-minted Leader of the Free World was already mired in his first political tussle (awwww!!!), trading barbs with Wall Street suits and the Liebermans they own over executive compensation limits. Capitalizing on lingering public hysteria over the Obama brand and society-advancing regime change, however, was a less laudable operation: Pepsi’s “Refresh Everything” ad campaign.
OK, fine. I know that corporations have piggybacked off war, disaster and political propaganda campaigns to turn a quick buck in the past, but Pepsi’s ad campaign (still ongoing) is positively analrapististic. For the uninitiated, watch this Pepsi flack try to keep a straight face while telling us about his employer’s desire to seize upon a “cultural movement” and “a spirit of optimisim” to quench our “thirst for positive change”…through mass quantities of refined corn syrup. He also implies that the Obama campaign ripped off the campaign, using as his crucial piece of evidence the fact that Pepsi is older than Barack.
In its ads, Pepsi tells us that “every generation refreshes the world.” Well, now…come to think of it, that’s absolutely true: The baby boomers refreshed our supply of potential soldiers, the beatniks refreshed American demand for berets, the hippies refreshed our appreciation for the First Amendment, Gen X refreshed the cocaine trade, Gen Y refreshed the flat-top, and the millenials refreshed our definition of “refresh.” Who doesn’t want to be a part of that? I’m in — toss me a Pepsi, Britney!
The more I study the Obama campaign, the more I begin to side with Pepsi: He clearly nicked original Pepsi catchphrases like “Yes You Can” and “Fo Sho!” (because, after all, black is now acceptable in Kansas!). His campaign logo looks eerily similar to that of Pepsi — a company that, again, is older than Obama. And the fact that Obama decided to become president just as Pepsi rolled out its “Change” campaign is too coincidental for comfort. Nope, my mind’s made up — Obama’s a thief. He’s from Illinois, home of Blagojevich and that other locked-up former governor and R. Kelly and Oprah, who once endorsed a memoir that wasn’t even true. It was fictional, which is Dutch for “sucked.”
So there it is — the truth in all its exhaustively-investigated, naked glory. Screw off, Obama. Get your own damn ad campaign. And give Enrique his mole back while you’re at it.
There has been plentiful talk about town recently regarding the Obamas’ artistic choices for the White House. The First Family, thanks to one of the major perks of White House residency, has the opportunity to borrow works not currently on public display from the collections of myriad Washington art museums and galleries in order to reflect their artistic preferences within the mansion. As with Jacqueline Kennedy’s love for Cézanne and Hillary Rodham Clinton’s affinity for living amidst de Kooning and Kandinsky, the Obamas will leave a significant artistic legacy based upon their choices. Many argue that they also have the power to affect the market, boosting the sales and popularity of any artist they decide to showcase. Such was the situation when the Bushes acquired Jacob Lawrence’s The Builders in 2007, which significantly raised the prices of Lawrence works at subsequent auctions.
Working since before the inauguration with White House Curator William Allman and personal decorator Michael S. Smith, the Obamas have selected 45 artworks reflecting bold and eclectic tastes. Within the group lie modern and contemporary gems as well as classics by Mark Rothko, Ed Ruscha, Richard Diebenkorn, Louise Nevelson, Jasper Johns, Edgar Degas, Glenn Ligon, and Josef Albers, among others. The group demonstrates the strong American persona that the Obamas hoped to depict. In fact, all of the selected artists, with the exception of Degas, are American (though even Degas spent time as an expat in New Orleans, perhaps justifying his inclusion).
As with any good political inquiry, a bit of scandal has also emerged. The Obamas had selected two paintings by female African American expressionist Alma Thomas. One of said works, Watusi (Hard Edge) from 1963, is a highly resemblant homage to Henri Matisse’s L’Escargot, completed a decade earlier. The selection immediately brought criticism, especially from Obama-haters, who blustered that “even the artworks he selects are phony.” The painting was later returned to the Hirshorn Museum, with the given explanation that its dimensions were not compatible with the wall in Michelle’s East Wing office. The White House denies that the accusation of plagiary had any affect on the decision to return the painting. Ms. Thomas’ Sky Light is still affixed in the collection.
Ultimately, the Obamas have successfully furthered their much-hyped platform of “change” through the art collection. For the first time, the White House contains a plethora of contemporary works, the rooms and halls adorned with paintings and sculptures by a diverse artists’ set: Asian Americans, African Americans, females and immigrants galore. It’s refreshing to see a collection that is somewhat representative of our country’s residents and their ideals — as opposed to one dominated by antiquated portraiture of wealthy old white men.
Images, top to bottom: Berkeley, No. 52, by Richard Diebenkorn, 1955; The Builders, by Jacob Lawrence, 1947; Watusi (Hard Edge), by Alma Thomas, 1963; Alma Thomas in her studio, ca. 1968.
For the past few weeks, asshole mailmen have been bombarding DCQ HQ with “election guides” and “voting cards,” and persistent old mamasita volunteers have been stuffing hit pieces under our door. Apparently there’s an “election.” Bah fucking humbug, I say. After all, King Bloomberg already re-upped his City Hall lease with a four-year, $85 million extension, there’s no spicy legalize pot/criminalize gays ballot measures, and what the hell is a “comptroller” anyway?!?
But haunted by a childhood riddled with Schoolhouse Rock videos (odd how that cuddly little roll of paper left out all mention of “lobbyists”), I succumbed to the nagging urge to “fulfill my civic blah blah” and walked to the local polling place. The wrong one. Outside, loud factions stood on the corner opposite a bodega and screamed at the occasional passerby to vote for their chosen Latina City Council candidate (more on that later). They yelled at me going in and coming out. I feigned confusion: “Wait, who should I vote for?” The ensuing cacophony made me smile until the machetes nearly came out and I decided to mosey along to my proper voting location at the other PS whatever.
Lo and behold, I made it to PS Whatever, and with relative ease received a voting card and a place in front of a curtained booth. “Have you ever used a voting machine before?” the lady asked. “Yup,” I answered, thinking she meant the neat standing contraption with the little pokey thing that produces those pesky hanging chads. You know, a “voting machine.” Instead, I slipped through the black plastic drapes to find myself before the motherboard the little guy operated to create the illusion of the Wizard of Oz in the eponymous movie.
There were scads of rigid plastic knobs and nozzles and whirligigs to fiddle with, set amid a blinding grid of candidates and party affiliations and positions and lines. There was no clear order to the scene. It was like a drunken Scrabble marathon morphed with a game of tic-tac-toe run amok. To top all, at the bottom of the mess there was an industrial-strength red lever — the kind the villain would pull in the Adam West “Batman” series or Leslie Nielsen would employ to great comedic effect in any number of more contemporary works.
I thought this was all great fun, so I uttered not a word to the usher lady looming outside. I yanked the big red lever all the way to the right, which prompted the Wizard of Oz machine to release a satisfyingly Adam West-y “ka-chunk!” I voted for mayor (against Bloomberg just because, you know, fuck the man and whatnot). I slammed The Great Lever back over to the left like an ice road trucker intent on reaching Fairbanks before the whorehouse closes. The console displayed a little “x” next to my mayoral candidate of choice. One motherfucker down. I grabbed the lever again to throw it back over to the right; it wouldn’t budge. I juggled some switches and flicked some knobs — no reaction. My voting was done. The machine stared at me, daring me to feel entitled to some class of explanation: “You dumb motherfucker. Gentrification’s a bitch, ain’t it? Your old-timey neighbors wouldn’t have been so cavalier with my Great Lever. Now go home and watch The Wire on your Macbook.”
So I did. And my curtailed vote didn’t matter: Bloomberg won (albeit not as handily as most had expected), and my vote wouldn’t have changed the local City Council race — incumbent Diana Reyna took it easily despite being thrown under the bus by Assemblyman Vito Lopez, her former boss and benefactor, a Brooklyn Democratic kingpin, and, awkwardly to the fullest, her current neighbor up on South 5th Street.
Lessons learned: Don’t antagonize the mobs picketing in front of polling places, not all NYC public schools are the right place to vote, and never, ever disrespect The Great Lever.
Oh, Pope: Condoms don’t spread AIDS, and telling the good Christians of Cameroon — many of whom believe the disease is more likely to be caused by a witch doctor’s sideways glance than by, say, “sex” — that they do is unfair. And immoral.
Pope, advocating “abstinence” doesn’t work: Humans are designed have evolved to reproduce before they’ve even finished growing. Kids will experiment. Your Promise Keepers rarely Keep their Promises (Poophole Loophole notwithstanding). And even those supposedly filled with the holy spirit will undoubtedly experience urges to fill something themselves (see: half the clergy in Boston).
In other words, Pope, the poor souls of Cameroon and every other African nation once beset by missionaries will continue to have pre-, extra-, and every other kind of hyphenated marital sex, whether you like it or not. And now that you’ve reiterated — in high profile — the Vatican’s antiquated stance on the issue, even more will be confused about the “science” of the AIDS epidemic, even less will use condoms, and even more will get AIDS.
Disclaimer: Do not read this post unless you’ve got absolutely NOTHING better to do. Seriously. You will not feel better about yourself for knowing the following, though it may give you and your co-workers something to gab about over happy hour at Fuddrucker’s tonight. 
by Jon Toulouse
