PSYchotic Le Tour Italia

"Who, me? Nah, the whole world has got it wrong." - Lance Armstrong. (not a real quote).

telegraph.co.uk

Now this is just starting to get sad. Denial is so unbecoming of a professional anybody, and the mendacity has been dripping from Lance like perspiration. Apparently he's removed "Le Tour de France Winner" from his Twitter bio, but still no whiff of a confession to doping. I wonder what information all the runners-up are changing on their own bios. Can anyone name any of the second-place Tour de France finishers from the Armstrong years? Or are they all just as guilty and that's why they aren't raising their hands? There's an ominous absence of the chinking sound of $ hitting the counter. The biggest cheat: no. The worst cheat: nup. The Greatest Cheat: nail struck firmly on head. Nobody wants a supernormal explanation about the whole thing, since I would wager most folk have already made up their minds about him, Lance (we must be careful and consider the amount of funds he's helped raise for cancer research). But a terse admission would be nice. 

At least the blame has not been shifted, as in the case of the six poor Italian scientists on charges of manslaughter for "overly reassuring" comments to the townsfolk of L'Aquila. You've simply got to be kidding me. Was it a requirement of the scientists to be trained in political communication, to mitigate the seismic concerns? They were clearly not educated for proper felicitous information transmission and this was their downfall. Contradict the boss and lose your job; don't contradict the boss and go to jail. It seems in this instance the politics of the situation failed them (but moreover those that perished in L'Aquila) spectacularly.

boston.com

On the subject of failure (and to follow up from my last post) I couldn't go past a look at the Australian visit of K-pop mega- (for the nonce) star PSY (real name Park Jae-Sung, which would make his name, to us, Mr. Jay Park). Winning over audiences here wasn't a difficult task for the bloke but the visitation wasn't without its controversies. The dummy was spat because of a question by an interviewer about a drug incident from far-distant 2001. Innocuous as it was, my impression is less tempered by the drugs and more by pre-Gangnam Style discourse, like he's now famous enough to cross the threshold into the realm of Untouchable. Cry me a river, Jay. This time next year everyone will have forgotten your name and your little dance.

The Slipper of Shame

It is so hard to decide what to be outraged about these days. Who can blame the mainstream media for not knowing which triviality to beat up out of all proportion? 

Look no further than Peter Slipper and his "vile" texts about female genitalia and alleged harassment of a former staffer, which culminated in his resignation last week. Most of the media missed what was actually written in these texts. If the description of the content is as vile as they say, then I'm one of the vilest creatures I know. It would appear as a serious condemnation of a significant proportion of the male population, as the ol' bearded clam (or in the case of Slipper, shell-less mussels), appears in many open conversations around the world without any need of furtivity. According to anyone with two brain cells to rub together, Slipper's private messages are none of our business and should not impact on his ability to do his job. So what if he made an off-colour remark - it does not make him unfit for public office, and if all our politicians were judged this way then we'll soon be seeing lots of empty seats in parliament. 

Grow up, pathetic children of Australian media. If a vagina cannot be described by likening it to a mollusk, then we've lost a few centuries of progress. 

I have another question to ask. Does anyone believe that Alan Jones's comments about the Prime Minister's late father were deserving of headlines for a straight fortnight? Moreover, the resultant fallout and hypocrisy from Jones in labelling the cyber-terrorists out to ruin him is equally petty and childish. The way Jones is carrying on he’ll be nailing himself to a cross any moment now. Crikey.com.au commenter Keith summed it up tersely: The mob mobilising shock jock is complaining about a mob being mobilised. But back to my question: who bloody cares. 

In entertainment, I'm late to the party. Gangnam Style by Psy has finally reached #1 on the charts and the youtube clip has reached half a BILLION views. I won't be viewing him on TV as unfortunately he'll be appearing on The X Factor and Sunrise next week. This is a complete soap opera social media phenomenon that cannot be avoided, try as you might (I certainly did, and failed). The rise of Psy is owed somewhat to a carefully managed pop-campaign,  but moreso to the capabilities of users of social media to share and promote these otherwise little-known quirky acts, and it is for this reason that I have found myself ensnared. The teenage me, drenched in angst and Slipknot, would have me shot. But I'm honestly glad to see Korea get the spotlight for any reason that isn't (a) Samsung, and (b) complications with the North. The unsuspected consequence of course is that this surge in K-pop interest may lead to everything else that is endearing about Korea being overshadowed by the horsey-dance. Or it might have the opposite effect. Time will tell for the ROK Tourism office.