A Stroke of Genius

So there I was clicking around last night when I came across the Colbert Report from Wednesday night (Comedy Central has the good sense to repeat the previous evening’s broadcasts for those of us who just can’t make it until 11:30 on weeknights). Anyway, I stopped to check it out and proceeded to see one of the cleverest five-minute interviews I’ve seen in ages! The guest was Salman Rushdie – Booker Prize winning author and Iranian fatwa recipient. He was brilliant to say the least!!

The topic was that newspapers are starting to ‘remove’ literary critics from their staffs. Many people are finding this absurd while others simply do not know or care. It seems that Mr. Colbert resides in the former and asked Mr. Rushdie (who does critique from time to time for papers such as the New York Times) to commiserate with him. Although this isn’t word for word, this was the highlight of the interview:

Colbert: ‘Why exactly do we need literary critiques?’

Rushdie: ‘Without them we wouldn’t know what to read, much less what’s out there to read. For instance, you wouldn’t know about Paris Hilton’s memoirs.’

Colbert: ‘Paris Hilton reads?’

Rushdie: ‘Well, she has people that can read for her…’

HA!

This leads me to giving my ‘two cents’ towards this latest chapter in the Paris Hilton ‘saga’. Paris is off to prison – whoopee. Yeah know, I’m really sick and tired of hearing about her. She’s only 26, doesn’t seem to have more than a reptilian brain, and the only reason anyone gives a damn is because she was stupid enough to let somebody video tape her while she spread her legs for the ‘flavor of the week’. It truly saddens and angers me that she equals big news and that if you Google the word ‘Paris’ with the Google quick search on your toolbar ‘Paris Hilton’ is displayed at the top with ‘Paris FRANCE’ a distant third. What has this world come to? There are people on the streets of our nation and many others in great need of help due to war, illness, etc… But rather than pay attention to things like this, the vast majority of this nation would rather watch what this nitwit is going to do next. Maybe the Red Hot Chili Peppers were onto something when they told us to throw away our televisions...