Samatha got some bad news this past week. You see, she was a big fan of Don Imus’ show, and now he’s off the air. I hated to see that happen, too, but I am not usually up that early in the morning to watch him. My wife and I did not understand the magnitude of the controversy. If you have ever watched his show, you would know that the man is not a racist. He just made an unfortunate bad joke that got blown out of proportion.

The whole Don Imus incident reminds me of what happened to Bill Maher. Back in 2001, he had a show on ABC, called Politically Incorrect. I used to watch it whenever I got the chance. But, shortly after the events of 9/11, Mr. Maher made a comment on his show that got him fired. His statement (which I totally agreed with) was, “Mr. Bush keeps talking about the cowards who flew those planes into the buildings. Well, they may have been a lot of things, including being very evil men, but they were definitely not cowards. Deliberately flying a jet into a skyscraper for a cause that you believe in is a sick murderous act, but not at all cowardly.” OK, those weren’t his exact words, but that is the gist of what he said. That is actually the statement I made in response to the President’s description of that tragic day. I also added that they were not hypocrites.

Well, Bill Maher came out of it alright. He now has a similar show on Showtime called Real Time, that is probably my favorite thing to view these days. With any luck, Don Imus will also make a comeback.

As of this writing, the death-toll in the shooting spree at Virginia Tech is at thirty-two, not counting the suicide of the perpetrator. There are some victims in the hospital, so the count may be higher when you read this. My initial reaction on hearing about this incident was the same as it has been to similar mass killings in the past (such as Columbine and the Amish school). Why is it so easy for nuts to obtain firearms? In the civilized world, these multiple shootings happen almost exclusively in America. The only place that is worse is Iraq, but I guess that country doesn’t qualify as civilized. I place the blame on the deliberate misinterpretation of the Second Amendment. If you include all the words, it says you get to bear arms if you’re in the militia. In our time I guess that would correspond to being in the National Guard. However, I don’t believe many of America’s mass shooters were members of that organization.

And lastly, there have been a lot of news reports lately about how much money has been raised by the various Presidential candidates. The pundits always seem to equate having the most money to getting the majority of the votes. I suppose there may be some correlation between the number of people willing to donate and likely voters, but that is not the way it is reported. In any election, the amount of money the candidate has to spend is considered a primary factor in their chances of winning.

I know they aren’t actually buying the votes (at least I hope not), but it seems to be an insult to the intelligence of the voters. Does high saturation advertising actually pay for itself in politics the way it does in corporate marketing? Well, maybe it does. Folks get talked into spending a lot of money by ads. Maybe voters can be brainwashed the same way.