Think of the children

In one sense, getting a top three Google hit is simply 15 minutes in the 21st century, but put those petty thoughts of fleeting fame out of your mind, I say, and take a moment to weep for the hard working school kid who stays up late at night doing research for the big term paper and comes across poor chuckling as an authority. Do we need any more evidence that computers should be banned from school?

You may think the editors here at chuckling on-line magazine spend our days hitting Google with combinations of words we've used in hope of seeing our name in RGB, but in this case at least, I was just trying to confirm a few facts about Republican presidential contender Mike Huckabee before commenting on an article in The New York Observer.

The article goes to great length detailing Huckabee's rhetorical prowess to support its contention that he could emerge as a contender in the Republican primaries, yet fails to mention a single relevant detail about Huckabee's politics. I find that notable because Huckabee is a moral and intellectual cretin who supports torture and denies science, and no doubt embraces most of the rest of the right wing wacko creed.

One would have hoped that after the years of media debacle that enabled George W. Bush to become president, start a stupid war, gut the constitution, and so on, that the media would be at least a bit wary of smooth talking morons and/or nut cases. But the Observer's Mr. Kornacki is having none of that.

Time and again, Mr. Huckabee asserted himself as the strongest orator of the bunch, combining the superficial—but ever vital—charm of Mitt Romney with a remarkable ability, honed during his years in the pulpit, to address bloodless policy topics in a language that is accessible and appealing to the common man.

Yes, charm, a remarkable ability to appeal to the common man. That's what we need. Huckabee's supporters must have to bite their tongues to keep from chanting "four more years!" Meanwhile the media puts on a fresh pair of kneepads.

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Since I'm on the topic of the Observer, I'll mention that their writing about the arts is often fantastic and share John Heilpern's take on Mel Brooks in this week's edition.

They say he doesn’t care about the little man, but I say Mel Brooks is a little man. There are those who accuse him of not caring about the real theater lovers of this proud city, but I say what’s the upper balcony for? There are even those who call him an opportunistic apostle of unacceptable greed. And to that I say, what’s an apostle?

Great stuff, eh.

Scorched

Chuckling on-line magazine went all out to cover this year's Burning Man festival and has yet to kick much of that fine white dust off our shoes. As a small on-line publication, our resources are limited. Alcohol is far and away the largest item on the P&L statement for each article we publish. Nevertheless, we managed to fly all the way across the country, pick up an entourage and camp in a beautiful desert for a week. We sent a writer, a still photographer and a videographer, as well as a couple Sherpa-like dudes to carry the drugs, light our pipes, fill our cups, call our attention to all the beautiful semi-nude women, find the best parties and generally distract us from our journalistic duties. We were in California much of the time and a California frame-of-mind just about all of the time, so we can say "dude" as long as it's in a sentence that contains some kind of reference to illegal substances.

Anyway, we'll be publishing the results of this project in the coming weeks and months. You can probably expect to see photographs regularly and perhaps a slideshow or two. We'll try to provide a little blog-style commentary to fill the dead spaces. And Chuck has a story to tell, but that could take a few weeks. Don't hold your breath for the video project(s) (unless you want to), but feel free to look forward to them. There is no possible way to understand anything at all about Burning Man without being there, but video is as close as it gets.