Re-run Sunday: Fake boobs to confound real ones

This one enjoyed a mini-surge this week. It charms me whenever readers revive some of these old stories. This was from March 2009. I re-read it and thought, you know, you don't hear foreign policy arguments like this on "Meet the Press." It's a pity. Read on and I think you'll agree.

This is bound to be controversial, but here goes: for the good of our national interests, Hillary Clinton needs a boob job.

I’m not talking something that will enhance the Secretary of State’s already womanly figure. I’m talking about porn tits. Major league yabos. Ta tas ‘til Tuesday.

And, yes, she needs to do this for Uncle Sam, and to be perfectly clear, I’m referring to the symbol of our shared national interests here and not the lecherous uncle who used to make you fish through his pockets for bent Tootsie Rolls.

This diplomatic overture occurred to me after I skimmed a recent story about how Sarah Palin’s voluptuous looks may have actually worked against her during the 2008 election -- and let’s again take a moment to revel in the marvelous reality show of a race that was.

It wasn’t too long ago that every national election involved four uniformly boring white men. The introduction of an unknown babe like Palin was a sensation that just keeps on giving. It’s impossible for her to say something that doesn’t enliven each and every news cycle when she manages to pry herself away from the tedium of North Pole politics.

We can all be grateful that she, her whack job family and pill-popping in-laws are going to be electrifying the national news for at least the next 30 years (and those of us who lean liberal can be grateful she’s a solid conservative).

Whether her dynamite looks cost her votes is disputable. But no one can argue the impact she had on the global politics when she made a memorable show biz visit to the United Nations.

To me, it was the highlight of the whole election. Palin handlers ushered her through a day of drive-by meetings with leaders from hotspots around the world.

It may have been the first time in history a push-up bra was deployed to demonstrate gravitas.

Fox News immediately trumpeted the predictable reaction of these dour men from mostly authoritarian countries to being greeted by the jiggly Palin: “Foreign leaders enthusiastically endorse Palin. . .”

Typically, Fox only gave half the headline and left out ". . . for their harems!”

No reaction was more comical than that of Pakistani president Asif Ali Zardari, the still grieving widower of assassinated premier Benazir Bhutto. He used his face time with Palin to gush on camera, “You are so gorgeous! Now I know why the whole of America is crazy about you.”

When an aide suggested the two shake hands, Zardari beamed boyish sunshine and said, “If he’s insisting, I might hug!”

He did regain enough focus to talk some strategy.

“And how does one keep looking that good when one is that busy?” he asked.

Yes, love was in the air.

It occurred to me that Zardari and men like him are still living in the ‘60s. The 1360s. They’ve never had a chance to enjoy lusty relations or bawdy ambitions with someone like the comely Sarah. It’s a pity and I think the unnatural repression is a reason that many fundamentalists around the world become so kill crazy. They’re stuck home alone on weekends with their religious studies while everyone else is out getting some.

It sort of reminds me of the unfulfilled longings from my own adolescence, except my internal frustrations boiled to the surface in the form of, not homicidal mayhem, but sprawling fields of unsightly facial pimples.

Make no mistake: We are at war with fundamentalists who resent our way of life, our exuberant liberty and the fact that they can’t put women like Palin in a drab burqa and a stifling muzzle (in reflective moments, John McCain probably shares half that sentiment).

That’s why Hillary needs to get some massive new boobs, some low cut dresses and a bra that’ll shove those hooters right up under the noses of our fundamentalist enemies.

She needs to look them in the eye, dare them to maintain eye contact and say, “This is who we are. Like it or not, this is the future and there’s not a thing you can do about it. And maybe you should loosen up that turban and think about giving it a try, big boy.”

It would make Hillary an historic feminist icon around the Muslim world and might eventually lead to seismic changes in how Arab males treat women.

Now, if I could just find a powerful politician with enough international respect to articulate the wisdom behind this groundbreaking diplomatic initiative . . .

I wonder if Bill Clinton would think this is a good idea.

It's time to sell hurricane naming rights

I think it’s time huge corporations are allowed to bid for hurricane naming rights the way they do with football stadiums.

This would generate millions to reduce the federal deficit and give corporate branding mavens more muscular platforms than, say, a 30-second commercial bumping up against “Hawaii Five-0.”

Plus, consumers often abandoned by shifty insurance policies could save time if we could say we got screwed by Hurricane Aflac or Hurricane State Farm instead of saying we got screwed by Hurricane Katrina and then screwed all over again by Aflac or State Farm.

Blame or deny global warming, but we can all agree the weather is becoming more wildly chaotic. We need to seize this opportunity before even conservatives understand Earth is becoming kindling.

They’ve been naming hurricanes since 1953, which strikes me as odd because there have been hurricanes throughout history right up until 1953.

It’s not like naming things was unfashionable prior to the Eisenhower administration. We’ve been naming children for thousands of years and they can be at least as destructive as your typical Cat 4.

Initially, weather systems that reached tropical storm intensity were given exclusively female names. That must have made for some interesting cocktail party chatter at the U.S. Weather Bureau.

The competition must have been fierce among the male meteorologists deeming wives and girlfriends worthy of being associated with a really big and messy blow.

Of course, that kind of blatant misogyny could not endure. Who did these petty weathermen think they were? Members of Augusta National?

So the naming system became gender neutral. Now the World Meteorological Organization creates and maintains the annual lists. Names are used on a six-year rotation, with the deadliest or most notable storms having their names retired. So this year’s list may look familiar to 2005 hurricane buffs.

The first tropical storm or hurricane of the year has a name that begins with the letter “A,” and the second begins with the letter “B,” and so on. For reasons I could not detect, the letters “Q” and “U” are left unused.

So -- drum roll, please -- here are the names for the 2011 Atlantic hurricane season: Arlene, Bret, Cindy, Don, Emily, Franklin, Gert, Harvey, Irene, Jose, Katia (subbing for the now retired Katrina), Lee, Maria, Nate, Ophelia, Philippe, Rina, Sean, Tammy, Vince and Whitney.

For a list that is likely to cause multi-billion dollars in damage, the names are a rather tame bunch.

Don? Cindy? Irene? Those don’t sound like hurricanes. They sound like characters from “Brady Bunch” re-runs.

It’s all one big bore.

If we weren’t so darned PC these days, I’d suggest we name all hurricanes after popular males names from countries with which we’re at war. I think it would inspire a sense of national unity and purpose if the country knew Hurricane Mahmoud was about to slam into Galveston.

It would certainly provoke more of a conspiratorial frenzy around Fox News than Hurricane Gert will.

It might sound contrary to prevailing political turns toward civility, but how about allowing the sitting president to name the big nasties?

You’d think that maybe some political commentators might temper their criticisms if they knew years from now their grandchildren would hear in school about how one of history’s most destructive natural disasters was Hurricane Pat Buchanan.

But that might be unduly harsh.

That’s why, as with everything else in America, I say we leave it up to the wisdom of our mightiest corporations.

When a hurricane begins roiling the waters off the Virgin Islands, the Weather Channel can host a gala where bids are taken to earn hurricane naming rights. It’d be as ballyhooed as NFL Draft night on ESPN.

Of course, insurance companies and big drug manufacturers will swamp the proceedings, but Hurricane Hallmark would lend itself to great commercial opportunities.

And what would it be without a little whimsy.

Can you imagine the trending boost Flexifoil would get by sponsoring a hurricane with wind gusts of over 155 mph?

Never herd of Flexifoil?

They make kites.

And getting a storm of publicity for any kite manufacturer sponsoring a hurricane is bound to be a real breeze.

Fox News goes too far; lies about Enquirer

I don’t know why I always feel compelled to leap to the defense of one of the world’s strongest news organizations when my own daughter thinks there are at least three third graders in her school who can kick my ass.

Maybe in a fair fight, they could. Poor kid. She’s too innocent to realize Daddy fights dirty.

I’d like to see a fair fight between what to me is one of the greatest news organizations on the planet and one that continues to amaze me with its reprehensible “journalism” that is revered by millions of news consumers who somehow still think it’s reputable.

I’m talking about a smackdown between Fox News and National Enquirer.

And guess which one of them are the good guys?

If you guessed Fox, I’ll give you another guess. If you’re a true Fox believer, then I’ll probably have to give you two more.

Now, this isn’t about their slanted and hysterical coverage of Democrats, RINOs or whether or not Barack Obama is really a Muslim tourist bent on becoming America’s first czar.

I’ll leave that narrative to Jon Stewart who brilliantly deconstructed the whole charade for Fox News dissembler Bill O’Reilly in an interview that was so heavily edited it needed YouTube resuscitation to save it from suffocating.

No this is about journalism, something I know a thing or two about. Despite all my self-deprecations, I have some bona fide credentials in that realm. I’ve worked for many of America’s top magazines and am currently teaching the subject to a bright collection of graduate students at Point Park University in Pittsburgh.

It’s my job to illuminate for them the opportunities a career in journalism affords. I tell them about my work in big city newspapers and high profile bylines for the dozens of still-thriving magazines.

And I tell them that the very best of the bunch regarding fact-checking, reporting and the joy of pure storytelling is National Enquirer.

From 1992-2000, I did more than 1,000 swashbuckling human interest features for America’s most notorious paper. They get a kick out for my first person features like the time I gained 20-pounds eating like Elvis for a week, or about my days spent dressed as a homeless man with a “Will Work For Beer!” sign to see how people react to honest bums.

I tell them about the awards I won for my stories about how botox is changing the lives of dystonia patients and how victims of fundamentalist Mormon cults led by the now convicted Rev. Warren Jeffs said my stories for Enquirer were better than those by The New York Times.

I tell them how excited I was when I found a really great story like the one about the armless woman who drove, cooked, and worked as a secretary who typed 25 words a minute -- with her feet! I remember how crushed I was when an editor told me the story didn’t make the demanding cut. I couldn’t believe it and asked how come.

“Well, 25 words a minute, that’s not much.”

I refute all their agitated contentions about stories involving aliens, Batboy and babies born with wooden legs by assuring them those are headlines from rival tabloids.

I don’t mock them for their ignorance. There’s no reason they should be expected know any better.

Not so for Megyn Kelly, host of Fox’s afternoon “America Live.” Her show was on in the newsstand where I’d stopped for magazines before last night’s class. She was talking to media critic Bernard Goldberg about the Enquirer being eligible for the Pulitzer Prize for its investigative work detailing the sordid affair of John Edwards, a story the entirety of the mainstream media missed, including Fox.

As a de facto media critic myself, I’m used to mainstream media types being stunned at getting beat by Enquirer on national scandals involving -- pick one -- Tiger Woods (sex), Rush Limbaugh (drug addiction), Drew/Scott Peterson (murder) or O.J. Simpson (all of the above).

But what surprised me was Kelly’s palpable outrage -- it must be a job requirement to host at Fox -- that the Enquirer was being considered for the prestigious award. Then I became furious at her reasons why.

“I’ve read National Enquirer,” she said. “Here’s some of their recent headlines: ‘Loch Ness Monster Found!’ ‘NASA Confirms Alien Footprints on Moon!’ Now are those the types of articles worthy of a publication being considered for journalism’s highest honor?”

Well, she’s a liar. She hasn’t read National Enquirer. Those stories have never appeared in National Enquirer. Ever.

Saying that is like saying the Enquirer wrote that Elvis is alive. The largest selling Enquirer ever had a cunningly acquired picture of The King in his coffin. They’d never refute a banner issue that sold more than six million copies. They had for a while a million dollar bounty for anyone who could find an Enquirer story saying otherwise.

It makes me wonder what else Fox lies about with such smirking ease. I’d watch to find out, but fear doing so might lead to so much palpable outrage I’d qualify to host one of their misleading news programs and I’d eventually be forced to attend company soirees with loudmouths like O’Reilly and Glenn Beck.

I’d been gushing to my students so much about Enquirer that I did something last week I hadn’t done in nearly 10 years. I started looking for story ideas that might again earn me an assignment from a magazine I revere above all others.

It’s my goal to have a byline in the issue trumpeting the news that the National Enquirer is the recipient of the Pulitzer Prize.

Now if I can just find an armless woman who can type 90 words a minute with her feet.