Today's Random Musings

Here's how it works in America where stardom, earned or accidental, is the coin of the realm: Bristol Palin, 20, the Quarter-baked Alaska, earned more than a quarter of a million dollars last year from a foundation that promotes teenage abstinence about which the unwed teenage mother would apparently know very little. So, you can be a teacher in Wisconsin, an auto worker in Detroit, or even a pediatrician in Iowa with thirty years of experience and you won't make close to that. But get knocked up by some knucklehead hockey player from Wasilla and have the senile John McCain pick your incompetent mother to be his running mate and the money flows in like oil in the Gulf. It's as American as apple pie.

America's sweetheart and unwed mother, Bristol Palin: abstinence advocate.

That giant sucking sound you hear in New England over the gnashing of teeth is the despair of Red Sox Nation just four games into the regular season in which the Red Sox, with the second highest payroll in Major League Baseball, have mustered an 0-4 record. Now, it's still early; the season is very, very long. But this team is, as all the pundits say, built to win a World Series. Red Sox fans have long forgotten the Japanese tsunami and will probably be unaffected by the government shutdown the Tea Party and its hostages in Congress have planned because those are trivial matters compared with the sorry start the Red Sox have managed. Yup, we have our priorities straight in Red Sox Nation. And you think Bristol Palin makes a lot of money?

Isn't it time for Southwest Airlines to pull those ads that talk about how other airlines have frequent flyer "restrictions through the roof?" At least those airlines fly planes that have a roof.

The trial of Italy's Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi on sex charges opened yesterday in Milan and was immediately adjourned until May 31. Talk about the wheels of justice turning slowly! Watching this trial get underway is like waiting for Spiderman to open on Broadway.

Finally, this. What exactly does Newt Gingrich do for a living?

A Little More Italy

Twenty-five years ago, crankyjewishguy (CJG) took a trip to Italy. He loved it. Great food. Beautiful scenery. Friendly people with a real lust for life. If CJG could be reincarnated he'd come back as an Italian painter and live in Umbria in an ancient stone house with a view of the hills, the vineyards and the cypress trees.

Speaking of lust, readers will recall that CJG had a few comments several weeks back about Italy's current prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, who's in a bit of hot water for his alleged involvement with an underage girl (seventeen at the time). Now, a court in Milan has ordered that Berlusconi stand trial for sex crimes and for abuse of power for intervening on the young woman's behalf when she was arrested on an unrelated charge. With a record like that it's amazing Berlusconi isn't a member of the U.S. Congress, or maybe even President. But all this has really made CJG wish he (a) understood Italian and (b) had whatever cable channel is going to broadcast this trial. It's going to knock the Amanda Knox affair right off the front pages. (In case you missed the latest chapter in that saga, the parents of Amanda Knox, the American student convicted in Italy on sexual assault and murder charges, have been indicted in Perugia for allegedly libeling Italian police whom they accused of abusing their daughter while she was in custody.)

A typical party at the Berlusconi mansion.

If you ask CJG, Berlusconi doesn't have a chance. All three judges who will hear the case are women and will, CJG suspects, be less than favorably disposed towards a 74 year old man who was fiddling, and apparently even diddling, while Rome burned. It sounds as if Amanda Knox may have been the only young woman in Italy Berlusconi hasn't been linked to. Berlusconi, of course, sees all this as an assault on Italy's good reputation. The allegations, he says, "have offended the dignity of the country." Without prejudging the outcome of the case, CJG would say the Prime Minister has been doing a pretty good job of doing that all by himself.

A Shout Out to...

CJG is at a loss to explain it, but suddenly his blog is getting gazillions of hits from Germany, many more, in fact, than from his native USA, and as far as he knows no one is translating his brilliant musings into German. Why is this happening? Who are these people in Germany who find CJG so amusing? If you know the answer, please e-mail CJG! In the meantime, Ich danke Ihnen, Deutschland!

A Little Italy

So much raw material, so little time! Today, crankyjewishguy (CJG) doesn't know where to go first: to the arrests of more than a hundred mobsters in the largest one-day Mafia round-up in U.S. history, or the latest revelations about Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's lurid sex life. CJG is almost afraid to mention what these two stories have in common because he doesn't want to return involuntarily to his home state of New Jersey, so figure it out for yourself.

Let's start with the mob. The federal indictments handed down yesterday included charges of murder, extortion, narcotics trafficking, illegal gambling, loan sharking and racketeering, a panoply of crimes otherwise known as a Jersey Poo-Poo Platter. Give us a break. Other than going to the shore or the mall that's all there is to do in New Jersey. All the major New York/New Jersey crime families -- Lucchese, Gambino, Colombo, Bonanno and Genovese -- and the Patriarcha Family of New England, were affected. (CJG is sorry if he left anyone out. Let him know and he'll publish your family name in a future post.)

As usual, the list of defendants includes people with names like Jackie the Nose, Vinny Carwash, Junior Lollipops, Jack the Whack and Tony Bagels. (No, CJG didn't make that up.) Some of those names don't even sound Italian, which makes CJG suspect they may not be their real names. In fact, Tony Bagels sounds vaguely Jewish, doesn't it? Anyway, all this just reminds CJG how much he misses The Sopranos.

Of the 127 people charged in federal indictments yesterday, all but one were arrested in the U.S. The other was arrested in Italy and much to CJG's surprise it wasn't Silvio Berlusconi. Actually, what Berlusconi's been up to sounds like much more fun than murder, loan sharking and illegal gambling. He's been cavorting with teenage girls and paying them huge sums of money to keep quiet about it, except that Silvio, who is 74, obviously doesn't appreciate the reach of a teenage girl with an iPhone. So, now Italian prosecutors have about 300 pages of transcripts and other information that reveal a level of depravity that makes the Lewinsky scandal look like a pancake breakfast at a Baptist church in Mobile.

It seems Silvio "The Salami" Berlusconi was done in by one Karima El Mahroug, an under-age Moroccan belly dancer known as Karima Cheese and Bagels. (No relation to Tony Bagels.) Just kidding. She's known as "Ruby the Heart Stealer." Sounds faintly reminiscent of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, don't you think? Anyway, here's a picture of the femme fatale...

Karima El Mahroug, Silvio Berlusconi's right hand man, as it were.

At least CJG thinks that's a picture of Karima El Mahroug. On closer examination it could be American Idol judge Steven Tyler. "Judge" for yourself.