These are things that used to get my goat, or still do but are a little outre'...

Pasha

The 1998 Nagano Olympics have introduced America to so many nice and admirable international athletes. And to Pasha Grishuk. What a freak!

This ice-dancing dame from Russia has the nerve to tell the press that she changed her name from Oksana because she was always getting confused with "someone who also won a gold medal but came to the U.S. and became a criminal." Before the name change, at last year's World Championships, she claimed she was the "good Oksana." Oh, don't you EVEN go there, Missy! Pasha can't be confused with Oksana Baiul, who is pretty, sweet and talented. Most of us are rooting for her complete comeback. Miss Grishuk only holds a gold medal because it was handed directly to her by a block of hopelessly partisan judges. Now she wants to be an actress here in the States. Yuck. Maybe John Waters needs a new freak-diva, but frankly, Divine had more class and empathy than Pasha will ever have. The only acting job for her that would be acceptable to me is a recurring role on Melrose Place. Her contract with Mr. Spelling could stipulate that she must get bitch-slapped by Amanda at least three times a show.

Pat ("I'm the Biggest Hypocritical Schmuck in the World") Robertson

As most of you know, Karla Tucker Brown, the convicted pick-ax murderess, was killed by lethal injection by the State of Texas recently in spite of the efforts of the biggest jerks in America to save her. Let's talk about one of those jerks.

Pat Robertson, in a move so tasteless, so stunningly cruel, so 180-degree-turnaround-hypocritical, that it amazed even his harshest detractors, has attacked the victim's husband.

Yes, it's not Tucker Brown's fault the poor woman had a pickax stuck in her chest in 1983, it's her estranged husband's fault. On the Feb. 4 airing of the "700 Club," Robertson challenged the widower, "...Number one, sir, why was your wife in bed with another man in a motel room in Texas on the night of the killing?" He then said that he'd heard "rumors" that the husband had thrown his cheating wife out of the house and refused to let her come back, thereby effectively condemning her to death by the hand of the strung-out crack addict Tucker. Oh, that makes so much sense. And the TV minister showed his usual compassion for a man who was cuckolded and widowed in the same eventful night.

To be fair, Mrs. Brown herself squarely accepted the blame for what she'd done. Robertson--in his zeal to excuse his own hypocrisy-- had to assign a scapegoat. He vociferously defended Tucker Brown, even though in 1994 he opposed any Clinton judicial nominees who weren't bloodthirsty enough: Letting a convicted murderer live at society's expense is "unbiblical," you see, and the Bible says that only blood can "cleanse the land" after blood has been shed. So the victim's husband, aside from feeling normal human rage and bereavement (which you'd feel even if your spouse was estranged from you at the moment of her untimely death), is the one acting biblically, and Robertson, as usual, is just an immoral weasel of Babylon.

Sadism and Saddam

This week, someone here in Syracuse set a kitten on fire. What on earth do you have to be thinking to do something like that? The kitten, Cindy, survived briefly but soon succumbed to her horrible burns. Syracuse is just provincial enough that we get up in arms about stuff like this.

I can't get all riled up about a wayward Iraqi strongman when there are people right next door lighting up kitties. If you need me, you can find me in my hideout waiting for the end of the next Gulf War recording session, and developing my new strain of bathtub anthrax. The U.N. can inspect me day or night, though: I want to make that perfectly clear. Just don't mess with my felines.

The TV News Media--

These morons are in such a hurry to scoop each other and to garner ratings at any cost, they have lost all connection to truth, fact, or research. While total objectivity and accuracy in news reporting are impossible to achieve, they used to at least be attempted.

If one more anchor or reporter says they don't yet know anything about what they're airing (which has happened far too frequently in recent Lewinsky coverage) I am going to go postal. But I'm fine now. Really. I think I'm going to find some unreliable extremist wingnut--like G. Gordon Liddy but more obscure--who has his own webpage full of bald assertions, and from now on, that's where I'll get my news. Sure, I'd have to take everything he says with a grain of salt, but it seems that my news diet from the supposedly respectable media is also quite high in sodium.

Linda Tripp--

What a...well, let's just say Newt Gingrich's mom would say it "rhymes with rich." Hello! What kind of a woman tells another woman she is her "friend," then tape-records her and offers her up to prosecutors, the press, and the public? What kind of woman allows a younger woman to look to her as a "mentor," then betrays her like that? Um...does it rhyme with "stunt," Mrs. Gingrich? I think it does.

I cannot look at Linda Tripp's big fat blonde head without wanting to smack her. I'm afraid that's just the way I feel as an American patriot.

Jeremy Rifkin

What, you were expecting Rush Limbaugh? Too easy! (I'd much rather accentuate the positive, anyway. Therefore, "Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot And Other Observations" by Al Franken gets a kudo, and I won't waste a goat-head on old Rush. Besides, I once knew a guy who became so obsessed with his hatred of Mr. Limbaugh that he would walk around muttering and waving his arms about, following strangers into the men's room to rant and rave. I would hate for that to ever happen to me.)
Don't know who Jeremy Rifkin is? Well, good! Bless you! (See my Diatribe, "Attack of the Killer Tomatoes" if you're curious.)

This:

What explanation is really needed?
Get the feeling I'm embittered toward Christians? Moi? With a tag like Reardenmetal, you know where I stand. To be fair, the above photo is far from a fair picture of most Christians, only the mondo freaks. If you're in the mood for a devastatingly funny detour into Recreational Religion, check out Psycho Dave's page. If you're a wuss, you've been warned, okay?

People who hate animals

After all, what do they think WE are? Let me clarify: If you eat beef, then you and I disagree about our diets. I would not go so far as to say that you hate animals. If, however,you know what pate' de foie gras and veal really are, and can still say that this is what calves and geese are "for"---or if you think that kittens exist to have their eyelids cut off and to be blinded with caustic chemicals so that Mary Kay can continue to look like a somewhat ghoulish 40-year-old well into her 90's---then you need to recognize the deep hostility that underlies those values. Can a human being really torture another sentient being--even one that is admittedly "less" sentient than himself--looking calmly into its eyes and feeling nothing for its pain? If you think that you can, or can complacently defend your "natural right" to do so, then I'd better not pick a fight with you. Because you scare me! The lame old claim of "sovereignty" over the rest of the animal kingdom barely masks the violent tendency underneath. I doubt seriously that anyone so brutalized can turn around and honor the rights of other human beings. It's a blatant falsehood that all such horrendous abuses against animals are necessary for human survival. Most of us have stopped living in caves long ago. Not that the average Neanderthal hunter-gatherer tested cosmetics on rabbits--frankly, he had better things to do. Chances are, some smug idiot is about to say, "You should learn what survival of the fittest means." Um, I don't think so. Look around this society and see how many spectacularly unfit people survive. Which is okay, because they don't taste that good with hollandaise.

Don't know what pate de foie gras is--or what you can do to help the other critters we live with? Check out the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals . They're, um, a little more devoted to animal issues than I am personally, but they're still a valuable resource.

Syndicated Columnists Mona Charen and Cal Thomas

She's a damned idiot and he's a damned idiot who can't write. Actually, I kinda have to put these two in the "love to hate" category. Sometimes their consistent advocacy of the Wradical Wrong's viewpoints makes me genuinely angry, but sometimes I want to kiss them (ooh, especially you, Mona!) for unwittingly exposing just how meanspirited they and their cronies really are. The best giveaway was last summer in the aftermath of Princess Diana's death. They could've seemed more credible in their gay-bashing, minority-scapegoating, single-mom-trashing columns if they had refrained from kicking Di when she was down (by about six feet.) But they couldn't resist kicking the royal corpse a few times before bidding the Peoples' Princess farewell. They couched their hatchet-jobs in careful, regretful language: "Of course her passing is a tragedy. But sadly, the bankrupt moral legacy she left her two boys is also tragic"--that sort of thing. Still--careful or not, they basically called Diana a jetsetting, frivolous tramp and a bad mother (because she chose to separate from her husband, who admitted having an affair. A decent Christian woman would have stayed and trudged through the loveless years, you see.) Reading their syndicated "elegies", I had to stop frequently and do the victory dance. After all, they gave away the whole store.