If you've seen one dead Rooney. . . .

"If a nation expects to be both ignorant and free, it expects what never was and never will be."

-- Thomas Jefferson

"We're doomed! We're doomed! We're all going to die!"

-- Kate Smith

HAT TIP: Romenesko.

Duuuude! DUUUUDE! Like, there's a winner, man!

The rock band 311 is the Nebraska-est of all Nebraskans. The Cornhuskerest of all Cornhusker State celebrities.

Bigger than Warren Buffett's billions. Dwarfing William Jennings Bryan, Willa Cather, Tom Osborne, Marlon Brando, Fred Astaire, Henry Fonda, Malcolm X and all the rest. So utterly huge and beloved that the Omaha World-Herald, in Sunday's paper, spent half of its final celebrity bracketology report explaining who -- and what -- 311 is.

To the uninitiated, 311 is made up of a group of guys who grew up in Omaha. After some short stays in Los Angeles, the guys came back home and fleshed out the band in the early ’90s. After establishing a local following, they headed to the West Coast again and eventually signed to Capricorn Records and released their first record, “Music.” Over the course their next several albums [sic] — “Grassroots,” “311” and “Transistor” — 311 became a huge success.

OVER THE COURSE the next few years -- as journalism fades into the memories of old folk befuddled by the new-media landscape of pictograms, biggest-boob newspaper contests and online vlogs consisting of random grunts, moans and clicks emitted by random hipsters -- me am planning to Anna Thesia-Eyes me by drinking hev-E over the course the day Evey daye.

Gloorp. Umnff. Ooh ooh ooh! Grock! Click. Ick-ick-ick-ick pfffffftuuuuuu. Bububububu. BRAAAAAAP!

Me kayn hav jobbe nau att nooz-Paypr?

What it looks like when newspapers give up

   
The local newspaper, just in time for March Madness, got the bright idea of having a championship bracket for "the Nebraska-est Nebraska celebrity."

Put aside our culture's idiotic obsession with "celebrity" for a moment. Forget even the apples-vs.-oranges stupidity of pitting William Jennings Bryan and Willa Cather against has-been alt-rockers 311 and "the Maroon 5 guy."

No, consider instead that when you start out with an unserious premise that elevates celebrity over all else, then put it all to a vote by those readers (and given how the voting's gone, "readers" might be too generous a description) who didn't think this was just too dumb to take seriously. . . .  

Well, let's just say you're going to get what you get.

Good and hard.

SO BRYAN and Cather and Malcolm X and Ted Sorensen are s*** out of luck. As are Gerald Ford, Johnny Carson, Fred Astaire and Marlon Brando. And Bob Devaney, Tom Osborne, Bob Gibson and Scientology nutbag L. Ron Hubbard. (Actually, I was counting on Scientologists stuffing the virtual ballot box on this one. I was wrong, alas. The sheer inanity of the Omaha World-Herald exercise must have fried their E-meters.)

Hell, Henry Fonda didn't even make the tournament. "Yours, Mine and Ours" must have totally screwed his RPI. 

Well, either that . . . or this:


NO, facing off for the "the Nebraska-est Nebraska celebrity," we have 311 and investing guru Warren Buffett, whom we all love for having craploads more money than we do. That, friends, is "journalism" today.

Good and hard.

I hope 311 wins. Not only would that be the most absurd outcome possible, but the World-Herald would mercifully be spared having to explain why the boss won.

Between this sort of thing and its steamin'-hot love affair with "charticles," I wouldn't be surprised if some day soon, the hometown daily becomes the first American newspaper to break through the Pictogram Barrier and become wordless altogether.

And to think that we thought in 1982 that USA TODAY was as dumbed-down as newspapering could get. There are none so naive as those who think things can't always get worse.

Huh. Huh-huh-huh.

Even Russia has a Mississippi

Иван пропустил Darwin Awards от это много.

(Translation: Ivan missed the Darwin Awards by this much.)

How, oh, how did I miss this when it appeared a couple of years ago?

The unimportance of being earnest

 

The Pillsbury Doughmagogue strikes again.

Let me explain Gov. Dave Heineman's latest smoove move as Nebraska's chief executive: It's as if Poppin' Fresh had appointed the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man to the Confectioners Council a few years after the big guy got busted for spreading malicious lies about Mrs. Smith. And after he never got around to paying his fines for an unfortunate 1984 incident in Manhattan.

Of course, the press learns of the whole deal, and the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man abruptly withdraws, saying his dad had just been turned into a s'more. And Poppin' Fresh is left without even a hardy "Hoo hoo!" for curious reporters.

What the doughboy can't say is this, because it is true: "Who cares if the dude stinks up the kitchen? He's my kind of culinary hack!"

Or something like that.

I THINK you'll find my analogy reasonably close as you read about how terribly hard it is to be a D'oh!-magogue in a world where the press occasionally pays attention:

Shannon

Bellevue businessman Patrick Shannon said Monday the governor knew about Shannon's state fines for campaign violations before appointing him last week to the Nebraska Legislature.

Shannon withdrew Friday several hours after questions surfaced about an anonymous smear campaign he orchestrated against an opponent in a 2004 legislative race. Shannon cited a family medical emergency as the reason for his withdrawal.

Gov. Dave Heineman declined to say Monday morning whether he knew about the $16,000 in state ethics fines levied against Shannon before appointing him to the vacant District 3 legislative seat.

Heineman: D'oh!

“He's withdrawn, and we're in the process of finding a new senator to appoint to District 3,” Heineman said. “That's the most important priority.”

Later Monday, The World-Herald contacted Shannon at his Bellevue tax and accounting business.

Shannon said the vetting process for the appointment lasted about three weeks. It included a private, in-person interview with Heineman that lasted about 40 minutes and “one or two” follow-up phone conversations with the governor.

Shannon said during the in-person interview that Heineman questioned him about the $16,000 in fines.

“He told me he knew (about the fines) and asked what did I learn from it,” Shannon said.

Shannon sent an email to the governor's office Friday, stating he couldn't fill the seat because his father had “just suffered a heart attack” in Oklahoma and it would be necessary for him to help provide care for his mother.

In an interview Monday from his Bellevue office, Shannon said the heart attack was mild and his father had been dismissed from an Oklahoma hospital and was recovering at home.

OBVIOUSLY, what Shannon learned from the ethics fines was that if you don't pay them, nobody notices . . . or cares. What he also learned is that the governor doesn't care if his appointments stink up the unicameral, just so long as it smells like Republican hackery.

What I love about Nebraska -- and what has been its saving grace since Boss Dennison's fall from power in Omaha -- is that Nebraska pols are just so bad at this stuff. Would that all politicians were so utterly incompetent at all the right things.

Only if your Christmas tree is a pussy willow

As I find myself often thinking the older I get . . . I picked the wrong day to quit smoking crack, snorting meth, drinking Everclear and sniffing glue.

On the other hand, there is neither enough booze nor are there enough illegal substances in the world to get this image out of my mind. Neither will there be enough to kill the section of your brain where the picture of this hideous thing now resides. Sorry about that.

On the third hand, why should I be alone in my torment? I hate being alone in my torment.

One thing I learned from this Etsy.com page, though, is that there are, per capita, just as many disturbed individuals in Canada as there are here in the United States. I blame our disturbed, shallow and hypersexualized common Western culture.

SOMETIME between the time I was born 52 years ago and now, our genitals (and what we do with them) became no mere fraction of who we are. Instead, who we are has come to be defined by our genitalia and what we choose to do with them. That's not only ass-backward, but just wrong -- as in utterly depraved.

Once upon a time, we put stars, candy canes, popcorn strings and shiny glass ornaments on our Christmas trees, which we regarded as a symbol of new life in the bleak midwinter. Now we put "Were vulva Dead Zombie" ornaments on them. How fitting, considering.

I eagerly await the advent -- not -- of the "Syphilitic Oozing Penis" yuletide ornaments, which should be arriving . . . wait, let me go check Etsy.

How low can we go?  Obviously, somewhere just below the waistline.

Lord have mercy. But I won't blame Him if He doesn't.

Whither North Dakota?

Apparently, the government shutdown has dried up all funding for education.

But if you're going to have an epic geographical fail, you'd just as well put it on Facebook. Especially if you're the chief meteorologist for a local Fox affiliate in Florida. Which we all know is somewhere between Cuba and Egypt.

Rare is the government that is smarter than the people who put it in power. In other words, to quote Dr. Zachary Smith, "We're doomed! We're doomed! We're all going to die!"

Louisiana jumps the shark

The Times-Picayune's J.R. Ball wants to know why Louisiana is so in love with Edwin W. Edwards, the ex-con ex-governor who, in his long public life, hasn't exactly covered the state in glory.

No doubt, that streak of ignominy -- more like a skid mark, actually -- won't be broken by his and his grandchild bride's new A&E "reality" show, The Governor's Wife. But the man's popularity persisted through thick and the federal pen, and no doubt it will continue to go up as he continues to drag the state's reputation down.

This mystifies the New Orleans paper's Baton Rouge editor and columnist. I don't know why, but it does:

Between pops of an adult beverage, my newfound friend informed me that Edwards, with a personality second-to-none, was the greatest governor to ever grace this state. My mention of Edwards' decade-long stay at a federal penitentiary brought, without hesitation, the explanation that "the governor" was simply robbing from those who could afford to be fleeced to help fulfill his larger, nobler quest to help the "little man" in Louisiana.

This bit of information prompted an epiphany: I need some new friends.

Before going our separate ways, my soon-to-be, newfound ex-friend dropped this nugget of wisdom: "Edwin Edwards would easily beat Bobby Jindal if he could run against him. Hell, there's not a politician in the state right now who could beat Edwards."

This was hardly my first exposure to this state's perverse love affair with Edwards. Most times, I adopt the learned Deep South behavior of smiling politely and simply walking away, silently stunned by the ignorance of such misguided opinions. As usual, I walked away without confrontation, but this time there was no incredulous internal laughter. Maybe it was latent hostility from having my television hijacked earlier that morning by a steady stream of commercials for "The Governor's Wife," a new reality show devoted to Edwards' ginormous ego. Maybe it was the ego of Edwards' attention-seeking trophy wife, using the show to introduce herself to a national cable audience. But this time I was angry. Or maybe it was just the increasing tempo of the "mist."

Regardless, can someone please explain this state's ongoing -- and seemingly never-ending -- fascination with one Edwin Washington Edwards?

SOMEONE doesn't need to explain it. I think Ball already knows; he's been around the Louisiana block more than a few times during his decades in the Gret Stet. As a journalist there, he's written about more stupidity, skullduggery, sleaze and stealing by those who run the state on citizens' behalf than most journalists from most other states would in three lifetimes.

You know and I know that in his heart of hearts, J.R. Ball knows.

The hard part is the admitting. And the accepting. And then acting upon what one has admitted and accepted. Yeah, that's the hard part. The longer one can prolong the "mystery," alas, the longer one delays some painful admissions and tough decisions.

In my opinion -- as someone born and raised in Louisiana, and as someone who lived there through more than half of Edwards' four terms as governor -- there are a few reasons you could be fascinated by the Silver Zipper. (Guess how Edwin got that nickname.)

One is that he's so foreign to you and your experience, you are fascinated by how exotic he is. That one's a non-starter in Louisiana. It just is.

Another is the Jerry Springer syndrome, otherwise known as "Look at the freaks!" and "Golly, I'm not as f***ed up as I thought!" But you don't elect your average Springero Erectus governor four times.

OR, IT JUST might be that you think, on some level, that Edwin Washington Edwards is just like you -- or perhaps a better, smarter and more powerful you. Massive corruption is OK, just as long as I can get some crumbs from his larcenous feast at the public's table.

J.R.'s game-day pal said as much.

Generally, states, like individuals, get what they tolerate, and they tolerate what they find tolerable. There lies the key to the riddle of Louisiana and its taste for crooks in high places.

To paraphrase what one colorful son of south Louisiana once famously proclaimed, "It's the culture, stupid!" Which just might be why "reformers" there spend all their time spinning their wheels, yet getting nowhere.

What was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.

No, son, they're not calling you a whale

 

You have your freshman mistakes, and then you have your freshman mistakes that you can't wait to share with the world.

World, meet Ishmail Jackson, Nebraska football walk-on. He was set on being a Husker, and damn if he didn't make the team. The upside to that is obvious enough.

I imagine he's just about to experience the downside -- Coach Bo Pelini's survey course on the cold, hard facts of life. One of those is that Husker football players, even the walk-ons, are public figures. And public figures, if they know what's good for them, do not go on Twitter to disparage Nebraska womanhood.

For example, "98% of the black girls at this school are just disgustingly ugly."

For another example, "Yall [sic] thought florida [sic] had ugly girls? omg lol"

I THINK more than half the University of Nebraska-Lincoln population will be calling young Mr. Jackson something, but it won't be Ishmael. It looks like Uncle Matt -- as in Damon, of movie fame -- never got around to explaining public relations, how it works and why it's important. Or the whole public-figure thing.

Now that talk will come from Coach Bo, who sometimes could be mistaken for Mount Vesuvius. He won't be nearly so smooth as Uncle Matt.

Let's just hope that Jackson, post eruption, isn't mistaken for Pompeii. Which, actually, wouldn't be the worst thing that could happen to him.

After all, being an 18-year-old male, he might do something even stupider than scorning half the population, with a soupçon of racial je ne sais quoi for bad measure: He might actually ask a coed for a date. That probably wouldn't end well.

SMASH RUNNING-DOG VERBAL DIARRHEAOF DILETTANTE U.S. REVOLUTIONARIES!

Does anybody in his right mind take crap like this seriously?

I found this hand-scrawled tract lying on the ground at Omaha's almost-dead, soon to be razed Crossroads Mall today, and I think there's a metaphor somewhere in that circumstance. I'm also thinking somebody watched "Reds" five times too many. Sheesh.

What's worse is that I agree with the general sentiment, hiding though it be in a steaming pile of outraged agitprop. Yes, the growing inequality of our society is a bad thing -- it's a very bad thing if you're the minimum-wage bug and not the overcompensated windshield. And what Wall Street bankers and bond traders have gotten away with the last decade (and more) is outrageous.

You can't even call it beating the rap. There's no rap to beat, and that is an affront to both social justice and civil society.

Furthermore, balancing a budget on the backs of those who most need "entitlements" like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid when the "1 percent" -- indeed, even the 10 percent -- are well capable of paying a fairer share of taxes would be fundamentally unjust. Cruel, even.

WE ARE our brother's keeper -- this comes from a Very High Authority, indeed -- and a society for which that is not an organizing principle is one that would be, in a word, brutish.

There's a lot you can say on this subject in support of reining in Wall Street and bestowing a little governmental mercy upon Main Street, not to mention Skid Row. It all would comport with what Abraham Lincoln called "the better angels of our nature," and some of it might even persuade a few Fox News Channel viewers.

Hand-scrawled tracts parroting a bunch of Leon Trotsky's B-sides?  Not so much. 

It's a natural fact that anywhere you land on God's green earth, those who are quickest to lend a helping hand -- to share with you whatever they have -- tend to be those who can least afford their own generosity. It doesn't take much for these souls to "give until it hurts."

"The widow's mite" wasn't just something Jesus pulled out of thin air.

BUT the thing is, those in our society who have the most right to be damned angry at their plight generally aren't half as mad as America's outraged, tract-scrawling, fill-in-the-blank-occupying dilettante revolutionaries, whose sound and fury thus far has signified pretty much nothing. Kind of like John Reed back in the day.

Frankly, I think America's have-nots deserve better representation.

After further consideration. . . .

Kanye West was right.

Watching Taylor Swift preen and oversing her way through Marianne Faithfull's masterpiece, "As Tears Go By," is too much to bear. She needs to go away. Now.

What's worse is that the shameless and decrepit Mick Jagger has so little respect for the song he and Keith Richards wrote that he co-leads the charge in its defilement. At least Richards' acoustic-guitar work is nice.

Still, it's increasingly clear this is a band that should have hung it up before it released the "Some Girls" album in 1978. The destruction of a great legacy began then, and it's now being capped off with the band's sad and shambles-worthy 50th-anniversary tour.

WATCHING the concert videos from this tour -- videos released by the Stones themselves -- is like going to the open-casket funeral of someone who died in some horrific, fiery accident . . . with the narcissistic, imbecilic Swift preening her way through the proceedings.

Only this grotesque spectacle is totally self-inflicted.

I would have preferred to remember the deceased the way they were, back when I was young and they were good. But now I can't. The mangled, charred corpse of the "World's Greatest Rock 'n' Roll Band" forever will be branded on my brain.

File this under "The Dangers of Planning Your Own Funeral."

Crap. Even getting myself Keith Richards wasted couldn't make me forget what can't be forgotten.

Thanks, guys.

Alex Jones explains it all

To the best of the non-whack-job world's knowledge, the United States does not have a "weather weapon" it uses to attack unsuspecting cities with killer tornadoes.

I'm fairly certain, however, that the federal gummint has a "bat-sh*t-crazy weapon" it apparently has been testing on unsuspecting conspiracy theorists. Seems to work well. Still, I wish radio could return to more civilized times, when quack doctors sold audiences more useful fare . . . like goat-gland miracle cures.

The political Twinkie

Apparently, labor unions are the source and summit of everything that is bad in this country.

In recognition of that, you're supposed to celebrate the resurrection of Twinkies -- which now will be produced in bakeries as free of labor unions as the little sponge cakes are of any nutritional value -- by waddling to your local grocer, purchasing a pack of empty calories and applying them directly to your ass.

After all,  according to one learned commenter on ForAmerica's Facebook page, "unions are destroying this country, remember Jimmy Huffa and organized crime, the mob runs unions." (Sic -- a great big sic. -- R21)

If you ask me,  what's destroying this country is us. Whacked-out, pissed-off, greedy-ass, political-nutjob us. We're pathological. Our angry zeal so consumes us that we've just f***ing politicized the Twinkie.

And . . . wait. Jimmy Huffa?

Do they have bourbon-filled Twinkies?

Boom goes the dynamite!

 NSFW alert: There's a reason the new anchor only lasted a day

If you haven't seen this viral video yet, crawl out from under your rock. The fresh air will do you good, as will taking a break from fighting off the grubs and the armadillo bugs that keep encroaching on your personal space.

That said, this is about as bad a first day on the job gets for a TV news guy, barring being sent to cover a fire at the local ammonium nitrate plant -- up close and personal.

On the upside, this poor guy is still alive. On the downside, when A.J. Clemente, now formerly of KFYR-TV in Bismarck, N.D., mixed the F-bomb with the S-word while forgetting that guns are always loaded and microphones are always "hot," he may have just blown his nascent career to smithereens.

Boom goes the dynamite!

Look, if you can't make it a day on local TV in Bismarck, where is there left to go? "F****** s***!" indeed.


HAT TIP: NPR's The Two Way blog.

Brent Musberger: Dirty old man

All that needs to be said about Brent Musberger's dirty-old-man faux pas during ESPN's coverage of the Alabama-Notre Dame game last night was said by a friend on Facebook this afternoon:

So THIS is what it took for ESPN to finally apologize for Brent Musburger?

Musberger is just silly and superficial, not to mention ignorant. Gals who look like A.J. McCarron's Miss Alabama girlfriend are a dime a dozen in the SEC. And I'm assuming you don't have to be a national-championship college quarterback to snare one.

If that's what you go for.

Me, I think tons of women are stunningly attractive. Much of that comes from the inside, not from a beauty spa or something. Not that that's dawned on Brett and Kirk Herbstreit, who are idiots. Did I mention that?

I'd trust their judgment a little bit more if they had made their pronouncement after talking to Katherine Webb for 20 minutes. Is what I'm saying.

A date that will live in the infirmary

It's a day that will live in infamy, and a day that Greg Camp's aging father has never forgotten.

That's why today, Camp will sit down for lunch with his 92-year-old dad and four more survivors of the brutal Dec. 1, 1941, aerial attack on Pearl Harbor by Japanese bombers.

-- Story in Columbus, Ga., Ledger-Enquirer

SURE, it's fun to cut school and smoke weed all day long, and there's always someone you can pay to take the ACT for you . . . but then you end up getting a job at a newspaper in BF Georgia, and you can't pay some smart dude to write your feature story for you because there aren't any, and there you are.

Stuck.

"Pearl Harbor Day . . . Pearl Harbor Day . . . that's like in December, right? That crippled president said something famous about Pearl Harbor back in the day, dude.

"Uhhh . . . 'Tuesday, Dec. 1, 1943, a date that will live in the infirmary . . . .' THAT'S IT!

"OK, I got this. Kewl."

FILE UNDER: If You Can't Laugh . . .

We wish you a merry Christmas . . .

. . . and a happy ∫*©# you!

I think that's a holiday greeting folks in Denham Springs, La., can work with. If you're familiar with the burg just east of Baton Rouge, you know what I'm sayin'.

If you're, say, a sensible, low-key Midwestern type, you're probably about to tell the missus "Vi, come look at this! I think those people down there might have a screw loose." Which, of course, is a sensible thing for a sensible, low-key Midwestern type to think when exposed to random slices of life in the Gret Stet.

Oh . . . and there's thi

Personally, I gauge the degree to which I have become Midwesternized -- or at least Nebraskafied -- by the number of times I face palm over stories like this from back home instead of chuckle and repeat the mantra "Well, dat's Loosiana for you!"

THIS from The Advocate is a definite face palm, and perhaps a reminder to pay homage and leave offerings of thanksgiving at the statue of Tom Osborne at Memorial Stadium in Lincoln:

Thanksgiving has just passed and Sarah Henderson has already taken the holiday lights off her roof.

A visit from the police prompted by complaints from her neighbors might have hurried the process.

The lights were in the shape of a hand flipping the middle finger, neighbors said. Henderson said that’s what she intended.

“I got to looking, and I said is that what I think it is?” said Gemma Rachal, who lives at the far end of the street. “I put on my glasses just to be double sure.”

“I’m furious,” Rachal said “My 6-year-old tried to make the symbol with his hand.”

She said she was afraid her son might mimic the gesture again at kindergarten.

Neighbor Hunter Lee said the lights bothered him because of his children, ages 3 and 9.

He said he didn’t like “having to explain to the kids what it means.”

Amy Bryant, who lives a block away, said that when she first saw the lights this weekend she thought, “I can’t believe she did it.”

Police Chief Scott Jones said an officer went to Henderson’s house on Starlite Drive on Monday and talked Henderson into taking the lights down.

TAKE THIS incident and transpose the psychology to the realm of governance, politics and what passes for civil society in Louisiana, and you might gain a little understanding of the place. Then you'll do a face palm.

At this point, you might be asking yourself why someone would put a twinkling fickle finger of fate on their friggin' roof. That's a good question, one for which Henderson has an answer that makes up in entertainment value what it lacks in lucidity.

The finger was intended for neighbors with whom she’s had a yearlong disagreement over personal matters, she said.

“This is how I expressed myself,” Henderson said. “It’s the only means I have to express myself to these people.”

She said she has thought about replacing the extended finger with a swastika.

I THINK I had a flashback just now. Yes, I definitely had a flashback just now. That's because I can picture my mother doing the exact same thing.

One of the benefits of old age, I suppose -- albeit a benefit for the neighborhood, not her -- is that it keeps Mama off the roof.

Well, dat's Loosiana for you! 

Oh, crap.

(Face palm.)

Les Miles rides all the wrong trains

I think everybody in the Western world knows this song.

Except LSU's football coach, Les Miles.

It would have been fun if CBS could have gotten a mic on Alabama coach Nick Saban -- who used to be the Tigers' coach --when he was shaking his head after every unexplainable Miles decision and saying "What a dumbass."

Which is what I was saying after that bizarre, doomed fake field goal in the second quarter of LSU's last-minute loss to the Crimson Tide.

Les just lost my protest vote for president. Maybe I'll write in Saban -- I doubt he'd have any problem at all telling Bibi Netanyahu to go ∫#¢& himself.

Vote for the black Muslim. It's important.

Madonna lectures on political science. Not safe for work . . . or young ears.

The only part of Madonna Louise Ciccone that's anything like a virgin is her brain, having for 54 years avoided being deflowered by a serious thought.

Monday night, the chastity belt around her cranium was cinched up extra tight as the crowd at her Washington, D.C., concert got three minutes' worth of Politics for Dummies . . . by Dummies.

"Y'all better vote for f***ing Obama, OK? For better or for worse, all right? We have a black Muslim in the White House."

And the crowd goes wild.

"Now that is the s***! That is some amazing s***! That means there is hope in this country. And Obama is fighting for gay rights, OK? So support the man, goddammit."

AND THE crowd goes wilder, stopping its whoops and yelps only long enough for the singer's political-science pupils to breathe through their mouths.

Tonight, the absent-mind professor sent a statement to the serious media -- in other words, Perez Hilton -- to clarify that she was being "ironic."

“I was being ironic on stage. Yes I know Obama is not a Muslim (though I know that plenty of people in this country think he is.) And what if he were? The point I was making is that a good man is a good man no matter who he prays to. I don’t care what religion Obama is – nor should anyone else in America.”

OH . . . okaaaaay. Sure, honey bun. Whatever you say.  

What? Oh.

I apologize. I was having a flashback to what my wife tells me whenever I try to BS her that blatantly after being caught saying something moronic.

See, it doesn't count as irony without an eye roll or air quotes. Them's the rules.

OTHERWISE, you're just being an idiot. You know, like if you'd stripped half naked to show off your new "tramp stamp" -- it said "OBAMA" -- then made a solemn vow to the faithful:

“When Obama is in the White House for a second term I'll take it all off.”

Mighty big talk for a woman who does that just to celebrate Tuesdays.

And Wednesdays.

And. . . .

Block by block, piece by piece, somead agency got way overpaid for this

If an SEC version of this super dumb Big 12 ad ever got made -- which it won't -- the last shot would be of Nick Saban's lifeless body under a giant "S."

Or, as a commenter on the Saturday Down South website excellently said:

Nick Saban is too busy eating the still-beating hearts of children to care about things like commercials. He has no time for your silly human publicity.