Now that The Donald has emerged as the bankroller of a proposed casino in deepest Johnston — and wouldn’t the landfill be wonderful as a site, symbolic in so many ways — it’s time to get into full Trump mode. To whet the appetite, P&J share a joke from a recent and great Sports Illustrated article on a Friars Club roast of legendary boxing promoter Don King, hosted by Trump.
The Friars’ roast is conducted by a legion of comedians, most of them clapped-out former Catskills schleps. But one of the up-and-comers, Lisa Lampanelli, brought down the house when she, as is traditional, doled out the all-blue, all-the-time grief to the host as well as the roastee. Of Trump’s roadkill hairdo, she said, “What do you say to a barber to get that kind of a haircut, anyway? ‘I fucked your daughter’ ?”
She also got a great line in about another attendee, the Amazing Kreskin (which shows something about the caliber of “celebrity” at this evidently gruesome event): “The Amazing Kreskin is here. He’s a mentalist, that guy — he can read people’s thoughts. What a horrible gift. How many times tonight alone did he hear people walk by him thinking, ‘Man, what a douche bag!’ ?”
Bring it on, Donnie Boy. We can’t wait.
Meg’s back
The outlook for cleaning the mess that is the administration of Roger Williams Medical Center got a whole lot brighter with the revelation in Tuesday’s BeloJo that former US Attorney Meg Curran is on the case. Meg will work with former Massachusetts prosecutor Leonard Henson to monitor the deferred prosecution agreement entered into by the hospital and the federal government.
It’s no secret that Meg is considered, at Casa Diablo, the best of the best. She has, of course, been battling multiple sclerosis for some time, and we are happy that her health is strong enough for her to take on this assignment. The world is more just and more honest when Meg Curran is involved.
Full speed ahead
Speaking of ethics, what Jack Abramoff?
After having flushed Tom “Cockroach Boy” DeLay out of his position as House majority leader, l’affaire Abramoff appears to have disappeared below the horizon, after its 15 minutes of fame, when “Shotgun Dick” Cheney took over the stage.
According to reports in the Washington Post, the entire ethics reform movement in Congress has slowed to a crawl. This is especially true in the House, led by the totally compromised Dennis Hastert. It is also due to the election of Representative John A. Boehner — “[who] has a different notion of what ‘reform’ should entail and who challenged parts of Hastert’s plan,” reports the Post — to fill DeLay’s cloven-hoofed shoes.
Boehner is the same bastion of morality who once actually passed out checks from tobacco lobbyists to representatives right on the House floor, and who has spent his winter break on a Caribbean “boys’ trip” with big-time K Street lobbyists. Phillipe & Jorge will not hold our breath waiting for any substantive ethics reform to come about, but we sure will exhale once Abramoff really begins to sing to save his ass.
And speaking of inaction in our nation’s capitol, which is rapidly becoming a wonderful place to take your skin for a crawl, the excellent Los Angeles Times columnist Richard Schmitt points out a very special federal body indeed. The White House’s Privacy and Civil Liberties Board, “whose purpose is to ensure that privacy and civil liberties are protected in the fight against terrorism” according to Schmitt, has yet to meet even once. Some protection, eh boys and girls?
And is it important? Schmitt quotes Thomas Kean, who headed the post-9/11 commission that investigated what went wrong and made recommendations to improve security: “We felt it was absolutely vital . . . We had certainly hoped it would have been up and running a long time ago.” Well, as “Big Time,” the famed gunslinger, would say, “Go fuck yourself, Tommy.”
Not that any of us have to worry about our privacy or civil rights, n’est-ce pas? Sleep tight, America.
Inspector Ramon Clouseau
P&J enjoyed the February 15 story from our august RI organ of record about Dick Cheney, courtesy of the BeloJo’s sister paper, the Dallas Morning News, whose hard-hitting investigative journalism is to be praised:
“Kenedy County Sheriff Ramon Salinas III, whose department investigated the shooting, has said he talked by phone to employees of Armstrong Ranch, including the boyfriend of his daughter, who assured him the shooting was accidental.”
“ ‘They told me what happened.’ Salinas said. ‘I decided [to] let them sleep on it. I said we’ll go in the morning.’ ”
