Dance of the Reptiles (35 page)

None of my cool buds like Jeter or Jordan ever explained to me that text messages just sort of float around cyberspace forever. Is that the scariest thing you ever heard?

No wonder I’ve got insomnia.

Tanya L., in Las Vegas, writes: “Hey, Tiggy, remember me from that time in the penthouse at Caesar’s when—”

Nice try, Tanya. Or whatever your real name is.

Mike G., in Miami Beach, writes: “Dear Wood Man, you are my hero! I mean, like, porn stars? Seriously?”

Whoa, Mike. They didn’t tell me they were porn stars. They said they worked for Cirque du Soleil. I guess all those dragon tattoos should have tipped me off.

Tony R., in Pebble Beach, writes: “Dear Tiger, I can’t hit a downhill bunker shot to save my life. Should I switch to a 60-degree wedge?”

Stick with your 56-degree, Tony, but play the ball in the center of your stance with the clubface slightly open.

And by the way, God bless you for asking.

April 30, 2011

The Donald Makes (Almost) Humble Speech

Rejected first draft of Donald Trump’s final announcement about his political intentions in 2012
.

First let me say how proud I am of myself for heckling Barack Obama until he produced the “long form” of his birth
certificate, something no white president managing two wars and a budget crisis has ever been asked to do. At long last, the national debate can move on to other idiotic conspiracy theories, which I may or may not exploit to boost my TV ratings.

Tonight, though, belongs to the 50 billion Donald J. Trump fans who’ve tuned in to see the season’s last episode of
Celebrity Apprentice
. To all my fellow Americans watching at home, and to all of you gathered here in the boardroom, the waiting is over.

[Pause for spontaneous applause from studio audience.]

Before I reveal my decision about whether or not to seek the presidency of the United States, I want to say a few words to all those pundits and bloggers who’ve been viciously attacking my integrity during these last few weeks.

To start with, I’m not a racist.

What I am is an egotistical gasbag who will say or do anything for attention. There’s a big difference!

Just because I needlessly insulted a black president and fired La Toya Jackson (and, okay, Dionne Warwick), that doesn’t make me a racist. I fired Gary Busey, too, didn’t I? And he’s as white as they come.

Other critics have questioned my truthfulness regarding my enormous, mind-boggling wealth. It’s true that on occasion I have exaggerated my net worth by a few billion dollars, and also perhaps overstated my stake in certain high-profile real-estate projects.

Does that make me a liar and a poseur? No. It makes me a guy who talks big, and that’s just what this nation needs: more bigheaded white guys talking big.

Now for the announcement that all of you are awaiting: After consulting with my family, my political advisers, and of course my close personal friend Martha Stewart, I’ve reluctantly
decided not to seek the Republican nomination for president.

[Dramatic pause for a collective groan of disappointment from the audience.]

Let me give you my reasons for this very difficult decision.

Ever since I braced President Obama about his birth certificate, I’ve been hounded by the media to produce my own birth records (which is fine), my tax returns going back five years (which I’m looking for), my contract with NBC (which I’ve misplaced, though I’m pretty sure it’s in my golf locker down at Mar-a-Lago), a list of all current corporate holdings and mortgage positions (like I keep track), and a sworn affidavit from my hairstylist stating that no orangutans were harmed during the weaving of my toupee.

Make no mistake: These petty demands are meant only to distract voters from the more serious issues I’ve raised, such as whether or not I’m richer than Mitt Romney (I am!).

Tragically, the frivolous and mean-spirited nature of the debate has taken a toll on my family, which is the second most important thing in my life. In good conscience, I can’t put my kids through a grueling presidential campaign in which they’ll hear their father maligned as a publicity-grubbing charlatan who couldn’t find Yemen on Google Earth.

The truth is, I did find Yemen on Google Earth. It was Bahrain that gave me fits.

Don’t get me wrong. I know I’d be a fantastic president, just like I’m a fantastic billionaire reality-show host.

Before the bloggers start in, let me set the record straight. My choice not to run for the highest office in the land has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that the job pays only $400,000 a year, which is, frankly, a joke.

When Donald Jr. told me what the president’s salary was,
I gotta admit, I thought he’d been spending a little too much time on Willie Nelson’s bus.

[Pause for audience laughter.]

Just kidding. Willie’s a close personal friend.

But seriously, can you believe that the most powerful guy in the free world gets paid a lousy 400 grand a year? The batboy for the freaking Yankees makes more than that!

I understand that by bowing out of the presidential race, I’m disappointing billions and billions of Americans who’d been counting on me to save the country. Two of them are sitting in this boardroom tonight. Meat Loaf, what can I say? I know I promised that you could be Secretary of Defense in the first Trump administration. And Lil Jon, you were my first choice to replace Bernanke at the Federal Reserve.

Gentlemen, you’re both fantastic patriots and close personal friends of mine.

Be patient. Your time will come.

Meanwhile, to all the fans who’ve cheered for me on this brief but overhyped journey, all that’s left to say is: I’m almost humbled.

God bless me, and God bless America. Good night.

[Remain seated for thunderous applause.]

June 4, 2011

Here’s the Lowdown on “Weinergate”

Now comes before us in indignation one Rep. Anthony D. Weiner, Democrat from New York, who, through Twitter, launched an unseemly photograph to a female college student in Seattle.

Weiner, a feisty liberal who hopes to become mayor of New York, is an avid user of social networks on which he dispenses quips and commentary. He says he’s the victim
of a hacker who sent out a “gag photo” of a man sporting a suggestive bulge in his underwear. In the lofty vernacular of our times, this is called a crotch shot, also known as a Favre.

Weiner vigorously denies tweeting the waist-down picture and says he has never met or spoken with the young woman who received it. The woman says the same thing. Yet “Weinergate,” as the bloggers have tagged the scandal, refuses to go away. Here’s why: When asked about it last week, the congressman stated that he couldn’t say “with certainty” whether or not it was his crotch in the picture.

This raises, so to speak, a couple of possible scenarios. Perhaps Weiner is photographed so often from the waist down that he can’t recall all the different pictures. Or perhaps the snapshot in question was taken from an angle that makes it difficult for him to identify himself in bedroom lighting.

For whatever reason, the congressman isn’t sure if it’s him in the wayward tweet. Most folks caught in the same predicament would know at a glance. Unless you’re a Calvin Klein model, a porn actor, or a rock star, you can probably count on one hand the number of times somebody aimed a camera point-blank at your groin.

Back in 1971, the Rolling Stones released a classic album called
Sticky Fingers
. The jacket art, conceived by Andy Warhol, was a pair of jeans with a zipper that really unzipped, revealing a photograph of a male torso in tight white briefs.

The rumor was that the man posing for that photo was Mick Jagger, the band’s lead singer. That wasn’t true, but nonetheless, many album covers were ripped open on the shelves of record stores by young female fans who lusted for a peek.

It’s safe to say that a different sort of frenzy has been stirred by the alleged crotch shot of Congressman Weiner. In an interview with CBS News, the most he would say is “The photograph does not look familiar to me.”

Not exactly a blistering denial.

In a stab at humor, he also alluded to his friend Jon Stewart’s joke that the tweeted picture featured such a robust weiner that it couldn’t belong to Weiner.

As this is being written, the congressman still hasn’t settled the debate over whether or not it’s him in his skivvies. Obviously, there’s no law against photographing yourself in underwear or having a friend do it. For a public figure, however, the dumb thing is to send out such an image electronically, or to leave it in a computer file that could be hacked. Yet brainless indiscretion does seem to be trending.

In February, another New York congressman, Rep. Chris Lee, resigned after it was revealed that he had e-mailed a suggestive photo of himself to a woman he’d contacted on Craigslist. In his creepy self-portrait, the married Republican lawmaker was posing shirtless and flexing his muscles.

Most infamously, NFL superstar Brett Favre got in trouble for sending inappropriate texts and voice mails to a woman who worked for the New York Jets while Favre was the team’s quarterback. Included in his Neanderthal seduction efforts was a graphic picture he’d taken of his locker-room pride and joy, a gesture that failed to impress the young lady and also was likely not a big hit with Mrs. Favre.

It’s common for men to behave like knuckle-dragging morons, but cyber-technology is presenting new opportunities for self-humiliation and disgrace. Tiger Woods, who had no qualms about sending raunchy texts to the women he was boinking, was unaccountably flabbergasted, stunned to learn
that some had archived these messages and shared them with others.

Rep. Weiner was known as a popular bachelor until last year, when he married a longtime aide to Hillary Clinton. It’s possible that the disputed close-up was taken by Weiner himself, or a past girlfriend, or even his wife. Or maybe it’s not even his personal junk in the photo, which would leave the mystery of how it got posted on his account with yfrog, an image service affiliated with Twitter.

If the congressman is being truthful when he says he didn’t send the picture, the story is worthwhile only as a lesson to all prominent persons who occasionally get stupid with their smartphones.

Spare us, please, from your homemade crotch shots.

The delete button is your friend.

July 9, 2011

Casey-Mania and the Talking Heads

A true headline among the flurry of stories posted on Yahoo! following the Casey Anthony verdict: “Kim Kardashian Weighs In.”

It’s fairly horrifying that anyone gives a rat’s ass about Kim Kardashian’s take on the Anthony case. On the other hand, she couldn’t be more clueless than some of the motormouths who landed TV gigs as “legal experts” during the trial coverage. Never have the airwaves and bandwidths of this country been so clogged with gasbags posing as seasoned courtroom veterans, or lightweight has-beens seeking to jump-start their careers.

High on Casey-mania, cable networks such as HLN were frantic to fill airtime with talking heads, and by the end of the
trial, you wondered if they were just yanking random lawyers out of the hallways and shoving them in front of the camera.

The prevailing tenor of the coverage, embodied by Nancy Grace and others, was that Anthony was guilty as sin of killing her daughter, Caylee. This wasn’t an unreasonable view, considering Anthony’s many lies, her busy social life after Caylee’s disappearance, and the circumstantial evidence compiled by prosecutors. Despite the acquittal, there remains no plausible set of circumstances to explain Caylee’s death that would not directly and criminally involve her mother.

So what went wrong with the jury? Nothing.

The public’s expectations were jacked up by all the TV yakking about this dreadful crime and the train wreck of a mom accused of committing it. With some sharp exceptions, like Jeffrey Toobin of CNN, most of the “legal experts” continued shooting from the lip, feeding the hype.

But here’s what smart trial lawyers knew from the beginning: Proving Anthony guilty of first-degree murder would be very difficult.

In the shell-shocked outcry last week after the verdict was announced, many were comparing the surprise outcome to that of the O. J. Simpson murder trial. The truth is, the Simpson prosecutors had much more evidence to work with, a veritable gold mine. They had a cause of death. They had a time of death. They had blood evidence, DNA, gloves, and footprints. They had two intact bodies and an actual crime scene. And still they lost the case.

Because it took so long to find Caylee’s remains, Anthony’s prosecutors couldn’t tell the jury where, when, or how she had died. Duct tape on the skull, chloroform residue in a car trunk—that’s enough for a theory, but it’s not a smoking gun. Then there was the question of motive. For any experienced
homicide detective, the Simpson crime scene had jealous ex-husband written all over it. But in the Anthony trial, jurors were asked to believe that this woman murdered her daughter simply so she could go out partying with her peeps. Sicker things have happened, but it’s a tough sell without credible witnesses who heard Casey say she wanted her daughter dead.

Given what they had to work with, prosecutors did a solid job. Obviously, so did Jose Baez, the much maligned lead defense lawyer for Anthony. It’s funny to see the so-called experts backpedaling in their estimation of both sides now that the case is over.

Shortly before the verdict came down, one row of TV legal eagles sat there predicting that the prosecution would be helped by the fact that most of the jurors were women, and women would be tougher on Anthony because of the nature of the crime.

So much for that bit of wisdom.

Watching a trial on television isn’t the same as watching it from the jury box, where there’s no background commentary or dramatic theme music during the breaks. However, smart lawyers and judges will tell you that a different jury could have just as easily convicted Anthony, just as a different jury could have convicted Simpson. That’s how it goes.

What happens next is more predictable: Casey Anthony enters the low realm of celebrity. She’ll get a ghostwriter and do a bestselling book and possibly have her own reality show. On the advice of her attorneys, she will either find Jesus or volunteer to work with abused kids. She will be strongly counseled not to start dating Alex Rodriguez or Charlie Sheen.