Xolo's House of Irony

http://www.enidnews.com/story.php?story_id=56471&c=29

The digested version: The representative apparently got drunk and molested several women in a hotel lobby, going so far as to chase one around the lobby.

The punchline appears near the end:

"O’Neal is author of “Defense of Marriage Act,” legislation that proposes a referendum on a constitutional amendment that would define a marriage as a union between one man and one woman.
He also introduced a bill in January 2003 limiting the use of incompatibility as a reason for divorce."

Here's a stalwart Defender of Marriage. Yep.

(no subject)

Some asshole went and put a television in the break room at work, so now it's impossible to enjoy a few minutes of quiet time. Either through cheapness or cruelty, or perhaps some unhappy confluence of the two, it's tuned to a broadcast (i.e., 'Big Four') network. It amazes me that people will actually sit through network primetime programming, yet there's a little group out there staring at the tube. The program's supposed to be funny (there's laughter dubbed in every 20 seconds or so) yet the watchers are sitting with this inscrutable, intent expression. Not a one of them seems to be amused by the jokes, or if they are, it's not an amusement that can be seen. Their faces reflect the earnestness of two year olds. Their bodies are there, but inside they've gone to this place that doesn't seem to be open to me.

There's something in network television that never really connected with me on an emotional level, and if that doesn't happen for you, you can't participate fully in middle American social life. That's probably a good thing, I suppose. If the lives being depicted on TV shows somehow represent dream lives for the viewers, that's a dream that I couldn't live in. It's bad enough to be stuck bodily here, without having it infect my soul as well.

To a certain extent, I think TV watching serves as a sort of surrogate life for some. Many years back, I worked in a factory, and there was a group of people who invariably spent the day talking about what they'd seen on television the previous night. They seemed not really so much to be friends with one another, as to be people who considered the television characters as their friends. They'd not only discuss the behaviour of the characters, but they'd also repeat favourite jokes, re-enacting the show to a certain extent. It seemed unwholesome, in some hard to define way. Monty Python fans do the exact same thing, but with them, it seems exuberantly silly. They're alive while they're doing that. With the factory women, it had this weird edge of desperation - they seemed almost compelled to do it.