Heck, cover her with some of Big Bird's feathers

Katy Perry’s breasts got her kicked off Sesame Street. I never thought I’d have to write that sentence, but because there is no shortage of prudes in this country, I finally got my chance. Perry, who is a rather attractive pop singer, did a musical number with the Sesame Street puppet Elmo that was supposed to run on the show, but when a clip of the video turned up on YouTube, some people apparently were aghast about the dress Perry was wearing, featuring a gold bustier top much like the one in the photo above. And, of course, with this being one of the leading countries in the world in which people are highly outraged by next to nothing, those folks complained. And Sesame Street, of course, bowed down immediately and killed plans to run the segment. You can still see it on Perry’s website at http://www.katyperry.com/ Judge for yourself. But here’s my opinion. Katy Perry is a pretty gorgeous human being, but I find it hard to believe that anybody was offended by her cleavage because, well, she really doesn’t have much to speak of. I guarantee you that you can go to pretty much any beach in this country and see a lot more skin that what’s revealed by Perry’s dress. Heck, go to Washington Crown Center and you’ll see a lot more. Back in the day, the women’s underwear section of the Sears catalog featured more in the way of partial nudity. Honestly, unless it was pointed out by an adult, if kids watched this video, they wouldn’t think a thing of it. And I wonder if we’d even be talking about this if Perry’s dress had a couple of little straps on it. Unfortunately, children are too often taught that the human body is something to be ashamed of. The folks who are griping about Perry are probably the same ones who want women who breast-feed their children in public to be treated like Hester Prynne. Some people in this country are becoming more like the Taliban every day.

The time of the season

In less than a month, voters will be going to the polls for the Pennsylvania primary, and the pre-vote TV ads are showing up full force. A few observations about some of the early offerings:

– Allegheny County Chief Executive Dan Onorato, who is running for governor, has an ad in which he talks about growing up in a home that is shown on the screen. Later he says that he still lives in the same neighborhood, a few miles away. Now, is it just me, or is that the biggest neighborhood known to man? I'm thinking that if you have to drive several miles away, you're NOT in the same neighborhood.

– Does anyone know what party Mark Critz belongs to? It's really hard to tell based on the advertisements being run by the former Murtha aide who is running for the late, legendary congressman’s old seat. The answer to my original question: Critz is a Democrat. He just doesn't seem to be very proud of it.

– Finally, has anybody seen the hatchet-job advertisement Sen. Arlen Specter has rolled out to target his Democratic primary opponent, Congressman Joe Sestak? No touchy-feely stuff from Arlen. He's going straight to the brass knuckles. The Specter ad starts by attacking Sestak’s military record, then goes on to chastise him for missing a lot of votes in the House. Here's the deal. To have any chance at unseating a guy like Specter, who has been in the Senate since the Iron Age and has a big old campaign war chest, a challenger has to spend countless hours raising money and actually campaigning. The big-money politics of our time demands it. If any challenger in Sestak's position played by Specter's rules, he would have little or no chance of unseating an incumbent. Oh, yeah, I get it now.

On burgers, briefs, buffoons and bones

A few random thoughts:

I saw a story on the Internet this week clearly illustrating that some people have too much time on their hands and also are horribly misguided. A watchdog group called Corporate Accountability International is mounting a campaign to have Ronald McDonald removed as mascot of the fast-food chain bearing the same name, apparently because he is leading kids to potentially unhealthy fast food. Now, certainly, kids think Ronald is a pretty cool guy, and they're big on the Happy Meals, but Ronald isn't going to their houses and giving them rides to the Golden Arches. It's up to parents to decide whether their children get a Happy Meal or a Filet-O-Fish or a Big Mac and fries. We can only assume that Corporate Accountability International will be coming out in favor of the Hamburglar, with hopes that he will snatch cheeseburgers from the hands of children. What they should really do is just shut up.

When it comes to groceries, I'm very picky about what I buy. I'm not saying I only buy healthy foods, but that I make sure the junk that I'm putting into my body is top-quality junk. When it comes to clothes shopping, I'm not nearly so meticulous. Ask anyone who has seen how I dress. My inattention to detail proved to be a problem the other day. I was in the market for some underwear, so I went to the local store with the bull's-eye logo and checked out its offerings. I've always been a briefs guy, and when I spotted a six-pack of nice-looking, well-priced “sport briefs,” I tossed them in the cart. It was only when I got them home and tried on a pair that I noticed ... there's no hole in the front of these briefs. My underwear have always had holes in a useful place, so this has required a bit of an adjustment in my bathroom routine. The whole thing left me wondering, though. Do "sporty" people not go Number One all that often? And when they do go, do they maybe sit? Sorry. That's just how my twisted mind works.

No one does a better job of treating their viewers like drooling imbeciles than local TV newscasters. During prime time, they'll breathlessly run promos for their 11 o’clock news with teasers like this: “Is a serial killer stalking South Hills residents?” Then they'll come on at 11 and tell you that, no, it was a false alarm. I was actually just a raccoon going through people's trash cans. I exaggerate, but you get the drift. This next part is real. The other night, the irritatingly kooky Wendy Bell on WTAE was teasing an upcoming story about the Steelers’ preseason schedule. She said something about the Steelers facing “strange competition” next preseason and telling viewers to stay tuned to find out what “enemies” the black and gold would be facing. This really had me wondering. Would the Steelers perhaps be squaring off against the Colgate University lacrosse team? Canadian female curlers? The Bangladesh national badminton squad? Uh, no. Turns out they'll be playing a couple of teams they don’t normally play in the exhibition season. And what’s with this “enemies” stuff? Those preseason games are glorified practices. There's not enough anger or enmity in those so-called contests to fuel a go-cart. The real rage should come from season-ticket holders who have to pay top dollar for the right to attend those auditions for third-string tight ends.

Finally, let's talk about lunch meat. It never seemed odd to me when stores advertised “ham off the bone.” Real hams have a bone right down the middle, and one could easily imagine somebody carving lunch meat off of them. But last night on TV, I saw a Shop ’n Save ad touting turkey off the bone. Huh? Last time I checked, turkeys had lots of bones, and I couldn't think of one particular turkey bone that a butcher might be carving slices of lunch meat from. What's next? Bologna off the bone? Salami off the bone? Maybe head cheese off the bone? Just wondering.

Really, was this necessary?

Those who know me recognize that I'm not a religious person. In fact, I often point out the failures and hypocrisy of religious organizations. But it really rubbed me the wrong way when I read in Rob Owen’s “Tuned In” column in the Post-Gazette that WPXI television in Pittsburgh is booting from Channel 11 a Catholic Mass that has been broadcast on that station for decades on Sunday mornings. Owen reported that the program will be shifted to the over-the-air RTV channel and WPXI’s cable station, PCNC. But anyone who gets their television signals via a satellite dish won’t be able to see the Mass. The reason for the change, according to WPXI, is that it will allow the station to begin its Sunday morning newscast at 5:30 a.m. rather than 7 a.m., in order to directly compete with WTAE’s morning news program. Here was the explanation offered by WPXI program director Mark Barash: “We were feeling like there was an audience looking for news on Sunday mornings, and our viewers were kind of saying, ‘Where’s your newscast?’ and we didn’t have one.” Yes, Mr. Barash, you did have one. It started at 7 a.m. Does he really expect us to believe that the station was being inundated with calls from people saying, “Dammit, I got up at 5:30 a.m., and you people didn’t have a rehash of yesterday’s news and video from a couple of overnight car crashes!” I'm not buying it. I don't know this for a fact, but I'm willing to entertain the notion that ratings and money somehow enter into this equation. And the needs of shut-ins and others who faithfully watched the broadcasts of the Masses? Hmmm, maybe not so much.

Creating a smokescreen

A few thoughts about the Winter Olympics:

– That was quite a tap dance that Olympic officials did after a Georgian luger, Nodar Kumaritashvili, went off the luge course, hit a pole and died last Friday. The International Olympic Committee and officials of the sport basically blamed Kumaritashvili for his own death, citing the 21-year-old's relative inexperience. But his deadly accident came on the same day a veteran slider lost his sled in an accident and had to hang onto it for dear life as he shot down the track. And what did the IOC and luge officials do after telling everyone that the track was perfectly safe? They put up a big wall to prevent anyone else from hitting the pole, and they changed the starting points for the men and women lugers to cut down the speeds. There are also reports that Canadian Olympic officials did what they could to prevent lugers from other nations from practicing at the site until just before the games, in order to give their lugers a home-track advantage. Shameful.

– The missus is a huge Winter Olympics fan, so I've seen nothing else on my television since Friday night. I find some of the sports enjoyable to watch. Speed skating comes quickly to mind. But some of this stuff, like cross-country skiing and the ice dancing part of the figure skating competition, make curling look like “Rollerball.” And would it be too much to ask NBC to show more of the actual competitions, even if the competitors are from Zingzangistan and not in contention for medals, rather than blab, blab, blab for 50 minutes out of every hour? A little less talk, a lot more action would be nice.

– Speaking of figure skating, did anyone else notice that in the pairs and ice dancing competitions, there are a bunch of people who were born in one country but are skating under another country’s flag? Apparently, a guy from the United States can skate for France if his third-cousin’s grandmother’s brother once ate a croissant. Seriously, these rules need to be tightened up so that the competitors have to compete for the country in which they were born and lived all their lives.

Random thoughts on the boob tube

A few observations after a night spent watching television:

1. There are times when, despite having a couple of hundred channels to choose from, I can't find a thing that I want to watch on television. Conversely, last night I saw a few good shows. I have to admit that I'm hooked on "Glee!" (I realize that's a somewhat shameful admission for a 51-year-old heterosexual, but it is what it is). And there were a couple of pretty good sitcoms on last night: "Modern Family" and "The Middle." I have trouble sticking with too many shows that have linear story lines, so I tend to watch lighter fare. Are there any shows you would recommend that might be flying under the radar?

2. I saw on SportsCenter that Chad Ochocinco (the former Chad Johnson) of the Cincinnati Bengals was fined something in the neighborhood of $30,000 for donning a cape and a sombrero on the sidelines after scoring a touchdown last weekend. Not on the field, mind you. On the sidelines. The NFL is, more and more, becoming a stiff, corporate "No Fun League," and W&J grad Roger Goodell, the league commissioner, is coming off as a humorless bastard who makes baseball commissioner Bud Selig, who has all the charisma of Harry Reid, look like Will Ferrell by comparison.

3. Does anyone else want to throw a brick through the television when those Jared jewelry commercials come on? They put me on the brink of wanting to retch into the nearest receptacle. I swear that if I were in the market for jewelry, I'd strip some off the rotting corpse of a dead hooker before I'd darken the door of one of their stores.

Windbag of change

Lou Dobbs has called it quits at CNN. On the rare occasions when I came across his show while flipping through the channels, he struck me as a pompous windbag – and another kind of bag that I won't mention here – but since I don't watch any of the talking heads on the TV news networks, I can't say that his departure will leave a hole in my viewing lineup. For those who also pay little attention to the pontificators of evening TV, Dobbs was initially a business journalist at CNN, but he gave his own career a boost when he decided to refashion himself as the Howard Beale of the anti-illegal immigrant movement. He also gave credence to the birthers, those dimwits who are convinced that President Obama was born in Kenya or Winston Churchill’s basement or the Planet Zoltron – pretty much anywhere but Hawaii. Dobbs hasn't announced his plans, other than to say that he intends to chase new opportunities and be a leader in the "national conversation." I wouldn't be surprised to see him run for public office, and I have a suggestion: Dobbs should try to reclaim for the Republicans the House seat they just lost in New York’s 23rd Congressional District. Then he could mount a campaign to stop those darned Canadians from swimming across the Saint Lawrence River and stealing the Zamboni-driving jobs of good, honest Amurkuns.

What does it mean? Not much

If there are signs today that the problem of global warming has increased, the main culprit was most likely all the hot air spewed into the atmosphere by the so-called experts (there were at least eight of them on CNN at the same time) trying to analyze what happened in Tuesday’s off-year election. And the answer, after all the pontificating is, really, not very much. Republican Party Chairman Michael Steele declared that the victories by GOP candidates in gubernatorial elections in Virginia and New Jersey proved the Republicans are "a transcendent party" with a future so bright they’re gotta wear shades. Leading Democrats say those same results were in no way a reflection of overall dissatisfaction with their party or its leader, President Barack Obama. The truth, as the old saying goes, is somewhere in the middle. There was really little doubt that Virginia would choose the Republican gubernatorial candidate, and there were few people in New Jersey less popular than incumbent Democratic Gov. Jon Corzine. But at the same time, it would be foolish to say that the results bear no connection to dissatisfaction with Obama, even if that dissatisfaction comes mainly in the form of angry Republicans who are now energized to get revenge. For the Democrats, it's a valuable wake-up call before next year's really important midterm elections. If they want to maintain their advantages in the House and Senate, they're going to have to work very hard to motivate voters – especially young people and minorities – who turned out in droves to elect Obama but stayed home in droves on Tuesday. You can try to pick apart Tuesday's races to conjure up trends, but none really exist. In very large part, next year's elections will hinge on one factor: the state of the economy. If people have more money in their pockets, if jobs are being created and if people feel optimistic about their futures, that bodes well for the Democrats. If the economic recovery stalls out, Republicans could make major strides toward proving that reports of their demise were greatly exaggerated.

A few other thoughts:

– The special congressional election in upstate New York, which filled a vacancy in a seat held by Republicans since sometime close to the Bronze Age, didn't go quite like far-right conservatives such as Sarah Palin had in mind. The right-wingers forced the Republican candidate from the race because she wasn't "right" enough, leaving an ultra-conservative to take on the Democratic nominee. The Democrat won, but again, don't read too much into that. There's an election for a full term representing that district next year, and there's a good chance the Republicans will reclaim it.

– It personally saddens me that voters in Maine chose to overturn that state's law allowing gay marriage, but a struggle such as this, for the hearts and minds of a people, isn't won in short order. Thirty years ago, a proposal to allow gay marriage probably would have been defeated by a 90 percent to 10 percent margin. Today, the votes are much closer, and eventually gay marriage will be the law of the land. The good news, from my vantage point, is that voters in Washington state appear poised (votes are still being counted) to expand the state's domestic-partnership law to give gay couples all the rights of heterosexuals. It would mark the first time a gay-rights measure had won statewide approval in this country. It's far from a major victory, but it's a small step.

– While switching over to watch the 10 p.m. local news last night, I happened to catch the last few minutes of the new "Melrose Place" on the CW network. If you are a fan of terrible, over-the-top acting, I urge you to tune in sometime. It was cringe-worthy.

– Is it just me, or is political commentator James Carville, above left, looking more and more like Skeletor from Masters of the Universe?

We're not that interested

The other morning, ABC's “Good Morning America” heavily promoted and gave considerable attention and air time to a story about the start of the trial of a man accused in the beating death of a woman in Little Rock, Ark. Oh, the woman just happened to be an anchorwoman on a Little Rock television station, which also just happens to be an ABC affiliate. As murders go, there was nothing especially spectacular about this one. Somebody gained entry to Anne Pressly's home, sexually assaulted her and fatally beat her. It's a very sad case, but it doesn’t stand out from hundreds of other murders that occurred across the country last year. So why does ABC think the average American is especially interested in the trial? Could it be that Pressly was blonde, attractive and a member of the local celebrity class? It certainly wouldn't be the first time that the media virtually ignored the killing of a poor, black woman while lavishing attention on the similar death of an attractive, white woman. But I don't think that's it. I think Pressly's case is in the ABC spotlight simply because she was a fellow TV news person. If she had been a bank vice president in Little Rock, would we have seen the extensive coverage? Not likely.