Morons of the Month - January 2016

Okay, it's only January 5 and we just got to Epiphany Sunday.   Plus these morons really showed their true stupidity just last week while we were still in 2015.   But, as true morons are, we can count on them being inept and brain-dead repeatedly so I assume we will see them as repeat moronic offenders in 2016.  It's the non-gift that just keeps on giving.

Okay, during the week between Christmas and New Year's, I always look forward to CBS airing the annual Kennedy Center Honors.   You know the drill after...lo...these many years.   Five or six long time members of the arts are given a tribute while seated in the same box as the President and the First Lady. I have long been a fan of the festivities as they are taken seriously with smart tributes.   Indeed, over the years, an air of seriousness has been added to the proceedings with the choice of hosts.   For a while, it was Walter Cronkite.   Okay, he became allegedly unavailable.   Then the host was Caroline Kennedy and, despite her lack of taking cue card lessons from Bob Hope, she still provided an element of class every year.

So I tuned in last week, expecting more of the same with the honorees being George Lucas, Rita Moreno, Cicely Tyson, Carole King, and some Japanese conductor I never heard of.  And, right from the get go, there was a tone to the show that seemed incredibly off.  As soon as the grossly unfunny host Stephen Colbert made his appearance, I had a sense that this was no longer the Kennedy Center Honors I had come to love over the years.

Indeed, it was not.  The staged lines were juvenile.   The choices of tributes, except for Carole King, were questionable.  I waited till the closing credits to see if my suspicions were correct.   For years, the show had been shepherded by the legendary producer George Stevens Jr.,   Well, either George was let go or perhaps he was retired.   The names that replaced him?   Well, they might as well be producing the People's Choice Awards.  And probably have.

What we wound up with was no longer the austere Kennedy Center Honors.   It was just another lame awards ceremony that are now a dime a dozen.   The only difference is that this one featured President and Mrs. Obama.

And therein lies another reason to lambast these producers as morons.  In all my years of watching the Kennedy Center show, never have we had the images of the President and First Lady crammed down our throats as much as this year's program.   Part of the joy of this show in the past has been to watch the honorees' reaction to the tribute on stage.   So, while we're waiting to see how Carole King is responding to her songs being sung by the likes of Aretha Franklin and James Taylor, we are instead "treated" to incessant cutaways of Barry and Michelle grooving to the music.   As if they are something more than the political elitists that they are.  Frankly, I am sick to death of having these two presented to me as if they are common folks just like you and me.  Because they are not.  Hardly not.

But, in the last week of 2015 as well as probably the rest of 2016, we are served daily doses of this castor oil by the media and Hollywood.   The President mountain climbs on a reality show and sits like a comedian in a car with Jerry Seinfeld.   All dignity is now gone from the office.   

And it is producers like those who just took over the Kennedy Center Honors who are to blame.  

But, alas alack, even that is no longer sacred television.

Dinner last night:  Chicken apple sausage, sauerkraut, and pickled beets.