While the news about Susan Boyle and Venus Williams was unfolding, I was asking Kevin Smith a question for CNN.com, and thinking about Hurricane Irene not being “too hyped.” I’m sorry that I even introduced the idea at al, as it seemed to catch fire. I find that we’re less sensitive to the suffering of others, and I think that’s due to digital media. We see so much of this so often, we’re hardened to it. Not good.
But we also have a lot to laugh about, like the reporter who got caught by a massive tidal wave in China (that’s in the video). Here’s my video:
Two years ago, April 2009, Susan Boyle, an unknown then-47-year-old Welsh woman appeared on a new show called Britain’s Got Talent, and shocked the World. The video explosion from Boyle’s unexpectly awesome presentation was such that the most popular video from that night has been seen 73 million times to date. Here’s what she did, how Simon Cowell responded, and what I said, then:
Fast forward to August 31, 2011, and the same Susan Boyle is a huge star, but not shy about returning to where it all started – almost. Tonight, Boyle came on not Britain’s Got Talent, but the even newer off-shoot called America’s Got Talent to perform her new song “You Have To Be There.” Here’s a video podcast of Ms. Boyle singing the song, from tonight’s America’s Got Talent show:
And while Boyle was wowing television audiences yet again, tennis star Venus Williams announced that she has withdrawn from the US Open and just before her second-round match, announcing that she has been diagnosed with something called “Sjogren’s syndrome.” That’s “a chronic autoimmune disease in which a person’s white blood cells attack their moisture-producing glands,” according to the website of the Sjogren’s Syndrome Foundation.
Venus told Fox Sports that it was just “energy sucking,” and she just started playing her best tennis in a while. On Monday, she beat Vesna Dolonts 6-4, 6-3.
Someone who needs to pull out of politics for his Hurricane Irene-related remarks is Republican House Majority Leader Eric Cantor. In the wake of the devastation that was caused by the natural disaster, Cantor decided to create a disaster of a PR move by opening his mouth and saying to Fox News “We are going to find the money. We are just going to have to make sure there are savings elsewhere to continue to do so.”
So if you’re drawing unemployment, Cantor seems to think you should give that up for recovery from Hurricane Irene. But the fact is the Federal Government’s ability to spend to get America out of an economic crisis or recover from a natural disaster is far greater than Tea Party types know. Indeed, it’s their lack of knowledge that’s harming America.
Cantor need to step down and make way from a majority leader who really understands how government works. He doesn’t.