Vanity? Fair?

Manfrengensen read me two staggering statistics this weekend from the Wall Street Journal.  In Detroit, the unemployment rate is 15%.  Fifteen percent!  And that says nothing of the number of people who are underemployed.  In addition to that, the high school graduation rate in Detroit is 25%.  That means that 75 of every 100 children are getting left behind by the system.

I was kind of drunk on Saturday night, which is rare for me.  All day Sunday, I had trouble focusing, a little headache, a lot of haze.  My glasses seemed not to be working quite right.  I finally sat down in the evening to watch a little TV and I realized: I hadn’t taken out my contacts when I went to bed after the party.  Duh.

Speaking of high school dropouts, I don’t want to make it a habit to comment on this kind of stuff, but…

Poor Miley.  Poor thing.  Seriously, she’s fifteen, and she’s getting exploited from every angle.  I certainly hope it all works out for this kid, but I wouldn’t be surprised if she goes all  Britney in a few years.

http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20195785,00.html

Though I must admit that the cynical side of me thinks it’s all just crap.  It’s all just PR and the sales machine.  They all knew what they were doing at this photo shoot.  It’s an orchestration. Oh, my god, there’s controversy in the fan base, so let’s issue a retraction (she thought the photos would be artsy, she’s just a pawn for those dirty-thinking artist-types) to placate them.  The masses who want scintillation are appeased, but so are those who want their white bread nice and plain. She’s ashamed and saddened, but she can’t stop Vanity Fair from running the photos. Sure. Right. 

Is there even really controversy over the photos? Or is it merely a manufactured controversy?

Any distraction will do to keep our minds off the situations in Detroit and other hard-to-face places, I guess.

This weekend, I was telling J to put his used batteries into a bag that I drop off at the recycling place.  Manfrengensen likes to tease me about being an avid recycler.  Not that he disagrees, but he is 2/3 Eddie Haskell, so he teases me, because like many things, I take it very seriously.  This weekend he referred to me as “Alice Gore.”  Thank God I have this man to keep me laughing.