On Sunday night, the TV pseudo-news show "Extra" did a full night of medical stories. So my question is:
Since when do people count on reporters who specialize in who Tom Cruise is fucking this week to tell us how to evaluate the expertise of one's eye surgeon?
Can you believe these entertainment industry PR reps - because that's what they are, publicists for the movie and record producers who give them tickets to the latest premier and invitations to the parties at Brad Pitt's house. What I want to know is when these people start doing "stories" on medicine, who's giving them what? I bet someone's grandmother is getting a free rectal exam out of this.
One of the stories on Extra was about women in Massachusetts who have come down with a disease called scleroderma, and now - thanks to some "public advocacy organization" - they're suddenly remembering all the polluting factories they've ever lived near.
"I have scleroderma, and my astrologer, I mean my priest, I mean my lawyer told me that pollution can cause this kind of stuff. Therefore, I'm going to sue any fuel-burning fuck I can get my hands on."
Yeah, just not your car-driving husband, or your chain-smoking mother. It's less upsetting to your relatives, and more generous to your pocketbook, to sue the automobile industry or the tobacco companies. Never mind the fact that people can get diseases like scleroderma by other ways besides eating five gallons of nuclear sludge a day for two hundred years.
Have you ever heard of a case when some disease-sufferer living in one of these environmentally-ravaged hellholes didn't get their disease from the pollution? It seems that when you have pollution in your backyard, you cease to contract diseases naturally. Maybe pollution is the cure to all diseases. Sure, you might see the same number of diseases with pollution as without, but you'll have absolutely zero cases of regular scleroderma, cancer, and Tourette's Syndrome.
Julia Roberts wasn't actually exposed to any of that chromium 6 shit in Erin Brockovich, but that sure as fuck didn't help reduce her swearing.
Erin Brockovich and the "C" Word
Have you ever seen the cut scenes from Erin Brockovich? (They're on the DVD, in case you're so inclined.)
There's a scene when Julia Roberts uses the C word to improve her description of her coworkers. Considering that Erin Brockovich was rated R for language, I know they didn't remove the C word to get the PG-13 rating.
Hmm... Who do you think that movie was being marketed to? Take a wild guess at which target group the producers were afraid would hate hearing the word "cunt"?
This is the world of art. Nothing demonstrates your creative genius more than cutting profanity out of your film so you can sell more tickets to the staff of your grandmother's hair salon. And if you really want to be one of the world's artistic masters, then make Julia Roberts show a continuous stream of cleavage so a few men will show up in the audience. Anything for your art, man.
I bet critics love to give a thumbs-up to "works of art" that just happen to have T&A. Their problem is, they try to tell us that it's the performances, the directing, or the special effects that are so incredible. The only special effects they really need are blowing up, erupting, or exploding out of a bra. Just add some politically-correct propaganda like "big business is killing the world", and voila, a four-star picture.
Wouldn't you love to see a review on the Today Show or in the New York Times that consisted of:
"This environmentalist piece of trash made me wish I had never been born, but Jesus Fucking Christ, I just loved Julia Roberts' tits!"
Signing off,
JR
