Rust Never Sleeps -OR- Crap ALWAYS Seeps

You can, absolutely, polish a turd. There are even a few brave sculptors who work in the media. Shed of its liquid, aged and dried, there is left, a somewhat workable substance to be had. As a novelty, there may even be a niche market for shit, but it would take a sizable genius to elevate the form into something acceptably submitted for display in a recognized gallery or auction house. It will always. only. be ART from and within a creative community or one that has jumped the shark. It might be safe to say that unless turds were the ONLY material available for artists, there would still be a natural revulsion to the idea that its production is suitable for consumption. Regardless of the beauty outwardly portrayed, beneath the inventiveness and shine, there lays a turd.

This underlying truth is what astounds me about what, but more importantly, WHO, is passing as authority in our public galleries. Whether it's on the 24/7/365 cable news outlets, or plopped, ubiquitously, amid the network fare and particularly its Sunday morning rat circuit, all you see are turd polishers. Some working with, and off, the excrement of others; whipping and fluffing it into billowy clouds of stank. While others gleefully play in, and with, their own extruded shit.

Even when the rare DaVinci cracks the inbred lineup, they are interacting with hosts and panels armed with and enthralled with its own crap. I don't know the exact date at which it became pointlessly cringe-worthy, painful and patently unwatchable, but I do remember Tim Russert's orgasmic glee when his guests began flinging their feces on the set of Press the Meat. The point when unscripted left the building. Regardless of how the herd of turds were wrangled, they had their scripts and were going to show off their wares irregardless of its context or merit.

The low-hanging fruit examples comprise the ensemble casts. The David Fucking Brooks', the George Wills if you will, the Peggy Nooners, the MoDoH!s, the Friedmans, hawking their still oozing steamy piles of one-size fits none punditry.

But like guest stars on Opposite World's version of the Love Boat, the line-up of gainsayers, flakes and nuts lines up weakly to chew some scenery. Whenever I think that intellectual dishonesty has reached its nadir and foolishly tune in to hear the kind of clarion calls that are direly needed, I get assaulted by the depths to which we've been dragged. There are only the bereft recyclers of repackaged failure trying to sell their latest buffing as truth, justice and the American Way.

Fucking Masterpieces of shit. On pedestals of crap. Leaving us, monumentally phugged.