Argus Hamilton's column for 9-7-09

HOLLYWOOD--Happy Monday, and how's everybody?

Michael Jackson's funeral was held at midnight Thursday as brushfires raged in the background. What a mistake. If you're going to scatter Michael Jackson's ashes over the San Gabriel Mountains you wait until he stops burning before you do it.

The New York Yankees changed a Sunday night game in late September to a day game because Yom Kippur starts at sundown. It's the holiest day on the Jewish calendar. The Cubs played a double-header on Yom Kippur one hundred years ago and you know the rest.

Chicago Mayor Richard Daley saw a list of the city's crack houses Thursday and noticed that his press secretary owns one of the buildings. Politics is a tough racket. The press secretary had to evict his only tenant who pays on time and in cash.

Teddy Kennedy's memoirs were excerpted in the New York Times Thursday, where he wrote about how the Green Bay Packers scouted him as a football player. His life would have been so different. He would have derailed his career by driving into Lake Superior.

Labor Day picnics were held across the Midwest by labor unions Monday. The day is intended to give working people a chance to forget about the problems of the world and to enjoy an afternoon with nothing to do. It's like being vice president for a day.

Michael Vick's NFL suspension was reduced to two games Friday. No one is that mad anymore. With people biting off each other's fingers over health care reform, dogfights now look like a halfway house for people who want to quit town hall meetings.

New York City College hired former governor Eliot Spitzer to teach a course on government and politics Thursday. They're paying him forty-five hundred dollars. The salary's non-negotiable, forty-five hundred dollars is the going rate for clunkers.

Barack Obama's desire to address schoolkids Tuesday ran into fierce opposition from parents. Opponents say it promotes a cult of personality and said they'll keep their kids out of school tomorrow. Republicans are calling it Take Our Children to Golf Day.

The Labor Department reported the highest unemployment rate in twenty-six years Friday, near ten percent. That's all we've gotten for the eight-hundred-billion-dollar stimulus package. Americans haven't paid so much for so little since Nouvelle Cuisine.

Beatles fans are lining up to buy The Beatles: RockBand, a year after Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, and John Lennon and George Harrison's widows agreed to the animated video game featuring remastered Beatles hits. Afghanistan and Iraq could learn from this. There's no tribal rift that can't be healed by pure capitalism.

White House adviser Van Jones apologized on Friday for signing a petition five years ago accusing the Bush White House of allowing the World Trade Center attack. Outsiders are always bomb throwers. Ever since Van Jones got his new job, the idea of the White House secretly controlling everything in the world has his full approval.

Van Jones refused to resign as Green Jobs Czar Thursday after background checks showed him to be a radical communist. His vetting was sloppy. The White House always asks appointees if there's anything in their background that could embarrass the president, but they never bother reading anything that's over one thousand pages long.

Sarah Palin makes a paid speech to an investment group in Hong Kong this month. While she's traveling all over the world, her estranged husband is at home coping with family chaos. It shows that life imitates art, but more often it imitates Jon and Kate.


Copyright 2009 Argus Hamilton
All rights reserved.
Material may be quoted with attribution.

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Comedian and nationally syndicated columnist Argus Hamilton entertains at corporate events and meetings around the country. When home in Los Angeles, he can be seen live onstage at The Comedy Store in Hollywood. Contact Argus@ArgusHamilton.com for more information. Argus Hamilton's bio