I feel vaguely guilty. I tweeted some silly off the cuff remark about dumb Amer­i­cans, and the fuss from the loopy right about Obama’s school address.

Some­times you just sit there with your mouth open, won­der­ing if half the nation is sim­ply tak­ing the piss, just won­der­ing in dis­be­lief if these peo­ple are in any way to be taken seri­ously. But, yep, at that site linked, about half those who (admit­tedly unsci­en­tif­i­cally, but I like those sort too) took the poll think that the anti-Christ is about to pev­ert the minds of America’s youth. And then you read the com­ments and the wack­i­ness gets worse, with all it’s CAPS. The left can claim it’s fair share of nut­ters and very vocal ones at that, but they tend to be out at the periph­ery, whereas the right’s wackos tend to exist all the way from the far, far right to pretty much the cen­tre, allow­ing, of course that in the US the cen­tre (or cen­ter as they put it.…even though it wasn’t John Cleese, I think John Cleese’s let­ter to the USA revok­ing their inde­pen­dence still nails it on the lan­guage fail­ures of that great nation) is rather to the right of the mid point in most other democracies.

And of course our own NZ right has it’s moments of self-important wack­i­ness, wit­ness this odd site:

Nor­mally I smile politely to myself, but tonight I AM writ­ing New Zealand First off as a going concern.

Cool, at least we have the defin­i­tive word, from, uhhh, someone…

The thread on Pub­lic Address con­cern­ing some of the odd goings on at that site is highly amus­ing, and worth a squizz, if only for a smile. Cur­rently it’s run­ning about 5–0 to Keith Ng, who clearly is hav­ing some fun, and the level of com­ments on that thread vis-a-vis those on the other side’s blog speak absolute vol­umes. I best like the one that goes:

Nggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggg is an irri­tat­ing word

Sharp, indeed.

But this thread in the NZ Her­ald, that cen­ter / cen­tre of artistry and progress in my home­town, is my favourite right now, and pro­vides hours of fun.

The ques­tion posed was:

Who are the most over­rated bands and singers?

Which is a fuck­ing stu­pid ques­tion at the best of times..really. Amongst the replies (and, like the Amer­i­can thread, are these peo­ple seri­ous? I hope so):

Michael Jack­son, Dave Dob­byn, Split Enz, Neil Finn et al, The Bea­t­les, Haley West­enra, Bon Jovi, ACDC. I could go on, but I haven’t the time. (from PPP of Ran­giora, please more…gagging to know who et al is…)

Locally: Dave Dob­byn can’t sing for tof­fee. If I hear “Loyal” one more time I think I’ll vomit.
Inter­na­tion­ally: With the pos­si­ble excep­tion of “Angie” The Rolling Stones make noth­ing but a huge, scream­ing noise. (from Doc­tor of Whangarei, poor Dave gets a right slag­ging in this thread, they hate him out there in Mt. Roskill and Ran­giora. Who knew?)

Bob Dylan — who can hon­estly count 3 songs of his they know. (from some­body called Ace, in Auck­land. I think it’s the killer comment..I can’t think of 3, can you?)

As indi­vid­u­als go Amy Wine­house is the most over­rated singer to ever exist. She known more for her weird­ness than any­thing she sings. Actu­ally what does she sing? (DDB from Danemora (I’m not sure where that is) doesn’t know any of her songs but says she can’t sing)

Rolling Stones — .…..The duet with David Bowie was excru­ci­at­ing (from Povi in Huapai..uhhh, Povi the Rolling Stones didn’t do a duet with DB..it was Mick, and by def­i­n­i­tion The RS can’t do a duet with anyone)

The same guy says:
Elvis — good image but the songs were not exactly mas­ter­pieces. 3 chords and a few hip shakes.(I’m off to sell my Sun Ses­sions today)

And then we have Oth­ers from Tau­ranga:
Smash­proof — That song was lame and uno­rig­i­nal rnb/hiphop or what­ever genre it is and so was the rest of the album plain and sim­ple (so you bought the album, after hear­ing that lame and uno­rig­i­nal song over and over again? Just to check it out? Or did you, uhh, bor­row a copy online just for ‘pre­view’ pur­poses, y’know? The record indus­try urgently needs more dimwits like you, peo­ple who hate the sin­gle but buy the album anyway)

Mar­cus from NSW reck­ons:
Easy. The Beatles.

Octo­puses Gar­den, Yel­low Sub­maire, Penny Lane, When I’m 64, Maxwell’s Sil­ver Ham­mer. so much awful music in such a short space of time. (yep, I reckon the lyrics in Penny Lane suck too, and these were, after all the sum total of their out­put, there was noth­ing else of worth on Revolver or Sgt Pep­per from whence two of these songs came)

there are dozens more, but my favourite comes from kwikkan, a fel­low Auck­lan­der (cher bro!), who’s con­tri­bu­tion includes:
The Bea­t­les are ter­ri­ble. Some good jin­gles for sure, but lis­ten to songs when they try to har­mo­nize! It really is pure rub­bish.

Sorry Amer­ica…

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