Weirdness in the news

William Shatner has been hit with a paternity suit. When I saw the headline, my first thought was that the dude was a little old to be out there getting it on with groupies -- or, for that matter, to have any groupies. Female trekkies who lusted after him back when the original "Star Trek" was on television are now post-menopausal; younger women aren't too likely to pursue a fat old man they associate with Priceline.com commercials.

Turned out it's not a woman suing him at all. It's a dude on the verge of geezerhood himself. Some guy is claiming Shatner is his dad. Shatner apparently did the deed with the plaintiff's mother back in 1956. Yep, you read that right. 1956!

This is so bizarre. Who waits until they're almost eligible for Social Security to go in pursuit of their deadbeat dad? Is the guy hoping to set some sort of record on the Maury Povich show for oldest person demanding a DNA test? If the plaintiff's mother did actually get it on with Shatner, why didn't she go after him herself for child support? And how on earth does a William Shatner story actually manage to make it to the top of the trending list? So many questions. . .

I will confess to a sense of relief, though, when I realized the news item was about Shatner's possible sex life 60 years ago and not a link to his obituary now. There have been enough celebrities taking dirt naps lately that my first initial reaction to seeing Shatner's name highlighted was that he'd dropped dead, too. Not that it would be much of a shock. The dude is 85 after all.

Why I don't bother watching the "news" channels

Last night I was in kind of an odd, let's see what's happening out in the world mood so I suggested to the S.O. that we watch MSNBC while waiting for it to get late enough to link to the With-Luck-You-See TV local news live stream. Since  WLUC out of Marquette started streaming the local news, we've started watching it primarily to catch Karl Bohnak's weather forecasts. That, and to see how excited he gets when there's snow predicted -- the man is a snow junkie.

Anyway, every so often I get curious about what's happening out there in pundit land. What is the topic du jour? Are they still obsessing about Ferguson? Are the chattering classes willing to concede any Democrats other than Hillary Clinton exist? What's the latest dumb thing to pop out of some politician's head?

The answer to the Hillary question is, of course, that no, the media is still thoroughly obsessed with Mrs. Clinton. They're wondering why no other Democratic candidates are emerging without ever stopping to reflect that maybe, just maybe, if they actually talked about a few of them (e.g., Jim Webb) the public in general would figure out there are other possibilities. I'd hate to see the Democrats degenerate into the sort of clown car spectacle going on among the Republicans at the moment, but it would be nice to hear about someone other than the former Secretary of State.

So what else is happening in the world? What topic is worth eating up air time on "Politics Nation"? Holy wah, Bruce Jenner has come out as transgender. The bad plastic surgery finally makes sense: he's transitioning to being a woman.

Question: why does anyone care? It's been a long time since he was on a Wheaties box. There have been plenty of other well-known people deciding they'd been born in the wrong body (Chaz Bono, for example) so why should any of us take any interest in Bruce Jenner?  You'd think the public would have collectively seen enough of him on reality tv, thanks to his being the stepfather of several Kardashians. But according to the panel dishing on Jenner's transition, the public is fascinated. Jenner has become tabloid fodder, and the tabloids have not been kind. (Or so they say; I don't recall seeing anything particularly dramatic screaming at me from the covers of the tabloids when I've been standing in the check-out line at Larry's Market lately.)

I will concede that having heard this news, I had some not particularly kind thoughts myself, like "Is the man insane? Is this a symptom of dementia?" But then I have that same reaction whenever I hear about any man deciding he should actually have been a woman. I am a woman. I've had a pretty good look at the downsides of being born female. Back in the '90s I thought economist Deidre McCloskey was totally insane when she announced she identified as a woman. I'd met McCloskey, I'd heard her speak back when she was still Donald. Donald was a balding, bearded man -- it was, to say the least, difficult to imagine that person as a woman.

I have no doubt that there are persons born, so to speak, into the wrong bodies. Gender identity is a lot more fluid than many of us want to admit. I also know there are persons born with ambiguous identity based on genitalia and get labelled as female when male would have been more accurate and vice versa. And I can totally understand why adolescents and young adults would struggle with this. But once you hit your 50s (McCloskey was 53 when she publicly became Deidre) or 60s (Jenner is 65)? What man in his right mind would want to be a post-menopausal woman in modern day America? I know feminists do a lot of blathering about the wisdom of crones, but the reality is that it is not particularly easy being an old lady. You're effectively invisble. You have no power. No one takes you seriously unless your name is Hillary, and even then half the time you get mocked by the media.

Still, setting aside questions about why Jenner felt compelled to do this so late in life, what makes Jenner's transition newsworthy? Why eat up broadcast minutes over something so banal?  I have no clue. I just have a hunch that somewhere on this planet, somewhere that was definitely outside the borders of the United States, there were people tuning into "news" programs and seeing actual news.

Bottom line? Next time I'll suggest streaming Al Jazeera.

Whatever happened to Tony Danza?

And what does it mean when a person dreams about bus travel?  Is it more or less significant that Tony Danza was also on the bus? 

I've read enough about dream symbolism to know that travel in any way, shape, or form represents a desire to leave one's current situation, whatever that situation might be.  It's actually fairly accurate, too, because I'm impatient in the short term to get the proposed move from this apartment into a renovated one over with (the latest update is that it might, just might, happen sometime around Labor Day, but the manager didn't sound particularly optimistic), and in the long term I'm anxious to get out of Atlanta.  But Tony Danza? 

I'll just chalk it up to a weird connection triggered by having spent some time on the phone last night with the Older Daughter.  She was a fan, sort of, of "Who's the Boss?"  That didn't come up in conversation, but who knows what sort of odd linkages happen in the subconscious.  My friend Teresa was in the dream, too, and I haven't seen her in ages.  Maybe my subconscious is planning a trip to Grand Rapids?

I'm one of those people who usually doesn't remember dreams at all, so when I do, I'm always a little curious as to just what inspired what I do remember.  Usually I can come up with some sort of explanation . . . but Tony Danza? Very strange.