Diamonds, Engagement Rings & Diamond Jewelry in popular culture

Yes, we are still talking about the issue of a mosque possibly being built on or near the former site of the World Trade Center.  Without getting into the whole political blah-blah-blah, there are some actions being taken that just don’t make an ounce of sense.  As usual, painfully misguided and outrageous megalomaniacs have weighed in and offered their own unsolicited opinions and personal versions of help.  And not one of these has been without a personal agenda, none of which is about religion or even fanaticism (those are two totally different things, by the way).  The most outspoken folks—from one side, the other, or neither—are interested only in the press that it brings.

"Two weeks ago, y'all didn't even know my name."

First there is Pastor Terry Jones of the painfully-misnamed Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, Florida.  He arranged “Burn a Koran Day” for September 11, 2010, allegedly as a memorial event for the terrorist attacks.  First, the good Pastor seems to forget one important thing that works a bit contrary to his objective: anyone who might participate in such an even would probably not have a Koran on the shelf next to back issues of Shotgun News, so they would, in fact, have to purchase one.  Is Jones hoping to drive the Islamic text straight to the top of the New York Times Bestseller List?  If not, he needs to rethink some things.

Then there are the responses from just about everyone in the political and military arenas.  Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called the event “disrespectful and disgraceful”.  Attorney General Eric Holder used the words “idiotic and dangerous”.  White House Spokesman Robert Gibbs said that, “any type of activity like that …puts our troops in harm’s way”.  Many Christians, including evangelicals who are peers to Pastor Jones, have spoken out against the book-burning, and veterans’ groups are asking for the event to be cancelled.  Gainesville city police and the Alachua County Sheriff’s Office both plan to send hefty bills, estimated in the tens of thousands of dollars, to the church for the necessary police presence.  President Obama told ABC News that the affair is “completely contrary to our values as Americans.  This country has been built on the notion of freedom and religious tolerance”.  And the church has had a few visits from the FBI, reportedly to discuss the inevitable public safety issues that something as inflammatory as “Burn a Koran Day” will bring.

Even with General David Petraeus warning that US troops still in the field will be put in imminent peril should the affair go on, Pastor Jones has somehow worked it out in his head that canceling would be tantamount to the US “backing down”.  And then forgetting who he is.

The sad thing is that he has succeeding on a massive scale in one way: everyone knows his name.  Everyone hates him, but everyone knows his name.  For some, that is enough.

Speaking of which, Donald Trump has also put his two cents in.  Actually, he’s offered to pay the full cash price plus 25% of what the owners paid for the planned site of the mosque.  He has vowed to merely move it five blocks away from Ground Zero, rather than the planned two blocks.  He’s missing the point, of course.  He could offer to have the next winner of The Apprentice design and build a mosque/Islamic studies center made entirely of diamonds and platinum, and it wouldn’t have anything to do with what this mission is about.  Fostering a bit more understanding of Islam and the tenets on which it is based is the objective.  Fanaticism in the US has turned this into a ridiculous firestorm.  Ironically, it is similar fanaticism that brought the towers down in the first place.

The purpose for Pastor Jones and Donald Trump is the same: fame, fame, and more fame.  It is with irritation and more than a little bit of shame that I give them 700 more words to add to their recognition.

But seriously, this is all just too moronic and nonsensical to ignore.

Do I not speak for most Americans when I say that it is a crying shame that those kids on Jersey Shore make millions for drinking and practicing flagrant promiscuity?  Not only has the Governor of New Jersey said that the show is bad for the image of his state, but after polling voters, Maurice Carroll of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute said this: “New Jerseyans to New York: Keep your low-lifes at home and away from our seashore”.  For those of you not as familiar with the difference in the accents of the region, it has been painfully obvious from the beginning of the series that most of the cast is, in fact, from New York.  Not that New Yorkers are generally as vile as “The Situation”, but declaring that those kids are all from New Jersey is just wrong. It is, in particular, bad PR when various members of the cast spend varying amounts of time in drunk tanks and/or court.

Snooki: Annoying even long-distance.

And so we get to talk, once again, about pocket-sized Snooki, whose habits including drinking twice her body weight in alcohol and exposing her underthings to cameras.  In July, she was arrested in the middle of the day for public drunkenness and swearing like a sailor at random people on the beach.  When the police hauled her off, she was wearing $300 sunglasses and a t-shirt with the word “SLUT” emblazoned across her chest.  A Municipal Court judge accepted her guilty plea on the charge of disturbing the peace.  For whatever reason, he dropped the accompanying charges of disorderly conduct and annoyance with the stipulation that she pay a $500 fine.  Those charges would have carried with them jail time.  After the trial, she declared that she was “too pretty to be in jail”.  Oddly enough, weighing in on the case was Senator John McCain, who agreed with Snooki’s assertion.

Despite Snooki’s troubles, boyfriend Jeff Miranda posed shirtless on whatever Steppin’ Out magazine is to propose marriage to his tiny girlfriend of two weeks.  Responding in that dignified way that celebrities seem to, Snooki took to Twitter to announce to the world that she would not be accepting an engagement ring from the Iraq war veteran, writing, “I’m single and I’m not going to get married!”  It is an odd twist of events, considering that she has been looking for a boyfriend under every barstool in Seaside Heights, but perhaps she’s holding out for something better.  It’s your move, John McCain!

We can all rest assured that the upcoming season of Jersey Shore will maintain the same level of class and modesty as previous seasons.  To ensure that the cast would be well-supplied—and protected—for the remainder of their filming schedule, Moishe’s Mobile Storage delivered some necessities to their summer home.  Included in the shipment were free gym memberships, sunless tanner, cases of vodka, and plenty of condoms.  Rami Haim, president of Moishe’s, explained that the company, “felt obliged to pull together and deliver everything they could possibly need to make it to the end of summer”.

Now, that’s annoying.

Merriam-Webster, the dictionary to which we all refer when we need to know the definition of real English words, has just released to the world the top-searched words on its website.  How proud all of us American-born folks feel to know that the official “Word of the Summer” isn’t a real word at all.  It is a Palin-ism.  Yes, our favorite bear-shootin’, gun-totin’, language-mangling former Vice Presidential candidate invented a word, using it not just on television but on Twitter as well.  Americans immediately took to the internet as they shook their heads and said “What?”  It has to be a real word, right?  People don’t just make things up or make giant, glaring errors in speech when they were thisclose to the Oval Office, right?

"I used a sharpie to write it here, so it IS real."

Wrong.  Sarah Palin said and typed “refudiate” just as though it means something.  But at this point, as our Ambassador of Embarrassment, she shrugged off criticism, noting that William Shakespeare created new language all the time.  Which is funnier: Sarah Palin flagrantly abusing her mother tongue or Sarah Palin comparing herself to Shakespeare?  The jury’s still out on that.

Merriam-Webster stands firm on not having this freshly-coined term in our official lexicon, at least not yet.  The same debate was raised when folks wanted to have “bootylicious” become part of our collective vocabulary.  A big shout-out goes to M-W.com on that decision as well.

Perhaps Sarah Palin is just giving up on trying to make sense.  Her family has become yet another reason for the rest of the world to think Americans are stupid.  But “refudiate-gate” has served a purpose for the Alaskan clan: it has taken some of the focus off of the “Bristol Palin unwed teenaged mother” thing, and away from every sidelong glance to see if Bristol is or isn’t wearing her engagement ring from on-again, off-again fiancé/nude model Levi Johnston.

We might give Sarah Palin the benefit of the doubt and say that she threw herself in front of the bus, so to speak, to give Bristol a bit of breathing room.  But that would require a few things that Mrs. P. just doesn’t have, like media savvy and intelligence.  And it would be a pointless effort anyway, as young Bristol is participating on Dancing with the Stars with the condition that she be able to wear modest dresses.  So far, teaser photos for the show have revealed that her interpretation of modesty is similar to her interpretation of abstinence.

Merriam-Webster has stated that the process of a slang term or word-hybrid (think ‘bodacious’ and ‘guesstimate’) becoming official is a long process and would require, among other provisions, common usage.  The “common usage” exception is a back door into accepted language, and one that can cause hilarity if you type in an entertaining word to hear it read to you online.  M-W.com is good like that.  But don’t expect to hear a well-enunciated “refudiate” any time soon on the respected site.  If it ever does make it into the dictionary, I’m giving up citizenship.

Who’s with me?

It isn’t like Venus Williams is known for her modesty.  She never did favor the standard tennis dresses.  And why would she?  Although there are some unusually tall women playing tennis—it gives a natural advantage to the player—Williams is 6’1” and looks likes she’s carved out of marble.  She’s an Amazon in the most flattering use of the word.  Taller even than her sister, she grew up as all tall women do, waiting for the boys to catch up.  While she waited, she became one of the best tennis players in the world.  And while she realized, again as all tall women do, that most boys would never catch up, she developed a way to celebrate her body by designing her own tennis outfits and wearing diamonds while she plays.

If you've got it, honey, flaunt it.

If you’re gonna be in Center Court, you shouldn’t be afraid to stand out.

Once again, Venus created controversy on Sunday because of what she was wearing.  Did it matter that she played a good game and, in fact, won?  Not when someone actually kept count of the number of times Venus Williams had to adjust her hot pink, rhinestone-decorated self-designed dress.  It often rode up a bit to reveal matching brown rhinestone-decorated tennis shorts.  CBS, apparently finding no real news to report on, enumerated the times she had to adjust her clothes.  John McEnroe and Dick Enberg took time to discuss it.  The final tally of 42 tugs at her dress was evidently more interesting to them than the way she played, winning the match 7-6, 6-3.  Winning is not what made news.  McEnroe felt that the dress appeared to be too much of a distraction to Williams, who, he pointed out, seemed to be uncomfortable in it.  How uncomfortable could it have been?  She won.  Shouldn’t we focus on that?  Apparently not.  We should, instead, focus on the tennis champion’s penchant for wearing flesh-colored shorts under her dresses and not caring if people see them.

Let’s be honest here: if we all had bodies like that, we’d bedazzle the heck out of our undies and wear them outside our clothes, too.

Today, Williams faces #6 seed Francesca Schiavone.  While tennis fans will tune in to watch an exciting match, everyone else will check out what Venus is wearing.  And it will be something cool, something different, something that she feels expresses her personality.  She likes bright colors.  She like rhinestones.  And, bless her heart, she likes to draw attention to an amazing body that she has worked her entire life to sculpt.  If it distracts her opponent, well, that’s not her problem.  If she wins, the press will still focus on her dress, and if she loses, the press will blame it on her fabric choices.  What does a woman have to do to be recognized for her talent?  How many times does a woman have to win almost every tournament in which she participates before her sportswear makes fewer headlines than her hard work?

Women everywhere should be thanking Venus Williams for showing that we can be talented and successful without desperately trying to fit into some antiquated mold that simply wasn’t built to last.

For the self-proclaimed purists out there, think of it this way (and I’ll even use another sport to explain): Fenway Park is held as one of the last remaining Old School ballparks that doesn’t bear the name of a gigantic corporate entity.  That’s great.  But the ballpark was built at a time when people were smaller.  The reason Red Sox fans are known for getting drunk and rowdy is, in part, because that’s the only way to not focus on how narrow the seats are and how little legroom there is.

Venus Williams is creating her own exclusive, theoretical legroom and letting the game of tennis catch up to her (maybe the boys will follow suit?).

As for me, I’ll be doing some lunges and bedazzling some shorts while I watch her next match.

Just because a guy has a certain amount of football acumen, just because he had a successful career, and just because he is even an NFL Hall of Famer does not mean that he is qualified to talk about the sport on television.  Athletes are known for, well, athletics.  Expecting them to speak eloquently is like expecting an orangutan to learn sign language; it can happen, but it’s not likely.  For every John Madden there are about 50 morons hoping to get a similar job.  Somehow, former NFL player Dan “Danimal” Hampton got in front of a camera and wasted no time putting his enormous shoe into his even larger mouth on Pro Football Weekly, where he will be working for maybe the next ten minutes.

What was that you were saying about the Cowboys again?

Sometimes, it is okay to joke about a tragedy, if enough time has passed.  It depends on amount of time and the magnitude of the event.  Holocaust humor is, for example, still generally unacceptable.  Likewise, 9-11 jokes.  But most of the world can safely make a Hindenburg or Titanic remark without being lynched.  But some wounds a too fresh.

Dan Hampton is, on paper, a good candidate to talk about football.  He was a great player.  He was Defensive Lineman of the Year, Defensive Player of the Year, six-time All-Pro selection, four-time Pro Bowl selection (and two-time alternate), and scored himself the coveted gaudy, diamond-encrusted Superbowl ring with the Chicago Bears in 1985.  The same year, he opted out of participation in the still-embarrassing “Superbowl Shuffle”. Oh, Jim McMahon, you were never more embarrassing.  And that’s saying something.  That would be the last time Hampton would show any semblance of taste.

So back to Hampton and his foot-in-mouth disease.  Boy Genius decided it was a good idea to say, regarding the Minnesota Vikings playing against the Saints in New Orleans, “The Vikings need to go down there and hit that town like Katrina”.

Really, Dan?  Really?

Unfortunately, no takesy-backsies once it’s aired on television.  If Mike & Mike weren’t busy talking about it, the blogosphere certainly was, and ain’t nobody pleased.  Tom Waddle, Hub Arkush, and Pat Boyle all managed to move past it relatively unfazed, but we all know they would have preferred to sink down under the desk and wait for the hurricane (pun intended) of emails and calls to hit.  Maybe they that the 1979 first-round draft pick might watch his mouth after that.

Not so fast, fellas.  Just as we expect simple, pure wisdom to come from children (“Out of the mouths of babes”), so can we expect athletes to say things that just shouldn’t be said (I’m looking at YOU, John Rocker).  While discussing the NFC East with his co-hosts, Dan Hampton said this: “The [Dallas] Cowboys think they’re Clint Eastwood; they’re more of the Brokeback variety if you know what I’m talking about”.

Yes, we get it, Dan.  You are not only completely indifferent to suffering, but you’re a homophobe to boot.

And the boot is exactly what he should get, and pronto.  Please, before he makes all turn to watching European football instead

Or not. Having been notified by my mother that Bristol Palin would appear on Dancing with the Stars in the show’s new season, I can’t say I was surprised.  The Palin family is hard-pressed to find any other new and exciting ways to embarrass themselves.  Indian Engagement Ring Giver Levi Johnston is all set to star in his own reality show that will follow his dignified campaign to follow in the practical footsteps of his twice-ex-fiancee’s mother as mayor of Wasilla, Alaska.  Why should he be the only one to ride the reality TV cash cow to fame, fortune, and a lifetime of shame and ridicule?  I guess those speaking engagements about the benefits of pre-marital abstinence aren’t going so well for the 20 year-old single mother of a Republican politician, and a girl’s gotta pay the bills, right?

Class Like This Can Only Be Found on DWTS

Bristol has vowed that she will maintain her dignity on the show (if that’s even possible) by forgoing the standard tight, sequin-y costumes that are a standard on the show.  Watching her dance in floor-length wool skirts, flannel shirts and hiking boots has the potential to draw a whole new audience to the show: the Amish and Hasids.  Mazal tov.  Backing Bristol up on this vow is fellow contestant David Hasselhoff, who appears to have developed some modesty—and perhaps some extra drunken hamburger-induced tonnage—since his Baywatch days.  The actor/singer told the UK’s Press Association that, “You won’t see me in spandex because that reveals too much of The Hoff.”  One can only assume that “The Hoff” is his pet name for the same junk he took such pleasure in jiggling all over the screen while he ran to rescue struggling swimmers all those years ago.

We can imagine that one contestant will be more than happy to reveal as much skin as possible while two-stepping with partner Karina Smirnoff, for whom one can only feel sympathy.  Mike “The Situation” Sorrentino, who has apparently run out of non-choosy women on Jersey Shore, has decided that a turn on another reality show can’t hurt his reputation.  Everyone already knows he’s a dirtbag.  I hope Karina is prepared for as much shirtlessness as the show will bear, and that she can find a way to incorporate latex gloves into her costume choices.  Or a Haz-Mat suit.

Another pit of vacuity will be joining the cast.  After a failed acting career, Audrina Patridge of another MTV show, The Hills, has decided to give dancing on a national stage before resorting to a pole at some “gentlemen’s club” in Hollywood.  She will likely spend most of her time fighting off the less-than-subtle advances of The Situation.  Best of luck to both of them.

Rounding out the show are some people who might be fun to watch.  Can Florence Henderson dance at her age?  Will she charm us like Chloris Leachman did?  Athletes Kurt Warner and Rick Fox of the NFL and NBA, respectively, will show their moves, as will Michael Bolton, the unrecognizable Jennifer Grey, Comedian Margaret Cho, Singer Brandy, and whoever Kyle Massey is.

Truly great television is possible this season, if only The Situation finds himself willing to take on another grenade and put some moves on Bristol Palin.  THAT is must-see TV.