David Kronke was appointed Mayor of Television after a bloodless coup in 2000. Since then, he has improved infrastructure, championed greater educational opportunities and fought for reforms that have utterly erased corruption and incompetence from the television industry. Since Mr. Kronke has ascended to power, Television is a far better place. Ellen DeGeneres goes to the dogs
Hard to decide where to come down on this whole Ellen DeGeneres/puppy scandal (love the headline on the link: “Ellen DeGeneres dog drama sends America into a spin”).
For the uninitiated (all two of you), Ellen broke down sobbing on her show yesterday, boo-hoo-hooing that she had adopted a puppy and it didn’t get along with her cats so she gave it to her hairdresser (who she sees every day) and her daughters who love love love the puppy but the rescue group she got it from said we have a firm no-re-gifting-of-puppies policy ’round these parts so they took the puppy away and everyone’s bawling and if I cry enough in front of America you should be guilt-tripped into giving the puppy back but they didn’t and now they’re getting death threats and stuff.
On the one hand: Some of these rescue groups can be pretty d!ckish. I’ve heard a lot of nightmare stories from people on this issue, the worst from a friend whose dog was killed by a coyote (clearly, it’s all her fault for living in Silver Lake, where the roving gangs of coyotes routinely break out of their habitat at the reservoir to go feasting on neighborhood pets) – when she approached one group to adopt a new dog, not only did the woman turn her down (though, like a lot of dog owners, she’s a very doting mom), but the woman cruelly told my friend that she was just interested in getting another dog so it could serve as coyote kibble, as well. The group from which I got my dog was cool, though they did come in and set up some restraining leashes, long and short, inside my place and have a lot of awfully specific requirements (no walking leash would do except for a six-foot leather leash).
(Hey, they’re having a fun-run fundraiser, by the way, at the Rose Bowl.)
But I digress. The point of these groups is to place abandoned and stray dogs in the hands of people who like dogs, you’d think, not to play bouncer at the Roof Bar at the Standard and arrogantly deny everyone access past the velvet rope to the puppies on the other side.
On the other hand, DeGeneres’ performance was a little over-the-top and more than a little cruelly calculated: She knows her fan base, and she knew that if she pulled this stunt on the air, the inevitable resulting outrage would mean she was essentially shaming the rescue group into letting her have her way – kill ’em with kindness, in other words. It was your standard bullying-celebrity “Don’t you know who I am?” act with a lachrymose spin.
Besides, the whole “I am not capable of coming out and pretending to be funny and ‘on’ when things are going so terribly wrong right now. I’m so sorry - I’m just not able to pretend” thing feels pretty calculated. Every professional on the planet deals with stuff far worse than this and manages to do their damn job anyway and oh sweet Jesus the Lakers are going to trade away Kobe no no NO NO no please don’t omigod it’s the end of the world please Jesus don’t let them trade him he’s KOBE!!!!!
sniff
That said: Give ’em the damn dog.