Five People Who Should Be Fired

Given the continual bad news pertaining to jobs in this country, I figure I’ll point out five people who should be out of jobs. There are of course the easy targets, the entire cast of Jersey Shore comes to mind, Kate Gosslein, and Heidi Montag – the last two, I’m not really sure what their jobs are but they’re getting money. I could also swipe at Glenn Beck, whom it was revealed earned 23 million dollars last year. Glenn Inc. sounds like a lucrative grassroots political movement. But those are easy targets.

Scott Van Pelt – He’s the goofy Sports Center anchor whose lanky, awkward body and bald head have kept viewers laughing over the years. Fine for television, but over the course of a two hour radio program it gets old. His propensity to talk about anything but sports, usually whatever is on his mind that second makes his show devolve into banter reminiscent of frat boys at five in the morning screaming lines from Gladiator. What’s worse, Van Pelt was recently given an extra hour for his show. His co-host Ryen Russillo is actually really good, and I’ve been happy to see his guest spots transition into regular hosting duties. When Van Pelt is out, the show is actually fascinating. It’s depressing though to see Russillo relegated to sidekick duties when Van Pelt returns with his infantile wit. The show is marketed as breaking the mold, a common trope that says, “We don’t know what we’re doing.” For years, Van Pelt would appear on Dan Patrick’s radio show and beg Patrick to talk to the radio folks to get him his own show. It just sounded pathetic and desperate. In Chicago, we only get Van Pelt’s show for an hour. It makes me shoot down the dial to 670 AM for an hour. When I’m on the road, I tune my radio to right wing talk shows rather than subject myself to the insipid banality of Van Pelt. He occupies a timeslot that used to be Dan Patrick’s and Mike Tirico’s: Great sports journalists who did substantive interviews with sport’s top names. Van Pelt just makes me feel like I should be doing keg stands; Lord knows listening to him makes me feel like I lost the same amount of brain cells from doing such a drinking binge.

John Thain – This guy is probably little known, but he’s the former CEO of Merrill-Lynch. Yes that same Merrill-Lynch that went belly up due to toxic assets and had to merge with Bank of America, for which BOA took a large chunk of TARP money. When Merrill joined with BOA, Thain held all his top executives accountable for their mishaps by doling out exorbitant bonuses to the dumb-dumbs who caused his company’s failure. So for being complicit in one of the most deplorable economic meltdowns in this country’s history, Thain has been named the CEO of CIT-Group, another company that messed the bed during the banking crisis. But hey, if George Bush can get a second term, it doesn’t surprise me that someone like John Thain gets another chance to bury another financial institution.

Tim Tebow – With the NFL draft coming up, it looks like the former Florida QB will be drafted in the second round as a quarterback. His obstinacy at demanding to play quarterback is embarrassing him. His pro day could have been called flight of the wounded ducks. On top of it, Tebow likes to allude to the fact that God has destined him for great things as an NFL quarterback. Tebow’s increased proselytizing is getting old. The Super Bowl commercial with his mom felt more like an ad for E-Harmony than a family values commercial. When it was done I felt like I should call him Oedipus. When he took the Wonderlic test at the NFL combine, he requested that everyone in the room join in a group prayer before they start. Someone in the room promptly told him to shut the (blank) up. He needs to remember that Jesus told us to keep quiet counsel with God and not be like the hypocrites who profess their faith in the public forum. His supporters in the media say he’s a high character guy who will add to a locker room. He seems like a nice guy and I can’t disagree with that; but the last time I checked there was no position out of the twenty-two that take the field that is listed as “high character guy”. In Florida, he’s known as Jesus. If some team is dumb enough to draft him as a quarterback two other names come to mind that aren’t JC: David Klingler and Andre Ware.

Jay Bybee – This guy wrote the infamous torture memos under Bush. The legal memoranda essentially said, “Yeah, there are the Geneva Conventions, but if these guys don’t die, it’s all good. Oh, and their organs can’t fail…too badly.” I’m paraphrasing. When he and Jon Yoo have faced criticism for the memos, they said, “We offered a legal justification for a course of action our clients wanted to pursue.” That’s legalese for, “We were following orders.” Didn’t work so well at Nuremberg. But little ethical problems like okay-ing torture were no obstacle for Bybee to be appointed to an appellate court judgeship. However, the memos did not come out until after his appointment. The man should be disbarred, impeached and removed from the bench. That means accountability though, and the current administration doesn’t have the stomach to actually include that word in their lexicon.

The Texas Board of Education – According to a USA Today article the Texas Board of Education does not consider Thomas Jefferson a great thinker of the Revolution. Moreover, our country is no longer a “democracy” but a “constitutional republic.” These are a few of the upcoming changes to curricula and textbooks Texas students will face in the next ten years. The Board of Education will also remove “capitalist” and “capitalism” because those have negative connotation…duh. But they will be replaced by the term “free market” because hey, you can’t spell “freedom” without “free”. The moves are clearly part of a conservative agenda to indoctrinate future voters into an ideology that is dubious according to the historical record. They say they’re doing it to counteract increased liberalism in textbooks. By changing from a democratic nation to a constitutional republic, students will learn that a true patriot is in support of the republic, therefore a Republican. And democracies are not worth supporting, therefore so are Democrats. The removal of Jefferson came, according to David Knowles' article on AOL.com, because current teaching asks students to: "explain the impact of Enlightenment ideas from John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, Voltaire, Charles de Montesquieu, Jean Jacques Rousseau and Thomas Jefferson on political revolutions from 1750 to the present." Now the new curriculum will ask: "Explain the impact of the writings of John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, Voltaire, Charles de Montesquieu, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin and Sir William Blackstone." Aquinas and Calvin are clearly added to give religious grounding to our nation’s principles. The biggest insult is that Sir William Blackstone, who lived during the Revolution, was a British judge whose work was eventually repudiated by Jefferson. Apparently the dude who wrote the Declaration of Independence deserves no credit for freeing us from the Great Britain and building our nation’s laws, but a British judge Jefferson deemed as too conservative does.