bleungberg.com

He was easily the most famous Boris in the world, (Becker comes a close second) and I have to say I was a little bit surprised to hear that Yeltsin had died today.

I know he’d never been well, and that he’d been out of the limelight for some years. But I keep on seeing him pop up at various tennis tournaments in the world - as a spectator, of course - most recently at the Kremlin Cup at the backend of last year.

I even remember thinking how well he looked then. Oh well. Another one bites the dust!

I still remember very clearly the day he ordered the tanks into Moscow and the speech he made on top of the tank. Can’t believe I was ten then, and am now 27!

I feel old!

High time I nominated the third Bleungberg hypocrite, and it’s none other than that chubby, OTT eco-warrior - former US Vice-President Al Gore.
Love the fact that this giant of a man (in the literal sense) moans and groans and preaches about global warming, yet lives in a motherfucker of a mansion which uses up excessive amount of energy, as well as travelling in gas-guzzling limousines and flying all over the place whilst filming ‘The Inconvenient Truth’.

I hate the fact that he conveniently overlooked those aspects whilst preaching to the camera.

Gore - you are a hypocrite! Now bugger off!

Last week, only one matter dominated American news - the crazy Korean and the Virginia massacre.

Yet, by Friday night, something else had usurped the tragedy on Fox News on primetime as the number one news item on its top-rated Hannity and Colmes show - Alec Baldwin’s explicit phone-call tirade to his 11-year-old daughter in which he accused her of being a ‘rude pig’.

Now, as a regular follower of American news, it came as no surprise that cable news channels should devote airtime to such trivial matters - especially when the content of that phone-call was made-for-TV-news.

But did it deserve to knock Virginia Tech - or VT as it’s now known - off the top of the news agenda? I mean, afterall, juts a day or so earlier, the entire media had been sent into a spin over those suicide notes and videos by that crazy Korean.

Of course it did! Especially if it’s Fox News!

Why?

Because Alec Bladwin’s a republican-hater. He’s renowned for being a lot of things - a bit violent on aeroplanes, a veciferous critic of Bush and Cheney, a prolific liberal blogger, and furthermore, a hater of Sean Hannity, the influential right-winger and host of…you’ve guessed it, Hannity and Colmes.

Therefore, when the tape of the abusive tirade was leaked to the media - probably from Baldwin’s estranged wife Kim Basinger - Hannity seized upon the opportunity to settle old scores with Baldwin, by denouncing his sanity and repeated questioned his right to paternal custody to the little girl.

Colmes - the ugly, liberal weasel of a co-host - tried to deflect from the ‘unfit parent’ angle by suggesting the kid was naughty to begin with. Naturally, Hannity wouldn’t have it and the two argued.

The volume of the arguments got louder and louder to the point that nothing really made sense - and Baldwin wasn’t even taking part in it!

So now you know where Fox News’s priorities lie - it doesn’t matter if the worst civilian shooting in the entire history of America had just taken place, if a ‘far-left’ liberal ‘America-hater’ slips up, you bet they’ll break away from even the most-revered Repubican president’s funeral just to bring you news of some non-important event. Like Alec Baldwin’s domestic life.

So, it’s right vs left, man vs woman, Nico vs Sego in the French Presidential election run-off.

I’d been looking forward to this for some time, and tonight’s first-round results did not disappoint.

It was wonderful to see the Front Nationale humiliated into fourth place, and very interesting to see Francois Bayrou doing so well as a centrist.

The victor of the second-round run-off will no doubt come from whoever Bayrou’s supporters vote for and with two weeks of campaigning still to go - it is shaping up to be a very exciting finale.
Without wishing to sound like I’m going to cream myself, I can hardly wait for that - and what a weekend that promises to be!

To begin with, we’ve the first big race on the Flat this year with the 2000 Guineas at Newmarket, followed by the 1000 Guineas the next day, with the biggest race in America, the Kentucky Derby, sandwiched between the two on the Saturday night.

In addition, there are two days of World Snooker Final plus the Bank Holiday, with the small matter of the French election on the Sunday evening.

Now that’s what I call TV Heaven!

Watching the BBC Ten O’Clock News tonight, I couldn’t help but feel angry that they’ve sent over Emily Maitlis and special correspondent Gavin Hewitt over to Virginia to cover the massacre.

For me, this is a virtual non-story as far as we are concerned. Why do and should we care about some campus shooting in America when a) it has nothing to do with us, and b) it wasn’t exactly the first of its kind and is unlikely to be the last.

When the gun-loving Charlton Heston (in)famously denounced - his rifle held aloft, naturally - Al Gore for attempting to ‘take away his Second Amendment rights “from my cold, dead hands” at the National Rifle Association a few years ago, you just knew incidents like this wouldn’t be the last of its kind.

When Bush described the Virginia massacre as “a day of sadness for our entire nation”, one should bear in mind that these are hollow words from a man who relies heavily upon the NRA’s electorate vote.

Bush knows damn well that guns are dangerous and laws regulating these deadly weapons have to be tightened. But with the NRA possessing such a huge influence over the republican movement, how could Bush abandon the NRA?!

More to the point, why should we care what happens in America unless it’s on a scale of 9/11 or the Los Angeles earthquake? Plenty of people die in Iraq on a daily basis, and there have been far worse natural disasters in places like Indonesia and South Asia than what Hurricane Katrina did to America a few years back.