When the Youtube description of a metal video warns that it might cause seizures, that’s usually a good sign.

Interestingly enough, a Salon article by David Sirota describes what the wedding coverage reveals about the US mainstream media. A Reuters poll reported that “65 percent of Americans have no interest in Prince William’s pending marriage and only a small minority are paying attention,” yet “U.S. media outlets are devoting exponentially more coverage to the royal wedding than the British themselves.”

At least the whole thing reminded me that I should reread Common Sense again soon, and I can say that I Brought the Paine on this issue. Some good stuff from Paine:

England, since the conquest, hath known some few good monarchs, but groaned beneath a much larger number of bad ones, yet no man in his senses can say that their claim under William the Conqueror is a very honorable one. A French bastard landing with an armed banditti, and establishing himself king of England against the consent of the natives, is in plain terms a very paltry rascally original. It certainly hath no divinity in it…

But it is not so much the absurdity as the evil of hereditary succession which concerns mankind. Did it ensure a race of good and wise men it would have the seal of divine authority, but as it opens a door to the foolish, the wicked; and the improper, it hath in it the nature of oppression. Men who look upon themselves born to reign, and others to obey, soon grow insolent; selected from the rest of mankind their minds are early poisoned by importance; and the world they act in differs so materially from the world at large, that they have but little opportunity of knowing its true interests, and when they succeed to the government are frequently the most ignorant and unfit of any throughout the dominions…

Of more worth is one honest man to society, and in the sight of God, than all the crowned ruffians that ever lived.

And the Sex Pistols should get some play.