Welcome to Stuff Happens, a weekly wrap up of the news that you know, or may have missed.
They say there’s no such thing as bad publicity. Not quite true. Outside of France, nobody had ever heard of Charlie Hebdo, a satirical French newspaper that mercilessly skewed everyone, from the Pope to a certain long dead prophet (photo unavailable). Now, the whole world knows of Charlie Hebdo, thanks to the first (no doubt of many) terrorist outrage of 2015. Gunmen killed 12 people at the satirical French newspaper, leading to a week of chaos in Paris and the eventual, well-deserved deaths of the terrorists. I hope the 72 virgins awaiting the ‘martyrs’ told these a-holes ‘Hey, it was only a cartoon’. While the world was obsessed with events in Paris, buried on the back pages was a story that the notorious Boko Haram, extremists opposed to western-style education and secular governance in Nigeria, carried out a multi-day attack in the northeast of Nigeria, focusing on the town of Baga, virtually wiping it out at a cost of thousands of lives. And you thought 2014 was a lousy year.
Bubbling to the surface in the first week of the year is a maybe/maybe not scandal involving Prince Andrew, second son of Queen Elizabeth. A woman named Virginia Roberts claims that Bonny Prince Andrew had sex with her three times while she
was a “sex slave” to the prince’s former friend, a disgraced tycoon named Jeffrey Epstein. Worse yet, not only is Ms. Roberts, now 30, a commoner, but an American commoner, the most common of commoners. While Buckingham Palace has “emphatically denied” the story, the prince flew home from a skiing holiday in Switzerland to talk to mummy about this unpleasant bother. This begs the question: what exactly is Prince Andrew taking a holiday from? According to a Monday report, the Queen was “grim-faced” as she left church on Sunday, which begs another question: how can you tell when the Queen is grim-faced, or just normal-faced? Since Roberts is taking the prince and the lowlife tycoon to court, and weighing offers to write a book, and this kind of story is red meat to Fleet Street, this story could have legs. Photos like the one above of the prince and Roberts, showing the two looking quite, shall we say, chummy, won’t help the prince’s case. Stay tuned …
The numbers are in, and the rich guys win. Again. According to Politico, the 100 largest donors in the U.S. 2014 election cycle gave almost as much money to candidates as the 4.75 million people who gave $200 or less. In other words, Democrats and Republicans owe their well-being to just 100 wealthy Americans. And here’s a surprise — a slim majority of the 100 wealthiest donors gave to the Democrats. As the saying goes, money doesn’t buy everything.
Canada ended a five-year gold medal drought with a thrilling 5-4 win over Russia to take the World Junior Hockey championship. This would be a really big deal if anyone outside of Canada cared about the World Junior Hockey championship.
It was revealed that Jim Prentice spent $2.6 million on winning the PC leadership race. That means Prentice spent about $128 per vote. And we expect this guy to spend our money wisely?
RIPs in the first 10 days of the year: Swedish actress and former bombshell Anita Ekberg (seen right in her bombshell days); J.P. Parise, a member Team Canada of the legendary Canada-Russia series of 1972; Donna Douglas, who played costume-challenged Elly May Clampett on the old Beverly Hillbillies show; Little Jimmy Dickens of the Grand Ole Opry; and called to the Lord, as he might have said it, gospel singer Andrea Crouch.
In This Corner 