WORD UP!: Why We Will Always Be News & Entertainment Addicts...

By ALVIN KARPIS
Special to The Tribune

McALLEN, Texas - The National Basketball Association's future - one LeBron James - took his act to Miami, Spain won the World Cup, Major League Baseball floats its annual All-Star Game tomorrow night and the British Open dawns on Thursday morning. We are a nation of groupies; we must be fed action, drama and spectacular news video.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is why we cannot wait to see silly Sarah Palin (see photo above) go nuts and run for the presidency. It's going to happen, if for no other reason than that the media want it, and when the media want something, well, the people fall in line to want it too. Promotion, see. You promote anything enough in this country and 50,000 rabid nobodies will show up to confirm your belief that passels of suckers are born in America every damned second.

That explains wrestling, doesn't it - the theatre of fools. That would explain the goofy octagon in that hybrid boxing-wrestling sport so popular lately. That would explain why The Lone Ranger would never gain audience in today's culture. Yep, there would have to be an episode in which the Lone One would have to take off his mask in the so-called dramatic end to the series. There was a time in this country's entertainment vein when a masked man could go masked without anyone seeing big bucks in his ripping it off his face. As they say in Detroit, "No mo..."

And so we shall tune in to catch the baseball summer classic, watch it and then wait on Tiger to tee-off in the British Open. Something just as huge will come next and then something bigger after that and so on and on and on.

America will get Obama-Palin's 15 rounds of body blows, jabbing, feigning and upper-cutting. Bets will be taken in Vegas. Pundits from coast to coast will lay it all out. The world will wait with bated breadth. It should be a dandy.

Get your chips and salsa, kiddoes. It's gonna happen...

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