We owe you one, Oprah, and that lady in the wig too
As if we hadn’t already gone way too far when it comes to blending our political system with entertainment, we went still further this week. The difference this time around is we weren’t using celebrity to get elected or appointed, we were using celebrity to thwart the same.
It unfolded like this: A crass little man who made gazillions of dollars by abusing fast-food workers was nominated to be Secretary of Labor by a crass big man who made gazillions of dollars by abusing everything and everyone he ever met… except Vladimir Putin. Go figure.
Well anyway, the crass little man, Andrew Puzder, top dog at the parent company for Hardee’s and Carl’s Jr., had a few skeletons in his closet. Not the labor secretary kind of skeletons like when he made employees clock-out and go sit in their cars without pay when the restaurants got slow or when he made commercials with mostly naked women eating burgers in slow motion as the “special sauce” dripped down their chin. Hell, that last one is probably what put him on Donald’s radar in the first place. No, the skeleton that cost Puzder his new job in the Trump administration is compliments of his former wife who claimed he abused her.
Funny that no one cared when 100,000 fast-food employees claimed the guy had abused them, but we digress.
So Puzder — why does Trump have an infatuation with men whose last names start with Pu? — was still heading for congressional acceptance despite his former wife’s claims because she had withdrawn the allegations during the money-phase of the couple’s divorce. But then a funny thing happened on his way to conformation.
Oprah found a 1990 taping of one of her TV shows dedicated to abused women of status. On that show, Puzder’s ex-wife appeared in disguise and told about her alleged abuse at her husbands hands and claimed she was in disguise because he had vowed revenge if she ratted him out.
Moral of story: never send 100,000 low-income, mostly people of color to do a job that one rich white lady can do all by herself…errr, with Oprah’s help.
Thanks, Puzder’s ex-wife and Oprah, from all of us who labor for a living.
THE BIRDS AND THE BEES
Reckitt Benckiser, the British company that makes Durex condoms, recently agreed to buy Mead Johnson Nutrition, maker of Enfamil baby formula. Cue the onslaught of jokes about Durex covering its bases and saving money on quality control. (Side note: Reckitt Benckiser manufactures other healthcare products, like Nurofen brand ibuprofen, Scholl and a bunch of cleaning products, so the company’s CEO says the $16.6 billion deal is just another addition to Reckitt Benckiser’s consumer health portfolio.)
But Durex doesn’t have to buy cut-rate latex or forego quality assurance testing on its rubbers to bolster sales for its newly acquired baby food product, because people around the world have absolutely no clue how to use condoms.
A 2012 review of 50 studies about condom-use errors from around the world took a look at the common mistakes and how frequently those occurred.
These mistakes include: Late application, early removal (easy there, stallion), completely unrolling a condom before putting it on (remember the banana demonstration from high school), failing to unroll the condom all the way (again, remember the banana), leaving no space at the tip, failing to remove air, putting the condom on inside-out (and then flipping it around the other way), exposing the condom to sharp objects (don’t use scissors to open the package), not checking for damage, using no lubrication (friction wasn’t just a chapter in your high school physics book), using the wrong lubrication (water-based, never oil-based), incorrect withdrawal (get out of there quickly — and properly!), condom reuse (seriously), incorrect storage (stop putting it in your wallet), breakage, slippage and leakage.
Unfortunately for Rickitt Benckiser, on both fronts, surveys find that millennials are having less sex than any generation in 60 years.
