Not like us

 Politics has been called show business for ugly people, and their Oscar night is the White House Correspondents Dinner.  This year CNN even carried the equivalent of the red carpet, with nobody tripping over a dress.  The difference is that the people we depend on to tell us the truth about Nicole Kidman or Robert Pattinson are not supposed to eat with them or laugh at their jokes.  I mean people like Amy Goodman and I.F. Stone, not the hairsprayed headline readers.  Maybe that's why there are so few.

The rich, said Fitzgerald, are not like you and me.  Hemingway demurred ("Yes, they have money"), but I think Scott has won the argument.  Take Dubai.  Most places where the airport was put out of commission for two weeks by flooding would look into improved drainage.  Dubai's response is to announce the construction of a new airport in the southern desert at a cost of $35 billion.  I wonder what the climate will have in store by the time it's finished, ten years from now.  (I also wonder how many impoverished "guest workers" will be worked to death to finish it on time, but it's not my job to impose decadent western values on the Islamic world.)

The rich don't look like us, either.  I once thought John Cleese was a sensible person but he's not only getting stem cell treatments (at 17,000 pounds a year) to look young -- well, young for 84 -- he gives interviews where he boasts about it.  He's turned into the kind of character he and his five partners used to make fun of.  Do you think it's working?

Then he complains about how much richer he was before his third divorce.  Oh, John.

I have more sympathy for the three women whose quest for eternal youth resulted in their contracting HIV at a New Mexico spa.  There's a procedure called a "vampire facial," which sounds as awful as the name, and when infected needles are re-used, bad things can happen.  The spa's owner has been prosecuted for practicing medicine without a license.  I hope the women at least look youthful.

After nearly a century of freezing their fans and opponents at Soldier Field, the Chicago Bears would like to build a new domed playground next door.  They've run the numbers and they say it would cost no more than $6.9 billion.  Needless to say, they would like the people of Illinois to make this a gift, although based on other recently opened wonderlands, few of them could afford to see a game there.  Moreover, "They're asking to keep all of the revenue from other events that might take place at the stadium...taxpayers really aren't going to do well under that proposal," said Governor J.B. Pritzker.  The Bears have not won a Superbowl since 1985.

Sometimes money makes you smile.  Such is the story of Cheng "Charlie" Saephan of Portland, Oregon, winner of $1.3 billion Powerball prize.  Mr. Saephan is an immigrant from Laos who has battled cancer for eight years.  He says he will use the money to provide for his family and "find a good doctor for myself."  Maybe John Cleese can give him the name of a Swiss clinic.