New Fruit of the Loom Commercial Perpetuates Racial Stereotype

On January 1st, 1863, Abraham Lincoln Issues the Emancipation Proclamation ostensibly freeing all African American slaves in the United States. In 1954, in the landmark Brown vs. the Board of Education case, the United States Supreme Court ruled that "seperate but equal" was unconstitutional paving the way for the civil rights movement. January 20th, 2009, Barack Obama becomes the 1st African American president of the United States.

Yet even with all of the historic advancements, African Americans continue to be stereotyped. In movies, in sports, on the street. Many people claim that America is a color-blind country, that we live in a society that can look past skin color and judge a person by their deeds and actions. These people are wrong.

The proof? This seemingly innocuous Fruit of the Loom commercial. At first glance it seems like a fairly straightforward commercial. Men of different races and creeds dressed up as a variety of instrument wielding fruit, hawking comfortable underwear with a rock ballad. HOWEVER, upon closer introspection, a shocking revelation can be gleaned.



The 29 second mark reveals the money shot. A green grape playing lead guitar? Okay nothing wrong with that. An apple lead singer? Totally normal. Some sort of leaf thing playing drums? You see it everyday. But wait. What's this? If you can hardly believe your eyes you're not alone. Yes, in a shocking and most heinous casting decision, the racists at Fruit of the Loom have decided to perpetuate one of the most hurtful and longstanding stereotypes of all: All African American men can play the bass guitar.

God forbid the racists at Fruit of the Loom could have an African American man playing the piano or rocking the drums. Maybe they could have put him as lead guitarist. Hey FOTL, ever heard of Jimi Hendrix? I hear he was pretty good at guitar.

It is sickening to see this hurtful stereotype still thriving in today's society, much less being plastered all over the airwaves for everyone to see. Fruit of the Loom should be ashamed and you the public should be outraged.

There is no place for this type of ad on TV. I hope you will join me in boycotting all fruit of the loom underwear until they make reparations for this blatant racist stereotype.

(Also, the African American is dressed as a bunch of purple grapes. Oh all African Americans love grape soda do they? Maybe they should just show him in shackles and an orange jump suit, eating fried chicken and talking to a white woman while they're at it. Disgusting, where is Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton on this one?)

Miley Cyrus' Bong Hit Fourth Sign of the Nudepocalypse

Sign 1. Innapropriate Text/Sext messages somehow leaked onto the internet
Sign 2. Plummeting album sales
Sign 3. Celebrating an 18th birthday
Sign 4. Drug arrest/Documented drug use
Sign 5. Unplanned pregnancy
Sign 6. Tearful appearance on Oprah
Sign 7. Rumors of a sex tape/sex tape settlement with jealous ex-lover

Not nude. For now.

These are the seven warning signs of the Nudepocalypse. The seven signs that foretell a forthcoming nude pictorial or sex tape of a formerly chaste and innocent female celebrity. Hundreds of female celebrities and socialites have experienced these signs, to the delight of the fat fingered heavy breathing perverts Googling naked celebrities with the "safe search" turned off.

The latest celebrity to experience these signs is Miley Cyrus. Fresh off leaked picture messages of Miley in inappropriate poses and a disappointingly low selling album comes the fourth sign: Documented drug use. The latest scandal to engulf Miley is a video of her smoking Salvia out of a bong. While Salvia is technically legal, it is known for its hallucinogenic properties and is drawing the ire of parents groups and police.

Miley Cyrus, aka Hannah Montana has already begun to distance herself from her formerly kiddie "Disney" persona with various slutty performances and risque internet photos. Following the latest video of Miley smoking out of a bong, Billy Ray Cyrus, her awful, awful father has come out saying he's "sorry" and "sad" for his daughter's behavior. However he is unable to maintain any control over his daughter because she is the only reason he has a job or money, or a sex-life. However, those who follow the signs of the Nudepocalypse know that this sign, along with the third sign of a celebrated 18th birthday leaves Miley only 3 signs away from sweet, glorious (and now legal) nudity.

Experts say that Miley has the best chance yet of fulfilling the seven signs and take her clothes off to make money and/or revive her undoubtedly flagging career. While many experts also expected Britney Spears to pose for Playboy and "accidentally" release a sex tape, she was able to mount a somewhat successful comeback and delay the inevitable for another 5 years. At which point her body will be wrinkled, stretched to the point of Danielle Staub.

Air Drum Solo Gone Wrong Leads to 14 Dead, 33 Injured

Phil Collins causes carnage on I - 805

Tragedy struck the greater San Deigo area today as an ill-timed air drum solo led to a thirteen vehicle pile up on the 805, causing multiple fatalities and clogging rush hour traffic. Witnesses say that the initial cause of the accident was a pickup truck that seemed to lose control for no reason. The truck then careened into a charter bus full of senior citizens, flipped over and burst into flames. The resulting carnage involved 12 other cars, a tractor-trailer and a bus.

Early reports from the San Deigo Police Department indicate that the cause of the accident was an air drum solo during Phil Collins' "In the Air Tonight". The driver of the pickup truck, Steve Dubinski, age 32, suffered only minor injuries and was taken into custody where he revealed that the loss of control was caused by an errant drum solo. His statement first taken by the SDPD, has now been released to the media.

"Well I was listening to 101.5 KGB and they had that Phil Collins song on, In the Air Tonight, the one about the guy who was drowning, and well that part came on where the drums first kick in, you know the part in the movie 'Hangover' where Mike Tyson does it, although he doesn't punch out Zach Galifinakis at the end like he appears to in the trailer which I thought was kind of a rip-off because that was way funnier than how he did it in the actual movie. Anyway I took my hands off the wheel to do it, because I was trying to impress this chick who was in the truck with me, and it looks way cooler if you do it two handed, and I must have hit a pothole or something cuz I was half way through the solo and the truck veered to the right and hit this bus. I tried to finish the solo but the truck was airborne at this point and I think i missed the last beat. When I woke up there were sirens everywhere and the song was over."

The passenger, Theresa Douglas, age 21, suffered a lacerated face but is expected to make a full recovery. The names of the deceased have been withheld as family has been notified, but most of the fatalities were a result of the senior citizens bus rolling over an embankment.

San Deigo Police Chief William Lansdowne was unavailable for interview but records indicate that this is the third such incident involving air-instrument-solo's gone wrong to strike San Deigo this year. The death total now stands at 45 with 89 injured and over 10 million dollars in property damage. 

Mr. Dubinski is being held without bail on 14 counts of vehicular homicide and reckless driving.

Rob Sheffield Has Never Actually Listened to a Morrissey Song

"At this point, she's like the new Morrissey, except with even more eyeliner." - Rob Sheffield of Rolling Stone.

Rob Sheffield, worse than Hitler

It would be easy to dismiss this quote as: ill-conceived; a desperate ploy to sound hip; a failed attempt to score indie cred, or; worse than Hitler, and all of the preceding quips would be completely justified. However, for a magazine that prides itself for raking musicians over the coals for songwriting faux pas, a quote this horrible must be thoroughly and utterly deconstructed.

Now in theory, comparing a musician like Taylor Swift - a celebrity dating, female pop-country starlet who rose to immense fame by writing songs about boys, losing boys, falling in love with boys and thinking about boys, and whose albums have consistently reached the top of the US charts to Morrissey; the asexual(?) heterosexual(?), bisexual(?), homosexual(?), celibate, pale, pompadoured former lead singer of the Smiths, whose work has been labeled as some of the most influential in all of popular culture but who never had an album reach higher than #55 on the US Billboard charts - seems completely and utterly moronic. But actually in practice it turns out that it's much, much worse. In fact it's so bad that it needs its own list of things that it is, in fact, worse than.

Things that this quote is worse than:
Hitler
9/11
Osama Bin Laden
Socialism
Kurt Cobain being named the 12th greatest guitarist of all time by Rolling Stone
George Bush's grasp of the English Language
Paul Krugman's grasp of economic theory
Pitchfork's genuine disregard and contempt for music and humanity in general
The Devil
Larry the Cable Guy's stand-up
Tyler Perry
The Show Lil'Bush
Ja'Rule
Limp Bizkit's cover of "Behind Blue Eyes"
L33t speak
People who tailgate
The fact that the sun will explode in 5 billion years destroying the entire solar system
The Crusades
Romantic comedies starring Sandra Bullock
Seeing your parents naked
Aids
Tucker Max's views towards women
MTV's Director of Programming
The slow and inevitable aging process that is slowly destroying your body and leaving you old, wrinkly, and impotent
Waterboarding

The quote is so offensive that the only explanation is that Rob Sheffield has never heard a song by Morrissey or the Smiths. This would make sense as neither of those is the Arcade Fire or Lil Wayne.

To paraphrase Wayne Campbell, "If Rob Sheffield was an ice cream flavor he'd be pralines and total sell-out in order to capitalize on Taylor Swift's burgeoning popularity."

E! Continues to Make Viewers Long For the End of Western Civilization

Meet the family!... From Hell!

E! Entertainment channel, the same channel that brought America Keeping up the Kardashians and Kendra now gives America the 3rd and final sign of the apocalypse, Pretty Wild.

The show is a mix of things of scripted lines "a la the Hills," interspersed with the daily lives of a family so useless they get kicked out of their neighborhood in the second episode.

The family is led by former lingerie model Andrea Arlington. If the fact that she whores her barely-legal children out to modeling agencies isn't bad enough, she also home-schools her family with a curriculum based upon the multi-million selling piece of crap "The Secret." A book so lame that it could only be popular in Hollywood. It even makes Scientology seem like a rational well-thought out belief system.

Instead of learning things like, addition, spelling, history, or economics, her children get to make posters about "what things they admire about Angelina Jolie," (The answers: "her boobs, her body.") Speaking of her children, because they were raised by unfit parents, Tess Taylor and Alexis and Gabby Neiers all act like petulant spoiled bitches, which isn't surprising because that is exactly what they are. In the first episode Alexis is arrested for possibly being part of the "bling ring" -- a group of Hollywood teens who like to steal from celebrities. Tess is currently a Playboy Cyber-Girl, this inexplicably has not been mentioned in the show, which is odd since E! spent the last 5 years pimping out Hugh Hefner and his brothel of prostitutes. The third daughter, Gabby isn't quite legal yet, but one can only imagine that she will soon be embroiled in a sexting scandal.

Watching this show almost makes you long for America governed by Sharia, or at very least the end of Western Civilization. Hopefully no one will show it Osama Bin-Laden, he doesn't need anymore reasons to hate America.

Unfortunately this show is so utterly exploitative that it will probably be a huge hit for the network. Millions of impressionable and stupid teenage girls will lap it up and America will fall further and further behind Japan in education, thus accelerating our fall from world-power to a third-world nation. Pretty Wild, the one show in existence that can make America long for the civility and wit of Sunset Tan.

Movie Exclusive: John Steigerwald to Star in "Anchorman 2: Ultimate Sports Guy"

In a Triple Threat Media exclusive, we have obtained the trailer for the upcoming movie "Anchorman 2: Ultimate Sports Guy." The new movie, set in Pittsburgh in 1981, stars Pittsburgh sports media stalwart John Steigerwald as the title character.

Also starring Will Farrell and Paul Rudd, the movie is a spin off of the first Anchorman. Will Farrell, as Ron Burgundy gets fired from his network job and ends up taking the only job he can get, as a station manager for WTAE in Pittsburgh. Languishing in third place in the local ratings, Ron tries to use his TV savvy to boost the ratings. But when all else fails he finds a young beat reporter named John Steigerwald and realizes that he holds the key to zapping the competition!

The exclusive trailer shows John Steigerwald undertaking a variety of wacky sports roles in Ron's advertisement for the new "Ultimate Sports Guy" on WTAE.



The movie is slated to arrive in theaters in May 2011.

Obama to ESPN: "I Will Trade the Healthcare Bill for a Re-do on my Bracket"

On Sunday, President Barack Obama scored the first major political victory of his young campaign. The Democratic controlled Congress was finally able to secure enough votes to ram home Obama's pet health care bill over the objections of Republicans.

However all was not well with Obama as Saturday handed him his greatest defeat. Kansas, who he had picked to win the entire NCAA tournament, was stunned by Northern Iowa 69-67 in the 2nd round.

Although he was bolstered by his health care victory, anonymous White House staff members told us that his mood has been sour all weekend, even with the passage of the bill. "He's just been moping around all weekend eating potato chips, he didn't even watch Sunday's games, he just locked himself in the Lincoln room. We had to get Pelosi to come in and bust the doors down so we could tell him about his health-care win."

On Monday President elect Barack Obama told ESPN reporters that he would "absolutely trade the health care bill for a re-do on my bracket, no questions asked."

Obama, who like many of the experts picked Kansas to win it all, now faces considerably longer odds in winning his pool. Although Obama has grown accustomed to long odds throughout his political career, these may be his hardest battle yet. Barack's team, BARACKetbusters, currently sits 4th in the USGovRulz Basketball pool on Yahoo!. Currently ahead of him is Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi's BBALLbreakers, Socialist Bernie Sanders' MarxMadness, and former President George Bush's Howulikemenow. However, because Kansas was eliminated he has virtually no chance of gaining the 64 point lead he would need to acquire in order to beat any entrant that picked the championship game winner. Barring a miracle from a Cinderella team like Cornell winning it all, he will not be victorious.

Reports from the Republicans say that they are seriously considering accepting Barack's offer, and a deal could come as soon as Wednesday. Obama has stated that they have until the sweet 16 begins on Thursday.

Media Cage Match: Steigerwald vs. Madden

Let's get ready to rumble!

It's the mustache vs. the super genius. Steigerwald vs. Madden: two of the premier names in Pittsburgh sports talk squaring off in the city of bridges. It's the tangle in the golden triangle, the melee on the Mon, the tiff at Fort Pitt.

Madden in his blog on 105.9 the X, recently criticized John Steigerwald's (ed. note. yes he's my uncle) accusation that Big Ben may have been high on something during the night he was accused of sexual misconduct. Madden, bless his heart, was obviously concerned that Steigerwald may get into legal trouble over the supposed accusation and wrote that "[his] implication is reckless." Madden, who has been known to defend Roethlisberger to the ends of the earth, also criticized Steigerwald's retelling of a supposed incident where Ben blew off a Make-A-Wish kid, asking where the proof was. .

John Steigerwald, perhaps as an answer to Madden, proceeded to post multiple new blogs, detailing just how he came to learn of the Make-A-Wish Roethlisberger incident. Steigerwald, immediately came back swinging (although not actually calling Madden out by name, I think we can all infer on this one.)

"Ok. I’ve been called everything from a hack to a scumbag and I’ve been accused of accusing Ben Roethliesberger of being high on drugs the night he was accused of sexual assault. Anyone with a brain knows that’s not true and it’s not going to get any truer no matter how many times it’s posted here.

I merely pointed out to those who were pointing out that he didn’t appear to be drinking a lot that there are other ways of getting high. Only a moron would call that an accusation. There are actually people out there who think that I could be sued for making that observation."

If, "actually people out there who think that I could be sued for making that observation," isn't a shot at Mark Madden, I don't know what is.

To be fair to Madden, Ben hasn't been convicted of anything except having bad judgment, at least not yet. But the constant cheerleading for Ben is getting a little old. Can't we just agree that he's a great quarterback whose kind of a jerk off the field, and makes questionable decisions with women.

Madden has been all quiet on the Western PA blog front since Mondays salvo by Steigerwald, but needless to say one can only assume that Madden will get in his shots either on the air or in print.

Stay Tuned.

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame: "We'll Pretty Much Let Anyone in at this Point... Except Rush"

Tonight the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inducts the newest members into its hallowed Cleveland halls. Well, actually although the hall rests along the Cleveland waterfront, the awards ceremony was held in a city with a little more life: New York.

The esteemed rockers, like Brady Quinn, Derek Anderson and the rest of the country, want nothing to do with Cleveland.

This years inductees included the multi-decade spanning art/prog rock masters Genesis, Sweedish pop pioneers Abba, British invasion rockers the Hollies, Jamaican Reggae king Jimmy Cliff, Punk darlings the Stooges, David Geffen, Barry Man, Cynthia Weil, Otis Blackwell, Mort Shuman, Larry David, everyone who was at the Beatles' Ed Sullivan performance, 4 out of the 5 roadies who toured with Led Zeppelin on their 1979 American tour, Kyle Stevens, who wrote a 2 page review of a Deep Purple show for his college newspaper and Brenda Waters who slept with 50% of the members of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young.

The induction ceremony opened with Hall of Fame president Joel Peresman announcing that

"We'll pretty much let anyone in the hall at this point... as long as its not Rush. We've been scouring the depths and dregs of rock and roll to find even the least deserving bands and artists, as long as their not associated with Rush, they can just walk right in and we'll give 'em entry. We can't wait until 2022 when we can start letting in bands like the Backstreet Boys and Britney Spears, but until then we will continue picking all the not-Rush eligible bands, regardless of their achievements in rock music."

Rush, who remain one of the most successful bands of all time, will have to theoretically wait another year to not get recognized. Rush frontman Geddy Lee told TTM that "It's just an honor to be nominated." It was then made known that they had never been nominated, to which Geddy replied, "well it would have been an honor to be nominated... if we had been."

Chuck Norris Turns 70 (In Human Years)

Chuck Norris is 70 today.

Although he is 70 in human years, Chuck has been directly in the prime of his life for the past 300 years as he actually controls the rotation of the earth around the sun and only ages when he feels like it.

For his 70th birthday Chuck will celebrate by running around the earth barefoot and then roundhouse kicking Kim Jong-Il in the face.

Although he has been out of the spotlight since he canceled his show, Walker: Texas Ranger, Chuck Norris has spent the last 15 years of his immortal life disguised as hockey players Gary Roberts and then Bill Guerin. After winning the Stanley Cup, and completing his work here on earth, Chuck has spent the last year roundhouse kicking demons in dimension-x. However, he decided to return to earth to celebrate his 70th human birthday with his bevy of supermodel girlfriends.

Oscars 2010: Sean Avery Shocks Academy With Surprise Best Actor Win

Pesky New York Rangers Forward Sean Avery has always been known more for his constant off and on the ice-antics than his actual hockey talents.

Sean Avery vs. Martin Broduer
Sean Avery vs. Elisha Cuthbert
Sean Avery vs. Fashion

Avery has been criticized, suspended and even gotten a rule change named for him. But had never been able to break out into the big time.

Until now.

On Monday the Academy of Arts and Science from awarding Mr. Avery an Oscar for Best Actor for his portrayal of Max Talbot in The Penguins vs. New York Rangers. Avery upset odds-on-favorite Jeff Bridges, who many had considered a lock for the award.

As you can see in the video above, Avery delivers a hilarious but touching performance that Puck Daddy's Greg Wyshinski described as "[a] particular brand of whimsy."

Avery, who previously won a Razzie for his portrayal of a hockey player in 2008's Dallas Stars NHL Regular Season, was unavailable for comment after the win as he earned an awards show misconduct after receiving the award for a blind side hit to the head on Dame Judi Dench.