Let’s make up a nonnews-oriented salad with everything that couldn’t be separated.

This nonnews salad’s core ingredients are basically simple, with plenty of sublime salad dressing to go around.

Recently I have been trying to figure out what is real and fake over the “news” as it becomes more saturated with sensationalism for journalistic substance in the practical terms of higher profits and ratings.

We are a culture that believes that personal lives of well-known people deserve excessive coverage at the expense of their professional deeds which are left to be uncovered.

Triviality plus trash are the pitiful substitutes for hard-boiled news.

We are swimming in a sea of toxic media with our constantly inquiring minds, forming obsessions with nothing sacred rather than anything worthy.

Before I start making up the nonnews salad, there will be no specific measurements because I would want you to be the final judge on how much to handle.

Different bites for different folks in either large or small helpings.

Now let’s get on to the main ingredients for this unique salad…

Spice Girls: who have officially downsized from a quintet to a quartet after Ginger Spice left.

Their famous fifteen minutes are rapidly winding down.

Jerry Springer: ringside fights, phony guests, and ongoing bleeps during airtime, only to be capped off with an after-hours pornographic hotel room romping.

MTV’s “Real World”: the newest bratty cast members are whining louder than ever from Seattle.

Hillary and Bill and Monica and Kenneth: Adultery + Legal overkill = Who cares!

Bill Gates: “The Thrill is Gone” at Microsoft valley when Anti-Trust lawsuits recently arrived from the Department of Justice, twenty other states (including Iowa), and the District of Columbia.

Viagra: a male impotence cure-all gets medical insurance coverage while female birth control pills remain medically uninsured.

Promise Keepers: pitiful excuses for male bonding when the suppression of women (to whom I dedicate the radical term of “doormats” for those who blindly follow these “men”) serves as a dominant factor for maintaining a promise.

Prodigy (“musical” group, not the on-line service): for the promotion of misogyny with their female-bashing song, “Smack My Bitch Up,” which makes domestic violence seem funny. Since domestic violence is nothing to laugh at, I fail to hear their humorous message!

They should be smacked off the charts.

Angie and Debbie Winans: for celebrating homophobia and gay-bashing (under the claim of “Christian” music) with their unrepentant song “Not Natural.”

As a heterosexual Unitarian, I just don’t find any spiritual (as well as musical) pleasure from a recording artist who goes around openly bashing others just to spread the word of God for the blessing of a hit record.

Spending quality time at a gay and lesbian support center would make them feel “naturally” sanctified.

Bob and Diane Greenlee: Thanks for your 9 million dollar gift (along with the 14 endowed chairs) that was recently given to the wrong department. Over in HRIM, we definitely needed a newly redesigned state-of-the-art Tearoom.

In the spirit of “Dotfest,” we would have to carry out our own fund-raiser for the Tearoom by banging pots and pans (while wearing white uniforms and hairnets) to the rhythm of “I Heard It Through the Grapevine” on the steps of Mackay Hall.

Finally, for sublime salad dressing, we have Iowa State University’s favorite dysfunctional family: President Jischke (as the annoyed parent) and The September 29th Movement (as his spoiled children) for three years of consistent stupidity, ongoing whining, credibility problems and worsened racial relations at ISU.

Bon Appetit!

---

Adrian De Vore is a senior in hotel, restaurant and institution management from Newark, N.J.