This weekend's Darlington Stripes

The news about disgraced soldier Bradley Manning, whose campaign to change the military to a sexual deviancy activist organisation was successful via Public Law 111-321, and his Wikileaks scandal that sent him to prison is very disturbing. But if he wants the identity of Chelsea, he must wear this shirt.

MTV has been the target of Our Word over the years here, especially since we regularly attend the orchestra and have an appreciation of classical music (just witness what happened when, during my daily Bible reading, I sensed the words from masterpiece I had sung months earlier came to life). The story over two grotesque performances by two major artists popular with this generation at the MTV Video Music Awards Sunday, held at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, showed the most banal standards that Fox Business anchorman Stuart Varney blamed it on the previous generation for accepting it in their time. Sometimes, I have a sense that someone's sitting in the Oval Office (fka Big Red Truck) and calling all three offending artists into the office for consultation. And at this pace, maybe the Barclays Center needs to be renamed the Sky Bet Centre. The calibre of "singer" there was a far cry from the Barclays-calibre type singers such as Анна Нетребко and the Minnesota Opera's Rebecca Krynski (in the upcoming performance of Manon Lescault; the author has seen her perform in college and the infamous St. Peter's Catholic performance of The True Story of Cinderella), Walter Cuttino, or the LaRoches (Michael and Serena).

And speaking of such outrageous performances, I think we've gone too far in sport and art with costuming, and even in schools. Who would want their kid to dress like those bad pop stars? We see that at sporting events and we rarely hear any complaints about it. But do it on television at the MTV awards, we hear complaints. Why is there a double standard? ◙