Top Buried NY Post Stories: Hugo Chavez is Right, 3OH!3 Slanders Helen Keller

Sometimes the most fascinating items in the New York Post are buried in the lifestyle coverage. Today Reed Tucker's "Diet Soda Diatribe" takes off from Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez ' claim that Coke Zero is bad for you. While saying up front, as all good Americans must, that Chavez "would love nothing better than to blacken the eye of America's biggest brand," Tucker winds up admitting that artificial sweeteners are probably unhealthy, that aspartame only got approved by the FDA because of political connections, and that diet soda is more likely to make you gain than lose weight. In other words: the commie was right! This may be why the story is on page 35 instead of page one.

Also of interest is Raakhee Mirchandani's "Top 40 Leer-icists," which complains of, and to, authors of sexually explicit pop songs. Mirchandani appears to have written her article in another language and had it translated into English by a computer program. "There are very few songs that will make a girl whip off her clothes and get all up in your personal space in public," she tells "Mr. Singer." "Sorry to burst your pervy little bubble," but though "you'd think scoring a gorgeous girl was as easy as waxing poetic about how hot it is when a girl 'backs it up and dumps it back,'" in reality "Don't Trust Me" by 3OH!3 is "ill informed," because "Helen Keller was into Braille and college, not bed hopping." Hmph!

Apparently also transliterated is Warner Group's Andrew Steinthal, who says, "These songs are all going to be nothing. And it's all going to get worse. People are going to try to do crazier things and it's not even going to be music." A "resident DJ" comments that once upon a time, dirty lyrics made sense: "When 2 Live Crew did it, it was their lifestyle. They lived in strip clubs." We are delighted to see 2 Live Crew used as an "in my day" point of comparison, and hope this resident DJ will appear on the infomercial when Time-Life Music finally puts out "Back the Fuck Up: The Gangsta Years."