Boondoggles in the news

I've been doing a Google Alert on boondoggle during the last week and to my surprise the word pops up a few times a day in the international press. A small overview:

• In the Pittsburgh Tribune review in an article on "pork". Pork is slang for "pet projects in governmental budgets". Given the negative connotations with thoughts about "fat in the budget", government officials have begun using a different word "earmarks" to describe these budgets. Leading the Pittsburgh Tribune Review to write this: However, the well-informed citizen recognizes that an earmark is just another boondoggle perpetrated by our elected officials. Let's face it. No matter how we describe it, pork is a pig and it still waddles up to the trough of public funds and picks our pockets.
• There's a Boondoggle Sports Network that is recently sold. The new owner actually has plans to roll out the network in the UK and the rest of Europe.  You can count on us to promote this network of utter useless sports, once it's here.
• In an article on the Cosby Show, The Trades pictures the Cosby Family as following: "the Huxtable family was an African-American sitcom family the likes of which we hadn't seen. They weren't being held down in the projects of Chicago; they weren't making ends meet in a junkyard in Watts; and they weren't mired down in the boondoggle of racial separation even after having moved on up. Instead, The Cosby Show presented a family that was educated, professional, and living out the American Dream".
• And in the world famous Roanoke Times there was a headline this week that said "billion-dollar boondoggle". The article was about coal-area lawmakers who are trying to push Congress into billion-dollar subsidies and and guaranteed loans for coal-to-liquid production plants. Coal-to-liquid turns out to be a very cost-inefficient procedure and very bad for the environment.  Pitty. The billion-dollar boondoggle wasn't about us.

Which brings us to us. You might get tired of seeing our über-boondoggle's head in the Belgian newspaper these days. We urged him to stop giving interviews. It got out of control. Thank God "Kerk & Leven", the magazine of the Belgian Catholic Church and "Het Laatste Nieuws", Belgian's Number 1 tabloid haven't found out yet. Please keep it quiet.