Mercury World Report

Toby Keith tops country charts with `Stingy, My Ass'
Controversial hit from new album How Dare You Ask for Aid

NASHVILLE, Tenn.--Cementing his place as the official spokesman of an outraged America, Toby Keith claimed the No. 1 spot on the country charts last week with his single, "Stingy, My Ass," a stinging rebuke to those who would question the nation's generosity to international relief efforts.

Following the proven formula of his smash hit "The Angry American," the new single, the first from Keith's new album How Dare You Ask for Aid, combines a hard-driving Western melody with the singer's trademark provocative lyrics.

In "Stingy, My Ass," Keith taunts the Sumatran survivors, singing, "If you don't like drownin'/ Then move away from the water/ And if your family's goin' hungry/ Try sellin' your daughter."

While critics say the single epitomizes knee-jerk American jingoism at its worst, Keith says he's merely speaking the truth of the working man's heart.

"I'm not singing for think tank elitists," Keith said. "I'm singing for that average guy in Kansas who don't go crying when a tsunami hits his farm."

Couple agrees to resume fight after dinner party

ASHEVILLE, N.C.--Despite a venomous fight in the car ride over, Pete and Sheila Barrentine agreed to suspend hostilities for the duration of a friend's dinner party, but only with the understanding that the fight would resume on the trip home.

"I've never seen Sheila that mad," Pete recalled. "She actually slugged my arm. But the minute we get to the Coopers, she's Little Mary Sunshine, all pretty smiles and gossipy chitchat. But when I'd catch her eye, she'd give me this emotionless death stare. Just the phoniness of it made me hate her all the more."

"Naturally, Pete stayed moody and distant through the whole party," Sheila countered. "God forbid he act like a grownup for two hours. Just seeing him display the exact same childishness that started the fight made me even angrier. I couldn't wait to get back in that car and tear him apart."

Cubist window painter not much in demand

ADA, Okla.--Though acknowledging the local artist's technical skill, shopkeepers in this small Oklahoma town are worried that Kurt Willeford's difficult, cubist window paintings, far from welcoming customers, may in fact be repelling them.

"I asked Kurt to do a Christmas thing for our store windows," Med-X Manager Steve Wilhelm remembered. "You know, some basic candy canes and maybe a tree with ornaments. What I got was an exploded manger scene, all shocking angularity and interpenetrating planes. It was as if he were holding up a shattered mirror to man's desperate need for myth."

"I guess Kurt's pretty good, but his stuff is too out there for my customer base," Bath Sense owner Mike Deschanel said. "We agreed on a Cupid and heart deal for Valentine's last year. I thought we were on the same page, but Kurt goes and does this fundamentally fragmented `heart-thought-object' without any fixed perspective.

"With all these contrasting points of view, it was as if Kurt were painting his own thoughts. It was freaky. And my customers went apeshit. Look, I want to support local artists as much as the next guy, but I got a business to run here."

A Mercury Handi-Chart
Why was America's initial pledge of tsunami disaster relief so small?

• Under intense questioning from President Bush, scientific advisers forced to acknowledge that surging waters posed little threat to America's unborn

• Vice President Dick Cheney's sober assessment that "if there's one thing dead people don't need, it's gobs and gobs of money"

• Full horror of disaster wasn't known until gorgeous white supermodel Petra Nemcova was spotted among survivors

• Guy from State Department accidentally overlaid transparent "Oil Fields of Strategic Interest" map over "Areas Affected by Tsunami" map

• Halliburton's regional director of disaster profiteering not answering cell phone over Christmas holidays

• President Bush informed that Bob Hope and Joey Heatherton would be unavailable for a goodwill tour

• Notion of relief called upon a different kind of non-vote-winning moral values

• President derides idea of subduction zones beneath the Indian Ocean as the "same ol' junk science from hysterical liberals"

THE ISSUES THAT MATTER
What Secretary of State Colin Powell will do after resigning

Celebrity boxing matches with Tom Ridge: 10%

Drive around in van solving mysteries with John Ashcroft: 10%

J-Lo's sixth husband, Britney's fourth, plus steamy affair with Sandra Murphy: 20%

Hello, Jim Beam: 20%

The most famous greeter in Wal-Mart history: 15%

Anything where he doesn't have to take it up the ass for four straight years: 25%