Infinite Monkeys
"...a sparkly blog..." - James Lileks"Read them only with extreme caution."- Hugh Hewitt
Infinite MonkeysAn obscure radio personality has some excellent advice for the new LA Times editorial page editor.
I'd add that this is Kinsley's opportunity to return to his New Republic glory days. No, he can't write editorial like the truly iconclastic TRB columns (for example, the one where he argued that Roe v. Wade was bad law and abortion would be legal without it). But he can be more thoughtful than he was on Crossfire (his Slate days were somewhere in the middle).
Last night I was uncharacteristically listening to the BBC radio news. They were cordially beside themselves over U.S. soldiers' treatment of some incarcerated Iraqi POWs. One newsman mentioned to the other that the pictures that had been released were depressing and humiliating beyond words, but that the American papers seems to have almost no coverage it. Having just heard several minutes of slanted news of the war (it was the Beeb...), I didn't know what to think of the report of the abuse. Hadn't heard anything on regular U.S. talk radio during my short drive times today.
Well, I finally had my first free minute this afternoon, and something on the Bear Flag League headline scroll thing caught my eye. It was called We Just Lost Iraq. Read that. Wasn't sure what to think. Then I followed the link in the post's update. [Warning: it's a disturbing set of images.] Oh, man... (chin drops to chest, head shakes slightly.)
Drudge carrying it didn't mean that much to me. Now it's also on Instapundit, who links to LT/Citizen Smash.
Isn't denial one of the first stages of grief? I keep hoping that this is going to turn out to be some sort of hoax, some kind of photoshoped propaganda op. But as that denial gets more and more worn away with each new credible and dependable pundit chiming in, I'm getting very close to anger.
It's that time of year again...time for colleges and universities to invite controversial figures to bore, er, address graduating students at commencement. I'll never forget—even though I wasn't actually there at the time—the hullaballoo that erupted at UC San Diego when President Bill Clinton and then Speaker of the House of Representatives Newt Gingrich were invited to address an all-college commencement. Clinton used the occasion to announce his preposterous "conversation about race." Gingrich called for doubling federal spending on scientific research. Two years in a row, UCSD had quite the tempest in the old teapot. Students were irritated, mostly, at the security and media overexposure.
Well, there's controversial, and then there's downright repugnant. I'm thinking of a couple of colleges playing videos of cop-killer Mumia Abu-Jamal at graduation several years back. Now, in a similar vein, Claremont's Pitzer College has invited Bernardine Dohrn to deliver its commencement address next month. Pitzer's website describes Dohrn as a "leading child advocate." But nowhere in the PR is there any mention of Dohrn's terrorist past as a leader of the Weather Underground.
The Claremont Institute's Ami Naramor has the sordid details, and draws a parallel to a recent case of campus "terror."
Update: Powerline's Big Trunk elaborates on Dohrn's terrorist past and sounds a call to action.
Lileks bleats today: "I wouldn’t be surprised if domestic leftist terrorism made a comeback this decade. It only takes a few, after all. And it only takes a few sympathizers here and there to shield them."
It's just possible that some Bleat readers may have missed a few of our past Lileks photoshop posts.
My blogging friend Paul Cella has a provocative essay on the First Amendment at TCS today. It's provocative, I think, because his argument, though old, would be considered novel today. Cella takes the original, small-r republican view of freedom of speech. He believes, in short, that Howard Stern and his ilk are getting what they deserve. Cella observes:
Someone will reply with shrill bombast by citing the First Amendment, as if the issue were beyond debate. Very well, but let him first acquaint himself with the debate as it unfolded in American history. Let him read of the history of loyal oaths and censorship in this country; and of which side usually had the upper hand and why. He can begin with Leonard Levy's The Legacy of Suppression. Let him reflect on the fact that most of the same lionized legislators who passed the Bill of Rights also passed the Alien and Sedition Acts...
One small quibble: Levy revised The Legacy of Suppression and toned down the thesis somewhat. But the point remains:
...today's First Amendment jurisprudence grafts depravity upon liberty; and puts liberty at the mercy of those most likely to abuse it and despise its authentic fruits. For who, if he really treasures Liberty, would countenance the relentless invasion of the precious liberty of the family, of which the Super Bowl half-time show was merely a conspicuous example? There is no greater liberty than that which is embodied in the mother and father who raise their children as good citizens of a Republic, in the love of the truth as that love is reflected in an ongoing public conversation or dialogue which begins with the ringing phrase: "we hold these truths."
Read the whole thing, by all means.
Update: Richard Reeb continues the discussion at The Remedy.
I've been wanting to write more about the Sazerac cocktail (I mentioned it before in my Vegas write-up). But I hadn't been drinking it, because it's so hard to find Peychaud's Bitters, and I really didn't want to pay the shipping. Fortunately, at our recent Monkey Summit, Ben gave me a bottle for my birthday.
I also convinced the guy at Wine Time, an outstanding La Jolla liquor store, to start stocking it. I buy most of my wine there now, and quite a bit of booze (including a Korean liquor made from sweet potatoes and green tea that I'll write about soon). I believe he's also going to stock the Herbsaint, but that's a bit easier to find.
I found an excellent discussion of the Sazerac cocktail, so I'll focus this discussion more on another of the long list of things Ben has taught me: the proper glassware is just as important in cocktails as in wine. And the amount per drink is much more important (in wine, it's mainly relevant in that you want room to be able to swirl your wine in the glass). So what's the right size glass for the Sazerac, martinis, and most other cocktails served straight up?
It's a four ounce glass. This is the old school martini glass size, so when you heard about "three martini lunches" back in the 50's, it was a lot of drinking, but certainly not like it would be with the monster glasses restaurants use today. As we've discussed before (back on Blog*Spot), a bigger glass means you have to drink fast or the cocktail will become warm. Also, I think the smaller glass makes for a better proportion of ice in the shaker, to get the 25% dilution Ben recommends.
Note that the recipe for the Sazerac in the article I linked to above would barely fill one of the new trendy glasses, nor would Ben's recipe for the magical Hpnotiq Martini. Your goal with this glass is to end up with 2.5 - 3.5 ounces of cocktail, which leaves room for an olive or lemon twist.
The smaller glass also allows you to enjoy the ritual of mixing a drink more frequently (if you don't like that ritual, just make a pitcher--trust me, everyone will be happy.
P.S. The glass shown above is from Libby, and while the shape is classic, there's a lot of other good shapes. The key is the 4 ounce size.
P.P.S. I've made the Sazerac with the rye from the Sazerac Company, with Old Overholt, and with Cognac (I just realized all of those bottles were gifts from Ben, at least originally--some have been restocked). All resulted in an excellent cocktail.
The L.A. Times reports that security was beefed up around several west Los Angeles shopping malls today after authorities received an anonymous threat. "It's not the kind of threat that we attach any more credibility to than any other anonymous call," John Miller, the LAPD's counterterrorism chief, said Wednesday. "But because it mentioned a specific kind of target on a specific day, we felt compelled to share it with the public."
I just read the Fraters post on the D.C. Abortion Rally, and it reminded me of an old Chris Rock routine, which is still part of his act:
"I like to go to abortion rallies to meet women. 'Cause you know they're f***in'. You don't meet a lot of virgins at the abortion rally."
Roll Call (web article available only to subscribers, alas) reports on Media Vote, a new consulting firm specializing in TV viewer demographics. Among of the more interesting findings of the firm's research is this:
Fox's 'The Simpsons,' long considered a staple of the hip and urban, is actually a Republican stronghold, with 47 percent of viewers Republican, 20 percent Democratic, and 22 percent Independent.
So does that mean that "The Simpsons" is no longer hip? Or that Republicans are secretly hip? Or merely wanna-be urban hipsters? Neither Media Vote nor the Roll Call article offer an answer. Only Birch Barlow knows for sure.
(Cross-posted at The Remedy.)
Back in our Blog*Spot days, we never utilized a Comments service. Now that we're using MovableType, some folks are still baffled over our practice of rarely enabling comments on our posts. (You'll find that most comments on InfMonks these days are restricted to those from the other Monkeys. That's our version of adding an update to another Monkey's post; sort of like on Power Line when you'd read "Hindrocket adds:")
Why do we limit comments from readers? Well, beyond SPAM, here are two good reasons.
I'm probably the only Monkey sober at this hour, so I guess it
falls to me to say welcome, and we're glad you found us.
I'm guessing it's the jet lag, but I've been watching a really lame Chris Rock movie solely because one of the small supporting roles is played by the hot blonde girl who used to be the DA on Law & Order: SVU. Wine & sleep deprivation are a recipe for disaster, I tells ya.
Tonight's cheap bottle of delicious foreign wine is another Italian gem: A 2000 red wine named "Col di Sasso" from Banfi in Tuscany. It's a blend of 70% Sangiovese and 30% Cabernet Sauvignon. Great stuff. And it was about $9 at the nearby Tampa-area wine & spirits shop. If your budget is small, it's hard to go wrong with Italian wine.
Smith, that is. I don't really like most of her stuff, either, with one notable exception: "Dancing Barefoot" is divine. One of my favorite songs ever.
And I'm a huge fan of the Velvet Underground and its post-punk stepchild, The Dream Syndicate.
But in support of his premise, and in honor of the recent re-release of Camper Van Beethoven's back catalogue (with bonus tracks!!!), I offer these classic lyrics by David Lowery:
Gonna move to the city (down and out)
Gonna read a lot of William Burroughs (down and out)
Gonna practice being depressed (down and out)
And I think I'll go to film school (down and out)
Live in a scummy part of town (down and out)
All my friends will think that they're junkies (down and out)
And I don't know what it is I want, but I can get it from my old man
And I don't know what it is I need, but I can get it
Gonna move to the city (down and out)
I'll join a rock and roll band (down and out)
Gonna dress and act like Lou Reed
And I think I'll go to film school (down and out)
Live in a scummy part of town (down and out)
Read a lot of William Burroughs and be depressed
And I don't know what it is I want, but I can get it from my own bed
And I don't know what it is I need, but I can get it
I'm acting (down and out)
(thanks to Mungo for his fantastic Camper etc. website, The Van)
In reference to the title of Ben's post below (Where Did All The Heroes Go?), I was wondering the same thing. As in the material he cites, it seems to be more a matter of shifting perspective than a decline of courage and character. See the "23apr2004 -- Heroism Quiz" (scroll down just a bit) on this DOC page, and its Addendum just below it.
I'm left wondering how Deuce or Mr. Taibbi would even define a hero, or whether they could provide an example of someone who they might find heroic under their terms.
Their naysaying positions, standing against the tide of more proletarian interpretations and presuppositions, to me amount to just so much socio-political gnosticism. But what they are advancing as some deeper level of insight or understanding, appears to me to be even more one-dimensional and simplified than that of the dupes and sheep they wish to deride.
I'd be pleased to be written off by such mindsets as one lost, brainwashed, having taken the soma.
A minute ago, a caller to a radio show many of us Monkeys listen to mentioned how Kerry needed to keep his record focused on the brief period time that he was on the swift boat in Viet Nam, since the other 25 years or so of his public service offers nothing but bad votes and flip-flops, nothing worth campaigning on.
Again, it all comes back to Apocalypse Now.
After his encounter with the tiger, Chef kept ranting, "Never get off the boat, man. Never get off the boat." Willard's voiceover: "Never get out of the boat. Absolutely g**d*** right."
I think that's got to be John F'n Kerry's campaign mantra.
Well, this is certainly news: Kinsley Named to Head 'L.A. Times' Opinion and Editorial Section. As Ken Masugi notes, "It will be easy for Kinsley to improve what is probably the worst and reliably uninteresting editorial and op-ed section of any major paper in the country (save Michael Ramirez's cartoons). The question is whether he will make it truly worth reading." (Hat tip: The Remedy.)
Captain Ed points to an interesting commentary at the Naval Institute about the apparent disappearance of battlefield heroes in favor of victims. The Captain writes:
One of my ongoing gripes about the White House approach to the war is the lack of continued and consistent communication about the purpose and the progress of our efforts. But it's not just the White House, or at least the problem doesn't exist in a vacuum. Thirty years of popular-culture indoctrination of the idea that nothing is worth fighting for has eliminated the idea of violence as anything except evil...
It's a bad sign that Jessica Lynch, who certainly suffered, is the household name of this war, "celebrated for being the war's most pre-eminent victim, in a nation that has made victimhood the highest state of being."
Look, just because the fledgling liberal radio network is losing a couple of its big suits, that doesn't mean everything isn't going just great otherwise. A couple of bumps in the road, sure. Happens all the time. But all is well... all is well... all is well.
Sir Elton John thinks the American Idol voting process is "incredibly racist" because Jennifer Hudson got voted off last week.
"The three people I was really impressed with, and they just happened to be black, young female singers, and they all seem to be landing in the bottom three," John said at a news conference on Tuesday. "The fact that they're constantly in the bottom three—and I don't want to set myself up here—but I find it incredibly racist."
He's set himself up here.
The other two singers he refers to, Fantasia Barrino and La Toya London, are not, in fact, "constantly in the bottom three." Barrino and London are favored to win the thing (I'd put my money on La Toya). In reality, John Stevens, America's young crooning sensation, has been whistling past the graveyard for the last four weeks. The shock was that Stevens wasn't in the bottom last week. No doubt the producers of the show got together after the Hudson debacle and said, "OK, this Stevens kid has been on long enough. What can we do to make sure this thing is nipped in the bud?" Since Chuck D wasn't available, they went with the next best thing: Gloria Estefan and the Miami Sound Machine.
Anyway, Elton John is clearly no expert in voting behavior. Why did Hudson get booted from the show? For the perverse reason that most voters thought she was safe. Millions voted to shore up their favorite weak contestants, at the expense of the strong ones. That's how Ruben Studdard wound up in the bottom two one week last season. And we all know how that worked out.
"We do hope that we shall not be obliged or forced one day to go back to those days when we ... put explosive belts around our beds and around our women so that we will not be searched and not be harassed in our bedrooms and in our homes, as it is taking place now ..."
Now, is Col. Muammar (G)(K)Qaddafi referring to:
B) Gay rights
D) John Ashcroft in general
(Hat tip: Joe Carter at Evangelical Outpost)
"...the monkeys are highly unpopular with the unions, and have been the target of a small but highly vocal protest group centered in Minnesota."
While you're there, be sure to try the Virtual Scotch.
Yesterday there was a lot of talk on the radio about the idea of the Arizona Cardinals naming their new stadium under construction after Pat Tillman. (Instead, they're planning on pinning his name on the plaza out front.)
During the discussion, Hugh Hewitt picked up on some Phoenicians' references to Arizona's Governor Napolitano changing the name of one of the three prominent mountain peaks within the Phoenix metro area. Hugh heard some Phoenix callers point to the change as a bad move, but he repeatedly supported the action, saying it was a fine and admirable things to do. Well, that's the sort of position I might expect an out-of-towner to take. But had one been here during the machinations of the change, a different opinion may have been reached.
In the preceding paragraph, I worded the line about Napolitano changing the name very carefully. Arizona's Governor doesn't have the authority to do such things. But that's what she did. Such changes are only to be made by
Now, all of the usual disclaimers about my appreciation for the service of Pfc. Lori Piestewa notwithstanding, here are a few newspaper excerpts from the mishandling of the issue
(from an archived copy of what Marianne Jennings wrote in our local paper):the Board's name change ran roughshod over law and policies. Both the U.S. Board of Geographic Names and state boards require that changes in honor of a person be proposed AFTER the person has been deceased for 5 years. To stop heat-of-emotion naming, these boards have, for 100 years, adhered to the five-year wait. Even Barry Goldwater's ghost had to sit it out until we named just about everything after him. ...When the chairman of the state board, Tim Norton, reappointed in January by Gov. Napolitano for another five-year term, pointed out the five-year rule to his demanding governor, she suggested[*] that he resign. He didn't, but he also didn't go to the meeting. Richard Pinkerton, a member of the board for 19 years resigned [in protest] prior to the meeting. A portion of his letter read, "[t]here have been implied threats from within the board's membership that I should sacrifice and prostitute my integrity in the interest of satisfying a particular political leaning."
With Pinkerton out, and the chairman not in attendance, there remained only the sycophants of state government, trembling in their French Shriners. One public member of the Board, and the representative from the Arizona Historical Society, my friend, Lloyd Clark, weathered the meeting and rose to defend the rule of law. A near-octogenarian, this life-long fan of Casa Blanca knows more about Arizona names, sites and history than the Gila monsters. He has a love of everything Arizona from Penny's Pies at the Rock Springs Café to the true origins of the name of Bumble Bee, Arizona.
Lloyd asked the same questions he would ask at any hearing. To the mayor of Phoenix, "Did the city council approve this?" Nope. To a member of the county board of supervisors, "Did the board endorse this?" Nope. To the head of the Arizona Department of Transportation, "Did your board approve this?" Nope, but they'll ratify it at the next meeting. The usual suspects were rounded up, but had nothing to offer. They came without endorsements.
*The strongarm tactics used by the Governor and her staff went far beyond "suggestions." Their actions went so far over the line as to inspire legislation "to give members of boards and commissions the same protections they have against unfair outside pressure." From the Arizona Daily Sun:I don't really have the time to go into the political motives behind why Napolitano had political motivations for the name change, but I think they were there. I don't think it was just about honoring someone. Nor do I have the time do go into measuring Piestewa's status as "hero" against that of Tillman, and the issue of her, as a single-mother of two, leaving her kids to go to war. Maybe I'll post an update.Sen. Dean Martin, R-Phoenix, is introducing legislation today to make it a crime for anyone to improperly seek to influence the vote of any board member by contacting that person's regular employer. Violators would be guilty of a misdemeanor, facing six months in jail and a $2,500 fine.Martin admits his legislation is in direct response to the actions of Mario Diaz, a top aide to Gov. Janet Napolitano.
Diaz, seeking to get the state Board on Geographic and Historic Names to approve renaming Squaw Peak, was pressuring board Chairman Tim Norton to put the measure on the board's agenda or resign from the unpaid position if he would not.
But Diaz did more than that. Diaz also called Sil Ontiveros, an assistant Phoenix police chief to whom Norton reports in his regular paying day job.
"Mario wanted us to encourage Tim to change his position," confirmed Andy Anderson, who heads the police department's public information unit. Anderson said the department refused to get involved.
Martin said he would have thought it unnecessary to tell people not to try to pressure board members by going to their employer.
"But now we have to make it perfectly obvious this is improper behavior," he said.
"Why would anybody give up their time to serve on mostly unpaid boards and commissions when you could possibly have your own employment, your livelihood threatened?" he asked. "Our whole system starts breaking if this type of activity persists."
Martin's legislation is patterned after existing law which makes it a crime to pressure legislators to vote a certain way by contacting their private employers. That law was enacted in 1974 after lawmakers, most of whom hold outside jobs, complained about the practice. ...
Because any law would be prospective only Diaz could not be prosecuted for his actions last month.
Mayes said Napolitano has acknowledged that what Diaz did was "a mistake" and that the governor "has accepted responsibility for it." But the governor has refused to say how she intended to discipline him, if at all.
Pat Toomey, that is. The Pennsylvania primary is happening as I type this. Toomey, a conservative congressman, is running neck and neck with the contemptible, Scottish-precedent citing Senator Arlen Specter. Living in California, I knew the election was coming, but I didn't realize until just a few minutes ago that it's today. A victory for Toomey would be a victory for limited-government, which (sadly) may be one reason why the White House decided to back Specter. Hope that doesn't come back to haunt the President in November.
"If this 15-year-old kid in Prosser is perceived as a threat to the president, then we are living in '1984'." Perhaps. I'll leave it to you, the reader, to decide.
On the bright side, there may be a new job opening for Professor Dunn once her legal troubles are resolved.
Assuming, of course, Air America is still solvent by then...
(Shamelessly stolen from an e-mail from P. Michaels)
I wish I could think of a better headline for this story, but I can't. It's just too strange. (Via Rambling's Journal.)
The lookout has gone high-tech. Partyers in N.D. Staving Off Raids: "Police say they believe some party houses are using scanners to monitor radio traffic and get advance warning about impending raids." Sounds like something Lileks would have done back in the day.
At long last, Claremont Professor Charged With Falsely Reporting a Hate Crime: "False accusations that imply hate crimes prey on the legitimate concerns of the public who truly abhor violence based on race, ethnicity or sexual orientation. And those who make false claims should realize there is a penalty for doing so."
I only wish they'd charged her with an actual hate crime. She did (allegedly!) spraypaint the car with racial slurs, after all. What good are hate-crime laws if they aren't enforced, even if she did commit it against herself? You say it would make a mockery of hate-crime laws? Hadn't thought of that...
(See also the Associated Press and the Los Angeles Times.)
The lesson: Next time, make sure there are no witnesses, Professor Dunn.
Police Stop Drunk Bulldozer Joyrider: "German police stopped a 17-tonbulldozer weaving through Berlin's streets at 3 a.m. by jumping onto the excavator, smashing the window and spraying mace into the driver's face."
The lesson: Never trust a German to operate heavy machinery.
Teens Steal Skull, Use as Puppet: "Two Scottish teenage boys . . . were put on probation for three and two years respectively under the ancient crime of 'violation of sepulchre' -- the first such trial for over a century, newspapers said on Saturday."
The lesson: Booze and grave-robbing don't mix.
Something bothers me about this. I'm gonna have to dig a little to figure out what it is exactly, because I'm sure it's about seven lost arguments deep.
Well, I've been meaning to say something about our recent site updates, but haven't had a chance to go into detail. The short version is, we've made changes to the right side of the page to (hopefully) improve "blog ergonomics" and to reflect our new membership in the Alliance of Free Blogs.
Next project: Update our "Manus Manum Lavat" section to reflect more of the blogs who have linked to us (apart from BFL and AFB blogs, which are already listed). If you've linked and would like a reciprocal link, please feel free to send us an e-mail letting us know, and we'll make sure you're on the list.
Well, thanks to PowerLine I now know what Bob Dylan Song I am:
| Which Bob Dylan song are you? Tangled Up In Blue
|
| Click Here to Take This Quiz Brought to you by YouThink.com quizzes and personality tests. |
Yeah, this one's pretty dead on. They didn't tell me what the other song options were, but this one's good. One of my favorites, too, along with "Stuck Outside of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again".
And catching up with Brad (and Mitch), I'm "New York City", which doesn't seem particularly right, but there weren't a lot of good choices. Frankly, my favorite among the cities listed was San Francisco. I love finding any excuse to go there, particularly when I'm going on someone else's dime. Great food, great music, great drink. Screwy politics, but in the places where I hang out, they're not as "in your face" as you'd think. As I've said many times before, if I didn't have kids there's no city where I'd rather spend a year or two.
While visiting a new Sprouts Farmers Market in my neighborhood, I happened upon a major discovery. The folks who make Hansen's All Natural Sodas have switched their line of Diet sodas over to my favorite new sweetener, Splenda. Woot! The cans even spell out clearly that they're "aspartame free" in addition to having no carbs and no caffeine.
So far I've had the Tangerine Lime and the Black Cherry. How do these compare with my beloved Diet Rite? Well, it's not even close. The Hansen's Tangerine blows away the Diet Rite Tangerine. And though they're not exactly matched head to head, the Hansen's Black Cherry does a much better job filling the niche that the Diet Rite Raspberry tried to fill in my life. (Yes, Diet Rite's website shows that they offer a true Black Cherry, but I've never seen it available in any store.)
It appears that Hansen's does not offer a cola, and I will be happy to get by with my old fried Diet Rite, for whom I will probably always have a soft spot. It's like a friend who helped me through rehab as I broke my sugar addiction. But as I put together my carb-smart, limited-sugar life, I'll be branching out and trying the other Hansen's flavors. Of course, I'll be reporting reviews and developments here.
UPDATE: Now if I could just convince the folks at Blue Sky to stretch their definition of "All-Natural," we might be able to see the delightful Cherry Vanilla Creme soda with Splenda. [insert Homer Simpson coveting noises here]
Far be it from me to ever be considered any kind of baseball blogger*, but I've gotta ask: isn't it a bit early for 2004 All-Star voting? I finally watched my first game of the season on Thursday night, and caught another last night. (Unrelated observation: the Padres' road uniforms feature a color disturbingly close to "flesh tone," especially when they wear the light pants with the dark blue tops. It's just weird. And David Wells does not look good in the all flesh tone get up.)
I have no idea if the paper ballots are available in the actual stands, but the team websites have already had the nominees listed for some time, and you can already cast votes. Is this a new development? Has it ever started this early before? Is Howard Dean still on the AL ballot? Can I write in Hugh Hewitt? Is George Soros behind this? Will Franken still even be playing come the mid-season break?
*see also the Baseball category in Robert Tagorda's blogroll.
Okay, I know we all want to cut folks slack when we can, but just because John Kerry went to Vietnam and won medals doesn't necessarily mean his service was honorable. He claims atrocities were committed. Free fire zones, burning villages, etc. He said he participated in some of these activities. That's not honorable, it's horrible. He likes to blame Nixon and "the government", but he held the gun in his hand. He pulled the trigger. He followed the immoral order. He could have said no, but he didn't. John Kerry, by his own account, participated in an immoral war and performed unthinkable and atrocious things. That doesn't sound like "honorable service" to me. It sounds like cowardice.
It's a shame only four of us could make it to the summit. You'll have to keep imagining what Dr. Monkeystein looks like.
So is allowing the Muslim call to prayer to be broadcast over the mosque's loudspeakers in a heavily Catholic and Polish community the right thing to do? The First Amendment and the founders' intent would suggest that to suppress it would be to stop the exercise of religion. But there's that old line about the right to swing your fist ends where it meets my nose--what about when your atonal (to Western ears) prayer meets my ears? Or is it like church bells?
Discuss.
This is the sort of the thing the Internet was invented for.
Really.
Stop looking at me like that.
So says Dan Henninger in The Wall Street Journal today. "The truly brazen authors of NBC's petition to the FCC say, 'Live and uncensored programming is the hallmark of a free society.' Oh please. It is the hallmark of NBC's need to produce quarter-over-quarter growth in the business it is in." Read the whole thing, as the sages say.
Unmentioned in the column, but equally relevant to the discussion, is the mainstreaming of pornography, about which I'll have more to say soon. Henninger believes that the political rumblings against broadcast indecency won't amount to much:
As to the "decency" police, the very notion is quaint. Decency died years ago and isn't coming back. The standards of the American people have been so beaten down that no public groundswell is likely unless something is really over the top. The argument now is over a social consensus on acceptable in-decency. Not being able to say "f------ brilliant" in front of 30 million people is a small price to pay to keep the gravy trains running.
One wonders what he means by "over-the-top." I'm not sure he's correct. I think a backlash is coming. The questions are when, how, and whether the entire First Amendment will be swept away in the bargain.
Joe Carter at Evangelical Outpost takes a look at some of the presuppositions behind positions for and against reinstating a draft. I think that the model of foster parenting would fit his analogy better than adoptive parenting, since it more regularly carries payments from the state and limited time commitments upon which many participants base decisions of service.
As a former Marine, it's tugged a bit at my heartstrings to hear of my "brother" Marines who've fallen in service over in Afghanistan and Iraq. But it's been esoteric. There hasn't really been a face on it. Just a story here and there. AZ's first casualty was a Marine in his 30's who was called "grandpa" by his comrades. Much as I can imagine being in a similar position, today puts a more familiar face on such a loss.
I watched Pat Tillman play linebacker at my alma mater Arizona State. He was the heart of the defense. I was later pleased to see him get picked up as a hometown favorite safety and special teams player for the hapless Arizona Cardinals. He always played well beyond his size. Well beyond. He was a guy I repected for his intensity balanced with serious focus.
I was further impressed when he walked away from his seven-figure pro-football contract to join the Army Rangers with his brother in the wake of September 11th. I think his only communication with the press was an indirect announcement that there would be no interviews, no cooperation with journalists covering his story whatsoever. He had not been married long before he shipped out. I'd heard that he was serving with a Special Ops team somewhere in Afghanistan. Today the news broke that he was killed in action.
UPDATE(S): Hugh Hewitt cites appropriate quotations, and points out this excellent summary of Tillman. Big Trunk at Power Line has been following the Tillman story for some time. Luke Duke posts the Ranger Creed. Can't resist adding a link to what Wretchard at Belmont Club penned this day.
Phoenix and its numerous burbs have a broad mixed population of folks from just about everywhere, making it an oft-used test market for new products. So I'd heard the buzz that we were going to be first to experience low-carb Doritos and Tostitos (yep, you read that right). I looked in the aisles of the grocery stores week after week. Nothin'. But I finally found the Doritos. They're at Subway, in the little bags that get added to the combo meals. They're called Doritos Edge. Of course I just had to try them.
First bite – not bad. Odd that it seems to be a little light on the orange spicy nacho powder coating. I mean, spices don't add calories in themselves. Why skimp on the flavor? I continued with my low-carb turkey wrap (minus the bacon) and had another chip a few minutes later. Tastes pretty much like a Dorito... a little different, but not terribly so.
But then I decided to have a few more chips. What I noticed was that after putting about the third chip in my mouth concurrently (before the first two were swallowed), the distinctly different texture became notable. Not really unpleasant (though it may be to some) but less than... well, pleasing. It's weird. So it seems that these low-carb Doritos fill the niche of adding a crunchy diversion between bites of a meal, but they do not seem to be well suited to satisfying the pure (however controlled) snacking urge.
I've lost the nutrition info that I tore off the package for this post. But the protein is high: 6 net carbohydrates (with 3 grams of fiber), alongside 10 grams of protein per serving. Can't remember of the bag was considered 1 or 2 servings. But, as you know, I'm a Zone Diet devote, so I'm concerned more about the balance than anything else. What surprised me was that I found the fat total to be low. I can't find the number for that online, but I remember thinking that I'd have to add a little dip, or have a few nuts too, if I were to snack on them.
As I write, I'm drinking a Boylan's Diet Birch Beer (powered by Splenda). It's one of the treasures I brought back from the MonkeySummit. I was very pleased to find a handful of fine bottled sodee-pops sweetened with my beloved Splenda. I have been proselytizing it, as it is in my interest that it gain marketshare and thereby remain available to me. But now there comes big, big news. The new "mid-calorie" Coke (C2) is going to be sweetened by a combo of High Fructose Corn Syrup and Splenda. And that's not all – the Frito-Lay folks who brought us Doritos Edge, are also heading onto this new front in the cola wars with their Splenda-mix mid-calorie Pepsi Edge. Woot!
Now, I'm not particularly excited about the products themselves. I don't want HFCS in my beverages, any more than I want aspartame or saccharine. But the scale of the mass production that Coke & Pepsi are likely to employ gives me hope that Splenda has a future spreading much further out toward the horizon. Must. Be able. To get. My Diet Rite.
As much as I'd love Infinite Monkeys to become your regular source for comprehensive Splenda beverage reviews, I'll have to defer to the folks at BevNet. I didn't like the Jones Soda Sugar-Free Cream Soda as much as they did, but they allow for user ratings as well. I should note that I'm awfully excited about the idea of Jones Soda Co. coming out with Splenda-based products. I've liked the Black Cherry so far. I should also note that you can direct-order cases from Jones, which ought to be more affordable than shipping from Galco's Soda Pop Stop. Of course, Galco's is cool beyond description and is certainly worth frequent visits when you're in the region. Just don't expect it to be as slick as the site.
Well, more like radio-sign (but no, I don't mean they've lined up the anxiously awaited webcast). The Northern Alliance Radio Network folks have lined up an interview with a temp by the name of Mike; just a regular joe they didn't like.
Somebody alert Croooow Blog.
Who knew?
I'm glad I work in a private school. (/Jackie Mason)
UPDATE: It appears another calendar event has nearly escaped me.
...never too busy for a quiz. (I blame King at SCSU.) It's not the best quiz ever but it's brief. You may as well...
I certainly don't think all the Monkeys are going to come out with the same results on this one.
The WebMD headline almost says it all: The Positive Side of Being a Pessimist. "Researchers found that a healthy dose of pessimism may come in handy in many real-life situations where optimists may be overly hopeful." Got that? I say the glass is half empty and if you don't like it, you can go straight to the place where Jesus doesn't live.
I was just telling the other Monkeys how much I miss TiVo when I travel. I wind up surfing the channels and wondering how I could possibly stop on a channel when BOTH Bill Maher and Jay Leno are on the screen at the same time. Then it hit me:
Apple and TiVo need to extend the relationship between iPod, iTunes, and TiVo beyond the current light-weight fluff. They need to develop an encrypted video codec (maybe a standard already exists?) that allows TiVo Series 2 owners with the Home Media Option (yes, I know somebody's got to make money for it to be worth doing) to sync a handful of preferred shows into their iPod/iTunes libraries to watch on their laptops while on the road for work, vacation, etc. You will only be able to watch the show on your Mac, and won't be able to edit, burn, or otherwise manipulate the video for non-TiVo purposes, thus avoiding the inevitable objections from the TV networks.
That said, why in the world hasn't Apple bought TiVo yet? It's a completely logical extension to its digital hub philosophy. And why won't Steve Jobs return my calls? I promised I'd stop hanging out in his alley and going through his trash.
I have made no such promise to Glenn Reynolds.
The WebMD headline is "Food: Cocaine for the Obese". Among the "enablers" cited in the story: "constant exposure to...advertising, candy machines, food channels, and food displays in stores." I suspect there is a great deal of truth to the study in question, yet I have a hard time resisting the urge to dismiss it, knowing that it will probably be Plaintiff's Exhibit A in the coming class-action lawsuit against Big Food.
Oh, dear. Looks like the Elder over at Fraters Libertas intends to follow Monkeystein's footsteps. Good luck, Elder. I hope you find what you're looking for.
One of the things I appreciate about William F. Buckley is that while he is brilliant and insightful, he doesn't imagine that he's got easy answers to problems that have plagued the Promised Land for millennia. Yesterday's column is no exception.
Brad used to drink coffee, but no longer. The change has made him soft. When he posted earlier, trying to come up with a worthwhile label for the Columbine psychos, he just wasn't trying hard enough.
Had the blessed drug caffeine been in his system, he would have known that the correct label for these worthless twits is, in fact, "The Little Assfucks." I would like to see the old media step up to the plate and start using this unbiased term, but it starts with those of us in the blogosphere, the New Media. Let's get the word out!
Okay, read this story and tell me it doesn't look like something The Onion would write.
Not only are the events themselves outrageous, but the names are clearly made up. I mean, what kind of name is Tillie Tooter?
Air America is going off the air again in the Second City, according to the Chicago Tribune. Franken, Garafalo, et. al., remain off the air in Los Angeles. (But, hey, there's always satellite!) Despite some legal wrangling last week, the network couldn't pay it's bills to Multicultural Radio, owners of the L.A. and Chicago affiliates.
Air America execs aren't saying much about this, and I find no rationalization yet from Sam Seder, who is busy denying the charge that the Majority Report disparages religion. (Sam, I heard the Bill Maher interview. You set the tone early. Or was that just schtick?)
(Hat tip: Philip Michaels, dammit.)
Update: Our main man Mitch Berg has an enlightening discourse on why FrankenNet is doomed. Make sure to read the comments, too.
Mitch Berg offers this reflection on the five years since Columbine:
The real lesson today? It comes from Israel. The intifada has destroyed life on a scale [...] and [...]* could not have imagined. Coincidentally (?), since terror became a fact of life in Israel thirty years ago, Israeli teachers have carried handguns in class - and are required to carry them on field trips. The intifada has struck no schools.*As long as I'm on the topic, I should note something that's long bothered me: the Columbine guys' names being repeated and repeated and repeated. Given that they were aiming for infamy on a grand scale, it perturbs me that the ampersand between their last names is today like the ever present initial in the name of an historically noteworthy assassin.
Once I mentioned this to Michael Medved (you just knew I'd find a way to work radio into this, didn't you?), he agreed and offered the idiom, May their names be blotted out. Of course, by the next day, he had gone right back to the seemingly unavoidable practice of calling them by their names. And no, I wouldn't encourage anyone to refer to them as they who must not be named. I don't want to give their memory the honor of a title. I just prefer to find a way to construct my words on the topic in such a way as to avoid empowering their notoriety.
I don't think that there's anything I can really do about it in the long run. Perhaps even this very exercise is self-defeating. But staying cognizant of this helps me feel a little better than doing nothing.
Where did the time go? Dave Cullen, whose controversial reportage nevertheless remains the most comprehensive, explains what Harris and Klebold were thinking that day. They were ambitious mass murderers. Here's what I wrote for Investor's Business Daily shortly after the smoke cleared: "Fact is, one law or 1,000 laws—especially those drawn in haste—cannot fix fatal character flaws. Lawmakers may ban guns or restrict violent video games. They may even outlaw trench coats. Yet none of those measures will matter until Americans stand strongly again for the idea of liberty rooted in moral principle, not moral relativism. Only this kind of 'prevention' will ever work."
Remember when Clinton used the "sooner rather than later" line to describe when he would publicly come clean with the details of his actions? Like so many talking-points phrases, that line enjoyed a notable bump in conspicuous usage for some time. To this day, I like to feature it in my rhetorical inventory. Similarly, I still over use "gravitas" from the Cheney as veep nominee days, play with my pronunciation of "harass" to harken back to the panoply of literation-conscious news dweebs during the Anita Hill silliness, and take great pains occassionally to call for someone to make clear what the definition... Of. Is. Is.
Now there's a new line I'd like to use mockingly. But the media isn't doing its part yet. We ought to be hearing "literally, formally" ... well, practically over and over. You know the line. John Kerry used it to describe how he planned to apologize to, er... "rejoin the community of nations," in the U.N. should he be elected.
(Note to the folks at MadTV: Remember that old recurring "literally, literally" sketch? Dust it off and throw this Kerry angle into it. It would give you another excuse to have Nicole Sullivan back for another reprise, which wouldn't be a bad thing at all.)
Today on the radio Frank Gaffney, President of the Center for Security Policy, pointed out that Kerry must have really meant figuratively, as there has been no real formal withdrawal from anything to which Kerry could literally rejoin us at the U.N. While that sort of pedantic exactitude is the sort of thing into which I sometimes delight, my spin on it seems just a little bit more down to earth. I think what Kerry's really trying to say is that if he were prez, he'd have the U.S. "literally, formally [bend over and grab its ankles before] the community of nations."
An important legal story from the BBC: "It is the right of every Englishman at a football match to fall asleep if they (sic) want to." Hear, hear! (Via No Left Turns.)
Do you suppose Weird Al's parents were offed by Michael Jackson because they knew too much?
We've all been wondering what's going on with Dr. Monkeystein. I'd dismissed rumors that he was holed up, watching re-runs of Crank Yankers. But now I'm not so sure.
Sunday was quite a day for the Arizona Monkeys. After getting to sleep around 2:00am, we were awakened at 8:00am by a requested call from the front desk. We packed up and checked out of our swanky digs (I will let Brad give you the play-by-play on our experience with "customer service excellence") and set out to find a Starbucks with a T-Mobile Hotspot in the truly hideous City of Commerce. Fortunately, we'd run across one in neighboring Pico Rivera when searching for a source of ZonePerfect bars for Brad the previous day, so we headed back there.
Sidebar: I used to feel a little uncomfortable asking for a "grande breve no-foam latte", but no more. My fellow Monkey's standard choice is a "decaf grande two-percent sugar-free-vanilla no-foam latte". Then he adds Splenda, of course. I'm not making fun (okay, maybe a little), just pointing out that at this point I feel like I'm ordering "coffee, black".
Over expensive McSpresso drinks, we went to MapQuest to find directions to our day's destinations. On Friday evening, Brad had made the exceptional suggestion of visiting Rev. Mark D. Roberts's fine church, Irvine Presbyterian. It was quite a drive, but we made it in time for a couple of songs and Mark's sermon. We were glad to have made the trek - the people were friendly and noticed we were visiting. They made the effort to come over, shake our hands, and welcome us without being overbearing.
Afterwards, we waited a few minutes for people to file out, and then spoke briefly with Mark. Lots of fun. We chit-chatted a little bit about the differences between our Presbyterian denominations (Mark's PCUSA, I'm PCA, and Brad's church is closer to Reformed Baptist) and the previous night's MonkeySummit. Then Mark signed my copy of "Dare to Be True" and we headed to the van. Thanks again, Mark!
It was lunchtime, and we went across the street to another wireless-enabled Starbucks to change out of our "church clothes" and get more directions. We decided to have lunch at Wahoo's Fish Tacos again (there was one a few miles away) and then head up to the West Covina IKEA store. Brad had never been to an IKEA, and somehow managed to leave without spending a penny. I, on the other hand, filled the space remaining in the van (I had already bought a slew of stuff at the Costa Mesa store on Friday) with more bookshelves and storage units for my office. Around 3:30pm, we finally were on our way home.
After a pit stop or two, we landed in Blythe around 6:30pm. Tempted by several of the Lovekin Exit fast food establishments, we decided to go to three, rather than pick one. We started at Popeye's Chicken (which I had never had before). I ordered two spicy chicken breasts, and Brad got a small side of red beans and rice. He wanted a $6 low-carb burger from Carl's Junior, so we headed there next. Unfortunately, the drive-thru was broken and they refused to take our order at the window itself. So we passed on Carl's and moved on to Del Taco, where Brad ordered a Macho Combo Burrito and we shared a gigantic order of crinkle fries. I also ordered a beverage, while Brad drank a warm bottle of Jones Sugar-Free Black Cherry soda. We determined that the reason he was happy to drink it warm is because he is "a classicist." Only explanation.
That was followed by a few more hours or driving, pit stops, and iPod music. I dropped Brad off at home a few minutes after 10:00pm and headed North to my own soft bed. A good ending to a delightful weekend. I'm already psyched up for another road trip!
Mitch Berg's "Shot In the Dark" has moved from Blogger to Moveable Type. Congratulations, Mitch! Welcome to the dark side. Bwahahahaha....
...he would definitely link to this post, and then he would say something funny and in incredibly bad taste:
McDonalds CEO Dies Suddenly of Heart Attack
Too bad John Ashcroft had him abducted. Now we'll have to make up our own punchlines.
The first annual (thankfully—I couldn't afford it if we got together more than once a year) Infinite Monkeys Summit concluded at 1:10 a.m. Sunday morning, and I would judge it a mixed success. It would have been an unmitigated triumph, but Monkeystein couldn't make it, which was a huge letdown. My agents tell me that the Doctor was last reported seen leaving the Gethsemane Abbey in Trappist, Kentucky. (Prayer and reflection? No, I think he went there for the beer.) And because my wife and I had another dinner engagement, we missed the knife fight at Ciudad. Robb emerged with only minor scratches, but I hear the other guy got a nasty laceration under his left eye. I did return in time for fire and Grand Marnier, however.
Here's a quick breakdown of the day's events:
What was discussed? I couldn't tell you. But I had so much fun, I didn't learn this bit of good news until late afternoon Sunday. I hope the other Monkeys all made it home safe and sound.
William F. Buckley on the November "choice":
Another good quote from the same column:
The cow will jump over the moon before President Bush volunteers an answer to how it is we were deceived about the presence of weapons of mass destruction; or, for that matter, how it is that we misreckoned the fractious behavior of the resistance. Mr. Bush's only recent approach to the problem of Muslim antagonism has been to cede some of the West Bank settlements to Israel.
Robb wrote about all the highlights. I guess that leaves me the details and the ephemera. Dinner worked out great, once I finally got it, that is. Our choice of fish taco was officially endorsed by Tony Hawk. Take that Zagat's.
Odd aspect of the moment: the WiFi group next to us have switched topics from Astronomy class to high bred horse show performance moves. They're playing QuickTime clips of different horses and riders. The quest is on to find video of a "reining horse sliding stop." From the description I've overheard, it's something like when a hockey player zips right up to the boards and turns his body and skates sideways for, well... a quick sliding stop.
Some notes on dinner conversation: We both enjoyed the Northern Alliance Radio Network filling in for Hugh Hewiit's national radio show (spelling that out for Montykins).The horse people have just accused me of "butt dancing" to The Specials' "Ghost Town."Also agreed on:
The show was tight – almost too tight. There was so much scheduled and so much going on that it was hard for us listening to find a spot that seemed good to call in. All bases were being covered as quickly as they could be conceived of.
Robb notes that "the music alternated between the ridiculous and the sublime," (and sometimes both at the same time). Example: Right now, some contemporary (alt-)country artist is performing a sparse, twangy arrangement of The Smiths' "What Difference Does It Make?" It's freaky. A little research and the wonders of iTunes Music Store reveal that the artist is Bobby Bare Jr., and the song appears on his "Young Criminals' Starvation League" album, which includes another song called, "Flat Chested Girl from Maynardville." Robb purchases the Smiths' song, preferring to leave the lyrics to the latter song to his imagination.
Back to dinner notes on the NARN:
Robb has a problem with my formatting. I have a problem with how he has his blogging app configured. An uncomfortable silence settles over Starbucks. Then the astronomy/horse lady asks me why I'm not dancing to some post Motown happy diddy. We agree that she's loopy. We are once again happy, united Monkeys. Now Robb is talking to the horse people about our backgrounds, lives, travel, business. He's trying to get out of the conversation. It's funny. Woop, he just made the mistake of mentioning where he ate in this neighborhood last night. Now they're on Jeopardy! and the sort of fish you'd find in Arizona lakes. Sigh. Now it's what they ate last night. Sheesh. Turns out she's a vegetarian. In California? Who'd have guessed? (I've also noted an abundance of folks in turbans, fake boobs [big surprise], and hard-to-mistake lesbian couples.)The guys really did a bang up job. No, not in the sense that Hugh has described. They were seamlessly professional. So seamless in fact that they packed about four days' worth of material into two days' worth of air time.The NARN should definitely be given serious consideration for the slot next time Hugh needs a sub. It was better radio than, well... a lot we've heard.
Speaking of being heard – we both took some delight in the fact that a handful of obscure hoo-has from the frozen north have, in the span of a month or two, spread their collective wisdom to more radio listeners than the much vaunted Air America operation. I feel a little bad calling the big brains from Power Line and SCSU "hoo-has" but, I mean, who saw it coming from these other guys?
We've shut down Starbucks. Time to save, post, and git.
It's a shame Monkeystein can't be here.
This weekend is the first (hopefully) annual (hopefully) Official Infinite Monkeys Summit, to be held at David's old place in Los Angeles. I've already been in town since yesterday, having had business in the area and a need for much new IKEA office furniture. Brad flew in to LAX tonight, and I spent about an hour on the I-405 parking lot going to get him.
Upon arrival, Brad announced that he was extremely hungry, so we headed down to Manhattan Beach for some "authentic" Los Angeles beach food. After spending another hour driving up and down Highland Avenue and getting kicked out of parking spaces by expatriate New Yorkers, we finally found a place to park and forage for dinner.
Rather than fork out $30+ apiece for dinner at some snooty restaurant that we'd have to wait an hour to get into, we instead decided to eat at Wahoo's Fish Tacos, a relatively small chain based in Orange County. Great choice. For $15 I had a huge carnitas burrito smothered in green sauce, a blackened fish enchilada, and not one but TWO mugs of microbrew "Ono Ale", which wasn't half bad. Brad enjoyed a gigantic blackened fish salad with excellent fresh and chunky guacamole, as well as a blackened fish taco and a heaping pile of rice and beans. his meal was less than $10. He left his Splenda in the car, so he just drank water instead of iced tea.
After dinner, we wandered up Manhattan Beach Boulevard to the Starbucks on the corner of Highland Avenue and sipped hot beverages while catching up on blogs and e-mail. (Brad just noted that he is "thrilled" to enjoy packet after packet of complementary Splenda with his Decaf Verona coffee). We were the third group in the shop to open a laptop and work on the Internet, and the first to have a stylish yet inimitably functional Apple PowerBook. So, in stark contrast to the worldwide marketshare, over 30% of T-Mobile Hotspot users on Friday night at this particular Manhattan Beach Starbucks are Mac users.
Tomorrow all of the Monkeys west of the Mississippi will get together for all manner of strange events, including something called "spinning fire", which sounds an awful lot like "chasing the dragon" to me. We'll see. By the end of the weekend, hopefully at least two of us will have attended services at Mark D. Roberts's church, hangover or not. With a little luck, there will also be an official First Monkey Summit theme song, as well. We'll keep you all posted throughout the weekend.
I'll let Brad proceed with Chapter Two...
First brain damage, now this. Next they'll be telling us that drinking alcohol impairs one's ability to drive or operate heavy machinery! Stupid killjoys... (Hat tip: Fraters Libertas)
Dale Franks puts some Cartmanesque rhetorical wood to a Baby Boomer's lament for Bob Dylan. The Boomers may be getting old, but as far as I'm concerned, bashing them never will.
From yesterday, but I would be remiss if I didn't post it: Air America to Go Back on the Air... in Chicago, at any rate. Here's the crux:
New York state Supreme Court Judge Marylin G. Diamond found Thursday that Air America had fully paid for airtime in Chicago and ordered Multicultural to begin broadcasting Air America's programming again.Air America remains off the air in Los Angeles...
...Air America executives said they were withholding payments for the Los Angeles station because [Multicultural Radio Broadcasting] had been "double-dipping," or reselling airtime that the network had already bought and paid for, prior to the network's launch a little more than two weeks ago.
[Evan Cohen, Air America's chairman] said late Thursday that Air America is still considering its legal options regarding the Los Angeles station and would be "doing something within the next 48 hours."
Well, good for Air America...at least for the time being. I wonder where Air America will be broadcasting in L.A. and Chicago when those contracts finally expire? And, incidentally, how is the search for new affiliates going? The network premiered this week on Sirius satellite radio. Also, a couple of shows are being picked up in Chapel Hill, N.C. Once the juggernaut gets moving, it cannot be stopped!
Masochists can follow the trials and tribulations of Air America over at the Majority Report blog, where Sam Seder is just as annoying in print as he is on the air.
Gentlemen, please! Be careful what you...uh, play at!
"I don't know what this couple were playing at, but there must have been tremendous pressure...to make this happen."
(Parental Advisory Warning: Explicit Content. Not for the squeamish. I had to pry myself out of the fetal position and pull myself off the floor before I could muster the will to post this.)
(Hat tip: Go Fish.)
My wife and I watched "The Apprentice" from the beginning. Say what you will about Donald Trump—Lord knows I wouldn't want to work for him—the guy is a first-class shuck-and-jiver. James Brown summed up Trump's business saavy this way: "I can dig wheelin', I can dig dealin', but I don't dig no damn squealin'." So it was obvious to me two weeks ago that cigar man Bill Rancic would be the winner last night. First, he showed drive. The guy is an entrepreneur. So what if he doesn't have a Harvard MBA? Second, he picked good people, real hustlers. Third, he didn't pick Omarosa, who certainly doomed the other finalist, Kwame Jackson, and who is obviously evil.
Business Week Online has a pretty good analysis this morning of why Bill was The Donald's clear choice from the get-go.
Click a little to help Alphonso Monkey deal with TEMPTATION and the dilemma of post-Kantian ethics. (Okay, it's not really post-Kantian. I just heard Steven Hayward say that on the Northern Alliance Radio Network yesterday.)
[Hat tip: The Cheese Stands Alone {love the URL}, via E-Claire]
Regarding the calls for the "ree-cooos-al" of Jamie Gorelick, 911 Commission Chairman Thomas Kean, former Republican governor of New Jersey, said, "People ought to stay out of our business."
I actually heard the tape of Kean's comments on some right wing shock jock's show. I'm wondering if I'm the only one who noted the hint of Elmer Fudd in his timbre and diction. I know a lot of folks have been calling Kean an elitist, but I find it hard to hear snootiness in the tone of a guy who wants the rest of us to be vewy vewy qwi-yet...
I remember once when Lileks was on the radio he was asked to give some background on what blogs are. He began by detailing the early days. Back when they were still called weblogs and before people started taking advantage of these new-fangled hyperlinks, news and politics were fairly removed from these online diaries. He admitted that these blogs were typically very introspective and often less than interesting. As an example of a post representative of the times, Lileks offered:
Got up.I've always remembered that paradigm. I'm tempted every now and again to post something very much like it. My entry today is equally as engaging by modern affecting-the-news-cycle blog standards, and perhaps even more accurately described as navel-gazing. Only these days my navel ain't as deep.Ate ramen noodles.
Went back to bed.
Yep, I'm shamelessly congratulating myself with a "hey, lookit me!" post – I've lost 45 pounds. Last time I blogged weight loss it was at the 40 pound mark. I put a lot more Zone propaganda and observations in that post than I'll bother with here. I'm gearing up for the next goal: 50. Now that will be a post. (No, don't expect any Before & After photos. I wish I were optimistic enough to have snapped some reference pics when I started my regimen, but alas...)
Here is the Chicago Tribune's story about Air America's troubles in L.A. and Chicago. It doesn't add much of anything to Drudge's report from yesterday. The president of Multicultural Radio, owner of the L.A. and Chicago stations, says Air America owes him more than $1 million. Air America says Multicultural Radio acted "disgracefully" by pulling the plug so abruptly. As if defaulting on a seven-figure payment isn't disgraceful in its own right.
Today is "Buy A Gun Day". I join the hundred or so other bloggers participating in this stunt and encourage all of you to buy at least one gun today.* I'd like to buy a new shotgun myself, but, alas, our hefty refund is paying for a new couch and chair for our living room, which I suppose can be used for cover.
Thank you, mortgage interest deduction! And thank you, Bush tax cut!
*Laws in your state may vary.
As an added bonus, the guy who posted this corrected wire story was clearly drunk at the time: Heavy Social Drinkers Show Brain Damage: U.S. Study. I had something else to say about this piece, but I had to refill my glass and forgot...
Was that punchline too obvious? Must be the booze...
Funny, it just so happens that I'm in the market for a new rail gun and mechaskin robotic armor. Who knew they were just a click or two away?
(Hat tip: The Corner.)
Can we please have a hiatus from terms like "un-American", "anti-American", "treason", "traitor", "unpatriotic", as well as the positive(-ish) terms like "patriot", "patriotic", etc. Let's face it, Ann Coulter ruined the language for all of us. Most of these terms are thrown around so lightly as to be worse than meaningless - they mean the worst things they could possibly mean while at the same time applying to the most inclusive group possible. Equivocation abounds.
An example: Let's talk about the words "treason" and "traitor", since Ms. Coulter is so happy to fling them around willy-nilly. The American Heritage Dictionary, as quoted at Dictionary.com includes this phrase in its primary definition of treason, "...especially the betrayal of one's country by waging war against it or by consciously and purposely acting to aid its enemies." Pretty bad stuff. They hang folks for stuff like that. A traitor is someone you hang because he is a spy for the other side. Someone you hang because they gave away troop positions to the enemy. There's nothing worse than a traitor. [spits] Judas was a traitor. Benedict Arnold was a traitor.
But when you hear the term bandied about on the radio, they like to use this phrase as a definition for treason: "giving aid and comfort to the enemy". And then they use the loosest possible definition for the words "giving", "aid", "comfort", and "enemy", in such a way that anyone who publicly voices opposition to the war is a traitor. "They're going to play that on al-Jazeera tonight and the terrorists are going to be encouraged to keep fighting."
And by continuing to use these "loaded" words in such broad ways, we're unable to distinguish between the kind of traitors who we execute and the kind of "traitors" who just don't like what their government is doing. It's Newspeak, and it completely undermines meaningful discourse and, therefore, democracy.
So let's stop. FInd another word - something meaningful, useful, and less emotionally charged.
Uh, oh. I may have been a bit optimistic about Air America's prospects. Drudge is reporting that the fledgling liberal radio network is having cash flow problems after only two weeks on the air, and that Franken, et. al., have lost their L.A. and Chicago affiliates as a result. Naturally, the Air America people are a bit peeved. Be on the lookout for a Chicago Tribune story soon. I... uh, I'm sure everything will work out fine. As soon as the lawyers sort it out. Heh.
(Hat tip: Luke Duke.)
Update: Well, more of an afterthought, really. If Air America goes out of business before the end of the year, it will be the biggest flame-out since Vince McMahon went into the football racket a couple of years ago. But I will predict here and now that the network's demise will be seen as conclusive proof that there ain't no such thing as a "liberal media." Wasn't it Chuck D who said "don't believe the hype"?
Dateline: Phoenix, AZ
With some reluctance, Gov. Janet Napolitano signed a bill Tuesday that extends Arizona's last call for alcoholic beverages to 2 a.m. from 1 a.m. and closing times to 2:30 a.m. from 1:15 a.m. ... Stores also will be able to sell alcohol until 2 a.m.Perhaps now Arizonans will see more of the Coalition of the Swilling visiting.
From the same article:
...she signed the bill on the same day legislators moved closer to passing a bill that would allow people to carry guns into restaurants that serve alcohol.Then we might find Mitch Berg tagging along on Lileks' next visit to Scottsdale.
I actually think this bill isn't the tragic idea that many's knee-jerk reactions would leave them convinced of. If Mitch doesn't take the opportunity to explain why this is a fine idea, I'll try to tackle it soon. But you may have to remind me.
I've been reading and listening to Christopher Hitchens quite a bit lately. One of several lefties-turned-hawk since the WTC disaster, Hitchens has a knack for saying things without bothering to be concerned if it will hurt someone's feelings. A week or two ago, he was interviewed by Dennis Miller, and said several things that really made me think. The gist of three points:
First, we should stop calling this a "War on Terror" and call it a "War on Jihad". This was most profound, and his reasoning was clear: You should know who your enemies are. "Jihad" is such a meaningless term to most of us when we hear it used in the press, so we often forget it means "holy war". Any group who has declared Jihad on the United States has declared war. If any country actually came out and "declared war" on the United States, and followed that up with a clear aggressive action would be flattened by our military, and without hesitation. If Yasser Arafat actually used the phrase "The Palestinian Authority declares war on the United States of America", we would rightly march and/or fly right into Gaza and the West Bank (with Israel's permission, of course) and flatten every Palestinian Authority compound and capture or kill Arafat ourselves. So why don't we treat the term Jihad as the declaration of war that it is? Hard to say.
The term also makes it clear that we are at war with Islamo-fascism and all groups that embrace its tenets. After all, we're not REALLY in a war against "terror of all sorts". We could give a rat's arse what the IRA are up to these days. England does, somewhat, but the IRA has not declared the drunken Irish equivalent of Jihad against the U.S. I think in President Bush's news conference yesterday he ALMOST said this, but the administration's hesitation to identify our enemies clearly as Jihadists is quite frustrating. Honestly, I believe this is because the administration wants to be free to tyrannize other "enemies, foreign and domestic" as its whims allow without having to justify its actions. Anybody who is doing anything unsavory can be labeled "un-American" or "terrorist" depending on how the government wants to spin it.
But they SHOULD have to explain why they might want to, let's say, take action against North Korea, and they should not be permitted to just wrap it up in the same "War on Terror" rhetoric. Additionally, Congress should take its constitutional responsibility seriously and enumerate the nations and/or organizations we have declared war against. Al-Qaeda, certainly. Other nations and organizations who have declared Jihad against us, sure. Did Saddam Hussein declare Jihad against the U.S. BEFORE we threatened to invade them? I haven't found the quote yet. Everything I've seen so far suggests that all such declarations were made in response to our threats to invade, bomb, or otherwise show aggression toward Iraq directly. If you've got a good news link that suggests otherwise, please send it to the e-mail address in the top corner of our weblog.
Okay, I've gotten away from Hitchens's points. Where was I? Point Two: We should make it clear to the lands we invade that they have been conquered. It seems contrary to our insecurities about being perceived as an "Imperial power", but in truth, it's the fairest and most honest thing to do. We're (trying to) run the show in Iraq, but we're trying to make everyone believe that we just came in to surgically extract a horrible dictator and let Iraq be governed by the "will of the people". But we don't REALLY want that. Rather, we want Iraq to be a democratic republic, whether its people want it or not. If what they want right now is an Islamic Theocracy, that is not going to do. Let's be honest, and speak the truth about our intentions: We want to stabilize the region and plant democracy in more Islamic dictatorships. To do this, we are invading Iraq. Conquering Iraq. Ruling Iraq. Pacifying Iraq.
Most of these Middle-East nations did not get to go through the Reformation and the Enlightenment. As a result, they have no ingrained concept of individual rights, the separation of church and state, or any other Democratic ideal - even though 1000 years before it was Islam which introduced some of these concepts to Europe. It takes decades to ingrain these concepts, and you've got to start with the education of the children. The Islamo-Fascists know this. They grind subservience and Jihadism into their children from day one. The Communists knew this. We USED to know this, but somehow we imagine that Freedom is a mystical force that fights for itself in every man's psyche as soon as a horrible oppressive state power is removed.
Hitchens's third point, and one that caused me to reflect on my own perceptions of our actions, was that (per point one) we were at war (with al-Qaeda at least) LONG before September 11, 2001. We just failed to realize it. Jihad had been declared. Attacks had been made, including at least one (the first WTC bombing) on our soil. But we were oblivious to the fact we were at war. The September 11 pilots entered the country, trained, and eventually booked passage under their REAL NAMES. They were, in Hitchens's words, "laughing at us".
So let's stop screwing around with this "War on Terror" language and start telling the truth. We're at war with al-Qaeda and other nations and groups who have declared Jihad on the U.S. We have conquered Iraq and aren't leaving until it's pacified. Make Congress do its job in determining where we should fight, rather than leaving it to the Executive Branch, which should be ENFORCING foreign policy, not making it. And tell the truth, so the electorate can know what they're voting for in November.
Ed at the indispensible MonkeyWatch notes that Jane Goodall is abusing the human primate's power of speech.
OK, I'm a geek. I liked this Lord of the Rings parody site.
But, hey, I'm not really a geek because a) this site has been around for a long time and I just found it and, b) I never actually finished reading the LOTR books, although I did read the entire Harvard Lampoon Bored of the Rings. All 160 pages of it.
I love iTunes, but it DESPERATELY needs a means of sorting the library by more than one column.
In no particular order:
I was a huge Watergate geek in high school, and I've read most of Dean's stuff. I'm convinced he's a weasel, and I have little patience for conspiracy theories, but I have a feeling there would be a lot to mock in it. Would it be worth the effort, though? I'm supposed to get a review copy, so I guess we'll find out soon enough.
Everybody's talking about it, and it's apparently selling like gangbusters, but who's actually read it? I have a feeling Clarke's book is the political equivalent of A Brief History of Time. I'm suspicious of the hype on both sides, and I'm curious to compare and contrast Clarke's analysis with Angelo Codevilla's.
Everything I know about Shostakovich, I learned from Terry Teachout. Okay, that may be a slight exaggeration. It is impossible to hear Shostakovich's music and not consider the conditions under which it was written. That's a problem, and a debate with a very long and acrimonious history. But if I'm going to read this book, shouldn't I first read David Cairns's two-volume biography of Berlioz and Henry-Louis de la Grange's three volumes on Mahler that have been sitting neglected on my shelves for so long? Maybe so. Maybe so.
My friend Matt Robinson introduced me to Fischer's novels several years ago with The Thought Gang, a very funny book about an alcoholic philosopher who decides to take up a life of crime. I quickly devoured his other books, and with the exception of his first novel, Under the Frog, I've liked them all. I suspect I'll enjoy his latest book, just as soon as I get around to buying it. Also, it will fill my fiction quota for the year.
And that's just the recent stuff.
I'm in the book review business. Dozens of books cross my desk every week. I read a lot, and not just books—newspapers, magazines, blogs. Normally, I have one or two non-work-related books going at any given time. I wish I could read more.
Everybody likes to write about what they're reading. Several very fine weblogs are devoted to that project, and I enjoy looking at them as much as the next fellow. But with so much to read nowadays, one must learn to discriminate. Knowing what not to read is almost as important as knowing what you should read. Life is too short to waste one's time on dreck.
For example, as important as the Korean penensula is to the geopolitical interests of the United States, and as appealling as the title may be, I won't be reading Kim Jong Il's Our Socialism Centered on the Masses Shall Not Perish now or ever. I'm taking a pass on this one, too. And this one. And this one. And definitely this one. And everything published by Llewelyn. I could go on. Believe me.
And, thanks to Lisa Schmeiser, I can safely avoid these two new periodicals.
A friend passed along this link, accompanied by the message: "Click on one of the seven deadly sins and read anonymous confessions... Strangely intriguing. I may have something to contribute." Spend a few minutes reading through it, and you see what he means. I couldn't help but notice, however, a certain something lacking in most of these "confessions": contrition.
My own confession: I have lusted in my heart, but God has forgiven me. Also, I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die. And I'm real sorry about it. Mostly.
I saw the same thing on the Montykins blog.
Strict adherence to rules:
1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 23.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
My results: Mac OS X In A Nutshell: A Desktop Quick Reference by Jason McIntosh, Chuck Toporek & Chris Stone: "Your home folder's icon now appears in the Dock."
Nearest "real" book: Dare To Be True: Living in the Freedom of Complete Honesty by Mark D. Roberts: "With the apostle Paul my heart proclaims, 'Oh, what a wonderful God we have! How great are his riches and wisdom and knowledge! How impossible it is for us to understand his decisions and his methods!' (Romans 11:33)."
One day, I hope to concoct a fabulous traffic-generating scheme like this, which I found through About Last Night and Edward Champion's Return of the Reluctant.
Here's the deal:
1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 23.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
My results: The American Language: Supplement Two, by H.L. Mencken (which just arrived this morning!): "James was no phonologist, and it was apparent that his notion of speechways of his native land was picked up, not by direct observation, but by a study of the barbarisms credited to Americans in the English comic papers, e.g., popper, vaniller, vurry, Amurrica, tullegram, and even Philadulphia."
Check out the lead paragraph from this article about the Miss USA winner:
LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- A fast-food loving beauty queen from Missouri who has two master's degrees and once wrestled a greased pig in a mud pit was crowned Miss USA 2004.That's quite arousing, I must say. She's hot, she's hungry, she's smart, and she's - uh - let's call it, "willing to experiment."
Notice how InstaPundit has been so swayed by our blog that he has abandoned the “3-column” format and switched to the superb “2-columns with posts on the left” format that we embraced.
The tasteful use of Yellow in his color scheme cannot be far behind.
Just a reminder that the great Northern Alliance Radio Network will be filling in for Hugh Hewitt's radio program today and tomorrow. Everybody tune in and give 'em your support.
To find an affiliate and show times, go here.
We've been chattering offline about Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ today, and the email exchange between some of us Monkeys began to stray near blog-post territory. So I've rolled it all together and published it as the "extended entry" of this post.
In an effort to make clear who wrote what, I'm keeping with our painful but popular "worst color scheme in the history of the internet" theme. Look upon the text at your own peril.
Ben:
I saw "The Passion of the Christ" on Friday. I'm not quite sure what I think about it. I fear I may have been overexposed to the hype.
Brad:
My thoughts exactly, even after seeing it a second time.
I still laugh when I hear the box office totals. "More money than God," I think..
(Suddenly I'm writing like Jackie Mason, no? "Hey ant...")
Ben:
My mom wants to see it, so I may go again with her. It's an interesting movie, a thought-provoking movie, and a disturbing movie. But I don't think it's a great movie.
Robb:
Yeah, I think it's more "important" than "great". When I heard all of the folks calling in to Hewitt's show to talk about how profoundly they were affected by it, I did kind of ask myself, "Did we watch the same movie?"
But my pastor had a very good point a month or so ago: For whatever reason, everybody has some kind of opinion about the movie, which makes it a fantastic topic of conversation and a way to legitimately discuss THE issue of historical Christianity - the atoning death and resurrection of Christ.
Anyway, it held no big surprises for me, nor was I "affected" much by the movie. I enjoyed several small parts – my favorite being the end of the "serpent scene" in the garden of Gethsemane. But it could have been much better.
Brad:
With all of the talk about the film's gross (the money, not the brutality) it's easy to forget that it was a small production on a limited budget, by modern standards.
I hope you've read through the pdf I posted – the one by the doctor/engineer who thinks that the physical suffering in the film was still not as rough as the real thing.
Ben:
Budget wasn't what I had in mind, exactly. One can conjure many excellent low-budget films. Two things struck me about The Passion that led me to think it may not be all it's cracked up to be: the gratuitious use of slow-motion, and the peculiar use of Satan – several instances, but particularly that moment when Satan appears to Judas under the bridge.
I was most moved by Mary's reaction to her son's suffering.
I was also struck by how political the movie is. And, yeah, the Jews come off looking pretty bad in the bargain.
Robb:
I kind of liked the artistic choices he made in the use of Satan, although the scene you mention is to a certain extent the exception - a cheap scare technique that doesn't have near the potency of the other manifestations.
It's not scriptural, of course, but by and large I thought they were good attempts at displaying a non-corporeal being in a meaningful way on screen.
The biggest disappointment, which my former pastor and I shared, was that after all of the focus on Christ's physical suffering, there appeared to be very little attempt to display the (much more profound) suffering he experienced when he was "forsaken" by the father. When all of the past and future sins of the world were placed upon him and he experience the full wrath of God on our behalf. I have no idea how it could have been portrayed, and I think that the difficulty in portraying it may be why Gibson made the choice to focus so strongly on the physical suffering – it's the thing we could most readily understand and identify with.
I thought [Mary's reaction to her son's suffering] was handled very tastefully and I was also moved. I was pleasantly surprised at how he focused so strongly on the humanity of Mary and her relationship with Jesus as her son, rather than choosing to grind a
particularly Catholic axe in the portrayal.
I'm not positive what you mean by "how political the movie is" – do you mean the political motivations of the Jewish leaders as well as Pilate in crucifying him? Or more modern political points?
[The Jews in the movie came off] no worse than ... in the gospels themselves, in my opinion. This is a frustratingly delicate issue because of the historical abuse Jews have received, but Christ was a threat to the religious establishment, which happened to be Jewish. He was a Jew himself, but threatened to completely destroy both the power structure of the Jewish leaders and the way of life of those who lived in Judea at the time. But blaming future generations for what that generation did is absurd. Blaming today's Jews for Christ's death is not unlike blaming today's Germans for the Holocaust, today's Southerners for slavery, today's Russians for the atrocities of Stalin, or even today's Italians for participating in Christ's crucifixion - not to mention the persecution of so many Christians in the first few centuries.
Those Jews look pretty bad, yes, in the same way that the generation of Catholics that lived during the Crusades and Inquisition look bad, or the generation of Protestants that burned witches and executed other heretics look bad. We all have dark episodes in our collective past, and dark purposes in our individual hearts now, which is why we all need forgiveness. (kudlow)And capital gains tax cuts.(/kudlow)
Brad:
My wife pointed out that she had heard about Steven Spielberg calling The Passion "anti-semitic." She said, "Didn't he make Schindler's List? That certainly could be considered anti-German, couldn't it?"
I explained, "Well, Spielberg would counter that it's anti-Nazi, and that there are even a few Nazi party members portrayed sympathetically, as not going along with the mood and actions of the larger group. Not all Germans were Nazi's and not all Nazi's were "good Nazi's.'"
My wife replied, "Exactly. And not all of the Jews in The Passion were members of the Sanhedrin."
Well, she had me there. Obviously implied were the points that in the movie (and in Scripture, of course) not all of the Sanhedrin were portrayed as negatively as Caiphas was, and some were even good guys (Nicodemus was a member of the Sanhedrin, and Oskar Schindler was in the Nazi party). So, I'd say The Passion is an anti-Sanhedrin movie, not an anti-semitic one; as much as Schindler's List is an anti-Nazi film.
Robb:
I would guess that the main difference is that The Passion does portray the Jewish people of Jerusalem themselves as fairly malleable in the hands of the Sanhedrin.
On the other hand, there is similar portrayal of German commoners in Schindler. I think of the little kid yelling "Die Jews!" or some such. How do you distinguish a "Nazi" from a German in the movie?
In The Passion, you have the difficulty of not knowing the "affiliation" of individual Jews. "Nazi" is a convenient label - you can attach the evil to party affiliation. Gibson didn't notify us which people in the crowd were members of the Judean People's Front, and which ones were members of the People's Front of Judea.
But ultimately, both movies explore herd politics. Decent and normal people are capable of spectacular evil given the right circumstances. In all the charges of "anti-Semitism" hurled at The Passion, I have yet to hear someone articulate what about the portrayal suggested that there was something inherent in the "Jewishness" of the crowd. They were oppressed people living in rough times under the thumb of both the Romans and a corrupt and manipulative clergy.
With the help of John Pohoretz, the guys at Power Line articulate a reasonable perspective on the PDB kerfuffle.
I have seen the future of U.S. military rifles, and it is fearsome. Check out the demonstration video. (Requires Real Player.)
(Hat tip: F-Rock)
Well, something's changed. I don't know what's happened, but I seem to have passed some boundary. It certainly wasn't intentional. The first thing happened Friday when one of Dennis Prager's callers asked him about the theme music for the weekly Happiness Hour segment. Both the caller and I would have sworn it was The Ventures. And we would have been wrong. Sure the tune is peppy and a bit more saccharin than most Ventures stuff, but not all of their tracks are wave-cutting burners. I love the song. Behind its melodic surfy guitar one hears a background of hipster-lounge percussion and an organ reminiscent of something Feathers McGraw's radio might have churned out in The Wrong Trousers. Hearing its first few opening measures (which I got used to over summer break) can be a day-making highlight for me. As if that weren't dorky enough, it turns out the song is called Apples and Bananas, and it's by one Mr. Lawrence Welk!
I still haven't quite come to terms with this discovery. My wife and I fell in love over Nat King Cole and many assorted "standards" that were from before our time, but I'd always kept Lawrence Welk relegated to a campy corner of ironic Polka. (Speaking of Polka, Matthew Hoy pointed out that "Weird Al" Yankovic lost his parents in a house fire last week.)
A snip of the song can be heard here. It appears to be from somewhere near the middle or end of the tune, which loses a good bit of the strong guitar melody, and displays much more of the signature Welk sound than the opening bars reveal. Hearing this sample, one can probably only think, "well, duh - of course it's Lawrence Welk." I can't find a clip of the beginning. You'll have to trust me. Or think me more a nerd than I may really be. Big woop. That's a risk that I'm clearly not daunted by. Read on.
The second thing happened late last night. After a horrible fit of channel flipping, something caught my eye: women in 19th century get-ups... practicing archery. Hmm. Flip some more channels. Nothing on. Back to Ladies' Archery. For a minute it was like Howard's End meets Samurai Jack. But then I notice that the dialogue's really pretty clever; the old man seems like the sort of pleasant odd coot that I'd like to grow into one day... The dialogue keeps me for another scene, and from an exterior to an interior. Then the hooks are in. I'm caught. My wife joins me and declines the offer of free reign over the remote. Soon she's hooked too.
After a while we realized that we were watching PBS. But soon we discovered that to see the conclusion of the story that we were following closely, we'd have to tune in for the next episode... of [cue music] Masterpiece Theater [yes, you should have read that in a halting pretentious accent]. We looked at one another with genuine surprise. I mean, we had watched Monsterpeice Theater, hosted by Alistair Cookie before, but never the original. When we mentioned it to some friends this afternoon, they just exclaimed, "You're old." I don't exactly know why. I don't feel old for reading classics. I guess I just classify Masterpiece Theater with tapioca and Louis Rukeyser; they're for old people.
I should note that having explored the MT website, I'm impressed with the idea of having access to essays and commentary on the original books and their adaptations. I doubt I'll change my opinion of tapioca, but I think I may be dropping my prejudice against Masterpiece Theater. In a perfect world we would have this kind of support material for many more programs and DVD's.
The show we were watching turned out to be Daniel Deronda (click for a glimpse of the archery), an adaption of a novel by George Eliot (a "George" of the George Sand variety - her real name was Mary Ann Evans). In deciding whether or not to go out of my way to catch the story's resolution, I checked out the author's bio. Funny how so many things come back to doctrine. [Huh?]
Well, her bio mentioned that Evans renounced the Evangelical Protestant faith in which she was raised. I thought that interesting, since it also mentions that she first came to be published by translating works on Christianity. The bio describes one, David Friedrich Strauss's Das Leben Jesu, ["The Life of Jesus Critically Examined," 1846], as simply "one of the most influential books on religious thought in England at the time." I'd say that's an understatement. Now, without getting into the issue of Election, I think it's worth noting that Evans's falling away from the faith was accompanied by her work on books that could only be described as hallmarks of Higher Criticism -- the 19th century equivalent (progenitors?) of today's Jesus Seminar folks.
Will this affect my decision to seek out or pass on the conclusion of Daniel Deronda? Probably not, but it will be in my mind as I watch how the author portrays the Christians in the story. This may come into play, as the plot involves issues of how Jews were received in English society at the time.
Okay, that's all. It's been a long time since I've had a sugar high like the one I allowed myself today. Hope you all had a blessed and fondly memorable Easter, or "Resurrection Day."
The Prof himself isn't the only one making excellent observations on the Professor Bainbridge blog. I found this courtroom interrogation tactic (which a Bainbridge reader caught Ben-Veniste using) awfully sneaky.
It's an old (and cheap) trick in litigation to ask a compound question, which is improper and to which an objection will be sustained. If defending counsel is asleep at the switch, the witness may not be quick enough to see both questions or will forget the first question by the time she finishes answering the second.The question before me now is: do I share it with the Rhetoric students at my school? I guess I'll have to, so they'll be wary of it in upcoming debates.The idea is to make the first question the damaging one and the second question one which the witness is likely to know and answer in an affirmative way, either by saying yes or by providing or confirming the information. Witnesses will almost always answer the last question first because it is recent and because it is one they can answer affirmatively. Most witnesses will either forget or bobble the first and damaging question.
Read the rest of the post, and the post that preceded it, for some details that most of us probably missed in the more mainstream reporting & commentary on the Rice testimony.
Oh, and for InfMonk David, I should mention this Bainbridge pointed out this story that's not only about Australian wines, Cuban cigars, Japanese chef Kazu, and a world class butcher, but also includes the word "Monkey" (but not as a food item).
UPDATE: A blog called Small Dead Animals (it has nothing to do with the "Monkey" in my last paragraph) has a side by side transcript comparison example of the coverage editing, plus a response from a CNN afilliate news director. (Hat tip: InstaPundit)
Some cheap Mexican candies may have a little bit o' lead in 'em. MMmmm... lead....
Perhaps this explains a lot about about our friend Godfrey.
Everybody's talking about the Belmont Club blog, and for good reason. A few years ago, I saw an episode of Frontline that I'll never forget. It was on the genocide in Rwanda. Right along side the horrific and hellish footage of machetes in use (through long zoom lenses) and rivers actually flowing with the physical remains of mass slaughter (no, not just blood), were the captured images of the U.N. troops packing up and leaving abandoning those Rwandans who had flocked to them for security. The faces and pleas of those left behind, and the interviews of the very, very few who survived the impending slaughter expressed utter disillusionment in the troops that had once offered the promise of protection bugging out without a shot fired once the innocents had been effectively assembled into one easily-surrounded mass. They were left with little more than sticks and rocks to defend themselves. In those particular circumstances, it would have been better for those Rwandans if the U.N. forces had never come at all.
After being nothing more than a passing line in a speech or list of shortcomings here or there for several years, the incident and details of the pull-out have finally come to my attention. Belmont Club author Wretchard provides a telling quotation from the U.N. general who was in command of the affair, and some comments that should not be missed.
I don't buy the general's assertion of responsibility. I surely don't claim to know how the overall situation should have been approached. But I do know that once troops were put in there, an obligation was incurred.
More than anything that's happened in the Balkans or in the Middle or Far East, the genocide in Rwanda makes me sigh sadly and dismissively almost any time I hear someone recite the post-Holocaust mantra, "We will never forget."
To what end?
For families, yes, I can understand. But for western culture, I must ask, "To what end?"
I must thank Mark D. Roberts for pointing out an updated version of a document that I had read and found so interesting several months ago. Roberts posted it a week or two ago. I thought I'd take the occassion of Good Friday to put it back up for folks to see.
Alex F. Metherell (MD, PhD) provides "A Review from a Biomedical Engineering Perspective" on the Biblical account and Gibson's cinematic portrayal of the flogging, crucifixion, and death of Jesus. I only have the document in .pdf format, which is fine, as it really shouldn't be viewed without its accompanying photographs, diagrams, and their captions. Even if you don't think you'll read the whole thing, take a minute to check out the archeological photos in it. I found them engaging.
Beyond how Jesus died, Mark Roberts touches on why, having recently provided a summary of his series on “What Was the Message of Jesus?” Is it exhaustive? Of course not. Is the whole series exhaustive? Still, no. But hopefully, reading the summary or the series will drive you to the actual Bible. It also wouldn't be a bad idea to talk with a professing believer about what it means to repent and to have Jesus as one's saviour and one's lord.
Folks in the Phoenix area might want to join me today, Sunday, and beyond at East Valley Bible Church. Perhaps the other church-going Monkeys will mention where they live and the churches they attend in comments to this post.
UPDATE: Joshua Claybourn's Good Friday post addresses the Jesus fulfilling prophecies and being "foresaken."
UPDATE II: Joe Carter's Good Friday post doesn't start as one. It's really. Worth. Reading.
The exhaustingly prolific Joe Carter is body-surfing in shark-infested waters today. More power to 'im, I say.
Of course, it's all about Presuppositions, isn't it? EVERYBODY's got them. And you shouldn't have to defend some of them (for example, the law of non-contradiction) every time you discuss anything. But we SHOULD be more diligent about confessing our presuppositions when we debate. Most people will argue and argue without recognizing that they are starting from incompatible sets of presuppositions. And finding the truth shouldn't be about "winning", it should be about - well, finding the truth.
If you're anything like me, "anxious" may be too weak a word to describe your feelings about the delay in the Northern Alliance Radio Network getting streamed over the web. Well, I don't have a complete solution yet, but there may no longer be a reason for those of us outside the Twin Cities area to miss selected highlights. An interesting character at a blog called Considerettes has put together the various bits of technology necessary to put a segment or two on a web server for distribution to the world. Admist a shower of praise and wonder, Considerettes' author exclaims,
(Aw shucks, a little ol' Perl script and a couple of programs that capture audio streams, running under Linux. And as I said when I first contemplated this, it may be kinda' vain, but no more so than having a blog. >grin<)This sounds like a job for Mitch Berg. Get to it NARNers!
Also, it fell to yours truly yesterday to put the NARN folks together with Hewitt's people for talks about filling in for Hugh next week. Developing.
Update: Mitch Berg's permalinks are "bloggered" (not working), so I've removed my "Developing" link. His post this morning cryptically hinted:
Huge Day - With huge news, potentially.More later today.
posted by Mitch Berg 4/8/2004 07:56:32 AM
From Wikipedia:
In the Christian calendar, Maundy Thursday, Sheer Thursday, or Holy Thursday, the Thursday before Easter. It celebrates Jesus's last supper before his execution. Traditionally, it is the day when Jesus washed the feet of his disciples and told them to serve others as he served them. Consequently, in many churches, both Protestant and Roman Catholic, the priest or pastor washes the feet of the congregants on this day.
The Middle English word Maundy, used only in this context, derives from Old French mandé from Latin mandamentum (commandment), in reference to the opening words of the Catholic liturgy for this day, Mandatum novum do vobis "a new commandment I give unto you" (John xiii:34), words spoken by Jesus to the Apostles after washing their feet in preparation for the Last Supper.
The day has also been known as Sheer Thursday, due to the idea that it is the day of cleaning (schere) and because the churches themselves would switch liturgical colors from the dark tones of Lent.
Over at Evangelical Outpost, it's Get Snippy With Joe Day. (Yes, more so than usual in the comments sections today.) I sometimes feel like ought to link to more quality posts at EO. But I'd be linking to so many. (Ed. Quit sucking up. What? I have nothing to gain by it. I'm just being honest about Joe. He's pretty much the blogger I wish I were. Well, tone it down, it's embarrassing.)
In the midst of taking a lot of flack over various issues regarding Intelligent Design (ID) and Darwinism, some of Joe's critics seem to be working hard to avoid acknowledging a simple challenge.
Joe's question is this:
So what is the “explanatory filter” (to borrow a phrase from the ID’ers) that naturalism uses in order to distinguish between what is “designed” by an intelligence and what are, in the words of Richard Dawkins, “designoids”, phenomena that only have the appearance of being designed[?]Granted, he forgot to add a question mark to it, I think it's a clear call for an explanation.
I was wondering the same thing. Similarly, it's funny how many professors I've heard speak of critters like diatoms or clams "figuring out" that they could molecularly unbind and utilize the calcium in their aqueous environments to build protective bodily forms. I've pointed out to some that such language attributes an unreasonable level of cognizance to such creatures. Sometimes they've blown me off as though it were preposterous for me to challenge their use of allegory, but even those who've acknowledged the fallacy seem stumped for means by which to explain the processes without resorting to anthropomorphism.
Curious story from Reuters - Lots of staff leaving the White House counterterrorism office in frustration, and more than one heading to the Kerry camp.
Not sure what to make of this yet - jump to draw your own conclusions.
Andrew at Pathetic Earthlings takes another gulp of single malt (excuse me, he prefers to call it his "morning constitutional") and shares a newly discovered treasure. I just ordered my copy from Amazon, along with Robert Crumb Presents "Hot Women Singers" and William Hung's "Inspiration".
Powerline's Hinderocket asks, "Can someone please explain to me why the 9/11 commission is not a joke?" Read his post for the answer.
Well, it turns out that the late Peter Ustinov was a typical actor. From the Telegraph:
In his book, My Russia—a grotesque piece of Soviet sycophancy—he conceded only that Stalin had caused "suffering" to "thousands"—as if the gulags were a nasty outbreak of food poisoning on a busy night in a Solihull balti house. Then there was his television series, "Peter Ustinov's Russia." Noel Malcolm's review said it all: Ustinov showed "all the investigative inclinations of an Intourist guide with a coach party and a lobotomy."
Elsewhere in the piece, the writer, columnist and Labourite Stephen Pollard, observes: "He may well have had a gift for anecdote and he was a perfectly adequate actor; but his politics were so vile, and his judgment so warped, that it beggars belief that his death should have been met with praise such as 'great humanitarian,' 'selfless' and 'visionary.'" (Via Sullivan.)
An obscure blogger makes an interesting point about Ashcroft's War on (cough) Stuff for Grown-Ups:
This is so ham-handed and sure to blow up in the Administration's face, making them look like stooges for the religious right while accomplishing nothing, that one almost suspects a Democratic mole in their ranks.This seems right to me; read the whole thing.
P.S. Could this have something to do with what Dr. Monkeystein's been up to?
Protect your flat screen TV, there are Monkeys about!
I'm just flabbergasted that Rose Marie is still alive and on television. Last night I saw her on the promo for an upcoming Dick Van Dyke Show reunion. If my math is right, IMDB shows that she's 80. Not quite Al "Grandpa" Lewis (The Munsters) territory, but surprising nonetheless. Gee, I hope by now she's finally found a fella.
Well, they had a coach named Hewitt and a starting small forward named Elder. Frankly, I'm shocked they got as far as they did.
Ith at Absinthe and Cookies organized a "Gathering of the Blogs" for Tartan Day. I'd raise a glass of Glenmorangie for the occasion, but I gave up booze for Lent. (Besides that, I'm working!) I'll follow the links instead. I encourage you to do likewise.
For I am a deity among grammarians! (Via About Last Night.) [Updated not once, not twice, but thrice!]
You are a GRAMMAR GOD!
If your mission in life is not already to
preserve the English tongue, it should be.
Congratulations and thank you!
How grammatically sound are you?
brought to you by Quizilla
Update: I may be a grammar god, but obviously that doesn't mean I know how to spell. Also, the image above isn't appearing in any browser. If you take the quiz, you'll see it. If you do as well as Robb and I did, I mean.
Update II: Brad is a grammar god, too. I guess all of that Latin finally paid off. Curiously, we haven't heard yet from David. Perhaps he doesn't want to embarrass us... or himself?
Update III: XRLQ demonstrates how the grammar quiz is lame and wrong. Though correct, this may also explain why XRLQ doesn't get invited to many parties.
Sure, I think Medved has a good point. Yeah, I think Lileks's "Bleat" is pretty solid on Tuesday. Jeez, is that the best I can do? Of course not. But I had to post something. The other monkeys are passed out by now. I'll probably have more to say about Medved's piece tomorrow.
Michael Medved opines on Motion Picture Association President Jack Valenti's legacy on the occasion of his recently announced retirement:
So what happened 38 years ago to drive millions of Americans away from movie theaters? In 1966, Mr. Valenti's Motion Picture Association of America quietly dropped its enforcement of the restrictive old Production Code that Hollywood studios had imposed on themselves since 1930. Then, on Nov. 1, 1968, Mr. Valenti introduced the "voluntary rating system" that continues in force to this day. As he proudly declared in his farewell address to the industry on March 23 of this year: "The rating system freed the screen, allowing movie-makers to tell their stories as they choose to tell them." That new freedom allowed the profligate use of obscene language strictly banned under the Production Code, the inclusion of graphic sex scenes along with near total nudity and, more vivid, sadistic violence than previously permitted in Hollywood movies.The resulting changes in the industry showed up with startling clarity at the Academy Awards. In 1965, with the Production Code still in force, "The Sound of Music" won Best Picture of the Year; in 1969, under the new rating system, an X-rated offering about a homeless male hustler, "Midnight Cowboy," earned the Oscar as the year's finest film. Most critics, then as now, welcomed the aesthetic shift and hailed the fresh latitude in cinematic expression, but the audience voted with its feet.
I wonder if "The Godfather" would have been as good under the Hayes Code, but I'll leave that discussion to the filmographers. Nevertheless, I think Medved is on to something.
Here's the punchline:
Americans strung up and burned. Big-time blogger says “screw them.” Blogger suffers blowback, just as a mainstream columnist would suffer if he wrote that it was time to nuke Mecca or pave Fallujah. And there are consequences? Welcome to the real world.
Pretty good, but that's not the best part. The best part is the paragraph immediately preceding that one, about "the Clever Kids." And he's got a good shot at O'Reilly, too.
Mark Bowden's book "Black Hawk Down" was a striking work of journalism, and one of the best squad-level military history works I have ever read. So I'm pleased to see him weigh in on Fallujah. And starting his article in 1930 is profoundly insightful. (I'm hoping that will intrigue you enough to do the free registration for the article.)
I bought a weed wacker this weekend. Actually, that's a trademark, so what I really bought was a Grass Hog, which is actually a better name. It was cheap ($50) and I managed to make it out of the Home Depot garden department without making any puns on "wacker" or "hoe" (OK, I did say "let's call a spade a spade," but that's because I really wasn't sure what a spade was). Man, that's a fun way to weed. I have a very tiny yard, so this was fine (Consumer Reports and the Amazon reviewers agree you need a gas powered "string trimmer" if you have a big yard). There's no way I would have been able to resist the comedy possibilities of "two stroke," though, so it's a good thing I got an electric.
Now that the 3 foot high weeds are gone, I could finally see my outdoor bar. It's desperately in need of refurbishment...
The pope says no more sports and movies on Sundays. At least, that's how CNN reports it. I wonder how the Fraters will respond.
Fortunately, I am a Protestant.
So one year ago today, I posted the first entry on the Infinite Monkeys blog. That was over at Blog*Spot.
It took a few days before the idea struck me to make it into a group blog, and the other Monkeys quickly joined. I can't really recommend going back and reading all of those posts from the early days of the Iraq war, though there is some good stuff there (blogging is a strange mix of the ephemeral and the permanent). So I'll just repost one thing from that first day, and say that I still stand by it, more than ever:
...In the long run is where my mind could be changed about the war, or at least its conduct. If it weakens us in the eyes of the Arab world--and I don't mean that they don't love us, because those who do are unlikely to change their mind, and those who burn American flags and shout "kill the Jews" are unlikely candidates as friends under any circumstance--then I will change my mind. Somalia weakened us, as did our mild response to pre-9/11 terrorist attacks. This war could, if we show any loss of resolve, either during the war or in its aftermath. If we abandon the Iraqi people to a new dictator, we deserve hatred. If we fail to pay attention to tyranny elsewhere that is occurring while the world is distracted (such as Cuba) then we could be sowing the seeds for future problems. If we trade abandonment of Israel, the only democracy in the region, for current or future support, then I will be dismayed.
Anyway, happy anniversary loyal readers (hi Brad's Mom!) and fellow Monkeys.
Molly makes an interesting point about the current strategy of attacking Bush.
I'd love to hear the President (and from here on through November, friends, that's how I'm going to refer to him) say this:
"I've got some wackos saying I should have preemptively attacked Afghanistan and killed Bin Laden. And I've got wackos saying I shouldn't have liberated Iraq. I guess that would make me feel like I was doing a good job being moderate--that is, if I cared what wackos think."
And by the way, if the President had killed Bin Laden in early to mid 2001, does anyone really doubt that 9/11 still would have still occurred? And, in fact, the President would have been blamed for inciting the terrorists to retaliate? So when idiots say the administration should have done something earlier, and Iraq is creating terrorists...well, there's only so much you can do, even if you have a blog or a radio show.
Until November.
There is only one solution to a giant Lincoln...
(see Episode 504 and, of course, Ben's post below)
Cobb makes a point that I would have made, if I had been on top of things. A certain portion of Americans reacted to the Fallujah massacre, understandably, by calling for the city's annihilation. Cobb observes:
We could carpet bomb the entire place with a day's notice. But we don't. It's not because we can't; it's because we don't want to. It is inconsistent with America's purpose in Iraq, which is not to bully people around or teach them a lesson in anything other than post-tyrannical life. Self-governance is the lesson, and we can only hope that the new government of Iraq has learned something from our forebearance.
I was thinking much the same yesterday. We could wipe Fallujah off the map, but that's not the American way. We aren't imperialists. And we're not Russians.
Some people in Lincoln, Illinois propose to loose a 305-foot statue of Abe upon an unsuspecting public. Tremble before the Great Emancipator!
Can you imagine driving down the highway and seeing a gargantuan Lincoln suddenly loom over the horizon?
I'm a big Lincoln fan—I have to be; it's my job—but this strikes me as ... over the top. (To be fair, the good people of Lincoln are by no means unified behind the proposal. Follow the link and scroll down.)
Here's an artist's rendering... [UPDATED]
If you look closely, there appears to be a giant watermelon behind Lincoln. A giant watermelon!
Terrifying or tasteful? Only Hilton Kramer knows for sure!
Brad's Update: I'm having suspicions about this all being just a big PR campaign for a film by a certain band several of us Monkeys are fond of. Or, if you interpret John and John with all the scrutiny of a Sunday afternoon History Channel special on Nostradamus, you may be shocked by this 1988 prophecy.
Congrats Mitch, on the double barrel endorsement. This was posted on Instapundit yesterday: "James Lileks ... says that more people should be reading Mitch Berg. He's right, of course."
Mr. Reynolds even linked to Mitch's new URL. If you haven't updated your blogroll, well, now it's obvious that all the cool kids are doin' it. To quote the colonel from Full Metal Jacket, "...how about getting with the program? Why don't you jump on the team and come on in for the big win?" (I know. I know. At the time of this posting, our blogroll link to Mitch is still bad. Hey, I'm not the Admin Monkey.)
Audrey, meet Kerri. Kerri, Audrey...
AP: Police Conclude No Suspect in College Student Abduction
Police said Friday a college student's tale of being abducted doesn't add up and they don't believe there is an abductor at large. They said there was evidence she planned her disappearance. ...Surveillance video showed Audrey Seiler, a University of Wisconsin-Madison sophomore, walking out of her apartment about 2:30 a.m. Saturday wearing only sweats. She was found Wednesday in a marsh about two miles away, cold and dehydrated but otherwise unharmed.
L.A. Times: Prosecutors Mull Dunn Case
Los Angeles County prosecutors are continuing to consider whether to charge Claremont McKenna College professor Kerri Dunn with filing a false police report about a hate crime. Authorities gave no timetable when a decision will be made.
I have no idea how either of these stories will play out. I'm inclined to think that whatever else happens, both of these women need serious psychological help. Some people associate Spring with the start of baseball season, but after this year I'll always think of Spring as hoax season.
On occasion I've thought of analogizing Hugh Hewitt with Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, as it's not too much of a stretch for our favorite shock jock. (It's not for nothing that we call Hugh Colonel Slanders.) But I'd never thought of Joshua Micah Marshall as Eminem – that is, until yesterday. I'm sure Hewitt himself won't get the reference, as it's based on somewhat recent popular culture (particularly music), but the whole JMM resigning as a regular guest from Hugh's show in a stiffly polite huff thing reminds me of the 2002 VMA's. We knew Josh was aloof – he never failed to subtly make it clear that he had certainly not been listening to any of Hugh's program before the producer got him on hold for his weekly scheduled guest spot. But I never expected him to be so thin skinned.
JMM acts like his honor was deeply assaulted. pffft, I say... Those were just jabs; taunts with a seed of truth behind them, and every opportunity was afforded for Josh to come on air and either defend himself, or laugh off the quips with a bit of self-deprecating humor. (What Would Kerry Do?)
Anyway, the whole affair has left me thinking that we should henceforth refer to him as Joshua Marshall Mathers.
Al Franken is interviewing Paul Krugman right now. It occured to me as I was drifting off: Good Lord! People may actually be listening to this in their cars!
Okay, so after spending a full month listening to the Democrats freak out about February's awful job growth numbers, this month we get a growth report that's the "strongest in 4 years". 308,000 non-farm jobs. Do you suppose we'll hear them congratulating the Administration? Well, of course they won't, but fortunately we won't have to worry about the Republicans failing to congratulate themselves. But it's good news, I suppose, anyway.
But in the article I linked, I was amused by this display of bias from Reuters: The number of jobs created doesn't appear until the third paragraph, and it IMMEDIATELY follows a sentence saying, "Nevertheless, U.S. jobs lost since Bush took office still number a hefty 1.8 million." This is the only mention of "Bush" or "The President" or "The Administration" in the entire article. The general message of the article is, "Bush lost over two million jobs, and fortunately for us they're coming back on their own, because he had nothing to do with the recovery."
Dubious sources inform me that our Dr. Monkeystein is now co-hosting a little-heard nationally syndicated radio talk show with a former "Daily Show" writer and some other woman. Apparently, he's working under the pseudonym "Chuck D."
Brooklyn Democrats have instituted a pogrom against black Republicans, and Dr. Monkeystein has been taken captive so that they can make an example of him.
From Friday's Wall Street Journal:
I hope I do not misrepresent my opponents, but their general view seems to be that Iraq was an elective target; a country that would not otherwise have been troubling our sleep. This ahistorical opinion makes it appear that Saddam Hussein was a new enemy, somehow chosen by shady elements within the Bush administration, instead of one of the longest-standing foes with which the United States, and indeed the international community, was faced. So, what about the "bad news" from Iraq? There was always going to be bad news from there. Credit belongs to those who accepted—can we really decently say pre-empted?—this long-term responsibility. Fallujah is a reminder, not just of what Saddamism looks like, or of what the future might look like if we fail, but of what the future held before the Coalition took a hand.
Another Mogadishu? Not likely.
"Love, exciting and new... Come aboard, we're expecting you!" (Hat tip: Steve-O.)
New York Press presents its second annual list of the "50 Most Loathsome New Yorkers." Hateful? Maybe. But not entirely wrong. My favorite line: "This is the kind of celebrity couple one dreams of razoring into bite-sized nibbles and feeding to baby pigs." Read the whole thing, if you dare. (Hat tip: Philip M.)
We've been getting thousands of e-mails, calls and letters, all asking "where is Dr. Monkeystein?" or "I miss my daily dose of folksy good-natured humor and wisdom!"
Now many of these seem to have come from some kind of mix-up down at Amnesty International (they seem to have confused him with Robb, who we actually do keep in a small box except when we want to beat him until he writes a blog entry).
But the mystery is simple. No, the good Doctor is not on tour with a polka troupe (although he probably would be if they had polka troupes, but, hey, wouldn't you be too?)
Dr. Monkeystein has been preparing for the new Infinite Monkeys Exciting Find Doctor Monkeystein Spring Contest Event. The rules are simple: you just have to find Dr. Monkeystein. Yes, I know this sounds like that annoying Burger King "Search for Herb," campaign, but this one is much, much better. Trying to catch that annoying nerd Herb in a Burger King was, let's face it, a boring idea. But the new Infinite Monkeys Exciting Find Doctor Monkeystein Spring Contest Event has a great twist: Monkeystein is armed. And almost certainly drunk.
Anyway, if you find him, or just give a good guess where he is, there's a t-shirt in it for you.
Well, that didn't take long: The Lone Wacko has started Bore America (the site's real URL isn't up and running yet), which "will be reporting on lies, prevarications, outrageous statements and other fun things sure to be heard on AirAmerica. We'll feature satires of AirAmerica, news of its contributors, and no doubt much more."
It's going to be a group blog. Check this post for details.
Rich Toscano and his lovely bride Brooke have returned to the States after lying low for a few weeks in South America, only to find that their whippet was badly injured by a hit-and-run driver. What a terrible turn of events! Looks like she'll pull through, which is good because she really is a sweet dog. I'll raise the question that Rich is obviously afraid to ask: Was it really an accident or an escalation?
Now that John Kerry's nomination is assured, the media's search for the "real" John Kerry is underway. What is it about the haughty, French-looking Democrat from Massachusetts, who by the way served in Vietnam that fascinates us so? And why can't I put my finger on where I may have seen him before? So many questions. Surely I'm not alone. I hope they talk about the guy on Air America. I'd really like to know who he is, and what he stands for.
Air America is a gift to bloggers far and wide. For conservatives, it's a target-rich Fisk-o-Rama. For obscure lefties like Atrios and Kos, now they have a real platform for their marginal rants.
Update: Oh, dear God, Randi Rhodes really does sound like Savage in drag...
Howard Kurtz reports on Air America: Day 1 in the Washington Post this morning, and USA Today carries a pretty decent summary from the Associated Press. I listened to Janeane Garafalo and Sam Seder on XM last night, and heard "Unfiltered" with Chuck D and friends on the way to work this morning. I'm willing my way through Franken now. (The Real Audio feed is holding... for now.)
Let me get the technical gripes out of the way first: Every show sounds terrible. I have to believe that the engineers are either stone deaf or saddled with surplus Soviet-era transmitters. The hosts are overmodulated (most of the time) or barely audible (the rest of the time). Memo to money men Mark Walsh and Evan Cohen: this is what happens when you try to buy a network on the cheap. More people may listen longer if their ears aren't bleeding. Pony up for better equipment.
OK, on with the shows...
I haven't heard Randi Rhodes, but reports are she's even more savage than Savage. I haven't heard any of the other shows.
Overarching themes: mockery of religion; differentiating between "genuine" conservatives and "radical" conservatives; anti-corporate; taking the argument for granted.
Mocking religion is a gamble. If it's true that most Americans are religious (if not necessarily regular church-goers), then it seems to me Air America runs the risk of alienating a large portion of its audience. But it's not clear to me who, exactly, that audience is supposed to be or how large it is. It's usually said of conservative talk radio that the hosts are simply preaching to the converted. From what I've heard so far, that is precisely what Franken, Garafalo, et. al. are doing. The very best conservative talkers—e.g., Hugh Hewitt, Dennis Prager, even Michael Medved—make an argument. They bring their sources to bear. The rhetorical hyperbole is kept to a minimum.
Without actually deploying the phrase "everybody knows," the general tone of Air America rests on the assumption that no argument is required. Everybody knows that W. stole the 2000 election. Everybody knows that deposing Saddam Hussein was a distraction from the important fight against al Qaeda. Everybody knows that the "liberal media" is a right-wing myth. Everybody knows that Bush's tax cuts only helped the rich. (If that's true, then I'm John D. Rockefeller.) Everybody knows that the Republicans are trying to undo the Great Society and the New Deal... and on and on. Everybody knows this. And if you don't know it, you're probably just an ignorant dittohead.
Over all, it's an uneven start for Air America. If the network can't grow, I can't imagine it will last longer than a couple of years. But I won't predict its doom just yet. Give it time. Dennis Miller's new show had a bumpy start, but has gotten better in the last few weeks. I'll keep listening for awhile. Let's see how the election goes.
Update: Bovious gives Franken, et. al. six months. "I'll be surprised if they make it to the election." He echoes my assessment of the network's generally smug and self-assured tone: "These people have a certain set of cultural and intellectual touchpoints beyond which no exploration is necessary."
Mitch Berg claims he hasn't heard a minute of Air America because he has a job. Where does he work, a Guatemalan sweat shop? Mitch did point me to this piece by Steve Gigl, who writes: "Basically they're doing exactly what liberals have always accused conservative talk radio hosts of doing: preaching to the converted." I swear I read his post after I wrote mine. I also swear that no GOP talking points were consulted in writing this item, or subsequent updates. But if anybody knows how to get me on that distribution list, drop me a line.
One of my favorite entertainment websites has been bought out by Salon, of all places! I didn't know Salon was in the black. Maybe TeeVee sold out cheap. Anyway, I'm sick about the whole thing. Check it out, you'll see what I mean.
King at SCSU ties together the Dunn hoax, Mike Adams' column (just below), and more.
