Infinite Monkeys
"...a sparkly blog..." - James Lileks"Read them only with extreme caution."- Hugh Hewitt
Infinite MonkeysFull disclosure: I am not a member of the cult of Apple, nor have I had much desire to own an Apple product since the day one presented me with that inspid "Dead Mac" icon. Not a diagnostic message indicating what had gone wrong, nor some hint of how I might fix the problem. Just a stupid, cutesy icon staring X-eyed at me; the equivalent of Apple telling me, "Your tiny mind can not possibly understand the internal workings of this massively complex machine. Just run along to the Mac store and a highly trained technician will make it all better, 'k? That's a good user."
With that said, it should surprise no one that I'm not really getting the people who are waiting in line for an iPhone. I mean, camping outside Best Buy overnight for a game console I can kind of understand. At least when you get a PS3, you have a day or two of completely debauched gaming goodness to look forward to. When you return home triumphantly clutching an iPhone, on the other hand, what are you going to do that will justify the hours of your life you spent in line? Call people?
"Hey, Ray! Guess what! You're the first person I'm calling on my new iPhone. I just got it. It's awesome, it has a screen and buttons and it lets you, y'know, call people and stuff! Yeah, sort of like the phone I already had. Uh. Hmm... Anyway, I gotta call some more people. Talk to you later!"
"Aw, shit. Battery's dead."
Has anyone else noticed the facts that even after all these years of the "rabid right" holding unchecked dominion on AM radio, the Dems hold two branches er... partisan elements at the top of our federal government, and are poised with a very real chance of [taking the third] in '08? Of course, everyone has. But isn't the current situation itself a priori evidence against the left's (in which I do include a few Republicans) arguments for bringing back the Fairness Doctrine?
Today's OpinionJournal Political Diary (Best of the Web Today is on hiatus this week) really disturbed me. Reading a supposedly "brilliant" Supreme Court justice babble on about Jack Bauer as if he was a real person saving real lives, and then justifying indefinite detention at Gitmo based on this show, made that constant lump at the pit of my libertarian stomach double in size.
Bob Lewis writes a column about Information Technology Leadership, and many of his columns have good advice and insight about leadership of all stripes. This week's column is a good example. I've worked for the guy he describes, and I confess I have manifested many of those traits myself from time to time. If you're in a position of leadership, paid or unpaid, formal or informal, take a few minutes to reflect on these characteristics.
Looks like Universal's "Evan Almighty," despite a huge ad blitz, is going to bomb — which is too bad. Steve Carrell is one of Hollywood's most endearing success stories. Nonetheless, a tepid opening makes it very unlikely that it will come anywhere close to recouping its $175 million to $200 million budget. As rotttentomatoes.com points out, only 21 percent of a pool of 112 movie critics gave it a positive review — and only 9 percent of "major" media outlets gave it a thumbs up. Ouch.
A blogger at Deadline Hollywood Daily put it best:
Even though the studio is dragging out every trick in the Christian playbook, including that PR firm to the religious Grace Hill Media, to convince holy-rollers in fly-over country to see this take-off on the already tired Noah’s Ark tale. I suspect The Passion Of The Christ crowd wants stories based on the New Testament than the Old Testament. Leave it to heathen Hollywood not to comprehend that.
Indeed. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha .... Hollywood understanding the role of religion in people's lives is like me trying to understand Aramaic. Not gonna happen.
I first spotted it at Target last month, and I thought, "What the hell is this?" The book is filled with stories and diagrams and wonderful illustrations. It's a how-to guide to adventure. "I remember this!" I thought. And so I bought "A Dangerous Book for Boys," because I have a boy of my own and these sorts of instruction book come in handy. I didn't realize until a few days after I bought the book how much discussion it had generated.
Conn Iggulden, one of the brothers who co-wrote what is fast becoming the publishing phenomenon of the year, justifies himself in today's Washington Post. This paragraph resonated with me:
Finally, we chose our title -- "The Dangerous Book for Boys." It's about remembering a time when danger wasn't a dirty word. It's safer to put a boy in front of a PlayStation for a while, but not in the long run. The irony of making boys' lives too safe is that later they take worse risks on their own. You only have to push a baby boy hard on a swing and see his face light up. It's not learned behavior -- he's hardwired to enjoy a little risk. Ask any man for a good memory from childhood and he'll tell you about testing his courage or getting injured. No one wants to see a child get hurt, but we really did think the bumps and scratches were badges of honor, once.
That strikes me as entirely sound, although I regarded the bump I received on my forehead from a baseball my father threw one chilly Saturday morning not so much a badge of honor as a reason to quit T-ball.
Now, Cathy Young of Reason has some trenchant criticisms about the Dangerous Book. As Young notes,
Less attention has been paid to the boys who are not particularly into "boy things," who may be more interested in reading than in catching snails and may prefer art to stories of battles. The fact is that for both girls and boys, biologically based gender differences—which some feminists have been far too dogmatic in denying—are considerably attenuated by individual differences. Moreover, gender-neutral educators notwithstanding, social pressure to conform to "appropriate" norms and interests remains a reality.
Fair enough, I suppose. And I've met more than a few girls who made "their own chain mail as kids, or cracked rocks with sledgehammers in the driveway both to see what was inside them and to see if you could get sparks," though they are a rare enough breed. Young loses me at the end with her oversimplification of what the feminist ethos of the 1970s delivered. That "liberating message of celebrating individuality" lasted about five minutes before solipsism, atomism and narcissism took over. Insofar as books such as the Igguldens' offer an antidote, I'll gladly take the bad with the good.
I feel it best to bring this discussion me and RobbL are having about Gitmo into the main thread — all the better to have more monkeys weigh in. Robb says:
" ... [the federal government has] decided not to extend fairly basic human rights (like habeas corpus, contact with lawyers, contact with families, etc.) to those accused but not convicted of - hell, not even CHARGED with - these crimes."
No access to lawyers? Then explain this story, in truthout.org of all places, that details how Gitmo detainees have had contact via mail with their crusading attorneys. An excerpt:
Navy Commander Jeffrey Gordon, a Pentagon spokesman, told the Associated Press the military has been giving broad lawyer access to many detainees - even though they are accused of having al-Qaeda or Taliban links and the United States is still at war.
You can argue many things, but saying those terrorist detainees don't have access to lawyers is not very strong. Not only is every case reviewed by a military commission, but at least three cases, Hamdi being the most prominent, have reached the U.S. Supreme Court. Here's an op-ed from The Wall Street Journal that goes into even more detail about the level of involvement America's legal community has had at Gitmo. Burlingame calls them "the Gitmo bar."
I said:
"Besides, they get pretty good treatment down at Gitmo — at least those who don't throw poo, urinate on and attack the guards."
And then RobbL said:
How do you know this? Because the US Government tells you so? And they've never lied to the public before, right? And what constitutes "good treatment" for someone who hasn't been charged with a crime?
To believe this, we'd have to believe that there is a wide-ranging conspiracy — stretching from the Pentagon all the way down to Gitmo guards, past and present, who are so disciplined as to never leak a peep that counters the extensive stories of prisoner attacks on guards, like this one from the Associated Press, via MSNBC.
The prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay during the war on terror have attacked their military guards hundreds of times, turning broken toilet parts, utensils, radios and even a bloody lizard tail into makeshift weapons, Pentagon reports say.Incident reports reviewed by The Associated Press indicate Military Police guards are routinely head-butted, spat upon and doused by “cocktails” of feces, urine, vomit and sperm collected in meal cups by the prisoners.
They’ve been repeatedly grabbed, punched or assaulted by prisoners who reach through the small “bean holes” used to deliver food and blankets through cell doors, the reports say. Serious assaults requiring medical attention, however, are rare, the reports indicate.
The detainee “reached under the face mask of an IRF (Initial Reaction Force) team member’s helmet and scratched his face, attempting to gouge his eyes,” states a May 27, 2005, report on an effort to remove a recalcitrant prisoner from his cell.
“The IRF team member received scratches to his face and eye socket area,” the report said.
And RobbL also wrote this:
I would rather they be charged with a war crime, designated prisoners of war and treated as such, or released. And whatever is done, it should be done stateside with both legislative and public oversight.
There is legislative oversight — and don't let the likes of Carl Levin and Jay Rockefeller tell you any differently. Congress knows very well what is going on down there, through classified briefings on the Hill and personal visits. And the amount of journalism chronicling the goings on down there is massive.
It is no gulag. And those who cooperate get very nice treatment, considering their status as violent, sworn enemies of the United States. Don't take my word for it, take it from that right-wing, pro-war bastion....Mother Jones.
Improved cooperation enables prisoners to move from maximum to medium security and on to a sort of honor society known as Camp 4. Good behavior alone can keep a prisoner out of maximum security, but moving to Camp 4 requires cooperating with interrogators. In Camp 4, prisoners eat together and are free to congregate and play soccer. A Mother Jones reporter was allowed to see these men but not talk to them. They wore white clothing instead of orange jumpsuits and, almost to a man, had cultivated the full beards common in their homelands.
That's enough for now. Back to you, Robb.
Michael Ledeen on The Corner pulled out this gem of a quote from a previous war — showing that second-guessing of war strategy by (er) editorial writers has long been a staple of the newspaper business.
It appears we have appointed our worst generals to command forces, and our most gifted and brilliant to edit newspapers! In fact, I discovered by reading newspapers that these editor/geniuses plainly saw all my strategic defects from the start, yet failed to inform me until it was too late. Accordingly, I'm readily willing to yield my command to these obviously
superior intellects, and I'll, in turn, do my best for the cause by writing editorials - after the fact.
Robert E. Lee, 1863
Such snarkiness from the paragon of gentlemanly virtue is worth noting today as it was 144 years ago.
Here's an interesting follow-up to our discussion about news media types who give money to political campaigns. This point in particular dovetails nicely with some of what I've been saying:
The real question isn't so much whether reporters have preferences -- most human beings do -- but whether they can set aside those preferences long enough to tell a story straight. Given the choice, it seems better to have a reporter who does his job without spin, even if he gives money to candidates on the side, than one who professes objectivity because he doesn't give money -- but whose "news" articles fall just short of agitprop.
By the way, I don't think it's a matter of giving the public too much credit (as Zaius said the other day) about its critical faculties. I think nine-tenths of the average media-consuming audience is paranoid, superstitious, prejudiced, ill-informed and easily misled by urban legends and patent medicine salesmen. But after years and years of reports and surveys and commentaries about the liberal bias that permeates the mainstream media, this should hardly be surprising. The notion has sunk into the public consciousness. That's why you see polls like this one from Gallup on Thursday, which shows the public trust in newspapers hovering around 22 percent, and the weekly stories about plunging circulation, etc.
(In related news, Italians trust blogs more than mainstream media.)
One of the infuriating inconsistencies about Bush's freedom program for the Middle East is his tolerance for Saudi Arabia's not-very-free state (just ask the women) and the kingdom's barely veiled support for the sort of Islamism we're fighting. So it is good news that the House today cut off all aid to Saudi Arabia. It's always been puzzling to me why one of the richest countries in the world, per capita, needs any financial aid at all from the United States.
Be that as it may, the House attached the no-aid to the radical madrasas factory to a foreign aid bill. Why this wasn't done on Sept. 12, considering the makeup of the attackers, is a national political shame. Anyway:
In the past three years, Congress has passed bills to stop the relatively small amount of U.S. aid to Saudi Arabia, only to see the Bush administration circumvent the prohibitions.Now, lawmakers are trying to close loopholes so that no more U.S. aid can be sent to the world’s leading petroleum exporter. ...
“By cutting off aid and closing the loophole we send a clear message to the Saudi Arabian government that they must be a true ally in advancing peace in the Middle East,” said Rep. Anthony Weiner, a New York Democrat.
That it takes a Democratic Congress to show moral courage and clarity on Saudi Arabia should shame the Republicans — and Bush.
Looks like the administration may be on the verge of throwing in the towel on Gitmo. It's about time.
Is it too much to hope that the secret CIA prisons and practices of extraordinary renditionwill be next to go? Yeah, I thought so.
I'm no fan of international courts, but it's a welcome change to see even a condemnation, let alone action taken, against the vile filth that forces children, often through the most brutal acts and poisonous lies, into military service. No, "military service" is far too civil a term. These child "soldiers" are typically either manipulated into brainwashed fodder, or dehumanized robots of slaughter. Often drugs and assertions that magical powers will protect them from enemy bullets are all these children lean on to cloud the fact that they are in a kill-or-be-killed-by-your-commander situation.
I honestly can't write too much about this. I don't mean that rhetorically. I mean, if I write much more about this, or research many links, trying to find documentaries I've seen in the last 6 or 7 years, books I've read, etc. it will simply devour me. It is a topic of evil on a gut wrenching scale. It honestly overwhelms me. Covering this subject in any depth, I risk a slide back into the clinical depression that has haunted my life. Weak as that may sound, it is the truth, and I owe it to my wife, my own kids, and the others I serve, not to become emotionally and spiritually disabled.
There's just so much out there.
May I, and so many of the victims of such abuse in this fallen world, find comfort at the throne of God.
This has to be the least surprising story of the day. According to an MSNBC study, the political contributions of journalists lean heavily on the Democratic side — by a count of 9 to 1. It is reflective of that survey back in 1996 (I think) when 90 percent or so of Beltway journalists admitted voting for Clinton.
The fun of this story, though, is reading the responses/justifications by the journalists who bothered to respond to MSNBC's queries about their political donations. It ranges from defiance, to denial of bias, to indignation — along with a few cases of "oops, sorry ... you're right ... that wasn't appropriate." The amazing thing is that scores of big-time journalists defied their media organizations' ethics rules, but will obviously face no retribution. And neither will the next round of offenders.
I've been a journalist all my adult life. I think I gave $25 to the RNC when I was covering the sewage system of McKean County, PA — and never again since I wanted to end the harassing mailings.
But, of note is the Republican outing of a writer I've long admired — Washington Post movie critic Stephen Hunter. His reviews, especially the bad ones, are a pleasure to read — funny and biting in the easy kind of way that only a writer who is not afflicted with Uptight Liberal Syndrome can produce. I should have known.
UPDATE: The list includes a staffer at my latest newspaper job, The Press-Enterprise in Riverside, CA. Mark Benoit chooses which national, state and international wire stories will run in the paper — a position where bias rules.
I've long been among the quite-possibly foolish who believe that an Arab/Muslim society would freely choose peace and democracy. And I've tried to hold that faith despite my careful readings of VDH and Steyn. My misgivings, though, keep strengthening — with the chaos in "Palestine" and Iraq as the picked scabs. Jonah Goldberg puts it well at the end of his latest column:
For many disciples of the "international peace process," it's a matter of faith that the Palestinians just have to want peace, because how else can you have a peace process? For many supporters of the Bush Doctrine, Iraqis have to want democracy, because if they don't, what's the point of having a freedom agenda? But what if these are just beloved Western fictions? We see a well-lighted path to the good life: democracy, tolerance, rule of law, markets. But what if the Arab world just isn't interested in our path? As a believer in the freedom agenda, that's what scares me most.
If freedom and democracy is merely a Western fiction — with the Israeli/Arab citizen, freedom-enjoying-doctorate-degree-earning exception notwithstanding — we are in for a long war. Or a more intense one along the lines of Ann Coulter: Invade their countries and convert them ... if not to Christianity, to Western values.
I've commented before on the Libby kerfuffle. And resisted the temptation to do so again even after the injustice upon him continues. But after perusing the latest R. Emmet Terrell column, I'll just note this almost-perfect summary (and justification for a prompt Bush pardon):
The case was a political scandal that left everyone appearing scandalous -- the White House, Wilson and his anti-war partisans and the press, particularly The New York Times. The Times called for the prosecutors to investigate the source of assumed White House leaks to the press. As a consequence, one journalist was jailed and others were threatened. The Times, in its partisan zeal against the Bush White House, actually managed to reduce freedom of the press and open a new avenue for government coercion of journalists. From the plagiarisms of Jayson Blair to this latest reckless partisanship, the Times continues to be its own worst enemy.
The moral gyrations of The New York Times during this affair would be humorous, if not for the damage they've done for the government's respect for the First Amendment.
Victor Davis Hanson is always brilliant in his analysis of the Middle East. So it's hard to say that that this is somehow exceptional. But it is still worth reading the whole thing. A few excerpts of an important topic we've ignored lately around here:
And after the multifarious failures of Yasser Arafat, the Assads in Syria, Muammar Gaddafi, Gamal Abdel Nasser, Saddam Hussein and other corrupt autocrats, many have, predictably, retreated to fundamentalist extremism. Almost daily, some fundamentalist claims that the killing of Westerners is justified - because of a cartoon, a Papal paragraph or, most recently, British knighthood awarded to novelist Salman Rushdie. The terrorism of Osama bin Laden, Hamas, Hezbollah and the Taliban is as much about nihilist rage as it is about blackmailing Western governments to grant concessions. ...
The poor terrorists of Arafat's old party, Fatah, seem to shriek that they have been out-terrorized by Hamas, and desperately con more Western aid to make up for what has been squandered or stolen.Muslims flock to Europe to enjoy a level of freedom and opportunity long denied at home. But no sooner have many arrived than they castigate their adopted continent as decadent. The ungracious prefer intolerant sharia - denying to their own the very freedom of choice that was given to them by others.
It is hard to deny that VDH treats the Muslim Street and their agitators and indulgers like children. It is equally hard to deny that he is wrong to do so.
UPDATE: For a more depressing (if that's possible) analysis of the Muslim Problem, read the column by my former colleague, Tony Blankley, which reviews the book by his friend and moderate Muslim scholar, Professor Akbar Ahmed. (The book is "Journey into Islam: The Crisis of Globalization"). An excerpt from the column:
His conclusion: Due to both misjudgments by the United States and regrettable developments in Muslim attitudes, "The poisons are spreading so rapidly that without immediate remedial action, no antidote may ever be found." And Dr. Ahmed has always been an optimist.
Seriously. Read the whole thing.
If you lay awake at night worrying about Global Warming, you need to get a grip.
But if you lay awake at night worrying about the over-reaction to the nonexistent crisis, you have good reason.
No, we're not all gonna be stuffed into Priuses (wish I knew someone who knew Latin so he could tell me the plural for Prius). It's much worse than that.
No, what we have to fear is George F'in Bush.
Yep, Mr. "Say No To Kyoto" Bush outlined targets last year to use Ethanol, a corn-based fuel as a gasoline alternative.
So?
Trust me, the consequences of this short-sighted meangless excercise in feel-goodism are frightful. If you are faint of heart, please, do not continue reading.
Ethanol boom may fuel shortage of tequila
Mexican farmers burning agave fields and replanting them with corn
Reuters Updated: 5:16 p.m. PT May 29, 2007
MEXICO CITY - Mexican farmers are setting ablaze fields of blue agave, the cactus-like plant used to make the fiery spirit tequila, and resowing the land with corn as soaring U.S. ethanol demand pushes up prices.
The switch to corn will contribute to an expected scarcity of agave in coming years, with officials predicting that farmers will plant between 25 percent and 35 percent less agave this year to turn the land over to corn.
"Those growers are going after what pays best now," said Ismael Vicente Ramirez, head of agriculture at Mexico's Tequila Regulatory Council.
The large, spiky-leaved agave thrives on high, arid land and can take eight years to reach maturity. To remove the plants, growers cut them at their stems and often burn the fields to remove the roots.
Tequila, drunk in shots and cocktails around the world, is named after a town in the western Mexican state of Jalisco.
Production of agave, from the lily family, soared in recent years as farmers cashed in on record prices brought about by a shortage of the plant at the start of the decade.
Despite rapid growth in tequila drinking, especially overseas, the over-supply of agave has driven prices for the plant to rock-bottom levels.
Many growers have started to abandon the crop in favor of corn, whose price has rocketed in line with massive growth in U.S. demand for ethanol after President Bush outlined targets last year to use the corn-based fuel as a gasoline alternative.
Agave supply is also being hit this year by disease in the fields, partly due to farmers caring less for the plants after prices dropped.
"The problem that we are going to see, perhaps by mid-2008, is that a lot of agave is sick," Agriculture Ministry official Arnulfo del Toro said. "That will have to be taken out and production is going to drop a lot."
Copyright 2007 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters.
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18926019/
Bastards!
I've got to hand it to Ron Rosenbaum: these are about the finest 2,200 words of celebrity "journalism" bashing I've read in days, if not weeks. (Link fixed...apologies.)
Truth is, I haven't read "Esquire" in years — something to do with the realization that I never cared much about the latest sports car, silk shirt or stainless steel nose-hair trimmer. But I'm half tempted to at least peruse the July issue to learn the identity of the hack who wrote, "in post 9/11 America, Angelina Jolie is the best woman in the world because she is the most famous woman in the world — because she is not like you or me."
No, she is certainly not like you or me. She has way more tattoos, first of all. And she's slept with Billy Bob Thornton — which should disqualify anyone as the best anything anywhere.
But I would say that passage tops this one (first paragraph) for over-the-top Esquire hilarity.
Rosenbaum makes a serious point about unserious journalism, though: "[D]oes anybody ever read this stuff? Does anybody take it seriously? Does the writer? It's the Emperor's New Clothes of prose. There's a certain sadness to it, as well. To paraphrase that line in 'Howl': I saw some of the best writers of my generation destroyed by celebrity profiling."
I guess whatever pays the mortgage. Even if there is a war on.
Much of the right is probably cackling right now with the news — reported only by NRO's Byron York — that Hillary got booed by the left nutjobs at today's Take Back America conference. See this video.
But this is quite clever of Hillary. I think she is rightly confident that the left will eventually come around to her campaign. And she can cite the way she defiantly stood up to the booing of the hard left as bolstering her centrist credentials, which is wholly a media fantasy.
It's all part of the master plan. The Clintons are too smart to "risk" confronting the hard left if they were not confident it would pay off later. And if you watch the video, the cheers are much more prevalent than the boos.
Predicting that Michael Moore's latest documentary would be about as accurate as a North Korean news service dispatch is as easy as ... well, predicting that it would be the toast of Cannes. Yet it's still cool to read even moderate, temperate, normally sympathetic columnists like The Sacramento Bee's Daniel Weintraub take it down.
But it's even more fun to read an autopsy of Moore's crockumentary from The New York Post. Expanding on his one-star review in the paper, Kyle Smith says:
Even Moore does not believe what he says, and his films don’t bring about change-—union membership did not skyrocket nor corporate downsizing trickle off after "Roger and Me," there was no movement towards banning guns after "Bowling for Columbine," and John Kerry did not have to fill out any change of address forms in 2004. Moore's documentaries are mere political slapstick that could have been made by a third Farrelly brother or an eighth Stooge. I will pay him the honor of treating him with his own meds. How else can I deal with a film that calls Hillary Clinton "sexy"?
Not bad. But we'll have to wait for Mark Steyn to get to "Sicko" to enjoy a really top-shelf evisceration.
Moore is the master of the half-truth — or as he might put it himself, the "fictitious" war fact. For instance, Roger & Me made it seem like he couldn't get in to see GM CEO Roger Smith. No less an authority than Team Ralph Nader popped that balloon (Moore quizzed him for 90 minutes ... yet the movie shows him interviewing an empty chair). And there's ... well, that's enough. Pick nearly any scene in any movie and you'll see a lie.
This excerpt from Smith's "Sicko" take-down is a great example of how "Inconvenient Truth" seems to always wreck his movies:
In a poll, 85 percent of the French recently said their country is heading in the wrong direction. Right direction? Nine percent. In France in 2003, 15,000 mostly elderly hospital patients died in an August heat wave--because hospitals lack air conditioning and doctors were on vacation. The French parliament blamed the health care system. That’s five times 9/11’s toll, all of it preventable, all of it unlamented by Moore.
Yes. But the French government will send bureaucrats over to do the laundry of women who just gave birth. Priorities are everything in a socialist medical system.
How, (HOW?) I ask you, did I not yet know about THIS?
Yes, CamBot, it's exactly like the bonus Stairway to Heaven scene from Almost Famous. But snarkier!
We should all be joining in a chorus of congratulations to Sir Salman Rushdie. I mean, it's not like we're asking anyone to suffer the existence of a cartoon or anything. It's time that the radicals' reactionary freakouts were tempered by a little inoculation.
Salman Rushdie offends Islam with his pen, yet he survives (so far) an 18-year old fatwa guaranteeing paradise to whomever metes out Allah's punishment. For his bravery, he is knighted on his 60th birthday by Queen Elizabeth II (a much more worthy honorific than the silly knighthoods bestowed upon the likes of Elton John). And the response of the religion of peace is ... sadly typical.
I guess it's nice to see the Union Jack replace Old Glory, at least for one day, as the Muslim Street's hand-warmer. More troubling, however, is that our "ally" in the war on terror, Pakistan, is among the nutjobs encouraging and justifying the death of Rushdie.
"This is an occasion for the [world's] 1.5 billion Muslims to look at the seriousness of this decision," Mohammed Ijaz ul-Haq, [Pakistan's] religious affairs minister, said in parliament."The West is accusing Muslims of extremism and terrorism. If someone exploded a bomb on his body, he would be right to do so unless the British government apologizes and withdraws the 'sir' title," Mr. ul-Haq said.
Mr. ul-Haq later backed off his remarks. Right. He doesn't believe that Muslims are justified to go on murderous rampages if they feel the slightest (even unintentional) offense. That would put him soooo out of step with the Muslim world.
More disheartening, though, is the reaction of Lord Ahmed, whom Tony Blair made a member of Britain's House of Lords.
Two weeks ago the Prime Minister was calling for building relations between the Muslim world and Britain, then suddenly this knighthood is given to a man who has not only been abusive to Muslims, but also to Christians - because he used abusive language towards Jesus Christ...This man not only provoked violence around the world because of his writings, but there were many people who were killed around the world...Forgiving and forgetting is one thing, but honouring the man who has blood on his hands, sort of, because of what he did, I think is going a bit too far.
Thanks, Tony, for accelerating the Islamification of your country. Let's put money on when Britain will back down. I doubt Elizabeth will revoke the knighthood. But I'd put even money on either a high British official or Parliament issuing a condemnation/apology — which will do nothing to clam things.
Daniel Pipes (Hat Tip: Powerline) pegged the question of submission or resistance 17 years ago when he wrote the following in his 1990 book The Rushdie Affair: The Novel, the Ayatollah and the West:
The Satanic Verses affair exposed a reluctance among Western governments, writers and booksellers to fight very hard. It seems scarcely believable, but the West, which had so much greater resources than Iran, especially an Iran recovering from almost a decade of war, ran scared of Tehran. How was it that the American, British, French and German governments could be intimidated by a state possessing little more than clearly defined goals and strength of will?
The question today is the same as it was in 1988 and during last year's Danish cartoons flap. Does the West stand up for its values, or submit to the demands of Islamists?
But on a lighter note, as always, the absurdity of the Muslim Street's overreaction just parodies itself.
Hardliners in Iran revived calls for his murder yesterday. Mehdi Kuchakzadeh, a Tehran MP, declared: “Rushdie died the moment the late Imam [Ayatollah Khomeini] issued the fatwa.”
Hmmm. Then Rushdie must think he's died and gone to heaven, to judge by his new bride — a hot model, actress, author and chef who is about half his age.
A "martyr" for Allah should have it so good.
ABC News reports that Al Qaeda suicide bombers are headed for the United States and Europe. The story, posted on ABC's Blotter blog, relates information from a Pakistani video of an Al Qaeda/Taliban terrorist graduation ceremony this month.
The entire thing strikes me as odd. Obviously, the source video is a propaganda ploy by the Taliban and whatever is left of Al Qaeda designed to make Americans more anxious -- or more cynical -- than they already are. But I'm surprised Al Qaeda has not struck already. It wouldn't be that difficult. America is a big country. Despite the specter of fascism that haunted the United States immediately following the 9/11 attacks, the nation remains relatively open and, yes, free. Total security is, of course, impossible. What we have instead is bureaucracy and faux security. If the suicide bombers are on their way, as ABC reports, then we'd better brace ourselves for the inevitable.
The field continues to grow. First it was Walken. Then came Kotto and some guy named Thompson.
And now... General Zod.
Beats me. I have but two descriptions for the wine I drink: "Hmmm. Delightful!" and "Ach! It burns!" Yet the world of wino-literature is teeming with such offenses as "Sweaty saddles," "caramel-coated autumn leaves," and "Quaffable, but, uh, far from transcendent." Mike Steinberger, who gets paid to pen such stuff, explains today in Slate: "We use this language because it's the best we've got."
Paid too much perhaps.
Boing Boing has more (don't stop at the top - read both of the linked articles, too) on the FBI abusing the Patriot Act to perform illegal searches.
Okay, so they broke the rules about 1000 times. But there won't be a 1001st time, Charlie Brown. You go ahead and kick that (little green) football again.
Happy Fathers' Day!
What have the procreating Monkey men received for this year's Fathers' Day?
I got a great homemade card, a pair of shorts, a travel kit of hygiene product containers for RAGBRAI next month, a tee shirt I'll be able to wear just about nowhere, and best of all... a bag of Chocolate Monkey trail mix!
What did you get?
Arnold is certainly a mixed bag of a governor, especially when he gets Master of the Universe disease on issues like global warming. A little bit too much of the "screw the people, they don't know what's good for them, I'll fix things."
But, at his best, Arnold speaks his mind like no other major politician in America. And sometimes that is a very good thing.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger told a gathering of Hispanic journalists that immigrants should avoid Spanish-language media if they want to learn English quickly."You've got to turn off the Spanish television set" and avoid Spanish-language television, books and newspapers, the Republican governor said Wednesday night at the annual convention of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists.
You're just forced to speak English, and that just makes you learn the language faster," Schwarzenegger said.
"I know this sounds odd and this is the politically incorrect thing to say, and I'm going to get myself in trouble," he said, noting that he rarely spoke German and was forced to learn English when he emigrated from Austria.
Schwarzenegger was responding to a question about how Hispanic students can improve academically. Many journalists for Spanish-language organizations in the audience were surprised by the remarks.
"I'm sitting shaking my head not believing that someone would be so naive and out of it that he would say something like that," said Alex Nogales, president and chief executive of the National Hispanic Media Coalition.
Yes. Naive. How silly of the governor of California to give Hispanic kids the best piece of advice any immigrant could get about how to succeed in America. Spending your days watching Telemundo might be comforting, but not much good in the long run.
And coddling Hispanic immigrants, treating them like children, is rightfully insulting to an immigrant like Arnold. Good for him for speaking so frankly.
Durham County (N.C.) District Attorney persecutor Mike Nifong accepted his guilty verdict on misconduct chargers in the Duke lacrosse case by saying, "I should be disbarred."
Some tar and feathers might also be in order.
Stephen Hunter, one of the best movie reviewers in the country whose analysis and writing talent command respect, gives dire news about The Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer. A taste of the scorn:
Surely the dullest of Hollywood's many comic-book-derived summer movies, "Silver Surfer" is drearier than corn dying in the Iowa sun, slower than molasses in Antarctica. ...So many flaws, so little time. Hmmm, we could waste a few minutes on the total absence of chemistry between the dweebs and dweebette known as the Fantastic Four, and if you still want to go with "Fantastic," maybe there's a lawsuit in your future. Or maybe we could try to discern whose eyes are deader: poor Jessica Alba, who looks like she got a concussion on the field hockey meadow from some 300-pound hormonally confused midfielder with a grudge; or Michael Chiklis, laboring under 700 pounds of rock disguise. Or what about actual actor Ioan Gruffudd, hiding his Welsh gravitas behind a cheesy Yank accent as he affects the enthusiasms of a Real Smart Science Guy Who Turns to Rubber.
Ugh. The trailer looks so cool. The Surfer looks so cool. But maybe after the terrible Spidey 3, the so-so Superman Returns, yet another dud for The Fantastic Four will finally kill off the superhero movie genre. Let's just declare it over now, and appreciate that X-Men 3 was the last good one.
Teddy Kennedy's excreable immigration bill is apparently as hard to kill as zombie.
Senate leaders announced plans Thursday night to revive the White House-backed measure as early as next week, although neither Majority Leader Harry Reid nor his GOP counterpart, Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, issued any predictions the bill ultimately would pass.Instead, they issued a statement that said in its entirety: "We met this evening with several of the senators involved in the immigration bill negotiations. Based on that discussion, the immigration bill will return to the Senate floor after completion" of sweeping energy legislation that has occupied the Senate this week.
In other words, they are working on this bill (again) in secret — no messy hearings, strict limits on amendments, just jam it through. Secret Senate deals do not have a good track record of becoming legislation, so my money is still on no deal. The House, frankly, will simply not allow this to happen. At least that is the prediction of Rep. Peter King on Mark Levin's radio show last week, based on what he hears from Pelosi and other Democrats. And the reason for that opposition? It is too restrictive on "chain migration," the ability of 20 million illegal immigrants to bring in their extended families. Egads!
Meantime, Trent Lott, the smooth-sounding but ill-tempered dolt is not doing his fellow pro-illegal immigration pals any favors by further irritating the loud opposition to this bill. A choice quote sure to make the talk-show rounds:
The Republican whip, Trent Lott of Mississippi, who supports the bill, said: “Talk radio is running America. We have to deal with that problem.”
How foolish of the people to think they run the country. We need to know our place, which is allowing senators to run the country from a back room.
And, say, Trent. How would you go about dealing "with that problem" of broad public opposition? Character assassination? Going on what's left of Air America? Bringing back the Fairness Doctrine? What a sore loser. What a jerk. It was right-wing talk radio that tried to save Trent's sorry ass over that foolish Strom Thurmond comment. It was talk radio that pointed out the double standard the press has for "gaffes" committed by Republicans and those committed by the left's beloved Democrats. Thanks a ton for your gratitude, Trent.
At any rate, the bill will probably reach the floor again before the July 4 recess. If right-thinking people can kill it then, it will likely stay (finally) dead.
When Christopher Hitchens is bad — like when he's running down Mother Theresa — he's really bad. But when he's good, he's very, very good. And he's at his very best writing in Slate about, of all things, the celebrity justice connection between Paris Hilton and Scooter Libby.
After describing Hilton's claim to fame as "one of the least erotic such sequences I have ever seen" during which Hilton's "facial expression [fails to] match even the simulacrum of lovemaking," comes this:
Not content with seeing her undressed and variously penetrated, it seems to be assumed that we need to watch her being punished and humiliated as well. The supposedly "broad-minded" culture turns out to be as prurient and salacious as the elders in The Scarlet Letter. Hilton is legally an adult but the treatment she is receiving stinks—indeed it reeks—of whatever horrible, buried, vicarious impulse underlies kiddie porn and child abuse.
Ouch. Sympathy for Paris? I have it now, thanks to Hitch's gifts
Oh, and that connection to Libby in the brilliant screed? Here:
Perhaps to compensate for its ridiculous decision to put her on Page One on Friday, the New York Times report shifted from the sobbing, helpless child to the more portentous question of another "high-profile defendant." It cited an even more acid piece of creepy populism, in the form of an order from Judge "Reggie" Walton, who poured his witless sarcasm on those who had filed a brief in support of Lewis "Scooter" Libby. Would such "luminaries," sneered Walton, be equally available for other litigants? It's not his job to arbitrate such a question, and he seems not to understand the law, but if his words mean anything, and from a federal judge at that, they appear to mean that to be a public figure is to risk double jeopardy in the courts.
Enjoy every word of a master by reading the whole thing.
HatTip: The Corner, via Instapundit
Lest the day end before we mark the day, today is Flag Day.
I particularly like this image to mark the long-ignored holiday.
Angelina Jolie is promoting a new movie about Daniel Pearl, the late Wall Street Journal Reporter who learned the fatal lesson of the seriousness of jihad — especially against American Jews. Wednesday night's premiere of "A Mighty Heart," which sounds more like a Lifetime Movie Channel title than a major motion picture, was also a benefit for Reporters Without Borders. Well, let's let Fox News tell the story about the borders Jolie puts on the press:
But Jolie turns out to be a mighty hypocrite when it comes to her own freedom of the press. Her lawyer required all journalists to sign a contract before talking to her, and Jolie instructed publicists at first to ban FOX News from the red carpet of her premiere.
To the credit of most media outlets, they declined to sign Jolie's agreement — which banned any journalist from asking anything but glowing, ass-smooching questions about the film.
If that wasn't enough, Jolie also requires that if any of these things happen, "the tape of the interview will not be released to Interviewer." Such a violation, the signatory thus agrees, would "cause Jolie irreparable harm" and make it possible for her to sue the interviewer and seek a restraining order.I am told that USA Today and the Associated Press were among those that canceled interviews, and eventually Jolie scotched all print interviews when she heard the reaction.
"I wouldn't sign it," a reporter for a major outlet said. "Who does she think she is?"
Who does she think she is? Where has this person from a "major media outlet" been for the last 6 years? Jolie is the person who banned all media from the birth of her son in Namibia — while giving the dictator, who declared himself "information minister" during Brangelina's visit, full control over the information. She praised said dictator, despite the fact that the Committee to Protect Journalists notes that the dictator has attacked journalists in his own country and has a "chokehold" on the media.
She is the person who has "know your rights" tattooed on her back (thanks, Drudge):
And she is a woman without the slightest sense of irony.
UPDATE: Here's the link to Jolie's contract, via The Smoking Gun. that Jolie now says was excessive.
Robb poses a compelling question or two:
Are you sure nihilist is the word you're looking for...?The reason I ask ... is that while jihadis may "love death more than life," this seems to be driven by a worldview that rewards that love, not by an angst brought on by the perception of meaningless in the universe.
The motivation of jihadis seems to be different in degree, but not really in kind, from that which motivated Christian crusaders, Samurai of some periods, etc. They believe in something transcendent. It is a very foreign transcendent something, but something nonetheless.
To take another tack, nihilism really seems to depend on some of the same post-Enlightenment underpinnings that led to other Western philosophical ideas that are so hard to engender in the contemporary middle east. Modern democracy, for example.
Nihilism predates Enlightenment. It just took guys like Nietzsche to spread the word. But I digress.
I'm not disposed to let others do my heavy lifting, but it's been a long day and I simply do not have the energy to compose a satisfactory answer. (Also, I'm not quite finished with Andrew Keen's book. Just 49 pages to go!) In lieu, thanks to the magic of Google, I would direct you to this piece by an Objectivist, of all people. If you can see past the invocations of Rand, I think the analogy to the Russian nihilists is apt. And I would highlight and underscore the author's citation of the Columbia Encyclopedia's description of Russian nihilism:
"Nihilism stressed the need to destroy existing economic and social institutions, whatever was to be the nature of the better order for which the destruction was to prepare…" Agreement between different programs of nihilism "was not essential to the immediate objective, destruction. Direct action, such as assassination and arson, was characteristic. Such acts were not necessarily directed by any central authority. Small groups and even individuals were encouraged to plan and execute terroristic acts independently.
Sounds about right to me.
It's summer and that means one thing: bicycle racing. No, it's not time for the Tour yet. But the Race Across America (RAAM) is underway. This year, all but one of the male solo riders are doing the race "traditional" style - that is, with no built in time for rest of any kind. Yes, the clock starts when they leave San Diego and never stops until they reach Atlantic City. It will take the solo winner somewhere in the vicinity of eight or nine days to race coast to coast in this bicycle ultra-marathon. Teams of 4 or 8 rotating riders have done it in just over 5 days.
There's just no way to put into perspective what these uber-riders are accomplishing. You guys know I ride my bike "a lot." Since Sunday I've ridden 126 miles. Since Sunday, the solo leader of RAAM (at the time of this post) has passed the time station at Kim, CO 1173.1 miles into the race. To get a brief sense of the epic scale, check out the video of this morning's ascent of Wolf Creek Pass, remembering that these guys left San Diego three days ago.
Check out the page of race update videos (8 so far) to see the start and the journey across the deserts, and to get a sense of the nuts who do this, the crazies who enable them, and the organization it takes. One guy is even doing this all on a singlespeed bike. The event and its various categories, teams, and solo riders is full of amazing characters, inspirational stories, and charity fund- and awareness-raising.
This couldn't happen to a nicer more deserving guy.
An excerpt from the race-baiting ruiner of innocent lives:
During an initial meeting at Nifong's office, Investigator Benjamin Himan said, he and his supervisor met with the district attorney to review the evidence and status of the case and that Nifong made a comment "to the effect, 'You know we're ******.'"
Certain former Duke lacrosse players are going to make a lot of money of this dope.
That look on his face — the one that says, "My career and life is ruined" — is the face of rare justice.
Mitt Romney, flush with cash, is now embarked on what the New York Times this morning calls the "costliest early advertising push in a presidential campaign."
He's pushing hard in New Hampshire and Iowa.
I say two sets of two words.
It's early.
and
Howard Dean.
And, to expand on that: I think the new primary set up makes spending money on NH and IA fool's gold. And that's a good thing.
In an epoch of darkness, this could not be better news. The cameos on "The Unit" were fine, but not nearly fine enough.
Hey! Look! A blog! Dammit all to Hades, how did I miss this? Oh, yeah, I had a life. I guess that's why Hendrie's getting back on the air. Welcome back, Phil!
Let there be no doubt about the difference between a Lego builder and a Lego artist.
Hasn't the U.S. invaded Albania over less?
Pretty good except for the gay part.
And it was pretty much all "the gay part."
My friend and former colleague Audrey Hudson of The Washington Times reports that CAIR speaks for even fewer Muslims than we suspect — and certainly not the "millions" it claims to.
According to tax documents obtained by The Times, the number of reported members spiraled down from more than 29,000 in 2000 to less than 1,700 in 2006, a loss of membership that caused the Muslim rights group's annual income from dues to drop from $732,765 in 2000, when yearly dues cost $25, to $58,750 last year, when the group charged $35.
Now let's see if the MSM starts giving the cold shoulder to these frauds.
When even the head of Time Warner says "I worry about CNN more than I do about CNN.com." that's a bad sign for old media.
"We're all pretty convinced that news doesn't break on TV anymore," said Eric Bader, senior VP-managing director of digital connections at MediaVest. "Almost everybody across pretty much every economic and age demographic learns of breaking news online, increasingly on mobile."
Yup.
That's the headline of an AP story about how the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the federal government does not have the right to hold "U.S. residents" indefinitely without charging them. I'm a bit conflicted about this ruling, but let's start with some media bias bug-bears.
The ruling was a harsh rebuke of one of the central tools the administration believes it has to combat terror.
Arggh. I am so tired of the media characterizing the fluid and ongoing struggle to determine the legal framework for the war on terror in terms of just "the administration." They do it with the war in general, all but calling it simply "Bush's war on terror" (a favorite phrase of al-Reuters). Yet nations wage war. Not presidents. This is America's war on terror, not Bush's. And this is as much a "harsh rebuke" for "the administration" as it is for the war effort of this country.
And I love that line about "tools the administration believes it has to combat terror." You can almost hear the glee pouring out of the writer's fingers. "Those arrogant BusHiltlerburtons are getting their comeuppance from the court. Ha ha ha." But in fairness, all we have here is a panel of three federal judges who "believe" they are right — but could very well be overruled when the Justice Department appeals to the circuit en banc, and, eventually to the Supremes.
In fact, there is good reason why the Bush administration believes it has these war powers: They have a pedigree going back to World War II and the Civil War. And by any fair assessment, the Bushies are employing war powers — given to the commander in chief at wartime by the U.S. Constitution not the courts — with more restraint than FDR or Lincoln.
There is a place for judicial review of war powers, but they must be used ... well ... judiciously. The Founders never intended the courts to micromanage wars, just as they did not give the Congress the power to execute a war. And judges with a proper respect for precedent should look at American history and give a commander in chief wider berth.
All that said, the courts probably got this one right — only because the Bush administration mishandled the case of Ali al-Marri and let Congress craft a flawed Military Commissions Act. Al-Marri is not a citizen, but was legally in the United States when the feds nabbed him for ties to al-Qaeda. They've had him in custody since December 2001 and have not charged him — not in a military court, and not in our civilian courts. They could not give al-Marri a hearing in a military tribunal, said the 4th Circuit, because the MCA does not include the power to declare legal American residents as "enemy combatants." That's foolish. Mohammed Atta himself was legally in the United States, and proved to be an enemy combatant. The government should have the legal leeway to seize such a man and deal with him to protect Americans.
And the Bushies also could have avoided this dangerous dangerous judicial meddling in the war on terror by treating al-Marri as they did Jose Padilla by transferring his case to special federal court proceedings. The Justice Department did not, so have invited judges to tie the hands of the commander in chief at wartime.
These are sticky legal issues, to be sure. But Congress's flawed MCA and Bush administration foot-dragging has only invited terrorists to exploit America's laws. And one of these days, that exploitation is going to get a lot of people killed.
A fascinating piece in today's New York Times about how militant Muslims justify their way of waging war. A taste:
“He’s American?” one of the militants growled. “Let’s kidnap and kill him.”The room fell silent. But before anyone could act on this impulse, the rules of jihadi etiquette kicked in. You can’t just slaughter a visitor, militants are taught by sympathetic Islamic scholars. You need permission from whoever arranges the meeting.
“He’s my guest,” Marwan Shehadeh, a Jordanian researcher, told the bearded men.
And with that, the American journalist lived to write another day. We've long heard that the jihadists are nihilists who love death more than life. That's true. But, as it turns out, even nihilists have rules of engagement. Specifically:
Rule No. 1: You can kill bystanders without feeling a lot of guilt.
Rule No. 2: You can kill children, too, without needing to feel distress.
Rule No. 3: Sometimes, you can single out civilians for killing; bankers are an example.
Rule No. 4: You cannot kill in the country where you reside unless you were born there.
Rule No. 5: You can lie or hide your religion if you do this for jihad.
Rule No. 6. You may need to ask your parents for their consent.
None of this should come as a revelation. Fact is, the Times story offers a nice summation of what people such as Daniel Pipes, Robert Spencer, Serge Trifkovic, Paul Fregosi, Ibn Warraq and others have been writing for years. For example, "Rule No. 5: You can lie or hide your religion if you do this for jihad." The Times story doesn't use the term specifically, but this is the concept of taquiyya, or religious dissimilation, which is at the core of jihadist ideology and, arguably, Islam itself. (Do follow that link for an interesting discussion on the origin and evolution of the concept.)
I do fear, however, the story will be revelatory to the readers of the Times.
Even Monkey Robb should get a kick out of Andrew Ferguson's op-ed in today's Washington Post about the misuse and abuse of Abraham Lincoln. Everyone -- well, almost everyone -- wants to claim a little bit of Lincoln's legacy. If I were Al Gore, I would stop payment on the ghostwriter's check.
Update: What's all this then? "(I)t seems that Ferguson lied, or at least didn’t have his facts straight. The Anonymous Liberal and Ron Chusid both point out that Gore did use endnotes and that “the Lincoln quote on page 88 has its very own endnote, which reads:”Abraham Lincoln, 'Letter to Col. William F. Elkins, Nov. 21, 1864,' The Lincoln Encyclopedia, ed. Archer H. Shaw (New York: MacMillan, 1950), p. 40."
If you follow the links, you find that, yes, the Lincoln quote is bogus, but Ferguson is a lying neocon hack for accusing Gore of not using footnotes. I'll leave it to Ferguson to defend himself against that particular charge, but doesn't that fact remain that the sainted Al is hinging an argument on a phony Lincoln quote? Footnoted or not, it's still a sham. That, and not Gore's notes/scholarship or lack thereof, was Ferguson's point.
Paris Hilton, screaming for her mommy and yelling "It's not right" in a Los Angeles courtroom today was remanded back to jail.
Not that I'm enjoying another person's misery... Ok. I'm enjoying it a little bit. But only because Hilton and her family are being such snobs in all of this. On the night of the MTV Movie awards a few days ago, Hilton said on the red carpet that she fully accepted responsibility for her lawlessness and was ready to go to prison. And in prison, she was given special treatment right away — no sharing the cell with another inmate, 24-access to the cafeteria, kinder treatment from the guards (undoubtedly on orders from the Lee "Star Whore" Baca, etc. And she breaks down in to hysterics after just THREE DAYS? It's hard to imagine such a sheltered, pampered lifestyle that a few days in the LA County Jail can seem to be the imagined horrors of Gitmo. A real horror would be subjecting the inmates to Paris Hilton's "singing" on her Paris album. (Torture masters at Gitmo, call your office).
While following this story is beyond a silly indulgence — it's fabulously asinine distraction — there are some serious issues of justice here. Hilton and her lawyers — not to mention her family, doctors, and Sheriff Baca himself — are making a mockery of the justice system. It is a good thing that the judge is being firm here and demanding that even "celebutantes" are subject to the law and the unpleasant machinations of justice.
And a doctor on Fox News made what I thought was a very good point. These doctors of celebrities and the wealthy make a mockery of the medical profession when they try to convince a court, and society, that their patient's shock of being introduced to the real world the "little people" live in causes a medically legitimate illness. There are people in LA County Jail right now who have cancer or some other fatal disease, and are dire need of serious psychiatric care. Yet there they sit, rotting in a cell.
Kelsey Grammer served two weeks in the LA County Jail for repeated drunk driving convictions — with nary a complaint. Hilton should do the same.
I was thinking about Monkey David's comment about Paris being ugly. And yet, I've always thought, "ugly like a fox!" I can't quite explain it. I know she's a bit... odd looking, and yet there's a hotness there too. Perhaps it's the hotness that accompanies many things simply slutty. Perhaps it's the polished, tanned, good skin. These things can be hard to quantify or explain.
Then it hit me, not so much an explanation, but a weird connection; a parallel, a truism, if you will. I heard in my head a clip of dialogue from Fargo.
Hooker No. 1: Well, the little guy was kinda funny-lookin'.Paris Hilton is the talentless female Steve Buscemi.
Marge Gunderson: In what way?
Hooker No. 1: I dunno, just funny-lookin'.
Marge Gunderson: Can you be any more specific?
Hooker No. 1: I couldn't really say. He wasn't circumcised.
Marge Gunderson: Was he funny lookin' apart from that?
Hooker No. 1: Yah...
Marge Gunderson: So, you were havin' sex with the little fellow then.
Hooker No. 1: Uh huh...
This Paris Hilton business did not interest me all that much (Lew Rockwell notwithstanding) until yesterday. The New York Post today nicely expands on Zaius's riff. I particularly liked this part:
It goes without saying, but we'll say it anyway: America's jails are full of folks who cry into the night, but are still behind bars when the sun comes up.Day after day after day.
Tough luck for them that they are not Privileged People.
Whatever may happen to Paris Hilton, though, I hope L.A. County Sheriff Lee Baca gets it 10,000 times worse. Baca, of course, can't manage to keep murderers locked up, let alone drunken heiresses. Incredibly, L.A. County voters have voted this hack into office three times. Once might have been excuseable -- he was running against a dead man the first time. But now voters will have to wait until 2010 to be rid of him. Unless a judge manages to do the job first.
Hell, who am I kidding? Baca would probably just let himself out early.
The AP story is optimistic, saying the Senate immigration bill is only dead, "for now." But let's be realistic. Reid pulled the bill because it doesn't have the votes (thanks, to Republicans who finally grew a spine). And the vote-count wasn't even close. Reid needed 60 votes to end debate and get the bill ready for easy passage. Reid got 45 -- with 9 Democrats voting to block the bill. Reid's not going to suddenly find 16 more votes for the bill in the coming few weeks, even with seven Republicans voting to shove this garbage down the throats of Americans.
And how pathetic is Reid? He whined on the Senate floor yesterday: "This is the president's bill. Where are the president's people helping us with these votes?" The president's bill? That will come to news to Teddy Kennedy's staff, which wrote every word in the piece of excrement.
Besides, Bush tried to help. But perhaps it was a poor strategy to paint as knuckle-dragging rubes those Americans who don't believe in the government's ability to orderly process 20-plus million new illegal immigrants overnight — or scoffed at the government's 1325th promise to really, really get tough about border enforcement. Or perhaps the fact that most senators didn't bother to read the 700-plus-page bill before insisting it was just what America needed had a negative effect on public opinion. Or as WSJ's peerless Peggy Noonan put it last week, in the eyes of Bush and the bill's supporters: "They are inclusive and you're not, you cur, you gun-totin' truckdriver's-hat-wearin' yahoo. It's all so complex, and you'd understand this if you weren't sort of dumb." Well said.
This bill is dead, however, for a more practical reason. Senators simply have too many other bills to consider this year. Barbara Boxer is not going to be content sitting on the sidelines while the Senate wastes more time on immigration. She's got to save the world from global warming. And Teddy Kennedy has to raise the minimum wage. And Schumer has to take our guns away. And Leahy has to give terrorists more rights and access to civilian federal courts. Busy, busy bees.
No. That's it for a "comprehensive" immigration bill until after the 2008 election.
UPDATE: A Senate source tells The Corner that this is not over. That Reid wants to get something done. Several Republicans are poised to join the dark side, etc. Maybe all that's true, but I'm skeptical. I'd be shocked if the Senate wastes more time whacking this dead horse.
UPDATE 2: Whaddya know. Now another Senate aide emails K-Lo at The Corner to, well, agree with me. As the aide said: "Reid just didn’t respond to questions about whether he would ever bring the immigration bill up again or why not. He actually argued that a censure vote on AG Gonzales was a more urgent matter for the nation."
Paris Hilton was released from jail Thursday because of a medical condition that warranted her spending the rest of her 40-day sentence at home with a not-so-stylish monitoring bracelet. It is apparently not because of venereal disease. No, Hilton's shrink convinced a judge Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca that the strain of staying in a 12-foot by 8-foot cell for five three days was too much for her (or maybe it was because they were playing Brad Pitt's Troy on the communal television). She reportedly cried all night her first two nights in jail, and was forced to eat franks and beans for dinner and bologna sandwiches for lunch. The horror!
This stinks. I mean, really. Is five days three days in the poke long enough? How will Hilton's much anticipated journal of woe be more than a just a disappointing pamphlet now? All we'll have to remember this whole episode by is the glamorous mugshot above?
By the way, it took exactly 74 seconds for The Rev. Al Sharpton to cry racism. For once ... I can't believe I'm writing this, he may have a point.
Jail is no doubt a serious bummer that can cause much mental stress — not to mention unwanted ... er ... amorous friendships. But by the Hilton standard, why not release everyone from jail and let them serve their sentences at home?
No doubt that in Paris' case, the invitation list for her lavish welcome-home party is already in the text-message ether. The martinis will flow like a champagne fountain for the can't miss event of the year.
Paris is out of jail, and normalcy will return to America.
UPDATE: The judge who sentenced Paris to 40 days in jail, and the prosecutor, object to her release. It is very unusual for a judge to publicly criticize another judge. It is even less unusual for a judge to reverse a decision because another judge criticized his decision.
UPDATE 2: Paris was reportedly released from jail because she was feared to be suicidal. Seriously. Five days in jail and the most spoiled woman on earth was thinking of killing herself? It's hard to know whether to make a joke about that fact, or just let it stand pathetically on its own.
The Brit tabloids say Paris "conned" doctors into letting her out. And a sign of Paris's supposed depression is that she was refusing to eat. Um....doc? Yeah. Refusing to eat is what Paris usually does. That's not depression. That's Paris ensuring that the pork and beans you feed her doesn't make her look fat. That wouldn't be "hot."
UPDATE 3: Paris has been ordered to come to court at 9:00 a.m. PDT this morning (Friday). Oh, the media frenzy is going to be something. I expect live OJ-chase-type coverage.
UPDATE 4: The media have staked out Paris' West Hollywood mansion — both on the street and from the sky in choppers — because she won't actually be coming to court at 9 a.m., but will participate in a conference call. Sheriff's are reportedly on the ready to take her back to jail.
UPDATE 5: Fox 11 News in LA reports that the LAPD have "essentially shut down West Hollywood." Blockades everywhere. This is sooooo silly. And Paris, when this is all over, will be even more famous and insufferable than ever. Ugh.
UPDATE 6: They've called off the conference call hearing. Paris will have to appear in person in court after all.
Gov. Arnold said Wednesday that Bush is "very courageous" for pushing the piece of crap immigration bill that is thiiiiis close to passing in the Senate.
Hmmm. Courageous isn't the word I'd use for a bill that includes a provision that give amnesty to felons and those who have been ordered deported. I'm surprised my clueless and tone-deaf governor didn't also say the No Mexican Left Behind Act was "fantastic."
Good news? Despite all the lamentations and rending of clothing on the right -- and maybe because of it -- the bill might be on the verge of dying Thursday (according to Drudge at 12:20 a.m. Thursday).
UPDATE: The Corner is characterizing this AP story as a sign that the immigration bill may fall.
Rudy scored tonight, from what I read. I doubt the Mayor is sincere, but he's talking the right language on the issues that actually matter.
Update: Mark Steyn revises and extends his comments from yesterday. I think most sensible people understand the Giuliani is unsound on liberty. And yet his appeal to safety- and comfort-seeking Americans will be difficult to resist.
Modesty lives! How about that. (Hat tip: Lisa.) Hope springs eternal, and all that. The freaks and nihilists have not won the day after all.
Somewhere, I hope, Wendy is collecting nice royalties.
Update Oh, wow. Shalit has penned a sequel, due to hit stores later this month. Good for her. "A Return to Modesty" was first-rate. And, of course, Miss Modesty has a blog. Bookmark it, fellas.
I'm a bit more sympathetic to Andrew Keen's thesis than my friend David appears to be. I don't have the book yet -- I just ordered it from Amazon -- but I did locate the Weekly Standard piece that inspired it.
Would David disagree with the following?
The consequences of Web 2.0 are inherently dangerous for the vitality of culture and the arts. Its empowering promises play upon that legacy of the '60s--the creeping narcissism that Christopher Lasch described so presciently, with its obsessive focus on the realization of the self.Another word for narcissism is "personalization." Web 2.0 technology personalizes culture so that it reflects ourselves rather than the world around us. Blogs personalize media content so that all we read are our own thoughts. Online stores personalize our preferences, thus feeding back to us our own taste. Google personalizes searches so that all we see are advertisements for products and services we already use.
Instead of Mozart, Van Gogh, or Hitchcock, all we get with the Web 2.0 revolution is more of ourselves.
Don't believe it? Spend some time on MySpace. Or what about this?
If you democratize media, then you end up democratizing talent.
Albert Jay Nock made precisely the same point more than three-quarters of a century ago. To wit:
I am in favor of having everybody able to read. I believe in the principle of it; I am all for equalitarianism in literacy. Yet when my theory is taken up and measurably put into effect, as it is in this country, just see the result -- the quantity-production of a contemptible journalism, a contemptible literature, an unconscionable blatant puffing of both, and a corresponding degradation of literary values, literary tastes, literary habits... My cardinal theory of society as shown by the substance of what I read, has set this course straight towards ignorance and vulgarity, while quantity-production salesmanship in literature -- an offshoot of my theory -- has succeeded in making ignorance and vulgarity arrogant.
What could better describe the bulk of media, new and old?
While I enjoy the freedoms that blogging affords, I have never fully subscribed to the overheated theories propogated by the likes of Reynolds and Hewitt. Eventually, expertise wins. And if it doesn't, we're in trouble. Glenn and Hugh understand this, but understate it, too.
I plead guilty to at least one of the sins that Keen ascribes to bloggers. I do "cut-and-paste" often (see above; although I did type in that Nock quote all by myself). I haven't read Jeff Jarvis's critique yet either, so I may have more to say. (My flash reaction, however, is that, yes, he should debate. Be a man, for Chrissakes.) I recall having a similar fight with none other than George Gilder about 10 years ago, when I was but a child. I took the Nock line then, and Gilder took a proto-Web 2.0 line. I still think I was right and he was wrong. It was ever thus.
Just read David Weigel's cavalcade of snark over at Reason's Hit and Run blog. MUCH more entertaining.
So, why would you pay $15 for the DRM-crippled "double disc version" of the new Paul McCartney album on iTunes when you can get a sonically superior, DRM-free copy on eMusic for a fraction of the cost?
I couldn't think of a reason, either. In fact, as I'm not a McCartney fan, I didn't even consider buying the CD or the iTunes release. Yet, here I am, 13 downloads poorer in my eMusic account. I can't wait to find out who is the next eMusic licensing coup.
"Millions and millions of exuberant monkeys ... are creating an endless digital forest of mediocrity," writes some idiot.
Evidently, there was a debate tonight among Democrats who aspire to be president of these United States. I didn't watch the thing. But from what I hear, some guy got arrested and Elizabeth Kucinich was super fine.
Dr. Zaius the other day noted President Bush's latest slap at Americans who understand an abysmally bad bill that the president clearly does not. Why, even Hugh Hewitt is ready to burn his "Harriet Miers Fan Club Card" over this stinker of an immigration bill!
Hugh wonders whether this bill can be saved. Maybe the better question is whether Bush's party can be saved? Peggy Noonan has it just about right:
The White House doesn't need its traditional supporters anymore, because its problems are way beyond being solved by the base. And the people in the administration don't even much like the base. Desperate straits have left them liberated, and they are acting out their disdain. Leading Democrats often think their base is slightly mad but at least their heart is in the right place. This White House thinks its base is stupid and that its heart is in the wrong place.For almost three years, arguably longer, conservative Bush supporters have felt like sufferers of battered wife syndrome. You don't like endless gushing spending, the kind that assumes a high and unstoppable affluence will always exist, and the tax receipts will always flow in? Too bad! You don't like expanding governmental authority and power? Too bad. You think the war was wrong or is wrong? Too bad.
But on immigration it has changed from "Too bad" to "You're bad."
Eventually, the battered wife files for divorce.
The Republican Party, ridiculous as it often is, cannot be defined by the Bushes. The party needs to be defined by its base. Here's Noonan's conclusion: "Now conservatives and Republicans are going to have to win back their party. They are going to have to break from those who have already broken from them. This will require courage, serious thinking and an ability to do what psychologists used to call letting go. This will be painful, but it's time. It's more than time."
Amen.