The Red Sox reclaimed first place in dramatic fashion yesterday. Dave McCarty's twelfth-inning bomb into the centerfield bleachers (Did Terry Francona really give Dave McCarty the green light to swing away on a 3-0 count?), coupled with the Yankees' loss to the Devil Rays, gave the Sox a half-game lead in the AL East.
As I depart Boston today, it is difficult to describe how fanatical the local feeling for the Red Sox is right now. Maybe it's hometown bias, but I don't think there is another professional sports franchise that commands as much passion as the Red Sox do. The Canadiens? The Packers? The Redskins? No, I think Red Sox Nation is the strongest.
A movie about Red Sox fans, entitled Still, We Believe, is now playing in New England theaters. The Boston Globe's paperback nonfiction bestsellers list currently features three baseball books: David Halberstam's The Teammates, Michael Lewis's Moneyball, and Jerry Remy's Watching Baseball, which owns the top spot. Yesterday's game was the 90th straight sellout at Fenway, the 3rd longest streak in baseball history and the longest streak by a team without a gimmicky new park.
In Boston, baseball players are gods who go only by their first names--Nomar, Manny, Pedro. And as today's makeup game with the Orioles gets underway, things are looking up. Nomar played in a minor league game yesterday. Trot is weeks away. Young players such as Kevin Youkilis, and role players such as Brian Daubach, Mark Bellhorn, and Dave McCarty, are coming through. Just wait 'til...this year.
Today, we remember the men and women who have given their lives in wars and conflicts for America. With more than 800 dead soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines in Iraq, this year's Memorial Day hits especially close to home for many Americans.
Today, I remember Gregory MacDonald. I served with Greg in the Marine Reserves in the 4th Light Armored Reconaissance Battalion, Bravo Company. After eight years of service that saw not a single day of combat, I was honorably discharged in 2002. Greg, who studied Middle Eastern affairs at American University and tended the bar at the Zoo Bar in Woodley Park, remained with my unit and was sent to Iraq. While driving to the aid of other Americans who had come under attack last June, the LAV Greg served as a gunner for overturned. Greg was crushed and apparently died instantly.
Greg MacDonald was an awesome guy. Perhaps some would find it curious that Lance Corporal MacDonald's career ambition outside of the Marine Corps was to help foster peace--especially in the Middle East. We both grew up outside of Boston, so when our paths first crossed in a Marine unit in Maryland we discovered we naturally had a lot in common. Politically, however, we had very little in common but this strangely (or maybe not so strangely) pushed us into more conversations. If Greg read the posts on this blog, he'd probably disagree with most of them. His political views were well left of the conservative norm in the Marine Corps, and yet he was very popular with his fellow Marines. He opposed the war in Iraq, but recognized that his job as a Marine was to carry out the policy, not make it. He did his duty and made the ultimate sacrifice for our country. He is a hero and I am proud to have known him.
I write all this because Greg MacDonald should be remembered. The servicemen and women who we memorialize today shouldn't be seen as names carved into a stone or numbers on a tally sheet. They were real people, with real lives, real families, and real friends. War exacts a terrible cost. Whenever I think of how terrible that cost is, Gregory MacDonald immediately comes to mind.
One lamentable consequence of the rise of the Internet is the decline of used book stores. I first noticed this trend while in San Diego for Marine training several years ago. While exploring the shops depicted on a flyer promoting used book stores within the city, all I came across were going-out-of-business signs and empty storefronts. In the short time between the printing of the flyer and my reading the flyer, numerous stores had shut down operations. Even in highly literate locales, such as Harvard Square and Washington, DC, it's becoming increasingly difficult to find a used book store.
On the Internet you're almost guaranteed to find what you are looking for. In a used book store, you're almost guaranteed to find what you are not looking for.
I had some success finding what I wasn't looking for tonight at McIntyre and Moore Booksellers in Davis Square in Somerville, Massachusetts. This is why I prefer shopping over the counter to shopping over the world wide web. Among the tomes I stumbled upon were a UK first-edition of James Burnham's The Managerial Revolution, a sturdy hardback of Thomas Sowell's Marxism, and an obscure book from the 1960s called A Passport to Utopia: Great Panaceas in American History. In fact, my wife and I bought a foot-long stack of books to qualify for a 10% discount--an imaginative deal you'd never find at Barnes and Noble, Borders, Amazon, or any other book-selling behemoth.
Like Second Story Books in the DC-area, McIntyre and Moore is among the last of a dying breed. Inspired by this troubling phenomena, I've created the Endangered Business List. I mean no disrespect to those on the Endangered Species List. But with all apologies to the Black-Browed Albatross and the Boreal Felt Lichen, used book stores have played a more meaningful role in my life than snakes, bugs, and weeds. Rather than a government protection scheme, the Endangered Business List will merely be an instrument to encourage my readers to frequent second-hand book shops. When we save used book stores, we will move on to protecting other endangered but worthy businesses: ice-cream men, drive-in movie theaters, pizza parlors run by real Italians, etc.
OK, who's with me?
The Saudi Arabian hostage standoff has ended. If you're keeping score, the Saudi government and the terrorists disagree on the particulars. A website linked to the terrorists claims that most of the kidnappers escaped and, "The holy warriors didn't leave any of the hostages alive. All those infidels and Crusaders who were in their hands were liquidated." The Saudis say that they killed the terrorists and that only as many as sixteen hostages died in the standoff and rescue.
While the results of the assault are in dispute, the radical Islamists' intentions are clear. The terrorists allegedly told one man living in the compound, "We only want to hurt Westerners and Americans. Can you tell us where we can find them here?" Another explained: "They said, 'You are American,' and I told them I am an American Muslim. They said, 'We do not kill Muslims.'" In addition to being killers, the terrorists are liars too. Several Muslims, including a ten-year-old Egyptian boy, were killed in the raid.
The religion of peace strikes again. This time they attack from the mecca--so to speak--of the religion of peace. Saudi Arabian gunmen felled several people, including an American, and took dozens of hostages. Apparently, the terrorists are now attempting to separate the Muhammedans from the folks who don't practice the religion of peace. Since the captors subscribe to the tenets of the religion of peace, the captives need not worry.
Taking after their most famous fellow countryman's love for animals, Austria has passed a stringent new animals rights law. Among other things, the bill outlaws caging chickens, using lions at circuses, and placing puppies in hot pet-shop windows. Austrian Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel maintains, "Austria is taking the role of pioneer." Pioneer of what? Foolishness?
Someone named Andreas Sax, who leads an animal rights group called Four Paws, calls the law "the first step in the right direction." What are steps two, three, and four? Legalizing interspecies marriage, banning animal crackers, and making humans the pets of dogs?
I made the drive with Molly from Washington, DC to Boston last night. So for the next couple of days I'll be posting from the Boston area and, with any luck, Cape Cod. Gas at the Vince Lombardi rest stop, the natural midway rest point between DC and Boston, cost $1.97. I asked the attendant--state law forbids you from pumping your own gas in New Jersey--for the cheap stuff, and he replied that there is no more cheap stuff. That's too true. Tolls have gotten out of hand as well. We paid $24 in tolls, with Maryland, Delaware, and New York earning my contempt for gauging travellers. Anyhow, the state of Connecticut--the only state on the trip not to charge a toll--decided to do most of its road repairs on Memorial Day weekend, which seriously delayed our trip. I've made this drive dozens of times, arriving in as little as six hours and twenty-one minutes, and as much as eleven hours. Last night the trip took us almost eight hours, which is about average. We completed our journey at around 3:30 a.m.
"Hollywood hates authentic Christians, because Christianity is diametrically opposed to its worldview--a dogma reflected in the very deep thoughts of Michael Moore, Tim Robbins and Barbra (color me stupid) Streisand," Don Feder writes in a piece called "Why Hollywood Hates Christianity." The jumping off point for the article is the new movie Saved, which follows a long line of blasphemous or Christian-bashing Hollywood productions--Priest, Dogma, The Last Temptation of Christ, Stigmata, etc. Tinseltown wasn't always thus. On the Waterfront, Boys Town, The Bells of St. Mary's, and numerous other mid-century classics featured Catholic priests, for instance, in a positive light. If Hollywood hates Christianity, is it too far of a jump to say Hollywood hates America? After all, more than nine in ten Americans claim a belief in God, about two-thirds claim membership in a church, mosque, or synagogue, and 87% support retaining the words "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance. If you hate Christianity, it's hard to love America.
Please allow me to introduce myself. I am from Nigeria and have stumbled upon a sizable treasure, but I am having trouble extracting it from the country. If you only email me your bank account number, then we'll both be rich. Debt consolidation? Want to increase your manhood by four inches? Click here for the best interest rates anywhere!
Chances are you've received such a message in your inbox. Actually, chances are you've received several hundred such messages in your inbox.
Howard Carmack of Buffalo was sentenced to three-and-a-half to seven years in prison today for sending out 825 million bulk emails. If I can track down his email address, we can all send him a sympathy card or two--or 9,000.
The pot is calling the kettle black. The Arab League has denounced the United States for "crimes and inhumane and immoral practices" in Iraq.
The only thing that seem to arouse the humanity of Arab leaders, curiously, are the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison. Egypt, Pakistan, and Jordan, for instance, offer leniency to perpetrators of "honor killings." An independent press free from government meddling is illegal in nearly every Arab and Islamic country. Sudanese Muslims enslave about 100,000 non-Muslim Sudanese. Converting to Christianity is punishible by beheading in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Anyone who follows the news could probably list numerous other offenses against the dignity of mankind that occur by force of law in Muslim nations.
Some only recognize human rights abuses when the oppressors come from one group and the oppressed from another. So, the mistreatment of Africans at the hands of white settlers in Rhodesia or South Africa sends such people into a fury, but their mistreatment by, say, Idi Amin or Mengistu Haile Mariam elicits yawns. Oppressors and oppressed come in all skin shades, and often times share the same ethnicity.
Human rights activist Paul Marshall finds the Arab world's horror at Abu Ghraib hypocritical, and notes in an article today that "members of the Arab League should be questioned, exposed, challenged, mocked, pilloried, castigated, shamed, and humiliated for their vile abdication of any real human responsibility."
Seriously guys, look in the mirror.
By now you've heard the story of Jessica Cutler, the twentysomething Hill staffer who blogged about her purported sexual exploits with the rich and powerful. At work on the government's dime, Cutler posted the seedy aspects of her life for all the world to see. And predictably, all the world saw and her boss--Senator Mike DeWine--fired her.
On her site called Washingtonienne, Cutler claims to be sleeping with six different men. She says she often got paid for it. Her beaus, she insists, include a Bush-appointed government official, among other movers and shakers.
A few things amaze me about this story. First is Cutler's blase attitude about being a leech. "If you don't like or care about your job, what's the big deal?" Cutler told the Washington Post. The big deal is that you wasted the taxpayers' money and disgraced the seat of American democracy. Second, by any definition Cutler is a prostitute. Yet, she seems to run from this label and rationalizes her behavior by claiming that it is somehow common. She states: "A lot of my friends are way worse than me." Third, how did it get to where a woman brags about being a whore and then wins celebrity rather than shame? Finally, who would pay this woman $400 to have sex? Did her suitors get a free haircut too? She's not ugly, but $400? C'mon.
It took 34 years, but Berkeley police have finally arrested someone for the murder of Officer Ronald Tsukamoto. An assassin gunned down the rookie cop in 1970 for no other reason, apparently, than to kill a policeman. Amidst talk of more arrests, the Berkeley police cuffed 55-year-old Don Juan Warren Graphenreed, a former Black Panther. Like Claude Rains' "Captain Louis Renault," "I'm shocked, shocked."
Should he be convicted, Graphenreed will join a long list of Panthers currently incarcerated for murdering cops: H. Rap Brown, Mumia Abu-Jamal, Eddie Conway, and "Chip" Fitzgerald, to name a few. Sure, the Black Panthers gave out free breakfasts and conducted education programs for young people. Other activities their members partook in include drug dealing, rape, and murder.
There are some bad dudes, and a dudette, on the loose. Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert Mueller alerted the nation to the pictures of seven people they believe "pose a real and present danger to U.S. interests around the world."
Sometimes the police utilize psychics to crack cases, so I'm offering my own intuitive powers (I did predict the past four Super Bowl champions) to help crack the case.
My sense is if law enforcement scours every massage parlor in the Tampa-St. Pete area, they will have no problem finding this guy. Shouldn't Ms. Siddiqui be wearing a mask? My intuition tells me that Adnan Shukrijumah frequents several danceclubs on Landsdowne Street in Boston. This guy has spent the last few years following Phish around the country. I'm thinking that this fellow drives a taxi in the Falls Church, Virginia area. I'm drawing blanks on two of the wanted men. Their auras doesn't speak to me the way the others' do.
Should my sixth sense fail, I'm counting on my loyal readers to spot these ne'er-do-wells and point them out to the police. Hopefully the pictures will help you in that worthy endeavor.
It was just a matter of time. Former Bush administration envoy to the Middle East Anthony Zinni has come out in a more vocal way against the Bush Administration's Iraq policy, and already the lackeys for the war are hitting below the belt, way below the belt. The charge against Zinni? Anti-Semitism.
In a particularly base and poorly written piece of invective called "Protocols of the Elders of Zinni," Richard Baehr quotes not a single word of Zinni's to support his very serious charge. If someone's conspiratorial hate is comparable to an anti-Semitic screed as vile as The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, you'd think you could find one blatantly anti-Semitic statement from that person. If he knows something we don't, Baehr refuses to share it.
The basis of his charge, it seems, is that General Zinni is critical of certain people working in the Bush administration who happen to be Jewish. "And Zinni names names--in particular the group he calls the 'neocons,' naming five men: Doug Feith, Paul Wolfowitz, Lewis Libby, Richard Perle, and Ellot [sic] Abrams, as the key ideologues who caused this war to occur," Baehr writes. I'll take his word that these men are Jewish, but doesn't Zinni also criticize Bush, Rumsfeld, and Cheney?
"The left was happy to call Pat Buchanan on the rug for similar anti-Semitic slanders during the first Gulf War," Baehr claims. The left was wrong then. Baehr is wrong now. Anti-Semitism is real. By using the charge to smear political opponents rather than label people who actually hate Jews, boys who cry wolf like Richard Baehr make elements of society less apt to believe the real thing when it comes along.
Novelist Tom Clancy has come out as a skeptic of the war in Iraq. The co-author with General Anthony Zinni of a new nonfiction book, Battle Ready, also revealed that he nearly threw down with neoconservative hawk Richard Perle.
"He was saying how (Secretary of State) Colin Powell was being a wuss because he was overly concerned with the lives of the troops," maintained the author of The Hunt for Red October, Patriot Games, and other bestsellers. "And I said, 'Look ..., he's supposed to think that way!' And Perle didn't agree with me on that. People like that worry me."
They worry me too.
Phish is breaking up. Their biggest fans are really bummed, but keep forgetting why. The group's demise is certain to preface a large influx of bead-sellers, merchants of cheese sandwiches, and pot dealers into the mainstream economy.
Iraq, Marine general Anthony Zinni declared on Hardball, was a "blunder."
"I think they misled [Bush] on what to expect--the rationale, the elements for the strategy, to the situation on the ground," Zinni said of Bush's advisors. "It wasn't going to be a pie-in-the-sky welcome in the streets with flowers." If anyone would know this, it would be Zinni. A combat veteran, Zinni led American forces in the Middle East and served as President Bush's envoy to the region.
Hardball host Chris Matthews asks: "If we were misled in terms of how easy it would be for us to go into Iraq? Who should be accountable? [Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Stephen] Cambone, [Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas] Feith, [Deputy Defense Secretary Paul] Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld?
General Zinni answers: "Somebody ought to be held accountable. The president, the country, and the troops weren't served well. Why not all of them?"
Why not?
Up north, Canada's ruling government has called for new elections. This comes at a very inopportune time. Since the beginning of the year, support for the Liberal Party has dropped 23% in the polls. While it's unlikely the Conservatives will overtake the Liberals, the Liberals will almost certainly lose seats in Parliament (I am of course referring here to a legislative Parliament, and not Parliament-Funkadelic). Canada's elections will be held June 28.
E.L. Doctorow, who apparantly had some success as a writer before he became a flunky for the free-Mumia crowd, was booed for turning his commencement address at Hofstra University into an anti-Bush rant. Peggy Noonan has an interesting take on the controversy in today's Wall Street Journal.
"Fast Eddy Doctorow told a story at the commencement all right, and it is a story about the boorishness of the aging liberal," Noonan writes. "An old '60s radical who feels he is entitled to impose his views on this audience on this day because he's so gifted, so smart, so insightful, so very above the normal rules, agreements and traditions."
Noonan's point is that unlike a guest lecturer or the guy with the megaphone at the campus rally, commencement speakers have a captive audience. It's uncouth to politicize a day that's supposed to be about the students.
"I am a conservative," the former Reagan speechwriter explains. "I have spoken at three college commencements. Each time I spoke I talked about the students, and the life ahead of them, and the nature of their achievement. I spoke to them about them. I didn't tell them Jimmy Carter is a retard or Bill Clinton is a pig."
Mr. Unpopularity did a lot tonight to become Mr. Popularity once again.
President Bush delivered an excellent prime-time speech from the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. His overall message: we're getting out of Iraq and turning the country over to its citizens. He used the phrase "full sovereignty" several times to describe post/6-30 Iraq. He gave Iraqis the message, "We have no interest in occupation." He told the insurgents that we will aggressively combat any force seeking to promote anarchy and undermine Iraqi democracy. And he promised elections and the formation of a new constitution within two years.
"All along," Bush remarked, "some have questioned whether the Iraqis are ready for self-government." I am such a skeptic, but I hope the President's optimism proves right.
The Brooklyn Bridge turns 121 today. When it opened, it was double the length of any other suspension bridge. The span's engineer, John Roebling, was killed making the it. His son, Washington Roebling, took over the construction of the bridge and was paralyzed by the bends in the process. The Brooklyn Bridge is an engineering marvel, and ushered in more than a century of even more amazing American building projects--the Panama Canal, the Empire State Building, the Hoover Dam, the Interstate Highway System, the Big Dig.
More than three-fourths of the states have capital punishment laws on the books. The most popular method is lethal injection, but the noose and the electric chair remain options in some locales. Even Nevada now rejects Nevada Gas.
Since colonial times, about 15,000 people have been executed in America. Since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in the mid 1970s, 910 people have been executed in the U.S. Three states--Texas, Virginia, and Alabama--normally account for more than half of all annual U.S. executions. Last year, the 38 death-penalty states executed 65 people. Thus far, the states have executed 25 people in 2004.
George Bush's popularity skyrocketed after leading America to victory in Iraq. But the president's support was a mile wide and an inch deep, and his poll numbers fell back down to earth the following year. Now his son finds himself in the exact same position. George W. Bush finds more people disapproving than approving the way he's handling the presidency.
The leaf doesn't fall too far from the tree.
There's a fine line between loyalty and bad judgment. We see examples of this in the greatest show in pop culture and the greatest show in political culture.
Tonight's incredible episode of The Sopranos (spoilers follow), and the incredible drama that's been taking place regarding the Pentagon's blunders, can teach some valuable lessons on the limits of loyalty.
Adrianna's loyalty to Christopher got her killed. Christopher's loyalty to Tony is sending him to Hell.
Adrianna confided in Christopher about the FBI's threat to send her to prison if she refused to cooperate. Christopher responded by punching her, swearing at her, and nearly choking her out. Adrianna, nevertheless, maintains her loyalty to her fiance to the death. Christopher admits to Tony that he is back using heroin. Tony responds by repeatedly kicking his mob apprentice. No matter what rotten things Christopher does to Adrianna, no matter what rotten things Tony does to Christopher, loyalty remains. Adrianna dies because of her loyalty. Christopher will burn for his.
President Bush may lose the White House because of his blind loyalty to Donald Rumsfeld and others in the Pentagon who've made mistake after mistake without any institutional repercussions. The Secretary of Defense and his underlings miscalculated the situation in post-war Iraq. The prisoner-abuse scandal happened on their watch. They promoted Ahmad Chalabi as an ally, but he is a rogue and a charlatan who aids our enemies. Their pronouncements regarding Iraqi connections to 9/11, Hussein's nuclear weapons program, and the tyrant's weapons of mass destruction, at best, seem wildly exaggerated. How many chances do you get?
Adrianna's blind loyalty hastened her death. President Bush's blind loyalty may hasten his political demise.
Aristotle confessed his loyalty to Plato, but proclaimed that his love for truth overrode his friendship. "We love both the truth and our friends," Aristotle famously said, but "piety requires us to honor the truth first." Wise counsel for anyone.
The Pew Research Center released a study showing that among national press organizations, 34% of those working in journalism identify themselves as liberals, while only 7% identify themselves as conservatives. At the local level, the disparity is 23% to 12%. The rest of America overwhelmingly label themselves "conservatives" rather than "liberals."
My sense is that if party identification were used rather than one's ideological leanings, the gap would be even wider. "Liberal" is a subjective term, while "Democrat" is an objective one. While many conservatives proudly embrace that label, the word "liberal" is a source of embarrassment for many, well, liberals.
Liberals are in denial. They believe themselves centrists, perhaps because they associate exclusively with other liberals. There's the old cliche of the Manhattan liberal wondering how Richard Nixon won re-election: "But everybody I know voted for McGovern." A parochial mind believes his norm to be the norm.
Years ago, I heard Robert Novak tell the story of Margaret Carlson's refusal to say "From the Left, I'm Margaret Carlson" when signing off on Crossfire. For the uninitiated, saying "From the Left" or "From the Right" is the obligatory Crossfire ending for the respective hosts. But Carlson balked, believing herself a moderate.
This is the condition that afflicts most of the media: Margaret Carlson Syndrome. Surrounded by like-minded people, they get the impression that their little world is a microcosm for the rest of the country. It isn't. Enveloped to their left and right by, for the most part, other liberals, they get the impression that they're centrists. They're not.
Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 won the Cannes Film Festival's Palme d'Or. For you rubes, that means his film won top honors.
Here's the question: Does this elevate the stature of Michael Moore, or degrade the stature of the Cannes Film Festival?
Floyd Mayweather, Jr. dominated DeMarcus Corley to win a twelve-round decision in Atlantic City tonight. Mayweather sent "Chop Chop" to the canvas twice, and fought in a brawling style despite his advantages as a boxer. He fought Corley's fight and still dominated. That's how good he is.
Even before Antonio Tarver's upset knockout of Roy Jones last week, I believed Mayweather to be the best pound-for-pound fighter in the world. HBO aired Tarver's second round KO of Jones tonight, too. Tarver landed the perfect punch (How else, but by perfection, do you beat Roy Jones?). Tarver also has a mouth to rival his left hook.
When the referee asked the obligatory "Any questions?" Tarver shocked everybody by declaring: ""I got a question. You got any excuses tonight, Roy?" Sure, Tarver's perfect punch got people talking about him. But like Muhammed Ali and Ray Leonard, his mouth will put dollar bills in his bank account. He beat Roy in the ring, and I think we'll see, he'll also beat Roy at selling a fight.
Viacom is reportedly looking to launch a gay-themed television channel. They should save their money. They already own such a network. It's called MTV. It used to play videos. Now it promotes homosexuality and other hot-button causes.
Friday night it aired something called, "I Do, But I Can't," a heavy-handed documentary aiming to generate support for so-called gay marriage. MTV pointed out that although only 22% of the country supports marriage rights for gays, 55% of its viewers do. That's about as surprising as finding out that most people who watch BET support racial preferences.
The program engaged in such amateurish tricks as playing ominous music when proponents of traditional marriage were shown on the screen, and opting for a more upbeat soundtrack when proponents of homosexuality appeared. The documentary displayed the Emancipation Proclamation, the 19th Amendment, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the 26th Amendment in a succession that led to homosexual unions. Those events that spread democracy, this mental gymnastics suggests, preface the subversion of democracy that is taking place on behalf of gay "marriage."
The show's host, Jon Norris, appears about as straight as Freddie Mercury. "Clearly," he informed viewers, "the country is divided and confused." Maybe the nation's split about a lot of things, but not about gay marriage. They don't want it.
Both houses of Congress rejected it by overwhelming majorities. President Clinton signed a bill defining marriage as between a man and a woman, and President Bush seeks a Constitutional Amendment banning homosexual "marriages." Thirty-eight states passed similar Defense of Marriage Acts. No state legislature or referendum has made homosexual unions legal--at least the ones free from court duress--and a multitude of states have defined marriage as a union between a man and a woman.
Where's the division? Where's the confusion?
The country is clearly united for retaining the tradition of marriage as a binary and mixed-sex union.
Just when you thought there were no more mountains to climb, no more oceans to cross, no more dragons to slay, along come eighty British students daring to ride a roller coaster naked. Marco Polo. Christopher Columbus. Richard Byrd. Charles Lindbergh. Naked Brits on roller coasters. The spirit of adventure is alive!
If you suck, a good way to pretend that you don't is to claim that the government is persecuting you. NSync's J.C. Chasez is trying this line out on the public.
He argues that his latest single, "All Day Long I Dream About Sex," is the victim of the FCC's crackdown on smut. It is smut, but the kind that repulses radio listeners and not government censors.
"When I go to radio stations to visit, they're like, 'Oh, man, it's just so tough right now with the FCC cracking down,'" maintains Chasez. Assuming that some DJs did in fact say this to Chasez, don't you think they might have said it in the same way that you might tell an unwanted suitor that you're gay to rid yourself of a nuisance?
"The meaning of the song is that you want to have sex," Chasez told Rolling Stone of "All Day Long I Dream About Sex." "It's not even implying that you're having sex. It's equal to saying 'hot for teacher.' It's getting out of hand if you can't even talk about sex. I mean, Marvin Gaye's 'Sexual Healing' is considered a classic."
Yes, but you're song isn't. You are to Marvin Gaye what Dustin Diamond is to Humphrey Bogart.
"They're standing on the corner and they can't speak English," remarked Bill Cosby at a dinner earlier this week celebrating the 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education. "I can't even talk the way these people talk: 'Why you ain't,' 'Where you is' . . . And I blamed the kid until I heard the mother talk. And then I heard the father talk. . . . Everybody knows it's important to speak English except these knuckleheads. . . . You can't be a doctor with that kind of crap coming out of your mouth!"
The Washington Post reported that many in the audience reacted to the remarks with "astonishment," while the head of the NAACP legal defense fund approached the podium "looking stone-faced." He quickly distanced himself from Cosby's remarks.
Sure, Cosby alienated some within civil rights circles. But after mocking ebonics so harshly, will he ever be able to undo the pain he has caused his old friends Dumb Donald and Mush Mouth?
My forthcoming book is about how people become blinded to reality by the causes that they serve. So naturally there is a chapter on environmentalist Paul Ehrlich. The Stanford professor has made a career out of imitating Chicken Little, with predictions of doomsday revised again and again after the selected date fails to bring humanity's demise. You'd think Mr. Ehrlich's penchant for being wrong would marginalize him. It hasn't, and he's back with a new book, One With Nineveh, that Ronald Bailey skewers.
Tony Randall died. That's sad, in the we're-going-to-miss-him sense.
Jimmy Fallon is leaving Saturday Night Live. He's sad, in the you-are-pathetic sense.
A Catholic priest got a second chance at a million dollars because of my old boss, Reed Irvine.
As many readers know, Reed founded Accuracy in Media 1969. Until a stroke recently cut short his professional life, Reed acted as the scourge of the liberal media by fighting against bias and inaccuracies.
But it isn't just liberal inaccuracies that bother Reed, but any inaccuracy--especially his own, which he often highlighted once he discovered them. As anyone who has worked closely with him knows, the man is passionate and has a strong sense of justice.
So when Reed saw Father Mike Sciumbato lose on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire after answering that evergreen trees can be found in the "sierra" ecological area, Reed did what he has been doing for years: he wrote a letter. This time, Reed's complaint was addressed.
"He saw what happened and realized that the guy was unjustly removed, so he wrote a letter . . . to the show," Roger Aronoff, an old buddy of mine and an AIM employee, told the Salt Lake Tribune. The priest will appear again on the show tomorrow and Thursday.
Years ago, Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee famously called Reed "a miserable, carping, retromingent vigilante." There's a priest in Orem, Utah who sees Reed's passion for accuracy in another light.
How do gays consummate their marriages?
Without consummation, a marriage isn't considered complete. It can be declared invalid and annulled.
The inability to consummate the union is one reason to scoff at the notion of gay marriage. Another pertains to the eagerness of gay couples to lie when taking their wedding vows. One need only look so far as the first homosexual couple to tie the knot in Provincetown to see this latter oxymoronic form of marriage in action.
"[Jonathan Yarbrough] says the concept of forever is 'overrated' and that he, as a bisexual, and [his partner Cody] Rogahn, who is gay, have chosen to enjoy an open marriage. 'I think it's possible to love more than one person and have more than one partner, not in the polygamist sense,' Yarbrough said. 'In our case, it is, we have, an open marriage.'"
With the IOC opening up the Olympics to transsexuals, what events do you think she-males and he-shes should compete in? Should some new events be made up specifically for those who have undergone gender reassignment surgery? Who is your favorite transsexual athlete of the past?
If you were looking for society to indulge your weird sexual vices, today was a big day for you. First, the Bay (Gay?) State overturned thousands of years of tradition and the will of the voters by forcing Massachusetts taxpayers to sanction "marriages" between husband and husband, and wife and wife. Second, the International Olympic Committee approved the notion of transsexuals competing against members of their new sex in the Olympic Games. What's next? Seriously, what's next?
My home state of Massachusetts has been forced by its Supreme Court to grant state marriage licenses to homosexual couples. Curiously, today's court imposed deadline to begin handing out the marriage certificates falls on the fiftieth anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education. Do you suppose the judges were trying to make a political statement?
Court imposed gay "marriage" undermines democracy. Four judges defied the will of the majority of the more than 6 million residents of Massachusetts. They invented a right to same-sex marriage that doesn't appear in the Bay State's Constitution--the oldest written constitution still in operation in the world. Do you think its authors had this in mind when they wrote it? Read the document and you'll see about a dozen references to God in the first few paragraphs, but nothing in the entire text about gays or lesbians.
Opponents of traditional marriage know that they can't win through the normal democratic process. Think about it.
The U.S. Senate voted 85 to 14 to keep marriage between a man and a woman. The U.S. House of Representatives voted 342-67 for the same piece of legislation. President Clinton signed the Defense of Marriage Act into law. Thirty-eight U.S. states have passed their own defense of marriage acts. No state--not even Massachusetts or Vermont--has voluntarily legalized gay "marriage." Even California voters rejected gay "marriage" by a huge margin.
In every civics class, children learn that the legislature makes law and the judiciary interprets law. In Massachusetts, the courts do both.
I haven't watched The Simpsons for a few years. After tuning in to last night's episode, I am reminded why.
Think Happy Days without Richie Cunningham or The Brady Bunch with Oliver. That's how bad Simpsons circa-2004 is. Guys, it's time to end it. Your show isn't funny anymore.
In last night's episode, the government sends the Simpsons to prison for being unpatriotic. There, they meet The Dixie Chicks, Bill Clinton, Michael Moore, and Al Franken, and are forced to enroll in the "Ronald Reagan Re-Education Center." In post 9/11 America, a cartoon Bill of Rights is shown drunk and vomiting.
Part of me resents the heavy-handed political message, part of me resents how unfunny the show was. Perhaps the two go hand in hand. Liberals imagine political persecutions after 9/11, but Michael Moore and Al Franken found themselves atop the bestseller lists--not in jail.
Did the Academy withhold Tim Robbins and Sean Penn's Oscars? Didn't The Dixie Chicks sell out practically everywhere they played? Were Noam Chomsky and Gore Vidal's books pulled off the shelves at Barnes and Noble? The Left has a persecution complex.
All good things come to an end. Unfortunately, when The Simpsons sign off the good will have come to an end long before.
When the former police chief for your entire nation gets arrested on charges of smuggling cocaine, it's generally considered a sign that your country is really, really corrupt.
Smarty Jones won the Preakness. Roy Jones got knocked out in the 2nd round.
If the election were held this past Wednesday and Thursday, and CNN got to oversee it, and only people who answered their phones and responded to pollsters voted, then John Kerry would be president. Since that's not the way it works, we'll have to wait until November for the results.
Kerry bests Bush 51% to 46% in CNN's latest poll. Add Nader to the mix and it's 49% Kerry, 44% Bush, 6% Nader. It's been a bad month for the president. The prisoner abuse scandal and April's bloody Iraqi insurrection has taken its toll on Bush's popularity. Bush probably had the worst month of his presidency, yet he still finds himself neck-and-neck with John Kerry.
Democrats are salivating over the far-fetched idea that Republican Senator John McCain will accept the number two position on their presidential ticket. McCain disagrees with the prevailing stances among Democrats on tax cuts, spending, national defense, gay marriage, affirmative action, socialized medicine, and dozens of other issues. Amazingly, there's just one sticking point.
"Senator McCain would not have to leave his party," former Senator Bob Kerrey told the New York Times. "He could remain a Republican, would be given some authority over selection of cabinet people. The only thing he would have to do is say, 'I'm not going to appoint any judges who would overturn Roe v. Wade.'"
That's all McCain would have to do? Remind me: What party has the litmus test on abortion?
Sending the six inflated egos in Da Band to fetch your cheesecake in Brooklyn: $20. Kicking Dylan out of your house: $100. Firing a group of ingrate rappers who'd be working at Arby's without you: priceless.
Puff Daddy supplied the second best moment in reality television this week. On Thursday night, MTV aired the finale of Making the Band 2. Mr. Diddy coldly fired Da Band--the group he handpicked, produced, and sent to #2 on the album charts. What Puff Daddy giveth, Puff Daddy taketh away.
George Will, onetime Iraq war cheerleader, today leads a chorus of boo-birds. Last week, Will aired his second thoughts about the war. Now, he goes even further with his criticism of the Bush administration in his latest column that ponders whether Donald Rumsfeld should resign as secretary of defense.
"[W]ho lost his or her job because the president's 2003 State of the Union address gave currency to a fraud — the story of Iraq's attempting to buy uranium in Niger?" Will asks. "Or because the primary and only sufficient reason for waging preemptive war — weapons of mass destruction — was largely spurious? Or because postwar planning, from failure to anticipate the initial looting to today's insufficient force levels, has been botched? Failures are multiplying because of choices for which no one seems accountable."
Count Tucker Carlson in as another figure on the political Right having second thoughts about the war in Iraq.
"I think it’s a total nightmare and disaster, and I’m ashamed that I went against my own instincts in supporting it," Carlson told the New York Observer. "It’s something I’ll never do again. Never. I got convinced by a friend of mine who’s smarter than I am, and I shouldn’t have done that. No. I want things to work out, but I’m enraged by it, actually."
I finished The Colonial Experience by Daniel Boorstin on the plane trip home from Seattle. The book is the first in the famous historian's series, The Americans.
One of the things I liked best about Boorstin's book is that the reader actually learns something, rather than being subjected to an endless barrage of the author's opinions and theories. I haven't stepped back and absorbed the book enough to give a proper review, but here are a few interesting pieces of trivia I picked up about our colonial forebears.
In 1658, the Massachusetts Bay colony made Quakerism a crime punishable by death. Pennsylvania did not reciprocate against the Puritans, but even the Friends in Pennsylvania made murderers and traitors subject to the death penalty. Colonial Virginia made voting compulsory amongst those eligible. The trustees who ran Georgia forebade landowners without male heirs to pass on their estates--to their families at least. So, who got the land? The trustees, of course. By the time of the Revolution, the colonies boasted nine degree-granting institutions; England, two.
The Colonial Experience is the 17th and best book I've read in 2004. Hopefully, the two other volumes in Boorstin's trilogy will meet the first book's high standards.
I just returned to Washington (the one with cheap crack and lots of monuments) from the other Washington (the one with apples and grunge music). My event last night at the University of Washington concluded my travels to campuses for the 2003-2004 school year. No hecklers, no disruptions--it was a nice way to end the year. I have spoken at 25 schools in 15 states since the start of the school year. While a few events this semester featured some uninvited shouting from audience members, things have quieted down since last semester--when I was shouted down by a mob, the focus of a 'hate speech' inquiry, and subjected to unstable leftists crying and swearing during my lectures.
James Robbins on National Review Online nails the difference between the terrorists' beheading of Nick Berg and the actions of the sadistic American prison guards. Aside from the obvious difference in the scale of the crimes, Robbins notes that one group looks upon their activities with pride; the other, with shame. "The outrages at Abu Ghraib were not sanctioned by higher authorities, and were halted when they were discovered," Robbins points out. "The terrorists on the other hand killed Nicholas Berg while executing their official policy."
A new study appearing in the Journal of the American Medical Association reports that 4 percent of people between the ages of 18 and 26 have chlamydia. Inspired by this scientific endeavor, I embarked on a similar study and discovered that the chlamydia infection rate dramatically increases for women between the ages of 18 and 26 when they have the name Christina Aguilera.
Mel Gibson will release The Passion on DVD on August 31. Gibson failed to get a major distributor for the big-screen version, which has taken in nearly $370 million thus far. But 20th Century Fox has agreed to distribute the DVD.
Red Sox: victorious. Yankees: still suck. Clemens: 7-0. NHL: old-time hockey. Roy Jones Jr.: will win. NBA Playoffs: more boring than reruns of The Love Boat.
Brazil's Marxist leader has expelled respected New York Times reporter Larry Rohter from the nation. Rohter penned an article noting that the drinking of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has effected his governance.
"It's not for a president to respond to such a piece of stupidity," Lula remarked. He responded anyhow by revoking Rohter's visa. Complicating things for Rohter is that he is married to a Brazilian woman and lives in the nation. He has a week to get out.
Brazil has grown increasingly anti-American since Lula's ascension to the presidency. A 2003 poll showed that only 43% of Brazilians hold a favorable view of the United States.
I speak at the University of Washington tonight. The event will be held at 7 p.m. in Gowan 301. The lecture is free, open to the public, and sponsored by Young America's Foundation and the school's College Republicans. If you're in the Seattle area, come out to the lecture and introduce yourself. This is the last of more than twenty campus lectures I have given during the 2003-2004 school year.
Terrorists posted a video showing Islamic extremists decapitating the head of Nick Berg. An American civilian, Berg had apparently travelled to Iraq to spread knowledge regarding technology.
In the video, Berg's murderer shouts "God is great!" and then beheads his victim. If this is the kind of thing that impresses your god, it's time to get a new religion.
As the nation is bombarded with ugly pictures of American soldiers engaging in disgusting conduct, we should also remember that an American soldier put a stop to the abuse at Abu Ghraib.
The prisoner abuse scandal is revolting and reflects poorly on the United States. In an interesting piece in the Boston Globe, Cathy Young shows how the scandal (or at least the reaction to it) also, "in a perverse way," demonstrates how great a country America is.
"It is almost as much of a cliche--and equally true--to say that this story reveals, in a perverse way, the strength of American democracy," Young writes. "Under Hussein, torture (far more extreme than anything done by the American soldiers) was the normal way of doing things. Under American rule, it is a scandal that calls for punishment for the culprits, a contrite speech by the president of the United States, and many voices urging the resignation of the secretary of defense. Under the American occupation, Iraqis can gather outside the prison to protest the abuse. Under Hussein, even whispering about it to friends and family was dangerous."
After making obligatory condemnations of the prisoner abuse scandal, Midge Decter declares it a "tempest in a teapot." Her New York Post article proclaims: "This new scandal is no more than an election-season opportunity seized by certain serious opponents of the war, along with many more unserious opponents of the Bush administration."
Reports of prisoners killed in U.S. custody, sodomized by guards, and attacked by vicious dogs aren't an "ersatz scandal." This is a real scandal. To find the truth, the charges need to be investigated--by elected officials, the military, the media, and others. The American people aren't tricked, they're disgusted--and their disgust manifests itself in the falling esteem in which they hold the leader that got us into the mess in Iraq.
The Arab world's feigned horror at the abuse of prisoners is hypocritical. They've yawned at far worse. But the disgust in the West is real. The United States is, and should be, held to a higher standard than Iraq's previous ruler.
I saw Velvet Revolver's new video, "Slither," on MTV tonight. It rules. The sound is more Stone Temple Pilots than Guns n Roses, but Slash's signature guitar sound is still hard to miss. My favorite video in circulation right now, though, is Modest Mouse's "Float On." If you're interested in hearing the song, check out The Late Show with David Letterman on Thursday evening.
Midge Decter doesn't get it.
In a piece in Monday's New York Post, Decter juxtaposes the Civil War's massive body count with the triple-digit death toll among Americans in Iraq. Contemporary Americans going wobbly over Iraq, this contrast seems to suggest, shames our ancestors who endured much worse.
And they did, but the Civil War was a contest fought over things worth fighting for--union or independence, freedom or slavery--worth dying for.
What are our young men and women dying for in Iraq? To combat mythic Iraqi connections to 9/11, a barely-existent nuclear weapons program, and weapons of mass destruction that Iraqis couldn't find when their country was invaded (for the same reason that Americans can't find them now that they have overrun Hussein's armies).
Decter contends that "an outcry is being staged--and 'staged' is the word--over casualties amounting to a few hundred" in Iraq. But this outcry isn't "staged." And the anger isn't because "a few hundred" Americans are dead. Americans are dying in pursuit of terrorists in Afghanistan, for instance, but nobody but the lunatic fringe opposes that military action.
The deaths of our soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines will always bother Americans. When those deaths serve vital national interests, we mourn but understand.
Americans are willing to fight and die for things worth fighting and dying for. Abstractions like nation building, righting all the world's wrongs, and imposing Western democracy on a people who either don't want it or aren't ready for it don't meet that basic criterion.
It's why Americans die in Iraq, not simply that they die, that outrages so many Americans.
The Washington Post features an article today on the frustration among conservatives regarding the Bush Administration. A larger government, more intrusive campaign finance laws, promises to extend the assault weapons ban, and the growing debacle in Iraq are a few of the reasons why conservatives are grumbling.
"Ideology has confronted reality, and ideology has bent," one anonymous conservative told the Post. "On the domestic side, it has bent in terms of the expansion of the government embodied in the Medicare prescription-drug law. On the foreign policy side, it has bent because of what has transpired in the last few weeks in Fallujah."
My take on the Million Mom March appears on National Review Online today. Click here to read the article.
Don't hate the player. Hate the game.
That's my message to Lex, Big Tom, Alicia, and all the other babies on Survivor's jury. Boston Rob outplayed you all. He controlled the game. He was the driver, Amber was a passenger. Rob determined the destiny of every contestant in the last half of the game.
Lex, Big Tom, and others complained that Boston Rob lied, cheated, and manipulated his way to the final two. That's kind of like a boxer complaining that his opponent hit him. In life, hitting someone is usually wrong. Just as in life, lying, cheating, and manipulating is usually wrong. Boxing is about hitting your opponent. Survivor is about deception. If you don't like the game, don't play.
Perhaps Rob saved his ultimate power play for last. Sensing that the jury voted Amber the million dollars, Rob asked Amber to marry him--an insurance policy of sorts. That way, he gets the money either way. At least that's the Machiavellian gamesmanship I've come to expect from Rob, so I'll pretend that's the way it went down.
Congratulations, Amber, on winning a million dollars. Congratulations, Rob, on losing Survivor but winning a million dollars anyhow. You are marrying up in more ways than one.
I covered the Million Mom March today. Rounding up, they came about a million moms short. But, hey, isn't overstatement a staple of all political rhetoric?
An article I wrote on the rally will hopefully appear on a major conservative website tomorrow. Stay tuned for the link.
We gave our blood. Where's our oil?
Prior to the war in Iraq, some of its more idiotic opponents cast the imminent conflict as a massive oil grab. Today, oil stands at its highest price since 1990.
Excitement.
That's the word that best describes the Manny Pacquiao-Juan Manuel Marquez blood-stained brawl on Saturday evening. Four months into the 2004, this is the fight of the year.
Pac-Man knocked down Marquez three times in the first round. Marquez outboxed Pacquiao for the majority of the remaining rounds. They traded, and traded, and traded punches again and again and again. Elevating the fight even higher was the passion shown by the Filipino and Mexican fans in Las Vegas. The energy was incredible.
In the end, I had the fight a little closer than the HBO commentators: 114-112 for Pacquiao. My card, however closer to the final decision, didn't matter at ringside. The judges viewed the fight 115-110 (Pacquiao), 115-110 (Marquez), and 113-113 (Draw). With Marquez's heart and Pac-Man's power, I will buy any fight featuring either of these guys. More boxing fans will join me in dishing out money, I suspect, if they fight each other for a second time.
Chile began the process of legalizing divorce. On Friday, President Ricardo Lagos signed the law that would begin allowing divorce in the South American country six months from now. The law makes divorce easier, but not easy. Couples seeking to terminate their marriage have to go through sixty days of counseling, and separate for a year before the state grants their wish. If only one spouse seeks divorce, the couple has to wait three years.
The Social Security Administration released its annual rankings of the most popular baby names. My name makes the list at number eight.
America's most popular baby names last year were: 1. Jacob 2. Michael 3. Joshua 4. Matthew 5. Andrew 6. Joseph 7. Ethan 8. Daniel 9. Christopher 10. Anthony. The most popular names for girls were: 1. Emily 2. Emma 3. Madison 4. Hannah 5. Olivia 6. Abigail 7. Alexis 8. Ashley 9. Elizabeth 10. Samantha.
The UK boasts a slightly different list. Born in England and Wales in 2003: 1. Jack 2. Joshua 3. Thomas 4. James 5. Daniel 6. Oliver 7. Benjamin 8. Samuel 9. William 10. Joseph. And for girls, the Brits like 1. Emily 2. Ellie 3. Chloe 4. Jessica 5. Sophie 6. Megan 7. Lucy 8. Olivia 9. Charlotte 10. Hannah.
"Nigel" and "Sporty Spice" have always struck me as peculiarly British names, but apparently they have fallen out of favor.
More interesting to me is how the popularity of some names has completely plummeted in America in recent decades. From the 1880s through the mid-'20s, John was the most popular boys' name in America save for one year when William reigned. Mary's popularity lasted even longer. From the 1880s to the early 1960s, the name Mary ruled atop the list of girls' names for all but a handful of years. By 1972, Mary was completely removed from the top ten, although its variant Maria remained for a few more years.
John and Mary always struck me as all-American names, but the American people--at least the ones having babies these days--apparently disagree.
In Texas, a new law defines the killing of unborn children as murder--provided an abortionist is not doing the deed. This is bad news for Gerardo Flores, an eighteen-year-old high school student.
Police charge Flores with beating his pregnant girlfriend, which, they say, resulted in the deaths of the twin babies she carried. The sixteen-year-old girl delivered the babies stillborn four months prior to her due date.
Will the self-appointed guardians of women's rights be able to keep a straight face when they claim to be protecting women by opposing this law?
Three more nominees for the Gross Awards have come my way.
Columbia University football player Aaron Percival stands "accused of entering [a fellow] student's room Sept. 14 while she slept, licking her toes and feet and sexually assaulting her while she resisted," the AP reported.
Neil Goldschmidt, former Oregon Governor and U.S. Secretary of Transportation under Jimmy Carter, seems a strong candidate for a lifetime achievement award. While mayor of Portland, Goldschmidt carried on an affair with a fourteen year old girl. The statute of limitations ran out on any criminal prosecution and on recognition through any annual Gross Award. But time hasn't expired for Goldschmidt on a lifetime achievement award.
Montana officials arrested convicted sex offender Kenneth Lee Hall on Wednesday. Through fliers and ads, Hall sought overnight babysitting job opportunites minding children between the ages of two and four, offered his services as a "big brother" for handicapped kids, and opened his home to homeless children under the age of nine.
Colin Powell's chief of staff made news this week by predicting that his boss won't be back for the second term. More interesting than prognostications about the Secretary of State's future are Larry Wilkerson's candid criticisms of other members of the administration.
"I call them utopians," explained Wilkerson of the war party seeking a mini-America in the Middle East. "I don't care whether utopians are Vladimir Lenin on a sealed train to Moscow or Paul Wolfowitz. Utopians, I don't like. You're never going to bring utopia, and you're going to hurt a lot of people in the process of trying to do it."
The Bush Administration has had its share of disgruntled ex-employees--among them Richard Clarke, Paul O'Neill, and John DiIulio. But the frank and biting assessments appearing in GQ come from someone still on the payroll. Will the administration unleash the attack dogs on one of their own?
I'm happy to see that Conservative University, a conference I started five years ago, will be held again this summer by Accuracy in Academia. Now in its sixth year, the conference will feature Stan Evans, Burt Folsom, and other great speakers. If you have $69 and can make it to Washington, DC on the weekend of July 16-17, I encourage you to attend.
When the Gross Awards are handed out later this year, there's one man that is certain to be nominated.
A Michigan man could spend as many as 40 years in jail for molesting a young girl he babysat for while her mother worked. "If I go to jail for 15 years then I go to jail for 15 years," reacted Clifford Walker to his sentence. "I love her and it was well worth the 15 years." The object of his "love" is seven years old.
I spoke at Ohio University last night to a packed room. During my talk, students were generally respectful. The question and answer period, however, brought out some angry responses, mild heckling, and upset students who left in a huff. It also produced some good dialogue. If there was any question that conservative ideas need a stronger presence at a place like Ohio University, this op-ed piece erased it.
I've managed to live the last ten years of my life without watching a full episode of Friends. My Friends-less lifestyle has worked for me thus far, so I won't be tuning in tonight.
Sex with various partners has no ramifications in their videos, but in the real lives of porn stars the consequences can be deadly. The Adult Industry Medical Health Care Foundation announced that another on-screen perfomer has tested positive for the virus that causes AIDS. This is the fifth porn star to come down with HIV since Darren James became infected while making films on a trip to Brazil in March.
In addition to "Lara Roxx," "Miss Arroyo," "Darren James," and a transsexual actor (actress?) named "Jennifer," someone you may want to avoid as a sex partner is Anthony Whitfield. Officials in Washington state have accused Mr. Whitfield of intentionally spreading HIV. A handful of women have come down with the virus after having sex with Whitfield, but officials believe it's possible that the Oklahoma City man may have infected as many as 170 people.
Two Catholics angered at the Madrid performance of a blasphemous play entitled In God We S@#! stormed the stage and beat up the production's director and an actor. "They beat us, they destroyed the music equipment, and they tried to set fire to the set, which is made of loo paper," the play's author complained. "The audience thought it was part of the play so no one helped us for ages."
I speak tonight at Ohio University, which is apparently the oldest university west of the Appalachians. The lecture takes place at 7 p.m. in the Baker University Center and is sponsored by Young America's Foundation and the school's College Republicans. The event is free and open to the public, so if you live in the area drop by. A campus columnist is upset with me even though I haven't stepped foot on campus yet. It should be an interesting time.
George Will has joined the editors of National Review in re-thinking the war in Iraq. Specifically, Will takes aim at the fetish among some neoconservatives that democracy can take root in any culture no matter the climate or soil. I'm speaking metaphorically, of course.
In other words, the idea that there were a bunch of latter-day James Madisons and Thomas Jeffersons floating around Hussein's Baghdad just waiting to institute a constitutional republic if only the Americans overthrew their oppressor was pie-in-the-sky stuff. Bush, Will suggests, needs to rethink his foreign policy.
"Being steadfast in defense of carefully considered convictions is a virtue," Will writes. "Being blankly incapable of distinguishing cherished hopes from disappointing facts, or of reassessing comforting doctrines in face of contrary evidence, is a crippling political vice."
Paul Watson rams fishing boats and spikes trees in logging forrests. This makes him a terrorist. That's scary enough. He is also a founder of Greenpeace and a board member of the Sierra Club. This is more frightening.
When ostensibly mainstream organizations embrace extremists, they can't rightly be thought of as "mainstream." In a frontpagemag.com article, "The Green Left's Favorite Terrorist," Watson is quoted as saying "earthworms are far more valuable than people." He exhorts, "Don't bring any more humans into being," and rationalizes his tree-spiking by opining of the logger-victims: "if they don't have any compassion for the future, I don't have any compassion for them."
Watson endorses and practices violence on behalf of a cause, arguing: "One person's terrorist is another person's freedom fighter." In Watson's case, every man's terrorist is every worm, hyena, and lobster's freedom fighter.
The wait is over. After formulaic documentaries on the likes of Tony Orlando, Glen Campbell, and REO Speedwagon, VH1 will be turning its attention to Guns n Roses. After a few short years of ruling the world, GNR disappeared never to be heard from again. I want some answers!
No, seriously: I want some answers. Axl: Did you really think anyone would buy into those imposters that you currently pawn off as being Guns n Roses, when they are really the back-up band for your solo act? Steven: You got kicked out of Guns n Roses for doing too much drugs: Isn't that like getting cut from the baseball team for hitting the most home runs? Duff: Was the explosion of your pancreas a fair price to pay for all of the partying you did? Izzy: Do you feel vindicated leaving the band at its zenith and not having to endure lame multimillion-dollar videos (November Rain, Don't Cry, Estranged), Axl's insanity, and tours with horn sections and background singers? Slash: Can you even remember 1992?
Alas, the documentary won't feature interviews with the band's two media-shy hoosiers: Axl Rose and Izzy Stradlin (the only gunner to graduate high school!). Slash, Duff, and Steven--whose stroke has left him with speech difficulties, but thankfully didn't rob him of his drumming abilities--will appear on the program to air in June, as will Izzy's replacement Gilby Clarke.
Guns n Roses has one of the more interesting stories in rock, so I'm surprised it has taken VH1 so long to broadcast a documentary on them. The Pretenders (two fatal heroin overdoses) and Van Halen (three different lead singers) are two groups that are due for the VH1 Behind the Music treatment. Use the "comments" link below to tell the world what band VH1 should profile on Behind the Music. I want to hear from you.
A few days after Rene Gonzalez's disgusting rant, cartoonist Ted Rall has published a despicable comic strip suggesting American hero Pat Tillman is an "idiot." Tillman, you will remember, exercised his rights as a free agent to sign with the U.S. Army rather than the Arizona Cardinals. He was killed ten days ago in Afghanistan fighting the war on terrorism.
Rall depicts Tillman as "a cog in a low-rent occupation army that shot more innocent civilians than terrorists to prop up puppet rulers and exploit gas and oil resources." (The war is in Afghanistan, not Saudi Arabia or Venezuela. What "gas and oil resources"?)
"Never mind the fine print," the cartoon Tillman asks his military recruiter. "Will I get to kill Arabs?" Based on nothing, Rall portrays Tillman as a homocidal racist. Similarly, Rene Gonzalez decided of Pat Tillman: "I could tell he was that type of macho guy, from his scowling, beefy face on the CNN pictures."
Both Rall and Gonzalez live in a delusional world where their own fantasies rather than the facts dictate how they view people. Pat Tillman volunteered to fight the war on terrorism, their thinking goes, therefore he must fit the racist, macho, killer stereotype that my imagination believes my ideological opponents to be. By all accounts, Tillman was anything but that. Rall and Gonzalez's hateful and ignorant expressions reveal far more about them than they do about Pat Tillman.
I can't say the name of my favorite television show--at least in polite company.
Penn & Teller's Bull#*@! skewers psychics, chiropractors, UFO enthusiasts, environmentalists, and others deserving our scrutiny. Penn (he speaks) & Teller (he doesn't) just launched their second season on Showtime, and I was lucky enough to see an episode from the new batch.
Tonight, the duo (You probably know them from Run DMC's "It's Tricky" video) went after the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. Among other items, they revealed that PETA killed almost two-thirds of the animals it "saved," gave more than $70,000 to an arsonist who burned down a lab at Michigan State, and refuses to condemn violence.
While I proudly watch a show with a swear-word gracing its title, I draw the line on the programming that followed Penn & Teller on Showtime: "Family Business," which looks at the life of the adult movie tycoon named Seymour Butts. Get it! Well, I guess we should all wish to be so clever.
One year ago today, President Bush famously landed on the USS Abraham Lincoln and declared "mission accomplished." If we accomplished what we set out to do, then why are we still in Iraq?
More than a year after the start of the war, life is better for Iraqis. But is this why we fight wars, to make life better for other people?
Wars aren't social programs. People die. The reasons for going to war should be strong and not based on some Pentagon scribbler's elaborate plan to remake whole nations in America's image.
We know now that Hussein's Iraq had no real nuclear weapons program. The menacing chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction haven't been found. Connections to al Qaeda proved more fantasy than reality. In other words, the stated reasons for going to war have proven false.
Worse, more Americans have died in Iraq since the President declared "mission accomplished" than in the actual war itself. With 136 American deaths, this past month was the war's bloodiest. Americans elsewhere in the region, as today's events remind us, are increasingly viewed as targets.
President Bush says he stands by his "mission accomplished" speech. If the job is done, bring the boys home. If it's not, please inform us what our mission in Iraq is now that Saddam is gone, WMDs proved chimerical, and the Iraqi people's capacity for self-government seems less than advertised.
