Get The Net. A Sports Guy Thinks He's A Journalist Again (II)

Uh-oh. Another sports "journalist" thinks he's a journalist.

Mike Lupica used to appear on ESPN to talk like a know-it-all and come off like same. For all I know, he still does. But in this piece for the NY Daily News he decides to go deep, then get outraged:

Across from the World Trade Center site there were more flowers than usual outside Engine 10, Ladder 10, the legendary New York firehouse known as Ten House. There are always more flowers, and signs, and photographs and flags, when there is another anniversary of Sept. 11.

OK. Good start. But wait...

We promised ourselves we were going to be a better city and a better country because of what happened. We told ourselves that we knew what really mattered now. In the aftermath of the worst day the city and the country had known, we promised to find the best in ourselves, and in each other.

And on this most recent anniversary of Sept. 11, the country seems as full of hate and noise as it has ever been. This is an America where Rep. Joe Wilson, whoever he is, thinks he can call the President of the United States a liar, Wilson talking to the President the way he would the help, or some waiter who was supposed to bring him another drink.

Ah, get bent. Screaming about politics has been going on forever. It took a break for a few weeks after 9/11, and then it came back. Did anyone think it wouldn't?

Human being are a political animal. We like to scream about politics, and sometimes we say outrageous things. Lupica's only upset because after a half-dozen years of Bush being called Hitler, it's now his guy that's getting yelled at.

There's a danger in sarcasm. You need to be good at it or you look kind of stupid. Lupica's words, with my immediate thoughts: "This is an America where Rep. Joe Wilson, whoever he is [you just said who he is], thinks he can call the President of the United States a liar [he doesn't think he can - he can, and he did], Wilson talking to the President the way he would the help [Mike would know?], or some waiter who was supposed to bring him another drink [so that's how you're supposed to ask waitresses for another round - you yell "Liar!"]."

Sports "journalists" are good for a laugh. In this case I got a double dip: amusing sanctinomy with a side dish of bad metaphor.

Musing on Iraq's (No) News

From the AP, on a report that the US and Iraq have made a deal to have US troops out of the country in three years:

The war has claimed more than 4,200 American lives and killed a far greater, untold number of Iraqis, consumed huge reserves of money and resources and eroded the global stature of the United States, even among its closest allies.

I wonder if that last bit is true? Bush and the US stuck it out when all seemed lost. Now Iraqis are living good lives, voting in free elections, and are unafraid to speak their minds in a parliament made by the people for the people. These are the reasons you haven't seen Iraq in the news for months, and why this latest 3-year-deal isn't making headlines. Bush and Iraq never receive good press. What is good news for a president? No news. Iraq has become a bore.

We take it for granted that the stature of the United States has eroded because of this war. It's repeated endlessly, like a mantra. It's burned into our brains. "Bush failed. Iraq was a disaster. The global reputation of the US is in tatters."

I'm not so sure. If anything, Iraq has proved that the United States will not cut and run. It showed America's enemies that it will attack, stand, and fight.

That has to mean something positive to somebody. Vietnam gave the US a reputation of not seeing things through, not going for the throat, and of leaving people in the lurch when times got tough. The first Iraq war only confirmed it. That reputation has now been erased. Whether two, five, or twenty years from now, if a country needs US support but questions America's stomach, a president can point to Iraq and say, "We didn't leave them. We won't leave you."

In terms of stature, that has to carry some weight. Doesn't it?

The Katrina Lie

Another day, another reference to Hurricane Katrina. Here's Howard Kurtz, defender of all things Big Media:

In merchandising terms, [White House Press Secretary] Perino hasn't had an easy product to sell since taking over the podium in the summer of 2007. Bush's popularity sank below 30 percent and stayed there as the public blamed him for the intractable war in Iraq and the botched response to Hurricane Katrina, among other failings. During the Wall Street meltdown, he was denounced for the lax regulation that helped fuel the market crisis.

The only people that even remember Hurricane Katrina today are liberal writers. It's just another arrow in an a very slim arsenal: Iraq, Katrina, and the economy. If the Wall Street collapse (aided and abetted by a Democratic Congress) hadn't come around this year, they'd be stuck sucking on an Iraq War going splendidly well and a three-year-old rainstorm.

Don't get me wrong. Bush and Republicans deserve blame for several screw ups. But as I wrote before, the "Katrina Effect" is a lie.

What This Is All About

Socialism and anti-American sentiment dovetail nicely in the dreamland of Europe. This opportunity must have them wetting their pants. A financial "crisis" and a liberal senator in the White House? Game on, baby:

German Chancellor Angela Merkel last month attacked ``greed, speculation and mismanagement'' and today called on counterparts to agree an end to ``blind spots'' in the financial system. Rudd said ``the root of this malaise'' lay in the ``twin evils'' of greed and fear that went unchecked because of ``obscene'' failures in oversight.

While defending capitalism as the ``most efficient system ever created,'' Sarkozy has described as ``over'' the view that ``everything could be solved by deregulation, free competition and the market.'' The French president said today he will argue the dollar ``can't claim to be the only currency of the world anymore.''

And:

Mr. Bush called the weekend G-20 meeting in Washington in response to persistent and widespread calls among European leaders for tougher regulation of the global financial system, and particularly what some European leaders view as the overly-volatile U.S. system. French President Nicolas Sarkozy, for example, has referred to the U.S. devotion to free-market principles as "mad" and has called for an international financial regulator.

Telling Fortunes

I always have a good laugh when I hear people talk about the present, then play fortune teller about how things will be seen in the future.

Tonight, Larry "Shoulders" King had Bob Woodward on his show. Woodward's written another book saying Bush is a bozo who didn't lead, screwed up the Iraq war, so forth. Hardly a new idea for a book, but I guess they sell pretty well, which is why they get written in the first place.

Larry's interview ended like so many others regarding Bush: "How do you think history will see Bush?"

Woodward stunned the world by saying history will see Bush as a waste of space who screwed everything up, and that his legacy will suck.

Nonsense.

I have a voracious appetite for presidential biographies and, with the slight exception of Carter, almost no president is remembered very poorly. Over time, they all get their due, and time heals even historical wounds. A president's mistakes are pointed out (or hailed as virtues), and their missed opportunities are trumpeted (or not called "missed"), and in the end you are always left with this feeling: being the president is hard. And, on the whole, they all did the best they could. Sometimes they came up aces, other times not. So whether you dislike Bush or any other sitting president, it is complete hogwash to think that you know what "history" will say about them. No one knows. Not yet.

Nixon, the only president to resign from office, has managed to come back into the fold as the good president who did a good job, but made a bonehead move covering for his friends. Johnson, whose Vietnam war was a hurricane compared to Bush's Iraq rain shower, barely ever receives bad press today (come to think of it, he hardly receives any press at all). Kennedy, the philandering playboy and war lover, is remembered as a hero with a human touch. Truman, called "The Senator from Pendergast" in the '40s because of his political machine roots, is now hailed a tough, no-nonsense, hell of a guy. The US is still technically at war with North Korea because Truman didn't bring the conflict to a decisive conclusion, but hey, he fired MacArthur and had some good one liners, so let's give him a nice write-up.

I titter with laughter when I hear journalists or historians attempt to tell the future about a president's legacy. Lately, a good many of these fortune tellers have been lionizing Lincoln. Lincoln comes and goes as a topic of presidential history every ten years or so, and it looks like his number's up again in 2008.

When you hear Lincoln's name mentioned today, you could be forgiven for thinking that the Illinois country boy was born with a halo. So let us harken back to an episode in the life of Lincoln.

Lincoln. The man. The myth. The legend. The Leader.

The scene: Lincoln on a stage in Pennsylvania. He has just finished a speech. Historian Shelby Foote writes:

He finished before the crowd, a good part of whose attention had been fixed on the photographer anyhow, realized that he was fairly launched on what he had to say. In reaction to what a later observer described as the "almost shocking brevity" of the speech, especially by the one that went before, the applause was delayed, then scattered and barely polite. Moreover, the photographer missed his picture. Before he had time to adjust his tripod and uncap the lens, Lincoln had said "of the people, by the people, for the people" and sat down, leaving the artist with the feeling that he had been robbed. Apparently many of those present felt the same way, agreeing in advance with what the Chicago Times would say tomorrow about the President's performance here today: "The cheek of every American must tingle with shame as he reads the silly, flat, and dishwatery utterances of the man who has to be pointed out to intelligent foreigners as the President of the United States." In fact, as he resumed his seat alongside his friend Lamon and heard the perfunctory spatter of applause whose brevity matched his own, the speaker was taken with a feeling of regret that he had not measured up to what had been expected of him. Recalling a word used on the prairie in reference to a plow that would not clean itself while shearing through wet soil, he said gloomily: "Lamon, that speech won't scour. It is a flat failure and the people are disappointed."

That speech was the Gettysburg Address. It's the one that starts with, "Fourscore and seven years ago..." Schoolchildren memorize it, and it is one of the two speeches whose words are carved into the walls of the Lincoln Memorial.

History's a funny thing.

Palin's Speech

Palin gave a good speech tonight. Not an excellent one, but a good one. Unfortunately for her, the media are raving about it. This can only mean that she's going to get hammered by the press over the next 60 days. "Hey, she was wonderful! (Psst. Sharpen the axe)."

A few thoughts after watching the first female Republican nominee for VP.

1) The Republican delegates in the hall still love Bush, but that doesn't mean the McCain camp thinks it's a good idea to mention him during the convention. Bush gave his address the other night, and that was all you're going to hear from or about the President. Tonight, Bush's name was not mentioned once. There were over half-a-dozen speakers, capped off by Palin, and not one of them said Bush's name even in passing. In a funny way, this election is almost like watching the Republican McCain and the Democrat Obama running to succeed the Other Party Bush.

2) It has been a weird, weird, weird week. McCain has thrown the election on its head. A week ago today, no one outside of politics had heard of Palin. Two days later, she's accused of covering up the true identity of her son. The next day, it's announced that her daughter is pregnant, so the slander about her son is false. Two days after that, Palin is giving a speech to accept her nomination.

3) During her speech, Palin gave as good as she got. She knocked the media, took a run at Obama, and didn't twirl her hair even once. Lefty bloggers are shocked. "My God. She can string a sentence together."

4) The speech wasn't excellent, because it should have ended off with another story of her small town roots. Instead, it ended with more stuff about McCain. They should have bookended the speech with another story from Alaska, maybe how she managed her and her husband's business while juggling family life, found the American dream, so forth. That kind of stuff will play in the heartland. Ending on the McCain deal seemed anti-climactic.

5) Speaking of anti-climactic, if McCain doesn't give a good speech, people might think Palin's the presidential nominee. Then again, maybe McCain doesn't mind that.

6) The foreign policy stuff in the speech sounded a little too pat, as if to prove she can pronounce words like "Caucasus," as in the Caucasus Mountains. These statements were no doubt used to get people off her back about a lack of foreign policy experience, but it sounded tin-eared next to the life story stuff. More life story, less Caucasus would have been the way to go.

7) Her duty now is to head out and start talking to blue collar workers, single moms, rural Americans, and family coalitions (especially any that involve kids with special needs; this was probably the most poignant part of her speech, and it came early on).

8) If anything, this is the most interesting presidential race in my lifetime. Nothing even comes close. This also had to be the first time in history that people were excited to hear a VP nominee accept the nomination.

Sometimes, It's Good To Be The President

Bush with the US Olympic beach volleyball team.

AP Photo/Gerald Herbert

McClellan's Bush Bash

When the news of Scott McClellan's book came out, I wasn't surprised on a couple of levels. If you haven't heard, the book is a tell-all from the former press secretary, and so far it looks like he disagreed with Bush on a ton of issues, and is willing to talk about them in detail.

The first reason for my lack of surprise is that loyalty doesn't mean much these days. Money talks, loyalty walks. I was amused to hear pundits say "thank you" to McClellan for giving us the dirty details on the Bush presidency (the jury's still out on the book's accuracy, with some calling it crap, others calling it exaggerated). But whatever the case, people are thanking McClellan for his disloyalty to his old boss.

I have a problem with that. If I spent three years with an advisor, it would be a massive stab in the back to have the guy write a book smearing me with his inside scoop. I have a hard time believing that you wouldn't feel the same way.

Let's not kid around, McClellan's book was written for money over honour, plain and simple. A tell-all book without dirt doesn't sell, and an honourable man doesn't smear his former boss for cash. But such are the times we live in, and that's why the book comes as no surprise.

On another level, it's no surprise to see a disgruntled press secretary. They're the lowest of the low in the Oval Office, usually the last to know anything. Pierre Salinger was kept in the dark by the Kennedy Administration during the Cuban Missile Crisis, because they were worried he'd spill some beans, be forced to lie, or screw something up that the Kremlin wouldn't understand. Salinger wasn't happy about it, and JFK didn't care. Nixon's press secretary Ron Ziegler was equally in the dark over Watergate, and I'm sure he was glad to be.

Now we have Scott McClellan, but with this difference: among other charges, McClellan's book apparently says that he knew Bush was making mistakes in Iraq and after Katrina, but he didn't say anything to anyone inside the White House. He also feels he was forced to bend the truth, and that he didn't feel comfortable with Bush's decisions. And that is what seems to have Bush and his other advisors so perplexed. When McClellan left office, Bush said he'd miss him and that the two of them would one day be sitting on the porch telling stories. There was not a trace of bad blood. Why the book?

Easy. Again, I was not surprised when I saw this bit from the AP: "[McClellan] reveals that he was pushed to leave earlier than he had planned, and he displays some bitterness about that as well as about being sometimes kept out of the loop on key decision-making sessions."

That's probably a line you could find on every press secretary's resume if they leave office before the end of their president's term. Only natural. A press secretary is someone who speaks for the president. He isn't like the other big-dog secretaries, of state and defense. He's a mouthpiece. The other secretaries get to make some policy decisions, and quite often they do it without the president's knowledge, only telling him about it later in the day. The secretaries of state and defense have clout, while the the press secretary only has a mouth.

I remember a fascinating transcript from the Nixon years, where Kissinger is on the phone as secretary of state, trying to calm things down in the Middle East. They're transcripts of phone calls between Kissinger and all kinds of Middle East big shots.

The next transcript in the book is between Kissinger and Nixon. The whole thing is Kissinger telling Nixon what he'd said that day to all of these world leaders, while Nixon throws in an "All right, Henry," every few sentences.

Presidents are busy. They need their secretaries to do that sort of thing. Except for the press guy. He doesn't set any policies, ever, and if he did, he'd be gone. Because he's not just speaking to some reporters, he's speaking to the world at large. There is no "backdoor channel" with a press secretary. His channel is a global one.

That must rankle. I can imagine there are many people out there that would like to be a press secretary, thinking they'll be rubbing shoulders with the people in the Oval Office and helping to decide the fate of the nation. Then they learn what the job's really like: you say what we tell you to. No more. No less. Stay on message. Don't send mixed signals. And your input isn't that important, so for God's sake don't improvise on policy.

Good press secretaries are not good thinkers or policy makers. Their true talent lies in the ability to field the same question 100 times without changing their answer.

It sounds to me like McClellan didn't like the job. He let things stew from 2003 to 2006, and then he blurted it all onto paper after he left his post. Most of the quotations from the book are very "I would have done it this way."

Unfortunately Scott, it didn't matter what you thought. Perhaps you think it does now?

Photo: AP/Ron Edmonds

The Saints Go Marching Out

2.5 years ago, Hurricane Katrina slammed into the South. The rallies began. The fundraisers. The government relief efforts, the rock concerts, the internet money drives. Mother Nature didn't do it, Bush did it. Western guilt was shoved down our throats, and it's still being fed to us on a regular basis.

Three months ago I heard a guy on the radio say that he had recently been to New Orleans. He said, "I looked around at all the devastation and I thought, hmmm. Somebody's fault." The DJs murmured agreement. They patted him on the back for raising money and trying to make a difference.

You know which 'somebody' he meant. He meant the state government, the Federal government, Bush, and I suppose, the world at large. Yup, poor New Orleans. No one is there to help them.

Last year I wrote a blog about New Orleans, and I let them off easy. I said, "I have no right to tell them how to live, but maybe they should start helping themselves instead of waiting for more assistance."

Today I read the following:

"A gunman opened fire Wednesday morning and killed a 26-year-old man driving a rental car in the Lower Garden District, sending the car careening into a nearby building.

The fatal shooting, the 21st murder in New Orleans this year, occurred closely on the heels of a trying Carnival season for police, one in which four people were murdered and 12 others injured in shootings in the past five days, according to police records." -- Times-Picayune

So now I've changed my tune. To the people of New Orleans: shut up and get off your ass. Crying for more cash while you throw Carnival parties and shoot each other? "21st murder so far this year." Nice way of putting it. I prefer, "21st murder in the last 38 days."

As for Ray Nagin, that butthead of a mayor, I'd like him to put a sock in it, too. During Katrina, the guy ranted and screamed on the phone that the Feds didn't care about his electorate; the next day, Drudge ran a photo showing dozens of buses in a New Orleans parking lot, up to their windshields in water. When confronted about it on Meet The Press, Ray said the buses sat idle because there was no one to drive them. He really said that on national TV.

That's about as big a knee-slapper as I've ever heard. Who was he kidding? There must have been a ton of guys in the can doing a stretch for grand theft auto. They would have been pleased to help him out.

What need do you have of donations, Ray? Ask your citizenry to turn over the loot from their last hold-up. You obviously don't want to do anything about the crime in your 'needy' city, so why should I care?

Here's a quote from Nagin's Katrina rant: ""Now get off your asses and let's do something, and let's fix the biggest goddamn crisis in the history of this country."

Nevermind the country. The man should listen to his own advice and do something about the crisis that is his city.

Almost three years since the storm hit, and I'm supposed to feel guilty because New Orleans and tough-talking Ray can't get their act together? I'm out.

Walter Who?

I was surfing the web and came across this headline: Former VP Walter Mondale Speaks in Duluth

Man, talk about a slow news day.

Who knew Walter Mondale was still around? Turns out he's as vigorous as ever and speaking in the metropolis of Duluth.

At the speech, Mondale said: "We told the truth we obeyed the law and we kept the peace. Maybe no more than what you'd expect but we can say that of ourselves and I'm proud of that. I hope the next administration will try and do the same."

Not bad. Thumping his chest at being the Vice President of Malaise under Jimmy Carter, and at the same time taking a shot at Bush. I'm sure the American hostages in Iran were delighted that Mondale had such a laid back time in the White House.

Those Were The Days
The irrelevant Mondale has some fans, though. The crackerjack news outlet Northland News covered the speech. A reporter on their website writes, "Weber Music Hall was filled with students and faculty to listen to what this influential political leader had to say."

Hmm. Influential. I'm not so sure about that. I remember Mondale from when I was a kid. I'd tune in to watch Commander Tom out of Buffalo. Mondale was running for President against Reagan. Just when I'd get into the storyline of a sock puppet trying to say the alphabet, they'd cut to commercial and there would be Mondale making a campaign pitch. The sock puppet made more sense. I also learned that his running mate, Geraldine Ferraro, had nothing to do with cool Italian cars. Bummer.

I wonder how many students and faculty "filled" Duluth's Weber Music Hall. Perhaps 13, the same number of electoral votes that the influential Mondale received in 1984 before he disappeared into obscurity.

He rose again, bless him. But in Duluth?

Sean's Year in Review

Midnight of New Year's Day is only a few hours off, so it's time for me to crack open the diary and see what I was thinking about over the past year.

I'm not so Victorian as to actually keep a diary, so the blog will have to do. Neither am I much of a sentimentalist, though I do find it funny to look back and say, "Was I really that concerned about the price of Starbuck's coffee?"

New Year's is a time of renewal and resolution. Millions of smokers will quit tonight, only to light up during the hangover the following morning. A number of fat people will say that they are going to drop fifty pounds, then chug chicken wings during the college bowl games. Life's funny like that: any other day of the year, a broken resolution would be a broken promise. But a broken promise on New Year's is okay, because people just think you were being a drunken ass when you made the declaration. They never believed you, anyway.

So, let me see. It was New Year's Eve, 2006, and I was in Acapulco. I enjoyed Coronas on the beach, then margaritas in the bar, and then a gorgeous Argentinian girl in the...well, let's not get carried away, shall we? Some things are better left off the page.

January

Shoes

I bought a new pair of shoes yesterday.

That shouldn't be news, but it is for me. I've always had a problem getting over to the shoe store and making a purchase. Like most real men, I only own a few pairs of shoes. A black pair for the suit, a running pair for the street, and a pair of sandals for everything else. I have never owned a brown pair of shoes in my life, not because I don't like the color brown, but because I don't have a brown belt to go with them. As for Oxblood, the name alone turns me off, and besides, red shoes are for Judy Garland.

Tanning and Work

Today's tanning episode got me thinking about work. You see, these two chicks are showgirls. That's their job. They're great friends and I love them to death. So as they were lying there, they asked me if I'd mind moving their chairs (whilst they were still lying on them) so that they could get a better angle from the sun. As women do, they had unstrapped their bikini tops and were lying on their stomachs. It was much easier for them to ask me to move the chairs, rather than tie the tops, get up, move the chairs, lie back down, and untie the tops again. So the thought crossed my mind to do it.

Then I saw something. Over their oiled, tanned, gorgeous kick-line butts, I saw a man painting a light fixture. He was sweating his balls off in the afternoon sun, paint chips all around him, the stink of varsol and epoxy in his nostrils.

I told the girls to stick it.

Heat

I have spent years in the world's hot spots and amongst the tourists they attract. Tourists are a funny bunch. Anyone that tells you they travel in order to learn about 'culture' are full of baloney. After sailing, flying, and hitchhiking around various parts of the earth, I have come to the firm conclusion that nobody wants to learn anything about anybody. At least, not anybody that is alive. People might fly to Italy, but they don't do it so they can rent an apartment in some Palermo craphole and learn the culture of getting mugged. No, they fly to Italy to check into a hotel, look at David's genitals, take a stroll around the Colosseum, then have a pizza at an 'authentic' restaurant.

February

My Name

It was in third grade that funny things started happening. My mom or my dad bought me one of those iron-on shirts, the ones where people would put their names on the back in case they forgot who the shirt belonged to when they pulled it out of the drawer. On the back of that shirt was written SEAN. So it was my shirt with my name. I can't remember what was on the front, but it was probably an iron-on Twisted Sister logo or something.

Anyway, I put on that shirt and went to school. All day long people called me 'Seen,' as in, "I have seen the light." I had no idea why they were calling me this, until I realized that they were ripping on my name. Since that day, I have probably been called 'Seen' about 5, 342 times.

Flush

If one sentence can sum up how ludicrous this stuff is getting, it must be the following one from Fox News, talking about Ibrahim Ramey, director of human and civil rights work from the Muslim America Society:

"Ramey said he was unaware of any specific complaints regarding the direction of toilets in U.S. prisons."

Poor Kids

They didn't look poor. They had well-combed hair and they looked as if they'd had three squares that day. Yet here they were, life's little lost ones. Their eyes darted from tourist to tourist and drunk to drunk, looking for a sucker or someone that wasn't paying enough attention to their wallet. They knew more about the street than I ever would, and they weren't old enough to enter high school.

And that's the way it's going to go for them. Roses, to heroin, to jail, to infection, to death in no time at all, and we'll still be going to the clubs and telling the next generation that we don't want their crummy flowers.

The Environment

Our conceit is limitless. The Earth has been through ice ages, massive earthquakes, hurricanes, innumerable volcanoes spitting sulphur into the sky, catastrophic meteorite impacts, so forth. But hairspray and unleaded gas will be the planet's demise?

Ours, maybe. But the Earth doesn't give a damn about us. Ask the next skydiver whose chute doesn't open how fragile the Earth is, and how much it cares. You'll get two four letter words in response. The first is shit!, the other is thud.



March

Al Gore

“The Earth has a fever.” What kind of an arrogant ass goes before Congress (and the TV cameras; let’s not forget why he was there in the first place) and talks to senators as if they are three years old? This man is quoted as saying that global warming is going to be the end of civilization as we know it, and he uses “The Earth has a fever,” to describe this scientific catastrophe.

I would love to hear Al Gore describe other problems using his condescending, talk-down-to-children-tone.

The Leaning Tower of Pisa: “The marble feels dizzy.”

9/11: “The birdies hit your Leggo set.”

Oil spill: “Exxon made a boo-boo.”

Hurricane Katrina: “Someone pulled the Caribbean’s finger.”

Apartment suicide: “Little man fall down, go boom.”

Assault and battery: “The bullies played a mean game of tag.”

Out With Friends

I have often said that it is not where you are, it is who you are with. I stand by that. If I am with my buddies Dave and Pete in some craphole, I will have a great time. If I am at the best nightclub in Berlin with some loser who complains all the time, I will hate life. This is why I despise going out with a group of people that cannot make up their minds on where they want to go. You’d figure they’d have learned it by now: if you’re truly friends, then it truly doesn’t matter. If the location matters so much, I have bad news for you: you aren’t friends.



April

Eavesdrop

I overheard a woman talking to her friend outside a mall last night:

"You know Angela. If it doesn't involve manicures, pedicures, martinis, or jogging, she doesn't give a shit."

Such is the epitaph over many a woman's thirties.

Good-Bye, Old Friend

I remember hearing about a friend that died. He wasn't a close friend, but we shared some drinks and jokes together. He was a hell of a guy. He got married, and three years later he dropped dead. I hadn't seen him in a long time. When I got the news, the first thing that popped into my head was him cutting up a salami and asking me if I wanted some. That memory comes from an all-night bender that we'd had. At the end of the night he pulled out some salami, some bread, and a knife. He said, "You want some salami?"

I feel like I cheated him. Nobody's first memory after death should involve a damned salami. I like to think he'll forgive me for that.

The Virginia Tech Shooting

I'm fed up with the cops, too. We've got America's Most Wanted, COPS, SWAT, Protect and Serve, and all kinds of tough-guy cop garbage on TV. When a drunk driver gets pulled over, the police have no problem throwing him to the ground or using a Taser to zap him into submission. On the SWAT programs, fifteen guys get out of a van all dressed in black body armor. They look ridiculous, like schoolboys at Hallowe'en. When they kick in the drug lord's slum door, they find the 17-year-old menace to society passed out on the couch in his underwear.

When they shackle the drug kid and put him in the back of the van, they usually bring on a sergeant to make some remarks. "Nobody got hurt," he says. "Successful day."

No kidding, pal. You stormed a suburban home as if you were the Marines. The kid didn't even know you were coming. The chances of somebody getting hurt were pretty damn small. Where are these tough guys when somebody is shooting cheerleaders and university professors in the back?

Netspeak

I have a friend that is the master of Netspeak. She loves it. When something special happens in her life, she types :P. This means she is sticking out her tongue. When she types ;), she’s winking. When she types :O, she’s surprised.

What people like her don’t understand is that I already know all this stuff because it’s implied in the language. When I write to say that I fell down a flight of stairs, they don’t need to type colon-capital-oh to say they are shocked. When they tell me they won free tickets to the playoffs, they don’t have to stick out their tongue. I know they’re a braggart and a blowhard. No emphasis needed.

May

Rosie Quits "The View"

Rosie. Ah, Rosie. The big, round, mound of sound finally decided to pack it in. She was due to resign from The View in a few weeks, but after her latest tiff with Elisabeth Hasselbeck, she punched the clock early. Or as Rosie wrote on her blog: "When painting there is a point u must step away from the canvas as the work is done."

True. Or as I like to put it, "When done taking dump, there is point u must flush."

European Chicks

Women north of the Rio Grande are a terrible disappointment when it comes to the mystery and the allure of woman. Yes, the French chick at the bar in the black turtleneck smoking the long cigarette might be a snob. But there is something sexy as hell about women that can stand alone at a bar and not once - not once - look around the room. Sheer confidence. Like a cat. Utterly disinterested in what you have to say or who you are...or might she be?

This as opposed to, say, the sexy allure of a chick from Kamloops wearing droopy denims when she shouts, "Canada kicks ass. Whoooo!" and then punches you in the arm harder than a lumberjack.

The Beer Test

The beer test is the ultimate indicator of how expensive a city is, because you can be sure that a city charging 1o dollars for a draft beer is not going to sell you a house for under a couple of million. To make a two million dollar house sound reasonable, just tell yourself that it's only worth two hundred thousand beers. Besides, what do you expect in a place like Monte Carlo, where Grace Kelly was a Princess and their Grand Prix has the Mediterranean for a backdrop?

Big Bucks

Any sports star that gets married and has kids before he retires is an idiot. I really believe that. Because man, if I was making ten thousand dollars every time I threw a ball or passed a puck, the last thing I’d want to do is go home to a bunch of screaming kids.

Planet Starbucks

The language of Starbucks amuses me. There is not a chance that any of these people knew what "grande" was ten years ago. Likewise chai, latte, or machioto. How did they learn the lingo? They must have been nervous the first time they used ten words to order a cup of coffee, some in a different language to boot. Or perhaps it just comes naturally to people that think there's no easier way to sound sanctimonious than to specify that their coffee be served at exactly 190-degrees. And what about the prices they pay? When a large (pardon me - venti) latte costs almost as much as a six pack of beer, you know things are seriously out of whack.

June

Gay Marriage

People that get upset when someone wants to talk about such a big issue, and have a good debate about it, aren't worth my time. When feelings drive laws, you should be very nervous. Today's good feelings about gay marriage could be tomorrow's bad feelings about not having Jews own supermarkets, blacks teach school, whites swim in pools. Seem ludicrous? 30 years ago, so did the very idea of gay marriage.

The Enviro-Boobs Strike Again

Poor guy. He's sane, but he doesn't get it: it no longer matters if the air gets cooler or warmer. All that matters is that it changes. Now that 'global warming' is called 'climate change,' the enviro-boobs and others of their mindless ilk can point at a thermometer or a thunderstorm any day of the week and say, "See?"

Personally, I can't decide which is better: global warming, so the babes are in bikinis throughout the year; or global cooling, so the babes want to spend more time cuddling in the Jacuzzi.

Growing up

Back in high school, I'm pretty sure we all wanted to get laid, but it rarely happened. Now, everybody's getting laid and they can't wait to post photos of the evidence all over the internet. It only took sex ten years to go from being the aw-shucks-red-in-the-face-sweaty-palms act it was, to a humdrum event you can now discuss over dinner.

July

Vegansexuals

Pardon the double pun, but sex in New Zealand just got harder to come by. According to one newspaper, Kiwi vegans have declared that they will not have sex with anyone who eats meat. They are calling themselves vegansexual. As if any red blooded human would care, since their “no meat touches these lips” mantra implies that they don’t agree with oral sex, either.

Tattoos

It seems like every woman in a tight shirt and low jeans was born with one of those Asian symbols just above their butt crack. I ponder what the symbols mean. I’d ask, but I know the ladies haven’t the foggiest. They got it because they thought it looked cool. Then the ladies give you dirty looks for staring at their butts, when all you’re trying to do is figure out what their butt is trying to say.

I wonder sometimes if they’re getting busy with an Asian guy, does the man ever think, “Why does this woman have ‘I’m With Stupid’ written above her butt in Mandarin?”

Sportscasters

I’ll give Sports Illustrated’s Rick Reilly a break on this. Years ago, in a face to face meeting, he asked Sammy Sosa point blank if he would take a steroids test. There was a great deal of controversy over whether Reilly should have asked the question. Not much controversy, though, over the fact that Sosa did not say yes or no. He still hasn’t. He just ignored it, it went away, and the sports writers let it, just as they let his corked bat slip from memory every time they discuss his homerun totals.

Soccer

The soccer tournament involved all of the qualifying countries in the Americas, including the United States. Canada didn't make it because Canada is so involved in soccer that they suck at it, ranking out of the top 50 countries in the world. When Bosnia-Herzegovina (28), Morocco (35), and Guinea (50) are better than you at a sport, you know it's time to stop asking when that sport will become popular in your country.

I flicked on CNN this morning and they were talking about David Beckham's arrival in Los Angeles. He used to play for Manchester United and Real Madrid. He's now come over to play with the LA Galaxy. Headlines on Yahoo are asking if he can save US soccer. The rest of us are asking if he can get out of the way so we can get another look at his hot wife.

Our Times

The other day I was on a flight from Washington DC to Toronto. It was a puddle jumper of an airplane, but it had jets, so it was noisy as hell in the cabin and the seats were too close together.

A little girl was across the aisle from me, looking out the window, and she turned to me and asked me how long the flight was going to last.

And I didn't know if I should say anything.

Such are the times we live in today, where speaking to a lone child is not something to cherish (the child might learn something; for that matter, so might you). Rather, speaking to a child makes you look over your shoulder, to see if anyone thinks you're some sicko who's trying to take advantage of a young innocent.

Look in the Mirror

The trouble with looking at yourself is the looking. Being bold enough to examine yourself, to be honest about what you see, is tough. I think it was Freud that said no one can psychoanalyse themselves (he also said the Irish are impervious to psychoanalysis, so I guess they can forget my whole point), but it's worth giving it a shot now and then.

August

Mother Theresa Dies

No one noticed the passing of Mother Teresa, and in a way I always liked that. She wouldn't have wanted the headlines, unless they came with a donation for her Missionaries of Charity. She had no crown jewels, and would have hawked them for food if she did.

10 years on, the news coverage still makes me laugh. A few days ago, a number of papers ran a story about how Teresa questioned her faith in God towards the end of her life. That's a great hit job on a devoted Christian, and a wonderful way to celebrate her life, isn't it? Diana, however, gets the tears, the flowers, and the orgasmic excitement of a nation in mourning. Fire up the TV. Replay the Elton John tune. Edit the video and photo montages. Set them to music, with soft focus and dissolve transitions. Nothing's too good for the Princess.

The differences in their deaths could not be more striking. One with malaria and heart failure, the other in a millionaire's limo. Guess which one gets the full blown Larry King treatment?

Senator Criag Bust

I remember reading a book written by a retired cop in Chicago. He went through the vice squad to pay his dues. For that detail, he had to watch gay men go at it in public bathrooms. He couldn't arrest them until they were virtually in the act of sex, otherwise there was no crime. He wrote some pretty disturbing images in that book, about Vaseline and all kinds of stuff, but it's an important example: to convict someone of a crime, there must actually be a guilty act. The lawyers called it mens rea (guilty mind) and actus reus (guilty act). You need to have both in order to constitute a crime.

To believe that the Senator is guilty of a crime, you must then believe that everything the arresting cop is saying is the truth, and you must assume that Senator Craig was looking for sex. It just doesn't stand up. If you believe it does, then God help you when you're in the hands of an overzealous cop.

Bill Moyers Shows His Colors

A few questions for Bill Moyers:

1) If the journalist's job is to provide the public with the "best thinking" out there, who decides what the "best" thinking is?

2) If there is a "movement" for impeachment, how can there not be one against it?

3) Since when was public broadcasting meant to be an alternative to anything? Just because you suck at your craft and have to appear between telethons and Nova re-runs doesn't mean you can give yourself a cool title like "alternative."

4) When did journalists "dare not" talk about anything because officials didn't want them to? Did you even watch the pre-invasion press conferences? I did. Guys were asking Generals if Baghdad was going to resemble Stalingrad. This proves two things: they don't toe the official line, and they are morons.

5) "The journalist's job is not to achieve some mythical state of equilibrium..." Really?

News to us. We lowly worst-thinkers always thought it was. It's nice to know that Bill Moyers believes equilibrium in a story of opinions is a thing of myth and legend.

The Flag

The flag looks pretty, but it means little. The rules that govern it don't actually exist. When you hear someone say that the flag shouldn't touch the ground, or shouldn't be used to wipe up coffee, they're borrowing from the Americans. There are no rules governing the use or misuse of the Canadian flag. You have every right to fly it over your house, or use it as a lobster bib.

Merv Griffin Dies

Merv Griffin died on Sunday. If you've ever watched Jeopardy or Wheel of Fortune, then you've seen his name at the end of each episode.

I remember staying in the Beverly Hilton about six years ago. It was one of his hotels. Merv's greatest hits were on one of the hotel's channels, and I watched an old interview he did with Richard Burton. Burton said to Griffin, "You're more successful than I am."

Merv looked suitably surprised, and asked Burton to elaborate. Burton said, "You're more successful than I am. Because you're on television." His emphasis on that last word was a sign of Burton's smarts.

Minnesota Bridge Collapse

It took CNN exactly 12 hours to have a graphic that said, Who's to Blame? written beneath pictures of concrete in water. Jack Cafferty, CNN's most asinine reporter (and that's saying something) went on his usual anti-Fed rant. He blamed the bridge collapse on Bush, Iraq, Bush, Iraq. He hearkened back to the glorious mud slinging days of Katrina and the tsunami (tidal wave, to the rest of us). Then he read some emails from his fans that did the same. Then he tossed it back to Wolf Blitzer and returned to his corner, waiting for Blitzer to call his unqualified ass back onto the tube to read more emails later in the show.

This is what passes for reporting nowadays. Jack Cafferty rolls up his sleeves like some 1950's newspaper editor and pretends to do some investigating. The next time you watch this guy on TV, you'll realize he does nothing of the kind. He's a morning show has-been. He's a hack. He sits on a stool and reads emails sent to him by the unemployed of America. Who else is watching CNN at 2 o'clock in the afternoon and writing political diatribes to Jack Cafferty?

Girl Talk

Look, if your relationship is headed for the dumps, you don't need a stranger to give you a list. You need to go with your gut. Guy never calls when he's always three hours late? He's balling somebody. Woman doesn't want to have sex with you anymore? She's not attracted to you. Guy constantly picks on your appearance? He's a jerk.

You know these things, but knowing is not believing. No list in the world is going to help you with that problem. Everybody's been there. When friends are calling your boyfriend an idiot or your girlfriend a witch, you know they're right. You just don't want to believe it.

You're on your own with that one.

Sean Penn

Speaking of pro-Fascists, it looks like Sean Penn has decided to go a step further in his glorious career as a pro-Fascist actor. I used to think that he was a great actor, and still would, if I saw any more of his films. I wouldn't call it a boycott, so much as a bore-cott. Is there anything more mundane that watching a rich American celebrity punish himself for being just that?

Seeing Penn bootlick the heels of an anti-Semitic dictator is a good reminder that actors are just people and some people are morons.

September

French Ambitions

People that believe the US mission in Iraq is all about oil are stupid or misinformed. The US actually believes what they are doing in Iraq is right, for moral and security reasons both. The French are vastly more cynical. They are the true oil-believers. While the Americans and Brits get killed, France buys the oil, and they don't have to fire a shot. All good. But a nuclear Iran changes the formula. A nuclear Iran will alter the costs of French oil interests in the region. The French aren't going to stand for that. Far cheaper to bomb Tehran then be strangled by Tehran's control of the the entire Middle East.

Inviting Hitler

The news out of Columbia University gets more bizarre by the day. On the heels of inviting Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian anti-Semitic tyrant, to their grounds for a "robust debate," a Dean of the University has come out with this as their defence: if Hitler were willing to have a debate with Columbia students and faculty, then the Fuhrer would be invited, too.

When you have to use Hitler as an attempt to quell outrage, you know you've lost your grip on reality.

Cosmo Girls

Think about that: first, they're saying that prehistoric women sat around waiting to screw the losers that weren't invited on the hunting trip. Then they're saying that prehistoric man knew that sperm had anything to do with sex (a sophisticated leap, not quite believed by many island populations in the early 20th Century). Then they're saying that prehistoric man thought his penis was a sponge, and that he could use it to soak up another man's semen. Leap forward a few thousand years, and Cosmo tells every wife in America that if their husband gives them the apocalyptic sex they've always dreamed of, it means he suspects she's running around.

Great. Thanks, Cosmo. We try to show our ladies a good time and you turn it into another chance for "open dialogue."

Death Proof

First, the writing: it's tired. Kill Bill was so well written that we know Tarantino's still got the goods, but with this difference: Kill Bill is not about Quentin Tarantino, while Death Proof is nothing but. It has ten-minute lunch room conversations, but only a passable cast saying the lines. Reservoir Dogs it isn't. Tarantino is horrible at writing teenage girl dialogue. He should stick to bank robbers and assassins. Teenage girls talking about boyfriends for an entire scene is the stuff naps are made of, especially since none of these boyfriends are ever going to appear in the movie. In other words, who cares?

Sean's Baseball Prophesy - Before the Mitchell Report

Jose Canseco released a book a couple of years ago. In it, he fessed up to his steroid use, and said that while he was in the bigs, approximately 80% of the league was juicing. He was lambasted by sportswriters, players, and fans as a dirty rat.

It's turning out that he's likely the most honest man this league has produced in decades.

Michigan Blows It

Michigan lost to Appalachian State, 34-32. Appalachian who? I had to Google the school to find out where it is on the map (Boone, North Carolina; apparently they have quite a music program).

October

Sarkozy Walks

I've pointed out before that Sarkozy walks to the beat of a different drummer. Being French, he gets away with it. Still, I can't fault him for this one. If a reporter showed up from the "most respected news magazine show in TV history" and started asking about my wife, I'd say au revoir, too.

Tonight on 60 Minutes, they aired an interview between Lesley Stahl and the French President. In the interview, Stahl asked Sarkozy about his marital relationship (not long after the interview was taped, Sarkozy and his wife separated). Sarkozy got up, said, "Merci," took off his microphone, and walked out.

The press would have a field day with any British or American leader that did that. Instead, 60 Minutes promoted the piece by calling Sarkozy "smart, energetic, and tempestuous."

UN Wake-up Call

Starvation, by the way, is never caused by a food shortage. There's tons of food lying around. Famine has always been caused by political regimes keeping food from people, not by people wandering into a desert and realizing that there's nothing to grow so they might as well sit down and die. The UN could try to do something about thug regimes not feeding people, but they're too busy writing bogus reports on climate change. Not as messy that way.

Byrd Busted

Funny that his 2002 fear of a declining career coincided with the 2002 receipts of HGH, and continued after he had Tommy John surgery in 2003, then the receipts dried up in 2005 when the league banned HGH. Funny.

Byrd's excuse of a doctor's prescription grows even more shady, as the Chronicle reports that one of the prescriptions was filled out by a dentist whose license was suspended in 2003 for fraud. That does not sound like the kind of high-end doctor that teams provide to their players. I'm not an anatomist, but I do know that the last time my dentist asked me how my pituitary gland was doing was never.

Deborah Kerr Dies

Kerr will be remembered best for her charm and manner, but I especially liked her role in From Here to Eternity. That is one of my must-see Fade to Black films this week. The Sundowners and An Affair to Remember are two others.

Steinbrenner Hangs Them Up

In 1985, he told the press that a bad start to the season would not affect his opinion of manager Yogi Berra. 16 games later, Berra got canned.

On April Fool's Day, 1999, pitcher Hideki Irabu dogged it on a play to first. Steinbrenner called Irabu a "fat pussy toad" in the press, then refused to let him join the team in Los Angeles. Later, he apologized for calling Irabu fat, and said that the team needed Irabu "big time." At the end of the season, Irabu was traded.

Friends in the Facebook Age

I went on Facebook the other day and took a look at a few of the people that have labelled me as 'friend.' If you're not hip to Facebook, a friend is someone that knew you a hundred years ago, writes you an email, and then never writes you again. You're put into a "friend list," and there you remain.

You're like a collector's item from their distant past. Maybe they pull you out once in a while, blow some dust off, look at you in the light of the window, and put you back. Maybe they print out your picture and draw mustaches on it. Either way, you're theirs to keep, unless you 'unfriend' them, and who would want to be so rude as to do that?

Facebook is the Ebay of society. Instead of trading old lamps and hockey cards, you get the chick that sat next to you in first grade and the guy that made everyone laugh with the hand-under-the-armpit fart trick.

Al Gore's Nobel Prize

Alfred Nobel, master of dynamite and TNT, started the whole Prize game back in 1895. Back then, the prize was to go to a person that fought for peace and disarmament. It now includes poverty, economic growth, and the environment. In other words, it's being watered down to include virtually anybody for anything.

Why Terrorism Works

And here I thought this multi-cultural deal was supposed to bring us all together. Not so. Islam, however, is a separatist faith and culture, in word and deed. Yet a highly successful one. Jews have never had Hanukkah and passover celebrations in public schools, and they've been around these parts for centuries. Then again, they haven't blown anything up to show their displeasure about it.

November

Re: The Loser That Got An Operation to Not Have Kids

"We feel we can have one long-haul flight a year, as we are vegan and childless, thereby greatly reducing our carbon footprint and combating over-population.

"My only frustration is that other people are unable to accept my decision."

Au contraire, nitwit. I am more than happy to accept your decision. Knowing that you will never raise a child does not disturb me in the least.

The Gutsy Arts Crowd

Here's a piece I found on the Times (UK) website. It's a story about artists in Europe not standing up for themselves because they're afraid of getting their throats cut.

Gotta love the "artists." Whether they work in paint, film, or literature, the vast majority of these thought provoking individuals are a bunch of chickens.

Bye-Bye Britain

Here's another laugher. Dress-up day at an English school shouldn't make headlines, but this one does. Students and teachers at the school had to dress as Muslims to belatedly celebrate the Eid festival. In the afternoon there was a party, but only women could attend. Of the students, most are Christian. Of the 47 teachers, 2 are Muslim. Yes, you just read that. No word yet on when everyone will have to wear a yarmulke or a Buddhist robe.

December

Brian Williams: Moron

Brian Williams: "My nominee for 2007 Person of the Year is a woman--a woman with a history of abuse, a woman who has never run for elective office, someone we all know, someone who makes her presence known on a daily basis in all our lives and, for my money, is better than any male alternative. That woman is Mother Earth. I think the environment is the compelling issue of our time."

Yes, he really said that. And yes, this is the man that reads you his interpretation of the important news stories on a nightly basis.

Juiced

You have to ask yourself, how is it that sports writers have not been unearthing these stories for the past ten years? The answer is simple: sports writers kiss the ass of every athlete they come across, because if they do not, they won't get 'access.' Gaining access also means keeping mum about the dirty laundry that they might trip over in the locker room.

The players that have been juicing should be ashamed to be on this list, but the sports writers should be equally embarrassed. Once again they have proven to be the most cynical people to ever hold a pen. I place no value in anything they say regarding sports. One minute they're defending Marion Jones to the hilt, the next minute they're holding the Kleenex while she cries in shame on the courthouse steps.

Fat Shopper that Honked at Me

Christmas gives me a chance to give thanks for many things. My friends. My family. My life. The fact that I don't drive a minivan or have floppy boobs and weigh as much as an NFL left tackle.

Intelligence on Iran

The National Intelligence Estimate came out this week, and the press are loving that it says Iran suspended its nuclear weapons program in 2003.

President Bush gave a news conference this morning that was informative and comedic. The press peppered him with questions about the NIE, and asked if this made him look the fool: Bush has said before that Iran could lead the world into a WWIII, but now the NIE says Iran's leaders are pussy cats.

Fascinating. The press have vilified the intelligence sector for the botched Iraq WMDs, and said that intelligence officials are morons at best, criminally negligent at worst. Yet now one report hits the desk that makes Iran look good (and, of course, Bush look bad) and the press are using the document as Bible study.

Bush did the only thing he could: he punted. He said that Iran is and always has been dangerous, and that this report shows that the Iranians did in fact have a nuclear weapons program. If the past few years of diplomatic pressure have made the Iranians call it off, so much the better.

The press weren't buying. David Gregory, NBC's reporter extrordinaire, took delight in paraphrasing Bush and saying that he had toned down his WWIII rhetoric. He then said that this new Bush junk sounded an awful lot like the past Bush junk: Bush could invade Iran anyway, under the "stop them before they have one" argument. Others in the front row of the briefing room asked the president if the rest of the world would now look at Bush as even more of a boob.

I don't give the NIE much import. Ahmandinejad is a holocaust denier that says Israel must be wiped off the map. If Iran was in fact conducting a nuke program up until 2003, it is pretty unlikely that the Iranians said, "Hmmm. We're unpopular at the UN. We should throw out everything we've learned and forget that we ever learned it."

Bush is right when he says Iran is a danger because they have acquired knowledge of how to build a bomb, and that they may transfer this knowledge to someone else. Just because Iran has stopped its own nuclear program does not mean that it won't hand over this vital information to any number of terrorist clients, if they haven't done so already.

The press have completely missed the point of the NIE document. Fact is, Iran was conducting a nuclear weapons program when they said they weren't. Though not quoted by the press corp, the document goes on to say that Iran could still develop a nuclear weapon by 2010.

The view of the press is that Bush is a fool and that the Iranians have turned good. This is the real danger of the NIE. Now that this news will be fanned for the next three weeks, Iran can do whatever they wish. Trying to convince the press later that Iran has restarted a nuke program or transferred the knowledge to someone else will be extremely difficult. Though they hang gays, stone women, and preach anti-Semitic hatred, the Iranian regime is suddenly a bunch of nice guys that have changed their evil ways.

The intelligence says so.

The Pen is Mightier than the...Well, On Second Thought...

Here's a piece I found on the Times (UK) website. It's a story about artists in Europe not standing up for themselves because they're afraid of getting their throats cut.

Perry: Radical Chicken
Gotta love the "artists." Whether they work in paint, film, or literature, the vast majority of these thought provoking individuals are a bunch of chickens.

Here's what Grayson Perry had to say, as quoted by the Times. He's a cross-dressing pottery nut, and his pots can fetch over a hundred thousand dollars at auction:

“I’ve censored myself,” Perry said at a discussion on art and politics organized by the Art Fund. “The reason I haven’t gone all out attacking Islamism in my art is because I feel real fear that someone will slit my throat.”

Perry’s highly decorated pots can sell for more than £50,000 and often feature sex, violence and childhood motifs. One work depicted a teddy bear being born from a penis as the Virgin Mary. “I’m interested in religion and I’ve made a lot of pieces about it,” he said. “With other targets you’ve got a better idea of who they are but Islamism is very amorphous. You don’t know what the threshold is. Even what seems an innocuous image might trigger off a really violent reaction so I just play safe all the time.”

Ah. Playing it safe. That's what we're to expect from the radical art crowd now, is it? Thanks, but I already knew that. 10 000 separate terrorist attacks around the world since 9/11, stacks of dead bodies everywhere, a Canadian mosque that says it's not right to kill "believers" but says nothing about us lowly infidels...and all you guys can come up with is movies bashing the West in general and George Bush in particular.

I can't wait until Dubya is out of office, not because I don't think he's been a good president, but because it will be wonderful to watch the slimy artistic worms try to find something new to deflect attention away from their cowardice.

Theo van Gogh makes a film about the brutal treatment of women at the hands of Islamic fundamentalists. He gets shot and stabbed for the trouble. How does the "artistic community" condemn this attack? By portraying the Virgin Mary with a dick and hiding behind such crap as Islam being "very amorphous."

Sure, Grayson. Tell yourself that it's "amorphous," and that you "don't know where the line is." I'll tell you where it is: just across the yellow line that runs down the center of your back.

Photo: Sydney Morning Herald

Al Gore - Nobel Sham

Al Gore has won the Nobel Peace Prize, sharing it with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. There's going to be a hue and cry from the old school types, who will insist that talking about polar bears is not on the same level as Theodore Roosevelt ending the Russo-Japanese war.

These critics miss the point. For the past half century, the Nobel Peace prize has not been about peace, but about politics. In the same way that a Nobel Prize for Literature means that the author's books are boring crap, so the Peace Prize means that the winner was some guy that, well, what exactly?

Child Soldiers - Sudan
Saying that environmentalists deserve a Peace Prize is a pretty big stretch. It's quite obvious that this was handed to Gore and his looney-tune buddies as a slap to George W. Bush, in the same way that it was handed to Jimmy Carter in 2002. I have no idea what Jimmy Carter has done to "advance peace," just as I have no clue what the UN and Kofi Annan ever did. He won the prize in 2001, after supervising the Oil for Fraud scandal and doing absolutely nothing to stop tyrants around the globe from murdering people, especially in Africa.

This is Ole Danbolt Mjoes, Nobel committee chairman, awarding the prize to Gore: "We would encourage all countries, including the big countries, to challenge, all of them, to think again and to say what can they do to conquer global warming. The bigger the powers, the better that they come in front of this."

Ah! Now I get it. If you use the word conquer, you can give the Peace Prize to anybody. Old Ole asserted that this was not a slap at Bush or the US for not adopting Kyoto (Clinton, darling of the Left, didn't adopt it, either). Still, one can't deny the Nobel crowd's bald politics. When handing the Peace Prize to Carter in 2002, then-committee chairman Gunnar Berge called it a "kick in the leg" to the Bush Administration. You can't get more direct than that.

Alfred Nobel, master of dynamite and TNT, started the whole Prize game back in 1895. Back then, the prize was to go to a person that fought for peace and disarmament. It now includes poverty, economic growth, and the environment. In other words, it's being watered down to include virtually anybody for anything.

Burma
The Buddhists that get shot in Thailand on a daily basis by Islamic thugs, the people struggling for democracy in Burma and getting tortured for their trouble, the peasants in Darfur that are hacked to death each and every day. No peace for them. Al Gore is being hailed as a prophet. How about doing something for peace now?

Here's another laugher from the Nobel Committee, upon presenting the award: "[Climate change] will place particularly heavy burdens on the world's most vulnerable countries. There may be increased danger of violent conflicts and wars, within and between states."

News for you, genius: the vulnerable countries are already in danger. There's no "may" about it. Violent conflict and war are taking place right this minute. Take off your rose colored political blinders for the first time in your life, and you might be able to see the blood in the streets.

It makes one ill to think that there are fat cats like Al Gore patting themselves on the back in Norway over a dubious scientific theory, while a few thousand miles away, men, women, and children are receiving the hard facts of a bullet to the brain.

Parler Nucléaire?

Iran is on French radar and - no surprise to anyone that knows them - the French couldn't give a damn what you think.

This is the latest statement from the French government vis a vis Iran's nuclear ambitions: "Ahmadinejad says that the programme is peaceful. Ultimately, we do not believe him. Everyone knows that the programme has military goals."

That's French spokesman David Martinon at a press conference this morning. Pretty bold stuff by today's standards. Someone in the world had the chutzpah to call a dictator a liar.

Ever since French President Nicolas Sarkozy came to power, there has been a decidedly different tone emanating from Paris.
This is Sarkozy on August 27: "A nuclear-armed Iran for me is unacceptable...This approach [dialogue and sanctions] is the only one that would prevent a catastrophic alternative: the Iranian bomb or the bombing of Iran."

That raised eyebrows, and no wonder. You just don't talk like that these days. But French politicians are fluent at speaking in forked tongues. They'd make masterful poker players, if anyone could stand sitting at the same table with them for more than an hour.

In the same "bombing of Iran" speech, Sarkozy didn't say that it would be the French that would do any bombing...but neither did he say they wouldn't. He then went on to add this about Iraq: "France was and remains hostile to this war...There will only be a political solution,” he added.

Iraq equals politics but Iran equals bombs?

Regarding Iran, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said this last week: "We have to prepare for the worst, and the worst is war." When the press freaked out over the W-word, Sarkozy tried to put out the fire: "I would not have used the word 'war." Thanks, Nic, that ought to put minds at ease.

Snakes and ladders, twists and turns. That has been the French modus operandi for the past two centuries. It went on vacation during the Chirac presidency. Now it's back, in the form of Sarkozy.

Anyone that needs evidence of the US drawing all of the anti-West limelight need only look at the public reaction to Sarkozy's words: there isn't any. Nada. You have to Google Sarkozy's name to find out anything the man has to say. Though France is a nuclear power and is more than capable of bombing anybody should they feel like it, the protesters remain strangely silent.

Imagine Bush saying the words "bomb" and "Iran" on the same day, let alone in the same sentence. Imagine the US Secretary of Defence saying, "Prepare for war." The headlines would be ten feet high. People would march in the street. CNN would trot out the analysts and we'd have a fine time hearing how "unhelpful" Bush is.

The French hide in the shadows. If I were the Iranians, that would give me great pause. I'd be very, very careful about the way I played this nuclear game. For the past two years, they have been able to manipulate the world because there was only one man to worry about: Bush. And he was transparently hamstrung by his own Congress, the world press, and the UN. Iran knew that it would take a lot, maybe too much, for President Bush to step in and do something about Iranian nukes before they had them. And once they had them, what then? North Korea put paid to that argument last year.

Then out of nowhere comes this Sarkozy character. The Iranians must be wondering how their luck could turn so sour. The French answer to no one, and never have. They stabbed the US in the back on the streets of Paris during Vietnam. They voted for "extreme measures" on Iraq for not opening their doors to inspectors, then betrayed the US again by calling the war a sham.

Pétain - collaborateur
During WWII, the French showed their colors. It is astonishing to me that people do not remember Vichy France, and the concessions that the French made to the Germans. "France" was not conquered by the Germans. Only part of it was. The French surrendered, formed a rump government, and lived out the rest of the war in peace while waiting to see which way the winds of history would blow.

The Iranians would do well to remember this, were they not so ignorant of history. Beware the man that does you a favor: the French are on the sidelines not because they don't believe in the war on Islamic fascism, but because they don't see anything worthwhile about it. They've been letting others duke it out, and watching for an opportunity.

People that believe the US mission in Iraq is all about oil are stupid or misinformed. The US actually believes what they are doing in Iraq is right, for moral and security reasons both. The French are vastly more cynical. They are the true oil-believers. While the Americans and Brits get killed, France buys the oil, and they don't have to fire a shot. All good. But a nuclear Iran changes the formula. A nuclear Iran will alter the costs of French oil interests in the region. The French aren't going to stand for that. Far cheaper to bomb Tehran then be strangled by Tehran's control of the the entire Middle East.

Interesting days lie before us. While the protesters march against the Americans, and the world sings the blues about Iraq, France has their eyes on a far different target. And nobody's watching.

Short Cuts -- A UN Tuesday

Ahmadinejad

The Iranian President came to Columbia and got them laughing, but not on purpose. He declared, "In Iran we don't have homosexuals like in your country."

The crowd laughed him off. A few booed him. He then called homosexuality a "phenomenon" that didn't exist inside Iranian borders, and said that people seeking nuclear weapons are "retarded."

That drew a smattering of cheers from the anti-nuke crowd, but an uncomfortbale silence from people that don't like the word "retarded."

Can someone tell me the point of Columbia's exercise? President Bush tried to pass it off this way to Fox News:

"If the (Columbia) president thinks it's a good idea to have the leader from Iran come and talk to the students as an educational experience, I guess it's OK with me."

Bush's gambit is the old, "Don't stop your enemy while he is in the process of hanging himself."

Calling Dr. Freud

Another actor has broken bread with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

Chavez is the guy that came to the UN last year and called George Bush the Devil. His opinion of Dr. Condoleeza Rice is that she is an illiterate (Rice speaks English, French, German, Spanish, and Russian) who suffers from sexual frustration. Chavez has also gone on the record as saying that the US is the biggest terrorist in the world. Nothing new there, and neither is his anti-Semitism. For some reason, a dictator must despise America first and Jews second. It's a prerequisite.

Spacey and Chavez
Harry Belafonte was the first star to head down to Caracas and pat Chavez on the back. Fellow career-in-toilet celebrity Danny Glover followed suit. Then it was Sean Penn. Now it's Kevin Spacey, who had a three-hour dinner with Chavez at his presidential palace.

It is traffic-collision interesting to watch these rich celebrities bathe themselves in guilt and self-abasement. The fact that they can't see how they're being used would be sad, if it weren't so funny.

Welcome to Columbia, Adolf

The news out of Columbia University gets more bizarre by the day. On the heels of inviting Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian anti-Semitic tyrant, to their grounds for a "robust debate," a Dean of the University has come out with this as their defence: if Hitler were willing to have a debate with Columbia students and faculty, then the Fuhrer would be invited, too.

When you have to use Hitler as an attempt to quell outrage, you know you've lost your grip on reality.

John Coatsworth is the Dean's name. You can see this clown's views on Hitler here.

Coatsworth's name is worth remembering, as he might be canned sometime in the very near future. Then again, probably not. Columbia University is a lunatic asylum, and it's quite obvious that the crazies are running the place.

I know what Coatsworth's game is. He's implying that Columbia is a bastion of free speech, and that every man should get his day in court. But what possible purpose can it serve to invite hate mongers to the floor? If Coatsworth and the morons at Columbia truly believe this, they would invite guest speakers from the Ku Klux Klan.

The invitation to Ahmadinejad is purely political in nature. He despises the United States, and he is an arch enemy of George W. Bush. In other words, he's Columbia's kind of people. Never mind that Columbia is "liberal," yet Mahmoud thinks women should be killed for adultery, and gays hanged in the street for sodomy. Mahmoud's hatred of the United States trumps all of this.

Robust debate? Gimme a break. What are you going to learn that history hasn't already taught you? Debating Hitler and Ahmadinejad about their views is like holding a debate on whether dog crap tastes better than chocolate chip cookies.

Bill Moyers - Mythical Conceit

An interesting bit I found on the MRC website. Bill Moyers got a smackdown from his own ombudsman, and here's his letter of response:

"The journalist’s job is not to achieve some mythical state of equilibrium between two opposing opinions....The journalist’s job is to seek out and offer the public the best thinking on an issue, event, or story.

That’s what I did regarding the argument for impeachment....There’s a movement for impeachment, not one against impeachment, and to fail to explore the arguments driving that movement would be as foolish as when Washington journalists in the months before the invasion of Iraq dared not talk about ‘occupation’ because official sources only wanted to talk about ‘liberation.’...I could have aired a Beltway-like ‘debate’ between a Democrat and a Republican, or a conservative and a liberal, but that’s usually conventional wisdom and standard practice, and public broadcasting was meant to be an alternative, not an echo."

— PBS’s Bill Moyers in a letter to PBS ombudsman Michael Getler, who had criticized the July 13 edition of Bill Moyers Journal for featuring only guests who favor Bush and Cheney’s impeachment.

I love it when the media-types decide that they know better than everyone else. It's interesting to see their thought processes, as in the above letter.

A few questions for Bill Moyers:

1) If the journalist's job is to provide the public with the "best thinking" out there, who decides what the "best" thinking is?

2) If there is a "movement" for impeachment, how can there not be one against it?

3) Since when was public broadcasting meant to be an alternative to anything? Just because you suck at your craft and have to appear between telethons and Nova re-runs doesn't mean you can give yourself a cool title like "alternative."

4) When did journalists "dare not" talk about anything because officials didn't want them to? Did you even watch the pre-invasion press conferences? I did. Guys were asking Generals if Baghdad was going to resemble Stalingrad. This proves two things: they don't toe the official line, and they are morons.

5) "The journalist's job is not to achieve some mythical state of equilibrium..." Really?

News to us. We lowly worst-thinkers always thought it was. It's nice to know that Bill Moyers believes equilibrium in a story of opinions is a thing of myth and legend.

In case you missed Journalism 101, bonehead, here's what we want from you:

Who, What, When, Where, How.

When it comes to the why, give me both sides of the story, if you please.

The Dope on D.O.A.P.

In a new film from UK-based Borough Productions, the President of the United States is gunned down in cold blood. Kennedy? Nope. McKinley? Of course not. Lincoln? Try George W. Bush.

It is always dangerous to rate things before you’ve seen them, lest you fall into the Mark Twain trap: “A classic is a book which everyone praises but nobody reads.” In this case, the film D.O.A.P. is a movie which I haven’t seen but that I know will be transparent political garbage. If you are told that there is urine in your cornflakes, you don’t need a spoonful to tell you what it will taste like.

According to the production company, the docudrama’s thinly veiled title stands for Death of a President. The year is 2007, and a sniper kills the Commander in Chief after he gives a speech at the Sheraton Hotel in Chicago. The Evening Standard says the film “looks at the effect the assassination of Bush has on America in light of its ‘War on Terror.’” Note the quotation marks that are being used more and more as the war on terror goes on.

At the top of the movie’s description on the Toronto Film Festival’s website (where else would this film premiere?), you will find that the film has two languages. English and Arabic. It is 93 minutes long. It is filmed in HD video. It’s written by Gabriel Range, a British guy.

I read that description briefly, then went down the page to find what I was looking for. It didn’t take me long. Knowing a film of this nature would be utterly predictable, I found the words xenophobia and civil liberties. In the Standard's rundown I found the words Syrian-born and wrongly.

‘Nuff said. Let me sum up the film for you and take bets on whether or not I am wrong:

Mostly hand held. Some black and white. President Bush rolls up to the hotel. There’s protesters lining the streets. An old speech is used. A digital magic moment follows, where he gets his head blown off. The cops and Secret Service look for the killer, grab an innocent man of Arabic ancestry, and rake him over the coals. The public goes bananas, accosting Muslims in the street. Various inserts of bogus news programs are used, showing how much we in the West will jump to conclusions and commit a pogrom against innocent people because of their race. War is declared on Pick-an-Axis-of-Evil-Country. But ta-da! In the end, it was a white guy with a right-wing political agenda that pulled the trigger. Whoops, the murder of the President had nothing to do with the “War on Terror” after all. The Syrian guy is off the hook. The United States looks bad, again. Slowly pull back from a shocked and embarrassed nation as the credits roll.

Writing on the TFF website, Noah Cowan makes a couple of statements that clearly define the naïve and self-destructive nature of filmmakers today. He begins with a laugh: “The film is never a personal attack on the President.”

Oh?

Let’s ask Theo Van Gogh whether or not assassination is a personal attack. You might not know him because his demise didn’t get the angry protest treatment. He was the Dutch filmmaker who was slaughtered in the street by an Islamic fascist for making a 10-minute movie criticizing Islam's mistreatment of Muslim women. His killer shot him eight times, slit his throat, and left two knives buried in his chest, one to pin down a five-page note of propoganda, the other just for kicks. Pretty personal stuff. Yet according to imams everywhere, a cartoon drawing is more offensive than a bullet. What’s worse, the vast majority of today’s media agree with them, refusing to show the cartoons in their pages. These will be the same publications that will run serious reviews of a phony documentary that details the murder of a sitting President.

Cowan goes on to say that the film merely wants to explore the consequences of Bush’s policies and actions. The consequences being the President getting shot, and white America acting like racist buffoons. It is highly doubtful that the other consequences will be mentioned: girls going to school in Iraq, women not having their fingernails pulled out in Afghanistan, children not being orphaned because they’re Kurdish, Libya saying to hell with WMD, so forth.

When are filmmakers going to get around to making a movie about the good guys (that’s us, by the way) that will say something good about them?

Even United 93 couldn’t bring itself to show the terrorists as murderous thugs. Sure, they shouted and raved for a couple of minutes of screentime, but if you watch the movie closely, the plane is the villain and the terrorists and passengers are more or less along for the ride. There is no moral judgment made in the film. Both sides are nervous about crashing, the difference being the terrorists are nervous about crashing on target. As Roger Ebert put it in one of his less-than-stellar moments: "The film doesn't depict the terrorists as villains. It has no need to. Like everyone else in the movie they are people of ordinary appearance, going about their business. United 93 is incomparably more powerful because it depicts all of its characters as people trapped in an inexorable progress toward tragedy." Er, no, Roger. I suppose one trapped group of people aboard that plane was 'progressing' towards tragedy. The other group was freely choosing to commit one of the biggest mass murders in history.

Stone’s World Trade Center is as warmhearted as it can get, but again, the terrorists are an afterthought. Once the buildings come down, there isn’t much more to say about them. Cut out the first fifteen minutes and the movie might as well have been called Earthquake 2. It is interesting to note that Stone's film was considered uncontrovertial because it didn't take a swipe at the US government. The thought that he would take a swipe at the terrorists was never predicted because it never entered anyone's head that he would do so. In the end, he did neither, and was praised for the middle of the road approach.

The outrage over D.O.A.P. will be minimal, hiding behind the free speech clause that went on vacation for the Mohammed cartoons. Someday, maybe, a brave filmmaker will make an Iwo Jima type film about this period in world history. When that happens, that soon to be forgotten filmmaker had better watch out.

Just ask Theo Van Gogh.