L.N. Smithee's REACTOR

RONALD REAGAN WAS A GREAT PRESIDENT. HE IS NOT GOD. DON'T TREAT HIM AS IF HE IS.

2012-01-05T22:20:00.000-08:00

The following is my reaction to a story written by Jamie Weinstein of The Daily Caller, the right-leaning news site founded by conservative pundit Tucker Carlson.

Jamie Weinstein, Senior Editor of the Daily Caller, was covering a Wednesday speech by fast-rising GOP Presidential candidate Rick Santorum in the run-up to the New Hampshire primaries. The report, shockingly headlined "Santorum Commits Republican Sacrilege: Attacks Ronald Reagan," began thusly:

BRENTWOOD, N.H. — Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum committed one of the gravest sins in Republican politics on Wednesday evening by knocking the revered former President Ronald Reagan at a packed town hall meeting.

Oh, noes! What did Santorum say? Did he call Reagan "a useful idiot"? Did he say that Reagan was an "amiable dunce"? Did he launch into a television appearance by calling Reagan "an airhead"?

Here's what Santorum said, as Weinstein continues:

“If Rick Santorum gets elected and we do what I said that we need to do, which is to deal with the entitlement programs now, not 10 to 20 years from now,” Santorum said.

“You’ll know — unlike Ronald Reagan who maybe was a better politician than me — you’ll know that it was Rick Santorum that worked together and got the American public to gather together to fix this problem. Why? Because it is our problem.”

Santorum was walking the audience through what he called the “ancient days of yesteryear” in a interminable and incredibly detailed response to a questioner. He explained that in the 1983 deal Reagan brokered with Democratic Speaker of the House Tip O’Neil to fix Social Security, the retirement age was moved back to 67, but that change wasn’t slated to be enacted until the politicians responsible were out of office.

“This was the brilliance of the politicians that did this,” Santorum said sarcastically.

“They were absolutely brilliant. They passed a bill that didn’t take effect for 20 years so nobody blames them. It was brilliant. They increased the Social Security age by two years back in 1983 and it didn’t start phasing in, it doesn’t fully phase in for almost 40 years. And so Ronald Reagan did that. Most people have no idea — no one associates Ronald Reagan with raising the retirement age. Why? Because all of the people it affected were nowhere near retirement and they didn’t know about it.”

The irritating third-person talk aside, is there anything improper about what Santorum said? Absolutely not. Social Security is a sacred cow entitlement that was fatally flawed from its very inception. People have lived their entire lives thinking that it is the recouping of what the government has set aside for their retirement. It is not. People are under the impression that there is a bank account somewhere in Washington, D.C. from which all Social Security payments are issued. There is no such place. And the last six Presidents have each had to take emergency measures to "fix" Social Security. They haven't -- all their fixes were temporary Band-Aid kick-the-can solutions.

Is Santorum's "fix" idea any better than the rest of them? I honestly don't know. But criticizing what we already know didn't work is certainly no "sin," Jamie Weinstein.

___________________________________

Here's what I posted in the comment section of this article:

Good lord, people, get a freaking grip.

I was born in the early sixties. Ronald Reagan was the Governor of California when I first became aware of the existence of government. My parents didn't like him at all, and said that he was probably a racist (we're black). I bought the nonsense about him that he was a "warmonger" when he vied for the GOP nomination in 1976. I vividly remember a commercial for Gerald Ford's campaign that said, "Governor Reagan can't start a nuclear war. President Reagan can."

By the time he laid waste to all Republican opponents in the 1980 campaign, I was convinced by the MSM portrayal of him that he was a megalomaniacal Hollywood has-been who failed at being a poor man's John Wayne, and figured being President would be bigger than any role he may not have gotten. When he won, I and many of my peers thought an atomic conflagration was only months away. When I graduated from high school, whenever plans for a ten-year reunion would be discussed, it was common to hear, "The world's gonna be blown up by then."

Needless to say, everything I had been taught to think about Ronald Reagan was dead wrong, and I didn't really realize it until after he had been termed out. He was the driving force behind the end of the Cold War, having helped weaken the Soviet bloc to the point where it collapsed without a single missile leaving a U.S. silo. In his wake, over thirty years later, there are still liberals who will never forgive Reagan for not blowing the
world to smithereens like they swore he would if they didn't stop him.

Ronald Wilson Reagan is the greatest U.S. President of my lifetime, and it's unlikely that will change (unfortunately).

Now...Does that mean he was perfect? Of course not. He wasn't. Whatever you think of the motivation behind Iran-Contra, that was a blunder that taints Reagan's legacy and might have cost the GOP the White House (it didn't -- George H.W. Bush won, largely because he was facing Michael "The Tank" Dukakis). The fact that Reagan granted amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants is used as a weapon to justify the drive by modern-day Democrats (and many Republicans) to expand on an action that they won't admit has failed. Even when he was Governor of California, Reagan -- who endured a contentious divorce with actress Jane Wyman -- signed the trend-setting no-fault divorce bill. It is my humble opinion that California's adoption of no-fault divorce damaged the institution (and thus, the nuclear family unit itself) more than any other single action.

In order [to make] the changes necessary to fix the broken entitlement systems, one needs to clearly state what led up to the mess it has become. It seems to me that Rick Santorum decided if he was going to make a solid case, he couldn't dance around the fact that Reagan was one of the steady string of POTUSes who played a part in screwing the pooch. Santorum shouldn't be intimidated into revering Reagan so much that he won't dare address fixing a problem that Reagan -- among many others -- left to future generations.

That having been said, at this point I don't think Santorum could beat Obama. But what I like about Santorum is that more than any other remaining candidate, he says what needs to be said, damn the torpedoes. In this time when the GOP establishment seeks out people who will do their best not to offend casual voters with short attention spans that unthinkingly swallow headlines, that ought to count for something.

GOODBYE -- AND GOOD RIDDANCE -- TO 2011

2011-12-31T23:56:00.000-08:00

New Year's Day usually doesn't mean jack to me. I've never felt the need to drink and dance for no reason other than other people were doing so. But for me, no year has sucked like 2011, and I am delighted it will be over and done with in minutes.

I lost in death three people I loved dearly in a period of sixty days. Not just people I knew, but people I cared about, thought about, and prayed for every single day, and I am confident they felt the same about me. I have no idea how to approach filling a void like the three of them left.

Time is an artificial concept; in the grand scheme, there's no hand turning a page on the past 365 days as if a new chapter is beginning. Events that determine changes in our lives have nothing to do with subdividing the cycles of the sun into easily digestible bite-size parts, or a ball of light exploding in Times Square. That being said, the beginning of a new year does serve a purpose as a rallying point, as in, "If I stay focused and keep moving ahead, I'll be able to say 366 days later that I took a bad situation and improved it."

I will have lived a good life if I can say 2011 was the worst year of my existence. Here's hoping. But, as the song says, "Nothing changes on New Year's Day."

Ladies and Gentlemen, from the legendary 1983 LP War, U2 (before they got full of themselves).

Click here for the superior LP version.

WILL PRESIDENT OBAMA USE BACHMANN-HATING "QUESTLOVE" FOR A "SISTER SOULJAH MOMENT"?

2011-11-22T17:36:00.000-08:00

At 10:07 pm Eastern Standard Time on the evening of Monday, November 21, 2011, Ahmir Khalib Thompson -- better known as "Questlove," the leader of The Roots, the house band on NBC's Late Night with Jimmy Fallon -- sent out this message via Twitter:

For the uninitiated, let me break it down; "walkon song" is a reference to the song that the band plays as a guest walks to the guest chairs to chat with the host. Just for the sake of example, let's say Paris Hilton is the guest. A band might choose the classic "April in Paris." Or if the guest is Sally Field, a good choice would be "Mustang Sally" by Wilson Pickett. Or if the guest is Martin Short, Randy Newman's "Short People." If the guest is Jack Black, "Back in Black," or "Jumpin' Jack Flash," or "Paint It, Black." Or if the guest is Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers, "Leader of the Pack."

Got it? Good.

The untitled "walkon song" Questlove was referring to in his tweet is an obscure track by the eclectic alt-rock band Fishbone that The Roots had planned for Republican Presidential candidate Michele Bachmann. Let's go to the videotape, courtesy Media Research Center:

November 21, 2011, Late Night with Jimmy Fallon

This is reminiscent of an even more objectionable musical serenade also done in the wee hours of the morning, on ABC's loose, chatty World News Now, a sort of training wheels national newscast for young, up-and-coming reporters (alumni include CNN/CBS's Anderson Cooper, ABC's Juju Chang, and Aaron Brown, formerly of CNN). This occurred in the wake of Ann Coulter's megagaffe of referring to then-Presidential candidate John Edwards as "a faggot" at CPAC in 2007. While the remark was outrageous, that was no excuse for what happened on what's supposed to be an objective newscast.

From Newsbusters.com; Listen to the song being played by the director as the disgusted anchors pile on Coulter, then go to a weather map and a commercial break:

June 28, 2007, ABC World News Now

Yes, that is Elton John's "The Bitch is Back."

President Obama was lauded for his speech at the public memorial for Loughner's victims. Here's CBS' Chip Reid, getting briefly choked up at Obama's announcement that Giffords opened her eyes, and introducing BHO's call for civility.

Talking the talk is easy. Walking the walk, not so much. Will Questo's homie Barack use this as a "Sister Souljah moment," and call him out for so brazenly issuing a slur to a woman for the sole reason that he disagrees with her politically?

I would bet against it. After all, someone would have to ask Obama what he thought about it, and 95% of the MSM can't stop laughing long enough to get the words out.

SLOW & SPURIOUS: THE CASE FOR IGNORANCE AS A DEFENSE OF ERIC HOLDER

2011-10-07T00:46:00.000-07:00

If you don't yet know about the "Operation Fast and Furious" scandal entangling the ATF (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, & Firearms) the FBI, and Attorney General Eric Holder, here's the situation as of October 3, 2011 as concisely reported by CBS News' courageous (and, according to livid figures in the Obamastration, the "unreasonable") Sharyl Attkisson:

Take special note of that last part of reportage from Attkisson that clues up into how Holder will attempt to wriggle out of a perjury charge (underscoring mine):

The Justice Department told CBS News that the officials in those emails were talking about a different case started before Eric Holder became Attorney General. And tonight they tell CBS News, Holder misunderstood that question from [Congress] - he did know about Fast and Furious - just not the details.

The initial reaction to a defense of "I wasn't lying! I'm just lazy, shallow, stupid, or all three" is something in the realm of "Awwwww, come on! You expect us to believe that you, America's top cop, didn't know what was going on when your underlings were sending you memos to keep you informed?"

But the more you know about Eric Holder, the more it seems like that's the way things are run in his Justice Department.

Remember that Holder first entered the national spotlight as a Deputy Attorney General under Clinton AG Janet Waco -- oops, I mean, Janet Castro -- darn! I mean, Janet Reno (If that's a new name to you kiddies out there, click on the links and educate yourselves). Her tenure was spotted with previously unimaginable abuses of power and cover-ups that were ignored by a mainstream media that tried to protect the Clintons (of course, the MSM wagon circle around the Obama WH is like nothing anyone's ever witnessed). Having years before been appointed to the D.C. bench by Ronald Reagan, and having already spent many years as a U.S. Attorney, Holder wasn't a particularly controversial pick for the AG position at first. But then, in a speech commemorating February 2009 as that year's Black History Month, he called the country he's serving "a nation of cowards" regarding discussion of racial issues -- this coming months after the same cowardly nation had just elected the first African-American as its leader.

In March 2010, when Holder caught holy heck over his nonsensical insistence that Al Qaeda terrorists be tried in New York civilian courts rather than in military tribunals at Guantanamo Bay, there was talk that he and the President were on the outs (and you know who always wins such battles). A thread on this topic at Patterico's Pontifications gave me the opportunity to relate what I noticed about something he said in the course of that insulting, patronizing, offensive 2009 lecture:

IMHO, everything you need to know about Eric Holder’s judgment — if not his intellect — was what he said in the waning moments of his infamous “Nation of Cowards” speech.

Visit msnbc.com for biased news, gasbag pundits, and Obama CYA!

Read carefully [cut-and-pasted verbatim from the DOJ's webpage, bold mine]:
I stood, and stand, on the shoulders of many other black Americans. Admittedly, the identities of some of these people, through the passage of time, have become lost to us- the men, and women, who labored long in fields, who were later legally and systemically discriminated against, who were lynched by the hundreds in the century just past and those others who have been too long denied the fruits of our great American culture. The names of too many of these people, these heroes and heroines, are lost to us. But the names of others of these people should strike a resonant chord in the historical ear of all in our nation: Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. DuBois, Walter White, Langston Hughes, Marcus Garvey, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Joe Louis, Jackie Robinson, Charles Drew, Paul Robeson, Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, Vivian Malone, Rosa Parks, Marion Anderson, Emmit Till (sic). These are just some of the people who should be generally recognized and are just some of the people to whom all of us, black and white, owe such a debt of gratitude. It is on their broad shoulders that I stand as I hope that others will some day stand on my more narrow ones.
All right. Now, in the spirit of the Sesame Street feature “One Of These Things Is Not Like the Others,” which of those names in bold does NOT belong?

If you answered “Emmett Till” (the proper spelling), you are correct. Your prize: a half-dollar with an Obama sticker pasted on it, sold by Montel Williams as a collectible (total value: 50 cents).

Emmett Till was a 14-year-old boy who was brutally beaten, shot, disfigured, tied with barbed wire to a 90-pound weight and dumped into a river on August 28, 1955. His “crime”? Reports vary, but at the very least, the Chicago-born teenager — while visiting with sharecropping relatives in Mississippi — directed a wolf whistle at a 21-year-old married white woman inside a general store owned by her parents. At the most (and of course, one must consider the sources), Till allegedly actually caressed the young woman, asked her for a date, and said to her “I’ve been with white girls before.” Two white men (the girl’s husband and his half-brother, a sharecropper boss) slaughtered Till after dragging him from his bed in the wee hours of the morning. It’s one of the landmarks of injustice in American jurisprudence, and sparked — but did not begin — the civil rights movement in America.

As a reminder, I am African-American myself — twice as black as Barack Obama. I am glad to live in an American society in which I can feel free to flirt with not only white women, but women of every ethnicity without fear of ending up at the bottom of a river. But that doesn’t mean that hitting on a pretty girl is a smart thing to do when she is being guarded by someone with a screw loose. I would think most of you fellows would think twice about lingering too long on the decolletage of a mobster’s arm candy regardless of your God-given right to look at what she obviously wants to be seen. Similarly, Till’s whistling incident was shocking not only to the white family of the young woman, but also to Till’s friends and kinfolk, because they understood what the young city slicker apparently didn’t — he was in an entirely different world, and needed to watch his step. He didn’t, and paid with his life.

Those who weren’t there in post-Plessy v. Ferguson/Pre-Rosa Parks/Dixiecrat Mississippi can scarcely imagine life for a black kid. I have never lived there, but I have a parent with Deep South roots. But the fact is indisputable: Till might still be alive today if he had been wise enough to keep big his mouth shut.

Emmett Till is the victim of ignorance, intolerance, bigotry, brutality (partial list). But he is certainly not a “hero,” and I don’t know what “debt of gratitude” I owe him for doing something that is the equivalent of walking into a buzzsaw. The fact that Eric Holder mentioned Till (in his prepared speech) as notable among the likes of Douglass, Robinson, Parks, and Dr. King shows what a shallow thinker we have for our Attorney General (for now).

Comment by L.N. Smithee — 3/22/2010 @ 4:17 pm

Earlier in that speech, Holder says he was "a former American history major." Really? Wouldn't an American history major know the vast difference between people who actually spurred progress among a persecuted, oppressed minority, risking their lives in the hope that some greater good might be accomplished years down the road, and a person whose sole page in American history is about how he pretty much went out of his way to get himself lynched?

(Did your face just contort with that last sentence? If so, you know why, don't you? That's the kind of "frank conversation about race" that we're not supposed to have, as opposed to conversations carefully designed to foster guilt in white people who already don't have a racist bone in their bodies.)

Anyway, the next time someone suggests -- as some already have -- that Columbia University alumnus Eric Holder is being clever and sly in suggesting he didn't always read his Fast & Furious briefings and couldn't understand a simple question at a Congressional hearing, remember the time he spoke of Emmett Till as being a hero on par with Frederick Douglass and Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. Then you can retort, "Maybe he's just dumb."

...But, most likely, he's just a dirty liar trying to cover his inferior posterior with blood-soaked hands.

QUESTION: IS JIMMY KIMMEL A RACIST FOR ASKING BLACK PEOPLE ON THE STREET ABOUT R.E.M. BREAKING UP?

2011-10-05T12:11:00.000-07:00

ANSWER: Of course he's not.

So neither is lesser-known comedian Bob Oschack a "racist" for asking Asian USC students about the expansion of the Pac-10 Conference.

So grow up already.

ACTOR MORGAN FREEMAN ACTS LIKE HE KNOWS ANYTHING ABOUT THE TEA PARTY; HERMAN CAIN SETS HIM STRAIGHT

2011-09-25T23:13:00.000-07:00

At this point, people who agree with Freeman over Cain need to address why Floridian Republicans -- who nominated American-born Cuban descendant Marco Rubio to serve them as Senator -- are racist for choosing Herman Cain over front-runner Rick Perry in their straw poll.

After all, Cain is twice as black as Obama. Why, praytell, wasn't that a disqualifier?

NEIL YOUNG'S TRIBUTE TO FLIGHT 93 HEROES: "LET'S ROLL"

2011-09-11T01:37:00.000-07:00

Neil Young - Let's Roll by LeBalayeur

FOX SPORTS CAVES, TV SHOW CANCELED FOR MAKING ASIAN USC STUDENTS APPEAR TOO BUSY STUDYING TO CARE ABOUT FOOTBALL (UPDATED x2, VIDEO RESTORED)

2011-09-11T01:22:00.000-07:00

Before we address the video that is the topic of this edition of REACTOR, you need to watch another one first. It's from 2009, when Tonight Show host Jay Leno stopped hosting his 11:35 pm show in favor of the hare-brained, ill-fated idea of a nightly 10:00 pm show.

Jay's most popular segment was "Jaywalking," in which he took a camera crew to the streets of Southern California and asked random strangers to answer simple questions. Naturally, the ones who gave the dumbest answers were featured on the program. Before signing off the late night Leno show, he presented this retrospective of the most ridiculous responses going back to the nineties.

Now, fast forward to Thursday afternoon, September 8, 2011. In the process of reading about news in Southern California, I saw a link to a story titled "Fox Sports cancels show after video mocks Asians." I clicked on the link to the story and read it...

...The Daily Camera newspaper in Boulder, Colo. reported (http://goo.gl/RmKAE) about the video and the network issued an apology. The video shows a comedian approaching Asian students at USC and asking them to welcome the universities of Colorado and Utah to the Pac-12 Conference. The comedian tells the students to give the new Pac-12 members an "all-American welcome" and then mocks students' accents.

...and then I clicked on a link to the video. I thought I was going to see something obviously, outrageously, demonstrably bigoted. Here it is:

My reaction viewing the Oschack video: "You've GOT to be kidding me. Who could be offended by this?"

Answer: This guy. Dr. Daryl J. Maeda, a University of Colorado professor in ... oh, you're way ahead of me, aren't ya? OK, let's all say it together. One, two, three ... ETHNIC STUDIES!

From the Daily Camera report, mentioned in the AP story, here's why Maeda's knickers were twisted by the video (bold mine):

[A] University of Colorado ethnic studies professor said Tuesday that he finds it troubling, saying it perpetuates racist myths about Asians being "un-American."

For the video, Bob Oschack -- a comedian who labeled himself as an "investigative reporter" for Fox Sports -- approached Asian students on the USC campus, asking them how they feel about CU and the University of Utah becoming the newest members of the Pac-12 conference. In his introduction, Oschack says: "Let's give the conference's two newest members a good, old-fashioned, all-American welcome!" He then appears to mock students' accents, corrects their grammatical mistakes in a seemingly condescending tone and pretends to mistake what they're saying for the sake of laughs.

One student enthusiastically say (sic), "Welcome to Colorado and Utah!" and is interrupted by Oschack: "No, you're saying welcome to Colorado and Utah. We're in Los Angeles." He also includes a student who admits that she doesn't know much about football and says, "Welcome Colorado and Utah to the top 12."

View the video again. At what point does Oschack "mock [their] accents"? He did correct the student at 1:00 when he thought Oschack said "You talk" when he was saying "Utah," and when other said "Welcome to Colorado," but that was because he wasn't saying what Oschack was requesting: "Welcome Colorado and Utah to the Pac-12!" And what "condescending tone" is heard in Oschack's voice either at that point, or when he is asking about the insertion of the word "fighting" into the greeting?

Daryl Maeda, a professor in CU's Ethnic Studies department, said that Fox Sports should be apologizing to Asian Americans -- not just the USC community -- who are demeaned by the video. He also said that Fox should publicly reprimand Oschack.

It is at this point that Maeda puts his years of ethnic studies indoctrination to use by referencing previous generations of Caucasians' misdeeds toward minorities and pretending it's somehow relevant to the video. Observe (bold mine):

Despite the fact that Asians have been in the United States for more than a century and a half, Maeda said, they are frequently seen as perpetual foreigners and the antithesis of "good Americans." Oschack reinforces this stereotype, Maeda said, when he purports to give CU and Utah an "All-American welcome" to the Pac-12, then goes out of his way to find Asian students for whom English is a second language.

"This is demeaning to millions of Asian Americans who have put down deep roots in the United States, claim English as their language and root vigorously for their favorite sports teams," Maeda said. Oschack's portrayal of Asian Americans as "perpetual foreigners" harks back to racist actions such as the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II and the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act, Maeda said.

"It has no place in a diverse and civil society," he said.

Can Maeda make a literate case for his outrage by using anything other than a broad brush? Let's take these one at a time, shall we?

Oschack, says Maeda, reinforced the stereotype that "Asians ... are ... perpetual foreigners and the antithesis of 'good Americans.'"
Really? How did Oschack do this? By asking people he reliably had an expectation didn't give a rip about USC football, asking them about it, and letting the hilarity unfold? How is such an approach to comedy (regardless of whether you find it amusing) also a message that they are anything other than "good Americans"?

The video clip is "demeaning to millions of Asian Americans who have put down deep roots in the United States, claim English as their language and root vigorously for their favorite sports teams," says Maeda.
How so? These students in particular were in blissful ignorance of the expansion of the Pac-10 conference. They know enough English to be conversational with Oschack, who likely doesn't know a word of Chinese, Japanese, or Korean he can't read off of a menu, but it clearly is still their second language. As with the "Jaywalking" clip in which no knowledgeable people were featured, if such Asian students were typical party-hearty tailgating foam-finger wearing Trojan fans who were walking around in team jerseys, they wouldn't be included in the final cut. And rather than the Jaywalkers' ignorance about general information, the Asian USC students were ignorant about college football. Big deal!

Who are these people Maeda is talking about who think there's something wrong with these young men and women if they aren't sports junkies? If in the future you have a surgeon, a dentist, or an architect who attended USC and you try to engage him or her about whether or not the Trojans went to the Rose Bowl when they went, wouldn't you be reassured if they replied, "I wasn't into football, I was buried in my textbooks"?

This is the biggest overreach of all, one that cannot be excused:

Maeda says "Oschack's portrayal of Asian Americans as 'perpetual foreigners' harks back to racist actions such as the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II and the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act."
(Notice how stealthily it is accepted by Daily Camera writer Brittany Anas that "perpetual foreigners" is how Oschack has portrayed the students, and not how Maeda impugns Oschack's intent.)

Maeda is suggesting that because Oschack asked serious, studious Asian USC students to briefly repeat some stuff they knew nothing about for a silly cable TV sports segment that somehow, his ideological forebears are people who supported restricting immigration from pre-Maoist China in 1882 and the imprisonment of everyone with Japanese surnames within U.S. borders in 1942.

Again, does Maeda really believe this? Is it possible for such a credentialed scholar to be that intellectually lazy? Or, is he just trying to justify his designation as an expert by whipping something out of nothing since it is one of few opportunities he has to make an impact outside the closed circle of academia?

Unspoken is the fact that the USC students themselves didn't seem to have any problem cooperating with Oschack whatsoever. And why should they? If I were a student studying in, say, France, and there was some big deal intercollegiate event having to do with soccer (a sport in which I have little interest), and some good-natured French dude asked me to say something before a camera in support of the team in my limited French, would I somehow be a victim? Maeda seems to be implying that even though they were obviously good enough students to qualify to attend a major American university (even with imperfect English), they were too dumb to know they were being exploited by a racist white guy.

Maeda knows better, thinks he and others like him, because he's got a degree qualifying him to make such judgments. Well, in my book, Maeda's one of those sorry persons who has shunted his individuality aside in order to put his ethnicity out front, always thinking other people are seeing him as a race first and a person second. He's always half-cocked, ready to fire at the slightest provocation. Like this fictional guy in a famous scene from Seinfeld (clicking on video will forward you to YouTube):

(ORIGINAL UPDATE: Fox Sports has had the video I originally embedded pulled from YouTube. Before finding the one above linked by the Los Angeles Times site,, the only working copy I was able to find was a Media Matters-watermarked version of the video, which is embedded on a website called Channel APA [Asian Pacific America]. The site describes itself as "an experiment building an Asian American 'channel.'" The webmasters titled the post featuring the Oschack piece as "Racist FOX Sports piece with Bob Oschack."

I found it interesting that while the people at Channel APA were infuriated by Bob Oschack's brand of humor, they were amused -- and perhaps had other physical reactions -- by a porn parody featuring adult actress Mika Tan and another woman calling herself "Sum Ting Wong." The title of the video, which they've proudly linked on the site? "Mr. Chew's Asian Beaver," complete with a panda mascot with a conical straw hat.

Nothing stereotypical or racist about that, right? Nawwwww.)

MAMA COURAGE VS. MAMA COWARDICE: LONDON MUM WHO TURNED IN RIOTOUS DAUGHTER VS. RICK PERRY-BASHING EDUCRAT USING HER SON AS A SOCK PUPPET

2011-08-23T01:01:00.000-07:00

Meet Mama Courage, aka Adrienne Ives of London, England.

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article3748107.ece

Mrs. Ives' disgust as she watched the television coverage of the London riots turned to horror when she recognized her eighteen-year-old daughter, Chelsea, joining in the meaningless, wanton destruction of whichever London neighborhoods were found to be underguarded by masked, hooded hooligans. Chelsea is by all accounts a beautiful, athletic, bright, talented young woman with a hypnotizing eyes, pop-star looks, and an unlimited future ... that is, up until that moment when she was televised throwing a traffic barrier at a police car, and her mother dropped a dime on her.

Multiplying the embarrassment Chelsea has caused (and has become) is that she was among a chosen few selected to be "Olympic Ambassadors" for the London 2012 Summer Games. The ambassadors' mission is "to be the face of London [as] people who are passionate about the capital and want to tell millions of people about the hidden treasures that makes London one of the best capital cities in the world." Instead, Chelsea showed how little she cared about her hometown before billions spanning the globe. Her public persona as someone proud to show London to world visitors was diametrically opposed to what she expressed on Facebook about the riots in which she expressed support for the criminal hordes ("Ders a RIOT in tottenham KOOL"), disparaged the police ("pigs shuldnt ov killed dat guy last nyt ... Den dey wuldnt gt blown up"), and chuckled at merchants who didn't have sufficient security to thwart the roving mobs ("Cozzz the shop keeper aint f***** dere") According to a prosecutor, Chelsea shouted to a friend "This is the best day ever!" before throwing a rock through a shop window.

More from Mrs. (and Mr.) Ives, from the August 23, 2011 edition of London's Sun tabloid:

Adrienne told of the horrifying moment she and Roger saw Chelsea flash on to their TV screens during Sunday night's appalling violence in Enfield, North London.

She said: "We were watching the riots. It was sickening. Then we saw her. To say we were shocked ... Not only was it someone we knew, it was our daughter. She's studying A-levels, is a fine sportswoman and a great singer - a beautiful, creative and talented child.

"I love her. But look at what she's done. These riots have cost people their jobs and even lives. We are going through hell."

Roger, 54, said Chelsea wept when they confronted her on her return home to Leytonstone, East London.

He added: "There were a lot of tears. She did not try to stop us phoning the police, she knew there was no point.

So in Mrs. Ives, we have the example of a parent stepping forward to encourage other parents to make certain their children take responsibility for their actions. Which brings us to...

...Mama Cowardice, aka Kristin Bunce.

You won't see Kristin in this mislabeled video clip from ABC News until it's almost over (0:42 in), but you'll hear her all the way through in her vain attempt to humiliate Texas Governor and GOP Presidential candidate Rick Perry.

That's Bunce, introducing Perry to her prepubescent son, saying "He's got a question for you." The query was "How old is the earth?" That was a bald-faced lie on Bunce's part. The question wasn't her son's, it was hers. Any doubt was erased as she began feeding lines to her boy when a cool, unflappable Perry apparently didn't sufficiently embarrass himself with his reply. IMHO, Bunce probably expected him to respond with something in the realm of "six thousand years old and not a second older!" When Perry was too fast on his feet to walk into Bunce's trap, that's when she started feeding him follow-up questions before he stopped talking ("Ask him about evolution." "Ask him why he doesn't believe in science").

So who is this woman who used her son as a human shield-cum-sock puppet? She's not your typical left-of-center woman heckling campaigning Republicans with raw-throated, unoriginal chants (which come at the end of the clip). No, Kristin Bunce has the unmistakable pedigree of a cultural elite. As was discovered by The Daily Caller's intrepid blogger Jim Treacher:

Here’s what she has listed on Facebook under “Education and Work”:
Grad School

John F. Kennedy School of Government [at Harvard]Class of 1996 · [Master's in Public Policy]

The University of Texas at Austin
MA Government

College

Wellesley College
Class of 1990

High School

Chatham High School
Class of 1996

Here's Ms. Bunce's wedding announcement, as published in the Summer 2007 edition of the Harvard Law & Policy Review

WEDDINGS; Marna Bunce, Silas Beane III
Marna Kristin Bunce, the daughter of Dr. Marna Louise Crim of Monroe, Ga., and Roy Karl Bunce of Longmeadow, Mass., was married yesterday to Dr. Silas Robert Beane III, the son of Rosa and Mr. Beane Jr. of Far Hills, N.J. The bride’s father, a United Church of Christ minister, officiated at Stanley Congregational Church in Chatham, N.J.

Mrs. Beane, 32, is a senior policy adviser in Seattle for the United States Education Department. She graduated from Wellesley College. She received a master’s degree in government from the University of Texas and a master’s in public policy from Harvard. Her father is the director of development at Hampshire College in Amherst, Mass. Her mother is the reading specialist at the Monroe Elementary School.

Jammie Wearing Fool did some more digging about Ms. Dunce ... er, Bunce, and found that while at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, she did herself some writing about politics! As is seen in a Google search, she wanted to help CBS News "present complex issues and increase [its] audience."

One wonders if her solution to Americans being "turned off by television coverage of politics and public policy" has anything to do with staging "gotcha" questions to conservative candidates. After all, what could be more complex, more informative, more relevant, more fitting a Harvard graduate than accusing an out-of-the-closet Christian Texas Governor of "not believing in science" (and making believe that her son came up with the idea)? And what a great lesson for young Master Beane, teaching him early on that when it comes to politics, there are no depths, and the end justifies the means. With a start like this, and his parents' Ivy League pedigree, who knows? Maybe someday he will become President of the United States. After all, the last two Harvard graduates have done really, really great things for the country.

But seriously, folks: Why is it that Dr. Bunce-Don't-Call-Me-Beane didn't want to put her own face to heckling Perry as opposed to that of her son? She must have known how lame it would make her look. Oops, I didn't mean "would," I mean "does." Now that she's been revealed, if she ever addresses her stunt, she'll probably pass the incident off as being reminiscent of Cyrano de Bergerac. I think not. I think she made her son into Mortimer Snerd, which, when you think about it, is an insult to Edgar Bergen.

...IN WHICH I CONGRATULATE THE LOS ANGELES TIMES_ FOR CATCHING UP WITH ME REGARDING LAWRENCE V. TEXAS_ AND POLYGAMY...

2011-07-31T20:46:00.000-07:00

...and ask, what took you so long to figure this out?

After all, I did write the following in December 2010 after a Columbia University professor (and Palin-bashing Huffington Post contributor) was arrested on a charge of incest with his twenty-four year old daughter:

Hear ye, all you people who rend your garments and begin boycott blogs whenever someone speaks aloud the blasphemy that rulings against laws prohibiting same-sex marriage will ultimately lead to the legalization of polygamy and/or incest. Within this sordid event lies (upon serious analysis) the evidence proving your outrage reactionary and shallow.

The attitude toward laws prohibiting incest expressed by the "consenting adults" crowd within the Columbia community are the blueprint for an off-ramp of the Rubicon Bridge expressway designed by David Boies, Theodore Olson, and anti-Proposition 8 activists who believe same-sex marriage is a right guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. The bedrock of their Federal case for having the California Constitution's sole definition of marriage as one man-one woman struck down is to have unelected jurists determine whether there are sufficient reasons to prohibit additional forms of marriage. On that particular docket is their support of same-sex marriage within two parties, but their position as advocates of such unions sets the table for future challenges to the idea that marriage ought to be limited to just two individuals, be they straight, gay, or bisexual. In short: If their California victory currently being appealed should be confirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court, all future challenges to America's longstanding marital norms won't be based on the question "Why expand marriage rights?" but "Why should marriage rights NOT be extended?"

The Times editorial today entitled "A Gay-Wedding (sic) Crasher" addresses high-profile D.C. law professor Jonathan Turley's advocacy of the right of reality TV star Kody Brown of Sister Wives to flout the anti-bigamy statutes of Utah, where he lives with his legal wife and three of her sisters as a family (they are pictured below). The rescinding of the practice of plural marriage by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (bka Mormons) -- whose devotees then and now make up the majority of the population -- was the condition under which Congress permitted the territory into the union as the 45th state. At present, one-man, one-woman definition of marriage is part of Utah's state constitution.

Kody Brown & his harem of sisters. (Bryant Livingston/AP)

Here is the Times editorial in full, bold mine:

Jonathan Turley is probably not the most popular man right now with supporters of same-sex marriage. The George Washington University law professor has filed a suit challenging the constitutionality of Utah's anti-polygamy laws — and his argument is based on a landmark 2003 Supreme Court gay rights decision. That's not good news in the view of most gay rights supporters, who don't want their cause linked to that of polygamists any more than they want to see parallels drawn with people who engage in incest, bestiality and other taboo sexual practices.

The Utah case involves Kody Brown, his legal wife, Meri Brown, and three other "sister wives." It's not actually about marriage, and it doesn't challenge the right of the state to refuse to issue wedding licenses to polygamous families. The Browns are in court because they fear they will be prosecuted.

The 2003 gay rights case, Lawrence vs. Texas, was also a criminal matter unrelated to same-sex marriage. The court overturned the conviction of two men found to have violated a state law against same-sex sodomy. But in reaching that conclusion, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy offered a paean to intimate relationships defined by sexuality that easily can be transferred to the context of same-sex marriage, and potentially to polygamous marriages as well:

"The case does involve two adults who, with full and mutual consent from each other, engaged in sexual practices common to a homosexual lifestyle. The petitioners are entitled to respect for their private lives. The state cannot demean their existence or control their destiny by making their private sexual conduct a crime. Their right to liberty under the [Constitution's] due process clause gives them the full right to engage in their conduct without intervention of the government."

Kennedy emphasized in Lawrence that same-sex marriage wasn't before the court. Similarly, in an interview with the New York Times, Turley suggested that decriminalizing polygamy will not inevitably lead to a movement for polygamous marriage. But language addressed to one issue often surfaces in cases dealing with others. When Massachusetts' highest court decided to strike down the state's limitation of marriage to heterosexual couples, it cited the Lawrence opinion.

So is polygamy about to receive the same legal status that same-sex marriage now has in several states? Not in the near term. For one thing, the U.S. Supreme Court has not recognized same-sex marriage, a prerequisite, some think, for acceptance of polygamous marriage. Meanwhile, the federal court in Utah, in parallel with Lawrence, may rule simply that the Browns and other polygamous families are immune to prosecution but can't have their multiple "spiritual marriages" blessed by the law.

But, like Lawrence, a ruling sympathetic to unconventional sexual behavior could plant the seeds of a future campaign for full marriage equality. In that case, governments would have to prove that it's rational to limit marriage to two individuals, homosexual or heterosexual. That might seem obvious, but so, at one time, did the argument that marriage should be confined to opposite-sex couples.

Re-read that last paragraph, and then, re-read what I wrote in my December 2010 piece "Ivy League Incest: The Beginning of a Slide Down a New Slippery Slope?" again:

On that particular docket is their support of same-sex marriage within two parties, but their position as advocates of such unions sets the table for future challenges to the idea that marriage ought to be limited to just two individuals, be they straight, gay, or bisexual. In short: If their California victory currently being appealed should be confirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court, all future challenges to America's longstanding marital norms won't be based on the question "Why expand marriage rights?" but "Why should marriage rights NOT be extended?"

I still remember as if it was yesterday the argument I had with my parents in May 1993, when the Hawaii Supreme Court revived the dismissed first suits against the state for its refusal to marry persons of the same sex. My mother in particular was certain that such madness would be stopped long before it could reach the U.S. Supreme Court. Here's what the L.A. Times had to say about the situation at the time:

Carl M. Varady, an American Civil Liberties Union attorney involved in the Hawaii case, predicted that the state would have a tough time meeting the Supreme Court's criteria for upholding the gay marriage prohibition.

"The argument we've pushed in this case was the one the court ultimately bought," Varady said, comparing laws against same-sex marriage to state bans on interracial marriage that eventually were struck down in the United States.

"These are really the miscegenation cases of the '90s," he said. "The same type of religious and natural-law arguments were put forth against interracial marriage."

We all know how things turned out over the next eighteen years, don't we?

LEGAL INSURRECTION ROCKS! (PLUS: A BICENTENNIAL MINUTE)

2011-07-05T07:32:00.000-07:00

A big seventies album rock Thank You to Cornell Law Professor William Jacobson and his crew at one of my favorite blogs, Legal Insurrection, for heeding my Tweet regarding their initial choice for Video of The Day, Styx's "Come Sail Away":

(BTW: "WADR" = "With All Due Respect".)

"Suite Madame Blue," from Styx's 1975 Equinox LP (that's a "record," you whippersnappers) with its pre-Photoshop album jacket with a flaming cake of ice , is a soaring six-and-a-half-minute epic cut portraying the United States of America as an aging matron who has led a full life, but whose glory days are behind her. The closing of the song is a call for the "red, white and blue" to "lift up [its] heart, and make a new start..." It has been said that lead vocalist/keyboardist Dennis DeYoung wrote the song in anticipation of the nation's bicentennial celebrations in 1976, which were anti-climactic in light of the open wounds of Vietnam, the resignation of Richard Nixon, and the crippling recession that eventually led to the defeat of Gerald R. Ford by Jimmy Carter, now the second-worst President of my lifetime.

Less than an hour later, I got this tweet back:

When I returned to LI, this is what I saw:

In case you can't read the bottom, here it is zoomed:

Ladies and Gentlemen, live and in concert in 1996, STYX!

ALSO: In the process of researching this entry, I came across a rare YouTube video of a CBS "Bicentennial Minute" (technically titled 200 Years Ago Today), which began broadcast in 1975 after the final credits of whatever was on the network at 8:30 every evening at 8:57 pm. The series ended with President Ford's recounting of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1976. This one, broadcast August 31, 1975, featured stage and screen veteran (and future Best Actress Oscar winner) Jessica Tandy:

I wonder if CBS would consider releasing all editions of 200 Years Ago Today on DVD -- that is, if it hasn't already lost or destroyed them. I was a grade-schooler at the time and used to think Bicentennial Minutes were corny and an unnecessary intrusion on my entertainment time. Now, I get it. Thankfully, so did Dennis DeYoung.

Thanks again Legal Insurrection (Prof. Jacobson, Kathleen McCaffrey, Matthew Knee, Michael Alan, Katie Thompson). YOU ROCK!

STOPPED CLOCK ALERT! DAILY SHOW 'S JON STEWART SAVAGES MEDIA OBSESSION WITH SARAH PALIN'S EMAIL

2011-06-15T22:40:00.000-07:00

What's a "Stopped Clock Alert"? An acknowledgement of excellence where you rarely expect to find it, in the spirit of the old adage, "Even a stopped clock is right two times a day." Today, that clock is The Daily Show's Jon Stewart, who points and laughs at the news channels obsessed with finding something scandalous in Sarah Palin's emails as Governor of Alaska (which I covered in this REACTOR post).

(h/t John Nolte, Big Hollywood.com)

The Daily Show
Tags: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

"I'm sure there's a pony in there somewhere." HA! Now THAT'S fair, balanced, and FUNNY!

"WHAT MEDIA BIAS," YOU ASK? THIS MEDIA BIAS, YOU IDIOTS!

2011-06-14T08:53:00.000-07:00

h/t Hot Air, Jammie Wearing Fool, Say Anything.

LAMESTREAM MEDIA LOOKS FOR SKELETONS IN SARAH PALIN'S SECRET VAULT, AND (LIKE GERALDO 25 YEARS AGO) FINDS ... NOTHING

2011-06-12T23:45:00.000-07:00

Before we go into the past weekend's events, a brief history lesson. Hop in the DeLorean with me and let's travel 25 years into the past.

It was one of the most eagerly-anticipated broadcasts of 1986. Geraldo Rivera, America's highest-profiled investigative journalist, had recently parted ways with ABC News over a spiked story by another ABC reporter (Sylvia Chase) speculating about the relationship between Marilyn Monroe and John and Robert Kennedy.

Freed of the suits that might get in the way of a great story, Geraldo went out on his own, and found what promised to be an intriguing topic: What might be hidden in a secret chamber deep inside Chicago's Lexington Hotel, the soon-to-be demolished headquarters of America's most notorious Prohibition-era gangster, Al "Scarface" Capone? For decades, rumors had it that within there might be a stash of hidden valuables, or even better, the remains of some of Capone's enemies.

Given exclusive access, a confident Rivera promised to reveal on an uncensored live broadcast what secrets had been lying behind those walls. How it was promoted...

...and what actually happened when the cameras rolled, live, as Geraldo recounted on the twenty year anniversary in 2006.

The term "Epic Fail" had not been coined yet, but few incidents illustrate it better.

It was thought at the time to have doomed Geraldo's career -- it didn't. More people watched Rivera fail that night more than any other audience had watched any syndicated program (remember, this was before the advent of the Fox TV network, so there were many more independent TV stations than exist today). Even though the program was a crushing disappointment, it proved Geraldo's drawing power. However, the program has joined Gertrude Stein's quote "There is no there there" as an illustration unanticipated vapidity.

Now, back to the present day and age.

Going back to September 2008 when Alaska Governor Sarah Palin was selected by John McCain to potentially serve as his vice president, the media has been clamoring for secret communication with which to hang her. They thought they had something when the college student son of a Democrat in the Tennessee Legislature gained access to Palin's Yahoo email account and uploaded everything to a hacker haven, hoping for something to exploit.

There was nothing.

David Kernell -- son of Mike -- was sentenced to a year in prison.

But finally, on Friday, June 9, 2011, after making legal requests dating back to when they barely knew her name, the day arrived when the state of Alaska gave the MSM what it wanted: A reason to dig deep into Palin's emails as Governor. She may have been defeated along with McCain in 2008, but she hadn't stated she wouldn't challenge President Obama for the White House in 2012; she was still a potential threat. At every turn, the media majority have dismissed the idea that she might have been a competent leader in Alaska, choosing instead to magnify her verbal slips, her plainspoken language, and her unconventional celebrity status. Even her own sex appeal was used as a weapon against her. The hunt was on to find whatever could be found to prove she lacked the all-important gravitas.

Because Alaska only released reams of physical copies rather than uploadable digital copies (24,000 pages), the New York Times and Washington Post called in the cavalry: Their thousands-strong reserve force of Palin-obsessed haters that emerge from the cyber universe whenever and wherever she is covered around the world.

The word went out on June 9th in the Post thusly...

Over 24,000 e-mail messages to and from former Alaska governor Sarah Palin during her tenure as Alaska's governor will be released Friday. That's a lot of e-mail for us to review so we're looking for some help from Fix readers to analyze, contextualize, and research those e-mails right alongside Post reporters over the days following the release.

The clamor to get in on the gang ... uh, group analysis of Palin was so great, the Post expanded its invitation:

UPDATE: We have had a strong response to our crowdsourcing call-out on the Palin e-mails. We've reconsidered our approach and now would like to invite comments and annotations from any interested readers.

Here’s how to participate:Over 24,000 e-mail messages to and from Sarah Palin during her tenure as Alaska's governor will be released Friday . We’ll be posting them here, and are inviting you to comment on the most interesting or most noteworthy sections. Please include page numbers and, where possible, a direct excerpt. We'll share your comments with our reporters and may use facts or related material you suggest to annotate the documents displayed on The Post site. We may contact you for further details, by way of your registered e-mail with the Post, unless you specify otherwise in the comments.

For micro-updates as tomorrow unfolds, check out our new Twitter feed .

Michael Isikoff (who will go down in history as the man who wrote the famously spiked article about Bill Clinton's inappropriate relationship with Monica Lewinsky) was all but licking his chops in his Friday morning conversation with NBC's Ann Curry live via satellite from Juneau, AK:

Like the promo for the Al Capone's Vaults special, much excitement and amazement was anticipated.

Instead, what actually happened is what Palin predicted would happen.

From CNN:

From CBS News:

and from POLITICO.com:

Even people who don't like Palin weighed in on the attempted high-tech lynching:

So, there you are. Unlike Geraldo, nobody like Jill Abramson of the Times, Isikoff of NBC or Dana Milbank of the Post promised a song and dance if their mission failed. But that's OK, I have a song for them instead.

Ladies and gentlemen, from 1981, Blondie's Debbie Harry.

Enjoy your baked Alaskan crow, lamestreamers! Hope it's been worth the wait!

NOTE: This is NOT an endorsement of Palin for President.

NO BIN LADEN PHOTO: ONCE AGAIN, PRESIDENT OBAMA FEELS NO NEED TO PROVE HIS OWN HONESTY

2011-05-09T22:24:00.000-07:00

A Facebook friend of mine (whose name and face has been obscured, along with those issuing comments) posted this on the evening of Tuesday, May 3, 2011:

I first began using the pseudonym "L.N. Smithee" on FreeRepublic.com in 1998 during the run-up to the impeachment of Bill Clinton. Free Republic was one of the few places on the internet where you could get more than pro-Democrat MSM reports out of Washington D.C. about the Whitewater investigation, the Paula Jones sexual harassment civil suit, and later, the Monica Lewinsky allegations. But I tapered off my daily visits to FR beginning in 2008 mostly because it began crawling with more conspiracy-believers than founder Jim Robinson could delete.

The last straw for me was finally tiring of trying to talk sense into Freepers who put any kind of faith in the word of Larry Sinclair, a career criminal who has made scurrilous accusations about then-Senator Barack Obama. In 2008, Sinclair posted a YouTube video making this charge: In 1999, when Obama was an Illinois state senator serving the city of Chicago -- years previous to people thinking of him as the future of the Democratic Party -- the two of them shared cocaine in the back of a limousine after meeting in a Gurnee, IL hotel bar. On top of that, Sinclair claims he did a very special kind of (ahem) job for Obama.

While the MSM would go on to protect Obama from many legitimate questions regarding his pre-political personal life (such as his real estate dealings with wealthy neighbor/corporate criminal Tony Rezko and the closeness of his friendship with unrepentant domestic terrorists William Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn), questions about Sinclair had no business being asked, because Sinclair has no credibility. Larry the Loser had not one iota of evidence of his allegations. He would often promise scads of proof, but all he ever delivered was backup for his claim that he once checked into the hotel and had rented the limo. That didn't stop Sinclair from upping the ante, accusing the Obama campaign of murder to cover up his being "on the downlow." As the story went, an allegedly gay choirmaster at Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ (home of Jeremiah Wright) supposedly was silenced so he wouldn't spill the beans.

When his allegations predictably were ignored by the MSM and failed to catch fire with the general public, Sinclair pulled out all stops. He sued Obama, David Axelrod, and Howard Dean for undisclosed conspiracies against him that violated his free speech rights under the "First Amendmant (sic)." Sinclair sued anonymous individuals on websites who doubted his story, including a YouTube user with a sock puppet (Sinclair v. TubeSock TedD, et al). He hired infamous media whore-torney (and deadbeat dad/vexatious litigant) Montgomery Blair Sibley, who insists he wears a kilt instead of trousers because unlike average men, he's just too darn prodigious for pants (video). Without evidence of his own for any of his charges, he desperately badgered the Obama camp to reveal his personal contact information and his calendar of events on certain dates so he could hang him with it. His last gasp was to hold a press conference at the National Press Club that Sibley presided over. At the close of the conference, Sinclair was arrested on a warrant out of Colorado. The phlegmatic Sibley, it turned out, had been suspended in the District of Columbia a month previous.

Believe me, I am sympathetic when it comes to baseless conspiracy theories and the frustration that sets in when people you thought were smart start buying into them. But in the wake of the MSM's campaign against the very questioning of Obama's eligibility for becoming President, I felt compelled in response to my fellow Facebooker (at the risk of losing her "friendship") to say that not all conspiracy theories are baseless.

My reply:

Here's the problem with treating all conspiracy theories as false: There have been enough outrages that are now established fact that can lend credence to wild speculation.

Speaking as a black man, I can tell you that there are a number of things the U.S. government has been accused of doing to African-Americans that make no sense whatsoever. A prime example is an accusation made by old school rapper (and former Air America radio host) Chuck D, who at one time said that a secret ingredient was added to malt liquor to make black people act stupid. Before you say, "Duh! Alcohol!" consider that Chuck believed that other ethnicities were immune to the mystery additive's effects by design. Also popular at one time was the lie that the AIDS virus was created by white scientists to eradicate blacks, which was repeated by Obama's longtime spiritual mentor Jeremiah Wright in a sermon.

One might wonder why any black person would buy into such conspiracies. While there are many answers, the best one is the established truth of the Tuskegee Experiment, a decades-long tracking of the effects of syphilis on the human body. Begun in the early '30s, it was conducted by lying to approximately 400 poor black men in Alabama who had contracted the STD, but never informed of the true nature of the infection. They were given non-effective treatment for an imaginary disease, and lured back for observation (despite not improving) by being provided their medical care (such as it was) free of charge. The project was uncovered in 1972, and in 1997, President Clinton held a ceremony formally apologizing on behalf of the federal government to the eight remaining survivors of the experiment, some of whom were in their late 90's.

Indeed, when the levies that held the waters surrounding New Orleans failed under the beating of Hurricane Katrina, no less a black icon than filmmaker Spike Lee suggested that George W. Bush blew the levies up for the purpose of scattering the black population in order to change the demographics of Congressional districts so they would be more white (and thus Republican). When challenged as to how he could believe such a thing, Lee cited the Tuskegee Experiment.

Now, to the current topic: I don't believe Osama bin Laden died in 2002 or that the incident this past weekend was staged. Still, there are things about the account of the raid that make you go "Hmmm," primarily the fact that it appears no evidence that he was apprehended, killed, and buried at sea will be made public any time in the near future.

[From 60 Minutes May 8, 2011's broadcast of Steve Kroft's interview with President Obama]:

KROFT: Did you see the pictures?

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Yes.

KROFT: What was your reaction when you saw them?

PRESIDENT OBAMA: It was him.

KROFT: Why haven't you released them?

PRESIDENT OBAMA: You know, we discussed this internally. Keep in mind that we are absolutely certain this was him. We've done DNA sampling and testing. And so there is no doubt that we killed Osama bin Laden. It is important for us to make sure that very graphic photos of somebody who was shot in the head are not floating around as an incitement to additional violence. As a propaganda tool.

You know, that's not who we are. You know, we don't trot out this stuff as trophies. You know, the fact of the matter is this was somebody who was deserving of the justice that he received. And I think Americans and people around the world are glad that he's gone. But we don't need to spike the football. And I think that given the graphic nature of these photos, it would create some national security risk. And I've discussed this with Bob Gates and Hillary Clinton and my intelligence teams and they all agree.

KROFT: There are people in Pakistan, for example, who say, "Look, this is all a lie. This is another American trick. Osama's not dead."

PRESIDENT OBAMA: You know, the truth is that - and we're monitoring worldwide reaction -- there's no doubt that bin Laden is dead. Certainly there's no doubt among al Qaeda members that he is dead. And so we don't think that a photograph in and of itself is gonna make any difference. There are gonna be some folks who deny it. The fact of the matter is, you will not see bin Laden walkin' on this earth again.

KROFT: Was it your decision to bury him at sea?

PRESIDENT OBAMA: It was a joint decision. We thought it was important to think through ahead of time how we would dispose of the body if he were killed in the compound. And I think that what we tried to do was, consulting with experts in Islamic law and ritual, to find something that was appropriate that was respectful of the body.

Frankly we took more care on this than, obviously, bin Laden took when he killed 3,000 people. He didn't have much regard for how they were treated and desecrated. But that, again, is somethin' that makes us different. And I think we handled it appropriately.

Read more: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504803_162-20060530-10391709.html#ixzz1LvJnbufk

For the second consecutive month, Obama has been shown to be reluctant to prove he is an honest man. Most people rolled their eyes at demands to view the President's original birth certificate, but think about it; rather than just show everybody back in the summer of 2008 that he was telling the truth, he *deliberately acted as if he was hiding something* to the tune of legal fees estimated at $2,000,000.

Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward & Carl Bernstein -- who in 1972 were initially discouraged from pursuing additional coverage of what was seen as a minor political espionage incident -- ended up toppling the President of the United States, Richard Nixon. Since then, journalists have treated them as patron saints, men whose determination to root out White House malfeasance was a example to use as a guiding star. But no longer do reporters seem to feel the need to hold the POTUS' feet to the fire -- they're too busy kissing them. Journalists are refusing to honestly investigate Barack Obama, choosing instead to lash out at his critics as being insane or unstable "conspiracy theorists" even if they don't meet the classic defiinition.

It only makes sense to dismiss *all* disagreement with the White House as "conspiratorial" if you are willing to believe everything it tells you. I know you're smarter than that.

She is still my Facebook friend. I had a feeling she'd understand. And I picked up a new one based on the above reply!

SATISFACTION AND APPREHENSION: MY FIRST TWELVE HOURS OF THE POST-BIN LADEN ERA

2011-05-02T15:20:00.001-07:00

As I commented at 8:02 am the morning of May 2, 2011 on the Patterico.com post What the Hell? Report: Bin Laden Buried at Sea, “In Accordance with Islamic Law”

The last twelve hours have been tough for me. I was out Sunday night visiting some apolitical friends when the word came down that bin Laden was dead, and out of respect for their hospitality, I did not turn the conversation beyond satisfaction that the mastermind of the greatest single act of murder in all of our lifetimes got what was long overdue coming to him.

Harley Carnes, CBS News
When I got in my car to go home, I listened to KCBS, the all-news channel in San Francisco, which I already had on the radio on the way; I was listening to the simulcast of 60 Minutes as Lara Logan told her chilling story of barely surviving gang rape by Egyptian men in Tahrir Square. I heard the CBS News announcer -- Harley Carnes -- as he ran down the details as they were known, talking back and forth with experts whose names nor voices were recognizable to me. Carnes then spoke with Terry McGovern, the daughter of a WTC victim. Ms. McGovern said that the elimination of bin Laden restored her faith in government, quoting drooling Bush-hater Maureen Dowd in the process. Carnes agreed, saying that it seemed for so long that the government was like the Keystone Kops, and that finally they were able to get something accomplished.

My stomach started turning as I felt the story turning political. Then as a D.C. reporter described the celebratory scene outside the White House, Carnes, apropos of nothing, said that President Obama would get a bump up in his approval rating as a result. "Uh, we'll see about that," the reporter replied. Carnes doubled down: "Oh, sure he will." When I got home, I surfed the web on my phone while still in my car to see just how much of a left-wing wacko Harley Carnes was.

I found some brief commentaries that he does for CBS News Radio on his personal website (he's also a novelist), and was shocked. The topics he tackled: "What a mess Libya has already become." "This time a government shut-down might be a good thing - because unlike Washington - the people get it, the U.S is broke - we can't afford this government." And this one [which is really worth a listen]: "It is fair to ask the question now -- are you better off today than you were two years ago? And how will the answers be presented to you?" This guy sounded more like a more even-tempered Bill O'Reilly than David Gregory.

I then wondered what was wrong with me -- why couldn't I shut down my media bias calibrator long enough to enjoy the justice, as did Carnes? Honestly, I don't think it's my fault. After a lifetime of news addiction and about twenty-two years of recognizing and being able to predict slant (beginning with the character assassination of Dr. Eric Foretich), it's cut into my brain now. It's as if I'm on a fishing boat in rough seas, and to remain upright, I lean starboard when the vessel tilts port. If I lose that balancing mechanism, I'll be sliding all over the decks, flailing all over.

I'll take the hit now for not being sufficiently appreciative of the Obamastration's part in getting bin Laden. We all know good and well that it's going to be used as a bludgeon against Republican candidates in 2012 -- the media will trumpet this success as if it is a counterbalance to his economic incompetence and the amorphous folly of the Libyan intervention. Long-term, losing my vigilance for just a second doesn't feel like it's worth the risk of reverting back to a being a bleating sheep like so many clueless "independents," who are mostly people who believe whatever the MSM tells them.

UPDATE: Here's the latest "Not Just Another Story" commentary from Harley Carnes regarding whether photos of bin Laden's corpse should be released to the public:

"Killing Osama bin Laden was the brave and right thing to do. In today's news and comment, Harley Carnes says .. now is not the time to worry about making Jihadists angry"

LOST 2008 VIDEO: OBAMA GIVES A PREVIEW OF CROSSING INTO PAKISTAN WITHOUT PERMISSION TO STRIKE TERRORISTS

2011-05-02T12:14:00.000-07:00

Osama bin Laden is dead, shot in the head by U.S. Special Forces that crossed over into Pakistan and invaded his compound near the capital of Islamabad -- all without prior authorization of the Pakistani regime.

That President Obama would have the boldness to charge into a Muslim nation whose relations with the U.S. have been spotty over the years is something that really should have been expected, as is indicated by the 2008 interview that he gave to ABC News' former nightly anchor, Charles Gibson.

I'm having problems locating the video of that interview, so for the time being, I will just post the transcript of the relevant part.

GIBSON: Do we have a right to anticipatory self-defense? Do we have a right to make a preemptive strike again another country if we feel that country might strike us?

OBAMA: Charlie, if there is legitimate and enough intelligence that tells us that a strike is imminent against American people, we have every right to defend our country. In fact, the president has the obligation, the duty to defend.

GIBSON: Do we have the right to be making cross-border attacks into Pakistan from Afghanistan, with or without the approval of the Pakistani government?

OBAMA: Now, as for our right to invade, we’re going to work with these countries, building new relationships, working with existing allies, but forging new, also, in order to, Charlie, get to a point in this world where war is not going to be a first option. In fact, war has got to be, a military strike, a last option.

GIBSON: But, Senator, I’m asking you: We have the right, in your mind, to go across the border with or without the approval of the Pakistani government.

OBAMA: In order to stop Islamic extremists, those terrorists who would seek to destroy America and our allies, we must do whatever it takes and we must not blink, Charlie, in making those tough decisions of where we go and even who we target.

GIBSON: And let me finish with this. I got lost in a blizzard of words there. Is that a "yes"? That you think we have the right to go across the border with or without the approval of the Pakistani government, to go after terrorists who are in the Waziristan area?

OBAMA: I believe that America has to exercise all options in order to stop the terrorists who are hell bent on destroying America and our allies. We have got to have all options out there on the table.

All right, I have found the video -- thanks for waiting. Here it is.

Congratulations to all of you people who actually, y'know, pay attention to the news, and recognized where this was going. For the rest of you: Didn't those answers have more gravitas when you thought Obama had given them?

You've been punk'd, punk.

GLORIA ALLRED'S SO OUTRAGED AT AN OBSCENE GESTURE THAT NINE-YEAR-OLD GIRLS SAW, SHE DEMONSTRATES IT REPEATEDLY IN FRONT OF THEM

2011-04-29T16:26:00.000-07:00

(NOTE: The clip of the Allred press conference initially posted below was taken down by YouTube due to copyright violations by the user in unrelated videos. It has been replaced by the story as it aired on the weekday TMZ syndicated show.)

The Inglorious Barrister strikes again.

In case you're not a baseball fan and haven't heard the news, here's a quick recap:

On Saturday, April 23, 2011, 33-year-old Justin Quinn, father and fan of The 2010 World Champion San Francisco Giants, drove from Fresno to San Francisco with his adorable nine-year-old twin daughters to watch a game between the Atlanta Braves and The World Champion San Francisco Giants (it never gets old!) at AT&T Park.

The Quinns arrive early enough to watch the Braves take batting practice and warm-ups, and take their place in the front row of the left field bleachers hoping to catch balls hit over the fence. As some Braves players go about their preparation on the field, some Giants fans heckle them.

In response, Braves pitching coach Roger McDowell -- a retired player and member of the legendary pitching staff of the 1986 World Champion New York Mets -- heckles back, in "homophobic" terms. In the course of profanely accusing three male hecklers as being a "homo" "threesome," he makes an obscene gesture with a baseball bat and his fingers meant to signify sexual penetration.

Mr. Quinn, who is not McDowell's target, objected to obscene words spoken and suggestive gestures being performed in the presence of his children (or anybody's, for that matter).

McDowell responds by telling Quinn that children don't have any [bleep]ing business being at the ball park, and wielding a bat menacingly, asked Quinn how much he thought he teeth were worth.

Quinn notified AT&T Park security, who aided him in making a complaint about McDowell's abusive behavior.

So far, I'm with Mr. Quinn. He had a perfect right to expect ballplayers and coaches to act professionally and responsibly, even in the face of heckling, and especially in the presence of children. One never goes to the ballpark expecting that a coach will threaten bodily injury while holding a baseball bat (even if it's just for show). On top of that, it's difficult to believe that McDowell -- who pitched in the Majors for twelve seasons -- could have been reacting that day to something he hadn't been subjected to at Shea Stadium in New York, Fenway Park in Boston (his Mets defeated the Red Sox in the '86 Series), Philadelphia's infamous Veterans Stadium (where football fans once booed Santa Claus and pelted him with snowballs), or the Giants' old stomping ground, Candlestick Park, not a friendly place for Dodgers pitchers.

But then, for reasons that are at the moment still a mystery, celebrity attorney Gloria Allred pops up out of nowhere into the situation -- with Quinn, his wife (?) and his pre-pubescent girls in tow -- in her natural habitat: Before a bank of microphones with clicking cameras and bright flashes popping.

What happens next would be unbelievable if you had put it in a screenplay.

From TMZ (a site that I hate, but that had the most complete video):

Allred, seated at a table with a baseball bat in front of her and flanked by the Quinn twins as if they were bookends, recounted McDowell's crude sexual remarks. As the girls sat and looked at her with rapt attention, Allred spoke of how McDowell was at one point "thrusting his hips forward and backward in a sexual manner..." She said that McDowell AND the Atlanta Braves ought to be fined, suspended, and made to apologize to the Quinn family.

Quinn, taking his turn with his prepared statement, then claimed that in addition to being offended and disgusted, he actually felt threatened, saying he didn't know if McDowell was going to attack him with the bat. He added that he thought about Brian Stow, the Giants fan who is still in an induced coma after nearly being beaten to death in Dodger Stadium's parking lot on March 31.

At this point, I have to call BalderdaSh on Quinn (the kiddies, y'know). The outfield walls in AT&T Park are eight feet high in center and left field. The 50-year-old McDowell would have to be an Olympic high-jumper if he wanted to be able to reach Quinn unless he leaned over the fence. All Quinn would have to do is back up out of the front row if he felt like his choppers were actually in danger. I find it difficult to believe that a guy in Quinn's shape truly feared he would be physically harmed by McDowell.

The twin girls then read their own prepared statements ("I hope that you never go to a baseball game where you were in a bad situation like I was," one read). And finally, to demonstrate exactly what obscene gesture McDowell made, she held the fat end of the bat, papa Quinn formed a circle with his fingers, and she started sliding the bat back and forth. Back and forth. Back and forth.

Then Allred started to put the bat down. But apparently, someone in the pool of photogs didn't get the shot. She lifted the bat back up, and Quinn prepared his fingers. Back and forth. Back and forth.

Right in front of the daughters.

McDowell issued a statement apologizing within minutes of the press conference's end:

"I am deeply sorry that I responded to the heckling fans in San Francisco. I apologize to everyone for my actions."

The Braves management issued a statement:

“We were made aware of an incident in San Francisco this past Saturday. We are concerned by these allegations and the behavior described by a witness today. This in no way represents the Braves organization and the conduct we expect of our employees. We will withhold further comments until we finish gathering information.”

(I have just gotten the word that McDowell has been "placed on administrative leave" pending an investigation by the Braves. That sounds like a suspension, but isn't really. We'll eventually find out whether that's good or bad news for him.)

Bud Selig, IMHO the 2nd worst commissioner in Major League Baseball history, issued a statement of his own:

“I was informed today that Roger McDowell, a coach of the Atlanta Braves, is being accused of engaging in highly inappropriate conduct toward fans at a game in San Francisco. Although I do not yet have all the facts regarding this incident, the allegations are very troubling to me. The Atlanta Braves have assured my office that they will immediately investigate the allegations, and report the results of the investigation to me. After I have all the facts, I will make a determination of how to proceed.”

If you know Allred as well as I do, you know that only one shoe has thusfar dropped. The second one is going to be the one that either shakes loose some cash, shakes up the political world, or both. Quinn says he's not gay, but hates discrimination, and wants to teach his young girls to stand up against it. Maybe so, but I tend to think he's not putting himself out there before the globe without thinking that with Allred on board, there's some gold at the end of that rainbow (minus her share). It certainly seems to me that a good father wouldn't want to subject his young daughters to that terrible, awful, vulgar stuff over and over and over and over and over again. Not for nothing, anyway.

We'll see.

________________________________________________________

My reaction below is to the report on the website of KNTV in San Jose, NBCBayArea.com, recounting the report on the controversy broadcast April 28. Apparently, in the original version of the report, Allred was referred to as "infamous." The first person commenting via Facebook wrote: "Where does this writer get off dismissing Gloria Alred as 'infamous?'" This is how I replied.

The article above no longer refers to Allred as "infamous." But I will. She's a high-profile ambulance chaser who doesn't care as much about the law as she does trying to extract large amounts of money out of famous and/or rich people by embarrassing them on a large multimedia stage.

For example: She was able to get $10 million out of Tiger Woods in exchange for the silence of one of his mistresses, skank-to-the-stars Rachel Uchitel. What did Uchitel do to earn that money besides mess with a married celebrity? Nothing. Woods did nothing illegal, just immoral, but so did Uchitel, so what principle was Allred serving besides lining her own pocket? She tried to pull the same trick (pun intended) with a porn star who played a few rounds with Tiger, but he refused.

More recently, in October 2010, Allred represented illegal immigrant Nicky Diaz Santillian, the former housekeeper of billionaire GOP gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman. At stake this time for Allred wasn't money, it was something that money couldn't buy -- free bad publicity for a political opponent. Diaz *admitted* she gave her employment agency falsified legal documents to qualify for work in California. With polls showing Whitman and Democrat retread Jerry Brown in a dead heat, Allred held one of her trademark press conferences. Sounding much like the cleaning woman [in] the "The Red Dot" episode of "Seinfeld,"

Diaz tearfully and dramatically read a prepared statement while sitting beside Allred, moaning about how difficult it was to be an immigrant cleaning house and running errands for the demanding Whitman (not mentioning her otherworldly pay rate of $23/hr).

Diaz said she was stressed out by the work she did for Whitman. How badly stressed? She worked for her for *nine years,* before Whitman got word that Diaz was illegal and fired her. Truth was, there was no way that Whitman and her husband could have known Diaz was illegal, since the reputable agency through which they hired Diaz was the victim of her scam. In addition, when a notice arrived at the Whitman residence suggesting that Diaz's SSN was errant, they left it up to her to resolve, trusting her integrity and believing it was a clerical error.

Whitman ended up losing to Brown largely due to the stunt, which sullied her name among Hispanic voters whose main source of news is Spanish-language media. In the end, Diaz & Allred never sued Whitman for being abusive (and certainly didn't want her to be charged for hiring an illegal), only failure to reimburse Diaz for overtime and mileage. Her somewhat trivial legal complaint was simply a conduit through which Whitman could be portrayed to undecided voters as an evil hypocrite.

Diaz settled in late November for a piddling $5500, with the stipulation the Whitman household admitted no wrongdoing. Only after that was it revealed what everybody who was really paying attention already knew: Diaz, disgruntled after being fired, had been steered to Allred by union allies of the Brown campaign.

One would be naive to believe that the 4-figure settlement was the extent of her compensation.

This raises the question, how did Justin Quinn, a supposedly unassuming father of 9-year-old twin girls from Fresno, get involved with a superstar Southern California celebrity attorney who is, yes, infamous for being a puppeteer to sympathetic victims for mutual financial benefit? He doesn't say, and nobody seems to be asking (nice job, Suzanne Shaw). But he's asking for the weight of the world to come down on Roger McDowell, whose actions were inexcusable and outrageous for a person who was not assumed to be drunk.

NOTE: He is responding to non-audible questions.

Quinn ideally wants McDowell to resign, and for Major League Baseball and the S.F. District Attorney to get involved. Seems to be a negotiating tactic, IMHO. Key phrase in the NBC11 interview of Quinn via Skype: "I don't know what can bring that moment back for me as a parent."

I'm sure Gloria can think of $omething.

_____________________________________________________________

Tell me what you think. Please add your comment below.

AMAZING DISG-RACE: COLOR OF CHANGE.ORG FIGURES DISFIGURE FACTS IN BREITBART-BASHING COLUMN

2011-04-12T01:30:00.000-07:00

Below is my reaction to a piece written for The Root, a blog dedicated to African-American issues. Naturally, the overwhelming majority of its content (as in everything I've ever read on it) is pro-Democrat and anti-Republican, and really anti-Tea Party.

The dismissal of Andrew Breitbart from the Huffington Post after a campaign by the leftist organization Color of Change (most famous for targeting Glenn Beck for boycott and cancellation after his remark accusing President Obama of not liking white people) has been a hot topic of late. Breitbart was vilified already for his role in the exposure of ACORN and especially for his BigGovernment.com's thorough investigative reporting about the Pigford Farms settlement, which I wrote about briefly in July 2010. Harsh remarks about former Obamastration "green job czar" and COC co-founder Van Jones got him bounced from HuffPo, despite the fact that other writers were more than welcome there after saying much worse things about conservatives.

In a column entitled "Race-Baiting Is Different From Racism" and subtitled
"When ColorOfChange.org campaigned against conservative provocateur Andrew Breitbart's presence on Huffington Post, it was for what he's done, not what he feels, say leaders of the organization", COC co-founder James Rucker and campaign manager Dani McClain insist that Breitbart got off easy due to too much respect issued to him by other white journalist types. They were upset because HuffPo founder Arianna Huffington and founding editor Roy Sekoff admitted in an interview that they even though they ejected Breitbart from the site, they did NOT believe he is racist.

This is the original draft of my comments on the below-quoted part of the Rucker/McClain piece before I had to divide it into two parts to fit it into The Root's comments section (links added):

This same reluctance (cowardice? postracial delusion?) was evident in some of the coverage of our campaign. David Weigel at Slate conflated our members' efforts against Breitbart with Media Matters' work monitoring Fox News, characterizing both as " … a liberal campaign aimed at getting conservatives off the air, off the Huffington Post front page, off Fox News. It's as blatant as the conservative campaign to dismantle the liberal media."

Well, no. Unless there's a conservative campaign afoot to keep race-baiters who intentionally deceive from appearing as trustworthy, ethical pundits on the Sunday-morning shows and network news, then there's really no comparison. Perhaps Weigel realizes this but fears what an honest assessment of Breitbart's race problem might do to his own bona fides as an objective journalist.

You folks haven't been paying attention, because Weigel has no "bona fides as an objective journalist." He was exposed as a hardcore lefty when his participation in the now-defunct pro-Democrat, anti-Republican JournoList mailing list was leaked to Tucker Carlson's right-leaning Daily Caller website. His supposedly objective column in the Washington Post examining the right wing was belied by his angry, profane rants on JournoList about Glenn Beck, James O'Keefe, Newt Gingrich, and Sarah Palin (partial list). When Rush Limbaugh was hospitalized in December 2009 with chest pains, we know now, Weigel snarked to fellow left-leaning JournoList reporters "I hope he fails." Following those revelations, Weigel was dismissed from the Post, but retained by its parent company, which operates Slate.

When it comes to Weigel's comparison that you find wanting, I say it's perfectly sound. It's true that what he described as "the conservative campaign to dismantle the liberal media" is not narrowly focused on -- to quote you -- "keep[ing] race-baiters who intentionally deceive from appearing as trustworthy, ethical pundits on the Sunday-morning shows and network news." But the default position on those programs is that it is fair to assume Republicans have "a race problem" (quoting you again) unless they make grand gestures of ideological departure from traditional Republican positions (e.g. Jack Kemp). No amount of equitable treatment of non-whites on a personal basis -- even marriage -- can do anything to alter that template unless it is expressed in *political* outreach leftward. Calling out the common presumptions as fraudulent is part of the larger fight against prejudicial treatment of the right-of-center in the mainstream media, and need not be specific to quashing race-baiting. The fact that you have felt it necessary to issue your statement above because Huffington & Sekoff admitted that they did not believe Andrew Breitbart is a racist proves my point. As media figures to the left of Fox News, they ran afoul of an unwritten law, and you fancy yourselves as the enforcers.

Finally, your assertion that somehow Breitbart had "destroy[ed] Sherrod's career" is laughable when one examines the facts of not only Sherrod's resignation under pressure from the Obama Administration, but the circumstances under which she even got the position.

Let's recap: According to Sherrod, she was pressured by an aide to Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack to announce her resignation in a phone conversation while she was driving on a Georgia freeway. Why right then? Because the USDA wanted to head off a discussion of the controversy on Glenn Beck's TV program that afternoon. (Remember that it was under the heat Beck brought upon your pal Van Jones that he resigned as Green Jobs Czar at midnight on the Sunday of a three-day holiday weekend.) Initially, the NAACP backed the decision to shove Sherrod out, based on the incomplete video of her discussion of how she pulled back assistance to a white farmer. Beck ended up actually sticking up for Sherrod, and criticized Breitbart for commenting on the video before he knew the context of the total speech. The NAACP did an about-face, claiming that it had been "hoodwinked" by Breitbart. Even Bill O'Reilly apologized for jumping to conclusions. The White House issued an apology to Sherrod. Vilsack offered an apology and her job back, but Sherrod refused the offer. Her "career" and her reputation were restored as quickly as they were tarnished, but she chose to walk away rather than return.

How did Sherrod get the job, anyway? The exact circumstances are unknown, but here's what we know: She was named Director for Rural Development for the state of Georgia on July 25, 2009. Mere *days* earlier, New Communities, Inc., a farm trust that Sherrod co-founded with her husband in 1969 (but had ceased operations in the mid-'80s), was given a cash award of $13,000,000.00 in the Pigford Farms settlement. Over $4,000,000.00 of that total amount was specifically termed as "lost wages," and Shirley and her husband Charles each personally received $150,000.00 each for "pain and suffering" (three times the average settlement issued to Pigford plaintiffs). The Sherrods were newly-minted multi-millionaires when she was appointed by Vilsack, who as Ag Secretary is the one who ultimately authorized their payment.

(I won't speculate in print about that last part, because I don't have a lick of evidence backing up what I'm thinking. But think about it.)

It's not only ridiculous to suggest Breitbart "destro[yed] Sherrod's career," it's outrageously disingenuous. The Sherrods were the most richly compensated awardees of the entire Pigford suit out of tens of thousands of filers stretching back to Clinton's second term. She didn't need the job when she got it, and she doesn't need it now. But the bitterness she has expressed after being booted from her USDA position could be predicted by anyone in the audience of that famous videotaped speech, in which she said "Have you heard of anybody in the federal government losing their job? That's all that I need to say, okay?"

Tell me what you think. Comment below, link if you like.

"I'M EIGHTY" - THE SHORT-SIGHTEDNESS OF OBAMACARE AND DODD-FRANK, AS TOLD BY A SCARED BILLIONAIRE

2011-03-03T11:16:00.000-08:00

I heard part of the audio of this conversation earlier today on CNBC on Rush Limbaugh's show this morning, and my jaw dropped at the 1:29 mark. I sought out more of the conversation, and sadly, it affirms the worst fears I have about how little lawmakers think about the lasting effects of the legislation they pass, keeping their focus on the next election and/or what's in it for them individually. Members of both parties are guilty of this, but this is regarding the ticking neutron time bomb that is ObamaCare, the biggest looming threat to the nation's long-term financial stability, so it stands to reason this anecdote is undoubtedly about a Democrat.

The person speaking is Equity International Chairman Sam Zell, iconoclastic billionaire real estate investor and recent purchaser of the Tribune Company, who has described himself as "an economic conservative and a social liberal”:

"I went to Congress lobbying last year for the real estate industry three weeks before the passage of the health care bill, and whenever I do this for the industry, I always save one question for myself. And so I ask a simple question for the first guy that I met. And I said, 'What about the eleventh year? You guys constructed this health care bill with six years of costs and ten years of revenue. What about the eleventh year?' And the guy looks at me and says, 'I'm eighty!' I rest my case. And you know, you wanna get scared, that's scary!"

Watch the entire clip. If you don't understand how anyone could be against ObamaCare and new banking regulations that are supposed to prevent the kind of recklessness and abuse that caused The Crash of '08, pay attention to Zell. He well represents those of us who know the devil is in the details of the 2,000+ page bills that few people (including legislators) have read, but that we all are bound by once they are shoved down America's collective throat.

Now, the question is: Who is the eighty-year-old in question? We know it's a "he," and that he was eighty at about this time in 2010, three weeks before (presumably) the final passage of ObamaCare on March 19. Obviously, Zell won't tell. Any detectives out there?

DID LADY GAGA RIP OFF HER EGG IDEA FROM THE SAN DIEGO CHICKEN? COMPARE THE VIDEOS!

2011-02-19T00:32:00.000-08:00

If you watched the Grammy Awards on February 13th, you saw it: The heavily-promoted first live performance of the title track from Lady Gaga's upcoming CD, Born This Way. As I tweeted during the Grammycast, I don't remember a title cut so overhyped since @MCHammer 's "2 Legit 2 Quit."

If you didn't see it, here it is, courtesy of CBS and Mediaite.com.

Here's a still image of the Gagster riding on to the Staples Center stage in a translucent egg, also from Mediaite.

Many have accused the singer/songwriter/musician formerly known as Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta (whew) of ripping off another flamboyant Italian-American singer, Madonna (nee Madonna Louise Ciccone). But the idea of emerging from an egg onstage predated Gaga's emergence from wherever she came from in 1986.

The above photo is from an evening of June 1979 in San Diego, CA at San Diego Stadium, home of Major League Baseball's San Diego Padres. A police motorcade has brought in an armored car with a giant egg on top, flanked by four security guards. Watching the entire spectacle is a crowd of over 47,000. Inside the egg is perhaps the most famous costumed mascot in the history of professional sports, The San Diego Chicken (aka The Famous Chicken, formerly the KGB Chicken). Inside the Chicken costume is Ted Giannoulas, who only five years before was a San Diego State student that agreed to wear a chicken outfit at an Easter Sunday promotion by a radio station. The pay rate: $2.00 per hour.

To make a long and nearly unbelievable (but true) story short(er), through appearances for KGB-FM at San Diego Stadium, Giannoulas became as big a draw to Padres games as the team itself, which rarely shined on the field. He stole the show wherever he went, even causing rock legend Elvis Presley (on his final tour) to laugh so hard, he couldn't complete a song without commenting on the Chicken dancing along. Then the station unceremoniously dumped Ted, and put another guy -- who had none of Giannoulas' comedic capabilities -- in the suit that Ted made famous. The station figured the KGB costume was what made the Chicken popular, not the person inside. They were wrong. Crowds not only didn't react to the new dude in the suit, at one point he was actually chased out of San Diego Stadium! Giannoulas created his own costume to resume his passion, but KGB filed an injunction to prevent him from doing so. Ted sued KGB for the right to perform as the character he alone created, and won in California's Supreme Court.

Free as a bird to resume his unlikely career, Giannoulas plotted a grand re-entrance. Below is video of the KGB Chicken's rebirth as "The Famous Chicken" with commentary by Ted -- who I don't believe has been photographed out of his costume since the '70s -- in an interview with Red Door Interactive CEO Reid Carr.

(Unfortunately, the footage doesn't include the audio of The Chicken breaking through the styrofoam shell as the climax of Richard Strauss' "Also Sprach Zarathustra" [the theme from 2001: A Space Odyssey] plays over the PA system.)

Since then, Ted has traveled throughout the United States and the world as a uniquely American ambassador of slapstick fun. At 56, he's just beginning to slow down a bit, but he's had a career longer than most comedians and every one of the athletes on the field when he first started out. And it all began with a college kid taking a short gig for cash and the accidental discovery he had a natural gift for making large numbers of people laugh.

Oh, yeah, I almost forgot ... in answer to the question, "Did Lady Gaga rip off her egg idea from the San Diego Chicken?" the answer is definitely "no," presuming she came up with it on her own. But among outlandish performers who exited a giant egg wearing a yellow costume in front of thousands of people in a sports facility, Giannoulas beat Germanotta to the punch. It only makes sense that when it comes to eggs, The Chicken came first.

(For the record: Among the two of them, I find the San Diego Chicken more entertaining.)

IS PIMA COUNTY SHERIFF DUPNIK STILL TRYING TO BLAME JARED LOUGHNER'S RAMPAGE ON "VITRIOLIC RHETORIC"?

2011-01-31T04:19:00.000-08:00

In the course of researching a longer, more detailed story I'm preparing regarding Rush Limbaugh's imitation of Hu Jintao and the over-the-top response by California State Senator Leland Yee (D-San Francisco), I found a detail that has escaped notice thusfar (to my knowledge).

For those of you who were in a coma the first week of 2011: In the immediate aftermath of the Tucson massacre, Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik couldn't stop himself from inserting his fact-free, pro-Democrat personal opinion about what might have spurred Jared Loughner to mass murder, asserting that there was "no doubt in [his] mind" that political "vitriol" constantly spread by television and radio commentators would eventually be proved to be a significant contributing factor.

Here is Dupnik being grilled gently by Fox News' Megyn Kelly on Monday, January 9, 2011:

Fast forward to two and a half weeks later, Wednesday, January 26, 2011. At this point, it has long been established by Loughner's friends, former girlfriends, creeped-out college classmates, frightened teachers, and investigators combing his personal effects that contrary to the media narrative Dupnik reinforced, the 22-year-old was a time bomb destined to explode Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords' world years prior to Sarah Palin's "crosshairs" map, the ObamaCare vote, the Tea Party movement, or the first primary victory of then-Senator Obama. On this same day: On his California State Senate homepage, State Senator Yee makes public a vile, profane, obviously racist (and somewhat illiterate) faxed death threat his office received from a person specifically making reference to Limbaugh's artificially controversial 18-second impersonation of President Hu.

I will NOT link the image of the fax here, but an accurate description of it is in the text of the press release:

The faxes received by Yee include a graphic of an American flag adorned pickup truck dragging a noose.

The faxes that were sent to Yee’s office today also state (with misspellings):

FIGHTING The Marxist Nigger Thug Hussein Obama & Fish Head Leeland Yee

To: JoBama Rectum Sniffing Moron LEELAND LEE

Achtung! [German word meaning “watch out”] Fish Head Leeland Lee. Rush Limbaugh will kick your Chink ass and expose you for the fool you are.
Without exceptions, Marxists are enemies of the United States Constitution! Death to all Marxists! Foreign and Domestic!

However convenient it is to State Senator Yee to receive hate mail mentioning Rush Limbaugh in the same proximity as an image of a pickup truck dragging President Obama's head in a noose (a detail not specifically mentioned in the statement), there is no doubt in my mind that the fax is authentically from a bonafide racist. It has the same type of crude, pre-Photoshop, clip art, ransom note graphics as I remember from the eighties, when disciples of Tom Metzger's White Aryan Resistance group would paste ugly posters like that in Bay Area phone booths (remember them?).

I hesitated to publish the text of the threatening fax, but I needed to -- it's relevant to the disclosure that preceded it on Yee's release (link, bold mine):

SAN FRANCISCO – After condemning offensive comments by Rush Limbaugh, Senator Leland Yee (D-San Francisco) today was sent a racist death threat via fax to his San Francisco and Capitol offices. The faxes have been turned over to the Senate Sergeant-at-Arms to investigate.

The expletive-laden faxes contain graphics and language similar to messages Yee receive [sic] in April 2010 after he called for Sarah Palin’s speaking fee at California State University to be disclosed. Recently, the Pima County Sheriff’s Office in Arizona contacted Yee regarding the April faxes and a possible connection to faxes found during the investigation surrounding the shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords.

Yee's previous claim to national fame was demanding that a private education foundation associated with Cal State-Stanislaus reveal how much it was paying Governor Palin to come to Turlock, CA to speak at a $500-per-person fundraiser. The foundation insisted it wasn't legally required to reveal the contract. CSUS said it had no information about the foundation's contract. Then dumpster-diving Palin-hating students found shredded pages of the contract the university said it didn't have, containing the quasi-damning revelations that Palin would be receiving less than her previously-reported $100,000 fee, that she wants to fly the 2,700 miles from Alaska first class (or, alternately, by Lear Jet), and that she insists on bendable straws for her lectern water bottles. What a diva, right? In the end, Palin's speech went on without a hitch.

But, I digress. One April 2010 faxed threat -- one of at least two missives much more disgusting than the recent ones -- is described thusly on Yee's page:

The fax, which included a graphic of an American flag adorned pickup truck dragging a noose, also states “FIGHTING The Marxist Nig**r Thug Hussein Obama” and “Safeguard the Constitution, Death of all Domestic Marxists!”

Not to discount the danger (at worst) or discomfort (at the least) that such a slimebag may cause to State Senator Yee, but come on ... it's the same sicko.

Now, back to Pima County. If we take Yee's Chief of Staff Adam Keigwin (author of the press releases) at his word, as of January 26th, Sheriff Dupnik's office "recently" had requested to see Yee's April threat faxes in association with the investigation of Jared Loughner's savage attack: A "possible connection to faxes found during the investigation surrounding the shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords."

Huh? You mean a "possible connection" between the looney loser whose closest associates agreed within hours of the shooting he didn't pay close attention to politics, didn't listen to talk radio, didn't vote in 2010, didn't pledge allegiance to the right or left, and whose stated conspiratorial obsessions were devoid of bigotry? You mean the guy we can reasonably presume didn't send either fax to Leland Yee since whoever sent the January one could not possibly be in police custody, where Loughner has been since he was held down by bystanders in that Safeway parking lot in Tucson?

Dupnik's office has put a gag on details about Loughner's attack, so we have not lately seen nor heard the Sheriff double, triple, or quadruple down on his pseudo-prophetic opinions about its root causes. But his department is still spending time chasing down information about threats that appear to be irrelevant to the prosecution of the individual we all know murdered six of his constituents! This indicates to me Dupnik knows the chances his bold assertions were prescient are dwindling, and he's got to scramble to avoid being exposed as unduly political and unprofessional.

Pardon the mixed metaphors, but in short: Dupnik is grasping at straws to cover his posterior. Not a good look.

Coming up: Why Leland Yee's and other Chinese-American politicians' offense at Limbaugh is selective, overblown, and IMHO, insincere.

NBC NEWS' LUKE "FAMILY DESTINY" RUSSERT SCREWS UP AGAIN ... SITUATION NORMAL AT MSNBC

2011-01-14T01:09:00.000-08:00

Late last October, I published "DESTINY" VS. "DYNASTY": ARE NBC NEWS PEOPLE AS DUMB AS THEY THINK SARAH PALIN IS?" about an egregious grammatical error made by NBC News' Luke Russert in a story about Sarah Palin's remarks about the "family dynasty" of Alaska's Murkowski clan.

It turned out to be the most viewed piece in the history of REACTOR, my sporadically-updated blog created out of cubicle boredom in 2005.

Here's how I ended it:

Palin's point about the dangers of installing dynasties may have been made in an indirect fashion through young Luke's megagaffe. As we can see from his performance yesterday morning, he's been deemed ready for the big time by the asleep-at-the-switch suits at NBC News despite the fact he's still swimming in the shoes of his late, legendary father, Meet The Press host Tim Russert. While he still has time to learn, let's be serious about the here and now: If he was Luke Smith, Luke Jones, or Luke Doe, he would never see the business end of an NBC News camera.

Harsh? Yes, uncomfortably so. True, nevertheless? You betcha.

Here's how Master Luke covered the Arizona massacre as the news came in (h/t Media Resource Center):

While this is another screw-up for Luke, things are moving in the right direction. This is, after all, a journalistic error, not a spelling error.

MEGHAN McCAIN ON ARIZONA: "I KNOW ANGRY RHETORIC WASN'T THE REASON, BUT ISN'T IT GREAT WE'RE TALKING ABOUT TONING IT DOWN NOW?"

2011-01-13T02:47:00.000-08:00

The following is my reaction to Meghan "The Brain" McCain's latest missive on The Daily Beast titled "What We Need to Learn From Arizona." Except that apparently what we "need to learn" are lessons that have nothing to do with what actually occurred in Tucson.

Here's a link to the original piece. Please come back here for my comment -- I can't be sure that the Beasties will approve it. I've had several remarks there spiked going back to 2008.

Quoth the Meghan:

"What is particularly sad and telling about the climate of today’s media cycle is that it seems to have taken the media this kind of moment to start analyzing their own rhetoric—even if that rhetoric wasn’t the reason for the tragedy."

Congratulations, Meghan, you have just joined the millions and millions of sheep who have swallowed the MSM narrative and regurgitated it to the rest of us for our consumption. Fortunately for me, I long ago lost a taste for semi-digested propaganda.

In case you live in such an impenetrable bubble that you haven't yet heard or [had] someone tell you, allow me: You're being manipulated. Scratch that -- you're being duped. And, funny thing is, you seem to enjoy it.

How dare I write such a thing, you may ask? Simple: you just admitted it yourself. Here's more you:

"Although I do not believe this shooter's motives had anything to do with the current political climate, it’s good that the media is questioning the dangerous levels that the rhetoric has reached nonetheless."

You see? You know good and well "rhetoric wasn’t the reason for the tragedy", but instead of upbraiding the media for pretending that it WAS about the rhetoric (for obvious partisan purposes), you boldly continue with their big lie by furthering a national discussion on an unrelated "conversation" -- which was started in the spirit of partisanship by the left, and promoted through the means of libel and slander of the right.

Meanwhile, the reasons why Ms. Giffords got shot and six people were killed -- y'know, the REAL reasons -- go underexplored by the media and most self-described center-left folk. They're kinda occupied, despite the fact that the similarities between Loughner and the Virginia Tech shooter are eerie; isolated, severely creepy marginal college students with paranoid theories and violent fantasies that frightened teachers and students alike, enough to get them barred them from their campuses. Somehow, they each got ahold of a firearm, and -- in the words of Drowning Pool -- "Let the bodies hit the floor." Teachers, counselors, parents, and surviving "friends" say "I KNEW he was nuts, but I didn't know he was THAT nuts." The only significant difference is that Loughner was stopped before he offed himself.

But, apparently, y'all think it is more important to seize this moment to focus attention on YOUR pet peeve: That goldarn angry rhetoric. And it was really important to take advantage of the situation as the story unfolded, because if it turned out the gunman was yet another Arab dude who turned out to be a Muslim extremist, we wouldn't have had squawking heads, bilious bloggers, and a media whore county sheriff blaming Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, and Glenn Beck for murders they didn't commit. Such blood libel (yeah, I said it, and I meant it) was needed to get the ball rolling.

Getting to the bottom of the real reasons why six people are dead and making necessary changes to prevent something like this from happening again can wait until next time the culprit is not a Islamist. First things first, right, Meggie?

IVY LEAGUE INCEST: THE BEGINNING OF A SLIDE DOWN A NEW SLIPPERY SLOPE?

2010-12-13T10:29:00.000-08:00

And you thought incest was just for rock stars and hayseeds!

Nope, nowadays Ivy League academics with national reputations are getting into the act -- namely, Columbia University political science professor David Epstein. From the December 10, 2010 edition of the Columbia University student newspaper, the Spectator (link mine):

Political science professor David Epstein, 46, was charged Thursday with having a sexual relationship with his daughter, 24.

He was arrested Wednesday morning and charged with one count of incest in the third degree at an arraignment hearing on Thursday. According to police, the relationship appears to have been consensual.

Epstein declined to comment when reached on his cell phone Thursday evening.

His wife, Sharyn O’Halloran, chair of the executive committee of the University Senate and a tenured professor, also declined to comment when reached by phone.

As recently as 2009, Epstein was a contributor to the leftist blog The Huffington Post (which, to its credit, reported the story). His most notable opinion piece (pictured on the right, click to enlarge) was "Palin Proves Voters Were Right in 2008", written two days after then-Alaska Governor Sarah Palin's July 4 press conference announcing she would resign. Wrote Epstein:

Palin has done what weak, self-centered people do when the going gets tough -- they quit and blame someone else.

Remember that quote, folks. It will be interesting to see if Epstein fights to maintain his position at Columbia, and what his excuses will be for sex with his own offspring. Grab some popcorn -- and a barf bag.

Much has been made of his bashing of Palin in conservative media, but that's par for the course among admitted, committed leftists. My concerns about l'affaire Epstein have more to do with the responses among people like the contributors and daily surfers of HuffPo and the culturally influential people of Northeastern academia. They have been challenged to address a scandal that they never would have imagined could happen to someone like Epstein (and, by extension, them), and it seems that too many for comfort will tip in favor of apathy -- that because the father-daughter lovers were "consenting adults" (as far as we know), it's salacious rubbernecking at something that's really not a big deal. "Nothing to see here, move along."

As noted by The American Spectator's Robert Stacy McCain on December 10, "some commenters at the [Columbia Spectator] Web site are mystified as to why it's illegal: "Wait, why is consensual incest a crime? It might not be appealing to everyone, but if they're adults and they consent, who cares what they do?" One clueless senior said the following upon learning of the arrest:

"Raahi Sheth, CC ’11, an economics and political science major—who had an Epstein (sic) as a major adviser—said he was surprised to hear of the allegations, since Epstein has always been helpful.

“He’d always been fairly jovial,” he said. “He seemed to be a very nice guy.”

Here was my reaction, posted on McCain's AmSpec blog December 11 (edited to include links, italics, and blockquotes):

Hear ye, all you people who rend your garments and begin boycott blogs whenever someone speaks aloud the blasphemy that rulings against laws prohibiting same-sex marriage will ultimately lead to the legalization of polygamy and/or incest. Within this sordid event lies (upon serious analysis) the evidence proving your outrage reactionary and shallow.

The attitude toward laws prohibiting incest expressed by the "consenting adults" crowd within the Columbia community are the blueprint for an off-ramp of the Rubicon Bridge expressway designed by David Boies, Theodore Olson, and anti-Proposition 8 activists who believe same-sex marriage is a right guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. The bedrock of their Federal case for having the California Constitution's sole definition of marriage as one man-one woman struck down is to have unelected jurists determine whether there are sufficient reasons to prohibit additional forms of marriage. On that particular docket is their support of same-sex marriage within two parties, but their position as advocates of such unions sets the table for future challenges to the idea that marriage ought to be limited to just two individuals, be they straight, gay, or bisexual. In short: If their California victory currently being appealed should be confirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court, all future challenges to America's longstanding marital norms won't be based on the question "Why expand marriage rights?" but "Why should marriage rights NOT be extended?"

For people who insist that's a wild, dystopic projection, consider this: The 2008 California Supreme Court opinion striking down the 2000 voter initiative cementing traditional marriage into the California family code (In re Marriage Cases) was carefully designed to mirror its previous 1948 decision striking down anti-miscegenation laws (Perez v. Sharp). Had someone declared 62 years ago that establishing a right for blacks and whites to marry would eventually lead to marriage of two men or two women, that person would have been called insane. After all, sodomy was a crime -- who was going to allow two homosexuals to get married as if they were two members of the opposite sex? Neither the affirming nor dissenting opinions in Perez even address sodomy law. But twenty-one years later in 1969, the state legislature decriminalized sodomy under the "consenting adults" banner. That opened the door that has, to date, been busted down twice; in 2008 and in 2010.

So, here we are now in 2010, and some of the same crowd who undoubtedly snickered when Saturday Night Live joked in 2008 about New York Times reporters imagining Todd Palin was "doing those daughters" are in all seriousness making statements such as this one, posted in the Spectator comments section [bold mine]:

"[L]egally speaking, I do have my doubts about why the law should see this as any different from any relationship between consenting adults,There used to be an adherence to natural law in the West that saw all such relations i.e. same sex relations, incest, bestiality, as the same legal category. We abandoned that some time ago, and are we better for having done so? I don't know, but those people that see this as deplorable need to show why it is any different from the other categories of behavior that used to be prohibited under a concept of natural law like gay sex."

The prosecution rests.

On a side note regarding Epstein's wife, Professor O'Halloran (who apparently is not the mother of the daughter in question), this is what the Spectator said about their relationship in its 2008 Valentine's Day article, "Married Profs Bring Love To Work" (bold mine):

“Our complementary skills lead to a great partnership,” she said. This collaboration is present in their home as well, where, according to O’Halloran, an economist, they “split household chores along comparative advantage and our marginal rates of productivity are maximized at every turn.”

Hubba hubba, Ms. O'Halloran knows the language of love. I thought Cheers' stodgy scholar Lilith Sternin was a fictional character.

SICK AND TIRED OF ALL THOSE NEGATIVE CAMPAIGN ADS, MATT LAUER? WELL, GROW UP!

2010-10-30T08:30:00.000-07:00

I don't believe in psychic phenomena or synchronicity, but it's very -- for lack of a more fitting description -- spooky. The folks at Reason.com (whom we know don't believe in that stuff) and I posted eerily similar thoughts around the very same time: Thursday morning, October 28, 2010. The topic: The annual mournful whining from mainstream media figures about how negative political campaigns have gotten.

The freaky stuff will make itself apparent later. First, you will read what I wrote in response to an article for the NBC Bay Area (i.e., television station KNTV San Jose) website by reporter Tom Sinkovitz. The report, titled "Looks Like They Are Staying Negative, Folks," was fleshing out an incident in a joint appearance at an annual state-sponsored "women's conference" by California Governor Schwarzenegger and gubernatorial candidates Jerry Brown (D) and Meg Whitman (R). Conducting a thirty-minute interview with the three of them was NBC's Matt Lauer, host of Today. In the accompanying video clip, you can see Lauer concluding the interview by making an attempt to shape the remaining days of the campaign by trying to shame Whitman and Brown into making a pledge "to end the negativity."

(A brief aside: Notice that only Whitman is pictured in the title frame for this video, and not Brown.)

Matt -- presuming he, y'know, watches NBC News -- was aware at that moment that Brown has opened up a lead in most polls that either is close to or exceeds error margins, and that Whitman must take drastic measures in order to close the gap. As any astute observer knows, that means going (more) negative. It stretches the bounds of credulity to think that Lauer (who, remember, is NOT a California resident) was unaware that Brown has nothing to lose by agreeing to this supposedly spontaneous request, and that he was ever-so-cordially requesting that Whitman fall on her $160 million sword rather than fight to the last moment.

My reaction, posted on the NBC Bay Area site (which was addressed to the piece's author, Tom Sinkovitz):

Oh, you're so disappointed, Tom - politicians aren't going to play nicey-nice. How old are you, 12?

Listen up, kiddies: Negative political tactics weren't invented during this campaign, since the invention of TV, or even in the past two centuries. Thomas Jefferson made remarks about John Adams that would be interpreted nowadays as "homophobic." Grover Cleveland was elected despite the rumors about his having an illegitimate child - John Edwards wasn't the first guy accused of it. You all sound like a mother wincing every time her halfback son gets put on the ground when he carries the ball. It's part of the game, Mom, so get used to it!

What's most ridiculous about such hollow calls for civility in campaigning is that it ignores three realities: 1. Negative campaigning works, 2. Every winning candidate who has a viable opponent has done it and will continue to do it (even YOUR favorite pol), and 3. Voters are NOT now nor have ever been sufficiently informed by political advertising in the first place!

What negative ads do is fill in the blank spots left by the sunny, smiling self-profiles that are like video of a cheeseburger with little resemblance to what you actually unwrap at a franchise joint. In the midst of his ads with teachers lauding his leadership, how many people knew Brown conceded his educational experiments as Oakland mayor [were] a failure before Whitman's negative ad? How many people knew of Whitman's history with Goldman Sachs before Brown's negative ad? Are those things you would have rather NOT known about either candidate before making a choice?

It's not the candidates' job not to offend your fragile sensibilities, it's your job to discover the truth neither side wants to admit, and to cast aside nonsense that has nothing to do with their ability to govern (such as that housekeeper compost Gloria Allred cooked up). It's not fun wading in the muck to get the facts, but you would think people would want to now more than ever. Grow up!

OK, now the spooky part. I wrote that part about Thomas Jefferson's attack on the manliness of John Adams before I was aware of the video below, which it seems was being posted on YouTube at about the same moment. It is Reason.tv's magnificent skewering of bemoaners of the tone of political ads, such as Lauer. Don't drink any beverages as you watch -- you will laugh so hard you will launch it on your screen halfway through, and the rest of it will be all blurry.

"DESTINY" VS. "DYNASTY": ARE NBC NEWS PEOPLE AS DUMB AS THEY THINK SARAH PALIN IS?

2010-10-26T19:10:00.000-07:00

In July 2010, when a tempest in a teapot resulted from Sarah Palin having accidentally coined the word "refudiate" (a fusion of the words "repudiate" and "refute"), I noted here at REACTOR that the same leftist partisans promoting the "refudiate" kerfuffle as proof positive Palin was an idiot had previously been hoist with their own petard in January 2010, when they suggested that Palin had invented the word "mandation."

To recap: The Professional Palinphobes, who grit their teeth with disgust while watching her every move in the hope of documenting and inflating her every infinitesimal error, watched Palin in her role as Fox News contributor sharing her thoughts on President Obama's first State of The Union address. In an interview conducted by Sean Hannity, she warned about the ill-effects of "mandation of health care," i.e., passing a law saying that purchasing health insurance was mandatory. The Sarah-haters, having never heard the word "mandation" before, leapt to the conclusion that since they first heard it from Palin, it couldn't possibly have been in the English language.

Left-leaning quasi-journalists like bloggers Shannyn Moore of her blog Just a Girl From Homer, Media Matters contributor Oliver Willis, and Mediaite.com's Colby Hall sprung into action. A commenter on Moore's blog wrote: "'Mandation' is not found anywhere in the dictionary. I taught U.S. History and ... government [] for 33 years [and] I can say that if [Palin] had been a student in one of my government classes, she would have failed the course." Willis -- whose blog is falsely subtitled "Like Kryptonite to Stupid" -- wrote "America’s Idiot and Fox News front woman Sarah Palin has made up a new word." Of the word "mandation," Hall of Mediaite.com initially wrote, "No, that’s not a real word."

In fact, "mandation" IS a real word, though rarely used in common conversation, and is not in abridged dictionaries. When searched online, it shows up in the titles of several policy papers in which professors and professional researchers lay out the benefits and consequences of newly-proposed government regulations. So, to all those people who figured Palin's use of "mandation" confirmed their opinion she is somewhat illiterate, it proved exactly the opposite! It seems she was doing her homework, and (perhaps) found the fancy word in the process. Meanwhile, her sworn enemies were so ignorant, they thought if she said something THEY didn't understand, that SHE must have been wrong. Surprise!

Of course, the mainstream media (or, as Palin has re-dubbed them, the lamestream media) was not interested in highlighting how Palin had schooled her enemies on "mandation," but made space to incorporate "refudiate" into news reports about the Ground Zero Mosque controversy. Rarely do nationally-televised or printed MSM journalists miss a chance to ridicule Palin for the most dubious of reasons, especially if she's making a pertinent point; it reinforces the narrative that it is dangerous to take her seriously.

It is that which I thought was afoot when I saw this tweet from NBC News' Luke Russert on Monday morning (October 25, 2010) regarding Palin's backing of Alaska GOP Senate nominee Joe Miller. Miller is facing an independent run by Lisa Murkowski, the GOP incumbent he defeated in the Republican primary. She also is the daughter of Frank Murkowski, the Alaska Governor that Palin defeated in a 2006 primary (click to enlarge):

Palin takes shot at Murkowski "family destiny":

http://tinyurl.com/23cgu6k

http://twitter.com/RussertXM_NBC/status/28716921420

"Family destiny?" REALLY?

"Oh, brother," I thought -- could Sarah Palin possibly have confused the words "destiny" and "dynasty"? That's an egregious grammatical error, much worse than merging the words "repudiate" and "refute," which, while not synonyms, are actions commonly performed consecutively; one can repudiate a false charge, and then refute it. On the other hand, there's no way to mix up "destiny" and "dynasty" -- middle school-level vocabulary words -- unless...

You have no idea what either word means,
You don't know how either is properly pronounced,
You don't know how to sound out words phonetically, and
You can't break words down syllable by syllable.

It was difficult for me to believe, but I clicked on the link, assuming that Russert had caught Palin in the act, and that she was in for more guffaws from the genii that put Barack Obama into office (heh). The link brought me to NBC News' First Read, which you can see below (click to enlarge):

I was waiting for the whammy showing that Palin had confused "destiny" and "dynasty." I read, and kept reading. And reading. Finally, Russert brought down the hammer (click to enlarge):

Palin then takes a swing at the Murkowski family, saying,

"Joe Miller will fight for the people of Alaska, and this great country.

Public service should be an honor not a family dynasty."

Wait a minute...it doesn't say "destiny," it says "dynasty"! What the French?

I went to the most trusted repository of Palin information on the Internet -- Conservatives4Palin.com -- to see what was really up. Sure enough, one of the editors had already posted Sarah's appeal for Miller, and it was properly spelled (click to enlarge):

My first instinct after this was to accuse Luke Russert of deliberately making believe that Palin had gaffed. I tweeted this, cc'ing Newsbusters' and Palin's own Twitter accounts:

I wanted to get a screencap of the First Read page before it vanished, because sometimes that happens to inaccurate news reports. I opened another browser, pasted the tinyurl link, and guess what? The headlines had changed! "Destiny" had become "dynasty" in the sixteen minutes in-between my accessing that story the first and second times.

So, it seems that after Russert wrote this report, and it was uploaded to the NBC News site, it was finally reviewed and proofread. As Palin might say, that's backasswards! Even worse, it shows that neither Luke Russert nor his editors can be depended on to tell the difference between words as dissimilar as "destiny" and "dynasty" -- and, it appears, neither can his MSNBC colleague Norah O'Donnell, who retweeted it within minutes...

...that is, unless, she didn't bother to read the story either.

It wouldn't be surprising if that was the case with the lovely Norah. She is chief among the MSMers who believe the worst about Palin first, and checks the facts later. Prime example: January 2009, when she said in a jovial three-way conversation with a Democrat strategist and fellow Sarah-sliming MSNBCer Lawrence O'Donnell that Palin had called Barack Obama "a terrorist" during the 2008 campaign. Remember that?

Palin's point about the dangers of installing dynasties may have been made in an indirect fashion through young Luke's megagaffe. As we can see from his performance yesterday morning, he's been deemed ready for the big time by the asleep-at-the-switch suits at NBC News despite the fact he's still swimming in the shoes of his late, legendary father, Meet The Press host Tim Russert. While he still has time to learn, let's be serious about the here and now: If he was Luke Smith, Luke Jones, or Luke Doe, he would never see the business end of an NBC News camera.

Harsh? Yes, uncomfortably so. True, nevertheless? You betcha.

WHAT I WISH MARCO RUBIO HAD TIME TO SAY TO DEBATE QUESTION OF WHETHER HE'S "ANTI-LATINO"

2010-10-20T16:38:00.000-07:00

The following is my comment in the HotAir.com thread "Debate moderator to Rubio: How’s it feel to be anti-Latino?" authored by Ed Morrissey. Here is the video of a question put to conservative Republican Marco Rubio, the former Speaker of the Florida House of Representatives and current candidate for U.S. Senate, as posted originally at Townhall.com/Tipsheet:

Let’s examine that question:

Mr. Rubio, you are running on what many commentators have described as one of the most anti-Latino platforms around. You support the Arizona immigration law, you oppose the DREAM act, you oppose a pathway to citizenship, ah, you support English as an official language. All those issues are issues that appeal to the most conservative elements of the Republican party, to the Tea Party, and has made you a darling of the Tea Party movement across the country and gotten you enormous support from the Tea Party. How can Florida voters feel comfortable that you are not beholden to interests from without the state, and the Tea Party, the most conservative elements of the Tea Party?

When a person asks a long, specifically detailed question like this, it’s like a DNA test confirming their lack of critical thinking skills as well as their acceptance of leftist propaganda about what is “good” for subdivided ethnic groups.

Rubio seemed ready for it, and gave a great answer. However, as a right-of-center black man, I wish he could have had time to politely — but forcefully — blast the question as prejudicial and bigoted, and dare the moderator to logically defend it.

For example: “Many commentators” call Rubio’s platform “anti-Latino.” What makes it so, praytell? Because he supports SB 1070, which has negatively impacted law-abiding Latinos how, exactly? He opposes the DREAM act, which helps native-born and naturalized Latinos how, exactly? He supposedly opposes a “pathway to citizenship” when his parents were legal Latino immigrants? How, exactly? He supports English as an official language, which hurts Latinos how, exactly?

Notice how the seamlessly the question turns from one accusing Rubio of self-hatred and extremism into one that also brings in the accusation of carpetbagging: He’s “a darling of the Tea Party movement across the country,” and thus, Florida voters aren’t supposed to feel comfortable that he’s not “beholden” to out-of-state interests? (Wow, that’s refreshing — usually it’s Northerners who are bitching and moaning about Republicans being beholden to the Deep South!) Dude acts as if he hasn’t checked the polls and noticed that Rubio is in the lead in Florida, which is a pretty good indicator that Sunshine Staters don’t see the Tea Party agenda as being “from without.”

The moderator — or, whoever wrote that question — designed it to have so many objectionable premises that Rubio wouldn’t be able to address them all. With the time Rubio was given, he did better than I ever could have expected.

AMERICA'S LEADING BLACK WOMEN'S MAGAZINE LIES TO ITS READERS ABOUT O'REILLY TIFF ON THE VIEW

2010-10-15T18:00:00.000-07:00

If you care anything about the ladies of ABC's The View or watch Fox News Channel, you've heard about it, and probably seen at least a little of it: The verbal donnybrook on the October 14, 2010 edition in which View co-hostesses Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar walked off the set after cable news superstar pundit Bill O'Reilly -- there to plug his newest bestseller, Pinheads & Patriots: Where You Stand in The Age of Obama -- made the remark that "Muslims killed us on 9/11."

How much you understand about what actually occurred on the program depends largely on where you get your news. If you watch Fox News, you got the whole story. If you saw the video on The View's official ABC website, ditto. If you got from someplace else, maybe you have had some details withheld from you.

For instance, this is what you got if you read about it on the website for Essence magazine, America's leading lifestyle magazine aimed at black women, published by a company owned by Time, Inc.

It's official: "The View" co-hosts Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar are not to be messed with. Goldberg and Behar let their feet do the talking during a heated discussion with FOX News host Bill O'Reilly on Thursday's show.

While promoting his book, "Pinheads And Patriots: Where You Stand in the Age of Obama," O'Reilly declared that "Muslims killed us on 9/11." In her best "Oh-no-you-didn't" voice, Goldberg snapped back, "Oh my God, that is such b******t! When Behar tried to get a word in, O'Reilly shut her down with this gentlemanly phrase: "Listen to me because you'll learn something," both women walked off the set, clearly outraged. O'Reilly later apologized, and Behar and Goldberg returned.

Funny, resident conservative Elizabeth Hasselback (sic) had nothing to say.

This is the video clip embedded on Essence.com accompanying their version of the events. It was posted by "StopBeck," the YouTube arm of StopBeck.com, an astroturf website dedicated to harassing/threatening sponsors of Glenn Beck's Fox News program. It is 2 minutes and 45 seconds of the conversation, which clocks in at over five minutes. Watch closely:

Essence asked its readers: "What do you think? Did Whoopi and Joy overreact or was their walk-off justified?" You know I couldn't pass that up. But before you read my response, look at the unedited clip from the official View website at http://TheView.ABC.go.com:

My comment, posted via my Facebook account:

Essence.com's account of the incident is not only inaccurate, it's deliberately and maliciously dishonest.

The synopsis written underneath the YouTube clip you've embedded (an edited version from an anti-Glenn Beck website [connected to] Democrat strategists, not the official http://TheView.ABC.go.com clip of the ENTIRE incident) has no resemblance to what actually happened. You did NOT make reference to the fact that Barbara Walters - the show's co-creator and Executive Producer - criticized Behar and Goldberg's actions as they were still headed backstage, and you flat out lied about and smeared Elisabeth Hasselbeck, who made her own statement after the walkout.

Here's why my conclusion is indisputable:

1. You wrote: "When Behar tried to get a word in, O'Reilly shut her down with this gentlemanly phrase: 'Listen to me because you'll learn something,' both women walked off the set, clearly outraged." Absolute nonsense! The truth is this: O'Reilly made his snide "gentlemanly" remark at 0:42 of the clip, before he explained his opinion that there was a wide gulf between Obama and "the folks," and thus BHO's plummeting approval numbers. It was not until the 2:30 mark -- one minute and forty-eight seconds later -- that Behar stood up and said "I don't want to sit here any more!" and walked away, followed by Whoopi.

2. As the edited YouTube clip above ends, Behar and Goldberg are walking off the set, but Barbara Walters can be clearly be heard saying "I want to say something!" As can be seen on the official http://TheView.ABC.go.com excerpt, as the applause for those supporting Joy & Whoopi subsided, Walters said the following: "I want to say something to all of you! You have just seen what should NOT happen! We should be able to have discussions without washing our hands, and screaming, and walking offstage! I love my colleagues, that should not have happened!"

3. To the remark "Funny, resident conservative Elizabeth (sic) Hasselback (sic) had nothing to say," here's the truth, which can be seen in the http://TheView.ABC.go.com video: After Barbara Walters expressed to O'Reilly "in a calmer voice" that it was "extremists" that carried out the terrorist attacks and that he had "demeaned an entire religion" with his statement "Muslims killed us on 9/11," this is what Hasselbeck said: "Do you think the problem though, Bill, is that if we go back in time, early in this administration, the President himself said we weren't allowed to use the word 'terrorist' early on ... he started saying "radical Islamists,' 'radical Muslims' so then there was then a closer association with what happened, and the religion? I think if he would have just let us say 'terrorists' because there are terrorists across all religions and all faiths, then this wouldn't even be a problem!" She got a fair amount of applause for saying that, although it is factually inaccurate. My comment is long enough without explaining why, so I won't go into it.

The Huffington Post and Gawker -- among other popular websites run by left-leaning people -- regularly delete comments without explicit or profane content for the "crime" of disagreeing with the editors' agenda. Hopefully, Essence.com will let my comment stand, showing that it has the courage to allow dissent, and also admit when it is dead wrong.

As of this moment, this comment is still on the Essence.com page, to its credit.

It occurred to me that Elisabeth Hasselbeck was prejudged the same way that Shirley Sherrod was -- based on an edited videotape that doesn't tell the entire story of what was said. More on that in an upcoming post. Stay tuned.

WRITER ANNE LAMOTT (WHO?) DOESN'T KNOW WHAT SHE'S TALKING "ABAHT"

2010-10-02T11:53:00.000-07:00

Anne Lamott -- whom I never heard of until last week -- wrote a supremely ridiculous op-ed for the Los Angeles Times named "The Last Word In Politics," subtitled "We must take on today's radioactive politics for the sake of my 1-year-old grandson."

Lamott, who apparently thinks herself hilariously funny, opened with the good ol' passive aggressive narrative about how she didn't want to hear people sneer at John Boehner's tan, Mitch McConnell's chin, or the intellect of Sarah Palin, Sharron Angle, or Christine O'Donnell, bashing them all the way through. Not original, not clever, not notable. Then it crossed into the dumber than dirt realm when she wrote this:

I was babysitting [my one-year-old grandson] on the night when Miss O'Donnell won the Republican nomination for senator in Delaware. The television was filled with footage of the incomparable O'Donnell and news of how she opposes masturbation and believes that scientists have successfully implanted human brains in lab rats. I could not have taken my eyes off the television for anyone else except my grandson, with his huge luminous black eyes and hair, his rosy brown skin, his toothy smile. But this toddler is so lovely, innocent and funny that he broke the spell.

Gazing at him, I realized how desperately important it is for there to be breathable air left when he comes of age, and perhaps the merest hint of an ozone layer.

She tries to turn her grandson's attempts at communication into a rallying cry:

Plus he can only say one word, besides "Mommy" and "Da-da." It is "abaht"... It's a good word, so I say now to all like-minded people, abaht! Get involved now in this election. Abaht for Molly Ivins and Teddy Kennedy. Abaht — register voters, or send sane candidates a donation, or volunteer to make phone calls or address envelopes. It will greatly affect the next 40-some days, for you and this country and even this world.

Read the entire thing at the above link, and remember that as lighthearted as it seems, it's supposed to be serious.

Ms. Lamott seems to be one of those who believes she knows everything there is to know about current events because she reads headlines, has the evening news on TV as background noise, trusts her favorite elected officials to tell her the truth, and disbelieves anything she hears that has Fox News Channel as its main source. If she was as informed as she believes she is, she wouldn't have been so apathetic until now, nor would she have bought into most of the schtuff she cited as being factual.

Here are my two responses, posted on the Lamott piece's comment page on the Times website within hours of each other:

This essay is a buffet table of ignorance, misinformation and fearmongering. I'll need to be precise in trying to rebut even half of it. Here goes:
In March, Speaker Pelosi said of the 2000+ page ObamaCare bill: "We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it," turning America's lawmaking process on its head. Had Sarah Palin said such a thing, it would have been trumpeted as evidence of her unfitness.
Concerns about the ethics of creating human/animal hybrids go back to the early '00s. Google "Irving Weissman, M.D." Ms. O'Donnell's sole error in relating her stance was saying "human brains" rather than "human brain CELLS."
Ms. Lamott need not fear lack of "breathable air" for her grandson. The air in the USA today is cleaner than it was when Ms. L bore her daughter.
The ozone layer Ms. L worries about is actually restoring itself. Was that not in the Times this week?
I find it interesting Ms. L thinks her grandson's future dates bear the responsibility of contraception.
Does Ms. L believe if same-sex marriage becomes legal, it will mean the end of "institutionalized bigotry"? Wait until polygamists and incestuous couples demand THEIR rights to marry. Oppose them when their turn comes, Ms. L, and The Bigot Finger will be pointed at YOU.

That's just for starters.

The next morning, just in case people thought I was kidding, I added more to my bullet list:

I couldn't slap down all of Ms. Lamott's nonsense in one 1400-character comment. Here's more:
"TV was filled with footage of O'Donnell and news of how she opposes masturbation" by leftist partisans in mass media. They don't highlight that the video is a decade old and that her stance had nothing to do with lawmaking.
Ms. Lamott remarkably herself writes "My [half-Latino] grandson ... looks like an illegal alien." I guess that assumption would extend to her grandson's father and all Latino-looking people as well. In the next sentence she decries "racist weirdness" she sees in others. The irony is apparently lost on her.
Ms. L exhorts people to get involved in this election in the name of Teddy Kennedy, an alcoholic who abandoned a woman trapped in his car to drown in a [pond] , conceived a cockamamie story to cover his tracks, [] traded on his famous family's tragic legacy to survive expulsion from the Senate, and in his waning years frequently joked about the deadly incident. (Kids, educate yourselves: Google "Chappaquiddick.") I guess Ms. L would prefer people of that character run in Delaware.
Ms. Lamott concludes: "Do it for your own incoherent paper-eating grandchildren..." She clearly meant "incoherent paper-writing grandmothers."

One thing I didn't include in my posts was a reply to her disclosure that her grandson had eaten part of the San Francisco Chronicle's "Sporting Green" section, anemically jesting that he was doing his part for the recycling cause. The sports section of the Chron is not that bad, but the rest of the paper -- the editorial pages, specifically -- have long made as much sense as something that had been through a hungry one-year-old.

GLORIA ALLRED'S UNSPOKEN MESSAGE: DON'T TRUST IMMIGRANTS!

2010-10-02T06:07:00.000-07:00

The following is a comment in praise of Cornell Assistant Law Professor (and Harvard Law School graduate) William Jacobson's comprehensive breakdown of Gloria Allred's latest stunt in his blog entry "Why Isn't The Left Screaming at Gloria Allred?" at his excellent blog, Le-gal In-sur-rec-tion.

DailyMail

Representing Nicky Diaz Santillan, the nine-year former housekeeper of former eBay CEO and GOP gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman, Allred is repeatedly calling Whitman a liar for saying that she didn't know that Ms. Diaz used false documents to qualify for her employment. In her haste to damage the Republican candidate running for Governor with a frivolous legal claim, Allred has inadvertantly violated a leftist credo; when it comes to illegal aliens (or, as Ms. Allred insists on saying, "undocumented immigrants"), one is never supposed to presume that they are lying because of the way they look, speak, or act. As Jacobson points out, Allred's entire premise of attacking Whitman hangs on the implication that "you ... must not trust the immigrant if a problem arises."

My reaction:


KPIX/CBS

I live in the S.F. Bay Area and have to force myself to watch news coverage of this "SCANDAL!" because I instantly knew how they were going to spin it; Whitman's a hypocrite because she said in a debate the previous night that employers should be dealt with if they hire illegals, and she should have been willing to go beyond due diligence and demand enough evidence to prove that her housekeeper's papers were bogus.

That, despite the fact that just a few months ago, the MSM worked from the angle that SB 1070 empowered Arizona law enforcement per se to do what they all agreed it deep-down really wanted to do: Scrounge for any excuse to round up brown-skinned people for the purpose of deportation. People who didn't have the right look about them, we were led to believe, would be detained for either frivolous or non-existent reasons (while taking their kids out for ice cream) so that their documents could be viewed, deemed suspicious, and ICE could be summoned to dump them back over the border (even if they in reality were American citizens).

Allred herself -- as I wrote in a recent blog post "Memo to Inglorious Barrister Gloria Allred: Enough Already!" -- is following her normal pattern:

[F]or the purpose of feathering her beachfront nest, Allred often portrays ought-to-be mature adult women [as] innocent, trusting, foolish little girls. She does what poverty pimps like Sharpton and Jackson also do: They call the media hordes on their speed dial[s], trot out before cameras people that too often bear much (if not most) of the responsibility for the predicaments they find themselves in, and demand the government and/or the general public treat them with $ympathy. It matters not if they are worldly, corrupt, liars, or hypocrites, the people standing in the background with that familiar starving waif expression are demanding justice that jingles in their pockets, with a healthy percentage to be taken by the likes of Allred of Arc.

That August 2010 piece was in the wake of a weak interview of Allred by ABC News' David Wright. Allred was lavishing in her estimated $10 million out-of-court settlement with Tiger Woods in exchange for the sealing of the loose lips of skank-to-the-stars Rachel Uchitel, and Allred still seems focused on duplicating that feat with washed-up porn actress Joslyn James. James,[at right] Allred wants us to believe, was a "victim." Victim of what? She "fell in love" with an international superstar who treated her the way she used to be treated (and she treated others) for a living? Similarly, Diaz is a "victim," says Gloria. Why? Because rather than being turned over to INS and deported to Mexico, she held a normally minimum-wage job for nearly a decade at the rate of $23/hr?

William Jacobson
In the imbedded ABC News video at the link above, you can see how -- true to her sadly successful playbook -- Allred was grasping the hand of the bawling "victim" James as she read a prepared statement, just like she did this week with "victim" Diaz. Allred knows the power (and the value) of a woman's tears, and has made a mint wielding their ability to cloud people's intelligence and judgment. (For more, see Delilah: Judges 16:4-20.) Allred didn't get to where she is because she's a dummy, but she clearly believes the rest of us are. It's a shame so many prove her right.

Finding a way to concisely explain to headline-scanning know-nothings why they should chew and slowly [digest] Allred's nonsense instead of swallowing and regurgitating it is frustrating and tiring. But I take it upon myself because the alternative is allowing it to spread. Thanks for your help, Professor.

Thankfully, Allred may -- just may -- have jumped the shark with this latest overreach. More to come.

.

"THEY TALK ABOUT ME LIKE A DOG," SAYS OBAMA. THEY NEVER DID THAT TO GEORGE W. BUSH. RIGHT?

2010-09-07T13:21:00.000-07:00

MEMO TO INGLORIOUS BARRISTER GLORIA ALLRED: ENOUGH ALREADY!

2010-08-28T03:36:00.000-07:00

The following is my reaction to a fawning interview of high-profile attorney Gloria Allred -- who has of late been prospecting on behalf of former side chicks of Tiger Woods -- on the August 26, 2010 edition of Nightline.

Here's ABC News correspondent David Wright making a fool of himself:

Here's how I responded on the ABC News Nightline Facebook page (some language was moderated to ensure it would remain on the Facebook page -- not so here):

I just got through watching David Wright mostly lobbing softballs at Gloria Allred, never once asking a question that she ought to have been asked while she was gently holding the hopefully washed hand of porn figure Joslyn James: How have these women who have knowingly messed around with a world-famous married celebrity been "wronged"?

How did James - who used to fornicate with strange men *for a living* - suddenly become a "victim"? Because her poor, tender, heart was broken by a out-of-control mega rich guy who had everything to lose if he admitted schtupping her? What in the world entitles James or any of the other whores - professional and semi-pro - to several hundreds of thousands times over the going rate?

I am not pretending that women aren't still victims of discrimination, but for the purpose of feathering her beachfront nest, Allred often portrays ought-to-be mature adult women [as] innocent, trusting, foolish little girls. She does what poverty pimps like Sharpton and Jackson also do: They call the media hordes on their speed dial, trot out before cameras people that too often bear much (if not most) of the responsibility for the predicaments they find themselves in, and demand the government and/or the general public treat them with $ympathy. It matters not if they are worldly, corrupt, liars, or hypocrites, the people standing in the background with that familiar starving waif expression are demanding justice that jingles in their pockets, with a healthy percentage to be taken by the likes of Allred of Arc.

Specifically, here's the question I wanted to hear the star-struck Wright ask: "If Tiger somehow "owes" his mistresses lifestyle-enhancement money, why aren't the little tramps that willingly played house with him holding bake sales to pay the only REAL victims: Elin and her children?" What, Gloria? No more questions? Wait, where are you going?

The ABC News.com report on this interview is hilariously headlined at the top of the browser "Gloria Allred Fights For Women's Rights." Puhleeze. More like "Gloria Allred Fights For Women's Right to Be Wrong."

I KNEW DAN QUAYLE. SON, YOU'RE NO DAN QUAYLE.

2010-08-13T14:54:00.000-07:00

The following is my reaction to the news that Ben Quayle -- son of former Vice President Dan Quayle and a candidate for the 3rd Congressional District in Arizona (Maricopa County, north of Phoenix) was a key figure in the promotion of a seedy, salacious website known as DirtyScottsdale.com (Scottsdale being a Phoenix suburb) three years ago. The site has expanded its scope beyond its regional focus, and is now known simply as TheDirty.com. TheDirty introduces you to endless photos of attractive women in varying states of undress and sobriety and talks trash about them, often based upon an angry ex-boyfriend's desire to see their former objects of affection held up to ridicule.

As posted on Verum Serum, August 12, 2010:

Oh, brother.

I first heard of TheDirty when it showed the first "topless" photo of former Miss California USA Carrie Prejean as she modeled panties while covering a nipple with her forearm. It was the first salvo in the Gay-stapo campaign to destroy the 2009 Miss USA runner-up's career for daring to say on national television that she supported "opposite marriage" as opposed to same-sex marriage, and that she thought voters in individual states have the right to define "marriage."

I wrote extensively about the unrelenting attacks on Prejean on my blog, and got more traffic than ever because I had posted a photo of Prejean (fully clothed), placing my blog in amongst the Google searches for the semi-nude pics of her.

I have to wonder what Ben Quayle was thinking as he watched a website for which he once wrote being used as a tool to crush an outspoken advocate of the traditional family unit. After all, "family values" and the public discussion/debate of what they are is the true legacy of his father, not his frequent verbal and spelling gaffes.

I don't live in Arizona, so it doesn't make a difference what I think of Ben. Only the people of Maricopa County can decide if they want young Quayle, or somebody who thinks Obama is neither flying by the seat of his pants nor an cryptosocialist ideologue who wants to tip this nation leftward for several generations. But I've learned over the years that if a politician who votes your way is two-faced, you will eventually see that other face at a most inconvenient time. Conservatives represented by Charlie Crist, Lindsey Graham, and Scott Brown know what I mean.

On the other hand, Arizona's 3rd IS McCain Country. Maybe they're used to it by now.

VIDEO: RULE #1 WHEN YOU'RE TRYING TO GET OUT OF A HOLE...

2010-08-05T15:02:00.000-07:00

I found this video from the Employment Policies Institute as I was waiting for another news video to load. In 30 seconds, it says it all, as short and sweet as the little girl at the top of the ditch.

Under normal circumstances, I don't like it when children are used in politically-themed advertisements about issues they can't possibly comprehend. This is a rare exception, because unlike some commercials in which complex issues are put in the mouths of child actors to regurgitate as if they understand the position taken by the sponsor -- as in this much harder-hitting ad from EPI, and this well-done piece of agitprop from Pasadena, CA -- this young sweetheart is just reciting a line, not stating a position.

POP QUIZ, HOTSHOTS! GUESS WHICH POLITICIAN WAS CALLED "HALF-HUMAN, HALF-APE?"

2010-07-23T13:03:00.000-07:00

Think you know? Well, you're wrong! This is a comment left on the Dictionary.com blog post regarding Sarah Palin's invention of the word "refudiate," which was the subject of my last blog entry. (Language warning):

Now, there is nothing remarkable about this comment by a typical potty-mouthed anonymous leftist except for one thing: This remark has survived at Dictionary.com's "The Hot Word" blog for three-and-a-half days as I sit to type this blog entry.

There's no way that it would still be online at Dictionary.com if the subject of the comment was "the half-human, half-ape Obama." On the other hand, it would still be there if it had said "the half-human, half-ape Bush."

For any liberals that stumble across this post, why don't you enlighten me? Since it's clearly not tolerable to refer to black people (like myself) as being like "apes" while it IS at the same time OK to insult white people that way, which animal is politically correct to use as a simile when it comes to slams against stupid African-Americans?

Or ... are you like the overly sensitive folks in the Hallmark Cards, Inc. PR department, and are reluctant to even acknowledge that there ARE stupid African-Americans?

DICTIONARY.COM BLOG REPUDIATES SILLY "REFUDIATE" KERFUFFLE

2010-07-23T12:36:00.000-07:00

The following is my reaction to the surprisingly sensible way the editors of Dictionary.com responded to the kerfuffle over Sarah Palin's accidental invention of the word "refudiate" in a Twitter message. Palin's intent was to appeal to Muslims behind the proposed mosque down the street across from Ground Zero to publicly reject terrorism.

Below are my comments made on the The Hot Word Blog posted Monday, July 19, 2010 at 5:34 pm.

_____________________________________________________________

What you unsuspecting linguists at Dictionary.com are witnessing is another example of desperate Google-bombing leftist loons furiously searching for a stake to drive into the heart of Sarah Palin's increasing popularity, and -- even more importantly -- her relevancy.

They attempted something like this in January 2010, when Palin spoke on Fox News Channel after President Obama's first State of The Union address. She spoke to Sean Hannity regarding Obama's proposed "mandation of health care." Left-leaning quasi-journalists like bloggers Shannyn Moore of [her blog Just a Girl From Homer*], Media Matters contributor Oliver Willis, and Mediaite.com's Colby Hall sprung into action. A commenter on Moore's blog wrote: "'Mandation' is not found anywhere in the dictionary. I taught U.S. History and ... government [] for 33 years [and] I can say that if [Palin] had been a student in one of my government classes, she would have failed the course." Willis -- whose blog is falsely subtitled "Like Kryptonite to Stupid" -- wrote "America’s Idiot and Fox News front woman Sarah Palin has made up a new word." Of the word "mandation," Hall of Mediaite.com initially wrote, "No, that’s not a real word."

In fact, "mandation" IS a real word, though rarely used in common conversation, and is not in abridged dictionaries. When searched online, it shows up in the titles of several policy papers in which professors and professional researchers lay out the benefits and consequences of newly-proposed government regulations. So, to all those people who figured Palin's use of "mandation" confirmed their opinion she is somewhat illiterate, it proved exactly the opposite! It seems she was doing her homework, and (perhaps) found the fancy word in the process. Meanwhile, her sworn enemies were so ignorant, they thought if she said something THEY didn't understand, that SHE must have been wrong. Surprise!

In both the cases of "mandation" and "refudiate," the Palin-haters are careful not to address the substance of what Palin has said or written. They are hoping to shift the focus to a verbal error to distract you from examining what might be a legitimate and logical argument. Why let them manipulate you? You can read Palin's note regarding the proposed Ground Zero mosque for yourself, and make your own decision about whether she makes sense without her detractors' prejudicial pre-publicity.

To Colby Hall's credit: following a commenter's proof the word "mandation" did exist, Hall struck-through the word "real" in the sentence "No, that's not a real word," replaced it with "common," and wrote a postscript correcting his snap judgment.

_____________________________________________________________

*In my original post, I mistakenly wrote that Shannyn Moore's blog was AKMuckraker, and acknowledged that I mistakenly thought that Palin had issued a Facebook note in addition to the tweet. At the time, she had not, but she has since.

I followed up on The Hot Word with this comment:

_____________________________________________________

For accuracy’s sake — In my previous comment, I wrote three things which need clarification:

1. Palin-hating blogger Shannyn Moore does NOT publish AKMuckraker, that is her Palin-hating colleague Jeanne Devon. Moore’s blog is named Just a Girl From Homer.

2. I was under the impression that Palin had a Facebook note that expanded her stance against the proposed Ground Zero mosque she expressed in her “refudiate” tweet. She does not at this time.

3. I wrote that Media Matters contributor Oliver Willis’ blog was “falsely subtitled ‘Like Kryptonite to Stupid’”. That one’s accurate, now more than ever.

_____________________________________________________

The thoroughly dishonest Oliver Willis viciously smeared Glenn Beck in April 2009 (among many other times). I refuted the particularly ridiculous argument blaming Beck for a neo-Nazi's murdering three Pittsburgh police officers in this thread.

Now, to get into the spirit of Shakespearean word invention, I am announcing the coining of a new term for the above-mentioned "Google-bombing leftist loons." Since they like to bomb, and they are from the left side of the political spectrum, I shall forthwith refer to them as "The Leftwaffe."

Yeah, I know, Godwin's Law. But the jackboot fits, and they ought to wear it.

DON'T CRY FOR $HIRLEY $HERROD. SHE DOESN'T NEED THAT GOVERNMENT JOB. THE GOVERNMENT'S ALREADY GIVEN HER 13 MILLION DOLLARS.

2010-07-21T04:38:00.000-07:00

This story is getting more and more ridiculous.

For the moment, I will not address the video of Shirley Sherrod speaking of not helping a white farmer as much as she could have, and whether or not she was being racist and smug in sending him to someone "of his own kind," or simply describing her attitude prior to an epiphany. I will not address whether or not Andrew Breitbart was duped into believing she is a bigot or has a jiu-jitsu media strategy that will take days to unfold.

For now, I'm just going to let everybody know that you don't have to worry about Shirley. Thanks to some digging by Washington Examiner reporter Tom Blumer, it has been discovered that Shirley Sherrod was appointed by Agriculture Secretary Vilsack for her USDA post on July 25, 2009, just days after she and her husband received from Vilsack as a cash settlement payment in a 1999 class action discrimination suit (...wait for it...) $13,000,000.00.

As explained at RuralDevelopment.org, circa July 2009:

The cash award acknowledges racial discrimination on the part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture for the years 1981-85. (President Reagan abolished the USDA Office of Civil Rights when he became President in 1981.) New Communities [the Sherrods' farming trust] is due to receive approximately $13 million ($8,247,560 for loss of land and $4,241,602 for loss of income; plus $150,000 each to Shirley and Charles [Sherrod] for pain and suffering). There may also be an unspecified amount in forgiveness of debt. This is the largest award so far in the minority farmers law suit (Pigford vs Vilsack).

From my quick, shallow research done in the wee hours of the morning, it appears to me that the Sherrods are one of the biggest beneficiaries of continual extraction of Congressional cash through the Ag Dept on behalf of black farmers who were (according to the 1999 Pigford v. Glickman consent decree) victims of discrimination during the Reagan Administration.

That settlement (known in D.C. shorthand as "Pigford Farms") is a sore subject to fiscally-minded legislators. Here's C-SPAN video of Steve King of Iowa, who sums up the Pigford Farms case on the House floor (May 13, 2008) by saying Pigford class action claimants had skyrocketed from around 3,000 estimated black farmers at the time the suit was filed to 96,000 after the announcement of the settlement, and that the money designated for the settlement will exponentially be increased, shuttling taxpayer funds to people who never actually suffered discrimination. In another C-SPAN video, Iowa Republican Senator Chuck Grassley refers to the phenomenon of Pigford Farms settlements paying off dead people.

Indeed, King's fears came to pass, as you can see here as Secretary Vilsack (former Iowa Governor) appeared alongside Jesse Jackson at a Rainbow/PUSH event ("Urban Stimulus") in which he explained that the original plans for the Pigford settlement, the discriminated farmers would receive on the average $50,000 apiece. But, he added, there were complaints from tens of thousands of alleged discriminated black farmers who somehow didn't understand the instructions about how to get paid. To accommodate them, Vilsack said, the Obamastration authorized an eventual 1.25 BILLION dollars, and left the door open for even "a bigger pot of money."

Oh, the date of that Vilsack explanation? June 28, 2009. Less than a month later, he would welcome Shirley Sherrod aboard for a government job that she apparently thought she would have as long as she wanted it. But according to the Rural Development press release, Sherrod was starting up New Communities, Inc. again, picking up where she left off when it shut down in 1985. Which is it? Either? Or both?

THE T-PARTY VS. THE C-WORD: A Coffee Party Fan Drops The C-Bomb on Michelle Malkin

2010-07-08T15:06:00.000-07:00

Hey, folks, remember the "Coffee Party" movement begun by liberals/progressives/whatever as an effort to counter the Tea Party movement as the ObamaCare vote was coming to a head? In case you've forgotten as much as the participants apparently have, their credo was the following:

Our Vision: Reason and civility in public affairs; A gov't of public servants accountable to the People; A People committed to the Common Good & Civic Virtue.

One of the people with high hopes for the Coffee Party Movement was Jim Weatherwax of New York City. Here's what Jim wrote about it on its Facebook page March 15, 2010:

Heck, I like coffee better than tea anyway. Hope that coffee gives the Dems more balls to do the things they promise!!!!!

Jim seems to be like many of your neighbors (or, if you're living in a liberal conclave, most): He likes Mad Men, he loves cats, he hates puppy mills and the use of dogs as bait for sharks (which I didn't even know was going on), and supports ObamaCare. He doesn't like Sean Hannity or Glenn Beck, believes Debbie Schlussel only long enough to buy her debunked allegations about Sean Hannity, and thinks that "conservative talking heads" really don't like Obama "because he's African American."

Obviously, Jim also doesn't think much of the Tea Party movement. Here's what Jim wrote on March 22:

Can u really call it a tea party when u hurl racial epithets and homophobic comments?

(Set aside for the moment that there exists not a shred of evidence -- despite a $100,000.00 bounty -- that any racial epithets were spoken in that supposed incident at the Capitol building in which Democratic Congressmembers attempted to provoke acts of incivility.)

When Jim's sister Ellen Nelson joined the Facebook group "1,000,000+ people who disapprove of building a mosque at Ground Zero," Jim posted a note detailing the loss of Muslims in the attacks, and ended with this comment:

It is up to all of us to always promote tolerance and not hate and bigotry.

So, you would think that intolerant, hateful name-calling when debating political issues seems like something that Jim is totally against.

Right?

Well, it turns out, not so much.

Jim Weatherwax was one of more than a few liberal partisans who were motivated to recently write conservative columnist Michelle Malkin -- a daughter of Filipino immigrants to the U.S. -- with hateful notes loaded with profanity, sexually-charged Asian and Filipino racial stereotypes, and wishes of death and harm. Here's what Malkin posted earlier today from her hate mail bag:

from James Weatherwax jameslwax@yahoo.com
to writemalkin@gmail.com
date Thu, Jun 24, 2010 at 6:09 AM
subject Your comments
mailed-by yahoo.com
signed-by yahoo.com
hide details Jun 24

You’re just an angry cunt. Your vitriol towards this President and the administration goes a lot deeper than on just a political level. You might want to look into some good therapy.

I just shake my head and go enjoy my day.

Now, it would seem Jim is lying here. If he was being truthful, he would have written, "I just shake my head, write an angry email with a vulgar slur in it, and then go enjoy my day."

It seems to me this is the reason why the Coffee Party never got percolating: The HuffPo/DKos/Comedy Central people who were supposed to make it a force to be reckoned with couldn't tolerate the lofty "reason and civil[ity]" aims. Their type is more used to things like calling Malkin a "Filipino prostitute," a "slut right-wing whore" or hope she and her family die in a traffic accident. And now that so many outspoken conservatives are female, how they love to drop that C-bomb.

Maybe it's the coffee that has gotten you all jittery, tense, and nervous, and some tea would do you good.

Now, some might suggest we all write Jim Weatherwax and give him a piece of our minds. I say, let's NOT. I have a better idea: Send a note of support to Jim's sister, Ellen Nelson, who mildly countered her brother's support of ObamaCare (which had passed moments before) in these exchanges (In reverse order chronologically; the 219 that Jim references is the number of House votes the Senate bill finally received after the Stupak betrayal).

Ellen was able to do something her brother was not: Disagree with someone else without being disagreeable. Let's continue to encourage that.

(Cross-posted at L.N. Smithee's Facebook Page.)

HOW LOST FINALE WAS LIKE A BEATLES REUNION (WITH A TWIST)

2010-05-24T16:40:00.000-07:00

The following is my reaction to The Daily Caller's Jim Treacher, whose blog post "Just One Question For Lost Fans" asked, "So what did you hate about it?"

I have always preferred non-fiction to fiction. I feel cheated when I am asked to care about non-existent people in a perturbing situation and how they willl end up and how the situation will be resolved only to find that the creator of the scenario decided to leave things up to the reader's own interpretation in the end.

EXCUSE ME?

You've been stringing me along, twisting my emotions around your little finger, making me anticipate the answers to the questions your tale raises, and then you want ME to help you write YOUR ending for you? THAT'S YOUR JOB! IMHO, that's just a hedge against upsetting some readers who want things to be resolved in a definite manner one way or another. It's not creative, it's lazy and cowardly.

As I tweeted earlier, I had expected the Lost finale to be something mildly mysterious like Orson Welles' timeless 1941 masterpiece Citizen Kane (spoiler video here; no embed available) and got instead an ending more akin to Donnie Darko, the vastly overrated 2001 teen angst-fueled time-travel crazy quilt that writer-director Richard Kelly (The Box) is still trying to successfully follow up:

But since then, I've come up with a better way to describe my feeling.

Imagine, for a moment, that John Lennon was never assassinated and that George Harrison hadn't passed away, and the Beatles had resolved their differences long enough to have ONE more concert. You are in the front row as they are playing "A Day In The Life" for the first and last time live. They play and sing flawlessly heading up to the iconic final "endless" E chord.

Lennon drops his guitar, and heads for a grand piano on the stage. McCartney sets down his bass, and another grand is rolled up for him. Ringo tears from behind his drum set to get behind his own, and finally, Harrison follows suit. The crowd goes wild, waiting for the Fab Four to re-enact one of pop music's most amazing moments.

Lennon gives the signal to the others, they look down at the ivories, lift their hands over their shoulders, drop them down with ferocity, and play...

..."Shave and a haircut, two bits."

How would you process this? You must count yourself lucky to be one of the few to witness the Beatles in person, but at the same time, you also have to figure, why supply such a stupid, insipid ending to a legendary song?

For the record: Treacher actually enjoyed the finale, despite its flaws.

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IS NANCY PELOSI'S PRIEST FATHER GUIDO SARDUCCI?

2010-05-20T12:41:00.000-07:00

It's well documented that Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) considers herself an "ardent practicting Catholic" (albeit one that holds views regarding the value of unborn life that are the diametric opposite of the Vatican). Rarely, though, does anybody ask who advises her regarding issues of faith. Who is Congresswoman Pelosi's Reverend Wright? Her Jim Wallis?

A fair indication of who that person might be is the way that the woman born a Democrat Party princess likes to highlight the way that the artistic community could benefit from ObamaCare.

Here is Pelosi on May 13, 2010, as she explains in a speech before the Asian-American & Pacific Islander Summit that ObamaCare would allow musicians to (ahem) forego conventional employment:

"[I]f you want to be creative, and be a musician, or whatever, you can leave your work, focus on your talent, your skill, your passion, your aspiration, because you will have health care, and you don't have to be job-locked."

Surprising? Not really. This is just an extension of the line of ~~reasoning~~ "reasoning" she expressed in her interview on MSNBC's Rachel Maddow Show on March 16, 2010:

"Think of an economy where people could be an artist or a photographer or a writer without worrying about keeping their day job in order to have health insurance..."

Where could such views on the lifestyles of artists come from? Maybe this is an indication of whom she recognizes as her spiritual leader: This gentleman, who did this commercial back in 1982:

That Father Sarducci's view of the artistic community might have influenced parishioner Pelosi makes about as much sense as anything regarding her. But of course, most people who know of Father Sarducci from the early years of Saturday Night Live are aware that he is, in fact, not a priest; he is comedian Don Novello, who created the brilliantly deadpan Sarducci character after purchasing the priest outfit from a thrift store operated by the St. Vincent de Paul Society. In 1981, Novello actually was arrested in Vatican City for "impersonating a priest" while trying to conduct a Sarducci photo shoot where picture-taking was prohibited.

Fortunately for Ms. Pelosi, in Washington, D.C., there are no such laws prohibiting impersonating a competent public servant.

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FAN OF "LOS SUNS" EJECTED FROM GAME AFTER REFUSING TO TURN PRO-ARIZONA SHIRT INSIDE OUT

2010-05-11T16:58:00.000-07:00

Video from http://www.abc15.com, Copyright 2010 The E.W. Scripps Co.

This is the kind of nonsense that happens when you start getting partisan fights involved with sports. Unlike politics, spectator sports truly unifies diverse groups of people. The President of the Suns reversed this particular situation, showing he has more sense than the owner, upon whose order the "LOS SUNS" statement was made.

This is a step in the right direction, but the sports media majority -- which is, after all, a subsidiary of the MSM - are egging the politicization on, pushing to make every arena, field, and stadium a left vs. right battleground. ENOUGH! This schtuff's gotta stop, and it's gotta stop right now.

MASTERS' BLAST AT TIGER WOODS IS OUT OF BOUNDS

2010-04-08T12:11:00.000-07:00

On Wednesday, April 7, 2010, Augusta National Golf Club chairman Billy Payne socked it to Tiger Woods the night before his return to professional golf. Woods today ended his self-imposed hiatus to participate in the Augusta National's Masters tournament, and Payne let it be known that he is disappointed in Tiger (although I don't recall anybody saying they were really interested in knowing how he feels). Here's video from Golf Channel coverage of the statement, via YouTube:

National Review Online's Kathryn Jean Lopez's approving comment, below:

Here's what I emailed K-Lo in response:

You wrote of Billy Payne's slap at Tiger Woods: "As someone who has done some defending of Augusta in my past, it made me smile." That's very interesting to me. Why were you pleased by Payne's "appropriate welcome," as you put it? Would you like to see such media statements to follow Woods all over the PGA tour? Is it your opinion that Payne said something new that had not been said in at least a million different ways?

And exactly who is Billy Payne to make such remarks? (I mean it -- who IS he? I never heard of him!) Is he now setting himself up as moral arbiter not only of the game of golf, but of its players as well? Are we to believe that Tiger is the first man to tee off at Augusta that has cheated on his wife multiple times? If Payne was so wounded by learning the truth about Tiger that he had to tell the world all about it, why didn't he just tell Tiger he wasn't welcome there any more?

I am no defender of Tiger's lifestyle, but his troubles are all personal, and only tangentially related to the game of golf. If he had been found to have used performance enhancing drugs, that would have been a different matter altogether, and one in which Payne's opinion would be relevant. As it stands, it just seems Payne felt the need to focus a spotlight on himself so that the people around the world who don't dig Tiger any longer can hear him say "Me too!"

I have not received a response from Ms. Lopez, whom I agree with much of the time. I don't expect to get a note in return, as she probably is deluged with mail on many other issues of more lasting import. But Payne ticked me off so much I had to say something about it.

MEDIAITE: JOKING ABOUT RUSH DYING? FUNNY! JOKING ABOUT TEDDY'S BUTT? YOU'RE OUT!

2010-01-27T08:05:00.000-08:00

Well, isn't this interesting. For the first time since I discovered Mediaite.com, the media industry blog founded by former MSNBC reporter Dan Abrams, a comment of mine has been deleted.

Mediaite's Senior Editor Glynnis MacNicol, the rabid leftist former Air America co-host who poses as a news writer, authored a thread linking to an op-ed on the The Onion bylined by "Rush Limbaugh." It is beyond a doubt satirical, but she pointedly accentuated her clear warning that Rush didn't write it by adding this: "though [it's] likely there are parts to it some folks very much wish were real ..."

She doesn't specify which parts she means, but there are a lot to choose from that would be right up her alley, which is located in the heart of the Hate-Rushbury neighborhood. For example, the part in which The Onion's "Rush" writes:

What I should really do is just commit suicide. I have this little Sunday ritual I started around the time I publicly compared the torture at Abu Ghraib to a fraternity prank, where I climb into my Jacuzzi and put a gun in my mouth. But I can never work up the guts to pull the trigger. A few times I came close to overdosing on prescription pain pills, but my g--damn doctors were always there to save me.

(snip)

You know what? I wish someone would just kill me. I'm serious ...

As can be observed in my first comment on the thread, I was unable to access the Onion piece because it is blocked by my employer, and was blissfully unaware of the extent of its malice -- although I suspected it was what it turned out to be. You see, like too many progressives, Glynnis loves herself some profane rants about conservatives. A recent example: Her breathless approval of potty-mouthed so-called journalist Matt Taibbi's poison-penned response to moderate conservative David Brooks' views on the history of Haiti's government.

Frequent leftist Mediaite commenter "The Real Royal King" has a similar mindset. He wrote that he "enjoyed the part [of the Onion piece] where the Reflective Rush describes his fans along his funeral procession" after succeeding his goal of achieving death, which he followed up with some pedestrian jibes about Rush's weight (which is in a down cycle currently). At that point, I thought it was a perfect opportunity to illustrate the hypocrisy of people who pretend Rush is as cruel to other people as they are to him. So when RRK wrote ...

Remember the pre-gastric collar Rush at his blubbery zenith, adorned in an Orson Wells (sic) all black ensemble, sweating, wildly and spastically jumping up and down and thrashing his arms all about? That was a self-parody even the Onion couldn’t hope to mimic. I understand Haiti is in desperate need of tents. Rush should be a mensch. Hundreds of people could be housed under that fabric.

...I knew I could make him pop off by just slightly tweaking that remark, and replied:

They’re doing fine with Ted Kennedy’s old swim trunks.

This predictably got the following irony-free reaction out of RRK:

How nice to joke about a much-adored deceased individual.

Of course, that is what RRK was doing just about an hour before -- joking about a much-adored individual (i.e., Rush, a living broadcasting legend), "enjoy[ing]" imagining he was a victim of suicide. When I turned his insult on one of his own heroes, he cried foul, never realizing I was doing no more than holding a mirror to his ugly attitude.

When I revealed my gambit, showing RRK he was "a hypocrite with a capital HIPPO," I wondered how he'd react. He didn't reply, but I got a reply in a sense when my comment was deleted, presumably by Ms. MacNicol.

I find this to be ironic in the extreme, and here's why: According to someone who loved Ted Kennedy, he also liked to joke about himself. And Ted was also known to have a laugh at the expense of "a much-adored deceased individual."

You may have heard of that person. Her name was Mary Jo Kopechne.

Kopechne was the forever 28-year-old young woman that Senator Edward M. Kennedy literally drove to her drowning death off of a bridge coming from Martha's Vineyard's Chappaquiddick Island in 1969.

Where did I get the idea that Ted was in the habit about laughing about Chappaquiddick, you might ask? Rush? O'Reilly? Beck? Alex Jones?

Uh, no. National Public Radio.

The morning after he passed away, NPR's Katty Kay interviewed former Newsweek magazine editor Ed Klein on The Diane Rehm Show. Klein said the following as he concluded his reflections on Teddy's life:

KATTY KAY, NPR HOST: Ed Klein, that's what I'm hearing today, that people are sad at his passing, and yet celebrating this huge life and its huge long list of accomplishments.

ED KLEIN, FORMER NEWSWEEK EDITOR: I think he'd be the last person who would want us, those he's left behind ... to, um, be, uh ... morose and, and full of bathos. I think he, he --

KAY: He would come in with a big guffawing laugh and make us laugh too.

KLEIN: He would, yes. You're so right, he would. And he'd probably have a joke to tell as well.

KAY: At his own expense.

KLEIN: Well y'know, he, I don't know if you know this or not but, one of his favorite topics of humor was indeed Chappaquiddick itself. And he would ask people, "Have you heard any new jokes about Chappaquiddick?" I mean, that is just the most amazing thing. It's not that he didn't feel remorse about the death of Mary Jo Kopechne, but that he still always saw, um, the other side of everything and the ridiculous side of things, too.

KAY: Ed Klein, former foreign editor of Newsweek, and author of a new book on Ted Kennedy ... We are remembering the life of Senator Ted Kennedy, who died last night after a battle with brain cancer at the age of 77. Do stay listening.

I'm sure there are some other people out there who listened or read what Klein said, and it makes perfect sense to them; Kennedy could somehow solicit jokes about the incident that killed a passenger in his car without being a ghoul. If you are one of those people, I invite you to comment on this thread and tell me why you think so. Enlighten me.

There are a lot of reasons one could poke fun at Ted Kennedy: His weight, his libido, his drinking problem, his being the runt of the Kennedy litter. I've joked about those things in the past, but some years ago, I decided that it wasn't cool to joke about Chappaquiddick. Not only because it trivialized the life of Mary Jo Kopechne, but because the joke wasn't so much on Ted as much as it was on the rest of us. The fact that he never served time in prison and was not expelled from the Senate by his colleagues is a classic miscarriage of justice. He escaped punishment because the regal aura of the Kennedy clan overwhelmed any sense of equity that would have seen him treated as would any other man who drove off of a bridge, left his passenger to die, made himself scarce until the next morning, and spun a preposterous story.

Many progressives feel that Kennedy's life of public service atoned for his complicity in Kopechne's demise, with one even suggesting that Mary Jo was the "catalyst for the most successful Senate career in history ... Who knows -- maybe she'd feel it was worth it." New York Times writer and Kennedy biographer Adam Clymer actually wrote (in 1999): “[His] achievements as a senator have towered over his time, changing the lives of far more Americans than remember the name Mary Jo Kopechne.” How sick is that? Mary Jo was a human being who deserved a full life. Through his negligence (to put it mildly), Ted Kennedy ended her life. But when she becomes the topic, some people use themselves as human shields to protect Kennedy from accepting responsibility as if he were their own child.

I suppose the motive for my comment's deletion was disrespect for the recently departed. IMHO, my mild disrespect shown to Ted Kennedy (which was only to make a point about the hypocrisy of being delighted by death fantasies about Rush Limbaugh) pales in comparison to the disrespect shown to Mary Jo Kopechne's shortened existence by Kennedy cultists eager to dismiss her as a nothing but a right-wing talking point. I thought at first I might suggest in the memory of Teddy, people who think of Mary Jo as an obstacle to his majestic memory ought to get a check-up to make sure they don't have brain cancer, but on second thought, it seems more like a symptom of heart disease.

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"MASS IS NOT GOING TO ELECT A REPUB TO REPLACE A KENNEDY."

2010-01-25T00:46:00.000-08:00

This is from the excellent blog Le-gal In-sur-rec-tion, written by Cornell Law Professor William A. Jacobson.

Jacobson was one of the prime movers of the Scott Brown uprising, who not only donated to the Brown campaign, but who traveled to Needham, MA to help out.

When word leaked out that left-friendly polls were showing Brown within the margin of error, The Boston Globe released a poll suggesting Coakley was up by as much as 15%. This impressed "BUCKJOHNSON," the resident gadfly of the blog.

The moral of this story: Never make a bet on a tip from BUCKJOHNSON.
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MOZILLA: NEVER MIND THE HAITIANS, HERE'S THE LEMURS

2010-01-17T22:55:00.000-08:00

I signed on Sunday evening, opened Firefox, and found this (click to enlarge):

Am I being unfair, or does this seem pretty darn tone-deaf in the light of recent events?

American Red Cross Haiti Relief

"HONEST INJUNS" AND DISHONEST DEMOCRATS

2010-01-13T01:06:00.000-08:00

The following is my reaction at Mediaite.com to the hubbub over Harry Reid's comments as quoted in the new book Game Change.

_____________________________________

You can bet your raspberries that had Mitt Romney said what Reid said, the leftweb and BSNBC would be attributing it to his devout Mormonism, throwing that atop their bogus circumstantial case that Obama opponents are racists. Meanwhile, there are probably tens of millions of Dem partisans who don’t even know Reid is an LDS member.

Regarding [RNC chairman Michael] Steele saying “Honest Injun” — it shouldn’t have been uttered simply for the sake of avoiding controversy, but it’s crystal clear that he wasn’t going out of his way to be offensive. When you actually, y’know, think about the phrase, it isn’t meant to be a slur (like “squaw”) or demeaning and slanderous (like “indian giver”) — it’s a way of saying that you’re telling the truth in the same way Native Americans had among many a reputation for honesty. In other words, Steele was in effect saying “You could trust my words as if I was an Indian.”

Speaking as a black man, my belief is that Reid’s quote is not so much insulting to Obama or to black people in general as it is to the black electorate. Remember what Reid said about Obama not displaying “Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one”? Why else would Obama “want to have one” unless it was to fool some black voters into thinking he was NOT “too white”?

Indeed, this is something that you can watch Obama doing early in his campaign. Watch him on March 7, 2007 in Selma, AL in this speech.

Obama spoke at the famous Brown A.M.E. Church from which the 1965 protest began, and talked about how black women decided “wurr gow-na walk instedda ride the bus” (1:00), how his white mother said “there’s some good crazaness goin’ ow-an” (2:45) “stirrin’ across tha cunt-tra” (3:00), and portraying the Selma marches as the impetus for his very existence! Obama’s descendant-of-slave-owners mother and his goat-herding father met as a result, he said, of the Kennedy family’s grant to Africans to help them emigrate to America. When they met, their marriage and his birth were deemed feasible because their attitudes were changed when the Selma marches took place. “I’m here,” Obama told the congregation, because “y’all sacrificed for me.”

Of course, that’s pure compost: Obama was born in 1961, and he was three years old when the first Selma march took place. His father arrived in the United States because of that scholarship program, but before the Kennedys got involved with the funding of it. Here’s the kicker: By the date of the first Selma march on March 7, 1965, Barack Obama Sr. and Stanley Ann Dunham had been divorced for almost a year (March 20, 1964).

The narrative of Selma sending “ripples of hope” that made his birth possible makes no sense whatsoever unless Obama took Dr. Emmett Brown’s DeLorean to get to the Brown A.M.E. Church.

DON'T MENTION IT, COLBY HALL (UPDATED)

2009-12-31T07:47:00.000-08:00

Take a close look at the Mediaite.com web page about Rush Limbaugh's chest pains as it was captured late night, December 31, 2009.

Here was my post to the thread minutes later:

This is the way the thread looked this morning:

It's called a "hat tip," Colby. I know, you just couldn't remember the phrase for it.

You're welcome.

UPDATE: Colby Hall responds on the thread:

*

SOUNDTRACK FROM FLIGHT 253 - THE MOVIE

2009-12-28T22:32:00.000-08:00

James Brown - "Hot Pants"

AC/DC - "TNT"

Bruce Springsteen - "I'm On Fire"

Buster Poindexter - "Hot Hot Hot"

Debbie Harry - "Backfired"

Queen - "Put Out The Fire"

Madonna - "Burning Up"

Tony Camillo's Bazuka - "Dynomite"

and the one you knew was coming...

Jerry Lee Lewis - "Great Balls of Fire"

DUTCH DIRECTORS JASPER SCHURINGA AND THEO VAN GOGH: THE ANGLE THE MSM WILL DELIBERATELY IGNORE

2009-12-26T20:30:00.000-08:00

I was shocked to discover that the man who doused the flames begun by self-described Al-Qaeda operative Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab in his apparent attempt to blow up Northwest Flight 253 over American soil was, of all people, a "Dutch video director" named Jasper Schuringa (at right in a Facebook photo). Why? Because it was another Dutch director whose untimely demise on November 2, 2004 set the current tone of cowardice in the art world toward criticism of Islamist extremism.

Director Theodor "Theo" Van Gogh, great-grandnephew of legendary painter Vincent Van Gogh, died on an Amsterdam sidewalk after being shot off of his bicycle, stabbed in the chest multiple times as he begged for his life, shot and stabbed again, and finally, having a knife plunged in his chest by his assailant.

What provoked the deadly attack? Van Gogh had directed and co-produced a 10-minute film titled Submission (which is "Islam" translated into English) from a script written by Dutch Member of Parliament Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Somali-born woman who rejected Islam. The film portrayed a composite veiled Muslim woman (wearing a partially transparent burqa) speaking aloud the prayers of four females mistreated by faithful Muslim men in their lives in seeming accord with the Qu'ran. Passages that purportedly condone or authorize whipping as punishment for fornication, forced marriage, domestic violence and sexual molestation are written across parts of women's beaten bodies in the film.

As a prominent politician, Hirsi Ali was entitled to some sort of security. Civilian Van Gogh, on the other hand, received death threats after the film's release, but didn't take them seriously, dismissing the idea that he should employ a bodyguard. Obviously, he should have; the knife that you can see sticking out of Van Gogh's chest as he bled to death on the street was more than just the murderer's coup de grace, it attached a five-page document to him that included an open letter to Hirsi Ali. The message: You're next.

Who killed Van Gogh? A radical Muslim Dutch-Moroccan named Mohammed Bouyeri (below in mugshot), then 26, who was apprehended soon after he fled the scene of the crime. He was wearing a djelleba, a long traditional Muslim formal garment, and on his person, he had a copy of a poem anticipating his glorious death in a shootout, which, of course, didn't work out for him (sound familiar?)

Bouyeri refused to speak in his own defense at his trial because he didn't recognize the authority of the Dutch government. He did have this to say to Van Gogh's mother after he was sentenced: "I don’t feel your pain. I don’t have any sympathy for you. I can’t feel for you because I think you’re a non-believer." No regrets from Bouyeri either: "I take complete responsibility for my actions. I acted purely in the name of my religion ... I can assure you that one day, should I be set free, I would do exactly the same, exactly the same." He was sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole, the most severe sentence the Netherlands could have given him.

The brutal murder of Van Gogh and the deadly Islamist violence that targeted Denmark and Danish interests after the publication of political cartoons satirizing the prophet Mohammed have served to muzzle artists around the world who pride themselves on being bravely acerbic on the topic of religious fanaticism. Their generally-agreed upon standards of artistic integrity ought to have them shining a light and holding a magnifying glass over the terrorism, oppression, and violent abuses against women radical Islam tolerates. Instead, with the image of Van Gogh's corpse sprawled on a downtown Amsterdam street fresh in their minds as if yesterday (if their memories of the fatwa against novelist Salman Rushdie were forgotten), they cower and surrender the principles they want you to believe they value more than anything.

Producers and directors' fear of reprisals for treating Muslim terrorists the way they regularly target (and often slander) Christians and Jews has made itself manifest in many ways. Just a sample: The switch of the nuke-wielding Palestinian terrorists of Tom Clancy's novel The Sum of All Fears to neo-Nazis in the film version; Clancy protege Vince Flynn revealing that none of his best-selling spy novels had yet been turned into movies because he demanded that the terrorist villains remain Arab fanatics and not -- in one change proposed by a studio executive -- Filipinos (not making it up, folks); Viacom's Comedy Central cable channel allowing the animators of South Park to splatter an image of Jesus Christ in excrement, but censoring an image of Mohammed simply standing in a doorway (more on that here and here); director Roland Emmerich's admission that while St. Peter's Basilica and the massive Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro were OK to CGI-obliterate in his latest end-of-the-world flick 2012, he pulled his punch when it came to the Grand Mosque in Saudi Arabia.

Call it serendipity, call it synchronicity, call it karma, call it divine intervention, call it what you want. That one Dutch film director should be killed by a Muslim terrorist while another Dutch film director possibly saved at least hundreds of lives from a Muslim terrorist is a remarkable coincidence. And one that you will likely read about only in places like mine, an unremarkable blog, because the mainstream media is also caught up in the same political-correctness game as the so-called art world.

THE KEVIN GOTKIN PROBLEM: Mediaite.com Columnist Plays The "You Really Hate Me!" Game

2009-12-24T06:46:00.000-08:00

NOTE: The following is my reaction to this editorial from Mediaite.com's Kevin Gotkin, who takes on the Wall Street Journal's Peggy Noonan after she wrote this December 19, 2009 column titled "The Adam Lambert Problem" regarding the controversy over the shocking performance by the 2009 American Idol runner-up on ABC-TV's live broadcast of the 2009 American Music Awards.

Mr. Gotkin:

Before reading your column, I read the Peggy Noonan piece at your link. Then I returned and finished reading your reaction, and noted this comment:

This is [a] story of poor journalism.

I agree wholeheartedly. But the poor journalism is not Noonan's, it's yours. (Not that this is new to Mediaite).

First of all, the illustration you chose to accompany your editorial would be fitting if you were taking on Rev. Pat Robertson, Dr. James Dobson, or Phyllis Schafly, whose objections to the expanding influence of the gay rights movement are deeply based in religious belief. Peggy Noonan is not of that sandwich-board ilk, and it's dishonest of you (or the person who chose that image) to imply that she is somehow.

Then, you employ the deceitful device used increasingly by professional opinionators left and right: “code language.” That is, to make the words of someone with whom you disagree seem more objectionable to the uninformed by suggesting the reader shouldn't believe the words that were actually spoken. No, readers should ignore the actual meaning of words, and instead embrace your perception of what their darker inner thoughts must be.

You wrote, “Noonan’s problem is that she hinges on homophobia.” Then, after quoting a paragraph in which Noonan almost apologizes for making Lambert's perverted display the topic of a column (“I don't mean to make too much of it”) you wrote:

“Translation from poorly codified indiscretion: Gay people are ruining America.”

Those are just your warm-up pitches, as you continue:

I can’t ignore disturbing shorthand homophobia. It’s a not-so-subtle way of talking that allows people of like minds to say just about everything except the offensive things they actually want to say.

Of course, Kevin, it never seem to occur to people like you that perhaps the reason why they don't say “the offensive things” is because they actually don't want to say them.

This is eerily reminiscent of another writer who hears things that weren't actually said – The New York Times' Maureen Dowd, who made a fool of herself when she wrote that “Fair or not,” she “heard” Congressman Joe Wilson silently call President Obama “boy” in his “You lie!” outburst in Obama's health care speech. Dowd can be found on that Pulitzer Prize list you linked, and her continued presence on it devalues its prestige.

This is also the main weapon used by the likes of Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, and other race hustlers (let me interject at this point that I am a black man); they are cocked and ready to accuse people of bias or bigotry without a shred of evidence, sometimes demanding a ransom of millions (in “donations”) to remove the tar they've slathered on their targets.

All such arguments are predicated on the idea that one knows what other people are really thinking if they don't accept (or openly reject) your values. Joe Wilson calls Obama a liar (accurately)? He's a white guy from South Carolina, so he's a bigot – he just doesn't say “boy” out loud. A cartoonist draws up a gag about a mad chimpanzee being the author of the stimulus bill? Obviously, the chimp represents Obama, even though Obama didn't write the bill, and the cartoonist said that wasn't his intent at all. Carrie Prejean doesn't think same-sex marriage should be instituted into law, so that must mean that she secretly despised the gay men that helped her win Miss California USA.

See, there's so much you can learn about people's true motives and feelings by what they don't say. Right?

Your argument against Noonan falls apart like a Jenga puzzle when you start defending gay values. I'm not saying that gays don't have values, I'm saying that in her piece Noonan never accused gays of not having them. Once again, that was your perception of Noonan, fair or not. She was specifically focused on the deliberately provocative performance by Lambert ("faux oral sex" featuring "S&M play," "bondage gear," "same-sex makeouts" and "walking a man and woman around the stage on a leash”) and the fact that it all took place on broadcast – that is to say “free” -- television. As Noonan wrote well before she specifically addressed Lambert:

For years now, without anyone declaring it or even noticing it, we've had a compromise on television. Do you want, or will you allow into your home, dramas and comedies that, however good or bad, are graphically violent, highly sexualized, or reflective of cultural messages that you believe may be destructive? Fine, get cable. Pay for it. Buy your premium package, it's your money, spend it as you like.

But the big broadcast networks are for everyone. They are free, they are available on every television set in the nation, and we watch them with our children. The whole family's watching. Higher, stricter standards must maintain.

You responded by suggesting this was evidence of Noonan's "poor journalism" because of her shaky "reasoning," and that:

Without distrust for the “alternative” lifestyle Adam Lambert now represents, Noonan’s piece comes across as aloof and out of touch. But with it, she rallies the base. Proof? That fact that she didn’t write this article after the Britney and Madonna kiss.

If you knew as much about Peggy Noonan as I do, you would know that she's not a big fan of "rallying the base" -- she did just the opposite a year ago, joining a chorus of urban intellectual conservatives in extolling the potential of Barack Obama to be a great centrist Chief Executive. I knew that wouldn't happen.

I never went to J-school, (I'm presuming that you did, Kevin -- maybe I'm wrong) but I always try to check my facts. Sometimes I fall short, and write something that is technically inaccurate, but I always try to get the big honking hippopotamus facts right. Such as the fact that the Britney-Madonna liplock was NOT on broadcast television, it was ... on cable, specifically the 2003 MTV Video Music Awards.

Another huge error of yours was linking a 1993 Andrew Sullivan NYT editorial about gays serving in the armed services openly as an example of "Gay Values, Truly Conservative." I won't go into the salacious details of Mr. Sullivan's values in practice (all of you who have the stomach for that can Google his name with the phrase "milky loads" or "power glutes"), but I wouldn't cite a man obsessed with Sarah Palin's uterus as a good way to get people OVER homophobia.

But I guess such dead-end rhetorical devices are a part of what you call "journalism that speaks through ingenuity instead of ignorance..." Is that what you believe you've accomplished here, Mr. Gotkin, this collection of prejudicial, presumptive, stereotypical assertions based in a gelatinous foundation? You are mistaken.