Hello Bloggy!

2003-04-22T20:53:00.000-04:00

CUT TO THE CHASE
WARNING: Mature subject matter and sexual content.
Andrew Sullivan keeps hammering away on the circumcision issue. As the communists would say, it is no accident.

To judge between the circumcised and uncircumcised penis, one would think, requires a good deal of analytical comparison -- and Sullivan has done plenty of that.

Ad hominem? Homophobia? No, not at all. It is Sullivan himself who has made a public issue of his homosexuality. And when someone who has such wide experience with male genitalia begins advocating foreskin envy, wouldn't we be a bit naive to think that the one had nothing to do with the other?

To the issue, briefly ... Circumcision is not "mutilation." Unlike the ghastly procedure known as "female circumcision" -- or, more accurately, female genital mutilation (FGM) -- the surgical removal of the foreskin does not impair the essential function of the sexual organ. The sexual response of the circumcised penis in arousal, orgasm and reproduction is normal, and in most ways indistinguishable from that of its uncircumcised counterpart. (Yes, I realize there is a cottage industry dedicated to demonstrating the many wonders of the foreskin, but am unpersuaded by such blatant special pleading.)

Attempts to argue that circumcision is analagous to FGM are absurd. FGM generally involves clitoridectomy and excision of the labia minora, destroying organs essential to female sexual pleasure, and often also involves "infibulation," leaving the victim with a narrow, scar-encrusted vaginal opening that makes sex extremely painful and makes childbirth difficult and dangerous. For circumcision to be analogous to FGM, it would have to involve not merely the removal of the foreskin, but also the excision of the glans and much of the penile meatus, as well as some sort of butchery to the scrotum. The comparison just won't withstand scrutiny.

Form follows function, and if both the "cut" and "uncut" members function properly, the distinction of form is not exactly a civil rights issue. The Jews have been circumcising their sons for upwards of 3,000 years, as have Muslims for 1,300 years. With them it is a religious principle. Most American Protestants adopted the practice in the 20th century for reasons of hygiene. In the industrial West, circumcision became a matter of parental preference, informed by family tradition or pediatric advice.

So long as chastity and modesty were societal norms, there was no way for circumcision to become an issue of public discussion. In an age when the vast majority of American women married the only man they ever slept with, most women never saw a penis other than their husband's, their son's, or perhaps a brother or two, so certainly women in the pre-Sixties era would have had no basis for comparison between "cut" and "uncut." (Even among today's liberated women, I suspect, most have no strong preference in this matter.) And in the old days, men might have had the occasion to observe other penises in the locker room shower or in the Army barracks, but they wouldn't have spent much time staring. So there was no real reason, back then, for a circumcised man to compare himself favorably or unfavorably to his uncircumcised peer, or vice versa.

It is, then, the sexualization of American society over the past 40 years that has given rise to the contention over circumcision. Promiscuity and pornography have permitted a greater scope for comparative anatomy. Women get breast augmentation and fret over their too-fat thighs. Men trek to the gym seeking the perfect "six pack" abdomen, and wonder if they should get laser treatment for the hair on their backs, or just wax it.

This is the fertile ground from which has sprung our contemporary Cult of the Uncut, a foreskin fetish increasingly common among circumcised men. Straight men, from viewing porn, or gay men, from more intimate perusal, have become obsessed with the Other. Like the Connecticut WASP who decorates his home with Africana, or British schoolboys obsessed with American blues, the circumcised man suffering from foreskin fever is experiencing what can only be described as xenophilia -- a perverse preference for the strange and foreign over the local and familiar.

If Andrew Sullivan feels damaged in having been surgically deprived of the Joys of Foreskin-dom, well, what is his basis for this angst? Is there some sort of dysfunction or inadequacy involved? Having gotten a few decades of quite satisfactory service from my own circumcised unit, I certainly feel no need to complain. If uncircumcised fellows (and their partners) are similarly satisfied with their own equipment, fine for them. But this absurd campaign of invidious distinctions, apparently designed to make circumcised men feel as if they're victims of oppression, serves no good purpose. I'm having a Rodney King moment: Can't we all just get along?

Whether your Little Soldier is wearing a helmet or a hood, be at peace with your penis. Covet not thy neighbor's foreskin. Or lack thereof.

2003-04-01T19:06:00.000-05:00

IRAQ RIDGE

Hello Bloggy's Pentagon correspondent, Mel Brooks, has acquired a classified transcript of a secret meeting where the Defense Department planned its new Iraqi war strategy, dubbed "Operation Blazing Saddles."

DOD assistant undersecretary Hedley Lamarr was wondering how the allied coalition could overcome resistance in the key crossroads town of Iraq Ridge, where villagers loyal to Saddam Hussein were blocking the allied advance to Baghdad.

The situation seemed hopeless, until Lt. Gen. Taggart offered a helpful suggestion ....

Taggart: I got it! I got it!
Hedley Lamarr: You do?
Taggart: We'll work up a "Number 6" on 'em.
Hedley Lamarr: "Number 6"? I'm afraid I'm not familiar with that one...
Taggart: Well, that's where we go a-ridin' into town, a whompin' and whompin' every livin' thing that moves within an inch of its life. Except the women folks, of course.
Hedley Lamarr: You spare the women?
Taggart: NAW! We rape the shit out of them at the Number 6 Dance later on!
Hedley Lamarr: Marvelous!

2003-03-31T19:35:00.000-05:00

ARNETT AND ALTERMAN
Peter Arnett gets fired by NBC for giving an interview to Iraqi state TV, saying "Iraqi resistance" had thwarted allied war plans.

This shows, I think, why left-wingers like Eric Alterman can claim that there is no liberal bias in the media. Alterman supposes that "liberal" means what most of us would consider "far left" -- anti-capitalist, anti-development, anti-American. By Alterman's political calculus, an ordinary conservative Republican is "far right," while liberals like Joe Lieberman and John Edwards are "centrist." To Alterman, "liberal" means Maxine Waters, Ralph Nader, Dennis Kucinich. And indeed, that fringe-left socialist perspective is not much in evidence in mainstream broadcast news reporting.

The Arnett incident shows why there is no "liberal media" in the Altermanesque sense of the term -- Americans simply won't stand for it. Arnett has once before been burned by his anti-American bias, when his CNN "Valley of Death" story claimed that the U.S. had used nerve gas against American deserters in Vietnam. Plenty of folks gripe about less-than-patriotic coverage of the U.S. military on the major networks, but when a subtle slant becomes outright slander -- well, you just can't get away with that.

And it's the same throughout the media. Folks will gripe and grumple about liberal bias in stories about the economy, the budget, elections, crime, race, religion, and the environment. But that bias is only effective to the extent that it is too subtle for the average viewer or reader to catch -- subtle enough that Alterman can pretend it doesn't exist. What Alterman wants -- a media with an explicit socialist agenda -- cannot find an audience in America. We may not be an outright conservative nation, but we are definitely not a socialist nation, and Alterman can't understand that.

2003-03-21T20:30:00.000-05:00

STUPID AARON BROWN

The charming Rachel Lucas catches the CNN pinhead at his most jaw-droppingly stupid:

"What's to stop the Iraqis from seeing these tanks and sending out a few planes to take them out?"

Aaron was talking about the Third Infantry Division.

To answer your question, you pinhead: COMPLETE AIR SUPERIORITY! Any Iraqi military pilot stupid enough to taxi to a runway would probably be blown to itty-bitty Iraqi bits before he could take off. If he managed to get airborne, however, he would have to deal with this ...

And, of course, would be blown to itty-bitty Iraqi bits. There is simply no way, Aaron Brown, you ugly whore you, for Iraqi aircraft to threaten U.S. ground forces. As Rachel put it, it's a metaphysical impossibility. But I guess you'd have to have half an ounce of common sense to understand that, wouldn't you?

2003-03-21T20:18:00.000-05:00

SHOCK AND AWE

2003-03-21T20:16:00.000-05:00

UNBELIEVABLE STUPIDITY

Just when you think Aaron Brown couldn't possibly be more stupid, he shocks and awes you. I walk past the TV tuned to CNN and the pathetic pinhead is suggesting that coalition forces could face a Mogadishu-type situation ("Blackhawk Down") when ground forces reach Baghdad.

OK, boys and girls, what was the one thing U.S. forces requested -- but the Clinton administration denied them -- in Mogadishu?

ARMOR

Anybody who's read the book or seen the movie should get the significance of this. Denied tanks and APCs, the Rangers were forced to go into Mogadishu in Humvees, and were spectacularly vulnerable to small-arms fire.

Obviously, this will not be the case in Iraq, where the U.S.-led coalition is advancing (you can watch it live on TV) with hundreds of tanks, hundreds more armored personnel carriers, and enough air power to blow the living hell out of anything that tries to stop them. There is nothing -- nothing -- in the Iraqi arsenal that can stop the M1A1 Abrams tank. So there is zero possibility of a "Mogadishu" in Baghdad, which anybody with a room-temperature IQ ought to be able to understand. But that doesn't include Aaron Brown.

Brown is not alone in his monumental ignorance of military basics. The 24/7 coverage of the war has put a bunch of pretty TV people in the uncomfortable position of having to fill hour after hour with chatter about the war, giving them ample opportunity to demonstrate their stupidity. Maybe this has something to do with our educational system, which has downgraded military history (battles, generals, et ceter) in favor of lots of PC multicultural "social studies" nonsense. The result is that there are many reasonable well-educated people who don't know their flank from their rear, so to speak.

You would think that such people would, in recognition of their own ignorance, be a bit humble when dealing with the military. You would be wrong. These arrogant TV twerps, who don't know Cannae from Caen, insist on acting soooo authoritative. Instead of asking basic questions to get information -- "Colonel, what can you tell us about this attack?" -- they ask complicated questions meant to show how smart they are: "Colonel, given the fierce resistance of the elite Republican Guards, how many American boys will go home in bodybags before you take Basra?"

These idiots have learned all the wrong lessons of the Vietnam War. They imagine that every war will turn into a quagmire and a bloody American defeat. Every battle will be the siege of Khe Sanh. U.S. generals are all bloodthirsty idiots. And the only honorable posture in time of war is to demand "peace."

Their wrongheadedness, combined with their astonishing ignorance, is evident every time they open their mouths.

2003-03-12T18:41:00.000-05:00

WHY LIBERALS LOSE

OK, read this and ask yourself, "What's wrong with this picture?"

Ono waging full-page ad campaign for peace

Yoko Ono paid $42,000 for a full-page ad in today's [San Francisco] Chronicle, because "it is a pretty urgent message," she said by e-mail Tuesday. "It is my contribution to the community."

The San Francisco version of Ono's message is "Imagine Peace Spring 2003." Ono has taken out identical or similar ads making brief statements in last week's Los Angeles Times, the L.A. Weekly and the Village Voice, and another will appear in the Washington Post this weekend.

She prefers free weeklies to commercial newspapers.

"If I knew another paper like the L.A. Weekly and Village Voice, I would have chosen that in San Francisco," she writes. "Those two papers can be picked up by anybody in the city without spending money. They are truly for all PEOPLE" (the capital letters are hers).

L.A. Weekly, Village Voice, NY Times, San Francisco Chronicles -- all are newspapers in communities where people ALREADY OPPOSE THE WAR!

Targeting millions of left-wing urban pacifists with an anti-war message is just typical liberal stupidity. It's a waste of Ono's money and effort. Her ads cannot possibly inspire San Franciscans or Greenwich Villagers to be any more anti-war than they already are.

Why isn't Ono taking out newpaper ads in conservative places like Tulsa, Tupelo and Tallahassee? Why not try to inspire anti-war sentiment out there in 'red-state' America?

Why? Because Ono is a feeble-minded liberal idiot, that's why. Not to mention, she can't sing a note, her "art" is pretentious nonsense, and she will forever be hated by millions as The Bitch Who Broke Up The Beatles.

2003-03-11T19:34:00.000-05:00

THE TROUBLE WITH 'SCHOOL CHOICE'

As our friend, John Ray from "up north" Down Under, points out, an ambitious public school "choice" policy in Florida is foundering on the rocky shores of racial realtity:

"Pinellas school officials acknowledged Tuesday they are limiting enrollment in several elementary schools, including the brand new Douglas Jamerson and James Sanderlin elementary schools in south Pinellas. ... The reason, in part, is that not enough nonblack students want to attend schools in predominantly black neighborhoods. ... [S]chool officials might not have enough nonblack kids to meet the all-important race ratios. ... under an agreement with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, the district agreed to prevent any school from having more than 42 percent black students for four years."

Que pasa? The secret truth — what no one will dare say — is that the overwhelming majority of parents (black, white, "other") do not want their children to attend a majority-black school. Why does the NAACP not want any school to be more than 42 percent black? Because they assume that any school with 43 percent or more black students would be "segregated" and therefore bad. Non-black parents make the same assumption, and therefore, there aren't enough available non-black kids to make this "choice" experiment work.

Another way of saying this is that both black and white parents consider the term "good school" to designate a majority-white school. Black parents back school desegregation programs because they want their kids to have access to "good" (i.e., white) schools. And in communities with large black populations and vigorous desegregation policies, white parents typically respond by moving to suburban districts with "good" (i.e., white) schools. So that both desegregation policies and the typical "white flight" response to those policies are different expressions of the same (unspoken) assumption.

Now, the sentiments of those parents who participate in "white flight" (choosing homes in "good" school districts with relatively few black students) are typically characterized as racism. But this ignores the fact that the NAACP, in pushing for integrated schools, is acting on the same sentiment, i.e., "good school = majority white school" or, perhaps more accurately, "bad school = majority black school."

This has been the fundamental problem with school desegregation since the Brown v. Board decision in 1954. The implicit logic of the Supreme Court's decision was that white schools were better than black schools, in an almost metaphysical way. The import of Brown was not -- as liberals then claimed, and conservatives now claim in retrospect -- was not, I repeat, to impose a regime of "colorblindness" in matters of education. Rather, the Court reasoned, black children were being denied a positive good: attending school with white children. (If you doubt this interpretation of the Court's logic, I invite you to carefully study the decision and its appendices.)

If this was what the nation's highest tribunal believed, and was indeed the argument of the NAACP, then the same logic had quite opposite import for white parents. Who could blame white parents for reasoning that, if even blacks considered it a wrong for their children to be forced to attend school with other black children, then court-ordered desgregation was now wronging white parents by forcing their children to attend school with black children.

All this was troublesome enough when it was applied to the Jim Crow South in the 1950s and '60s, and it proved no less troublesome when applied to Detroit and Boston in the 1970s. When white parents in liberal Northern cities rioted in reaction to court orders compelling their children to attend school with black children, it should have been obvious that the entire edifice of Brown had been erected on a weak philosophical and legal foundation. Remember Ayn Rand's dictum: Whenever you think that you are facing a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong.

Blacks and whites are equal, or they are not. If the races are equal, then no matter your race, it makes no difference if your child's classroom is 99 percent black or 99 percent white. American parents do not believe this. By their choices -- blacks in pursuit of "integration," whites through "white flight" -- both black and white parents exhibit a profound, if unconscious, belief in white superiority.

However mischievous such a belief may be be, per se, it is all the more damaging because it cannot be publicly expressed. Indeed, many of those who most vociferously argue for racial equality are equally vociferous in acting on premises of white superiority. White liberals like Bill and Hillary Clinton refused to send their daughter Chelsea to Washington, D.C.'s majority-black public schools, but then again so do the affluent blacks in Washington like Clarence Thomas. When the privileged and the powerful of both races in the national capital seek out majority-white schools for their children, why should we be surprised at similar behavior by ordinary parents in Pinellas County, Florida?

2003-02-25T20:05:00.000-05:00

WORSE THAN RICHARD COHEN

Yes, it's true, there is a columnist worse than The Washington Post's Richard Cohen, who actually manages to write one or two columns a year that make sense. Bob Herbert of The New York Times, on the other hand, is consistently, 100% wrong. (I leave open the possibility that there may be a Herbert column that makes sense, but I just haven't seen one yet.)

I am thankful to Friedrich of 2Blowhards.com for calling attention to the idiocy of Herbert's argument for affirmative action:

Bob Herbert in the New York Times of February 24 spells out the logic behind affirmative action in an Op-Ed piece by. In it he makes the following rather oddly paired assertions:

A glance at the current challenges to affirmative action in higher education would show little more than the fact that a number of white applicants have asserted in court that they were illegally denied admission to college or law school because of preferences given to racial or ethnic minorities.

...The United States is a better place after a half-century of racial progress and improved educational opportunities for racial and ethnic minorities and women. We have all benefited and, and voluntary efforts to continue that progress, including the policies at Michigan, are in the interest of us all. [emphasis added].

Friedrich offers an excellent dissection of Herbert's claim of universal benefit for affirmative action. I think the argument of universal benefit, whatever the issue, is one of the most transparent frauds in political rhetoric. Whenever it is argued that some proposal or program benefits everyone, you may be sure that some special interest will reap the direct and immediate benefits.

Suppose the county roads commission proposes to spend a few million to widen Route 5. "Everyone will benefit," they say -- and perhaps rightly so, in the most general sense. Improved transportation spurs economic growth and makes travel easier for everyone in the county. But the highway contractors will be the immediate beneficiaries, pocketing whatever amount of the taxpayers' largesse is voted by the commissioners for the Route 5 project. The secondary beneficiaries will be the property owners and real-estate developers along the Route 5 corridor who stand to gain from expanded commercial opportunities created by improved highway access. So while these interests reap benefits that are immediate and tangible, those taxpayers who live on the other side of the county -- who aren't paving contractors, who seldom travel Route 5, and who own no property there -- receive a benefit that is remote and abstract.

This is not to say that we shouldn't widen Route 5 -- or that we should not have affirmative action, more to the point. Rather, it is to say that we ought not kid ourselves about who is benefitting from government action. The "diversity" rationale is invoked to claim that the university is doing a favor to white and Asian students by imposing a quasi-quota system that ensures that they will be exposed to more black and Hispanic students. The absurdity of that claim ... well, I could go on forever. In fact, affirmative action is a sort of programmatic welfare giveaway, based on the university's perception of blacks and Hispanics as academic charity cases who can't be expected to meet common standards of academic achievement. Blacks and Hispanics are the direct and immediate beneficiaries -- they receive admission based purely on their ethnicity -- while whites and Asians are sold the "diversity" myth as a way to secure their cooperation in their own dispossession. And this dispossession is perpetrated by an institution supported by the tax dollars and votes of the dispossessed. It's suicidal, and sane people would never have stood for it.

People ought to be honest about what's going on -- that's all I'm saying.

2003-02-24T17:13:00.000-05:00

FIRST THEY CAME FOR THE HASH PIPES ...

Attorney General John Ashcroft announces the feds have busted 55 people for making or selling drug paraphernalia. Great. We are menaced by international terrorism, but that won't stop the feds from spending our tax dollars to hassle the makers of roach clips and bongs.

What next? Will Ashcroft go after strobe lights? Pink Floyd albums? Patchouli incense?

Don't get me wrong. I am not some anti-Ashcroft, pro-dope libertarian. It's a question of priorities. Once we've rounded up all the radical jihadis, shipped them to Gitmo, and sealed the borders to make sure they never get back in, THEN maybe we can worry about allocating federal law enforcement resources to bust headshop owners and hookah dealers.

2003-02-12T22:09:00.000-05:00

WHAT ANN COULTER WANTS FOR VALENTINE'S DAY

2003-02-12T22:00:00.000-05:00

BUY THIS SHIRT

2003-02-12T21:18:00.000-05:00

LINKED
The Vast Right Wing Conspiracy (Blog Division) spans the globe to Down Under, where John Ray's Dissecting Leftism takes note of one of my rants in his "Carnival of the Vanities." Thanks, John! And let me recommend some good barbecue if you ever visit the Southern part of the northern hemisphere ....

2003-02-12T20:47:00.000-05:00

QUO BARBECUE EST?
Some upscale "Southern culture" Web site makes reference to what has sometimes been called the Second Civil War, namely the Great Barbecue Debate.

Of course, both conflicts are misnamed. The former is rightly called the War for Southern Independence (or, if you prefer, the War of Northern Aggression). And as to the latter, well, there ain't no debate.

Barbecue - n. - Pulled pork, smoked and slow-cooked over hickory, soaked in a thin mustard-vinegar sauce, generally served with white bread, baked beans, steak fries, cole slaw and/or potato salad.

This is not an opinion, it is a fact -- it is the capital-T gospel TRUTH. Texans and other such fools can cook a cow over mesquite, and slather some blend of ketchup and Tabasco on it, and eat as much of it as they want. But if they try to tell you that's "barbecue," well, they are lying. There is barbecue, as previously defined, and there is everything else.

While I'm at it, Yankees should be advised that "barbecue" is not a verb, and has nothing to do with charcoal bricquets. "Hey, Leonard, when ya gonna be finished barbecuing dem hamburgers?" Pity the poor Northerners, denizens of a land with no indigenous culture.

Enough talk of apostasy. Let me direct you to the Barbecue Mecca, Wallace Barbecue on Bankhead Highway in Austell, Ga., about 16 miles west of Atlanta. Here are directions from Hartsfield Airport (about 21 miles) and here are directions from Six Flags Over Georgia (about 6 miles). Go there soon. Eat real barbecue. The truth will set you free.

2003-02-11T20:17:00.000-05:00

HOMO HOLLYWOOD -- Andrew Sullivan gets an e-mail from a friend, demonstrating that the American film industry is totally dominated by homosexuals.

No, this isn't about Tom Cruise (please don't sue me) or even Nathan Lane. It's not about movie stars so much as it is about screenwriters, directors, producers and other behind-the-camera personnel, and the themes of the material they produce. The people who develop the stories and turn them into films, who pick the casts and select the scenes, are disproportionately homosexual -- a fact of which Sullivan doesn't mind boasting.

I would argue that this has an impact not just in explicitly gay-themed films, but also in the way heterosexual relations are portrayed. For instance, in the last 20 years, it has become a Hollywood convention to portray traditional morality as stifling, to portray parents as clueless or oppressive, to portray marriage as a sort of slavery, and most especially to denigrate chastity and monogamy. These themes -- call them "anti-family" or "trangressive" or whatever suits you — are developed in dozens of recent films, including many movies that are thought of as inoccuous.

Consider "My Best Friend's Wedding," the whole point and purpose of which is to have Julia Roberts discover that marriage is only suited for dumb bimbos, an overrated institution she can live without, because she has a gay friend. The desire for marriage is an unworthy sentiment. This anti-marriage, anti-family attitude shows up in so many movies that one could hardly name them all. "Pleasantville" and "American Beauty" are definitely near the top of the heap. "The Birdcage" and "In and Out" are two more. (Do not imagine, for instance, that the hetero bridal couple in "The Birdcage" constitute an endorsement of marriage. The whole point of the movie is that the gay couple are as legitimate as any married couple; ergo marriage is equivalent to homosexuality; ergo traditional marriage bestows no distinct legitimacy upon sexuality; ergo, marriage is irrelevant, except so far as it functions as a weapon of oppression and exclusion against homosexuals. This is a Queer Studies concept known as "heteronormativity.")

Even rather family-friendly films, such as "Blast From the Past" and "Sweet Home Alabama," show how it has become de rigeur that the romantic heroine must have a Gay Male Best Friend with whom she can "compare notes" about guys. Inevitably in such movies, the Gay Male Best Friend is a sweet and harmless (but lusty) thing, whose helpful romantic advice always proves correct. The Gay Male Best Friend is never a misogynist (contempt for women being a widespread but seldom acknowledged sentiment in the gay male community). Instead, he is always sympathetic and supportive, full of "you go girl" encouragement for the heroine. The Gay Male Best Friend is becoming a Hollywood stereotype like the Big Bellied Southern Sheriff and the Wise-Cracking Action Hero.The heroine may be a ditz, her boyfriend may be a jerk, but the Gay Male Best Friend is as honest as a Boy Scout and as wise as Solomon. He even scores points for having The Courage To Be Who He Is.

You don't have to be a homophobe to find all this strange. Homosexuals are 2 percent of the population, but 40 percent of the Best Original Screenplay nominees? C'mon, explain that. I'm imagining that "coming out" in America today means your 16-year-old son marches into the family rooms and announces: "Mom, I'm going to film school!"

I'm not saying that this is a conspiracy of some Velvet Mafia to indoctrinate America with queer propaganda. All I'm saying is that the (increasing?) influence of homosexuals within the film industry is naturally reflected in the product flowing into your neighborhood cineplex. Agree or disagree. Tawk amongst yahselves. Or e-mail hellobloggy@yahoo.com

2003-02-03T17:45:00.000-05:00

'ELEVATED' NONSENSE
OK, OK, call me picky, but I could not help take notice of this little snippy comment by Liz Smith:

Ben Affleck thinks there is something besides the combined stellar light of himself and Jennifer Lopez that makes us all sit up and take so much notice. Ben tells Vanity Fair for March: "I think it has to do with race and class, the fact that I'm white and she's Puerto Rican. That's what's underneath, although nobody says it, because it's not politically correct."
Hmmm . . . I can only speak for myself, but the racial mix between Ben and Jen had never occurred to me. ... I've never heard one word, or even a veiled allusion to race when it comes to these two. For that matter, I never heard a racial remark one way or the other when Jennifer was dating Sean Combs. (Maybe I run with an elevated crowd.)

Now, I can see taking exception to Ben's attempt to claim an ethnic angle to the celebrity buzz about him and J-Lo. Affleck, a major disciple of Howard Zinn, seems to be trying to play some liberal racial martyr trip here.

But to say that the ethnic difference between the whitebread Affleck and Jenny From the Block "never occurred to me"? That no one ever said "one word" about the ex-Fly Girl getting jiggy with WASP-y Ben?

And then the real kick-in-the-head: "Maybe I run with an elevated crowd."

J-Lo is Puerto Rican. Ben Affleck is white. Puff Daddy is black. These are observable facts. The sequential liaisons of Ms. Lopez with Combs and Affleck are equally observable facts. Why does Ms. Smith think it is "elevated" not to notice facts which are plainly obvious? Would there be such an "elevated" insistence about not noticing ethnicity in a romance between, say, an Italian and an Englishman? A Brazilian and an Irish lass? Does the "elevated crowd" ever hestitate to notice that certain fashion models are Russian?

Affleck is right to say that it is not "politically correct" to make mention of ethnicity -- but this is only true in certain cases, i.e., when the ethnicity involved falls within the "protected" categories. If Affleck were dating a Lithuanian or French girl, people might mention it. But because J-Lo is Puerto Rican -- a person of color, member of a designated victim group -- "elevated" people aren't supposed to notice.

Ah, well. No one I know gives the Affleck-Lopez romance more than nine months. Not because of the inter-ethnic nature of the romance, mind you, but because, in the words of one friend, "J-Lo is a ho." Rather unchivalrous, that. But she sure does have great glutes.

2003-02-03T15:46:00.000-05:00

'FEELINGS, WO-WO-WO ...'

Karen Peterson of USA Today -- whose previous writings about divorce struck me as rather soft-headed -- goes squishy for The Hours, the Virginia Woolf-inspired chick flick. Peterson's article boils down to: Men are so insensitive. You just don't get it. Here:

For many men, the film is a tough sell, says Stuart Fischoff, a media psychologist at California State University-Los Angeles. "Men will balk" at going to this film, he says. "They do not respond to character-driven performances by women. A woman's world is not a world they want to enter. It is emotional. And the movie does not move fast."

Ugghh. Man frightened by emotion. Not respond.

Men love solutions, says Lee Beckerman, 41, of Woodbridge, N.J. "Women like to discuss their feelings. It's all right to have feelings, but men really like to have an answer. 'If you feel that way, then do this.' " A woman's approach can be "hard for men to grasp."

Attaboy, Lee! Welcome to the cave!

Laurie Young, the executive director of the Older Women's League, based in Washington, D.C., was "enraptured" with the movie. "I just thought it was incredibly powerful."
Women respond to the suggestion that in the 1920s and the 1950s, women's roles were often limited, says Young, 52. "There was a lack of choice, an inability to direct their own lives" and control their reproductive choices. Women react to "the pain women suffered," she says, including society's mandate to marry and have children.

Oh, shut up you silly crone -- "an inability to direct their own lives," indeed! And while my heart is just breaking for "the pain women suffered" because of "society's mandate to marry and have children," I'm trying to keep it in proportion to the pain suffered by (off the top of my head here) the immigrant workers incinerated at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, the millions of Ukrainians who died in Stalin's terror-famine, the Pennsylvania coal miners who died in explosions ... need I go on? I mean, to hell with the existential angst experienced by affluent women intellectuals, when there is so much real pain and suffering in the world.

This whole bit about women's emotional needs -- what a crock! OK, it's 1843 and you're on the Oregon trail. Six people in your wagon train die of typhoid, four more are killed by hostile Indians, a couple of kids are attacked and killed by coyotes. Now ... how do you feel about that? What the hell does it matter how you feel? You are either going to survive and make it to Oregon, or you are going to die on the trail like the others. You don't have the luxury of indulging your emotions. The wagon train has got to keep rolling, OK?

Where did we get the idea that feelings -- mere subjective emotions -- possess a meaningful reality? Yes, yes, everyone feels happy, feels sad, feels confused from time to time. But how we feel is far less important than what we do. We cannot always control our emotions, but we can all control our actions. So stop dwelling on how you feel, and start thinking about what you should do.

And as for the horrible oppression because "women's roles were often limited" in the past -- don't believe a word of it. America's supposed oppression of women is a myth created by feminists as a justification for their radical agenda. The American housewife in 1955 was the most affluent, most secure, most protected creature on the planet. In no other country on earth did women enjoy more true freedom and opportunity. While feminists rant about this putative "oppression," let it not be forgotten that men's "roles were often limited" in the past. Eighteen-year-old boys were drafted into the Marines and sent off to die on some frozen Korean mountainside or in some malarial Vietnamese swamp. Were women craving those "roles"?

2003-02-03T15:14:00.000-05:00

THANKS MUCHLY

A big Axis of Weevil thanks to John Ray for linking my rant about left-wing ideas of "economic justice."

2003-02-02T19:20:00.000-05:00

WHAT WENT WRONG

The word out of NASA makes it pretty clear that the shuttle's left wing -- perhaps damaged by insulation that fell off the external fuel tank at launch -- was the cause of the Columbia disaster.

The temperature of the left wing increased 60 degrees in 5 minutes before the explosion. Automatic flight systems tried but failed to compensate for extra drag on the left wing. At the time the signal was lost, the shuttle had banked left until its wings were 57 degrees off horizontal.

In other words, this is a freak accident, the cause of which can be easily discovered and fixed. The disaster is not due to the shuttle design itself -- contrary to what Gregg "I Hate SUVs" Easterbrook argues. While updating, expanding and improving the U.S. space program is a good idea, there is no reason to scrap the shuttle simply because of the Columbia disaster, which is what Easterbrook wants.

2003-02-02T17:40:00.000-05:00

MORE FULMINATIONS

One post was not enough to exorcise my rage over Robeson's "economic justice" nonsense. What I can never understand in the reasoning of the Left is: What have the poor done to deserve the fruits of redistribution? What is it about being poor that entitles people to handouts at the expense of taxpayers?

Americans have so long been bludgeoned with liberal propaganda that most never ask this basic question. Let's see: You goof off in school, don't bother to get a job, develop a substance abuse problem, get pregnant out of wedlock -- CONGRATULATIONS! You are now entitled to lifetime subsidies, paid for with money extracted from the pockets of your fellow citizens!

That there is no moral justice in socialism is fairly easy to demonstrate. The architect or engineer, making $125,000 a year, is in no way responsible for the poverty of the dope-addled high-school dropout who might earn $18,000 a year if he would get off the sofa and go to work. Had the dropout sought advice from the engineer, the engineer might have counseled him to apply himself in school. The architect might have told the bum to stay off the pipe. The loser, you see, has chosen his own course in life, and would greatly resent any career counseling from his betters. So the loser is wholly responsible for his misery; and his successful countrymen are not to blame.

But leftist economics begins with the premise that the poor -- by virtue of their mere poverty -- are entitled to subsistence at the expense of the taxpayers. And that goes hand in hand with the premise that the affluent are -- for the sake of their very affluence -- obligated to pay for such subsistence. Where is the proof of these assertions? Stripped of emotional rhetoric, how are these ideas to be called "economic justice"? Where is the "justice" in taking money from the man who earned it and giving it to a man who has done nothing to deserve it? If this weren't being done by government, we wouldn't call it "economic justice," we'd call it armed robbery.

Somewhere planted firmly inside the sick minds of socialists are two fallacious notions:

1. The Virtuous Poor -- There are many decent, honest, hard-working people who fall substantially below the media annual household income. No one would argue otherwise. But socialists believe that the poor are uniquely virtuous merely because they are poor. Poverty thus becomes a virtue of its own. And if you should dare to point out that many poor people are deficient in certain virtues -- thrift, diligence, sobriety -- then you are accused of "blaming the victim." (It is curious, though, that the same limousine liberals who plead the case of the poor manage to avoid socializing with the poor. One would think, if the poor were so wonderful, that liberals would enjoy their company. Alas, however, vagrants and welfare mothers are seldom invited to ski weekends at Vail with Streisand and Spielberg.)

2. The Vicious Rich -- In the rhetoric of the Left, "the rich" are evoked in such a way as to suggest that they have become wealthy through sheer malice. The rich are construed as "the wealthiest 1 percent" or "corporate America" -- a populist trope that allows 99 percent of "us" to conceive of the rich as "them." The rhetoric encourages us to think of the rich as born that way -- Richie Rich, in his baronial mansion with servants and polo stable, riding in a limousine to his elite private academy. Of course, extremely few people fit this description, forming a social class so tiny as to be statistically irrelevant to discussions of "economic justice." Constituted as "corporate America," the rich supposedly plot and scheme to defraud and impoverish John Q. Public, not to mention corrupting government and inciting imperialist wars of conquest. Nonsense, of course: The executive suites of American corporations are populated largely by guys from middle-class backgrounds with management degrees whose chief concern is how to improve productivity and increase market share. They are not mustache-twirling melodrama villains; they are not J.R. Ewing.

But this is the kind of lazy thought, full of stereotypes and unexamined premises, which fuels the rage for "economic justice." It makes you want to kick somebody's ass, or at least have your butler kick somebody's ass.

2003-02-01T22:57:00.000-05:00

NONSENSE. JUST PURE NONSENSE

Critical Mass calls our attention to this speech by Paul Robeson Jr. at a Dartmouth College commemoration of MLK.

To start with, the nut doesn't fall too far from the tree. Paul Roberson Sr. was a treacherous Red bastard, and it seems like his son is carrying on the seditious legacy.

Secondly, did I say "nut"? This dude's as nutty as a fruitcake. Where to begin? Oh, the "neo-Confederate" motif is one beloved of the Left, but it just doesn't work with Bush. Ask the Texas SCV what they think about Bush, who took down some commemorative plaques at the state Supreme Court building in Austin -- a building built with Confederate pension funds. Far from being a "neo-Confederate," Bush is not even arguably right wing. His triangulation on the Michigan affirmative action case is a perfect example.

Why does Robeson Jr. think it an indictment to say that the Homeland Security Act is modeled after a measure by Josef Stalin -- did I say "nut"? -- while Stalin was just fine for Robeson Sr.?

And his "economic justice" scheme -- " spending 'hundreds of billions of dollar' elevating the income of every American who made less than the median income" -- is just childish nonsense. From whom does Robeson propose taking "hundreds of billions of dollars"? And what does he suppose the effect of this Marxian (Rawlsian?) redistribution would be? All these low-income people -- why are their incomes low? Do they just happen to be inefficient computer engineers or spendthrift heart surgeons? I suspect, rather, that having a low income might be a function of having a low level of education, skill or experience. And, for this, Robeson wants to reward them!

So if we plunder the pockets of the skillful, the resourceful, and the persistent, in order to reward the unskilled, the uneducated and the inexperienced ... well, with incentives like that, what sort of country will we become? If talent and virtue are punished, while ignorance and sloth are rewarded, you may be sure that the former qualities will become more scarce and the latter more common.

2003-01-27T06:32:00.000-05:00

ACTRESS OF EVIL

Evil. Twisted. Dangerous. No, not Saddam. I'm talking about Janeane Garofalo, who tells Howard Kurtz that she is a victim of pro-war bias in the media.:

Janeane Garofalo says she knows why Fox, CNN, MSNBC and "Good Morning America" have booked her to argue against war with Iraq.
"They have actors on so they can marginalize the movement," the stand-up comic says. "It's much easier to toss it off as some bizarre, unintelligent special-interest group. If you're an actor who is pro-war, you're a hero. If you're an actor who's against the war, you're suspect. You must have a weird angle or you just hate George Bush."

Well, gee, Janeane, if that's how it is, then why don't you say "no" to these interviews? If you're right, then every time you go on TV, you're helping to "marginalize" the very movement you claim to be advancing. What a strange, bitter, and vaguely paranoid thing to say. I guess Howard Kurtz just interviewed you because he's trying to discredit the anti-war movement and figured there was no better tool than Janeane Garofalo.

By the way, where are all these pro-war "hero" actors, except in the imagination of Janeane Garofalo?

"These same corporate entities have an interest in war, have an interest in profiting from war. They represent corporate America. Corporate America dictates the news we are getting."

Here we go with that stupid "merchants of death" cliche. It is simply not true that business has "an interest in profiting from war." Coca-Cola? Archer Daniels Midland? Microsoft? It's hard to demonstrate that war is good for most corporations. A big war with a full mobilization -- requiring hundreds of new tanks and planes -- might be good for a few companies like Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics. But war with Iraq will be a short term affair. And the stock market slumps at every news that war may be imminent, and rebounds at news that promises peace. War is bad for international trade, limiting access to both resources (e.g., oil) and markets.

As for Garofalo's notion that the media "repesent corporate America" -- well, you have to be a left-winger to think like that. The New York Times is one of the most "corporate" of newspapers, but is just about as "anti-war" as Garofalo. Certainly, the New York Times is resolutely opposed to the Bush administration. And being owned by "corporate America" didn't stop ABC News from hiring Clinton mouthpiece George Stephanopoulos to host "This Week." Maybe an honest-to-God liberal Democrat campaign operative is still too "establishment" for Garofalo's taste. Tough. That whiny bitch wouldn't be happy if Ramsey Clark were running the networks.

2003-01-26T19:06:00.000-05:00

IN RE SCOTT RITTER

A 41-year-old man who believes that he can pick up teen-age girls in Internet chat rooms is not exactly the sharpest knife in the drawer. I accept that, somewhere in the grand universe of probability, there must be some chunky middle-aged guy who has got blissfully jiggy with a 16-year-old he's met on AOL. Given that there are several million people trawling for action on the 'Net, I am willing to believe that somewhere in all of this, some shmuck hit the jailbait Powerball. It could happen.

But not bloody likely, is it? I suppose that teen-age girls hanging out in chat rooms are mainly interested in teen-age boys. Oh, sure, if you were a cute guy of 20 or 25 and drove a nice car, you might get somewhere but ... sorry, 41 years old is just out of the question. Let the girls get a bit older, maybe, and if your name is Michael Douglas, you can score but ... hey, if you're 41, you can just forget about teen-age girls, OK?

And thus we confront the case of Scott Ritter who, until tales of his Internet activities made headlines, was lecturing President Bush about high policy toward Iraq. Leaving aside the morality of a married father of two trying to make it with teen-age girls, doesn't this sordid saga raise questions about Ritter's intelligence and judgment?

Look, if you're a 41-year-old guy trolling a chat room, and encounter someone who tells you she's a 16-year-old girl, and she's acting all hot and sexy with you, the first thing you've got to figure is, "she" is another middle-aged guy getting his fantasy jollies. But when the 16-year-old girl says, Sure, I'd love to meet you at the local Burger King -- you gotta know you're talking to an undercover officer doing a sex sting. Common sense tells you that 16-year-old girls have better things to do with their time than to hang out in chat rooms making dates with 41-year-old guys.

Common sense? Ritter apparently doesn't have any. Or else his ego is so huge that he imagines that (a) he can really charm the chicks in the chat room, and (b) he is so incredibly hot that this high school hottie is gonna flip for him the minute he walks into Burger King. Scott Ritter, massive ego? Sure, I have no trouble believing this.

Now keep in mind that Ritter got busted not once, but twice, for this scam. The first time he got popped -- in April 2001 -- Ritter believed he had a rendezvous with a 14-year-old. Understand that there are lots of guys in prison serving hard time after being caught in Internet stings like this but Lucky Scott gets a huge break. He is released without being charged.

And so he does it again! Two months later, he sets up a date with a "16-year-old girl" who, it is reported, was to watch him while he masturbated. Lucky Scott goes to the Burger King to meet the girl and learns, to his chagrin, that the "girl" was actually an undercover officer who has no intention of watching him masturbate. But Lucky Scott is still lucky, and the DA agrees not to prosecute the case.

Scott Ritter is so smart, he knows more about Iraq's weapons than the President of the United States, but he's so stupid that he twice arranges trysts with undercover cops he thinks are teen-age girls? Like I said, leave aside any judgment of the man's moral rectitude, and you still have to account for Ritter's incredible stupidity and/or arrogance. Scott Ritter is so stupid, he's probably responding to those "ENLARGE YOUR PENIS" spam scams. And a lumpy middle-aged guy who honestly thinks that teen-age girls are interested in watching him masturbate? That speaks of an arrogance and self-esteem inflated to the point of being delusional.

Ritter's credibility is toast. And not because of the sex. It's the stupidity and arrogance.

2003-01-23T15:51:00.000-05:00

DEPT. OF BAD ENGLISH

Believe it or not, the following sentence -- from Critiquing the Sitcom: A Reader -- was written by the associate director of the school of journalism and communication studies at a prestigious university:

All situation comedy, inasmuch as it is concerned with discursive hierarchies, is also concerned with sexuality, the latter being one of the dominant modes of manifestation of class difference. Sexuality is usually presented in its most highly domesticated form: the leading characters are married, have been married, or envisage marriage as a likely outcome in their lives. The discourse of sexuality in situation comedy constitutes it as necessarily heterosexual and necessarily unconsumable outside matrimony. This is a discourse of sexuality as it is spoken in many of the dominant institutions of the present social formation.

Ugh. A communications professor wrote it, and it scarcely communicates at all. Never mind the smarmy politically correct nonsense beneath all this dreck -- it is just unreadable.

When did bad English become mandatory in academic writing? Oh, the words are spelled correctly and the sentences scan, but no one would ever read such a thing for pleasure, nor derive any accidental pleasure from reading it, if it were assigned. Unless one is habituated to the postmodern lingo used here, it becomes a Herculean task merely to extract the meaning from such stuff. No wonder the liberal arts are in decay, when the supposed sages are incapable of writing anything more exciting or understandable than this?

1. Frankly, I don't know what "discursive hierarchies" means, but will guess it describes how rank is expressed through speech or dialogue. I suppose "discursive" has a particular connotation with the pomo crowd, and is sort of a specialist jargon, but to any general reader, this fancy word is opaque, a "stopper."

2. "Inasmuch" -- boy, there's your showoff word! Why not "so far" or "to the extent," either of which has the same meaning without being so pompous and ungainly?

3. Why "sexuality"? Whatever happened to plain old "sex"? Here we have a Latinate big word, all puffed up, when the good old Anglo-Saxon would do just fine.

4. Reckon "the dominant modes of manisfestation of class difference" is grad student for "the most important ways that class differences are shown." Again, the Latinate is substituted for the Anglo-Saxon: "modes" for "ways," "manifest" for "show." While the politically charged "dominant" is subbed for "important" or "prevalent."

5. Why "envisage," when "view" or "consider" or some other plain English word would work better and be more readily understood? This is purposeful obfuscation.

6. Why "matrimony" and not "marriage"?

7. And "the present social formation"? Who cannot imagine a dozen more concise and understandable ways of saying this?

OK, so let's re-write this garbage in good English:

To the extent that situation comedy is concerned with social rank, it is also concerned with sex, especially as a way of expressing class difference. Sex is usually presented in the most domestic form; the leading characters are married, have been married or consider marriage a likely outcome for themselves. In situation comedies, the portrayal and discussion of sex is based on the assumption that sex is always heterosexual and never occurs outside marriage. Such a discussion of sex reflects the status quo.

Now, that is not a transliteration, but it is saying essentially the same thing, and saying it in a way that it can be easily understood. It's absolutely wrong, of course, but because it is clearly written, now the reader can understand how wrong it is. Hey, wait a minute ....

2003-01-22T21:23:00.000-05:00

Marie Gryphon and Gene Healy go 'round on the extent to which wealth and status influence women's romantic choices. Allow me to muddy the waters ....

1. Consider that, from the time they are young girls, females tend to idolize wealthy and famous males. A girl of 11 or 12 will nearly wallpaper her room with photos of N'Sync or Nick Carter or whatever guy is the flavor-of-the-month with the teen magazines. Yes, the guys are cute, but they are not merely cute. They are singers or actors -- or, in the case of Prince William -- British royalty, and thus presumably wealthy. At any rate, these "teen idols" are successful and/or accomplished. They are not just the guy-next-door. By comparison, guys drool over the Playboy Playmate without any regard as to whether she has any accomplishments, any career, or any wealth.

Dorothy Stratten went from being counter girl at Dairy Queen to being Miss August 1979 in about a year. The millions of Playboy readers who admired Miss August cared nothing at all about Dorothy Stratten except for her physical beauty. They would have admired her no less had she been a high-school girl behind the counter of Dairy Queen.

Wealth and fame add substantially to a man's attractiveness, but add little or nothing to a woman's attractiveness. Some guys may be fans of Pamela Anderson or Marilyn Monroe, but merely because they are beautiful women -- talent, wealth or success have nothing to do with it. Whereas females will sometimes go wild for a guy who is not particularly good-looking, given that he is famous or successful. A classic case is Ringo Starr. The Beatles drummer was the shortest and homeliest of the Fab Four, yet at the zenith of Beatlemania (1964-65) perhaps the most popular, especially among American girls. There were perhaps millions upon millions of American guys at the time more handsome than Ringo, but it was the weallhy, famous guy who made girls scream.

Yes, there are females who fetishize "hunks," who put Chippendales calendars in their office cubicles, who still carry a torch for David Soul or John Schneider or some other has-been pretty boy. But such women are exceptions proving the rule. Beauty is beauty, and all admire it -- but men who are not beautiful can gain admiration in ways that women cannot.

Consider Bill Clinton and Henry Kissinger. If either one had been a shoe salesmen, his romantic options would have been quite limited; but because they were powerful men, Henry became a major-league babe magnet and 50-something Bubba had a 23-year-old intern flashing her panties at him. But you never heard of guys throwing themselves at Donna Shalala or Jeane Kirkpatrick, did you?

In fact, success may actually reduce a woman's romantic options. Many successful women, including quite attractive ones, complain that men are "intimidated" by them. Right-wing pundette Ann Coulter, for example, has complained of a lack of suitable romantic companions. In New York City, home to many of the world's most accomplished women, the "man shortage" is a constant source of woe for upscale 30-something single ladies.

2. Marie's allowance that "some college-educated, middle-class American women still choose men primarily on the basis of money" hinges on the word "primarily." Women exhibit a tendency to "marry up," that is to have a husband (or other romantic partner) of superior socioeconomic status. This preference has long been recognized, and has been demonstrated by social research.

Women, I believe, tend to establish some baseline of status for mates; this baseline is unconscious but very real. A college-educated woman may, without actually thinking about it, restrict her pool of potential mates to college-educated males. Women may "marry down," but they usually don't marry too far down: A woman with Ph.Ds may marry a fellow with only a bachelor's degree, but she is unlikely to marry a high-school dropout. But education is but one measure of status. A woman might limit her mating preferences to men with certain job statuses, or she may refuse dates from guys who drive ratty cars, or live at home with their mothers. At any rate, there is some threshold of status beneath which she will not consider a romantic involvement.

So it may seem to be true that women are not choosing men "men primarily on the basis of money," even though a college-educated middle class woman may automatically (but unconsciously) eliminate from consideration as potential partners about 40 percent of available men. The female accountant would not consider dating the cab driver, the janitor, the short-order cook -- the very suggestion seems absurd to her. Once she is allowed to draw that baseline, however, it may be true that men who meet that minimum socioeconomic standard are not judged "primarily" on money; but she is choosing from a restricted field -- and the basis of that restriction is largely economic.

3. It is to be remembered that attraction and actual romantic involvement occupy distinct, if overlapping, spaces. A guy may be attracted to blue-eyed blondes, but marry a brunette. A man might be handsome, but if he is arrogant and selfish, a woman might refuse to date him. So what we actually do in terms of dating and marriage may be at odds with what our underlying attractions are.

Most of all, let us remember that few people are entirely rational in their romantic endeavors. Battered wives stay with their abusers, and a woman may be always willing to forgive her philandering husband, no matter how many times he strays. Not many years ago, the "family values" governor of Mississippi bumped into his old junior high sweetheart, began an affair, eventually divorced his wife of 44 years and took up with his long-ago girlfriend. This entirely destroyed the governor's political career, and ruined the prospects of his party. Was this rational? Would any objective person think that the governor acted in his own best interests by this course of action? And while each of us criticizes the irrational romantic actions of others, we all cherish our own craziness.

Men may complain about women preferring rich men, but women know that those same men will go gaga for any chick with bleach-blonde hair and silicone implants. It is worth noting that among these complaining parties, none of the men are Bill Gates and none of the women are Pamela Anderson.

2003-01-21T14:22:00.000-05:00

IRRELEVANT FRANCE

To hell with the French, who live under the grand delusion that they are important enough that anyone cares what they think. France hasn't won a real war since Napoleon (come to think of it, Napoleon was ultimately a loser, too). To call France a third-rate country would be an insult ... to third-rate countries.

One good thing about the French: There aren't many of them. In a world of more than 6 billion people, France's 59 million are less than 1 percent of the global population. So 99 percent of the world's people are not French. (Tres bien!) There are more than twice as many Nigerians, Japanese and Bangladeshis as there are French, and the U.S. has more than four times as many people as France (not to mention, our women shave their legs and bathe regularly).

In fact, France doesn't even rank in the Top 20 most populous countries:

World's Most Populous Countries: 2002

Rank.....Country..................Population
1............China...................1,284,303,705
2. ...........India...................1,045,845,226
3.............United States........280,562,489
4.............Indonesia..............232,073,071
5. ...........Brazil...................176,029,560
6. ...........Pakistan..............147,663,429
7. ...........Russia.................144,978,573
8. ...........Bangladesh..........133,376,684
9. ...........Nigeria................129,934,911
10. ........Japan...................126,974,628
11. .........Mexico.................103,400,165
12. .........Philippines.............84,525,639
13. .........Germany................83,251,851
14. .........Vietnam..................81,098,416
15. .........Egypt.....................70,712,345
16. .........Ethiopia.................67,673,031
17. .........Turkey....................67,308,928
18. ..........Iran.......................66,622,704
19...........Thailand..................62,354,402
20...........United Kingdom......59,778,002
21...........France....................59,765,983

2003-01-21T04:01:00.000-05:00

BLOG DYSFUNCTION
Blogger is down! Drats!

2003-01-21T03:54:00.000-05:00

WEEVIL WANNABE
I have been told I might qualify for the Axis of Weevil, based on my ’Bama bloodline and gradimafication from JSU (Go Big Cocks!). Will the Membership Committee consider me as a pledge? I know, I know: My blog is crap. I haven’t updated in forever. And I think Monica Lewinsky is cute. But even with those strikes against me -- and despite the fact I haven’t been to Alabama in two years -- maybe y’all will see fit to admit me on double-secret probation, OK?

2003-01-11T01:30:00.000-05:00

DEAR SUSAN ....

Andrew Sullivan wishes to ask Susan Sontag: She supported president Clinton's military intervention in the Balkans. He did so without U.N. approval. Yet Bush is acting entirely under U.N. auspices with regard to Iraq. If Bush is an imperialist, why wasn't Clinton?

Exactly. If you can justify bombing Belgrade into rubble -- which is what NATO did -- because of Kosovo, then you can justify anything. There are millions of Serbs who will hate America until the day they die, because of what Clinton did. The bombing of Belgrade also cost us the goodwill of Russia, Serbia's traditional ally. If Russia is not now supporting the U.S. against Iraq, one reason is because of the foolish and unjust bombing of Serbia. Some have called for war crimes trials.

So, yes, absolutely right, Andrew: Nobody who supported the Clinton administration's Balkans policy has any standing to criticize Bush on Iraq.

2003-01-11T00:52:00.000-05:00

WHO'S WORSE: SADDAM OR RAMSEY?

Ramsey Clark, former stooge of the Lyndon Johnson administration, is now the stooge of Saddam Hussein, a tyrant perhaps even worse than LBJ (if that were possible). RightWingNews concludes that Clark has simply gone nuts. And who are we to argue?

2003-01-11T00:36:00.000-05:00

LEFT-WING 'IDEAS'

Let's call Michael Savage "mean"!

2003-01-11T00:27:00.000-05:00

'WISHFUL THINKING' VS. THE CONSTITUTION

Few Americans today have ever heard the name of M.E. Bradford (1934-93), who was almost the first nominee for the National Endowment for the Arts in the Reagan administration. A professor at the University of Dallas, Bradford's views on the Constitution were expressed in a series of lectures, collected and published posthumously as Original Intentions: On the Making and Ratification of the United States Constitution (Athens, Ga.: University of Georgia Press, 1993).

Bradford examines the history of the Constitution as a means of determining what the Founders had in mind. In an epilogue, he contrasts those "original intentions" with a very popular, but erroneous, view in which the Constitution itself is sort of an afterthought to the Declaration of Independence. As an example of such "wishful thinking" -- used to justify a powerful, interventionist role for the national government -- Bradford cites Mortimer Adler (1902-2001), the longtime University of Chicago professor credited with popularizing the "Great Books" curriculum.

Whatever Adler's greatness as a philosopher and pedagogue, he had great shortcomings as a constitional scholar, said Bradford:

To attempt to abstract from the Preamble to the Constitution a lever for transforming it into an instrumental document is ... to live without (that is, outside) the law, to invent powers that do not exist. And is also a transparent attempt to import the second paragraph of the Declaration -- as a mandate for national self-creation, refounding -- into our fundamental law. Yet no such action is required by the Preamble. No power is created by it. Rather, it explains what is intended by the rest of the document. A contemporary point of reference for all such nonsense as follows from an activist view of the Preamble and Declaration is Mortimer Adler's We Hold These Truths, a book "about" the Constitution whose weaknesses are specified by its very title. After Adler identifies the Declaration as a "preface" to the Constitution, we know how his argument will tend: that in the end that Declaration will, if allowed, swallow up the Constitution -- except for the Preamble, as ideologically construed. ...

The text of the Constitution proper plays no major role in [Adler's argument]. ... Instead Adler speaks of the Declaration ("the architectural blueprint for the government of the United States"), the Preamble, and (because of its value as a gloss on the Declaration) the Gettysburg Address -- "something like the sacred scriptures of this nation."

Adler is a marvel of obdurate misconception and wishful thinking in We Hold These Truths, going so far in one place as to maintain that "almost all the underlying ideas of the Constitution are to be found in the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence, in some phrases in Lincoln's Gettysburg Address and [only] here and there in the Constitution itself." These ideas, he says, are "equality, inalienable rights (or human rights), the pursuit of happiness, civil rights (to secure human rights), the consent of the governed, and the dissent of the governed." Adler's analysis would seem so week as to embarass his admirers -- did it not concern equality. No critical thought on that subject is now encouraged. Indeed, it may soon be forbidden.

Exactly so.

2003-01-10T17:28:00.000-05:00

TRUE CONFESSIONS. First I spilled about Monica, now Rachel Lucas 'fesses up to actually liking Air Supply. All right, I'll see your quarter and raise ya 50 cents: I like Barry Manilow music. Especially "Weekend in New England."

2003-01-09T06:55:00.000-05:00

COOL. IT WORKED. Got the links in without screwing up the rest of the code. And since nobody is actually reading this stuff yet, I will make a true confession: I think Monica Lewinsky is sexy.

No kidding. Blue eyes, long lashes, cute nose, lovely lips, nice teeth, large breasts and .. "more cushion for the pushin'," as they say. Yeah, she's a tramp and an airhead, not to mention a Democrat, but I guess I'm the only right-winger in America who admires a girl with much back.

2003-01-09T06:33:00.000-05:00

BABY BLOGGER BLUES - OK, I know my blog is incredibly lame. I don't know how to do much of anything beyond posting and linking. I've got this template thingy, but when I try to alter the HTML (using my rather limited skills) to add links, etc., it seems to corrupt regions of code that I never even touched! So I will just say, if you visit this blog, please e-mail me at hellobloggy@yahoo.com and say hi.

2003-01-09T06:27:00.000-05:00

Rachel says Michael Moore's bizarre rant about white "scaredy cats" on the 9-11 jets is evidence of a psychological disorder.

Nah, it's just plain stupidity. Moore was trying to be humorous, suggesting some homies from the hood would not have sat still for the hijackers. Did he seriously believe his rant? I doubt it. This was just a dirtbag leftwinger's lame idea of topical humor. But if Moore did believe his riff, it just shows what a shallow and stupid person he is.

A. The passengers on board the first three flights had no idea that the hijackers were on kamikaze missions. All three of the flights were hijacked roughly simultaneously.

B. The few accounts of these hijackings, received by cell phone from passengers or flight attendants, indicate that the hijackers on each flight demonstrated their intentions by killing at least one person and holding others at knifepoint. The sight of someone lying dead with his or her throat cut had the desired effect of shocking the other passengers and convincing them of the bloodthirsty determination of the hijackers. Also, I believe I read that the hijackers also (falsely) told the passengers that they had bombs. So the hijackers had some important advantages.

C. For two decades or more, Americans have been told that non-resistance is the best response to crime. Michael Moore, I believe, would endorse that advice. Congratulations, Mike: The passengers on three of the 9-11 flights were non-violent in their reaction to the hijackings.

D. On Flight 93, the only 9-11 where the passengers had timely warning of the suicidal intent of the hijackers, the "scaredy cat" white boys -- including Todd "Let's Roll" Beamer -- fought back and succeeded in preventing the jihadis from accomplishing whatever mission they were following.

To reach Michael Moore's idiotic conclusion about the 9-11 passengers, you'd have to be .... a Stupid White Man.

2003-01-09T03:28:00.000-05:00

IT'S A FREE COUNTRY and everybody’s entitled to their own opinion. NOT. Derbyshire is absolutely right. Everybody loudly declares that there are racists in America, but nobody (or, almost nobody) will ever admit to actually being a racist. And so the stupid charade goes on until some clumsy idiot says the wrong thing, and then everybody jumps up and down screaming “racist.” Trent Lott is probably no more racist than, say, Hillary Clinton, who refused to send Chelsea to D.C. public schools and then relocated to a 71% white suburb (14% black) of New York. If Hillary had lived in Pascagoula, Mississippi (21% black) you know she’d have sent Chelsea to a seg academy. But Hillary’s got the right (which is to say left) politics, so she could never be accused of racism, even if she were to put on blackface and do a mocking imitation of Al Sharpton in the well of the Senate. And Lott was good enough for Republicans until he made the mistake of complimenting a fellow Republican on a slow news day when Sidney Blumenthal and Thomas Edsall were paying attention. There is a horrible bipartisan hypocrisy on race that nothing, not even the L.A. riots, can seem to disrupt. It is depressing even to think about it.

2003-01-09T03:07:00.000-05:00

YES! YES! YES! I am blogging. I got tired of watching everybody else have all the fun, so here I am. Get over it.