Pregnant Pause
Getting Less Squeamish By the Minute
The hostess with the moosest
Over in the Frumistan province of the NR caliphate, our pal David is not happy about the Palin pick. I am - for several reasons.
First, Governor Palin is not merely, as Jay describes her, "all-American", but hyper-American. What other country in the developed world produces beauty queens who hunt caribou and serve up a terrific moose stew? As an immigrant, I'm not saying I came to the United States purely to meet chicks like that, but it was certainly high on my list of priorities. And for the gun-totin' Miss Wasilla then to go on to become Governor while having five kids makes it an even more uniquely American story. Next to her resume, a guy who's done nothing but serve in the phony-baloney job of "community organizer" and write multiple autobiographies looks like just another creepily self-absorbed lifelong member of the full-time political class that infests every advanced democracy.
Obama over the top
Events may prove me wrong. But I believe that in hindsight — even, say, a year from now — the high point of the failed Barack Obama presidential candidacy will be recognized as having occurred a few seconds before he spoke these lines in his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention tonight:You know, John McCain likes to say that he'll follow bin Laden to the gates of Hell. But he won't even follow him to the cave where he lives.
What a nasty, vile statement. What a palpable, obvious, and deliberate lie. What a calculated insult, in a speech guaranteed to have been combed over in advance for anything that might generate misunderstandings, in a speech guaranteed to receive more national attention than anything Obama has said to date in his entire life. What a great insight into the shallow, immature thinking and overweening, craven opportunism of this man who's never done anything, never risked anything, never shown an ounce of even political courage (much less physical courage) — but yet would be the Commander in Chief of the United States of America.
This is what we've been fighting in Iraq...
...not teenage girls with explosives strapped to them - but the people who would strap explosives to teenage girls.
How can society continue to receive the benefits of journalism, given the current media environment? Also, which players might provide those benefits, and how?
Probably that solution (or more likely, set of solutions) won't look or work like traditional journalism. It might not be done by "professional journalists" or "news organizations." It may have different values and standards. It might not even be "a business." And yes, the big risk is that society could experience harm during this transition. But society also can participate in finding new solutions.
Kan. university fires mooning debate coachFor one thing, these is something wonderful about a hippy-dippy, Gramsci-spouting professor losing his composure after being accused of racism and exercising his “white hegemony”.
"Obviously it got out of control, but to be honest I thought I was in a safe house," Shanahan said. "I thought I was part of a community that handled its problems internally and that recognized the dangers of exposing ourselves - no pun intended - to the rest of the country. It is so difficult as a non-participant to understand what is going on in the debate round." .Translation: Tax-payers and parents are to be treated like mushrooms. They can foot the bills, but they are not supposed to know what happens on campus
A Fort Hays official described the pony-tailed, bearded Shanahan -- who routinely goes barefoot -- as a "nonconformist" and provocative teacher.Fifty years ago Shanahan would qualify as a nonconformist. Now he is just one of a vast, crude, shaggy herd.
Shanahan's Outbursts Not Limited To YouTube
The gratingest generation
If our era could have its own coat of arms, it would be a yak against a background of mush. This must be the golden age of endless and pointless talk.
Every sports events seems to be preceded by all kinds of talk - whether by athletes repeating cliches we have heard a thousand times, announcers making pseudo-profound sociological observations, or fans rambling on incoherently.
Farewell to an American hero
For the better part of 60 years, two old Army pilots who loved each other argued over many a meal and drink as to which of them was the second best pilot in the world.
The two shared the cockpits of old Beaver prop planes and Huey helicopters; they shared rooms in military hooches all over the world; they shared a love of practical and impractical jokes and they shared an undying love of flying and soldiers and the Army.
They also shared membership in a very small and revered fraternity of fewer than 105 men who are entitled to wear around their necks the light blue ribbon and gold pointed star that is the Medal of Honor, America’s highest decoration for heroism above and beyond the call of duty.
RTWTsince shortly after September 11, 2001, the television networks have refused to show footage of the terrorist attacks or the collapse of the twin towers. They have done this on the ground that the footage would be too upsetting to Americans; therefore they are sparing our sensibilities. What they really mean, I think, is that if Americans could see that footage their anger against the Islamic terrorists would be rekindled and they may be more likely to support aggressive actions to defeat them. They might conclude, for example, that two or three minutes of waterboarding is a small price to pay to avoid such attacks in the future.
So, if we're going to have a debate about when it is necessary to show graphic images of violence so that Americans can be better informed about the consequences of government policies, by all means let's go at it. But let's not pretend that the only time the issue arises is when a newspaper wants to publish photos of dead and dying soldiers for the purpose of turning public opinion against a military conflict.
Steelers' Farrior agrees to new contractHe does not get a lot of press attention, but he may be the Steeler's best defensive player over the last four years. Hampton, Smith and Troy are great, but each have lost time to injuries. Farrior has been there game in and game out.
Actually, now that I think about it, it's a bit like a game of Dungeons & Dragons without dice or graph paper. Like a role-playing game, each participant agrees to indulge the others in their shared mutual fantasy; each player agrees "You are a mighty warrior, and I am a rogue, and this kid over here is a wizard." The "game" works to the extent that each participant buys into, and reinforces, the conventions and assumptions of the agreed-upon fantasy world.
The only difference, really, is that they're all playing the same character -- persecuted rebels for truth, hounded at every turn by an Evil Tyranny bent on killing them or shipping them off to the Salt Mines of Outer Tenubiah.
And they get very pissy when someone comes in and disturbs their communal fantasy "political" cosplay, by speaking to them "OOC" (out of character).
As Avery Island is to Tabasco sauce, so were 1970s Berkeley and San Francisco to white liberal guilt. When I was a fifth-grader in the Berkeley public schools (the first school system in the nation to integrate without a court order), I was taught—as part of a two-year course in Black History—that the word picnic had derived from the days of lynching parties, that it stood for “pick a nigger” and for the basket lunches that white women would pack for their families to eat while they enjoyed the spectacle. I happened to mention this to one of my parents’ academic friends, who sputtered in outrage—the word had originated from the French verb piquer and had nothing to do with American lynching. But it would not have occurred to her, the mother of two children in the schools, to complain about it. Black History, as it was then taught, was perhaps not academically rigorous, but it was understood by those white parents who even knew about it (in those days, middle-class parents did not carefully track their schoolchildren’s education like a rising or falling stock) to be part of some larger enterprise, some settling of an old debt.
Girl, InterruptedI have never understood why the Ford Justice Department went all out to prosecute Hearst. Her "membership" in the SLA was always a dubious concept in light of the ordeal she suffered after her kidnapping. By prosecuting her, the DOJ threw away their best witness against the remaining SLA terrorists and their accomplices.
The SLA was probably the first band of revolutionaries to marry a commitment to radical feminism with the use of systematic rape as a means of recruitment.That sort of cold-eyed realism was in short supply in 1976. Patricia Hearst had the bad luck to be kidnapped, rescued, and then tried when America was out-of-its-mind crazy.
Last season the Packers were 13-4, and they came within an overtime of going to the Super Bowl. How many Green Bay players from that team can you name, other than Favre? His constant media antics had the effect of denying recognition to his teammates. In June, Tom Pelissero of the Green Bay Press-Gazette reported, "There is a substantial faction of younger players who are eager to play with Aaron Rodgers. Favre is at least a decade older than all but six guys on the roster. He dressed in his own locker room. He had minimal social interaction with teammates. Rodgers is one of the guys, and plenty of them are pulling for him." He dressed in his own locker room? In the past few seasons, Favre has been all about Favre, as if his teammates didn't exist. A man who wanted to maximize his own celebrity and income, at the expense of his teammates, would behave in that manner.
Franchise Players: Best all time for every NFL team - NFL
