Posted 2:07 PM by Angie Schultz

Childhood Haunts

Well, here's a Halloween story for you. It's about the time I saw a ghost.

I was about seven years old. I want to say it was Halloween, after trick or treating was done, but it was probably a few days before, or after. We lived in a house at the end of a street in a small town. There were a bunch of other kids on the street, and one night we were all hanging out together, just goofing around.

Now, my sister is two years younger than I, and apparently we (or I) thought she was too young and annoying to hang out with us (or me), so we (or I) made her go home, which she did with much pouting and sulking.

So we were all telling scary stories. One kid told us about the Boogie Man, who was a man all covered with boogers, see, and he was green all over, except for his heart, which you could see there in his chest, and it (needless to say) was all red.

Another kid told us the story of the Black Coffin, which I will now tell to you.

There was a woman who married a man for his money, and then she killed him, and had him buried in a black coffin, thirteen miles away.

The night after the funeral, she gets a phone call, and all the voice says is, "Black coffin thirteen miles from home."

Well, of course this is spooky, but she doesn't think much of it. Maybe some kids playing a prank.

The next night at the same time, she again gets a phone call. "Black coffin twelve miles from home."

And of course, the night after: "Black coffin eleven miles from home."

And so on, until two weeks after the funeral. She doesn't get the phone call she's come to expect, and she figures the prankster has gotten tired of it. Then, in the middle of the night, she wakes up, and hears---not the phone, but a voice---

Black coffin on the street.

Black coffin in the driveway.

Black coffin in the yard.

Black coffin on the porch.

At this point, she begins to hear thumping noises downstairs.

Black coffin in the doorway.

Black coffin on the stairs.

Thump Thump Thump...

Black coffin in the hallway.

Black coffin in your room.

Black coffin at your bedside.

Black coffin

GETCHA!

It went over big. I must have jumped a foot. As we sat there absorbing the impact of that story, we heard...a noise.

WoooOOOooooo

What the---? "Look at that!" One of the kids pointed behind me.

WoooOOOooooo

It was a ghost!

A ghost! Just like on Scooby Doo: an eerie white form, floating a few feet above the ground, with only two bottomless pits for eyes. And it was headed straight for us!

WoooOOOooooo

We scattered.

Screaming, we took off in random directions. I ran home, by a very roundabout route, since the dreaded Thing was between me and safety.

Finally, I arrived home and burst into the house. "Mom! Dad! We saw a ghost! It was white, and it went WoooOOOooooo!" They sat there for a second, and then they burst out laughing. "You mean like this?" Dad said, gesturing to my sister, sitting in the middle of the floor.

She threw a blanket over her head. "Wooo!"

"Uh, yeah." They all laughed. "You wouldn't let me play with you, so I scared you!" my sister said. She had been under that sheet. She had come back home, crying that I was being mean to her, and Mom and Dad had found an old blanket and cut eye holes in it, and sent her out to scare us.


I'd still be laughing about this today, except that they used my own security blankie to make the ghost. I had mostly outgrown it, but I was still really sad that they'd cut holes in it. "Oh, grow up," they said.

Posted 12:59 PM by Angie Schultz

The Intruder

This is a true story, for your pre-Halloween enjoyment.

Yesterday I was home alone, sitting at the computer in the gathering dusk[*], when I saw something move out of the corner of my eye. Of course, I'm always seeing something move out of the corner of my eye---and it's generally nothing. I'm always seeing things that aren't there.

But this time, something was there. There was a shadow moving against the light behind me. I turned a little, instinctively, wondering what could be making the shadow, when my hair began to stand on end. There was someone looking over my shoulder. I turned to stare right into a pair of monstrous green eyes! What could it be??

It is balloooooon! A couple weeks ago we got a big mylar balloon, a "black" (actually purple) cat with big green eyes and (inexplicably) a pumpkin on its chest. Those mylar balloons stay inflated forever. We stuck it in a corner of the study, wedged its ribbon under a bookcase, and largely forgot about it.

Well, it being the end of October, yesterday it was cool enough to turn off the air conditioning, open the windows, and allow some fresh oxygen molecules into the room. The little breeze blew the balloon from its station by the bookcase. It has about five feet of free ribbon on it, so by the time it reached me it was hovering just above my shoulder. Whatcha readin', Angie? Muahahahahaha!

I wrapped the ribbon around a TV antenna. That ought to hold it. Anyway, today it's back to being hot, and the windows are shut.

If that had happened at night, while Niles was away on a business trip, I'd still be under the desk, shivering.

[*] Actually it was about two in the afternoon, but it makes a better story at dusk, don't you think?

Posted 12:38 PM by Angie Schultz

Don't Bother, They're Here

O Joy! There will finally be peace in the Mideast. How do I know? Because Hollywood is on the job.

[N]ow a team of Hollywood film stars is about to visit the Middle East on a private peace mission, in the belief that their charms will work magic on the Israeli-Arab conflict.

Brad Pitt, his wife, Jennifer Aniston, and Danny DeVito are among the stars who aim to succeed where world statesmen have stumbled.

"The past few years of conflict mean that yet another generation of Israelis and Palestinians will grow up in hatred," reads a statement from Pitt and Aniston. "We cannot allow that to happen."

Wow! So, how are they going to accomplish this? Well, it's part of a 4 million pound peace initiative (So says the Telegraph---I don't know how you put a monetary value on that. Is there a bond market of some sort?) called "One Voice", brain child of American businessman Daniel Lubetzky.

Near the end of this AP article, One Voice is described as a plan "backed by academics, former U.S. officials and actors Danny DeVito and Rhea Perlman." (Gosh! Academics, former officials, and short, annoying actors! It can't fail!) The article further says:

The plan has brought together experts to create 20 secret pillars to solving the conflict. Those are now being put to focus groups of Palestinians and Israelis.

The 20 secret pillars of peace. Wasn't that by T.E. Lawrence? Well, he should know all about it. But I don't see how they're going to work if they're kept a secret.

This article is kind of vague too. Does One Voice have a website? But of course.

Here at last we get some details. I like the description on this article from Global Democracy (whatever that is) best.

A sidebar explains that:

The One Voice initiative is based on the premise that there is a silent majority among Israelis and Palestinians who want a negotiated settlement to their conflict and an end to the cycle of violence.

So far, so good. And then:

"The aim of this project is to awaken the voice of the silent majority on both sides and involve people in helping to solve the main issues by getting their input," [Mohammad] Darawshe [regional director and co-founder], explained.

"The first stage will be to collect signatures on a proclamation of principles, which will be the gateway for engaging in a dialogue on the way to drafting proposals for overcoming obstacles on the path to peace.

Friends, I have seldom in my life seen a finer example of ActivistSpeak: The signatures are a gateway for engaging in a dialog which will result in proposals for overcoming obstacles. Why just do something, when you can discuss the tactics for approaching the strategies of the protocols for implementing the instrumentalities which...

The article goes on:

"Those who sign the proclamation will then be eligible to participate in a truly public referendum, via e-mail, phone, and traditional door-to-door canvassing that we hope will reach hundreds of thousands if not millions of people. They will be asked to give their views on proposals formulated by experts to resolving the 10 key issues."

In other words, they're going to take a detailed poll to find out what people want. Although at this point is sounds as if the only people who count will be those who signed the petition in the first place. That's sort of what it sounds like here, in the group's FAQ. Only those people who signed in the first place get to discuss the actual issues. When (or if) the issues have been resolved:

Once we have consensus and have established the People's Mandate, we will partner with local grassroots organizations for them to deliver the mandate to the leaders in the region. Politicians will be confronted by the clear will of the majority and will face the need to listen and act accordingly or face replacement by future leaders, who will gain a mantle of legitimacy by adopting the People's Mandate.

Firstly, this won't be the People's Mandate, but the People Who Were Semi-Sane and Literate and Unintimidated's Mandate. Secondly, I invite you to consider the likely outcome of "confronting" the leaders of the PA by the "clear will" of the majority (assuming, of course, that it's different from what they're doing now), and their reaction upon being threatened with removal in favor of other leaders which will carry out the (putative) will of the majority.

I'm guessing a few executions would swiftly bring things back to the status quo.

I can only imagine that the founders of One Voice:

A) Are completely delusional about the mechanisms of "leadership" among the Palestinians, or

B) Think that the Israelis are the real stumbling block to peace. After all, it is only among the Israelis that the People's Mandate has the remotest chance of influencing the leaders.

The FAQ makes a very interesting read, addressing concerns like "Isn't One Voice a liberal dream?" with answers amounting to long-winded versions of "No." For example, one question asks whether democracy isn't foreign to Palestinians. The answer:

• Palestinians have one of the most developed civil societies in the Arab world. Non-Governmental Organizations serve as a buffer between the government and society, and have been very active for decades. In 1996, the Palestinian Authority held elections for President and a Palestinian Legislative Council, with universal suffrage.
  
  
• Palestinians have more democratic tendencies than most of their Arab neighbors, including Egypt, which has a peace agreement with Israel. Besides the fact that the majority of Palestinians crave democracy because they have been exposed to it, the democratic process is natural to all people with free will and does not require prior institutional expertise or structure.
  
  
• Regular Palestinians have already started to participate and have helped design the platform of OneVoice; hundreds of Palestinians have been extremely supportive and encouraging and are eager to participate in the initiative.
  

I am astonished to find that the existence of NGOs (such as? the ICRC? UNRWA? Hamas?) serving as "buffers" between government and society is somehow indicative of democracy. If it's democratic, why do you need a buffer? I am not astonished, but instead disgusted, at those who would hold up Arafat's 1996 farce as a genuine election.

The second point is telling: "...the democratic process is natural to all people with free will and does not require prior institutional expertise or structure." This must be why every human society has organized itself as a democracy, beginning with the ancient Sumerians and continuing on until the present day.

Wait, that's in an alternate universe. In the real world, societies are still often ruled by whoever is the strongest, or whoever can buy protection, or whoever has the largest tribe. While the dream of democracy may come easily, the actual implementation is a bit trickier. And many people who get the short end of their society's stick dream of revenge, and only call it democracy.

Those who overlook these facts are doomed to failure (and worse, ridicule).

Posted 8:57 PM by Angie Schultz

Falling to the Earth's Rubber Core

Natalie Solent kindly mentioned the email I sent her about the How and Why Wonder books. Gosh, I loved those. I have great stacks of them in storage. In storage---therefore I'm afraid I cannot look up the source of the nuclear strawberries she mentions.

But her memory reminds me of my own embarrassing encounter with the books. One of my favorites was Our Earth. Hey, who could resist exploding volcanoes? But better than that, Our Earth had illustrations of gemstones. In particular, they noted that the most valuable rubies were called "pig-eon's blood" rubies, because they were the color of the blood from a freshly-killed pig-eon. (I had never seen this word spelled before, and pronounced it in three distinct syllables, with a hard "g".) I was very dismayed to find the book talking so cavalierly of slaughtering pig-eons (which I thought might be something like pygmies), and wondered how many poor pig-eons had to die to compare their blood to the rubies. I figured this was a practice of earlier times, and trusted that this sort of thing wasn't allowed in these enlightened days.

(Mind you, in those days insects, not children, were nestled in cotton wool: Insects included information on the use of the "killing jar", and Sea Shells instructed you to kill your univalves by immersing them in boiling water, then prying them out of the shell with a wire hook. So you never knew what kind of horrors you were going to find. See below.)

But that wasn't the embarrassing part.

My grandmother gave me this book, which also included a section on the formation of the solar system. It said that the sun and planets were formed out of clouds of dust and gas which started swirling around, and formed themselves into a disk with the sun bulging at the center, and the disk eventually becoming the planets. But Grandma was a bit concerned, she said, because the book did not mention the role of God in the creation of the Earth. I assured her that God had caused the gas clouds to swirl. "After all," I reasoned, "You don't think those clouds started swirling around by themselves, do you?" St. Anselm, eat your heart out.

These days, we think gravity might have something to do with it.

But that wasn't the embarrassing part either.

No, the embarrassing part came when the book described the structure of the Earth. It said something of the nature, "The Earth is like a baseball, with its core of hard rubber, surrounded by packed string, covered in a thin layer of horsehide." It probably went on to point out that the earth has a molten core, surrounded by a thick mantle, covered in a thin crust, on which we live. Unfortunately, that wasn't clear to me. I thought they meant that the Earth was covered in a thin layer of horsehide. Disbelieving, I read it several times. This posed some problems:

1. All those poor horseys! (I worshipped horses.)
   
2. Where did the dirt come from?
   
3. For that matter, where did the horses come from? Didn't the horses evolve (of course I knew about that---I read about the eohippus in Prehistoric Mammals) on the Earth? Did the horses originally come from another planet? Or, was there some other covering to the earth before horses arose?
   
4. Who sewed the horsehides into the earth's covering? And why? Did God do that? What did He have against horses, anyway?
   

Eventually, I suppose, someone straightened me out, but I was awfully confused there for a while.

Anyhow, a check of my book list shows that I have 64 of these books, of which 49 are unique titles. The books came, not only in the paperback editions I had as a child, but in slightly fancier hardback editions with glossy covers, and also as "library editions", sturdily made with cloth covers. I have some of each of those. Most of them were collected at various book sales in the Bay Area. But my first week in Australia, the local hospital held a "fete", which included sort of a communal garage sale, and there I found a How and Why Wonder Book. It was as if a new planet swam into my ken. I had no idea that the books had penetrated into the Antipodes. Afterwards, I eagerly searched the local university book fair, bravely wading into the blood-drenched pit that was the children's section, and snatching at any blue-yellow-pink bars I saw, before the slavering mothers could find them.

In this way I found the coveted The Tower of London book, which was not published in the US, but that's the only UK-specific one I have.

Posted 9:47 PM by Angie Schultz

The Smallest Show on Earth

As always, if you have nothing to say, you can always take off from a Bleat.

This week, the Minnesota Family Lileks goes to a circus. Go read about that there. I use this mostly to tell you about the time I went to the Worst Circus in the World.

We went to the circus occasionally as kids. It was very stressful, because it entailed driving clear to St. Louis (about an hour away), watching Dad sweat bullets as he navigated the Big City, and then again as we walked from the parking lot to the car, expecting to be mugged at any moment.

Once in the circus we waded through ankle-deep litter to our seats, and then the fun began! Well, not really. TV spoils you for the circus. When I was a kid there was a televised circus at least once during the year. On TV you could see all the acts really close---the fearsome tigers, the daring trapeze artists, the disturbing clowns. It still was only marginally interesting, but at least you could see it well.

In person, you saw little blobs whirling about somewhere far below, until finally the music told you they were done and you could applaud. When it was all over, you spent five minutes being told no, you could not have a balloon, or a banner, or a stuffed tiger, and then you kicked through the litter back to the car, and fell asleep while Dad was still telling you to lock your goddamn door already.

So when we were given tickets to the circus in my senior year in high school, I was not terribly enthused. But I was curious to see the circus that would come to our tiny town. As far as I knew, we had never had a circus---or any other kind of social event---in our town, ever. Unless it occurred at the high school or the Amvets, we never had concerts or anything of that nature. And here was a circus coming to our little town, and it was free! (To me.)

So off I went with my friends to see (what turned out to be) the Sad, Sad Circus. This sort of thing must have inspired Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes.

We approached the circus tent by passing the tiger cages. We could have easily put in an arm and had it chewed off. There was no one and nothing to stop us. Nothing, except the profound disinclination of the tigers to bother us, or look at us, or even move. These were very tired tigers, with ragged coats.

Inside, the lion tamer didn't appear to be in mortal danger every second from the ferocious beasts only he could control. He practically had to get up behind the arthritic cats and shove them up onto their perches. I love big cats, and felt very sorry for them.

It wasn't just the cats who were tired. You could tell the human performers were too; if not physically tired, then tired of their work, of themselves, most of all of their audience. The female trapeze artist did not look like a fairy princess, she looked like a cigarette-y broad in shabby chiffon who was dying to get back to her bottle. When she took her bow she flopped over perfunctorily, twice, in the general direction of the audience, and stalked off as if her ass ached.

Best of all was the tightwire act. A man threw on a serape and sombrero, and, mimed drunkenly swigging from a bottle while the band played the "Mexican Hat Dance". I was mildly aghast. Those were the days, eh? He would drink from his bottle and wiggle back and forth and stagger across the wire, and even as bigoted as it was, it might have been worth seeing if he had been more than six feet off the ground. Truly. The wire was not as tall as he was.

I looked around at the audience and wondered what they thought of it. Were the grown-ups amused, the little kids impressed? I have the impression they sat there somewhat grimly, as if determined to be diverted, but having a bad time of it. Maybe they were thinking what I was thinking---that this would've satisfied our homebound ancestors, who never saw a real circus, but would not do for us. I wondered if this was the last of the small travelling circuses, and whether that was a bad thing.

No. I don't think it is.

Posted 4:02 PM by Angie Schultz

Easterdonnybrook

There's been a lot of bloggy controversy over Gregg Easterbrook's rant on violence in movies (specifically in the new Quentin Tarantino film Kill Bill), which concludes with:

Disney's CEO, Michael Eisner, is Jewish; the chief of Miramax, Harvey Weinstein, is Jewish. Yes, there are plenty of Christian and other Hollywood executives who worship money above all else, promoting for profit the adulation of violence. Does that make it right for Jewish executives to worship money above all else, by promoting for profit the adulation of violence? Recent European history alone ought to cause Jewish executives to experience second thoughts about glorifying the killing of the helpless as a fun lifestyle choice. But history is hardly the only concern. Films made in Hollywood are now shown all over the world, to audiences that may not understand the dialogue or even look at the subtitles, but can't possibly miss the message--now Disney's message--that hearing the screams of the innocent is a really fun way to express yourself.

As Meryl Yourish pointed out, this is a major WTF moment. How did Jews get into this? Why does he feel that their position as Jews have anything to do with it, rather than, say, their position as men, or as white men, or as rich white men, or as rich white men whose names contain the "ei" dipthong?

A few days later (about three weeks in blog time), Easterbrook issued an apology, saying that he had expressed himself poorly, that he stood by the thinking behind his words, but agreed that his phrasing was very bad.

Roger Simon pronounced this apology adequate, but just barely, saying "I would think some honest self-examination is in order." Meryl says she accepts it, but later suggests it's a "non-apology apology".

Other people---commenters on Roger Simon's blog, or on LGF (example here)---don't even give him that much credit.

While I think people were certainly right to wonder what the hell was going on, and to criticize his words, I think they're going overboard when they still suspect him of harboring (perhaps unconscious) anti-Semitic feelings. Here's the relevant bit of his apology:

I wondered about the consciences of those running Disney and Miramax. Were they Christian? How could a Christian rationalize seeking profits from a movie that glorifies killing as a sport, even as a form of pleasure? I think it's fair to raise faith in this context...

He deplores the over-the-top violence in films. He wonders about the guys who let Tarantino get away with this. What are they thinking? Are they Christian? How could a Christian justify (to himself) making such violent films?

So he looks up the movie executives in question. Huh. That theory falls flat---they're not Christians, they're Jews. Hmmm. But wait! That's even worse! Jews have been the targets of terrible violence in the past century, and even now have prime ministers baying for their blood. How can they justify making violence seem enjoyable, knowing that they are the disproportionate targets of violence?

It seems pretty clear to me that his reasoning went something like this.

Of course, I find it----well, I won't say "chilling", or "disturbing" or "ominous", but instead perhaps "telling"---that practically the first thing he wonders is, "Were they Christian?" I've heard this before; in this case it's tantamount to asking, "Weren't they Christian?"---an answer expected to be answered in the affirmative, and followed by a lecture as to why such-and-such is not Christian behavior.

In other words, it sounds as if Easterbrook was prepared to offer a little sermon on Good Christian Living to men who were (perhaps only nominally) Christians; in my youth, this was a favorite pastime of little old ladies with a lot of time on their hands. In this case, however, his targets foiled his plan by being Jewish.

I don't know whether this is SOP for him, or whether his mind was still on the case of Mel Gibson:

I think it's fair to raise faith in this context: In fact I did exactly that one week earlier, when I wrote a column about the movie The Passion asking how we could take Mel Gibson seriously as a professed Christian, when he has participated in numerous movies that glorify violence.

I don't think it's fair at all to raise faith in this context, unless of course you believe that it would be impossible for your co-religionists to have any other understanding of a Christian's role than the one you hold.

Gibson, however, may be an exception. He's claimed that he's created his movie, The Passion, out of his Christian faith. One might question the sincerity of his religious beliefs in the light of his movie career (though I don't really see why), but that's because he's made this explicit claim. Eisner and Weinstein have not (to my knowledge) made any such claim.

Sullivan's take on it is pretty much the same as mine, except that he sees Easterbrook's words as

...an appeal to leading Jewish citizens to take their faith seriously, as Gregg has also written, in an identical context, about Christians.

This is the flip side of what I wrote---Sullivan sees it as a call to take one's faith seriously, I see it as an unwarranted assumption about what their faith is, and nannyish interference, to boot.

Easterbrook doesn't sound like an anti-Semite to me. He claims to belong to some church that shares space and finances with a synagogue. This wasn't enough for some people. "Oh, right, some of his best friends are Jews. Where have we heard that before? You know he's a bigot when he says something like that."

But as Glenn Reynolds pointed out, long ago (look under the heading EUROBASHING):

Actually, though, the "some of my best friends" line was originally thought uncool because of what usually followed: "my shoeshine guy, the janitor, the bartender at the country club, the yard man," etc. The "best friends" line was thus rather hypocritical: these were people who were actually servants, and only promoted to "best friend" status in the service of rebutting charges of racism.

That's not the case here. There's no reason to believe Easterbrook is not sincere about his non-problem with Jews. But there's no way for him to prove it. The "some of my best friends" remark was often countered with, "Yeah, but would you want your sister to marry one?" Easterbrook could marry off his sister, his daughter, his mother, and still be tainted in some people's eyes.

Posted 11:32 AM by Angie Schultz

Over 4 Million Served

Natalie Solent points to this blog survey, which reports:

The most dramatic finding was that 66.0% of surveyed blogs had not been updated in two months...

...

Blogging is many things, yet the typical blog is written by a teenage girl who uses it twice a month to update her friends and classmates on happenings in her life. It will be written very informally (often in "unicase": long stretches of lowercase with ALL CAPS used for emphasis) with slang spellings...

You sometimes find Big Media types dismissing blogs on this basis---"Blogs? Yeah, I've heard of them. My 15-year-old niece has one. So do all her friends. I hardly think they are a source for informed commentary on current events, heh heh heh."

One might as well note that: "The typical newspaper supports a small community. Often it is distributed free, supported solely by advertising. Its chief features are birth, death, and wedding announcements; notices of upcoming community events, and, occasionally, news articles of purely local interest." This is true of many places I've lived, from the Rocket (of Jefferson County, Missouri) to the Eastern Suburbs (of Sydney) Courier.

Obviously they are not a source for informed commentary on national or international events. Heh heh heh.

(I wrote this, then shelved it, thinking I was behind the curve. Big Media may not like or respect blogs, but at least they know that not all blogs are teen angst billboards, right? Well, maybe not.)

Posted 1:36 PM by Angie Schultz

I. WANT. IT. NOW.

All last week, the Bleat (start there) was about Lileks's recent trip to New York to talk to his publishers about upcoming Lileksian goodness.

For example, from Tuesday:

When the meat and wine and gossip was done, it was back to the office to talk about the next book beyond “Desecrators.”...So I said THE IDEA, and bang! / shazaam, he got it. We almost did a little dance on the spot, so perfect was the concept. And no, I’m not telling....If all goes well, I’ll be kicking out a book a year, which is what I wanted to do anyway. Three more Institute books for a total of five...

Oh, for fun! And I'm glad your little idea was received so well.

Now.

WHERE'S THE BOOK, JAMES? WHERE THE HELL IS INTERIOR DESECRATORS? I WANT IT. I WANT IT NOW.

I did a google search and could not find anything which said that the book was forthcoming, which seems ominous for a book that was supposed to be published this fall.

WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH IT?

It better damn well be out for Christmas, that's all I'm saying. It better be under my tree come Christmas Day, or Someone Will Hurt.

...twitch...whimper...foam...

Posted 10:42 PM by Angie Schultz

Loonies to the Left of Me, Rednecks to the Right

OK, this is new. In an interview with the Charlotte Observer's Tim Funk, Rep Cass Ballenger (R - N.C.) blames CAIR (the Council on American-Islamic Relations) for the breakup of his 50-year marriage.

Seems his wife was unnerved that CAIR moved into an office near their house, and they both were worried that CAIR could blow up the Capitol, only a couple blocks away.

CAIR spokeman Ibrahim Hooper said:

Blah...blah...bigotry...blah...

Now, this all would be much more interesting if it didn't seem that Ballenger is kind of a jackass:

This isn't the first time Ballenger has been criticized for comments some consider insensitive. Last December, in another interview with The Observer, he said that then-Rep. Cynthia McKinney, an African American from Georgia known for her abrasive style, had stirred in him "a little bit of a segregationist feeling. I mean, she was such a bitch." He later apologized for what he called "pretty stupid remarks" even as an aide was painting white the black lawn jockey -- a symbol of racial insensitivity to many -- in Ballenger's front yard.

McKinney is six different flavors of unsavory, but I really think her colleagues in the House ought not to call her a "bitch" (or even words that rhyme with it) and witter on about segregation.

But it gets better:

Another stress on their marriage: the decision by "we holier-than-thou Republicans" in the House, Ballenger said, to ban gifts -- including meals and theater tickets from lobbyists -- that once meant "a social life for (congressional) wives."

...

Ballenger's wife also agreed with him that the GOP-controlled House's 1995 decision to restrict the money spent on members of Congress and their spouses had helped turn Washington into "a lousy place to live. ...It used to be you'd get invitations to the symphony or the theater ... I don't think you should get $1,000 trips to the Bahamas (from lobbyists). But I don't see where a dinner or a theater ticket is that bad. We had friends who are lobbyists."

So what did they do? They got a legal separation and now live in separate residences, although he still eats a lot of meals over at his wife's place.

Could this marriage have been saved? I don't suppose it would have been possible to move away from CAIR, and to buy your own damned theater tickets? That would've been cheaper than a separation and separate residences.

Twits.

It would help if people opposed to McKinney and suspicious of CAIR wouldn't act as if they longed for the old days when all these coloreds knew their place and you could let a nice feller buy you a dinner or a car.

I found this as a little snippet in the Houston Chronicle, where it came from AP. The Chronicle's title was "Lawmaker blames split-up on Muslims", whereas the Observer's title was "Ballenger grouses about Muslims, lobbyist limits". You don't see much grousing in newspaper headlines these days. One gathers that he grouses quite a lot, and always expects to see it in the newspaper.

UPDATE: Not one to open itself to charges of being unfair and unbalanced, the Observer prints Froot Loopy goodness from the other side---to wit, the assertion by a fellow writing for the Islamic Political Party of America, that Muslims beat Columbus to the punch:

It is important for the American public to know that although this political movement by Muslims may be somewhat new, Muslims have been a part of the fabric of this society, in some fashion, since before Columbus. Muslim explorers visited the West Coast long ago. Arabic writings have been found in some caves in California. The name "California" comes from the Arabic word calif, meaning ruler or leader.

Actually, the name "California" comes from "Calafia" the queen of a fictional land of women warriors. I suppose it's possible that "Calafia" came from "Caliph": after all, Arabs occupied Spain for hundreds of years, until driven out in 1492, and many Arabic words entered the language.

I think I'll write the Observer on behalf of the lost continent of Mu.

Via the Lizard King.

Posted 12:18 PM by Angie Schultz

GET ME RE-WRITE!

Those of you who follow the new Star Trek incarnation, Enterprise, but haven't seen the latest episode, might want to go away now, because there will be spoilers.

OK, so, Archer and the crew are looking for information about the Xindi, plus a way to synthesize the magic beans that will keep the space-time knotholes from screwing up the ship. They "accidentally" rescue a luscious slave girl, who turns out to be a Xindi spy. She has some sort of juju which turns her into an organic medical scanner---she can read people's insides and store the information.

This is handy to have. The Xindi want it because they're building a bioweapon that will wipe out humanity without having to go through the trouble of blowing up Earth. It's tricky to build a planet-busting weapon without busting the planet you're building it on.

She gets her info, and tries to return to the Xindi ship, but Archer is on to her, and has her thrown into the brig. So the Xindi board the Enterprise to get her back.

The Enterprise crew then put on The. Lamest. defense action since Dr. Smith was last in charge of the Jupiter II. You'd think that an airlock would be the easiest thing in the universe to defend. It's small, the enemy has to come through this tight space, and if you can break the seal, they all die. But the crew cannot manage this simple task. Three whole people gather to defend the first airlock, fire off a few rounds of comical, squeak-toy sound effects, then retreat.

The Xindi get to their spy in the brig. Archer gave instructions to the guards of the nature, "They will not get to her." To me, this means that if the Xindi do get in, the spy dies first. But no. The supposed defenders are nowhere to be seen when the Xindi come busting in.

Forget quagmire; our mission is an instant failure. Earth is doomed.

Fortunately for our heroes, however, they are up against an enemy even stupider than they are. The Xindi are running all over the ship at will, felling crew right and left, and it never occurs to them that they could just grab a couple of humans and they'd have their info. Hell, they didn't have to go through all this cloak and dagger crap, they could have just arranged to kidnap some humans at the last planet.

But I guess you couldn't really expect sense from a race that would toast Florida then retire to tinker with their weapon (so to speak) for another decade or so, secure in the knowledge that they sure showed those Earthmen.

There's a slight suggestion that she has sabotaged the Xindi's plans by giving them false info, but that's not at all clear.

As the Flea says, this starts out as a red-blooded, bare-chested, he-man episode of the original stripe. Kirk, though, would have done something boldly stupid, not cautiously stupid. Perhaps they (the writers) are still trying to recover from their "protocol"-obsessed Voyager days. They're lucky Field Marshall von Ashcroft doesn't have them taken out back and shot. I would have.

Flea also says, The Flea is still waiting for Starfleet-issue red-shirt uniforms. Last night one of those Marines they took along bought the farm, and I said, "Hey, where's his red shirt?" You have to watch for the silvery-black Marine uniforms.

Posted 10:24 PM by Angie Schultz

Dissent Crushed, Film Suppressed at 11

Ah, yes, 'tis fall and the smell of the crushed blossoms of dissent wafts through the air, felling puppies and kitties.

British-born Alex "Who?" Kingston tells all to the Independent, in its fawning profile of her. (Seriously, I have never heard of this "leading light" of American TV.) Author James Rampton wastes no opportunity to grovel in penning this classic portrayal of the honest British entertainer forced by cruel circumstance to spend her days in the grueling sun, enduring pitiless luxury and the drooling, slope-browed locals, to pursue her craft in the belly of the Beast. Ah, but her purity is untouched:

Despite all those years surrounded by psycho-babbling lifestyle gurus, I'm mightily relieved to say that she has not gone all Californian on us. That is most obviously demonstrated by the actress's outrage that in the US virtually all criticism of Bush's policies has been deemed "unpatriotic" and suppressed.

Er, but James, that's so Hollywood!

Kingston also says,

Quite unprompted, midway through our interview she says that The Independent offers "the best journalism in the world". This is not, I hasten to add, just gratuitous flattery. It is expressed as part of the actress's deep concern about the state of the media in the US.

...

In addition, she is livid about the McCarthyite witch-hunting of anyone who dares voice criticisms of the US President. "It frustrates me," Kingston asserts. "And it's not just because I'm European - thousands of Americans share the same frustrations."

You know, every time I read something like this, I think, "Gosh, a lot of people are saying that. Maybe there's something to it. Perhaps, finally, this person will reveal the Truth! She will give an example of the excesses of the Bush administration! She will blow the whistle on Ashcroft's crushing of dissent!" Let's read:

"...A comic called Bill Maher hosted an irreverent current-affairs talkshow called Politically Incorrect, where celebs would come on and discuss topical subjects. In one edition, he wanted to provoke a debate, so he said that while the terrorists who had hijacked the planes on September 11 were many things, they weren't cowards. His show was instantly axed, and Maher lost his livelihood. Isn't he allowed to make an inflammatory statement in order to get a reaction?"

Phweet. OK, stand down red alert. Sound the all clear.

Ah, yes, Bill Maher. Said something that pissed off his sponsors (actually, he said that it was Americans who were cowardly), and his show went off the air instantly. I mean, sometime in the next nine minutes! No, wait, months. It was nine months. The episode in question aired on September 17, 2001, and (per the above Wikipedia link), Maher's show ended on June 16, 2002. The cancellation was announced about a month before.

His show was on the air for nine months after Fed Ex and Sears pulled their sponsorship. It was not suppressed by the Bush administration. As for Maher's "lost...livelihood", he seems to have found it again. He just had Michael Moore, Charles Barkley, and Aaron McGruder on his show (the fourth horse must've thrown a shoe). Oh, and he has a blog. Happy Day!

Given her big chance to reveal the McCarthy-ite nature of Bush's America, she has to trot out Bill Maher. If that's the best she's got, I think we can cancel that order of crosses.

But let's look at this part again:

"Isn't he allowed to make an inflammatory statement in order to get a reaction?"

This is exactly what he did. He did not try to "provoke a debate", he tried to get a reaction. He didn't say something inflammatory because he believed it; he did it to get a rise out of his audience. This is not debate, or dissent, this is infantile exhibitionism. This is the equivalent of going downstairs and shitting on the carpet in front of Mommy and Daddy's party guests. Why people pay for this sort of thing, from Maher or Stern or Limbaugh, I don't know.

But then, when Maher got more reaction than he bargained for, he whined that he was being "persecuted". How unfair, that people no longer want to pay to be offended!

So, Kingston is just another Hollywood nitwit who has somehow gotten the idea that she (and others like her) are owed a living, that their special specialness entitles them to live in luxury without actually having to please anyone for it. Why, they're doing us a favor by entertaining us! Surely anything they want to say should be OK by us.

Moving along in this tongue bath, we find that Kingston is starring at Boudica (or possibly Boadicea) in a new movie co-produced by WGBH. Kingston and Rampton are wriggling with glee, anticipating the American reaction to this film. For you see:

Many strands of Andrew Davies's biopic about the feisty Celtic warrior queen could have been ripped from today's headlines. The wily old writer's script is full of such current buzz-phrases as "brute force - it's the only language these savages understand," "read my lips," "client state" and "the peace process".

Ugh. I hate modern slang in historical movies. It sounds ignorant. Hell, it sounded ignorant when George Bush said "read my lips" the first time. Enjoy the farm-fresh "it's the only language these savages understand", which was not only in practically every movie set in colonial-era Anywhere, but was probably said by the Cro-Magnon of the Neanderthal. And I don't think the ancients really had the modern grasp of the "peace process".

"What you call terrorism," Prasutagus fumes, "we call defending our home." Prasutagus' even ballsier wife, Boudica (portrayed with characteristic spiritedness by Kingston) then wades in, urging her husband to resist the brutal invaders: "This is our land, and we'll fight for every last inch of it. If we die, we'll die a glorious death." Do these words sound at all familiar?

Hmmm...

Oh thus be it ever
When free men shall stand
Between their loved homes
And the war's desolation...

Hmmm...no? Thought not.

No, actually, it doesn't really sound familiar. Care to give us a hint?

The sheer topicality of this tale of a defiant people fighting back against an imperialist invader proved irresistible to Kingston. "Andrew [Davies], in his usual naughty way, draws modern parallels," laughs the 40-year-old actress..."He cheekily puts President Bush's words into the mouths of the Romans. In an early draft, the Emperor Nero even called his enemies 'the axis of evil.'

Tee hee!

"Given what's happening in the world at the moment, you could easily liken the Romans to the Americans. I'm certain that Andrew was influenced by world events as he was writing Boudica," she says, before adding with a mischievous smile: "I will be fascinated to see the American reaction to the film."

What if the reaction is that we can do without your snotty British arse on our TV screens, and send you back to enjoy the cold and damp, hmmmm? Then you can spend your time reflecting with satisfaction on your martyrdom.

Sadly, this will not come to pass.

But remember, "Boudica" on PBS---Must Miss TV!

(Via veteran Oppressor Tim Blair.)