Wednesday, November 30, 2005
MYSTERIOUS CULTURE EXPLAINED
Michael Gawenda, The Age’s source of Washingtonian wisdom, doesn’t know when Thanksgiving ends and Black Friday begins.
CONTEXT DILUTED
Damian Lataan reports some curious editing over at Margoland:
For some reason the editors at Webdiary have become frightened of using the word ‘Jewish’ and, where I have used the word ‘Jewish’, the editors have replaced that word with ‘Zionist’ which has the effect of diluting the context of the original post.
Webdiary has a history of problems with these terms.
TWO YEARS OF METAPHORICAL PURPOSE
Jeff Alworth—who’d earlier declared “the turkey was a plastic fake”—now performs some comical wriggling:
Whether or not the turkey was fake has little bearing on its purpose as metaphor ...
So now the bird is just a metaphor? Better tell that to Kevin Zeese, whose recent column mentioned Alworth’s plastic literary device six times. Republished in the American Chronicle, this howler is added in the very first line of Zeeses’s piece:
Last year President Bush made a surprise visit to the troops in Iraq, put on an Army jacket and served the troops a turkey.
Bush’s visit was in 2003. Meanwhile, fellow turkey-lie repeater Mother Sheehan is upset over alleged media inaccuracies.
Tuesday, November 29, 2005
COLUMN PERPLEXES CONSUMERS
This week’s Continuing Crisis column for The Bulletin challenges you to sort genuine ridiculous products from fake ridiculous products. Answers to follow ...
UPDATE. Answers here. Prepare to be shocked!
FOR EMAIL BEFORE HE WAS AGAINST IT
Robert Fisk earlier this month:
I don’t waste my time with blogs, I don’t use the Internet, and I don’t use e-mail. I work.
And Robert Fisk in 2003:
“I was giving a talk last December to a very large group of British Jews ... and I said, ‘I’m on your side—let’s fight anti-Semitism together, but don’t start libeling me,’ ‘’ Fisk says. “If you stand up to people, they’ll respect you for it. I had an e-mail from a Cambridge University American law student, and he said, ‘You are an evil f—man, ’ so I called him up—he put his telephone number on it.”
(Via Angus Cook)
Monday, November 28, 2005
PLASTIC TURKEY FRENZY
Mother Sheehan, shown here at a triumphant book signing, joins the plastic turkey conspiracy:
I have met so many amazing, loving, and delightful people since I started my quest to end the occupation of Iraq. My Gold Star Families are especially dear to me. In their tragedies they have found a way to bring their horrible grief to the forefront of the American consciousness and help America see the terrible price some of us have had to pay. One of my Gold Star Moms had her son commit suicide two years ago as George was smirkingly serving the plastic turkey.
Question: is Sheehan lying or is she the victim of poor intelligence? Also joining the plasticists is Kevin Zeese:
In 2003 President Bush made a surprise visit to the troops in Iraq, put on an Army jacket and served the troops a turkey. The photograph and video of a smiling president serving the loyal troops was played throughout the country - over and over. Only later did we discover that the service was a staged event and the turkey was plastic.
Except we’d learned earlier that it wasn’t! Jeff Alworth is yet another plastic turkey newbie:
After invading Iraq, Bush celebrated Thanksgiving with the troops. Pictures of him in front of a golden turkey were whisked to FOX News, who was trying to help give birth to another myth. (The turkey was a plastic fake and the soldiers got the same old KBR offering.)
These people are idiots.
APPOINT A PRO
The crappiest Media Watch host yet has fled after just one year. Perfect replacement: John Gatfield.
PM AND ME
As of yesterday, Pajama Media’s editorial board is missing one member.
Me.
Simple decision, really. PM needs people who can devote themselves full-time to rescuing the project after a launch that was, to say the least, problematic. It would be wrong for me to continue any involvement without being able to help to that extent. Hopefully PM will turn things around; I’d love to see it succeed. Meanwhile, in other semi-related US/Pajamas developments:
* The completely wonderful Emmanuelle Richard (who yesterday wore a t-shirt bearing the slogan “Childless Whore”) captures my and Matt Welch’s delight upon hearing the tune Wake Up America;
* James Lileks tells the story of a Thanksgiving I won’t soon forget, God bless his beautiful family;
* Clive Davis admits that I was right all along about jet-lag cures;
* Young Curmudgeon libellously claims that I’m “nice” and “friendly”;
* Alarming News is similarly loose with the facts;
* Kesher Talk even ventures that I’m courteous;
* And La Shawn Barber also will be a target of my planned class-action libel suit.
* Just as well Dr Alice hasn’t posted anything yet. The Doc turned up last night at the Welch/Richard compound to reveal many insider LA medico stories; another absolutely sweet Angeleno.
GEORGE BEST
George Best has taken his final penalty. Met him once, in the late 80s; very friendly chap until he discovered I was a journalist.
WHY DON’T YOU MARRY HIM
The Sydney Morning Herald’s Andrew West just loooooves Hugo Chavez:
The great Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is, yet again, humiliating George Bush by showing him how a national leader should act.
It gets worse. God only knows how much West—a mainstream reporter at an allegedly general-interest newspaper—adores Castro.
ONLY REPORTING THE BAD STUFF
James Q. Wilson crafts the speech George W. Bush should deliver:
My fellow Americans: We are winning, and winning decisively, in Iraq and the Middle East. We defeated Saddam Hussein’s army in just a few weeks. None of the disasters that many feared would follow our invasion occurred. Our troops did not have to fight door to door to take Baghdad. The Iraqi oil fields were not set on fire. There was no civil war between the Sunnis and the Shiites. There was no grave humanitarian crisis.
Saddam Hussein was captured and is awaiting trial. His two murderous sons are dead. Most of the leading members of Saddam’s regime have been captured or killed. After our easy military victory, we found ourselves inadequately prepared to defeat the terrorist insurgents, but now we are prevailing.
U.S. Navy construction apprentice Nick Fotoples might second that view:
He supports the war declaring Iraqi freedom, and said the media is distorting events to carry out an agenda. He described a situation where Iraqis working in the PX appear happy to have freedom for the first time, water for those who wouldn’t otherwise have it and 16 new schools as examples of what the U.S. military has accomplished in the country ...
He said he hears the war is in vain, and he disagrees. He emphasized the point by recounting the rape and murder of an Iraqi family. The terrorists raped the wife in front of the husband, then killed him and his child. The wife survived at the mercy of the terrorists only so she could tell the story.
“If that happened in the states, we’d be all over it, but if it happens somewhere else it’s OK. That’s bullshit in my book,” Nick said.
Fotoples’ father doesn’t support the war, which he believes was based on lies; nevertheless, he’s with his son so far as the press is concerned:
“He’s surrounded by military guys, and he’s hearing a lot about the liberal media. They’re real sore about the successes that they’re having over there not being told,” Bob said. “My mom and my sister tell me this all the time; they say the media isn’t reporting the good stuff; they’re only reporting the bad stuff.”
COLUMN WEARS HAT, RHINESTONES
The latest Continuing Crisis column in The Bulletin mentions cops, hookers, Keith Urban, Lee Ann Womack, Debbe Dunning, Tim Allen, Pamela Anderson, and Glen Campbell (see also this, by Jim Lowney, in which certain comical themes are revisited).
Among other excellent items in The Bulletin: Eric Ellis and Julie-Anne Davies report on Nguyen Tuong Van, soon to be hanged in Singapore.
Thursday, November 24, 2005
MINI APPLE IS
Apologies for so few posts; it’s a little difficult to maintain internet access when driving a cube-shaped baby Pontiac (I think the model type is Zion—a Pontiac Zion) through interstate snow drifts. Especially when the car involved offers no evidence of an engine, apart from requiring fuel.
Classic rock FM radio fact: Gimme Three Steps was played four times today, narrowly defeating Sweet Home Alabama (3 repetitions) as the Lynyrd Skynard classic rock selection of the day. It even beat out Piano Man, the opening notes of which were detected just twice. Once, in fact, as three youngsters driving in front of me were nearly pitched into a snowbank in response to a trucker’s impatient honking. Snow driving is fun; make any incorrect move and you’re all ditch-dwelling or tree-thumping. Thing is, almost any move is wrong. Driving on impacted snow is like performing heart surgery on a hummingbird.
Through sheer driving genius (and the lack of snow post-Chicago) I’m now at the Minnesota compound of James Lileks, who tomorrow will try to establish a local tradition of turkey consumption. It could catch on; he’s very influential.
More soon. Must add wine to that turkey idea.
And Happy Thanksgiving to everybody. We all of us have a whole bunch to be thankful for.
Sunday, November 20, 2005
CHIMPFEST 2005
Chimpy McBushitler? Chimpron W. Hitlerburton? Chimperial pResident of ZioniKKKa, Abu Jesus W. Chimplerstein? Come forward with your own suggestions as we search for the ultimate chimp-themed Presidential slur.
Saturday, November 19, 2005
QRAZY QUIGGIN QLAIM
Professor John Quiggin writes:
In the leadup to the Iraq war, we were repeatedly told that anyone who disagreed with the rush to war, or criticised the Bush Administration, was anti-American.
It’d be helpful if the Professor supplied some evidence of this.