There's Still Hope For The Republic!
- "Clinton Hires 3-Breasted Intern!!" --Headline screaming on the cover of World Weekly's current issue on display at a local Kroger store. Also prominently featured was a photograph of the purported creature, bearing three cantaloupe-sized glands on her chest. (January 7, 2002)
- "Rumsfeld is the anti-Alda. . .he is the anti-Clinton. Whereas Clinton was a pain-feeler, Rumsfeld is a pain-inflicter, at least where the country's enemies are concerned." --Jay Nordlinger, writing about defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld in the December 31, 2001, issue of National Review.
- "They are being used on frontline al-Qaeda and Taliban troops to try to kill them." --Donald Rumsfeld, responding to a reporter's press conference question about why America was using such heavy bombs in the Afghanistan campaign.
- ". . .he was raised in (Marin County, California) the very crucible of cultural nuttiness. He is a child of hot tubs, massage therapy, cultural relativism, amicable divorce, racial guilt, vegan diets, Chardonnay, anti-Americanism and "Teach Peace" bumper stickers. He is the product of grey-bearded radical high-school history teachers, old Volvos, public radio, women's bookstores, pita-wrap sandwiches and clunky brown sandals. . .He was raised to believe that every crazy idea and every loony impulse he ever had was valid, that all cultures are basically equal (except for ours, which is a good deal worse), and that America is a pretty bad place."--Rob Long, writing about American Taliban John Walker, in an article in the December 31, 2001, issue of National Review.
- "There's been a mixup someplace over the years. He's tried to get it straightened up over the years and, for some reason, someone hasn't let him."--Chan Gailey, the new head football coach at Georgia Tech, quoted in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution in response to Tech's January 28 admission that it had released a biography of newly-hired assistant coach Rick Smith which contained "false information." This is Georgia Tech code for: Smith's resume had been "doctored up," and contained some lies. Smith's resume, it turned out, claimed he had played football and baseball for Florida State, but in fact he was never on the football team and was cut from the baseball team. Intrepid reporters discovered that the "errors" have been in Smith's records at least as far back as 1985. The image of Smith battling valiantly over years and years to rid his resume of untruths, but being thwarted at every turn by a mysterious, unnamed "someone," as Coach Gailey contends, is simply priceless. (January 29, 2002)
- "To me, a three-box sedan has so little value. What do you do with it?" --Wayne Cherry, vice president of car design at General Motors, quoted in the Wall Street Journal following a February announcement by rival Ford that it would be reducing the proportion of midsize, mid-priced sedans it produces because buyers seem to be growing bored and tired of them. Detroit insiders often refer to these cars as "three-box" sedans because when viewed from the side they can be visualized as consisting of three boxes--front fenders and hood, passenger cabin, and back fenders and trunk. The Journal noted, however, that Toyota and Honda have dominated sales in the midsize sedan area while Ford has lost its once leading share of that market. Ford has confirmed it would be emphasizing its new "sports wagon," the CrossTrainer, said to be a hybrid between a car and a station wagon. Sounds to me like code for Ford slinking off another playing field on which it couldn't compete.
- Borrowing from a concept pioneered in the 1970s by National Lampoon, which gave the world its legendary map of the sovereign state of Minniebraska, the December 10, 2001, issue of The New Yorker tried to lighten the burden of reality a bit with a special map of the Gotham area with tribal place names themed in response to the September 11 Unpleasantness. "New Yorkistan" they called it--and there for our amusement--well, some of us were amused, anyway--were such places as Youdontunderstandistan, Botoxia, Al Zheimers, Bulimikhs, Psychobabylon, Badassin, Khlintunisia, Bronxistan, Cold Turkeystan, Gadzhooks, Irate, Irant, Khandibar, Outer Perturbia, Flatbushtuns, Turban Sprawl, Taxistan, Khantstandit. . .well, you get the picture. No doubt some in the magazine's audience took offense, but they'll just have to file suit if they can't take a joke. And no doubt someone will.
- Big Cosmic Question Regarding The Most Recent Unpleasantness Said To Involve A Banker Aboard An Airliner at 30,000 Feet. . .the man is said to have been subdued by the co-pilot who clunked him on the head with a small axe after the man tried to hack his way into the cockpit. News reports say the banker was subdued, confined, and given medication for the rest of the flight. My question: why did the co-pilot stop hitting the man? Why wasn't he fatally injured? Why isn't someone who does this after September 11 killed on the spot? Haven't we learned anything yet? (February 8, 2002)
- Time and events will show that the greatest mistake the United States made with regard to the American Taliban, John Walker, is that someone didn't snuff him back in the ruins of the Taliban lair in Afghanistan where he was captured. A take-no-prisoners policy would have saved us the lunacy sure to attend his "detainment."
- The planet got better by subtraction February 10 when the body of Jack Henry Abbott was found hanging dead in its cell in a New York prison. Abbott was made a cause celebre by the equally detestable author Norman Mailer in the late 1970s after Abbott wrote a series of letters from prison to Mailer. At the time, Abbott was in prison for bank robbery and then for fatally stabbing another inmate. Mailer loudly supported Abbott's request for parole and Abbott was freed in 1981. Six weeks later Abbott murdered a 22-year-old waiter outside a New York City restaurant. Abbott's letters to Mailer were published as In The Belly of the Beast and became a best-seller. Abott was sentenced to another 15 years for his most recent murder and his later requests for parole were denied. Mailer is not known to have ever acknowledged culpability in the Unpleasantnesses which followed his campaign to free Abbott the first time. When Mailer leaves us we'll be doubly blessed. (February 11, 2002)
- Associated Press reports out of New Delhi, India, told of roving gangs of Hindu nationalists accosting couples holding hands, burning Valentine's Day cards, breaking shop windows, threatening customers and blocking access to gift shops and restaurants to prevent people from celebrating Valentine's Day. (February 15, 2002)
- The travel section of the February 15 issue of USA Today carried a brief review of a production of La Femme which finally unlocked the mystery of a decades-old inside joke perpetrated by Peter George, author of the legendary Dr. Strangelove. The newspaper's review noted that the troupe of scantily-clad dancers performing in La Femme "sometimes wear nothing but a small glued-on patch between their legs (called a merkin)--a fact that no doubt sells tickets." And now we know from whence author George obtained inspiration for naming the President of the United States (played in the movie by Peter Sellers) in his book. . .President Merkin Muffley. Priceless! (February 15, 2002)
- Can you imagine the long years of ridicule and raised eyebrows my bride and I would have endured if my parents had named me one of my favorite names, Drogo? Drogo and Mogo--that may have been more than even we could have endured!
- There was Trouble in Harrisonburg, Virginia, in mid-February, and it took me back to the days of my youth on the plains of north central Indiana. A note tucked away on the sports pages of the February 21 issue of USA Today reported that the coach of the boys basketball team at Harrisonburg High School abruptly suspended his team's season over what the newspaper delicately termed a "prank." Seems someone--one of the lads on the Harrisonburg team, most likely--left a fresh deposit of excrement "on or near the shower floor" after a February 12 game at Stuarts Draft, Virginia. Responsible adults got angry about this and demanded to know who did it. They threatened to suspend the season if the culprit didn't step forward by Feb. 19 and confess the deed. The boys pondered their options and decided to go down in flames together. Nobody 'fessed up and--big shocker--the adults made good on their threat. Coach Roger Bergey, 61, and in his 30th year at the school, forfeited the remaining games. A mere 44 years ago a nearly identical stunt occurred on the Scorched Corners (Indiana) Mad Hatters team. But this one involved one player making a deposit inside the duffel bag of a teammate. The feces was kept "within the team family," so to speak. Coach Bayner summoned the team together in the bleachers before practice and gave us a stern lecture. When I was observed chuckling and giggling, he asked if I thought it was funny. I said that I did, and was promptly dismissed from that day's practice. I can't recall, Your Honor, what punishment (if any) was meted out to the dumpor, who was then and still is a Local Legend, but I know that those present still guffaw about the episode to this very day. (February 21, 2002)
- Huffing and puffing has erupted across central Indiana over the story of the Avon High School wrestling coach who bit off the head of a live sparrow in front of a group of students. The school board suspended the man for two whole weeks. "It was just innocent fun," the coach told an eager Indianapolis Star reporter. "The kids laughed and laughed. They're still laughing. . . ." Indeed, what is the fuss all about? Surely no harm was done and none intended. This was a simple error in judgment. And why should we be surprised that an adult high school coach, a role model and community leader, should bite off the head of a live sparrow in front of children? This is, after all, a country which has raised generations of young people in front of television sets watching rock groups and other celebrities do the very same things and worse, isn't it? Can't we get on with our lives and with our shopping, for heaven's sake? (February 25, 2002)
- The Winter Olympics produced its fair share of whiners, but no terrorist attacks. The ending was perfect, with the vile rock group Kiss onstage representing us. And they do represent us, make no mistake. What a message to send to the planet's young and impressionable.
- Penn State University and other researchers have codified something my wife, Mogo, has pointed out for years: the American food industry has been giant-sizing us for decades and the proliferation of whales among us proves it. New York University professor Lisa Young's research shows that portion sizes have increased hugely--delis serve cookies the size of pancakes; muffins weigh over six ounces and some as much as 11 ounces, compared to the U.S. government's "standard" of 1.5 ounces; soft-drink makers are pushing 64-ounce sodas loaded with over 800 calories, over 10 times the size of the Coca-Cola bottles offered as late as the 1960s; Starbucks no longer even sells a "small" coffee. It won't even use the word. If you want a small coffee you order the 12-ounce "tall" size. At Penn State they discovered that the typical person will eat more if larger portions are served, and that after meals, people rated their 'fullness' the same, regardless of how much they had just eaten. Fast-food sellers, of course, for years have been beseeching us to "biggie-size" everything for just another few cents. Couple this with studies released in 2002 showing child obesity is epidemic and more than half of all Americans are overweight, and the connection is made. The note I most enjoyed, though, in the USA Today article (March 4) on portion sizes, was that "about half the participants (in the Penn State Study) didn't notice that the size of portions were different from meal to meal." (March 4, 2002)
- Chris Matthews, host of the Hardball show on CNBC, invited Rich Lowry, editor of National Review, as a guest the first week of March and probably wishes he hadn't. The ruckus in the Mideast was the evening's hot topic. Matthews asked Lowry for his opinion and got one he apparently disagreed with. Visibly riled, Matthews interrupted Lowry to ask him how many of those countries in the Middle East he, Lowry, had personally visited. Lowry asked--and so would I have--what that had to do with anything. Matthews asked him the question again and when Lowry challenged its validity, Chris rudely cut him off and turned to another guest. Matthews, a lifelong liberal Democrat, appears to work hard most of the time at presenting a balanced, fair program. But something about Lowry got to him when he established this new litmus test for guests, whose crediblity and evenhanded treatment now depends on whether they've personally visited the countries they're talking about on the program. I'll bet you five Chris won't be applying this standard to everyone. (March 5, 2002)
- The usual liberals and limp Euro-snivelers are whining about the treatment of prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. This illustrates a fundamental error in American procedures. We should not want any prisoners, any time any where. We should want them all dead. This should be a take-no-prisoners conflict. All "taking prisoners" means is we have to listen to liberals complain about their living conditions and their precious rights. I say kill them all on the battlefield and there'll be one less thing for lefties to bitch about.
- Greg Palast, a writer for Britain's Guardian and Observer newspapers, reports in the March, 2002, edition of Harper's magazine that in the thirty-five states where convicted felons can vote, approximately 90 percent of them vote Democratic.
- Bleeders have been screaming for years about all the things we do that grievously offend American Indians. Most visible is their drive to outlaw the use of Indian nicknames and mascots. But some troublemakers at Sports Illlustrated asked Indians how they felt and printed the results in the magazine's March 4 issue. It'll drive lefties crazy. SI discovered--big shocker--that while most Indian activists and tribal leaders are offended, "neither Native Americans in general nor a cross-section of U.S. sports fans agree." Eighty-three percent of the Indians polled said pro sports teams should NOT (emphasis mine) stop using Indian names, mascots, or symbols. Seventy-nine per cent of the fans agreed. Over 80 percent of Indians said they had no problem with high school or college teams using Indian names, mascots, or symbols.The magazine reports that across the board on all questions asked, the opinions of fans and actual Indians are in clear opposition to those of the activists doing all the screaming. Indian activists immediately ridiculed both the survey and the huge majority opinions expressed. Using their own spinoff of Uncle Tom-ism, they called the participants "misguided" and added that "There are happy campers on every plantation." Another activist is quoted by SI saying the poll results proved that Native American self-esteem is so low that "they don't even know when they're being insulted." The Sports Illustrated story deserved major publicity and discussion, but I have neither seen nor heard a single mention of it on television, radio, or in print. This is the way the left typically reacts to facts contradicting its positions. (March 4, 2002)
- Today is Election Day in Zimbabwe, according to a National Public Radio report this morning, and Robert (Those Who Know And Love Him Call Him Bob) Mugabe, the current president (and unjustly alleged one-time Marxist) has vowed to "pursue" (we are inclined to assume this is code for: "hunt them down and kill them") his enemies even after the election is over. According to NPR, no one knows how many ballots have been printed, and no one even knows the location of the voting places. Sounds like Florida to me! And another assignment for the legendary Jimbo Carville and Mary Frances Berry! (March 7, 2002)
- I asked a friend if he had any idea why Indiana would be playing in Sacramento, California, and the NCAA would be calling it the South Region bracket. He said it had something to do with the NCAA's new "pod seeding" approach to things. Every time I think of seed pods I think of the great sci-fi film, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, where seed pods were the source of evil. But the NCAA's ceaseless attempts to reorganize the way it seeds the tourney also reminds me of my Price Cathouse days. The pooh-bahs there became obsessed in the 1980s--along with the rest of the nation--with reorganizing every 10 minutes or so. The firm originally consisted of offices in places known as cities. But these under the pressure of the 1980s fad became regions, groups, clusters, areas--and there was even an "Oil Patch" bunch. Truth was, these folks had no idea what they were, wanted to be, should be, could be, or had become. The firm was a gigantic ocean liner with nobody at the helm, roaring into a harbor, bouncing off first one pier and piling, then another. But everybody felt good. There was a sense of action and movement and excitement. They felt like they were actually doing something. The illusion was enough. Nobody wanted to face reality, the shrieking nothingness of things. Few of us ever do. (March 15, 2002)
- A Georgia jury has handed a sentence of life in prison without parole to one-time 1960s black power activist H. Rap Brown (now known as Jamil Abdullah al Amin) in the killing of a deputy sheriff in the year 2000. Rap claimed honky conspiracy, mistaken identity and everything else he and his lawyers could think of, but the jury passed on all of it. Good! (March 14, 2002)
- A full-page ad on the back of the current Indianapolis phone book touts the talents of a couple of "Accident & Injury" lawyers, Bill Hurst and Sam Jacobs, of the local firm of Mitchell Hurst Jacobs & Dick. The ad notes that the firm is listed in Martindale-Hubbell's Bar Register of Pre-Eminient Lawyers. Must have just missed the list of pre-eminent spellers.
- My wife, Mogo, battled her way through a fairly trifling spot of bad weather the last week of March (some sleet, snowflakes, and chilly temperatures) to teach her classes in English Decomposition at a major midwestern university. About half her students were absent. One of the absentees soon after sent Mogo an e-mail expressing concern that the instructor not penalize any student who missed the class and thereby failed to turn in a paper due on that day. The e-mailer said she had been "told" (though not, obviously by anyone who attended the class) that "only two students were able to make it to class" and added she did not think it fair that any penalties be imposed because, after all, the weather was "too dangerous for some of us to drive in." The e-mailer closed by offering to submit a petition signed by students, if that would help Mogo reconsider any contemplated penalties, then closed with just a brief flash of edginess by noting that if a petition wasn't sufficient, the student "could talk to the English Department and write to the Chancellor. . .if you think that might help persuade you." Mogo, ever impish and eager to see me perform, asked for my advice. I suggested that the student be instantly provided fax and cell phone numbers, as well as mailing addresses and regular phone numbers for all members of the U.S. Supreme Court and the International Court of Justice at The Hague, as well as a huge foundation grant of gold bullion to pay for whatever attorney and court fees were necessary in her quest for justice. I added that I would make it mandatory that she contact all the Justices--at my expense, of course--and that her filings with the Justices, the Chancellor, and the department head be read aloud in class, in exchange for which she would be granted an automatic A for the semester. Mogo declined my advice and chose instead to e-mail the supplicant the facts, which were that 20 students attended in all, not two, and that there was no penalty for papers turned in late (since this was a draft, not a final paper), and alert the student about upcoming assignments she might not have focused on. Thank God someone in our family is a mature, responsible adult. Still, I would have paid big money for the chance to have sent my reply in place of Mogo's. (March 27, 2002)
- The Los Angeles jury which returned a boatload of guilty verdicts March 21 in the tragic dog-mauling death of Diane Whipple deserves our applause. The animal owners, Marjorie Knoller and her husband Robert Noel, were no doubt as stunned as many Americans when the highly judgmental verdicts came cascading in. The husband, according to trial testimony, took the position that if his neighbors didn't like his dogs (there were 32 complaints filed by frightened neighbors prior to the mauling death in an apartment building hallway) then they damn well could just move away. Knoller faces 30 years in prison, the husband eight. Good!
- Other than Coach's firing and Sick Willie's Impeachment, can there be any thrill greater than having the Oscar Awards over for another year? The media frenzy over this absurd event is staggering. (March 25, 2002)
- By the way, who won the Golden Honkers Award last night? That's all that matters in this, anyway.
- USA Today reports that the 4.5 hour marathon Oscar telecast, which didn't end till almost 1 a.m., set a record low for viewership with 24.5% of American homes tuned in. That's encouraging.
- And isn't it time we had a 1,000-year ban on further use of the word "diva" to describe teen-age rock stars?
- I heard on the radio that the NCAA basketball tournament is the second-biggest betting event in the nation. Only the Super Bowl draws more wagering. The announcer said that over $55 billion (or million) was being wagered on NCAA games this month. But don't anybody dare give a "student-athlete" a five-dollar bill, or the NCAA will be on you like the wrath of Coach (worse than God).
- National Public Radio had a short feature this morning on child slavery in the African nation of Ivory Coast. Funny, I've never heard Alec Baldwin, Al Sharpton, Ted Kennedy, Jesse Jackson, Maxine Waters, Paul Begala, Susan Estrich or any of the rest of them utter a peep of protest about this. (March 25, 2002)
- Saw this headline on the MSN.com news website April 1: "World Warns Against Harming Arafat". Oh. That must mean it's OK to harm Sharon or Bush or other selected AntiChrists, right?
- Brook Barnes, who writes the Art & Money column for the Wall Street Journal, brought America something special in the March 29, 2002, edition when he reported on New York City's New Museum of Contemporary Art and its spring exhibition featuring artist Wim Delvoye's sensational creation, "Cloaca." A feeling of hushed awe sluiced over me as I read Barnes's account. Short of being there, seeing and touching and tasting it, I can't imagine anything better than Barnes's words will do. Cloaca, he writes, is "a giant machine which replicates the human digestive system from beginning to end." (The term means "sewer" in Latin). It consists of "a series of tubes and glass cannisters connected to computers." It is "fed food from nearby eateries twice daily through a funnel." Then, Barnes continues, "acids break down the food and what's left over"--and here we get to the really charming part (italics mine)--"emerges onto a conveyor belt several hours later, stinking up the entire museum, including the gift shop." Barnes says Museum officials are "aware of the problem" and are doing "everything possible" to eliminate the stench, including encasing part of the work and building a makeshift exhaust pipe out of the gallery. Museum spokescritter Lauren Tehan concedes, though, that complaints have been "flowing in" from employees as well as visitors. Of course the Museum hasn't quite done everything possible to solve the problem. No, that would have required less than an ounce of good judgment and--dare we say it?--good taste well beforehand. The Museum could have insisted that Delvoye set up "Cloaca" in his own living room, and provided limosine service there for all Museum patrons wishing to visit the scene. It's still not too late, if only enough people of vision and commitment will step forward. I personally will spring for a $100 million grant if Delvoye will eat the daily output every day for the rest of his life. (March 29, 2002)
- The Indiana Senate's ethics committee chairman has revealed he is uncertain about whether to have a committee hearing on unjust allegations--and they are only allegations--that Senator Sam Smith, a Democrat from Gary, has diverted some $450,000 from the Build Indiana Fund for personal and unseemly uses. I personally doubt that embezzlement, even if true, can be classified an ethical issue. No harm was done, surely. The Senator's intentions were good. What right do we have to judge Sam? Isn't it time to get back to our shopping? (April 3, 2002)
- Years ago I was told by a friend that the first place he goes when he reads the New York Times is the obituaries. The March 31, 2002, edition showed why. For there was laid out the astounding story of a truly self-made buffoon, imp, and con-artist, Ralph Rumney, dead of cancer at age 67 and described by writer Douglas Martin in the lead paragraph as an "English-born artist who romanced just about every eccentric left-wing intellectual movement he encountered over a half-century." Who could read that lead and resist going on? Not I, nor could I resist adding my own annotations in italics. Martin noted right away that Rumney "founded no philosophical schools, nod did the art he produced... bear any important influence." Rumney founded something called the Situationist International in 1957, a group which apparently drank a lot but did little else. Rumney himself was expelled from the group early on, and eventually 45 of its 70 members were kicked out (my kind of organization!) by a leader who "had a penchant for excommunication." The obit writer ascertained that the group's central belief, "aside from frequent denial that they had any beliefs at all, was that people were no longer participants in their own lives, but spectators. Reality, they said, was being replaced by images (here, I think they were onto something). . ." Martin wrote that Rumney "saw his finished art as a necessarily muddled reflection of his initial idea (my hunch: more likely there was no 'original idea,' only original muddle)." Whatever Rumney believed or didn't, none of it stopped his "vast outpouring of art over the years." Rumney began his lonely journey early, according to the Times account. He was "anti-establishment from the start" and when a mere slip of a lad he was called a "pervert" by the Bishop of Leeds (in England, the land of his birth) for ordering the complete works of the Marquis de Sade when only a schoolboy (young Rumney was only doing a teen-ager's job, which is to irritate and outrage adults). Rumney attended boarding school and later dropped out of art school, where he had been expelled from the Young Communists "for lack of moral rectitude" (at least the Commies stood for something defensible). In the mid-1950s, Rumney founded the London Psychographical Association, of which he was the only member (and a good thing, too!). At some point he became a draft dodger and fled to Paris, where he fell in with radical groups (shocking!). He married Pegeen Guggenheim, who committed suicide 10 years later. The Times quoted Michel Guet, a member of an avant-garde group of artists self-identified as The Banalites, as saying, "Ralph is a hero. That is why artists will build monuments to him in the 21st century" (I'll bet money this doesn't happen--but I'll bet his close friends gather from time to time to get high and hoot and guffaw over his and their lifetime of pranks played on straight society). The obituary included a picture of Rumney in full beret, with a sly little smile on his face. I have a feeling I would have liked him. (April 3, 2002)
- Laren Sims wants to win the lottery even from beyond the grave. Sims, 36, committed suicide by hanging herself March 30 in jail in Hernando County, Florida. She had been held there awaiting extradition to California where she was accused of murdering her husband. Sims left behind a note urging her attorney to sue the jail for failing to prevent her from killing herself. If I'm the Hernando County Sheriff I counter-sue Laren Sims, her estate, all her relatives, living or deceased, her dog, cat, goldfish, parakeets, and everyone who ever knew her, under the Flaming Asshole Clause of U.S. Federal Code.
- The Post Office introduced special commemorative stamps April 4, one for each of the 50 states and all on the same day. It's the first time in history this has ever been done! For a moment, it made citizens of all 50 states feel good about themselves simultaneously. But like everything else in American hypersociety, this good feeling was fleeting. Within moments, cries of curmudgeonly outrage rose across this great land. Sourpusses began protesting they didn't like the way their state stamp looked. Dumb, stupid, embarrassing, outrageous, silly, weird--these are some of the terms heard to describe individual state stamps. And that wasn't all! In a typically Postal Dopey failure to anticipate customer behavior--the stamps may only be bought in a sheet of 50, one for each state. The customer in Indiana or Idaho or New York who wants to buy a single stamp or 50 or 100 stamps of only their own state--as millions and millions and millions of citizens will want to do--cannot do so. The only way to get 50 Indianas, for example, will be to buy 2,500 stamps in total (50 sheets), and then tediously separate each Indiana stamp from the other 49. We know that postal workers frequently "go postal." The wonder and the mystery is why postal customers don't. (April 4, 2002)
- But on the other hand there'll be billions and billions and billions of dollars extracted by lawsuits filed by angry customers for pain and suffering brought heaping upon them by their state's crappy, boring, insipid, ridiculous, humiliating, dumb-ass commemorative stamps! (April 4, 2002)
- "My instinct says things aren't right in parts of the world." --Legendary talk-show host Oprah Winfrey, explaining to eager reporters why she had postponed a trip to South Africa and turned down a White House invitation to visit Afghanistan. (USA Today, April 8, 2002)
- It's comforting that periodically someone comes along and does a survey that quantifies what we know intuitively from slogging through our daily lives. Early April brought word from Public Agenda, a polling company, which reports these yawners: the level of rudeness has gone up in American society in recent years; 58 percent of Americans report they often encounter aggressively rude drivers on the highway; over 71 percent who go to organized sports events for children report that they've actually witnessed parents screaming at coaches, referees, or players; 94 percent say they've honked off when they call a company and get a recorded greeting; and 49 percent said they are often subjected by "loud and annoying" cell phone conversations in public.
- A jury in England has acquitted rock guitarist Peter Buck on charges of assaulting crew members during a drunken rampage on a British Airways flight to Seattle. Buck claimed that he took a sleeping pill with a glass of wine, "blacked out," and couldn't remember anything he did thereafter. The jury bought in, apparently foregetting that the trial was about whether Buck committed the acts alleged, not whether he remembered them. (USA Today, April 8, 2002)
- The Chicago Tribune reports that Chicago Public Schools officials have voted to close three elementary schools for poor performance and transfer the pupils. The Tribune said this is the "most drastic step yet in seven years of reform efforts" by school officials. We'd best stay tuned. There'll be hell to pay for this. (April 11, 2002)
- I was standing in line at my local Turd-Mart the other evening waiting to pay for gasoline. The fellow ahead of me was agonizing over which lottery tickets to buy. And no wonder. Twenty-eight (28) different lottery game choices confronted him. Twenty-eight. And local radio stations blare endlessly every day with ads from the state lottery commission urging us to join the fun and go for a chance to win. Can anyone imagine how high our taxes would be if these poor bastards weren't buying lottery tickets? (April 11, 2002)
- Michael Anderson of Chicago has an absolutely brilliant idea. In a letter to the editor of the Chicago Tribune, he says he's tired of the bitching about mascot names for athletic teams. Why don't we just call all teams "Home" and "Away"? he asks. Then at every game we could just yell "Go Home" and "Go Away". Perfect! (April 11, 2002)
- The Wall Street Journal reported April 10 that human bar codes are the latest Brave New World breakthrough! Another reason to stop the planet and let us off!
- Must be the something in the spring air that's making citizens feisty. For three days after the "mascot letter" in theTribune came a missile from John Dunham printed in the Indianapolis Star. Dunham took issue with efforts by the Colts football team to flimflam the city and its taxpayers into providing the team with a bigger, better stadium. Dunham says the Colts are a small-market team and should have a small-market stadium. "The players are also too large," Dunham wrote. "We should trade for shorter players." Dunham said the seats themselves are "about perfect." Short of bringing in the B-52s, Dunham has nailed it precisely. (April 14, 2002)
- The Supreme Court has upheld Oregon's assisted suicide law against a challenge by the Justice Department. Good! A sturdy bastion of liberalism, Oregon is exactly the sort of place where suicide should be encouraged in any way possible. The Supreme Court's decision is a step in the right direction. (April 15, 2002)
- Hey! Somebody help me on this! I need to conjugate the verb "to vomit" in Latin. Vomo, vomis, vomit, vomitimis, vomititis, vomitint? Vomitabis, vomitatis, vomitant, vomitando, vomitabo, vomitomundo? Vomitabar, vomitabaris, vomitabatur, vomitabamur, vomitabamini, vomitabantur? (April 16, 2002)
- Every time we wonder what we'll stoop to next, someone comes along to show us. Latest in line is 55-year-old Kingsley Barham, who has founded a company in Delray Beach, Florida--there it is, Florida again!!--to publish a complete collector's set of September 11 trading cards. Barham is contacting relatives of the 2800+ deceased victims asking them to provide pictures, anecdotes, and sign a two-year rights waiver. Barham is hyping the project on a web site.
- The plaintiff wouldn't put up or shut up, so a federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit filed by the parents of a 10-year-old boy from Sellersburg, Indiana, who claimed their son had a constitutional right to play in a basketball league in another city. The parents claimed that other players living outside the school district had been allowed to play in the Jeffersonville league, but when the league filed a document asking for the plaintiffs to provide the court a list of those names, the parents said they wouldn't be "comfortable" doing that. The parents had claimed that their son had suffered "irreparable horror" from being prevented from playing. Where were Jesse Jackson, Gerry Spence, Al Sharpton, and Johnny Cochran when we needed them? (April 24, 2002)
- And speaking of rules, fear and trembling are rippling through the ranks at Universal Export, where there are so many violations of the company's already generous dress policy that certain team leaders are fearful the company will go back to older, harsher dress-up rules that will break our hearts. An earnest colleague recently circulated a memo to staff trying to alert them that they were in danger of losing a good thing. A smile crossed my face as I read it, for it took me back to the days of my youth on the plains of northern Indiana, where I toiled for several decades in the fetid swamps of human resources. I observed then what's being seen now; namely, that in any group, anywhere, there are always individuals who cannot or will not play along with rules and guidelines, who always have to push the envelope, stretch the rules, jockey for exceptions. I became convinced that this phenomenon is part of our genetic code, in the very nature of the species. No matter what or how lax the rules are, X percent of us are unable to comply. And since there are almost never any consequences for miscreants, the joke--in the form of more and stricter rules--is nearly always on the rest of us.
- Here are the first four stories my eye fell upon in the April 25 Wall Street Journal: 1) Professor Lawrence Tribe of Harvard is joining a growing number of legaloids who believe chimpanzees are legally 'persons' who have rights--including the right to a lawyer--in the American legal system, and legislation is being drafted to assure this; 2) Since January of 2000 at least 20 companies that sold or used asbestos products have gone into bankruptcy as the number of asbestos-inspired lawsuits has skyrocketed, and more and more people who've been awarded damages are collecting smaller amounts because the money pot is being rapidly drained dry as "relatively healthy" plaintiffs are swamping the courts with claims; 3) The number of lawsuits filed by shareholders over stock market losses is soaring and because this money pot is still relatively untapped, it's drawing increasing interest from more and more lawyers and plaintiffs. One attorney was quoted saying that soon "there's going to be more money (awarded in damages to plaintiffs) in class-action'" than is paid in dividends; 4) Over 30 U.S. steelmakers have gone bankrupt in the past four years, and hundreds of thousands of their retirees are in danger of losing most of their pensions and benefits. I put down this issue pretty well convinced the editors had captured the essence of American society today: lawyers and plaintiffs swarming the landscape and justice in mighty short supply.
- Despair, Inc. may have found a new market niche with its "Demotivators" line of greetings cards, posters, and other items. One of its cards arrived in the recent mail reminding me that "It's Always Darkest Just Before It Goes Pitch Black," and urging me to "Discover The Cure for Hope" by visiting its website at www.despair.com. The company's motto is "Increasing success by lowering expectations." It sounds like an Idea For Our Times. It sounds like my kind of place.
- From the frontiers of human achievement came two stories in the Indianapolis Star this week: the mother of a 12-year-old boy who committed suicide has been arrested and faces 10 years in prison for failure to get counseling for the boy, and a research study shows that a white woman with a college degree and specialized skills is more likely to get a higher paying job with better working hours than a black woman or a woman of some other hue, ethnicity, religion, creed, or sexual preference without a college degree and specialized skills.
- The death of rock singer Lisa "Left Eye" Lopes in an automobile accident in early May brought an explanation, at long last, of her nickname. Wire service reports said Lopes "may not have been the most musically talented member" of her group but she "was easily the most watchable", then noted that she "earned her nickname by (italics mine) wearing a condom taped over the left lens of her spectacles" when onstage performing. Can we even imagine how proud her parents--particularly her mother--must have been?
- Science has finally offered a clue about why some of us hate the sound of a telephone ringing. Writing in the "Cubicle Culture" column in the Wall Street Journal May 8, 2002, reporter Suein L. Hwang reveals that a sound engineer in San Francisco has analyzed the tones of a Nokia 5190 cell phone and determined that "at predominately 2.64 kHz, they are roughly the same frequency as screeching car tires." That's one reason, anyway. (May 8, 2002)
- I noticed a box of Xerographic paper on a shelf at Universal Export this week. Ten reams in a box and on the end was stamped "Made in Indonesia." Someone's decided it's cheaper to make paper over there and ship it halfway around the planet than to make it in America. And so it goes.
- An article in USA Today by columnist Craig Wilson raised the cosmic question: What would you do for free? This was asked in the context of gainful employment.The point was that many people seem not to be following their dreams and doing what they want (except for liberals, criminals and terrorists, of course). I thought a moment and decided my answer is: there is no job now, nor has there ever been, that I would do for nothing. The time I will love best is when I no longer have to go to any job, and have sufficient funds to make that possible. People who find life's fulfillment in a job will forever confound me. (May 15, 2002)
- Gazing stupidly at MSN's home page May 14, I noticed it was hyping a feature story from its online magazine, Slate, titled "Help For Your Shy Bladder." It was only a gentle click away, but I couldn't bear to go there. Too shy, probably.
- Critic Valentine Low of the London Evening Standard sees things ordinary mortals miss, judging by his review of Gwyneth Paltrow's work onstage at the gala May 15 premiere of her new play, Proof. None other than USA Today (May 17) quotes Low's eye-witness account of Paltrow's use of her toes (italics mine) to "express annoyance, frustration, unhappiness and a whole range of emotions that some actresses cannot manage with their faces, let alone their feet."
- Among the great mysteries of the human race is the persistent hatred of Jews. Historians in the decades after World War II and its Holocaust wrote hopefully that this evil had been exterminated. The Current Unpleasantness Said To Involve Islam amply demonstrates that it was only dormant. And now, it seems, Americans are on the extermination list, too. We're fools and doomed fools if we don't believe and act upon the evidence screaming everywhere before us. (May 19, 2002)
- Put Romania high up on my list of must-visit destinations. Construction has begun on a Dracula theme park in the remote Transylvanian medieval town of Sighisoara, about 165 miles north of the capital of Bucharest. The town of 37,000 is believed to be the 15th century birthplace of the legendary Vlad The Impaler, who later became the inspiration for Bram Stoker's novel, Dracula. The park will cost about $31 million and feature a Dracula castle, a golf course, and assorted other enticements (one of which better be coach rides through the brooding highland forests in the famous black stagecoach they use in the movies!), along with 1,700 hotel beds (in which nobody in their right mind would sleep without one eye open for a midnight visit from Drac himself). The grand opening is to occur in 2004. Nobody in the world could be better than British actor Christopher Lee to do the ribbon-cutting and haunt the place for the first few months. Lee's played Dracula matchlessly in many movies and would be perfect for this gig. Book him!! (May 20, 2002)
- The press is bombarding us as May fades with stories of the impending departure from television of the legendary dirtbag Rosie O'Donnell. We're Gonna Miss Ya, Rosie, the headlines wail. Baloney. Millions of us won't miss Rosie at all. Millions of us probably don't even know who she is (I do, and it's no fun). But she's leaving, and that's the important thing.
- During a leisurely browse through the State of Florida's sales and use tax administrative rulings, I ran across the following in Sec. 12A-1.0091 (3): "Aircraft, boats, motor vehicles, and other vehicles are not considered to be nonresidential buildings." This seemed at first glance to be belaboring the obvious, but then I realized that surely the reason this is included is that somewhere along the line a taxpayer has actually taken the position that they are, indeed, nonresidential buildings. And this is why tax codes and bureaucratese are such an impenetrable thicket of often preposterous verbiage.
- Looks like the resume-crisis is going global! Now it's the president of the United States Olympic Committee whose resume includes some errors of judgment, some long-standing mistakes that she (Sandra Baldwin)--my god, it's affecting women, too!!--has struggled for years to get corrected. But it was only a problem of degrees, says Baldwin, who admittted to breathless reporters May 23 that "There are some things on my resume that I should have corrected, and I didn't." Two of the "things" cited were phantom degrees. The resume says she got a Ph. D. from Arizona State University and an undergraduate degree from the University of Colorado. She says that instead of these she actually got an undergraduate and a master's degree from Arizona State. She attributed the mistakes to "a lot of tumultuous years and two rotten marriages," but said she didn't feel any of this has hurt the Olympic Committee's credibility. She resigned a few days later, becoming the second Committee president to be forced out. The other was Robert Helmick who quit in 1991 after it was revealed he had used the position for "personal gain." Hear that scuttling sound? Can we even imagine how many millions of resumes are being pulled out of files and re-examined at this very moment? (May 28, 2002)
- This morning's Star business section carried an angry cry from a reader wanting justice from an employer who has started a bonus program based 50 percent on attendance--the remainder is based on quality and productivity. Those last two requirements will eventually be thrown out by the courts, of course, as unfair and discriminatory, but for now the employer actually believes it can dispense awards based on them. But Rega's complaint today is about the goddamned attendance requirement. Rega hints that she's contemplating some time off under the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) and she wants that attendance bonus to be included in the full benefits rights FMLA grants her, even though she won't be attending work while on leave. "They can't do that, can they?" she asked "Work It Out" columnist Greg Weaver. Greg contacted a "management attorney," Nestor Shylock, who cited various opaque and seemingly contradictory rules, and then said the company had better pay Rega her attendance bonus for non-attendance, just to be on the safe side. My attorney, Kermit Sligo, advises the employer to pay Rega any amount of money and bonuses in exchange for her promise never, never, never to return to work. (May 29, 2002)
- May slithered to a close with word in USA Today's daily tonnage devoted to pop culture that two legends, The Rev. Al Sharpton and Johnny Cochran, have joined mighty forces in still another quest for justice. This one seeks to "ensure that recording artists are treated fairly by the music industry." Al and Johnny are going to be looking at "onerous contracts" and other things. Cochran says he's heard sad stories for years about artists winding up broke and it's time to put a stop to it. Music industry execs may as well get out their checkbooks now. This has the unmistakable scent of the corporate extortion and blackmail scam raised to an art form by Al and Johnny's Mentor, The Rev. Jesse Jackson. (May 30, 2002)
- Ralph Nader is demanding that the NBA review Game 6 officiating in the recent Lakers-Kings playoffs. A disparity in free throws and a "no foul" non-call after the Kings' Mike Bibby got belted in the chops by a Laker have Nader lathered up. He's written league commissioner David Stern about it, saying America's confidence has been shaken enough and this, during America's "relaxation time," is too much to bear in silence. I say Ralph needs a sedative and a life. (June 6, 2002)
- A USA Today/Gallup Poll shows that weeks of effort by Roman Catholic leaders to convince their flocks and the rest of us that they're responding to the church's Sexual Abuse Unpleasantness have not influenced the troops. Eighty percent of Catholics want priests defrocked if they abuse a young person; 75 percent say their leaders have done a poor job of dealing with the problem. Eighty-seven percent say a cardinal or bishop who covered up such abuse should himself be removed from church office. So we have what we so commonly see in American life: "leaders" saying and doing one thing; ordinary people wanting something entirely different. A disconnect. They still don't get it. (June 11, 2002)
- Tucked away in legislation passed by Congress this spring was a $237,437 federal grant to Blue Springs, Missouri, to help that embattled community combat "gothic culture." Now some awful troublemaking prick at Harper's magazine has looked it up and reports (in the July, 2002 Harper's Index) that the distance between Blue Springs and the nearest gothic cathedral is: 4,280 miles. The same Index reports that: (1) the ratio of Avon ladies to soldiers in Brazil is 5:2; (2) the city of Normal, Illinois, has passed legislation which establishes a fine of $100 for the outdoor use of upholstered furniture; (3) the California Energy Commission has renewed its ban on the use of duct tape on ducts. I'll say it again: Only by reading the monthly Harper's Index can you truly understand what's going on in our universe. (June 17, 2002)
- One thing we learn being human is that there are few things we can imagine that are too absurd to come true. And so in today's Chicago Tribune there was an Associated Press wirephoto of square watermelons being readied for shipment. Japanese farmers have developed them to save refrigerator and shipping space. They cost about $80 each in Japan. (June 18, 2002)
- Enron executives and other insiders looted the company treasury for $744 million in salary, bonus, and stock grants last year just before declaring bankruptcy, according to court documents filed June 17 in New York. Over 4,200 Enron employees lost their jobs and many lost their life savings and pensions in the firm's collapse. So far the highest severance pay awarded any of these "little guys" is $10,000, according to newspaper reports. In a just society many of these executives would be strung up in the public square or stuck in prison for life. But you can bet most if not all of them will skate free in USA 2002. (June 18, 2002)
- A survey commissioned by The Center for a New American Dream has confirmed what anyone who's around children already knows: rude, whiny, sniveling, nagging kids are epidemic in American society. Kids have learned--because so-called responsible adults have taught them--that "no" doesn't mean no at all, it simply means the child must keep asking until no becomes yes, and most of the time it does. The survey confirmed the impact of advertising on children, and confirmed that kids learn before first grade how to "manipulate their parents" by nagging until they get what they want. Betsy Taylor, executive director of the Maryland organization, said she hopes the Center can get Congress to pass laws limiting advertising aimed at children. What we really need is parents who will start acting like grownups.
- The food industry may be the next goldmine for the victim industry and its marauding army of lawyers, according to a June 18 article in the Wall Street Journal's Marketplace section. American food and beverage makers fear they'll become "the next tobacco"--the next target for a society obsessed with finding someone to blame for their own decisions, and making them pay a king's ransom for it. With obesity and related ailments soaring in America, who better to blame than the people who force us to eat and drink their products? Sounds right to me! (June 18, 2002)
- USA Today devoted 12 column inches June 20 to a review of Ridin' High, Livin' Free, by the legendary Ralph "Sonny" Barger, one-time (and perhaps still) commander of the legendary Hell's Angels motorcycle gang from Oakland, California. Reviewer Ralph Wu notes that this book is a follow-up to Barger's autobiography, itself a best-seller. Wu describes Barger's new offering as a "motley collection of 39 anecdotes" from bikers who've done everything from serving in the Vietnam War to having terrible crashes on their hogs. Although the Barger anecdotes cover nearly the entire range of human experience, the book also contains pictures of motorcycles, men and women with tattoos, plenty of strong language and the shocking revelation that deceased movie star Steve McQueen "believed that government should be run like the Hell's Angels." Throughout the book, Wu writes, the men and women drink, fight, take drugs, fornicate, customize their motorcycles, break through tollgates, scare local citizens, break out of camps and prisons, flee police, confront judges, smoke cigarettes, race, crash, turn over, run out of gas, and things of that nature. Wu speculates that "anyone who enjoyed Barger's first book or who would like to sit down with him over a beer will be interested in this sequel." I've got a hunch he's right. (June 20, 2002)
- Indiana has a mandatory seat belt law and a lot of people are complaining about it. What right does the government have to tell me what I can do? is the gist of their complaints in angry letters to the newspaper. I can appreciate the broad philosophical argument that this (and similar laws) are an unwarranted intrusion by the nanny state into our private lives. However, the same individuals who insist on their rights in these matters are first in line to sue for damages when they are injured in a traffic accident. Here's the deal I'd make (and the insurance companies should make) with the bitchers: I'll give you an exemption from the seat belt law if you'll sign away all rights you and your heirs and assigns will ever have on this planet or any other to sue anyone for damages a seat belt would have prevented. No more of this making-the-rest-of-us pay-for-it when you get hurt crap. Fair enough? (June 24, 2002)
- As if we needed more evidence that social studies is "cotton candy science," David Popenoe weighed in at the end of June with some stunners that caught Mr. and Mrs. Front Porch competely off guard. Popenoe is co-director of the Rutgers (University) National Marriage Project, which gathered together young single men in "focus groups" around the country and after exhaustive research discovered that a major reason men are reluctant to get married is because in today's society it's easy to shack up with a woman, get free poon, free food, free housecleaning and all the rest without having to marry. The Project's finding catapulted onto front pages around the country at the end of June and also included the startling revelations that young men "want to own a house before they get a wife, "want to enjoy single life as long as they can," "fear that marriage will require too many changes and compromises," and are not interested in the idea of "divorce and its financial risks." Translated this means: as long as women are stupid enough to hand it out free, men will play hard-to-marry. Doesn't take a soothsayer to figure this out, either. (June 26, 2002)
- Troy Bowron has been awarded over $30,000 by a Sydney, Australia, court after he fell and broke his arm in a restaurant. Seems a man named Ross Lucock came to the inn but was refused service because he was not wearing shoes. Lucock happened to be carrying a package of pork chops he had won in a raffle. Lucock--whimsically, may we suppose?--then taped the pork shops to his own feet so he could qualify as "wearing shoes" and be served. But along came Bowron and slipped in some pork chop grease left behind by the slaloming Lucock. No other details were available in a report in the June 28, 2002, edition of USA Today. The story is dopey enough that it's not immediately apparent if we have a Darwin Awards Wannabe Watch List candidate in the making, or what (probably not, since nominees for Darwins must either be killed or seriously maimed in their capers--but there's got to be a category somewhere for Ross Lucock!). All we can do is report the facts. I am not making this up. (June 28, 2002)
- Southwest Airlines has assured its own death by bankruptcy. It announced in late June that henceforth fat people who can't squeeze into one seat and billow over into two are going to have to pay for two seats. It will take a little while for the Blubb Lobby to mass its forces, but you can bet they'll be spilling into the streets screaming soon about discrimination and so forth. Lawsuits winning billions in recompense will follow, and Southwest will be only a memory, though a beautiful one, for trying to stand for something. (June 28, 2002)
- IRS statistics show that only 11.75 percent of tax returns came in this spring with the little box checked that says you want to donate $3 to a presidential election fund. When this nonsense started in the late 1970s, the number got as high as 29 percent. This latest is encouraging, though we obviously have a long way to go to get to zero.
- A clue as to just how far we have to go came in the June 27 issue of USA Today in a story about the adoring crowds of fans who thronged outside Cook County Court in Chicago the day before when pop song idol R. Kelly appeared there to plead innocent to 21 child pornography charges. "Kelly is Innocent!" proclaimed one sign. "Chi-Town Loves You," read another. Kelly's supporters, sounding eerily like Clintonistas, angrily denounced the prosecution's videotape evidence as phony, made up by Kelly's enemies to destroy him. "He shouldn't be punished because the tape isn't real," 26-year-old Camika Russell told eager reporters. Kelly himself put together a new song to blast his critics and it's getting big radio air time. Station switchboards are said to be lighting up in support. I smell boffo box office potential here, perhaps a full-length movie, a TV miniseries, a Book of The Month Club offering, an MTV video. The nation's starved for new heroes now that September 11's old and boring. RK could be A Man for Our Times!
- "Most kids I see think exercise is driving to McDonald's. Many of them used to play soccer, until they got burned out on breakneck schedules in traveling leagues run by maniacal parents living vicariously. Maybe that's why we're the fattest nation on earth. Eating a cheeseburger can be done without an adult coach yelling at you." --Columnist Bob Verdi in the Chicago Tribune writing about why soccer hasn't caught on in the United States. (June, 2002)
- "The news has brought dorsal fins to full erection down at Trial Lawyer Central." --Writer David Shiflett in the July 2, 2002, issue of National Review, in a story about a planned lawsuit against the Canada Lottery seeking damages for people who claim they became addicted to gambling from playing video lottery machines. The suit potentially involves 125,000 residents and more than $625 million in damages.
- "How come it's O.K. to burn the flag but not pledge allegiance to it?" --Cosmic question asked by a character in a Chicago Tribune cartoon Monday July 1, 2002.
- If Sharon truly wanted to turn up the heat on terrorists, here's a Turn About Is Fair Play card he could play. The Israelis could randomly grab Palestinians off the streets, wrap them up in plastic explosives and duct tape and lob them randomly back, with short fuses, into Palestinian neighborhoods, shopping malls, and crowds.
- We are fools if we think terrorists can be reasoned with. They respond only to violence and the only response to terrorism should be violent. If it ultimately means having to kill them all, then so be it.
- Bob Rosebrock of Brentwood, California, plays the genial know-nothing in a letter he wrote to the editor of USA Today about all the recent news stories involving corporations and CEOS lying and cheating. (The newspaper only last week published a survey reporting that 82 percent of CEOs admitted they cheated on their golf scorecards--and then of course there's Enron, Xerox, Worldcom and a bunch more in the wings). Rosebrock asks the editors why this news should shock us. But of course he knows, and devotes his last paragraph to reminding us that "it was only a couple of years ago that the CEO of the United States called a national news conference, stuck his finger into our TV sets, and lied to us. Nevertheless, the majority of Americans asked that the Senate not impeach him because they thought it was OK to lie." Good job, Bob---and there's no comeback for it, either. (July 1, 2002)
- The latest government tests of airport security show that screeners failed to detect simulated weapons--guns, knives, bombs--almost 25 percent of the time. At some airports--Cincinnati, Las Vegas, Jacksonville, for example-- the failure rates reached or exceeded 50 percent. Is there anyone left in America who believes we're serious about airport security, or ever have been? (July 1,2002)
- Forty-nine of the 50 states levying cigarette taxes use the time-honored two decimal places in their rates (e.g, $.48, or $1.14) One state feels compelled to refine its rate to three decimal places: Washington, a bastion of Left Coast urban liberalism, at $1.425. New Jersey and New York have the nation's highest rates, at $1.50 per pack, though Massachusetts has a law on the gub'nor's desk at July 1 awaiting signature for a rate of $1.51. Rhode Island has the fifth highest rate, $1.32. In a testimony to the unbridled power of Big Tobacco, the lowest rates are found in the tobacco-producing states of the south. Virginia's 2.5 cents per pack is lowest in the country. Kentucky is close behind at three cents, followed by North Carolina ($.05), South Carolina ($.07), Georgia ($.12), and Alabama ($.165). Smoke 'em if ya got 'em! (July 1, 2002)
- Sacramento atheist Michael Newdow was surely puffed up with pride in late June when a panel of the 9th U.S. Circuirt Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled 2-1 that the Pledge of Allegiance is unconstitutional because it contains the words "Under God." Newdow had gone to court because, he claimed, his second-grade daughter was being forced to recite the pledge in school. Newdow claimed his daughter was being thus confronted with "an unacceptable choice between participating and protesting." Two judges agreed. But Newdow's claim was disingenuous. The girl's "choice" was between participating or not participating (remaining silent), not between "participating and protesting." . She was not being required to "protest." or to say the pledge. The Supreme Court ruled in 1942 that no American can be required to recite the pledge. Newdow's artful spinning is the sort that would make a Clintonista proud.
- The counter critter at the Hard Cheese Post Office told me today, when I asked if they had any 34-cent stamps for sale, that they "don't sell them any more." These stamps are printed by the millions if not billions. They couldn't possibly have all been sold just when the rate increased July 1. But they seem to have been withdrawn from service. Where did they go? What did the Post Office do with them? I didn't have the heart to ask. (July 2, 2002)
- Columnist John Leo today brings us the latest chapter in our ongoing insanity. A Muslim woman has sued the state of Florida charging religious discrimination because it requires a Florida driver's license with a photo on it whenever legal identification is required. And even worse--learning a lesson from Sick's Willie's parsing of the word 'is'--Florida interprets its law to mean that the word 'photo' actually means a picture with a face visible and recognizable on it. The aggrieved plaintiff contends that her religion requires her to wear a cloth over her face and dictates that it is a sin for a woman to reveal her face to a man. She will no doubt prevail in court, and then other states' photo ID laws will fall, too. Two easy solutions: (1) require Muslims to show their drivers license only to female state bureaucrats, or (2) take a picture of a towel and put that on everyone's driver's license. Will that discriminate against anyone? (July 11, 2002)
- Meanwhile, in Canada--a 12-year-old Sikh youth and his family claim his religion requires him to carry a ceremonial dagger on his person at all times and therefore the rule in his school that students are not allowed to carry weapons into school is religious discrimination. He has already won in a Quebec court and school officials, under threat of contempt of court, yielded to a judge's order that the lad can bring his dagger inside the school--but only if it's wrapped up and carried inside his clothing. My guess is this is racist and discriminatory, too. But we'll leave that for future litigation. Next up: irate honky tots and their aggrieved parents sue for the right for their kids to bear arms in schools since the Sikhs get to. (July 11, 2002)
- And a few days later, July and Florida went over the top with news out of West Palm Beach--where Democratic voters probably still haven't figured out to cast a legal vote--that a quadriplegic has sued a strip club claiming discrimination because he can't get a lap dance there. Edward Law of Orlando filed his claim for billions in damages under the Americans with Disabilities Act because the lap-dance room doesn't have wheelchair access and is reachable only via a short flight of stairs. Sounds like a case for The Civil Wrongs Brigade--Johnny Cochran, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and Al Gore's ceaselessly flying battalion of legal beagles--to me! (July 15, 2002)
- Time to colonize another planet, boys. Where can I buy my tickets?
- "Everybody stay fly get money kill and f--- bitches." --Selected lyric from a rap song by the legendary Allen Iverson, "franchise player" for the Philadelphia 76ers, quoted in the Wall Street Journal, July 17, 2002
- Richard Feinberg, a member of the board of directors of Paul Harris Stores, Inc., bought 1,000 shares of Paul Harris stock one day before the company filed for bankruptcy, according to Indianapolis Business Journal columnist Greg Andrews (July 15, 2002)
- The Wall Street Journal ran a front-page expose July 19 about the latest crisis plaguing this great nation: Each Year, There Are Uninsured Children Injured While Delivering Newspapers. There is a deep longing loose in American society to eliminate all risk from life, and this is only the latest manifestation of it. Sounds to me like the Journal has uncovered another potential Democratic Party victim group constituency.
- Isn't it truly a Ripley's Believe It Or Don't that all (well, almost all) the freshly killed body parts from September 11 ground zero were hauled off to a place called Freshkills Landfill? Absolutely too weird, dude! (July 30, 2002)
- A woman using the nickname "No Doctor's Playmate" wrote to Dear Abby to report that her doctor reached into her bra when she consulted him about an ear infection. (Chicago Tribune, July 30, 2002)
- What is it with Florida, anyway? Activists (the ACLU, NOW, and Planned Parenthood) are now suing the state charging "viewpoint discrimination" because it is selling license plates with the slogan "Choose Life." NOW attorney Barry Silver was quoted saying this phrase is the equivalent to the Nazi "Sieg Heil." It's a "rallying cry to intimidate and kill," he added. Florida may be the next place (joining California, Oregon, Washington, New York, Massachusetts, and Vermont) we should saw off and set adrift in the ocean.
- A Zogby poll released this summer found 75 percent of college seniors saying their professors teach that there is no such thing as right and wrong.
- Only Mississippi has a higher rate of home loan foreclosure than Indiana, according to statistics released early in August by the Mortgage Bankers Association of America. Mississippi's rate was 2.13 percent, Indiana's a mere whisker behind at 2.12%. The national rate was 1.10 percent. Possible explanation: The hundreds of thousands of grieving Grape Kool-Aiders who abandoned their homes and worldly belongings in Indiana to trek to West Texas to be near Coach in His new job at Texas Tech. (August 8, 2002)
- The 69th Annual Church of God Assembly is going on at the Hoosier Dome in Indianapolis this week and the faithful--most of them outfitted in their Sunday best-- are thronging Indianapolis streets and restaurants. The Hoosier Dome's recorded loudspeaker announcements have even been customized for the group. The "public service" information broadcast tells how to get first aid, how to find automated teller machines, special entrances for the disabled and offers other useful clues. But it omits the lengthy warning which booms at most events--the Dome's ban on bringing in guns, knives, liquor, explosives, contraband, concussion grenades, flame throwers, missile-like objects and things of that nature. Apparently Dome management has done a little illegal profiling and determined the risk is low that the Assembly will produce any unpleasantness. But it opens the door for massive lawsuits by other aggrieved groups. (August 8, 2002)
- International Indigenous Peoples Day is August 9. Mogo and I will spend the day in quiet prayer and meditation at a quiet table with a drink of our choice. Care to join us? Care to play along?
- Vernon Hills (Illinois) High School has signed a $100,000 deal to name its new football stadium Rust-Oleum Field. The school district defends the action as a "creative alternative to raising taxes or cutting programs." The Chicago Tribune reports this is the first school facility in the state to be named after a corporate donor. Somebody ought to be investigting why the school board sold out so cheaply. One hundred grand is chump change for this deal! (August 14, 2002)
- Crusading local judges have freed about 3,000 criminals from Indianapolis jails in the last 10 months while citing a failure to comply with federal rules about overcrowding detention facilities. Two of these citizens have been re-arrested for murders. Judge William Young on July 25 set loose the most recent batch of 95 people, mostly drug dealers and drug addicts, he said soothingly, who hurt themselves but "in general" are "not hurting other people." Sixty others were released June 11 and one of those was arrested only two months later and charged with murder. Local pols seem afraid to ask us for more taxes to build more jails, but my guess is they're asking the criminals, not the rest of us. Now the Star has another daunting assignment: keeping track of the names of the freed criminals and the crimes they commit after their release. There will be justice in this matter only when the released prisoners are required by the Constitution to live in the homes of the judges who freed them. Not before. (August 15, 2002)
- My late-summer doldrums were eased a bit by word out of Boston of the orthopedic surgeon who abandoned a patient during back surgery so he could catch a ride to his bank to deposit a paycheck. The patient was under anesthesia with his back cut open when Dr. David Arndt whispered to his colleagues that he had to "step out" for a bit. The trip was short and Arndt returned in 35 minutes to wrap up the successful operation. He was suspended pending a hearing once word leaked out. No word about the patient's wallet, though we may safely presume it's been emptied.
- Two Londoners, James Auger, and Jimmy Loizeau, claim they have invented a "telephone tooth" that can be implanted in the human mouth and serve as a miniature telephone. The device would be implanted in a molar but turned on and off and programmed by a small device outside the body. So far the lads have no takers to manufacture it, but hope springs eternal, according to rumors.
- A Roper survey reveals that the percentage of Americans happy with their jobs has actually declined in the last seven years. In 1995 it was 60 percent, but today it's only 51 percent. Still, today's workers offer hope we are all coming to our senses. They report by big margins that the most happiness they get from their jobs is going home from them. These are my kinda Americans! (August 22, 2002)
- Lefties rejoiced when it was announced last summer that one of their icons, the surpassingly dopey Phil Donahue, was coming out of retirement to launch a talk show on MSNBC. But now that Phil's ratings are crappy, they're screaming conspiracy and lookin' under the bed for spooks and hobgoblins. Chicago Tribune columnist Salim Muwakkil outlined his theory as the dog days of August faded, and it's a humdinger. According to a New York Times article cited by Muwakkil, Donahue's show got unprecedented hype from MSNBC and debuted with a "fairly strong" audience of 660,000 in its first week. Alas, it's gone steadily south since. "Four weeks after his debut, Donahue has lost 40 percent of his audience," and is being routed by Fox News Channel's top-rated O'Reilly Factor. Muwakkil complains, though, that the playing field isn't level because a rich kook, Rupert Murdoch, owns Fox and has unlimited money to promote conservative causes. Not only that, the guy who runs the channel for Murdoch, Roger Ailes, is a "pugnacious former Republican operative and a veteran of the Nixon, Reagan, and Bush-the-elder campaigns," according to Muwakkil. "In other words," the Tribune columnist says, "Fox is on an ideological mission." Muwakkil says MSNBC is at a disadvantage because its "maneuvers are purely commercial" since it is owned by General Electric and Microsoft. Muwakkil says Donahue's "anti-corporate messages" are not likely to win approval from GE's chairman, Jeffrey Immelt. "Donahue is locked into a format that is intrinsically favorable to right-wingers who tend to have strong, unequivocal opinions," claims Muwakkil, who adds with an apparently straight face that this format "is less forgiving to progressives (Muwakkil carefully avoids the "L" word, calls Phil a "progressive" instead) who often need time to debunk conventional wisdom or bust biases (italics mine)." Muwakkil says the "format" that kills Donahue's chances of success "prevents the kind of context-laden discussions" that are Phil's strength, and that until Donahue can "bust the bias" that favors verbal fireworks over thoughtful nuances, "the game is rigged against him." I have a hunch it's a lot simpler than this. I have a hunch there's no market for Phil Donahue or the tired, liberal dogcrap drivel he's peddling. Just a hunch. (August 26, 2002)
- Ever notice how despite the bleeders claiming they care for children and people you never hear them advocate a policy that would make anyone rich? They'd rather have them poor and stupid so they'll vote Democrat. Just a hunch.
- Remember all the ads touting the miraculous memory-boosting powers of Gingko supplements? Well, put 'em on hold. A late August bulletin on the MSNBC website says the latest studies suggest it's pretty much baloney. Dang! Another dream shattered.
- Mogo and I attended the gala opening last evening of the Isaac Stern: American Superstar exhibit at the Eiteljorg Museum in beautiful downtown Indianapolis. It featured an hour-long film on Stern's life--itself a remarkable record of achievement-- the exhibit of artifacts commemorating his life, including the violin he used most of his 60+ year career, and grazing by patrons at the salad/munchie pit. The story of his life is inspiring. Born in one of the old Soviet republics, he left abruptly at the age of one when his family--Jews, you see--opted to flee to safer ground. They crossed Siberia and eventually secured passage on a ship to San Francisco, where they lived forever after. Isaac began playing the violin a few years later and dropped out of school at age eight to study it full-time. He went on to world acclaim and died last year at age 81. Back in the town of his birth, the Nazis rounded up all his relatives and everyone else in town as well, and burned them all alive in the1940s. Stern is credited with personally saving Carnegie Hall when New York City had slated it for demolition in the 1970s or 1980s. Stern raised millions of dollars for the building's purchase and renovation. He made a famous trip to China in the late 70s or early 1980s, from which a Pulizer-prize winning documentary (From Mao to Mozart) was made. His was an amazing and wonderful life. It was an inspiring and uplifting evening for us and, given the general grubbiness and self-absorption of American culture these days, a wonderful tonic. (August 29, 2002)
- The best story out of a long weekend for me was the report out of Sweden that authorities there had grabbed a guy who tried to board a flight to London with a loaded weapon in his carry-on bag. The guy was 29 years old, a Muslim, had a criminal record, had attended flight school in Conway, South Carolina, and was with a group said to be traveling to a Muslim convention in London. Why would anyone be suspicious? Meanwhile, in America, our airport security people would have been crawling around on the ground looking up the dresses of two-year-old girls and giving colorectal examinations to 93-year-old paraplegic grandmothers rather than offend the delicate sensibilities of the civil rights crowd by concentrating on the obvious. The really crazy thing is that the notoriously liberal Swedes actually refused to let the guy board! This sounds like a case for Johnny Cochran and Gerry Spence! Somebody's going to have to pay for this outrageous act of racist profiling and discrimination! (September 3, 2002)
- If I were Dubya I'd be planning a little September 11 Surprise for Al Qaeda somewhere in the world. Something like we see in the movies. . .a phone call is placed to a terrorist hideout. . .a voice at the our end of the line whispers softly, "Look out your window, asshole. . . ." And the guy does, and what he sees is the entire sky black with B-52s wingtip to wingtip at treetop level in a swath ten miles wide. . .Slim Pickens in the lead, flyin' point, slapping his thighs with his big cowboy hat as the bomb bay doors yawn wide open. Fade to blinding white, the color the universe turns when a Daisy Cutter ignites three feet from your face. Well, just a daydream. My guess is we'll have a national day of hand-wringing and feeling sorry for ourselves instead, with full network coverage and days of pre- and post-game analysis by the big talking heads and big yelling heads. Just a hunch. (September 3, 2002)
- Chris Matthews spent one of the toughest nights of his life September 4 on his CNBC program, Hardball. Michael Ledeen served in the recurring role of The Guest Who Drove Chris Crazy. Ledeen was making the rounds promoting his latest book, The War Against The Terror Masters. He appeared first on the Kudlow & Cramer Show, then an hour later went on Hardball with Matthews. The contrast was striking. Lawrence Kudlow and Larry Cramer and Ledeen engaged in a conversation marked by no interruptions, by thoughtful, intelligent questions and answers, and considerable edification for viewers. (Kudlow and Cramer, by the way, has my vote for the best talk show anywhere right now--its co-hosts are intelligent, widely read, ask insightful questions, and allow guests an uninterruped response. You almost never hear the yelling and interrupting that so characterizes most shows, and you seldom get the feeling their positions are personal agenda-driven. Ledeen's major theme in his new book is that the United States should use all its "political, moral, and military genius to support a vast democratic revolution to liberate all the peoples of the Middle East from tyrrany." This is what Ledeen said in response to Matthews' first question September 4. But Matthews became immediately obsesssed with the word "military" and accused Ledeen of proposing a massive military invasion of the four major state supporters of terrorism Ledeen's book cites: Iraq, Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia. Ledeen politely but firmly pointed out that this was not what he had just said or written in his book. Ledeen then repeated his premise for Chris a second time. Matthews apparently could not hear or chose to ignore, for he came back a third time with the same insistence that Ledeen was advocating a massive military operation against all four. Ledeen repeated a third time that this was not what he said or wrote. Chris at this point was visibly irritated and, one assumes, fairly baffled. He quickly cut off Ledeen, went to a break, and Ledeen was gone when Chris returned. This was an utterly wasted segment for Chris and his viewers, and in my view a deep embarrassment for Matthews himself. While sometimes I enjoy and applaud Matthews, there are other times when the guy just seems to lose it, go nuts with this fixation or that. Chris was really off his feed on this occasion. (September 4, 2002)
- Thirty years ago today, Palestinian terrorists invaded the Munich Olympic Games and slaughtered 11 Israeli athletes. The Chicago Tribune ran a huge (over a full page) article on the Unpleasantness today. How quickly things recede into memory. Israel's secret service has hunted down and captured or killed most of the terrorists. I say we still owe the bastards who did it. (September 5, 2002)
- A headline--one of those epic stunners you never forget-- over a column by Washington Post columnist Michelle Singletary printed in the September 8 Indianapolis Star blew me backwards out of my chair with hurricane force: You Can Benefit By Saving--No Matter Your Race. I'd believed all my life that only white honkey mothers could benefit by saving. But my own desperate need for therapy aside, aren't there any adults at the Post and the Star? That remains the cosmic question, particularly at the Star. (September 8, 2002)
- But once I regained consciousness, my wife, Mogo, soothingly read this encouraging news to me: American Airlines is assuring an anxious world that although it is cutting 7,000 jobs to save millions and millions and millions of dollars in these trying times, it will not cut one dime from its multicultural diversity program budget which courts gay travelers and workers.
- The heartbreaking anniversary of the September 11 Unpleasantness is fast approaching and the media are weighing in with their own special plans for the occasion. There's much talk of sensitivity, our delicate emotions, our need to express how we feel, how to talk to our children about it, where to get therapy and counseling, about our need for closure, about how important it is to avoid hurting the feelings of others. So far I haven't heard a peep about what we ought to be feeling. That would be unrelenting fury and anger over what they did to us, and unrelenting efforts to make they pay for it. (September 8, 2002)
- The State Department has issued over 125,000 temporary visas to people from Middle East countries (not including Israel) to enter the U.S. since September 11, 2001. Of these, 899 are from Iraq, 14,109 from Pakistan, 9,247 from Lebanon, 17,237 from Saudi Arabia, 8,405 from Syria, 871 from the Palestinian Authority, and 20,206 from Egypt. The U.S. government has no way of knowing if any of these visitors leave when their visas expire. Isn't this comforting? (Source: Human Events, September 9, 2002 issue)
- "The History Channel made a splash last week by asking Britons to name the most important event in their history the past century. The death of Princess Diana came in first. World War II was second." --Daniel Henninger, a columnist writing in the Wall Street Journal September 6, 2002.
- One of the more depressing stories to come down the pike--in the last few minutes, anyway--is the September 4 Chicago Tribune report that the nation's marketers and advertisers are zeroing in now on the irresistible 8-12-year age group. "Once considered off limits (for reasons, one fondly remembers, of simple human decency and self-restraint) to advertisers, they are now part of a 30-million person force. . .that is. . .one of the most powerful consumer groups in the nation," according to columnist Jim Kirk, who goes on to talk about the "faux leather pants and flirty tops" and the "mascara and navel rings" being shoveled at our children. Kirk's story was accompanied by a picture of two of these little "consumers" tucking in their tummies and studying their budding profiles in a suburban Chicago children's "boutique." And so it goes in America. Appalling.
- Lance Bass, a member of a band called 'N Sync, got some bad news the first week of September. He had his heart set on being the youngest person in space and only the planet's third space tourist by riding along October 28 when the Russian Space Agency sent a flight to the International Space Station. But on September 9 the Russians said no. I'd make Lance a deal: he could go, if he agreed to stay and never return to earth.
- Television news and talk shows on the eve of September 11 were full of fearfulness, hand-wringing, angst and worry on the part of commentators and guests. They conveyed a sense of America cowering. We should be doing just the opposite. Our forces should have been walking the earth that night hunting terrorists, making them cower in their bunkers and caves, snuffing them out wherever they could be found. (September 11, 2002)
- Comcast, the big cable television outfit, used to have us send monthly payments to Detroit. Then the address for paying bills changed to something called "Southeastern PA." Does this sound like the name of a real place to you? I suspect it's just some warehouse somewhere, in an increasingly detached, depersonalized world or matrix. If anybody can find Southeastern, Pennsylvania, on a map, let me know.
- The Indianapolis Star plans to spend more than a million dollars in a fresh, new "branding" (that's what they call advertising nowadays) campaign featuring TV ads showing reporters and editors talking about how they feeeeeeel about their jobs. The goal is to "connect our brand in the community with the passion our reporters and editors feel", says the marketing director, Brian Priester. The Star would be better off spending that million to put out a world-class, ass-kicking newspaper that readers couldn't live without, instead of the silly, trivial mediocrity they peddle now.
- "Bob Greene's real mistake was neglecting to get elected president. Then he could also have lied under oath and kept his job." --Charlie Hooks of River Forest, Illinois, in a letter to the editor in the September 17 Chicago Tribune. Hooks was remarking on the furor over the forced resignation of Tribune columnist Bob Greene last weekend after it was revealed that he had had an inappropriate relationship (code for: sexual) decades ago with a high school girl then in her "late teens" who met Greene during a tour by students of the Tribune's office. (September 17, 2002)
- The latest entry in the No Script Is Too Insane To Come True in American Society Department can be found in the September 19 Indianapolis Star, which reports that two lard-assed teenagers have sued McDonald's seeking billions and billions and billions in damages for making them fat. Their suit claims that McDonald's made it impossible for them not to eat McDonald's food and that it is therefore McDonald's fault that they are grossly obese. One of their attorneys is quoted saying that, obviously, children are not capable of making healthful decisions about food (although they are capable of murder, just to name one thing). This is the third known suit of this type against the latest American Demon, Big Food. Seats are selling fast and others will soon be clambering aboard the gravy train. McDonald's should counter-sue the parents and other irresponsible adults responsible for this absurdity, charging them with not making healthful decisions about food for their idiot children. All aboard! (September 19, 2002)
- "Among the many commemorations of the September 11th anniversay, the one at Berkeley was unique. The American flag was banned because it might offend people from other countries. "The Star Spangled Banner" was banned because it was considered too militaristic, while "God Bless Amerca" was not regarded as an acceptable substitute because God is considered politically incorrect in Berkeley." --Thomas Sowell, Creators Syndicate columnist, September 19, 2002.
- "They can't keep the Iverson product in the stores." --John Shanley, a Wells Fargo analyst, commenting on skyrocketing sales of Allen Iverson signature shoes since the NBA star was arrested on gun charges, quoted by Associated Press and listed in Time magazine's "Verbatim" column in a September, 2002 issue.
- In the break room down at Universal Export is a wall clock that's been hanging crookedly for over four years. In all that time not a single person--the room is used by dozens of people daily--has ever been moved to straighten it. It lists about 30 degrees to the left. Ordinarily I'd be obsessive enough to do it, but early on I became fascinated wondering how long it would hang there unstraightened. I'm in the room numerous times each day and it takes enormous willpower each time for me to resist nudging it straight up. Over four years and counting. Amazing. (October 1, 2002)
- A jury in Lost Angeles awarded a record $28 billion in damages October 4 to a woman named Betty Bullock who has lung cancer. Bullock, 64, has smoked for 47 years and sued Philip Morris, Inc.--America's favorite Big Tobacco demon-- for fraud, claiming it has concealed the dangers of smoking for half a century. Testimony during the trial indicated Bullock was warned against smoking by her own doctors for over four decades, and her own daughter begged her for years to quit, but she told them, "I am an adult. This is my business." The jury apparently chose to forgive Bullock for these errors in judgment. The Wall Street Journal termed the decision "the zenith of absurdity." That understates it by light years. (October 4, 2002)
- Almost 84,000 people have visited the Spam Museum since it opened last September in Austin, Minnesota, according to a report in the Chicago Tribune September 17. Equally exciting, the Trib reports that 3.8 cans of Spam are consumed every second in the United States.
- Evidence of still another possible conspiracy--"Our National Parks: Why Are They So White?" the headline read--has been uncovered by Nathan Biersma, a reporter for the Chicago Tribune, who dug deeply into a 2000 survey by the National Park Service and uncovered these disturbing facts: 95 percent of visitors to the Badlands that year were white, two percent were Asian, two percent were Native Americans, and one percent were black. Our national parks, he concluded, were not drawing a sufficiently diverse crowd. More sleepless nights.
- The local public televsion channel, WFYI, broadcast a program October 6 containing never-before-seen (by me, anyway) footage of Willie Nelson. He was clean-shaven, with short hair, and wearing a suit and tie. A pre-dirtbag version of Willie. Amazing. (October 6, 2002)
- The first week of October provided these new lows in my personal radio listening experience: A guest on the Bob & Tom Show saying "Fuck," a sports broadcaster saying "pissed off", and country singer Waylon Jennings saying "son of a bitch." Please don't anyone tell me that our civilization is better off now that this sort of language has entered the public dialogue. (Waylon later in the program offered the notion that "They ain't nobody ever wrote better songs than Willie Nelson.")
- In a recent Indianapolis Business Journal story about the acquisition of Best Access Systems, an 80-year-old family-owned Indianapolis company, by Connecticut-based toolmaker The Stanley Company, mention was made of Stanley's "access technology" division. Could this be the division that makes what we used to call locks? (October 14, 2002)
- "You can see the misery in the faces of passengers on minibuses and vans. They stare pale and lifeless out of windows streaked with vomit." --A Chicago Tribune reporter in Afghanistan, describing that country's primitive sytems of roads, cart paths and animal trails. (October 21, 2002)
- "Only the dullest believe that the "security measures" that now inconvenience and humiliate grandmothers, Medal of Honor winners and Al Gore (he was searched at an airport recently) reflect the capacity of the U. S. Government to protect us. People know in their bones that they reflect incompetence." --Angelo Codevilla, a professor at Boston University, writing in the Fall, 2002, issue of the Claremont Review of Books.
- "This was a Liberals' war, run by Liberals, who regarded Barry Goldwater and William F. Buckley, Jr., as more reprehensible than Ho Chi Minh." --Angelo Codevilla, referring to the Vietnam War, in an article in the Fall, 2002, edition of the Claremont Review of Books.
- ". . .if we cannot make them like us, what can we do? We can earn their respect by killing our enemies. Though we cannot make good regimes, we can kill harmful ones. Distinguishing between the relatively harmful and harmless, between the more and less friendly, is the simple beginning of wisdom. Plato grounds the argument of his Republic on the observation that dogs do this well. So far, however, the U.S. government has killed lots of people whose deaths have not made us safe, and spared the regimes that hate us." --Angelo Codevilla, advocating decisive action against Iraq, Syria, and the Palestinian Authority, which he regards as the world's chief terrorist-supporting regimes, writing in the Fall, 2002, edition of the Claremont Review of Books.
- A lawyer in Idaho, mercifully not identified, accused by the state of evading use tax on out-of-state purchases, tried to claim that it was unconstitutional to make him pay use tax because not every taxpayer in the State was being audited. The authorities told him to cram it and nailed him.
- Let's see now. The alleged snipers--John Allen Muhammad and John Lee Malvo--are a Muslim who converted to Islam in the mid-1990s, and an illegal immigrant. Why does this seem to be following a script?
- How's this for a great irony of September 11: much of the dismantled steel from World Trade Center wreckage has been cut up, loaded into cargo ships and delivered to steel plants in China and other locations, where it is being recycled and dispersed to other building sites around the globe. This from a review of a new book titled American Ground: Unbuilding The World Trade Center, by William Langewiesche, the review written by Jeffrey Goldberg for the New York Times Book Rievew. Goldberg, in a wonderfully evocative paragraph, wrote: "No bagpipes, no speeches, no CNN, just a pile of steel and a dirty ship on a grimy bay; this is how the story ends, the bones of the World Trade Center becoming a commodity in world trade. In this story is contained one of the gifts of American Ground: truth, unclouded by sentiment." (October 20, 2002)
- Worst News I've Heard So Far In The D. C. Sniper Unpleasantness: The Baltimore Sun is already speculating that any death penalty verdict which might be obtained from a Montgomery County, Maryland, jury will likely be overturned by the Maryland Supreme Court. (October 27, 2002)
- And of course lawyers are already speculating that young Malvo will wriggle off the hook because he is a minor (under 18) and via some clever notion that he was in total submission to an adult master and therefore not responsible for anything that happened. It's hard to imagine America's coterie of celebrity defense attorneys--Johnny, Gerry, Alan and the rest--isn't already airborne toward Montgomery County, Maryland.
- Doug Gansler, a Maryland attorney for Montgomery County, was all over the Sunday TV talk shows, explaining why that county was the absolute best place to prosecute the snipers. He showed he is media-ready and an accomplished spinner, too. Asked directly by host Tim Russert on Meet The Press if there was any chance that Muhammad and Malvo were connected to a terrorist organization, Doug said "there is absolutely no evidence" that they are. This was not what Russert asked him, of course, but no one seemed to notice the deflection, and the show roared on. (October 27, 2002)
- Meantime, a chap connected with the homeless shelter out in Washington where Muhammad and Malvo stayed last year told authorities that Muhammad received more than one phone call at the shelter from a travel agent. Muhammad also is reported to have left the shelfter for occasional trips to Denver, New Orleans, and the Cayman Islands, although he was without any visible or known source of funds to pay for these trips or other life necessities such as food, lodging or transportation. The average person would quickly conclude there's something peculiar about such reports; the question seems to be whether government authorities will find them worth attention and follow-up.
- Oh, man. The president of Quincy College, a private Catholic school in Illinois, has resigned "amid reports he padded his resume with two degrees he never earned." The Rev. Eugene Cole's the name o' the perp, errors in judgment the name o' the game. (October 30, 2002)
- Bid a fond goodbye to Billy Mitchell, a retired rock music legend who died in Wonderland, D.C. today at age 71. Mitchell sang about seven years with The Clovers, a group that had over a dozen top-10 hits. Mitchell was best known for his version of Love Potion No. 9, the group's' last big hit, in 1959. (November 5, 2002)
- A moment of silence, please. The legendary Lonnie Donegan expired in his native England this week at age 71. He was most noted for two rock hits, Rock Island Line, and Does Your Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavor (On The Bedpost Overnight)? Lonnie, Lonnie, we hardly knew ye.
- One of my left-of-center friends must have sent my name in as a little joke to a liberal organization or two, asking for information, hinting at big contributions, that sort fo thing. I've been getting mail lately from places like the ACLU, the Sierra Club and other wacko leftwing extremist kook groups. But this sort of joke backfires. I tear up all their enclosed literature, add some of my own waste basket scraps to jack up the weight, and send all the shreddings back to the organization in the postage-paid envelope they unfailingly supply. I figure this joke costs the lefties a dollar or more every time the mailman delivers me something. I love this. (December 1, 2002)
- As though we need any more proof the United Nations is a convention of charlatans and whores, consider this: The UN's 53-member Commission on Human Rights includes Cuba, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, Vietnam, and Zimbabwe, and last year expelled the United States from membership (we've been re-admitted after a year's penance for our crimes against humanity).
- While we were traveling over Thanksgiving, federal screeners at America's airports were confiscating the following: 15,982 pocket knives, 98 box cutters, 1,072 clubs or baseball bats, 2,384 flammable items (including a welding gun), 3,242 banned tools, six handguns, one brick, and 20,581 "sharp objects" including scissors, ice picks and meat cleavers. This is only what as discovered, not what got aboard undetected. (December 4, 2002)
- A man has successfully sued Eagle Creek Golf Course in Indianapolis under the Americans with Disabilities Act, arguing that he has a right to play golf from a golf cart. The club has been forced to buy him a specially equipped cart so he can play without getting out of the cart. (December 4, 2002)
- A friend read an e-mail of mine he thought was "mostly negative." He asked if I could think of anything positive to say. With no prep time and shooting from the hip, I thought of five things. They were: 1) Al Gore is still not president; 2) Neither is Sick; 3) Neither is Hillary; 4) Last month's election results still have not been overturned by leftie judges; 5) We live in the best country ever on this planet. (December 4, 2002)
- America's next billionaire's gonna be Scott Walston. Never heard of 'im, you say? You will. Scott's a Macon, Georgia, entrepreneur chasing a can't miss concept in niche marketing--college logo caskets. A late-November Chicago Tribune article is sure to propel him to fame. Like so many, this is a stunningly simple idea, sure to make you slap your forehead and say, "Why didn't I think of that?" Scott is marketing caskets and other funeral-related products bearing college logos. His just-out University of Illinois model triggered the Trib's interest. Walston says he has "a few hundred" colleges already signed up with his company, Collegiate Memorials. He has at least one competitor, WhiteLight Art Caskets of Dallas. Walston's biggest seller so far is the University of Nebraska. The University of Kentucky model tops Whitelight's sales. Both companies are believed to be eyeing the global marketplace, and that could include a Coach Knight model for the Grape Kool-Aid Crowd. Another compelling reason to look forward to the end, I say!
- As we might expect from a nominee (mine) for a Pulizter Prize for Subtlety, there is no caption on the cartoon, and no indication of where it was published. It features a drawing of five candidates in a beauty contest. All are in bathing suits, with sashes draped across typically ample chests. Only one sash bears a notation (Miss Sharia). Only a political junkie will get it. And only the attentive will notice that Miss Sharia's left arm has been hacked off just below the elbow." Priceless. (December 1, 2002)
- Still More Reasons To Go On Living A huge feature story in the Wall Street Journal brought us the urgent news that America's teen fashion mavens were going back to the "grunge look." They've dressed it all up, though, by calling it New Grunge. Dirtbag's a dirtbag, I say. (December 11, 2002)
- Along toward the end of the year I heard one of my heroes, Emo Philips, on a local radio program. He is a Chicago-based comedian. He was a guest on the Bob and Tom Show. A high squeaky voice, decidedly goofy. He is famous in my life for this wonderful observation about life: "Some mornings it just doesn't seem worth it to gnaw through the leather straps."
- Tambourine Bapp. Wayne (Bromo) Redpoll. Froggy Dibden. Mrs. Stinchcomb. Babe Vanderslice. Harry Howdiboy. Bob Dollar. Ribeye Cluke. Global Pork Rind Corp. Woolybucket, Texas. LaVon Fronk. Orlando Bunner. Frances Scott Keister. --Names of places and characters used in That Old Ace In The Hole, a new novel by Annie Proulx. Set in the rural American Southwest, it was favorably reviewed in the December 15, 2002, New York Times Book Review by Laura Miller (who, for inexplicable reasons, branded Keister a "truly inexcusable" name. What's wrong with Laura?). (December 15, 2002)
- "Cool breeze. Warm fire. Full moon. Easy chair. Empty plates. Soft words. Sweet songs. Tall tales. Short sips. Long life. . .Happy New Year." --Toast written and recited a capella by Jim and Bonnie Carter of Zionsville, Indiana, 12/17/2002.
- ". . .you have to understand (that) when you smile, it's eight Buicks in a drive-in theater." --Jack Nicholson, discussing acting techniques in an interview published in the Chicago Tribune hyping his new film, About Schmidt. The metaphor worked for me. In my mind's eye I'm looking straight on at their grills, and all eight sets of headlights are on--it brings to mind Nicholson's trademark piercing smile seen so often in his movies.
- Past time to doff our hats and bow our heads in a moment of deepest respect and admiration for the legendary Ray Wallace, who died in late November at age 84. Soon after, his son, Michael, came forth to reveal that the elder Wallace, with plenty of help from family, was none other than the brains behind. . .Bigfoot, the 8-foot apelike beast said to have stalked the woods and wilderness of Humbolt County California, in recent decades. Michael Wallace claims that his dad, who owned a construction company, enlisted friends and family members in the hoax and "documented" much of it with the help of photographs taken by the elder Wallace. The "sightings" produced those famous grainy photographs of Bigfoot loping along a trail near deep woods, and footprints "discovered" in 1958 which were created by a friend who made them from carved wooden "feet." A nephew, Dale Lee Wallace, told Associated Press that, "He did it for a joke, and then he was afraid to tell anyone because they'd be so mad at him." Mad? No way, Dale Lee. On the contrary, this fan is deeply disappointed at the news. Only two things can ease the pain: either another practical joker taking up where Wallace left off, or confirmed proof that the Wallaces were just funnin' us and that Bigfoot is indeed real. (December 23, 2002)
- OK, I'll confess. I just mailed off a subscription to Esquire magazine. I've had a half-love, half-hate affair with this journal since the 1960s. It's evolved over the decades from a publisher of great fiction to a now dominant obsession with our smutty pop culture. Its only redeeming virtue today is the annual December issue containing its scalding Dubious Achievements awards. Even those don't have the brilliance of yesteryear. But even mediocre Doobies are better than no Doobies at all. So, when I recently got a mail offer for a year's subscription for $6.95. I took the bait. I question if the magazine is worth that much, but at that price, you can use it to start campfires or your fireplace. They must be utterly desperate to boost subscription. (December 31, 2002)
- Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, the second of the Rings trilogy, is a blockbuster. The usual awful villains and critters and loveable heroes and lovely damsels. Nearly unbelievable special effects (the Orcs, an army of 10,000 shrieking, babboonlike monsters, all in a high state of piss, are your worst nightmare as they mass outside Helm's Deep for the Final Assault). If you aren't a child at heart, you'd best see it with a child, and hope some of their awe and glee will rub off on you. Four stars.
- I have a hunch--just
a hunch, mind you--that so long as our county is entangled in
any way with the United Nations, our national interests
and sovereignty are in peril. The odds that Iraq will slip the
hook increase each day the UN is involved. (December 31, 2002)