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June 26, 2003
UNCLE THOMAS
I made fun of Maureen Dowd the other week [see
href="http://lexiphane.com/lex/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1
37">TIME TO HANG IT UP, 6/11/03] when she decided to traffic in
the lame clich?s of men, women, barcaloungers, and shoe shopping. She
gets serious
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/25/opinion/25DOWD.html">this
week though, basically calling Supreme Court Justice Clarence
Thomas an ungrateful negro Uncle Tom in her column. Doesn't he know
that he owes his entire life accomplishments to sassy beautiful
liberals such as herself? You tell him Maureen! That uppity negro
needs to mind his manners and not forget his place.
Here's a pernicious aspect of affirmative action. How would you
like to have elevated yourself from the lowest rungs of American
society to perhaps one of its most elevated stations, a seat on the
Supreme Court, and have people discount your achievements as nothing
other than skating by via racial preferences? Dowd:
"The dissent is a clinical study of a man who has been
driven barking mad by the beneficial treatment he has received.
It's poignant, really. It makes him crazy that people think he is where
he is because of his race, but he is where he is because of his
race."
Barking mad indeed. What other Supreme Court Justices have to
put up with this level of condescension from an intellectually
lightweight ditz whose greatest claim to fame is banging Michael
Douglas before he met Katherine Zeta Jones? I hope that makes her
bitter, by the way. I don't recall reading about dissenting opinions
from Justice Ginsberg or Justice O'Connor that intoned "stupid chicks,
they're probably just on the rag." Dowd later goes on to contradict
herself in the course of a single sentence.
"Other justices rely on clerks and legal footnotes to
help with their opinions; Justice Thomas relies on his id, turning an
opinion on race into a therapeutic outburst."
Somehow, the fact that Thomas writes his own opinions is held
against him. Thomas probably knows that if deigned to use clerks to
help him write his opinions--as most Justices feel free to do--it would
be presented as evidence of his intellectual shallowness and more proof
that he was a simple black footservant of Justice Scalia. Of course,
Justice Thomas can't be writing logical and reasoned legal arguments
based on his life's experiences and the law, he "relies on his id."
Look out! Crazy black man on the loose talking all sorts of shuck and
jive nonsense!
I don't know if Maureen Dowd is a racist, but if belittling the
professional accomplishments of a minority as simply charitable
largesse and denying their ability to think rationally for themselves
are racist notions then I think she's fitting the bill pretty well.
But what can you expect from a woman?
Posted by Lexiphane at 12:29 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 25, 2003
LIZZIE GRUBMAN REDUX
I don't know what to say about
href="http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/176/metro/Police_say_road_rage_
driver_struck_officer_with_car-.shtml">this. She sounds like quite
a catch.
Posted by Lexiphane at 10:11 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
PROOF OF LIFE
Here are the
href="http://www.tomhogarty.com/gallery/eldo">money shots. Anyone
that read
href="http://lexiphane.com/lex/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1
46">THE ROAD TO EL DORADO is probably dying to see what the car
looks like. One simply hasn't lived until you've cruised in this
thing. Browse around the site and you'll get some pics from cousin
Mike and Molly's wedding in Burlington. The fact that I made it there
by the skin of my teeth was apparently not photo-worthy. Either that,
or Tom was just being charitable in not capturing my dissipated state.
Lots of nephew-in-shortpants shots though.
Posted by Lexiphane at 9:57 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 24, 2003
CHECKS AND BALANCES
Rep. Dick Gephardt obviously failed his high school civics class;
either that, or he's spent so much time in DC that he's become drunk on
the concept of arbitrary power. Speaking of the recent Supreme Court
decision on Michigan's affirmative action policy he asserts:
"When I'm president, we'll do executive orders to overcome any
wrong thing the Supreme Court does tomorrow or any other day,"
The Marbury vs. Madison case--near 200 years old--
established that the Supreme Court had the ability to rule acts of
Congress unconstitutional. The executive branch has the privilege of
nominating Court officials, subject to legislative approval, thus
closing the circle on a near-perfect set of checks and balances between
the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of government. The
fact that Gephardt is now saying that he wishes the executive branch to
have the power to arbitrarily overrule the findings of the Supreme
Court is tantamount to saying he'd like to burn the Constitution. This
might not be the most racy or controversial story of the week, but
Gephardt just made the most un-American promise in decades. He might
have just been talking out of his ass, but challenging the power of the
Court over the actions of the executive and legislative branches is on
the same par as southern legislators advocating secession prior to the
Civil War. In short, Rep. Dick Gephardt--in public--just claimed that
he is for a dictatorship of the executive branch. And he did so
unequivocally.
Posted by Lexiphane at 10:14 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
ANOTHER LOOK
Last week I wrote about a picture in The New York Sun that
showed a man immolating himself to protest French police actions
against an Iranian opposition group [see
href="http://lexiphane.com/lex/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1
44">AGONY, 4/19/03]. A piece in today's Wall Street
Journal op/ed page by Amir Taheri [unavailable online at this time]
describes how this group is actually the Iranian's Mujahedin Khalq
(MEK), or "People's Combatants", an Islamic-Marxist sect. The group
has been looking to overthrow the mullahs in Iran since they
participated in that country's revolution to overthrow the shah, but
then felt the Ayatollah Khomeini was not radical enough, and
have since waged a campaign of terror against the theocracy.
"The MEK was founded in 1965 after a split in a
Marxist-Leninist movement that had waged a guerilla action in northern
Iran. Its ideology emerged as a mix of Islam and Marx, with
ingredients from the Iranian religious sociologist Ali Shariati, who
advocated an "Islam without a clergy." The MEK, with KGB help, engaged
in a campaign against the Shah, and sent cadres to Cuba, East Germany,
South Yemen and Palestinian camps in Lebanon to train as
guerillas."
The MEK has since worked closely with Saddam Hussein to wage war
and post-war insurrection against Iran. It's consistently taken action
to undermine U.S. influence in the region, including the murder of U.S.
citizens. They also cooperated with Hussein to massacre Kurds and
Shiite Iraqis. If there's one thing I hate more than Islamist
terrorist organizations, it would be a commie Islamist terrorist
organization. Taheri points out that France's current crackdown after
years of hospitality to the MEK is probably just an effort to curry
favor with one of the dwindling number of middle-eastern nations that
are countering U.S. efforts in the region. That doesn't mean that
taking action against Islamist-Marxist terrorist groups is a bad idea.
Posted by Lexiphane at 9:25 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
THE ROAD TO EL DORADO
This weekend was spent driving out to Ft. Wayne, Indiana with my
brother so he could purchase a long-time dream of his--a 1972 Cadillac
El Dorado convertible. He found one via ebay and after arranging for
purchase with the owner we hit the road.
We started off around 8:15 Saturday morning and went over to the
Budget rental center on 85th St. to pick up our ordered subcompact,
cheapest available please. They must have been looking to unload a car
from South Carolina from their inventory, however, because when they
pulled it out of the garage we were looking at a brand new blue
Mustang. This augured well for the trip. The ride to Indiana was kind
of a blur of changing CDs and shifting in my seat so as not to succumb
to deep vein thrombosis. The Mustang's a nice car with a powerful
engine. The backseat is suitable for holding maps.
Driving directly to the owner's house, Tom introduced himself and
spent a fair amount of time looking the Caddy over. It's hard to
believe cars like that were ever produced [actually, less than 10,000
of the convertible ever were]. The El Dorado is red with a white
ragtop and white pin-stripe trim. The engine is the biggest thing I'd
ever seen [V8, 8.2 liter, 500 cubic inch if that means anything to
you]. We took it for a test drive with the top down and our lap-belts
fastened. The windshield looked like a movie screen and the hood
stretches before you like you're at one end of the dinner table at a
private meal with the Vanderbilts. The Cadillac insignia hood ornament
sticks up at the end of the hood like a gun site trained on your
destination. It might be the coolest car in the world. Test drive
over: SOLD.
After dropping the Mustang off at Fort Wayne International
Airport [a chain link fence and two Quonset huts] we drove Tom's new
pimp-mobile over to our Motel 6 and checked in. Desperate for dinner,
the only available eatery was next to our motel and called New York
Diner. The menu sure looked the same, although the service was a
little less brusque and a beer only cost $2.50--very un-NYC. After a
nightcap at the bar on the other side of our motel and a few minutes in
the parking lot gazing at the El Dorado, I fell into bed and, as one is
wont to do in motels, slept terribly.
The next morning we gassed up [coffee for us, gas for the car]
and hit the road. Unlike on the East Coast for the past 40 days and 40
nights, the weather in the Midwest was warm and sunny. It remained
that way until we hit New York State, which seems to be contractually
obligated to suffer crappy weather through the end of June. We drove
with the top up all the way home because 700 miles of highway driving
with the top down might have left us too sunburned and hoarse from
screaming to be practical. I've always wanted to drive all the way
across the U.S. and Tom's about to do that this summer [actually ending
in New Mexico]. Driving to Fort Wayne makes me feel like I've gotten
the boring part out of the way, although I'm sure there are some
Midwestern Plains states that might take issue with this and say "Hold
on! We've got a lot less to offer!" Still, it was a good trip unmarked
by any major inconveniences our traffic hold-ups. I have no pictures,
but when Tom posts some from his trip I'll link to them. I also
composed a sort of poem/song regarding Ohio. That state has produced
the second-most number of U.S. Presidents, trailing only Virginia, and
I'm convinced that's due to a deep desire of its residents to get the
hell out of it. Anyway, here's my composition, to be sung on crossing
over that state's border on the way out:
So long, farewell Ohio,
It's time for us to say goodbye.
Next time I have to visit,
You can bet I'll surely fly.
West Indiana roads have bucolic views,
Pennsylvania's have up-and-down grades.
But even next to Scranton, crappy coal mining town,
Your roads' and land's appeal simply fades.Driving Ohio is so boring,
At times it made me want to cry.
So with God as my solemn witness,
I pray I never call myself a Buckeye.Posted by Lexiphane at 9:15 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 19, 2003
POSH TRADE
Greatest soccer player in the world, David Beckham, has been
traded from the storied Manchester United team in a deal involving more
money than Oracle C.E.O. Larry Ellison could spend transporting an
island from Japan to the California coastline, but still only about a
third of what Nike just agreed to pay a high school kid for wearing
shoes. Strangely, the midfielder and husband of Posh Spice was traded
to the Yankees, where he will assume the center fielder position.
Here's a confused George Steinbrenner:
"I heard this kid's the best in the world and heTagged:
was ready to make a move. I know that over there they call it football
or something, but over here we call football baseball. You don't win
championships without shelling out some cash you know, and I never pass
up an opportunity to pay ridiculous amounts of money getting the best
players off other teams. The kid's gonna be fabulous. It's win win.
Oh, and Gipson, you're fired."Posted by Lexiphane at 10:06 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
AGONY
In 1995, director Spike Jonze shot a video for the band Wax's
Tagged:
song "California" that was simply slow motion film of a man on fire
jogging down a city sidewalk. Those images are mirrored horribly on
the front page of today's New York Sun. The Sun, which
has taken to distinguishing itself with large, crisp, full-color, page
one photos, today has a picture of an Iranian dissident running, while
he is almost completely engulfed in orange and yellow flames. The fire
has yet to consume his face though, so his expression of anguish is
perfectly clear. This is not the passive self-immolation of a Buddhist
monk in Diem's 1960's Vietnam. It's a horrifying form of protest
against France's crackdown on an Iranian opposition group. I wish it
were available online, but The Sun is only available on the
Internet via subscription. Look for it at newsstands though.
UPDATE: Here's a href="http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/030618/168/4fkiy.
html&e=2&ncid=996">link to an online version of the photo discussed
above, although this version is much darker than the one that appears
on the front page of The New York Sun. Much of the detail
that's in the paper's picture doesn't appear online. Maybe my monitor
just stinks.Posted by Lexiphane at 9:17 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 17, 2003
SOMETHING TO GAWK AT
The Lexiphane et al. get results! The href="http://gawker.com">Gawker herself has contacted Bunsen to
Tagged:
check out the synchronicity mentioned immediately below and then posted
a nice link to his site. Classy.Posted by Lexiphane at 5:20 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
FLATTERY?
If you live in NYC or just want to keep a finger on its carotid,
Tagged:
Gawker is essential reading.
I did notice some similarities between that site's six-month
anniversary post
and Bunsen's one-year href="http://bunsen.tv/2003_05_01_bunsen_archive.html#200350637">post a>, however. Perhaps Gawker reads WFOoBH. LA and NYC, faraway so
close.Posted by Lexiphane at 4:07 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 16, 2003
WELCOME TO THE CLUB!
I'm very happy to say that longtime friend Elizabeth Johnson
Tagged:
Cooney has joined the ranks of the aunt and uncle club. At 4:44 a.m.
on June 11th, her sister gave birth to href="http://photos.yahoo.com/bc/johnsoeg20007/vwp2?.tok=bcfhfuRBqwy9do
eE&.dir=/Mail+Attachments&.dnm=Picture_022.jpg&.src=ph">Carsen Gabriel
Bovier. Congratulations to the new soon-to-be-sleepless parents,
Jenny and Wayne, as well as the new grandparents that currently reside
in Caracas, Venezuela. Here's another picture of the happy href="http://photos.yahoo.com/bc/johnsoeg20007/vwp2?.tok=bc.ufuRB2EIJso
3l&.dir=/Mail+Attachments&.dnm=Picture_040.jpg&.src=ph">family for
good measure.Posted by Lexiphane at 1:24 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 12, 2003
THE AMA AND THE CATHOLIC CHURCH
I've been a long-time proponent of tort reform in the field of
Tagged:
medicine. I do think that there are a lot of out-of-control jury
awards that are forcing medical insurance premiums to ridiculous levels
and discouraging a lot of doctors from continuing to practice. But an
interesting parallel occurred to me today. Doctors today serve much
the role of secular holy men and women. They are the supposed guides
and providers of a good and healthy life. And in many ways their
current tort dilemma is similar to that of the Catholic church.While most doctors are competent and careful, a small percentage
are reckless, incompetent, and indifferent to patients' welfares. This
small percentage is the group responsible for the majority of huge
damages awarded to injured patients or their families. Similarly, I
believe that among priests in the Catholic church, there is a small
percentage disposed to depraved acts perpetuated against those that
have entrusted themselves to them. I don't think that there is
anything about the nature of the priesthood--the all-male
characteristic or the requirement of a life of celibacy--that attracts
people predisposed to abuse. I do believe that amongst any population,
there will be a small subset of members that will commit such
crimes.
The parallel is that both groups--doctors and the priesthood--are
suffering for the sins of the few, primarily because their governing
organizations have done little to actively stem occupational abuses.
As the Church tended to shuttle known abusers from one church to
another with little remedial action, doctors found guilty of
professional abuses tend to be quietly dismissed, their privileges
revoked in a certain state or at a certain hospital, and they are free
to wander off to some other unsuspecting institution where they can
continue their mistreatment of patients. The Catholic church has taken
a rightful financial beating for such laxness in dealing with those
that hurt lay people. And it is these lawsuits that are motivating the
Church to review and reform how it deals with such individuals. That
is why if the AMA would like to institute widespread tort reform, it
must be accompanied by a serious effort to regulate doctors and
seriously sanction those guilty of patient mistreatment.
Imagine if there was a proposed tort reform for those harmed by
abusive priests. What if there were caps on damages abuse victims
could hope to be awarded for being violated by a priest? That would be
outrageous. I think most doctors would welcome a more strict
enforcement policy by the AMA in dealing with malpractice if they knew
their insurance premiums would be reduced. I'm surprised none of the
insurance carriers that write these policies have pressured for such
reforms. Like the priesthood, medicine is a collegial and insular
profession whose practitioners are loathe to take action against their
own. They need to get over that, though, if fair tort reform is to be
instituted. All would be well served.Posted by Lexiphane at 4:54 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
THE CULT OF BUBB RUBB and LIL' SIS
Perhaps I'm out of the loop and coming to this story a little
late, but everyone should see href="http://homepage.mac.com/howheels/rubpics/woowoo.wmv">this news report about "whistle tips" in Oakland featuring a guy
Tagged:
named Bubb Rubb and his friend lil' Sis. Note how the anchor can
barely contain her laughter when introducing the story. Then wait for
Bubb Rubb to drive off and demonstrate his newly installed "whistle
tips." Apparently, they inebriate you. Once you've watched the news
report a few times to get the full effect, visit href="http://lisupras.com/wooo.html">The Official Bubb Rubb
Soundboard and mix yourself up some mad beats. Woo woo!
They're just for decoration; that's all!Posted by Lexiphane at 3:28 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
ALL IN A NAME
As usual, David Sedaris is dryly hilarious in his latest piece
that appears in this week's New Yorker. Writing about a second
home--a beach house his father was contemplating buying--the family
tries to come up a name for the place that reflected the North Carolina
seaside:
Everything we saw was offered as a possible name,
and the resulting list of nominees confirmed that, once you left the
shoreline, Emerald Isle was sorely lacking in natural beauty. "The TV
Antenna," my sister Tiffany said. "The Telephone Pole." "The Toothless
Black Man Selling Shrimp from the Back of His Van."
Read the whole thing href="http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?030616fa_fact">here. Tagged:Posted by Lexiphane at 6:33 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 11, 2003
TIME TO HANG IT UP
Maureen Dowd plumbs the depths of inanity and clich? in her href="http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/11/opinion/11DOWD.html">column
today:
At shoe stores, for instance, men are always making
totally illogical and irrelevant comments to their wives and
girlfriends: "You already have a pair that color," they'll say,
sounding flummoxed. Or, in a slightly peevish tone, "But why are you
buying them if they hurt?" Tagged:I hate to play into stereotypes [could've fooled me], but when I
see men following women around the couture departments of Bergdorf's on
a rainy Saturday afternoon like trained poodles, it crosses my mind
that they should be home on their Barcaloungers watching ESPN and
eating a Jerry's sub.
She later throws in a line on how men don't like to ask for directions.
Next week: what is the deal with airline food? Maureen Dowd has won a
Pulitzer Prize for her work at the Times.Posted by Lexiphane at 1:52 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
LOVE IS A MANY MANY MANY SPLENDORED THING
Here's a href="http://www.msnbc.com/news/925113.asp?vts=061120030835">story
about a U.S. soldier who through online personals sites managed to
meet, woo, and become engaged to 50 different women. That's a lot of
rocks (for them) and big ones (on him). There's a hilarious quote from
one of the women though:
"He wrote better than Yeats. He wrote better thanTagged:
Shakespeare. He totally intoxicated you with his feelings: 'Oh, baby, I
want to tell you how much I miss you.' 'I can't wait to get home to
you,' " Robin Solod, 43, told the Times.She's right. That guy does seem to be channeling Yeats
and Shakespeare. Apparently the lexiphane needs to tone down the rap
he's been slinging at the ladies because it's been notably lacking in
"oh babies" and the guy did manage to get 50 women to agree to
marriage. Here's another unintentionally funny quote:
"We are not a group of stupid, na?ve women,"
Sarah Calder, 33, told the Times. "We are bright, intellectual,
professional women. I can't tell you how much he wooed us with his
words. He made us feel like goddesses, fairy princesses, Cinderellas.
We had all found our Superman, our knight in shining
armor."
Yep. Bright, intellectual, professional women are constantly on
the lookout for guys that make them feel like goddesses, fairy
princesses, and Cinderellas. You know, the Superman, knight-in-
shining-armor type of guy. What, no Batman?Posted by Lexiphane at 1:33 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
100% WRONG
Critics of the war in Iraq have said it was simply about oil oil
Tagged:
oil oil oil. The repetition of this notion ad nauseum belies any
connection with reality, but its evident truth is adhered to by the
unhinged anti-war extremists as if it were whispered to them by God
itself. Afghanistan? Oil pipeline project. Iraq? Huge oil reserves.
Looting of the Iraqi National Museum? Allowed to happen while the
Ministry of Oil was protected. Of course, it turns out that the
looting of the National Museum was a crock of shit and never actually
happened. In the meantime, what was actually being looted, sabotaged,
and wrecked was Iraq's oil industry.Looting, sabotage and the continued lack of security at oil facilities are the most recent problems the industry and its American overseers must address in order to get petroleum flowing again, especially for export.That's from The New York Times of course, so it's insinuated that this is all the U.S.' fault. The rhetorical question is, if this war was all about oil, why are coalition forces dicking around in major population centers trying to maintain order, supply humanitarian aid, and form a new democratic government while the oil fields are being trashed? It could be said that the Bush administration has fallen down on the job by not protecting Iraq's major national resource, but that would entail refuting anti-war protestors primary argument that this had nothing to do with liberating a country from a fascist dictatorship and everything to do with oil oil oil oil.Posted by Lexiphane at 9:44 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 10, 2003
BLIND SPOT ON THE LEFT
I was listening to lefty Pacifica radio station WBAI yesterday
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evening and they had a guy going on and on about how the media was
complicit in spreading Pentagon propaganda about the rescue of PFC
Jessica Lynch in Iraq. This despite that accounts of her faked rescue
have been href="http://www.mrc.org/cyberalerts/2003/cyb20030603.asp#4">debunked a> and the outlets that reported that U.S. special forces staged a
Hollywood-style act complete with guns loaded with blanks have already
corrected themselves and issued retractions. But while this canard
continues to live on in the fevered imaginations of the truly deranged
anti-war crowd, propaganda
about the looted Iraqi National Museum goes unmentioned.Posted by Lexiphane at 9:49 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
TRUMPED-UP ACTIVIST NOT FOUND
Burmese pro-democracy advocate Aung San Suu Kyi was not located
Tagged:
by a U.N. envoy to The Republic of Myanmar recently after she was
abducted by that country's military dictatorship. Critics are now
claiming that since she has not been found, it's unlikely that she ever
existed.In all seriousness, the plight of this Nobel Prize winner is an
international tragedy and exhibits the limits of diplomacy when dealing
with autocrats. I think one of the anti-war pacifist crowd's biggest
blind spot is that it clings to the examples of men like Martin Luther
King and Ghandi as reasonable models of diplomacy. The only problem is
that pacifism only works when one is dealing with a civilized opponent.
Ghandi in India and MLK in the U.S. were dealing with democratic
opponents that could be shamed into reforming when exposed to the
brutality of the systems they were perpetuating. When one is dealing
with a de facto dictatorship that really doesn't care if it murders its
subjects, then pacifism is just formalized suicide with a propagandized
edge.
On a more personal note, it should be observed that Aung San Suu
Kyi has a husband and two sons that fled Burma many years ago. Her
sons accepted the Nobel Peace Prize on her behalf since she was under
house arrest at the time. I went to school with the older son Alex and
he was a great guy that was understandably reluctant to discuss the
sacrifices his mother was making for her country. Unfortunately, the
psychological toll of her continued imprisonment got to him before we
graduated and he suffered a nervous breakdown, fearing that Burmese
spies were constantly watching him. Who knows? It could have been
true. I wish the best for Aung San Suu Kyi's whole family though.Posted by Lexiphane at 9:33 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 9, 2003
BAD MANORS
There's recently been a lot of talk about neoconservatives, who
they are, what they are, and what nefarious influence they hold over
The White House. I believe a neoconservative was originally deemed
someone that had moved from the far left, eventually to the right on
the political spectrum. I've read this anecdote several times in
different locations, most recently in today's Wall Street
Journal. Here's Robert L. Bartley's href="http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/rbartley/?id=110003602">
version:
It happens that I did a lot to put this term on theTagged:
intellectual map as the 1970s dawned, with profiles of Mr. Kristol and
Norman Podhoretz. The "neo" meant that they were conservative converts
from earlier radicalism. I recently asked Mr. Podhoretz whether his son
John and Mr. Kristol's son William were neo-conservatives. "No!" he
answered. "They were to the manner born."I don't know if that last line is supposed to be a pun or a play
on words, but I believe what Mr. Podhoretz was actually saying was
"They were to the manor born." [emphasis mine] This would mean
that they hadn't been politically transported to their current
positions, but had always resided in the figurative conservative house.
I did a quick Google of the latter term and it appears that this was
the title of a British sitcom that ran from 1979 to 1981 about an
upper-crust widow who loses her ancestral home. I think the "manor"
reading of Podhoretz's phrase makes more sense in the context of what
he was describing with his and Irving Kristol's sons.
UPDATE: I did a little searching and actually found an article
written by Podhoretz in which he uses the phrase "to the manner born."
Unless he was dictating and the writer made the same mistake Bartley
did, then it's possible that Podhoretz is simply mistaken about this
phrase, its meaning, and is committing serial malapropisms.Posted by Lexiphane at 5:22 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
MEDIA CONSOLIDATION
Since the FCC ruled that media companies can increase the
Tagged:
percentage of owned outlets in certain markets from 35% to 45% there's
been a lot of bitching about how this will result in a suppression of
diversity of viewpoints heard through that media. I think I'll have to
go home, turn on my media-bohemoth-provided AOL Time Warner cable
service, tune into one of the 250 diverse channels I receive on that
service, and see what the corporate party line on this issue is.Anyone super concerned about the suppression of diverse
viewpoints via consolidation has probably spent way too much time
getting their news from one exclusive media outlet, probably NPR. If
you'd care to flip around the radio or television dial, one could see
that the market provides a wildly diverse range of viewpoints,
certainly more than when the news was provided almost exclusively by
the heavily FCC-regulated big three broadcast networks.
And what's so great about retaining local flavor in newscasts
anyway? Is anyone afraid that if there's too much consolidation
they'll lose the local flavor of the two morons doing their substandard
and derivative morning drive time radio schtick? Most local papers are
already owned by large national chains and I suspect if they weren't
piggy-backing off their corporate parents' newsgathering resources and
syndicated fare, your local daily would retain the journalistic heft of
the PennySaver circular you mistakenly took home from the
supermarket.
How The New York Times can get itself worked up into a
lather over this phenomena is beyond me. I didn't hear them bitching
about local viewpoints and media consolidation when it decided to
assume a national profile and pushed its distribution coast to coast,
probably putting a few Podunk Times & Records out of business in
the process. Nor did I hear it objecting too strongly when The New
York Times Co. recently bought The Boston Globe.
Why are we so concerned about the market being antithetical to
choice when it comes to the media? Walk through your local grocery
store's cereal aisle and it will be abundantly clear that if the free
market is good at providing one thing, it's a proliferation of choices.
If you don't like what you're hearing on the big three networks, tune
in Fox News. Don't like the right-wing fair-and-balanced act? Switch
to the BBC or CNN or MSNBC. Traditional media too hidebound for you?
Hop on the Internet and read some blogs or Drudge or
democraticunderground.com or whatever. Still not good enough? Head
outside and over to Times Square; some guy is dying to sell you a
pamphlet or scream in your general direction for as long as his voice
holds out. And no, I'm not talking about Howell Raines.Posted by Lexiphane at 4:41 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
HEROES AND VILLAINS
The American Film Institute recently released a href="http://www.afi.com/tv/handv.asp">list of the top 50 heroes
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and villains in movie history. I have to take issue with some of their
choices as I'm sure others will as well.With all the criticisms of Bush and the war in Iraq, it seems odd that
Gary Cooper's Will Kane in High Noon would be selected as a
hero. The sheriff is a trouble-making unilateralist stirring up unrest
by confronting evildoers while the rest of the town hides in their
outhouses and wishes the incoming outlaws will just go away. At least
Grace Kelly as his anti-violence-protesting bride managed to turn
around her buggy in time to blast some baddies as the best looking
coalition member ever.
I have to take issue with the inclusion of Erin Brockovich in the
heroes column. If being a scare-mongering slut shaking down the widows
and orphans that own utility stocks for a couple hundred million bucks
on behalf of a two-bit swindling shyster lawyer that subsequently
screwed a bunch of sucker townspeople out of their shares of the loot
makes one a hero, I think a redefinition of the term might be in
order.
And what's with putting little Regan Macneil from The
Exorcist in the villains category? The poor kid gets possessed
by an ageless demon with a score to settle, is cut, blistered, slammed,
levitated, subjected to some extreme chiropractics, and violated with a
crucifix and she's the villain? I think the antagonist in The
Exorcist was Azuzal. Linda Blair is a villain for appearing in
The Exorcist II however.
I think in light of recent goings on on Wall Street and in
certain corporate boardrooms, Gordon Gecko from Oliver Stone's Wall
Street definitely deserves to be shifted from the villain to the
hero column. He may have been a cutthroat and heartless operator, but
he created wealth by putting the screws to lazy, wasteful,
uneconomically productive corporate CEOs. Can't make a buck? Unions
sucking your airline dry? Gecko will move in, rip your heart out, and
hand it to someone that can get the job done right. Greed is good.
Corruption sucks.
Jimmy "Popeye" Doyle is a heroic character in The French
Connection? Doesn't he mistakenly plug one of his fellow officers
towards the end of the movie? Plus he's the poster boy for
overexuberant prosecution of the wasteful War on Drugs. I could go on,
but you folks should check out the lists and see if there are any
heroes or villains you feel were unfairly glorified or maligned.Posted by Lexiphane at 3:58 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 4, 2003
SHORT BREAK
Posting's been a bit light recently due to busy times at work
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caused by the holiday-shortened week and other factors. I'm happy to
report that I'll be heading up to Vermont for the weekend to attend a
wedding and will be away from a computer until next Monday. So expect
further infrequent activity at the site, unless someone wants to go
nuts in the Comments section. Hope everyone is enjoying their soggy
spring.Posted by Lexiphane at 5:17 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
IT'S SPRING, AND 'LOVE' IS IN THE AIR
When it comes to dance theater, I don't know Martha Graham from
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Martha Stewart, but when a young woman I know told me she was involved
in a production currently being staged at Brooklyn's Lyceum Theater I
decided to shake my philistinism and head to Park Slope. The name of
the show was All is Full of Love and is part of breedingground
productions' Spring Fever Festival. It was choreographed and
directed by Josh Walden, a current cast member of the Broadway musical
42nd Street.I was extremely impressed with the show that featured three main
female characters and their male counterparts, and an ensemble of 15
additional dancers. Set exclusively to music by Bjork, All is Full
of Love communicates the story of three young women coming to the
big city, where they experience the thrill and then bitter
disappointment of searching for love in a sometimes exciting, sometimes
cruel urban environment. While there is absolutely no dialogue,
Bjork's soundtrack and Walden's choreography do an excellent job of
telling the story and investing it with a good deal of detail and
emotion. Would that apartment hunting be such a brief and graceful
dance! The three young women meet with less than success in their
quest for men, but finally find valuable human connection amongst
themselves, and exit triumphant.
The costumes play a significant role in the production. Ensemble
dancers are dressed as general city dwellers in costumes that identify
their roles, e.g., waitress, paperboy, businessman, construction
worker. But whether in a daytime scene or a nightlife scene, these
costumes tend towards neutral colors like beige, grey and tan, or
black, respectively. The three main characters, on the other hand, are
dressed in monochromatic outfits of astoundingly bright color, with
matching accessories. The show's program, in fact, only identifies the
characters as Orange, Yellow, and Green.
The use of Bjork's music was inspired. Ranging from mournful, to
playful, to psychotically exuberant, Bjork's songs are sometimes
difficult to listen to unaccompanied by something else. I have to
admit that while I enjoyed seeing her perform live last year at Radio
City Music Hall, I did find myself fidgeting in my seat at times. As
the score to a dance production, however, her songs were
perfect.
The one shortcoming of All is Full of Love is its short
stage life. There are only two remaining shows left, both at 8:00 pm
on Wednesday and Saturday nights. The Brooklyn Lyceum is in Park Slope
at 227 4th Ave. One can take the R train to the Union St. stop, but I
would take the W train from Union Square to the Pacific stop, transfer
there to the R train, and go one stop further to Union. It's
appreciably faster. Tickets are available at href="http://www.breedingground.com/dance.html">breedingground.com
or those interested can call the Ticket Hotline at (347) 683-7698.
It's an opportunity to see a group of extremely talented young men and
women perform a very entertaining show.Posted by Lexiphane at 11:13 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 3, 2003
PEACE OUT
When I first wrote about Salam Pax [see href="http://lexiphane.com/lex/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1
06">FIRST PERSON ACCOUNT, 5/7/03] there was still some
question as to who he was and what his goals were by blogging from
Baghdad, if indeed he even was in Iraq. Slate's Peter Maass
wound up getting probably the most unintentional scoop of the year
while he was in Iraq, but didn't even realize it until he got home and
decided to check out Salam's site, href="http://www.dear_raed.blogspot.com/">Where is
Raed?:His latest post mentioned an afternoon he spent at the Hamra Hotel
Tagged:
pool, reading a borrowed copy of The New Yorker . I laughed out loud.
He then mentioned an escapade in which he helped deliver 24 pizzas to
American soldiers. I howled. Salam Pax, the most famous and most
mysterious blogger in the world, was my interpreter. The New Yorker he
had been reading--mine. Poolside at the Hamra--with me. The 24 pizzas--
we had taken them to a unit of 82nd Airborne soldiers I was writing
about.So Salam Pax is legit, whatever his background happens to be. If
you're interested in what he's like as described by someone that
actually met him, read Maass' href="http://slate.msn.com/id/2083847/">story. It's interesting.Posted by Lexiphane at 10:54 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
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