September 29, 2005

HORSEFEATHERS AWARD

        At the end of each Yankee game, broadcasters Jim Kaat and Michael Kay pick their player of the game. The American and National League each pick a player of the month. There are Most Valuable Player awards, Cy Young awards, World Series MVP's, etc. We enjoy these tributes to excellence, however fleeting. We each vicariously enjoy transcending our own limitations and acknowledging the extraordinary accomplishments of our fellow humans. In that same spirit, it seems to Horsefeathers that some acknowledgment should be given to transcendent stupidity, especially when expressed by those who believe they are uttering deep, invaluable truths. To merit the award requires something more than, say, Maureen Dowd's repetitive invocation of the evil 'neocons' and 'Bushies'. Her alcoholic-like ravings are merely vicious--an obvious outlet for Ms. Dowd's anti-semitism and sexual self loathing.
        A particularly rich source of self flattering ignorance is the "creative" world of authors, screenwriters, actors, directors and other members of the artistic elites. Our tendency is to idealize creative artists, and to assume that their utterances on any topic are worthy of special consideration. If the village idiot tells us that Bush=Hitler, we tend to dismiss it, but if a 'creative artist' produces a drawing of Bush with a Hitler mustache he is likely to see his work displayed at the Venice Bienalle. Our award goes to Nora Ephron. Her self-flattering concern for the dead people produced by W's war is a classic. No notice is taken of the huge numbers of dead at the hands of barbaric jihadis. No mention of the numbers of innocents tortured and murdered by Saddam. No mention of the plight of Afghanis under the Taliban. Ms. Ephron has never uttered a word about her co-religionists, the murdered Israeli children whose killers were financed by Saddam. Those deaths don't count because they can't be blamed on W. Reading this essay you would never know that 9-11 occurred, or that Iraq under Saddam was a vast killing ground. Certainly no notice is taken of the fact that Islam wishes to destroy the decadent likes of Nora Ephron. The interesting twist, earning Ms. Ephron the Horsefeathers award, is the way in which she blames Clinton for Bush! While the horrors of war are all W's fault, it's really Clinton who is to blame, because his Monica moment deprived the peace loving Al Gore of the White House. It would be hard to condense in one paragraph more idiocy than Ms. Ephron produces. Without further ado we present the first winner of the Horsefeathers Wordsmith Moron of the Week award to: Nora Ephron for her combination of narcissistic self absorption, grandiosity and cluelessness, on a grand scale. These attributes serve her well in her work for the Hollywood dream factory, where the gratification of wishful fantasies, a la Sleepless in Seattle, is a sure route to big bucks. Extend that utopian fantasizing to the realms of reality, and you get a moving story of love and loss. Here is the key paragraph: "...I'd sit around with friends at dinner talking about How We Got Here and Whose Fault Was It? Was it Nader's fault? Or Gore's? Or Scalia's? Even Monica got onto the list, because after all, she delivered the pizza, and that pizza was truly the beginning of the end. Most of my friends had a hard time narrowing it down to a choice, but not me: only one person was at fault, and it was Bill. I drew a straight line from that pizza to the war. The way I saw it, if Bill had behaved, Al would have been elected, and thousands and thousands of people would be alive today who are instead dead..."
        We defy anyone to top that paragraph!
Here's the rest of the Ephron article.:

After the Love Is Gone
By NORA EPHRON
Published: September 29, 2005
I broke up with Bill a long time ago. It's always hard to remember love - years pass and you say to yourself, was I really in love or was I just kidding myself? Was I really in love or was I just pretending he was the man of my dreams? Was I really in love or was I just desperate? But when it came to Bill, I'm pretty sure it was the real deal. I loved the guy.

As for Bill, I have to be honest: he did not love me. In fact, I never even crossed his mind. Not once. But in the beginning that didn't stop me. I loved him, I believed in him, and I didn't even think he was a liar. Of course, I knew he'd lied about his thing with Gennifer, but at the time I believed that lies of that sort didn't count. How stupid was that?

Anyway, I fell out of love with Bill early in the game - over gays in the military. That was in 1993, after he was inaugurated, and at that moment my heart turned to stone. People use that expression and mean it metaphorically, but if your heart can turn to stone and not have it be metaphorical, that's how stony my heart was where Bill was concerned. I'd had faith in him. I'd been positive he'd never back down. How could he? But then he did, he backed down just like that. He turned out to be just like the others. So that was it. Goodbye, big guy. I'm out of here. Don't even think about calling. And by the way, if your phone rings and your wife answers and the caller hangs up, don't think it's me because it's not.

By the time Bill got involved with Monica, you'd have thought I was past being hurt by him. You'd have thought I'd have shrugged and said, I told you so, you can't trust the guy as far as you can spit. But much to my surprise, Bill broke my heart all over again. I couldn't believe how betrayed I felt. He'd had it all, he'd had everything, and he'd thrown it away, and here's the thing: it wasn't his to throw away. It was ours. We'd given it to him, and he'd squandered it.

Years passed. I'd sit around with friends at dinner talking about How We Got Here and Whose Fault Was It? Was it Nader's fault? Or Gore's? Or Scalia's? Even Monica got onto the list, because after all, she delivered the pizza, and that pizza was truly the beginning of the end. Most of my friends had a hard time narrowing it down to a choice, but not me: only one person was at fault, and it was Bill. I drew a straight line from that pizza to the war. The way I saw it, if Bill had behaved, Al would have been elected, and thousands and thousands of people would be alive today who are instead dead.
I bring all this up because I bumped into Bill the other day. I was watching the Sunday news programs, and there he was. I have to say, he looked good. And he was succinct, none of that wordy blah-blah thing that used to drive me nuts. He'd invited a whole bunch of people to a conference in New York and they'd spent the week talking about global warming, and poverty, and all sorts of obscure places he knows a huge amount about.

When Bill described the conference, it was riveting. I could see how much he cared; and of course, I could see how smart he was. It was so refreshing. It was practically moving. To my amazement, I could even see why I'd loved the guy in the first place. It made me sadder than I can say. It's much easier to get over someone if you can delude yourself into thinking you never really cared that much.

Then, later in the week, I was reading about Bill's conference, and I came upon something that made me think, for just a moment, that Bill might even want me back. "I've reached an age now where it doesn't matter whatever happens to me," he said. "I just don't want anyone to die before their time any more." It almost really got to me. But then I came to my senses. And instead I just wanted to pick up the phone and call him and say, if you genuinely believe that, you hypocrite, why don't you stand up and take a position against this war?

But I'm not calling. I haven't called in years and I'm not starting now.

September 25, 2005

ABORTION DISTORTION: THE TAIL STILL WAGS THE DOG

Horsefeathers has no axe to grind in the abortion debate. Most Americans—men as well as women—are fair-minded about the matter. They understand that some religious people are offended by the practice and respect their beliefs; and they also understand that some women may decide to have an abortion for various reasons at some point in their lives, and can accept those realities.

Only the ideologues—politically active feminists, politically active right-to-lifers, and, oh, yes, the left wing of the Democratic Party and the New York Times make the big noise about abortion. Women who need one get one, often regretfully and without fanfare or a sense of political triumph. And although the rate of abortions is continually decreasing because of the number of convenient and effective contraceptive devices, the event of the Supreme Court nominations has roused the New York Times propaganda machine to keep the public on the boil lest it realize that abortion is increasingly becoming a dead issue except in the minds and hearts of the political ideologues, left and right.

The article by reporter John Leland that appeared in the Sunday Times of September 18, after the hearings, was meant to remind us that there were still women who needed abortions and to emphasize that abortion was still a very important issue in this country. As you would expect in a New York Times social-conscience article, there was enough moist pathos and self-pity to launch a battleship.

But what stands out most in the article are the factual distortions that the reporter creates in the service of the Timesview, which is that Abortion, with a capital A, is still an issue of mainstream politics—the same disinformation that Senators Schumer and Feinstein were feeding the American public in the form of leading questions to Judge Roberts during the hearings last week.

Between the lamentations of the young women he has selected to interview and depict, our reporter asserts that abortion remains one of the most common surgical procedures for women in America. Then he adds for emphasis that more than a million women a year have abortions, and as though to clinch the argument with a home run, he tells us that since Roe v. Wade was passed in 1973, twenty-five million women have had abortions.

Well, hell, that’s pretty impressive, you think, trying to catch your breath from the statistical body-blow. Twenty-five million women is a lot of women. But hold on there, wait a minute…twenty-five million in 32 years…that averages out to only 781,000 a year. And when you divide the number of women of child-bearing age in America—sixty million—into that average you get the important result 1.3%. In other words, these days (in the nineties the percentages were a bit higher, but not significantly) only slightly more than 1 percent a year of all women of child-bearing age avail themselves of surgical abortions, and if you include women of all ages, tax-payers all, the number for whom abortion is a relevant issue drops to 0.6%.

Attention, attention, Senator Schumer, can you hear us way up there on Mars? You made such a point, during the hearings, that Judge Roberts must have values that are in the “main stream.” Well guess what, Senator, your concerns about Roe v. Wade, and those of Senator Feinstein and the editorial board of the New York Times are not “main stream.” Abortion as practiced is far out of the mainstream, way out in the tail of the curve, past two standard deviations of interest to the average woman.

The women for whom abortion has any practical meaning, in these days of wide contraceptive choice, are women who are largely from the underclass—ill informed and less resourceful. And based on the behavior of the Gang of Four on the Judiciary Committee—Kennedy, Schumer, Feinstein, and Durbin—which seemed to suggest that Roe v. Wade trumped everything else on their political agenda, this appears to be the most important constituency of the left wing of the Democratic Party. The special interest groups are still wagging the party.

September 24, 2005

LIFE REMAINS A METAPHOR FOR BASEBALL

        Horsefeathers has been spending considerable time recently at his House of Worship, Yankee Stadium, and as a result has been neglecting the undoubtedly larger issues of the day. Still there is something to be said for spending time away at the ballpark, amongst 50,000 American patriots, enjoying the National Anthem, Kate Smith singing God Bless America, and the national pastime. Baseball is a humbling game, not for utopian perfectionists. It reminds us that wars are not easily won, that there are setbacks to be overcome. Even the greatest players, like A-Rod, make outs 2/3 of the time. Similarly, the fan who expects victory in every game will be disappointed. Regret over lost opportunities (how could we lose so many to Tampa Bay?) is constant. Still, hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul--and hope was in short supply for Yankee fans through much of the season
        Horsefeathers has enjoyed criticizing George Steinbrenner as much as any Yankee fan. Our complaints have ranged from resentment over the price of a beer at the ballpark---$8.50 for a watered down Bud and, God preserve the memory of Billy Martin, sushi between innings---to “the Boss’s” interference in the day to day running of the ball club. We detest the loud rock music at the ballpark, the canned demands that fans “get loud”, in short,anything that detracts from the game itself. In principle, we dislike the notion of big bucks buying a winner. Yet in this bizarre and wonderful season, with the Yankees, amazingly still in the pennant hunt, we say ‘thank you’ to George Steinbrenner. This may be the most remarkable season in the Joe Torre era. As the high priced stars broke down and the baseball pundits gleefully predicted the collapse of the Yankees, somehow it hasn't happened--much to Horsefeathers' amazement. Instead, a bunch of no-name players proved equal to the challenge. Who ever thought of Robinson Cano—the Yankee farm system was supposedly shot- Aaron Small, a 33 year old, lifetime minor leaguer, Bubba Crosby, (both obtained by Brian Cashman in a trade for Robin Ventura, now out of baseball) Shawn Chacon, the Colorado loser, in the line of Yankee winners? Bubba Crosby is especially inspiring, for he looks like an average kid, with (deceptively) average ability. When he hit his spectacular game winning homer against Baltimore, and his teammates erupted in glee, who didn't identify with him? When he said he had never done that, even in Little League, how many of us who coached Little League were transported back to the thrilling days when one of our 11 year olds launched a game winner over the right fielder's head? And then there’s the phenomenal return of Jason Giambi, the one steroid using player who handled his situation with dignity and grace. Here’s to you Jason---and to Joe Torre and Don Mattingly for sticking with you when most of us fans were eager to see you booted off the team. So whatever happens from here on, Horsefeathers raises a glass to George Steinbrenner. The Boss wants a winner, but he is, like his hero, George Patton, flexible enough to adapt to changing circumstances. We hope he is enjoying this great and glorious season as much as we fans. Win or lose, these Yankees have earned the respect we were so reluctant to give.

September 21, 2005

MORE ABOUT AL QAEDA'S HARVARD PROFESSOR

The Weekly Standard has additional information about al Qaeda on the Charles:

Harvard's al Qaeda Apologist

"After four long and bloody years of unresolved war, shouldn't America begin thinking about the possibility of an equitable diplomatic settlement with Osama bin Laden? Isn't it finally "Time to Talk to Al Qaeda?" So asks the headline on a Boston Globe op-ed piece published September 14. And so answers its author, Mohammad-Mahmoud Ould Mohamedou of Harvard University: Yes, he says. Let's make a deal.

Bid Laden and his confederates are widely "misunderstood" in the United States, according to Mohamedou, associate director of Harvard's "Program on Humanitarian Policy and Conflict Research." We like to flatter ourselves that the war on terrorism is "an open-and-shut matter of good versus evil," but the truth is very different, he suggests. Al Qaeda is not, in fact, a totalitarian and "apocalyptic" movement; it is an "industrious" and "committed" rational actor pursuing "political" and "limited" objectives. And September 11 "was not an unprovoked, gratuitous act." Rather, the murder of 3,000 office workers in New York is best understood as a "trained commando" operation "in the context of a war that had twice been declared officially and publicly."

And there being no realistic way for Americans to win such a war--against a "diffuse, ever-mutating, organized international militancy movement" enjoying "the rear-guard sympathy of large numbers of Muslims"--it becomes the better part of wisdom for us to seek a truce with al Qaeda in return for "some degree of satisfaction regarding its grievances."

The Scrapbook knows what you're thinking here: There's a numbskull on the Harvard payroll. Been there, done that.

But wait. There's more. This is new. This is worse.

For it turns out that Dr. Mohamedou's Globe op-ed is merely the condensed version of "Non-Linearity of Engagement," a 30-page treatise he produced, on Harvard's dime, back in July. And "numbskull" doesn't begin to describe the thing. It seems that Harvard University's associate director of "humanitarian policy" and whatnot believes the United States should belatedly "acknowledg[e] the logic in which terrorism is used as a method of warfare, according to a principle of indiscrimination whose rationale is negation of the notion of innocence of the civilian population, and imputation of collective responsibility." As Osama bin Laden himself has observed, American foreign policy is effected by politicians whom Americans have freely elected. And in that respect, concludes our man in Cambridge, al Qaeda clearly claims "a valid jus ad bellum case" against any and every one of us--man, woman, or child.

In the end, Mohamedou says, "these 'terrorists' are de facto combatants, and justice . . . is what they are after." Which is the true source of bin Laden's strength. And the reason that "no leading Muslim intellectual or scholar has denounced him."

Not at Harvard, anyhow".

September 20, 2005

THE NYTIMES SWALLOWS HARD AND REPORTS THE BAD NEWS: YOUNG WOMEN WANT TO BE MOTHERS

        Central to politically correct, PoMo dogma is the conviction that differences, especially the difference between the sexes can be abolished. Biology may seem determinative, but really, according to these neo-Marxist utopians, the "narrative" of gender" can be changed by a revolutionary change of consciousness. Women, they argue, are victims of an oppressive, patriarchal narrative designed to bar them from professional accomplishment, and force them to seek gratification in motherhood. If they learn that other narratives are possible they will shake free of the shackles, and find gratification in the corporate board room, or as 18 hr./day partners in major law firms, or as members of the NYTimes editorial board. Now, however, after 40 years of indoctrination, oops teaching, we learn that (Many Women at Elite Colleges Set Career Path to Motherhood) there are differences between young women and men, and that, curiously, women seem to possess a maternal yearning that outweighs ambition for worldly accomplishments.
        How can this be? After all, haven't our young Ivy League trained female wordsmiths absorbed the central dogma from their utopian professors. The tenured radical professoriate has waged relentless war for the past 40 years on the notion that biology is destiny, such that when Larry Summers dared to question the role of innate, i.e. biological differences between the sexes he was forced to apologize over and over and show he was contrite by turning large sums of money over to the faculty gender benders. His groveling before the arbiters of political correctness spared him exile from Cambridge, but he remains, a pitiable, intellectually castrated version of his former self.
        Now though, horror of horrors, in the very belly of the p.c. beast, young women are rebelling, but it’s not against the ‘patriarchy’. According to the puzzled reporters of the New York Times, and the baffled feminist professors they cite, bright, high SAT Yalies are not buying the groupthink, feminist dogma. Where oh where will our future Maureen Dowds and Gail Collinses come from, if these young women want to have children and actually mother them? Who will support the out of work nannies on Manhattan’s Upper West Side?
        The New York Times’s description of young Ivy League women who look forward to motherhood, rather than sitting in board rooms, resembles an anthropologist’s baffled initial description of an alien Maori tribe. Profound explanations are sought to explain why such highly intelligent women prefer being mothers and, horror of horrors, stay home with their children. It certainly couldn’t have anything to do with women's biological nature, their ability to bear and give birth to babies, could it? It’s baffling and troubling to these wordsmith intellectual utopians. "What does concern me," says the worried Peter Salovey, dean of Yale College, "is that so few students seem to be able to think outside the box; so few students seem to be able to imagine a life for themselves that isn't constructed along traditional gender roles." Note the condescension in his words, describing these intellectually limited female students! The worst insult imaginable- that their thinking is profoundly limited to “traditional gender roles”. And poor Shirley Tilghman, President of Princeton who regards Princeton's aim as not simply to provide a good education, but rather: "The goal of a Princeton education is to prepare young men and women to take up positions of leadership in the 21st century. Of course, the word 'leadership' conjures up images of presidents and C.E.O.'s, but I want to stress that my idea of a leader is much broader than that."
She listed education, medicine and engineering as other areas where students could become leaders.Notice there is no mention of motherhood as a worthwhile source of satisfaction for an educated woman.
        Such foolish females, so misguided as to think maternal urges matter in determining how to live one’s life. Don’t they understand, as do their PoMo betters, that ‘gender role’ is a narrative, imposed by the patriarchy, and all they need do is adopt a different narrative, the narrative of oppression and injustice and they’ll all be able to be good little Maureen Dowds, happily sharing their unmarried grievances with the rest of the sisterhood.

September 14, 2005

DUKE WEIGHS IN: BIN LADEN, A "VERY HIGH MINDED AND WELCOME VOICE IN GLOBAL POLITICS."

Not to be outdone by Harvard, a Duke University scholar confirms: bin Laden has been misunderstood. "Only days after the fourth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, a Duke professor is trying to explain the motivations of the tragedy’s organizer—jihadist Osama bin Laden.

Bruce Lawrence, professor of religion, edited and wrote the forward to the book Messages to the World—The Statements of Osama bin Laden. The text, which goes into print today and will arrive in bookstores in the fall, is the first to include the translations of the Arabic writings of bin Laden.

The book features a collection of 22 speeches and interviews given by the leader of the terrorist organization al Qaeda between 1994 and 2004.

Verso Books, a British publishing company, approached Lawrence in March, asking him to write the introduction and analyze bin Laden’s writings.

“No one has ever looked at all of his writings,” Lawrence said, adding that most of the resources about bin Laden are not written down, existing primarily as audio-cassettes or videos from al-Jazeera, an Arabic-language news network.

Lawrence said the new book focuses on understanding what makes bin Laden tick.

“If you read him in his own words, he sounds like somebody who would be a very high-minded and welcome voice in global politics,” Lawrence said.

Posted at 09:15 PM by Stephen
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AL QAEDA ON THE CHARLES

        Were Joseph Goebbels alive today he'd undoubtedly hold an Ivy League faculty position, heading up a "Program on Humanitarian Policy and Conflict Research". Instead, meet Professor Mohammad-Mahmoud Ould Mohamedou, "associate director of the Program on Humanitarian Policy and Conflict Research at Harvard University." He explains that al Qaeda has been deeply misunderstood by our simple minded, moralistic leaders. Why is everyone so upset about 9-11? After all, "Al Qaeda believes that the citizens of the states with whom it is at war bear a responsibility for the policies of their governments. Such democratization of responsibility rests, it has been argued by bin Laden, in the citizens' ability to elect and dismiss the representatives who make foreign policy decisions on their behalf..." I guess we've somehow missed bin Laden's deep understanding of Democracy. The good Professor continues: "...The best strategy for the United States may well be to acknowledge and address the collective reasons in which Al Qaeda anchors its acts of force. Al Qaeda has been true to its word in announcing and implementing its strategy for over a decade. It is likely to be true to its word in the future and cease hostilities against the United States, and indeed bring an end to the war it declared in 1996 and in 1998, in return for some degree of satisfaction regarding its grievances..."
        How unfortunate that we didn't have scholars like Professor Mohammad-Mahmoud Ould Mohamedou to help us deal with Hitler. After all, if we'd only offered "some degree of satisfaction" to him we might have had peace. Oh, we just remembered, the West did make such an offering--Czechoslovakia, and sure enough we had 'peace in our time'.

Posted at 06:35 PM by Stephen
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September 12, 2005

JUDGE ROBERTS' CHALLENGE: KEEPING A STRAIGHT FACE

Today, the first day of hearings on whether Judge Roberts has the judicial temperament to be the Chief Justice, he demonstrated, without doubt, that capacity. Today—the day which may yet turn out to be the most challenging of the entire process, he was required to listen to eighteen senators telling him the same thing over and over as they preened and blathered on and on about their worries that he will not answer enough of their questions or too many of their questions. Each senator oozed his or her special brand of charm as they read the scripts that their staffs had prepared for each of them.

Throughout the three straight hours of bloviating (with one ten minute bathroom break) Judge Roberts managed to stay awake, alert, and to appear interested in the blah-blahing. This in itself earned him Horsefeathers’ vote for a high level of judicial temperament.

Furthermore, he did not go bonkers in the face of Teddy Kennedy’s hypocrisy, nor he did shrink from Joe Biden’s demented grin full of implanted teeth as he spouted paranoid fantasies, he did not yawn during Senator Grassley’s terminally boring pronouncements, and he remained tactfully attentive throughout Diane Feinstein’s word-salad thought processes, nodding graciously, as though she made sense.

Today Judge Roberts won his judicial spurs and Horsefeathers’ admiration.

Posted at 08:57 PM by Yale
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September 11, 2005

DON'T MISS THIS!

Michael Yon's battlefield reporting from Iraq introduced us to a warrior hero, LTC Erik Kurilla. We saw him wounded while leading his men in battle and now we have a follow up report from his hospital convalescence. Men like Kurilla provide hope for our country, that we have not become entirely a nation of infants, as well as knowledge that some in our military understand the need to deal harshly with our enemies. He has some choice comments on the Fifth Column homefront media.
See the article here.

Posted at 12:02 PM by Stephen
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September 10, 2005

NYTIMES TENNIS REPORTER MAKES A GUILTY DISCOVERY: POVERTY EXISTS IN AMERICA

        One of the small pleasures of attending a sporting event is the time devoted to celebrating America. The crowd stands respectfully for the national anthem, and patriotic pride is shared at the playing of God Bless America. Occasionally, for special events, a flyover of fighter jets draws 'oohs' and 'ahhs' from the crowd. At one game in Yankee Stadium, shortly after 9-11, a spectacular trio of Air Force parachutists descended, bullseye!, onto a huge American flag while the West Point band played a glorious Sousa march, Remarkably, these displays of unabashed patriotism shared proudly by fans of diverse backgrounds, escaped the critical gaze of the NYTimes editorialists. Perhaps the sports pages were regarded as not worthy of the attention of serious people, like Gail Collins, Maureen Dowd, Tom ('it's a flat world, after all') Friedman, Paul Krugman and friends.
        Although political correctness did invade the Times's sports coverage, especially when it came to their relentless efforts on behalf of androgyny, patriotism itself was not a target. Now, however, NYTimes tennis reporter, William Rhoden is shocked, shocked by discovering in the aftermath of a hurricane, that poor people do exist in America. Recovering from the vapors induced by this rather late recognition, Rhoden felt troubled when he heard John Mc'Enroe say he was happy there would be an American in the final of the U.S. Open. He tells us his deep thoughts designed to convey what a caring person he is, even while covering a sport like tennis. He's newly, post-Katrina, conflicted about 'flag waving' patriotism. He can no longer join in such expressions of affection and gratitude to this great nation. His profound, hand wringing reflections lead him to wonder how we can celebrate America when, good grief, poverty still exists! He writes guiltily that before Katrina he would have cheered, but now he has seen the light. "...Horrifying images since the storm have underscored the reality that there are multiple tiers of America and Americans. The images of death, desparation, hopelessness and poverty flushed into full view, have made many of us wonder where this America was hiding. We did not recognize it. Some of us did not even realize this America existed..." Having suddenly awakened to the fact that America is not utopia, Rhoden is angry. The America he thought he rooted for was an idealized version of a child's yearning for perpetual bliss. To become aware of reality is disillusioning. Rhoden no longer knows which America he's celebrating when the flag is waved. Notice his use of the editorial "we", designed to implicate all of us in his guilt, while suggesting that because America is not an egalitarian paradise it is simply impossible to feel and express unabashed patriotic sentiments.
         The glory days of sports reporting are long gone. We won't see the likes of Red Smith or Jimmy Cannon again, because they had not been indoctrinated in the dogma of post-modern journalism, whose aim is to create a politically correct 'narrative'. Is it too much to ask that the NYTimes's stable of bloviating, self-flattering pontificators be kept away from the sports pages? If we need or want instruction in politically correct thinking, we can find it every day, right there on the front page as well as the Op-Ed page. Let's reclaim the sports pages as a cant-free zone.

Posted at 08:03 AM by Stephen
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September 09, 2005

10,000 NOT DEAD. HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS SAFE

You can almost palpate the disappointment at the NYTimes when they're obliged to report fewer deaths in New Orleans than they'd hoped---no, feared:

Posted at 11:55 PM by Stephen
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WHY DEATH? BUSH IS TO BLAME

The horror! Everyone dies. Even innocent children grow up, age and die. How unjust, how unfair! Some die young; most die old. No one escapes. Who is to blame? Why of course, it's the tax cutting Bush administration and it's war on terror:

"Professor Erica Frank said the effects of funding diversion had been sharply felt following Hurricane Katrina.
She said, while 3,400 died in the 9/11 attacks, around 5,200 Americans died on the same day from common diseases.
A similar number have died from these same causes each day since, she wrote in the British Medical Journal..."
See the rest here.

Posted at 11:38 PM by Stephen
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THE ARAB MIND

After convincing the frog to carry him across a pond, the scorpion bites him half way to shore. As he dies, the frog asks why. as they both will die. The scorpion replies, "It's in my nature."

        Horsefeathers regards the prospects for a modern liberal democracy emerging in Iraq as slightly more likely than the scorpion refraining from biting the frog on his next trip across the pond. Jew hatred remains deeply embedded in the Arab mind, and until that is purged---perhaps in 600 years or so, our utopian fantasies about a tolerant, modern, Arab democracy emerging in the Middle East are delusional. Here is Jalal Talabani, comfortable in his Saville Row suits, reminding us that our sacrifices on behalf of Iraqi freedom do not mean a change in the primitive Arab way of thinking about a Jewish state in the Middle East.
"...Talabani said that Iraq will not follow the model set by Pakistan, that opened a dialogue with Israel following the Gaza withdrawal and stressed that contrary to Pakistan, Iraq is obliged to follow the resolutions of the Arab League..."
See the rest here.

Posted at 09:55 PM by Stephen
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September 05, 2005

FAMILY VALUES, ARAB MUSLIM STYLE

While regularly accusing Western infidels of decadence, our Democracy seeking, peace loving Palestinian friends show how much they need and deserve a state.

Homes razed in mob fury at couple's 'affair'
Chris McGreal in Jerusalem
Monday September 5, 2005
The Guardian

"The only brewery in the Palestinian territories escaped an attack yesterday by a mob that razed a dozen homes over an alleged affair between a Christian man whose family owns the beer factory and a Muslim woman from a neighbouring village who was then murdered by her own family.
The attack on Taybeh, a wholly Christian village which gives its name to a popular Palestinian beer, came despite appeals from residents to their neighbours in Deir Jarir to refrain from violence while the body of the murdered 25-year-old woman, identified only as Haim, was disinterred for DNA tests to try to ascertain if she had sex with the accused man, Mahdi Abu Houria.

"Because we were afraid of what would happen, we got permission from Abu Mazen [the Palestinian president] to dig her up from her grave and have DNA testing," said Maria Khoury, the wife of Taybeh's mayor who co-owns the brewery. "You can't just accuse someone without evidence. They buried without testing. We are very suspicious that this family raped their daughter and buried her and they want to find an excuse to destroy our village."

The accused woman was murdered by her family last week in an "honour killing" after the alleged affair was made public. Palestinian women's groups say that women are sometimes killed after being raped by relatives who then attempt to shift responsibility for pregnancy to an innocent man..."
See the rest here.

Horsefeathers has a question: suppose the DNA test indicates she did have sex with Mr. Houria. Then I guess it's okay to have murdered her. After all, 'honour' is such a vital part of Palestinian male identity, and we must respect traditional cultural values

Posted at 07:52 AM by Stephen
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September 04, 2005

THE FEVERS OF BUSH DERANGEMENT SYNDROME

Once again, the wordsmith elites of the media and universities are in a spluttering, impotent rage at President Bush. Childish finger pointing, and verbal mudpies have become substitutes for thought. Do these people really expect they can live in a world that corresponds to their boundless narcissism? The world has other ideas.

Here's Ben Stein providing some adult supervision to the Tim Russerts, Maureen Dowds and Gail Collins's of the wordsmith elites:

"...It's not George Bush's fault that there were sick people and old people and people without cars in New Orleans. His job description does not include making sure every adult in America has a car, is in good health, has good sense, and is mobile.
George Bush did not cause gangsters to shoot at rescue helicopters taking people from rooftops, did not make gang bangers rape young girls in the Superdome, did not make looters steal hundreds of weapons, in short make New Orleans into a living hell..."
See the rest here.

Posted at 11:30 AM by Stephen
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