Thursday April 28
Not Again
I gotta tell you, this is getting frustrating. Every time I find a new, pretty young actress to fantasize about, she goes off and hooks up with some buff hollywood hunk. I mean, first it's Jennifer Garner getting engaged to Ben Affleck, now it's Katie Holmes shagging Tom Cruise. Tom Cruise Dating Actress Katie Holmes [ABC News.com].
There they are in Rome, holding hands. Too cute. Well, if I were a woman, I definitely would not throw Tom out of my bed. But Katie, you really shouldn't piss on the dreams of all your secret admirers!
Posted by glenn at Wednesday April 27
Poignant Luddites
Between them, both Tom Boswell and George Will sing poignant tunes about what they call the "timeless" rhythms of baseball. Read the two linked columns -- one about the new Washington Nationals, the other about 39-year old Atlanta Braves pitcher Greg Maddux -- and you'll see that these otherwise smart men are living in the past. As I've said before, these guys are "throwbacks to an idyllic agrarian American past that -- as anyone from the Midwest or the Great Plains knows -- never really existed in the first place."
George Calin was right! His hilarious comparison between baseball, our former national pastime, and football -- excerpted below -- "tells us something about ourselves and our values. And maybe how those values have changed over the last 150 years."
In football, the object is for the quarterback, otherwise known as the field general, to be on target with his aerial assault, riddling the defense by hitting his recievers with deadly accuracy in spite of the blitz, even if he has to use the shotgun. With short bullet passes and long bombs, he marches his troops into enemy territory, balancing this aerial assault with a sustained ground attack that punches holes in the forward wall of the enemy's defensive line.
In baseball the object is to go home! And to be safe. "I hope I'll be safe at home!"
One Step Forwards, Two Steps Back
The insurgency in Iraq is "about where it was a year ago," in terms of attacks, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said yesterday, but he also asserted that American and Iraqi troops are "gaining ground" in the two-year-old conflict. Yeah, right (not). It was a quagmire two years ago and is worse now. $300 billion and counting (it was only $150 billion last September) and we're not out yet. "Shock and awe" has been transformed into long lines of flag-draped coffins, pictures suppressed by the military in order to avoid letting the American people know the real price of this occupation.
I am all for spreading democracy and freedom, and am overjoyed that America is finally -- after many decades of Machievallian foreign policy -- fighting against fascism and tyranny. But in Iraq we're engaged, pure and simple, in nation-building to protect the human rights of people who bascially either hate or are indifferent to us. Who cares? Let them rot in the desert. We knocked off Saddam Hussein -- a very good thing -- so let's get the hell out of there, leave Iraq to the Iraqis, and go after the real "Axis of Evil" in the world. How about Al Qaeda, you morons!!
Sunday April 24
Barry Bonds Naked
Emotionally, that is. Dan Le Batard of the Miami Herald has a fascinating column in the April 11 issue of ESPN The Magazine. It observes that:
You'd be surprised how insecure superstars can be.
Unfortunately, the piece is not available on the Web. Non-subscribers will have to settle for this March 2005 column by Le Batard, which is almost as insightful. Bonds' Pain More than Physical [Herald.com].
Thursday April 21
The Rules of War In Occupation?
The Department of Defense is prosecuting a Marine Lieutenant, Ilario Pantano, for murder arising out of the shooting death, at an Iraq checkpoint, of two suspected "insurgents." Allegedly, Pantano ordered other troops to remove the suspects' handcuffs and look away, and then shot the pair in the back, vandalized their vehicle and hung a sign over their corpses bearing a Marine slogan: "No better friend, no worse enemy."
Pantano protests that it's impossible to differentiate between innocent civilians and potential terrorists in the environment of "post-war" Iraq. The problem, here, hoewver, is that both sides are at least partially right. As the 1968 Mi Lai scandal in Vietnam shows, a civilized society must have rules of behavior even in warfare. But the situation in Iraq is poised precariously between war and police-state security. More than 1,700 of our troops have been killed, the majority in car bombs and other "IED" attacks, after "major combat operations" ended in May 2003. How in hell are these young men supposed to know who the bad guys are? Isn't this just second-guessing combat decisions made in the fog of war? Genocide is one thing, but in the aftermath of Abu Ghraib, this prosecution strikes me as one making a scapegoat of a solitary solider in order to offer a patina of legitimacy to the atrocious inhumanity of what's really going on over there.
America decided long ago that we could not be the "world's policemen." Now the miltary is doing just that in Iraq. The "rules of engagement" need to be changed, fundamentally, so the troops can defend themselves and do their jobs without being blown up by rag-heads whose idealogy is to kill Westerners, not matter why, just because they are not Muslims. As long as America remains an occupying power in Iraq -- which is what we are in reality -- this problem will not go away by itself. Even worse, Pantano gave up a lucrative career as a New York investment banker to enlist in the Marines to defend this country. He deserves better thanks than a trumped-up murder prosecution.
Tuesday April 19
Fooling the World
The Michael Jackson child abuse trial in California has been somewhat surreal from the beginning, but it's taken on a whole new aura of weirdness recently, The mother of the boy in question -- who starred in the infamous video documentary where Jacko protested how "normal" and "loving" it is to share one's bed with a child -- was called as a prosecution witness to corroborate her son's allegations. Tom Meserau, Jackon's long-haired (and very cool) defense attorney, came after her like a pit buill, trying to establish that the family had concocted the entire story to extort money from the music superstar. Accuser's Mom: Jackson "Managed to Fool the World" [NYDailyNews.com].
But the confrontation failed miserably. We can't see it on television, so here's the media summary, related to the claim that Jackson imprisoned the family at his Neverland Ranch:
Way to go, Tom! You violated the first rule of cross-examination by asking an open-ended question (one should ONLY ask leading questions on cross) and got burned, bad, as a result. Maybe that's because your client is a lying pervert.
Monday April 18
The Party's Over
As "Dandy" Don Meredith used to sing to Howard Cossell, when Monday Night Football games were winding down, "the party's over, turn out the lights." MNF was an American institution, revolutionizing sports broadcasting and making football the real American religion.
But now, bowing to financial (and ratings) reality, it's gone. "Monday Night Football" Moving to ESPN [BusinessWeek]. The NFL realized that in today's media-centric world, Monday is the wrong night for a nationally televised, prime time game. ABC desperately wanted to keep "Desperate Houswives" on Sunday, so NBC takes over the Sunday evening slot and MNF moves to Disney's ESPN affiliate. (The eight-year deal is worth a reported $8.8 billion.)
It's the end of an era, but certainly not the end of the game. With the steroids controversy raging in baseball, the NBA in the doldrums and the NHL on strike, NFL football will be bigger than ever this fall and for years to come. George Will, eat your heart out.
Wednesday April 13
Small Minds
This just makes no sense. One day after concluding that breast implants remain too risky, because of lack of actual data in field trials, to permit their reintroduction, an FDA advisory panel voted 7-2 to permit a different manufacturer to resume their sale. FDA Panel OKs Implants [RedHerring.com]. Yesterday's decision was based on the rationale that the company, Mentor, had only three years' of test data. But today's approval of silicone devices from Inamed was based on only two years' testing.
BusinessWeek describes the debate as a "ball of confusion." I think it's more simple than that. Big breasts reduce men to small minds!
Monday April 11
Santo Subito
Even as a Jew, I deeply admired Pope John Paul II, feeling that his humanity, charisma and courage more than overshadowed his conservative (actually, reactionary) views on issues like opposing condoms for AIDS prevention. This is a man who helped topple Communism in his native Poland (born Karol Jozef Wojtyla and a priest there for decades) by suporting Lech Walesa and the Solidarity movement and helped the Roman Catholic Church, for the first time, apologize for its silent acquiesence during Hitler's Holocaust of World War II.
Now that he has passed away, an old, stooped and silent man, the cry in St. Peter's square is "sainthood now" (Santo Subito in Italian). John Paul II on Fast Track for Canonization? [Catholic World News]. Whether he's got enough living and posthumous "miracles" for beautification is questionable, as is the whole idea of religious miracles, but the man was indeed a saint. The conclave should make him one officially.
Wednesday April 6
Human Cannonball
Very cool. Hunter S. Thompson's ashes will be blasted from a cannon sculpted into a 53-foot high fist in a public ceremony in August, his widow said Tuesday. Mr. Gonzo journalist was also a gun freak, and this was one of his dying wishes. Have a blast, Hunter!
Tuesday April 5
Stop the 'Nats
It's only day two of the '05 baseball season and I am already sick of these luddite pundits who just can't stop talking (endless talking is really baseball epitomized) about the return of MLB and the "Nationals" to Washington, D.C. Like Tom Boswell of the Washington Post, who today described baseball lyrically as a game in which "[h]ours of incident simply set the stage for a handful of truly crucial confrontations."
Sorry, Tom, you are living in another century. Baseball is long stretches of absolutely nothing punctuated by a few, brief moments when almost everyone is looking the other way. The NFL is the official state religion of the United States. Baseball is for you, George Will and other throwbacks to an idyllic agrarian American past that -- as anyone from the Midwest or the Great Plains knows -- never really existed in the first place.
Monday April 4
Not Again
Will this man never just LEAVE!! Please, spare us any more agony and, if you can't gracefully wither away, die. Gore TV Network to Launch in August, Google Tie-In.
Friday April 1
Courage and Judicial Activitsm
This is Judge Stanley Birch's stirring separate opinion in the decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit (Atlanta) to reject the appeal of Terry Schiavo's parents under the special statute Congress passed last Monday giving federal courts jurisdiction over that single case.
In resolving the Schiavo controversy it is my judgment that, despite sincere and altruistic motivation, the legislative and executive branches of our government have acted in a manner demonstrably at odds with our Founding Fathers’ blueprint for the governance of a free people -- our Constitution. Since I have sworn, as have they, to uphold and defend that Covenant, I must respectfully concur in the denial of the request for rehearing en banc. I conclude that Pub. L.109-3 (“the Act”) is unconstitutional and, therefore, this court and the district court are without jurisdiction in this case under that special Act and should refuse to exercise any jurisdiction that we may otherwise have in this case.
And if you think this comes from a liberal jurist, you're way wrong. Birch is from rural Georgia, was an Army lieutenant in Viet Nam from 1970-72 and was nominated to the federal bench by by George H.W. Bush on March 22, 1990. That's a conservative bio if I ever heard one. And as Ed Brayton from Dispatches from the Culture Wars cogently points out--
We need more judges like Stanley Birch, judges who have the courage to tell it like it is and not base decisions on political expediency.