Latest Newspaper Column:
To all my good friends in the right wing: I have a deal to offer you.
First, a bit of background. As you know, recently Vice President Dick Cheney visited Afghanistan to confer with commanders there. While he was there, a suicide car-bomber attacked the base where Cheney was staying. The vice president wasn't hurt; however, a number of others, including American soldiers and Afghan civilians, were killed or wounded.
When the news broke on the liberal blog The Huffington Post, some readers went waaay over the top. Like many online sites, The Huffington Post provides a space after news stories in which readers are invited to comment on the articles.
Some of the comments on the Cheney bombing story were, indeed, disgraceful. "They missed?? Dammit. I hope they try again before he leaves." "Better luck next time!" And so on. Several other commenters were quick to deplore such sentiments: "C'mon, guys, let's have a little bit of honor, no one deserves to die in a bomb blast."
The moderators of the site quickly removed the offensive comments, but not before right-wing pundits and bloggers gleefully dutifully copied them down and spread them farther across the Internet than HuffPo, as it's known, could ever have done. Rather than note the fact that the majority of comments did not wish Cheney dead or the fact that the owners of the site took the offending comments off, wingnut commentator Hugh Hewitt called HuffPo "the one indispensable stop for readers wishing to sample the fury, bile and idiocy of the sub-moronic left."
"Liberals wish assassins had succeeded!" trumpeted Rush Limbaugh. The idea was that a few angry nutballs hiding behind the anonymity of the Internet and posting on someone else's site not only reflected the opinions of the owners of the site, but that they epitomized liberals in general.
A few days later, right-wing harpy Ann Coulter was speaking at the yearly Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington. She had some glowing words for Mitt Romney, Massachusetts governor and current presidential candidate. "I think he's probably our best candidate," Coulter said. Romney also spoke highly of Coulter.
When it came to former senator and current presidential candidate John Edwards, however, Coulter was less complimentary: "I was going to have a few comments on the other Democratic presidential candidate, John Edwards, but it turns out that you have to go into rehab if you use the word 'faggot,' so I'm kind of at an impasse, can't really talk about Edwards." She also said about African-American Republican candidates: "Our blacks are better than their blacks."
Now, if Barbra Streisand or Harry Belafonte or Michael Moore had called George Dubbya Bush that nasty name and made condescending comments about "our blacks," not only would the right-wingers have thrown a hissy fit, but the "journalists" of the so-called liberal media would also have leaped into the fray, brows furrowed with fake concern over the "tone the Democrats were setting" and demanding that, for example, Barack Obama comment on things he didn't say. After all, they've done it many times before.
But it's a bit much to hope for that the mainstream media were going to demand the same level of accountability for "tone" to the Republicans that they demand of the Democrats. It was left up to people like Howard Dean and Ted Kennedy to demand that Republican candidates Romney, McCain and Giuliani, who were all at the meeting, dissociate themselves from Coulter.
Republican supporters scoffed. They denied that there ever was any slur and called the demand for candidates to disown Coulter "disingenuous" and "political grandstanding" -- until their candidates cut the legs out from under them by providing just the declarations their supporters deemed unnecessary.
"The comments were wildly inappropriate," a spokesman for John McCain said. And Romney, so recently a Coulter cheer-leader, released this terse statement: "It was an offensive remark. Gov. Romney believes all people should be treated with dignity and respect." Rudolph Giuliani also called the comments "completely inappropriate" and went on to say that "there should be no place for such name-calling in political debate." Good for them, I say.
But you know what? When you really think about it, maybe it is a little silly to expect the main-stream of either party to apologize or to take the blame for inflammatory remarks of their hotheads or their lunatic fringe.
And so, my modest proposal: Stop hanging Michael Moore or Rosie O'Donnell or David Geffen or Barbra Streisand or Harry Belafonte or even some obscure Muslim cleric around the necks of the Democrats, and I'll stop hanging Ann Coulter and Michelle Malkin around the necks of Republicans.
Deal?
Saturday, March 10, 2007
Friday, March 09, 2007
Is There Anybody Out There?
Sitemeter is currently telling me no one's read this blog in two days. I hope this means that sitemeter's broken and not that I've mortally offended all my loyal readers.
Hellions, REPRESENT!
Hellions, REPRESENT!
The Death Star Conspiracy
Was the Death Star Attack an Inside Job?
We’ve all heard the “official conspiracy theory” of the Death Star attack. We all know about Luke Skywalker and his ragtag bunch of rebels, how they mounted a foolhardy attack on the most powerful, well-defended battle station ever built. And we’ve all seen the video over, and over, and over, of the one-in-a-million shot that resulted in a massive chain reaction that not just damaged, but completely obliterated that massive technological wonder.
***
1) Why were a handful of rebel fighters able to penetrate the defenses of a battle station that had the capability of destroying an entire planet and the defenses to ward off several fleets of battle ships?
2) Why did Grand Moff Tarkin refuse to deploy the station’s large fleet of TIE Fighters until it was too late? Was he acting on orders from somebody to not shoot down the rebel attack force? If so, who, and why?
3) Why was the rebel pilot who supposedly destroyed the Death Star reported to be on the Death Star days, maybe hours, prior to its destruction? Why was he allowed to escape, and why were several individuals dressed in Stormtrooper uniforms seen helping him?
4) Why has there not been an investigation into allegations that Darth Vader, the second-ranking member of the Imperial Government, is in fact the father of the pilot who allegedly destroyed the Death Star?
5) Why did Lord Vader decide to break all protocols and personally pilot a lightly armored TIE Fighter? Conveniently, this placed Lord Vader outside of the Death Star when it was destroyed, where he was also conveniently able to escape from a large-sized rebel fleet that had just routed the Imperial forces. Why would Lord Vader, one of the highest ranking members of the Imperial Government, suddenly decide to fly away from the Death Star in the middle of a battle? Did he know something that the rest of the Imperial Navy didn’t?
6) How could any pilot shoot a missile into a 2 meter-wide exhaust port, let alone a pilot with no formal training, whose only claim to fame was his ability to “bullseye womprats” on Tatooine? This shot, according to one pilot, would be “impossible, even for a computer.” Yet, according to additional evidence, the pilot who allegedly fired the missile turned off his targeting computer when he was supposedly firing the shot that destroyed the Death Star. Why have these discrepancies never been investigated, let alone explained?
7) Why has their been no investigation into evidence that the droids who provided the rebels with the Death Star plans were once owned by none other than Lord Vader himself, and were found, conveniently, by the pilot who destroyed the Death Star, and who is also believed to be Lord Vader’s son? Evidence also shows that the droids were brought to one Ben Kenobi, who, records indicate, was Darth Vader’s teacher many years earlier! Are all these personal connections between the conspirators and a key figure in the Imperial government supposed to be coincidences?
8) How could a single missile destroy a battle station the size of a moon? No records, anywhere, show that any battle station or capital ship has ever been destroyed by a single missile. Furthermore, analysis of the tape of the last moments of the Death Star show numerous small explosions along its surface, prior to it exploding completely! Why does all evidence indicate that strategically placed explosives, not a single missile, is what destroyed the Death Star?
We’ve all heard the “official conspiracy theory” of the Death Star attack. We all know about Luke Skywalker and his ragtag bunch of rebels, how they mounted a foolhardy attack on the most powerful, well-defended battle station ever built. And we’ve all seen the video over, and over, and over, of the one-in-a-million shot that resulted in a massive chain reaction that not just damaged, but completely obliterated that massive technological wonder.
***
1) Why were a handful of rebel fighters able to penetrate the defenses of a battle station that had the capability of destroying an entire planet and the defenses to ward off several fleets of battle ships?
2) Why did Grand Moff Tarkin refuse to deploy the station’s large fleet of TIE Fighters until it was too late? Was he acting on orders from somebody to not shoot down the rebel attack force? If so, who, and why?
3) Why was the rebel pilot who supposedly destroyed the Death Star reported to be on the Death Star days, maybe hours, prior to its destruction? Why was he allowed to escape, and why were several individuals dressed in Stormtrooper uniforms seen helping him?
4) Why has there not been an investigation into allegations that Darth Vader, the second-ranking member of the Imperial Government, is in fact the father of the pilot who allegedly destroyed the Death Star?
5) Why did Lord Vader decide to break all protocols and personally pilot a lightly armored TIE Fighter? Conveniently, this placed Lord Vader outside of the Death Star when it was destroyed, where he was also conveniently able to escape from a large-sized rebel fleet that had just routed the Imperial forces. Why would Lord Vader, one of the highest ranking members of the Imperial Government, suddenly decide to fly away from the Death Star in the middle of a battle? Did he know something that the rest of the Imperial Navy didn’t?
6) How could any pilot shoot a missile into a 2 meter-wide exhaust port, let alone a pilot with no formal training, whose only claim to fame was his ability to “bullseye womprats” on Tatooine? This shot, according to one pilot, would be “impossible, even for a computer.” Yet, according to additional evidence, the pilot who allegedly fired the missile turned off his targeting computer when he was supposedly firing the shot that destroyed the Death Star. Why have these discrepancies never been investigated, let alone explained?
7) Why has their been no investigation into evidence that the droids who provided the rebels with the Death Star plans were once owned by none other than Lord Vader himself, and were found, conveniently, by the pilot who destroyed the Death Star, and who is also believed to be Lord Vader’s son? Evidence also shows that the droids were brought to one Ben Kenobi, who, records indicate, was Darth Vader’s teacher many years earlier! Are all these personal connections between the conspirators and a key figure in the Imperial government supposed to be coincidences?
8) How could a single missile destroy a battle station the size of a moon? No records, anywhere, show that any battle station or capital ship has ever been destroyed by a single missile. Furthermore, analysis of the tape of the last moments of the Death Star show numerous small explosions along its surface, prior to it exploding completely! Why does all evidence indicate that strategically placed explosives, not a single missile, is what destroyed the Death Star?
Thursday, March 08, 2007
CATCHING GENIUS, Kristy Kiernan
The amazing Kristy Kiernan's debut novel, Catching Genius, hits the streets today.
I've been excited about this book ever since I read an excerpt from it after meeting Kristy at last year's Southern Kentucky Book Festival. Now that it's out, I can say it was definitely worth the wait.
Understand, this is not my usual sort of book at all, by which I mean that nothing gets blown up and no one is menaced with a chainsaw. But hey, a good book is a good book, and this story of a pair of once-inseparable sisters who became estranged after one was found to be a math prodigy gently but firmly hooked me and drew me in.
I think the thing that strikes me most about this book is Kiernan's subtly deft use of language. Her writing is very assured, lovely without being self-consciously showy. And the characters are so real, so true to life, you feel like you could take out the phone book at look up their numbers.
Catching Genius is a keeper. Check it out.
Wednesday, March 07, 2007
Artificial Un-Intelligence
You know, judging from some of the comments I've heard and read about the Administration's Very Bad Week, I think you could probably design a very simple robot that would be impossible to tell from an actual wingnut.
"Well, a high ranking member of the Bush Administration was found guilty of perjury yesterday..."
*click!* *whirrr*
SANDY BERGER! BILL CLINTON! ROBERT BYRD WAS IN THE KLAN! CHAPPAQUIDDICK!
"And it looks like several U.S. Attorneys were fired for political reasons..."
*bzzzz*, *kaching!*
IT DEPENDS ON WHAT THE DEFINITION OF IS, IS. HA. HA. HA.
"And now the wounded from Iraq aren't getting proper care in Army hospitals..."
*blurp*, *whizzzz* *ding*
*EXPLODES*
*blurp*, *whizzzz* *ding*
BYRD! KLAN! ROSE LAW FIRM! BLOWJOB! BLOWJOB! BLOWJOB! BYRD! KLAN! CHAPPAQUIDDICK! TUNAGATE! FITZFONG! BLAAAAAAGH!
*EXPLODES*
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