Mom!
: I’m watching Madonna on MTV right now and I’m struck not by the pretentious celeb slather, not by the mediocre music, not by the religion for idiots, not even by the self-centered ego of it all. I’m struck by her age: She’s old enough to be the mother to everyone in her audience — the slutty divorced mom from down the street.
It’s turn off pretentious bores week
: Here are people I hate:
1. Open-mouthed chewers. I don’t need to hear you digest.
2. People who say they watch only PBS. Snobs.
3. The people behind TV Turnoff Week. So we should teach our children to turn off a source of news, information, drama, comedy, humanity, entertainment; that’s a fine lesson. Would you be offended if I suggested Shut the Books week? I’ll bet you would. But there’s just as much crap on bookshelves as on airwaves (take a look at the best-seller section and then argue with me). This is just censorship by mob: Instead of destroying the art, we try to intimidate the audience. This is patronizing, anti-populist, anti-democratic, show-off crap.
4. People who don’t wear deodorant in the summer.
5. Jacques Chirac.
Busted
: Dan Gillmor tries to draw a parallel between what’s happening in Iran — where they arrested blogger Sina Motallebi — and here:
Jailing political opponents isn’t our style in the U.S., but just about every policy our current government favors would make it harder for average people to get news that’s contrary to the conventional wisdom — and the Bush administration, the most secretive in decades, is no friend of untrammeled speech in any event.
Huh? Sorry, friend, but that makes no sense. What is happening here that has the slightest resemblance to arresting a man for what he says online? What’s happening in Iran is serious and dangerous. What was happening in Iraq (pre-war) was serious and deadly. What’s happening here? Nothing.
Gitmo kids
: News.com.au says child terrorists are begin held at Gitmo. Really?
Our American Taliban
: Everybody and his gay uncle has already hopped on the hopping stupidity of Pa. Sen. Rick Santorum’s comments trying to equate homosexuality with bigamy, polygamy, incest, adultery, and probably Communism, too.
Two-parent families, says Santorum, are good. Requiring people to work is good. So is banning late-term abortions and giving religion a greater role in government. Traditional welfare, on the other hand, hurts the family. Homosexuality, feminism, liberalism all undermine the family. Even parts of the Constitution can harm the family.“If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual (gay) sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything,” the Pennsylvania lawmaker said in a recent interview, fuming over a landmark gay rights case before the high court that pits a Texas sodomy law against equality and privacy rights.
That’s as frightening as it is stupid. Jack Balkin, smart law professor, dissects other issues this raises and sees hope in calling this the last desperate gasp of the gay-bashing right. But that’s not my point.
And before I get to my point, also consider this story today out of Sinsinnati:
A Mount Auburn Presbyterian minister was found guilty Monday of marrying gays and lesbians in the denomination’s first ecclesiastical trial dealing with the church constitutional issue.
As I’ve said here before, this is just why I left the Presbyterian Church: because it has become an institution of hate and bigotry that thinks it should judge God’s creations, because it is no place to raise my children. But that, too, is not my point.
And now consider this, on the Shia majority in Iraq threatening to impose a theocracy and bloody-stump Sharia law:
:Ayatollah al-Sadr would have wanted an Islamic government for Iraq, based on the Koran and on Sharia (Islamic law).
Those wacky Frenchmen
: From the world of sports:
A French soccer player who celebrated a goal by stripping his shirt and putting his hand down his shorts was fired Tuesday by his Turkish team….“It was not against anyone. It was just a private sign of joy,” Nouma said.
Now you can boycott him
: The Independent is going to start charging for some online content — including all stories by Robert Fisk, reports Vin Crosbie at Poynter’s media blog (do damned permalinks; scroll till you find it).
How’s that for a straight line?…
Hey, they should pay us to read him….
When he’s wrong, will they give us a refund?…
Will he donate his cut to victims of war and imperialism?….
Did they ever think that the readers of Alternet don’t have disposable income?…
Brazillian bloggers get rich
: While you’re on that page, keep scrolling down until you find an interesting item reporting that Brazillian bloggers are invited to submit posts to the local Reader’s Digest; the best every month will get picked up and paid $100.
Whatever happened to…
: Now this is a good idea for reality TV: Fox stations are turning Classmates.com into a TV show (without the damned popups). I assume we’ll see homecoming queens turned into fat drunks; geeks turned into millionaires; high school sweethearts long since broken up and then divorced brought back togther….
