Monthly Archives: September 2010

Christine O’Donnell: The Day the Laughter Dies


Posted by Omnipotent Poobah
Bewitched

AAAAHHHHAAAAAAAHHHHHAAAA! - Bewitched, bedraggled, and bewildered. Make the comedy stop!

Update Sex columnist calls for “Masturbate to Christine O’Donnell Day”

It’s a hard political season and we can all do with a little comic relief. That lovable lunkhead, Sarah Moosilini, wore a bit thin when she began inundating the country with her 140-word Twitternouncements. Susan Angle brought the funny for awhile, but she’s a dark comic who always leaves audiences a little edgy about whether she’ll exercise her Sec0nd Amendment freedoms on their asses.

Now, there’s Christine O’Donnell.

This chick is a laugh-a-minute. She can claim masturbation is vitrual adultery while keeping a vapid, cute little gapped tooth smile on her chipmunk-serious face. She claims she started dating by canoodling behind the altar with a witchcrafter down at the Wicca Wig Wam and Occult Church and then laughed it off with the airiest, most delightful grin – though the Wiccas seem none too pleased. But Wiccas, cheer up! Republicans didn’t like her at first either, but now she’s growing on them!

However, like any good comedienne, she has a dark side. Her belief that she can cure homosexuals of screaming cases of The Gay™ has alienated more than one of her “friends” and some of her former campaign officials made robocalls against her the day before the primary. And, it seems, she has more skeletons in her Halloween-hating closet than they have down at the Spirit Halloween Superstore.

Combine serious charges of tax delinquency, misappropriation of campaign funds, stiffing her vendors from previous campaigns, and the miscellany that all candidates pick up while swimming in the political death pool and her cute-as-a-button smile might just get wiped off her smug mug in the near future.

As O’Donnell and other attendees at the Tea Par-Tay make it to ballots, there’s much being said about their influence. Dems are rubbing their hands together like a stoned raccoon at a hot dog convention, lulled into Christmas-night dreams of a political disaster averted. The Republicans are asking Daniel Webster to reconsider that whole agreement he negotiated with the devil for them. Independents are frozen in the headlights, unsure which way to turn to avoid the scruffy riff-raff who rave like soap box preachers downtown. And the Baggers themselves? They don’t even get the joke.

The secret to good comedy is to take it right to the edge and not a smidge farther. Making people uncomfortable is OK, profoundly scaring them isn’t. There’s still time before the elections for another few rounds of Palin/Angle/O’Donnell jokes, but not much. It’s about time the adults break up the party and start cleaning things up for the election. We’re tired of laughing to avoid crying. Our sides are split from so much myrth. We just can’t take it any more…

No, really. We can’t.

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Randomness: Doughnut Brain Style


Posted by Omnipotent Poobah
Huh?

BEATS ME - Title it.

The Critical Thinking Skills of Your Average Doughnut

Weird Science

Whirr, Click, Clank

Just Plain Weird

Vagina Eye

CAREFUL - Things as not always as they seem. Click photo for more >>

High School Band Drop Outs

Consuming Consumers

90% of Sex is in the Brain(less)

Japan, Oh How We Love Thee

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AP to Credit Bloggers: The Headlong Rush Into Media Overload


Posted by Omnipotent Poobah
The New Media

NEW MEDIA? - Bloggers can't get no respect, except at the AP.

The Associated Press is starting to credit bloggers as sources. On the surface, this seems like an uncontroversial idea. There are some damn good blogs out there and their reportage is the equal of any traditional media outlet. On the other hand, not all traditional media outlets are as good as they used to be, so that’s a pretty low bar. And for every good, well-run blog, there are 10 million hacks like me.

The nut of this usually centers on the notion of credibility. No doubt that’s important, but the issue is as much about technology and a rapidly changing society as it is about credibility.

“The News” – with a capital “N” – is being pulled every which way by dozens of brand new technologies becoming obsolete as we speak. Sadly, newspapers and magazines are in their death throes. Uncle Walter’s nightly news has been supplanted by the Giant Screaming Heads on cable. As they shout into the ether, their day is coming to an end too – even if they don’t know it yet. Heck, even blogs, despite AP’s big leap into the future, are on the way to the dust bin. The abomination that is Twitter – operated by drunken Hollywood starlets or pinned-down insurgents in 140 character bursts – is the new wave of media. I expect news via telepathy in 10 years … no, let’s make that 6 months.

Oops, there it is now.

Oooo, I Gotta Have That
Our society has a great affinity for the new and the splashier and faster, the better. This is what drives cable companies to tout Internet service that saves milliseconds over DSL. Heaven forbid we have to wait another second to see which jail LiLo has checked into now. The rapid pace of technology has far outpaced the human ability to use it wisely.

There’s no longer anyone that isn’t part of the media – not withstanding Rush Limbaugh‘s and Sean Hannity‘s claims they aren’t. The impact of an Anderson Cooper, Brian Williams, Gene Robinson, or even (Dear God) Bill O’Reilly is big, but at a fire or flood or in a war zone, a scared kid Twittering and sending live video from his iPhone can be bigger.

It seems we’ve lost sight of the nature of news and failed to realize that a little time delay is sometimes a good thing. It gives humans time to digest information at a comfortable pace, rather than being distracted by their perpetually attached Bluetooths (Blueteeth?) It gives reporters time to collect their information and thoughts and news consumers time to actually understand what they’re absorbing.

Pffft, What Does the AP Know?
I don’t know if AP’s decision is a good or a bad thing – and I don’t think they do either. Their journalistic bell is being beat silly with a hi-tech, six-axis, robotically-controlled hammer … installed in a cellphone. Lost in all that God-awful racket is the other dimension of the issue – credibility.

What the hell constitutes as good blog? How reliable is reliable? Are they credible because some government official tells them so or does the AP reporter have to run a fancy checklist to see if the blog owner is on the up and up. Does he have to find at least 5 blogs that all say the same thing to before he can cite them?

Those are pretty tall orders for a reporter in search of news that’s spread around dozens of blogs at the speed of light, each with a particular ax to grind, and that change in real time to the “facts” on the ground.  By the time the fact checking is done, the story is already over and we’ve all moved onto the next catastrophe du jour or Hollywood breakup.

Credibility? Yeah, we have an app for that.

A Tip of the Hat A big tip of the hat to Jr. Poobah Ari Cohn for the idea for this post.

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Abhorrent Speech is Still Free Speech


Posted by Omnipotent Poobah

WHIPPIN’ UP FREE SPEECH – The Constitution doesn’t say a word about whether free speech has to be smart speech or inoffensive speech. it just says speech is free, even if some do decide to push the limits.

When it comes to the First Amendment, I’m a fundamentalist. First, I believe all other constitutional rights flow from the First. For example, you can’t have a Second Amendment without the First. Freedom of speech has to be fair and truly free for the gun opposition to debate their points and for the NRA to debate theirs. Without that back and forth, neither side could bring out valid points they each have. Laws without debate come out more flawed.

Second, for speech to be truly free it has to be unencumbered. There’s nothing in the First Amendment about speech not being stupid. People will do and say many things I think are outrageous, but that’s my opinion, not a certifiable fact. There is no easy way to determine what is truly over the top vs. just ignorant or offensive.

A local Tea Party group has a parade float depicting an Obama effigy wielding a whip against a prostrate figure known as “future taxpayer”. Not surprisingly, many have condemned it as hateful, racist speech. As someone who finds almost every stance by the Tea Party abhorrent, I tend to agree. However, I’m not sure my opinion would be different, even if someone else were sponsoring it.

It’s About Accountability?
The head of the group that sponsors the float said, “It’s ridiculous when people say it is racism. It has nothing to do with that. We need accountability.” In fact, the local NAACP agrees, “A lot of people will see it in different ways. I don’t see it as being racist.”

I’m not sure how the float makes anyone accountable, so I’m, perhaps, not as forgiving as the local NAACP. But, it doesn’t really matter whether I think its racist. As the NAACP spokesperson said, viva la difference. Whether it is racist depends on your opinion, not on what I think.

But don’t be surprised if someone attacks you as a racist when you’re on thin ice, which is where the floaters seem to be. It’s their opinion and both sides have free rhetorical reign to swing away.

Or, take the recent apology from the Portland, ME Press Herald for a front page, upbeat story on Muslims celebrating the end of Ramadan – coming this year on 9/11. Tempers flared. One reader commented, “I don’t want to here [sic] how caring the Muslim religion is on 9/11.”

Fair enough, but I’d wager Muslims are pretty sic [sic] of hearing about Muslim mosques supposedly from hell, filled with people who have no value for human life.

Gutless Apology
The paper took a rather gutless approach, I think, by apologizing for not presenting a story showing the opposing view. Not everything requires an opposing view and no one is obliged to offer one. That’s why some people watch Fox and others watch MSNBC. Not only do those “news” outlets not present opposing views, they frequently and vociferously shut them down whenever possible. Besides, I’d wager the Mainiac reader would’ve been just as offended by the Muslim view, even if a Christian view appeared directly alongside.

As for lies, it’s a tough call – that’s why slander and libel suits are notoriously hard to win. Most cases of this type aren’t about truth and falsehood, but the wide band of subjective truthiness that fills the gulf between them. One person’s “fact” is another’s “opinion” and inconclusively determining where a lie came from is damnably hard. Admissibility tends to default to “free” in the truest form of the word. This is as it should be.

Holding a fundamentalist view of the First is sometimes a retching, clothes pin-on-the-nose  job. You find yourself defending people who can and do say the most crapweaselish things, but even the crapweasels deserve their day. They deserve it because if we limit them today, someone will eventually come along to limit us tomorrow. The day we prohibit abhorrent speech is the day we can kiss the rest of our freedoms goodbye.

Kiss very freely, you understand.

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Small Government: When 307,999,999 People Can’t Agree


Posted by Omnipotent Poobah
Protesters

ALL FOR ONE AND NONE FOR ALL - Everybody wants smaller government, but only if it gets smaller at someone else's expense.

A funny thing is happening on the way to the ballot box. Voters of all stripes decry the excesses of big government. The reflexive complaint from both ends of the political spectrum, although voiced most loudly by conservatives and tea drinkers, is that big government is inherently bad, a foregone conclusion needing no evidence for proof. It’s a lot like religion that way. “I believe in God, so therefore there must be a God.” “I believe big government is evil, so therefore it must be true.”

It’s curious that the louder the screams about government size, the fewer practical suggestions the screamers give regarding how to make it smaller. There’s the all or nothing crowd – the government shouldn’t do anything but maintain an army. Or, the “limited” governmental types who want to lop off entire government departments, like the Department of Education, Federal Reserve, or Department of Homeland (In)Security. But, there’s precious little in the way of a platform to explain how we’ll reach this government nirvana.

Saying No is Fun
You might expect voters wouldn’t clamor for details. After all, it’s great fun to go watch Glenn Beck scream political science screeds or wave protest signs or accuse people of being anti-Christ socialists. It’s also great to campaign and hear the yelps of Grizzly Mommas in full-throated rapture about how wonderful you are. But the day in and day out grind of actually governing or even setting goals … not so much. In other words, the universal Republican “plan” for everything – “NO” – gives voters, candidates, and sitting politicians the chance to be righteous without the responsibilities of righteousness.

Come to think of it, that’s a little like some religious folks too.

There are roughly 308 million citizens in the US. That means there are at least 308 million opinions on how to reduce the government. Farmers kind of like crop subsidies, especially if their name is Farmer ConAgra. Some people are really behind “drill baby, drill”, without the inconvenient fact that without government regulation, a well might one day pop up in their backyard.

“Take that you NIMBY bastards!”

The “local levelites” don’t want an Islamic center in Manhattan, but are unwilling to accept the decisions of the local planning commission. And Reaganites complain, for example that transportation decisions be made on a state-by-state basis. However, they don’t seem to realize that building a road is building a road whether Uncle Sam funds it or your state increases taxes to offset the downsizing of Federal tax dollars. And, the private enterprisers would be the loudest to complain if RoadCo ran the highways and every country lane and freeway in their state started charging tolls.

Immutable Laws of Government
Americans need to understand a few immutable laws of government and human nature. First, nobody wants a bigger government. Second, everybody wants a smaller government so long as it gets smaller at someone else’s expense. Third, everyone wants the government to work. And fourth, those elected will become “inside” professional politicians as soon as they take their hand off the swearing-in Bible. They will be in your business for good and ill from then on as a result. This is especially true if you want the government to decide who gets married, who serves in the armed forces, who gets government assistance, and dozens of other meat and potatoes governmental decisions that must be made to support your idea of how smaller government should stay out of your life.

American individualism is a great strength. It’s the engine that drove the idea of American exceptionalism in the last century. But, when individualists forget there’s such a thing as shared goals and common needs that strength becomes a drag on the country.

Especially when you and the other 307,999,999 of us can’t agree on just what small government means.

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