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THE DAILY DIATRIBE
for Tuesday, April
18th
(click here for the RSS feed!) 
 HAPPY
EASTER
JESUS!
And to thank you for dying for us, here's a chocolate rabbit
and some colored eggs!
read it/
hear it
MORE RECENT DIATRIBES
►Steroids:
Why parents, press and politicians should worry
about REAL problems instead. (3-30-06)
read it
/ hear it
►Prostitution:
tax it...don't ban it. (3-23-06)
read it
/ hear it
►Call a Spade
a Spade: and a terrorist a terrorist, even if he
speaks English and attended UNC. (3-14-06)
read it
/ hear it
►American
Ports, Foreign Control: the truth behind the
politics of port control. (3-1-06)
read it
/ hear it
►Boycott Gary
Busey and Billy Zane! Learn why these two
Americans are undermining American-Muslim relations. (2-22-06)
read it
/ hear it
►The
Minutemen: NOT necessarily xenophobic...NOT
necessarily racist. (2-15-06)
read it
/ hear it
►Pop Quiz:
Local TV News is: a) gory b) sensational
c) talent-less d) irrelevant....answer E) all
of the above! (2-10-06)
read it
/ hear it
►Praise Allah
I don't live in a Muslim Country!
Unfortunately
Jihad Momani and Hisham Khalidi do.(2-7-06)
read it
/ hear it
►Surveillance
Cameras: Threat to liberty, or powerful crime
deterrent?
(2-3-06) read it
/ hear it
►Paint, Draw,
or Sketch Islam's Muhammad at your Own Risk! But
Jesus? No Problem!
(2-1-06) read it
/ hear it
►Judicial
Junkets: Threat to democracy, or no big deal?.
(1-27-06) read it
/ hear it
►Google vs.
Bush: Weren't Republicans supposed to be the
party of smaller government?.
(1-23-06) read it
/ hear it
►Al-Jazeera:
Al Qaida's P.R. Firm.
(1-20-06) read it
/ hear it
►Crab:
Why pay through the nose to eat something so flavorless
and deadly to catch.
(1-18-06) read it
/ hear it
►TV's "The
Insider": the fall of a once-decent
entertainment show.
(1-16-06) read it
/ hear it
►Pit Bulls: Why
trashy, lowlife dog-owners--NOT pit bulls--are the real
problem.
(1-11-06) read it
/ hear it
►The Golden
Globes: Why no one should care about these
worthless "awards."
(1-9-06) read it
/ hear it
►The Death
Penalty: How to Fix It.
(1-5-06) read it
/ hear it
►The Death Penalty:
Why it's Useless.
(12-16-05) read it
/ hear it
►The Christian
Right:
Not Afraid of the Devil, but Gay Marriage...Now THAT'S
Scary!!! (12-9-05) read it
/ hear it
►A Bowl Game for
Every Team: Have Liberals Taken Over College
Football?
(12-7-05) read it
/ hear it
►Memo to Liberal
Scrooges: Make Like Frosty the Snowman and "Chill Out" on
the Capitol X-mas Tree! (12-2-05)
read it /
hear it
►Reality Shows:
the
most UN-realistic Shows on Television
(11-25-05)
read it /
hear it
►Mugabe:
Meet the Dictator who Wants to Take Control over Internet
Addressing Away from the United States (11-16-2005)
read it /
hear it
HAPPY RESURRECTION JESUS!
And to thank you for dying for us, here's a chocolate rabbit
and some colored eggs!
Even if
you don’t believe that Jesus Christ was the son of
God, you can still be sure of two very important things: 1)
that he lived approximately 2000 years ago; and 2) that he
was a great man. Sure, Jesus has always had people who
claimed to follow him who he’d probably rather not have
had his name or the name of Christianity (the religion named
after him) associated with. But claims of miracles aside,
if he actually said the things he said and taught
the things he taught about loving everyone including
our enemies, turning the other cheek, and forgiveness of
those who do bad things to us, that alone would certainly be
worthy of a holiday.
And we all
know that Jesus not only said and taught amazing things, he
also did some pretty amazing things too, the most
important of which (to his believers) was being tortured,
then killed, then ultimately resurrected to atone for the
sins of mankind in order to give eternal life in paradise to
anyone that believes in him—regardless of their
previous religion, race, or language they spoke. This
incredible man’s teachings—again, putting questions of his
divinity aside, and much to the chagrin of modern-day
liberals—are the foundation of enlightenment thinking,
universal claims of human rights, and democracies like ours
here in the United States of America. In my book, that
remarkable feat is worthy of another holiday.
And so it
is that Jesus quite rightly gets not one but two
prominent holidays in America—Christmas and Easter—one
celebrating his birth and another celebrating his
resurrection. But what isn’t quite right is the
way that those two days are celebrated by
everyone—including his followers—and in this Easter season,
I thought I’d share my thoughts about the dissing of Jesus.
When you
think about it, even mortals like Martin Luther King Jr. and
George Washington seem to get more respect on the days set
aside to remember their lives and accomplishments than Jesus
himself gets on the days set aside to remember his. And
what’s worse, while you rarely get an argument from anyone
about paying public homage to Martin and George, you
frequently hear people shying away from praising even Jesus
the historical figure and Jesus the man for
the important impact of his teachings on the modern world.
To do so is labeled “endorsement of Christianity” or
“prejudicial” against other religions and atheists, and when
it’s done by public officials, their words are usually
slandered by the liberal left as being “unconstitutional.”
Pretty sad, because unlike George Washington Jesus never
owned slaves, unlike Christopher Columbus he never conquered
and subjected entire peoples (nor did he advocate the
subjection of peoples), and even to some non-Christians, his
achievements equaled if not surpassed those of the likes of
Washington and Columbus.
And then
there’s the ways people celebrate Jesus’ alleged
death and resurrection. While it’s true that some people do
actually attend a church service on Easter (any for many of
them this is the only time they attend a Christian
house of worship), we all know that for most people, Easter
is better known for the hams we eat at Easter dinner, the
“Easter Bunny” who delivers eggs and chocolate rabbits to
kids in Easter baskets, Easter sales at local and national
retailers, and the coloring, hiding and hunting of
hard-boiled eggs. Forget about claims that the whole egg
thing is pagan in its history…the problem for me is that
these Easter customs have nothing to do with Jesus
whatsoever, and in my book, Christians who mark the
occasion of their savior’s resurrection with egg hunts,
rabbits and candy should be embarrassed and ashamed.
Jesus is
at the core of the religion of most Americans, he’s revered
as a prophet of God by Muslims, and as I said earlier even
Jews, Buddhists, atheists and agnostics with a clue know
that his teachings are the foundation of core western ideals
like freedom, democracy and universal human rights. All I’m
saying is this: maybe Jesus’ followers should consider
celebrating his resurrection by doing something that Jesus
would approve of; so this Easter, why not help the
poor have a hot meal, instead of helping yourself
to quite literally suck an egg?
STEROID BANS:
Why Parents, Press and Politicians Should Worry About REAL
Problems Instead.
 In the
past few months steroids have been in the press so much that
you’d think they had their own publicists. It’s either news
that big-league record-holders like Mark McGuire or Jose
Canseco have been “outed” as users, or another sob story
featuring parents whining about their kid whose death has
been linked to the illegal drugs. Or maybe it’s a story
about a shady doctor at a shady lab who’s providing
supplements to athletes, or, maybe it’s my personal favorite
kind of steroid story—a story about politicians at every
level promising to ride in like the cavalry to rescue
society from the evils of steroids and all other forms of
illegal performance-enhancing drugs. Any way you slice it
you’d think steroids were the root of all evil on planet
earth and that we should be thankful to have the press and
our politicians paying so darned much attention to them.
Well, I
beg to differ.
Let me ask
you this…when was the last time you heard of someone being
hurt by a steroid? No, not someone you read about or heard
about in the press but someone you actually know. My
guess is not many of you. Let me ask you another question:
when was the last time that the actions of professional
baseball players on or off the field had a major impact on
you or your child’s behavior? My hunch, again, is not many
of you. One final question—and I really want you to think
hard about this one and realize that I’m being very, very
serious: what the hell difference does it make to you
whether someone—anyone—uses steroids? I’m not asking what
bad things could happen to that person who
uses the steroids…and remember, those potential bad things
are happening only to that person—who, by the way, is also
well aware of the possible side effects of using before
they use. I’m also not asking about bad things like
“undeserved homerun records” or “undeserved state
championships”…I’m talking about real bad things that
happen to lots of people other than the people who
use the drugs. When you put it all in the proper
perspective, steroids really don’t hurt anyone but the
idiots dumb enough to use them in spite of the risks they’re
already aware of before they use them.
In light
of this epiphany, I’ve got some suggestions for everyone
seemingly so concerned with steroids: the press,
politicians, parents, and the public. First the press:
stick to real stories about real problems affecting a lot of
people—not just the one or two morons who off themselves
when they stupidly use these illegal drugs.. Cover the lack
of preparedness for things like natural disasters, terror
attacks and pandemics. Cover corruption in public offices
and major corporations. Cover the economy, employment,
inflation and investments. But stop exploiting the deaths
of a handful of fools from steroid use to sensationalize a
problem that really isn’t a problem.
Next,
politicians: worry about legislating the steroid problem
away when you’ve managed to whittle congressional sessions
down to two months so you can spend the rest of your year
living in the states and districts you’re supposed to be
representing. Worry about the so-called steroid
problem when you’ve eliminated overlapping government
bureaucracies, increased governmental efficiency and reduced
unnecessary spending. In other words, do your jobs and
solve real problems—stop the touchy-feely hearings and
grandstanding. And whatever you do, do not clutter
the already cluttered law books with unnecessary steroid
bans and punishments for the morons who violate them, and
do not waste good public money on teaching kids of the
evils of steroids—something best left to parents and
teachers.
Annnd
parents: parent! Don’t forget about that beautiful
verb derived from what you are—a parent. Do your job and
Billy and Daisy won’t ever think about using the
juice. The time you spend whining to Congress and state
governments about steroid laws should be spent getting a
clue what your kids are putting in their bodies and making
sure it’s not ‘roids.
And
finally, to the public: get off your moral high horse and
stop looking down upon your heroes when they do something
that your ridiculous worship of them encourages them
to do in the first place. The fans and the public made
icons like Mark McGuire, Jason Giambi and Jose Canseco who
they were. Better yet, stop worshipping them and
stop rewarding them with your dollars when you learn they’re
cheating and breaking the law to do so if you’ve got such a
problem with it. That’s what hits their wallets, and
God knows President Benjamin on a bill is more powerful than
President Bush in the White House. And let’s not forget,
the evil steroid is already illegal when used by
athletes in this way, so if you feel the need to morph into
chicken little, then go run around demanding the enforcement
of laws already on the books making the unprescribed
use of performance-enhancing steroids illegal.
Look…I’m
not trying to say that steroids are good or that their
athletic, non-prescribed use should be legalized or even
encouraged for that matter. But on the whole, they’re not
doing that much damage to that many people,
and for the most part, their effects—good and bad—are
limited to the user, who knows what he—or she—was getting
into before they even started juicing. In fact, in my book,
the worst effect of steroids is that they make parents, the
press, politicians and the public flip out unnecessarily.
Now if
there were actually a way to legislate away “flipping out
unnecessarily”—now that’s an additional governmental
intrusion I might actually be able to get behind.
PROSTITUTION:
Tax it,
don’t ban it.
 It’s
called “the world’s oldest profession” for a reason. And
it’s not just New York City’s, the State of California’s or
even America’s oldest profession; it’s the world’s
oldest profession, which should tell us that it probably
involves something about all human beings regardless of
culture, religion or color. And it’s not just the world’s
oldest pastime, hobby, habit or fad; it’s the world’s
oldest profession, which should tell us that for
longer than anything else, it’s been something that humans
do to make money.
But while
turning tricks…whoring yourself out…having sex for cash…and
for my hip-hop readers, “big pimpin’” may be so old that
father time himself might have utilized the services of a
woman of the night, prostitution, to this very day, and even
in America—the so-called “land of the free”—is still quite
illegal. Yes, even though the world’s oldest profession
continues to thrive in every American city (despite being
illegal) either out in the open in the form of hoochie-mamas
walkin’ street corners, or under the guise of the less
threatening-sounding “escort services,” even though it
essentially involves consenting adults engaging in
activities that would be perfectly legal were it not
for the fact that money was changing hands, and even though
its illegal status means that it’s both un-regulated
and that society earns no tax revenue from it…yes,
it’s still illegal.
Is it just
me, or were the first people in the United States to pass
laws banning prostitution members of the Taliban? Actually
those laws probably are vestiges from a time when
American laws looked a little more like Islamic sharia
law than they should have, from the days when things like
using the lord’s name in vain and adultery could get you a
nice fat scarlet letter on your chest or a stint in the
stocks, and when other non-crimes like witchcraft could get
you burned at the stake. But regardless of the reason why
prostitution was first legally banned, there is just no
good reason for such bans across America to continue
today.
Look—just
as I’m not a pot smoker but I still think there’s no
compelling reason for it to be illegal, just as I’d
never pay for a prostitute, there’s just no compelling
reason for grown men and women engaging in otherwise legal
behavior (with the minor addition of a mutually agreed-upon
financial transaction) to be illegal either. None.
But
Jason! Are you saying that you wouldn’t care if hookers
walked the streets in broad daylight…hookers?! Do
you actually want there to be a whorehouse right next
door to you? Do you have any idea what that will do to the
rate of AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases? These
are usually the responses of those who are opposed to
prostitution—often on religious grounds—but who at least try
to frame their opposition in more practical terms because
even they know that simply saying “because it’s a sin and
it’s wrong” isn’t quite enough.
My first
response to those more practical concerns is that yes, I
would care about whether hookers walk the streets and it’s
not necessarily my first choice of things to see as I drive
down the road. But with that in mind, there are plenty of
other people that I’d also rather not see as I drive down
the road but it doesn’t always mean that they should be
illegal. Poorly-dressed people, mimes and cigarette smokers
are people I’d like to see removed from public
sidewalks, but that doesn’t mean we need to legally ban
them. Also, it’s not like prostitutes tend to violently
wield weapons at passers-by, hurl epithets, or even come
across as threatening in the least. In fact, as far as
undesirables are concerned, they’re not doing anyone any
harm, they tend to smile at you because of the nature of
their work, and their manner of dress tends to be quite
entertaining too! Also, unlike other things which are
legal, prostitution is not carcinogenic (like
cigarettes) and does not lead to drunk driving, liver
disease and alcoholism (like booze). And as far as the
transmission of STDs is concerned, empirical evidence from
places like Amsterdam where it’s legal actually shows
reductions in STD transmission rates. And before
someone tries to use a straw man argument that legalized
prostitution will mean hookers parading in front of schools,
churches and your house, don’t let them get away with it and
make sure to remind them that if prostitutes were made
legal, they’d be regulated. So just as there’s
not a bar next door to every church or a strip club next to
every school, it’s not like we’re gonna be seeing hookers
hookin’ down residential blocks, in apartment complexes or
in malls. That’s what zoning and regulation are for.
Finally, consider the financial tradeoff: knowing that a
legalized prostitute’s hefty hourly earnings would no
doubt be taxed significantly, imagine the potentially
huge reductions in the tax burden for the rest of us. Just
think of the Nevada example when it comes to gambling.
Because gambling’s legal (yet another behavior many consider
to be sinful), nobody in the state of Nevada pays a single
penny in state income tax.
And let’s
not forget about the shame factor for hookers and
their clients. Just because something becomes legal it
doesn’t mean that people are proud and public about doing
it. Buying porn, going to a nude beach and cross-dressing
are also legal but that doesn’t mean you do those things in
broad daylight in front of your grandparents and children.
A negative social stigma will almost certainly remain
attached to either picking up or being a prostitute—even
when it’s made legal. So even without zoning and
regulations which we’ll certainly also have, you can expect
shame alone to keep women of the night out of the daylight.
And one last point about the shame factor. Unless you live
under a rock you know that rare practice of
prostitution—whether done at a whorehouse or done under the
stewardship of a street pimp—is constantly being glamorized
in American media by shows like TV’s “The Insider” (who
routinely profiles the exploits of New York’s most expensive
call-girl) and the HBO series “Cathouse” (which follows the
excitement at a legal Nevada brothel). But with the
widespread legalization of prostitution, perhaps it’ll
help “deflower” its novelty, make it more cliché, and return
some of the moral shame to the practice that the media’s
glamorization of it has removed.
And I just
want to mention one last contradiction regarding
prostitution in society today. With the exception of a few
counties in Nevada, prostitution in America is by and large
illegal. However, almost anywhere in America it’s
perfectly legal to shoot an X-rated movie, which is nothing
more than prostitution caught on tape, and then sell that
movie to adults in perfectly legal adult video stores. So
what’s the contradiction? The contradiction is that our
foolish laws are telling the public, “it’s only legal to be
a prostitute if you’re going to make your sexual exploits
public and make money making them public, but if you’re
going to keep your prostitution a private matter between you
and your john, well….then we’ve got a problem!” It just
makes no sense whatsoever. If it’s legal to film it and
sell it, then it should be legal if you don’t film it
and make it public either.
Remember
what I said back at the beginning of today’s diatribe:
prostitution is the world’s oldest profession…and it’s
gonna continue to thrive even if it’s illegal. So the
question isn’t whether or not to get rid of it; the question
is whether or not we want to rein in and regulate this
non-crime, and tax the heck out of it. It should be clear
by now how I feel about it, and I just hope that after
reading today’s diatribe, the hyper-moralists who usually
spend too much time caring about the private morality of
others might realize that if they can’t change a species-old
practice in humans, at least they can control it and make
money off the sinners by making it legal.
TIME TO CALL A SPADE A SPADE,
and a
terrorist a terrorist.
 Even Fox
News, the channel that ushered in the term “homicide bomber”
instead of the less potent “suicide bomber,” has seemed to
fall under the spell of excessive-tolerance and
liberal-speak when it comes to the Iranian UNC grad who
mowed down a bunch of students in the name of Islam, calling
him nothing more than a vengeful former graduate student in
an online article dated March 6, 2006. And conversely, it
was actually an eighteen-year-old UNC freshman (yes, a
college student who is normally expected to spout the
liberal rhetoric of the left) who was actually quoted as
daring enough utter the “T” word—yes, “terrorism”—when
referring to Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar and what he did.
And you
can imagine if this is how delicately Mohammed’s labeling
was handled by Fox News, it doesn’t take a PhD in
touchy-feely studies to realize that other print and
broadcast media outlets are equally if not even more
hesitant to call Mohammed what he is…an Islamic radical, and
a terrorist.
Bizarrely,
everyone—including Fox News—seems to be treating this dude
by entirely different standards than they’d be treating a
similar action by a like-minded Muslim in any other part of
the world, such as Israel, for example. Yes, what I’m
saying is that American news outlets are acting like Al
Jazeera when it comes to the way they describe this guy and
it’s both ridiculous and a disservice to their readers,
listeners and viewers.
Forget
about the fact that the man seems sane (as
opposed to the victim of “voices in his head” or
hallucinations, and at least as sane as someone can be who
thinks it’s OK to mow down kids with an SUV), forget the
fact that he’s always smiling and seems to have no remorse
for what he’s done, and forget the fact that he’s made it
crystal clear that the reason for his crime was to
avenge the deaths of Muslims at the hands of Americans and
to “spread the will of Allah” (incidentally, the very
same rhetoric used by other Muslim radicals to “justify”
their actions or as I prefer to call them, TERRORISTS).
Yup, it seems that in the mind of the American media, what
makes someone a terrorist are the incidental and now-cliché
things like a bomber-vest, box-cutter and low-quality video
for broadcast on Al-Jazeera after your death, and not, as it
turns out, the substantive motivations that lead
other jihadis to do what they do, nor other, more
novel ways of harming innocent civilians that justify the
terrorist label.
Look, I’m
not saying this idiot doesn’t deserve due process, a fair
trial and a presumption of innocence by the legal
system, but what I am saying is that if it quacks
and waddles like a duck, it’s a duck, and if it
spouts anti-American rhetoric and engages in violence
against innocent civilians in the name of revenge on behalf
of Muslims like a terrorist, it’s a terrorist. So
let’s not play word games that only deceive and delude
ourselves; let’s call a spade a spade, and a terrorist a
terrorist—whether he’s English-speaking and
American-educated, or whether he speaks Farsi and lives in
Tehran.
AMERICAN
PORTS, FOREIGN CONTROL:
The truth
behind the politics of port control.
 Well it’s
getting nasty inside the beltway again, and it’s just the
kind of nastiness I enjoy: when prominent members of both
parties team up to go head-to-head with the administration.
Every now and then it’s just nice to have a break from the
typical Democrat v. Republican scuffles we’re used to and to
have the opportunity to enjoy one of those rare battles
between the two most powerful branches of the federal
government—the executive and the legislative.
In this
particular case, the fuss is over one of my favorite topics:
relations between America and the Muslim world. And the
bipartisan uproar over the recent sale of a company that
handles port operations at certain U.S. ports to a company
owned by the United Arab Emirates makes it sound like ships
pulling into those ports will be welcomed by turban-clad,
Quran-thumping, Al Qaida members, happily ignoring U.S. laws
and regulations and instead laying the foundation for their
next big attack.
Now look:
I’m as concerned (if not a lot more concerned) about
homeland security as anyone and I’m the first person to
raise a red flag when it’s warranted to do so. And my point
here is not to say that a sale like this shouldn’t be
scrutinized to the fullest. It should be
scrutinized (which the administration says it’s already
done), and politically, it would have also been a good idea
for the Bush administration to at the very least run it past
Congressional leaders to avoid getting so much egg on its
face and opening up divisions within the Republican party.
But what
annoys me about this case of bipartisan grandstanding is not
so much its substance but rather its hypocrisy. For
example, congressional Democrats and Republicans
criticize the fact that the United Arab Emirates was one of
only a handful of countries to officially recognize the
Taliban regime in Afghanistan, to not recognize the
state of Israel, and they point out that UAE financial
institutions were used to funnel money to the 9-11
terrorists. Horrible? Yes. But unique? No.
Despite
the fact that the UAE was one of only a few countries to
recognize the Taliban, not to recognize Israel, and
whose financial institutions were used to funnel money to Al
Qaida, it wasn’t as if the other countries to do so were
insignificant, because they also included Saudi Arabia
and Pakistan—two of our biggest allies in the
war on terror, and arguably far more dangerous in their
support for the Taliban and Al Qaida than the UAE. After
all, Saudi Arabia, whose oil we all cheerfully pump into our
cars without hesitation or a second thought about where it
originally came from (and therefore who might be making
money off us each time we fill up), is where most of the
9-11 hijackers came from, the homeland of Osama Bin Laden
himself (who was later expelled for threatening the regime),
and most importantly, the source of funding for Islamic
Madrassas across the globe responsible for a large part of
the widespread and irrational hatred of America throughout
the Muslim world. But both Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, like
the UAE, continue to make strides in the direction of
purging terrorists from their midst, the Bush administration
considers both to be key allies in the war on terror, and I
agree that to criticize the UAE for the same offenses in
spite of its help in the war on terror is a slap in the face
to it, and to the Saudis and Paks who are just as guilty of
the same offenses.
But that’s
not all…another fact you’ll rarely if ever see or
hear reported is that in addition to these Muslim countries,
another key country found itself in the financial loop of
the 9-11 terrorists: THE UNITED STATES. Here’s a direct
quote from a 9-11 commission staff report: “The September 11
hijackers used U.S. and foreign financial
institutions to hold, move, and retrieve their money. The
hijackers deposited money into U.S. accounts,
primarily by wire transfers and deposits of cash or
travelers checks brought from overseas. Additionally,
several of them kept funds in foreign accounts, which they
accessed in the United States
through ATM and credit card transactions.” Of course, no
one would claim that America’s domestic link in the chain of
terror financing should disqualify us from running our own
ports.
The final
bit of hypocrisy I’d like to point out involves the control
and operation of U.S. ports. Not only are ports publicly
owned and only leased to companies—including the UAE
company, and not only are all port workers union members and
U.S. citizens, but the majority of U.S. ports are
already operated by foreign companies—including
companies based in China, that great bastion of democracy
and human rights who, despite producing much of the
affordable merchandise at Wal Marts and Dollar Stores across
America, likely has at least a few nuclear missiles aimed at
the US at this very second.
And this
last point leads me to a final thought on this topic, and a
possible silver lining in this whole port control mess.
See, when you own something and make a lot of money from it,
you’re less likely to want to hurt or destroy it. So just
as China’s less likely to actually fire a nuke at it’s best
customer—the United States, and just as the Saudi’s—in spite
of their Wahhabi, non-American way of life—are helping us
avoid future terror attacks on US soil because it doesn’t
want to deal with a backlash from its best customer,
maybe…just maybe…letting an Arab company run a few terminals
at a few U.S. ports might help ensure that folks from that
country’s neck of the woods will be less likely to want to
do us harm. And because we’re talking about an actual
country and not a hard-to-find non-state actor like
Al-Qaida, if they’re actually foolish enough to allow harm
to come to America through our ports, they’ll know they can
expect instantaneous and overwhelming retaliation that will
make what we did to the Taliban look like we were just
warming up.
READ
MORE HERE
http://www.cfr.org/publication/9918/uae_purchase_of_american_port_facilities.html#6
BOYCOTT BUSEY & INSANE
BILLY ZANE:
Why there is no equivalence between Muhammad Cartoons and a
New Turkish Movie.
  When the
Muslims of Bosnia and Kosovo were being slaughtered by their
Christian neighbors in Serbia, it wasn’t the armies of Saudi
Arabia (the home of Mecca), Pakistan (the only known nuclear
power in the Muslim world), or Indonesia (where more Muslims
live than in any other country in the world) that came to
their defense. The mainly-Christian United States and the
West did.
When the
tsunami hit Indonesia and other Muslim-populated areas,
relief donations by the United States more than four
times exceeded those of Islamic Turkey, Saudi Arabia,
Qatar, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates combined.
(source: turkishpress.com)
When
Muslim Pakistan was hit with an earthquake last year killing
80,000 and leaving millions more homeless and hungry, it was
again the United States coming through with aid
contributions surpassing those of any Muslim country.
But it
seems that regardless of all the good we do in situations
like these around the world, and regardless of the fact that
our oil addiction keeps many Muslim economies afloat, the
fact that we support Israel, and the fact that we are
perceived as Godless heathens keeps us as perpetual entries
on the Muslim world’s shit list. And because I think that
Islam’s hatred of America and the West is rooted primarily
in their resentment of our successes in spite of our
“Godlessness,” I believe this hatred would still exist if
we had never invaded Iraq or Afghanistan. And in fact,
it did indeed exist prior to even the first gulf war.
In other
words, what I’m trying to say here is that despite the fact
that in recent world history the US and the mainly-Christian
West have done more to help the Muslim world than any other
country in the Muslim world itself, we sadly don’t need
any help in demonizing America and convincing the Muslim
world that America and the West are no good.
The flap
over the Mohammed cartoons that we’ve all heard about and
that I’ve written about in two earlier blogs have
shown us that the Muslim world’s ire is well-armed and on a
short fuse that even the slightest non-violent
provocation will cause to explode into bloody
demonstrations, trade boycotts, diplomatic rifts, and the
now-cliché Islamic death sentence (fatwa). If this is what
happens because of a cartoon, it doesn’t take a rogue
nuclear scientist to tell you that an even less-satirical
and more realistic portrayal of the already-hated
Americans will not mend any fences between the West
and Islam.
But that’s
precisely what actors Gary Busey and Billy Zane have helped
filmmakers do in a new Turkish movie called “Valley
of the Wolves, Iraq.” In this, the most expensive
Turkish movie ever made, Zane plays an American soldier who
oversees the slaughter of innocent Iraqi women and children
at a wedding, and who then takes the survivors of the
massacre to Abu Ghraib where a Jewish American doctor,
played by Busey, cuts out their organs for sale in London,
Tel Aviv, and of course, New York. In Turkey, the most
“liberal” and “pro-West” of Muslim countries where 53
percent of those responding to a recent Pew Global Attitudes
survey associated Americans with the word "rude"; 70 percent
with "violent"; 68 percent with "greedy"; and 57 percent
with "immoral," advance tickets are selling out and
Istanbul’s mayor said about the movie, “The scenario is
great.”
Now I’m
not saying that Gary and Billy shouldn’t have the freedom to
choose the movie roles they play, nor am I calling for a
bounty to be put on their heads for these or any other roles
they may play—no matter how anti-American, and no matter how
blasphemous. I’m not calling for their expulsion from the
Screen Actor’s Guild or from the United States itself, and
I’m not calling for an ounce of jail time to be done by
either. Those things would be the typically-Muslim
response to such transgressions.
But I am
calling for the beautifully-democratic response:
boycott—the choice of free peoples to not give one ounce
of support to the work and causes of these individuals as a
symbolic expression of displeasure with their poor
decisions, and to let them know that their decisions and
actions have consequences—and in this case quite negative
consequences—that extend far beyond the paychecks they
received for their work on the film…consequences that will
extend to the rest of us Americans and the freedom-loving,
democratic, Judeo-Christian west.
While this
anti-American movie is a fictional portrayal of Americans
just like the satirical cartoons of Muhammad are clearly
fictional portrayals of Islam’s prophet, there’s still quite
a big difference between the two. While the cartoons of
Muhammad inflamed anti-American passions throughout Islam,
they actually created a pro-Muslim/pro-tolerance backlash in
America and the West where the cartoons first originated.
Editors who published them were fired and suspended,
peaceful interfaith protests underscoring the west’s
religious tolerance were organized, and political leaders of
western countries publicly condemned the cartoon’s
publishing even though the publishing was done by a private,
non-government entity.
But to me,
the new Turkish movie is quite different; although
fictional, I predict that it’s going to be viewed throughout
the Muslim world as evidence of American atrocities and
American evil. If I’m right this will only further inflame
anti-Western sentiment and lead to Muslim public opinion
that is more likely to want to develop nuclear weapons, hate
America and its people, and support terror. The other key
difference in the aftermath of the cartoon publications and
the release of this movie is that the west—although it will
not enjoy or embrace the movie—will certainly
not threaten to sever diplomatic relations with
Turkey, call for the Turkish government to publicly censure
the filmmakers, or allow the kid of violence against Turkish
interests to take place that many Muslim countries have
allowed to take place against western interests in the wake
of the cartoons. And while Denmark’s embarrassment has been
made public in the Arab world in the form of full-page
apologies in Saudi and other Muslim newspapers, showing that
the west does indeed care about how some among us made
Muslims feel, I’m willing to bet money that no such shame
will ever come to the Turkish filmmakers, nor will the
west’s outrage that such a movie was ever created in the
first place ever be known in the Muslim world.
I really,
really hope I’m wrong about everything I’ve just
written, and I hope that Muslims will actually rise up in
anger against this movie just as they did against the
cartoons. But as much as I enjoy being right about most
things, this is one of those rare occasions where a
dangerous likely outcome makes it something I’d rather be
wrong about.
Either
way, boycott Busey and Zane; and forgive them, for they know
not what they do.
THE MINUTEMEN:
Not necessarily xenophobic…not necessarily racist.
 The
political left and so-called Mexican-American and Hispanic
civil rights groups unfairly—and often with great success in
the media—brand supporters of secure borders and things like
border walls as xenophobic racists who don’t appreciate the
fact that illegal immigrants risk life and limb to come to
this country where they often do jobs that Americans are not
willing to do. Unfortunately for these groups, they’re
wrong, and because they’re wrong, they’re being unfair to
the real and justified concerns of people who, like me,
favor more airtight border security
But being
wrong isn’t their only problem. The claims of pro-illegal
immigrant groups also distract attention from the fact that
the policies of these groups do more harm to illegal
immigrants than any minuteman has ever done, and from the
fact that their positions are rooted not in immigrant
safety but in a desire for one of their key
constituencies—illegal immigrants living in the US—to swell
and be replenished via our insecure borders.
THE TRUTH ABOUT SUPPORTERS OF SECURE BORDERS
I first
want to discuss the unfair portrayal of those who support
more secure borders as xenophobic racists. This is simply
not true. I, for one, am an American of Mexican descent who
is the grandson of an illegal immigrant from Mexico. And
not only do I harbor no racial or ethnic animosity
whatsoever toward the land of my ancestry, but also, I don’t
blame Mexicans one bit for trying to get as far away
as possible from the corruption and poverty of Mexico, nor
for trying to enter the greatest country on the
planet—America—by any means necessary. As I’m fond of
saying, there’s a good reason why my great grandmother
decided to flee Mexico with my then two-year-old
grandfather, and there’s a good reason she chose the United
States as her ultimate destination. Unfortunately for many
Mexicans today, those good reasons remain an undeniable fact
of life.
And just
as we are not necessarily racist, we are not necessarily
xenophobic. Speaking for myself only, I have dear friends
who are either U.S. citizens or legal U.S. residents from
countries ranging from Canada, Mexico and India, to even
Muslim countries like Turkey and Iran, and I would trust
any of them with my life. And even though all of these
personal acquaintances of mine both arrived and stayed in
the United States legally, I still harbor no intrinsic
hatred or fear of anyone who either arrived or stayed
illegally either. I know that U.S. immigration laws can
often be confusing and unfair, and I know that most illegal
aliens aren’t in the US to intentionally hurt a single
soul. And finally, if magically I were given the power to
make a list of people that I could have immediately deported
from the United States, almost everyone I can think of
expelling is a native-born U.S. citizen!
ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT RIGHTS GROUPS DO MORE HARM TO ILLEGALS
THAN EVEN THE MINUTEMEN
Their
anti-border control rhetoric is a smokescreen cleverly
disguising the fact that pro-illegal immigrant groups are
actually doing more harm to illegal immigrants than any
minuteman ever did. Why? Because their platform—including
everything from their opposition to more strict border
controls to their support of health, education and other
social programs for illegals—lures illegals to our country
and encourages them to risk life and limb in their
treacherous journey north.
Ruthless
coyotes who make money off the misery of Mexicans
desperate to come to America, deaths and other casualties
resulting from the dangerous journey across the desert on
foot or in sealed cargo containers, billions of dollars in
uncollected taxes from the illegal drug trade, the bloody
drug war that plays itself out on Mexican streets, and a
Mexican regime not motivated to fix itself and provide the
hope of a prosperous life for its people—these are all
encouraged by the present inadequate U.S. border control
policy and its support by pro-illegal immigration groups.
However, it’s the stricter border control policies favored
by the minutemen and their kind that have the exact opposite
effect. You don’t need a PhD in border policy to see that
an open border encourages illegal immigration and all the
negative consequences that come with it, while an
impenetrable border would all but completely discourage it.
As someone
quite sympathetic to both the cause of the supporters of
stricter border security and the motivations of Latin
American illegal immigrants who just want a better life for
themselves, it’s pretty annoying to be falsely and unfairly
branded as racist and xenophobic. And it’s frankly
ridiculous that those of us who are actually supporting what
is legal and opposing what is illegal are painted out to be
the bad guys by those falsely claiming to carry the banner
of humanitarianism.
So just
why are non-racist and non-xenophobic people
like me in favor of tighter border control? In a word:
security. Security from an illegal drug trade that
leads to the importation of millions of dollars worth of
untaxed goods and that props up violent Mexican drug
cartels, security from a labor pool who while well-intended
will undercut American employees with their willingness to
work for less than what it’s legal to pay an employee in the
US, and security from terrorists intent on inflicting mass
casualties in the U.S. and who are likely to exploit our
leaky borders to sneak in and do it. That is the
truth, and that is what’s really behind support for
tighter border controls.
So when
those who make their living tilting at the nonexistent
windmills of xenophobia and racism make claims about the
supporters of secure borders, don’t automatically take them
at their word, and take what they say with a large dose of
healthy skepticism, because the fact of the matter is that
they’re often dead wrong.
POP QUIZ: LOCAL TV NEWS IS:
a) gory b) sensational c) talent-less
d) irrelevant ANSWER: e) all of the above
 Blood,
gore, sensationalistic plotlines, fear mongering, bad
writing, and crappy talent. What am I talking about? No,
not a bad, direct-to-video “B” movie starring daytime soap
rejects. No, not an amateur student film shot on a
camcorder so a couple of academic underachievers could get a
little extra credit in drama class. No, what I’m describing
is your home-grown, garden-variety, local network affiliate
television news!
Yes, at
some point in the recent past local TV news editors got the
memo that important things like press conferences with city
officials talking about things that actually affect
our lives aren’t as “eye-catching,” “telegenic,” or “sexy”
as stories about rare and isolated things that do not
affect our lives, and do little but scare the crap out of us
and…oh yeah…keep us glued to our TV as if it were a
miniature car accident in our living room because local TV
news is pretty much nothing but car accidents beamed
into our living room.
Personally, my least favorite type of lead stories are the
ones about tragic accidents that do little but give us an
irrational fear of driving, stories about isolated murders
that inspire irrational fears of home invasion, and—worst of
all—stories about ongoing court cases that while “high
profile” only because we’ve all heard of the parties
involved, truly have zero impact on your life or
mine. Yeah, I’m talking about the Michael Jackson trials of
the world and the idiot networks drawn to them like a shark
to blood in the water.
But it’s
not just stupid stories. It’s also talent that’s often
mediocre at best. Why? There are hundreds of media markets
in the country, some with four or more local TV news
establishments. And many of those all feel compelled to
have live newscasts early in the morning (which I don’t
understand), a full hour at noon (which I don’t
understand), another two hours between 4 and 6PM (an hour
and a half of which I also don’t understand), and
another half hour at 10 or 11PM (again—don’t get it). In
short, news organizations are forced to cover almost 10
hours of on-air news with a talent pool that you might
be able to decently cover an hour with. And since the “good
ones” tend to be attracted to the pay and prestige of the
bigger cities, the rest of us are stuck with the “B” and “C”
teams of television journalism…bad hair, bad delivery, bad
ties and all.
So in my
usual spirit of constructive advice to help solve today’s
problems and embarrassments, here’s my newsflash for local
news: please remember where the word “news” comes
from…“NEW”. Murders, car accidents, death, rape and
theft—while all horrible and sad—are not “new.” Unless one
of them happens with a regularity that indicates a serial or
epidemic status, or unless seeing or hearing about the story
is going to have a real (not imagined effect on our
lives), then we don’t need a live shot of a reporter
in front of a non-descript house, an accident, or any other
random crime scene every damned night telling us
about it. It’s not news, it’s a statistic, so give it to us
in a crawl at the bottom of the screen if you’re gonna give
it to us at all. Instead, as hard as it may be, tell us
stuff that actually matters to us and affects our lives, or
as some people like to call it…NEWS!
Next, once
you take out the sensationalistic fluff, shrink wrap the
day’s real news and serve it up in a 30-minute
newscast during early-evening by your best anchor. I say 30
minutes because you’re lucky if you even have that much real
news, and I say early-evening because folks who work late
can record it and watch it later. And yes, I said just
your best anchor. Spare us the politically-correct and
cliché male-female anchor “team” with token ethnic sports
and weather wingmen, and take the cash you save by trimming
the fat and hire someone attractive to look at and easy to
listen to for the anchor desk, and take the money you save
and hire good reporters to support him or her. Then,
because it’s good for a change, record it and rebroadcast it
the next morning between five and 10AM when you typically
find the third or fourth string anchors regurgitating the
previous night’s news anyway. If local news outlets did
this, the five people who actually want 10 hours of
live local news each day could visit a station’s website as
often as they want to get it, and the rest of us could
actually enjoy a decent television newscast featuring
relevant, real news.
I know, I
know…you may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one…and
unlike John Lennon’s dream in the song “Imagine,” my
proposed local TV news reforms—unlike world peace—actually
have better than a snowball’s chance in Hell of actually
happening.
PRAISE ALLAH I DON’T LIVE
IN A MUSLIM COUNTRY:
Unfortunately, Jihad Momani and Hisham Khalidi do.
 Well it
just gets worse every day. As I mentioned in one of my
recent diatribes the Muslim world has reacted to the
publishing of cartoons featuring Mohammed in a way that
Christian democracies hardly ever do…even when they are
physically attacked by Muslims and their innocent civilians
are killed. In fact, while the Muslim world torches
European embassies—including the embassies of countries
not involved in the recent cartoon controversy—and makes
calls of “death to…” European countries—including countries
not involved in the recent controversy—I’m not aware
of so much as one single demonstration in the streets of a
major American city calling for “death to Afghanistan,” the
home of Al Qaida, nor death to any other Muslim nation, much
less the torching of any Muslim country’s embassy in
Washington, DC, in the wake of 9-11.
And yes,
while America did indeed topple the Taliban regime in
Afghanistan in response to 9-11, can anyone really say that
the murder of 3,000 innocents was not an adequate
justification for retaliation? But on the other hand, only
Muslims seem to argue that cartoons—CAR-FREAKIN-TOONS—are
adequate provocation for acts of violence against even
countries unrelated to the controversy. In a situation like
this, it really makes you wish that Muhammad wrote the
phrase “sticks and stones may break my bones but cartoons
will never hurt me” into a passage in the Quran. It sure
would have saved a lot of Iranian Molotov Cocktails.
But just
when I was about to completely lose my faith in the Muslim
world’s ability to take the insulting cartoons with a grain
of salt, I was pleasantly surprised and impressed by
the courage and enlightenment of two Jordanian Muslim men,
Jihad Momani and Hisham Khalidi. Momani and Khalidi were
(yes, were) editors of Jordanian newspapers who had
the intestinal fortitude to republish the pictures because
they knew that without an ability to view the comics for
themselves, readers would have to rely on the word of
government officials about their offensive nature. This
reliance on a few rulers to make decisions on the part of
the many is the antithesis of democracy, and it is at the
heart of almost every claim to power throughout the
dictatorial and undemocratic Muslim world. But as men who
have faith in the ability of individuals to make up their
own minds rather than needing beliefs and opinions to be
spoon-fed to them by dictators, ayatollahs, or caliphs, they
very democratically republished the cartoons for their
readers to view and form opinions about on their own.
And my
respect for Mr. Momani doesn’t stop there. In addition to
republishing the cartoons, his paper also ran an editorial
which bravely said, "Muslims of
the world be reasonable," and wisely posed the rhetorical
question "What brings more prejudice against Islam, these
caricatures or pictures of a hostage-taker slashing the
throat of his victim in front of the cameras or a suicide
bomber who blows himself up during a wedding ceremony in
Amman?"
That’s the
good news. But here’s the bad news. For their brave,
nonviolent act and for their faith in the ability of their
readers to decide for themselves and consider an opinion
unpopular in the Islamic world, these heroes of freedom and
symbols of moderation in Islam were not just fired, but
jailed by the Kingdom of Jordan…one of the most moderate
and pro-American regimes in the Arab and Muslim world whose
king is an American-educated Georgetown University Alum and
who, along with his wife, is a fluent English speaker.
Charged with “defaming prophets in public,” Jihad Momani and
Hisham Khalidi, if convicted, they could serve up to three
years in prison, and the moderate king has promised “no
leniency” in their prosecution. And finally, the Jordan
Press Association, which you might expect to defend
the actions of these men, has actually referred the men to a
disciplinary committee saying “they have done something
wrong and they must be punished.” How’s that for free press,
ALCU?!
It’s the
treatment of brave men like these in what is typically
considered to be a moderate Muslim nation with a
pro-America, pro-reform regime that should cause us to be
quite concerned about everything from the democratization of
the Muslim world to the security and reliability of our
supply of foreign oil. I mean think about it: if a cartoon
is reason enough to recall ambassadors (see
previous article here), cease all trade with an entire
country and firebomb embassies, then just imagine what other
kinds of nonviolent missteps by private citizens
could lead Muslim countries to decide to just turn off our
oil supply. And it’s one of the reasons why we should both
continue to coax the Muslim world gently towards democracy
and freedom on the one hand, while exercising caution and
cutting our dependence on goods and service—especially
oil—from the politically volatile Muslim world on the other.
Like the
Bible and the Torah, the Quran is a rather long book filled
with stories and lessons about God and how God wants his
human followers to act. But while the New Testament of the
Bible has frequent peaceful teachings like reminders to love
our enemies, to forgive those who have trespassed against
us, to not to judge others, and to turn the other cheek, the
Quran seems to lack any such teaching or to even possess a
passage that when liberally interpreted might actually be
read to mean “chill out on folks who make you mad. Because
remember…I’m God…I’ve got pretty thick skin, OK?” It’s too
bad the Quran doesn’t have such a passage—both on an
individual and on an international level—and it’s one of the
reasons I’m glad I don’t live in a Muslim country.
SURVEILLANCE CAMERAS:
Threat to liberty, or weapon against crime?
 I think
anyone who, like me, has spent a lot of time in Vegas—either
visiting or living there as I once did—has become oblivious
to the fact that their every move in public is being
photographed and/or videotaped, and similarly, they’ve come
to realize that the ACLU and other left wingers are
over-hyping the whole “threat to privacy” that they believe
widespread use of surveillance cameras pose to society. But
for those of you out there who haven’t had the pleasure of
spending a lot of time in Vegas or another well-scanned
city, and who are, like me, quite mindful of our civil
liberties and have had their eyebrows raised by ACLU claims
that cameras pose a threat to freedom and democracy as we
know it, let me make two very important points.
POINT
NUMBER ONE: what you do in public is just that…PUBLIC.
There’s a reason why the word privacy exists, and that’s to
describe the realm in which you do and say things when
you’re not in public. There is no bigger civil
libertarian than I, and anyone who reads my daily diatribes
on this site knows that. Whether it’s a person’s right to
marry who they want or to smoke what they want when in
private and as long as any negative effects remain
with you in private, I think people’s freedoms should be
as broad as possible, and that the realm of the private
should always be free and protected.
However,
most of the people who masquerade as “civil libertarians”
like the ACLU, for example, wrongly define the sphere of the
private as including a good chunk of the public domain or
other people’s private domains. Whether it’s a public
street, in a public place, on the premises of
another person’s private property on which their
rules apply and not yours, or whether it’s your e-mail
correspondence on computers at work that you don’t
own and therefore aren’t private, we’re always being
told by ACLU types that we’re entitled to privacy in those
areas.
But they
couldn’t be farther from the truth. The fact is that
anytime you’re in public, you’re in public.
And a camera watching over a city street isn’t seeing
anything that another person who could legally be standing
outside watching you (or watching you from inside their home
or apartment for that matter) couldn’t also legally
see. And for that reason, the notion of suing the
government over placing cameras to monitor public places is
just as ridiculous as suing another citizen for being in the
same public place and watching you. And it’s the same when
you’re on another person’s private property—whether
it’s a public store or a private home. If they want to tape
you, then it’s their right to do so—including, frankly, in
my opinion, whether you know it or not!
Because of
their completely wrong definition of the private, civil
liberties imposters like the ACLU are more like
“pseudo-libertarians” than “civil” libertarians, and
counterfeit civil libertarians and their overly-broad
definitions of the private sphere do nothing but give real
civil libertarians like me a bad name. If you are in a
public place or on another person’s private property, claims
of “personal space,” “civil liberties,” and “privacy” simply
have no place in the discussion.
POINT
NUMBER TWO: cameras work. As Chicago’s Mayor Daley said
when he recently announced that Chicago businesses would be
required to install cameras, “Cameras really prevent much
crime. Cameras also solve a lot of crime. The terrorist
attacks in London were solved by cameras. The whole incident
was solved by cameras." And let’s not forget about the
criminals in Florida who were recently caught after a
portion of their attacks in which they beat and killed
homeless men were captured on camera. And in still another
example, in Wilmington Delaware, cameras have helped in 95
cases over the past six months alone. Of course these
examples are only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to
the massive numbers of crimes that were solved because of
surveillance camera footage. But as big as that number is,
it probably still pales in comparison to the number of
crimes that never happened in the first place because
cameras helped prevent them from happening.
The bottom
line is this. There are plenty of places in the world and
even here in America where cameras are already everywhere,
and if there were really any horrible consequences of
widespread surveillance camera use, we would have heard
about them by now—because the pseudo-libertarians would have
made sure we heard about it. So the fact that all we ever
hear when these measures are debated and discussed is
chicken-little fear-mongering should tell us that the people
suggesting broader use of surveillance cameras in public are
probably right, and that we have nothing to fear but the
criminals who will be all too happy to continue doing their
mischief knowing it’ll never be captured on film.
PAINT, DRAW, OR SKETCH ISLAM’S
MUHAMMAD AT YOUR OWN RISK: Jesus is OK, though.
 One of the
most beautiful things about living in a western, Christian
democracy is that I can post a humorous depiction of
Jesus—the most important person in world history to
Christians everywhere—on my site and not really have to
worry that Christians will try to kill me or that Christian
nations will recall their ambassadors from the United States
because of what I did. But apparently the same can not be
said of Islam’s prophet, Muhammad.
I’m not
sure if you’ve heard about it yet but a cartoon in Denmark
depicting the Muslim Prophet Muhammad wearing a turban in
the shape of a bomb with a burning fuse has caused so much
international turmoil that you would have thought an Arab
country had actually been physically attacked or
economically sanctioned by the west. But no, the mere
publishing of a cartoon in a Danish newspaper
(not even a newspaper in America—the great Satan, or in
Israel—the little Satan) has ignited a diplomatic and
literal firestorm in the Islamic world. Sure the usual
suspects voiced their anger: Palestinians added Danish flags
to the American ones they burn daily, and the terrorists/new
leaders of Palestinian territories, Hamas, called for a
worldwide boycott of Danish products. But on a much larger
level Kuwait and Saudi Arabia have boycotted all Danish
products, Saudi Arabia recalled its ambassador to Denmark,
its Islamic Affairs ministry called it “cultural terrorism,”
Libya has closed its Danish embassy, the ambassadors of
eleven Muslim countries to Denmark demanded apologies from
the publisher, and of course, the peace-loving government of
Syria called for the publishers to be punished.
Now as
always let me get my disclaimers out of the way right off
the bat before I tell you my take on the situation. First
of all I’m a big fan of satire—including political
and religious satire—and I think that mature people and
mature political and spiritual leaders should keep a stiff
upper lip when they confront insults to themselves
personally as well as to important people, gods and
historical figures in the groups they represent. I don’t
necessarily like all of it, and I even think it
can be in poor taste at times. But one of the unique,
and in my opinion, beautiful characteristics of modern
democracies is our ability to legally poke fun at
ourselves—even our most important religious and political
figures—such as on Saturday Night Live where countless
American presidents as well as Jesus Christ himself have
been lampooned. And it didn’t start there; political
cartoons making fun of political and religious
leaders—sometimes quite rude and crude—have been a part of
America since its founding, and we seem to have done pretty
well for ourselves in spite of it.
Not
so
in the Muslim streets of almost every single Muslim country
where American flag burnings, George W. Bush effigy
burnings, and chants of “death to America” are an almost
daily occurrence if not a national pastime. Even worse,
some governments of Islamic states have both publicly and
privately supported actual plans to destabilize our
government and other western democracies by killing as many
of our innocent civilians as possible, refused to recognize
the sovereign state of Israel, and not only outlawed but
punished by killing those people within its borders who
practiced Christianity or any other religion other than
Islam. Yet to my knowledge, not a single country—not
America, nor any of our western allies—has ever once yanked
its ambassadors, threatened sanctions, or so much as
demanded a simple apology in retaliation for any behavior
short of the cold-blooded killing of its own people.
And not
only is the response to such insults more mature on
the part of the west, but the actions that inspire it are as
opposite as night and day. While the action that inspired
boycotts, ambassador recalls, and undoubtedly a few new
fatwas (or Islamic death sentences) too was an act of humor
(albeit offensive humor), it was certainly not the
organized, state-sponsored, and violence-promoting actions
and chants that we routinely hear from the Arab and Muslim
world.
Clearly,
there is a double standard in the Islamic world that must be
overcome if it is ever to fully integrate into modern,
civilized, world society. While their brothers and
sisters can strap bombs on themselves and blow up as many
innocent civilians as possible without reprimand and
sometimes even with state-sponsored encouragement,
acts of nonviolence—while possibly offensive—by one
artist and one newspaper, bring the wrath of the
Muslim world down upon an entire free country. And while
the recent publication of the offensive cartoon may have
been in poor taste on one level, on another level it
illustrates—quite literally—the very real, and moreover, the
very justified concern on the part of the west about
Islam’s tradition of militancy, violence, and revenge which
can be traced all the way back to their prophet himself.
And if I
may, I’d like to make one final political point. Even
though I hate flag-burning and flag-burners and wish that
they would wrap themselves in the American flag before they
set it on fire, the flap over the cartoon of Muhammad is
exactly why I’m opposed to laws or a constitutional
amendment banning the practice. Because that’s what sets us
apart from the repressive regimes of the world whose
governments and people hate us so much; we allow the
expression of nonviolent dissent even if it makes us
uncomfortable—if for no other reason than to prove that our
society and system of government is so strong that it can
and frequently does survive such dissent. While on
the other hand, the repression of Muslim regimes seems prone
to banning nonviolent expressions of dissent precisely
because they fear what would happen if its people were
actually allowed to say and express what they wanted, and
they know that without such repression their own stability
and hold on power would be severely weakened. In other
words, a strong society has nothing to fear from dissent,
but a weak one most certainly does, and it will undermine
any and all attempts at dissent—both at home and in
Denmark—“by any means necessary,” to quote one of Islam’s
own adherents.
READ MORE HERE...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4670370.stm
JUDICIAL JUNKETS:
Threat to democracy, or no big deal?
 Well
here comes another diatribe that I’m gonna once again beg my
liberal friends to hear me out on before you think I’m just
being a knee-jerk conservative which I’m not. (Remember:
I’m a staunch non-partisan and you know I’ve got your back
on plenty of issues—so please read/listen to today’s
diatribe with an open mind).
I’m not
sure if you’ve heard about it but ABC News’s chief
investigative correspondent Brian Ross, whose reports I
usually enjoy, just came out with a major exclusive report
about U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonin Scalia.
Apparently when the new Chief Justice John Roberts was being
sworn in, Scalia was not only not at the swearing-in
ceremony, but he was in Colorado at a junket sponsored by
the Federalist Society, a legal organization usually branded
as evil by liberals, where he did things like lecturing to
the attendees and even playing tennis and fishing! The
nerve!!!
At
first glance I agree this isn’t what I would call “good P.R.”
for Justice Scalia, who I’ve long considered to be my
favorite justice. Not only did he miss the rare and
important occasion of the swearing in of a new chief
justice, but his trip—which included hobnobbing with
conservatives, fishing, and playing tennis—was paid for by a
conservative organization that gave its members exclusive
access to one of our nation’s highest ranking judicial
authorities. In light of recent allegations of
influence-peddling in Congress by lobbyists who used their
client’s cash to buy favorable congressional action, I can
understand why Scalia’s trip looks pretty suspicious and
maybe even inappropriate to the casual observer.
But
after a closer examination of the situation, I’ve got to say
that I’m not as worried and bothered as ABC’s Brian Ross
clearly appears to be, and you shouldn’t be either. Let me
explain why.
First
of all, there’s a massive difference between the
average U.S. Supreme Court justice and the average member of
congress. The biggest difference is that justices, like all
other members of the federal judiciary, have life tenure
once appointed by the President and confirmed by the U.S.
Senate. On the other hand, Members of Congress (the U.S.
House of Representatives and U.S. Senate) are elected—and
re-elected if they’re lucky—every two years if they’re
Rep’s and every six years if they’re Senators. So while
federal justices will have their jobs tomorrow, next year,
and 20 years from now no matter what assuming they’re still
alive, and regardless of whether or not they please a given
constituency or political faction, Reps and Senators are
constantly “running for office,” concerned with fundraising,
legislating, and in short, pleasing one faction or another
lest they lose their next race and find themselves
unemployed and on the street in two or six short years.
So when
Scalia goes on a junket, he does so knowing that he is
beholden to no one—not the sponsors of the junket, not one
political faction or another, not even the president…nobody.
This is exactly why our justices and other members of the
federal judiciary have life tenure—to help insulate them
from outside influence which the founders of our
constitution wisely anticipated as they designed our system
of government. He can preach to the choir at the junket, or
he can piss them off—either way he goes back to his job the
Monday morning after the junket.
But
when a member of Congress goes on a junket, it’s a
different story altogether. Even though he or she may
say or do something to tick off the sponsors, they do so
at their peril. Campaign contributions—the lifeblood of
modern political races—could be jeopardized, constituents
could be alienated, and in short, the member’s political
future could be endangered permanently. And because of the
dire consequences of ticking off a junket’s sponsor or
participants, members of Congress—unlike Justice
Scalia—are under very real financial and political pressure
to make a sponsor happy, and gifts, getaways and golf are a
great and questionable way for someone to guide a
member in the direction the group wants them to go.
The
next reason I’m not so concerned is that Scalia is
associating with a group and its members that we would
totally expect Scalia to associate with. In other words,
his participation in the junket and his association with the
group isn’t anything that’s going to change his mind or make
him behave differently than he would had he not attended the
junket. If anything, Scalia is so freakin’ brilliant that
the hacks out there with him on the golf course and tennis
courts are going to be the ones having their minds
changed. It’s not like Scalia was confirmed as a justice
who believes the constitution should be interpreted
according to today’s norms and definitions, and it’s not
like the trip ABC’s Brian Ross describes is going to morph
him into someone different than he was the day he was
confirmed. Quite the opposite: Scalia is being Scalia,
and he’s getting the Ritz-Carlton weekend because of
who he is—knowing he’s beyond influence—while members of
Congress get trips and gifts because of who junketeers
want them to be. Big difference.
Think
of it this way: hypothetically, the conservative Federalist
Society could have invited Ruth Bader Ginsberg to its
Colorado retreat, wined her and dined her, taken her out on
the links golfing and out on the lake fishing, and intently
listened to her liberal lectures about the constitution.
But the Federalists would never do that because like Humpty
Dumpty, all the gifts and all the golf won’t turn Ruth-baby
into a Federalist, not to mention the fact that they’d
probably rather visit the dentist than listen to her talk
about her judicial philosophy!
Because
Scalia is someone insulated (as much as one can be
insulated) from outside influence while other elected
officials are not, stories like this in popular news venues
do nothing but distract the general public (who generally
knows what it knows about politics from what it sees on TV)
from the real problem—improper and inappropriate
influence of those who are more susceptible to it…Senators
and U.S. Representatives in Congress.
So
before I wrap today’s diatribe let me give my liberal
listeners and readers some words of comfort since I’ve
basically just stuck up for my favorite justice who also
happens to be hated by every liberal friend of mine.
Although you may be depressed and sad about the fact that
President Bush has just successfully appointed two
apparently conservative justices to the court, remember
this: justices don’t always live up to the hype once they
get on the bench, and historically some of the most
liberal justices in recent history have been appointed
by Republicans. Earl Warren, one of the most liberal chief
justices of all time, was actually a popular Republican
governor appointed to the bench by fellow Republican Dwight
D. Eisenhower (who reportedly once said that one of the
biggest mistakes of his presidency was appointing Warren to
the high court). Similarly, Justice Harry Blackmun was a
lifelong Republican and appointed to the bench by Republican
Richard Nixon before authoring the infamous Roe v. Wade
decision, revered by liberals to this day. Anyway I’m not
sharing this with you as a way of saying I hope the same
phenomenon takes place with Roberts and Alito, but it’s just
my way of saying…ya never know!
GOOGLE vs. BUSH:
Weren't Republicans Supposed to be the Party of Smaller
Government!?
 I’ll tell
you right off the bat that when I’m looking for something
online, the only search engine I use is Google. And
over the past few days, I’m proud to say that Google is the
only search engine getting my business and not the
other big, and as it turns out cowardly search
engines like MSN or Yahoo. Why? Because when the US
Justice Department asked all three companies to give it
their millions of lists of things that people had
searched for—in some cases possibly revealing things that
people don’t want the government to know—while MSN and Yahoo
turned into DOJ’s little minions, only Google had the
intestinal fortitude to stand up to Attorney General
Gonzales and say “no.”
When I
first heard that the U.S. government wanted lists of
searches from search engines I automatically assumed it had
something to do with terrorism. I made that assumption
because of the recent controversy over the Bush
administration spying on terror suspects without warrants,
and also, I could at least see the utility of wanting to
track down someone named “Achmed” or “Mohammed” who googled
“how to assemble a suitcase nuke and secretly deploy it in a
way that maximizes casualties.”
But it
turns out I was wrong. Surprisingly, the government says
that it wants to have records of Google searches to help
prevent children from accessing pornography. I say
“surprisingly” because despite the hopeless goal of fighting
kids’ access to pornography (if the porn’s there, kids are
gonna find it), terrorist strikes pose a far greater danger
to America than kids looking at boobies by any measure.
To put it
bluntly, the Department of Justice’s demand that Google or
any other search engine turn over information of the type
recently requested is patently foolish. If the government
wants to know if it’s possible for a kid to hop online and
find porn using a search engine, let me do my civic duty and
save government attorneys the effort of preparing and
submitting subpoenas—YES, kids can, and do, look for and
find porn using search engines. Now Bush
administration, wasn’t that a lot easier than facing another
round of accusations in the media of more big brother
tactics?
Look.
Search engines are to online porn what our uncle’s mattress
was to Penthouse and Playboy. They’re a means to an end—an
end that hormonal kids are gonna find whether repressed
conservatives who fear pornography more than the devil
himself like it or not.
And if the
government doesn’t want to just take my word for it and
wants to know what kind of titillating smut it’s possible to
find through Google, Yahoo, MSN, or AOL, then instead of
subpoenaing other people’s searches, why don’t they just
search those engines for themselves? Are the disciples of
Reverend Ashcroft and Pastor Gonzales just too pure or prude
to think of words that might yield an X-rated buffet of sexy
sites? Or maybe they already know that even G-rated words
can lead to G-spots, and they’re afraid they just might
enjoy their results a little too much.
In
conclusion, I confess that I’m not a pornophobe like the
Bush administration and many Republicans seem to be. And
although I may not agree with their pornophobia, I do
respect any parent’s right to limit their kids access to
porn or anything else they deem dangerous or wrong. But I
do have a problem when Bush Republicans, allegedly the party
of smaller government and the party of families
raising kids (not laws or governments raising kids), take
refuge in meddling government instead of meddling moms and
dads. So Attorney General Gonzales, remember what Bob Dole
said in response to Hillary’s book It Takes a Village;
“It takes a family,” said Dole, reminding us that it’s a
parent’s responsibility to raise their kids—not the
government’s. And when parents parent, our
private online searches don’t need to be anyone’s business
but our own.
AL JAZEERA: AL QAIDA’S P.R.
FIRM.
 I used to
only have a problem with Al-Jazeera because of its biased
portrayal of terrorists as “martyrs” and “freedom fighters,”
and because of its equally biased portrayal of the U.S. and
its allies against terrorism as “anti-Muslim” and
“imperialists.” Despite the fact that U.S. and allied
forces are in their part of the world because we were
provoked by naked aggression, and despite the fact that
we’re taking military action that even a hawk like Rumsfeld
would probably rather not take if he didn’t think we were in
the crosshairs of people who have threatened to kill as many
of us as possible, we are made to look like the bad
guy whenever innocent women and children happen to be in the
same house where top al-Qaida deputies are having dinner
when a CIA drone takes the place out. On the other hand,
when al-Qaida, Palestinian suicide bombers in Israel, or
Iraqi insurgents intentionally kill as many innocent
Muslim civilians as possible—often scores of people—they
are merely painted as patriots trying to expunge infidels
from Muslim lands.
But the
insurgent’s strategy appeared to backfire—at least for a
time—and news reports of Islamicide by Muslims,
often on stations like Al-Jazeera, started to turn the tide
of pro-insurgent sentiment in the Arab and Muslim world
around. And although they continue to use terms like
“terrorize” to describe the annoying yet nonviolent use of
sonic booms by Israel to create upheaval in Gaza, while
using the generic term “fighters” to describe the Muslim
murderers, kidnappers and suicide bombers, at least they
seem to indicate their support for the release of
innocent hostages, and they similarly pay lip service to the
fact that they categorically oppose things like the
kidnapping of innocents.
Then Jill
Carroll, an anti-war yet American reporter was taken hostage
and the newest bin Laden tapes got released…on
Al-Jazeera. And all of the sudden, what had not really
hit me before on numerous occasions over the past few years,
became more disturbing: despite it’s claims to journalistic
neutrality, and whether or not it realizes it, Al-Jazeera
has become Al Qaida’s PR firm, and a willing accomplice to
them and terror groups like them, without whom (or
without the assistance of news organizations like it), Al
Qaida would not have the ability to secretly pass along its
messages of hate and threats of terror to the west, nor
would hostage-takers be able to “complete the loop” of
hostage taking by informing their targets of their demands,
confident in their ability to do so easily while hiding
behind the veil of a “neutral” news organization.
Think
about it for a second. If I’m a kidnapper, I need to make
sure that I can get the word out to the people I’m trying to
get something out of. Now normally our eyebrows don’t get
raised when we see kidnappers in the media making their
demands because most kidnappers we’re used to know that we
already know where they are. They’ve taken hostages in a
bank or shopping center and the problem is one of
negotiation and extraction. But in the case of hostages
like those taken in Iraq by Islamic terror groups, nobody
knows where they are—except, as it turns out, Al-Jazeera—and
as such the terrorists are provided with an additional
level of insulation in the threat-loop. They’ve got just a
tad bit more security in keeping their location secret than
if they had to creep just a smidge more into the daylight in
order to make their aims known.
So what’s
the alternative? If Al-Jazeera and other respectable news
organizations immediately started refusing to be a link in
the threat-loop of kidnappers, terrorists would have to
figure out another way to communicate their demands. True
enough, they may still take hostages, and they could still
communicate their demands, but it would be slightly more
difficult, and slightly more vulnerable. As such it may not
end kidnappings forever, but in the war on terror, aren’t we
looking for each and every edge we can gain, no matter how
small it may be?
Similarly,
if news organizations like Al-Jazeera stopped broadcasting
videos of bin-Laden, al-Qaida could still spew their
insanity and hate, maybe via the internet or dead drops of
videos and cassettes. But similar to the hostage-taking
example, that, too, would become more vulnerable for
terrorists as they would lose the level of insulation that
Al-Jazeera gives them, and they’d be forced to communicate
with the outside world in a way ever-so-slightly more likely
to divulge their whereabouts.
Maybe I’m
being too hard on A.J., and perhaps our people at pay grades
and levels of expertise far higher than mine think that news
organizations like them provide an important service and
link to these groups—and if that’s the case I sure hope
someone corrects me. And maybe in some macabre way, someone
actually thinks encouraging kidnappings and other videotaped
threats and atrocities is a good thing because it forces
these secretive operators to communicate with the outside
world and possibly give away their locations. But if that’s
really the case, we should have covert operators as
hostage-taker bait—not innocent civilians—and everyone…and I
mean EVERYONE…who even might be considered a target
for a kidnapper, should be microchipped with an On-star type
tracking device. If it’s good enough for Fido and Kitty, or
for our cars, then it should be good enough for every
reporter, contractor, and certainly every man and woman in
uniform too.
CRABS: WHY PAY THROUGH THE NOSE
TO EAT SOMETHING SO FLAVORLESS AND DEADLY TO CATCH?
 I was
recently on the west coast and had the opportunity to do
something that someone like me who grew up in a landlocked
state doesn’t often get the chance to do: eat at a real
seafood restaurant right on the ocean, featuring things
caught fresh from the sea. It was beautiful—seagulls glided
past from time to time, the serene waters of the ocean
lapped against the rocks on the shore, and really gorgeous
waitresses walked in and out of the dining room bringing
drinks and huge trays of things that just a few hours
earlier were alive in the saltwater outside the window I sat
next to.
But
against this beautiful backdrop, something just kept
bothering me. Something just didn’t seem right at all.
Something was really confusing the heck out of me. Why was
the most expensive thing on the menu the thing that was the
most void of taste, the thing that looked the most
unappetizing, and the thing that was most deadly to catch?
Yes, I’m talking about CRAB.
Look, my
astrological sign is cancer and I think crabs are cool and
all, especially when you look at them from an ecological
perspective because I’m sure that they, like all the other
animals out there, have their role to play in “maintaining
the gentle balance” of nature in the great food chain in the
ocean. And I even think they look kind of cool too—the
pinchers, the hard exoskeleton, the fact that every now and
then you see a blue one—all very cool. But why the hell
anyone would want to eat one, and not just eat one
but pay through the nose to eat one, and worst of all
risk their life to try to catch them is truly beyond
me.
While crab
fans will try to sell you the line that crab meat is
delicious, in and of itself, the truth of the matter is that
crab meat, like lobster meat, doesn’t have much taste at
all, and the only reason most people eat it like they do is
because they practically infuse it with butter. And let’s
be honest—anything soaked in as much butter as people
normally soak their crab meat in will taste good. To
paraphrase Bill Clinton, “It’s the butter stupid!” And if
it’s not butter, it’s some other spice or the tasteless meat
is just drowned in an overpowering sauce (usually over
pasta) to give the sauce a little texture and the person
eating it a little protein.
And
there’s another reason (in addition to it’s butter-dunked
flavor) why people gorge themselves on crab, and it’s the
same reason that people gorge themselves on other disgusting
things that they inevitably pay too much money for and that
have dubious dietary value. What’s the reason? Herd
mentality. Crab, we are told, like other gross fare
like foi gras, steak tartar, lobster, and “fine wine” is a
“delicacy,” and as such, we are to suspend our taste buds’
ordinarily trustworthy judgment because people with “more
refined” and “more developed” tastes than our own
tell us that the stuff is really delicious and worth
blowing huge wads of cash on. And if it’s written up in
magazines, featured by Bobby Flay on the Food Network, and,
of course, expensive, then it must be
delicious, right? Yeah…and the emperor’s new garments are
truly exquisite as well. And if crab (and other disgusting
foods) isn’t called a delicacy, it’s called an “acquired
taste,” a label which always prompts me to warn, “if it
needs to be acquired, that should be a red flag.”
The fact
that should you decide to actually eat crab, you’ll end up
having to practically take out a loan to afford it, is very
much related to the fact that fishing for crab is one of the
most deadly jobs on the planet (in the civilized world, at
least). I was watching a show the other night on TV about
the dangers of crab fishing season and next to the danger
crab fishing entailed, what I found most fascinating about
it was that this was a job that was totally
unnecessary, and one that wouldn’t even exist if everyone
was like me and hated crab. No, these people were out there
in the freezing ocean risking life and limb to net as many
crabs as possible not to cure cancer or to achieve the
salvation of humanity, but because gluttons from the free
world would pay good money to eat the tasteless rubbery meat
beneath the shell, and that in turn means good money to
catch the little suckers so they can be put on our tables.
And again, I’m not saying the eating or catching of crab
should be illegal or banned or anything—I’m a big free
marketer and as long as nobody’s forced at gunpoint to
either fish for or eat crab, it’s all good with me. But I
am just wondering why in the name of God in the
absence of a gun to their heads people would eat and fish
for the things.
“But
Jason,” you might be saying, “what if there’s a good dietary
reason to eat crab? There are plenty of gross things out
there to eat and if something’s healthy, shouldn’t we eat it
even if it doesn’t taste like much of anything and has a
rubbery texture? Isn’t no price too high to pay when we’re
getting amazing nutrition?” Well, I’m not Jewish but I’m
good with the Jewish rationale that eating bottom feeders is
pretty unappetizing, and again, all things being equal, I’m
going with the healthy food (of which there are plenty of
other options than crab) that doesn’t cost a
year’s salary to eat, doesn’t require cheating death
to procure, and actually tastes good.
To this
day I’m puzzled about the fact that somewhere far back in
human history one of our forefathers looked at a crab with
its pinchers, hard exoskeleton and antennae and said to him
(or her) self, “Mmmm! That looks tasty! I think I’d like
to eat that!” It would be one thing if crab (along with
crawfish and lobster, the crab’s fellow pinchered
crustaceans) were delicious or immediately removed wrinkles
or caused a spontaneous orgasm when eaten, but the fact that
none of these tasteless crustaceans do any of those things
or anything else but cut you when you try to cut into them
to get to the meat, and cost an arm and a leg to buy, leave
me wondering why on earth people pay out the nose to eat
them, and why people die every year working hard to put the
things on our tables.
TV’s “INSIDER”: THE FALL OF A
ONCE-DECENT ENTERTAINMENT SHOW.
 Have you
ever seen the TV show “The Insider”? If not, it’s that
daily half-hour entertainment news show hosted by Pat
O’Brien (after whom the show is supposed to have gotten its
name because he’s so “well connected” in Hollywood). I
remember when the show was first being rolled out I was
actually really excited to hear that a show like “The
Insider” was coming to TV. I liked the premise of the
show—that because of its unprecedented access to celebrities
and exclusive interviews it would give you the real, behind
the scenes stories of Hollywood without having to resort to
the paparazzi footage and other tabloid BS that other shows
and publications had to resort to because they didn’t have
the access The Insider did. And believe it or not I also
liked the host Pat O’Brien who I used to watch do late-night
Olympic coverage when he was still in the sports world.
And man
did they promote the hell out of that show before its
launch. I remember seeing Pat O’Brien interviewed on every
show possible for practically a month before the first
episode aired and when it finally did, it was like an orgasm
after a five-hour buildup of foreplay and sex. And it
didn’t disappoint…at least not initially; “The Insider”
lived up to its name by featuring daily interviews with Pat
O’Brien live on location with A-list celebs on the sets of
their new movies—interviews you couldn’t see anywhere else
because only Pat was the real “Insider,” and only Pat
could penetrate the inner sanctums of Hollywood’s hottest
actors and actresses.
But time
passed, The Insider’s “new car smell” began to fade, and oh
yeah…Pat O’Brien got high and in a drugged up trip, he left
a sexually-charged, profanity-laden phone message on the
answering machine of some dame he was dating. As with
everything else in celebrity-land, the message saw the light
of day, Pat was shamed, and he took a hiatus from the show
to get drug treatment.
Now at
this point I’m still a fan. While I don’t condone drug use
whatsoever, I also don’t put B and C level celebs on a
pedestal and expect moral leadership or role modeling from
them either. And besides—Pat did what he should have done;
he got the help he needed, made a triumphant return to the
show, and a-la post-prostitute Hugh Grant, he even faced the
music and did a prime time sit-down with Dr. Phil.
I’m not at
all sure whether Pat’s drug ordeal is the actual cause of
The Insider’s fall, but whatever the actual reason, the show
has been steadily tanking since Pat’s return…and oh,
how it’s tanked.
The once
proud Insider, which used to lead off its broadcasts with
headlines about their latest A-list celebrity “gets,” now
leads off with stories that make you think you’re either
watching “Jerry Springer, Celebrity Edition” or a circus
side show. Lead stories now use standard paparazzi footage
of stars being stalked as they get into their cars from
restaurants instead of legitimately-obtained “insider”
footage, celebrity interviews have been replaced by
interviews with gossip columnists about the
celebrities, and worst of all, lead stories on The
Insider now include sideshow features about non-celebrities
like the 1000 pound man, the anorexic twins, hideous plastic
surgery addicts, and recently, a telephone interview with
confessed murderer Eric Menendez who probably any Podunk
newspaper could book if they were desperate enough to waste
space talking about him. Even more disgusting than this is
the fact that The Insider draws these sensationalistic
stories about tabloid topics into series, subjecting
their poor viewers to multiple updates on people like
the anorexic twins that last for weeks. Alas,
poor Insider, I knew it well Horatio.”
Ah but it
doesn’t stop there….the fall of The Insider doesn’t end with
the abandonment of insider interviews and their replacement
with Jerry’s kids…Jerry Springer’s kids; no, the
Insider has recently added to its arsenal of weak and
unknown correspondents in an apparent attempt to
rehabilitate its “insider” reputation. So who are these
cooler than cool, hotter than fire correspondents? They
are…ready for this…none other than the beefy Clay Aiken and
the A-list’s Kathy Lee Gifford. Come on Insider! Even the
show “Extra” hired the Sugar Ray lead singer Mark McGrath,
who despite being talentless is at least more hip and “in”
than Clay Aiken, today’s answer to Barry Manilow, and Kathy
Lee, best known as Cody and Cassidy’s mommy.
And what
about the celebrities who actually do agree to an
actual Insider interview? Well, they’re from such an
ancient era that The Insider should probably consider
changing its name to “Stars of the 70’s: Where Are They
Now?” Recent guests include old-timers like Regis Philbin,
Barry Manilow, Frankie Valli, and The Captain and Tenille.
Well, I guess what you lose in A-list interviews you gain in
insider information for your next dead pool!
In
closing, we may never know why its executive producers chose
to maintain The Insider’s original integrity like a meth
head maintains her teeth, but when the final credits roll at
least we know this: don’t show tapes of The Insider to Gitmo
detainees unless you want a legal fight with Amnesty
International because last time I watched the show, it was
torture.
PIT BULLS: WHY TRASHY, LOWLIFE
DOG OWNERS—NOT PIT BULLS—ARE THE REAL PROBLEM.
 Pit Bulls
are the Rodney Dangerfield of the dog world. And not only
do they get no respect, but lots of people—most of whom have
never owned or even met one—actively hate them and want them
banned for no reason other than sensationalized coverage of
rare, albeit vicious, attacks on humans. But the reality is
that a pit bull is actually like a handgun—in the hands of
the wrong person, it can be quite dangerous, but in the
hands of a decent, law-abiding dog-owner, it doesn’t hurt
anyone and can actually be one of the sweetest pets you’ve
ever known.
One thing
that I’ve noticed about people who hate pit bulls and think
they should be banned is that they’ve never in their life
actually met a pit bull. I’m not saying they’ve never seen
a pit bull. We’ve all seen images of the vicious
ones on television after they’ve mauled someone, but I’m
talking about actually meeting one. And because
they’ve never met one they’re forced to draw a conclusion
only from those they know of—the abused, fighting-trained
ones owned by human scum that they’ve seen on TV. But the
truth is that the myth that pit bulls are naturally vicious
is just that—a myth.
So the
question that naturally arises is this: why, if pit bulls
are no more vicious than other breeds, do we only hear about
pit bull attacks. There are actually two very good answers
to that question. The first has to do with the breeds of
dogs people choose for themselves, and the second has to do
with the way the media covers dog attacks.
First,
let’s look at how people select the breed of dog they want
to own. Some people want dogs that are cute, some want a
good guard dog, some just want companionship, and other
folks just might want a little tiny dog to sit in their laps
while they watch television. But in general, most people
just want a good, solid, dependable dog who will provide
them with the qualities they’re looking for and won’t kill
them or their families, and they end up with breeds like the
cuddly lab, the cute Bijan, or the socially conscious pound
puppy. In other words, they go with the breeds that get
good press, and that media glamorization makes it
fashionable to want, just like they want any other article
of clothing or gadget that you see on TV or in the movies.
Maybe they’ve seen old Lassie movies and go for the collie,
or maybe you like Wegman photography and opt for a
Weimaraner instead. Maybe you worship Paris Hilton and
think a Chihuahua would be a nice small dog to clean up
after, or better yet, reruns of Benji make you do the more
responsible thing and get a pound puppy. But whatever they
do, most people who want a dog don’t go for the pit
bull because the only press pits get is bad press.
But not
everyone selects dogs that way. Some people, namely
criminals, gangsters, and meth chefs want dogs that will
hardly ever be around humans, instill fear upon people, and
guard contraband with their lives…literally. There
is a miniscule subset of dog breeds that fits the bill for
this, and popular breeds like Sharpeis, Cocker Spaniels,
labs, and certainly toy breeds like Chihuahuas and Shi-Tzu’s
won’t help ward off rival gangs, penniless addicts, or the
law. You’re pretty much looking at a Doberman, a Rotweiler,
or yes, the ever-vilified pit bull. That explains why there
are so many criminals and low lifes with pit bulls, but what
about pit bull attacks in a non-criminal setting? The truth
in those cases, which never gets reported, is that they
attacked in a way that any other breed would have attacked
given the same set of circumstances.
The second
reason you only seem to hear about pit bull attacks involves
the media. It should come as no surprise to anyone that the
media loves blood, gore and death above all else. There’s a
reason why the expression “if it bleeds it leads” has become
such a cliché in out culture—because it’s true. The
media has a horrible habit of planting irrational fears in
our minds each morning in the paper and each night on the
news. Whether it’s highlighting shark attacks even when
they’re statistically down worldwide, or whether it’s
warning of terror attacks after the umpteenth video
threatening them is aired on Al-Jazeera even though none
have actually been followed by an attack since 9-11, the
media routinely behaves like Chicken Little with his head
cut off because he’s suffering from bird flu.
And sadly,
it’s no different when it comes to the media’s coverage of
the dog world. Seeing eye dogs help the blind every day,
drug dogs discover pot every day, our family dogs at home
bring love and joy to our families, and collectively dog
activities like these do far more good for the world that
pit bull attacks could ever undo. But when you watch the
news, although you might occasionally hear the touchy-feely
story of a dog finding a person buried in the rubble after
an earthquake, or the story of a dog who dialed 911 and
saved its owner, you will never hear them that often,
and you will never hear stories like those at the
beginning of a newscast. But—if a stupid little kid,
who was not being properly supervised by his stupid
parents, who tried to pet his stupid meth-head
uncle’s pit bull gets his face torn off, you can bet your
bottom dollar that it will lead the newscast, be front page
above the fold, and reignite calls for the pit bull as a
breed to be banned. I find it funny how nobody would ever
use that logic to call for the banning of Islam just because
of a few Muslim terrorists.
Still not
convinced? Then consider what happens in the press when dog
breeds other than pit bulls attack. Nothing. Zip.
Nada. It actually happened recently but I bet you didn’t
hear about it. Remember the French chick who got a face
transplant? Guess why she needed a new face. It’s because
it was ripped of by a vicious, evil…LAB! Yup, a cuddly
Labrador retriever. But you wouldn’t know it. When a pit
bull’s not involved the story is about overcoming the
maiming, the ethics of the treatment, and the annoying
French accents of her surgeons. But if it had been done by
a pit bull, the headline would have screamed, “French Woman
Defaced by Vicious Pit Bull. Calls Mount to Ban the Breed.”
So let’s
get past sensationalistic media coverage and the dog choices
of criminals and give pit bulls the respect they deserve.
Because I, for one, will only support a ban on pit bulls as
a breed if we can actually ban local news fear-mongering
with ridiculous stories like “the deadly consequences of
driving in flip-flops” and “the hazardous perils of buying
designer knockoff purses.” Crappy local news….I think I
just got an idea for a future diatribe!
WHY DOES ANYONE CARE ABOUT
THE GOLDEN GLOBES? IF YOU DO, READ THIS AND YOU WON’T CARE
ANYMORE!
 My last couple of diatribes have been on a topic about as
serious as you can get…capitol punishment. So today I
thought I’d lighten things up a bit. You know, I really
find it quite shocking and quite pathetic that we, as a
country, seem to give so much attention to the Golden
Globes. Granted, it ain’t the Oscars, but you can’t tell me
that you’ve never heard it described as the “prelude” to the
Oscars or a “good predictor” of who will be nominated for or
even win Oscars.
So why am I so amazed at our infatuation with the Golden
Globes? In my book, as far as films go, The Golden Globes
don’t even have the stature or prestige that the American
Music Awards or even the Billboard Music Awards have for the
music industry. That’s because those two lesser awards
shows, while they may not have the prestige of the Grammies,
at least reflect some level of accomplishment in the music
industry like sales and popularity in America. But the
Globes? The Globes are merely Hollywood’s PR tool for
making you give a darn about certain movies before they can
similarly use the tool of an Academy Award nomination once
they’re announced. But other than that, do you even
know
who gives out the Golden Globes? Hopefully by the end of
this diatribe you’ll know, and if you’re like me, you won’t
give a damn about the prestige-less Golden Globes.
Let me start by asking a question. Does anyone care about
the Juneau Awards? Does anyone in America even
know
what the Juneaus are? Probably not many, and for those of
you who don’t know what the Juneau’s are they’re the
Canadian equivalent of the Grammies, only unlike the
Grammies, only Canadians are nominated which means only
Canadians can win. Why does this award exist? Because in
general, in popular music (Gordon Lightfoot and Anne Murray
not withstanding), America is better than Canada, and if
Canada didn’t have their own awards show they’d rarely, if
ever, win the more coveted and
American
Grammy or any other American award, for that matter. But
why don’t we know what the Juneaus are or who recent winners
are? Because as horrible as it sounds, we really don’t give
a damn what they think up in the Great White North. Yeah,
yeah, you could argue that we don’t care what they think
because they’re rewarding something Canadian, but do you
really think we’d care much even if American artists were in
the mix? Probably not. Why? Because we have our own
award, the Grammy, which is more prestigious mainly
because—well—because it’s American.
Now you would think that if we don’t really care what
Canadians, who are basically just Americans with an annoying
French-speaking minority, think about one of our major art
forms, you’d think we also wouldn’t care what anyone else in
the world thinks about our movies and television either. I
mean hey—the new Iranian President just banned all American
and Western music…he clearly has an opinion about it. And
while it’s a crummy thing to do and while I wish he would
reconsider, do I care what he thinks about American cinema
or television? Hell no! But while nobody I know seems to
care what Canadians or Iranians think about their own music,
our music, or any other
American
arts, we not only seem to
care
about what just 85 unknown foreigners think, but millions of
us watch their annual awards show when they share their
meaningless opinions with us. That’s right: get 85
nameless, mostly freelance, liberal-leaning entertainment
correspondents
(not actors, directors, screenwriters, or other people
actually involved in the making of American movies and
television)—correspondents from
independent foreign
publications (not
including major foreign publications like Le Monde or the
Times of London whose correspondents were
rejected
for membership), and including members from Bangladesh and
South Korea, let them nominate and vote on
our
movies and
our
TV, and you’ve got yourself the third highest-rated awards
show in the US—the Golden Globes.
Look…I love the people, places, plants and pets of the
world. I really do. I love the scenery of the Alps, the
food of Asia and Latin America, the people of Australia, the
oil of the Middle East, and most of the religions of India.
And it may surprise you to know that I actually
do
care about what foreigners think about the US, its people
and its politics. But I really don’t care beyond just a
passing curiosity what they think of our music, movies and
TV, just as I’m sure someone in a foreign country right now
really doesn’t care what I and 84 other nameless and
faceless people from a country other than theirs think about
their music, movies and TV.
Thankfully, it seems that America is finally getting wise to
the fact that the Golden Globes should actually be called
the Golden Turds. Apparently, the 2005 Golden Globes were
watched by a massive 40% fewer people than in 2004. That’s
certainly a promising trend, but with the Globes still
ranking among the top three awards programs on US
television, I hope that by the time you finish
reading/listening to today’s diatribe, you too will
contribute to another massive slump in this year’s Golden
Globe viewership so that the Golden Globes, as well as the
Hollywood Foreign Press Corps, will be riding off into the
sunset for good.
HOW TO FIX THE BROKEN
DEATH PENALTY
 In my last
diatribe, the companion to this one, I talked about why I
was a death penalty foe. Basically, despite the rhetoric of
its supporters, and even the temporary emotional
“satisfaction” it gives even capitol punishment foes like
me, the death penalty is useless. It doesn’t deter future
crime, it doesn’t bring about any closure, it doesn’t bring
people back to life, it’s too easy on people who don’t
deserve a “sleepy, painless death,” and worst of all it’s
sometimes applied to innocent people. But there’s a
stumbling block in the way of doing what needs to be done
and getting rid of the death penalty, and that’s what
today’s diatribe is about.
Unfortunately, most death penalty opponents are
bleeding-hearts whose arguments appeal to things like the
industrialized world’s opposition to the death penalty and
the attempt to frame murderers as victims by blaming
genetics and bad upbringing for their behavior as adults. I
say “unfortunately” because in my opinion they’re missing
the boat. The real obstacle to abolishing the death
penalty isn’t the fact that the industrialized countries of
the world don’t have a good point and that we’re too
“American” to understand it. And it’s not the fact that we
don’t understand the contributions genetics and psychology
have made to understanding criminal motivation. The real
reason we still have the death penalty in this country is
because there is not a suitable alternative punishment to
execution for the worst of the worst human beings walking
the planet, and that, is the fault of liberals—quite ironic,
because Roman Catholics aside, they’re the most vociferous
foes of capitol punishment.
Sadly, we
live in a country where far too many people sentenced to
life imprisonment, the next best alternative to capitol
punishment, seem to be living the life of Riley behind bars,
and getting even more attention and publicity incarcerated
than they did before going into the big house. Don’t
believe me? Take Eric Menendez, serving a life sentence for
the murder of his parents along with his brother Lyle.
Eric, in addition to getting married to a woman he
was allowed to correspond with and later meet in person
while in the slammer, was recently also allowed to conduct a
telephone interview with Entertainment Tonight about topics
ranging from his relationship with his wife to the double
murder of his parents. Or how about Charles Manson? Ole’
Chuck seems to be on TV every time you turn around, spewing
his trademark insanity for everyone to hear—including the
friends and families of his victims who, as long as he’s
allowed to do so, will be haunted by this despicable human
being. And when does an anniversary of John Lennon’s death
go by without another jailhouse interview with Mark David
Chapman, the loony who blew John away to impress Jody
Foster. Just “Imagine” (pun intended) how Yoko Ono
feels when occasionally throughout the rest of her life she
flips through the channels on TV only to see her husband’s
killer being interviewed yet again. Even though I
personally can’t stand Yoko Ono or her music one bit, I
still think that even she deserves to know that the scumbag
who wasted her hubby will never be seen or heard from again,
and it’s sad to think that we live in a country where the
only way to ensure that from happening is from killing him
too.
These are
just some of the famous cases we’re familiar with, but lord
knows there’s a batch of others who are not as well known
but treated just as nicely. How many times do we hear about
a murderer getting a degree behind bars that we of course
are paying for, or like Eric Menendez getting married and
carrying on correspondence friendships with pen pals. And
even worse, and probably the biggest fear of the friends and
family members of murder victims, there are still stories of
heinous murderers either being given sentences less than
life because it was the next-best alternative in the absence
of the death penalty, or released for some reason after a
time spent in prison paying only a portion of their debt to
society. In a world—or in our case a country—where liberal
activism has made all these things possible for people who
should be kept in confinement for the rest of their lives,
the death penalty starts to look more and more attractive to
both victims of violent crime, their families, and even
society at large.
But these
criminals should not be pampered and afforded all kinds of
special rights and privileges because it’s the only way to
finally abolish the death penalty; criminals should not be
pampered because they’re criminals. Your life,
liberty and ability to pursue happiness ends the second your
cell door shuts behind you.
Aside from
having the ability to communicate with his or her attorney
to monitor any developments in their case, or the ability
for a chaplain or even an inmate treatment monitor to
occasionally visit to ensure our American prisons haven’t
turned into Abu Graib, when someone is put away for life
because they’ve murdered someone in cold blood and it’s a
case where the death penalty has been spared, then
society—including the inmate’s friends, family, and pen pals
to be—should never see or hear from them again. Ever. That
means no correspondence with brides-to-be, no interviews
with 20/20 or Entertainment Tonight that force friends and
families of victims to relive the crime, and no early
releases. And instead of worrying about how many rights the
dregs of society should be afforded once they’re behind
bars, liberals should spend their time working to ensure
people accused of capitol offenses have the best legal
representation they can possibly get, and trying to overturn
the convictions of those they believe are wrongly
incarcerated. Then maybe they won’t feel so cruel when the
folks in the big house don’t get to get married or be on TV
anymore. The ridiculously posh way we treat the most
heinous criminals serving life sentences must be
changed if we can ever hope to have a better alternative to
the feel-good but ineffective and morally wrong death
penalty. Only then will the abolition of the death penalty
have the chance of mustering the political support necessary
to make it a reality, which would both ensure that families
and friends of victims can rest in peace without resorting
to execution, and most important of all, it will also stop
once and for all the horrible, albeit rare practice of
putting innocent people to death.
TODAY’S DIATRIBE: WHY
THE DEATH PENALTY IS USELESS; NEXT DIATRIBE: HOW TO FIX IT.
This is
two-part daily diatribe. This one’s about the death
penalty, and the next one will be what we need to do to
fix the death penalty.
Well
Tookie Williams, the co-founder of the notorious Crips
street gang, was just put to death and his execution has put
the death penalty back on the public’s collective radar
screen. I’ve got to admit it. Anytime…ANYTIME I hear that
a small child has been abducted, beaten, raped, tortured,
and then killed, the first thing that comes to my mind is
that the individual responsible for the crime should be
killed—done away with—erased from the face of the Earth.
That individual adds nothing to American society or the
world at large and really need not be here. Really.
But soon,
or sometimes not so soon, the initial emotional response of
shock and rage wear off, and the realities of the death
penalty and criminal justice in our society creep in. The
reality of the fact that we kill our most heinous criminals
with more painlessness than the average law-abiding citizen
experiences at the time of their own death, and with as much
dignity as we afford our four-legged friends when they’re
put to sleep. The reality that the death penalty does not
deter other capitol offenses from being committed. The
reality that neither the death penalty, nor any other form
of punishment can actually bring back the dead or undo the
psychological damage that was done to the victim before
their murder. The fact that even our most notorious killers
receive publicity and an audience to tell their story to
before they die. The fact that even death sentences can be
and sometimes are commuted, further traumatizing the friends
and families of victims, and victims still living, because
of their inability to experience closure to their pain. And
finally, the reality of the fact that sometimes innocent
people are put to death because of human imperfection
blended with the pursuit of revenge.
It’s these
realities that make me a right brain death penalty advocate
but a left brain death penalty foe. And, at the risk of
sounding like Slick-Willie himself, I side with my left
brain because in issues of law and justice, crime and
punishment, the influence of emotion has no place.
Now I want
to take this opportunity to distinguish myself from other
death penalty opponents who frequently argue that we should
drop the death penalty because the rest of the civilized
world has already done so. While I’m not saying the
experience and wisdom of others is to be ignored, the simple
argument that “everyone else is doing it” has never had much
influence on me.
I also
want to separate myself from those who oppose the death
penalty because they believe that anyone who kills must be
mentally deranged, and who, whether genetically-predisposed
or environmentally-influenced, is not ultimately to be
blamed for his or her crime. While either one or both of
those forces may have played a role in the killer’s
background, I still believe that even youngsters and
certainly those in adulthood know the difference between
right and wrong in spite of that background, and are capable
of choosing between them. And while the agency or free-will
of the killer might excuse their genes or harsh upbringing
from fault, it still doesn’t mean that the responsible
party, the killer, should die for his or her crime. If
killing is wrong in the first place, and if a second killing
will not right the wrong of the first or prevent
future killings, then to kill as punishment is pointless.
That’s why even when we know with 100% certainty that an
individual has committed a cold-blooded act that death
penalty fans would deem worthy of punishing with execution,
the death penalty should still not be imposed.
“But what
about closure, Jason. Victims can’t rest until the killer is
also killed.” Really? Ask the families of children lost in
the Columbine massacre if their loss is any easier because
the killers took their own lives after their rampage.
Thankfully, I haven’t personally experienced the loss of a
loved one in a premeditated murder. But if I were to lose
one of the people most important to me in my life, I do know
that killing the perpetrator, his entire family, his
offspring, and anyone else won’t do a damn thing to make me
feel any better about the loss. When it comes to the death
of a loved one, and especially a death by sadistic means,
there will never be closure, at least for me.
There are
many reasons why the death penalty should go the way of the
dinosaurs, but the most important of all is the fact that
occasionally innocent people are mistakenly put to death for
crimes they didn’t commit. That there are people who would
support the death penalty even knowing that the occasional
innocent individual would be executed is truly disturbing,
but not as disturbing as the fact that American society as a
whole continues to support a flawed practice that allows
innocents, albeit rarely, to die.
It’s also
interesting to note that many of the most staunch death
penalty advocates are evangelical Christians, people who
follow a man who taught forgiveness and to love one’s
enemies. But I always find it interesting when asked about
forgiveness in the context of the death penalty, that many
sound more like vengeful Muslims bent on eye-for-an-eye
retribution characteristic of Mohammed instead of someone
inspired by the turn-the-other-cheek, forgiving love of
Christ. And if they do try to use the rhetoric of
forgiveness, they’ll usually say something like “I forgive
him, but that doesn’t preclude us from giving him the
chair.” I’ve gotta say that that logic, no, that
language bears no logic and makes no sense to me
personally. But I don’t identify myself as a Christian so
I’ll leave it to actual Christians to reconcile their own
beliefs and actions.
The real
problem with scrapping the death penalty today is twofold:
1) most death penalty foes are bleeding hearts who lack the
credibility to make a solid case for scrapping capitol
punishment without sounding like they’re soft on crime; and
2) even the most heinous individuals serving life sentences
(the punishment that death penalty foes would mete out to
murderers in lieu of death) are living the life of Reily
instead of experiencing a punishment that truly fits their
crimes. And these—these serious problems and roadblocks to
the elimination of the useless death penalty—will be the
subject of my next diatribe.
THE CHRISTIAN RIGHT: NOT
AFRAID OF THE DEVIL, BUT GAY MARRIAGE….NOW THAT’S
SCARY!!!
 Recently
it was rumored that Ford Motor Company might have withdrawn
advertisements in gay publications because they were bent
over the proverbial chair by the threat of boycott from the
American Family Association. Ford denies the charges and
says it was other factors that led it to pull out of
the gay publications, and apparently the publisher of the
gay publications believes Ford.
But while
Ford and other companies might have stood their ground this
time around, it doesn’t change the fact that there are
legions of homophobic bigots out there, usually evangelical
Christians of the so-called “Christian Right,” hell bent on
protecting you, me, and all other god-fearing heterosexuals
from what they refer to as the “homosexual agenda.”
And their tactics include blackmailing corporations like
Ford, Wells Fargo and Walt Disney into dropping what they
call “gay friendly” corporate policies (the nerve of those
companies!).
To hear
the Christian right explain it, you’d think that the
so-called “homosexual agenda” was something we should all be
really worried about as if it were the homosexual equivalent
of a worldwide Muslim caliphate, only with Harvey Feierstein
as “Lord Queen” instead of the global Ayatollah. It’s so
frightening, so destructive, and so hideous that almost
every homophobic Christian organization has as one of its
key political aims to pass what they call “defense of
marriage” legislation to, as they strangely assert, save
real marriages (of course what they mean is heterosexual
marriages) from gays getting married.
First let
me say that I’m married, to a woman, and there are only two
people that have anything whatsoever to do with the success
or failure of my marriage and it’s not a gay married couple;
the only two people who will determine whether or not my
marriage is a success are my wife and I. And it’s the same
for every other straight marriage out there.
Second,
I’ve known gays my whole life and the only homosexual agenda
that I know of is making the world a better place by color
coordinating everything, styling the hair of its people, and
ensuring that our wardrobes are more fashionable. If the
radical right is worried about gays converting people to
“its team,” then I think our homophobic friends doth
project too much. The only people I know of who jump
through hoops of fire to try to convert people are not gays
at all—they’re evangelical Christians!
But to be
fair to the homophobic Christian extremists on the right,
let’s examine the ways in which the radical right fears gays
could possibly “harm” my marriage thereby making me and my
marriage require the protection of evangelical Christians.
1) The
Christian right thinks that gays want to convert us
straights and our kids. This is only a concern if it’s
possible to convert someone from one orientation to another,
and good news Christian right: it’s not! The truth is that
you’re not so much worried about gay conversion as you are
about gay people already in your midst coming out of
the closet; you don’t need to worry about gays on the
outside of your congregations because they don’t want
anything to do with you anyway. And if you’re really as
pissed about the public display of gay affection that you
bitch about seeing at gay pride parades as you say you are,
then stop going to the parades. How hard is that?
2)
Evangelical Christians fear that gays will get the same
rights as married people. Well, so what? What do I
care whether Adam and Steve have spousal privileges? I
don’t, and neither should anyone else. If a company wants
to offer spousal benefits to spouses, that’s the private
matter of a privately held company. And contrary to the
logic of people like the American Family Association or
Focus on the Family, even if a privately-owned company like
Ford or Disney does not offer benefits to gay spouses, it’s
not going to make those affected any less gay. And by the
way: there is no moral or religious equivalence whatsoever
between a company’s extension of benefits to gay spouses,
and a company’s supporting of pro-choice causes. Even if
you’re anti-choice, you must admit that gay couples marrying
aren’t killing even a possible human life, and in fact,
they’re not even contributing to the abortion problem at all
because they can’t conceive. If anything, gays who want
kids want to be able to adopt, which would actually help
reduce abortions, but in a characteristically contradictory
stance, most evangelical Christians oppose that too.
3) The
Sodom and Gomorrah effect. Just as Pat Robertson
suggested that Hurricane Katrina and other natural disasters
are at least in part brought on by the sinfulness of the
people in the areas struck by them, many evangelicals
believe that gays bring down the wrath of God on all of us,
gay and straight alike. Even post Katrina I heard many
pastors on TV claiming that the hurricane hit when it did as
God’s way of supernaturally preventing the gay “Southern
Decadence” celebration from happening. Well if that’s your
fear, Christians, then I fear your faith may not be as
strong as you claim it is. If you actually read the story
of Sodom and Gomorrah in the bible, you’ll see that God said
he’d spare it for the sake of ten God-fearing people. Just
ten, no matter how many other angel rapists there are in the
town. (Remember that the threat of rape—and not just any
rape but angel rape—was the straw that broke the
camel’s back for S&G, not consensual homosexuality). Heck,
by that logic, simply placing groups of ten Christian human
shields in geological and meteorological danger zones around
the world should prevent any form of natural calamity from
happening, and God knows that would still never
actually stop natural disasters from happening.
The bottom
line is this: not only do gays pose ZERO threat to my
marriage or anyone else’s (with the exception of gay
closeted Republicans who married their fag hags, beards,
window dressing, or whatever else you want to call them),
but as far as I’m concerned, gays do just the opposite for
me and my marriage. Gays have played and still do play
active roles in my life, my wife’s life, and our life
together none of which we need to be defended from by Jerry
Falwell, Pat Robertson or any other bigot. I would list
their names here and describe how meaningful they’ve been to
us as friends and acquaintances, but I thought I’d save them
the dogmatic hatred that the mere knowledge that they’re gay
would automatically bring down on them from idiots who think
that all gays wear leather chaps to the grocery store and
make out with their partners in front of pre schools.
So what
the hell is wrong with a man marrying another man, or a
woman marrying another woman? And I’m actually serious
here. I’m not asking this rhetorically expecting the
proverbial choir I’m preaching to to just respond with a
“yeah! What is wrong with that?!” I’m actually
asking a heartfelt question to those who really do believe
that there’s some horrible evil being committed when two
people of the same gender decide to get married. So you
think they’ll go to hell for it. Then leave them the
hell alone and let them go to hell—they ain’t takin’ you
with ‘em, right? That is, unless folks like James Dobson of
Focus and the Family are strangely aroused by the whole man
on man thing. Maybe that’s why they’re so worried. Some
gay spell that charms bigots into switching teams, and whose
casting power was conferred upon all gays by Satan himself.
Is it just that you don’t have good gay-dar and you’re
afraid you might befriend one at the gym and accidentally
end up in the shower with and be seen by one? Because
god-forbid that would happen because we all know that gays
attack unwitting naked straight men and force them to listen
to club remixes of Ricky Martin as you towel each other off
in the locker room. Is that what you think is gonna
happen? Or maybe there was a “gay” chapter in the
Protocols of the Elders of Zion that only evangelical
Christians read that kind of spooked them. Hello! Not
a factual book!
Look.
Gays are probably right there in your life already,
Christian right…they’re arranging your furniture and picking
out colors for your foyer, they’re styling your hair, and
they’re buying lots of the stuff your business sells because
as a demographic, gays are some of the most wealthy,
economically secure folks around. Look—take a page out of
the playbook of Mormon-owned businesses for a
second—Mormon’s don’t condone pornography, gambling or
drinking alcohol. But they know that other non-Mormons will
always do those sinful things (and in large numbers), and
that you can make a lot of money off the sinners without
being corrupted by them. And by the way, you’ll also have a
better chance at winning the sinners over to your side if
you’re actually nice to them instead of doing everything you
can think of to piss them off.
A BOWL GAME FOR EVERY TEAM:
HAVE LIBERALS TAKEN OVER COLLEGE FOOTBALL?
 When I was
a kid the only college bowl games I could remember were the
Rose Bowl (because of the damn parade), the Sugar Bowl, the
Gator Bowl, the Orange Bowl, the Citrus Bowl, the Sun Bowl,
and I vaguely remember a Peach Bowl too. And that was about
it. They were all invitation-only games, they all happened
around New Years, they all featured the best teams in
college football, and they all shared their names with the
name of the facility in which the game was played (i.e., the
Rose Bowl was played in the Rose Bowl, the Sun Bowl
was played in the Sun Bowl, etc.).
But then
things started to change. The first thing that happened is
that big companies saw an opportunity to get some
advertising exposure by underwriting and sponsoring the bowl
games, and in return for their big bucks they got their
names in the name of the bowl game itself…before the
name of the bowl game. I didn’t have a huge problem
with that because as long as they were still preserving the
name of the heritage bowl game, the sponsors needed to get
their money’s worth.
Pretty
soon, though, a few more things started to change that I
wasn’t so thrilled about. Once companies saw other
companies getting some good exposure by sponsoring bowl
games they wanted in on the action too. But there was a
problem: there were only a handful of bowl games, and the
only way for everyone to be able to play in the sandbox was
to make the sandbox bigger. So here came the additional
bowl games, and at a rate so fast that it didn’t matter
whether or not there was a stadium with a cool “Bowl” name
to play it in, so you had games like the Silver Bowl in Las
Vegas played in Sam Boyd Stadium, and San Francisco’s
Emerald Bowl played in SBC Park (a baseball stadium!). And
soon, I guess the bowl types just gave up on trying to come
up with clever names unique to the city or community where
the game was played. Instead, as long as the cash was
flowing in, they just dispensed with them entirely in some
cases, going instead with the very generic, and very
uncreative, “sponsor name”-BOWL.
So today,
not only do we have 28 bowl games and counting, but 22 of
those bear a corporate sponsor’s name, and eight of those
bear only the name of the sponsor. But hey! Who
cares when you’re talking about quality football teams with
great records, right? Well that would assume that the teams
that populate modern-day bowl games are quality teams with
great records, and unfortunately, someone making that
assumption would be sorely off the mark. In 2005, for
example, of the 56 teams playing in the 28 bowl games, 15
were just two losses away from losing seasons, and 12 others
were barely one game over 500.
Look. The
way I see it, at least half of the teams playing in bowl
games this year have no business being in intra-squad
scrimmages much less bowl games. But I’m also a good
capitalist and if companies are dumb enough to sponsor
crappy teams in crappy bowls, then I for one am not going to
get in their way. In fact, why stop at 28 bowl games?
Since there doesn’t seem to be any stopping the
proliferation of bowl games featuring mediocre teams with
mediocre records, I say, “keep on bowling!” And since it
seems like college football is getting touchy-feely and
trying to make sure there’ a bowl game for every team so no
one feels left out, I just have one request. Let’s make
sure that just as there’s a championship bowl game (like
this year’s Rose Bowl), that there’s also a bowl game for
the worst two teams in college football, and that it be
called, appropriately, the toilet bowl.
MEMO TO LIBERAL SCROOGES…MAKE
LIKE FROSTY AND CHILL OUT ON THE CAPITOL “CHRISTMAS” TREE!
 According to the History Channel, and frankly I have no
reason to doubt them, the whole Christmas tree thing started
with the ancient Egyptians. They worshipped the sun
god “Ra,” and since winter with its shorter days cramped
Ra’s style, they’d celebrate the winter solstice. The
winter solstice, which falls on the 21st or 22nd
of December, because it was the shortest day of the year and
after the solstice, the days got longer and Ra started to
recover from his winter illness. And what better way
to celebrate Ra’s recovery than to decorate their homes with
green palm leaves to celebrate the victory of life over
death.
Later, the good ole Romans had their own god—this time
Saturn, the god of agriculture (which of course depends
pretty heavily on the Sun)—and they too celebrated the
winter solstice because they knew that soon thereafter,
farms and orchards would be green and fruitful. And similar
to the Egyptians, they decorated their homes and temples
with evergreen boughs to mark the occasion.
But enough about Egyptians and Romans…what about the
Christmas tree? As far as the first Christian
incarnation of an actual “Christmas” tree, the History
Channel says that’s the doing of the Germans in the 1500s,
when devout Christians were said to have brought decorated
trees into their homes. Even legend has it that Martin
Luther himself (you know, the man responsible for the
Protestant Reformation) was one of the first to actually
decorate a tree to celebrate Christmas.
But whatever the origin of the “Christmas” tree (and please
note my use of quotation marks to indicate my sarcastic use
of the word here), one thing is for sure: a pine tree (or
any other tree, real or fake) adorned with flashing lights,
ornaments, and a star on the top with presents underneath
has as much to do with the birth of Christ as the man on the
moon.
But that’s sure not gonna stop the rabid liberals of ACLU
ilk from at best protesting and at worst suing to stop the
beautiful New Mexico tree slated to be erected in front of
the US Capitol Building (and other trees like it in or in
front of other city, state, county and federal government
buildings all across the US) from being called a “Christmas
Tree” instead of the more politically-correct and
less-offensive “Holiday Tree.” Stupidly these fools
actually think that merely calling the thing a
Christmas tree (since no matter what you call it it’s still
gonna look the same in the end) is a form of
government sanctioned religion.
Hey libs…make like a Christmas tree and lighten up!
Christmas trees are just one of many Christmas season things
that bear the name Christmas but have nothing to do with
Christianity whatsoever! I mean think about it.
Ask anyone—and especially kids—to do a word
association with Christmas and they’ll rattle off things
like presents, shopping, Santa Claus, jingle bells,
reindeer, Christmas trees, stockings hung by the chimney
with care, and Christmas parties. Not only is Jesus
probably not on the list, and not only do these things have
nothing at all to do with Jesus or his birth or why
Christians believe he’s important (son of God, everlasting
life, etc.), but these things would probably revolt
Jesus—the very guy whose birth we’re supposed to be
celebrating!
And just like the story about where the tradition of a
Christmas tree came from, there are also numerous theories
about how we ended up with December 25th as the
date on which Christmas is celebrated. But one thing
is almost unanimously agreed upon: the first Christmas, the
birth of Jesus, did not happen on December 25th.
But That’s OK, celebrants say, because what’s important is
that on Christmas we celebrate the birth of the man
Christians believe is the savior, not the exact date on
which he was supposed to have been born. But that’s
another problem: we don’t celebrate the man.
OK, maybe you go to church and sing a hymn. But show
me the person who spends as much time meditating on the
mystery of Jesus’ virgin birth, his role in the fulfillment
of Old Testament prophecy, or his death and resurrection, as
they do making their shopping list, checking it twice,
shopping for everything on the list, and then complaining
when they don’t get what they want in their stocking, and
I’ll show you the wedding photo of the Loch Ness Monster
marrying Bigfoot.
So to all the libs out there worried that the capitol
Christmas tree is a tool of evangelism for Christianity,
relax, and remember two important things: 1) if the
capitol Christmas tree is a tool of evangelism, then it’s an
equal opportunity evangelizer since it’s stumping (pun
intended) for the gods Saturn and Ra too; and 2) Christmas
is a cultural holiday in the US, not a religious one.
If you’re really worried that a tree is an endorsement of
Christmas, just turn on a television, open up a newspaper,
or visit a mall to remind yourself that Christmas isn’t a
religious holiday anymore nor has it been for quite some
time. Even people who call themselves Christians and
celebrate “Christmas” don’t see the inside of a church but
once or maybe twice a year, and their celebrations of
Christmas are more about materialistic indulgences (the
shopping), gluttony (the feasts, parties and gingerbread),
and sloth (taking time off work to shop and eat) than a
celebration of thanks for the birth of their savior.
So if anyone has a right to be pissed at this time of year,
it’s not a bunch of whiny lefties with nothing better to
waste their time on—it’s Jesus himself!
The bottom line is this: instead of whining, protesting,
suing and in general just getting ticked off about things
like Christmas trees and the fact that Christmas is an
officially-observed holiday by government entities, the
rabid, radical non-Christians most ticked off about things
like Christmas trees should make like Frosty the Snowman
(another icon of Christmas that has squat to do with Christ)
and chill out! Let the modern-day Christians do
their modern-day Christian thing, and if you really want to
be ticked off about something and you want to get judgmental
about it (which, incidentally, real Christians would
not do), then protest the playing of Jose Feliciano’s
“Feliz Navidad” every five minutes.
THE MOST UN-REALISTIC
SHOWS ON TV...REALITY SHOWS
 Although most people credit Mark Burnett and his “Survivor”
with the creation of reality TV, I personally give credit to
MTV’s “The Real World” as the first show in the category of
what people today call “reality TV.” But while people
may not be able to agree on who gets the Emmy for “first
reality show ever known to man,” we should at least be able
to agree on one thing—the term “reality show” is an oxymoron
at best, and at worst, the “reality show” is utterly
UN-realistic.
First clue? Everyone’s hot…and I mean EVERYONE.
OK I know what you’re saying, Donald Trump is hideous by any
standard and I’ll grant you that one. But Donald
aside, everyone’s hot! The hosts, the contestants, the
passers-by on the street (or the passers by on the beach
where shows are frequently shot because most people who go
to the beach are hot)…they’re all smokin’…fine…H-O freakin’
T.
“But Jason,” you’re saying, “other than the whole ‘hot’
thing, reality shows are sooo REALISTIC!” Of course
they are! I mean, who doesn’t live with a bevy
of beautiful bisexual women in a penthouse suite atop the
Palms Hotel and Casino where the basic necessities of life
are all taken care of? Who doesn’t get stranded
on an island where all of the chicks (except the token fat
old lady) look fantastic in bikinis? Who doesn’t
live communally atop Trump Tower as you compete with a team
against another team for an executive position within the
Trump organization? And finally, who doesn’t
get followed around by cameras, 24/7, having your every
move, gesture and word recorded, and virtually removing the
word “privacy” from your functional vocabulary?
Come the heck on! If that’s reality, then my name is
Jeff Probst and your name is Omarosa. Everybody
knows…scratch that…everyone should know, that in the
real world (not on MTV’s “The Real World”), you find
roommates by placing an ad for people with similar living
habits—not by hiring a casting director who wants to create
as much chaos, drama and sexual tension as is humanly
possible; that in the real world you get a job by submitting
an application and interviewing with the boss, not by being
hot, feisty, and…well…HOT; and most importantly, in the real
world, you get fired from a job when you act like an ass to
your coworkers, and you get kicked out of your apartment
when you’re a dick to your roomies—you do not get
rewarded for your being an ass/dick/(insert your favorite
vulgar body part here) by being allowed to stay in your job
and/or apartment because it’s good for ratings.
Now by now you’re probably thinking that I must hate these
so-called “reality shows” and that I must have a beef with
the genre. But if you are, you’re wrong. I’m actually
an admitted reality show bitch, needing my weekly fix of
both Apprentices, Extreme Makeover Home Edition, and any
show involving the temporary swapping of spouses and the
rearing of disobedient brats. Because while these
shows may not be as “realistic” as the name “reality show”
would indicate, they still enable me to experience the full
range of human emotions without bad things happening to me
personally. Yes, from the comfort of my living room
recliner, I can experience the emotional highs of watching a
deserving family have their home rebuilt and redecorated,
and I can also be filled with fear…not by watching a
documentary about terrorism, but by watching shows like
Nanny 911 where families who should never have been allowed
to breed have not only spawned, but spawned offspring who
make the evil doll Chucky look like McCauley Culkin on
valium.
So watch and enjoy these “shows,” but let’s be real and not
call them “reality shows.” Let’s call them what they
really are… “TV crack.”
MEET THE DICTATOR WHO WANTS TO TAKE
CONTROL OVER INTERNET ADDRESSING AWAY FROM THE UNITED
STATES!
 Archbishop
Desmond Tutu has called him a cartoon figure of the
archetypal African dictator. Investors Business Daily
calls him “the most visible manifestation of the tyranny and
corruption that sustains misery through much of Africa.”
He’s a Marxist, a bigamist, and his repressive style of
campaigning and governing basically make him a dictator too.
And now, the illustrious Robert Mugabe, President of
Zimbabwe, is leading the fight to take control of the
Internet’s governing agency away from the US.
Are you
freakin’ kidding me? Robert Mugabe? Was everyone
else in the anti-US camp at the recent UN technology summit
asleep when the issue of Internet addressing came up?
Were they at a special drum circle for third-world Marxist
dictators that Robert wasn’t invited to? Or was it
something far worse…something far more sinister…did the
so-called “leaders” of the UN’s America-hating banana
republics actually want Robert Mugabe making their case
because they thought he’d do the best job at it? Was
he the best they could do?
I’d like
to give a few pieces of advice to the America-hating banana
republics of the world (might want to pay attention here
Fidel, Bashar, Hugo, Robert, Muumar, and the rest of you
democratically-challenged fascists):
First,
pick a better spokesperson! Mugabe’s the kind of guy
that I don’t even need to analyze what he does to know that
I want to be doing the exact opposite of what he’ doing.
In other words, if Robert’s turning left, I’m turning right,
if he’s white, I’m black, and if Robert says po-TAE-toe, I’m
saying po-TAH-toe (even though it goes against my every
instinct to say it that way because everyone knows it’s
really po-TAE-toe). In fact, if Robbie Mugabe’s
running away from the cliff’s edge, I’d actually be inclined
to run off the edge of the cliff just because it’s not what
Mugabe decided to do. That’s the kind of length I and other
clear-thinking lovers of all things American would go to
just to be anywhere you and dictators like you are not.
My next
piece of advice for you modern-day Stalins: shut the hell up
about anything that affects any-one but the poor,
leadership-deprived human souls with the misfortune of
living under your rule. (And if those poor souls had
their way you should probably shut up about anything
involving them too.) See, there are actually many good
reasons for everyone—both in your country and abroad—to hate
you, and those reasons can accurately be summed up in one
overarching reason: you govern like that which emerges from
beneath a horse’s tail. (by the way that’s a euphemism
for crap if you were struggling with the description).
That’s right. There’s a reason why your countries are
in sad states of affairs, and it’s not the fault of America
and the democracies of the world—it’s the fault of poor
leadership (in other words it’s your fault), and we don’t
need your asinine ideas to ruin miserably important global
resources like the Internet.
And one
final piece of advice for the world’s remaining brutal
dictators: don’t rule out suicide. Yes, I encourage
you to strongly and carefully consider what would indeed be
the best course of action for you and the people of your
country—and I don’t mean international control of the
Internet…I mean you making a date with a warm bath and a
freshly-sharpened razor. See, assassination is messy
and risks the lives of our commandos, and it never gets good
press around the world because people are always predisposed
to hate the powerful. And your continued lives do
nothing but ruin the lives of your people, and annoy and
sadden people throughout the rest of the world. So do
the world and your people a favor and google the lyrics to
the theme song from the TV show “MASH,” and give the chorus
some serious thought.
Now
although it’s quite unthinkable, there might actually be an
open-minded soul out there who gives someone like Robert
Mugabe the benefit of the doubt, and that rare person might
remind us that Mugabe helped gain independence for his
country and was always an opponent of apartheid. That
person might also remind us that Zimbabwe has one of the
highest literacy rates in Africa because Mugabe was once a
teacher. Great—that just means that the country with
the highest AIDS rate in the world (almost a fourth of the
adult population) will be able to read the directions on
their prescription medication—that’s if they’re even able to
afford it in a country with 70% unemployment, and where the
average life expectancy is 38 for women and 40 for men.
Look—even Jeffrey Dahmer gave his mom birthday cards and
even Osama bin Laden loves his wives. But one or two
good deeds don’t forgive multiple grave ones.
The bottom
line for me is this: I don’t want Robert Mugabe or any other
of his Stalinist third-world cronies installing my worst
enemy’s VCR, much less dispensing advice on Internet
protocols or doing anything else which affects my life in
even the most minimal way. So leave Internet naming
governance to the people who founded it, and we’ll happily
leave you to
the
pathetic little regimes you falsely claim to legitimately
govern. |
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bullypulpitonline.com
