His point is that when you say outlandish things with a straight face, which is the essence of satire, there’s always the danger that someone will think you aren’t kidding.
So I feel The New Yorker’s pain. The magazine is under fire for a cover illustration depicting Barack Obama in the Oval Office wearing a turban, bumping fists with his wife, Michelle, who wears an Afro and fatigues, and has an assault rifle slung over her shoulder. Osama bin Laden watches from a portrait on the wall. An American flag burns in the fireplace.
The Obama and McCain campaigns have pronounced the cover offensive. There have been calls for a boycott.
Me, I like the cover. It strikes me as an incisive comment on the fear mongering that has attended Mr. Obama’s run for the presidency. Still, I understand why it is incendiary: Some of us will take it seriously.
As absurd, as over the top, as utterly outlandish as the New Yorker image strikes the more sophisticated among us, there is a large fringe out there for whom it will represent nothing more or less than the sum of their fears.
Indeed, as I sat down to write these words, there beeped into my mailbox an e-mail with this subject line: “WOW, The New Yorker got it exactly right, for once.” Said without a trace of irony.
But increasingly, that’s who we are in this country: ignorant, irony-impaired and petrified. So maybe we should just cancel the campaign and ask that the last intelligent person turn off the lights when he or she leaves. And bring the last book with you. Nobody here will need it.
Okay, I get it. Add Leonard Pitts to the list of intellectual lightweights who can’t dredge up any semblance of respect for mindsets differing from theirs. The cartoon means some things to some people, other things to others; Mr. Pitts comes to find out about this divide and it comes as a bitter blow that his perspective is not unanimous. So out come the most rancid insults he can manage to slip through his layers of editors. We are all supposed to agree with Leonard Pitts, don’t you get it?
See, satire is just like any other medium of humor. To work, there has to be a connection between the source of the comedy, and the audience. The assault rifle, the flag in the fireplace, the Oval Office itself, these are all metaphorical — it may be difficult for some to admit, but Sen. Obama has not been sworn in yet — and so the point of the cartoon, which is to be deemed too outlandish to seriously entertain if it is to be successful satire, is that Sen. Obama’s loyalty to the republic should be questioned. Well, I’m afraid the source and the audience have not agreed that that is outlandish. The Senator does have a rather lengthy and rich history of America-bashing dickhead friends.
And this is where satire is often abused, in this age of The Colbert Report. Far too often, is is wielded as a bully stick, to intone that certain ideas are to be thought of as ridiculous, without anyone bothering to explain why. When the existence of the satire is the only incentive we have to regard something as silly, the satire isn’t exactly being given a lot of advantages in doing what it’s supposed to be doing.
And that sad truth of it is — this is exactly what the Obama campaign needs right now. It probably cannot survive without it. It needs a way to bullyingly lecture people that it’s ridiculous to “question his patriotism,” without an associated burden of explaining why, exactly, said questioning is supposed to be ridiculous.
The situation is a rather rich target of satire in its own right.
* The IPCC’s 2007 climate summary overstated CO2’s impact on temperature by 500-2000%;
* CO2 enrichment will add little more than 1 °F (0.6 °C) to global mean surface temperature by 2100;
* Not one of the three key variables whose product is climate sensitivity can be measured directly;
* The IPCC’s values for these key variables are taken from only four published papers, not 2,500;
* The IPCC’s values for each of the three variables, and hence for climate sensitivity, are overstated;
* “Global warming” halted ten years ago, and surface temperature has been falling for seven years;
* Not one of the computer models relied upon by the IPCC predicted so long and rapid a cooling;
* The IPCC inserted a table into the scientists’ draft, overstating the effect of ice-melt by 1000%;
* It was proved 50 years ago that predicting climate more than two weeks ahead is impossible;
* Mars, Jupiter, Neptune’s largest moon, and Pluto warmed at the same time as Earth warmed;
* In the past 70 years the Sun was more active than at almost any other time in the past 11,400 years.
Left unexplained: Why has this hoax become a liberal/conservative/Republican/democrat thing?
That deals with psychology, how the human mind works, how some of us are after good results and others of us are just out to portray themselves that way. What this thing we call “guilt” is, and how it is viewed differently amongst us.
Inspected quite often in these pages, and elsewhere. Use yer Mad GoogleSkilz.
Fellow Webloggin contributer Big Dog is going after my Governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and he’s found a whole mess of contradictions about the Governator T-800. Gov. Schwarzenegger is supposed to be a pretty smart and ambitious guy, but on the global warming thing he’s either fallen for a bunch of hooey, or is pretending to have. The propagandists have now been caught trying to sell us on the canard that “The Science Is Settled” — when it isn’t. They’ve been caught trying to snooker us into thinking science is all about arriving at theory by common consensus and then opposing any assault on it — when that isn’t really what science is. If anything, science is about something more closely resembling the exact opposite of that. It’s a process of gathering and validating information, and figuring out what it means…and it has nothing to do with forming policy. If you’re mind’s made up about that something has to be done, and you’re calling this “science,” yer doin’ it wrong.
The mean-temperature plotting is no longer shaped like something that will help the global warming political movement. It’s now widely understood that 1934 was a hotter year than 1998, which throws that nifty mean-temperature graph in all sorts of disarray. Ross McKitrick has busted the “hockey stick” in two. And what’s even worse than any of that, is that more and more people are recognizing the global warming political movement as a political movement.
It just seems, to me at least, an odd time to surrender to the climate-change dogma. “Throw It In, Or We Just Might Win?”
And then there is the Governatron’s own behavior to consider. His movies, arguably, are more environmentally filthy than the films of most other actors, both in greenhouse gas and other pollutants produced in the making of them, and the themes suggested by them. There had to be a “greener” way to kill the liquid-metal terminator than dunking him in a vat of molten steel; it doesn’t impress me as an environmentally friendly way to rescue your daughter from terrorists on the top floor of a skyscraper, to use a borrowed USMC Harrier jump jet. And then there is his private lifestyle.
Arnold Schwarzenegger scaled to the top of a large heap of candidates to succeed Gov. Gray Davis, partly because of his unapologetic attitude about his own habits. The cigars. The Humvee. Anyone else in California remember that? How Candidate Schwarzenegger worked the Humvee into his debates with Ariana Huffington, et al?
What’s happened since then. A couple movies came out? Is Govenor Ah-nuld really a convert to the cause now?
And what good does it do for California to be “in the forefront” in the fight against global warming — an effort that, if it has any legitimacy at all, is as contrary to any competitive endeavor as could possibly be imagined? Correct me if I’m wrong, but I thought this was something where if we fail, it’s lights-out for all of us. What’s the vision here? We’ll save the planet, but California did more than it’s share? Or we’ll bollux it up and go bye-bye, but in our dying moments we’ll think “if only everyone had been more like Kah-lee-fo-nya…”
It seems we aren’t even achieving that much. Quoting Big Dog…
California has all those movie studios and sets that blow things up and burn things down. They continue to produce TV shows and movies that emit tons of pollutants into the air. Has anyone shut them down yet? California also has a huge problem with wildfires right now. These were caused by lightning and have been burning for weeks. The amount of pollution [or greenhouse gases if you will] released into the atmosphere is more than some small countries will emit in decades. If one were to believe that man causes global warming where do we put the blame for this?
How exactly is California in the forefront when it blows up and burns stuff to make money and every time one turns around the place is on fire?
I think I might have the answer to all this.
A sensibility has arisen, and there could be something genuine about it — I can’t prove it or disprove it — that the next big economic push for our nation, and especially for California, is something called the “green industry.” I’m not altogether sure what a green industry is. Where I come from, an industry is something that is…
the aggregate of manufacturing or technically productive enterprises in a particular field, often named after its principal product: the automobile industry; the steel industry. [bold mine]
And from what I understand of it, “green” is not “technically productive.” It’s a lot of people coming together and doing something, with a whole lot of folks giving orders to other folks. And money is definitely changing hands; but that thing we call “green” is not supposed to be productive. If anything, by design, it is unproductive.
But as the money changes hands, if the hands taking it in are in California, and the hands letting go of it are elsewhere…say, in the federal government perhaps? Well then I suppose for an economically depressed state that’s all we need to define the “industry” that is of concern to us.
I think what we’re looking at in our Governator is a walking manifestation of the Sinclair Paradigm. Writing in I, Candidate for Governor: And How I Got Licked (1935), American author Upton Sinclair observed:
It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.
So let’s give Gov. Schwarzenegger some credit here, especially if you are reading these words in my state of California. He’s probably showing prescience. Climate change is a big scam, probably the biggest one ever successfully perpetrated. But California’s “salary” is about to depend on the folks in charge never, ever figuring that out. Even though, in the hearts-of-hearts, they know it already. Just shut up, take the money, laugh all the way to the bank, and get back to that old grind we call the “green industry.”
The first thing I notice, is how similar is the media’s reaction to a radical hardcore left-wing liberal getting caught saying what he truly feels, compared to a natural disaster like Hurricane Katrina. No protagonist; it’s nobody’s fault; both events are things that just “happened.” Well, in the natural weather phenomenon it’s the incumbent Republican President who somehow made it happen, but give the Jesse Jackson thing time. That’ll be George Bush’s fault too. You know if we don’t obey our instructions to forget about it, toot-sweet, someone in some strategy room somewhere will be brainstorming on a way to hold the current President responsible for Jesse Jackson’s latest embarrassment.
And that brings me to the second thing. Like Officer Barbrady said, “move along, there’s nothing to see here.” What a wonderful thing it must be to be Jesse Jackson! You get to express your profound regret that you got caught saying something, and this massive public-relations tsunami goes out…everyone should pretend it never happened. This is why democrats tend not to stand for anything. There are, in fact, deeply held principles in their camp; all these principles do not agree with all other principles; this causes deep divides and schisms that are well worth discussing.
But it would hurt both sides within the democrat camp to permit any discussion of them. So they remain undiscussed.
Here, the divide is over — and this brings me to the third thing — what is it we’re talking about when we use the word “responsibility?” Truth be told, this nation is chock full of reasonable, moderate-to-conservative people who call themselves “democrats” and look at the R-word the way any conservative Republican does: Responsibility is something inextricably intertwined with the decisions you want to make. Authority, autonomy, control, it’s-my-turn-at-bat…having sex with a good-lookin’ woman…driving a car. These all carry responsibility.
Well the truth of the matter is, Rev. Jesse Jackson represents millions of people — of all skin color — who don’t feel that way. To them, “responsibility” is a burden that bears down upon undesirables. Those who are seen as oppressors within history’s backdrop, people who run corporations, rich people, straight people, white people, males, white-straight-males, oilmen. We/they have the “responsibility” to provide…and there, there’s this huge exploding list. Jobs. Food. Daycare. Minimum wage. Education. Healthcare.
Obama just said “black people” — clearly, in Jackson’s mindset as well as in Sen. Obama’s, the useful meaning of this phrase is something that could be best worded as “our primary beneficiaries” — have responsibility. And Jackson was none to fond of this. On Planet Jackson, there’s the folks who’ve gotten away with stuff and are about to get their come-uppins, and there’s the folks who’ve been trampled and now get to live in utopia. And the latter of those two should not have to worry about any responsibilities, because you saw how he reacted when someone suggested something different.
My suggestion? Let’s go ahead and disagree about what responsibilities are. Let’s go ahead and disagree about whether Obama would be a decent President, or whether Jesse Jackson is good for America. Disagree about all that — but let’s agree the Officer Barbrady approach doesn’t fit in here. No need at all to “move along” from what apparently divides the Obama and Jackson camps within the democrat party.
This is a debate well worth having. What is responsibility? Are you burdened by it by the things you do, or by who you are? Is it a way for people to earn the privileges and the stature they want in life, to change what they want to change and achieve what they want to achieve — or is it punishment to be meted out to dirty rotten creepy jerks (DRCJs) who are somehow associated with historical skulduggery and need a good whallopin’ of some kind?
Because I don’t think this is a “black” thing at all. I think there’s millions of people who feel, when they see themselves or any of their peers or perceived constituents saddled with any kind of “responsibility,” for any reason at all, their first instinct is to cut somebody’s nuts out (or off). They seem to be angry people who have something to say. I’d like to know more about what they’ve got to say. I’d like everybody to hear it — right before it’s time to go into a voting booth and punch a ballot. Then we could show what we think of it. I think that would be a good thing.
It was also as clear a violation of the Fourth Amendment as can be. For the Government to invade our communications with no probable cause showing to a court is exactly what the Founders prohibited as clearly as the English language permitted.
But today, the Democratic-led Congress — with the support of both John McCain and Barack Obama, neither of whom will even bother to show up and vote — will cover-up those crimes.
Also, what makes him so comfortable as he so regularly speaks for his opposition? It has become a Glenn Greenwald signature tactic to bullyingly imply things are outside the realm of reasonable dispute, even as they’re being hotly debated. Like…
It was also as clear a violation of the Fourth Amendment as can be. For the Government to invade our communications with no probable cause showing to a court is exactly what the Founders prohibited as clearly as the English language permitted. [emphasis mine]
Come to think on it awhile, I’ve been reading his manifesto on this, that, and some other thing for a few years now…and I have not yet one single time come across a Glenn Greenwald statement to the effect “well, this is my own opinion, but of course I can see why a perfectly reasonable mindset might have a different take on it.” Nor have I ever seen him say something to the effect of “okay, it’s pretty clear to me, but I suppose it could’ve been clearer.”
I don’t think those exist in his world, for if they did, surely I’d have seen them by now. He’s one of these grown-up children — you know the type, the kind who insists all others have tolerance and respect for diverse points of view that he himself doesn’t have to show. He thinks a legal statement is to be read a certain way, and it’s “as clear as can be.” The test for clarity, is whether it seems to say what he wants it to.
And I got a gut feel that when Mr. Greenwald tells me I don’t need to go looking into the history or language-context of something, that’s exactly when I should do it.
Take the Iraq war for example. OK, so he got us into Iraq in the first place. But for Pete’s sake, he’s the leader of the world’s only superpower. He needs to take decisions, even if sometimes they have nasty consequences - which is far better than we do in Europe, where we enjoy dithering not as a means to an end, but as an end in itself.
Something had to be done about Iraq and our government was all for attacking it too. So let’s not blame G.W. for the war.
And when things did go wrong in Iraq, and there were calls to pull out, Mr Bush just followed his own counsel and doubled his bet with the Surge.
And he was right because Iraq is in a relatively better shape today than it ever was and Al Qa’eda is a shadow of its former self in that country.
This is a man who has the courage of his convictions.
Let’s not forget how Europe does wars.
Usually we wait and wait until the enemy starts attacking, then we let them win a bit, then we fight until we are tired, then we just call the US to come over to clean our mess.
That is what happened in WWI, WWII, and the Balkans.
Bush is just showing us what a bunch of dangerous ditherers we are and we hate him for it. Naturally.
A greenhouse gas called nitrogen trifluoride, used to make the TVs, is 17,000 times more potent than carbon dioxide, said Michael Prather, director of the environment institute at the University of California, Irvine.
But no one yet knows how much of it is being released into the atmosphere by industry, a report in Britain’s The Guardian said.
Prather’s research shows production of the gas, which remains in the atmosphere for 550 years, is “exploding”.
It’s only at the end of the article you read that this is all about the possibility of a contaminant, not about the contaminant itself. And this Prather guy clearly belongs to the “all regulation is good and doesn’t cost anything” crowd:
Air Products, which produces the gas for the electronics industry, told New Scientist that very little nitrogen trifluoride is released into the atmosphere.
But Prather raised concerns about companies being careless with the gas, given the lack of a regulatory framework.
Well, he’s right, you know — if this stuff is 17,000 times more potent than CO2, it should be taken very seriously. The first step is to find out what “very little” means in terms of what’s released into the atmosphere. A cubic foot per television set?
Unless it’s zero, I say we should use this to shed some more light on the greenhouse gas debate. We weren’t building flat screen TV sets in 1934, which has now been revealed to be the warmest year on record, so this would be some sturdy evidence that the “greenhouse effect” isn’t the be-all-end-all. Sorry, but when you make superlative claims like “17,000 times more potent,” this can have unforeseen effects on your argument if your audience is paying attention; we’re spewing this awful gas, and even with that benefit we haven’t managed to get the “mean temperature” up to the levels of 74 years ago.
And, as the propeller-beanie pocket-protector white-coat-wearing regulation-loving geek points out, the production of flatscreens has been “exploding.” Logic would therefore dictate we can stop complaining about carbon for awhile.
Webloggin Note: There are currently 2 bouts of misinformation coursing through the blogosphere with regard to this story.
First, for all the conservatives that claim this is proof positive that Saddam Hussein was pursuing a nuclear program and that he had made progress on that front: sorry that is not the case with this particular uranium. This yellowcake was well known by the IAEA and the US since the first gulf war. Saddam couldn’t use this uranium for nuclear weapons because it was so well known. It was under lock and key so he had to look elsewhere. Its removal makes sense but does not point to any secret attempts to make new stockpiles by Saddam or Iraq.
Second, and something I consider to be more disingenuous and troubling are the claims by the New York Times and other left leaning sources of misinformation regarding the Niger purchase attempts.
The yellowcake removed from Iraq — which was not the same yellowcake that President Bush claimed, in a now discredited section of his 2003 State of the Union address, that Mr. Hussein was trying to purchase in Africa — is used in an early stage of the nuclear fuel cycle. Only after intensive processing does it become low-enriched uranium, which can fuel reactors producing power. Highly enriched uranium can be used in nuclear bombs.
Wrong. The following excerpt from the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on Wilson’s report puts to rest this lie. Iraq was actively trying to purchase yellow cake uranium for weapons likely using oil for food funds; the only problem for them was that they were rebuffed in those efforts. (Hat Tip Ed Morrissey, here and here)
[Wilson's] intelligence report indicated that former Nigerien Prime Minister Ibrahim Mayaki was unaware of any contracts that had been signed between Niger and any rogue states for the sale of yellowcake while he was Prime Minister (1997-1999) or Foreign Minister (1996-1997). Mayaki said that if there had been any such contract during his tenure, he would have been aware of it. Mayaki said, however, that in June 1999,(REDACTED) businessman, approached him and insisted that Mayaki meet with an Iraqi delegation to discuss “expanding commercial relations” between Niger and Iraq. The intelligence report said that Mayaki interpreted “expanding commercial relations” to mean that the delegation wanted to discuss uranium yellowcake sales. The intelligence report also said that “although the meeting took place, Mayaki let the matter drop due to the UN sanctions on Iraq.”
It appears that the New York Times discredits itself just by being in print.
Original Article Below:
Via Rick, we learn about Don Surber’s handy summary of exactly what’s been happening the last five years. It’ll be a bitter pill to swallow for some, but let’s just see any from the other side take it on directly:
The last major remnant of Saddam Hussein’s nuclear program - a huge stockpile of concentrated natural uranium - reached a Canadian port Saturday to complete a secret U.S. operation that included a two-week airlift from Baghdad and a ship voyage crossing two oceans.
The removal of 550 metric tons of “yellowcake” - the seed material for higher-grade nuclear enrichment - was a significant step toward closing the books on Saddam’s nuclear legacy. It also brought relief to U.S. and Iraqi authorities who had worried the cache would reach insurgents or smugglers crossing to Iran to aid its nuclear ambitions.
Joe Wilson is a liar who should be investigated for contempt of Congress charges regarding knowingly giving false testimony. This yellowcake, though, predates that.
There is a happy ending. This stuff is not in the hands of terrorists, thanks to President Bush’s actions for which he has been hammered by the left for 5+ years.
When I was a young man just coming of age, I was told Ronald Reagan was a senile old warmonger because he was irresponsibly ratcheting-up an arms race with the Soviet Union; a little while later, as the Soviet Union came apart I was told it might be time to pay the piper on this as the munitions of the former republic came to a high potential for falling into the hands of terrorists.
So in just a few short years, the American Left has gone from arguing against the Reagan Doctrine, because of all the havoc it might cause through terrorists getting ahold of weapons and raw materials that would otherwise be unavailable to them…to an impassioned reprimand of anyone who might try to stop that from happening.
In November, they’re running for control of our military and our intelligence agencies. Their sales pitch? That they would bring about “change.” Huh. Yeah, looks like it.
Three weeks ago an expose appeared in Pajamas Media about the bounty on special education students. The point of the article: There are “lump sum” districts in which the funding for special ed programs is kept independent from the number of students enrolled, and there are “bounty” districts in which there’s money to be made per pelt, just like hunting beavers or mice. Bottom lining it: Since the special education law went into effect in 1976, the increases in number of children enrolled in these programs, have been registering at different rates. The bounty districts have the faster-growing enrollments.
We live on a cozy dead-end street in suburban New Jersey with 13 school aged kids. Of those 13 kids, six qualify for special services and have IEPs, including my son.
:
These diagnoses cause real problems in education. Many of us can think back to our own childhoods and remember the kids who were ostracized, lonely, strange, smelly, weird, hyper, and angry. Today, those kids have a much better shot at life, and at an education because they are getting appropriate services. With help, they are more likely to finish high school and even attend college. They will be able to more fully function in society and provide for themselves, rather than spend a lifetime on welfare.
Anecdotally, I haven’t seen a single kid in my kid’s special needs classrooms that I thought should not be there. [emphasis mine]
Holy crap!
So what Laura McKenna is saying, is half the kids on this cozy dead-end street would have dead-end lives and end up on welfare if it weren’t for special education programs. Right?
Call Erin Brockovich. Look for power lines, chemicals in the water, barbiturates in the asphalt, whatever. Something’s wrong.
McKenna’s responses to our evidence fall into four categories:
Appeals to emotion and superior personal experience…
Misunderstanding of the issue…
Appeals to improved diagnosis…
Appeals to the awfulness of the system…
Tell me about it. I’ve been having this argument with people like McKenna, many times.
These people demonstrate intelligence, and yet they do not argue the issue rationally. I’ve noticed one pattern that occurs over and over again, that disturbs me more than anything else, is this: If you have the audacity to argue “Child X does not have Disability Y” (or may not) you will find yourself embroiled — in the blink of an eye — in a red-hot back-and-forth about whether “Disability Y exists” even though this is not what you called into question. I’ve seen it with ADD. I’ve seen it with dyslexia. I’ve seen it with hyperactivity. And then the anecdotes come out: This one kid, he had such a bad case…blah blah blah blah blah. And then you ask, what does that have to do with this borderline case that is the subject of our disagreement? And you get back this deer-in-the-headlights stare, and, uh, gee, well I dunno…I just wanted to make sure we’re talking about the same stuff.
Horsepuckey. They’re just being drama queens.
And when they demonstrate the capacity to pursue a disagreement logically, but not the willingness to do so — that screams money, to me. That’s the way people behave when they’re motivated by money.
Not all of them though. Some of them are parents. Parents aren’t all the same, it turns out; some of them want their children to be strong, and others want their children to be weak.
I think that’s why they don’t argue these things logically. If you argue something like this logically, you identify the areas of disagreement — this child cannot make it without specialized help, and if he gets the specialized help it will help him more than it will hurt him — and you make the dialog about those points of disagreement. That is not what these people do.
They presume this is “The Help That He Needs”; they go through the motions of leaving this open to question, but they don’t. They settle on it, and then they monologue outward from there, that of course he needs the help, I just pulled that one outta my ass. They won’t allow any debate about it, even though any disagreement confronted is supposed to be about that and very little else.
“Kids” who get put on this stuff, are overwhelmingly boys. The “parents” who want them on it, are overwhelmingly the mothers. Why do we need special ed? A lot of the time, it’s because the “parent” feels like she should be able to relate to the “kid” emotionally in every single way, and she simply isn’t going to be able to. And if McKenna thinks those kids belong exactly where they are, in a special ed program, well then she’s quite plain and simply wrong.
Amazingly, you have to wait a MINUTE AND A HALF before this “feminist” unloads on Rush Limbaugh with any specifics. Up until then, the main point of her video is that Limbaugh — and by extension, anybody else who says “irresponsible” things — needs to check with her first before being allowed to communicate with any significant numbers of people.
What’s irresponsible? Whatever she doesn’t like. As I said…you have to wait a minute and a half before she goes into detail. The detail in question…that bit about feminism being started so that ugly women could get dates. (”Access to the mainstream of society,” Undeniable Truth of Life #24.)
Wow, how ineffective. If Rush was wrong, you could simply debate the point and squish him like a bug. This feminist chose not to do that…opting, instead, to argue as persuasively as she could that Rush must not be allowed to say what he says, or that others must not be allowed to listen to him. So there must be something to it.
That’s the problem with basing your WHOLE argument around “I don’t like this, can I get an amen here?” — opining away, then moving on to the next issue, lather, rinse, repeat. It atrophies aggressive thinking, and in some measure it validates the opposition. But that’s just stating the obvious. I feel a little silly even having to jot it down. But tragically, “feminist” is coming to be a word that describes people who somehow can’t catch on to this. Especially in colleges, which is where young people are supposed to go to learn how to noodle this stuff out.
Just saw a nice fireworks display, for a great price. Free. So I’m feelin’ all big & into free speech. Let’s take a minute or two to study someone who wants to take it away. They’re definitely out there.
P.S.: What’s up with the snotty overlay messages? This clip was linked directly from Feministing, and apparently someone there didn’t realize there are all these subtitles that don’t seem to have been inserted by anyone terribly sympathetic with the feminist’s message. Oh well, that’s their problem not mine.
So I feel The New Yorker’s pain. The magazine is under fire for a cover illustration depicting Barack Obama in the Oval Office wearing a turban, bumping fists with his wife, Michelle, who wears an Afro and fatigues, and has an assault rifle slung over her shoulder. Osama bin Laden watches from a portrait on the wall. An American flag burns in the fireplace.
Science & Public Policy Institute
Fellow Webloggin contributer Big Dog is 
