"If ricin was packed into a roll of quarters unknowingly,... Wouldn't you think that would be considered a terrorist act?"

What's next, Kaye Grogan's Hands Off My Caftan, PETA?

Don Knotts died Friday night in Beverly Hills of pulmonary and respiratory complications. He was 81.

The actor, who played landlord Mr. Furley on TV's Three's Company, won five Emmys in the 1960s for his portrayal of deputy Barney Fife on The Andy Griffith Show.

Former costar Andy Griffith was at Knotts's bedside when he died at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, as were his third wife, Francie, and his children, Thomas and Karen.

I always liked Don.

(Unnecessary political tie-in. This too.)

Roger Reviews: The Professors

I was at Borders today and spotted Crazy Davy Horowitz's latest tome, The Professors. I spent a little bit of time scanning it, but don't have a laptop so I couldn't make detailed notes. Thus, the following is from memory.

From what I gleaned, many of the professors on the list were guilty of criticizing Bush and his war in Iran or saying something offensive (to Davy) about 9/11, the U.S. or Israel. Having a history with the Black Panthers and/or being a 60s radical are also a big no-nos, unless you're the author of the book. Teaching queer theory or feminism or black history is beyond the pasty pundit's pale. And I didn't see a lot of discussion about what actually transpired in the professors' classrooms, although there were a few references to syllabi and test questions.

A few of the alleged quotes from the profs were genuinely distasteful, but a lot more seemed to be selectively edited and many more than that seemed right on the money.

As I am unfamiliar with many of these professors or their alleged quotes, it's hard to tell how accurate the book is. The endnotes are often worthless, referencing an entire book without a page cite or citing to one of Crazy D's earlier books rather than an original source. (Not that I'd waste my time checking the cites.)

One example I am familiar with makes me suspicious about the accuracy of the entire book. In "his" piece on Orville Schell, Dean of the Berkeley J-School, Crazy Davy tells how the U.C. search committee refused to even interview an unnamed "qualified conservative" candidate for the position that went to Schell. Passing over the qualified conservative led to a lawsuit against U.C. by Crazy Davy's Individual Rights Foundation, until the qualified conservative bailed on the lawsuit.

Of course, that tale has nothing to do with Schell's qualifications for the job, but Davy's got pages to fill. But why doesn't Davy name the qualified conservative? Because that man is Michael Savage, the lunatic racist who even Bobo Brooks calls a "radio hatemonger." Savage isn't qualified to clean the crappers in the Bear's Lair.

If the rest of Horowitz's book is as dishonest as that particular passage, then ... well, really, it's nothing new.

The book also has Regnery hallmark of shoddy editing. Dinesh d'Souza is identified as "Dinesh n'tsouza" and the phrase "captured Taliban fighters who were captured...." is used. In one of the pieces, Crazy D refers to himself in the third person, as if someone else had written the entry. I expect it will be a few months before stacks of The Professors sit next to stacks of Bernie Goldberg's Arrogance, going unsold at $3.99.

Rating: No Stars

Retarded

Here's a quote to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of National Review:

"In the Deep South the Negroes are, by comparison with the whites, retarded. . . . Leadership in the South, then, quite properly, rests in white hands. Upon the white population this fact imposes moral obligations of paternalism, patience, protection, devotion, sacrifice."

How little has changed.

(via George Fwill, of all people.)

It is just as well Harriet Beecher Stowe knew nothing about Mary Chesnut.

The child of fervently puritanical parents and driven by her abolitionist beliefs to write "Uncle Tom's Cabin," Stowe created an incredibly successful and influential novel although she had no firsthand knowledge of her subject. It was serialized in the National Era in 1851, in the year before it appeared in book form.

Stowe was convinced that all slaveholders were brutish oppressors (as some undoubtedly were), but what would she have made of Mary Boykin Miller, who as a young girl taught slaves on two plantations to read and write although this was strictly forbidden in South Carolina? Both she and the man she married were opposed to slavery.

Yes, the Chesnuts were so opposed to slavery that they taught the slaves they owned to read.

Because I'm opposed to violence, I'll drive Peter Cliffe to the hospital after I beat the shit out of him. And then I'll do it again.

Hyatt Riot

Looking for an upscale space for your next Klan rally, Stormfront soiree or MalkinCon? Hyatt hotels has got a deal for you!

McLEAN, Va. -- The Hyatt hotel chain has come under fire for agreeing to host a conference this weekend sponsored by a white supremacist group.

The conference in the Washington suburb of Herndon is sponsored by the Oakton, Va.-based New Century Foundation, whose leader says the white race is losing its identity in the United States because of multiculturalism and immigration.
...

Hyatt spokeswoman Lori Armon said the opinions of those at the conference do not necessarily reflect those of the Hyatt Corp. "However, we do not discriminate against any of our guests or organizations with which our guests are affiliated," she said.

That's mighty white of you, Lor. I guess that's what Hyatt calls diversity.

The event promises to be the largest ever -- and that's just counting the contingent from the Moonie Times.

The keynoter at this year's event will be Charles Krauthammer, who will speak on "The White Man's Burden, The White Man's Solution."

(Tnanks to a reader for the tip.)

One of the lame gimmicks at the film's website is a series of "Great Moments In Spin" e-cards, including the following one:

There's also a banner ad running that reads: "President Bush says he's presently surprised by how good New Orleans looks these days. That's coming from the man who thinks things look great in Iraq too."

Certainly these are cynical uses of current events to promote a film rather than a sincere condemnation of Bush's high crimes, foreign and domestic. (And it worked, since I mentioned the film.) If anything, the campaign's disrespectful of the victims of Bush's crimes.

But it's certainly not an example of liberal Hollywood. The film's directed by the son of Ahnold apologist Ivan Reitman (making it an all-nepotism production). And the promoters include a Clinton gag card as well.

One might expect the Bush part of the ad campaign to be met with squeals of horror from the phony outrage pimps on the Fox News Channel, but the film's producer is Fox Searchlight. And with Ol' Dirty Buckley's ties to the project, Cousin Itt Bozell will be gagged as well. (I also see Dennis Miller's got a bit part "as himself," portraying an unfunny talk host.) Expect not a peep from the pimps.

Delusions of Persecution

The voices in Peggy Noonan's head are cross...and they're going to make Peggy pay.

Yesterday, TBogg linked to Peggy Noonan's latest self-pitiful exercise in nailing herself to the cross, in which all the nasty lumpenfolk bruised Old Peg's sensitive feelings by "yelling" at her. But the abuse was all in her broken head.

Check out Peg's choices of verbs and adverbs: "curtly," "barked," "yelled at," "yelling," "yelled," "snap," "impatiently," "yelling," "yelling," "yells," "shouts," "twisted in anger." I understand that everything sounds louder and everyone seems meaner when you've got a constant hangover and you're jonesing for another cig, Peggy, but those people are just doing their jobs.

Now read the article with Peg's victimhood omitted:

A woman in an airport security uniform patrolled on the left, professionally instructing us to move to the right. A cleaning crew on the right requested, "Coming through, move please!" We stood nervously wherever we wouldn't be in the way. No one tried to help us, to calm the fears of those about to miss their flights. There was a lot of requests intended to expedite the process -- "I need your ID open and faced forward! No, you must put that in the bin!"

I know it's a bitch when janitors speak to you without leave and you've got to queue with the unwashed who so brutally ignored your last book, but you've got to face the fact that air travel can't be delivered to you like a case of Ancient Age.

So how do I know for a fact that every single working peon in two airports wasn't rude to Old Peg? The same way I know that Holy Dolphins aren't possessed to perform miracles on command.

Konservative Komedy Korner

Over at Clownhall.com, Hollywood insider Cheryl Felicia Rhoads is touting the comedy stylings of far-right funnyman Evan Sayet. Sayet has been tapped to headline at David Horowitz's rescheduled Restoration Weekend, where he will "entertain the likes of Michael Barone, Tammy Bruce and Phyllis Chesler to name just a few."

Sayet's "also a popular blogger and lecturer" (who isn't!) and he's generous enough to share some of his "A" material on the 'net.

Here's Evan on the Moslem:

The folks at the Times, et al, know that if the people actually saw the silly, innocuous cartoons then the Moslem would be, yet again, exposed as exceptionally dangerous and willing to commit the most exceptional of crimes because of their exceptional viciousness. This cannot be allowed. And THIS is the reason the Antique Media refuses to provide their readers/viewers with salient and vital information.

It's the funny because its the true.

Evan on the Demonrats:

Democrats ALWAYS Side With Evil/Wrong and Failed

If you don't know the Democrats' position on any particular issue simply ask yourself "what's the worst option" and that will be the Democrats'.

Anything that's successful -- Wal-Mart, Israel, America, etc. -- they are against. Anything that is failed -- Tookie Williams, ebonics, the Palestinians -- they are for.

Evan could use a few writing tips from ebonics; but at least he's cutting-edge topical.

Evan on the destruction of civilization:

This idea of "living for today" is what is behind the left's arguments for homosexual marriage -- something that may well destroy civilization TOMORROW but for today, well, it feels good. And it explains why the left's ideological brethren in France would refuse to get up from their Chablis to go check on their parents during a heatwave that saw 15,000 of their moms and dads, grandmas and grandpas suffocate to death two summers ago.

Zing!

Why is Evan only charging $10 a head for this comedy gold? And why isn't he on CNBC?

Evan on the lighter side of death:

(In fairness, while the socialists in places like Canada and France have offered not a single scientific advancement of note in a long, long time, there are American scientists whose computer models suggest that one is expected by around the turn of the twenty-fourth century -- about the same time that the first person is expected to die from second-hand smoke and the first non-intravenous drug-using heterosexual in the Western World is expected to contract AIDS.)

I'd like to see Jerry Seinfeld or Jon Stewart get as many laughs out of a "die, fags" routine.

Rhoads informs us that "the formerly liberal Sayet switched his political allegiances after September 11th, 2001." Yes, Sayet's another el-Simon wingnut: "I used to consider myself a Democrat, but thanks to 9/11, I'm outraged by Chappaquiddick."

But Evan's not just a comedian, he's an historian too:

From the light bulb to the television, from the personal computer to the internet, virtually every scientific innovation of the last century has come from the religious folks in America. If it were up to the French, the Swedes or the Spanish the "enlightened" would quite literally still be sitting in the dark.

Or maybe that's part of his comedy routine; I'm not sure.

I hope Crazy Davy Horowitz, Michael Barone and Tammy Bruce enjoy Sayet's gags about dying faggots and Frogs, dem illiterate Negroids and the bloodthirsty Moslem race. The culture wars will still be there to fight after the warm glow of laughter fades away.

All The Rage

This David Ignatius column makes me so mad that I can't see straight:

A second explanation of the connectedness paradox comes from Charles M. McLean, who runs a trend-analysis company called Denver Research Group Inc....

McLean argues that the Internet is a "rage enabler." By providing instant, persistent, real-time stimuli, the new technology takes anger to a higher level. "Rage needs to be fed or stimulated continually to build or maintain it," he explains. The Internet provides that instantaneous, persistent poke in the eye. What's more, it provides an environment in which enraged people can gather at cause-centered Web sites and make themselves even angrier. The technology, McLean notes, "eliminates the opportunity for filtering or rage-dissipating communications to intrude." I think McLean is right. And you don't have to travel to Cairo to see how the Internet fuels rage and poisons reasoned debate. Just take a tour of the American blogosphere.

The connected world is inescapable, like the global economy itself. But if we can begin to understand how it undermines political stability -- how it can separate elites from masses, and how it can enhance rage rather than reason -- then perhaps we will have a better chance of restabilizing a very disorderly world.

Oh, for the good old days -- pre-1990s -- a time when our sectarian wars and riots and lynchings and genocides were civilized affairs, based on pure, sweet reason. Oh, paradise lost!

I'd like to apologize personally to David Ignatius and Tom Friedman and Francis Fukuyama and Thomas P.M. Barnett and, most of all, to Charles M. McLean, who runs a trend-analysis company called Denver Research Group Inc., for coarsening the discourse. It was wrong of me to think that my opinions might be worth consideration even though I knew I didn't have a book contract. Clearly, it was my rage that blinded me to the fact that I was poisoning reasoned debate and undermining political stability and separating elites from masses.

And I was such a nice fellow before October 2002; really, I was.

Let the healing begin.

Face Time

An inbred hillbilly who pretends he's not a conservative writes:

"If you want to start on that, you might take a look at PorkBusters Hall of Shame Grand Prize Winner Ted Stevens (R-AK) and ask if he's the best face for the Republican Party. Because right now, he is the face of the Republican Party."

(Italics in original, no link to the inbred hillbilly.)

Yes, neither the President of the United States nor the Vice President nor the Senate Majority Leader nor the Speaker of the House nor the House Majority Leader nor the soon-to-be-convicted former House Majority Leader is the face of the Republican Party. The face of the Republican Party is a senator from Alaska whose face and name wouldn't be recognized by 1 out of 20 Americans.

But what else would you expect from a fake libertarian who earns his daily bread and subsidizes his blog by sucking at the public teat?

All Access Bribe Pass

I saw Josh Marshall's link to this article concerning the Abramoff/Mahathir Mohamad connection about a hour and 15 minutes ago, and was going to comment on the Malaysian regime's ties to Ed Feulner and the Whoritage Foundation.

But Matt Yglesias and Atrios already have it covered.

The questions remain: How much of the $1.2 million made it into White House hands, and whose hands?

More Feulner fun here.

Bonus Fun:: A link to a different version of the A.P. article is up at Whoritage's purported spin-off, Clownhall.com. (And dig the Freudian reference to "two confessional trips to Malaysia.") I wonder how long it will take Clownhall to scrub that link.

David Irving pleads guilty, concedes 'I made a mistake'

Kausphobes

Mickey Kaus goes bobbing for apples at his favorite racist bulletin board, Lucianne.com, and surfaces with two pet hates clenched between his teeth.

The stunted blogger writes:

Harmonic convergence of right-wing isssues: Gay marriage becomes immigration loophole in UK. ... "Immigrants face less rigorous tests if they seek to gain British citizenship through a civil partnership," notes the Sunday Times--though I doubt the additional "consummation" requirement for heteros is rigorously enforced. ... Isn't the problem simply that a gay-union loophole multiplies the number of possibilities for sham marriages (and probably by more than a factor of 2, because it's less of a psychological effort for heteros to room with a same-sex pal for two years than to feign marriage with an opposite-sex pal)? ... [via Lucianne] 12:23 P.M.

Wasn't it just last week that the diminutive one was, in his latest slam of Brokeback Mountain, telling us how all straight-thinking heterosexual straights like himself were filled with innate revulsion for all things gay?

If you think the visceral straight male reaction against male homosexual sex has effectively disappeared--look at Plano, etc.--you won't spend a lot of time trying to figure out the possible deep-seated, even innate, sources of resistance to liberalization, and you'll tend to be surprised and baffled by their persistence.

Of course, Kaus blows hot and cold on his fascination for the gay. Days earlier he was chastizing the Los Angeles Times for leaving out the details of a same-sex encounter between a bisexual film director and a cop:

Why We Are Still Not Willing to Pay 50 cents for the Los Angeles Times in Los Angeles: The director of the James Bond movie "Die Another Day,"--as well as "XXX: State of the Union," "Mulholland Falls," and "Once Were Warriors"--is arrested "after allegedly dressing as a woman and offering sex to an undercover Los Angeles police officer in exchange for money." (Apparently he's selling, not buying!) The mighty local monopoly paper gives it ... two sentences buried in a news roundup on page B4. Too interesting! People might talk about it.**

P.S.: The New York Daily News, operating on an East Coast deadline, managed to generate a whole page on the busted director.

Maybe it was the cowboy part that repulsed Kaus. He can't enough of a story about blowjobs between urban male professionals.

Kaus might explain his apparent contradiction if he believes scheming foreigners don't share his clear-minded, genetic revulsion to all things gay. But Kaus himself doesn't claim that -- He imagines a universal psychologically-based preference for same-sex platonic roommates.

Perhaps Kaus's next post can address the rampant proliferation of phony same-sex pairings at companies offering benefits for gay domestic partners, such as, say, Kaus's employer, The Washington Post Company. If Kaus doesn't believe there's a tie between national origin and benefits fraud, surely he must believe that unmarried American heteros have been pairing off with same-gender friends in recent years to reap lucrative partnership benefits.

I'd give Kaus the benefit of the doubt on the immigration angle, except for the fact he frequents (or at least promotes) the bigot's bulletin board.

"History Is Like A Constantly Changing Tree"

And David Irving is like a pyromanic in a forest.

Some good reporting from the Associated Press, which isn't afraid to call David Irving what he is: a right-wing British historian:

VIENNA, Austria -- A right-wing British historian said Monday he would plead guilty to criminal charges of denying the Holocaust as his trial opened in Vienna.

David Irving, 67, told reporters he now acknowledges that the Nazis systematically slaughtered Jews during World War II. "History is like a constantly changing tree," he said as an eight-member jury and a panel of three judges prepared to hear charges that could put him behind bars for up to 10 years.

Irving has been in custody since his arrest in November on charges stemming from two speeches he gave in Austria in 1989 in which he was accused of denying the Nazis' extermination of 6 million Jews.

A verdict could come later Monday.

Irving's trial comes amid new - and fierce - debate over freedom of expression in Europe, where the printing and reprinting of unflattering cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad has triggered violent protests worldwide.

I'd oppose the criminal law on principle, but I've got no sympathy for Irving. He could've stayed clear of Austria, but chose to return to the country to spread his propaganda, knowing the consequences.

Perhaps his time in prison will allow him to finish his memoir. It did wonders for his fellow right-wing fraud, Jeffrey Archer. (Not so much for Judy Miller, though.)

Dick Cheney IS The Beerhunter

"Go fuck yourselves, you hosers."

And, thanks to Bruce Webb, here are the Blogger-deleted comments to this post:

Eh eh. Indeed.

ahab 02.17.06 - 5:19 pm

...

Funny, Lynne actually looks like a slab of Back Bacon.

Pechorin 02.17.06 - 6:39 pm

...

On the twelfth day of Christmas

Dick Cheney gave to me

a buttload of birdshot for free

(pause)

And a beer.

Jo Fish Homepage -- 02.17.06 - 6:46 pm

...

Beerhunter.

LOL! Those fools at the Wyoming State Legislature gave the Beerhunter a standing ovation. For what, exactly?

Cybelle 02.18.06 - 12:23 am

...

Marksmanship.

doghouse riley Homepage 02.18.06 - 1:18 am

...

Kooooo Loo Koo Koo Kuu Koo Koo Koo!

CHENEY: G'day; I'm Dick Cheney, this is my friend Harry --

WHITTINGTON: Good Day, eh. Hey, that Lynn's a looker, eh. A 'good-time' girl, you know?

CHENEY: Okay; so, like, we're here -- we've got a six and whole buncha backbacon; and like I'm running the country, eh.

WHITTINGTON: I mean, like, I'm old, so it really takes some serious coal to get my Canadian Great Northern train runnin', eh. And what was that ambassador doin' with her hand down your pants, eh?

CHENEY: TAKE OFF!!! Okay. So I want to show you this new game to play; I call it 'The Beer-Hunter'. Okay; so its gotta be close to gettin' dark, eh -- and I like chug back this whole six, eh -- and you go stand over there --

WHITTINGTON: Like, over here?

CHENEY: No -- go long, eh!

WHITTINGTON: Here? Whatchoo doin' with that shotgun, Dick, eh?

CHENEY: Okay, just stand still, eh! Itz da game, eh... [Burps]

WHITTINGTON: Hey! Whataya gonna do with that gun, eh, you hoser?

CHENEY: [Burps] I'm Master Of The Universe, Eh !! I faked out everybody to invade Iraq! I'm runnin' the War On Terror; I'm like pissin' on the whole country; I'm untouchable, eh!! I'm a mighty BEER HUNTER!!! And you like think Lynn is hot, eh? TAKE OFF YOU HOSER!!!

[Shotgun discharges]

Nominal Chtulu 02.18.06 - 2:19 am

...

"I was the last one left after the nuclear holocaust, which I had caused, eh. The whole world had been destroyed, thanks to me. Fortunately, I had been offworld at the time. There wasn't much to do. All the quail and old lawyer had been destroyed. So's I spent most of my time looking for beer."

s.z. 02.18.06 - 4:19 am

...

From the same movie:

Dick Cheney: Fleshy-headed mutant. Are you friendly?

Tom DeLay: No way, eh? Radiation ... and corruption have made... me an enemy of civilization.

s.z. 02.18.06 - 4:24 am

Finally, the comments have returned.

Use of foul language is inappropriate under any circumstances. The Post is a family newspaper. Members of the Graham family would never resort to vulgarity to express themselves. I applaud the paper's use of profanity filters.

Cooler heads have prevailed, yet the Post still refuses to admit its fabrications.

Knowing that the Post refuses to do so forces one to question everything that is printed in the paper. The Post cannot re-earn its readers' trust if it will not admit wrongdoing.

Journalists must be completely candid when they are called on misstatements; Deborah Howell (who, admittedly is not a journalist) has not been.

I made a mistake, Howell claims. But she did not make a mistake. Her writing was deliberately false.

Mistake connotes an inadvertant or unintended error. When one writes, however, every word the deliberate product of one's mind, as is the decision to omit every word not used. Further, the decision to submit the finished product for publication is a second, deliberate act.

Because words have meanings, when one says that "Jack Abramoff gave campaign contributions to Democrats as well as Republicans" one means that Jack Abramoff gave campaign contributions to Democrats as well as Republicans. That statement simply is not true. Whether the statement is true or false, making the statement is a deliberate act, not a mistake. When the statement is false, one of two things happened. Either the writer knew the statement was false, and wanted to convey false information, or the writer didn't know the statement was true, and committed it to print without any regard (that is, reckless disregard) as to whether the statement was true or false.

Regardless of which occurred in Ms. Howell's false statements about Abramoff, causing the statement to be published was an act of dishonesty on Ms. Howell's part. Her actions were no better (and no worse) than those of Jayson Blair, Jack Kelley or Mr. Abramoff himself.

As the Post refuses to acknowledge that what Howell did was not a mistake, it cannot be trusted. Of course, Howell alone is not responsible to the paper's lack of credibility. Responsibility must be shared by Bob Woodward (who failed to tell his readers the truth about his role -- and his conflicts of interest -- in the Plame investigation) and Susan Schmidt (who tells us that Jack Abramoff was a benefactor to his religious community even though he used his religion to steal from his fellow Jews). I could go on, but those examples suffice.

Deborah Howell has been given a two-year contract as ombudsperson, and the Post must honor that contract, for both legal and moral reasons. A bad bargain is still a bargain.

Yet the Post is under no obligation to actually publish Howell's falsehoods. And when it does, it ratifies them. So the Post does allow Howell to speak for it.

I love that gag.

(Note: recreated from yesterday's Blogger-deleted post.)