There's a bit of hagiography (holy legend) about the Second Apostle of Rome, St. Philip Neri, which has the ring of historical truth, and the solid gold seal of metaphysical truth.

Here it is, as recounted by the late Fr. Richard John Neuhaus in his journal First Things:

The story is told of St. Philip Neri (1515-1595) that he gave a most unusual penance to a novice who was guilty of spreading malicious gossip.

He told him to take a feather pillow to the top of a church tower on a blustery day and there release all the feathers to the wind. Then he was to come down from the tower, collect all the feathers dispersed over the far countryside, and put them back into the pillow. Of course the poor novice couldn't do it, and that was precisely Philip's point about the great evil of tale bearing.

Slander and calumny have a way of spreading to the four winds and, once released, can never be completely recalled. Even when accusations are firmly nailed as false, the reputations of those falsely accused bear a lingering taint. “Oh yes,” it is vaguely said, “wasn't he once accused of . . . "

The words of the Bard that you learned in grade school are entirely to the point:

Who steals my purse steals trash; ‘tis something, nothing;
‘Twas mine, ‘tis his, and has been slave to thousands;
But he that filches from me my good name
Robs me of that which not enriches him,
And makes me poor indeed.

A heinous crime against reputation is going on at present in the United States, created by a national media for whom their profession has become an ethics-free zone, with the willing complicity of Democrat politicians and their accomplices in the liberal punditocracy, f'rinstance those public menaces the Race-Shakedown Twins, Sharpton and Jackson.

The crime in question is the slanderous attribution of vicious and repugnant utterances to radio gab-king Rush Limbaugh -- utterances that have been branded "racist" (with good reason), and are being blown around by once-reputable media organs like wildfire through an L.A. county canyon in midsummer, without the merest, slightest, most perfunctory effort to discover whether these things were ever actually said.

Limbaugh categorically denies having said them, and challenges the slanderers to produce a single authentic source for any one of them -- a task that not one slanderer has succeeded in doing, and the furious back-peddling has begun already, though with reservations and without apology or retraction.

Rush Limbaugh is one of the most politically astute voices to command the public ear in America. He is also brash, relentless, occasionally vulgar and sexist, culturally under-educated, and genuinely EDGY (where most on the contemporary arts or discourse scene who claim to be so don't even come close to it). Limbaugh is proof that genuine, Swiftian satire is not yet dead -- though his most vicious and/or hypersensitive critics prove equally that it (satire) may be on its last legs.

One of the areas where Limbaugh can be the most edgy is in matters of race, or more specifically, racial politics. One might sometimes be able to characterize his mode of delivering uncomfortable truths as "offensive" or perhaps, more accurately, "abrasive" -- but I challenge anyone to reveal a single abrasive utterance for which an intelligent person, in the cool light of reasoned debate, could not make some coherent and persuasive arguments. Others might disagree, but even Limbaugh's most outrageous claims ARE basically arguable.

Anyone who claims otherwise, and who attributes to him the kind of mindless bigotry embodied in the controversial "quotes" now scurrying around on the public winds.... well, you could say a lot of things about such a person, but one thing is for certain: he or she has NEVER been a listener to the Rush Limbaugh program. IMPOSSIBLE. In fact, Limbaugh's harshest critics, on any subject, prove again and again that they could not possibly have listened to his show for more than a sound bite. (Or, I will allow, it's possible that they did listen longer than a bite, but they have demonstrated themselves too blind and stupid to grasp what they heard.)

There are any number of legitimate criticisms one could make about Limbaugh's program and his manner in delivering it -- I've made a few above, and there are more. I'm always surprised at how his most vitriolic critics seem to miss everything that they might genuinely criticize, and then spew with abandon criticisms that are patently false, even as they themselves engage in all the crass, hateful, superficial, often cruel ad hominem attacks and dishonesty of which they accuse their target. It's a strange thing -- one which, I'm thinkin', betrays nothing so much as FEAR.

Now, I can picture some sort of academically-inclined leftist phiilosopher/ideologue -- of an intensely serious and humorless and apocalyptically tragic mentality -- cultivating the kind of visceral hatred for Rush Limbaugh which has clearly gripped his opponents in media and politics. But I cannot picture this serious partisan lowering himself to engage in the mindless schoolyard savaging, the casually bald-faced lying, the hysterical bogey-manning that issues from Limbaugh's media enemies day in and day out, to their everlasting humiliation; the non-stop indulgence in the very sins for which they would burn Limbaugh at the stake (or some other form of execution, as cheerily recommended by Chris Matthews and others).

What's going on here is just wrong. And the purpose of it is not simply to discredit Limbaugh's opinions, but to destroy his reputation in order to prevent him, as a private citizen, from pursuing a private business transaction to become part-owner of a sports franchise.

Limbaugh has become very rich doing what he does, and that's probably his biggest sin -- he has enough ready cash to fulfill the ultimate sports fantasy, especially for the fan who was never talented or fit enough to play himself. How much, one wonders, does rank jealousy of both his money and his sports-dream lie behind this all-out effort to sabotage Limbaugh's bid for the St. Louis Rams?

On such things apparently the world turns, and, like Hitler at the English Channel, this advance must be halted in its tracks. A proud moment for the fifth estate.

St. Philip Neri, Holy Fool, pray for us.

REAL LIFE ~ THE ONION:
A SEAMLESS GARMENT

PRESIDENT-OF-THE-WORLD OBAMA
WINS NOBEL PEACE PRIZE

Mere days ago the kings of the satirical world over at The Onion [read regularly -- die laughing] gave us a short list of the highlights of Barry Obambi's address to the United Nations, among them:

-- Now is a time when we must do something about some problem, perhaps by working with others.

-- If Iran continues to pursue nuclear weapons, then it will have to face blank and blank. Oh shoot, I forgot to fill those in.

Little did they know that, based on these very concepts, that very president would shortly be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Or is that Piss Prize?, awarded, as it has been so often in recent years, for little more than consistently pissing on the United States whenever a microphone presents itself -- see: Al Gore, Jimmy Carter, Yasser Arafat....

Little did we know that the criteria for Nobel status would evolve into something resembling a grading category on a kindergarten report card ["does not run with scissors" or, dare I say it, "promises hope and change"] -- marked on a Dewey-esque sliding scale of "pass/fail" or "satisfactory/unsatisfactory", of course.

On a more serious note, the folks at PowerLine have put together a nice summary of the history of Nobel Prizes, ancient and modern, which explains how these absurdities just keep happening, and how, in fact, the once-prestigious award has a very long record of being fairly ridiculous. Read and learn.

Instapundit has an excellent round-up of responses, including a devastating poignard from Richard Cohen at the WaPo (who will temporarily be forgiven for making effective use of a slur on Sarah Palin), and some wise words from my friend David Warren (via RealClearPolitics). Even the Huffington Post is rattled by the ridiculousness of it. [No link -- life is too short....] Gateway Pundit offers up that it was Nobel for "the gift of gab" -- fair enough.

Is this just another case of "Trophy Kid" Syndrome? The unfortunately-named Starshine Roshell seems to have more sense than her parents [cripes, boomers, the things you did to your kids -- Starshine???], and wrote a needed complaint about what it means when you give a trophy to just anybody, merely for showing up. Little did she know that six months later.....

IRONY ALERT: Oh, those cut-ups at Saturday Night Live! Little did they know that the Big Prize would soon be awarded to the President they had slam-bammed the week before for having been in office nine months and achieved absolootly nuttin' -- nada -- not so much.


POST RACIAL AMERICA

Remember that campaign promise? Well, I'm betting it will come true -- later rather than sooner, and in a backwards fashion. I'm betting that ordinary pale Americans ["white" is ridiculous, and "Caucasian" is exclusionary and inaccurate] are going to get so fed up at being called racists for voicing opinions and ideas that have nothing whatever to do with racial considerations, they are going to start barking back or just ignoring the Amen-corners of the Racial Grievance Industry, and eventually silence them all by diminution and irrelevance. It has begun already.

What's terribly sad, though, is that the road to racial harmony has been carpet-bombed in the few months since the ascendacy of The First Black President and Harbinger of Racial Harmony, due entirely to the redoubled efforts of the racial grievance industry, who can think of no other defense of their stumbling standard-bearer as he fraks up his foray into global politics. Check out this sad survey on the question of whether America is or isn't a basically fair and decent society. That opinion among the country's major minority group has turned on a dime [perhaps one of the few remaining in the national purse, Mr. Geithner?] is itself utterly indecent.


SUFFER THE LITTLE CHILDREN

That snippet of Biblical text is often misinterpreted by those who were deprived of learning their King James English: "Suffer the little children come unto to me" means, in today's lingo, "Let the children approach me." The words carry no meaning related to the endurance of physical pain.

Sadly, the two interpretations (correct and not) are increasingly, perversely, fused as we observe in the culture the acclerating normalization of "intergenerational sex". The most recent, most heinous development is the downright weirdsmobile support for convicted child-rapist Roman Polanski, found overwhelmingly among the European (largely the Fwench) "arts community", but leaking frighteningly over into the upper echelons of Hollyweird.

The Polanski affair, however, remains at the fringes of society by virtue (ahem) of having sprouted from the weedy world of entertainment, where no one expects to find normality, whether it is in matters of serial marriage, drug habits, or obscene amounts of money being invested in really really bad taste, from horrible fashions to obese mansions full of kitsch furnishings.

Far more disturbing is the introduction of skewed morality into the politics and education that are supposed to serve the rest of us -- the normal people in nice little homes in ordinary neighbourhoods around the corner from the barber shop. In the United States this skewed crew has come to rest in the nest of Czars -- Presidential appointments to positions of advisory authority and policy influence, appointments requiring no public vetting or representative approval process.

Various czars have been outed as having troublesome records, the most extreme of examples of which have recently crashed -- Van Jones, "Green Jobs Czar", was revealed to be a self-described Communist (bad) and, by any definition, an anti-white racist (way badder). But a President, who is proving himself to be as GREEN as a man can be at his own new JOB, was a long-time admirer and couldn't wait to get Jones on his team.

More disturbing is the presence of Kevin Jennings in a Czar-ship where his capacity to do horrific damage is far greater than Jones's boondoggle. Jennings, by some bizzarro twist of circumstances, ended up being "Safe Schools Czar" -- this despite his being a gay activist whose work and publications all revolve around one aspect or another of being gay in school.

The crowning finial seems to be his intro blurb for a book called Queering Elementary Education [no, I'm not making that up]. Apparently in that Foreword, Jennings totally (and revealingly) steps in it, by expressing some brand of endorsement for a certain Harry Hay, who has an unsavoury connection with the notorious NAMBLA -- the North American Man-Boy Love Association. Learn all you need (and perhaps more than you care) to know about that group from a new book, The Last Undercover [profiled here at Big Hollywood], about the FBI's exposure of its repugnant operations, by intrepid agent Bob Hamer. It's one thing to sacrifice your life for your country -- another to sacrifice the inner sanctity of your own mind, which this poor man probably had to do in order to achieve his aims.

Big Hollywood, obviously a significant source of reflection on the Polanski affair, and thus on larger issues regarding mainstreaming of pedophilia, also offers an interesting piece by a gay conservative who was himself a "Lolito", as he calls it. It won't be agreeable to every reader, but is also food for thought, especially about what happens to the Tolerance Police when fascism becomes fashionable.

John Nolte at Big Hollywood weighs in with a rather chilling piece on Hollywood's pedophilia-mainstreaming agenda. I weigh in on page 4 of his comments, citing a terrific 1997 article by Norman Podhoretz -- Lolita, My Mother-in-Law, the Marquis de Sade, and Larry Flynt -- about how Nabokov's Lolita made pedophilia "thinkable", for which reason Podhoretz, who once made a career of debating against censorship of any kind, came to the reluctant conclusion that Lolita should never be read, and never even have been written. Food for thought, from Commentary -- for purchase, but worth it.

October 9 -- 69th would-be birthday of the composer of Imagine. Imagine all the people living for today. How perfect. How ee-e-e-e-e-w-w-w.

Imagine the vast expensive estate in the British countryside. Imagine the custom-made white grand piano in the gigantic mansion sitting-room with the garden view. "Imagine all the people sharing all the world" (except maybe that giant estate and its sitting room: "Zer vuss rhoom for seven families in ziss house..." -- Dr. Zhivago)

"Imagine no possessions," like the custom-painted Rolls Royce.

Imagine -- the speedo version, but you get the gist...

SEEN IN THIS MORNING'S NATIONAL POST,
AND I'M NOT KIDDING

This photo:


And this caption:

Brad Pitt knows the travails of trying to foster socially responsible consumerism. When the actor had to choose a scent for his new line of environmentally friendly body wash for Kiehl's, he ran into a problem: "Not much biodegrades," he said. "There were only three scents to choose from. I chose aloe."

Brad Pitt -- St. Francis of Ass-hatsy.

WHO WON?














ABC's morning anchorperson took on Governor Sarah for her first Most Excellent TV Interview Adventure.




She had her weak moments. But at the end of the day, the imperious, supercilious, self-important Professor Gibson just made himself look...small.



H-m-m-m-m

It has come to me recently that I have one very, very big fear about the 2008 U.S. election:

I fear that at some point, Sarah Palin's mountain man husband, Todd

is just gonna HAVE to CLOCK somebody!!!

And I would SO want to be there when it happens! Please, somebody, have the camera rolling!

But I sure hope it doesn't turn out to be former-conservative-turned-alien-life-form Andrew Sullivan, cuz Andrew's, er, "husband" is a REALLY big dude too,


and he might decide that, like Mr. Palin, he has to step in and..., um,... defend his woman.... as 'twere.

Among Sullivan's early reactions to the Palin pick [even before he became an irresponsible smear-monger in the National Enquirer mode]:

Squaring The Christianist Circle

29 Aug 2008 11:35 am

Now I understand: she's a pro-life mother of a Down Syndrome child. And she's not from the South.

And later, after flogging every scandal he could scrape off the bottom of his shoe [about Bristol being Trig's mother, about an affair with a business partner, you name it, he disseminated it]:

She is a long-time member of the Assemblies Of God. That's all you need to know.

Sully, we hardly know ye..... Well, yeah -- we do now.


Hurricane Ike -- bearing down on my little niece's house! STOP THAT!

I TAKE IT ALL BACK

Here I was, feeling like I had to soften the blow of a mouthy Canadian newsbabe who fired off a bazooka-sized bitch-slap on Sarah Palin, via the CBC webpage [scroll down].

Well, why should I be surprised that once again America has built something bigger and better. Or in this case, badder and bitchier. Check out the Malign-a Monologue by some mistress of the frickatives named Cintra Wilson at Salon.com. I won't even quote any of it here. Reading it once was too exhausting.

Re: the weird tilt toward Puritanism exhibited by the most lefty of the left when they take on a person of sincere traditional moral convictions. Strange how Mrs. Palin brings out the over-sexed smut-mouthed prose stylings in these feminist columnists, who sex-up every angle of every argument, but do so with this bizarre, dripping disgust -- you can almost see the lace hanky being brought to the turned up nose and the cry for smelling salts, like a spectator at the Ascot races who just heard Eliza Doolittle holler, "Come on Dover, move your bloomin' arse!"


Or, more to the point, they are as seized by seething shock as the nice little church ladies who sat at their dinner table and endured Borat Sagdiyev (Sacha Baron Cohen's on-screen alter ego) gracing their gathering with a bag of feces and a two-bit hooker.

Spare us the gasps and squeemish dry heaves, ladies. Go ahead and strike something, if it makes you feel better, but not this particular pose.

TRANSCANADA GAS PIPELINE, or

CANADIAN WOMEN JOURNALISTS STRIKE!

Many a Canadian is delighted that before becoming internationally famous, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin pushed to seal the deal on the gas pipeline that will bring north Alaska gas to the lower 48 via western Canadian territory. (details here, maps here)

That project will take some years to come online, but in the meantime there's been a blast of Canadian unnatural gas that is blowing all across the United States, and nations abroad. ** Journalista Heather Mallick, a viciously anti-American asp who has worn out readerships in newsprint and codex form, and is now on her last legs on the CBC website. Marshalling all the poisons in her alchemical closet, Mallick churned out a piece called A Mighty Wind Blows Through Republican Convention a few days ago. It starts like this:

I assume John McCain chose Sarah Palin as his vice-presidential partner in a fit of pique because the Republican money men refused to let him have the stuffed male shirt he really wanted. She added nothing to the ticket that the Republicans didn't already have sewn up, the white trash vote, the demographic that sullies America's name inside and outside its borders yet has such a curious appeal for the right.

Then builds to stuff like this:

Palin has a toned-down version of the porn actress look favoured by this decade's woman, the overtreated hair, puffy lips and permanently alarmed expression. Bristol has what is known in Britain as the look of the teen mum, the "pramface." Husband Todd looks like a roughneck; Track, heading off to Iraq, appears terrified. They claim to be family obsessed while being studiously terrible at parenting. What normal father would want Levi "I'm a fuckin' redneck" Johnson prodding his daughter?

You get the picture.
[**Mallick also re-worked her malice for Britain's Guardian]

Fortunately, one of the people who made this column famous was James Lileks, who conducted a world-class fisking on it here. Even more fortunately, Canadian journalist Jonathan Kay dismantled Mallick, and her employers, in today's National Post, with Another week, another disgrace at the CBC.

In the same issue of the Post, Jonathan is one-upped by his mom, Barbara Kay, who writes this!:

I imagine his pre-speech expression as alert, but relaxed paternalism, like a chief surgeon set to supervise a lowly resident's clumsy initial attempt at an appendectomy. Then puzzlement as the surgeon realizes that he's to be the patient, and finally horror as, strapped to the table and, before a nation of fascinated onlookers, he is subjected to ... a palinoscopy!

Oh, she got through to him all right. For eight months critics haven't really laid more than glancing blows on Obama, because they were jabbing away at his exterior. Sarah got him right in the gut.

Palin's mockery tickled Obama's worrisome polyps of swollen self-regard (the "styrofoam pillars"), his history of words over action ("two memoirs, but no major bills"), his curious pattern of risk avoidance (unlike community organizers, mayors have "actual responsibilities") and his tendency to solipsism(presidential journeys are not "voyages of personal discovery").

Bottom line:

...Palin wasn't ever committed to any collectivity but America itself. She was never "I am Woman, hear me roar." She was always, "I am Sarah, watch me act."

Mama Mia!

Just passin' this on, so's people don't assume from the 'Mallick aforethought' that everybody in this banana-like republic is certifiably bananas.






NOT A PICTURE OF HEATHER MALLICK --

NOT, NOT, NOT

WHAT DOES A "COMMUNITY ORGANIZER" DO?,
PART DEUX

The blogosphere's favourite law firm, Power Line, has the complete round-up on why the Big O's background as a Community O [seen at right during his First Temple period] is such a mockable thing, both in the specifics and the generalities. Drink deep -- it would be funny if it were not so sad.

Power Line also digs into some of the Big O's claims about his legislative triumphs in the Senate, which, to no great surprise, he has inflated out of all compass.


BLUE STATE BABY BLUES?

Mona Charen at Jewish World Review is chewing on the decidedly distasteful notion that the media blitzkrieg of Sarah Palin has something to do with her having been distasteful enough to choose life for a Down Syndrome child, and then trot it [him] out before the public eye -- rather than doing what 90% of the other Americans in her same position would have done: abort the poor blighted thing. Tom Smith at TheRightCoast thinks it might be even simpler than that: it's the reaction of people who see kids generally as having a great big "ick factor." Rich Lowry at NRO has some related thoughts on the subject. They are all probably on to something.

This is a very special and complex brand of hypocrisy. The merchants and apostles of "choice" and of hedonism (if that's your choice) have the oddest way of turning Puritan when someone on the right wing tumbles to transgression. Their attitudes toward those within their own bubble are not only different, they are at the farthest extreme of different.

They think Bristol Palin is fit for nothing other than that antiquated concept of a woman's "confinement" for the duration of her nasty condition, but Demi Moore is celebrated for being nakedly, aggressively pregnant on the cover of Vanity Fair in 1991 -- pregnant with a child by husband Bruce Willis, from whom she split 11 years after a Hollywood wedding that cost almost $900,000 in 1987. Three daughters in tow, she eventully took up co-habitation with boy-toy Ashton Kutcher, 15 years her junior [he was ten years old when her first child was born]. They married two years later. Wow, folks, here they come down the red carpet! -- aren't they just GREAT???!!!! One of Hollywood's HOTTEST COUPLES!

Perhaps Bristol Palin should have shown up on stage with her mother, wearing some tight double-knit shirt that didn't quite cover her belly, itself hanging out over a non-maternity set of skin-tight leggings -- haven't we all seen a lot of these types tooting around the shops lately? It's a symptom of the Aggressively Pregnant fad, almost literally "in your face" with the belly [that's La Britney in the picture, by the way, but she has many non-famous imitators], which is often followed by the in-your-face Hummer-sized stroller and the noisily public "negotiations" with unruly toddlers who won't eat their Whole Foods multi-grain flax cookies.

But remember, please, this condition is just for wymin who CHOSE to be pregnant -- or maybe those who got caught by surprise but are so RICH and FAMOUS and COOL that any act of spontaneity is, like, WOW, I can so cope with this! It's AWESOME! The father? He's my trainer, my DJ, my rockstar live-in, and if he and his tattoos fly the coop it SO doesn't matter -- I've got money, hear me roar.

Daughters of conservative politicians from Hicksville, however, are just dumb sluts who are fit for The Shunning, especially by their close-minded crazoid churches.

I'm just sayin'.

CURTAIN.

The man synonymous with the word "mime" died in Paris on Saturday September 22. The incomparable MARCEL MARCEAU was buried today in the equally incomparable Pere Lachaise cemetery. Every non-clever epigram about "silence" has been written and uttered a thousand-fold, and if there's a clever one out there, I haven't heard it. This genius of gesture will be mourned by everyone who loved and appreciated his art-- and faux-mourned by a whole ton of people who have for years been exchanging groaning mockeries about mime over their coffees and cocktails.

At some point, perhaps in the 80's, it became fashionable to pronounce mimes of all sorts ridiculous and annoying. I suppose there were members of the profession who brought this on themselves: TV variety mimes Shields and Yarnell made it a coy and sentimental mass-marketed art, and it seemed for a time that big-city squares were teeming with street buskers who thought there was nothing more to the art than painting on a clown face and moon-walking inside an imaginary box. And then asking for money.

This in turn gave a lot of cool sophisticates and stand-up comics license to put mimes on their list of people to be anathematized without fear of argument. Some of us, however, stayed quietly loyal to the great art, and kept an eye out for people who were actually good at it, or drew on it in a newer context. Johnny Depp comes to mind, in Benny and Joon.

But the Undisputed Master of the art remained this man I'd had the privilege to see in live performance a couple of times when I was in high school. (I think I have an autographed programme somewhere.) I never saw him again after that, but paid him the best tribute I could by taking two semesters of mime from another, albeit unsung, master, Kaz Piesowocki at the University of Victoria, British Columbia.


Mime was part of the Acting program. I took the one compulsory Acting course without intending to ever put it to use in performance. But the mime component I returned to for a second round. I was just interested in finding out how it works-- gaining an appreciation for the way that acting starts with a physical "impulse" from the heart, and seeing how stripped-down essentials can communicate as much or more than busy details.

I wanted to know how you walk against the wind, and how you reach out to pluck the leaf with the smoothness of mercury. Kaz knew how to teach that, and I wasn't half bad at it. He was a pleasure to watch in action, either at mime, ballet, or as a director of full-length stories in mime, like the (oh-so-badly-lit!!!) story of Joan of Arc. (How we all laughed about the notorious Joan in the Dark.)

Kaz retired in 1998, the same year Marcel Marceau came to the U-Vic Phoenix Theatre and spoke to the students. Wish I had been there for both events.

I knew of Marcel Marceau as a clown and a tragedian under the Klieglights, but never knew until the obits [and here] came out this week about his role in the great tragedy of our time: being a Jew in France during the Nazi occupation, working for the Resistance to help others escape, losing his father to the ovens at Auschwitz. One is left wondering how, after all this, the optimistic spirit of his "Bip" could ever be born. Yet he was, and lived to be 84, and left this world unrivalled. I'm not sure he would have been so happy about that: a rival would have also insured a successor, which he plainly desired. Let's hope for that.


Adieu, Bip.







Au revoir.








CANADIAN JOURNALISM HITS ANOTHER HIGH-WATER MARK

MACLEAN'S Magazine fancies itself the Time or Newsweek of Canada, and in the worst sense it may well have achieved that status. Continuing its sterling tradition of intelligent commentary on world events, as displayed in these cover stories of the past few years.....

... like their 2004 American election special....






Or this gem from 2006 (the answer to their question being, of course, "NO, that would be Jimmy Carter, by the landslide the voters didn't give him in '76.


Now the editors have gifted us with this:



Now that's HARD-HITTING JOURNALISM, EH? We're so proud, up here in the Great White North.

And how do we know this cover is a lie? HOW DO WE KNOW THAT BUSH IS NOT SADDAM, and that any suggestion of a resemblance between the two is so unspeakably, ungratefully STOOPID that is just defies human understanding????????

Because there's not a cloud of toxic gas now floating north of the 49th parallel in the vicinity of the Maclean's head office (that's One Mount Pleasant Road, Toronto...). Because Maclean's Editor Kenneth Whyte has not, to my knowledge, been hung on a meat-hook and beaten to death. Because, ... because, ... well, as Kathy Shaidle [new blog alert!] might put it, "If Bush is a Nazi why aren't you a lampshade?"


Ahem.


Speaking of Nazis-----


FLASH!!! -- SEEN IN AND AROUND THE BIG APPLE HOT-SPOTS:


Whadd-I-say??? Huh? Hey, don't taze me, bro!

New York City opens its doors (well, a few of them) to our buddy, Madmood Ahmadinnerjacket, so he can lay down some peace, love, and sure-I'm-a-feminist vibes for his adoring left-wing public. There were lots of places he wanted to go, but couldn't manage to get them all onto his already crowded itinerary [smiles and a hat-tip -- Hart Seely at Slate.com].


MINOR FOOTNOTE FROM THE RECENT TORONTO INTERNATIONAL FILM-FESTIVAL:

SEPARATED AT BIRTH












Film "auteur" and perennial ghoul David Cronenberg unveiled (as 'twere) his latest work and won the big prize at the TIFF. It's called Eastern Promises, and is the latest venture in a time-tested cinematic genre that has become Cronenberg's new signature style: Naked Tattooed Viggo-Vision. Our spies are certain they overheard the feted (fetid?) director muttering: "Well, if I can't have him, at least I can watch."

This review brought to you by someone who hasn't seen the movie. Too busy watching 3:10 to Yuma.

OH YEAH!

Plame Name Blame Game, round two:

LIBBY LYNCHED





LIAR










LIAR

SO WHY ARE THIS GUY'S PANTS ON FIRE?

+ + + +


"Grandstanding, show-boating, evidence-suppressing, justice-perverting, narcissistic, bottom-feeding snake?......

Who, MOI?"







Unindicted co-conspinmeisters:

Stay tuned for the continuing story of the woman who wanted nothing more than to preserve her quiet anonymity, tucked away, Emily-Dickinson-like, in the privacy of her parlor, writing tiny little memos to the twins-- cruelly, tragically EXPOSED!!!

If you think the leak is of any importance at all, then read the story [hat-tip, David Frum at NRO] of how it ACTUALLY took place (a subject which appears to have been COMPLETELY IRRELEVANT to the trial just concluded).

There is only one lesson to be learned from this episode: Lewis Libby has been convicted of being a friend of the Bush administration. Richard Armitage is not, and was never, a friend of the Bush administration, so for him, the leaker, there will be no consequences. Ever. If you think the leak is of any importance at all, you should be furious.

Dydd Gŵyl Dewi Sant

Happy
Saint David’s Day!

Eat a leek for the
Wonder of Wales.



Fond memories of residence and holidays in fair Gwallia.


SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 18
PROVIDENCE, RHODE ISLAND

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 22
HOUSTON, TEXAS

IN BETWEEN: AIR CANADA
My new bumper sticker (feel free to duplicate and distribute at will -- copyright is hereby waived)

If the only way to get to Heaven was on Air Canada, I wouldn't go.
...They'd probably just cancel the flight anyway.

I could tell the whole tale, of the four flights between February 16 and the 26th, but we'd all be asleep in short order. Let's just start with lost luggage.

February 18, PVD to YYZ:
on a Beechcraft (about 20 seats) with a total of 6 passengers. Six pieces of luggage (four checked, two carry-ons). My suitcase does not appear. I join the angry, seething crowd at the baggage claim desk and, while trying to file my report, am told by the Air Canada employee that "Whining will get you nowhere." There are five or six telephone calls to the baggage tracing number, one trip to the airport, and numerous attempts at the internet bag tracer. At the time of my departure for IAH on Wednesday, February 21, the bag is somewhere in limbo, waiting for customs clearance.

Departure to IAH:
Delayed because neither the flight attendant nor the ramp crew notices that there's an electrical cord lying in the hatchway when they pull the door closed. The cord winds around the emergency chute, which will deploy if they open the door to get the cord out. We change planes. Our 8:40 a.m. flight leaves at 2:00 p.m., minus 14 of its passengers who didn't get seats.

Cut to Monday, February 26:
YYZ has cancelled numerous flights due to an onslought of 3 or 4 inches of snow. My 5:00 p.m. flight from IAH to YYZ is filled with people who've been waiting since early morning. We depart IAH at about 8:00 p.m., and arrive YYZ just after midnight.

Not one single piece of luggage belonging to the 70 passengers emerges onto the carousel. An angry, seething crowd clusters around the baggage claim desk. It appears that the cargo hold of the plane did not leave Houston empty (one of our fears), but the Toronto crew did forget to remove the luggage once it arrived at YYZ. All passengers eventually receive their bags and are ready to leave by 2:00 a.m.

This delay affords me time to comb the rows and rows of abandoned luggage between the ten huge carousels in the international claim area. Twice. I do not find the lost bag of February 18. (But I do find heaps of bags thrown into corners, one cluster of at least forty pairs of skis-- what a great vacation those people must be having!!-- and mass disorder on an epic scale.)

I am then directed to the domestic claim area, on the other side of a glass wall, where, I am told, a huge load of baggage has recently been cleared by customs. I exit the international area and then push my cart backwards through the exit doors to the domestic area, and begin to comb the rows of baggage there.

It's not here:



Or here:



Or here:


Or here:
The sorrowful voice of a fellow bag-pilgrim is heard nearby: "This is like a needle in a hay-stack."

I reply, "This airline is beyond embarrassment." He responds, "I agree-- and I work for them."

He wears a dark blue uniform with braid on the cap and sleeves. He is an Air Canada pilot, whose bag is also lost.
In the spirit of kindness he tells me, "If you don't find it here, there's a room, over in the corner, where there are about 200 bags. Just ask at the desk and you can look in there."

I have always known, in my heart, that somewhere there's a room.

I walk over there. No one pays any attention to me, so I find the room on my own, and walk in.

Nine days, with more phone-screaming and swearing and walking up and down amid piles and heaps of lost luggage than I dare relate, and at last I have found my bag. Of February 18. I arrive home, with all my luggage, 2:30 a.m., February 27.

Richard Branson could put this airline out of business in 2-3 weeks. I wish he thought it might be worth it.



AIR CANADA -- STOP THEM BEFORE THEY KILL AGAIN.

FOX NEWS -- SO HIP IT HURTS

Threw away a late Sunday evening recently watching the FoxNews lineup of, er, um, “light?” – “comedy?” – programming. Started with the second half of If Hollywood Ran America. A great idea, lots of fodder for mockery, comedy, or dry and biting satire. Alas—none of these to be found anywhere.


Followed by The Half-hour Newshour, Fox’s new venture into the “fake news” market now dominated by Jon Stewart’s Daily Show and Stephen Colber-r-r-r-r-e’s Colbert Report.

Jon— Stephen— a word to the wise: lie quiet and content, your jobs are secure. The best comment on The Half-hour Newshour (and I can’t hat-tip this because I don’t know who said it first) has to be that it resembled nothing less than the script which would have been produced had a bunch of rabidly left-wing bloggers and activists set out to create a satire of the type of mean-spirited, puerile show that their mean-spirited conservative enemies would think was funny. Padding out the occasional genuinely funny line or bit was a bunch of limp and lame-o pokes in the liberal eye that went from sophomoric to really offensive.

Next on the lineup was It’s Out There, Fox’s new cutting edge overview of what’s hot on the blogs and the ‘net in general. Hosted by Kirsten Powers and the often grating Michelle Malkin—a woman whose thought processes are usually on course but whose TV presence can leave me clenching my teeth. Malkin has been a blog pioneer, and has been on the receiving end of vile dirty tricks and verbal abuse (apparently there are those on the left who think that calling her a “Chink” constitutes an argument against her positions—she is, in fact, a Filipina)—so she knows the workings of the blogosphere as well as anybody. When it comes to being annoying, she’s certainly not in the Ann Coulter league (nightmare hag!), but... I dunno, sometimes she bugs me. Also assisting on It’s Out There is some guy named Griff Jenkins, a Fox roving video reporter and techno-geek. Also a little irritating—nothing I couldn’t handle.

Nevertheless: I didn’t last through the entire show. The information was less than exciting, some of it downright stale, and the inter-hostess banter was oh so lame-o.

Dear FoxNews: GIVE IT UP!!!!

COLBERT COULD BEAT YOU SENSELESS WITH A POPSICLE STICK!!!

NEW SUNDAY PROGRAMMING = SUCKS!!! HUGE!!!!

And while you’re at it, lose Shepard Smith. My initial impression of him turned out to be bang-on.

Just found this on YouTube. It's more entertaining than the subject it parodies.