Posted 2/22/2003 05:58:55 PM by Edward Driscoll
THE GLORY HOLE: An...err..exciting..feature of the Berkeley campus discussed by Michele Malkin. Nice to see those tuition dollars being spent so wisely.

Posted 2/22/2003 05:22:11 PM by Edward Driscoll
THE SEARCH FOR A LIBERAL RUSH LIMBAUGH: Ann Coulter looks at Phil Donahue, then and now and writes:

Did people enjoy watching a man with the IQ of the average TV newsreader who passed himself off as Bertrand Russell? Or did they just want to watch something on TV? We have the answer to that! In a controlled scientific experiment, Donahue was given his own TV show on MSNBC in the new competitive environment of cable TV. That Boy's ratings are the lowest in primetime TV for any news program. They are so low, Nielsen can barely detect them. One wishes bitterly that MSNBC could give shows to all the other pompous liberal blowhards once forced on the public, like Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite, so we could see how they'd fare with a little competition. Nielsen would not be able to "See It Now." * * * One thing about liberals is they're pesky devils. They'll never quit. And now they are back again looking for the next "liberal alternative" to Rush Limbaugh. They have the money, the business consultants, the radio talent. Now all they need are ideas. There's the rub.

Who is the probable candidate for radio talent? Al Franken. No, really! (As Dave Barry might say.) Jonah Goldberg weighs in on his chances:

What's funny is that Franken's backers are banking on precisely what Franken shockingly didn't know until recently: Conservatives are more entertaining than liberals. Oh, of course it's true that professional — and very funny — entertainers and comedy writers tend to be liberal. But the key here is that they are professional entertainers, not professional liberals. And therein lies all the difference. Franken is on to something when he says that liberals aren't interested in the sort of demagoguery provided by Limbaugh. That's not because liberals don't like demagoguery. They love demagoguery. They love hatchet jobs, low blows, cheap shots, and character assassination even more than conservatives do (and there are certainly more than a few conservatives into that sort of thing). When every day we hear another comparison between Bush and Hitler; when conservatives are likened to Klansmen, the mentally retarded and the Taliban; when the Democratic party sponsors ads saying that a vote for a Republican is a vote for church burnings, hate crimes, and organized murder; when every Republican economic policy is attributed to personal greed and every foreign policy is attributed to a hodgepodge of sins including, (again) greed ,racism, and vanity; it becomes very difficult to take Franken seriously when he says that his listeners aren't interested in demagoguery. No, the problem for liberals is that their "movement" extends to virtually every boutique victim group under the sun. I don't just mean blacks, Hispanics, gays, women (roughly two thirds of the population right there), but pretty much anyone with a grievance. Even white guys can join the club if they complain about not getting enough workman's comp or about Gulf War syndrome. Liberalism has become a politics of complaint. In a sense, that's fine because politics is largely about the adjudication of complaints. Lord knows conservatives have plenty of grievances too. But the problem for liberals is that they are terrified of offending anybody in their own massive Coalition of the Oppressed. That pretty much leaves white Christian men, rich non-liberals, and maybe a handful of right-wing Jews and conservative women. And, I'm sorry Al, there's just not enough material there to be entertaining. Liberals have been feeding off of Whitey for so long they can see their reflections in the bones, they're so picked-clean. If Franken thinks that there are millions of people who want to listen to the same tired and lame laments about white folks every day for three hours, he's nuts. * * * Anyway, I guarantee you that if Franken were to make fun of activists from any number of constituencies — gays, Hispanics, blacks, animal-rights activists, environmentalists, fill in the blank — he would be inundated with gripes from his "base" saying "that's not funny!" And because he's such a nice tolerant, Upper West Side liberal, he'd have to listen, apologize, atone. This is one of the main reasons why professional liberals aren't funny: They are terrified of offending anybody even remotely "on their side." (Another reason is that liberals tend to believe they are on a mission to save the world and therefore there's simply no time for joking around.)

One thing's for sure, Al's got his work cut out for him. As Coulter writes, "Among the "alternatives to Rush" that liberals have tried over the years are: former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo, Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, former Connecticut Gov. Lowell Weicker, former California Gov. Jerry Brown, former U.S. Sen. (and Monkey Business skipper) Gary Hart, and former Virginia Gov. Doug Wilder." UPDATE: Thomas Sowell also has some thoughts.

Posted 2/22/2003 10:22:43 AM by Edward Driscoll
THE STRANGE CASE OF SAMI AL-ARIAN: David Frum has the details of his interaction with President Bush, and Andrew Sullivan has a flashback, which, as he notes, "seems less outrageous now, doesn't it?"

Posted 2/21/2003 12:50:32 PM by Edward Driscoll
OK 80: Happy birthday (well, almost) to Orrin Keepnews, the legendary jazz producer who turns 80 in March. Keepnews "was the first to record legendary artists Bill Evans and Wes Montgomery, and has figured prominently in the careers of Cannonball Adderley, Thelonious Monk, McCoy Tyner, Sonny Rollins, Stanley Clarke and Flora Purim. He started three distinguished jazz labels: Riverside, Milestone, and Landmark", according to this excellent profile by Eric Olsen on Blogcritics.

Posted 2/21/2003 12:39:28 PM by Edward Driscoll
"OLD, WEIRD AMERICA": Orrin Judd looks at Gods and Generals in two posts here and here. (The astonishing quote above though, is courtesy of Greil Marcus.) I haven't seen the movie yet, but I did get a kick out of Ted Turner, searching to find an anti-war message in his own film--a film about the war the ended slavery. It's unlikely that this fellow and Ted will ever meet, but they ought to. UPDATE: Rod Dreher also weighs in (start here, and then scroll down to the post below), along with an excerpt of the Village Voice's not-surprisingly condescending take on the film.

Posted 2/21/2003 10:13:41 AM by Edward Driscoll
IS THE STATEN ISLAND REFINERY FIRE TERRORISM? Probably not, but Rod Dreher writes about a curious incident right after 9/11 involving someone wanting to photograph American refineries. "Point is, our enemies are watching our refineries. That's why the first thing I thought of when I saw the fire was: 'Terrorism.'" And Saddam Hussein does have a thing about setting oil refineries ablaze. Dreher adds a comment from friend: "28,000 New Yorkers are now going back into therapy."

Posted 2/20/2003 10:42:08 PM by Edward Driscoll
LILEKS' MONEY QUOTE:

Playwright Harold Pinter, speaking at last weekend’s rally, said "The US is a nation out of control," and “unless we stop it, it will bring barbarism to the entire world." He said America was "a country run by a bunch of criminal lunatics with Tony Blair as a hired Christian thug." When Blair shows up in the pulpit cleaving the air with a scimitar, let me know. When US television broadcasts a speech with Billy Graham hosting an Excalibur replica from the Franklin Mint Collection, demanding the decapitation of Muslims, let me know. When George Bush grips the podium and beseeches American rock formations to give up the location of non-Christians so we can slit their throats, and it’s carried live on national TV by presidential order, drop me a line. It takes a particularly rarified variety of idiot to look at a Jew-hating fascist with a small mustache - and decide that his opponent is the Nazi.

of course, for those who have that particular rarification, have we got a bumper sticker for you...

Posted 2/20/2003 11:10:03 AM by Edward Driscoll
STAGGERING: Check out this line by Molly Ivins, by way of Jonah Goldberg:

For those of you who have not read Paris 1919, I recommend it highly. Roosevelt was anti-colonialist. That system was a great evil, a greater horror even than Nazism or Stalinism.

Jonah replies, and he's spot-on, at least in my book:

the suggestion that colonialism was a greater horror than Nazism or Stalinism is so stupid and so repugnant it really must be addressed. Does she know what she's saying? Doesn't she know how many tens of thousands of brave colonial troops fought side by side with the British against the Germans and the Japanese? And whereas there are many defenders of British colonialism - and other colonial regimes - I think she will have to look under a lot of rocks to find defenders of the death camps of the Holocaust. Considering that Nazism and Stalinism represented the very worst kind of colonialism, one wonders what it was about the Raj that Ivins considers worse than Stalin's collectivization or the rape of Poland.

Colonialism worse than the death camps of the Nazis, or the gulags of the Soviets? As I said, it's staggering that someone would write that--let alone think it.

Posted 2/20/2003 10:40:02 AM by Edward Driscoll
ADVANTAGE DEN BESTE! Back on January 5th, we linked to this post by Steven Den Beste regarding non-nuclear EMP. Compare that to this item on the Drudge Report. Nice to see even Matt getting scooped from time to time by the Blogosphere.

Posted 2/19/2003 03:03:15 PM by Edward Driscoll
IRANIAN TROOPS PERISH IN PLANE CRASH: Will anyone blame this crash on Iranian "arrogance"? UPDATE: James Morrow wonders what Allah thinks about it:

When the Shuttle Columbia burned up on re-entry, many in the enlightened and rational Islamic world credited Allah with orchestrating the disaster. Now that an Iranian troop transport plane has crashed, killing 302 - including 280 members of the "elite" Revolutionary Guard Corps - I wonder if the big man upstairs will also cop blame in the Islamist world?

Good question.

Posted 2/19/2003 02:42:57 PM by Edward Driscoll
THREE WORDS. JUST THREE SIMPLE WORDS: Lesbian Japanese monkeys. What else needs to said? (No word on what the lesbian love goats think of this, however.)

Posted 2/19/2003 12:51:19 PM by Edward Driscoll
SHUT UP 'N PLAY YOUR GUITAR: A review I wrote (which helped kill some time whilst in the Frozen Tundra of Washington, DC) of the Frank Zappa all-instrumental set is up on Blogcritics.

Posted 2/19/2003 11:18:00 AM by Edward Driscoll
ANN COULTER TELLS GOP, LISTEN TO DAVID DUKE:

Miss Coulter's comments came in response to a report in The Times on Monday that detailed Republicans' concerns that Mr. Duke's presidential bid would divide their party."He's an unknown quantity; that scares people. What they read about him causes people to cringe because they don't know him." Miss Coulter said Mr. Duke's Republican critics "need to take a deep breath and exhale."

Sounds pretty scary, huh? But all we did was to swap Donna Brazile's name with Ann Coulter's, and Al Sharpton's with David Duke, from this Washington Times article. (And it's instructive that Brazile's quotes--assuming they're true--indicate that she's willing to work with anyone who will increase black votes to the Democrats, no matter how odious that person is. As Rod Dreher of the conservative National Review wrote in January:

Republicans took a whipping over a gaffe made by Trent Lott, a mere senator, but now the Democrats have to deal with a bona fide black racial demagogue, a man in David Duke's league, blunder bussing onto the national stage as a candidate for his party's nomination. Democratic politicians are scared to death of offending Sharpton, because they don't want to be denounced as racist by a man who can command such media attention.

Or as Peter Beinart of the liberal New Republic recently wrote:

Bull*****ing is the mechanism Sharpton uses to escape unscathed from the moral train wrecks that dot his career. On "Meet the Press" in January, Tim Russert reminded the freshly reinvented presidential candidate of four episodes in his past: His 1987 conviction for defaming a man he accused of raping Tawana Brawley; his 1993 conviction for tax evasion; his 1995 incitement against a Jewish store owner in Harlem, which culminated in the racially motivated murder of seven of the store's employees; and his 2002 eviction from the Empire State Building for failing to pay his rent. Sharpton responded by implying racism and changing the subject: "I think you've got white candidates with worse backgrounds who--." Russert interrupted to ask whom he meant. Sensing a dead end, Sharpton declared, "I'm not getting into name-calling," and changed the subject once again. "If you want to talk about background, talk about how a white male stabbed me at a nonviolent march. I forgave him, testified for him. That's somebody that brings America together," he declared. Russert doggedly returned to his question, asking Sharpton, "Why not apologize for Tawana Brawley?" "To apologize for believing and standing with a woman--I think all of us need to take women's claims more seriously," Sharpton responded indignantly. "No apology for Tawana Brawley?" Russert tried one last time. "No apology for standing up for civil rights," replied Sharpton. That last answer is particularly revealing. According to Al Sharpton, the behavior of Al Sharpton is synonymous with the cause of civil rights, and therefore any criticism of Al Sharpton is, by definition, an attack on racial justice. By running for president, Sharpton is effectively asking the Democratic Party to bless that proposition. He knows that, by treating him as a legitimate candidate, the party is ratifying his self-coronation as the leader of black America. And, if the Democratic Party and the media accept him as the leader of black America, the post-Martin Luther King Jr., post-Jesse Jackson civil rights movement will become, in effect, whatever Sharpton says it is.

Brazile's response to Beinart's article? "Stop beating him up." Dreher sums it up best: "Sharpton will make fools of the Democrats. "Good. They created this monster. They bloody well deserve him."

Posted 2/19/2003 10:40:29 AM by Edward Driscoll
ADVANTAGE, ED! Back on Friday, February 7th, we wrote:

The black coaches who declined to interview with the Lions seem to have a short memory. If the Lions and Mariucci couldn't have come to terms on a contract, they would have been in the same position as Tampa Bay and Bill Parcels last year. Mariucci--as Parcels did--would spend a year in the TV booth, and the Lions would have been scrambling to find a replacement, and at that point, Denny Green would be a perfect fit.

This weekend, Peter King of Sports Illustrated wrote:

I'm going to say something that is bound to generate a ton of what-an-idiot-you-are e-mail. I welcome said mail. I think the African-American coaches who were asked to interview with the Detroit Lions but refused because Steve Mariucci had a near-lock on the job made a big mistake. I'd been thinking this since five black coaches each said no to an interview request from Lions CEO Matt Millen, thus igniting the hot-stove-league firestorm around the issue. I even asked Millen about it, and he said he had tried to make the same argument, the contention being that black coaches know there are 32 white men, the owners of NFL franchises, holding those 32 sacred jobs hostage. To get one of those jobs, you have to break the code. You have to get inside the circle. You can only get inside the circle one way -- by meeting these men, impressing them and convincing them you ought to be in their little club. And even if they don't hire you, you're three percent closer (1/32nd) to your goal than you were. You've met with one of the gatekeepers of these jobs, and hopefully made an impression on him. And when a vacancy occurs somewhere else, the owner with the opening then might call Millen or one of the Fords (Bill Sr., or Jr.) and ask about you. This was reinforced last week when I talked to Ted Cottrell, the Jets defensive coordinator who was spurned by San Francisco in favor of Dennis Erickson. Now, the prevailing opinion is that Cottrell was just a flunky keeping the seat warm until the Niners found a white coach they liked better. That he was a phony leading candidate. I can say with certainty that this is total horsecrap. Dr. John York, who, with his wife, Denise DeBartolo York, rides herd over the 49ers, was the gatekeeper to this job. San Francisco general manager Terry Donahue would identify the leading candidates, then run the list through York, and the two would decide on a coach together. (Team consultant Bill Walsh was, shall we say, "consulted." But this hire was not his call. He advised both men.) Had Erickson blown the interview with York and Donahue nine days ago, or had some red flags gone up when Erickson met them, this would have been Cottrell's job. Two separate Niners sources, including York himself, told me this. Three times York dined alone with Cottrell -- breakfast, lunch and dinner -- and they didn't talk about the blue-plate specials. They discussed the nuts and bolts of the job: which coaches Cottrell would want to keep, how he'd fit in the strict front-office setup. "I really, really liked Ted Cottrell," said York, "and I think he's going to make a very good head coach in the league. And I'll tell anyone who asks me that. I will recommend him highly."

Emphasis above mine.

Posted 2/19/2003 10:24:42 AM by Edward Driscoll
MEDIA BIAS: According to Andrew Sullivan, when it comes to anti-war bias, the American media has nothing on the BBC, or as he's dubbed it, the Baghdad Broadcasting Corporation.

Posted 2/19/2003 09:55:59 AM by Edward Driscoll
YOU FOUGHT IN THE GRITS WAR? No, not really (although I've eaten them, and lived!). But England's Group Captain Mandrake, and Acidman of Georgia are slugging it out even as we speak.

Posted 2/19/2003 09:19:53 AM by Edward Driscoll
WE REPORT, YOU DECIDE: Those “who took to the streets opposing U.S. policy” this past weekend are a second “world superpower,” MSNBC reporter David Shuster asserted on Monday's Hardball:

Shuster, who provides a set up or background piece for the show each night, insisted: “The size of the demonstrators at least here, at least in Europe, seems to underscore, Chris, that there are now perhaps two world superpowers. There’s the United States and then there are those millions of people who took to the streets opposing U.S. policy.”

Well, that's one take. But Ken Layne, who actually bothered to add up the numbers, and compares them to the number of people who over the weekend ate at McDonalds or "paid about $8 each" to "support a blind lawyer superhero", decides:

to be a bit cruel, the protests attracted about as many people this weekend as the movie "Kangaroo Jack." I'm sorry, but it's true.

Orrin Judd adds:

We should hardly be surprised then that the Western Left--already buffeted by the collapse of communism and socialism as viable alternatives to capitalism, and reeling from the American people's ready acceptance of the idea that 9-11 and after represents a clash between good and evil--has poured into the streets to hysterically proclaim that it's all our own fault, that it's big oil, or fundamentalist Christians, or our arming of Saddam, or our support of the Afghan mujahadeen, or our support of Zionism, or whatever...that has "caused" the conflict. The Left believes it can control the world, can reshape humans, and can create a utopia. Such a dream must die hard and we can't expect its death throes to look pretty. Were they not abetting evil, it might even be possible to pity these folk.

I dunno--I feel a bit of pity for the folks who had to march downwind of this pair. (Or is it a foursome?)

Posted 2/18/2003 07:12:46 PM by Edward Driscoll
BACK IN CALIFORNIA: Thanks to the perfidy of Mother Nature, my wife and I spent an extended weekend in Washington, DC, holed up in a Marriott while 24 inches or so of snow were dumped onto us. We managed to get out via Dulles this morning, and are now safely back in San Jose. More to come!