The Tempest

Speak•ing Prop´er•ly

2007-10-04T14:58:00.000-04:00

Let me aks you a question. What? You’ve never heard of “aks”? Well, if you haven’t noticed, it’s the new way to pronounce the word “ask.” From what I can tell, the mispronunciation of ask isn’t the only casualty of the Americanized English language.

...Here are a few things on which we need to work in an effort to at least pretend that we know how to speak correctly. If we can’t even master these, is it really worth worrying about the whole English versus Spanish debate?

• The word ignorant means lacking education or awareness of something. It’s not a catch-all description that can be applied to something that one doesn’t like, even though it’s become popular to do so.

...I recently saw a news story on television in which a woman referred to a disease as being “ignorant.” I’m not sure how a disease can be ignorant, but if this lady is able to communicate with diseases on a higher intellectual plane, more power to her.

• The term surreal is an adjective describing a twentieth century literary and artistic movement which expresses the workings of the subconscious via trippy images. Surreal is not a synonym for the term unreal.

• Apostrophes are not added to any and every word ending with the letter S. Apostrophes are used to show possession and in contractions.

• Their, they’re, and there are not interchangeable, nor are you’re and your.

• The word of is not interchangeable with the word have in phrases like should have, would have, and could have. To say should of, would of, and could of doesn’t even make any sense.

• Finally, I’ve saved my biggest language peeve for last.

...The correct phrase is “couldn’t care less”—not “could care less.” It’s unfortunate, but this new phrase of “could care less” has spread like wildfire, from daily conversation to song titles. I even discovered it not once but twice in a so-called professional journal a few weeks ago.

...Think about it: If you could care less, why would you mention it to anyone? To say that you couldn’t care less means that you can’t possibly care any less than you currently do.

...Now I’m wondering how many people are thinking that they could care less about an ignorant person like me. There sitting their at they’re computer’s pondering such a surreal thought.

So That’s Why the Ball is White!

2007-07-05T12:50:00.000-04:00

Play Ball
A little over a year ago I wrote a piece on another blog with a similar title to this one, in which I commented on an Associated Press story dealing with the ongoing decline of black participation in professional baseball. Over the last 12 months, even more debate and discussion (both of which are very good things, I might add) have developed in regard to the issue, but as with anything else that pertains to issues of ethnicity, so too did this.

…Just before the start of the 2007 regular Major League Baseball season began, a season which marked the 60th anniversary of Jackie Robinson’s debut in the league, the St. Louis Cardinals and Cleveland Indians squared off in the Civil Rights Game.* The topic of present-day black participation in the game was front and center and the question on everyone’s lips was: “What would Jackie think of it?”

…Near the same time, Richard Lapchick, director of the University of Central Florida’s Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport, gained notoriety after releasing his study on diversity in professional baseball, in which he gave a “solid B+” for ethnic diversity and a “C+” for gender. The gender grade appears to stem from the following statistics, as taken from the official report entitled The 2006 Racial and Gender Report Card: Major League Baseball: 43 percent of MLB’s Central Office were women; 26 percent of the senior administration level were women; 33 percent at the director and managerial level were women; and 15 percent of team vice-presidents were women.*

…As for the ethnic demographics in Major League Baseball, the number of black players has obviously dropped over the last 30 years: in 1975, approximately 27 percent of MLB rosters were black; in 1995, approximately 19 percent of MLB rosters were black; in 2006, the percentage was approximately 8.4 percent.* (I use the word “approximately” due to player transactions that weren’t mentioned in any of the stories about the study. Similar to NHL rosters, players are signed, released, promoted, and demoted throughout the year, meaning that one set number can’t possibly be 100 percent accurate to describe the rosters in September that we might have had in April. Even so, I’m confident that Lapchick’s numbers are valid.)

…In April, San Diego Union-Tribune staff writer Chris Jenkins decried the lack of ethnic diversity on the 2007 Padres roster in his column entitled “Padres: The Face of San Diego?” In it, he mentioned that only two players on the team were Latino and two were black, whereas a year ago the Padres were a “more multishaded bunch” with Mike Cameron, Dave Roberts, Josh Barfield, Chan Ho Park, Adrian Gonzalez, and Vinny Castilla.*

…A few weeks ago the issue came into the spotlight again when Tigers designated hitter Gary Sheffield made the following quote in GQ magazine as to why there are so many Latino players in the game and so few blacks:

I called it years ago. What I called is that you’re going to see more black faces, but there ain’t no English going to be coming out.

[…]

[It’s about] being able to tell [Latin players] what to do—being able to control them.

Where I’m from, you can’t control us. You might get a guy to do it that way for a while because he wants to benefit, but in the end, he is going to go back to being who he is. And that’s a person that you’re going to talk to with respect, you’re going to talk to like a man.

These are the things my race demands. So, if you’re equally good as this Latin player, guess who’s going to get sent home? I know a lot of players that are home now can outplay a lot of these guys.*

…Sheffield’s comments didn’t go unnoticed. Former teammate Eddie Perez remarked that Sheffield’s statement would “hurt a lot of people.” Lisa Navarrete of the Latino organization La Raza said that Sheffield “resorts to the stereotyping that he himself is trying to fight.” Jemele Hill points out that Sheffield appears to be doing what he’s told to do given that he’s on Detroit’s payroll, possibly defeating his own argument.*

…In Sheffield’s defense it can be argued that if Latino players are “controllable” that it might be economic more than anything else. The New York Daily News reported that White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen said: “I guarantee that Latin American people play more baseball than any people, because that’s all we have. You have people playing baseball in Venezuela or the Dominican than anywhere, so there are going to be more players from there.”*

…Whether we talk about drafts, signing bonuses, or the prospect of having to return to a poverty-stricken environment if they don’t play well, Latino players need money more but can be paid less. It’s easier—and cheaper—to travel to third-world nations and pick from a pool of players who have an abundance of talent and don’t ask for much in return. Guillen stated:

Maybe we’re hungrier. We’re trying to survive. Those guys sign for $500,000 or $1 million and they’re made. We have a couple of dollars. You can sign one African-American player for the price of 30 Latin players.*

…Keeping with this argument, though, we could easily say that foreign-born Latinos should be the only ethnicity in Major League Baseball. That is, of course, unless there’s a bigger conspiracy present—one in which owners have decided to offer a few good white, black, Latino, and Asian players to draw crowds, and then dozens more “filler” Latinos who are there to simply keep the rosters full and costs down. I’m not ready to buy into a conspiracy of that magnitude.

…More recently, Dennis Hayes, the interim president of the NAACP, aired his displeasure with Major League Baseball and KPMG over their efforts to increase the number of black players in the game. KPMG, a global group of firms in the financial sector which has a multi-year agreement with MLB to encourage youth participation in baseball and softball, made a $1 million donation to Major League Baseball, which was called a “small step” by Hayes. He went on to say:

I hope that MLB will start listening to current and former African-American baseball players about their disappointment in the dwindling number of young blacks who are being coached and trained to enter the game that they love. They believe, just like the NAACP believes, that if we don’t do something now, African-American players will become extinct when it comes to Major League Baseball.

…Hayes also said that he “watched with amazement at how funding for baseball programs has found its way to the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico and other countries.”*

Questioning the Answers
This topic has me asking a few questions which could be posed both independently or as a group:

(1) What is the “right” number for each ethnicity in Major League Baseball and who is in charge of determining this number?

(2) Are all major professional sports intended to follow these demographic percentages, or only select ones?

(3) Are professional sports teams supposed to be determined by the best available players or are they supposed to be a collection of players who represent the national demographics in an effort to make a social statement?

(4) Considering that only approximately nine percent of college baseball players are black, should teams be forced to pick every black player who is available in the draft—even if a particular player might not be as good as another available player who might be white, Asian, or an American-born Latino?

(5) If the argument is made that professional sports teams should mirror the ethnic demographics of its home country, how many people would actually attend the events, whereby keeping the league afloat via ticket sales, clothing sales, television contracts, etc.?

…Question (1) is assuming that there exists some pre-determined percentage for each ethnicity in Major League Baseball. If one would be implemented, who would determine it? Would it be determined by Major League Baseball? Would it be determined by the NAACP? Would it be determined by a Latino organization? Would it be determined by an Asian organization? Would it be determined by some kind of panel comprised of all of these? Would it be fair or unfair if the panel excluded representatives for white players? Would players be allowed to pick their ethnic affiliations if they happen to be of a multi-ethnic background, or would the powers-that-be make the final decision? Finally, how would this number be determined? Is it supposed to be a mirror of U.S. Census data or something else?

…Question (2) pertains to the NHL, NFL, and NBA. Richard Lapchick’s The 2006-07 Season Racial and Gender Report Card: National Basketball Association reports that in the NBA, “almost 79 percent of the players were people of color.”* The African-American Registry reports that “67 percent of all players in the NFL are black.”* Lapchick’s report on the NHL is said to be in the works, but most National Hockey League players are white, predominantly coming from European countries and Canada (a country which has a black population of roughly two percent). The current United States contribution to the NHL is said to be roughly 15 percent.*

…Given these percentages, what are we to do? If we decide that each league should mirror the national percentages of ethnicity, do we force some of the black players to leave the NBA and NFL and replace them with whites? Do we mandate some kind of “mass trade” in which we force some black players to join the NHL and whites into the NFL and NBA in an effort to achieve a representation of the nation?

…Questions (3), (4), and (5) deal with the entire concept of sports in general, and they’re intended to be more “real-world” in nature than the first two questions.

…Sports, whether they’re on a scholastic, amateur, or professional level, are based on one thing: competition. Athletics draw players and fans because people like to win. This is unsettling to some people, but it remains true.

…The columnists who lament the lack of ethnic diversity in professional baseball seem to preach a common theme: they always focus on the social message that might be conveyed if the teams mirror the ethnic demographics of the country and avoid the issue of competition altogether.

…Take the aforementioned column by Chris Jenkins, for example. He mentions that guys like Eric Young, Vinny Castilla, Ben Johnson, and Chan Ho Park helped to make San Diego’s 2006 team “a more multishaded bunch” and doesn’t seem to be too happy with their departures, but he doesn’t mention anything about the players’ ability—or their status. He didn’t mention that both Young and Castilla retired after last season or that Johnson and Park are both currently in the minor leagues. Park was released by the Mets after posting an ERA of 15.75 and is playing for Houston’s triple-A team; Johnson was batting .185 for the Mets and is currently at triple-A New Orleans.

…I’m only speaking for myself, but when I watch a game—whether it’s baseball, hockey, or any other sport—I do so because I want to watch the competition aspect of it. If I’m watching a Cardinals game, I’m doing so because I want to see the Cardinals win (which hasn’t been as often as I’d like this season, but that’s a post unto itself). I don’t watch games because I want to see which team is making a stronger social statement with the diversity of their roster. I’m willing to bet that other sports fans view it in a similar manner.

…How many people do you know who have tailored their fantasy teams around ethnic diversity? How many times have you been to a tailgating party where the fans were more concerned with the social statement that their team would be making that day instead of how many touchdowns would be scored?

…I ask these questions because they seem to be ignored by those who are consumed with the ethnic-percentage angle of sports. They fail to realize that these leagues exist because fans are willing to spend money on things like tickets and clothing, in addition to television networks being willing to sign contracts to televise them. These consumers are following the sports to witness the competitive aspect of the games. I’m going to go out on a limb and predict that if we were to make a demographically-representative league, one which would cast aside competition and replace it with political correctness, that it would fail miserably.

Conclusion
I can imagine that there are some radical factions of our nation that might view the opinions expressed here as being racist, simply because even questioning ethnic demographics is a hot-button issue. The best way for me to defend my position is to say it honestly: I don’t give a damn what a player’s ethnic background is as long as he can contribute to the team’s victory. If a team is predominantly Latino, so be it. If a team is predominantly white, so be it. If a team is predominantly black, so be it. If a team is predominantly Asian, so be it.

…In addition, when it comes to a particular sport, I would encourage everyone to become a fan. Moreover, if a young person shows a desire to play a particular sport, encourage them to get involved; it doesn’t matter if a person is white, black, yellow, red, purple, blue, or orange.

Weed & Speed

2007-07-04T19:27:00.000-04:00

Al Gore III was arrested again, this time for going 100 miles per hour and possessing marijuana, Valium, Vicadin, Xanax, and Adderall. Young Gore didn’t have a prescription for any of the pharmaceuticals that were found.

...There was good news to come out of the story, however. Even though he was posing a threat to public safety, he was helping the Earth by driving an environmentally-friendly Toyota Prius.

...There’s no word yet on whether or not carbon credits can be used as his bail.

Reference
• ABC News

When Moore Isn’t Merrier

2007-07-02T16:56:00.000-04:00

Yesterday I received an e-mail from my best friend, in which he asked, “Did you hear about the lawsuit against Michael Moore?” I wasn’t positive as to what suit he was referring, however, and my initial thought was the one brought against the portly pseudo-documentary maker by the soldier who claimed that his comments were used out of context in Fahrenheit 9/11. That suit, incidentally, was thrown out a few months ago.

…What my friend had heard about was the possible investigation against Moore and the 9/11 workers who accompanied him to Cuba to find medical care for their ailments in Moore’s new movie Sicko by the Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, given the embargo with the land of Castro. (For the record, you can count me as one person who would support an end to the embargo; if anything, it has helped Castro more than hurt him. His biggest worries in the last few decades seem to have been heart and intestinal problems.)

…Anyway, this topic led to me drafting a lengthy e-mail explaining why I’ve come to view Moore as nothing more than an entertainer who has managed to garner a legion of brainwashed zombies by manipulating facts at best and inventing them at worst—essentially the left’s version of George W. Bush (although please don’t think that I’m suggesting that Moore has led us into a war) who did similar things to justify invading Iraq.

…In short, I’ve come to view Moore as nothing more than a masterful propagandist with a legion of loyal, feeble-minded followers because, like Bush, Cheney, Rove, et al., his philosophy is identical: lie if it’ll help get your message across. It’s akin to hearing millions of Bush supporters chanting, “We need to bomb Iraq to avenge the 9/11 attacks!” Never mind that Osama bin Laden guy.

The Movies
I’ve watched Roger & Me, Bowling for Columbine, and Fahrenheit 9/11, and each has had too many falsehoods and illogical connections for me to view them as serious documentaries. My skepticism began after learning that many of the folks who were part of the eviction sequence in Roger & Me didn’t actually have any ties with General Motors whatsoever—even though the viewer is led to believe that each was losing their home because of GM’s downsizing. To be sure, the people were, indeed, being evicted; unfortunately the viewer wasn’t informed that they would have been evicted even if GM hadn’t carried out any layoffs.

…I would come to learn that the eviction scene wasn’t the only manipulated aspect of this film. I came across an article from the New Yorker’s Pauline Kael that was published after Roger & Me’s popularity began to grow. Kael wrote:

I had stopped believing what Moore was saying very early; he was just too glib. Later, when he told us about the tourist schemes, I began to feel I was watching a film version of the thirties best-seller A Short Introduction to the History of Human Stupidity, and I began to wonder how so much of what was being reported had actually taken place in the two and a half years of shooting the film. So I wasn’t surprised when I read Harlan Jacobson’s article in the November-December, 1989, Film Comment and learned that Moore had compressed the events of many years and fiddled with the time sequence. For example, the eleven plant closings announced in 1986 were in four states; the thirty thousand jobs were lost in Flint over a period of a dozen years; and the tourist attractions were constructed and failed well before the 1986 shutdowns that they are said to be a response to. Or let’s take a smaller example of Moore at play. We’re told that Ronald Reagan visited the devastated city, and we hear about what we assume is the President’s response to the crisis. He had a pizza with twelve unemployed workers and advised them to move to Texas; we’re told that during lunch the cash register was lifted from the pizza parlor. That’s good for a few more laughs. But Reagan visited the city in 1980, when he wasn’t yet President—he was a candidate. And the cash register had been taken two days earlier.*

…Interested in finding Moore’s rebuttal to these discoveries, I found little more than “it’s all a lie.” In a 1998 Newsweek interview with Andrea C. Basora, Moore says that when it comes to Kael, everything is “personal” and that Kael lied because he didn’t send her a tape of Roger & Me.* In 2000, Moore called Kael “a deadly serious historical revisionist” and said that articles in the Sacramento Bee and St. Petersburg Times support his side of the issue.* (I’m not suggesting that these articles don’t exist, but for the record I have yet to find either.)

…In an interview with the aforementioned Jacobson, Moore stated:

The movie is essentially what has happened to this town during the 1980s. I wasn’t filming in 1982…so everything that happened, happened. As far as I’m concerned, a period of seven or eight years…is pretty immediate and pretty devastating…I think it’s a document about a town that died in the 1980s, and this is what happened…What would you rather have me do? Should I have maybe begun the movie with a Roger Smith or GM announcement of 1979 or 1980 for the first round of layoffs that devastated the town, which then led to starting these projects, after which maybe things pick up a little bit in the mid ‘80s, and then BOOM—in ‘86 there’s another announcement, and then tell that whole story?...Then it’s a three hour movie. It’s a movie, you know; you can’t do everything. I was true to what happened. Everything that happened in the movie happened. It happened in the same order that it happened throughout the ‘80s. If you want to nit-pick on some of those specific things, fine.*

…Apparently nit-picking is bad. (The ellipses in the above quote were added by Richard Palmer and/or Edward Champion, who maintain the Michael Moore FAQ page—not me.)

…When it came time to watch Bowling for Columbine, I did so with the same approach that I had when I tuned into the Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th movies: I prepared myself to be entertained—not informed.

…I was entertained and similar to Roger & Me, I would eventually learn that reality and fantasy were whatever you want them to be. My two favorite fabrications in Bowling for Columbine became the doctored Bush/Quayle advertisement* and the accusation that the Lockheed-Martin plant in Littleton, Colorado, produced “weapons of mass destruction” around the time of the Columbine attack. What kind of WMDs were produced there? Apparently the mentally-destructive kind: the plant made space launch vehicles for television and telecommunications satellites in the late-1990s. The latest date that I could find for anything related to ICBM production in Littleton was the mid-1980s and that was on an unattributed Wikipedia entry.*

…Perhaps Moore should have waited a few years to release Bowling for Columbine because he could have included footage of his bodyguard being investigated for having a gun at JFK airport that wasn’t licensed in New York.* (Then again, this story has taken on a life of its own, too. The bodyguard was said to have really been a “former Moore employee”—but not a “bodyguard” per se—who worked as a bodyguard for others, but not for Moore. Um…okay.)*

…After viewing Fahrenheit 9/11, I found myself scratching my head not because of the inaccuracies that were presented*, but simply because of the contradictory nature of the film: on one hand we see that George W. Bush is the world’s biggest moron (a notion with which I agree), but on the other hand we are supposed to wonder if he might be genius enough to have pulled off a 9/11 conspiracy. The nature of a jump like this reminded me of a scene in the 9/11 conspiracy theory flick Loose Change, in which we are told that witnesses at the Pentagon who claimed to have seen a passenger jet fly over cannot be believed but a few seconds later we are told that we should believe the same witnesses when they also claimed to have seen a C-130 flying overhead during the attack.* Sorry, but this is like trying to argue that the Earth is both round and flat.

…I haven’t seen Sicko yet, but some of the reviews that I’ve read thus far make it apparent that it’s following in the footsteps of Moore’s other mockumentaries. Stephen Hunter of the Washington Post says that just when you think that you’re about to see something of substance make an appearance, Moore does an about-face in the name of humor and entertainment.*

…MTV’s Kurt Loder has provided a more in-depth review of the movie, one which might very well earn him a few death threats from Moore’s minions. In it Loder points out: Moore gushes over how wonderful Canada’s healthcare system is, but he fails to inform the viewer of how long the average patient must stay on waiting lists for both major and minor medical procedures; he fails to mention how many Canadians travel to the U.S. on a daily basis because they can receive faster care here; and he fails to mention that the quality medical care in Cuba shown in the movie is readily available only for non-Cubans and Cuban politicians who can easily pay for their procedures with cash—not the impoverished Cuban commoners.*

In Defense of Lies
The Internet is chock full of Moore apologists and they offer similar themes: his movies are entertaining; his movies are funny; his movies are riveting; his movies have an important message. Hence, truth be damned.

…The best way to illustrate these descriptions is via quotes from support for Moore’s approach to movie-making:

• From a fan who is offended that another Moore fan suggested that Fahrenheit 9/11 might have been “manipulative” and “unfair”: “How do you put it all in one film? Keep in mind that in making such a film, if you concentrate on only one or two misdeeds, and really get into the details necessary to do that you will have defeated your purpose in all likelihood. The movie will be too forensic and not many will be compelled to see it. You also have to make the movie funny.”* Thus, popularity trumps facts.

• From a customer review of Roger & Me on Amazon.com: “[I]f Moore strictly adhered to documentary ethics, would Roger & Me still have been the most successful documentary of its time?” He also states that “one problem Moore’s critics are overlooking is that they are lumping Roger & Me into the largely diverse and loosely defined genre known as ‘the documentary,’ as if all films showing real footage of real people and events should be held to the same standards.” Finally, he summarizes it best by saying: “Like fiction films, the documentary genre has become increasingly more complex and experimental[,] blurring the boundaries of its classification. Moore may have created a new sub-genre of documentary: one that combines [Bill] Nichol’s documentary modes in a heuristic visual essay where accurate historical representation is eclipsed by unbridled personal emotion.”*

…Documentaries are “loosely defined”? They’re “experimental”? Accurate historical representation is now eclipsed by unbridled personal emotion?

• A third and final description is more succinct but just as telling: “[Fahrenheit 9/11] holds the viewers’ interest from beginning to end. The film is entertaining in that the events on the screen did not appear to be ‘documentary’ in nature—rather they were riveting, much as a good suspense/action film unfolds before the viewer’s eyes. To ask oneself why this could be so reveals the layers upon which the film is built.”*

…Entertainment value becomes the most important concept.

What’s the Big Deal?
For me, Michael Moore has become no better than Bush, Cheney, Rove, Rumsfeld, et al. in the propaganda department. In an effort to win the hearts and minds of his audience, Moore has shown that misinformation is a valid weapon and should be used liberally (no pun intended). Who are the “good” guys if both the far-right and the far-left become masters of misinformation?

…Unfortunately, discussions on this topic don’t get very far because they quickly turn into a cesspool of rhetorical nonsense: if you criticize Bush it’s said that you’re a supporter of terrorism or that you’re unpatriotic; if you criticize Moore it’s said that you’re obviously a Bush supporter and you’re a war-monger.

…Using facts to bring BushCorp down shouldn’t be a problem; there are more than enough things against this administration to make Bill Clinton’s perjury case look like a strawberry social—and Slick Willy was actually impeached over it. Sadly, sensationalism for the sake of impact has become more popular and acceptable.

…As we’ve seen, though, this sensationalism is what has made both Michael Moore and George W. Bush as big as they are.

Conclusion
Make no mistake about it—my criticisms of Moore should not be in any way perceived as somehow being support for gun violence, George W. Bush, or any problems that we have with our healthcare system (and there are many). This, however, has become the usual retort of diehard Moore fans; if you question him, the theory seems to be, you must be supportive of the other side.

…Instead, my argument is that if you adopt your enemy’s tactics, how different from your enemy are you?

…While I’ve watched Moore’s previous movies, if I don’t get around to seeing Sicko it won’t bother me. Besides, I’m busy working on a script for an “experimental” documentary on the Civil War in which Napoleon and Robert E. Lee square off against Ulysses S. Grant and Gerald Ford after Napoleon and Lee bomb Pearl Harbor. In it, Lee and his Nazi forces are pitted against the Grant/Ford army in 1920s Nepal. When things look bleak, Grant whips out his cell phone and says, “Let’s roll.”

References
Due to the length of this post, asterisks have been placed in the appropriate locations to provide sources.

Fairwaves

2007-06-30T06:18:00.000-04:00

If you didn’t happen to catch Friday morning’s episode of C-SPAN’s Washington Journal, you might not have heard that those of us who support the First Amendment won a small victory recently.

…Passing by a vote of 309-115-1, the Pence-Hensarling-Flake Amendment (H.AMDT.484 [A031]) made it through the House of Representatives, giving free expression advocates a little more hope that government-mandated speech isn’t on the horizon.

…The amendment was attached to the Financial Services and General Government Appropriations Act of 2008 (H.R. 2829) and prohibits the Federal Communications Commission from using funding to impose the coercive Fairness Doctrine, which advocates claim will bolster “fairness” and “diversity” by requiring outlets such as talk radio stations to express certain political viewpoints against their will.

…The old version of the doctrine helped to all but eliminate political discourse on the radio dial because stations simply opted to avoid any controversy altogether instead of worrying about who said what and how often it might be said. Time reports that National Association of Broadcasters spokesman Dennis Wharton said of the Fairness Doctrine: “It actually inhibited free speech because broadcasters simply avoided covering controversial issues because they feared that the FCC might either fine them or revoke their licenses. It actually had the practical impact of chilling speech rather than enhancing it.”

…It was laid to rest in the 1980s by the FCC and pertained to radio and television, but given our technological advancements since then there has been concern that the Internet—and most notably blogs—would be added to the list of government-regulated speech if a twenty-first century version of the doctrine was drafted.

…Those of us who see the rule as the fascist (and I use that term in the true sense of fascism) mandate that it is will continue to argue in favor of the First Amendment and denounce the Fairness Doctrine. Supporters, some of whom called C-SPAN’s morning show on Friday and stumbled over almost every question that was posed to them by host Brian Lamb, apparently want fairness—even if it means violating the First Amendment . (Then again, we’ve already seen that unconstitutional mandates are popular with a large percentage of the U.S. population, so perhaps I shouldn’t be shocked.)

…That aside, a list of representatives who voted for and against free speech can be found below. Some of the prominent names who voted against the idea of not funding the implementation of the Fairness Doctrine: Conyers; DeFazio; DeLauro; Fattah; Frank; Hoyer; Jefferson; Kanjorski; Kucinich; Levin; Lewis; Lowey; McDermott; Murtha; Nadler; Rangel; Slaughter; Wasserman Schultz; and Wexler.

…In the transcript of the debate over the amendment, it’s interesting to see some of Dennis Kucinich’s (D-OH) comments pertaining to the matter: the doctrine will give us “productive public debate” (productive in the eyes of those calling the shots, of course) and will “need to restore accountability to those who use the publicly-owned airwaves” (again, accountable to whomever is in power at that moment). Kucinich concluded by saying that the Fairness Doctrine debate won’t happen while BushCorp is in the White House, but that “it may happen under a future administration.” Oh joy.

…We’ll have to see how the bill does in the Senate.

…For those who are unaware of what the First Amendment says about government-mandated speech, the text states: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

…For those who don’t like what they hear on a talk radio show (or television or the Internet, for that matter), turn off whatever it is and find something that you like. Don’t attempt to control what others say because you don’t like it or find it “unfair.”

References
• Financial Services and General Government Appropriations Act of 2008 (H.R. 2829)
• H.AMDT.484 (A031)
• Roll Call for H.AMDT.484
• Time
• Transcript of H.AMDT.484 Debate (scroll to middle for Kucinich quotes)

One Person’s Constitution is Another’s Racism

2007-06-30T01:54:00.000-04:00

In my last post, which dealt with the recent ruling by the Supreme Court which said that using skin color to determine student placement in public schools was unconstitutional, I had mentioned that what might make this decision so nationally divisive is that we have differing viewpoints on whether or not we should be able to enforce unconstitutional laws as long as those laws have good intentions behind them.

…In Thursday’s move by the Court, for instance, we could see that two views on constitutionality emerged: (1) a law is either constitutional or unconstitutional and if it’s unconstitutional it needs to be struck down; and (2) unconstitutional laws should exist as long as they send a socially-just message.

…In Meredith we found ourselves with a ruling that was boiled down to one thing: skin color cannot be used as a factor to determine which school a child attends. The ruling has not been popular, though, and the Internet is teeming with dissenting opinions that are in line with the second view on constitutionality mentioned above.

…The most applicable remark so far has been on The State of Opportunity (opportunityagenda.typepad.com), where Amanda Ogus illustrated my prediction that the term “racism” would be utilized to describe those of us who don’t think that skin color should be used to make decisions because such a move is unconstitutional: “[I]f we attempt to make policy on the assumption that the government is or should be colorblind, we ignore the existing health, wealth and society disparities, thus invoking a whole new form of racism.” Furthermore, she states: “So letting things ‘run their course’ now, and delaring [sic] that colorblind policies are best is premature, short-sighted an [sic] unlikely to proect [sic] our coutnry’s [sic] core value of ensuring opportunity for everyone.”

…I’m not using Ms. Ogus’s view as an example to single her out; I don’t know her from Eve and there are many other opinions in the blogosphere of a similar nature. I picked her comments because they provide the best example of my assertion that issues like race will never be agreed upon because we often disagree on how to handle laws related to them; in addition, we find it difficult to discuss racial issues because it has become common to hear words like “racism” and “racist” the moment that a disagreement arises—even if racism isn’t present.

…Sometimes we’re supposed to be colorblind; other times we’re supposed to pay attention to skin color and nothing else. Sometimes we’re supposed to oppose unconstitutional laws; other times we’re supposed to celebrate laws that are unconstitutional. As I had mentioned in the previous post, we need to make up our minds; we have to decide if we want consistent laws or if we want laws that apply to situations whenever we want them to. If we opt for the latter, are we prepared for the outcome that comes with such a double standard?

Reading, Writing, & Social Engineering

2007-06-29T17:21:00.000-04:00

Color ~~Blind~~ Bind
In the wake of the Supreme Court’s recent ruling in Meredith v. Jefferson County Board of Education, in which they ruled that using skin color to determine school placement for students was unconstitutional, a few items of importance have surfaced that are well worth mentioning.

…In last night’s “debate” of Democratic presidential candidates, Senator Hillary Clinton said of the Meredith ruling: “You can look at this decision today, which turned the clock back on the promise of Brown v. Board of Education, that was resting on the fact that children are better off if they are part of a diverse, integrated society.” Senator Clinton didn’t offer any scientific evidence to back this assertion on diversity, however; moreover, she has jumped aboard the bandwagon which says that the Meredith ruling is opposite that of the Brown ruling. But is it?

…On last night’s episode of Nightline, even Mattie Jones, a black grandmother in Louisville, has suggested that the social experiment of forced diversity based upon skin color has backfired. “We don’t have to sit next to a white person—our kids don’t—to be educated,” she said. Her final quote pertained to the state of her neighborhood following the busing requirement that bolstered diversity: “I used to sit on my porch to hear the laughter and the chatter; all we hear now is the noise of the buses.”

…I imagine that a few people are calling Mattie Jones a “sell-out” or similar, possibly viler, names. Some are probably sitting at their computer saying, “What? James Phillimore, how dare you not take the position of the minority Justices! You’re racist! You’re bigoted! You’re narrow-minded and ignorant! You’re fascist!” Such utterances might be emotionally gratifying, but they’re nonetheless lacking merit.

…Let’s consider, for a moment, the ruling in Brown v. Board of Education. The Brown ruling was supposed to overturn the absurd “separate but equal” doctrine that was put forth in Plessy v. Ferguson. In Brown we find: “Racial discrimination in public education is unconstitutional, 347 U.S. 483, 497, and all provisions of federal, state or local law requiring or permitting such discrimination must yield to this principle.”

…So, we find ourselves with a few questions that need to be asked: Why are those who claim to be opposed to using skin color to make determinations—in this case school populations—the same ones who are now opposed to the Meredith ruling, which says that using skin color to make determinations is unconstitutional? If we’re supposed to be a colorblind society, why are we supposed to simultaneously support the idea of using skin color to determine which child goes to which school? If anything, a person should either support both the Brown decision and the Meredith decision or oppose both. It’s contradictory to support one and oppose the other.

…NPR’s Juan Williams might have explained it best in a recent interview with Renee Montagne. He said:

Brown said that, in fact, separating children on the basis of their skin color—their race—was unconstitutional, a violation of their Fourteenth Amendment rights to equal treatment. So yesterday what you had was the majority saying that, according to the Brown decision, you shouldn’t judge children on the basis of their race and you shouldn’t assign them to schools on the basis of their race. The minority said that, wait a second—Brown was intended to remedy the damage done by legal segregation in this country and you’re now turning it on its head by suggesting that you can’t take those steps because of the need to have a colorblind Constitution.

…In a press release, the American Civil Liberties Union states:

The impact of the Court’s decision will be particularly striking in Louisville. In response to the city’s history of racial segregation, a judicial order that was in place 25 years authorized school officials to take race into account when making student assignments. After the judicial order expired, city officials continued that policy in modified form in the hope of avoiding the resegregation that plagues so many cities. Louisville’s effort has now been derailed by the Supreme Court.

…This paragraph from their press release is interesting on two points: (1) the ACLU has concluded that it’s “segregation” if a student goes to school in their own neighborhood; and (2) they openly support taking skin color into account for student assignments, even though such a move violates the Fourteenth Amendment. Moreover, the ACLU is apparently taking the position that upholding the Constitution is now a form of “derailment.”

…Perhaps this is where the controversy is found. One view is that it’s an either-or situation: Using skin color to make decisions is going to be either constitutional or unconstitutional; it can’t go both ways.

…The other viewpoint, in this case the one espoused by the minority Justices and folks who are decrying the Meredith ruling, is that we can use skin color to promote diversity in an effort to remedy the past injustice of segregation (real segregation—not the ACLU’s version of it), but that we must ban it in all other situations.

…The second viewpoint is basically saying that double standards are acceptable as long as we get what we want, in this case the possibility of a grand social engineering experiment.

The Benefits of Diversity
It might be disturbing to those who are lamenting the Meredith ruling, but evidence exists that actually calls into question the social value of diversity based on ethnicity.

…Robert Putnam, a political scientist at Harvard University, has authored Bowling Alone, in which he says that diversity in communities might in reality cause people “to withdraw even from close friends, to expect the worst from their community and its leaders, to volunteer less, give less to charity and work on community projects less often, to register to vote less, to agitate for social reform more, but have less faith that they can actually make a difference, and to huddle unhappily in front of the television.” Furthermore, as City Journal’s John Leo points out, Putnam even suggests that the data “may underestimate the real effect of diversity on social withdrawal.” (His emphasis.)

…Unfortunately, Putnam’s book has a dark side-note: he wasn’t happy with what he discovered and hesitated to release the results until he could find evidence that suggested something else.

…Leo continued: “Last October, [Putnam] told the Financial Times that ‘he had delayed publishing his research until he could develop proposals to compensate for the negative effects of diversity.’ He said it ‘would have been irresponsible to publish without that,’ a quote that should raise eyebrows.”

…I have to agree with Leo. The idea that a scholar might hesitate on releasing research data simply because he didn’t like what the data showed is disturbing to say the least. While it’s not as serious as the Michael Bellesiles incident from several years ago, it still makes one wonder if the world of academia is making a significant shift from objectivity to subjectivity.

Affirmed
Putnam’s desires aren’t the issue here; the rulings in Plessy, Brown, and Meredith are. As such, we need to ask ourselves if we’re for or against using skin color as the determining factor for public school populations. If we’re going to say that using skin color as a determining factor is a bad thing, as the Supreme Court rightly did in Brown, we should consistently defend that position by denouncing the Plessy decision and supporting the Meredith decision.

…If people are opposed to the Meredith decision but claim to support the Brown decision, we need to seriously question their view on using skin color as a determining factor for schools and their opinion of the Fourteenth Amendment in general. To suggest that skin color should be used in an effort to experiment with forced diversity to “remedy” the past injustice of segregation is contradictory to the Brown ruling. Like it or not, opposition to the Meredith ruling is opposition to a colorblind society.

References
• ABC News
• ACLU
• City Journal
• Cornell University Law School
• Nightline
• NPR

Mouth of the Beholder

2007-06-26T14:47:00.000-04:00

I haven’t written anything for The Tempest lately but given that the First Amendment and government regulation of speech is a major issue in my line of work, I’ve found myself becoming frustrated over the last few weeks over an issue that continues to have support: the unconstitutional Fairness Doctrine.

…It’s been in the news of late following a “report” issued by the Center for American Progress and the Free Press entitled The Structural Imbalance of Political Talk Radio, in which they state that “91 percent of the total weekday talk radio programming is conservative, and 9 percent is progressive.”

…This has opened the door for calls of government-regulation of talk radio to make the views expressed there “fairer” and “balanced.” On the blog This Modern World, Tom Tomorrow says that “it’s fun to listen to Hannity and Limbaugh desperately try to explain why ‘equal time’ = ‘censorship.’” Representatives Maurice Hinchey (D-NY) and Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), along with other members of Congress like Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), have also been supportive of bringing back the law that was overturned in the 1980s. When asked if she’d bring back the anti-First Amendment mandate, Feinstein said: “Well, I’m looking at it, as a matter of fact, Chris [Wallace, host of Fox News Sunday], because I think there ought to be an opportunity to present the other side. And unfortunately, talk radio is overwhelmingly one way.”

…As such we find ourselves with politicians and their supporters who are willing to call for legislation requiring certain viewpoints to be aired, all in the name of “fairness.”

…When I was preparing the rough draft of this post I found myself with several paragraphs explaining how government-regulated speech can never be “fair” because there’s nothing fair about having one’s First Amendment rights violated. Then I came to the realization that I’d be preaching to the choir. Those of us who recognize government-mandated speech as censorship will always do so because that is what it is; those who want to force others to say something against their will will continue to call such coercion “fairness.” It’s like trying to debate the Earth’s shape with someone who insists that the planet is flat.

…What this issue has done is helped me to see that segments of our populace—segments that can be represented by the aforementioned Tom Tomorrow—view coercion as a form of “fairness” as long as it helps to get their views promoted. They’ve concluded that if you’re not saying something that they want to hear—in this case viewpoints that are being proclaimed on talk radio—it in some way makes your First Amendment rights invalid. Mr. Tomorrow, for instance, views government-regulation of speech as “equal time” and doesn’t see it as being censorship because the doctrine is to his benefit.

…I’ll be the first to say that someone like Sean Hannity has the intellectual capacity of a first grader. I’ve listened to him on several occasions and can sum up his usual response when it appears as if he’s about to lose an argument: “You’re not a patriot. You’re not a real American.”

…We can find a similar lack of intellectual weight and logic in the argument that has been offered by supporters of the Fairness Doctrine. We could sum up their stance this way: “You’re not saying what I want to hear so I’m going to have the government tell you what to say.”

…Is there really any difference between these two?

References
• Center for American Progress
• This Modern World
• Fox News Sunday transcript

It’s Time to Make the News

2007-05-18T17:12:00.000-04:00

I
A few weeks ago I wrote a few paragraphs questioning the legitimacy of traditional media outlets (e.g., television news, print newspapers, print news magazines, etc.) when compared to newer outlets (e.g., blogs, Internet-only news outlets, etc.). The argument has been that the bigger outlets are “professional” when compared to amateurs with blogs and have more access to getting to the bottom of a story.

...Today during lunch I was discussing the state of television news with my friend ***** (I’m protecting his identity because I don’t want his reputation to be sullied if it should become known that he associates with me) and, given that his line of work is behind-the-scenes stuff for television production (i.e., video, sound, production assistant work, etc.) we found ourselves discussing the current state of television news: Is it information or infomercial? I made the argument that while the best description would be “infomercial,” we have to place the blame for it being this way on the consumers. After all, if more people were demanding informative, in-depth investigations on major stories, the networks would adjust their presentations to reflect this.

...Instead, the majority of television news viewers are tuning in to be entertained. They’re more interested in Paris Hilton’s jail sentence than the estimated 300,000 barrels per day that have disappeared over the last four years in Iraq.

...This isn’t anything new, though. As far back as the late-1800s the country had to deal with yellow journalism, in which the news was essentially invented. From journalists like Joseph Pulitzer to newspaper owners like William Randolph Hearst, we saw fiction pushed as fact in an effort to sell a few more papers.

II
I hadn’t planned on defending conservative radio blowhard Rush Limbaugh, considering that when I was posting on my old blog I lambasted him for railing against drug users while he himself was addicted to prescription pharmaceuticals, but I’m quite concerned when “professional” news services prove to be more amateurish than true amateurs.

...A few weeks ago, in what was either a sign of incompetence or intentional deceit, neither of which can be defended if one is passing oneself off as being “professional,” a television news station in California arrived late to the party and ran a story about a parody song entitled “Barack the Magic Negro” which was sung to the tune of Peter, Paul, and Mary’s “Puff the Magic Dragon” and was aired on Rush Limbaugh’s radio show. A news story on CBS 13 about the song was chock full of errors, including failure to explain the origins of the tune (which were comments made by Al Sharpton, Senator Joe Biden, and an L.A. Times column from David Ehrenstein using the term “Magic Negro”) and the use of a homemade video for the song found on YouTube that was presented as an officially-made video (in reality no officially-made video for the parody exists).

...Fast-forward to yesterday: The Houston Chronicle ran a piece from Andrew Guy, Jr. entitled “Is Limbaugh Above the Law?” in which he questions why Don Imus and other disc jockeys have been fired for racist remarks, but Limbaugh hasn’t for the “Barack the Magic Negro” parody. In the column, Guy ponders why there are no protests, prepared statements, press conferences, apologies, or even outrage from the public. He also perpetuates the CBS 13 error by referring to the homemade YouTube video as “Shanklin’s video” (Shanklin being Paul Shanklin, who wrote the lyrics to the parody).

...More humorous in the piece is Guy’s interview with Ehrenstein, whose column helped to inspire the parody in the first place. Ehrenstein says that he’s “not sure why no one else has really talked about it.” Perhaps it’s because the song was inspired by actual remarks by Ehrenstein?

III
As I had mentioned earlier, I don’t consider myself a follower or an apologist for Rush Limbaugh. I do, however, question why and how stories that could be easily investigated by major news outlets are falling prey to slipshod reporting and armchair journalism (i.e., if one outlet reports something—erroneous or otherwise—another outlet simply picks up the story and runs with it; if it’s sensational, it must be good).

...Moreover, keeping with the notion of ideology, I find myself wondering if ideology has become a determining factor in reporting, similar to the yellow journalism of the 1890s. While I don’t buy into the idea that there exists some kind of giant “liberal media” or “conservative media” conspiracy (I’m of the belief that people will find an enemy whenever they hear something that they don’t like—no matter if there is factual basis to the story or not), I do think that the possibility exists that some people are willing to misrepresent facts in an effort to promote their own beliefs. Several years ago author Michael Bellesiles showed us that you can actually garner support for fraud so long as your supporters believe that your overall message is a just one.

IV
In the end, it’s my firm belief that Limbaugh isn’t getting a free pass on this issue in the way that Guy suggests in his column, simply because a parody based upon actual remarks from politicians, so-called civil rights leaders, and newspaper columnists is vastly different than a stereotyped comment about looks à la Don Imus or a stereotyped prank phone call to a Chinese restaurant à la Jeff Vandergrift and Dan Lay.

...Had Al Sharpton never questioned Barack Obama’s blackness, the parody might be a true controversy. Had Joe Biden never called Obama “the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean,” the parody might be a true controversy. Had David Ehrenstein never written that “it’s clear that Obama also is running for an equally important unelected office, in the province of the popular imagination—the ‘Magic Negro,’” the parody might be a true controversy. Unfortunately for Guy, those things actually occurred.

...I’d sooner argue that the biggest controversy of this story is the willingness of a professional news outlet to hype a story and include inaccuracies in an effort to sensationalize something that wouldn’t otherwise be as sensational.

...Then again, as William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer showed us, sometimes you have to lie a little to sell a few more papers.

References
• Houston Chronicle (screenshot 1; screenshot 2)
• International Herald Tribune
• PBS

More Bipartisanship

2007-05-17T20:47:00.000-04:00

Does this make them Demopublicans or Republicrats?

Reference
• The Politico

The Right to Complain

2007-05-15T16:07:00.000-04:00

It’s primary election day in Pennsylvania and, since I refuse to register as either a Democrat or Republican, I won’t be visiting the polling station today. Yes, as a registered voter I could still have my say on our Act 1 property tax ballot question, but two things made me hesitate: (1) if I vote for it today—and if it passes—I’ll find myself fighting against it as soon as I retire; and (2) considering our legislature’s history of having problems with ethics—from 2005’s illegal pay raise to the PHEAA scandal and cover-up—there’s no guarantee that any of these politicians would actually implement “property tax relief” for anyone once they find themselves with millions of dollars with which to play.

...Yes, it’s frustrating to have a primary situation such as this, but it’s even more frustrating to hear the trite locution that usually accompanies any discussion pertaining to wretched ballot choices in the general elections: “If you don’t vote, you shouldn’t complain about the government.” On About.com’s “teen advice” page, Mike Hardcastle provides a good example:

If you don’t vote you really have no right to complain about government decisions you don’t like (no matter how much they actually suck).

OK, if there is one thing that is really annoying to us actual voters it is the endless ramblings on the bad political policy of a current government spewing from the mouths of eligible voters who never bothered to cast a ballot. If you don’t vote it is like saying you don't care how your country is run, so if you don’t care where do you get the idea that you can complain when something happens that you don’t like? If you don't vote you really have no right complaining about anything the government does and if your [sic] like most young people you like complaining and have it down to a fine art. Want the right to complain when TPTB (the powers that be) make a truly heinous decision? Then you must exercise your right to vote.

...It’s unfortunate to see widespread use of such a philosophy—especially on a Website that is supposedly “advising” young people—because when we analyze it, we can easily see that there’s no logic to such a statement. If anything, the concept is actually contradictory; if one is aware that it’s election day but one refuses to vote, it’s a sign that one is not satisfied with the choices. If one did vote, one wouldn’t—or rather shouldn’t—complain because one would be helping to promote the politician and governmental system in question. For instance, if Voter X casts a vote for Politician X, what logic would there be in Voter X complaining about Politician X being in office?

...In a November 2004 Reason piece entitled “Not Voting and Proud,” Brian Doherty expresses a similar view:

Defending non-voting in bars across this great land, I often hear the ultimate “shut up”—that if you don’t vote, you have no right to complain about politics or society. The reality is the exact opposite: By voting, you are playing a game whose rules are that the majority vote winner gets to control the reins of government, in all its unspeakable power. If you complain about the results of the game you chose to play, you’re just being a sore loser—or winner.

...The argument might then become this: Those who are dissatisfied should attempt to join the system and change it from within. I would agree; such an argument is quite valid but has alas been met with difficulties. Last year a three-judge panel of the Third Circuit Court of Appeals upheld Pennsylvania’s signature requirement for commonwealth-wide ballots: Republicans and Democrats need 2,000 signatures on their nominating petition; independents and third parties need 60,070 signatures. Aside from such a disparity, if such high numbers are required to simply be on the ballot, the issue is almost a moot point. After all, wouldn’t the majority have to be something other than Republican or Democrat and wouldn’t the issue quickly disappear?

...My purpose for writing this isn’t necessarily to change the two-party mentality which has permeated our country since the 1800s. To think that I could pull that off in a few blog posts would be unreasonable. Hell, I’m still surprised with how many votes H. Ross Perot received in 1992.

...My purpose for writing this is to defend a legitimate reason for voter abstention in general elections. Moreover, I’m defending abstainers’ “right” to complain when a politician does something that they find abhorrent. Suggesting that non-voters are simply apathetic or saying that critics of a particular candidate must first vote for that candidate in order to gain a right to complain (too bad that Justice Douglas didn’t get to find this one) is borne of a mentality that might win debates in bars or on playgrounds, but the argument doesn’t have any weight anywhere else.

References
• About.com
• Reason
• Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

Second Life Strife

2007-05-12T14:29:00.000-04:00

I have too much going on in real life to take time to play the virtual reality game Second Life. Others—several million—have joined, though, and as with other Internet-based trends (e.g., chat rooms and MySpace) it has developed a following among pedophiles. It wasn’t designed to be this way but whenever you have a large population you have a playground for predators.

...With that being the case, German police are investigating the site because some of Second Life’s “residents” have created images of virtual child porn. While the images in the game aren’t of real children, Germany has laws against child pornography in any form—even if the “victim” is nothing more than a manmade pixilated image on a monitor. The United States doesn’t have such a law, and it’s creating quite a debate—well…okay, not really a debate; more like lots of jumping to extremes, but this is America and that’s how Americans debate nowadays.

...In 1996, Congress passed the Child Pornography Prevention Act, which was said to be designed to help fight against the sexual exploitation of children, but the law’s language was severely broad and in 2002 the United States Supreme Court ruled in Ashcroft v. The Free Speech Coalition that virtual child pornography can’t be criminalized because no real-life child was abused.

...Critics of this ruling have said that virtual child pornography helps to encourage pedophiles and as such the potential for preventing a future crime should trump the existence of a real-life victim. (For a better look at the CPPA and Ashcroft v. The Free Speech Coalition, read Danielle Cisneros’s “‘Virtual Child’ Pornography on the Internet: A ‘Virtual’ Victim?” made available from the Duke Law & Technology Review.)

...The debate—and I use that term loosely—over this issue has increased in recent weeks as federal law enforcement officials have increased criticism of the Supreme Court ruling. An ABC News story reported that an FBI agent was “devastated” by it and that “[a]ll virtual porn does is satisfy [sic] them until they can find their next victim.”

...Comments left on threads pertaining to the story run the gamut, ranging from support for the Supreme Court ruling, citing the fact that “victims” aren’t real, to those who say that “[t]he whole internet should be shut down till this is sorted.” In between are those who refer to virtual child porn as a “gateway drug” and those who blame the whole thing on George W. Bush being in the White House. There are also a few who really aren’t sure what Second Life is but want it shut down anyway.

...Before I continue with my point of this post, I feel the need—in an effort to explain my position to those who quickly jump to conclusions—that I’m adamantly opposed to child pornography and child molestation of any type. I’d actually like to see laboratories use convicted child molesters in cosmetics and household products testing instead of innocent animals; not only would it give us a better idea of what it would do to humans but it would also spare the lives of innocent animals.

...With that out of the way, the point of this post is this: For those who are supportive of criminalizing virtual child pornography, you have to be aware that you’re opening the floodgates for the criminalization of many more fictionalized criminal acts. If we determine that a crime is a crime, no matter if it’s a pixilated image on your computer screen or on the corner of your block outside your door, we have to be ready to criminalize many more things that are currently accepted as being “just make-believe.”

...For instance, games like the Grand Theft Auto series and even the Medal of Honor series will have the potential for being outlawed. This is because in these games—as well as others, but I’m using these as popular examples—the user has the ability to kill. While the “killing” is nothing more than virtual killing, we’ll have already established a precedent saying that there is no difference between the two. Did you run down a pimp in Grand Theft Auto III? If so, and if we apply the concept that virtual crime is akin to real-life crime, we’ll have no choice but to charge the user with murder. Did you play a Medal of Honor game and kill a Nazi? If so, your intentions might have been noble, but you still committed murder and as such will need to be charged.

...We shouldn’t, however, stop there. If we establish that fictionalized crime is still crime, we have the possibility of investigating charges against those in the movie industry, too. Did Robert Englund really kill dozens of people in the Nightmare on Elm Street movies? No, but it wouldn’t matter because we could argue that it had been established that fictionalized crime was equal to real-life crime.

...What about Murder-Mystery Weekends? The argument easily could be made that while a real murder hasn’t been committed, the act could still be punishable because fictionalized crime is still crime.

...In an effort to defend myself from those who quickly misinterpret things, I must reiterate that this post isn’t to defend virtual child pornography. I’d be more than happy to see those who look at virtual child porn removed from our society (having seen no scientific evidence to suggest otherwise, I’m a firm believer that child molesters can’t be rehabilitated). This is why I applaud Linden Lab, which created Second Life, for being willing to remove the user-introduced child porn—virtual or otherwise—from their site. Their blog states: “Linden Lab has absolutely zero tolerance for depictions of child pornography within Second Life.”

...The purpose of this post is to remind those who oppose the 2002 Supreme Court ruling—from those in law enforcement to soccer moms and dads—that while your intentions are more than noble, you’re failing to consider the consequences of criminalizing depictions of crime. Even if you want it to begin and end with virtual child pornography, it doesn’t mean that it must.

References
• ABC News
• ABC News (comment thread)
• BBC News
• Duke Law & Technology Review
• Second Life blog
• Topix.net (comment thread)

That’s Hot Pathetic

2007-05-08T21:28:00.000-04:00

I’m happy to report that my life isn’t so mundane that the only thing keeping me going on a daily basis is reading about what Paris Hilton is doing on a daily basis.

...I’m referring to a letter sent to California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger by a Hilton fan named Joshua, who, hoping to persuade the Governator to pardon Hilton from her pending 45-day stay in the pokey, wrote: “She provides hope for young people all over the U.S. and the world. She provides beauty and excitement to (most of) our otherwise mundane lives.”

...Paris Hilton gives young people hope?! Hope to do what? Oh—right; she gives others hope that they can be beautiful and exciting by doing whatever she actually does.

...Since I’m the nice guy that I am, I’ve decided to translate this post for Paris Hilton’s fans:

...im hapy 2 report dat mi lif isnt so mundan dat da unly ting dat keep me goin on a daley basis is reeding bout wat paris b doin.

...wat hope b paris givin? gotcha. she b givin da hope a doin wat she do.

Reference
▪ Paris Hilton’s MySpace Blog

Changing of the Guard

2007-05-07T18:41:00.000-04:00

Over the last few years, the possibility of the “alternative media” (read: blogs) becoming rivals to the traditional mainstream media has been discussed quite a bit. Given some of the incidents from the traditional media over the last few months, I’m thinking that blogs should be considered legitimate rivals. Consider these:

...A little over a month ago, ESPN Radio’s Colin Cowherd, who ironically stole material from blogs last year and passed it off as his own on his show, felt threatened by bloggers so much that he urged his listeners to visit a sports blog called “The Big Lead” en masse, thus crashing its server for two days.

...Not surprisingly, Boston Globe columnist Dan Shaughnessy illustrated similar childishness and suggested in a March 25, 2007, column that bloggers are just Star Trek and comic book addicts who live in their mother’s basement, eating Domino’s pizza and “living the dream.” If Shaughnessy views bloggers as being insignificant cellar dwellers, why would he feel the need to dedicate an entire column to bashing them? It reminds me of people who say that teaching is the world’s cushiest job, but they themselves won’t enter such a “cushy” field.

...These are just examples of people in traditional media fields who are facing the threat of the twenty-first century. Unfortunately, some other traditional media outlets have simply made us wonder if they’re willing to change news stories in a concerted effort to make things more sensational than they really are. Two recent cases can be used as examples:

Don’t Bee Fooled
The issue of colony collapse disorder (CCD) has been gaining attention over the last few weeks, and rightly so. Bees are disappearing in large numbers all over the globe but scientists don’t know why. The world’s food production could be affected because bee pollination plays a major role in fruit and vegetable growth.

...A German scientist, Stefan Kimmel, suggested that cell phone waves might have something to do with the bee disappearance but that his small study shouldn’t be generalized to the world’s bee population as a whole. No matter; headlines like “Are Mobile Phones Wiping Out Our Bees?” accompanied by lines such as “Scientists claim radiation from handsets are to blame for mysterious ‘colony collapse’ of bees” quickly spread like wildfire.

...In addition, this story spawned a hoax about Einstein saying that if bees disappeared from the Earth, humans could survive for only four years. Einstein researcher Alice Calaprice, who has authored six books on Einstein, has said that she’s never come across his views on bee pollination and human survival. Moreover, Jeff Pettis of the U.S. Department of Agriculture pointed out that the four-year survival theory is scientifically incorrect because some food—enough to survive—comes from wind-driven pollination.

Pulling a Video from Your Hat
More recently, a television news station, CBS 13 in Sacramento, highlighted a parody song called “Barack the Magic Negro” that first aired on the radio show of conservative blowhard and noted prescription drug aficionado Rush Limbaugh. The song was to the tune of “Puff the Magic Dragon” and was inspired by comments from liberals who are questioning Senator Barack Obama’s “blackness.”

...Democrat Joe Biden said of Obama, “I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean, that’s a storybook, man.” Obama correctly called Biden’s comment “historically inaccurate.” Biden later took the usual route and said that his comment was taken out of context.

...We shouldn’t be surprised, though, because Biden is no stranger to making ethnically-stereotyped comments. With regard to Indian-Americans in his home state of Delaware, Biden once said, “You cannot go to a 7-Eleven or Dunkin’ Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent. I’m not joking.” (Click here to see the video and read comments left by his supporters. It’s proof that conservatives don’t have a monopoly on stereotyping.)

...In addition to that remark, Limbaugh’s parody song also took remarks from Los Angeles Times columnist David Ehrenstein, who referred to Obama as “the Magic Negro”—a reference to “a cultural figure who emerged in the wake of Brown v. Board of Education” who “has no past” but “simply appears one day to help the white protagonist.”

...Anyway, the story behind the parody song wasn’t sensational enough for CBS 13—or were they just ignorant to it?—and they posted a homemade video found on YouTube to accompany the song, thus making it look as if it were a shocking official video from the Limbaugh camp.

Equality
Due to so many incidents of questionable content (the aforementioned examples are the most recent ones; going back a few more years we could include bigger stories like Newsweek’s fictional Koran-flushing incident and the New York Times incident in which Jayson Blair was caught plagiarizing and fabricating information), we need to ask if we’ve finally reached the point where the “alternative media” or the “new media” is now equal to the traditional media in terms of information, intelligence, and creativity.

...Judging by some of the blogs on the Internet and comparing them to “official” media outlets, I’d say “yes” without hesitation.

References
▪ NPR
▪ Boston Globe
▪ The Independent
▪ Seattle Times
▪ Penn State University
▪ CNN
▪ CBS 13
▪ Los Angeles Times
▪ Washington Post
▪ New York Times

Updated Section:
With regard to the parody on Limbaugh’s show, I forgot to add Al Sharpton’s comments, whose voice is impersonated on the song. In March, Sharpton criticized Obama and asked, “Why shouldn’t the black community ask questions? Are we now being told, ‘You all just shut up’?” An unnamed black Democratic activist was then quoted as saying, “It’s driving Al crazy that Obama is as impressive and popular as he is, and he’s not happy about it.” (Chicago Sun-Times)

Wikiology

2007-05-06T17:21:00.000-04:00

Because my job requires me to work with information and research, I find myself dealing with the issue of Wikipedia on a regular basis. It seems to be an ongoing debate among those within the education community: Of what value is Wikipedia in legitimate research?

...Some of my colleagues share my view that it’s not a legitimate academic resource, citing its history of entries that have not only been inaccurate, but legally libelous. Other colleagues take the opposite position and view it as being the best thing since sliced bread. What I’ve come to notice is that the sides involved have vastly different ways of defending their positions.

...Those of us who look at Wikipedia as being a pop culture Website for pseudo-scholars almost always point out the incidents which have left us with a sour taste in our mouths, namely the number of libelous entries, the questionable credentials of the “writers,” and the ease of creating the libelous entries. (In defense of Wikipedia, it’s been said that they’re making attempts to alleviate the third problem.)

...Fans of Wikipedia, however, appear to take the approach that has been used by those who defended alcohol prohibition during the 1920s and currently defend the war on drugs: The intentions are good, so let’s run with it. The outcome might be undesirable, but the concept is for the public good, so that trumps reality.

...Some go even further and question the accusations of inaccuracy (I highlighted the inaccuracies—which went far beyond basic errors and fell into the realm of libel, which is a crime—in this post, so I feel confident in my stance). A recent blog entry by Wesley Fryer on Techlearning.com is a good example. In it, he states, “Many people falsely perceive that WikiPedia is usually factually inaccurate.” Granted, the use of the word “usually” can suggest that, as a percentage, most of the time Wikipedia is accurate. Unfortunately, that could run from 51 percent to 99 percent; that’s too wide a range for a so-called legitimate research resource, in my humble opinion.

...Fryer also states: “To address and remedy these misconceptions, I know of no better approach than listing [sic] to Jimmy Wales, the founder of WikiPedia, discuss these and other issues in an April 2006 speech available on Fora.tv.”

...Aside from this being akin to telling critics of the Bush Administration that their misconceptions of Bush and Cheney can be remedied by listening to Karl Rove, the Fora.tv site offers evidence of my assertion, via a description by The Long Now Foundation, that Wikipedia’s concept is the most important aspect of its existence.

The free licensing of Wikipedia content means that it is free to copy, free to modify, free to redistribute, and free to redistribute in modified forms, with attribution links. This is in service to the Wikipedia vision “to create and distribute a free encyclopedia of the highest possible quality to every single person on the planet in their own language.” One byproduct is that Wikipedia’s success is helping shift the terms of the copyright debate, in a public-good direction[.]

...Shifting the terms of the copyright debate in a public-good direction? I’d venture to say that it’s not a good direction for those who actually took the time to do the research.

...Indeed, such a comment not only solidifies the view that intentions are key, but it goes one step further and makes me question the intentions altogether. Shifting the terms of the copyright debate will no doubt make those who oppose intellectual property rights salivate, but when the advancement of an ideology becomes a point of contention for defending a “research” resource, how legitimate can that resource be? Shouldn’t an encyclopedia be agenda-free?

...Moreover, the promotion of theft isn’t something that I’ll be supporting anytime soon; I’m not afraid to say that I support intellectual property rights. I like seeing credit given to those who create things, from books to movies to music to photographs to academic dissertations to news stories. If I use a story or image, I give full credit for it. Why? It’s because someone took the time and had the imagination to create it.

...There’s no doubt that this debate will be an ongoing one. My concern is how vastly different the three sides of the debate seem to be. One faction is critical of Wikipedia and cites examples of gross negligence (read: incidents of libel) as evidence. Yes, other encyclopedias have had errors, but they haven’t been illegal, such as accusing people of having played roles in assassinations or being drug addicts and wife beaters when no evidence exists to support the accusation.

...The second faction is supportive and likes the idea of the community coming together in the name of information as being the most important aspect of the site. Errors are to be expected and victims of libelous entries appear to be viewed as nothing more than collateral damage.

...The third faction is supportive but seems to be more radical than the second group, viewing the site as being an implement to wage war on intellectual property rights within the world of academia. Essentially, what’s yours is mine if I want to take it and use it however I see fit.

...You have my permission to adopt the viewpoints in this post and call them your own.

References
▪ Techlearning.com
▪ Fora.tv

Where There’s Smoke, There’s a Nanny State

2007-05-04T21:46:00.000-04:00

I’m a huge proponent of safety and personal security. I lock my doors and windows at home; I lock my truck when I’m not in it; I wear my seatbelt while driving; I don’t talk on a cell phone while driving; and I have two smoke detectors with the purchase of a third one imminent. If I rode a motorcycle, I’d wear a helmet.

...What I’m not a proponent of, however, is the incremental nanny state that is spreading across the land—all in an effort to save us from ourselves.

...Rush Township in Pennsylvania has recently passed an ordinance making it illegal for both apartments and privately-owned homes to be absent of smoke detectors. If you don’t have a smoke detector, you’ll be hit with a $300 fine. The move seems to have support from some locals, since it’s in the name of safety, after all. One resident called it a “fair idea” since it involves saving lives. The township’s supervisor said that officials won’t be “knocking on doors” to check if residents have the smoke detectors installed, but that “there are ways to enforce it.”

...I can envision school children being asked questions like, “Does your mommy and daddy have a smoke detector at home?” That aside, this seems to be another move to essentially save us from ourselves. Gone is the potential for residents to take the responsibility and install the smoke detectors on their own, and in its place is the idea that if you’re supposed to do something in the name of safety, your local government will just let you know by way of an ordinance.

...Such a situation would give credence to something that was said by Scottish history professor Alexander Fraser Tytler in his description of democracies:

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising them the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship.

...Those in a democracy follow a path:

From bondage to spiritual faith; from spiritual faith to great courage; from courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance; from abundance to selfishness; from selfishness to complacency; from complacency to apathy; from apathy to dependency; from dependency back again into bondage.

...While I’d sooner argue that as a nation we’re in the “selfishness to complacency” phase, we’re beginning to see dependency creeping in; motorcycle helmet laws and smoke detector laws are prime examples.

...“But James, but James,” you say, “these laws are being passed for safety.” Of course they are, but if we draft laws and ordinances that are designed to control personal responsibility—laws that have nothing to do with keeping Person A from harming Person B—we could quickly create the perfect nanny state. We could pass a law to prohibit eating too much junk food in one sitting; we could pass a law mandating what kind of clothing people wear in extreme temperatures; we could pass a law saying how loud a person can have their music volume if they’re wearing earpieces or headphones. Each law or ordinance could be easily defended by saying that it’s “for safety.”

...Then again, perhaps these laws are next. Perhaps my attempts at being absurd will eventually be adopted under the guise of personal safety.

References
▪ WNEP-TV

Strike Two

2007-05-04T13:07:00.000-04:00

Having been a St. Louis Cardinals fan since I was a kid, I was hoping that the news reports about pitcher Josh Hancock’s car crash wouldn’t be what they are. Now that they are, however, the question needs to be asked if there are problems within the St. Louis clubhouse which need to be addressed.

...A medical examiner’s report on Hancock’s death stated that his blood-alcohol level was 0.157 in addition to marijuana being found in his SUV. This comes only weeks after manager Tony La Russa was picked up for DUI in Florida during spring training after he was discovered passed-out at an intersection.

...I’m well aware of what the cry will be: “What happens in the clubhouse stays in the clubhouse.” I’d have no problem with that if it weren’t for the fact that neither of these recent incidents has occurred in the clubhouse; they’ve occurred on public roads.

...Whatever substance problems are running throughout the Cardinals clubhouse are now beginning to spill out into the street—literally. As such, it opens the door for public scrutiny and makes us wonder about not only what might be happening, but whether or not they’re taking steps to alleviate the problems. They’ve gone from being personal health issues to public safety issues.

References
▪ Yahoo! News (AP)
▪ SUV photo is © Associated Press

Spare Change

2007-05-03T14:30:00.000-04:00

The cost of the recent California tanker-truck inferno is currently said to be $14.3 million and rising.

...There’s no word yet if the guys who made the conspiracy theory classic Loose Change are investigating this incident, since they pushed the idea that fire can’t damage steel. If they need some help in forming a conspiracy theory for this, I’ll offer one:

...California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger had explosives planted on the freeway and the tanker crash was just a ruse because, as Loose Change showed us, metal would never lose its structural integrity in fire. In addition—in order to ensure the freeway’s collapse—Arnie had a missile fired at the overpass. Witnesses might suggest otherwise, but we can’t believe them because they’re part of the conspiracy.

...Schwarzenegger planned this incident because he’s planning on garnering more votes from union workers who will now get work in rebuilding the destroyed freeway.

...Maybe I’ll do my own documentary on this. I’ll call it Spare Change.

References
▪ San Jose Mercury News
▪ Freeway photo is © Associated Press

Today’s Share the Wealth Award

2007-05-02T13:45:00.000-04:00

Last year I conceived the idea of handing out the “Share the Wealth Award” for men who are lacking manliness and all-around testicular fortitude. It’s to be handed out whenever necessary and was inspired by a story about an Indian businessman who was born with not one but two penises. His fiancée didn’t like the idea of having two phalluses at her disposal, so she ordered him to have the extra one surgically removed.

...Today’s Share the Wealth Award goes to Roy Pearson, a Washington, D.C. judge who is suing a dry-cleaning establishment for $67 million after they lost his trousers. The pants are said to be worth $800, but his “mental suffering, inconvenience and discomfort” are worth much more.

...Pearson was actually offered $12,000 as compensation by the owners of the dry-cleaning shop, but he wanted more after calculating that his pain and suffering should be multiplied per day—$1,500 per day to be exact. It breaks down into $500,000 for emotional damages, $542,500 for legal fees (although Pearson is representing himself in court), and $15,000 for 10 years’ worth of weekend car rentals.

...Yes, Pearson wants the dry-cleaners to pay for his weekend car rentals, too.

...Pearson also tried to persuade other customers and even his neighbors into joining him in a class-action suit against the dry-cleaners, but it wasn’t allowed. Oh, and did I mention that the pants were eventually found? Yes, Pearson is suing for $67 million over a pair of lost pants that aren’t even lost.

...Thus, Judge Roy Pearson is today’s recipient of the Share the Wealth Award, because it’s quite obvious that he’s in desperate need of some manhood.

References
▪ ABC News

More War for Peace

2007-05-01T14:03:00.000-04:00

After having been on the face of the planet for quite a few years, I’ve found that I’m part of a minority of people who are willing to suggest that both liberals and conservatives are similar: both want their ideology to reign supreme and both are willing to use the same tactics to do so.

...I’m not necessarily as offended that both are willing to use similar techniques so much as I’m offended that neither side is willing to acknowledge how similar their extremes really are. Case in point: Rage Against the Machine.

...The influential punk band (and I use the term “punk” in a classic punk sense—not in a way that it eventually became known, like “pop punk” à la Blink 182, Sum 41, and the like) reunited recently for a concert at Coachcella and during the song “Wake Up” front-man Zach de la Rocha called for George W. Bush to be “tried, hung, and shot.”

...Now, don’t get me wrong. If something like that were to happen to W, I probably wouldn’t be shedding any tears—then again, we’d have Dick Cheney take over, so maybe I would. Anyhow, de la Rocha shows us a prime example of how the left is just as rabid as the right. You don’t hear him calling for diplomacy or talking things through in a civil manner, which is the image that the left is always trying to illustrate. This is similar to an incident last year in Australia in which Nobel Peace Prize winner Betty Williams proclaimed—to a group of grade-schoolers, no less—that she “would love to kill George Bush.”

...Let’s stop pretending and be honest by saying that both sides are full of hate, vitriol, and are willing to kill to see their views win the hearts and minds of the populace as a whole.

Reference
▪ Spinner

Mommy Dearest

2007-04-26T11:57:00.000-04:00

Keeping in step with my previous post, I found one more article for the “Illegal Activity Isn’t So Bad” file.

…A woman in Pennsylvania has been charged with the death of her 11-month-old son after she allegedly slept on top of him following a night of excessive alcohol consumption and marijuana smoking. According to police, she drank 10 beers, two Long Island iced teas, and topped it off with weed. She then went home, slept on top of the baby, and allegedly killed him. The recorded 911 call has her shouting, “My baby’s dead! I slept on my baby!”

…The part of this story that hit me was the comment made by the woman’s defense attorney, public defender Gregory Mousseau. Now, I completely understand that your defense lawyer’s job is to defend you. Comments that they make sometimes make me wonder if it’s defense or support for illegal behavior.

…Mousseau said, “This case is about criminalizing someone who sleeps with their child after they had a few too many drinks.”

…There’s nothing criminal about getting plastered, smoking weed, and then sleeping on your 11-month-old baby—even if the baby had lived? (Notice that Mousseau conveniently left out the weed-smoking part.)

…Maybe it’s time that I became a criminal. I’d have the support from Representative Luis Gutierrez from my previous post and if I found myself in trouble with the cops I’d have Gregory Mousseau taking care of me in court.

…Life is going to be sweet.

References
▪ The Morning Call

Your Papers, Please

2007-04-26T11:18:00.000-04:00

When it comes to Congressmen, usually we hear them preach the virtues of abiding by our nation’s laws and then we see them break them. Other times we just find ones who are openly in favor of illegal activity.

…Such is the case of United States Representative Luis Gutierrez of Illinois. After federal agents charged 22 people for operating a huge fake-ID business in Chicago, Gutierrez was outraged. It turned out that the fake-ID business was catering to illegal immigrants and shutting down an illegal business that provides fraudulent documents was “an outrage and completely excessive,” in Gutierrez’s words.

…He went on to describe the bust by saying: “It only served to frighten and intimidate a vulnerable community and to drive a wedge between law enforcement and immigrants.”

…I’m not in the business of public relations, but if Gutierrez thinks that he’s doing a service to the concept of immigration, he’s doing a crappy job. By suggesting that it’s an either-or situation—in this case you’re either on the side of the law or you’re on the side of illegal behavior—he’s not going to garner too much support for his cause.

…Oh…wait. I almost forgot that it has become more popular to support illegal immigration than it has to support legal immigration. Never mind.

References
▪ USA Today

Saving the Planet — One Asshole at a Time

2007-04-23T10:29:00.000-04:00

For the last 40 years or so the pro-choice movement has used the mantra “Keep the government out of my womb” (with the occasional “Keep the government out of my bedroom”). Now the U.S. populace as a whole might have a new mantra on the way: “Keep the government out of my anus.” (I would have used “Keep the government out of my bathroom” but the size of toilets is already regulated to help save water per flush; never mind that you can flush more than once per session.)

…Sheryl Crow wants the government to regulate how much toilet paper you use per bathroom visit, but it’s to help stop global warming, so you should support it. Crow and An Inconvenient Truth co-producer Laurie David are currently on their Stop Global Warming College Tour and Crow writes the following in her tour blog:

I propose a limitation be put on how many squares of toilet paper can be used in any one sitting. Now, I don't want to rob any law-abiding American of his or her God-given rights, but I think we are an industrious enough people that we can make it work with only one square per restroom visit, except, of course, on those pesky occasions where 2 to 3 could be required.

…I’m assuming that Crow takes herself seriously (I certainly don’t), so let’s humor her fascist views and ponder how the government could actually control how much toilet paper we use per visit to the porcelain throne. I’ve come up with two possible ways.

…The first way is to have every bathroom all across the country be installed with some kind of contraption that will hold the toilet paper and dispense your one square. Being good global warming soldiers, we’ll have to program each toilet paper distribution contraption to prevent people from going overboard each day in an attempt to hoard it to use all in one sitting. Thus, we’ll have no choice but to make it log when you make your visit to the water closet.

…The second possibility is more intrusive and more expensive. We’d have to form a Department of Toilet Paper Monitoring, which would be a cabinet-level department that would oversee the installation of cameras into each and every bathroom across the nation. Toilet Paper Monitoring Department workers would watch you pee and defecate while watching to make sure that you use no more than your allotted amount.

…I feel as if my IQ has dropped by just discussing this nonsense. The worst part is that Sheryl Crow is probably dead serious about this. No—wait; the worst part is that there are probably other Americans who are now going to push for government regulation of toilet paper use per bathroom visit in an effort to save the planet.

…This is what the global warming movement has become.

Reference
▪ The Washington Post (screenshot)

Wikiprophet

2007-04-20T23:18:00.000-04:00

In a recent interview with News24.com, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales predicts that MySpace will fail in a few years and that the popular social networking site “hurts” his eyes.

…The irony is that MySpace profiles probably have a better accuracy rating than Wikipedia entries.

References
▪ Israel News Agency
Joel Leyden provides an overview of falsehoods and libel that have come to make Wales’s site famous: the John Seigenthaler JFK assassination lie; Jimmy Wales’s personal alterations of Alan Dershowitz’s entry whereby he censored information (he used the term “protected”); Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg’s libel-ridden entry; the infamous Adam Curry podcasting entry; and the error-ridden entry on Harriet Tubman, which was highlighted by racial epithets.
▪ “The Great Failure of Wikipedia”
Jason Scott of Textfiles.com delivered this speech at Notacon 3 in Cleveland last year and covers the Ashida Kim incident, users’ dislike of people who are actually experts on given subjects, and discusses Wikipedia’s consensus-based decisions on who/what is worthy of an entry and who/what isn’t. The audio has been archived at The Internet Archive.
▪ The Village Voice
Rachel Aviv offers an interesting look at Wikipedia in her article “Mondo Wikipedia,” in which she points out that 2005’s biggest contributor was a high school student and entry writers can vie for a “General Awesomeness Barnstar” award.
▪ The Smoking Gun
Professional golfer Fuzzy Zoeller filed suit against Wikipedia after a libelous entry was posted. The entry stated that he was a wife beater, child abuser, alcoholic, and drug addict.
▪ USA Today
The most recent celebrity to be hit by the false reporting via Wikipedia was comedian Sinbad, who learned that he was dead. He looks good for a dead guy.
▪ The Telegraph
Last month it was discovered that one of Wikipedia’s editors, who claimed to have been a professor of religion with advanced degrees in theology and canon law, was actually a 24-year-old community college drop-out who held no advanced degrees in anything and was said to have edited 20,000 Wikipedia entries. (On his Wikipedia user page, the man states that he has “received an astounding amount of support.” I’m not shocked.)

Dead Man’s Curve

2007-04-20T13:53:00.000-04:00

David Brown from The Washington Post reports the following:

Traffic injuries are the leading cause of death in people ages 10 to 24 around the world — a huge, overlooked and largely preventable public health problem, the World Health Organization said yesterday.

In a new report, the organization promoted a long list of suggestions to developing countries, where most of the deaths and disabling injuries occur. The improvements include safer roads and vehicles, better urban planning, helmet laws, prosecution of speeders and drunken drivers, better education of the driving and walking public, and simple interventions such as putting reflective tape on backpacks.

[…]

About 30 percent of all traffic deaths worldwide — roughly 400,000 each year — are of people younger than 25. Although teenage and young-adult drivers are at greatest risk, younger age groups also have high mortality. In 2002, traffic injuries were the third leading cause of death for children ages 5 to 9, behind pneumonia and AIDS. About 46 percent of traffic deaths in sub-Saharan Africa occurred in that age group that year.

…Since 400,000 young people are dying every year by way of automobiles, and since bans on things are said to be the cure for all of humanity’s ills, join me in a grassroots effort to ban automobiles—if not the world over, at least here in the United States.

…Those not supportive of this ban on cars will be accused of not being interested in preventing adolescent deaths.

Reference
▪ The Washington Post

“Be Nice to Psychopaths” Day

2007-04-19T12:26:00.000-04:00

It turns out that most people knew of what Cho might do. From the AP via Yahoo!:

BLACKSBURG, Va. — The gunman blamed for the deadliest shooting in modern U.S. history had previously been accused of stalking two female students at Virginia Tech and had been taken to a mental health facility in 2005 after an acquaintance worried he might be suicidal, police said Wednesday.

Cho Seung-Hui had concerned one woman enough with his calls and e-mail in 2005 that police were called in, said Police Chief Wendell Flinchum.

[…]

“I had no idea he was capable of this,” [roommate Karan] Grewal said. “We were never told his teachers had concern about him committing suicide and all these dark feelings.

“We were never told that our suitemate was depressed or suicidal.”

Several students and professors described Cho as a sullen loner. Authorities said he left a rambling note raging against women and rich kids. News reports said that Cho, a 23-year-old senior majoring in English, may have been taking medication for depression and that he was becoming increasingly erratic.

Professors and classmates were alarmed by his class writings — pages filled with twisted, violence-drenched writing.

“It was not bad poetry. It was intimidating,” poet Nikki Giovanni, one of his professors, told CNN Wednesday.

“I know we're talking about a youngster, but troubled youngsters get drunk and jump off buildings,” she said. “There was something mean about this boy. It was the meanness — I’ve taught troubled youngsters and crazy people — it was the meanness that bothered me. It was a really mean streak.”

Giovanni said her students were so unnerved by Cho’s behavior, including taking pictures of them with his cell phone, that some stopped coming to class and she had security check on her room. She eventually had him taken out of her class, saying she would quit if he wasn't removed.

…I’ve figured it out: As a country, we want to ban guns, violent video games, violent movies, and heavy metal, but we’re opposed to keeping easily-identifiable homicidal maniacs off the street.

…That would violate their civil rights, after all.

Reference
▪ Yahoo! News (AP)

Exploitation 101

2007-04-17T12:41:00.000-04:00

There isn’t much to say other than it’s disgusting to see how yesterday’s massacre is being exploited for political purposes.

…The gun-control crowd; the anti-heavy metal crowd; the anti-violent movie crowd; the anti-violent video game crowd; the anti-immigration crowd; the America-is-too-rich crowd (the gunman decried “rich kids,” “debauchery,” and “deceitful charlatans” in a note left behind). All the while the media is salivating over the whole thing for ratings.

…This was sick and is getting sicker. Who else is going to exploit this situation? Who else needs to get their personal and political agenda noticed?

Updated Section:

…I have to thank Rosie O’Donnell for providing a wonderful example of my observation. She took to the airwaves on The View this morning to connect yesterday’s mass-murderer to the NRA. She also said that her attempts at promoting gun control have been “futile.”

…Apparently she’s forgetting that her rants on guns lost some of their weight when it was discovered that her bodyguard carried one.

Why?

2007-04-16T20:47:00.000-04:00

7:15 a.m.: Two people are murdered in the West Ambler Johnston dormitory.

9:45 a.m.: A shooter executes 32 people and injures over 25 more.

…Two people are murdered at quarter after seven and Virginia Tech Police Chief Wendell Flinchum and university president Charles Steger not only did not have a campus lock-down, but allowed classes to continue on schedule? Steger then has the nerve to say that he’s at a loss for words to understand how it happened?

…It’s terrible enough to know that a madman was willing to take 32 innocent lives and injure almost 30 more. It’s worse to know that it might have been prevented had Steger and Flinchum initiated a lock-down and cancelled classes for the day.

…It might be an institution of higher education, but the people at the top apparently lack intelligence.

Speak Softly and Carry a Big Wallet

2007-04-12T19:21:00.000-04:00

Since I outlined a story of apparent political intimidation a few days ago that came to us from the coal regions of eastern Pennsylvania, I felt that it was only proper to offer an update to the story.

…A judge in Carbon County, Pennsylvania, ruled today that a man who challenged two county commissioners in court will have to pay $8,114 to the county to cover legal fees incurred by the commissioners’ attorney. The man originally took the commissioners to court over a disagreement related to a controversial land and building purchase.

…I can’t help but think that this ruling will send a clear message to the folks in this particular county that if you challenge your local politicians, you’re guaranteed to pay for it—literally—in the end.

…What better way is there to keep dissent at a minimum?

References
▪ The Times News

Case Dismissed

2007-04-11T15:24:00.000-04:00

Now that the charges have officially been dropped against the wrongfully-accused Duke lacrosse team members, perhaps we can go after the real criminals in the case: the woman who lied about being raped; Mike Nifong, who willingly attempted to destroy as many innocent lives as necessary in an effort to win re-election by ordering that DNA evidence be hidden; and the 88 Duke University professors who helped Nifong’s criminal acts by way of a newspaper advertisement designed to bolster support for the corrupt attorney.

…For an image of the advertisement, click here.

…The following is a list of professors who helped Nifong on campus:

▪ Abe, Stan (Art, Art History, and Visual Studies)
▪ Albers, Benjamin (University Writing Program)
▪ Allison, Anne (Cultural Anthropology)
▪ Aravamudan, Srinivas (English)
▪ Baker, Houston (English and AAAS)
▪ Baker, Lee (Cultural Anthropology)
▪ Beckwith, Sarah (English)
▪ Berliner, Paul (Music)
▪ Beaule, Christina (University Writing Program)
▪ Blackmore, Connie (AAAS)
▪ Boa, Jessica (Religion & University Writing Program)
▪ Boatwright, Mary T. (Classical Studies)
▪ Boero, Silvia (Romance Studies)
▪ Bonilla-Silva, Eduardo (Sociology)
▪ Brim, Matthew (University Writing Program)
▪ Chafe, William (History)
▪ Ching, Leo (Asian & African Languages and Literatures)
▪ Coles, Rom (Political Science)
▪ Cooke, Miriam (Asian & African Languages and Literatures)
▪ Crichlow, Michaeline (AAAS)
▪ Curtis, Kim (Political Science)
▪ Damasceno, Leslie (Romance Studies)
▪ Davidson, Cathy (English)
▪ Deutsch, Sally (History)
▪ Dorfman, Ariel (Literature & Latin American Stds.)
▪ Edwards, Laura (History)
▪ Farred, Grant (Literature)
▪ Fellini, Luciana (Romance Studies)
▪ Fulkerson, Mary McClintock (Divinity School)
▪ Gabara, Esther (Romance Studies)
▪ Gavins, Raymond (History)
▪ Greer, Meg (Romance Studies)
▪ Glymph, Thavolia (History)
▪ Hardt, Michael (Literature)
▪ Harris, Joseph (University Writing Program)
▪ Holloway, Karla (English)
▪ Holsey, Bayo (AAAS)
▪ Hovsepian, Mary (Sociology)
▪ James, Sherman (Public Policy)
▪ Kaplan, Alice (Literature)
▪ Khalsa, Keval Kaur (Dance Program)
▪ Khanna, Ranjana (English)
▪ King, Ashley (Romance Studies)
▪ Koonz, Claudia (History)
▪ Lasch, Peter (Art, Art History, and Visual Studies & Latino/a Studies)
▪ Lee, Dan A. (Math)
▪ Leighten, Pat (Art, Art History, and Visual Studies)
▪ Lentricchia, Frank (Literature)
▪ Light, Caroline (Inst. for Crit. U.S. Stds.)
▪ Litle, Marcy (Comparative Area Studies)
▪ Litzinger, Ralph (Cultural Anthropology)
▪ Longino, Michele (Romance Studies)
▪ Lubiano, Wahneema (AAAS and Literature)
▪ Maffitt, Kenneth(History)
▪ Mahn, Jason (University Writing Program)
▪ Makhulu, Anne-Maria (AAAS)
▪ Mason, Lisa (Surgical Unit-2100)
▪ McClain, Paula (Political Science)
▪ Meintjes, Louise (Music)
▪ Mignolo, Walter (Literature and Romance Studies)
▪ Moreiras, Alberto (Romance Studies)
▪ Neal, Mark Anthony (AAAS)
▪ Nelson, Diane (Cultural Anthropology)
▪ Olcott, Jolie (History)
▪ Parades, Liliana (Romance Studies)
▪ Payne, Charles (AAAS and History)
▪ Pierce-Baker, Charlotte (Women’s Studies)
▪ Pebles-Wilkins, Wilma
▪ Petters, Arlie (Math)
▪ Plesser, Ronen (Physics)
▪ Radway, Jan (Literature)
▪ Rankin, Tom (Center for Documentary Studies)
▪ Rego, Marcia (University Writing Program)
▪ Reisinger, Deborah S. (Romance Studies)
▪ Rosenberg, Alex (Philosophy)
▪ Rudy, Kathy (Women’s Studies)
▪ Schachter, Marc (English)
▪ Shannon, Laurie (English)
▪ Sigal, Pete (History)
▪ Silverblatt, Irene (Cultural Anthropology)
▪ Somerset, Fiona (English)
▪ Stein, Rebecca (Cultural Anthropology)
▪ Thorne, Susan (History)
▪ Viego, Antonio (Literature)
▪ Vilaros, Teresa (Romance Studies)
▪ Wald, Priscilla (English)
▪ Wallace, Maurice (English and AAAS)
▪ Wong, David (Philosophy)

…There’s no word yet on whether or not Jesse Jackson is still planning on giving the alleged rape victim the college scholarship that he promised her several months ago.

I Love You; You Hate Me

2007-04-09T14:26:00.000-04:00

Over the last few years it has become common to hear the Internet, and more particularly blogs, as being the twenty-first century version of the Wild West. In many cases it has turned into an outlet for rumor, gossip, libel, and even threats of violence.

…A New York Times article on the topic offers three examples of people whose lives have been affected by harassment that ranges from doctored photographs to death threats. One man has had negative comments left on his blog because he wants peace between Israel and the Palestinians. One woman has found herself with a stalker blogger who parodies her writing on another website. Another woman has been sent death threats over a dispute pertaining to the ethics of deleting vile comments from one’s blog.

…In response, conference promoter and publisher Tim O’Reilly joined Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales have joined forces to develop a set of guidelines to help bolster online civility. Some of the rules include situational use of anonymous writing and others include pledging to cite sources for gossip or breaking news. O’Reilly and Wales suggest that bloggers use some kind of logo on their sites to help visitors recognize whether or not they follow the guidelines of civility.

…The concept behind these guidelines is great, but they seem to be ignoring something: If a blogger is honest and ethical from the start, they won’t need to use a superficial logo. This is one of the reasons that I make sure to offer links to sources and, whenever possible, screenshots of links to not only show where I found the information, but what the website looked like at the exact moment of my using it (being that websites have been known to change at the drop of a hat).

…If a blogger is unethical and only interested in libelous gossip, there’s a good chance that they’re also going to be so unethical as to stick a little logo on their site suggesting that they follow guidelines. They’re not going to care about the unethical use of a symbol if they’ve already proven to the world that they don’t care about ruining reputations.

…A second point that needs to be addressed is the bastardization of the terms “censorship” and “First Amendment rights.” It has becoming common to hear people use both so liberally that in many times—such as the cases in the article—both have become as commonly misunderstood as the terms “communist” and “fascist.”

…To put it succinctly, censorship and violating one’s First Amendment rights can only be done by a governmental agency, be it local, state, or federal. A blogger removing a threatening comment from his or her site is not censorship and it’s not violating any First Amendment rights. If it were a governmental body stepping in and telling the blog host (i.e., Blogger, MySpace, LiveJournal, etc.) that they must remove a particular comment or blog post as a whole, it’s then censorship.

…Other examples of this misunderstanding (I’d sooner use the term ignorance, but I’m trying to be civil for the sake of the topic at hand) have been Wal-Mart’s choosing to not carry certain genres of music, Mötley Crüe’s imbecilic 2005 lawsuit against NBC, and even an argument that the “ignore” option in Yahoo!’s instant messenger application is a form of censorship.

Always My Right; Always
Let’s look at the Wal-Mart issue first. If Wal-Mart—or any other store, for that matter—doesn’t want to carry a certain band or certain genre, it’s their choice. If I want to open a store that sells CDs (humor me here; I know quite well that CDs are a dying medium), I have every right to pick what I sell. If I don’t want to sell Yanni or John Tesh, it’s not censorship; it’s because I can’t stand Yanni and John Tesh. No matter what I like personally, however, what I sell should ultimately be based on a business decision. If it sells, I should sell it. If I don’t, there’s a good chance that I’ll go out of business. Keeping bread on my table is of the utmost importance. That isn’t violating anyone’s First Amendment rights; it’s me exercising my right to choose.

Shout at the Devil
As for Mötley Crüe, they sued NBC in 2005 after being banned from Saturday Night Live following vocalist Vince Neil’s use of “fuck” on live television. The lawsuit accused NBC of violating the band’s First Amendment rights and hurting record sales, and went so far as to suggest that NBC should be forced to have them on TV.

…If you want to argue that the Federal Communications Commission should be dissolved, I might be tempted to agree with you. That’s a separate issue, however, and the issue in this case was NBC’s right to pick and choose their musical guests. The First Amendment bans governments from silencing private citizens; it doesn’t provide for the right to increased record sales.

…This point seems to have been missed by quite a few people. For instance, the Center for Creative Voices in Media asked, “[H]ow can NBC ban a band from its airwaves for an incident that does not violate any law or FCC rule and for which few if any genuine complaints were filed?” The answer is simple: NBC has just as much freedom to pick and choose what bands are on Saturday Night Live as the Center for Creative Voices in Media has to complain about it. Both choices are being made by non-governmental parties.

ASL PLZ
A third place that has been invaded by the I-really-don’t-know-anything-about-law-but-I-want-people-to-think-that-I-do crowd has been Yahoo!’s instant messenger service and its accompanying chat room program. I don’t chat much anymore due to time constraints, but when I did I recall one evening when one user threatened to sue another user for having violated his First Amendment rights when the first chatter clicked his “ignore” button on the other. (For those who might not know, you can block comments from other individual chatters by pressing a button if they become offensive or annoying.)

…If the incident hadn’t been as amusing as it was, it would have been frightening.

●●●●●

The only way that civility becomes the norm across both the blogosphere and the Internet as a whole is to have each of us adopt a philosophy to promote and utilize civil measures. However, offensiveness and incivility have become historic characteristics of both our country and our species. I have a feeling that both will be with us for as long a time as we’ve had people who don’t understand the basics of the First Amendment.

References
▪ New York Times
▪ Yahoo!
▪ Center for Creative Voices in Media

Boss Tweed Railway

2007-04-07T14:57:00.000-04:00

When writing about certain topics, I don’t intentionally set out to find something so much as having it find me. Likewise, I don’t find myself looking for news or issues that emanate from a particular location. While I have, quite a few times, found myself discussing asinine political issues in my home commonwealth of Pennsylvania, it’s not because I’ve set out to do so; it’s because asininity is running rampant here.

…After writing about a potbellied pig story last week, in which a town council and local judge are in denial over the fact that there is another world outside their door, I had no idea that I would find myself commenting on another story from the same county.

…Unfortunately, this story is much more serious than sheltered councilmen and pet pigs. It begins with ludicrous remarks by county commissioners to defend their questionable use of tax money, but ends with what can be called nothing other than intimidation against constituents who question their actions.

All Aboard
The saga began with a rather inconspicuous subject: an abandoned railroad building and the land on which it stood.

…The building, which was recently torn down, was located in a village called Packerton, Carbon County, and was in use until the 1970s. From that time forward, however, the building became victimized by the elements, fell into a state of disrepair, and ultimately turned into an eyesore. The property was for sale for quite a few years, but for one reason or another—it could have been either the price or the possibility of petroleum-based pollution in the soil—no one wanted anything to do with it.

…That is, no one until last year when two of the county’s three commissioners, William O’Gurek and Charles Getz, voted to have the county buy the land, saying that they were going to lure some kind of “high-paying industry” to the area. (No actual industry has ever been named.)

Derailed
The two elected officials, who were opposed by the third commissioner over the land purchase, quickly took the next step in their supposed goal of bringing an industry to the area: razing the railroad building. This is where things got interesting because when it was announced that the building would be ripped down, several people—most of whom didn’t seem to have any interest in the building for the 30 or so years that the property was available for sale—wanted the demolition stopped. They formed an organization called Save Packerton Yards and argued that the building was an historical site. As such, they argued that it should be saved from the wrecking ball, if not restored to its original state.

…That wasn’t the commissioners’ only roadblock, though. It was discovered that O’Gurek and Getz had violated the United States National Historic and Preservation Act by not notifying the state Historical Museum Commission before the demolition was announced. The notification was required because the commissioners applied for and received $675,000 in federal and state tax money to use toward the land purchase. Whether they intentionally tried to hide the razing from the Historic Museum Commission or whether they’re just incompetent hick politicians has never been said, but either way, this is where the story took a brief detour into the Twilight Zone.

…In an apparent effort to fix their standing with the Preservation Act and help their side of the argument, Commissioner Chairman O’Gurek finally filed a report with the Historical Museum Commission, but it wasn’t without oddities. In the letter, O’Gurek said that the railroad building was “being used for booze, drug and sex parties, satanic worshipping and harboring vagrants and vagabonds.” As such, he said, it should be razed as quickly as possible.

…Local police said that they were aware of teenagers using the building as a drinking spot and vagrants living in tents on the edge of the property, but they had no knowledge of the structure being used for drug-fueled sex parties or Satanic rituals. When asked by a reporter for details on how he knew of these activities, O’Gurek wouldn’t comment. Given O’Gurek’s refusal to answer, it’s easy to assume that the commissioner had some kind of insider information on these illegal hedonistic orgies.

…That aside, those opposed to the building’s destruction lost their case in court. The razing was to continue, but not without more controversy. The state Museum Commission asked for at least a delay in the building’s destruction so that they could take a look at the site to make a final decision on the structure’s historical worth. The commission had no legal authority to stop the demolition, though, and the razing continued. Rather conveniently, every staircase to the second floor was removed the day before the Historical Commission representatives had said that they were going to visit the property.

…A third—or fourth or fifth, depending upon how you’re looking at it—brouhaha developed when a second court case arose. Save Packerton Yards accused the commissioners of violating Pennsylvania’s open-meetings law, leading to a lawsuit that was deemed “frivolous” by the majority commissioners. As we’ll come to find out, the commissioners didn’t take kindly to having their actions questioned by any of the county’s residents.

…After the structure was completely torn down, you would have thought that the story would have ended. It would have seemed as if this would be where Commissioners O’Gurek and Getz would have begun luring all the industry that they had previously talked about when defending their decision to purchase otherwise worthless land. Instead, their next move was what appears to be state-sponsored revenge and intimidation.

Caught on the Tracks
Thomas A. Zimmerman IV, who founded Save Packerton Yards, soon found himself being sued by Carbon County—namely O’Gurek and Getz. The commissioners said that opposing them cost $10,405 in legal fees, and that they want Zimmerman to pay for the expenses. The amount was later reduced to $8,114 and the county’s special counsel referred to the challenges against the commissioners as an “abuse of the legal system.”

…As of this writing, the judge in the trial is expected to rule on the case next week.

Next Stop: Ignoranceville
With respect to the initial argument, I would have been hard-pressed to take a side. In one corner we had an organization which claimed that it wanted to save a building from destruction, but none of its members had an interest in saving it throughout the 30 years that it was available for sale. Instead, they allowed it to deteriorate into a decrepit state—a state that, given the photos, wasn’t repairable.

…In the other corner were two commissioners who helped promote the belief that the government is the be-all and end-all of job creation. They helped foster the belief that supply and demand was a conspiracy propagated by evil capitalists, and that if a county government wants to insulate itself from changes in both the national and global economy, it can somehow do so. They basically promoted the idea that market forces shouldn’t play a role in job growth.

…Such an idea would probably be sold easily in rural Pennsylvania because basic economic theories aren’t embraced much here. Having grown up here, it’s quite common to see communities welcome the idea of cutting themselves off from the rest of the world in terms of economic factors. Even though service-sector jobs have replaced traditional blue-collar jobs everywhere else, some communities yearn for the old days. The old days are fun to wax nostalgic, but you can’t put a stop to evolution and progress.

…Maybe these details aren’t a concern for this particular county, though, because their own website provides us with something that is quite telling: Before purchasing this 59-acre tract in the village of Packerton, Carbon County already had 635 acres of available “industrial” land at their Green Acres Industrial Park. If they already have 635 acres that aren’t being used, why buy another 59 with state and federal tax dollars? That’s not to mention that the Packerton land was exposed to pollution for close to 100 years.

…Perhaps the irony here is that O’Gurek was recently quoted as saying, “We don’t want to be a land baron,” after the county took control of several parcels of barren land a few miles from Packerton due to delinquent taxes.

Last Stop: Intimidation Valley
For me, the most frightening part of this story is the recent lawsuit brought by the commissioners against the founder of the organization that opposed them. It reeks of intimidation because Commissioners O’Gurek and Getz have shown the citizens of that county that they’re willing to use litigation against anyone who opposes them. All the while, they can simply justify the lawsuits by saying that they’re trying to recoup legal fees. Again, their questionable moves are done under the guise of working “for the people.”

…I took a look at the financial statistics of Carbon County using data that was compiled by the United States Census Bureau. As of 2003, the median household income in the county was $38,745 and the per capita income as of 1999 was $17,064 (both years being the most recent statistics available).

…Since this county doesn’t have a wealthy population, it’s a safe bet that the people who live there wouldn’t be willing to challenge their elected officials if they knew that they’d face the possibility of shelling out attorney fees when the commissioners take them to court. What better way to keep the people silent? What better way to quell dissent?

…I’m hoping that when the judge rules on this case, it will be against Commissioners O’Gurek and Getz. I don’t say that because I’m supporting their opponents; I have no vested interest in either side. I say it because I don’t want to see yet another situation where small-town politicians get a carte blanche and a green light to do anything that they want.

…If that happens, the people of this particular county might find themselves with a diesel-powered political machine and a set of train tracks being built toward Tammany Hall.

References
▪ The Morning Call
▪ The Morning Call
▪ The Morning Call
▪ The Morning Call
▪ Carbon County Economic Development Office
▪ United States Census Bureau

Reading, Writing, and Hate

2007-04-04T00:17:00.000-04:00

A few weeks ago I commented on the NAACP’s push to have a singing performance by former Dukes of Hazzard stars John Schneider and Tom Wopat cancelled because the television show featured a car with a Confederate flag on the roof. Anything with a Confederate flag, the NAACP reasoned, must be promoting a racist agenda.

...In that particular post I sarcastically suggested that the NAACP’s next move should be to push for the destruction of all history books that have images of the Confederate flag so that we can rewrite history and provide a new, kinder and gentler past. After all, the reasoning should be that any history books with images of the Confederate flag could easily be viewed as promoting racism.

...What I didn’t realize was that some schools in England have already got the ball rolling down the road of revisionist history. Their attempts to change the past aren’t based on racism, however; theirs is an attempt to avoid offending Muslim students who might be anti-Semitic and Holocaust deniers.

...The Guardian’s Jeevan Vasagar reports:

Schools have avoided teaching the Holocaust and the Crusades in history lessons because they are concerned about causing offence to Muslim pupils or challenging “charged” versions of history which children have been taught at home, government research has found.

A report for the Department for Education and Skills found that a history department in a northern city had avoided selecting the Holocaust as a GCSE topic for fear of confronting “anti-semitic [sic] sentiment and Holocaust denial” among some Muslim pupils.

Another school decided to teach the Holocaust despite anti-semitic [sic] sentiment among students, but avoided the Crusades as “their balanced treatment of the topic would have directly challenged what was taught in some local mosques.”

The report, Teaching Emotive and Controversial History, also revealed that one school was challenged by Christian parents for teachers’ treatment of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

A DfES spokesman said: “It’s up to schools to make a judgment on non-compulsory parts of the national curriculum. It is a broad framework and there is scope for schools to make their own decisions.”

Teaching of the Holocaust is expected to become compulsory under the new national curriculum from next year.

...The very notion of pretending that a significant historical occurrence never happened is frightening. Knowing that such a move is being done in a school setting in an effort to appease an extremist segment of the population that chooses to not live in the real world is even worse.

...Simply because many Muslims choose to be propagators of bigotry and ignorance doesn’t change history; it doesn’t mean that millions of innocent Jews weren’t executed from the early-1930s to the mid-1940s in Europe.

...It has become common to hear criticism of the United States’ education system for various reasons, but at least the U.S. system doesn’t cater to an anti-Semitic movement that would make Adolf Hitler proud.

References
▪ The Guardian
▪ BBC News

This Little Piggy Went to Prioritize

2007-03-30T11:38:00.000-04:00

James Carville once referred to Pennsylvania as “Philadelphia and Pittsburgh with Alabama in between.” Having lived in the Keystone State for quite some time, I can relate to that. It has a combination of political corruption à la Boss Tweed, backwards thinking, right-wing Democrats, and a populace that still holds onto the hope that the 1950s—when coal, steel, factories, and other blue-collar industry fueled the commonwealth’s economy—will somehow come back with a vengeance.

...That’s why it wasn’t a surprise to read about an ongoing controversy involving a municipality—or possibly now two—and two potbellied pigs. Yes, you read that correctly: potbellied pigs.

...Over the last year a burned-out coal town in eastern Pennsylvania called Lansford has been giving one of its residents grief over her pet potbellied pigs. The powers-that-be in the area, from councilmen to a local judge, have never heard of potbellied pigs (that’s what happens when you don’t realize that there’s actually a world outside your town’s border), and as such have declared that a pig is a pig is a pig. Citing a 1968 livestock ordinance which prohibits farm animals from living in residential areas, the pigs’ owner was forced to get rid of the little porkers. The pigs are now in a neighboring burned-out coal town, and the council there will most likely wage war against them, too.

...What’s really worrisome is this: Both the town of Lansford and the new town in which the potbellied pigs reside, Nesquehoning, are part of the Panther Valley School District. They’ve been in the news of late because the district, in an effort to make ends meet, has talked about eliminating its home economics teachers, industrial technology teachers, librarians, National Honor Society, and JROTC program. They’ve also recently had their superintendent arrested and charged with driving under the influence with a blood-alcohol level of .22. Pennsylvania’s legal limit is .08.

...It appears that the folks in this region should have bigger concerns than little Vietnamese potbellied pigs.

References
▪ The Times News
▪ The Morning Call
▪ The Times News

I Am Woman, Hear Me File a Formal Complaint

2007-03-29T19:36:00.000-04:00

I’m beginning to think that the National Organization for Women might want to rename themselves to something more appropriate—perhaps something like the National Organization for Emasculation.

...I thought that it was an early April Fool’s Day joke from the Washington Post, but it’s not: NOW wants access to money that is allotted for a program called the Promoting Responsible Fatherhood Initiative, which is designed to build job skills in men and help fathers connect better with their children. The women’s organization is saying that it’s discriminatory to fund such a program, since a program for fathers focuses on men only.

...Post reporter Christopher Lee writes:

NOW and Legal Momentum, another advocacy group, filed complaints yesterday with the Department of Health and Human Services alleging sex discrimination in the initiative that is funding about 100 programs this year.

[…]

“What we’re asking them to do is to make sure that the grantees provide equal services to women and men,” said Kathy Rodgers, president of Legal Momentum. “It should be a parenthood initiative.”

Administration officials and grant recipients say the challenge is misguided. The programs may target men, they say, but helping men become better fathers will benefit women and children, too. Moreover, HHS officials say they have told grant recipients they must open their fatherhood programs to women.

“If a woman says she wants to apply and it’s not happening, we want to know about it,” said Tara Wall, at the Administration for Children and Families, the HHS agency that oversees the grants. “Yes, fathers are the target group, but at the same time allowing equal access is required.”

[…]

One of the grants NOW objects to is a five-year, $2 million-a-year award to the D.C. Department of Human Services. It expects to help as many as 2,500 low-income fathers with parenting skills, substance-abuse prevention and treatment, job training and educational development, said Debra Daniels, a D.C. spokeswoman.

...Shouldn’t a women’s organization be supportive of giving men parenting skills, substance-abuse prevention and treatment, job training, and educational development? Maybe not, since there are more programs in NOW’s crosshairs:

Another group under fire is the Latin American Youth Center in the District, which got a $250,000 annual grant to provide 30 young fathers a year with job training, language classes and parenting skills. But women can enroll, too, said Lori Kaplan, the executive director.

“It doesn’t mean that anywhere along the line our moms are getting excluded,” she said.

...Wouldn’t fathers who act like fathers be beneficial to women? Perhaps only a few people think so. That aside, since Ms. Rodgers of Legal Momentum suggested that this program should be a “parenthood initiative” instead of a “fatherhood initiative,” why isn’t Legal Momentum urging NOW to rename themselves the National Organization for People?

...Having an organization dedicated to one sex doesn’t seem very equal, does it?

Reference
▪ Washington Post

Off-Base Percentage

2007-03-28T11:42:00.000-04:00

It’s not often that I have the urge to just find someone else’s commentary and suggest that everyone else read it, but on occasion it has been known to happen. This instance is one of those occasions.

...While perusing ESPN’s baseball homepage, I discovered a link to a piece by Keith Law entitled “Baseball Needs a Backbone Regarding DUIs” that poses a question which needs to be asked: Why are we more offended when a professional athlete tests positive for illegal steroids than we are when a professional athlete is arrested for drunk driving?

...Law’s column stems from the recent DUI arrest of St. Louis Cardinals manager Tony La Russa, and how many fans have not only dismissed his arrest as a petty incident (one fan was more upset that the police didn’t let La Russa drive home drunk) but have literally applauded him for it (in his first spring training game after the arrest, La Russa received a standing ovation from the crowd). I can promise you that I wouldn’t have been one of the ones standing.

...Law’s column is worth reading, but his points (sadly) don’t shock me. I’m not a psychologist nor a sociologist, but I’m willing to bet that since a higher percentage of the American public at large engage in drunk driving more than engage in steroid use, people aren’t as willing to criticize getting behind the wheel while intoxicated. Their moral high-ground is to sooner go after performance-enhancing drug users while simultaneously looking at someone who can in an instant destroy dozens of lives and say, “Yep. I do that, too.”

Reference
▪ ESPN

The Department of Departmentalism

2007-03-24T12:06:00.000-04:00

When the federal government (read: George W. Bush) created the Department of Homeland Security in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, I—and hopefully a few other people—questioned why such a department needed to be established given that homeland security was something that was supposedly already covered by the Department of Defense, which has been in existence since 1789 (at the time it was called the War Department; it later became the Department of the Army and eventually the Department of Defense). If we’re already paying people to make decisions about defending the borders, and if they can’t do their job, why are we creating an additional department to cover the asses of those who messed up in the first place? Why aren’t we removing the incompetent bureaucrats and replacing them with competent ones (if they actually exist) instead of simply inventing what is essentially a pick-up-their-slack department?

...This is why the establishment of yet another cabinet-level department really shouldn’t be too shocking if its legislation is passed. As such, our nation’s penchant for a wide-reaching government has given us a push for yet another institution: the Department of Peace and Nonviolence.

...The bill (HR 808), which is sponsored by Ohio’s Dennis Kucinich (and yes, that’s the same guy who, along with several other politicians in Washington, is currently pushing to bring back the unconstitutional Fairness Doctrine law), will establish a Department of Peace and Nonviolence to set forth the following: (1) hold peace as an organizing principle; (2) endeavor to promote justice and democratic principles to expand human rights; and (3) develop policies that promote national and international conflict prevention, nonviolent intervention, mediation, peaceful resolution of conflict, and structured mediation of conflict.

...I’m guessing that the last point is strictly for structured mediation, since you can’t legislate to have structured conflict. That aside, I’m beginning to wonder if we’re embarking on what might be a twenty-first century approach to life where everything with which we might deal will need a cabinet-level department to oversee it. Allow me to explain.

...Peace is something that we should want without having to be told by a federal institution. It’s something that we should recognize as being more conducive to progress than war. Civility should be quickly identified as being more worthwhile than violence. The concept of being cool, calm, and collected should be adopted by both individuals and organizations sooner than the idea of being agitated warmongers. Therefore, why do we need to bloat the federal government any more than it already is?

...I use the term “bloat” intentionally because it’s obvious that wasting taxpayers’ money is the status quo in Washington. The recent legislation that was passed to set a timetable on pulling our troops out of Iraq had so much Democratic pork in it that the Republican minority was probably thinking, “They’re our people!” It provided $25 million for spinach growers who lost money on the E. coli scare; $120 million to the shrimp industry to compensate for Hurricane Katrina; $238 million for the Milk Income Loss Contract (MILC) program, which wouldn’t be needed in the first place if the government would stop mandating what the price of milk is; and $74 million to pay farmers for peanut storage.

...I’m a huge supporter of peace, but establishing a federal cabinet-level department to promote it sounds like nothing more than a nice way to create more bureaucracy, get a few family members and friends public sector jobs, and spend millions of tax dollars that we, as working people, can’t afford.

...Real peace starts with us, as individuals, who want to find more reasonable solutions than violence. It doesn’t—and can’t—exist in a Washington office where politicians will dole it out via pamphlets, brochures, and public service announcements.

...Moreover, if we’re going to begin a journey down this road of increased government intervention, we might as well prepare ourselves for a regular barrage of department creation. Why not a Department of the Internet, Department of Entertainment and Recreation, or Department of Quality Living? Of course each of these departments sounds silly right now, but we could very easily offer grounds for supporting each of them.

...If we really are to the point where we need a federal agency to “teach” us how to be peaceful, we might as well also create a Department of It’s-the-End-of-American-Civilization-As-We-Know-It.

References
▪ Department of Defense
▪ Library of Congress
▪ Washington Post

Share and Share Alike

2007-03-22T15:32:00.000-04:00

It’s becoming too easy to spot instances when both liberals and conservatives oppose tenets that are traditionally attributed to them. The left, who supposedly support free speech, is currently pushing to have the Fairness Doctrine, which is nothing more than legislation to have the government not only regulate but mandate particular speech, brought back in an effort to promote “fairness” on television and radio talk shows. It appears that this morning conservatives have had a bit of a position switch, too.

...A federal judge recently struck down the unconstitutional 1998 Child Online Protection Act (HR 3783), which made it illegal for commercial Website operators to allow children to access information that was deemed “harmful.” The judge explained that parents can do the protecting by utilizing filters and blocking software that wouldn’t restrict the free speech rights of others.

...We see a rather interesting change of ideological stance by way of a quote near the end of the story. We usually hear conservatives say that they parents should be the ones to raise—and educate, in the case of public versus private schools and the topic of vouchers—children, free from government intrusion.

...Oddly enough, government attorney Peter D. Keisler said, “It is not reasonable for the government to expect all parents to shoulder the burden to cut off every possible source of adult content for their children, rather than the government’s addressing the problem at its source.”

...Parents paying attention to their children’s Internet surfing is a burden? I thought that the right-wing view of parenting was that parents should have more power in raising their children than the state. Wasn’t it usually a left-wing view that the government should have more say in parenting than the parents? Isn’t that where the concept of “it takes a village to raise a child” originated?

...These are strange days when conservatives and liberals are borrowing ideological points from each other.

References
▪ Houston Chronicle
▪ Library of Congress

Clipped Wings

2007-03-22T12:59:00.000-04:00

St. Louis Cardinals beat reporter Matthew Leach wrote the following:

JUPITER, Fla. — Cardinals manager Tony La Russa was arrested overnight for suspicion of driving under the influence of alcohol, a misdemeanor in the state of Florida, the Jupiter Police Department said Thursday.
[...]

According to police, La Russa was arrested at approximately midnight ET on Wednesday night/Thursday morning at the intersection of Frederick Small Boulevard and Military Trail in Jupiter. Undercover officers noticed that the manager’s vehicle stopped, but his car was running at the intersection, sitting through two cycles of a traffic light.

When Jupiter police officers approached the vehicle, they saw La Russa “slumped over in the driver's seat” and knocked on the window. After the knocks were not met with a response, a field officer came to the scene.

After further knocking on the window, La Russa responded. He was given standard field sobriety tests, and the officers believed they had probable cause to arrest the manager on suspicion of DUI.

When La Russa was taken to the Palm Beach County Jail, he underwent a breath test and was determined to have a blood alcohol level of .093, higher than Florida's legal limit of .08.

He was booked at Palm Beach County's Main Detention center at 4:07 a.m. ET and held until approximately 8 a.m.

...I’ve been a hardcore Cardinals fan for almost 20 years. All that I can ask is, “How the fuck could you be so stupid?”

Reference
▪ MLB.com

The Right to Remain Afraid

2007-03-22T01:18:00.000-04:00

The spirit of Al Capone is still alive and well in Chicago. Unfortunately, nowadays it can be found in the Chicago Police Department instead of the mob.

...CBS 2 Chicago reports the following:

A woman was injured during a frightening attack and it was all caught on tape. The attacker was an off-duty Chicago police officer who has now been charged. CBS 2 Investigator Dave Savini reports.

Shocking surveillance video shows off-duty Chicago police officer Anthony Abbate, 38, a 12-year veteran of the force, brutally beating a female bartender.
[…]

“He was drunk in a bar. She refused to serve him anymore so he went behind the bar and threw her around like a sack of potatoes,” said Attorney Terry Ekl who represents the alleged victim.

...As if that weren’t bad enough, here’s something even scarier:

“The Chicago Police Department made a unilateral decision that they were going to charge him only with a misdemeanor without telling the State's Attorney’s Office,” said Ekl.

But prosecutors took over and filed felony aggravated battery charges.

...Abbate is caught on tape savagely beating a woman and Chicago’s so-called finest view it as nothing more than a misdemeanor? I wish that that were the end of it, but there’s more:

Prosecutors are investigating adding possible obstruction of justice and intimidating a witness charges.

“Another individual came in moments after the attack and attempted to offer the victim money in order for her not to prosecute the defendant,” Navarro said.

The February attack, caught on the Tavern’s surveillance camera, was Abbatte’s second assault of the evening, say prosecutors.

[…]

Abbatte is no stranger to drunken behavior.

He was one of 100 Chicago police officers who had been hired despite having prior drug or alcohol related driving offenses.

Abbate had also been arrested for drag racing and driving on a suspended license.

...The only difference between the Chicago Police Department and common criminals is that one party poses a threat to the public while the other party doesn’t wear badges.

Reference
▪ CBS 2 Chicago

If It's Free, It's for Me

2007-03-21T15:00:00.000-04:00

Having been on a work-related blogging hiatus for several months, and having come back to the blogosphere with a new site, I haven’t had the opportunity to vent about the threat of the Fairness Doctrine, which is being spearheaded by Representative Dennis Kucinich of Ohio.

...At first, one would think that a law that regulates speech—obviously excluding such things as slander or yelling, “Fire!” in a crowded theater—would be something that was being pushed by conservative Republicans. After all, over the last few years we’ve had to worry about our free speech rights being raped via the Patriot Act, which would supposedly identify potential terrorists and protect us—at least those of us who are good patriotic Americans—from the evils of…um…well…everything. That’s not to mention the routine attacks on our First Amendment rights from fundamentalist religious organizations, which are “protecting” us from Satanic books, movies, and music by way of trying to ban these blasphemous tools of the devil.

...Sadly, regulating speech has turned into a bipartisan tool.

...For anyone who isn’t aware of what the Fairness Doctrine is, the best description of it has been made by Adam Thierer of the Cato Institute:

The so-called Fairness Doctrine was put in place by the FCC in 1949 to require broadcasters to “afford reasonable opportunity for the discussion of conflicting views of public importance.” After coming under attack by the courts, the FCC discarded the rule in 1987 because, contrary to its purpose, the doctrine failed to encourage the discussion of more controversial issues. Still, regulatory revisionists seem to pretend that the world would be a better place if government officials sat in judgment of “fairness” on the broadcast airwaves and have attempted to resurrect the Fairness Doctrine a few times since it was abolished. By requiring, under threat of potential license revocation, that broadcasters “fairly” represent both sides of a given issue, advocates of the doctrine argue that more opinions will be aired while the editorial content of the station can remain unaltered.

...Imagine having a country where the government requires a television or radio talk show host to say something that he or she might not want to say, simply because it’s “fair.” Imagine how far we could go with a law like that now that we have more outlets for speech than we did in the 1980s when the Fairness Doctrine was suspended. Imagine having a blog on which you want to say something in particular, but you quickly find yourself being told that you have to offer an opposing point of view under the guise of “fairness.”

...You might think that such an assertion is a large jump, but how big a jump is it really? Isn’t it a rather large jump in the first place to go from having a First Amendment that guarantees speech that is free from government regulation to speech that is mandated by the federal government?

...In a 2005 Salon article, New York Representative Louise Slaughter, who has authored the Fairness and Accountability in Media Act to bring back the Fairness Doctrine “with new requirements,” said that a speech-regulating law like this is “for the public benefit.” Really? How much does the public benefit from having the state tell them what to say?

...What’s most disturbing is that this issue of regulated speech isn’t a one-side-only debate. The regulation of free speech has now become bipartisan and has become viewed as an implement to silence the opposition—no matter which side of the aisle the opposition happens to be.

...Many liberals have jumped aboard the bring-back-the-Fairness-Doctrine bandwagon because conservative talk radio might be affected the most. The idea seems to be that if the enemy is affected, then raping the Constitution is well worth it. Essentially, the end justifies the means.

...My question thus becomes this: If liberals, who routinely talk about how much they support free speech, are willing to adopt right-wing tactics and push their own laws that mirror conservative anti-First Amendment actions, who will actually defend free speech? Moreover, how can anyone suggest that there’s actually a difference between the two sides?

...It appears as if liberals and conservatives have more in common than they’d like to admit: Both sides want to force their views on us and both sides are willing to craft laws to do it “legally.”

References
▪ The Cato Institute
▪ Salon

…and Daisy Pushed Back Women’s Rights

2007-03-19T22:22:00.000-04:00

They were able to avoid an incompetent police force and corrupt county commissioner, but former Dukes of Hazzard stars John Schneider and Tom Wopat have found themselves handcuffed by an institution bigger than Boss Hogg’s belly: the NAACP.

...After having signed contracts to perform with the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra, Schneider and Wopat were informed that their concerts were cancelled after the NAACP expressed opposition to their performing, citing the use of the Confederate flag on the car that was used in the show, which was named after General Robert E. Lee. A statement from the orchestra said that “the messages conveyed in the program are not consistent with the efforts of the Pops to reach out to all members of [the] community.” Those “messages” weren’t listed, though.

...Edith Thrower, who is president of the Cincinnati branch of the NAACP, explained, “It’s very clear how we feel about the Confederate flag and the long and arduous fight we have conducted to get rid of that symbol of a very unpleasant time in our history.”

...Ben Jones, who played Cooter on the series and eventually became a Democratic representative in Congress after the show ended, has gone on record as calling the move by the orchestra “blacklisting” and “McCarthyism.” He said, “I have fought racism and bigotry my whole life and worked in the civil rights movement, and there is nothing racist about [the show].”

...When I was younger I watched the Dukes of Hazzard on a regular basis and didn’t take from any episode a feeling of racism, bigotry, hate, or negativity in any form. Therefore, I have no choice but view the accusations of racism as being based on nothing more than the fact that the car used in the show had a Confederate flag painted on the roof.

...If this point is to be our litmus test for racism, we could easily say that every history book with photos of Confederate flags is promoting a racist agenda; every Time-Life Civil War book is teeming with hatred and bigotry. Should we push to have them removed and altered as to have all images of the southern battle flag erased from our memories? Should we edit history in an effort to provide a kinder, gentler past?

...Another question that I have is: Is this really what the NAACP has become? Have they gone from the once-mighty organization that helped to champion Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka and legislation like the Civil Rights Acts of 1957 and 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Fair Housing Act of 1968 to a group that is spending most of its time fighting against any and all images of the Confederate flag? Would W.E.B. Du Bois be happy about such an evolution?

...I personally think that our country’s two biggest historical black marks have been our treatment of Native Americans and our institution of slavery. Sadly, it seems as if now we have a new problem with which we must deal: people becoming offended at something even if that something isn’t present.

Reference
▪ Kansas City Star

Mush or Die?

2007-03-18T20:44:00.000-04:00

Iditarod participant Ramy Brooks has a new way of dealing with his dogs when they become exhausted: beat them.

...MSNBC reports the following:

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Two-time runner-up Ramy Brooks was disqualified from the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race for abusing his dogs.
The 38-year-old Brooks hit each of his 10 dogs with a trail marking lathe, similar to a surveyor’s stake, after two refused to get up and continue running on an ice field, race marshal Mark Nordman told The Associated Press from Nome on Sunday.
[...]
One of Brooks’ dogs died the next day on the trail, between White Mountain and Safety, the last checkpoint before Nome.

...Is there any possibility that we can stick Brooks in a harness, make him run the length of the Iditarod course, and beat him a few times if he doesn’t move fast enough? I’d pay to see that.

...It’ll be interesting to see if Cellular One—not to mention all the other companies—continues to sponsor his Website.

References
▪ MSNBC
▪ RamyBrooks.com

Dude, You Still Don't Want a Dell

2007-03-18T13:34:00.000-04:00

Early last year, my brother experienced one of the scams that Dell Computer pulls in order to garner a few more PC purchases. It was a classic bait-and-switch in which they originally told him that he qualified for an interest-free payment plan, but after a few months he received a letter in the mail telling him that after further review—almost like instant replay in a football game—he suddenly didn’t qualify for the interest-free promotion anymore. As such, he had the choice of either paying in installments with an absurd interest rate or he could pay it off at once. He dipped into his checking account and freed himself of Dell’s chains. He also vowed to never purchase anything with the name “Dell” on it again.

...Sadly, now my parents have fallen prey to the incompetence of Dell’s billing department and have received multiple harassing phone calls regarding a bill that was sent after the due date (the check for the bill was sent the day after the bill arrived). They know that it was sent late because of the postmark on the envelope: the postmark is March 12; the due date is March 1. Unfortunately, now two more people have found themselves the victims of a company which—after doing some research on it—looks as if it might have one of the worst customer service records in the field.

...As far back as 2005, BusinessWeek reported that from 2003 to 2004, complaints to the Better Business Bureau (BBB) rose 23 percent for Dell. From 2004 to 2005, complaints rose another five percent.

...I couldn’t count all of them, but Consumeraffairs.com has what looks like over 100 complaints listed, most of which appear to be related to Dell’s customer service. Perhaps Consumeraffairs.com worded it best when they offered:

We’d say Dell offers good equipment at a great price but if you never want to open the lid of your computer and have no patience with troubleshooting by phone, then you should probably by a machine from a local geek-owned computer store. Then, when trouble strikes, you’ll have a place to go where, as they say, when you go there, they’ll have to take you in.

References
▪ BusinessWeek
▪ Consumeraffairs.com (complaints)
▪ Consumeraffairs.com (evaluation of Dell)
▪ Whatsnextblog.com

Under the Sea

2007-03-15T15:18:00.000-04:00

Two weeks ago, a group of divers went swimming and picture-taking off the coast of the Dominican Republic. Their photography subjects were a mother humpback whale and her baby, which had been sleeping on the mother’s back. The diver who videotaped the event explained, “[The other divers] were basically right on top of the whale.”

...In response, the baby became frightened and the mother whale duly protected her offspring, resulting in one diver’s broken femur and another diver breaking ribs and being knocked unconscious. The diver with the broken leg is planning on doing it “again in a heartbeat.”

...Some whale experts are concerned about the impact on the whales that increased human contact might have. One study showed that whale-watching boats and divers bothered the whales so much that their food intake dropped by 18 percent.

...We can assume that these divers wouldn’t mind having people stop by their homes for the afternoon to photograph them for a few hours, can’t we? I mean, they’d be supportive of having a camera crew show up to film them in their natural habitat without permission, right?

Reference
▪ ABC News

Viva Book Talk!

2007-03-14T18:45:00.000-04:00

Over the last year, the children’s book Discovering Cultures: Cuba has become quite popular in Florida. Unfortunately it’s not because of any awards; it’s because it has become the center of an ongoing dispute with one party crying “Propaganda!” and the other party crying “Censorship!”

...The book first gained popularity last April when some Cubans wanted the book pulled from the shelves of Bossard Elementary School, after they claimed that the book makes Cuban dictator Fidel Castro look much nicer than what his documented tyrannical history has shown.

...A few weeks ago, mother Dalila Rodriguez checked the book out and never returned it, hoping to “protect” other students from the book’s “lies.” Critics have labeled Rodriguez’s action not only theft but censorship; supporters have said that the book is propaganda and doesn’t belong in a school library.

...I haven’t had the opportunity to read Discovering Cultures: Cuba, but the purpose of this post isn’t to defend the theft of library books for any reason. The purpose of this post is to question if those who are ready to all but hang Rodriguez are vehemently opposed to her actions because her move is a form of censorship, or if they’re opposed because they’re angry that someone might question a potentially propagandized book about Fidel Castro.

...I pose such a question because it’s no secret that Castro is embraced by many self-professed progressives, most of whom claim to oppose censorship and any limitations on book access. Moreover, many are in the field of education, where such issues need to be discussed as often as possible.

...What if this book were nothing more than a piece of propaganda that was used to paint a rosy image of a person whose ideological bent is that of the far-right? What if, for instance, a children’s book were published to do nothing but offer a polished image of someone such as George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, or Donald Rumsfeld? Would those who want Dalila Rodriguez’s head brought to them on a silver platter be as opposed to a librarian or parent trying to pull a pro-conservative book from the shelves? I won’t answer that with certainty, but I have my gut feelings because I’m not sold on the idea that liberals are as anti-censorship as they claim to be. I’ll get to that in a moment.

...While researching this topic, I found one blogger who wants the police to “throw [Rodriguez’s] sorry ass in jail” for having taken the book (he didn’t say if he wanted all patrons with overdue books to have their sorry asses thrown in jail, too, or just Rodriguez). Syndicated columnist Leonard Pitts, Jr. has vowed to replace Discovering Cultures: Cuba at his own expense whenever someone signs it out and keeps it.

...Would that blogger want a patron who stole a pro-Bush or pro-Cheney to have their “sorry ass” thrown in prison, too? Would Pitts be willing to replace stolen books if they painted a pretty picture of Bush or Cheney?

...My concern is that many people who claim to be adamantly opposed to censorship and book bans are actually more talk than substance. Columnist Nat Hentoff recently pointed out that the American Library Association, which supposedly fights against censorship, has routinely refused to call for the release of imprisoned Cuban librarians who have criticized Fidel Castro—librarians who have been deemed “prisoners of conscience” by Amnesty International.

...Hentoff points out that the ALA has actually gone so far as to refuse to make any mention of the farcical trials which put these librarians in prison in the first place. The judges of these trials ordered that books from Martin Luther King, Jr. and George Orwell be burned. As if that weren’t bad enough, Judith Krug, who is the chief goon at the ALA’s Office of Intellectual Freedom, went so far as to say that she “dug in [her] heels” against the supporters of the imprisoned librarians because they have “an agenda” (damn them for wanting to see political prisoners set free). Krug then wished that she could “drown” the entire issue because it “wouldn’t die.” Imagine that: A fight against tyranny not dying.

...My position on book selection is just that: selection. Librarians owe it to their patrons to provide nonfiction books if they’re indeed offering them under the guise of being nonfiction. Otherwise, they should be identified as fiction and offered as such.

...As I’ve said before, I haven’t read Discovering Cultures: Cuba, and as such I can’t call it either propaganda or quality nonfiction. I do, however, long for the day when censorship is a one-way street. Until that day comes, I have a feeling that I’ll have to get used to having people view some censors as fascists and other censors as heroes.

References
▪ Peoria Pundit
▪ Leonard Pitts, Jr.
▪ Nat Hentoff

Higher (Priced) Education

2007-03-14T15:55:00.000-04:00

It’s been said that Pennsylvania might have the most corrupt state legislators in the entire union. Sadly, we keep reading more and more stories that only provide evidence for such an accusation.

...It was recently discovered—after numerous attempts to hide the truth—that the Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency (PHEAA) ripped off taxpayers for at least the last seven years and then attempted to cover it up when news outlets began to question their spending activities.

...For those who don’t know, PHEAA dispenses roughly $500 million a year—all taxpayers’ money—in the forms of grants and subsidies for college students. The PHEAA staff consists of 20 members, 16 of whom just happen to be elected legislators, and they were asked by three news organizations to turn over their expense records under Pennsylvania’s Right-to-Know Law. The politicians, most likely aware that they’d have to explain why they were blowing tax dollars on dinners, golf, and spa treatments, refused to turn over the documents. In fact, they tried to sue the news agencies for requesting the information. That’s probably because PHEAA was hiding the following expenses:

• A November 2001 trip to the Meadowood Napa Valley in California: $156,000.
• Two trips to The Greenbrier resort in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia: $185,000.
• Three days at a retreat south of Pittsburgh: $135,000. (For this one, the dinner tab alone was $47,000; the bar tab was over $10,000.)
• Spa visits amounting to $9,542.
• Additional golf outings costing just under $9,000.

...Associated Press writer Martha Raffaele put together an easy-to-use timeline of events. I’ll reprint it here, adding a few comments of my own to it. This should give you a better idea of what kind of politicians we have in Pennsylvania.

◦ July 22, 2005: WTAE-TV requests PHEAA documents showing their travel expenses.
◦ July 31, 2005: The Patriot-News of Harrisburg reports that PHEAAA spent roughly $885,000 since 2000 on trips.
◦ August 1, 2005: The Patriot-News requests expense records related to PHEAA trips from 2000 to 2005.
◦ August 15, 2005: The Associated Press requests expense records for a PHEAA trip in June 2005.
◦ September 6, 2005: PHEAA, realizing that they have a lot to hide, refuses to honor the news agencies’ requests.
◦ September 9, 2005: PHEAA decides to sue WTAE for their attempts at exposing PHEAA’s corruption.
◦ October 4, 2005: The news agencies sue PHEAA to release their spending records.
◦ November 2005: Both sides agree to suspend their lawsuits against each other and take the case before a judge.
◦ April 4, 2006: Both sides testify before retired judge Warren Morgan.
◦ June 7, 2006: PHEAA releases Morgan’s nonbinding recommendation calling for it to release the spending records. PHEAA, however, refuses to honor the actual recommendation and still refuses to make their records public.
◦ June 30, 2006: The news organizations appeal to Commonwealth Court.
◦ November 15, 2006: The Court rules that PHEAA has violated the Pennsylvania Right-to-Know Law.
◦ December 18, 2006: PHEAA asks the Court to stay the order and files papers for permission to appeal to the state’s Supreme Court.
◦ December 22, 2006: The news agencies file a request with Commonwealth Court to enforce the November 15 ruling.
◦ January 16, 2007: A Commonwealth Court judge denies PHEAA’s request for a stay and orders the immediate release of the documents.
◦ January 26, 2007: PHEAA says that it will release the documents, but doesn’t actually do so after the state Supreme Court grants a request to temporarily stay the Commonwealth Court ruling.
◦ February 21, 2007: The state Supreme Court dismisses PHEAA’s appeals and lifts the stay.
◦ February 28, 2007: PHEAA releases only half of the documents that they were ordered to make public.
◦ March 12, 2007: PHEAA finally abides by the law and releases the remaining documents.

...Who are these crooks that freely spend our hard-earned money? Here’s a list as taken directly from their Website:

• Rep. William F. Adolph, Jr. – Chairman
• Senator Sean Logan – Vice Chairman
• Rep. Ronald I. Buxton
• Senator Jake Corman
• Hon. J. Doyle Corman
• Rep. Craig A. Dally
• Senator Jane M. Earll
• Senator Vincent J. Fumo
• Senator Vincent J. Hughes
• Rep. Sandra J. Major
• Rep. Jennifer L. Mann
• Rep. Joseph F. Markosek
• Senator Michael A. O’Pake
• Hon. Ray Reinard
• Senator James J. Rhoades
• Rep. James R. Roebuck, Jr.
• Rep. Jess M. Stairs
• Senator Robert M. Tomlinson
• Gerald L. Zahorchak (Secretary, Pennsylvania Department of Education)

References
▪ Post-Gazette
▪ PHEAA