English Mall Bans Shoppers' Hooded Tops

This story is getting a little old but I've been meaning to get to it for a month or so now. Hooded tops, baseball caps and swearing have been outlawed at Bluewater shopping centre in Kent as part of a crackdown on anti-social behaviour. The retail and leisure complex is bringing in a zero-tolerance approach to intimidating conduct.

BBC NEWS: Mall bans shoppers' hooded tops

 

 

 

None of these people can go shopping

I'm all for a ban on annoying seniors who wear nylon speedwalking gear and stomp around malls, getting in the way of those of us who want to go and wave at the rabbits in the pet store or window shop at Hillshire Farms. I doubt I'll have much luck though unless I can entrap them into a little light group loitering and menacing.

Once again, rather than address the behavior of the unruly, we are back to blanket categorizations based on dress. Those who complain today probably dressed as mods or rockers in the 1960s (notorious for gang fights at British beaches), Teddy Boys (infamously branded as knife carrying thugs), punks, new romantics (a real chance of blusher burn fo the unwary), or had mullets (a sure sign of a disposition towards mindlessness) back in the day. This is not to say that mobs of sullen teenagers are not intimidating (I work with them; I'd say infuriating rather than intimidating but eh) but once the initial reaction to their vague loutishness has passed surely grown adults can apply a bit more nous to sorting the wheat from the chaff rather than condemn the rather utilitarian and comfortable hoodie? Bah.

Save the USA from Sculptors!

I never realized the Union was so weak that it could be rent asunder or fundamentally changed by words on a monument. After all, the Lincoln Memorial is much bigger and famous than the installation described below but it wasn't until 43 years after the its "simple and dignified message of Freedom" (to quote the Park Service and their odd capitalization) was dedicated that the Voting Rights Act passed.

From the Christian Science Monitor:

"BALDWIN PARK, CALIF. – For a dozen years, a 20-foot monument has stood quietly at the rail stop in this predominantly Latino city. Ray Leyba had never bothered to read it - even though he lives next door. It wasn't until the monument became the focus of a group raging against illegal immigration that he walked across the street and looked at one inscription:
"This land was Mexican once, was Indian always and is, and will be again."

Mr. Leyba was surprised, but his response pales in comparison to the recent fury launched at the slab of concrete by Save Our State (SOS). Though not based in Baldwin Park, the group has spearheaded two recent protests, calling those words seditious and likening the town to "occupied territory," according to SOS founder Joseph Turner...."(read on)

Does This Make Me A Refugee?

I know the Michael Jackson trial was a big story, an Alabama teenagers don't get abducted from tropical island every day, but you would think that at least one network would have reported this earthshaking story:
Hilton.com Special Offers
You would think someone would have noticed. Thanks to my friend RPS for breaking this news to me. No more Colman's mustard, no more wine gums.

Greatest American Chosen

Proving that the GOP has really mastered the ballot stuffing process since the Florida debacle of November 2000, Ronald Reagan defeated Abraham Lincoln by .44% (ironic, given that both were shot- not by a magnum though) to claim the title greatest American. MLK was third, and ooh I don't know; Peppermint Patty fourth (not unlikely based on the nominees chosen by the American public).


Reagan reacts to the news that he was chosen as "Greatest American"

Setting aside the pointless stupidity and complete lack of historical understanding and situational awareness displayed by those who voted for a man whose legacy is still unfolding (much of it remains a state secret) once again the example of Orwell's inventive "memory hole" concept shows itself to be highly appropriate in this day and age.

Even worse, the Discovery Channel has just handed a boxful of ammunition to those maniacs who seem intent on renaming every single thing in the USA after the Gipper. I think I'm going to campaign to have the Guantanamo Bay Detention Center named "The Ronald Reagan Memorial Detention Center". Perfect in so many ways, as the man voted greatest American showed the same lack of historical understanding as his voting bloc, having allowed the escalation of weapons shipments and Saudi/Pakistani fundamentalist outreach to the Afghan muj fighting the Soviets without comprehending the historical, political and religious undercurrents of the region, directly sowing the seeds of the Taliban and Al Qadea. Still, he was never noted for his oversight of the details of his grand concepts. No wonder GWB idolizes him. Furthermore, Bush is in real danger of unconciously emulating Reagan in Afghanistan; pushing in guns, grain, and gold and then losing interest in seeing the job through. My bold prediction: Afghanistan will collapse into civil war within 5 years; Hamid Kahzi will be assassinated or exiled and we will have declared him a) a dictator; b) a fundamentalist; or c) a commie after he tries to stand up for Afghans against State or Defense one time too many.

This Is Not A Baseball Blog 5

Abraham Lincoln

Matt Clement

All Blog And No Play Makes A Dull Boy

Hello chums. I realize that I have been unforgivably absent from this odd exercise in ego-massaging for just over a week, but in my defense I'd like to offer up the following excuses:

a) After two months of near constant rain, the sun has been out in Maine and then some.
b) Therefore it has been awfully hot in the upstairs bit where I habitually do my computer buggins.
b) It was my birthday on the 21st (of June, Mondale) and I had to contemplate being 32 for a few days (thank you hops, thank you barley, thank you yeast).
c) I got a bike for my birthday (what am I, 12? Asking for a bike at my age; I must be part Dutch. Suffice to say, I'm very happy). I have been riding said bike, buying accessories for said bike, and daydreaming about riding said bike to work (8 miles downhill to sea level good; 8 miles back up long slow hill at the end of the day bad).
d) I bought a new water pistol yesterday (well, more of a pump action water shotgun actually), ostensibly for repelling skunks in the dark (long story partially recounted below) but in its short reality it has proved more useful for blasting a path through the swarms of june bugs and moths crowding the porch light so that I can nip out for a bifter (Mondale can translate if needed).

I'll brook no argument; these are valid excuses.

Anyway, to the weather; on blistering days like this one can only be thankful that one was born and raised on military bases on the fair Island of Albion and thus developed early the ability to make a bloody reasonable gin and tonic. You can throw your How The Irish Saved Civillisation by whatshisface Cahill in a peaty bog, you can raise the anchor on the Greeks and send them back to Sailing The Wine Dark Sea (Cahill again), and you can even apply kevlar, bactine, and rustoleum to Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel; the true mark of civillisation can be found by marching into a local hostelry anywhere in the world and being pleasantly surprised to find bottles marked "schweppes indian tonic water" and either "Bombay Sapphire" or "Tanqueray".

Already I can sense some of your hackles rising; "'(I) thus developed early the ability to make a bloody reasonable gin and tonic'- how hard is it to splash a little gin in a glass, sling in some ice, and top it off with tonic and a slice of citrus?" Far be it for me to claim total expertise in this area, but I will humbly suggest that a properly constructed G & T (or in the Weasel family vernacular, a "grin and vomit") while simple on the surface really needs a gentle hand and a steady eye. Making the first is no trial but if you have done it properly making the fourth will be. Allow me to humbly share my recipe:

3 parts good gin, aka "mothers' ruin". I prefer Tanqueray; Mondale is a Bombay man. Unlike a drink that will be drowned in cola or a fruity disaster blend there is really no top-notch mixer for gin (most tonic being mass-produced in grim soda bottling plants) and so a good spirit is a must. A martini quality booze really makes the drink.

7 parts Schweppes tonic. A conglomerate they may be, but sentimentally British to the core. When I was 14 I took part in a leg of the "Round Britain Walk" sponsored hike for the Duke of Edinburgh's Award Scheme(for the Brits out there, my team covered Sandringham to Newark, mostly along Peddars Way; for the septics, the DoE award is like Outward Bound) and the victuals were supplied by Cadbury-Schweppes. Therefore I have fond memories of bottles of bitter lemon and the legendary finger of fudge candy bar.

One ice cube for every 4 fluid ounces of glass volume.

Take glass from cupboard (I like the American pint glass; 16 ounces, while too small for a real beer, is good for mixed drinks). Remove errant spider from glass. pour in gin. Add ice. Take cocktail stirrer or chopstick and "bruise" the gin on the ice to release those fantastic aromatic herb extracts. Pour in the tonic gently, preferably letting it cascade over the mini-iceberg before hitting the gin. Do not add fruit; this is an elephant tranquillizer designed to avert malaria and homesickness, not a salad. Drink while seated in a comfortable armchair listening to English "Sounds of the Suburbs" music like the Pistols, the Jam, or the Libertines with a punkah (with or without punkah wallah) chugging in the background. Verily, you are now a pukkah sahib of your own liberal, boozy raj.

Bugger- I would write more, but a terrific thunderstorm just started. More Grin and Vomits! To the storm shelter Dorothy!

Spare Your School Run Blushes, SUV Driver

 

This is not an off-road vehicle

A new product has taken the SUV accessory market by storm in the UK, and with any luck it will soon be on autoparts store shelves here. The crusty layer of grime and filth it takes us residents of rural areas a month or so to accumulate on our vehicles after the snow melts can be yours in one simple application:

"Sprayonmud is a specially formulated spray-on product for anyone that wants to give friends, neighbours, colleagues or just anyone at all, the impression that they have been off-road or, at the very least, out in the country for the weekend."
Sprayonmud Products

Dinah, Meet Pepe Le Pew

 

It finally happened: after 15 months of living surrounded by the breeding skunks who seem to have a fetish for the space under our mud room, Dinah the dog finally got sprayed. And as is traditional whenever this sort of thing happens, she took on her new vomit inducing parfum at bedtime.

I have always dreaded the first time one's dog meets the business end of the skunk. The fact that it is pretty much a given in Maine, as inevitable as slow RVs from Ohio clogging the drive to work every July, doesn't make it any less horrible. Still (maybe because I've feared it so long and built it up in my mind) it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. Di was obviously pissed off and freaked out, but she made it upstairs to the bathroom with minimal guidance without wiping skunk juice on everything and was meeker than usual in the tub, despite the attention we had to pay to her eyes. Luckily she has such a huge German Shep head and a collie ruff (thank god for mutts) so none of the stank made it onto her torso. She enjoyed having the tomato juice poured on her head as it appeared to be good eatin' to her mind (she drank a fair amount of it) and she's always liked the smell of Mrs. Weasel's bespoke dog shampoo so the actual bathing wasn't too onerous. Dinah's head does currently smell like a mixture of pine needles, a bloody mary, and burning tires however.

The trouble with a skunk really spraying, rather than just malodorously wandering past the house, is that the even the slightest hint of pong lingers. So much so that Mrs. Weasel decided to sleep on the living room futon to get away from Dinah's gently wafting head (I put some pleasantly scented muscle rub up my nose: fine until it began burning) and the kitchen had a really unique scent this morning thanks to the overnight marinating of collar and leash in tomato juice in the kitchen sink. I even felt compelled to apologize to my co-workers this morning should I have brought any of the skunkiness to the office with me; I keep catching hints of skunk but I'm not sure if it's down to actual skunk juice molecules or the psychological trauma of being inches from being doused myself.

At least Di has been blooded and is a true Maine dog now.
 

Stinky dog

"It's Just A Rumor That Was Spread Around Town.."

 


In all the recent furor over the Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) report that targeted the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard and NAS Brunswick in Maine another defense story that has the potential to have a big impact on workers and coastal communities here seems to have fallen by the wayside. In the interests of efficiency and to meet future needs, the Navy proposed halving the number of shipyards working on the DDX destroyer and a future "stealthy" class of surface warship and withdrawing the contract from either the Ingalls yard in Mississippi or from Bath Iron Works here in midcoast Maine.

Predictably, there was a huge outcry from state legislators and our delegation to Washington, most notably from Senators Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins. The usual arguments were trotted out; we are at war, it is shortsighted to limit our warship building infrastructure, the yard builds outstanding vessels, and so on. There were even the now common whispers from the fringes and flanks that the proposed changes were political payback directed at Maine's maverick Republican senators who are gambling their reelection chances in this fairly liberal northeastern state on voting much of the time with the Democrats. In short, these exchanges followed the script, and the script does not allow for one important factor to be discussed maturely; namely the defense needs of the United States.

The case for withdrawing the Navy contract from Bath Iron Works is less apparent at first glance than the real need to close both Portsmouth and Brunswick. The two bases slated for closure/realignment are relics of the Cold War, designed to quickly service a North Atlantic fleet and maintain and fly submarine hunters protecting the arctic approaches and the eastern seaboard from Soviet penetration. In our current "war on terror" the need for coastal picket lines and routine searches for surface and subsurface fleets seems limited. If there is a seaborne attack (and I fully believe there will be) it will come undercover aboard a civilian ship. The money spent on maintaining aging air wings of P-3 Orion subhunters would be better spent on port security if we are serious about saving American lives. The Customs Agent, not the depth charge, is going to be the federal expenditure that saves lives. But we still need ships, even if they are not going to be based in the North Atlantic.

In this current conflict vessels larger than coastal/riverine raiders, stealthier than submarines, or smaller than aircraft carriers seem like expensive ornaments, but given that a ship will likely be in service for at least twenty years it is wise to plan ahead to the next threat. For many students of geopolitics and strategy, the next threat is likely to come from east Asia. North Korea is a given, and there is a lot of agreement that China will increasingly challenge American Pacific hegemony, or that a Sino-Indian conflict or Indian-Pakistani war will greatly destabilize that region. Putting aside the maniac in Pyongyang, China is the key. Already the Chinese are subtly pursuing global energy resources and markets and are loudly rattling the saber over Taiwan. Should the worst come to pass (and that is what military planners are paid to expect) the United States will need the best possible surface and subsurface fleets in order to engage with an enemy an ocean away. So shouldn't BIW keep building destroyers?

In my humble opinion, no. I don't approach this question from a liberal, pacifist point of view (in my ideal world we wouldn't need warships, but my ideal world would per force have to be devoid of most humans for that to come to pass); those who know me well are aware that I believe in a muscular liberalism that is prepared to defend (not impose) ideals with the sword. If you have to take that step, you have to make your opponent rue the day he took up arms against you (three of my greatest heroes are Oliver Cromwell, Union General William Sherman, and Air Marshal Arthur Harris; men who understood war to be so terrible an instrument it could not be implemented half-heartedly). Therefore, a free and democratic nation owes it to its citizens to be well prepared to defend itself and to approach that defense in a robust, clear eyed, and intelligent manner. We need the ships, we just don't need them built in Maine, a continent away from where they are likely to be employed in battle. What we need instead is a west coast mid-sized surface vessel shipyard.

There will be those that point out that concentrating surface construction on the Pacific coast will lay our yards open to missile attack by whoever winds up on the enemies list +1. I would argue that given the great (but slowly decreasing) gap between American and Chinese (for sake of argument) missile and naval forces, the risks of a sub or ICBM launched Pearl Harbor or sustained facility attrition campaign are much lower than some kind of asymmetric attack, such as a forced closure of the Panama Canal by sabotage preventing Atlantic based or built vessels from quickly reaching the Pacific and then Taiwan, or Japan, or Indonesia (and so on). Between SOSUS, satellites, aircraft, subs, and ships we will be able to protect the west coast. Any missile launch will not herald the start of a war, but rather the end of an opponent's existence. Without going any further into the nature of any Pacific conflict, BIW does not serve any current or near-to-mid range future strategic defense need.

So rather than trying to fight for a Cold War relic, why doesn't Maine's congressional delegation grab the nettle and be the first to break this paradigm? I would much rather see Maine out of this fraught business of fighting for our bases or shipyard every couple of years and instead looking at retraining the workforce and attracting new and diverse employment opportunities. Let the other 49 states tilt at federal windmills; let Maine escape the one industry town/"if the mill dies we all die" mentality; and let our Senators turn their proven rhetorical skills and positions as bi-partisan teases towards a new century rather than keep looking wistfully over their shoulders towards a past that was never as glorious as the geezers maintain. As Elvis Costello sang;

"Is it worth it
A new winter coat and shoes for the wife
And a bicycle on the boy’s birthday
It’s just a rumour that was spread around town
By the women and children
Soon we’ll be shipbuilding
Well I ask you
The boy said ’dad they’re going to take me to task
But I’ll be back by christmas’
It’s just a rumour that was spread around town
Somebody said that someone got filled in
For saying that people get killed in
The result of this shipbuilding
With all the will in the world
Diving for dear life
When we could be diving for pearls
It’s just a rumour that was spread around town
A telegram or a picture postcard
Within weeks they’ll be re-opening the shipyards
And notifying the next of kin
Once again
It’s all we’re skilled in
We will be shipbuilding
With all the will in the world
Diving for dear life
When we could be diving for pearls."

Police Officers Look Younger Every Day

 

You are under arrest for stealing my lunch money

News from the subcontinent, courtesy of the BBC:
India's five-year-old policeman
'At a time when most children prepare to go to school, Saurabh Nagvanshi is off to the office. Saurabh works at a police station in Raipur, the capital of India's central state of Chhattisgarh. He is five years old.

He is part of an Indian system that allows a family member to take the post of a government employee who dies while in service. There is no age limit and many families have no alternative but to send young children to work to make ends meet. Saurabh has to feed a family of five and so his mother, Ishwari Devi Nagvanshi, holds his hand and takes him the 110km (68 miles) from Bilaspur, where they live, to Raipur.

In this surrogate police job, a child must work one day and go to school the next. At work, the children are asked to do filing and bring tea and water for senior officials. The children are paid 2,500 rupees ($57) a month. At an age when children are learning how to write, Saurabh now knows how to sign his name when he receives his monthly salary. He is quiet. If you try to talk to him he will either run away or hide behind his mother. Mrs Nagvanshi says: "In order to run the house I had no option but to make my child work. It's not nice. He should be jumping around and playing at his age."

For most of the children who take on the responsibilities of their dead fathers, there is no time to play. Many families, like that of Manish Khoonte have little choice Manish, who is 10, works as a child officer in the Korba police station. His day begins at 0600 by going to school with his two younger brothers. In the afternoon, after finishing his studies, he goes to work. He gets extra tuition in the evening. He loves football, but has no time to play. But he does get 2,400 rupees a month and the respect of his peers - they call him "policeman". Manish says he wants to become an inspector someday. Jitesh Singh, 13, wants to leave his job as a child officer as soon as possible but thinks it could be many years before that happens. Janki Prasad Rajwade, 18, feels the same way. He joined the police in 1994 after his father's death. Since then, he has spent every day wondering when he will be able to leave. He says he does not like filing and serving tea but has little choice. He hopes to finish his studies and get a job with the federal Indian Police Service, not the state force.

Railway Police superintendent in Raipur, Pawan Dev, says the employment of the children in the police must be seen from a social perspective. Jitesh Singh wants to quit but knows it may be many years away The money is a great relief to the families, he says. In addition, the workload is light. But Subhash Mishra, a member of the state's Human Rights Commission, says it is wrong to make children work like this. He says, instead, the families should be given an equal amount of money to pay for the child's upbringing and education. Subhash Mahapatra, president of a human rights organisation called Forum for Fact-finding, Documentation and Advocacy, goes further. According to the Geneva Convention, he says, employing children as police officials and making them work at such a young age is against Indian and international laws.

"It is very similar to the definition of child soldiers as outlined by the United Nations," he says.'

In the United States of course, we do not expect children to join the police force or replace dead fathers. Instead we encourage them to run for president and the father doesn't even need to be dead. This behavior is common though among those who take their father's place and are reliant on sub-standard skills and education: "If you try to talk to him he will either run away or hide behind his mother."

Kidding aside, before we get too high and mighty about this, this practice is not disimilar to the old 18th and 19th Royal Navy/US Navy practice of placing infants and children on a ship's rolls or even physically onboard to draw pay and accrue seniority. One can hope then that India will move forward and develop both the social safety net and civil service culture that allows this practice to die a natural death in the way other industrializing nations have in the past. Fascinating stuff, either way.

And You Think We Have Church vs. State Issues Here...

BBC NEWS: Violence at tsunami monk protest

Back to the Terrible Ton

My apologies in advance, but I can't stay away from that blasted "100 Greatest Americans" list formulated by the pop biography, raised by ESPN and MTV, self help nation who know more of Vidal Sassoon than Gore Vidal (at the very least you can buy Sassoon's work in Wal Mart in handy 12oz bottles). Let me reiterate that there were some very worthy choices, and some that played to my own predjudices and beliefs (I'll admit to getting very emotional upon seeing Ceasar Chavez was on the list). Its the bone headed options that get me, and so this entry is a revisionist, Hitchenesque look at the frankly asinine names that made the cut.

Americans who belong on the list (with caveats in some cases):
Abraham Lincoln, Albert Einstein, Alexander Graham Bell, Alexander Hamilton, Amelia Earhart, Andrew Carnegie, Audie Murphy (at a pinch, as representative of the military conscript), Babe Ruth (representative of sports as nobody could remember the name Abner Doubleday), Benjamin Franklin, Bill Clinton (time will tell, but gets presidential default), Bill Gates (but not top 25, and no Thomas Watson?), Carl Sagan, Cesar Chavez, Charles Lindbergh (fascist), Chuck Yeager, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Eleanor Roosevelt, Elvis Presley (but not top 25 if Muddy Waters or Hank Williams didn't make the list), Frank Sinatra (representing a cultural movement and time), Franklin D. Roosevelt, Frederick Douglass, George Washington, George Washington Carver, Harriet Ross Tubman, Harry Truman, Helen Keller, Henry Ford (fascist), Howard Hughes, Jackie Robinson, Jesse Owens (no doubt pissed off Lindbergh and Ford), Jimmy Stewart (as an avatar for Ted Williams etc; giving up big career for national service, versus Ronald Reagan's approach), John Glenn, John F. Kennedy (hmmm, see Clinton), Jonas Edward Salk, Joseph Smith Jr. (if only for being so batshit crazy), Lyndon B. Johnson, Malcolm X (terrified whitey- always worth 100 points), Mark Twain (I'm surprised these spastics didn't nominate Shania) Martin Luther King Jr., Muhammad Ali (For saying "no viet cong ever called me n****r" and thus encapsulating the hypocricsy of the ol' "let freedom ring" type rhetoric), Neil Armstrong, Nikola Tesla, Ray Charles (no Dizzy? Duke? Ella?), Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan (see Clinton), Rosa Parks (again, an avatar), Sam Walton, Steve Jobs, Susan B. Anthony, Theodore Roosevelt (a man, a plan, a canal, Panama!), Thomas Edison, Thomas Jefferson, Walt Disney, Orville & Wilbur Wright.

OK, so the American public scored 55/100 there. Now for the dross:
What Were People Thinking?
Played heroes or nice guys in movies with little emprical evidence they are heroes or nice guys in real life:
Arnold Schwarzenegger, Clint Eastwood, John Wayne, Tom Cruise, Tom Hanks. Special award goes to: Mel Gibson, who is neither hero or nice guy but insane egoist and mascochist.
Had Sex With White Politician, Farted Around With Public Policy:
Barbara Bush, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (her second husband had barstools covered with whale foreskins. Meanwhile people starve), Laura Bush, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Marilyn Monroe (except she stayed away from policy).
Told Jokes Within the Last 50 Years:
Bill Cosby, Bob Hope, Johnny Carson, Lucille Ball, and with the special Mrs. Roosevelt has already got the lesbian thing covered award, Ellen DeGeneres.
Told Nixon He Hated Jews Too:
Billy Graham
Plays a Game for Money:
Brett Favre, Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan, and the shit luck award winner, Pat Tillman.
Rich Men With Health Issues:
Christopher Reeve, Lance Armstrong.
First In Ethnic/Gender Does Not Excuse Craven Moral Cowardice or Intellectual Bankruptcy:
Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice.
President Ain't Enough, Died Too Young, Or Way Too Early:
George H. W. Bush, George W. Bush, Barak Obama, Jimmy Carter, John Edwards, Robert Kennedy, Rudolph W. Giuliani
Made Aliens Cute:
George Lucas, Steven Spielberg
Sherman Did It Better With Less:
George Patton
Realized Men Like Looking At Boobs:
Hugh Hefner, Madonna
Longevity Is Not Greatness:
Katharine Hepburn
Sells A Mean Bed Sheet:
Martha Stewart
Who Says People Can't Name A Poet?:
Maya Angelou
Fat Ideologues Who Probably Nominated Themselves:
Michael Moore, Rush Limbaugh
Won NAMBLA Bloc Vote:
Michael Jackson
Have Hypnotized Their TV Audiences To Do Their Bidding:
Donald Trump, Oprah Winfrey, Dr. Phil McGraw (lives off the royal jelly Oprah secretes).

Spot The Difference

With apologies to Walter Mondale and Listmaker, can you spot the main difference between these two English athletes, goalscorer extrordinaire Michael Owen and crack bagel racer Mondale?

 

 


I think it is obvious; Mondale is much more comfortable in the spotlight.

At Least Matt Lauer Had The Good Grace To Seem Embarrassed

 

Gregor the Hairy (1802-1902), discovered the microfleem and once made out with Molly Ringwald's great grandmother on a visit to Smegmaworld, Armenia's first theme park. What's that, its the "The 100 Greatest Americans" not"Armenians"? Well that explains the presence of Eisenhower but how does that account for Cher?

So I exaggerate. Cher, mercifully, didn't make the optimistically titled list of "the 100 Greatest Americans" as aired on the Discovery Channel last night. But Michael Jackson, Brett Favre, and Dr Phil did. As did Donald Trump. No Joseph Pulitzer, John D. Rockefeller, Ernest Hemmingway, Sacajawea, U.S. Grant, John Steinbeck, Susan Sontag, Jackson Pollock, Aaron Copeland, Clara Barton, Mother Jones, Jack Johnson, Mary Baker Eddy, Andy Warhol, Margaret Chase Smith, Shirley Chisholm, Geronimo, John Brown, H.D. Thoreau, Mack Sennett, King Gillette, or George Gershwin (never mind the fact that there would never be a place for the Berrigan brothers, Howard Zinn, Eugene Debs, or Emma Goldman). But the Donald made the list.

I'll admit up front that my personal list would be heavy on rabble rousers and impish activists but in the spirit of the survey I would be prepared to step back and try to cast a long view before selecting my greatest American. Alas, it seems a fair percentage of the folks who voted for their top 100 decided that this was the way of the Darwin supporting antichrists who model themselves on Old Europe and instead plunged ahead with the nomination of those whose names they either scrawled on their trapper keepers as young kids or maintain slavishly obsessive and very creepy fan web sites about. Hence, no Edward R Murrow but instead a distrubingly high ranking Rush Limbaugh.

From the get go I got the impression that even the good folks at the Discovery Channel were disturbed, amazed, and embarrassed by a large number of the nominees- Matt Lauer kept reminding us that the list was bound to be controversial and quirky. Bob Costas, in his role as pontificator on nominated athletes, went so far as to denounce those who voted for Favre as 'dopey.' In retrospect, the Discovery folks might have tried to clarify things by adding the words "of all time. think about this carefully. Please." to the title of the show but I suspect that given the instantaneous, thought-free nature of our modern society and the short shrift civics and history are given in our classrooms (do all high school coaches have to opt for history as their classroom back up?) that this would have made little difference. And before I get too sniffy, the British version of this saw Princess Diana make the list at number 3; horrifying given that we Brits have two thousand years of recorded history to draw on.

Of course, I'm being unrealistic in my expectations (its what makes my life fun). This sort of show no more reflects a true matirx of human achievement or greatness than the faces on postage stamps do. What it does present is a snapshot of contempary attitudes towards celebrity and pop history with little room for for thoughtful analysis or a balanced look at a person's life. So with that in mind I'm going to continue to invest in this program until the bitter end in a couple of week's time and prepare myself mentally for a massive outpouring of spleen should the public vote go against my personal pick. The last 25 are open for public discussion and voting: go here to review the candidates and cast a vote for proper historical perspective.

Welcome to Boston, John Olerud

 


I know, I know: don't make fun of his helmet, he wears it for a good reason.

He still looks like a knob though.

Sorry! Jesus, I'm only joking.