Around The Horn

• This is one of the scariest things I've read in a long time. It gives real insight into what fascists hardcore feminists really are. Choice, shmoice. It's a review by Slate writer Meghan O'Rourke of Get to Work: A Manifesto for Women of the World by Linda Hirshman. The book's thesis is essentially that women have a moral responsibility to work outside the home.
  
  The writer says:

  ...[B]uried beneath Hirshman's overblown rhetoric is a useful idea....namely, that our obsession with choice prevents us from asking tough questions about how to achieve further equality. "Deafened by choice, here's the moral analysis these women never heard," she says: Until there is more equity in the cultural norms for child-rearing and household tasks, each time a woman decides to "opt out" she is making a political decision that reinforces an already ingrained social inequality. Women who believe otherwise suffer from a mixture of false consciousness and impractical idealism. It's when Hirshman is at her most radical—when she sets aside the language of personal fulfillment in favor of injunctions about the collective good—that she is at her most valuable.
  
  ....Her stubborn insistence is refreshing. Unlike others, she is willing to come out and say, in no uncertain terms, that the luxury of making our own decisions as if they had no larger implications isn't ethical at this point in time. If that makes feminism unpopular, so be it; but shying away from persistent inequality by invoking the language of "choice," she observes, is hardly feminism. If you buy her argument, then even if you find it hard to leave your baby at home, and even if you find the workplace sometimes less-than-fulfilling, it's important—to society as a whole—that you work. This sounds extreme, but of course it's the lesson every man is taught when he's a boy: Your responsibility to society—the way to become an adult—is to work.

  Read it. If you're anything but a cyborg, it'll send chills down your spine. In all the ominous talk about "theocracy" you hear coming from the Left, never forget that it's the leftists in America who have the scary totalitarian instinct.

• A friend and coworker of mine was in New York the other day to interview Ann Coulter, and knowing my fondness for the poison pen, he was kind enough to have her sign her book for me. She wrote:

  To John,
  Best wishes to a great American.
  Enjoy the invective!
  
  Ann Coulter

  Pretty cool. My friend said she couldn't have been nicer.

• Regarding the latest Rush Limbaugh incident. I hope it won't be too hard on him.

• Yesterday, I saw a headline that said, "University set to fire Ward Churchill." But I momentarily misread it, thinking it said, "University to set fire to Ward Churchill."
  
  "I'm cool with that," I thought.

• When I was in high school in St. Louis in 1986, they were having a two nights of concerts at the Fox Theater to celebrate rock legend (and St. Louis native) Chuck Berry's 60th birthday. Among the guests to play with Chuck: Keith Richards, Eric Clapton, Robert Cray, and Etta James, among others. I remember desperately wanting to go (several friends of mine even worked on the sound crew), but I didn't get to. Anway, they made a movie about it called "Hail! Hail! Rock 'n' Roll," which is being re-released on DVD after 20 years.
  
  The participants in the project found out that Chuck Berry really isn't a very good guy:

  ...Berry refused to show up for filming each day until [a producer] gave him a bag of cash, which is how he used to be paid for his slapdash concerts. She estimates that Berry cajoled upwards of $800,000 out of the production, a hefty sum given that the budget was $3 million. [Director Taylor] Hackford was forced to give up his director's fee in order to stem the tide of red ink but ended up with the DVD rights.

  The director did not find it to be a pleasant experience.

  "Nobody is ever gonna know what really goes on inside that head. No one's ever gonna do the entire picture of Chuck Berry because it's just too deep and dark."

• Here's the best article ever written about soccer. My own view of the sport has never been better represented:

  The historic [U.S.] game with Italy ended in an epic 1-1 tie. But in what was ballyhooed as one of the greatest games ever played by an American team, the United States failed to score. The goal credited to the Americans was scored by an opposing player who--oops!--accidentally kicked the ball into his own goal.
  
  Think about this about this for a moment. It just about sums up everything you need to know about soccer, or football, as it is known elsewhere.
  
  Soccer is the perfect game for the post-modern world. It's the quintessential expression of the nihilism that prevails in many cultures, which doubtlessly accounts for its wild popularity in Europe. Soccer is truly Seinfeldesque, a game about nothing, sport as sensation.

  I'm getting this one framed. (Hat tip: Justin Taylor)

And that's how we play "Around the Horn."

Related Tags: Slate, feminism, Meghan O'Rourke, Linda Hirshman, Get to Work, Ann Coulter, Ward Churchill, Chuck Berry, Taylor Hackford, Hail! Hail! Rock 'n' Roll, Rush Limbaugh, The nihilism of soccer, Frank Cannon, Richard Lessner, Weekly Standard

From Ye Olde Mail Bag

I see we have some post-NBA Finals reaction in the mail bag:

From: andrew
To: thecalvinator@hotmail.com
Subject: absurd blog entry
Date: Thu, 22 Jun 2006 18:29:34 -0700 (PDT)

your [sic] words:

>As I said, I don't watch except for the finals.
>So despite living in South Florida, this
>is my first real look at this Heat team.
>My newest copy of SI has Dwayne Wade
>on the cover, and I'm told his is
>the best-selling jersey in the NBA.

>Let me say: I'm not impressed.

let [sic] me say this is some comical stuff..you admit you never saw the guy play and then you proceed to slam him after seeing him play the first two games of the finals. how [sic] rediculous [sic] does what you wrote look now? my [sic] advice to you, don't write about things you no [sic] nothing about. anyone [sic] who has watched wade over the past three seasons knew he was a special player.

-----------------------------------------

Dear Andrew,

I think you may be overestimating my importance a mite. Enjoy the win and relax a little bit. How sad it must be to be so bitter even in victory! But since you took the trouble to write....

I'm not the least bit embarassed by what I wrote. I've written many, many things to be embarassed about. That's not one of them.

Let's give this some thought. Why do you think I specifically mentioned that I hadn't watched Wade play? Think about that a minute: why would I have pointed that out? Indeed, that was the whole POINT of the post: Wade is a celebrated player, and yet showed nothing in Games 1 and 2 of the NBA's biggest showcase. Nobody who'd only seen him in those two games would have any idea what all the fuss was about, and considering it was the NBA Finals, there were millions of people watching in exactly that position.

I figured that "he was a special player," seeing as though he was on the cover of SI and all. Duh. If you're anything other than a dull literalist, you'll understand that the real point I was making was that "Dwyane [sic] Wade is not even close to playing up to his capability." After that, he began to play in a way far more consistent with his reputation, obviously. Of course I was more impressed in Games 3 through 6. Who wasn't? What, are you saying I should have been impressed with games 1 and 2? I don't think even Wade would say that.

And my larger point, namely that the comparisons with Jordan are inane, still stands. Show me any two consecutive games in the playoffs where Jordan didn't show anything. Show me two Finals games where he didn't show anything. Show me a time Jordan would ever have missed two crucial free throws in a huge game like Wade did at the end of Game 6, which have been forgotten only because Dallas missed a wide-open 3-point opportunity.

He's a nice player, and I was rooting for the Heat to win. I'm excited, and I think Wade has a great future. But my post was correct: Games 1 and 2 were an embarassment to him, and he's not in Jordan's universe. It's okay. He doesn't need to be. Nobody else is either. But Jordan never embarassed himself in big games, and if a Martian were to come to earth and randomly select from history one Jordan Finals performance to watch, he'd never find a game where he was wondering what the big deal was at the end of it.

That's the difference, and that's what I was saying. And I was (and am) right. As always.

Cheers,
John Rabe

Will They Use The Bubble Tops?

To the astonishment of anyone who watched the first two games of the NBA Finals, the Miami Heat are (is?) the 2006 champions. South Florida is euphoric after years of basketball futility.

I'm coming up with this one off the top of my head, but I believe this is the first time in NBA history that a team without a plural nickname has won it all. The Jazz had a couple of shots, but never closed the deal. It may even be the first time in major team sports (unless you count hockey as a major team sport, which nobody does). Of course, it doesn't hurt that neither the NFL nor Major League Baseball has any teams with singular names, but still...

I'm told (and the ABC broadcast reiterated) that a Mavericks victory parade route had been developed and published in Dallas sometime around Game 2. Heat players mentioned it as part of the inspiration for their sudden turnaround.

If it's true, that's the most ill-advised parade in Dallas since the presidential motorcade snaked through Dealey Plaza.

Related Tags: Miami Heat, NBA Finals, NBA Champions, 2006 Champions, Dallas Mavericks, victory parade, Lee Harvey Oswald

Bits and Pieces

• For Father's Day, my family gave me a book I've been asking for: Guests of the Ayatollah, about the Iran hostage crisis that ultimately sunk Jimmy Carter's presidency (who says all things don't work together for good?) by Black Hawk Down author Mark Bowden.
  
  The first 80 or so pages I've read are outstanding. Amazingly, I read several chapters out loud yesterday to my kids (13 and 12), and they were riveted to it.

• Paul Weyrich of the Free Congress Foundation argues compellingly that President Bush's recent, sudden "support" of the Federal Marriage Amendment was a half-hearted, cynical ploy to throw an artificial bone to his conservative base, whom he knew would roll over and chew on it without demanding any real substance.
  
  He writes:

  Did the Majority Whip in the Senate twist arms until it hurts on the Marriage Amendment? No. Did the President talk with Senators, trading things as he did with the drug benefit? No. Was the Right angry about this? No. I asked one of the most visible and important leaders of the pro-family movement if he had conscience problems attending the event at the White House, since he and the rest of us were props in a non-effort to pass this Amendment. Without hesitation this major leader said, “Not at all. I felt we had to enforce what little this President did.”

  Would that this president truly cared as much about traditional values as Bill Clinton did about abortion rights.

• In watching the NBA Finals, I've noticed that when one team goes on a roll and the other team naturally calls timeout, Hubie Brown constantly needs to tell us what a "good timeout" it was, as if a chimpanzee wouldn't know to call timeout in that situation.
  
  My son and I have really started having a good time with this. Last night he said, "You know, this series has had a lot of poorly-played basketball, horrible shooting, and terrible free throws, but we've seen some really great timeouts. I've just enjoyed the good, fundamental timeout work we've seen from these two teams."
  
  He's a real chip off the ol' smart-aleck block.

• Of course, all of that was before Josh Howard actually cost Dallas Game 5 with the worst timeout since Chris Webber.

• Okay, the MJ comparisons are still way overdone, but I'm starting to see a little bit of what the Dwyane [sic] Wade hype is all about. And I've only recently noticed that he doesn't know how to spell his own first name.

• I was out of town on Thursday and Friday. Here's what I did at work on Thursday (scroll down the Thursday, June 15th). When I grow up, I want to be George Grant. And I'm not even kidding. This guy has forgotten more this morning than I've ever known. And he couldn't be a more enjoyable guy to hang out with.
  
  And here's what I did on Friday. The folks at Answers in Genesis couldn't be nicer either. I really have a great job. Though after looking at these photos, I'm finally now convinced that I really need to lose some weight.

• Now that the World Cup of soccer has had a few days to really get going....nope, still don't care.

The Way We Were

At halftime of the NBA Finals game last night (just before detectives discovered Dwyane Wade and brought him out of hiding), ABC aired a touching feature about a young kidney transplant patient whose life was touched by fellow transplant patient Alonzo Mourning of the Miami Heat.

It reminded me of another touching true story involving the philanthropic Mourning.

When I worked at KFNS sports radio in St. Louis in the early 90's, we producers were looking to get some guests on the air. One of the ways we frequently did this was by "ambushing" (as we called it). "Ambushing" was simply calling a sports team's hotel, asking for the room of a player, and when he answered (the majority of them, suprisingly enough, register under their own names) asking him if he'd come on the air with us for a few minutes. It wasn't a fun job because many players understandably didn't care to be bothered in their rooms and could be a bit terse. Occasionally, however, there were some really nice ones, even among the stars. I recall Greg Maddux, Curt Schilling, Chipper Jones, and Andy Benes as being particularly friendly and accomodating. And NHL players were uniformly wonderful.

Anyway, ambushing wasn't the most fun in the world, so we'd get interns to do it when we could. One day, probably in '94 or '95, I asked one of our interns to try Alonzo Mourning in his room during a Heat road trip. The intern dutifully looked up the hotel number in the NBA media guide, got Mourning on the phone, and asked him if he'd be willing to come on the air with us for a couple of minutes.

"What's your name?" Alonzo asked.

"Tim Brinks," repeated the intern.

"And where are you guys at?" inquired Mourning.

"St. Louis," said Tim.

"Well I'm going to come up there and find you, and I'm going to #&$@^!& kill you!" quipped 'Zo before slamming down the phone.

Good times.

Related Tags: Alonzo Mourning, Miami Heat, KFNS, sports radio, death threats

Sports Shorts

A few sports observations from the weekend past:

• We've entered the once-every-four-years cycle that's even less appealing than the presidential election: the soccer World Cup. This is the period when every major media outlet tries to bang the drum for the world's most popular (and boring) sport, which is about as popular in America as a tight belt at a rap concert. Sports Illustrated, ABC, ESPN, and the usual suspects are already days into their month-long campaign to try to make us feel like parochial rubes for not enjoying "the world's sport."
  
  I'm sorry, but I refuse to feel guilty for rejecting something that's only enjoyed by Europeans and other third-worlders. If it's such a tremendous jewel in the worldwide crown of athletics, why is ESPN giving priority to things like the College Baseball World Series and showing the whole soccer shmear on ESPN 2?
  
  Remember, these are all the same media outlets that have been trying to push the moribund WNBA on a clearly-unwilling American public for years now. For 3 1/2 more weeks, the major sports outlets will keep acting as if we cared about the World Cup, and for 3 1/2 more weeks, we will continue not caring.

• I'm not a big NBA fan. Probably because St. Louis (where I grew up) had no NBA team, I've always been much more interested in college hoops. But I do watch the NBA finals.
  
  Is it too late to cancel this year's finals due to a lack of interest? Yes, Dallas finally turned things on a bit in third quarter of last night's game, but other than that, this series has been brutal. I've had to turn over to old series on ESPN Classic just to see somebody score. If turnovers and balls clanking off the rim are your idea of entertainment, then this is the series for you. Personally, I'd just as soon go watch the guys at the court near my house. They clank just as many shots, but it seems like less of a ripoff since they're not actually getting paid anything.

• As I said, I don't watch except for the finals. So despite living in South Florida, this is my first real look at this Heat team. My newest copy of SI has Dwayne Wade on the cover, and I'm told his is the best-selling jersey in the NBA.
  
  Let me say: I'm not impressed.
  
  This is probably self-evident, but let us put these inane Michael Jordan comparisons aside once and for all now. Jordan was an unearthly player who somehow found a way to even get better when everything was on the line in the finals. Wade has folded like an origami carnation. I'm sure there's some reason somewhere for all the fuss over Wade, but I ain't seen it. True superstars like Jordan, Magic, Bird, and Isaiah all made their bones in the finals. Wade, meanwhile, is currently in the Federal Witness Protection program working at a bank in Provo.

• That commercial with neighborhood sports being played by little kids who have full-sized athletes heads (like Derek Jeter and Peyton Manning) isn't cute, it's downright disturbing. I think I had nightmares about it last night.

• And speaking of commercials, what's the deal with the Haines commercial with MJ and Kevin Bacon. Kevin Bacon? What, was Tom Berringer unavailable? Who seeks to bolster Michael Freaking Jordan--King of All Celebrity Endorsers--with Kevin Bacon? And what kind of work is Bacon having done? He ages slower than Pat Riley.

Related Tags: sports, NBA Finals, Dwayne Wade, Michael Jordan, Kevin Bacon, World Cup, ESPN, soccer

Glass Houses

Tony Hendra, an author and former National Lampoon writer who occasionally jots for the always-silly Huffington Post, isn’t taking kindly to Ann Coulter’s new book or her comments promoting it.

Writing as God, the liberal Hendra (without any hint of knowingness) goes after Coulter precisely the way she argued liberals always do in her book Slander: by attacking physical appearance. Writes Hendra:

That can't you keep a man or have kids, because you're literally inhuman - a cold-blooded vertebrate, a bipedal reptile, a hilarious genetic joke. How would your millions of pinheaded fans feel if they knew that you were actually...an advanced form of velociraptor? That you never wear backless outfits because there are vestigial leathery batwings sprouting from your shoulder-blades? That even if some male could fertilize you you'd lay eggs? That if those eggs hatched you'd eat your young? Because that's what you're hardwired to do, Ann, you poor little velociraptor, you.

…Ann, you don't know Me. You've never spoken to Me in the 45 years of your twisted, spoilt-brat existence. You don't believe in Me or any of My works least [sic] of all that being the God of love the only thing I hate is hate - the force that drives every cell in your bony sunken-faced velociraptor frame. Yours is a faith of convenience shining bright - and about as deep - as aluminum foil.

Well. And this from the pro-women party.

I don’t know if the only thing God hates is hate itself. In fact, I’d be willing to bet just about anything that God really, really hates child molesters. Of which Tony Hendra is one.

Oops. Yes, Tony fails to mention that, either in his little note from God, or in his books on his supposed spiritual awakening. It’s hard to imagine anything more misogynistic than what he’s written here, but Tony Hendra’s repeated sexual abuse of his daughter when she was young probably tops it.

In speaking to The Times, [Hendra’s 39-year-old daughter Jessica] authorized a reporter to talk to two therapists who treated her, as well as three friends in whom she confided, and her husband and mother. All said that Ms. Hendra credibly told them at different junctures of being molested, one of them when she was 12.

…During the interview, Mr. Hendra at first simply impugned Ms. Hendra's accusations. When informed that friends and therapists said that Ms. Hendra had told them of abuse, he was quiet and sounded shaken and, saying that these were developments he was unaware of, asked if he could have five minutes to catch his breath and then call back.

He called back 45 minutes later and made up some story. Incidentally, those accusations don’t appear in the National Enquirer; they come from the liberal "paper of record"--the New York Times.

So I wonder if all the wild-eyed liberals at the Huffington Post feel better today, having just taken a theology lesson from an unrepentant child molester?

Related Tags: Tony Hendra, child molester, Tony Hendra is a child molester, Huffington Post, Ann Coulter, Slander

By Popular Demand

I present to the world....Buck.



And one more. He sits like this, which seems uncomfortable to me.

The Mark Of The Dense

Okay, enough of the 666 stuff today.

First of all, there’s good reason to believe that the current popular conception of the biblical meaning of this number is simply wrong.

But aside from that, where are we getting the idea that today is even 6/6/6 to begin with? It’s actually 6/6/06. There’s a zero in there. Why do the 666 mavens get to just drop the zero? I don’t think so, bubba. If today is 666, then so is 6/6/16, 6/6/26, etc. We have one every decade. It’s no more legitimate to arbitrarily drop the zero out than to drop any other number out.

You had one year in which you could legitimately find a 6/6/6, and that was in the year 6 A.D. Except in 6 A.D. they didn’t even know yet that it was 6 A.D., so it passed them right by. They didn’t figure out the A.D. years until centuries later.

So I hope I've made my point. I'm off now to the license bureau to have the microchip implanted in my forehead that will allow me to buy and sell at Sam's Club.

Related Tags: 666, 6/6/06, mark of the beast, dispensationalism

All Is Vanity

Why does life have to be like this?

Why do things like this not happen to Barry Bonds when he's on the way to breaking major home run records?

Why would Albert Pujols go on the disabled list for the first time in his career a). when he's having one of the greatest seasons of all time, and b). he's on my fantasy team?

Related Tags: Albert Pujols, disabled list, Barry Bonds, life bites

And You Thought I Was Overly Ironic

Matt LaBash of the Weekly Standard writes of his devotion to CNN anchor Anderson Cooper in an article called "Cooper Duper Newsman."

Writes Labash:

We now recognize the host of CNN's 360 the way we recognize the sun and moon, which are always before us, as Anderson is. He is silvery and sleek, the son of Gloria Vanderbilt, the friend of mankind. He is an enigma wrapped in a mystery ensconced in a French blue shirt, which really makes his eyes pop, by the way. Not that he cares about shirts. He doesn't really need one. In fact, if it were up to him, he'd probably do every show naked. Because that's how he comes to the story. And maybe because of that nakedness, he tells better stories. Which, strictly speaking, is a Nissan slogan. But I wouldn't be surprised if Nissan became one of his sponsors, since, they, like Anderson, understand narrative nudity.

....His first name is Anderson, which of course means "son of Andrew," as in the first disciple called by Jesus. And like our Lord and Savior, he is omnipresent. He's on two hours a night on America's News Leader, the second-place network CNN. He writes for Details, poses for Maxim, and is called one of the sexiest anchors alive by Playgirl magazine. There he is crying in New Orleans. Wait, no! Now his throat's tightening in Niger. Time out! Isn't that him vacationing in Rwanda at the genocide museum, since he says he hasn't been in a while? Hold up a second! What's that rustling? Is that Anderson under the bed, finding the news, emoting over it, smothering it with a pillow until its legs kick and twitch, then sliding out the bathroom window before anyone notices?

The piece might just make Anderson cry, which is okay, because Anderson feels and he loves and he grieves.

Related Tags: Anderson Cooper, Matt Labash, Cooper Duper Newsman, CNN, Weekly Standard

The Buck Stops Here

When I was in Tanzania last year, one of our translators had just visited America for the first time a few weeks earlier. The thing that amazed him most here was the way people treated their dogs.

"In America, people keep the dog in the house. And they name the dog! And they love the dog! They buy it special food, and they stop what they're doing to go home and take care of it." This was stunning to him, and also quite ridiculous.

His voice was ringing in my head on Friday when we adopted a nine-week-old golden retriever puppy after a year of me saying "no way" in the face of the constant begging of my children. For the last three days, the dog has only been slightly more in need of attention than your average newborn infant, while inflicting substantially more damage.

Over the objections of my family, I've named him Buck (after the late Cardinal broadcaster Jack Buck). I figure I'm at least entitled to naming rights since I'll still be feeding this beast and paying vet bills on him long after my children have moved out, gone off to college, and gotten married. It's a darned fine name for a (soon-to-be) 90 lb. male dog, and I don't care who disagrees (which, as it happens, is everyone so far).

On the other hand, we may not have him as long as we think we will, since the local alligators, in addition to eating a sizable portion of the general human populace, are now trying to eat golden retrievers too.

According to the story:

Rubin ran to help his dog and saw her head in the mouth of the alligator. He jumped in the muddy water, which reached his neck, he said, and began beating the beast with his fist.

Somehow he pried the dog out of the jaws of the seven foot alligator, and the dog is fine except for a few scrapes.

There are brave people in this world who will jump on an attacking alligotor to save their beloved dog. And let me say with all the courage I can muster, if the same thing happens to Buck, we ain't gonna be going that route. So I'd stay away from the canals if I were him.

Airport '06

I know it's de rigueur to criticize air travel these days, but it really has to be done since there's so much worth criticizing. I had a few beefs last year, but picked up a couple more this week.

Tuesday and yesterday, I was in Pittsburgh, a town which, though it was considered a national joke only a few years ago, is really a lovely place to be. On the way back to Florida, the plane was packed to the gills. Because the airlines are all bankrupt, they now oversell tickets to the point that every seat is stuffed, with many still waiting at the gate to get on.

When I travel, I usually carry a relatively small shoulder computer bag onto the plane with me. Now, I'm 6-2, and most commercial airliners are not a comfortable ride for me. My knees are often brushing up against the seat in front of me, and I need every bit of leg room I can find. So I put my computer bag in the overhead compartment. But what I've been finding more and more is that flight attendants are wanting to ask people like me, who are carrying on small bags, to put them under the seat in front of us so that bigger bags can go in the overhead compartments. To which my answer is a big, fat no.

At what point in this country did a carry-on go from being a purse or a backpack to a suitcase the size of a Volkswagen? Do you need to have the entire contents of your home with you to help you get through a couple of hours in the air? What I think is happening is that many people want to save themselves 15 minutes at the luggage carousel after the flight by bringing their main luggage on board with them, rather than checking it. To which I say, "tough luck, buddy." I simply refuse to sit with my knees smacking me in the nose and my circulation cut off below the thighs for three hours while gangrene sets in so that some putz can save himself 15 minutes of waiting for his bag at the end of the flight. And to give those people preference, as if dragging all their worldly possessions onto the plane entitled them to a favored overhead compartment instead of people who carried on carry-ons is borderline criminal. Instead of everybody else having to cater to them, they should be politely told, "Sir (or ma'am), this is an airline flight. It's not summer camp. You're not moving in. This only takes you where you're going, and it only takes a couple of hours. You're not actually establishing residency on board. So you need to go check your washer/dryer combo with the gate agent."

But that pales in comparison to my second beef. Does the drink cart really need to take up every available bit of space in the aisle? Would it completely destroy that oft-noted airline hospitality (sodas and peanuts!) to narrow the cart by about an inch on each side? Is there so much high technology packed into that cart that it has to take up every available micron between the aisle seats? Last time I checked, they don't even serve meals anymore. Couldn't you pretty much carry cans of soda and seven-count bags of pretzels in vendor's trays like you find at the ballpark? Do we really need this enormous mechanism in order to distribute wafer-thin shortbread cookies and thimbles full of flat Coke?

The reason I ask is because, while I know the rules about putting your knees or feet into the aisle, I occasionally will take one of those peaceful airline naps (during the 30 quiet seconds between the attendant explaining how you can deploy your under-seat life preserver as the plane nosedives into the drink by merely connecting six interlocking straps and pulling a series of ropes and pulleys to inflate it, and the pilot blaring over the intercom system to tell you that flight control has given him the official okey-dokey to ascend from 37,500 to 38,000, meaning that he'll be able to have you into Atlanta-Hartsfield sixteen seconds ahead of schedule). During that sleep of angels, as a guy who's 6-2, sometimes my knee may stray about 1/16th of an inch into the No-Man's Land known as the aisle, where it is promptly sheared off by the 1400 lb. drink cart. This, which happens on every flight to every person sitting on the aisle, is usually followed by a brusque "sorry" from the flight attendant, as if to say, "You knew the rules and violated them, and you deserve to be kneecapped and crippled for life." After approximately three dozen times of being wakened from a deep sleep to find part of my kneecap missing while the bloody stump leaves a crimson brushmark along the side of the passing drink cart, I'm thinking maybe there'd be a way to establish a one inch zone of grace on each side of the cart. Maybe they could take notice of the fact that most people don't naturally fit into a 12-inch wide seat and allow for the occasional, accidental elbow or knee flop. Or perhaps they could put very sensitive lasers along the aisle that will alert a buzzer in your seat if any part of your body encroaches the plane of the aisle. I'm just saying.

Oh, and while we're fixing things, could we get the flight attendants to stop telling us that "we'll be on the ground in 15 minutes"? I need a bit more specificity here. I want to know when we'll be landing. "On the ground" seems to offer a margin of error that frankly I'm not too comfortable with.

Related Tags: air travel, airlines, flight attendants, drink cart, carry-on bags

Renowned Author Dan Brown Staggers Through Book

A few weeks ago, I mentioned that those who think that The Da Vinci Code book is well-written are essentially ferns.

Here, better than I could ever say it, is the best-yet literary deconstruction of Dan Brown's clunky cultural touchstone. It's written by Geoffrey K. Pullum, a professor of linguistics. He writes:

Brown's writing is not just bad; it is staggeringly, clumsily, thoughtlessly, almost ingeniously bad. In some passages scarcely a word or phrase seems to have been carefully selected or compared with alternatives. I slogged through 454 pages of this syntactic swill, and it never gets much better. Why did I keep reading? Because London Heathrow is a long way from San Francisco International, and airline magazines are thin, and two-month-old Hollywood drivel on a small screen hanging two seats in front of my row did not appeal, that's why. And why did I keep the book instead of dropping it into a Heathrow trash bin? Because it seemed to me to be such a fund of lessons in how not to write.

....[Brown] is a huge, blockbuster, worldwide success who can go anywhere he wants and need never work again. And he writes like the kind of freshman student who makes you want to give up the whole idea of teaching. Never mind the ridiculous plot and the stupid anagrams and puzzle clues as the book proceeds, this is a terrible, terrible example of the thriller-writer's craft.

Celebrate the film's release today by reading Pullum's piece on what a steaming load the book is.

(Hat tip: Thinklings)

Related Tags: The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown, Geoffrey K. Pullum

If I Only Had A Sponge

I saw an interesting story on the web today: Hillary Clinton: Right Wingers to Blame for Abortion.

I suppose it's noteworthy that Mrs. Clinton thinks anyone needs to be "blamed" for abortion in the first place, since we don't tend to assign "blame" for things that are good or right. I assume it must be part of her attempt to move away from the politically suicidal Democratic Party policy on abortion, which could be summed up as, "keep 'em comin', and more of 'em!"

Still, it sounds like she may have some glitches in her thinking as she tries to hang what she acknowledges is a problem on many of those who have been dedicated to eradicating that problem. She claims that availability of contraception (or the supposed lack of it) is the the cause of abortions. Says Hillary:

They're waging this silent war on contraception by using the power of the White House and their right-wing allies in Congress.

I may be out of touch on this. Are contraceptives hard to get? Because I can't even seem to walk through the pharmacy aisle at the supermarket without seeing dozens of methods and variations of contraception, both male and female, available. Where is this war, and what's so difficult to obtain? Hillary ominously adds:

Low-income women, denied access to contraception, are having more unwanted pregnancies - four times as many as those for higher income women. And almost half of all unwanted pregnancies end in abortions.

Hmmm. So let me make sure I have the logic on this straight, so I can understand how I've actually caused the abortion problem. By the millions, women who can't pull together walking into Walgreen's to buy easily-acquired, over-the-counter contraceptives are making surgical appointments at far-away clinics for hundreds of dollars to have abortions? Is that the deal?

Gee, who could argue with logic like that?

Related Tags: Hillary Clinton, abortion, contraceptives

Could You Help Me Hold This Grudge?

I received this email yesterday through the address associated with this blog:

Re: Floyd Patterson

Sad to see such a class act and true sportsman pass away last week. Just curious whether this means you won't be joking about him "soiling himself," as you did on Sports Talk radio back when he first started showing signs of Alzheimer's/dementia.

Just to give you an idea, it's been seven years since I last did a sports radio show. Glad to know my memory still lingers, though.

Truth be told, I don't really recall making the unfortunate jokes about Floyd Patterson. I'm certain that I did, though. It's just the kind of thing I would have done.

All I could really do is write back to the guy and admit that I said lots of things when I was in sports radio that I probably shouldn't have. Hopefully I've grown up a little bit since then (though regular readers of this blog might dispute that). Floyd Patterson was a wonderful guy (I met him once in Las Vegas), and Alzheimer's causes anguish for millions and isn't funny. So I apologize to anyone who still takes offense at things I said back in the old days.

But I have to admit, I wonder how many others there are out there who've hated me all these years for things I don't even remember saying?

(For the record, however: In case someone else is planning to email me, I do remember the Joe Dimaggio jokes, where we kept cutting away to "see if Joe Dimaggio's dead yet." And I remember that we'd then play the sound of an EKG machine. That never really got old. C'mon, you know it was a little bit funny.)

Related Tags: Floyd Patterson, sports radio, Joe Dimaggio, John Rabe, insensitive jerk

"Da Vinci Delusion" Rerun

For those of you kind souls who missed the documentary and have asked me if it will be aired again, I see that according to TBN's website, they have scheduled a re-airing for midnight eastern time (11pm central, 9pm Pacific) this Saturday, May 20th.

We'll be on against the infomercial with the hyperactive bearded guy who cleans any surface with his miracle solution.

Hope Not To See You Later, Alligator

By now you probably know that alligators are eating people down here. Like we didn't have enough to contend with from the bi-weekly hurricanes, the current drought, and the Third World road conditions (about once a month someone is literally impaled by a piece of debris flying through their windshield while driving down I-95).

Frankly, people are kind of freaked out by it. They keep telling us that the odds are still higher of being struck by lightning than getting attacked by an alligator, but I'm not consoled because A). I know a pool guy who's been struck by lightening twice down here, and B). The odds are getting better (worse?) now that three people have been eaten in the space of half a week, with a fourth attack resulting in a better outcome. Plus, if they had to choose, I think just about everyone would much rather be struck by lightning than be chewed up and digested by a reptilian monster, generally speaking.

A couple of years ago, much ado was made about the shark attacks that were happening, but people seem to be much more nervous here about this alligator stuff. In a post-Chevy Chase world, in order to get eaten by a shark you generally have to go in the water. But these gators are attacking people while they're just going about their business. These alligators are everywhere down here. All of the Ft. Lauderdale area is a series of interlocking canals in which alligators live. They find 'em in the canals, in people's backyards, and sometimes in the road. It's not terribly unusual for dogs to be eaten right off their backyard leashes. One famous local church found a little one in the prominent fountain out front (though they think that was probably the work of pranksters, miscreants, or possibly ne'er-do-wells).

Even the normally virile and courageous (like me) are finding themselves a little jittery. I actually had a dream the other night that I was being grabbed by one, and I remember thinking "Great, I've worked my whole life to accomplish something, and the world, my friends, and my family will all now forever remember me as the guy who got eaten by an alligator." I also tried punching it in the nose, but I don't think it worked. You know how it is with dreams--I think the alligator had some sort of force field around it that slowed my fist down right in front of its nose. I couldn't get any power behind it. It was the same frustrating feeling I have in the dream where I'm trying to dial an emergency phone number in a hurry, but I keep hitting the wrong numbers. "Rats! That's 9-1-2! Okay, okay, I can do this. Argh! That was #-1-1!" (Etc. etc., ad infinitum.)

The first victim was merely out jogging, and the attack took place only a few miles from my house. My wife's been bugging me to go camping for a while, and we were looking at going this weekend. The thing is, I hate camping. So if I can leverage this right and really get everyone else in the family as freaked out by it as I am, I may be able to salvage the weekend and spend it as the good Lord intended: in front of the TV in my air-conditioned house watching sports.

Related Tags: alligator attacks, Florida alligator attacks, alligators, alligator, dreams where you can't dial the stupid phone

For Whatever It's Worth

I try not to shill personal projects around here too much, but one week from today is the worldwide release of "The Da Vinci Code" movie. If you're not completely burned out on that subject and are looking for some information about the real facts, a documentary I co-wrote and co-produced will be airing nationally this weekend called The Da Vinci Delusion.

It features scholars like Darrell Bock, Gary Habermas, Peter Jones, Paul Maier, and many others, and if I do say so, I feel like it came out rather well.

It airs on TBN Saturday evening at 7pm eastern, and again Sunday at 11am. It's also syndicated all over the country. As the old saying goes, check local listings for times and channels in your area. And, of course, set your TiVos, wake your kids, and phone the neighbors.

Related Tags: Da Vinci Code, The Da Vinci Code, Da Vinci Delusion, The Da Vinci Delusion, Darrell Bock, Paul Maier, Gary Habermas, Peter Jones

Prominent Atheist: Intelligent Design is Winning

Prominent atheist and professor of philosophy Michael Ruse has released correspondence with superstar evolutionists Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett telling them that they "are absolute disasters in the fight against intelligent design -- we are losing this battle..."

A fairly incredible admission indeed, especially when viewed in light of the usual, dismissive triumphalism presented publicly by the anti-ID movement. Ruse makes clear what most people have known all along: that the Darwinian movement is driven more by ideology and anti-religionism than by science.

William Dembski (who reprints the correspondence with Ruse's permission) notes the highlight of the exchange, with Ruse writing here to Dennett:

I think that you and Richard [Dawkins] are absolute disasters in the fight against intelligent design -- we are losing this battle, not the least of which is the two new supreme court justices who are certainly going to vote to let it into classrooms -- what we need is not knee-jerk atheism but serious grappling with the issues -- neither of you are willing to study Christianity seriously and to engage with the ideas -- it is just plain silly and grotesquely immoral to claim that Christianity is simply a force for evil, as Richard claims -- more than this, we are in a fight, and we need to make allies in the fight, not simply alienate everyone of good will.

For his part, Dennett, in responding to some of Ruse's criticisms, gives quite a bit of inadvertent insight into how the Darwinian movement works--threats, power politics, and all:

I'm afraid you are being enlisted on the side of the forces of darkness. You may want to try to extricate yourself, since you are certainly losing ground fast in the evolutionary community that I am in touch with.

It's interesting that the supposed science of Darwinism is so quick to excommunicate dissenting members. Is that how they encourage the pursuit of raw truth wherever it might lead?
(Hat tip: The Pearcey Report)

Related Tags: Michael Ruse, Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins, Intelligent Design, Darwinism, evolution, Darwinian evolution, William Dembski