Correcting an oversight on my part, I should point out that I’m now posting occasionally at the Ministry of Minor Perfidy, thanks to their kind offer of a spot amongst their soap-boxes.
Also, please feel free to have a look at my new site (Mar 2007), IssuesBlog.com.
Continue reading ‘As evidenced by the top entry over there ->’ »
In today’s Bleat (for which see link to your right), James Lileks succinctly says, among other things you should go and read:
Speaking of which: (ed: regarding the unfortunate matter of Terri Schiavo) if nothing else, this entire affair has made me heartily sick of the very act of reading the Internet. Pardon my language, but I am simply goddamn sick of opinions, period. Right or wrong, well-reasoned or poorly expressed, snarky or solemn, I am tired of the lot of them, my own included. I?m tired of reading blogs and bulletin boards and noting that it?s OK to joke about one dead person, perfectly fine to kick the Pope when he?s about to give up the ghost, but a breach of human decency to be less than reverential about the passing of a comic who specialized in dope humor. That sort of thing is expected on the internet, but what makes me weary is the blogligation to have an opinion about it and bang it out so the whole world knows I stand four-square against bashing near-dead Popes.
That’s what I’d have said, if I could have mustered the indignity to do so. But James did it for me.
Internet slapfests, just like real-world slapfests, can be fun to watch for a while, but I get the distinct impression that the current meta-slapfest, between those on opposite sides of the Terri Schiavo affair, will resonate for some time, for a couple reasons. First, it’s different than the average cat fight of the past several years, in that it’s highly partisan and charged with rhetoric, but it doesn’t break down on political lines. It’s not even divided along religious lines, as there are proponents of both supposed “sides” of the matter across the religious spectrum. When the “Save Terri” roster includes Jesse Jackson, Ralph Nader, and Randall Terry (he of anti-abortion pseudo-terrorist fame), it becomes quite hard to cast this as some takeover of the political process by the “fundies” of the religious right.
Yet, inexplicably, that’s the meme – Bush, the Republican Congress (and a goodly number of Congressional Democrats, but let’s ignore that, because it violates the meme) tried to execute a ham-handed payback to their fundie supporters, the mouth-breathers from the Red States. Would that it were that simple. To anyone paying attention, it clearly ain’t. Yet, too many folk seem to be willfully not paying attention, and it’s looking like just as polarizing an issue as anything preceding last November’s election campaigns.
The slapfests previously mentioned are ongoing, even after Ms. Schiavo’s death today. A decent summary of the day’s events, and the ongoing recriminations, can be found in the article entitled Terri Schiavo Dies, but Debate Lives On, and elsewhere.
“You saw a murder happening,” said one demonstrator, Dominique Hanks.
Maybe. But I think not, even as I remain convinced that we’ll never know for certain. My earlier post on the matter acknowledged my lack of command of the details of the case, and subsequently, I’ve become better aware of the specifics. Those specifics, neatly summarized in an article entitled Terri Schiavo FAQ for the Uncommitted, are enough to convince the open-minded reader that, however unfortunate and potentially contrary to Terri’s own wishes her court-ordered starvation might have been, it wasn’t a case of the government simply deciding to begin culling the herd.
But those facts, and others, haven’t been enough to quiet the manufactured indignance and the aforementioned willful ignorance of those who either see this case as a stalking horse for some other pet issue (Roe v. Wade, anyone?), see it as an opportunity for personal aggrandizement, honestly and sincerely believe they’re correct, or are, like me, genuinely saddened at the loss of this poor woman’s life without certainty that this is the choice she’d have made, were she able, and accept that for the irrefutable fact that it is. At least, I think, in my case, I’ve avoided indignance, manufactured or otherwise.
And I don’t begrudge anyone with more animated opinions on the matter their manufactured indignance – quite the opposite. Talk it out amongst yourselves, people. But the time for bashing and backbiting on this matter, if it ever existed, is over. She Daid. (Yes, Virginia, it’s just satire). Not everyone realizes this, unfortunately. And the childishness that results, including such things as dramatic “delinkings” of well-known sites, is now further degenerating into name-calling and discourse better suited to prison yards or pre-school playgrounds. Which is fine, if you’re into that, but in the particular case of the site linked just above, Protein Wisdom, it’s a distraction in the output of his biting wit, and therefore counterproductive.
For the record, with full acknowledgement that it’s quite easy to arrive at this position after Ms. Schiavo’s death, I don’t consider the unfortunate events of her life to indicate the end of Western civilization. Sad? Absolutely – I feel quite badly for her family, including her husband. Murder? Nope. State-sponsored euthanasia? Be serious.
But like Mr. Lileks, I’ve grown weary of it. Always one to check the pulse of his audience and act on it, Ace (also linked to your right) created “The Flame War Thread”. The purely made-up invective slung about on that thread was cathartic enough (though I didn’t participate) to distract me from the sinking feeling that, for some time to come, commentary on the internet is going to be dominated by precisely the form of crap of which Lileks despairs.
I’m with Lileks. Watching otherwise agreeable folks arguing as though they know the answer to an utterly unanswerable question has convinced me that it’s not worth waiting for the invective to quit flowing. A bunch of folks whom I thought could rationally discuss their way to agreement, or at least to a polite consensus on how to avoid unpleasantness, have proven to me that my judgment was flawed. Too many folks, though thankfully still a minority, are taking this “new medium” thing way too seriously, becoming pompous and pronunciatory, and seem actually to believe their own shit.
While Lileks will be back sometime later in April, I won’t, other than as a reader of the excellent sites listed to the right. Mr. Lileks’ piece triggered the realization for me: I just don’t care to add to the chum already in the water. I’ve never had pretense to knowing it all. Damned if that doesn’t put me out of place in the slice of the ‘sphere I’ve been hanging around. Some other day, in some different forum, about different subject matter, perhaps, but no more for me in this one. The internet will soldier on just fine, even absent my sporadic commentary, just as the creators intended.
Many thanks to those of you who’ve been kind enough to read, comment, and link.
For me, in an embarrassingly large number of instances, that involves an article in the Economist, such as that in the March 19th issue entitled Freedom of Speech – Harvard’s Disgrace (subscription).
Short, sweet, and to the point, so much so that it will help to make this post likewise.
Relative to the hue and cry at Harvard, evidenced by the 218-185 vote of no confidence in Larry Summers by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, the money quote is this:
To the non-paranoid, there was nothing disreputable or ?sexist? about his comments. So the issue is whether it was right for Mr Summers to express an opinion which (though quite plausible) appears to be unpopular with the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. It beggars belief that a community of scholars, or people purporting to be scholars, wish to deny him that right. It is argued that a university president must choose his words carefully, to avoid giving offence or discouraging women students of a presumably nervous disposition. People of either sex who are so easily offended or discouraged might be better employed away from the battle of ideas.
(emphasis, obviously mine) The actual text of his speech, for those like me who prefer either to make up their own minds or to confirm the assessment of other fine sources like the Economist, can be found here.
Clearly, I think, a tempest in a teapot, and one which makes those baying for Mr. Summers’ head look bad, in any light.
And in closing, the following opinion from the anonymous writer (since almost every Economist article is absent a byline, expresses an opinion, and contains a good story):
It is to be hoped that Mr Summers does not resign, and that Harvard’s Corporation, which runs the university, reaffirms its support. For a man of his intellectual distinction, and devotion to Harvard’s thriving as a centre of excellence, to be hounded out in this way would be one of the blackest acts in the history of the university.
Quite.
Update: Other than the simple process of finishing off last week’s Economist, it seems relevant to point out that the impetus for this commentary actually came from an editorial in Tuesday’s WSJ entitled Where Were You on 1/14?. Recommended reading, unless your temperament is unsuited to the sound of the estrogen sloshing around the room described in the conference.
I’ve had a hell of a time mustering comment, for a couple reasons.
Aside from having been busy, the past several months have been filled with events I find troubling to various degrees.
“Easongate”? With all due respect to the commentators who’ve got audiences they needed to keep sated with content, I couldn’t figure out what the hubbub was about. Did the CNN’s Eason Jordan make comments that were silly, offensive, or both? Sure. Should he have been hounded from his job as a result? Not so sure. In fact, I lean rather heavily to the “no” camp there, and I find myself embarrassed by extension that the howls of the right wing were the proximate cause of his career’s demise.
(Update: “Alex – I’ll take How the Hell Did I Miss This Editorial for $100, please”)
An article from one of last month’s issues of the Economist (subscription) has been sitting in my “pending fulminations” folder for a while, because I found it a worthy source of thought, and therefore comment. Enough bile has built that I find it’s time to relieve it.
The Economist article was entitled “The Old Slur”, and begins
THERE is no thunderbolt that the American right likes hurling at its foes more than the accusation of ?anti-Americanism?.
Apropos Mr. Jordan, it continues:
… the right foamed again about the revelation that Eason Jordan, CNN’s chief news executive, had supposedly told a group of bigwigs at Davos that the American army was deliberately targeting journalists to kill them; he denies he said this, but admits he left the wrong impression.Mr Jordan, who even under the worst interpretation was probably just sucking up to a group of glamorous foreigners rather than expressing any deeply held philosophy, has now resigned.
It also covers the story of the execrable Ward Churchill, the alleged literary and artistic plagiarist, apparently fake-Indian, and certain radical firebrand who’s clearly aiming his slobberingly idiotic comments toward a group of people so unintelligent, easily led, or already radicalized that to worry about broad dissemination of his fatuity is to waste one’s valuable time.
And let’s not even bother with Dan Rather, eh? Surprisingly, the Economist didn’t.
Who knows ultimately what will happen to Churchill? He’s kept his job so far, since the University’s (correctly) decided that his blatherings are valid expressions of his low-rent opinion. His past missteps may end up providing legitimate academic reason for the embarrassed administration of CU to eventually ease him out, sans 8 digit blood-money payoff, but the process seems likely to run for three years or more. Let him talk, says me. He’s a publicity whore, and every action he takes, complaint he makes, or paper he fakes moves him one step closer to career suicide. Rather had already firmly ensconced CBS into third place among the Big 3, if only because there’s no place lower than third he could go. Why the drumbeat for his head, when he was already doing such a good job of, eventually, offering it up on a plate by himself?
“Blog Triumphalism”, as covered by blogger Rebecca MacKinnon at Harvard, National Review Online’s Jonah Goldberg, and about 23,600 others is one part a much larger real problem, I think, and it’s now in full howl as every meaningful issue that arises becomes the “new” point of polarization for the left and right in America. Pretense to extreme importance or a truly crucial position in the scheme of things is unseemly and can guarantee the opposite.
I’ll be damned if it doesn’t seem that each new issue is also an excuse to jump with both feet to the extreme dictated by one’s political inclinations. As usual, parody proves helpful in seeing some of the absurdities engendered by this approach. A site I seldom visit got a mention by James Taranto in Friday’s Best of the Web. The whitehouse.org site’s issue in question is entitled SAVING TERRI SCHIAVO: PRESENTING INCONTROVERTIBLE PROOF THAT EVERY LIFE HAS WORTH, PRESIDENT BUSH ANNOUNCES “66 USES FOR PERSISTENT VEGETARDS”, and contains a picture of Mr. Bush with a subtitle “I cannot abide any political chess piece going hungry”. In a vacuum, the site’s got good humor value, just as, in a vacuum, other sites have good entertainment or enlightenment value.
With all due respect to the humor value of the edition mentioned above, whitehouse.org has a single-minded focus that is antithetical to anyone who’s not a leftist, a Bush hater, or both. Humor gets old fast without balance, as do entertainment and enlightenment. And just like Ward Churchill, if one’s pronouncements are always skewed toward fellow travelers, the likelihood of providing new information, insight, or food for thought to readers approaches zero.
Remember the Valerie Plame “kerfuffle”, stoked by the New York Times? It, too, gets coverage in Taranto’s daily overview, primarily as a relatively gigantic “oops” on the part of the liberal press. So much for the certainties of just last year.
Another of Mr. Taranto’s snippets deals with this week’s cause célèbre, the Terry Schiavo case, about which I’ve been simultaneously irked and conflicted. Among his quote sources, he included one about Andrew “Take the Money and Run” Sullivan:
(who) characterizes those on the pro-life side of the Schiavo debate as “a crew of zealots and charlatans,” in contrast with the “sane, moderate, thoughtful people” who agree with him. He also offers the sane, moderate, thoughtful observation that “religious zealotry . . . has to be purged.”
Religious zealotry? That’s a charge that would shock Ralph Nader (via Ace), I’m thinking. Ignore Sullivan’s “All Gay Marriage, All the Time” editorial style, and what he has to say on the matter is still, well, retarded and unbalanced. A more rational sort might also at least consider the thought that “I do not understand the emotionalism of the pull-the-tube people.”
And then, tonight’s/tomorrow’s Townhall arrived containing an article that said for me what I’ve been unable to say for myself. Jeff Jacoby’s piece, “Terri Schiavo: Less certainty, more prayer”, even to an utterly areligious sort such as me, encapsulates much of the heart of the matter, as far as I’m concerned.
Unlike many of those weighing in on the Terri Schiavo matter, I am having trouble working myself into a lather of outraged certainty.
Michael Schiavo is either a self-interested, lying shitheel or he’s spent 15 years looking out for Terry’s best interests. Of that I’m certain. The Schindlers are either concerned parents or they’re religious zealots. Of this, too, I’m certain. Congress has engaged itself on a dangerously slippery slope or it hasn’t. Ditto. And the more information I get, the more certain I am that all possible interpretations might well be the truth. Looked at in isolation, then, it’s possible for everyone with an opinion to claim moral certainty that they’re correct and everyone who disagrees with them is wrong.
I beg to differ. And so does Jacoby, as he closed his article:
A decision has to be made about Terri Schiavo, and my head and heart are with those who would ”err on the side of life.” But don’t count me among the dogmatists. This is one case that calls for less certainty, and more prayer.
I’m distinctly iffy on the benefit of prayer in this case, but for damned sure a bit less certainty, on all parts, would serve us all quite well. Except for Terry, of course, whose life seems likely to end soon. I hope that was what she wanted, because I’ve not yet heard or read anything that makes that a mortal lock certainty.
And I hope, perhaps fruitlessly, that those who choose to comment on the issues of the day are able to take the same lesson from her unfortunate journey that I have: Absolute claims of certitude on either side of a nontrivial matter are often proven to have been ill-advised. Working oneself and one’s readers into a lather, particularly a lather that, at the end, has someone’s life or career impaled on the end of your sword, is even more ill-advised. At times in the past I have, and perhaps at times in the future I will be guilty of the former. I hope never to be guilty of the latter, as I just don’t claim to be that smart. And the blog triumphalists among our number might ought to assess themselves along those lines as well.
Preaching to the choir doesn’t increase the size or intellect of the choir. And bragging about useless preaching, while claiming to have scored “points” and counting “scalps”, is silly.
Of that, I’m certain.
I’ve been trying to arrange an appropriate time (across 8 time zones) to catch up by phone with my friend Ziad in Beirut.
This morning, I got an update from him that included, among other things, the answer to my question about what he was up to, business-wise. As a Sloan MBA, his skills (those he learned at MIT and those he was born with) should be the key to significant success. In Lebanon, lately, that’s not yet proven to be true.
As for my altered focus, there is not too much to do in Lebanon today except set up for the future.
…
I will not be in the office today since I will be demonstrating against the love of my neighbor.
It would be easy to misread that as “The best use of my time is to demonstrate against Syrian occupation”. That would be an incorrect reading, out of context, since the two statements were separated by a list of things he’s actually working on in Kuwait, Qatar, and Northern Iraq. Nothing much in Lebanon, though. That’s what he hopes will change.
Lebanon’s been economically decimated since the end of its last physical decimation, during the civil war, and that economic mistreatment has been directly and largely, though not exclusively, caused by the Syrian interference.
Claims can be found, in a variety of places, that Israel’s not the only democracy in the Middle East – Lebanon, too, is a democracy! Or so “they” say. Not really – Lebanon is a cartoon democracy, and was, at best, the second closest thing to a democracy in the region, pre-Iraqi & Afghani elections, that is.
I don’t get the impression that Ziad thinks there’s any danger in the Lebanese’s continued agitation for complete control of their fine country. Cynic that he is, and no matter that he and I disagree on most political points (90 degrees, not 180, though he is a friggin’ Socialist at heart, carrying dual nationality in Lebanon and Canada), he seems hopeful that things will get better there, and soon.
This all assumes, of course, that the US doesn’t find itself better served to sell them gently down the river again, as happened in the early 1990s to gain Syria’s assent to the first Gulf War. Realpolitik is a bitch, and for some reason, even those Lebanese, such as Ziad, who might otherwise be counted upon to dislike the US for exercising it seem willing, eager almost, to forgive and forget.
Or at least they don’t personalize it, choosing instead to blame it on “the US government” rather than the people. An endearing fiction, that.
Update: See also (via Ace) “Back Atchya Hizballah!”
Or so says this story.
We’re further informed:
Thousands of Syria’s red, white and black flags with its two green stars streamed in the wind. “We sacrifice our blood and our souls for you, oh Bashar!” chanted marchers in the upscale Mezzeh neighborhood,“Nobody can get Syria out from Lebanon’s heart and mind,” a banner read. “No for antagonist pressures against Syria,” another said.
The rally came a day after Syria’s allies in Lebanon made a thundering show of their strength, with hundreds of thousands turning out for a protest organized by the Shiite Muslim Hezbollah guerrilla group to denounce pressure from the United States, France and the United Nations.
Now, I’m as much a fan of the public’s right to self determination as the next guy, and I believe that there can be more than one valid set of opinions on any matter, including whether Lebanon is better off without Syrian involvement. But I tend to be skeptical when I hear about people who claim that they’ll sacrifice their blood, let alone their souls, for whatever chicken-necked tinpot dictator happens to be running their country at the moment. So pardon me for my archly raised eyebrow.
One of my favorite people, a long-time friend, is Lebanese, and has been on the Beirut half of his Beirut/Manhattan residential rotation for the past several months. He’s a skeptic, too, and has tended to downplay the chances of success of all the democratization efforts in the Middle East. He even questioned, initially, Syria’s involvement in the assassination of Rafik Hariri.
However, this morning, I got an email message from Ziad that included this bit:
By the way, most of yesterday’s demonstrators were either foreign or were threatened/forced to come out. So, discount the numbers heavily.
As I told him, of course, that had occurred to me, but pending a statement from someone who should know better, I’d felt compelled to believe what I saw on TV yesterday.
The statement from my friend qualifies as better informed than the TV news, and I’m now comfortable asserting my belief that the fun and games from yesterday’s news aren’t indicative of Lebanese reality. On that view, Hizb’allah, the Shia, Syria, and Iran might have to up the quality of their game before the rest of the world can rationally be asked to believe that the Lebanese, among the sturdiest of all the nationalities in the Middle East, really want to continue under Assad’s thumb.
As for Assad, and more fully detailed elsewhere, including invective, analysis, and a nicely captioned picture, I hope, for the benefit of my Lebanese friends as well as democracy in that region as a whole, that he remembers that he is not Saddam Hussein and that he does want to cooperate.
Proof that an “eco-friendly message” isn’t necessarily all it’s crapped up to be.
Presented below in its entirety due solely to its shortness of stature, an item from last week’s UK Telegraph that had somehow escaped my view. I don’t feel too bad about missing it, because while trying to prove it’s not simply a hoax on the Telegraph, I found that a story was published almost two weeks before the Telegraph did so, in what was labeled “The Advocate, Online Edition”. And, no, I’m stil not certain it’s a true story.
Roo poo hits the shelves, no messing
By Charles Starmer-Smith
(Filed: 26/02/2005)British travellers heading to Tasmania will soon be able to bring back a new memento of their Australian holiday – writing paper made from kangaroo manure.
“It’s a great product for tourists, but it’s also something that gets our eco-friendly message home to a lot of people,” said Joanne Gair, manager of Creative Paper Tasmania, whose paper products contain no wood pulp. The first batch of pulp-free paper has now been produced, but Ms Gair admitted that gathering an ample supply of kangaroo and wallaby dung had been a problem.
“At the moment we are finding it very difficult to get the quantity of poo we need,” she said. “We are hoping the community will help by collecting it for us and dropping it off in plastic bags. New or old, we’ll take it all,” she told the Advocate newspaper in Tasmania.
The company estimates that about 55lbs of kangaroo manure can produce 400 A4 sheets of paper and plans to produce postcards. Each of the sand-coloured sheets will be embossed with “Genuine Kangaroo Poo”, to prevent any dung paper fakes flooding the market.
Heaven forfend market imitators should try to usurp the rightful place of these valiant poop solicitors.
“It’s a great product for tourists”? I don’t know about you, but I try never to let my guests leave without at least offering them some excrement to take with them.
So, is it really so bad to use wood pulp-based paper, aside from the fact that it’s not made of, well, crap?
Just a quick hit, since I’m time limited. There’s been a lot of recent trouble and strife, just in the past week, about issues related to global warming, the Kyoto Treaty, and the alleged sheer, unmistakable stupidity and arrogance of Bush and his evil administration.
In reverse chronological order, from an article in Monday’s Houston Chronicle, this excerpted bit on the difficulties inherent in mending fences with Europe:
Some observers warned that if Bush intends to improve relations he will have to offer more than conciliatory rhetoric and be prepared to offer compromise on issues such as the Kyoto global warming treaty, which the Bush administration has rejected.
Additional tripe of the same sort is available in an op-ed printed in the same paper, from the curiously mistyped “Dayton Beach News-Journal” ([sic], Daytona, perhaps?) Friday, Feb 18, 2005 issue, excerpted here in its entirety, since it’s nearly devoid not only of compelling logic, but blessedly of words, as well:
Global warming no hoax
Dayton Beach News-JournalGlaciers are retreating in mountains from Alaska to the Andes to Tibet. An age-old Antarctic ice shelf the size of Rhode Island shatters and melts into the sea. Greenland’s ice, which holds enough water to raise ocean levels 21 feet, is starting to melt. … Yet James Inhofe, the Oklahoma senator and chairman of an environmental committee, calls global warming the “greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people.”
Inhofe’s thinking is echoed more mildly by the White House and is winning the day in the United States for now, at least politically. [Last week] the Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change went into effect, but without American participation. It isn’t just a failure of diplomacy characteristic of the Bush administration, which has been either unwilling to negotiate through international forums or inept at doing so. It is a failure of imagination as well. The administration’s promised alternative to Kyoto has yet to coalesce in the form of policy. … The United States contributes more than a quarter of the world’s pollution (and greenhouse gases). Its absence from the treaty means progress on emissions will be even slower, if at all effective.
Finding nothing other than hoary claims, without supporting proof, and realizing that other reasonable scientific opinions have been put forth on the matter, I beg to differ. And again, amidst the unsupported claim that “global warming is no hoax”, we hear that it’s all Bush’s fault.
Via Washington Post:
Hunter S. Thompson, the acerbic counterculture writer who popularized a new form of journalism in books like “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,” fatally shot himself Sunday night at his Aspen-area home, his son said. He was 67.
My first thought, honestly, was that yes, a shitty attitude can be bad for your health. I haven’t arrived yet at a second thought, and might not.
R.I.P. Dr. Thompson.
——
Update (2/22): Turns out that a case can be made he might have died of idiocy. According to a report in this morning’s Washington Times:
“He was depressed about the state of society,” said Loren Jenkins, foreign editor for National Public Radio in Washington.
A vehement opponent of President Bush, Mr. Thompson, 67, “was feeling maudlin about the current conservatism sweeping the country,” Mr. Jenkins said. “He felt he’d had a long run, trying to create a freer society in the ’60s and ’70s and he felt it had all been closed down.”
Whatever other ills he might have wanted to drunkenly attribute to conservatism, lucky for him, there’s been no diminution of the 2nd Amendment. As for the allegation that conservatism is “sweeping the country”, indications are otherwise, and I’ll cover that later. Socialism, however, is clearly losing electoral ground, and the decedent may have confused that with the problem he’s quoted as having cited.
Additional Addendum: Johno at the Ministry of Minor Perfidy has a take on the matter that’s more wide ranging than mine, and worth your reading.
Update to the updated update: According to his attorney, despondency over politics had nothing to do with Thompson’s suicide:
The decision, he said, had nothing to do with the reelection of George W. Bush or the current trend in national politics, which provided a certain grist for Thompson’s mill. Nor did he have significant financial problems. With his land, archives, royalties, and other valuable possessions, Tobia said, Thompson’s estate is worth millions of dollars.The best explanation, perhaps, is that in recent months Thompson had chronic pain from back surgery and an artificial hip. He also broke his leg on a recent trip to Hawaii and was limping, which made it difficult for him to travel.
“He didn’t want to waste away,” Tobia said. “He did not want to exist as an invalid or as someone who needed constant care. It wouldn’t suit his sense of self.”
I therefore wholeheartedly and unreservedly retract the allegation that he might have died of idiocy.
I’m tossing in a placeholder here to mark the end of this site’s first year of existence.
It started, as I’d guess many blogs do, with an entry like this, clearly an indication that I was trying to decide on a voice to use for these scribblings. I’m not at all certain that the search is complete.
On its face, it’s not been a strenuous year – an entry, on average, every 2.33121 days, by my reckoning. My posting frequency, since the election, has been lower, because I’ve grown tired of hearing the same idiocy, on the same silly-ass subjects, that I heard before those espousing it were politely told “no thanks” at the polls. But in my feeble defense, my average post is fairly lengthy, making this a long-winded opinion site, with far less of the quick-hit postings I enjoy at so many other sites.
So, along with ignoring the inflating effect of the leap year in 2004, that’s probably enough to make my adjusted rate about once every 2.29 days, which is good, right? And if you counted my comments at others’ sites, not that you would, well, that number would surely drop to no more than 1.99 days between posts.
If I can bring myself to muster the bile to complete it, I’ve got a comparison in the works of several editorials on environmental issues, just to remind myself how rampant, frothing polarization can lead to self delusion. And, if I can make it through that, I’ll do another on the ascendancy of Screaming Howie Dean, using the same several sources.
Sadly, there might be no conclusions in either piece you couldn’t get or haven’t already gotten elsewhere, but if so, it’ll be my failure, not yours. Until then, like a good Irish cop (which I’m not), “Nothing more to see here – move along”.