Smart Alec

Alec Baldwin is an egocentric, arm-candy-collecting metrosexual. A smarmy, bubble-headed, Bush-bashing poltroon. A corsetted, sycophantic, smirking, B-movie thespian. And now a short-tempered, blowhard father. His voice-mail rant against his daughter, Ireland, when she turned off her cell phone rather than take his scheduled call may be a career-ending faux paux. Clearly I don’t respect this fellow, but there is one person I esteem even less – his ex-wife, Kim Basinger. She, the scorned woman, has apparently helped create this spoiled brat of a daughter and, by releasing this tape to the hyena-press, done her best to publicly humiliate the father of their child. She has consequently driven a wedge between these two that may never allow them to have a meaningful relationship. And this will certainly further wound this child. To me, it’s as though she said to King Solomon, “Go ahead, cut the baby in two.” Shame on her! Shame on her! Shame on both of them … but somehow spare their daughter her prancing parents.

Global Warming Warning

The global warming nuts are now predicting drought and flooding will be the result of global warming. Now, when we get droughts or floods (as we have since the beginning of time), it will prove that (man-made) global warming is real. Pleeease! Larry David's wife is now flying around the country in a private jet preaching how we need to stop using fossil fuels. Other nabobs (John Edwards, the Governator, John Kerry, etc.) buy "carbon offsets" (planting trees, etc.) to justify their own profligate cee oh two production. While "The Economist" now opines that new computer modeling says that trees contribute to global warming and we should cut them all down. Will such naive mass hysteria never stop?

Signed,
Euell Gibbons

Clive James

I was just watching the famous critic, Clive James, on Book TV (CSPAN2). He said two things that I would like to share. He first related that when he was once lecturing he noted that while two negatives make a positive, two positives never make a negative. With that, someone in the audience cynically barked, “Yeah, Yeah.” He later said that he never found John Coltrane worth listening to. He followed that Coltrane was “the sonic equivalent of a toothache”. (In the sixties I went with a buddy, Jay Goshen, to listen to John Coltrane at the Five Spot in New York City. Coltrane was so spaced out on drugs that there was absolutely no continuity or art in his performance. While the rest of the audience sat in reverent silence, I turned to Jay and said “The emperor has no clothes.” He nodded and so we got up and walked out.)

IMUS IRONIES

Don Imus, who has been booted by both MSNBC TV and CBS radio for his comments about the Rutgers women’s basketball team, calling them “nappy-headed hos”. This story is full of sweet, sweet ironies … some of which I am now compelled to relate:

1) Imus, who has feathered his New Mexico nest by extorting money and payments in kind (“donations”) from his sponsors and other US corporations, has been taken down by two far greater extortion artists, Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. (This is a “borrowed” idea from my son.) Imus went on Sharpton’s New York radio program, I suppose, expecting Sharpton to recognize him for his over-the-years pandering to black rappers (who NEVER use such derogatory remarks). Instead, Sharpton kicked him to the curb. And, I got to believe that most of the sponsors that dropped Imus like a hot potato had gotten a call from Jesse James … er … Jackson.

2) Al Sharpton, who cut his teeth defending Towanda Brawley, and Jesse Jackson, who recently viciously attacked the three Duke Lacrosse players for “raping” that Durham stripper, have both had to back peddle from these outrageous and likely libelous charges. The true irony here is that both these Sharpton-and-Jackson-defended women surely were NHHs.

3) Hillary Clinton benefits enormously from Imus’s demise. Generally once a day Imus would refer to Hillary on his show as “Satan.” This drip, drip, drip of derogatory remarks (I can’t now say dissing) for the next year could not have been good for Hillary’s try at the Presidency. But now, this chronic negative goes away. I am enough of a conspiracy theorist to believe that anything good that happens to Hillary is not accidental.

4) Many of those liberal guests who have appeared on the Imus in the Morning have dropped him like he was radioactive (stolen term). These include David Gregory, Barak Obama, Harold Ford Jr., and James Carville. He has so far been defended only by Paul Bagala, Mike Barnacle and Bo Deitel. Over the next few days many more former “names” and politician guests (who used Imus much as he used them) will go on extended vacations to avoid having to comment on-air and be proven the hypocrites that all are. I’m particularly curious to see on what side Tim Russert will land.

5) Chris Carlin, Imus’s punching-bag sports commentator, also does play-by-play for what football team? You guessed it … Rutgers. This poor schmoo, who daily suffered taunts of vicious and diabolical proportions, is now out of a job thanks to the sadist he sucked up to.

6) In the end I really don’t think that this kerfuffel (another stolen term) had anything to do with the Rutgers women’s basketball team. It just has been a massive settling of scores … kinda like what is going on in Iraq these days, but a tad less bloody.

40 Degree Easter

Would someone please call Al Gore and ask him to turn up the heat?

Most Craven

The following is a list of the top contenders for Mr./Mrs. Craven of 2007. Please vote for your three favorite poltroons:

/__ / Osama Bin Laden
/__ / Hillary Clinton
/__ / Joseph Biden
/__ / Ann Coulter
/__ / Kim Jong il
/__ / Rush Limbaugh
/__ / Jimmy Carter
/__ / Al Sharpton
/__ / Don Imus
/__ / Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
/__ / Jim Cramer
/__ / Keith Oberman
/__ / John F. Kerry
/__ / George Potts
/__ / Katie Couric
/__ / George W. Bush
/__ / Al Franken
/__ / Kofi Annan
/__ / O.J. Simpson
/__ / Jacque Chirac
/__ / Nancy Pelosi
/__ / Bill O’Reilly
/__ / John Edwards
/__ / Sean Hannity
/__ / Barbara Streisand
/__ / Bill Clinton
/__ / Vladimir Putin
/__ / Dick Chaney
/__ / Mike Barnacle
/__ / Howard Stern (either one)
/__ / Hugo Chavez
/__ / Alberto Gonzales
/__ / Chuck Schumer
/__ / Ted Kennedy
/__ / Newt Gingrich
/__ / Lawrence O‘Donnell
/__ / Rosie O’Donnell
/__ / John Murtha
/__ / ________________ (your write-in)

MORE PET PEEVES

Ham Rind -- Why is it that many hams and ham steaks now come with a layer of plastic welded to the outside? Ham used to have nice soft tasty fat on its outside, not a cuticle of a non-organic nature that reminds me of the cellophane rind on bologna. And why do U.S. consumers tolerate such nonsense? And while we’re at it, let's get rid of the huge brine injections that meat processors give hams to bulk them up for higher profits. This thumb-on-the-scale trick adds nothing to the taste of ham ... it only causes water to exude during cooking and dilutes the resulting flavor.

“Jumbo” Eggs -- Has anyone noticed that jumbo eggs aren’t often “jumbo” any more? Jumbo egg cartons have “jumbo” compartments, but the eggs you often find there are frequently one or two sizes too small. As an educational exercise sometime, compare the largest egg of a “Large” egg crate with the smallest egg of a “Jumbo” egg crate. Your eyes may be opened.

Strange Names -- Weird spellings of common names is an irksome trend. Novel spellings like Jessye, Eriq, and Alisyn I guess are meant to set children apart ... but they unnecessarily slow the pace of life. How many times a year do people with such nonsensical appellatives have to stop and spell their names during introductions and applications? It’s not just a waste of their time, but also wastes the time of those on the receiving end. It even forces everyone to ask for spelling of those with normal names ... just in case. I suggest that parents endow their offspring with uniqueness in some other, more enduring but less trivial way ... say with character or selflessness or piety or honor. Even common spellings of weird names don’t ensure that the children so named will be so endowed ... witness Chastity Bono.

Commercials on Public Television -- Public television is supposed to be funded by individual and corporate donations and, disputably, the government. So why is it that corporate donations engender what increasing appear to be commercials? Public television is slowly morphing its segment breaks into product commercials. First, just the name of the company was mentioned. Then a corporate image statement of one sentence was added. Then two sentences. Then product names were introduced. Then favorable attributes of these products were added. And through it all the length of these segment brakes keeps increasing. It won’t be long before public television is as commercial as network TV. Then perhaps we might wean them from our government’s funds ...

Vanity Street Names -- Corporations increasingly are adopting vanity street names for their headquarters address -- Apple Computer has Infinite Loop; Data General had Computer Drive; and Gateway Computer has Gateway Drive, etc. Since most of these names don’t exist on city maps, it almost assures that you must stop and ask directions in order to get to these headquarters ... another indication that corporations sometimes behave like they’re above it all.

Free Handicap Parking -- Now I don’t have any problem with physically handicapped people having special parking places. However, why is this parking free? What about a nabob who has a bum leg? He gets gratis parking (near the action) while a destitute schmoo who happens to be physically able must feed a ravenous parking meter. Why do we equate being physically handicapped with being fiscally distressed?

Mothers with Infants Parking -- The other day I saw a sign reserving a parking space in a supermarket lot that said “Mothers with Infants.” Now, since we already have handicapped parking and loading zones, this new category of privilege is a little disturbing. What about “Fathers with Infants” parking? What about “Cars with Faulty Mufflers” parking? What about “Parents with Whining Children” parking? What about “Munchausen’s Syndrome Sufferers” parking? When will it all stop?

Homophobe-Phobes -- People who find in-your-face homosexuals uncomfortable or even offensive are quickly labeled “homophobes” and are automatically criticized or even ostracized by many ... sometimes with a good bit of vitriol. Can we, in turn, stamp those, who rail against “homophobes,” as “homophobe-phobes”?

Trite Expressions of Grief -- A smoldering trend that erupted into a conflagration with Princess Dianna’s death is the trite expression of grief -- a Teddy Bears tied to a chain link fence, a plastic balloon with a maudlin message, a rubber duck with a [blue, red, pink, black] ribbon around its neck, one rose packaged in Saran Wrap, etc. Such anonymous crepe hanging is like chalk on a blackboard to me. In Princess Dianna’s case, the sheer volume of this banality became a public health hazard. Please, please, please ... when I pass on to that place where there are no more pet peeves; let no one memorialize my death with a plastic balloon of any type with any message, however heartfelt.

Icon Flags -- This pet peeve might lose me some friends, so I will be as gentle as possible. What is it with people who have a repertoire of multi-colored event flags that they proudly display at the drop of the tam-o-shanter ... a martini glass, a birthday cake, a snowman, an exploding firecracker, etc.? Do I really care that it’s Aunt Louise’s birthday? Or that tonight they are abusing their livers?

Diagonal Parking in Parallel Spaces -- “I’m so important and rich that I get two parking spaces while you get none.” This is the kind of ludicrous thinking that causes people to park their new expensive, usually foreign, cars diagonally across two parking spaces ... denying others the extra spaces. Greed and anal retentiveness trump neighborliness in this ostentatious power play by these boobs. If I were a miscreant, I would “key” their shiny news, but I am not. However, I shall find no real fault with those that do.

U.S. Female Correspondents Wearing Hijabs (Islamic Head Scarves) -- I find it profoundly offensive to see non-Muslim female TV correspondents (CNN, MSNBC, etc.) reporting from the Mideast wearing hajibs (usually black and white checked) as though they are Muslims and have sided with the terrorists.

Gross Generalizations -- As soon as polls show more than say 60% of the U.S. populous agree with a leftist position (no more war, Bush lied about WMDs, etc.), then talking heads (like James Carvel, Eleanor Clift, etc.) start saying that "All the American people want blah, blah, blah.")

Space "Walks" -- When astronauts work outside their space capsule, it is called a space "walk". Now, this is similar to when you "dial" a phone by pushing some buttons … or why doen't everyone (other than Emeril) call a refrigerator an "ice box?" When you step on the accelerator, do you then say you "whip" your car? Can't we, for God's sake, update our terminology?

Evacuation Day

In the Commonwealth of Massachusetts they celebrate one obscure holiday which is conveniently concurrent with St. Patrick’s Day. It is called “Evacuation Day.” On this day, the state government closes down ... allowing its many pols and solons to gather at their favorite watering holes to celebrate the banishing of snakes from the ole sod. Once there, they donate a parcel of liquor taxes back to the treasury from which they draw their sustenance. Incidentally, the reason Massachusetts is called a “commonwealth” is that the Pilgrims believed “from each according to his ability and to each according to his need” ... a tradition that lives on in this state unto this day.

Evacuation Day was named to honor the purging that supposedly saved the life of Paul Revere’s mother when she had come down with the croup the night before her son’s famous ride. Her doctor, Elias DeBakey, gave her a double dose of ipecac and prune juice. Then he bled her with leaches; sweated her in a log-cabin sauna; gave her a soapy water enema; and finally, had her down a triple dose of bromide expectorant. She was “evacuated” so completely that she dropped nearly a third of her body weight. But, despite all this bad medicine, she survived ... and the people of the Bay State chose to honor this miracle by declaring this day an annual holiday.

The Irish, when they are not blowing each other up, spend a good deal of their time writing blue-ribbon prose; and, as already noted, have an affinity for amber liquids. On Evacuation Day this tropism becomes an obsession. Brass-railed bars with names like “Galway Bay” and “Glacamora” fill with corpulent-visaged Celts downing tuns of Harp lager and Guinness stout. And, at the tables, sit hoards of green-tie trenchermen devouring nitrided corned beef, bilious cabbage, boiled Bliss potatoes, and Irish soda bread. In the more radical of these establishments, Erse is spoken to cover the intrigues and cabals being planned, abetted by the bravado of booze.

These Sons of Erin, having sated and slaked themselves, finish the day with some sort of melee. On this day, a bloody nose or a broken tooth is a badge of honor. But the belligerents know it’s time to go home when they start seeing leprechauns prancing among the pots of shamrocks on the bar top. Then, after everyone has left, the leprechauns really do emerge, belt down the bar spitsies ... and, invariably, start their own brouhaha. But when in turn, these elves start seeing even littler people hidden among the mosses and detritus of the clover pots, even the leprechauns call it a day.

Al-Gored

Last night Boston set a new record for the lowest temperature in recorded history -- not just for March 8th, but for all of March – 3 degrees Fahrenheit. This is a FULL FIVE degrees LOWER than the previous record of 8 degrees/F. It must … it has to be all Bush’s fault!!! And I’m sure we will hear from at least one Al-Gore looney today that such low temperatures are a result of global warming. Don’t try to follow the supporting logic to such assertions for they will basically devolve into, “You just have to believe … that’s all.”

Speaking of believing, it has recently been posited that Christ had siblings and, therefore, clearly was a historic construct. And as a result, the Church of the Latter Day Polar Bears (Al Gore, Pope) is rapidly supplanting Christianity. We will soon be asked to stop buying Polar Seltzer and wearing Polar Fleece as a token of our piety.

Yours in Genuflection,
Saint Elmo (The Vicar of Sesame Street)

KVETCHING

Why is it that all those talking heads and (now) solons who are screaming about the Walter Reed/V.A. Hospital “scandal” are the same ones who are constantly kvetching for our government to take over our nation’s health care system (read “single payer” health care)?

Carter’s Little Liver

(From 2/26/07 FORBES Magazine) In 1980 Jimmy Carter signed the Energy Security Act which created the Synthetic Fuels Corp. at a taxpayer cost of $2 billion. It went belly up a mere five years later. I wonder how many Habitat for Humanity houses could have been built with those same 2,000,000,000 (1980) dollars? Maybe 100,000? OOPS!

CON CONS

I think the anti-victory-in-Iraq vote in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee yesterday was a disgrace ... and indicates how evil and self-serving politicians can become when they think that their power base is in jeopardy. If one calls the Neo Cons who are for the Iraqi war “chicken hawks” ... perhaps we should call these Con Neo Cons, "plucked chickens", or "chicken fingers", or “Chicken Little’s”, or even, "Brothers of Islam". During the cold war, Russia liked to call such people "useful idiots". Before you, who may belong to one of the above appellations, takes too much umbrage at these comments, think of the patience that we “chicken hawks” have visited upon you when you have shrieked your insults at us.

A QUESTION

I have a question for any of you liberals who have graduated into rabidness: Would you have us win in Iraq if that means that Bush would go down in history as a good or even a great president?

Sock Raties

REPORTAGE

There are two articles in this morning’s newspapers that neatly illustrate a point that the major media outlets in the U.S. have been drumming out an anti-Bush and anti-U.S. message for at least the last two years. Both these articles have to do with U.S. losses in Iraq over the weekend. One is in the NY Times (page A6) headlined “U.S. Toll in Iraq Is 27 for Deadly Weekend” and the other in the Boston Globe (page A6) headlined “Cunning, sophistication seen in Iraq ambush”. Both articles detail how Sunni terrorists, dressed up like American soldiers (but with beards no less) conned their way into an Iraqi government compound and killed five American servicemen.

These articles also highlight a helicopter crash in which 12 American soldiers were killed and other combat incidents: one, where two Marines were killed and another, where five servicemen were killed, both in Anbar Province. The NY Times does mention that the first attack “was repelled by American forces” and that, earlier, and American raid had killed a guard in Moktada al-Sadr’s posse which was then diminished by a quote from another al-Sadr lieutenant as “inhuman and against human rights”.

Both articles managed to bring up other past incidents where large numbers of U.S. troops were killed … and other weekend incidents where Iraqi citizens (including young children) were blown up by insurgents. Neither article thought to report or even estimate bad guy losses.

This is not reportage … this is propaganda, but, unfortunately, not pro U.S. propaganda.

SURGE PURGE

To all my liberal, self loathing readers. Here is an example of why it is all downhill from here. It essentially says that we, as the most powerful force in the world (for the nonce), must follow, not lead. There is a groupthink now in this nation's mainstream media that is exemplified in the following snippet. If you keep nodding your head as you read this, you have drunk the kool-aid. (You also probably think that hanging Saddam was cruel and unjustified.) American Liberals confuse that fact that we have not been "successful" in Iraq (as defined by the NY Times) with whether our strategy of taking the fight to radical Islam around the world is flawed. Not that this attitude on your part is necessarily wrong. It is just means that you have gone into your shell and should go shopping for a prayer rug (and learn where Mecca is). And please, please do not mourn when Israel is in ashes.


Published on Tuesday, January 9, 2007 by CommonDreams.org
How the World Will See the Surge
by John Brown* see brief bio below

There has been much press commentary in recent days concerning the administration’s planned surge of American soldiers in Iraq. According to The New York Times, this “rapid influx of forces … could add as many as 20,000 American combat troops to Baghdad.” The domestic consequences of what some media are calling a military escalation have been widely analyzed.

But US pundits, reflecting our widespread national assumption that Iraq is essentially about ourselves, have not sufficiently commented on the possible international reactions to the President’s latest initiative overseas. Below are speculations, based on what polls and foreign media have been saying about the U.S. in recent years, about how some public opinion abroad, taken as a composite, will look at this latest Bush foreign-policy move.

1. The surge is yet another expression of US unilateralism. The Americans do what they want when and how they want, no matter what non-Americans -- including Iraqis -- think. They are not bothering to get international support or approval for their surge. The rest of the world be damned.
2. The Americans say one thing and do another. They proclaim peace as their goal in the Middle East but use military force whenever things don’t go their way. While they love to boast about their wholesome values, they brutally kill innocent civilians in Baghdad neighborhoods in a surge to restore “stability.” Their public diplomacy, whatever they say it is, is no more than blatant, hypocritical propaganda.
3. Elections in the U.S. don’t really matter. Americans in November didn’t vote for more troops in Baghdad, but their president is doing precisely that. The so-called opposition party in the U.S. is just part of an American imperialistic system that wants to dominate the rest of the planet, including its oil reserves, and that allows the White House carte blanche in carrying out aggressive military operations like the surge anywhere, any time.
4. The U.S. is under the control of an anti-Muslim, anti-Arab lobby. The White House is in fact controlled by a coterie of ideologues that wants to redraw the map of the Middle East in favor of Israel. The surge is their latest effort to accomplish this.
5. The American international media, both private and US government-supported, are not to be trusted. Their coverage of American military actions, with its traditional neglect of civilian victims, will try to show the surge in the best of lights. As for USG-funded outlets like Alhurra, they don’t offer the real news. For more accurate reports, better to turn to the BBC or Al Jazeera.
6. The surge will result in more US casualties, but that’s the Americans’ own fault. They are bringing disaster after disaster upon themselves because they refuse to understand or negotiate with the world outside their own borders. The Americans have no idea of the real situation in Iraq, where they are occupiers, not liberators.
7. The surge is further evidence of sheer American incompetence. US efficiency, planning, and management are far overvalued. Simon Jenkins, The Times (January 7): “I have not heard one remotely plausible game plan for the 'Battle of the Surge.'”
8. The U.S., like ancient Rome, has overextended itself. The more it tries to control the world through the force of arms, the less successful it is in doing so. The surge, per se a minor military move, is yet another illustration of America’s imperial decline caused by its hubris. How can American soldiers possibly “clean up” Baghdad neighborhoods, when their own cities are marked by incessant crime and violence?
9. The surge, while historically of limited significance, gives added evidence that the future no longer belongs to the U.S., which has become desperate in finding ways to influence events. The American era -- the twentieth century -- is just about gone forever, and another Bush military push in Iraq won’t bring it back.
10. Any “superpower” that thinks it can “win” a universally condemned war with an additional 20,000 troops is certainly not a model to follow. Forget about the made-in-Hollywood American “dream.” America is now producing one nightmare after another. It’s become a mortal danger, not a universal hope.

John Brown is a Senior Fellow at the University of Southern California Center on Public Diplomacy http://www.uscpublicdiplomacy.org/pdpr/, and a Research Associate at the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy at Georgetown University. He's a former Foreign Service officer who practiced public diplomacy for over twenty years, now compiles the "Public Diplomacy Press and Blog Review," http://www.uscpublicdiplomacy.org/pdpr/ which can be obtained free by e-mail by requesting it at johnhbrown30@hotmail.com

PRESIDENT FORD'S ETERNAL INTERMENT

"Let the dead take care of the dead." -- Jesus Christ

(On the other hand, I wouldn't mind being constantly reminded that Jimmy Carter had achieved room temperature.)

CUDDLY PET PEEVES

Cold weather makes me irascible. Adding to this discomfort is a litany of annoying little things that society imposes on me. Here are a few of my favorite winter irritations:

Pasteurized Cider -- Every fall for many years I have purchased cold, dark, sweet, unfiltered apple cider locally. I would then leave it overnight on the kitchen counter until it started to ferment slightly. Finally, after a day of rechilling, I would then drink my slightly-carbonated, libation to autumn in New England. Now, due to a one-in-a-billion food-processing accident in California, all I can find is a pale, insipid, pasteurized product called “apple cider,” but much more like apple juice. One again, the food Nazis have made my world a little smaller.

Anonymous Answering Machine Messages -- It is quite grating to have placed an important and expensive call to an unfamiliar person in Saskatchewan only to get a terse answering machine message that says, “Hi, it’s us. Please leave a message.” Now, these provincial putzes at least could include their phone numbers so that I know I haven’t called a bordello in Biloxi. (By the way, to be grammatically but annoyingly correct, it is “Hi, it’s we.”)

Magazine Inserts -- My main motivation for becoming insanely rich is so that I can hire a “magazine valet.” This would be one who, dressed in full livery with white suede gloves, would riffle through my newly-delivered magazines and remove all those loose solicitation cards. That way, when I read these periodicals, my lap would not be constantly littered with such detritus.

Prolonged Voice-Mail Messages -- Frequently overly conscientious business people feel compelled to leave elaborate and up-to-the-minute phone messages, “Hi, this is Fred Mertz and I am in the office today, Thursday, July 23rd, but may be in a Board of Directors meeting or lunching with the Sultan of Brunei. I am interested in returning your call but, if it is important, you may want to contact my Executive Assistant, Siegfried Sassoon, the fourth, on extension 34895 ... or, if he is unavailable, my Executive Secretary, Nancy Drew, on extension 34897. If this is an emergency, you may call my beeper at 888-555-2345 and then enter 678-999. On Tuesday, my daughter had a bouncing baby boy, Mergatroid, weighing eight pounds, six ounces. We plan to vacation in the Barbados in September. My father’s gal bladder has stopped acting up. Thanks for your call. Please leave a message after the eighth beep.” I have reproduced the whole message here, but I generally hang up somewhere around the Sultan of Brunei.

Neat Litterbugs -- What possesses people to be fastidious while they are trashing things? There is a brand of urban slob who will reach down and carefully place a Starbucks latte cup right-side-up beside his/her car before leaving a parking space. Or neatly wrap a used diaper and put it under the nearest park bench. Do these teeny fits of tidiness really mitigate such gross slovenliness?

Architectural Food -- It seems these days that every dish I order in a fancy restaurant comes piled high as a tottering pilaster ... defying gravity and good gastronomic sense. Has the measure of culinary merit now become altitude and not sapor? Another paradox to ponder -- why are all our newly-built civic monuments flatter than the proverbial pancake?

Public Grooming -- In olden days it was considered impolite to comb you hair or put on your makeup in public ... hence powder rooms. It’s not that I don’t enjoy inhaling clouds of dandruff on the “T,” but need I also sit on the finger-nail clippings of others? I suppose public tooth brushing or face shaving are just a whisker away.

Dial Tones -- Few of us use dial (pulsed) phones anymore. So why do digital-keypad telephones have “dial tones?” And how do we “dial” a phone by punching some buttons? When we send E-mail do we call it a “telegram?” When we consult our watches, do we still view a “chronometer?” Do we call refrigerators, “ice boxes?” Of course not! So, please, let’s update our phone terminology.

Plastic Thread -- There should be a new place in purgatory into which the inventor of clear plastic thread and its users would be hurled. Garment manufacturers, in order to save a few pennies by not having to change thread colors, now torture their wearers with the constant scratching from the cut ends of this filament. This purgatory locale would a briar patch filled with nettles and razor wire.

E-mail Junk -- By this I don’t mean junk E-mail (or “spam”). This has been lambasted enough. Rather, I refer here to all those annoying extras you get in E-mail messages, particularly those that have been forwarded. For instances, why must all the co-recipients of E-mails be listed twice in painfully convoluted ciphers? Does the computer forget in that short span of message text to whom it is addressing this E-pistle? Also, why is the message text often repeated (sometimes twice or more) in the body of a forwarded message? And why do all those little greater-than signs (>>) scatter themselves all over forwarded E-mail messages like chicken tracks? Come on you Internet techies ... these are not difficult problems to solve. If you can transmit smut to our children, the least you can do is get rid of this E-mail junk.

Big Word Users -- Few scholarly artifices engender my trenchant passions like those literati who espouse antiquated synonyms whilst composing expository prose. These inane and erudite accouterments generally bequeath naught to their reader’s comprehension other than an acute discernment of their author’s ego-inspired hyperbole.

Compulsive Call Screening -- Due to such things as phone solicitors, some clever people now never ever answer their telephones. Instead, they screen all their calls through an answering machine. This, of course, is understandable, but can sometimes cause extreme frustration. For instance, like when you know that they are at home and you need to reach them in a hurry ... say to tell them that someone with a hockey goalie’s mask and chain saw is jimmying their cellar door.

Airline Lies -- Every time a flight is canceled, airline counter personnel offer the same lame excuses: “Your plane is experiencing mechanical difficulties.” or “Weather at your plane’s feeder airport has forced the scrubbing of this flight.” Just once I would like to hear: “This plane is not fully booked, so we are canceling it and cramming you into a later one so we can generate higher profits.”

ON BEING JUDGEMENTAL

A while ago a very bright liberal daughter of some friends said that she didn’t like the religious elementary school that she had attended because they had been “judgmental.” I then engaged her in a short colloquy about this subject (I, being in favor of drawing conclusions) and didn’t make the slightest dent in her social armor. So I have decided to try to memorialize my feelings on this issue in order to argue my case further and perhaps even open her mind a little.

The definition of “judgmentalism” I would like to use here requires a little visualization. Imagine that you are sitting in the middle of a large circle drawn on the ground and that you are metaphysically sorting through all the thoughts and things of life. You place those thoughts and things that you find acceptable inside the circle and those that you don’t, outside. I think we all perform such a chore with some regularity and even pleasure. For instance, you might place “fouling the environment” outside the circle, or unacceptable; and “the smell of baby powder” inside, or acceptable. At some point you must make such a placement decision on “being judgmental.” Aha, now comes the conundrum! Can you place this behavior outside the circle without being hypocritical? And if you do, then you are denying the very process you may savor.

The best path off of this uncomfortable paradox might be for this young lady to admit that she just didn’t like this elementary school because its value system differed from hers. In fact, her put down of people and institutions for being “judgmental” is nothing more that an easy pejorative, a semantic substitution for ideas too weak or embarrassing for social expression. Such pejoratives (for example, “homophobe” or “knee-jerk liberal”) have become, at least to the unthinking, a way of quickly winning arguments with a backward wave of the hand and the nodding approval of one’s clique members. In other words, they are a dialectic code for “the social norm is to find this behavior unacceptable and, if you don’t comply, then we will think less of you.” Notice, I say “we” since such tête-à-têtes are usually sprinkled with such aphorisms as a way of testing newcomers to see if they have enough common receptor sites to be considered as someone to whom we will pay attention. Of course, this newcomer may also be applying a similar Rorschach to the testers to decide whether they too are worth a fiddler’s fart. Then the ridicule-or may become the ridicule-ee.

Historically these code words shift and jive. The older, cruder forms were often short and stabbing, such as “pinko” or “crybaby” or “bum.” Today, our salon societies have evolved much more subtle and sophisticated membership applications ... polysyllabic (and often humorous) aphorisms that slip off the tongues of our dilly dandies like cheap oil off of freshly-opened sardines. There are even those who seem to coin such terms for a living. Those that quickly come to mind are Rush Limbaugh (“femi-nazi” -- a hyper-radical feminist), Tom Wolfe (“x-ray” -- a socialite whose skeletal-look seems to be her only claim to self worth), and James Carville (“sexual McCarthyism” -- daring to pass judgment on President Clinton’s peckerdilloes).

Therefore, I am here pontificating on nothing really new. I’m old enough to remember, in the 1950s and 1960s, when similar semantic weapons, which are now so capably used against the right, were leveled at liberals with equal efficacy. However, I do not recall conservatives denying their left-wing foes the ability to think or form judgments. This is the insidious demagoguery against which I now rail. I honestly hope that this one flicker of liberty is not snuffed out as tribute to our current worship of feelings over consequences.

TRADITIONAL TRADITIONS

“In olden days a glimpse of stocking was looked on as something shocking, now heavens knows, anything goes.” (Cole Porter)

Recently I wrote a blog on another site (Dartmouth Traditions) about college traditions, their plusses and minuses. This has caused me in turn to think about much of today’s social and political conflicts in these same terms – the push and pull between modernity and traditions. To be specific:

Gay Marriage – a main argument against gay marriage is that it changes the definition of “traditional” marriage (one man, one woman). Therefore, the “modern” view is pro gay marriage. However, I find it most ironic that gay couples often wrap themselves in the age-old marital traditions (a walk down the aisle, a wedding cake, exchanging rings, etc.). This has just a touch of pathos to it.

Radical Islam – it seems that much of bin Laden’s hatred of the West has to do with the creeping modernity with which we seem to have infected the world. Sex, drugs and rock-and-roll would clearly vanish under traditional Sharia rule (the ultimate world goal for Al Qaeda). Women (and I suspect many minorities) would lose centuries of emancipation. And whole populations would resemble Afghanistan ere its recent liberation: one-eye burkas (see BeliefNet), brutal stoning-to-death executions, destruction of centuries old art works, etc. “Civilizations” would clearly become a lot less civil.

Journalism – Ernie Pyle exemplified journalism in the Second World War. David Gregory exemplifies it today. There is a rift between these two styles of reporting as wide as the seas. Is the traditional journalism mold better than the “modern” one? I’ll let you be the judge.

Rap Music – Does anyone really think that out-year reunions of today’s youth will nostalgically involve Gangsta Rap? Modernity is not always indisputably better.

Old Europe – Without traditional garb, food, architecture, etc. Rick Steves would have to find another line of business. The charm of traveling through France, Germany, Spain, etc. is experiencing these delights first hand. Usually, however such vacations do not include a sampling of the local politics … which is far from traditional.

Art Movements – Impressionism, Cubism, Abstract Impressionism, Pop Art, Op Art, etc. Art movements come in quick succession like waves sucking on a money-strewn beach. Which of these movements are “traditional”? Time alone can make this ultimate judgment. But please give me just one opinion … Andy Warhol has done more to trash the progress of art in the twentieth century than the Taliban ever could have.

The lesson here is that everything old is not necessarily good and everything new isn’t necessarily bad. However, once a tradition is establishes, it has an inertia that should not be fooled with carelessly. But changing circumstances can devalue a tradition as well as make a good innovation poisonous. It is only mindless insistence on a style of behavior that seems truly dangerous.

BOOBY PRIZES

Dartmouth College has once again come up almost empty when prestigeous international scholarships are handed out to outstanding seniors. (Well, we can still console ourselves with the fact that we have a crackerjack football team.) Perhaps the recent vote by the alumni regarding the proposed new constitution may be reflective of this situation. See the below links for the bad news:

Rhodes Scholars (not):
http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2006-11-19-rhodes-scholars_x.htm#list

Fulbright Scholars (not):
http://www.fulbright.co.uk/awards/announcement.htm
To be absolutely accurate, eight Fulbright awards were awarded to Dartmouth students to study outside the United Kingdom. See http://www.dartmouth.edu/~news/releases/2006/05/18.html

Marshall Scholars (not):
http://www.marshallscholarship.org/winners.html

Luce Scholars (not):
http://www.hluce.org/4datefm.html

To repeat myself, I once asked President Wright at a luncheon in Hanover why Dartmouth didn’t have more Rhodes, Fulbright, and other senior honors scholars. His response was stupefying … he said he didn’t want students, who tried for such honors and failed, to have this failure define their Dartmouth experience. (We must have a lot of self-satisfied students.)