Romney, the son of a politician, has been running for office, holding office or thinking about running for office for more than two decades. “Just level with the American people,” Gingrich growled. “You’ve been running … at least since the 1990s.”

For some reason, Romney can’t do that. Or at least it seems like he can’t. His authentic inauthenticity problem isn’t going away. And it’s sapping enthusiasm from the rank and file.

Goldberg is right, but the underlying theme that voters need to be reminded of is that during so many important debates fromhealthcare, jobs, Wall Street Reform, confirmations, recess appointments, to taxes the culprits to invoke cloture or side with the Democrats typically are the same:  Senators Susan Collins, Olympia Snowe,  and Scott Brown–the trifecta of RINOs. All from the northeast, too.  See where I’m going with this?

Frankly, Romney, who the mainstream liberal media would like to see win the nomination, has yet to unite the GOP base.  His used car salesman pitch simply rubs people the wrong way.  We’ve seen this over and over again–even John McCain pointed this out and won in 2007′s primary–and now supports him–that should speak volumes to my point.  Romney has always been dogged by this and this is why we have such a large ‘Not Romney’ camp on the right side of the aisle.

The GOP is also paying the bitter price for not having anyone in line to succeed GW Bush.  The party’s internal tug of war will be an historical teachable moment and prepare the party for future elections.  The one saving grace is that, while the Democrats have Hillary, they have no one to succeed her at this point in time.  I say Hillary because she seems to be the only power broker left untarnished by Obama–even though she is an Alinsky kinda girl.

Additionally, the GOP presidential candidate will have a two-pronged mission as the nominee:  to beat the MSM and Obama.  However, enlightened voters now know for sure the media is mostly state-controlled, Obama was never vetted, and that his radical leftist ideology drives his policies, appointments, and regulations out of the mainstream.

Furthermore, the MSM needs Romney to offset Obama.  The formula is quite simple:  RomneyCare is to ObamaCare as Obama’s rhetoric is to Romney’s rhetoric all of which cancel each other out according to how the media sees it.

I’m not buying the media hype over who can beat Obama.  The primary is the primary and the game changes in the general.  Voters are more inclined to vote with their wallets.  We have gas prices averaging at almost $4 per gallon across the country, skyrocketing food prices, record foreclosures, record number of people on food stamps, high unemployment, ObamaCare, crippling regulations, and much more.  So if the MSM thinks that the historic 2010 midterm GOP wave was a whim, think again.  The Right accomplished its key mission of splitting the Congress so that Obama’s agenda could not be rammed through anymore.  Would we have liked the Senate, sure, but in 2012, the job will be finished.  My point is that who do we really want in the Oval Office?  A northeastern Republican who disavows the GOP or not.  We already have someone who does not have the consent of the governed.  Are we really going to take that risk again?

Finally, Romney has always touted RomneyCare as a great model for all the states to implement, but the reality is, the only person who implemented RomneyCare was Obama and now we have ObamaCare.  No thanks.

The performances are superb – Gary Oldman as George Smiley immediately makes you forget even Alec Guinness – and the script and staging range from not overly annoying to inspired.

But in the theater where I saw it, the quiet, understated delivery of the actors caused an older gentleman in the audience to shout, “Turn up the damn volume!” (He was shushed by his embarrassed wife.)  The cast does affect a certain amount of mumbling and whispering, which apparently forms an important part of Swedish director Tomas Alfredson’s concept for remaining true to le Carré’s trademark atmospherics.  (It could also be that his artistic hero is Ingmar Bergman; I haven’t seen any of Alfredson’s Swedish films.)

This little audience-reaction vignette sums up beautifully the movie’s basic disconnect.  Tinker works very hard to be true to le Carré, whose classic Cold War spy novels were contemplative and brooding, generous and patient.  Le Carré is a writer of unequalled talent in his sphere, giving his name to an enduring, identifiable mood about the fictional business of international espionage.   But for that mood to grip an audience’s short hairs when the story is told on screen, something more is needed than a faithful rendition of le Carré’s style.  What is needed is a Cold War audience.  What is needed is the Cold War.

Le Carré didn’t do cinema-ready chase scenes in his Cold War spy novels.  He isn’t a mystery writer or a spinner of fantastic tales about resurgent Nazi cabals or Nazi breeding programs in Latin America.  His fascination has been with character, moral decisions, and the tension between professionalism and human weakness.

Frederick Forsythe, by contrast, another great action-fiction writer from the same era, gave his readers a sort of documentary insight into spycraft, constructing stories around criminal plots, suspense, and danger.  Robert Ludlum, for his part, built his name on fast-paced action, stock characters, shocks and surprise twists.  Ludlum’s Bourne series has been translated effortlessly into a modern franchise, and the film adaptation of Forsythe’s Day of the Jackal, released in 1971, holds up for 21st century audiences who have barely heard of Charles De Gaulle, because the story is about the respective crafts of assassination-for-hire and police sleuthing.  When the tale was reset in the United States for the 1997 Bruce Willis vehicle The Jackal, it worked as a film of its own because the story is a generic classic: rumpled, wily law enforcement official pursues preternaturally brilliant international criminal.

But le Carré was the Greek-tragedy hymner of Spies in the Cold War.  His genius was to sketch stories against the background of the common angst, fears, and assumptions of that strange, twilight conflict.  He didn’t have to explain why a fanatical Soviet spymaster who had never heard of compunction was a figure both frightening and fascinating – because everyone knew why.  The tanks that rolled into capital cities in Eastern Europe, the nuclear weapons that were pointed at everyone in the northern hemisphere 24/7, the grainy videos of Khrushchev and Brezhnev, eyes shadowed under their Russian-style swaddlings, the mental water-torture of endless coups and insurrections and wars – Soviet spymasters were connected with these lurking threats, these things that could actually hurt us.  These things that could end life as we knew it.

The necessary but somewhat ironic outcome of winning the Cold War has been that we no longer viscerally understand le Carré’s world without having it explained to us.  What Soviet communism was in the Cold War world is something that does not even exist today.  We have no common perception now of a threat figure like the storied Soviet spymaster, because there is no threat like the predatory Soviet Union.

The specific threat environment within which the humans do their shabby maneuvering is a surprisingly important component in a le Carré tale.  A diabolical plot, car-chase, or shoot-out can be reset almost anywhere, but the towering existential threat and moral exhaustion of the Cold War are sui generis.  Without a prior sense of them in the hearts of the audience, the conflict at the core of Tinker’s narrative comes off as flat and uncompelling.  Ho-hum, we think.  Another bunch of cynical spies, unable to trust each other.  And why is this lumbering story of teletype messages and old paper files moving along in such a jerky fashion?

The 1979 TV adaptation of Tinker, featuring Alec Guinness as Smiley, did less homage to le Carré’s style, but it fit squarely within the cultural expectations of Cold War fiction, and in that way was less self-conscious than the 2011 movie.  It was suited to its time, with Guinness as a memorable Smiley.

But Oldman is a wonderful George Smiley in his own right.  If there are more adaptations of Smiley novels, I predict that all future performances will be compared to his.  Oldman hits off le Carré’s ordinary, understatedly noble functionary perfectly.  He carries the movie, which I think would otherwise be rather tedious and inexplicably dour for under-40 audiences with no tribal memory of the Cold War.  Virtually all the performances are excellent, although some of the actors, like the wonderfully effulgent Ciaran Hinds, have too little to do.  Hinds plays Roy Bland, one of the top British spy leaders suspected of being a mole, and manages with just a few close-ups to keep those who don’t already know the story interested in the possibilities of his guilt.

Tom Hardy (Inception, The Take), as lower-class thug Ricky Tarr, almost steals the movie out from under the tremendous older cast.  He manages to convey a feral audacity without being coy or grating.  Other stand-outs are Benedict Cumberbatch (BBC’s 2010 Sherlock Holmes) as Smiley’s sidekick Peter Guillam, and Mark Strong (Sherlock Holmes, The Young Victoria) as Jim Prideaux.  The Prideaux character is shortchanged somewhat in the film, but Strong grabs attention for it anyway.

One of the most poignant moments of the story occurs when Prideaux – after being sneaked back into Britain from his supposed assassination in Hungary – finds himself in a rural classroom with a group of young students.  An owl emerges like a wild dervish from the schoolroom’s chimney, precipitating an explosion of feathers and char over the assembled children.  Prideaux, who was tortured by the KGB before he was returned to the Brits, kills the bird quickly and professionally with a stick, administering one deadly, jolting whack that leaves the owl emitting terrible cries in its death throes on the classroom floor.

We are meant to see in this jarring vignette the seared conscience of a beaten-down, used-up spy – and back when spies seemed terribly necessary, in a world rent by a grotesque ideology married to weapons of global destruction, the irony and sorrow of such a moment had a power to pierce the heart.

But more heart-rending today is the fact that they no longer do.  We may appreciate the owl’s scene as a narrative device, but it doesn’t make us secretly long to hug a spy for all the moral sacrifices he makes to keep us safe.  We simply don’t live in a world anymore in which his services seem indispensable, or like the center ring of a global struggle for civilization.

It is this passing of an era that does in Colin Firth’s turn as Bill Haydon, another of the potential moles among the senior leadership of the British spy service.  Firth’s performance is terrific – in his last scene with Oldman you can hardly bear to look at him – but the elephant in the room is the stark recognition that it just doesn’t matter anymore.  Without the Cold War context – of politics, of ideology, of threats to the future of mankind and to our very existence – the hubris and manipulation and cynicism and betrayal look small and pathetic, like something way too inconsequential to build a story around.

I suspect that today’s generations will have an existential-conflict narrative of their own soon enough.  We who remember every assumption and slogan of the Cold War don’t by any means wish it back.  But we are in a peculiar hiatus now from the civilizational compulsions that attend a life-and-death struggle, and nothing – no fiction, no poetry, no art – that requires a context of that kind to grip our minds and hearts has a hope of tasting the way it once did.  For such a savor, we will have to await the next brush with existential brinkmanship.

Addendum:  For more poignant Cold War reminiscing, be sure to check out Rick Richman’s superb review of The Iron Lady, the late-2011 indie film in which Meryl Streep portrays Margaret Thatcher.  Rick makes the case that, whatever the narrative intentions of the film’s producers, the movie’s result is to spotlight the remarkable strength, grace, and admirable quality of Thatcher’s character and legacy.  If I were to sum up Rick’s thesis, I would put it this way: No matter what you try to say about Margaret Thatcher, she’s going to have the last word.

J.E. Dyer’s articles have appeared at The Green Room, Commentary’s “contentions,” Patheos, The Weekly Standard online, and her own blog, The Optimistic Conservative.

The controversy surrounding the show has spread beyond the Florida conservative group which began it. Just this week, as Jim Hoft reports, WordPress took down the blog Bare Naked Islam, which had been calling for the show’s cancellation. (Though the reasons cited by WordPress don’t specifically include a reference to the show.) They were also getting attacked from the Left, as PETA blasted them over one woman’s decision to give up her ten year old dog.

Lining up on the opposite side of the aisle, hip hop artist Russell Simmons took the side of the show, being joined by Mia Farrow. He called for a boycott of Lowe’s, (though I’m not sure what that’s supposed to accomplish) and bought advertising time during the broadcast himself.

So has the show benefited in the form of higher ratings amid all the Sturm und Drang, as I speculated it might earlier this month? The premier episode actually did fairly well, with more than 1.7 million viewers and a .9 overall rating, though it dropped nearly 50% over the next couple of weeks. The impact on the ratings from these stories seems to be… not so much.

TLC’s ‘All-American Muslim’: Controversy Does Not Equal Ratings

It would appear members of the conservative Florida Family Association are among the few actually paying attention to TLC’s All-American Muslim.

The reality series about Muslim families living in suburban Detroit, which lost advertising from Lowe’s and other brands after FAA condemned it as propaganda, is languishing in the ratings.

Only five episodes into its first season, the series ranked 78th among Sunday’s cable broadcasts for Dec. 11. With only 908,000 viewers and a 0.3 rating among adults 18-49, it’s being easily outperformed by series like History’s American Pickers, Discovery’s Moonshiners and its latest lead-in, Little People Big World: Holiday Surprise.

We’re still waiting for the confirmed numbers for the last episode, but the trend lines don’t seem to indicate that all of the shouting over the subject matter is causing viewers to come back in droves.

And if not Ron Paul, then who? This brings us back to an old chestnut where people ask how any gay person could vote for any Republican. I bring this up today because of a letter I received recently from a conservative who also happens to be a lesbian which tackles this question in a direct fashion. I have permission to reprint it, but because of her particular circumstances, the author shall remain anonymous. (So you are free to disregard this if you don’t care for unnamed sources.)

Answering the question of how somebody can be a politically conservative lesbian in the 21st century is harder than it sounds and still brings me some uncomfortable moments, but I can take a shot at it. It also matches up with how people in a supposedly enlightened age can still be in the closet. While I know it’s not the same thing and the metaphor fails, I tend to think of it as being something like being part of any other “assumed minority group” when it comes to voting. (And I simply gag on that phrase.) It’s kind of insulting to think that just because you happen to be Jewish, or black, or Hispanic, or Muslim, or a man, or a woman, old or young, – OR GAY – that somehow that sticks you into a particular folder and you need to agree with everyone else who fits that category on EVERYTHING.

These days it seems like the big defining thing about gays in politics is marriage. (Now that Don’t Ask Don’t Tell has gone away, which I see as a good thing, particularly since the love of my life was in the Air Force and in the closet also.) And for those who want to fight that battle, good for them. I just can’t get excited about the marriage question. I know many of our sisters do, and good for them, but here’s my main stand on that. I care more about my relationship with my girl and my God than I do about my relationship with the state. If we decide we want to be married, we will have a ceremony with our friends and family and take our vows before God. We will be married in our eyes and in the eyes of those that matter to us. I don’t know if that’s going to happen and neither of us is particularly worried about it. If the state or the nation think I’m married doesn’t matter much to me.

But I DO have concerns about our country when it comes to public policy, and most of my friends who are seriously engaged in politics over marriage push a whole bunch of policies which seem to me to be destructive. We have to cut the debt. We need our own energy that pays for itself. We need law and order and fairness under those laws for everyone. And my liberal friends don’t get that. And that ties in to the question you asked about jobs.

Why am I in the closet? Because where I work I found out early on that openly gay people of either sex were in for trouble. We live in a supposedly VERY liberal city, as you know, and the owners claim to be very progressive. But when it comes to having clients find out that anyone on the staff is gay, they say pretty much, “business comes first.” I could get [expletive deleted] off about that, but I need a job. And my employer needs customers. I can trash him for being “weak” and “not taking a stand” I guess, but I still wind up unemployed either way if he goes out of business. I honestly don’t give a [expletive deleted].

The world’s not a fair place full of unicorns and rainbows. I need to make a living. I need to have the country survive so I hopefully CAN make a living. Things will get better in the future. We have bigger fish to fry right now than having me just support people who think I should be able to get married but are sending America into a messed up situation where maybe nobody’s marriage will matter. I don’t have to be out. I don’t approve of forcibly outing private citizens. And just because I think some of my friends should be able to get married if they want to, it doesn’t mean I should vote for idiots if they agree on that one thing.

Thanks.

Here’s the portion of that which stood out most to me. “I care more about my relationship with my girl and my God than I do about my relationship with the state.” I have to wonder how prevalent that attitude is across the country, and if just maybe it might be the most libertarian stance of all. If you truly do follow a libertarian ideology and don’t think that the government should be involved in the business of marriage, why would you care if the state “endorsed” your marriage or not? Either it is the state’s business or it isn’t, right?

I keep meaning to bring this up with Chris Barron of GOProud fame and get his take on it. Anyway, just something for you to chew on during the closing days of 2011.

I spent the morning plagued by an indescribable sense of sadness, though everyone had known for some time that this day was coming. I never met Hitchens, but it always felt as if he lived around the block from me and only poor timing had kept us from running into each other. Such was the nature of his constant output of notable work; his books upon my shelves, the regular links which popped up in my mail, pointing to this or that column in every major publication which wound up being brilliant, infuriating, or – most frequently – both.

For many years I have either puzzled or enraged my friends and regular correspondents when the inevitable topic among writers would crop up. Who are the greatest writers of our time? I long ago narrowed my list down to four – George Will, James Kilpatrick, Christopher Hitchens and James Wolcott. (That last entry never fails to send conservative friends into apoplectic fits, but he deserves his place on the roster.) Sadly, we have now lost two of the four.

We can, perhaps, learn more about the nature of the man not from what he wrote, but what his friends and enemies wrote about him over the years. (And the ranks of the aforementioned categories are legion.) But even identifying his actual friends can be difficult, since he demonstrated a lifelong propensity to slash at his allies – in a seemingly careless way – with the same vigor he displayed in eviscerating his foes. Even that should have come as no surprise, though. What else should we expect from someone who penned a scathing editorial attack on Mother Theresa? Andrew Anthony of The Observer offered a defense of Hitch’s wide ranging attacks in a jacket blurb he did for one of my favorite books in the Hitchens collection, Love, Poverty, and War:

Among his many weapons… a moral authority that is built on something sturdier than cheap moralizing.

Hitchens wasn’t some overnight success, suddenly appearing after his famous moment of liberal apostasy when he embraced the invasion of Iraq. (A seminal moment which led to a mass upwelling of rage among his legions of followers, including yours truly.) He had always been there, frequently behind the scenes, stirring up trouble wherever he went. I often pictured Hitchens as the quintessential, revolutionary character in all of those movies we all remember. Whether it was Dead Poets Society or The Big Chill, there was always the one rebellious student, striding back and forth on the university library steps, gesticulating wildly and quoting centuries dead monks which nobody else had heard of yet, while a crouched group of future protesters and disaffected youths looked on in awe. Hitchens was that guy. He was always that guy.

I imagine him at the moment of his birth as being the baby who refused to squander his first breaths bawling and mewling after the doctor spanked him. He would have contained himself, storing up his energy until he developed sufficient motor skills to hold a pencil and write his first scathing review – probably a critique of his mother’s womb as a prenatal carrying device. (“All in all a creditable conveyance, though tending a bit toward the damp side and the lighting was simply abysmal.”)

Hitchens moved boldly across the world stage, wandering through places which would paralyze a more cautious man. While he found much to criticize, he still revealed a deep well of empathy in his writings for those who were left out in the cold by forces they could never hope to overcome themselves. In one of the many jewels among his collection of essays, I was particularly moved by the stark image he painted of North Korea following a trip there in the nineties. Titled, “Visit to a Small Planet,” (an ironic homage to the Jerry Lewis film of the same name) he crafted a meticulous, insult laden assault on the late Kim Il Sung and his hapless, seemingly inbred progeny. He describes his visit to the U.S.S. Pueblo with a visceral, white hot anger, but then goes on to convey the shame he experienced for feeling hungry in a land filled with hopeless, starving peasants.

North Korea is a famine state. In the fields, you can see people picking up loose grains of rice and kernels of corn, gleaning every scrap. They look pinched and exhausted. In the few, dingy restaurants in the city, and even in the few modern hotels, you can read the Pyongyang Times through the soup, or the tea, or the coffee. Morsels of inexplicable fat or gristle are served as “duck.” One evening I gave in and tried a bowl of dog stew, which at least tasted hearty and spicy—they wouldn’t tell me the breed—but then found my appetite crucially diminished by the realization that I hadn’t seen a domestic animal, not even the merest cat, in the whole time I was there. (In a Pyongyang restaurant, don’t ever ask for a doggie bag.) Nobody knows how many North Koreans have died or are dying in the famine—some estimates by foreign-aid groups run as high as three million in the period from 1995 to 1998 alone—but the rotund, jowly face of Kim Il Sung still beams down contentedly from every wall, and the 58-year-old son looks as chubby as ever, even as his slenderized subjects are mustered to applaud him. Kim Jong Il, incidentally, has been made head of the party and of the army, but the office of the presidency is still “eternally” held by his adored and departed dad, who died on July 8, 1994, at 82. (The Kim is dead. Long live the Kim.) This makes North Korea the only state in the world with a dead president. What would be the right term for this? A necrocracy? A thanatocracy? A mortocracy? A mausolocracy? Anyway, grimly appropriate for a morbid system so many of whose children have died with grass in their mouths.

Hitchens was one of the few who could pull off the feat of making up his own, new words when a suitable one was not extant in the English language. And the imagery of the North Korean children who, “died with grass in their mouths” while their delusional leaders told them they lived in a land of milk and honey is heart rending. But that was Hitchens in a nutshell. You didn’t need to go to North Korea after that. He had done it for you and you could immerse yourself in the experience without ponying up the cash for a plane ticket and a full suit of body armor.

Hitchens was the party crasher who never made you feel like calling the cops. He was completely unapologetic for the smoking, the drinking, the unhealthy food and his take no prisoners, bon vivant lifestyle. He was The Honey Badger decades before YouTube would be invented to bring the now iconic video clip to us. He simply did not – if you’ll pardon the alteration – give a crap. Hitchens was in technicolor when much of my early life seemed to be playing out in black and white.

And now he’s gone. I’m sure I’m not the first to describe him as a “devout atheist” and I won’t be the last. (Another case where an ironic contradiction in terms is the only suitable way to describe him.) He has either been proven right and sunk back into the cosmic background noise, or found himself to be wrong and is pounding on the Pearly Gates in righteous indignation. If so, somebody will have some explaining to do, and I expect in this case Hitchens will be demanding an answer as to how God could be such an inexcusably obstreperous contrarian as to exist.

Yes, I can bring myself to say it now. Christopher Hitchens is dead. But he most assuredly did not die with grass in his mouth.

Addendum: Hitchens beat the ploughshares of the English language into a sword. And he wielded it mightily.

An answer to that question seems to have been provided on Monday, at a branch of In-N-Out Burger in Pinole, California, where a man in his twenties opened fire on another man just after 5 p.m. The shooting occurred in the drive-through line, but drivers mere feet from the incident were unmoved—literally—by the sounds or sights of gun violence. Instead, they sat patiently in line, waiting to pick up their orders.

MercuryNews.com reports that the victim was airlifted to a regional trauma center, where he remains in critical condition.

The sound of the gunshots was loud enough to rouse customers of a pizzeria next door but not to deter burger lovers, who continued streaming through until 7:15 p.m., when police officially closed the restaurant to investigate the shooting.

One possible explanation for the customers’ stoic behavior is that the food at In-N-Out Burger is that good. Another possibility is that violence at fast food restaurants is becoming so routine an occurrence that patrons have become inured to it.

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The Seattle School Board is considering relaxing its ban on unhealthful food in high schools amid complaints from student governments that the policy has cost them hundreds of thousands of dollars in vending-machine profits over the past seven years.

But board members now acknowledge they probably went too far. The restrictions, which are more strict than the now-crafted state and federal nutrition guidelines, allow only products such as milk, natural fruit juice, baked chips and oat-based granola bars.

Perhaps not surprisingly, many students are not particularly interested in those items.

In 2001, before the junk-food ban was passed, high-school associated student body (ASB) governments across the city made $214,000 in profits from vending machines, according to district data. This year, they’ve made $17,000.

Well, there’s a shock. In a television report on CNN they interviewed a few students who said they were simply either bringing their own treats to school or running out at lunch or during study halls to the store down the street and buying them. Gee… ya think? So the end result was just that they cost the student government a ton of funding with no real change in dietary habits.

Keeping children healthy is important. It involves a lot of personal choices involving not only what and how much they eat, but how much physical activity they get, as opposed to sitting in front of the television or a video game. And who do you suppose has the real power to influence those choices? At one time in the far distant past I seem to recall that parents were responsible for that, not the school or the government. And if the parents fail at that job, Seattle has demonstrated once again that the rest of the “village” is completely incapable of it.

The Associated Press reports on another such list, this one the ten* most hated people in America. The list is the result of an opinion poll conducted by E-Poll Market Research. Here, in descending order toward “most hated” are those who were named. See how many you can guess. (A slideshow of the “honorees” is here.)

No. 9: Howard Stern. The shock jock still manages to ruffle enough feathers to edge onto the list.

No. 8: Heidi Fleiss. If you were of a mind that the “Hollywood Madam” is yesterday’s news, you are not alone. What may have catapulted her back into the spotlight was her stint on Celebrity Rehab as well as her upcoming reality show Heidi Fleiss: Prostitutes to Parrots.

No. 7: Paris Hilton. Her highly publicized (and all too brief) stint in jail, followed by continued brushes with the law, make the heiress a perennial object of scorn. Her towering intellect is a factor as well.

No. 6: Levi Johnston. The celebrity media magnet would be an obscure 21-year-old oil rig worker in Alaska if it were not for his one brush with fame—fathering a child with former fiancée Bristol Palin when her mother was in the headlines as GOP veep nominee. Some respondents probably responded unfavorably to Johnston’s Playgirl spread.

No. 5: Jon Gosselin. The former reality TV star of Jon & Kate Plus 8 likely made the list because of his very public and very messy divorce from Kate Gosselin, the mother of his eight children. Rumors of his infidelity are no doubt a contributing factor to his placing fifth.

No. 4: O.J. Simpson. Not much to say here except that murdering your children’s mother and then walking away scot-free is a source of ongoing revulsion for many. Simpson is currently serving prison time for armed robbery.

No. 3: Nadya Suleman. The Octomom’s story—giving birth to octuplets while an unemployed single mother with six other children in tow—is an object lesson in how to not to win friends and influence enemies. Suleman denies ever having said, “I hate the babies, they disgust me,” and “My older six are animals.”

No. 2: Spencer Pratt. It’s obviously the year to hate reality TV stars (maybe reality TV, too?). Rumor has it that Pratt and wife Heidi Montag are broke. No word on whether they think of themselves as belonging to the 99 percent.

No. 1: Casey Anthony. The Florida mother who was found not guilty of murdering her two year-old daughter is a member of the O.J. club. She is also the most hated person in America for 2011, described by 60% of respondents in the E-Poll survey as “creepy” and “cold.” And those are among the more charitable comments.

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A Michigan music teacher’s decision to censor the word “gay” from a traditional Christmas carol is being met with a frosty response.

The teacher, who has not yet been named in any of the published reports, allegedly removed “gay” from “Deck the Halls” after 1st and 2nd grade students kept giggling during preparations for a Christmas concert at Cherry Knoll Elementary School in Traverse City. Instead of the traditional lyric, the students were taught to sing “don we now our bright apparel”….

One of the many infuriated Cherry Knoll parents and fellow educators who expressed umbrage on the school’s Facebook page wrote:

Essentially, this teacher has now taught the elementary school children, including children as young as five, that gay means homosexual sex.

One way of avoiding this problem in the future would be removing the sex from homosexual—in other words, dealing discreetly with what takes place in the bedroom, which is precisely what heterosexual couples do. It is certainly the tack taken by the authors of two celebrated children’s books that preach tolerance, Heather Has Two Mommies and One Dad, Two Dads, Brown Dad, Blue Dads.

But removing references to overt gay sexuality from the public square is not everyone’s cup of tea. Members of the Gay Straight Alliance at Washington & Jefferson College in Washington, Pennsylvania, believe that one historically gay issue—HIV/AIDS awareness—should be front and center in this holiday season. Accordingly, they have adorned a Christmas tree on campus with condoms.

Not everyone is happy with the display, which includes a sign reading, “AIDS Awareness! Free condoms! Take one!” Joshua Habursky, a junior and president of college’s Young Republicans Club, told TheBlaze.com:

I submitted to [the club's leaders] that I understand the tree was for thr [sic] AIDS Awareness Day … but why is it continuing to stay up into the Christmas season?

I pleaded to the college president to take it down. I met with the dean of student life who said that he approved the tree and that he would approve the tree again.

The Gay Straight Alliance is claiming their First Amendment right to co-opt a holiday symbol for their cause, once again missing the critical distinction between rights and what is right.

One additional concern of Joshua Habursky is the tree’s location—in a spot that elementary school children visiting the campus are likely to pass through. Imagine the fallout if the tykes snicker at this spectacle the Alliance is so hell-bent on displaying.

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Perhaps the next edition can provide kids with a full accounting of the Occupy-related illnesses, vandalism, rapes, deaths, and other criminal violations — and a related pop quiz on John Nolte’s Occupy arrest rap sheet.

The kids deserve the whole truth. The teachers unions’ Alinsky brigade won’t give it to them.

However, while Scholastic continues its love affair with OWS, it also has a hypocrisy problem (yes, go figure).  Seems Scholastic senior editor, Natalie Smith, who wrote this OWS puff piece dated well after this gem of a photo, conveniently forgot that her company is a $1.9 Billion publicly-traded company on the NASDAQ exchange.  Smith writes:

The Occupy protesters argue that large companies like those on Wall Street are making too much money while millions of Americans are struggling just to put food on the table. The protesters say they want average Americans to have more job opportunities and share in companies’ prosperity. They want their voices to be heard.  (emphasis mine)

What Smith fails to report is that Scholastic is in quite good shape financially:

In fiscal 2011 operating income was $100.7 million on revenue of $1,906.1 million, primarily reflecting lower sales of educational technology relative to a year ago, when the Company benefited significantly from the federal stimulus program, as well as increased strategic spending on digital initiatives in the children’s book business. Free cash flow was $120.5 million, which exceeded net income, compared to $171.6 million a year ago, which reflected that year’s strong educational technology sales. The Company also returned $176.4 million to shareholders in the form of share buybacks and dividends in fiscal 2011.

Last year we celebrated the 90th Anniversary of the founding of Scholastic. From the launch of a single classroom magazine in 1920, Scholastic has grown to become the world’s largest publisher and distributor of children’s books and a leader in educational technology and children’s media.

Ah, yes, the sweetness of a capitalistic economic system, vision, ingenuity, and success.  Scholastic has been able to grow due to the very capitalistic system OWS condemns.  It’s mind-boggling, to say the least, how Scholastic can support a movement that validates and teaches children class warfare, lawlessness, and lewd behavior.  But then again…

However, the design element that sets this one apart from others—a whimsical “pixelated cloud” of terraced apartments jutting out from the buildings—has become the center of a controversy. To many viewing this architect’s rendering, the “cloud” conjures up disquieting memories of smoke billowing outward from the World Trade Center on September 11, 2011.

The project is still on schedule for completion in 2015. Yet, the negative reaction to the design has been so widespread that MVRDV felt the need to release a statement of apology that reads in part:

MVRDV regrets deeply any connotations The Cloud projects evokes regarding 9/11.

The Cloud was designed based on parameters such as sunlight, outside spaces, living quality for inhabitants and the city.  It is one of many projects in which MVRDV experiments with a raised city level to reinvent the often solitary typology of the skyscraper. It was not our intention to create an image resembling the attacks nor did we see the resemblance during the design process. We sincerely apologize to anyone whose feelings we have hurt, it was not our intention.

Well, maybe not overtly. The Weekly Standard writes that of MVRDV’s Jan Knikker told the Dutch-language newspaper Algemeen Dagblad, “I have to admit that we also thought of the 9/11 attacks.”

In fairness to the architect, Daniel Libeskind, the similarities between The Cloud and the Twin Towers on 9/11 is less apparent from perspectives other than ground level, as the images in this slideshow reveal.  Libeskind, should the name fail to ring a bell, was the designer of the original “master plan” for the reconstruction of Ground Zero.

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That was the experience of three women on a New York-bound AirTran flight out of Palm Beach on Monday. The women, complete strangers who happened to be seated near one another, found themselves huddled together in the face of adversity. That face belonged to a testy flight attendant, whom the three insist was the only bad actor in a situation that rapidly escalated out of control.

The female passengers were buckled in and ready for takeoff when one of them, Marilyn Miller, noticed a male flight attendant attempting to force her carryon bag into an already-stuffed overhead luggage compartment. “Hey,” she said, “I have breakables in that [bag].”

Miller claims that the flight attendant not only ignored her concern but became more aggressive, shoving other bags into hers.

A second woman, Carol Gray, attempted to alert the same flight attendant to the fact her seat was broken and was greeted by a similarly hostile reaction.

Both Miller and Gray maintain they tried to defuse the situation but that the attendant became increasingly irate. Ultimately, to their amazement, he called the gate and asked that they be removed from the flight.

As staff and deputies led the Miller and Gray toward the exit, the third woman, Karyn Schorr, spoke up, saying, “This is crazy, they didn’t do anything. Why are you doing this to them?”

At this point the attendant said simply, “Throw her off, too.”

All three say they were in shock at being led off the plane and back to the terminal. Says Gray in a video clip recorded after the fact:

My seat was broken and it really was. Her bag was being mishandled. And this other woman came to our defense. Those are hardly causes to throw us all off the plane.

The women were not cited or charged with a crime. On the contrary, AirTran offered to fly them to New York on a later flight at no charge.

AirTran’s behavior might be construed as an admission of guilt, but Southwest Airlines, which acquired AirTran in 2011, released a statement on Tuesday that contradicts that reading:

Our Employees are responsible for the safety and comfort of everyone onboard a flight. Our goal is always to mitigate any uncomfortable situation prior to departure. Our crew assessed the environment onboard and ultimately decided to accommodate the passengers on an alternative flight. In addition to booking new travel arrangements, we compensated the passengers—offering a gesture of goodwill for their inconvenience. We always prefer that a passenger walk away with a positive experience when flying our airline, we regret that didn’t happen in this scenario. As we often do in these situations, we will take this opportunity to review the reports and take away any key learnings [sic] that we might uncover.

As for troublesome flight attendants, this is not the first time an individual in that line of work “lost it.” In August of 2010, a flight attendant with Jet Blue went berserk over a heated exchange with a passenger, deployed the plane’s emergency chute, and ran off.

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Some will accuse Obama of getting the date wrong, as he did when he wrote “2008” next to his signature in the guestbook at Westminster Abbey earlier this year. But this video clip provides evidence that the president knew full well what he was doing this time.

So why did he jump the gun on the actual start of Hannukah? Hey, the guy is busy! Who knows what his calendar will be like two weeks from now? He’s got important campaigning to do. Besides, it’s not as though we’re talking about Ramadan here.

As for the president’s observation about never needing an excuse for a good party, Daniel Halper at the Weekly Standard blog writes:

[W]ith unemployment at 8.6 percent, and with many having already quit looking for a job, I doubt many Americans would be heartened to hear the president saying he ‘never need[s] an excuse for a good party.’

As for the party, Hannukah is customarily celebrated by the eating of latkes, potato pancakes fried in hot oil. I wonder if the ever-vigilant First Lady saw to it that White House chef Sam Kass substituted fruit, which is an “any time” food.

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The teacher, Kimberly Crain, 48, was arrested on Friday and arraigned on charges of child pornography. Pottawatomie County District Attorney Richard Smothermon has asked that bail be set at $1 million, stating that Crain is a flight risk. Crain resigned her position at McLoud Elementary School on Thursday.

The investigation began earlier this month when a parent told Shawnee Police that her daughter and the girl’s classmates had been invited to a pizza party at Crain’s residence. The child told her parents that “they dressed up in bras and panties [imprinted with phrases like “Ho! Ho! Ho1”] and decorated the tree and ate pizza.”

The child also revealed that Crain “took photos of her and her friends decorating the tree,” and that some of the girls “made up a cheer dance and did it in the bra and panties while Crain videotaped them.”

A search warrant affadavit provides additional creepy details, including this one based on a statement taken from another of the girls in attendance: “Crain has all the kids in her class Skype over the computer with an older man wearing glasses named ‘Uncle G.’” The man is not further identified in the affidavit.

An article at the website of station KRMG notes that the FBI is also on the case. An agent named Clay Simmons is quoted as saying:

Currently we are examining the computers and the other digital media that may contain images of child pornography and try to review them and see if there’s any [additional] criminal charges to be filed.

A final detail worth noting is that Crain at one time was McLoud’s “teacher of the year.”

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Today, his chances of getting past this scandal grew immeasurably worse. A fourth woman has come forward with tales of Cain’s sexual predation. And this time there is a name—Sharon Bialek—and concrete details of the CEO’s alleged inappropriate advances.

There is also a recorded video statement by the accuser.

Bialek told reporters during a press conference on Monday that in 1997, Cain—then head of a restaurant trade group—tried to grope her genitals and force her head into his crotch. The woman claims that she initially rebuffed the advances and asked Cain what he thought he was doing. She insists that he replied, “You want a job, right?”

Cain’s campaign immediately issued a denial, but I believe the die is now cast. Whether Bialek is telling the truth is beside the point. Cain is now in the same unenviable place that former Congressman Anthony Weiner found himself in just before a shirtless photo of the veteran politician went viral. Even those who believe in Cain’s innocence will have formed an indelible picture that is hard to erase. I expect the candidate to withdraw from the race within the next two weeks.

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NBC New York reports that the new sex education curriculum, which will be mandatory for middle and high school students next spring, will provide a frank and comprehensive grounding in the birds and the bees that will be customized according to age group.

Middle school students will receive “risk cards” that rate the safety of different sexual activities, among them, the New York Post reports, “intercourse using a condom and an oil-based lubricant,” mutual masturbation, French kissing, oral sex, and anal sex.

High-school students get to go on field trips. These will include a visit to the neighborhood pharmacy, where they will compare and contrast condoms in terms of brand, price, and features such as lubrication. Others will research and map out a route from school to a clinic that provides birth control and STD tests. You just can’t tell when an emergency visit might be in the cards for your honor student.

While the city Department of Education hastens to point out that the curriculum “stresses that abstinence is the best way to avoid pregnancy and STD/HIV,” it will also feature a fair amount of role playing. One lesson focuses on just saying no, while another entails “negotiating condom use” with a partner.

Best of all, the Post writes:

Teens are referred to resources such as Columbia University’s Web site Go Ask Alice, which explores topics like “doggie-style” and other positions, “sadomasochistic sex play,” phone sex, oral sex with braces, fetishes, porn stars, vibrators and bestiality.

In case you were wondering, the classes will be coed. No word on whether students get to choose their homework partner and, if so, whether they will have a chance to specify cup size, length, and the like. In the meantime, think of the many rich opportunities for cross-disciplinary study afforded by the curriculum (“If Mary fakes two orgasms every hour and John has three real orgasms every two hours…”).

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The 2002 play, the book for which was written by Tim Acito, with additional lyrics and material by Alexander Dinelaris, is set in a fictional high school. It was, however, a recent performance at a real school, Hartford Public High, that generated headlines.

The Hartford Courant reports:

Members of Leadership Greater Hartford’s Quest, a program for professionals that develops leadership skills, put forth ‘Zanna’ as an anti-bullying community service project that helps lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning youth.

In a partnership with the nonprofit True Colors, one Quest team raised $10,000 to show the musical three times at Hartford High this month. The Knox Foundation and the Samuel Roskin Trust at the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving gave sponsorship money. Students from area high schools and Trinity College are the actors.

In one scene in the play two males of the species exchange a brief kiss. The scene was obviously meant to raise the consciousness of audience members. But when the play had its debut at Hartford High last week, the scene instead raised the blood pressure of some in attendance.

The Courant notes that

a piercing clamor rang through the auditorium. There were screams and loud voices and a bit of feigned or real disgust. Dozens of students, mostly male and a few in their Owls football jerseys, hurried out of their rows and walked out. A few jumped over seats to leave.

Before the day was out, one parent had stormed into the main office with a Bible, pointing out portions that condemn homosexuality as a sin. Others took their teenage children out of school early.

According to the Courant David Chambers, principal of the school’s nursing academy, had informed his students ahead of time there might be same-sex affection in the play. Some had asked to be excused, and Chambers had considered—but then rejected—the idea of sending home an opt-out letter.

Chambers is said to have hoped the play would help his students develop a sense of empathy toward gays and lesbians, or at least exposure to “that which makes them uncomfortable.”

“Our kids are not there yet,” he is quoted as saying.

But some evidently are. Oneida Fernandez, a 17-year-old law and government student, is quoted as saying, “To me, people are people. We’re human beings.… I don’t discriminate.”

Another, Dineily Vargas, told a reporter:

I think it opened a lot of people’s eyes.… This school never really had anything like this happen. I’m still happy. It was wonderful.

The only part I hated, was when some people left.

This story raises all manner of questions. Chief among them is where a school’s responsibilities to its students and to the community at large begin and end. There are also see clear-cut First Amendment issues here. Anyone with answers is welcome to weigh in below.

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“They’re defecating on our doorsteps,” Community Board 1 member Catherine Hughes told the New York Post. Hughes, who lives a block away from Zuccotti Park, was referring to the park’s “inhabitants” of the last five weeks, adding:

The cowbells start at 4 a.m. and the drumming goes past 10 p.m. A lot of people are very frustrated. A lot of people are concerned about the safety of our kids.

Other area residents told the Post they’ve been insulted and harassed as they walk to work each morning.

Bloomberg can’t run for the mayoralty again, and judging from his recent polls, it’s unlikely New Yorkers would have him. But he still has his legacy to preserve. That may explain why he announced this morning on local talk radio that more arrests are imminent. He spoke of enforcing rules, such as requirements of permits for marches and assemblies.

A separate column in the New York Post quotes OWS media coordinator (OWS has a media coordinator?) Thorin Caristo as essentially threatening Bloomberg back:

The mayor’s statements sound hardline and I have no doubt he may actually try to enforce those. But we all know that every time excessive police force is used in this situation the movement grows exponentially.

Caristo also said of Bloomberg:

His inability to create a clear and definitive opinion or position on OWS just shows he’s being tossed around like a bird in a storm.

In short, Caristo was calling Bloomberg a wimp—an insult he doesn’t need to take. After all, he’s been called a wimp by far better people than Thorin Caristo.

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The city is now threatening to shut down the route if the carrier, Private Transportation Corporation, doesn’t stop its practice of segregating passengers based on sex.

The New York World, which broke the story on Tuesday, recounts the experience of passenger Melissa Franchy, who boarded the bus on October 12 and took a vacant seat near the front. Franchy claims she was immediately warmed by curious glances from the men on the bus, all wearing full beards and long black coats.

When the vehicle began to fill, one of the men rose and told her she would need to move to the back, adding that the B110 is a “Jewish bus.” When she inquired why she had to move, the man responded sternly, “If God makes a rule, you don’t ask ‘Why make the rule?’”

After the World story ran, the New York Post got in on the action. The paper dispatched one of its photographers to Williamsbug, one of the two Hasidic communities serviced by the line, and instructed her to refuse to change seats. She did. Like clockwork, the driver told her the bus would not budge until she moved to the “non-reserved” section at the back. At the time, the vehicle was half-empty.

Yesterday, Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan (a woman yet!) fired off a letter to Jacob Marmurstein, reminding him that his comapny’s franchise agreement with the city prohibits discrimination “based on race, creed, color, national origin, sex, age, handicap, marital status, or real or perceived sexual orientation.”

The letter further warned that if the company continued its discriminatory practice, the city would terminate the agreement.

The view of women as inferior under Orthodox Jewish law last made news in May, when a Hasidic Jewish newspaper photoshopped two females out of the iconic White Situation Room photo taken during the raid on Osama bin Laden’s lair. One of the two was Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

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Despite Jon Stewart’s frequent reminders to his audience that his is a “fake news show,” a slightly heated on-air clash in June with FOX News Channel’s Chris Wallace suggests the Comedy Central host takes himself and his politics more seriously than he lets on.

So when he poked fun last night at conservatives for their recent calls to “take back America,” you could tell Stewart was only half joking. (Video clip is here.) Even when he went out of his way to riff on Rep. Allen West’s impassioned plea to pick up “your muskets,” Stewart himself understood that the reference was an historical metaphor even if his guffawing studio audience didn’t.

Today Mediaite devotes some space to the segment and to Stewart’s ironic question of who those on the right are trying to take the country back from. A related question that the host might want to devote another hilarious segment to is to who those on the left are trying to take the country back from.

He might want to begin with Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy, who offers a recipe for “How Progressives Can Take Back America” in an article with the same name.

Too obscure? Then how about crazy man Howard Dean, whose 2004 book is titled Winning Back America? Or better still the radical-left Take Back the American Dream (formerly “Take Back America”) conference. Dean was keynote speaker at the group’s conference in 2004, where he told those in attendance:

So over the next few months we’re going to partner with 21st Century Democrats, with the Progressive Majority, with SEIU, with AFSCME, with other groups, where we can come together not just to make sure John Kerry is the next president of the United States, but to make sure that if he is, that this is not just simply a weigh station in between right-wing presidents. That we are going to take this country back this time, and never again are we going to permit the extreme right wing of the Republican Party to tell us what to do. I am tired of listening to the fundamentalist preachers, and we’re not going to do it anymore. [Emphasis added]

An even better Daily Show guest would be the man who told an auditorium full of fellow progressives in 2006:

We are here tonight because we believe that in this country, we have it within our power to say ‘yes’ to those questions—to forge our own destiny—to begin the world anew.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is our time.

Our time to make a mark on history.

Our time to write a new chapter in the American story.

Our time to leave our children a country that is freer and kinder, more prosperous and more just than the place we grew up.

And then someday, someday, if our kids get the chance to stand where we are and look back at the beginning of the 21st century, they can say that this was the time when America renewed its purpose.

They can say that this was the time when America found its way.

They can say that this was the time when America learned to dream again.

Were you able to guess from the florid prose that the speaker was the current progressive-in-chief, Barack Obama?

Mediaite, at the close of its article, quotes Jon Stewart as saying (with his tongue embedded, as ever, only halfway in his cheek):

It must be tough to love America so much, but hate almost three fourths of the people living in it.

Since conservatives still outnumber liberals in this country by a margin of better than two to one, it’s hard to know who Stewart was talking about. Could it be he was looking in a mirror when he made this sage observation?

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Knox teaches at a school that is currently celebrating Lesbian Gay Bisexual and Transgender History Month. In her Facebook comments she makes specific—and critical—reference to the school display shown on this page.

John Paragano, an attorney and former town councilman, sent the district a copy of Knox’s Facebook commentary along with his unsolicited opinion, to wit:

Hateful public comments from a teacher cannot be tolerated. She has a right to say it. But she does not have a right to keep her job after saying it.

The American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey argues otherwise. ACLUNJ legal director Ed Barocas is on record as saying:

Although we do not agree with the sentiments expressed on Ms. Knox’s personal Facebook page, her comments are protected by the First Amendment. The ACLU believes that the response to offensive speech is not the restriction of speech, but more speech.

Meanwhile, the battle lines have been drawn. A gay rights group that dubs itself Garden State Equality has joined Paragano in demanding Knox’s dismissal. Steven Goldstein, who chairs the groupis quoted by NJ.com as saying:

Teachers are supposed to be role models for our children, not hatemongers. I don’t see how this teacher could possibly be effective in implementing the state’s new anti-bullying law, designed precisely to teach children that bullying, including cyber-bullying, is unacceptable.

The law in question was adopted last spring after a Rutgers student committed suicide upon learning that a video of him kissing another man had gone public.

In the opposing camp is Knox’s pastor, who argues another aspect of his parishioner’s First Amendment rights—her freedom to express her heartfelt religious views. Rev. Milton B. Hobbs, of New Covenant Fellowship in Clark, New Jersey, notes:

It’s not saying that people who are gay sin any more or less than anyone else. But to say that the Bible doesn’t say it’s a sin would be untrue. It does say that.

Any Christian who makes a stand that’s unpopular can expect to be persecuted. That’s in the Bible, too. But no American should expect to be prosecuted for exercising free speech. At what point does that stop?

The against Knox case is similar in many respects to one involving a Florida teacher who had posted comments opposing New York’s gay marriage lawon his personal Facebook page.That teacher, Jerry Buell, was suspended after his comments were made public but won a lawsuit against the school district and has been reinstated.

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I only need to pay $1,500 if she dies. But if she lives, it would cost ten times more at least.

But the driver is not the only member of that society in desperate need of a soul. The dozen or so passersby that walked or drove by the child impassively over the next seven minutes also boggles the mind.

And if your blood is not yet at a full boil, consider this: A second truck rumbled by, and it too rolled over the child as she lay unconscious and bleeding.

Finally, after what seemed to this viewer like an eternity, a woman in the clip appears and drags the child out of the path of oncoming traffic, after which her mother—said to be a migrant worker—rushes into the frame.

Remarkably the child did not die immediately, though she is currently in a coma. Her prognosis, according to China’s official English-language newspaper, China Daily, is grim. In any case, she has been declared brain dead.

Reuters, which produced the video, writes that many in China are reluctant to aid people who appear to be in distress for fear of being blamed. “High-profile law suits,” the wire service adds, “have ended with good Samaritans ordered to pay hefty fines to individuals they sought to help.”

Another factor noted in the article is a growing disparity between rich and poor, which has led to a climate of general apathy. If this is the road we as a society are headed down, God help us.

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If you are fed up with politics as they exist in the real world, a new free online application will give you the chance to make up your own movie featuring the pols of your choice. Called GoAnimate, the app provides you with a debate stage, a cast of characters, and a behind-the-scenes animation engine that will convert your script and voice-overs (via your computers mike) into a Flash movie.

That there is likely a market for this app is suggested by the popularity of Bad Lip Reading, which syncs pure gibberish to videos of selected pols mid-speech.

Gary Lipkowitz, GoAnimate vice president of corporate development, is quoted by The Blaze as stating that the purpose of the site is

to provide a fun mode of expression for the masses. Candidates and pundits are constantly talking at us, and people are trying to shout back in social media, but most of the tools are just text. So we launched this project to provide rich media feedback tools—to empower everyday people to turn their comments into commentary—whether they’re responding to the debates, campaigning for a cause or recreating key political moments.

I perused the site and couldn’t find the particular actor I was looking for to star in my own movie. At least I can take solace in the fact that from time to time he provides his own real-life comedic relief.

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McIntosh is (make that was—he’s since been fired) a cashier at a McDonald’s in Greenwich Village, where two women handed him what looked like a phony $50 bill last Friday. An altercation that ensued quickly turned obscene, then violent.

A video of the incident shows one of the women slapping McIntosh. Seconds later the other woman jumped the counter while the first walked around to where the cash was kept.

McIntosh swung into action—literally. Grabbing hold of a metal rod he kept in the back of the store, he began whaling on the two women. One ended up with a fractured skull and a broken arm. The other was treated for a deep laceration.

All three combatants were arrested. The women were charged with menacing, disorderly conduct, and trespassing. McIntosh received two counts of felony assault and criminal possession of a weapon. It may be irrelevant, but McIntosh did a “dime” at Sing Sing for shooting a high school classmate to death in 2000.

So who’s the hero in this tale of bunko bungling and urban unrest? That would be McIntosh, who according to the New York Post has become a “McHero” among the social network set. The Post reports that a Rayon McIntosh Defense Fund has been set up on Facebook and that other cyber-support pages have followed suit.

I do not disagree entirely with the person who wrote at one of the abovementioned pages that the women “needed a good whupping.” For me, the problem is according hero status to a man who settles his differences by picking up a metal pipe.

It’s not that the nation has not had its share of heroes. One can make a persuasive case that the men of Seal Team 6, the group that took out Osama bin Laden, were heroes, though members of that elite team would argue that what they did was all in a day’s work.

Part of the problem facing the country is that its “heroes” so often turn out to be false idols (think Barry Bonds or Roger Clemens). An even bigger issue is that the term hero is sprinkled around so injudiciously. It has become a commonplace in news reports to refer to victims who survive crimes against them as “heroes.”

A curative, I believe, would be the emergence of a genuine, certifiable hero—someone who truly deserves the recognition and thanks of the American people. Sadly, Captain America is a fictional character. And Rayon McIntosh, the appreciation of his fans notwithstanding, is far from a hero.

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Before you answer that question, be mindful that no one attempted to evict anyone. Early this morning, the squatters in Zuccotti Park learned that Brookfield Properties, which owns the plot of land, had aborted its planned cleanup. The mayor’s office sent tidings at 6 a.m., informing the occupiers that they were once again free to camp out in the park indefinitely.

But the protesters, who apparently had girded themselves for a good fight, began “throwing bottles and bags of garbage at officers” anyway. Police retaliated. CBS New York reports on one particularly ugly skirmish:

First Precinct Commander Ed Winski checked a protester who refused to stay on the sidewalk. When the protester came back into the street, Winski hurled his megaphone down and wound up rolling around in the street with the protester, throwing punches. Other officers surrounded the two, throwing punches. The protester was arrested.

Shades of Chicago, 1968.

There were about a dozen arrests in all, all provoked by demonstrators who, channeling the president’s former chief of staff, decided not to let a crisis go to waste.

Today’s were not the first arrests since the sit-in began. That dubious distinction belongs to some 700 protesters who were taken into police custody after blocking traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge on October 2. Something, however, tells me this won’t be the last incidence of violence from the “party of peace.”

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Zuccotti Park, the plaza in downtown Manhattan where the movement got its start three-plus weeks ago and which remains the national epicenter, is overrun with refuse. Brookfield Office Properties, which owns the park, has released a statement that reads:

Normally the park is cleaned and inspected every weeknight.… Because the protestors refuse to cooperate … the park has not been cleaned since Friday, September 16th and as a result, sanitary conditions have reached unacceptable levels.

A catch-22 for both Brookfield and the city is that Zuccotti Park is a public space. It is privately owned but operates under a charter that gives anyone free access—even squatters in desperate need of a bath.

Filth is not the only way in which the movement is adversely affecting New York. The tendency toward violence among the protesters, 28 of whom were arrested on Wednesday for disorderly conduct, requires a constant police presence. NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly reports that the protests have so far cost the city about $2 million in overtime for officers assigned to cover the demonstrations.

How serious a problem is the sit-in becoming for a city that is already in debt to the tune of $100 billion? So serious that even its socialist mayor, Michael Bloomberg, has told the protesters to “lay off the banks.” Bloomberg is quoted by Politico as saying:

The protests that are trying to destroy the jobs of working people in this city aren’t productive.

What they’re trying to do is take away the jobs of people working in the city, take away the tax base that we have. We’re not going to have money to pay our municipal employees or anything else.

I share Bloomberg’s concern, if for different reasons. His chief worry is not having enough warm bodies to place more traffic-choking bike lanes on city streets.

As for Commissioner Kelly, he warned the protesters, several of whom have been arrested for assaulting police officers, that “they’re going to be met with force when they do that—this is just common sense.” Kelly added:

These people wanted to have confrontation with the police for whatever reason. Somehow, I guess it works to their purposes.

Clearly, the commissioner has the OWS demonstrators confused with the Tea Party. Everyone knows that it’s conservatives who are violent. Liberals are the party of peace and tolerance.

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Christie suspended the film tax credit program in 2010 to close a budget deficit, but the 2009 season still qualified for the credit.

“I have no interest in policing the content of such projects,” Christie said in a statement. “However, as chief executive I am duty-bound to ensure that taxpayers are not footing a $420,000 bill for a project which does nothing more than perpetuate misconceptions about the State and its citizens.”

To those of you who don’t live in New Jersey, please be advised that orange-dyed overexposed (in every meaning of the word) louts are the exception, not the rule, to the Garden State’s inhabitants.

Jersey Shore is awful enough that companies pay the orange-dyed “stars” not to use their products:

The Situation doesn’t usually require a lot of motivation to lose the shirt. But Abercrombie & Fitch wants him to go one further — the company has offered to pay “Jersey Shore” cast members to stop wearing clothes carrying their brand.

The preppy teen retailer said Tuesday it would pay a “substantial payment” to Mike “The Situation” Sorrentino or any cast member who stops wearing its clothing on the popular MTV reality show because the series is “contrary to the aspirational nature of the brand.”

Coach didn’t like Snooki carrying their purse to the bar, either.

Thank you, Governor Christie for ending the $420,000 Jersey Shore tax break.

And, A&F, you can pay me to not wear your clothes any time, too.

Cross-posted at Fausta’s blog

The intended recipient was Ralph Steinman, of Rockefeller University. Unbeknownst to the committee, which was planning the awards ceremony for today, Prof. Steinman died on Friday at age 68. And the Nobel Prize is not awarded posthumously.

Nobel Foundation spokeswoman Annika Pontikis is quoted as telling the Associated Press, “I think you can safely say that this hasn’t happened before.” One might quibble that the decision to award the prize to noted climatologist Al Gore should have caused the committee at least as much embarrassment.

The judges now face another dilemma: how to divvy up the $1.5 million in prize money. Steinman was to share the Nobel Prize for Medicine with two other recipients. Should those men—American scientist Bruce Beutler and French scientist Jules Hoffmann—split the cash two ways? Or should a third go to Steinman’s heirs?

It’s a problem the Nobel committee has never had to confront before. Maybe they can get some help from the Obama administration, which has experience handing out money to dead people.

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Police diverted from more important tasks to function as baby-sitters admonished demonstrators to stick to the pedestrian pathway. Needless to say, about 1,000 protesters interpreted the warning as their cue to move their act to the roadway, where they blocked traffic and clashed with cops for several hours, creating larger-than-normal traffic delays.

Some 700 protesters were arrested for disorderly conduct amid chants of “Let us go.” Change the slogan to “Off the pigs” and the theme to taking down “the Man,” and the scene could have been straight out of the ‘70s—except that the Man is currently black, which kind of spoils everything.

Some of those taken into custody claim they were tricked into being arrested by the NYPD, which they insist gave them misleading information about where on the bridge they could demonstrate.

Then again, the misinformation has been flowing for the duration of the sit-in, and those assembled have been willing dupes. At one point, for example, a rumor sprang up on Twitter that the police planned to use tear gas on the protesters—a crowd-control tactic the department doesn’t use. The claim was eventually rescinded.

As to what the protesters hope to accomplish, one of their own summed it up neatly in an email to The Associated Press. Erin Larkins, a Columbia University graduate student, wrote:

I don’t think we’re asking for much, just to wake up every morning not worrying whether we can pay the rent, or whether our next meal will be rice and beans again. No one is expecting immediate change. I think everyone is just hopeful that people will wake up a bit and realize that the more we speak up, the more the people that do have the authority to make changes in this world listen.

I’m pretty sure that most Americans at this point are on the same page as Larkins. The only question is how to bring about the change she is seeking. Somehow, I don’t think taking up residence on the streets of lower Manhattan and defiling the bathroom at a nearby McDonald’s is the answer.

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That would probably still be the case if she and her better (other?) half hadn’t made headlines for “kissing and telling” on a commercial airliner mid-flight.

Actually a word about those headlines is in order. The banner at The Hollywood Reporter, which is typical, reads “’L Word’ Actress Leisha Hailey Tweets She Was Kicked Off Southwest Airlines Flight After Kissing Girlfriend.” That gives you the basic outlines of the story, but the ostensible chronology and cause and effect are wrong. The women were taken off the plane after it landed. And it was not because they had been kissing.

As best as I reconstruct (the details vary depending on the source), Hailey and her girlfriend, Camila Grey, were exchanging saliva during a flight from Baltimore to St. Louis. Nearby passengers complained that the women’s expression of affection was “excessive,” which in turn prompted a flight attendant to tell them their behavior was inappropriate. Hailey concluded she and Grey were the targets of discrimination.

Apparently, words between the actress and airline personnel grew heated. Once the plane landed Hailey and Grey were led off the plane—in Hailey’s own words—“for getting upset about the issue.”

Upon deplaning, Hailey went to work compiling a complete dossier of the incident on her Twitter page via a half dozen outraged tweets, beginning with:

I have been discriminated against by @SouthwestAir. Flt. attendant said that it was a ‘family’ airline and kissing was not ok.

An employee at Southwest followed, tweeting: “I’m so sorry! Can you please follow/DM [direct message] me more details so we can get to the bottom of this? Thanks!”

The airline later tweeted the following statement:

Initial reports indicate that we received several passenger complaints characterizing the behavior as excessive. Our crew, responsible for the comfort of all Customers on board, approached the passengers based solely on behavior and not gender. The conversation escalated to a level that was better resolved on the ground, as opposed to in flight. We regret any circumstance where a passenger does not have a positive experience on Southwest and we are ready to work directly with the passengers involved to offer our heartfelt apologies for falling short of their expectations.

Were the passengers who objected “homophobes” who overreacted to a simple peck between two women? It’s possible. It’s equally possible that Hailey and Grey were making a public display of their “equal rights” by vying in front of a planeload of hapless passengers for membership in the Mile High Club.

All I know is if what happened to these two women once the plane touched down—viz., getting to exit before all the other passengers— qualifies as being “kicked off,” I urge the airlines to kick me off the next I fly. I promise not to accuse them of heterophobia if they do.

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Both men also went on to articulate who the real enemy is. Here is Obama:

We are at war against terrorist organizations that have distorted Islam or falsely used the banner of Islam.

Maybe a Georgia school curriculum developer would have done well to read past the first sentence in either president’s remarks before creating an assignment that glorifies two of the more controversial tenets of Sharia law. (h/t The Blaze)

According to the Marietta Daily Journal, the overarching purpose of the assignment was to teach Campbell Middle School students about the pros and cons of school uniforms. Among the materials distributed to them was a letter from a woman that extols the virtues of Sharia law:

My name is Ahlima and I live in Saudi Arabia. … Perhaps two differences Westerners would notice are that women here do not drive cars and they wear abuyah. An abuyah is a loose-fitting black cloth that covers a woman from head to toe. I like wearing the abuyah since it is very comfortable, and I am protected from blowing sand. … I have seen pictures of women in the West and find their dress to be horribly immodest. … Women in the West do not have the protection of the Sharia as we do here. If our marriage has problems, my husband can take another wife rather than divorce me, and I would still be cared for. … I feel very fortunate that we have the Sharia.

One of the students’ parents found the lesson plan problematic, especially a line from the assignment that read, “I understand that some Westerners condemn our practice of polygamy, but I also know they are wrong.”

The parent, Hal Medlin, told station WSB-TV:

It’s promoting or positively depicting their belief that polygamy is fine, if that’s what they believe. But I don’t know how you could possibly state that and not have any kind of disclaimer that this is what these people think, but not necessarily what all of us believe.

In defense of the materials, their creator, Sharon Coletti, replied:

This particular sequence is a two-day social studies lesson. [Students] read this letter and then examine stereotyping. The next lesson is a compare and contrast on the role of women in the Middle East. Yes, the Muslim girl stereotypes Western women, but are there ways we stereotype Muslims? I have no idea what the objection is.

It’s important for kids to have some empathy for other people in the world. … [Emphasis added]

Ah, the E word! You had to be wondering when that would emerge as a part of the equation.

The Daily Journal notes that in the wake of the objections, the material was adjusted. In particular, the portions on the utility of slavery and the stoning to death of non-believers were stricken. Ha, just kidding! There were no such topics in the lesson. The scary part, though, is that there could have been.

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There is no doubt, as we discussed this morning, that the decision by Elmhurst College in suburban Chicago to include a question (even voluntary) on it’s incoming freshman registration is severely misguided.

The problems with such a decision are numerous:

1. It violates the principles of the original Christian mission of the school. This is being laughed off of course as it has been with Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, but it is true nonetheless.

2. It draws uneven comparisons with legitimate “minority” status that might be helpful for the college to be aware of. How many times must African Americans draw attention to the obvious that genetically disposed skin color is not comparable to the issue of desiring to sleep with someone–whatever the orientation may be.

3. It further divides a school over an issue that should be relatively invisible to the issue of learning. It further separates students one from another based on random allocations of answers on the registration.

Elmhurst is hearing today from Alumni and donors over it’s poorly thought through silliness.

Let’s hope they listen!

Maybe so that he could him some tax-payer funded Pornos!

Now take it one step further to understand, not only is he suing for the state to provide him pornographic material, but he is suing the state at the expense of the tax-payers in the state to make his claims.

And if the ACLU has their way… he will win.

Try not to snicker at the references to being “frustrated” in the CNN clip below.

For me it wasn’t an issue, (to snicker or not) because I was overwhelmed with nausea at the thought that we have to put up with this idiocy, largely foisted on us by the perves in our society, many of whom took that first step towards rape, murder, and other felonies–merely because they were users of porn.

But we’re not allowed to say that these days are we?

We’re not allowed to say that some things exploit women, degrade human sexuality, create an “objectification” towards other human beings…

Nope we have to give the guy his latest edition of “Beastiality Monthly” because he claims to have the worst case of “the blues” ever known to human kind, and now its our fault and we have to pay for him to have the right to make his claims in federal court.

I could also live perhaps an entire lifetime before I hear the term “stimulatory irritation” again…

I’m Kevin McCullough, and that’s how I “Binge Think…”
I care about giving you control back into your life in free market ways…
And I also believe strongly that you need to at least consider the assertions I make.

Here is the example that got me thinking about it recently.  Victor Davis Hanson wrote last week, as he has several times, about the rampant property theft in his area of California.  People come onto his property uninvited in order to scope out the equipment he has installed on it, and then come back later to steal the stuff.  Nothing can be left out unattended.

He lives in the Central Valley, where illegals roam, farms have been failing due to the artificial drought imposed by state and federal water policies, and unemployment is higher than almost anywhere else in the nation.  I’ve driven through the area on Highway 99; although I don’t know the situation of his particular property, the principal impression the traveling driver takes from Selma, California (which passes fleetingly on the way to Fresno) is of farmhouses set close to widening country roads and a lot of suburban encroachment on a once-rural landscape.  This pattern – extension of the suburbs into farmland, the chopping up of farms and the loss of a rural lifestyle – is recognizable to a very large number of Americans, I think.  Certainly it is to me.

The rural-suburban intersection is a vulnerable spot, and particularly so in a southern-border state.  Urban concentrations of some size are required to attract people to what Hanson correctly calls a “parasitic” lifestyle.  And a rural environment close by makes a handy redoubt for it.  One of the chief features of the rural side is the light footprint of law enforcement.  It’s usually the province of the county sheriff in such areas, and sheriff departments notoriously lag population development in funding and size.

The question for people in Hanson’s position is really whether to look to the urban model for relief, or to the traditional rural model.  In the urban model, police are relatively plentiful and a short drive away.  This doesn’t result in perfect protection, by any means, but property crime will routinely get attention from law enforcement, including follow-through and attempts at deterrence.

In the rural model, by contrast, the local citizens think about crime and their relation to law and order differently.  Whereas an urban dweller who hears someone outside her window calls 911, the rural citizen – very often at the behest of her dog – gets her shotgun.  In many cases, the rural citizen will induce the intruder to run away merely by pressing the slide release to chamber a round, which makes a very identifiable noise.  Rural dwellers are no more anxious than their urban confreres to kill or wound property thieves; they know, however, that active deterrence is a necessity out where no one can hear them holler.

It occurred to me, reading through the original Hanson post and the comments, that America has reached the stage at which even parts of our rural community have forgotten the utter ordinariness of taking their own security precautions.  The old-fashioned perspective on this was not dictated in the past by the accidents of distance from law enforcement, or specific crime waves.  It was part and parcel of a philosophy, in which the sanctity of a citizen’s life and property were foundational elements of the culture, not artifacts of state policy.   A self-protecting posture was simple prudence, predicated on an idea of the citizen as the basic unit of society.

The family functions as society’s first and most basic authority structure, and the citizen’s relation to his property is the basic model of the human phenomenon of property.  In the American philosophy, the individual citizen is the “principal.”  Property exists at all because he has earned and obtained claim to it, in a voluntary process from which he and his fellows derive benefit.  It is not conferred on him by the government; government is his agent in regularizing his title to it.  Inherent to the responsibility of property is protecting it, and in this, too, the government is an agent, and not the principal.

In an urban or urbanizing setting, it’s easy for people to forget this idea.  We come to think there is no alternative to what the police are willing or able to do to protect our property.  We think of the unguarded life as normal, and of crime as a city problem that makes police necessary, rather than as a human problem that makes precaution and vigilance necessary.

But an Arcadian vision of the American past, in which farmers never had to worry about crime or human predators, is a myth.  When people in less-populated, rural or quasi-rural areas have to take their own security precautions, that in itself is not a sign of civilizational breakdown.  The breakdown, if there is one, will be evident if the people as a whole don’t appreciate and quickly revert to their inherent right and responsibility to protect themselves.

There are certainly big things wrong with America.  If our borders were secured better, the problems in Hanson’s county would not be nearly so pressing.  If our cultural institutions had not been dedicated for the last half-century to demonizing and tearing down the traditional arrangements of society, which discourage the development of a criminal underclass, we would have a more effective societal attitude about crime today.  These things are unquestionably important.

But it all starts with how each individual citizen sees himself in relation to survival and property.  Do we have an inherent right to defend both?  Or do we only have the options the government is willing and able to make available?  If we don’t have the former, what is the basis for defining the latter?  Why protect life and property at all?  If the individual is not meaningful enough to justify protecting himself and what he has, then on what basis does the government undertake to do it?  And if we let the government define the extent to which we are to be protected – this far, and no farther – what does that make us?  In what relation to us does that put our government?

Citizens who fend for themselves approach the whole proposition of government with a moral certainty about their worth and authority that a less self-reliant people cannot know.  And when it comes to fixing the big problems that contribute to the bad patterns in the San Joaquin Valley – insecure borders, the effective promotion of illegal immigration, the corruption of society – a weak, importunate citizenry will not force a high-handed government to change its character.  That kind of citizenry will instead sell more and more of its discretion over itself to an ever-larger government:  the “liberty for security” bargain, which destroys both.

In the project of guarding ourselves, government is a practical arrangement, not a god dispensing favors.  We cannot live an unguarded life indefinitely:  a life in which we do not have to understand the ubiquity of predation and take precautions against it.  When we have torn down one societal retaining wall after another, the predation is more and more likely to show up on our doorstep.  Guarding what we have spent a lifetime working for is not an unnatural burden; it is simple responsibility.

J.E. Dyer’s articles have appeared at The Green Room, Commentary’s “contentions,” Patheos, The Weekly Standard online, and her own blog, The Optimistic Conservative.

However, there are several other companies and individuals who continue to file applications in an attempt to trademark SEAL Team 6 and other variations of the name.  In examining the USPTO database, such companies and individuals filing applications include Metrogames, Justice is Done, AAAA World Inc., RESCO Instruments, The Outdoor Recreation Group (and this one), John Brokaw, and Jon Narmi–even a German company is trying to cash in.  There are others as well, but you get the picture.

It is not coincidental that all of the application file dates range from early May 2011 until present–obviously a direct link.  Additionally, Disney was met with public scorn and the Navy did strong arm Disney to protect its rights:

Navy spokeswoman Amanda Greenberg said the Navy already had rights to the SEAL trademark but recently submitted two new applications for trademarks of “Navy SEALs” and “SEAL Team.”

“The Navy is fully committed to protecting its trademark rights as it pertains to this matter and is currently examining all legal options,” she said.

Disney/ABC spokesman Kevin Brockman said the company pulled the plug on its bid “in deference to the Navy’s application.”

It is fair to ask, in light of the outcome with Disney, how will the Navy handle these companies and individuals who continue to file trademark apps using Navy SEAL Team 6 and will the public rebuke these companies and individuals by boycotting these products that display the TEAM 6 name?

I shopped at Hallmark quite a bit while Matt was deployed. When I found out we were having a boy, I wanted to send him a themed care package with a ton of “Its A Boy!” stuff to surprise him. Hallmark was where I got a lot of those things.

Had I known they would be so willing to disrespect the troops and their families, I would never have spent a cent there.

Monday was Memorial Day. Maxine — and thus Hallmark — chose to commemorate the holiday by running the following comic on Maxine’s official Facebook page:

This insulted and offended multiple military family members, including a Gold Star wife. They decided to express their feelings about the cartoon, and were summarily attacked, insulted, and degraded by the commenters there. After a good amount of time, Hallmark finally issued a weak apology. But it was far from over. Maxine’s fans continued to berate the family members, myself included, who had the gall to express our opinion: that we found the cartoon offensive. Yes, I know, most of America does indeed see Memorial Day as just another day off of work. That doesn’t mean any of us like it, or that we want a cartoon character furthering that sentiment. And this is where it got interesting.

The moderator for the Maxine page got to work. No, whoever it was did not delete the rude, insulting, vile comments directed towards military families. Instead, they were deleting our comments. Comments calling us “inbred hicks” and “retards” were allowed to stand. We were told that we didn’t support the military, that we were complainers and whiners just pretending to be offended, we were told to shut up and go away. We were insulted and attacked for merely expressing an opinion. And Hallmark didn’t delete a single of their comments. (Susan Katz Keating has just a few examples.) This action made it clear: their words said one thing but their actions said another, and that was that Hallmark does NOT support our troops and the military.

Now, this wouldn’t have been as big of a controversy as it has turned into if it wasn’t for this. Imagine being a Gold Star wife and having people insult you for merely saying that you were offended — and that Hallmark decided to side with them. Hallmark could have chosen to delete the comments attacking her and other military family members, but instead, they sided with them and allowed the abuse to continue. Here’s an example of the type of comment that Hallmark endorses:

“Yet I find it very disturbing that closed minded Inbred Hicks have nothing better to do than to trash a Cartoon Figure its a waste of Energy, really people get a grip on reality . Maybe the Bible Belt Inbred’s need to do something for their country than sit behind a computer & complain get a life seriously.”

That is simply inexcusable in my book. They censored dissenting comments while allowing insulting personal attacks on military families to continue. I can’t see how a company that supports the military would ever let that happen. Susan points out how the situation got worse and worse, and how Hallmark has even visited her website — but still has done nothing.

Stalwart troop supporter Carrie Costantini jumped into the discussion and tried to educate the Maxine fans on why the cartoon was offensive. Carrie even gave a tutorial on what Memorial Day actually is, and what it means to people who have lost a loved one in combat. The Maxine fans hooted ever louder. Their responses showed them to be people who care very deeply about when their new Keepsake Ornament catalogs will arrive, but not at all about telling a Gold Star mother to “get a life.”

Despite the fact that “Maxine” frequently responds to people who leave comments on the page, Hallmark allowed the dialog to continue unmonitored. The Maxine Brigade grew increasingly snide, belittling, and hostile. Anyone who objected to the cartoon was cast as a whiner, or stupid, and worthy of extreme mockery.

This extended “Hallmark Moment” continued much of the day.

I posted a couple neutral questions, myself, asking Hallmark to respond to the complaints. “Maxine” remained silent. I posted again. Still nothing. Finally, I questioned whether Hallmark would have been willing to use a different holiday in place of Memorial Day in the cartoon. What if, for example, the Maxine character joked about Martin Luther King Day. Within minutes, Hallmark removed my questions. Then they surfed into the blog and read a couple posts.

Are we all overreacting? I’d imagine that people without skin in the game might say yes. But as a Marine wife, this is insulting to me. I refuse to shop at Hallmark from now on and hope that everyone who reads this does the same. I sent Hallmark the following message expressing my displeasure — I have yet to receive a response. I encourage everyone reading this to also send a message of their own. I sincerely hope that word gets out about this and that Hallmark comes around.

Our troops and their families have sacrificed too much to be disrespected this way.

To Whom It May Concern:

Sincerely,
Casandra Chesser

So guess who’s coming to dinner at your house? The answer, as you probably already knew, is the rapper who goes by the name Common, the synonyms for which word—vulgar, ordinary—suggest a talent for naming. Whether Common, who was born Lonnie Lynn, Jr., has a talent for anything else is in the eye of the beholder.

Judging from the lyrics to his “Song for Assata,” his talent for recording historical events accurately is non-existent:

There were lights and sirens, gunshots firin
Cover your eyes as I describe a scene so violent
Seemed like a bad dream, she laid in a blood puddle
Blood bubbled in her chest, cold air brushed against open flesh
No room to rest, pain consumed each breath
Shot twice wit her hands up
Police questioned but shot before she answered
One panther lost his life, the other ran for his
Scandalous the police were as they kicked and beat her
Comprehension she was beyond, tryna hold on
To life.

The description is a fanciful account of the apprehension by police of Assata Shakur (aka Joanne Chesimard), who was convicted in 1973 for the murder of a state trooper and sentenced to life plus 33 years.

Interestingly, there is nothing in the lyrics about Chesimard-Shakur’s criminal history (bank robbery, attempted murder, kidnapping) prior to or including the shootout with New Jersey state police that claimed the life of trooper Werner Foerster. Nor is there mention of her prison escape in 1979 or her life since in Cuba, where she was granted asylum.

None of this apparently matters to the First Lady, who is perhaps more of an aficionado of the songs from Common’s “misogynist” period, which include the “diss” tune “The Bitch in Yoo”:

A bitch nigga wit an attitude named cube
Step to com wit a feud
Now what the f**k I look like dissing a whole coast
You ain’t made sh*t dope since amerikkka’s most
Wanted to cease from the midwest to the east
On the d*ck of the east for your 1st release
Your lease is up at the crib, house niggaz get evicted.

A number of commentators, including blogger Keli Goff, have come to Common’s defense. Appearing on FOX News Channel’s On the Record with guest host Martha McCallum last night, Goff proclaimed that

Common is one of the good guys in hip-hop. I mean, he’s one of the people who’s known for not putting the misogynistic lyrics out there. [Ed.’s note: Apparently Goff is not an aficionado of the songs from Common’s "misogynist" period.]

NBC also seemed to defend the rapper’s appearance at the White House, maintaining that “even casual hip-hop fans wouldn’t characterize him as a controversial rapper,” which is an interesting line of reasoning. It is tantamount to acknowledging that some of the performers of this genre create material that is so pernicious and asocial that the following lyrics are not:

So my neighbors won’t hear the sparks as the lead gets pumped
Its a pre-(?) agreement in the cement jungle
Kill each other over money and white boys for fun.

In case you’re wondering, the lines are from another Common song, “Don’t Come My Way.”

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“Be all you can be!”

“An Army of One.”

“Army Strong.”

I have to be honest here.  I don’t think the silliest thing about this is that the project was going to cost $600,000, before Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) stepped in and asked for some, er, clarification.

I agree with Grassley, of course:

The Army was ready to spend $600,000 on three pieces of questionable art, just when the country is up to its eyeballs in red ink. With a national debt of more than $14 trillion, we’ve got to make sure spending is in line with the national interest.

Yep.  What he said.

But I can imagine why the Army was trying to spend money this way, just as all government agencies come up with “good ideas” and try to spend money that’s been deposited in their accounts.  The “good ideas” factory churns out its product 24/7, independent of funding or specific direction.  It gets help – often – from bureaucratic inertia.  A directive from years ago, to “interact in interesting, compelling ways with the public to enhance the Army’s image,” is executed in “bureaucratic years,” meaning that the original purpose looks idiotic by the time something actually happens.

And never forget that this year’s funds get spent, period.  It would be lovely if they didn’t, but the first law of government funding is, if you don’t spend it this year you won’t see it next year.

So I get the process that led to this interesting interlude.  What I don’t get is how a sculpture of a faerie riding a toad – a toad burbling brown stuff – became a finalist in the Army-funded public art sweepstakes.  I mean, a group of children, maybe.  Or a soldier surrounded by children.  A soldier and civilian standing shoulder to shoulder, I don’t know.  Something that doesn’t look like the Army’s channeling the Pre-Raphaelite poets or the wonderful world of wall-art stickers.

It might have been useful for Army decision-makers to consider the checkered history of the military’s involvement with public art projects.  In the 1930s tale recounted by Time, the warriors of West Point ended up with some marvelous Navy-themed “art” to honor their brothers in arms with.  Somehow I suspect there will be more than one rendition of the toad-riding faerie popping up – for art’s sake – around the august haunts of Annapolis.

Not just strong. Army strong.

J.E. Dyer blogs at The Green Room, Commentary’s “contentions” and as The Optimistic Conservative.  She writes a weekly column for Patheos.

In response to a YouTube video of a 6-year-old girl receiving a pat-down from a Transportation Security Administration officer, Congressman Jason Chaffetz is drafting legislation that will require parental supervision during the pat-down of a child.

“They claim there is a modified pat-down for 12-year-olds and younger, but when you see those videos, you realize that just isn’t true,” Chaffetz said.

The proposed legislation would require that a parent must give their consent before a child receives a pat-down, and that the child must remain with the parent while the pat-down is performed.  emphasis mine

While the outrage continues over the pat-downs of minor Americans for “security” purposes, what is ironic about this new concern is that the parental consent/notification issues are completely dismissed and ignored when dealing with abortions.  Most recently, LifeNews reported that a 16-year old girl was sent to the hospital after a botched abortion at a Planned Parenthood facility in Everett, Washington:

The Planned Parenthood caller, in the 911 phone transcript, says, “We have a patient bleeding. She’s 16. We just did an abortion on her.”

Hubert is very concerned about the impact this revelation has on concerns about young girls getting abortions without any parental involvement.

“This is extremely important because of a massive loophole in Washington state law which means that a minor of any age who is pregnant may get an abortion without any parental or adult protections or involvement. It could be your daughter,” he explained. “There is no need for anyone to be there with a girl while an intimidating adult at Planned Parenthood bullies them, lies to them, and manipulates them into getting an abortion that will kill their baby and, as we see here, put them in hospital, possibly rendering them permanently infertile.”

It is important to note that Planned Parenthood has not come forward to say that the girl was escorted by anyone and has not been cooperative in providing that information.

The point here is to question whether Americans have become so desensitized to girls having abortions that we direct our outrage at other more “fresh” instances–like the TSA pat-downs?  Would these same people be just as outraged if a 12- or 13-year old girl had abortion without parental consent?  Planned Parenthood has been under fire for some time, but the laws in place protect their business under the guise of health care and choice.  We all know that.  But, when do parents stand up in the states that have no laws on the books for parental consent/notification and say enough with this ruse.  Or, are they only to foot the ambulance and hospital bill after the fact?

States with no parental consent or notification laws include:  CA, CT, IL, ME, MT, NH, NJ, NY, OR, VT, WA, and Washington DC. While I am not suggesting legislation at the federal level (I’m all about states’ rights) but, it is disturbing that so much emphasis is placed on the TSA (and rightly so), and the issue of minor girls having abortions and their parents’ right to know are repeatedly ignored and challenged.

Crossposted at TMR

Latest example?  A teenager in Seattle, doing community service work, does a project to hand out to younger children in class.  The results?  Just fascinating in a bizarre and idiotic sort of way:

“At the end of the week I had an idea to fill little plastic eggs with treats and jelly beans and other candy, but I was kind of unsure how the teacher would feel about that,” Jessica said.

She was concerned how the teacher might react to the eggs after of a meeting earlier in the week where she learned about “their abstract behavior rules.”

“I went to the teacher to get her approval and she wanted to ask the administration to see if it was okay,” Jessica explained. “She said that I could do it as long as I called this treat ‘spring spheres.’ I couldn’t call them Easter eggs.”

Rather than question the decision, Jessica opted to “roll with it.” But the third graders had other ideas.

“When I took them out of the bag, the teacher said, ‘Oh look, spring spheres’ and all the kids were like ‘Wow, Easter eggs.’ So they knew,” Jessica said.

Never mind that a “sphere” is perfectly round, not an ovoid shape.  It has to do with the unbelievable nonsense that allowing something that has been a traditional American practice and celebration since the founding of the country has to be made secular because A) it will somehow be construed as the school establishing religion or B) it will offend someone or C) all of the above.

It doesn’t establish anything in terms of religion and if it offends someone, tough.  Speaking of religion, couldn’t the argument be made that celebrations of Spring favor Wiccans or Druids or something?  And how about those who are offended when teachers make up  stupid and obviously incorrect descriptions for Easter eggs like “spring spheres”?

This is the same school district that declared Thanksgiving to be racist and a time for mourning instead.  The district  has also defined racism in unique and toxic ways.  For instance:

Racism:
The systematic subordination of members of targeted racial groups who have relatively little social power in the United States (Blacks, Latino/as, Native Americans, and Asians), by the members of the agent racial group who have relatively more social power (Whites). The subordination is supported by the actions of individuals, cultural norms and values, and the institutional structures and practices of society.

Notice the only group listed who can possibly be racist according to their definition.

And it gets even better.

Cultural Racism:
Those aspects of society that overtly and covertly attribute value and normality to white people and Whiteness, and devalue, stereotype, and label people of color as “other”, different, less than, or render them invisible. Examples of these norms include defining white skin tones as nude or flesh colored, having a future time orientation, emphasizing individualism as opposed to a more collective ideology, defining one form of English as standard, and identifying only Whites as great writers or composers.

Got that?  “Future time orientation”, i.e. planning ahead, is racist.  Apparently only whites do it.  And individualism?  Racist.  And the school district also made it clear they had no desire “to hold onto unsuccessful concepts such as [a] . . . colorblind mentality.”

Calling MLK Jr., because as I remember him, a colorblind society was his fondest hope.

The Supreme Court of the United States literally mocked the district’s racial nonsense in a ruling it issued.

Interestingly, the justices highlighted the bizarre claims about race made by the Seattle schools, which cast doubt on whether allowing schools to use race will promote racial harmony rather than racial balkanization.

For example, the Chief Justice’s opinion points out that “Seattle’s web site formerly described ‘emphasizing individualism as opposed to a more collective ideology’ as a form of ‘cultural racism,’ and currently states that the district has no intention ‘to hold onto unsuccessful concepts such as [a] . . . colorblind mentality.”

Justice Thomas pointed to those claims, and other bizarre claims on Seattle’s web site, in rejecting the dissent’s argument that “local school boards should be entrusted to make decisions on the basis of race.”

Now they’re into “Spring Spheres”.

Wouldn’t you just love for your child to have to grow up attending school in a district that is as tolerant of race and religion as that?
—
Bruce McQuain blogs at Questions and Observations (QandO), Blackfive, the Washington Examiner and the Green Room.  Follow him on Twitter: @McQandO