It be that time of the year again, maties, to talk like a pirate.
Category Archives: Popular Culture
John Stewart
I’ve never been as impressed with him as I’m supposed to be.
Here’s a long explanation why:
Was Jon Stewart being a dick when he was subjecting Jim Cramer to enhanced interrogation? Sure he was. He was also being a dick when he called Tucker Carlson a dick, and when he was preaching to Chris Wallace. But here’s the thing: It doesn’t matter. What matters is that even when Stewart’s a dick, he is never the dick. It is Stewart’s unique talent for coming across as decent and well-meaning when he’s bullying and hectoring and self-righteous. And this is because his talent is not just for comedy and not just for media criticism or truth-telling; it’s for being — for remaining — likable.
I think it’s a travesty that so many young people get their news from him and think they understand what’s going on.
So Much For The Spartans
I thought that Notre Dame was a much better team than their record, and they showed it today. Michigan was very lucky to get out alive, but the Spartans looked over-ranked today. They probably won’t drop out of the polls completely, but they never should have been at 15. It will still be a tough game against them in October for the Wolverines, though, because it always is. But the way Michigan played today, they may be able to go into that game 6 and 0. Which is a nice way for a first-year coach to start.
[Sunday morning update]
Ignoring the Spartans, which did fall out of the polls, it’s been a pretty good sports weekend for the Great Lakes State. The Lions are tromping the Chiefs, and if the Panthers can come back against Green Bay, they may be at the top of the division, with Chicago going down to the Saints. And the Wolverines are now ranked at #22. Prematurely, I think. Not to mention that the magic number for the Tigers has been zero for more than a couple days now. Their first time in the playoffs in almost a quarter of a century, I think, not counting wild cards.
This Won’t Be Good For The Rocket Racing League
Many people have been killed and injured at the Reno Air Races. It was a vintage plane (reportedly a Mustang) and things can go wrong. The rocket racers will be more modern, and presumably safer, but there will be a lot of emotional arguments against allowing a crowd anywhere near them after this.
[Update a few minutes later]
Here’s some video. Looks to me like it could have been a lot worse — the pilot seems to have tried to minimize the damage. I’d hope do the same in similar circumstances — I suspect it’s a natural reaction. You don’t want to die, but you don’t want to fly into a crowd, either.
The Invasion
…of the earbud people.
I do have to wonder about someone who seems afraid to be alone with their own thoughts. Of course, I don’t wear them because they hurt my ears.
Oh, Goody
There’s going to be a hearing in the House Science Committee next Monday, and guess who is on the witless list?
Scheduled witnesses are Neil Armstrong, Gene Cernan, and Mike Griffin, so you can kind of guess the hearing’s theme already.
Why oh why couldn’t Rohrabacher have gotten that chairmanship?
[Update a few minutes later]
I just got an update from Jeff Foust; the hearing is actually scheduled for next Thursday, the 22nd. Not that it makes it any better.
911 And Science Fiction
Are the books not being written, or not being published?
One And Oh
Well, the Lions tried to lose the game against Tampa Bay at the end, as is their wont, but didn’t quite succeed. And the Tigers have now won nine straight. They’d have to have a monumental collapse now to not win the division. It’s a good sports weekend for the Great Lake State.
By the way, I almost felt sorry for Notre Dame last night. Almost.
Jane Fonda’s Crush
…on Che:
In case you read Town Hall, Ms. Fonda, here’s some consolation, honey: “I used to call him El Gallo (the rooster)”recalled Carlos Figueroa who was Ernesto Guevara’s adolescent friend in Alta Gracia, Argentina. “I’d be visiting him and eating in his family’s dining room and whenever the poor servant girls would enter Ernesto would promptly grab her and force her to lay on the dining room table where he’d have rapid intercourse with her. Immediately afterwards he’d throw her out and continue eating as if nothing had happened.”
“Es un gallo—un gallo! (He’s a rooster!—rooster”) complained a scowling Berta Gonzalez a few years later upon emerging from her Mexico City bedroom summer of 1955. This was shortly after his Motorcycle Diary trip, when the hobo Ernesto Guevara was scribbling unreadable poetry and mooching off women in Mexico City, where he met Fidel and Raul Castro. Berta Gonzalez was a Cuban exile in Mexico at the time.
Gallo, as you might have guessed, is a common pejorative by Spanish-speaking women against men who terminate carnal encounters prematurely.
If only that were the least of his crimes. Here’s how Cuba treated real feminists:
They started by beating us with twisted coils of wire recalls former political prisoner Ezperanza Pena from exile today. “I remember Teresita on the ground with all her lower ribs broken. Gladys had both her arms broken. Doris had her face cut up so badly from the beatings that when she tried to drink, water would pour out of her lacerated cheeks.”
“On Mother’s Day they allowed family visits,” recalls, Manuela Calvo from exile today.” But as our mothers and sons and daughters were watching, we were beaten with rubber hoses and high-pressure hoses were turned on us, knocking all of us the ground floor and rolling us around as the guards laughed and our loved-ones screamed helplessly.”
“When female guards couldn’t handle us male guards were called in for more brutal beatings. I saw teen-aged girls beaten savagely their bones broken their mouths bleeding,” recalls prisoner Polita Grau.
The gallant regime co-founded by Che Guevara jailed 35,150 Cuban women for political crimes, a totalitarian horror utterly unknown—not only in Cuba — but in the Western Hemisphere until the regime so “magnetic” to Barbara Walters, Andrea Mitchell, Diane Sawyer, Jane Fonda, etc. Some of these Cuban ladies suffered twice as long in Castro’s Gulag as Alexander Solzhenitsyn suffered in Stalin’s.
Their prison conditions were described by former political prisoner Maritza Lugo. “The punishment cells measure 3 feet wide by 6 feet long. The toilet consists of an 8 inch hole in the ground through which cockroaches and rats enter, especially in cool temperatures the rat come inside to seek the warmth of our bodies and we were often bitten. The suicide rate among women prisoners was very high.”
But they got free health care.
The Hands-Off Generation
This is a problem that has been concerning me for some time. We have a lot of people who plain don’t understand how things work, from cars to economies and businesses.