Dangerous Dan

Wizbang points to this Townhall column by Kathleen Parker. In it, she condemns most bloggers as being immature kids:

These effete and often clever baby "bloggies" are rich in time and toys, but bereft of adult supervision. Spoiled and undisciplined, they have grabbed the mike and seized the stage, a privilege granted not by years in the trenches, but by virtue of a three-pronged plug and the miracle of WiFi.
…
…many bloggers seek the destruction of others for their own self-aggrandizement. When a mainstream journalist stumbles, they pile on like so many savages, hoisting his or her head on a bloody stick as Golding's children did the fly-covered head of a butchered sow.

Schadenfreude – pleasure in others' misfortunes – has become the new barbarity on an island called Blog. When someone trips, whether Dan Rather or Eason Jordan or Judith Miller, bloggers are the bloodthirsty masses slavering for a public flogging. Incivility is their weapon and humanity their victim.

Yeah, she goes way over the top complaining about blog swarms. It's a little extreme to say 'humanity' was victimized because a couple of journos were brought down. If you read the rest, you can also see the tremendous elitism she displays.

No matter… I'm actually not concerned about the substance, so much as the form of the argument. This is a nice example of a catch-22 attack; there is no good response. There are three possible options for responding:

1) Agree with her. Most of the people she criticizes will not be inclined to do this.

2) Say nothing. The disadvantage of this is that it can be taken as implicitly agreeing with her. Refer back to (1).

3) Defend yourselves¹ and criticize her analysis.

If you take option 3, of course, she's got you. She can then dance around and say that you are merely proving her point by jumping on her, being uncivil, etc.

I'm not necessarily against catch-22′s, but I prefer them to be more coyly formed and a bit more Socratic. This was just a crude form and practically dared bloggers to come after her so she could turn it around on them. It's an unfortunate use.

1. I'm not necessarily including myself in this. I have no idea if I fall into her ill-defined category of malcontents or not. [back]

Wide receiver Joe Horn of the New Orleans Saints wants Jim Mora, head coach of the Atlanta Falcons, to be fined $30,000 for using a cell phone during a game Saturday. You see, Horn was fined that amount two years ago for using a cell phone in a touchdown celebration stunt. After Horn reached the end zone, another player pulled the phone out of goal post’s padding and gave it to Horn who then pretended to punch in a number and talk. He was fined under an NFL rule that says cell phones can't be used on the field or sidelines. He wants this same rule (and his punishment) to apply to Mora who was using a phone late in overtime and who was desperately trying to contact league officials to figure out how a tie would affect the Falcons' playoff standings.

That's the difference. Horn got fined because he made an ass of himself¹ and the league with his outlandish stunt. Mora, while violating rules, was trying to get vital information about obtuse playoff seeding calculations to decide what to do. He should get fined, sure,² but not $30,000.

1. I actually kinda, sorta, grudgingly like Horn. He played for the Chiefs for four seasons before the Saints and has behaved admirably and magnanimously in the wake of Katrina. [back]
2. There are other good reasons the league doesn't want coaches on cell phones, such as instant replay issues. [back]

Yeah, that's right, I said Christmas.

Time magazine's section on "People Who Mattered 2005″ featured New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin with this blurb:

Could he have done more to get his people out before Katrina hit? Probably. But once the levees broke, the mayor of New Orleans embodied the pain and frustration of his city, even cursing on the radio as he joined thousands of stranded residents in wondering why their government had failed them.

What?! He was the government that failed them. And by publicly whining and panicking in a time of crisis, he showed himself to be a pitiful leader. Instead of trying to do anything himself, he sat around and waited for the big daddy feds to do things for him and then complained that the government responsible for the entire country wasn't fast enough dealing with the small locality under his specific jurisdiction. Nagin mattered, alright. Too bad he didn't matter more.

This is typical, though, in that the media put the blame on the federal government (who did deserve some blame), while ignoring the glaring incompetence of Nagin and Louisiana governor Blanco.

Try looking at the rest of the people to see the leftward tilt.

For George W. Bush and Dick Cheney: "After winning re-election and claiming a mandate, the President and his No. 2 quickly squandered their political capital."

John McCain and Harry Reid are pleasingly featured for sticking it to the President.

Tom Delay gets a spot for his indictments and stepping down as House majority leader.

Joseph Wilson and Valerie Plame get a spot, natch.

Patrick Fitzgerald receives a mention for casting "an unflattering light on the inner workings of the White House and the press."

Cindy Sheehan pops in for second 886 of the 900 she's allowed.

Condi's blurb ends with this: "And she must be doing something right: she's far more popular than her boss."

Tony Blair took "Britain into a deeply unpopular war."

On Pope Benedict XVI: "For years Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger seemed too polarizing a conservative to succeed John Paul II." Where's the 'but?' Here it is: "But his closeness to the late Pontiff, his intellectual substance and his high profile entering the conclave turned him into the obvious choice." Notice the but clause did nothing to dispel the ‘polarizing conservative’ label.

Kanye West is in. He "freestyled an outraged rant on a TV benefit for Katrina victims." Is that what blurting out pause-riddled incoherent whines in the style of a five-year-old is called nowadays?

It's a little ridiculous.

When reading articles about the death penalty, I've been repeatedly amazed at the AP's obvious slant. I first noticed it reading this article about the forthcoming "grim milestone"(TM) of the 1,000th execution since capital punishment was reinstated in 1977. You can read it for yourself, but you can get the general idea just from looking at the subheadings:

The race factor
Executing the innocent?
Questions raised

Under each subheading, death penalty proponents get about two or three lines and the rest is against them.

You then got similar treatment for the Stanley Tookie Williams fiasco (I'm not putting 'Tookie' in quotes, because it turns out that it's not a nickname; that was his real middle name. Who knew?). The articles constantly bemoaned his impending execution and how his defenders said he was innocent and/or had been redeemed.¹ The fact that he had murdered four innocent people in cold blood during robberies and then laughed and bragged about it afterwards, that he had created a pox on American society generally and black communities especially by founding the Crips, that he never admitted to his crimes, that he always refused to provide any information on the gangs because he wasn't a “snitch”… well, all that got nary a mention or was significantly downplayed. It usually wasn't as important as noting that he wrote a few anti-gang kids books that were probably ghost-written, few were purchased, and nevermind the fact that it's when kids are entering their teens that they're especially vulnerable and a book read to them at 5 probably won't have much impact.

Then I get to this article about Charles V. Thompson, the guy who walked out of a Houston jail last month even though he was on death row. He relates his experience on the lam to the AP:

It was great. I got to smell the trees, feel the wind in my hair, grass under my feet, see the stars at night. It took me straight back to childhood being outside on a summer night. It was short lived, but I think it was worth it.

(Apparently he also drank a lot as a child because he was stinking drunk when he was captured.)

The article even ends with this little quote meant to make us feel sorry for him:

I'm pretty much resolved to my fate. Concrete box 23 hours a day. Just sit in there and think about how they're going to kill you.

Oh, poor boy. Well, you know who won't be smelling trees, feeling the wind in their hair, grass under their feet, or seeing the stars at night? His ex-girlfriend and her new boyfriend whom he killed and who receive barely a blip in the article. In fact, their names aren't even mentioned, so I'll say them here: Dennise Hayslip and Darren Keith Cain.

So what about the slain?

Thompson got in an argument with Cain, left, came back with a gun and shot them both. He shot Cain four times before then shooting Hayslip once in the face. Moreover, a psychologist who examined Thompson said that he is "a charming, narcissistic sociopath who turns violent under stress." Being a sociopath means that he lacks the ability to sympathize with others and is essentially an amoral being. Other people have no moral import to him and he can lie, cheat, steal, kill, and do whatever is to his advantage and it's no big deal as far as he's concerned. In fact, it's not a deal at all except that if caught it will inconvenience him. And so he will say whatever and do whatever he thinks will get people on his side. He's scum.

So when CNN.com puts up this friendly-looking picture of Thompson…

…remember what a heartless, manipulating bastard he is and that these were the friendly-looking people he murdered (from a victim-tribute site the AP apparently couldn't be bothered to visit):

"I'm pretty much resolved to my fate. Concrete box 23 hours a day. Just sit in there and think about how they're going to kill you." Good. At least he'll get to know when death comes for him. He gave Dennise Hayslip and Darren Cain no such courtesy.

I highly recommend this post from the crime blog The Dark Side with details, links, and newspaper clippings of the case.

1. I'll comment more on the Tookie circus when I get a chance. [back]

The amazing part about this story is how he got away with it:

A 500-pound man in Seminole County, Fla., was arrested Tuesday on suspicion of scamming fast-food restaurants out of large amounts of milk shakes and tacos, according to a Local 6 News report.

Investigators said George Jolicoeur, 33, would visit fast-food businesses and order food.

Jolicoeur would then call or visit the restaurants posing as a police officer or a firefighter and ask for a refund because there was a hair in his food, according to the report.

The guy was 500 pounds and posing as a firefighter? And people bought it?

C'mon! This guy would get winded just driving the fire engine.

If you've got about five minutes, you might do this nifty quiz to figure out where you land on the political spectrum. My results are after the break, and they came as no surprise to me.

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I think there was a better way to phrase this headline from CNN.com's main page:

Teacher's plea deal for sex with boy rejected

For high entertainment, you need to watch this old short film of Arnold Schwarzenegger in Rio de Janeiro for Carnival. It's great. You see him very awkwardly hitting on his female companion (he gets a little pervy at one point) and it features the greatest Arnie line ever:

"Seeing the mulattoes shake it, I can absolutely understand why Brazil is totally devoted to my favorite body part: the ass."

(warning: the clip is NSFW)

In case you're fortunate to have never heard of him, there's a guy in Topeka, KS, by the name of Fred Phelps who's a right lout. He's the pastor of a Westboro Baptist Church and has long made a nuisance of himself protesting homosexuals, something he and his followers do in completely appalling fashion. They stands on street corners, in parks, at restaurants, at parades, at churches… pretty much anywhere people don't share their extremist views, which is pretty much everybody. They call anybody who passes by a sodomite who’s going to hell. For Phelps and company, unless you're one of them, you're automatically a sodomite. They also have quaint signs with vulgar messages and stick figures arranged in, well, suggestive poses.

Phelps then decided to expand his annoyance of the citizenry and started picketing funerals as well. At first it was just those of homosexuals, but it soon grew to include whomever he didn't like (which, again, is nearly everyone). Since he has decided that America's troubles in Iraq are the result of God's wrath on a "fag nation" (that being the U.S.), he has seen fit to start picketing the funerals of America's honored war dead. That's right, he's protesting at the funeral's of fallen soldiers with signs that say such things "Fag Body Bag"¹ and "Thank God for IED's." The guy's a real piece of work and I'll let you guess out of what he is made.

The adopted tactic of most Topekans has been just to ignore him. Cussing him out, yelling at him, or flipping him off is but sweet song to his ears. The deviant loves to be hated. Protesting soldiers' funerals, though, has proved to be utterly intolerable to people. As Gaijin Biker pointed out here, bikers have recently discovered they can drown out Phelps's invective. At a funeral last month, 125 bikers at a military funeral in Ark City, KS, at which Phelps was protesting, circled the protestors and would rev their engines whenever they tried to yell.

Then, at a Topeka funeral yesterday for Army Sgt. Dominic Sacco, around 100 bikers did the same. My brother, who lives in Topeka and brought the article to my attention, mentioned to me that the Harley-Davidson chapters had been communicating about Phelps's protest plans so that they could disrupt them. It seems they and others have gotten much more organized and have formed a group called the Patriot Guard whose express purpose is to go wherever Phelps is, especially military funerals, and ruin his fun. The man makes it all over the country and there are currently at least 436 members around the nation² prepared to match their expression of first amendment rights against his. And they seem to be getting to Phelps as his group’s recent signs target the bikers specifically. That’s quite a compliment.

For the bikers and Patriot Guard, all I have to say is God bless 'em and keep up the good work.

I should also mention that at the Topeka funeral, other citizens were counterprotesting. I’ll leave you with this anecdote:

Standing near the Phelps group so they could certainly see her was tiny, 67-year-old Lorine Nolte. A Topeka homemaker and stay-at-home mother all her life, she said she had never protested anything — ever.

But she was there with the anti-Phelps group on Friday, with her sign, "I upped my flag … Up yours."

She's a straight-talking woman. She didn't know Sacco, but she heard what Phelps was doing to his family.

"I don't like the method we went to war. But these people served our country," she said. "To have these buttholes picket one of our own, that just pisses me off.

I like Lorine Nolte.

1. Again, the actual sexuality of the person is irrelevant; in the Phelpsian lexicon, a 'fag' or any similar such epitaph is anybody who is not them. [back]
2. Those who have input into the Frappr page anyhow, I'm sure there are more. [back]

I blogged about the new NBA dress code a few weeks ago and Devil's Advocate points to the results. I like it.

Of course, some are a little better at dressing nicely…

…than others.