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New! Improved!
I changed the blogroll (which for me is a big deal -- one misplaced "<" and life as we know it is wiped out). Ann Coulter is no longer on the listed, not even as an enemy, because frankly she's just not that interesting anymore. I also did away with the Salon Blog ghetto (because Salon bloggers are people too)! And then I broke up the list into two groups: good and evil.
No, actually, the first category is for political/current eventy-type blogs, which you should read when you want to know what's happening in the world and you can't trust the elite media, because it might be monitoring your brain waves via microwave transmissions. (Or, for when you want to laugh at the news, which is a sane and healthy reactions, and why so many of the blogs listed to the left are funny ones).
And speaking of this first group and what's new with them today, we (to get editorial in our pronouns) note that Sadly, No! made the big time today (a link from Atrios), and is reaping the rewards of fame (being harassed by Andrew Sullivan supporters). Atrios, as everyone knows, was part of an NPR program on blogging last night, and did a great job; Sullivan, as everyone knows, was silly. David at Orcinus is reaping some well-deserved acclaim for his great piece discussing George W. Bush's mysterious absence from the Texas National Guard for a year (we suspect an alien abduction, but since we didn't do any research and David did, you should probably believe him instead of us). We welcome Pandagon back from the abyss, and will gladly help in smacking around their former host provider, who unexpectedly and without cause, cancelled their service. (We missed those guys, and got all scared and lonely without them, so we're glad they're back in business. Sisyphus Shrugged had a very interesting and well-researched piece a day or two ago about how Jewish Groups Are Threatening and Extorting Mel Gibson! (Yes, vicious gangs of roving rabbis are our nation's newest threat -- per Mel, of course.) And we note that The Rittenhouse Review has a bunch of good stuff, new today, which you should check out. And, of course, read TBOGG, because you'll always find something there to make you smile (or laugh out loud), and if you're not careful, you just might learn something. And all the rest. Read them all. They're all good or they wouldn't be on the blogroll.
The second category is for popculture/personal essay/a-bit-of-this-and-that blogs, which you read when you want to take a break from current events and visit the days of classic radio ( Thrilling Days of Yesteryear), or live vicariously as you share in one extremely cool woman's life and times ( Mercy Buttercup), or learn about one man's experiences at Sundance ( A Perfectly Cromulent Blog). And so on.
And I updated the addresses of Koufax-finalist Norbizness and the always well-done The 18½ Minute Gap. And by getting rid of Ann and The Institute of Official Cheer (which I still like, but just don't check often enough to justify it being listed on the blog roll -- which is primarily for my convenience after all), I made room for some worthy additions: Bush, Busy, Busy, Strata Lucida, and Washing the Blog. Anyway, if anybody doesn't like the new setup, or thinks their blog has been miscategorized, let me know. And if you want to be included in a new, super-elite category called "Platinum Boggers: Our Bestest Friends," just send a check or money order for $10. We're willing to sell out, and for cheap!
11:18:17 PM  | |
Idiots 4 and 5: Kathryn Jean Lopez and Meghan Cox Gurdon
Kathryn Jean Lopez provides us with the following useful and important information: FROG ALERT [KJL ]
Kerry just practiced his French during the after-rally greet and meet.
Posted at 07:59 PM CHEESE-EATING, SURRENDER MONKEY [KJL]
Meghan Gurdon caught more of Kerry's French moment than I did. She e-mails: ""J'espere" he said, to his froggy well-wishers, who evidently called him M. le President, though it was hard to hear through the roars of enthusiasm."
Posted at 08:08 PM
Ha ha! John Kerry looks French and he SPEAKS French. And we hate the French! What witticisms and bon mots they trade in the Corner!
But K.Lo's little apercus have reminded me to read her last couple of NRO columns. This week's deals with Howard Dean and Abortion. She quotes Dean telling the People Magazine interviewer that neither he nor his wife peformed abortions while working as residents at Planned Parenthood: [N]either of us is trained to do abortions. We're both internists. Internists don't do abortions. ... It would be malpractice if we did.
Kathryn recounts an incident where, to illustrate why he's against parental notification laws, Dean told a story about a pregnant 12-year-old who said the baby was her father's. Dean later found out that the girl's father wasn't responsible for her pregnancy, but didn't tell that to his audience because it didn't change his dilema at the time. To Kathryn, this proves that Dean is "already on record lying about medical experiences in order to pander to the abortion lobby," and allows her to imply that Dean probably DID peform abortions and is just trying to cover it up now that he's running for President.
She concludes with: And as an added question mark — Vermont is actually one of two states that allow non-physicians to perform abortions. What was that about malpractice, again?
Kathryn, the question wasn't whether the state allows non-physicians to perform abortions. It's about whether Dean, as a doctor, considered it malpractice to perform operations for which he wasn't trained. Not that hard to understand, unless you are doing your damnedest to make someone out to be a liar when he hasn't done anything to allow you to so fairly. Around here, we call that dishonest.
And in last week's column about Women in the Military, she discusses an Iraqi video of Lori Piestewa, lying injured in a bed next to Jessica Lynch. Kathryn disputes the notion that the Iraqis tried to provide medical care for Piestewa, but adds: Admittedly, there is much we don't know about what happened to Lynch after she was captured, and to Piestewa in the hours before her death. But we do know the regime they were held by and, in Piestewa's case, we now do know what is clear in the video. Piestewa, by then a prisoner of war, is shown in pain, her face and visible skin swollen, bruised, and torn.
And to Kathryn, this is clear proof that women don't belong in combat. Because they might get hurt. Or RAPED!
And this time she concludes with: When the video was aired last week, a spokesman said the Pentagon was not aware of the footage. The Pentagon knows the difference between GI Joe and GI Jane, however, and the whitewashing of gender differences in the military is doing no one any good — especially the families who are losing mothers, wives, daughters, and sisters who should have never been in the line of fire in the first place.
Because it's WRONG for mothers, wives, daughters, and sisters to die in the line of fire. It should be fathers, husbands, sons, and brothers doing the dying. Why? Kathryn never says. Of course, it's still totally excellent that the President sent young men to Iraq to save us all from the "Butcher of Baghdad's regime," it's just horrifying that "Thirteen military women have been killed on duty in Afghanistan and Iraq." Let's not even mention the 490 or so men -- they just did what men are supposed to do.
But moving on to Meghan Cox Gurdon, I found a very interesting Spectator column which mentions her. It's by Rachel Johnson, and it's about women who make careers of writing about motherhood. As Ms. Johnson says about the practice, "it's a great way to "swap the long-hours-culture grind of your office job for the creature comforts of Schedule E at home." It also enables you to get credit for being an "earth mother," while simultaneously showing those feminists that you are doing more with your life than just changing diapers and cleaning bathrooms.
So, how do you manage to become a successful novelist or columnist, despite having a bunch of kids to look after? Easy. You lock the door and pretend you can't hear the kids screaming while you write about the adorable poppets. And you employ a nanny (preferably, a foreign woman who will work for minimum wage) to actually care for the children. So you want to know who these women are who seem to be having it all, but not walking the walk, only talking the talk? After all, we are peddling a cosy fiction, an apple-pie lie, that our columns and books somehow get written between the morning school-run and an afternoon spent chiselling mashed banana off a high chair; for as we hymn the delights of home-made Play-Doh from our panic-room-style workstations in attics, our column-fodder kids are more often than not sitting in front of the DVD under the care of a Croatian au pair or Filipina Gastarbeiter who is working her socks off to send money to her seven children back home in Manila.
The author includes herself among that number, but then drops a few other names. But I feel we must include in the line-up Washington DC’s resident brainy blonde mom, Danielle Crittenden, columnist author of Amanda Bright @ Home and Things Our Mothers Didn’t Tell Us; my lovely friend Meghan Cox Gurdon (another brainy blonde) who has parlayed her experience as a national radio reporter and feature writer into a popular home-life column for the National Review Online; Alison Craig, the Scottish television presenter, radio-show host and newspaper columnist who recently published her account of when she swapped greenrooms for baby poo in her book called Alison’s Diary, The Nappy Years.
Meghan wrote an essay about the resurgence of housewifery, and how today's stay-at-home mother has it all: selfless devotion to husband and children, and also fulfillment of her own talents and needs. Part of it is quoted here -- I especially liked this bit: The housewives I know deal with the groceries and cooking and all the other drudgery and yet still manage to paint, write, play piano, ride horses, fiddle about on the Internet, and volunteer for charities and schools.
Well, if they have hired help, like Meghan and her good friend Danielle do, then they don't deal with ALL the other drudgery, now do they?
Anyway, since I've always wanted to have a lifestyle which includes painting, playing the piano, horseback riding, and bossing around others in the name of charity, I think I will become one of these women. But since I have no children to write about, I will be detailing the adventures of Ethelberta Augusta, Mr. Crumpet, Hammurabi, and little Fish. I'm pretty sure that if I swear at them when they ask to be fed, and I encourage Ethelberta Cat to play with Hammurabi Hamster when I need a break from their constant demands, I can soon earn the title of American's Worst Pet Mother (TM).
4:13:29 AM | |
#3: Kiddie Pundit Kyle Williams
In this week's World Net Daily column, Kyle answers his critics who say he's too young and limited in experience to be a credible pundit. He does this by citing the first ammendment, and then getting sarcastic and snarky. While his "Well, FINE! Maybe I just WILLl!" response does little to convince doubters that he has the gravitas we prefer in those who would tell us how to order our society, Kyle is just fifteen, so what can you expect? One reader says, "The kid just needs to get to college, join a frat and get hazed for a semester." Thanks to these words of wisdom, that's what I plan on doing. First, I will enroll in a party college. After wasting myself nearly to the point of death, my fraternity days will be bliss. Although the hazing may be difficult, I know it will help me see the world using rational thinking. Next, I will party in college for a few years and then fail all my classes – because that's the cool thing to do. Hopefully, after the college social experience, I can begin to father children born out of wedlock. Although this will be a financial burden, I plan to find a part-time job and spend the rest of my days writing and espousing views based on a worldly experience. I know you wish you had it all planned out like I do. I can only thank the concerned readers of this column who warned me of my isolation, indoctrination and proper role in society. The only thing I regret is wasting all my time on the so-called "successful" accomplishments of writing a weekly column, a book and appearing on national talk shows.
Kyle certainly has "fathering children out of wedlock" on the brain these days. Must be the hormones kicking in. I'd advise his parents to do the homeschooling sex ed class ASAP.
And Kyle, dude, nobody thinks failing all one's college classes is cool. Just like nobody thinks writing a weekly column for WorldNetDaily is a successful accomplishment. You do need to get out more.
1:16:48 AM | |
My Second Favorite Idiot: Amber
While I realize that Sadly, No! is her biggest fan (and I hate to poach on his territory), I find it troubling that only now that he's a finalist for a prestigious Koufax award is she asking for his photo and blowing him smooches. I think the little hussy is seeking a blogger whose cachet she can borrow, a man to lend intellectual respectability to her writing and take her places. And buy her dinner.
Therefore, since I don't have what she's looking for and am unseducable (at least by silly college girls who fawn over Ann Coulter), it's probably better that I update you on her latest article for Men's News Daily. It's about how the wussy French are intolerantly banning headscarves in schools as a way to deal with violence, when the correct solution is war: Because they are opposed to war, racial profiling, and other effective tools to stop violence and crime, the French have been gutted of any ability to protect their own streets. Their only option has been to ban headscarves and now beards – all in the name of “secularism.” Indeed, one can easily see those in the United States doing such a thing, except in the United States they are only trying to remove Christian religious signs from the classroom – not Islamic. At least the French are consistent, although at this point they have to be. Of course, radical Muslims knew what Western country to hit first in their effort to Islamicize the rest of the world. France, being France, was the most vulnerable country to go after. Is France the world’s canary? Are the rest of us watching, like coal miners as the canary falls over and dies, knowing what will happen to us next? France got itself into this mess by being such a “progressive” and “tolerant” country. Now the rest of us watch while they, like a hippopotamus trying to do ballet, try to get themselves out. And what do you know. The United States's "unilateral" mission in Iraq and the Middle East may very well end up saving them.
It seems to me that France "got itself into this mess" by failing to integrate Arab immigrants into society, leaving young men with no jobs and no few chances for a better life feeling alienated and angry, and therefore prone to violence. I can't see how invading Iraq made anything better. In fact, I bet it made things worse in France. But it did allow George Bush wear that flight suit, and thereby provide Amber with a new image of what her ideal man would look like (like an overgrown four-year-old in tight miliary attire), so it served its purpose.
But I like the idea of using war as a way to combat street crime. FBI Stats for 2003 show that the South led the country in serious crime (on a per capita basis). Maybe we should invite the French to invade Alabama. It might very well end up saving both of them.
12:53:15 AM |
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