February 22, 2006 by s.z.

This 'n That 1.   Roger L. Simon, the famed mystery novelist, screenwriter, and genius co-creator of the phenomenon known as "Pajamas Media," says that he found Bill Tierney (the guy behind the Saddam tapes, and our bestest friend ) unlikable and weird. I wanted to like Tierney, I mean really like him, but I have to admit that I was put off by his excessive religiosity. [...]  (What is it about UNSCOM that made it collect such bizarre personalities - Scott Ritter... Tierney?)  Hey, if anybody knows about bizarre personalities, it would be Roger . . . 2.  And Rush predicted this would happen.  Renew America's Sharon Hughes explains: It will be fascinating to watch the frenzy as the MSM and liberal politicians try to put their spin on what's revealed in these tapes in the weeks to come. Rush Limbaugh has predicted that everyone associated with the tapes will be 'discredited' because what's on them is so damaging to the liberal "no WMD" mantra. It was horrible how the liberals went back in time and forced Tierney to be part of the Terri Schiavo hospice circus, required him to talk about torturing "wogs" at a conference, and made him appear on "Coast to Coast," all in an effort to discredit him.  But mostly, I blame Simon.  You know, for not trying hard enough to like Bill.  While I have never actually met Tierney, I've read a lot about him.  And to me, his problem isn't "excessive religiosity," it's Narcissistic Personality Disorder. (It's all there: "An exaggerated sense of self-importance," a preoccupation with fantasies about his great success and power, "Requires excessive admiration," "Has a sense of entitlement." etc.)  If Tierney's "religiosity" involved actions that didn't involve him trying to be in the spotlight all the time (you know, if he was quietly giving alms to the poor, not letting his left hand know what his right hand was doing, and such), I bet that even Simon would find him likable.  But since Bill seems to use religion as a way to show how special he is, to demand special treatment, or to blame for his "persecution" by a world that won't acknowledge how special he is, then I think the problem lies more with Bill than with his devotion to his religion. 3.  Speaking of bizarre personalities (and Rush Limbaugh), it seems that Rush is alone again, naturally.  As you may have heard, the NY Daily News reported that he and Daryn Kagan are"finally kaput."  I'm guessing that things were never the same after Rush referred to her on his radio program as his "mistress in Georgia," thus giving the world the idea that they slept together.   No romance could stand that! But, like the Daily News said, the good news is that Rush is available again!  (Okay, they only implied this.)  So, to give you guys and gals some tips on how to win Rush's heart, here's the story of how he met his third wife, Marta. Limbaugh and the then-Marta Fitzgerald's love affair began in 1990 on the information superhighway. Going by the name of the "Jacksonville Jaguar," Fitzgerald contacted the talk show host through the CompuServe message network to ask his advice on how to challenge her President Reagan-bashing professor at the University of North Florida, where she was a student. Reagan had once called Limbaugh "the No. 1 voice for conservatism in our country." Fitzgerald's husband at the time, Tom Fitzgerald, said Limbaugh didn't respond to her first query. She got angry when she heard Limbaugh respond on the air to some flight attendants who had written wanting to meet him. So she wrote Limbaugh a scathing letter, calling him pompous and telling him he was wasting his time, Fitzgerald told The Florida Times-Union in Jacksonville. This time, Limbaugh responded. "That's how the whole relationship got started,'' Fitzgerald said. ''They started corresponding back and forth.'' Limbaugh escorted Marta, who was divorced from Fitzgerald in 1992, to the 1994 Super Bowl, Israel and New Orleans. He playfully hinted to radio listeners about his "Jaguar," and eventually Marta moved to New York, where Limbaugh owned an Upper West Side apartment. The two were wed May 27, 1994, at the Virginia home of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, who officiated. Attendees included former Education Secretary William Bennett, another family values advocate who later admitted to a multimillion-dollar gambling habit. And then, almost exactly ten years later (when, as some say, the pre-nup was no longer in force), they were divorced.  But anyway, I think that the Rush/Marta love story, featuring as it did such traditional conservative values as professor-bashing, insults, adultery, divorce, drugs, gambling, and porn, should be an inspiration to us all.  I am saddened that the Daryn/Rush romance couldn't end in a similar fashion.  4. And, in a related story, WorldNetDaily reports that "Fewer college-bound, higher suicide rates, shorter life spans suggest males getting shaft."  And who is shafting those men out of their college educations and their longer life-spans?  Apparently sitcoms. Watch network sitcoms and you will find the dolts are usually men. In TV commercials, it's always the kids or the mothers who know the real score, not the fathers. Affirmative-action programs by definition mean women get preference in hiring, school admissions, contracts and promotions. While some social scientists may see these facts as harmless – or possibly even necessary reconditioning of society to correct past injustices against women – others are beginning to conclude that men are the real victims of discrimination so virulent it is shortening their life spans, causing them to be self-destructive and suicidal, crippling their educational opportunities and destroying a generation of fatherless children. So, does everybody love Raymond now? Anyway, let's look as just one of WND's "sobering facts." Men, whose average life expectancy was formerly on a par with women, are now dying 10 years earlier. Is this true?  Per the CDC, no.  (See " U.S. Life Expectancy Best Ever, Says CDC").  The CDC claims (and with evidence to back them up) that in the U.S., women now live 80.1 years, while men live 74.8 years, a difference of 5.3 years.  (I don't want to make the man -- or woman -- who wrote the WND column feel virulently discriminated against or anything, but 5 is about half as much as 10.) The CDC also says that the gap between life expectancies in the U.S. has never been ten years, and that men are actually living longer now. That's down from a peak of 7.8 years in 1979. Since then, men's life expectancy gains have outpaced those of women, says the CDC  So, apparently it's WOMEN who are getting the shaft by sitcoms and discrimination and stuff. And did men formerly have the same life expectancy as women (until being portrayed as dolts on shows like "CSI" Miami" and "The O'Reilly Factor" caused them to die in shame)? Let's see if the Harvard Gazette can answer this question: "It seems likely that women have been outliving men for centuries and perhaps longer," say [doctors at Harvard Medical School] Perls and Fretts. Even with the sizable risk conferred by childbirth, women have outsurvived men at least since the 1500s. Although, in the United States between 1900 and the 1930s, the death risk for women of childbearing age was as high as that for men. Since then, improved health care, particularly in childbirth, has put women ahead of men again in the survival struggle, as well as raising life expectancy for both sexes. So, yeah, because of all the women who were dying during child birth because of the crappy medical care of the time, there was a 30-year period in the early 20th century when women didn't live any longer than men.  And I guess that's the period that WND wants us to return to. As for the "sobering fact" that there are now more women attending college than men, the so-called "comic strip" Mallard Fillmore has devoted the entire week to trumpeting just that stat.  The punchline for today's strip was that ugly, strident feminists have nothing to say about this state of affairs. ( It's funny because ... um ... it's conservative!) Personally, I think this kind of virulent discrimination against humor probably lowered the life expectancy of everyone who reads the strip. 8:20:54 PM

Tutti Non-Fruity Watch for this exciting story, coming soon to a WorldNetDaily near you! COMING THIS WEEKEND WorldNetDaily Exclusive Who's missing from rock Hall of Fame? Effort initiated to induct pop pioneer Pat Boone And why should pap pioneer Pat Boone be inducted?  In our opinion, for his humanitarian efforts on behalf of the Western, as exemplified by this WND column. In it, Pat explains how, back in 1969, he had taken his dozen or so innocent children and his nonsexual wife to see a popular film, only to find out (when it was too late) that it was about heterosexual cowboys!!! The horror, the horror! Here, I'll let Pat tell the tale: We had gone together to see a very popular musical film, "Paint Your Wagon." It had been a celebrated Broadway smash, terrific music, and the movie version starred Clint Eastwood, in a singing role! It was at the Cinerama Dome, a posh downtown theater in Hollywood – what could have been more ideal for a family outing? But as the thing rolled along, with giant production, huge cast, all the "good stuff," I realized that the story was about a struggling frontier town whose city fathers decided that the cowboys needed feminine companionship – so they'd build a whorehouse and import a lot of "ladies" to stock it! And when a big musical number centered on all the girls coming in by stagecoach and all the rugged wranglers salivating to get at them, I gathered my flock and we left. You can certainly understand Pat's reaction.  (As Homer Simpson said, "Aw, why did they have to screw up a perfectly serviceable wagon story with all that fruity singing?") But even though Pat took his brood outta there before the trauma of "They Call the Wind Mariah," the damage had already been done, for less than ten years later, daughter Debby would inflict "You Light Up My Life" on the world.  But anyway, on to the REAL problem: Brokeback Mountain. The majority of the Oscars' attention and praise will be for a procession of depressing, controversial, objectionable and downright decadent flicks, led by "Brokeback Mountain," a quaint tale of two homosexual cowboys. Imagine America's families flocking to see that one! There goes the Western. One of our country's finest exports for 75 years, the dramatic story where lonely heroes fight desperate but victorious battles, where the good guys always win and the desperadoes get what they deserve, has been dealt a possibly fatal wound. Um, yeah.  'Twas Brokeback killed the Western.  Because up to this year, the Western was a thriving genre, and there had never before been a movie set in the American West where the good guys didn't win. Yes, it used to be that out there on the range, the deer and the antelope played chastely, never was heard a nuanced word, and the sky was not cloudy (but was instead a black-and-white morality or revenge tale) all day. Another cowboy film set in about the same time period as "Brokeback."   While it too was released in 1969, I don't know if Pat took his flock to see it at the Cinerama Dome.  And not only has "Brokeback" inflicted a possibly fatal wound on the noble Western, but it's also debasing our beloved movie stars by forcing them, under threat of forced gayification, to give it awards. I cringed when Clint Eastwood, the quintessential Western hero, had to give the Golden Globe for best director to Ang Lee for "Brokeback," But ...but ...I thought Pat hated Clint for ruining Pat's family outing back in '69 (you know, by appearing in a movie where cowboys enjoyed female companionship, and sang and stuff).  How could Clint be called the "quintessential Western hero" after that?   And I really wish Pat would stop with the cringing -- it's so uncool. and saw my friend Denzel Washington cringe as he announced the Golden Globe for BEST FILM went to the same sorry tale. Pat, dude, Denzel says he's never heard of you.  (He added that he knew Fats Domino.  Fats was a friend of his.  And you, sir, are no Fats Domino.) I've since been obsessed with wondering what John Wayne would say. Will his beloved "Alamo" be remade now, with a "new slant," into "Al and Mo"? Will "Shane" be modernized into "Shame, with Al and Ladd"? Will Hollywood treat us to "Catfight at the OK Corral"? "Hang 'em Limp"? "He Wore Yellow Ribbons"? "Stagecrotch"? It's for the above that I think that Pat deserves to be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. I probably couldn't repeat, or in this space print, what the Duke would have to say. Possibly something like, "Pat, you damned pussy, it's just a movie. Now, stop trying to be clever, because you're a moron, and stop obsessing about me, because you're creeping me out.  Don't make me get another restraining order against you, Boone!" But hey, if YOU want to think up some titles for the gay porn versions of the Duke's movies, be my guest. 5:59:41 PM