It's Everybody Draw Mohammed Day!

Per the South Park episode "200", I've cleverly dressed Mohammed up as a bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich to protest the notion that it should be forbidden to display physical depictions of that supposed prophet. Make no mistake though: this is clearly an image of Mohammed and he looks both savory and delicious. I love free speech.

[Update: On a personal note, I would like to wish friend of this blog and Thunder from Down Under magpie's dear momma a very happy birthday from halfway around the world. All the best, Ma'am.]

[Update II: Reason.com lists their favorites, which are all better than mine, most notably because they're all actual drawings.]

Comedy Central And Religious Hypocrisy

So it seems that certain religions are still acceptable for ridicule by Comedy Central:

Comedy Central might censor every image of the Prophet Muhammad on "South Park," yet the network is developing a whole animated series around Jesus Christ.

As part of the network's upfront presentation to advertisers (full slate here), Comedy Central is set to announce "JC," a half-hour show about Christ wanting to escape the shadow of his "powerful but apathetic father" and live a regular life in New York City.

In the show, God is preoccupied with playing video games while Christ, "the ultimate fish out of water," tries to adjust to life in the big city.

"In general, comedy in purist form always makes some people uncomfortable," said Comedy Central's head of original programming Kent Alterman...

Like all Comedy Central executives, Alterman declined to address the recent controversy over "South Park," where the network aired a heavily redacted episode after the show's creators were threatened by an extremist Islamic Web site.

I'm sure what Alterman meant to say is that "comedy in purist form makes some people uncomfortable but the fact that it makes a certain group of people uncomfortable is unacceptable and so it must be censored". Again, this isn't about making fun of one particular religion but rather the un-American idea that one particular religion should be off limits from being made fun of when doing so to all the others. Nobody in this world has a right not to be offended.

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Maher On What's Not Negotiable

I think this defense of free speech rights from Bill Maher nicely echoes my recent explanation for participating in Everybody Draw Mohammed Day:


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In Defense Of Everybody Draw Mohammed Day

Friend of this blog and Thunder from Down Under magpie of The Quiet Magpie has taken exception to my recent endorsement of Everybody Draw Mohammed Day in the comment section of that post. I was in the middle of writing a response when I decided that this issue is important enough that it should warrant its own post. First, magpie's rebuke:

I'm not totally with you on this one, JBW.

"Freedom of speech" is often a cosy refuge for those who seek simply to vilify, and then get away by calling themselves principled for doing it.
Like all our other freedoms, our conduct with regard to that freedom must be worthy of it.

It's not a catch-all get-out-of-jail for fucking people over. It's a political right to speak for truth.

"It's about fighting terrorism".... Not it's not. Destroying Al Qaeda training camps is fighting terrorism.
This has nothing to do with that. And if this were about sending up Jesus we wouldn't even be talking this linkage.

"Nobody in this world has a right not to be offended".

Whoa... reconsider what you're saying there.... Because the ancillary to that is that everyone has the right to go round verbally bullying people in any way they want.
Do you reckon the parents of teens who have killed themselves because of school bullying would be on board for your argument? I reckon not.

If someone called Obama (who - despite the paranoid imagination of the Right - is not even a religious figure) a "something@#$%something nasty" you'd be on their case faster than Republican going to a sex show with donor money.
And quite rightly so.
And if the difference there is that Obama is not a religious figure, but Mohammed is, then that's tacit acceptance that vilification is just fine as long as it's based on religion.
Have I just vilified Republicans? maybe... Depends whether you are a Republican.

In any case YOU are able to comfortably say "nobody has the right not to be offended" because you are a capable debater, have high self-esteem, are emotionally resilient, not in a minority, and are at all times up for verbal agro (confrontation) because you like it.
Not everyone is so well armored.

May 20th is my mum's birthday.
Anybody saying anything about her will meet my friend 'Pain' - to quote the great Mr T.

I understand your concerns magpie but I think you might be missing my larger point. My parenthetical mention of "similarly intolerant individuals" was to address the fact that some will use this occasion as an excuse to specifically bash Muslims and Islam out of religious intolerance rather than an exercise of free speech and they should rightfully be called out for it if they blatantly cross the line into bigotry or have a history of such behaviour in the past. My point is that my merely posting a picture of your prophet or god should not be off limits in a free society, no matter what your views are on the subject. You have every right not to depict your god in bodily form and you have every right to tell me that you think I am wrong for doing so but you never get the right to tell me that I cannot do so, much less threaten me with bodily harm for doing so. In fact, that is the very definition of terrorism.

"Destroying Al Qaeda training camps" is not fighting terrorism, it's fighting terrorists. Terrorism is an ideology and as such is much harder to kill than mere terrorists. That's why the moniker "War on Terror" is as useless as "War on Poverty" and "War on Drugs", because these are wars that can never be won. We will never rid ourselves of terror and thus we will never be rid of individuals who would use terror as a tool to get what they want from others. The best way to fight back against these individuals is to never give in to their demands and thus not allow ourselves to be terrorized. South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone understand this better than anyone else at Viacom or Comedy Central (with the exception of Jon Stewart, who has publicly voiced his support for them on his show) and it's why they've created the various Mohammed episodes addressing the subject.

You are completely correct that if this were about "sending up Jesus" we wouldn't be having the conversation and that's pretty much the point. I don't want to sound all right-winger here but if this were about a depiction of Jesus the main difference would be that even if Parker and Stone were receiving death threats from Christians Comedy Central wouldn't have censored their work, just as they haven't when South Park has skewered several other major religions in the past despite loud protestations on their behalf. Islam is the only religion that gets a pass on being criticized by that corporation and it's because of credible threats of violence from Muslim organizations and religious fundamentalists that this is so. I'm not saying that there aren't violent adherents of those other faiths as well but certain branches of Islam do seem to embrace violence much more readily than do other religions (remember the murder of Theo van Gogh). If it's OK to poke fun at one religion then it should be OK to poke fun at every religion. Again, nobody in this world has a right not to be offended.

And I do not believe that "the ancillary to that is that everyone has the right to go round verbally bullying people in any way they want", it's that everyone has the right to say whatever they want unless that speech crosses specific lines that we as a society decide for ourselves and even then those lines are intentionally defined extraordinarily carefully in order to offer as much protection to our freedom of speech as possible. Now of course there are limits to that freedom and I'm not arguing that there shouldn't be: one isn't allowed to yell "fire" in a crowded theatre or aggressively bully another student at school, for example. These limits are specific to certain circumstances and are in place for the protection of individuals and the greater good of society but to suggest that they should also extend to constraining criticism of religious beliefs or institutions is a dangerous precedent to establish and quite frankly a direct violation of the First Amendment.

As I mentioned, last Easter I posted a picture of the Easter Bunny birthing (not "crapping out" as was criticized) bloody Jesus eggs. Many people took offense at the depiction and I was called all manner of foul names and was even threatened with being satirically portrayed as "goatseing" for doing so but to their credit the individuals who criticized me never threatened me with physical violence, nor did they insist that I should not be allowed to express myself in that manner, just that they disagreed with me for doing it. I have every right to say whatever I want about Jesus, Mohammed, Buddha or Santa Claus and you have every right to criticize me for it if you wish. Criticism is fine, censorship through intimidation is not.

You are quite right that I would be on someone's case if they (unfairly) criticized President Obama; to do so is my right as well as their's but I would never insist that they shouldn't have that right just because I disagree with what they are saying. And the only distinction I would make between Obama and those other individuals has nothing to do with religion but rather would be that he's an actual living person so slander/libel laws could apply, though even those legal limits on free speech are defined much more narrowly in the case of public figures.

And the fact that I am a capable debater (thanks, by the way), have high self-esteem, am emotionally resilient, not in a minority, and am at all times up for verbal confrontation because I like it may allow me to say "nobody has the right not to be offended" more comfortably than most but that doesn't make it any less true or applicable to all of us. Your or anybody else's comfort level should have nothing to do with determining what I am allowed or not allowed to say in a free society. The odds are fairly good that pretty much everyone will get offended or be made uncomfortable by something they hear at some point in their lives and my advice to them is to do what I do when that happens to me: change the channel. Insisting that the broadcast should be censored or taken off the air is politically correct overkill. Most of the time a remote control is the only armor one needs.

As to your momma's birthday magpie I will gladly wish her many happy returns come May 20th but I hardly think the choice of that date for this particular political protest had anything to do with her and I would of course never advocate attacking anyone's family members (something I learned from The Godfather) for any reason, especially mommas. I hope you don't mind that I turned my response to your comment into a post but again this issue is very important to me and (I think) to the American way of life. I didn't write it so much to convince you of my side of the argument but rather just to let you and everyone else reading this better understand why I am participating in Everybody Draw Mohammed Day. Everyone is of course free to disagree with me and I welcome all opposing opinions as always. That is one of my favorite things about living in a society that holds freedom of speech so dear and why I so vigorously defend it on this site.

Everybody Draw Mohammed Day

You can read about the entire controversy here. I've been meaning to post about this for the last several days because I think that the principles involved here are extremely important. Religious zealots are essentially threatening the lives of American citizens because they've exercised their freedom of speech. As I think I proved on Easter a few weeks back religious folks can get pretty upset when you use your First Amendment rights to say something about their god that they don't like, although to the credit of the individuals who were pissed off that day they only peppered me with verbal abuses whilst never threatening me with violence.

South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker are two of the most honest and fearless individuals working in television today and they deserve the support of everyone who believes that our freedom of speech is important enough to fight for against the intimidation tactics of Islamist religious bullies. This isn't about fighting Islam (although I'm sure some similarly intolerant individuals will use it as an excuse to do so), it's about fighting censorship through fear. It's about fighting terrorism. Nobody in this world has a right not to be offended. I'll be posting my own Mohammed creation on May 20th and I encourage other bloggers to do the same.

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[Update: This always pumps me up and gets me laughing at the same time:


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Cartman Heating Up Washington

I have no other reason for posting this than that I wanted to start the new year with a smile on my face, and this always makes me smile:


If only it were this easy to unite Congress in real life. *sigh*

The Many Deaths Of Kenny McCormick

I've seen every one of these at least a dozen times and they still crack me up:


You bastards.

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Van Jones' Resignation

I was on vacation camping when this story first broke so please excuse me for my Johnny-come-latelyness:

White House environmental adviser Van Jones resigned late Saturday after a simmering controversy over his past statements and activism erupted into calls for his ouster from Republican leaders on Friday.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs on Sunday explained the resignation on ABC's "This Week with George Stephanopoulos," saying, "Van Jones decided was that the agenda of this president was bigger than any one individual." The president does not endorse Jones's past statements and actions, "but he thanks him for his service," Gibbs said.

A White House official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a personnel matter, said Jones's past was not studied as intensively as other advisers because of his relatively low rank.

Jones's position did not require Senate confirmation, so he avoided the kind of vetting Cabinet officials were subjected to. In addition, as an adviser to the Council on Environmental Quality, rather than to Obama directly, his past was not reviewed to the same degree as the more senior "assistants to the president" and other top advisers inside the West Wing.

As far as I've been able to tell, Jones was a pretty innocuous figure within the Obama administration. He was fairly well known and popular within the environmentalist and activist communities but aside from Glenn Beck's hysterical rantings performed as payback for a boycott of his show that Jones had nothing to do with he hasn't had a very high profile but why would we expect that from a Green Jobs/environmental advisor anyway?

And while enemies of this White House like Beck will claim that their opposition to Jones comes from his "radical, socialist" political views (his admission at one point to using communist protest tactics being the most egregious for the wingnuts) it seems to me that the main reason he had to leave the Obama administration is his having signed a 911Truth.org petition in 2004 questioning whether Bush administration officials had prior knowledge of those attacks and chose to allow them for military/political reasons.

Now I don't know if I've ever addressed this theory about the 9/11 attacks here so let me just say this about that: As with everything else in this universe, I can't say for sure that the Bush administration didn't have prior knowledge of this horrific event. The 9/11 Truth Commission's report was woefully inadequate and full of holes and unanswered questions. Having said that however I've always believed in a universe of infinite possibilities, but I also try to make most decisions in my life according to the science of probability and I'd have to say that the probability of this whole conspiracy being true is really pretty damn small:


So yes, the Bush administration could have known about and/or had something to do with the 9/11 attacks although I highly doubt it for a myriad of reasons I won't enumerate here but the larger point as far as Jones is concerned is this: Even if you do believe this to a much greater extent than I ever could you should never, ever state so publicly and still expect to have a career in politics afterwards. The Truther movement is just too damn crazy in their convictions and if you throw in with them you'll appear a disreputable fool by association and other things you say and do will be discredited.

And that's what happened: Jones, while a fairly intelligent and capable fellow, made several mistakes in his past but it was his association with the Truthers that the mainstream media and thus the American public just couldn't get past. It's also too bad because I think that he could have done some good things for this country as an environmental advisor to the White House. So expect the usual round of right-wing crowing about "One down, ____ to go!" and the like until they latch on to the next outrage du jour. And they soon will, of course.

[Update: The piece "Who is Van Jones?" at Gawker lays out the exact timeline and tactics the right followed to destroy Jones' career at the White House. Here's a taste:

So here we have a radical youth turned respectable liberal. Respectable enough to be on Time magazine listicles and win World Economic Forum prizes and everything. Respectable enough for Tom Friedman to profile him. And The New Yorker. Respectable enough for Meg Whitman, as in former eBay CEO and wealthy Republican California gubernatorial candidate and John McCain advisor Meg Whitman, to proclaim herself "a huge fan of Van Jones."

And for both his activism and his charm he was rewarded with a White House job with the Council on Environmental Quality. He was tasked with making sure stimulus money for green jobs actually went to green jobs. And he's a great person to have in this administration—he is a genuine environmentalist and the only special interest he's beholden to is poor people. He is the sort of person we were all praying Obama would bring with him to DC, instead of Larry Summers.

And that is one of the reasons he is now being ritually and savagely demonized.

If you want a better understanding of this story beyond my own commentary I highly encourage you to read the rest of the piece. It disturbs me that the political right is able to influence White House hiring policies just by having the loudest and angriest voice but here's proof of it. I really hope that Obama starts hammering back at these guys soon but at this point I'm not holding my breath.]

The South: Home Of The Birther Movement

Yet more evidence to indicate that the modern Republican party is fast becoming the almost exclusive province of the Southern United States:

The news that American southerners are the most likely to question whether President Obama is actually a native-born citizen got a lot of attention last Friday, when a Research2000 survey on that question was released by DailyKos. Eleven percent of all Americans apparently do not believe Obama was born in the United States, but 23% of southerners (compared to roughly 5% of people from the other regions of the country) share that belief. I thought it would be interesting to see what various trend-culling tools might add to this picture.

A look at Google Trends is certainly illuminating. The top ten states where people are searching on the phrase "Obama birth certificate" are:

1. Louisiana
2. Mississippi
3. Colorado
4. Oklahoma
5. Alabama
6. Tennessee
7. Arkansas
8. Missouri
9. South Carolina
10. North Carolina

One would hope that this is not also evidence for the eventual redneckification of Colorado. Keep watching your South Park, Coloradans! And mad props to my home state of Texas for managing to stay off of this list full of wingnuts. Now if they could just climb out of last place for child homelessness, residents over 25 without a high school diploma, average credit score, voter participation and residents without health insurance they'd really have something. Good thing Governor Perry refused all of that stimulus money, huh?

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[Update: Obama finally debunks the Birther conspiracies:


After Barackula I suspected that maybe the vampire myths were true but I guess they've now been debunked as well. Of course, don't expect this to deter the wingnut Vamper movement...

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[Update II: Found it:
Just as damning as they said it would be. How could I have been so wrong?

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[Update III: Almost forgot that today is his actual "birthday" so here's the theme-appropriate card:
The truth hurts, doesn't it you dirty Kenyan bastard? Happy Birther Day, Mr. "President".

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Kanye West: "I Am The New King Of Pop"

Apparently Michael Jackson is now finally dead enough:

"You know everyone loves and respects Michael but times change. It's so sad to see Michael gone but it makes a path for a new King of Pop and I'm willing to take that on," so he told Scrape TV.

On what makes him deserve the title, Kanye said, "There's nobody who can match me in sales and in respect so it only makes sense for me to take over Michael's crown and become the new King." The rapper then added, "First there was Elvis [Presley], then there was Michael, now in the 21st century it's Kanye's time to rule. I have nothing but respect for Michael but someone needs to pick up where he left off and there's nobody better than me to do that. I am the new King of Pop."

Furthermore, Kanye reportedly has reached out to the Jackson family to obtain official permission to use the title but so far received no response from them. It is believed that the family is still mourning over Michael's death.

Huh, you'd think that Jackson's family could get over the grief of losing a beloved family member long enough to anoint someone else as his self-proclaimed successor but I guess they're just going to continue to be jerks about it. And correct me if I'm wrong but I don't remember Michael Jackson ever declaring that he was the King of Pop. It was only after expending a lot of talent and hard work that he was finally dubbed as such by his fans and critics alike. I admittedly don't follow West's career that closely but speaking as a big Michael Jackson fan I have to say that South Park really had this guy's number a few months back:


[Update: It seems that this was a fake story (told you I didn't follow him that closely) although a quick perusal of the Internets has made it clear that I wasn't the only one fooled by the prospects of West's jackassery. My apologies for the mistake, just the same.]

American Power And Hypocrisy

I stopped by my conservative counterpart Donald Douglas' blog American Power this morning to see if he could provide me with a laugh or two to start my day and instead I found (sandwiched of course between two posts about what a super-brave, Christian patriot beauty queen Carrie Prejean is for wanting to deny gay people the right to marry each other because she totally read that gay people are bad in some old book once) this libertarian-esque take on personal freedoms:

There's been a lot of debate on health care the last few days. Check out this morning's Wall Street Journal, for example, "Soda Tax Weighed to Pay for Health Care" (via Memeorandum).

A "soda tax" is a "vice tax", like cigarette taxes, that gouges people for making personal choices that may have negaative externalities for the economy. The upshot, of course, is that limiting human freedom is taken as beneficial to the "public good." And it's the Democrats who're always doing it.

The rest of the post is just a cut and paste job from another conservative blogger complaining about health care and socialized medicine so don't bother reading it but it was Don's thoughts on limiting human freedom as it pertains to ingesting certain "vice" substances for the benefit of the "public good" that caught my eye in general, and his opinion that "it's the Democrats who're always doing it" in particular, because I remembered reading something rather similar he wrote about cannabis legalization last month:

This is a response to Will Wilkinson's essay, "I smoke pot, and I like it."

Fine. Good for you.

But I don't smoke pot, and I don't like it. Not only that, I don't like what it does to people, including people I know, and especially people I used to know, before they they fatally OD'd; and I worry that my sons will come under the influence of bad people who smoke pot, snort coke, and God knows what else; and my boys will be too inexperienced in the ways of the drug culture to know that what they're being turned on to could kill them.

Now I don't drink soda (although I do like it) and I don't smoke cigarettes, and I don't like them. Not only that, I don't like what they both do to people. 33% of American adults are obese and obesity-related deaths have climbed to more than 300,000 a year, second only to tobacco-related deaths which number 440,000 a year. I don't have any sons (that I know of, *wink*wink*) but if I did I would worry that they would come under the influence of bad people who drink soda, smoke cigarettes, and Zeus knows what else.

Come to think of it, I would worry that my fictional sons would come under the influence of bad people who do anything, be it doing their laundry, visiting their local library or even praying to a god of their own choosing, because they're bad people. I guess the difference between Don and myself is that I have the ability to realize that doing those things, or even doing harmful things like drinking soda and smoking cigarettes, doesn't necessarily make someone a bad person. And I apply this same logic to those who recreationally and/or medicinally use cannabis.

But Don lacks that ability (in addition to apparently lacking the ability to talk to and educate his own sons about drug use) because he proceeds from a number of false assumptions that he holds either out of prejudice, ignorance or both. One is that cannabis and other recreational drugs are inherently bad in and of themselves, and that it therefore follows that anyone who uses these substances, regardless of their personal level of responsibility or lack of abuse, is a bad person. Another is that since all recreational drugs are bad and therefore rightly illegal, all recreational drugs are also categorized exactly the same and pose the same societal and health risks regardless of their strength or effects on the human body. In other words:


M'kay? Oh, and of course Don has never known anyone who has "fatally OD'd" smoking cannabis because that is physically impossible; it's never happened even once in all of recorded human history. That's right: 740,000 deaths in America every year from completely legal obesity and tobacco, not one death worldwide from illegal cannabis use ever. Later in the same post after relating a story about one of his former students who was arrested for drug possession with intent to distribute Don again applies the Mr. Mackey argument against drug legalization:

Do not tell me, Will Wilkinson, that "Marijuana is neither evil nor dangerous." Fancy-talking libertarians like you have the luxury of expounding on the "failed" war on drugs while kicking back in cozy offices at the Cato Intstitute, or some other free-market think tank. I mean, look at this blather: "the stigma of responsible drug use has got to end."

Hey, man, can I borrow your Visine?

You see cannabis is obviously evil and dangerous because someone Don knows was arrested trying to sell it and rather than promote responsible drug use by consenting adults he would prefer that it remain stigmatized instead, allowing hundreds of thousands of otherwise law-abiding Americans to suffer incarceration or worse at the hands of America's "failed" war on drugs. And also rather than employing scientific data and rational points of thought to prove his case he instead deftly applies the standard Glenn Beck/Cheech and Chong argument at the end there because since drugs are bad there's no point in taking any other argument to the contrary seriously, right?

To return to my original point, this entire worldview smacks of rank hypocrisy. In the world Don lives in the government and everything it says or does is part of an elaborate ploy to take away your rights and freedoms by controlling and taxing everything you personally choose to put into your own body in the name of the "public good", and this is of course all the fault of and only done by oppressive and socialistic Democrats. But at the same time of course recreational drugs like cannabis are so incredibly dangerous and just plain evil that no intelligent adult should ever be allowed to use them and it's entirely necessary for the government to spend $50 billion a year to protect free Americans from their own actions by fining and/or imprisoning them in the name of the "public good". This is a phenomenon known as "cognitive dissonance" and it makes it very hard for many people to think and debate honestly and logically.

You want to drink soda and smoke cigarettes, Don? Fine, good for you; feel entirely free to get as fat and cancer-ridden as you'd like. I would never suggest that you or any other adult should be denied the right to do pretty much anything you want to your own body, as long as it does not directly harm anyone else's. But by the same token, do not presume to tell me or anyone else what to do to our's because you somehow think you know what's best for us. Conservatives like you constantly bitch and moan about the reviled "nanny state" within our government yet seem to have no apparent quarrels with it when it serves your own purposes and agenda. In a free America we call that hypocrisy, and we call people like you hypocrites of the first order.

Geek Cred: Pwning The Elderly, Ctd.

It looks like my "esteemed" colleague William A. Jacobson has now become completely unhinged (those just tuning in can catch up on my exchanges with the old coot by reading this post first). I really expected a little more from a professor of law:

UPDATE No. 2: Someone Get Him A Life

Did you ever meet one of those people who have to have the last word? The people you just can't hang up on, because as you are putting the phone down you hear they still are talking? (Only people of my generation or older would know about that, because the Real World generation never used a real phone.)

So what's his name, you know, the one McCain doused with a Rule 4 shower, has posted something in response to my Update:

Here's some history: according to his Wikipedia page, McCain was born in 1959. I can't find a definite birth date for Jacobson but according to his Cornell bio page he completed his undergraduate degree in 1981. If we assume a standard matriculation period of four years that would also put his date of birth in 1959 as well. I was born in 1974. That means that when Star Wars came out in 1977 McCain and Jacobson were both legally classified as adults, and I was three years old.

Before I digress, please note that proper grammar requires an initial capitalization after a colon. Didn't they teach that to you in your Stanley Kaplan SAT review course?

And you were 3 when Star Wars came out. Did you watch it then, or only when you got Star Wars toys forced upon you? Perhaps you should have played with Legos and learned to build things and use your imagination.

There are boxes full of action figures, an AT-AT imperial walker, several TIE fighters and many other toys I haven't seen for years in a storage facility back in Texas with my name all over them. I had Star Wars curtains in my room as a kid, for Christ's sake.

Someone please get him a childhood.

And talk about being "Pwned" (yes, I had to look it up on Wikipedia, at least I admit to it). I don't stay up late on a Saturday night drafting posts about you, but you posted your latest screed at 11:34 p.m. on Saturday, March 14, 2009, and posted a comment on my blog at 1:47 a.m. the next morning. What's the matter, can't sleep without thinking about me? Nothing better to do on a Saturday night than worry about me? And thanks for linking to my Cornell Law School bio page; are you having it framed and putting it over your computer for inspiration? Someone please get him a life.

And I don't keep checking your SiteMeter like you do mine (don't even think of denying it). But I thought you didn't judge your worth as a blogger based on hits. Hmm, having second thoughts? Call McCain when you get 30,000 visits, if you can remember next year. Someone please get him the conscience of a liberal.

And someone tell him I'm hanging up the phone.

My buddy repsac3 has already fisked this 2nd update from old man Jacobson in the comment section of the post this one continues from, so I may pluck a bon mot or two from him as well. Did you ever meet one of those people who can never admit when they've been proven wrong? People you just can't reason with because they refuse to accept logical arguments that constantly refute their previous assertions and accusations? *sigh* OK, let's do this.

Really, Jacobson? Are you telling everyone that you think cell phones became ubiquitous when you were fifteen, so therefore the "Real World generation" (me, apparently) has never used them? Cell phones weren't even really in widespread use when I was fifteen. I remember in high school a friend's mom had a portable phone: it fit into a carrying case the size of a car battery with a strap on it and weighed around twenty pounds. Two questions: 1) what the hell kind of an insult or point is this guy trying to make with that comment? Is not having ever used a land line (that's what we're all calling them now, not "real phones", dude) something to suddenly be ashamed of? And more importantly 2) why the hard-on for the Real World? Bad roommate experience in college? Let me guess: you were Felix, right? You certainly sound uptight enough. I used an older reference there so as not to confuse you with anything broadcast in this century, guy; you're welcome.

Now you can tell when someone is running out of reasoned arguments and debatable points when they start saying things like "what's his name" and they suddenly become a stickler for proper grammar. This is a blog. I'm not submitting it as my senior thesis. And apparently I had Star Wars toys "forced upon me" as a child and that's how I came to know about the movie. Yeah, because what kid would want to watch an FX packed, shoot 'em up, sci-fi action flick without all of the attendant marketing to entice them first, right? I also apparently have no imagination now and who didn't play with LEGOS when they were a kid? repsac?:

And when did this become a question of anyone's intelligence or imagination? Looks to me like our lawyer friend is trying to change the subject, employing classic ad hominem--the heart of "rule 4," from what I've seen from these clowns--in the process.

But you can see now where his arguments start to flounder as he has pulled these suppositions about how I discovered the movie and my level of imagination out of the same anally-shaped (Oh no, is that even a word? Kaplan, where are you when I need you?!) filing cabinet from which he extracted his earlier definitive claim that I looked up the spelling of "padawan" on Wikipedia. Oops, I almost forgot that I also have no childhood because...to be honest, I have no idea what he's trying to do here. Accusing me now of not having a childhood? So what, I bought all these retro toys on eBay, boxed them up and shipped them to Texas on the off chance that someone would someday accuse me of not having grown up watching Star Wars? To what, cover up the fact that instead of playing with toys and watching movies I worked in a sooty, Dickensian child labor factory as a kid?

And talk about being pwned (sorry Reppy, you got your numbers a bit jumbled here as well but not nearly as badly as Jacobson), let's have a short primer on the movement of celestial bodies and how we as humans measure the passage of time based on these movements, shall we? You see, as the Earth orbits the Sun that fiery orb appears to be in a different position in the sky relative to where any one person is standing on the planet at any one time. In order to keep a relative sense of the passage of time around the world we divide the planet up into 24 different zones all with different relative times; let's call these time zones. Still with me, old man? Cause this is where it gets tricky.

I posted my "latest screed" as he calls it around 5:00 pm PST (the screed being the update to the original post on this topic below; there is no documentable proof of time because it was an update). Now what Jacobson is referring to is not my original update but this follow up post in which I called attention to that update because it had moved further down the page where others might miss it (that's why this one is a new post) and yes, it was indeed at 11:34 pm PST. Now what codgers like Jacobson can easily forget is that Blogger lets you set the time zone from which you are blogging and every time stamp (comments included) on your site are recorded as such. So the comment I posted on his site (in the Eastern time zone) actually posted at 10:47 pm PST, 47 minutes before my follow up post (I wanted to talk some shit to his old ass).

He's right that I don't sleep well but it's not because I can't seem to get a certain wrinkled pentagenarian off my mind, I just have insomnia. And I linked to his bio page because I have this really bad habit of backing up any assertions I make online with this little thing I like to call "evidence". As he lacked a Wiki page like the other McC, I used the next best thing to extrapolate his age and then documented my source; that's something else I like to call "research". It doesn't surprise me that these are foreign concepts to you Jacobson but you must have heard the other more competent lawyers discussing them while you were writing down what everyone wanted for lunch.

And yes, I checked your Site Meter (should I deny that? Nah, better not even think about it; imagine the consequences!). Of course, the only reason I even checked out your meter (does that sound gay?) was because I remembered this specious claim from a little while back on a comment thread by some old guy I'd never heard of at the time when I was having fun teasing my special blog lady:

William A. Jacobson said...

Link to me, I can throw you more traffic than McCain (please don't look at my sitemeter, it's not functioning properly; I really get a lot more traffic, but the vast leftwing conspiracy is playing games with my blog).

Now doesn't that sound suspiciously like, "I swear, this never happens when I'm with other women..."? I just figured that maybe you were trying to be ironic. To his credit, McCain did send hundreds of hits my way when he attempted to talk some shit about yours truly so you can imagine my utter surprise when nothing even close to that happened when you tried to do the same. Hell, I got more hits when my own blogging mentor (he doesn't know he is) linked to me a few days ago than I got from you two old coots combined and that was just an indirect link to give me credit for the site I pointed out to him. Anyway, Reps?:

Sorry... Not only don't we judge our worth by blog hits, we don't even judge your worth by blog hits. A trained monkey can get hits, as RSM so ably proves... Don't mean he can write, though... (I know, Grammerman... It's intentional... Put away your super hero cape.)

I never said that I don't look at my or even other people's Site Meters, just that I don't judge my own self-worth based on those numbers. I mean, what's the point of even having a meter if you never check it? I look at it to see where my hits are coming from when someone else links to me and I look for family and friends; when I see Dallas or San Leandro or Walnut Creek or Redmond or even Birmingham I know who those people are and that they're reading my stuff. If anything I'm more of a digital voyeur than an insecure old man sizing up my own dick (you must feel sick when you watch pornos, huh?).

The last line is great not only because, as repsac3 pointed out, you've already taken another shot at me in an update to another post but also because only a fogey like yourself would think that a phrase like "And someone tell him I'm hanging up the phone"would translate in any way to a back and forth on the Internet. You can't hang up this phone Billy boy because you're not the only one I'm talking to; what you've done here is the online equivalent of sticking your fingers in your ears and screaming like a child who doesn't want to face reality. And the best part is that everyone reading this on my site and coming here from yours will now know that the dickless lawyer (see how I squeezed two unnecessary insults in there?) just took his little ball and went home.


[Update:I just sprayed my chocolate milk all over my keyboard. I'm seriously:

UPDATE No. 3: He realized his 15 minutes of fame are over.

This is what happens when someone realizes that his 15 minutes of fame are over:

And the best part is that everyone reading this on my site and coming here from yours will now know that the dickless lawyer (see how I squeezed two unnecessary insults in there?) just took his little ball and went home.

And he posts a silly photo-shop of my head on a chicken in front of Cornell Law School -- must have stayed up all night working on that one.

Wow, some people don't even know when they have been played. My post that I was "hanging up the phone" brought out the best in you, as I knew it would. Apparently it always was there, just needed a little prodding to shake loose. Too bad, I was hoping you had a sense of humor. But then again, you do brag that you "supported Barack Obama before it was cool to support Barack Obama" so there is a sense of humor in there somewhere.

Oh no, my fame! I need that to be famous!! I guess that phone was harder to hang up than he thought it would be; maybe arthritis is kicking in (the old fart won't even link to me anymore). But let me just repeat that one line again:

And he posts a silly photo-shop of my head on a chicken in front of Cornell Law School -- must have stayed up all night working on that one.

Maybe I should use one of Jacobson's rhetorical techniques to get this through to his addled brain: Someone under fifty please tell him who's body his head is on in that silly photo-shop. Remember what I said about pop culture, old man? And talk about no sense of humor. How exactly did I get played here? Screw this guy, I'm going home.]

Steele "Apologizes" To Limbaugh

I've posted before about the recent toadying and groveling by the Republican party before their new de facto leader, radio personality Rush Limbaugh. Well apparently Michael Steele, the newly elected chairman of the Republican National Committee, decided to grow a pair lately and actually voice his opinions about Limbaugh and his radio show publicly. That didn't last very long:

Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele says he has reached out to Rush Limbaugh to tell him he meant no offense when he referred to the popular conservative radio host as an “entertainer” whose show can be “incendiary.”

“My intent was not to go after Rush – I have enormous respect for Rush Limbaugh,” Steele said in a telephone interview. “I was maybe a little bit inarticulate. … There was no attempt on my part to diminish his voice or his leadership.”

The dust-up comes at a time when top Democrats are trying to make Limbaugh the face of the Republican Party, in part by using ads funded by labor. Americans United for Change sent a fund-raising e-mail Monday that begins: “The Republican Party has turned into the Rush Limbaugh Party.”

Steele told CNN host D.L. Hughley in an interview aired Saturday night: “Rush Limbaugh is an entertainer. Rush Limbaugh — his whole thing is entertainment. He has this incendiary — yes, it's ugly.”

I think the American people are finally starting to see Steele and company for what they are: a bunch of scared, sycophantic mama's boys who are too afraid of the political repercussions if they piss off the big blowhard kid on the playground. Steele issued his apology during a phone interview but I included quotation marks around the word in the title of this post because we all know what he was really doing:


(hat tip: Doctor Biobrain)

Happy Thanksgiving

Hope everyone has a good one today; I'm spending the holiday with my friends the Davis clan up here in soggy Seattle, WA. Save me one of the legs and cheer for my beloved Texas Aggies as they face the Texas Longhorn juggernaut in our annual Thanksgiving weekend rivalry game. Gig me!

Obama's Eleven

Of course; it's all starting to make sense now:

Raping Indy

Oh my God. I just finished watching the newest South Park episode, "The China Probrem" and my sides are still sore from laughing. If you haven't seen it yet stop reading right now, go to Comedy Central's website and do so immediately; I'll wait. OK; pretty funny shit, huh? I wrote what I now consider an all too generous review of The Crystal Skull after having too many glasses of wine back in May but I excuse my initial enthusiasm because of my great love for the original trilogy: I was once again watching an Indiana Jones movie filled with Nazis, jungle temples and a fedora and I think this blinded me to the craptacular CG sequences, the unimaginative alien ending and Shia LeBeouf.

I was watching a downloaded copy on my PS3 with a friend the other day and I started to remember watching the parts that I really didn't enjoy but just looked past at the time as Indy fought the aforementioned Nazis and I felt a little dirty for it. Then today I watched this South Park episode, and I almost died laughing as the boys had to work through the trauma of having seen Indy getting repeatedly raped by Lucas and Speilberg because I knew exactly how they were feeling. And dude did they rape his ass, all in multiple homages to some of cinemas most famous rape scenes but it was the actual acting out of the metaphor and the psychological scarring it had on the audience members that really made the scenes hilarious.

Now if you're sitting there reading this and thinking, "Jesus, James sure is one cold bastard to be laughing during a rape scene," all I can say is lighten up, it's a cartoon. Seriously. Oh, and the subplot of Cartman and Butters taking over the P. F. Chang's to stop the Chinese invasion was great but you knew it would be. I've heard rumors of a supposed fifth Indiana Jones sequel and I'm not expecting anything good to come of it; my only hope is that Lucas and Speilberg will come to their senses and go back to what made me love these movies so much in the first place but their behaviour of late has been decidedly less than encouraging. Chin up, Indy.

Michael Phelps' Diet

Unless you've been living under a rock this past week you've probably been following or have at least heard about Michael Phelps' history making run at the Beijing Olympic games. He won eight gold medals and set seven world records, establishing himself as the greatest medal-winner at a single Games in the 112-year history of the modern Olympics. Combined with his six golds and two bronzes from previous Games and the fact that he plans to compete again both four and eight years from now, it's a pretty good bet that he will some day be known as an Olympic legend.

Even more prolific than his penchant for winning gold however is his appetite: the 23-year-old consumes a staggering 12,000 calories a day, over five times what an average adult male should be getting. Check out this menu from a typical training day:

Phelps lends a new spin to the phrase "Breakfast of Champions" by starting off his day by eating three fried-egg sandwiches loaded with cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, fried onions and mayonnaise.

He follows that up with two cups of coffee, a five-egg omelet, a bowl of grits, three slices of French toast topped with powdered sugar and three chocolate-chip pancakes.

At lunch, Phelps gobbles up a pound of enriched pasta and two large ham and cheese sandwiches slathered with mayo on white bread - capping off the meal by chugging about 1,000 calories worth of energy drinks.

For dinner, Phelps really loads up on the carbs - what he needs to give him plenty of energy for his five-hours-a-day, six-days-a-week regimen - with a pound of pasta and an entire pizza.

I'm a fairly slow eater myself but even if I wasn't I don't think I could find the time to put all of that away every day. And I imagine that he must have many days just like the one below (you can see that the Emmy's are well deserved):

RIP, Issac Hayes

Isaac Hayes was found dead in his Memphis, Tennessee home this morning at the age of 65. The police do not suspect any foul play. Hayes was best known by people over 40 for his sweet-ass rendition of the theme song to the 1971 blaxploitation film Shaft, for which he earned an Academy Award for Best Original Song (the first Academy Award received by an African-American in a non-acting category) and two Grammys. He was best known to people under 40 as the voice of Chef on South Park.

For anyone who doesn't watch the show, South Park regularly and unapologetically skewers various aspects and institutions of culture, with religion being no exception. They've made fun of Christianity, Catholicism, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, and Mormonism and Hayes seemed to have no problem contributing to those shows but when they went after the relatively secretive Church of Scientology (making sure to tell the viewers in frequent captions that "This is what Scientologists actually believe") Hayes decided to quit the show. I have to say that as much as liked Isaac Hayes and his work I found this to be highly hypocritical; it was as if he was saying that there should be a different set of free speech standards when it comes to his religion and I highly disagree. Unfortunately, this seems to be a running theme in Scientology.

That aside, I do love the theme to Shaft and I miss his character on South Park. Matt Stone and Trey Parker commented on the departure of Hayes from their show in the episode The Return of Chef, so I'll let Kyle deliver the eulogy:

Come Son Of Gore-Al, Kneel Before Zod!

We didn't listen! We didn't listen:

EARTH—Former vice president Al Gore—who for the past three decades has unsuccessfully attempted to warn humanity of the coming destruction of our planet, only to be mocked and derided by the very people he has tried to save—launched his infant son into space Monday in the faint hope that his only child would reach the safety of another world.

"I tried to warn them, but the Elders of this planet would not listen," said Gore, who in 2000 was nearly banished to a featureless realm of nonexistence for promoting his unpopular message. "They called me foolish and laughed at my predictions. Yet even now, the Midwest is flooded, the ice caps are melting, and the cities are rocked with tremors, just as I foretold. Fools! Why didn't they heed me before it was too late?"

Hubris is truly the folly of Man; remember, we were warned:

Too Sexy For Turkey

Turkey is often singled out as the most (or only) secular Muslim country, giving the impression that they're slightly less daffy and sexually repressed than their neighbors. Of course, that's only if you ignore the dictates of their Directorate on Religious Affairs:

"Women have to be more careful, since they possess stimulants," and they "have to be covered properly so as not to show their ornaments and figures to strangers."

Those are two of the controversial "dos" and "don’ts" given to Turkish women in the "Sexual Life" article that appeared last week on the website of Turkey’s Directorate on Religious Affairs, the Diyanet.

It added that if women have to communicate to the opposite sex they "should speak in a manner that will not arouse suspicion in one’s heart and in such seriousness and dignity that they will not let the opposite party misunderstand them."

That's right, Muslim women need to watch what they do and say very closely because if they don't, a man might not be able to prevent himself from raping them because they're acting like they want it. And this is one of the more moderate Muslim countries. Some other countries go so far as to even make people dress or cover the sex organs of goats and other animals, ostensibly because Muslim men can't control themselves when they spy some hot goat shaking it's hairy ass like a bearded little slut.

Why are so many Muslims sexually repressive of their women and yet also still incredibly pissed off? South Park has the answer; in this clip, Mrs. Garrison breaks it all down during Muslim Sensitivity Training: