It’s wine time. Long day. Got a grill (I went for one that is one side gas and one side charcoal, because I prefer charcoal but sometimes I don’t plan shit in time and need to use gas), then went to the Farmer’s Market in Bridgeville and bought a bunch of stuff. Planning a party for 20 peeps is a lot of work.
It Hurts Too Much To Laugh…
And I’m too old to cry:
Via Josh Rosenau’s fine blog Thoughts from Kansas, this video compilation of Miss USA thoughts on evolution seems a perfect comedy/tragedy hit to engross whilst consuming the first of the weekend cocktails:
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Miss Connecticut gets the prize for stating the obvious with no fuss or bother. As for the rest, I couldn’t stick to it long enough to tally the full march of folly. Fortunately, Josh kindly provides a complete transcript at the link above, for those gluttonous for punishment.
But of course, this is nothing that a voucher + religious charter school education reform can’t solve.
If the Soviets launched Sputnik today, we’d ramp up to match them with a private sector RFP seeking designs for the flying dinosaur that carried Jesus to heaven.
But I can’t get too worked up on this fine afternoon. The only question I’m going to tackle is how much lime to put into that lowball glass.
Cheers! (and consider this a summer surfeit of open threaded goodness).
Open Thread: A Song for Doug Mataconis
Run, Do Not Walk, For the Smelling Salts
Imagine this: Let’s say it’s 1948, Strom Thurmond is about to lead the Dixiecrat ticket, and rumors are flying about a certain young lady who he might have fathered. This young lady is a “negro”, as Strom would say in polite company, because her mother is. Would it be bad for other people of color, and their supporters, to entertain the possibility that Strom may have fathered a child with a black woman? Would it be OK for a black columnist, or a white comedian, to archly point out that Strom himself might be a perpetrator of miscegenation? Or would it set back the cause of civil rights, even though there’s nothing whatsoever wrong with a black woman and white man having a sexual relationship, or even getting married, despite the fact that it was illegal throughout the South at the time? Should the commentators of the time have treated Strom with kid gloves?
Fast forward to today, and answer the same question about Marcus Bachmann, gay-hating Christianist pray-away-the-gay “therapist”, who is at the minimum a bigot and perhaps a closet case. Is it OK for Dan Savage and Jon Stewart to wonder if he’s gay, and do so in an sarcastic and mocking tone? Or should we run for our fainting couches as June Thomas and James Joyner recommend?
My guess is that the only people who are seriously offended by those wondering if Marcus is gay are probably people for whom “gay” is a terrible insult, and they’re also the people who oppose gay civil rights. Similarly, in 1948, the people who would be extremely offended by the notion of Strom fathering a black child are those who opposed civil rights for African Americans. Well-intended non-bigots like Joyner and Thomas, who are not offended by the notion of homosexuality, shouldn’t feel the need to carry water for someone who’s devoted his life to ruining the lives of vulnerable teenagers and denying civil rights to fellow citizens. Marcus Bachmann doesn’t deserve it.
Also, too: I’m looking forward to Dan Savage’s response on this — here’s a taste.
Run, Do Not Walk, For the Smelling SaltsPost + Comments (154)
The Witch or the Sorcerer
Not surprisingly, people went with the sorcerer.
Why we are all doomed
For some masochistic reason that I need to take up with my therapist I like listening to news while I work. Even on good days this can expose me to dangerous levels of conventional wisdom, and this is not a good day. Who can forget the awful ‘so where is your plan to destroy the country?’ argument from that Social Security crapola in 2005.
Here is Gail Chaddock of the Christian Science Monitor just now on the NPR show Tell Me More Here and Now. I typed a transcript from the audio stream here.
I think the disconnect between the president and the Republicans, for sure, [is that] they don’t like it when he says, ‘I’m waiting for them to show me a serious plan’. They’ve been waiting all year, ‘we want to see your plan. We want to see you commit in writing to trillions in spending cuts. We don’t want to be the only ones out there with a plan’. Same thing with the Senate Democrats. They have yet to produce a plan either. So there is still a real disconnect about how Washington talks about this issue that makes it much harder to solve it.
Kill me now.
Open Thread
Hosting a party for my father’s 70th, so I have a ton of preparations to do. I’ll check in when I can.