I got to work early on Friday. I walked by the cube of a coworker who was there when I left at 2am the day before.
“Did you go home?”
“Nope.”
He was one of the coworkers who made my first year on the job so memorable. A young man with old eyes, he had served in the Balkans with the Army a few years earlier. He had many stories, but when pressed for a certain type of stories, carefully steered clear.
We talked for a bit on Friday morning, and by turns he had me laughing, and welling up. One of the things he said struck me hard: “there are two things you can do that will endear you for life to someone who’s served. Shake his hand and say Thank You; and invite him to your table. You don’t even need to speak with him. If you do, be prepared for a wild ride, because the enlisted folks tend to be a bit rough around the edges. But that acceptance, that acknowledgment – that means the world.”
It’s a small thing. Almost too small. That it could mean so much, because it’s so rare, is very sad. And I thought – after years of knowing this guy, I’ve never shaken his hand.
So I did. A small thing…but it still brings tears to my eyes. I like to think I support the troops…but how much? Not as much as I can.
There’s a veterans hospital in my city. I read today that Gene Simmons went there recently to visit our troops from Iraq and previous battles. He chastised Hollywood types for not managing the short drive down the 405, but they can swing private jet flights to Washington DC to rally against the war. I read that, and felt guilty. Hollywood might not be showing up…but neither have I.
Elizabeth Hasselbeck, her oft-stomped young right-leaning co-host on The View, has been holding her ground much better lately. On Wednesday, Elizabeth held her ground so firmly that at moments The View looked and sounded more like CNN’s Crossfire.
Elizabeth is being painted as the bad one, naturally; Alicia Silverstone, the day’s first guest, pointedly refused to greet her when she came out. And on Rosie’s “blog,” which reads more like the reject pile from the Deb Frisch Poetry Corner, the devastated Ro replies in typo-riddled haiku-esque belches of word fragments. Samples:
surrender rosie
in the sky
when painting
there is a point
u must step away from the canvas
as the work
is done
anymore would take away
ethnocentric u
can u not imagine urself
and iraqi woman
country invaded
by US
She’s obviously hurting – she lost it on national television – again – but did not successfully browbeat Elizabeth into submission, for once. I don’t take joy in Rosie’s pain, but I do note that her concern for the pain she causes others by her spittle-flecked commentary is nowhere to be seen. She wants to be an expert on topics of which she knows little to nothing, AND she wants to be liked by all regardless of the positions she takes.
Not going to happen. She has said too many hurtful things in her days on The View, and her unwillingness to step back from the abyss of rage has taken a heavy toll.
It’s too bad, really. Rosie achieved a very likeable persona in her earlier daytime show days. Back then, she was the “Queen of Nice,” a happy, goofy, kooshball-launching, Tom Cruise-worshipping daytime talk days. She brought out qualities her audience could relate to – starry-eyed fandom of celebrities, love of snacky cakes, and letting out the inner kid.
But even then, she had a dark side, when someone whose politics she abhorred came within range. She once treated Tom Selleck over the Second Amendment – as a guest on her show – the way a very nice lion treats a limping gazelle. And that was when she had some credits in the Niceness Bank. In 2007, if you’re not in lockstep with her Deeply Held Beliefs, abandon all hope.
As it is, Rosie’s days on The View – already numbered – may already be over. Because that blonde with the varying viewpoints is there, and she’s learning to stand her ground.
If there’s one thing a raging bully like Rosie can’t stand, is an opposing voice that she can’t shout down.
Jimmy Carter has pronounced George W. Bush the worst president in history. I think he qualified that a bit by specifying in terms of foreign policy, but that’s a small concession on his part at best.
Jimmy Carter. Calling someone else the Worst President Ever.
Jimmy. Carter.
That’s like being called irrational by Rosie O’Donnell.
I’m not George W. Bush’s biggest cheerleader this week, after his embrace of a Teddy Kennedy proposal on illegal immigration. And internationally, we aren’t popular.
But if “popular” is measured in terms of how big a doormat we are worldwide, Jimmy Carter was our most successful president ever. Manuel Noriega, the Ayatollah Khomeni, Leonid Brezhnev, Kim Il-Sung, Papa Doc Duvalier, Yassir Arafat – they couldn’t get enough of our grinning Georgia Peach in the 1970s, because they could act with absolute impunity. On the other side were all those dead and suffering Nicaraguans, Iranians, Americans abroad, Afghanis, Olympic athletes, Anwar Sadat….
Yeah. Jimmy Carter. He who hasn’t had a kind word for any president who followed him, of either party, for showing him up as the incompetent, America-last demagogue he was, and to this day remains. He won the Nobel Peace Prize chiefly for vocally opposing the war in Iraq and for badmouthing the sitting US president.
I briefly had respect for him when he was building houses for Habitat for Humanity. But when he started trying to be relevant in world affairs, his status as our least competent commander in chief, least astute judge of world affairs, and least compassionate judge of people whose boots he is unfit to be kicked in the butt by, is further…um, enhanced.
For all his faults as President, I cried when I heard of the death of Richard Nixon. I bawled like a baby when Reagan died. President Ford’s death saddened me, as do the deaths of almost all decent people.
Jimmy Carter is not decent. He flouts tradition and common sense when he speaks with such venom of those who currently hold office. I wasn’t a fan of Bill Clinton to put it mildly, but Carter’s public rudeness towards Clinton offended me deeply.
It’s unseemly to celebrate anyone’s death. Even Saddam Hussein’s execution left me with mixed emotions. I won’t dance on Carter’s grave when his time finally comes. But like Winston Churchill commenting on one of his political rivals responsible for Britain’s disastrous appeasement policies of the 1930s, it would have been better for our nation – and the planet – had Jimmy Carter never been born.
The first Republican debate – “moderated” by MSNBC’s Chris “Hardball” Matthews and Keith Olberman, and politico.com (“who?”) was closer to a Saturday Night Live parody of one. In that one, Rudy Giuliani fared the worst of the three major declared candidates; Mitt Romney, who seemed to be given first crack at every question, was widely considered to be the winner.
Tonight, in South Carolina, the moderators were the infinitely more serious folks at FOX News, and the result was a more substantive and surprising debate. Not every question was a winner, but Chris Wallace and Wendell Goler handled themselves well. Giuliani was much better this time; I would be surprised if he is not called the winner. Certainly he was the most improved, and coming into the debate ranked first in the state should only help his numbers. His passionate out-of-turn hammering of Ron Paul over 9/11 can only help him, and his references to Hillary Clinton are a stark reminder of the stakes in November 2008. He even got a laugh out of “Rudy McRomney sounds like a pretty good ticket to me.”
Romney was not given nearly as much air time tonight, and when he was called upon he was not treated with kid gloves. His responses weren’t terrible, but he didn’t stand out the way he did last week. He’s claiming “another victory,” but I doubt the polls will back that up.
As in the first debate, McCain’s performance was good but not stellar. His response on the Confederate Flag issue was solid, and earned him a good response from the South Carolina crowd that is surely as tired of the topic as anyone. His vocal loathing of torture does gain force considering his own experience as the victim of it. McCain and Romney traded some pointed barbs tonight; as the field shakes out that dynamic bears watching.
I’ll be happy to see many of the also-rans stop running. Ron Paul: not going to happen, thank heaven. Tom Tancredo: we need you in Congress. Mike Huckabee: stick around awhile, if only for the great sound bites. Duncan Hunter: I like him, but not likely. Tommy Thompson: the surname just reminds folks of Fred. You other two: thanks for playing.
There are those who are looking for the None of the Above candidate: Fred Thompson, Newt Gingrich, the draft-Condi contingent. Heck, if you want the first black, the first woman, or the first Mormon in the White House, just elect Gladys Knight and score the trifecta. She can sing the national anthem at her own inauguration, and rock the house. But not likely, so if anyone wants to jump in, they’d better hurry before someone breaks away from the pack.
We’re still months away from the first actual votes. Most folks aren’t paying attention yet. But they should.
Cory Doctorow has an interesting piece on the challenge of trolls (or regular folks who get bit by a 24-hour Troll Virus) and the means by which some are effectively dealing with them.
This technique sounds particularly intriguing:
Troll whisperers aren’t necessarily very good at hacking tools, so there’s always an opportunity for geek synergy in helping them to automate their hand-crafted techniques, giving them a software force-multiplier for their good sense. For example, Teresa invented a technique called disemvowelling — removing the vowels from some or all of a fiery message-board post. The advantage of this is that it leaves the words intact, but requires that you read them very slowly — so slowly that it takes the sting out of them. And, as Teresa recently explained to me, disemvowelling part of a post lets the rest of the community know what kind of sentiment is and is not socially acceptable.
When Teresa started out disemvowelling, she removed the vowels from the offending messages by hand, a tedious and slow process. But shortly thereafter, Bryant Darrell wrote a Movable Type plugin to automate the process. This is a perfect example of human-geek synergy: hacking tools for civilian use based on the civilian’s observed needs.
There will likely never be a foolproof DeTroll-O-Matic® which is where the conscientious moderator comes in. It is a particular challenge when the posters-behaving-badly are regulars – even more so when it’s several regulars who are suddenly at each others’ throats.
I try not to pattern my life after the oeuvre of Kenny Rogers, but I try to follow his suggestion: Know when to hold ‘em. Know when to fold ‘em. Know when to walk away. Know when to run. Sometimes it calms down on its own. Sometimes it’s merely the first wave of an apocalyptic Scheißesturm. I’m not that great at moderating; I’m more bipolar, leaping straight from hands-off to heads-on-pikes, and back again.
Hey, it worked on Highlander. That show’s message consistently boiled down to “Don’t be a dick. Or die where you stand.”
I’ve enjoyed Jonathan Coulton’s music for a while now. Coulton, a former programmer who quit his day job to become a full-time musician and song writer, set a goal to do a “thing a week” – write and record a song and post it to his blog – every week, for a year. Considering such an aggressive schedule, Coulton’s output is surprisingly good.
From melodic covers of rap classics (“Baby Got Back”) to originals (“Code Monkey”), Coulton’s music trends both folksy and geeky, with a wit that is at turns subtle and juvenile…tailor made for the age of YouTube and MySpace. Coulton offers many of his songs for free on his site, and the purchases are high-quality, DRM-free MP3s. He also offers free streaming of all songs, lyrics, background notes, and fan comments and videos for each song.
For example, here is Coulton’s ode to the useful but notoriously time-sapping Flickr, best experienced as a music video:
A mild content warning – some of his songs have language not suitable for all audiences (“First of May”). Still, there’s something for everyone, even my longsuffering wife (“Ikea”).
Not much to report: work and family are taking up 120% of my time. I miss hanging out with my gerbilly friends. I have a few thousand China pictures to plow through and share. I have a few dozen Gerbilee pictures to plow through and share.
