Month: April 2011

It's an ancient sport and it's hard not to agree with Richard Rushfield's indictment of the recent uncritical judging. Last night, mercifully, Haley's version of "Call Me" was so awful, screechy and perpetually out of tune, even Randy Jackson had to demur. Without DVR fast-forwarding, the show is unwatchable. But I still watch, and I still enjoy it as pure television. Pia's ouster was entirely predictable. She can sing but she has no personality. And, frankly, I've rarely heard performances like Jacob Lusk's on live television. He's a church choir ham, but you simply cannot deny the raw, boundless talent.

Lusk is also a cultural test. He would kill on RuPaul's Drag Race and is also a genuinely beautiful, sincere, uplifting vocalist. Can Idol get that gay? The sheer vocal ability Lusk has (only Casey rivals him) will test it.

We'll never know what Qaddafi's forces might have done in Benghazi had they reached there. But we do have some data on the shelling of Misurata:

Human Rights Watch has released data on Misurata, the next-biggest city in Libya and scene of protracted fighting, revealing that Moammar Khadafy is not deliberately massacring civilians but rather narrowly targeting the armed rebels who fight against his government. Misurata’s population is roughly 400,000. In nearly two months of war, only 257 people — including combatants — have died there. Of the 949 wounded, only 22 — less than 3 percent — are women. If Khadafy were indiscriminately targeting civilians, women would comprise about half the casualties.

That number is roughly confirmed here:

Doctors say more than 240 people have been killed and over 1,000 wounded in Misurata in the last month, as Gaddafi's forces have sought to retake the opposition bastion.

All of this is horrifying. But remember Dennis Ross' claim that 100,000 could be killed in Benghazi? Yes, Benghazi was even more of a symbol of the resistance than Misurata, but the discrepancy here is simply fantastic. Did we go to war on false, scare-mongering pretenses? That could never happen in America, could it?

A reader writes:

One of your readers wrote of my comment:

The Giving Tree is clearly a parable about parenthood, i.e true love. The irony of your readers telling their child never to be a “tree” is that parents are “trees” themselves. Good parents love their children so deeply they willingly sacrifice to make them happy.

A good parent doesn’t give in to a child’s every whim and demand.  A good parent puts limits on their child, and raises a child who can grow into an independent, responsible adult.  A good parent disciplines a poorly-behaved child.  It is the poor parent who “sacrifices” to give in to a child’s every selfish desire and is well on his/her way to starring on an upcoming episode of “Supernanny”.

Another writes:

The metaphor that the Tree is a parent only works until the Boy reaches adulthood. Because once we’re adults, we should NOT be sponging off our parents to that extent. We should have their love and emotional support, I hope, but at some point the tree should be allowed to enjoy her own branches and her own TRUNK, for goodness’s sake.

If the Tree is the parent, then the Boy has sold his mom’s house to pay for his condo in the city, and raided her retirement account to pay for his yacht. And now that he’s old and broke and his third trophy wife has left him (and without even any grandchildren), he’s returned to his mother’s tiny apartment and wants to move back in with mom. And she lets him.

No, I’m sorry, that’s not parental love or parental sacrifice. That’s enabling a user.

"Many of you have talked about the need to pay down our national debt. I listened, and I agree. We owe it to our children and our grandchildren to act now, and I hope you will join me to pay down $2 trillion in debt during the next 10 years. At the end of those 10 years, we will have paid down all the debt that is available to retire. That is more debt repaid more quickly than has ever been repaid by any nation at any time in history," – George W. Bush, in his first major address to Congress in 2001.

Glen Bolger and Jim Hobart compile evidence that the GOP will retain control of the House:

[E]ven presidents who easily win reelection do not have long coattails. Look at the last three reelected presidents–Reagan in 1984, Clinton in 1996 and Bush in 2004. Two were blowouts and one was close. In 1984, the GOP won 16 House seats. In 1996, the Dems picked up nine House seats. In the two blowout reelections, the president’s party picked up an average of just 12.5 seats. In the close election of 2004, Republicans won three seats. Across the three elections, the average pickup for the president is 9.3 seats. Obama is not likely to win a blowout reelection. Given Obama’s problems with white working class voters and the unifying effect he has on the GOP base, he is much more likely headed for either a close win or a loss, rather than a big win.

Alan I. Abramowitz counters:

What we can say, at this point, is that if Barack Obama wins a decisive victory over his Republican challenger in the presidential election, Democrats have a realistic chance of regaining control of the House. That is because even after redistricting Republicans will be defending a large number of seats in districts that were carried by President Obama in 2008, the 2012 electorate is likely to look much more like the 2008 electorate than like the 2010 electorate and straight-ticket voting is now much more prevalent than it was 30 or 40 years ago.

The Daily What spots "GWU Suicide Tragically Coincides with Obama Speech" on FoxNews.com:

“GWU officials tell Fox that police were notified about the incident around 2pm, which happens to be at the same time that President Obama was speaking… As of this writing, Fox has not been able to obtain reaction from the White House.”

Fox News: Just like The Onion, minus the kidding.

Gaw, a blogger at The Dabbler, can't stomach traditional Cockney cuisine:

Jellied eels somehow seem a more appropriate accompaniment to a funeral than baked meats. I can see the mourners exchanging regretful comments between lugubrious spoonfuls of silvery eel and golden jelly, turning away occasionally to suck on the odd piece of protuberant cartilage.

… I can’t think of another instance where I haven’t liked the local, traditional, everyday food of a place (unless it’s featured tripe): wurstl, pizza, croque monsieur, balti, burgers, gallettes, chips and mayo, waffles, herring (pickled and smoked), tapas, salt beef, stovies, noodles, fish and chips, tacos, kebabs, knishes, dosas, phô, pasties, pelmeni (OK, perhaps I’ll make an exception for that last one – the Russian equivalent of the Cockney pie). And so on. No, I really would like to enjoy Cockney grub. But I just can’t – it’s simply no good.

Just stay a while for the spotted dick and bubble and squeak. And yes, I grew up on both, which may explain this. George Orwell's classic defense is here. It reads like a blog-post avant-la-lettre.

(Photo of jellied eels by Flickr user Malias)

A reminder of an unlikely historical collision. From the ADN, April 3, 1993:

Sarah Palin, a commercial fisherman from Wasilla, told her husband on Tuesday she was driving to Anchorage to shop at Costco. Instead, she headed straight for Ivana. And there, at J.C. Penney's cosmetic department, was Ivana, the former Mrs. Donald Trump, sitting at a table next to a photograph of herself. She wore a light-colored pantsuit and pink fingernail polish. Her blonde hair was coiffed in a bouffant French twist.

''We want to see Ivana,'' said Palin, who admittedly smells like salmon for a large part of the summer, ''because we are so desperate in Alaska for any semblance of glamour and culture.''

That doesn't sound like the Palin of TLC fame, does it? I know which one I think is real.

PM Carpenter explains how threatening to hold the nation's credit-rating to ransom is just good political tub-thumping, but actually pushing "a vision that's a couple hundred years old, one steeped in American philosophical values of rugged individualism and collective rights and collective caring and virtually every Judeo-Christian ideal that can be Constitutionally woven into secular governance" … is "overtly partisan" and a "disgrace". Yep: that's about right.