Year: 2013

Many members are welcoming Bowie and me:

Congrats on the new family member. You said about the missing leg: “it is, of course, the first thing you notice about her”. Not necessarily.  We have a three-legged labrador.  Time after time, we’ve had people over for dinner, only to have them exclaim at the end of the evening, “Wow, I just realized your dog has three legs!”

Another:

Congratulations on finding Bowie, who “runs like the wind.”  Shortly after adopting our three-legged dog, Ceiba, my wife and I were walking with Ceiba and our other dog, Chloe, along the C&O Canal towpath outside D.C. Both dogs were off leash. When a deer ran past in the nearby woods, it was Ceiba who led the charge, leaping over fallen trees and crashing through the brush. Both dogs were soon out of sight, their barking growing ever fainter. So much for the handicap.

Fortunately, the deer was faster than the dogs. On another walk along the canal, Ceiba charged into the brush and reappeared with a freshly caught squirrel between her jaws. Hopping along ahead of us (there was no way she was going to give up that rodent), she proceeded to devour the animal, starting by crunching into its skull.

Dog paddling seems to be the only thing our girl can’t do; it’s tough when you’re missing a front leg. At the local park, she’s got dozens of fans, especially kids – “Look, the three-legged dog!” Ten years on, she remains a joy and an inspiration.

Another:

Welcome to the three-legged beagle club! Jake came to my wife Sharon and me via a beagle rescue organization near Nashville (where we live) several years ago. His previous owners had him tied to a chain in the yard. While they were mowing the yard, the chain had become wrapped around the shaft of the mower and Jake was pulled under, mangling his left front leg beyond saving. Afterward, they were planning to turn him over to a shelter before the rescue organization took him in.

The two things that are most amazing about Jake (it’s hard to narrow down to just two!) are that his default setting is happy – he wakes up wagging his tail every morning – and, as you note about Bowie, he is utterly oblivious to his handicap. Nobody has ever told Jake that missing a leg is a problem, so for him it isn’t. He digs massive holes in the yard, he runs after squirrels and plays with his “sisters” – our two other dogs – and never gives a thought that there is some sort of problem with his curious, hoppy gait.

He is also, of course, nothing but trouble. As Bowie will be.

Another:

One of our older greyhounds got bone cancer in his right rear leg.  Instead of putting him down as everybody suggested, a vet surgeon removed his leg and he happily lived for three more years as a tripod … until the cancer returned with a vengeance.  But those three years were glorious and happy for him. He could go for long walks and run on the beach and splash in the water and swim though waves.  He was also one heck of a draw (and a ham); people would cross the street to say hello to him and give him an ear rub.

And another:

Welcome to the world of a 3-legged rescue dog. We got Lego (formerly Rambo, but he’s no Rambo) about a year and a half ago. A lab mix, he is the sweetest, most joyful dog I’ve ever known. I couldn’t be happier that my wife took him in.

Another asks:

Who is rescuing whom?

The news agency is under fire for allegedly killing stories that would upset the Chinese government. Gwynn Guilford and Gideon Lichfield have details:

The New York Times reported last week that Bloomberg had scrapped an investigative report linking China’s richest man with top party officials, as well as another article on children of Chinese leaders working at foreign banks. The Financial Times followed up today (paywall) with similar allegations. According to both papers, Matt Winkler, Bloomberg’s editor-in-chief, spiked the reports after they had already been fact-checked and vetted by lawyers; he allegedly told reporters on a conference call that if Bloomberg ran stories of that nature, it risked being “kicked out of China.” Winkler and other senior executives say he made no such claim, and suggested that the stories had not been scrapped but merely weren’t yet good enough to publish.

CJR’s Dean Starkman fears the worst:

News “employees” (as the Times calls them) don’t usually put their jobs on the line to talk about stories they feel are being spiked (or “postponed,” as Bloomberg puts it), no matter how bitter the internal arguments. …

There is rarely a “smoking gun” in such matters, so to speak, and it’s a difficult argument to win outright, so most frustrated reporters don’t go public on such matters, even through leaks. Plus, generally there aren’t that many people involved in an internal controversy like this, so sources are more vulnerable to exposure than they might be in your usual inside-the-newsroom stories, like, for instance, Politico’s gossipy piece on Jill Abramson. The allegations there were so vague and catty that anyone could have been the source. That’s not the case in the Bloomberg affair. And yet whomever the sources were leaked the dispute anyway, in some detail and at considerable career risk – with little upside. That’s unusual and, in my opinion, it tips the scales in their favor.

Fallows thinks through the company’s motivations:

The less-damaging rationale for this decision is Bloomberg’s concern that its reporters might be kicked out of China. The more-damaging suspicion is that the company was worried that it would lose subscribers in China for its cash-cow Bloomberg financial terminals.

But he adds that the real story here is China itself:

[L]et’s not lose sight of the larger point: Bloomberg is (apparently) wrong for acquiescing, but the real problem is obviously with the parts of the Chinese government that are afraid of what domestic and international reporters would say. Which brings us to the day’s second bit of downbeat news: the Chinese government’s refusal to renew a visa for Paul Mooney, a well-respected reporter who has spent his career covering Asia. Apparently the government didn’t like his tone about Tibet. This is part of a much more widespread pattern of making it hard for international journalists to get into China.

This is not the way a confident, big-time government behaves.

Noah Berlatsky suspects that artist David Trumble’s efforts to satirize Disney princess imagery – by depicting real-life feminists in that style – may have the opposite effect:

The point here is supposed to be that, contrary to what Disney might be suggesting, strong, inspiring women—female role models—don’t need to be princesses, and that turning them into princesses trivializes them. Heroes don’t need sparkles, and sparkles distract from the heroines. In fact, though, Trumble’s drawings don’t so much satirize princesses as, rather wonderfully, validate them.

In some cases the satire works. Turning Anne Frank into “The Holocaust Princess” (later changed to “Diary Princess”) is, baldly tasteless, as Trumble intends. The princess narrative of wealth, prestige, and gutsy triumph sits very uncomfortably next to the persecution and mass tragedy of the Holocaust. The cute, sparkly, flowery dress and big-eyed cheer comes across as inappropriate, ghoulish irony; her blank cheer almost seems to mock Frank’s real life. …

But, as it turns out, making Gloria Steinem a princess is not silly and artificial. Instead, it is awesome. Which suggests, first of all, that femininity is, or can be, awesome. It can be smart, or fierce, or courageous, just like masculinity can. In his caption for Princess Malala Yousafzai, Trumble writes, “She risked all for what she believed in, for education and equality for young girls everywhere! But never mind that … Look! Sparkles!” In the drawing itself, though, those feminine sparkles don’t make Yousafzai less determined. On the contrary, they seem part of the determination and the commitment. Gloss them as cynically as you will, but if you put stars on Malala Yousafzai’s dress, those stars mean hope.

(Image courtesy of David Trumble)