Category: The Dish

Beagles are a start.

The good doctor had a rally … in World Of Warcraft land (yeah, the above is a screen-grab of a line of Ron Paul supporters):

"We rallied in Ironforge for a while, then we took the subway to Stormwind, then we went to Goldshire and eventually Booty Bay, Ratchet, The Crossroads, and then Orgrimmar." "There was even a long swim involved, which was really funny," another player said. "Considering there was 240 people all swimming at the same time."

More to come:

The RP Revolution guild is planning additional rallies in WoW in support of Ron Paul, and there are rumors of events in other virtual worlds (Second Life? LOTRO?).

Alas, our intrepid blogger-reporter got the time zone for the gathering wrong:

Allow me to explain something about gaming journalism: when you show up three hours late to an in-game event, there isn’t much of a story left to cover. Even my editors, who generally consider my faux pas to be the very height of comedy, would raise their eyebrows at this one. Time to pull this puppy out of the jaws of defeat, and get something that looked like a story out of this mess.

I interviewed a couple of my new guildmates. They were quite helpful. A few facts:

The rally went a bit better than expected.  The number of Ron Paul followers that appeared were appreciable.

The rally actually caused a queue on Whisperwind of more than 300 players waiting to log in.   

They filled five raids with Ron Paul supporters.  At 40 per raid, that was more than 200 people.

Various guildmates threw out different figures. One said that 200+ people had shown up. Another said the number was 240, another said 250 or more.

The march ended in Orgrimmar, with (presumably) the mass slaughter of the marchers at the hands of their Horde enemies. No word on how Ron Paul felt about this horrific tragedy.

A new word: the kind of sadness that is affecting many human beings as their climate and familiar landscape shifts:

It’s a mashup of the roots solacium (comfort) and algia (pain), which together aptly conjure the word nostalgia. In essence, it’s pining for a lost environment. "Solastalgia," as [Glenn Albrecht] wrote in a scientific paper describing his theory, "is a form of homesickness one gets when one is still at home.’"

I guess we’re all getting used to it. And, of course, this impulse toward environmentalism is a deeply conservative one. We need to harness it to wrench a shift in attitudes on climate change on the right.

(Photo: Peter McDiarmid/Getty.)

Another story:

A small-town child, I spent much of my American life daydreaming of a phenomenal job and a Manhattan apartment on a high floor. At 40, somebody did hire me for a phenomenal job, and I did rent a Manhattan apartment on a 39th floor. Four weeks after arrival in fall 2002, I met a glorious soul with a singular face. He’s Colombian, and his residency would expire, so I began to study the issue, and thereby did I learn something I’d never imagined: I’m actually unlucky to be American. Of course, I had to quit the job, we had to flee America, and we’ve lived in London for two years.

We’re still peeling ourselves up from the canvas, if you’ll pardon the aching sports cliche.

Obama’s college kids flock back to Iowa. Clinton appeals to older women. We’ll see if the youth vote finally makes a difference tonight.

A reader writes:

I was talking to an African-American friend last week and they mentioned their mother was seriously frightened for Obama that "something will happen to him if he is nominated" i.e. he will be assassinated. Is this a generational concern or more widespread? Have you picked up on any such concern?

I hear it all over the place – and it’s a common assumption among many African-Americans. I hope his security is getting tighter.

Chase Martin hears rumors of a caucus strategy.

Ahem:

Second, I suspect the Purdue poop-sniffing story has more to do with poor choice of dissertation topic,  I can’t wait to get up every morning and resume working on mine:

"Staying Power: The Mainstreaming of the American Hard-Core Film Industry."

Karl Rove reveals his personal motto. No, I’m not kidding. Then this for his greatest fear:

Living foolishly above my means and running out of money.

While Rove was in the White House, according to the GAO, his party and president added $32 trillion to the debt the next generation will have to pay.

Back to his roots. Dish coverage of the Kenya disturbances – and the Rwanda resonances – here. A helpful time-line of recent events here.