Truth (Plus Lies)

More than blacks or gays or immigrants or lesbians or even Muslims, atheists are viewed as the least American, according to the survey. And those without a god are the last people most folks would want their children to marry.

“She’s been chancellor of Stanford,” Lenihan said on the air. “She’s got the patent resume of somebody that has serious skill. She loves football. She’s African-American, which would kind of be a big coon. A big coon. Oh my God. I am totally, totally, totally, totally, totally sorry for that.”

He meant to say ‘coup’. How weird that he said ‘coon’ twice. Otherwise, he could have passed it off as being tongue-tied. Even so, it’s too bad a guy has to lose his job for accidentally saying a slur. Clearly, he wasn’t spouting hate here - he didn’t even call anybody a coon, he just said the word. Oh well, I guess with radio, what you accidentally say still matters.

One of the lamer bits of news last week was that Isaac Hayes was quitting South Park because they made fun of Scientology. But now some people say that Isaac didn’t quit, and other Scientologists quit for him.

via Swiss Miss

Click for larger pic/more info

Ok, check it. Democrats hate President Bush. It’s one of their defining characteristics. They have their reasons too. Perhaps I should say we have our reasons because I’m pretty much a Democrat myself. So anyway, some of us blindly and idiotically hate Bush, but (hopefully) most of us have extremely good reasons for thinking the guy’s a terrible president. And incidentally, thinking Bush is a bad president is not a novel position.

So it’s totally awesome that when Russ Feingold introduces a measure to go on the record with that disapproval, all the other Democratic senators try their damnedest to bury it. They don’t want to vote on it because they don’t want to alienate the voters.

This is stupid. I mean, ok: is this censure thing probably a bad idea? Yeah. Would it probably alienate voters? Well, yeah. But do any Senate Dems really disagree with it? I mean: they believe he did wrong with wire-tapping, right? They do think he broke the law? Right?

So once again, we’re gonna stick with the “say what we think they want to hear instead of what we believe to be true” strategy that’s been kicking Republican ass for 7 years. This is the tipping point, people.

Via Wonkette, here’s a great Daily Show clip that gets to the heart of the matter:

Oh, and one other thing: I don’t consider myself a member of the “Democratic wing of the Democratic party”. I certainly don’t think the way out is for Democratic leaders to start sounding like the Huffington Post. It only adds to my frustration that every time a Democrat “grows a backbone” or whatever, all they’re really doing is targeting their message to the base. I wish they would just focus a little less on targeting altogether because they apparently suck at it.

Kind of a crazy story from BoingBoing

Victoria was a hoax UCLA co-ed, created by Cal’s Rally Committee. For the previous week, “she” had been chatting with Gabe Pruitt, USC’s starting guard, over AOL Instant Messenger. It got serious. Pruitt and several of his teammates made plans to go to Westwood after the game so that they could party with Victoria and her friends.

On Saturday, at the game, when Pruitt was introduced in the starting lineup, the chants began: “Victoria, Victoria.” One of the fans held up a sign with her phone number.

My verdict: One-third cruel, two-thirds funny.