Category: News

This damn cheap verbal construction sticks in my craw and wiggles and twists. I don’t care to hear this abomination spoken (and I have one friend who applies it to his conversations like barbecue sauce on over-cooked hamburgers), and I find it disreputable when professional writers use it in things for which they were paid.

Current offenders:

• Richard Roeper, Chicago Sun-Times:
  

  Conservative commentators who seized on this tragedy to complain that the so-called liberal media was more interested in abused Iraqi prisoners than a murdered American civilian are either lying or stupid.

• Sara Shipley, St. Louis Post-Dispatch:
  

  The Howard Bend Levee District is nearly finished with a $25 million upgrade designed to protect against a so-called 500-year flood, or one that has a 1 in 500 chance of happening in any given year.

Face it, “so-called” is the “alleged” without the elegance and without, you know, actual allegations. So-called is the drop-in equivalent of an “authorities say” asterisk in a headline, a written sneer that would be denied if someone questioned a speaker who added the equivalent tone of voice. It’s making air-quotes with the English language, and it deserves all the mockery we can summon.

I’m almost tempted to start a “So-Called Watch” blog, but given the underwhelming popularity of Pop-Up Mocker, I think not.

In his column today, Roeper of the Chicago Sun-Times endears himself to the other half:

You go first.
In a recent column you brought out the big guns, God and the Vatican,
to condemn Rush Limbaugh for his support of the troops in the so-called
Iraqi prisoner abuse. Who you gonna call on now to comment on the
televised beheading of an American civilian — the liberal high
authority Michael “Freaky” Moore? Let’s just see if this cold-blooded
murder gets as much air time from the media as the naked butts of Iraqi
prisoners.

Alberta Dabrowsky, Lake Zurich

The entire world
should be condemning that horrific, cowardly murder. As for press
coverage: the beheading of the American civilian is a huge story and
was treated as such. Conservative commentators who seized on this
tragedy to complain that the so-called liberal media was more
interested in abused Iraqi prisoners than a murdered American civilian
are either lying or stupid.

My response, of course, is that I read his column online every day Monday through Thursday, so I guess it’s obvious which of the two I am.

Mr. Roeper can be reached for comment at rroeper@suntimes.com.

I, too, have a crush on my best friend!

Should I tell her?

Signed,
Are You A Psychic, Too, Because Your Columnist Name Sounds Like What A Psychic Would Call Herself -Notice How I Subtly Slipped A Second Question Into My Letter For Free

At OpinionJournal.com, Peggy Noonan examines the terrorist threat to Newark. Her analysis:

• Because the Port of Newark is an easy target:
  

  He [Tony Soprano] comes across a documentary about the potential use by terrorists of the nearby Port of Newark. The Port of Newark, the biggest port on the eastern seaboard, receives millions of ship containers each year; the feds say they can check only 2%; terrorists could easily smuggle in a dirty nuke.

  Tony becomes alarmed. He knows Port Newark. The mob is there, his people are there. It is corrupt, lazy, badly run. Suddenly he realizes there’s nothing between his home and kaboom but a chain-link fence and a mall.

• Because the Port of Newark is an attractive target:
  

  Port Newark is just beyond the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor. A hit on Newark would cause panic in al Qaeda’s great target, New York–stock market crash, terror in the streets. A hit on Port Newark would deal a blow rich in practical and symbolic terms.

• Because New Jersey is becoming the center, in America, of the movement for cloning:
  

  But there’s more and for me it’s more central, and the reason my pings began. New Jersey is becoming the center, in America, of the movement for cloning. Its governor just signed the most liberal cloning bill in the United States. There is money in cloning research, and status: We’re the coming intellectual center of science! We’re not just the Meadowlands and the mob, we’re Princeton and Einstein! There is greater suburban affluence to be gained, and higher tax revenues for politicians to spend on community centers built through no-bid contracts by big contributors. The Robert Torricelli Psychotherapy Institute for the Differently Abled. The Jim McGreevey Carpal Tunnel Trauma Research Facility.

Cripes, spare me further “Why do they hate us?” projection of whatever bugaboos the commentator has about America in the discussion of terrorism. Who cares? Don’t solve the projected problem, eliminate those who would blow up Newark for whatever reason.

And prevent Peggy Noonan from being cloned, ever. For her sake, and for the sake of generations of future Americans who read conservative commentators.

Check out John Kerry’s bravado here:

Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry warned his political opponents on Monday against attacking his outspoken wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, saying, “They’re going to have to go through me.”

That’s a pretty metaphor, Massachusetts. But we here in the midwest respect our elders just enough to not beat them to a pulp when they start talking smack.

Important insight from WebMD Health News:

Commercials featuring topless models with buff bodies and unattainable physiques may make the viewers feel depressed and unhappy with their bodies.

Sound familiar? It is, but this time it’s the men’s turn to feel insecure.

Actually, it doesn’t sound familiar at all, but then again I have what they call “self-esteem” mostly because I have an accurate depiction of why my body is the way it is, and I’m content with it. Sure, I’d like a little flatter stomach, but that would require more time on the gerbil machines and fewer Guinnesses.

So pardon me when I am skeptical when a woman psychologist from Central Florida University intones, seriously:

“The level of muscularity and attractiveness that are idealized in the media often are not attainable for the average man,” says researcher Stacey Tantleff-Dunn, professor of psychology at the University of Central Florida. “Men see more of a discrepancy between how they want to look, or think they need to look, and the image they see in the mirror. Such discrepancies can cause the dissatisfaction and low self-esteem that lead to extreme and often unhealthy actions, such as eating disorders, exercising too much, and steroid abuse.”

You know what I think when I see an idealized level of muscularity and attractiveness in the media? I think, “Hey, I’m in the media!” or “Hey, man, I wish I had time to spend four hours a day in a gym; of course, I would spend it drinking Guinness and reading or napping in a recliner, but the time would be nice.”

I have not posted on this topic much, gentle readers, because the zone has been quite flooded with floor-to-ceiling coverage of the topic. It’s a bad thing, but not as bad a thing as it’s been made out. The coverage certainly outweighs the offense.

I don’t have anything to add. Read what this guy says about it. He covers it.

(Link seen on Instapundit.)

Pardon me while I mock the editing of the ABCNews.com piece entitled Aisles of Fraud? Faked Slip-and-Fall Accidents Cost Customers, wherein we find this gem:

Debbie Williams, a fortune teller, was caught faking a fall in aisle nine of a New York City grocery store. Williams — who is also a fortune teller — knew she was going to fall before she walked into the store.

I must be psychic, too, because I knew before the second sentence that Debbie Williams was a fortune teller!

Thank goodness experts have acknowledged that global obesity is not solely the fault of the United States.

However, we should be act unilaterally and institute the world-wide famine, as previously planned, to reduce the weight of people who currently are getting too much to eat. Do it for the Children!

Charles Schmucker, senator from a tiny little state called New York, posits more Federal tax money, contributed by people in Mississippi and Wyoming, should go to New York:

The federal government should give New Yorkers unused housing subsidies earmarked for other states, Sen. Charles Schumer said yesterday.

From the many, one, brother, as long as it’s one of the populous states whose overregulation is choking its populace. Put your fingers around my neck, too, please.

Newt Gingrich, on OpinionJournal.com, explains a double standard at work:

The media coverage of the violations of American law against Iraqi prisoners is in peril of setting a dangerous double standard for America and the Arab world. The administration must be very careful in explaining how we feel and what we will do. Otherwise our enemies will use our own words as an excuse to exploit this double standard.

To be clear, a very small number of Americans did a terrible thing at Abu Ghraib. And because we live under the rule of law, and we take protecting the Constitution seriously, the accused will be investigated and, when guilty, punished. The incidents themselves are to be condemned.

Some have called for Donald Rumsfeld to resign. However, he has led the process of exposing the wrongdoing and investigating the charges. Moreover, he will see to it that the accused get a fair and honest trial, in which there is a presumption of innocence until guilt is proved and the guilty are punished. That due process is something we as Americans should be proud of, and unequivocal about. In view of Mr. Rumsfeld’s significant contribution to our security, this incident will be but a footnote.

Explaining our anger at these misdeeds and our determination to punish the wrongdoers is appropriate. Appearing overly contrite or overly apologetic, however, will be a big mistake.

What he said.

On the front page of its NewsWatch section, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch offers pro and con, emphasis on the con, of whether another casino would be good for the St. Louis area:

• (No) Opponents of new casino tell tales of addiction’s toll
  

  Looking back, Connie realizes she should have seen the problem. Her family members always wanted her to take a separate car to the casinos – they knew she would want to leave long before they did.

  She should have known the $50 here, $100 there that they borrowed was not a coincidence. She had lost a few bucks playing bingo before, she knew grocery bills were hard to cover sometimes. No big deal. They always paid her back.

  Had she been asked three years ago to vote on a new casino in Lemay, where she lives, “heck, yes, I was all for it,” said Connie.

  The loan requests grew larger and more frequent.

  “They ran themselves low on one person, and they couldn’t go to them anymore, so they would start on other people, and pretty soon, I realized they were all hitting on me,” Connie said of her family members.

  None of these relatives had gambling problems before casinos came to the St. Louis area. They had never visited Las Vegas. There was a history of alcoholism in the family, and Connie smoked through three pregnancies before she finally quit.

  “I know about addiction,” she says.

  So we start with an anecdotal lead that, I guess, will support the argument that government should pad the harsh walls of reality to make it safe for the least responsible or intelligent members of society, because if they can, stupid people will do stupid things.

• (Yes) Supporters for new casino see cash for education
  

  Last week, Hancock High School Principal Jason Naucke bluntly told his students that if they even considering drinking, don’t bother showing up for the prom. Fifth graders got a one-hour lesson from a police officer about the consequences of joining a gang, the 15th week of a 17-week course urging them to reject drugs and violence.

  Just another week in the “values” curriculum at Hancock Place School District, while the district’s superintendent was pushing for a casino to come to the neighborhood.

  A casino means money, and Superintendent Ed Stewart hasn’t seen enough of that.

  A new “casino” would mean “tax revenue” that “scare-quoted” “educators” could [Please punch up with use of term so-called. –Ed.] use in promoting “values” in their so-called curricula, and the unintelligent educators “educators” don’t capture the “irony” of raising money from gambling while promoting other “values” (which are obviously “scare-quoted” because anything valued by someone other than the journalist is “suspect”). Thus begins the story favoring the casino.

Criminey, I pay money to have this delivered. At least I am getting some use out of it now that hockey season’s over.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch profiles the president of the St. Louis Zoo. The lead: How he fired up his wife to think about conservation:

Perhaps the only wild creatures Melody Noel studied in law school were F. Lee Bailey and Alan Dershowitz. But today, Noel is an expert on penguins, cheetahs and addaxes.

“Farmers in Botswana are shooting cheetahs because they eat their livestock,” Noel said. “It’s going to take some creative solutions and some time to work through the problem.”

Noel has no background in biology, but she is married to St. Louis Zoo president Jeffrey Bonner. And anyone who lives in Bonner’s world – whether for two decades, like Noel, or two years, like the Zoo’s 1,000 employees – invariably adopts his passions.

“I am a perfect example of a convert,” said Noel, who practices domestic law. “These are not things I thought about before, but he knows how to get people fired up.”

You mean, farmers shoot wild cats that attack their domesticated animals? The horror! As mountain lions return to scourge the mountainous country of our own United States, I only hope the farmers in Botswana only use one bullet per cheetah and have a nice, fashionable pelt to wear afterwards.

But what’s the point of the anecdote? The great Mesmero can convince people who would marry him to join him in an inchoate collection of beliefs about the circle of life as it exists outside of Disney cartoons. So what makes him different from any other professor?

Now Bonner wants to convert St. Louisans and one of the city’s most beloved institutions. Soon, he promises, visitors will see a new sort of St. Louis Zoo, one that confronts the destruction of the wild, the slaughter of endangered species and the hard choices the public must face if it wants to change the world. This new Zoo that Bonner envisions looks a lot like the old one: The train still runs, sea lions still flip for fish and Raja still roams the sprawling River’s Edge. But with the fun comes a sober message of conservation and responsibility.

“What we have failed to do is really show people the world around us. In Africa, the loggers are putting in the roads, and the hunters go in with their AK-47s and slaughter every animal they see.

I guess he’s saying that he would prefer Africa to continue with substinence farming, famines, and starvation, since that lack of development didn’t threaten nature.

How daft is he?

To Bonner, who studied anthropology, the human element matters most.

“The environment is never the problem. It’s the people that are the problem – always the people,” he said.

Pretty damn daft, if you ask me. People are always the problem. Except people like him.

“Conservation ultimately requires compromise,” Bonner said. “I think people struggle with that all of the time, but if you look at the big picture, there are ways of balancing your lifestyle with the good you do.”

In Bonner’s case, he drives a sport utility vehicle, eats meat and wears leather shoes.

So he proffers this compromise: cattle farmers, African loggers, everyone outside of a pampered urban setting, you’ve got to do what he and his type dictate, based on theories and “hard emotions.” He, on the other hand, will continue to make six figures, eat meat, drive a sport utility vehicle, wear leather shoes, and promises never to get attacked by a big cat while jogging or allowing his pets or livestock to tempt carnivores. Also, he’s willing to suffer through puff pieces in the newspaper and colleagues who gush:

Jerry Borin, director of the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium, calls Bonner “a big-picture person.”

“He is always two or three steps ahead but he brings people along,” Borin said. “That’s important in the zoo community. We are not that large of an industry, and by nature we have to cooperate.”

That big picture? It’s a large, flattering self-portrait depicting Bonner as nobility, willing to do what’s best for his serfs, whether it’s popular or not.

Update:
What does a mountain lion or cheetah think of a zookeeper who’s not afraid to admit he wears leather?
Atkins-friendly.

Sorry, I couldn’t help it. I am also toying with a global outreach program called “Bullets for Botswana,” but that takes more effort than making jokes.

At the risk of imperiling my marriage, I shall link to this piece, entitled Second Hand Joke, wherein Dr. Sydney Smith recognizes that smoking’s bad, but also that trampling individual rights for abstractions such as “public health” or “the good of the individual” are worse. Read:

Smoking is a filthy habit. It causes bad breath. It stains the fingers and the teeth. It rots the lungs and it takes the breath away. Spend a day in any doctor’s office and you can quickly spot the long time smokers, such is its impact on the body. And death by tobacco is a truly horrible death, with the final days spent gasping for breath and drowning in ones own secretions while the doctors look on helplessly.

And yet, as loathsome as smoking is, it’s hard not to feel sorry for smokers. Every morning I pass small clusters of them in front of the hospital, just around the corner from the “No Smoking” sign, like high school hoodlums who smoke just a step away from school property. Some of them are hospital employees, puffing off job stress during their breaks. Others are patients, with nothing but flimsy hospital gowns and robes to protect them against the elements while they seek solace in tobacco. It seems cruel to make them smoke outside. The hospital has a special room for prayer. Couldn’t they have a special room for smoking?

But then, the world has become a cruel place for smokers. Not only must they huddle outside at work to indulge, they increasingly must also huddle outside when they’re enjoying a night on the town. Over a hundred cities in the U.S. have banned smoking in public places such as bars and nightclubs. Last month, Ireland banned smoking in pubs. Now Scotland is under pressure to do the same, and the EU is flirting with its own ban.

The rationale for these bans is that smoking in public is not only a nuisance for non-smokers, but a health threat. While it’s true that an asthmatic non-smoker may have problems working or relaxing in a smokey bar, anti-smoking advocates have lately drastically stepped up their claims regarding the dangers of second hand smoke. A CDC official, writing in the British Medical Journal warned people with heart disease to avoid all buildings that allowed any smoking, claiming that just thirty minutes of inhaling second hand smoke could cause heart attacks. Apparently, even miniscule amounts of tobacco smoke can turn your coronary arteries from this into this.

Slate published a couple good articles on Friday dealing with prosecutors and their new cudgels with which to beat the citizenry into proper obsequiousness. Read:

• Everyday Obstruction: The government finds a new way to nail old tax evaders
  How prosecutors nail people, like Martha Stewart, Frank Quattrone, and Jayson Williams with obstruction when they cannot make a case for an actual, you know, crime.
• Zero to Life: The injustice of white-collar sentencing rules
  How a “fraud” that causes Microsoft stock price to fall less than a nickel could cost the perpetrator life in prison.

Read them, and weep that your legislators will forever more empower prosecutors until such time as we’re all in prison, and they have to go after each other for wrongful prosecution and corruption.

Eugene Kane writes another of his screeds in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, this one entitled “Abuse of detainees nothing new in U.S.“:

The president of the United States of America assured the rest of the world Wednesday that images of prisoners in Iraq being mistreated by their American captors were just an aberration.

“People in Iraq must understand that I view those practices as abhorrent,” Bush said on Arab television, referring to alleged abuse of prisoners by the U.S. military at Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad.

“They must also understand that what took place in that prison does not represent the America that I know.”

Maybe he ought to tell it to Curtis Harris, a Milwaukee man in danger of never walking again after an encounter with Milwaukee police officers last December.

Kane chronicles an aberration, an abhorrent treatment of a detainee by police in Milwaukee. I guess he equates it with the Iraq story because he’s trying to indicate that it’s standard operation of The Man whether He’s a cop on the beat or a soldier on patrol. Typical Kane.

Blech. I am sorry I bothered you with it, gentle reader.

Unlike this story, at least the media –the Cincinatti Enquirer anyway–caught a story of Bush’s common empathy:

Lynn Faulkner, his daughter, Ashley, and their neighbor, Linda Prince, eagerly waited to shake the president’s hand Tuesday at the Golden Lamb Inn. He worked the line at a steady campaign pace, smiling, nodding and signing autographs until Prince spoke:

“This girl lost her mom in the World Trade Center on 9-11.”

Bush stopped and turned back.

“He changed from being the leader of the free world to being a father, a husband and a man,” Faulkner said. “He looked right at her and said, ‘How are you doing?’ He reached out with his hand and pulled her into his chest.”

Faulkner snapped one frame with his camera.

“I could hear her say, ‘I’m OK,’ ” he said. “That’s more emotion than she has shown in 21/2 years. Then he said, ‘I can see you have a father who loves you very much.’ “

“And I said, ‘I do, Mr. President, but I miss her mother every day.’ It was a special moment.”

Do you think John Kerry would have given her an awkward pat on the stomach?

(Link seen originally on Wizbang!, but it’s everywhere by now.)

In his current column in the Chicago Sun Times, stings Bob Greene in a simile:

My room at the David Intercontinental looked down on the beach. The first night I couldn’t sleep, so went downstairs to slog through the Mediterranean and join what looked like about 10,000 people partying on the sand. I expected young adults dancing the hora. What I found were high school students, some falling-down drunk, clutching tequila bottles. I tried assessing the mood of Israeli youth, which seems to have absorbed our core American values. “I want to be a star!” exuded Tal Zolti, 16. Their English was good, but I started feeling like Bob Greene crashing the junior prom, and after one kid called me “Grandpa” I decided it was time to head back upstairs.

Remember, Bob Greene resigned his position at the Chicago Tribune after having an affair with a seventeen-year-old girl (legal in Illinois, fellows!) whom he met on the job.

Me, I am disappointed. Not because I am a fan of Greene’s, which I am, but because I’ve been polishing my own Greene zingers since I’m reading Bob Greene’s America and will undoubtedly deploy those zingers in the online review.

Unfortunately, now they’ll seem derivative of a real writer. Thanks a lot, Mr. Steinberg.