Ave atque vale Alex Anderson, the cartoonist who created Rocky and Bullwinkle.
Rocket J. Squirrel and Bullwinkle The Moose were the perfect pair: One hard-headed, the other noodle-headed. They were don’t-miss TV every night.
And don’t miss this tribute in the Washington Post:
Hokey Smoke! Our Top-15 ‘Rocky & Bullwinkle’ Quotes (*RIP, Alex Anderson)
Cut to:
1. Rocky: “And now, here’s something we hope you’ll really like!”
Like?
Loved Rocky and Bullwinkle.
Sunday Boston Herald Page One screamer:
ACEBOOK FLAP
Mass. districts eye cyber-crackdown on teachers
Lede of piece (on Page Nine – so much for the cover story):
Teachers could be disciplined or fired for friending students on Facebook and school administrators would be encouraged to comb the Web for cyber-transgressions under a new policy being pitched to Massachusetts districts.
It’s mind-boggling that this would even be an issue. Handy rule of thumb #1: No teacher should ever friend a student on Facebook. It’s just plain creepy.
But, according to the Herald, “some education experts and teachers worry the policy is too restrictive and invades privacy.”
Get a load of this one:
“It’s inappropriate for anyone to tell a teacher that they can’t have a picture of themselves drinking or smoking – I don’t consider that anybody’s business,” said June Talvitie-Siple, 56, a former supervisor and science teacher at Cohasset High who was forced to resign this summer after she called kids “germ bags” on Facebook and labeled the town’s residents snobby. “I think it’s dangerous to decide what is inappropriate and what is appropriate.”
Hey, June: Didn’t you just say what’s “inappropriate?”
Handy rule of thumb #2: Anyone who can’t be consistent from one sentence to the next shouldn’t be allowed to teach children under any circumstances.
That’s appropriate.
The Juan Williams/NPR rumpus has turned into a tempest in a Tea Potty, with innumerable conservatives claiming that the public broadcast network has violated Williams’ First Amendment right to free speech.
Except it hasn’t.
Handy First Amendment refresher course:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
NPR is not Congress, despite receiving a whopping 2% of its funding from the federal government. Regardless, the First Amendment rights of Williams continue to be invoked.
From Saturday’s New York Times:
Many supporters of Mr. Williams have sought to frame his firing as a First Amendment issue, especially those appearing on Fox, which reportedly gave Mr. Williams a new three-year contract on Thursday.
Three years at $2 million, that is.
Nice payoff for not having your First Amendment rights violated.
Saturday’s Boston Herald features this piece:
NPR official admits fault in firing
National Public Radio’s ombudswoman admitted the nonprofit botched the firing of Juan Williams for his remarks about Muslims making him nervous on planes, but the firestorm around the longtime news analyst’s ouster has fueled speculation that it could be another boon for the GOP less than two weeks ahead of the hotly contested midterm elections.
That headline manages to get the story wrong in at least two ways:
1) Alicia Shepard, the ombudsman, is not an NPR official. She is the listeners’ representative. She does not speak for the network, but attempts to hold the network accountable.
2) As such, Shepard did not “admit fault” in the firing of Williams – she found fault. And not that Williams was fired, as the Herald story itself states:
In a lengthy column at NPR.org, Shepard defended the decision to fire Williams, wondering how Williams, who is black, would have reacted if another analyst had admitted nervousness at the sight of “an African American male in Dashiki with a big Afro.”
What Shepard actually criticized was how Williams got fired, as the story also notes:
But Shepard said of NPR’s over-the-phone dismissal, “a more deliberative approach might have enabled NPR to avoid what has turned into a public relations nightmare.”
So that’s actually three errors in the course of six words.
That’s some headline.
Then again, the headline on this post is Not Precisely Right either.
It should read:
Boston Herald’s NPR Headline Flat-Out Wrong.
This is all you need to know about the 2010 ALCS:
New York Yankees 2-23 with runners in scoring position and two outs.
Texas Rangers 8-24 with RISP and two outs.
Ouch!
Oh, yes, and then there’s this about the Rangers’ Game 6 drubbing of the Yankees: the Bronx Bombers needed a blown call by the umpires to score their only run.
The truth is, the Rangers thoroughly deserved to win this series over the ex-World Champions.
As they said in Brooklyn in 1956: Wait till last year.
Ruth Franklin in The New Republic:
Why Is Emma Bovary So Maligned and Misunderstood?
Emma Bovary is one of the most abused heroines of the modern novel. It’s not enough for her to lose her mind in love for an unworthy man; to squander her fortune and suffer the terror of mounting debt; and, finally, to die in a prolonged, painful suicide by arsenic. No, she must also be cruelly misunderstood by Kathryn Harrison in a weird piece in The New York Times Book Review that has generated a steady seething of online dissent. Harrison and the Book Review have been jointly taken to task for the piece’s failure adequately to assess the novel’s boutique new translation by Lydia Davis. But equally hard to understand is Harrison’s pitiless condemnation of its protagonist.
Okaaay . . . let’s go to the text of Kathryn Harrison’s Times review:
Desperate Housewife
Poor Emma Bovary. She will never escape the tyranny of her desires, never avoid the anguish into which her romantic conceits deliver her, never claim the oblivion she sought from what is perhaps the most excruciating slow suicide ever written. Her place in the literary canon is assured; she cannot be eclipsed by another tragic heroine.
But what kind of tragic heroine is the issue at hand. Here’s Harrison’s take:
Readers cannot like Emma Bovary, and yet they follow her with the kind of attention reserved for car wrecks, whether literal or metaphorical. How can a covetous, small-minded woman, incapable of love and (as she feels no true connection to anyone) terminally bored by her life, fascinate us as she succumbs to one venal impulse after the next?
But wait! There’s more!
Emma forces us to confront the human capacity for existential, and therefore insatiable, emptiness. Fatally self-absorbed, insensible to the suffering of others, Emma can’t see beyond the romantic stereotypes she serves, eternally looking for what she expects will be happiness . . .
Emma doesn’t have character flaws so much as she lacks character itself. She’s a vacuum, albeit a sensitive and sensual one, sucking up every ready-made conceit.
Back to TNR’s Ruth Franklin:
Emma Bovary, “incapable of love”? This is truly a bizarre interpretation of perhaps the most famous adulteress in Western fiction . . .
If Emma Bovary were truly just a shallow woman who comes to a bad end, she could never have become the subject of what is arguably the greatest French novel of the nineteenth century, the novel that set the course for realism forever after.
Franklin’s conclusion: Harrison’s review is “a missed opportunity for the Times: an exercise in ego-stroking rather than a genuine intellectual contribution.”
Our conclusion: If a 19th century French novel can create this kind of a rumpus, there may be hope yet for Western civilization.
New York Times “This Land” columnist Dan Barry emailed the Global Worldwide Headquarters regarding our question about why he failed to identify WHDH’s Andy Hiller in this piece on Massachusetts gubernatorial candidate Tim Cahill.
Barry wrote in the piece:
[A] television reporter, declared by his news station to be “widely regarded as the most provocative political reporter in New England,” asked a provocative question [at a Cahill press conference] wrapped in faux courtesy: “Is it possible you’re in denial, sir?”
“No,” Mr. Cahill answered, and looked away.
Here’s Barry’s response to the hardworking staff’s email inquiring about the omission of Hiller’s name:
Dear John:I truly apologize for getting back to you so late. I’ve been overwhelmed with other things, I am sorry. It was, I believe, Andy Hiller. I left the name out only because I am already asking a national audience to follow other names that may be unfamiliar to them — Cahill, Loscocco, Patrick — and I didn’t want to add another surname. Really, no other reason.This is probably too late for your purposes, and I apologize.Take good care.Dan Barry
Very gracious, and never too late.
First it was MSNBC with its Lean Forward promotional campaign, described thusly:
TO LEAN FORWARD IS TO THINK BIGGER, LISTEN CLOSER, FIGHT SMARTER, AND ACT FASTER. TO CELEBRATE THE BEST IDEAS, NO MATTER WHERE THEY COME FROM. TO DARE TO DREAM OF A NATION THAT’S BETTER TOMORROW THAN IT IS TODAY.
The hardworking staff would settle for an MSNBC that’s better tomorrow than it is today, but why get technical about it.
Especially in light of this staggeringly pretentious “Declaration of Forward:”
Oh, wait! It was directed by Spike Lee! It’s supposed to be staggeringly pretentious!
Enter staggeringly opportunistic Fox News Channel with its new promotional campaign, Move Forward.
Script (illustrated with dramatic newsclips):
News breaks at a blistering speed. And as the story moves forward, we’re right there. Pushing the limits. Staying in front. And running down every detail.
We don’t stand around.
We don’t lean against a wall.
We break the wall down.
We move forward.
Of course, given that Fox News invests slightly north of zero in actual reporting, its army travels on its tongue more than anything else.
But why get technical about it.
There are only two plausible explanations for the bizarre, out-of-the-blue phone call Mrs. Justice Clarence Thomas placed to Ms. Call-for-Justice Anita Hill this past Columbus Day weekend.
[Text of voicemail, via the New York Times: “Good morning Anita Hill, it’s Ginni Thomas. I just wanted to reach across the airwaves and the years and ask you to consider something. I would love you to consider an apology sometime and some full explanation of why you did what you did with my husband.
[“So give it some thought. And certainly pray about this and hope that one day you will help us understand why you did what you did. O.K., have a good day.”]
Back story helpfully provided by the Times:
Ms. Hill had been an aide to Mr. Thomas at the Department of Education and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. President George Bush nominated Mr. Thomas to fill the Supreme Court seat left vacant by Justice Thurgood Marshall in 1991.
In testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Ms. Hill claimed that Mr. Thomas had repeatedly made inappropriate sexual comments to her in the workplace, including descriptions of pornographic films. Mr. Thomas denied the allegations and called them “a high-tech lynching.”
In her 1998 book “Speaking Truth to Power,” Ms. Hill noted that she had been accused of harboring a romantic interest in Justice Thomas by his wife. “Virginia Thomas and I have never met,” Ms. Hill wrote. “And one can imagine that she is guided by her own romantic interest in her husband when she assumes that other women find him attractive as well.”
Justice Thomas weighed in with his own autobiography in 2007, “My Grandfather’s Son, ” referring to Ms. Hill as “my most traitorous adversary” and asserting that liberal advocacy groups stooped to “the age-old blunt instrument of accusing a black man of sexual misconduct” to block his ascent because of his conservative views.
So, what’s going on here with the phone call and all?
Explanation #1: Virginia Thomas Drunk-Dialed Anita Hill on October 9th
The hardworking staff is totally rooting for this explanation although – according to the Times piece – Ms. Thomas placed the call at 7:31 am, which is not exactly your prime drunk-dialing timeslot.
Not helping matters: “In a statement conveyed through a publicist, Ms. Thomas confirmed leaving the message, which she portrayed as a peacemaking gesture. She did not explain its timing.”
Explanation #2: Virginia Thomas Is Doing To The Media What The Mister Hoped To Do To Anita Hill
Mrs. Injustice Clarence Thomas has recently launched the conservative advocacy group Liberty Central. Via The Grio:
The prime goal of the group is to raise bushels of cash from corporations and wealthy donors to bankroll conservative candidates, and to keep a scorecard on the voting records of members of Congress. The scorecard is a not so subtle threat to wavering GOP representatives to toe the hard right line against any and everything that the Obama administration proposes. As ostensibly a non-profit, non-partisan group, it can raise as much money as it wants, with absolutely no rules of disclosure.
That lack of disclosure also apparently applies to early-morning crank calls.
Dude, can the Yankees please get a mercy rule for the 9th inning of their games?
I understand why Sergio (The Human White Flag) Mitre was on the mound for the final frame of last night’s beatdown by the Texas Rangers, but really – is he the best bad pitcher the Bronx Bunglers have?
[Your bitter recriminations – or victory dances – go here.]
This ALCS has magnified every weakness the big ballclub dragged through the regular season: spotty pitching, abysmal run production, squandered opportunities. After Game 1 it looked like the Yankees might have the mojo to take this series. Now it’s clear all they have is nojo.
[It’s never a good sign when you start each inning asking “What fresh hell is this?” (With apologies to Dorothy Parker.)]
Soooo . . . that dream of the first Yankees-Giants World Serious since 1962 (thanks to the Missus, I have an OFFICIAL PROGRAM FIFTY CENTS) is all up in smoke, yes?
Not so fast. Having been done in 2004, the Yankees still have a shot at being the doer this year.
One C.C. of Sabathia!
STAT!
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