I'm So Sorry!

Michael Bérubé recommends the American Apology Shirt when traveling overseas.

Fox News Gives "Fahrenheit 9/11" Two Thumbs Up

I know, did I really write that? Well, Fox's Roger Friedman gives it a good review anyway. Don't know enough about him to know if he's a token liberal or what.

Gordon Cheung

Gordon Cheung is the artist, and though his "textscapes" may look simple, they're actually meticulously constructed with shredded stock listings from the Financial Times.

(Featured on Britart.com)

Ron Reagan: I Knew the Gipper and George W, You're No Gipper

OK, so, I've paraphrased a little, but as this Salon article from just over a year ago reveals, Ron Reagan Jr. is sure no fan of George W. Bush.

The Bush people have no right to speak for my father, particularly because of the position he's in now. Yes, some of the current policies are an extension of the '80s. But the overall thrust of this administration is not my father's -- these people are overly reaching, overly aggressive, overly secretive, and just plain corrupt. I don't trust these people.

And then there's this:

Sure, he wasn't a technocrat like Clinton. But my father was a man -- that's the difference between him and Bush. To paraphrase Jack Palance, my father crapped bigger ones than George Bush.

Not to forget this:

Nine-11 gave the Bush people carte blanche to carry out their extreme agenda -- and they didn't hesitate for a moment to use it. I mean, by 9/12 Rumsfeld was saying, "Let's hit Iraq." They've used the war on terror to justify everything from tax cuts to Alaska oil drilling.

So George W. Bush is continuing the Reagan legacy, huh? Reagan's son doesn't think so. And there's a lot more like that in that article. Reagan even says his mother, Nancy Reagan doesn't trust "these [Bush] people. She gets that they're trouble in all kinds of ways. She doesn't like their religious fervor, their aggression."

(Via Kevin Drum)

CNN Arabic

Check out CNN Arabic.

Design-wise: The scrollbar shows up on left and the content is right-justified, since Arabic is read from right to left.

Politically: they highlight a whole area devoted to Abu Ghraib right on the home page. You won't see that on the U.S. or International sites. The area even has its own look and feel and artwork. Wish I could read Arab see how they handle the content--to see if they're giving it a Western spin at all. (If it were Fox News Arabic, I have no doubt they would be.) I also wonder how much freedom they have to do their own thing relative to the U.S. and International versions.

Bottom line: it's chilling to see this stuff out there and to wonder about its impact in the Arab world.

And, to think, there may be worse to come.

RIP Ray

Ray Charles - 9/23/1930-6/10/04

Tragic Story, Hilarious Headline

Royal funeral for pickled heart.

The French bury the heart of a 10-year-old heir to the throne over 200 years after his death.

The Great Rapture Round-Up!

Recently, I suggested that folks who get round up in the Rapture might like to leave their earthly possessions with those of us who are left behind.

Well, tonight, my girlfriend saw a bumper sticker with a similar sentiment:

In case of Rapture, can I have your car?

Guess there really ain't nothing new under the sun. As the Good Book says.

Reagan Here, Reagan There, Ronald Reagan Everywhere

I know it's not PC to criticize anything remotely Reagan-oriented right now, but Ronnie on the $10 bill? Er, why not JFK, FDR or Teddy? Isn't there a long line of presidents who should be on any American currency before the Gipper?

And shouldn't you have to be dead for, like, 30 years or so before you can even be considered?

And let's not even talk about Rushmore!

Sweet Hymn-Singing Ashcroft

After displaying this much contempt--for Congress, for international treaties, for human rights, for . . . the truth, he's got to go. Ashcroft's got to go.

Joe Biden's response:

“That’s why we have these treaties. So when Americans are captured, they are not tortured. That’s the reason, in case anybody forgets it.”

In other words, what goes around, comes around.

Reagan/Bush, Left/Right, Religious/Secular, Blah/Blah

Andrew Sullivan has some really interesting thoughts on Reagan vs. Bush. Sounds like he's increasingly browned off w/W. It's interesting to see a "conservative" who's not exactly rushing to compare W and the Gipper favorably. Sullivan goes on to say that if there’s a Republican alive in the mold of Reagan, it may be Arnold Swarzenegger, not Bush.

Read this Economist article (membership required) and you’d be forgiven for thinking there may be an irreversible gulf forming between the Republican and Democratic parties along religious lines, leaving the GOP with all the religious folks and the poor Dems with all the untouchable heathens.

But I wonder if Andy Sullivan isn't right when he says someone more secular like Schwarzenegger might be the future face of the Republican party--someone who can reach across the divide. Surely not Arnie though? Well, I bet they said the same about the Gipper, too. Never mind that Arnie wasn’t born here; if some have their way, that qualification will be a thing of the past. As a naturalized American myself, I can’t much protest that.

Sidebar: What I wouldn't mind betting, in fact, is that if there's an atheist president in our lifetime, it'll be a Republican. Not suggesting Arnie's one, though it wouldn't surprise me if he were. As the Economist article points out, currently, “Voters do not like atheists: 41% say they would never vote for one, far more than say they would not vote for an evangelical, Catholic or Jew.” Thing is, Republicans wouldn't vote for a heathen Democrat, no, but I suspect they would vote for a heathen Republican who was strong on the military, fiscally conservative, and not too liberal socially. Bonus points if he were a movie star. The Repubs really dig it when Hollywood coughs up a conservative: Reagan, Charlton Heston, Chuck Norris, Dennis Miller (remember when he was funny?), etcetera. They're so dazzled by the aura of celebrity, they'll apparently vote them into practically any office or position. OK, maybe I'm generalizing now.

Back to the current reality, though, and I think that although the Repubs *are* heavily influenced by the right-wing religioso, those folks don't represent the average American, and the Repubs may shoot themselves in the foot if they pay too much attention to these fringe dwellers (they may have already). That wouldn't necessarily preclude them from being the party of the mainstream religious folks as the Economist suggests. But, I think, the mainstream is becoming more socially liberal anyway. So, maybe the GOP will have to lurch left regardless. Let's face it: the GOP's been having to lurch left for decades now.

How much impact does the religious right have on the current administration? A lot, I’m afraid. More so than they did on Reagan. But I’m not too worried. To use one front as an example, the right may be salivating over the Federal Marriage Amendment and Bush may be egging them on, but many of us suspect it won’t pass constitutional scrutiny. I'll get a lot more scared when the fundies succeed in banning shows like Queer Eye and replacing them with Bible Eye for the Secular Guy. The point being that gay culture is steadily seeping into mainstream culture, and we’ve not gone to hell in a hand basket for it yet. In fact, the more we’re all exposed to real gay culture—not the fringe gay culture the fundies focus obsessively on, but regular every-day, 9-to5 gay culture—the more folks realize that homosexuality is nothing to be afraid of.

OK, maybe I am *a little* scared at the progress the far right has been making, but I just think if their impact gets any greater, there'll be a massive backlash. We’ll get sick of being told what to say, what we can watch on television, whether we can be married or not. And things will move the other way. Hopefully, before anything so grotesque as the FMA is passed. The pendulum effect.

But I do tend to be overly optimistic sometimes. You only have to read about what the Republican party's doing in Texas, and it's enough to scare the bejesus out of you.

Fahrenheit 9/11

If the documentary's as good as the trailer, Bush may be in trouble.

And this coming election may be the first one in U.S. history to be influenced by a film maker.

The trailer ends with this stirring Bush quote:

[Headshot of Bush, clearly on a golf course.] I call upon all nations to do everthing they can to stop these terrorist killers. Thank you.

[Bush repositions himself. Camera zooms back. Bush nods.] Now, watch this drive. [Bush swings golf club.]

That's my Bush!

Curb Your Prison Sentence

Yes, you read it right - a man wrongly accused of murder was rescued by un-aired footage from an episode of Curb Your Enthusiam, which provided him with an alibi, since it showed him in a crowd at a baseball game.

It's kinda funny, sure (especially since Curb is one of my favorite shows), but read the whole article, and it makes you wonder: how many other wrongly-accused folks may be languishing in jail who don't have an episode of a sitcom to save them? Worse still, how many have been executed when a few inches of video could've saved them?

This guy was in jail for *murder*. Maybe we should be outraged rather than amused.

The Subtle Sexual Evil of Shrek

Gee, thanks, Traditional Values Coalition for warning us about the transgenderism and crossdressing themes in Shrek 2. TVC says DreamWorks is aiding the "effort to deconstruct the biological reality of male and female."

God forbid our children should learn to feel comfortable around transgender folks!

A banner ad on TVM also points to this helpful info about Homosexual Urban Legends, including the "Born Gay" myth. TVM warns that this particular urban legend is being promoted, "not only by homosexual activist groups but by prestigious organizations like the American Psychological Association and the American Psychiatric Association."

Now, call me crazy, just maybe the reason those organizations are sharing this "Born Gay" stuff is because it ain't no urban legend. And perhaps the fine folks at TVM ought to consult a dictionary for a meaningful defintion of "urban legend." 'Cos, you know, that's really like: drink Coke and eat Pop Rocks and your tummy will explode. Or if you wanna get sexy: Catherine the Great's equine adventures. (OK, so maybe the latter's not technically an "urban" legend either, but it's closer to one than the TVM twaddle, and more fun to boot.)

(Shrek stuff via A Boy and His Computer)

Watch What You Write, Where You Go

A 35-year-old Brit is questioned by British Special Branch police after he text messaged the lyrics to a Clash song, "Tommy Gun."

And then there's the story of the British journalist, Elena Lappin, who was detained, cuffed, searched and locked up overnight in L.A. for being . . . a journalist. She was told she needed a special journalist's visa, despite the fact that she'd been coming to the United States for years, has an American husband and a daughter born in New York. She says she was told she was lucky she wasn't being treated as she would be in Iran. Which is ironic, she says, because:

it is only "countries like Iran" (for example, Cuba, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Zimbabwe) that have a visa requirement for journalists. It is unheard of in open societies, and, in spite of now being enforced in the US, is still so obscure that most journalists are not familiar with it. Thirteen foreign journalists were detained and deported from the US last year, 12 of them from LAX.

Lappin's piece makes it clear: she believes she was singled out because of her trade.

The American novelist Jonathan Franzen wrote her, "On behalf of the non-thuggish American majority, my sincere apologies." Having recently become a United States citizen, I wish I could say I was more proud to be one right now.