Barry Bonds: Megaroid

This is catchy: in the new afterword to the paperback edition of Game of Shadows, which as all you diehard baseball fans know is the book by San Francisco Chronicle reporters detailing Barry Bonds' steroid use, is the news that his feet have grown 2.5 sizes since he first came to the major leagues.

How many of you have experienced dramatic foot growth after age 18 or so? Me neither.


Update: Yesterday, Buster Olney of ESPN brought up the announcement by Bonds that he had received death threats (in the past, before the homerun thing--presumably because Barry Bonds was and always has been an insufferable asshole).

To Bonds' credit, I guess, you have to put the fact that he did not play up the comparison Buster Olney was about to make, though because Bonds is such a whiny dildo you'd have thought he'd be all over it like The Cream on his elbow.

Olney said, and I quote: "It's interesting because (threats and racially-charged hate mail) are exactly what Hank Aaron had to deal with. It's the same thing."

Well, if that isn't the most incredibly stupid thing you could have said, Buster. And I'm saying that even though you go by the name "Buster," which is like scolding a dog because he ate cat shit (stupid, but apparently delicious), or a retarded child because he stuck the fork in the power outlet, or Mary Cheney The Lesbian (TM) who happens to be a Republican and so apparently wants to have her pie and take it away, too. The point is: I know you're retarded, Buster Olney. But you don't have to make it so flipping obvious.

1. It's not "interesting." Lots of people get death threats, and lots of people get called "nigger" and lots of these people are professional athletes. It's mundane, at best.

2. And more importantly, Hank Aaron received hate mail and death threats 33 years ago because he was surpassing the greatest white baseball player of all time and reactionary white conservatives couldn't handle it.

Barry Bonds is getting hate mail and death threats because he, personally, is a repulsive human being, and because he is openly contemptuous of the law, his health and the health of others, and the game of baseball. And he thinks everyone but him is an idiot.

Bonds does not represent the black race, he is not on the cusp of some great social achievement, unless you think major league assholes need social validation so they can come out of hiding because, gee, we never see big fat assholes in public anymore. Nah, I think fraternities and the Republican Party pretty much cured that oversight.

But thanks, Buster Olney, for turning the tables on all of us who don't care for Barry Megaroid Bonds. Apparently Bonds' critics are "exactly" the same as racists 30 years ago, and Barry is now some fucking martyr to...something. You didn't really finish the thought, Buster. What did you think you were saying, or were you just talking out of your empty head?

Douche.

Why don't you reclaim the word "silent"?

Joel Bleifuss is the editor of Chicago's own formerly-communist lefty rag, In These Times. This is an article from last month's issue which I am going to reprint in its entirety (sue me) because it is the reason subscription renewal will not be happening.

Ready? Here goes:

Features > February 21, 2007

A Politically Correct Lexicon
Your ‘how-to’ guide to avoid offending anyone

By Joel Bleifuss

In the late ’70s, “politically correct,” “PC” for short, entered the public lexicon. Folks on the left used the term to dismiss views that were seen as too rigid and, also, to poke fun at themselves for the immense care they took to neither say nor do anything that might offend the political sensibilities of others. “You are so PC,” one would say with a smile. In the ’80s, the right, taking the words at face value, latched on to the term and used it to deride leftish voices. Beleaguered progressives, ever earnest, then defended political correctness as a worthy concept, thus validating conservatives’ derision. Today, on both the left and the right, being PC is no laughing matter; three decades of culture wars have generated a bewildering thicket of terminology.

To help me parse what’s PC and what’s not, I had help from people attuned to the nuances of words, particularly those that describe race, ethnicity and sexual identity. Rinku Sen is a 40-year-old South Asian woman. She is the publisher of Colorlines, a national magazine of race and politics, for which she has developed a PC style manual. Tracy Baim is a 44-year-old white lesbian. She grapples with the ever-evolving nomenclature of sexual identity and politics as the executive editor of Windy City Times, a Chicago-based gay weekly. Lott Hill is a 36-year-old white gay male who works at Center for Teaching Excellence at Columbia College in Chicago. He interacts with lots of young people—the font from which much new language usage flows.

African American: In 1988 Jesse Jackson encouraged people to adopt this term over the then-used “black.” As he saw it, the words acknowledged black America’s ties to Africa. “African American,” says Hill, is now “used more by non-African-American people, who cling to it because they are unsure what word to use.” Sen says, “African American” is favored by “highly educated people who are not black. Whether one uses ‘black’ or ‘African American’ indicates how strong your social relations are with those communities.” And Chris Raab, founder of Afro-Netizen, says, “People who are politically correct chose to use African American, but I don’t recall any mass of black folks demanding the use of African American.”

Asian: The correct term to use for anyone of Asian ancestry. When accuracy is desired, nationality of origin is appended to “American,” as in “Korean American.” Sen, who describes herself as South Asian or Indian American, says that there is “some push around not conflating everybody into Asian. This is mostly an issue among new immigrants. If there hasn’t been time for a generation, it seems to be hard to move those folks to the Asian category.”

Bitch: A word, says Baim, which is “absolutely being reclaimed by a younger generation of women who are asserting their sexuality and control of their sexuality.” Successfully repurposed by Bitch magazine over the past decade, ‘Bitch’ is now becoming passé as less edgy writers like Cathi Hanauer, author of The Bitch in the House, adopt it. Similarly, though more slowly, “slut,” “whore” and “cunt” are being reappropriated. “The young people use those terms all the time teasingly and sometimes to even refer to themselves,” says Hill. “It is more common to hear someone say ‘I am a slut’ than ‘I am a whore.’ ” “Cunt” is gaining currency among some young lesbians, though Baim says it is a word that gets stuck in her throat. “While it is a reclaimed word, it is one I can hardly say, the same way some older blacks have trouble saying the n-word.”

Black: At Colorlines “black” is used with a capital B, while The Associate Press Stylebook advises use of the lower case.

Boi: A word, says Hill, that is “used by young queer people to refer to either young gay males or young females who are presenting as males.”

Brown: A general term for people who are not white. Colorlines uses “brown” in a casual or playful way. “We might have a headline ‘Brown People to the Back’ in a story about restaurant hierarchy,” Sen says. Sometimes used to refer to Latinos, as in the “black-brown” coalition that helped elect Harold Washington mayor of Chicago in 1983.

Chicano: Correct term for people of Mexican ancestry, popularized during the civil rights movement. “We use it to refer to U.S.-born people of Mexican descent,” says Sen. “Mexican American is the more distant, politer thing to say.”

Dyke: A word lesbians have reclaimed. Hill, however, says that among the young it is “on its way out.”

Fag (faggot): The new “queer.” “Like the n-word, it’s a word that can be said by gay people,” says Hill. “I hear ‘fag’ a great deal, especially among queer-identified young people, like ‘don’t be such a fag’ or ‘you are such a fag.’ “

Feminist: “A word that the younger generation doesn’t always embrace,” is how Baim, 44, describes it. A lot of young women, she says, are “feminists but they don’t want to be pigeonholed.” “Feminist somehow became a tainted word along the way,” says Hill. “I have heard a lot of people say, ‘this sounds feminist’ or ‘I used to be a feminist.’ “

Gay: The word used to refer to males and, inclusively, to the whole gender-bent community. “College-age people are more likely to refer to themselves as queer,” say Hill. “People out of college are more likely to refer to themselves as gay.”

Girl: “‘Girl’ is used by older women,” says Baim. “It is kind of nice because it used to be used derogatorily and now it is used in a fun way.”

GLBT: Shorthand for GLBTQ2IA.

GLBTQ2IA: The acronym for Gay, Lesbian, Bi, Transgendered, Queer, Questioning, Intersex, Allies. “This is coming from the youth movement, the college campuses, it has not seeped into the whole community at this point,” says Baim, who at the Windy City Times uses GLBT, an acronym the New York Times has not yet seen fit to print.

Guys: Very controversial. Used, especially in the Midwest, when referring to a group of people. “In Chicago that word gets used a lot,” says Hill. And Baim says, “I use it all of the time.” Some feminists, like Andi Zeisler, the editor of Bitch, find “guys” problematic. “We assume the descriptor ‘guys’ denotes a quality of universality,” she says. “It would be hard to imagine a group of men being addressed by their server as ‘hey you gals’ and not taking offense, but the reverse happens all the time.”

Hir (hirs): Gender neutral for him and her. At Wesleyan University, incoming freshmen are instructed to use gender-neutral pronouns in campus correspondence. As one person wrote on the university’s online Anonymous Confession Board, “I am usually attracted only to people of hir original gender, rather than hir intended gender. As such, I’m afraid that I’m, like, viewing hir wrong, or not respecting hir wishes or something.”

Hispanic: “We never use Hispanic,” says Sen. “It privileges the European roots of the identity of Mexicans born in the United States.” Hispanic, however, is the preferred term of people in the Southwest whose families are descendents of Spanish colonists.

Indian: The preferred term for Native Americans. “Indians either use their specific tribal name or use Indian,” says Sen. “You use the qualifier American when you need to distinguish from Indian Indians.”

Latino: (Capital “L,” with “a” or “o” at the end used to connote gender.) Politically correct term for those from Spanish or Portuguese speaking cultures. “We use it instead of Hispanic when we want to refer to many different national groups where there has been an indigenous-European mix,” says Sen.

Lesbian: “The younger generations are less connected with the terms ‘gay’ and ‘lesbian’,” says Baim. “Lesbian is out of favor as a self-identifying label, it means something political, something more rigid than the younger generation is comfortable with.”

Macaca: The latinization of the Bantu “ma-kako,” meaning monkey. According to the Global Language Monitor, former Sen. George Allen (R-Va.) helped make this the most politically incorrect word of 2006 by using it to refer to an Indian American.

Native American: Some Indians object to the term, seeing it as a way to linguistically eradicate “Indian” and thus the history of their oppression by whites. “I almost always hear Native American, and in the more enlightened conversations there is usually ‘indigenous’ thrown in there somewhere,” says Lott. Sen says, “Native American seems to be a more distant construction, developed by academics.”

Nigger: “It is a word that white students struggle with and black students use pretty freely,” says Hill. “Young people are much more open to using it, especially young people who are black or who have been exposed to more diverse groups of people.” While Sen says, “I can’t imagine a political or a social multiracial situation where it would be appropriate, but I know that is because I am too old. The word is so prevalent in the popular youth culture, grounded in hip-hop, that I wouldn’t like to predict where that debate is going to end up. But if the popular culture ends up agreeing that it is okay to use, then I think there are a lot of pretty scary implications.”

Queer: Anyone who falls outside the lines of straight. “It has been reclaimed far ahead of faggot or dyke,” says Baim. “It is our buzz word,” says Columbia College’s Hill. “It is how we avoid saying all of those letters [GLBTQ2IA].” REM lead singer Michael Stipe, for example, is queer, not gay. “For me, queer describes something that’s more inclusive of the gray areas,” he told Butt, a pocket-sized Dutch “fagazine.” “It’s really about identity I think. The identity I’m comfortable with is queer because I just think it’s more inclusive.”

Transgendered: (trans) A person who is not presenting as their biological gender. “It is fascinating how transgendered is becoming like an octopus with all the tentacles of identity and personal design. The transgendered movement is burgeoning and fluid, they are creating all of these new ways to define who they are,” says Baim.

Ze: Gender neutral for he or she. As Mary Boenke writes on the PFLAG (Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays) Web site: “When talking with Leslie Feinberg, noted transgender author, I asked Leslie which pronouns to use. Ze shrugged hir shoulders and said ze didn’t care.”

OK, thanks, Joel. THANKS FOR NOTHING!

Where do we begin? I suppose first, we should note that this article is a fucking mess. It's all over the place, and you can tell that because it covers 50 years (at least!) of slang under the false assumption that any of it is still relevant. Second, "macaca" is on this list, and it just became a term last summer! And, except for Virginia Senators with Algerian moms, nobody ever uses it in this country! Talk about grasping for material!

Rewind to the part where I give a shit. Not there? Oh, that must be because I don't and never did. If I'm talking to you and I say "fag" or "bitch" or "you're so gay," and you correct me then that's the end of the conversation.

We can argue about ideas, and we can discuss the framework behind the words, but the words themselves are off-limits. There is no greater threat to free speech than a streamlined (or, horror of horrors, mandated) lexicon. When someone pretends not to be able to "hear" what another is saying because "ze" didn't say "hir," or that Hispanic fellow didn't remember to call himself a Latino, then the critic is the one being the asshole, not hir.

As soon as you allow someone else to put your argument on their terms--like changing the very words you were going to use--you have lost. No wonder people ridicule this shit.

This article needs no review, since it's just damn gibberish anyway, but my assessment is that, out of a yearly subscription cost of $24.95, ITT loses...the whole $24.95. That would be two thumbs down, zero stars out of four, two pokes in the eye with two sharp sticks, sucking all the way to "11," and so on.

Tomb could be that of Jesus and his family.

Or, it could just be some group of nobodys who died a long time ago. No way to tell, really. But get this: James Cameron, the man who made "Titanic" (I am not saying that as a way to bolster his reputation) and then, afterwards, sponsored a trip to find the actual Titanic and film the shit out of it (memo to Jim: movies are better than old, rusty boats. You should know that. You make movies. Ass.), is lead investigator on this project. No shit.

James Cameron and his critics, along with Dan Brown and everybody else who cares enough to bother with this, can all go to Hell and spend eternity pondering the meaning of "faith."

I give this project 7 circles of Hell out of 9.

Stupid Idiots

Suicide bomber blows himself up inside the perimeter of Bagram Air Force Base in Iraq. Dozens killed and more wounded. Cheney is inside the base at the time, too. US government rejects phoned-in claim by Taliban that it coordinated the bombing to strike at Cheney, using the following rationale: "I think it's a far-fetched allegation. The vice president wasn't even supposed to be here overnight, so this would have been a surprise to everybody."

Yes, one good thing about Afghanis, they don't have eyes or mouths, and information never, ever makes its way from one person to another. In fact, all of the citizenry live in individual little bubbles. The caller from the Taliban was just grasping and so he picked a name at random and said "Cheney." In fact, we have a transcript of the call:

Unidentified Caller: "Uh, hello? Yes, can I get two orders of pita garlic sticks, one family-sized hummus platter--"

US Air Force Official: "No, no! This is Bagram Air Force Base! Yoooo esssss aaaaay? You speaky the English?"

Unidentified Caller: "Well, yeah. I mean, I just said..."

US Air Force Official: "Look, Rahib, we just had this little thing we call a bombing here at the base, so I don't have time to fuck with this shit right now. Take your little kids outside to throw rocks at tanks or something, 'cause we're busy. You have the wrong number."

Unidentified Caller: "Hey, where do you get off talking to me that way? I LIVE here, man!"

US Air Force Official: "Hahaha! Only a camel jockey would cop to that! Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to get back to spreading civilization to this hellhole by escorting a very important US official to a meeting with your HSNIC--" *translator's note: I think he actually meant to play on the old racist American expression "head n***** in charge, but added the "s," presumably, for "sand"?*

Unidentified Caller: "OK, then since you're just going to be a dick, try this on for size--"

US Air Force Official: "Did you say "Dick"? How did you know the Vice President was here?!"

Unidentified Caller: "(muffled giggles) ...he was...uh, our target, pale faces! Um, me no likey Great Satan and, uh, death to empiricism...no, wait! Imperialism! Death to imperialism! Now, let's get off "dicks," 'cause your mama just got offa mine! Peace!"

**end of call**

And Dick Cheney still doesn't think Afghanistan is even the least bit of a problem. For that, I give him an "A". And then two "s"-es, and then an "h-o-l" and an "e".

I give Aghanistan--the whole country--ten thumbs up for being fucking hilarious.

Frank Deford is the Enemy

This is the first smart thing the man has ever said...er, written. Though, I still hate that fake gravelly-voiced character he does for his comments on NPR. Not that I listen to that shit, either.

So for this article, alone, Frank gets 3 Shaun Alexander bouncy hand-claps out of 4.

This is not a review

News story says here that high school kids are taking "more challenging" courses and getting higher grades, but their test scores on national exams are going down like Britney's chances of getting sober. ZING! (No, I couldn't think of a bald joke.)

What's the explanation, I wonder to meself. The writer of the story seems to think, as do supposedly befuddled government and education types (you know the kind: the 'tards who did so poorly in school that they wound up in government and education...and now they design said national exams for high school kids) that the problem is with the national math and science tests.

Oooooookaaaaaaaay.

Math doesn't change, dildos! Either you know how to do a derivation, or you don't. Perhaps, just a wee suggestion from I, you might look at how the local "advanced classes" are being administered, and whether or not dopey rich white kids taking those courses are being taught what they need to know, or if instead all they're getting is passed through because they are rich white kids. Look: we all know who is taking these "challenging courses," and it ain't Deron and Shakkita.

Way to make the whole country look bad, dum-dums! I give you a 1.....out of 5! Hah! It IS a review, now!!!

GREAT RIDER!!

Forget Con-Air. Forget Windtalkers. And you can throw Guarding Tess in the trash. If you want to see Nicolas Cage in his greatest role since Valley Girl you must see Ghost Rider. Nicolas Cage remains a cabernet sauvignon, or perhaps a nebbiolo. A complex and aquired taste that is hard to take at first but soon you find you can't do without. That being said, you can keep that pussy-ass pinot noir (John Cusack) shit.

I must start with the commercials. They suck. Stop holding me hostage while you fill my mind with the false assertion that Vista is better than running up a mountain or a snow day or the Berlin Wall comming down or Pele for Christ sake. Nothing is better than Pele.

This movie had everything. Crazy old St. Nick, some old queen as the devil, some creep- ass creep as his son, Sam Elliot, and a very subdued Rosie Perez. I thought she was all finger snaps and "no he didn't". Just kidding it was Eva Mendez. She has a great rack. They should have fired the costume designer. How is she going to responsibly report the news when her boobies are falling out. She also has man-hands.

Sam Elliot has finally shed his corporeal form in exchange for a visage composed entirely of facial hair and tobacco juice. It looks as gross as it sounds.

So the movie starts with this kid (not fit to hold Cage's jock strap) jumping through flaming hoops on a motorcycle. His dad also jumps through hoops. We are led to believe that his father gets cancer from cigarettes but this reporter ain't buying it. Maybe it is years of sucking gas fumes or drinking five bottles of burboun a day. So young Johnny Blaze makes a deal with this queer old devil played by Peter Fonda, dad gets better then eats it on his next jump. That will teach that little shit. So he leaves his girlfriend(little Eva Mendez) and gays off into the sunset.

Blah,Blah Blah. Fast forward to the TNT (titties n trucks)scene. Johnny Blaze jumps 13 tractor trailers. Totally awesome. Fast foreward yet again to the TNH(titties n helicopters-yes I said helicopters)where after succesfully jumping 5 blackhawks with rotors spinning he meets Eva Mendez. She is a reporter covering the jump. Nothing much else happens for 45 minutes except that we see that Johnny Blaze is at least as wierd as Nicolas Cage.

Finally we get to see the ghost rider. he saves some fat chick after killing some demon. Sadly by this point in the movie the dead hillbilly count is only at one. But we do see the penance stare.

After that it gets lame again for a few minutes.

For the grand finale the ghost rider enlists the help of Sam Elliot. Everybody and their mother has figured out that he knows too much about Blaze's condition. Everyone except Johnny Blaze. What a dumb ass. Even when Sam Elliot whistles for a horse that seems to materialize from the mist. Even when he is in possesion of the scroll that the devil wants. Even when the horse bursts into a flaming skeleton demon horse Blaze does not get that Sam Elliot was the last ghost rider. What a dumb shit.

Finally the movie climaxes in an orgy of demon shooting, penance staring and lizard burning. I had no idea that you could kill demons with a shotgun. By this point in the movie I was ready to kill the assbag behind me that insisted on repeating every,I repeat every line in the movie and was not very concerned with how ghost rider was going to kill the devils son. But it was awesome.

Ghost Rider: First Review

I'd like to begin my review of Ghost Rider by saying that it is a tall order to create a two-hour film that fully encapsulates years of comic literature. A comic book hero undergoes numerous transformations and grows and d/evolves throughout the serial’s run. It is too lofty a goal to make a meaningful movie out of years of literature. It's just too tough and I think movie studios should be more wary of using this method to produce new blockbusters.

That being said, this was the awesomest movie ever.

The Ghost Rider is some guy played by Nicholas Cage (NC) who hunts demons or something and is in love with Eva Mendes and has to fight the devil, played by David Carradine, and his son, Blackheart, and is helped along the way by Sam Elliott. I think. I didn't pay too much attention in the beginning. I was too busy calling my bookie.

The pre-preview advertisements were spectacular. They reminded me that I need to put 20 bucks on the East in the NBA All-Star game and the over-under on how many Dominique Wilkins highlights will be shown. The pre-preview ads also informed me that Coca-Cola makes everything better. Up until this movie, I was convinced that coke makes everything better, but if I can buy a good time and slurp it off a stripper's leg cheaper, safer, and in a can, I certainly will.

Anyway, the movie. Again, best movie ever. The casting was spectacular. First, Nicholas Cage. NC is action personified. Nobody personifies personification of personified action like the ultimate personifier of all human qualities Nicolaspersonicagetion. NC was perfect as the haunted collector of lost souls. He's a natural. His own soul is lost and tormented, and in this film, Texan. I think he studied the greatest actor and Texan ever, George W. Bush. I can see why NC chose this great man as a model for his role. NC sounded just like him.

Plus, NC is the greatest motivational speaker I've ever seen. I feel like I wasted my money at that Feel Better about Yourself, Pussy! Bootcamp I went to last weekend. NC can inspire without words. His facial expressions arouse in me a need to be a better me. His cookie dough-mush face cuts through life's BS and tells me how to live Cagey. Face your problems. When a woman talks, kiss her so she'll shut up. Ignite your Rage Cage. Point your finger at those things that get you down and say "Guilty." Yes, our problems are the guilty party, not us. "I'm gonna own this curse." He brings light to those of us struggling with our own demons. We must take control of our curses and give those things that trip us up our own penance stare, which is the trademark ass-kicking device of the Ghost Rider, which incidentally is the same weapon employed by Sister Mary Modine at St. Biff's Church.

Anyway, NC has given me a new path. He always has, from ConAir to Face/Off to National Treasure, when times were dark I saw one set of footprints, and that was when NC carried me.
The other actors were great too, and they were even greaterer because of the casting director’s seeming third eye and sixth sense for an 18 fold ability for filling roles par excellence.

An actress was needed to play a younger version of Eva Mendes, NC's love interest. The only qualification was mole location. Eva and this girl had identical moles. The girl was born to imitate Eva Mendes as an adolescent girl. The greatest casting ever. Like finding a needle in a stack of unsuitable duds.

The villain, known as BlackHeart, was played by the weirdo kid next door in American Beauty. I actually thought the role was played by Unknown Hinson until a friend of mine corrected me. Very convincing. Best makeup job ever. The guy was great, very scary, especially because his vocal patterns and speech intonations were identical to the character Dwight on The Office.

Fact: I am the son of the devil and you cannot defeat me. Fact: These are my real sideburns.

Blackheart had this crew of demons helping him out. Very convincing, very scary. They looked like they just jumped outta Purgatory. I don't mean the part of Hell. I mean that gothfest in Charlotte where all the freaks wear black leather and makeup and silly moustaches. They looked like some guys I used to collaborate with in the D&D club back in high school. It brought me back to the old days.

David Carradine was a natural as the Devil. The casting was easy. He just showed up one day pretending to be a blind man with a cane looking for weed or a leather jacket with fringe and the casting director must've hired him on the spot. Not a stretch. David Carradine is the Devil and I'm glad they dug him up from the Hotel Bangkok. Oh, shit, that was Peter Fonda. Whoops!

Anyhow he was looking for weed and they hired him.

Thank God for Sam Elliott. I needed a reliable typecast to steady all this thrill-a-second action. He brought it into focus and made sense of the world. The grizzled oldster insulted NC's whippersnapper ways, apparently grumpy that kids keep leaving flamin’ bags of poo on his flamin’ porch. I do feel bad for Sam Elliott, although I need him in my life. I'd be pissed and grumpy if I was born from the womb with facial hair trying to invade my eyes daily and saliva consisting of chaw juice and hooker spit.

So, the acting was super-perb, and the blockbuster’s fail-safes and never-fails were all there. This blockbuster had everything. I knew it was a blockbuster when during a scene in which a big truck crushes the Ghost Rider, a sign swings from the hitch of the truck "How's My Driving?" Boy, I wasn't sure if I was watching a documentary or a romantic comedy or what. As soon as I saw that tried and true indicator of every box office boom stick, I knew I was on a Highway to Greatest Action Flick of my young life. That was a close one.

There was also a totally awesome scene right before the totally awesome ending, and I can imagine the production meeting needed to produce such a pre-climax, we'll call it:

"Okay, the Ghost Rider and Sam Elliott are ripping through the desert on fire towards the movie's grippingest climax ever. We need to torch something along the way."

"How bout a cactus?"

"Predictable."

"Tumbleweed?"

"Lame."

"How about a lizard that wouldn't normally be out in the cold desert night because of its need for daytime warmth but who just happened to be taking an evening stroll."

"That's perfect! We could torch it and it'd turn into a skeleton. Boys, let's hit it!"

Boy, if it wasn't for this scene and the "How's my Driving?" plate, I wouldn't know what was happening.

The film was not all wine and burning corpses, however. The liberal producers and their sadistic socialist puppeteers decided to take a shot at something I hold dear. Big Tobacco. This film was pure anti-tobacco propaganda. The Ghost Rider's dad smokes in every scene, and he has cancer and he is going to die from cancer before he dies doing some off the wall motorcycle stunt. Blame cigarettes, the filmmakers tell us. Look, the Devil kills people, not cigarettes! NC (**editor’s note: do you mean "North Carolina" or "Nicholas Cage" here? Ambiguous.**) made a deal with the Devil to get rid of his father's terminal cancer. The Devil giveth cancer and he taketh away. Neither cigarettes nor the tobacco magnates have that kind of unearthly power. Mephistopheles has majority control of cancer, not RJ Reynolds, folks. For crying out loud, the Devil named his kid "BlackHeart," an alleged effect of continued cigarette use. A connection, unavoidable. I posit that something even more sinister than cigs are behind all of our health problems ever. It's the Devil.

All in all, it was one of the greatest movies ever. It was one step down from Point Break and one step above The Day After Tomorrow. I recommend you see it with your family, your friends. Take a total stranger. They'll thank you for it. There was action, acting, and acting-tion. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'll try to work my penance stare on my bookie. The East? They never win anything. Anyhow, if that doesn't work on him maybe I can ransom my thumbs with some Coca-Cola or better yet I'll take him to see Ghost Rider. Thanks for reading and smoke 'em if you got 'em!

Introducing: New Reviewers

At a lesbian Mardi Gras party the other day (what was I doing there? Macking on lesbians. Duh!), a very nice, mincy fellow and I were playing the game where you make your porn name out of the name of your first pet and the street you grew up on. I had just informed Errol Flynn that I already have a porn name far, far better than any that method can conceive, when Cary Grant thought about it and revealed that his "formulaic" porn name would be "Lucky Feller."

So I stole that shit, post-haste.

From now on, all guest reviews on this site will be posted under the name "Lucky Fellers," because they are so very, very fortunate to be a part of history, like that last guy at the "Spantaneous Exxxtasy" 551-man gangbang (which, incidentally, was supposed to be a 1,000-man gangbang, but the producers could only find 551 dudes who would have sex with a fat black woman who can't spell either of her stage names correctly.

Incidentally, since she only "achieved" 55.1% of her, uh, "goal," I give the Spantaneous Exxxtasy Gangbang a 55.1%, which as any round-heeled gangbang queen will tell you is a "middle F."

Heh, heh. "F."

Stay tuned for Lucky Fellers' review #1!

Mini-Review: Racist Yahoo!

Oh, Yahoo! I was going to skewer you for your hopelessly outdated, goofy-looking cartoonish email interface, with which you are apparently trying to force-infantilize every adult using your "service." I was also going to rip on your for making people click no less than four times just to check one lousy email.

But instead, I'll review your apparent racial views, as expressed on the homepage displayed at 8:30 this morning when I turned on the computer:

The picture had this script next to it:

"What message you sending?

Find out what your body language at the office says about you, and how to use it to your advantage.

More advice on succeeding at work..."

Yes, I believe one WOULD be very successful at any job so long as one was aware of one's body language. And, also, if that same big-mouf mofo' wuz awarrr uh th' message he sendin'. Fool!

For this bit of racial buffoonery, I give myself an A+. Yahoo!, which ought to know better, I give an F+, which, as anyone who has ever majored in "body language" in college will tell you, is the "high F."

GR is GD Bad

Hey, Bob Fortuna: where's that Ghost Rider review you promised me? Because over on Rotten Tomatoes the critics are giving it a 23% favorable rating!

And, speaking of motion pictures, here's a list of the critical review aggregates for all the Best Pictures ever chosen. There are some real suckass films here, proving that, like the Pulitzer Prize (which has a strange habit of winding up in the hands of a Columbia University graduate), the Oscars are one truly horrible way to judge a film's merits.

This Crazy Goes to 11

Greg once asked why I wouldn't write a conference paper entitled: "Oprah Winfrey: Threat or Menace?"

Well, I may yet. In a move so goddamn silly it's hard to get a grip on it, Oprah apparently embarrassed the hell out of Jim Thome the other day on her show.

Here's the link, to another link.

And here's a story about Jim Thome:

He was supposed to be on a local radio show back when he played in Cleveland. This was in the 1990s sometime, after he had graduated from the Charlotte Knights, the Indians' farm club at the time, where he, Manny Ramirez, and old Red Sox washup Sam Horn had combined to hit somewhere in the vicinity of 400 trillion homers in a season and had brought Charlotte its first AAA championship. We're still talking about it, obviously.

Anyway, Thome had to cancel his radio appearance so he could do charity work. The radio hosts didn't know this, however, and they ripped on Thome for being a fat, overpaid, whiny, lazy athlete who didn't show up for his gigs.

Thome didn't call them out. In fact, he didn't even tell them why he missed the show. Instead, he called and asked if they would have him on the next day, which was Christmas Day. He was visiting sick children on Christmas Eve, which the radio people found out, and they felt really bad about busting his balls on the air, and so they said no, why don't you spend Christmas with your family instead of on the phone with us?

Thome did the radio show. And I'll bet those DJs will never assume again.

Jim Thome is almost enough of a stand-up guy to make me watch the White Sox. Not quite, but almost.

Oprah Winfrey has graduated from "quirky" to "scary crazy."

New Directions for Old Hats

I think we'll try something new for a while. Let's review everything and anything we come across: TV, books, movies, people, sunsets, ideas, pet names, etc. I think it'll be fun.

I'll start with this abbreviated review of Richard Hofstadter's classic, The Age of Reform

"Richard Hofstadter’s Age of Reform stands now, as it probably will for some time, as one of a handful of standard texts for students of American history. It is not difficult to see why. From its elegance of prose to its author’s novel contentions as to the motives and mindsets of the Populists and Progressives (the latter for him being only Roosevelt’s supporters, really), Age of Reform is quite brash and demands attention.

Hofstadter’s most famous—or perhaps most outrageous—assertions in Age of Reform concern the Populists who, he argued, suffered an ironic journey to an even more ironic fate. While the criticisms of his treatment of Populism are legion and famous (see Alan Brinkley’s essay on Hofstadter in Liberalism and Its Discontents, Norman Pollacks’ numerous diatribes, and Richard McCormick’s "Progressivism: A Contemporary Reassessment" in The Party Period and Public Policy), his most vocal critics have not given him the credit he deserves for identifying a strain of thought that had tormented intellectuals dating at least as far back as the contemporary, William James.

To wit: intellectuals, in formulating their reform philosophies and putting them into practice, had never successfully confronted man’s irrationality and the role it would play in reform. Populism, on the surface anyway, was irrational. Hofstadter identified the Populist impulse quite strikingly as a panic response by agrarians to the decline of the mythological stature of the farmer in American society. Though this is controversial, and may even have been repudiated by the author himself, there is a great deal of merit in the idea that members of an industrializing society might have put stock in outdated notions of pastoral righteousness and might have acted irrationally when confronted with evidence of disjunction with the "past."

The specifics of this line of argument are not so charming or acceptable. It has been said that Age of Reform was written with precious little primary research, and thus the evidence that Hofstadter claimed for his position—a position, again, that I find perfectly reasonable—is highly suspect. The Populists in question are a carefully-selected lot (as are his Progressives later on); though we see Tom Watson often, there is little else of southern or western populism and thus the reader gets the idea that these regions contributed little to the midwestern folks Hofstadter was talking about (and, as a side note, Watson appeared as less of a pragmatic leader than a frothing maniac—a portrait refuted by other severe critics of Populism like Barton Shaw).

Though the author tried to be nice in places, the entire discussion was clouded by a thread of scorn—I could not help but recall Walter Lippmann and his derision of backward-looking reformers (in Lippmann’s case, the Progressives), each attempting to claw his way (and take America, too) back to a past shrouded in self-delusional fantasy and late Victorian propriety.

Not only is Populism history’s greatest anachronism, then, it was also a paranoia club; seeing in history a conspiracy of powerful interests (70). Whether this delusion was defensive (Hofstadter implied that Populists could not see themselves as losers in an age of impersonal forces, so they constructed a scenario in which they were yeomen, divorced from the market and preyed upon by industry (73)) or a more cynical, less coherent amalgam of silverites, xenophobes, and anti-semites, one can hardly mourn their passing.

It is helpful, however, that Hofstadter included in his discussion of Populism an epilogue of sorts. Farmers, we are reminded, did eventually realize many of their protectionist goals and did recapture a bit of their stature. Ironically, it was only after the death of third party politics and the adoption of interest group voting behavior, to say nothing of the elimination and consolidation of tens of thousands of farms, that led to this "victory" (95, 109). Agricultural interests gained a strong political voice, as a minority interest, only when farmers could finally admit to being businessmen (121,124).

In the same manner in which status anxiety informed the Populist movement, so too did it drive the Progressives. Hofstadter took a crib from C. Vann Woodward’s Origins of the New South when he splits the Progressives into two generations and locates their concerns in economic and social status. Just as Woodward’s old southern elite faded in the face of the New South industrialist, so did Hofstadter’s "Mugwump" elite inadvertently relinquish power to the upstarts of the machine age. Never mind that Woodward was wrong for all the right political reasons.

Upon realization of this blunder, of course, the old elite reemerged and fought for its customary respect but, finding itself losing ground relative to the vast fortunes of the nouveau riche, it channeled its energies instead into a reform movement (135-148).

The second generation of Progressives included intellectuals, alienated professionals and clergy, the new, industrial middle class, and displaced agrarians. A wonderful delineation of this shift can be found in James Kloppenberg’s Uncertain Victory, concerning the angst of the aforementioned James when it came to actually joining the fray. He, at least, realized that theory cannot measure up in practice; what would one expect from the founding pragmatist?

A variety of causes united the Progressives: urban chaos, political corruption, fear of immigrants, a disdain for elitist leadership and laissez faire economics, a growing shift towards the politics of consumerism; and in the case of social scientists a vested interest in reforms that would put their services in demand (155). In fact, and contrary to what I have read elsewhere (i.e., Brinkley), it seems that Hofstadter deviated from his status/interest dichotomy enough that he was able to assemble just as disparate a group of "progressives" as any other historian has. Like them, his tale ends in a confusion of just what exactly, other than self-identification and Rooseveltism, qualified them as a cohesive movement.

Just as Lippmann did with Wilson and his supporters, albeit in a derisive way, Hofstadter locates his Progressives in a nostalgic tradition where they looked to "recapture a bright past in which there had been a future" (227). However, Hofstadter saw in Wilson someone earnestly trying to make sense of the new reality in terms of old values, not a fool sticking his finger into the proverbial dike to hold back progress. Unlike many contemporaries, who struggled mightily to reconcile the best of individualism with the emerging hierarchical industrial society, the Wilsonians were fighting anything that stood in the way of the self-made man. Unlike for Lippmann, these were not Americans looking expectantly to "science" or managers, or to be "a nation of employees, at best of administrators" (227). FDR was the betrayer of this modest dynamism of the early 20th century.

In my opinion, the most interesting part of the analysis of Progressives is the notion of guilt as a motivating factor in reform. Whether it be the guilt of an absentee elite, wracked by conscience for allowing the evils of the world to come to the fore, or the imputation of personal guilt to the readership of McClure’s (204). Where Lippmann saw in muckraking journalism merely the chronicling of the same ills over and over until it lost all meaning, Hofstadter saw the very nature of progressive thought. The Protestant Progressive mind would not allow for social evils without blame, and so the ethos of personal responsibility demanded the assignation of guilt (204-212). Few have accepted Hofstadter’s notion that all reform was simply a performance to assuage guilt, but the solemn, accusatory preface to Steffens’ The Shame of the Cities demonstrates the power that such thinking held for contemporaries (208).

Ultimately, Progressivism proved unable to fulfill its promise, even though, like Populism, reform legislation did find its way, eventually, onto the books. Unlike the agrarian measures, though, Progressive reform utterly failed to changing the underlying structure of society and politics (just as Lippmann and James predicted), because most measures of political accountability were designed for the age and its people. When Progressivism was no more, these measures could be seen as obviously futile attempts to "legislate a mood" (266).

Additionally, Hofstadter’s Progressives suffered from Hofstadter himself: positing that they had worked within a narrow framework of consensus and accommodation, in this case to the new organizational society, Hofstadter was then able to sigh that they had mortgaged possibility by necessity. This is a far cry from the intense hopefulness that the era embodied not only for Progressive intellectuals but for Hofstadter’s contemporaries as well. Finally, his assertion that the New Deal effectively discarded the rules of reform is similar to Daniel Rodgers’ analysis of the chaotic nature of Roosevelt’s grand experiment; but Hofstadter, sensing the need to close with a downer, lays at its feet the very death of Progressivism."

What you got?

If Gays Can't Stand the Heat...

...they should return their season tickets.

Tim Hardaway, former Miami Heat guard (and, speaking as a Jordan-era Bulls fan, in my opinion just about the dumbest fucker in the NBA in the last 20 years), has gone on record multiple times in the past week to let everyone know that he "hates gay people," "wouldn't speak to" a gay family member, and is "OK with" the suggestion that hating gays is like whites hating blacks.

You truly are an unforgivably stupid meat sock, Tim.

Unfortunately, Hardaway is retired, so he can't be directly punished for his hateful statements. But here's a guess: he will be awfully lonely during this weekend's All Star festivities in Las Vegas.

And just to remind everybody (and him, since he's probably a huge fan of mine): Tim Hardaway never won a championship and he wasn't even that good at basketball. It's called defense, Timmy. And if the laws in this country were what they ought to be, you'd need a good one to fend off all the lawsuits coming your way.

Here's a video clip of Little Timmy Thinks-He's-Special in action:

http://deadspin.com/sports/nba/tim-hardaways-deeper-hole-236925.php

Thanks to Seth for the email.

NHL Player Loses Face, Plays Out Game

John Madden--yes, that's his real name--is a forward for the NJ Devils. He got hit in the face with a puck the other day and left the game to get tended to. He returned shortly thereafter with the giant gash in his face stitched up, some of his teeth in a cup back in the locker room, and blood still coming from his nose and ears.

As you would imagine, it was a life-altering moment: Madden switched to a helmet with a visor for the rest of the game.

From the write-up:

"Madden received an undisclosed number of stitches and played the final two periods wearing a visor on his helmet. He had a nasty gash below his eye and his face was badly swollen and black and blue after the game. Droplets of blood dripped occasionally from his nose as he talked to reporters.

"I have seen guys take a lot worse shots than this and get back out there," Madden said. "That's the way the game is played."

"The gash was nothing, it was just a big cut," Madden said. "It's like getting cut with a knife or something like that. Bone wasn't involved. You know, force was involved. It caught me pretty clean. It looked worse than it was."

"Madden was hurt when he put his stick down to deflect a power-play shot by Lightning forward Eric Perrin. The shot deflected and the puck struck him in the face and opened a cut."

Here's the picture:

"Your Obama's So Black..."

Round 2 of "Barack Obama vs. Blackness" comes from a mighty scribe who has fallen pretty far in the last few years. Salim Muwakkil of the watery In These Times has this to say:

"Some of the same qualities that make Obama alluring to white Americans (his affability, his seeming lack of racial grievance) are troubling to many African Americans. They wonder if the senator feels as connected to the black community as he does to the educated elite with whom he spent so much of his formative time.

"This is a skeptical tradition formed by generations of African Americans who were betrayed by the slave masters’ favorite blacks. The logic seems simple: Be suspicious of those like you who are liked by those who dislike you.

"Despite these suspicions, most African Americans seem pleased with the Obama phenomena, if also perplexed by the intensity of white Americans’ affection. All of this is new ground, which is why, aside from his political stance or ideological leanings, Obama’s public prominence will spark necessary discussions on race in American culture."

Man, Salim: you sure do suck at history! Blacks distrust Obama because plotting slaves were often betrayed by the master's favorite slave? What the fuck are you SAYING?!?

Personally, I never trust dogs because my caveman ancestors were often attacked and killed by wolves. ZING!

Anyway, as the comments on the ITT website point out (in a belabored tone that suggests nothing so much as exasperation with this media hit on Obama), most black people never gave a thought to what white people think of Obama. If they did, they'd likely conclude that it's remarkable that whites like him so much and maybe they'd even get a creeping feeling that racial progress isn't dead. But mostly, I think, black people in this country are too busy working and living and dying to care much about another Tiger Woods debate over the nature of "blackness." He says he's black, fine. Why do you need anything more than that?

13%, God-dammit!

Debra Dickerson: do you know who you are? I saw you on the Colbert Report the other day and you said the damnedest thing. See, you were there to promote your new book, The End of Blackness, and you must have gotten sidetracked, because you went off on a rant about Barack Obama and how much of a fake Negro he is. You remember that, right, Debra?

Here's what I don't get: your book makes the argument that Afro-centrism is a bad thing because isolationism is self-defeating. No argument from me there. I think the same thing about deaf people, gay people, lefties, and anybody existing outside the corporeal boundaries of myself. Heck, just for fun, let's quote the blurb on your book:

"She fearlessly condemns the black community for defending the actions of O.J. Simpson and Marion Barry, and for scorning "Uncle Tom" figures like Julian Abele, a black architect who designed Duke University in the 1920s despite its whites-only policy preventing him from ever visiting the campus. "The great architect never got to see his creation, but those for whom he left it in trust-knowledge seekers of all races and nationalities-do. Thank God he was an Uncle Tom."

Now, for a counterpoint, let's look at part of the Washington Post review:

"Dickerson's entire argument -- that blacks need to let go of old notions of black identity and the forms of identity politics and racial grievance at their core -- is subverted early in the book by a surprising chapter on "white intransigence" in which she presents a litany of complaints against whites. Here she lumps all whites together -- just the thing she opposes in the case of blacks -- and casts them as still in denial about the nation's racial crimes. Taking the occasional bigoted remark -- the kind usually vilified and exposed in the press today -- as indicative of late-20th-century white opinion, she undermines her own argument in the previous chapter that the civil rights movement brought revolutionary change. After urging blacks to forsake old patterns of complaint and redress for a newly courageous civic participation, dedication to the common good and individual flourishing, she invokes the usual culprit -- white supremacy -- as if it were an unmitigated and eternal force. Earlier faulting blacks for wrongly feeling excluded from America, she later says that blacks "find themselves defined out of America." Well, which is it?

"Other parts of the book are equally baffling. One page has her praising the ways in which black women "are beginning to free themselves," for example through intermarriage with whites, and another one finds her condemning whites as "societally short-tempered and rage-filled" and steeped in denial. On one page she says that whites who have children with blacks define their children as biracial or multiracial instead of black because they see "blackness as always and only something less than," while on another she seems to celebrate the notion of racial intermixture. She faults black leaders for imposing an orthodoxy of opinion, casting dissenters as Uncle Toms, and elsewhere attacks middle-class blacks' acceptance of the notion of transcending race as a negative sign of their having assimilated to white norms that deny the racial past. She criticizes those who cannot abide blacks who dissent from mainstream views on race but describes whites who criticize "political correctness" as trying to change the subject away from oppression. She summarily lumps the whites who worry about racial balkanization today with opponents of the Freedmen's Bureau in 1866, who saw an organization dedicated to the well-being of former slaves as racially divisive."

I stole all of that shit from Amazon.com. Sue me, fuckers.

Anyway, as the WaPo review sort of kind of gets at, Debra is a confused little lady. She doesn't quite want to let go of that entitlement blanket (as in, she wants to be entitled to SOME kind of racial difference, something that will keep the rest of us from ever being able to speak to her on equal terms about what black people are into, up to, out of), but she also sees that blacks--only 13% of the nation's population--must become more, not less, culturally mainstream.

Now back to Obama. In the midst of this maybe-maybe not argument, Ms. Dickerson made the outrageous claim on Colbert that Barack Obama is not "black" because he did not "live the black experience." Laura B., sometime critic, never-ever reader of this blog, wants to know: did Debra Dickerson read either of Obama's books? I do believe that's in there...

But really it's beside the point. Debra's argument is that Obama cannot really represent blacks in America because he is not a black American. According to her, he's an "African African-American" (and here I thought only white people said "African-American" anymore!), and as such he has no appeal to American blacks and doesn't speak their language. Apparently, when Obama talks, American blacks just hear that wah-wah trumpet thing from Charlie Brown. Or the barking chihuahua noise from Mars Attacks!.

Here's the stern rebuttal for confused Debra Dickerson: it doesn't matter what you think. "Real" blacks are the minority of this country. As you suggest--in your OWN BOOK, which you were plugging WHILE YOU MADE THIS COMMENT ABOUT OBAMA--you suggest that blacks need to see things through the eyes of whites in order to figure out how to better seize power in this country. Got it? Whites are still in charge, blacks need to see things as whites do in order to identify, anticipate, and control developments, and not spend all their time in isolationist cultural fantasyland wishing for pie in the sky.

And oh, by the way, white people think Barack Obama is black.

Could be because his skin is brown; could be because he keeps saying he is; doesn't really matter, Deb. Point is, the man has staked out that ground and you can only hurt him by saying otherwise. There are no great debates over racial issues during presidential campaigns, either, so yes: now is not the time. When IS the right time? I don't know. But just because the Naderites are goddamn morons who insist on repeating their crimes against humanity every four years doesn't mean you can, too. For the last time: white people think Obama is black. He thinks he's black. What the fuck are you arguing about?!

Or, is this another case of the left attacking a viable candidate simply because they dislike uber-successful, somewhat moderate politicians? In 2000, Gore was destroyed not by the right, but by the left, which apparently had a problem with his incredibly successful predecessor and Gore himself, a very stolid, intelligent, and honest man. His wife is a stone-cold cunt, sure; but she's not the president. George Bush is, thank YOU, America's left!

In 2004, Kerry got the royal screw-job from the conservatives, but he was attacked almost as much by his own party. "He's too soft," "he's not defending himself," "he's letting Bush get away with all his lies!" The best of all: "he's not really a liberal, we can tell by his stacks and stacks of money! Why can't we find a Tom Joad to run for president?" All valid sentiments--except maybe the Tom Joad part--but shut up, won't you, until after the election?

Elections are not policy sessions. They are not informational presentations. They are not protest rallies. Elections are yes-or-no votes. You do the educating AFTER you've won, not before. All your pretty lesson-plans look downright stupid, as do you look the ass, on the day after, when the Republicans are in the White House and Congress and they don't want or care to listen to you.

So, Debby: what are you after?

Darwin Day

For the sake of the species, go fuck a smart person tomorrow. That is all.