Posts Tagged ‘I wish I said that’

I second his motion

Posted: January 25, 2009 by datechguy in catholic, opinion/news
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Don Suber in his just ask me column gets it exactly right on the nonsense column comparing Princess Di and Michelle Obama. It is an insult…to Obama:

Mrs. Obama is an accomplished lawyer, pretty good mom (from what I see) and a person of substance who would not fritter away a good marriage for a roll in the hay. Di had her good points, but she was Paris Hilton with underpants.

I don’t like Mrs. Obama’s politics and her neo-patriotism was bizarre. That said, I respect her as a first lady because she acts like a lady first.

I know Baxter meant it as a compliment but America is no place for royalty. As Princess Caroline just found out.

One of my pet peeves is the idolatry over Princess Diana. It is an odd phenom. I like this Mike Barnicle from the week of their death:

And an odd thing happened today. If you believe in God, or a higher being, it’s almost as if God tapped the news media around the world on the shoulder at about 1 o’clock this afternoon and said, “It’s time to straighten your priorities out. Mother Teresa is dead.”

For five straight days we have been making Princess Diana larger than life. She seems like a very wonderful woman, a nice woman. She was 36 years of age. A woman died in Calcutta today who spent all of her life touching the poor and helping the poor. And I’m going to be interested, and I think many Americans would be interested to see if Peter Jennings and Dan Rather and CNN and Tom Brokaw go to Calcutta.

His Boston Globe column of that week on the subject, which I’ve been unable to find free online, was one of the best things he ever wrote.

The fact that Mother Teresa died the same week and the media was forced to give her funeral the same coverage as Diana is one of my “indirect proofs” of Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular.
I’ll be doing a post on the subject of “indirect proofs” later in my religion series.

Steyn deserves his own post

Posted: January 21, 2009 by datechguy in internet/free speech, opinion/news
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Mark Steyn is one of today’s great writers. His comment on the Wilders situation deserves its own post:

The PC nellies of the Canadian “Human Rights” Commission, happy to hound the last neo-Nazi in Saskatchewan posting to the Internet from his mum’s basement, won’t go anywhere near Abou Hammaad Sulaiman Dameus al-Hayitia, the big-time Montreal imam whose book says infidels are “evil people”, Jews “spread corruption and chaos”, and homosexuals should be “exterminated”.

Instead, the state’s response to explicit Islamic intimidation is to punish those foolish enough to point out that intimidation. You don’t have to be as intemperate as Minheer Wilders can sometimes be: In the Netherlands even the most innocuous statement can get you into trouble. To express his disgust at Theo van Gogh’s murder, the artist Chris Ripke put up a mural outside his studio showing an angel and the words “Thou shalt not kill”. But the cops thought this was somehow a dig at the local mosque and so came round, destroyed the mural, arrested the TV news crew filming it, and wiped their tape. The Dutch have determined to commit societal euthanasia, and dislike fellows pointing out it might not be as painless as they’ve assumed.

Democracies tend to die of suicide, lets hope that’s not the case.

Broken clock Watch Bob Herbert

Posted: January 19, 2009 by datechguy in opinion/news
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I don’t have a lot of use for Bob Herbert but this column on Zimbabwe is required reading:

Most of the world is ignoring the agony of Zimbabwe, a once prosperous and medically advanced nation in southern Africa that is suffering from political and economic turmoil — and the brutality of Mugabe’s long and tyrannical reign.

Zimbabwe mess is even worse since it was done by Zimbabwe’s dictator and his supporters with no opposition from African leaders who might have made a difference. Totally avoidable

It brings to mind this Wondermark Cartoon.

Well Obama will be president tomorrow so it will be ok. Right?

Update: Here is the Comic Proper used with permission and don’t forget to check out Wondermark twice a week available from our permalink:

Liberalism defined!

Liberalism defined!

An inherent truth

Posted: January 17, 2009 by datechguy in opinion/news
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The Wall Street Journal’s review of the the Nation’s magazine The Nation’s guide to the Nation delivers some comedy that I suspect the book doesn’t intend. But there is one part of the review that hits a particular nail on the head:

The Nation guide recommends a bookstore in Madison, Wis., by saying: “George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld do not want you to shop at Rainbow Bookstore Cooperative.” Yeah, remember that clerk, Dylan, the guy who was named Rainbow employee of the month last June? He’s in Gitmo now.

Gird Yourself for Exciting Yet Imaginary Battles! As far as The Nation is concerned, just about every progressive bookstore, musician, theater troupe and mime is committed to fighting the stranglehold of censorship. Except, well, they don’t actually get censored, so it’s like they’re committed to fighting the stranglehold of Klingons.

That line encompasses everything about the left and oppression these days. Over and over they talk about speaking truth to power and how there were censored by the Bush administration except that they don’t challenge any power that might actually strike back. Those days a long gone. Maybe they are referring to the violence inherent in the system.

“committed to fighting the stranglehold of Klingons.” Marvelous!

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