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Tired.

From overseas, watching the media whine about not being in the loop was truly pathetic. Correct headline: Bush Trip To Iraq Stuns Media. Here's another one: Bush Lied. Turkeys Died.

I can only remember two other sitting United States Presidents visiting a war zone, or an occupation zone if you prefer, and taking such a risk. They would be Abraham Lincoln visiting Richmond, VA, and Franklin Roosevelt visiting Yalta. And I thank I'm being generous with the latter since it gets into how we choose to define our terms.

Did I mention I'm tired?

After seeing it briefly, I cannot believe that there is an audience for Seinfeld dubbed in Japanese.

I've never been to Las Vegas, but somehow, I think it might pale in comparison to Tokyo's Ginza District.

So many topics, so few neurons firing.

More later.

Happy Now?

Ok, I couldn't stay away. Richard Cohen has been a bit more of an ass lately than usual and I was wondering if some of you weren't suffering from a lack of Scourge as much as I was. But that one Scourge will have to tide you over until I get back from Japan. Hmmm..., I wonder if I can get Cajun deep fried turkey sushi somewhere in Tokyo's Ginza district next Thursday.

DOWNDATE: A few random thoughts...

Big Media vs. the Blogosphere: Compare and contrast the level of obsession Big Media has with Michael Jackson with that of the blogosphere. Who's more serious? Which is closer to capital-J journalism? Speaking of Michael Jackson, is he updating the moon walk to a perp walk dance step? Or should that be a frog march? Michael's brother Jermaine calls this "nothing but a modern day lynching". Has the phrase "modern day lynching" jumped the shark? Finally, I hope Michael is on a suicide watch. Say, I hope there aren't any Blazers anywhere near Neverland Ranch.

Ya know, it's getting harder and harder to compete with the unintentionally funny. Yahoo! says today that "Michael Jackson Surrenders to Face Abuse Charges." Plastic surgeons throughout California must be leaping off buildings.

Today is Dodd's 3rd blogiversarry. Congrats!

And Tim Blair is back, presumably holding up the fort Down Under.

Honestly, the Massachusetts SJC ruling doesn't bother me nearly as much as the way politicians seem increasingly willing to abandon their responsibility and allow judges to make law rather to interpret it. This is an increasingly bad sign.

Now the Democrats are attacking the AARP for backing the Republican Medicare bill. Apparently one step off the reservation gets you blacklisted now. Such intolerance! I've noted before how silly it is to predict the end of a major party based upon the latest piece of information, as though that trend will go on forever. But the current DNC leadership does look to be increasingly suicidal in nature.

The Scourge of Richard Cohen, Vol. XCIX

(Ed. -- The following is a bit of mean spiritedness that will be an on-going feature of this blog. Normally the author will endeavor to be reasonably fair, but this is an exception.)

Vive la non-difference!

Full frontal disclosure: I am in favor of civil unions for gay men and women, but there is something about gay marriage that doesn’t seem right to me. I’m not doctrinally or ideologically opposed to it, but it just doesn’t feel right. I can’t really explain my reservations about it any better than that. If that’s not good enough, well, my explanation is worth every penny you paid for it.

As you might have guessed by now, Richard Cohen has fallen head over heels in love with gay marriage and he’s prepared to knock anyone who isn’t ass over tit. Watch in rapturous awe as Dick swings from an uncertain statement of hoping he’s right in the title to a growing rock-hard certainty in his manly conviction (Ed. – I’ve never heard it called that before) to see justice done, with gratuitous ad hominem attacks and slanders thrown in for good measure. Perhaps you will be able to see farther and clearer than I why This May Be Good for Marriage:

If Tom DeLay had half a brain…

Multiple choice:
a) He’d be twice as smart as Richard Cohen!
b) He could be the other bad guy in the next bad sequel to Silence of the Lambs.
c) He couldn’t be the Scarecrow in the next Wizard of Oz revival.
d) Being ambidextrous would be right out.

As fond as Richard Cohen is of straw men, I’m going with c.

… (if pigs had wings), …

(It would pose even more serious problems for Muslims everywhere. Unless, of course, said hallucinated pigs remained flightless like ostriches, penguins and many other birds, but then Dick would be making even less sense than usual, if that’s possible.)

… he would have cheered the news that Massachusetts may legalize gay marriages.

Let me see if I understand this correctly. If Tom DeLay were half as smart as he is, then he’d support gay marriage. But since he’s twice as smart as Richard Cohen thinks, he doesn’t. This is supposed to be an insult? Of course, from a purely political perspective, how do we know that he didn’t cheer this news?

The institution for which the House majority leader has such concern, traditional marriage, is both wobbly and wheezing -- the butt of cynical jokes, a gold mine for divorce lawyers and, even for the non-initiated, the triumph of hope over experience.

Sort of like a drunk Bill Clinton. Or would that be the triumph of Hope over experience?

Gays, bless 'em, may wind up saving marriage.

Gays, or the courts? Dick’s confused about cause and effect here. Or is it cause and affect? Well, there is certainly a cause. But how will it affect the desired effect? Or is it the desired effete? (Yes, I know I’m converting an adjective to a noun. And I could also go a lot further than this, but to do so would be in really bad taste.)

In ways that DeLay and his conservative cohorts seem not to recognize, marriage itself is on the rocks.

It’s only missing the twist.

Twenty percent of all first marriages don't make it past five years, and after a mere decade, one-third of all marriages are kaput. Married couples, once dominant in both life and sitcom TV, have gone from 80 percent of all households in the 1950s to 50 percent today.

Yes, and out of wedlock births have skyrocketed, our inner cities have deteriorated, high school dropout rates for black males have reached historically catastrophic proportions, church attendance has declined, Arnold Schwarzenegger is now the governor of California, and the ozone hole has disappeared. Hmm…, could any of this be related?

If you peek into the average home,…

Perhaps you should be arrested.

… the chances of finding a married couple with kids are just one in four.

Maybe, just maybe, there are other sociological forces at work here. And what’s more, maybe some people legitimately think that this is exactly what’s wrong with society -- and marriage -- and that further weakening marriage as in institution is not the answer.

DeLay, don't delay, marriage needs help.

Jeez, that’s weak use of his name. How’s this? If Richard were a lesbian, maybe he’d be looking for a co-hen to marry.

Now along come gay couples to rescue marriage from social and economic irrelevance, casting a queer eye on a straight institution.

But, no matter how you dress it up, isn’t it just a little premature to make this claim?

They seek it for pecuniary reasons -- issues such as estate taxes, etc. -- but also because they seem to be among the last romantics.

No stereotypes here, no siree bob.

(No shotgun marriages here.)

(Well, duh. I will assume that Richard Cohen knows the etymology of this phrase.)

The odd thing about the opposition to gay marriage is that if the opponents were not so blinded by bigotry and fear, they would see that gay men and lesbians provide the last, best argument for marriage: love and commitment.

There are many things I love and to which I am committed, none of which I am going to ever marry. No doubt, lots of people are blinded by bigotry and fear, but if the foolishness of your opponents is your best argument, may I therefore assume that President George W. Bush is the greatest man in the world? Anyway, if gay marriages started to fall apart faster than non-gay marriages, would Richard Cohen then think they are a bad idea?

There is scant reason for marriage anymore, …

Then why advocate it for others?

… which is why it has become a dicey proposition -- and why 86 million adults are unmarried.

Huh? I’m going to have to start inventing new Latin terms for these new errors in logic.

Women don't need men to support them or defend them from saber-toothed tigers -- and they can, I have read, even have babies on their own.

And what other possible reason could there be to get married?

Men, of course, still need women, if only to bear children and to remind them that they are uncommunicative.

I am beginning to feel sorry for Mrs. Cohen, if she exists.

(Is a marriage between two men a zone of total silence?)

(Gosh, I don’t know? Is a marriage between two women a cacophonous shouting match where no one can ever get a word in edgewise? Well, you sexist pig? Is it?)

But single guys can adopt kids, and sex is readily available almost anywhere, or so I am told by various city magazines.

This is a very strange collection of words that brings you know who to mind.

There is an analogy here -- I think.

Or not -- I know.

Just as gays are renowned for moving into urban areas that others have fled, for refurbishing whole neighborhoods and making them attractive, so they might rehabilitate and renew marriage.

Renowned?

Of all people, they need it the least. They have already shattered convention with their lifestyles, and demolished our comfy and parochial notions of sexual categories -- heterosexual male, heterosexual female and nothing else.

We must destroy this tradition in order to preserve it. (Hmm…, where have I heard that before?)

But when it comes to marriage of all things, some of them want to veer toward the traditional.

Well, technically, the non-traditional.

They want commitment and love -- a universal truth in a manner that Jane Austen never envisaged.

You can have commitment and love without marriage. Just ask some of those 86 million unmarried adults. Or is Richard implying that love and commitment can only be found within holy matrimony? Holy matrimony? Holy separation of church and state, Batman, what am I saying? Richard’s quite right about one thing though. I cannot imagine Jane Austen envisaging this.

The dour Republican Party, …

Dour? (Ed: Is there any other kind?)

… with DeLay and others promising a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage …

Fortunately, neither Tom DeLay nor any other wannabe dictator can just will constitutional amendments into being.

… (can Elizabeth Taylor be included, too?), …

Huh?

… is once again willing to stand athwart history, yelling stop.

Well, let’s be fair, that is what good conservatives do.

In the short term, it will work, since little in politics has the power bigotry does -- certainly not reason.

Bigotry certainly runs roughshod over reason in Richard Cohen columns. But I do take great offense at the idea that all opposition to gay marriage is motivated only by bigotry. You know, Dick, not everyone is an Episcopalian.

The many GOP politicians who have gay children will have to stifle all that their kids have taught them and fall behind DeLay in his backward march toward a vanished world.

[Many remarkably crude comments deleted at this point.]

Some, though, may succumb to knowledge and empathy and suggest -- softly, of course -- that love and commitment are universals and not confined to a single category of sexual orientation.

Conservatives must succumb to knowledge and human feelings. They are, after all, so unnatural to conservatives. But again, love and commitment do not necessarily imply marriage.

Gay marriage will not and cannot weaken the institution of marriage.

Q.E.D. No argument necessary. At least, I haven’t seen one yet.

A heterosexual is not somehow less married because a homosexual has tied the knot.

But that’s not the point now, is it?

On the contrary, the institution will be strengthened, bolstered by the very people who for conservatives represent everything loathsome about modernity.

And conservatives are just bigoted idiots not to realize that what they believe is just totally, completely wrong. They just cultural Luddites, eh Dick? I mean, they don’t even know any metrosexuals.

Gays are not attacking marriage. They want to practice it.

Actually, I think they want to practice that most postmodern pastime of redefining the language to mean whatever they want it to mean as a means to power.

"Love. Of course, love. Flames for a year, ashes for 30." So says the prince in Giuseppe di Lampedusa's classic novel, "The Leopard."

Sorry, never heard of it. But I do live in flyover country, had a public education and attended a state university, so maybe that explains it.

This cynical observation, attributed to a 19th-century man by a 20th-century writer, is hardly out of date.

But I’ll bet “The Leopard” is out of print.

Love is as much a recipe for failure as it is for success, and yet we cling to it because it ennobles us.

What in the hell is he talking about?

Love is our emotional opposable thumb, what differentiates us from lower animals, and why we vow -- sometimes over and over again -- a lifetime's commitment, marriage.

Oh that’s what he’s talking about. “Love is our emotional opposable thumb.” No wonder Dick gets paid to write and I don’t. I never could have come up with that.

If gays can do it …

I think they can, or so I am told by various city magazines.

… and maybe do it better, …

I wouldn’t know, though I am told so by various city magazines.

…then Tom DeLay could do us all a real public service by just stepping aside.

And, after all, getting Tom DeLay to step aside is what is really important here, isn’t it.

A whole lot of wonderful people want to come down the aisle.

Such a poor choice of words. Someone without my well-practiced restraint might be tempted to make some truly crude remark about this sentence as well. Fortunately, I can restrain my inner juvenile delinquent. I will, however, note that Mr. Cohen has studiously avoided the concerns that most conservatives do have about gay marriage in favor of his well-worn straw men. I don’t particularly subscribe to most of the conservative arguments, but I don’t casually dismiss them out of hand as being ignorant and motivated by bigotry and hatred either. And anyway, if marriage sucks so much, why is Richard Cohen trying to sucker gay men and women into it? Sometimes, I think Dick would have trouble selling ice cubes to the denizens of the nether regions.

Hiatus

I'm going to step away from the blog for the rest of this month. Between work, kids, holidays, a golf outing at Pinehurst next week, a business trip to Japan at the end of the month, and the paucity of any real change in the world situation of late, I think it best to take an extended break. I reserve the right to change my mind, especially if I am taken with some cunning quip that is so sharp you could shave with it, but I'm going to try and do this cold turkey.

I feel like I'm in a rut and some time away will help clear my head and allow me to generate some prose that more than about twenty of my closest blog friends might be interested in. I am profoundly grateful for the quality of the readership I have, but I will admit to wishing for some quantity as well. Hopefully, I'll come back with a fresh approach, some new ideas, a few good stories and a couple of surprises. Until then, feel free to look over my last week's work. There's a little bit of everything in there from agrisexuals, chicken catcher Torre, a prescient bit on Iraq being more closely analogous to Tet than to Vietnam, life imitating art in the guise of Monty Python, Jack Skelington rip-off Scourges, incestuous linking, bad puns, pop culture references, free word association, homonymic delusion, self-deprecation, and ruminations on the theatre of the absurd that is politics today.

In the meantime, if you have any suggestions on how I can stay under 100 at Pinehurst #2 -- what with only playing about two rounds since this spring, what to do (or to avoid) in the Ginza district of Tokyo, or if you just want to flatter me and tell me how essential this blog is to maintaining your proper perspective on life, the universe and all that, well, feel free. I'm not proud. I'll do anything to avoid being thrown onto the ashheap of the blogosphere. Well, almost anything.

See you in December.

DOWNDATE: Damn his hide, Richard Cohen is making it awfully hard to stay away. M...u...s...t n...o...t e...n...g...a...g...e ... ... ...

Off Topic

If someone should ever decide to do a movie on Laurel and Hardy, Hugh Grant should play Stan Laurel. I saw him from afar on a television without sound today (I work next to an NBC affiliate) and he has the expressions down pat, as well as the long face and tall slender build. I feel certain from his past work he could pull off the comedy without a hitch.

As to who should be Oliver Hardy, that's a tougher one for me. But maybe a good candidate to play the rotund half of this duo could be Michael Moore. Of course, he'd have to shave, bathe, learn to act rationally, and lose a little weight first. Hmmm, maybe Oliver Platt would be a better choice. At least he might be used to being called "Ollie."

Charity

I rarely say anything about charitable acts I do, but I am going to make an exception in this case for a couple of reasons.

This week I took daughter #1 out and we bought supplies and toys to send to the kids and people of Iraq via Chief Wiggles and Operation Give (mad props to Dean Esmay for pushing this relentlessly.). Everybody who reads this has probably already responded to Chief Wiggles drive, but you never know. While it is easiest to send money, and I have no doubt that it is appreciated, involving a young person back here in the whole process helps lay the seeds for future good deeds in ways that a check just can't. If you haven't found the time or opportunity yet to help, maybe today would be a good time to take care of it. You can do it for me since it's my birthday!

Over at Ipse Dixit, Dodd posted an item from a New York paper from a librarian about his son and other soldiers needing books to read in some areas just to pass the time -- and it does look like they are going to be there for a long time. I packed up six hardback Tom Clancy novels, and softcopy versions of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Count of Monte Cristo, and The Three Musketeers, to Capt. David Spencer and his fellow soldiers in the 173rd Airborne Brigade, Task Force 1-63 Armor. I think the idea of books arriving from all over our country from people they don't know will help assure them that their efforts are appreciated and that we do think of them frequently.

While shipping the books, I got into a discussion with the woman behind the counter who asked if Capt. Spencer was a friend or relative. When I told her it was neither and explained, she was so impressed that she took all the info necessary and said she was going to do the same thing. (Sowing the seeds of love!) Since Capt. Spencer's was only looking for 200 books or so, he probably is going to have to be building more shelves soon. I'm sure that any overflow they have will find its way to another unit. But if you're concerned about overburdening Capt. Spencer's shelves, there is another site that let's you send books to other soldiers in the armed forces.

So, what are you waiting for?

88 Lines for 44 Years

I wanted to write a long poem for my birthday inspired by that catching song by Marc Campbell and the Nails. But I've run out of time and inspiration, so instead I'm going to kick back, relax, drink a few beers, hug the kids, adore the wife, and offer thanks for what I have and the time I have left.

Later dude.

Smells Like Dean Spirit

The Democrats in Congress really are losing their minds:

Top Democrats in Congress are planning a second, "independent" investigation into the role of the White House and the Pentagon in processing pre-war intelligence on Iraq.

The Democrats-only inquiry, targeting the actions of Condoleezza Rice and senior Pentagon officials, would be a dramatic breach of Washington protocol. It would be led by rebel members of the Senate Intelligence Committee (SIC), which has spent more than four months investigating the quality and use of the intelligence.

Breaches of protocol and a complete disregard for precedent aren't exactly new to the current Democratic leadership though.

Senior Democrats have accused the committee's Republican chairman, Pat Roberts, of giving top White House and Pentagon officials an easy ride. According to Richard Durbin, a Chicago senator and SIC member, a public split and new inquiry is inevitable.

"We want to know whether the administration put pressure on the agencies to come up with certain kinds of information. It's the very question that has been explored at great length in Britain at the Hutton Inquiry," he told The Telegraph.

"If the Republican leadership of the Senate Intelligence Committee is determined to protect the administration at any cost, we'll do the investigative job on our own."

Let's see, when was the last time one party lined up to protect its president at all costs. Hmm..., I think it was fairly recently. Anyone?

The inquiry, under a rule never evoked before, would have legal powers to demand documents and summon witnesses from within the administration, potentially leading to high-ranking confrontations with top Bush officials.

As the American death toll in Iraq mounts, it has become clear that Democrats have claimed the Iraq war and its aftermath as their own battleground for the forthcoming presidential elections.

Bring it on. May the Democrat Party shrivel up and fall into the decline it deserves as they put their desire for power over the need to protect America. Better to rule in hell than serve in heaven, eh boys and girls?

Hey Joe, Where You Goin' With That Mic In Your Hand

Your fifteen minutes are up Mr. Wilson:

The former ambassador whose wife was exposed as a spy lambasted the Bush administration yesterday for what he considers lax response to a serious breach of national security. Joseph C. Wilson IV compared the action of the unidentified White House leaker to the treason of convicted FBI spy Robert Hanssen.

If that's true, maybe it would be better if Mr. Wilson stopped talking about it quite so much. I mean, we certainly don't want to reveal anything else, do we?

Best Halloween Costume 2003

A little boy with a Cardinals jersey all decked out in the tools of ignorance, but with a rubber chicken in his catcher's mitt. Can you guess what he was?

Chicken catcher Torre.

But, Of Course, There's Always the Stoopider Party

With the election only 366 days away, these guys are never going to last. The latest attempt to turn a drainage ditch into a canyon involves pickup truck pandering.

First Howard Dean let's us all know what he thinks of those below the Mason-Dixon line:

"I still want to be the candidate for guys with Confederate flags in their pickup trucks," the former Vermont governor was quoted as saying in Saturday's Des Moines Register. "We can't beat George Bush unless we appeal to a broad cross-section of Democrats."

Dean's campaign said Saturday that Dean was intending to encourage the return of Southern voters who have abandoned the Democrats for decades but are disaffected with the Republicans.

But wait! There's more! Dick Gephardt tries to make some hay by letting us know that he has no intention of being the president of all the people:

Rep. Dick Gephardt of Missouri, who shares the lead in Iowa with Dean, accused Dean of making a blatant move to win the votes of people "who disagree with us on bedrock Democratic values like civil rights."

"I don't want to be the candidate for guys with Confederate flags in their pickup trucks," Gephardt said in a statement. "I will win the Democratic nomination because I will be the candidate for guys with American flags in their pickup trucks."

Not to be outdone when the dirt is flying, John Kerry then jumps in the hole and keeps digging, trying to remind us all that NRA = confederate flag = racists:

Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts contended that Dean's "pandering" to the National Rifle Association gave him an inroad to "pander to lovers of the Confederate flag."

Dean's comment was reported in story about Kerry's criticism of Dean's record on guns. The senator claimed that Dean was an NRA favorite who opposed a 1994 law that banned assault weapons to civilians.

"I would rather be the candidate of the NAACP than the NRA," Kerry said in a statement.

What's wrong with trying to gain the support of both? Oh, I forgot, Democrats needs demons and devils to fight since everything has to be a bloody holy war for them. But it has got to be tough to fight holy wars when you insist that God stay on the sidelines.

Civics for Utopians

If you have children, please get involved with their schools. Fighting the rot is a daily battle. Take this little item, for instance:

Every time he speaks at a school, Colman McCarthy pulls out a $100 bill and gives students a pop quiz. He offers to give the money to any student who can correctly identify the following six American heroes:

Robert E. Lee, U.S. Grant, Paul Revere, Jeannette Rankin, Dorothy Day and Emily Balch.

Wait a second. I know most of these people and I don't regard them all as heroes. But let's see what Mr. McCarthy has in mind.

McCarthy, a retired Washington Post columnist, has spoken to more than 5,000 high school and college students during the past 20 years. He still has the $100 bill.

So, he's spoken to 250 people a year. Is this supposed to impress me?

"Audiences know the peacebreakers, but not the peacemakers," wrote McCarthy, founder of the Center for Teaching Peace.

Well now, that's something of a contentious point. So, fighting back makes you a peacebreaker? I'm quite certain that U.S. Grant and his side did not initiate the hostilities in the US Civil War. And it was U.S. Grant that did a lot to finally bring an end to the bloodletting and bring about a peace, however imperfect. I always love when the purveyors of peace are able to shed all historical context in favor of their manichean view of peace and non-peace. Perhaps slavery was preferable to non-peace, if I am reading Mr. McCarthy correctly. As far as the American Revolution goes, I doubt that Mr. McCarthy has a clue.

McCarthy's point is that our schools teach our kids plenty about war heroes such as Lee, Grant and Revere, but little to nothing about peace heroes such as Rankin, Day and Balch.

Peace heroes. Aren't they on right after Captain Planet?

"I can report that the young are hungry to learn alternatives to violence," McCarthy wrote.

Right along with their alternatives to freedom.

Some of that hunger will be evident this weekend during PeaceJam Slam at Rhodes College. About 300 high school students from three states will attend to prepare for February's PeaceJam 2004, co-sponsored by BRIDGES INC.

PeaceJam Slam. That sounds kinda, well, violent, doesn't it?

February's visiting professor will be Rigoberta Menchu Tum, the Guatemalan human rights activist.

Another 300 minds of mush are going to learn that truth is a construct of imperialist oppression from a factually challenged Marxist.

"You live in a culture of violence, a world of violence," Peace Prize laureate Adolfo Perez Esquivel told teenagers who attended the Mid-South's first PeaceJam in 2002.

Apparently is has necessary to add the "Slam" to get the kids to show up this year.

"In the midst of so much violence and terror and war, is peace really possible? How do you build peace?" First, by teaching peace.

"We are the world, we are the children." Who's going to argue with teaching peace, besides people like me, of course.

By teaching students as much about international cooperation as we do about international conflict.

Lesson number 1: That stuff George Washington said about avoiding entangling alliances, just ignore that.

By teaching them about great diplomatic victories as well as great military victories.

Great diplomatic victories? Name one. I mean name one that didn't rely on the threats or acts of some "peace-breakers."

By teaching them the history of tolerance as well as the history of terror.

Ah, the opposite of tolerance is terror. Got that? At least none of the kids will get sore backs carrying around the volume on the history of tolerance.

By teaching them about peacemakers as well as peacebreakers.

I can only assume that the people at the Center for Teaching Peace will be voting for Dennis Kucinich.

They should know about Emily Balch, a Quaker who inspired Woodrow Wilson and many others to seek international cooperation and conflict resolution.

Seems to me that Woody fought a war didn't he? And his peace initiatives didn't exactly pan out.

And about Dorothy Day, founder of the Catholic Worker movement, who inspired Catholic bishops to embrace pacifism and conscientious objector status.

Sorry, but I'm naturally suspicious of any organization with the word "Worker" in the title. And I don't respect liberation theology, pacifism, or other efforts to undermine the ideals of the greatest country on earth.

And about Jeanette Rankin, the first woman elected to Congress, who said, "You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake."

Ms. Rankin didn't feel it was necessary to fight WW II. So this makes her a hero?

Teaching peace would be a seismic shift in education. But who knows? If our kids and their kids studied peace, eventually we might study war no more.

Yes, we can change human nature and mold mankind into what we want him to be. Hmmm..., where have we heard that before?

It's Not Fair!

The L.A. Times is shocked to find bias in the media. Well, at FoxNews anyway:

A veteran producer this week alleged that Fox News executives issue a daily memorandum to staff on news coverage to bend the network's reporting into conformity with management's political views, refocusing attention on the partisan bias of America's most watched cable news operation.

The key words in this complaint are "most watched." It's driving them batty. Presumably, daily memos aren't necessary at the L.A. Times. Perhaps since all contrary opinions have already been eliminated. I have another slogan for the slef-annointed Ministry of Truth concerning freedom of thought:

Diversity is Unity! Unity is Diversity!