Of Moops and Men

The National Guard spy for al Qaeda was arrested "pending criminal charges of aiding the enemy by wrongfully attempting to communicate and give intelligence to the al-Qaida terrorist network," an Army spokesman says.

How do you rightfully do that?

UPDATE: OK, the answer I should have thought of: You can rightfully give info to al Qaeda if you're a double agent, that is, really working as a spy on behalf of the U.S. government. Doubtful in the case of this dipshit.

New Jersey's highest honor for physicians is known as the Edward J. Ill award. I had to read it several times to confirm: That really is "ill" as in sick, not as in Roman numeral III.

Moby, the pop-music man-child who is amusing but less talented (by a geometric order of magnitude) than his ancestor Herman Melville, suggests spreading false rumors in order to defeat Bush.

Country Store suggests that the blogosphere Google-bomb Moby with the phrase "dog humper."

I've done my part on the left-hand blog roll. Now back to reading the more intelligent Moby.

If you're looking for the actor with the misspelled name "Vito Morgenson," you've come to the right site! I am the No. 1 Google site for people spelling his name wrong! Hooray for small victories!

Lileks writes in his Bleat today about a startling discovery he made -- Johnny Horton a vicious racist! My jaw dropped as far and as fast as his did when I read the lyrics of the offending song. Then I, like he, did a Google check. Mine was more successful than his.

I think this story completely disproves Johnny Horton's authorship of a hate-song. Johnny Rebel is the Klan baddie. Johnny Rebel. Obviously Lileks has fallen prey to the confusing and error-filled world of MP3 searches, where you may also find that Bob Dylan recorded "One Headlight" and the Beatles did "Uncle Albert / Admiral Halsey."

But looking more closely at the matter ... was Johnny Horton a racist? Closely examine the chorus of the "Battle of New Orleans" ...

We fired our guns and the British kept a comin’,
There wasn’t ’bout as many as there was awhile ago.

... In which merry sport is made out of the mass slaughter of a group of people --- solely because of their nationality!

I made a delightful discovery the other day while reading "Moby Dick" for the first time ever. In the first few pages, Ishmael imagines some headlines showing how absurd it is that his sea voyage would be considered important. These are the headlines, precisely as written by Melville:

Grand Contested Election for the Presidency of the United States.
Whaling Voyage by One Ishmael.
BLOODY BATTLE IN AFFGHANISTAN.

"Why," I thought, "Those are the headlines from 2000-2001! What eerie premonition!"

Heh-heh, and I have discovered it!

Until I mentioned I was reading "Moby Dick" to Dawn, and she said, "Oh, did you read that part about 'Bloody Battle in Afghanistan?' "

Argh! Turns out this was already cited by the keen-eyed James Taranto, never one to miss a cool historical/political coincidence.

The curse of Saturday Night Live strikes again. I'll be agitating for a "Best of ..." TV special.

My whipping boy of a "news" source, the Reuters agency, tries to add depth and sophistication that you just don't find in the American media. To wit: Their latest dispatch, about a Miami con game, informs us that Miami is a city with a "large Cuban-American population." Too bad they couldn't have said it in a less laughable way:

It was not immediately clear whether they had managed to persuade anybody to give money to the scheme, presumably meant to fool people in a city with a large Cuban-American population.

Presuming what? That the scam was meant to fool people? Or that Miami has lots of Cubans?

A newspaper feature analyzing each of the Democratic presidential candidates by their zodiac signs appeared today ... not in the New York Post, not in the National Enquirer, but in The New York Times.

The vaporizings of star-child Erin Sullivan finally give the Times a horoscope worthy of the name. Talking out of both sides of the mouth? Check. (Lieberman is in a "transitional phase.") Banal positivity? Check. (Sharpton "desires global harmony.") Pseudo-scientific babble? Check. (Kerry has "four Gemini planets in the public relationship sector of his birth chart.")

This would be great stuff if the Times let us know they're in on the joke. But they don't. My guess is, they'd tell us it would be inappropriate to make a value judgment on astrology as a science. Which makes a tiny bit of sense. At least Miss Cleo takes herself less seriously than the Times editorial board.

Gasp! What were the Oscar voters thinking? They nominated for Best Picture that vile work of hatred, that insidious piece of race-baiting propaganda, that cruelly insensitive, one-dimensional, crude Hollywood stereotype ...

"Lost in Translation"?

Well, here's the straight scoop, by an insufferably moral op-ed writer for a British newspaper known variously as the Guardian or the Grauniad. You may have read that it's planning to publish a U.S. edition, all the better to spell out politically correct Euro-orthodoxy in the manner of a papal bull.

Anyway, it seems that because the film shows Japanese people behaving humorously and in ways Westerners might find foreign -- it's racist. After all, the Japanese are not foreign. To imply otherwise is racist. Q.E.D.

Kiko Day is the author: Here she is playing a traditional Japanese musical instrument in a non-stereotypical, non-phallic, non-paradigmatic, cultural-norm-shattering way. Don't giggle or I'll phone you in to the sensitivity police. Her e-mail address is kikuescargot@hotmail.com, which is a non-offensive ethnic reference to a French national dish.

I will leave it to the brilliant Aussie blogger Bunyip to take the wrecking ball to her weird ideas of what's racist. But I'll point out this: She suggests that the brilliant director Sofia Coppola is really the "thinking person's Sylvester Stallone." Whaaaa-aaat? What exactly do Sofia Coppola and Sylvester Stallone have in common, except that they're both ... er ... Italian?

The city of Waterbury is colorful enough without being overblown into (giggle alert) a quasar of corruption in this Times piece.

It's actually a neat little city, lots of red brick and character. It features one of the only public places I know of you can walk in and look at a Pulitzer Prize -- the one hanging in the lobby of the Waterbury Republican-American newspaper. Today's top story: Waterbury's dog warden breaks the old mold.

So the sweet little old lady approaches me on the subway platform today, sticks out a hand grasping some crackpot pamphlets, and declares: "Read about Bush's secret society."

I show no reaction, giving her only silence, which she correctly interprets as lack of interest.

She turns angry and spits out: "If you're riding the subway, you can't be for Bush. He's only for white males who ride in limos."

Of course, like a majority of humankind, I never can deliver the impromptu comeback. What I should have said was: "My chauffeur was out sick today."

Last week marked the well-timed U.S. release of "The Office" DVD. It's the best TV comedy I've seen, at least in this decade. Of course, it's humor based on unflinching observation, not yuks.

Which on occasion leads to hilariously damning self-criticism. In the DVD's documentary feature, co-creators Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant are asked to explain how their fictional boss, David Brent, keeps his job while being a jaw-dropping incompetent.

Gervais: "If you walk around the BBC for a day, you see people who are rubbish keep their jobs."

Merchant: "In very important jobs, too. We're talking executives."

About a week after this DVD came out, the two top executives at BBC News were forced to quit for the matter of standing by a libelous story without ever bothering to check if it was true or not.

(One of them, Greg Dyke, was hit in the rear end by the door as he left BBC headquarters. NOT a joke.)