Author: VD

After long reflection, I have decided to make a major change in my life. After more than a decade of loyalty, I am abandoning my former footwear. Yes, gentle reader, I know it comes as a shock, but at long last I have decided to forsake Bally in favor of Geox as my primary means of being shod.

I am not proud of my inconstance, but the disappointments have been grievous for lo, these last three years. The elegant shoes that felt like slipping one’s feet into warm butter are no more, shoes of a lost golden age, now replaced by lesser creations that look, but do not feel, like Bally of yore.

Still, I am not entirely treacherous, as I remain faithful to Mr. Armani as well a certain camiceria.

MoveOn is worried about media bias:

This Sunday, CNN engaged in one of the most troubling trends in political dialogue today — pitting a right-wing advocate against a journalist who is paid to be neutral and calling it a “balanced” discussion of political issues.

Discussing the president’s State of the Union address on CNN’s “Reliable Sources” were Washington Post reporter Dana Milbank and Byron York, which CNN described as “of National Review.”

What CNN did not say is that the National Review is a right-wing movement magazine and that York is author of the book Vast Left Wing Conspiracy. As could be expected, no progressive perspective was offered on President Bush’s biggest speech of the year….

Why would CNN do something so obviously unfair and unbalanced? Either they didn’t think about it, which is a huge problem, or this is just the latest example of a news outlet caving to the right-wing’s false charge of “liberal bias” in the media — presuming that any real journalist must inherently be liberal.

Perhaps that’s because at least 95 percent of “real” journalists are liberal. What passes for liberal logic runs thusly:

1. Journalists work for corporations
2. Corporations are conservative
3. Therefore, even genuinely liberal journalists are forced to be politically moderate.
4. And besides, they are trained to be objective in journalism school.

Of course, as I have previously proved, (2) is demonstrably false, as anyone who is so unfortunate as to have encountered the HR departments of the Fortune 500 knows. As for four, many journalists have never been to journalism school, even if one accepts the questionable idea that one can be trained to be objective.

One wonders if these trained, objective journalists would be willing to concede that every business executives who has taken an ethics course in the process of obtaining his MBA may therefore be considered ethical.

From Editor and Publisher:

* National Public Radio decided not to even post a Web link to the cartoons. “The bottom line for me is that the cartoon is so highly offensive to millions of Muslims that it’s preferable to describe it in words rather than posting it on the web,” said NPR News executive Bill Marimow, the former editor of The Sun in Baltimore. “In this case, I believe that our audience can, through our reports — on radio and the web — get a very detailed sense of what’s depicted in the cartoon. By not posting it on the web, we demonstrate a respect for deeply held religious beliefs.”

* At USA Today, “we concluded that we could cover the issue comprehensively without republishing the cartoon, something clearly offensive to many Muslims. It’s not censorship, self or otherwise,” said Deputy World Editor Jim Michaels.

* According to an article in today’s USA Today, New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller said that he and his staff concluded after a “long and vigorous debate” that publishing the cartoon would be “perceived as a particularly deliberate insult” by Muslims. “Like any decision to withhold elements of a story, this was neither easy nor entirely satisfying, but it feels like the right thing to do.”

Of course, Bill Keller and company don’t mind putting a picture of the Virgin Mary covered in shit in the paper again. Perhaps a few Catholic radicals need to behead Mr. Keller, then the NYT might realize that it is giving a “particularly deliberate insult” to Catholics.

It’s become inarguably obvious that these secular champions of the 1st Amendment are pansy paper tigers. They’re bold and brave enough when attacking a religion that instructs followers to turn the other cheek, but they suddenly find deep sensitivity and respect when a religion of the sword is involved.

The lesson? No atheist ever died for his religion.

From the editors at the New York Press:

The editorial staff of the alternative weekly New York Press walked out today, en masse, after the paper’s publishers backed down from printing the Danish cartoons that have become the center of a global free-speech fight.

Editor-in-Chief Harry Siegel emails, on behalf of the editorial staff:

New York Press, like so many other publications, has suborned its own professed principles. For all the talk of freedom of speech, only the New York Sun locally and two other papers nationally have mustered the minimal courage needed to print simple and not especially offensive editorial cartoons that have been used as a pretext for great and greatly menacing violence directed against journalists, cartoonists, humanitarian aid workers, diplomats and others who represent the basic values and obligations of Western civilization. Having been ordered at the 11th hour to pull the now-infamous Danish cartoons from an issue dedicated to them, the editorial group—consisting of myself, managing editor Tim Marchman, arts editorJonathan Leaf and one-man city hall bureau Azi Paybarah, chose instead to resign our positions.

We have no desire to be free speech martyrs, but it would have been nakedly hypocritical to avoid the same cartoons we’d criticized others for not running, cartoons that however absurdly have inspired arson, kidnapping and murder and forced cartoonists in at least two continents to go into hiding. Editors have already been forced to leave papers in Jordan and France for having run these cartoons. We have no illusions about the power of the Press (NY Press, we mean), but even on the far margins of the world-historical stage, we are not willing to side with the enemies of the values we hold dear, a free press not least among them.

Meanwhile, CNN is refusing to display them out of respect for Islam. Of course, as John Miller of NRO’s Corner has pointed out, it has no similar regard for Christianity or Judaism.

Perhaps Christians should take notes from this unsurprising, but signal lesson in secular pusillanimity and shoot a few artists, editors and movie producers. No doubt we’d be up to our necks in television shows about King David and movies about the Apostle Paul within months.

Only three newspapers are willing to cover a story accurately. I guess they weren’t all that willing to sacrifice their lives for their right to speak freely; what are the chances that they actually stand by that Voltairean flag they’re always waving?

This Valentines Day, indulge her fantasies… SEX AND THE CITY: THE COMPLETE SERIES

I found this to be an educational advertisement, as apparently women’s fantasies primarily revolve around behaving in a totally conventional manner while presenting a falsely adventurous front to the world.

Sex in the City was rather like a hopelessly inept porn movie, where at the last moment, the clothes stay on and no one except the cautionary figure out of the traditional morality tale actually does anything but have missionary-style sex with the boyfriend. Thus, Charlotte and Miranda flirt with the idea of having threesomes but don’t, Carrie can’t have a fling without attempting to turn the mystified guy into a fixture and the eternal transgressor, Samantha, is punished with betrayal and cancer. Charlotte, we are given to understand, can’t even bear to give blow jobs, and Miranda, her inexplicable affairs notwithstanding, is about as sexually intriguing as a legal brief on import tax.

There are other fantasies, too, from the Beast’s inevitable taming in the end to the idea that a man will be so enraptured with a woman that he will leap from his younger, prettier new lover’s bed to rush to her side should she beckon. And then, there was the biggest fantasy of all… that four (presumably) attractive women whose primary connection was social would stay friends through thick and thin.

This was TV for the F/F – Friends Forever – crowd. What’s mystifying isn’t its popularity since escapist fantasy has always been popular, whether it is set in Manhattan or a Galaxy Far Far Away. What is mystifying is how anyone could take it seriously as a cultural icon, a guide to personal behavior or a realistic representation of modern American women.

TMQ:

Rumsfeld to Joint Chiefs: There’s Been Some Mistake, We Missed 15 Countries: Just before Super Bowl kickoff, Al Michaels welcomed U.S. armed forces members “serving overseas in 175 countries.” Yours truly thinks grateful thoughts about the men and women defending our liberty, and the concept of liberty, by serving overseas. Yet there are 191 nations in the world. We have troops stationed in 175 of them? Make that 176, including here. We have soldiers in 92 percent of the world’s nations?

I always enjoy speaking those who insist that there is no American empire because we elect a president. I like to ask them two questions:

1. Have you ever heard of the Athenian Empire?
2. Who was its emperor?

Hruby’s sheds a tear for the fat and the ugly:

Dove wants me to join something called the “Campaign for Real Beauty” because the greatest issue facing our girls is feeling too fat or wanting to be blond, and the solution is buying skin care products that will magically boost one’s self-esteem. Right. Maybe in Oprah’s America. As for me, sorry if I’m not ready to march on Washington for this. Look, it’s simply not a tragedy when watching Jessica Simpson in a video makes a little girl feel less pretty, any more than it’s a tragedy when listening to Simpson open her mouth makes the same little girl feel less dumb. Promote a similar “Campaign for Real Athletes” — with pictures of little boys and sad captions like “DOESN’T THINK HE’LL EVER PLAY IN SUPER BOWL” — and you’d be laughed off the air…. Did anyone tell the Campaign for Real Beauty about those Slim-Fast ads?

I suspect the whole campaign was originally conceived by a man, because anything that relies this shamelessly on sanctifying and taking advantage of female insecurity almost has to have been thought up by someone accustomed to ruthlessly preying on women.

A well-known black columnist writes about yesterday’s column

Vox…well said…loved it…point we must make not stop making until same is ended.

LL has some suggestions:

Please revise the Afro-Abortion article. The politically correct term is now known as Afro-capable. Please revise paragraphs 1 through 11, to reflect a sugar-coated version, more appropriate for those of us who can’t handle blunt truth. Tell us the numbers but not the meaning behind them, and most undoubtedly, you will have to ensure that it is unbiased in political thinking. If you could also find a way to point a finger at a few conservatives while making these needed changes, we may be able to publish the article.

Actually, the mainstream media prefers not to provide the hard numbers, but rather the percentage change in the numbers, the better to avoid all possibility of comparison with past statistics.

Thus, “the economy grew x.y% in the fourth quarter” and “the American birthrate dropped 0.z% in 2005”.

JB, an obvious White Guy, is horrified by today’s column:

Horrible. I know that you meant it as a parody on liberal thinking. I know that the people who have received the worst lot in life due to liberal thinking and programs are the Afro-American population. I also am much agreived at the abortion issue, but Vox I think your editorial crossed the line. I kniow that brilliant thinkers like your self sometimes communicate in a way that is not understandable by us mere mortals, but I searched your editorial for the words that said you did not think about black people in the epithetic and critical tone of your desctiptions and I found no such disclaimer. I am appalled that WND would publish an editorial that so depreciates the worth of our Afro-American people.

It’s not a parody of liberal thinking, it’s an EXPOSURE of liberal thinking. And, as anyone who actually knows black people could tell JB, Afro is a hairstyle, African-American is the politically correct term. Racist pig!

Meanwhile, RB somehow manages to survive the virulent racism inherent in today’s column:

That was an excellent piece. Funny, being black, I would have been called an oreo for saying such things. Very much on target. Not only that, it was hilarious! Keep up the good work. Man! Does the truth ever hurt.