Vox Popoli

Jonah Goldberg complains about the media poohbahs:

San Francisco Chronicle columnist Jon Carroll has suggested that the Republican attack on the New York Times is a cleverly anti-Semitic campaign because “many members of the president’s base consider ‘New York’ to be a nifty code word for ‘Jewish.’”

Considering how Joel Mowbray and other NROniks like to whine that “neocon” is a nifty code word for “Jewish” and that everyone insufficiently enthusiastic about neoconservative plans to invade and forcibly install democracy in [insert country name here] are therefore anti-Semites, this strikes me as a rather strange point. In fact, I think everyone should feel free to make use of the tactic.

Seeing as the original Patriarchs were all Jewish, it is obvious that “Patriarchy” is a nifty code word for “Jews”, so therefore feminism is nothing but a particularly ugly face of anti-Semitism and all feminists hate Jews. Shame on you, Amanda! For shame, Lauren and Zuzu!

Fred hits the target again:

It is curious. Ancient Rome had little disposable income, and ancient Greece less. Building a Parthenon required great effort, as did the Gothic cathedrals. Yet they were built, and statues carved, and fountains made to play in the downtowns. Emperors built these things to glorify themselves, rich men to impress. Whatever the motive, they were built and adorned their times.

Today, with resources thousands of times greater, with bulldozers, steel, and unlimited money, we build little but square boxes and freeways. Our civilization is become a sprawling eyesore.

What is there to say? Small-hearted, short-sighted people build ugly monuments, or perhaps monuments to ugliness would be a better description. Indeed, the poverty of late 20th century art leads one to wonder if it is even possible for a godless, hedonistic society to produce great art. One has to see the new Guthrie to believe it, in fact, it is all but impossible to view so much as a picture without bursting into derisive laughter.

Italian Football Federation prosecutor Stefano Palazzi requested that champions Juventus should be sent down to Italy’s third division, and that AC Milan, Fiorentina and Lazio all be relegated to Serie B.

I think that’s a bit harsh on Fiorentina, which is struggling to make its way back from bankruptcy, but it won’t matter much for Milan since next year was looking difficult without Sheva anyhow. Gilardino It’s not as if Berlusconi is going to permit them to languish in Serie B for long.

Lazio deserves to be sent down simply for being a bunch of Fascists, and by Fascist I mean the literal Mussolini-style capital-F ideology of Giovanni Gentile Fascism, I’m not using it in the modern American sense of “people I neither like nor understand”.

It’s the thought of seeing Juve play in Serie C that enchants me so. I’ll delightedly go hours out of my way to see the insufferable Torino giants playing on patchy fields surrounded by rickety wooden stands that only hold 5,000 people. It’s just so fitting that their uniforms resemble prisonwear.

Busting these teams down is essentially just a mammoth fine. Neither Qaddafi’s son nor Berlusconi is going to stop playing top salaries, so both teams will be back on top of Serie A in the time it takes to play through the necessary season(s) and get promoted. But it has to be done, and if nothing else, the sting of the humiliation should last for some time.

It was a very entertaining game, although the Germans hung with the Italians rather better than I’d anticipated. No one was looking for another 4-1 walkover as in their last friendly, but I did think Lippi would have the Azzurri looking to shoot early and often as he did against Ukraine. This time, they were looking for too many crosses and tricky little penetrating passes that all too often fail to come together against competent defenders.

But the Italians controlled the wings throughout, except for when Odonkor came on towards the end of regulation, and Gattuso and Pirlo had the better of Ballack in central midfield. I think the loss of Frings hurt the Germans as badly as expected, as Klose and Poloski played well, they just didn’t get enough of the ball.

Fabio Grosso did extremely well in again getting forward at a critical moment late in the game, although he and Zambrotta were constantly pushing forward and preventing Lahm from doing likewise. Pirlo’s discipline on the first goal was fantastic, as he hung on to the ball long enough to occupy four Germans before laying it off to Gross on the right. Jens Lehman did his best but he never had a chance.

I thought Lippi was too conservative on his substitutions, as Toni ran down and should have come off fifteen minutes before he did. I would have brought Del Piero and Inzaghi on rather than Gilardino and Del Piero, but then, I think Gilardino is somewhat overrated and I have far more confidence in Pippo. His shot off the post did beat Lehman, but with such a small margin for error, he should have pulled the ball back to a wide open Totti instead of trying to go nearside.

Cannavaro was the man of the match for me. Except for the one rather iffy foul call towards the end, he was calmly winning every ball and launching immediate counterattacks with smooth passes to the midfield instead of settling for moonball clearances like so many central defenders.

Now, here’s hoping France will keep it together tomorrow and finish off an eminently beatable Portguese squad. France-Italy made for an excellent Euro 2004 final, and while I’ll be pulling for the Azzurri, I wouldn’t shed any tears to see Zizou end his great career as a world champion.

Forza Italia!

UPDATE: And this is why teams have to start taking shots early instead of always looking for the little entry passes: Germany defender Christoph Metzelder claimed Pirlo’s ‘moment of brilliance’ made the difference. ‘Everyone was expecting him to shoot but he just passed,’ Metzelder said. ‘That was a moment of brilliance.

And why were all the Germans expecting Pirlo to shoot? Because the previous two times he had the ball in a similar position, he took the shot. It doesn’t matter what the sport is, to be predictable is to be defendable. It will be interesting to see if either France or Portugal decide to mimic Italy’s more aggressive shooting strategy after their recent success, as neither team has hitherto shown any sign of it.

I’m having serious technical difficulties with the aforementioned game, namely, the screen goes to garbage as soon as it goes into the battle screen. The effect even continues after I quit out of the game, leaving Windows completely illegible until I restart. I’ve downloaded the latest DirectX as well as ATI’s current Catalyst drivers for the Radeon 9700 Mobility in my laptop.

Anyone run into this one before? What’s annoying is that TW:Medieval is screwing up too now, which it was not doing before.

Zuzu at Feministe cries crocodile tears:

Horrifying
Filed under: Blogging, Crime, Stupidity, Crazy Conservatives — zuzu @ 11:28 am

Recently, J*ff “Online Integrity” G*ldstein allowed a comment which outed Thersites and NYMary to remain on his site for some time, publishing personal information about their identities and workplaces, apparently because Thersities snarked at Online Integrity’s misattribution of a rather famous piece of artwork. Prior to that, Michelle Malkin published personal contact information for some UC Santa Cruz students who’d mistakenly included it in a press release that she’d gotten her hands on — and she refused to take down the information, even after the students asked her to, because they had started getting threatening calls from Malkin’s flying monkeys. She then found herself having to move because someone retaliated by publishing *her* home address and telephone.

Now another wingnut has published the personal contact information for someone who has displeased him. The crime? Taking a photo assignment for the New York Times’ Travel section on St. Michael’s, an exclusive community on the eastern shore of Maryland where Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney have well-known, heavily-guarded vacation homes.

I note that Zuzu doesn’t mention The Poor Man Institute, Electrolite, ConWebWatch, Dispatches From the Culture Wars, Bartholomew’s Notes on Religion, World O’Crap, Max Blumenthal, Blog of the Moderate Left or Brent Rasmussen, all of whom have enthusiastically published personal information about me because they do not agree with my opinions. This is not an empty accusation, you can easily confirm the veracity of it on Google. And while Zuzu is surely innocent of performing any such attempted outings herself – which in my case is particularly stupid anyhow as informed readers well know – this attempt to label such a tactic a particularly conservative craziness is in direct contradiction to the easily verifiable facts.

It will be interesting to see if Feministe’s readers will judge these left-wing blogs to be equally “horrifying” and “cowardly” as the “bedwetting Brownshirts of the Information Age” they decry for “using the implcit threat of violence to silence people”.

I had an espresso in Rome the other day that transformed my approach to my daily coffee. The bar happened to have little packets of honey as well as the usual sugar and insecticide, so I decided to give Pooh Bear’s favorite delicacy a whirl. The result was buonissimo despite the mediocre quality of the espresso itself, so I decided to experiment a little on the home front upon my return. I found this yields the ultimate result:

1 Nespresso machine
1 capsule ristretto. That’s the black caps intended only for the serious espresso drinker.
1 cup whole milk
1 teaspoon spun Canadian honey

And here everyone thought I was kidding when I said I was down with Mr. Clooney.

C’e veramente una vita bella

The Washington Times apparently considers this to be news of the Nation/Politics variety:

Labeling a child obese might “run the risk of making them angry, making the family angry,” but it addresses a serious issue head-on, said Dr. Reginald Washington, a Denver pediatrician and co-chairman of an American Academy of Pediatrics obesity task force. “If that same person came into your office and had cancer, or was anemic, or had an ear infection, would we be having the same conversation? There are a thousand reasons why this obesity epidemic is so out of control, and one of them is no one wants to talk about it.”

The diplomatic approach adopted by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and used by many doctors avoids the word “obese” because of the stigma. The CDC also calls overweight children “at risk of overweight.”

Personally, I’d find it difficult not to tell the fat little freaks to stop worrying about their self-esteem and stop stuffing their fat little faces before they contract diabetes, but then, I’m reliably informed that I am somewhat insensitive on the issue.

The annoying thing about the fat brigade, junior division is the way in which many of their parents simply refuse to accept responsibility for their children’s excessive weight. It’s reprehensible.

Losing weight isn’t any fun. It’s not supposed to be. Nearly everyone has had to do it at one point or another, but the equation is pretty simple. Unless you burn off more energy than you take in, you won’t lose weight. I wish I could still eat like a stoned pig, drink 14 beers and not gain an ounce, but I’m not 21 anymore so I don’t. The trick is to recognize where your limits are and stick to them.

I know most of the big and beautiful understand this on some level, but then, it’s hard to forget the fatty walking down the stairs and loudly lamenting her inability to lose weight… with a doughnut in either hand. Or the woman at the Dairy Queen who was sitting at a nearby table theorizing about the possibility of her thyroid being overactive while scarfing down a Peanut Buster Parfait, a Banana Split and what looked like a Hot Fudge Brownie Delight.

Venus Williams laments her second-class status:

Wimbledon has sent me a message: I’m only a second-class champion…. I intend to keep doing everything I can until Billie Jean’s original dream of equality is made real. It’s a shame that the name of the greatest tournament in tennis, an event that should be a positive symbol for the sport, is tarnished.

Beat Federer and then you can call yourself a champion, Venus. Until then, you’re merely the best of a lesser group of athletes, at least, you would be if you weren’t getting eliminated in the second round.

And who cares about a “dream of equality” from someone who played in a sham competition with special rules designed to benefit her at the expense of her opponent?

I don’t mind girls’ athletics, except for basketball which is not only lame but seems to be murder on young female ACLs. I’m one of the few coaches who allows girls to play on what is a predominantly boys’ team, but they get no special treatment. And I loathe the equalitarians who talk equality in theory, but like Billie Jean King, expect special treatment for the girls in practice. It was for just that reason that two seasons ago, I went out of my way to let my players humiliate the local girls’ All-Star team in the semifinals of a big tournament.

My boys were winning 2-0, and I’d taken off three of my best players as I usually do to avoid running up the score when we have a lead. The ref had been calling a lot of ticky-tack fouls on my guys, (most of whom were a head shorter than the girls), but I didn’t think much of it until we scored again and the boy who scored bumped into the goalie after the ball was already in the back of the net. Unbelievably, the ref disallowed the goal. The boys were furious, but I stayed calm until a girl blatantly used both hands to pull down one of my midfielders from behind by the shoulders, then tripped over him and was given a free kick. She even pretended to hurt herself although she’d added injury to insult by landing on top of the poor kid. That was the single most ridiculous call I’d seen since an African referee disallowed a goal my junior year of high school on the grounds that had the goal posts been curved instead of rectangular, the ball would not have gone in.

I wanted to lose my temper, but I wasn’t about to do so in front of the boys since our whole approach to the game revolves around discipline. Still, I was seriously pissed. There was no way the ref had been confused, he’d seen the whole thing, and the other coach was actually applauding his players for their ridiculous play-acting and she-thuggery. It was clearly a purposeful effort to aid the poor little overmatched All-Stars. At this point, four of my starters were out, so I called them over to me – all the boys were practically breathing fire by this time – and issued one very simple order: crush them.

It was like releasing the slavering hounds. Although the game was two-thirds over already, the boys managed to put eight more balls in the net before the whistle blew. That was six more goals than we’d scored against any other team, including the lowly ones, so their coach got the message loud and clear. After the game, he came over and began vehemently protesting our “unsportsmanship” but he finally ground to a halt as my only response to his complaints was a contemptuous stare.

“Either play the game, or don’t play at all,” I finally told him. Belatedly realizing that he didn’t have a leg to stand on, he apologized, we shook hands and that was that.

If Venus and company want to be considered first-class champions, there’s a simple answer. Go out and beat the best. And if you can’t, then you’re not a real champion anyhow. In any event, at least do yourself the favor of testing yourself against the best and seeing where you really stand. I know how it feels to be the best of an inferior lot – I was a white sprinter – and the telling thing is that my best times were always recorded when finishing third or fifth or seventh against the brothers, never when I was winning races against white guys.

UPDATE: Speaking of the sexes and tennis, Scott Adams chimes in:

Later today I have a tennis match against a 20-year old woman who plays for her college team on a tennis scholarship. Her mom is the tennis pro at the health club where I play. I am still formulating my strategy for avoiding embarrassment. My current plan is to run head first into the net post when the score reaches 5-0….

The good news is that I hit enough “Kennedys” to actually win. The bad news is that my opponent has renounced tennis and joined the Witness Protection Program so that no one at the club will ask her how the match went.