Vox Popoli

From NRO:

“FORMER TOP-NOTCH PEST EXTERMINATOR” [Rich Lowry ]
Eugene Robinson manages two snotty exterminator references in his DeLay column today.

Boo-freaking-hoo. If DeLay had serious stones, he’d show up for a press conference with whatever flamethrower contraption it is that exterminators carry and announce something like:

“I’ve taken down bigger cockroaches than Nancy Pelosi and Howard Dean in my day.” Then blast Wolf Blitzer or whoever in the face with whipped cream or whatever.

The media would never dare give him a hard time about it again, because people would think it was awesome.

Then again, thinking like this may be why I’m not a campaign advisor or a politician….

The Original Cyberpunk makes use of his Hollywood connections:

As April gives way to May and the final days tick down, one question preoccupies millions of highly trained technical minds around the globe: does George Lucas still have it, or will Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith be yet another example of beautiful cinematography and brilliant special effects in the service of an infantile story line? While I realize I’m in danger of jeopardizing decades of close personal friendship here, I also believe that in time George will thank me for telling you all today that the answer to this question is an absolute, unqualified, and resounding, YES!

Er, that is, yes, George Lucas does still have it.

Really, I can’t say enough about how impressed I am that he has saved the biggest and best surprise for last. This is no ordinary story-teller’s feat: for 28 years he has kept one essential piece of misdirection going and one utterly mind-blowing surprise under wraps. I am speaking, of course, of the one critical question that underpins the entire evolution of the whole storyline; that of the true identity of the evil Galactic Emperor.

I don’t care. Star Wars is dead to me. After the abomination that passed for Episode I, I refuse to see II or III. II was on one night and I saw just enough of it to confirm my decision.

The Fraters Libertas draw our attention to the Star and Sickle’s new Reporter’s Defender making use of a sock puppet or two:

“Along with many other readers, I continue to be frustrated with the needless attacks, negativity, name-calling, lying/deceit and general hypocrisy. Your article serves to focus on the cause of our frustration and the importance of supporting a free press. Well done! Please continue to speak out. The public hears the negative messages over and over until they become almost believable. The positive messages need to be repeated just as often. It is so important for the media to speak up and not be afraid to challenge. Our society needs a free press, and it is an honorable profession.” – Nina Buzzell, Blaine

Print media have their own way of undercutting themselves. Time and again print journalists, in their efforts to be “fair and balanced,” present stories as if there were two equal sides. Mostly, however, the world is much more complex and interesting than to present itself in neat, bilateral symmetry on all occasions. Perhaps the most dangerous manifestation of this problem has been the coverage of global warming, which has long been recognized by a very large preponderance of evidence from scientists all over the globe to be a significant, and now rapidly growing, problem. But still we find stories that bend over backward to suggest that it’s still in doubt. – James McKenzie, St. Paul

What’s funny about these two quotes isn’t their high content of equine excretia – for when has the Red Star ever presented two sides of anything – but the fact that the first note is almost surely written by my fourth-grade public school teacher! There’s something more than a little satisfying in the knowledge that one of her very own students is one of the many voices repeating that negative message over and over, and one of the louder voices at that.

Prostitution is a more honorable profession than journalism. Not only are the call girls prettier, but they’re nicer and more intellectually honest.

Here are three new additions to what was formerly known as the reader blogroll. Outside the Box, Anti-Buffoonshevik Thoughtcrime, Difster. A recent email from the notorious Franger indicates that he, too, will soon be numbered – or perhaps listed would be the more accurate term – among the Elect.

A few things. One, there’s five new additions to the Reader Blogroll, (on the right, scroll down), so check them out if you’re so inclined. They are: Bulletproof Pimp, The Psyclop’s Lair, Exile From Hillary’s Village, Liberal Quicksand and the upcoming Guest Blogger of the Week, Animate Matters.

Two, Reader Blogroll is boring, and I’m thinking of changing it to a term I noticed on Desert Cat’s blog, namely, the Voxosphere, except that sounds a bit too possessive, even bordering on demi-derigence. Since, as a good libertarian, I exert as little control as possible over anyone, EVEN, NAY, ESPECIALLY INCLUDING MY ROBOT, this may not be the optimal term.

Share your feelings….

Also, I’m contemplating putting out a collection of short stories. Rowena has been kind enough to provide me with another very pretty cover if I do so, and I’m interested in getting a rough idea of how many people would theoretically be interested in buying a 250-300 page trade paperback for $15. The OC has turned me onto some of the new publishing technologies and so there’s really no concern about being stuck with cartons of books any longer. Two-thirds of the stories would be from the PDB, the other third would be new.

Share your feelings….

And finally, the good news. The new keyboard did the trick and my ubermachine is back in full E-F-F-E-C-T otherwise known as effect. The bad news, however, is that I somehow managed to lose a new short story I’d written recently in my previous attempts to access the partition.

Probably not a bad trade, actually, when you think about it.

A public school teacher provides a little too much help after class:

[Daniel] Cliatt is accused of raping a 13-year-old repeatedly after school, at school, every day for months. Cocoa police say the 29-year-old, 360-pound sixth grade teacher started by showing the boy pornography, then moved to sex acts, almost 100 of them. That didn’t stop until, police say, another teacher walked into Cliatt’s classroom Friday after school.

“At first, she walked in and didn’t know what she was seeing. But she ran out and grabbed a supervisor,” explained Detective Barbara Matthews, Cocoa Police Department.

Cliatt has been a teacher at Endeavour Elementary School for five years and he’s worked there for 10. The school district is already planning a termination hearing.

Too bad Cliatt doesn’t work in Detroit. He’d still have his teaching job. I’m only surprised the other teacher turned him in.

The NYT paints an unflattering portrait of Katie Couric:

Viewers – and most of them are women – like Ms. Couric’s cheeky, easygoing manner; affection grew into admiration after her husband died of colon cancer in 1998 and Ms. Couric made early detection her cause. (In 2000 she underwent a colonoscopy on the program.)

But “Today” has turned her popularity into a Marxist-style cult of personality. The camera fixates on Ms. Couric’s legs during interviews, she performs in innumerable skits and stunts, and her clowning is given center stage even during news events. “Today” hit a low point in July, when Saddam Hussein appeared in a Baghdad courtroom to hear the charges he will face when he goes to trial as a war criminal. All the networks interrupted their programming to show live images of Mr. Hussein – all except NBC. “Today” stayed on Ms. Couric swatting shuttlecocks with the United States Olympic badminton team.

A Marxist-style cult… how very apropos! As some of you may know, I am an anti-democrat as well as being against both the Democratic and National Democratic parties, and the fact that anyone cares even the slightest about what this woman thinks, says or does should suffice to prove the inadequacy of the concept.

I find the cult of the celebrity to be massively distasteful. It is a mistaken conflation; the fact that one of the SF writers I consider to be the most talented and insightful is a blithering cretin when it comes to politics takes absolutely nothing away from my admiration for him or my appreciation for his writing and ideas about the future. But the celebrity cult is a form of demigod worship, as we assign importance and values on the basis of what is often nothing more than physical attractivness or even just familiarity with a friendly fake smile on the television screen.

I hope that the decentralization of the media will lead to the reduction in importance and influence of these celeb-cults. I suppose that’s unlikely, however, since it has always suited the Imperators to make sure the eyes of the people are focused on what is happening in the Coliseum and the Arena, not on the Palatine Hill.

Apparently those newspaper editors who said my columns were too difficult for their See-Spot-Run readerships weren’t entirely off-base. I ran today’s column through the Readability Index – courtesy of Bane – which rendered the following results:

Gunning Fog Index 14.07
Flesch Reading Ease 46.90
Flesch-Kincaid Grade 9.57

Which apparently means that my column falls somewhere between The Times and The Guardian, both UK papers rated at a Fog Index of 14, and academic papers (15-20). Time Magazine, on the other hand, was rated at 10.

This blog, however, is a rather easier slog, almost translucent in its clarity:

Gunning Fog Index 10.18
Flesch Reading Ease 67.49
Flesch-Kincaid Grade 6.87

Of course, it’s pretty clear that this boils down to little more than how many syllables are in the words one uses. I’ve been a little skeptical of this concept ever since being accused – in print – of showing off by using big words such as “nadir”. That’s right, all five letters and two syllables of it.

From the US Dept. of Education, brought to my attention by TZ:

Responses from students who indicated they had experienced one of the listed behaviors were analyzed using descriptive statistics and frequencies. This analysis (Shakeshaft, 2003) indicates that 9.6 percent of all students in grades 8 to 11 report contact and/or noncontact educator sexual misconduct that was unwanted. 8.7 percent report only noncontact sexual misconduct and 6.7 percent experienced only contact misconduct…. Of students who experienced any kind of sexual misconduct in schools, 21 percent were targets of educators, while the remaining 79 percent were targets of other students.

So, think for a moment about how much unwanted ass-grabbing and whatnot was going on around you at your high school. Now figure a quarter of that was also happening a little less publicly thanks to the teachers, principals and coaches around you. Strangely, male students are nearly as likely to be targeted as female students, although male educators do most of the abusing. This proclivity of public school teachers for homosexual abuse is supported by the fact that 4 of the 22 school employees exposed in a recent Detroit article were men attacking boys.

Another interesting tidbit is the fact that the younger the abused child is, the more likely the abuser is to be an award-winning teacher considered to be one of the best ones in the school. This shouldn’t be that surprising, as it’s only logical to expect pedophiles to go where the kids are. I’ve always had a certain skepticism about any man who voluntarily spends a inordinate amount of time with children; most dads consider four straight hours with their own kids to be an overdose. Especially all those youth pastors with mustaches….

I coach little kids soccer myself, so one could argue that I belong on the sketchy list too, but in my defense, I don’t even pretend to be interested in the kids. They are simply my little pawns on the big green chess board… I teach them the skills and tactics they need to succeed on the field, nothing more. The parents appeared to be stunned at the first big tournament I coached, when we had a break for 90 minutes and I simply told them where to bring the kids for the next game, then walked away for the duration. Hey, they were all right there and I’m a coach, not a babysitter.

I’m pretty sure they would have demanded my dismissal by the club had we not shocked everyone by winning the tournament, in the finals beating a team that had stomped us 14-0 only three months before. You want the Phil Jackson of kiddy soccer, you’re going to put up with some idiosyncracies. Minus, of course, the mustache.

Finally, I should note that 6 of the 14 teachers convicted in that Detroit report are still certified to teach in the Detroit public schools. Socialization is important, after all!