Why Do They Hate America?

This is damn good. And she can sing.

Too bad she's a non-real American music-redistributionist who pals around with piano-playing moose.

Check Your Sources

This is why it's so important to teach kids in high school and college how to find, quote, and attribute sources...and how to hold others accountable for the accuracy of their research.

I know it's only Ann Coulter, but it's a good object lesson:

MSNBC's Keith Olbermann histrionically described Todd's hoax as "a narrative straight out of Reconstruction-era, race-based fear-mongering: a black man, 6-foot, 4-inches, attacking, sexually assaulting, fondling, mutilating a young white woman." His expert pontificator on race was The Washington Post's Eugene Robinson, who said the Pittsburgh hoax was "the blood libel against black
men concerning the defilement of the flower of Caucasian womanhood. It's been with us for hundreds of years and, apparently, is still with us."

Okay, let's go to the videotape. Here is the actual Olbermann report, with Robinson's guest punditry. As any sixth grader would be able to interpret, neither man believes in the incident--in fact, this show aired after the incident had been revealed as a hoax. They are discussing an accusation that the McCain camp had pushed the racial assualt story before the police had even released a report of their own. They are not reacting to the incident credulously and with outrage. Their anger is directed at the cynical, manipulative pols who are trying to play on ancient racial fears.

This is why they taught you to do your homework, people. Don't just skip to the answers. Sometimes, the answers lie.

Plus ça change, plus ça le même chose

...which is just an elitist (i.e., French) way of saying, "same old, same old."


Here's a map of projected presidential voting, next Tuesday:





And here's a map of Union-supporting vs. Confederacy-supporting states, circa 1861:



The song remains the same...except for those damned Dakotas and their neighbors.


All thanks to Andrew Sullivan at the Atlantic Monthly for making the comparison.

Wassup?

Higher Education

See the college debate blow-up below, unless you have issues with strong language.

The two people "arguing" are, by the way, college debate coaches. Professors. People with doctorates. Just so you know.



The comments below the clip on YouTube claim that what this video is all about is racism or reverse racism.

Interesting. For me, it's about what "debate" has decayed into, even on our college campuses. And it's about how a "professor" carries him (and her)self in public, as a model of the life of the mind and the pursuit of intellectual inquiry. But that's just me.

Clearly, whatever set this thing off was a big deal, and led to high emotions. By the end of the video, someone trying to make a point about it all is crying. I grant that this was hot.

But isn't a university--and a formal debate--supposed to be a place where hot issues of great import can be dissected and analyzed rationally, somewhat coolly...and with a level of maturity that would exclude, say, mooning your opponent?

Or is everything--everything--from talking with your classmates to formal debate to TV news to presidential campaigns --is everything in our public life now Kindergarten?