FIRST DRAFT

Weekend Question Thread

What embarrassing song do you secretly love? 

I have an awful lot of Ke$ha on my running playlist. 

A. 

Well... Just... Ow...

This has not been a great week for student media. In case you missed it, the Daily Texan found itself in hot water when one of its cartoonists decided to put forth a fresh take on the Trayvon Martin shooting and the subsequent flurry of outrage and media coverage and outrage at the media coverage and the media’s coverage of the outrage at the media and so on. In doing so, artist Stephanie Eisner managed to mangle the issues of race, media coverage and spelling all in one fell swoop. The paper pulled the cartoon and then put it back up on its site with a brief “don’t hate the player, hate the game” kind of response to the outrage.

And this was only the second-weirdest moment of the week…

Not to be out done in the “Head Up Your Ass Olympics,” the editor in chief at the Daily Free Press at Boston University was fired after the paper produced an April Fool’s issue that leveled allegations that Cinderella was in a prostitution ring and a group of BU frat guys slipped Alice in Wonderland some LSD. The paper’s lead story? A piece on seven dwarves from a BU frat “gangbanging” a female student as part of a roofie and rape party.

Don’t think for a moment I’m climbing on a “holier than thou” soap box. No way I’m doing the “tsk, tsk, tsk” thing here.

I think in my life I’ve had three true, gasping, heart-palpitation-inducing, freakishly real dreams that made me wake up in the middle of the night and walk the floors of the house.

1) I was being buried alive in a glass coffin and I could see it all happening as shovel after shovel of dirt hit the casket and I was all “Bill Pullman in The Serpent and the Rainbow” and couldn’t do anything to stop it.

2) I was somewhere with girl who wasn’t my wife and she was all over me. I succumbed to this and as I’m in mid-sex, I was screaming in my head, “WHAT ARE YOU DOING? WHAT ARE YOU DOING?” as I realized I had done something from which I could never recover.

3) I get a call at about 6 a.m. from the president of the university, who has informed me I’m being fired for something the kids did at the paper. When I see the paper, it’s something so horribly stupid and infantile, there is no way in hell I can say anything other than, “Ah… Well… Fuck.”

I’ve read several studies and seen several “Law and Order” episodes where experts outline how the brains of young people aren’t fully ready for high-order thought and it’s stuff like this that has me believing it. I keep turning over in my head the Trayvon cartoon, looking for answers to questions like “What the hell did you think was going to happen when you published this?” and “Did anyone stop and THINK about how this was doing nothing to address the issue you think you’re trying to address?” and “Should we really let a cartoonist who can’t even spell “Trayvon” right take a potshot at such an amazingly delicate issue through a one-panel cartoon?” And “Who the fuck still uses the word ‘colored’ to describe people? We’re not talking about fucking Easter Eggs…”

I can’t find any, other than to say that this is what tends to happen when people reach beyond their own level of competence and inject themselves into an issue they can’t fully understand. We all do it to some extent in our discussions with colleagues, our bar arguments over baseball teams and our understanding of the human psyche. Most of us don’t fall on our keys as publicly or spectacularly as this, but it’s not a rare frailty.

The same thing can be said about the BU kids: Many of us think we’re funny. The problem is that we probably are in the right situation with the right people. However, while my father’s fart jokes are likely hilarious to The Guys at Work, they aren’t going over with the Moliere crowd. The wider the audience, the more likely your humor will be offensive.

You’re not getting away with joking about frat guys being rapists or dealing drugs any more than you’re getting away with putting on black face and walking around with a watermelon. Frat guys, friends of frat guys and people who know they could be your next target all read the paper. It’s not like the frat guys are looking at this saying, “Hey, look! They got us again! Those clever scribes!”

Even beyond that, there are certain things that are just never funny, no matter who you are.

The late, great George Carlin once tried to prove otherwise in his album segment titled, “Rape can be funny.” Despite his best efforts (“Picture Porky Pig raping Elmer Fudd.”), I can honestly say it as the most awkwardly painful thing I’ve ever listened to.

And this was being done by a guy who made a fortune being funny.

If Carlin couldn’t pull it off, the BU Daily Free Press didn’t have a shot in hell at making this work.

Every couple years, a staff asks me if I think they could do an “April Fool’s edition” of the paper. I grit my teeth and tell them the truth: You can do whatever you want, that’s part of the joy of operating under the First Amendment. However, keep two things in mind:

1) Just because you can do something, it doesn’t follow that you should. If you publish this, remember that you need to be ready to deal with the fallout when people are pissed about something you wrote.

2) People already look at what we do, find every minor error and say, “What a bunch of shit. Who takes this garbage seriously?” Why would you want to give them an even better reason to think we’re stupid and pointless?

And every time they say, “Oh. Got it. Thanks.” and walk away, I hope I’ve made my point.

And then I usually have the third dream.

Friday Ferretblogging

Tilly and Claire have started to interact more often in the past few weeks. When we first brought Tilly home Claire ignored her completely, as if to say, "Fine, there can be another pretty girl in this house, but I don't have to LIKE IT." Lately they've been chasing one another into and out of the tubes they play in, and I'll often find them curled up around each other (with Riot's little naked chicken feet on top of them for good measure). 

A. 

Thursday Night Music: Leave It

It's been a frantic few weeks and I have some good tales to tell about my exit from one space and entrance into another. But they'll have to wait until I get a day off so all I got for you is some thematically appropriate music with killer harmonies:

 

Internet Murder

Journalism dies another death at the hands of pixels. 

A. 

Technically, a Nightmare is a Dream

From Album4

Villager pundits speculate about a Herman and Eddie ticket.

I Had No Idea White Folks Had It So Bad In America

Don't worry, my brothers and sisters. You shall overcome. Someday.

Just a quick one here, folks. Did you know that white folks needed saving in this country? Apparently, we are seriously oppressed. Don't believe me? Just ask this future Nobel Prize winner:

Today I, John King, MAEd, a father of two, honorably discharged officer of the US Army and a proud individual of European descent, decided to take on the "Klan with a Tan" at a "Justice for Trayvon" rally held at the University of Southern Indiana (USI) just outside of Evansville. I have had it with anti-White rhetoric thinly disguised as Trayvon "remembrance". I have had enough of this lame stream anti-White media campaign, the likes of which I have seen coming from my television from the time I was an infant. I believe in individual responsibility. I am tired of other races blaming their problems, shortcomings, deficiencies, etc on White people. 80% of the inmates in the Federal Prison System are non-Whites. With perhaps a few exceptions most everyone of them earned a jail cell by their actions. But if we're to listen to the Trayvon devotees, they are there because of "racist" judges and juries. Good one! We must understand that American Whites are subjected to an almost constant barrage of anti-White media propaganda. The propaganda is designed to hammer down White people and beat any sense of pride and heritage out of them. Usually the propaganda follows the usual paradigm: a evil, white, racist, nazi, supremacist White kills/beats an innocent, defenseless, lovable little black boy. That's why the media is showing pictures of Trayvan as cute little boy instead of the 17 year old thug he was with gold teeth flashing gang signs. This paradigm remains the same. Last time it was those three Duke Lacrosse players and that cute adorable black escort girl. It turned out the entire production was a hoax but there was no apology to those three white students once the hoax was exposed. Most hate crimes -- if you do your research -- are staged events in which Whites are falsely blamed. The entire purpose of the media circus is to beat down the resolve of the White race as a whole. We are all made to feel guilty because of the injustice done to Tyrone X or LaQueesha X. Any sort of propaganda which has its purpose to beat down a racial or ethnic group and make it feel ashamed of itself is IMMORAL. And it should be attacked as being immoral. Everyone -- blacks, whites, reds, etc -- have a human right to feel proud of the accomplishments of their ancestors and kinsfolk.

Ain't gonna let Tyrone X turn us around, brothers.

I don't know about you, but I'm ready to start chanting and marching around with bullhorns and shit. Don't forget the SPF 50! Sunburn is clearly part of the Black conspiracy against us.

Apparently, we're also required to wear shorts with loafers and calf-length socks. I guess good fashion sense is part of the Afro-Hispano-Native American-Asian New World Order, and is to be avoided at all costs.

Oh, and where is my god-damned meteor?

Choices

Read this: 

“Purely a genetic fluke, nothing you could have done,” said Dr. Iglesias, who then asked for our family medical histories, and our medical histories. He handed us pens. We were confused, shaken, tired. “If it doesn’t die before you deliver it, it will have very serious problems,” he said. “It would likely not achieve consciousness and certainly would not live without some kind of extraordinary intervention.” That’s when I was given three choices: terminate the pregnancy now, do nothing and likely miscarry, or induce and deliver vaginally a baby who will die or be dead. Terminate. Miscarry. Induce.

“But I am still pregnant,” I insisted.

[snip]

“Listen to me, Mira. ‘Partial Birth’ abortion is an inaccurate term,” is what Dr. Stein told me, over the phone, when I’d finally accepted her phone call. “You must understand that.” She explained how the term I had used to describe the D&E was a political one. Incorrect. Inaccurate. Charged with meaning. That the phrase was coined by the National Right to Life Committee, and that it was not recognized as a medical term by the American Medical Association. Or the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. That the term “partial birth abortion” was false. A generalization. A terrible term. She told me that my situation, right now, was my body’s. That I hadn’t done anything wrong, that I couldn’t have prevented any of this, that I needed to understand this, and that this was a decision I needed to make for myself based on what was best for me. And that the best decision, the healthiest choice, for me, in her opinion, as a health professional, as my doctor, was to terminate the pregnancy, immediately. The only one who was going to survive this was me. Period.

Then this: 

Commonly referred to as a "fetal pain" bill, House Bill 954 would tighten medical exemptions for terminating pregnancies and require any abortion performed after 20 weeks of pregnancy be done in a way to bring the fetus out alive. No exemption is made for rape or incest. The measure says that a fetus can feel pain at 20 weeks, therefore the state has an interest in protecting it.

Supporters of the new Georgia bill said it would save lives and protect more fetuses.

And try not to punch anyone in the face. 

They have no idea, the people making these laws, how women's bodies and women's lives actually work. They have no idea all the things that can happen inside you, all the things that can go wrong. And so they make these glib and ridiculous laws that wind up hurting women who are already alive, while paying lip service to preserving life. 

Schmucks. 

A. 

Mitt Romney Wins It All

Obama wants to attack success, because success is for the French and their faculty lounges: 

Free enterprise has done more to lift people out of poverty, to help build a strong middle class, to help educate our kids, and to make our lives better, than all of the government programs put together.

Free enterprise built the Hoover Dam and desegregated schools, not to mention winning World War II! Was there ever anything so inspiring as Blackwater's storming of Omaha Beach? 

If we become one of those societies that attack success, one outcome is certain – there will be a lot less success.

Success being a notoriously fragile thing, susceptible to vaporizing the minute someone on TV says something mean. For what it's worth, though, I agree we need to start attacking failure harder. Let's start with the Bush tax cuts and work our way up from there. 

Regulations are necessary, but they must be continuously updated, streamlined, and modernized. 

They must synergize and colonize and enterprise their way to winning! Also, modernization is whatever makes it easier to put chemicals in the water supply that make it light on fire, because of freedom. 

Workers should have the right to form unions, but unions should not be forced upon them. And unions should not have the power to take money out of their members’ paychecks to buy the support of politicians favored by the union bosses.

Unions shouldn't have the power to do anything really, but we'll let you call yourselves a union, because it's a nice word and there aren't enough words that have u's in them. 

Out-of-touch liberals like Barack Obama say they want a strong economy, but they really don’t like businesses very much. But the economy is simply the product of all the nation’s businesses added together. So it’s like saying you love omelets but don’t like eggs.

FREEDOM BACON FOREVER! 

Tonight, I’m asking the good people of Connecticut, Delaware, New York, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island to join me. Join me in the next step toward that destination of November 6th, when across America we can give a sigh of relief and know that the Promise of America has been kept. The dreamers can dream a little bigger, the help wanted signs can be dusted off, and we can start again.

And this time we’ll get it right.

All those other Republican presidencies? Dry runs. A few thousand war dead? Practice. Double-digit unemployment? Rehearsal. This time we won't piss it all away. We promise. Really. For real. This time. 

We’ll stop the days of apologizing for success at home and never again apologize for America abroad. 

We will have no success to apologize for, when Mitt Romney is president! We'll run over your dog and piss on its tombstone at the pet cemetery! 

There was a time – not so long ago – when each of us could walk a little taller and stand a little straighter because we had a gift that no one else in the world shared. 

We walked up to other countries and we slapped them with our dicks! And they liked it! 

We were Americans. That meant something different to each of us, but it meant something special to all of us. We knew it without question. And so did the world.

Those days are coming back. That’s our destiny. Join me. And take another step every day until November 6th.

We believe in America. We believe in ourselves. Our greatest days are still ahead. We are, after all, Americans!

I don't know what Romney's people paid to have George Lucas write this shit, but he's really phoning it in these days. 

A. 

The Bishop Abuse Cover-Up Scandal

On trial in Philadelphia: 

Few victims or members of the public have been attending the trial in downtown Philadelphia, but retired Philadelphia detective Arthur Baselice III of Mantua, N.J., turned out Monday.

His 28-year-old son, Arthur Jr., died of a drug overdose in 2006, after his civil lawsuit against the church accusing his high school principal of molesting him was thrown out because of legal time limits. The former principal, a Franciscan friar, is in prison for stealing nearly $900,000 from the school and the Franciscans, some of which fed the younger Baselice's drug addiction, according to prosecutors.

Prosecutors are detailing allegations made against nearly two dozen priests since 1948 to show that Lynn and other archdiocesan officials kept suspected predators in jobs around children.

Any entrenched power structure is eventually only interested in protecting itself. It's why we have to have checks and balances, systems designed to provide oversight, because this is what we do, we close doors and pretend that our sins aren't ordinary sins, they're special somehow and the rules don't apply. 

A. 

So very interesting....

Please pardon me for getting out of my box here, but the idiot who tried to play James O'Keefe is apparently a staffer for Rep Thad McCotter.

Someone else with the same name?

Doubtful.

 

Tommy

 

Top 5 Things I Thought Were April Fool’s Jokes (But Weren’t)

1- Anne Romney saying Mitt isn’t stiff, just unzip him and see for yourself!

I just ... I’m sorry, there simply isn’t anything to add to that.

 

2- The announcement that Sarah Palin is co-hosting the Today Show today in a “face off” against Katie Couric, who is co-hosting Good Morning America.

Yes, this is really happening. I realize the morning snooze is to real journalism as pink slime is to actual beef, but I thought these people at least pretended to be more serious than a junior high school cafeteria. I mean, really? And Washington Post, what the fuck is wrong with you?

Viewers will cast their votes with their clickers Tuesday.

Yes. Yes, I will. I’ll be tuning in to the BBC World Report on my XM radio. Because people are dying, wars are waging, the planet is heating, and we don’t have time for your stupid teenage bullshit.

 

3- The Romney campaign’s sad attempt to humanize Mitt by releasing video of their April Fool’s joke: bringing him to a “campaign event” in Wisconsin, which turned out to be an empty ballroom. So awesome, you guyz!

They even got Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan and U.S. Senator Ron Johnson in on the joke.

I don’t get why this was supposed to be funny. Republicans have thrown up every creepy crawly hiding beneath the conservative rock in a pathetic attempt to find a candidate -- any candidate -- who isn’t Mitt Romney. Herman Cain? Hello? I’m thinking an empty banquet hall is not a joke but an entirely plausible scenario.

That they lack the self-awareness to understand this makes me think the problem isn't just Mitt but every one of the Mitt-wits. This isn't a tin ear. This is Pod People From Another Planet.

 

4- Arlen Spector had a hissy fit on a conservative talk radio show because host Jason Lewis didn’t ask him about the book he’s hawking:

“I have one final comment, I gave you 10 minutes. You’ve been over every subject except for my book. I’ve listened to two rounds of your commercials. I think it’s insulting. I’ve been in a lot of interviews in the course of the past 30 years and you are absolutely insulting!”

I don’t know who Jason Lewis is, for all I know he’s a gigantic asshole entirely deserving of a righteous tongue-lashing. But not over this. Dry up, you big baby. You’re a former U.S. Senator. No one is under any obligation to help you sell your damn book, no, not even a conservative talk show host. Buy an ad if that’s what you want.

 

5- Mary J. Blige’s ad for Burger King’s chicken snack wraps. So much fail.

 

[UPDATE]: Universal Music Group pulled the Blige video but I found it over at VH-1.

Quote of the day: Mitt's no stiff edition

It comes from Anne Romney in an attempt to refute claims that her husband is a stiff:

“Well, you know, I guess we better unzip him and let the real Mitt Romney out because he is not!”

Unzip and let him out? Yikes. In that case, wouldn't it better if he were stiff? <rim shot>

LOL MEGADETH

Heavy Metal birthers. What is the world coming to? 

A. 

Today on Tommy T's Obsession with the Freeperati - "Hey mama, weer all RINOS now" edition

Good morning, everyone - I've had to scrounge up extra blowers for the iso chamber - the tops keep exploding off the storage drums from the gaseous crazy fumes building up and you never know when.......CRIKEY!

Everyone OK? I think I soiled my iso suit, but there's no point in worrying about it now, as what's outside it is considerably worse than what's possibly inside it. 

Let's start with - Newtie - QUITTER!!

Breaking: Gingrich replaces campaign manager, lays off 1/3 of staff — to focus on the convention
Hotair ^ | 03/27/2012 | AllahPundit

Posted on Tuesday, March 27, 2012 10:15:26 PM by SeekAndFind

Clearly it's his campaign manager and the staff who are the problem.

Alternate headline: “Gingrich finally approaching the fifth stage of grief.”

It’s largely a strategy of necessity: The former House Speaker is a distant third in delegates, behind Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum. His campaign-finance report for February, released last week, showed more debt ($1.55 million) than cash on hand ($1.54 million).

He doesn't have a revenue problem, he has a spending problem.

DeSantis said the former Speaker will continue to visit states with primaries, but will have a less intense campaign schedule. DeSantis promised that the campaign will be “more positive and ideas-focused,”

as opposed to "Delegate-focused".

eschewing attacks on Republican rivals. The aide said the campaign will be more digital, focusing on low-cost communications tools, including informational videos, social media and the web…

DeSantis elaborated on the announcement in an email: “Newt 2012 is transitioning into an organization appropriate for winning a big choice convention. This big choice convention phase will be focused on two goals. 1. Affecting the national dialogue to show that Gingrich is the most capable of defeating Obama, by leading on issues that put the president on defense – like Newt’s $2.50 Gas Plan;

and 2. A parallel communications strategy directly to the delegates…

“Furthermore, the fact is the more than a million more people have voted against Mitt Romney than for him. We believe that if Governor Romney is unable to secure 1144 by the last primaries, he will be unable to do so at the convention where the vast majority of the delegates are conservative. That creates and environment at the convention where Gingrich can emerge as the one candidate who can unite social, economic and national security conservatives (a fact which is borne out by polling).”

Like I said in the earlier Gingrich post, that last paragraph is pure fantasy. If you’ve reached the point in a convention floor fight where, for whatever reason, both Romney and Santorum are deemed unacceptable, why wouldn’t you roll the dice on a dark horse outsider? You’re much better off with someone like Christie or Paul Ryan who’s young, appealing appalling,

FIFY.

superb on the seminal issue of fiscal reform, and yet to have their national image defined than you are with High-Negatives Newt. Passing over the guy with the most delegates and the guy with the second-most delegates means you’re thinking way out of the box on the nomination, which means there’s no reason to limit your choice to the people who are running. Although I guess choosing someone who hasn’t held elective office since the 90s and who can’t seem to win anywhere except his home state and the state next door would qualify as “way out of the box.” Way, way out.

I don’t know, guys. I’m starting to think maybe he really believes in this ludicrous convention idea. What other explanation is there?

He's been taking advice from Sarah Palin?

Exit question: Why on earth would he cite Romney’s vote total as relevant to the delegates’ calculus when Newt himself is much closer to Ron Paul’s total than to Romney’s?

1 posted on Tuesday, March 27, 2012 10:15:37 PM by SeekAndFind

.

.

To: SeekAndFind

And yet he will stay in the race to ensure Romney the nomination. The Newt legacy. Disgusting.

Santorum 2012

2 posted on Tuesday, March 27, 2012 10:19:34 PM by RIghtwardHo

Um - you are aware that Freeperville is an official "Newtie For President" website, per Jim Rob, no?

To: RIghtwardHo

If Newt continues on this path, he is going to be a very unpopular man after this is over.

Talk about a spoiler..

19 posted on Tuesday, March 27, 2012 10:57:22 PM by Mountain Mary ("This is OUR country and WE will decide"... Mark Levin)

"After this is over"?

"After this is over"?????

Q2 Do you have a favorable or unfavorable opinion
of Newt Gingrich?
Favorable........................................................ 28%
Unfavorable .................................................... 61%
Not sure .......................................................... 11%

To: Paladin2

Newtie would make the perfect srategerist and press secretary

 Press Secretary? Absolutely. Strategerist? Not so much. The fabled "Southern Strategy" wasn't such a hot idea.

10 posted on Tuesday, March 27, 2012 10:33:17 PM by Lazlo in PA (Now living in a newly minted Red State.)

.

.

To: Lazlo in PA

As I see It, Newt was thinking that there was more depth on the South. Instead, he found the one issue voters still haven’t learned a thing.

12 posted on Tuesday, March 27, 2012 10:43:10 PM by Toespi

.

.

To: Toespi

...he found the one issue voters still haven’t learned a thing.

 Yeah. It is always everyone's fault but Newts. It couldn't be that he ran a shabby campaign that didn't stay on message and blew threw(sic) cash like a teenager at the mall.

20 posted on Tuesday, March 27, 2012 10:58:17 PM by Lazlo in PA (Now living in a newly minted Red State.)

(Jim Rob is MIA for this entire thread, BTW)

To: RIghtwardHo

And yet he will stay in the race to ensure Romney the nomination. The Newt legacy. Disgusting.

More lies for Santorum.

Now THAT is disgusting.

21 posted on Tuesday, March 27, 2012 11:03:19 PM by newzjunkey (Newt says, "A nominee that depresses turnout won't beat Barack Obama.")

To: Lazlo in PA

What’s Saintorums strategy?

“Zimmerman has a sick mind and committed a heinous crime”

We are so screwed.

24 posted on Tuesday, March 27, 2012 11:30:27 PM by mylife (The Roar Of The Masses Could Be Farts)

Aintcha just?

More,  north of the Wall, inclucing - Ted Nugent - RINO !

Game of Thrones Thread

That's Rory McCann's audition for Sandor Clegane, in which he tells Sansa the story of how he was maimed, instead of having LIttlefinger tell it. This is the part of the story, that started tonight, in which he becomes my favorite character. Him, and her. 

TV spoilers below. Let's try to keep book spoilers out of the comments, too, for those who are doing this as they go. 

Sunday Morning Video: Starship Trooper

We here at First Draft post frequently about genre fiction; particularly science fiction books teevee and movies. Here's a splash of sci-fi rock featuring some astonishing guitar playing by Trevor Rabin: