I mostly agree with what Amanda has to say about “self-loathing gay men who join the Republican party”, but I still don’t buy this old canard :

Susie Bright addresses what I think a lot of people were thinking, or at least I know I was, but few would just come right out and say–it’s likely Jeff Gannon didn’t get into the White House despite being a prostitute, but because he’s a prostitute. I think she’s got his number pretty well. Gannon’s motivations are obvious enough if you open your eyes–getting up in age, he has to find a new career so he probably shook down a couple of the connections that high-paid hookers collect and got his brand new job.

I’d like to think my eyes are wide open, but I just don’t see it.

A variation of this attack was floating around when the JimJeff story was everywhere, except in its earlier incarnation there was some sort of blackmail involved. In either case, I have yet to see anything that lends validity to the conspiracy theory that this hack’s prostitute past wasn’t just a skeleton in his closet, but his ticket to the big time. Have Scott McClellan or Ken Mehlman been caught on a compromising position with Gannon? Does Guckert have a little black book that leaked? Or are people just jumping to the conclusion that the rare sight of three conservative homosexuals in relative proximity means they must have screwed each other at some point?

It’s easy to believe awful things about people you hate. So as much as I think this scenario might be plausible, I’d love to hear some backup before this ribald chatter gets repeated to the point that it get promoted from the the realm of speculation into fact. Besides, there’s plenty of room to get outraged here without having to resort to rumor-mongering.

Google search terms that have led people to this site today :

“Iraq War” “Anne Coulter” “Pope John Paul”

George Bush Pedophile

“dick cheney” + “mr potter”

Bible verse about homosexuals

oscar baloney has a first name

animated ugly people

bravo’s new gay shows

nascar exposed

euonym

the jerk store called

starting Christian rock band

corn on the cob fucking teeth

disappointment catholic

small dicks

is margaret cho on drugs?

the new animated bugs bunny

You can’t get the Declaration of Independence out of the Ten Commandments

There’s also the dozen or so requests for “talent show ideas” that bring people here every day. I never realized until I started this site how many clueless talent show organizers are out there.

This sucks. Another great artist dead because of a fucking drug overdose. I’ve probably seen Mitch Hedberg perform a couple dozen times. His delivery always made me think I’d hate his act, but the brilliance of his material always won me over. He was the Steven Wright of the “alternative comedy” scene and his passing will leave a huge gap to be filled.

What so tragic is that this whole comedy scene has been self-destructing for a few years now. I’m not gonna name names or anything¹, but people who follow this stuff closely know exactly what’s going on when, as Patton Oswalt once observed “What’s also really sad is somehow cocaine has come back. There’s comedians that I know that you would think would know better; people that used to make fun of that whole culture.” Like so many other parts of the entertainment industry, the stand up comedy boom has fallen victim to the tragic cycle of obscurity, rapid success, fame, substance abuse, and untimely death. This shit is predictable by now but it still hurts to see.

^{1: Ross, keep your rage in check. I’m not kidding.}

Jesse Jackson is a genius. Like most of you, I had a “WTF?!” moment¹ when I heard he was joining the Schindler family in their protests, but his interview on CNN this morning in which he recounted his advice to the family was brilliant :

JACKSON: And so I said to them, at a time when fate deals you such a cruel hand, lean to your faith and use your love. And while you are losing a daughter, thank god for what’s left. You still have another daughter left. You have a son left.

And therefore, lean upon them. But through it all, do not get bitter. Get better.

And thank god for the legacy of your daughter, because her legacy has forced the nation to focus on health care in ways the nation would have ignored. I mean, we cannot deal the past issue now of medical malpractice which helped to sustain her. We cannot deal past the issue of Social Security versus Medicaid, for example. We can’t deal past the issue right now of long-term health care.

I thought she received excellent hospice care. But in the end, when they pulled the plug, which was a judgment that was made, it certainly induced her death. And the family was keenly angry over that. But I urged them to get past that anger and now move on to the next stage of how they reconcile.
[. . .]
JACKSON: Well, I’ll tell you what, there is nobody who is conservative but disagrees with her winning malpractice. They would not disagree with her having Medicaid or long-term health care.

I think sometimes that we talk past each other in these kinds of political polarizations. There are some, you know, who really are sincerely concerned about abortion, and they will fight for the fetus. But then the fight against prenatal care, head start (ph) and daycare, they must grapple with this issue in broader terms.

Now, there are those who will really embrace Terri and loved her as a symbol and love her as a classic crisis, and yet they must also deal with what she needed, which was long-term health care. And so I think if we see this thing right and talk with each other and not at each other, that the long-term health policy issues are now front and center. I think we should all be part of that debate in a creative and unbitter and non-hostile way.
[. . .]
JACKSON: You know, this is a case where faith and public policy came together. Faith sustained them.

KAGAN: When you say “them,” do you mean the Schindler family?

JACKSON: The Schindlers. I mean, faith sustained them. But a public policy of health care also kept her alive and enabled her to have hospice care, enabled her to get medical care.

So people of faith — I mean, Jesus taught by example and he also taught by parable. So what do we glean from this that has value beyond Terri and what’s there?

About 30,000 other people in the same or similar conditions. What shall we do for those who are not under the lights of TV every day as she has been? And I would contend that people of faith must now fight for a health care policy that in fact addresses more meaning to those who will be living longer as America grows older.

I think conservatives try to take advantage of this story’s political momentum and steer it towards one of their pet causes are in for a rude awakening. While there’s message discipline among the protesters² now, I think many of the “Culture of Life” folks might not be as willing to switch their “Save Terri” placards for “Abortion = Genocide” ones as Randall Terry might have us believe.

While I’ll grant that steering this discussion towards healthcare reform is an equally abrupt change, it does bear repeating that this sort of tragedy happens every day, often for people whose terminal (or in this case PVS) conditions aren’t self-inflicted but are equally preventable. If we’re truly a country that believes in a “culture of life”, our first step should be to do everything in our power to keep people from dying. This should apply to all people (regardless of their income), not just those on life support or in a petri dish.

^{1: By the way, what’s the deal with this Ralph Nader column? Dude, the election’s over. You don’t have to kiss conservative ass anymore.}

2: Of course this isn’t that hard when half the people have tape over their mouths.

Could somebody please point me towards any prominent and influential American leader (and I’m not talking Ward Churchill here) who is strongly against the notion of spreading freedom and democracy throughout the world? Seriously. I’d like to see at least one example. Maybe it’s just me, but I thought we’d already come to the conclusion that freedom and democracy were great about…oh….230 years ago. At this point, isn’t the point of contention not about the virtues of liberty, but the methods we use to get there?

Wow. I went a whole day without posting anything about Terri Schiavo. Before I get into this, lemme just address the following comment from an earlier thread :

Please don’t waste any more of your valuable blog space on this. The real shit is going on elsewhere. Look at the credit card bill or ANWR. This is Michael Jackson’s molesting OJ’s boobs at halftime. That is, not really news.

As far as I’m concerned this became real news the moment the President raced back to Washington D.C. to sign the “Pander To Conservative Christians Act”. Since then, the endless twists and turns in this essentially unchanging story as well as the endless stream of interesting commentary this has inspired have fascinated me. If you’re tired of this story (and I don’t blame you), take some solace in the fact that the longer this dominates the news, the worse the Republicans look.

One of the ways you can tell if a story has “made it” is whether or not Slate runs a grotesque and distant story from some jerk who does a cost/benefit analysis of everything. The same sort of thinking that would probably conclude that you’re better off letting sick children die because it’s cheaper to conceive new ones is responsible for this gem :

Now, Michael Schiavo, it seems to me, is in something very like the bluenose position here. If he had a use for his wife’s body?if he wanted to cook it up for dinner, let’s say?then I’d have more sympathy for him. (On the other hand, I don’t think we should make a habit of letting people cook their spouses up for dinner, because it creates very bad incentives with regard to keeping your spouse safe and healthy.) But in fact, he doesn’t want to do anything at all with the body, except perhaps to bury it in accord with what he perceives to be the wishes of an essentially dead woman whose wishes have long since ceased to count. All he wants to do is stop someone else from feeding this body, and I see very little difference between that and wanting to stop someone else from reading William Saletan.

Well, one difference is that I enthusiastically understand why people read Saletan, and I have less understanding of why Schiavo’s parents want to keep feeding her. And insofar as they want others to keep feeding her?through Medicare, etc.?I think we can safely ignore their preferences. But provided they and their supporters are willing to bear those costs, I infer that this is something they want very much and there’s not much reason to stop them.

Now, via Kos, let me take you from something that’s “grotesque” something that’s been justifiable dubbed “ghoulish” :

The parents of Terri Schiavo have authorized a conservative direct-mailing firm to sell a list of their financial supporters, making it likely that thousands of strangers moved by her plight will receive a steady stream of solicitations from anti-abortion and conservative groups.

“These compassionate pro-lifers donated toward Bob Schindler’s legal battle to keep Terri’s estranged husband from removing the feeding tube from Terri,” says a description of the list on the Web site of the firm, Response Unlimited, which is asking $150 a month for 6,000 names and $500 a month for 4,000 e-mail addresses of people who responded last month to an e-mail plea from Ms. Schiavo’s father. “These individuals are passionate about the way they value human life, adamantly oppose euthanasia and are pro-life in every sense of the word!”

And finally, you know a member of the Bush family has gotten involved when people start using phrases like “constitutional crisis” :

Hours after a judge ordered that Terri Schiavo was not to be removed from her hospice, a team of state agents were en route to seize her and have her feeding tube reinserted - but they stopped short when local police told them they would enforce the judge’s order, The Miami Herald has learned.

Agents of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement told police in Pinellas Park, the small town where Schiavo lies at Hospice Woodside, on Thursday that they were on the way to take her to a hospital to resume her feeding.

For a brief period, local police, who have officers at the hospice to keep protesters out, prepared for what sources called “a showdown.”

In the end, the squad from the FDLE and the Department of Children & Families backed down, apparently concerned about confronting local police outside the hospice.
. . .
The incident,known only to a few and related to The Herald by three different sources involved in Thursday’s events, underscores the intense emotion and murky legal terrain that the Schiavo case has created. It also shows that agencies answering directly to Gov. Jeb Bush had planned to use a wrinkle in Florida law that would have allowed them to legally get around the judge’s order. The exception in the law allows public agencies to freeze a judge’s order whenever an agency appeals it.

Participants in the high-stakes test of wills, who spoke with The Herald on the condition of anonymity, said they believed the standoff could ultimately have led to a constitutional crisis and a confrontation between dueling lawmen.

“There were two sets of law enforcement officers facing off, waiting for the other to blink,” said one official with knowledge of Thursday morning’s activities.

In jest, one official said local police discussed “whether we had enough officers to hold off the National Guard.”

If you still haven’t had enough Schiavo news, you should definitely check out this interview at Media Matters with a neurologist who examined Schiavo. My favorite quote : “The autopsy is going to show severe atrophy of the brain. And you’re asking me if a CAT scan was done? How could you possibly be so stupid?”

It may come as a surprise to those of you who remember my post “Tech Monopolies”, but I finally joined the hip, silhouetted masses and bought myself a 40GB iPod photo. Having had a month or so to acquaint myself with my new favorite toy, I’ve got quite a few comments to make.

User Interface - Let me just get this one out of the way. The click-wheel input on the iPod is the coolest thing on Earth. It’s so easy to use and intuitive that the mini joysticks found on many other portable music players seem archaic by comparison.

Where’s the radio? - What the iPod has in coolness, it lacks in extra features. One of the most glaring omissions is an FM radio. While many view this as a cheap add-on, to me it’s something that’s such an obvious thing to include in a portable audio system that it’s a bit puzzling that it isn’t automatically included in every mp3 player.

Rather than make the radio the rarely-used option that nobody ever uses, I’d love to see Apple take the TIVO-concept and apply it to the iPod. Imagine how cool it would be to “subscribe” to your favorite radio shows, rewind live radio to re-hear or record a cool song you just heard, or store mp3s of the crazy shit you hear on talk radio? Considering that the iPod never turns itself off (it’s usually in “sleep” mode) all of this should be fairly easy to implement and would add change the way people listen to the radio forever. The ability to fast-forward through radio commercials alone would be worth the few bucks it might add to the system cost.

Organization Issues - While I’m glad to see that the iPod has a menu for audiobooks, the process for getting an audiobook to actually show up in that menu is a big pain in the ass. For example, if you have an mp3 of an audiobook, you have to use iTunes to convert it to AAC format, rename the resulting files from *.m4a to *.m4b, and then reimport the files into your iTunes library.

And that’s just audiobooks. Now it’s obvious that users should have the ability to drag and drop files into this folder, but what about other audio files that users may want to organize outside of their music libraries? Wouldn’t it be nice for iTunes to allow user-created subcategories for radio shows, comedy albums, spoken word, and podcasts?

Default behavior - This one’s a little nitpicky, but this is a little pet peeve of mine. Unlike many users, I listen to shuffle for a few minutes just to figure out what sort of mood I’m in. Once I find an album I want to hear, I go back to the main menu, into the artists menu, etc.. When going through these menus, each one starts at the top rather than skipping directly to the artist / album / song that’s currently in “Now Playing”. Not a big deal, but when you’ve got 600+ artists on there, it can cause a lot of unnecessary scrolling.

And speaking of all those artists, the iPod is missing a vital feature that’s currently part of iTunes, the ability to “group compilations when browsing”. Being able to lump all your compilation albums together really helps eliminate the clutter. Don’t get me wrong, I like the 13th Floor Elevators and the 1910 Fruitgum Company, but I don’t need them at the top of my artists list.

Shuffle “Moods” - We’ve all encountered computerized randomizers that seem to get into moods. While I find this refreshing in a way, it’s pretty improbable that a truly random selection of songs would include the same artist as often as the iPod seems to. At the risk of getting into geek territory here, this is because computers aren’t really capable of “true” random number sequences. Having multiple algorithms or changing the random seed often would probably increase the randomness of the shuffle output, but since most people are pretty happy with the way shuffle works I’m probably being more nerdy than I need to.

Developer Friendliness - If you want to play your iPod through an FM radio, the iTrip is a pretty cool accessory. It’s prominent placement on Apple’s iPod accessories page is the closest thing to an official endorsement that the iTrip is likely to get, but at the end of the day, the device is just a hack by third-party developers into a system that doesn’t have any interest in being expandable. How else can you explain the fact that getting the iTrip to work requires selecting an FM frequency mp3 from a playlist, waiting for the red light on the unit to start blinking, hitting pause before the mp3 stops playing, and then picking the music you want to hear. A developer-friendly iPod would allow users to avoind jumping through these hoops by adding an “FM Output” option to the Setup menu somewhere. C’mon Apple…open things up a little bit. Provide APIs into the firmware, develop an SDK, and let third-parties add to the value of your products.

All this having been said, the iPod is still in my eyes the best portable music player on the market. While I’d love to see some of my suggestions be implemented, I’m not holding my breath. After all, when Apple owns the market, there’s not much economic incentive to innovate. Especially when the direction they’re headed with the brand is towards photo and possible video support rather than further honing the audio side of their product.

By now you’re all painfully aware of the sights from the protests of some of Terri Schiavo’s self-appointed defenders. There’s the bloody sheet borrowed from an anti-war rally…

…the kid whose asshole parents got him arrested…



…the standard “I own a big-ass crucifix, so Jesus likes me better” guys…



…and the woman using her first amendment rights to complain about her lack of first amendment rights.



We’ve been seeing this crap all week, but this report from one of CNN’s correspondents outside the hospice really puts all of this political theater in perspective :

DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: Getting back to the Terri Schiavo story. Protesters are gathering outside of Terri Schiavo’s hospice in Pinellas Park, Florida. Bob Franken is live there with the very latest — Bob.

BOB FRANKEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: And Daryn, this is probably one of most choreographed protests you will ever see. This is something that has been planed and negotiated between the police and those who are going to protest. What we can expect is a small group from among those who have been holding a vigil here in support of connecting the tube of — the nutrition tube of Terri Schiavo — are going to try and bring water in. Now, this has been done by various individuals and once they get on the property, the hospice — the people who own the hospice here do not want them on the property and they have been arrested for trespassing. And we expect that to happen today.

Now, all of this has occurred with leaders of the group having extensive negotiations with the police to discuss the parameters. One of the things that we can expect is a brief demonstration. And let’s not forget much of this is for the news cameras. And then they will be handcuffed, those who disobey the order to leave the property, handcuffed. And they do it in a certain way, they have decided, so they don’t cause too much discomfort. They, the police. They handcuff them with metal handcuffs, but double ones. In other words, they link two together. That way they’re not pulling so much on the arms of those who they arrest.
[. . .]
And to make sure you understand that this is not exactly considered some sort of high tension confrontation, the police are just in their normal uniforms, no sort of protective gear. They’ve gone through this the last couple of days with people and it’s very polite. The man who is going to be meeting the demonstrators is the person who runs the detail here, and that Lieutenant Kevin Riley (ph), who is somebody who is very adept at keeping things low-key.
[. . .]
FRANKEN: OK, what we have here now, Daryn, is that today some of the people planning to bring the water, are holding styrofoam cups with water. That is their intention, their announced intention, to try and take that water to Terri Schiavo, who has had her nutrition tube removed as of last Friday. Which, of course, means in the medical term, that she is not being hydrated. That is to say, not only is she not been given any nutrition, but has not been given any water.

What will happen, and everybody knows this, is that the police will ask them to leave. They will not leave, they will stay a foot or so on the property. The facility here has insisted that nobody can get on the property. And that’s sort of a line of demarcation. The police will ask them once or try twice to depart, and when they do not, and when they do not, they will be arrested, something they all expect to have happen.

Man, they really put the obedience back in civil disobedience, huh? Choreographed dissent really takes all the fun out of breaking the law.

I’m not even a Christian, but agree that this is pretty messed up :

A mass-produced chocolate cross is being sold this Easter by Russell Stover Candies Inc. in about 5,000 stores nationwide, which experts say is apparently a first for a major American company.

“Obviously they’ve seen that there’s a market for chocolate crosses at Easter,” said Lisbeth Echeandia, a consultant for Candy Information Service, which monitors candy industry trends. “I don’t see it growing tremendously but I think there would be growth in the Christian market.”

However, not all Christians are happy about it. Chomping on a chocolate cross can be offensive to some, said Joseph McAleer, a spokesman for the Roman Catholic diocese in Bridgeport, Conn.

“The cross should be venerated, not eaten, nor tossed casually in an Easter basket beside the jelly beans and marshmallow Peeps,” he said. “It’s insulting.”

I’ve linked to it a couple of times before, but when you’ve got Pat Robertson selling a book called “The Bible Cure for Yeast Infections”, you’ve really hit rock bottom. Now we’ve got a situation in which people are turning the instrument in which their lord endured a slow, bloody death and turning it into candy. It’s always astounding to me how much kitschification of their god most Christians are willing to put up with.

Since this weekend is probably the only one in which many of you will be going to church this year, here’s an idea. While the preacher is yammering about something that you’ll forget in the parking lot, ask yourself this question “Why should anyone take your beliefs seriously if you don’t?”

Yeah, I know that this is sick and insensitive, but it’s also funny as hell and perfectly captures the lies and exploitation behind the “Save Terri” movement :

The funniest thing was a comment on a Fark thread where someone compared Terri to Michigan J. Frog; when only her parents are in the room, she sings, dances and talks, but can’t do a thing when someone comes in to witness the event.

To put this in visual terms, here’s what they want us to believe :

But here’s what we end up seeing :



As these tense days go on, the prospect of dying with dignity becomes less about ending her status in a vegetative purgatory and more about freeing her of the burden of being a political prop for the extreme right.