A Few Choice Words

Greening Your Brown

Sheryl Crow continues her crusade to save the world from itself:

"I propose a limitation be put on how many squares of toilet paper can be used in any one sitting. Now, I don't want to rob any law-abiding American of his or her God-given rights, but I think we are an industrious enough people that we can make it work with only one square per restroom visit, except, of course, on those pesky occasions where 2 to 3 could be required."

She also proposes a replaceable “dining sleeve” for wiping one’s mouth and nose since paper napkins are “the height of wastefulness.” As you might imagine, this has flushed out comments from around the globe, provoking her to say a few days later that it was all a joke (even if there was no clue to that).

Come on, Sheryl, stick to your guns. Far from robbing us of our rights, this idea of “do more with less” would encourage:

• constipation
• vastly increased hand-washing (more detergents in our water)
• creation of a single-sheet TP dispenser industry (industrial pollutants)
• latex glove and finger cot companies (we need more latex?) and
• wide-ranging disease (overburdening health care still further).

I'm for it.

Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time

Boy, it’s hard to be a liberal these days. The Dems have deliberately ducked the issue of gun control after the Virginia Tech massacre. Harry Reid is just the worst majority leader they have had in twenty years. And now Sheryl Crow presents herself as a spokesperson for global warming awareness.

Not content with her role as a wretched pop singer, she mounts the podium as another Hollywood authority to endorse liberal causes. At the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner last night, she got into it with Karl Rove over global warming. Accounts vary but apparently she and Laurie David, Al Gore’s “Inconvenient Truth” producer, did a stakeout on Karl and confronted him at his table.

Here’s the thing, ladies. Pick your occasions better, and don’t use a venue which is traditionally an occasion for levity and amity between political opponents as an opportunity to reeducate somebody who would in fact no way listen to you even on a good day. If you wanted to make a scene in front of all the major political players in the country, you achieved your goal.

I went to one of these affairs back in the ‘90s, black tie and all, and it was great. A bunch of us even traded jokes with Bob Novak. It was an evening of comity and comedy, as Rich Little (still and forever) did imitations of Bill Clinton. No one would have undertaken to go over to James Carville’s table to advance the importance of trickle-down economics.

David and Crow reported:

In his attempt to dismiss us, Mr. Rove turned to head toward his table, but as soon as he did so, Sheryl reached out to touch his arm. Karl swung around and spat, "Don't touch me." How hardened and removed from reality must a person be to refuse to be touched by Sheryl Crow?

On this, Noel Sheppard commented, “Imagine the arrogance: Anyone that would refuse to be touched by Sheryl Crow is ‘hardened and removed from reality.’” The two were actually miffed at their reception and said, “Drama aside, you would expect as an American citizen to be able to engage in a civil discussion with a public official.”

God knows, I have no brief for Karl Rove or any of the global naysayers who refuse to confront the most ominous issue of our times. But, drama aside, you would not expect entertainers who engage in politics to be so hardened and removed from reality as to act out in front of the media’s most prominent members. From donkeys like this, liberals may hope to be preserved.

Your Hair is Nappy, Who’s Your Pappy?

So goes the lyric to an awful Hoagy Carmichael song (“Ugly Chile”) from the 1940s. One of my friends used to sing it in high school. Trouble is, this shit don’ go out of style, it just keep bubblin’ under the surface. We give it a pass by usin’ blackface language like Hoagy did, payin’ no mind to the gangsta rap misogynists who viciously attack black women in their music and have been doing so for over twenty years.

Some get morally indignant, calling Imus’s remarks “disgusting,” ”reprehensible,” “despicable.” Mmm-hmm. Viewers condone them in the same way my mother used to feign disgust at my father’s off-color humor. Or snicker at it.

Like many people, I watched Imus because he generally got good interviews from pundits and politicos who would say things on his show they would never repeat to the newspeople. But you’d have to put up with the nasty, constant put-down comedy the host (‘hos?) encouraged: byplay, sexual insults and right-wing slurs from producer and opinionator Bernard McGuirk; the constant toadying of rod-up-the-ass newsreader Charles McCord; the presence of guests on the set like Bo Dietl, an oily bigot.

I’ve heard the argument that these clowns are all foils for Imus. The trouble with that is he generally reinforces their statements. So the show is often filled with references to jewboys, cripples and jigaboos. “Who’s he gonna hit on next?” we wonder.

From the November 12, 2004, program with one-time sports anchor Sid Rosenberg:

DON IMUS, host: They're [Palestinians] eating dirt and that fat pig wife [Suha Arafat] of his is living in Paris.

ROSENBERG: They're all brainwashed, though. That's what it is. And they're stupid to begin with, but they're brainwashed now. Stinking animals. They ought to drop the bomb right there, kill 'em all right now.

After years of watching Imus I got to the point where I ‘jes couldn’t take it no more. Whether the pundits and politicos will hang in is anybody’s guess. Like Charles McCord, they are total suck-ups to Imus because he has real book-selling and Nielsen power. Many of these public folk are accustomed to snickering and passing off the sneers and insults as “just Don’s humor.” But now they may well perceive it as a liability.

Prediction: the Rutgers team will accept his apology, he’ll perform some “community service” and get beyond this, finally, despite the loss of major advertisers. Nobody wants to accept the economic consequences of racism in this country. So, instead of firing Imus and putting a black host in his place, the networks will keep dispensing platitudes like “reprehensible” and “deplorable.” He makes too much money for them.

The Uniter, not the Decider

Today the U.S. Supreme Court rebuked 5-4 the administration's ridiculous contention that the EPA (Environmental Protection Administration) was not empowered to regulate carbon dioxide emissions because the Clean Air Act doesn't classify them as pollutants. By this logic, we should ignore the relationship of ultraviolet rays to skin cancer because the EPA doesn't regulate them either.

Yesterday, insider Bush strategist Matthew Dowd broke publicly with the president, pointing out the administration's several failures in Iraq and Abu Ghraib plus Bush's increasing rigidity and isolation. Dowd's decision, a long time coming, was portrayed as a complete loss of faith in the president and his leadership.

Indeed, events seem more and more to be leaving The Decider higher and drier. But, you know, he's never at a loss for words.

Last Friday the Dems were congratulating themselves on passing the war spending bill that called for withdrawing all forces from Iraq. So the president called the entire GOP caucus to the White House to paper over the Republican divisions.

"We stand united in saying loud and clear that when we've got a troop in harm's way, we expect that troop to be fully funded," Bush, surrounded by GOP lawmakers, said on the North Portico of the White House.

What is he talking about, the Boy Scouts? John McWhorter explained the solecism this way:

The problem is that this usage of troops is only possible in the plural. One cannot refer to a single soldier as a troop. . . . Mothers do not kiss their troop goodbye as he takes off for Anbar Province. One will never encounter a troop learning to use her prosthetic leg.

After the coming impeachment threat (we predict later this year) forces The Decider, like Nixon, finally to resign the White House, we shall witness the most unifying act of a totally divisive presidency.

Vincenzo Revisited

Here’s the full story of the man who died in front of the television.