Category Archives: Twitter

09/04/2014
2 Comments
"States' Rights", Columbia Journalism Review, Disinformation, Indiana University, IUPUI SPEA, Louisiana, Same-Sex Marriage, Sheila Kennedy, Truthy, Twitter, Vladimir Putin

Hot Air

The Right’s Mr. Right

Sheila Kennedy is one of those precious few Republicans who make a pile of sense. It follows, then, that she wastes few opportunities to lambaste her GOP sisteren and brethren for their most egregious examples of stupidity. And there have been plenty of those in the last few decades. Plenty.

Tuesday, she took on the Right’s recent surreptitious fling with Vlad Putin, the bare-chested strongman of Russia. They dig him the most, preferring him to that scrawny Kenyan, the current phony Prez of the US. Natch, they won’t admit their infatuation with a Russkie but, believe me, he’s Mr. Right for the Right.

Putin

Russo-Romeo

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A little bit of self-back patting here. I radar-ed the Right’s googly eyes for Vlad months ago — months, I tell you! See here and here.

As for Kennedy, she’s a professor in the School for Public and Environmental Affairs at IUPUI as well as director there of the Center for Civic Literacy. She puts out a daily blog in which she tells humanity what’s what. In fact, Kennedy’s like a bizarro-world image of me: she’s a woman — I’m not, (ICYDK); she’s a college prof; I’m a college dropout; she’s a Republican — I’m Democrat(-ish). Our similarities, though, outweigh those contrasts: We’re both keyboard clackers, we both have a compulsion to tell the world what we think, and, because we agree on so much, we’re both fabulous intellectuals. (Obvious, no?)

Anyway, start reading her blog daily (after reading mine.)

[h/t to Susan Sandberg.]

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No Wed In NOLA

Well, the same-sex freight train was slowed down a tad yesterday, what with a court ruling that Louisiana’s ban on it is cool.

Funny, isn’t it? When wits and wags try to speculate which state will be the last to okay SSM, they usually guess Mississippi. So, natch, the first state in the last 20 that has had its ban blessed by a court is right next door.

An even funnier thing: Notice how the anti-SSM gang is huzzah-ing the ruling as a triumph for “state’s rights”? The state’s rights argument is used by people who pretty much don’t dig any part of the US Constitution except the good ol’ 2nd Amendment. Most of those same folks believe a state’s right to deny rights to individuals and couples is paramount.

Wallace

George Wallace At The Schoolhouse Door

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Sometimes I even wonder if A. Lincoln did the right thing by forcing the South to stay in the Union.

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When The Lie Becomes The Truth

How about this from the Columbia Journalism Review? The media watchdog yesterday reported that an Indiana University study called “Truthy” has been savaged by Fox News-heads of late. Truthy is a long-term look into how info spreads on social media, specifically Twitter. One of Truthy’s areas of concern is the viral spread of false information.

From "Pinocchio"

Disney’s “Pinocchio”

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Truthy’s been at it for three years now. The project’s report page is chock-full of revelations about how facts and lies are disseminated throughout society. Ironically, Truthy itself is now the object of a disinformation campaign, the likes of which can serve as a textbook example of precisely what Truthy’s looking into.

Not terribly long ago, one small publication carried an article that Truthy was responsible for helping the federal government create a database of its domestic enemies under the guise of tracking hate speech. In other words, Truthy was acting in concert with authorities to carry out a fascist plot. Well, this kind of thing is red meat to the wingnut Right so — wouldn’t you know it? — people Tweeted it like mad and then everyone from the Libertarian Reason magazine to the evil brietbart.com jumped on the story.

The thinking seemed to go Obama’s a fascist? Of course! The Truthy story has to be true!

Tens of thousands of Tweets became tens of thousands more and then even more conservative-leaning media outlets picked up on the story until, finally, Fox News harrumphed over it on several of its programs.

The only problem was the story was entirely untrue.

The whole incident perfectly illustrates one of Truthy’s findings: That after a certain tipping point, misinformation is repeated so often on Twitter and the like that news outlets begin treating it as fact.

The researchers leading the Truthy project couldn’t have fabricated a more appropriate example to illustrate one of its points.

[h/t to Rea (last name withheld.)]

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03/14/2014
1 Comment
Barack Obama, Brook Benton, Elisabeth Hasselbeck, Fox & Friends, Fox News, Joe Hogsett, Justin Wykoff, Matchbox-Chicago, Republican Party, Steve Volan, Tony Joe White, Twitter, WFIU

Hot Air

The Political Asylum

Our Fox News friends and other purported inhabitants of this Earth who, in truth, live in other worlds, are mad at Barack O. because he wants companies to pay certain salaried employees for their overtime hours.

Philosopher and women of letters Elisabeth Hasselbeck (who, in her spare time, co-hosts the Fox & Friends morning gabfest) sez mandating overtime will undercut America’s work ethic. According to this titan of cerebral stuff and other defenders of the plutocracy, now peeps who hope to get ahead by “going the extra mile” will become lazy, unambitious and, well, probably Democratic, mainly because they’re going to get paid for the time they work.

Hasselbeck

Hasselbeck: Only Lazy Bums Want Paychecks

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That, my babies, is today’s Republican Party in a nutshell. Robert Taft, Dwight Eisenhower, and even Tricky Dick Nixon are spinning in their graves as we speak. That’s how mad the mad, mad, mad, mad party has become.

And yet, our Dems still lose any number of elections to them.

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Park It

B-town city council guy Steve Volan will be on WFIU’s Noon Edition today at, duh, noon. He’ll be perorating about the parking situ. here in our burgeoning burgh.

Marc Antony

Steve Volan

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And I’m certain the genteel hosts of NE will treat him with the respect and deference a statesman of his high station truly deserves.

[Personal to Steve: As if you couldn’t have guessed by now, I’ll never stop being a smart-ass.]

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Confidence Game

So the Feds have dropped the hammer on former Bloomington Public Works big shot Justin Wykoff and a couple of henchmen from Bedford for allegedly bilking the city out of 800-large.

Wykoff City ID

Busted

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Acc’d’g to US Attorney Joe Hogsett, the Bedford boys submitted phony invoices for construction work and Wycoff approved them, a task he handled with great aplomb and for 33 percent of the take.

It wasn’t until a puzzled fellow Public Works employee dropped a dime on him that the first dark clouds marred Wycoff’s day. Wycoff was a project manager, which means he had a certain amount of say-so in how the city’s dough got spent. Still, you mean to tell me there was no one with the fiduciary responsibility to occasionally peek over Wycoff’s shoulder?

We’re a trusting lot here in B-town.

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Twitter Twaddle

As you may or may not know, I don’t really use Twitter. Oh sure, I’ve got an account (don’t ask me how to get there) but I have it set up so it automatically puts out notifications that there’s a new post on The Pencil. Otherwise, I have no idea how many followers I have or even if some terrorist group has hijacked it and is even now devising plans to make another jet vanish.

See, Twitter serves no purpose for me at all. Not even to pimp for this blog, considering I’ve done absolutely nothing to grow my followers list. I just set my account up, well, because it seemed the right thing to do, rather like that time in the early ’90s when I grew a ponytail even though my hairline had already receded dramatically.

Anyway, I’m a strong proponent of using any tech advancement only if it serves a need I already had when said machine or service came onto the market. And I had zero need for Twitter before Twitter came out.

It never occurred to me that I needed to let a widening circle of semi-acquaintances know that the slice of sourdough bread I ate this morning gave me gas.

So, here’s a listing of ridiculous Tweets that illustrate precisely how useless the damned thing is. BTW: h/t to my old pal Jacqueline Gevercer for this. Jacqui was the chief bartender at the Matchbox (“Chicago’s most intimate bar”) back when I met the future Mrs. Loved One there. She was one of toughest dames you could imagine (Jacqui was; although T-Lo could give her a run for her dough).

From Just Something - Creative

Click Image To Read

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Sample Tweet:

queue at @sainsburys salad bar for 15 mins to find they had no egg OR giant cous cous. To say this has ruined Monday would be an understatement [all sic]

Read away, with the understanding, I’d suspect, that a few of these Tweeters were aware of their own over-dramatizations. Some of them, though, seem truly distraught by their imagined ordeals.

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Rainy Night In Georgia

Here’s the prettiest sad song you’ll hear today — or this year, for that matter.

Tony Joe White wrote it and it became a hit for Brook Benton in 1970. TJW has recording a couple of versions. This one is my fave. It makes feeling the blues a pleasure.

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11/12/2012
3 Comments
Angela Davis, Barack Obama, Dragnet, Gawker Media, Jezebel, Katy Waldman, Mitt Romney, Racism, Sgt. Joe Friday, Slate.com, Twitter

The Pencil Today:

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THE QUOTE

“Racism is a much more clandestine, much more hidden kind of phenomenon, but at the same time it’s perhaps far more terrible than it’s ever been.” — Angela Davis

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THE KEYS TO THE WHITE HOUSE

Have you seen this map yet?

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Weird, huh?

It’s the electoral map from Tuesday’s presidential election with all the women’s and blacks’ votes discounted. In other words had the female suffragists never been successful, nor had the 15th Amendment giving free blacks the right to vote been ratified, this is what we’d have been left with — one of the greatest electoral college landslides in the history of the United States.

For Willard “Mitt” Romney.

White men simply did not vote for Barack Obama. And for the last 223 years, white men have chosen the president.

No more.

Is it any wonder why they’re scared to death?

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SO WHO AM I?

Now here’s my own existential question: Why do I refer to white men as “they”?

A Young Mitt Romney And His (White) Pals

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Again, is it any wonder?

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SNITCHES

Jezebel, as you probably know, is part of the Gawker Media group of websites. As its name indicates, it’s directed at women. But I read it because, well, as indicated in the preceding entry, I’m not thrilled to be a part of the white male gang.

Speaking of whiteness, Jezebel has embarked on a campaign to blow the whistle on high school kids who’ve Tweeted racist and often threatening comments about the reelection of Barack Obama Tuesday.

Far too many of these little bastards are calling Obama a “nigger” and a “monkey” and some even express longing for the day he gets picked off by an assassin.

Now, I’ll refrain from revealing what I’d like to do to these brats only because it entails my shoe and their asses and, as I understand it, kicking the crap out of kids is frowned upon these days.

That said, I’m made a little uncomfortable by Jezebel’s tactics. See, the website is contacting the schools these racist kids attend and letting their principals know what they’re saying on the social site.

Not only that but Jezebel is publicizing the kids’ names as well as their schools on the site which is seen by perhaps 100,000 people a day (the latest figures show the combined daily hit total for Gawker’s sites is about a quarter of a million, so I’m estimating here.)

Anyway, I don’t like it. Kids are stupid. I know this because I was a kid once. Kids say stupid things. I remember once telling my mother that I was a communist. Communism, after all, seemed a very attractive alternative to me at the age of 17, what with the Vietnam War and racism and the Nixon White House defining this holy land at the time.

Should I have been called out in a national media outlet for saying so? IIRC, my flirtation with communism lasted all of a few weeks. Then I read about old Joe Stalin and his purges and idiosyncrasies. I also read that even though Stalinism had been declared old hat in the USSR, the new generation of leaders there were only slightly less, shall we say, stern than Stalin.

And here’s another thing. I’ve called some people “nigger” in my day. That’s the word we used in my neighborhood to describe black people. I wasn’t terribly comfortable using that terminology and I never used it as liberally as the vast majority of my peers. In fact, even during those few-and-far-between moments when I did drop an N, I knew I wouldn’t be saying the word once I freed myself from the neighborhood I grew up in.

Still, I felt an almost irresistible pressure to speak in the language of my environs. I did my best to resist, but sometimes I couldn’t. I was, after all, a kid. And kids not only are stupid, they’re apt to fall in line awfully easily.

I was overheard saying the word once by a black guy named Chris, whom I liked. I’ll never forget the look on Chris’s face: a combination of hurt and anger that I’d never seen before. I swore at that moment I’d never use the word as a descriptor again.

Nevertheless, I ran into the guy and his sister several years later on Michigan Avenue. Apparently, he’d never told his sister about what he’d heard me say. She greeted me like a long lost brother. All the while, the guy stood at a remove, eying me as one would a rat.

I wanted to say to him, “Chris, I’ve never used that word again,” but I knew it wouldn’t make his hurt and anger go away. It would only make me feel better to say so.

Speaking of rats, Katy Waldman wrote on Slate.com Friday that Jezebel is “ratting out” the kids. She, too, riffs on the stupidity of kids. She also posits that Jezebel’s campaign just might make the Tweeters in question bitter, which could very well preclude any magical reversal of their racist feelings.

For its part, Jezebel says it’s calling out these Tweeters and dropping the hammer on them via their principals in an effort to get them to see the error of their ways.

Perhaps. I still don’t care for the paternalistic (or should I say maternalistic) attitude Jezebel’s taking here. It reeks of Joe Friday on “Dragnet” preaching against hippies and LSD and extolling the values of hard work and sacrifice.

As kids, we all laughed at Joe Friday. The mere fact that he was anti-LSD to a large extent drove us toward it. He was the authority, someone to be resisted at all costs.

With its campaign, Jezebel’s putting itself in the role of authority. How hip is the term “nigger” going to become now?

Unless a kid has it in his heart to see black people as human beings who can experience hurt and anger, he’ll never stop dropping the N-bomb no matter how many people call him out on it.

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The only events listings you need in Bloomington.

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Monday, November 12th, 2012

LECTURE ◗ IU Maurer School of Law, Room 335 — A Case Study of China’s Administrative Law Crisis: The Unlawful Enforcement of Insider Trading Prohibition,” Presented by Nicholas Howson, professor of law at the University of Michigan; Noon

MUSIC ◗ IU Ford-Crawford Hall — Master’s Recital: Adam Walton, bass-baritone; 5pm

MUSIC ◗ IU Auer Hall — Doctoral Recital: Matthew Middleton on organ; 5pm

LETTERS ◗ Rachael’s Cafe — Creative writing workshop; 6-8pm

OPEN HOUSE ◗ Harmony School; 6:30pm

FILM ◗ IU Cinema — “Blind Chance“; 7pm

LECTURE ◗ Buskirk Chumley Theater — IU School of Journalism Speaker Series: Byron Pitts of CBS News; 7pm

MUSIC ◗ Muddy Boots Cafe, Nashville — Joe Sanford; 7-9pm

SPORTS ◗ IU Assembly Hall — Hoosier men’s basketball vs. North Dakota State; 7pm

MUSIC ◗ IU Auer Hall — Percussion Ensemble, John Tafoya & Kevin Bobo, directors; 7pm

LECTURE ◗ IU Sweeney Hall — Guest Lecture: Shinuh Lee, composer; 7pm

MUSIC ◗ IU Musical Arts Center Recital Hall — Horn Studio Recital: Students of Jeff Nelson; 7pm

MUSIC ◗ IU Musical Arts Center — MAC Lobby Concerts Series: Jazz Combo; 7:15pm

MUSIC ◗ The Player’s Pub — Songwriter Showcase; 8pm

MUSIC ◗ IU Musical Arts Center — Latin Jazz Ensemble & Jazz Combo, Michael Spiro & Jeremy Allen, directors; 8pm

MUSIC ◗ The Bishop — DJ Tyler Damon; 8pm

MUSIC ◗ IU Ford-Crawford Hall — Doctoral Recital: Julia Pefanis, mezzo-soprano; 8:30pm

MUSIC ◗ The Bluebird — Dave Walters karaoke; 9pm

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ONGOING:

ART ◗ IU Art Museum — Exhibits:

  • “Paragons of Filial Piety,” by Utagawa Kuniyoshi; through December 31st
  • “Intimate Models: Photographs of Husbands, Wives, and Lovers,” by Julia Margaret, Cameron, Edward Weston, & Harry Callahan; through December 31st
  • “French Printmaking in the Seventeenth Century;” through December 31st
  • Celebration of Cuban Art & Film: Pop-art by Joe Tilson; through December 31st
  • “Threads of Love: Baby Carriers from China’s Minority Nationalities“; through December 23rd
  • “Workers of the World, Unite!” through December 31st
  • “Embracing Nature,” by Barry Gealt; through December 23rd
  • “Pioneers & Exiles: German Expressionism,” through December 23rd

ART ◗ Ivy Tech Waldron Center — Exhibits through December 1st:

  • “Essentially Human,” By William Fillmore
  • “Two Sides to Every Story,” By Barry Barnes
  • “Horizons in Pencil and Wax,” By Carol Myers

ART ◗ IU SoFA Grunwald Gallery — Exhibits through November 16th:

  • Buzz Spector: Off the Shelf
  • Small Is Big

ART ◗ IU Kinsey Institute Gallery — Exhibits through December 20th:

  • “A Place Aside: Artists and Their Partners“
  • “Gender Expressions“

ART ◗ IU Mathers Museum of World Cultures — Exhibits:

  • “¡Cuba Si! Posters from the Revolution: 1960s and 1970s”
  • “From the Big Bang to the World Wide Web: The Origins of Everything”
  • “Thoughts, Things, and Theories… What Is Culture?”
  • “Picturing Archaeology”
  • “Personal Accents: Accessories from Around the World”
  • “Blended Harmonies: Music and Religion in Nepal”
  • “The Day in Its Color: A Hoosier Photographer’s Journey through Mid-century America”
  • “TOYing with Ideas”
  • “Living Heritage: Performing Arts of Southeast Asia”
  • “On a Wing and a Prayer”

BOOKS ◗ IU Lilly Library — Exhibits:

  • “The War of 1812 in the Collections of the Lilly Library“; through December 15th
  • “A World of Puzzles,” selections from the Slocum Puzzle Collection

ARTIFACTS ◗ Monroe County History Center — Exhibits:

  • Doctors & Dentists: A Look into the Monroe County Medical Professions
  • What Is Your Quilting Story?
  • Garden Glamour: Floral Fashion Frenzy
  • Bloomington Then & Now
  • World War II Uniforms
  • Limestone Industry in Monroe County

The Ryder & The Electron Pencil. All Bloomington. All the time.

09/07/2012
Leave a comment
Ann Romney, Aretha Franklin, Barack Obama, Blue Moon, Franklin D. Roosevelt, James Thurber, Labor Unions, Liberace, Michelle Obama, Mitt Romney, Neko Case, The Daily Mirror, Twitter

The Pencil Today:

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THE QUOTE

“You can fool too many of the people too much of the time.” — James Thurber

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LOOK TO THE SKIES!

Looks like that big fist of rain up around the Chi-town area is getting ready to come down upon us.

We’re still not ready to complain about another washed-out weekend, though.

NOAA Satellite View, 9:15am, EST

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STRAIGHT FROM HIS LIPS

In the category of People Will Believe Any Bullshit Anyone Tosses At Them, this book cover has to rank among the top ten:

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And just to show how bizarre Homo Sapiens sapiens is, a London-based gossip columnist in 1956 described Milwaukee’s greatest piano player thusly:

“… [A] deadly, winking, sniggering, snuggling, chromium-plated, scent-impregnated, luminous, quivering, giggling, fruit-flavored, mincing, ice-covered heap of mother love.”

Ice-covered?

Upon reading this, Wladziu Valentino Liberace sued the gossip columnist and his newspaper, The Mirror, for libel. And won!

Liberace on the witness stand swore he wasn’t a homosexual (even though the columnist had not explicitly accused him of being gay) and said — I remind you, under oath — that he’d never had a homosexual experience.

And you wonder why some people believe Barack Obama was born in some terrorist madrasah in Kenya run by Karl Marx’s heirs, abortionists, and pedophiles.

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INTELLIGENT LIFE?

And then there’s this from I Fucking Love Science. Many people were sorely disappointed the other night when the moon did not, as advertised, turn blue.

See, there was supposed to be a blue moon a week ago today. The Twitter-verse went full-tilt apopolectic when our celestial nightlight did not shine in the wavelength range of 475 nanometers.

Colors On The Electromagnetic Spectrum

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Anyway, tons and tons of deep thinkers flooded the hell that is Tweet-ville with irate complaints that the moon was, well, still white.

To wit:

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And you wonder why some people believe it was Barack Obama who crashed the economy.

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CRUST OF BREAD AND SUCH

Still wondering if the Romneys understand what it’s like for the rest of us? That is, those of us who didn’t grow up uber-wealthy?

Read this:

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This is not to say a rich guy can’t have empathy. Franklin Roosevelt never missed a meal in his life but he had a feeling for those who had.

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TRADING PLACES

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RUNNIN’ OUT OF FOOLS

Originally recorded by Aretha Franklin, this version was done some 30 years later by Neko Case, perhaps the only woman who could do justice to it other than the Queen of Soul.

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Here’s how I waste my time. How about you? Share your fave sites with us via the comments section. Just type in the name of the site, not the url; we’ll find them. If we like them, we’ll include them — if not, we’ll ignore them.

❏ I Love Charts — Life as seen through charts.

From I Love Charts

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❏ XKCD — “A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language.”

❏ Skepchick — Women scientists look at the world and the universe.

❏ Indexed — All the answers in graph form, on index cards.

❏ Science Is Awesome (formerly I Fucking Love Science) — A Facebook community of science geeks.

❏ Present/&/Correct — Fun, compelling, gorgeous and/or scary graphic designs and visual creations throughout the years and from all over the world.

❏ Flip Flop Fly Ball — Baseball as seen through infographics, haikus, song lyrics, and other odd communications devices.

❏ Mental Floss — Facts.

Click For Full Article

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❏ Sodaplay — Create your own models or play with other people’s models.

❏ Eat Sleep Draw — An endless stream of artwork submitted by an endless stream of people.

❏ Big Think — Tapping the brains of notable intellectuals for their opinions, predictions, and diagnoses.

❏ The Daily Puppy — So shoot me.

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11/23/2011
2 Comments
Auto Racing, Black Friday, Bloomington Indiana, Candidate Debate, Dallas Cowboys, Donald Trump, Foreign Aid, Freedom of Speech, House Intelligence Committee, Jabar Gaffney, Judas Priest, Lindsay Lohan, Miami, Michele Bachmann, Michelle Obama, NASCAR, Nobel Prize, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., Pakistan, Republican Party, Rick Perry, Teen Suicide, Twitter, US Supreme Court, Washington Redskins

The Pencil Today:

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POT VERSUS KETTLE

I’d imagine the number of local residents paying the slightest bit of attention to last night’s debate between Republican candidates for president hovered somewhere around, oh, zero.

This is, after all, Bloomington, Indiana, the capital-in-exile of the former Soviet Union and geographical magnet for this holy land’s unscrubbed beatniks, bomb-throwers, abortionists, and other Democrats.

So, The Pencil will do y’all a favor and point out the most eye-opening statement made by one of the fine and decorated statesmen and women who gathered to verbally spar in that other locus of undesirables, Washington, DC.

Minnesota Congressbeing Michele Bachmann dug deep into her her pocket thesaurus and threw a sophisticated two-syllable pejorative at Texas Gov. Rick Perry.

Bachmann: “Fingers crossed — Someone Has Less Of A Clue Than I Do.”

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The issue was Pakistan and Perry had just pronounced all future financial aid to that nuclear armed Stone Age nation a no-go as long as its leaders wouldn’t keep “America’s best interests in mind.”

Y’know, the way every other nation on this spinning globe keeps the well-being of the land of Donald Trump, Lindsay Lohan, and Black Friday in the forefront of all its deliberations.

Well, our plucky gal Michele found Perry’s logic rather lacking. Bachmann is a member of the House Intelligence Committee which, if nothing else, proves our elected representatives possess a sense of humor. She reminded Perry and the world that this country gains a lot of inside dope on the doings of the wild-eyed gun-toters who populate much of Pakistan’s desolate countryside. Our dough, Bachmann insisted, also insures that the borderline lunatics who run the place aren’t overthrown by certified lunatics.

Bachmann characterized Perry’s statement thusly: “I think that’s highly naive.”

Kudos to Bachmann on grasping the fact that the syllables of a word needn’t be separated by consonants.

Now, imagine how discouraged the cowboy governor is this morning to realize that Michele Bachmann — Michele Bachmann — considers him naive.

The election, folks, is a mere 49 weeks away.

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“KILL URSELF”

I have a Twitter account, I’ll admit it. On the other hand, I haven’t touched it in more than a year.

Twitter is the 140-character preserve of semi-literate pro athletes, pathologically self-involved Hollywood stars, and that portion of the populace that was born, sadly, with the condition known as anencephaly.

Take the recent Twit (screw “Tweet” — I’m going with Twit) from Washington Redskins pass catcher Jabar Gaffney.

Poor Jabar was in a funk after his team lost to the rival Dallas Cowboys Sunday. Some Cowboys fan sent him a Twit ridiculing him and his Redskins mates. (By the way, I was under the impression that this was the year 2011. And still there’s a pro team called the Redskins? The Redskins?!)

Anyway, Gaffney promptly advised the Twit-sender to, um, commit suicide.

Yup. Gaffney thumbed these proto-words into his connection to the civilized world: “… I’m just proud I ain’t you get a life or kill urself.” The line is close enough to the human language known as English that I needn’t translate it for you.

Naturally, the NFL and representatives of the sane population of America had apoplexy. Hell, if people can blame Judas Priest, whose song obliquely referred to the ultimate form of self-determination, for a couple of teens’ deaths in 1985, then Gaffney’s unmistakable advisement is fraught with peril.

Gaffney then quoted another Twit-person who agreed with his original broadside. Gaffney thumbed: “I do want that man to kill himself..one less cowboys fan…”

Existential Advice

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Sheesh. Now we know there are at least two people in this nation who don’t know ellipsis is indicated by three dots, not two. America is indeed going to hell.

Cooler heads got to Gaffney and he apologized — the way many celebrities, politicians, and corporations apologize these days, which is not at all.

Gaffney Twitted a third time, “They say I can’t tell people to kill themselves didn’t know freedom of speech had limitations so I’ll just say #uknowwhattodo #HTTR better?”

In case this puzzling series of electronic grunts is indecipherable to you, I’ll help. Gaffney is saying: “My heavens, despite the landmark US Supreme Court decision wherein the noted jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. opined that shouting ‘Fire!’ in a crowded theater is a practical violation of common sense, civility, and the spirit of the original 1st Amendment, I was under the impression that the concept of Freedom of Speech is sacrosanct. I will therefore alter my original pronouncement by saying, ‘Sir, do you recall that action I advised you to take which, apparently, I am not at liberty to utter in a public setting? If so, please take it.'”

Big time sports and the reprobates who perform in it and operate it are becoming less and less attractive by the week.

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DON’T CRY FOR ME HOMESTEAD-MIAMI SPEEDWAY

The Loved One was incensed that First Lady Michele Obama caught the raspberry Sunday at a NASCAR race in Miami.

Obama: “I Can’t Hear You Because I Have These Big Things On My Head.”

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Many in the crowd of some 80,000 booed the president’s wife lustily when she was introduced prior to shouting “Start your engines” into a microphone.

Aside from the fact that the speedway was filled with people who find deafeningly loud cars continually turning left at life threatening speeds entertaining, the race, it must be said, was held in Florida. That double-whammy indicates the crowd probably was lacking in thinkers who grasp the subtleties and nuances of today’s domestic and geopolitical debate.

Who was the last Nobel Prize winner to hail from the Sunshine State?

No matter, I actually tried to defend the crowd, which caused my lovely bride to eye me through narrowed lids.

I said, “The fact that people feel free to boo the wife of the boss of the most powerful nation on Earth is a good thing.”

The Loved One shook her head almost imperceptibly. And, I have to admit, I’m not thrilled with my argument either.

♢

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