Tuesday, August 31, 2010

The Old “I Work with Chimps” Commercial

Let’s take a humor break.
 




Omar Thornton’s Mother Speaks!

By Nicholas Stix

Does she or doesn’t she defend him? You decide, and let me know.
 



LEFT PLAYED RACE CARD AT GLENN BECK RALLY - BIG TIME


LEFT PLAYED RACE CARD AT GLENN BECK RALLY - BIG TIME

By Ronbo, Freedom Fighter’s Journal


Saturday Night Card Game (Think Progress Forced To Fold At Restoring Honor Rally)

This is the latest in a series on the use of the race card for political gain:

Think Progress tried really, really hard to cover the Restoring Honor rally with photographers and videographers. I don't think it is a stretch to think that Think Progress was hoping beyond hope that it would find a sign or something else that would permit it to portray the rally as racist.


Apparently, Think Progress drew some really bad cards, because the focus of its video and photo coverage is a rather pathetic attempt to claim that the rally really was a "political rally":

Political Rally Or Not? We Report, You Decide

For months, Glenn Beck has breathlessly insisted that today’s “Restoring Honor” rally was a completely non-political event. ThinkProgress attended the event and documented what we saw. Decide for yourself if Beck’s rally was non-political:


But not to mind, Think Progress also had photos of t-shirts like this one (unfortunately, TP gave no link as to where to order one):



Come on Think Progress. Is that the best you got?

With all your money, you could do better! How about a little bluff? Raise the ante and at least pretend you have good cards. A headline like this would have been a good bluff:

"Racists Hide Racism At Racist Rally"
All is fair in love and the card game. At least take some of your race cards from a different rally, and play them here.

It never stopped you
before.

Update:
Link for T-Shirts, h/t Brian at Red Dog Report.

--------------------------------------------

Related Posts:
Saturday Night Card Game
Let's Play "If a Tea Party Supporter Had Said That"
Still Waiting For Apologies



Monday, August 30, 2010

“Racists Hide Racism at Racist Rally”

By Nicholas Stix

Ronbo’s satirical faux headline above, from Freedom Fighter’s Journal, sums up the tenor of the MSM and leftwing blogosphere’s “coverage” of Saturday’s Glenn Beck Rally.

St. Ted? Anti-Catholics at National Catholic Reporter Begin Canonization Process for Kennedy with Hagiography, Censorship, and Counterfeit Consensus

 

Never remember him...
 

(Mary Jo Kopechne is at the far left.)
... without thinking of her. He got a 77-and-a-half-year orgy of privilege (including grabbing the bodies of unprivileged girls and women), whoring, drinking, gluttony and the abuse of power, which he used to destroy America. She got just under 29 years, in which she was used, and left to die a horrible death.
 

By Nicholas Stix

The National Catholic Reporter celebrated the one-year anniversary of Ted Kennedy’s (D-Chappaquiddick) death last Wednesday with something from Dr. Dr. Patrick Whelan, entitled “Ted Kennedy’s Well-Lived Life.” (Barf alert!)

A year ago today, people in Massachusetts and around the world mourned the death of Senator Ted Kennedy in a manner reserved for few Americans. Tens of thousands stood respectfully for hours, spontaneously forming lengthy lines along the shore of Columbia Point on Boston Harbor for a chance to walk past his casket. It was a testament to respect for a special moment in history, but more poignantly to a deep sense of personal loss. A member of the family had died, and the grief was evident on the faces of people who sacrificed hours to be together there. "He was out there every day, fighting the fight for us -- especially for our health," the Rev Jesse Jackson told me, as he signed the guest book. "And look how much these people loved him for it."

Senator Kennedy was the only one of the four brothers who was not taken in his youth. But even at age 77, after 15 months of crossing swords with cancer, he seemed at the height of his game -- a pivotal figure in the victory of Barack Obama and a key player in the impending healthcare debate. Why at that moment, many people asked. Why do bad things happen to the people we need the most?

Senator Kennedy dwelt on this issue in the closing pages of True Compass, his autobiography, which arrived on his doorstep the day he passed away last August. Recounting reflections he shared at a Senate prayer breakfast only three months after the death in 1999 of his nephew, John Kennedy Jr., Senator Kennedy said, "Every single one of us, if we are awake to the brokenness of the world and of our lives, wonders at some point, 'How could you allow this, O God? I believe, but help me in my unbelief!' And these questions, this wonder, this pain and this pleading know no bounds of faith -- for the simple, hard fact is that God plays no favorites; that we all suffer; that we all die; that, at one time or another, we all shake our fists at God; and that, if we are lucky, we all come home to God in the end." He went on to quote Thomas Carlyle, who said, "I had a lifelong quarrel with God, but we made up in the end."

His book weaves a chronology of his life, and it is easy to hear his deep laughter as he relates a long parade of family adventures and 47 years of campaign tales and historic legislative battles. But his optimistic prose is punctuated with moments of despair, and a theme develops in which self reflection is followed by a healing rededication to the humanistic causes of his life. He quotes his father as saying, "When one of your children goes out of your life, you think of what he might have done with a few more years, and you wonder what you are going to do with the rest of yours. Then one day, because there is a world to be lived in, you find yourself a part of it again, trying to accomplish something -- something that he did not have time enough to do. And, perhaps, that is the reason for it all. I hope so."

They say experience is what you get when you don't get what you want. But Senator Kennedy had a talent for turning personal experiences into collective dividends. As a young boy living in London, he witnessed the preparations for World War II -- and he became a pivotal leader opposing the rush to war in Iraq....

I commented at NCR,

This little piece of propaganda is pornographic in the debauchery it commits upon the truth. It would be perfectly at home in a newsletter from the National Abortion Rights Action League or the DNC, but the National Catholic Reporter? I’m a Jew, and yet I have more respect for Catholic principles than Mr. Whelan and the rest of you at NCR do.

The most important statement on the page comes at the bottom:

“Patrick Whelan MD, PhD is … a former advisor on Catholic concerns to Governor Howard Dean when he was chairman of the Democratic National Committee.”

If this piece of excrement is any indication, I can imagine what Dr. Dr. Whelan told Gov. Dean. Something like, ‘Governor, the most important thing to Catholics is that there be no limits whatsoever on abortion. No parental notification at any age, no limit on late-term abortions, no waiting periods. Indeed, unlimited abortion is a pillar of the Catholic faith!’

Off the top of my head, Ted Kennedy’s legacy consists of:

Mary Jo Kopechne
Supporting abortion
Virulent racism
Destroying America through the 1965 Immigration Act, which he completely lied about, before it was passed and signed in to law.
Repeatedly trying to ram through racist, nation-breaking amnesties for criminal foreign invaders.
Repeatedly trying to ram through nation-breaking health-care legislation.

But the best comment came from Pat Hickey, who blogs at ... With Both Hands:

One Year Sober!

Pat and I both posted our comments at the NCR hagiography, where they were both removed; we re-posted ‘em at Jim Bowman’s Blithe Spirit blog.

The censors at NCR left a couple of critical comments up, over the weekend, amid a sea of hosannas, and then added two more token critical comments to make it appear as though Kennedy was all but universally beloved. Two idolators even called for immediate sainthood for the departed Devil:

"Santo subito!"

Today, the censors posted Kennedy-devotee Denis Sugrue’s comment, dated August 27:

I am genuinely shocked that there's so little hate mail on this one. Last year Brooklyn's 'The Tablet' had a reader writing a letter to the 'letters to the editor' page for six consecutive weeks talking about how Sen. Kennedy should not have received a Catholic funeral; of course, those readers clearly were more knowledgeable than either of the Bishops in Boston or Washington.

The censors posted seven new comments today, including Sugrue’s, one from Saturday, and two from today. To ensure that no glitch played a role, after having posted my comment initially early Friday morning, I re-posted a slightly edited version at 7:24 a.m., Saturday.

By my count of the posted comments, the Kennedy worshipers have it, 31-5, over the critics. But if Pat Hickey and I were both censored, who knows how many other critics were, too. Thus, the idolatrous consensus on behalf of Kennedy in NCR’s comment section must be seen as having been manufactured.

I got the idea for this post’s title, as well as for the "barf alert," from Jim Bowman who, by the way, is a real Catholic, and not a counterfeit, like the NCR gang, and is where I heard about the NCR shtick. Counterfeit Catholics; has a nice ring, no? Counterfeit consensus, too.

By the way, the acronym “NCR” has traditionally been associated with “National Cash Register,” a more spiritual and less materialistic organization than the National Catholic Reporter.

With the Catholic Church having been taken over by Marxist and homosexual militants, is it any wonder that it is besieged by scandal after scandal?

Aaron Copland: The Red Pony (1949): Dream March and Circus Music New Philharmonia

 

 

By Nicholas Stix

The Red Pony is a beautiful picture that depends more on its music for its effect that any other movie, save perhaps for The Natural and Field of Dreams. I read somewhere that Copland composed over an hour of original music for the film, with only the opening and closing overlapping. Typically, when a movie today even has an original score, as opposed to a soundtrack reusing popular noise, it has a few recurring leitmotiv themes. E.g., in Forrest Gump, which I think has an excellent score, composer Alan Silvestri largely alternates three recurring themes: The sound of wonder (opening and closing); Forrest's broken heart; and Jenny's theme. Some sections (Forrest running across America) also have their own themes.

I read that The Red Pony was supposed ot be released in 1948, in which case Copland likely would have been nominated for best score, and would have had a very good chance of winning. Instead, the picture was delayed until 1949, the same year that The Heiress was released, and though Copland's score for the latter picture was butchered by the director or the studio, it still won the Oscar for best dramatic score. Like movie and music fans, the Academy appreciated Copland's brilliance. And though he worked on few movie scores, his influence on movie and TV music has been immense, seen through such composers as John Williams, Jerry Goldsmith, and most of all, Elmer Bernstein who, I am convinced, composed his National Geographic theme as an "Ode to Copland, in Four Movements."

My thanks go out to acuario1002.

Sunday, August 29, 2010

Misremembering Katrina: Michelle Malkin Writes on Race Again (When Will She Ever Learn?!)

 
[Postscript, 9/2/12: Tonight, Peter Brimelow just published my VDARE Katrina update, “Revising Katrina for the Age of Obama.”]

By Nicholas Stix

She did it again. Michelle Malkin wrote a column on race. When will she ever learn?!

Her current column, “Hurricane Katrina and the Race Card: Five Years Later,” purports to debunk racial demagoguing on Hurricane Katrina.

Well, she quotes quite a few racist black demagogues, but there’s precious little debunking to be found. That’s not good. Black racists—i.e., 80-90% of the black population—will see a column like that and say, “They were telling the truth!”

Well, I guess they’ll say that, no matter what proof one shows, debunking their insane claims.

There is one paragraph, however, where Malkin does appear to provide some beef.

[Jimmy] Carter's speech not only lacked basic decency. It lacked any grounding in reality. According to vital statistics released just months after the storm by the primary morgue that processed the bodies of the deceased, 48 percent of those who died in the natural disaster were black, 41 percent were white, with another 8 percent unknown and 2 percent Hispanic. Little-noted follow-up analysis confirmed those preliminary results and also debunked the myth that the poor were disproportionately affected by the storm.

Well, she sold it as beef, but it was really… a veggie burger! Call the Consumer Fraud Hotline!

I recall only two writers who cited those figures when they came out, and engaged in “little-noted follow-up analysis”: An anonymous scribe at Newsmax… and me!

As I first wrote in the August 30, 2006, Men’s News Daily version of my article, “New Orleans Times-Picayune Reporters, Editors Win Duranty-Blair Award for Journalistic Infamy,”

Another blow to the MSM’s (following the Times-Picayune) mainstream media’s revised, official Katrina story came on November 14, when reports on New Orleans’ dead were published by the State of Louisiana. The mainstream media had promoted the notion that those who suffered in the Hurricane’s aftermath were almost exclusively black. After all, over 90 percent of those stuck in the city were reportedly black, with the blacks predominantly stuck in the Ninth Ward and environs, where the levees had been breached. And the whites who remained reportedly lived above sea level on dry land, in the city’s tonier precincts. One was given to expect that the dead would be virtually all black. But in fact,

“Of the 562 bodies (out of 883) that had so far been identified by race, 48 percent (267) were “African American,†41 percent (230) were “Caucasian,†eight percent (48) were “unknown,†2 percent (13) were “Hispanic,†1 percent (3) were “Native American,†and zero percent (1) was “other.—

(The quoted section on the breakdown of deaths came from the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals.)

But unlike the anonymous Newsmaxer, I went beyond simply pointing out that the morgue figures showed that blacks hadn’t disproportionately died following Katrina, but that whites had, and that the only credible explanation, based on what was known about the anarchy at the time, was that racist blacks were hunting them down and slaughtering them, just as they had sought to slaughter white rescue workers.

On August 30, 2006, I responded at my article to a comment from a Men’s News Daily reader,

Given that supposedly only 10 percent or less of the people left in town were white, and over forty percent of the dead were white, whites were dying at over four times their proportion. And that doesnt even take into consideration that whites were reportedly concentrated in “safer” places. Thus, I am convinced that blacks were on search-and-destroy missions, hunting down and murdering whites.”

And as I added on page 102 of the NPI report that I edited, and co-authored with economist Edwin R. Rubenstein and historian Robert J. Stove, The State of White America-2007,

The anomalous numbers make black search-and-destroy operations much more likely. If genocide was afoot, it was certainly not the sort of genocide that black activists and leaders such as Nation of Islam leader, Min. Louis Farrakhan, have claimed.

After the Louisiana death figures were released, the mainstream media suppressed the story of the issue of the proportion of whites who met their end in New Orleans, and suppressed reporting on pre-Katrina criminality, while uncritically reporting scurrilous black charges of anti-black genocide.

But Malkin, in her race-political cowardice, has turned back the clock on knowledge of Katrina! She refers to the dead as having died from Katrina: “those who died in the natural disaster.” How does she propose that people on land that remained dry died in a flood?

On April 19, I recalled how Malkin had fallen hook, line, and sinker for an Internet hoax last December, based on black racist Maurice Clemmons’ ambush murder of four white police officers in Lakewood, Washington. In fact, she unwittingly promoted the hoax the day after I had debunked it. On April 19 I wrote,

Lacking such integrity, Malkin never printed a correction.

Does she still not know that she fell for an Internet hoax that my readers learned about on December 3?

Unlike over 90 percent of Republican writers, Malkin has for years been good on immigration, but she’s so lazy and dishonest on race that every time she writes on the subject, she causes damage to public discourse, through misleading her hundreds of thousands of newspaper and Web readers.

An Open Note to Michelle Malkin:

If you’re not going to thoroughly research and honestly write on racial topics, stop writing about them! Leave the subject to the professionals. Like me.

Signed,

Nicholas Stix

Former New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin Calls Katrina the Worst Natural and Man-Made Disaster in American History

 
[Postscript, 9/2/12: Tonight, Peter Brimelow just published my VDARE Katrina update, “Revising Katrina for the Age of Obama.”]

By Nicholas Stix
 

 
 

According to WPIX New York reporter Jennifer Jordan on last night’s 10 O’Clock News, Mayor Ray Nagin says, “Katrina was the worst natural and man-made disaster in the history of the country.”

Why “man-made”? The question is important, because for five years blacks have insisted, based on a rumor initially circulated by the genocidal black supremacist Min. Louis Farrakhan, leader of the terrorist group, the Nation of Islam, in diametric opposition to the truth, that there was no black anarchy, and that the damage to the city was caused by the government’s having dynamited the levees in the Ninth Ward, in order to commit genocide against poor blacks.

The truth is that even before Katrina made landfall, New Orleans blacks who stayed in town, undertook an orgy of looting (including police looting stores and automobile dealerships!), rape, robbery, maiming and murder that dwarfed their usual daily orgy of violence, which had already made “NOLA” one of the country’s five most violent cities. And on top of that, they took the opportunity to go hunting for whites in dry neighborhoods, where they slaughtered them, and they repeatedly sought to murder predominantly white rescue workers.

But Nagin is gracious. He takes a tiny bit of responsibility for New Orleans’ post-Katrina problems—for about a second, before throwing it back in citizens’ faces (at about 2:13 in the tape).

WPIX’s Jennifer Jordan: He says there was no playbook to coordinate evacuations [that’s a lie!] and admits to making mistakes.

Mayor Nagin: I could have probably managed expectations a little bit better, but most people in America have a fast-food mentality, and want everything to be done overnight, and that was impossible.

So, those are some of the things that I could have done a little bit better.

No, Mr. Mayor. You are responsible for panicking, being indecisive, not sticking to your own emergency plan, failing to order people to evacuate in time, not using the 500 school buses that you had at your disposal to ferry people to dry ground in nearby Baton Rouge, and then screaming to the feds, “Get up off your ass!”

As for "hav[ing] a fast-food mentality, and want[ing] everything to be done overnight," that is not at all true of "most people in America." Whites are used to having delay gratification for years and years, while they get an education, slowly work their way up, if they are not waylaid through affirmative action, save for the down payment on a house (unlike black and Hispanic deadbeats, no one gives them free mortgages), and then, after buying one, spend half of their adult lives paying it off.)

So, the disaster was “man-made,” but not what blacks mean by that term. Contrast New Orleans with places like Gulfport, Mississippi, which was hit worse by Katrina, but which had some looting (but nothing like in New Orleans) but few problems with violent crime, and where billions in federal money weren’t variously stolen, or spent on strip clubs. And although like New Orleanians, the folks in Gulfport went days without water or electricity, and had precious little food, unlike folks in NOLA, they didn’t panic, or remain helpless until the feds showed up. White folks protected each other, and started working on repairing their homes and property, as soon as the storm had passed. (Gulfport was and remains one-third black.)

I wrote a number of exposés on New Orleans in 2005-2006, and even appeared on an Australian radio show, to argue against a lefty propagandist. I’ll be reposting them, in dishonor of the anniversary.

Saturday, August 28, 2010

Race Hustler Alert at Wikipedia! Someone Has been Making Mischief Regarding Maurice Clemmons’ Lakewood Massacre

By Nicholas Stix
Revised at 5:35 a.m., on Saturday, August 28, 2010.

One or two mischief-makers have tampered with articles at The Pretend Encyclopedia, aka Wikipedia, regarding black racist Maurice Clemmons’ ambush massacre of four white police officers in Lakewood, Washington on November 29. (See my 2008 American Renaissance exposé, “Wikipedia on Race.”)

In the article, “Maurice Clemmons,” someone slipped in,

Prior to his alleged involvement in the shooting, Clemmons had at least five felony convictions in Arkansas and at least eight felony charges in Washington.[2]

Alleged involvement? Editors will tell you that saying “alleged” is an ethical obligation, but they act out of prudence, based on a healthy respect for the libel laws, such as they are.

If a man is falsely accused, and able to clear himself before the statute of limitations runs out for a civil suit, he can sue for defamation any media outlet that falsely accused him. That’s why, when media operations want to defame a man while protecting themselves from costly litigation, they use “anonymous sources,” often government officials who are themselves seeking to railroad the subject in question, say by poisoning the jury pool (see the Bernard Goetz and Steven Hatfill cases). But the protection of the media is so broad, due to the Supreme Court’s decision in the New York Times Co. v. Sullivan case, which said that a victim must prove “actual malice”:

Held: A State cannot under the First and Fourteenth Amendments award damages to a public official for defamatory falsehood relating to his official conduct unless he proves ‘actual malice’ - that the statement was made with knowledge of its falsity or with reckless disregard of whether it was true or false.

And the High Court made that standard almost impossible to satisfy, at least against Big Media, which can almost always get away with pleading “absence of malice.” (Although the Sullivan decision was limited to the press libeling or slandering public officials, somehow it was extended over the years, in practice, to other public figures, and then to private persons.)

But once a bad guy gets his, there’s no obligation, ethically, prudentially, or legally, to say that he “allegedly” committed a crime that a study of the facts says he did. Indeed, it would be both morally perverse and idiotic to refrain from stating the obvious.

Maurice Clemmons was identified by a coffee shop employee as the killer; identified by the weapon he left at the scene of the crime as the killer; identified by the Glock pistol that he had taken off of one of his victims, and possessed at the time that Seattle PD Officer Benjamin L. Kelly shot him dead, as the killer; identified by the blood that he left on the seat of the first getaway truck, registered to one of his businesses, as the killer; identified by his old cellmate, then-fugitive Darcus Allen, who has admitted driving Clemmons to the coffee shop, as the killer; identified by his friend, Quiana Maylea Williams (originally misidentified as his sister), who tended to his wound, and had a blood-stained carpet to show for it, as the killer; and finally, identified by the slug fired into his gut by heroic, dying Lakewood PD Officer Greg Richards, as the killer.

And in the article, “Lakewood, Washington,” either the same deceiver or an ally slipped in the second sentence in the following paragraph.

Officers killed in the line of duty

On November 29, 2009, four Lakewood Police Department officers were shot and killed. Police believe Maurice Clemmons[12] walked into the Parkland Forza Coffee shop at around 8:15 a.m. After approaching the counter, he turned and started shooting.[13] Dead at the scene were Sgt. Mark Renninger, 39, and officers Tina Griswold, 40, Ronald Owens, 37, and Greg Richards, 42. Each of them had served with the department since its inception.[14] Two baristas and several customers in the shop were not injured.[13] Clemmons was shot and killed by a Seattle police officer two days later.[15]

These are the only Lakewood Police Department officers who have died in the line of duty.[14]

“Police believe”?! Police know. As do we all.

The redefining of black criminals as only “allegedly” guilty is a black thing. Black racists increasingly refer to convicted black criminals as only “allegedly” guilty committed the crime for which they were convicted. That is because for black racists, no black can be guilty of committing a crime in Ameri-kkk-a. It’s just the white man’s allegations, and the white man’s laws, which most blacks refuse to recognize, no matter how heinous the criminal, and even when the victims are themselves black. This mentality is a pillar of what I call the paranoid, black supremacist, jailhouse philosophy of law. “Jailhouse,” because that’s where it began, only now most blacks at all levels, including the penthouse, have the mentality of a bunch of convicts.

Friday, August 27, 2010

Absence of Malice (1981)

By Nicholas Stix
April 21, 2006
Blogcritics
 


 

When I was a boy, for better or worse, I knew lots of policemen. But one man stood out. We weren’t that close, but I saw him enough, and heard enough from him, to know that he was…a hero. And that was even before that special day.

The most heroic deed he ever did as a cop was the day in 1975 when he had to confront a shotgun-wielding man who was holding an entire street hostage. The officer told the man to drop the gun, gave him enough time to do so, and when he didn’t, he shot him. Dead.

Although the shooting was by the book, and the officer had, while risking his own life, rescued the neighborhood, the local newspaper sought to destroy him. The policeman’s problem was that he was white, and the bad guy was black. Logically and morally speaking, if anything, that made him even more heroic. Black cops consider it their birthright to control black communities, and expect and get accolades just for showing up for work, without facing off against men with shotguns.

Conversely, a white officer who puts his life on the line saving black lives gets no payoff, no thanks, and is lucky if he doesn't get railroaded to prison, as veteran, decorated Detroit cops Walter Budzyn and Larry Nevers found out the hard way. Given the routine racial profiling of white policemen, he knows that he’s more likely to be called a “racist murderer,” and prosecuted, than heralded a hero. He has to be motivated by pure duty and pride in his job.

A reporter at the local newspaper decided to destroy the cop. She fabricated a story, in which 27 anonymous blacks supposedly claimed to have heard him utter racist epithets. I’d seen the man in situations, both with black folks in public and with me in private, where, if he were that kind of a guy, he would have said something…but he didn’t. Ever.

The newspaper also assembled some racist demagogues, who claimed to be the local NAACP. Problem was, there was no local branch of the NAACP, and I knew the demagogues. They were my bosses at my part-time job. I didn't work for the NAACP; I was a token white in a federally funded, black supremacist youth program.

Fifteen years later, I ran into a young cop parked in a squad car with his older, veteran partner in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. It was a cold day. They didn’t have anywhere to go, and neither did I, so we talked about this and that. It turned out that the young policeman knew the cop from my childhood. “He was a hero to me,” I said. “He was a hero to a lot of guys,” responded the young cop.

The young guy told me about what happened to my hero at the end of his career. He got a call that was an ambush, and was beaten almost to death. That the attack was racial, was a given.

That was at least in part thanks to the racist frame-job by that newspaper and that reporter.

In case you’re wondering why I haven’t yet named the offender, it’s because I haven’t finished retracing the tracks from 30 years ago. When I have, I’ll let you know.

Truth be told, that frame-job probably had a lot to do with my ending up as both a journalist and a scourge of bad journalists.

There are millions of people in this country who have either been deliberately harmed by “news” people, or know someone who was. Absence of Malice was made with them in mind.

Set in Miami, Absence of Malice is about a good man, “Michael Colin Gallagher” (Paul Newman), who happens to be the son of a dead gangster. (Not a saint, but an honorable man – and a very smart one.) “Elliott Rosen” (Bob Balaban), an unscrupulous federal prosecutor who has hit a dead-end trying to solve the disappearance and almost certain murder of a labor union organizer, seeks to shake the trees by deceiving an ambitious reporter, “Megan Carter” (Sally Field), into believing that the prosecutor is investigating Gallagher for the murder. Rosen hopes to coerce Gallagher into using his father’s mob ties to find out who the real killer was, into telling Rosen the killer's identity, and then into letting himself be the newest star of the federal witness protection program.

So, using Carter, Rosen sets out to destroy Gallagher. That much I can reveal, without giving away the story.

You’ll be surprised to see that this Sidney Lumet-sounding (12 Angry Men, Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon, The Prince of the City, The Verdict) picture was actually produced and directed by Sydney Pollack, famous for more glamorous vehicles and period pieces (They Shoot Horses, Don’t They; The Way We Were; Tootsie; Out of Africa). Maybe the two Si/ydneys are really the same guy. Has anyone ever seen them in a room together? I’ll bet he thought he’d fool me, by spelling his first name differently in each case. Nice try! There’s no moss growing on my back!

To return to our feature, Gallagher isn’t the only one that gets thrown into the meat grinder. And therein hangs the tale. For Carter’s editor, “McAdam” (Josef Sommer) — no first name — is just as unscrupulous as Rosen is.

And that’s all the particulars I can give you, without ruining the story. Except to say that the story will break your heart, and leave you with one unforgettable image.

The title refers to the threshold that, since the 1964 U.S. Supreme Court decision in New York Times Co. v. Sullivan exempts a news organization from civil penalties if it botches a story, and results in harming someone. Actually, the Sullivan decision only applied to public officials, but it seems to have since been expanded in practice to cover private persons, as well. (“Held: A State cannot under the First and Fourteenth Amendments award damages to a public official for defamatory falsehood relating to his official conduct unless he proves ‘actual malice’ - that the statement was made with knowledge of its falsity or with reckless disregard of whether it was true or false.”)

In an exceptional 1996 case, Richard Jewell made the law work. Jewell was the Olympic security guard who saved countless lives when he found a pipe bomb domestic terrorist Eric Rudolph had left in a backpack in Atlanta’s Olympic Park in 1996. Jewell cleared the area of thousands of people, but not before one person was killed and over 100 were wounded in the blast. Instead of being hailed a hero, Jewell was treated as if he were the bomber by the media, based in part on an FBI leak and in part on a defamatory telephone call from a previous employer. But Jewell turned the tables on his tormentors, got the U.S. Attorney, in a rare move, to formally clear him, and ended up making his tormentors pay him approximately $1,000,000 in settlements for defaming him.

In fact, news organizations proceed with malice all the time, but the Westmoreland case against CBS News notwithstanding, for a public figure to prove that in a court of law is almost impossible.

The premise of this picture is, What if an unscrupulous big-city newspaper (pardon the redundancy) and prosecutor (ditto) picked on someone who not only was every bit as tough as they were, but infinitely smarter?

Although I’d seen her in Gidget, forty years ago, and The Flying Nun in the early 1970s, with the passage of time, I’d forgotten just how gorgeous the young Sally Field was. I’d also forgotten how well she could act, when she and her director both respected her limitations.

Newman is very good here, but not great. (In spite of his gray hair, the 56-year-old Newman is physically believable as a 47-year-old man, with one caveat: his arms. He had old-man arms). That he was up for best actor for this role is due to it having been a bad year, and to the Motion Picture Academy’s desperate desire to reward him for his great earlier performances. The following year, Newman gave a great performance in Lumet/Pollack’s The Verdict, and was again nominated, but lost out to Ben Kingsley for Gandhi (as did Lumet/Pollock’s The Verdict and Pollock/Lumet’s Tootsie, respectively, for Best Picture).

In 1986, Newman gave a lousy performance in The Color of Money, but the Academy, tired of waiting to crown him, nominated him and delivered him his Oscar. (He recovered, and gave a great performance in 1994's Nobody's Fool, but by then, the deed had been done.)

As the newspaper editor, McAdam, Josef Sommers is excellent in the sort of role — unscrupulous authority figure (think Witness) — that in middle-age would become his bread-and-butter. And Melinda Dillon (Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Sounds of Glory, The Prince of Tides), one of the greatest actresses you've probably never heard of, is marvelous (she was up for Best Supporting Actress) as "Theresa Pirrone."

Like most good movies from 20 or more years ago, this one couldn’t be made today. Newman plays a man with machismo and an old-fashioned sense of honor (not unlike, come to think of it…Paul Newman). A role like that would today serve as a punch-line, a sad sap who serves only to have a lesson taught him by the feminist star. But in this case, it is the feminist, modern woman, who learns from the old hand. And that is just as it ought to be.

Also like most good movies 20 or more (or is that 40 or more?) years ago, this is a movie that you can watch with a fairly young child. With HBO, I have gotten to the point where I never watch a movie, unless my son is sound asleep. Otherwise, in the middle of an engrossing picture, the characters suddenly start dropping “f” bombs, and I have to shut off the TV.

There is one modestly violent man-woman scene, but nothing that would shock a child over three years of age from an intact, healthy family. And the scene is justified within the framework of the story.

There are only two irritating aspects, in my estimation, to this movie. One is a cheesy, TV movie-style musical score by the usually dependable Dave Grusin. My other, more substantial beef, relates to how the early tragedy is set up. The newspaper reveals a source’s identity in a way that I don’t believe a real paper would have done.

Perhaps Pollack/Lumet did this to avoid being too polemical, but I found Sally Field’s Megan Carter to be too decent to be what passed in newsrooms, already in 1981, for a hard-charging reporter. And yet, had the movie been more accurate about the reporting business, it would have been too morally lopsided to be a good drama. We have to like Field, really like her. And I do.
 

The Friends of Omar Thornton: Two Alleged Accomplices Indicted So Far; One Assaulted Photographer On-Camera

By Nicholas Stix

 

The mainstream media (MSM) are off trolling for their next race hoax, having long forgotten their campaign to make racist-thief-mass murderer Omar Thornton a victim of white racism. But I haven’t forgotten. Eight of Thornton’s victims are still dead, and the other two have scars that will last a lifetime. The media’s slanders remain. And the case of a penny-ante criminal conspiracy remains, which gets more pathetic by the day.

Christy “Quail,” 33, the wife of Thornton’s best friend and former Hartford Distributors colleague, Sean Quail, was arrested on August 6 as Thornton’s alleged accomplice in his criminal scheme.

As Matthew Lysiak and Leo Standora reported in the August 7 Daily News,

“Christy Quail, 33, was caught twice last month receiving beer from Thornton on tape recorded by a private investigator hired by Hartford Distributors,” police said. She was arrested at her home yesterday and charged with two counts of sixth-degree larceny, cops said.

On August 16, her husband, Sean, was arrested on the same charges.


 
Attacker of journalists and alleged Thornton accomplice, Sean Quail.
 

Quail was to be arraigned on August 17, but her lawyer instead got a mysterious continuance that morning before court began. I can only imagine that that was in order to drag out matters until after things die down, and the matter can quietly be disappeared. She must have a well-connected lawyer.

But a funny thing happened at court that day. When a friend pulled up in a truck to pick up Christy Quail, with husband Sean riding shotgun, a Fox CT team approached the truck to get a shot and ask Mrs. Quail questions. But as soon as she boarded the truck, her husband whipped out cans of hornet and wasp spray, and sprayed reporter George Colli and photographer Alan Chaniewski, hitting Chaniewski in the face. Since the attack was caught on camera, I don’t have to say “alleged.”

Chaniewski got first-aid at a nearby firehouse, and the truck was stopped by police, who arrested Sean Quail.

Thus, Sean P. Quail has managed to leverage his two larceny charges into additional charges of “three counts each of reckless endangerment and third-degree assault, as well as carrying a dangerous instrument and breach of peace.”

Mr. Quail may need an even better lawyer than his wife.

Note that a couple of days after Thornton’s rampage, his girlfriend, Kristi Hannah, insisted that he didn’t drink, and thus that he would never have stolen beer. At about the same time, Sean Quail floated the same ridiculous claim. What does whether a man drank beer have to do with whether he stole and re-sold it?

Thursday, August 26, 2010

ABC News Sent Agents Provocateurs to Ground Zero Mosque Demo, to “Make” News

By Nicholas Stix

“Why do you feel threatened? What are you afraid of? Why can’t you answer my questions?”

Those are rhetorical questions that leftwing activists routinely use to harass people they consider the enemy. Only this particular leftwing activist was an employee of ABC News, harassing an older man at last Sunday’s protest against the Ground Zero Mosque. The older man was holding a sign saying, “No Sharia here.” The ABC News “journalist” was seeking to provoke an incident that he could use as “news” of “intolerance.” (Note that lefties are the most intolerant people you’ll ever find, this side of Mecca. For them, “tolerance” means simply supporting the rights of them and their political allies, and suppressing their enemies’ rights.)

The ABC activist was inches away from the older man, practically touching his elbow.



The Traditional Values Coalition’s Andrea Laffety, who had just given a speech, writes,

When I challenged the man in the black shirt, asking him to tell me what media outlet he worked for, he refused to answer. He walked away.



But there was cameraman was standing nearby, watching the scene play out. When I asked, he said he worked for ABC News. I then asked if the man in the black shirt was with him. The ABC cameraman said, ‘yes.’”…



Clearly, the ABC employee’s role at the rally was to provoke a confrontation with participants so ABC News cameras could record it and then use the footage. The ABC employee was literally
making news.




Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Racist Columnist Leonard “Cry Me a River” Pitts Jr. vs. “Dr. Laura” Schlessinger

By Nicholas Stix

Asking racist, pathological liar columnist Leonard “Cry Me a River” Pitts Jr.—a convicted Pulitzer Prize winner—for advice on race is like hiring a convicted pedophile to run a day-care center.

In his newest, er, thing, Dr. Laura’s ignorance on display, Pitts molests truth and decency—that’s what the Miami Herald pays him to do, after all—and radio host “Dr. Laura” Schlessinger. (To the literacy volunteers reading to the functional illiterates who have been screaming on message boards that Schlessinger has no doctorate and no education, she has a real doctorate in a real field, physiology, from Columbia, on top of a B.S. in biology from my alma mater, SUNY Stony Brook, and an M.S. in physiology, also from Columbia. And for what it’s worth, she reportedly also has a “post-doctoral certification in Marriage, Family, and Child Counseling” from USC. Such a credential means little to me, and even less to her political enemies. There’s no credential for wisdom. That’s not a knock on Schlessinger, but a general statement on the value of university credentials in certain fields. And yet, if her detractors were as serious about credentials as they purport to be, her post-doc certification would mean the world to them. It’s just that, in their ignorance and laziness, they had no idea just how mindbogglingly educated this woman is.)

For background, please read my article on Schlessinger, “[Censored, Censored, Censored]…” The title is a third-hand quotation, but in a nation in which tens of millions of blacks shout out the “N-word” about 1,000 times each per day, it really shouldn’t matter, and indeed, to black racists like Pitts and Nita “Jade” Hanson, the racist black caller who I believe set up Schlessinger, it doesn’t, or so they claim.

Both racists have insisted that using the “N”-word wasn’t the worst of the radio host’s offenses. But such sophistry is a gimmick of the Black School of Rhetorical Bombast: Take an act committed by a white that racist blacks have decreed is the worst thing that a white can do, seek to destroy her for the offense, but then insist that that wasn’t even the white’s, er racist’s, worst offense.

I can only skim Pitts’ column because, as Mary McCarthy famously observed of Stalinist Lillian Hellman, every word he says is a lie, including “and” and “the.” A complete Fisking would take thousands of words, and constitute cruel and unusual punishment of my readers.

Pitts: “There are exceptions, yes, but by and large, that terrain is the dark side of the moon for conservatives. They don’t know it well, so they tend to go there rarely, reluctantly and seldom voluntarily. And when they do, they not infrequently make Patrick Buchanan-size jackasses of themselves.”

Implication I: Racist white leftists and black racists like Pitts are experts on race. I’m way beyond laughing at the smug sense of entitlement of racist black AA hires like Pitts. Sometimes I get angry, but Pitts is so weak that he’s usually just boring.

Implication II: When Pat Buchanan writes about race, he makes a “jackass” of himself.

First of all, every time I’ve seen Buchanan write about race—and I’m a long-time, regular reader—he’s been dead-on. Second of all, I doubt that Pitts has read Buchanan on race, or any other topic, in this millennium. And third, whether intellectually, journalistically, or in thinking about race, Pitts can’t carry Buchanan’s jock strap. (And though I recognize Buchanan as probably America’s greatest living political writer, I’m not even a Buchananite! To get the measure of the man, read his masterpiece, State of Emergency.) It’s unfair to Buchanan for me to even mention his and Pitts’ names in the same sentence, but it was Pitts who went out of his way to make this an issue. He always puts his foot in his mouth in ways that would mortify a man who had any integrity.
But Pitts was just warming up.

“So the train wreck of a radio segment that generated unwelcome headlines for talk-show host Laura Schlessinger last week was predictable the moment she took a call from an African American woman named ‘Jade.’ [Hanson] See, Jade, inexplicably, sought Dr. Laura’s advice on what to do when her white husband’s family and friends make ‘racist comments’ in front of her.”

“Jade” didn’t call Schlessinger for advice, but in order to set her up.

“And that’s when the train took a header into the gorge. First, there was Jade’s mention of a neighbor who can’t drop by without asking her how black people like this or black people like that. Dr. Laura said that wasn’t racist — which is arguably fair, but ignores the fact that a person gets tired of constantly being treated as an emissary from the planet Negro.”

Then why doesn’t Pitts quit his job? His entire career, personal wealth, and Pulitzer conviction are based solely on his “being treated as an emissary from the planet Negro.”

“Then there was Dr. Laura’s non sequitur rant about how blacks voted for Barack Obama ‘without giving much thought’ — the brainless, easily swayed black voter being a fiction beloved by many conservatives, and never mind that it was Queen of Soul Hillary Clinton who had the black vote sewn up and Obama who was forced to earn it.”

It wasn’t a non sequitur. “The brainless, easily swayed black voter” is a fact much beloved by all white leftist and black racist Democrats. Hillary Clinton never had the black vote sewn up. The problem was that black voters lied to pollsters.

“There is much more, but we are running out of space and still haven’t gotten to the part that made headlines and forced Dr. Laura into an apology the next day. Jade asked, ‘How about the N-word?’”

“Black guys use it all the time,” snapped Dr. Laura. “Turn on HBO, listen to a black comic and all you hear is n—-r, n—-r, n—-r.” [NS: Pitts quoted the full word; I censored it, in order to protect VDARE.com from censorship software, and from Google's censors.]

When Jade challenged her casual use of that word, Schlessinger doubled down. She repeated her N-word trilogy and at one point told Jade, “I think you have too much sensitivity …”.
There is, should it need saying, a big hole in Dr. Laura’s reasoning. Comics do all sorts of obnoxious things. They call women by a synonym for female dogs. They talk about menstruation, masturbation, nose-picking, gas-passing and other subjects that are generally avoided in polite company.”


Schlessinger’s mistake was in referring to black comedians. It is ordinary—whether “educated” or not—blacks who continuously pollute the nation’s streets, subways, buses, classrooms, businesses and agencies with “n—-r.”

“Does Schlessinger really think comedians should be our standard on matters of decorum? Does she really think comedians’ — or rappers’ and street kids’ — choice of language justifies her use of a noxious epithet loathed by the vast majority of the 38 million people against whom it is routinely hurled? Or that calling her on that is evidence of hypersensitivity?…”


What is he, the reincarnation of Joseph “Big Lie” Goebbels? Only twice in 25 years in New York City, during which time I heard blacks say the word millions of times, and once call me one, have I ever heard a white call a black “n—-r.” [In June, 1993, during the run-up to a racial attack, in which she sought to shred my face with a scissors, a racist, 18-year-old black girl called me a “n----r.”] One white guy was a drug dealer who looked to be about 18 years old, threatening a black rival from outside the black Far Rockaway neighborhood I lived in, circa 1996.

The other case was that of a wheelchair-bound man in his seventies who called his husky black roommate a “n—-r,” after the latter had continuously tortured, assaulted, and terrorized him for three days in the presence of approving black nurse aides, nurses, and supervisors at the Rockaway Care nursing home, during summer, 1998. (After I confronted the racist black thug and called him a “punk,” the black supervising nurse finally gave the victim a tiny, private room.)

On the other hand, millions of black adults teach, encourage, and incite black children and young people to assault whites of all ages daily with racial epithets (”cracker,” “white motherf—-r,” “ghost,” etc.), threats, and bloodcurdling violence.

“Suffice it to say, I bet you Dr. Laura never thought about it like that. I bet you she never thought about it at all. And therein lies the problem — not simply for her, but for conservatives in general who seek to contribute to a constructive racial dialogue.
See, I’d argue the most offensive thing about Schlessinger’s gaffe wasn’t her use of the
N-word, but the air of smug entitlement with which she did so. Conversing with a woman who lives a reality about which she can only theorize, Dr. Laura brushed away Jade’s every effort to dissent or explain. She was not there to engage. She already knew all she needed to.”

Total projection.

But of course Schlessinger was there to engage Hanson. The problem was, Hanson was there to bushwack Schlessinger. Besides, in the racist black mental universe, whites’ job is to defer to blacks, to listen to blacks’ paranoid, racist monologues, and to beg blacks’ forgiveness, which they usually refuse to give, just as Nita Hanson refused to accept Laura Schlessinger’s apology, and before Hanson, Al Sharpton refused to accept Don Imus’ apology.

“Cry me a river,” was Pitts’ response, following the Knoxville Horror, to all whites complaining about that particular racist atrocity, and about black racism in general:

“I have four words for them [white racists] and any other white Americans who feel themselves similarly victimized.
“Cry me a river.”

Springtime for Ebert


Ed Driscoll reports on the deep meditations of political philosopher, Roger Ebert.

Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Schwarzenegger to California Schools, Counties: ‘The Dog Ate My Budget’

 
Don't look for the Governator to fall on his sword anytime soon.
 
By Nicholas Stix

Faced with a $19 billion budget deficit that won‘t go away, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is robbing Pedro to pay Pablo.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, the state controller and treasurer decided Monday to delay $2.9 billion a month in payments to school districts and counties sooner than expected so the state can meet debt and pension obligations.

The leaders issued a joint letter notifying state lawmakers of their decision to begin withholding the payments in September instead of October.

The move reflected the limited resources the state has to work with as the impasse over California's $19 billion budget shortfall has dragged on for nearly two months.
Controller John Chiang has warned that the state could again issue IOUs, perhaps as soon as the end of August.

The Legislature gave authority in February to the three officers to delay $2.5 billion a month in payments to schools and $400 million in monthly payments to counties during October, November and December to help manage cash flow.

The step came on top of a July deferral of $2.5 billion for schools and $700 million for counties….


“California to delay payments sooner than expected,” by Anonymous, Associated Press, Aug. 23, 2010.
Once Schwarzenegger is done robbing the schools and counties, look for a massive release of cut-throats, thieves, drug dealers and other upstanding "citizens," some of whom even know some English, from California’s state prisons, making the Golden State even more vibrant than it now is. And after that, whatever state-funded services are left will be on the block. Police? Fire Departments?

Some may say that those are necessary services, but the only services that are necessary are those which primarily serve illegal immigrants, such as hospitals, welfare, and food stamps. At this rate, eventually the state will stop making pension payments, because those mostly go to a bunch of old white people.

The lame duck—and thus invulnerable—Governor has repeatedly insisted that illegal (or legal, for that matter) immigration has played no role, whatsoever, in the explosion of unpayable state deficits (see also here).

Updates on the Los Angeles “Grim Sleeper” and “Westside Rapist” Serial Murder Cases, from David in Tennessee

Updated at 1:54 a.m., on Tuesday, August 24, 2010.
Last updated at 2:02 a.m., on Tuesday, August 24, 2010.

[My reader-researcher David in Tennessee just wrote, regarding two black, alleged Los Angeles serial killers.]

 

The Grim Sleeper
 
The Grim Sleeper defendant, Lonnie Franklin Jr. (charged in the murders of ten black women, and suspected in as many as 31 other murders), was arraigned in LA today, and pleaded not guilty. His next appearance is scheduled for September 14. Will a date for the preliminary hearing be set?
 

Recent picture of "Grim Sleeper" defendant Lonnie Franklin Jr., 57.
 

John Floyd Thomas Jr. (suspected in the murders of 30 elderly white women), the Westside Rapist suspect, has a court date in October. The proceedings in this case are going as slow as frozen molasses, to use a Tennessee expression.
 

April, 2009 mug shot of "Westside Rapist" defendant John Floyd Thomas Jr., now 73.

Monday, August 23, 2010

Having Black Friends

By Nicholas Stix

The satirical blog, Stuff White People Like, contains a January, 2008 essay, “Having Black Friends.”

Christian Lander got the concept for SWPL and his eponymous book from David Brooks’ 2001 book, Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There.

Not that Lander isn’t good at what he does, but credit, where credit is due. After all, years ago, I used to drop my VDARE colleague Steve Sailer a line, whenever it sounded as if he had just ghost-written a column for Brooks or the latter’s New York Times colleague, John Tierney, so I ought to give Brooks credit, when other people use his ideas without attribution. (I’m not talking strictly about plagiarism here.)

My understanding is that Brooks, who combines intellectual curiosity with desperate triangulation—leftward, ho!—still occasionally pens a column based on Sailer’s ideas, but I don’t read him that often these days. (I spend most of my time these days perusing the crime stories that my reader-researchers keep me richly supplied with.)

“Having Black Friends” was guest-authored by Kristen Warner.

Since we are on the verge of electing a black president, it seems important to explain why white people want black friends. Every white person wants a black friend like Barack: good-looking, well-spoken, and non-violent. Obviously, whites want black friends so as not to appear racist (see earlier Obama post). However, if we dig deeper what we notice about white people is not if they have black friends but in fact, how many black friends they have. White people like numbers. They like to count things like stars in the sky and the death toll at Mt. Everest and the number of times they’ve seen Tori Amos and/or Phish in concert. Counting the number of black friends is then clearly a divine imperative. The number of black friends white people possess also illustrates their comfort with black culture. Here’s a handy guide to the number system:

You’ll want to read the rest.

I posted the following comment.

NS: I used to have black friends. But I’ve lived in New York City for 25 years. If you’re white, unless you’re a complete phony, of which the city has a couple million, much of what you want to spend time with friends doing, is complaining about insufferable, black racists, who: 1. Cut in front of you in the checkout line/on the street/subway/bus; 2. Try to humiliate you in the checkout line/on the street/subway/bus; 3. Try to rob you in the checkout line/on the street/subway/bus; 4. Try to rape you in the checkout line/on the street/subway/bus; and 5. Try to murder you in the checkout line/on the street/subway/bus. My black friends didn’t want to spend time complaining about insufferable, black racists, and so they are now my black ex-friends.

As one of my black ex-friends once said, “It’s all about black and white, and white and black.”

That elicited three responses.

Phyl: You sound like an ingnorant fool, & to have lived in NY for so long. I almost feel sorry for your experience with black people.

sosowhat: what the hell are you saying? i think you owe us reading your comment some clarity of what the hell your talking about. why are your ex black friends your ex black friends? because they raped and murdered you in the check out line? huh?

Enigma the Coon: black friends?
Icky poo, echhhhhhhhhhhhh, not me!

I responded to Phyl: Phyl, How could my 25 years of experience with thousands of black racists make me an “ingnorant [sic] fool”? You got some ‘splainin’ to do.

To sosowhat, I wrote: sosowhat?

“In the present, everyone will be Hitler for 15 minutes.”


Kathy Shaidle, aka Five Feet of Fury.

Sunday, August 22, 2010

What is It with Charles Johnson?

By Nicholas Stix

For those who haven’t heard of him, Charles Johnson is the proprietor of a once- popular, once-influential Republican blog called Little Green Footballs. Presently, Johnson is the proprietor of a popular, influential, Democratic blog called
Little Green Footballs
. (See also here.)

In “LGF’s Lunacy Comes Full Circle,” at Man Sized Target, Chris Roach has done a better job of succinctly describing LGF than I ever could (see below).

A few years ago, I tried to post a comment at LGF, but I couldn’t. You had to register at the blog itself, and only during certain times. And that wasn’t one of the authorized, official registration times. Since Johnson was already purging anyone not in lockstep with him, and I was going to criticize him, he would have censored and purged me, anyway, so I didn’t bother, and stopped reading his blog.

(I’m funny that way. I tend to lose interest in blogs where I can’t comment. That’s one of many reasons why I rarely visit Michelle Malkin’s blogs, which have a similarly cult-like character. A few years ago, I wanted to post a comment at one of them, only to be informed that one could only post if one had previously registered, and “Comments registration is now closed.” Comments registration is always closed. Her gofers must privately invite cronies and cultists to register. Otherwise, her readership would die off, or otherwise wither away, through attrition.)

At least, Malkin doesn’t engage in the bizarre political switcheroos that Johnson does. She’s good on immigration, but cowardly, lazy, and dishonest on race, a combination which is, I suppose, as good as one may expect from a syndicated, Republican writer. But somewhere along the line, she went from being an important, full-time journalist to a GOP diva who occasionally does good work. See here, here, and here. But when she does good work on a topic I’m writing on, I still give her credit.)

At the time, Johnson was still very pro-Israel, pro-Iraq war, patriotic, and anti-Moslem. Now, he is, apparently, the opposite, or darned close to it. Writes Roach,

Legend in his own mind, Charles Johnson has come full circle with his blog, Little Green Footballs. It began as a fairly ordinary blog. In the wake of 9/11 it became fiercely pro-American and pro-Israel and did a great deal to collect extensive evidence of Muslim double talk, craziness, violence, and insanity, particularly in the borderlands of the Muslim World. It also did much to show the western media’s duplicity, pointing out doctored photos in the Israeli-Lebanon war of 2006 and the infamous faked memo in Dan Rather’s attempted expose of Bush’s national guard service.

Then, it started to go bad. There were many purges. Nationalists, Europeans, Christians, and others opposed to Muslim extremism were castigated for being insufficiently pure ideologically and too extreme, even though Johnson’s ideology was unclear, ever changing, and overly connected to personalities. Then people were purged simply for offending Johnson’s delicate sensibilities. He finally came out for Obama, purged even more longtime allies and commenters, and now, having come full circle with his liberal instincts, is knocking American politicians uneasy with the 9/11 Victory Mosque....

I asked Roach what he thought was up with Johnson. Is he insane; a complete and ruthless opportunist, who puts his finger to the wind and acts accordingly, his previous statements notwithstanding; or is there some third possibility I’d neglected? A third option occurred to me, and I asked Roach if Johnson had fallen in love at some point with a girl whose politics were diametrically opposed to his, and he submitted, in order to stay in her good graces?

Roach responded,

“I think he was a center left guy, jolted by Islamic attacks on 9/11, and in love with Israel, but hostile to Christianity, the historical West, and Europe, and, finally, kind of liked Obama. Plus he’s crazy.”

Works for me.

Saturday, August 21, 2010

Shades of Tommie Agee! Angel Pagan's Spectacular Catch Sparks Rain-Shortened, 5-1 Mets Win over Bucs

 
Tommie Agee at the left-center field wall, making one of his two unforgettable catches in game three of the 1969 World Series, as teammate Cleon Jones backs him up.
 
By Nicholas Stix
Updated at 10:46 p.m., on Saturday, August 21, 2010.
Last updated at 11:11 p.m., on Saturday, August 21, 2010.

In Pittsburgh's corporate-named park, with two out in the bottom of the fourth inning, Angel Pagan just went flying towards the center field wall to snag a sure triple, in a catch that reminded me of the first of two incredible plays that the late Tommie Agee made in game three of the 1969 World Series against the Orioles. Agee took over the game, defensively and offensively, leading it off with a home run off Jim Palmer, and saving six runs with two catches for the ages, turning what without him would have been an Orioles rout into a 6-5 Mets win, and giving the overwhelming underdogs a 2-1 series lead. His performance proved to be the turning point of the series, which the Miracle Mets won in five games.

Back at Pittsburgh's corporate-named park, Pagan led off the top of the fifth hitting lefty, and promptly laced a low, inside pitch from skinny, wild, 6'5" Bucs starter James McDonald into the rightfield corner for a double. Carlos Beltran then worked a walk off McDonald, bringing up the Mets' best hitter and RBI man, David Wright.


 
Angel Pagan. The source where I found this said that he was giving a curtain call on August 1, 2009, after hitting a grand slam against the D-Backs on the road. Since when do fans cheer enemy players? Anyway, that held up to win the game, and was the last time a Met hit a grand slam. Conversely, Mets pitchers are most generous about serving up grand slamis, having given up nine so far this year.
 

Although McDonald’s fastball has been running about 93 on tonight’s radar gun, velocity without location is of little value, even against Wright’s sometimes laggard bat. Desperate for strikes, McDonald went from wild out of the strike zone, to wild in the strike zone, and threw Wright a thigh-high, 91 MPH fastball right down the middle. That one didn’t come back.

Wright hit it about 420 feet to the deepest part of the park, for a three-run dinger—his 19th home run—and a 5-1 Mets lead, behind rookie Jon Niese.
 
 
David Wright making contact.

 


James McDonald who, until recently, pitched for a Los Angeles team.
 

Though throwing a lot more fastballs than usual (90-91 mph), Niese has been in complete control so far through five.

 
Mets rookie southpaw Jon Niese.

 
At the top of the sixth, with Jose Reyes on first on a leadoff single, the rain, which had been steady for most of the game became a downpour, and at 9:04 p.m. (seconds ago), crew chief Tim McClellan stopped the game for a rain delay. But if the rain doesn’t let up, it’s an official game.

Update: McClellan called the game, so the Mets won. They now have a two-game winning streak, one of the few they've had during the past month, and are riding high at 61-60. Jon Niese is 8-5, but has pitched 11 games in which he's given up only one run wihtout getting a victory. So, with a little run support, he could easily be 13 or 14-5, and a serious rookie of the year contender. Of course, in that case, the Mets would be serious contenders for the wild card and the division chanmpionship. The Mets' win and a Braves loss combined to put the former ten back in the Eastern Division.

 

A Tommie Agee baseball card pic from his Mets days.


P.S. Beware of the Web site http://www.studioveelenturf.nl, which has some sports pictures (e.g., a baseball card picture of James McDonald in a Dodgers uniform). It’s a malware pit.

* * *

Have you read the testimonials that the academic debate community has written on my behalf?

Friday, August 20, 2010

“Nigger, Nigger, Nigger”: Besieged Dr. Laura Schlessinger Says ‘I Quit’; Communist Ed Asner and Libertarian Howard Stern Celebrate;

Triumphant Black Racist Nita Hanson Won’t Take ‘Yes’ for an Answer
By Nicholas Stix

Call-in radio host Dr. Laura Schlessinger has responded to the firestorm of leftists and racists calling for her head, on the August 17 Larry King Show, by telling the socialist host that she is quitting radio, at year’s end.

"I want to regain my first amendment rights. I want to be able to say what is on my mind, in my heart, what I think is helpful and useful without somebody getting angry."

Schlessinger did not explain how quitting radio would regain her her First Amendment rights.

At issue was an August 10 show when a black woman, “Jade” (Nita Hanson), called in, to denounce her white husband’s friends and relatives as “racist,” for asking her what black people thought, allegedly for dropping the “n-word,” and her husband for not doing anything about it.
 


 

SCHLESSINGER: Jade, welcome to the program.

CALLER: Hi, Dr. Laura.

SCHLESSINGER: Hi.

CALLER: I'm having an issue with my husband where I'm starting to grow very resentful of him. I'm black, and he's white. We've been around some of his friends and family members who start making racist comments as if I'm not there or if I'm not black. And my husband ignores those comments, and it hurts my feelings. And he acts like --

SCHLESSINGER: Well, can you give me an example of a racist comment? 'Cause sometimes people are hypersensitive. So tell me what's -- give me two good examples of racist comments.

CALLER: OK. Last night -- good example -- we had a neighbor come over, and this neighbor -- when every time he comes over, it's always a black comment. It's, "Oh, well, how do you black people like doing this?" And, "Do black people really like doing that?" And for a long time, I would ignore it. But last night, I got to the point where it --

SCHLESSINGER: I don't think that's racist.

CALLER: Well, the stereotype --

SCHLESSINGER: I don't think that's racist. No, I think that --

CALLER: [unintelligible]

SCHLESSINGER: No, no, no. I think that's -- well, listen, without giving much thought, a lot of blacks voted for Obama simply 'cause he was half-black. Didn't matter what he was gonna do in office, it was a black thing. You gotta know that. That's not a surprise. Not everything that somebody says -- we had friends over the other day; we got about 35 people here -- the guys who were gonna start playing basketball. I was going to go out and play basketball. My bodyguard and my dear friend is a black man. And I said, "White men can't jump; I want you on my team."

That was racist? That was funny.

CALLER: How about the N-word? So, the N-word's been thrown around --

SCHLESSINGER: Black guys use it all the time. Turn on HBO, listen to a black comic, and all you hear is nigger, nigger, nigger.

CALLER: That isn't --

SCHLESSINGER: I don't get it. If anybody without enough melanin says it, it's a horrible thing; but when black people say it, it's affectionate. It's very confusing. Don't hang up, I want to talk to you some more. Don't go away.

I'm Dr. Laura Schlessinger. I'll be right back.

[After the commercial:]

SCHLESSINGER: I'm Dr. Laura Schlessinger, talking to Jade. What did you think about during the break, by the way?

CALLER: I was a little caught back by the N-word that you spewed out, I have to be honest with you. But my point is, race relations --

SCHLESSINGER: Oh, then I guess you don't watch HBO or listen to any black comedians.

CALLER: But that doesn't make it right. I mean, race is a [unintelligible] --

SCHLESSINGER: My dear, my dear --

CALLER: -- since Obama's been in office --

SCHLESSINGER: -- the point I'm trying to make --

CALLER: -- racism has come to another level that's unacceptable.

SCHLESSINGER: Yeah. We've got a black man as president, and we have more complaining about racism than ever. I mean, I think that's hilarious.

CALLER: But I think, honestly, because there's more white people afraid of a black man taking over the nation.

SCHLESSINGER: They're afraid.

CALLER: If you want to be honest about it [unintelligible]

SCHLESSINGER: Dear, they voted him in. Only 12 percent of the population's black. Whites voted him in.

CALLER: It was the younger generation that did it. It wasn't the older white people who did it.

SCHLESSINGER: Oh, OK.

CALLER: It was the younger generation --

SCHLESSINGER: All right. All right.

CALLER: -- that did it.

SCHLESSINGER: Chip on your shoulder. I can't do much about that.

CALLER: It's not like that.

SCHLESSINGER: Yeah. I think you have too much sensitivity --

CALLER: So it's OK to say "nigger"?

SCHLESSINGER: -- and not enough sense of humor.

CALLER: It's OK to say that word?

SCHLESSINGER: It depends how it's said.

CALLER: Is it OK to say that word? Is it ever OK to say that word?

SCHLESSINGER: It's -- it depends how it's said. Black guys talking to each other seem to think it's OK.

CALLER: But you're not black. They're not black. My husband is white.

SCHLESSINGER: Oh, I see. So, a word is restricted to race. Got it. Can't do much about that.

CALLER: I can't believe someone like you is on the radio spewing out the "nigger" word, and I hope everybody heard it.

SCHLESSINGER: I didn't spew out the "nigger" word.

CALLER: You said, "Nigger, nigger, nigger."

SCHLESSINGER: Right, I said that's what you hear.

CALLER: Everybody heard it.

SCHLESSINGER: Yes, they did.

CALLER: I hope everybody heard it.

SCHLESSINGER: They did, and I'll say it again --

CALLER: So what makes it OK for you to say the word?

SCHLESSINGER: -- nigger, nigger, nigger is what you hear on HB --

CALLER: So what makes it --

SCHLESSINGER: Why don't you let me finish a sentence?

CALLER: OK.

SCHLESSINGER: Don't take things out of context. Don't double N -- NAACP me. Tape the --

CALLER: I know what the NAACP --

SCHLESSINGER: Leave them in context.

CALLER: I know what the N-word means and I know it came from a white person. And I know the white person made it bad.

SCHLESSINGER: All right. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Can't have this argument. You know what? If you're that hypersensitive about color and don't have a sense of humor, don't marry out of your race. If you're going to marry out of your race, people are going to say, "OK, what do blacks think? What do whites think? What do Jews think? What do Catholics think?" Of course there isn't a one-think per se.

But in general there's "think."

And what I just heard from Jade is a lot of what I hear from black-think -- and it's really distressting [sic] and disturbing. And to put it in its context, she said the N-word, and I said, on HBO, listening to black comics, you hear "nigger, nigger, nigger." I didn't call anybody a nigger. Nice try, Jade. Actually, sucky try.

Need a sense of humor, sense of humor -- and answer the question. When somebody says, "What do blacks think?" say, "This is what I think. This is what I read that if you take a poll the majority of blacks think this." Answer the question and discuss the issue. It's like we can't discuss anything without saying there's -isms?

We have to be able to discuss these things. We're people -- goodness gracious me.

Ah -- hypersensitivity, OK, which is being bred by black activists. I really thought that once we had a black president, the attempt to demonize whites hating blacks would stop, but it seems to have grown, and I don't get it. Yes, I do. It's all about power. I do get it. It's all about power and that's sad because what should be in power is not power or righteousness to do good -- that should be the greatest power.

Hanson has parlayed the August 10 conversation into 15 minutes of fame, with at least three appearances so far on CNN, variously with Larry King, T.J. Holmes, and on Anderson Cooper 360.

Speaking with King on August 19, Hanson condemned Schlessinger,

I think she’s trying to shift the responsibility on to somebody else. Now it’s somebody else’s fault. Well, no, you said it. And I just what like she says, ‘You need to go out and do the right thing.’” “And she needs to own it and claim it. She said it.”

(King: How about quitting radio. How do you feel about that?)

She really needs to be off the air.

To say those type of things; in a, in a, we’re in a situation right now where racism is just huge. But to say those type of things. You can’t say that. You can’t say that. And all I called was for advice. I didn’t ask to be beat up. And personally attacked. And personally attacked, you know.

It just went way too far. She went way too far, and she should not be on the radio; she shouldn’t be anywhere.

Hanson has not demanded that blacks be silenced for publicly using the word that Schlessinger quoted.

 


 

Hanson called in … the race card.

Hanson exposed herself as a run-of-the-mill, hypocritical black racist. Blacks can talk race, race, race, in any way they wish with whites, but if whites are less than deferential, they must have their lives destroyed. But why would a run-of-the-mill black racist call a white talk show host known both for her “conservative” views and for her no-nonsense responses to callers, and then complain that Schlessinger was insensitive?

Hanson claimed to CNN’s T.J. Holmes,
 

 
I didn’t want to make this a racial thing. [Hahaha!] She’s only apologized because she got caught. It’s more than just the N-word. [Yeah, right.] Dr. Laura acted like I set her up…. [Because you did!] I don’t think she’s sincere in her apologies. [Of course, whites' apologies are never enough. But blacks always demand them?] I’ve been married for three wonderful years. [She sure didn’t say that to Schlessinger!]… “I listen to her all the time.” [And I'm an Obamaton!]
When Hanson said, “I didn’t want to make this a racial thing,” and “I listen to her all the time,” she violated the First Law of Lying: Plausibility. I doubt very much that Hanson ever a fan of Schlessinger. Her claim reminds me of the dirty trick campaigns of leftists who claim to be staunch Republicans, and who then either take leftwing positions (to try and make them look acceptable to conservatives), or who act “racist,” in order to try and discredit the Tea Party, Rand Paul, et al. Holmes asked Hanson if it was ever appropriate to use the “N”-word. Hanson said “no,” but spoke of the “civil rights movement,” and insisted that Schlessinger’s use of the word came from her heart, and proved she was a racist. There was no condemnation of the millions of blacks who say the same word billions of times a day (at least once in every sentence). Translated out of racial code, what Hanson is saying is that it is never appropriate for a white to use the word. Both women have followed the Don Imus-Al Sharpton script, which was great for Hanson, but not so good for Schlessinger. Schlessinger made the mistake of apologizing to Hanson, who of course denounced the apology. Was Hanson’s call a set-up, in order to “Imus” Schlessinger? Do cows fart? After all, lefties have been trying to destroy Schlessinger for years. Do I smell a Nita Hanson book deal? A frivolous lawsuit, like the one that some black Rutgers women basketball players filed against Don Imus? In a story published today, “Stars happy with Dr. Laura exit,” The Hollywood Reporter’s Paul Bond reports,
"I found her repellent," Ed Asner told THR. "If she said the N-word, then she's sociopathic. I don't think she'll be missed. There are other Dr. Laura's out there who know how not to go too far." "She used the N-word, and now she has to leave her job," Howard Stern said on his Sirius XM Radio show…. Talkers magazine says her audience tops 9 million unique listeners a week, which ties her with Glenn Beck and Michael Savage for the third-largest audience in talk radio behind Rush Limbaugh (15.3 million) and Sean Hannity (14.3 million).
Asner’s response is shocking in its stupidity, but not surprising, coming from a communist. From a professed libertarian like Stern, however, who has long chafed at any limits on his right to express himself, such hypocrisy is disappointing. Perhaps Stern is just one of the glibertarians one runs into nowadays, for whom “libertarianism” is merely a sophistic rhetoric meant to make them rich as Croesus, rather than a principled philosophy. And of course, it’s he’s covering his own derriere, by acting properly outraged. But that won’t help him, when black racists go after him. And they will. He would have done better to show some integrity. CNN’s Roland S. Martin wrote a column with the bizarre title, “Dr. Laura blew chance to talk about race.” What did Schlessinger do, if not talk about race?
(CNN) -- The beauty of having your own radio or TV show or column is that you have a wonderful opportunity to address many of the significant issues of the day by using the enormous platform that has been bestowed upon you. That's why when I read, and then heard, the stunning, childish, and venomous discussion Dr. Laura Schlesinger had with one of her callers Tuesday, it was clear to me that the firebrand radio talk show host blew a perfect shot. She could have used the exchange around race to help a lot of people. Dr. Laura is getting ripped, rightfully so, for her repeated use of the N-word during the discussion with a black female caller. Instead of paying attention and listening to the woman's genuine concerns about the racist comments made by the friends and family members of her white husband, Dr. Laura made her out to be the villain. It was clear that Dr. Laura had a beef of her own when it comes to black folks being too sensitive about matters of race, and that's why she tried to use the example of black comedians using the N-word to buttress her position that the woman should really pipe down and not be so sensitive about such issues. She could have easily pivoted from the caller's question to explore this issue, but she didn't, choosing to dig herself deeper and deeper into the racial abyss.
One of the giveaways of black racists nowadays is their calls for a conversation about race. The last thing in the world that racists like Nita Hanson, Roland Martin, Eric Holder or “Barack Obama” want is a conversation about race. They want to lecture whites, and get outraged whenever a white refuses to play the role they have assigned him as a white Uncle Tom or, in this case, white Aunt Jemima. (I have previously exposed Martin as a black supremacist.) Nita Hanson told CNN's T.J. Holmes that she was "confused" by her conversation with Schlessinger, and claimed that she wasn't saying that it was o.k. for blacks to use the word, but not for whites. So that there is no ambiguity, and my readers don't fall for Hanson's current story, let's review the central passage of the radio dialogue.
CALLER: How about the N-word? So, the N-word's been thrown around -- SCHLESSINGER: Black guys use it all the time. Turn on HBO, listen to a black comic, and all you hear is nigger, nigger, nigger. CALLER: That isn't -- SCHLESSINGER: I don't get it. If anybody without enough melanin says it, it's a horrible thing; but when black people say it, it's affectionate. It's very confusing. Don't hang up, I want to talk to you some more. Don't go away. I'm Dr. Laura Schlessinger. I'll be right back.... SCHLESSINGER: It's -- it depends how it's said. Black guys talking to each other seem to think it's OK. CALLER: But you're not black. They're [the husband's friends and relatives] not black. My husband is white. SCHLESSINGER: Oh, I see. So, a word is restricted to race. Got it. Can't do much about that. CALLER: I can't believe someone like you is on the radio spewing out the "nigger" word, and I hope everybody heard it. SCHLESSINGER: I didn't spew out the "nigger" word. CALLER: You said, "Nigger, nigger, nigger." SCHLESSINGER: Right, I said that's what you hear. CALLER: Everybody heard it. SCHLESSINGER: Yes, they did. CALLER: I hope everybody heard it. SCHLESSINGER: They did, and I'll say it again -- CALLER: So what makes it OK for you to say the word?
Like the lady said, it's all about power. A tip ‘o the hat to George Soros, for paying to have the transcript prepared, and some of the videos posted.
* * *
Have you read the testimonials that the academic debate community has written on my behalf?