A Haft Made of Dudgeon

Just when I was calming down!

In large part, the deescalation in my gastric acid production is attributable to not reading or listening to the rhetoric of the extreme right, the crazed element of the conservative movement. I think they're well represented as assorted PacMan Blinkies, chowing down on whatever gets in the way.

I plan on using this long PacMan video as a point de repère for mindful meditation -- now that my Palm has died a good, but lingering, death and I no longer have recourse to Crazy Daisy. You see, it wasn't under warranty; It had no recourse, no place to go. I was awesome at Crazy Daisy and on endless mode, it kept me calm and distracted (but way zen-focused) even when in intense pain.




So, uncentered and bereft of handheld technology, I decided to follow some demented Twitter feed... and ran smack dab into this:

Nobody likes a racist…
Nobody likes a race hustler either.

On Saturday March 20th the leftist media reported what they described as a horrible story from their sources at the anti-military Jew-hating conservative-hating Huffington Post. The media claimed that members of the Congressional Black Caucus were called n*ggers and spat on by tea party protesters as they walked from the Longworth office building to the Rayburn office building. At least one report said that it was “a chorus” of racist hatred. Another report said the Congressional members heard the n-word at least 15 times. Reporters from ABC, CBS, CNN, FOX News, (including Bill O’Reilly), MSNBC, and so on, repeated this horrible story.

Unfortunately, it was a fake. The media had no evidence… Nothing. As the story was a complete fabrication. It was totally made up.
[....]
Last Wednesday, video was released that confirmed the spitting incident was bogus, too.

Dan Riehl reported:

There’s some higher resolution video... I hadn’t seen before. Unlike what was claimed during recent Tea Party protests in Washington, DC, it would appear Cleaver was simply walking close by in front of a protester. The protester’s hands were cupped as he was shouting. While it appears Cleaver may have experienced a spraying of sorts as a result of the yelling, it does not support a conclusion that he was intentionally spat upon, as claimed.
[....]

Again. Another liberal lie.

On Thursday of last week Andrew Breitbart* at Big Government offered $10,000 to any of the reported victims for proof of a racial attack. No one will! And, in this economy you know someone would if they could. No one came forward. Nothing happened.

It was all a lie.

It’s time for these race hustlers to apologize to the tea party movement and the American people for this horrible racist lie.

We demand that these Black Caucus members apologize for their fabricated hate story.

It is tough to know what tags to apply to such virulent, yellow pus -- particularly as the tag situation chez this blog is abominable -- but it seemed right to pair political rhetoric with noise pollution, as well as with a PopThatZit video.

How would you tag this?


*Andrew Breitbart:
As I have said over and over and over, the left has one trick that it will use again and again when its back is in the corner: shout ‘racist’ in a crowded country.

On Saturday, during the peaceful and patriotic tea party protest at the Capitol, the Democrats staged a series of symbolic acts meant to manipulate the media to do its bidding. The Congressional Black Caucus pulled the Selma card and chose to walk through the crowd in the hopes of creating a YouTube incident.
[....]
It’s time for the allegedly pristine character of Rep. John Lewis to put up or shut up. Therefore, I am offering $10,000 of my own money to provide hard evidence that the N- word was hurled at him not 15 times, as his colleague reported, but just once. Surely one of those two cameras wielded by members of his entourage will prove his point.

And surely if those cameras did not capture such abhorrence, then someone from the mainstream media — those who printed and broadcast his assertions without any reasonable questioning or investigation — must themselves surely have it on camera. Of course we already know they don’t. If they did, you’d have seen it by now.

THOUSANDS OF TIMES.

Rep. Lewis, if you can’t do that, I’ll give him a backup plan: a lie detector test. If you provide verifiable video evidence showing that a single racist epithet was hurled as you walked among the tea partiers, or you pass a simple lie detector test, I will provide a $10K check to the United Negro College Fund.

They used to make me laugh. Then they made me mad. Now? Now, they have succeeded in planting fear in my heart. Okay, that's a bit of a stretch. Mostly, they provoke tears of angry laughter.

The tactic of planting the lie, then repeating the lie in feigned high dudgeon, manufacturing "unbiased" support, and putting the attacked on the defensive? It's low brow propaganda.

Some people comfort themselves with salty, fried things, others with sweets. I turn to etymology, my private puff pastry. Okay, and low fat plain yogurt hit with a good measure of excellent vanilla extract.

dudgeon: Middle English dogeon, from Anglo-French digeon, dogeon
Date: 15th century
1 obsolete : a wood used especially for dagger hilts
2 archaic : a dagger with a handle of dudgeon; obsolete : a haft made of dudgeon

Stand, and Remember

I just heard that Glenn Beck has admonished John Lewis for "comparing" himself to "civil rights activists."

He is not worth my time, Glenn Beck, yet he requires attention because of the uncritical thinkers who are following him.

John Lewis, though, needs no defense from anyone; He need only stand, as he has always stood.

The rest of us, however? We are required to remember, and to share those memories with an abundant spirit.

From The Biography of John Lewis:

He was born the son of sharecroppers on February 21, 1940, outside of Troy, Alabama. He grew up on his family's farm and attended segregated public schools in Pike County, Alabama. As a young boy, he was inspired by the activism surrounding the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the words of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., which he heard on radio broadcasts. In those pivotal moments, he made a decision to become a part of the Civil Rights Movement. Ever since then, he has remained at the vanguard of progressive social movements and the human rights struggle in the United States.

As a student at Fisk University, John Lewis organized sit-in demonstrations at segregated lunch counters in Nashville, Tennessee. In 1961, he volunteered to participate in the Freedom Rides, which challenged segregation at interstate bus terminals across the South. Lewis risked his life on those Rides many times by simply sitting in seats reserved for white patrons. He was also beaten severely by angry mobs and arrested by police for challenging the injustice of Jim Crow segregation in the South.

During the height of the Movement, from 1963 to 1966, Lewis was named Chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), which he helped form. SNCC was largely responsible for organizing student activism in the Movement, including sit-ins and other activities.

While still a young man, John Lewis became a nationally recognized leader. By 1963, he was dubbed one of the Big Six leaders of the Civil Rights Movement. (The others were Whitney Young, A. Phillip Randolph, Martin Luther King Jr., James Farmer and Roy Wilkins). At the age of 23, he was an architect of and a keynote speaker at the historic March on Washington in August 1963.

In 1964, John Lewis coordinated SNCC efforts to organize voter registration drives and community action programs during the Mississippi Freedom Summer. The following year, Lewis helped spearhead one of the most seminal moments of the Civil Rights Movement. Hosea Williams, another notable Civil Rights leader, and John Lewis led over 600 peaceful, orderly protestors across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama on March 7, 1965. They intended to march from Selma to Montgomery to demonstrate the need for voting rights in the state. The marchers were attacked by Alabama state troopers in a brutal confrontation that became known as "Bloody Sunday." News broadcasts and photographs revealing the senseless cruelty of the segregated South helped hasten the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Despite more than 40 arrests, physical attacks and serious injuries, John Lewis remained a devoted advocate of the philosophy of nonviolence. After leaving SNCC in 1966, he continued his commitment to the Civil Rights Movement as Associate Director of the Field Foundation and his participation in the Southern Regional Council's voter registration programs. Lewis went on to become the Director of the Voter Education Project (VEP). Under his leadership, the VEP transformed the nation's political climate by adding nearly four million minorities to the voter rolls.

Keep your eyes on the prize, hold on.

schultz: more psycho talk from limbaugh

Glenn Beck

It's getting very ugly out there, which goes a long way in explaining why I am in here, safely ensconced in Marlinspike Hall, deep, deep in the Tête de Hergé. The barracuda are back in The Moat, and the drawbridge is up.

Uncle Kitty Big Balls is patrolling the perimeter; Marmy is sporting a lovely pink -- kind of a '50s retro style -- kevlar helmit; Sam-I-Am was last seen burrowing under the layers of tapestry surrounding La Bonne et Belle Bianca Castafiore's gigantic platform bed, an excellent replica of François le Premier's renaissance digs; Dobby, ever stalwart, stares Evil straight in the eye, his breast bare -- oh, don't worry, I will protect The Dobster, who knows only good intentions, having known only us.

Sammy, too, since his tail is sticking out from under the bed curtains, making him another easy target. The Castafiore has been on a binge since criticizing doctortainer Phil McGraw and his minions -- she's terrified that he'll come after her "like a hound dog's white rice."

[Bianca gets her homely homilies mixed up sometimes. She keeps yelling at me, for instance, that "That Dick Cheney won't hunt!" and demanding to know if someone has written "stupendous" on her forehead.]

Anyway, at least I know where she is -- I've only to follow the snores. It's something of a ludicrous vision, as she is still wearing her costume from last night's operatic presentation of... well, you know. I've moved the damn miroir out of harm's way, should there be an invasion. And she thinks I don't care...

I know, I know, she's at least a warm body, and is, at heart, a Person of Quality -- but I am still recovering from her "help" during Spring Cleaning.

I'm afraid for Fred. He once took on Bill O'Reilly, and was acquiting himself quite well, when that coward tagteamed him with the corpulent Limbaugh. We're still paying on that emergency room bill. Fred is out shopping (If it's Friday, it must be bouillabaisse!), but phoned an hour ago with reconnaisance reports on Sean Hannity and Michael Savage, who were both attempting to hide behind some mammoth fennel bulbs. Fred will sneak back into Marlinspike Hall via secret passsageway, once he gets hold of some turbot.

I can't hold off The Intruders all by my lonesome!

How did it reach this point? How ever did it get this bad?

Back in the Good Old Days -- that would be July, in case you've forgotten -- Glenn Beck saw that it was the right time, according to his basal temperature chart, to fertilize the airways. I think that was when we first spotted Salem Radio Network executives chasing The Four Local Infidels across our scale replica of Wimbledon courts 1-19 (plus Centre Court). Who could forget?




Fast-forward almost two months, to Katie Couric's recent interview for further indepth explanation of the intricacies of race relations in America, beginning with the definition of "White Culture":



I didn't know George Bush' grandmother was "a typical African-American woman." I know a few million people who will be mighty suh-prized.

It's tempting to name Glenn Beck a "tool," and move on. At least once a day, more if I'm feeling adventurous, I toy with that dividing line between what is funny or pathetic, and what scares me to death.

But there isn't time to luxuriate in scoffs and derision; There's not even a spare moment for a self-satisfied smirk. We cannot dismiss this unreasoned hatred, and we've few laurels on which to rest. Notice that I have lapsed into "we"-speech, ever hopeful.

The future I had hoped to enjoy is become dependent on the constant deflection of negativity -- no matter that it is fuelled by ignorance, no matter how ludicrous its provenance.

GlennBeck has announced that Cass Sunstein, Mark Lloyd, and Carol Browner are his next targets and asked his followers to dig up all the dirt they can on them.

Cass Sunstein heads the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. He’s a legal scholar, particularly in the fields of constitutional law, administrative law, environmental law, and law and behavioral economics.

Mark Lloyd is the associate general counsel and Chief Diversity Officer at the Federal Communications Commission. Previously, he served as Vice President for Strategic Initiatives at the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights.

Carol Browner is Assistant to the President for Energy and Climate Change in the Obama Administration. Browner previously served as Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency during the Clinton Administration in the United States.

Racism is like a fart

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Mostly in America

From the police report:

On Thursday July 16, 2009, Henry Gates, Jr. was placed under arrest after being observed exhibiting loud and tumultuous behavior, in a public place, directed at a uniformed police officer who was present investigating a report of a crime in progress. These actions on the behalf of Gates served no legitimate purpose and caused citizens passing by this location to stop and take notice while appearing surprised and alarmed.

I thought Fred was trying to pull a fast one when he told me that Henry Louis Gates, Jr. had been arrested in Cambridge last week. A more perfectly framed story could not have been invented. It sounds like something that could easily have been a stunt from Punk'd. Ashton Kutcher and Henry Louis Gates -- a natural pairing.

I mean, really. After I laughed myself silly, I felt like crying. Pithy things kept rolling across my digital mental marquee: only in America, stranger than fiction and other such insights. If Professor Gates is not the preeminent scholar of African American Studies in the United States, as director of Harvard's WEB Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research, he is on a very short list.

Of all people to racially profile, on his own turf, in his own home (which no doubt visually testified his identity), a home situated in his own community of scholars.

I'm betting he doesn't feel so much at home these days, and is probably redefining the term at its most basic application.

He has asked for an apology from Sgt. James Crowley, the officer being labeled the author of the incident. Sgt. Crowley might be at the epicenter of what happened, but -- scarily -- from out of the woodwork crawl the creepy people who will always, always be involved, but never named or held responsible. People such as Tom, who left the following comment on the matter over at The Root (where Gates serves as editor-in-chief):

Mr. Gate, if you are half the scholor you claim to be you should separate yourself from the J. Jackson's and Rev Sharpton's. These are the gentlemen that KNOW nothing about racism or the common good of the people, one is a cheat to his family the other is a fraud to the government. You as an educator of ALL should separate and rise above the standards of these gentlmen that try and ride your coat tails. You have been put in a bad situation, just like hundreds of thousands of other PEOPLE of all races and creeds. Learn from your mistakes and dont make a mochary of the situation, both are wrong, question is weather you are man enough to admit it publicly without making a mochary of it. Remember you are an Educator first, set the stand, don't creat a problem by getting the JJ's, Sharpton's involved. You should want to separate yourself from the level they claim to be at and are acutally on. Speak the truth and admit when you are at fault first and you will prosper longer than the others. Thank you Sir

[Please take the time to read the rest of the comments; It's scary.] Were I to elevate Sir Gentleman Please-'n-Thank-You Tom to the level of the serious (and I think, sadly, that we have to), I might start humming The Lonesome Death Of Hattie Carroll, with emphasis on "*now* is the time for your tears." Overkill? what-ev-errr. I'm just sayin'. Sir Gentleman Please-'n-Thank-You Tom cannot, and should not, be ignored or discounted as an oddity.

Yesterday, the charge of disorderly conduct was dropped, and the impression given that the whole event was a casual misunderstanding. That speaks to me of Prof. Gates as a perhaps overly forgiving and polite individual but I'm sure that's not the end of it. This will be used as an object lesson by many, and probably for a long time.

Charles Ogletree, Professor Gates' attorney, issued the following statement:

On July 16, 2009, Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., 58, the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor of Harvard University, was headed from Logan airport to his home [in] Cambridge after spending a week in China, where he was filming his new PBS documentary entitled “Faces of America.” Professor Gates was driven to his home by a driver for a local car company. Professor Gates attempted to enter his front door, but the door was damaged. Professor Gates then entered his rear door with his key, turned off his alarm, and again attempted to open the front door. With the help of his driver they were able to force the front door open, and then the driver carried Professor Gates’ luggage into his home.


Professor Gates immediately called the Harvard Real Estate office to report the damage to his door and requested that it be repaired immediately. As he was talking to the Harvard Real Estate office on his portable phone in his house, he observed a uniformed officer on his front porch. When Professor Gates opened the door, the officer immediately asked him to step outside. Professor Gates remained inside his home and asked the officer why he was there. The officer indicated that he was responding to a 911 call about a breaking and entering in progress at this address. Professor Gates informed the officer that he lived there and was a faculty member at Harvard University. The officer then asked Professor Gates whether he could prove that he lived there and taught at Harvard. Professor Gates said that he could, and turned to walk into his kitchen, where he had left his wallet. The officer followed him. Professor Gates handed both his Harvard University identification and his valid Massachusetts driver’s license to the officer. Both include Professor Gates’ photograph, and the license includes his address.

Professor Gates then asked the police officer if he would give him his name and his badge number. He made this request several times. The officer did not produce any identification nor did he respond to Professor Gates’ request for this information. After an additional request by Professor Gates for the officer’s name and badge number, the officer then turned and left the kitchen of Professor Gates’ home without ever acknowledging who he was or if there were charges against Professor Gates. As Professor Gates followed the officer to his own front door, he was astonished to see several police officers gathered on his front porch. Professor Gates asked the officer’s colleagues for his name and badge number. As Professor Gates stepped onto his front porch, the officer who had been inside and who had examined his identification, said to him, “Thank you for accommodating my earlier request,” and then placed Professor Gates under arrest. He was handcuffed on his own front porch.

Professor Gates was taken to the Cambridge Police Station where he remained for approximately 4 hours before being released that evening. Professor Gates’ counsel has been cooperating with the Middlesex District Attorneys Office, and the City of Cambridge, and is hopeful that this matter will be resolved promptly. Professor Gates will not be making any other statements concerning this matter at this time.

Here is a link to the .pdf file of the police report* filed by Sgt. Crowley.

*My favorite line from the police report? Upon being invited to exit his home and talk to Crowley on the porch, Gates is said to have replied: "Ya, I'll speak with your mama outside..."

Yes, indeed-y, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., the original Mr. Priss, is going to make a "your Mama" joke, and in this circumstance, too.

*** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** ***

A terribly sad story came on the television as I sat here typing, safe in my home -- not in America, but secure in the insular Tête de Hergé.

A mother called for police assistance because her adult daughter was threatening to commit suicide. Unfortunately, the presence of the police proved more of an aggravation than anything else. The mother informed the police that her daughter hoped to force a "suicide by cop" situation. Just then, the daughter descended the stairs, gun in hand. The mother moved to shield her child.

Mom was shot to death. Daughter is in a bad way at the hospital. The police spent the night "investigating."

It's tough being a cop. It's tough relying on cops. It's just plain tough, these days.