For those of you with an unhealthy fascination with the Mafia, this is pretty interesting. Italy will always remain a strange place.
About The Author
BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
My unhealthy fascination is with dumbasses like this.
If this isn’t enough to make you blow out your freaking brains, I just don’t know what is.
I will wait with bated breath to see if, after his inauguration, Obama just straight up tells these fucking idiots like John McCormick to just kiss his goddamn ass. I swear to God, this is what makes me want to just flee the country and move to a remote tropical island somewhere.
You have no idea just how much I hate ignorant bastards like this. Most of them are nothing more than empty-headed, useless tools.
so, who has a better jump shot?
I haven’t seen Arne’s jumpshot yet. So the jury is still out on that.
But either way, I’m sure it’s bad news for Obama.
You know one of the most insightful pieces about WH press reporters I ever read (or top echelon journalists in particular) was from the late David Foster Wallace entitled “Up, Simba”. It used to be only available in digital form but I think it’s in dead tree print now too.
And don’t quote me on this but I believe it was written for Rolling Stone originally.
Essentially the largest media organizations send their “top” people to cover the president and the designation “top” tends to mean someone who is the MOST conforming to both “Village thinking” as well as a societal conformist in general.
They tend to uniformly be all graduates from the same few J schools, know each other personally quite well and this leads to incredible “group think”. I bet if you did a survey on them you’d find they all tend to make about the same amount of money, their children attend the same schools, they live in a handful of neighbors, etc.
In other words, a tiny, tiny segment of the population is represented by presidential reporters and yet they are reporting on the subject for the ENTIRE NATION. For Bush anyway, we all know that any independent journalists (minus stooges like JG) were entirely cut out of the loop, this reinforcing this groupthink.
Check it out (the essay) and let me know what you think!
Pax
Strange place? Seems like home. Of course, my home IS Chicago and Italy doesn’t seem strange at all. I don’t think this story would seem odd to a New Yorker, either.
There are two online petitions demanding the immediate release of Muntadhir Al Zeidi. Please sign both petitions and pass on the information.
This one has a goal of 50,000 signatures. Please add yours and encourage others to sign also.
This one was put up by Ra’ed Jarrar, Iraq consultant for AFSC. He will deliver it to the Iraqi embassy next week if Muntadhir has not been released.
We are hearing reports from reliable sources that he is being badly abused and possibly tortured in prison. The reports say that they have broken his arm and one or more ribs, and injured an eye. He is suffering while millions and millions of people all over the world are celebrating what he did. He has no idea the effect his gesture has had all over the world, and how much support he has inspired.
Please sign both petitions, and please urge others to sign. It might not help, but doing something is better than doing nothing.
I think the guy should be able to post bail. He certainly should be treated humanely. But I think it is more realistic to focus on the latter than the former.
Well, it is simply inexcusable the way he is being treated, and of course it is mostly for show. This was a huge embarrassment to the Iraqi “government” in front of their outgoing wannabe emperor. They screen the hell out of the people they allow into those little shows, and they’re all supposed to be uber friendly. Ooops! Too bad for them that they allowed a real Iraqi in there by mistake.
It is very clear that from the beginning they were trying to delegitimize his action by suggesting that he was paid to do it by Al Qa`eda or some other “insurgent” (sic) group, or portraying him as some kind of extremist himself, or suggesting that he was drunk or on drugs. They have tried all those things out in the media, sometimes all in one story. My guess is that he has been tortured to try to get him to confess that he was paid to do it, or that he is connected with Al Qa`eda. Otherwise they will have to face the fact that he was acting out of a real emotion and a real conviction that he represents the sentiments of the overwhelming majority of the Iraqi people.
Fortunately, none of it is working because the overwhelming majority of people in the world wish they could have what he did and admire him for standing up to Bush, even if they do not approve of the specific method he used.
And his gesture has started a new fashion in protests all over the world, including in the U.S. where people are mailing their old shoes to the White House, and where people are planning a nice sendoff for Bush on January 19 involving piling their old shoes in front of the White House. I personally would love to see him leave the White House along a route covered in shoes. That would be lovely. Of course, he wouldn’t get it. He is impervious to these things. Sociopathic narcissists always are.
Shoes in Islamic Culture (Sialkot, Pakistan)
These are the only specifically shoe-related photos I have. I guess on my next visit to Muslim/Arab-land I will have to focus more on shoes!
By the way, when I first met the little girl in these pictures she did not like me much at all, and viewed me with considerable suspicion. I didn’t force the issue, and within a week or so we became best friends despite a total language barrier (she had not started school yet, and so spoke only Punjabi, and so my very limited Urdu was not terribly helpful). There are a lot of ways to communicate besides language.
She was very upset when I left, and I am told that even after two years she frequently asks for me, which makes me quite teary-eyed. She is a very strong-minded little girl with a very strong personality, and her strength is not discouraged. She has started school since I last saw her, and I am told she loves school so much that she takes her school bag to bed with her. Last year I sent her a big set of paint pens and pads of fancy paper, and a magnetic erasable writing thingy, all of which are not easily available in Pakistan.
Families are deeply connected and children are part of everything in Pakistani families. At least in my Pakistani family they are all incredibly confident that they are loved and that their needs will be taken care of by whichever adult or older child from the extended family is nearby. They are closest to their parents and siblings, but that is only the core of a very large and dependable support system.
I am honoured to be considered part of this extended family, and I miss them enormously.
IMHO this is just dramatics for a deal done long ago to get Senator Kennedy’s (and her) public support.
The #1 reason I support her candidacy now is that in 8 years (and after 2 re-election campaigns), she will be the first female President Elect of the USA. A fine heiress to the presumably successful Kennedy/Obama legacy at that.
A taste of good ole East Coast elitism could server the country well for, I don’t know, a generation or two.