In an article linked at FrontPageMag, Richard Poe frets:
If I spelled out "n----r" on my Web site even for the innocent purpose of, say, reviewing [Randall] Kennedy's book [Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word] there is a slim but real possibility that the term could be flagged in a key-word search, my site blacklisted for "hate speech," and access to it blocked by libraries, "family-friendly" ISPs and other automated cyber-censors.
What a pussy.
Oh fuck. Can I say pussy?
Oh shit. Can I say fuck?
The article tells of a man unduly wrong'd, and facing jail time for. . . oh, you can probably guess.
Channel 45: Governor Reagan, would you consider Angela Davis dangerous?
Reagan: Yes, she's a Communist.
Channel 45: Tell me, Governor, how did the police department determine the guns used in the Marin Country Massacre were all registered to Davis?
Reagan: Simple. She was a Communist.
Channel 45: Governor, it has been rumored that one of the weapons used was, in fact, a weapon recovered in an earlier raid and never returned to Davis. Is this true?
Reagan: Is Angela Davis a Communist?
The Great Communicator, eloquently explaining the threat posed by University of California philosophy professors.
This is not news to anyone who's been paying attention the last few decades.
Sorry, I forget, Americans. Shocking revelations regarding suppression of dissent by FBI, CIA under Reagan's watch.
According to the documents, [FBI Director J. Edgar] Hoover became outraged over an essay question on UC's 1959 English aptitude test for high school applicants that asked: "What are the dangers to a democracy of a national police organization, like the FBI, which operates secretly and is unresponsive to public criticism?"
In response, Hoover ordered his aides to launch a covert public relations campaign to embarrass the university and pressure it to retract what he called a "viciously misleading" question.
The director also ordered his agents to search bureau files for derogatory information on UC's 6,000 faculty members and top administrators.
Now go back to sleep. And please, do not look up "irony" in the dictionary. For a start, it'll ruin your enjoyment of Alanis Morisette songs.
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Maxi's Blogger? Why would anyone want to be Maxi's blogger? The site is practically dead (along with the rest of ChickClick -- I still miss my Chickmail.com address), and the (S)HITLIST at Bitch Magazine's site seems to do that sort of thing already. Plus, Bust is making a comeback, so what's the point of. . .
Oh.
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*blinks*
Jae-Ha Kim did the review of Undercover Brother for the Sun-Times instead of Ebert.
Grant Morrison be damned, I am never messing with chaos magic again.
Which means, in response to MaryMarubixCube's comment below, that I suppose I'll be available after all. . .
Speaking of the Sun-Times, I miss Jae-Ha Kim's column.
Here's how hot the video is: For weeks, it received the most requests and the most complaints on MTV. "We moved Sir Mix-A-Lot's video to after 9 p.m. because we received a tremendous amount of complaints about the context of the video," says Carole Robinson, an MTV spokeswoman. "We believe in the artists' right to do what they want to do creatively, but our audience should always be the biggest factor with what we do with our programming."
Just who's complaining is the question. It's not the National Organization for Women, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People or the Parents Music Resource Center (with whom we checked). And Robinson says parents didn't account for the majority of complaints.
Sir Mix-A-Lot's video is less suggestive than others that have garnered heavy rotation on MTV. Marky Mark, Chris Isaak and a seminude Madonna all frolicked with topless models. But they didn't sing about body parts. They just groped at them. In "Baby Got Back," no woman is naked or grabbed at. (The original version did depict Mix-A-Lot simulating sex with one of the inflated butts, but it was edited out for MTV's censors.
From Mix-A-Lot Baffled: Why Are Butts a Big Deal?, July 14, 1992. And I don't even remember a controversy over the thing at the time.
(Yes, we're back to Asian women. No, I'm not sorry that Learning Annex class got canceled.)
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Life imitates Buckaroo Banzai, part 12:
Using two motors, speech-recognition software and an exo-skeleton inspired by science fiction, three Johns Hopkins University undergraduates have designed and built a muscle enhancement device that will help a disabled man grasp and lift a cup, a book and other household items. By uttering commands such as “open” and “raise,” the man will receive mechanical help in moving his fingers and bending his elbow.
Nothing about throwing harpoons, though.
From ScienceDaily Magazine. Found at fieldmethods.net, a Natural Language Processing community website.
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Brief, someone-got-paid-for-this? piece on Scooby Doo in the Chicago Sun-Times, with quotes from former writer for the series Mark Evanier. And that has to be one of the worst jobs possible. Just imagine the pitch sessions.
"Ok, the kids are at this haunted amusement park. . ."
"Done it."
"This haunted race track. . . "
"Done it."
"This haunted castle, brought over stone-by-stone from the old country. . ."
"Done it. Twice."
The article lists some of the incarnations the show has gone through. This is the one they need to bring back:
"The New Scooby-Doo Movies" (CBS, 1972)--Guest stars like Sonny and Cher, Mama Cass Elliot and the Harlem Globetrotters team up with the gang of super sleuths on new adventures. The show's worth watching for the pop culture references of the co-stars alone.
C'mon, it'd be great. Like, Scooby and the gang meet Eminem, for example. Or we'd get to hear the dialogue like, "Look, gang, it's Trent Reznor. What are you doing at this abandoned steel mill, Mr. Reznor?"
Ok, it'd be crap. Let me have some illusions.
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Yes, the Rich Johnston replied to in that Usenet message from Mark Evanier is probably the same guy whose column at Silver Bullet Comic Books is moving to Comic Book Resources. The Google Groups archives are a potential source of embarrassment to us all.
Chicago Crime Commission Gang Book:
The leader of the Black P Stone Nation is Jeff Fort. In 1969 Fort was mailed an invitation to President Nixon's inauguration. In 1972 he was sent to Leavenworth Kansas Correctional Center for misappropriation of Federal Funds. He is currently in prison after being convicted of "attempting to commit a treasonous act against the United States." This conviction stemmed from a 1986 incident in which Fort and other El Rukn gang members agreed to commit acts of treason against the United States government in exchange for a sizable loan from Colonel Moammar Gadhafi of Libya.
Just in case you were thinking this was totally unprecedented. Haven't seen which gang Jose Padilla was a(n alleged) member of, but I haven't been reading the stories that closely. . .
And if I remember right, the Rukn's were never actually in contact with Libya. The Feds sent someone to the gang who told them he represented the Libyans. This only sounds like entrapment if you think (alleged) criminals have rights. I think this was part of some Reagan-era effort to tie fear of Middle Eastern terrorists to fear of domestic brown gang bangers, and had as much basis in reality as Bush the Elder's infamous vial of crack "seized in a park across the street from the White House." Can't the New, Improved Bush people do anything original?
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Yes, the apostrophe in "Rukn's" is extraneous. "Rukns" looks dumb, "Los Rukn" looks and sounds dumb, and I don't think the name is Spanish in the first place. "The El Rukn members" works, but it's too long. Although I've now spent a hell of a lot longer justifying the shorter version than it would have taken to use it in the first place. We'll just fix that in post-production.
Huh. Christy Marx has a blog commentary thingee, adding her to the ranks of Patrick Nielsen Hayden, Peter David and Neil Gai—
Ok, I'll stop.
She was also a regular pro/participant on GEnie's SFRT. Nice place; the interface (if you weren't using a front-end) was so hideously complicated, it screened out the morons. And sent them to AOL.
We now return to your regularly scheduled objectification of Asian/Asian-American culture, already in progress.
CoCo Lee was also cover-featured in the Spring 2000 issue of Sony Style magazine, which article mentions that she had a song on the Runaway Bride soundtrack (never saw it), as well as doing voice work for Disney's Mulan (ditto).
I worry about mentioning Mulan and Margaret Cho on the same page. If Margaret ever sees it, she'll send Korean ninjas after me. They're even more secretive and deadly than their Japanese counterparts.
You say you've never heard of Korean ninjas? Exactly.
Sony Style is precisely what you'd expect from an evil multinational corporation trying desperately to sell their consumer products as a series of lifestyle choices. So tacky it's cool. Or something.
Not speaking of Mulan, Christy Marx co-wrote another animated version which certainly didn't attempt to take advantage of Disney's popularization of the story. You might remember Ms. Marx as the creator of Jem and the Holograms. Or not.
I'm going to get all this trivia out of my head even if it kills me.
I forget these things.
The S.E.S. link in the next section will ask to install Korean fonts on your Microsoft® Windows® system, assuming they're not already present. Most of the other links go to bandwidth-consuming pages featuring Macromedia® Flash™.
Finally, the color design of this site should have sufficiently damaged your retinas that you will be able to view today's partial solar eclipse without protective eyewear.
You can thank me later.
Perhaps I was too hard on Caldwell and his cluelessness about R. Kelly and company. After all, I have no idea who S.E.S. are, and they're number ten on the charts.
Then again, I'm on the other side of the planet, and don't speak the language. Except for the chorus, but I'm pretending to be a conservative frightened by the New and Foreign, so let's not let facts get in the way.
Used the Korean charts since I actually recognized two names from the Mandarin one, but knowing CoCo Lee from the Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon soundtrack, and Faye Wong from Final Fantasy VIII, doesn't really prove my point either way. Um, whatever my point was . . .
Link to Groove Asia found on Asiafirst. Link to Asiafirst found on American Samizdat.
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Typical. Margaret Cho's new film Notorious C.H.O. won't get to Minneapolis until August. Knowing this place, it'll run for all of one week. Assuming this isn't a one-night-only benefit screening.
Thought that when the theater chains started building multiplexes, they'd claimed it would allow them to show a more diverse line-up of films. Not that it would let them run Spider-man and Episode II on multiple screens, with a show starting every hour on the hour. Perhaps I'm remembering things wrong again. . .
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Hemi-demi-semi-permalinks now appear sporadically in entries from the past few days. Like the <blockquote> coloring, these also do not work properly in Netscape 4. This is what passes for "subtle hints" around here. Links to specific sections of the today page will fail utterly once the page is archived, which happens whenever the author gets around to it. You may be wondering why.
One of the major difficulties Trillian experienced in her relationship with Zaphod was learning to distinguish between him pretending to be stupid just to get people off their guard, pretending to be stupid because he couldn't be bothered to think and wanted someone else to do it for him, pretending to be outrageously stupid to hide the fact that he actually didn't understand what was going on, and really being genuinely stupid. He was renowned for being amazingly clever and quite clearly was so - but not all the time, which obviously worried him, hence the act. He preferred people to be puzzled rather than contemptuous. This above all appeared to Trillian to be genuinely stupid, but she could no longer be bothered to argue about it.
From Douglas Adams, The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. No, I don't have Salmon of Doubt yet. Shut up.
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Unless there is much wailing and gnashing of tooth, longer quotes will henceforth appear with the funky grey background. The wails and gnashes of Netscape 4 users will be ignored.
[Jesse] Jackson said to [Professor Henry Louis] Gates: ''This man (Glenn Loury) is smart. Whatever his politics, he's always been smart.'' When the conversation turned to the Middle East, Loury sheepishly reminded Jackson of an article he wrote more than 15 years ago in Commentary attacking him for embracing Yasir Arafat.
''You probably don't remember the piece,'' Loury said.
''Oh, yes I do,'' Jackson fired back.
''I looked him in the eye,'' Loury recalled a couple of weeks later, ''and said: 'I really wish I hadn't written that. It was a mistake, and I really regret it.' Jackson didn't say anything directly in response to it, but during his formal presentation he made a point of singling me out. He said: 'To say that Glenn Loury isn't black because he disagrees with me, well that's just stupid. We can't afford to leave brilliant minds like that by the wayside.'''
Glenn Loury is an un-person. All references are to be stripped for improper thinking and ideological non-conformity.
Also, times 17.3.84 bb speech malreported africa rectify.
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Attention!
Your attention please!
A newsflash has this moment arrived
from the Kandahar
front!
Our forces in South Afghanistan have won a glorious victory!
I am
authorized to say that the action we are now reporting
may
well bring the war within measurable distance of its end.
Here is the newsflash.
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More news on favorite conservative whipping girl Cynthia McKinney, from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:
"McKinney (D-Ga.) and her father, state Rep. Billy McKinney (D-Atlanta), were accused of violating election law by entering a south DeKalb County polling area on Election Day in November 2000 and urging voters waiting in line to vote for her. Election law forbids campaigning within 150 feet of the polls.
"The McKinneys denied the allegations made by Republican poll watchers but signed a consent agreement to avoid a prolonged hearing on the civil charges."
Given my own experience with "Republican poll watchers" (namely, some scrawny twat allowing the white folks in front of me to pass unmolested, then challenging my right to vote based on my not residing at the address listed on the rolls -- which I did, and I had the id and correspondence to prove it), I'm gonna say this was just petty harassment.
In the next election, I think I shall bring a copy of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 with me. Wrapped around a Louisville Slugger.
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Reading warbloggers puts me in a shit mood.
Why?
"Since the Arab is not the object of aggression but the aggressor himself, he considers as his enemies not only those who attack him but also those who may be capable of resisting him. The means which he employs to break people of this kind, who may show themselves decent and upright, are not the open means generally used in honourable conflict, but falsehood and calumny.
"He will stop at nothing. His utterly low-down conduct is so appalling that one really cannot be surprised if in the imagination of our people the Arab is pictured as the incarnation of Satan and the symbol of evil."
(From My Struggle, by an Austrian artist of no little fame -- albeit not for his art. Arab has been substituted for a less politically correct term in the original text.)
Because they're not fucking saying anything new.
"No; the Arabs have not the creative abilities which are necessary to the founding of a civilization; for in them there is not, and never has been, that spirit of idealism which is an absolutely necessary element in the higher development of mankind. Therefore the Arab intellect will never be constructive but always destructive. At best it may serve as a stimulus in rare cases but only within the meaning of the poets lines: The Power which always wills the Bad, and always works the Good (Kraft, die stets das Böse will und stets das Gute schafft). It is not through his help but in spite of his help that mankind makes any progress."
Just the same shit we've been hearing for centuries, and God knows it wasn't funny the first time.
My grandparents accepted that the people they were dealing with on a daily basis were racist assholes, but honestly thought that when the lot of them died off, the next generation would be an improvement.
My parents felt the same way.
I will not bring children into a world controlled by you. Take that any way you want.
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Reader comments:
Negro what? Negro where? Negro when? Negro today.
Son, wipe
your feet.
