A number of universities are holding separate graduation ceremonies for blacks, Hispanics, gays, Phillipinos, Asians and other minority groups. I thought the whole idea of diversity was to unite and combine our differences, not divide them. Leave it to today’s crop of leftist dunderheads to encourage the very evil their parents and grandparents fought so hard to eliminate in the 50’s and 60’s.
As if seeing The DaVinci Code wasn’t punishment enough, this morning I received an official mortal sin notification from the Vatican condemming me for all eternity, after which it burned up in my hand. How very Mission Impossible, I thought, or maybe it was Satan. Both possibilities left me shaken so I figured I’d just hit the confessional before work, tell the padre, get absolution, say my Hail Mary’s and be on my way. But Father L. wouldn’t absolve me unless I said I was sorry I’d seen the film. Well … okay! I really wasn’t sorry except that I spent nine bucks on a real turkey, but I said it anyway.
My son Mario, age 17, asked an important question the other day: How old should an adopted highway be before it’s told that it’s adopted? Highway engineering philosophers are constantly debating this issue, but have come to no conclusion.
All art is, of course, subjective. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and all that.
But sometimes a piece of work is done so well that subjectivity is irrelevant and the piece is just damned good, period. In this case, it’s the film United 93, the story about the fourth hijacked 9/11 plane that the passengers brought down before it could reach its target, which some believe was the Capitol itself.
A British study has concluded that a woman can tell from a man’s face whether he’ll be a good parent to her children, making him husband material. The problem is that the woman can also tell from his face that he’s somebody she doesn’t want to f**k.
So now being a soldier is a negative. The appointment of General Michael V. Hayden to head the CIA has been greeted with criticism not because he’s incapable or dishonorable but because he’s in the military.
What the *%#% is that all about? During my lifetime soldiers were held in high esteem. Generals MacArthur, Eisenhower, Patton, Admiral Halsey, Sergeant York, Audie Murphy and Jimmy Doolittle, to name a paltry few of our gallant, recent warriors, contributed profoundly to our country’s survival and we celebrated their service.
It’s okay. Better than MI2, not as good as MI1, which wasn’t that great to begin with. What’s discouraging is the action standard by which this and other such films are being judged. Non-stop, special effects and great stunts are the measures, while story and plot are rarely considered. Perhaps it’s because plot and story require that the viewer use his brain to figure out what’s going on. Since the media is doing such a good job formulaizing our expectations, we don’t need to think about story anymore. The simpler the better.
This one courtesy of the Democrats.
By a vote of 55-7, the California Assembly approved a bill prohibiting the private sale of sonograms to individuals about to have a baby. Democrat assemblyman, Ted Lieu, who introduced the bill, became concerned that fans of Tom Cruise would run out and buy these machines because he had purchased one himself in order to monitor the in utero activities of his baby by Katie Holmes.
Courtesy of the Democrats
California Bill SB1437 is making its way through the California legislature and if it becomes state law, all references to mom, dad, mother and father are to be removed from all school textbooks insofar as they suggest that a mother and father are the parental norm. Life is about to imitate schtick as my ex-writing partner, Norman Stiles, once brilliantly said because there are few choices to replace those words other than the Conehead’s famous sketch comedy expression “Parental Unit.”
The Twinkie defense may have faded from memory but many other unique approaches defense lawyers will always be with us. Among them is the PAC defense. No, PAC does not stand for Political Action Committees. In this context it means, Previously Abused Criminal.
In one respect, I’m proud of the jurors who declined to give Moussaoui, the so-called twentieth 9/11 bomber, the death penalty. It was a wonderfully American thing to do, illustrating our innate sense of fair play and compassion. It was a civilized decision, not a rush to blood despite the anger and justification many felt about the unconscionable events that September morning.
