perfidy

While listening to sports-talk radio this afternoon on the Houston ESPN affiliate, I heard a popular locally originated broadcast of the Calvin Murphy show.

Mr. Murphy, a former star performer for the NBA's Houston Rockets, is a bit of a bomb thrower, and spends quite a lot of time talking about racial issues. He's interesting enough that this no longer bothers me nearly as much as it used to. Quite an entertaining gentleman.

For the past several days, they've been doing live remotes at one of the local Dave & Buster's restaurant/entertainment joints, and have had live audience participation in addition to their regular phone callers.

During one of the live audience segments, a guest took the mike and explained that, as a young black man (27 years old), he'd experienced the sting of racial prejudice for most of his life. He claimed (and sounded) to be well-educated, was planning a career in the ministry, and spoke clearly and eloquently about the times in Oklahoma where, while at white friends' houses, he was asked to sit on the floor rather than on the furniture, and of other times, while working in child-care environments (at his church?), where he was reassigned at the request of white parents whose kids were intimidated by his presence.

Calvin Murphy was, metaphorically at least, playing along and pointing out that "See? Even young, well-educated black men are still subjected to unfair discrimination based solely on their race", or sentiments to that effect.

Calvin's #2 (the actual radio guy who works full time at the station), Dave Tepper, to his eternal credit, stepped in and said, (paraphrased from memory):

"Pardon me, but I'd like to ask a question, as the designated white guy here. You're a pretty large man - about how much do you weigh?"

To which the young man allowed as how he tipped the scales at somewhere between 470 and 500 lbs.

After which, they went a commercial break and, I presume, discussed amongst themselves their certitude that, sure, yeah - he was considered intimidating to small children and was asked to stay off the furniture because he was black.

By those nasty Oklahomans.

[wik] Not directly related, but in the same galaxy

Enjoy watching the high and mighty taking a tumble?

Generally, my response to that question would be "No, not particularly, but thanks for asking". I do, however, make exceptions, and NY Governor Eliot Spitzer would be one of those. From a WSJ email alert of a bit ago:

March 10, 2008

New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer apologized to his family and the public but didn't elaborate on press reports linking him to a prostitution ring. "I violated my obligation to my family and my own sense of right and wrong," he said in a brief statement with his wife by his side. Last week, federal prosecutors in Manhattan filed conspiracy charges against four people, accusing them of running a prostitution ring that charged wealthy clients in Europe and the U.S. thousands of dollars for prostitutes.

The one time attorney general for New York built his political legacy on rooting out corruption, including several headline-making battles with Wall Street while serving as attorney general.

Why does he rate my interest in (and hope for) his potential comeuppance? He's a haughty bully, a guy who made his name by being a 14K prick to every company from which he could mulct blackmail payments. As NY AG, he was like a pallid and uptight version of Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson.

He virtually never took a case to court, and in those he did, he virtually always lost. His successes, if you can call them that, were largely obtained by bullying people into plea deals. Sometimes, people plead because they're guilty. Spitzer, a publicity hound of the worst sort, prosecuted his cases in the press, and bludgeoned people into plea deals, so I (perhaps incorrectly) give the victims the benefit of significant doubt in this case.

Spitzer has also been accused, quite credibly, of destoying companies, and thus harming the shareholders in those companies, for no legitimate cause. Other than the fact that he's a nasty, pasty, little holier-than-thou prick, that is.

As governor, he's continued this "I know what's best" motif, siccing his insurance commissioner, Eric Dinallo, on the bond insurers with instructions that time was short, and if they didn't hurry up and do Spitzer's bidding, he'd..., well, he'd do something. Spitzer and DiNallo have a history of Spitzerian overreach, as seen in the WTC reconstruction funding marathon recently forced to an end. Blackmail's almost too nice a word for the games these bastards have played.

Who knows what's really behind the WSJ story? Surely not I. But it doesn't sound good at all for El-i-ot, and I'm OK with that.

[wik] Also see, from Long or Short Capital: "Spitzer in a Ring of Pictures"

[alsø wik] It would seem that this fucking guy is toast. So much for the happy ending.

A fascinating article about a fictional character's take on the 2008 presidential election can be read here.

Discuss, fellow Ministers, since we seem to outnumber our readership by a margin of approximately 4:1.

Gary Gygax, one of the creators of Dungeons and Dragons, failed his last saving throw Tuesday morning. We've consulted the appropriate table, and learned that geeks everywhere are in mourning, displaying their +2 Armbands of Dismay (purchased for only 7 Gold Pieces from a mysterious beggar outside the Tavern where they always seem to meet).

Not completely, anyway. In fact, it's not even really a post, but just a "fakeblog". I think I've met this guy, multiple times.

(Onion "autoblog" entry moved to the extended entry, because it apparently fucks up our blog in the worst way)

You Know What's Stupid? Everything I Don't Understand

[wik] (4-Mar-08) Since it would be churlish to have back-to-back fake blog entries, I feel I must tag another Onion item on to this one, if for no reason other than to make it easy for me to locate later:

Biofuels Worse For The Environment

All three fake man-on-the-street comments are winners:

Kirsten Simonon, Tattoo Artist "Just once, why can't one of our poorly considered quick fixes work?" 

Bruce Jones, Systems Analyst "Would it at least offset the amount of time I have to pretend to care about the environment?"

Will Trembeau, Truck Dispatcher "Then where do they suppose we should get this green power? From magic? From the very Sun?"

You Know What's Stupid? Everything I Don't Understand

For far too long I've sat idly by, twiddling my thumbs and respecting the right of others to form thoughts and opinions independent of my own, and...

I had inherited my mother's house and property. It's a decent-sized house on about five acres. But the house is in general disrepair, and in my dream I didn't have the inclination to get it all fixed up. What I did instead was have the house razed, with the intention of building a kickass underground structure on the same spot, using the existing foundation and cellar as a template. I had in mind part bunker/catastratorium, part cozy hobbit-hole.

So with the upper structure demolished, I began cracking though the concrete in the cellar. In my dream I was alone doing all this, which is utterly ridiculous for a variety of reasons, but primarily because I have zero training on any tool or construction principle and the most sophisticated bit of toolery I ever did was installing a cat-flap in the door to my basement.

But none of it mattered in the end, because as it turned out the earth beneath my mother's cellar was already inhabited.

A wizardly-looking fellow sort of appeared, surprising me as I was just taking sledgehammer to concrete. He looked like Gandalf if not quite so imposing...rather dumpy, really...and explained that he had been living in his own underground building for quite some time now on the very same spot, and would I please knock off trying to crash through his roof. After some back and forth, he ended up giving me a tour of his place, and it was pretty impressive. There was a very deep...shaft, I guess, but not a cold and drafty and sooty shaft, but a bright and interesting shaft, with little niches here and there with tasteful if uninspired bits of art in them. Think the inside of a very deep well, with the big stones and the curved surfaces everywhere, but without the panic that comes with falling down a deep well however tasteful the art inside may be.

We finally reached the bottom, although now I'm not sure how. I don't remember stairs now, and I think we may have been just falling very gently. As it happened, the bottom level of his place ajoined a largish chain bookstore. I thanked him for the tour, and went to poke around the store. I ran into someone I knew inside...all I remember is she was a she...and we browsed together for a bit but ended up separating. I wound up buying a copy of The Green Berets.

I never liked the comic strip Garfield. It was smarmy, irritating, and about cats. But I never in a million years would have realized on my own that, hidden behind Garfield's prancing, self involved corpulence, a brilliant comic strip was desperately trying to be heard.

This guy did.

And why, of course, couldn't it be both?

Willie Nelson wants President Bush impeached

AUSTIN -- American icon Willie Nelson says he supports efforts to impeach President Bush and "throw the bastards out," adding that the administration will do anything to stay in power, including staging an event to cancel the election.

I'm down with him disliking Bush and his cohorts - it's a free country, and he's entitled to his opinions, deranged, inflated, or otherwise. The presumption that there's some secret plot, or even the possibility of such, to derail the election is pure lunacy.
...

Nelson denied earlier reports that he said no planes hit the World Trade Center on 9/11. He said he was talking about WTC 7, which fell in the late afternoon of 9/11.

His denials ring hollow - the original stories on his status as a 9/11 moron seem more credible. The same fevered stupidity that drives his trutherism feeds his certainty that the change of government is to be thwarted.

Dipshit.

He and others like him who think we live in some form of a dictatorship that quashes voters' will and free speech rights seem not to catch the irony that they've not been placed into the reeducation camps of their addlepated nightmares.

From the BBC, this story:

Restaurant sorry over F word bill

A restaurant owner has apologised after diners had their very own F word experience - without Gordon Ramsay.

Ten friends found the abusive and sexually-explicit message on their bill at Joe Delucci's Italian restaurant in Bird Street, Lichfield, Staffordshire.

Diner Clare Watkin said she thought it was written after they complained about poor service.
...

If it weren't for the fact that I seldom eat in either Great Britain or Manhattan, and in any event, am always unfailingly polite to anyone in a position to spit in my dinner, I'd have to start paying more attention to my bill.

I'm fakeblogging.

This is from the brilliant webcomic xkcd.