KING KONG! A mean-spirited review with PLOT SPOILERS!

[Yes - I know this one comes too late, but it's only a couple of weeks old, and I think some people have yet to see the movie, and, hopefully, this review will prevent said people from going.]

Short Version:

My evening’s entertainment, including the price of a “gourmet” pretzel and a tub-sized Coke, cost me $12.50. If I ever have the pleasure of meeting Peter Jackson face to face, I’m going to make sure I beat every single penny’s worth of my King Kong experience out of that sawed-off kiwi pipsqueak.

Long Version (the one with spoilers):

Einstein’s theory of general relativity has a lot of people confused, including your Cranky Reviewer, but tonight I think I got a little bit closer to understanding how mass acts on the space/time dimension.

See, when the movie was over and Kong finally – to my silent cheering – fell off the ol’ Empire State Building I took out my watch and saw that I’d been held hostage by the movie for three hours. Only I knew better than to trust my watch. By my calculations, each of the two-trillion-or-so scenes was at least five hours too long, which means that I’d actually been sitting in that theatre watching “King Kong” for roughly the same amount of time it took for me to sit through all three years of high school. Yes – it was only a mere three hours of time as far as my watch was concerned, but I felt years older, used-up, beaten to black and blue and nigh mental incoherence by the obviously angry vicissitudes of life that I didn’t even know were kicking me in the kidneys with their big, heavy boots as all of my attention during what I must now call my Lost Years were spent focusing on Peter Jackson’s gazillion-dollar masturbation project and how much I’d come to hate everyone involved in it even before the giant gorilla made his first appearance (winter-break, sophomore year, for those of you marking your viewing calendar).

How to account for this? Well, I can only assume it’s because the impossibly great mass of Jackson’s by-now well-known obsession with the original “King Kong” somehow got translated onto each print of the film, creating in each theatre a singular theoretical point which in its turn creates an event horizon in which movie patrons, once trapped, cannot escape as time stretches into the infinite unknown.

I mean, there it is: a lesson in cosmology and physics as close as your nearest movie house. The “twins” paradox is paradoxical no more for those of us who have watched both King Kong and Disney’s The Black Hole.

One thing about getting older, though, is that some of us get meaner as the years get packed on. By the time this movie was over, my fantasies about beating up Peter Jackson had morphed into unprintable transports of gory extravagance. I’m an angry man, is what I’m saying.

And I’ve been disappointed a LOT lately in my movies. Sort of. I mean, I absolutely knew Doom was going to be a stinker, but I wanted to see how low it would go, and I think I got my money’s worth, if only because I went hoping for a truly wretched movie.

But I went to King Kong hoping for a good movie, an entertaining movie, and I was NOT rewarded. Not one bit.

It occurred to me, shortly after my tenth-grade fall semester mid-terms, or, for those of you in the earth-bound space/time continuum, when the ship finally shoves off for Skull Island, that the real problem with scenes that go on too long is that it gives one time to think about something other than the all-important HERE and NOW of the story being presented on the screen. And the reason this is bad is because the last thing one wants to give one’s suspension of disbelief is a chance to get, um, whatever the opposite of suspended is.

Let me put it to you this way, and this, I suppose, is a SPOILER(!), so movie-going purists should stop reading right now.

Still with me?

Okay, look: You know that scene in the original movie where King Kong and the Tyrannosaurus Rex go at it? It’s, what, ten minutes long? Five? Stop-action photography took forever to do, so they couldn’t milk that kind of thing.

Well, in Jackson’s homage, in what is clearly a classic example of the “Because We Can” school of filmmaking, Jackson’s version has three – yes, three - T-rexes in a scene that accounts for fully one of my three Lost Years. It goes roughly like this:

August – Thanksgiving Break: four-way cage match, Kong vs. the three T-Rexes.

Thanksgiving Break – second semester mid-terms: Kong vs. the three T-rexes on swinging vines in a canyon (they all fell in, you see . . .).

Second-semester mid-terms through the end of the summer break: Jackson somehow – I can’t really remember because I wasn’t paying attention – gets around to the more traditional Kong vs. a single T-Rex match-up, and shoots the one scene that is shorter than the original, if we don’t include what happened during August through roughly July 18.

And while this long fight is going on I began thinking things like, “When is this over?” and “Three? Why?” and “Criminy! How many times do we need shots of Kong saving the idiot blonde in impossible grabs?” and “Not only would her neck have been broken 97 times if this were happening in real life, I wish this WOULD happen in real life so her neck WOULD break!”

And then you become comfortable with your bitterness and bile as you start using your free time – you’ve long since lost interest in the actual fight – to think about other things. You begin picking over all the stupid things you saw previously and didn’t want to complain about out of a sense of “maybe it’ll get less stupid” generosity. By the time the third T-Rex was introduced, I’d built quite a list, and I had plenty of time to mull it over, really sink my mental teeth into that list, and go over it point by delicious point.

And this is when the LOGIC portion of one’s thinking fully takes over, and for a movie like King Kong, this is death – the point at which a fantasy movie is utterly beyond saving.

Because THEN you start thinking about what a creepy knucklehead Kong’s love interest is. I mean, the hostages for which we coined the phrase “Stockholm Syndrome” didn’t cave in as easily or as quickly as the creepy knucklehead.

You start thinking, “You know, most rich guys would just have bought a large Hum-Vee to compensate for their size issues.”

You start thinking, “This movie is so bad I’ve decided to hate Jackson for his Lord of the Rings movies, too, even though I really like them, because now some sort of cosmic principle of karma or whatever is at stake.”

You start wondering things.

I wondered, for example, if God will punish me more for hating the movie so much or for having watched it in the first place.

I even wondered – I’m not kidding – if King Kong would need one gigantic heart to move that much blood around, or a bunch of little hearts, like the brontosaurus and similar dinosours had, cause of their long necks. Then I started wondering how large Skull Island would have to be to realistically sustain that many large herbivores and an apparently too-large predator population. Then I wondered if I should get cable so that I could watch the Discovery channel again because it was this really interesting documentary they showed several years ago about dinosaurs that got me thinking about it because Spielberg’s “Jurassic Park” had come out and Crichton’s original novel was being picked over by on-the-bandwagon biologists looking to make a quick buck on the “Why It Can’t Be Done” publishing circuit, but it was all still pretty interesting, which is more than can be said about the “The Science of Star Trek” books, but only because I was never a real Trek fan anyway, and then I remembered that old Saturday Night Live skit where Shatner plays himself at a convention and says “Would you guys get a life?” and, man, I think tomorrow I’ll play his “Transformed Man” album because after this crappy movie I could really use a good laugh, and, you see, that’s just how the mind wanders when you watch Jackson’s King Kong.

You’ll think lots of interesting things yourself when you watch King Kong. You’ll have plenty of time and ammunition for it, that’s for sure. I mean, the “meeting the natives” scene alone is solid gold for haters looking for new things to legally hate.

Special Bonus Joke: As the First Mate’s final scene reaches its climax you’ll end up seeing just how useless a graduate degree in English Literature actually is. I’m sorry, but only those of you who’ve seen the movie can even begin to understand that particular joke.

Actually, you want to know the two points in the movie in which I first began to really despise the movie, and then despise Peter Jackson personally? I’ll tell you, if you don’t mind wading through a couple more SPOILERS:

It’s the two scenes where Kong and the creepy knucklehead bond and fall in love, or whatever it is they do.

See, the first scene is in the jungle, where Kong, a gigantic, man-eating gorilla, has finally set down the blonde bimbo and she’s looking for a way to not get eaten. Her solution?

She performs vaudeville pratfalls. See, in the movie she’s an out of work vaudeville performer, and . . . what ? No - I’m not joking.

Anyway, Kong sees her act and laughs. Once again, I ain’t kidding.

And so, of course, she thinks, “finally! A good review!” and she falls for the big, murderous lug. You’ll discover depths of emotion you were always afraid to admit you had when you see this scene.

The second scene, where they go ice-skating in New York on a winter’s evening and laugh and frolic and act all “Bambi On Ice For The First Time,” will be the scene where you begin imagining things for which you will have to repent, perhaps even confess to your local ecclesiastical authority, in order to save your soul from the eternal damnation that otherwise awaits you. Again, you only think I’m kidding, but you have not seen the movie yet and therefore remain naïve and unsullied. I envy you and your ignorance of true evil.

Completing the Bambi theme, the Ice Capades scene ends when Bambi – I mean Kong – meets WWI-era military ordinance for the first time. (“Man is in the forest, son!”) This is followed by several gazillion tedious months of Kong climbing a building, Kong being shot by planes (“How many civilians will those stray bullets kill,” you will logically think to yourself), and the creepy knucklehead getting right up there with him and saying:

“Stop! He only kills because he LOVES!”

Well, okay, she doesn’t actually say that, but you know that somewhere down the road, Jackson had his writers put that line in there, and only took it out because he needed those precious months of screen time for seventy-seven more shots of Kong looking poignantly at his growing collection of bullet holes. He’ll do that roughly 500 times before he dies.

And, finally, c’mon: Jack Black?

He couldn’t do a scene convincingly straight if his life depended on it. And because of this I can only hope that someday it does.

Yup. I guess you can say I pretty much hated Peter Jackson’s King Kong.

This is the Cranky Reviewer, logging off.

IL DIVO: A CRIME AGAINST GOD AND MAN! (. . . on sale now for $16.99)

[I may not have been blogging in December, but I couldn't stop writing. I grant that this review is too old to have stopped you from making a horibble mistake in 2005, but I hope it will serve you well 11 months from now.]

Aw, jeez. How do I approach this . . .

Let’s try metaphor, in the form of a true story:

Imagine, if you will, that it is the holiday season, getting close to Christmas, in fact, and, one day, as you sit in front of the television while channel-flipping, you chance to come across whatever equals the “religious channel” on your cable listing. (Many of you are aware of this channel as its owners – or whatever – are the ancient Dennis Weaver-ish guy and his freaky, pink-haired wife.) Now, you’re flipping through fairly quickly, but your brain tells you that the contortions and passionate squinting and the cramp-indicative doubling over of sweaty bodies and the jittery wavings of blown-dried mullets and permed hair pieces aren’t, in fact, being performed by an audience of faith-seeking donors – the suits and jewelry and various wigs/toupees worn by these circus contortionists are far too expensive. No – what your brain registers is that the station’s regular musical personalities are all grouped together doing . . . something; confessing sins? Experiencing The Rapture? Whatever it is, it is deeply intense.

So you stay tuned to the channel, and turn the sound up.

And discover they are singing.

Sort of.

It’s hard, at first, to know what they are singing. A couple of issues get in the way of quick recognition.

First, there is the fact that eight (or so) voices that are being wielded by singers not used to taking, oh, let’s call it a supporting role, are just not going to sound good together. Listen to any duet or group effort that involves Willie Nelson or Celine Dion and you’ll know what I’m talking about. Worse, all eight voices are SHOUTING their music, every note sung with not merely a vocal exclamation point, but an accompanying muscular twitch of the body – eight white, epileptic James Browns, but without the sexiness. It is simply the most unmusical thing you can imagine being performed that doesn’t involve Yoko Ono. The entire effect of this performance style is to obfuscate important things like words and notes. This slows down the recognition process.

Second, there is the fact that you’ve heard most of these clowns do their road-show-on-the-studio-sound-stage thang before, and you know exactly what kind of soulless, manipulative, cookie-cutter, pre-recorded pop-gospel faux-musical garbage makes up the entirety of their collective repertoire; thus, you are not equipped by prior experience to believe what you are hearing.

But eventually your brain registers that what you are hearing them mangle – no, callously abuse is the more appropriate word here – what you are hearing them abuse is Handel’s “Hallelujah Chorus” from the Messiah.

And then morbid curiosity turns into a frank astonishment not felt since that day in your long-ago youth that you first saw a real small male dog being physically amorous with an oblivious, large female dog’s back legs. I mean, that’s pretty funny stuff at any age, but when you’re a kid, it’s like, woah.

And a slow ‘ya gotta be kiddin’ me, Pyle!’ grin begins to appear on your face as you both listen and watch this hideous display on your TV set and discover that some perms can gesticulate. It’s more gut-churningly fascinating than the first time you watched professional wrestling.

And then, when you think your smile can’t get any bigger, you are proven wrong as they get to the windin’-up part, and, O Lordy, every single man and woman is hunched over like they’re both passing kidney stones and trying to keep in bad diarrhea, one hand in the air all testifyin’ ‘n stuff, the other hand with a white-knuckle grip on the microphone, and each singer has his or hers eyes closed really, REALLY tight, and it is just really, truly equal parts the funniest thing you’ve ever seen and the most musically-insulting thing you’ve ever heard. (If anyone has this performance on videotape or DVD, you must send me a copy.)

Ok. Got that picture in your mind?

Any one song on Il Divo’s Christmas album makes that religious channel travesty seem like “Silent Night” being performed by a Presbyterian choir under the direction of John Rutter on Christmas Eve in a small, Cambridge chapel.

I tell you, kind readers, that Il Divo’s “The Christmas Collection” is easily the most obnoxious, arrogant, infuriating Christmas album that has yet been produced. I bought a copy pretty much for this reason and it gets a special place next to Shatner’s “The Transformed Man,” that’s how bad this thing is.

Needless to say, Barnes & Noble has assigned it to in-store play for the Holiday Season.

For the heck of it, co-worker D. and I decided to put all the really bad Christmas stuff in the store CD player this afternoon, just to get it out of the way and give us complainin’ rights. I almost fell on my knees laughing when I heard what they did to “White Christmas.”

“My Gosh!” I said a little too loudly. “It’s just a song from a Bing Crosby movie – it ain’t freakin’ opera!” Then I laughed and got dirty looks from customers, too many of whom watch Oprah and therefore think they actually like this noise because they have long since given over their ability to make critical decisions about what they do and don’t like to that horrible woman and if she says “I like Il Divo,” then they think “Well, I LOVE Il Divo!” and so we’re gonna sell lots and lots of Il Divo this year because people are idiots.

Anyway, during the next song, Ave Maria, the manager on duty came up and said, “What is this crap? Are we, like, obliged to play this right now? This is HORRIBLE!” We just laughed at her, because we’re jerks.

But during song number four, even I’d had enough – I was at work, after all, and was getting a headache – and I skipped to the next CD: Kenny G’s Christmas album, which I can now tell you is also not great. And, as if you couldn’t guess already, Barbra Streisand’s ain’t too hot, either. I TOLD you we put in all the bad stuff today. (Note: Michael McDonald’s Christmas album – what little I heard - seems indistinguishable from any other musical endeavor of his, save that it is funnier because as he ages his singing voice gets more and more alien and inscrutable.)

But, you know, as bad as Streisand and Kenny G are, they sounded downright musical in comparison to the FULL-THROATED PASSION that is Il Divo(!).

If the goal at the outside of this project (now into its second album) had been to find four voices that had the least ability to sound like they were meant to sing together, then the producers succeeded grandly.

I believe that when it comes to art, one way of gaining a better appreciation of what is well-done is to experience something along the same lines, but that is poorly-done. Like, if you want to more fully see the excellence of Kenneth Branagh’s wonderful performance of the Henry V ‘Saint Crispin’s Day’ speech, one could listen afterward to William Shatner’s performance of the same on his truly amazing “The Transformed Man” record. “Ah!” you’ll say to yourself. “Branagh really got it right! I can totally see that now, because Shatner is really, really bad.”

Il Divo is classical music’s very own collective 60’s-era Shatner – a quartet of utterly self-impressed blowhards, making everything else sound better simply because they have so deeply buried the bar that the excellent-by-comparison Andrea Bocelli was heretofore only able to lower to ground level. (In fact, I think I’ll start calling them SC – the Shatner Collective, like the Groove Collective, except that the SC’s suck really bad whereas the Groove Collective involves actual musicians.)

I highly recommend listening to Il Divo even to a few seconds. Just pick any track – they’re all the same.

But for those of you too chicken to do that, here’s a kind of play-by-play of – oh, let’s pick Ave Maria, easily one of the most-abused religious songs EVER in musical history. Here are my notes as I listen to it for the first time (thank God for the pause button):

[0:00] Right out of the gate you suspect you’re in trouble. Harps and oboes and lush strings all together can be used quite nicely in the hands of someone who loves music, but because we know going into this that Il Divo is not remotely about music we can take it for granted that the normally unthreatening pluckings of the harp instead signal the approach of something ominous.

[0:20] Said ominous thing begins its arrival in the form of one of the most unpleasant, weird vibratos you will ever hear sung through a tenor’s nose. It’s like he’s actually licking his vocal chords as he sings, and that’s why the tones can’t get past his lips and instead have to move up and out through his nostrils, which means he must have nostrils as manipulative as any tapir’s if he’s forming words through them, so I suspect that it’s the guy in the striped coat. As all instruments but the harp have dropped out to make room for this guy you find yourself thinking that, hey, that oboe obligato wasn’t too bad after all – wish they’d bring it back.

[0:51] And here’s the second tenor, or perhaps baritone(?). This guy ain’t too bad – if he’s a baritone, he’s got a good, lyrical upper range. Just a hair too sloppy, too pop-ish, but not badly so. The arrangement still calls for piano – pardon me, for quiet singing – at this point so this second tenor is doing a light, perhaps too-florid job. I’d give him a B-, but because he’s involved with Il Divo he gets a D on general principle, the jerk.

[1:15] And SC #2 must have been a baritone because now the third SC is singing a line, and this must be their token American. You can tell from the light “pop-swoop-grace-note” he seems unable to erase from his technique. A little too much breath. Not surprising for what was originally a Simon Cowell production, this kid just screams “American Idol.”

[1:33] What the heck? Is this is the bass? No – baritone. They have no bass. Ah.

Eh. He’s bein’ all fancy pants. I’m going to guess that this guy is the one who comes closest to looking like a leering Dean Martin on the record cover.

[1:51] Okay; they’re still singing more or less at piano, bu . . .

HOLY CRAP! [1:58] Somebody hit that baritone in the head with a lead pipe! Great Googly Moogly! Roland Corporation produces, like, fifteen voice processors, any one of which could have corrected in post-production the fact that this guy’s a full quarter-tone flat! These guys are making money hand over fist and they hire Helen Keller as their engineer? BAH!

I mean [2:00] they’re still holding that note and he’s STILL FLAT! He’s not even doing that annoying lounge singer thing where a guy starts flat but then brings it up to pitch as he lets his vibrato kick in. No – this guy starts flat, and HOLDS IT, like he’s PROUD OF IT! “Hey, look at me!” he’s saying. “I’m-a singing flat! Have-a some more wine while I sing-a the flat note!”

[2:09] Two descending notes later tonal equilibrium is more or less achieved by the group. Yeah – let gravity do your work, guys. Brah-freakin’-vo.

[2:10] Instrumental bridge to the next round of singing. It’s garbage, of course.

[2:24] And as the second portion begins, so, too, are we introduced to a drum machine giving the song a trap/hat beat.

A drum machine beat in Ave Maria, I kid you not, people.

[censored]!

Only two voices, don’t ask me who. I think Unpleasant Vibrato is the guy in the falsetto register because he’s warbling around up there like an old lady whose voice wore out a few decades ago. You know that Old Person vibrato I’m talking about? The sine wave as deep as the ocean and as high as mountain peaks? A roller coaster of tone? Yeah – that’s the one.

Oh no. Please, no. [2:34] Finger snaps.

Got that? FINGER SNAPS! On every other “one.” Lord help us all. (KICK!, cymbal, cymbal – SNAP!, cymbal, cymbal – KICK!, cymbal, cymbal – SNAP!, cymbal, cymbal – ad infinitum.)

[censored]!!

[3:34} Ok. Standard tag-team duet stuff up to this point because each singer needs mathematically equal amounts of “on” time, but now Mr. Pulled From The Part-Time Opera Company To Give This Group A Whiff Of Legitimacy Baritone is starting to light it up. And – oh, yeah! Tympanies backing him up on the forte. Inflate them gonads, bubbas, and let ‘em explode in musical passion!

Okay – that was gross, and I apologize.

[3:44] Fake! Dramatic Musical Pause after the build up. Tenor comes in at mezzo-piano.

[3:54] Fake! Tympanies come up with tenor to create the forte he couldn’t build on his own because he’s so obviously a wimp and here we get our Shatneresque Pique of Operatic Climax. And, oh my, this not-terribly successful blend of voices is being buried by the “orchestra” and drum box. Good luck trying to hide the sheets, Mr. Conductor, but we all know what just happened.

[4:20] What do you get when four guys all try to out-sing each other on the final round of “AVE!!!!! MARIA!!!!!!!!!!!!”? You get what’s happening at 4:20. I just about snorted my Dr Pepper out of my nose.

[4:50] Whew! Well, it ended quietly, thank goodness. But – oh, golly – this was really bad.

I mean, only two of these guys can actually sing loudly, and you can hear the problems of recording this group in the mix: the two loud guys sound like they’re singing from as far away as Antarctica and the two American Idol contestants sound like they’re singing a lullaby right next to you – I mean, these are guys who’d need microphones to sing in a small bedroom - and yet they all manage to sing equally loudly thanks to Helen Keller’s lucky engineering guesses.

Well, that, plus they’re being buried by the hideous orchestra. And I have to say that without something like that for them to be hidden behind this would have been so very, very much worse, and so very, very much more funny.

Hang on – gotta check out Silent Night . . .

Will this follow the same formula? It seems to as it begins with Mr. Unpleasant Vibrato. I think they just like to get his obligatory solo out of the way early.

Ooh! Here comes American Idol: “’Round yon virgin, multher and mild?”

“Multher.” – Yup. I just listened again – he’s mangling the word so badly that “mother” comes out as a pulpy, throat-squeezed “multher.”

Wow. Do you have any idea how bad your technique has to be to do that?

“Tender ‘n mild.” Not “and.” “’N.”

‘N??

[double checks]

“Tennnnnnnnder ‘N miiiiild,” he just sang, like he’s doing an ad for KFC.

And Jesus wept.

Over to SC #2:

Sle-e-e-e-e-e-e-p in h-e-e-e-e-E-E-E-E-E-ven-ly pe-e-e-e-e-e-E-E-E-E-E-EACE”

[listens some more – skips ahead]

Yup. They open up a Big Ol’ Can of Opera on this song’s hinder for the last verse, just like Ave Maria.

I repeat: Wow.

And when the heck did “Over The Rainbow” become a Christmas song? I mean, that’s just weird.

For collectors of bad music, I can’t recommend this CD highly or lowly enough.

This is the Cranky Reviewer, logging off.

CCWBASS Signs In!

Greetings, friends.

Oh, sure, I may have ditched my old blog after my post-40 Year Old Virgin epiphany (you Way Off Bass readers know what I'm talkin' about), but that doesn't mean I've lost the itch to screed.

See, I've decided to embrace the fact that underneath my pleasant exterior I am an angry, angry person. Not all the time, mind you, but after I watch a bad movie, or listen to a wretched CD I'm just spittin' mad.

Thus, I've decided to elbow my way into Woodys Woundup and take the position of Cranky Cultural Reviewer.

Look for my first couple of posts tomorrow.

This is Your Cranky Reviewer, signing off.

Woody appends: Buwahahahahaha! I warned you he was coming! Now it's too late! Your souls are forfeit! Aaaaahahahahaheeheeheee! *snort* *cough* Sorry. Getting too old for this sort of thing...

#222 - Poor, Pitiable MSM

Writing in the Business section of the NY Sli... er, Times, Katherine Q. Seelye describes the MSM's paradox with new media in "Answering Back to the News Media, Using the Internet." (registration req'd)

In simplest terms, the MSM no longer can rely on their granite-walled fortresses to protect them from the slings and arrows of the little people. You know, the folks Jay Rosen now calls "the people formerly known as the audience." (My favorite quote!)

Specifically, the MSM loyalists are dismayed at the vehemence with which new media bloggers (and others) rip apart nearly every story they ever publish.

Danny Schechter, executive editor of MediaChannel.org and a former producer at ABC News and CNN, said that while the active participation by so many readers was healthy for democracy and journalism, it had allowed partisanship to mask itself as media criticism and had given rise to a new level of vitriol.

"It's now O.K. to demonize the messenger," he said. "This has led to a very uncivil discourse in which it seems to be O.K. to shout down, discredit, delegitimize and denigrate the people who are reporting stories and to pick at their methodology and ascribe motives to them that are often unfair."

Ah. But the stories you publish are analagous to evidence presented at a criminal trial. Even if the evidence is merely circumstantial, we can convict if it removes reasonable doubt. If the story seems to favor one political spectrum over another, we can justly accuse you of having a "bias," whether or not you care to admit it. To continue:

Thomas Kunkel, dean of the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland, said reporting on reporters had created a kind of "Wild West atmosphere" in cyberspace.

With reporters conducting interviews more frequently by e-mail, he said, "You have to start thinking a couple of moves ahead because you're leaving a paper trail. And the truth squad mentality of some bloggers means you are apt to have your own questions thrown back at you."

From their perspective, I'm sure this has more than a ring of truth about it. If I were an old J school graduate, I might react the same way. After all, to have one's work thrown under a microscope and have every flaw revealed is a little like having one of those uncomfortable close-ups in a TV drama; the kind where every needle mark reveals exactly how many botox injections the actress has received. Furthermore, reporters can no longer simply sit on their material and anonymous "sources" and hope the furor will simply go away. No, now we have Google and innumerable bloggers who seem to have unlimited time on their hands. These new media warriors seem to delight in the deconstruction of nearly every article published in any paper with the words "Times," "Tribune," or "Herald" in their mastheads.

Well, folks, now look at it from our perspective. For decades (for some of us, anyway) we had labored under the apparent truth that, crooked though your reporting might be, there was precious little we could do to correct the "reality" that you were creating. If Walter Cronkite said it, by golly, it was truth worthy of being chiselled in marble and placed on the pillars of the Supreme Court. No matter that the subjects of those truths occasionally cried foul. They were merely disgruntled that their malfeasance had been uncovered. No longer:

Jamie McIntyre, CNN's senior correspondent at the Pentagon, said the traditional skills of sifting through information and presenting it in context were especially vital now because there were so many other sources of information.

"With the Internet, with blogs, with text messages, with soldiers writing their own accounts from the front lines, so many people are trying to shape things into their own reality," he said. "I don't worry so much anymore about finding out every little detail five minutes before someone else. It's more important that we take that information and tell you what it means."

Ah, yes. But what if it just happened that your traditional MSM version of "reality" didn't quite square with our own? What we PFKATA (People Formerly Known as the Audience) have long suspected is that you MSM writers and editors have been attempting to shape reality to fit your own vision of what we should perceive as truth. In other words, if you have a liberal bias, then those of us who are conservatives must by your definition be the bad guys. That's your reality. That's what you've been trying to peddle for centuries now.

If, as Mr. McIntyre pretends, it really is your job to tell us "what it means," then we reserve the right to disagree. Loudly, if need be. That we have the tools to do so must really stick in the MSM's collective craw. In other words, prepare to have more and more of your own questions thrown back at you.

This is war, after all.

#221 - LA and NY Slimes

Several years ago I subscribed to the LA Times. I can safely promise you that is was far less for their theoretical journalistic integrity as for their coupons. I hadn't voluntarily read a Times editorial piece since I was a relatively idealistic young man at the outset of my first marriage.

It wasn't long (some might say not soon enough) before I realized that the cost of receiving this overcoat for deceased trout was somewhat greater than the perceived benefits of using their precious coupons. In fact, we only ever received the Sunday edition, and promptly recycled everything but the coupons, which sadly didn't get used quite as frequently as the Times sales staff would have had me believe.

Truth be told, I haven't as an adult read any major paper published anywhere in the United States unless one or more of the following conditions existed:

1. I was in an office waiting room or airport
2. I was bored out of my skull and there was literally nothing else, including Bassin', to read

As an emerging conservative, I quickly formed an opinion that these major papers were far less interested in telling a truthful account of any given newsworthy event than they were in forming (even forcing) public opinion. It wasn't anything I had smarts enough to articulate as a youngster, but I felt it instinctively. I felt it was a mark of the incredible stupidity of any given paper's reporters that I found myself trusting humor columnists to give me a more accurate picture of national stories. Even the ones I disagreed with.

Hence, I find it absolutely anti-climactic to learn that two of the country's largest bird-cage liners, the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times, find themselves being taken down - consistently - by Michelle Malkin and Patterico, respectively (if not quite respectfully).

Read their analyses. Add my "amen" to their thoughts.

Another year, another quest for published (and verifiable) truth.

#220 - Resolved

This one slipped quietly by. On December 15, the House of Representatives passed House Resolution 579 as follows:

H. Res. 579

In the House of Representatives, U.S.,

December 15, 2005.
Whereas Christmas is a national holiday celebrated on December 25; and

Whereas the Framers intended that the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States would prohibit the establishment of religion, not prohibit any mention of religion or reference to God in civic dialog: Now, therefore, be it

Resolved, That the House of Representatives--

(1) recognizes the importance of the symbols and traditions of Christmas;

(2) strongly disapproves of attempts to ban references to Christmas; and

(3) expresses support for the use of these symbols and traditions, for those who celebrate Christmas.

Well said.

And yet... something bothers me about this resolution. It's not the language, certainly. I agree with everything it says. I myself would have voted for it enthusiastically.

It could be the final count. It had what you might call an unprecedented level of bipartisan support. 401 representatives voted in the affirmative. There were only 22 negative votes - all of them Democrats. 5 congresspersons merely answered, "present." 5 more did not vote for whatever reasons. Interestingly, one of our primary California Atheists sorry, Democrats, Jane Harman, was among the "nay" votes. In fact, at least 4 of the 22 nay votes were California Democrats. How inspiring.

Yet as interesting as was the final vote, it pales in comparison to the reason for the resolution.

How on earth have we arrived at a place where the symbols and traditions of Christmas need the support of the House of Representatives? Is it possible that Christmas is in danger of disappearing altogether from the public arena?

Perhaps. Some folks have sure done their level best to make sure that the word "Christmas" is instantly associated with some sort of counter-diversity movement. Stores now fear retribution from atheists and civil libertarians who somehow feel that public recognition of the Savior's birth is anaethema to the nation's well-being. Bell-ringers? Not in front of my store. No, sir. We support diversity!

And so it goes.

Still, one phrase of the resolution is most meaningful: "reference to God in civic dialog." Ah. Civic dialog. The ability to freely express our thoughts, worship as we please, and pay tribute to any and all religious observances. All guaranteed by the First Amendment. We the people have this right, and we need to exercise it.

Let the atheists, ACLU barristers, civil libertarians, and even Jesse Jackson believe (or not) any way that they choose. Those who might take offense need to remember that it cuts both ways. To those who believe that public prayer is somehow offensive, let me remind you that to oppose prayer is equally offensive to me and my family. To hear you belittle and degrade our celebrations is highly offensive. But that same First Amendment even guarantees you that right, and I certainly cannot stop you.

Neither can you stop us.

Merry Christmas!

#219 - Looking Ahead

The Woundup has been in operation for a whole year and a half now, and in that time we have been referring to ourselves (frequently, if not consistently) in the first person plural. We enjoy doing that on occasion because it sounds so deliciously pompous, and we can also create the illusion that the Woundup is some sort of underground syndicate with a staff full of bitter, street-tough researchers. On the other hand, that would make Woody just another figurehead; a Dan Rather of the blogosphere who stands by the accuracy of every story whether or not they have any actual facts involved. So we're not sure the imperial "we" is the way to go. It may work for Dave Barry (who does have a bitter and street-tough researcher named judi), but we just don't have that kind of budget. In fact, we don't budget well at all, which is why Mrs. Woody is our finance department.

Anyway, back a few weeks ago we approached fellow blogger (and full-time brother) Cameron of "Way Off Bass" notoriety. We had commented on his recent blog-dearth and he happily admitted that his heart just isn't in it anymore. He is a recovering blogoholic, and we respect that. We also don't buy it. Not that he isn't sincere, by any means. I (oops, I mean we) believe his contrition is genuine and worthy of our support. But we also know our brother, perhaps better than he cares to admit. He has a disease for which, frankly, there is no known cure: he has Male Answer Syndrome. MAS means that, one day, Cameron will be driving to or from work and will be listening to talk radio and will hear some outrageous statement by some left-leaning nutcase who will propose - we don't know - perhaps that the answer to global warming would be eliminating all drilling for oil RIGHT NOW and Cameron will find himself driving directly to Kinko's where his connectivity currently resides and he will log on and BLOG HIS EYES RIGHT OUT OF HIS HEAD. He won't be able to help it. Also, mid-term elections are coming up next year and he will find himself in a target-rich environment.

In fact, we're counting on just this sort of reaction. It means that our conversation with The Bass a few weeks back, which ended with our inviting Way Off Bass to make appearances on the Woundup, did not go to waste. So, you may see an occasional post here from my brother. This means that now, whenever I use the term "we," I won't be referring to any schizoid personalities that I (we?) may possess.

So we roll out the Welcome mat for Way Off Bass, and hope he'll find fresh meat with which to satiate his blogging appetite. He has been sorely missed.

#218 - Ann Coulter Demands Equal Rights!

Conservative gun moll Ann Coulter complains that, for all the damage she inflicts on poor downtrodden liberals, she can't seem to get indicted.

Money quote:

Can't we rustle up a right-wing prosecutor to indict Teddy Kennedy for Mary Jo Kopechne's drowning? Unlike the cases against Limbaugh and DeLay, Mary Jo's death was arguably a crime, and we could probably prove it in court.

I'm afraid, Ann, that you can't be indicted until Pat Oliphant and Ted Rall have completed their initial investigations and handed their findings over to the syndicateGrand Jury. They do speak for the "people," after all.

Specifically, they speak for the Pod People.

#217 - Out on a Limb Prediction

Should M'sieur Schwarzenegger grant clemency to that apparent paragon of virtue, Tookie Williams, I predict this will be the governor's last term in office. As a Republican, anyway.

Let's review the facts:

• Major loss of support base during the Special Election.

• Appointment of Democratic hired gun as Chief of Staff.

• Seemingly increased influence from traditionally hardcore Democratic wife.

Woody's prediction: Arnie will either jump ship before the next election, or will run as the Republican equivalent of a Howard Dean, trying to galvanize the moderates (read: left-leaners) in the party.

It won't work. He can no longer even sell himself as a fiscal conservative, and any signs of social conversatism disappeared when he appointed Ms. Kennedy to such an important staff position.

Fare thee well, Ahnold.

UPDATE: Well, I'll be... he still has a backbone after all. Still not sure it's enough to get him a second term, but at least this won't be one of the reasons conservatives abandon him.

#216 - Another Unsolved Mystery - Solved!

Oh... so that's what Howard Hughes was really doing!

#215 - Oh, Arnold...

Question:

What do Tookie Williams, Susan Kennedy, and Joan Borucki all have in common?

Answer:

A Republican governor who can't seem to remember he's a Republican.

Without debating the death penalty on its merits (I support it. End of discussion.), it seems that Schwarzenegger's recent special election debaucle has not only rattled his political agenda, it has also completely unleashed his Inner Kennedy.

Signs of his incipient demhood surfaced last year when he attempted (and, fortunately, failed) to install a tax-and-spend Democrat as head of California's Department of Motor Vehicles. Joan Borucki was widely panned by conservatives a year ago when she first floated her plan to tax California drivers by the mile. This was supposed to alleviate tax shortfalls created by more and more people switching to environmentally-friendly hybrid vehicles and spending less on our already over-taxed gas. That her appointment was not confirmed by a Democrat-controlled legislature only confirms that even liberal California pols can get it right on occasion, if only by accident.

The decision to hold a special election in the first place was nothing short of desperation on Arnie's part. That he not only lost, but lost every single initiative did two things: It made his "special election" basically a very expensive non-event, and it ruined his credibility among the right-leaning elements (myself included) of the party. So what is our surprise to find, weeks later, that he has appointed another Democrat to an important staff position? Not only that, but this particular Democrat was one of Gray Davis's (remember Gray? The guy Arnie wanted so badly to replace? The one he basically accused of being incompetent?) chief architects of some of his more spectacular political failures. Can you say, "Oracle?" Susan Kennedy (please, let her not be any relation!) was absolutely clueless about the ramifications of that Oracle contract, and I can't imagine her acumen having improved since then.

Finally, now that poor ol' Tookie has lost his battle in court, it's up to Ahnold to yea or nay his execution this month. The fact that he's already "agonizing" over this decision does not bode well for those of us who prefer justice over entitlement. Williams helped found one of the most dangerous, deadly gangs in Los Angeles. Whether or not he pulled the trigger that killed the four people he's been convicted of murdering, he has at the very least been indirectly responsible for the deaths of dozens more in the three decades since the gang was founded. This man has been found guilty, has refused to accept responsibility, and needs to die. But now it's in Schwarzenegger's hands. Hands that no longer seem to know what to do. Hands that shake with indecision now.

I've seen that shake before. Where have I seen it...? Oh. Of course.

Another Kennedy.

#214 - One More Reason to Avoid Flying

If you're a man, that is.

Mark Worsley boarded a plane, took his seat, and then was asked to move. The airline needed to seat an unaccompanied eight year old boy, and airline policy dictates that they cannot be seated next to men. So Worsley, who after all is sensitive to post 9-11 delicacies, promptly moved. He spent the remainder of his flight stewing about it. It was embarrassing, he reasoned, to be singled out as a potential pedophile just because he would be seated next to a young boy. He confronted the flight attendants after the flight and was told that this was, indeed, company policy.

There are two problems with this scenario:

1. It would have to be a pretty desperate individual to attempt to engage in any sort of "inappropriate" behavior on an airplane. For one thing, an airplane cabin is hardly the kind of place you can invoke the sort of privacy I'm imagining it would require. Especially after 9-11. Flight attendants are trained to watch passengers like a hawk, and unaccompanied youth most of all. The airline assumes special liability by allowing such children to fly alone, and the potential for lawsuits means those kids are under continual scrutiny. In the United States, I'm guessing that an Air Marshall would make pretty short work of any perv who tried to get cozy with a kid like that.

2. The airlines (Qantas and Air New Zealand) who implemented this policy obviously haven't been watching the news lately. 'Nuff said.

Giving the airlines the benefit of the doubt, I will agree that on its face this seems like a genuine attempt to protect the rights and safety of a child. I have no problem with that. However, if an airline knows that an unaccompanied child is going to be on a given flight, special care should be taken to avoid the embarrassment of singling someone out. Call that seat number before boarding and talk to that individual privately. Or, if the seats aren't pre-assigned, put a sign on that seat stating that the seat cannot be taken without consent of a flight attendant. There must be better ways of handling it than to essentially shame a passenger by labelling him a potential molester.

Remember, "politically correct" is no replacement for courtesy and respect.

#213 - The Lone What State?

So my new step-Dad and I were enjoying a nice chat at the dinner table yesterday afternoon, when the topic of ID's came up. Grandma Woody and her new hubby have only recently (just a few months ago) relocated to Texas and have been going through the process of getting their new Texas photo ID's. Two interesting stories came out of this discussion.

First, the process for getting a driver's license in Texas is nothing short of hilarious. I mean ironic, of course, but it's the sort of thing that makes people involuntarily snort their milk if they're unprepared. Turns out (I'm cutting to the bottom line here) that one must "surrender" their current driver's license before getting a new one. Bob, having been a fairly regular reader of the Woundup since hooking up with my mother, was gauging my reaction. I don't think I disappointed:

"Let me get this straight. A state that cannot control their own border with Mexico doesn't trust people who come from other states?"

"Exactly!" he replied with glee. Guess I nailed that one.

He then related a story about someone (I was tanked up on pumpkin pie and my memory is getting fuzzier) who needed to see the expiration date on his new license to enter as part of a transaction. The clerk looked at his license and was completely stymied. Bob then showed me what his license says next to "Expiration."

"INDEF"

To a programmer, that also is nothing short of hilarious. Keep in mind that I was part of the dreaded and probably over-rated "Y2K" problem, and was one of those lucky guys who had to scrub countless lines of code to make sure that my apps could handle the new millenium. As I have worked with various systems as part of my work in aerospace, one thing that continually amazes me is programmers who leave date fields as open text. In other words, you could probably type in something like "INDEF" in that field and it would be accepted. Unfortunately, the other end of a database is the reporting that managers and customers require, and they always want things sorted by date. How on earth do you sort by "INDEF?" So your more anal programmers - like me - tend to force date fields to only accept actual dates.

This clerk had no idea how to handle putting a non-date entry into a field that would only accept a true date. Finally a supervisor was consulted, and he said, "Oh, just put this day next year in there." End of problem.

So, in Texas, it's possible to have a license that never expires, assuming you can get them to admit that you really are a U.S. citizen who won't give your old license to one of the thousands of illegal immigrants who flow through our open borders every single day.

Texas - the Lone Brain Cell State.

P.S. Note to my friends in Texas, assuming I have any left: I realize that California is no better. We have Hollyweird, for cripes' sake, and Nancy Pelosi. We are properly ashamed.

On the other hand, you have Cindy Sheehan. You may keep her.

#212 - The Idiot's Guide to Intelligent Design

There are always extremists in any given argument. When one side believes itself to be correct, no amount of discussion or presentation of evidence will do much to convince that side to change its thinking. We see much of that same dynamic in the on-going fight over "intelligent design."

On the one hand, you have the scientific community, currently represented by the humanists who believe that everything that has ever happened has been the result of some gigantic cosmic accident. They try to peel back the layers of our terrestrial onion to uncover the secrets of where we came from and why we exist. God becomes an excuse created by man to make up for his lack of knowledge.

On the other hand are the theologians. These are represented by those who believe that none of what we experience could possibly be anything but the design of an all-powerful deity who has carefully controlled every facet of our physical life. To understand everything about creation requires faith as much as (or perhaps more than) knowledge, because so much of what we lack remains hidden to our natural eyes.

This debate intrigues me because, while I come down pretty firmly on the side of the theologians, I feel that there is value in something that the great philosopher, James Tiberius Kirk, once said: "You and I are both extremists," he once told Spock. "The truth is probably somewhere in the middle."

To understand my own position, of course, it's important to tell you what I believe. And why I don't necessarily buy completely into the "intelligent design" meme, even if I believe most of it.

In LDS scripture, we have the statement of Alma on which I base all of my scientific (such as it is) research. While debating an anti-Christ about the existence of God, Alma said, "The scriptures are laid before thee, yea, and all things denote there is a God; yea, even the earth, and all things that are upon the face of it, yea, and its motion, yea, and also all the planets which move in their regular form do witness that there is a Supreme Creator." (Alma 30:44)

In other words, Alma points out to Korihor that creation itself is evidence of the existence of God. The entire spectrum of physical life, our very solar system, and the entire known (and speculated) universe are all evidences that God not only exists, but that he has power to set and keep all these things in motion. The scientific world - bless their little knowledge-thirsting hearts! - have done little to "prove" that God does not exist. All they can do is gain an increasingly better understanding of how or why things work the way they do, but how many of them have been able to do more than postulate on what made the Big Bang go "bang?"

Still, I also don't buy into the argument that God is so controlling that we aren't given considerable leeway to live according to our own consciences. And I don't necessarily believe that Darwinism is the great evil protrayed by many religious apologists.

There's simply too much empirical evidence to dismiss Darwin's theories out of hand. Certainly it has been proven, time and again, that many species have adapted and evolved over time. I have yet, of course, to see where it has been proven that man derived from any anthropoid thus far discovered. As far as I'm concerned, Adam appeared in the garden, and it's all been down-hill from there. But I also know that the biblical account of the creation is far more allegory than scientific fact, so I have no problem accepting that the earth could very well be four-plus billion years old. That would be plenty of time to form life gradually, enact a few extinctions, and shake up the landscape enough to prepare the earth for its most significant inhabitant.

Me.

[ahem]

All lack of modesty aside, there is still more than enough hidden knowledge awaiting discovery. God himself is subject to the laws on which our creation is based, and science has yet to fully comprehend the true glue that keeps the universe growing within its sphere.

In the meantime, the debate rages on. Until both communities get comfortable with the idea that there is room at the table for both perspectives, the debate will remain contentious. Someday, I hope, there will be a meeting of mind and spirit. Until then...

... semper fi.

#211 - The Arrogance of Harvard

(H/T: Mrs. Woody, as usual!)

Oh, to have the clarity of vision and nobility of purpose of an old Ivy League school. Harvard University (pronounced "hahvahd" by the cogniscenti) is not only accepting homeschooled students, but is willing to help assimilate them into "normal" society during their first year at the school.

On behalf of homeschooling families across the country, let me just thank Harvard for having the guts to admit that higher education is more about having sex than taking classes. Also, in a marvel of investigative reporting that only Mary Mapes could fully appreciate, your Woundup Weporter has uncovered evidence that Harvard University now considers homeschooling to be another form of compulsive substance abuse, similar to alcoholism. More on that later.

First, one must be grateful that truly visionary university administrators like Kathy Kushner dedicate their professional lives to making sure our backward children are properly introduced to the party-hearty life of a college student in the United States. At approximately $27,000 a year, parents want to know that their youngsters are well versed in the art of wasting time and money. It's a full package, really, that includes learning how not to appear smarter than your fellow classmates (or, no doubt, your professors), how not to appear awkward at your average pharm party, and how to increase your personal focus on sex. Perhaps Ms. Kushner hopes that the students will try to get it out of their systems earlier so they can buckle down to work by the time they reach their senior year.

It's unfortunate, if not unexpected, that so many homeschooled youths rebel at the thought of having such a prestigious institution treat them like inmates at a local juvenile detention center. Along with the socialization experiments, they are made to live in the same dorms as other homeschoolers. While not yet in evidence, it would not be unreasonable to believe that in the near future, homeschool freshmen will be required to wear striped uniforms and have stylized "H" emblems tattooed across their foreheads. The emblems would always be visible because the students' heads would be shaved prior to beginning their studies. Some university staffers are rumored to have been given "SS" pins to wear on their lapels.

Such segregation is unsurprising given Harvard dean James Muesten's opinion of homeschool families:

"Homeschooled children tend to come from white, evangelical families, and frankly, those people — I don't want to call them rubes — have a lot to learn about broader culture." He later retracted the comments, saying they were made "in the spirit of the interview" which was free-wheeling and "not entirely serious." He said he thought the Vermont newspaper was satirical and he had tried to "make a joke that turned out not to be funny." He apologized, but affirmed that the homeschool dorm was a good idea that would prove itself over the years.

"Fitting In is a great program," he said. "If you're homeschooled and you're coming to Harvard, this is the way it is."

At the same time freshmen are subjected to the school's "Fitting In" program, they also have an opportunity to recant their mistaken beliefs in such an obviously right-wing extremist form of education. Listed among the university's many associations and organizations is one entitled "Homeschoolers Anonymous." The official website for this group is disappointing, to say the least. I had expected to find at least a link to the 12 step program they must have designed to purge their initiates of all traces of homeschooled superiority. Instead, they offer the following mission statement:

Homeschoolers Anonymous is an organization dedicated to ensuring an active community that promotes the facilitation of a healthy transition from homeschooling to Harvard student life. We believe that by creating a network of support through this community of individuals who understand the issues surrounding this transition, we can foster the development of a positive foundation upon which a rich educational and social experience within the ivy walls of this hallowed institution that is Harvard University can be made. In addition, we also believe that it is our solemn duty to heighten awareness of homeschooling and the surrounding issues on our campus.

I work for a huge multinational aerospace corporation, and even we couldn't come up with such a convoluted and self-important collection of double talk. And we get paid to write this tripe!

So there you have it, homeschoolers of America. The halls of upper education are well represented by the arrogance of the king of Ivy League campuses. If Harvard is so accepting of homeschooled students, you can only imagine how the others will react. Perhaps they'd like to call a summit meeting to discuss the issue.

I plan to bring my pitchfork.

#210 - Don't Let the Door Hit You...

Nearly everyone's common blogological ancestor, Glenn Reynolds, serves up this WaPo article regarding Nissan's relocation of its headquarters and over 1,300 jobs from Gardena, California, to a suburb of Nashville, Tennessee. There is talk about this being another "blow" to Governor Ahnold, but that just doesn't wash. As one of Glenn's readers pointed out, it's not like the Republicans haven't been trying for decades to make California more business friendly. The simple truth is, it's just awfully expensive to do business here in California, particularly in the larger metropolitan areas where housing generally exceeds $360,000 (for a shack with plumbing), and a tax structure that should have bankrupted nearly everyone.

Even Hollywood, for whom I hold no love, feels this pinch. They keep imploring the state to cut them some slack so they can keep more production in the local area, but to no avail. This is surprising insofar as Hollywood is a hotbed of liberalism, and they just can't seem to get any relief from their liberal buddies in the legislature. I mean, they donate millions to Democratic coffers as a community, and this is the thanks they get. Hmph. Maybe if Warren runs... nah! He'd only confuse things.

Anyway, Nissan's move is just the latest salvo in this ongoing battle. Other companies have pulled similar maneuvers without raising so much as an embarrassing question or two from the MSM operatives. Faced with burgeoning costs on the Space Station project, Boeing moved 1,100 engineers and other technical professionals to Houston and other locations. Their reasons generally revolved around making the engineers more "accessible" to their government customers, but you just know a healthy part of that decision had to involve Boeing's negotiated administrative rates with NASA. Those rates take into account the taxes and fees the company must pay to do business in California, and it's just getting too expensive to justify any longer. When you tell this to state pols, they will pull the standard "I Feel Your Pain" frowny face, but they don't really understand the problem. They get their pension whether your company stays in California or not.

Woody, of course, has his opinions on this topic. Personally, I'd like to see about two or three thousand more companies of varying sizes leave California for good. Let's lose, say, about 20 to 50 thousand more jobs. Most of them would have to come from Los Angeles and the Silicon Valley, of course, but they need to go. What we need here is a solid glut of cheap housing. Primarily, we need about a 30% foreclosure rate in every state politician's neighborhood, so they get the idea that their current policies are choking the local economy.

I recognize that this is likely never to occur, but I can dream. In the meantime, California will continue to be more about speculation than about real productivity, and companies like Nissan will continue to recognize that there are greener (and more economically friendly) pastures elsewhere in the country.

I'll be shopping for a house.

#209 - Ahnold's Boat Forgot to Float

Poor Ahnold. What's a seemingly disgraced soon-to-be-ex-Governor to do? Every single one of his reasons for having an expensive special election have been shot down before his eyes and, worse yet, no one seems to care very much.

I mean no one.

Interestingly enough, even the political pundits of the MSM seem to have dropped California's election results like a bad breakfast burrito. There's been maybe two days of political commentary and, suddenly, it's all disappeared. There has been an almost eerie silence from Sacramento since the election. Seems the entire executive and legislative branches have chosen to leave town rather than discuss what's just happened.

This could be because what's really just happened is: nothing.

As far as the Democrats are concerned, the election was a walk. Oh, sure, they outspent the Governor by nearly a two to one margin, but then they always outspend their opponents. That's what soft money is for. You have to make people think it's scary to vote against them. But the Democrats probably knew something that Ahnold didn't: the Republicans just weren't engaged in this campaign.

Take a look at the list of initiatives. Begin with the "Big Four;" those initiatives personally sponsored and backed by the Governor himself. The issues of teacher tenure, labor union money, forcing a balanced budget, and even redistricting are four of the most complicated (and, therefore, most boring) issues currently infesting state government. Each one is so deeply entrenched in the law books that no single initiative - even a well designed one - will solve the problem. As for the others, well, how many times have we tried to reform prescription drug policies, utility price controls, and even (shudder) teenage abortion laws?

Apparently, one too many times to suit most Republicans. Take the issue of teenagers requiring parental consent before getting an abortion. While it may sound noble to require parents to be informed that their children are asking for an abortion, what's the reality here? What savvy parent who truly cares about their daughter would be completely unaware that their child was having sex, got pregnant, and is now seeking an "easy" way out? The ones who actually communicate with their children and stay actively involved in their lives probably (I'm sure there are exceptions) don't have to deal with that. So it's the kids who feel a need to "play" the system and stay just under the parental radar that this law would have captured, and they are the most likely ones to get the abortions, legal or otherwise. Another near-useless law.

Teacher tenure? Pshaw. Nothing we've tried in the last thirty years has ever had any effect - positive or negative - on producing quality teachers who in turn produce quality students. The pressures our kids face are societal, not legal. It's in the family that a kid either excels or disintegrates. School is merely the most visible component of a child's life, because that's where we "test" the kids. If the test scores are bad (and they almost always are), then the kids must be failing. And if the kids are failing, the schools certainly are. Unless you talk to the teachers, who for years have claimed that moneyovercrowded classrooms, moneylack of materials, and moneycorrupt administrators are to blame, along with every Republican who ever registered to vote. Either way, Proposition 74 would have had little effect. I voted yes, but (as I said before) unenthusiastically.

Any initiative to reign in the organized labor unions must be met with utter contempt by the voting public. As I mentioned in my previous post, the unions have become the very things they fought against over a hundred years ago. They have become the corrupt bureaucracies that use heavy-handed scare tactics to control their memberships, and are not above the use of occasional violence or threats to enforce their image of victimization. They are the very definition of the Entitlement Mentality. Efforts to correct their corruption through legal means are always doomed to fail. Why should Republicans get passionate about something they know won't go away without a highly organized national effort?

I'm not as old as some people think, so when I say I cannot remember the last time Sacramento passed a budget on time, you'll have to take my word for it. Maybe they have, and I was busy that year. Still, the more deeply divided the legislature becomes over basic issues, the longer this process is going to take. At some point, some genius will figure out that we have to start passing budgets five years in advance in order to have them approved on time. Until that happens, you can legislate the process all you want. They'll still never get it done when they're supposed to. The Governor will always have to resort to unusual means to get money to the places he needs it, and the opposing party will always be hacked off about it. Another no-win situation.

And on, and on, and on.

So, here's the lessons Ahnold should have learned this year:

1. If you want to have a special election, make sure you've earned it first.

2. Ballot initiatives need to capture the attention and interest of the minor players. "Voters," I think you call them. Without their interest, you have no chance.

3. If you absolutely must raise an issue that's never been successfully challenged before, make sure your vision is worthy of deep analysis and discussion by all sides. Don't assume your constituents "get it" just because they elected you in the first place. And, finally,

4. Never let the President come to your state during the election to raise money for himself. Looking like a beggar at the table is bad politics.

#208 - Woody's Voter's Guide for Curmudgeons®

It's time to take a curmudgeonly look at the various ballot initiatives on which we will be voting tomorrow and provide my reasons (such as they are) for the positions I've taken. If you're looking for in-depth analysis of any of these measures, look elsewhere. I may joke about some of what is discussed here, but my votes will be serious. If I say yea or nay, I mean it. You may have to read between the lines to find out exactly why.

[A tip of the ol' hat to Boi from Troy who neatly summarized his own views on these propositions and included invaluable links to background data on all the props!]

Proposition 73
The so-called "parental notification" amendment will require notifying a parent before performing an abortion for any underaged girl.

As a parent, the idea that either of my little girls could one day find themselves pregnant before they come of age is extremely worrisome. Rest assured that Mrs. Woody and I are doing everything we can to preach, exhort, encourage, and otherwise enforce abstinence for the Woodyettes. I've got the cardboard boxes with breathing holes ready to go the minute I detect any incipient male gender interest, and duct tape to seal the holes when they turn 16. (You always thought that was just a joke, didn't you?) I also have my brother-in-law-the-deputy-sheriff on speed dial.

Beyond those reasonable measures, I have to learn to trust my little girls. I dearly hope that, when they reach those critical years of adolescence, they will be able to confide everything in their Mom and Dad, even if some things might cause pain and heartache initially. I believe Mrs. Woody and I are mature and stable enough to be able to deal with such things in a reasonable and loving manner.

Then and only then will I put the boy that did it in the hospital. Count me as a YES on 73.

Proposition 74
This one increases a new teacher's probation period from two to five years, and modifies a school board's ability to dismiss a less-than-qualified teacher.

Ho hum. Another attempt to "fix" public education in the great (whoopee) state of California. I have no real feelings for this one in either direction, primarily because we homeschool, and "teacher quality" is not an issue in our academy. My kids have the best, and they're thriving.

In this case, one more attempt to reign in the madness can't really hurt, and certainly won't further flush a system that's already in the u-bend. Woody votes YES, if somewhat unenthusiastically.

Proposition 75
In simple terms (and we have to keep it simple for union leadership, right?), this proposition prohibits the use of union dues for political purposes without prior consent of the members.

The advertising for this one kills me. While the leftist unions try to show it as an attempt to "silence" their voice, one wonders just how much membership money was spent to create and air the campaign in the first place. Mrs. Woody, who was an active educator for several years, assures me that, contrary to the adverts, union members do not already have "protections" in place to prevent their dues and fees being used politically. Not unless you're on the board of that union, at any rate.

Put another way: the unions have become exactly what they fought against over a hundred years ago - corrupt bureaucracies with little regard for those they're supposed to protect.

Woody's take: Shut up and show us your cooked books, guys. We're voting YES on 75.

Proposition 76
Ah, yes. Schwarzenegger's "grab the money and run" initiative. This one imposes limits on state spending (current year plus some reasonable adjustments based on three year averages), and revamps provisions of Proposition 98. Also allows the governor to reduce budget appropriations under certain circumstances.

This one is being lambasted as nothing short of a political "power grab," which is - let's be honest - redundant. There's no such thing in politics as a "powerless" grab, no matter what you choose to call it. When I was a pup in high school, my American Gov teacher delineated the difference between Democrat and Republican. "They both want to spend money. The difference is how they want to spend it." I have found that to be more and more true in the ensuing years.

It's real title should be the "What to Do When the Legislature Refuses to Pass a Budget" act. That's really the only way the governor can "grab" the money, and there are no guarantees on either side that the governor would do anything more stupid than Sacramento does today. At least with this initiative the governor can look like he's doing something constructive. All he can do today is hurl sexist insults at them. Color me YES on 76.

Proposition 77
The notorious "Redistricting" initiative. This one scares the heck out of the libs, and with good reason.

Imagine that your two terms as Assemblyman are up and it's time to either run for State Senate or cut bait. What's a poor legislator to do? Redraw the lines! Sure! That'll work! I'll just create a new district and guarantee myself a shot at two more terms!

In the "Desperate Enough to Hire Living Fossils as Spokespersons" category, the No on 77 forces have made retired Judge Wapner their figurehead for this campaign. Give me a break. I was never a big Wapner fan when he was newly retired from the bench and farced his way through People's Court. Now I have to watch him try to stand upright and read his copy from cue cards that are the size of Buicks behind the camera. (On the other hand, the commercial showing three "judges" redistricting California into the shape of Texas makes me laugh every time. It's probably the only clever commercial of the entire election!)

Sorry, assemblypersons and senators. You can't do the job you were elected to do in the amount of time we've given you to do it. Go find another ball park to play in. Woody votes YES on 77.

Propositions 78 and 79
Drugs: Who Pays and Who Plays?

Proposals like these spring up about every other election cycle here in California. Democrats always try to make this an issue at a national level during general elections, but tend to fail miserably because free markets abhor working under price controls. Also, any attempt to control pricing of pharmceuticals tends to dilute the ability of drug manufacturers to continue research and development of newer, more potent medications.

Whatever the case, both initiatives are being fought over primarily by the drug companies and the insurance industry. They're both badly written and contain enough loopholes to keep lawyers happy for decades to come.

Want real reform? Update MediCal to include medications that seniors and disadvantaged people really need. Now. And apply pressure to Washington to do the same with Medicare. Then you'll get my attention.

Woody sez NO thanks to 78 and 79. In no particular order.

Proposition 80
"The Affordable Electricity and Preventing Blackouts Act" (according to its proponents).

Pardon me while I snort derisively. Price controls sound nice, but what happens when the providers no longer want to play ball? We will be stuck with a pricing structure that was enacted by ballot, and would then be locked until it could be voted on again, or somehow overridden by the California Supreme Court. In either case, if we somehow create another Enron-like debacle, we'd have Hades' own time undoing it.

Things may not be pretty now, but they'd be worse if 80 passes.

This one gets a NO from Woody.

One Last Thing
Just vote tomorrow. Everyone has an opinion. As long as you've studied it and are clear in your thinking, vote. I'd hate to wake up on Wednesday and discover that the main reason my life got worse overnight is because people decided it wasn't worth fighting over. If I'm gonna lose, I'd rather there had been a fight. Forfeiture just doesn't work in a democracy.

#207 - Short-Circuited Court of Appeals

(Noted in many places, but especial thanks to Mrs. Woody!)

So it happens that the 9th U. S. Circuit Court of Appeals, located in (where else?) San Francisco, has rejected a lawsuit brought by families in Palmdale, California who claim that the local school district violated their rights as parents by surveying their children about sex.

Circuit Judge (and Rocket Scientist) Stephen Reinhardt wrote:

"...no such specific right can be found in the deep roots of the nation's history and tradition or implied in the concept of ordered liberty."

That's probably true, but you will also "not find" reference to any constitutional right or authority - deeply rooted heaven only knows where - of the public schools to assume that responsibility, either. Period.

However, this is San Francisco we're talking about, as well as a Circuit Court that has been overrun by the same liberal think-tank mentality that brought us both Dr. Spock and Berkeley. The ghost of Timothy Leary lives on in the 9th Circuit Court.

Unfortunately, modern society has created a safe-haven for such thinking, and believes more and more that all parents are morons. Our children can only learn these things at the hands of embittered unionized teachers who are becoming increasingly distracted by over-crowded classrooms, spending their union dues on political propaganda, and complaining about Schwarzenegger's failure to pay back the $2 billion he "owes" them. I mean, owes the kids. Furthermore, our rights as parents to determine when and how our children will be taught about these things appears not to exist in the minds of the Court. Or liberal politicians. Or the California Department of Education. Or, no doubt, the ACLU.

Not that we're bitter.

All this by way of expressing gratitude for two things:

1. We homeschool. End of problem.

2. We no longer live anywhere near Palmdale. That's cause for gratitude, just because.

UPDATE: More on this over at Memento Moron.

#206 - Anonymity vs. False Identity

Very interesting implosion over at Banner of Heaven. Just scroll through various posts and you'll quickly see what I'm talking about. Apparently several of the regulars were posting as characters they had made up, presumably to add a little "spice" to the discussions over on the Bloggernacle. Many of those regulars are now feeling a need to apologize for allowing the schtick to get out of hand, and perhaps discredit one family in particular.

Actually, I've not kept up much with BoH since joining the LDS ring myself. Every once in awhile someone would surf over here from BoH out of curiosity, but I've never had any steady interest from anywhere in the so-called "Bloggernacle." Truth is, I never should have put the Woundup on their lists because I rarely deal with spiritual matters here, except to complain whenever someone pulls a stunt like "designer scriptures." The Inner Dad deals much more with family and religion, but doesn't get much play time on the Bloggernacle. Go figure.

But my primary purpose for this post was to point out that while I never (or, at least, extremely rarely) use my real name, it's only because there's a difference between anonymity and false identity. The bloggers of Banner of Heaven are finding themselves in the awkward position of having to apologize (or at least explain themselves) for having misled their readers and for giving false impressions of the intent of their blog. I would like to hope that I don't have that problem in either of my blogs.

"Woody" is an old nickname that began more or less while I was on my mission. I also went by the moniker of "Dr. Ply," but that's a story for another day. "Woody" is also the name I was using when Mrs. Woody and I found each other - online - after a protracted absence of fifteen years during which I had been married and divorced. Having become addicted to MOOs and MUDs and their chat-room mentalities, I quickly realized the benefit of using an anonymous identity on the internet.

Now, once upon a time, back in the bad ol' telnet days, I did try a false identity or two. I did it mainly to do a little sleuthing at a time when my life was in tremendous upheaval, and I didn't like what I saw. Rather than allow myself to glory in such nonsense, I abandoned the identities before they did any real harm (as far as I know), and returned to the business of trying to get on with my life.

After Mrs. Woody and I married, our life together quickly became a whirl of newlywed activity and preparation for a new family. There was little time for anything but growing together and dealing with all the day-to-day family matters that always occupy large chunks of our time and thought. When I became aware of blogging as a potential outlet for my creative writing abilities, I quickly jumped in and started pounding away on the keyboard, but with a greater sense of purpose than I ever had when I was MOOing or MUDing.

I know I've said this before, but it bears repeating in the wake of Banner of Heaven's growing pains: Both the Woundup and Inner Dad need to be taken with requisite grains of salt. I would like to think that it's relatively easy to tell when I'm being serious (like now) or when I'm pulling everyone's leg. Sort of. I have two blogs so it becomes easier for me to keep my ranting and complaining separate from my family-oriented writings.

I use the anonymous IDs for the obvious benefit of keeping my real life as private as possible. It's not that I'm hiding anything; regular readers of either blog know how I live. They know enough about me that if they ever met me in real life there would be no surprises. I even use my real photo, for Pete's sake. I just don't want identity thieves to get too much info and give me more trouble than already appears occasionally on my credit cards. Also, I have four children and their lives to consider and protect. With all the predators running loose in our increasingly "progressive" society today, that's a concern I will never violate. My girls will always be "Woodyettes" until the day they are ready to announce themselves to the world in whatever manner they choose. And not until they're old enough to handle it. Mrs. Woody and I can look after ourselves.

I feel for the Banner of Heaven writers. It's an uncomfortable thing to have to apologize like that. I applaud them for doing so, and hope they'll continue to contribute to the discussion. For the record, I never once worried about their opinions, except to occasionally clarify my own position on one or two of the thornier questions that were raised. And I always did so by way of comment on their space...

...anonymously, of course.

#205 - Exxon Profits From Creative Management

During the energy crisis of the 70's, Exxon was widely viewed as the Great Satan of corporate profiteers. They were the smelly pirates with bad breath and worse hair who raided our pocketbooks and shoveled our money directly into Swiss bank accounts, all the while refusing to apologize for their lack of corporate citizenship and common decency. When the Valdez dumped so much oil into one of the most pristine ecosystems on earth, their corporate image was lower than President Bush's current approval rating. Throughout the entire crisis the company merely sneered at our whining and carping, and rode out the storm in their plush offices while the rest of us rode it out in line at the gas pump.

Flash ahead to our current crisis where prices dance around either side of $3 a gallon at the pump. Once again Exxon executives refuse to acknowledge that their current record-setting profits are any indication whatsoever that they may be sticking a very sharp implement into very sensitive regions of our national psyche. "Consumers don't get it," they pontificate. "They can whine all they like, but we will continue to make money as long as there's oil in the ground. If they don't like it, they can kiss our balance sheet." Executives from Shell and Chevron could be seen snickering behind the curtains.

Being the dumb consumers that we apparently are, we make the false assumption that their obscene profits have something to do with supply and demand. For most of my adult life I've just assumed that whenever the oil companies wanted to make more money they would blow up a refinery somewhere (or, to throw us off their scent, generate a category 4 hurricane in the Gulf), then sit back and watch us pay through the nose to keep gas in our cars and generators.

What a fool I've been.

Turns out that it is not merely through a calculated reduction in our fuel supply that the oil barons fatten their collective pork (although it certainly helps!), but also through some very creative internal management which drives down their administrative costs and widens their already overlarge margins. In fact, I'm surprised this technique hasn't been widely touted in MBA programs across the country by now.

Actually, I can see how this might have come up in some executive's MBA studies. In any such program there are requisite (read: necessary but excruciatingly dull) courses that deal with internal management. This is where they learn such things as how to save money by reducing the amount of office supplies you have on hand, or cutting back on employee recognition programs so there will be enough money in the budget for executive bonuses at the end of the year. Most executives tend to sleep through these classes because they already instinctively know these things. Look at Michael Ovitz, for crying out loud. You think he got that $140 million by being Employee of the Month?

Just for a joke, one instructor - probably looking to see if any of his students still had a pulse - said something like, "Hey, you know those flu shots that so many companies offer every year? Wouldn't it be a hoot if, instead of flu shots, you gave them injections of saline or something?" Then he laughed to show that he was, after all, just kidding.

Unfortunately, an Exxon exec who was in that class snapped out of his torpor and somehow thought he'd just been given a project to do and report back on later in the class. So, in Baytown, Texas some "fake flu vaccines" were offered to participants in a health fair sponsored by the company. About 1,000 employees participated. Fortunately, no one seems to be permanently injured, and the company is already levelling blame at the doctor who supplied them with the vaccines; but, let's be honest, who's going to believe them after they posted over $25 billion in profits in just the first nine months of the year?

So, I'm guessing that this Exxon exec is now on the company's fast track. He'll score high on his final in the class. He'll get the bonus, the penthouse, the corporate jet, and the Ginsu knives. The employees will be offered free counselling and blood tests. It's another win-win scenario for the world's most successful gentlemen of fortune.

Make that: "Fortune" with a capital "F."

#204 - Get Rich Or...

In the ever-sarcastic "color me surprised" category, we present the story of a clueless major entertainment studio and its ability to advertise its diverse films with tact and sensitivity.

I don't normally get too worked up over local protests since I rarely know enough about either side of the issue to offer an opinion of my own. In this case, however, I have to side with the protestors.

Paramount has made a film. No big deal, since that's one of Paramount's alleged core competencies. The film is called "Get Rich or Die Tryin'," and it has a decidedly street-violent theme. In fact, nothing I've read about the film so far compels me in any way to go see this one. Having seen some of the advertising for the film I can assure you that neither I nor my family will be subjected to this glorification of gangsta life. But it is the advertising that the protestors are targeting.

Specifically, protestors in South Central Los Angeles - an area especially prone to gangs and their attendant killing lust - are complaining about the presence of a billboard for the movie showing a microphone in one hand and a gun in the other. As I heard it on a local radio report, the billboard is highly visible from a day care center, and in an area where gun-related homicides have occurred recently. The protestors represent those few people still living in South Central who understand all too well that movies like this will do nothing to alleviate the problems they face every hour of every day. They'd like nothing better than to see the gangs go elsewhere, but know they're fighting a seemingly insurmountable evil. The gangs want us to believe that this movie means there's always hope. No one besides the gangs and liberal apologists buys into that argument.

Paramount, being in favor of making money on their projects, has declined to comment thus far on this little hiccup. Needless to say, they see no correllation between the billboard and violence in the streets of Los Angeles. It would only be the tiniest of coincidences that some hood gets tanked up on the substance of the day, sees the billboard, and decides that a shooting spree is just what the doctor ordered to relieve his stress. Yessir, and serves 'em right for being on his turf in the first place. Paramount will argue that the violence is always there, and that in no way was the billboard intended to glorify senseless violence. Except for the fact that the movie fronts the idea that (as most of us have long suspected) many rappers probably get their starts by being gangsta drug pushers before becoming millionaire recording stars, I might agree with them. As it is, I'm not quite convinced in this case.

You see, the movie's appeal will be largely to the hip-hop/rap crowd, not a few of whom seem to find street violence as a perfectly acceptable way to express their inner feelings. Paramount knows that it would be throwing away perfectly good advertising dollars to mount such a billboard in your average conservative community. Any first year marketing student knows that you target your advertising where it's most likely to sell, and the gangstas live in communities like South Central.

That's who's going to see the movie, and that's where I have absolutely no plans to be any time soon. Especially not after this movie opens. In the meantime, I'm hoping Paramount will find some semblance of a clue in the future.

I won't hold my breath.

#203 - And Now for Something Truly Ineffective...!

By way of a homeschool news list to which we subscribe comes word of a falling out between American Girl™, and conservative activists. Interestingly, the article is published by "The Capital Times" which bills itself as "Wisconsin's Progressive Newspaper." This might explain why the headline reads "Conservatives diss American Girl" (emphasis mine). I would like to think that this is primarily why these "conservative activists" come off as pompous baboons in the article, but there's a fundamental truth that needs to be addressed in any case:

Conservatives make lousy boycotters.

The idea here is that American Girl, which creates and markets a line of dolls and the historical fictions that accompany them, is in league with Girls, Inc., which states that at least part of its objective is to promote the idea that girls should be allowed to choose what's best for their lives (read: abortion and lesbian rights). This, the conservatives say, is unacceptable. They're "not ready" to call for a boycott of American Girl products yet, but they'd sure like us to tell American Girl how displeased we are that they "support" this subversive group by sponsoring some of Girls Inc's worthier pursuits. In other words, American Girl indirectly supports abortion and lesbian rights by sponsoring Girls Inc's math and science programs for girls.

Okay, fine, I'm displeased. At the same time I see very little to get excited about in all this.

While conservatives (and remember, I consider myself to be such) talk themselves into a dither about liberal flag issues (abortion, gay marriage, etc., etc., etc.), they've done relatively little to protect their own positions politically and legally over the past several decades. It forcibly reminds me of a statement made in the play "1776!" when Robert Morris of New York describes a meeting of the New York legislature. "Everyone talks very loud and very fast, and no one listens to anyone else; with the result that nothing ever gets done. Beg the Congress's pardon." This perfectly describes the state of American politics today. Nothing ever gets done.

A prime example of this is every boycott ever called for against Disney and its theme parks. This happens every time the company announces "appreciation days" for diverse groups of people, or refuses to bar entrance to those people at the behest of whatever religious council is calling for it at the time. The council gets its collective noses bent out of shape and immediately calls for a worldwide religious boycott of all Disney theme parks and (by extension, of course) every Disney product ever created. Just as immediately, thousands of people who can't afford to go to the theme parks anyway boycott them, and Disney continues to make money hand over fist.

Think about it: what was the last successful boycott you ever heard about? The only one I personally remember was the boycott called for against California grape growers by Cesar Chavez to protest the working conditions of immigrant farm workers back in the early 70's. That one worked because it had an immediate impact on farmers' bottom lines. The workers were able to force better working conditions (at least in part), and organize themselves against future problems. Some might argue that the fight continues, but at least they won the right and ability to do just that.

Since then, however, I can't think of a single boycott that was called for that actually worked. Conservatives, in particular, just can't pull it off. I think it's because we're far too dedicated to capitalism to allow the flow of money in this country to be disrupted on mere principle. Smacks of anarchy, that does. If we boycott American Girl, we also impact the poor publishers, toy manufacturers, web designers, and other down-stream suppliers that support them. Chaos would ensue, and the terrorists would win. Can't have that!

For my part, I will continue as a parent to supervise my children's education. I will make sure they have a well-rounded understanding of the issues that they will face as adults when it's their turn to run the world. I will help them take full advantage of every opportunity that comes their way. I will continue my own boycott of Carl's Jr. because their advertising continues to be offensive and immature.

I will also continue to buy American Girl books because my girls like them so much. With apologies to the activists.

#202 - Entitlement Amok

Surfing through Joanne Jacobs' wonderful blog this morning yielded this little piece of incredulity. An 18 year old woman in New York moves out of her mother's house because her rules are too restrictive, then turns around and sues her parents for child support.

Why? Because she can.

Apparently, in New York (q'eul surprise!) a young adult is considered old enough to be on their own, yet young enough to still be entitled to support from their parents. I'm guessing the ACLU-happy legal beagles in New York had several field days dreaming this one up.

The daughter had problems with, among other things, a restrictive curfew and a no-tolerance policy of budget for such things as restaurants and a fashionable wardrobe. "Fashionable" isn't defined in the article, but in my mind it would be equated with "expensive." Her mother does not work, according to the article, so I'm guessing that any money she felt was due to her would have come from her father. For his part, he was probably looking forward to her 18th birthday (I know this feeling) so he could put that money to other uses. Finally the girl becomes an "adult," moves out, and is on her own. She lands a part-time job and (my guess here) realizes that living on one's own is expensive fashionable. How to get Mom and Dad to pay for her heart's desires?

Sue 'em.

Ostensibly she wants to use this money to go to college. She's attending a community college, so expenses would be minimal, but her job won't pay for tuition and living expenses. Most kids would deal with that particular pressure by living at home while attending college. But she "didn't feel right" living there, and now feels that her parents should simply shoulder the extra burden of paying both for college and her living expenses while she figures out what being an adult is all about. This, she says, is "only fair."

Assuming the facts in evidence to be essentially correct, this is a powerful demonstration of the entitlement mentality under which so many of our kids are growing. The basic premise of the entitlement mentality is, "you owe me everything I want, or I won't be happy and it will be your fault." All that's lacking in this case is for the girl to stick her head in the oven, a la "Bye-Bye, Birdie!" and claim that her parents never loved her.

If I were her mother I'd offer to turn on the oven for her.

My Dad was a tough old bird, but he loved his kids. His toughness was born of a post-Depression existence being raised by a very strict and thrifty mother and having to make his own way in the world, including two stints in the military. He made no bones that personal integrity was the human value he most treasured both in himself and in others. When I was a newly licensed driver I had an accident. I was so scared of facing Dad's wrath that I hid the fact for several days, until the other guy started calling the house looking for insurance information. Once my cover was blown, Dad went through the anticipated steam-blowing exercise, then sat me down and taught me an important lesson about accountability. The bottom line was covered by this statement: "If you land in jail, kid, you can expect to be there for a few days." The implication being that I would be allowed to suffer the consequences of my stupidity before eventually being bailed out. That thought sobered me up pretty quickly, and I was little more circumspect in my activities from that day on. Oh, I was still a squirrely teenager, to be sure. But I understood Dad and took his meaning.

This new generation I'm not so sure of. They don't seem to get "Life, Liberty, and the pursuit (not the "entitlement") of Happiness."

*sigh*

#201 - Poor Babies!

Kimberly Swygert of Number 2 Pencil neatly summarizes an LA Times article showing that nearly 20% of California high school seniors have failed California's graduation exit exam. Not good by any measure, and the rationalizing is already in full swing. Assuming you can handle the smell of decaying trout, surf on over to the Times and check out the full article.

The key word here is "entitlement." Social and educational apologists seem determined to show that we simply can't expect our kids to pass tests geared to at least two grades lower. We need to give the poor dears their diplomas so they can get into colleges that accept substandard skills. The usual excuses apply:

• Overcrowding.


• Inadequate materials.


• Underqualified teachers.


• Unmotivated kids.


• Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

I really hate to say it (since I'm no fan), but Jack O'Connell has probably the most cogent statement in this article:

"It's important to keep one core principal front and center: awarding a student a diploma without the skills and knowledge to back it up does the student a disservice," said O'Connell, who added that his staff would study the options spelled out in the new report.

(Quick note: Could it possibly be that a Times staff writer goofed on the proper usage of "principal" vs. "principle?" Just askin'.)

The thing that really galls me is that these kids should have been preparing for this test for twelve years. What have they been doing all that time? According to the apologists, they've been sitting in overcrowded classrooms with no materials and underqualified teachers. Which is why they have no motivation. Which explains why we need to give them more money, I guess.

Or not.