The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Celebrity News So Sadly Weird I Can’t Even Think Up a Clever Headline for It

Posted on | January 18, 2011 | 10 Comments

“I knew everything about sex before I was even 7. . . . My mom left me at home when I was 14 with a credit card and a box of condoms and the keys to the car and said, ‘Don’t get pregnant and don’t drink and drive.’ . . . I had to be responsible for myself.”
— “Ke$ha” (Kesha Rose Sebert)

But before you say to yourself, “It can’t possibly weirder than that,” somehow it always does, and now we learn the messy details of Melissa Etheridge’s lesbian divorce:

A “source” close to Melissa Etheridge recently confirmed a scoop by the Enquirer that Etheridge has been dating longterm family friend, Linda Wallem, who served as the best woman at her 2003 commitment ceremony with now-ex, Tammy Lynn Michaels. Michaels and Etheridge have four year old twins together, and Michaels has claimed that Etheridge left her with little money and no clear explanation for why she was leaving. Now that the news is out, People is reporting that Melissa and this Linda woman . . . got together three months after Tammy and Melissa split up. Only Tammy, in her roundabout way, is disputing those claims and suggesting that Melissa cheated. She also adds that she’s known about it for a while, that one of her kids told her, and that Melissa accidentally had a box of dildos delivered to her house.

That’s got to be the absolute rock-bottom of celebrity weirdness, right? OK, then, I won’t bother to tell you the latest developments in Justin Bieber’s love life, because even writing the phrase “Justin Bieber’s love life” gives me the creeps.


Category: Celebrities, Sex

Report: Suspect Confesses to 3 Murders in Philadelphia ‘Kensington Strangler’ Case

Posted on | January 18, 2011 | 11 Comments

Police say Antonio Rodriquez, 22, has “made a full confession” in the case of three women murdered last year in Philadelphia’s Kensington neighborhood, according to Fox 29 (WTXF-TV) News:

Rodriguez was taken into custody Monday in connection with the case after being linked to the sexual assaults and strangling deaths of three women late last year in the city’s Kensington section.
He was previously jailed between June 5 and Aug. 19 on a narcotics charge, Philadelphia police say.

Police had Rodriguez, but the court turned him loose:

A drifter arrested in the stranglings of three young women in a gritty city neighborhood was identified by DNA tests that were delayed by a case backlog, but he has no history of violent crime, authorities said Tuesday.
Antonio Rodriguez, 22, the transient being held in the slayings, does have a criminal record: He was jailed on drug charges June 5 and released on bail Aug. 19, said Bob Eskind, a spokesman for the Philadelphia prison system. Rodriguez pleaded guilty Oct. 21 in that case but was immediately paroled and given one year of probation.
“This was just a judgment that was made in court,” Eskind said, adding that Rodriguez did not have a history of violent crime.

Showing that real life isn’t like “CSI,” it appears that a delay in DNA identification prevented Rodriguez from being arrested earlier:

Pennsylvania State Police acknowledged that for months they had the DNA of the man suspected of sexually assaulting and strangling to death three women in Philadelphia’s Kensington section last year but failed to enter it into their convicted-felon database because of a backlog.
The DNA was not put in the system until Jan. 10.
That meant that the suspect, 21-year-old Antonio Rodriguez, arrested Monday, had been loose for almost a month after investigators knew that the same DNA had been found at the scene of all three victims. . . .
Rodriguez, an ex-con, grew up not far from where the killings occurred. . . . Family members still live in the area but have declined to speak with the media about Rodriguez. . .
The state police received Rodriguez’s DNA from the correctional facility Oct. 25; however, because of a backlog, his DNA was not entered into their convicted-felon database for 2 1/2 months.

There will be a lot of angry questions about that delay, which could have saved at least one of the victims, but like I said, real life isn’t like “CSI.”

Category: Crime, Pennsylvania

Ricky Gervais Is Right!

Posted on | January 18, 2011 | 5 Comments

And perhaps in more ways than one:

With insulting humor directed at celebrities and at the event itself, Golden Globes host Ricky Gervais may not have impressed many of the attendees, but he scored with one demographic: political conservatives.
Delighted at the sight of Gervais belittling Hollywood elitists who they maintain do likewise to them regularly, the right-wing blogosphere lit up with positive reviews, even while more traditional media was critical of Sunday’s telecast.
Had Gervais “been as relentless in ripping apart Sarah Palin, her young children, Jesus Christ or George W. Bush, today the comedian would be celebrated as ‘edgy’ and ‘courageous’,” noted John Nolte, editor of the website Big Hollywood.
Instead, the Washington Post said Gervais “crashed” and the New York Times said he was “merciless” and in “bad form.” Philip Berk, president of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, said some of the things Gervais said “were totally unacceptable.”
Nolte, though, likened Gervais’ jabs at various actors and the HFPA as a much-needed “sucker punch” leveled against elite bullies who do likewise to middle America on a routine basis.
“We settle in for some relaxing entertainment at the movies or in front of the TV only to receive an “out-of-nowhere sucker punch aimed at our identity, faith or country. You former Law and Order fans know especially of what I speak,” Nolte blogged.
“And so last night Gervais gave the entertainment industry a little taste of what that sucker punch feels like.”
At Pajamas Media, a conservative and libertarian news organization, CEO Roger Simon wrote that Gervais “has been roundly attacked for being rude to practically everyone, including the HFPA, whose event it was. Problem is: he was right, particularly about the HFPA.”

Gervais’ lines about Charlie Sheen and Robert Downey Jr. were funny, I don’t care who you are.

Category: Celebrities, Hollywood

The MSM’s Peculiar Silence on Zeitgeist (Guess Which Network the Progressive Award-Winning New Age 9/11 ‘Truther’ Film Suggests Is ‘Manipulating’ News)

Posted on | January 18, 2011 | 2 Comments

“The last thing the men behind the curtain want is a conscious, informed public . . .”
— Zeitgeist (2007)

“If conservativism is defined as standing athwart history yelling ‘Stop!’ Zeitgeist is looking the other way yelling ‘Go!’ Have you seen any major media reports on Zeitgeist? Why is that?”
— John Saxton, “Three Exculpatory Facts the MSM Continues to Overlook in the Arizona Shootings,” Hot Air

Which is the drum I’ve been beating since last Thursday: It is truly astonishing that, after ABC News broke the story of Jared Loughner’s Zeitgeist obsession on Jan. 12, there was no substantial follow-up reporting by any major national news organization.

The Washington Post did a 2,700-word profile of Loughner on Thursday and the New York Times did a 5,000-word profile of the accused gunman Sunday, and neither story so much as mentioned Zeitgeist. We got some more reporting in a Sunday story by the Arizona Republic, but the rest of the major media seem determined to ignore this clue to Loughner’s lunacy. Meanwhile, conservative bloggers have begun digging into this two-hour conspiracy cult film and calling attention to crucial elements of Zeitgeist that point away from the absurd claim that director Peter Joseph was pushing a “right-wing” paranoia. 

In addition to its 9/11 “Truther” orientation, Zeitgeist won a progressive film award and the movie’s key sources are associated with the New Age movement. And now Maggie’s Notebook points to another telltale clue of the movie’s political orientation:

After listening to every word, along the way it came to Fox News. Eight frames showing Fox anchors and Fox news-talkers – in the context of television “lying” to the people and “manipulating” the news. . . .
Added to everything else we know, is there still anyone out there willing to stand up and say Zeitgeist is a product of the “right-wing?”

In analyzing Zeitgeist, it is important to look at the way the film uses imagery to convey meaning, a point to which I alluded Monday in my American Spectator column:

“They do not want you to think too much. … You had better wake up and understand that there are people guiding your life, and you don’t even know it,” says one of the film’s “experts,” anti-Masonic conspiracy theorist Jordan Maxwell, near the end of Zeitgeist . . . A few minutes later, while images including Jesus Christ, Bill O’Reilly and Saddam Hussein flash across the screen, the narrator says: “The last thing the men behind the curtain want is a conscious, informed public, capable of critical thinking, which is why a continually fraudulent zeitgeist is output via religion, the mass media and the educational system.”

Wake up and smell the Bush Derangement Syndrome, people.

Category: Arizona, Conspiracy Theories, Crime, Fox News, Hot Air, Media Bias, Zeitgeist

Berlusconi: Italy’s Charlie Sheen

Posted on | January 18, 2011 | 14 Comments

Except that Charlie Sheen isn’t 74 years old and is not — nor we hope, ever will be — head of state:

A “significant” number of young women prostituted themselves with Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, prosecutors investigating him said in a document made public on Monday.
The prosecutors also believe that Berlusconi gave some women free use of a string of apartments in a residential complex near Milan in exchange for sex, according to the document posted on the website of the lower house of parliament.
It details accusations leveled by magistrates, who are probing whether Berlusconi paid to have sex with 17-year old Karima El Mahroug, a nightclub dancer better known under the stage name “Ruby.” . . .
The probe focuses on El Mahroug, who says she received 7,000 euros ($9,318) after attending one of Berlusconi’s parties at his sumptous villa near Milan. Prosecutors allege that she went to Berlusconi’s residence several times between February and May 2010, when she was 17, and that he paid to sleep with her.

You know how liberals are always saying we need to be more enlightened and sophisiticated like the Europeans? This ought to give you a good idea what they mean by that.

(Via Real Clear World; hat-tip to Smitty in our Kabul bureau.)

Category: Italy, Scandal, Sex

John B. Judis: Just Makin’ Stuff Up

Posted on | January 18, 2011 | 3 Comments

Anyone familiar with the schisms and divisions among Republicans would be well advised not to read this article by The New Republic‘s senior editor while drinking coffee:

In short, for the first time since the Civil War, the United States has a political party that is ideologically cohesive, disciplined, and determined to take power, even at the cost of disrupting the political system. What accounts for this remarkable transformation? And how likely it is that the Republican Party will continue to act this way during the next two years?

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot? The Democrats of 2005-2008 weren’t “determined to take power”? Democrats bear no responsibility for “disrupting the political system”?

Judis begins by citing a 1960 political science textbook describing U.S. political parties as “creatures of compromise, coalitions of interest in which principle is muted and often even silenced,” an alleged tradition from which he says the Republicans have departed — a departure he suggests is both unique and unprecedented.

If this is not an altogether false history, it is certainly tendentious and overlooks important context. The book cited by Judis, Clinton Rossiter’s Politics and Parties in America, was published in the final year of the Eisenhower presidency. In the previous 30 years, after the Hoover debacle, the nation had been convulsed by the Great Depression, the New Deal and World War II. During the unprecedented 13-year presidency of Franklin Roosevelt, the GOP had fallen into a state of desperate political decrepitude. Republicans gained a congressional majority in 1946 and elected the war-hero Ike as president in 1952, but lost the House in 1954 and lost the Senate two years later.

The Age of Eisenhower was an era when the GOP drifted into a meaningless me-too moderation, the so-called “Modern Republican” movement that was denounced as ridiculous and unprincipled by William F. Buckley Jr. in his 1959 classic, Up From Liberalism.

In such an era, it was possible for Rossiter to see Americna political parties as “creatures of compromise,” but that tradition — if, indeed, it is historically accurate to describe it as a tradition — was ended by the revolutionary upheavals of the 1960s. And it is interesting that of all historians Judis could have cited, he sided Clinton Rossiter who, according to Wikipedia, committed suicide at age 52 in 1970:

His beloved Cornell was convulsed with racial conflict, including the famous armed occupation of the student union building in April 1969. Rossiter became prominent as a moderate voice among the faculty, urging some understanding of the African-American students’ frustrations. For this he was branded a traitor by hard-line faculty, some of whom (such as Allan Bloom) refused to speak to him again.

Ten years after he published the paean to moderation cited by Judis, then, Rossiter’s idealistic “moderation” was destroyed by an insurent radicalism with which it was incapable of coping.

John B. Judis? He came of age as a 1960s radical at Berkeley, and is busy re-writing history to reflect his own ideology. Those who can’t tell the truth about the past are not to be trusted as analysts of the present, and are poor guides for the future.

UPDATE: Like a rampaging elephant, Ed Driscoll never forgets: “In January of 2009, TNR urged the incoming president to “screw civility;” good to see they’re not changing course now.”

Category: Liberals

Regis Philbin, 79, to Retire

Posted on | January 18, 2011 | 4 Comments

And isn’t it about time?

Regis Philbin, a star of morning television for a generation, made a surprise announcement at the start of “Live with Regis and Kelly” Tuesday morning, telling viewers that he intends to step down sometime later this year.
The decision will mark the end of one of television’s longest runs on the same show for an individual host — 28 years. Mr. Philbin has shared the show with two chief co-hosts during his run, Kathy Lee Gifford and the current co-host Kelly Ripa. . . .
Mr. Philbin broke into his usual morning banter with Ms. Ripa, to say: “Well, I’ve got one of those announcements to make.” He added that he didn’t “want to alarm anybody” before declaring, referring to his producer Michael Gelman, “It’s going to happen. The station needs to know and Gelman needs to know and we all need to know. But this will be my last year.”
Mr. Philbin, 79, did not offer any specific reason for his decision other than to say, “There is a time. Everything must come to an end for certain people on camera — for certain old people.”

Certainly after so many years as a national TV star, Regis Philbin ought to have accumulated enough wealth that he can live comfortably the rest of his life, and I certainly wish him a long life.

I’m not anti-geezer. At 51, I’m a good ways down the road to geezerdom myself. But I’ve always thought it was wrong for people to ensconce themselves in a key position and then stay there past the point where they’re doing anything other than going through the motions — and preventing younger people from having an opportunity. There comes a time when a successful person ought to go play golf and write his memoirs.

One of the things that ruined CBS News was that Dan Rather stayed in the “Evening News” anchor chair until he was 75, preventing the organization from revitalizing its on-air personnel.

UPDATE: Democrat Sen. Kent Conrad has decided to retire rather than seek re-election in 2012, but unlike Philbin, it isn’t advanced age that’s driving 62-year-old Conrad out of the Senate. It’s the Big Red Wave, which hit North Dakota hard in the 2010 midterms, as Chris Cilizza of the Washington Post notes, “Former [Democrat] Sen. Byron Dorgan retired in the face of a challenge from popular [Republican] Governor-now-Senator John Hoeven while former Rep. Earl Pomeroy (D) was defeated by [Republican] Rick Berg.”

Category: Election 2012, North Dakota

Jared Loughner: Reefer Madness?

Posted on | January 18, 2011 | 48 Comments

The Tucson massacre provides arch-Tory Peter Hitchens an excuse to stick his thumb in the eye of libertarians:

The most likely cause is Loughner’s daily cannabis-smoking habit. The link between this drug and serious mental illness grows clearer every day. Wickedly, the dope lobby still tries to deny this and seeks to legalise it.
Loughner has been, for much of his short life, a habitual smoker of this so-called ‘soft’ organic drug. This is not in doubt. Police records, the testimony of U.S. army recruiters who rejected him partly on these grounds, and the accounts of several friends confirm that Loughner is a marijuana victim.
Yes, I know. Not all cannabis-smokers lose their minds. And not all cigarette-smokers get cancer. [Oooh! Taking shot at his brother Christopher? — RSM] But in both cases the risk is enough to cause concern.
When police caught him driving a car that stank of marijuana, Loughner was let off,
as he would have been here. So much (as usual) for the non-existent ‘war against drugs’.
Cannabis is now effectively legal in Britain and in several parts of the USA, where this dangerous and unpredictable poison is ironically permitted for ‘medical use’.
Arizona voters, fooled by years of cynical and shameful ‘cannabis is harmless’ propaganda, approved just such a stupid law in November.
The town council of liberal Pima (scene of the murders) last week took the first step towards licensing ‘dispensaries’ for dope.
Arizona has always had plenty of guns. America has always had heated political rhetoric. What is new is that it now has legal dope as well.
Those who are seriously interested in public safety should worry less about guns and radio shock jocks, and more about the little packets of madness on sale in every school.

Certainly a controversial opinion, but let me ask you try something. Take five minutes to watch the opening sequence of Zeitgeist and tell me if you don’t see its psychedelic element:

If you have any background in psychology, would you say that young people under the influence of marijuana — or salvia divinorum or cocaine or psilocybin, which were among the drugs Loughner reportedly used — are highly suggestible?

And did you notice what happened in that video from 2:45 to 3:05? A man writes “1+1 = 2.” A Bible is laid down, and a U.S. flag is laid atop it. Then, fading in over the red-and-white stripes of the flag, we see scenes of the jet flying into the World Trade Center on 9/11.

What does it mean? What is being symbolized and suggested by that 20-second sequence? Why do you think the drug-addled Jared Lee Loughner was so obsessed with Zeitgeist? And what ideas did it convey to him?

Understand that it is not necessary, in the case of a schizophrenic, to single out a single factor in his madness. Dan Collins writes with the authority of experience:

As other observers have pointed out, [Loughner’s] age when he began gradually to withdraw is consistent with the usual onset of schizophrenia — in the late teens and early twenties. We also know that among those who are genetically inclined towards schizophrenia, the use of marijuana makes it significantly more likely that they will suffer an onset episode. Mercifully, I don’t have to go through a full recitation of the evidence, because Salon . . . has interviewed the psychiatrist author of Surviving Schizophrenia, Dr. E. Fuller Torrey, who lays out the case as elegantly as anyone could. . . .

Dan delves into the difficulty of decoding the typical “word salad” gibberish of the schizophrenic:

Jared Loughner’s ideolect is inflected with bits and pieces of deconstructive linguistic theory. The basic idea is that words only refer to other words, in a closed system of signification. . . . There is no “objective” (at least human) “reality” apart from the signification conferred on it by language. It depends on the definition of what “is” is. . . .

Read the whole thing.

UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers! You may remember that, on the day after the Tucson shootings, Time magazine’s Joe Klein went on CNN and used what proved to be a very poor choice of words:

“I have used that very word, crap, to describe what appears on Fox News. . . . [T]he conspiracies that Glenn Beck promotes create this notion we’re about to fall off of the abyss, that helps to create a zeitgeist where nuts are empowered.”

You know who else hates Fox News? Yeah: The makers of Zeitgeist.

UPDATE II: Linked by The Lonely Conservative — thanks!

UPDATE III: Linked by Jacob Sullum at Reason‘s Hit & Run blog, where I contributed this comment:

Yeah, dopeheads are giving me hell in the comments on that blog post. This suggests to me that long-term marijuana usage makes people hypersensitive to criticism. I’m thinking about reporting their ISP addresses to the DEA and the FBI just to see the headlines: “ONLINE DRUG RING BUSTED.” Then the SWAT squad will kick in their doors, and Radley Balko will have another one of his cops-run-amok stories.
Crazy? Yeah. But wouldn’t it be fun?

It’s important to play on the paranoid fears of these drug-crazed hippies. Make ’em sweat, see? Every time they see a clean-cut, thick-necked guy in a dark sedan, they need to be thinking it’s a plainclothes narc doing surveillance, ready to serve an arrest warrant. And, hey, stoner — you see that van parked across the street? How do you know it’s not full of M-16-wielding SWAT cops getting ready to raid your house because they noticed your electric bill’s gone up since you put all those grow-lamps in your basement?

They’re coming to get you, dopehead scum!

You’d better flush your stash down the toilet now, before it’s too late, or else you’ll be handcuffed, locked up and sent to the state penitentiary.


Category: Arizona, Conspiracy Theories, Crime, Zeitgeist
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