That's almost as good as the fundie groups that cite the Onion article about how Harry Potter has led to a boom in children studying witchcraft and performing grim sacrifices when they try to get the HP books pulled from school libraries and such.
This is funny on three levels:
1) The drug thing. This is starting to become a habit. Pattern of behavior, second offense, recidivism - each trip through the legal system is going to be harsher and harsher. Even well-connected junkies, if they trip up enough times, will end up in some serious trouble.
2) The boner thing. Hahahahahaha, big man Rush Limbaugh has to take a fistful of boner pills to get his Vienna Sausage to stand at attention. Welcome to Instant Punchline territory. Public humiliation wise, he'd have been better off with a bottle of Percocets.
3) The sex thing. Why is an umarried middle-aged morals scold carrying around a bottle of V-pills? And why is he taking short trips to the Dominican with it? As Peggy Noonan liked to say, it's irresponsible not to speculate, so I'm speculating about no-questions-asked paid arrangements with underaged females. Or underaged males.
The Gore campaign missed a trick; they could have gotten some of the votes which went to Bush on the mistaken impression that he was a regular guy if they'd showed Gore backing up a farm tractor with a nice hefty piece of equipment behind it.
Wouldn't have helped - the media would have sprained its eyes rolling them at Gore's 'desperate and obviously insincere' effort to try and paint himself as something other than an unlikeable robot. The pundit class would have giggled themselves silly at this latest evidence that Gore 'doesn't know who he is' and 'is flailing around trying to find something, anything that will connect him to the average voter'. Then they would go on about the simple, folksy charm and winning personality of George W. Bush.
There really was nothing Gore could do in 2000 to break out of the box the media put him in. I remember watching the third debate, and before it started, the pundits had already placed him a no-win position - if he toned his act down, he'd be stiff and boring and robotic, but if he was engaged (like he was in the first debate), he'd be knocked as wild-eyed and unlikable and angry.
(And with all that, he still won the popular vote, and it took the combined efforts of the Florida secretary of state, a pre-arranged riot by bussed-in Republican hacks, and a corrupt majority on the Supreme Court to deny him his victory)
Of all the toxic trends that cause damage to our body politic, the rise of psychobiography and amateur drama criticism as the primary method of political writing and analysis (as opposed to careful consideration of policy, experience, and previous behavior, or even just letting the candidates speak for themselves) has got to be among the worst.
What makes this doubly weird is the general cultural embrace of Catholicism among the more strident Protestant sects over the last few years, with the general love-fest for JPII, the outsized celebration of the ascension of conservative Benedict XVI, and thunderous response to The Passion (which, with its emphasis on the suffering of Christ, was a very Catholic and not at all Protestant movie). Watching various Evangelical leaders and spokescritters wax rhapsodic about Ratzinger's elevation was one of the stranger moments of the last few years.
It seems that Catholicism is in vogue right up until the moment it espouses something outside the neo-Confederate Dobson/Robertson axis - then it becomes good ol' Romanism and Popery again. They'll embrace the Church when it supports their policies on gays, abortion, and contraception, but when the subject turns to social justice or immigration, it's back to 1886.
Tsongas carried around a little black-and-white teddy bear that he called "Pander Bear" and would liken it to Gov. Clinton. Because Clinton would tell Democratic interest groups (women, unions, minorities, enviros) that he agreed with their concerns - quelle horreur!
Tsongas was the sort of fellow that gave rise to the term "pain caucus". Oh, no, a Democratic candidate for President is telling union workers things they want to hear - better put a stop to that!
"I would have shelled out good money for Alien vs Predator if it had had Jerry Orbach in it."
Will you settle for a painting of Jerry Orbach battling pirates on the high seas?
http://www.brandonbird.com/lno_me.html
"The portkey problem always bugged me in Goblet of Fire also, but I then figured no one's ever been shown using a portkey to get into or out of Hogwarts."
Book 5 or 6 does explicitly mention that Hogwarts has very strong spells preventing unauthorized teleportation. An important subplot of Book 6 involves Draco Malfoy finding a way around this, and another subplot is about sixth-year students learning how to apparate (clear analogy to driver's ed), which requires deactivating the spells in a certain corner of the great hall for a certain period of time, so students can practice.
My favorite Quidditch glitch has to do with size of the crowd at the game. There are only about 280 students at Hogwarts (7 years x 4 houses x 10 students per year/house) and it's set in an isolated village, so how do the stands fill up with cheering throngs for each intramural match?
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2006 | 8 |
Total: 8 comments. View all these comments on a single page.
The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by Kent State University:
Show all comments by Kent State University.