Yes, he DID have a chance!

I can't believe I'm recommending comments to a post over at the Crunchy Conservative Blog, but there are some good ones. I mean, a poster-boy for Mr. Dreher's favorite topic–child molestation–dies, and we get this one line in an otherwise plaintive piece: "If Jackson really did behave indecently with children, then he was a kind of monster." A kind of monster. I'm not the only person who notices the disconnect and the inaccuracy of the assertion that someone is not responsible for their choices as an adult just because they had a bad childhood. Commenter "alkali" nails it:

alkali
June 26, 2009 9:09 AM
1) Without disputing that Michael Jackson's father was a tyrannical and indeed abusive show business parent, I'm not aware of any evidence that he was history's greatest monster. To the extent we have reason to attribute Michael Jackson's odd behavior to his father's abuse, it's because Jackson himself constantly excused his behavior on that basis. To some extent, I'm willing to credit that, but the extremity of Jackson's behavior over the last 27 years (since he recorded Thriller in 1982) suggests that that claim was somewhat self-serving.

It is sort of a smack in the face to all the people I know who overcame abusive childhoods and didn't end up as hideous perverts to say that Michael Jackson didn't have a chance. (There's a part 2 to this comment with a great Bill Murray quote, but it wasn't as relavant to my point.)

Observer
June 26, 2009 10:22 AM
As a parent myself, I'd like to insert a caveat into this discussion, along the lines suggested by alkali.

The data we have suggests that Michael Jackson's father was something short of ideal. But it's quite a jump from there to attributing all of Michael's oddness and bad decisions back to dad. Even if (especially if) Michael himself was inclined to blame his father for all this.

Michael Jackson was an adult when he decided to change his skin color, to have his nose disastrously re-engineered, when he decided to go around talking (and singing) in a falsetto voice (and maybe, some have suggested, taking female hormones), when he started wearing lipstick, when he dangled his infant son off a second-story railing, when he formed what are at best inappropriate relationships with small children, on and on. Some of these decisions, the ones around blurring the distinctions between white and black, male and female, were also highly profitable decisions, part of his art.

However bad a daddy Daddy was, and however evil a place Hollywood might be, I just don't see the justice in allocating all the blame for this behavior away from Michael Jackson himself.

Yeah, does everyone in Hollywood mess around with little kids?

The only reason I would be tempted to make excuses for Michael Jackson's behavior is that I liked his work, at least to some degree. But don't you think this would be like making excuses for a priest who molested children by pointing out that he celebrated so many Masses and gave up every Saturday afternoon hearing confessions?

Now, next topic: Andrew Sullivan. I didn't read his eulogy for Jacko which Rod linked to; no time for nonsense right now. However a commenter named "Nomilk" starts off with a great, unanswered question:

Nomilk
June 25, 2009 9:33 PM
My question is why would a crunchy con read, promote, link to, or hat tip Andrew Sullivan?

Ah, but that is the great question. There are several lame answers and non-answers provided in the comments, and one typical call for him to "shut up". Maybe my commenters will do a better job?

Failure

The FeedBlitz drive ended yesterday. My goal was to sign up 15 readers, and I utterly failed to meet my goal. This is failure defined. Of course, I haven't blogged in several days, but I can't help that I'm human and have other things to do. Sheeeeeeeesh....

Words fail me. Let's see what the "Man in Black" says about the situation:


OMG, that is so rude, Mr. Cash! I'm shocked that you would make such an uncourteous gesture. After all, I did sign up three new people. Now they will probably stop reading my blog as well.

LOL: "We're not just talking about, you know, something else, you know, we're talking about my life, you know...."

I Missed This One

This is sooooo funny to me.


http://view.break.com/359628 - Watch more free videos

HT Pud.

Don't Be So Chintzy with the Nutella

This is so suburban. I love it. I mean, come on -- making s'mores with an electric range? At least the marshmallows aren't being microwaved, that's simply inhumane.

"Trouble dolls"

Ain't too proud to bleg

The Wikipedia glossary of blogging terms defines the noun bleg as follows:

A blog entry consisting of a request to the readers, such as for information or contributions. A portmanteau of "blog" and "beg". Also called "Lazyweb."

Sounds like me; I work really hard on this blog to make sure everyone knows how lazy I am. That's why I took some time off from watching television and eating Ruffles to put together the K Street Bleg to invite the mysterious blog commenter named "The Man from K Street" to start a blog.

I just think his comments are so dead on and cut through the digestive by-product of the pessimistas and the ivory tower condescension which is so prevalent in certain corners of the blogosphere. It's unfair that a lazy ass, or as I like to call myself, an "ambition-challenged person", has to wait so long inbetween K Street fixes.

So how about it, Mr. Man?

OH YEAH!! Ya look like a bunch o' dames....

But what a great tune, huh?

Who cares if "soothing" doesn't rhyme with "grooving". After reading the wikipedia entry on The Sweet and watching this video I can't believe this band wasn't one of the many informing the movie Spinal Tap. That little wink put me in mind of the hilarious "Flower People" tune from Spinal Tap's "psychedelic phase". Fave line from the article: "This dichotomy of bubblegum A-sides and heavy rock B-sides only served to confuse their teenage fan following." We wouldn't want to have rock bands doing anything which would confuse teenagers, now would we?

Carp & Cube

Jonathan comments to the last post:

I do not think writing for the National Review is what it used to be anymore. Sure, Dreher wrote for the Review but so did Gary Wills. He came up with concept of "Mater Si! Magistra No!" Look also what he had to do to get on the News Hours. He has checked his values at the door. Tell me the last article he wrote supporting Pro-Life views or for diversity in the media? Never! However, because he is against the war and tells enough Bush bashing jokes he gets included in with the other elites. Quite an example if you ask me.

Also can someone tell me of a Conservative Catholic who gets the status of Dreher, Kuo et.al.? Their isn't any. It has all the diversity of the Pravda.

Cubeland Mystic responds:

Jonathan, A liberal friend once said to me "Why do gay people want the Catholic Church to accept them? They should just go off and do their own thing. It is so much easier."

Well she was right. They should do their own thing, and start their own institutions rather than anger the people who dominate the institution they are trying to corrupt.

We should do the same thing here. We should have our own institutions including the media. Pauli posted on a man who is buying a radio station in San Fran. Are we all supporting him? Do we all support EWTN?

I get some of my news here at Est Quod Est. Why do we even care about diversity and liberal hypocrisy? We should apply ourselves to making the institutions we have successful.

I've mentioned to Jonathan in public posts and private emails in the past that I agree whole-heartedly with his assessment of the MSM. But I think Cubeland's point need to really be taken to heart. The "media" as a whole is diverse, probably moreso now than ever. Sure, it's irritating that the old liberal dinosaurs still have plenty of power and are too stubborn to change much. They're all like "dogs who returneth to their own vomit" in this regard, Dreher's vomit is Catholic Church bashing, Kuo's vomit is outright liberal goofiness posing as Christian charity.... Big name media clowns like Chris Matthews have even more disgusting rainbow-colored vomit featuring abortion rights pimping, military bashing, Republican baiting, Clinton-worship and those are just the big chunks....

Sorry, getting a little too realistic there. We can only spend so much time cursing the darkness before we get back to lighting candles. Or M-80's. (Wow, haven't seen one of those suckers in a while.)

I'm one to also predict the new push for the so-called "fairness doctine" is going to ultimately end up in nowheresville. There are many reasons for this, but the most blatant one to me is MONEY. If anyone thinks that all the people pulling down the swag from the El Rushbo/El Hannitybo Industrial Complex are conservative Republicans then you know less about American business than Wendell Berry.

I Like Mushrooms

From time to time, someone checks out this site from Kennett Square, PA. This always reminds me of Mushrooms because of the renowned Mushroom Festival which is held there each year at harvest time. I went there with me mates one year when my friend had a little booth for selling his printed mushroom merchandise. I've never consumed so many different fungal species in my life.

So if the the mystery person would like to reveal themselves that would be nice. I'm hoping it turns out to be a mushroom farmer. Then we can send him/her some money and he/she can start shipping the 'shrooms!

It was really weird...

I had my long coat on, but I'd left my hat in the car. I was walking toward the mall entrance when I felt like I was being followed. When I turned around I saw 5 guys with big cameras pointing straight at me! When they saw me, they looked confused and put their cameras down. Obviously this was a case of mistaken identity. I wonder who they thought I looked like.



Nahhh... cheekbones are too high....

Parents Should Be Seen and Not Heard

That's an appropriate lead-in for this TIME article about parents inflicting their own sense of cool on their progeny. I found it at the car dealership whilst performing remedial winterization a few days back. The long faces of the other NE Ohio patrons were glued to the gloomy weather reports on the lobby TV and they were probably wondering why I was laughing so hard. (I even had them photocopy it for me which helped to take the sting out of the bill, oy....) Excerpt:

Full disclosure: I have two young sons, and if anything, Pollack gets my experience unsettlingly right. I live in Brooklyn, which along with the Silver Lake area of Los Angeles is the apparent epicenter of the hipster-parent movement. When one of my kids requests the Magnetic Fields on the iPod, I swell with pride as fathers of another era did when their sons completed touchdown passes. And if it's easy to criticize Pollack's preciousness, it's because, like a good, self-aware Gen Xer, he does it for you. "I wonder," he writes, "what Ariel Dorfman, Primo Levi and Arthur Koestler, men who wrote memoirs about actual struggle, would think about the genre of whiny new-parent hand-wringing."

I know it's not the main point here, but this comedic-yet-scary piece segues with my rantings about how bad an idea it is to "live out loud" on the Internet. Putting everything out there in a premature memoir is loosening up parents and future parents to turn their kids into Gerber babies without the revenue stream. They think of their kids as just another part of their life instead of people who should be given some privacy. Ever hear of search engines? The World Wide Web is not a family slide show in the basement, folks!

I've told commenters to my blogs that I'm pretty liberal about what they write in the comments, but start mentioning my kids names there and see how long they stay up. In my view, you can't complain about child molestors if your blog readers know their names and ages and where they're going to school. People need to learn how to discuss things in general terms and save the rest for private email discussions.

In saying this I realize that I am busting on some of the blogs I read and enjoy and I don't mean to offend them or suggest that they don't care about their children's safety. But if I can figure out how to search using target terms to identify virtually public family photo albums and weblogs, then families who put all this personal stuff out there must consider that this trend might be the greatest thing to happen to child predation in a great while. Fortunately the new version of blogger has a feature to configure a blog to be "by invitation only" and require a login; that is what I would suggest for family use.

But Nothing Which Backs Up from the Drain

No doubt those of you on the growing list of readers have noticed that this blog is swiftly becoming a "kitchen sink blog" where I provide opinion, fodder, tripe, and what-have-you absolutely free of charge. There's also some good stuff. Like a good flea market, you should feel free take what you want and leave the rest.

(Hmmmmm.... is this just a way of disguising what I'm obsessed about? Interesting idea.... People who see conspiracies everywhere will certainly ask the question!)

One thing you don't have to worry about here are posts like "OMG, I can't believe that Paris said [blah, blah] and that guy kissed [blah, blah, blah] desperate houseflies [blah, blah]! Certainly the terrorists would hate us now if they didn't already!!" You might get everything including the kitchen sink from my mind, but nothing which backs up from the drain, even under the pretense that some kind of perversity meter is so necessary. No, the Disposall is run on a regular basis on that stuff.

(Which reminds me...)