IS THIS ANOTHER NEW FIRST FOR THE TIMES? Hope's obituary was written by the great Vincent Canby....whom Matt Drudge notes has been dead since 2000!

COMPARE AND CONTRAST: Bob Hope died today. I can think of no better tribute than Mark Steyn's column marking Hope's recent celebration of his 100th birthday.

Meanwhile, Chevy Chase is pitching explicitly anti-American products in Turkish commercials--when he isn't defending murderous dictators, of course.

PUT BLIX ON THE CASE! Back in March, Hans Blix was quoted as saying--without a shred of irony, five minutes before the war in Iraq broke out, "I'm more worried about global warming than I am of any major military conflict."

Today, a British scientist is quoted by AFP as saying:

Human induced global climate change is a weapon of mass destruction at least as dangerous as nuclear, chemical or biological arms, a leading British climate scientist warned.

John Houghton, a former key member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said Monday that the impacts of global warming are such that "I have no hesitation in describing it as a weapon of mass destruction."

He said the United States, in an "epic" abandonment of leadership, was largely responsible for the threat.

"Like terrorism, this weapon knows no boundaries," Houghton said. "It can strike anywhere, in any form -- a heatwave in one place, a drought or a flood or a storm surge in another"

C'mon Hans--disarm those pesky storm surges!

ALTERNATE REALITY: Following up on Randy Barnett's alternative reality theme, Mark Steyn writes:

The BBC, CBC and most of the European media have constructed an alternative universe and are content to frolic on its wilder shores. Time stands still in this world: Even though the confidently predicted civilian death tolls and humanitarian catastrophes never arrive, nobody minds. There's no reason why reality should ever intrude.

Unfortunately, Dean, Gephardt and about half the other Democratic candidates still live in the real world--or, more to the point, their would-be constituents do. These candidates are obliged to be, in Bill Clinton's words, ''politically viable.'' At the BBC and Le Monde and the Sydney Morning Herald, anti-Americanism is the New Universal Theory: It explains everything; it's the prism through which every event is viewed. But it's an unlikely strategy for American electioneering. One anti-Bush Democrat at a protest the other day carried a sign reading ''FRANCE WAS RIGHT!'' That's not a winning slogan, even in Vermont.

What happened this week is a foretaste of what the party can expect in the next 15 months: Reality will keep intruding, and if the Dems keep moving the goalposts ever more frantically, pretty soon they'll be campaigning from Planet Zongo. This week, Tom Daschle insisted that Odai and Qusai were all very well, but where was the Big Guy? Why hadn't that slacker Bush caught him yet?

Well, yes, Saddam's gone the Osama route, releasing audio cassettes every couple of weeks. Why is that? These days, a compact camcorder's as easy to smuggle in as a Walkman, and video would have far more impact. Could it be that Saddam isn't in such great shape for the cameras? Not quite ready for his close-up? Wherever he is, he's dependent on a dwindling band of aides and, after the way his sons were sold out, he's gonna be a bit twitchy if Ahmed's trip to the 7-Eleven seems to be taking a little too long.

So suppose there's another firefight and they pull his mustache from the rubble? What's Tom Daschle going to say then? Right now, of the 55 faces on the Iraq's Most Wanted playing cards, the Americans have killed or captured 37. Democrats, by contrast, have yoked their fate to bad news. So they need to ask themselves, realistically, how much is likely to show up.

As Orrin Judd recently wrote, "on the day the Dow tops 10,000 again, the Democratic cloakrooms on the Hill are going to look like the compound at Jonestown."

LIFE IN A BLUE STATE: Went shopping with my wife this afternoon at Valley Fair Mall, an upscale enclosed mall in San Jose. Inside, holding fort in the middle of the ground floor (where there are always lots of peddlers, small carts, and the odd table for insurance salesmen, financial planners, and the like) was a fellow at an anonymous table with a large sign on it with the wording "Have you considered Islam?". He didn't seem to be attracting any takers.

Outside, as we left, we passed a half dozen protestors with both large American flags(!) and signs reading "Bush Lied", "No Blood For Oil", etc. Apparently they're there every weekend.

I didn't realize that for some people, it would be September 10th so quickly again in San Jose.

UPDATE: As ususal, James Lileks helps put things in perspective.

ADVANTAGE ED! Back on Monday, July 14, we wrote that Rush Limbaugh will go on ESPN's NFL pre-game show each week...

...and discuss nothing but football. Meanwhile, his detractors will start foaming at the mouth at what an evil, vile, racist, awful, dangerous, psychotic Nazi he is. Sort of a dispersed version of the how James Taranto described what the protests outside the Republican convention in New York will be like.

Paul Zimmerman, the venerable Sports Illustrated writer does precisely that in his column today:

Duncan of Fairfax, Va., wants my thoughts on Rush Limbaugh being added to ESPN's Sunday NFL Countdown. "Personally, I'm getting ready to break out the pitchfork and find me a couple of torches," he writes, "but I suppose I'll have to make do with just not watching the show." Careful about hints of terrorism, Dunc. Not only the FBI, but the Justice Department monitors columns such as these for any hints of terrorist threats. To say nothing of the Department of Agriculture and the Attorney General's Office, which is exactly what I'd like to say about them. Not that I don't agree with everything you've said. I most certainly do. It's funny, on Thursday afternoon I did an interview on ESPN Radio, only because I wanted to present my Limbaugh views right up front. So I ranted and raved for a while about how ABC set the idiot-tone with its Dennis Miller venture. But Miller, while being a footba! ll! ignoramus, at least wasn't mean, in direct contrast to this Limbaugh character, who's not only stupid and nasty, but stupid and nasty at the top of his voice. The pity of it is that I used to enjoy watching Countdown, but of course I won't tune in anymore. And what do you think the radio guy said? Right on cue he came in with, "See that, we're all talking about him." To which I retorted that we talk about murderers, too, and thugs and all manner of aberrant behavior, which doesn't mean that we want to include it as expert commentary on the football scene. I hope to God this is the last reference to Limbaugh that I'll have to make.

So being a conservative radio talk show host is the equivalent of being a murderer, a thug, and someone who engages in "and all manner of aberrant behavior"? Nope, no media bias to see here, move along...

Back in November, Dale Amon of Samizdata wrote:

Political Correctness is not a matter of what is said; it is a matter of who says it. The annointed are "allowed" freedoms of speech unavailable to the hoi polloi. Had it been myself...making the same remark, I would be pilloried for it.

The Human Rights Campaign illustrates Amon's Law in action brilliantly, as Andrew Sullivan notes:

Here's the Human Rights Campaign's Winnie Stachelberg's response to a Democratic congressman calling another congresman a "fruitcake" and a "****sucker":

"I think Congressman Stark's use of the word [fruitcake], he probably regrets having used it. I think he meant nothing by it, but I think in the 2003 context, it's probably a poor choice of words. But it's also important to note that Congressman Stark is one of the gay community's staunchest allies."

Translation: bigotry is fine if you vote our way. How will anyone take HRC seriously when they condemn Republican bigotry in the future?

Brent Bozell has some additional examples of Amon's Law in action, and no doubt there are countless more.

KEMP FOR GOVERNOR? Matt Drudge had his trademark earthshattering-news-of-the-century gumball light flicking away a little while ago, as he announced:

18:01 ET: Kemp has property in Fillmore, CA and looking into residence, sources tell DRUDGE... 'Feels he could be a consensus candidate,' top source says... wires, newspapers, networks chasing.... MORE... KEMP: former Vice Prediential candidate (Dole) in 1996....former Secretary of HUD for Bush 41....Congressman from Buffalo New York, engineered big Reagan early 80's tax cut...

WORLD EXCLUSIVE: JACK KEMP THINKING OF RUN FOR CALIFORNIA GOVERNOR

For what it's worth, I think that while Kemp would make a pretty good governor, and he's generally respected enough, even by the far left, that he'd be tough to slander (unlike Bill Simon). But if there are any televised debates, he'll be easy pickings. Al Gore ran roughshod over him in '96. (Remember Gore's inane "risky tax scheme" mantra? Kemp never even counterpunched. God that was brutal to watch.)

If Kemp really does want to be governor, he needs to get into debate and soundbite training with his advisors ASAP--he'll need all the help he can get.

MATT JEFFERIES PASSED AWAY: Walter "Matt" Jefferies, the man whose graceful design of the U.S.S. Enterprise for the TV series Star Trek in 1964 was a science fiction landmark, passed away on Monday at age 82. Jefferies was a WWII B-17 aviator who later became a production designer in Hollywood. He worked on shows ranging from Ben Casey to Little House on the Prairie, but he'll forever be known for the original Enterprise, which rests today in the Smithsonian, and has influenced the design of the main spacecraft in each successive version of the show, including the current Enterprise TV series.

Besides designing other spacecraft for the original series, Jefferies also designed many of the sets. Jefferies' style on Trek perfectly bridged the gap between Hollywood's pulpy 1950s designs (such as Forbidden Planet and This Island Earth) and the more technologically sophisticated shapes that Stanley Kubrick ushered in with 2001: A Space Odyssey, and George Lucas carried on with his Star Wars movies.

Star Trek.com has a tribute page to Jefferies, including a recent videotaped interview, where he explained how the design of the Enterprise, and its famous call sign, NCC-1701, came to be.

(Also posted on Blogcritics.)

PLUG INTO THE MATRIX: Sitting in for The Professor at his MSNBC blog, Randy Barnett writes, "Since the 2000 election, I have begun to realize for the first time that the Left really and truly lives in a socially constructed world — a world where “truth” is their own construction".

Spot on--read the whole thing.

VH-1's BEHIND THE TYPEFACE: The humble beginnings, the breakout fame and its accompanying dissipation, and the inevitable soul-saving comeback. We're all familiar with the story arcs of VH-1's Behind the Music. But did you ever wonder what it would be like if they devoted an episode of the series to the history of a typeface, instead of a rock star?

No? Fair enough, neither did I.

But "Cheshire Dave" did, and he gave us....

VH-1's Behind The Typeface: The Cooper Black Story--complete with a cameo by the Beach Boys, who were instrumental in putting Cooper Black back in the black.

BRICKS IN THE WALL: Mamma, don't let your babies grow up to pose for PR shots like these...

(Also posted on Blogcritics.)

SURPRISE, SURPRISE: "Rock the Vote Betrays 'Non-Partisan' Label".

ANDREW SULLIVAN WRITES, "I keep hearing - anecdotally and from forwarded emails, that things are going far better in Iraq than the anti-war media wants you to believe", and quotes an encouraging letter from a G.I. stationed in Iraq.

But what's the real story behind those Alice reruns, huh??

A FEATURE, NOT A BUG: "Gephardt Attacks Bush Foreign Policy as 'Machismo'"

So does that mean Gephardt's promising to give the country the foreign policy of a paintywaist?

We tried that already--and look what it got us.

UPDATE: If I was Karl Rove, I'd think seriously about printing up posters along these lines....

IT'S OPEN MIKE NIGHT at the California Democratic party!

JUST LIKE THEIR FATHER: For a brief round up of coverage of just what despicable fellows Saddam's sons were (and God, it's nice to type 'were'), click here. And here. And here. As Susan Konig wrote about 45 minutes ago, "Did a palpable bit of evil just get sucked out of the universe in a strong downward motion? The world feels that much better now."

Amen. Now let's find Saddam, and Bin Laden. (Arafat's head on a plate wouldn't be bad either, come to think of it.)

MEANWHILE, the Iraqi Mission in Manhattan has been liberated.

SYNCHRONICITY: According to a senior American general, Saddam Hussein's sons Odai and Qusai were killed in a six-hour firefight earlier today.

Meanwhile, in an appropriate display of Jungian synchronicity, the Eiffel Tower caught on fire.

UPDATE: Here's more synchronicity.

UPDATE: John Hawkins, in between Snoopy dances, has some thoughts. As does James Taranto (sans Snoopy, though).

THE DOWNWARD SPIRAL: Theodore Dalrymple looks at the decline of both England, and the West's art, and morality in the 20th century:

When exactly did this downward cultural spiral begin, this loss of tact and refinement and understanding that some things should not be said or directly represented? When did we no longer appreciate that to dignify certain modes of behavior, manners, and ways of being with artistic representation was implicitly to glorify and promote them? There is, as Adam Smith said, a deal of ruin in a nation: and this truth applies as much to a nation's culture as to its economy. The work of cultural destruction, while often swifter, easier, and more self-conscious than that of construction, is not the work of a moment. Rome wasn't destroyed in a day.

In 1914, for example, Bernard Shaw caused a sensation by giving Eliza Doolittle the words "Not bloody likely!" to utter on the London stage. Of course, the sensation that this now-innocuous, even innocent exclamation created depended wholly for its effect upon the convention that it flouted: but those who were outraged by it (and who have generally been regarded as ridiculous in subsequent accounts of the incident) instinctively understood that sensation doesn't strike in the same place twice, and that anyone wanting to create an equivalent in the future would have to go far beyond "not bloody likely." A logic and a convention of convention-breaking was established, so that within a few decades it was difficult to produce any sensation at all except by the most extreme means.

If there was a single event in our recent cultural history that established literal-minded crudity as the ideal of artistic endeavor, however, it was the celebrated 1960 trial of Penguin Books for the publication of an obscene book, the unexpurgated version of D. H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover. The trial posed the question of whether cultural tact and restraint would crumble in the absence of legal sanctions. For, as the much derided prosecutor in the case, Mervyn Griffith-Jones, understood only too well, and specifically advised the government of the day, if the publication of Lady Chatterley?’s Lover went legally unchallenged, or if the case were lost, it would in effect be the end of the law of obscenity. To adapt slightly Dostoyevsky's famous dictum about the moral consequences of the nonexistence of God, if Lady Chatterley's Lover were published, everything could be published.

I'm currently reading (and very much enjoying) Thomas S. Hibbs' 1999 book, Shows About Nothing, which analyzes Nietzsche's prophesies concerning nihilism, and then illustrates how they apply to the pop-culture world of TV and the movies in the 1990s. Dalrymple's article flows very nicely into Hibbs' book, and both illustrate just how far our culture has defined deviancy down (to coin a phrase) over the last 40 years.

QUOTE OF THE DAY: "I don't think of myself as a classic conservative," says Dennis Miller. "I think of myself as a pragmatist. And these days, pragmatism falls into the conservative camp. We have to depend on ourselves in this country right now because we can't depend on anyone else. We are simultaneously the most loved, hated, feared, and respected nation on this planet. In short, we're Frank Sinatra. And Sinatra didn't become Sinatra playing down for punks outside the Fontainebleau [Hotel]."

(Via The Brothers Judd Blog.)

Steven Den Beste thoroughly debunks it in a long, detailed essay, adding:

The new refrain is "Bush lied about the reason for attacking Iraq. He claimed that Iraq tried to purchase Uranium from Africa, and that wasn't true." Therefore... only they don't proceed with the "therefore" because their unspoken therefore is "therefore we shouldn't have attacked Iraq; we should have pursued other approaches and left Saddam in power."

And they don't want to formally say that, since Saddam was a monster and the people of Iraq are incalculably better off now without him. But those making these arguments don't care about the plight of the people of Iraq, or indeed the plight of impoverished people anywhere else, except in very abstract terms. The dirty little secret of those on the far left making these arguments is that for all their claims of compassion for the downtrodden of the world, they are primarily motivated by hatred of Western culture, especially as manifested in the United States, rather than by love of the people of the rest of the world. [Emphasis mine--Ed]

Which is why they don't like to talk about how awful it actually was in Iraq before we invaded, because they argued at the time, and implicitly are arguing now, that the status quo there should have been maintained.

Meanwhile, James Taranto adds:

Democrats are complaining that the national-security justifications for liberating Iraq were phony. They're wrong, of course, but if they actually believe what they're saying, they should be all the more supportive of the war. "By their own political principles, the less threat Iraq posed to the United States, the more reason there was to wage humanitarian war," notes Wolfson. "So, just who is deceiving whom?"

As Mark Steyn recently wrote:

Intelligence is a hit-and-miss business. In 1998, when Bill Clinton launched mid-Monica cruise-missile attacks on Afghanistan and the Sudan, he hit a Khartoum aspirin factory and missed Osama bin Laden. The claims that the aspirin factory was producing nerve gas and was an al-Qa’eda front proved to be untrue. Does that mean Clinton lied to us? I mean, apart from about Gennifer, Monica, and which part of the party of the first part’s enumerated parts came into contact with part of the party of the second part’s enumerated parts. Or was it just that the intelligence was lousy? The intel bureaucracy got the Sudanese aspirin factory wrong, failed to spot 9/11 coming, and insisted it was impossible for any American to penetrate bin Laden’s network, only to have Johnnie bin Joss-Stick from hippy-dippy Marin County on a self-discovery jaunt round the region stroll into the cave and be sharing the executive latrine with the A-list jihadi within 20 minutes.

So, if you’re the President and the same intelligence bureaucrats who got all the above wrong say the Brits are way off the mark, there’s nothing going on with Saddam and Africa, what do you do? Do you say, ‘Hey, even a stopped clock is right twice a day’? Or do you make the reasonable assumption that, given what you’ve learnt about the state of your humint (human intelligence) in the CIA, is it likely they’ve got much of a clue about what’s going on in French Africa? Isn’t this one of those deals where the Brits and the shifty French are more plugged in?

But here’s a much more pertinent question than whether BUSH LIED!!!!!!!!!!!!!: how loopy are the Democrats? One reason why the President, in defiance of last week’s Spectator, is all but certain to win re-election is the descent into madness of his opponents. They’ve let post-impeachment, post-chad-dangling bitterness unhinge them to the point where, given a choice between investigating the intelligence lapses that led to 9/11 and the intelligence lapses that led to a victorious war in Iraq, they stampede for the latter. Iraq was a brilliant campaign fought with minimal casualties, 11 September was a humiliating failure by government to fulfill its primary role of national defence. But Democrats who complained that Bush was too slow to act on doubtful intelligence re 9/11 now profess to be horrified that he was too quick to act on doubtful intelligence re Iraq. This is not a serious party.

Exactly.

SURVEY SAYSSSSS! "Bloggers Select The 20 Greatest Figures In American History". Thanks to John Hawkins for including us among the bloggers invited to respond.

As Glenn would say, "Oh, that left-wing media."

That's vile stuff. I can't believe the Los Angeles Times' editors would approve such a cartoon. (I downloaded a copy, just in case the LA Times pulls it.)

UPDATE: Jonah Goldberg has some thoughts about the cartoon, as well as the horrific photograph it was based on.

UPDATE: Speaking of political cartoons, the Professor's found a doozy.

UPDATE: Orrin Judd also has some thoughts on it. And be sure to read the comments as well.

My take? I think anytime a cartoonist draws someone about to get a .45 in the skull--particularly a politician--he's violated some corollary of Godwin's Law. Given the natural assumption that the majority of people have towards the direction of media bias, it's an astonishingly stupid cartoon.

FLASHBACK: Back in November, shortly after Republicans retook the Senate and kept control over the house, I linked to this Bruce Bartlett article about what it was like for them to be in the minority in the 1980s:

As Republicans and Democrats absorb the significance of last week's election results, a few things are starting to become clear. For one thing, Republicans are finally starting to settle into the idea that they are the majority party in this country. They have not thought so since 1932.

I worked in the Senate in 1980, when Republicans won control there for the first time in almost 30 years, and I remember clearly the sense that this was all just temporary. In contrast to the Democrats, who treated Republicans like dirt, the latter were very deferential. They didn't treat Democrats with the same disdain, because in their hearts they knew it wouldn't last.

The memory of 1946-48 and 1952-54, the last times that Republicans held either house of Congress, were very much in their minds. Although no one ever said so, I think most Republicans in the Senate thought they would probably lose the majority in 1982. Consequently, they were fearful of alienating the Democrats, whom, they thought, would soon be back in power, lest they be punished as a consequence.

This sort of meek attitude toward one's oppressors is, sad to say, not uncommon. People who are kidnapped, such as Patty Hearst, have been known to fall in with their kidnappers.

Republicans in Congress had somewhat the same attitude. They were so used to being beaten and abused that they thought this was the normal state of affairs. When they got the majority, some reacted like a caged bird suddenly set free: They simply didn't know what to do.

While Stockholm Syndrome doesn't seem to be a issue with the current minority party, they might want to take a course or twenty in dealing with anger management.

UPDATE: Here's another article on today's free-for-all.

DO DRIVING TESTS FOR SENIORS MAKE SENSE, asks Matt Welch, after yesterday's horrific car-on-pedestrian accident in Santa Monica.

ANTI-SEMITISM IN ENGLAND: It's not just for universities anymore!

UPDATE: Meryl Yourish has some further thoughts.

I'LL HAVE WHAT JOE'S SMOKING: The New Republic reports:

After offering the NAACP another apology for skipping the candidates' forum and then ticking off his own civil rights credentials, Lieberman praised the NAACP for its work during the Florida recount. That's when things became absurd. "We didn't realize at the time, Al Gore and I, that we not only needed Kweisi Mfume fighting for justice here in Florida counting votes," Lieberman said, "we need him on the Supreme Court where the votes really counted. Maybe that'll happen some day."

So Lieberman--a man who once questioned affirmative action--is now saying that he'll put Kweisi Mfume--a man who, according to his biography on the NAACP website, has not even attended law school--on the Supreme Court? Nothing like compounding an initial mistake.

There's a lot of that going around, it seems.

BI-PARTISAN REVIEW: Glenn Reynolds gives good advice to the Democrats. Meanwhile, Peter Roff looks at advances made by the Republicans since emerging from their post-Watergate wilderness.

VOIP-A-RAMA! I know what you're thinking: where can I go for the hippest, freshest, coolest look at voice-over-IP, that bitchin' 21st century technology that sends voice over the Internet?

Well, my friend, look no further than my column today in Tech Central Station! It's VOIP-a-licious!

UPDATE: Reader Ken Whelan had some feedback about the article that he emailed me:

Good article but I can tell you, now that Voice over IP is here, it has so many more positives that you did not mention. We are a small company. Probably 100 stations or so at the most and we just installed the Cisco solution. We are finding that things are so seamless, just tonight I brought home a phone, put it on the inside of my cable modem and VPN router (SOHO) and running the high bandwidth protocol (G711) had good voice quality. If I dropped it down to G729, there would be no problems whatsoever. We have several people working from a home office and soon you will not be able to tell as they will be on the same phone system.

Another positive that you did not mention. We have a satellite office that is going to have 5 phones in it. It is connected to us by a 56k frame relay connection that in no way has enough bandwidth to carry the data and the calls. However, for the price of a router and phones, we can install a phone system down there and use the Call Manager Servers at the host site to manage the call switching, the only thing going over the frame connection will be the switching information. Now voice brings regular phone lines into the router and they will not be able to tell the difference. With a little bit of programming, it will appear that they are extension to extension dialing from the host site when really the connections are going out regular phone lines. I did not mention that as we install this, this particular office is in flux: they are in a temporary building now. In the next 6 months they are going to switch buildings 3 times due to construction. Rather than dig in phone lines from one building to the next, only to move them two more times in the next 6 months, we are using a Proxim point to point (directional) wireless solution to connect Ethernet to the remote building (the one that is moving two more times). Each time we move, we will just point the antenna at the new location and move the phones to the new building. This is one of those eminent domain situations where a road is taking half the lot, so we have to remove a building, move to a construction trailer and then build a new building.

Every day we are finding new ways to save money because we put the infrastructure in place. The technology is here and it is mainstream. Nothing like having your voicemail arrive as an E-Mail attachment that you can pickup anywhere, anytime, without even having a phone; just find an internet connection.

Cisco is going to be a very very very rich company. As big as they are now, when this VOIP really gets a foothold, they are THE only company with a fully VOIP solution the rest of them are hybrids that really don't end up being fully VOIP.

I appreciate his comments. I'm far from an expert on VOIP; like most of my articles, I tried to simply find the guys who are experts, interview, and quote them.

But it does make perfect sense that VOIP systems will eventually dominate telecommunications.

SORRY FOR THE LACK OF POSTS: I have multiple articles due in early August, and I've spent big chunks of the past couple of days with my ear pressed to a telephone, gathering quotes and background material for them. They're mostly for consumer electronics magazines. I feel like a police beat reporter, or maybe Jack Webb himself asking questions, getting the facts (and hopefully a lot more), and taking it all down on my trusty Radio Shack recorder.

How I'd love to retire this thing for something digital. But I don't know of anything as reliable, that I could plug mini-plugs into, and then plug a phone into it. So I keep using this thing, and going through about a half dozen or so cassettes a week.

This afternoon, I spoke with Bob Ryan and Steve Sabol of NFL Films for an upcoming article. I grew up near NFL Films--their main offices are in the Philadelphia suburb of Mt. Laurel, New Jersey, about 15 minutes away via Route #295, from where my parents still live. I went down a couple of times myself in the early 1980s, to purchase highlight films for that new fangled top-loading, rotary channel dial-equipped VCR that I talked my parents in buying.

Ryan (who coined the phrase "America's Team", for a highlight film, and unwittingly boosted the Dallas Cowboys' promotional machine into the ionosphere) and Sabol were all business (and Sabol sounded exactly as he did on the numerous shows he hosts for ESPN, ESPN2, ESPN Classics, and probably for the NFL Channel, which will debut this fall.) So I didn't get a chance to go into Full Gush Mode about growing up watching the shows his company has been putting out since the 1960s.

What's amazing to me about NFL Films, is how radically they changed how sports documentaries are presented. The NFL is basically divided into before and after NFL Films. Watch a team's highlight reel from as late as the early-1960s, and it sounds like a college team: lots of "boolah-boolah" marching band music, a breathless newsreel-style narrator, and a combination of long shots watching a play unfold from scratch, and goofy, obviously-staged closeups of the clean-cut well-scrubbed, closely-shaved athletes looking clean cut and well-scrubbed (and closely shaved).

Compare that to NFL Films' stuff: the plays are cut to the apex of the action, so there are view few long shots of the refs placing the ball, the snap count, the QB yelling "HIKE!". The players are shown in closeups from the bench, where their faces are caked with sweat, mud, blood, tears, pain and an occasional broken nose. Extreme closeups of the players in action alternate with slow motion tracking shots that would make Haskell Wexler blush.

Arguably the most important element: the endless Winchell-style narration is replaced by the clipped, deep tones of "The Voice of God", the great John Facenda, the Man Born To Describe Football.

Facenda was one of the first TV news anchormen in Philadelphia, but he had a burning passion about football. In the mid-1960s, a mutual friend introduced him to Steve Sabol, and Sabol's dad, who ran NFL Films. (Cue Strauss's "Zarathustra" from 2001: A Space Odyssey)

When I was a kid, this was an irresistable combination. NFL Films made football players larger than life, men who could do no wrong. Men who made Batman and Superman look like pantywaists. Of course, now we know they're far from Supermen; indeed, their morals often appear far worse than average men fresh out of college who haven't been handed a multi-million dollar signing bonus, and who don't have his every move observed by minicams and sportswriters.

To this day, during the fall, I watch several hours a week of NFL Films' material (in addition of course, to the regular network TV coverage of the games). Their technology has changed remarkably since then: they use synthesizers in their background scores, and computer-based editing tools in assembling their shows. But their basic story telling techniques remain remarkably similar to what they developed over 35 years ago--and it was great to talk to one of the men who created them.

It seemed pretty well documented in 1999. Why has it since vanished down the collective memory hole of the press?

PRESIDENT REAGAN'S HANDLING OF THE AIR TRAFFIC CONTROLLERS' STRIKE was one of the (many) moments of his administration that was greater than the sum of its events. In her book about Reagan, Peggy Noonan quoted the Gipper's Secretary of State George Schultz, who called it:

"One of the most fortuitous foreign relations moves he ever made". It was in no way a popular move with the American public but it showed European heads of state and diplomatic personnel that he was tough and meant what he said.

Perhaps learning from this event, in a similar, but preemptive move, the Bush Administration is refusing to allow the Transportation Security Administration to unionize:

Airport security screeners don't have the right to unionize, according to the agency handling labor issues for the federal government.

The Federal Labor Relations Authority ruled that the screeners' boss, Transportation Security Administration chief James Loy, has discretion to decide the terms and conditions of their employment.

Loy in January signed an order forbidding collective bargaining by screeners, saying unions are incompatible with the war on terror that screeners are helping the government wage. Union contracts could limit the flexibility needed to make sudden changes in shift assignments in response to terror threats, Loy said.

AP reports that "the screeners earn between $23,600 to $35,400 a year, with health care, life insurance, paid vacation and sick leave. Before Sept. 11, the private-sector screeners earned less and often had no benefits."

An average salary of about 30K for work that could be done by any able-bodied person with little or no specialized training seems pretty darn good to me. What more could the unions bring them, other than increased red tape. And what happens when the inevitable strike occurs, just as it did with the air traffic controllers?

As Calvin Coolidge said when he was governor of Massachusetts, "There is no right to strike against the public safety by anybody, anywhere, at anytime". Too bad the union who wants to represent the TSA doesn't get this.

THIS ONE GOES TO ELEVEN! Why yes, I do have the cover story on Vintage Guitar magazine this month. It's Part I of the history of Marshall Amplifiers--and by God, it was fun to write!

(Special thanks to Nick Bowcott of Korg USA for helping to arrange an interview with the great Jim Marshall himself.)

See also my earlier (and much shorter) Blogcritics post for more Marshall mania. And be on the lookout for Part II of the story!

SOMEBODY SHOULD HAVE TOLD JULIAN BOND to read James Lileks' latest Bleat.

A TIME FOR CHOOSING: The Democrats face some hard choices, much like the Republicans of 1964, writes Orrin Judd.

WELL, THAT DIDN'T LAST TOO LONG DID IT? Hollywood is set to release Buffalo Soldiers, a 2001 film starring Joaquin Phoenix and Ed Harris about "enlisted man running a profitable drugs and stolen goods business out of an Army base".

According to the Internet Movie Database, the film debuted at the Toronto Film Festival on September 8, 2001. Not surprisingly, it was shelved after 9/11. But obviously, as this film, and the military bashing in The Hulk demonstrate, the brief moratorium in the war against "the Red States" (AKA, the people who buy the tickets) by Hollywood is over.

By the way, Phoenix's biography on the IMDB says:

Once refused to wear shoes during a photo shoot for Prada because they were made out of leather.

He is a strict vegan and will not wear costumes made out of animal skin.

Are army boots still made out of leather? How did Mirimax work around this issue with their temperamental star?

FULL DISCLOSURE? File this one under "we report, you decide": We've linked to Andrew Sullivan plenty of times concerning the New York Times under Howell Raines. Sullivan owned the story, and did a thorough job of exposing the (numerous) problems at the Times. But James Panero of the New Criterion's "Armavirumque" Weblog says that Sullivan clearly has an axe to grind in this issue, and gives some examples.

MEET THE NEW BOSS.... TimesWatch looks at Bill Keller, who will be replacing Howell Raines as executive editor of the New York Times, and finds his viewpoints are very much the same as Raines'. In other words, if you like doctrinaire leftism and plenty of gratuitous Bush bashing, whether he deserves it or not, the Times is still your paper.

(And they're still cooking the books!)

LIMBAUGH TO ESPN? In other football news, Matt Drudge is reporting that Rush Limbaugh will be joining ESPN's NFL Sunday Countdown pre-game show each Sunday this fall, where he will provide "a two-minute essay near the top of each show and participate in discussions during the show, sources say."

This should be fun. Limbaugh will go on each week, and discuss nothing but football. Meanwhile, his detractors will start foaming at the mouth at what an evil, vile, racist, awful, dangerous, psychotic Nazi he is. Sort of a dispersed version of the how James Taranto described what the protests outside the Republican convention in New York will be like.

UPDATE: Here's more, in a surprisingly low-key Reuters piece.

UPDATE: By the way, will anyone who bashes Limbaugh note that Gregg Easterbrook of the liberal New Republic has been writing a column on ESPN's Website for over a year? (This one, where he ties himself into knots of liberal guilt over the Washington Redskins' team name, is a classic.)

UPDATE: Here's Limbaugh's own page, with his announcement.

WHAT WOULD JESUS PAY? According to AP, Deion Sanders, aka "Prime Time", the cornerback formerly with the Dallas Cowboys (and Falcons and 49ers and Redskins), blanched at a $4,265.57 repair bill for his 1961 Lincoln Continental convertible:

The owner of the repair shop says Sanders wanted to pay only $1,500 of the $4,265.57 bill, saying that Jesus had informed him that was all he needed to pay.

"It's the 'Praise Jesus' discount,'' attorney Ed Edson told The Dallas Morning News in Monday's editions.

* * * Anthony Montoya, a representative for Sanders, had contacted Compton and told him a 1961 Lincoln Continental convertible needed to be towed to his shop for repairs. The car had been repaired before by Compton.

Papers filed in his lawsuit stated that he and his mechanics installed a new radiator and thermostat, flushed the engine, repaired the car's electrical system and gauges, replaced the starter motor, removed contaminated fuel and rebuilt the carburetor. Mechanics for Magrathea Inc., Compton's company, had replaced gaskets and hoses.

Sanders had approved and Montoya had approved all the repairs, according to the lawsuit. But when the car was returned to the CBS sportscaster's home in Plano on Nov. 5, 2001, Compton said Pilar Sanders, the former Cowboy's wife, ``answered the door, took the keys and invoices, started the car to make sure it was working and went back into the locked house, refusing to return the keys or invoices.''

Sanders' bodyguards and housekeepers then moved their cars in front of and behind the Lincoln so that it couldn't be towed back to the garage, the lawsuit stated.

When Sanders drove up, he refused to pay the invoice amount, handing Compton a $1,500 check and saying, ``Praise Jesus ... I follow what in my heart I'm told to pay.''

Wonder if Deion tries this with the IRS?

UPDATE (10:54 PM): Sanders won the suit.

QUOTE OF THE DAY is by Robin Roberts, who really nails it:

Notice...that the Democrats are trying to make hay about a single sentence in the state of the Union speech which occurred many months after a bipartisan vote in Congress to authorize the President to act in Iraq.

Clifford D. May has more.

LUMPING, THEN AND NOW: James Lileks does a thorough job of explaining who the "lumpers" are, and gives some current examples.

Meanwhile, the Washington Post places lumping in a historical context.

SORRY FOR THE LACK OF POSTING TODAY: I seemed to have gotten several article assignments simultaneously, and I spent the day cranking out material for dead tree publications. But I did have a couple of short posts (each with a 1970s sci-fi theme) on Blogcritics.

DOES DUSTY BAKER'S RACIAL GAFFE SIGNAL A NEW ERA? Fascinating article by Matt Welch, which ends on this quote:

"[T]his witch hunt has to stop somewhere," wrote TCPalm.com sports columnist Ray McNulty, who was critical of Baker's comments. "And this is as good a place as any. This is where the revolution begins. This is where we overthrow the Political Correctness Police."

Read the whole thing. And then check out John Hawkins, who also has some thoughts.

UPDATE: As does Jonah Golberg, in his latest syndicated column.

IRAN: Michael Ledeen weighs in on its future, while Glenn Reynolds and Andrew Sullivan have lots of links.

WHEN WILL CALIFORNIA DO THIS? The British government announced the biggest road-building project in a decade today, "a move that enraged environmental groups but pleased business interests", CNSNews writes.

"THE GREAT MEDIA MELTDOWN, And What Lies Beyond: Open-Source Media"--Evan Coyne Maloney really gets it. So RTWT, as the cool TLA-users say.

THE JOYS OF PITCH CORRECTION: Thanks to both Glenn and Eric for linking to my yesterday article in Tech Central Station on pitch correction and home recording. And thanks to Nick Schulz for running it!

For more of my lugubrious ponderings on the joys of home recording, click here and here.

HOLLYWOOD SUICIDE: The Internet Movie Database's "Movie/TV News" page has this today as its lead story:

Forget Nemo! Find the Audience
Analysts were still scratching their heads Monday, puzzling over the lackluster performance of the box office over the past four weeks. Despite featuring some of the most expensive films ever produced, ticket sales for the summer are off more than 7 percent from a year ago. "We've had four weekends in a row when business was down from the year before," Exhibitor Relations chief Paul Dergarabedian told today's (Tuesday) New York Post. "Every week, we're looking for a film that will pull us out of the slump." The Associated Press observed today that the box-office picture is in an even worse state if the increase in ticket prices is taken into account. Nevertheless, the box office has seen one stand-out performer. Disney/Pixar's Finding Nemo has now earned $274.9 million and appears set to surpass the $312.9 million earned by the The Lion King, which currently holds the record as the most successful animated film of all time.

"Analysts were still scratching their heads Monday"? Well, let's try to help them out before their supplies of Neutrogena T-Gel run out. The Hulk got terrible word of mouth, as did Hollywood Homicide and The Matrix Reloaded. And it's word-of-mouth that ultimately drives summer movie business. A film can have a blow-out first weekend, but it won't have "legs" unless those audience members tell others that "you have to see this movie!" In contrast, the Pixar movies, with their combination of 15-minutes-into-the-future computer technology and family friendly plots, have built up an enormous amount of goodwill among audiences.

But it didn't help matters that beginning around January of this year, the rest of Hollywood began what seemed like a systematic effort to alienate 80 percent of its audience. The Oscar ceremony only reinforced how out of touch Tinseltown is. Going to the movies, with its ever-increasing amounts of screaming children, ringing cellphones, and talking audiences, and films with soundtracks pumped ever louder to drown them out isn't much fun. And at eight or nine dollars a ticket, plus three dollars for a large bag of popcorn, or a large soda, the cost of a night at the movies is greater than purchasing a DVD for keeps, with all its ancillary material, audio commentaries, and other bells and whistles.

Is it any wonder that the average man looks at all this, and decides, "the heck with this--I can build my own home theater, rent DVDs, and see what I want, when I want it, without all the hassle?" Or I can buy a DVD--for less than it costs to take my family to the movies?

WELCOME BACK, PROFESSOR! Nice secondhand Instalanche reflected on the stats page today.

ROLLING BLACKOUTS: Coming soon to England?

BUT WHERE'S SPOCK'S BEARD? Andrew Stuttaford explores multiple parallel universes. Start here, then scroll up.

MAYBE BELGIUM SHOULD BE IN THE AXIS OF EVIL: The US has suspended military aid to 35 nations for refusing to sign agreements promising not to bring American citizens before the International Criminal Court.

Meanwhile, Steven Den Beste writes that Donald Rumsfeld, "has now said that the US won't provide any funding for a planned project to build a new NATO HQ in Belgium until Belgium repeals the law. Modification ain't good enough; he wants the law completely repealed". Meanwhile, he "also said that it might be necessary for NATO to find a new location for its HQ, perhaps one more central to the expanded alliance."

THIS SHOULD BE FUN TO WATCH: MTV Political Death Match 2003: In this corner, Howard Dean. In the other, Terry McAuliffe.

Have at it, boys!

NEW POST ON BLOGCRITICS: "...And Starring Sylvester Stallone as Woody Allen".

IT'S A BULL MARKET, "but with an asterisk", reports AP.

Happy Fourth of July!

OH, THAT LIBERAL MEDIA: Happy Fourth of July from NBC.

CALIFORNIA, IT'S A MAGICAL PLACE--at least when it comes to its politics, writes Virginia Postrel.

UPDATE: Speaking of California, Jay Bryant has some thoughts on the efforts to recall Gray Davis--and the surprising reluctance of the Bush administration to join in.

UPDATE: Incidentally, the Davis recall group says that they've reached their goal of over 1,000,000 signatures.

UPDATE: Jonah Goldberg writes that "few politicians in America today more in need of an atomic wedgie than Gray Davis". But "Californians must be punished. If they're not punished now, we all will be later."

THE L-WORD IN 2004: Fred Barnes says it stands for landslide. But Ramesh Ponnuru is also afraid it stands for leftward:

One of the reasons that parties benefit when the other party becomes extreme is that it allows it to hug the center. But if Republicans are moving to the center and Democrats to the left, that means both parties are moving leftward-that the center of gravity of American politics is moving leftward. Isn't that, too, part of the story of 1972?

* * * And there's another issue. People ask me sometimes whether I'm happy about the Democrats' current predicaments. But let's rephrase the question. Should we be happy that one of our two major parties is going off the deep end? I don't think so.

After watching the Robert Evans documentary on TV a couple of times last week, I started re-reading Easy Rider, Raging Bulls, Peter Biskind's look at the "New Hollywood" of the 1970s. At several points in the book (just as Todd Gitlin--another leftist author--did in his look at the TV industry during this time), he moans about the "incipient movement of America to the right" (that's a paraphrase, but a pretty close one). Did America move to the right in the 1970s, or did the leadership of the Democrats simply move so far to the left that they lost their voters? FDR, Harry Truman and JFK weren't perfect, but at least in terms of attitude and jaunty confidence, they seemed far more in tune with most Americans. But Johnson's leftward lurch with the Great Society (the New Deal--Texas size!) coupled with McGovern's pacifism and anti-Americanism seem increasingly far removed from the ideals of the typical American voter. And politics is a symbiotic tug and pull of leadership and listening.

The Democrats are listening to their base right now--as they did in the 1970s--but they don't seem willing to listen to the rest of the nation. Which leads back to Barnes' article. As for my take, here's what I wrote back in February.

WATCHING DEFLATION IN ACTION: P.J. O'Rourke--as only he can--takes the air out of Hillary's gasbaggery-laden opus.

RTWT.

LET'S RIFF ON THIS ONE FOR A WHILE, shall we?

"Pig Iron--it's what's for dinner!"

"Can I get fries with this?"

"You have to be careful when you come between a bear and his Nimitz-class dinner!"

"Hey, is that Ernest Borgnine in Ice Station Zebra?"

"Awright Gentle Ben--put the sub down and move away slowly--and no one will shoot your lilly white furry butt!"

AL DAVIS GIVES GOOD JURY: At least that's what Mark Purdy of the Mercury News says. Given the percentage of his life that's he's spent in court rooms, he certainly should have at least as much practice at it, as his Raiders do on the gridiron.

EU president violates Godwin's Law, European Union forced to disband: AP reports that "Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi provoked an uproar during a Wednesday speech to the European Parliament by telling a German critic he should star as a Nazi concentration camp guard in a movie."

UPDATE: On a serious note, Michael Ledeen is very impressed with Berlusconi. As he says, "That whining you hear indicates a victory."

HOLLYWIERD: "Sgt. Mom" of Sgt. Stryker's group blog looks at all the places that Hollywood and its surrounding area doubles for--sometimes very, very poorly.

LESS IS MORE: Marian L. Tupy of Tech Central Station compares the 260 page, 70,000 word-long EU Constitution to the 4,500 word, 17 page American Constitution, and dubs the EU's document "Socialism's Farewell Note".

Let's hope so--but that level of rot may take a very, very long time to decay.

FRANCE: As always, a class act. "Group Captain Mandrake" has details--and photos.

UPDATE (7/03/03): And a revised post--apparently no malice was intended by the French this time around.

"PROTESTING INTO THE WIND": President Bush comes to the Bay Area. Silliness ensues. Russell Wardlow has the details--and a photo that's worth--if not a thousand words--maybe a couple of hundred.

IT'S ABOUT TIME: New Jersey state lawmakers voted today to eliminate the position of poet laureate of New Jersey, after Amiri Baraka used the position to write an anti-semetic tirade suggesting Israel had advance knowledge of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks:

The Assembly approved a bill Tuesday that passed the Senate in January. Gov. James E. McGreevey, who cut off the $10,000 annual stipend that goes to the poet laureate after Baraka refused to resign, intends to sign the bill, according to a spokesman.

Abolishing the position was the only way to remove Baraka because the governor and Legislature cannot fire the poet laureate.

Baraka was criticized after reading his 60-stanza poem "Somebody Blew Up America" at a festival last summer. It included the lines: "Who knew the World Trade Center was gonna get bombed/Who told 4,000 Israeli workers at the Twin Towers to stay home that day?/Why did Sharon stay away?"

After Tuesday's vote, Baraka said he would sue the state for violating his First Amendment rights and for slander.

"Very few of those people have even read that poem," Baraka said. "I can't have a differing opinion about a foreign state?"

Click here for a flashback to what Stanley Crouch and Michele Malkin had to say about Baraka.

"CBS EVENING NEWS RATINGS HIT NEW LOW". Clearly, there's only one thing to do: Replace the aging Dan Rather with someone new and different. Someone with bold ideas. A fresh thinker. Someone who's controversial, instead of the same kind of whitebread liberal anchors the networks always churn out. CBS needs a firebrand. A rebel.

Gentlemen, I have your man: Phil Donahue, tanned, rested and ready. What he did to for MSNBC, he can do for your network as well.

(For information about the classic photo of "Captain Dan the Newsman" on the left, click here.)

UPDATE: Scott Ott strikes a similar note.

JUST SUE, BABY! It's the NFL offseason, and you know what that means: Al Davis is in court again; the guy must live there.

JAMES LILEKS ON JOURNALISTS' UNIONS:

Humor is irrelevant when the situation is dire. And it's always dire. It's the sort of constant direness you find in the mind of someone who drives a 10-year old Volvo with bumperstickers that say "If you want peace, work for justice" on the left side and "If you want justice, work for peace" on the right, with a faded sticker in between from a 5,000 watt progressive radio station that features New Sounds in Congolese Drumming every Sunday night before signing off with an Emma Goodman quotation.

This isn't to say I don't like unions - no. When management shivved me a few years back over an utterly trivial and preposterous issue, the union stood by my side and helped me out. I pay my dues without complaint, I applaud their actions on the workers' behalf. But I don't get all jangly inside when I consider that I belong to a UNION!, because I do not feel I am the spiritual inheritor of some grimy-handed laborer who just wants to put bread on his family's table, and is repaid for his work with the boot of a Pinkerton operative in his ribs. But honest to God, so much of the union rhetoric I get in the mail seems to think that Woody Guthrie will soon descend from the clouds with his fascist-killin' geetar and start singing against the Greatest Injustice of Our Era, namely, the proposed 17% interest in the dental co-pay.

Around 1999 or 2000, I belonged for a year to the National Writers' Union. A friend recommended it for the leads, and I seem to recall getting an assignment or two out of it. (Incidentally, before, during and while I was a member of the NWU, the vast majority of assignments I've gotten by mailing--up until recently, snail-mailing--cold query letters, and lots of them. There's no substitute for hard work and aggressive marketing). But the day the NWU sent out an email celebrating "Native Americans' Day" on Columbus Day, the first of an endless series of the type of shrill leftist agitprop that Lileks derides in his "Bleat" today, I decided I'd simply quietly let my membership expire, and never renew.

FLASHBACK: Back on March 7th of this year, we wrote (and also provided pretty good photographic evidence to back up our argument):

WAS IT P.J. O'ROURKE WHO SAID that you could tell which party was winning, based upon who had the better looking women? (Or something like that. See this recent David Frum post, and this John Derbyshire essay from a couple of years ago for the basic gist).

Check out these two lovelies, protesting against England's attempted ban on fox hunting. I don't know if they're going to actually win the argument, but it's obvious (at least to me!) they're on the right side of it:

QUOTE OF THE DAY: Found in the comments section on this Reason post about Fox canceling their broadcasts of Charlie Chan movies:

Anyone who thinks that applying the moral standards of today retroactively to persons or cultural artifacts of the past means something should have their university degree taken away, at the least.

Exactly. Whatever happened to simply turning the channel if you don't enjoy a show?

Haven't we learned anything from Speedy Gonzales?

THE KID STAYS IN THE PICTURE: So did I enjoy this bio-pic of Paramount's Robert Evans? Absolutely. Would I watch it again? I've already watched about two and half times since I recorded it off the satellite dish. Would I recommend that you see it? If you dig Hollywood history, you bet your *** I would, baby.