RoguePlanet

Blogging has been sparse

because my home 'puter is messed up since last week. Should have it back by this weekend, I hope.

While you breathlessly await my next post, check out these fine blogs:

Our (that's the royal "our") old friend Anntichrist S. Coulter has her own place: Mark of the Beast. She's also still blogging at Blondesense.

Go see Velociman's adorable new PUPPY here. I tried to praise the pup on V-man's blog comments, but the pinko filter blocked me.

Also, geo3rge has finally resumed blogging. 'Bout time!

UPDATE: I stand corrected! Annti is departing Blondesense and will be blogging exclusively at Mark of the Beast. Blondesense is terrif and so is Annti, so read them both, I say. Or else.

Who wrote it?

Match the excerpts quote below with their respective authors:

1)

I had the opportunity this afternoon to be part of a relatively small group who heard President Bush talk, extemporaneously, for around forty minutes. It was an absolutely riveting experience. It was the best I’ve ever seen him. Not only that; it may have been the best I’ve ever seen any politician. If I summarized what he said, it would all sound familiar: the difficult times we live in; the threat from Islamic fascism–the phrase drew an enthusiastic round of applause–the universal yearning for freedom; the need to confront evil now, with all the tools at our disposal, so that our children and grandchildren can live in a better and safer world. As he often does, the President structured his comments loosely around a tour of the Oval Office. But the digressions and interpolations were priceless.

2)

WASHINGTON, DC—President Bush delighted an intimate gathering of White House dinner guests Monday, regaling the coterie of dignitaries, artists, and friends with a spirited, off-the-cuff discussion of the Roman poet Virgil's lesser-known works.

"Ah, W. was in top form tonight," Spanish foreign minister Josep Pique Camps said. "We were all held captive by his erudition and charm. First, a brief history of the opium trade, then a bit of Brahms on the piano, then a rousing discussion of Virgil. That boy is a wonder, isn't he?"

According to guests, the subject of Virgil arose serendipitously, when a servant opened a window in the Red Room, to which the group had retired for after-dinner drinks. Noticing the breeze, Bush raised his glass and delivered a toast to the changing of the seasons. He then apologized to "lovely Winter," explaining that he "meant no slight against her."

"The first blush of Spring always reminds me of Virgil's words," Bush said. "In early spring-tide, when the icy drip / Melts from the mountains hoar, and Zephyr's breath / Unbinds the crumbling clod, even then 'tis time / Press deep your plough behind the groaning ox / And teach the furrow-burnished share to shine."

"Book One of The Georgics, of course," Bush added.

3)

Fund said that Bush is not dumb, just inarticulate, while O'Donnell suggested that Bush is out of his league. They both may be right, but I'd like to submit an alternative explanation for Bush's linguistic deficit.

Language barrier.

This theory occurred to me not long ago at an off-the-record luncheon with Bush and a hundred or so of his supporters. I was the guest of a guest, and welcomed the opportunity to observe the president in his natural habitat.

What I witnessed was revealing. Not only was the man fluent in the English language and intellectually agile, he was knowledgeable on a wide range of subjects raised during a 90-minute Q&A. Someone apparently had been slipping intellectual-curiosity tablets into Bush's cola.

Toward the end, one of the guests said, "Mr. President, I think if Americans could hear you speak the way you have today, you'd have a 95 percent approval rating.''

Authors:

A) Kathleen Parker; B) Hindsocket; C) The Onion

First to guess correctly gets a free glass of Rogue Planet water.

Shorter Buttrocket

President Bush's boots are so shiny. And tasty, too!

STILL not ready for prime time


Michael Graham. (Via Hecate).

Something about Hillary Clinton seems to send Mr. Graham into a frothing rage: The last time I recall him making the news, he was expressing his desire to bludgeon Senator Clinton with a tire iron. Oh, well, as long he's expressing his violent fantasies under his real name, we needn't worry about his lack of civility . . .

Oh, so THAT was the plan


Via TPMCafe by way of Atrios, here's Joe Lieberman and right-wing radio host Glenn Beck talking about the REAL reason we invaded Iraq:

BECK: I've been saying this before we even went into Iraq, that we're trying to change the face of the Middle East. The weapons of mass destruction was a nice side benefit. We were trying to go and pop the head of the snake in Iran. That's what we were trying to do. And I don't think anybody had the courage or could actually come out and say that with world politics the way they are.

LIEBERMAN: Well, you're right. And I think if I fault the administration for anything before the war -- 'cause I think we did the right thing in going in to overthrow Saddam -- it's that they oversold the WMD part of the argument....

"Oversold?" The "WMD part of the argument??" Funny, I don't remember there being ANY other part to the argument in favor of invading Iraq. Well, other than the Bush administration's careful attempt to link Hussein to 9/11 in a such a fashion that they could later deny having attempted to link Hussein to 9/11.

I've seen other pro-Iraq invasion fanatics advance similar after-the-fact justifications for invading Iraq. Brad Warthen, for example, fancifully informed us that the invasion was about "knocking over the oil barrel." Perhaps Bush conveyed that to Warthen and others in the know by a series of coded blinks, 'cause I sure don't recall him saying anything about upsetting the oil barrel. To the contrary, I seem to recall something about how the invasion would result in cheap gas. But then, what do I know. I'm no Middle East expert. In fact, I'm so clueless about the Middle East that if someone HAD stated the purpose of the invasion was to "pop the head of the snake in Iran," I would have probably said something really dopey like, "How do you expect that deposing Iran's enemy will accomplish that?"

But, hey, that's just me. I will say this: If Joe manages to get re-elected, then I hope in the future he will be so good as to let the rest of the country in on the rationale for any invasions we may undertake in the future.

South Carolina doesn't like his stance on abortion, but the cousin-marrying thing should be a plus

According to South Carolina political journalist Lee Bandy, "some say" the South Carolina Republican Party is softening its Taliban-like (that's my locution, not Bandy's) attitude on social issues, as evidenced by the enthusiastic reception Rudy Giuiliani got in Charleston.

But you know how decadent those Charlestonians are. Color me skeptical about a statewide change in GOP attitudes. At least until Rudy gets a similar welcome at Bob Jones University in the upstate.

Yeah, well, I can still trackback your ass!

What is it about some of these authoritarian right-leaning bloggers that anonymous and pseudonymous commenters drive them so apeshit? Why are John Cole, Tacitus [heh], and the weaselly Patterico [double-heh] so obsessed with the identities of people who disagree with them? What difference does it make?

Brad Warthen, the editorial page editor of The State newspaper, has long had a burr under his saddle about anonymous and pseudonymous comments on his blog (he also doesn't seem to comprehend the difference between anonymous and pseudonymous comments). Recently he's been harrumphing around about the dismal quality of comments on his blog and threatening to do something about it; but he kept his 10 or 12 loyal readers (more than I have, I'll admit) in suspense about what the new policy would be. I figured, based on the hints he was dropping, and given his antipathy towards anonymous and pseudonymous commenters, that the new policy might include one or both of two things: 1) deleting ad hominem attacks, and 2) real-name registration. The former at least is arguably reasonably calculated to foster civil discussion. The latter - well, you need only have a passing familiarity with the work of Ann Coulter, Michael Savage, and Bill O'Reilly to realize that lack of anonymity is no guarantee of civility. But I can see how someone like Brad Warthen might think a real-name requirement would keep his commenters in line (or at least keep them from harshing on Brad Warthen too severely).

But the comments policy Mr. Warthen announced consists neither of deleting all personal insults or requiring all commenters to register their real names. Instead, he has come up with the most bizarre, asinine, indefensible comments policy I've ever seen. To wit:

I'm implementing a Double Standard:

The bad news is that one group of people will be free to post pretty much whatever they want. I will maintain the same hands-off policy with them that I've maintained with everyone up to now. With those in the other group, I will delete at will any comments that I deem harmful to good-faith dialogue.

The good news is that you get to choose which group you're in.

To be in the first group, you just have to give up your anonymity.

You read it right - if you tell Big Daddy your real name (and he wants to know your occupation too), he'll let you post whatever you want, no matter how insulting, vile, or "harmful to good-faith dialogue." But if you use a pseudonym, even if you use the same pseudonym every time you comment, he'll arbitrarily and capriciously delete anything you post that he doesn't like.

He claims to want to promote "discussions that move toward real solutions on issues." How this idiotic policy is designed to do that is beyond me. If you truly wanted to foster civil, productive discussions why would you proudly announce a double standard wherein a handful of your commenters are exempt from any requirement to actually be civil?

It's too bad, because although Mr. Warthen is consistently on the wrong side of national issues (his editorial page called on Clinton to resign; it endorsed Bush twice; it endorsed Mark Sanford (then complained when Sanford did what he promised to do); it was and continues to be pro-Iraq invasion and in fact Brad's itching to invade Iran; etc, etc) I've always thought Mr. Warthen deserved some credit for being, as far as I know, the only mainstream media figure (albeit a relatively minor one) to run a blog that permitted relatively unfettered feedback. Now that that's history, I'm hard-pressed to think of anything nice to say about his blog - except that I'm on the blogroll, evidence of at least a smidgen of good taste and judgment.

Oh, and Mr. Warthen? The reason some people give gmail, Hotmail, and Yahoo email addies when posting comments on blogs like yours is to avoid having their "real" friends-and-family and work accounts bombarded with the type of spam you get when you post on a pop-up infested site like The State's.

UPDATE: Thers, who knows whereof he speaks, weighs in. As Thers succinctly puts it: "If something is genuinely offensive, it's offensive whether it comes from a named or an anonymous source." Indeed. The rhetoric of, oh, say, David Duke isn't any less disgusting just because Duke uses his real name . . .

Democrats play dirty trick on Senator George Allen

[wingnut]
The libs sank to new lows when they sent a brown-skinned man with a camera to cover Senator Allen's public appearances before all-white crowds. The devious libs knew that poor Senator Allen wouldn't be able to resist the temptation to call the colored man a monkey. I guess some of you libs got a big kick out of making Allen look like the kind of man who would single out a dark-skinned man and call him "macaca."

What a despicable trick. It would be just like dangling a big Twinkie in front of Michael Moore and videotaping him as he lunges for it and devours it and then greedily licks the creamy filling from his chubby fingers. I'll bet you libs wouldn't be laughing at that, would you?

Or it would be like parading a cute fifteen-year old girl in front of John Derbyshire and videotaping him as he drools. Of course you sicko libs would probably get a kick out of tormenting a fine conservative like Derbyshire.

Typical morally bankrupt liberals - deliberately exploiting a man's weakness, and then laughing about it.

[/wingnut]

(Inspired by Dan Riehl. Via The Poor Man)

If you make fun of my Dispoz-o plastic sporks, al Qaeda will have won

Time for some local wingnuttery. Background: South Carolina public education has been under siege lately. The laughably named South Carolinians for Responsible Government (SCRG) is devoted to one goal: Dismantling public education in South Carolina. Well, that and getting government handouts for rich people to send their kids to private school. Aligned with Grover Norquist's equally laughably named "Club for Growth," it has taken dead aim at South Carolina public education and is working to have anti-public education zealots elected to political offices in SC. I imagine the Hair Club for Growth folks figured South Carolina would be sort of a soft target, given the relentlessly libertarian bent of our governor, Mark Sanford, who hates government so much he's spent the past 8 years (at least) drawing a paycheck from it.

Anyway, Sanford appointed one Karen Iacovelli, upstate spork magnate, to serve on South Carolina's Education Oversight Committee. A South Carolina blogger, "Gervais Bridges" (Ross Shealy - son of Rod, evidently, but I won't hold that against him) started Googling Ms. Iacovelli's background, and found some interesting things. Like, for example, Ms. Iacovelli's signature on a pledge favoring the end of public education. The pledge was sponsored by a group calling itself the "Alliance for Separation of School and State." As Gervais Bridges drolly noted, the Alliance for Separation of School and State probably rarely uses its acronym. Anyway, I expect Ms. Iacovelli caught a little heat for that - you can imagine that some people were disturbed that the gov. would appoint a woman who opposes public education to oversee public education. Subsequently, Ms. Iacovelli resigned from the Education Oversight Committee, whereupon the Club for Growth generously appointed her to its board.

Gervais Bridges is now, sadly, retired from blogging (his archives are here). But he wrote an amusing editorial for The State summarizing his findings about Ms. Iacovelli.

Yesterday, Ms. Iacovelli responded indignantly in The State:

Ross Shealy (“On barbecue, politics and what defies parody,” Aug. 1) exemplifies the ignorance and vitriol of the fanatical left.

Mr. Shealy is a coward hiding behind a slippery keyboard. For the record, Mr. Shealy never contacted me and does not know a wit about me, my business or the disease that 20 million people, including me, suffer from. Rather than a doctor’s note, Mr. Shealy needs a lesson in reporting facts. They are:

I have had Lyme disease for 14 years, have been hospitalized on too many occasions to recall (even when appearing pretty in pink). I sit on the Board of Dispoz-o Products Inc., a major manufacturer of plastic disposable products that has done great good for humankind, exceeded only by the greater shame Mr. Shealy brings to journalism.

I had to stop reading right there because I was laughing so hard.

Frankly, I thought bringing shame to journalism in a quantity exceeding the good that plastic disposable utensils bring to humankind was Geraldo Rivera's job. But what do I know, as I sit here behind my slippery keyboard.

In her editorial, Ms. Iacovelli goes on to deny ever signing the ASSS pledge. But thanks to the miracle of Google cache, South Carolina blogger NotVeryBright has uncovered Ms. Iacovelli's name on ASSS's pledge. So, um, maybe someone put her name on that ASSS pledge without her permission. Or maybe she's just full of it.

More here at Laurin Manning's blog.

Via Tim at Crack the Bell, who also uncovered another fun fact about Ms. Iacovelli: She thinks Vince Foster was murdered. Dollars to doughnuts she's one of those nuts who spent the second half of the '90's forwarding chain emails about the 2,378 people the Clintons murdered on their rise to the top.

UPDATE: Still more from Tim at Crack the Bell. Ms. Iacovelli has an interesting Santorum connection via the private bank that gave the Santorums a whopping loan to buy an expensive house in Virginia. You know, the house where the Santorums "cyber-schooled" their children with the help of some $67,000.00 from the taxpayers of Pennsylvania.

Spinning for al Qaeda

Yesterday morning I caught a bit of John McCain's appearance on This Week with George Stephanopoulos. While I can't find a transcript for that show, I'm pretty sure I remember McCain saying something to the effect that America's withdrawing from Iraq would be a victory for al Qaeda. And it occurred to me that it was pathetic that McCain is so wedded to seeing his own foreign policy vindicated that he'd be doing pre-emptive spinning for al Qaeda. You know, I'm pretty sure that al Qaeda itself will spin anything America does as a victory for al Qaeda. So it really isn't necessary for McCain to do their spinning for them.

As it turns out, McCain has a history of that kind of thing: Here he is giving advice to al Qaeda.

Dick Cheney of course also has a history of spinning for al Qaeda:

CHENEY [video clip]: If we follow Congressman [John P.] Murtha's [D-PA] advice and withdraw from Iraq the same way we withdrew from Beirut in 1983 and Somalia in 1993, we will simply validate the Al Qaeda strategy and invite more terrorist attacks in the future.

Naturally, Cheney spun Joe Lieberman's defeat as a victory for al Qaeda:

Cheney suggested Wednesday that Lamont's victory might encourage "the al Qaeda types" who want to "break the will of the American people in terms of our ability to stay in the fight and complete the task."

How do you suppose all those Connecticut voters like being accused of encouraging al Qaeda by the likes of Dick Cheney, who couldn't be more helpful to al Qaeda if they were paying him lobbying fees?

Joe Lieberman has also taken to doing al Qaeda's publicity work:

After British officials disclosed Thursday that they had stopped a terrorist airline bombing plot, Lieberman warned that Lamont's call for a phased withdrawal of troops from Iraq would be "taken as a tremendous victory" by terrorists.

Which is weird 'cause Joe himself, in his desperate last-minute scrabbling for votes, said that he himself "now felt a 'heavy responsibility' to end the war quickly," and said that he opposed an open-ended commitment in Iraq. So if I understand Joe correctly, if Lamont is elected and takes steps to end the war, that will be a "tremendous victory" for al Qaeda, but if Joe is elected and takes steps to end the war . . . not a victory for al Qaeda.

With flacks like John and Dick and Joe, al Qaeda needn't bother releasing any more of those videotaped statements. It can just sit back and let John and Dick and Joe trumpet its "victories."

UPDATE: Glenn Greenwald was evidently thinking along the same lines yesterday (great minds, etc - heh); here's his list of right wing flacks for the Islamofascists.

Shorter Brad Warthen

Connecticut voters are stoopid.

Seriously, can anyone hazard a guess as to why Warthen is willing to sacrifice unlimited numbers of American soldiers to bring democracy to Iraq, yet pitches a fit when American voters exercise their rights? I just don't get it.

Also, note the way Warthen pretends to despise partisan politics even while he consistently regurgitates Republican talking points.

Shorter Atlas Jugs interview with John Bolton

"But enough about me. What do YOU think about me?"

tbogg, Sadly, No!, and Digby have more on the nuckin' futz Ms. Jugs.

BOW before your furry masters!



At first I thought this article was a joke:

Aug. 9, 2006 — Kevin Lafferty is a smart, cautious, thoughtful scientist who doesn't hate cats, but he has put forth a provocative theory that suggests that a clever cat parasite may alter human cultures on a massive scale.

His phone hasn't stopped ringing since he published one of the strangest research papers to come out of the mill in quite awhile.

The parasite, Toxoplasma gondii, has been transmitted indirectly from cats to roughly half the people on the planet, and it has been shown to affect human personalities in different ways.

Research has shown that women who are infected with the parasite tend to be more warm, outgoing and attentive to others, while infected men tend to be less intelligent and probably a bit boring. But both men and women who are infected are more prone to feeling guilty and insecure.

But apparently it's serious. This is really the best part:

Toxoplasma, he notes, is "frighteningly amazing."

It can change the personality of a rat so much that the rat surrenders itself to a cat, just as the parasite wanted.

The parasite's eggs are shed in a cat's feces. A rat comes along, eats the feces, and becomes infected. The behavior of the rat undergoes a dramatic change, making the rat more adventuresome, and more likely to hang out around cats.

The cat eats the rat, and the parasite completes its life cycle

.

Since most humans do not eat cat feces, I'm not clear on how Toxoplasma makes humans do cats' bidding. But I don't really have time to chat about it. I'm feeling kind of guilty and insecure right now. I. Must. Feed. The cats. Now.

Rove tosses anchor to drowning man

From TPMCafe:

George Stephanopoulos reports:

According to a close Lieberman adviser, the President's political guru, Karl Rove, has reached out to the Lieberman camp with a message straight from the Oval Office: "The boss wants to help. Whatever we can do, we will do."

Just yesterday, I was still saying that even though even though Lieberman's been consistently wrong about Iraq, and he's made some indefensible statements recently, I basically respected him. But not after last night. I agree with what Josh Marshall says here.

What part of "no" does Joe Lieberman not understand?

Btw, check out Brad Warthen's entirely predictable response.

Bargain basement neoconnery

Brad Warthen, editorial page editor of The (Columbia, SC) State newspaper, on "the coming war with Iran" (the idea of which he seems to relish):

We're going to be at war with Iran sooner or later -- sooner, if we act in the best interests of our own country and civilization as a whole. We can wait until the dark cloud out of Mordor assumes mushroom shape and consumes a few of our cities, courtesy of Hezbollah Delivery Service, or sooner.

Maybe he's angling for a job writing speeches for Condi Rice.

Discussing an incident described in Mark Bowden's Black Hawk Down in which a Somali used civilians as human shields, Mr. W says:

What do you do about someone who is evil enough, craven enough, hateful enough to do something like that? I've come to the conclusion -- and it's a difficult one for me -- that the only solution is to kill him -- and every one of his fellows.

Why's it difficult for Mr. Warthen, I wonder? He's not going to be doing any of the wet work.

But I sure hope killing ALL the bad guys is not the ONLY solution (solution to what, for that matter?). It seems kind of impractical to me. We can't even kill all the cockroaches. Or eradicate the clap. Or win "the war on drugs." So it seems to me that if you actually think terrorism, or any other -ism can be solved by killing each and every one of the -ists, you're delusional. Or you're just setting yourself up for failure. Failure which you can then blame on everyone but yourself.

Random funny

This made me laugh.

Via Atrios.

Oops

I can hardly blame the John Coles of the right for enjoying a nice tasty glass of schadenfreudenberry wine (stolen from Balloon Juice commenter Krista) as they savor this news.

I have trouble articulating exactly how I feel about the whole thing, maybe because my feelings are so mixed. Personally I found that photoshopped picture of Joe Lieberman in blackface (reproduced here) to be unfunny, a complete dud as an attempt at satire, and yes, offensive. Offensively over-the-top as a criticism of anything Lieberman has done in his campaign. I wouldn't reject the use of of such caricatures out of hand, but certainly in this instance, it seemed disproportionate and inappropriate under the circumstances, which circumstances should include Lieberman's civil rights record as a whole.

All that said, I think many of the people on the right raising holy hell about this are big fat stinking hypocrites who don't give a rat's ass about civil rights or offending black people (I'm lookin' your way, Michelle Malkin). Moreover, I wholeheartedly support Jane Hamsher's (and Jeff Goldstein's, and and anyone else's) right to be offensive, outrageous, provocative, edgy, profane, etc, on their blogs. More power to'em. But still. When you're that closely associated with a hot Senate campaign, and the race is tight, and you've not hesitated to accuse other people of racism and you know you're under scrutiny . . . well, if that is the climate and you still think it's a good idea to put up a caricature of the other candidate in blackface, you've had a major brain fart. To say the least. Moreover, I know, oh yes I KNOW in my heart, that if the shoe was on the other foot - if a blogger associated with a Republican candidate did the same thing - many of my fave lefty bloggers would be howling with outrage.

Of course, I strongly suspect most right wing bloggers would refuse to acknowledge any wrongdoing. So I give Ms. Hamsher credit for doing the right thing by promptly removing the picture from her post and apologizing.

I don't think it's possible to reconcile being an uninhibited Internet flame-thrower and take-no-prisoners type of blogger with being a very public campaign operative (paid or unpaid). That's why when Hillary Clinton approached ME to be her blog liaison, I said, "no thanks." Because I didn't want to give up my freedom to bring you, my global readership, my uncensored thoughts. So Senator Clinton had to settle for Peter Daou.

Anyway . . . my point is, if you're going to be really offensive to a lot of people, at least try to be funny. Or at least don't do it when you're enmeshed in a tight campaign. That's all I'm sayin'.

Update: Steve at No More Mister Nice Blog has a fun post about the aforementioned big fat stinking hypocrites.

Not that being drunk is an excuse but . . .

"God Almighty does not hear the prayer of a Jew."- The Reverend Bailey Smith, former head of the Southern Baptist Convention, presumably stone sober.

"The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world." - Mel Gibson, drunk.

(courtesy the Reverend V.I. Bezark)

And I thought blogfights were vicious

Jeff Goldstein and Deb Frisch got nothing on these guys:

Near the end of our conversation, a television in Kevin Liles’s office, tuned to BET, showed a press conference on the steps of City Hall, where a woman named Gia Casey—the wife of Hot 97’s DJ Envy—was standing beside several councilmen, calling for the arrest of a rival d.j., Troi Torain, who goes by the name Star. Star was fired from Hot 97 in 2003, after more than a dozen suspensions. (He referred to the station’s general manager, Mayo, as “Benson,” and to his bosses at Emmis as “the big Jew engine.” [again with the Jews! - kc]) He then promised to visit “doomsday” on his old employer, and was eventually hired by the competition, Power 105. In the preceding week, that doomsday plan had taken the form of berating his ex-colleague Envy, whose given name is Raashaun Casey, and his family, in spectacularly vile fashion, vowing, Mike Tyson style, not only to come after the Caseys’ child but to eat her; he made reference to spreading mayonnaise on her rear, as a dressing. He’d also indicated that he wished to “tinkle” and “skeet” on the girl (“your seed”), who is four, and offered five hundred dollars to any listener who could tell him which preschool she attended.

But hey, Star was provoked:

Hot 97 had not sat idly by. Star’s defense—other than his sworn allegiance to an Ayn Rand-inspired philosophy he calls “objective hate”—was that Envy’s on-air partner, Miss Jones, had spent the same first few days of May calling Star an “alcoholic,” a “faggot,” a “spermless dwarf,” and the son of a white prostitute “who got knocked up by the blackest, blackest, blackest nigger—and then the coochie must not have been that good because he left her.” Jones, who is black, invoked her own child—a one-year-old son—for the purpose of comparing penis sizes with Star; they were, she said, “about the same.”

Have Confederate Yankee and Patterico* condemned these vile statements yet? No? Their silence speaks volumes, wouldn't you say?

Elsewhere in the July 10 & 17 New Yorker issue, there's a Tad Friend article (I couldn't find it online, alas) about the self-proclaimed blue-collar comedians - you know, Larry the Cable Guy & Jeff Foxworthy & them. Their manager, J.P. Williams, boasts about verbally abusing Lloyd Braun, then president of the studio producing Foxworthy's show:

During a conference call, he screamed at Braun, "I hope you and your family die of ass cancer!"

There's also this:

During one conference call, Williams became so enraged by a credit-hogging television agent that he flung his Rolodex at the wall (hitting a junior agent), then hurtled over his desk and began throttling the offender. "If you can jump your desk, you ought to be allowed to strangle somebody," he explained."

There must be something about working in the entertainment bidness that turns people into sociopaths. Or maybe it just attracts people who are already sociopaths.

Anyway, I note, more in sadness than in anger, that Confederate Yankee and Patterico have failed to denounce Williams's vile words and deeds. Of course, as I understand the philosophy of Patterico, as articulated in the comments to this post, Williams, Star, and Miss Jones are all people of some courage, because they weren't anonymous when they made their mayonnaise-spreading, coochie-dissing, hope-your-family-dies-of-ass-cancer comments. Whereas I, according to Patterico, am a "huge pussy" with no "balls" because I choose to comment pseudonymously. Well, let Patterico think what he wants - let the record reflect that I , unlike Mr. Patterico, at least have the courage and decency to denounce the appalling comments of DJ Star.

*Be warned before you click on Patterico's site: He doesn't seem to respect the anonymity of people who disagree with him.

Update: Goodness. The whole time I was gathering links for this post last night I was unaware Patterico was being a busy little bee over at tbogg's.

And the party is nonstop at SadlyNo!

Honestly, I DO feel guilty for reading (and commenting on) silly blogfights. Especially in light of, um, all the really serious stuff that's happening in the world that I haven't gotten around to blogging about. Oh well . . .