Another dram of history: Mr Obama, or perhaps Mrs Obama, or perhaps Valerie Jarrett has smashed yet another glass ceiling kept so spotless you probably didn’t know it existed. We refer of course to the hiring of an openly gay man as Social Secretary at the White House. The purity of this latest First is somewhat at issue though. The office of Social Secretary, while venerable, is not mentioned in the Constitution. Its history is not well recorded. Like so many curious things Presidential, it owes its current sacred status to the gunning down of William McKinley which begat the raising up of Teddy Roosevelt. But until yesterday this swanky, demanding post had never been held by a man. Now, this is not much of a First for fans of Firsts especially as this lucky fellow, Jeremy Bernard, is about as white as they come except that he is no Republican. He is however a prominent homosexual, which counts for Firsts, I guess, except that since the job is approving doilies and judging chintz you might doubt it if they said he WASN’T gay, but just hiring a white guy with good penmanship and a glad hand wouldn’t be much of a breakthrough, at least not on par with the other Firsts we have seen. Probably Bernard’s status as a multi-million dollar campaign contribution bundler was most persuasive, if we are being fair. But paying off a crony is no kind of First and if we are being truthful we would say what everyone paying attention knows; our Second Black President has hired our First (Openly) Gay Male Social Secretary as part of a coordinated and transparent sop to a restive element of his base. [Read more →]

Tags: politics & government, race & culture by Ken Watson
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This past Friday night, my girlfriend Cailin went out, so I had our son Jack all alone. I wasn’t wild about the prospect of watching Thomas the Train on repeat, so I thought of things to do. I am devastated that I couldn’t make my friend Rita Marley’s going away/wig out party, but I was thinking that showing up with a raucous, manic, wild(almost)three year old might not be a good idea. Then again, Rita is one of my brother Patrick’s best friends, so it may not have been so bad after all. But I hit the open South Jersey road with Jack, and while he played Angry Birds on my itouch, I thought about a place we could wander around and explore. I was having a comically bad day on Friday, and the place I decided to visit certainly didn’t help matters. I took Jack to the Voorhees Town Center, the shopping destination formerly known as the Echelon Mall. Instead of a fun night out, I wound up depressed over a once glorious shopping mall. [Read more →]

Tags: art & entertainment, Marty digs by Marty O'Connor
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Holy Family University, a small Catholic college in Philadelphia, is an unknown in the world of major college athletics. It competes in Division II in most sports, including basketball. Rarely does the school’s name come up when it comes to sports news, but that changed this week. Head basketball coach John O’Connor resigned Thursday after a controversy stemming from his treatment of one of his players that became public the way so many things do these days:  Youtube. [Read more →]

Tags: bad sports, good sports by Alan Spoll
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If you were a young man in Arizona in the eighties, you know Dave Pratt. He is much in the mold of a Howard Stern but local and more musically oriented. Dave Pratt and his Sex Machine band were big mouthed trout in this smallish pond but they did have one break-out national hit, the comic masterpiece Drop it on Khadaffy. As radio’s ’Wild One’ Pratt was a man of his times. The infectious licks and Middle Eastern hooks wedded to open, violent assertion of US interests was hugely popular. It is probably needless to say, if you think about it, that this song that encourages the airstrikes on Libya of 1986 was actually a RESPONSE to those actions. It is a safe bet that Dave Pratt, like most of his audience and demographic was as ignorant of Libya’s existence as they were of its troublesome habits until American jets kicked up a goodly amount of dust there. [Read more →]

Tags: politics & government, terror & war by Ken Watson
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10. “I hope Inception wins for Best Brain Cramp.”

9. “Only three hours to go?! Man, this show is just zippin’ by!”

8. “Best Picture? – Hah! My favorite is Best Sound Mixing!”

7. “What about Sex & the City 2? Or are they just giving prizes for good stuff?”

6. “I never realized that the Oscar is just chocolate wrapped in tinfoil.”

5. “I hope Jeff Bridges wins Best John Wayne Impression.”

4. “Crap! Justin Bieber: Never Say Never won’t be eligible until next year!”

3. “If 127 Hours wins, how’s that guy gonna clap?”

2. “Isn’t Lindsay Lohan up for Best Special Defects?”

1. “I thought The King’s Speech was about that whole ‘I have a dream’ thing.”
 

Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.

Tags: art & entertainment, Bob Sullivan's top ten everything, movies, television by Bob Sullivan
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I’ve steered clear of the Wisconsin brouhaha mostly because I don’t have anything unique, interesting, or provocative to say about it.  Moreover, nearly all of my closest friends and family members live in Wisconsin, and 95% of them think Scott Walker is Satan. To phrase it delicately, these friends and family members are not “receptive” to opinions that stray from the Satan narrative.

However, at Jim Goad’s NetJerk Lounge, Vladimir Zamansky, a Russian citizen (and featured guest in one of WFTC‘s old “Audio Files” columns) provides the most compelling thought yet. He writes (emphasis mine):

My mom is working 24/7, half-day at school and half-day at home. Her monthly salary is 500 USD. These teachers from Wisconsin are shameless.

To see how that $500 USD a month compares to some Wisconsin teachers’ salaries, click here.

What’s that, you say? “You can’t compare Wisconsin to Russia — it’s apples and oranges.” OK, fine. That’s fair. But then please don’t compare Wisconsin to Egypt. Please don’t compare Wisconsin to Nazi Germany. Please don’t compare State Street to the beaches of Normandy.

Vladimir officially gets my vote for Champion of the Universe right now.

UPDATE: Some more revealing data (h/t Michael C. Moynihan).

Tags: education, politics & government by Michael Cade
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Charlie Sheen and his poetic fingertips have been the source of great entertainment and speculation over the last several days. His antics have provided a much-needed distraction from events in that other part of the world where all that stuff is happening that I’m not really following anyway because it in no way affects me, and rising gas prices. But now that CBS and Warner Bros. have pulled the plug on the remainder of this season of his show “Two and a Half Men,” things have gotten a lot less funny and a whole lot more serious. After all,

If the show can’t return after this shortened season, it will still have a long life in re-runs and remain a cash cow. Warner Bros. still retains the syndication rights, and the show is watched almost as much in syndication each week as it is in primetime.

“Great would be an understatement,” said one studio insider asked to describe the show’s success, who said the show remains on-track to be a billion-dollar asset for Warner Bros. “This is one of the most successful sitcoms in the history of television.”

I have to admit that I have never watched more than a few minutes of the show. But given the importance of this program to the American economy, it is vitally important that it continue. It “is one of the most successful sitcoms in the history of television.”

It can’t die. Therefore I would like to present some suggestions as to how “Two and a Half Men” can continue its run. [Read more →]

Tags: art & entertainment, ends & odd by Ricky Sprague
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Israel sits on some disputed real estate. Perhaps you had heard. The vigor with which it is disputed is somewhat curious given that it is tiny, mostly desert and in a pretty rough neighborhood. Indeed it is the neighbors who press their claims. The claimants are arab and muslim. The holders are jewish and jewish. Yes, there are arabs and muslims in Zion but if they are loyal Zionists they keep that to themselves. Israel is a jewish nation for a jewish people who are about as religious as any western people which is to say some are not at all and some are devoutly so. There have been many, many denunciations of this state of affairs as some sort of racism and yes, it IS some sort of racism. It is the sort of racism practiced by a race that is threatened with extinction every day by explicitly racist actors with apocalyptic religious tastes of their own.

[Read more →]

Tags: politics & government, race & culture by Ken Watson
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While once we may have contemplated the merits of the philosopher king in human society, now we focus on a humbler, but quite common role: The parent coach. So many of us spend hours coaching our own kids, and I will start by stating the embarrassingly obvious: It is challenging. [Read more →]

Tags: sports, virtual children by Scott Warnock by Scott Warnock
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It is wearying to mention Wisconsin so let’s mention it not. It’s unnecessary because those events are not exceptional, actually, but for scale and location. The struggle there is just one beach head in the constant, global and universal struggle. A tiny tendril of that struggle touched down here in Atlanta yesterday as a noisy bussed in scrum of unionists faced a smaller, carpooled scrum of flag wavers across the intersection in front of the Georgia capitol. I can’t say that I attended although that was my intention. For me it was just a three or four block walk. Approaching I could tell my side by the abundance of Carhartt’s and posterboard signs. I could tell the other by their red t-shirts and glossy-stock signs. The unionists numbered maybe 200 and the anti-unionists half that so this was less than a political Woodstock. An earlier scheduled event for and against a referendum on Sunday liquor sales (I’m pro) was a bit larger.

I didn’t stop. I didn’t break stride. I walked past my guys and their guys at the same camel-esque speed and blinked at them as if I had no idea what I had stumbled upon at all and walked straight to the bar. So I guess I am a deserter. [Read more →]

Tags: language & grammar, politics & government by Ken Watson
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