Sticks And Stones

I never particularly cared for Jerry Lewis the comedian. I admit he sometimes made me laugh, but mostly, I really didn't enjoy most of his material. But for 42 years now, the now 81-year old Lewis has held his Labor Day Telethon to benefit the Muscular Dystrophy Association. He has raised an enormous amount of money for that organization - and dedicated every Labor Day weekend since he was 39-years old to doing so. That, I think, is worthy of respect, regardless of whether I cared for his act or not.

So would it be too much to ask to cut him a little slack?

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Comedian Jerry Lewis apologized on Tuesday for his use of an anti-gay slur during the weekend broadcast of his annual Labor Day Telethon for the Muscular Dystrophy Association.

The controversial remark came Monday afternoon in the 18th hour of the live national telecast, when a visibly weary Lewis, 81, was joking on stage, pretending to introduce members of someone's family as he mugged for the camera.

"Oh, your family has come to see you. You remember Bart, your oldest son, Jesse, the illiterate fag …," Lewis said, as he apparently caught himself and ceased the gag in mid-sentence, turning on his heel away from the camera.

A clip of the incident surfaced on a number of Internet sites on Tuesday, including TMZ.com, drawing a condemnation from the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD).

"Jerry Lewis' on-air use of this kind of anti-gay slur is simply unacceptable," GLAAD President Neil Giuliano said in a statement, adding that the comic's remark "feeds a climate of hatred and intolerance" that could incite anti-gay violence.

GLAAD urged Lewis to apologize for the comment and asked the entertainer to meet with members of the group "to help him understand why these words are so hurtful."

Lewis issued a statement later in the day through organizers of the telethon saying he was sorry "to anyone who was offended."

"I obviously made a bad choice of words. Everyone who knows me understands that I hold no prejudices in this regard," he said. "The success of the (telethon) and all the good that will come from it shouldn't be lost because of one unfortunate word. I accept responsibility for what I said. There are no excuses. I am sorry."

GLAAD might want to consider that Lewis realized almost as soon as he said it that he had made a mistake and that he has issued a real, heartfelt apology. It would be a better move for them to accept that and let the matter drop than to continue to flog away at an 81-year old man who has done so much to help others. They would look better by doing so than by continuing to beat up verbally on Lewis.

Drop it. Please.  

(Joe Gandelman has thought on this as well, as well as some tribute video.)

UPDATE: Apparently GLAAD has issued a statement acknowledging the apology and is dropping the matter. There may yet be some hope for civility.

Tonga, Tonga, Tonga!

No, not a typo. It is neither meant to be Animal House, or a signal that complete surprise was achieved. Although there are elements of both in this story. No, it is about the rugby team from Tonga. And those boys can eat!

In Rugby circles they are renowned for their all-devouring, take-no-prisoners style of tackling.

It is an attitude the Tonga rugby team bring with them to the dining table.

When they dropped into the Fusion Inn yesterday for an English pub lunch, the 30 South Sea giants chomped their way through a staggering 30 roast chickens, 60lb of roast lamb and 60lb of roast beef.

They also wolfed 30lb of pasta and 30lb of potato salad and washed it all down with 40 litres of orange juice.

In all, more than a quarter of a million calories and nearly 10,000g of fat were consumed by the squad.

The team is collectively known as the 'wrecking balls of the tournament'. One player weighs in at 294 pounds. He's his very own scrum! Personally, if I had to play these guys, given their eating habits, I'd be very, very worried. They might decide to simply eat the opposition. It's not like it hasn't happened before.

(They'll be denied health benefits, though.) Side note: Tonga is a really unusual nation, by the way. You might be interested in reading a bit about it.

Birdie, Eagle, Mulligan……Emu?

New golf term! When your every shot is being watched by an enormous, flightless fowl, it's called an "emu."

ELMA, Wash. - Every golfer likes a birdie, even more so an eagle. But an emu? The big bird that showed up Tuesday at Oaksridge Golf Course was another matter, at least for Sue McMeekin of Satsop and Les Bell of Montesano.

The flightless bird, second in size among avians to the ostrich, followed the pair for seven of their nine holes, watching each swing and sometimes walking between them or standing directly in front of them. The emu seemed to take special interest in McMeekin's red fleece jacket.

"It was strange," McMeekin said. "She's awful big and she made me nervous."

Even more annoying was the bird's advice on what club to use. He was always wrong.

Driving With The Top Down

Driving with the top down isn't so bad. Driving with the top and the bottom down - when you don't own a convertible - not so much.

The 37-year-old Chicago man was traveling east to Ohio to visit his mother, police said. He was nude and had petroleum jelly on his hands when a state trooper pulled him over about 10 miles from the Ohio line Wednesday, police said.

The man, who told police he was comfortable driving in the nude, was charged with misdemeanor indecent exposure, punishable by up to a year in jail.

The trooper, Al Martinez, a four-year veteran of the Indiana State Police, said he walked up to the passenger side of the SUV and saw that the man had dropped a T-shirt across his midsection. Other motorists had called police about the driver, with several calls from truckers who could see into the front seat of the SUV.

Hey, Brattleboro. This guy's the type you're encouraging! Have a nice day!

And There It Is

The "conservatives" in Britain are now openly considering a policy that would deny health care to those who make "unhealthy" lifestyle choices. This is the dark side of socialized medicine.

Patients who refuse to change their unhealthy lifestyles should not be treated by the NHS, the Conservatives said today.

In a bid to ease spiralling levels of obesity and other health concerns, a Tory panel said certain treatments should be denied to patients who refuse to co-operate with health professionals and live healthier lifestyles.

And those who do manage to improve their general health by losing weight and quitting smoking, for example, would receive "Health Miles" cards.

Points earned could then be used to pay for health-related products such as gym membership and fresh vegetables.

The aim is a shift in the NHS towards preventing disease and ill-health rather than having to treat it.

The proposal was one of a raft of measures suggested in a review of public services, ordered by David Cameron.

The 200-page study, entitled Restoring Pride in Our Public Services, was carried out by the Conservative public services improvement policy group's review co-chaired by former health secretary Stephen Dorrell and leading educationalist Baroness Perry.

"It is inconsistent with the concept of the responsible citizen to imagine that it is realistic for citizens, having paid their taxes, to expect that the state will underwrite the health implications of any lifestyle decision they choose to make," the report states.

This is the logical extension of John Edward's proposal to make "preventative" care mandatory - presumably under threat of legal actions. Like taking away your health care. Its funny how people who demand government stay out of the bedroom are seriously arguing that government should be given ultimate control over your body itself. This is authoritarianism of the worst kind. The state asserts its right to control you and your behavior if you want "free" health care.

Free health care will only cost you your freedom.

UPDATE: Others: Gina Cobb: You work hard, take care of your health, and save the system thousands of dollars a year and you get  . . . a coupon for turnips.  Nice.

McQ: Health Miles cards. How, well, infantile. Why not put a gold star up on the "chores" poster each day instead?

A Blog for All: It's one thing for an insurer to offer incentives to their customers to improve their lifestyles and promote healthier living. It's quite another to punish those who can't comply with such plans by cutting their health care services.

Ann Althouse: I'm picturing a whole weird future where we trade in government-granted points.

Professor Bainbridge: Anywhow, I hope for the sake of my British friends that Health Miles work a heck of lot better than frequent flyer programs.

The Astute Bloggers: THIS EFFORT BY CAMERON IS REALLY JUST ABOUT AN ELITE FOISTING THEIR VALUES ON THE MASSES - "FOR THE COMMON GOOD" OF COURSE.

Dust my Broom: Smoking is healthier than fascism. (Funny poster).

Cato-at-Liberty: Sometimes politics is beyond parody.

A Tangled Web: I hate the Nanny State and Cameron is a bigger Nanny than even Labour!

New Aircraft Maintenance Procedure

We're not sure where you'd find this procedure in the official Boeing 757 maintenance manuals. Nepal has instituted a whole new maintenance regime: goat sacrifice.

KATHMANDU (Reuters) - Officials at Nepal's state-run airline have sacrificed two goats to appease Akash Bhairab, the Hindu sky god, following technical problems with one of its Boeing 757 aircraft, the carrier said on Tuesday.

Nepal Airlines, which has two Boeing aircraft, has had to suspend some services in recent weeks due the problem.

The goats were sacrificed in front of the troublesome aircraft on Sunday at Nepal's only international airport in Kathmandu in accordance with Hindu traditions, an official said.

Nepal Airlines officials say the new procedure was effective and the planes are now airworthy. The goats were unavailable for comment. It doesn't look like they teach advanced techniques like this over at this school, though. We had no idea goat sacrifice worked on aircraft. We thought it was only good for fixing computers.

Lies, Damned Lies And ……Rock Stars?

Well, here's a shocker of a study: Rock stars more likely to die prematurely.

A study of more than 1,000 mainly British and North American artists, spanning the era from Elvis Presley to rapper Eminem, found they were two to three times more likely to suffer a premature death than the general population.

Between 1956 and 2005 there were 100 deaths among the 1,064 musicians examined by researchers at the Centre for Public Health at Liverpool John Moores University.

As well as Presley, the toll of those dying before their time included Doors singer Jim Morrison, guitar hero Jimi Hendrix, T Rex star Marc Bolan and Nirvana's Kurt Cobain.

More than a quarter of all the deaths were related to drugs or alcohol abuse, said the study in the Journal of Epidemial Community Health.

"The paper clearly describes a population of rock and pop stars who are at a disproportionate risk of alcohol and drug related deaths," said Mark Bellis, lead author of the study.

One wonders how much money was wasted spent on developing these stupid shocking results. First of all, if you select rock stars knowing that some are already dead, is there really any purpose to the study? You've already got an obvious skew in the data right out of the gate. About the only useful bit of the study is the conclusion that using rock stars as spokesmen in public health campaigns is not a good idea. And that conclusion could be reached without doing any study at all, couldn't it? The single silliest conclusion:

Bellis suggested that the high death rate among older American musicians could be related to the continent's greater appetite for reunion tours, exposing the artists for more years to an unhealthy "rock'n'roll" lifestyle.

It could also be due to the poor medical outlook for impoverished American ex-pop stars who have no health insurance, he said.

Horse hockey. There's insurance available for musicians. Meanwhile our recently concluded study indicates that any study that is based on epidemiological methods is three times more likely to produce lurid headlines. Well, it does.

Let Them Eat Something Or Other

Marie Antoinette did not say, "Let them eat cake" when told the peasants had no bread. That scurrilous lie was told by agitators trying to turn the populace against her. But the phrase has been around for a while and is usually interpreted as indicating aristocratic contempt for the needs of the people. (And don't believe the interwebby idiocy about "brioche", either.)

 The political philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau mentions it in his Confessions in connection with an incident that occurred in 1740. (He stole wine while working as a tutor in Lyons and then had problems trying to scrounge up something to eat along with it.) He concludes thusly: "Finally I remembered the way out suggested by a great princess when told that the peasants had no bread: 'Well, let them eat cake.'"

But whoever said it and whenever it was said are unimportant. It does describe a disconnect between a ruling elite and the people, doesn't it? Well, that disconnect still exists. You see, bread prices are skyrocketing in Britain. Why? Well, its at least partly - if not mostly - due to the increased demand for biofuel production.

Premier Foods will force shoppers to pay up to 8p more for a loaf of Hovis after raising the price of bread for the second time this year because of an “unprecedented” surge in wheat costs.

The company, which makes Hovis, Mothers Pride and Homepride bread, said that it had no choice but to push through an increase given that wheat prices had doubled in the past 12 months after poor harvests around the world and the UK's dismal summer.

Premier Foods admitted the price rise as it revealed its pre-tax profits fell nearly 50 per cent to £13.9 million in the six months to June 30. Profits at Premier's Bread Bakeries business almost halved to £19 million.

Robert Schofield, chief executive, refused to reveal the extent of the price increase, adding that it was up to supermarkets and independent retailers whether to pass it on the additional cost of a loaf……

……Mr Schofield warned that other food products were also facing inflationary pressure, in part because of the desire by governments to give over more farmland to biofuel products.

He said: “Everyone is focusing on wheat and bread prices at the moment but there is a general inflation that hasn’t been with us since the 1990s.

“As long as governments are going to grow fuel there will be in effect an environmental tax on food.” (Emphasis added)

Kevin Hawkins, director general of the British Retail Consortium, said he believed shoppers would be able to weather higher bread prices.

Yeah, yeah. Let them eat whatever, right? Some folks are denying that it is the biofuels, of course. But a strong indicator that there really is a fire with all that smoke is the sharp decrease in profits for the company. Food prices have only just begun to climb - there is no end in sight. The increases are happening in every sector of the food markets. It will get worse. Remember what Sunita Narain, the head of the Centre for Science and Environment in India had to say about biofuel? Biofuels were "good as an idea, bad in practice." The elites are pushing biofuels without regard to the impact it will have on all those little people out there.

Let them eat whatever.

Self-Delivered Fast Food

We have noted several instances of this in the past months. Bears have discovered a new, self-delivered fast food sensation: mountain bikers. This time it was in Washington state.

A Port Orchard man who was attacked by a black bear while mountain biking Sunday in a Kitsap County park was in satisfactory condition Monday but remained in intensive care.

The 51-year-old man, whose name has not been released at his family's request, had a brief conversation with a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service official Monday afternoon, and was adamant that it was a male bear that mauled him, not a mother bear with two cubs that had also been seen in the area Sunday.

"He said, 'It was on top of me and I'm positive it was a male bear,' " said Fish and Wildlife spokesman Sgt. Ted Jackson, who visited the man at the hospital for about 15 minutes. Fish and Wildlife officers were still hunting the bear with a team of dogs Monday, with plans to kill it.

The man suffered injuries to his face, shoulder and arm, Jackson said.

"From my understanding, it was his left shoulder that was heavily damaged," he said. "He's in a lot of pain and heavily medicated. You can tell he's still probably in a little bit of shock."

The man was biking, with his two dogs, in Banner Forest Heritage Park near Olalla around noon when he encountered the bear, said Ron Powers, a battalion chief for South Kitsap Fire and Rescue. The dogs were in front of him on the trail when he heard them barking. He came around a blind corner and was face to face with the bear, Powers said.

The bear charged, and the man picked up his bike to protect himself. But the bear reached through the bike and ripped at the man's arm, face, back, neck and ear before backing off, Powers said.

Authorities are trying to catch - and kill - the bear. (Once they have attacked a human, that is pretty standard.) Authorities are not sure why the bear attacked or if anything provoked the bear, but one of the man's two dogs has not been seen since the attack. The dogs, incidentally, should not have been running loose - the park rules require that dogs be leashed.

William Shakespeare Runs Amok

William Shakespeare has been killed while running amok on a highway in England. Not, no, no. Not the guy who may or may not have written some plays back when the first Elizabeth was queen. This one was a full grown water buffalo. And the past tense is correct here. Old Billy is an ex-buffalo after meeting a Fiat.

The Fiat Punto hit the large animal on the A590, near Dalton-in-Furness, on Monday night.

Police said the privately-owned buffalo, known locally as William Shakespeare, died at the scene. It had escaped from a nearby field.

The driver, from Barrow, was taken to Furness General Hospital and treated for minor injuries.

Two other cars, a Ford Focus and a Nissan Micra, collided after swerving to avoid the buffalo and the Fiat.

This is a Fiat Punto. This local report states that water buffalo can weigh up to a ton. (That may be a bit high for a domestic one, though.) But the weights are probably pretty evenly matched. If you thought hitting a deer was bad, just be glad there aren't many of these things running about.

Post Bashes Bundlers

Well, not bundlers per se, the Post is actually bashing the non-reporting of the activities of campaign finance "bundlers" by political campaigns. It isn't just Norman Hsu, there are other bundlers for Democrats that are facing criminal charges.

Ms. Clinton isn't the only candidate with bundler troubles. Michigan lawyer Geoffrey Fieger was indicted last month on allegations of conspiring to make more than $125,000 in illegal bundled contributions to the 2004 presidential campaign of John Edwards, who declined to identify his bundlers during that campaign. The indictment alleges that Mr. Fieger's law firm reimbursed employees for their contributions by disguising them as bonuses and repaid contractors by calling the amounts payments for services.

These episodes underscore the importance of disclosing bundlers, and they reveal the inadequacy of the current state of affairs, in which no such reporting is required and what reporting does occur is sporadic, insufficient and inaccessible.

And who does the Post hold up as a model for trying hardest to be open and honest about campaign bundlers? George W. Bush. He disclosed more and better information than any of the current crop of Democratic candidates. The Post is calling for a law requiring disclosure. That isn't a bad idea. It would also be a good idea to require open contribution information by any organization that is involved in politics by running "issue ads." Let people or organizations spend whatever they want, but make them show the source of every dime they raise and spend. Simple enough.

An Ugly Old Monster Is Back

Denis MacShane, a member of the British Parliament and currently serving as a member of the Council of Europe, has an op-ed in today's Washington Post. He describes the findings of a committee he chaired investigating anti-Semitism in Britain, Europe and the world. The results are not encouraging.

Our report showed a pattern of fear among a small number of British citizens — there are around 300,000 Jews in Britain, of whom about a third are observant — that is not acceptable in a modern democracy. Synagogues attacked. Jewish schoolboys jostled on public transportation. Rabbis punched and knifed. British Jews feeling compelled to raise millions to provide private security for their weddings and community events. On campuses, militant anti-Jewish students fueled by Islamist or far-left hate seeking to prevent Jewish students from expressing their opinions.

More worrisome was what we described as anti-Jewish discourse, a mood and tone whenever Jews are discussed, whether in the media, at universities, among the liberal media elite or at dinner parties of modish London. To express any support for Israel or any feeling for the right of a Jewish state to exist produces denunciation, even contempt.

MacShane says that the problem is becoming very severe in Europe, especially in those places where anti-Semitism has a long history of being official government policy. But it is getting much worse than that even in the Middle East - that isn't exactly a shocker, of course.

Europe is reawakening its old demons, but today there is a difference. The old anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism have morphed into something more dangerous. Anti-Semitism today is officially sanctioned state ideology and is being turned into a mobilizing and organizing force to recruit thousands in a new crusade — the word is chosen deliberately — to eradicate Jewishness from the region whence it came and to weaken and undermine all the humanist values of rule of law, tolerance and respect for core rights such as free expression that Jews have fought for over time.

The president of Iran is the most odious example of this new state-sanctioned anti-Semitism. But from the Egyptian Writers Union to the notorious anti-Jewish articles in the charters of Hamas and Hezbollah, hatred of Jews is an integral element of a new ideology rising to prominence in many regions of the world.

The one problem with MacShane's take on all this, as I see it, is his attempt to finesse the distinction between Israel and Jews in general. Yes, there is a real difference, of course, but the fact is that there really isn't a lot of nuance in the current anti-Semitism. The terms are interchangeable for far too many people - especially in the West where people should know better. MacShane may be correct in pointing out the distinction, but in practical terms there is no real difference. At the close of his piece he actually does get it right, incidentally:

We are at the beginning of a long intellectual and ideological struggle. It is not about Jews or Israel. It is about everything democrats have long fought for: the truth without fear, no matter one's religion or political beliefs. The new anti-Semitism threatens all of humanity. The Jew-haters must not pass.

MacShane is at least trying to address this. But in many ways and in many (too many) places the old mindsets that led to pogroms and official persecution are making a comeback. That is a a very ugly old monster.