Unnecessary parody

Does Maureen Down think she's writing for the Onion?! Her article of today (which, unfortunately, is behind a TimesSelect wall of registration and money, which I get because I subscribe to the paper version, and which you can if you do, too, or if you pay the fee to get the online content) is UTTERLY FUCKING RIDICULOUS.

Let's go through it bit by bit, shall we?

Her opening line:

W. was the best Harry ever had.

is just insulting. First, it takes the liberty of assigning a Bush-style nickname to the supreme court nominee Harriet Miers. Maybe this is a nickname she already has, but, AFAIK, it hasn't come out in the press yet. It's therefore just parody -- not lampooning based on fact -- to make one up one's self. Also, the line is sexual in its overtones, which is also insulting and completely unsubstantiated.

Next, she prints the text of one belated birthday card that Miers sent to Bush in 1997. Sure, Miers can't punctuate (which is, in itself, excoriable in a supreme court nominee):

"You are the best Governor ever - deserving of great respect!"

Eh. Sure, dumb card. But were those ten words sufficient to mock for the next several hundred?



Really. I'm considering registering maureendowdsucks.com and just ripping her apart every week. Not like I don't anyhow ... Hmm ...

Steel Magnolia

This is not from the Times, but it's so egregious I had to post something. Up late coding, I'm listening to the news about Bush's latest Supreme Court nomination of Harriet Miers. Martin Frost (who was apparently "served in Congress from 1979 to 2005, representing a diverse district in the Dallas-Ft. Worth area") says:

There are other interesting aspects to her nomination. There currently are no Southerners on the court (individuals who spent their adult life in the South) and Miers is a somewhat soft-spoken Southern woman. However, no one should mistake her quiet nature for a lack of toughness or resolve. She is a steel magnolia — something hostile senators from both the left and right will find out when they try to embarrass her during the confirmation process.

(Sorry for the Fox News link, but it was the only hit at 2:19 PDT for "steel magnolia miers").

To hear him say it (as he just did on NPR) is disgusting. "She's a real southern lady ... she'll be a real interesting presence on the court ..." So we're looking for steel magnolias now? This is just so ... disgustingly fetishist, somehow.

NYT Archive Link Generator

Shoulda found this a long time ago:

http://nytimes.blogspace.com/genlink

Links permanently into the archives, with GET headers telling the Times that the link is coming from a blog. Cool!

FSM!

The Flying Spaghetti Monster has finally made the big time. This image is just too good to not re-post:



I first heard about this maybe a year ago (6 months? Something small), but apparently now, the FSM (not to be confused with Finite State Machine) is endoresd by many educators, and is bringing a lawsuit against the Kansas Board of Education.

Hurrah for parody! And hurrah for snarky, anti-ridiculism parodies picked up by the NYT.

Grammar warms my heart

There may be many things I don't like about Roberts as a Supreme Court nominee. But I can't help it that his apparent tendency as a grammarian who sent back briefs that had sound legal arguments but stylistic holes warms the cockles of my shoulda-been-a-journalist-or-at-least-a-copy-editor heart. :)