So David Letterman has issued a more extensive and seemingly less qualified apology for telling a joke that — taken most charitably — suggested that Sarah Palin's 18-year-old daughter Bristol is a slut. That's a good thing. He ought to apologize. Bristol Palin had a child out of wedlock. So did David Letterman. For David Letterman to suggest that she's a slut because she had a child out of wedlock makes him a hypocritical asshat. Moreover, it's uncouth to attack the children of politicians to make a joke or score political points, even if they make mistakes in their private lives. (Attacking them for public actions as adults is perfectly fair game, of course. It's particularly obnoxious to attack them with racist or sexist tropes.

I say that even though I absolutely abhor Sarah Palin.

There have been some unqualified condemnations of Letterman from the Left. But there's also been a strong current of minimizing his behavior on the grounds that the Right's outrage is manufactured for political effect, or that the Right is exaggerating what Letterman said, or that the Right is hypocritical because figures on the Right have attacked the daughters of Democratic politicians (as both Limbaugh and McCain did with Chelsea Clinton, for example).

There are two things going on here. One is a mundane he's-one-of-us sentiment, the tendency to issue apologias for the bad behavior of people on "our side." E.D. Kain at League of Ordinary Gentlemen did an excellent job of discussing this in the context of the recent debate over whether conservatives should criticize right-wing commentators when they act like jackasses.

But the more insidious sentiment is that there's a limited amount of bad behavior to go around in any given the situation, and that if you assign a bunch to one side, there won't be any left for the other side. That's bullshit. That's the spirit at the core of thinking based on labels and group affiliations. Asshattery is not a zero-sum game. There's an infinite amount of it to go around in any scenario. That's why we can both call out Letterman for being a sexist dick who took a cheap shot at an 18-year-old who just happened to be the daughter of a politician, and simultaneously call bullshit on some of the carefully crafted and stage-managed outrage from some people who don't typically show much delicacy about how they talk about women. (Like John McCain. Really, John McCain? You feel comfortable running your mouth about this one, given the infamous joke you made about Chelsea Clinton?) One does not diminish the other. Pulling our punches on Letterman because some of his critics are hypocrites, or pretending that all of Letterman's critics must be sincere just because he did act badly, is to engage in sloppy thinking, and to value allegiences over ideas.

In that spirit, and on a related note, I rather like the blog Sadly, No. It's frequently quite funny in puncturing the inanity of the right-wing commentariat. I approve when they ridicule figures like Kathryn Jean Lopez, who is stepping down as the NRO's editor and whose views I frequently despise. But when Sadly, No decides to go with sophomoric "hyuck hyuck K-Lo is an ugly whore" approach, they're acting like sexist dicks. It doesn't matter that they have well-polished liberal credentials; they are indulging, as they occasionally do, in offensive misogyny. The fact that Lopez herself says appalling and/or idiotic things like clockwork does not diminish that, and does not excuse the folks at Sadly, No.

I'm just not sure how email and social networking are going to work out for the Republicans.

No, I'm not just talking about the fact that Dems like Obama seem better able to use e-solicitations to flimflam millions of gullible net users out of that week's latte and/or beer money. I'm talking about Republicans having a seemingly harder time of grasping this simple truth: if you are a dipshit, and you are willing to commit your dipshittery to writing (especially when that writing is easily forwarded, copied, and linked to), then many, many more people are going to learn that you are a dipshit.

See, Republicans have been having a little spate of trouble with officials and staffers — usually but not always on the state level — getting caught sending around racist jokes at President Obama's expense. In today's iteration, Sherri Goforth, staffer to Tennessee Republican state senator Diane Black, sent around a picture showing miniature portraits of the nation's presidents, with the last spot occupied by two big eyes peering out of the dark. Ha ha! Because black people don't show up on camera because they are so black! Even if it's a painting! It's a knee-slapper! Caught out, Sherri Goforth confessed, and attempted to recoup some points by executing an Olympic-quality I'm-sorry-you-found-out-I'm-an-asshole non-apology apology:

When I asked her if she understood the controversial nature of the photo, Goforth would only say she felt very bad about accidentally sending it to the wrong list. When I gave her a second chance to address the controversial nature of the email, she again repeated that she only felt bad about sending it to the wrong list of people.

“I went on the wrong email and I inadvertently hit the wrong button,” Goforth told NIT. “I’m very sick about it, and it’s one of those things I can’t change or take back.”

This is merely the most recent instance. Liberal blogs like Wonkette have been gleefully reporting as Republican after Republican has been caught sending around stupid racist stuff: Trey Walker, aide to Republican South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster, talking about how Michelle Obama is a gorilla's descendant; or Diann Jones, a Republican Party vice-chair from Dallas, sending an email about the "black house" to judges and then getting shirty about it when they forwarded it to the press; Southern California Republican (ex)-mayor Dean Grosse, who sent around the popular-amongst-idjits watermellon-growing-on-the-White-House-lawn email; and so on and so on, ad nauseum and ad moronum (more collected here.).

I've said before that I pine for the return (or the arrival in the first instance, if you prefer) of a Republican party that stands for, among other things, taking responsibility for your own actions. So while emails and social networking may not be a good thing for the modern Republican party as it currently kind-of exists, they may prove to be a healthy purgative in the long term. This sort of thing can help rid the party of people it should be rid of, including but not limited to (1) racists, and (2) really stupid people, including the subgroups of (a) people who think racial humor is funny and (b) people with such piss-poor judgment that they put racial humor in emails. Personally I'd also like to see this result in the culling of (3) people who whine about "political correctness," by which they mean "the awful system in which I am called a dick if I act like a dick," and (4) people who think that being called a racist when they say racist shit means that they are being silenced by an oppressive society. Categories (3) and (4) may be summarized, for convenience, as "whiny little bitches." Watch for a flood of whiny little bitching from Sherri Goforth's defenders.

I doubt the purge will work very fast or very well. But a man can dream.

I don't mean to pick on Great Britain this week or anything. I'm just warmed by the notion that in the face of anti-crime hysteria, another country has the capacity to act like even more of an ass than my own. Case in point: in an effort to profit from England's terror over knives, manufacturers are offering anti-stab knives. No, really.

The knife is expected to sell for around £40-50 and has been tested with “very favourable” results by the Home Office’s Design and Technology Alliance – set up to research products that can deter crime.

If someone makes whiffle cricket bats, buy their stock now.

This is the face of the generation that will lead Cuba's revolution for the next forty years.

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In the various blogs and forums where adoptive families congregate, there's been an uproar about the upcoming Warner Brothers movie Orphan. You may have seen the trailer if you've been to the movies in the last few weeks; if not, you can see a revised version (more on that later) through the link above. Orphan appears to be a run-of-the-mill psychological horror movie built around the classic changeling/bad seed myth kernel, in this case featuring a nice quiet family adopting a cute little girl who turns out to be an evil psychopath with some sort of mysterious and no doubt horrifying past.

This is nothing new. The Omen series plays on the same mythic structure. The evil adopted child/stepchild/foundling is a concept as old as the evil stepmother and just as common in folklore.

So why the uproar? Well, a few reasons. First, in fairness to Warner Brothers, the adoption community is somewhat sensitive (some would say oversensitive) to slights to begin with. Why? Well, it's because some of you are such relentlessly insensitive and ignorant assholes who don't think before flapping your big fat mouths in front of our kids. No offense.

But second, in fairness to the adoptive parents, Orphan has been marketed in a way to play up the adopting-a-kid-is-a-scary-risk angle. The trailer dwells on the spooky orphanage and scenes within it, and emphasizes that the adopted child is alien and out of place in her new family. Of course, adoptive parents get that a lot. "Aren't you afraid you'll get a child with . . . problems? "Isn't there a risk of emotional issues?" "Aren't you worried about getting a drug-addicted baby?" Etc. Etc. Etc. (As if pushing a kid out of your vagina was insurance that the kid would grow up to be a well-adjusted brain surgeon. Ask Lionel Dahmer about that one, kids.)
The original trailer also featured a line from the titular character: "It must be hard to love an adopted child as much as your own." There's a line that sets our teeth on edge, and that we also hear all too often. The inclusion of that line made it seem as if Warner's marketers were trying to demonize adoptive kids.

The adoptive community reacted in bad ways and good ways. I'm sorry to say there were calls to censor the movie — to prevent it, somehow, from being released. The fact that there was no chance of that happening does not diminish the fact that such calls for censorship are un-American and regrettable. There were also calls to exercise return speech in the marketplace of ideas — to tell Warner that they were being assholes and offending a small but extremely noisy segment of their ticket-buying audience. That approach was effective — Warner acknowledged that its marketing of the movie was sort of douchey (my words, not theirs), removed the "it must be hard to love an adoptive child" line from the trailer, and apologized. They also commented that in a world in which they get death threats for moving the date of the next Harry Potter movie, the adoption community was unusually polite in their feedback. That's nice to know.

My kids will be bombarded with cultural messages marking them as other, different, even inferior because they are adopted. Orphan adds but one small voice to that din. I'd like them to take two messages away from this affair. The first is that they are in control of their own destinies and, by taking initiative and telling people like Warner that they are being assholes, can educate and change minds. The second is that while their feelings are valid and their own, they ought not interpret every use of an anti-adoption trope as a personal assault, any more than a stepmother should get upset at every Cinderella sequel. Sometimes a mythic-theme-driven horror movie is just a horror movie.

Usually bad things are not as bad as they are portrayed on blogs. Blogs tend to exaggerate, because otherwise no one would read them. Plus, if blogs didn't exaggerate, dead tree journalists would have nothing to feel superior about as they made soup out of catsup and hot water.

However, despite occasional signs of improvement, English libel law is every bit as bad (censorious, unjust, and chilling) as blogs (including ours) have been suggesting. Don't believe me? Check out this infuriating article by First Amendment scholar Floyd Abrams over at Index on Censorship. Abrams reports that plaintiffs win 90% of libel suits in English courts, an astounding figure. Read it.

Ordinarily I wouldn't quote a Twitter feed, unless it was someone I knew and trusted, but Change_for_Iran, whoever that is, speaks Farsi and follows Iranian media relentlessly.  And Change_for_Iran points out that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has just announced himself as a direct descendant of the Prophet Muhammad.

Ahmadynezad now calls himself "seyed" (bloodline of prophet mohammad) & wearing a green shawl on state TV! unbelievable! #IranElection

This is supposed to make Ahmadinejad's fraudulent reelection legitimate.  Of course, while Ahmadinejad probably is descended from the Prophet, so is everyone else in the Middle East.  It's strange that he chose not to reveal this until today.  Previously, Ahmadinejad was thought to be descended from no-name farmers.

I can trace my ancestry on all fronts to Europe, and while I am not, in all probability, a descendant of the Prophet (Muslim warriors, and for that matter slaves, didn't make it in large numbers to Scotland or Denmark), it's a dead certainty that I am descended from Charlemagne, who of all people in history can lay the best claim to being the heir of Caesar.  Because the Pope said so.

So I'm just as entitled to rule Iran as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.  Rome still has a legitimate claim on Parthia, and I'd probably be in charge over there if that idiot Crassus hadn't ruined things by crossing the Euphrates without cavalry reserves sufficient to drive the Parthian cavalry into the Romans' infantry lines.

Thanks Crassus!  You ruined my inheritance!

Lawyers are so universally scorned (regrettably frequently with reason) that we're always happy to find folks roundly despised more than us. There are only only so many telemarketers, but there's no shortage of politicians. And just as law students are scorned even more than lawyers (because, after all, they're currently specifically trying to become lawyers and are completely useless besides), wannabe politicians are even more fun to hate than actual politicians

Hence a new guilty pleasure, the DC Interns blog, which collects in an Overheard-In-New-York fashion the idiocies of the inexplicably entitled blue-blazer set from the Hill. Some of the stories may even be true. Enjoy.

Via South Bend Seven, who linked this this probably too good to be true but still hilarious one.

Kirk Bernard, of Bernard Lindquist and the Bernard Law Group in Seattle Washington, is using the tragedy of a five year old orphan to market his firm. There is no indication that Bernard represents the boy, or his parents' estates. Kirk Bernard just wants you to know that a five year old was orphaned, and that if you're orphaned, he'll be happy to represent you.

Assuming there's insurance and that someone else is at fault.

Enjoy your cartoon.

Unlike many libertarians, and for that matter many smokers, I do not consider the passage of a law allowing the Food and Drug Administration to regulate tobacco to be a major affront to my freedom.

Or, for that matter, my smoking habit.

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Via The Gormogons, I see that an astrologer is very upset that a Japanese lunar orbiter will be crash-landed into the moon, because the Japanese have not gotten the moon's informed consent:

Quoth "SF Astrology Examiner" Sataya Harvey:

In many traditions, including astrology, the moon represents the feminine. It is the yin, the intuitive, the emotions. Women are connected to the moon by their menstrual cycles while they are fertile, and all beings, including the earth herself, are affected by the pull of the tides.

Purposefully crashing something into the moon just to watch what happens is akin to a schoolboy cutting up a live frog to see what makes it jump. It is an example of the domination of the left-brained rational scientific approach over the intuitive.

Did these scientists talk to the moon? Tell her what they were doing? Ask her permission? Show her respect?

When we are connected into the web of life, we know that what we do to one part is what we do to all. Gaining knowledge by destruction is an empty victory.

Of course, if the moon is really the feminine, those of us who are married know that it would be better to just do it and ask forgiveness later.

Sorry and goodnight, moon.

Writer and director Craig Mazin is a genuinely funny guy, on paper and in person. I've suffered through a number of kiddie parties and similar events with him. I've managed to overcome my resentment of the fact that he has some sort of deal with his wife where if he doesn't want to go to a social event, he doesn't have to go. That shit's not fair, man.

I've talked before about Craig's blog The Artful Writer, which has lots of inside-baseball stuff about Hollywood, as well as good writing about the craft of writing. Today I enjoyed his recent piece on the up-and-down cycle of the movie genre of spoofs, in which he has worked. That genre hit its peak with Airplane! and its nadir with the recent Meet the Spartans, which I recently encountered on cable and from which I was unable to avert my sickly fascinated gaze.

It's a good read. Check it out.

Via Billy Ockham.

Via Bill Harris' reliably time-wasting Friday Links, I found this fascinating New Scientist article about eight written languages we can't decode, and how we've tried.

I was already thinking about this topic because the comic XKCD had a reference to the Voynich Manuscript, a more modern questioned text of odd provenance.