If this baby Hippo is the cutest or most terrifying thing I have seen today. Can't it be both?

Ken has been doing a great job pointing out the awful support for Roman Polanski. Last night, in a bizarre scene, David Letterman entered into a similar (although far tamer) territory. What struck me about the whole thing was how bizarre it was that Dave joked about the entire situation. It was jarring. He veered back and forth between extortion and protecting his family and nonchalantly mentioning that he has had affairs with women where he is the boss.

I certainly don't equate the two situations, but I think the response to both is telling. As I watch the strange confession of Letterman, the crowd cheers and laughs. I'm not sure that's the appropriate response for stories about cheating on a marriage. And Dave definitely shows no remorse for the affairs.

I know I'm not as upset about the Letterman thing as I was by Polanski, but I am left cold by how he handled it, and by the response of the crowd. Did they turn on the applause sign during his confession?

I don't get jealous of other people's jobs much. I don't tend to pine over the fame or fortune of others; when I covet, it's usually because someone is doing something that sounds like so much fun, and because the way they got there is so cool. Case in point – John Scalzi first made it big as a writer, and based on that was hired on as a "creative consultant" on the new SyFy show "Stargate: Universe." I've never had a clear sense of what a creative consultant does, but Scalzi explains it at length. It's fascinating, and sounds both more substantive and more challenging as a writer than I expected. I particularly like it that he got there through writing, not through the Hollywood route. Good for him.

Seventh grader Adam Marino, of Saratoga Springs New York, is getting an early education in law and citizenship courtesy of the New York State Police and his school district.  His offense?  Riding a bicycle to school.

At the start of school in September, Kaddo Marino thought that she had a nonverbal agreement with school officials to allow her son to ride his bike until a new policy was resolved. But on the night before classes started, school authorities called parents to say that walking and biking to school would not be tolerated.

When the pair stuck with their plan, they were met by school administrators and a state trooper, who emphasized that biking was prohibited, Kaddo Marino said.

Although no bicycle accidents have been reported in the past three years along Saratoga Springs Route 9, it appears to be a busy street without bike lanes.  And so Adam Marino will have to walk to school.  Except that he can't do that either.  Walking to Maple Avenue Middle School is also prohibited.

Though Adam's parents are willing to accept the risk that their son will suffer injury on a road where, apparently, bicyclists are never injured, the Saratoga Springs board of education knows better.  Bicycles are dangerous!  Why, every day, somewhere, a boy is injured riding his bike.  Just as every day, somewhere, a boy is hit by lightning, attacked by a shark, or suffers health problems because of obesity.  Will Saratoga Springs protect its children from obesity?

Why yes it will.  New York Schools are so concerned about the threat that fat and overweight pose to children that Saratoga Springs classifies and marks its students through "weight status grouping" and mandatory body-mass indexing. And like every other school in the state, Maple Avenue mandates physical education and health education, though that doesn't seem to help most New York school kids, who are incorrigible fatties.

Despite the threat that his bicycle poses, to him and to society, it appears that Adam Marino is going to defy school board mandates and continue propelling himself to school rather than taking a bus.  No price is too great to pay for health.  And no price is too great to pay if it lets good citizens like the Marinos tell mindless bureaucrats like Maple Avenue Middle School Principal Stuart Byrne, to butt out of things that shouldn't concern them.  Like whether a kid walks or rides his bike to school.

But Saratoga Springs isn't all bad.  The schools do make some effort to educate their kids in good character, and recognize students who excel in their behavior.  You can even nominate an outstanding student.  Perhaps Adam Marino deserves a nomination.

While Adam probably wouldn't qualify during "Respect Month," as his school calls October, he'd be a fine candidate for a character award this May, which is "Citizenship Month."  I can think of no better act of citizenship for a young man than civil disobedience against a foolish and intrusive nanny-state.

Some posts need a clever title to carry them. Some require a thoughtful lede. But some posts simply point the reader in the direction of sheer awesomeness, and all I need to do is step out of the way.

This is such a post.

Jack Thompson — the anti-gaming crusader and justifiably disbarred lawyer, who has made a name for himself by consistently exhibiting a level of crazy that makes him stand out even in Florida, has sued Facebook. Why? Well, basically, he's mad that Facebook won't make its users stop being mean to him. No, really.

Thompson asserts that he is the victim of bullying by the video gaming industry and gamers, and that he has received death threats as a result. He is unable to describe these threats without indulging in his anti-video-game rant:

And the harassing phone calls have been so continuous and so disruptive that Thompson has to take his phone off the hook each evening or he will be awakened, as he is when he forgets to do so, by miscreants who think that the First Amendment protects not only the predatory and illegal marketing and sale of adult porn and violence to kids but the criminal harassment of a citizen who has the courage to say what 90% of the American people know-that families are under siege by corporate predators who mentally molest minors for money.

And so on. Facebook failed to take down some groups that are mean to Jack. One offers someone $50 to punch him in the face. Another says he should be "removed from the populace." Another suggests smacking him across the face with an Atari 2600. Thompson also complains of groups that simply say "I hate Jack Thompson."

I've uploaded Thompson's pro se federal complaint here. Given the amount of joy it will give us, it almost seems unfair to expose it to a rigorous legal analysis. That would be like having a professor of modern art criticize your three-year-old's finger-painting. Suffice it to say that Thompson has not lost his talent for crazy, nor has he developed any more of an understanding of the law. Jack sues for intentional infliction of emotional distress, negligent infliction of emotional distress, and negligent supervision. Jack is all wet. Under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, Facebook can't be held liable for what its users post on it, or for its refusal to take those posts down. Moreover, because the posts are so patently satirical, Thompson can't make out a case of infliction of emotional distress anyway. The posts are not, by any stretch of the imagination, "true threats," as no rational person would think they show a genuine intent to inflict harm. The standard is what a reasonable person would think, not what a deranged disbarred attorney would think.

Read the complaint, with Jack's tale of woe. But then, if you don't already know it, be sure to read Thompson's history, particularly the things he did to get disbarred, lest you feel any sympathy for him. Jack Thompson is a litigation terrorist.

Jack's mad, as he usually is, because those Facebook posts make him look like an ass. But if Jack is going to sue everything that contributes to making him look like an ass, then I advise logic, sentience, written language, and God to contact their insurance carriers.

By the way, Paragraph 9 of Thompson's complaint suggests that he was inspired to sue Facebook because Facebook responded so quickly to take down the "should Obama be killed" poll, yet did not heed his entreaties to take down the mean things people said about him. That's amusing.

Edited to add: More amusement: Andrew Eisen of GamePolitics, which is very critical of Thompson but gets press releases from him anyway, asks Thompson if he tried using the "report group" function. Thompson calls Eisen a "total moron." So Eisen clicks on "report group" for the "$50 to punch Thompson" group, and the group is removed within a day. Eisen didn't even have to file a federal suit! Lesson to Thompson: you catch more flies with the honey of a site's established fly-catching procedures than you do with the vinegar of being a raving lunatic.

One of the most interesting aspects of the Roman Polanski arrest, which my co-blogger Ken has covered in all its sordid glory, is the split that it creates.  Chris, who frequently comments here, described Polanski as an "OJ Simpson for the elites," and that's not too far off the mark.  What one thinks about Polanski, whether he should come to a Los Angeles courtroom and face whatever may be coming to him, or whether the man should be allowed to continue raping little girls in the peace of his Gstaad villa, seems to be more a factor of one's attitude toward and deference to fame than whether one identifies as a liberal, a conservative (though admittedly few conservatives, if any, have spoken out for the man), a statist, or a libertarian.  A similar, albeit lower rent, divide seemed to exist in views on the prosecution of Michael Jackson, as it was tried in the court of public opinion, before that prosecution imploded in a real courtroom.

But regardless of whether its members prefer Vanity Fair or the Economist, there is one group I would have expected, uniformly, to argue that Polanski should stand tall before the man.  That group is: organized political feminists.

I was mistaken.

Some of the [television and film] industry's most prominent women said they believe Polanski, who faces a sentence as low as probation and as high as 16 months in prison for pleading guilty to having sex with a minor, should be freed. "My personal thoughts are let the guy go," said Peg Yorkin, founder of the Feminist Majority Foundation. "It's bad a person was raped. But that was so many years ago. The guy has been through so much in his life. It's crazy to arrest him now. Let it go. The government could spend its money on other things."

That would be Peg Yorkin, the founder and chair of the same Feminist Majority Foundation which owns Ms. Magazine, which reported breathlessly on a more recently famous alleged rape, and the same Peg Yorkin who funded a graphic art exhibition in hopes of "shocking" an America she felt needed to confront the "brutal crime" of rape:

In the artwork, which was created by Massey and funded by Yorkin, a female victim rises up on her elbows and attempts to crawl along the ground while her male assailants hang from a beam above her–strung up by their genitals. Nearly identical versions of the piece were unveiled simultaneously on Monday in storefront windows in Santa Monica, Chicago, Miami, Washington and New York. …

"I think we'll hear some screeching brakes," said Yorkin, who (with Eleanor Smeal) co-founded the Fund for the Feminist Majority, a women's rights advocacy group. Yorkin has produced plays in Los Angeles but "Morality/Mortality" is the first visual art project to win her backing.

Passing motorists can see the horrific pair of ghostly white men dangling in the window, but they must get out of their cars to view the anguished woman whose clothing, briefcase and purse are strewn around her. The scene is most dramatic at night, when illuminated by theatrical lighting.

But that was fifteen years ago.  Fifteen years ago, Feminist Majority Foundation chairwoman Peg Yorkin wanted to see rapists, figuratively if not literally, strung up by the balls for their crimes against women.  It may seem odd that Yorkin would show such concern today for Roman Polanski, given that genital torture was a real possibility had the Nazis caught him when he was a younger man, but in 1994 the hidden horror of rape was an issue that America had to "shocked" into perceiving.  Even if it meant hanging virtual rapists by their testicles.

Evidently Yorkin succeeded beyond her wildest dreams.  Why only two years ago, Yorkin's magazine felt that unproven and dubious allegations of rape against a handful of comparative nobodies should be reported as though they were gospel truth.

Today?  Rape is sooooo 2007.

Yes, it's bad a "person" was raped by Polanski.  But It's crazy to arrest him. He's been through so much in his life.  We should just let it go rather than forcing him to sit through a sentencing hearing for a crime to which he pled guilty.

Perhaps we could hang the man by his testicles instead.

Update:  And in fairness, Feministing has a nice roundup of how some poorer, non-millionaire feminists outside Hollywood react to the Polanski case.  I suspect that these women suffer an inability to see the big picture.

I've carped before about the prevailing legal illiteracy of the media, and the various atrocities against accuracy it produces. There are bright islands in the dark sea — journalists who educated themselves about law before reporting on it, and who take the time to craft a story that accurately conveys complex legal issues. Those journalists are a pleasure to read, and I often learn things from them. But they are not the norm. The norm is a mix of willful ignorance and laziness.

The Polanski affair reveals that there is another element to this prevailing legal illiteracy: some journalists' unhealthy contempt for the intelligence of their audience. Patterico has pulled back the curtain to reveal a bit of this unbecoming contempt in the course of his dialogue with Washington Post blogger Anne Applebaum. Applebaum wrote a post on the Washington Post blog that made several mistakes about the case, and further said several things that were materially misleading. Among the mistakes and misleading statements: Applebaum said "there is evidence of judicial misconduct in the original trial" when there was no trial because Polanski entered a guilty plea. Applebaum wrote "there is evidence that Polanski did not know her real age," which may be true, but is grotesquely misleading for a journalist to write without also noting that Polanski admitted under oath during his guilty plea that he knew the girl was thirteen at the time. Applebaum writes of "Polanski's crime — statutory rape of a 13-year-old girl," but fails to note that Polanski was charged with both statutory rape and rape, that the girl's grand jury testimony made it clear that it was rape, and that even in her recent press statements she has maintained that she said no and Polanski ignored it. (Perhaps Applebaum, like Whoopi Goldberg, thinks it was not rape-rape.) And so on.

Patterico is an exceptionally able and dogged investigative blogger; I say that even though I frequently disagree with him on issues of substance. He has engaged in a dialogue with Applebaum culminating today in this post, in which Applebaum defends her inaccuracies in flat-out appalling terms.

I used the word “trial” in the layman’s sense – trial meaning a judicial investigation, court proceedings etc – and see no need to correct, as it would confuse the matter further.

The notion that a professional wordsmith can't convey the difference between a trial and a guilty plea without "confusing the matter" is sheer lunacy. The credible possibilities are (1) Applebaum didn't know it was a plea, because she didn't investigate adequately before writing, making her careless; (2) Applebaum didn't really grasp the difference between a trial or a plea, making her ignorant; or (3) Applebaum thought her readers couldn't grasp the difference between a trial and a plea, making her contemptuous, or (4) Applebaum thought that accurately describing the event as a guilty plea would not serve the argument she was trying to make, making her dishonest. Based on the "confuse the matter' language and general tone of her response to Patterico, I think the most likely explanation is #3: she thinks her audience is dumb.

Her defense of her statement about Polanski's knowledge of the victim's age is just as appalling:

Yes, there is “evidence” that Polanski did not know the girls age – or that he was told but did not believe it: He has told people since that, anyway. Pictures of her from the time show a girl who could be anywhere from 12-25. “There is evidence” is a broad expression and I see no need to correct that either, as again it would simply be confusing.

Either this is dishonest, or it reveals a paternalistic attitude towards readers. The most powerful evidence of whether or not Polanski knew that his victim was thirteen is his admission, under oath, that he knew. Saying that "there is evidence that he did not know" — without revealing that he admitted that he knew — is incredibly deceitful. If it's not intentionally deceitful, then it reveals Applebaum's attitude that, as a journalist, her role is to decide what facts are credible and what facts are not and present only the facts that she believes to her audience, even if that means concealing sworn testimony that contradicts her conclusion. Again, that suggests that she thinks that her audience is just too dumb to come to the correct conclusion themselves unless she sifts the evidence for them and presents it as an advocate.

Her big-picture conclusion is also revealing:

In any case, none of these particular issues has much to do with my main point, which were that this was a confusing story and that it’s very peculiar that the Swiss suddenly decided to arrest him now. I do not condone his original action in any way, and didn’t write that I did, either: However, I dislike the reduction of complicated stories to simple facts. And please don’t write back that “he drugged and raped a child” because that is not an accurate description of what happened.

But she unquestionably does like reducing complicated stories to simple facts. That's what she did, and it's clearly what she thinks it's her role to do. She asserts that it's not an accurate description to say that Polanski drugged and raped a child, yet that's exactly what the child in question testified that he did. A responsible journalist might carefully marshal all of the facts and lay out a case of why the evidence does not support the victim's grand jury testimony that Polanski gave her alcohol and a quaalude and then, over her repeated objections, penetrated her vaginally and anally. But that's not what Applebaum's doing, and not what she's saying. Applebaum's just saying that she has concluded that's not the real story, and so she wants to report that conclusion to her readers. It appears that she does so based upon the presumption that her readers cannot evaluate that themselves based on the facts — that the evaluation would be, in Applebaum's repeated words, "confusing."

Between Patterico and Applebaum, Patterico comes out of this looking far more like a competent and trustworthy journalist. And, again, I say that as someone who frequently disagrees with — and sometimes really dislikes — his opinions. Read the series of posts; they are a great dissection of journalistic practice.

Popular rightward blogger Confederate Yankee wrote a post very enthusiastically endorsing a class (which comes complete with a gun and a knife) put on by something called the Front Sight Firearms Training Institute.

Folks, this is one great offer.

What should you expect to get out of this investment in your shooting skills?

The ability to draw from a concealed holster and put a controlled pair of shots to the target's thoracic cavity from 3-5 yards away, in less than 1.5 seconds.

[An analysis of the marketing acumen displayed in that description is an entire separate post.]

The folks at Sadly, No — who never miss an opportunity to shit on Confederate Yankee, sometimes reasonably and sometimes not — do a little digging about Front Sight and its founder, "Dr." Ignatious Piazza, and rather quickly discover some circumstances that might make reasonable people very hesitant to do business with them. (I'm primarily referring to the circumstances that led to the company being placed in receivership briefly, not to "Dr." Piazza's affiliation with Scientology.)

Read it for yourself.

In his comments, Confederate Yankee responds "knowing the whole story helps," and offers some facts which, in his opinion, counter the negative information about Front Sight and Piazza. He concludes by repeating his endorsement, and inviting people to do their own research on the internet.

The speed with which he does so suggests that he was aware of the negative information to begin with.

Here's my question: would you, should you, trust a blogger who endorses a product or service under those circumstances? Would you, should you, trust a blogger who doesn't call his readers' attention to such material information in the course of the endorsement, rather than in response to questions?

Also, a query: I wonder whether Confederate Yankee will get any consideration from this rather gushing endorsement. I have no idea one way or the other. I oppose any law forcing him to do so. But if he is getting some kind of consideration, and hasn't disclosed it — wouldn't that be relevant to your evaluation of his credibility?

[For the record, we at Popehat have never gotten consideration for any of our various gushing endorsements, unless you count the creators of the products and services occasionally saying nice things in comments.]