Author: rakemag

Ann and I would see eye-to-eye more often if I wore six-inch heels

First, let me call attention to Steve Perry’s blog over at City Pages. He had the great idea of starting a Katherine Kersten haiku contest and he’s got some hilarious entries. Check it out.

And, while we’re on the topic of blithering right wing idiots (Kersten, not Perry,) the Strib Op-Excrement page reprinted some wisdom from Ann Coulter today re the appointment of Harriet Miers.

Faithful readers, look up now. The sky is not falling.

I’m saying that to prepare you for what’s coming next.

I agree with Ann Coulter.

There, I said it.

God help us all.

The eyes of Texas…and the brains

Two months ago, all us folks at the Rake were asked to name our favorite Texans. One of the knuckleheads who works here answered George W. She admitted she’d done so just to piss me off. I told her, though, that it didn’t bother me at all, but she’d find out later that printed evidence of her lack of depth was a bad thing to leave lying around. Just look at the writings of Harriet Miers.

As my favorite Texan, I named Molly Ivins. For those of you with really long memories, you might recall when the Minneapolis papers used to have writers like…well…Molly Ivins. She left Minneapolis in 82, and after working for the NY Times for a while ended up back in Texas, where she’s been the very best at keeping her exceptional perceptiveness trained on Bush (or “Shrub” as she likes to call him) and his cronies.

Today, the Strib printed her column, which, interestingly, cited a Strib story about vanishing pensions. (Don’t bother to try to find the story on the Strib web site. The people who run their archive should be fired and left without pensions. Try Lexis-Nexis.)

The true theme of what’s going on here, as Molly says, is not so much that Bush, et al. are evil themselves, but that they are letting corporations get away with unspeakable crimes against their workers, and sticking us all with the bill.

That’s Molly Ivins in a nutshell. Some Texans are getting it right. Think of her next time you wish a plague on the entire state of Texas.

I foment world revolution and all I got was my face on a lousy t-shirt

As one commenter on this blog said yesterday, this IS like making fun of the retarded kid. Ok, one more round of cruelty today then I promise I’ll leave them alone for a while…at least until I feel like it again.

First, I want to say Katherine Kersten’s new column photo is an improvement. We once suggested that she looked like Margaret Hamilton. She’s now improved to Napoleon Dynamite who has had lasik. Unfortunately, her column is still the usual fatuous twaddle. Today we have the insight that service clubs, like Rotary, do nice things. Of course, I guess that’s an improvement on her usual observations that if everyone would just go to church more often and send their kids to private (religious) schools, the world would be a nicer place.

On to “source style”, which used to be called Variety, I think. I never read that section before and you’ll forgive me if I don’t start now. The lead story on “What your t-shirt says about you” was a stunner though, although I have to admit I stopped reading it right after the summary graph: “T-shirts with witty, suggestive and opinionated statements are everywhere on college campuses. Some say the wearable text messages speak volumes about who we are.”

No they don’t. They speak a few words about what’s on our T-shirt. For example, my favorite T-shirt says Louisville Slugger. Does that mean I’m a baseball bat?

And, let’s be honest here, the girl who was pictured in the tight T-shirt doesn’t need a couple of words here and there to get people to look at her…well…t-shirt. C’mon, aren’t there any women editors over there at the chessecake factory?

We hoped, maybe, for more from the front page today, but we were disappointed again. More Vikings crap and, ohmygod, the breaking news that they’re building condos downtown and I can now get vacuuous music videos on my iPod, if I had an iPod. My fervent hope is that people who have video iPods run into the sides of downtown condos and kill themselves while jogging.

Opinion Exchange, thank God, left off the “The Street” item today in favor of a Randy Kelly penned piece that somehow left the impression that St. Paul voters ought to vote for him. Maybe tomorrow we can get the startling opinion from Chris Coleman that he thinks St. Paul voters should vote for him? But what really fried me though, was on the day they should have reprinted a great piece from David Brooks from the NY Times on why we should not have the pedestrian Harriet Miers as a Supreme Court justice, we get clarence page (who?) from the Chicago Tribune on why Bush appointed her. We already know why Bush appointed her: He’s an idiot. What we don’t know is why SHE’S an idiot. Brooks tells us, in HER own words. Believe me, it’s worth paying for NY Times Select for their Op-Ed columns alone. You could use the money you are wasting on your Strib subcription, for example.

Maybe, if you’re lucky (and still subscribing by tomorrow,) the Strib will reprint Brooks’ piece.

But, never mind what they could have printed today. Let’s look at the eagerly awaited and much touted bi-weekly “the world” section. As Courtney Peifer, World (I wish they’d make up their mind about capitalizing things) section coordinator, says in the note to readers, “You’ve asked for more international news, and we’ve reponded.”

Today’s big story from the international scene: More Asian women are getting cosmetic surgery. As if the story weren’t enlightening enough, we got a little side bar on some of the most popular procedures. Now, thanks to the Strib, I know what’s involved in “Breast augmentation.”

Maybe the Asian women who get “Surgical placement of an implant” can model t-shirts for the “source style” section next week.

Style beats substance every time

Gee where do I start on the Strib’s redesign/repositioning?

First, I guess anyone who’s been paying attention has heard the Strib was undergoing a redesign. It debuted today, and I must say I find the use of the pastel colors in the flag the most striking use of pastels since Crockett and Tubbs cleaned up Miami in 1984. I know that’s what the kids want in their newspaper, the signature colors from 21 years ago.

Ok, let’s forget that and go on to the “substance” of the makeover. I was completely bowled over by “one-minute strib”, not only because I think the Strib is now officially calling itself what everyone else has been calling it for years, but also because I am so impressed that they noticed that the Wall Street Journal has been doing a digest of their paper on the front page ever since any of us could read, and the Strib finally ripped off the idea. Of course, the Strib improved on it by moving the digest off page one onto page three, where they spent almost half of the column telling you what was on page one. Yeah, that page one–the one you had to turn over to get to page three.

Wait, I forgot I was talking about “substance”. Where might one expect to find such substance–and even news that might differentiate a newspaper from, say, a TV station? The front page, perhaps? No such luck. Today, we get the same stuff we got last night from Cyndy (If It Bleeds, It Leads) Brucato over at Channel 5. Did you hear about the kids who killed their parents? And how about them crazy Vikings? Yup, just what I care about, two stories that have nothing to do with me and about people I couldn’t care less about–Vikings players and the kids who have them as role models.

I was especially happy to see, though, right there at the top of the front page, where some newspapers put news, that I could turn to page five of the sports section to see how I could run into my local gas or grocery and pick up my Viking medallion of the day. Personally, I think it would be more fun to have the kids fill a scrap book of Strib-sponsored Vikings mug shots. Now that would sell papers.

On to the Opinion Exchange, which is what they’re now calling Op-Ex. Aside from the seeming obligatory column from yesterday’s NY Times which I’ve already read, we now have a feature called The Street. In this feature the Strib allows us to exchange opinions with idiots we wouldn’t give the time of day if they were living in our own basement. Today we have a guy from Orono who thinks we can solve the energy crisis in our country by pumping more oil out of Texas. Well here’s my exchange for him: “You’re a moron.”

Another bit of substance that I really like is the short summaries of the articles that appear above any article longer than a couple hundred words. My favorite was the summary of editorial page editor susan albright’s fervent introductory column: “Opinion Exchange expresses our desire that this page and the Sunday opinion section connect readers with a wide range of perspectives on issues of the day.”

Ok, first, what happened to capitalizing Op-Ex bylines? Who’s writing these pieces, e.e. cummings?

Second, if the readers really need a summary of Op-Ex pieces, why not just go all the way? Here’s an idea: “In today’s column, Molly Ivins says President Bush is an asshole.” We don’t really need much more information than that, do we?

Finally, (I could go on, but according to Strib research, you don’t like to read too many words,) do you remember when newspapers used to have Obituaries? Not any more. We now have “remembering”. I was surprised to see, however, that the individual death notices didn’t have their top line summaries. Wouldn’t they be fun to write? “Dorothy Smith got old and died.”

Or, in a few years we could read this one about the Strib itself: “This poor excuse for a newspaper died from repeatedly shooting itself in the foot by underestimating its readers.”

Dumb and Dumber

A very smart friend of mine…and I mean VERY smart…once said to me when I asked her how she’d accomplished so much at her very young age, “I always try to be the dumbest person in the room.”

Now that was damn near impossible for her, I thought. But, she continued, “That’s no BS. A smart person gets smarter by always trying to surround herself with smarter people. It rubs off.”

Today in Maureen Dowd’s column in The NY Times we have this: “David Frum, the former White House speechwriter and conservative commentator, reported on his blog that Ms. Miers once told him that W. was the most brilliant man she knew.”

Come again?

There are a few inferences we can draw from this: Miers has never met Antonin Scalia, (or, for that matter, Forrest Gump); Miers is a lying kiss up to her boss; Miers should have no trouble being the dumbest person in the room if she makes it to the Supreme Court chambers.

Roman Hruska: until now, the patron saint of government mediocrity

You know you may be in trouble when you are a “Conservative” President and the the house organ of the American Fascist Party, the Wall Street Journal’s Editorial Page, takes you to task for the nomination of Harriet Miers.

Actually, in one of the few times I’ve ever felt myself agreeing with Mein Kampf, Jr., I couldn’t help but admiring Randy Barnett for citing Federalist Paper 76 in his argument against cronyism in the appointment of Miers. According to Barnett’s reading, and mine, of Federalist 76, the very reason the Senate has approval power of Presidential appointments is to prevent exactly a case like Bush’s annointment of Harriet Miers.

Let’s face it, the only qualifications Bush could come up with in his ridiculous nomination speech yesterday was Miers’ church membership and her tenure as head of the Texas Lottery Commission…and the long association with him. Just what I want in someone who has a lifetime appointment to decide how we’re all going to live–another evangelical who runs an immoral scheme to rip off the poor.

Sheesh, even Michael Brown had some judging experience, even if it was only Arabian Horse Shows.

So, with all the eminently qualified jurists in this land, with all the brilliant thinkers now sitting in our courts and in our law schools, the best Bush can come up with is someone he’s known for years and who once defended him in a boundary dispute at one of his vacation homes. Yup, she’s just who I want applying herself to the basic questions of privacy rights, abortion, torture of prisoners, and affirmative action.

I’m reminded of Roman Hruska, the Republican senator from Nebraska, who commented after the Senate’s rejection of G. Harrold Carswell for the Supreme Court on the basis of his “mediocrity”, “There are a lot of mediocre judges and people and lawyers. They are entitled to a little representation, aren’t they?”

Well, as long as we have Bush in the White House, and nominees like Miers headed for the Supreme Court, there’s no danger Hruska’s wish won’t be fulfilled.

Gerrymandering. Wasn’t he the guy who played “The Beaver”?

Here is the first line from Tom Delay’s statement on his indictment:

“This morning, in an act of blatant political partisanship, a rogue district attorney in Travis County, Texas, named Ronnie Earle charged me with one count of criminal conspiracy.”

Imagine, someone with prosecutorial power using said power for partisan political purposes. Oh, my!

Let’s see, does anyone remember Ken Starr? Does anyone remember who the House leader was who pushed for Clinton’s impeachment?

You only get three guesses. And the first two don’t count.

What’s a guy gotta do to get arrested in this country?

The news today, if you are paying attention to anything other than Bush’s attempt to convince us he cares about poor people on the Gulf Coast, is that Private Lynndie England is going to prison for three years for her part in the Abu Ghraib disgrace.

Farther down the news chain, so far that it’s not even on the news chain any more, is Judith Miller, who has now been in jail for 84 days for refusing to testify about her source in the Plame leak case.

Cindy Sheehan went to jail on Monday (briefly) because she refused to move off the White House sidewalk.

Who’s not in jail? Alberto Gonzales, Attorney General of the United States and architect of the Bush torture policy; Karl Rove, the guy who actually revealed the name of a CIA agent to the press; and, let’s not forget the Commander in Chief, who knowingly lied to the American People to start a war in Iraq which killed Cindy Sheehan’s son.