The Sound of the Crowd

Why, tell ‘em that it’s human nature. This article is over a week old, but I missed it till now, and it’s good. It’s about the knee-jerk way the mainstream media and centrist Democrats are ostracizing those who were right, and have been proven right, about the war in Iraq.

It’s an interesting thing. I mean, I know nobody likes to see their heroes, their beliefs, shot full of holes, but these are people who–in theory–should be objective, or in the other party.

And truth should be something we care about. I know that sounds simplistic, and I know the truth has taken something of a beating these past couple of years, but it is.

Now that the protest season is here…

Former President and Senator Clinton have some things to say about the prospective re-election of Bush. Unsurprisingly, they’re against it.

Well this is kinda weird. Less than two weeks after I noted something about the video for her “Self-Control” record here, Laura Branigan dies at 47.

I can’t say she was one of my favorites; as relatively sexless pop singers from the ’80s go I’m more about Olivia Newton-John, Sheena Easton and, of course, Howard Jones. But “Gloria” remains a trademark of “my” decade, and “Self-Control” has held up better than I ever thought it would’ve. So: Sorry you had to leave us so early, Laura…hope you keep a tighter rein on your self-control the next time around.

The American Library Association, god love it, has released a list of the 100 most frequently challenged books of the ’90s. “Challenged” means parents and other concerned citizens got them pulled out of schools, public libraries, and like that.

As always, a list like this includes almost two dozen books that anyone who grew up reading for pleasure will remember fondly. And a handful of (nearly) undisputed classics.

The Chocolate War, for heaven’s sake? Huckelberry Finn? Of Mice & Men? If I had a grade-school aged kid reading these (and I was a grade-school aged kid when I read at least one or two of these), I’d be getting down on my knees to thank Allah, not getting them removed from the school library.

So far as I know there’s no documented proof of this (save perhaps for the book Language Police), but I believe the whittling down of books availible to schoolchildren is directly connected to the low literacy rate. If you take away all the books that might hold a child’s attention, why would they learn to read?

Go, B.D.!

I just unfortunately stumbled across a DVD review of Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s sixth season. It’s terrible. I give you my word on my writing, I swear on anything good I’ve ever written, I’m not saying that because I disagree with the opinions in it. As a piece of writing, it is simply and sadly inadequate–there’s a reason why I’m not providing you with a link to it. I care for you all too much, my vast reading audience, to subject you to someone who does such things as these to sentences. Just trust me. If anything you have ever read by me had led you to believe I know anything about writing, trust me. And this was on a pretty well known DVD review/information site, too, not some message board for overgrown fanboys.

But anyway, it’s got me thinking about writing and one of my all-time favorite quotations on the subject. It’s from Tom Stoppard’s play The Real Thing, and Henry, a playwright, is explaining to his lover something about writing. He is also trying to make a point about a script by an enthusiastic but untalented amateur. He uses as illustration a handy cricket bat…

“This thing here, which looks like a wooden club, is actually several pieces of particular wood cunningly put together in a certain way so that the whole thing is sprung, like a dance floor. It’s for hitting cricket balls with. If you get it right, the cricket ball will travel two hundred yards in four seconds, and all you’ve done is give it a knock like knocking the top off a bottle of stout, and it makes a noise like a trout taking a fly… (He clucks his tongue to make the noise.) What we’re trying to do is to write cricket bats, so that when we throw up an idea and give it a little knock, it might … travel … (He clucks his tongue again and picks up the script.) Now, what we’ve got here is a lump of wood of roughly the same shape trying to be a cricket bat, and if you hit a ball with it, the ball will travel about ten feet and you will drop the bat and dance about shouting ‘Ouch!’ with your hands stuck into your armpits. (Indicating the cricket bat.) This isn’t better because someone says it’s better, or because there’s a conspiracy by the MCC to keep cudgels out of Lords. It’s better because it’s better.”

That’s right.

Just for one day.

I leave it up to you.

Promises, how we both forget…

Mark Evanier put up another one of his political rants yesterday. I don’t know why he calls them that, really, they’re usually quite thoughtful and this one is especially so. It’s about what John Kerry was doing in 1971, what Mark was doing, and what a lot of people have done since.

Me, depending on when in ’71 Kerry’s testimony took place, I was either just-born or just waiting.

Well-recommened and highly worth reading.