Comments or suggestions: Gerard Van der Leun
Color (Double) Blind

Fresh from feasting on the scrawny corpse of Don Imus, the marching morons of Media Matters turned this week to more succulent fare, Rush Limbaugh. Sensing a self-inflicted wound from Limbaugh's repeated playing of "Barack the Magic Negro," the M&Ms of MM were getting into "Firing" mode over this "insensitve" and, wait for it..., "racist" assault on the tender sensitivities of all African-Americans from Al Sharpton to Jesse Jackson. The magic phrase "Barack the Magic Negro" was, of course, coined by an LA Times writer who, being black, has a natural immunity to saying the word "Negro." Indeed, he could say much worse and still get a pass from all and sundry, but because he is a gentleman he has eschewed such language.

Continued...

Posted by Vanderleun Apr 29, 2007 7:20 PM | Comments (4)  | QuickLink: Permalink
Housing Bubble is Now Not "Pssssst....." but "KABOOM!"


"Here's to you Ms. Too Much Home Buyer with a payment that eats up 60% of your gross income."

For the last several years I've been bedeviled at various times and hectored to "buy" a house. My default position has always been that the housing boom will bust on the very day I close on a house. To keep the boom booming, I've stayed out of the housing market and in the stock market. It was the least I could do for my fellow citizens.

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Posted by Vanderleun Apr 27, 2007 8:27 AM | Comments (9)  | QuickLink: Permalink
Born Alive But Not For Long

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Every so often the news, which is built around a lot of numbers, delivers a number that makes your happy world come to a screeching halt. A day ago that number was: One in 30 aborted foetuses lives.

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Posted by Vanderleun Apr 22, 2007 1:41 PM | Comments (20)  | QuickLink: Permalink
Consulting the Oracle

The details of the killer's last day begin to emerge. One of those early details states that "Cho also died with the words in red ink on the inside of one of his arms."

An incomprehensible detail dredged up from the midst of an incomprehensible crime. Our reaction? 'What Can It Mean?' is the question that arises in millions of parts of the global hive mind. And when incomprehensible questions arise in the human mind we have a long, long history of going to ask the Oracle. And so millions do.

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Posted by Vanderleun Apr 17, 2007 10:12 AM | Comments (15)  | QuickLink: Permalink
Imus Said It. So What?

Only the dead do not know Imus this week. Hardly had the words "nappy-headed hos" left his grizzled lips when he was chained, pushed into the tumbril, and rolled by the Sharpton-Jackson tag-team to lick their mire spatted boots, in a live demo of the "Bottom rail on top" ritual that should have passed sometime after Reconstruction. He was allowed to beg and beg shamefully he did as all bullies must. It was the show trial of one-man hostage taken in the American culture wars whose confession tapes were aired for all and sundry. Who says we can't learn anything useful from the Iranians?

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Posted by Vanderleun Apr 14, 2007 7:26 AM | Comments (8)  | QuickLink: Permalink
No Stinking Badges

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Tim O'Reilly is a perfectly nice, bright guy, who has had a great deal of success with an ever expanding line of Geek and Nerd books and associated products. I like them all and admire his well-deserved success. But Tim O'Reilly has, as seemingly all good GeekNerds must, become infected by the most insidious virus of the new high-tech rich in our culture. He has gotten the inner conviction that he just has "to give back."

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Posted by Vanderleun Apr 9, 2007 4:30 PM | Comments (16)  | QuickLink: Permalink
And Now, A Word to Rosie's Sponsors

I'm not much for joining movements. The last one I joined was the Vietnam Day Committee back in 1965, and that didn't turn out very well for the Vietnamese. Nor for Americans -- except for those who still float fermented in the fetid vats of their long-lost youth today. But I do believe that the effort to yank Rosie O'Donnell off The View by going around the vapid and hapless Barbara Walters and her cynical producers is worth the effort. It goes around it by "following the money" and communicating directly to the products that keep The View's gravy train flowing.

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Posted by Vanderleun Apr 4, 2007 11:18 AM | Comments (24)  | QuickLink: Permalink
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