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Odds & Sods #24: The Suzy Creamcheese Edition

  • December 4th was the 13th anniversary of the death of Frank Zappa. We could use a guy like him today:
    Zappa: When you have a government that prefers a certain moral code derived from a certain religion and that moral code turns into legislation to suit one certain religious point of view and if that code happens to be very, very right wing almost toward Attila the Hun...

    Lofton: Well then, you are an anarchist. Every form of civil government is based on some kind of morality, Frank.

    Zappa: Morality in terms of behavior - not in terms of theology.

  • Speaking of theology, the Dennis Prager story -- wherein he demanded that Rep. Keith Ellison use a Bible (not a Koran) to take his oath of office for the House -- has developed legs. Sorry to mix metaphors, but Prager's attitude is just the tip of the iceberg. Glenn Beck's outrageous insinuation that Ellison is some sort of al-Qaeda operative and the shameful conduct of US Airways in booting six Muslim clergymen off a flight in Minneapolis are all part of the same anti-Muslim hysteria that is becoming more and more common in this country.

  • And speaking of what's just under the surface, James Wolcott makes a valuable observation about the relative moral values promoted by right-wingers:
    It is symptomatic of the moral-spiritual-political-human degradation of the right blogosphere that its receptors register more indignation over some fugitive fatuous quote from Gwyneth Paltrow than over the Orwellian torture of a prisoner and American citizen convicted of no crime, Jose Padilla, whose mind has been subjected to finest deprivation techniques American tax money can buy.(james wolcott)
  • And speaking of ruthless overkill, Rudy Giuliani is riding high in the polling for '08 presidential candidates largely on the myth that he rescued New York (and the rest of America) on 9/11. But Cintra Wilson reminds us that he's really an authoritarian narcissist -- and we certainly don't need another one of those in the White House.
    His political career may have been defined by his willingness to confront scary bogeymen, but during slower periods when there were no obvious villains around, Giuliani's interpretations of who or what constituted an immediate threat became increasingly bizarre, personal, puritanical and dangerous. Before the planes hit, when he had too much power and not enough to do, Giuliani, like an old soldier who comes home and starts abusing his family in lieu of a real enemy, was pulling a Great Santini on New York, rooting around in our sock drawers with a Maglite, looking for vices to confiscate and sins to punish. By the mid-'90s, Mayor Rudy was abusing authority according to the whims of his own paranoid, hyper-defensive personality disorder in way that would have made Tiberius self-conscious.
  • Carl Levin will be running for re-election in '08. And, gosh -- he's 72?? I guess we're all getting old. I remember when Carl Levin was a Detroit City Councilman. IIRC, he went straight from there to the US Senate, which has to be some sort of record. [P.S. He is the longest-serving Senator in Michigan history.]


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