Signs of the times: In the annals of activism, this site has to be considered a classic. The idea is simple — put signs up on freeways containing antiwar or lefty messages and many people will read them. It’s freewayblogger.com and their slogan is Free Speech: Use It or Lose It. Check it out. Then put a thought on a sign and hang it from an interstate.
Stiff security: Professional prick Rush Limbaugh was detained yesterday for more than three hours after Customs and Border Protection agency staff discovered a vial of the prescription drug Viagra in his carry-on luggage as he was passing through Palm Beach International Airport, according to a report in the Miami Herald. Limbaugh admitted in 2003 that he was addicted to prescription painkillers and received barely a slap on the wrist last April by the courts for perpetrating prescription fraud.
Perhaps the Oxycontin makes it hard for Rush to get his little soldier to come to attention, hence the vial of little blue pills. The problem with the vial of lead in your pencil? Had a name other than Rush’s on the bottle, which is a misdemeanor. The explanation:
A doctor had prescribed the drug, but it was ”labeled as being issued to the physician rather than Mr. Limbaugh for privacy purposes,” Roy Black, Limbaugh’s attorney, said in a statement, according to The Associated Press.
Hey, that privacy thing worked out really well.
The lie on the label reminds us of how he got multiple Oxycontin prescriptions from four different doctors — by lying. Rush Limbaugh is a victim — of instant karma. By being who he is — a reprehensible rightwing blowhard who appeals to the reptilian brain stems of his mouthbreathing listeners — Limbaugh has brought bad joss on himself. And now everybody know that he’s a liar who can’t get it up.
Name game: As if the Department of Defense didn’t have better things to do — like, say, creating an exit strategy for Iraq — they’ve had a couple of staffers looking at the language gubmint officials use to describe events and characters revolving around the war on terror, or “terr,” as POTUS pronounces it. They’ve come up with a handy miscellany of terms that will win the war of words even as we lose the battle for hearts and minds.
In dealing with Islamic extremists, the West may be giving them the advantage due to cultural ignorance, maintain Dr. Douglas E. Streusand and Army Lt. Col. Harry D. Tunnell IV. The men work at the National Defense University at Fort Lesley J. McNair in Washington, D.C.
The two believe the right words can help fight the global war on terror. “American leaders misuse language to such a degree that they unintentionally wind up promoting the ideology of the groups the United States is fighting,” the men wrote in an article titled “Choosing Words Carefully: Language to Help Fight Islamic Terrorism.”
An example is jihadist. Most of us take jihadist or jihadi to mean an Islamic extremist who is fighting a holy war. But Steusand and Tunnell maintain that in Arabic jihad “literally means striving and generally occurs as part of the expression, Jihad fi sabil illah, striving in the path of God.” Which is considered a good thing for Muslims to do.
According to Islamic scholars, the correct term for Islamic extremists is hirabah, which identifies those engaged in sinful warfare that is contrary to Islamic law. Steusand and Tunnell offer some other examples of western semantic screw-ups:
Another word constantly misused in the West is mujahdeen. Again, in American dictionaries this word refers to a holy warrior � again a good thing. So calling an al Qaeda terrorist a mujahid legitimizes him. The correct term for these killers is mufsidun, Streusand and Tunnell say. This refers to an evil or corrupt person. “There is no moral ambiguity and the specific denotation of corruption carries enormous weight in most of the Islamic world,” they wrote.
People can apply other words instead. “Fitna/fattan: fitna literally means temptation or trial, but has come to refer to discord and strife among Muslims; a fattan is a tempter or subversive,” they wrote. “Applying these terms to our enemies and their works condemns their current activities as divisive and harmful.”
Finally, Steusand and Tunnell urge Westerners to translate Allah into God. They argue that using Allah to refer to God is like using Jehovah to refer to a Hebrew God. What’s wrong with that? Fact is, Muslims, Christians and Jews all worship the God of Abraham, but, say our intrepid translators, using different names serves to exaggerate divisions among the religions.
Sorry, but I don’t buy it, Messrs. Steusand and Tunnell. To say that after five years of verbally sparring with the hirabas, we’re going to change the rules of engagement by changing the terms and they’re just going to see that we “get it” and come crawling out of their caves to stop sewing fitna and quit being fattan and give up being mufsidun? Sounds about as effective as the rest of the DoD’s antiterrorism arsenal.
And “fags” means “cigarettes”: According to a short in The Hollywood Reporter, the BBC Board of Governors has ruled that the word ” ‘gay’ now means ‘rubbish’ in modern playground-speak and need not be offensive to homosexuals.”
Wonder how all the rubbish people are taking that ….
Apparently this all came about after a listener complained when a morning talk-show host dismissed a cell phone ringtone with the remark, “I don’t want that one, it’s gay.”
The BBC’s program complaints committee noted, “The word ‘gay’ … is often now used to mean ‘lame’ or ‘rubbish.’ This is a widespread current usage of the word amongst young people.”
Who needs “gay” anyway, when we’ve got so many other descriptive adjectives available?
Markos Moulitsas, the founder of DailyKos, seems like a savvy fellow, so it is surprising he lost his cool last week after Maureen Dowd was a bit snarky in her column about the first-ever YearlyKos convention in Las Vegas, which she attended.
About being interviewed by Dowd, Moulitsas said to another blogger, “Maureen Dowd is an insecure, catty bitch.”
Waiting at Dulles yesterday for my flight back to Los Angeles after 10 days of fun and business on the East Coast, I heard Moulitsas tell Howie Kurtz on CNN’s “Reliable Sources” that he regretted the “bitch” part.
But what exactly was it that MoDo wrote that Kos didn’t like?
You’ll find the full text of the column here, and a representative excerpt here:
No black light needed: Take down your Hendrix poster, we’ve got something tons better — the official TKB Terrorism Trends 2005 map poster. “TKB” is short for “Terrorism Knowledge Base,” which is part of the National Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism (MIPT), which is a nonprofit organization dedicated to preventing terrorism on U.S. soil or mitigating its effects that was established after the April 1995 bombing of the Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City.
Oh, and it should be noted that the MIPT is funded through the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Grants and Training. Hmmmmm.
According to the TKB, “this large, colorful map is a must-have for analysts, law enforcement, researchers, or others interested in terrorism.” Who is “interested in terrorism” besides, say, al Qaeda and gothic death-worshippers?
Like manna for the terrorism groupie, the poster lists the 10 most active groups (top three: al Qaeda, Hamas, Taliban), top 10 most frequent targets (police, government, private citizens) and tactics (bombing, armed attack, kidnapping, assassination, arson), and the most lethal attacks for 2005 (al Qaeda has six of the top 10) — complete with lurid color photos of death and destruction. The map also offers comparison graphs for several terrorism hotspots — helpful in vacation planning.
You can download a PDF copy here. For a 24” x 34” hard-copy version, simply e-mail your name and mailing address to TKBsupport@tkb.org and TKB will ship you a copy at no cost.
Of course, then they’ll have your address, if they don’t already.
The nerd I never knew: Since fellow editor Jon decided to “out” me as a former Davidson College classmate of White House Press SecretaryTony Snow, I figured I’d share a profile published recently in an alumni newsletter.
In the interest of full disclosure, I will note that I have no recollection of Tony Snow, who was two years ahead of me, and as far as I know, never met him. Of course, as you’ll see from his curriculum vita, it’s plain that while I was off playing with cool kids like Jon, Snow was diligently copying over his notes from philosophy class and polishing his rhetoric to debate his philo prof.
Robert A. “Tony” Snow ‘ 77, named on Wednesday, April 26, as White House Press Secretary by President George W. Bush, was an outstanding Davidson student who has remained engaged with the college throughout his professional career.
“He really was a remarkable student,” recalled Professor Lance Stell, who taught Snow in a seminar on political philosophy. “As a matter of fact, he’s the only student who has ever challenged me to a debate.
And it wasn’t just a fly-by-night idea. He followed up on it, secured a venue, and we had it. He assigned me to argue against the viability of libertarianism, and he argued for it. He was passionately interested in political philosophy, and believed deeply that people’s political beliefs had real meaning in the world.”
Snow, a Cincinnati native, majored in philosophy at Davidson, and was a great admirer of the substance and style of the late Professor Emeritus of Philosophy George Abernethy. In 1997 Snow wrote a syndicated Media General national column about his time as a pupil in Abernethy’s class,
“Once you got in George’s thrall, you stayed,” Snow wrote. “He enticed students with lectures of rare pith and energy. I did something for him I’ve never done before or since. I raced back to my room and reworked my notes to preserve as much as possible.”
Are you among the millions of middle-income families who have no health insurance–or do you know a family who is?
The fastest-growing sector of the population to be without coverage are working families who make less than $60,000/year. For these Americans, losing health insurance means either going into debt to pay for medical attention or going without the attention they and their children need.
Parenting magazine, the national monthly Time/Life publication, is looking to feature just such a family–two parents and probably two kids, one of whom is an infant or toddler–as they struggle to cope. If you meet this description, or you know of a middle-income family who does, please contact:
M. Marshall via email.
Bullshit market: Though we here at Pensito Review are loathe to send our intelligent and discriminating readers to other Web sites, sometimes one comes along that is just too good not to share.
Trendio is a site that allows you to “play” the “stock exchange of headline news” by buying words you think are going to be used more often in the media than other words. Depending on how well you pick them, your portfolio will grow or shrink. And hey, they give you a stake of $10,000 play money to start with, so you’ve got nothing to lose but time.
The idea of investing in buzz words is appealing to those of us who believe in words and the power of words, and occasionally accidentally string them into semi-cogent sentences. Good luck playing the market of ideas!
Keeping it public: In an effort to fend off Draconian budget cuts by Congress, public broadcasters have banded together and launched a Web site called TellThemPublicMatters.com. The site provides one of those nifty on-line response mechanisms whereby you can send a message in suppport of public broadcasting to your elected representatives.
Congress is considering cutting $201 million — 38 percent — of the funds allocated to public broadcasting nationwide. These are the same numbskulls who have appropriated more than $250 BILLION in supplemental spending for the war in Iraq!
Let Congress know that you value public broadcasting by signing on to join the campaign. And if you have a couple of scheckles lying around, consider donating them to your local public radio or television station.
In the diplomatic ranks, trained professionals toil,
To keep the peace and tamp down foreign turmoil.
But for Greek ambassador,
Trump picked an artful dodger —
The grifting, drunken blackmailer Kimberly Guilfoyle.
