This 'n That
1. Roger L. Simon, the famed mystery novelist, screenwriter, and genius co-creator of the phenomenon known as "Pajamas Media," says that he found Bill Tierney (the guy behind the Saddam tapes, and our bestest friend ) unlikable and weird.
I wanted to like Tierney, I mean really like him, but I have to admit that I was put off by his excessive religiosity. [...] (What is it about UNSCOM that made it collect such bizarre personalities - Scott Ritter... Tierney?)
Hey, if anybody knows about bizarre personalities, it would be Roger . . .
2. And Rush predicted this would happen. Renew America's Sharon Hughes explains:
It will be fascinating to watch the frenzy as the MSM and liberal politicians try to put their spin on what's revealed in these tapes in the weeks to come. Rush Limbaugh has predicted that everyone associated with the tapes will be 'discredited' because what's on them is so damaging to the liberal "no WMD" mantra.
It was horrible how the liberals went back in time and forced Tierney to be part of the Terri Schiavo hospice circus, required him to talk about torturing "wogs" at a conference, and made him appear on "Coast to Coast," all in an effort to discredit him.
But mostly, I blame Simon. You know, for not trying hard enough to like Bill.
While I have never actually met Tierney, I've read a lot about him. And to me, his problem isn't "excessive religiosity," it's Narcissistic Personality Disorder. (It's all there: "An exaggerated sense of self-importance," a preoccupation with fantasies about his great success and power, "Requires excessive admiration," "Has a sense of entitlement." etc.)
If Tierney's "religiosity" involved actions that didn't involve him trying to be in the spotlight all the time (you know, if he was quietly giving alms to the poor, not letting his left hand know what his right hand was doing, and such), I bet that even Simon would find him likable. But since Bill seems to use religion as a way to show how special he is, to demand special treatment, or to blame for his "persecution" by a world that won't acknowledge how special he is, then I think the problem lies more with Bill than with his devotion to his religion.
3. Speaking of bizarre personalities (and Rush Limbaugh), it seems that Rush is alone again, naturally. As you may have heard, the NY Daily News reported that he and Daryn Kagan are "finally kaput." I'm guessing that things were never the same after Rush referred to her on his radio program as his "mistress in Georgia," thus giving the world the idea that they slept together. No romance could stand that!
But, like the Daily News said, the good news is that Rush is available again! (Okay, they only implied this.) So, to give you guys and gals some tips on how to win Rush's heart, here's the story of how he met his third wife, Marta.
Limbaugh and the then-Marta Fitzgerald's love affair began in 1990 on the information superhighway. Going by the name of the "Jacksonville Jaguar," Fitzgerald contacted the talk show host through the CompuServe message network to ask his advice on how to challenge her President Reagan-bashing professor at the University of North Florida, where she was a student. Reagan had once called Limbaugh "the No. 1 voice for conservatism in our country."
Fitzgerald's husband at the time, Tom Fitzgerald, said Limbaugh didn't respond to her first query. She got angry when she heard Limbaugh respond on the air to some flight attendants who had written wanting to meet him.
So she wrote Limbaugh a scathing letter, calling him pompous and telling him he was wasting his time, Fitzgerald told The Florida Times-Union in Jacksonville. This time, Limbaugh responded.
"That's how the whole relationship got started,'' Fitzgerald said. ''They started corresponding back and forth.''
Limbaugh escorted Marta, who was divorced from Fitzgerald in 1992, to the 1994 Super Bowl, Israel and New Orleans. He playfully hinted to radio listeners about his "Jaguar," and eventually Marta moved to New York, where Limbaugh owned an Upper West Side apartment.
The two were wed May 27, 1994, at the Virginia home of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, who officiated. Attendees included former Education Secretary William Bennett, another family values advocate who later admitted to a multimillion-dollar gambling habit.
And then, almost exactly ten years later (when, as some say, the pre-nup was no longer in force), they were divorced.
But anyway, I think that the Rush/Marta love story, featuring as it did such traditional conservative values as professor-bashing, insults, adultery, divorce, drugs, gambling, and porn, should be an inspiration to us all. I am saddened that the Daryn/Rush romance couldn't end in a similar fashion.
4. And, in a related story, WorldNetDaily reports that "Fewer college-bound, higher suicide rates, shorter life spans suggest males getting shaft."
And who is shafting those men out of their college educations and their longer life-spans?
Apparently sitcoms.
Watch network sitcoms and you will find the dolts are usually men.
In TV commercials, it's always the kids or the mothers who know the real score, not the fathers.
Affirmative-action programs by definition mean women get preference in hiring, school admissions, contracts and promotions.
While some social scientists may see these facts as harmless – or possibly even necessary reconditioning of society to correct past injustices against women – others are beginning to conclude that men are the real victims of discrimination so virulent it is shortening their life spans, causing them to be self-destructive and suicidal, crippling their educational opportunities and destroying a generation of fatherless children.
So, does everybody love Raymond now?
Anyway, let's look as just one of WND's "sobering facts."
Men, whose average life expectancy was formerly on a par with women, are now dying 10 years earlier.
Is this true? Per the CDC, no. (See " U.S. Life Expectancy Best Ever, Says CDC"). The CDC claims (and with evidence to back them up) that in the U.S., women now live 80.1 years, while men live 74.8 years, a difference of 5.3 years. (I don't want to make the man -- or woman -- who wrote the WND column feel virulently discriminated against or anything, but 5 is about half as much as 10.)
The CDC also says that the gap between life expectancies in the U.S. has never been ten years, and that men are actually living longer now.
That's down from a peak of 7.8 years in 1979. Since then, men's life expectancy gains have outpaced those of women, says the CDC
So, apparently it's WOMEN who are getting the shaft by sitcoms and discrimination and stuff.
And did men formerly have the same life expectancy as women (until being portrayed as dolts on shows like "CSI" Miami" and "The O'Reilly Factor" caused them to die in shame)?
Let's see if the Harvard Gazette can answer this question:
"It seems likely that women have been outliving men for centuries and perhaps longer," say [doctors at Harvard Medical School] Perls and Fretts. Even with the sizable risk conferred by childbirth, women have outsurvived men at least since the 1500s. Although, in the United States between 1900 and the 1930s, the death risk for women of childbearing age was as high as that for men. Since then, improved health care, particularly in childbirth, has put women ahead of men again in the survival struggle, as well as raising life expectancy for both sexes.
So, yeah, because of all the women who were dying during child birth because of the crappy medical care of the time, there was a 30-year period in the early 20th century when women didn't live any longer than men. And I guess that's the period that WND wants us to return to.
As for the "sobering fact" that there are now more women attending college than men, the so-called "comic strip" Mallard Fillmore has devoted the entire week to trumpeting just that stat. The punchline for today's strip was that ugly, strident feminists have nothing to say about this state of affairs. ( It's funny because ... um ... it's conservative!)
Personally, I think this kind of virulent discrimination against humor probably lowered the life expectancy of everyone who reads the strip.
8:20:54 PM 
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