I find it quite astounding that Martin Scorcese, Woody Allen, David Lynch, Wim Wenders, Pedro Almodovar, Tilda Swinton and Monica Bellucci would sign a petition calling for the release of Roman Polanski. If people in Hollywood wonder why people think they’re out of touch with reality there’s no better example than the reaction to Polanski’s arrest. Polanski pled guilty to drugging and raping a 13 year girl in 1978. Polanski fled the country before the sentence could be carried out. Whoopi Goldberg says that it wasn’t “rape rape,” whatever that means.
It’s astonishing and disgusting that anyone would defend this rapist, but there seems to be no end of idiots defending rape.
One celebrity supporter, the actress Debra Winger, said it was a “three-decades-old case that is dead but for minor technicalities. We stand by him and await his release and his next masterpiece.” Movie mogul Harvey Weinstein said Polanski was a “humanist” who had been the victim of a “miscarriage of justice”. He said: “We will have to speak to our leaders, particularly in California. I’m not too shy to go and talk to the Governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and to ask him once and for all to look at this.”
I guess if a person is perceived a genius director and a “humanist” he gets to drug and rape all the 13-year-old girls he wants. This is beyond the pale. There should be universal outrage. Goldberg should be forced to apologize or be fired from ABC’s The View. She has the freedom to say whatever she wants, but no TV network should pay a personality who downplays the rape of a 13-year-old girl.
As far as the actors, directors, and insiders who signed this petition, it should be a black mark on their otherwise distinguished careers. I know it’s easy to pick on morons, but just read the tweets from Matti Croft. He is one of the countless people who are rushing to defend Polanski.
Matti09: In Cali you can cut your ex wifes head off & go home, or record top #1 hits and molest little white boys & go home- let Roman Polanski go
Matti09: Roman Polanski – Americans should be concerned with Public Option not 30 yr old cases… Ridiculous
Matti09: If Roman Polanski was a black football star or a black king of pop, would this even be of any concern! NO!!!
Matti09: 13 year old woman isn’t a child!
When I responded to the idiot I predictably got an idiots response.
Matti09: @DailyPlunge – Better be careful you would want to get trouble! That woman knew what she was doing! SEDUCTION! She got paid by settlement!
Matti09: @DailyPlunge – Know your facts be for you open your $%#@&%$ mouth!
I guess I’m a little surprised that pedophilia is acceptable to many people. The girl was raped so it wasn’t even consensual. In this case the girl’s age is irrelevant. To defend Polanski means that after 30 years rape of any kind should be a forgivable offense.
What is finitephobia? People who have a illogical fear of running out of resources. This paranoia isn’t new. Well educated people have promised all kinds of scarcity disasters. One day we’re faced with overpopulation; a few decades later it’s water or oil. At the heart of American scarcity paranoia is the idea that the average Wal-Mart consumer is fat, uneducated and polluting the planet. Elitists all over the fruited plain like to look down at these stupid peasants.
Nothing lasts forever, but the idea that we’re at the precipice of running out of vital resources is absurd. There’s no evidence to suggest we’re almost out of any resource. The world could use more clean water, but the Earth isn’t running out of water. In order to have more clean water we have to pay for it. Another popular finitephobia is that the United States is becoming overdeveloped. Well over 90% of the United States is undeveloped, but this doesn’t seem to stop communities from implementing Smart Growth. There’s nothing smart about it.
Ultimately, the irrational fear of scarcity becomes problematic. Here’s a prime example from a finitephobe I encountered at Creative Loafing’s the 941 blog. I tried to make this point about finitephobia and was promptly greeted with a mixture of anger, profanity and condescension. Here was Susan Nilon’s reaction:
It doesn’t take much intelligence to look around you and see that we cannot sustain ourselves at the rate we are going. If you can’t recognize that, then please step aside. You are in the way. [emphasis added]
There’s the rub. “I am in the way.” Well, that’s a fairly totalitarian way of looking at a differing opinion. What’s the solution then? Everyone with my opinion must be exterminated in order to “fix things.” I jest, but when this kind of religious devotion to finitephobia sets in it becomes nearly impossible to have a logical debate. How do you debate someone who is “looking around” and claims “we cannot sustain ourselves at the rate we’re going”? Do we have to stop growing? De we start sterilizing humans? Will the world appoint a Growth Czar to make sure there’s no illegal breeding?
I’m troubled by the elitist mentality by many Americans. It’s especially annoying when these people can’t even form a logical argument. It might be fun to drink cocktails and make fun of people who shop at Wal-Mart. When this sentiment starts shifting from snobbery to a “these people are in the way” then there’s a problem. One last point…. Why is it that so many people who are worried that growth is unsustainable are the same people who don’t see any problem with unsustainable government growth?
The college football season is well under way, and a couple of weeks ago Club Soda posted his BCS Solution. I share his disdain for the current system; however, I’m opposed to a huge playoff. One of the unique aspects of college football compared to, say, the NFL is the fact that losses matter a lot more. The Carolina Panthers have started of 0-2 this season and could conceivably still play in the Super Bowl (they’ll be lucky to win six games). A two-loss start in college football is virtually the end of any shot at the national title.
Rivalry games would lose their importance as well. What makes the great college football rivalries so great is that Texas vs. Oklahoma, Michigan vs. Ohio State, Auburn vs. Alabama, and Florida vs. Georgia only play once a season. Those games are huge because they help determine the conference champion. In a 16-team playoff, conference play become pointless.
Knowshon Rockwell Moreno scores against the Gators in 2007
My plan only involves conference champions. It would be an eight-team playoff that would include the champion from the ACC, Big East, Big Ten, Big Twelve, Pac 10 and SEC. The two final spots would be reserved for the two highest ranked non-BCS schools. Seeding would be determined by final ranking.
In essence, the entire season would be a playoff. This system would likely force the Pac 10 and Big Ten to have a conference championship game. Undoubtedly, some really good teams would lose a shot at the national title because they couldn’t win their conference. That’s too bad; if you can’t win your conference, you shouldn’t be playing for a national championship.
The system could also add a few more teams if the lesser conferences continue to improve. A ten-team playoff could have two play-in games. The leftover teams who don’t qualify for the playoff could play in the Canada Dry Club Soda bowl or whatever. The major bowls could rotate the venues for the playoff games.
- Orange Bowl
- Rose Bowl
- Fiesta Bowl
- Sugar Bowl
- Cotton Bowl
- Chick-fil-A Bowl
- Citrus Bowl
All these games would sell out. The television ratings for this playoff would dwarf March Madness, but that’s only because people love football more than they do basketball. It would be more exciting than the NFL Playoffs. Some kind of system is inevitable because there’s so much potential money to be made. My system wouldn’t stop the whining. Teams fortunate enough to play in weak conferences would benefit, but the best team would win, supposedly.
In 2002 Georgia went 13-1 and won the SEC Championship but didn’t get a shot at the national championship because Ohio State and Miami both went undefeated in weaker conferences. That season Georgia was a better team, but had no chance of proving it, despite winning what was arguably the most difficult conference. In 2005 Auburn went undefeated and didn’t get a shot at the national championship because Texas and USC went undefeated. The current system doesn’t have a solution for this problem. Until this is corrected, the national championship is simply a glorified beauty contest.
The 2008 youth vote myth is fast becoming one of my biggest pet peeves. The percentage of young people who voted in 2008 was relatively unchanged. The largest change was that Obama carried 66% of the youth vote compared to Kerry’s 54% in 2004. This is hardly a huge electoral shift. 2008 was a Democrat year in which a hip young politician ran against a very old member of the incumbent party. Unfortunately, these realities cannot stop the press from pushing this myth even further. Martha Irvite writes the following for the Associated Press:
Young Americans showed their collective power when they helped vote President Obama into office. Inspired by his message of “change,” they knocked on doors, spread flyers, voted for him by a 2-1 margin, and partied like rock-the-vote stars when he won. Since the election, though, that fervor has died down — noticeably. And while young people remain the president’s most loyal supporters in opinion polls, a lot of people are wondering why that age group isn’t doing more to build upon their newfound reputation as political influencers.
Isn’t it obvious? The reputation is a myth. A better reputation would be the fact that young voters are easily the most ignorant political demographic. What else can explain the fact that a majority of young voters continue to vote for a party that’s steadfastly opposed to reforming Social Security. The number one issue for young voters is that there won’t be a country left when they reach 50. I find it humorous that many young people spend time worrying about climate change, but seem unfazed by the idea that they could be living in the economic equivalent of the 1930s in the future.
I would love to hear this guy speak intelligently about any topic.
Perhaps this is the outcome of 50-plus years of economic prosperity. No one (especially anyone under the age of 40) has any idea what economic hardship is like. It’s not like no one sees this coming. Economists have been talking about this for decades now. The American people lack the will to do anything about it and our politicians would rather promise free health care than tackle real problems. Western Civilization is buckling under the weight of entitlements. I fear before my generation passes, we’ll see the fruit of a half century of bad economic choices.
I don’t like Glen Beck. There, I said it. He’s an emotional, populist, conspiracy-believing talking head who’s not helping the debate in the United States. Beck isn’t a conservative and his on-air style isn’t good for Americans. I’m not the only conservative who shares this opinion. Peter Wehner has a great piece on Beck and he hits all the right points.
He [Beck] seems to be more of a populist and libertarian than a conservative, more of a Perotista than a Reaganite. His interest in conspiracy theories is disquieting, as is his admiration for Ron Paul and his charges of American “imperialism.” (He is now talking about pulling troops out of Afghanistan, South Korea, Germany, and elsewhere.) Some of Beck’s statements–for example, that President Obama has a “deep-seated hatred for white people”-are quite unfair and not good for the country. His argument that there is very little difference between the two parties is silly, and his contempt for parties in general is anti-Burkean (Burke himself was a great champion of political parties). And then there is his sometimes bizarre behavior, from tearing up to screaming at his callers. Beck seems to be a roiling mix of fear, resentment, and anger–the antithesis of Ronald Reagan.
I understand that a political movement is a mansion with many rooms; the people who occupy them are involved in intellectual and policy work, in politics, and in polemics. Different people take on different roles. And certainly some of the things Beck has done on his program are fine and appropriate. But the role Glenn Beck is playing is harmful in its totality.
I don’t share Wehner’s opinion about Beck as a libertarian, but everything else is correct. Simply labeling Beck a right wing fanatic is a dangerous tactic and it only feeds his rhetoric. The public is becoming more and more disenchanted with the Democrat and Republican parties, and the rise of Beck is partly because of this trend. I for one, don’t care what the babbling man has to say about any topic.
The past two months have been difficult for the Obama administration. The White House has learned that Americans still do not trust the government. Well, maybe “learned” is too strong. I’m not sure the White House gets it. However, the conventional wisdom about the 2008 election is starting to shift. Originally, the election was the “end of conservatism.” Bush’s unpopularity created an unfair perception that the United States had moved to the left. Liberals so blinded by partisanship didn’t realize that Bush wasn’t conservative.
Most of Bush’s domestic agenda was opposed by mainstream conservatives. The National Review opposed No Child Left Behind, the Prescription Drug Bill, the creation of Department of Homeland Security, and the immigration amnesty bill. Conservatives have been appalled by the spending spree in Washington. Americans were appalled as well. The Democrats who won swing districts in 2006 ran as conservatives. They didn’t promise government health care. They promised to reduce the debt.
The growing angst in America comes from the fact that President Obama seems unconcerned about reducing our debt. Instead of tackling Medicare and Social Security the President wants to burden the nation with costly climate change and health care bills. After promising more transparency and less pork, the stimulus package the President signed is a perfect example of government waste.
Obama successful tapped into the American angst with Washington when he ran for President, but he’s been unwilling to reduce the size and scope of government. I’ve never seen so much angst with Washington. Obama had a tremendous opportunity to lead the nation toward real change, but instead he represents the problem. Obama is a more liberal version of Bush. Conservatives and independents didn’t like the first version and they’ll hate the second version.
Who can successfully represent America? The Republicans don’t have anyone that I see on the horizon. A lot can change over the next few years, but there’s a huge opportunity for a new leader to connect to Americans in a very dramatic way.
I’m back! I’ve spent the past two weeks in North Carolina for my wife’s brain surgery. Everything went well, but it’s still a very trying and emotional process. She had the surgery on the 9th and every day has been a challenge. I’m so thankful she’s doing well and hopeful this will put an end to this thing once and for all. We’ll learn more in six weeks.
I can’t say enough about Duke University Hospital. Everyone was nice. I was happy to be back in NC for a few days, but we were both ready to get back to Florida. Two weeks away from home and friends is about all we could take.
Meanwhile, The Daily Plunge has been lacking any daily activity. So much has happened the past two weeks… Obama gave a speech that will only be remembered for Joe Wilson. Alas, it’s a different Joe Wilson. Whatever happened to “speaking truth to power?”
In less than a year the left has turned a complete 180. Protests used to be grassroots uprisings against the government. Now they’re characterized as angry racist mobs more concerned about the color of the president’s skin than the content of his proposals.
What else have I learned? Cable news really is horrendous. Fox and MSNBC are almost unwatchable. I’m not sure how anyone can complain about Fox. MSNBC has thrown objectivity completely out the window. MSNBC’s coverage of the ACORN incident is hilarious.
Speaking of ACORN, who would have believed it was criminal institution? Who saw that coming? I jest of course. It’s amazing that the press had to be dragged kicking and screaming to cover the story. I gripe a lot about the mainstream press, but the great thing about the Information Age is that real journalism still exists.
Since the long-awaited college football season kicked off, now is a good time to start talking sense about the BCS. Unfortunately, you can’t discuss the upcoming college football bowl season without a slide rule and a compass, thanks to the geniuses who devised the BCS, a.k.a., Bowl Championship Series. They ought to take the C out of the acronym, but more on that later.
For these many eons, college football has had its postseason “bowls”. According to Wikipedia, Michigan and Stanford played in the first bowl, the Rose Bowl, named after the bowl-like dimensions of the stadium. What’s strange is that the stadium is not much different in appearance than the Roman Coliseum (the Circus Maximus was more like the Del Mar Fairgrounds, used mainly for horse racing, but most of the races within the Circus Maximus involved some type of bloodshed). I doubt very much that Roman citizens would have called their spectaculars “bowls”. If they had, the Barbarians would have been at the gates much sooner.
Since that first Rose Bowl, the bowls remained rather static until the postmodern era, in which the entire system would need to be deconstructed, re-built, and made crappier than it ever was before. But that’s the postmodern way.
These days there are about 3,500 postseason bowls, 3,499 of which simply don’t count. The Granddaddy of them all is no longer the Rose Bowl, but the so-called Citi BCS National Championship Game.
Utilizing a computer system that takes into account the relative strength of each team’s record, its win-loss record, its standing in various polls, margin of victory, and a complicated calculus involving the earth’s rotation in conjunction with the moon’s position in relation to the sun and earth, a number is concocted in the hard drive of the Univac that sits at BCS headquarters, a.k.a., Spacely Space Sprockets.
Inevitably, there are two teams playing in separate bowls that objectively should be playing for the national championship. Each year, Univac and the brain trust at the BCS hold prayer ongoing vigils in hopes that USC and Notre Dame will go undefeated, and everyone else will lose at least one game. Their prayers have almost been answered in past seasons when there were only two undefeated teams left standing at the end of the year, though never USC and Notre Dame in the same year. Sadly, this is the exception rather than the rule.
This year, we’ll be treated to the usual scenario. Any number of teams will have a legitimate claim that they deserve a shot at the national championship game. Univac will go into motion, two teams will be spit out, and no one will be satisfied. The only thing we can be assured of at this point is that Georgia is not a contender for much of anything this season.
Some advocate a BCS +1 system in which Number One plays Number Four in one bowl, Number Two and Three in another, and then the winner of those two play for the whole enchilada… or something similar to that. This is a Band-Aid solution to patch over the BCS Titanic. The ship’s sinking, and what we need is an entirely new boat.
Club Soda, on the other hand, advocates a full playoff series that incorporates the bowls. Your lower-tier bowls, such as the PapaJohns.com Bowl (What? Are you kidding? No!) would comprise the first round of the playoffs.
However, there’s a mathematical conundrum here. If you took the top 16 teams and put them in a playoff, you would end up with 17 bowl games in four rounds, including the championship (the fourth and final round). Currently, there are somewhere around 30 bowl games on tap, a few of which are new, such as the PapaJohns.com/BS.asp Bowl.
Club Soda’s solution would be to ditch ten of the crappier, less attended bowls altogether. However, that would not sit very well with a sponsor like Papa John’s. To appease those pesky people, and appease even more pesky sponsors and others who stand to gain financially, you could take the top 32 teams, and have 33 bowl games and five rounds. That means the teams that make it all the way to the championship would play five extra games, which seems NFL excessive. It’s important to recall, however, that they used to play ten-game seasons. Club Soda recommends going back to a ten-game season, and eliminating St. Agnus School for the Blind and M.I.T. from the schedules of the powerhouse programs.
Usually, such innovations are greeted with the inevitable, “It’ll never happen.” Arms subsequently fly in the air as we once again resign ourselves to second-best. Usually the “it’ll never happen” argument revolves around money. There’s simply too much money being made and a lot of people making that money who have a stake in the current system. However, Club Soda insists that this will generate tons more money for everyone, including those who currently have a stake, than is currently being made. Are you kidding? Look… When the PapaFreakingJohns.com Bowl has capacity crowds and a huge television audience because something’s actually at stake, and Ohio State is playing Tennessee (or Clemson, depending on how many teams are invited to the dance), the math should be obvious. Don’t make me use a compass and a slide rule to prove it. Use your common sense.
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