It's for very good reasons that Bill Cosby is a treasured American icon. His contribution to my generation alone, via Fat Albert and The Electric Company, is palpable, and his stand-up comedy has always been refreshingly obscenity-free. Cosby received heat from some quarters for The Cosby Show in that it was uplifting the ideals of Reagan—but those of us who have at least half a working brain in our heads know that those are ideals worthy of uplifting and those quarters should be ignored if not mocked. Cosby, in that sitcom and in his own life, showed how blacks are just as capable as any other racial or ethnic group of engineering an upper middle-class or wealthy lifestyle through dedicated study and hard work (as opposed to specious talents). Cosby has weighed in on the Trayvin Martin-George Zimmerman scenario. The actor-comedian said the issue relates to guns, especially with respect to taking them out in public instead of keeping them in the home. While Cosby supports an individual's right to keep guns in his or her home, he has said that when the same individual carries a gun outside the home, "sometimes their mind clicks that this thing ... will win arguments and straighten people out." We can argue the merits of carry-and-conceal statutes, and it's little wonder that those who attack police officers often receive a Darwin award for their idiotic efforts. However, I also agree with Cosby that possession of a gun can preternaturally embolden many individuals. Money and power can go to people's heads; so, we must admit, can guns. Cosby's son Ellis was shot during an attempted robbery in 1997, so we can certainly understand Cosby's attitude toward having guns in public. With respect to what happened in Sanford, Florida on the night Martin was shot, Cosby questions Zimmerman's logic. He said, "When you tell me that you're going to protect the neighborhood that I live in, I don't want you to have a gun. I want you to be able to see something, report it and get out of the way." If Zimmerman had done that, and taken the advice of the 911 dispatcher to leave the matter to the police, then Martin, angel or not, would still be alive and Zimmerman would not be facing second-degree murder charges. Charges the prosecutor was forced to make, in my humble opinion, but for the purposes of this piece, that's neither here nor there. We do not know if Martin was aware that Zimmerman had a gun. We do not yet know why Zimmerman felt the need to pursue Martin. The fact that Martin beat Zimmerman up (as well as his previous use of social media) proves he is not the choir-boy the media insists on portraying him as. It's apparent that Zimmerman shot Martin for the very reason you would have a gun in the first place—self-defense. Could it be that Cosby is right, though? Did Zimmerman ignore the dispatcher's advice because he felt invincible with a gun at his side? Hopefully all the facts will surface during Zimmerman's trial. But if Cosby's overall point is that some people, regardless of race, can be prone to being trigger-happy, then that's difficult to argue against. Like Cosby, I fully support the Second Amendment. Without it, the rest of the rights enshrined in the Constitution are pretty much mooted. And I like having an armed police force. But that doesn't mean I want everything the National Rifle Association wants. Police have guns and, under normal circumstances, any potential need for them should be left to law enforcement. There's got to be a balance when it comes to firearms. But the issue is such a polarizing cauldron, I wonder if that balance will ever be achieved.
Rep. Anthony Weiner: "I had hoped to be able to continue the work that the citizens of my district elected me to do ... Unfortunately, the distraction that I have created has made that impossible. So today I'm announcing my resignation from Congress." Hecklers: "Yea! Bye-bye, pervert!" It may have been a prank engineered by Howard Stern, but that is a classic. One of the most amusing press conferences of all time. Distraction, Anthony? Distraction? This nogoodnick—last year, I called him a "schmuck extraordinaire"—still can't admit the nature of this scandal. By using that word, Weiner is acting as though this was simply a political inconvenience beyond his ability to control. It seems pretty straightforward to me: You don't send a photo of your crotch in tight boxer briefs to a young female follower on Twitter when (a) you're a Congressman elected to do the people's work (even if the people in question are moonbats) and (b) You're married. And if this was a distraction that you created, Mssr. Weiner, then why the bullish attitude over the past couple of weeks, acting as if you did nothing wrong? Why lie about it all, since you surely knew it would eventually backfire? Instead, as we all know by now, Weiner claimed that his Twitter account was "hacked"—insinuating that it was the work of Andrew Breitbart. He called CNN producer Ted Barrett a "jackass" for insisting on a very direct answer to a very direct question, instead treating him and reporter Dana Bash to a rambling statement about thrown pies or insults that he wouldn't spend the next two hours responding to. It was glaringly obvious why he parried by talking about Clarence Thomas and the debt-limit vote, and never contacted law enforcement with regard to the alleged hacking. Have you heard about the e-mails that Weiner sent to former porn actress Ginger Lee? Gloria Allred read them out the other day: "I have wardrobe demands too, I need to highlight my package," "Alright, my package and I are not gonna beg," and "You aren't giving my package due credit." I'm all for male pride, but jeez. This is ridiculous, not to mention gross. Anthony Weiner spent his entire political life trying to stick it to the middle class that he claimed he stood up for. He used the usual Democratic code-speak to sound friendly to working people. But the dudes who shoved him into lockers at school grew up into responsible, working, contributing members of society, and Weiner couldn't tolerate the thought of them being successful. He was a member of Congress; he had power and a generous pension that those guys, as taxpayers, were funding. His whole demeanor over the past 12 years of his Congressional career screamed, "Look at me now! How's my ass taste?" He probably spent the last few years asking every female he came across during his on-line activities how their asses tasted, I regret to say. Unfortunately, there is no shortage of "beautiful people" just like Anthony Weiner out there, in the private sector as well as public "service": Smug, arrogant, and too quick to look down upon everyone around them. People with no reason to be as self-assured as they are. People whom you just ache to kick to the curb. Would it were that they could all be brought down with such punishing, poetic justice as Anthony Weiner.
Well, I'm sorry, dear reader, but my rating on the city of Vancouver isn't zero. It's well into the negatives. That's where it will remain for a long time to come. If anyone from Vancouver happens to be reading this right now—and I'd love to hear from you—perhaps you could answer me one question: What is up with the incredibly babyish attitude? You people must be the sorest losers on the globe. Just pathetic. Hey, it's your city: Tear it up, blow it up, wipe it off the map—whatever. I'll still sleep comfortably at night. But you did yourselves no favors. For once, the world is witnessing just what a lie we've all been sold with respect to the idyllic utopia Vancouver supposedly is or the peaceful, law-abiding orderliness with which Canadian society conducts itself. Ice hockey is a Canadian invention—and look how thuggish the game is. Just put two and two together. (But at least their skating rink ice isn't stained with Ottawa-sanctioned seal blood.) I'm not saying Canadians are worse than anyone else. I've just had it with the fairytale existence they want us to believe everyone leads up there. The Vancouver Stanley Cup Riot of 2011 should forever dispel that myth—and I honestly hope it does. You can point the finger south and sneer only so many times before something like what occurred yesterday afternoon in Canada's third-largest city brings a big smile of satisfaction to an American's face. But I digress, really: Let's stick to just the Canucks' fan base. What does the all-out war that broke out in downtown Vancouver yesterday say about them? First of all, you need to understand that the Canucks have been in the Stanley Cup Finals three times: In 1982, 1994 and this year. Two out of those three times, there were riots. The 1994 riots, after the New York Rangers defeated the Canucks in seven games, were disgraceful enough, worthy of staining the city for several decades after the fact. But after the Bruins won in seven games Wednesday, the mayhem and violence that occurred was, according to some reports, three times as worse. So, two large-scale riots after two lost causes in the Cup finals. Pretty bad, eh? It's begun to look like a not-so-healthy trend. But—and this is really good—the city had already planned a parade route for the Canucks. The positive air of expectation surrounding the Canucks permeated everything. Crowds watching the game outside Rogers Arena were joined by jubliant policemen, who were exchanging high-fives with fans early on in the game. Fans actually expected their team to come back from a 3-goal deficit in the third period. The Cancuks were going to win, damn it all! Honestly, not even New York Yankees fans are this arrogant. They at least know when they are beaten. It was only after Boston scored goal #4 that things turned ugly. One fan was heard to shout after the game, "Boston, I hate you!" For what? Daring to compete with your boyfriends and being good enough to win against them, you candy-assed crybaby? Excuse me, but I thought that's what hockey, like any other sport, was about: Playing the game and having a winner and a loser. No surprise that the Canucks currently have the most hated fan base in all of sports. Even Canadians who aren't from British Columbia hate the Canucks and their fans. The Canucks themselves were notorious for their cheap shots, unnecessary roughness and general dirty play. If this was the only riot to have occurred after a sporting loss in Vancouver, I'd be willing to chalk it up to the anarchist freaks that magically materialize at any large event to cause trouble. We experienced that ourselves here in London during an anti-budget cuts protest in March. The 1994 riot, combined with this one, makes that excuse less easy to explain. Especially since "true Canucks fans" were not honor-bound to participate in the violence, then or now. But they did. I'm no hockey fan. However, I congratulate the scrappy, but gentlemanly Boston Bruins for capturing the Stanley Cup for the first time in 39 years. This wasn't just a hometown team done good; the Bruins were an underdog in the truest sense of the word. But it's good for the city, and it's great for the Bruins die-hards who watched as all the other professional Boston teams won fresh championship titles during the past decade and wondered when their time would come. At no point along the way did Bruins fans riot to express their displeasure over how long they were expected to live off the fumes of 1972. I will tell you something about the city of Boston though: It won't have to spend several years trying to wipe an ugly stain off its complexion—the way Vancouver will.
For a month or two last year, I had a Facebook page. I balked, however, when Facebook executives refused to take down the page dedicated to British gunman/killer Raul Moat. Facebook claimed it was all about free speech. My understanding is that once the public expression of views crosses over into death threats and the encouragement of violent, anarchic activity, defense on the grounds of freedom of expression is no longer relevant. David Cameron, the Prime Minister of Britain, even got involved and asked the CEO of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, to remove the site; Zuckerberg refused. In the end, the creator of the page removed it herself, though she only did so, she claimed, so things could simmer down a bit, and then she would re-launch it. In disgust—and also considering that I had gotten into a serious fight with someone over the subject of capital punishment—I de-activated my page and left Facebook. I haven't been back since, nor have I missed it. Mark Zuckerberg just ensured, beyond any shadow of doubt, why I won't reconsider my decision. The Facebook chief likes to set little challenges for himself every year, such as learning Chinese or wearing a tie every day. If I had a douchebag face like his, I'd consider it a challenge just stepping out my front door and into the public domain every day. But apparently, that's not enough. Zuckerberg now wants to eat meat only from animals he kills himself. He says this personal goal of his represents the need for people to be "thankful for what they eat rather than trying to ignore where it came from." I'll admit, this is good advice for carnivores/omnivores and in making this statement, Zuckerberg has a valid point. Some meat-eaters are uncomfortable with how their food ends up on their plate and they'd rather not think about it. Luckily, the pickings available at the grocery store sanitize the whole sordid business. The supermarket or butcher is the middleman between the slaughterhouse and the consumer. Using that exact same argument, why should anyone feel guilty about purchasing drugs from a dealer? He will never tell you who he shot dead for stepping onto his turf the night before, so you have no need to worry about it. Let that not interrupt anyone's narcotic-cloaked enjoyment of life. Rather than finding the slaughter of animals deplorable, and using that as an excuse to set a vegetarian challenge for himself instead, Zuckerberg endorses it. "I think many people forget that a living being has to die for you to eat meat, so my goal revolves around not letting myself forget that and being thankful for what I have," Zuckerberg proclaimed. Have I missed something? Who exactly is forcing people to eat meat? Has meat-consumption become the law of the land? As for the inane argument that meat-eating is vital for human nutrition, the last time I checked, humans weren't canines nor felines. Zuckerberg has all-too-predictably received well-wishes and plaudits from those who pretend that their psychopathic hatred of any life form on Earth that dares not to be human is the very essence of libertarianism. Well, I'm a libertarian too and my goal for the year is to hope in earnest every waking day that Zuckerberg swiftly becomes the victim of a hunting accident. Only you won't find me encouraging that on Facebook.
It's odd. I know there are conservative people in Britain. But they're like God: I need faith that they actually exist, because, aside from my wife, I have never met anyone who came even remotely close to scoring 0.001 percent on the conservative scale. I've certainly never worked with any. A good example came last week when the Daily Express arrived to the scanning room where a younger co-worker and I were stationed. The headline announced "40 Percent Rise in Ethnic Numbers." My immediate thought upon reading the headline was, This is not good for social cohesion. My colleague, however, gruffly stated, "Let's leave this paper with its racist headline till last." Its racist headline? Score another point for the rose-colored glasses wearing, blue-sky thinking crowd, because that kid is clearly part of it. Who cares if foreign influx into the country is so high that we quickly find ourselves possessing no common language, cultural references or shared values with each other? We should care. After all, don't the British complain incessantly about the "Americanization" of their culture? Alas, I suppose it's far easier and more fashionable to complain about American words infiltrating Brit-speak (which are actually English words that Americans preserved) than how closely British immigration policy—or lack of it—resembles that of the U.S. Why exactly do I bring this up? Sky News reported that President Obama signed the Westminster Abbey guestbook but dated his comment "May 24, 2008." A harmless gaffe, but do you know what the reaction to the story would have been had George W. Bush done that? It would have been proclaimed the dumbest mistake in the history of mankind. Reader comments would have declared: "Further proof the President's an idiot," "The American people deserve this man," "George Bush, worst president evah," and peppered throughout by the occasional but obligatory "GEORGE BUSH WAR CRIMINAL!" It should come as no surprise that the reaction to the Obama story was all "peace," "love" and "what's the big deal?"
Give up nit picking [sic], so what he made a mistake with the date [sic], I think the President is a great guy and doing a grand job. It was lovely to see him and his wife at Buckingham Palace with the Queen.
What is it, fashionable to hate on Obama now?
Which only goes to show he is also human and open to the same effects of media exposure and jetlag!! Good for him.
you all are hatters. [sic] why don't you get a life. [sic] We all make mistakes. who haven't? [sic] put your hands up. leave the poor man alone people [sic].
And on, and on, and on the Obama bum-kissing goes, for over 1,000 mind-numbing, grammatically appalling comments. Suddenly it's fashionable in Britain to stick up for the American President. And golly gee, aren't those Yanks nice, cuddly people for electing him too? The world's such a snuggly-wuggly place! The world's not coming to an end just because Barack Obama signed the wrong year to his guestbook entry. I get that. It's to be expected, I suppose. The man has never stopped campaigning, after all. That's why he's hardly ever in the office he got elected to. He's living in a perpetual 2008. One of these days, he's going to say that's when he had Osama bin Laden executed. But doesn't it speak volumes about a man who pronounced corpsman as "corpseman," said he visited 57 U.S. states, and thinks Austrian is spoken in Austria? Are we going to have a book on Obama-isms to join the volumes of tomes dedicated to Bushisms? How about Mr. Obama completely screwing up while delivering a toast to the Queen? The band is instructed to play when they hear "the Queen." That's their cue. Obama and his defenders will try to blame the orchestra, when the truth is, Obama never should have spoken those words until the end of his speech. I ask again, if Dubya had done this, what would the reaction have been? Of course, Bush never would have fouled up like that for he would have pulled all the stops to get it right before speaking. He would have bothered to study the protocol. Beautiful people like Barack Obama, however, have no need for that because their brilliance is beyond the reach of normal people. Or so we're told, time and time again by the fawning media, both American and international. What really throws me is the completely fake bonhomie that Obama is presenting to the Queen, David Cameron and the British people themselves. Obama is a notorious Brit-hater. Nile Gardiner spelled it all out in his commentary "Does Obama Have it in for Britain?":
Obama seems strangely oblivious to the dangerous path he has embarked on, becoming the first U.S. President in modern times to place no importance on the historic relationship between the U.S. and Britain. We cannot say, however, that we weren't warned. This, after all, is a man who, within days of being sworn in as President, ordered that a bust of Winston Churchill—a gift from the British people to the U.S. in the dark days that followed 9/11—be removed from the Oval Office. ... When the U.S. marches in, it's only ever the British who can be depended on to march alongside them. And yet all that proud history, all that noble sacrifice, seems to count for nothing in Obama's eyes. He seems oblivious to the debt of gratitude he, and the American people, owes this country.
Despite that, Obama is enormously popular in this country. The British talk a good game about being different from Europeans, but the President's popularity numbers continue to hover between the 75 to 80 percent mark, as with France and Germany. Obama might very well declare in the House of Commons, "Screw it, I'm not pretending to like you anymore. You're all evil and you should consider yourselves lucky if I don't nuke you all to hell where you belong." Sky News would report it, and you'd still have Brits commenting, "Come on, take it easy on the President. He's a wonderful man, the most brilliant in all of history. He wants to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony," only without the punctuation or capital letters. I learned years ago that a strong, confident America is not what the world, including Britain, wants—and everyone can relax because that's certainly not something the world is going to witness under the present administration. But this is ridiculous. I'd have an easier time finding a unicorn or gryphon walking the streets of Britain than I would someone who isn't an Obamabot, to use Ted Rall's appropriate term. I prefer the phrase "Obama rumpswab," but that would be politically incorrect, now wouldn't it?
Yesterday, this blog told the tale regarding the curious case of far-Left loonie Ted Rall. For the past two years, Rall has been spitting vitriol at Barack Obama, calling him a "monster" and a "terrible leader," and the resultant rejection of his animated commentaries by editors confirms what we all know: the media is not only biased, but you are in for hard times if you dare to diss their anointed saint and savior, even if the color of your blood runs pink(o). Robert Fisk has no such worries as he is not a freelancer. He is the established Middle East correspondent for the left-of-center British paper The Independent. I will acknowledge that Fisk is a brave man to have made Middle East reporting his specialty. But he long ago upgraded from objective reporter to subjective columnist and that's the trouble with him. A socialist, Fisk predictably decries U.S. (and some British and European Union) policy in the region and is always denouncing Israel. A recent column of his demonstrates this all too well. I've loathed Fisk for years, but, as with Rall, I find myself fascinated by his denouncements of Obama. Like Rall, who wrote that Obama is timid and all-too-readily gives in to political correctness, Fisk also states the obvious, accusing the President of "speechifying" and calling him "vain and cowardly." Here's where it really gets enjoyable: Fisk nearly blows a gasket by sarcastically mocking Obama as "our favorite President," preferring the adjective "mealy-mouthed" to describe him, and makes the spot-on prediction that whatever Obama says about the Middle East (or anything for that matter), "we will be treated to all the usual analysts in the States, saying how fine the President's words are." Whoa! I must give Fisk some credit. He nails it when he declares, "We will be asked—oh, I fear we will—to turn our backs on the Bin Laden past, to seek 'closure' and 'move on' (which I'm afraid the Taliban don't quite agree with)." Even Fisk gets what Obama apparently doesn't. I can hardly wait to read what Fisk will say about Obama's depressingly clueless pronouncement that Israel should revert back to its pre-Six-Day War borders. I'm guessing Fisk will approve. But whatever. If the Independent's editors instructed him to "go easy on O," Fisk's columns would lose any shred of entertainment value they currently carry.
Sometimes a truly incredible phenomenon occurs and it's a wonder to witness. Whenever there's a split within the Left, or a member of the Left rants against his or her own, I get very excited by it. It's like an orgasm for my mind. Case in point: editorial cartoonist Ted Rall. If you're a patriotic American, there's nothing nice you can say about him. I don't like Ted Rall for having the nerve to call Bill Maher a "libertarian," for starters. But he's not afraid to go against the grain. Rall made a name for himself internationally and became a hit with the champagne socialists and limousine liberals in the lamestream media—sorry for the clichés, but it's all true, isn't it?—because he unrelentingly attacked President Bush, the War on Terror, Republicans and conservatives in general. But Rall isn't so popular in the elitist liberal camp these days. Why? He dislikes Obama. One editor told Rall, "Can't you focus more on the GOP?" in response to Rall's anti-Obama work. Rall admits to nearly going broke, angrily writes "I didn't realize how besotted progressives were by Mr. Hopey Changey," and excoriates the militant Democrats a.k.a. Obamabots. Granted, Rall's considerable distaste for Obama is the result of his dismay that the President has not closed Guantánamo and continues to rely on Bush-era intelligence techniques. (Interestingly, Rall hates Obamacare as well.) But he also calls him out for political correctness. Get a load of this, from this Universal Syndicate Press column that somehow managed to work its way past the Messiah-loving censors:
"From health care to torture to the economy to war, Obama has reneged on pledges real and implied. So timid and so owned is he that he trembles in fear of offending, of all things, the government of Turkey. Obama has officially reneged on his campaign promise to acknowledge the Armenian genocide. When a president doesn’t have the nerve to annoy the Turks, why does he bother to show up for work in the morning? Obama is useless. Worse than that, he’s dangerous. Which is why, if he has any patriotism left after the thousands of meetings he has sat through with corporate contributors, blood-sucking lobbyists and corrupt politicians, he ought to step down now—before he drags us further into the abyss."
Obama is timid, worries too much about offending, and dangerous? Mr. Rall, now surely you jest! When you read the column further, it becomes clear that Rall is offended by Obama because he thinks the President is doing too much to secure America's safety. In Rall's twisted brain, that just won't do. But I am absolutely fascinated by a Leftie who would call Obama a "monster" and a "terrible leader." Rall is saying all the right words; he's just arguing from the wrong side of the fence. Rall makes a good point about his work being turned down by the operatives of the mainstream media who idolize Obama. I dare to critcize their man, Rall is saying, and I get shut down. Where's freedom of speech and freedom of the press? I agree. The media is censoring Rall and, despite how vicious, mean-spirited and small-minded Rall is, that isn't right. You could argue that Rall is reaping what he has sowed. See, Ted, this is why there have been no denouncements of the war in Libya. The Obamabots you criticize do disagree with it, but they refuse to say one critical word against their Messiah. Ted Rall isn't the only Leftie ticked off at Obama. Another recently called him "cowardly" and "mealy-mouthed." But I'll leave that for my next entry.
It's for very good reasons that Bill Cosby is a treasured American icon. His contribution to my generation alone, via Fat Albert and The Electric Company, is palpable, and his stand-up comedy has always been refreshingly obscenity-free. Cosby received heat from some quarters for The Cosby Show in that it was uplifting the ideals of Reagan—but those of us who have at least half a working brain in our heads know that those are ideals worthy of uplifting and those quarters should be ignored if not mocked. Cosby, in that sitcom and in his own life, showed how blacks are just as capable as any other racial or ethnic group of engineering an upper middle-class or wealthy lifestyle through dedicated study and hard work (as opposed to specious talents). 
