But Iran Doesn't Like Us

Remember the three American "hikers" that had inadvertently hiked into Iran whilst they were attempting to hike along the Iran-Iraq border? And remember how they were taken into custody by the Iranians? And remember Iran released the girl but the other two have been in custody ever since because Iran says that they were spies? Well, if you didn't remember, consider yourself caught up.

Before I continue, I just need to say a few things about the situation that put those three folks in the position that they are/were in. First of all, if you're in the Middle East and you want to go "hiking", I cannot for the life of me figure out why you wouldn't be either more cognizant of where the borders were or wouldn't just hike really far away from the borders to begin with. Hiking so close to Iran's borders seems to be just asking for trouble if you're asking me.

Second, I find myself conflicted as to how Iran is dealing with this situation. On the one hand, I am fairly certain that these folks were not and are not spies. On that same hand, I really have absolutely nothing to base that on other than the fact that they don't seem like they would be spies. This ideology is based loosely on watching the Pink Panther when I was a child. Oh, and Scooby Doo. Thus, if I am Iran, what do I do? I have to say that I will lend a certain degree of respect to a country that protects its borders. I'm not even so sure that I'm concerned with how a country protects its borders, as long as it does so.

Those perspectives that I have are the reasons why I'm not overly sympathetic to the hikers. Sure, people make mistakes. But, come on! How delusional are you if you think you'll be just fine if you accidentally hike into Iran? You should be wearing a helmet at all times if that's how your mind works. And then I read an opinion piece by Sarah Shourd, the freed female American hiker, over there at CNN. And her logic in the piece is a bit surprising. It's as if she has no clue as to the history between the United States and Iran. Then again, this is the same person who was doing all of the border hiking, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised.

Sarah states in her piece that "At a very personal level, I never would have been kept in jail for 14 months if Iran and the United States had a better relationship." I'm not so sure that I believe that to be accurate. It sounds nice, but I doubt it. The United States has pretty good relationships with other countries whose citizens have been caught spying. We don't just let them go. Again, you have to go on the basis that Iran is using, that being that they were spies or doing something that would harm Iran, in order to justify them keeping them in custody. Then again, they were not in the country lawfully, so I guess you don't even really need to justify it with anything other than that.

She goes on to say that "How different our situation would have been if the United States had an embassy in Iran when Shane, Josh and I were arrested on the border with Kurdistan, where we had gone hiking." Um, is she kidding me?! The United States did have an embassy in Iran. Perhaps she is unaware of the little disturbance that took place in that embassy in 1979 when Sixty-six Americans were taken captive when Iranian militants seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. Perhaps she is also unaware that 52 of those hostages were held for a total of 444 days. And if that's the case, I guess she also didn't hear about the eight American servicemen who lost their lives during a rescue mission. And she thinks that we need an embassy in Iran? Are you dry shaving me?

Allow me to show you a picture of what the former US embassy in Iran looked like after the hostages were taken. Picture is courtesy of Wikipedia.

Oh, sure. They just loooooove us. She also has the nerve to say "I hope our leaders find the courage to begin to break from our nations' hostile past..." Do you now? Our leaders? Plural? Explain to me what the United States is supposed to be doing when I'm A Dinner Jacket (Ahmadinejad) continues with his nuclear program against everyone's wishes? Explain to me what we're supposed to do with a guy, who wants to blow Israel off of the map, who is intent on making his country a nuclear power? It's not a hostile past that is all of the problem. It's the hostile present, cupcake. I should also note that there are some former hostages who believe that Ahmadinejad was actually one of their captors and have identified him as such. If that's the case and he's now the President of Iran, I'm not so sure that the "courage" is going to be "found" by him to "break from our nations' hostile past".

Look, I totally understand that her two friends are still being imprisoned over there in Iran and she wants to have them freed. Therefore, I can understand why she wouldn't write anything that would be overly critical or take a harsh tone with the Iranian government. But I can't understand why she would write anything like what she did in the first place. Does she really think that it's going to matter what she says? I don't think that it is. Then again, this woman does seems to have a fairly delusional way of thinking when it comes to international relations, so I guess it's to be expected.

Sunday TV News FAIL + New Animation(s)

Why on earth do I waste any time watching the Sunday morning and afternoon TV political shows?  If the definition of madness is doing something you know to be wrong again and again--

To give just one example, I stomached about two segments of Candy Crowley's CNN show State of the Union, by which I mean I was able to stomach two consecutive doses of hard-right-wing propaganda before I started commenting loudly back at the screen, and C suggested I turn it off. In the first, billionaire Mortimer Zuckerman and multimillionaire Steve Forbes represented the ideological range and diversity of opinions on the current economic crisis. As you might imagine, their responses to Crowley's non-sequiturs-as-questions had little to do with the reality of the world most of us live in. Zuckerman, on a "deficit" hysteria high, ranted about business leaders being very unhappy with (business-friendly) President Obama and the failure of the stimulus, and suggested that we needed fewer regulations so that businesses would be happy, and lower taxes for the "middle class" to turn things around, while Forbes suggested that we needed a three-year "moratorium" on the new health insurance reform bill and financial regulations, and of course, a continuation of the massive deficit-increasing W. Bush tax cuts, and like magic, the economy would be booming again. Oh, and both slammed Obama for the 9.5% unemployment rate, which resulted in part from businesses' "uncertainty," and not the fact that they were sitting on cash, that bailed out banks weren't lending, or that the vicious cycle of unemployment, tightened credit and financial distress meant no return to the consumerism of the last decade and a half.

Crowley noted that from her (wrong) understanding of economics, "raising taxes" (i.e., allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire) on the wealthiest Americans during a tough economic period like this would be the worst thing we could do, in line with and to the approval of Forbes, but Zuckerman, to his credit, disagreed with her and noted that in fact, the slightly increased tax burden on the rich wouldn't be that much of a burden, really, before quickly returning to his mantra of cutting the deficit and having fewer regulations. After several rounds of this, with Crowley offering no serious challenges to anything they were saying, including Zuckerman's non-response on rising foreclosures--he went on about the "bubble" and the failure of people to buy houses--she effusively thanked them for their expertise (!?), and then proceeded to her next guest, former Bush CIA director Michael Hayden, who, when questioned tepidly by Crowley about the host of deeply troubling allegations in the recent multipart Washington Post series by Dana Priest and William M. Arkin, "Top Secret America," on the dangerously secretive, inefficient and possibly unconstitutional National Security-Military Industrial complex, graciously responded by emphasizing that an attack on Iran was "inexorable"....

I'm aware that quite a few people no longer watch these shows, and that they exist primarily to reinforce the echo chamber in Washington, but I guess that's what disturbs me most, that echo chamber effect and its ramifications on the policies that emanate from the White House and Congress. It's not enough that corporations, their lobbyists, and the megarich have the ears (and pockets and throats) of those in power, but they also have this self-reinforcing medium to propound and pound, day in, day out, their propaganda. One might argue that it does offer a window directly into what their aims and preoccupations are--more wars; more secrecy; more corporate socialism and wealth transfers to the rich; more shredding of the already threadbare social safety net; etc.--but the cynical and frustrating aspects of this include the inability to directly challenge them or force them to change course. And speaking of courses they're on, high among their priorities is slashing Social Security, with this President's and Congress's direct help.

And speaking about the successes of disaster capitalism, in Detroit, they're getting skilled labor for a song. Now, I ask you, did any of the GM or Chrysler executives pay back any of those bonuses or the compensation they received during the years they were running these companies into the ground?  Were they forced to, by the government, the courts or anyone else?

+ + +

Shifting gears, here're two newer animations, the first on soccer (I created it the night Spain won the 2010 FIFA World Cup), the second on the theme of art. And speaking of soccer, welcome Thierry Henry!

Golazo!


Art

It's Not The Dress That's The Problem

This is one of those posts that started out as one thing, but quickly became about something else for me. Let's head on over to Oxford High School in Oxford, Alabama to check in on some hubbub that's been going on. While we're there, let's create a little hubbub of our own, shall we? Because from what I can tell, we're going to have to, as the part of this story that made me yell, "What?!" was just completely brushed over in the article that I read.

The article to which I'm referring comes to us courtesy of AOL News. It is there that we learn the tale of a one Erica DeRamus, whose choice of a prom dress ended up getting her not only kicked out of the prom, but suspended for three days on top of that. Really? Really. Apparently, the school has a dress code "...which stipulates that necklines must not plunge below students' breastbones and skirt hems must not be higher than six inches above the knee." Huh. Wait. What?

See, now I thought that this was going to either be some sort of ambiguous dress code requirement or it was going to be something that would have required kids to dress in a way that made members of the FLDS church seem like bimbos. Neither one of those was the case! Serious, does that really say that "skirt hems must not be higher than six inches above the knee"?? I believe it does! Look at your knee! Look at where six inches above it is! Holy crap! Six inches?! That's short! I don't care who you are, you're getting into dangerous territory with a skirt that's six inches above your knee. I'm not sure if I think that it's a perfectly reasonable (not to mention easily attainable) limit to set or if I think that they might want to consider making it three or four inches instead. Holy crap, six inches. That doesn't leave much to the imagination. God forbid if they bend over in something like that. That would render the imagination completely useless.

That requirement seems a little contradictory or counter-productive to the other requirement that the necklines not plunge below the breastbone. Look, you can do a lot with cleavage. It's very a very versatile anatomical part. As proud as all of you guys are about your penile units, y'all ain't got nothin' on our breasts. They're magical. We can do damn near anything with 'em. (And I realize that guys don't care what it is that we do with them, just as long as they can stare at them or, on a good day, grope them. But that's not my point and you know it.) But even if the lowest part of the neckline was below the breastbone, that doesn't necessarily mean that an undue amount of cleavage is going to be revealed. It's not like the neckline goes straight across or anything.

So, just to recap this part of the story, it's OK in Alabama to have your ass damn near coming out of the back of your dress, but keep your breasts under some sort of burlap sack, would you, please? Now, just to see where Ms. DeRamus went afoul of these guidelines, let's look at the dress in question, shall we? Behold!

Oh, good Lord, what the hell is that?! Wow. It's like Tinkerbell on crack. That is not an attractive dress, miss. I'm sorry, but it's hideous. I realize that you can't ban someone from the prom for poor fashion sense, but that's really bad. And she's a cute girl, too. That dress really doesn't do her justice at all. But judging solely on the screen shots from the video (thanks for the crappy reporting WBRC-TV and not including a head-on full length shot of her wearing the dress in question), I'm not sure where you would begin measuring that thing. It's awfully poofy.

According to the principal, a one Trey Holloday, the students and their parents were notified three times in advance of the prom as to what the dress code standards were. That seems reasonable. He also said that "Of the 352 Oxford High students who attended the prom, officials said 18 violated the dress code." Hmm. Five percent. That seems about right. (After seeing Erica's dress, though, I'd really like to see what other folks who got booted from the prom were wearing! I think that would be highly entertaining, yet probably horrifying at the same time!) All of that being said, her dress, while hideous, didn't seem too out of line. It appears to fit within the 6 inches rule. And the cleavage thing seems within limits as well. But I wasn't there, so it's hard to say. Regardless, I think it's fair to say that the dress clearly could fall within a gray area and she probably should have checked with those who make the decision on these sorts of things beforehand and avoided all of this.

But here's the part that just blew me away. Ready? It doesn't have anything to do with the dress or the prom or the dress code. Of the 18 students, Erica is the only one who was suspended for three days. That's because there was a choice of punishments. Erica's choice was suspension. Do you want to guess what the other punishment was that the other 17 students opted for? You'll never guess, so I'm just going to tell you. The other 17 students opted for paddling. Um, wait. Paddl...what the what?

Correct. Apparently, paddling is a punishment option at schools in Alabama! Are you kidding me?! Since when?! Actually, I suppose that the "when" is easy to answer. It's more the "Why are they still doing this?" question that I'd like to have answered. Even Erica sees the archaic-ness of the practice, explaining her choice by saying, "I'm a little too old to get paddled...This is high school, we're seniors. If we're going to act up, give us another option besides being paddled because this isn't the 1940s. We don't take corporal punishment now." Good. For. Her.

And if you read this article over at AOL News or anywhere else, the whole paddling issue is not even addressed. It's just brushed over like it's perfectly normal (which it is not, by the way). You folks in Alabama really paddle 18-year old seniors (who fit the legal definition of an adult) who act up? Why? What is the rationale behind that? What in the world are you people thinking?!

Of course, now I'm totally curious. What does this paddling entail? How big is the paddle? Are we talking like fly-swatter size? Ping-pong paddle size? Tennis racket size? Oh! Wait! Is it like a spanking machine?? Do they make the wrong-doer crawl through the legs of a line of people and they all swat them on the butt as they make their way through? Or is it some sort of Rube Goldberg contraption that they're strapped to until an egg makes its way down a conveyor belt and lights a match which burns a string that unleashes a paddling device upon the hind quarters of the moral defy-er? That must be it. (I wonder where they keep it. Oh! There must be a dungeon! Schools in Alabama have paddling dungeons! Pass it on.)

And who actually does the paddling? I would quit my job (and seriously reconsider my career choice) if I were told that one of my duties was now going to be to physically beat students. Who is OK with performing that act? What kind of people are they? I guess they're the kind of people who work in schools in Alabama where they still paddle students. Un-freaking-believable. I have suddenly forgotten all about the chick and her prom dress that may or may not have been too short. I am now more concerned by the fact that there are still schools in this country that paddle children as a punishment. And I am consumed by the fact that it is seemingly an accepted practice to many folks. I think I'm going to go and contemplate whether or not the wall around my walled-off compound is high enough. I want those people kept far away from me.

Happy Effin New Year

Finally! Finally! The holidays are over! Technically I don't have to speak with or have a meal with another human being until the next major day of nationwide observance which, according to my calculations, might be Groundhog Day. I don't mind the holidays. The alligators in my moat which surrounds my walled off compound kind of freak out my relatives, but other than their needing sedatives rather often, I enjoy them. So many traditions that just keep happening year after year. I embrace consistency like that. I like to know what to expect. You know who else seems to embrace consistency and who else seems to like doing the same thing year after year? Kathy Griffin and her tradition of belting out some sort of expletive or sexually inappropriate reference while hosting some New Year's gala with, of all people, pretty, pretty Anderson Cooper.

Here's the deal: Last year, while hosting the New Year's festivities again with pretty, pretty Anderson Cooper, Kathy was being heckled by none other than, you guessed it, a heckler. And, well, let's just say that she had finally had it with said heckler and she let fly a rather pointed rebuttal when she yelled out to the dude, "Shut up!! Do you know what? Screw you! I'm working! Why don't you get a job, buddy!? I don't go to your job and knock the d**ks out of your mouth." Ah, yes. What a way to welcome in the new year!

But that was last year. I think. Wait. Yes. Yes, it was last year. I was a little confused because Kathy Griffin again hosted the New Year's Eve festivities and she again let her vocabulary fly a little bit off in a direction that I'm sure the FAA will be looking into. It won't be as intense as the scrutiny over Janet Jackson's Nipple-Gate at the Super Bowl that one year, but if she gets the same gig next year, they're really going to have to look into assigning a permanent agent to follow her around or something just to monitor her and her inevitable and predictably unpredictable outbursts. I'm just saying.

So this year, Anderson Cooper, being as how he's a fairly legitimate news reporter and all, decided it would be a good idea to engage Ms. Griffin in a little game of "Who Was Who in the News in 2009". You know, show her some pictures of folks who were prominently in the news (for better or for worse. I'm guessing mostly worse.)...see if she knew who they were. It seems harmless. And if he wasn't doing it with Kathy Griffin, it probably would have been harmless.

First up was a picture of reality show

hopeful asshats Richard and Mayumi Heene who had their kid hide in the attic or somewhere whilst they told the rest of the world that he was flying over a three state area in some sort of mylar balloon thing that the family constructed in the backyard during their spare time. (In spare time at my house growing up, we did yardwork, but whatever.) Ms. Griffin knew exactly who they were and said that she "admired their stick-to-it-tiveness". I hadn't heard it put quite that way before then. They did have stick-to-it-tiveness, didn't they? They would not let go of their lie for what seemed like weeks! OK, fine, kudos for that.

Then Kathy asked Anderson if he followed the story and he said that he did and that his

favorite part was when "Falcon said 'Who the hell is Wolf?' " It was at that moment that Kathy Griffin became a bit confused. It was like Anderson Cooper had suddenly started speaking Chinese or something because she started sputtering words out as if she was hoping to randomly hit upon what it was that he had just said. So she asks him, "Falcon?" And Anderson reiterates, "Falcon Heene." Do you see where this is going? Neither did I.

Even with Anderson's "Falcon Heene" clarification, that didn't seem to clear things up for Kathy Griffin. Nope, instead she continued to question him on what he had said. "Fal....F**kin'....Falcon? How do you say it?" Hoo boy. Nice.

I think that poor ol' closeted Anderson Cooper was having flashbacks of the year before and probably was praying that it wouldn't go any farther. Meanwhile, those of us watching this unfold were praying it would go farther. We wanted it to go really far. We wanted her to continue to act as if she had just been liberated from lifelong deafness and was hearing the spoken word for the very first time. That's what we wanted. Sadly, it didn't go that way.

Anderson acknowledged her "curiosity" by simply bowing his head (likely asking the gods for forgiveness and praying that he either keeps his job or finally loses the New Year's gig) and moving onto the next picture while muttering, "You're terrible...." Good cover, Anderson. I wonder if Kathy will come up with something that clever when she is inevitably asked about it?

Well, in a statement released by her publicist on Friday, she didn't just come up with something that clever; she came up with something more clever. According to the AP, she responded to this incident with the following: "Like every other serious reporter covering the now infamous balloon boy hoax, I struggled to pronounce his name 'Falcon' correctly and have gotten a kick out of how many ways I've heard it pronounced by other serious reporters. Just add me to that list and happy new year!"

It's hard to know where to start with that obviously sarcastic and non-serious statement. There's the hilarious reference to her being a "serious reporter". (Then again, there's the hilarious reference to everyone else who covered that ridiculous story as a "serious reporter" as well.) There's also the implication that she was "covering" the story. She was barely having a conversation, let alone covering anything. But my favorite was the assertion that the name/word/bird "Falcon" is difficult to pronounce. You know, more people had difficulty pronouncing the family's last name of "Heene"

than they did have trouble pronouncing "Falcon". Tell me, just how many ways are there that "Falcon" can be pronounced? Let's see...there's falcon. That's one. And then there's...oh, that's right. THAT'S IT! That's the only way! What else could there be? Fulcrum? You're going to tell me they named their poor child after a lever mechanism? Falco? How into the 80s would his parents have had to be to name him after the one-hit wonder Rock Me Amadeus guy? (Very. Very into the 80s and probably very stoned as well.) Falcon. There's one pronunciation and we all know it. Well, we all know it. Let's just hope that the guys at the FAA don't know it because if CNN gets fined and she gets booted from the New Year's Eve gig then the tradition will never have a chance to properly flourish! And after the year that we just had, we need as much possible flourishment in the upcoming year as we can possibly get. And if it has to be through the means of a raunchy, D-List comedienne dropping a f-bomb at some point during the last night of the year, then so be it.