It's nice to know that Albert Belle hasn't changed since leaving baseball:
Albert Belle was arrested on a new stalking charge for allegedly making phone calls to a woman he already was charged with harassing.
I'm pleased that ESPN chose to run a photo of Albert in an Orioles cap. Here's his mugshot; I think it's fair to say that Albert has let himself go a little bit:
If the camera adds 10 pounds, how many cameras are on him?
ESPN has lost $25 million so far on its laughably overpriced, astonishingly useless and pain-in-the-ass-to-get Mobile ESPN, reports Sports Business Daily. Thinking about it, what's surprising is not that no one is buying the product, but that ESPN spent $30 million on those monumentally stupid commercials with the greasy-haired sportsdork loitering outside of ESPN headquarters. What keen advertiser hatched this campaign, anyway? Who thought it would be a good idea to portray the people who want this product as unwashed, jobless, fast-food-physique-having, couldn't-pick-a-vagina-out-of-a-police-lineup douchenozzles?
I'm just not sure what niche ESPN is trying to fill. As one of the Deadspin commenters pointed out, how many people have no access whatsoever to sports news for more than a few minutes a day, such that sports to your phone becomes a necessity? Degenerate gamblers, maybe?
I have to stop now. I've reached my rhetorical question quota for the post.
Someone uploaded this 2004 video from to YouTube, of some University of Notre Dame MBA students "tailgating":
If you don't have sound on your computer, don't worry about it. The visual is horrifying enough. By the end, it will either have you rolling on the floor in tears of laughter, or in tears praying for the sweet release that only death can bring. For the record, it was the latter for me.
These people embody every whitebread stereotype ever: crappy suburban junior high dance-style music mix? Check. At least one guy in a replica football jersey? Check. Awful breakdancing, including but not limited to the Worm and the Robot? Check. Jorts? Check. Middle-aged guy trying to dance with girl half his age? Check. Cringeworthy poetry? Check. Finally, pitiful excuse for a beer bong? Check. (One other note: the only thing that should be hooked to a generator at a tailgate is a TV. Preferably with a satellite hookup. Dorks.)
Honestly, these people are like your racist uncle. Part of you feels obligated to try and defend them because they're family, but you can't because you know in your heart that their conduct is indefensible. Basically, the people in the video have made me embarrassed to be:
This video is kind of like Flight 93 (writ very, very small, of course) -- everyone should see it, if only to make the point that this can never be allowed to happen again.
[Link via just about everybody who blogs and either loves or hates Notre Dame.]
On the other hand, these guys know how to tailgate at ND (and are an inspiration to boot).
Morgan Spurlock, the documentary filmmaker of the critically-acclaimed and somewhat factually inaccurate Supersize Me, gave a speech to 700 high school kids, including some special-ed kids, in which he swore five times, insulted the teachers, and used the term "retarded" in a derogatory manner. Spurlock justified his speech thusly: "The greatest lesson those kids learned today was the importance of free speech." [Links via Joanne Jacobs.]
Naturally, a lot of folks were spitting mad. So Spurlock issued this "apology." I use sneer quotes because it is plainly not an apology at all, but instead one of those pseudo-apologies in which the offender is "sorry that you, the offendee, were offended," then goes on to explain why his actions were correct and the offendee is wrong to take umbrage.
To the Students, Teachers, Parents, Administrators of Hatboro Horsham High School, the Hatboro Horsham Education Foundation, and anyone else who has now heard of the events of last Friday in Pennsylvania,
Throughout the year, I travel to various colleges and high schools to talk about my experiences in making Super SIze Me, the impact it has had on me and the community, and what kids can do to make a difference in their own lives. That was my goal when I went to speak to the students of Hatboro Horsham High School.
That's a laudable goal, to be sure. Just skip ahead to the part where you explain how cursing, making jokes about teachers smoking pot and japing at kids who unfortunately have to wear helmets serves that goal.
As I told both the principal and superintendent of schools after my lecture, it is never my intent to insult or demean anyone – and I understand how some of my remarks may have offended some in attendance and if you feel they did, then I am deeply sorry.
Yes, I can feel the sincerity, can't you? See, he's not saying "I'm sorry that I made a mistake." He's saying "I'm sorry that you think I made a mistake." Big difference, I think.
When I speak at schools, I try to express my views on difficult topics with humor and a joking mannerism.
That's fine and good. Humor is an age-old method of connecting with your audience. Still waiting for the part where you explain why you felt that you had to degrade others to do it.
I try to connect with students by conveying my thoughts in an accessible form, using the same speech and tone that they or I would use in any other lively conversation.
Apparently, Spurlock thinks that it's impossible to connect with teenagers these days without dropping the F-bomb. Nonsense. Hey Spurlock, try being the adult, and connecting with them through reasoned, well-articulated statements. And, by the way, not all teenagers curse or want to hear cursing. That's awful presumptuous, no?
One student even said to me, “you didn’t say anything that we aren’t going to hear later on TV,” and that was my sole intent.
Oh, well fine then. Television should be the sole arbiter of what teenagers say and hear. Also, as long as some seventeen year-old says that what you did was okay, then we shouldn't be questioning you over it.
I do, however, believe it is very important for me to address many of the points made in the media.
First and most importantly, it should be made clear that the only person I called “retarded” was myself when I was unable to hear a question from the audience. Having done work with special needs children in the past, something this hurtful would never come from my lips.
But the insult did come from your lips, you idiot. Whether you directed it at yourself or someone else, you still used it as a derogatory term. And don't give me that tripe about "[h]aving done work with special needs children." That sounds like the "I have a lot of black friends" justification uttered by bigots after using "n-----."
I have also been portrayed as someone who spewed profanity for a full hour. To set the record straight, I said only five “dirty” words during the entire speech.
The Superintendent said to me backstage that the only words he had problems with were the “F-Bombs,” (of which there were only two) so perhaps I should have toned down even those two uses, but as another student told me, it’s nothing they hadn’t heard before.
So you only swore five times, and said "fuck" twice. We're obviously all upset over nothing. I'm sure most parents and school administrators gladly adhere to the well-known "fewer than half a dozen curses, including no more than two 'F-bombs,' is totally cool" maxim. The fact that you needed to curse at all shows both a paucity of language and an insecurity in your message. If you don't have any actual content that the kids can connect with, get a new speech; don't pepper it with profanity to get their attention.
It has also been said that I insulted faculty, when in actuality, all I was doing was making a joke at their expense for the enjoyment of the students.
Staggering cognitive dissonance here. In fact, this may be one of the dumbest sentences ever written. If anyone can tell me the difference between insulting someone and making a joke at his/her expense for the enjoyment of others, I'm all ears.
During the Q&A after my talk, I asked them if they had any questions for me. They shook their heads no and I said to the kids, “You see, while you guys sit down here and watch, the teachers sit up in the balcony and smoke pot.” The students roared with laughter, and once again, that was all I wanted to do: entertain the kids.
Wow, jokes about retards, teachers smoking pot, and swearing. What, no dick and fart jokes? Again, if you can't entertain kids any other way, perhaps you should get a new presentation. Second, I think teachers have enough difficulties to deal with without some half-celebrity like Spurlock cutting them off at the knees. If his sole standard for material is whether it will entertain kids, he's setting the bar way too low.
Lastly, in the article it quoted me as saying that the greatest lesson those kids learned was the importance of freedom of speech. When saying that, I did not mean that you have the right to insult anyone at will (as many people have interpreted it.) I was referring to the fact that the group that hired me to speak asked that I not mention McDonald’s in any of my talk because one of their board members owns a franchise. That would be like asking Neil Armstrong to speak but tell him he can’t bring up walking on the moon, so needless to say, I didn’t agree to their censorship.
But you still took their money, didn't you? In taking their money, you tacitly agreed to play by their rules. Even after they relented about the McDonalds material, you still had to be a jerk. Your portrayal of your actions as bravely upholding the First Amendment would be funny if it weren't so sad.
As an individual who fights daily for us all to find some common ground in this world, I am hopeful that the work I do can continue to generate a positive dialogue, inspire action and make this world a better place.
If by making the world a better place, you mean teaching kids that it's okay to make fun of special needs kids, curse like sailors, and disrespect their teachers, then I'd say you did an admirable job.
Normally, I don't give a hang about Morgan Spurlock. But people who refuse to own up to their mistakes by simply saying "I'm sorry," bother me. People who make themselves out to be free speech martyrs, as Spurlock tries to do here, bother me more.
By the way, I know I'm all over Spurlock for cursing, and yet I used a curse word in the title of this post, and curse frequently on this blog. First, my audience isn't high school students; it's adults. And second, sometimes only a curse word can capture the exact sentiment that you wish to convey. I think we can all agree that that's certainly true at least here.
Western Kentucky University's Alpha Gamma Rho fraternity chapter has been suspended surrounding, as the news story puts it, an "alleged goat sex hazing incident." But it's no big deal. The chapter president denies that anyone was actually going to have to bang the goat, saying that it was just a joke to make pledges think they'd have to bang the goat. He also denied that this was a hazing incident. Well, I'm satisfied.
See, this is how cliches become cliches. So don't ever wonder why Kentuckians get made fun of for porking livestock and fraternity members are thought of as vicious a-holes.
[Link via Everyday Should Be Saturday]
In a move reminiscent of when your mom would try to use current teenage slang in casual conversation, attorney/blogger/friend Don Burton hips me to this sad, desperate quote from Sharon Stone's iTunes playlist:
"For me, Biggie Smalls was the most talented rap musician/composer ever. That's it."
There's nothing more pathetic than an aging hipster. The day I take advice about rap music from a 60 year-old white woman (wait . . . she's only 49? Holy crow; she's got more wrinkles than a Sharpei) is the day I ask Lil' Bow Wow for recommendations on the great Big Band music of the '20's and '30's.
Let's be honest. The only time I ever want to hear anything from Sharon Stone is when she (or her husband, but preferably she) is being mauled by a komodo dragon.
Mouthbreathing California Senator Barbara Boxer (who, to continue the Robert Byrd theme, referred to the former Night Rider as "the love of her life") apparently writes bad novels in her spare time. (I had no idea.) Anyway, NRO's John Miller has read her latest, so we don't have to (thank Christ): Boxer Shorts. [Link via Power Line.] John humorously excerpts some great (by great I mean awful) bits, and one really disturbing bit in which a guy watches a stud trying to bang a mare who's totally not into him, from this largely autobiographical crapfest. See if you can spot the cognitive dissonance by comparing these two paragraphs:
It had been a particularly intense day in [Senator Ellen Fischer's] D.C. office, with a steady stream of meetings, e-mails, and phone calls from organizations and constituents, all urging her to step up her opposition to Professor Frida Hernandez's nomination to the Supreme Court. There was little time left for any attempt to block the confirmation of the ultra-conservative professor. ... Ellen, a member of the [Judiciary] committee, had sought to challenge the nominee's strongly suspected bias against Roe v. Wade. ... Ellen knew that, once on the Court, Hernandez would help turn back the clock on Court decisions that Ellen believed were vital to the people.
(Emphasis mine.) And:
That was a defining moment, when Ellen knew how she'd spend the rest of her life — that she'd been put here on earth to save its endangered children.
(Emphasis again mine). Huh. She must mean saving only those endangered children lucky enough to not have been killed in the womb.
I honestly don't know what to make of this. It has to be one of three things: (1) Hillary Clinton has titanium balls; (2) Hillary Clinton is borderline retarded; or (3) Hillary Clinton thinks Americans, especially black Americans, are borderline retarded. One of those has to explain why she thinks it's okay to throw a birthday party for former KKK Kleagle Robert Byrd at . . . wait for it . . . Frederick Douglass's house.
When a possible Republican challenger to Hillary called her on it, Hillary whined that she was being "insult[ed] and attack[ed]." Of course. This is one of the Democrats' favorite tactics: whenever facts, like Senate voting records for example, are presented that show a Democrat to be feckless, mendacious or hypocritical, they accuse a Republican of playing dirty pool and they whine that they're being "attacked." If presenting facts is an attack, what about innuendo? Or rumor? Or fake but accurate documents?
In the article linked above, much is made about Byrd's membership being "brief" and "long ago," as if it was some harmless youthful indiscretion. Byrd's subsequent actions, such as filibustering the 1964 Civil Rights Amendment, and using the "n word" in a 2001 interview, put the lie to that notion. As Marathon Pundit points out (in a great turn of phrase), Byrd may have left the Klan, but the Klan didn't leave him.
Two Saturday's ago, for just a moment, the following appeared in homes across the country:
Yes. Yes he is. Here is an interview with the guy who created and held the sign, Todd X (no last name as -- wouldn't you know it? -- he wants to work for ESPN), or, as I like to call him, "The Greatest Man Who's Ever Lived."
My next-door neighbor is one of the biggest hillbillies ever. She doesn't have a single bona fide blade of grass on her entire 2-acre lot; it's all clover, dandelions and crabgrass. She has a trampoline, a big wooden swingset, a statue of the Virgin Mary in the front yard, and this poor dog that's tied up out back year 'round.
In the past month, she's made two "improvements" to her property that have dropped the value of my house by about $15,000. First, she's added a pool. Of the above-ground variety. It's lovely, especially where it's all dug up over by the filter. Then, today, she painted her formerly-white house this color. Except brighter by an order of magnitude. I saw it this afternoon and nearly threw up in my mouth.
