Tag: Anger and Rants

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The wanking of the wankitrons

Color me kinda-sorta amused by the outbreak of right-wing joy at Chicago’s defeat (along with Tokyo and Madrid) for the hosting of the 2016 Olympic Games. First, there’s the odd spectacle that these people are actively rooting against the United States; further, there’s the perception on their part that this is all about Barack Obama when the Bush Administration was also supportive of the Chicago Olympic effort, because, you know, American Presidential administrations tend to be supportive of holding Olympics in America.

This whole thing is staggeringly silly, of course, but it’s precisely that silliness that is so revelatory of the rhetoric and the very thought behind it that now dominates the political right in this country. Their logic, on anything, boils down to exactly this:

PROPOSITION: Obama’s position on Issue X is ______.

THEREFORE: Our position on Issue X is the exact opposite of ______.

COROLLARY: No factual information about the world will dissuade us from believing the opposite of Obama’s position on Issue X.

SECOND COROLLARY: Any denial of what Obama wants, pertaining to Issue X, is a political win for us.

THIRD COROLLARY: Any denial of what Obama wants, pertaining to Issue X, is a colossal defeat for Obama and will be analyzed as a sign of how he will fare on all other Issues, no matter what those may be.

There is zero actual thought coming from the right these days. It’s all just a bunch of knee-jerk reaction to them: Find out what Obama wants, and then oppose it. No matter what it is. I swear, these people would cheer if Obama ordered a pepperoni pizza and the pizzeria sent him a mushroom pizza by mistake. There’s no sense of “Yes, this is an actual issue, but here’s how we think it should be solved.” There are no actual ideas on the right, aside from their continued religious belief that cutting taxes on rich people or bombing brown people will solve all problems. Nothing at all.

Especially interest to me is that third corollary up there. The theme of the day over at The Corner (where a number of the Right’s greatest idiots, including Jonah Goldberg, reside) was that somehow Obama’s failure to convince the Olympic Committee to award the games to Chicago somehow indicates something about the success of Obama’s future foreign policy. Matthew Yglesias has some examples, and then points out the sheer stupidity on display there:

These are lame jokes, yes, but I also think they reveal the profound misunderstanding of how international relations works that exists on the right. The competition to host the 2016 Olympics is just that, a competition. It’s a friendly competition, yes, but it’s still a competition. It’s zero sum. If Rio wins, then Chicago and Sao Paulo and Tokyo lose. But the overall relationship between the United States and Iran is not a zero-sum competition. A world in which Iran accepts verifiable safeguards on its nuclear program in exchange for security guarantees and a relaxation of American sanctions is a world in which both the United States and Iran wind up better off. A world in which the US and Iran cooperate in Afghanistan is a world is which both the United States and Iran wind up better off. If we fight in Iran, we both wind up worse off.

And now, even as I’m writing this, I see that Newt Gingrich is saying the same thing, via his Twitter account. Remember when Gingrich was “the guy on the right with the ideas”? Well, OK, I don’t either, but that’s how the media saw him, and that’s how they still see him, which is why the Twitter ramblings of a guy who was forced out of office by his own party more than ten years ago are still treated as newsworthy.

The Right’s desperate need to see everything as a defeat for Barack Obama is embarrassing enough, but their general levels of cognitive dissonance are downright troubling. During the campaign, there was lots of comment about Obama’s patriotism, or lack thereof, owing to the absence of a flag pin on the lapel of his jacket — but somehow, cheering for Chicago to lose the Olympic bid is also patriotic. I well remember the tantrums the right used to have, during the Bush years, whenever any Democrat traveled overseas and said virtually anything that they could construe as being critical of the Bush foreign policy — “Everybody should follow the President on foreign policy! Politics should stop at the water’s edge! They’re traitors!” I remember how un-American the Dixie Chicks were when one of them made an anti-Bush statement on the stage in Paris, but they sure lap it up when Sarah Palin criticizes Obama in Hong Kong. I will not be holding my breath, waiting for Republicans to denounce their own Senators who are traveling around the world to disrupt Administration policies.

Anyway, as for the Olympics themselves, congrats to Rio. I kind of hope they put the Olympic flame on top of Sugarloaf Mountain. But I also wonder if, given the apparently irritating political crap that’s going to come up every time a host city is chosen and given the fact that Olympics represent enormous expense to their host cities, maybe it’s time to simply put the Games someplace permanent — say, Athens. That would solve some problems, wouldn’t it? At least it would spare future US Presidents the unimaginable embarrassment of seeing their foreign policy credentials demolished by failing to secure a two-week quadrennial sporting event.

(Comments are shut off for this post.)

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Colin Cowherd is a giant doodie-head.

I was listening to WGR, the local sports-radio talk station, on my way to work this morning, because WNED was playing some baroque thing that I didn’t want to listen to. (Probably Vivaldi.) Sometimes WGR likes to promote their programming by airing small snippets, a minute or less, from something said on one of their shows the day or two before. This morning, they played a clip of Colin Cowherd, the guy who is on from 10:00 to noon, the slot vacated some years ago on the ESPN Radio network by Tony Cornhiser.

I’ll be honest: I can’t stand Colin Cowherd. I hate his voice, he has a bizarre man-crush on Tom Brady, and he generally fills his airtime with one stupid utterance after another. The clip WGR played this morning was a case in point. He was apparently referring to a suggestion (made by whom, I don’t know) that the NFL set aside its local teevee blackout rules this season, as several teams are apparently in serious trouble with regard to selling out their stadiums. The franchises he named at Jacksonville and San Diego. Cowherd indicated that he’s not inclined to support such a rules change, since smaller towns, like Buffalo, manage to support their teams by selling out all the time.

Setting aside the issue of whether it makes sense for the Bills, seemingly hopelessly mired in mediocrity for a decade, are selling as many season tickets right now as they did when they were the AFC’s best team and going to the Super Bowl every year, it might have been nice to hear Cowherd saying something positive about Buffalo — but then he proceeded to crap all over it, noting that football is all there is to do in Buffalo since our weather is awful (it isn’t, but good luck telling him that) and…

…wait for it…

…that Buffalo is…

…(I couldn’t believe my ears)

…geographically isolated.

Yes. Colin Cowherd said that Buffalo is “geographically isolated”, whereas San Diego is not because it’s close to LA and Las Vegas.

Well.

According to this site, it is 130 miles from San Diego to LA and 340 miles to Las Vegas. So, for Buffalo to be “geographically isolated”, all other destinations of note would have to be quite a lot farther away from Buffalo than LA and/or Vegas are from San Diego. Right? Well, to me, if you can drive someplace in less than eight hours, you can consider yourself un-isolated from that particular destination. Assuming 70 miles an hour, here are some places within eight hours of Buffalo by car:

So, Buffalo to Chicago: 540 miles.
Buffalo to Indianapolis: 510 miles.
Buffalo to Boston: 470 miles.
Buffalo to Washington, DC: 410 miles.
Buffalo to New York City: 370 miles.
Buffalo to Detroit: 360 miles.
Buffalo to Philadelphia: 360 miles.
Buffalo to Pittsburgh: 220 miles.
Buffalo to Cleveland: 190 miles.

And, of course, Buffalo to Toronto is about a hundred miles.

Yeah, Colin. Buffalo is totally isolated. Look at a map next time, doofus.

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Drivers – I could do without ’em.

Several times in recent weeks I’ve posted over on my Facebook profile about goofy habits people seem to have nowadays when driving, things that people didn’t always do and actually wouldn’t do at all if they would just remember the fairly simple rules of Right of Way that we all learned way back in Driver’s Ed class. It’s starting to get maddening. Maddening, I say!

First off, take the four-way intersection. It’s well-established that when multiple cars arrive at such a place, they go in order by who got there first. This is usually easy enough, although I do occasionally see the idiot who thinks that stopping behind someone who has stopped at a stop sign actually constitutes stopping at the stop sign himself, and thus, he goes as soon as the guy in front of him goes, so the person who should be next starts moving forward and then has to slam on the brakes again because Mr. Thinks He’s Next In Line is going of his own volition. I’ve blogged about this before, I think.

But the real problem comes when two cars arrive at an intersection at the same time. Oh noes! What are we to do? Well, the Driver’s Ed teacher told us, didn’t he? The car on the right goes first. So: assume a four-way intersection where the streets correspond to the compass points. I’m going north; Driver #2 is going West. We arrive at the same time. Picturing this scenario, Driver #2 goes first, because of the two of us, he’s on the right. But if we flip this around – I’m going south and he’s going west – then I go first, because now I am on the right. (This is from the perspective of the drivers, obviously.) This should be easy enough – but not anymore. I don’t know if we’ve forgotten basic Right of Way in this country, or if we’re just trying too hard to be polite, but what seems to always happen now in these types of cases is instead of the person on the right going first, we now engage in an annoying ritual. See, I know my Right of Way, so I know that I have to wait until Driver #2 goes – but I see that Driver #2 isn’t going. Instead, he’s sitting in his car, staring at me, until he finally waves at me to go.

Even worse is when Driver #2 waves for me to go when they stopped first! Yes, this happens too. So commonplace has the annoying “No, you go!” approach to Right of Way become that if I see I’m going to arrive at an intersection at the same time as another driver, I will actually exaggerate my braking on purpose just so I arrive there second, in hopes of avoiding the whole “I’m on the right” thing and instead triggering the “You go because you got there first” rule. And you know what almost always happens when I do this? No dice. Driver #2 starts the “No, you go!” hand waving.

Well, I used to just shake my head and go, but no longer. My new approach is to refuse to go, no matter how much hand-waving Driver #2 goes. If he’s got the Right of Way, I am going to sit there motionless until he goes, whether he realizes he’s got Right of Way or, more likely, decides that I’m being a jerk and resumes driving, wondering why I spurned his magnanimous behavior. Maybe I am being a jerk, but we came up with those rules for a reason: so intersections don’t become morasses of drivers staring at each other in an effort to determine who’s going first. My last straw on the “No, you go!” approach to determining intersection Right of Way came a week or two ago when I guy actually arrived first at the intersection, indisputably first, as in, he was first by four or five seconds. He still waved insistently at me, and as I finally conceded and pulled through, I glanced over and saw that he was intently studying a piece of paper which probably contained directions from MapQuest or something. And I thought, “Yeah, stopped at an intersection is where you want to be doing that.”

This sort of nonsense is one reason why I have become an even bigger fan of roundabouts (or rotaries, or traffic circles, or whatever they call them where you are) of late. I’ve always loved them, but now, I think they are supremely fantastic and I can’t believe there isn’t more of a drive to replace every single four-way stop in the country with a circle. Even those rural four-ways in the back country of Texas, where you can go six years without seeing two cars arrive at the same time. Roundabouts are awesome because they remove nearly all of the guesswork; traffic tends to keep moving, and drivers arriving at the roundabout only have to concern themselves with the cars in the circle. They are so much easier, so much more intuitive, so much less time-consuming, and so much safer. Whoever invented the first roundabout should be on the dollar bill of some large Western country.

My other big complaint of late? Yield signs, and the fact that people insist on treating them as full stop signs. At a number of suburban shopping plazas I tend to frequent around the environs of Casa Jaquandor I find spots where I have a Stop sign where the other drivers have Yields. This seems pretty obvious to me: I stay stopped until everyone’s through the intersection and I can go. But no – there’s always someone who thinks that they must stop at their Yield sign, look over at me, and start with the “No, you go!” handwaving nonsense again. Now, sometimes this isn’t total jerkiness at play; I realize that. One such plaza has an eighteen-screen multiplex next door to Target, so if you’re trying to leave the Target lot in the period after the weekend’s big blockbuster has let out, frequently the Yield-stoppers are really being nice because otherwise you’d be sitting there forever. (I myself tend to always err on the side of letting people out of their intersections if it’s clear they’re never getting out unless someone actually lets them.)

But what happens so often is that it’s not an effort to let me into an otherwise steady stream of traffic; what’s clear is that people are simply treating Yield signs as Stop signs. Just today I arrived at an intersection in a parking lot/service road at the same time as another car; I was on the right, so had we both had Stop signs, I would have had Right of Way. But while I had a stop, he had a Yield, so all he really had to do was slow down and proceed through the intersection. Instead, he came to a full stop himself and, you guessed it, gave me the “No, you go!” bit. This annoyed me on several levels: first, he obviously didn’t know what he was really supposed to do at a Yield, and second, he didn’t even notice that he was in the right lane of the wide-enough-for-two-lanes driveway, so the two or three cars behind him just swung over, went around him on his left, and proceeded through the intersection! Had I obliged his “No, you go!” waving, I’d have been T-boned by the people he never saw because he was too busy trying to be magnanimous to me. Ugh!

Other annoying things I’ve noticed lately haven’t fallen into the “Right of Way” category, but a more general “How to be a dick when driving” thing. Case in point: last week I’m approaching a big intersection near Casa Jaquandor, where two different four-lane roads come together, plus another two-lane road off to one side. (For those familiar with the area, it’s Southwestern Blvd. and Orchard Park Road; Lake Ave. also goes off from there.) I’m northbound on Orchard Park Rd, but I’m going to be turning right onto Southwestern, so I’m in the righthand lane. This was Sunday morning, so the traffic was pretty light; only one car was in front of me, a guy about five or six car lengths ahead of me, in the left lane because he’s going straight. So I’m almost at the intersection; I’ve even got me turn signal on already, as do the two or three cars behind me that will also be making right turns on Southwestern. Easy, right? I’ll be able to make a simple right-on-red and go on my way.

Except that the guy in front of me, the guy in the left-hand lane who isn’t turning right, at the very last second swerves over into the right lane and stops at the red light, thus preventing any of us behind him from going right-on-red. We had to wait for the full cycle of traffic lights before we could go, and at that intersection, this takes five minutes. I spent those minutes trying to shoot laser beams from my eyes such that they would hit his rear-view mirror and burn the flesh from his head. (This failed. Stupid laser eyes…never work when I want them to….) Now, it’s possible that he had a right-hand turn of his own to make after the intersection (there’s a large gas station there), but I’ve been in that situation myself, and it’s just not that hard to get from the left lane into the right to make the turn; especially given that most cars in the right-hand lane are turning at the intersection and not after it, thus creating natural openings in traffic to move into, and given that this particular gas station’s entrance is about two hundred feet past the intersection and not immediately after it, so this guy really gained nothing by suddenly cutting me off. Other words? He was being a dick.

So that’s what it boils down to: learn your Rights-of-way, and don’t be a dick on the road. Please oh please.

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A modest suggestion

Next time the three men go into their little room so they can privately plan how to screw New York State, why don’t we just bar the doors and set the place afire?

I said this on Facebook the other day, but frankly: forget these nice and pleasant “tea parties”. What’s needed now is, frankly, a storming of the Bastille. Maybe the sight of a working guillotine in front of the Capitol in Albany will jerk these people into taking governance seriously.

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GO already.

I’m reading lately about a lot of people who think they need to “Go Galt” — people who are appalled at President Obama’s intention to allow the top tax rates in the US to return to what they were before Bush lowered them. He’ll allow them to return to the levels they were at during the 1990s, that horrible period of economic malaise and hardship that nobody in their right mind ever wants to repeat. What does “Go Galt” mean? Well, who knows, really. It refers to the colossally stupid premise of the colossally stupid, and yet oddly revered by right-wingers, book by Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged, in which all the rich geniuses who run things pack up their stuff and go off to live in their own little rich Shangri-La while the rest of us all go belly-up or something. Yeah.

I’m reminded of something I was always taught when I was in restaurant management: when an employee, any employee, either threatens to quit or actually does quit, you always let them go. Nobody is ever irreplaceable. Nobody. The answer to the ultimatum-droppers was always the same: “Tomorrow morning we’re unlocking those doors and serving our customers and running our business whether you are here or not.” Well, the same thing applies to all the would-be John Galts out there: when you go, nobody’s going to much miss you. Your positions will be filled and the world will go on.

So, please, if you really want to Go Galt, then by all means, go. Have a nice time. Enjoy cleaning your own hotel rooms and cooking all your own meals and growing your own food and building your own roads to drive on and everything else. By all means, go. More for the rest of us.

Here’s DougJ from Balloon Juice on this:

These are good points, but I think there’s been too much emphasis on what idiots these people are and not enough on how childish they are. Quitting work because of a slight tax increase isn’t akin to anything from any sort of philosophy, not even one as crude and simplistic as Ayn Rand’s; it’s more akin to a child’s decision to take his ball and go home. It’s probably worse, though, since when a typical ten year-old gets home, stops crying, and wipes his nose, he doesn’t then fantasize about how the world will now suffer from the loss of his inestimable brilliance. I don’t know if Vincent Gallo is a Randian or not (it certainly wouldn’t surprise me if he was), but this quote summarizes Galtism in its current form perfectly: “I stopped painting in 1990 at the peak of my success just to deny people my beautiful paintings; and I did it out of spite.”

(Wow, is Vincent Gallo an ass or what? How many people out there actually feel as though their lives are lessened because he stopped painting? And he’s from Buffalo. Oh well, we can’t win ’em all.)

Of course, by “Going Galt” they’re not actually going anywhere. Some are talking about scheming to make less money so they won’t get taxed at the “new” rate (which, I point out again, is merely a resumption of the old rate). How dumb is that? If someone is actually scheming to make less money than they otherwise could because of some tax thing, it makes me wonder just what kind of genius they are in the first place.

The Right really needs to start fetishizing some better books.

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A-rantin’ and a-ravin’

Some random opinions on recent stuff, just to get it all out of my head for a little while:

:: The other day, the people supposedly in charge of developing Buffalo’s waterfront area had one of those press events they like to have every eighteen months or so where they announce A Plan. At these events, they talk about pages being turned on Buffalo’s history and about how we’re finally going to see a new era of prosperity and bustle on the waterfront and so on yada yada yada. These events always feature pretty architectural renderings and sometimes even little scale models of what it’s all going to look like when it’s done.

My reaction? Wake me up when there’s a guy with a shovel down there, digging up dirt. Until then, I have no use for pretty models and nice pictures.

:: How worried about the economy am I supposed to be? The main worry, I think, lies in the loss of either one of our jobs, and frankly, I don’t see that happening unless things get drastically bad. We (that is, The Wife and I) work for companies that seem to be doing fairly well. My company is actually doing very well, and I tend to think that grocery stores will stick around since people are still going to have to eat. The Wife’s company had a rough patch a few years ago but weathered that just fine and is now putting the brakes on aggressive growth (but not shrinking). We don’t own a house, so we’re not looking at that particular calamity. We’re both probably at least thirty years shy of thinking about retirement, so seeing the 401k’s take a hit doesn’t seem like a long-term disaster for us. I know things are bad, but my reaction to the articles I read that have us all settling into an era of permanent economic contraction seem to me overwrought. The world will be a very different place in ten, twenty, thirty years. I don’t know. My thoughts tend to be “This sucks and it’s scary for a whole lot of people”. Maybe my head’s just in the sand, but then, I can’t control the economy and I tend to not worry about stuff I can’t control.

:: I am agog at how smug George W. Bush looks every time I see his revolting face on teevee or in the news. The man genuinely believes he’s done good work in office. I just can’t believe it. I am unable to think of a single aspect of American life that is better today than it was in January 2001 when he took office, one single thing that George Bush made better. Bush still thinks Iraq was a good idea. Cheney still spouts nonsense about the weapons of mass destruction Iraq never had. These people are the worst administration of my lifetime, and I was born when Nixon was in charge.

:: I’ve seen some discussion in Left Blogistan about the merits of the filibuster in the Senate. I’d love to see the filibuster go away; it’s a tradition that needs to go. I’m amused to see the Republicans in the Senate vow to filibuster Barack Obama’s judicial nominees when they start coming up for votes; apparently the whole “Every judge deserves an up or down vote!” principle is, well, not so much a matter of principle but a kinda-sorta guideline. But really, what I haven’t seen pointed out is that what happens is not actual filibusters but just the threat of them. The minority party says “We’re gonna filibuster that”, a vote comes up to close debate, the vote fails, and the bill or judge or whatever is tabled; this then gets reported in the news as a bill or judge being blocked via filibuster. Here’s what I’d like to see: when the Republicans threaten a filibuster, make them do it. I’ll bet the appeal of using that particular weapon against Democratic policies and bills and judges will lose a bit of its luster if these guys know they’re going to have to stand in the well of the Senate and talk for hours and hours on end. Come on, Mr. Majority Leader: let them threaten the filibuster all they want, and then make them do it.

:: New York’s governor David Paterson has just announced that the economic downturn has resulted in budgetary problems for the state government which will result in tax and fee hikes along with cuts to just about everything under the sun. We hear all the usual suggestions here: cut school aid, cut Medicaid payments to hospitals, raise fees, et cetera. But wow, what a missed opportunity. Paterson could use this emergency as impetus to change New York’s vastly bloated state government forever, and yet, all he’s willing to do is cut staffers and eliminate a scheduled pay raise. This is a time which one would think would encourage some serious outside-the-box thinking, but it’s not forthcoming. Why not look at eliminating the State Senate and going with a unicameral legislature? Why not look at eliminating the Thruway Authority? Why not look at reforming all of the various regulations that may make sense in New York City but, when applied to smaller municipalities upstate, are obviously stifling to growth? For God’s sake, Governor, there’s a chance here to right some of New York’s long-standing impediments to progress. Yes, you have serious budget problems to fix, but you also have a chance to position New York for a stronger position once the recovery gets here. (And there will be recovery, folks. Nothing lasts forever, and that means the bad times must end too.) So, Governor Paterson: Why not take this chance to actually fix some problems?!

:: I am no longer a fan of the Buffalo Bills. I’m not switching teams, actually; I’m not much of a football fan at all now. I’ve thought for several years now that there have to be better ways for me to spend my time on Sundays than giving three hours to a game that’s less fun to watch every year, but the point got driven home the weekend the Bills played the Browns. That was a Monday Night game, so on Sunday, the day before, I watched one play of one football game. (It was in the Cowboys game that Sunday night. Tony Romo threw an interception.) And I didn’t miss it at all. So yeah, I think I’m parting ways with football.

But as for the Bills themselves: they’re not good, they’re not going to be good, and soon enough, they’re not even going to be the Buffalo Bills anymore. So I’m done.

I would like to say that I do not think that Ralph Wilson doesn’t care. I think he does; I think he also has very little clue as to how the NFL functions these days, and I think that while he cares, he also wants to do things on the cheap. I genuinely believe he wants to win and that he’s trying to field a good team, but that he does not want to spend exorbitantly to do it. Unfortunately, that means he’s relying on finding diamonds in the rough, and it just isn’t working out. Dick Jauron simply isn’t a particularly effective head coach. The personnel people with the Bills simply aren’t making good personnel decisions. The team simply isn’t very good, and the current approach is only likely to produce a good team of the random variety, one of those teams that suddenly one year looks great because everybody on the roster inexplicably has a career year at the same time.

Three years into Dick Jauron’s tenure, this team is no better than it was before he got here. That’s ridiculously bad. In today’s NFL, a rebuilding program need only take a year or two. If you contrast the Bills’ results since the last time they made the playoffs (1999) with that of the New York Giants in the same period, you see the difference most readily. The Bills have had exactly one winning season in that span of years – 2004, when they were 9-7. They have made no playoff appearances in that span, not one. The Giants, though, started that span with a Super Bowl season, then they missed the playoffs, then they made the playoffs again, then they missed the playoffs a couple of years as they rebuilt (drafting Eli Manning in the process), then they became a playoff team again, staying in the playoffs and winning a Super Bowl and being one of the NFL’s best teams this year. Look at that: in nine years, they went from a Super Bowl to a rebuilding phase and back to the Super Bowl, in the same time that the Bills went…nowhere. I’m not going to analyze the reasons why this is the case; I merely note that the Bills are showing no signs of improving, and anyway, I think they’re out of here as soon as Mr. Wilson dies.

So I’m done. I’m not spending my Sundays watching these guys anymore, and I’m not going to pay attention on Draft Day to see if they finally grab that offensive lineman I always wanted. I’ll always remember Kelly, Reed, Thomas, Smith, Bennett, Hull, Talley, Tasker, and all the rest of those guys, though.

:: One other point on the Bills: I was a big backer of JP Losman back when he was still the young guy learning the ropes. Now that it’s obvious he’s never going to be much of an NFL quarterback (unless he somehow puts it together late in his career the way Rich Gannon did), I’d just like to note that I still like the guy and wish it had worked out for him. He always struck me, frankly, as a good guy. I really appreciated how when he was drafted he really went out of his way to adopt Buffalo as his new home town. He never acted like the guy who was here to collect his paycheck and then get out of town as soon as he could, and I appreciate that greatly. So no hard feelings, JP, and best wishes for the future. (Unless you somehow end up on the New England roster, in which case, you’re dead to me.)

That’s about all the opinionation I have for right now.

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BUY BUY BUY BUY STUFF STUFF STUFF STUFF

I read with some horror of the poor guy who got trampled to death by the stampeding shoppers at a Wal-Mart, and my feelings really weren’t all that mixed. Wal-Mart continues to anger me with this sort of thing. No, it’s not like somebody’s getting trampled to death every year on Black Friday, but crowd control isn’t that hard, especially when you’re dealing with an event like this where you know exactly when the movement of people is going to happen. Other retailers manage to figure this out: you set up stanchions and steel fence lines, you hire security people to direct the crowds into lines outside the door, and so on. There is absolutely no reason for Wal-Mart’s approach to simply boil down to “Unlock the doors, and then get the hell out of the way!”, no reason that I can see, except for one:

Wal-Mart likes it this way.

You’d better believe they do. What better publicity can there be for Wal-Mart’s unbelievable bargains than the annual news footage, which runs like clockwork on all the news stations every year on Black Friday starting with the very earliest local newscasts and then propagating out to the TODAY Show, of all those lunatic shoppers leaping forward from their three-point stances as they race into the damn store? Wal-Mart loves this publicity, and the news stations love giving it to them – otherwise, they wouldn’t have camera crews on site to capture this footage. Sure, having lines set up and personnel outside the store to help things move along in an orderly fashion might be safer and prevent the trampling death that everybody knew was gonna happen sooner or later, but that’s not fun to watch on teevee, is it?

And of course, that news footage every year helps guarantee that the same crowds will be there every year, probably even larger and they’ll be gathering even earlier, because every year somebody’s going to see that footage and think, “Hey, gotta remember that for next year!” And why does the news media think that a bunch of stampeding weirdos looking to buy stuff is important to show? Who knows why the news media thinks that most of the stuff it shows is news?

I have no problem at all with the 4:00 a.m. shopping stuff, even if I think it’s total lunacy. But I do think that the stores should make it safe. This was not a freak occurrence. Anybody who has half a brain and has seen the news footage of the Wal-Mart Shoppers of Pamplona in years past must know that sooner or later somebody was going to get killed on account of those $300 laptops, and just because it’s been a rarity doesn’t cancel out the fact that this was preventable. That guy did not have to die under the feet of shoppers who didn’t care enough to stop and notice him beneath the soles of their boots. Those people didn’t have to be running at all.

So, yeah: f*** Wal-Mart.

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Sigh.

Right now, the only thing I find more tiring than the continued spasms of the lunatics who do nothing other than read the tea leaves in everything for any sign of the Coming of the Caliphate (hey, that can be the next Indiana Jones movie! Indiana Jones and the Coming of the Caliphate!) is that their moronic spasms still seem to work.

Of course, there are doubtless those who chalk this up as some kind of major victory for Western decency or something…but the cravenness of companies viz. their advertising is well established by now. Remember that Cingular commercial that had a guy briefly sing “Jimmy Crack Corn” during a phone call?

Anyway, congratulations to Michelle Malkin, who thus gets to add another notch to her “Mighty Blogger Against the Caliphate” bedpost. I hope it was good for her.

(And since I’m getting all political and stuff, sure, I’m thrilled at the prospect of lots of tell-all books about the disaster that is the Bush Administration. But Scott McClellan doesn’t get any props from me. Telling the truth five years after playing a large role in the actions that caused the damage to get done in the first place, when now the rest of the country has realized how disastrous the damage was and the polling numbers of the people who did it are in the toilet really doesn’t take a whole lot of guts. So thanks, Scotty. But you can still piss off.)

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