What needs changing is the way the media deals with the conflicting claims of science and pseudoscience. You can’t be “fair and balanced.” You can only be fair or balanced. To be fair is to tell the truth; to be balanced is to tell a truth, tell a lie, and then let the public determine which is which — and this, of course, isn’t fair to anyone. People are busy! They have jobs to attend, children to raise, hobbies to pursue. They can’t go out and investigate every last crazy claim. They deserve a media unashamed of telling the best truths it can.
We’re all against bullying of course, but it’s a fact of life. Everyone gets targeted for whatever it is that makes them different, and if you’re absolutely normal in all respects, you’ll be targeted for being too perfect.
I put my son in tae kwon do classes at an early age. I said it was for fitness and confidence and all the usual stuff, but really it was so that any needlessly cruel behavior directed toward him could be addressed via a kick in the teeth.
Sometimes you have to beat someone’s ass to teach him how to get along with the rest of the human race . . .
In most failing projects, there are a few people at the top of the organization who think they are in trouble, lots of people at the bottom who know they are in trouble, and a bunch of worried middle managers trying to keep those at the top from talking to those at the bottom.
“This TV cuts off the bottom of the scrolling bar,” my son says as we’re watching a football game. “I can’t tell if it says SCORE ALERT or SCORF ALERT. I assume it says SCORE ALERT but I don’t really know.”
“That’s a really good point,” I say.
“And I don’t care about scorfs. I only care about scores.”
James Taranto on press coverage of President Obama’s Backyard chats:
What’s most telling about these encounters is the absence of fear on the part of the citizens challenging Obama. In October 2008, in his own Ohio neighborhood, “Joe the Plumber” confronted the future president and objected to his tax-hike plans. Obama revealingly replied that he was eager to “spread the wealth around,” and the media pounced–on Joe. He’s not really a plumber! Joe is his middle name! Who knows how history might have been changed if the media had been as aggressive in investigating Obama’s background?
But now, it seems, the lesson of Joe the Plumber has been lost. Citizens feel free to criticize Obama with impunity. The reporters who wrote these stories don’t even mention the names of the critics, much less conduct opposition research against them on Obama’s behalf.
I can make a firm pledge. Under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase. Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes.
— Barack Obama, Sept. 12, 2008
There must be some mistake then because I just got an email from our accounting department stating that effective January 1, 2011, over-the-counter drugs will require a doctor’s prescription when an FSA claim for reimbursement is submitted.
That doesn’t even make sense. Of course I don’t have a prescription for OTC drugs. Why would I pay a doctor to write me a prescription for something that I can just walk into Walgreen’s and buy it?
Hi Doc, I’ve got a terrible cold so I just stopped by to drop a $30 co-pay and get a prescription for some Nyquil.
And if I can no longer pay for ibuprofen, aspirin, cough/cold medication, etc., with pre-tax dollars through my FSA, that makes my taxes go up. Did I mention that I earn less than $250,000 a year?
They came first for the smokers with last April’s increase in the cigarette tax from 39 cents a pack to $1.01 (even for smokers making less than $250,000), and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a smoker.
Then they came for the tanners with the 10 percent tanning bed tax (no exemption for tanners making less than $250,000), and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a tanner.
Then they came for me and by that time no one was left to speak up . . .
I do think that crime and show business have never been more closely aligned. I don’t know if there has ever been a time where criminal arrests are worth as much in terms of $$ as going on a publicity tour or being in a movie.
A little explanation is in order here: In the olden days, when computers were less powerful than they are now, people used to read newspaper websites in the form of massive printouts. On Sundays, the newspaper website printouts (which were sometimes called “newspapers” for short) would come wrapped in a “comics section,” which contained still-life color cartoons that told a “story” in a series of panels or “drawings.”
Bill Clinton: “Do you know how many political and economic decisions are made in this world by people who dont know what in the living daylights they are talking about?”
