'Best of TBH Politoons'
Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Daniel Sturm: Local vet recalls his POW days with the late Kurt Vonnegut (athensnews.com)
When Kurt Vonnegut called my home on Feb. 23, I was thrilled. It was so exciting to hear the famous writer's voice on the phone that I didn't mind so much that he was calling to cancel a sit-down interview I'd suggested, to discuss his experiences in Dresden during WW II, and current views on war. As a captive POW, Vonnegut had survived the 1945 firebombing in an underground meatpacking cellar known as "Schlachthof 5." His experiences are memorialized in his best-selling 1969 novel, "Slaughterhouse-Five," and the film by the same name.
Froma Harrop: Road Most Dangerous Place for Teens (creators.com)
The day I received my driver's license, I jumped in my mother's car and motored off into teenage freedom. I remember that first solo drive well, because five minutes into it, I braked on a pile of wet leaves and skidded clear across the road.
Froma Harrop: How Green Was My Palace?
Can one be big and green? (creators.com)
Andrew Tobias: A Boy Named Sue (andrewtobias.com)
Well, you know, I'm a pretty square, straight, white guy. I had never even heard of 'gender identity.' But what it's basically about is boys getting beat up or killed because they're effeminate, and girls getting attacked or killed because they're not feminine enough. Nobody's for that, unless there's a lot of hate in their hearts -- and I know first hand there's not a lot of hate in the hearts of my constituents. I'm kind of shocked that my opponent takes the sides of the bullies in this. Well, if that's his best credential to represent you in Congress, so be it. But now let's talk about jobs and why the Republicans have us paying so much more for prescription drugs than we should.
Jim Hightower: EARTH DINNER (jimhightower.com)
What's for dinner at your place? How about having an earth dinner? Not that you'd eat earth, but that you and others would gather around a table for a social occasion to celebrate the bounty of our good, green earth. This is not just another Thanksgiving event, but a festive opportunity to have friends and family cook, eat, and drink together while reveling in the culture of food.
Weldon Berger: "Please for you to be spending my blood-drenched monies" (smirkingchimp.co)
"Please, ponder over this and feed me back as I am in dire need of your assistance at this time."
JOHN PATRICK DIGGINS: Eugene O'Neill's America (chronicle.com)
"I'm teaching a course on O'Neill at Sing Sing." Sing Sing? The notorious jail? Why would prisoners be interested in a playwright? "Every convict is convinced that he comes from a dysfunctional family. They all see themselves as victims of a loveless environment of indifference and deprivation."
Michelle Tsai: Erotic Services 101 (slate.com)
When is a massage more than a massage?
Better Angels (massequality.org)
Reader Tip
South Dakota
State looks to pull anti-Bush license plate
Reader Suggestion
Spicewood Seven
Please consider linking to this
anti-war protest music video by the Spicewood Seven of Austin, Texas. The award-winning video was directed by famed Italian post-neo-realist director Antonio Zapanini and shows the horror and insanity of the war from a grunt's eye view.
Purple Gene Reviews
Golden State Warriors
Purple Gene's mini-review of the Golden State Warriors spectatcular win at the Oracle Arena in Oakland on Wednesday night:
The stage was set:
It had 16 year since the lowly Warriors basketball team had won an NBA play-off series!
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Sunny and seasonal.
Concert Sells Out In 20 Minutes
Barbra Streisand
Tickets for US songstress Barbra Streisand's first British concert in 13 years sold out in 20 minutes Friday, despite their whopping price tag.
The award-winning singer and actress has now added a second date at The O2 landmark venue in London, formerly the Millennium Dome.
The cheapest seats for the original July 18 gig cost 100 pounds (200 dollars, 145 euros), while the most expensive sold for 500 pounds.
Streisand has now worked a second concert on July 22 into her European tour.
Barbra Streisand
Manuscripts Found
John Steinbeck
A handwritten draft of John Steinbeck's novel "Sweet Thursday," along with an unpublished story and other works, will be auctioned by a writer who says they were sitting in a closet for 50 years.
"This stuff was unbelievable - just laying in a box," said Joel Eisenberg. "I had this `Aha!' moment when I realized not only what I had here, but what I had the responsibility to do."
He said the material belonged to a friend, the late theater producer Ernest H. Martin. Martin's widow asked Eisenberg in 2004 to sort through a box that had been sitting in her Hollywood Hills closet.
Eisenberg found a 188-page manuscript of "Sweet Thursday," the sequel to Steinbeck's famous "Cannery Row"; a manuscript from another book, "The Log from the Sea of Cortez"; an unpublished story, "If This Be Treason," set during the McCarthy era; the unfinished draft of a musical comedy called "The Bear Flag Cafe" and carbon copies of 13 Steinbeck letters from 1953.
John Steinbeck
Content Analysis Finds Spin 'Factor'
O'Really
Bill O'Reilly may proclaim at the beginning of his program that viewers are entering the "No Spin Zone," but a new study by Indiana University media researchers found that the Fox News personality consistently paints certain people and groups as villains and others as victims to present the world, as he sees it, through political rhetoric.
The IU researchers found that O'Reilly called a person or a group a derogatory name once every 6.8 seconds, on average, or nearly nine times every minute during the editorials that open his program each night.
For their article in the spring issue of Journalism Studies, Conway, Grabe and Kevin Grieves, a doctoral student in journalism, studied six months worth, or 115 episodes, of O'Reilly's "Talking Points Memo" editorials using propaganda analysis techniques made popular after World War I.
Using analysis techniques first developed in the 1930s by the Institute for Propaganda Analysis, Conway, Grabe and Grieves found that O'Reilly employed six of the seven propaganda devices nearly 13 times each minute in his editorials. His editorials also are presented on his Web site and in his newspaper columns.
O'Really
This study, published in the academic journal Journalism Studies, was conducted and released without any involvement of any special interest group. The researchers received no grant funding for this study. Additional data, charts and the full text of the study are available online at
journalism.indiana.edu/papers/oreilly.html.
Producing Gay Cable Series
Stoli
Stoli Vodka is producing a five-part cable TV series on the real-life experiences of gay Americans titled "Stolichnaya Presents Be Real."
The show will air commercial-free, on Mondays beginning May 14, on MTV Networks' gay-themed Logo channel.
While Stoli will not be integrated into the show, it will bookend the series with traditional 30-second spots and Stoli logos will appear at the opening and closing of each episode.
Stoli
Borat's Brother Composes For Kazakhs
Erran Baron Cohen
The West Kazakhstan Philharmonic Orchestra chose an unusual composer to headline its London performance Friday: Borat's real-life brother.
Erran Baron Cohen, the brother of the actor Sacha Baron Cohen, composed the 16-minute piece, "Zere," which is debuting at St. James's Church in central London.
The irony of working with a Kazakh orchestra was not lost on Baron Cohen, a trumpeter who also composed the score to his brother's movie "Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan." In the smash comedy last year, Sacha Baron Cohen portrays a backward Kazakh television journalist.
He told the newspaper his piece incorporates Kazakh folk elements and instruments and is named after the Kazakh company that sponsored the composition.
Erran Baron Cohen
Time Delay Option
Don Imus
A lawyer for Don Imus said Friday that the former radio host's bosses could have edited the on-air comments that got him fired - and the fact that they didn't meant they saw his remarks as routine for his often provocative show.
CBS Radio and MSNBC had delay buttons, but didn't use them when Imus made racist and sexist comments about the Rutgers women's basketball team, lawyer Martin Garbus said on ABC's "Good Morning America."
"That means CBS and MSNBC both knew the language that was going out, and both knew the language complied with (Imus') contract."
"It was consistent with many of the things he had done," Garbus said.
Don Imus
Charged In Murder
J.J. Paulsen
John James (J.J.) Paulsen, 47, a writer and producer on "Cosby," "In Living Color" and other shows, has been held in jail since his wife's decomposing body was discovered April 18 in the couple's upscale home in Carmel, north of Indianapolis.
Leanne Serrano-Paulsen, 39, had been beaten to death and was dead for at least a week before her body was found, according to her autopsy report.
When officers entered the home, they found the couple's 16-month-old son, Christopher, alone in a crib, crying but unharmed, authorities said.
J.J. Paulsen, who was found walking along a street about three miles away, was arrested on charges of child abandonment and violation of probation, authorities said.
J.J. Paulsen
45 Days In County Jail
Paris Hilton
A judge sentenced Paris Hilton to 45 days in county jail Friday for violating her probation, putting the brakes on the hotel heiress' famous high life.
Hilton, who parlayed her name and relentless partying into worldwide notoriety, must go to jail on June 5 and she will not be allowed any work release, furloughs, use of an alternative jail or electronic monitoring in lieu of jail, Superior Court Judge Michael T. Sauer ruled after a hearing.
She was then ordered to report to a women's jail in suburban Lynwood on the set date or face 90 days behind bars. The judge's ruling excluded her from paying to serve time in a jail of her choice, as some are allowed.
Paris Hilton
Fetches $10 Million Bid
General Lee
A version of the General Lee - a 1969 Dodge Charger made famous in the television show "The Dukes of Hazzard" - fetched a winning bid of nearly $10 million Friday in an online auction.
If the bidder comes through with cash or financing for the $9,900,500 price, the car will be the most expensive item ever sold by eBay Inc., company spokeswoman Catherine England said.
Actor John Schneider, 47, said Friday that he expected bidding for the orange coupe, which has "01" on the doors and is emblazoned with the Confederate flag, to go for $3 million at most.
"In my wildest dreams, two people would get into a bidding war at about $2.5 million ... and I would have been delighted with that. However, I'm three times as delighted as that now," he laughed.
General Lee
Sued By Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
Oscarwatch
Ever the protective Oscar parent, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) has made good on its threat to sue Oscarwatch.com.
The organizer of the Academy Awards filed suit Thursday in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, accusing the Web site of trademark infringement. The action seeks injunctive relief plus damages, but AMPAS' attorney said the big aim is to halt the site's use of the Oscar name.
In the Oscarwatch flap, AMPAS in February ordered site proprietor Sasha Stone to cease operating under her current domain registration and threatened legal action if the order went unmet. The Academy suggested in March that Stone might remedy the situation by switching to a different domain name and limiting any use of the name Oscarwatch to subdomains within the site, according to the AMPAS suit.
Contacted by a reporter for comment, Stone said: "I am not trying to exploit the Academy's trademark to offer competing goods and services. Rather, I am offering commentary that directly addresses the Oscars awards, a topic of great interest to the general public, thanks largely to the efforts of the Academy itself. I believe that the use of (Oscarwatch) to describe commentary about the Oscars is that of fair use."
Oscarwatch
Rewriting Dialogue
Spin
The White House is trying to clarify something: Resident George W. Bush is "a commander guy" but not "the commander guy." Or something like that.
The official stenographer of the event recorded Bush as having said he was "the commander guy" and some reporters did as well. It was not far off from his past description of himself as "the decider."
White House spokeswoman liar Dana Perino took to the podium on Friday to clarify, while acknowledging to reporters that "you might find it a little strange."
"It's been reported that the president said, 'I'm the commander guy.' He did not. What I recalled was that he said 'I'm a commander guy,' meaning that he's one of the people that listens to the commanders on the ground," Perino said prevaricated.
Spin
CNN Removes Web Link
Lou Dobbs
Following a protest, CNN has removed a link from its Web site to an organization that is raising money to fight illegal immigration.
The link to smalltowndefenders.com was included on Lou Dobbs' home page. Dobbs has used his early evening show as a platform to protest illegal immigration, and he's being profiled Sunday on "60 Minutes" about this fight.
An advocacy group, the National Institute for Latino Policy, protested that Dobbs' on-air advocacy was expanding to include an endorsement of raising money for an organization.
After getting a letter from the group, CNN chief executive Jim Walton agreed to remove the link, CNN spokeswoman Christa Robinson said Friday.
Lou Dobbs
Born in Southeast Wisconsin
Bald Eagle
Bald eagle fans have something to celebrate: the first recorded successful nesting of the species in southeastern Wisconsin in more than a century.
Owen Boyle, an ecologist with the state Department of Natural Resources, said he confirmed the birth when he watched the nest for an hour and saw the eaglet's head pop into view.
According to the Department of Natural Resources, bald eagles disappeared from southern Wisconsin by about 1875.
Bald Eagle
Painting Sold
Battle of Gettysburg
A towering six-tonne painting depicting the Battle of Gettysburg was sold recently in North Carolina after decades in storage, and it could resell quickly for more than $10 million, an art dealer said.
The 115-metre-long cyclorama depicting the bloodiest battle of the Civil War is meant to be displayed in a round room to give viewers the feeling they are there.
Winston-Salem artist Joe King knew of the cyclorama's existence and spent 30 years searching for it. He found it in 1965 behind the wall of a burned-out Chicago warehouse. King was unable to find a home for the massive painting and willed it to Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem when he died in 1996.
The cyclorama is one of four created by French military artist Philippe Philippoteaux and a team of artists in the 1880s. Two are believed lost and the fourth has been on display at the Gettysburg National Military Park in Pennsylvania but is being restored.
Battle of Gettysburg
Robbers Dressed As Presidents
Nixon & Reagan
Usually bank robbers just wear a mask.
But police say two robbers dressed as Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon last month in two heists in Bowling Green, Ky.
William R. Hendrick, 57, and Richard Parrott, 58, were arrested Wednesday in Nashville. The pair, who both were convicted of bank robbery in Florida in the 1980s, face federal armed bank robbery charges.
Police said the pair may be fans of an old Patrick Swayze and Keanu Reeves movie in which robbers wore masks of Presidents Reagan, Nixon, Carter and Johnson.
Nixon & Reagan
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