"And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned 'round on you -- where would
you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat?This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, -- Man's laws, not God's! And if you cut them down (and you're just the man to do it!), do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then?"
- Robert Bolt, "A Man For All Seasons"
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"Rockets, moon shots.
Spend it on the have-nots.
Money, we make it.
Before we see it, you take it.Oh, it make me wanna holler,
The way they do my life.
Make me wanna holler
The way they do my life.This ain't livin'.
No, no baby, this ain't livin'"- Marvin Gaye, "Inner City Blues"
Gator Nation's hopes of a third national championship in four years were dashed tonight with a decisive loss to the run-happy Alabama Crimson Tide. Florida's defense had no answer for Alabama running back Mark Ingram who tore them up like practice squad scrubs with 189 total yards and 3 TDs. The Gators were held scoreless in the second half and failed to generate any late-game heroics despite being led by the most famous college player of this generation. When it mattered most Tim Tebow couldn't live up to his own legend and will not finish his career off with another title.
"a racist...who has a deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture..."
"Most Americans...are being forced to live in a politically correct world, and I've said this for awhile now, and I don't know exactly what this means, it's just something that I just feel...there's gonna come a time when the people who have been forced to live in a politically correct world...gonna come a time when the public is just going to say, 'I'm not living in your politically correct world and I don't care anymore'."It seems clear to me that many of Beck's statements likely regard things to which he doesn't know the meaning but has a feeling about. Those feelings certainly appear to be passionate but passion is often misguided. In the case of calling the President "a racist" even the Fox News network and Beck's colleagues backed away from these comments, something that doesn't happen nearly often enough.
"Gang, you have a system that is wildly, wildly out of control, and they are capturing your kids. As Van Jones himself has said, 'the earlier we get the kids, the earlier we make this adjustment with the youth, the easier this transition is going to be'. Stand guard America. Your republic is under attack."Van Jones, as referenced in the above quote, was the Obama administration's special advisor regarding green jobs for the White House Council on Environmental Quality. Jones was forced to resign his post this September due to a vicious smear campaign maneuvered by Beck and other Fox News employees regarding his past political endorsements. As if that wasn't bad enough Beck misquotes him entirely there in order to lend credibility to his "Obama Youth" rant. Van Jones' actual quote was regarding the potential growth of clean power industries and reads thusly:
"If we can get these youth in on the ground floor of the solar industry now, where they can be installers today, they’ll become managers in five years and owners in 10. And then they become inventors. The green economy has the power to deliver new sources of work, wealth and health to low-income people—while honoring the Earth."These are only two examples and yet they show how Beck uses controversial, misleading and/or entirely misquoted material in order to keep his audience glued to their sets. Even with all of that, I don't believe the outrageous things Glenn Beck says or does on-air are the real problem. Any reasonably educated person can watch his show for five minutes, change the channel with a laugh and say, "What nonsense!" The real problem is that the number of reasonably educated Americans is dropping like a stone.
| Robert Kennedy's speech to the City Club of Cleveland Cleveland, Ohio April 5, 1968 |
Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen, This is a time of shame and sorrow. It is not a day for politics. I have saved this one opportunity, my only event of today, to speak briefly to you about the mindless menace of violence in America which again stains our land and every one of our lives. It is not the concern of any one race. The victims of the violence are black and white, rich and poor, young and old, famous and unknown. They are, most important of all, human beings whom other human beings loved and needed. No one - no matter where he lives or what he does - can be certain who will suffer from some senseless act of bloodshed. And yet it goes on and on and on in this country of ours. Why? What has violence ever accomplished? What has it ever created? No martyr's cause has ever been stilled by an assassin's bullet. No wrongs have ever been righted by riots and civil disorders. A sniper is only a coward, not a hero; and an uncontrolled, uncontrollable mob is only the voice of madness, not the voice of reason. Whenever any American's life is taken by another American unnecessarily - whether it is done in the name of the law or in the defiance of the law, by one man or a gang, in cold blood or in passion, in an attack of violence or in response to violence - whenever we tear at the fabric of the life which another man has painfully and clumsily woven for himself and his children, the whole nation is degraded. "Among free men," said Abraham Lincoln, "there can be no successful appeal from the ballot to the bullet; and those who take such appeal are sure to lost their cause and pay the costs." Yet we seemingly tolerate a rising level of violence that ignores our common humanity and our claims to civilization alike. We calmly accept newspaper reports of civilian slaughter in far-off lands. We glorify killing on movie and television screens and call it entertainment. We make it easy for men of all shades of sanity to acquire whatever weapons and ammunition they desire. Too often we honor swagger and bluster and wielders of force; too often we excuse those who are willing to build their own lives on the shattered dreams of others. Some Americans who preach non-violence abroad fail to practice it here at home. Some who accuse others of inciting riots have by their own conduct invited them. Some look for scapegoats, others look for conspiracies, but this much is clear: violence breeds violence, repression brings retaliation, and only a cleansing of our whole society can remove this sickness from our soul. For there is another kind of violence, slower but just as deadly destructive as the shot or the bomb in the night. This is the violence of institutions; indifference and inaction and slow decay. This is the violence that afflicts the poor, that poisons relations between men because their skin has different colors. This is the slow destruction of a child by hunger, and schools without books and homes without heat in the winter. This is the breaking of a man's spirit by denying him the chance to stand as a father and as a man among other men. And this too afflicts us all. I have not come here to propose a set of specific remedies nor is there a single set. For a broad and adequate outline we know what must be done. When you teach a man to hate and fear his brother, when you teach that he is a lesser man because of his color or his beliefs or the policies he pursues, when you teach that those who differ from you threaten your freedom or your job or your family, then you also learn to confront others not as fellow citizens but as enemies, to be met not with cooperation but with conquest; to be subjugated and mastered. We learn, at the last, to look at our brothers as aliens, men with whom we share a city, but not a community; men bound to us in common dwelling, but not in common effort. We learn to share only a common fear, only a common desire to retreat from each other, only a common impulse to meet disagreement with force. For all this, there are no final answers. Yet we know what we must do. It is to achieve true justice among our fellow citizens. The question is not what programs we should seek to enact. The question is whether we can find in our own midst and in our own hearts that leadership of humane purpose that will recognize the terrible truths of our existence. We must admit the vanity of our false distinctions among men and learn to find our own advancement in the search for the advancement of others. We must admit in ourselves that our own children's future cannot be built on the misfortunes of others. We must recognize that this short life can neither be ennobled or enriched by hatred or revenge. Our lives on this planet are too short and the work to be done too great to let this spirit flourish any longer in our land. Of course we cannot vanquish it with a program, nor with a resolution. But we can perhaps remember, if only for a time, that those who live with us are our brothers, that they share with us the same short moment of life; that they seek, as do we, nothing but the chance to live out their lives in purpose and in happiness, winning what satisfaction and fulfillment they can. Surely, this bond of common faith, this bond of common goal, can begin to teach us something. Surely, we can learn, at least, to look at those around us as fellow men, and surely we can begin to work a little harder to bind up the wounds among us and to become in our own hearts brothers and countrymen once again. |
Unless you're at a place where people are playing metal. Because that actually happens and is rad. Parties where people play Brand New and sing every word in your face shouldn't ever happen. But they do. Not cool. Who wants to hang out and drink with their buddies with sad songs as the soundtrack? Is this The Graduate? Am I living through some version of the movie Garden State? Is this an episode of Dawson's Creek? Come off it. Here's my plea: please quit bumming everyone out with with your Anger Rock. I don't need it. I love Elliott Smith but not with beer pong happening. Who's leg do I have to hump to hear Steely Dan on the stereo? The Roots? Queen for gods sake!!!?? 
ing QB Chad Henne hit Ted Ginn Jr. with a 53-yard touchdown bomb. This is turning out to be the best game I've seen this week. Ooh I'll be seeing this all day tomorrow on SportsCenter if Miami loses --- the officials just called pass interference on Miami inside their own red zone for coverage that did not appear to be illegal at all. Now NY scored again with Thomas Jones. This comes amid a weekend of questionable calls in the MLB playoffs that have been getting a lot of media attention. Chad Henne looking pretty clutch in the 2-minute-drill at home in Miami. Looking like a goal-line-stand will decide the course of this game with Miami knocking on the door at NY's 2-yard-line. Ronnie Brown runs out of the wildcat for an easy score leaving the Jets 6 seconds to score a touchdown. Barring a miracle it looks like this one is over. MIAMI 31 - JETS 27 
This game was, to me, another example of how this season is developing into some strange bizarro-world where Cincinnati is knocking off SuperBowl contenders and Kyle Orton looks like a Pro-Bowl passer. I enjoy rooting for the underdog but, who cares about Denver or Cinci? Yes, they have both started the year undefeated in the face of ridicule and low-expectations but how can anyone think either are for real? These aren't playoff teams. Consider that The Bengals have won all of their games in narrow, 4th quarter comebacks during weeks where their opponents under-performed and Carson Palmer carried them down the field. A clutch franchise quarterback will get you wins but he's all they've got. Their defense is overrated and their star wide-out is more bark than bite. Cedric Benson may be displaying a resurgence of sorts but I'm not sold. He showed a spark in Chicago too but I expect him to remain average or, again, sink down the depth chart. Same with Denver. Congrats on keeping Brandon Marshall happy, he's your only star player so make it work, but Kyle Orton has consistently shown he is mediocre and leaves plays on the field more weeks than not. He lacks the experience and skill set to lead a team in the playoffs. Period. Don't make me laugh.
