sisu

Pardon my French

What bothers James Lileks about gutter language in the public square seems to be the fact that "there's a small child present":

If naughty words crossed my lips, they would not necessarily require a road map. And, of course, that makes me an utter hypocrite, I suppose. So, you can say it at home, but Bono can't say it on network TV? Yes! You've grasped the nub of the gist, you have.

What bothers some of us, though, isn't the doggy doodoo connotations of gutter language per se so much as the poverty of language resources its excessive use betrays.

[via Lucianne]

Tiger, tiger, burning bright

What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

"Bush lied" mantra is fundamentally religious in nature

Gosh, we wish Glenn Reynolds had permalinks . . . He doesn't, so we can only link to his site in general, for this excellent insight:

Congressional and CIA investigations into the prewar intelligence on Iraq's weapons and links to terrorism have found no evidence that CIA analysts colored their judgment because of perceived or actual political pressure from White House officials, according to intelligence officials and congressional officials from both parties.

I wonder if it'll silence the "Bush Lied" claims? Probably not, as they're fundamentally religious in nature. It's true, of course, that there appears to have been some sort of intelligence failure with regard to Iraq's WMD -- at best, the intelligence community missed how well it was hidden, at worst, it was vaporware all along (er, except for those tons of anthrax UN inspectors found, etc.). But that's not such a shock: the CIA missed the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the Pakistani nuclear bomb, after all. And, by all accounts, was in the dark about just how far along Libya's program was before Qaddafi decided to give it up.

Mind games

"Things in the Middle East are hard precisely because the stakes there are gargantuan. But so are the rewards," writes Victor Davis Hanson in "The Mind of Our Enemy" at National Review Online:

Remember that Musharraf’s sudden investigation of Pakistani nuclear scientists, Libya’s unexpected admission of nuclear proliferation, the removal of troops from Saudi Arabia, the growing Saudi dissident movements, and renewed Iranian unrest did not happen in a vacuum — and will cease the moment we return to the old way of appeasement and neglect.

. . . Success in Iraq cannot be measured by how much it resembles the Connecticut countryside next month, but instead by whether — in two or three years — it is a country that no longer invades others, promotes terrorists, kills its own citizens, and uses petrol dollars to acquire a strategic arsenal to threaten the West.

[via Charles Johnson]

The importance of being noticed

This John Robb fellow saw us coming. We may be caught in his trap, but you won't see us gnawing off our foot anytime soon.

The bait:

3 ways to build a hot weblog and
4 ways to build "a second tier (but still popular) weblog."

The quarry:

Folks like ourselves thinking to hitch a joyride on this meme machine by "seeding" -- to use James Lileks' word -- Mr. Robb's e-mail and trackback.

Shall we ping?

[via BuzzMachine]

Rat leaves sinking ship

Nocturnal loners Rattus norvegicus (left) and Andrew Gilligan, BBC distorter who resigned Friday

The Washington Post fills in the details on the recent unpleasantness at the BBC:

[Andrew] Gilligan, 35, had a reputation among fellow BBC journalists as a nocturnal loner who dug up scoops -- many of them denied by government officials -- from anonymous sources in Britain's notoriously tight-lipped defense and intelligence circles. He never was a comfortable fit in the buttoned-down Beeb. According to [the BBC documentary] "Panorama," [BBC News head Richard] Sambrook had warned Gilligan before the report on the dossier about his loose use of language in stories, saying, "If he didn't take care, this was going to undermine him." Gilligan has denied this allegation.

Afraid of being "seen to buckle in the face of government pressure," BBC Chairman Gavyn Davie made the mistake of backing up his employee without first verifying his story. When "Today" editor Kevin Marsh finally checked out Gilligan's notes a month after the show had aired, he e-mailed his concern to a BBC executive:

"I hope my worst fears are not realized . . . This was a good piece of investigative journalism marred by flawed reporting. Our biggest millstone is a loose use of language and lack of judgment in some of [Gilligan's] phraseology." [BBC top dogs Greg] Dyke and Sambrook have said they did not see this e-mail and only later became aware of Marsh's misgivings.

Ah, loose use of language and lack of judgment in phraseology . . . the stock-in-trade of so many practitioners of the journalistic vocation.

[via Lucianne]

The cats' meow

How many minutes till suppertime?

September what?

Deacon at "Power Line" is afraid, very afraid of what might happen should one of the current crop of Democratic wannabes win the Oval Office:

The divide between these Democrats and Bush isn't a disagreement over tactics (should we attack the terrrorists where they live and breed or just deal with them when they try to operate here), although that disagreement might be reason enough to support Bush. The divide is over whether 9/11 was a fluke or a defining moment. With these stakes, Bush could triple the NEA budget and put Barbra Streisand in charge of it, and I'd still support him in this year's race.

BBC gets first down

The battered BBC soldiers on with help for "us Brits who are only used to watching rugby and the 'real' football," reports "A Welsh View":

As Super Bowl XXXVIII approaches, BBC Sport Online provides a simple guide to the basics of the National Football League.

Comments our expert American correspondent:

You can tell the BBC wrote it: Here we play on fields and have teams -- not pitches and sides. But other than a little different language, they explained the game very well.

The peaceable kingdom

Buffy Boy (left) breaks bread with Teddy Bear

Emmy's Buffy Boy crashes a Teddy Bear's Picnic.