Yo Dawgs: It's Just "Diddy" Now

I've often been worried that the "P" in "P. Diddy" gets in between P. Diddy and his fans. Thankfully, I don't have to worry about that anymore:

Hip-hop impresario and fashion designer Sean "P. Diddy" Combs wants to make it easier for fans to shower him with adoration--so he's dropping the "P." from his stage name.

Word up.

Combs, 35, has said he wanted to "simplify" his image and felt that the P. "was getting between me and my fans."

Yeah dawg, the peeps be confused:

During concert appearances, for example, he noticed "half the crowd saying, 'P. Diddy' and half the crowd chanting, 'Diddy.' Now everybody can just chant, 'Diddy,"' Combs explained during an appearance on NBC's "Today" show.

And now there can be peace out in our time.

From now on when a narcissistic celebrity announces a gratuitous name change, we should just call him Bob. Or Herkemer.

"Yo, yo, yo--Herkemer is in the houuuuuuuuussssse."

Benighted Hypocrisy of the Left

The disgusting Cindy Sheehan spectacle that Bill references below only highlights the gross hypocrisy of the Left. They claim than the Right are "hypocrites" for not caring about her political position on the war since she is a mother, thus projecting onto their opponents the mindless undifferentiated emotionalism that the "Left" engages in in pursuit of its own jackboot-smashing-into-a-human-face-forever collectivist agenda.

"Motherhood" is not an excuse for irrational behavior, nor does the fact that Ma Barker* and Catherine de' Medici procreated give their lives any ethical cachet. It is no surprise that an amoral swine like Maureen Dowd, who has made her very name a synonym for lying misquotation, should projectile-vomit such garbage. You can find out what the Left really thinks about "motherhood" by inspecting the medical waste containers in any abortion clinic.

*yes, I know that Arizona Barker was framed as the ringleader for her son's crimes by the FBI, but she was a first-class enabler of criminal behavior, to say the least!

Dowd on Cindy Sheehan's Moral Authority

Maureen Dowd writes:

Selectively humane, Mr. Bush justified his Iraq war by stressing the 9/11 losses. He emphasized the humanity of the Iraqis who desire freedom when his W.M.D. rationale vaporized.

Note the loaded phrases "his Iraq war" and "his W.M.D. rationale." Is Dowd completely unaware that Saddam was universally thought to be a threat? That the UN considered him a threat? That regime change was a policy of the Clinton administration? That Saddam was in constant violation of the cease-fire agreement he made with the UN after the first Persian Gulf War? It's one thing to be against the war and another to be clueless--or to not be clueless but to ignore the context of the war. Isn't Dowd supposed to a member of the tribe that values nuance and context?

But his humanitarianism will remain inhumane as long as he fails to understand that the moral authority of parents who bury children killed in Iraq is absolute.

Poppycock. Cindy Sheehan has the same moral authority that all of us do, and her loss has no bearing on whether the war was just or not. What's going on here is akin to what went on with the Million Mom March; the MSM is floating the absurd notion that motherhood grants some kind of moral authority that trumps everything else. It doesn't. Policy has to be decided on rational grounds even if a policy involves the loss of "children," who in this case volunteered for service knowing that they might be called to war.

Brian Williams Redux

Brian Williams complains that his critics have missed the point:

Today, apparently, on some radio talk shows and blogs, my friends in the media have accused me of labeling George Washington a terrorist. They apparently missed my point: That the BRITISH CROWN might have viewed American revolutionaries that way.

It's quite true that Williams never called Washington a terrorist, but he did equate the belief that Iran's current president-elect is a terrorist with the belief that American revolutionaries were terrorists:

Many Americans woke up to a curious story this morning: several of the former Iran Hostages have decided there is a strong resemblance between Iran's new president and one of their captors more than 25 years ago.... It is a story that will be at or near the top of our broadcast and certainly made for a robust debate in our afternoon editorial meeting, when several of us raised the point (I'll leave it to others to decide germaneness) that several U.S. presidents were at minimum revolutionaries, and probably were considered terrorists of their time by the Crown in England.

The only point of making such an analogy is to pooh-pooh the worry that Iran's new president-elect might be a terrorist. After all, didn't some American revolutionaries become president even though the British thought they were terrorists? Williams doesn't realize that this lame analogy isn't any better than calling George Washington a terrorist. If I have a prima facie legitimate worry that X might be a terrorist, it's ridiculous for you to respond by suggesting that some people might think that Y is a terrorist. If your point is that I have as much justification for calling X a terrorist as others do in calling Y a terrorist, then come right out and say that. Otherwise, your point is not germane.

Williams may not be happy about being accused of saying that George Washington was a terrorist, but he left himself open to that accusation. If I think that X is a terrorist and you equate that to thinking that Y is a terrorist, the implication is that X's being a terrorist and Y's being a terrorist are logically equivalent, that is, that one of the following is true:

• X and Y are both terrorists.
• Neither X or Y are terrorists.

Either way, there is an equivalence between X and Y. So Williams either thinks that Iran's president-elect isn't a terrorist or that George Washington was. He denies the latter, so he would seem to endorse the latter--although he probably would deny that as well. So again, his point simply seems to be the following: it's not that big of deal that Iran's president-elect might be a terrorist, because the British might have thought that George Washington was a terrorist. I've critiqued this point below, so it suffices here to say that the point is just plain dumb.

The One Man's Terrorist Argument

MSNBC's Brian Williams, in response to the story that Iran's new president might be one of the 1979 hostage takers, offers an iteration of the "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter" cliche:

. . . several of us raised the point (I'll leave it to others to decide germaneness) that several U.S. presidents were at minimum revolutionaries, and probably were considered terrorists of their time by the Crown in England.

Presumably the point is that it's not that big of a deal that one of the 1979 hostage takers became president of Iran, because George Washington was considered by some to be a terrorist.

As it stands, this is a non sequitur; even if GW was considered to be a terrorist by the British, it doesn't follow that he was or that Iran's new president wasn't. To belabor the point, there are four possibilities:

1. George Washington was a terrorist, and Iran's new president was a terrorist.
2. George Washington wasn't a terrorist, and Iran's new president wasn't a terrorist.
3. George Washington was a terrorist, and Iran's new president wasn't a terrorist.
4. George Washington wasn't a terrorist, and Iran's new president was a terrorist.

Let's be blunt. Leftists don't like it when people endorse propositions such as (4), because they think that such an endorsement smacks of misguided patriotism at best and jingoism at worst. However, the "one man's terrorist" argument doesn't show that (4) is false. All it shows is that some people consider X to be a terrorist and some do not--but so what? Some people consider tomatoes to be vegetables and others consider them to be fruit. Nothing follows from this about what a tomato actually is (it's a fruit).

At best, the "one man's terrorist" argument implies that we shouldn't hastily judge X to be a terrorist merely because X did something politically controversial. This cautionary note is fine, but it doesn't preclude me from finally and correctly judging X to be a terrorist. Timothy McVeigh blew up a federal building because of his political views on Ruby Ridge and Waco--and some people think that he was a freedom fighter--but when all is said and done, he was a terrorist.

To drive the point home, compare the following:

One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.
One man's neo-Nazi is another man's freedom fighter.

Those who assert the first would be loathe (and rightly so) to assert the second--but why? If we're going to play the "one man's terrorist" game, we have to play it through to the end. It's a fact that some people think that neo-Nazis are freedom fighters. If we're going to be consistent, that means we cannot be quick to label anyone a neo-Nazi. Since this is an absurd conclusion, it's best that we stop playing the game the generates the absurdity.

Cal Thomas gets "pod-snatched"

Dear Cal Thomas,

Has a liberal pod infiltrated your mind and made some sort of weird lefty substitution?

Blogs DO have a corrective mechanism, other blogs, i.e. good, old-fashioned skepticism at work. You've been complaining for years about the vile, unchecked bigotry of the MSMer's against Christians, and rightly so. Where were the "corrective mechanisms" then? Yeah, NON-EXISTENT, that's where they were.

You, OF ALL PEOPLE, should know how much credence should be given to "academic journalism," when the favorite film shown in journalism schools is the Chomskybot's MANUFACTURING CONSENT and where the REAL "dittoheadism" of leftist groupthink is spawned in your profession.

Did the great journalists of yesteryear have college degrees? Twain was a second-grade dropout. Hecht and Mencken didn't go to college. By your twisted logic, homeschooling shouldn't be permitted because the parents don't have the proper credentials.

The truth is, you're just jealous that punditry has been made available to the people, and you've chosen the side of the anti-Christian leftist vomit-merchants who hate and deride you.

How sad.

Regretfully yours,

Ernest Brown

Puffs of Huff

As far as I can tell, The Huffington Post is a blog for several hundred million celebrities, journalists, politicians, and other unsavory characters to offer opinions that rival the wit and rigor found in high school essays and letters to the editor. It also seems to lean a bit to the left, probably because the aforementioned unsavory characters tend to lean to the left. But now that I’ve said some nice things about Arianna’s uber-blog, it’s time to get testy. Here’s a cursory, selective, and entirely unfair survey of the blog.

Naomi Foner (who?) mourns for the children:

Our Children Are Trying To Tell Us Something … And we're not listening.

I’m sorry, what did you say?

So they wage guerrilla war. Shooting at each other and at us.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to open a window and shout: “Hey you kids! Get off my lawn and stop shooting at each other. Do you want Naomi Foner to write about you?”

“Who?”

In schools. On freeways. Copying our violence.

In incomplete sentences. With prepositional phrases. With missing subjects.

The recent Iranian movie, set on the Iraqi/Kurdistan border, Turtles Can Fly is peopled by children who are the living debris of war.

They’re the living debris of which war? The one that we mean Nazi-American imperialists started for oil and Walmart expansion? No, it turns out that “Turtles Can Fly” is set before that war and is about a Kurdish refugee camp. In other words, it’s about people who fled from Saddam’s tender mercies.

Nothing grows here except tragedy.

And bad metaphors.

Under our noses the children reach for guns and shoot, crying into cyberspace of their loneliness and fear.

No, it’s just a handful of psychotic nutjobs who shoot their fellow students and have really lame websites.

And we feed them on empty patriotism and "mine is better than yours" religion and ignore their questions.

Yes, we all know that conversations of the following sort happen daily:

SON: Dad, what is the meaning of life? I’m like all confused and stuff, and my insides hurt. What’s wrong with me?

DAD: America rocks!

SON: But Dad, why do I want to kill my classmates?

DAD: Son, did you know that Zoroastrianism is the best doggone religion on the planet? Really. Just forget about all of the others.

SON: Oh forget it, Dad, I’m gonna go update my lame website.

I’m taking a wild guess that Foner thinks any form of patriotism is empty and that any serious belief in religion—and, of course, we’re talking about Christianity—is of the “mine is better than yours” variety.

George Lakoff talks of the "strict father" the Republicans lionize. An old image from the days of our Calvinist beginnings. No place for compassion. Our destinies are predetermined. A helping hand will only hurt. A distorted philosophy that will kill our culture as it maims and destroys our children.

Theocracy upon us. Children weeping. Falwell laughing.

It is time for a different kind of parenting. It is time to look at the truth and to apologize. To validate the kids.

DAD: Son, it’s time I validated you. There, I’ve validated you.

SON: Gee, Dad, my insides still hurt and I wanna kill my classmates, but now I feel terrific! I’m gonna go blog about this on my lame website!

It's going to take a lot to turn around several generations of looking away. But we need to look at what we've done.

What have we done? I didn’t do it. I wasn’t even there. Besides, they made me.

What was Foner's point? All she knows is that she’s got Something Serious to Say and it involves a Vague Indictment of Society and an Ambiguous Solution Involving Validation. Let’s move on.

Mark Green lays the smackdown on the religious right:

The religious far (f)right, big business, and Bush & Co. have become profoundly authoritarian

Darn straight. This is precisely why I’m angry with my fellow right-wingers. I’ve told them over and over again that we should be whimsically authoritarian, not profoundly authoritarian. Profound authoritarianism has been done to death, and if we want to be the avant garde of authoritarianism, we’d better start innovating. How about mandating that the Sundance Film Festival show nothing but John Wayne movies? Why not pass a law against Michael Moore—not against his movies or his books, but Moore himself? We'll charge him with illegal possession of Michael Moore.

Next up, Joshua Zeitz has some pointed questions for us:

Would you invite a neo-Nazi over for dinner?

Look, I didn’t know what Heidi’s political views were, and when she talked about the Master Race, I thought she was talking about the scallops.

Would you attend a dinner party where a neo-Nazi was in attendance?

Depends on what’s being served. If they have corn dogs, I am so there, politics be hanged.

Would you socialize with people who openly cavort with neo-Nazis?

I have a strict don’t-ask-don’t-tell policy in regards to cavorting with neo-Nazis.

Here’s a counter-question to Zeitz: would you socialize with people who openly frolic with communists? Or with people who wear a Che Guevara or hammer-and-sickle t-shirt? Would you talk to an anarchist on a bus? Or have dinner with a communist named Gus?

Finally, David Corn also has some questions:

Is anyone else puzzled why George W. Bush's bicycle ride was not immediately interrupted?

I think some guy down the block was puzzled as well, so that’s at least one.

Conspiracy theorists, have fun with this.

I expect Michael Moore to make a movie out of it.

Hollywood's First Star listens to the ants scream in FLORENCE LAWRENCE, THE BIOGRAPH GIRL

My Epinions article on the life and fate of Hollywood's first movie star is now up for your reading pleasure.

VRWC's Cover Blown

Darn! A professor at Berkeley has gotten wise to right-wing mind control:

... the word fetus has been demonized, even though it is a technical, scientific term. The right is so successfully framing this issue that a term representing a political agenda is becoming the "neutral" or "objective" word that journalists are supposed to use in their stories.

The right has been on this for the last 40 years; they understand and pay attention to the way the mind works.... the right figured out how to physically change our brains, and the left is only beginning to recognize this very basic fact of cognitive science.

He's discovered what's really happening in Area 51! We'll have to relocate to our alternate site underneath the Kennedy compound, the one where we keep our Hitler clones.

On a lighter note, if journalists find "fetus" to no longer be a neutral term, perhaps they can start using the phrase "that thing--you know, that thing." On television, they can easily use body language to supplement "that thing--you know, that thing"--such as a knowing wink or sheepish mug. Of course, it's not possible to do this in print, but perhaps this will help print journalists: an unpronounceable symbol that everyone will read as "that thing--you know, that thing formerly known as a fetus."

Billy Beck vs. P

Some quick, desultory comments:

• Sometimes speculative examples are helpful in philosophy, and they do actual work towards knowing something about the world.

• Analytic philosophy has its merits but can go over the top and become mind-numbingly trivial or silly. The same is true of continental philosophy.

• P's main problem, one by no means shared by all professional philosophers, is that he conceives of philosophy in purely formalistic terms, as if philosophers were geometers.

• Philosophical jargon can be helpful at times, although I try to do without it when I can.

• Roger Scruton is another philosopher critical of the analytic tradition.