Day: January 3, 2004

The 2004 quarters

The U.S. Mint will release quarters honoring Michigan, Florida, Texas, Iowa and Wisconsin in 2004. That’s the 26th through 30th states.

Last year’s quarters were Illinois, Alabama, Maine, Missouri and Arkansas.

Who would you name?

From Gallup

Gallup’s annual poll of the most admired people in the world shows George W. Bush receiving the distinction as most admired man in the eyes of the American public for the third consecutive year, and Hillary Rodham Clinton as the consensus choice for most admired woman for the sixth time, and for the first time since 2000. The Rev. Billy Graham once again finished among the Top 10 men, the 46th time he has done so, while Queen Elizabeth II of England appeared among the most admired women for the 39th time.

Near the end of each year, Gallup asks Americans to name the man and woman, living in any part of the world today, that they admire most. The question was first asked in 1948 and has been repeated nearly every year since then. This year’s poll was conducted Dec. 5-7.

Bars Are Still the Hub of Vast State’s Small-Town Life

Blaine Harden writes in The Washington Post that In Mont., It’s Home, Home at the Saloon

The rhythms of small-town Montana bar life go something like this: Bars are often open at 8 a.m. with farmers and ranchers coming in to drink black coffee, complain about the weather and argue about things they have been arguing about for decades. Drinking usually doesn’t commence until about 3 in the afternoon. Because Montanans, especially in small towns, tend to get up early, most people go home by 9.

Here in the Big Hole Valley of southwest Montana, children often come into bars after school, especially on cold winter afternoons.

“We give ’em candy and watch out for them, until their parents get off work,” said Charlie Beck, owner of the H Bar J Saloon in Wise River, about five miles from Dewey.

Football Dads’ Ultimate Goal: A Kickoff The Old Block

Joel Achenbach on father-child bonding.

A special pleasure of fatherhood at this time of year is teaching a child the art of watching football on TV all day long and into the night as the living room becomes a debris field of beer cans and pizza crusts and the child increasingly begs to be allowed to go outside and play, or some such request that is totally inappropriate to the game situation.

“Daddy, I’m going to my room to read a book,” the kid will say.

“On fourth-and-goal???” the father will answer.

Fattest cities

America’s “fattest cities,” which is to appear in the February issue of Men’s Fitness magazine. To determine the fattest cities, the magazine looked at the 50 largest cities in 14 categories, such as air quality, climate, commute time, total number of fast-food and pizza restaurants, and number of health clubs and sporting goods stores. The number following the city name is last year’s ranking for fattest cities:

  1. Detroit (last year ranked 3rd)
  2. Houston (1)
  3. Dallas (9)
  4. San Antonio (13)
  5. Chicago (2)
  6. Fort Worth, Texas (16)
  7. Philadelphia (4)
  8. Arlington, Texas (not listed last year)
  9. Cleveland (6)
  10. Columbus, Ohio (8)
  11. Atlanta (7)
  12. Mesa, Ariz. (19)
  13. Oklahoma City (23)
  14. Kansas City (22)
  15. Miami (24)
  16. Las Vegas (18)
  17. Indianapolis (12)
  18. Phoenix (14)
  19. Tulsa, Okla. (not listed last year)
  20. Memphis, Tenn. (not listed last year)
  21. New York (15)
  22. New Orleans (11)
  23. Baltimore (20)
  24. El Paso, Texas (17)
  25. Washington (25)

Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick — 6-4, 300 pounds — said he plans to run a marathon in the coming year and “will lead by example” when it comes to getting Detroit in shape.

The 34 Best Movies of 2003

David Edelstein writes about movies on Slate.com.

There were too many good movies this year for me to do a proper 10-best list—and not enough great ones. What I mean is, there isn’t that much difference between my ninth-favorite movie and my 20th, and any numerical distinction is pretty much whimsical. That’s why I’ve done four 10-best lists for sundry newspaper, Internet, and radio outlets, and no two are the same.

Edelstein discusses his 34 best movies. And, as he says, “You’ll learn much more from a lively writer you think is nuts (c.f., Manohla on In the Cut or Elvis Mitchell on the execrable 21 Grams) than from the 10-best list of someone with whom you agree.”

I Was a Tool of Satan

Doug Marlette, Pulitizer Prize-winning cartoonist, writes of his confrontations with those that don’t understand free speech.

Last year, I drew a cartoon that showed a man in Middle Eastern apparel at the wheel of a Ryder truck hauling a nuclear warhead. The caption read, “What Would Mohammed Drive?” Besides referring to the vehicle that Timothy McVeigh rode into Oklahoma City, the drawing was a takeoff on the “What Would Jesus Drive?” campaign created by Christian evangelicals to challenge the morality of owning gas-guzzling SUVs. The cartoon’s main target, of course, was the faith-based politics of a different denomination. Predictably, the Shiite hit the fan….

In my thirty-year career, I have regularly drawn cartoons that offended religious fundamentalists and true believers of every stripe, a fact that I tend to list in the “Accomplishments” column of my résumé. I have outraged Christians by skewering Jerry Falwell, Catholics by needling the pope, and Jews by criticizing Israel. Those who rise up against the expression of ideas are strikingly similar. No one is less tolerant than those demanding tolerance. Despite differences of culture and creed, they all seem to share the notion that there is only one way of looking at things, their way. What I have learned from years of this is one of the great lessons of all the world’s religions: we are all one in our humanness.

In my response, I reminded readers that my “What Would Mohammed Drive?” drawing was an assault not upon Islam but on the distortion of the Muslim religion by murderous fanatics – the followers of Mohammed who flew those planes into our buildings, to be sure, but also the Taliban killers of noncompliant women and destroyers of great art, the true believers who decapitated an American reporter, the young Palestinian suicide bombers taking out patrons of pizza parlors in the name of the Prophet Mohammed.

Then I gave my Journalism 101 lecture on the First Amendment, explaining that in this country we do not apologize for our opinions. Free speech is the linchpin of our republic. All other freedoms flow from it. After all, we don’t need a First Amendment to allow us to run boring, inoffensive cartoons. We need constitutional protection for our right to express unpopular views. If we can’t discuss the great issues of the day on the pages of our newspapers fearlessly, and without apology, where can we discuss them? In the streets with guns? In cafés with strapped-on bombs?