“A member of the U.S. Olympic ski team was disqualified from competition today,” reported satirist Andy Borowitz of borowitzreport.com, “when it was learned that he did not have a sufficiently compelling human story line to exploit on the NBC telecast of the worldwide sporting event.”
Sideline Chatter, which has more.
Goldfish + Mountain Dew + 9 Volt Battery = Lives
A three-minute video (no sound).
… of Kim Novak. Madeleine Elster/Judy Barton (Vertigo) and Madge Owens (Picnic) is 73.
… of George Segal. Jack Gallo (Just Shoot Me) and Nick (Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?) is 72.
… of Carol Lynley. Nonnie Parry (The Poseidon Adventure) and Janet Willard (Blue Denim) is 64.
… of Peter Tork of the Monkees. He’s 64.
… of Jerry Springer. He’s 62.
… of Stockard Channing. Abbey Bartlet (West Wing) and Louisa (‘Ouisa’) Kittredge (Six Degrees of Separation) is 62.
… of Mike Krzyzewski. The Duke coach is 59 today.
… of Peter Gabriel. He’s 56.
… of actor Neal McDonough. He’s 40.
… had to be intoxicated, right?
That alone would seem to explain both the accident and the delay in making it public.
Update: Two men hunting with two women not their wives might be another explanation for the delay in reporting.
“‘The vice president was concerned,’ said Mary Matalin, a Cheney adviser who spoke with him yesterday morning. ‘He felt badly, obviously. On the other hand, he was not careless or incautious or violate any of the [rules]. He didn’t do anything he wasn’t supposed to do.'” (Washington Post)
So, he was “supposed” to shoot Whittington in the face. Presumably it was an accident. The person with the gun is always responsible for where he shoots.
Talk about spin.
Know your target and what is beyond.
Be absolutely sure you have identified your target beyond any doubt. Equally important, be aware of the area beyond your target. This means observing your prospective area of fire before you shoot. Never fire in a direction in which there are people or any other potential for mishap. Think first. Shoot second. (NRA Gun Safety Rules)
The first person to break the sound barrier is 83 today.
Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier on October 14, 1947, reportedly with two ribs broken two nights before in a drunken horseback ride. The plane, Glamorous Glennis, is hanging from the Air & Space Museum ceiling. Glennis was Mrs. Yeager.
Yeager is the basis for the character played by Sam Shepard in The Right Stuff. Glennis was played by Barbara Hershey.
In his wonderful book The Right Stuff Tom Wolfe explains that West Virginian Yeager is the reason why all airline pilots talk with a drawl — to be like Yeager, “the most righteous of all the posessors of the right stuff.”
This Peter Benchley story isn’t about Great White sharks.
Benchley was hired away from Newsweek in 1967 to be a speechwriter for President Lyndon Johnson. The White House speechwriters were used to deadlines, demands and long hours, yet Benchley (in his mid-twenties) worked at a different pace, still finding time for tennis and other pursuits.
As the story was told to me in 1975 by former speechwriter, and then Johnson Library Director Harry Middleton, the writers finally went to Chief of Staff Joseph Califano and insisted he do something about the fact that Benchley was not working as hard as they. One thing lead to another and Califano eventually told Benchley he was fired.
Benchley refused to be fired. He said, “I was hired by the President of the United States, and only the President can fire me.”
Califano went to the President. The timing couldn’t have been worse. Califano had been featured in Time or Newsweek as “the second most powerful man in America.” LBJ told Califano, “You’re the second most powerful man in America, and you can’t even fire a speechwriter.”
As Middleton told it, Califano went back to Benchley, who still refused to be fired. And so it continued. Benchley working less-and-less, but staying adamant that only the President could fire him. LBJ having too much fun with Califano to step in and actually fire Benchley.
Benchley lasted until the end of the Johnson Administration.
I asked Middleton what he thought about Benchley. His reply was that the speechwriters all resented that he was a slacker and that they had to work all the more to take up that slack, but they sure all had to admire his ability to stand up to Califano and Johnson.
RIP Peter Benchley.
“Dick Cheney now joins Aaron Burr as one of the two vice presidents to shoot someone while in office.”
Take The Week Quiz.
NewMexiKen scored seven correct out of ten.
Oh, NewMexiKen knows, these kinds of accidents happen in hunting.
But this is too good to pass.
Click image to enlarge (and go to Rox Populi to add your caption).
“For all the good things it has brought our society, the Web has also fostered ideological hermits, who only talk to folks who believe exactly what they do. This creates an echo chamber that only further convinces people that they are right, and everyone else is not only wrong, but an idiot or worse. So when an incident like this one arises, it’s not enough to point out an error; they must prove that the error had nefarious origins. In some places on the Web, everything happens on a grassy knoll.”
Jim Brady, executive editor of washingtonpost.com.
(Brady’s column is in play around the internets today, but thanks to John Fleck for highlighting this paragraph for me.)
An Australian tourist has been charged with assault after telling a Texas woman to stop talking on her mobile phone at the movies.
Pauline Clayton was enjoying a matinee screening of Brokeback Mountain in a Texas cinema when her day suddenly turned ugly.
The former Sunshine Coast councillor said about halfway through the movie, a mobile phone started ringing nearby, a woman answered it and started talking.
“I put one finger up to my mouth to shoosh her,” Ms Clayton said.
“She ignored me – I then leaned across and touched her with three or four fingers on the top of her arm.”
When the “very large” woman failed to end her call, Ms Clayton again touched her on the shoulder and that was when the woman exploded.
Ms Clayton said the woman stood up over her, started shouting expletives at her and then stormed out of the cinema, in the town of Webster, just outside Houston.
A short time later two Texas police officers walked into the cinema and escorted Ms Clayton out.
Both women were charged. Read more.
Ski jumping — in its pure form and paired with cross-country skiing in the Nordic combined — is the only Winter Olympic event in which women do not compete. There just aren’t that many at the top level. Maybe it’s because they have the good sense not to zoom down a ramp up to 70 mph, fly the length of a football field without wings, then land and come to a stop without brakes.
…Ski jumping isn’t just a male thing. It’s an oddball male thing. You have to be a little bit different to get into this sport, which explains why among the competitors gathered at these Games you’ll find a Slovenian who owns a two-foot boa constrictor (Rok Benkovic), an Italian who kept his ski-jumping activities a secret from his parents until they read about it in the newspaper (Alessio Bolognani) and an Austrian soldier whose motto is “Only dead fish swim with the current” (Martin Koch).
J.D. Adande in the Los Angeles Times
Best of times: Winter Olympics in High Definition.
Worst of times: Dick Button still commenting.
“We can’t think of a president who has gone to the American people more often than George W. Bush has to ask them to forget about things like democracy, judicial process and the balance of powers — and just trust him. We also can’t think of a president who has deserved that trust less.”
First paragraph of an editorial in the Sunday New York Times
Worth reading at least once a year:
The Address at Gettysburg (November 19, 1863):
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, upon this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived, and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met here on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of it as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But in a larger sense we can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled, here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they have, thus far, so nobly carried on. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation shall have a new birth of freedom; and that this government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
And, from his Second Inaugural Address (March 4, 1865):
Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. “Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh.” If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said “the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.”
With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.
… of Bill Russell. He’s 72 today. Back-to-back NCAA championships at the University of San Francisco, 1955-1956 — 55 consecutive wins. Eleven NBA championships with the Celtics in 13 years, 1957-1969 — Russell was the only player there for all 11. Simply the greatest winner in basketball history. (And the best laugh.)
… of author Judy Blume. She’s 68.
… of Ray Manzarek. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee is 67.
The Doors formed in the summer of 1965 around Morrison and Manzarek, who’d met at UCLA’s film school. A year later the group signed with Elektra Records, recording six landmark studio LPs and a live album for the label. They achieved popular success and critical acclaim for their 1967 debut, The Doors (which included their eleven-minute epic “The End” and “Light My Fire,” a Number One hit at the height of the Summer of Love), and all the other albums that followed.
(Rock and Roll Hall of Fame)
… of actress Maud Adams. Octopussy is 61.
… of actress Christina Ricci. Wednesday Addams is 26.
Lorne Greene (aka Ben Cartwright) was born on this date in 1915.
Omar Bradley, the G.I General, was born on this date in 1893.
And it’s the birthday of artist Thomas Moran, born on this date in 1837. The National Gallery of Art has an outstanding online exhibit on Moran. Click to see a replica of his classic painting Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone.
… were born on this date in 1809.
February 12, 1809, was a particularly promising day in the evolution of the human species.
George Gershwin’s phenomenal blending of jazz and classical music, premiered at Aeolian Hall, in New York, on this date 82 years ago. Gershwin wrote it in three weeks, reportedly improvising some of the piano parts during the premiere.
You can hear an acoustical recording by the Paul Whiteman Orchestra made on June 10, 1924, by clicking here [RealPlayer]. That’s the composer, Mr. Gershwin, at the piano.
Rhapsody in Blue was one of NPR’s 100 most important American musical works of the 20th century. You can listen to the NPR report here [RealPlayer].
Lun Lun and Yang Yang have needs. They require an expensive all-vegetarian diet — 84 pounds a day, each. They are attended by a four-person entourage, and both crave privacy. Would-be divas could take notes.
But the real sticker shock comes from the annual fees that Zoo Atlanta and three other American zoos must pay the Chinese government, $2 million a year, essentially to rent a pair of pandas.
The financial headache caused by the costly loan obligations has driven Dennis W. Kelly, chief executive of Zoo Atlanta, to join with the directors of the three other United States zoos — in Washington, San Diego and Memphis — that exhibit pandas to negotiate some budgetary breathing room. If no agreement with China can be made, Mr. Kelly said, the zoos may have to return their star attractions.
“If we can’t renegotiate, they absolutely will go back,” Mr. Kelly said. “Unless there are significant renegotiations, you’ll see far fewer pandas in the United States at the end of this current agreement.”
San Diego’s contract with China is the first to expire, in 2008. The last contract, in Memphis, ends in 2013.
Albuquerque Mayor Martin Chavez six months ago, in his 2005 State of the City Address:
They can look at the bio park, it’s incredible. They can see animals from all over the world, and I can tell you this evening, we are going to have pandas next year at the Albuquerque zoo. And I think we should have them just because its great to have Albuquerque be part of a world breeding program for one of the most marvelous species ever thought of by our Creator. But, it will also attract investment. Everyone, that maybe in the past went to Santa Fe, Taos and we were just the way to get there, will stop and see the pandas.
Sounds like Albuquerque might be able to get a sub-let set of Panda’s from Atlanta or Memphis.
That’s not cleavage — that’s a cutting board.
We consider this a high alert situation that needs to be monitored and, as quickly as possible, repaired. Somebody please make her some fried chicken, or take her to Jack In The Box for some meat and cheese between slices of butter-soaked sourdough. Britney? Where are you, dear? You’re needed. Sheryl can hold Sean Preston on her lap (if she has the strength) while you take her through the drive-thru.
Go see the photo.
… was established on this date in 1895.
Located 50 miles northwest of Baltimore, the small town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania was the site of the largest battle ever waged during the American Civil War. Fought in the first three days of July 1863, the Battle of Gettysburg resulted in a hallmark victory for the Union “Army of the Potomac” and successfully ended the second invasion of the North by General Robert E. Lee’s “Army of Northern Virginia”. Historians have referred to the battle as a major turning point in the war, the “High Water Mark of the Confederacy”. It was also the bloodiest single battle of the war, resulting in over 51,000 soldiers killed, wounded, captured or missing.
As Jay Leno said, “These are the greatest athletes on ice…not counting Ted Williams.”
On this date in 1803 Marbury v. Madison was argued before the Supreme Court.
On this date in 1856 Dred Scott v. Sandford was argued before the Supreme Court.
