Happy Birthday…

to three TV favorites. Abe Vigoda (Fish on Barney Miller) is 83. Steven Hill (Adam on Law and Order) is 82. Dominic Chianese (Uncle Junior on The Sopranos) is 73.

And Edward James Olmos is 57.

Afraid so

Josh Marshall on Bush and the marriage amendment:

One might suggest that the idea we should have in mind here is that old line about judging a man’s character and mettle by what he does when the seas get stormy rather than what he does when they’re calm. But I think the real metaphor to keep in mind is how dangerous and unpredictable an animal becomes when he’s cornered.

Can you tell me how to get
To Sesame Street

Belle Waring at Crooked Timber posted this nice piece about Sesame Street.

When I was a kid, I really liked Sesame Street, and now that I have a little girl, I still like it. Timothy Burke, for one, finds it a bit too cloyingly pro-social (he complained of this in a comments thread that I am too lazy to find here). One of my favorite animated bits as a child was one in which three plainly dressed workmen emerge from, clean, and retreat into a giant letter I, accompanied by the following song in a minor key: “We all live in a capital I/in the middle of the desert, in the center of the sky/and all day long we polish on the I/to make it clean and shiny so it brightens up the sky.” Imagine my surprise when I read Ulysses at 17 (yes, I was trying too hard; don’t worry, I re-read it later) and found the following passage:

(He points to the south, then to the east. A cake of new, clean soap arises, diffusing light and perfume.)THE SOAP:
We’re a capital couple, Bloom and I;
He brightens the earth, I polish the sky

Those jokers at the Children’s Television Workshop. I have also always liked the look of it. Even when I lived in NYC in a terrible place between Amsterdam and Columbus on 109th — I recall holding the phone out the window for my brother to hear the small arms fire before I retreated into the tub — I was always tickled by the resemblance to Sesame Street. Only there were fewer muppets and more crack dealers.

Finally, they sometimes address the big issues. On a recent episode, Big Bird and Snuffleupagus were investigating whether various things (toasters, plants, small children) were alive or not. By the end, they had worked themselves around to some serious questions. Is the letter “A” alive? No. Is the Children’s Television Workshop alive? Indeterminate. Is the word “alive’ alive? No, because it doesn’t grow or change. Take that, Platonism!

Momma giraffe

NewMexiKen visited the Rio Grande Zoo Monday, a cool but not uncomfortable day (the rain and snow came in toward evening). With me were my daughter Emily and her daughter, my 16-month-old granddaughter, Kiley. The Zoo was quiet and nearly empty, seemingly as many caretakers as visitors.

We had already enjoyed the giraffes for a few minutes when a female came from the far side of the enclosure toward us. I commented to Emily that the giraffe was coming to see us.

Sure enough the giraffe came as close as she could, her head no more than five or six feet from our viewpoint. She seemed attracted to the baby, who was hungry about then and crying.

Kiley stopped crying when she saw the giraffe. We took some photos (alas with film and not yet available). The giraffe lost interest and wandered off.

Kiley also lost interest and resumed crying. Slowly, ambling as they do, but without hesitation, the giraffe, which by then had gone around a corner out of sight about 20 yards away, came back, if anything closer.

There was absolutely no doubt in our minds that the female giraffe was interested in the crying baby. I found myself talking to the giraffe, as one would to an intelligent house pet, reassuring her that the baby was fine. It was a conversation with considerable eye-to-eye contact.

The whole incident was extraordinary.

Paige Calls NEA a ‘Terrorist’ Group

From The Washington Post:

Education Secretary Roderick R. Paige yesterday told the nation’s governors that the largest teachers union in the United States is a “terrorist organization” — a remark that prompted a torrent of criticism and an apology by the end of the day.

Paige made the comment about the 2.7 million-member National Education Association in a private meeting at the White House with the National Governors Association, less than a week after he announced the administration was relaxing testing requirements under the No Child Left Behind law. The landmark education law has come under mounting opposition, and the NEA has been among its strongest detractors.

Breath taking bravado foils speed camera

QC received a very amusing although naughty e-mail from a spy at the Department of Transport this week. Our mate informs us that four youths from Canberra recently pulled off a trick of breath taking bravado to gain revenge on a mobile speed-camera van operating in the area.

Three of the group approached the van and distracted the operator’s attention by asking a series of questions about how the equipment worked and how many cars the operator would catch in a day. Meanwhile, the fourth musketeer sneaked to the front of the van and unscrewed its number plate.

“After bidding the van operator goodbye, the friends returned home, fixed the number plate to the car and drove through the camera’s radar at high speed – 17 times,” our transport spy writes.

“As a result, the automated billing system issued 17 speeding tickets to itself. Go Aussies!”

The son must refute father’s hateful rants

Mitch Albom on Hutton Gibson.

Every now and then some nut case says the Holocaust was faked. Usually, you dismiss him as pathetic.

Last week, however, a man named Hutton Gibson told a national radio host that the Holocaust never happened, that there were no concentration camps, only “work camps,” and that Jews basically made the whole thing up.

Hutton Gibson is Mel Gibson’s father.

So this nut case must be addressed.

Plague and pestilence

[J]ust like the hand-wringin’ pseudo-sanctimonious Christian Right predicted. Horrors bled into the streets, presidents lied so as to lead a nation into bloody violent unwinnable war, tens of thousands of Catholic priests groped and molested countless children over a 50-year period without the slightest punishment, the environment teetered on the brink due to government rollbacks as air quality and water quality and food sources were ravaged in the name of corporate profiteering, the economy crumbled…Oh wait. That was all *before* the gay marriage thing.

–Mark Morford, The Morning Fix

Who’s running against this guy?

Representative Tom Tancredo (R-CO) says Bush’s plan for illegal immigrants goes too far. According to a report in the Los Angeles Times, Tancredo told the California Republican Convention that he knew a gynecologist who surveyed patients and found it [Bush’s plan] “rated right below genital herpes.” Tancredo also said America had taken “rabid, overstated multiculturalism” too far.

It’s the birthday of the first blogger

Samuel Pepys was born in London on this date in 1633. Pepys kept a diary from 1659-1669, writing about the major events of the time, but also the day-to-details of his life.

Here’s the entry from Pepys’ Diary for February 22, 1660/1661.

All the morning at the office. At noon with my wife and Pall to my father’s to dinner, where Dr. Thos. Pepys and my coz Snow and Joyce Norton. After dinner came The. Turner, and so I home with her to her mother, good woman, whom I had not seen through my great neglect this half year, but she would not be angry with me. Here I staid all the afternoon talking of the King’s being married, which is now the town talk, but I believe false. In the evening Mrs. The. and Joyce took us all into the coach home, calling in Bishopsgate Street, thinking to have seen a new Harpsicon that she had a making there, but it was not done, and so we did not see it. Then to my home, where I made very much of her, and then she went home. Then my wife to Sir W. Batten’s, and there sat a while; he having yesterday sent my wife half-a-dozen pairs of gloves, and a pair of silk stockings and garters, for her Valentine’s gift. Then home and to bed.

Treaty of Amity, Settlement, and Limits Between the United States of America and His Catholic Majesty. 1819

The Adams Onis Treaty was concluded on this date in 1819.

His Catholic Majesty cedes to the United States, in full property and sovereignty, all the territories which belong to him, situated to the eastward of the Mississippi, known by the name of East and West Florida.

The boundary-line between the two countries, west of the Mississippi, shall begin on the Gulph of Mexico, at the mouth of the river Sabine, in the sea, continuing north, along the western bank of that river, to the 32d degree of latitude; thence, by a line due north, to the degree of latitude where it strikes the Rio Roxo of Nachitoches, or Red River; then following the course of the Rio Roxo westward, to the degree of longitude 100 west from London and 23 from Washington; then, crossing the said Red River, and running thence, by a line due north, to the river Arkansas; thence, following the course of the southern bank of the Arkansas, to its source, in latitude 42 north; and thence, by that parallel of latitude, to the South Sea.

The Avalon Project has the complete text of the Treaty.

Honorable discharge

TBogg points out that an honorable discharge from the National Guard isn’t necessarily a testimonial.

John Allen Muhammad, convicted last November for his participation in the D.C. sniper shootings, served in the Louisiana National Guard from 1978-1985, where he faced two summary courts-martial. In 1983, he was charged with striking an officer, stealing a tape measure, and going AWOL. Sentenced to seven days in the brig, he received an honorable discharge in 1985.

‘Significantly more Democrats and independents predict Democratic victory than did so in January.’

From The Pew Research Center:

Bush’s personal image, by contrast, is at the low point of his presidency. His overall favorability rating has tumbled from 72% last April, shortly after the fall of Baghdad, to 53% in the current survey. Moreover, when asked for a one-word description of Bush, equal percentages now give negative and positive responses, which marks a dramatic shift since last May when positive descriptions outnumbered negative ones by roughly two-to-one (52%-27%). The most frequently used negative word to describe Bush is “liar,” which did not come up in the May 2003 survey. The president’s job approval also stands at an all-time low. Just 48% approve of his performance as president, the first time in his presidency his rating has fallen below 50%.

George Washington’s birthday…

was celebrated on this date from 1752 through 1970. Before 1752 and the change to the Gregorian Calendar, Washington’s birthday was February 11. Beginning in 1971, Washington’s birthday has been celebrated on the third Monday in February.

Fraiser…

is 49 today. Kelsey Grammer, that is.

Celebrating, one hopes, at the Twist and Shout is Mary Chapin Carpenter. She’s 46 today.

Charlotte Church is 18. Hasn’t she been one of the PBS fund drive specials for about 20 years?

Erma Bombeck…

was born on this date in 1927. According to The Writer’s Almanac:

[Bombeck] became famous for her humor column called “At Wits End”, about the daily madness of being a housewife. She knew she wanted to be a journalist from the eighth grade, and she had a humor column in her high school newspaper. She got a job at the Dayton Journal-Herald writing obituaries and features for the women’s page, but when she married a sportswriter there, she chose to quit her job and stay home with the kids. She spent a decade as a fulltime mother, and then in 1964 she decided she had to start writing again or she would go crazy. She said, “I was thirty-seven, too old for a paper route, too young for social security, and too tired for an affair.”

She got a column at a small Ohio paper and wrote about the daily trials and tribulations of the average housewife. Within a few years, she was one of the most popular humor columnists in America.

NewMexiKen thought Bombeck funniest when she really was a a full-time mom. When she became rich and famous the humor often seemed more contrived and strained. But then I’d rather be rich and famous than funny, too.