May 3, 2007
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Web Today, Barbaro,Marlon Brando,Mayweather, De La Hoya,Viacom, Google
- Google Viacom Suit
Google Calls Viacom Suit on YouTube Unfounded
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., April 30 — Responding to Viacom‘s $1 billion copyright infringement suit over video clips on YouTube, Google said Monday that it would not back off, declaring that the law was on its side.
“We are not going to let this lawsuit distract us,” Michael Kwun, managing counsel for litigation at Google, told reporters.
In its response to the lawsuit, filed Monday in Federal District Court in Manhattan, Google said that Viacom’s claims were unfounded and asked for a judgment dismissing the complaint.
In March, Viacom, the parent company of MTV, Comedy Central and Nickelodeon, sued Google and YouTube, the video sharing site it acquired last year, saying they were deliberately building a business on a library of copyrighted video clips without permission. Earlier this year, Viacom had asked YouTube to take down 100,000 clips that it said infringed on its copyrights.
Google’s court filing gives few new details of its legal thinking, which relies heavily on the so-called “safe harbor” provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, enacted in 1998. Those provisions generally hold that Web sites’ owners are not liable for copyright material uploaded by others to their site as long as they promptly remove the material when asked to do so by the copyright owner.
The 1998 law “balances the rights of copyright holders and the need to protect the Internet as an important new form of communication,” Google said in its filing. “By seeking to make carriers and hosting providers liable for Internet communications, Viacom’s complaint threatens the way hundreds of millions of people legitimately exchange information, news, entertainment, and political and artistic expression.”
Viacom said Google’s response misses the mark. “This response ignores the most important fact of the suit, which is that YouTube does not qualify for safe harbor protection under the D.M.C.A.,” Viacom said. “It is obvious that YouTube has knowledge of infringing material on their site, and they are profiting from it.”
Mr. Kwun, the Google lawyer, said there had been no talks between Google and Viacom to discuss a settlement. “We feel pretty confident about the case and are ready to take it to court,” he added.
In the suit, Viacom had complained that it was unfairly forced to devote significant resources to police YouTube. “Every day we have to scour the entirety of what is available on YouTube, so we have to look for our stuff,” Philippe P. Dauman, Viacom’s chief executive, said in an interview earlier this year.
In recent weeks, Google’s chief executive, Eric E. Schmidt, has said that the company will soon unveil new tools that will make it easier for copyright owners to spot their content on YouTube. Mr. Schmidt had said that those tools, to be called Claim Your Content, will make Viacom’s complaint moot.
But Mr. Kwun said on Monday that Google was not compelled by law to develop those tools or to make them available to content owners.
The first case management conference, at which the judge may set an initial timeline for the trial, is scheduled for July 27, Mr. Kwun said.
Google has asked for a jury trial.
The cable TV provider, the Comcast Corporation, and the Internet media company Yahoo said yesterday that they had agreed to a multi-year partnership for Yahoo to supply Web advertising to Comcast.
The deal covers online display and video advertising to be featured on the site Comcast.net, which has 15 million monthly visitors, the companies said.
The deal is the latest in a string that Yahoo has signed to supply media players with online advertising services. Yahoo wants to show that its own upgraded Web search advertising system, dubbed Panama, is gaining momentum against Google, the pay-per-click Web ad leader.
- De La Hoya and Mayweather
Brian Jones/Las Vegas News BureauOscar De La Hoya, left, and Floyd Mayweather Jr. Wednesday at their news conference in Las Vegas
All About Money for De La Hoya and Mayweather
LAS VEGAS, May 2 — Floyd Mayweather Jr. stood in a ring recently but rather than flicking punches, he was flinging cash at the HBO camera that has followed him over the past few weeks for the four-part TV series that concludes Thursday night, “24/7: De La Hoya-Mayweather.”
“My name is Floyd, my name is Floyd,” he sang, releasing the bills in a tempo that matched his silly doggerel. “My name is Money. Mayweather.”
If every major fight is about money, then Saturday night’s World Boxing Council Mayweather-Oscar De La Hoya junior middleweight title bout is even more so. The expressed goal is to shatter the record of 1.99 million pay-per-view buys, set in 1997 in the second Evander Holyfield-Mike Tyson fight, or the $112 million in revenue recorded in June 2002 for the Tyson-Lennox Lewis bout, which was bought by 1.97 million homes.
The bout has already broken the record in Nevada for live boxing gate receipts, selling out $19 million in tickets at the MGM Grand Arena in three hours. The promoter, De La Hoya’s Golden Boy Promotions, is looking to set a new financial standard for closed-circuit revenue and merchandise.
Richard Schaefer, the former Swiss banker who is Golden Boy’s chief executive, said that the sponsors — including Cazadores tequila, the lead sponsor, Rock Star energy drinks and the Subway sandwich chain — are spending more than $50 million on in-store promotion, advertising, billboards and pay-per-view rebates to use the bout to sell their products.
Tecate, a Mexican brewer, has produced one million 24-ounce cans emblazoned with the fight’s logo to sell in 7-Elevens and Hispanic groceries.
“What sponsors are paying us for the sponsorship” — which Schaefer estimated at only about $1 million in cash fees — “is insignificant compared with what they’re doing, which is much more valuable,” he said.
Eduardo Casas, the Tecate brand director, said that the popularity of boxing among Hispanics, and the renown of De La Hoya, a Mexican-American, made the bout essential to its marketing.
“We feel boxing is a place where Tecate can project its image as a bold, authentic Mexican brand,” he said. “And Oscar is the pride and joy of the Hispanic community.”
De La Hoya is also the most marketable Hispanic athlete, according to the Davie-Brown Index, a measure of appeal, influence and trust used by advertisers. He ranks well above Alex Rodriguez and Nomar Garciaparra. But his power as a commercial endorser is rated much below that of entertainers like Jennifer Lopez, Antonio Banderas and Ricky Martin.
“In terms of his crossover appeal in boxing, there is nobody like him,” said Brian Herlihy, the division marketing manager for Cazadores, whose name will appear on the mat below the boxers, on the ropes and on a banner above the ring. “He is unique. He’s the Michael Jordan of boxing.”
The bout is being marketed on YouTube and MySpace, avenues that did not exist in the past for greater fights than De La Hoya-Mayweather is being hyped as. De La Hoya, rarely humorous, is also featured in a video on Will Ferrell’s Web site, funnyordie.com (that was brokered by De La Hoya’s agent at the Creative Artists Agency), in which he vows to taunt Mayweather after beating him. “I’m going to sign you up to a Hillary Duff fan club,” De La Hoya promises. “Make you president.”
The fight is a matchup of two very different pugilistic brands, seemingly a generation apart. De La Hoya, 34, portrays himself as the smooth boxer-turned-businessman and devoted family man (“24/7″ has numerous scenes of his nuzzling his toddler son) — a square, in fact, at least when measured against the outrageousness of Mayweather.
Mayweather, 30, has willingly and gleefully cast himself as the villain; he is a profane and funny man, a big-time casino gambler and a friend of the rapper 50 Cent. He said he made the fight happen by complimenting De La Hoya during the talks, which has allowed him to insult him as a quitter, and worse, ever since.
As “24/7″ has underscored, Mayweather’s father, Floyd Sr., and his uncle, Roger, who trains him, are fascinating characters, much like Ozzy Osbourne‘s wife and children were in his, as viewed in the aged rocker’s reality series. Floyd Sr. developed his son as a boxer, but Roger trains him. Floyd Sr., who used to train De La Hoya, now plays a minor role in his son’s career. The elder Mayweathers were also boxers, with Roger a world champion.
“I’ve been through a lot in my life,” Floyd Jr. said Wednesday at a news conference. “My father was in jail, wasn’t nobody there for me then. My mother was on drugs, wasn’t nobody there for me then.”
With the ultimate goal of all the marketing being outsize pay-per-view success, each man arrives at the bout with different levels of success in that realm. De La Hoya’s 17 pay-per-view events — including 1.4 million for his loss to Felix Trinidad in 1999, the most ever for a nonheavyweight bout — have grossed $492 million. Mayweather’s peak pay-per-view performance, when he beat Zab Judah in a 12-round decision last year, was 375,000.
“If I had the right promotion behind me from the beginning,” Mayweather said Wednesday, “I’d be on a certain plateau.”
The hyperbole over the bout has inspired those involved with it to liken it to the Super Bowl or the opening day of a blockbuster film, and to label it the greatest fight ever before the bell has been rung. It is, to be sure, the type of matchup that can in the short-term awaken interest in a sport that is perpetually in sick bay, or sometimes, on its death bed.
The two boxers appear this week on the cover of Sports Illustrated, and Mayweather is the sole image on the cover of ESPN the Magazine — a rare media play for boxing.
Schaefer believes that the fight can revive boxing, but he has a vested interest in saying so. The boxers believe the fight will be huge but right now, the only guaranteed enormity is the size of their financial guarantees. De La Hoya’s will get at least $23.3 million and Mayweather’s at least $10 million.
“Boxing is a sport that will always have a cold,” said Seth Abraham, the former president of HBO Sports. “There is no single vitamin that will make it better. If this is a terrific fight in the ring, boxing will bask in a warmer glow, but that’s only until the next problem, the next crisis.”
In what was surely wishful thinking about the impact of the bout, José Sulaiman, the president of the W.B.C., said that it will prove that “boxing is the cleanest of all sports.”
- Brando and His Golden Mumble
Turner NetworksMarlon Brando is the subject of a two-part documentary on TCM.
TV Review | ‘Brando’One More Tango for Brando and His Golden Mumble
“He was sort of a different type of a person,” ventures Betty Gossell, who went to high school with Marlon Brando in Illinois. A different type of person. That may be the last word on Brando, who died in 2004.
No significantly more penetrating insight is offered into Brando’s character by Al Pacino, Robert Duvall, Johnny Depp, John Travolta and Jane Fonda in “Brando,” a two-part documentary about this big man that begins tonight on Turner Classic Movies. But their hymns to him are poignant and worth hearing.
As the documentary makes clear, hitting its points with style, Marlon Brando wasn’t like other movie stars. He wasn’t like other serious actors. He wasn’t like other rebels. He wasn’t like other ladies’ men. He was different.
“He drummed on everything too,” says Janet Aemisegger, a white-haired woman who said she used to sit in front of Brando in algebra class.
Hmm. The image piques interest. Brando was one of those chronically drumming kids. What do you know? In a 1955 interview with Ed Sullivan, young Brando in suit and skinny tie talks of his love of rhythm, recalling the pulsation of the donkey engine for the water pump on his family’s farm. With a half-smile, he even breaks into a jazzy whispery impression of the engine. Fwuhhh-fwuh-fwuh-fwuh-fwuh.
Curse that Brando. At that fwuhhh he gets you all over again, from the grave this time, devilish and freakish and heartbreaking, even when we know how it ends: with Brando in Colonel Kurtz mode, obese, portentous, self-infatuated, preening. That too seems gorgeous, come to think of it.
Brando fans may watch this program, as we watch the Brando movies or read the Brando books, in hopes of deciding the question of whether the big man was mostly a genius or mostly a fat fool. A decisive clue is not here.
As image after beautiful image appears, the clearest conclusion is that we are the fools, for falling for him, like Stella, like that sulky Frenchwoman in “Last Tango in Paris.” Or, for that matter, like Tarita Teriipaia, Brando’s former wife, who published a memoir in 2004 called, “Marlon, My Love, My Suffering.”
So first comes review. Brando’s father was mean, and his mother was drunk. Ms. Fonda, in a garish cowboy hat that suggests her interview was taped during her fad years, complicates the picture of Brando’s boozing mother somewhat by reminding viewers that Dorothy Brando gave her father, Henry Fonda, his start as an actor. It seems she recruited him for a community play in Omaha.
Brando’s father was a traveling salesman with girlfriends. He was cruel at home, but seldom there. Brando was sent to military school, where he acted, played football and hurt his knee. The injury exempted him from the World War II draft, and he moved to New York. At this cue “Brando” cuts to stock film of city girls in spackled makeup batting eyes at the camera. This is what Brando is believed to have found in Times Square.
As the film chronicles Brando’s career, fellow actors give head-shaking descriptions of his so-called mumbly-stumbly acting style. Broadway actors of the ’40s were still accustomed to crisp presentationalism, while Brando, freshly anointed by the Method grande dame Stella Adler, would talk into his sweater, murmur and upstage himself, seeming to subvert the very purpose of performance.
Later accounts of his hackwork (“Candy,” anyone?), when he was acting to support his life in Tahiti or his forays into politics, are entertaining. Supremely bratty about his talents and lazy about memorizing dialogue, he only supplied directors with glimpses of what they were paying for.
And then came “The Godfather,” and the part for which Mr. Pacino convincingly says he first proposed Brando, whose career was on the skids by then. James Caan and Robert Duvall reminisce like schoolboys about their hero. Then came “Last Tango,” and the butter. Brando was back, and, as Martin Scorsese says, he was also done.
Everyone on film here, including Laurence Olivier and Quincy Jones, including the people Brando relentlessly hazed and wrong-footed, indulges in Brando worship. (A surprising moment: Olivier’s undated insistence that Brando is a better actor than he is.)
This film could use a skeptic, though it’s eventually to be commended for refraining from bashing Brando too hard for his obvious personal failings. In the end there’s something direct, simple and thorough about “Brando.” With the leading man gone, the film seems to come with remarkably little baggage and few strings. The same probably cannot be said about any production involving Brando when he lived.
BRANDO
TCM, tonight and tomorrow night, at 8, Eastern and Pacific times; 7, Central time.
Written by Mimi Freedman; Ms. Freedman and Joanne Rubino, producers; Bryan Richert, editor; music composed by Andrea Morricone; Tom Brown, executive producer for Turner Classic Movies; Melissa Roller, supervising producer for TCM; David Thomson, consultant; Quincy Jones, music consultant; Darroch Greer, associate producer; Randy Krehbiel, director of photography; Bill Butler, lighting consultant. Produced by Leslie Greif.
Copyright 2007 The New York Times CompanyBarbaro’s Doctor Looks Back, and Moves On
Sabina Louise Pierce/University of Pennsylvania, via Associated PressDr. Dean W. Richardson with Barbaro at University of Pennsylvania’s New Bolton Center in July 2006.
Year Later, Barbaro’s Doctor Looks Back, and Moves On
KENNETT SQUARE, Pa., May 1 — A 3-year-old thoroughbred stood in the operating room Tuesday as Dr. Dean W. Richardson removed a bone chip from its lower left front leg. A nurse cradled the horse’s head and the surgical team members wore kneepads, as if laying carpet, as they knelt on the hard floor. The extricated bone fragment was the size of a fingernail clipping. In 15 minutes, the arthroscopic procedure was done.
“A typical, very minor racing injury,” Richardson said as he left the operating room here at the University of Pennsylvania‘s George D. Widener Hospital for Large Animals. “This horse will be back training in six to eight weeks.”
The surgery was “extremely routine,” Richardson said. “The complete other end of the spectrum from Barbaro.”
It has been nearly a year since Richardson watched the Preakness on a six-inch television while performing veterinary surgery near West Palm Beach, Fla., and saw Barbaro take a dreadful, shattering misstep early in the race. In an interview Tuesday, Richardson reflected on his treatment of the colt here at the New Bolton Center; on Barbaro’s greatness and spirit; and on the public outpouring for the 2006 Kentucky Derby winner, who was euthanized in January after a remarkable attempt to save his life.
“From a purely surgical perspective, it was extremely unsatisfying because he didn’t make it,” Richardson, 53, said of Barbaro. “Professionally, I think we did the best we could. I’m not at all embarrassed by anything that was done. Personally, I’m very sad that we didn’t save him. As a horseman, as someone who really wanted to save the horse, it’s extremely dissatisfying.”
On the other hand, he added: “Do I think we ended up doing some good things for the profession and the industry? Yes. The increased awareness of the issues of racetrack safety. People adopting horses. Even the awareness of a horse as an animal was increased. I think people became aware of the fact that sophisticated surgery can be done on horses. A lot of people knew that already; some didn’t.”
On Saturday, Richardson said, he will make every effort to watch the Kentucky Derby. He and his wife, Laura, own three thoroughbreds. Once, they participated in three-day equestrian events. Now, he said, they mostly ride for pleasure in the verdant, rolling countryside about 45 minutes southwest of Philadelphia.
“The whole reason I became a vet is because I love horses,” said Richardson, the son of a Navy captain who was a physician.
Last May 21, when Richardson flew back here from Florida to operate on Barbaro, he already knew from e-mailed radiographs that the colt’s right hind leg had splintered. The long pastern bone, also called the proximal phalanx and located between the fetlock and hoof, had broken into 20 pieces as if “someone put a bomb in it.” When he began surgery, Richardson was essentially confronted with a skeletal jigsaw puzzle.
“When you have a horse with bones in that many pieces, it’s kind of intimidating when you first start,” said Richardson, who can best be described as self-assured. “It doesn’t look like anything’s going to go back together.”
During five hours of surgery, 27 pins and a stainless steel plate were inserted to stabilize Barbaro’s right hind leg. Last July, veterinarians replaced the plate and some of the screws to treat an infection. The colt also developed laminitis in his left rear hoof, and eventually in both front feet. It is a painful, often fatal condition frequently caused by uneven weight distribution among a horse’s legs.
Any worthy surgeon regularly looks back and asks whether he could have done something differently at some juncture, Richardson said.
“Even if you don’t know for sure it would have made a difference, you better think about it, so next time you know where the potential pitfalls were,” Richardson said.
If confronted with a similarly complicated fracture, he said, he might do the original surgery in the pastern region slightly differently. This might involve extending the stainless steel plate farther in bracing the proximal phalanx to the middle phalanx bone, Richardson said.
Even so, he added, “I honestly don’t know if that would have made a difference,” and it could have exposed Barbaro to a greater chance of infection.
“No matter how you do it, there’s going to be a downside to the other way of doing it,” Richardson said.
While crates of letters arrived in support of Barbaro and the efforts to treat him, and the public response was positive by a margin of “a thousand to one,” Richardson said, he did receive some hate mail accusing him of “killing the great Barbaro.”
“The outpouring from nice people has been extraordinary,” he said. “Not everyone is totally rational. You find that out being in the public eye.” He added, “I’m pretty sure I can live with it.”
Speaking of Richardson in an interview last week, Barbaro’s trainer, Michael Matz, said, “There’s things I would have changed.” He would not offer specifics, then retreated from the criticism, saying, “I do think he really tried the best of his ability to save that horse.”
Barbaro’s owners, Roy and Gretchen Jackson, paid tribute to Richardson in February by endowing a $3 million chair in his name at Penn’s School of Veterinary Medicine. The new faculty position will be dedicated to the study of equine disease.
About $1.3 million has also been donated to the Barbaro Fund at the New Bolton Center, and another $300,000 to a laminitis fund, Richardson said. While an anonymous donor seeded the Barbaro Fund, both funds have received many donations from the public in amounts of $5, $10 or $50, Richardson said.
Explaining his theory for such affection for Barbaro, he said: “Mine would simply be people recognizing greatness and that he was an untarnished hero. Here’s a heroic athlete, cut down in his prime, one of the best, and he’s completely unblemished. How could you ascribe any bad behavior or motives to Barbaro? And when you have a totally unblemished vessel, it can be filled with all kinds of emotions and ideals. All the good things they’d like to have in people, they could see in Barbaro.”
He was as remarkable a patient as he was an athlete, Richardson said. Some injured horses can be difficult in everything from being placed in a sling to having bandages changed, he said. “Barbaro always seemed to understand, for the most part, that we were trying to help him,” he said.
Some have used the word courage to describe Barbaro’s fight to stay alive. Some used dignity. Richardson prefers class, with its suggestions of personality and intelligence. Previously, he said, he had treated horses that seemed to give up. They stopped eating or became disinterested in life much earlier than Barbaro did. Barbaro was different. Until the end, when he became anxious and frustrated, he kept his ears up, ate vigorously, came when he was called.
“Great horses,” Richardson said. “They act like they belong.”
- Best of the Web Today – May 2, 2007
The Enemy of My Country Is My Friend
What did Speaker Nancy Pelosi accomplish with her visit to Syria last month? The Washington Times does some man-on-the-street reporting in Damascus:Many Damascus residents say her private visit with Mr. Assad and senior ministers shattered Washington’s attempt to isolate the regime.
“She was enormously popular here, a hero,” said one such resident, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “This is the best thing that has happened here, if it proves [Mr. Assad] was right not to give concessions.”
Along with recent visits by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and officials from the European Union, the resident added, Mrs. Pelosi’s trip “bolsters the regime with the Syrian people, and it shows that isolating Syria won’t work.” . . .
Mrs. Pelosi said she raised substantive issues with Syrian leaders, urging them to stop insurgents from entering Iraq, help win the release of Israeli soldiers thought to be held captive by Lebanese and Palestinian militias, and end Syria’s support for terrorist groups.
But nobody talks about that now.
Of course Syria is not a free country. Thus man-on-the-street interviews are a gauge not of genuine public opinion but of what Syrians feel constrained to say–that is to say, of the regime’s attitude. It appears Pelosi’s visit, by presenting an image of America as divided and irresolute, strengthened Syria’s determination to defy the U.S.–”not to make concessions,” as the unnamed Damascene put it.
Why would Pelosi do such a thing? Perhaps she’s merely naive. More likely, as the Hudson Institute’s Lee Smith argues in The Weekly Standard, “the Democrats are playing a dirty game in the Middle East, where, just like Arab regimes, they are using proxies to wage war–except their war is against the Bush administration”:
It’s hardly surprising that the Asad regime is trying to wait out a highly unfriendly White House and see what fate throws them next. But what has the Democrats so excited about a government that is helping to kill U.S. soldiers and Iraqi civilians, targeting American allies and interests in Israel, the PA, and Jordan, all while trying to reassert its presence in Lebanon?
“The Democrats were the loudest critics of Bush’s unilateralism,” says Tony Badran, a fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. “But with Syria, they seem eager to cross the consensus of allies like France, Saudi Arabia, and the U.N. Security Council who are all working to make Damascus pay the consequences for its meddling in Lebanon.” . . .
The one thing Damascus has going for it is that it is the ideal entry point to attack the Bush administration’s policies in the region.
Democrats seem to believe that by undermining the policies of a Republican president, they are making more likely the election of a Democratic one. Even if true, as Smith notes, by fomenting chaos in Iraq and emboldening America’s adversaries in Syria, the Democrats “may be making the job much harder for themselves should they get the chance to govern again someday.”
The Democratic approach thus is politically hazardous even if it proves politically successful. It is also morally hazardous, for political leaders owe a degree of loyalty to their country even when it is led by the opposing party. The old idea that politics ends at the water’s edge was useful in that it shielded both parties–and, more important, the country–from such hazards.
The Light Is Better Here
An Israeli report on the government’s failures during last year’s war with Hezbollah draws praise from the New York Times, which closes its editorial on the subject as follows:One major lesson of the Lebanon experience is that Israel cannot defeat its most dangerous enemies by brute force alone. Its security and survival require a more active diplomacy toward the Palestinians and Syria–and a willingness to take risks. More than ever, Israel needs a government and a leader strong enough to steer it wisely through the uncertain hazards of war and bold enough to test the equally uncertain possibilities for peace.
In reality, Israel has never relied on brute force alone; in just the past decade and a half, its leaders have shown “a willingness to take risks” from the Oslo accords to the unilateral pullout from Gaza–and those risks have not always turned out well for the Jewish state.
The Jerusalem Post reminds us of the sort of adversary Israel is up against:
Sheik Ahmad Bahr, acting Speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council, declared during a Friday sermon at a Sudan mosque that America and Israel will be annihilated and called upon Allah to kill Jews and Americans “to the very Last One.” Following are excerpts from the sermon that took place last month, courtesy of MEMRI. . . .
The Hamas spokesperson concluded with a prayer, saying: “Oh Allah, vanquish the Jews and their supporters. Oh Allah, count their numbers, and kill them all, down to the very last one. Oh Allah, show them a day of darkness. Oh Allah, who sent down His Book, the mover of the clouds, who defeated the enemies of the Prophet, defeat the Jews and the Americans, and bring us victory over them.”
Plainly it is Israel’s enemies that rely on “brute force alone.” So why do the Times and other liberal elites demand that Israel be more flexible and pacific? Perhaps in part because Israel, unlike its foes, is susceptible to moral suasion.
It reminds us of that joke about the guy looking for his lost keys. He knows he lost them somewhere else, but he’s looking here because “the light is better.” Just as he will never find his keys, Israel will never find peace if it follows the advice of the New York Times.
‘He’s Too Tall as It Is!’
“Calls for Olmert to Resign Growing”–headline, Associated Press, May 2Deep Throat
The Politico reports on a South Carolina appearance by Sen. Joe Biden:Biden is asked what he’ll do when Bush, as is expected, vetoes the Iraq funding bill.
First, he talks about his son, and the equipment soldiers need–”The idea that we’re not building new Humvees with the V-shaped things is just crap. Kids are dying that don’t have to die.”
And: “Second thing is, we’re going to shove it down his throat.”
Remember, this is the Democratic presidential candidate who’s supposed to be serious about foreign policy. Then again, maybe we shouldn’t make too much of “shove it down his throat,” which seems to be a standard Biden trope. An article from the July 2006 issue of The American Spectator includes this quote:
“The next Republican that tells me I’m not religious I’m going to shove my rosary beads down their throat,” railed Sen. Joe Biden (D-DE) while stumping for Democrats in Kentucky.
If Biden gets the nomination, maybe he can pick Chuck Schumer as his running mate. A dagger in the throat!
Homer Nods
Yes, of course, reader Sean Magee, whose email about a possible Disney theme park in Iraq we featured yesterday, is a lieutenant commander in the Navy, not a lieutenant colonel. Just a typo (since corrected), sorry.Variety, meanwhile, reports that a new theme park actually is under way in the Middle East, albeit not in Iraq;
Execs from the United Arab Emirates-based Tatweer have launched the $2 billion Universal City Dubailand in partnership with Universal Parks & Resorts.
The 505-acre development will include a 149-acre Universal theme park along with more than 4,000 hotel rooms, 100 restaurants and a range of retail outlets.
The theme park will be Universal’s fourth, after existing parks in Los Angeles, Orlando and Tokyo. Rides will center on the likes of “Jurassic Park” and “King Kong,” with Steven Spielberg acting as creative consultant. Park is due to open in 2010. Majority of park will be indoors, given Dubai’s soaring temperatures.
A reader who asks not to be identified sends the following comment and photo:
I can shed some light on Disney’s desire to invade Iraq. It was either to rescue one of Mickey’s cousins who was being held in an amusement park in Basra or to protect Disney’s intellectual property.
Attached is a photograph of a park in Basra, Iraq taken during my government-funded vacation to the Middle East in 2003. I never had anyone try to translate the text below “Mickey.”
Something tells us Dubailand will be a lot snazzier.
Gimme Shelter
How many homeless shelters does your town have that are “intended specifically for transgender youth”? If you live outside New York, the answer almost certainly is a big goose egg. Here in the Big Apple, on the other hand, one of the city’s leading newspapers regards it as newsworthy that there is only one.In case you’re wondering what “transgender” means, here is what we took away from the story: The residents of this shelter are young men who go to extraordinary lengths to appear as if they were women. They wear dresses, high heels and feminine makeup; they carry purses; they even “take hormones–often bought illegally on the street–to develop breasts and hips and to deter masculine traits like Adam’s apples and whiskers.” Apparently, though, unlike “transsexuals,” they do not go so far as to have surgery to make their bodies more womanlike.
The residents of this shelter, the Times informs us nonjudgmentally, work as prostitutes “on the ‘tranny stroll’ near Roosevelt Avenue in Jackson Heights [a neighborhood of Queens], where men go for quick sex with men who look like women.”
If you’ve been reading the New York Times as long as we have, you’ll find none of this shocking. What did raise our eyebrows a bit, though, is the attitude of the clergyman who runs the shelter, an Episcopal priest named Louis Braxton:
Father Braxton strongly disapproves of the prostitution, but he says kicking residents out for peddling their bodies would only make things worse. So as they leave the shelter dressed in skimpy outfits, he reminds them that the shelter door is locked from 2 a.m. until sunrise and leaves them with his standard parting wish: “I hope you get arrested.”
“That’s the only thing that stops them–at least for a few days,” he said. “These kids have been kicked out of the other gay youth shelters in the city by breaking rules and curfews. We’re their last hope. I can’t throw them back on the street.”
Father Braxton does have rules. No sex with customers within five blocks of the shelter. Sex with shelter workers is forbidden, and sex with other residents is strongly discouraged.
Father Braxton’s compassion for his charges is certainly admirable, but something seems awry here. Aren’t Christians supposed to “love the sinner but hate the sin”? If “strong disapproval” is the all he can muster for the sin, is he really doing the sinners a service?
What Would We Do Without Experts?
“Coffee Can Be Good for You, Experts Say”–headline, Reuters, May 1Higher Than 100%?
“Left-Handed Women Face Higher Risk of Death”–headline, Daily Telegraph (London), May 2Too Many Doughnuts
“Suit: Cop Was Not Fit”–headline, Chicago Sun-Times, May 1‘This Stream Ain’t Big Enough for the Both of Us, Beaver’
“Otter Moves Toward Water Confrontation”–headline, Idaho Statesman (Boise), May 1‘But Noah, You Said You Were Only Bringing Two!’
“Bee Swarm Shuts Ark. Hospital’s ER”–headline, Associated Press, May 1News You Can Use
“Guilt-Ridden Turn to Internet to Confess”–headline, USA Today, April 30Bottom Stories of the Day
- “Danny Glover Refuses to Give Speech in Berkeley”–headline, San Jose Mercury News, May 1
- “Turner Pipe Not Replacing Workforce”–headline, Paris (Texas) News, April 30
- “Bush, Cheney Committed Impeachable Offenses, Say Liberal Authors”–headline, CNSNews.com, May 2
Craziest Left-Wing Town in America
If there were an award named after the headline in this item, which municipality would get it? San Francisco? Berkeley, Calif.? Amherst, Mass.? Someplace in Vermont? We’ve got a surprise nomination: New Paltz, N.Y.New Paltz is in Ulster County, across the Hudson from Poughkeepsie. It’s probably best known as the site of Arthur “Pinch” Sulzberger’s embarrassing commencement speech last year. But as far as we know, Pinch isn’t from around those parts. A Poughkeepsie Journal article on yesterday’s village election shows just how crazy-left the New Paltzers are.
New Paltz voters elected a new mayor, Terry Dungan, ousting the incumbent, Jason West. West got some attention in 2004 when he “married” a series of same-sex couples, even though such unions are a nullity under New York law. Yet it seems voters rejected West’s re-election bid because he wasn’t liberal enough:
“I was really gung-ho for West when he first ran,” Judy Swallow of New Paltz said. “The sadness with Jason is the fame, perhaps, got in the way of some of the issues.”
She voted for Dungan for a few reasons, namely his interests in ecology and sustainability. She said it might have been difficult for West to honor such issues in the face of a proposed 15 percent property tax cut.
“I didn’t like the tax cut,” she said. “I felt it was pandering to the voters.” . . .
“Jason has a little bit of a big ego,” said Swallow’s husband, Amos Sunshine.
He commended West for marrying same-sex couples in the village, and said it was “brave to venture in that direction.” He added that Dungan is a “pretty liberal guy,” and he doesn’t think he’d stand against the issue.
Also telling are the names of the political parties. Dungan, though a Democrat, ran on the Village Unity Party ticket. West ran as the nominee of the People’s Party. And there was a third, write-in candidate, Jonathan Cohen. His ticket: the Groovy Party.
(Carol Muller helps compile Best of the Web Today. Thanks to Mark Van Der Molen, Jared Silverman, Ed Lasky, Michael Segal, Michael Zukerman, Steve Karass, Jim Orheim, Marshall Sella, John Vecchione, Ethel Fenig, John Bade, Roger Jones, Bill Thielen, Kevin Burns, Matt Bridges, Dick Clark, Irwin Kraus, Michael Bice, Chuck Coffin, Geoffrey Gill, Seth Kanter, Howie Mirkin, John Relle, Steve Parks, Dave Skocik, Mary Jean Hrbacek, Robert Church, Storrs Warinner, Jim Berg, Bill West, Cameron Williams, Jacques Tucker, Jerry Shaw, Rol Herriges, Pat McWaters, Tom Spillman, Paul Weiss, Thomas McKee, Richard Presley, Robert Thorndike, Joseph Burns, Jeff Starck, Merv Benson, Bruce Goldman, Ray Hendel, Bryan Fischer, C.A. Hicks, Jack Lewis, Chris Green, George Struve, Michelle Schiesser and Eric Wieder. If you have a tip, write us at opinionjournal@wsj.com, and please include the URL.)
URL for this article: http://www.opinionjournal.com/best/?id=110010017
Today on OpinionJournal:
- Review & Outlook: Immigration spring: No deal is better than one that ignores labor realities.
- Michael Young: America should press Damascus to let go of Lebanon.
- Harvey Mansfield (from Claremont Review of Books): Under some circumstances, the rule of law must yield to the need for energy.
Copyright © 2007 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. - “Danny Glover Refuses to Give Speech in Berkeley”–headline, San Jose Mercury News, May 1
