Uncommon Commentary #123

It used to be that the only fems who wore bikinis, miniskirts, &c. were those who knew that they had something to flaunt; now, even ugly ones dress that way.  People haven't merely lost their modesty; they've lost their knowledge of the concept.

Uncommon Commentary #122

Former USDA official Shirley Sherrod (who deserved to be ousted not for alleged racism but for her left-wing political actions) is indignant not at those who unfairly discharged her but at Andrew Breitbart, who made that infamous video—evidently sent to him by someone else, who had edited it—available online; she has accused him of being "willing to destroy me ... in order to try to destroy the NAACP."  How does she know that he was "willing to destroy" her?  Breitbart has said that "this is not about Shirley Sherrod" and that (to quote a Fox News story) he "posted the clip to show that racism exists at the NAACP, since members in the audience laughed as she told the story"; this explanation is quite credible. (Even the person who sent Breitbart the video clip is not necessarily guilty of malice; if he sought to make the same point about the NAACP that Breitbart did, he would not have needed to exhibit the whole video—if that would even be feasible—but only the part in which the NAACP members demonstrated amusement at Sherrod's relating of how she denied the White farmer as much help as she could have given him.)  Sherrod is treating Breitbart precisely as the Obombast Administration treated her in sacrificing her without hearing her side of the story.

Uncommon Commentary #121

I don't know how the story got started that it's nearly impossible to subdue Afghanistan.  The Afghans have actually been defeated by just about everyone who conquered in that part of the world: Persians, Greeks and Macedonians, Turks, Arabs, Mongols, British—multiple times by some of these.

Uncommon Commentary #120: Slick Words for a Sick Byrd

In his eulogy of Democratic Sen. Robert Byrd, Bill Clinton said that "He once had a fleeting association with [the] Ku Klux Klan, and what does that mean?  I [sic] tell you what it means.  He was a country boy from [the] hills and hollows of West Virginia.  He was trying to get elected.  And maybe he did something he shouldn't have done and he spent the rest of his life making it up."  Presumably this Rhodes scholar meant not "making it up" but "making up for it," but let me begin my assessment of the Failed President's funeral oration. (I refer to the words of Clinton; our current Failed President also said something ridiculously disingenuous about Byrd, replete with cloying pseudo-patriotism, but his remarks are outside the scope of this uncommon commentary.)

1.            What Clinton calls a "fleeting association" with the KKK began in the early 1940's, when Byrd founded a chapter of that organization by recruiting 150 new members, who (unanimously) made him their "Exalted Cyclops" or leader of said chapter; the title seems accidentally appropriate for so monstrous a man who became so powerful a member of the US Senate.  Byrd would later say that he ended his membership "after about a year," but as late as 1946 or 1947 he wrote to a Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan that "The Klan is needed today as never before, and I am anxious to see its rebirth here in West Virginia and in every state [sic] in the nation [sic]."

2.            What does Dirty Byrd's having been a country boy, and his "trying to get elected," have to do with his having been a Klansman?  Was Clinton slandering rural West Virginians, by saying that Byrd's environs made him a bigot? Or that racism was so pervasive in the people's hearts and in public debate that he had to pretend to be one in order to get their votes?  There's something wrong with this alibi, anyway: When Byrd joined the Ku Klux Klan, he was under 25 years of age, and thus wasn't even old enough to stand for public office.  Indeed, Byrd said that he never considered a future in politics until a KKK official told him that he had a talent for leadership, and that this happened at age 23 or 24, hence, in 1940 or 1941.  Furthermore, in 1952, when he began his career of corruption by campaigning successfully for a seat in the US House of Representatives, he told the electorate that his participation in the KKK was a thing of the past.

3.            What did Clinton mean, "maybe" (Byrd "did something he shouldn't have done")?

4.            How did Byrd make up for the wrong that he had done: by becoming the congressional "King of Pork?"

It seems to me that it wasn't Byrd but Clinton who was "making it up," that is to say, fabricating offensive nonsense to disguise the reality of the late Senator's failed life.

Uncommon Commentary #119

Emperor Nerobama really is unbelievable.  Now, we learn from NASA Administrator Bolden, in statements confirmed by the Oval Office, that his boss wants the agency to do three things: "re-inspire children to want to get into science and math," "expand our international [sic] relationships," and "engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good [sic] about their historic contribution to science ... and math and engineering."  Doesn't "explore space" belong on this list?  Planetary scientist and former astronaut Tom Jones has written of the NASA:

Its shuttle program will end early next year, and the space agency has no clear, approved plan to build the shuttle’s successor….  Due to inattention and lack of funding by our policy-makers, American [sic] astronauts next year will be forced to reach the Station via Russian rockets, at least through 2015….  Once the shuttle retires, [the] NASA doesn’t know when U.S. rockets will again launch astronauts from Cape Canaveral, or whether those rockets will be privately run, or government-owned, like the shuttle….  Even less certain are the means for [the] NASA to reach deep space, … and when American [sic] explorers might be ready for such a journey.

As you know if you read The Heavens That Interest Me Number Only Seven, I consider penetration of the cosmos to be largely a waste; if we're even going to have a NASA, though, it ought to serve the purpose for which it was originally intended.

Uncommon Commentary #118

I wonder whether Christopher Hitchens, author of an infamous atheist book, realizes that his first name is religious (meaning "messiah-bearer").