Long enough to reach the ground

How can Mitt Romney recall childhood memories of Detroit’s Golden Jubilee? That event, a celebration of the 50th anniversary of the American automobile, took place June 1, 1946 — “fully nine months before Romney was born.”

David Barton offers one explanation. “Biblically,” the fraudulent non-historian says, “life begins before conception.”

This may also explain why Barton himself is able to “remember” things like what a devout, prayerful Christian Thomas Paine was.

Speaking of Romney, Buzzfeed speculates that his “trees are the right height” line may have been an elliptical Hemingway reference.

The literary reference it called to mind for me was more recent: Woody Allen’s Side Effects. Specifically, it reminded me of his one-act play The Query — an extended riff on a joke attributed to Abraham Lincoln in which the 16th president was asked “How long do you think a man’s legs should be?” and he replied, “Long enough to reach the ground.”

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Back in the 1990s I remember being puzzled by fundamentalists’ hatred of The Berenstain Bears. I heard several iterations of the same complaint — that these children’s books about talking bears were insufficiently patriarchal. Years later, via Jim Newell at Wonkette, I finally learn the source of this weird objection: Charles Krauthammer.

It seems that back in 1989 the conservative columnist took a break from cheerleading for war and torture to complain that Papa Berenstain was “a wimp” who does too many chores around the house and fails to keep his woman in line. Mother Bear, Krauthammer said, was the sort of woman he “always dreamt of drowning.”

Charles Krauthammer dreams of killing women. And cartoon bears fill him with rage.

OK, then.

Somewhat related, from Raw Story: “Upper class people more likely to cheat”

People from the wealthy upper classes are more likely than poorer folks to break laws while driving, take candy from children and lie for financial gain, said a US study on Monday.

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Phil Plait: Ten tons of pure sodium, dropped into a lake.

(Now it can be told: Senior year of high school, my best friend and I volunteered to help a schoolmate with his Eagle Scout service project. We helped him repair a footbridge at our school that had become shaky due to “erosion.” The truth is that erosion wasn’t to blame, and we weren’t volunteering out of altruism, but out of penance for a misguided experiment involving a flooded brook and a fist-sized chunk of sodium. Totally worth it.)

A few more things I thought were kind of neat:

• The Dynasphere
• “Stuff Emergent Christians Say“
• Documentary trailer: Bully
• Wislawa Szymborska: “Hard Life With Memory“
• AV Club: “17 successful movie adaptations of ‘unadaptable’ books“
• BBC: “Ocean trench: Take a dive 11,000m down“