I got a little confused when I first heard that ABC was in hot water with the FCC after Monday Night Football. Something to do with Terrell Owens and a naked lady. Owens, the Eagles wide receiver, is infamous for his over-the-top end-zone celebrations but I couldn't figure out how he'd pulled this one off. It's one thing to hide a magic marker in your sock, but how did he manage to sneak a naked lady into the end zone... Read more

I've only seen a few instances of this so far, but this needs to be nipped in the bud: Bruce Springsteen is not a part of the "Hollywood elite." Freehold, N.J., is "western Monmouth's family town" — not the center of media, political or cultural power. You got that, Rev. Falwell? Let him who is without a media empire cast the first stone at the "media elite." You own your own TV and radio stations. You own your own freakin'... Read more

"Now, look! No one is to stone anyone until I blow this whistle! Do you understand? Even, and I want to make this absolutely clear, even if they do say 'Jehovah' — Ow!" — from Monty Python's Life of Brian The folks at the American Family Association are all lathered up again. That's hardly news — it doesn't take much to get Don Wildmon's knickers in a twist. But what's newsworthy this time is the target of Wildmon's wrath —... Read more

John Mintz and Joby Warrick of The Washington Post present a dismaying and frightening summary of the threat of bioterrorism in their article "U.S. Unprepared Despite Progress." It's not all that different from the nightmare-scenario articles I was reading two years ago* when I was researching a training manual for the private security company I worked for at the time. The big difference, though, is that two more years have passed and the U.S. is nearly as woefully unprepared to... Read more

Jeanne d'Arc finds some comfort and fire in the new album from Iris DeMent, Lifeline. It's a collection of old-time country Gospel songs — including some of my favorites like "Near the Cross," "Blessed Assurance" and "Leaning on the Everlasting Arms." DeMent, Jeanne writes, has "A voice you'd hear in the kitchen from a woman putting up beans." Her songs are about values so old-fashioned, they've come round again. God. Family. Forgiveness. Community. "Our Town." "Mama's Opry." You'd call them... Read more

Following up on this earlier post, I want to make two distinct points more clearly regarding exit polls' use of the phrase "moral values" to describe the motivation of some Bush supporters. 1. This notion of what constitutes "moral" issues is grotesquely stunted. "Moral values" as a category cannot be segregated from things like jobs, taxes, the economy, health care, the environment, the war in Iraq, Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, government secrecy, honesty, corporate corruption, educational opportunity and protection of... Read more

Happy Veterans Day. And that means the post office is closed for the holiday, so odds are the birthday card I'm sending my sister won't get there on time. My sister was born 38 years ago Sunday. I would provide the link here to my original post celebrating this happy event, but unfortunately there is no such post. Sarah, you see, is my older sister, and not having been born yet myself, I was unable to blog about her birth.... Read more

So I'm reading the venomous Human Events piece linked to below and it starts to remind me of something. Mike Thompson wants to remap the United States, expelling huge chunks of the northeast and ceding it to Canada. He says he's just joking, of course, but this remapping reminds me of something I'd read before in jest — in Infinite Jest, in fact. David Foster Wallace, writing almost 10 years ago, sets his tale in the remapped and reorganized "Organization... Read more

Point (via Atrios) … … and Counterpoint (via TBogg). Three cheers for the Red, Black & Blue. Read more