North Coast Online

Avoiding The Obvious

Mark Steyn on the waterfrontization [my term] of the Flight 93 Memorial.

Part of the Bowl is designated "Wetlands": "The area will be its own kind of healing landscape, as it will be a habitat full of life. . . . Here visitors will be most aware of continuously connected living systems as the circular path literally bridges the hydrology of the Bowl."

The architects proclaimed that their plan was for a "living memorial" that "offers the visitor space for reflection, learning, social interaction, and healing."

All that plus wind chimes. A true Flight 93 memorial would honor courage, action and improvisation, but reflection, healing and wetlands are the best we can manage. Go to any Civil War memorial on any New England common, and marvel at how they managed to honor their dead without wetlands and wind chimes.

"Feral Britain"

John Edwards talks of two Americas; now Melanie Phillips writes about the two Britains.

What we are seeing is nothing less than a cascade of abuse and neglect down through the generations, so that the instinct that makes morality possible — the ability to feel someone else’s pain, so there is a desire not to hurt them — is wholly absent.

This has given rise to the emergence of two Britains. The division is not between North and South, nor between rich and poor. Instead, it is between those who adhere to the basic rules of a civilised society and those whose lives are characterised by depravity and disorder. Our culture is now deep into uncharted territory. Generations of family disintegration in turn are unravelling the fundamentals of civilised human behaviour.

Her explanation makes a lot more sense than his.

Camille's Back!

Camille Paglia is as refreshing and biting as ever over at Salon.  Here are a couple "fair and balanced" excerpts.

On Hillary:

Hillary didn't help herself with her over-the-top sermon at the First Baptist Church in Selma, Alabama, two weeks ago. Her aping of a black Southern accent from the pulpit was so inept and patronizing that it should get a Razzie Award for Worst Performance of the Year. At times, it approached the Southern Gothic burlesque of Bette Davis chewing up the scenery in "Hush ... Hush, Sweet Charlotte." Does Hillary Clinton have a stable or coherent sense of self? Or is everything factitious, mimed and scripted (like her flipping butch and femme masks) for expediency?

On John Edwards:

Hence my unhappy surprise when Edwards, who has an attractively comprehensive social policy and strong oratorical skills, was the first to pull out of the scheduled August debate moderated by Fox News. What is this morbid obsession that liberals have with Fox? It's as if Democrats, pampered and spoiled by so many decades of the mainstream media trumpeting the liberal agenda, are so shaky in their convictions that they cannot risk an encounter with opposing views. Democrats have ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, the New York Times, Newsweek, Time and 98 percent of American humanities professors to do their bidding. But no, that's not enough -- every spark of dissent has to be extinguished with buckets of bile.

On Fox News itself:

But Fox is certainly disingenuous with its absurd "fair and balanced" motto. Oh, come on, give it up! Why can't Fox honestly admit its conservative agenda, as do major radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, and simply argue that it represents a culturally necessary antidote to the omnipresent liberal line? Yet for Democratic presidential candidates, who will be assessed by voters for their ability to stand up to China, North Korea or al-Qaida, to run squealing from a Fox moderator as if he or she were a boogeyman with blood-dripping fangs makes the whole pack of them look like simpering wusses. Dennis Kucinich was quite right to express his scorn and offer to debate anyone anywhere and under any sponsorship. Nice job of skewering the sacred cow!

Lots more good stuff like her take on Ann Coulter, Newt Gingrich and Dick Cheney -- just to name a few. Paglia is one of the best around; sort of a white, lesbian Thomas Sowell of the left.  Read the whole thing.

Going Around And Coming Around

I wonder if one day the pioneering artists who brought a dying Main Street back to life will be complaining that the rest of us are moving in and ruining it.

Therapy Slouches On

Never underestimate the ability of psychologists to turn commonsense on its ear.

Pupils up to the age of 11 are being bottle-fed and mothered in school as part of a radical new move to address poor discipline.

A state primary school has become the first in the country to take part in the approach, which was developed in the US to give problem children the love and attention they may have missed out on at a younger age.

Instead of being given a sharp telling off or a few minutes on the naughty chair, they have one on one sessions with a trained school therapist.

The children - aged between six and 11 - are bottle-fed like young babies, nursed and encouraged to play games promoting patience and teamwork.

And are the really bad ones breast-fed?  That would calm the little beggars down.

C'mon Tubby, It's Time For Your Workout

Fisher-Price has come up with what it hopes is the next "must-have" toy and they've even hired Richard Simmons to publicize it at the New York Toy Fair. Now, far be it from me to predict what young parents will buy their pampered offspring, but a kid's exercise bike that runs learning videos on the TV while the kid pedals? 

I'd say put the money in a college fund and give the little rugrat a book and a sled (make him drag the sled back up the hill by himself.)  If Simmons's parents had done as much, maybe we wouldn't have to put up with him now.

Boston - Dumb City?

You've probably heard by now of the big panic in Boston over a TV promotion that was misinterpreted as a terrorist plot.  To say that city officials have overreacted is an understatement.  Bob Parks thinks Boston is the dumbest city in the world.

Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis said that residents should not be afraid to enter or leave the city and that additional police resources have been deployed to help ensure people that they are safe.

Safe from what? Cartoons?

Boston Mayor Tom Menino said, “Public safety officials are all working together. There is no time for anyone to panic. We believe we have the situation in hand. Go about your business. The individuals who placed these packages should be warned that there is a heavy penalty — two to five years imprisonment for each one of them. We are not playing around.”

They’ve arrested 27-year-old Peter Berdovsky of Arlington and 28-year-old Sean Stephens of Charlestown, who were probably making a few bucks on the side for putting up the “devices” around town. The tab for the overreaction is a half million bucks and rising by every television interview Mumbles Menino grants. Apparently, it’s against the law to place a “hoax” device in a public place that may cause a panic.

The only ones who caused the panic were the idiots in the City of Boston, the Governor, the Chief of Police, and the Attorney General who is going to try and sue Turner Broadcasting because Boston politicians are liberal bloodsuckers who can’t take a joke.

Boston. One of the dumbest cities in America. So much for Homeland Security….

Identical promotions have run in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Atlanta, Seattle, Portland, Austin, San Francisco and Philadelphia for the last two to three weeks.  Sounds a lot like a bunch of embarrassed city officials too full of themselves to admit they screwed up.

Record Theater

Record Theater's closing its Main Street store.  Now, some of you young 'uns may not realize what a big deal it was when it opened, but there was nothing else like it in upstate New York.  I used to drive there regularly from Jamestown in the late seventies; and a long trip it was, too.

Of course, in those days, I only knew one way to get there:  Take Route 60 from Jamestownto to Route 20 in Fredonia.  Take that till it turns into Transit Road, um, somewhere past Rich Stadium.  Turn left on Main Street by the new mall (Eastern Hills) and follow it all the way downtown.  And back out the same way to get home.  Didn't we have maps, you ask? 

Yes, of course we did, but parchment was very expensive during the Carter administration.

Decorum For Thee But Not For Me

The confused masses of Europe continue their mourning for Saddam Hussein.

The Colosseum in Rome was illuminated evening as part of Italy's campaign for a global moratorium on the death penalty following the bungled hanging of Saddam Hussein.

It wasn't bungled, it went off quite well actually.  If he'd lived, then we'd have a story of bunglement.  These people are simply upset that in some parts of the world, people are often relieved when a vicious dictator, responsible for the death of millions has, himself, been put to death.

It reminds me actually of the rather undignified end of Italy's own Benito Mussolini.  That would be the body of said dictator and his girlfriend above who were caught trying to escape the scene of their crimes and who were strung up for the mere enjoyment of their former victims.  The funeral was not, to say the least, dignified, though I doubt you'll find an Italian even today who would criticize it.

The jury was not a carefully selected representative sample of the country's various political groups and, come to think of it, there wasn't a jury at all.  It was pure vigilante justice and more than a half century later no one disputes the verdict.  Yet the Italians see fit to disapprove of Hussein's fate.

Odd, isn't it, how one's own people subjected to injustice and torture can be subject to a different standard than someone else's people who endured the same.

Hating The Good For Being The Good

Dissecting Leftism posits that Americans are the new Jews.