Well, yeah, moron. Last time I checked, black kids weren't walking around in Nike Air Turino luge-cleats.

Suffice to say that Mr. Gumbel will not, in the near future, be commenting on the NBA looking like a Biggie Smalls funeral procession.

The quote:

Finally, tonight, the Winter Games. Count me among those who don’t like them and won’t watch them ... Because they’re so trying, maybe over the next three weeks we should all try too. Like, try not to be incredulous when someone attempts to link these games to those of the ancient Greeks who never heard of skating or skiing. So try not to laugh when someone says these are the world’s greatest athletes, despite a paucity of blacks that makes the Winter Games look like a GOP convention. Try not to point out that something’s not really a sport if a pseudo-athlete waits in what’s called a kiss-and-cry area, while some panel of subjective judges decides who won ... So if only to hasten the arrival of the day they’re done, when we can move on to March Madness — for God’s sake, let the games begin.

Is Gumbel suggesting he's only interested in sports if there are enough African-Americans fielded to whet his racial appetite?

Of course, this isn't an unheard of phenomenon. There's a reason most white guys like Brett Favre, and most black guys love Donovan McNabb (or used to, anyway). There's an element of identification in rooting in sports, and that identification is stronger when a player, well, looks like you. It's easier to indulge in the fantasy of "What if it were me getting the ball with 1.2 seconds left and needing three points to take the lead...?"

But it seems only black people can admit this. White people have to pretend that Larry Bird is not, in fact, Mr. Clutch, and that he only earned that sobriquet because racist white fans had to find some intangible reason to elevate him over Magic Johnson.

Video at the link.

PS: Is this one of Gumbel's occasional racially-provocative flare-ups designed to prove he's black?

You know this guy spends his off hours watching PBS' Mystery and Martha Stewart.

Thanks to Jack "Slublog" Straw.

UPDATE! Bryant Gumbel Has Been Shot By Dick Cheney!

The Vice President took "full responsibility" but added it was "just a horrible accident."

"I thought I was aiming at Greg Gumbel," he confessed.

Experienced hunters say one should always verify one is aiming at the proper Gumbel before pulling the trigger, although they add, "Look, if you get the wrong one, it's not exactly a national tragedy, you know what I mean?"

Posted by: Ace at 09:22 AM | Comments (171)
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It's not the information revolution it seems to be, though. 90% of all IM's consist of the text "Justin Timberlake is teh ghey" and "Hey, check it out, Lindsey Lohan got her jugs back."

Shocking:

The youngest Netizens, and teenagers in particular, are the most avid IM users, and often use it more than e-mail or their mobile phones to communicate with each other, in addition to taking advantage en masse of some of the newest features available.

Remember the days we'd have to get together face-to-face and enjoy a nice beer or coffee when we wanted to talk? How backwards we were.

Thanks to Allah.

Posted by: Ace at 09:13 AM | Comments (8)
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This is one of those stories that is almost certainly complete bullshit but I just can't help myself.

"Monkey boy," raised by monkeys and fed monkey-milk, once covered in hair and his hand curled into monkey-paws, is now, um, a sessions musician with Matchbox 20.

Or something. I don't know. He plays the guitar, it seems. Or at least he clumsily strums it before using it to smash coconuts and sea turtles.

When it comes to food, SebunnyaÂ’s favourites include... meat. According to his friends, Bisaso and Sserubula, when Sebunnya is offered food, he consumes everything even when the amounts are excessive.

“ After meals, he goes to sleep and doesn’t like being disturbed while resting.["]

Good to see he's successfully made the transition from monkey-boy to normal human male.

EXCLUSIVE UPDATE! Must Credit Ace of Spades HQ!

Monkey-boy has been shot by Dick Cheney.

Surprisingly, it wasn't because Cheney mistook him for a monkey. "I just don't like folk guitar," the Vice President said.

He added that he would be attending a James Taylor concert next month, and further added, cryptically, "You will not want to miss the second encore."

Posted by: Ace at 08:50 AM | Comments (32)
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Apparently those are women's only two choices. Either way, they're simply fornication-brokers. I guess someone forgot to tell that to every girl I knew in high school and college, damn it all.

A pretty funny read, both for the strangely reductive quotes of economists and for the reporter's sarcastic take on them.

"This begs the question of why married men go to prostitutes (rather than buying from their wives, who presumably will be low-cost providers, considering that they can sell nonreproductive sex without compromising their marriage)." Guys, nothing says "Happy Valentine's Day" more than "low-cost provider."

And:

In particular, the assumption that there is no "third way" between wife and whore is problematic, if not outright offensive: "The third alternative, working in a regular job but not marrying, can be ruled out, since we assume that the only downside of marriage for a woman is the forgone opportunity for prostitution."

Be sure to let all your married friends know what they're missing.

I think the article probably holds the Forbes Magazine record for most uses of the word "whore." Even Ron Burgundy would find it excessive.

Thanks to LauraW, sending in tips from her vacation home on Whore Island.

Posted by: Ace at 08:40 AM | Comments (36)
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UPI's Martin Seiff suggests it's a possibility:

Paul Hackett's angry decision to withdraw from the Senate race in Ohio is a devastating blow for the Democratic Party and may even have profound long-term repercussions on American politics.

It opens the door to the very real possibility that opposition to the war, and to any possible conflict with Iran, will focus on a new Third Party populist movement that could reach the scale of the H. Ross Perot movement in the 1990s but be far more passionate. And that could cripple the Democrats' hopes, and even expectations of regaining the White House in 2008.

...

Political blogs across the nation are red hot with debate over Hackett's withdrawal.

...

The Hackett fiasco may well doom the Democrats to losing the Senate race in Ohio this November. But it also highlights the broader pattern of the party's liberal Old Guard refusing to open its doors to the new generation of angry patriots like Hackett and Sheehan who had offered their services to it. Far from benefiting from anger against the Iraq war and other policies of the Bush administration, the national Democrats may be fated to become targets for it. If that happens, their many critics will certainly say they have no one to blame but themselves.

Bush-hatred isn't enough to paper over serious differences between the moderate and left wings of the liberal party.

Posted by: Ace at 08:24 AM | Comments (22)
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What exactly is motivating the release of these tapes now? They seem to make the case that Saddam was interested in WMD's. If so, why is dedicated Bush-hater John Loftus one of the prime movers behind publicizing them?

...James Woolsey and John Deutch, have resigned from something called the Intelligence Summit, run by a former federal prosecutor named John Loftus.

...

[W]hat is missing from the story is some perspective on John Loftus. I first encountered his name in the fall of 2003, when I was working on a story about Bush hatred. I was looking at the people who claim that the Bush family got its wealth from financing the Nazis, and I discovered that one of the sacred texts of that particular worldview is a book, The Secret War Against the Jews, by the authors Mark Aarons and...John Loftus.

...

Loftus has other interests. A visit to his website finds, among other things, a May, 2002 article by him entitled "What Congress Does Not Know About Enron and 9/11." In the article, Loftus reports that the now-defunct energy company had a contract with the Taliban to build a pipeline, and that Vice President Dick Cheney, determined to help out Enron, forbade U.S. intelligence sources from investigating the Enron/Taliban/al Qaeda connection in the months leading up to the September 11 terrorist attacks. After outlining this somewhat Fahrenheit 9/11-like theory, Loftus concludes, "The Enron cover-up confirms that 9/11 was not an intelligence failure or a law enforcement failure (at least not entirely). Instead, it was a foreign policy failure of the highest order. If Congress ever combines its Enron investigation with 9/11, CheneyÂ’s whole house of cards will collapse."

Deutsch and Woolsey seem to have resigned because of concerns over one of the Intelligence Summit's financial backers:

The reason both men gave for their resignations was new information they received regarding one of the summit's biggest donors, Michael Cherney, an Israeli citizen who has been denied a visa to enter America because of his alleged ties to the Russian mafia.

Bush-hater Loftus continues making the case that Saddam was interested in making a sneak WMD attack on the US:

"There is a candid discussion between Saddam and his top aides to launch a sneak attack against the United States, whether to use a nuclear or germ weapon. It is discussed that maybe we would have the others do it, that is an unclear reference. It becomes very clear, though. Saddam thinks this is something the Iraqis should do."

So the Bush Administration, which would seem to be aided politically (and in terms of international standing) by these tapes, resists their release; Bush-hater Loftus, who believes that a full investigation of 9/11 would expose some nefarious doings in the Bush White House, pushes for their release.

Why? I have no idea.

Byron York at NR urges caution in reacting to the tapes, but apparently has no better idea what shenanigans Loftus may be up to, or else he'd speculate about it, presumably. It's just mystifying.

Posted by: Ace at 07:57 AM | Comments (21)
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Interesting stuff:

Saddam Hussein told aides in the mid-1990s that he warned the United States it could be hit by a terrorist attack, ABC News reported Wednesday, citing 12 hours of tapes the network obtained of the former Iraqi dictator's talks with his Cabinet.

One of Saddam's son-in-laws also explained how Iraq hid its biological weapons programs from U.N. inspectors, according to the tapes from August 1995.

The coming terrorist attack Saddam predicted could involve weapons of mass destruction.

"Terrorism is coming. I told the Americans," Saddam is heard saying, adding he "told the British as well."

"In the future, what would prevent a booby trapped car causing a nuclear explosion in Washington or a germ or a chemical one?" Saddam said.

But he insisted Iraq would never launch such an attack. "This story is coming, but not from Iraq," he said.

The State Department had no comment on the report, which aired on "World News Tonight." ABC News said U.S. officials confirmed the tapes were authentic.

ABC News said the CIA found the tapes in Iraq and that the 12 hours were provided to it by Bill Tierney, a former member of a U.N. inspection team who was translating them for the FBI. ABC News quoted Tierney as saying the U.S. government was wrong to keep the tapes secret.

Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz told Saddam on the tape that "the biological (attack) is very easy to make. It's so simple that any biologist can make a bottle of germs and drop it into a water tower and kill 100,000."

"This is not done by a state. No need to accuse a state. An individual can do it," he said.

...

Charles Duelfer, who led the official U.S. search for weapons of mass destruction, told ABC News the tapes show extensive deception but don't prove that weapons were still hidden in Iraq at the time of the U.S.-led war in 2003.

"What they do is support the conclusion in the report which we made in the last couple of years, that the regime had the intention of building and rebuilding weapons of mass destruction, when circumstances permitted," he said.

Posted by: Ace at 08:19 PM | Comments (27)
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I don't really like forced apologies, but hey, along with her apology, she'll have to learn something.

She'll have to read Boyington's book-- Baa, Baa Black Sheep -- or lose her Senate seat, too.

I didn't like her nasty ignorance and I really don't like this politically-correct-esque mind-police solution. I'm conflicted. She's a deeply stupid girl who could use a little learning. On the other hand, I don't like forcing it on her.

People have the right to be stupid. This is America. That's our birthright.

Posted by: Ace at 07:37 PM | Comments (68)
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Over at the Huffington Post, Arianna reports:

TiVo Moment #1: After Cheney walked Hume through the specifics of the shooting, including a cataloguing of Whittington's injuries ("He was struck in the right side of his face, his neck and his upper torso on the right side of his body"), Hume inexplicably followed up with this jaw dropper: "And I take it you missed the bird?"

F'n' Brit Hume. Coolest cat in the news.

Arianna then screeches:

The VP has just painted a verbal picture of blasting his friend in the face and Brit is wondering about... the bird?!

I'm pretty sure Michael Huffington is the one homosexual who wasn't born gay. But the poor sonofabitch just never had a chance, did he? What would you have done?

Me? Had I married Arianna Huffington? I think I'd be blasting my own friend in the face right now, if you know what I'm sayin'.

Arianna fancies herself a wit, incidentally. I remember her trying her hand at comedy, when she was still a "conservative" or supposedly so, in a Playboy article. It was about Newt Gingrich and Bill Clinton and other Washintonians all in a hot tub together.

It was not funny. It was so not funny it couldn't even be called not-funny. A scientist once described a theory that was so incomplete and nonsensical it couldn't be evaluated as being "not even wrong." It didn't even rise to the level of being wrong, you see.

Well, Arianna's humor is not even unfunny. She tried to be funny on that "Strange Bedfellows" segment on the old Politically Incorrect; shit, she made Al Franken look funny by comparison. Arianna trying to be funny is like listening to the Who's On First routine performed by Frankenstein and The Incredible Hulk. You're not sure what the hell it's supposed to be, but you're pretty you'd be better off somewhere else.

Slime... She also links a nasty rumor about infidelity.

What a rotten bitch.

She's the Yoko Ono of politics. About that level of talent, too.

[Recycled joke alert.]

Having to read Arianna Huffington's idiotic rantings is like having to sit through Yoko Ono's screechy atonal non-songs just to hear the decent John Lennon tracks on Double Fantasy.

Wait a minute, that's not right. I just compared the rest of the Huffington Post's writers to John Lennon, which plainly makes no sense at all. Let me reconfigure the analogy: Let's pretend that Yoko Ono was dating one of the guys from Foghat. Okay?

So having to read Arianna Huffington's insipid drivel is like having to listen to Yoko Ono tracks just to hear all that sweet Foghat.

Posted by: Ace at 06:03 PM | Comments (49)
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Lou Ferrigno sworn in as deputy sheriff.

Lou Ferrigno, 54, who played the green-skinned monster on the CBS-TV show from 1977 to 1982, was sworn in during a ceremony Monday night.

"My father was a police officer with the New York Police Department; I've always had a high respect for officers," Ferrigno told The Associated Press.

Ferrigno began training to become a reserve deputy last September after passing a background check. He completed training in firearms, first aid, and high-speed driving techniques and was recognized as "an outstanding trainee" by Sheriff Lee Baca.

Ferrigno will be assigned a new beat each week. After concluding his patrol, he will take a lonely walk beside railroad tracks or over an empty bridge while sad music plays, to find a new town where he is misunderstood and abused with disasterous consequences.

He says the best part of law enforcement is "just helpin' folks out," by which he means "smashing puny humans."

Thanks to Crosblog.

Posted by: Ace at 05:05 PM | Comments (22)
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