I assumed it was women filing the charges.

It wasn't.

... Ohio State University (Mansfield) professors J.F. Buckley and Norman Jones are alleging ["sexual orientation harrassment"], in a complaint that they have filed with the University. A conservative OSU reference librarian (Scott Savage) suggested that several books be included in the first-year reading program; one of the books -- The Marketing of Evil by David Kupelian -- is apparently anti-gay.

The professors claim in a formal complaint filed with OSU that this suggestion, and the librarian's arguments in its defense (which were apparently not otherwise anti-gay, not that this should matter), create a "hostile environment" for them based on their sexual orientation. (The complaint has been referred to as a sexual harassment complaint, but it's really a sexual orientation harassment complaint, see the first paragraph on page 2 of the Ohio State harassment policy.)

...

The university is now investigating the complaints. It's quite sad, I think, that these university professors are responding to offensive ideas not just by arguing against them, but by trying to coercively suppress them (apparently, according to the ADF's letter, with considerable support from their colleagues). I expect that the university will promptly dismiss the complaint, since even under the university's own policy such speech is not prohibited -- among other reasons, the speech wasn't "based on a person's protected status," since the statements weren't about the complainants, and weren't targeted towards the complainants because of their sexual orientation. But it reflects badly on the complainants that the complaint is even being filed.

Links to PDF's of the actual documents involved at Volokh's link.

In related news, gay men around the country are considering filing a "sexual orientation harrassment" charge against these professors, for "perpetuating the vicious stereotype that gay men are sissies who 'tell' on perceived bullies like 8 year old girls."

As my gay friend Ron says, "I love gay men. I hate sissies."

I think there should be a new category of "hate" called "sissymaryphobia," which I wouldn't mind copping to. It's not the same as homophobia-- a lot of homos are pretty damn cool. But sissies like these he-girls...

If you're attracted to other men-- hey, have a party. If I were attracted to men I sure the hell wouldn't be trying to pass as straight. I'd be screwing other guys like it was going out of style. (And really-- can it ever go out of style?)

But just because you're homosexual shouldn't mean you have to be a frigging faggit.

Butch up, nancies. The world's a tough place. It's even tougher if you're a cringing, swooning man-bitch who gets the vapors every time she sees a mouse.

Posted by: Ace at 09:30 AM | Comments (38)
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It sounds amazing, even if it is so horrific. It's a horror film, apparently, but it's far worse than that, because we know of course this horror actually happened.

And has happened again, in Bali, Madrid, and London. And daily in Iraq. And again, and again, and again.

There are certain seminal film going experiences in your life… movies that you never forget the first time you see them: “Psycho” or “Jaws,” “The Godfather” or “Star Wars.”

Depending on who you are, the experience of sitting in a darkened theater and seeing a classic unspool before your eyes becomes permanently engrained in your memory.

That’s the way I feel about a movie I've just seen: “United 93.”

We've all heard the controversy about the trailer. People complained and were upset by it. One theater quit showing it while at the Chinese Theater in Hollywood; patrons yelled “Too soon!” at the screen.

The events of 9/11 changed the course of our daily lives, yet you might not know it anymore. Time and everyone’s desire to “move on” tends to do that.

The fact that people wish to forget the events is one of the prime reasons the timing is right for this film.

No one screamed “Too soon!” at Michael Moore’s documentary, and it’s important to view the events depicted in Paul Greengrass’ movie in this objective prospective, as opposed to campaign ads seeking to use 9/11 to justify a variety of agendas.

That's an excellent point. I've noted no one said "Too soon!" about the pro-terrorist film Paradise Now, but Michael Moore's "documentary" also portrayed (using real footage) the horror of 9/11. Although, of course, he ham-handedly shifted responsibility for the outrage from the terrorists to George Bush. I suspect that's why this film is being greeted by cries of "Too soon!"

It's "Too soon!" to some people to display the viciousness of our enemeis, and it always will be "Too soon!"

...

Greengrass uses the same pseudo documentary style he employed in “Bloody Sunday” to place us directly into the day when life as we know it changed. The acting and camera work achieves total verisimilitude. Many times during the first half hour of the movie, which depicts air traffic controllers and government officials grappling with the escalating situations occurring in the sky, I literally forgot I was watching a film. It felt totally real. The dialogue is mostly improvised, overlapping, no "Hollywood" clever lines.

...

In this movie, you dread the inevitable that you know will take place. ItÂ’s painful to see a passenger running late and making the flight at the last minute, knowing he would have also avoided his own demise. What a difference one minute can make.

The fact that the actual highjacking takes place so late in the film (about one hour in) makes the tension all the more unbearable.

I don't get his bit at all:

...

[]Greengrass doesn't portray the terrorists as “evil” per se. They are definitely heinous. Seeing their panic at the passenger uprising when the tables are turned does satisfy our need for some small measure of payback, but the instigators are also shown as devout in their mission as well as quite frightened themselves.

Nothing in this film feels exploitative and is rendered with remarkable taste.

Perhaps he's just trying to make the film seem palatable to liberals, who reject the idea of "evil," because I have trouble understanding the difference between "evil" and "heinous."

....

he moment when the passengers unite and charge the terrorists is rousing and heartfelt to witness, despite the tragedy that is inevitable. The guts and desire to live is overwhelming to watch.

We all have thought of what it must have been like to be on that plane and wondered what we'd do under the very same circumstances.

I have to be honest; I don't know if I could ever do what I saw in this reenactment. ItÂ’s certainly easy to say we would, but watch this film and be honest with yourself.

...

To anyone yelling “Too soon!” at the trailer for this film, I dare you to see the actual and say that.

To me, it's too soon to forget.

Thanks to RCL.

I have to admit, as much as I support this movie, I'm not sure I'll be eager to see it when it opens. It is simply too horrific to make me want to see it. I'll see it, just because I think I have to (as we all, perhaps, do), but the idea of watching such horror for two hours is not an appealling one.

Posted by: Ace at 09:17 AM | Comments (34)
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This is actually old, and I've linked it before. But the Telegraph is noting it again, and if the MSM can continue brining up Abu Ghraib, we should be allowed to push on this revelation.

In addition, last time 'round there was some dispute as to which President was in office when a fiasco of a mission codenamed "Merlin" wound up delivering workable nuke blueprints to the Mad Mullahs. This article is pretty clear on the point it happened in February 2000, when Clinton was in office.

Botched CIA operations may have handed Iran vital information on how to make nuclear weapons and betrayed the identities of America's spies in the country, according to a new book on US intelligence.

The latest account of American intelligence failures includes details of how the CIA allegedly tried to slip Teheran some Russian designs for an atomic bomb, which contained hidden flaws that would have made any device inoperable.

The Iranians, however, were tipped off by the very agent sent to give them the documents.

...

The CIA says the book contains "serious inaccuracies", but has not elaborated.

The claims about Iran are startling because of the scale of bungling that Mr Risen claims has taken place.

He highlights one operation, known as Merlin, in February 2000, when the CIA allegedly sent a Soviet-era defector to Vienna where, posing an unemployed scientist selling nuclear secrets, he was supposed to contact the Iranians.

The Russian scientist, who had previously worked as an engineer on the Soviet nuclear weapons programme, was given Soviet documents for a key bomb component.

These had been provided by another Russian defector and then doctored by the CIA. Had they used the documents, "instead of a mushroom cloud the Iranian scientists would witness a disappointing fizzle", Mr Risen writes.

But the Russian scientist immediately spotted the flaw and told his CIA handlers: "This isn't right." When told to go ahead with his mission, he apparently feared the Iranians would find the errors and decided to include a letter that alerted them to the flaws in the designs.

Mr Risen describes Operation Merlin as "one of the most reckless operations in the modern history of the CIA, one that may have helped put nuclear weapons in the hands of a charter member of what President George W Bush has called the 'axis of evil' ".

Mr Risen also claims that in 2004 a CIA officer mistakenly sent one of its agents some information that was used by Iran to "roll up" the CIA espionage network in Iran.

"It left the CIA virtually blind in Iran, unable to provide any significant intelligence on one of the critical issues facing the United States - whether Teheran was about to go nuclear," Mr Risen writes.

Hitchens related an unfortunately accurate joke in a column the other day.

The CIA always claims that you don't hear about their success, only their failures, because their successes remain secret, as they should.

Hitchens countered that there were in fact only two sorts of CIA missions -- those you've heard about, because they were such spectacular failures they embarrassed the country and the Agency itself, and those you haven't heard about, as the Agency has been successful in covering up how spectactularly they failed there as well.

The CIA is the Special Olympics of spycraft. Everything they do is a Very Special Episode of espionage where a mentally-challenged individual attempts to gain the acceptance of those prejudiced against the handicapped, except they wind up just embarrassing themselves further.

Remember Blair's cousin with cerebral palsy who used to do really, really bad comedy routines on The Facts of Life? Well, now she's Deputy Director for Operations.

It's high time we gave the lot of them "Certificates of Effort" and colorful caps with the slogan "I Was A Super-Special Spy" and brought in a whole new crew.

First questions on the new CIA job application:

1) Are you frigging retarded?

2) Seriously, don't shit me here. Are you a retard or not?

3) Let me clarify that "retard" is not being used in a strictly clinical manner. It is meant less techincally and more broadly. A "retard," for purposes of these questions, includes the following categories: shit-for-brains, spazzmoid, goldbricking layabout, drooling imbecile, inpenetrably idiotic incompetent, and Clinton appointee.

4) Suppose that Mary has six apples and John has three apples. If Mary gives John two of her apples, would you like to stop thinking about this question and begin finger-painting unicorns frolicking under a happy-happy rainbow and/or Godzilla taking a poop on the Chrysler Building?

Posted by: Ace at 08:22 AM | Comments (26)
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Normally, Video Games and Those That Play Them quietly go about their gaming in their own forums, websites and publications. However, occasionally a game hits so big that even the 'mainstream' media wakes up and pays some attention, whether that's just because it's a monster huge franchise (like Halo and its sequel) or because it is a very good but notorious franchise (like Grand Theft Auto).

Now, we have The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, which as I and Dave have mentioned is an astonishingly addictive time-suck. It is so bad that nearly a month after release I am *still* working on getting all the X360 achievements (which only begin to touch the total amount of content in the game) and have two brand new games (Blazing Angels and Far Cry Instincts Predator) sitting on my shelf untouched.

So, when Oblivion gets a moment in the sun in the WaPo, you know it's big.

Update: BSG producer Ron Moore is considering making a BSG game. My only request is that this one not suck.

Posted by: Harry Callahan at 07:26 AM | Comments (46)
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Not even make sandwhiches, really. They were already made. She refused to heat them up for him in the microwave. So he grabbed the microwave oven, threw it at her, and beat her to death.

After throwing her to the floor, Fordyce threw a microwave oven onto McCann's chest after she refused to heat up sandwiches for him, he told police. Fordyce also said he stomped on McCann's chest repeatedly then banged her head on the floor until she lost consciousness — but that he also said he didn't mean to kill her, police said.

"It was an accident. I didn't do it on purpose," police quoted Fordyce as saying.

As Chris Rock said of O.J. Simpson, "I'm not saying he should have killed her. I'm just sayin' -- I understand."

Umm, no really, I don't, and neither did he. It's black humor. Don't file sexual harrassment charges against me.

Wait, did I say black humor? Well, yeah, it's black humor, as I was quoting Chris Rock, but I meant it in the sense of gallows humor. Please don't file hate-crime charges against me.

Posted by: Ace at 07:20 AM | Comments (30)
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Including clips from the show, a likely faked clip of the censored scene with Mohammad, and suggested new Comedy Central logos, a couple of them by Allah, and one by Dan of Riehl World Views.

Related: American Barbarian hassels a bookstore hippie over Borders' refusal to carry the magazine "Free Inquiry," which published cartoons of Mohammad.

The hippie went ape-sh*t, ‘We do too support free speech! I know for a fact we have many subversive books!” I said “that was roughly my point” and left.

Yes, that is exactly the point. People and companies that have no concerns about insulting any other religion or creed in the world suddenly develop a heightened case of sensitivity and religious respect when it comes to Islam.

I mean, take this hippie. Can you imagine him defending a corporate bookseller driving independent bookstores out of business through predatory pricing and low wages on any other issue? I have trouble imagining that, myself. But suddenly he finds himself in perfect agreement with Borders' corporate suits about the importance of not giving offense to the easily, and lethally, offendable.

That is unacceptable.

And I mean that as actually "unacceptable." Jack Straw points me to this good piece about America's de facto acceptance of Iran's nuke program. The following is written with respect to that, but really, it applies to pretty much everything involving radical, expansionist, imperialist, racist, hegemonic, murderous Islamism.

IN THE SPRING OF 1936--seventy years ago--Hitler's Germany occupied the Rhineland. France's Léon Blum denounced this as "unacceptable." But France did nothing. As did the British. And the United States.

In a talk last year, Christopher Caldwell quoted the great Raymond Aron's verdict: "To say that something is unacceptable was to say that one accepted it." Aron further remarked that Blum had in fact seemed proud of France's putting up no resistance. Indeed, Blum had said, "No one suggested using military force. That is a sign of humanity's moral progress." Aron remarked: "This moral progress meant the end of the French system of alliances, and almost certain war."

Posted by: Ace at 07:13 AM | Comments (8)
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Good editorial in the Australian about Europe accepting decline with air of welcome relief as a wrist-cutter slipping peacefully into blood-pinked bathwater.

Posted by: Ace at 07:50 PM | Comments (15)
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And they have a very high risk of wearing too much mascara, too.

YOUNG people who adopt the "Goth" lifestyle of dark clothes and introspective music are more likely to commit self-harm or attempt suicide than other youngsters, a Scottish study has found.

"Although only fairly small numbers of young people identify themselves as belonging to the Goth subculture, rates of self-harm and attempted suicide are very high among this group," said Robert Young, lead researcher of the Glasgow University study.

The Scottish team described Goths as being a subgenre of Punk "with a dark and sinister aesthetic, with aficionados conspicuous by their range of distinctive clothing and make-up and tastes in music"....

The study, published in the British Medical Journal, found that 53 per cent of those who were linked to the Goth subculture reported self-harm and 47 per cent had attempted suicide...

"One common suggestion is they may be copying subcultural icons or peers," Mr Young said.

"But since our study found that more reported self-harm before, rather than after, becoming a Goth, this suggests that young people with a tendency to self-harm are attracted to the Goth subculture."

Michael van Beinum, a child-and-adolescent psychiatrist, said the Goth subculture might be attractive to young people with mental health problems, allowing them to find a community where their distress might be more easily understood.

The study was performed by three university statisticians hoping to parlay their M.F.O. (Master of the F'n' Obvious) degrees into Ph.D. (Phuckin' Duh!) degrees.

Posted by: Ace at 07:29 PM | Comments (27)
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He really said this.

I think. Al Gore says he said it. So, yeah, that might be a somewhat less credible authority than Stuff Jefferson Said, 4th Ed., (rev'd).

But let's pretend we can take Al Gore as accurate.

I have sworn on the honor of God, eternal hostility to every form of tyranny over the mind of man.

I had no desire to gratuitously insult Islam until I was instructed by its clerics/mob bosses that I must not do so, on pain of death. Now I am compelled to.

The New Caliphate begins first in the minds of those they would conquer, and I think a lot of us are allowing them to colonize our minds by imposing foreign laws over our beliefs and words.

Posted by: Ace at 07:19 PM | Comments (48)
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I said it wouldn't bother their clientele. I meant, I guess, it wouldn't bother enough of their clientele to actually move them to threaten to take their business elsewhere.

One reader here is making that threat. I hope their will be more.

Dear Mr. Boyle,

I am upset at your company's refusal to renew the lease for Fran O'Briens
steakhouse in Washington, DC. I noticed this information from the
MudvilleGazette website. Many of our wounded veterans receive meals there
and the proprietor does them great honor and service by making sure they
don't have to pay for those meals.

If your large company cannot manage to find some way to cover the supposed
liability of feeding these amputees and disabled veterans who would rather
go back to Iraq and Afghanistan without all their limbs than to sue you for
damages from tripping, then I will find another hotel chain to give my
business to.

I am extremely disappointed in your company's position, and pray that it is
only a result of the fact that you were unaware of this condition. Please
remedy this problem before the lease expires.

Michael [redacted]
[redacted]
Hilton HHonors #[redacted]

Posted by: Ace at 07:07 PM | Comments (8)
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