Michelle flipped the switch - on. Speaking of meaningless but vanity-feeding gestures, a great bit from Thompson. A quote:
If not to have a discernible impact, directly or by example, what, then, is the point? What drives this level of anxiety over soft drinks and peanut butter residue? Unless much of this is indeed about seeking out pretentious guilt and then wringing one’s hands for public display and personal gratification?
It’s not that I necessarily believe that my eating a KitKat is going to lead directly to the death of a baby in the developing world, or that drinking a Fanta means one more “disappeared” trade unionist, it’s more a case of knowing that if I do these things I’m letting myself down, that I’m going against the standards I’ve set for myself.
Standards that apparently serve no objective purpose, whether enacted or not. Could these ineffectual standards then be about something less tangible and more intimate? Could they perhaps be about how a person wishes to seem, to themselves, or in certain kinds of company?
I don’t care what anyone else thinks of me.
But of course. What was that about unrecycled peanut butter jars?
I usually just give up and throw it in the bin (as long as no one’s watching).
"Punished with a baby..."? True, changing diapers at 3 AM is an annoyance, but is that what Obama meant?
Granola strikes out grittily against oppression. Jules
Do jails do any good? Betsy
The Prophet's pedophilia banned in the Netherlands. If I were a holy prophet, I wouldn't want that advertised either.
A note to Alice Walker, from Phyllis Chesler
Mugabe is gone! Who'd a thunk it?
The rising price of biofuels
How to lie with statistics, Swiss style. See how they selected 1961 as their index for the second graph? It's in the fine print.
McCain in his own briar patch. Am. Thinker. McCain has been wrong about a few things, but McCain-Feingold has been the worst. As has been widely noted, that law limits the individual's political speech - but not the political speech of media (and, thus far, not the political speech of blogs and websites). It's nuts.
I thought Villainous Company was on hiatus, or had retired. I guess not. She has a good piece up about "conversations on race." (h/t, Anchoress)
Roger's snaggle-tooth blood-pudding eaters piece (below) effectively fisked the newspaper article. The photos were worthy of Pallywood, and they ignored the aggressive efforts over the past few years of the Dept. of Agriculture to expand the food stamp program.
