Please Judge November 28, 2007
Posted by rosolio in Politics, Racism, Terrorism, World.Tags: gibbons, islam, khartoum, muhammad, sudan, teddy bear
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In the words of the great Adam Carolla, “Every culture is beautiful and we cannot judge.”
I can hear the nasally sarcasm from the Prophet of North Hollywood already, and hope that this story makes its way across his desk at KLSX just so I can hear him explode with a rage similar to my own about this story. When you’re mad, you want other people to be mad, I think because angry people by themselves are assholes, but when there are many, angry people are just right.
The finest news source in the world, the BBC, released this morning the story of Gillian Gibbons. She’s a 54 year old teacher from Liverpool who heads a class in the Sudanese capital of Khartoum. She’s obviously not there for the cheesesteaks or the skiing; this is clearly a humanitarian effort. You look at a picture of this woman and know that she’d be really good at reading to kids. And then you see she’s going to jail.
And then you see why.
Naming teddy bears in the class, one of her students wanted to name a bear after himself. His name is Muhammad. Because Gibbons allowed it, she’s being charged with insulting religion, inciting hated, and showing contempt for religious beliefs. Here’s the rationale:
“… chapter 42, verse 11 of the Koran does say: “[Allah is] the originator of the heavens and the earth… [there is] nothing like a likeness of Him.”
This is taken by Muslims to mean that Allah cannot be captured in an image by human hand, such is his beauty and grandeur. To attempt such a thing is seen as an insult to Allah.” [from the BBC]
What I’m about to say is not an indictment of every Muslim on the planet, or every religious person on the planet, because I do know that not everyone who believes in something is crazy.
But I do know that the people who believe Gibbons is a criminal are. They’re completely insane. They’re cavemen. You know how I know? Because of the punishments for the crime: Six months in jail (think less Prison Break and more Ben Hur), a fine, or 40 lashes. They’re going to whip this woman like she gave Ramses the stink eye. Retro.
Situations like this separate the civilized people from the cavemen. Who seems less crazy:
“This is a disgraceful decision and defies common sense. There was clearly no intention on the part of the teacher to deliberately insult the Islamic faith,” said Secretary-General Dr Muhammad Abdul Bari, in a strongly-worded statement.
“We call upon the Sudanese President, Omar al-Bashir, to intervene in this case without delay to ensure that Ms Gibbons is freed from this quite shameful ordeal.”
Or…
“What has happened was not haphazard or carried out of ignorance, but rather a calculated action and another ring in the circles of plotting against Islam,” the Sudanese Assembly of the Ulemas said a statement. [both quotes from the BBC]
Calculated action?!? This woman moved to your third world country to help the next generation possibly shake that moniker, but is really coming in as an act of holy war? Don’t you get the impression that somewhere in the Sudanese assembly, or maybe it’s just the Fundamentalist Islam manual (copyright Penguin 632 c.e.), that you have a conversion chart, where thousands of actions in the left column each correspond with one line on the left: “Conspiring against Islam”? This sort of psychotic religious paranoia is reminiscent of another crazy guy with loyal followers and facial hair (though admittedly, a lot less).
If a court in Alabama did something like this, we’d revoke their statehood and ban the Crimson Tide from the BCS. But because the people signing up a humanitarian to get beaten for giving a teddy bear (not a pile of shit, but a cuddly, wuddly teddy bear) the most common name in that part of the world are a different color than us, we have to tread lightly, because then we might be called racists or jingoists. Isn’t it more racist to have a different set of moral rules for people, like we don’t hold them to the same standards as us? Isn’t part of getting past petty differences to treat people the same, and holding white, black, brown, and yellow (like the Simpsons) people accountable when they’re being crazy?
We like to call ourselves the beacon of morality in the world. We lose that if we don’t judge.
Ace man, back me up.
It Puts the Lotion in the Basket October 4, 2006
Posted by rosolio in Common Sense, Politics, World.add a comment
It’s been a long time – a good sixty years or so – since we’ve really encountered a crazy person with his finger on the button. In defense of foreign policies, the governments of both the United States and Soviet Union have tossed the ‘madman’ label out there. Saddam Hussein was given that label quite recently, but there’s a difference between ‘evil’ and ‘crazy.’ Sure, Hussein gassed boatloads of Kurds, but he wasn’t doing so indiscriminately. If he was really as out of his mind as we’d like to believe, he would have brought the genocide out into the streets and made no effort whatsoever to hide it. And as off-his-ass nuts as Hitler was, he had a cadre of handlers (re: sane people) who kept all of his crimes against humanity on the downlow. This stems from Bond movies: every bad guy who sits across the justice scale from 007 is both evil and out of his mind. We fused them together in the 1960s and like chocolate covered pretzels, we prefer to have them together. It’s much less disconcerting when the bad guy is maniacal. We can separate ourselves from them by turning them into a sub-human beast. It’s the ones who are calm and composed and so very…human…that we have trouble with. The Silence of the Lambs is a great example. We like our adversaries to be closer to Buffalo Bill than Hannibal Lecter; we’d prefer to see Hussein stumbling around in front of a camera with a wig on sporting the Full Tuck. The problem is that years of assigning Crazy to Merely Bad people has left us totally unprepared for Real Deal Crazy.
Kim Jong Il is textbook crazy. We were concerned that Hussein was hiding weapons of mass destruction, but KJI flaunts his efforts to get them. We’re nervous about nomadic Al-Qaeda wannabes sneaking a dirty bomb into a subway car, and KJI announces his plans to test a nuclear weapon that could have horrible environmental effects on the East Asian Region. We’re so nervous about our image in the world that we don’t have the stones any longer to handle this the way we need to. If North Korea, a nation duped into believing that their humunculous bespectacled leader created the goddamn world, obtains nuclear capabilities, there is no reason NOT to believe that they won’t take a potshot at Juneau or San Francisco or Los Angeles. They have nothing to lose, with the fuckin messiah in their corner. I’m not necessarily saying we should flatten North Korea now, but there’s going to be a time in the not too distant future where the people we trust with our national decisions are going to have a doozy on their dockets. Humanitarianism aside, this could very possibly reach Us or Them territory. We’ll see how we react when we get there. Until then, we can continue to make fun of the tiny Dr. No of the 47th parallel and hope to high hell he can’t get the recipe right.
Borat, John McClane, and France July 1, 2006
Posted by rosolio in Common Sense, Random, World.add a comment
Okay…watching the World Cup again…somewhat immobilized. We’ve got Brazil and we’ve got France. In classic Sherlock Holmes fashion, I may have just discovered why these teams are so good and the American team just plain wasn’t: they’ve got players. The best athletes in each respective nation are playing in this game. Such is the case with all of the top flight teams in glaring contrast to the United States. American-born athletes rarely turn to soccer, and when your supposed star is under 5’8”, it’s just not going to work.
We do have a couple very good players, most notibly The Gooch, who patrols the backline like a more nimble Ben Wallace. But there’s no way we can roll with these upper echelon athletes. Ronaldo and Wayne Rooney are built like tanks and have sub 4.4 speed. Ronaldinho has that Michael Vick “Holy Shit!” speed factor. Thierry Henry is basically Dwyane Wade. Imagine how much different our chances in the World Cup would be if our team had Allen Iverson, Vick, T.O., LeBron, Dwight Freeney… I mean, wow. Granted, if T.O. was involved in any sort of international competition, it’s safe to say that it would not help our overseas reputation and that a full scale war could break out as a result.
I’m also convinced that the reason the Americans will never be significantly competitive in soccer is the way we view flopping. The French, Portuguese, and Italians (who are all still in, by the way) consider falling down and pretending to be injured as being part of the game. While there is flopping in the NBA (and it is honed to perfection at Duke University), you never see anyone fake an injury, because it makes you look gutless. So our frontier spirit and our belief in it keeps us from cheating. So we can’t win. There are worse things to be than honorable.
Score Henry, France up 1-0. No way in hell anyone on the U.S. is athletic enough to do something like that.
Usually the more times you make a trip, the shorter it seems, because there isn’t that unexpectedness. The exact opposite is true for getting to Midway airport. It seems like 10 minutes are added every time I pick up the Orange line. It even seems far away by cab. This irks me.
Has anyone actually changed their Brita filter? And if so, was there a noticeable improvement? I just learned how to defrost a steak, so take it easy on me.
Isn’t pornography basically prostitution on camera? And if so, why wouldn’t tricks and ho’s just whip out a camera and save themselves the jail time?
Which of the following will not live up to the hype? Snakes on a Plane or Borat? I’m going to say Snakes on a Plane, just because seeing it will leave nothing to the imagination, which is the best part of this movie.
The Cubs fan is by far the most dejected and easily destroyed fan in all of organized sport. I’ve never seen anything like it. Even pre-2004 Red Sox fans kept some semblance of faith beyond June.
Speaking of which, how shitty was my June? Remarkably shitty.
Are they really playing Jump in the background of Fox Major League Baseball? They couldn’t find anything even slightly newer?
The price of having a good World Cup team: total devastation when you get knocked out. The English fans look like they might all jump off the Old Bailey.
Was V for Vendetta a good movie? I still don’t know.
Zidane just got mugged by a Brazilian player, who ran away afterwards. The ref couldn’t find him so there were no cards. He basically punched the bully and then hid behind the monkey bars. Would Randy Moss do that? We’re never winning the World Cup.
Best part about watching soccer? No commercials.
Here’s an analogy: Imagine if the democrats and republicans played a softball game once every four years. The grudges would be amazing. That’s what the World Cup is like for these countries.
So it’s France vs. Portugal, Italy vs. Germany.
Who started the bag on the head thing? Like the one’s that say “Fire Dusty [Baker]”? Doesn’t it seem a little archaic, almost like throwing rotten vegetables?
Does Taco Bell honestly believe the “good to go” hand gesture is going to catch on? I think they do…
Another interesting twist: Christian Ronaldo scored the final penalty kick that knocked out England, and his club team is Manchester United. How are the Man-U fans feeling about that? He might never be able to go back to that team.
They picked the most effeminate member of the Chicago Fire to give an inspiring speech in their commercial. Doesn’t quite have the Maximus effect.
Die Hard came out almost twenty years ago. John McClane can vote. More importantly, people born the year Die Hard came out can vote. And people born in the 90s can drive. Damn it.
Off-Tube Commentary and the Pursuit of Happiness June 22, 2006
Posted by rosolio in Common Sense, TV, World.add a comment
Reasonably intelligent people all share the common trait of being in control of what they care about. Or at least can stay aware of it. Usually. Case in point, I was anti-Bloody Mary for my entire career, until tasting what was apparently a mediocre one at Corcorans led me to a totally new conclusion. I didn’t wake up a week and a half later and realize, “Holy crap, I like Bloody Marys now.” Same with entertainment. I knew right away that NBC’s summer test run show ‘Teachers’ was painstakingly awful. I didn’t try to rationalize anything (“Susan from Coupling is on it, and she was…uh…funny on that show…”), I just knew it. I knew I didn’t like the I.O. manual ‘Truth in Comedy’ around page 15 and I was fired up to buy the Oceans Eleven DVD a halfhour after stepping into the theater. You know right away.
There are only two scenarios that defy this trope (keep in mind this is for reasonably intelligent people. It wouldn’t surprise me if this list continued endlessly for people camping out for Larry The Cable Guy tickets. Ohhhhhhh!): 1) when you’re in love, and; 2) when you deeply care about a sport or sports team. Some people never experience one or both of these things, but hey I’m trying to make a point here. The former is obvious, and fairly universal. The whole ‘love at first sight’ thing isn’t reality. What happens is you wake up one day thinking about someone, realize you’ve done that a few times in the last few days, and before you know it, you come to the conclusion that you’re in actual, real-deal love and didn’t know it. Often, this realization can put you in a terrible spot, but that’s not the focus of this column, no no. We’re talking about the latter today, which was spent listening to the Off-Tube Commentary of the World Cup match between Ghana and the United States.
The Off-Tube Commentary to which I refer is one of the most simultaneously brilliant and ridiculous ideas in recent history. The World Cup is totally blacked out on the internet, at least in English, because audio and video rights were purchased by ESPN and BBC Sports. The BBC adheres so strictly to the rules that they will broadcast literally everything except the game itself. So you have all the pregame and predictions and analysis, and then the online radio player shuts off like the electricity at 1157 W. Diversey, Chicago IL, 60614 (see the previous article on this subject). So this tiny English newspaper (which I suspect is the New York Post of the UK, based on the number of headlines involving booze-induced embarrassments and injuries to celebrities) has a link to two guys sitting around watching the game on TV and giving the play-by-play themselves. No official color commentary, no sponsors, just two random fans telling you what’s happening on their TV. This idea is so good, that I’ll probably be trying it at some point during the NFL season. What if they did this for dramatic television as well? “And Michael is down in the hatch, yes, he just told Ana Lucia that he’ll kill Henry…yep, she gave him the gun…oh my! oh dear oh dear oh dear…”
(note: The potential for drinking games surrounding this is totally endless as well. My personal favorite is taking a shot every time one of the announcers describes a player as being “knackered”. Play with the word “quality” and you’ll be shitfaced before halftime).
So I’m listening to it, experiencing the typical ups and downs of a sporting event while still maintaining relative diligence at work. When the dust settled, and jesus, did it settle, Ghana defeated the U.S. 2-1, scoring the second goal off of a penalty shot drawn by the flopping Pimpong (great name). In fact, there was a lot of flopping, so much that the neutral British commentators were making fun of the situation. “And Pimpong goes down like he’s been shot in the leg. There wasn’t any contact. The Germans are awfully strict aren’t they?” The Ghanians basically made Shane Battier and Vlade Divac look like Abe Lincoln (who couldn’t tell a lie) and Dennis Haysbert (who could run for president right now as David Palmer and would win in a total landslide). Whatever, either way, the Americans lost and Ghana sealed the victory by acting as if there was a U.S. sniper on the roof picking them down one by one.
As the clock reached zero, I found myself overcome with simultaneous sadness and rage. I immediately went onto Wikipedia to find out the gross national product of Ghana, hoping to be able to make some comparison to their gutless play on the soccer pitch with their inability to compete in the world economy. I cursed Landon Donovan’s total disappearing act. I started with countless ‘what ifs?’ regarding Eddie Pope and Pablo Mastoreni’s card suspensions and Claudio Reyna’s injury. As I did this, I came to a strange conclusion: I really cared about soccer. I know these guys’ names. I really cared about this U.S. team. I overtly wanted to follow the event as much as possible, but my rooting for the Americans was more of an obligation than a decision. Somewhere along the way, I started to give a shit. It didn’t happen then, but I noticed it then.
This lightning bolt of an epiphany caused me to start thinking about the other times I felt this way. The only teams that I really, really bleed for are the Ravens and Maryland basketball, with the Orioles simply falling a little behind due to the miserable ownership of Peter Angelos, but then again I should include them.
The Orioles had won the first game I ever went to. They beat the Yankees 10-1, Randy Milligan hit two home runs, and I was mesmerized by the fact that at any moment, I could stick a finger in the air and get a hotdog. I wasn’t a fan just yet, though. I wasn’t a fan until my favorite player, the closer Gregg Olson, blew a save against Boston, and I was left crying on the floor, like I played for Ghana and was within 30 feet of an American player in motion. It was the first game I could remember them losing, and I felt like I lost. ‘Them’ became ‘us’, and I did nothing but care.
For the Ravens, it was an end of the season game against the Patriots in 1999, the first season we didn’t totally stink on ice. We were on the brink of making the playoffs, which is sort of like a validating moment for a team that was new to a city so starved for football that we watched minor leaguers running around on a 110 yard field with only three downs for four years. Doug Flutie converted a 4th and a million by scrambling, barely making it, barely sealing our fate. They ended up getting another cheap score and we were done. We had lost…hang on a sec…38 games, but that was the first one I was pissed about. It was the pain then that was counteracted by total psychotic jubilation the next season, when we game back to beat Jacksonville at home. There’s no way it would have felt that good if Flutie’s scramble didn’t hurt so bad.
The Maryland one is easy: Final Four against Duke. Even the total collapse against the Dukies at home earlier that season didn’t hurt as bad as this one. For one thing, I was sick at home and not there (I probably would have gotten sick if I was there). Maybe that 54 second meltdown contributed to this pain, but we had them on the ropes, and it was for a chance to play for a title. We were up 22 at one point, and it was the fucking Dukies. The moment of clarity for me was when Chris Duhon and Steve Blake dove after a loose ball and Duhon slammed his head against the ground harder than any crash test dummy has hit anything…ever. He was jacked up, not like paralysis jacked up, but totally dazed and rolling around like he was about to stand up claiming to be Joan of Arc. As this guy writhed in pain, I remember thinking: “Good.” My investment in this outcome and my total hatred for everything the Dukies stood for completely overrode any sense of humanity that I had. I honestly didn’t care that this guy whacked the hell out of his head. Nothing else mattered except for my beloved Terps (who went on to dominate the Dukies the next year and win a national title…had to get that in there) and the wave of disappointment that enveloped Cole Field House.
The moral of the story? You’re not a fan until you get totally wrecked over a team. A lot of people never experience that; the people who don’t like sports certainly haven’t, and think people who hyperventilate after games (the victorious Tim Rosolio after a Mo Vaughn walk-off in 1996) are out of their minds. You get the same impression of people who are in love. Often their decisions are totally ridiculous, their devastation totally beyond everyone’s comprehension. Am I saying that you need to get completely buried by someone before you can understand what love is? I don’t think I am. I think the better way of looking at it is that you can’t really appreciate the good without getting a brutal, lingering taste of the bad.
Without that hope, none of it would be worth it.
Common Sense Man: Global Warming, Great Apes, and other Bedtime Stories May 1, 2006
Posted by rosolio in Common Sense, Media, Politics, World.add a comment
Rush Limbaugh does not believe in global warming. While the term ‘believe’ may seem out of place there, it’s because it is his own. He and many of his acolytes are under the distinct impression that global warming is a mythic abstraction that is accepted or rejected by the respective sides, despite boatloads of physical evidence. I for one would like to counter by saying that I do not believe in orangutans. I have never seen one, and am guessing that the ones featured on TV and in print are simply baboons wearing costumes.
Is he insane? Clearly not; he’s made multiple millions countering intelligent discourse with shouting and throat-wobbling (I’m not sure exactly how else to describe it, but if you hear the man talk, it sounds very much like he has a neck 94 inches in circumference; the acoustics in this man are similar to that of a gigantic festival tent that has collapsed on the band who, because they don’t get paid if they don’t play, power through the distraction). There is no such thing as an idiot-millionaire, but there is certainly such thing as a millionaire who plays an idiot on TV (or the radio). On the list of truly vile and dangerous people, he cannot possibly overtake Ann Coulter, for the sole reason that he is often seen as a sideshow, and not as a real person. However, he does preach a doctrine of seperatism and hate, so it’s always nice to watch him roll down a few notches.
The Jabba the Hutt of the AM dial is in the news for pleading guilty to prescription drug fraud. He went to three different doctors to load up on three supersized orders of OxyContin. It’s looking like he’s getting away with five years probation, but he’s already cracked once (the first warning was in 2003), so it’s likely it’ll happen again. Even if he doesn’t see the inside of a jail cell, at least we’ll get a chance to see if Limbaugh believes in constipation, nausea, somnolence, dizziness, vomiting, pruritus, headache, dry mouth, sweating, and asthenia. Then again, side effects could be part of the Jewish-Liberal media agenda as well…
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In more pressing, less morbidly obese news, the Sudanese Government is drafting a proposal to end the violence in Darfur. While this is the most optimism yet to appear from the situation, things are not looking tremendously positive. That is, it is very unlikely that the rebel groups and/or the Janjaweed are going to accept any kind of deal.
With all of the attention on Iraq and terrorism, immigration and race relations, the situation in Darfur is and has been the worst conflict in the world for the last three years. Obviously, we can’t all pull a Lord Byron and join the war, and, frankly, it is not in the interests of any world power to intervene. The best we can do is pay attention. Eventually, we may have some kind of a voice in determining the future of Darfur, and when that time comes, it’s a plus to know about it so it doesn’t get swept under the rug.
Rotten in Denmark? February 4, 2006
Posted by rosolio in Common Sense, Media, Politics, Racism, Terrorism, World.add a comment
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, or just don’t have any interest in international news you’re going to have heard about this (if your idea of international events revolves entirely around Simon Cowell, you’d better hurry and go vote for this week’s “Who Wants to Marry My Cat” on Fox). To make a long story short, a Danish newspaper decided it would be prudent/hilarious/incendiary to publish a week-long series of illustrations depicting the prophet Muhammad as a psychotic terrorist with a bomb-shaped turban (By the way, according to the Qu’ran, you can’t depict the image of Muhammad at all in any fashion, good or bad. So the fact that he’s drawn like a terrorist is irrelevant in many eyes). Before we get into the actual topic here, let’s get this out of the way: can a Western nation, powerful or otherwise, repeatedly make sweeping judgments and openly mock a gigantic organization of people who are currently embroiled in a culture war with the predominately Christian and Jewish West?
You can’t do that.
(The Can You Do That? feature will be launching shortly. Consider this an appetizer, a little piece of toast with cream cheese and smoked salmon. Main course to follow.)
Anyway, so the Danes made a mistake, I think that’s clear. A lot of people are trying to play the Freedom of the Press card, forgetting of course that the Bill of Rights does not cover the entire world and that America’s laws do not apply in every corner of the globe. It’s alarming, but true, there are other nations with other governments. Even the people who argue that our policies are always correct and that the citizens of foreign nations would have better lives if they adopted our ways can’t disagree with this one. When you satirize someone who looks differently and acts differently than your majority does, you’re just begging for someone to get offended. If Al-Jazzera, the Fair and Balanced Fox News of the Middle East, responded to the outbreak of sexual assault by priests with images of Jesus (H. Christ) engaged in deviant activity with small boys, you’d see Rumsfeld and Cheney tossing the phrase “act of war” around. So something’s rotten in the state of Denmark, they showed staggeringly poor judgment (this wouldn’t be the first time; historians have found Danish illustrations of Fortinbras wearing a baby bonnet and holding a rattle). Because the ratio of psychotic fundamentalist muslims to laid back muslims is about the same as rainy days in Tucson, yeah, the Danes were out of line.
That being said…look at the result.
The Danish embassy in Jakarta was stormed (a word forever associated with the Bastille) by angry protesters. The protesters did not reach the embassy itself, but it wasn’t for a lack of trying. Danish flags and effigies of the Prime Minister of Denmark were burned in the streets around the world. Gunmen raid the EU office in Gaza demanding an apology. Death threats were mailed to the newspaper and Denmark’s government officials.
This is not exactly a rational response. While a lot of people do not want to say it, one of the reasons so many apologies are being issued is that no one in Denmark wants to get blown up. And you know what? Everyone in the world right now, no matter how free thinking and accepting of all peoples, thinks it’s about to happen.
You do not protest a blasphemous cartoon by acting them out. You do not challenge people who make sweeping judgments by making your own. It wasn’t like the Government of Denmark released an image of Muhammad doing something ridiculous and declared it their new national seal. The country is being blamed for something that happened in a newspaper. That’s like a family in Brooklyn being called insensitive over a controversial cartoon in the New Yorker. That doesn’t exactly follow.
Attention Middle Eastern and Islamic nations: if you want people to stop depicting your religion as one based in violence and lunacy, stop reacting to controversy with violence and lunacy. There are civilized ways to do this, the world was already on your side in this matter. Those M-16 bullets don’t have to burn a hole in your pocket, you’ll have another chance to fire them into the air. Chill out.
A great example to follow is the one taken by Ali al-Sistani, the Grand Ayatollah of Iraq who, in the same speech, condemned the drawings while making no call for protests, suggesting that militant Muslims were partly to blame for distorting Islam’s image (MSNBC, 2/3). The true leadership of Islam understands what’s going on and knows that they are responsible for policing the out-of-control members of their following. The Vatican is equally responsible for keeping a leash on their fundamentalist Christian groups. The Philadelphia Eagles as an organization are responsible for keeping their fans from throwing batteries at opposing players and fans (there’s actually an NFL mandate penalizing a home team 15 yards if the fans throw things on the field; they hold the team responsible). Every group has its share of crazies and it is up to the leadership to keep them under control, lest their whole group gets lumped under the same umbrella.
-Mike Rosolio
