As much as I love James Lileks' writing, I've gotten damned weary of the liberal-bashing screeds in his (voluminous and often brilliant) blog, The Bleat. So, incensed/inspired by his political snark-zeal, I thought I'd comment on the latest news. I'm sure he'll be unspeakably proud.

President, first lady oppose S.F. weddings
(Yahoo/PlanetOut)

"I have watched carefully what's happening in San Francisco, where licenses were being issued, even though the law states otherwise," the president told reporters at the White House. "I have consistently stated that I'll support law to protect marriage between a man and a woman. Obviously these events are influencing my decision."

Protect marriage? Oh my god -- if gay people get married, they'll gain terrible powers! They'll go around indiscriminately annulling straight marriages with a wave of their hand! How did we miss it until now? Stop the marriage terrorists!

(And, uh, maybe somebody's pointed out once or twice...there's already a federal law...)

While campaigning for her husband's re-election, Laura Bush called marriages for gay couples "a very, very shocking issue."

Shocking? Did this woman grow up in a Wonder Bread factory or something? Well...yeah, probably, pretty much.

"Very, very shocking" -- goodness, she's as eloquent as her husband.

"It's an issue that people want to talk about and not want the Massachusetts Supreme [Judicial] Court, or the mayor of San Francisco, to make their choice for them," she told the Associated Press. "I know that's what the president thinks."

Skipped a few grammar lessons at the bread factory?

Yeah, you tell 'em, Mr. and Mrs. Laura -- people don't want the government making their choice for them! Straight up.

But no, really, she's got a bachelor's in education and a master's in library science, and she's been a teacher and a librarian. You'd think this would actually mean something. Here, a few bits from her official bio:

She urges more Americans to become teachers

It would help if teachers were paid decently, of course

and wants parents and other adults to have important information on child rearing and cognitive development.

Yeah, I know I've sure seen a lot of that coming from the White House.

Since the tragedy of September 11, Mrs. Bush has focused her energy on helping our nation, especially children, through the healing process.

Ditto.

She encourages Americans to spend more time together as families

...as long as they're, you know, man-and-woman Christian families. Or Jewish, okay. ALL RIGHT Muslims can be Americans too as long as they cooperate with the authorities.

and support the teachers who take care of their children every day in school.

See unterminated comment above

In her speeches and public appearances, she expresses what many Americans believe: that every human being should be treated with dignity

Except, you know. You know. The ones who shouldn't be.

She worked to establish Adopt-A-Caseworker programs and Rainbow Rooms throughout Texas. Rainbow rooms provide abused and neglected children with basic necessities such as clothing and diapers.

But FOR HEAVEN'S SAKE don't let those gays adopt them, or, like, God will eternally damn those children for having the wrong kind of loving, supportive family. Uh, because they'll turn gay! It's common sense! God hates gays. Who pretend to be normal. Or something.

Today she brings her experienced viewpoints, her love of children and her interest in education to a much broader audience as the wife of the 43rd President of the United States

asterisk

, George W. Bush.

Okay. That should sate me for a while.

When I paste a large chunk of text into iChat, the text entry box expands grossly to accommodate it all, as if the window were gaping its jaws to devour the paragraph whole -- which it does, shrinking the box in what I can only describe as a chomp, wherein the text appears inside the iChat log window, eaten, unchewed.

My friend and fellow MacWarehouse Tech Support survivor (and finest Mac fanatic/guru) Ian Beach is dead at 35. Heart attack, apparently while at work, webmastering at UWashington-Bothell, on August 14.

His web team knows his style -- see the discreet, elegant "In memory of Ian Beach" link at bottom right on that page. I have yet to collect my thoughts to add to the eulogies already posted there.

Last Thursday, my wife wrote out a card to our local Islamic Society center to offer thoughts of peace and friendship. She asked our five-and-a-half-year-old if he wanted to write a card too, and he said yes. He asked her to write down his message so he could copy it into the card (he writes and spells well, but I guess he wanted to have it in front of him so he wouldn't make any mistakes). She picked up pen and paper and asked what he wanted to say, and he dictated this:

She blinked a few times, said "That's very good," and wrote it down. He wrote out the card and she mailed it alongside hers. He wants to send three more cards to other people.

There is hope for the world.

"The World Trade Center is not America. Oh, in a way it is -- a marvel of engineering, a hub of wealth creation, designed by a man of Japanese ancestry, constructed by hand by citizens whose people came from Europe, Asia, Africa. Men who prayed to one God, to many, to none. All colors and creeds constructed that building; like any skyscraper in any American city, the World Trade Center was the legend of Babel refuted in stone and glass.

"But it was merely a manifestation of America. If the terrorists had a finer grasp of American culture, they might have headed for the Empire State Building. It has a greater claim as a national symbol. It went up during the overture to the Depression, a statement of optimism in a world of compounded doom. Its lines are serious and austere, yet romantic and ennobling. A zeppelin docked at its summit; King Kong climbed its cliffs. Even the name contains the contradictions of America -- we are an empire, yes, but an empire whose provinces are knitted together by an idea. A concept. A bold proposition: citizenship is not based on blood, on clan, on tribe, but on a belief in an ideal.

"An ideal often soiled by the crude hands of mere humans, yes. But an ideal whose worst manifestation in our history is still a hundred times better than the world the terrorists wish to bring about."

James Lileks, The Bleat, 12 September 01

Joystick101.org interviewed Nolan Bushnell, founder of Atari and widely regarded as the father of the video arcade game, and asked him which elements of video games should be brought into the public education system. (Quote edited for clarity.)

"Essentially the idea of high production values surrounding educational concepts. I believe that a school teacher today is so outgunned in this world of competition for ideas. Think about a school teacher, with a piece of chalk and a blackboard, competing for the minds of children inundated with commercials that have million dollar production values for 30 seconds in which the concepts are so tight and well produced, or video games with 4 million dollar budgets in which the concepts are so tight and produced, or hundred million dollar movies in which the concepts and visuals are so great. The immature mind I don't believe can distinguish between good ideas that are poorly produced and bad ideas that are well produced. And so I feel like we need to get media systems into the educational process, and to fail to do so is to fail."

"You should not underestimate the power of comfort. To our everlasting discredit, we owe our utter dependency on technology, and the conclusive design of our stagnant society, to our inability to resist it."

Book of Pages

"The culture war is not just phony, but reactionary. It commodifies powerless groups to project a fearsome image of constantly escalating menace, suppresses discussion of real social inequalities, and promotes repressive government solutions. Youth are the most convenient population upon which to project damage, keeping the debate safely away from questioning adult values and pleasures that form the real influences on youths. In short, the culture war is not about changing genuine American social ills such as high rates of child poverty, domestic violence, and family disarray, but fomenting an endless series of moral panics that obstruct social change. . . .

"Healthier Western nations recognize it's normal for an adolescent to experience depression, anger, lust, body image confusion, anxiety, sexy music, cathartic games, evil media messages, corporate pitches, dangerous temptations, free time with peers, consumer interests, all those untoward growing-up influences about which America's kiddie-savers spread apocalyptic terror. . . .

"American youth do suffer real threats (as opposed to fictional booze marketing and R-rated movies). Fourteen million kids grow up in abject poverty, 2,000 die and half a million are treated in hospital emergency rooms from domestic violence every year, and 15 million have addicted parents. Americans' preference for indulging self-righteous moral crusades to avoid tough decision-making is a big reason the U.S. remains unable to confront vastly outsized levels of murder, violence, gunplay, unplanned pregnancy, addiction, drunkenness, preventable disease, and other social ills that other industrial nations better control."

Mike Males, "The Culture War Against Kids," AlterNet, 22 May 01

On that note, can someone get me U.S. statistics on school-shooting deaths versus suicides?

"Everyone is now overfamiliar with the event of several weeks ago, when an American missionary mother and her daughter were killed by a bullet fired at their plane, which a Peruvian fighter pilot decided was running drugs . . . But the presence of the missionaries raises a more basic question: what were they doing there in the first place? What on Earth gives some people the right to decide that their view of God or nature or destiny is the right one? What permits them to conclude that other people pointlessly labor with false gods and false values and need to see the light? What profoundly arrogant sense of the correctness of their ideas empowers missionaries to wrestle with the lives of strangers?"

Lionel Tiger, "Missionary Come Home," New York Press Volume 14 Issue 20