Showing posts with label culture war. Show all posts
Moving Targets: A Sea Change In San Francisco Planning
Once more unto the San Francisco breach comes Target.
This time, to help fill the dead space - or "ghost town," as it's often referred to - in the geographical heart of the city where Mervyn's and Sears used to be.
Last week, the Planning Commission gave its initial go-ahead for the Minneapolis retail chain to move into the 106,000-square-foot Mervyn's space, with an option to occupy an additional 15,000 square feet in the largely deserted City Center shopping complex on the corner of Geary Boulevard and Masonic Street.
Opening date: Spring 2013.
"We've long been interested in coming to the center of San Francisco, and we know we have a lot of supporters here," said Sarah Bakken, a Target spokeswoman.
San Francisco's second Target store will be looking for 200 full-time employees, said Bakken. Construction, which could begin as early as next spring, will employ about the same number of construction workers.
Work on San Francisco's first "City Target" - the centerpiece of the downtown Metreon's overhaul - is well under way, and on track to be done by fall 2012.
"Things are moving smoothly," said Bakken.
Crashing The Sheen-kansen: Two & A Half Men Canceled
By halting production on the eighth season of "Two and a Half Men," CBS Corp. and Time Warner Inc.'s Warner Bros. are turning away from a proven hit with both viewers and advertisersOutbursts from star Charlie Sheen led the media companies to cut off production of TV's most-watched comedy, potentially ending a program that helped lead a revival in TV sitcoms.
New episodes of "Men" on CBS average 14.7 million viewers. Reruns on CBS rake in nearly three quarters of the audience, and it is also popular in nightly syndication on local TV stations.
It's now unclear whether new episodes will ever be made, however, according to people familiar with the matter.
CBS' and Warner Bros.' decision Thursday came less than six hours after Mr. Sheen went on an erratic rant in a radio interview against topics as varied as Alcoholics Anonymous, Thomas Jefferson, and "Men" co-creator Chuck Lorre.
CBS Corp. CEO Leslie Moonves learned of the radio rant while at a party the company was hosting for investors in midtown Manhattan, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Mr. Moonves spoke by telephone with Bruce Rosenblum, president of Warner Bros. Television Group, the person said. Together, the two men decided to pull the plug.
"Based on the totality of Charlie Sheen's statements, conduct and condition, CBS and Warner Bros. Television have decided to discontinue production of 'Two and a Half Men' for the remainder of the season," the companies said.
When she was on location in Chicago shooting Alfred Hitchcock’s 1959 thriller, North by Northwest, her co-star, Cary Grant, took her to see a show. “A buzz went up in the audience the moment he was recognized. It was like a wave of adulation rolling round the theater. I found it overwhelming and a little scary. I was thrown by it. And I asked him, ‘How do you handle this, because I know I couldn’t?’ It was almost as if he were talking about someone else when he said, ‘They’ll tell their friends tomorrow that they saw Cary Grant. It makes them happy!’”
The Untold Stories: What You Won't See On the Evening News
A Lone Voice Crying In The Wilderness
The King's Speech" is a heartwarming, "Masterpiece Theatre"-type affair about King George VI, who conquered a serious speech impediment and, with the able assistance of a saucy Aussie therapist, taught himself to address his countrymen in public during their finest hour. This is a very nice story, and even though the film fudges the facts—Edward VIII and his Nazi-loving wife get off pretty easily—it definitely achieves what it sets out to accomplish. The performances are very good, the dialogue is crackling (except when the king stutters) and the lighting could not be better. Moreover, the way Helena Bonham Carter jauntily cocks her stylish chapeaux is enough to convince you that the Queen Mother herself has generously returned from the dead to do a nice little cameo.
That said, "The King's Speech" is basically a film about what positively smashing folks the royals are. It's a film that's infatuated by those awfully swell people up at Balmoral who wear kilts and shoot foxes. Americans used to turn up their noses at this sort of stuff. But that was before "Upstairs, Downstairs" and Merchant & Ivory intoxicated the entire republic with the rustle of crinoline and the shimmer of lace. "The King's Speech" is not, after all, a film about a Welsh coal miner who overcomes a speech impediment. It is not a film about an Aussie doughboy trapped on the beach at Gallipoli who overcomes a speech impediment. It is a film about spiffing chaps and the spiffing folks who help them to be even more spiffing.
Fully Committed: Left Wing Activist Arrested For Making Death Threats
A Tucson mass shooting victim was taken into custody Saturday after yelling "you're dead" at a Tea Party spokesman during the taping of an ABC-TV town hall event hosted by Christianne Amanpour.
The Pima County Sheriff's Office said J. Eric Fuller, 63, was involuntarily committed to an undisclosed medical facility, NBC News reported. The Associated Press said he was undergoing a psychiatric evaluation.
He faces charges of threats and intimidation and disorderly conduct, according to Tucson TV station KGUN.
The gathering for "After the Tragedy: An American Conversation Continued," to be shown as a special edition of "This Week" Sunday, included witnesses, first responders, victims and heroes of the Jan. 8 mass shooting that killed six and wounded 13 others, including Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz.
Local officials and others also packed St. Odilia's Catholic Church in northwest Tucson, where the show was taped.
KGUN reported that Fuller took exception to comments by Republican state Rep. Terri Proud and Tucson Tea Party spokesman Trent Humphries.
Fuller was in the front row and apparently became upset when Humphries suggested that any conversations about gun control should be delayed until all the dead were buried, KGUN reported.
Fuller took a picture of Humphries and shouted, “You’re dead.”
The Parallax View: the Gifford Shooting
A gunman targeted Rep. Gabrielle Giffords as she met with constituents outside a busy supermarket Saturday, wounding the Democrat and killing Arizona's chief federal judge and five others in an attack that left Americans questioning whether divisive politics had pushed the suspect over the edge.
The assassination attempt left the three-term congresswoman in critical condition after a bullet passed through her head. A shaken President Barack Obama called the attack "a tragedy for our entire country."
Giffords, 40, is a moderate Democrat who narrowly won re-election in November against a tea party candidate who sought to throw her from office over her support of the health care law. Anger over her position became violent at times, with her Tucson office vandalized after the House passed the overhaul last March and someone showing up at a recent gathering with a weapon.
Police say the shooter was in custody, and was identified by people familiar with the investigation as Jared Loughner, 22. U.S. officials who provided his name to the AP spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to release it publicly.
His motivation was not immediately known, but Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik described him as mentally unstable and possibly acting with an accomplice.
As the shooter was a declared admirer of the Communist Manifesto and had a thing for flag burning, I think it's safe to say that he's not a right winger. Still, just as there has been a rush to judgment against "us," there has also been rush to judge this guy as little more than crazy. Sorry, but this was an attempted political assassination by a guy who went through a certain amount of effort to position himself to do maximum damage. God knows why he would target an inoffensive moderate like Gifford. Then again, moderates often take it on the chin in immoderate times. Mr. Manifesto also managed to kill a federal judge, a 9-year old girl and three bystanders in their seventies. In ways both large and small, America really is under assault.
I'm not going to point to one person on the right or the left and say that their "rhetoric" caused this. But, I will say that the last 10 years have seen a mounting fury first on the Left against the supposed war crimes of George Bush and then on the Right (and among many independents) who suddenly saw the country veer crazily from a financial crisis to a pell mell socialization of the banking, automotive and health care industries. And now, we have a resurgent Republican Party that is taking on to itself the task of dismantling at least a portion of the sprawling federal government, something you can expect will be fought tooth and nail by the people who earn their livelihoods from it.
We can only hope that violence remains a matter of rhetoric and hyperbole, but after today, I can only say: let's be careful out there.
Get In the Van: Selling Mini-vans To Gen X
Sales are up, new models are appearing, and the woman who once did the blog "Rage Against the Minivan" has fallen in love with one. "In marketing campaigns featuring heavy-metal theme songs, rapping parents, secret agents in cat masks, pyrotechnics and even Godzilla, minivan makers are trying to recast the much-ridiculed mom-mobile as something that parents can be proud—or at least unashamed—of driving," reports The New York Times.
This is known as reinventing the wheel. Minivans became popular in the 1980s because they offered so many things—abundant seating, ease of entry for young children, decent fuel economy, and cargo space without excessive bulk. For a generation in its fertile years, they were the solution to every need.
Except one: the perennial urge of many baby boomers to believe they are cool. Our parents knew better than to expect hipness to coexist with diapers and PTA meetings. But the postwar generation is the one advertisers asked, seductively: "Who says you can't have it all?"
Apparently, though, the urge to be awesome has carried over to Generation X. That explains why automakers are trying so hard to convince them that basic, functional transportation is not a fate worse than fiery death.
Toyota is selling the Sienna as a "Swagger Wagon" after hearing consumers lament, "I don't like being the soccer-mom joke or feeling like I've given up all trace of my identity to be a parent," according to marketing manager Richard Bame.
The Further Adventures of THAT WOMAN: Sarah Palin in the News
The publisher of Sarah Palin's forthcoming book filed a lawsuit against Gawker Media on Friday for leaking pages of "America By Heart: Reflections on Family, Faith and Flag" before its release next week.
The legal complaint was filed Friday in federal court in Manhattan, said a spokeswoman for HarperCollins Publishers. The filing came two days after Gawker published images of 21 of the book's pages and its dedication page. In response, Palin tweeted, "Isn't that illegal?"
Her publisher contends it is. The lawsuit asks that Gawker be banned from what it terms "further copyright infringement" and that Gawker deliver the source material to the publisher so it can be destroyed. HarperCollins is also seeking financial damages.
Gawker did not immediately respond to e-mails seeking comment Friday evening, but an item published the day before and titled "Sarah Palin Is Mad at Us for Leaking Pages From Her Book" defended the blog's actions and linked to websites defining the fair use doctrine of copyright law.
TMZ is reporting that someone sent “white powder” later determined to be Talcum powder to the offices of Dancing with the Stars:
Cops and other emergency responders raced to CBS Television City studio late Friday after a white powder substance was discovered by a member of the “Dancing with the Stars” staff … and sources tell us Bristol Palin may have been the intended target.
This is the second deranged response to the show in the last week. Just a few days ago a man shot his television when Bristol Palin made it to the finals. Police were called and there was an actual stand off for several hours until he surrendered.
Red State Avatars: Dispatches From the Culture Wars
First, let’s start with the serious stuff first. Earlier this month, Army Sgt. Jason James McCluskey died for his country in Afghanistan. Freedom Remembered tells us that “[h]e died at age 26 at Zarghun Shahr, Mohammed Agha district, Afghanistan, of wounds suffered when insurgents attacked his unit with small arms fire. He was posthumously awarded the Purple Heart and Bronze Star Medal.” May God bless and keep you, Sgt. McCluskey.
So his funeral was apparently last Saturyday, and the Westboro Baptist @$$holes went to protest this soldier’s funeral. They apparently think that if you serve with a gay person you get their gay cooties and therefore go to hell. But when they went back to their minivan, they discovered that someone had slashed two of their tires
This morning in La Plata, Md., the hate group's parade of absurdity received quite a response: More than a thousand counter-demonstrators showed up early, established themselves on the rights-of-way around the church, and prevented the "God Hates Fags" crowd from getting anywhere near the funeral of Marine Lance Cpl. Terry Honeycutt.
A few minutes ago, I called Holly Smith, one of the organizers of the counter-demonstration. I was surprised to hear no shouting or noise in the background. "American flags as far as the eye can see," she told me. And the Westboro crowd? "They are up at a gas station probably a mile up the road, because they couldn't get any closer," she said. "We're in the shoulder for probably ten deep for at least 300 yards."
PC Re-runs: Clarence Thomas, Redux
For nearly two decades, Lillian McEwen has been silent -- a part of history, yet absent from it.When Anita Hill accused Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment during his explosive 1991 Supreme Court confirmation hearing, Thomas vehemently denied the allegations and his handlers cited his steady relationship with another woman in an effort to deflect Hill's allegations.
Lillian McEwen was that woman.
At the time, she was on good terms with Thomas. The former assistant U.S. attorney and Senate Judiciary Committee counsel had dated him for years, even attending a March 1985 White House state dinner as his guest. She had worked on the Hill and was wary of entering the political cauldron of the hearings. She was never asked to testify, as then-Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.), who headed the committee, limited witnesses to women who had a "professional relationship" with Thomas.
Now, she says that Thomas often said inappropriate things about women he met at work -- and that she could have added her voice to the others, but didn't.
Islamophobe: Obama Reaches The Limits of Multiculturalism
On an upcoming trip to India, President Obama will skip visiting one of the country’s most sacred shrines out of fear that wearing the requisite headgear might make him appear Muslim, according to reports from the United States and India.
The New York Times, citing an unnamed American official involved in the trip’s planning, reports that the president will not stop at the Golden Temple, a Sikh holy site and one of the country’s most popular tourist attractions, because visitors typically wear headscarves, turbans or Muslim caps.
Obama was to visit the sprawling golden complex in Amritsar, "but the plan appears to have foundered on the thorny question of how Mr. Obama would cover his head, as Sikh tradition requires, while visiting the temple," wrote the Times.
"To come to golden temple he needs to cover his head," Dalmegh Singh, secretary of the committee that runs the temple told the paper. "That is our tradition. It is their problem to cover the head with a Christian hat or a Muslim cap."
Grim Reality: Where To Go To Survive A Mine Disaster
Rescue workers were struggling Sunday to reach 11 coal miners missing underground after an accident that has triggered anguished comments on the Internet comparing China's woeful mine-safety record with the concern for human life displayed by the rescue of 33 miners in Chile.
The state-controlled Xinhua news agency said 26 miners were killed Saturday in an avalanche of coal dust triggered by a gas explosion at a mine in central Henan province.
It was the second deadly accident at the pit, owned by a consortium of companies including state-run China Power Investment, Corp.
Zambian locals rioted and blocked a road leading to Chinese-owned Collum Coal Mine Ltd. on Saturday to protest the shooting of at least 11 miners, allegedly by Chinese supervisors during a protest over low wages, police officials said Sunday.
On Friday, miners at Collum Coal Mine, in the Sinazongwe District of southern Zambia, demonstrated against low pay and poor working conditions. Gunshots followed, allegedly fired by two Chinese supervisors, wounding 11 miners, two of them critically, according to Zambian police and government officials. They were taken to a hospital.
Zambian police arrested the two Chinese supervisors allegedly involved.
Sesame Street XXX: Katy Perry Video Too Racy
Truce or Surrender: The GOP and Social Conservatives
Indiana governor and presidential prospect Mitch Daniels caused a stir - complete with broken crockery and multiple spit takes - when he suggested that the GOP should declare a truce in the culture war until we have resolved the survival issues confronting the US (those being the Little Depression and the War on Terror). The guys at Powerline took a look at the prospects of such a "truce:" Truce or Consequences
PAUL:Daniels is pitching the notion that we may need a truce in divisive culture war controversies in order to deal with "survival issues" such as terrorism and debt. But Michael Gerson argues that Daniels is being naïve here. He asks: "Just how would avoiding fights on unrelated social issues make Democratic legislators more likely to vote for broad budget cuts and drastic entitlement reforms?"I think Scott's last point - that the GOP has always had a strong moral component - is a good one, as John's point that the only people really pushing for a lowered emphasis on social issues are liberals who hate being on the wrong end of cultural questions. And, it's hard to imagine the GOP going into an election without strong support from social conservatives. Would Democrats try to win an election without unions or the urban poor or illegal immigrants? Of course not.Clearly, avoiding such fights would not produce that result. But it might well enable Republicans to become and remain more popular with moderate voters. And this, in turn, might give Republicans the majorities necessary to implement budget cuts and entitlement reforms.
JOHN: his is an interesting political question, I think. Over the last couple of decades, countless media/political voices have urged Republicans to abandon social conservatism on political grounds, i.e., the need to appeal to upscale suburbanites. This has always struck me as odd, since the social issues have consistently represented a net gain for Republicans--which is why, I assume, liberal commentators are so anxious for Republicans to abandon them. So in the past, my view has always been that Republican and conservative politicians should keep the social issues as one leg of the proverbial three-legged stool.
The present moment, however, represents a departure. It may well be that a consensus exists in favor of reduced federal spending and economic power that dwarfs any plurality on the social issues. So should conservative candidates forget about abortion, gay marriage and so on? The answer depends, obviously, on the particular district in question.
SCOTT: The Republican Party was founded in opposition to "those twin relics of barbarism -- Polygamy, and Slavery." Emmer's response may or may not be good politics, but serious concern with what John refers to as "the social issues" is deeply embedded in the principles and the history of the Republican Party.
The problem for fiscal conservatives like Daniels is that they are not comfortable discussing social issues. Does anyone really care what Mitch Daniels thinks of gay marriage? I don't. Most people simply don't want to have to worry about that stuff, and would just as soon not have the government involved in social issues at all (or, at least, as little as possible). But, too many prominent social conservatives are too happy to give ready ammunition to those who would say the GOP wants to pass meddling legislation rather than grant them their freedom to live as they choose.
Here's a quick look at a set of the most prominent political social cons from the last 10 years (talk radio guys and cultural conservatives are not really part of this group). Is there a word that comes to mind when you look at these guys?
Dr. James Dobson
Gary Bauer
Randall Terry
Pat Robertson
Ralph Reed
Can I hear a "Yuck!" from the congregation?
Now, this is not a call to denigrate these gentlemen. They've all done good work in support of their various causes. Dobson and Robertson, especially, have real fund-raising clout, have built impressive organizations and are (well, in Robertson's case "were") media-savvy operators. They paid for their microphones and, by gar they've used 'em.
But, you know what? Sometimes these fellows, and some of their cohort, have gone out of their way to court controvery, to point fingers, to declare that this or that group is the laltest cause of the decline and fall of civilization. Nothing wrong with that, I guess, except it can be a real turn off for the millions of people out there who, in addition to not wanting the government in their pocketbooks, would also like the government to stay out of their bedrooms. And, too many political social conservatives have given every indication of being a little too interested in what is going on behind closed doors.
Now, I know what people are going to say. The MSM unfairly portrays social cons as grim visaged Puritains. Yes, that's true and yes that's damn unfair, but...is it a surprise? I hope not. So why play into the worst stereotypes available by cosntatntly pushing forward the same grumpy old men as your spokesmen? Why resort to frankly embarrassing statements such as parsing out which Telle-tubbie is gay?
I also know that the Left's endless reliance upon the courts to put across social change that would never be accepted without a court order is deeply unfair and a betrayal of constitutional government. But, why must we reduce every Supreme Court nomination and GOP presidential campaign to Roe v Wade? We've had decades of GOP politicians dutifully learning the ins and outs of Roe, Casey, and Cathcart. To what end? Republicans have put so much intellectual and political energy into its social conservatism that everything else has been at least partially crowded out. And many GOP politicos have been needlessly hurt by the strict emphasis on social issues. Did a tortured soul like Larry Craig really have to go on the record with those gay marriage votes, which he had to have known would come back to bite him someday? Did the Northeastern fiscal conservatives who were blown out of office in 2006 really have to take so many hard votes just to satisfy social con voters who denigrated them as RINOs anyway?
Moreover, social conservatives have not exactly acted as helpful members of the GOP coalition. Look at what happened to George W Bush. Social conservatives never had a president who gave them so much of what they demanded. W was a real pro-lifer who always spoke out in favor of pro-life causes. He took the hard road and declined to allow federal funding for new stem cell lines, earning him the unfair sobriquet of being "anti-science." He used his faith-based initiatives to bring religious non-profits into the government grant sphere. There was no stronger friend to Israel. There was no Republican president who appointed better judges and justices to all levels of the federal courts. No one took the role of comforter-in-chief more seriously. No president ever spoke more sincerely about his faith and the continued strength he drew from the Bible. And, I truly believe he was doing God's work when he led the doomed political effort to save Terry Schiaivo from the legal system that abetted her death.
And what happened?
Everyone threw a fit when he nominated Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court, something Obama's allies would never do against the mediocre Sotomayor or Kagen. Worse, when W tried to move forward on agenda items important to fiscal conservatives - I'm thinking of FreddieMac/FannieMae reform, Social Security reform, vetoing S-Chip - W took a lot of heat and received absolutely no help from the social conservatives to whom he had offered so much. If you are a Bushie like Daniels, is it any wonder if you look at social conservatives and see an interest group that demands total obeisance without offering support to their allies when their policies are up for a vote?
The Anchoress has often asked her readers "how do you receive a good?" The question is a good one, and more difficult to answer than many would like to think. Bush gave social conservatives a lot, and they repaid him with an increased stridency that - along with the out-of-control spending by many in the GOP caucus - helped end the majorities in the House and Senate. Remember, it was the fiscal conservatives who were hurt most in 2006 and 2008, but it is fiscal conservatism that has brought people out to Tea Parties and reinvigorated the GOP, which was flailing in the early months of Hope&Change.
The GOP is ultimately a party of limited government. That means not just limited in financial scope, but also limited in social scope as well. Too many social conservative leaders have gotten too used to the idea of approaching each election with a to-do list and then bemoaning any failure to check off all of their little boxes. How the hell does it help the party or the country when we are facing, once again, the question of whether or not Mitt Romney's Mormonism will prevent him from getting out of the primaries? Why do we need to know what Mitch Daniels - a guy who has succeeded in governance by doing the exact opposite of what the Democrats have done, maybe there's a lesson there? - thinks of abortion? Why don't we simply commit to reaffirming the Establishment Clause and promise to get government out of the social issue business? I don't know, seems a lot simpler than what we have now.
Maybe we don't need a truce, but we certainly need a break from Big Social Conservatism as much as we need a break from Big Government.
