Politics

Damon Wayans Makes His Mark

New York Daily News columnist Stanley Crouch blasts Damon Wayans' attempt to trademark the word "N---a" for a clothing line and other uses, a story I covered for Wired News: He wants to put it on apparel and whatnot. So far, he has not been successful but one can imagine young American kids wearing that word emblazoned on clothes and listening to rap "songs" in which the N-word frequently appears, in conjunction with "bitches" and "hos," among other denigrations. Of course, there is a defense. ... (read more)

2006/02/28

Wikipedia Fights for Prophet Muhammad Cartoons

The controversy over the publication of editorial cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad is playing out on Wikipedia, where an image of a newspaper page containing the cartoons has been removed eight times within the past week alone. An internal poll of Wikipedia editors strongly favored the publication of the image, which puts the online encyclopedia in the same position as media organizations that have taken criticism for reprinting them. "Making and also looking the figures of Mohammed is ... (read more)

2006/02/20

Columnist: 'Blacks are No Longer Rioting'

In the Washington Post this morning, columnist David Ignatius makes a few jaw-dropping racial generalizations in a piece comparing Muslim outrage over the Muhammad cartoons to African-American reaction to the N word: I think the Muslim world could learn something about tolerance from African Americans. The United States still abounds with racist images, but blacks are no longer rioting in the streets or burning down buildings. ... We haven't abolished racism, but by working honestly at the ... (read more)

2006/02/10

Astronaut Launches Tirade

I visited Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Florida, last July, spending an afternoon at the tourist exhibits and launch pads. The original countdown for space shuttle mission STS-114 was underway, and we were taken by bus to see Discovery on launch pad 39B. Though the pad obscured everything but the top of the shuttle's external tank and booster rockets, the sight of the spacecraft was the highlight of the trip. I think I started to cry a little. Science rocks. ... (read more)

2006/01/23

No-Fly Canadian Linked to Hezbollah

I've been following the story of Sami Kahil, 38, a Canadian shoe store owner denied entry to Mexico Jan. 5 because his name appears on the U.S. no-fly list. Few American media have covered the incident, in spite of the fact that the U.S. was concerned enough about Kahil's presence on a plane to scramble fighter jets to escort it across the country. Kahil has become a cause célèbre in Canada, doing television interviews, hiring attorneys and soliciting the help of Amnesty ... (read more)

2006/01/16

Mexico Bars Canadian over U.S. No-Fly List

A story today in the Canadian media ought to get more coverage in the U.S.: American fighter jets intercepted a Air Transat plane flying from Toronto to Ixtapa, Mexico, on Thursday because a passenger appears on the U.S. no-fly list. Canadian citizen Sami Kahil, 38, was denied entry to Mexico and detained one night in jail, then sent home in the company of Royal Canadian Mounted Police: U.S. fighter jets shadowed Kahil's flight after American officials declared the plane was not cleared to ... (read more)

2006/01/08

Little Red Book, Big Fat Apology

New Bedford Standard-Times Editor Bob Unger has responded to the Little Red Book hoax that ran in the newspaper, acknowledging that the original story should not have run until they interviewed the student making the claim: We -- reporter and editors -- failed here because we put our faith in what two college professors told us. We should have held off publishing the story until we had a chance to judge the student's credibility for ourselves. The student's name continues to be kept private, to ... (read more)

2006/01/04

Student's Little Red Hoax Circles the Globe

The Drudge Retort fell for a hoax earlier this month, passing along a newspaper's report that a college student was investigated by the Department of Homeland Security for requesting Mao Zedong's Little Red Book on interlibrary loan. The student admitted on Friday it was a little red lie. I hate falling for stuff like this, because I like to think I was occasionally listening in class when I earned a journalism degree from the University of North Texas. In hindsight there were strong reasons to ... (read more)

2005/12/27

John Derbyshire: Jennifer Aniston Too Old to Be Hot

I'm the unnamed reader quoted by Jonah Goldberg on the National Review weblog this afternoon. I sent the same loaded question to 12 of the magazine's writers and editors: Do you share John Derbyshire's belief that females are only desirable to look at nude from the ages 15 to 20? Derbyshire, a conservative columnist for the magazine and an infamous contrarian, declared earlier this week that Jennifer Aniston is too old to be attractive in the nude: While I have no doubt that Ms. Aniston is a ... (read more)

2005/12/02

Terrorists Reap What They Sew

Congressman John Carter, R-Texas, has found a new area of concern for the nation's homeland -- uniforms worn by U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents are made in Mexico: If we're manufacturing uniforms in Mexico, what's to stop someone from walking across the border in a Border Patrol uniform? How do you know who are our guys and who are their guys? Don't tell Rep. Carter, but Al Qaeda probably has the operational capabilities to sew a shirt and pants. If our border security can be fooled ... (read more)

2005/11/28

Read More Entries