Shots in the Dark

In an editorial, the English-language newspaper in Japan says it’s time for the country to stop its pointless slaughter of whales.

Continuing the whale hunts means Japan will continue to pay dearly in international diplomatic costs for its right to maintain a tradition that extends far beyond the borders of the country’s culture yet is no longer central to daily life here at home.

Whether this will make one iota of difference, I don’t know, but it can’t hurt.

Can you think of a worse idea for a television series?

The man whose ringing iPhone led conductor Alan Gilbert to halt a performance of Mahler’s 9th apologizes—anonymously—to the New York Times.

“It was just awful to have any role in something like that, that is so disturbing and disrespectful not only to the conductor but to all the musicians and not least to the audience, which was so into this concert,” he said by telephone.

“I hope the people at that performance and members of the orchestra can certainly forgive me for this whole event. I apologize to the whole audience.”

So, okay, maybe he shouldn’t have been taken out and shot. As apologies go, that one is pretty straight-up—none of that “if anyone was offended” nonsense—and sincere.

The man, whose seat was in the front row, claims that his company had changed his Blackberry for an iPhone the previous day—sign of the times!—and that the alarm was going off; he says that he didn’t even know smart phones had alarms. (Ah, the willful ignorance of the 1 percent! Those technological drones in IT will figure those things out for you!) And so the alarm kept ringing….

Which doesn’t totally explain why he couldn’t, for example, turn the sound down, but never mind. I am warmed by the deeply hostile reaction of the other members of the audience.

Meanwhile, in China, riots broke out as the iPhone 4S went on sale in Beijing.

Don’t the Chinese have more important things to riot about?

It’s a curious world we live in….

One of the reasons I love this city is that you can’t own a gun here and you can’t bring a gun here, and generally 99.99% of the folks who live in New York think that’s a good idea. We recognize that when you cram this many people into a small space, things can get stressful sometimes, and at those moments it’s good not to be able to reach for your weapon.

The problem is that wackos from across the country keep bringing their guns to New York City because they believe that a gun is something you shouldn’t leave home without—and they keep getting arrested.

Like Mark Meckler, the co-founder of the Tea Party, for instance.

What, you’re shocked that the a Tea Party member would be carrying a Glock 27?

Meckler was arrested at the airport for having the gun—for about three hours—and, as the Wall Street Journal reports, had this to say about it:

It was a nightmare that I can scarcely describe to you. Until you have felt the handcuffs on your wrists, and until you have heard that cell door close behind you, it is impossible to understand what it means to actually lose your liberty. And since that day, my liberty has been at stake, and because of that threat, based upon the advice of counsel, I’ve been unable to publicly speak about this case. Today the silence ends.

Now, that totally reassures you that this guy is sane and reasonable and should be allowed to carry a lethal weapon, right?

As Plaxico Burress and lots of other folks have found out, this is a great city to visit…but we can live without your guns.

Yesterday’s New York Daily News had a thoroughly entertaining article about the strife and dissension tearing the New York Jets apart.

The headline read as follows:

NY Jets players bash Mark Sanchez, say they want Peyton Manning and GM Mike Tannenbaum should trade young quarterback away
Teammates rip franchise QB, say he’s ‘lazy’ and ‘content’

Basically, a bunch of Jets players-a pretty decent number, actually—think that quarterback Mark Sanchez isn’t very good, that he’s not much of a leader, that he’s been spoiled by the team, that he’s getting worse and not better, that he’s lazy, and that it’d be better to get a 36-year-old quarterback coming off major neck surgery than to stick with a guy who’s headed into his fourth season in the league.

“They see the organization babying him,” said a Jets source. “They see him with a sense of entitlement. He’s been given all this and hasn’t done anything. They call him ‘San-chise.’ They make him the face of the organization. They gave him the captain tag. He’s not a captain. He should have never been a captain.”

None of the players who spoke to the Daily News for this story agreed with Ryan’s decision to anoint Sanchez as a captain.

Deeee-licious!

After this story, the Jets are in a bind: Stick with a quarterback who clearly doesn’t have the confidence and respect of a good portion of his team. Or trade him!

Both options have—heh—their downsides.

Meanwhile…go G-Men! They are the underdogs in cold, primitive Green Bay. But truth, justice and the American Way are on their side.

When one man’s iPhone repeatedly went off during a recent performance of Mahler’s 9th Symphony at Avery Fisher Hall, conductor Alan Gilbert actually stopped the performance to ask its owner to turn it off. The audience, writes the Wall Street Journal, “applauded vigorously.”

So yes, Mitt Romney won in New Hampshire, and yes, as I predicted, John Huntsman did better than expected, though not enough to make much of a difference for him, I expect. But I think the real story of this primary is that the GOP’s primary season continues to reflect the tenor of the party over the last decade or so, which is, essentially, nasty and angry. During the Obama presidency, the GOP has been destructive, opposing everything no matter how urgent the crisis. And now, campaigning for the party’s presidential nomination, the GOP’s avatars continue that trend, only they have become self-destructive.

More to the point: Where until recently Republicans generally honored what was known as Ronald Reagan’s 11th Commandment-thou shalt not speak ill of a fellow Republican—every candidate except for Romney have been attacking Romney like Reivers (or Reavers, actually).

And as a result of all that pressure, Romney said some truly stupid things, such as having known the fear that he was about to get a pink slip and how much he likes to be able to fire people—then claiming that he was talking about insurance companies. What a liar.

So Romney won, but he lost a lot in the process. He emerges from New Hampshire the likely nominee, but no one seems to like him much and he provided some fantastic ammunition for the Democrats. Really? At a time of debilitating unemployment you tell the world how much you like to fire people?

He’ll be the nominee. But he looks flustered. All because the tenor and tone of the national party has morphed knee-jerk opposition into fratricide.

And the results are pretty amazing, in this video filmed off the coast of Guadeloupe. The shark/s is/are quite beautiful.

Dressed for Dinner from adam kimmel on Vimeo.

In the Times, Charles Blow lambastes Rick Santorum, who is accusing President Obama of “elitist snobbery” for arguing that every child should go to college.

Blow quotes Santorum as saying of Obama:

Who are you? Who are you to say that every child in America go … I mean the hubris of this president to think that he knows what’s best for you. I … you know there is … I have seven kids. Maybe they’ll all go to college. But, if one of my kids wants to go and be an auto mechanic, good for him. That’s a good-paying job – using your hands and using your mind. This is the kind of, the kind of snobbery that we see from those who think they know how to run our lives. Rise up America. Defend your own freedoms.

Rise up, America, indeed.

Of course, as Blow points out, the president has never actually said that.

But if he hasn’t, perhaps he should: As Catherine Rampbell has been writing on the Times’ Economix blog of late, there’s more and more evidence that college-educated workers are gaining ground in American society, while non-college grads are falling farther behind…

Over the last year, an additional 1,068,000 bachelor’s degree recipients have found work, for example, while the number of employed workers with no more than a high school diploma fell by 551,000.

There is certainly virtue in work that does not require a college degree—I don’t think anyone is saying that. And, sometimes, you can make a decent living from it. But if you want to ensure your kid the best chance of employment, send him or her to college.

More to the point, Santorum is an dolt, so convinced that every attack that can be made against Obama should be made that he’s actually downplaying the virtues of a college education—bad policy and, I think, bad politics.

“Citigroup Replaces JP Morgan as White House Chief of Staff”

—Gawker, now

You don’t even have to read the rest of the story….