DT ALBERT HAYNESWORTH
(on his hit on Andre Gurode)
First thing I’d like to say is, nobody told me what to say. Nobody coached me on my statement or anything like that. It’s all coming from me. What I’d like to say is I’m very sorry. I apologize to Andre. What I did was disgusting. It’s something that should never happen. I mean I’m not a dirty player. I don’t play dirty. I have respect for the game. What I feel like is I disgraced the game, disgraced my team and disgraced my last name. I just don’t know what else to say to apologize. When I was sitting in here in the locker room when the game was going on, I was looking at my phone, which has my kids on it. I don’t want them to have my last name and to think their Dad was a dirty player because I don’t play that way. I play with a lot of heart. What I did out there was disgusting. It doesn’t matter what the league does to me. The way I feel right now, you just can’t describe it.
"People told us at the time, 'You can't really draw an image of Mohammed,'" Parker says. "And we were like, well, we can. We're not Muslim, so it's OK."Parker and Stone both appear to be getting burnt out in their non-stop efforts to defuse even the most politically charged issues.
In 2006, however, when Stone and Parker wanted to depict Mohammed in an episode, Comedy Central wouldn't let them. After all, Muslims worldwide had rioted over insulting depictions of Mohammed in a newspaper in Denmark.
It seemed odd to the creators of "South Park," who had been and were still allowed to depict Jesus in any number of profane ways. In fact, the episode in question, "Cartoon Wars," shows a cartoon (supposedly created by al Qaeda) in which Jesus defecates on President Bush.
"That's where we kind of agree with some of the people who've criticized our show," Stone says. "Because it really is open season on Jesus. We can do whatever we want to Jesus, and we have. We've had him say bad words. We've had him shoot a gun. We've had him kill people. We can do whatever we want. But Mohammed, we couldn't just show a simple image."
During the part of the show where Mohammed was to be depicted — benignly, Stone and Parker say — the show ran a black screen that read: "Comedy Central has refused to broadcast an image of Mohammed on their network."
Other networks took a similar course, refusing to air images of Mohammed — even when reporting on the Denmark cartoon riots — claiming they were refraining because they're religiously tolerant, the South Park creators say.
"No you're not," Stone retorts. "You're afraid of getting blown up. That's what you're afraid of. Comedy Central copped to that, you know: 'We're afraid of getting blown up.'"
"At the same time, just like we always do, we managed to get something on and say something about how we can't say something about Mohammed," Parker says.
"South Park," from its very beginning has been about mocking that which is held most sacred.
"Going into the last run was the most sort of scared I've ever been," Parker says. "I went into the run just going, 'Wow, how many times are they going to tell us we can't do something before we bail?' Because we're ready to bail. We're ready. … We wanted to say some things, shake things up a bit. And I think we've done that, and I think we've done it in a bigger way than we ever will in the future. So it'd be nice to make some more shows and some more movies, but it'd also be really nice to go to a farm and raise some goats and have some kids. You know what I mean? I mean, that would be really nice, too."
"As soon as we can't make the show we want to make, we're not going to make it anymore. At the beginning of the last run I thought we were really close. I thought it was like this might be it. But then, you know, we were able to still do a Mohammed show and do it the way we wanted, which was to do it and then say, 'All right, Comedy Central, you're a network, you have a right to do with this what you want, so we're making it this way. And then if you want to take out the image of Mohammed, that's fine, you can do that, but we're also going to make the show about you taking out the image of Mohammed.'"
"All the religions are superfunny to me," Parker adds. "The story of Jesus makes no sense to me. God sent his only son. Why could God only have one son and why would he have to die? It's just bad writing, really. And it's really terrible in about the second act."
But Parker says atheism is more ludicrous to him than anything else.
"Out of all the ridiculous religion stories — which are greatly, wonderfully ridiculous — the silliest one I've ever heard is, 'Yeah, there's this big, giant universe and it's expanding and it's all going to collapse on itself and we're all just here, just 'cuz. Just 'cuz. That to me, is the most ridiculous explanation ever," he says. "So I think we have a big atheism show coming."
Libertarian New York Times columnist John Tierney recently wrote that he had "bad news for the GOP regarding that promising new bloc of voters, the "South Park Republicans." It turns out they're not Republicans, at least not anymore."This resonates with me on many levels, mostly because of the fact that I am consistently regarded as a conservative republican Bush-apologist for my stances in the war against Islamic terrorists. The reality is quite a bit different. I don't really fit very well in to either political aisle, mainly due to the fact that I have conflicting views on the many of the main issues. I am pro-choice, yet pro-2nd amendment. I am for the war in Iraq yet critical of the way it has been handled by the Bush administration. I believe in a social safety net, yet also believe in privatizing social security.
"We would love to think that we could control a group of people and take over the country in a new political party," Stone says. But they have their doubts. And in truth, they say they're not necessarily all that conservative, it's just that they enjoying poking fun at liberal orthodoxies and celebrities, and it's far more rebellious to lean right in Hollywood than to lean left.
"We're probably more conservative than most Hollywood liberals, but that doesn't mean a whole lot," Stone says.
"When the show first came out, there were a lot of people calling it 'Peanuts on Acid,'" Parker says. "I was a big Charlie Brown fan as a kid."
"And I was a big acid fan," says Stone.
The beginnings of the show focused mainly on "this is how kids talk," Parker says. "This is what four little boys do when left alone. These are the things they say. Here's how kids really are."
"They're selfish," Stone says. "They're little bastards. And society makes them better. It's not 'Society corrupts them.'"
"See," Parker says, "that's probably the most conservative viewpoint we have."
Cell Hell Phone Fun
Or, How I finally caved in.
by Larry Miller
09/15/2006 12:00:00 AM
I HATE CELL PHONES.
Well, hate is probably too strong a word.
No, it's not. I hate them.
I know they've become as essential for all of us as deodorant and bottled water, and that without our phones, we would all sit very still for half a minute or so, then begin drumming our fingers, then roll our necks a couple of times, take a deep breath in and out, quietly whistle a bar or two of "Arriverderci, Roma," then suddenly vault up, screaming, and dive out the nearest tenth story window......
Auschwitz camp on 26 May 1944, where the Nazis chose whom to kill immediately and whom to use as slave labor or for medical experimentation. The entrance to the main camp is in the background. Between 1.1 and 1.6 million people were killed at Auschwitz alone; over 90% of the victims were Jews. Picture taken by SS Oberscharführer Bernhard Walter or SS Unterscharführer Ernst Hoffmann.
"Our enemy is a radical network of terrorists, and every government that supports them.....Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists. From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime.
Top Hizbullah official: Group Didn't Expect Israel To React So Strongly
A senior Hizbullah official has said the group did not expect Israel to react so strongly to the capture of two Israeli soldiers. (AP)
Argument: The average English word has 2.5 syllables. It is a constant that a haiku stanza has 17 syllables. This means that the average haiku written in English will have in the environ of seven words. I have no idea how many syllables the average Japanese word contains, however, I do know that variety exists between the languages.
Hopefully, My Last Analysis of the Flight 93 Crash: Where I Show the Official Story Is Simply Wrong Here is the official government version of the flight 93 crash (all of the details can be found in the book "Among the Heroes" by Jere Longman):
This is why I mention the "Two On Two" program airing tonight. It's always good to interview men such as Magic and Bird and Carmelo Anthony and LeBron James, to see how they tick -- and from the league perspective, to see if such bounty as the Era of Bird and Magic spawned can ever be reproduced. David Stern would love it. Consciously or not, so would you. I myself once said on the L.A.-based show "Rome Is Burning" that everybody would probably get into it more if Carmelo Anthony, the foil for LeBron James, were a white kid instead of a black one. I didn't say it as an I-wish thing, or as a condemnation.
It is the first way people draw a rooting interest in our nation of fools.
But it is not the only way, as the Lakers joining the Pantheon of the Yankees, Notre Dame and the Dallas Cowboys as America's Teams shows.
Now we have Iceberg Jim asking Larry Bird, "Does the NBA lack enough white superstars, in your opinion?"
This, right after Bird is being one of the fellows, in his opinion, by saying he hated it when a white guy tried to guard him because he felt that was beneath him. There was laughter in this part of the segment, although it was nervous uncomfortable laughter from LeBron and 'Melo. Magic was laughing, but then he laughs at everything.
You know what's troubling about this? You and me. That's what the marketers think of us. Dangle the red meat of race in front of them, and they'll tune in and get the fruits and vegetables and all the stuff that's good for them but that they won't tune in for otherwise. That's No. 1.
No. 2, the timing. I mean, Gray asked this question, and elicits this answer, and there Luke Walton is! I mean, there he is, right in front of your eyes, as the only possible salvation of the Lakers in the NBA Finals! And you can't make a Luke Walton overnight. You can't I-wish up on one. It takes years and years and years of training, as well as many other variables falling exactly into place. It's just like when some of these know-nothings with ulterior motives ask, "Where are the American-born blacks in big league baseball?" And then I turn on the TV and there they are!
Somebody explain this to me.
It seems the only one who cares that Larry is white, is Larry.
No. 3, and somehow most disquieting: A couple of days before, in the run-up to Game 2 in L.A., Iceberg Jim Gray, who is a colleague of mine, a long-time acquaintance, was asking Shaquille O'Neal questions about the Finals and the Laker season, questions that don't get nearly as much media mileage as "Does the NBA lack enough white superstars, in your opinion?" Near the conclusion of Gray's interview with O'Neal, Gray asked O'Neal to characterize the Laker season; and O'Neal did, with the last word he used being "enigmatic."
Good word. O'Neal seemed to try to humorize his use of it by smiling and saying Jim might not feel the use of such a word was appropriate -- if, in fact, he knew what it meant. O'Neal was sort of diffusing his own use of the word, as if Jim would take it as inappropriate, not as a word -- it was exactly the proper word -- but inappropriate for Shaq to use.
The word seemed to throw Jim Gray, who said to Shaq, "Spell that."
I was stunned. Almost as stunned as when O'Neal almost defiantly spelled it perfectly. He's lucky Shaq responded. Responded? He's lucky Shaq didn't drill him. Luckily for Iceberg Jim, Shaq's not that type. Spell that? What is that supposed to prove?
Wait. Don't answer that. Somehow I think it's going to lead to a question about race. Iceberg Jim is not so innocent here; but then again, few of us are. I do wish we'd stop infecting others, though. The moral here, if we can find one under the pile of horsecrap: Don't ask people if they think there should be more white superstar ballers (when they are right under your nose) without asking if there should be more black superstar lawyers, doctors, and sports interviewers who can spell "enigmatic."
Good freaking word, Shaq. Thank you.
Of course, the risks we private pilots face pales in comparison to our military fliers, and is absolutely nothing compared to that met eye-to-eye by men and women like Rick Husband, Willie McCool, Dave Brown, Laurel Clark, Kalpana Chawla, Mike Anderson, and Ilan Ramon; nor does it require the courage and skill of Dick Scobee, Mike Smith, Ron McNair, El Onizuka, Christa McAuliffe, Greg Jarvis or Judy Resnik. These are the last crews of Columbia, and Challenger before her, buried with their ships in the skies over Florida and Texas. But many, many others have taken that walk in those spacesuits, smiling and waving as they pass the cameras on their way to their seats atop 2 million pounds of explosives, and they took exactly the same risks and bore them with the same courage. It is fitting that we remember the names of those lost with their ships, but not fitting at all that most of us cannot name a single living crewmember, some of whom have taken that walk four or five times.
Story Musgrave was one of those people. He described the Space Shuttle as "a beautiful butterfly that's bolted to a bullet."
Here’s what he meant:
Your chairs are facing the sky as you crawl into the Orbiter. You can barely move anyway in your orange pressure suits – thank god for the technicians. They literally ratchet the five-point harness across your chest and legs. On a full flight, it’s four on the flight deck: Pilot and Mission Commander on the controls up front. Two behind him, three on the deck below.
You sit for hours like this – minimum of three hours or so, often longer. There is a lot to think about, and I have no doubt that since Challenger rose and then fell on that cold January morning not one of them has been able to avoid seeing in their mind’s eye that horrible forked smoke trail and raining, smoldering debris. No one talks about this. No one has to. There’s a lot of smiling and nodding, but the chatter is kept to a minimum since the intercom is dominated by call-outs from launch control to the crew, most often the Mission Commander and Pilot.
There’s a lot of built-in holds, chances to catch up and work minor, last minute problems. At the T-21 minute hold, the Flight Director polls the Launch Control Team to confirm we are go for launch. This is a solemn moment. It is, in essence, the passing of a cup of responsibility. Everybody takes a sip. It’s a little less dramatic than in the Apollo days (Telemetry? GO! Cap COM? GO! Booster? GO FLIGHT!), but it’s still where we sign the check.
They pick up the countdown. There’s another built-in hold at T-9 minutes. Any one of these can, and very often does, result in catching one or more of the one million components falling out of nominal status. That’s either more delay strapped into your chair, or a trip home for the night, or the week, or the month.
T minus 31 seconds -- OBS takes over, with auto-sequence start at T-28. Software is running the countdown from this point forward, but anyone at any console can stop the launch if they are not happy.
Computers are checking each system twenty-five times a second. The crew hears everything. Pilot and Mission Commander are busy as hell, but the other five are essentially passengers, and now they are scared. Now they are calling on all of their courage, reasoning with themselves. Smiling at each other. That helps a lot. That and The Nod. The Nod is untranslatable. It means, very roughly, that I know what you went through to sit here with me, and you know the same about me. It’s not something you and I can do. This is something reserved for the very best people we have as a species. That inner voice, the one we cultivate and nurture through untold hours of training and simulation, whispers to us, pushing out the fear: Those controllers are the best there are. The engineers too. The technicians. All of them. We don’t know if they can keep us safe but we know they’ve done their best, and that’s as good as it gets.
Ten, nine, eight…
Okay, head back. Here we go. On the flight deck, some orange gantry out the left window – everything else is blue sky. A butterfly bolted to a bullet.
At T-6 seconds, fire-hoses of fuel and liquid oxygen begin to flow to the three main engines at the back of the Shuttle. They only give us about a quarter of the thrust we’ll need to get off the pad. But they’re on fire now, pushing the Orbiter forward, giving the crew the sickening feeling that the ship is falling over. The vanes constrict and focus the thrust – we’re going to need it all now. Everything she’s got.
Come on, baby. Come on.
The entire shuttle assembly rocks back into place now, and even during these last five seconds, computers can catch a stray reading and shut it all down…
Three, two, one…
SRB ignition. The two flanking Solid Rocket Boosters ignite, pitching more than a million pounds more thrust onto the orange External Tank, the bullet that the butterfly rides into orbit.
And now you’re headed for space, and there’s nothing you can do to stop it.
The SRB’s kick in, and that is what it is, a hammer to the back. You were scared before; you’re terrified now. The SRB’s are horrible, they’re pigs, they scrape and hiss and rattle and they feel like they will shake that ship to pieces. Look at the cockpit cameras during launch, and you’ll see the crew battered like they’re taking speed bumps at two hundred miles an hour. Everyone hates and fears the SRB’s; you’ll never relax while they’re burning.
15 seconds in and you’re clear of the tower. The Shuttle rolls 90 degrees left, fast. You’re not only on your back now, you’re tipping over upside-down and it’s getting worse as you angle out over the Atlantic.
A few miles away stand the smartest men and women the human race has ever produced, and they are watching over you like a hawk. There’s just so goddam little they can do for you now. They’ve already done everything they can and they’re as much a passenger as you are.
You are probably too scared to think about it, and it is CERTAINLY too loud to hear, but further away, thousands and thousands more watched the glare as the SRB’s lit. The Shuttle rolls off the pad in complete silence at that distance. It’s surreal. There’s nothing to compare it to. People are usually kind of quiet.
Then the sound hits you: you feel it in your chest more than hear it, the sound of millions of pieces of thick canvas being torn all at once. And then a funny thing happens, because you’re surrounded by people but suddenly you’re all alone out there – sunburn forgotten, mosquitoes a memory from a past life. You’re ten or fifteen or twenty miles away, but it’s just you and the white butterfly now, that’s all there is. You’re crying and you don’t know it, you're screaming but you can’t hear it, you’re jumping up and down, and it’s every time a Gator wide receiver ever beat a Florida State defensive end and he’s just pulling away and ain’t nothin’ gonna stop him now – he’s going all the way.
Go, baby! Go! GO! Go you son of a bitch! Yeah, they say she burns liquid hydrogen and LOX, but that’s just camouflage. It’s pure love that keeps that ship in the sky.
And she is going. She’s going like a bat out of hell. And every traffic jam and dental appointment and blind date and income tax form is suddenly worth it to be able to see this with your own eyes, to live through a time like this…It’s a pillar of fire and a pillar of smoke, but it’s not God coming down to speak to us, it’s us going up to have a word with Him. Good GOD look at her go!
40 seconds. The mains throttle back. Nothing stops the goddam solids: they keep roaring and hissing and knocking loose your fillings if you're dumb enough or human enough to keep your teeth clenched. We’re at Max Q, and the Shuttle is experiencing the highest aerodynamic loads it can bear. We keep getting faster, but the air starts to thin. This is as hard as the air can push back, and if we do it at full power we’ll be blown to pieces.
Fifty years ago it took all the Right Stuff we had in the box to push a tiny orange glider level through the sound barrier. Now we do it in less than a minute, straight up, from a standing start, with a spacecraft the size of a ten story building weighing a few million pounds. Ka-BOOOM! Mach 1, baby, and you ain’t seen nothin’ yet!
A little more than a minute and most of the atmosphere is behind us. Main engines back up to 104%
"Challenger GO at throttle-up…"
73 seconds.
“Oh no—“
That’s as far as Challenger got that cold January morning. 73 seconds. End of story.
“Roger Columbia, we copy you go at throttle-up”
I know how they must have felt at 2:02 – a kick and a pop, and all of a sudden, the ride turns to pure velvet as the SRB’s fall away. I know one of them must have looked at another and smiled. We’re safe now.
Well, safer. Now a complete engine failure could result in a return glide to Kennedy. Forget all that nonsense about parachutes and escape poles. At mach 5 and climbing the air is as hard as concrete.
2:32 – we’ve been in the air for two and a half minutes, and we are high and fast enough now to glide to Africa.
4:20 – Two engine Abort to Orbit – if we lose a main engine now, the other two will get us to orbit. We can sort things out up there.
7:00 – One engine ATO. Even better. We’re gonna make it.
7 minutes, 45 seconds. MECO. Main Engine Cut Off. Welcome to by-God outer space! Everything is strapped down except your arms. They float in front of you like they do at the top of a roller coaster. Only this one is going to last for two weeks. You’re weightless.
Thursday, August 05, 2004 at 7:33 AM
Colin Powell, PJ O'Rourke, Volvo's, Beatles, Elvis, and our Zero Sum World...
.......Via Beck over at Incite (recently added to ye olde blogroll) comes this fascinating interview with Colin Powell by PJ O'Rourke. PJ is one of my favorite writers, and his attitude definitely makes for an entertaining read.
Colin Powell is also probably one of the most misunderstood people within the current administration I have ever seen. People from either side of the political fence constantly berate him for being either a Bush lackey (if they are Dems) or a soft multilateralist appeaser (if they are Repubs). I think he is one of the greatest things to happen to this country in years. In this interview he highlights the specific problems facing this country and the World, and shows how America has taken on the responsibility of lifting up the undeveloped nations of the world since the other major powers are either unwilling or incapable of doing so.
And of course, this being a PJ O'Rourke interview, he does the whole socio-political thing and then seamlessly jumps to Volvo's, Elvis and the Beatles.
P. J. O'ROURKE: In terms of non-zero-sum thinking, is our country in the unique historical position of wanting other nations to be as powerful as we are?
Powell looked at me over the top of his glasses.
SECRETARY POWELL: Wanting other nations to be as powerful? No, I wouldn't say that. I think our historical position is we are a superpower that cannot be touched in this generation by anyone in terms of military power, economic power, the strength of our political system and our values system. What we would like to see is a greater understanding of power, of the democratic system, the open market economic system, the rights of men and women to achieve their destiny as God has directed them to do if they are willing to work for it. And we really do not wish to go to war with people. But, by God, we will have the strongest military around. And that's not a bad thing to have. It encourages and champions our friends that are weak and it chills the ambitions of the evil.
