PEACE, LOVE, KNOWLEDGE

Barack Obama campaigned hard to end politics "as we know it" -- a kōan perfect for the picayune American mind obsessed with change. Too many Americans are blissfully ignorant about politics (one in three can't name the governor of their state, and three in 10 can't name the vice president of their country). They want to change politics as they don't know it. Maybe then they'll pay attention.

But then again, no. Attention requires effort requires sacrifice, and we're just not into that. What, we should search for information and actually read it? Exercise the big muscle between the ears? Maybe if you bring it to our (desk)(couch)(bed) and hand it to us with the really important stuff highlighted. So, you know, we don't have to work at it.

And slap a slogan on it. We love slogans. "Change We Can Believe In." "A Leader We Can Believe In." "Ignorance Is Strength."

The men who would lead our country appreciate and rush to the lowest common denominator. They talk good, high-minded games to the faithful in their flocks, but they cater to the people who know Peyton Manning but draw a blank on Vladimir Putin, the folks who can't name the Sunni branch of Islam (to them, probably, all Muslims are sweaty, swarthy terrorists).

They follow another time-honored kōan: Keep it simple. Don't bother with facts. Nugget-sized platitudes and zingers, hold the sauce. Don't discuss the difficulties in the Middle East, the complexities of the U.S. relationship with China, the fact that Americans pay half as much (or less) than Europeans at the pump. Don't make people think. Hurts. Brains.

John McCain comes to Springfield on Wednesday. He's supposed to talk about energy and the economy. Avid Republicans will eat the sweets (even though they don't especially care for the confectioner). Avid Democrats will naysay his offerings as leftovers from the Bush kitchen.

Everyone else will wonder why traffic around Missouri State University is bollixed up, but only if it's inconvenient to them. What they know about John McCain and Barack Obama would fill a bumper sticker but not a brochure. They will decide this election based on the last, best slogan they saw on a 30-second ad, sometime in late October.

"The darkness of insanity," as the immortal poet-philospher Declan Patrick MacManus put it. Don't bother looking for a switch. The strong and the trusted like it better with the lights out.

TONY SCHWARTZ, 84

Media consultant. "Highly reclusive," according to The New York Times. Helped create the seminal moment in modern American politics.

From the Times obit:

“Media consultant” is barely adequate to describe Mr. Schwartz’s portfolio. In a career of more than half a century, he was variously an art director; advertising executive; urban folklorist who captured the cacophony of New York streets on phonograph records; radio host; Broadway sound designer; college professor, media theorist and author who wrote books about the persuasive power of sound and image; and maker of commercials for products, candidates and causes. What was more, Mr. Schwartz, who had suffered from agoraphobia since the age of 13, accomplished most of these things entirely within his Manhattan home.

Of the thousands of television and radio advertisements on which Mr. Schwartz worked, none is as well known, or as controversial, as one that was broadcast exactly once: the so-called “daisy ad,” made for Lyndon B. Johnson’s presidential campaign in 1964.

Produced by the advertising agency Doyle Dane Bernbach in collaboration with Mr. Schwartz, the minute-long spot was broadcast on Sept. 7, 1964, during NBC’s “Monday Night at the Movies.” It showed a little girl in a meadow (in reality a Manhattan park), counting aloud as she plucks the petals from a daisy. Her voice dissolves into a man’s voice counting downward, followed by the image of an atomic blast. President Johnson’s voice is heard on the soundtrack:

“These are the stakes. To make a world in which all of God’s children can live, or to go into the dark. We must either love each other, or we must die.”

His mentor and friend was Marshall McLuhan. Figures.

DEWING IT

We admit our addiction and are powerless to stop it. We're Dew junkies. Especially when it comes to the new flavors of Mountain Dew, tasties as enticing as China White and Black Tar.

There's Revolution, "infused with Wild Berry fruit flavor and Ginseng." Voltage is "charged with Raspberry Citrus flavor." Supernova -- perhaps the least-best of the lot -- has "a Blast of Strawberry Melon Flavor."

None of it is as toothsome as Code Red, the kindest of Dew buds. But Voltage is close, until Mountain Dew Oxy hits the market.

Dew Boy, save us from the madness.

A HONEY OF A HOUSEGUEST

Dateline: Concord, N.H.

Skinny: Homeowner sees sticky stuff on walls, dips a finger, takes a taste. It's honey. In the walls, bees crawled.

WYFF reports:

Mark Jones’ 100-year-old house has more than 60,000 [bees].

Jones and his wife, Amychelle, said they can sum it up in one word: insanity. On Sunday, they found a way to deal with the bees.

Beekeepers removed 60,000 bees from the Joneses' home Sunday morning, leaving about 1,000 still buzzing inside.

No queen, so no lingering infestation. Four bees stung the beekeepers. All good, and the house remains tasty.

DOC SAYS YOU'RE GONNA DIE

Man in Australia squats for a little roadside relief. Deadly brown snake squirms between his legs and lunges at the dangly bits. Man and snake freak.

The Cairns Post has the story:

Emergency workers raced to the scene to treat the man.

The wound was wrapped in plastic in case poison had penetrated the skin but medical staff gave the man the all-clear after conducting tests.

He was taken to Cooktown Hospital where he spent a night recovering.

The ambulance spokesman described him as "lucky", given his near encounter with one of Australia’s most poisonous snakes.

"I think he was a bit shocked and embarrassed," he said.

Life imitates joke.

PAST BLASTS, REVIVED

A couple bullets for your Sunday:

•A reporter has tracked down Adolf Hitler's nephew -- to America. Here's a graf from David Gardner's Telegraph story about Hitler's nephew and his offspring:

I was to discover that the Hitler bloodline was carried on through William Patrick's four sons - one of whom died in a road accident in 1989 - and that the brothers had decided in a remarkable pact not to have children themselves in order that Adolf Hitler's genes would die with them.

•The Daily Mail has the story of Sen. John McCain's first wife, Carol, and how she became a former. Suffice to say it doesn't flatter the GOP presidential candidate. After he returned home from a Vietnamese prison, he kicked her to the curb for a prettier model:

Ross Perot, who paid her medical bills all those years ago, now believes that both Carol McCain and the American people have been taken in by a man who is unusually slick and cruel – even by the standards of modern politics.

"McCain is the classic opportunist. He’s always reaching for attention and glory," he said.

"After he came home, Carol walked with a limp. So he threw her over for a poster girl with big money from Arizona. And the rest is history."

Is John McCain history, too? Not a chance.

BO DIDDLEY, 79

From The Associated Press:

A spokeswoman says Diddley died of heart failure. He had suffered a heart attack in August 2007, three months after suffering a stroke while touring in Iowa.

HARVEY KORMAN, 81

Hedley Lamarr has left the building. Damn.

Korman died Thursday at UCLA Medical Center. He won Emmys for "The Carol Burnett Show." And, of course, he was Hedley Lamarr. It was a 10-gallon hat, and we did enjoy the show.

FEAR AND CLOTHING

Michelle Malkin, the blogger, has gotten her way. Dunkin' Donuts is now safe from terrorism, Rachael Ray is a left-wing apologist, and anyone wearing a black-and-white silk scarf is Against Us.

Dunkin' Donuts ran an ad featuring Ray wearing a scarf with a paisley design, "selected by her stylist for the advertising shoot," according to DD (mmm, double-Ds).

Malkin started ranting and said the scarf looked like a keffiyeh: "The keffiyeh, for the clueless, is the traditional scarf of Arab men that has come to symbolize murderous Palestinian jihad ... the apparel has been mainstreamed by both ignorant and not-so-ignorant fashion designers, celebrities, and left-wing icons."

According to the Boston Globe:

[Dunkin' Donuts] at first pooh-poohed the complaints, claiming the black-and-white wrap was not a keffiyeh. But the right-wing drumbeat on the blogosphere continued and by yesterday, Dunkin’ Donuts decided it’d be easier just to yank the ad.

Said the suits in a statement: "In a recent online ad, Rachael Ray is wearing a black-and-white silk scarf with a paisley design. ... Absolutely no symbolism was intended. However, given the possibility of misperception, we are no longer using the commercial."

Dunkin' Donuts caves, Malkin crows, idiocy reigns. Soon the clock will strike 13.

SYDNEY POLLACK, 73

Director, actor, producer. "Out of Africa" and "Tootsie" immediately come to mind. They were his.

Pollack died of cancer Monday at his home in Los Angeles. According to The New York Times:

Mr. Pollack’s career defined an era in which big stars (Robert Redford, Barbra Streisand, Warren Beatty) and the filmmakers who knew how to wrangle them (Barry Levinson, Mike Nichols) retooled the Hollywood system. Savvy operators, they played studio against studio, staking their fortunes on pictures that served commerce without wholly abandoning art.

Hollywood honored Mr. Pollack in return. His movies received multiple Academy Award nominations, and as a director he won an Oscar for his work on the 1985 film “Out of Africa” as well as nominations for directing “They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?” (1969) and “Tootsie” (1982).

“Michael Clayton,” of which Mr. Pollack was a producer and a member of the cast, was nominated for a best picture Oscar earlier this year. He delivered a trademark performance as an old-bull lawyer who demands dark deeds from a subordinate, played by George Clooney. (“This is news? This case has reeked from Day 1!” snaps Mr. Pollack’s Marty Bach.) Most recently, Mr. Pollack portrayed the father of Patrick Dempsey’s character in “Made of Honor.”

An Indiana boy, reared in South Bend. "Absence of Malice" and "Three Days of the Condor" were among his best works.

DIVINE 69

A little soixante-neuf never hurt anyone, height differences notwithstanding. But slap the number 69 on a T-shirt and all hell breaks loose in Billerica, Mass.

A 14-year-old was suspended from middle school for wearing a shirt that said "SOPHOMORE 69." WCVB reports:

Christina Morrison, an eighth-grader at the Marshall Middle School, was sent to the office Tuesday when she arrived at school wearing the shirt. The assistant principal told Morrison and her stepfather that the shirt was "sexually explicit," and that she was being suspended for the day, the Lowell Sun reported.

The teen said she felt like crying because she only wore the shirt she'd recently purchased from a store called Urban Behavior because she liked it.

The school principal, Roland Boucher, said he wouldn't talk about the specific incident, but added that the school's dress code prohibits "any clothing that displays offensive language or images or suggests inappropriate or illegal behavior is not allowed in school."

The teen's mother, Kimberly Cifelli, wants an apology. Cifelli says she doesn't understand why the school says the shirt is sexually explicit. C'mon, Mom.

NEVER GONNA BREAK MY FAITH

As you remember lost loved ones on Memorial Day, keep in mind Jeff Melton. His widow, Holly, has a challenge for locals, issued in a column in Sunday's News-Leader, and on her blog.

Holly Melton wants to establish an urgent care cancer clinic in the Ozarks -- "an urgent care medical facility that is dedicated to only the special needs of cancer patients." She writes:

When one is battling for his or her life, an urgent care clinic is needed that is specially designed to keep cancer patients free from the airborne illnesses found in a typical urgent or emergent care facility. A cancer patient's immune system is already greatly compromised. A clinic is needed where a cancer patient's wait won't be extended because of an incoming car accident that takes the immediate attention. A clinic is needed where a cancer patient will be touched gently, spoken to softly -- cancer patients are in great pain, not hard of hearing. Often the pain medication and the cancer treatments have left a cancer patient with a low tolerance for noise and light. The tumors and searing pain in their bodies make it absolutely necessary for gentle treatment, softer bedding, swift and expert bed transfers. A cancer patient doesn't want to go through their litany of medications another time. Therefore, there is a need for a registry of medications. There is a desperate need to care for those with cancer, no matter what stage of the disease.

If you have ever witnessed someone who has just received a round of chemotherapy, or a cancer patient who is so weak and in desperate need of a blood transfusion, or a cancer patient whose pain is so intense that the thought alone of moving makes them vomit, then you can see the need exists. Please join me. We can do this.

Stop by her blog, read up, consider joining her challenge. It's a worthy one.

DICK MARTIN, 86

Co-host, with Dan Rowan, of "Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In," a groundbreaking television show of the 1960s. The Associated Press reports:

Martin, who went on to become one of television's busiest directors after splitting with Dan Rowan in the late 1970s, died Saturday night of respiratory complications at a hospital in Santa Monica, family spokesman Barry Greenberg said. ...

"Laugh-in," which debuted in January 1968, was unlike any comedy-variety show before it. Rather than relying on a series of tightly scripted song-and-dance segments, it offered up a steady, almost stream-of-consciousness run of non-sequitur jokes, political satire and madhouse antics from a cast of talented young actors and comedians that also included Ruth Buzzi, Arte Johnson, Henry Gibson, Jo Anne Worley and announcer Gary Owens.

Presiding over it all were Rowan and Martin, the veteran nightclub comics whose standup banter put their own distinct spin on the show.

Like all straight men, Rowan provided the voice of reason, striving to correct his partner's absurdities. Martin, meanwhile, was full of bogus, often risque theories about life, which he appeared to hold with unwavering certainty.

Sock it to me. Bet your sweet bippy. Say goodnight, Dick.

AGONY OF THE FEET

Since last August, human feet have been washing ashore on British Columbia's Gulf Islands. Right feet, to be precise, and clad in sneakers.

It happened again on Thursday, in Richmond.

According to this Canada.com story, it's a real stumper:

The first foot appeared last Aug. 20 on Jedediah Island, near Nanoose Bay.

A week later, a second foot was found on nearby Gabriola Island.

On Feb. 8, a third foot washed up on the eastern shore of Valdez Island, off the shore of Nanaimo, which is accessible only by floatplane or private boat.

All three were right feet and all were found in sneakers. The first two feet were found in size 12 men's sneakers.

The latest foot was found on the north side of uninhabited Kirkland Island, west of the George Massey Tunnel at the south end of No. 5 Road.

Someone has gotten off on the right foot.

SMOKE 'EM IF YOU GOT 'EM

Your favorite smoker will appreciate this:

This ashtray looks like a lung. And as you put your cigarette in it, it starts coughing and screaming.

Eleven bucks. Hey, a bargain.

WRITER WITH A REAL VOICE

It pays to be bland.

Exhibit A: Steven Barber, former student at the University of Virginia's College at Wise. He turned in a short story for a creative-writing class. His instructor freaked out at the story's violent tone. Barber, 23, was forced into a psych bin, then expelled.

The Wall Street Journal reports:

"It had to be acted on immediately," says Christopher Scalia, the instructor. He alerted administrators, who reacted swiftly, searching Mr. Barber's dorm room and car. Upon discovering three guns, they had him committed to a psychiatric institution for a weekend. Then they expelled him.

Yet the psychiatrists who evaluated Mr. Barber during his hospitalization determined he was no threat to himself or others. Mr. Barber says the guns were for protection from threats such as school shootings. He maintains that his story, titled "Sh---y First Drafts," was merely a fictional attempt to address school shootings such as the April 16, 2007, Virginia Tech massacre, which left 33 dead, including the gunman. The story "was supposed to show how disturbed people are who do that," Mr. Barber says. ...

The problem for Mr. Scalia, the instructor, was the story's references to the class and its assignments and to the murder of a professor called Mr. Christopher, a name identical to his own first name. Mr. Barber, a Navy veteran who served in the Iraq war, wrote of stockpiling alcohol and drugs for a binge and sleeping with the "cold and heavy steel" of a gun under his pillow. "I knew I had a choice," he wrote. "Murder or suicide. Either way, death was imminent."

Scalia is the son of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. He believes Barber's story was about him.

Barber gave the school enough ammo to shoot him. He was already on school probation for booze and for possession a nightstick-like weapon. He also had a 3.9 GPA and was on the dean's list. He says he'd write about "butterflies and rainbows" if he had a second chance at Wise.

The WSJ hed: Schools Struggle With Dark Writings. The real struggle seems to be with common sense.

SULU PULLS AN ELLEN

George Takei, the actor who played Mr. Sulu on the original Star Trek series, is getting hitched to his longtime partner.

The BBC reports:

Takei, 71, said he and Brad Altman were going through the "delicious dilemma" of where to marry.

The actor and 54-year-old Mr Altman have been together for 21 years.

"We can have the dignity, as well as all the responsibilities, of marriage. We embrace it all heartily," Takei wrote on his website. ...

On Thursday, California's Supreme Court said the "right to form a family relationship" applied to all Californians regardless of sexuality.

But opponents of the decision said they would seek an amendment to the state constitution, which would override the ruling.

Following the Supreme Court's decision to legalise same-sex marriage, comedian Ellen DeGeneres announced plans to marry her girlfriend, actress Portia de Rossi.

Does this mean the Sulu in "Mirror, Mirror" was straight?

HAMILTON JORDAN, 63

Political whiz kid from the 1970s who helped push Jimmy Carter into the White House. Last name pronounced "JUR-den." The Associated Press reports Jordan died of cancer. It happened Tuesday night.

In his memoir, No Such Thing as a Bad Day, Jordan discussed living through three bouts with cancer before he was 50.

A Friday memorial service is planned at the Carter Center in Atlanta.

SOME DEATHS ARE WORTH MORE

At least 35,000, or maybe four times that number, dead in Myanmar. Another 30,000-plus killed in China. It's news, even big news, but it's not the Mother of All News. The MOAN designation is attached only to the events we see for ourselves, when it's our shoes on the ground, our nose filled with the pungence of mayhem.

Unfair but true; subjective but real. It's the Law. McClurke's Law.

Reportedly named after a jaded BBC editor, McClurke's Law holds that some deaths are worth more. NBC journalist Martin Fletcher's Breaking News -- a helluva read, even if you don't work in a paragraph factory -- includes McClurke's Law:

One hundred thousand Bangladeshis killed in a flood equals 10,000 Africans killed by famine equals 500 Egyptians eaten by crocodiles on the Nile equals five British soldiers killed in Northern Ireland equals two of the queen's corgi dogs run over by a bus.

Rue the day when the U.S. has to endure a death toll equivalent to a dozen Sept. 11ths. The ensuing coverage may kill us all.

A FETISH TOO FAR

Rough sex gone wrong. After seeing that headline, who's not going to read more?

The skinny: Man loves woman. She loves him. They drink, heavily. They have rough sex. He asks her to "carve artwork" into his chest. She picks up a knife. Things go awry.

Thank God the Winnipeg Sun is around to provide details:

A court order has prohibited the young lovers from communicating with each other since the February 2007 incident. That order was lifted yesterday and the couple left court together, smiling. ...

Court heard the 25-year-old woman and 24-year-old man had known each other since grade school but had only become romantically involved four weeks prior to the accident.

The man was rushed to hospital in critical condition after suffering a stab wound to the left ventricle of his heart.

"Hospital staff thought he was going to die, he was very close to death," said Crown attorney Larry Allan, adding the man has fully recovered. ...

"He said they engaged in dangerous play, and due to her intoxication, was not precise with the knife and punctured his heart," Allan said.

The man told police the stabbing was an accident and that the two routinely cut and scratched each other with knives. The man showed police several wounds, including a heart-shaped scar on his back featuring the woman's initials.

McCammond said it was the victim who introduced the woman to "body modification" and asked her to carve another heart on his chest. The woman was complying when the man asked her to press harder, said [the woman's lawyer, John] McAmmond. ...

Judge Brian Corrin said the woman was "clearly remorseful and unlikely to be reinvolved."

Corrin ordered the woman to participate in alcohol counselling while on probation.

Nothing so sweet as young love.

BABY SUPERNOVA

An explosion just discovered, and it's the most recent in the Milky Way -- about 140 years old.

According to news from NASA's Chandra X-Ray Observatory:

Previously, the last known supernova in our galaxy occurred around 1680, an estimate based on the expansion of remnant Cassiopeia A. ...

The tracking of this object began in 1985, when astronomers ... used the [National Radio Astronomy Observatory's] Very Large Array to identify the remnant of a supernova explosion near the center of our galaxy. Based on its small size, it was thought to have resulted from a supernova that exploded about 400 to 1000 years ago.

Twenty-two years later, Chandra observations revealed the remnant had expanded by a surprisingly large amount, about 16 percent, since 1985. This indicates the supernova remnant is much younger than previously thought.

That young age was confirmed in recent weeks when the Very Large Array made new radio observations. This comparison of data pinpoints the age of the remnant at 140 years - possibly less if it has been slowing down - making it the youngest on record in the Milky Way.

The photo -- a blending of data from Chandra and the Very Large Array -- is money.

DOTTIE RAMBO, 74

Gospel songwriter, singer. Died Sunday when her tour bus wrecked on Interstate 44, just east of Mount Vernon, Mo. Severe storms could have contributed to the crash. The Associated Press reports:

Rambo, of Nashville, Tenn., was on her way to a Mother's Day performance in Texas, according to her Web site.

"She was a giant in the gospel music industry," said Beckie Simmons, Rambo's agent. "Dolly Parton recorded some of her songs."

Parton sent condolences to "everyone involved in this terrible tragedy."

"I know Dottie is in heaven in the arms of God right now, but our earth angel will surely be missed," Parton said in a statement. "Dottie was a dear friend, a fellow singer, songwriter and entertainer, and as of late my duet singing partner."

Rambo was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame last year and the Kentucky Music Hall of Fame in 2006.

Rambo wrote the 1982 Gospel Music Association Song of the Year, "We Shall Behold Him."

ANGEL HARVEY, 92

Real first name: Lynne. The First Lady of Radio. Wife of broadcaster Paul Harvey. Died Saturday of leukemia in River Forest, Ill. Radio and Records reports:

An official statement from the Harvey family said, "A director, writer and editor, she was the creative and administrative heartbeat behind the number-one-rated 'Paul Harvey News and Comment,' which reaches tens of millions of listeners." ...

Lynne's influence can be felt in many of the ways Americans consume electronic news media today. Her news related innovations include the concept of news features within hard-news broadcasts, humorous "kicker" stories, which became a Paul Harvey trademark, and news broadcasts at 10:00 p.m. to take better advantage of adults' leisure time. In television she created "Dilemma," a program which became a prototype for today's talk-show genre and "Paul Harvey Comments," a nationally syndicated show that aired five days a week for 20 years.

She was born in St. Louis, educated at Washington University. She met Paul Harvey when she worked at KXOK; they married in 1940.

He has lost his Angel, but their partnership endures. Especially in the program she developed and edited, the one he delivers with idiosyncratic style. It's a short, snappy little program, a story with a twist. She named it "The Rest of the Story." And now you know.

MOM, BEER AND A BB GUN

Angelique Vandeberg is this month's Top Mom -- and just in time for Mother's Day. Police say the Wisconsin woman (mugshot here) shot her daughter in the leg with a BB gun. Reason? To win a $1 bet.

The Sheboygan Press reports:

Police began looking into the incident Wednesday after a school counselor reported it to police. The girl was shot three or four days earlier, but a circular bruise with a white-colored point in the middle remained visible on her thigh, the counselor said.

The girl said the shooting occurred in her mother's bedroom, where Vandeberg was with her boyfriend after she had consumed 10 to 12 beers.

The boyfriend bet Vandeberg $1 she wouldn't shoot the child, then handed her the BB pistol. Vandeberg took it and shot the girl. The bullet, which did not break the skin, bounced off her leg and struck her 7-year-old brother, who was not injured.

Wonder what she'd do for five bucks?

WIKIPEDIA MONKEY BUSINESS

Someone within the Department of Justice wants to mess with our heads. A typist using an IP address belonging to DoJ made edits to an article about the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America, also known as CAMERA.

The scrubbed info: How CAMERA was trying to "cooperate with prominent Wikipedia editors to promote a Zionist viewpoint and oppose pro-Arab viewpoints on Wikipedia."

The Wikimedia Foundation has been all over the story. According to this report from mister-info:

After the IP address belonging to the DOJ was blocked, Wikipedia editors informed the Wikimedia Foundation's Communications committee about the incident. Both Wikinews and Wikipedia are projects of the Wikimedia Foundation. In addition to the DOJ IP address, several Wikipedia users determined to be cooperating with the CAMERA campaign to influence Wikipedia had also previously been blocked by Wikipedia administrators.

Wikinews requested a statement from the Department of Justice on the edits to Wikipedia, but as of this article's publication had not received a response.

The (for now) anonymous DoJer also made edits to articles about Tracy Jordan, Roger Ebert and James E. Akins.

The DoJ address was blocked for "repeated vandalism," but someone else in D.C. is also making the same edits to the CAMERA article. Nice to know CAMERA is a government front, and we always suspected there was something odd about Roger Ebert. But Tracy Jordan? Maybe the Black Crusaders are real.