James McWilliams Reminds Us All Why We Hate That One Vegetarian We Know

Good God Almighty. Fuck this poor miserable soul who's only joy in life to suck the joy out of others lives and starve poor people to death. Did I mention he also looks like a weasel who wears glasses? Because he does. Not even a cute weasel with glasses that you would dress up in a little sweater and take for walks around the city and people would say, "Aw, that's a cute weasel. Can I pet him?"

No, that's not him. Instead he looks like the type of weasel that carries rabies. And syphilis. Definitely looks like a weasel with syphilis. No one wants to pet a rabid weasel who has syphilis. Trust me.

Here's the weasel in a Washington Post op-ed demanding an apology from meat-eaters:

We know more than we've ever known about the innards of the global food system. We understand that food can both nourish and kill. We know that its production can both destroy and enhance our environment. We know that farming touches every aspect of our lives -- the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the soil we need.

So it's hard to avoid concluding that eating cannot be personal. What I eat influences you. What you eat influences me. Our diets are deeply, intimately and necessarily political.

God damn, we're all doomed. Fucked to an eternity of douche bags like this one telling us what is and isn't politically conscionable to eat, wear, drive, fuck and everything else in between.

If what YOU FUCKING EAT isn't personal what is? Is the pornography I choose to watch a personal decision? Or no, because it would offend just about any reasonable person? Seriously, If this guy is offended by eating chicken he would shit-a-brick at my browsing history.

More:

This realization changes everything for those who avoid meat. As a vegetarian I've always felt the perverse need to apologize for my dietary choice. It inconveniences people. It smacks of self-righteousness. It makes us pariahs at dinner parties. But the more I learn about the negative impact of meat production, the more I feel that it's the consumers of meat who should be making apologies

I don't care about your self pity. My concern isn't about you feeling out of place at a dinner party. What I care about is your types making meat more expensive for poor people. That's my concern. I want beef, chicken and pork to be cheap and widely available, because it's the 21st century and we're a rich, developed society with a huge middle class. It wasn't always like this asshole. Meat was a luxury. Protein was a luxury.

That's the elephant in the room. [I was working on this post before I read this post by Sonny Bunch, so excuse the redundancy] These people want to price certain types of food out of certain types of people's budgets. You don't think that fat guy in Iowa is eating properly. You also think he doesn't hold cows in the proper esteem. It offends you. So you want meat to so expensive that poor people can't afford to eat as much of it as they are now. That's pretty shitty no?

A 'Skins Fan's Lament

As Rob notes below, the Washington Redskins have, after years of being merely mediocre, become a national laughingstock. I was at the 'Skins-Eagles game Monday night and it was four hours of my life that I want back. As if the shitty play of the team wasn't bad enough, my section was filed with the Eagles' thuggish fans. Throughout the game, I had to endure them opening their greasy cheesesteak holes to tell me how much my team sucked.

They were at least telling the truth though. The Redskins management has apparently adopted an aggressive "let's make a bad situation worse" policy. The sign issue Rob notes is just one part. Another is being in complete denial of the problem. As they repeatedly say: Things are fine, just fine.

Consider this article from the Washington Post's Sunday section about declining stadium attendance and other signs of fan discontent:

David Donovan, the Redskins' chief operating officer, disputed Powell's analysis, saying that team records show a 12 percent dip in merchandise sales, which he said was understandable in a down economy.

Donovan also said that the team hasn't detected a significant decline in fan loyalty and that the team's attendance figures are accurately gathered by bar-code scanners at the turnstiles.

"I think the relentless negative coverage in The Washington Post is a real difference from previous years," Donovan said. "But in terms of the way our actual fans are behaving, we don't see any difference." [Emphasis added]

Yeah, that is it. The Post is just making shit up when they report that fans like me are pissed off.

God almighty, is Dan Snyder exclusively hiring ex-Bush appointees or something?

Quiet Fade Into Obscurity Or Flaming Death Spiral?

As far as John Edwards' once-promising political career goes, the answer appears to be the latter. In fact, it is now achieving Lindsay Lohan-levels of self-destruction.

Cheating on your cancer-stricken wife is bad; knocking up your mistress is worse; creating an elaborate cover-up to keep said career alive is Nixonian; but having to admit that your earlier emotional mea culpa was an elaborate lie is in a class all by itself:

[A] federal grand jury in nearby Raleigh is investigating whether any crimes were committed in connection with campaign laws in an effort to conceal his extramarital affair with a woman named Rielle Hunter. At the same time, Mr. Edwards is moving toward an abrupt reversal in his public posture; associates said in interviews that he is considering declaring that he is the father of Ms. Hunter’s 19-month-old daughter, something that he once flatly asserted in a television interview was not possible.

Yes, I am gloating because, fuck it, it's fun.

This detail, also from the New York Times' Sunday story about Edwards linked above, has already been blogged in a couple of places, but c'mon, it's a beaut:

Mr. Young says that he assisted the affair by setting up private meetings between Mr. Edwards and Ms. Hunter. He wrote that Mr. Edwards once calmed an anxious Ms. Hunter by promising her that after his wife died, he would marry her in a rooftop ceremony in New York with an appearance by the Dave Matthews Band.(Emphasis added.)

This is as good of a time as any to point out that Edwards's pose as champion of the poor and downtrodden was bullshit too.

"Hey, have you heard the latest one about me drowning that chick?"

Here's one for the you-cannot-make-this-shit-up file. Ted Kennedy apparently loved to collect and tell Chappaquiddick jokes. No, seriously. National Review's Mark Hemingway made the catch:

Jules Crittenden mentioned on his blog he heard Ed Klein, former foreign editor of Newsweek and editor-in-chief of The New York Times Magazine, recalling on air that Ted Kennedy liked to joke about Chappaquiddick. It seemed to defy belief, so I listened to the episode of The Diane Rehm Show in question and sure enough — I've transcribed what Klein told guest host Katy Kay (Here's a link to the audio in WMA format, relevant portion starts at about 30:15):

I don't know if you know this or not, but one of his favorite topics of humor was indeed Chappaquiddick itself. And he would ask people, "have you heard any new jokes about Chappaquiddick?" That is just the most amazing thing. It's not that he didn't feel remorse about the death of Mary Jo Kopechne, but that he still always saw the other side of everything and the ridiculous side of things, too.

That's odd 'cause I saw saw the funny and ridiculous side of things that night I vomited in the backseat of the sheriff's deputy's cruiser and yet somehow I still ended getting charged and having to go to court for it.

Here's a handy youtube clip of the same radio interview.

Paul Krugman Gets a Blog

Look, I realize anyone can blog. Without that guiding principle TtP would have gone out of business a long time ago. Actually, that's misleading. "Business" suggests that someone is making money off of this thing we have going here. I'm certainly not. I've lost money...Did anyone else know that a printing press isn't necessary equipment for blogging? I sure didn't. Now I have the plastic apron and big gloves...Kerosene lamp probably didn't make sense either...Humm...Mistakes, mistakes, mistakes. At least this one didn't involve a homeless tranny. Silver lining folks.

Point of this post -- Paul Krugman has emerged from behind the now removed TimesSelect wall...And he has..A BLOG! You gotta appreciate anyone who uses the introductory paragraph of their new blog to excerpt their book. And then gives the blog the same title as his book. Krugman on Krugman:

“I was born in 1953. Like the rest of my generation, I took the America I grew up in for granted – in fact, like many in my generation I railed against the very real injustices of our society, marched against the bombing of Cambodia, went door to door for liberal candidates. It’s only in retrospect that the political and economic environment of my youth stands revealed as a paradise lost, an exceptional episode in our nation’s history.”

Brilliant. I'm looking forward to this.

If You Ever Wondered How Someone Who was Needlessly Tasered Can Lose All Your Sympathy, Look No Further

than his website. THEandrewmeyer.com. I'm serious, if anything I now think the taser and jail time wasn't enough to beat the doucheness out of him. Think frat boy. Only he doesn't get laid. And thinks he's witty and intelligent. And thinks he's cool because he doesn't get laid, as though people don't "get him."

I'll share an excerpt from his article section, from a piece titled "The folly of serious".

I went to a fancy restaurant yesterday dressed in a blue wife-beater and a red top hat with a white fuzzy band around it that might denote it as a “pimp hat.” Well, imagine to my surprise the reaction of the luminaries around my dining table. Not the servers, who are forced to dress a certain way everyday they come to work in their hoity-toity establishment. They are used to customers in their restaurant dressing a certain way, and when presented with such a ridiculously attired fellow, it is natural that they would feel queer or unsettled. But what of my fellows, the people I came to dine with, who are both accustomed and expecting of my uncanny ways. Surely they can laugh, and appreciate the bold strangeness that I have exhibited?

[...]

The people in this world who are ‘cool’ are the people who don’t give a fuck. The guy going around the party in a deranged and spectacularly adorned cowboy hat, learning everyone’s name on the fly and forgetting them just as quick? That’s me. I’m expanding my world, learning new faces and names and opinions and ideas.

Thinking back to college, I'm not sure I can remember anyone more uncomfortable than the loser with the cowboy hat on, bouncing around the party awkwardly until he passed out with his shirt off in a pool of his own vomit...He was fun to urinate on, but that's about it.