"Suh-NAP!" of the Week

Andrea Fay Friedman is now officially one of our favorite people. In case you haven't been following the dust-up, here's the deal:

Last week, Fox's animated series "Family Guy" featured a character named Ellen. The character--and Andrea Fay Friedman, who provided the character's voice--both suffer from Down Syndrome.

Now, for those of you unfamiliar with the program, you should know that the humor of "Family Guy" is not known for class and sophistication: Fart jokes pass for witty bons mot. So in last week's episode, when one of the regular characters asked Ellen about her parents, and when Ellen replied that her father was "an accountant, and my mom is the former governor of Alaska"--well, let's just say it could have been worse.

Not for Sarah Palin, though. Palin, whose own son Trig also suffers from Down Syndrome, saw the joke as an attack on her defenseless child. (Though considering that the show portrayed a Down Syndrome sufferer--played BY a Down Syndrome sufferer--as a fully functioning young adult, we find it hard to see how this constituted an attack. Anyway.) In predictable Palin-esque fashion, she launched an attack on the show's producers and enlisted her daughter Bristol "abstinence pledge" Palin in the campaign.

So how does Andrea Fay Friedman feel about all this? From an e-mail she sent to the New York Times:

"I guess former Governor Palin does not have a sense of humor. [In my family] we think that laughter is good. [I was raised] to have a sense of humor and to live a normal life. . . . My mother did not carry me around like a loaf of French bread the way former Governor Palin carries her son Trig around looking for sympathy and votes."

!!!!!

Can we get an "AWWWWWW, NO SHE DIII-N'T!!!"

Ms. Friedman, we would like to offer you full citizenship in Solipsist Nation.

(Image from The New York Times)

What Next?

Yesterday on Facebook, one of our friends changed his status to read: "is bone tired just thinking of the inevitable stampede of every possible group under the sun to blame each other for Joe Stack's suicide and claim him as their martyr. Even Paddy Chayefsky's head would explode."

Sounds like an invitation!

On the one hand, you'll have the Glenn Beck-Rush Limbaugh contingent screaming that Joe Stack crashed his Cessna into the Austin, TX, offices of the IRS because he was pushed too far by the federal government and the incipient despotism of Barack Obama: Stack as Buddhist monk self-immolating to protest injustice. On the other hand, you will have the left-wing countercries pointing out that this is what happens when the Glenn Beck-Rush Limbaugh contingent inveighs unceasingly against the incipient despotism of Barack Obama.

You know into which ring we throw our own hat.

Stack was an unbalanced loser.

(DIGRESSION: If you think we lack sympathy, you're right. Look, if he had just wanted to commit suicide, Stack could have just blown his own brains out--or even flown his plane into an empty IRS building at midnight. We might have felt a twinge about the "poor man's" fate. But Stack's actions were not simply suicide--they were a 9/11-style attack writ small--one that seems to have claimed at least one victim in addition to Stack. EOD)

But his attack could prove to be the shot heard 'round the world at the start of a new American revolution. We hope not, but when we read about how the Tea Party and other like-minded organizations are "bracing for tyranny," we worry.

We tell ourselves that the loathing of people towards the federal government is nothing new. It's been over 15 years since Timothy McVeigh blew up a federal building in Oklahoma City; indeed, a distrust of government is one of the bedrock principles on which the United States was founded. But now one cannot go a day without hearing some screed against Washington that seems like nothing so much as a call to civil war.

Could we possibly take a moment in the face of this most graphic demonstration of anti-government outrage to try to pull back from the brink? Could we focus for a moment on things that all people of all backgrounds conceivably want: a modicum of physical and financial security; the right to say and do what we want as long as it doesn't infringe upon the individual liberty of others; a sense that the "game"--of business, of labor, of education--is fair and being monitored by honest brokers. Feel free to add your own favorite to the list.

Until we recognize that there are some principles that everybody agrees on and stop trying to destroy each other for the sake of some misplaced ideology, we can expect to have ever more militants and martyrs, a stack of Stacks, a squadron of planes small and large, circling like Thanksgiving over LaGuardia, picking out targets across the land, and launching themselves headlong into the breach.

Off the Top of Our Head (A Brief Post)

Potential opening for a novel:

When I was six years old, my father put on his hat and coat and walked out the front door after telling my mother that he was leaving and never coming back. Twenty minutes later, he returned from the corner store with cigarettes and a quart of milk. This was unexpected. My father did not smoke.

What's That Weird Feeling? Oh, Optimism!

We were shocked Emi Ha didn't comment on yesterday's post. We were sure we'd get a rise out of our resident Canadian follower. Ah, well. Avoiding pointless blogwars must be part of her whole quest-for-happiness protocol.

Interesting article in today's Times. The big Danish shipping company Maersk has found it both environmentally correct and fiscally profitable to run ships at lower speeds and take longer to make deliveries. While it goes against the conventional wisdom that bigger and faster is always better, some shippers have found that "slow steaming"--going about 20 knots an hour instead of the usual 24-25--or "super-slow steaming"--12 knots an hour, which Maersk does--cuts fuel costs significantly enough to make it profitable to take longer to make deliveries. At the same time, the ships reduce greenhouse gas emissions by about 30 percent.

What's interesting about this article is that, by questioning a basic assumption--that products must always ship as fast as humanly possible--a company has found an easy way both to reduce costs and to benefit the environment. No new technology required; no major sacrifices needed. Indeed, since longer shipping times call for more ships to be readied and longer crew assignments, this program also presumably increases employment in the shipping industry.

While Maersk's actions will not by themselves end global warming, stories like this give us a glimmer of hope--hope that maybe, just maybe, the problems we confront are not as insurmountable as they often feel.

In Which We Once Again Destroy Our Chances of Being Named Ambassador to Canada

Sandwiched between a lengthy article on the Tea Party, and another announcing the political disillusionment and retirement of Senator Evan Bayh, a moderate Democrat from Indiana (about both of which the Solipsist may have more to say tomorrow), was the REAL news of the day: a hard-hitting expose about some really hard hitters. Brace yourselves!

It seems a disproportionate number of Canadian hockey players swing from the left! Of course, what else would you expect from a bunch of liberal pinko "athletes" whose national animal, apparently, is a leaf?!? No firm, manly right-handed stick-swinging for these rough traders of the Great White North! Instead, pansies like Pittsburgh Penguins star Sidney (SIDNEY!) Crosby happily swish away left-handedly at puck and golf ball--yes! their southpaw tendencies infect the club-wielding manliness of golf!--alike.

No one is quite sure why Canadian hockey players are so predominantly left-handed, as the "handedness" of the general population is as ruggedly "right" as in the good ol' U S of A. (Canadians' general lameness seems as good an explanation as any.)

Some will point out that a high proportion of right-handed baseball players also swing--or "bat"-- left. But there's a good reason: The majority of pitchers are right-handed, and it's easier to see the pitches if you bat from the left side of the plate. So, you see? Baseball players swing bats aggressively to fend off bulletlike pitches hurled at their heads! Hockey players are just womping on a helpless piece of rubber, so there's no excuse for--let's face it--acting all left-handed and gay.

Now, if you'll excuse us, we've just received a fax from the starting line-up of the Canadian hockey team. They want to have a word with us in the alley outside the skating venue. No doubt, they want to thank us for our insights and for helping them to see the error of their ways.

NOTE FROM WOS: I want nothing to do with this. Please don't hurt my husband TOO badly--and try not to mess up the "pretty" face.

(Image from The New York Times)

Shuffle Befuddlement

One thing we like about the iPod is the "shuffle" feature: With hundreds of songs from dozens of bands, we never know what we're going to hear next. But since these songs all come from our own collection, we are pretty much guaranteed to hear a song we like.

The only drawback to shuffle is when it lands on a song that is part of a larger work. Think side two of "Abbey Road"--from "Here Comes the Sun" through "And in the end. . . ." is really all one big symphony. But the iPod doesn't know that. Nor does it know that the reprise of "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band" is SUPPOSED to be followed by "A Day in the Life." So instead of hearing familiar piano chords right after the cheering and guitars fade out, we might hear Guns n' Roses or Aimee Mann or Springsteen: Nothing wrong with that in and of itself, but jarring nonetheless. Don't even get us started on what happens after "The Happiest Days of Our Lives" --better known to most people as that bit that comes right before the "We don't need no education. . . " part of "Another Brick in the Wall": The music crescendoes, but instead of a rock-and-blues marching anthem, we get. . . well God knows what we get.

Yes, we know, we could just take the iPod OFF shuffle when it's playing a song that is really just a single part of a larger whole. But then we worry that we're going to confuse the device, and it'll just start playing things that it was playing right before we took it off shuffle. . . . Maybe we're overthinking this.

Suggestions?

Agony Worse than Defeat

Let us stipulate that nobody should die from pursuing a sport. (This raises the question of what people SHOULD die from, but we'll leave that for another day.) In particular, nobody should die from so obscure and mockable a sport as luge--it certainly takes a lot of the fun out of making jokes about it--not that that will stop us.

Consider, though, that, while his death was heartbreaking, Nodar Kumaritashvili--the Ukrainian Olympian whose fatal accident has become an internet sensation--died doing what he presumably loved--he died, in effect, for what he lived for. We can debate the relative value of his pursuit, but how many of us will be so lucky in our own cause of death?

Awhile back, we discussed recent studies confirming a link between playing football and having an increased risk of dementia. These Olympics have so far featured the debate over whether Lindsey Vonn, America's golden hope, would, could, or should compete despite a serious shin injury suffered just before the Games began. (As of today, it appears Vonn will, in fact, be able to race.) These stories and others like it often lead to pontification about the misplaced values of modern society, the implicit exploitation of the young (and often poor and/or nonwhite) who sacrifice youth and health for the sake of our entertainment.

We don't buy it.

Sure, professional athletes sacrifice youth, but so do we all. Most of us, though, just sacrifice our youth--our lives, really--for a modicum of comfort and social approbation for conforming to society's expectations. These folks sacrifice their youth in pursuit of their dreams.

Look, Lindsey Vonn will ski; she may win, she may not. Conceivably, she could cause herself serious damage if her injury is worse than she thinks. Maybe she'll never be able to ski again. But if someone has a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to realize a dream, isn't it a risk worth taking?

Rest in peace, Nodar.

(Image from Daily Mail)