The Bitch Of The Magi, or It's A Whinerful Life

Here's an old tragic tale from Gregg Easterbrook, who was forced at gunpoint to celebrate Christmas in an ostentatious and over-indulgent manner.

It's Christmas, festive season of goodwill, time of sparkling delight for the little ones, and... argggghhhhhhh, how many hundred chores left? For parents of young kids, the run-up to Christmas is the most exhausting period of the year. A dozen large boxes of decorations and lights to string. Two trees in our household, plus miniatures for each kid's room. The Tyranny of the Presents: dozens of relatives are present-qualified in our extended family group, and each of the five of us gives an average of 2.5 gifts to each, meaning uncountable gifts to buy or make. Plus toy drives and Secret Santa events, parties to attend, parties to give, stockings to stuff, the wrapping of those uncountable gifts, rehearsals for the pageant (our offspring are two camels and a shepherd this year), all the while regular homework and housework and income work continue. By Christmas morning, my wife Nan and I are in a state of pure fatigue. Then the event goes by in a blur and it's time to start cleaning up. As a child, my favorite moment each year was Christmas Eve, when bells were ringing and everything was in prospect. As a parent, my favorite moment each year comes around the morning of December 29, when I've finally caught up on sleep.

....Doctor: "Then stop doing that."

Now if you're not registered with The New Republic (and why would you be?) you might think the whole article is about Easterbrook the status-driven, self-pitying yuppie. Or that he ends by blaming his ordeal on avaricious Jewish movie executives.

But Easterbrook isn't quite that dense. He goes on to assert that you should send a dollar "to the needy or to charity" for every dollar you spend on family and friends. Strangely, Easterbrook never actually says whether he follows that standard himself.

And then he goes on to gripe about how Amazon overcharged him for shipping on a toy order exceeding 99 bucks, and how Amazon is hostile to workers -- which doesn't stop him from using Amazon.

My suggestion: Take that $29.95 the New Republic keeps asking for, and buy a DVD of An Inconvenient Truth instead. You could even send it to Easterbrook.

Grand Old Police Blotter: A Drunkard Fillmore Update

I was incorrect when I posted earlier that Bruce Tinsley was lawyered up. The only attorney listed in the electronic court file at that time was William Nash, who appears to be a D.A.

But there's another lawyer listed now, a bilingual criminal defense attorney named Dominic Glover. And it appears that Mr. Glover is a friend of the bleeding heart missus:

Director [Arlette] Tinsley completed multiple trainings and received an invitation to provide the anti-bullying & harassment training for St. Peter's Lutheran School in December. She provided the legal perspective, "On Being Gay" at the Center for Teaching and Learning. Both the director and deputy director provided a presentation on diversity for Leadership Bartholomew County. Director Tinsley provided a historical perspective of diversity in Bartholomew County. Deputy Director Smith developed a diversity self-assessment and resource guide to aid individuals with their incorporation of diversity into work and personal lives. Tracy Souza and Dominic Glover provided an overview of the Heritage Fund's Welcoming Community Outreach Project and the results obtained from the focus groups.

Perhaps the thought that his wife supports gay rights and opposes Lutheran bullying drove Ed Bruce to imbibe copious amounts of the local moonshine.

Meanwhile, the court records now reflect two separate criminal cases involving Edward Bruce Tinsley, filed separately on December 7 and 13, 2006, respectively. Whether this reflects a crime wave in Bartholmew County, Indiana or simply a duplicate filing is unclear.

Marty Peretz, Class Warrior

Martin Peretz drops trou and squeaks out a few bars of Fanfare for the Common Man:

I have a question I've been reluctant to ask. Do the Clintons have any friends who aren't really rich? Maybe just a few, for old time's sake. But, as I read the clips about them, they consort largely, and maybe only, with zillionaires and very high-pay Hollywood types. It is not an axiomatic vocational hazard of politicians. Let me take Gore as an instance. He and Tipper have musician friends and professor friends and artist friends and just plain worker friends and farmer friends, for sure. Not that they don't mix with computer magnates, as well. But the Gores are rooted in ordinary life--in real, even quotidian activity. For example, he actually writes his own books. Believe it or not, it's true. The indulgent wealth that surrounds Bill and Hillary is, I am sure, corrupting. And that corruption--of taste, of moderation, of what is essential--cripples the soul and distorts life itself.

Yes, only the "really" rich and "very" highly-paid and the "indulgently" wealthly are soul-crippling life distorters, whereas the moderately highly-paid and the deserving wealthy are God's blessing upon us all. The cut-off line? One penny above the current Singer family fortune.

P.S. to Marty - You don't actually write your own books either.

Nice Per Se

Coming not-that-soon: A book about the ordeal of sex workers in Cambridge, MA:

Djuric said that one idea that has been tossed around for the book proposal is a collection of autobiographical stories about how different Harvard students lost their virginities.

While Chen said the idea is still in its nascent stages, she envisions it being a sort of guide to sex at Ivy League schools.

"A guide to everything there is about sex," Chen said. "Not on how to have sex per se, but a manual with a certain Ivy League legitimacy."

I though sex per se was the only kind Harvard students had.

Young Goode-man Brownshirt

Representative-elect Keith Ellison (D-MN) schools an ignorant cracker:

In his letter, which was dated Dec. 5, Mr. Goode [R-Inbred] said that Americans needed to "wake up" or else there would "likely be many more Muslims elected to office and demanding the use of the Koran."

...

Mr. Ellison dismissed Mr. Goode's comments, saying they seemed ill informed about his personal origins as well as about Constitutional protections of religious freedom. "I'm not an immigrant," added Mr. Ellison, who traces his American ancestors back to 1742. "I'm an African-American."

Since the November election, Mr. Ellison said, he has received hostile phone calls and e-mail messages along with some death threats. But in an interview on Wednesday, he emphasized that members of Congress and ordinary citizens had been overwhelmingly supportive and said he was focusing on setting up his Congressional office, getting phone lines hooked up and staff members hired, not on negative comments.

Christianity, the religion of peace. I wonder how many of those death threats came from Clownhall contributors.

Reg Against The Machine

New York Sun staff writer Robert Assshiner Asahina takes a brave stand against the persecution of Dame Judy Stench:

But aren't publishers supposed to be daring, even if they act in dubious taste? In a publishing environment that is increasingly bottom-line driven, Mr. Murdoch and Ms. Regan's immediate superior at HarperCollins, Chief Executive Officer Jane Friedman, can hardly complain that Ms. Regan's daring hasn't paid off. In fact, she has probably been the single most successful publisher in the industry, perhaps in recent memory.

It's difficult to avoid the conclusion that Ms. Regan was fired not for her legendarily difficult personality -- and not, or not just, because of her longstanding rivalry with Ms. Friedman -- but for her repeated affronts to the bland conformity of New York publishing.

Assshiner then takes the time from mailing his ms. to Ms. Regan to portray her as a victim of the elitist liberal publishing industry:

Would Ms. Regan be considered even remotely controversial if she had published, say, Noam Chomsky, Al Franken, and Karen Finley? By this measure, Ms. Regan's chief sin seems to have been that her authors sold millions of books to exactly the kind of readers that New York publishers wish weren't their customers.

If she recruited Noam, Al and/or Karen to write a book about how they might have knifed two people to death (who had in fact been knifed to death), probably, yes.

(By the way, Regan published books by Ralph Nader, Michael Moore, and Joe Trippi. Isn't that the exact same thing?)

Don't worry, Bob, there are plenty of other sewers Regan can infest, and it's more likely she'll return your calls now.

Blogging For Dumbfucks

Here's a remedial lesson for subliterate, underwear-soiling bloghacks.

I guess we'll never find out how that real-life remake of Six Days Seven Nights turns out.