I’m sure Joe Biden is their hero. Since they couldn’t heed his warning not to travel in planes or trains or other enclosed spaces they did the next best thing: they used the rally towels the Caps gave out at the game as makeshift face masks. No, really. No doubt the high quality cotton poly is at least as resistant to A/H1N1 viruses as an N95 mask. (Click the picture to make them bigger dorks.)

The kid finally gave up when he finally realized that most of the rest of the car was highly amused by their frivolity, but the dad kept up his PDBR (public display of brain rot) for at least a half dozen more stops. Mercy. Somebody shoulda sneezed.

I landed in Gothenburg about 10AM local time on September 11, 2001, there to prepare for a meeting I was organizing/hosting/chairing a month later. As usual, I checked into the hotel after the all night flight and went to sleep for a couple of hours. Woke up to Aaron Brown standing on a rooftop with smoke pouring out of a hole in one of the towers behind him. My jet lagged brain thought he said that a plane had crashed into the building. Then the second plane hit while he was talking. He didn’t see it because he was facing the camera. But the rest of us saw it. And felt it, even across oceans.

Our kids were both in school in the District and the rumors started to circulate. CNN, having airtime to fill, started airing them. “Fires on the Mall. Plane headed toward the Capitol. A helicopter has crashed into the Pentagon.” Great. The country’s under attack and everybody I love is in Washington, and I’m stuck thousands of miles away across an ocean. My jet lagged brain then tried to direct Gigi to the best routes to take, and the ones to avoid, to get downtown and pick up the kids. Trying to take charge from Sweden seemed like a good idea; it sounded ludicrous in Washington. She and a friend drove down, picked up everybody’s kids, and returned to what seemed like the relative safety of the suburbs. I mean, even my jet lagged brain figured that the 7-11 on MacArthur Boulevard was an unlikely target.

With all flights to home grounded there was no chance to get back. I did manage to make it to England where good friends took me in for as long as I needed; that turned out to be a week. We made lemonade by touring a different corner of East Anglia every day. Pubs, churches, ruins, villages, followed by more pubs, villages, and narrow, hilly, winding, rain slick lanes better suited to carts than sedans. John’s driving so terrified me that I almost forgot why I was there. Joan, having survived as John’s passenger for 40 years, took refuge in the back seat and had a quiet bit of fun noticing my white knuckles.

One day we didn’t go touring. The memorial service from St. Paul’s was on the BBC. The orchestra played our National Anthem, God Save The Queen, and an entire program of tear-inducing music. I stood in the doorway of their parlor, hoping that if I didn’t go in and sit down I’d somehow avoid the tears. That didn’t work; I cried my eyes out missing the family and being glad they’re safe and being sorry I can’t be there for them and for me. Later, after I calmed down, I made a joke about the size of the upcoming cellular bill.

I was flying so much that I was in United’s top tier of frequent flyers, which came in handy. We had a private number in most every country to call for customer service, and I called it twice each day for news of flights. They were amazingly patient and never once got cross, as the Brits say, and they managed to get me on a flight on the first day they were allowed to fly. Even better, it was the first flight from Heathrow to Dulles. Upper deck of a 747. Everybody was nervous and eying everybody else, especially the middle Eastern looking guy sitting across the aisle and one row back. Trying to be non-obvious about the obvious while begging the crew to do something, anything. Like get him the hell off the plane. Security finally came on board and so very politely asked him to join them back in the terminal. After an hour he was back, apparently absolved of Flying While Arab. The crew later confided that they’d had his bags pulled off and re-re-re-examined, too.

Got home to what passed for normalcy. At the Caps games that fall, images of waving flags and wheat fields filled the scoreboard and signs around arena during anthem. Everybody sang like they really meant it, something I hadn’t ever heard before. Frankly, I don’t know how the performers got through the song without choking up. The whole place was wrapped up with so much pride and anger and fear all rolled into 2 ½ minutes of song. Then huge cheers at the end, and much more than the ‘OK the song’s over, let’s play’ cheers. Every single night.

Now, I’ve been in the same arena for 40+ games, listening to the same song, watching similar images. And the memories come. Every night.

A couple of weeks ago a young rep from some environmental group or other asked, “Are you against global warming?” BZZZT! You’re out for asking one of the most idiotic questions I’ve heard in a long time! Thanks for playing! Didn’t your trainers tell you that by asking a question like that you’ll only attract the people who already agree with the many assumptions inherent in the question? Or was that your point? No, you moron, I’m actually FOR global warming: cuts down on the winter heating bills and should extend the growing season thus providing more jobs for landscapers. And all that new shoreline will make for kabillions of dollars in new real estate development, not to mention the new marinas.

Yesterday’s SQOTD was even more fun. “Hi, sir. Would you like to help defeat the Republicans today?” asked the young woman wearing a tee shirt emblazoned with “Democratic National Committee.” BZZZT! I slowed down a bit, and carefully considered my response. Are Democrats really that bad at either picking street pollsters or training them, or could this be another Karl Rove political trick to make them LOOK bad? I chucked a little bit, smiled my friendliest smile and said no, sans equivocation. The young woman scowled indignantly at me, as if I’d just called her something nasty.

They don’t call ‘em closed-ended questions for nothing.

It must have seemed like a good idea at the time. Europe’s largest brothel, the Pascha in Cologne, which incidentally claims to be the world’s only brothel with a money-back guarantee for dissatisfied customers, attached the flags of all 32 nations competing in the World Cup to its façade in a bid to demonstrate international flair and attract custom during the tournament this summer.

A giant poster covering the side of the seven-story, 126-apartment building showed a friendly-looking blonde woman lifting up her bra above the slogan “A Time to Make Girlfriends”, in a play on the World Cup’s official slogan “A Time to Make Friends.” Right beneath her pink panties were posters of the flags, including those of strictly Islamic Saudi Arabia and Iran.

Pascha’s manager Armin Lobscheid had also erected real flags of all the World Cup nations on another side of the building.

The campaign provoked excitement, but not the kind the management was hoping for. Men from the Muslim community came to the door complaining that showing the flags of Saudi Arabia and Iran was an insult to the Prophet Muhammad. Later, some returned in masks.

Take it from me. Based on my observations the red light district in Amsterdam was not a place Muslim men avoided. Quite the contrary. In fact, I once met a German printing equipment salesman who was shepherding a gaggle of his Iranian customers around Amsterdam in order to close a sale. He confided to me over drinks one night that they wouldn’t sign the order unless he took them out of Tehran and escorted them around both Köln and Amsterdam; Köln so they could see his plant and drink, and Amsterdam so they could, um, partake of the local sweets.

But back to the Germans…I guess thugs are thugs, regardless of how they justify their thuggishness.

From TigerHawk, where you’ll also find this delicious comment, which reads in part,

“But against Muslim extremists, we’ll all unite behind German prostitution companies. What a crazy world we live in.”

Amen.

DeLay, who will turn 59 on Saturday, did not say precisely when he would step down, but under Texas law he must either die, be convicted of a felony, or move out of his district to be removed from the November ballot.

Attention fact checkers: the applicable Texas election law (§ 145.035. WITHDRAWN, DECEASED, OR INELIGIBLE CANDIDATE’S NAME OMITTED FROM BALLOT) actually says nothing about felony convictions. It reads, “A candidate’s name shall be omitted from the ballot if the candidate withdraws, dies, or is declared ineligible on or before the 74th day before election day.” According to § 141 a candidate is eligible only if he is a US citizen over 18, meets residency requirements, has not been found mentally incompetent and has not been “finally” convicted of a felony (pardoned felons apparently are eligible in Texas). So at best the Post writers and editors decided that it would easier for them to paint an incomplete picture of the law, pandering to the wingnut element of the Democratic party at the same time, than to actually inform readers. That’s at best.

Your assignment, class, is to rewrite the sentence for the Post. Your rewrite must accurately and succinctly convey the facts. Given that we’re talking about the Post, your political bias may show through. Here’s an example: “DeLay, who will turn 59 on Saturday, did not say precisely when he would step down. Under Texas law his name may be removed from the ballot if he withdraws from the race, becomes ineligible or passes away.” (A good editor would probably delete the “passes away” phrase as superfluous, by the way.)

And to think that I actually pay for this paper. At least the Sports pages are good.

[By the way: I'm no fan of DeLay and his ilk, and am in no way sad to see him departing the main stage.]

On one point Nagin apparently wants to sincerely apologize for is his assertion that God is mad at America or at black people in particular. He said:

“I sincerely apologize for that and if there was anything I could take back, that would be it. I think it was inappropriate. I don’t know what happened there. I don’t know how that got jumbled up. That whole God thing, I don’t know how that got mixed up in there.”

Okay then. Next?

In speaking about his ‘chocolate city’ comment Nagin used the famous ‘conditional apology’ method; you know, the one that precedes the ‘I’m sorry’ part with ‘if’:

“[The chocolate city comment] was targeted toward African-Americans and it was intended to say, ‘You’re welcome regardless of what you’ve heard,’ and, ‘Come back.’ But obviously I misread the mood of people on some points, and if I said or did anything that offended people I sincerely apologize.”

I won’t even bother to deal with his feeble attempt to defuse the bomb yesterday, when he claimed that he meant ‘chocolate milk city’ when he said ‘chocolate city.’ I grew up here in Washington which has had a black population majority since long before I became aware of such things as demographics. The city’s black-oriented radio stations and other media outlets used to refer to Washington as “Chocolate City” with great pride in the 1970s. So please, Mr. Nagin, don’t try to tell me what ‘chocolate city’ means.

“Surely God is mad at America. He sent us hurricane after hurricane after hurricane, and it’s destroyed and put stress on this country. Surely he doesn’t approve of us being in Iraq under false pretenses. But surely he is upset at black America also. We’re not taking care of ourselves. It’s time for us to come together. It’s time for us to rebuild New Orleans – the one that should be a chocolate New Orleans. This city will be a majority African American city. It’s the way God wants it to be. You can’t have New Orleans no other way. It wouldn’t be New Orleans.”

I’d love to know what Dr. King, with whom Mayor Nagin also admitted to having an imaginary conversation, would think about the mayor and his assertions.

Can you imagine the furor which would erupt if the governor of Mississippi, who, if you’ll recall, is a white Republican, invoked God’s will as he called for his state to be a ‘vanilla,’ populated by a majority of white people. Furor, hell! His career’d be over before the ink was dry on the first edition of the New York Times.

– Scott Johnson, eviscerating Mary Mapes’ book about the 60 Minutes II story which featured fraudulent documents purportedly from the Texas Air National Guard.