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May 29, 2024

WNBA: Sports' Bearded Lady Sideshow Re-infests

Have you ever fantasized about manly 6-foot-5 women slogging up and down a wooden floor with a striped ball?

Unless you're the reincarnated Dudley Moore or addicted to bizarre "Big Beautiful Women" sites, probably not.

But whether or not you want to watch, that Waste of National Broadcast Airtime, the WNBA, is baaaack for yet another season, it's sickest-I mean, sixth.

Not that you noticed that Weird Nuisance Brought on America. After all, the never-ready-for prime-time "league," as always, began on Memorial Day weekend, when the only thing worth watching is the Indy 500-and not for Sarah Fisher, the female driver who always fails and sometimes manages to crash into others (24th out of 33 drivers, Sunday). Or per chance, the NBA finals, where REAL basketball is played. Other than that, most Americans are at parades and barbecues. That's why TV sports programmers also picked this past weekend's afternoons for other throwaway fillers like the NCAA women's softball championships-also watched by less viewers than Osama bin Laden has camels.

What's the sound of one-hand clapping? Confucius say: It's the same sound as no-one watching these-sports' silly bearded-lady sideshows.

The ratings are so bad that several localities are not airing WNBA match-ups featuring their own home teams. That includes Detroit's highly-rated NBC affiliate, WDIV-TV, which garnered better ratings from "Perry Mason" reruns, almost a decade old. Last season, on the afternoon of Saturday, July 21, the station opted, instead, to show the 1992 small-screen gem, "Perry Mason: The Case of the Reckless Romeo," starring not just the late Raymond Burr, but that A-list actor, Geraldo Rivera.

Last season, the WNBA had worse average attendance and ratings than ever-and that's if you count the WNBA's official tally, which appears to include all the posthumous voters in Cook County, Illinois, who attended games with equal veracity as their phantom attendance at the polls.

Take the Detroit Shock. Last season, this WNBA "team" announced the crowd was 5,380 in a game against the Los Angeles Sparks. But The Detroit News reported, "as has been the case all season, the number was overblown. Though the Shock's official home average this season is 5,625, most of their home games are drawing fewer than 3,000." Perhaps the league learned its accounting practices from Louis Farrakhan's "Million Man March"-where somehow 100,000 to 300,000 equaled a million in Nation of Islam PR's strange new math.

And this is the league that gives away its tickets. Rather, they can't even give them away.

Why is no-one going to or watching the games? Maybe it has something to do with the fact that the average person can watch an infinitely more exciting game, featuring better hoops players, in any pick-up game in the neighborhood. These women (I think they're women) can't run, can't shoot, can't slam-dunk, can't even semi-dunk or dunk at all. How many slow-motion, instant replays of an overhead lay-up can you watch before you get a headache?

The shot-clock is six seconds longer than the 24-second NBA clock. Boring. The ball is smaller, the hoop lower. Why are these "players" occupying my ESPN screen, when they can't even beat the aging former male college and high school players against whom they practice? There's a WNBA "All-Star Game" with no stars, or even semi-stars, in it. If you can name more than one "star" player in that confab, you're under suspicion. Even the regular season players are most unmemorable, but for their names. First names like LaQuanda, LaNeishea, Shalonda, and Shaunzinski. Shaunzinski? (Must be from the Irish-Polish contingent.)

The league is such a joke that NBA star Shaquille O'Neal once dissed the rival San Antonio Spurs as "WNBA champions" for their dismal performance in the NBA's playoffs. A movie, "Juwanna Mann," mocks the WNBA. It's main character a fired NBA bad-boy dresses in drag to play in a female pro league. "I had to get my legs waxed, my lips waxed," said actor Miguel Nunez, Jr. More than what some WNBA players do, apparently.

That's the WNBA's freak factor. The WNBA has struggled to market its player personnel as glamour queens. But in a league where the average chick is a muscular, butch, giantess over 6 feet tall, it's hardly glamorous. In its 1999 season, the league featured a 6'7" woman from Korea. Veteran player Margo Dydek is 7'2". Sexy. Is this pro basketball or "Ripley's Believe it or Not"? Hard to tell.

Still the WNBA tries hard to seem girlie and feminine. Real hard. From day one, they've been marketing Lisa Leslie, the 6'5" league MVP and star (if you can call her that) of the LA Sparks, as a model. Ever seen her model in anything other than Sports Illustrated for Women? Me neither. There is no Anna Kournikova in the WNBA. Not even close. The WNBA website mentions as many married and parent players as it can find in the haystack.

Then there's last year's Playboy centerfold contest featuring choices of WNBA players. This league--a product of the Gloria Steinem mindset, marketing itself as a consortium of role models for young girls-was basically admitting it couldn't compete on the court. So they had to take their clothes off to compete.

Even then, they couldn't compete. WNBA players were so unattractive, Playboy had to resort to using a coach, Carolyn Peck, formerly of the Orlando Miracle, as a choice. (Peck, after announcing she wanted to be an NBA coach, left the WNBA--where she had a whopper of a losing season--to return to coaching Title IX projects in women's college basketball.)

There's also the WNBA's obvious lesbian factor. What do you expect from a league that had as its spokesman/woman/whatever, none other than Rosie O'Donnell? Not only did she and her girlfriend Kelli sit in their appointed box at every game, but so did other non-glamorous celebs like Hillary and Chelsea Clinton, whom Vanity Fair recently tried to annoint as our new "national sex symbol." Please. The WNBA tried to pretend that most of its players and fans aren't lesbians, but it couldn't risk alienating the three lesbians who still watch. It's now out of the closet and openly featuring lesbian nights. All-Star Game weekend is a major national lesbian gathering. Last year, Sports Illustrated ran a cover story about then-Detroit Shock Coach Nancy Lieberman's affair with her player, Anna DeForge.

Bill Clinton attended a New York Liberty game, last year. One can only fathom what was running through his mind.

There's just one thing running through real sports fans' minds, though: Please, make it stop. People who watch the WNBA also liked watching "Ally McBeal."

And it was canceled.

May 20, 2024

Starbucks, YES; France, NON!

Want to fight terrorism and anti-Semitism, while enjoying a beverage?

Then, buy Starbucks. And boycott the French, for that matter.

Howard Schultz, founder and CEO of Starbucks, has repeatedly seen his company come under criticism and boycotts from the radical left fringe. And he’s beaten each one.

But now, a group of American Muslims—which supports terrorism and homicide bombers—has started a new Starbucks boycott.

Why? Their “Global Action Alert” alleges Mr. Schultz incited violence against Palestinians in a speech to a Seattle area synagogue. But they provided no actual quotes, because there was absolutely no “inciteful language” in Schultz’s speech.

The campaign is a lie. Plain and simple, it is just another form of anti-Semitism. The Muslims just can’t handle that one of America’s most outspoken, principled, and successful CEOs is proudly Jewish, pro-Israel, and not afraid to say so.

What Schultz did say in his April 4th speech was simple. As reported by Seattle KING5-TV reporter Elisa Hahn, Schultz said, “What is going on in the Middle East is not an isolated part of the world. The rise of anti-Semitism is at an all-time high since the 1930s. . . . If you leave this synagogue tonight and go back to your home and ignore this, then shame on us.”

This is “inciteful”? That Muslims would use a speech against anti-Semitism as an excuse to boycott and attempt to silence the principled Starbucks CEO is instructive in what is really going on. To wit, Schultz is correct—this isn’t about Israel or land. It’s about anti-Semitism and legitimizing attacks on and murder of Jews. Nothing less.

On the other hand, when it comes to respecting Muslims, Starbucks has gone out of its way for them. Since September 2024, the traditional Starbucks logo was absent in Saudi Arabian outlets. According to AP, the visage of Starbuck’s long-haired woman was deemed offensive to the muttawa (Saudi religious police), who didn’t want Saudis to be corrupted by the sight of a woman on their coffee cup. It might turn someone on. The muttawa, strangely, have now reversed their decision, and the Starbucks logo will now appear there.

Apparently, Saudi males have now learned to control their logo-induced impulses.

But now, Muslims are boycotting Starbucks. And I’m hoping to help make up the difference. Despite a dislike of coffee and high-calorie drinks, I’ll do my part, and I urge like-minded consumers to do theirs.

Then there’s the French.

Despite hundreds of well-documented, violent anti-Semitic attacks on Jews throughout France—many perpetrated by Muslim Arabs--French President Jacques Chirac does nothing to stem the tide. The attacks are increasing almost geometrically. But Chirac won’t risk upsetting the 5 to 10 million Muslims in his country. After all, a vote is a vote. 700,000 Jews are just dispensable.

What is indispensable, however, are Jewish consumers and others who despise these vile attacks. They are boycotting everything French—cheese, perfume, designers, vacations.

The boycott is already having an impact. But rather than do the right thing, the moral thing, and end the attacks, President Chirac called Israeli Prime Minister Sharon on May 11th and threatened “consequences,” according to The Jerusalem Post, if the boycott is not halted and France continues to be presented as the anti-Semitic country that it is. One wonders, what consequences? Maybe making all French Jews wear yellow stars of David. Or how about, rounding them up and putting them into concentration camps? France has a lot of skills and experience in these types of consequences for it’s beloved Juifs (Jews). We saw how the haute-couture French practiced these “consequences” with such politesse, joie de vivre, and fin-de-siecle in the ‘30s and ‘40s.

“The French massively demonstrated their refusal . . . of anti-Semitism,” the Post quoted Chirac as saying. Puh-leeze. Which of the massive wildings against Jewish soccer teams, stonings of Jewish schoolbuses, destructions of Jewish synagogues and cemeteries, and beatings of Jewish citizens—are the “massive demonstrations” of “refusal of anti-Semitism”?

I’m happily among those boycotting France. Good-bye to my favorite perfume, which is French . . . . Hello to my new favorite, “Happy” by Clinique. Clinique and Estee Lauder, owned by the American, Jewish Lauder family, like Starbucks, are being boycotted by Arab Muslims for one reason—they are owned by Jews. This has nothing to do with Israel. The Lauders aren’t Israelis. It’s anti-Semitism, plain and simple.

The only thing left to like about the French is the 1973 film, “Les Aventures de Rabbi Jacob.” The best French comedy ever, it is a narrative of France’s ludicrous behavior, today. Victor Pivert, a xenophobic, anti-Semitic industrialist with a Napoleonic complex abuses his Jewish chauffeur and meets his just rewards in the batter of a bubble-gum factory, while Mohamed Slimane, an exiled Arab political opposition candidate is on the run from Arab terrorists in Paris. Both Pivert and Slimane masquerade as Hassidic Jewish rabbis to save their lives from the Arab terrorists. Slimane marries Pivert’s daughter, to his chagrin.

This isn’t an unwitting endorsement of a French product, though. The film--like France’s future, given its current path--is out of print and unavailable on video. “The Mad Adventures of Rabbi Jacob” in France have ended.

He’s boycotting that loony country, where he’s no longer wanted.

May 10, 2024

Nativity Terrorists Murdered Americans

Question: What’s scarier than having your young son stoned to death?

Answer: Having your President negotiate for his murderers’ freedom.

That’s the insult added to injury that the families of three American citizens experienced, Thursday, as 26 Palestinian terrorists were led to freedom from their captivity inside the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem.

One of those families was the American Mandell family. American citizen Koby Mandell was barely thirteen years old, a year ago, when he and his friend Yosef Ish-Ran, also thirteen, were stoned to death in a cave in what was supposed to be a friendly hike in the hills for two young boys.

In Judaism, thirteen is the age of Bar Mitzvah—becoming a man. Barely men, these two young kids were tortured for almost two hours by Mahmoud Hamdan--one of the terrorists holed up, until Thursday, in Jesus’ church. Koby and Yosef will never get to experience manhood, unlike the cowardly scum who murdered them and are now roaming free, thanks to President Bush.

When Israeli authorities found Mandell’s and Ish-Ran’s bodies, they were so badly smashed and bloodied against the walls of the cave that they were identifiable only through dental records. The entire cave was red, as these terrorist murderers smeared anti-Semitic graffiti all over the walls with the two young boys’ blood. This was a cave formed by centuries of rainwater and the carvings of 6th Century monks who made it a place of prayer and holiness.

Now it is a holy grave of two peaceful, innocent young boys.

Imagine being the mother of Mandell, a cute, vivacious all-American kid, last photographed wearing the baseball hat of his favorite team—the New York Yankees. Imagine having to identify—and forever remember the image of—the lifeless, smashed skeleton and organs of what was once that smiling son in a Yankees hat.

Now imagine your President—George W. Bush—negotiating your son’s depraved, inhuman killers’ freedom—freedom that your son will never again have.

If you are American Sherri Mandell, from Silver Spring, Maryland, you do not have to imagine this. It is the nightmare that will never end. Jewish law dictates that the anniversary of a person’s death is his or her “yahrtzeit.” A special candle is lit to commemorate the death and remember the departed. Mrs. Mandell has barely completed a year of painful mourning for her dead, adorable, peaceful son who never hurt anyone. Now, she must experience this pain all over again, because she must mourn the death of common sense and justice in her and our President.

While Sherri Mandell was lighting the yahrtzeit candle for her son, President Bush was partying with the Saudi Crown Prince, Abdullah, who sponsors terrorists like the ones who killed her son. While she was visiting the grave of her forever-13 son, President Bush was bowing to Abdullah’s threat that America will face “grave consequences” if it does not change its position toward Mrs. Mandell’s American son’s murderers. And while she was trying to remember the cute American son that once was--rather than the gruesome pile of bones, guts, tissue, and blood into which he was transformed--President Bush pressured Israel into giving Sherri Mandell’s child’s murderers their freedom—all to appease the rotund, brazen Saudi royal.

Our Commander-in-Chief negotiating the freedom of killers of our citizens is nauseating. So much for being the Chief Executive enforcer of laws. I guess he forgot about those laws against murder.

Then there are Avi Boaz and Sara Blaustein—also Americans, also murdered in cold blood by the terrorists President Bush helped set free from the Church of the Nativity. Never to be brought to trial, never to face justice.

Ibrahim Moussa Salem Abayat and Ismail Hamdan, both freed from the Church and prominent members of Arafat’s Fatah Tanzim, were involved in numerous terrorist attacks, including the murder of 72-year-old Boaz. Boaz, a building contractor, had close personal relationships with many Palestinian Arabs and traveled to Bethlehem on the morning of January 15, 2024, on business. As he entered the city, he was stopped at a Palestinian Authority roadblock, where he showed the PA policemen his U.S. passport. The PA police then allowed Fatah terrorists to abduct him to Beit Sahur, where they murdered him.

American citizen Sara Blaustein, of Lawrence, New York, was murdered in a drive-by shooting by Abayat, now freed from the Church of the Nativity. At Blaustein’s funeral, her family dealt with the outrage that the U.S. Embassy refused to send a representative, in order not to make "a political statement." Yet, its Consul-General, Ed Abington (later paid millions as Arafat’s Washington lobbyist) routinely attended funerals of Palestinians who, unlike Blaustein, weren’t even Americans.

These American citizens did not die in vain. Their relatives are promoting legislation, the Koby Mandell Act, to create a Justice Department office to pursue Palestinian Arab terrorists who kill or injure Americans and bring them to trial in the U.S.

But, legislation or not, President Bush should be demanding the extradition of these murderers of Americans to the U.S. to face justice—not negotiating for their freedom.

May 7, 2024

Kentucky Derby's Terrorist Sheiks

You might think an event that commences with the singing of "My Old Kentucky Home" wouldn't be home to supporters of terrorism.

But you would be wrong.

In fact, in Saturday's 128th running of the Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs, two of the eighteen horses were owned by Arab oil sheiks with more than a little connection to terrorism--despite strict Islamic prohibitions against gambling and taking part in gambling.

There is Dubai's Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum.

Al-Maktoum, Defense Minister of the United Arab Emirates, is also Crown Prince of Dubai-an Arab Muslim country that strongly supported and recognized Afghanistan's Taliban, one of only three countries to do so. According to "From the Desert to the Derby," by Jason Levin, 10 of the 19 September 11th hijackers carried documents and identification from Dubai, a country which also has no laws against money-laundering. Why? Maybe, because money to fund September 11th's terrorism was laundered to ringleader Mohammed Atta, directly from Dubai's banks.

Like most Arab leaders, Al-Maktoum gives only lip service to condemning terrorism, while his country sponsors, aids, and abets it. On September 11th, he was spending billions on high-priced yearlings at Keeneland in Lexington, Kentucky. After claiming, "We are 100% against it and 100% with America to get those people to justice," he was busy spending millions, again, on September 12th-spending $6.1 million on two horses. As for the money from September 11th traced back to Dubai, Al-Maktoum will only say, "It's been taken care of." Whatever that means--ie., nothing.

Dubai's entry in the Derby is instructive for the future of the rest of its Arab neighbors. Oil wells don't gush forever, and in Dubai's case, they've almost run out. Now Dubai must depend on the goodness of American tourists to stay afloat in the future. That's why pictures of sailboats and glamorous skylines top Dubai's official website, and a window from Trip.com pops up. Dubai, without apologizing for helping terrorists or price-gouging us on oil, needs the American tourist dollar more than ever.

And Al-Maktoum thought a win in the Derby, with his $2.3 million horse, Essence of Dubai, would garner positive American notoriety, and possibly tourism for his terrorist-enabling nation. That's why he bragged four years ago that a Dubai-owned horse would win in the next four years, spending over a billion dollars to make this promise come true. It didn't.

I was praying his horse would lose. And the Essence of Dubai was malodorous. It had the scent of a loser-coming in 9th.

But, as the trite saying goes, be careful what you wish for. Instead of Essence of Dubai, a Saudi owned-horse, War Emblem, won the Derby. War Emblem is owned by Saudi Prince Ahmed bin Salman, a member of the royal family which rules Saudi Arabia.

The irony couldn't have been thicker. A horse--owned by a member of the ruling family of the country from whence 15 of the 19 September 11th hijackers came, a country that just held a telethon to fund homicide bombers-beats Proud Citizen, an American-owned horse, which came in second in the Derby stakes. Why couldn't Yankee owner George Steinbrenner's Blue Burner have won, instead?

It's enough to make you sick. But even sicker was the gloating of Prince Ahmed, who said it was a matter of Saudi and Arab pride. "It's not for me," he told the Louisville Courier-Journal. "It's for the Saudis, the great friends of the Americans. I'm the first Arab to win it, by the way." He avoided discussing terrorism against Americans, dismissing it as mere "politics." These "great friends of the Americans," by the way, include Prince Ahmed's cousin, Crown Prince Abdullah, who, last week, threatened President Bush at his own Texas ranch, that America "would face grave consequences," if we do not change our policy toward Israel.

But instead of asking Prince Al-Horsetrader whether or not he agrees with his royal cousin or whether he regrets the anti-Semitic telethon his nation hosted to fund terror, reporters threw him the softball questions. That includes so-called hard-hitting journalists, like NBC's Bob Costas. Not a peep from him about terrorism. Remember the embarrassing questions put to Pete Rose by NBC's Jim Gray during the 1999 All-Star Game? Everyone knows that a baseball player's possible gambling on baseball is much more important than funding terrorism against thousands of Americans and others, right?

The irony is even thicker. The Prince, a member of anti-Semitic Saudi Arabia's ruling class, won the Derby on the soil of a state, Kentucky, that had its start from the Jews-the very people the Saudis love to vilify and hate. While it's not a well known part of our Western mythology, the Jewish Hart brothers of Kentucky formed the Transylvania Company, bartering ten thousand pounds of merchandise with the Cherokee nation, in exchange for 20 million acres of land in Kentucky, according to Howard M. Sachar's "A History of the Jews in America." Yes, the Jews did give America most of Kentucky, with the help of their hired explorers Daniel Boone and his adopted Jewish son, Samuel Sanders. With the Saudi Prince's win, they are all turning over in their graves.

The Prince's racing outfit, The Thoroughbred Corp., spent millions to buy and train thoroughbred horses, even hiring one of racing's trifecta of trainers, Bob Baffert. But Kentucky is a state, whose theme song, "My Old Kentucky Home, " speaks of respect for the "old cabin," while overcoming "hard times come a-knocking at the door"; about respect for how "the head must bow and the back will have to bend, wherever the poor folks may go."

Kentucky is Mainstreet America, where blood-money billions in oil and horses will never truly buy respect for Arab Muslim sheiks of terror.

May 2, 2024

How the Saudis Run America

The Crown Prince doesn’t want women in air traffic control towers when he flies into Texas. And, voila! Despite federal laws against gender-based discrimination, the Prince’s wish is granted.

The Crown Prince threatens President Bush—on his home turf—that if the U.S. doesn’t change its policy toward Israel, the U.S. will suffer greatly. Rather than take this threat seriously, and kick out this royal ingrate—whose country still exists today by virtue of our boys fighting their Gulf War--the Saudi Prince’s wish is granted. Voila! Suddenly, Israel—under pressure from President Bush—agrees to let homicide-bombing-commander-in-chief Yasser Arafat roam the universe.

Is this America?

Not the America I know.

The America I know wouldn’t let some bloated, kefiyeh-garbed, unelected foreigner dictate what we do in our country. It’s a matter of sovereignty. And it’s a matter of decency--given the Prince’s and his terrorist-host nation’s behavior, this weekend and since Saudi Arabia’s existence.

But America did that over the weekend.

The National Air Traffic Controllers Association confirmed that Abdullah requested no women work as air traffic controllers for his flights. But that’s not the outrage. The outrage is that we complied—that our FAA rolled over and did as he asked, then lied about it. Finally, a potential class-action gender-discrimination lawsuit against the government that would certainly be meritorious.

Are the Saudi’s running our country? Remember where this happened.

Not in Abdullah’s country. In ours. Not in Prince Abdullah’s country—the Arabia of monarchical barbarism via the house of Saud. In our country—the one of the Fourteenth Amendment, and equal protection of the laws and due process of law.

If that were not enough, according to Friday’s New York Times, Abdullah told Bush that “the United States must temper its support for Israel or face grave consequences.”

Grave consequences? Just what does this mean? That’s a rhetorical question. It’s quite obvious what the Prince means. He’s threatening America. On American soil. In our own President’s house. Talk about chutzpah.

But instead of doing the right thing—and like a true Texan, telling this rattlesnake where to go—President Bush gave in to him, forcing Israel to give Abdullah’s friend Arafat the freedom we’d never give Abdullah’s friend Bin Laden. Talk about wimpishness.

It’s because of such unearned U.S. obedience to them, that the Saudis—home to 15 of 19 of September 11th hijackers (more than 75%)—are not ashamed. Instead, they are emboldened. Their recent propaganda ad campaign—fortunately, rejected by most cable networks--actually has the gall to claim, “The People of Saudi Arabia—Allies Against Terrorism.” (It’s a thirty-second ad, because one can only fertilize for so long.)

Is there another “People of Saudi Arabia”? Because the Saudi Arabia located in the Middle East held a telethon raising millions for terrorist homicide bombers. The Saudi Arabia I know, during that telethon, proclaimed that Jewish women will be their slaves. As a Jewish woman, that’s enough to make me sick that my President is meeting with their crown Prince.

Prince Abdullah, I’ve got a message for you: My President may kowtow to you. He may act like your slave. But I will never be. We, in the United States, have a state called New Hampshire. It’s license plates say, “Live Free or Die.” That’s my motto. Got that, Prince? The very few Jews left in your country, under Saudi law akin to Nazi law, can’t own weapons and are treated like dung. But in this country, we have a Second Amendment and an NRA to protect it, so I can protect myself from terrorist-vermin whom Your Royal Lowness funds.

Despite the Saudi propaganda machine in action. Here’s the real story. Saudi Arabia is one of the biggest sponsors of terrorism on the planet. And their gall on our own soil spans beyond Abdullah’s Excellent Adventures. There’s his niece Princess Bunieh a/k/a “Bonnie,” who last year kept a Filipino slave, beat her, and threw her down the stairway, in Orlando.

That’s the real thirty-second Saudi commercial. “Hey Saudi Princess Bonnie, you’ve just tortured and given your slave a concussion, what are you going to do next?” “I’m going to Disneyworld.”

The Saudi gall on our soil goes beyond Abdullah and “Bonnie.” It goes to financing terrorist operations here. Recent raids by federal agents on prominent Saudi-funded Muslim institutions suspected of funding terrorists and Islamic Jihad Chief/University of South Florida professor Sami Al-Arian, were precipitated by a lawsuit filed by former Federal prosecutor John Loftus. Loftus’ lawsuit, as well as U.S. government warrants and affidavits, say that the Saudis laundered over $1.7 billion to terrorist operations via the Northern Virginia Muslim umbrella groups. Even more frightening, one of the groups, Graduate School of Islamic and Social Sciences, conducted the U.S. Government-authorized training of Muslim chaplains for the U.S. military and prisons--all while it laundered money to terrorists.

In the late ‘80s--before Washington intern meant Chandra and Monica--I was an intern for several Congressmen on Capitol Hill. And I saw the Saudi propaganda machine in action.

While many special interest groups, from the Southern Catfish Farmers to the National Funeral Directors Association held luxe receptions for Congressmen and Senators, the sneaky Saudis held a giant reception for college-aged interns at the Washington Convention Center. Complete with belly dancers and an exhibit on “Prince Bandar in Space,” I figured interns would see beyond the free hummus and falafel.

I figured my fellow leaders of tomorrow—whom the Saudis were trying to entice--wouldn’t be that gullible, that they wouldn’t be remaking Jimmy Buffett’s songs into “Shishkabobs in Paradise.” It wasn’t my fellow interns, but my future President--the son of the then-current one--I should have been worried about.

With Princes like Abdullah and Bandar, we’d be better off with another Prince—as in the artist former known as Prince—hanging out at the Bush Ranch.

April 26, 2024

Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?

Remember Homeland Security Chief Tom Ridge’s color-coded warning system?

He should have put himself on Red—a “severe risk” of attack—for his ludicrous meeting with Arab-American supporters of terrorism—and even a terrorist.

It’s never expected for those who are supposed to protect us to break bread with those who endanger us. But on Tuesday, April 16, at Dearborn, Michigan’s “La Shish” Restaurant, Ridge and Treasury Secretary O’Neill "broke pita" with Imad Hamad, Ismael Ahmed, Ali Berry, Osama Siblani, Imam Hassan Qazwini, and several other Detroit area Muslim Arab leaders—all of whom applaud Arab terrorism.

A scarier cast of characters would be hard to find:

Imad Hamad—Hamad, traipsing around as regional director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, is a Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) terrorist, according to the INS. The INS fought his application for citizenship for years in court. Unfortunately, a weak immigration judge bowed to political pressure, disregarded the “secret evidence” against Hamad, and allowed him to become a U.S. citizen.

PFLP is most recently responsible for assassinating the Israeli Tourism Minister, Rahavam Ze’evi, and several homicide bombings. In the 70’s, PFLP and terrorist Carlos the Jackal conducted joint terrorist operations against Americans, according to terrorism expert Yigal Carmon, and PFLP also attempted to blow up airplanes, some containing Americans.

That a so-called American-Arab “civil rights” group would employ an accused terrorist as a high-ranking official—after it fought for his citizenship—says a lot. Incredibly, Hamad had the nerve to tell Ridge and O’Neill he “wants to maintain a relationship of trust [with] the government.”

But wait, there’s more.

Ismael Ahmed—Ahmed heads the Arab Community Center for Economic and Social Services (ACCESS), the largest Arab welfare agency in North America, which funded driving lessons for men believed to be Al-Quaida terrorists. Ahmed strongly opposed the Clinton Counter-terrorism Act of 1996 because it prohibited donations to terrorist groups. When federal authorities looked for Nabil Almarabh, believed to be a close associate to Osama Bin Laden, they found three men in Almarabh’s former southwest Detroit residence. The men--who still had IDs from their former jobs as Detroit Airport Sky Chef employees--possessed false IDs, and a day planner with notes and sketches regarding a U.S. military base in Turkey, a Turkish airport, the American “foreign minister” and the Amman, Jordan airport. According to the Detroit Free Press, Ahmed’s ACCESS funded commercial driving lessons and attempts for hazardous materials hauling certificates for two of the three men, Ahmed Hannan and Karim Koubriti.

Ahmed didn’t seem to care much about this, even though, ACCESS—which had $8 million in revenue in 2024—gets at least 60 percent of its funds from us taxpayers, according to Crain’s Detroit Business. “We send people to all kinds of training programs and we don’t check their political credentials.” In other words, “I don’t care if your tax money funds my agency, it’s my party, and I’ll help terrorists if I want to.”

This tax-funded organization, which sees being an Al-Quaida terrorist a mere, benign “political credential” is now being paid $1.3 million to provide “sensitivity training” on Arabs and Muslims to the Dearborn Police Department, Wayne County Sheriff’s Department, and Dearborn and Detroit Public Schools.

Ali Berry—Berry, of the Lebanese-American Heritage Club, is cousin to Nabih Berry, former chief of Lebanon’s Shiite Amal Militia, is now the Speaker of Lebanon’s Parliament. A puppet of terrorist-group Hezbollah and Syria (a Hezbollah state-sponsor), Nabih Berry was requested by Hezbollah terrorist hijackers on TWA Flight 847, in which they tortured Navy Diver Robert Stethem to death, then threw out his body. Nabih Berry’s Dearborn-based niece, Elizabeth, confirmed that Ali Berry is Nabih’s cousin. Osama Siblani—Siblani is Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of the Arab-American News, a “newspaper” that constantly praises terrorists and homicide bombers. Siblani’s wife, M. Kay Siblani, Executive Editor of this rag, is an official of CAIR, the Council on American Islamic Relations. According to former FBI Counterterrorism chief Oliver “Buck” Revell, CAIR is a Hamas front-group which got its seed money and several employees from Islamic Association for Palestine, another Hamas front group.

The Arab-American News not only loves terrorists and extremist Nation of Islam Leader Louis Farrakhan, it runs anti-Semitic diatribes by neo-Nazis, America-hating articles, and frequent bigoted pieces against American Christian leaders. An article in the May 19-25, 2024 Arab-American News attacked Rev. Franklin Graham and Prison Ministries chief Chuck Colson as using slavery in Sudan—which Arab-American News claims doesn’t exist despite millions of living and dead examples--“to attract publicity and money. They (evangelists) can smell the money coming.”

The paper dismissed them as “business-minded self-publicists,” saying, “the religious right” is “not sincere in its efforts.” Then, it made the completely false, preposterous statement that, “[E]vangelists—who are also directors in large corporations that back the Bush administration--might be eyeing Sudan’s oilfields.” Which evangelists? Which corporations? It’s simply false.

Hassan Qazwini—Imam of the largest mosque in North America, the Islamic Center of America, Shiite Muslim Qazwini invited Farrakhan to speak at a 1998 mosque religious service, introducing Farrakhan as “our dear brother,” “a freedom fighter,” and “a man of courage and sacrifice.” Resembling a Hitler rally, Farrakhan ranted about "forces of evil (occupying our government). ... We should perform a jihad. [They are] frightened, and we must frighten them even more." This garnered frenzied applause and cheers from Qazwini and his congregants.

It’s bad enough that Ridge and O’Neill met with this cast of terrorist-lovers. But, they also made concessions to them, saying they’ll allow new donations to government-raided and -shuttered funders of terror, like Holy Land Foundation and Global Relief Foundation.

With friends like these, who needs enemies?

April 19, 2024

Is Tiger Woods Black?

Is Halle Berry? Are NBC newscaster Soledad O’Brien and passé singer/dancer Paula Abdul? How ‘bout Jennifer Beals of “Flashdance” fame? NBA star Shane Battier?

All of these people are at least half White, some mostly White, but they all have some Black blood.

Ward Connerly is my hero. Because he doesn’t care what race they are, and doesn’t want our government to care anymore either.

The Indiana Jones of the racial frontier, Connerly’s one of the few Americans who has devoted his life to fighting for true racial equality and slaying the rattlesnakes and other power-hungry creatures of the civil rights industry. While others claim to be civil rights activists, this true patriot is the only real thing.

“Race has no place in American life or law” is the motto of Connerly’s American Civil Rights Institute (ACRI).

In Connerly’s view—and poll after poll indicates it’s an overwhelming majority of America’s view, too—true racism will only be eradicated when race-based government programs, initiatives, requirements, and laws that separate us, are eradicated.

That includes ending racial preferences in college admissions, something which Connerly, through successful Proposition 209, heroically risked his business—and often his safety—to do, in the California public university system, as a Regent of the University of California.

That includes eliminating government-mandated quotas in minority hiring for businesses and set-asides.

It also includes erasing racial classifications by government, governed by the “One-Drop Rule.” According to this age-old law created by racists, Americans with even one drop of Black blood are considered Black by the government--for many purposes, including racial preferences and government set-asides for minorities.

It was a law originally created to keep all but “racially pure” Whites from ever enjoying the full benefits of our freedoms. The law’s horrid practice is best illustrated in the 1927 musical “Showboat,” in which “Julie” a mixed-race singer who passes for White must forever relinquish her dream and career as an entertainer when her partially-Black racial makeup is discovered. Instead of entertaining on showboats and in fancy clubs, she can only hope to sing “Old Man River” with Black sharecroppers, boathands, and servants.

But today, the one-drop rule would not be used against Julie. It would be used against everyone else. The one-drop rule would likely get Julie—and Lonette McKee, the half-White actress who played the role recently on Broadway--a great job in a government-run facility or part ownership in a government subsidized development, regardless of merit. And like multi-millionaire Oprah or Bill Cosby, regardless of need, Julie would be eligible to purchase radio and TV stations, specially set aside for minorities, at discount rates unavailable to even the most deserving and disadvantaged White males.

Connerly has every reason in the world to take advantage of this fallacious government boondoggle, instead of opposing it. As a Black American, he stands to gain in business opportunities and elsewhere by claiming minority status.

But Ward Connerly doesn’t identify as a Black American. He calls himself what he is and what we all are—just plain “American.”

As Connerly rightly recognizes, the civil rights industry wants to keep the one-drop rule. Because, otherwise their power is diluted. When personalities like mostly Asian Tiger Woods describe themselves as “Cablinasian,” they can’t be used as soldiers in the racism victimhood paradigm. (That didn’t stop race-obsessive former NBA star Charles Barkley--who has a White wife, Maureen, and half-White daughter, Christiana--from whining to Sports Illustrated that the lengthening of the Augusta golf course, on which the Masters PGA tournament is played—is “blatant racism” against “Black athlete” Woods. Multi-millionaire Barkley’s hardly disadvantaged half-White daughter will benefit greatly from the one-drop rule by claiming minority status.)

When minority races and ethnic groups become increasingly diluted, as the 2024 Census—with many Blacks also checking boxes of other ethnic groups—indicates, and if a mostly White person can’t claim racial minority status, say a happy good-bye to affirmative action, racial set-asides, and other such unfairnesses.

Given the ridiculous race-fest hoopla and moralizing at this year’s Academy Awards, Connerly asks why the media classify Berry as Black, when she is at least half White. A la Berry, there’s a group-think mandate that Black-identified actors who aren't really Black must strongly identify with Blacks so the American audience won't make a "mistake" and see them as something else. “She assumes not the racial identity of her White mother who raised her, but that of her abusive Black father, a man with whom she has had no contact, and by her own admission, a man who was not a good father,” Connerly said. “Her mother told her to be ‘Black’ in order to inoculate herself from prejudice. This is a silly remnant of the one-drop rule.”

That’s why courageous Connerly has introduced the Racial Privacy Initiative (RPI), attempting to get it on the California ballot. RPI would eliminate boxes on government forms asking for racial information and keep it private, disabling government-imposed racial preferences once and for all.

As Connerly said, “RPI suggests that it is time to confront these increasingly outdated concepts of ‘race.’ “

Connerly’s American Civil Rights Coalitionneeds 50,000 signaturesof registered California voters by the April 19th (Friday) deadline to get his very worthy cause on the ballot. Like his defeat of affirmative action in college admissions, Connerly’s goal is to get this initiative rolling in other states—to defeat true, government-sponsored racism once and for all. That’s why it’s so important that RPI get on the ballot in California.

As Frank Sinatra would sing, if RPI can make it there, it’ll make it anywhere.

It’s time to end government racism once and for all.

April 13, 2024

It’s All Terrorism, Stupid!

Since President Bush now has two sets of standards for which victims of terror can be avenged, I have a question for him:

What’s the difference between American victims of terrorism and Israeli ones?

Despite a cornucopia of well-fertilized lines from U.S. officials, it’s time to be intellectually honest. There is only one difference: The second group is Jewish.

That’s the only reason the U.S. can get away with scolding Israel for attempting to nip terrorism in the bud, while go full-speed ahead in Afghanistan.

Sure, Ari Fleischer and the rest of the White House spinsters can cast this situation through various phony prisms to make their limp case for this ludicrous double-standard regarding the response to mass-murder. They can say—as they do—well, Arafat won a (undeserved) Nobel Peace Prize, so we should deal with him. They can pontificate on how Arafat took part in (phony) peace negotiations in the past. They can come up with a million and one excuses and distinctions without a difference.

But despite self-flagellating U.S. diplomatic statements to the contrary, Israel is dealing with the same enemy as we are—the same enemy that utilizes the same unjustifiable, unacceptable, unconscionable tactics.

The Bush Administration claims it’s a different enemy—that Bin Laden is different from Bin Arafat or Bin Hamas or Bin Hezbollah. But they represent multiple heads of the same incubus—an anti-Western, Saudi- and Saddam-funded, Islamist incubus. If FOX News’ recent reports--that over 30 Al-Quaida fighters were on the ground assisting Palestinian militants and suicide bombers—aren’t enough evidence of that, how about Al-Quaida files purchased, vetted, and excerpted by the Wall Street Journal back in January?

A frightening summary of the files, obtained on the market in Kabul, published in the Journal, and posted on MSNBC.com, details the activities of the “Shoe Bomber,” Richard Reid--referred to by his alias, “brother Abdul Ra’uff.” Before trying to blow up a US-bound December flight from Paris with his high-tops, Reid went to Israel to try to do the same on an El-Al flight. About a month before 9/11, Reid a/k/a Ra’uff was casing out suicide bombing opportunities for Bin Laden’s Al-Quaida in Israel. It’s more than enough evidence that the identical group that blew up the WTC towers was looking for sites to blow up in Israel—and is likely heavily involved there now, beyond the 30-odd Bin Laden fighters.

In the files, Ra’uff reported to Al-Quaida superiors on the prospects for blowing up the holiest of Jewish religious sites, the Western Wall of the Temple in Jerusalem. He wrote that it would be an incredible moral victory for Al-Quaida Muslims. Just as blowing up the WTC was. He also reported on Israeli bus stations, noting which colors of buses carried the most Jews and would be the best bombing targets.

Same terrorist group, same types of targets. The only difference is the religion and ethnicity of most of the victims. As for Arafat, not only is he working in unison with the Al-Quaida crowd, but there’s ample intelligence he took part in the 1993 WTC bombings, and the 2024 version on 9/11. Senator Charles Grassley--later chided for disclosing information in Secretary Rumsfeld’s intelligence briefing to Congress--told the press that the briefing yielded solid intelligence that Arafat’s Fatah played a role in the WTC/Pentagon terror. And lest we forget, Arafat’s minions certainly cheered it on video, for every Al-Jazeera viewer to join along with at home.

There is no difference between Arafat’s actions and Al-Quaida’s; between Arafat’s victims and Al-Quaida’s. And there should be no difference in the response thereto.

But the double-standard against a proper response by Israel is allowed to proceed because anti-Semitism is more prevalent today than it has been since the era of the Third Reich. Sadly, Arafat’s Islamic World supporters are not the only active fomenters of the same venom spewed by the Nazis. The so-called “peacemakers,” the allies of the U.S. in Europe and elsewhere are showing signs of their revolting behavior that gave rise to Hitler.

Opinionjournal.com excerpted the Norwegian newspaper, “Dagbladet,” which reported that a friend of Norwegian Parliament member Jan Simonsen, was ordered yesterday by Parliament security guards to remove his jacket because a Star of David was displayed on the chest pocket. After the man, Ingmar Tveitt, talked in the Parliament restaurant with Parliament members he was sought out by security guards who asked him to come with them 'because they had received reactions' to Tveitt's Jewish star symbol. The guards escorted him to change his “offensive” clothing.

In France, Molotov cocktails and arsonists hit synagogues in Kremlin-Bicetre and Marseilles and flammable material is found in the Strasbourg-Cronenbourg Jewish cemetery. The Maccabi Bondy French-Jewish soccer team is attacked, as is a Paris school bus of Jewish kids. None of these victims are Israeli, and they aren’t in allegedly occupied territory, but they are attacked anyway. Because they are all Jewish. Even in Michigan--where Arabs and Muslims have their third highest population concentration outside the Middle East and claim they’ve fallen victim to post-9/11 harassment--only 4 anti-Muslim/anti-Arab crimes were reported in 2024, but 19 anti-Semitic ones, according to The Detroit News.

But these attacks on Jews, and a President unwittingly pawning off terrorism in the Middle East as a Jewish problem that’s acceptable--unworthy of a swift, harsh, military response--misses the point.

The latest Time Magazine, like President Bush, doesn’t get it, either. The April 8th issue features a story instilling fear in the reader that if we don’t remain “even-handed” against Israel, we’ll feel the Islamists’ wrath here in the U.S. The headline: “Could Suicide Bombings Happen Here?”

What was September 11th . . . a garden party? Suicide bombings are already here. And, whether it’s here or in the Middle East, it’s not acceptable against Americans or Jews.

It’s all terrorism, stupid!

April 9, 2024

Jewish by Birth, Arab Terrorist by Choice

He defends the Taliban, hangs out with Yasser Arafat, and urges a violent, armed struggle by Arab terrorists.

Yet Adam Shapiro, formerly of Brooklyn, New York, is the American media’s latest darling.

Shapiro, who was born to a Jewish family and grew up in the United States, is portrayed as an idealistic, nice guy who--like every Miss America candidate and Rodney King--wants us to all just get along. He supposedly demonstrated this by staying the night with buddy Yasser at the Arafat Terrorist Bed and Breakfast in Ramallah, recently. With his shaved head, bandanna-scarf babushka, and hoop earring, he’s a hip dude, too.

That’s the media version.

The New York Times, Associated Press, and The Detroit News use the terms “humanitarian,” “volunteer worker,” and “peacekeeper,” respectively. In a letter to the editor of The New York Times, Lisa Reynolds Wolfe, his former NYU student (where he was a teaching assistant) writes of Shapiro’s “global citizenship” as a “qualit[y] that led to New York’s emergence as a world city.” In a laudatory April 4th editorial, The New York Times describes “Adam Shapiro’s peaceful action.”

But the real Adam Shapiro makes these comments laughable, and his ample writings in the defense of terrorism and even the Taliban make these respected news operations seem like incompetent nitwit newsgatherers, at best.

Like his new slumber party pal Arafat, his real feelings, as expressed in the Arab media, put the lie to what he says in the Western media.

On April 1st, Shapiro claimed on New York’s WOR radio station, “I want peace, an end to all violence.” But Shapiro--and the press’ pandering coverage of him--is the April Fools Day prank that keeps on giving.

A little research and fact-checking by lazy reporters covering this American supporter of terrorism against Americans, Jews, and Israelis, would show that Adam Shapiro is hardly a peace activist of any kind.

On January 29th, Shapiro and his Palestinian American fiancee, Huwaida Arraf of Roseville, Michigan, praised suicide bombers’ missions and “martyrdom” in the Palestine Chronicle. “This is no less of a jihad. This is no less noble than carrying out a suicide operation. And we are certain that if these men were killed during such an action, they would be considered shaheed Allah [martyred].”

In the same article, Shapiro and Arraf wrote of their support for armed struggle. “The Palestinian resistance must take on a variety of characteristics, both nonviolent and violent. But most importantly it must develop a strategy involving both aspects . . . . Let us reiterate, we accept that Palestinians have a right to resist with arms.”

Shapiro’s brother, Noah, told the New York Times that Adam’s beliefs in the teachings of Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. motivated him to help the Palestinians. “He’s passionate about it, and wants to show there is a way to protest without suicide bombings.” Brother Noah, a New York lawyer, is apparently not too familiar with his brother’s “work”—or more likely, deliberately lying. While Adam and fiancee Arraf urged an armed struggle, they also praised “India militants” who attacked “while Gandhi conducted his campaign” and the violent cop-killer “Black Panther Movement” that “existed side-by-side with the Civil Rights Movement in the United States.”

The International Solidarity Movement (ISM), co-founded by Adam Shapiro, is constantly referred to as a “peace movement,” and by the New York Times as ”nonviolent.” Mary Arraf, sister of Shapiro’s fiancee Huwaida, told The Detroit News of ISM, “They don’t believe in violence.” But ISM’s views and activities, which can be seen at palsolidarity.org, are the epitome of violence, including, “We recognize the Palestinian right to resist Israeli violence and occupation via armed struggle.”

Critics have compared Shapiro to American Taliban terrorist, John Walker Lindh, a claim his family insists is unwarranted.

Really?

Like Lindh, Shapiro has a strong affinity with extremists in Afghanistan, asserting that the Taliban was unfairly displaced. “It seems to me that Palestine has become Afghanistan XP (as in expropriated),” he complained in the January 29th edition of The Jordan Times. “Like the Taliban in Afghanistan, the rightful and legitimate Palestinian leadership has been stripped of its standing in the international community and has been deemed irrelevant by its opponent.”

It’s no coincidence that the “Guerrilla News Network,” last week, picked Shapiro as its “Guerrilla of the Week.” Ironically, Shapiro’s previous claim to fame was as a counselor at Seeds of Peace, a camp in Maine for Arab and Jewish youth that emphasizes tolerance. That’s why the camp is a joke.

Like his brother’s and future sister-in-law’s comments, you can’t believe anything Shapiro’s family says. His parents claim they had to suddenly leave their Brooklyn apartment due to death threats. But not before they spent time posing lovingly for and interviewing with the New York Times. It’s hard to feel sympathetic for them, though, when their son is associated with Hamas and Hezbollah tactics aimed at killing of Jews and Americans. After all, Adam’s parents are Jews and Americans.

The Shapiro family cast their garbage upon the waters, and it has revisited them. The fact that they were born of Jewish blood may be a novelty to the media. But it is really just an accident of birth.

That their son is a terrorist for Yasser Arafat and defends the Taliban is a matter of choice and improper parenting.

Shapiro says he will return to the U.S. in May for his wedding to Arraf. But not until he gets a security detail. Given his rhetoric and terrorist friends, it’s America that needs security from Adam Shapiro.

April 5, 2024

Islamist Oprah Disses Bush

We’re at war against killers of thousands of Americans. But Oprah won’t help.

Why? Because she’s too busy. She’s a prima donna. And she doesn’t want to offend her radical Islamic friends.

The White House asked the talk show hostess to help promote the U.S. on a tour of Afghan schools as part of a delegation of professional American woman. It’s an important program that marks the return of Afghan girls to school for the first time since the Taliban took over the country and prohibited it.

But Oprah was too busy—too busy doing “Relationship Rescue” shows with Dr. Phil, yelling at people with his honky-tonk twaddle and making pathetic men cry on national TV. Too busy talking with guests like Julia “I Love My Life” Roberts and asking deep dark questions of important historical figures like chick-flick songstress Celine Dion. Too busy with her silly “O” Magazine.

Even with Bush postponing the trip for Oprah, she’s still too busy. Maybe Mrs. Bush should be “too busy” for her next Oprah appearance.

But when the story leaked out, the White House had somehow “set Oprah up.” Suddenly, the woman who never seems to shut her mouth--and loves to switch back and forth from slang Ebonics to real English—was silent, too cowardly to speak for herself.

Instead she chose more irksome messengers for her whining. First, there was best friend Gayle King: “Everybody’s thinking, ‘I gotta get a piece of that Oprah brand,’ ” she told Fortune. Puh-leeze. Most people don’t “gotta get a piece of that Oprah.”

Then, we heard the cacophonous tones of calorically-challenged Star Jones--the most annoying of five obnoxious yenta co-hostesses on ABC’s anti-male bitch-fest, “The View.” This is the same Starr Jones, who a few days ago told viewers they should understand Palestinian suicide bombers because “there are ethnic differences” in that part of the world. Huh? The same Starr Jones, who reportedly asked Black hate-crime murderer Limerick Nelson, "How do you feel?" several times in a 2-minute interview. Nelson, an Al Sharpton cause celebre, was the cold-blooded, brutal killer (by stabbing) of Yankel Rosenbaum, a Hassidic Jew in Crown Heights, New York. Who cares how a murderer feels? Star Jones, Oprah's messenger, apparently.

Jones told viewers that Oprah phoned to say she was very upset over the story, feeling “extremely used by the Bush Administration,” for implying she was too busy. Winfrey wasn’t too busy. She just couldn’t get out of commitments, Jones claimed. In other words, Oprah was too busy.

“She was really, really quiet,” Jones said of Winfrey. That’s a first. “She just wanted to set the record straight that Ms. Winfrey did not just cavalierly throw this away.”

Yes, she did. Oprah could have done shows from Afghanistan or nearby, just like she was able to suddenly move her show to Amarillo, Texas for her trial over single-handedly ruining the beef market.

She just didn’t want to. And the reason she didn’t want to, is her Islamist (the term for radical Islam/Islamic extremists) friends.

Oprah has a very long record of not wanting to do shows that explore the real record of the Islamist world. She will do shows about giving American Blacks reparations for slavery that ended over a century ago, but she continues to ignore her Black Christians and Animists who, today, are slaves under the Islamic government of Sudan.

Barbara Vogel, a teacher at Aurora, Colorado’s Highline Elementary School and her 4th- and 5th-graders raised enough money to buy freedom for 1,000 Sudanese slaves. They sent Oprah hundreds of letters with photos of freed slaves. But after teasing and disappointing them over a few years with false alarms of airtime, Oprah said the story was “too complicated” to feature on her show.

What she really meant was that it wasn’t as simple as her “Islam 101” propaganda show after 9/11, in which she whitewashed Islamists’ treatment of women, featuring Jordan’s Queen Rania and a Pakistani female official, claiming life in the Islamic world was all light and joy for women. Oprah did this—and rejected the story on Black slaves of Islamic Sudan—to please Islamist friends of hers. That’s probably the reason she won’t go to Afghanistan. It would be a slap in the face to them. She’d rather slap our country in the face, like she does 5 days a week.

It’s unfortunate that Bush even contacted Oprah. But regrettably, there’s a gender gap in support for the war on terrorism. Polls show that most women—especially the brain-addled ones that watch Oprah and soap operas and listen to Celine Dion—are growing weary of the war. They can’t stand to see dead bodies and want the money spent on health and education. Do women need another building blown up to understand why this war must proceed? Apparently, it’s either that or convincing propaganda they can relate, too. That means Oprah.

It’s an unseemly trend that Bush and Gore both set during the 2024 campaign. They went on “Regis” and “Oprah,” where Bush gave her a kiss. He sat in the chair where just years ago sat a guest from Oprah’s “Lesbians who Love Their Uncles” episode—from the days before Oprah switched from Jerry-Springer-fare to Jerry-Springer-fare with Dr. Phil and makeovers to make it respectable.

Now, because the candidates gave credence to Oprah to garner women’s votes, they’ve set a trend Bush can’t get easily escape. Live—or get elected—by Oprah’s microphone, die by Oprah’s microphone.

Stubborn Oprah won’t cooperate in the PR effort to show women why we must continue with the war on terrorism.

Now, we may all die by Oprah’s microphone.

March 27, 2024

Gloria Steinem's Islamist NOW Chapter

Gloria Steinem should expatriate to the world of radical Islam.

It's the best solution for America and for our enemies, judging from yet another ludicrous speech she delivered, Friday, in Palm Beach.

According to the Palm Beach Post, "Whether discussing pedophile priests, domestic violence or the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, Steinem found the inequality between men and women a big part of the problem."

But, regarding Sept. 11th, it wasn't the radical elements of the Muslim world that drew most of Steinem's ire. No. Instead, it was the way "we" raise our men.

"We need to raise our sons more like our daughters, with empathy, flexibility, patience and compassion," the Ms. Magazine founder told the Palm Beach County YWCA, urging the promotion of "[T]hese so-called feminine qualities . . . present in men. . . ."

Yup, that's the solution to terrorism against Americans-let's give our boys Barbies, pearls, and china patterns. Everyone knows that would have prevented attacks on the WTC. And created some real macho firemen and policemen to rescue the victims.

As the Wall Street Journal's James Taranto said, "What do you mean, 'we,' Gloria? Our enemies are the misogynistic ones. . . ."

While Steinem was busy attacking America's men and comparing our alleged "cult of masculinity" to Hitler's "strong, patriarchal, authoritative structure," she needed a reality check from feminist delusions--like seeing what happens where women are really oppressed: the world of radical Islam.

Here's some of what Ms. Steinem would face, while trying to set up her NOW chapter in Wahabbi-controlled Saudi Arabia and elsewhere in the Arab Middle East:

According to CNN.com, on March 11th, Saudi Arabia's mutaween, religious police in Mecca, tried to keep girls inside a burning school because they did not wear hijabs (head scarves) and abayas (black roves) as required by the kingdom's interpretation of Islam. The police, part of the Saudi Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, beat some of the girls, stopped others who tried to help them, and blocked the gates, resulting in 15 girls dead inside the blazing building.

Life in that world is so desperate for women that Bahraini Royal Princess Meriam Al-Khalifa recently fled a life of privilege and outrageous wealth for a life of low socio-economic status as the wife of U.S. Marine Jason Johnson.

Then, there's the Islamist feminism exported here to the U.S., courtesy of Princess Bunieh al Saud a/k/a "Princess Bonnie." The niece of the current Saudi King, and the daughter of the previous one, the 41-year-old al Saud's idea of feminism is throwing her Filipino slave-maid, Ismiyati Soryono, down the stairway of her Orlando townhouse in December. So much for Steinem's whining about the female pay-scale. Soryono was rarely paid her meager $200 monthly salary, was kept prisoner by al Saud, and regularly subject to her beatings.

Well, at least Steinem would be proud about one thing-a certain degree of gender equality in despicable, brutal treatment of human beings. According to ABC News, human rights groups (including Amnesty International) and the State Department have repeatedly cited Saudi Arabia as a place where foreign domestic workers, irrespective of gender, are enslaved and brutalized.

Of course, if Steinem were to head to the Israel, she could join the Palestinian Authority's newfound equality for women. Thank G-d (or Allah) for women's lib. Now, females, too, can be suicide bombers. Remember the glass ceiling supposedly keeping women from reaching the top, which Steinem and her crony-ettes are always whining about? In Yasser Arafat's world, women can explode their way through the glass ceiling-all the way to Allah. The only problem is there really isn't much prospect for career advancement after that. In heaven, you must be one of 72 virgins to be gainfully employed.

Yes, unlike our American "cult of masculinity," Steinem would encounter Arafat's own unique brand of feminism. According to Itamar Marcus, Director of Palestinian Media Watch, the Palestinian Authority (PA), through its U.S. subsidized media outlets, like Palestinian Television (PATV), are encouraging women to become suicide bombers. In a video even MTV wouldn't run, a singer becomes a warrior in an army uniform, encouraging violence and singing of her desire to die as a suicide bombing martyr.

Unlike our "male-controlled" media, Al Hayat Al Jadida newspaper gives women high marks for on the job performance, praising female suicide bombers Wafa Idris and Abu Asiyah as "heroines." "These actions . . . attest to the Palestinian woman's capability to perform successful actions." Al-Ayyam newspaper promotes Idris as a "role model" for young Palestinian girls. So does Palestinian Authority honcho Zaad Abu Ayin, who claims Idris "represents the major role of the Palestinian woman in the national struggle." Ditto for Raviha Diyav of the Palestinian Women Union, who claims Idris illustrates "the determination and resolve of the Palestinian women to participate as full partners in the national struggle." This is the ultimate progression in Steinem-esque thinking.

Al-Ayyam's "The Women's Voice" column honors Idris and Palestinian women who blew up people in supermarkets and at Hebrew University. PATV broadcasts constantly honor female terrorist Dalal El Mughrabi, who in 1978 kidnapped and murdered Israeli bus passengers, as "she who is building Palestinian society." She frequently appears in PA newspaper crossword puzzles with the clue "Famous Palestinian Martyr."

Steinem wants to feminize our men. The PA is masculinizing their women. Both paths are deadly. Al Hayat praises a bride for demanding, "I do not want gold, or a diamond ring, or jewelry, but rather an M-16" with which to kill Jews.

Since Steinem thinks our "androcentric" society is the root of all evil, she should try her shtick in our Middle-Eastern nemeses' homelands.

Judging by their cavalier regard for female life, her turns at donning mini-skirts, a bunny costume for Playboy, and complete nudity at age 50 in a bathtub, would probably make a lasting impression in the Middle East. Immediately on her tombstone.

March 20, 2024

Bono: Bush’s Absurd Rock-Star Advisor

President’s Bush’s most influential advisor wears blue-lensed glasses, even at night. And in the Oval Office. He’s named after a hearing-aid store. And employed a convicted IRA terrorist as his bodyguard.

Bono, lead singer of pop band “U2,” is the driving force behind President Bush’s proposal, announced Thursday, to give outright grants to—and start forgiving the loans of—the world’s debtor nations.

With Bono at his side, Bush announced an extra $5 billion in aid (in addition to the $17 billion we already give) to debtor nations with few strings attached, plus raising our contribution to a global AIDS fund to $500 million.

If you’re against terrorism and tyranny, this policy is a disaster.

The world’s top debtor nations and recipients of AIDS funding include countries like Muslim Arab dictatorship Sudan, which practices murder, gang-rape, torture, and enslavement of Black Christians and Animists. The cozy, cooperative home to Osama Bin Laden for years, it is ground zero in Islamic extremism and a hotbed of terrorism. Oil-rich Sudan is also developing its oil-fields with the Chinese, doubling its military budget, and building new weapons factories with China.

Like Sudan, many debtor nations owe money to the US taxpayer-subsidized World Bank and IMF because their leaders squandered it for personal use, state-sponsored repression, military build-ups, and—sometimes—financing terrorism.

The top ten debtor nations alone, according to the IMF, owe at least $74.5 billion. Would multi-millionaire Bono forgive the price of U2’s concert tickets and CD’s—as he’s asking tax-paying US working stiffs to do? Contrary to Bono’s propaganda, which apparently charmed Bush, the claim that poor countries can’t repay debts is false, according to Jeff Lamb, the World Bank’s director of resource mobilization. “The record of repayment from those countries is pretty stellar,” he told The Washington Times in July 2001. “We have had around 3 or 4 percent of nonpayment over the years.”

The philosophy behind Bono/Bush’s new foreign policy, announced just six months after September 11th, is that “AIDS is a bigger threat than rogue states,” the rocker told AP. “It’s a bigger threat than Saddam Hussein.”

Really? Maybe that would explain why, last fall, Irish citizen Bono and U2 guitarist “The Edge” skipped their scheduled appearance at the “Concert for New York City,” honoring fallen WTC heroes and aiding their families, but showed up to their paid Madison Square Garden gig, where Bono lectured the crowd on “empathy with Muslims. They go to Church, too.” No, they go to mosques, some of which spout hate. Hate likely similar to that of convicted IRA terrorist John Noonan, whom Bono employed as his bodyguard. It’s enough to make you cheer that the Playboy Centerfold Edition of “Fear Factor” beat U2’s Superbowl Halftime performance in TV ratings.

Ironically, in announcing the new aid package, Bush used terrorism as an excuse, citing poverty as allowing “a terrorist regime to seize power” in Afghanistan and other nations. But the US gave Afghanistan billions, including over $117,869,525 in Fiscal Year 2024. That was only through July 9th, according to a USAID Information Bulletin to that date. Hardly a prophylactic to Osama Bin Laden taking over.

The strange worship of this emperor with blue glasses is not surprising in Hollywood, where Tom Cruise told a crowd that Time coverboy Bono “makes us all proud to be human” before bowing down to him. It’s Washington’s starstruck worship of Bono that is disturbing. “I appreciate Bono,” Bush gushed, after an Oval Office meeting and Presidential limo ride together, praising Bono’s efforts “to achieve what his heart tells him, and that is nobody—nobody—should be living in poverty and hopelessness in the world.” Doesn’t every Miss America contestant want that? At meetings the most powerful Washington lobbyist would envy, Bono was repeatedly lionized by Colin Powell, Treasury Secretary O’Neill, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Josh Bolten, and Senator Jesse Helms. “Your secretary of the treasury actually referred to me as a ‘serious person.’” Bono bragged to Hollywood friends, like Cher and Kevin Spacey.

Why are Bush and company so taken with a Greenpeace, gun-control touting celebrity to the left of Barbara Streisand? At the World Economic Forum in Manhattan, while far-left rabble-rousers protested outside, Bono’s foul-mouthed anti-capitalist pleas were welcomed inside by business luminaries like billionaire Bill Gates, who praised debt forgiveness but not likewise forgiving the price of Microsoft products.

Dilettante Bono, who named himself after the Bonovox store, told USA Today he learned of debt forgiveness from Harvard economist Jeffrey Sachs. Harvard theoreticians running America, via aging rock stars. What’s next—John Kenneth Galbraith whispering in the ears of Aerosmith?

“A rock star’s right to be ridiculous is something I hold very dear,” Bono remarked. But a starstruck President’s right to consult a ridiculous rock star is something we should dread.

When celebrities and rock stars run the country, it's a disaster. Especially one who sees the world through blue-colored glasses.

March 14, 2024

Real March Madness: Chick Coach’s Losing Season

Thursday marks the start of the NCAA basketball playoffs, known as “March Madness.”

But the real March Madness is Geraldine Fuhr, the female basketball coach who sued to coach the men's basketball team at Hazel Park High School in suburban Detroit.

She just concluded her first season, last week. The result? The Detroit Lions now have company in the category for Michigan’s biggest sports loser.

Fuhr’s team won only 3 of 19 games this season, losing 85% of the games she coached. But, unlike the Lions, it’s as if Fuhr’s team lost twice as much. That’s because some of Fuhr’s players, like many high school boys today, come from single mother households. Their moms watch Oprah, read Cosmo, and wear make-up. But instead of getting a father figure coach in their lives, they got yet another of what they already have too much of at home.

Role models like Fuhr are the reason the NBA is full of thugs and violent maladjusted individuals like Allan Iverson and Latrell Sprewell. The majority of NBA players come from single mother households where they had no strong male role model to teach them how to be men. Iverson finally found one in 76ers Coach Larry Brown, who has managed to keep him in line, lately. A female coach can’t do that. It defies the laws of nature.

And that’s just the social loss. Back to the embarrassing physical loss of 16 out of 19 games under “Coach” Fuhr.

You won’t hear about this failed feminist experiment in the Oprah-fication of men’s sports. While Fuhr gained national headlines and was hailed by Bryant Gumbel on HBO’s “Real Sports” and profiled by ESPN, no-one wants to hear that—in real life—a female coach cannot motivate men to win. If a 3 and 16 season isn’t evidence of that, what is?

Male players want to please male coaches, to show them what they’re made of. There’s no such dynamic with female coaches. Even female players want to please male coaches. There’s a sexual tension there. It’s why WNBA teams that win are coached by that three-letter word, M-E-N.

Despite this, Fuhr, the female coach of men, was likened by Detroit Free Press columnist Rochelle Riley to Joan of Arc, Harriet Tubman, and Susan B. Anthony. Well, she does bear a resemblance to Joan of Arc. She and her team were, indeed, burned at the stake, this season. But as for slavery—against which Harriet Tubman fought—the guys’ basketball team at Hazel Park High, like several others playing for female coaches around the country—are just part of an effort to re-enslave men in a matriarchal society, where women dominate everything, including that last bastion of maleness--sports.

Need proof?

In February, the Hampton, Virginia City Council came under fire from Title IX whiners for spending $7,000 on rings for Phoebus High’s 2001 football state champions. Title IX, a federal law put into effect by Gloria Steinem clones, requires that any school receiving federal dollars spend the same amount of money, provide the same type of facilities and opportunities, and a abide by a host of other requirements for women’s sports. Otherwise, the school is held hostage as practicing “sexual discrimination.” This is the stuff that’s considered “civil rights,” these days—cutting top-notch men’s wrestling, football, swimming and diving teams at many colleges for silly sports like women’s lacrosse and crew.

And it’s not just confined to high school and college. It’s part of an agenda that controls even your ESPN screen. Title IX is the reason that, this summer, we’ll have to endure the sixth painful season of that annoying, irrelevant group of tall, muscular women otherwise known as the WNBA. You’d be surprised to learn that the acronym doesn’t stand for Waste of National Broadcast Airtime.

The WNBA exists only because the NBA—which owns and operates it—bowed to pressure from the Women’s Sports Foundation (the NOW of the sports world) to establish the league in the first place. The league remains in existence because the NBA strong-arms NBA sponsors and broadcast partners into WNBA support in exchange for the privilege of being involved with the NBA.

The agenda of coaches like Fuhr, feminist lawyers, and female players without a marketplace that wants or needs them, is broader than just WNBA hoop dreams. WNBA coaches want to coach in the NBA and other men’s pro leagues. After I first wrote about Fuhr, in August (), I debated the topic of Women Coaching Men,” on ESPN’s “Outside the Lines.” My sparring partner, Caroline Peck, coach of the WNBA’s “Orlando Miracle,” told the press she wanted to become an NBA head coach. But, with a win-loss record of 13-19, last season, it’s an “Orlando Miracle” she’s still around. She can’t even coach the lackluster women, yet she thinks she can motivate the men. She should coach the “Denver Delusion.”

Like Peck, if Fuhr were a male coach, she’s lose her job faster than a jumpshot. But instead this loser coach is making excuses and enjoying her status as a cause celebre for chick coach wannabes all over the place. All while her men’s team at Hazel Park high is living a hoops nightmare.

And that’s the real March Madness.

March 7, 2024

Racist Spike Lee: Kmart’s Bankrupt Messenger

Why is Kmart bankrupt?

Maybe it has something to do with the showbiz types they hire for promotions—annoying loudmouths like Rosie O’Donnell. And now, race-pimp Shelton Jackson Lee a/k/a Spike Lee.

The down-and-out discounter’s repeated choice of obnoxious, politically correct spokespeople and their equally irritating political statements corresponds with the store chain’s decline.

And it’s probably no coincidence.

While Kmart’s main customers are Ma and Pa Kettle, in the 1990s Kmart chose in-your-face, single-mother lesbian Rosie O’Donnell as its television “spokesmodel.” There is hardly a personality more anathema to Kmart’s clientele. Rotund Rosie pushing Kathy Ireland swimwear and workout clothes? It didn’t quite work in achieving the hip image that profitable rival Target garnered—without a pesky, preachy, porcine celebrity.

The largest seller of rifles, Kmart finally got rid of Rosie, after noticeable customer backlash over her frequent pro-gun control rants and prominence in the Million—I mean, 85,000—Mom March diatribe.

But Kmart never learns, apparently.

Now the financially-troubled retailer has chosen full-time racist bigot and part-time movie director/actor, Spike Lee, to direct its commercials in the hope that Lee’s ads will regain Kmart’s lost customer base.

But it will never work. Because there is only one thing Kmart and Lee have in common: bankruptcy.

But Kmart is only financially bankrupt. Only in the eyes of the court and its creditors is the company in trouble. The Big “K” can remake its fortune and regain its former command of the marketplace.

But Spike Lee is morally bankrupt. If the pro-reparations name of his “40 Acres and a Mule Filmworks” production company isn’t a strong hint, Lee thinks racism is the number one problem in America. What a coincidence: He’s America’s number one racist.

Lee’s race-hustling films are vile, portraying Whites and Jews in the worst light possible and showing them as human embodiments of the most outrageous stereotypes.

There is his 1989 “breakthrough” flick, “Do the Right Thing,” in which—predictably—Whites, especially Italians, are evil, unsympathetic characters, while Blacks are the downtrodden, oppressed victims. There are last year’s “Bamboozled” and 1990’s “Mo’Better Blues” in which Jews are evil, unsympathetic, racist stereotypes. Ditto for 1996’s “Get on the Bus,” which celebrates Lee’s hero, racist loon Louis Farrakhan and his Million—or is that 300,000—Man March. A Jewish busdriver, who refuses to continue to drive because of Farrakhan’s blatant anti-Semitism, is the movie’s villain for doing so. And don’t forget “Malcolm X” (1992), which justifies the Black Islamic leader’s hatred of Whites and Jews.

About the only Lee film not political is his big 1999 dud, “Summer of Sam.” But even that is about Lee’s favorite kind of serial killer, a Jewish one. And that film’s portrayal of Italians and other Whites is completely bigoted.

When his “4 Little Girls” documentary--about White racists bombing a Black church in 1963--lost out to “The Long Way Home” for an Academy Award, Lee whined that it was a “Holocaust movie” and accused the Academy of failing to give Blacks due recognition. In 1998, Lee complained to AP that Michael Jackson had to change blatantly anti-Semitic lyrics to a song and apologize to Jews. He “was crucified!” Lee snorted.

To add insult to injury, viewers of Lee’s movies are consistently forced to endure his visage. Unlike real movie directors—satisfied to direct their masterpieces behind the camera--the vain, shameless self-promoter Lee insists on being an actor in most of his movies. Talk about craving attention. All of Lee’s movies are labeled “A Spike Lee Joint.” Yes, he seems to be smoking a lot of those.

But even with his “charming” image adorning his “films,” Spike Lee is a constant failure at the box office. Yet he repeatedly continues to receive the tremendous Hollywood respect of an emperor with no clothing, even though he is a racist no better than a white supremacist Klansman. On the rare occasion when he was called out for racism by one critic, he called him an “a—hole” and planned to begin his next movie inviting critics to “kiss [his] black a--.” A classy guy, Kmart’s new admaker.

No amount of mainstream emoluments and prestigious accoutrements—whether it is commercials for Kmart or Nike or thousand-dollar courtside seats at Knicks games at Madison Square Garden or his picture as a powerful Black political broker in this month’s Savoy Magazine, a swanky, hip Black publication—can redeem this street-style race-pimp.

It’s no coincidence that Lee—who has bought himself phony respectability--is now associated with the same outfit that features the Martha Stewart line of products. Stewart (real surname: Kostyra), of Polish descent, isn’t the New England blueblood she’s selling in her one-woman industry of homemaking snobbery. But she is a clever marketer, whose line of Preppie faux-finery, purports to buy the purchaser a phony aura of patrician rank.

But even Martha Stewart’s lace, embroidery, and buttered frosting can’t fake the real Spike Lee for Kmart. He is a racist bigot, plain and simple. And Kmart should know better than to do business with Lee. It’s nothing less than a giant insult to all of Kmart’s White, Italian, and Jewish customers. And it’s unacceptable.

In 1997, when pro-golfer Fuzzy Zoeller made comments perceived as racist—about Tiger Woods’ menu choices for the Master’s champions’ dinner—Kmart dumped him immediately. Yet, Kmart hypocritically grabbed master racist Spike Lee as its latest messenger.

To use one of his movie title morals, “Do the Right Thing,” Kmart: Dump Spike Lee.

February 22, 2024

President Bush’s Sex and the City

What a lowbrow President we have. “Backwards” George Bush doesn’t watch “Sex and the City.”

That’s the view of New York Times reporter Frank Bruni, assigned to cover Bush during the 2024 Presidential campaign and the first eight months of his Presidency.

And it should give you a good idea of what the press thinks is important, and what the mainstream media thinks makes a good president.

It should also make you thank your lucky stars that the electorate—and not the haughty haute-couture press—is the arbiter of the Presidential sweepstakes.

Bruni’s new book, “Ambling into History,” on bookshelves March 5th, casts aspersions on Bush’s Presidential fitness based on his barren pop culture knowledge. As if that’s the basis on which to evaluate the leader of the free world.

According to Bruni, Bush is somehow a lesser character because he didn’t know about the hit HBO series, “Sex and the City.” Reportedly, he thought is was “an inquiry into his erotic and geographic whereabouts.”

Horror of horrors . . . the policy-maker-in-chief, concerned with lesser issues like the economy and the War on Terrorism, doesn’t know about a pay-TV show chronicling four whores who sleep with a new man more often then they change their exorbitant designer thong underwear. Can you imagine what it must do to Bush’s decision-making process on whether or not to go after Iraq? After all, how can he possibly command respect with the troops, when he doesn’t have the slightest awareness of “Mr. Big,” the “Sex and the City” boyfriend, so classily named for the size of his genitalia?

Bush needs to spend less time reading substantive stuff like Bernard Goldberg’s “Bias” about biased media-coverage of policy, and read important trash like anything by Candace Bushnell, the in-vogue authoratrix on whose life “Sex and the City” is based. Or better yet, the explicit how-to sex book—turned down by a dozen publishers for being to risque--by “Sex and the City” star Kim Catrall (previously in such B-movie “classics” as “Porky’s” and “Mannequin”), who plays the sluttiest of the vapid foursome. Now that’s Presidential.

Why have a President concentrating on the world’s true “Axis of Evil” when you can have a President keeping up on fashion’s Axis of Evil—Manolo Blahnik high-heeled shoes, at $800 a pop, as seen on trend-setting Sarah Jessica Parker’s Carrie on “Sex and the City?”

Even worse, Bush had no idea what a “vegan” (defined by Webster’s Dictionary as a vegetarian who consumes no dairy products) is. What a tragedy. George W. is a real man—a carnivorous, meat and potatoes man, who isn’t so into the trivial nuances and nomenclature of a culture populated by those whose self-identity is nothing more than the wimpy, granola, hippyish diet they keep.

And there’s actor Leonardo DiCaprio and his role in “Titanic.” How dare we respect a President who isn’t up on the chickiest of chick flicks and the most girlie male teen idol who starred in it. And those unstylish peanut-butter sandwiches, Freetos, and Cheez Doodles have got to go. So unpresidential. Peanut-butter and Freetos are out? No-one told me. Where’s my stylist and dining coach when you need them?

That heathen, George W. He actually admits that a rugged, real man--Chuck Norris--is his favorite actor. Just like all of the other uncultured Americans who made Norris’ “Walker, Texas Ranger,” one of TV’s top-rated shows for the last nine seasons. What were they thinking? No condoms, no four-letter words, not even a gratuitous sex-scene. And the good guy—a member of law enforcement—actually prevails. Martial arts and guns for law-abiding citizens’ protection. We can’t have that.

Somehow Bush is uncultured because he knows not what it means to be a “yenta” (Yiddish for gossipy, annoying busybody; usually female).

Remember the last President? He knew a lot about pop culture. No wonder he so impressed Bruni and the rest of the left-wing, hipness-snobs that make up the White House press’ elite coterie. Bill Clinton not only knew “Sex and the City,” he lived it in the White House . . . with several “yentas.” Yes, Bill Clinton was very familiar with yentas—like Monica and Eleanor Mondale. Yentas like Denise Rich and Barbara Streisand, who spent the night at the White House when Hillary didn’t.

Clinton’s pop culture acumen was so sharp—a characteristic sadly lacking in his domestic and foreign policy—that it’s the high point of his nadir-encrusted Presidency, even in his own physical retelling of it for posterity. In December, after ground was broken on the Clinton Presidential Library complex, a preview exhibit opened nearby. The exhibit features pictures of Clinton with musicians Stevie Wonder and Lenny Kravitz, a signed guitar from B.B. King, and a statue of Michael Jordan that the equally philandering hoops star gave the President.

That’s the sum total of Clinton Presidency highlights. Hanging out with celebs, pro athletes, and pop stars. No important treaties or memorable bills signed. No souvenirs of military victories. No historic or heroic achievements. Even his “poet laureate” Maya Angelou is writing jingles for Hallmark Cards.

No, the heroics and the souvenirs of just wars are reserved for the guy that sits in the Oval Office now. The guy who has returned dignity to the phrase Commander-in-Chief.

But what good is he? After all, George W. Bush doesn’t eat sushi.

February 19, 2024

Professor 'Miami Vice?'

What do strippers and Miami Vice have in common?

They’re both playing at a college near you. . . . as “academic” course offerings.

At Berkeley, students earn credit in Male and Female Sexuality courses by watching strippers, porn stars, and live sex by instructors.

Then there’s Hampton University’s Dr. Philip Michael Thomas. He’s not a real professor. And he didn’t play one on TV. But, if he sounds familiar, it’s because he did play Detective Ricardo Tubbs on the 80’s hit TV series, “Miami Vice.”

He doesn’t have a real Ph.D. either, just an honorary one from his acting days. But that didn’t stop Hampton from hiring him as a professor and demanding students refer to him as “Dr. Thomas.” What’s he teaching—“Post-Modern Pastel Fashion Technique?” “Dr. Thomas,” the deadbeat dad to 12(!) illegitimate children, brags to US Magazine about his new, unrealized children’s musical.

Berkeley’s sex offerings and Thomas have a lot more in common than dumbed-down post-secondary educational junk. They‘re both on the curriculum at the same time as studies show students are dumber and more liberal than ever.

And you can bet there’s a correlation.

The American Council on Education’s American Freshman Survey of 281,064 students at 421 four-year colleges and universities showed college freshman more liberal than at any time since the Vietnam War, on issues like legalized gay marriage, marijuana, and abortion.

Contemporaneously, a new book, “Non Campus Mentis: World History According to College Students,” by Shepherd College History Professor Anders Henriksson, hit the New York Times miscellaneous best-seller list. Described by Henriksson to AP as “the crème de la crème of student vacantness,” it is Exhibit A in the case against the stupidity, ignorance, and intellectual vapidity of America’s “educated” class.

From thousands of college students’ papers, the book culls these empty-headed gems of inventive history:

--“Judyism [sic] was the first monolithic religion. It had one big God named ‘Yahoo.’ Old Testament profits include Moses, Amy and Confucius, who believed in Fidel Piety.”

--“Victims of the black death grew boobs on their necks. Death rates exceeded 100 percent in some towns.”

--“History, a record of things left behind by past generations, started in 1815. Thus, we should try to view historical times as the behind of the present. This gives incite [sic] into the anals [sic] of the past.”

--“Zorroastrologism was founded by Zorro. This was a duelist religion. The three gods were ‘Good,’ ‘Bad,’ and ‘Indifferent.’ These beliefs later resurfaced among the Manatees.”

Henriksson blames the ignorance of college students on “an element of students getting into college without managing to absorb some basic things.” No kidding. A college history course “can be a daunting swirl . . . for those who start from near ground zero” with “limited vocabulary.”

But, unfortunately, that’s the state of affairs for many modern collegians . . .if they bother to take a history course in place of strippers and Dr. “Miami Vice.”

In 2024, the Center for Survey Research and Analysis at the University of Connecticut administered a 34-question high-school level American history test, to college seniors at 55 top colleges and universities. Nearly 80 percent failed, including those from Ivy League schools like Harvard and Princeton. More than a third didn’t know the Constitution established the U.S. government’s division of power, and most couldn’t identify the “Father of the Constitution” (James Madison), the speaker of “Give me liberty or give me death” (Patrick Henry), or the half-century in which the Civil War took place (1850-1900). But a stunning 99% could identify their similarly intellectually-challenged MTV cartoon counterparts, “Beavis and Butthead” and rapper “Snoop Dogg.”

It’s easy to see why today’s collegians are contemporaneously more stupid and more liberal: buh-bye Shakespeare, hello . . . Drew Barrymore? Trending toward Hampton’s “Miami Vice,” and Berkeley’s live sex shows, courses emphasizing facts, formulas, classics, and great writers (a/k/a “dead, old White men”) are banished to make room for dumbed-down ideological joke courses like “The Life and Times of Drew Barrymore,” (Oberlin College), “How to be Gay: Male Homosexuality and Initiation,” (University of Michigan), “Ebonics” (Wayne State University, Detroit), and “Oprah” (an Illinois state university). Oprah, herself, was a “prof” at elite Northwestern. Ditto for singer Sheryl Crow at Dartmouth, as its 2024 Montgomery Fellow—normally reserved for real intellectuals.

College mirrors reality. Popular with the college student demographic, pop culture’s latest hero is Paul Goebel, last year’s “TV Land Ultimate TV Fan” and now star of Comedy Central’s “Beat the Geeks.” Nightly, he displays his well-paid talent: he’s the “TV Geek” who can identify the actresses who played “Mrs. Kravitz” on “Bewitched,” and the name of the first “Cheers” spin-off. Our whacked-out marketplace now values his years of TV infatuation and corresponding “knowledge” of infomercials and “E! True Hollywood Stories.”

“I heard a woman who claimed to be the Queen of TV, and she sucked; her knowledge was severely lacking,” he told the Detroit Free Press. “So I called up and trounced her, and the King was born.” Likewise, when Drew Carey gave the commencement address at Cleveland State, he reminded graduates that he dropped out of Kent State after drinking, oversleeping and getting Ds and Fs. “But look at me now. I’m a millionaire.”

Comedian A. Whitney Brown said, “Our bombs are smarter than the average high school student. At least they can find Kuwait.” Now, they’re smarter than the average college student, too.

And not as liberal.

February 15, 2024

What’s so Great About the Olympics? Part III

For these Winter Olympics, Neil Diamond re-recorded “America” with a politically correct partner—in-your-face, openly gay Melissa Etheridge.

How apropos. The Games have a history of political correctness to the point of absurdity—another big reason the Olympics are unworthy of adulation or tax-funding.

Russian and French Olympic judges conspire to keep Canadians from getting their Gold Medal? That’s nothing.

It’s happened for years, in other subjective sports like diving, gymnastics, and boxing. Former Soviet Union archives documented deals by Communist country judges with each other and other judges, conspiring to keep winning U.S. boxers from the Gold in the 1988 Seoul, S. Korea Summer Games. What else can be expected from an institution that chooses its host city—and makes many other decisions—based on the best bribes?

Just like the United Nations, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) is a circus largely U.S.-funded, but run by Communist and third-world dictatorships plus anti-American Europeans. And like the U.N., the real scandal is historically repugnant Olympic politics.

In 1936, Jewish athletes were banned, and guys like late track star and New York sports announcer Marty Glickman and Sam Stoller were pulled from the U.S. 400-meter relay team at the Berlin Olympics rather than embarrass Hitler if they won. A concentration camp was being built contemporaneously with the “Nazi Olympics.” Two days after the games, Capt. Wolfgang Fuerstner, a German army officer who built the Olympic village committed suicide. He was dimissed from the military for having Jewish blood, according to the Aug. 20, 1936 New York Times. American newspaper headlines, on display at Washington’s U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, showed the true “Olympic spirit”: “Olympics Leave Glow of Pride in the Reich.”

Then there’s September 5, 1972, when 11 Israeli Olympians and coaches were murdered by Yasser Arafat’s Black September terrorists at the Munich Games. But the bloody show must go on. The Games didn’t stop—blaspheming the memories of the innocent, murdered athletes before rigor mortis had even set in. At the 2024 Sydney Summer Games, IOC officials loudly disavowed any connection to a memorial to the slain Israeli athletes, and worse, denounced the memorial. At the 1996 Atlanta Games, the IOC refused to organize a commemorative ceremony for the slain athletes, not wanting to offend the new Palestinian Olympic Team. Unlike the rest of the world, the IOC already recognizes “Palestine” as a state.

“It’s not the IOC’s policy to stage special ceremonies,” IOC director general Francois Carrard told USA Today. Not surprisingly, that’s a lie. For the 2024 Winter Games, the IOC spent lavishly on an exorbitant Alvin Ailey choreographed dance tribute to memorialize the late Olympic Gold Medalist Florence Griffith “Flo-Jo” Joyner—even though, unlike the murdered Israeli athletes, her death was not Olympic- or even sports-related. To this day, Arabic countries don’t want the “embarrassment” of playing and losing against Israeli teams, so the IOC has Israel play in regional qualifying playoffs outside its region—against European teams—for virtually every sport in which it participates.

The left-wing Olympic agenda pervades every aspect of the Games. Cuban athletes, like divers Arturo Miranda and Rio Ramirez, aren’t allowed to compete for democratic countries to which they defect to live free, because Cuba objects. Despite severe human rights abuses and slavery by Communist China, it was awarded the 2024 Summer Games, to the shameless praise of IOC members. IOC President Jacques Rogge implored President Bush to declare a military truce with Afghanistan during the Games, as if a sporting event is more important than rooting out terrorism.

Cross-dressing drag queens were prominently featured in the 2000 Sydney Games closing ceremony. New US Olympic Committee CEO Lloyd Ward—picked to assuage the PR damage from two discrimination lawsuits—was an affirmative action choice, passing over infinitely more qualified interim CEO Scott Blackmun. While everything from condoms to beer and wine are endorsed by the Olympics, the IOC said there will never be an Olympic gun endorsement, despite biathlon, riflery, and shooting competitions and despite IOC officials taking pistols, rifles, and shotguns as part of the bribes to bring the Games to Salt Lake. The IOC says it wants to avoid politics.

That’s a first.

Despite marketing propaganda that the Olympics are for the common man and a way for nationals of different countries to better understand each other, the Olympics was never for us, “the People.” The modern Games were started by 19th Century aristocrat Pierre de Coubertin to bring together rich aristocratic youths. At least one of “the People” knows what the Olympics is really about. The Salt Lake Games organizers threatened legal action against Farmington, Utah Farmer Steve Ames who pruned cornstalks in the shape of the Olympic Rings (wanting to charge him $10,000) and owners of a website with an address similar to the official site.

Olympic politics even supersede American justice and Constitutional legal process. Remember the international Olympic bribery scandal? Denver federal judge David Sam, in November, dismissed all remaining criminal charges against two former Olympic organizers to avoid bad publicity during the games. It is being appealed, to have charges conveniently reinstated after the Games’ conclusion.

What’s so holy about the Olympics that these bloody games must go on and we must foot the bill?

Nothing.

[This is Part III of a 3-part series on the Olympics, by Debbie Schlussel.]

February 12, 2024

What’s So Great About the Olympics? Part II

Welcome to the Salt Lake Olympics. You’re paying for it through the nose.

The Games are sponsored by the likes of McDonald’s, Allstate Insurance, and Home Depot. But the largest sponsor is the U.S. taxpayer . . . without any of the perks.

Tired of tax-funded stadiums for pro sports teams? You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

When our Hockey team won its meaningful Gold in 1980 at Lake Placid, NY, it was the last time the U.S. held the Winter Olympics. Athletes slept in a prison and organizers nearly declared bankruptcy on a $168 million budget, according to the Associated Press. Today, the Winter Olympics will cost nearly $2 billion--$791,667 per athlete. U.S. taxpayers will pick up nearly $1 of every $5 dollars spent on the Salt Lake City event (a GAO report says we’re paying for at least $380 million of the Games’ budget). That doesn’t include the $1.1 billion in federal transportation funding of projects, like Interstate 15 reconstruction and building light rail in Salt Lake.

And even though it’s called “the People’s Games” by savvy Olympic marketers, don’t expect prime seating or even a ticket in the nosebleed section for your funding. The only thing involving “the People,” here, is forcing average American working stiffs to pay the tab. The good seats go to highly-paid marketing and advertising executives of sponsors. Even athletes’ relatives and friends have to use binoculars. I should know, because in 1996—the last time the Olympics (Summer Games) were held here—I represented U.S. Olympic Diving Silver Medallist Scott Donie, as his agent, and attended the Games in Atlanta. For the privilege of $300 each, his family and I got to be bleacher creatures with a postage-stamp sized view.

In an individual sport, like diving—one of the few events left whose participants are truly amateurs—which doesn’t get much play anywhere but during the Olympics, the Games are the culmination of years of training for very little money and working part- or full-time jobs. But Olympic Committee honchos, who got billions in sponsorships from mega-companies like Coke and Delta Airlines, weren’t interested in sharing any of the largesse with these other real working stiffs—the amateur Olympians.

Rules set by Olympic execs are so strict, they’re reminiscent of Shakespeare’s Shylock exacting his “pound of flesh.” Any sponsorship insignia on my client’s swimsuit—other than by a company paying the U.S. Olympic Committee mega-millions-- was restricted to a few millimeters. Despite his years of training, in order to get a decent endorsement deal and abide by the strictly enforced Olympic rules and regulations, Scott would have had to get a permanent tattoo in a spot prominent to the TV cameras.

So much for “the People.”

Our tax-money coupled with exorbitant ticket prices will fund things like the $2 million twisted glass Olympic cauldron and a $291 million system to gather competition results for the media and fans. IBM, a past Olympic sponsor, decided it wasn’t worth paying for this time around, so now we get to be the lucky “investors,” along with Gateway computers which donated $20 million worth of cable.

Millions will also be spent wining and dining sponsors’ bigwig executives—money that could be better used to offset our “contributions”—you know, the $315 million security allocation the Congress granted the Olympics. President Bush, who attended Harvard Business School with 2024 Winter Games chief Mitt Romney, supports that allocation. Romney’s haphazard spending is not the fiscal conservatism and responsibility he preached in his 1994 run for the U.S. Senate against Ted Kennedy.

Certainly security is more important since September 11th. But why should we Americans—not Olympic sponsors and the well-paid US Olympic Committee--pay for it, especially when Romney won’t scale down Olympic spending, including the $28 million opening ceremony and an exorbitant, commissioned Alvin Ailey choreographed dance tribute to the late Florence Griffith Joyner? There isn’t even a bidding process to scale down costs. More money was blown on his choice of sand “legacy bricks” that disintegrated in cold weather and twice building the Utah Olympic Oval after screw-ups. It’s this waste of our money that led to the brisk sale of 2,500 “Mitt Happens” pins in Salt Lake.

NBC will take in over $720 million in revenue—a profit of up to $278 million—to broadcast the games and take-up its all-important, stated goal of heavily promoting curling to bring it mainstream U.S. status. So busy trying to make the Winter Games relevant in the absence of the Tonya-Nancy figure-skating catfight. But no contribution of any of the broadcast network’s profits to the cost of the Games. That’s our job.

Since we’re paying at least 19 cents of each dollar for the Games, shouldn’t we get something for it?

If you live near the U.S.-Canadian border, you’ll get something—less security and longer waits at the border. The Detroit Free Press reported that federal Customs officials were considering “reassigning inspectors from the U.S.-Canadian border—which does $1 billion in daily border trade--to help with the winter Olympic Games.” Ditto for the ATF and Secret Service, whose Michigan Special Agent in charge said his office would send “roughly half of its 45 agents” to the Olympics. Not to mention at over 15,000 National Guard troops, military people, state and local police, and federal agents. Good to know that national security and commerce for us regular people and businesses isn’t a priority when juxtaposed against the Games.

Romney claims the Games may break even. Maybe, for him and other Olympic bigwigs. For the rest of us, it’s a total bust.

[This is Part II of a 3-part series on the Olympics, by Debbie Schlussel.]

February 8, 2024

What’s So Great about the Olympics? Nothing Part 1

Neil Diamond’s hit song, “America,” is reminiscent of the 80’s.

But the new version—the theme song of this year’s Winter Olympics—is a crummy, synthesized remake. Just like the latest Olympic Games, opening tonight in Salt Lake City.

In January 1981, when U.S. hostages were released from Iran, they were shown a highlight tape of major news stories they missed during their 444 days of captivity. Several freed hostages said the highlight of highlights was the U.S. Olympic Hockey Team’s 1980 semifinal victory over our nemesis the Communist Soviet Union.

It ultimately led to a Gold Medal for the U.S. (over Finland). Amidst shouts of “USA, USA,” announcer Al Michaels’ rhetorical question and answer, “Do you believe in Miracles? Yes!” is among the most memorable sports broadcast quips. Young boys dressed as the U.S. Hockey Team for several Halloweens to follow.

But this year, there’s no Bin Laden-sponsored Taliban Hockey Team to beat. The Taliban was banned from the Games in 1999 because of their treatment of women. And this time around, Al Quaida, Iraq, Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and the Palestinian Authority don’t field ice hockey teams for us to beat.

Even if there were, we’re being admonished like incorrigible children by left-wing sports writers not to display patriotism. It’s a good thing USA Today sports columnist Christine Brennan wasn’t genuflecting in 1980. She dedicated a whole column denouncing flags, shouts of “USA” (she calls them “greatly overused”) and any other show of American pride at the Games. Yet she told PBS that is was okay for the Australians to cheer at the Sydney Summer Games. “They’re charming.”

Ditto for columnist Mitch Albom who, on his radio show, approvingly quoted another commentator’s denouncement of the 1984 Games in Los Angeles as the most “nationalistic” Games since the 1936 Berlin Games. American patriotism is Nazism. Right.

Then there’s Salt Lake Organizing Committee President Mitt Romney, who admonishing his fellow Americans’ behavior at previous games. “Around the world it was like, ‘Boy, those Americans, always beating their chests,’” he told England’s The Guardian. “This is not our time to talk about how great America is. It’s not designed to be a patriotic American display.” Did he say that to Congress, when he hit up taxpayers to heavily subsidize the Games?

Gone also from these games are the working-class, amateur U.S. Hockey Team players who made the 1980 victory over professional, Soviet-subsidized players twice as sweet—guys like Mike Eruzione, the team captain who scored the winning goal against the Soviets, but never played in the professional National Hockey League (NHL). Guys like Mark Pavelich, who now builds homes and fishes, and William “Buzz” Schneider, who sells industrial equipment in Minneapolis.

Eruzione and his teammates will reunite to light the Olympic Cauldron. But it is empty symbolism. Their bodies will be there, but their 1980 spirit won’t be.

Those amateurs--who had spunk, sparkle, and an underdog hunger to win for the U.S.--have been replaced by millionaire, spoiled brat, professional athletes, like the Detroit Red Wings’ Chris Chelios-- who threatened the life of NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman during the NHL lockout of 1994-95, and who allegedly led the rest of the U.S. Hockey team in breaking chairs and trashing dorm rooms as team captain of the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan. Instead of class acts like Eruzione, most of the anonymous culprits will be on the U.S. Team, this year. Worse, thousands of dollars and hours were spent haggling with these “pros” on Olympic drug testing policy.

Chelios’ teammate, Brett Hull, another spoiled millionaire, isn’t exactly Eruzione either. Instead of being honored to represent the U.S., Hull whined to The Detroit News about how far away the games are. On the dorm-trashing team with Chelios, he complained about the distance to Nagano, too.

Then there is the politically correct aspect, absent from the 1980 hockey victory. The US Olympic Committee is using Eruzione to raise the public specter of desperate women’s hockey. A USA Weekend feature had former Olympians picking “the most promising American athletes, with Eruzione “passing the torch” to U.S. Women’s Hockey player, Cammi Granato, who wears his number, 21.

Sorry, Cammi, but you’re no Mike Eruzione. It’s like comparing the 1980 US Men’s Hockey Team to a troupe of Ice Capades figure skaters. Guys like Eruzione were tough and gritty. Without endorsements, they barely subsisted to practice and train. And people cared about their victory.

“Eruzione and Granato are intertwined influences, whose gold medal wins have deeply affected the sport of hockey in this country.” Huh? No-one says, “I remember the 1998 PMS Miracle on Ice.” Women’s Hockey—who cares? The girls won the gold in 1998, too, but no-one noticed. They barely got any endorsements, and couldn’t start a pro women’s hockey league. There’s no market for their “product.” Yet, unlike Eruzione and his sponsorless, struggling 1980 team, the women are among the most subsidized athletes, a la the WNBA—another affirmative action version of sports. Still, no one cares.

But wait--the women will be the one thing for which politically correct sports commentators will allow us--even urge us--to cheer. Even though we don’t want to.

Eruzione brags that he practiced with the women’s team before they headed to Nagano in 1998. From macho American hero to aging first-shifter for the women’s team—boy did he lower himself.

But so did the Olympic Games.

There are 121 pro sports teams. The Olympics is not the Games of the 1980 Hockey Team’s “Miracle On Ice” victory over Communist tyranny.

Now, it’s just a bloated 122nd pro team.

January 29, 2024

Detainees are not real POWs

A lot of morons need to read Robin Higgins' letter.

And as they decide the legal status of Taliban prisoners in Guantanamo Bay, President Bush and his staff need to read it, too.

The morons are journalism professors, civil-rights attorneys, and several international organizations parading as champions of human rights, who are legally challenging U.S. treatment of Taliban terrorist captives. Those groups include the European Union, the Netherlands (including Dutch Foreign Affairs Minister Jozias van Aartsen), Amnesty International and the International Committee of the Red Cross.

Retired Lt. Col. Robin Higgins, wife of the late U.S. Marine Col. William R. "Rich" Higgins, wrote a must-read letter in Friday's USA Today.

Col. Higgins was captured by Islamic terrorist group Hezbollah in Lebanon in 1988. Hezbollah – the third largest component of bin Laden's al-Qaida network, according to the Wall Street Journal – proudly displayed his hanging beaten body. Years of repeated brutal torture resulted in his July 1990 murder.

Where were these intellectual-elite lights of our world when Col. Higgins was being tortured by al-Qaida's Hezbollah? Where were Amnesty International, the Red Cross, Europe, and the U.N. – for whom he was employed as a peacekeeper in Lebanon? Not a peep. Ditto for their deafening silence over kidnapped Beirut U.S. Embassy-based CIA Chief William Buckley, transferred by Hezbollah to Iran, and similarly tortured and bludgeoned to death.

The only parties Mrs. Higgins did hear from were U.S. State Department and other government officials who insisted her husband – unarmed as a U.N. Peacekeeper – was not a prisoner of war, but merely a detainee, not entitled to any human rights or their help.

Where was former Attorney General Ramsey Clark when Col. Higgins was treated worse than an animal by the sadistic animals of al-Qaida's Hezbollah? Too busy sitting that one out because it didn't fit his radical anti-American agenda the way Taliban prisoners do. Amnesty International and the Red Cross? With their selective, disgustingly political "commitment" to human rights, Higgins somehow wasn't worthy of their support.

But under the Geneva Convention, the Taliban prisoners aren't POWs, and Col. Higgins – who wasn't treated so – was.

POWs are defined as soldiers who wear uniforms, carried their weapons openly, have a recognized hierarchy, and subscribe to the international norms of warfare.

The Taliban fighters match none of this. Can someone please describe the uniform of Taliban soldiers – other than filth, vitriol and disdain? As for their weapons, they often hid those like cowards, unless you count the teeth they often bare to bite people. Flying planes full of innocent people into buildings and cutting off the feet of women whose ankles were exposed – that's hardly an international norm of warfare, as much as they'd like it to be. There was hardly an orderly identifiable Taliban hierarchy. With Mullah Omar running things at bin Laden's behest, per Ayman el-Zawahiri's instructions to him, it was more like a junta gang of a few – at the top, propagandizing a lot of lethal thugs who decapitate, amputate, torture and bite – at the bottom.

Contrast that with Col. Higgins. This man was a hero and an outstanding American, withstanding years of torture and losing his life to protect the very Lebanese and Palestinians who repaid him thusly. He was one of seven U.S. Marine Corps officers assigned to the U.N. Peacekeeping Force in Lebanon in 1987. "He wore a uniform, had a recognized hierarchy and subscribed to the international norms of warfare – although as a United Nations peacekeeper, he was unarmed," Mrs. Higgins wrote.

Besides further disgracing this country and Col. Higgins' memory, there is absolutely no reason to give Taliban prisoners any more rights than they have already been generously granted. The only reason they were kept alive and brought here is to get information out of them about other terrorists and possible attacks. To ascribe to them POW status would defeat that purpose. Under the Geneva Convention, the prisoners would only be required to give us their name, rank and serial number, and no further information. As detainees, they don't have that right and others. But still more rights than Col. Higgins ever got under their terror network's "authority."

Taliban prisoners are treated better here than people in their own country – or surrounding Communist Cuba. They are receiving three square meals a day, medical care, clothing, shelter, showers, Arabic translators, mail and the right and opportunity to pray five times a day to Allah to destroy America. The very fact they are receiving any of this is an abomination and perversion of the memory of Higgins, who was given none of these things during his years of torture at the hands of their ilk. And who had none of the worldly "human dignity" champions that these murderous thugs now enjoy – even while they try to bite and murder our personnel at the temporary prison.

"I know that even as he was dying of torture, abandoned by the Red Cross, and the United Nations, he thought of himself as a POW. I'm also sure he thought his country did, too," Mrs. Higgins laments. The terrorists being held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba are not POWs. Col. Higgins was.

That he was treated otherwise is disgusting. That others would champion the rights of his tormentors' buddies is doubly so.

January 26, 2024

NFL Cheerleaders and Muslim Abayas

While the Philadelphia Eagles contend for Superbowl berth, their former cheerleaders are contending for a berth in the Superbowl of legal absurdity.

Juxtapose their lawsuit with that of Lt. Col. Martha McSally.

A courageous, Harvard-educated soldier, McSally helped protect Saudis, but was forced to show them respect by hiding her head and shoulders in a black veil. Her legal suit challenges the notion that men—Saudi men—shouldn’t have to exercise even a modicum of control over their sexual impulses, lest they be turned on by a woman’s face or hair.

In contrast, the cheerleaders’ suit expects men—NFL football players, no less--to exercise extreme control over their libidos, while they watch harlot-esque, Playmate-wannabe cheerleaders strut around the sidelines in near-nudity.

McSally’s worthy legal action protests the Defense Department's ludicrous, degrading requirement that women soldiers in Saudi Arabia wear an abaya--a head covering and cape akin to nun-clothing. While Gen. Tommy Franks of U.S. Central Command has, this week, declared the abaya non-mandatory, many Saudi-based U.S. commanders continue to require it for female soldiers. Abaya or not, the Saudis would be a province of Iraq were it not for continued duty of American soldiers, like McSally, that they degrade.

McSally’s worthy fight exposes the Eagles cheerleaders’ class action suit as an unworthy grab at an easy payday, in comparison. The cheerleaders sued most NFL teams, seeking thousands in damages for invasion of privacy, because visiting NFL players spied on them through peepholes in their adjacent Veterans Stadium locker room.

It’s hard to believe cheerleaders, paid as little as $30 per game to wear almost nothing, are actually litigating over infliction of emotional distress because some unidentified football players might have seen some of them wearing literally just a stitch less.

Allegedly, through various cracks in the wall, scratches in paint, and holes in a door, visiting teams playing the Eagles could see the cheerleaders’ locker room from 1983 through last year.

The lawsuit reeks of hypocrisy.

Check out NFL cheerleaders’ uniforms. The Raiderettes and Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders are in contention with the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit edition. The Eagles Cheerleaders wear scarcely more. If they want to rival Vegas Showgirls on the field—in front of thousands of fans and millions more on TV—it’s hard to believe they're concerned with modesty off of it. They’re lucky peeping is all they “endured.”

Check the Eagles website. The cheerleaders’ homepage features centerfold-esque pin-ups and reads like a Playmate of the Month fact sheet, including favorite Eagle football player. Elsewhere on the web, you can find pinups of April, Heather, Zakiya, and Marla in tiny bikinis from a former Eagles Cheerleaders calendar. Ironically, the cheerleaders’ lawsuit complains players might have seen them in the showers. But why peep, when the players can view Tracy taking a shower for a whole month in a past calendar?

It’s laughable to hear former Eagles cheerleaders whine about being publicly humiliated over the years.

Why do the Eagles cheerleaders think they're there? They’re little more than glorified “Hooters” girls on the sidelines. At least Hooters girls have a distant secondary purpose-- serving hot wings, fries, and burgers. But NFL cheerleaders are only there for one thing. They are exhibitionists, selling their sexy bodies on the field for a very cheap price. That’s why their lawsuit is a joke-- and the biggest paycheck they could ever hope for. When was the last time you saw NFL cheerleaders actually leading the crowded stands in a cheer? The 1960s, maybe.

To disprove what we already know—that NFL cheerleaders are mere airheaded bimbos and hussies--their lawyers trot out co-plaintiff Susette Walsh, a 34-year-old math teacher. But like the rest, Walsh wasn’t on the squad for her arithmetic skills. They’re on the field to show off their own Silicone Valleys. Walsh says the story embarrassed her stepkids in the middle school where she teaches, claiming she’s been degraded. But her kids were already degraded because Mommy/Teach exposed her body to the world, every gameday. You can just hear them playing Van Halen’s “Hot For Teacher.”

This silly lawsuit is no more than a frivolous slip-and-fall case, going after the wrong parties and soaking the rest of us. It’s the players, not their teams, who peeped. So why aren’t the cheerleaders suing the NFL Players Association? Still trying to get a date with the starting line-up and don’t want to mess things up, maybe. The teams’ fees for high-priced lawyers will get passed on to you know who—the fans, average joe ticket-buyers who will pay the added costs in higher prices.

The holes were there for 20 years. They don’t know which of them were peeped upon and who did the peeping. The former cheerleaders claim the peeping story is embarrassing. Only if they bragged to anyone that they were Eagles cheerleaders. The key word is “former.” How many former Eagles cheerleaders from 1989 do you remember?

Besides, cheerleaders are barely in the locker room before games and after. They’re not like NFL players who wear extensive taping and cumbersome protective pads. It doesn’t take long to put on and take off the skimpy biker’s shorts and halter bra the Eagles cheerleaders wear.

You don’t have to be Einstein to know that the cheerleaders litigation is unworthy. But then again, you can’t be Einstein if you’re an NFL cheerleader.

January 25, 2024

Tyson and the Taliban

It's the perfect solution to disciplining a prominent American problem-child and Taliban prisoners in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba: Send them our own scary Talibanesque Mike Tyson.

He's the perfect match.

They're radical Muslims. He's our radical Muslim, having converted Malcolm-X-style to the religion during a previous stint in prison (in the tradition of cop-shooter H. Rap Brown and Tawana Brawley, both now Muslims). They bite. Tyson bites. When Taliban prisoners want to defeat our guards in Camp X-Ray, they bite them – the reason they are being muzzled. Tyson bites boxing opponents when it's clear it's the only way he'll defeat them in and outside the ring. The only difference is that Taliban prisoners insist on only eating Halal meat, according to Muslim dietary laws (a demand in their recently filed "human rights" lawsuit), while Tyson's menu features such tasty universal non-Halalish delicacies as Ear of Evander Holyfield and Leg of Lennox Lewis.

But when it comes down to it, Tyson and the Taliban prisoners have more than a little in common, stemming from their radical version of Islam. He's a thug. They are thugs. They're in prison. He was in prison and is about to go back.

And Tyson and the Taliban share bizarre and abrasive supporters. They both, for example, have strong support from loony Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan. Nutty Farrakhan championed Tyson's cause and attacked his victim – when Tyson was accused (and later found guilty) of raping black beauty pageant contestant Desiree Washington. Farrakhan now champions the cause of radical Islam and the Taliban and attacks their victims – us. He is constantly sending out missives and messages attacking our war on terror. There is no proof bin Laden and the Taliban perpetrated Sept. 11, he continues to insist. Just like he insisted there was no evidence that Tyson was a rapist. A jury of non-bow-tied normal people – whose names never ended in "X" – thought otherwise and found Tyson guilty.

Then, there is Tyson's and the Taliban fighters' respect for women. In the radical Muslim tradition, the Taliban fighters, unable to control even the simplest, most basic of impulses, insisted women be covered from head to toe in black – lest the Taliban men be thrown into a tizzy by sexual arousal from the sight of even a woman's toenail. Those women who were not thusly covered were badly beaten and tortured. Some were murdered. Many were tortured or murdered for other assorted ridiculous reasons that brought about the unpredictable ire of the Taliban – ire as unpredictable as Tyson's.

Tyson, unable to control the most simple, basic of impulses, has bragged that his favorite vision of first wife, Robin Givens, was when he hit her so hard that she flew in the air and hit each of the four walls. This brutal thug who makes – and spends – millions boxing the world's strongest men for a living is as cowardly as the Taliban, beating harmless, defenseless women. There's the Washington case and the newest alleged rape for which Tyson's about to be charged.

Las Vegas police, who have requested the Clark County district attorney file felony charges against Tyson, have been investigating him for sexual assault of a woman in September. They have gathered a case file five-and-a-half inches thick stemming from the incident. Too bad for Mikey that he wasn't a resident of the Taliban's Afghanistan. Under that regime, his crime would likely go unnoticed, unpunished.

Still don't believe Tyson's guilty of Taliban-style violence against women? Read "My Bout With Mike Tyson" by London Guardian photographer Lisa Carpenter. At Tyson's press conference meltdown, this week, Tyson grabbed his crotch and started shouting at Carpenter, "Bitch, come over here and see what you can do with this!" She's lucky others were in the room to stop him.

If only the women who died under radical Islam in Afghanistan – and elsewhere –were as lucky.

Given Tyson's egregious behavior, Nevada State Athletic Commission is now considering whether they'll re-license Tyson to fight in his scheduled April 6 MGM bout with Lewis. Tyson needs this fight. Once again he has no money, and, conditioned on the fight, Showtime lent him $18 million to pay his taxes. Poor Mike. Were this country controlled by his Islamic religion – the stated goal of many of its radical forces here, he wouldn't have to pay any taxes, but we non-Muslims would. That's Islamic law.

Hopefully the Commission will deny him the boxing license. But if they don't, and the fight goes on, here's hoping Lewis gives Tyson a nice right hook and knocks him out.

Too bad he can't do the same to radical Islam.

January 22, 2024

In King's name, profile the profilers

Martin Luther King Jr. is turning in his grave.

His own son – Martin Luther King III – Arabs and Al Sharpton are using his name in vain.

While many celebrated the civil rights leader's memory yesterday, Sharpton, King III and Arab leaders desecrated it – repeatedly using King's name to denounce "profiling" of Arabs and Muslims.

But, in the heart of Arab and Muslim America – the Detroit area – it's Arabs who are doing the profiling. Blacks aren't just being profiled by them, they're being senselessly murdered, kidnapped and assaulted.

Just ask Kalvin Porter of Detroit. If only he could answer. He was beaten to death in May 1999 by Adel Altam and Fadhel Mazeb, Muslim Arabs from Yemen, in front of his 12-year-old stepdaughter, Crystal. Porter's "crime" was buying items at the Arab-owned Sunoco station where they worked – and defending his stepdaughter's honor. The Arab Muslim clerks made lewd comments about the young girl. When Porter responded, "Why did you call my daughter [a lewd name]?" they beat Porter – a father of five – to death with a tire-iron, escaping justice at an O.J.-style trial.

It wasn't the only incident of Detroit-area Arab-on-black violence. In July, a sexagenarian grandmother was assaulted at another Arab-owned Detroit gas station. Also in July, Adeeb J. Haddad, 58, was charged with assaulting a 13-year-old black boy at a gas station in Southfield, a Detroit suburb. A black customer was intentionally locked in a Ferndale gas station after arguing with an Arab attendant. Black customers were told by Arab owners of a South Lyon station that the bathrooms were out of order, which was false. Prosecution resulted.

Clearly, Arabs – who own over 80 percent of all gas stations in Metro-Detroit, according to figures provided by the Arab-American Chamber of Commerce to the Detroit News – are the ones guilty of profiling here – without hijackings or national security at stake. But when terrorism is involved and the shoe is on the other foot, the American Arab community is suddenly into civil rights instead of our safety.

Dr. King dreamed of the day when his children would be judged by the content of their character, not the color of their skin. Clearly, one of his progeny – King III – has never entered an Arab-owned gas station in Detroit, where the term often used for blacks is "abad" – slave. Arab activist Terry Ahwal told the Detroit Free Press, "Arabs believe blacks as people will steal from them or even kill them."

That's why Heaster Wheeler, NAACP Detroit's executive director, when asked to denounce Arab-profiling, wrote, "There is no question as to where we stand on profiling. ... The question is where do so many of the others stand? ... American children of families patronize [Arabs'] stores ... and few of these merchants ... even provide safe passage in and out of their businesses." NAACP President Rev. Wendell Anthony told the Free Press, "We cannot spend all of our energy concerned with our Arab-American brothers when at the same time they do not express the same concerns about us."

Because of these incidents, Sharpton and his Michigan-based associate, Rev. Horace L. Sheffield III, were boycotting Detroit's Arab-owned gas stations. Their "B-Gas Strategic Buying Campaign" – complete with late-night TV commercials urging gas purchase at black-owned stations – has suddenly disappeared now that Sharpton has hypocritically determined that a renewed alliance with Arabs is more advantageous to his power-grabbing enterprise.

Equally hypocritical, the same Arab leaders who expressed little remorse over Arabs' poor treatment of black customers are now waving the Martin Luther King Jr. flag, just as easily as they waved the American flag after Sept. 11. In August, Imad Hamad, Michigan regional director of the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, was attacking the black boycott, threatening that it would "escalate tensions." But in October, in a Detroit News article decrying Arab profiling, Hamad was photographed holding documents "for a Martin Luther King scholarship program." Ironically, the INS opposed U.S. citizenship for Hamad, a Muslim Arab, because he's a suspected Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine terrorist – exactly the type of person we should be profiling.

Sharpton, who just months ago protested Arab profiling of blacks, is now joining hands with his profilers in the "civil rights" industry's latest juggernaut, blaspheming all King stood for.

King demanded freedom for "our brothers in Africa ... to live in peace under our own sovereignty," not just in the United States. But Islamic and Arabic leaders with whom Sharpton is allying himself are supporters of Arab Muslim enslavement, gang rape, torture and murder of blacks in Sudan.

Arab leaders now allied with King III and Sharpton opposed the rescue of Ethiopian black Jews to freedom and opportunity in Israel. They oppose Zionism and the existence of a Jewish State in Israel.

But Dr. King was definitive on Arab Anti-Semites like Hamad and their civil-rights fakery. In his "Letter to an Anti-Zionist Friend," he wrote, "Anti-Zionist is inherently anti-Semitic, and ever will be so. ... It is the denial to the Jewish people of a fundamental right that we justly claim for the people of Africa and freely accord all other nations."

King recognized that those who "feel as I do, a deep love of truth and justice and a revulsion for racism, prejudice and discrimination ... have been misled ... into thinking you can be 'anti-Zionist' and yet remain true to these heartfelt principles that you and I share."

Dr. King wasn't fooled by these racist profilers and their newfound commitment to civil rights. Shame on them for hijacking his good name.

January 18, 2024

Pro-sports’ litigation Lolitas

Tennis Lolita Anna Kournikova soaks her billionaire ex-husband for millions.

Not the real Anna Kournikova. But Lisa Bonder, who was Anna Kournikova before there was Anna Kournikova – 20 years ago.

If you've read about Bonder's child-support fight with her husband-for-a-month – billionaire Kirk Kerkorian – and before her, Anna Nicole Smith's continuing travails over her deceased Methuselah of a husband – you've been introduced to litigation's latest overcompensated victims: scorned women.

The current specimens all have ties to pro sports. But they're stark examples of a clogged legal system turning relationships into lifelong ATM machines for women. They're also excellent examples of the failure of feminism. In the end, these women achieve "independence" by using courts to mooch off men and the rest of society.

Whether it's Bonder-Kerkorian, Kelci Stringer, or even Juanita Jordan (soon to be ex-wife of Michael), these "disadvantaged" women are out for an unearned payday bigger than winning the lottery.

Tennis fans likely remember Lisa Kerkorian as Lisa Bonder, the '80s' sexy, tall blonde from Michigan, who hit pro tennis' top-10 rankings and dabbled in modeling and posters. Unlike Kournikova, she never achieved the crossover appeal outside the tennis world that garners the Russian tennis starlet an estimated $15 million per year in endorsement income. But Bonder did garner enough lucrative endorsements and tournament winnings to keep her in comfort.

She should be set for life, rather than seeking out, shacking up with, and shaking down a senior-citizen billionaire, Kerkorian.

Instead, Bonder, 36, had a multi-year affair with Kerkorian, 84, beginning in 1991. Does anyone believe a 26-year-old was truly interested in a 74-year-old? She was likely more interested in his billions. Kerkorian, the MGM studio and casino mogul worth over $6 billion, is so wealthy that he was the single-largest non-institutional stockholder in Chrysler and threatened a hostile takeover in the '90s.

But while he easily fought Chrysler's then-Chairman Lee Iaccoca, Kerkorian met his match in the scheming Bonder. He refused her constant begging for marriage so, in 1997, she got pregnant with his daughter. In a move to legitimize the child's birth, they married on the condition that she waive all spousal support and divorce a month later.

But Bonder found a way to get paid for this high-class prostitution act: child-support, perhaps the only reason she had this child with an 80-year-old. The prenuptial pact set per month support at $35,000, the divorce agreement specified $50,000 monthly, and Kerkorian has been voluntarily paying $75,000 per month for a 3-year-old! Not enough, says Bonder, who sued for $320,000 per month, claiming the young child needs $144,000 monthly for travel, $7,000 monthly for charity, and $102,000 monthly for food.

Bonder lives in three estates, worth a combined $26 million. Yet, she's using the legal system – and her daughter – to play the victim. That's the legacy of feminism: Even rich, "independent" women's sports stars resort to shacking up with octogenarians and suing them for a big payday.

Kelci Stringer is another "victim." It's lamentable her pro-football player husband, Korey Stringer, died in Minnesota Vikings training camp on a hot day. But, as a first-round draft pick and starter, he was well compensated and insured for risk of injury. Stringer was also paid his multi-million dollar salary to stay in shape. But he didn't – getting fat over the off-season, dangerously trying to lose it and get in shape just a few days before camp.

But is that his fault? Not according to Mrs. Stringer's lawyers (and Jesse Jackson, who has – surprise! – interjected himself in this shakedown). They've filed a $100 million lawsuit against the Vikings. No matter that out-of-shape Stringer was up to a bloated 335-pounds. Newspaper photos showed him doubling over, gasping for breath during drills that in-shape athletes finessed.

Mrs. Stringer is a "victim," and instead of quietly dealing with her grief, everyone else must pay for this woman "scorned" by the Vikings. Costs of the suit will be passed on to Vikings' ticket-buying fans who, unlike wealthy Mrs. Stringer, are mostly working-class stiffs.

Don't feel sorry for Juanita Jordan – divorcing wife of basketball great, Michael – either. According to the New York Post, she put up with his affairs for years, tailing him with a private investigator.

What did she expect? Her own marriage was the result of a tawdry, litigious affair. She met Michael at Bennigan's restaurant in Chicago in 1988, got pregnant, gave birth and slapped him with a paternity suit. To avoid the suit, Michael whisked her off to a tacky Vegas quickie-wedding at the Little White Wedding Chapel in 1989. What an omen for the kind of smarmy marriage she'd have with a philandering sports star.

But even though she had prior warning and was an operative from the beginning in this questionable partnership, she could win 90 percent of the Jordans' property under Illinois law. Illinois is not a community-property state. Rather than splitting property 50-50, fault is a factor in deciding property division. Totally immoral, should Jordan's philandering, of which former groupie Juanita was well aware, entitle her to 90 percent of his worth? Is she really a victim? Under the law, yes.

The song, "The Sisters Are Doing it For Themselves," is bogus. Just look on the sports pages and the overburdened courthouses. For these newest Anna Nicole Smiths, The Sisters Are Suing it For Themselves. The litigation Lolitas will get their big payday in court.

January 16, 2024

Pop princesses' jihad on men

They're young, they're cute and, if you're male, they hate you.

That seems to be the common theme of late for pop's top selling starlets – jihad against men. They have the sweet voices of sirens, but their words bear the screaming vitriol of Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan.

The latest is Brandy, singer and star of UPN Network's defunct sitcom dud "Moesha." Her latest single, "What About Us?" plays out on a soon-to-be released video of Brandy lamenting a failed relationship, while standing on a hill. But, according to MTV News' Shaheem Reid, the hill is made of men. "The camera zooms out and we see that beneath the ground Brandy stands on, hundreds of agonizing men, down on all fours, are stacked on top of each other."

To add a little touch of sado-masochism, there are the two chained-up, body-painted men at her feet, while Brandy, dressed in tough warrior garb, uses a metal baseball bat to smash a chest of mementos from her evil boyfriend. Of course, the video wouldn't be complete without the required act of she-woman violence against men. This is the new "girl power."

Brandy's spokesperson told MTV News that "this simply has to do with her growing up. Like her fellow pop princess peer, Britney Speers, she's not a little girl anymore." From saccharin bubble-gum popster to man-torturer? If that's growing up for today's girls, we're all in trouble. It seems like just yesterday, Brandy was singing, "The Boy is Mine." Now she's a female thug out to smash the boy up. Great.

Imagine the outcry from feminists if the roles were reversed. Take a couple of Backstreet Boys or N'Sync dudes, wanting to shed their image as girlish members of boy bands. Add a mountain of women on all fours with the men walking all over them. Then chain some of the women up, groveling at the male singers' feet. Put in a touch of violence, smashing objects in the women's faces. Would we put up with that? Not likely. It's as bad as Eminem. But it comes and goes without the protestation. That's the new feminism – when the tables are turned, anything goes for pop princesses.

Brandy is just the latest. But there's a whole stack of them.

Take Blu Cantrell. Last year, she hit it big with her top-10 groove, "Hit Em Up Style (Oops)." The song has the sound and feel of a 1940's ballad, with Cantrell's angelic voice. But listen to the words, and you'll hear Steinem and Ms. Magazine screeching from the CD player. "Hit Em Up Style" is Cantrell's term for bankrupting your man when you catch him cheating – an inevitability in feminist pop. There's no physical violence advocated here. Just vengeful damage to his credit.

"Hey ladies, when your man wanna get buck wild, just go back and hit em up style. Get your hands on his cash and spend it to the last dime. Oh when you go, then everything goes, from the crib to the rod to the clothes," sings Cantrell. "So you better let him know, that if he mess up, ya gotta hit em up." Nice grammar.

Yes, if your daughter listens to top-40 tunes, this is what she's told will make her a "lady." Cantrell has several suggestions of "another way to make him pay for it all": "Neiman Marcus on a shoppin' spree;" "All his pictures and the clothes in the baggin'"; And selling "everything else till there was just nothing left." It makes Cantrell happy that "all of this I sold, left you out in the cold and all of this I sold will take you until you get old to get em back without me."

Teaching women to steal and cheat to get back at a man, to bankrupt him – what a classy message.

Then there's pop trio, "Destiny's Child." They've got three songs attacking men as failures and unnecessary. "Bills, Bills, Bills" excoriates men as "You trifling, good for nothing type of brother, Oh silly me, why haven't I found another … a scrub like you who don't know what a man's about." "Hey Ladies" (why do all of these pop stars think anyone who listens to them could possibly be a lady?) asks "why is it that men can go do us wrong; Why is it that we just decide to keep holdin' on … But he's got to go, he's got to go … My man's been cheatin' on me … Yeah he did me wrong." Then there's "Survivor." "Now that you are out of my life, I'm so much better … stronger … richer … wiser … smarter. I'm a survivor."

Three bitter songs. Sounds like these barely dressed women from Destiny's Child are the problem, not the men who put up with them.

With idols like this, it's no wonder so many kids grow up to have marriages that end in divorce. For girls listening to top-40, no man will ever be able to compete with pop princesses' disastrous girl-power philosophy. For them, all men are losers.

January 12, 2024

Terrorism and zit medicine

A 15-year-old deliberately crashes a plane into a Tampa building, with a note supporting Osama bin Laden.

And the politically correct media blame it on pimple medicine.

Rather than examining Charles Bishop's Middle Eastern background and informing us that Bishop is half Arabic, the media relies on the old "Twinkie Defense." With a new twist: The acne medication made him do it.

Sticking to the absurd blame-it-on-Accutane story, very few media outlets reported other more relevant information, like Bishop's real surname: Bishara, an Arabic name which was legally changed to Bishop, according to the Australian Herald Sun. He thanked his teacher for calming anti-Muslim feelings in the school-building among her students, hinting that for all he knew, he could be part-Arab, the paper reported.

Why did it take Australia's Herald Sun, in a land far away, to investigate legal records regarding Bishara-Bishop and his father's foreign-status – believed to be Syrian? The New York Post later reported it, but few others did. FOX News Channel even featured Arab Muslim civil-rights advocates pointing to Bishara-Bishop as an example of non-Arab terrorism.

Strangely, while Court TV, C-SPAN and a gaggle of other broadcast news sources are fighting to televise terrorist Zaccarias Moussaoui's trial – and turn it into another O.J. spectacle – few media outlets are fighting for the release of the full text of Bishara-Bishop's suicide note.

Maybe because the conventional media wants you to believe that this was just another all-American suicidal teen-age loner, a patriotic kid with absolutely no ties to terrorists in the Arab world. But do we really know that?

According to Tampa Police Chief Bennie Holder, Bishara-Bishop's two-page-long suicide note "had some other things in there that we prefer not to talk about [since] the investigation is still ongoing, but everything in the note mentioned things that occurred on Sept. 11 and his support of bin Laden and al-Qaida." Were this simply a copycat suicide, the mysterious contents of the note would be released, not kept confidential while "under investigation."

As for Bishara-Bishop's heritage, we don't know the extent of his contact with his father, whether the father has connections to terrorism, or even where the father is. For all we know, he might be an al-Qaida terrorist, safely in the Middle East or somewhere in the U.S., planning an attack. Maybe the unreleased portions of the suicide note refer to this, but because of a lax media, we don't know. Where is the network news on this? It's like playing "Where's Waldo."

Instead, we're being told Bishara-Bishop was a "superpatriot," in the words of his flight school's president, Bob Cooper. Many flight school instructors described Sept. 11 terrorists as nice guys, too. The lesson here is that lip-service can be deceiving. While many Muslims are hard-working, loyal Americans, some of the most vocally patriotic may not be.

Cavalierly dismissing a terrorism connection, the media – from the Washington Post to ABCNews.com to the Associated Press – began running stories blaming Bishop's suicide mission on Accutane, the powerful acne pills produced by Hoffman-La Roche. Accutane has been unjustly vilified over the last year due to the suicide of Congressman Bart Stupak's, D-Mich., son, who was taking Accutane at the time.

While Stupak's loss is regrettable, his son would not be the first teenage child of a politician, who felt neglected because daddy was too busy politicking in Washington and the district. Rather than address that possibility, Stupak began an interminable crusade of congressional hearings against Accutane, claiming the acne medicine causes suicide and depression. No doctor he, Stupak's kangaroo court will only serve to drive up the cost of Accutane to those who need it.

Stupak has a special tax-funded website and e-mail address soliciting venom with which to attack Accutane maker Hoffman-La Roche. The media's haste to blame Bishop's suicide flight on Accutane adds more fuel to Stupak's witch-hunt.

While it's true that, according to the FDA, 147 people on Accutane from 1982-2000 either committed suicide or attempted it, that's actually much lower than the overall suicide rate for youth aged 15 to 24 – the age range of most Accutane users. Since over 20,000,000 people took Accutane over the last 19 years, that's a paltry combined suicide/attempted suicide rate of .000735 per 100,000 on the drug. Yet, according to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention and the Centers for Disease Control, the 1998 (the latest year for which data is available) suicide rate for those aged 15 to 24 was around 11.3 per 100,000.

Accutane – which virtually erases acne and is the only treatment for severe or nodular, scarring acne – probably prevents a lot of pimply, less attractive teens (like Bishop), from committing suicide. The statistics bear that out. There is absolutely no conclusive evidence that the drug causes depression or suicide. But in their zeal to attack the big, bad pharmaceutical industry and remain politically correct, the media never reports this.

Enough about acne medicine.

It's time the press started covering the real story about this "sweet boy" who nearly strafed MacDill Air Force Base, where Central Command for foreign wars, including this one, is based.

It's time for them to look into the whereabouts and activities of his father and the contents of the suicide note. We all deserve to know.

January 5, 2024

Spicoli's America: Sean Penn's Nutty Politics

Sean Penn's most memorable role was as Jeff Spicoli, airhead Valley Guy surfer, in Cameron Crowe's 1982 hit film, "Fast Times at Ridgemont High."

But, Penn's recent interview with Talk Magazine, comprising the magazine's February cover story, is more confirmation that life imitates art. Penn not only played an airhead in the movies, he is one.

Among his ridiculous comments, Penn criticizes FOX News Channel's Bill O'Reilly and nationally syndicated radio host Howard Stern as more horrible than Osama bin Laden, saying, "I'd like to trade O'Reilly for bin Laden," comparing him to Adolph Hitler, and calling him "an embraced pariah." FYI, Spicoli: A pariah, by definition, is not embraced. Penn also attacks President Bush.

It's obvious Penn has a problem with O'Reilly's conservative views. But here's a news flash for Penn: He's out of touch with America, which has made "The O'Reilly Factor," the highest-rated cable news show, and turned "embraced pariah" O'Reilly into a much bigger celebrity than has-been Penn is today. As for Stern, he's been great on the issue of terrorism and raised over $4 million for Sept. 11 victims, all of which has gone straight to them. And unlike Penn, millions of people listen to what he says.

Apparently, Penn is desperate to promote his new movie, "I Am Sam" (in which he plays a retarded father fighting for child-custody) – and will say anything ludicrous to do so. But he's hardly the one to criticize Bush, O'Reilly, or Stern or anybody.

Who is Sean Penn? He's a failed movie actor, who's become an also-ran since his big role as Spicoli. Unless you count his real-life co-dependent gig as Mr. Madonna, being married to and then dumped by the blonde pop dominatrix. There're also his sorry roles as criminal and inmate in films like "Bad Boys" and bad cop in "Colors" – a film whose greatest accomplishment was provoking violent gang fights in movie theaters.

A brat in the movies, Penn's no prize in real life. In 1987, he served 32 days in jail for slugging a "Colors" extra and has had numerous other such incidents. In the '90s, the classy Penn urinated into a bottle in front of several starlets and a Rolling Stone reporter. Surprise, he's used acid and is an outspoken ally of Hollywood-drug-addict-with-9-lives, Robert Downey, Jr. After years of living with, cheating on, and fathering two illegitimate kids with actress-girlfriend Robin Wright, Penn finally married her. She played "The Princess Bride" in the movies, but her husband is no prince – more like the frog. His views, though, have all the truth of a fairy tale.

Penn graduated from playing a stoner, street-punks, and a bad cop, to propaganda films, like the anti-death penalty diatribe, "Dead Man Walking." Then, there are his assorted "finer" roles, like a sleazy criminal lawyer who snorts cocaine while having sex with coked-up strangers on a toilet in a public restroom, in the movie, "Carlito's Way." Now, we know what Penn means when he differentiates himself from O'Reilly, saying, "This is not a man sitting on the toilet with a smile on his face."

Yes, this is the same Sean Penn who now tells Talk, that Bush, "doesn't provoke thought or challenge my head or my spirit. I don't think he does the country's either." In the midst of war, Bush should be worrying about provoking the thought and challenging the head and spirit of our real-life Jeff Spicoli. Penn's toilet-coke-sex scene really did a lot for this country's thought and spirit.

Sorry, Sean, but President Bush currently has this country's approval rating in percents reaching the high 80s. As for your movies, well that's a different, but very pathetic story. Does anyone remember a thought-provoking, spirit-challenging Sean Penn movie? Other than "Fast Times," does anyone even remember seeing a Sean Penn movie? Didn't think so. His "Shanghai Surprise" was panned by critics as one of the worst movies of all time.

In his nutty interview, Penn, who calls O'Reilly "grumpy," speaks of his rage-filled hatred of O'Reilly, Stern and FOX mogul Rupert Murdoch. Poor guy. Murdoch wouldn't let him use the FOX jet to a screening of "The Thin Red Line" and wanted a bigger star than Penn in order to produce "I am Sam." Penn's wacky politics are illustrated by a framed jacket of Christopher Hitchens' preposterous "The Trial of Henry Kissinger" on his wall, and his rage over a 1999 Oscar for anti-Communist director Elia Kazan.

It's no surprise Talk Magazine would give Penn's irrelevant left-wing views a prominent airing. The magazine is run by Friend of Hillary, Tina Brown. Interestingly, in the very same issue, another article, "Goodbye, Angels," claims that blonde conservative commentators Ann Coulter and Kellyanne Fitzpatrick Conway are through. Reality check: They're bigger than ever. Brown's Talk just wishes it weren't that way, and that Spicoli's America was reality. It isn't.

In "Fast Times," Penn's long-haired, pot-smoking Spicoli sets his goals high in life: "All I need are some tasty waves, a cool buzz and I'm fine."

If only reality's Spicoli-Penn would stick to that and shut his mouth, we'd all be fine.

January 2, 2024

NBA’s Same Old Double-Standard

It may be a new year, but the National Basketball Association has more of the same old things. Like the pro league’s double standard when it comes to racism.

Dan Issel, Head Coach of the NBA’s Denver Nuggets knows about this double standard well. Actually, he’s now former Head Coach, because of comments he made to a Hispanic fan after a game. While many Black NBA players who make up the bulk of the league’s roster have made similar offensive remarks, they remain on the multi-million dollar payroll. But Issel, who is White, starts 2024 looking for work.

On December 11th, after a loss to the Charlotte Hornets, Issel was heckled by a fan, who uttered, “You suck, *******!” Issel replied, “Hey go buy another beer. Go drink another beer, you ****** Mexican piece of ****.” The Nuggets immediately suspended Issel for four games without pay—a loss of over $112,000. The next day, Issel apologized for his “uncaring and un-Christian-like comment.”

But that wasn’t enough for the Hispanic community of Denver, who demanded Issel’s head. Thursday, Issel resigned under pressure.

Were Issel’s comments insensitive, improper, and bigoted? Yes. As a professional coach in the big leagues, shouldn’t Issel have expected to be heckled and to ignore it? Certainly. (In fact, in another publicized incident, Issel himself benched player Tariq Abdul-Wahad for using such language with him.)

But did Issel deserve to be fired? Definitely not.

But the NBA has a hypocritical double standard on racism. Minorities in the NBA can say and do whatever they want with apparent impunity, or in the worst case scenario, a slap on the hand.

Whereas Issel apologized, was fined significantly, met with leaders of Denver’s Hispanic community, etc., other NBA employees have made equally bigoted comments—unprovoked by drunken, obnoxious fans—with no penalty. And little remorse.

Take New York Knicks’ Charlie Ward. Last April, he and teammate Allan Houston made blatantly anti-Semitic comments about Jews. What happened? No Issel treatment. Instead NBA Commissioner David Stern and the Knicks. “Despite suggestions that the NBA should penalize Ward for his words, I am not planning to do so,” Stern said, claiming that punishment would somehow “enhance his sense of martyrdom.” Huh? More like it would have hurt the NBA’s pocketbook and the Knicks’—in the midst of the playoffs at the time. Stern added that Ward’s only punishment would be having “to accept the reactions and judgments of fans.” That reaction was a loud boo at the beginning of his next game and cheers ever since.

Big punishment.

True, Ward apologized. But so did Issel. And only one of them is out of a job. One could argue, as Nuggets supporters do, that a third of the population in Denver—and a large percentage of the Nuggets’ customers—are Hispanic. But the same argument can equally be made about heavily Jewish New York City and the Knicks.

The difference is that Hispanics and Blacks are politically correct minorities in the NBA’s eyes. They can’t be insulted, but other groups apparently can. And minorities in the NBA can get away with saying just about anything. That’s the not so subliminal message the NBA sent last week. And while Issel’s fine, suspension, and subsequent “resignation”/”buyout” were forced by the Nuggets, omniscient Stern was definitely involved every step of the way.

This isn’t the first time the NBA employed double standards on bigotry. In 1987, after the Boston Celtics beat the Detroit Pistons in the 7-game East finals due to Larry Bird’s fantastic performance, Isiah Thomas remarked that, sure, Bird was good, but, “If Bird was Black, he’d be just another good guy.” He said this to confirm his then-teammate Dennis Rodman’s racist comments. Never one to miss out on media publicity, Rodman whined that Bird was “overrated” and received media praise and attention only “because he is white.” (Not apparently because Bird—with several MVP seasons and the first NBA player to shoot better than 50 percent from the field and 90 percent from the foul line for consecutive seasons--had just spanked Thomas and Rodman on the court.) NBA response to these comments: Nothing. Stern: silent. No punishment for Rodman or Thomas.

Then, there’s the not-so-genteel Sir Charles Barkley. In response to reporters after a game, he said, “That’s what I hate about white people.” NBA Response: Nothing. Stern: silent. No penalty for Barkley.

Then, of course, there’s Philadelphia 76ers’ gangsta-in-residence, Allan Iverson. Not only did he blow up at a heckling fan, a la Issel, last season, but he also made a gangsta rap album, promoting murder and violence against women and gays. Again, not wanting to alienate its politically correct minority customer, the NBA’s response was: Nothing. Stern made another slap-on-the-hand statement. No penalty for Iverson.

Who can forget professional choker (and basketball player), Latrell Sprewell? With a great deal of his punishment overturned, quickly reinstated to the NBA, and now playing for the Knicks, USA Today reported that he and former chokee/Coach, P.J. Carlesimo (now a TV hoops commentator), were all lovey-dovey, wishing each other a happy holiday, as if this “saint” wasn’t a thug who violently assaulted his former boss.

No one’s asking the NBA to be the thought police. But it’s time for the league to stop deeming some animals in its Orwellian barnyard more equal than others. Since our taxes fund their arenas, we must demand no less.

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