Nobody's Business

Euro Lawmakers Undo Ban on Ugly Fruit

After 20 years of insisting that fruit must adhere to shapes mandated by law, EU bureaucrats have graciously decided that Mother Nature may take her own course again:

Curly cucumbers, crooked carrots and mottled mushrooms — odd-looking fruit and vegetables are making a comeback as 20-year-old EU rules are lifted. Marketing standards for 26 types of produce have been scrapped, in a drive to cut EU bureaucracy. ...

"July 1 marks the return to our shelves of the curved cucumber and the knobbly carrot," said Agriculture Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel. "We don't need to regulate this sort of thing at EU level. It is far better to leave it to market operators."

The depth of Ms. Fischer Boel's conviction is unknown, however, considering that

The [shape] standards will remain in place for 10 of the most popular types.

A Teenager's Superior Judgment

It's official, even though we knew this already: Safford (AZ) Middle School assistant principal Kerry Wilson, administrative assistant Helen Romero, and school nurse Peggy Schwallier are not reasonable people. They will now have to live with the hard-to-expunge infamy that comes with strip-searching a 13-year-old female student on the (unfounded) suspicion that she possessed a few ibuprofen pills, a mild and legal painkiller. I wrote about it here.

The search would have been a sexual assault under almost any other imaginable circumstances; as Popehat noted at the time, "If this had happened anywhere but school, they'd be all be in jail."

In a rare 8-1 Supreme Court decision, the school authorities have finally been slapped upside the head for violating Savana Redding's rights. Justice John Paul Stevens opined

It does not require a constitutional scholar to conclude that a nude search of a 13-year-old child is an invasion of constitutional rights of some magnitude.

It does not, and it clearly is. In fact, a 13-year-old middle schooler knew it was wrong. We owe Savana Redding a debt of gratitude for seeing this through till the end. With students like her, the future of liberty appears to be in good hands. There's a fine video interview with Savana here. I like the slight smile of her mom. I'd be proud of her too. In fact, I am.

Killing Dogs: How is the SPCA Different?

The Agitator's Radley Balko offers a link to an extra-disturbing animal-cruelty story:

A Columbus firefighter admits that he took his two dogs to the basement, tied them up and blasted them with a rifle so he and a girlfriend could vacation without paying to board the animals. "He said chunks of concrete were flying everywhere," Assistant Franklin County Prosecutor Heather Robinson said. ... According to Robinson, [firefighter David P.] Santuomo laid down a plastic sheet in his basement and tied the dogs to a pipe, partially suspending their bodies. He shot them at least 11 times. At first, he said the dogs were suffering after drinking antifreeze, but a necropsy proved that he lied.

Neighbors had actually offered to take care of the dogs in Santuomo's absence. The guy evidently preferred killing the animals.

Yes, I'm upset about this too. But then, I was upset back when something not so dissimilar happened in my neck of the woods, and when that dog killer turned out to be the boss of the Hancock County (Maine) SPCA in Trenton. The guy is still sitting pretty today. Not only were he and his organization not held accountable; to this day they solicit donations for their [cough] "no-kill" shelter, and are celebrated for their [double-cough] selfless work by citizens who have no idea what occurs behind the facility's closed doors.

I'm not saying there are no differences between SPCA executive director Doug Radziewicz and the loathsome shell of a human being that is David Santuomo. I'm saying the differences between Radziewicz killing dogs and Santuomo killing dogs are more meager than you'd assume.

Let's look at how the cases are similar.
• An animal, just "taking up space," becomes an inconvenience — check.
• Good people step forward offering to take care of it, but the offer is rebuffed — check.
• Instead, the animal ends up being deliberately killed — check.
• The person in charge of the dog lies about what happened — check.

I trust that the SPCA's execution of Baxter, the Saint Bernard, was not as relentlessly brutal as the killing of the firefighter's animals. Then again, Baxter is still quite dead, regardless of the method used by his killer.

In some ways, I find SPCA deaths harder to take, because we'd all like to suppose that the organization is run by non-sociopaths who would do everything in their power to save the creatures in their charge.

Sanford's "Family Values": Schtupfing Foreign Lover

South Carolina governor Mark Sanford disappeared for six days, unexpectedly abandoning the ship of state he is paid to steer. Now he's back with a bombshell: Unbeknownst to his family (wife Jenny and four sons) and his aides, he's been in Argentina, where he has cheated on his wife with a "dear, dear friend." (Whether the friend is a gay prostitute and a meth fiend remains to be seen, I suppose.)

Father's Day must have been a hoot at the Sanford mansion this past Sunday.

I honestly wouldn't care whom Mr. Sanford beds, except for the small fact that he is another one of those ramrod-straight 'family values' Republicans who like to stick their repressed cocks where they don't belong while crafting legislation to "protect" marriage from tidal waves of adultery and gayness. See here, and here.

And while the governor is keen on keeping American jobs from being taken by foreigners, he seems to make a special exception for blowjobs. Come now — was there really no female (or male, for that matter) in the greater Columbia area who might have provided relief for Mr. Sanford's throbbing stimulus package, and at a fraction of the cost of a plane ticket to Buenos Aires? America First, governor!

By the way, the news of Sanford's South-American love fest comes 24 hours after fellow Republican John Ensign apologized to his Congressional colleagues for his own extramarital affair and was welcomed back into the GOP fold with hugs and applause.

Do you remember that both Ensign and Sanford voted to impeach president Clinton for his tryst with Monica Lewinksy? Funny as hell, that. Just last year, Sanford recalled his own high-minded efforts at the time:

I voted to impeach, because I think that, you know, moral legitimacy is one of the precursors to a legitimate [political] legitimacy.

The holier-than-thou-ness is a pattern with him:

Sanford was one of a handful of Congressmen who said they could not support Rep. Bob Livingston for Speaker after his admission of an extramarital affair in late 1998.

Ensign and Sanford have both been mentioned as future presidential candidates. Presumably, they'll take take their head-of-state cues from Don Juan, or possibly Silvio Berlusconi.

The Perils of Peer Pressure

Laugh-out-loud-funny shtick from Paul Krassner, whom I wrote about yesterday:

I smoke marijuana every day. Listen, I was seventy-six in April, and the reason for my relative longevity is that I never take any legal drugs — except a few months ago. I was at a party, and I took an aspirin. I didn't even have a headache. I just gave in to peer pressure.

A Kinder, Gentler Focus on the Family?

Props to newish Focus on the Family president and CEO Jim Daly for not being a horrible, bigoted ass like his predecessor. He sounds like a guy who even libertarians and liberals might like to break bread with.

I would like to sit down with those who may be pro choice when they say, "Let's make abortion rare." I obviously am pro life and would like to see that practice ended because I think in our humanity we can find better solutions to bringing children into the world. From what I understand, there are far more parents looking for infants than there are abortions. It would be nice to create a national database of parents waiting for kids.

[We need to find] a kinder, gentler way to approach this topic and see if we can make abortion rare without, as pro-lifers, abandoning our desire to see it eliminated altogether. That would be a great starting point. The very fact that those who support abortion would say, "We would like to make it rare," says something about the fact that they must not feel good about it. So let's start the dialogue.

So far, just words. But encouraging ones, and on a topic that the Christian right has always cast as a simple binary choice between 'good' and 'evil.'

Cinderella's Bare Ass, or Pluto Pissing on Mickey?

Choices, choices.

Boing Boing reports that Yippie co-founder and publisher of the Realist, Paul Krassner, has a new book coming out entitled Who's To Say What's Obscene: Politics, Culture, and Comedy in America Today.

Then, over at Amazon, I noticed something peculiar. There's quite a difference between what Boing Boing presents as the cover, and what Amazon says it looks like. If you compare the version at left to the one on the right, various naughty bits — including the featureless pelvic area of a nude Tinker Bell, Cinderella's equally smooth nether regions, and what looks to be a little girl in flagrante delicto with a unicorn — have been shifted so as to become unobjectionable. On the other hand, we now see Pluto impishly relieving himself on a likeness of Mickey Mouse.

It's all pretty funny, given the topic of the book. I can almost picture the graphic designer moving around the layers in Photoshop, muttering under his or her breath ("Come on, think — what's worse, a unicorn fucking, or Pluto's golden shower?"), trying to position the images strategically so as to give the least offense. Obviously, such decisions entail getting into the heads of a good cross-section of the book-buying public. I hope that reading Krassner's manuscript helped!

Or did the shift go the other way? Which version is the real cover?

So I called the publisher, City Lights in San Francisco. Spokeswoman Stacey Lewis explained that the different covers were intended as a "comment on censorship." When I prodded a bit, asking if the change had been made to make the book more shocking, or less — if it was done as some kind of deliberate gesture to  booksellers and -buyers alike — she said she wasn't sure, and gave me Krassner's e-mail address. He got back to me just now, and seems about as baffled as I am.

Thanks for your email...and for pointing out the cover contrast...this is the first I've seen of it...the original cover is the one on the right, with red stripes across, the one Amazon shows...the one on the left is a surprise to me, the one on BoingBoing which has tan stripes and Arianna Huffington's [name] beneath mine...now you can't see Pluto pissing on Mickey Mouse's image, but you can see Cinderella's bare buttocks...I've forwarded your email to the publisher.

A subsequent message from Krassner said, simply:

Thanks for catching that foolish double standard.

I'm not implying there's something terribly important going on here — I'm mostly just amused by the morphing of the cover (again, considering what the book is about). No big deal, I suppose. I've asked Krassner to keep me posted, and assuming he does, I'll let you know what he finds out.

I'd say that in terms of courting possible controversy, the book is off to a fine start. And just maybe, that was the point from the get-go?

P.S.: The drawing used on the book cover — depicting a "memorial orgy" in Disneyland — was commissioned by Krassner for the Realist in 1966, on the occasion of Walt Disney's death. The artist was Wally Wood, of Mad magazine fame. It's a classic of sorts, as you can read here and here. You can admire the artwork up close here — probably not safe for work though. It's available as an 18''x24'' poster for $38 including shipping, directly from Krassner's website.

Cops Prize Anonymity, Arrest Women Asking Questions

In democratic countries, people have a right to — as our Bill of Rights puts it beautifully — "peaceably to assemble." Because police officers are our in our service and we are their bosses, we also have the right to ask them questions, some of which they must answer by law; no cop may withhold his name and badge number from a citizen interested in learning them.

Here's footage of how those rights are working out in practice in the U.K. — footage that also shows what happens when you train a camera on a police officer. It ain't pretty.

The video is one of those you-have-to-see-it-to-believe-it jobs that may evolve into a cultural touchstone of sorts, a watershed moment — along with the video of a bystander at another recent demonstration who actually died after being needlessly attacked by his uniformed protectors.

England seems to turn a little scarier every week. Good to see some people (such as the Kingsnorth protesters) refuse to stand idly by while their country descends into soft totalitarianism.

Warning, Water!

Also, watch out — sand ahead! And careful, sun may cause redness!

[via Failblog]

Liz? Lizzie? Liddy? Beth? Betty? Betsy?

The next guy who calls me Roger or Rodge can get a free nut-ectomy.

I borrowed the lovely sentiment (if not the proposed procedure) from Elizabeth Becton, an office manager and scheduler who works for Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash). Ms. Becton went ballistic when a hapless constituent addressed her as "Liz" in a friendly e-mail, and she continued to badger her mortified victim despite receiving a half-dozen written apologies. Politico has the whole e-mail exchange. Becton sounds like a real barrel of laughs.

Elected officials with a Sun King complex, that's nothing new. It is sort of annoying, though, when even the hired help demands the same worshipful treatment.