Vulnerable men in danger

I have been closely following a worrying case which is currently being investigated by the state police in Massachusetts. A fifth grade student named Betty (to protect her family, her surname has not been published) has been accused of grooming a middle-aged man on the internet. His name is given as "Fatso" Schlegel, and he is an unemployed steel worker aged 54. For months, Betty had been carrying on an email correspondence with him, masquerading as an imaginary steel worker called "Plug" McCory, a man with an unpleasant skin disease and a criminal record.

She gained Schlegel's's confidence by pretending that her (Plug's) interests—shooting craps, pool and possum-hunting—are just the same as his, while concealing her real obsessions, which are Barbie, Sweetie Belle's Gumball House and Snickers.

Her object, of course, was to lure him into a meeting, and she even sent him a photograph of some of the men she tells him that she hangs out with, promising that she would bring them along so that they could all play seven-card stud together. She did not intend to molest him, but was intent on enjoying his disappointment when he came face to face with an adorable golden-haired poppet rather than the bunch of smelly overweight thugs with whom he had been hoping to bond.

Fortunately the police stepped in before the meeting could take place, and we may hope that a stiff custodial sentence for Betty will be a warning to others who might attempt such cruel impostures.

The POTUS writes

I haven't watched The Daily Show very often recently; Jon Stewart is a bit pleased with himself and the sycophantic laughter sometimes grates, but his heart is in the right place and his satire only rarely misfires. To the English, the news that the show has been "criticized as having a liberal bias" is incomprehensible until you remember that in north American right-wing parlance "liberal" is a term of abuse.

Our liberal Guardian has been assiduously satirizing the US administration throughout the Bush years and has not stopped doing so just because the White House it is now occupied by a less sleazy bunch. The paper asserts that, "in a unique experiment in democratic transparency", they are being sent copies of all Obama's confidential emails, of which this is one:

To: Arlen Specter [arlen.specter@senate.gov]
Subject: welcome aboard
Just wanted to drop you a line to welcome you personally to the Democratic party, and to say how much I appreciate this courageous act of naked self-preservation. Not everyone would have the nerve to abandon an affiliation of some 30 years standing in order to avoid a tough primary race. I've long admired your independent spirit, but you won't be needing it any more. Good Democrats toe the line. I'll drop by the debriefing if I get a chance - in the meantime I'm getting some bumper stickers and stuff sent over to your office. Update your website, and cover your mouth when you cough.
Barack

[Not having kept up with the political news from the USA for a week or two, I was puzzled when I first read about Specter's recent defection. Why should the Democrats welcome a convicted murderer into their ranks, even if he had been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame? Then I realised: silly of me, wrong spelling and different first name]

New York, 1960

No 14 in an occasional series of extracts from The Postcard Century,

November 1960: From Margaret to the Brierleys in Stockport, Cheshire. Dear Aunt Maggie, Uncle Eddy. I find America quite fascinating with many modern sky-scraping buildings but so Victorian decorations They are a very kind and generous people but oh, so sentimental.

Well, that's America dealt with, and this is an unusual view of New York from the East Side showing the new Air Terminal.

The Freedom Train

No 10 in an occasional series of extracts from The Postcard Century

November 1947: Ruthie in Syracuse, NY, to Priscilla Clarke in Marlborough, Mass: Dear Butch, Be sure to save this card for me! The Letter paper is absolutely lovely; hope I get a chance to use it soon, too!! Thanks a lot. I'm dying to see you in your scout uniform - I'll bet you look really sharp! The Colgate game was wonderful - I've never been so excited in my whole life!
The Freedom Train in red, white and blue livery started out on a two year journey in September 1947, stopping in all 47 states. In a manner paradoxically reminiscent of the Soviet Agitprop trains of the early twenties it was a travelling exhibition of democratic propaganda and patriotic memorabilia. The show included unique items that citizens in remote places would not normally get a chance to see, including a 1493 letter of Columbus, Washington's own copy of the Constitution, the Gettysburg address, etc.
Long queues formed wherever it stopped and many waited four or five hours to get to see the show. The millionth visitor was a girl in Oklahoma who travelled sixty miles in a blizzard to view the exhibited wonders.

They could, and they did

November 4th 2008

It's five minutes to midnight here in the UK and five minutes to seven in Washington DC. It looks as if the result most of the world hopes for will be achieved tonight, so now we can all go to sleep.

That's all right then, and we uncharitable curmudgeons have a new source of delight to sustain us through financial catastrophe and a hard winter: our schadenfreude (no italics: the word was appropriated by English-speakers more than 150 years ago) will keep us warm and chuckling.

It will be immensely pleasurable to contemplate the discomfiture, anger and fear of thousands of gun-toting Christian fundamentalists, neo-cons, creationists and all the other mindless nasties as they slowly realise that they are in a minority, being greatly outnumbered by millions of evil ant-eye-American commie-loving gun-hating libtards, the spawn of Satan, led by the socialist Antichrist himself, against whom they have struggled in vain for so long. It will be quite a revelation to them, and not the one from which they are so fond of quoting.

But we shall all miss Sarah Palin: the Ignorant Bigotry Show will be no fun without her.

Sarah Hockey Mom Palin

I had not intended to jump on the band wagon by offering a link to any of the several hundred tributes to the Republican vice-presidential candidate which are currently on the net, but it seemed to me that this spoof by New York comedian Sara Benincasa should not be missed by anyone who wants to get the feel of Sarah, as it were.

And if you're not already bored with the woman you could look here as well.

For beauty and for virtue she was of far renown...

Funny how things stick in the mind. It is many years since I last heard tell of a girl named Nancy Brown, and I thought I had forgotten the story, but Hillary Clinton's win this week has reminded me that Nancy lived in the hills of West Virginia...
...Now she went up in the mountains
With the deacon one fine day
And came rollin' down the mountains
A wiser girl they say
She came rollin' down the mountains
She came rollin' down the mountains
She came rollin' down the mountains, mighty wise
But she didn't give the deacon
That there thing that he was seekin'
She stayed sweet and pure as West Virginia skies.

Now there came along a cowboy
With laughter and with song
And he took her in the mountains
But she still knew right from wrong
She came rollin' down the mountains
She came rollin' down the mountains
She came rollin' down the mountains, mighty wise
But in spite of all his urgin'
She remained a blessed virgin
Just as sweet and pure as West Virginia skies.

Then there came a city slicker
With his hundred-dollar bills
And he drove her in his Packard
Right up in them thar hills
And they stayed up in the mountains
And they stayed up in the mountains
And they stayed up in the mountains all the night
Then she came down bright and early
More a woman than a girly
And her pappa kicked that hussy out of sight.

Now she's livin in the city
Now she's livin in the city
Now she's livin in the city, mighty swell
And her life's all beer and skittles
And she dines off fancy vittles
And the West Virginia skies can go to hell.

Patently obvious

Tipi Eisberg, a contributor to Martin G's Really Magazine, normally reviews the more intriguing American patent applications but has recently started selecting some and showing only the drawings, leaving readers to guess what purpose the devices are intended to serve. That this is not always easy may be judged by looking at the three currently selected (Week 08); you can find the answers by clicking on the drawings, but I will spoil these puzzles by revealing that these patents cover, respectively, an electronic device for training animals, a helmet for wearing in the water which enables you to squirt stuff at other swimmers, and a method of gas stunning chickens before slaughtering them.

But the simplest inventions are always the best, and my current favourite is An Apparatus for Improving the Taste of Beverages. Martin is greatly taken by the idea, as everyone may well be, of turning a bottle of plonk into something really good by putting a magnet in it.

One reason why I like this one is that although it is indeed very simple, its description runs to one sentence of 399 words; I like long sentences. The longest one I have ever posted was a mere 164, but that was in 2004, when I was young.

[Unaccountably, I missed Disposable protector for engaging a clogged toilet and containing splashes in the clogged toilet occurring during unclogging of the clogged toilet by a plunger when Martin published it at the end of 2007.]

Forty-one shopping days to go

On Christmas Day this year the volcanic island of La Palma will erupt and the unstable part will fall into the sea, resulting in a mega-tsunami that will devastate the east coast of America, if the word of God is anything to go by. Or, rather, the word of Alasdair T R Laurie, who is, or was, a promising second-year PhD student at the University of Leeds in the UK. He did not finish the course after becoming a fundamentalist Christian.

All this is set out in his website, called unequivocally WorldEnds. Many will find some of his evidence difficult to follow; it is not easy, for example to see just how the date was first predicted by showing that the 666th name in the Bible is Solomon, the number of the beast, and I myself am totally confused by Laurie’s reference to the whore of Babylon being outlined by Hudson Bay (Canada), riding on the scarlet beast (Labrador). He does provide a map but this doesn’t really help much.

But while one may be unable to comprehend the main thrust of his argument, one must admire the way in which he presents it. Unlike many American fundamentalists, he has an excellent command of English: the syntax and grammar of his prose is quite sound, and his spelling is impeccable. If his reasoning is difficult to grasp, this is only because these are complex matters which would tax the exegetical skill of the keenest mind, even that of a bioinformatics PhD student who had actually completed the course.

Another point in Mr Laurie’s favour is that he has taken the trouble to pass on this particular warning to residents of the east coast of America, although the catastrophe lined up for December 25th will presumably affect the whole world, including Leeds. It seems that the tsunami which hit the Solomon Islands on April 1st this year did actually ‘herald an end to the capitalist ideology that is in opposition to following Jesus’, and ‘God is in support of this line of argument, but is giving extra warning to the Americans’. This is a clear rebuke to those who have ever doubted that the USA has a very special place in the affections of the Almighty.

Christmas in Maine, 2007
(actually, a microphotograph of organic crystals
by John Cheslik, entitled "Apocalypse")

Buy one immediately

This sounds ingenious. But what's it for, and how does it work?

Two pairs of first and second legs compromised of angular members having top portions and lower ends, said first and second legs connected at top portions of first and second legs at joints, wherein the joints further comprise pivots, and further comprising spacers located at the pivots, said spacers spacing the first and second legs a predetermined distance apart from one another…

For a fuller description and an illustration, you will have to go here.

[Thanks to Martin G]

Ten easy steps to dictatorship

Naomi Wolf identifies the steps any would-be dictator must take to destroy constitutional freedoms, and argues that George Bush and what is left of his administration seem to be taking them all, using time-tested tactics to close down an open society:

1 Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy
2 Create a gulag
3 Develop a thug caste
4 Set up an internal surveillance system
5 Harass citizens’ groups
6 Engage in arbitrary detention and release
7 Target key individuals
8 Control the press
9 Dissent equals treason
10 Suspend the rule of law

No reason for us to feel smug about the unlikelihood of such measures ever being introduced into the UK. Most of them are for the moment unthinkable to us, but there are already indications that we are starting to edge in that direction.

Sooty of the Yard and Sir Stafford Crisp

It seems a pity to quote hoax entries in Conservapedia, the leading source of misinformation for the not very bright, because this increases the chances that they will be exposed before we have all had a chance to enjoy them. My own contributions, providing fascinating and totally fallacious details about the careers of such characters as Melzach the Jebusite and the modern artist Goswell Frand, were spotted and disappeared within a couple of weeks, and I am now banned from the site; quite right too.

However, the editors of this fatuous website are, typically, Baptist creationist sophomores; they are not the sharpest of reviewers and very unlikely to be readers of Other Men's Flowers, so I will recommend this entry which I came across today; it may have vanished even before I post this piece; in case it has, I reprint it here in full:

Detective Superintendent Sooty
Sooty was a notorious figure in Scotland Yard in the mid sixties, his colleague Sweep made a pun of his name referring to himself as "the new broom of the yard". Brought in to fight corruption within Scotland Yard, they were in fact nothing more than puppets of crime figure Harry Corbett. Their campaign in London sloganed "Let's get busy" was not successful, even for a spell. This was eventually brought to light after the infamous incident concerning Basil Brush, which subsequently led to their downfall.
In 1983, Sooty was charged with the murder of three left-wing agitators belonging to an organisation called the Rainbow Programme—Rod Burton, Jane Tucker and Freddie Marks. It is believed by some that they had become aware of his role in MI5's covert project to oust Harold Wilson from office. However, because no reliable witness could be found willing to testify, Sooty was acquitted. He retired to Bordeaux, where he had family, and died of a coronary thrombosis in 1987.




Sooty and Sweep were indeed the puppets of the much-loved Harry Corbett, who created them for TV in the fifties.



Basil Brush is an 18-inch fox who has been a part of British television culture for nearly 40 years. He was created by illustrator and animator Peter Firmin and actor Ivan Owen in 1963; the latter spent most of his life in a cramped box providing Basil’s voice and actions.

Rainbow was a highly successful children's TV puppet series which ran from 1972 t0 1992. The "left-wing agitators" were actually a popular singing/songwriting trio.

And here’s another, still there the last time I looked:

Milton Keynes
Milton Keynes (1883-1961) was a British economist who worked with Lord Beveridge on his landmark report on social service and also advised Chancellor of the Exchequer Sir Stafford Crisp, modifying the latter's extreme socialist views, in the 1945-51 Atlee government. In the 1951 dissolution honours he became Lord Keynes of Wolverton.
The 1960s new town in Buckinghamshire is named after him. The town is famous for its use of concrete, (especially its concrete cows), its confusing road system, and its apparent abandonment of all aesthetic considerations in its planning.

Many of the spoof entries in Conservapedia seem to have been inserted by mischievous Englishmen, perhaps because they assume, quite rightly, that the editors are even more profoundly ignorant about England than they are about most of the other topics their website covers. After all, why should a Midwestern fundamentalist know or care that the economist Maynard Keynes died a year before Stafford Cripps became Chancellor, or that the new town was named after the existing village of Milton Keynes, which was in the Domesday book?

The reference to concrete cows might have raised doubts, but in fact this is almost the only accurate statement in the whole article.

Gunism

It is depressing to read the demented ramblings of those American commentators, both amateur and professional, who seek to justify the worship of guns. A journal for academics, The Chronicle of Higher Education (Washington D.C.) has published a number of cool and sane attempts to explain why this attitude is so widespread. In one of them, American psychiatrist Robert L Lifton writes:

The combination of mental disease and access to guns leaps out at almost everyone in connection with the Virginia Tech shootings. ...There is consensus that something should be done to intervene earlier in threatening forms of psychological disturbance, and as a psychiatrist I agree and also recognize some of the social obstacles to doing so. But while there will always be mentally ill people, a few of whom are violent, it is our gun-centered cultural disease that converts mental illness into massacre.

Indeed, I would claim that a gun is not just a lethal device but a psychological actor in this terrible drama. Guns and ammunition were at the heart of Seung-Hui Cho's elaborate orchestration of the event and of his Rambo-like self-presentation to the world. When you look at those pictures, you understand how a gun can merge so fully with a person that a man who makes regular use of it could (in the historical West and in Hollywood) become known as a "gun".

Emotions of extreme attachment to and even sacralization of the gun pervade American society, and commercial interests shamelessly manipulate those emotions to produce wildly self-destructive policies. Much has been said, with considerable truth, about the role of the frontier in bringing about this psychological condition. I would go further and suggest that American society, in the absence of an encompassing and stable traditional culture, has embraced the gun as a substitute for that absence, and created a vast cultural ideology we can call "gunism."

Paradoxically, this highly destabilizing object became viewed as a baseline and an icon that could somehow sustain us in a new form of nontraditional society. That new society was to be democratic and egalitarian, so that the gun could be both an "equalizer," as it is sometimes known, and also a solution to various social problems. That idea of the gun as ultimate solution reached a kind of mad absurdity in Newt Gingrich's recent suggestion that university killings be prevented by having students carry hidden guns into classrooms. The gun as ultimate solution has also played a significant role in American military misadventures in Vietnam and Iraq, and in our attitudes toward nuclear weapons (as gigantic "guns").

Bright ideas

The admirable Martin Gardiner (not to be confused with the equally admirable Martin Gardner) maintains on his website for the delight of all of us a continuously updated review of “some of the most promising, interesting, and intriguing examples of the latest US patents”. He has been accused of spoofing, but, as he says, no-one could make up things like these—other than those who really did have the ideas and patented them, that is. Here is a small selection:

Leg-mounted mouse pad
Chin chain
Steerable roller skates
Cucumber sandwich
Boot lacing system
Breast enhancement device
Circular shirt
Garment for two people
Potato chip bag holder
Men’s underwear with adjustable support sling (illustrated above)
Fish breeding toy for cellular telephones
Internally illuminated knitting needle
Criminal arresting assembly
Beach blanket
Shelter for small animals and pets
Burial container

There seems to be a recurring theme which suggests that an easy way to come up with a patentable device is simply to cut a hole in something: the last three listed above, for example, consist of, respectively, a blanket with a hole in it, a box with a hole in it and a coffin with a hole in it.

All this is just as an introduction for those who have not yet sampled these joys. For Martin’s (often puzzled) comments, the filed illustrations and specifications, you need to go to Really Magazine.


[In an introduction, Martin had explained the basis on which US patent applications are assessed. It doesn’t seem too difficult to persuade American Patent Officers that they should protect your right to profit from some unlikely device you have invented, but their British equivalents are probably made of sterner stuff. Alan Coren described the weary cynicism with which they might have greeted John Logie Baird’s unsuccessful attempt to register his machine for sending pictures by radio:“What is it this time, Mr Baird? Raspberry death-ray? Thing for turning socks into honey?” ]

Gun

Search for information on this topic in Conservapedia—“the conservative encyclopedia you can trust”—and you will learn that “Theoretically, if a person has the power to take the life of another, other people will not perpetrate criminal offenses against them….”, though “countries with high rates of gun ownership, such as present-day Iraq or many countries in sub-Sharana[sic] Africa, are not guaranteed to have a low crime rate”.

No, indeed. But apparently having lots of guns around works really well provided they are in the right hands: “…Law-abiding citizens carrying guns are statistically an effective deterrent and defense against lawless or criminal individuals”.

So far, so dotty. But the point is hardly confirmed by: “...This has certainly been shown in the USA, which had 11,350 murders by shooting in 2005, compared with 50 in 2005/06 in the UK, which restricts the possession of handguns. However, it should be noted, that the USA has a population approximately 5 times greater than the UK, the number of murders by shooting is approximately 200 times higher".

How’s that again?

According to a true story recounted in Thank God I Had a Gun:
"Ron Honeycutt had been delivering pizzas in Indianapolis for 20 years. When a robber tried to hold him up with a gun, Honeycutt shot his attacker 10 to 15 times, killing him. He was not prosecuted, but was fired by Pizza Hut."
So make sure you've got plenty of ammunition.


I wrote the above and was about to post it when the appalling news came from Virginia Tech.
There have been the predictable comments that this will re-open the debate in America on their lax gun laws, but that seems unlikely. There has never been much of a debate on that: some think it might be a good idea to tighten them, others see the answer as Guns For Everybody.
Typical of the latter is the demented blogger whose comment on yesterday's events was: "When my daughters go to college they will go armed".
A spokeswoman for George Bush says that the president believes in the right to bear arms, but "...Walking into a school hall and shooting people is clearly against the law". That's really laying it on the line, that is.

Misconceptions

I was filled with horror—no, mildly irritated—to read that outside the UK Mr Bean has become an “iconic figure” representing “an English archetype”, an "international symbol of Britishness", and that although the world is bowled over by his comic persona and his latest film is grossing millions everywhere, it is widely believed that we English do not laugh at him because we cannot laugh at ourselves.

Let’s get this quite straight: the reason we do not laugh at Mr Bean is that he is not funny. In his early days Rowan Atkinson was very funny, and Blackadder is a masterpiece, but Mr Bean gurning and falling about is not funny at all.

And in no way does Mr Bean typify the English: I have never met an Englishman remotely like him. Pierre Daninos in The Notebooks of Major Thompson created a much funnier caricature of Englishness and that wasn’t particularly accurate either.

When we see ourselves caricatured effectively we certainly laugh without restraint; nearly forty years ago a certain bunch of comics portrayed us to ourselves as ineffective, feeble, loony, and with a penchant for cross-dressing. Whether this was entirely accurate or not is irrelevant: we loved them because they were funny. Lesser breeds didn’t get it at all for years, though finally they did.

Mr Bean is one of several totally unfunny Englishmen to go down a storm outside his native land. Norman Wisdom is apparently very big in Romania and so of course is Benny Hill in the States: back home their comic acts sank without trace years ago. There is also an ancient English sketch which has become a cult classic, shown on German TV every New Year to the huge delight of millions of viewers. It wasn’t funny, and never had been.

National differences in sense of humour are not surprising: why should something that makes them roll in the aisles in Bradford have the same effect in Prague or Des Moines? We don’t really expect to share each other’s tastes in comedy, but in other fields people are often oblivious of differences in national viewpoints: it is sad, for example, when others blithely assume that we share their view of our country’s leaders. Many times I have been at a loss when American acquaintances, meaning to be friendly, tell me of their admiration for Margaret Thatcher or Tony Blair. What can I say which will not hurt their feelings?

Back in 1997 I might have lost a few (not very close) friends when foreigners wrote to me saying nice things about Diana, if I had not lied when responding. Had I been honest I would have told them that although of course it is sad when any young woman dies, their condolences were misplaced, for I had never admired her much, and that national mourning, closed shops and widespread sobbing seemed to me excessive for the mistress of a dodgy Egyptian playboy.

Not particularly welcome

The Oxford English Dictionary releases every three months some notes on the quarter’s updates to the online edition, consisting of the revisions to entries in one section of the alphabet and the new entries from across the alphabet.

The revised range published on 15 March covers the words from Prakrit to prim. It contains 2,693 entries (8,756 subsenses, including compounds, etc.). This brings the total number of main entries in the OED to 259,487 (containing 684,542 subsenses).

Of course, the OED’s aim is simply to record words which have come into use and it cannot exclude those which need not or should never have come into being, so the list of 288 new words and senses which were added last quarter makes rather depressing reading. Many of them originated in former colonial territories whose peoples are clearly misusing the lexical licence they acquired when we gave them their freedom. Few of the following can really be said to have enriched our language, because they are superfluous or they describe something we have no real need to know about, or are just silly; I think I could have lived quite happily without adding any of these to my vocabulary:

asswipe, n.
derogatory.
1. A foolish or contemptible person.
2. Toilet paper.

tighty-whities, n.
Men's snug-fitting white cotton underpants; briefs

bimbette, n
slang (derogatory)
A young woman or adolescent girl, esp. one regarded as sexually attractive but thought to lack intelligence or distinctive personality; a bimbo.

irritainment, n
humorous.
Broadcast material which is irritating yet still entertaining; irritating entertainment

leccy, n.
Brit. colloq.
Electricity, esp as commercially supplied

jaffle, n
Austral.
A toasted sandwich, typically sealed around the edges

toodles, int
U.S. colloq. (freq. humorous).
(=toodle-oo, int.)

pretzelled, pretzeled, adj
N. Amer. (orig. and chiefly U.S.).
Twisted, contorted, tangled

The rock icon and the B-movie star

As I have never felt the need—or the inclination—to follow closely the careers of 1960s record producers, it is not surprising that I had not heard of a man called Phil Spector until I saw a whole page devoted to him in the Guardian last Saturday. It was reported that he murdered a “blond, leggy Californian” called Lana Clarkson in 2003 by blowing off her jaw with a 36-calibre Colt, which he then put under her left leg. Or didn’t, as the case may be, or rather, as the jury will decide: next week he is to go on trial in Los Angeles for the alleged crime. He asserts that it was an “accidental suicide”.

We are told that for his court appearances he has prepared Cuban-heeled boots, a blond Afro hairstyle, tinted glasses, frock coats and jewel-encrusted brooches, and that he has a reputation as an “eccentric, unpredictable control freak, as likely to scream profanities at the person nearest to him as to pull a gun on them”, and to wear different guns to match his outfits.

Nothing surprising there then, just an everyday story of Hollywood folk. I would have turned the page without pausing had the article not featured a photo of Phil looking exactly like my great-aunt Emily (apart, of course, from the black shirt and chalk-striped suit; Phil’s, I mean). This caught my attention and I read the whole piece carefully to see if he was like her in other ways: I came to the conclusion that he was not; well, not really.

Then I saw that the unfortunate Lana was described as “a 40-year-old actor and waitress”. The actor/actress thing is all sorted out nowadays, but waiter/waitress? Why be inconsistent within a single sentence? I suppose if they had written “actor and waiter” the first reaction would have been to think that Lana is a funny name for a man, until you read on and found that she had been a sex-bomb wife in an 80s movie, which had confirmed her position as a Hollywood bimbo.

Before any of my feminist friends add reproachful comments to this post, I should say that none of these words are mine; I am merely quoting the Guardian, well known for its generally contemptuous attitude towards women and the rabid misogyny of its writers.

Conservapedia: A loss to the world of comedy

Feeling lazy this weekend, and looking for some easy laughs and a post that writes itself, I thought of doing as dozens of commentators have done since the right-wing reference source Conservapedia was launched on the internet last November: simply quoting, or providing links to, some of its dottier entries.

Sadly, however, for the moment it seems to be impossible to access the site*. This may be because its server (probably just one, bought on eBay) could not cope with a huge volume of hits. Many of these would have been from jokers trying to post parody entries, a pointless task when most of the genuine entries parody themselves so brilliantly.

So all I can do is to list a few examples of entries quoted by others which illustrate the site’s factual inaccuracy, extremism, unhelpfulness, hypocrisy, and bias, and its tendency to ignore the scientific consensus on subjects such as the Big Bang and evolution in favour of biblical exegesis. Some of these entries were hoaxes, some have now been amended and some deleted, but all of them did once appear in Conservapedia and they give you the flavour.

Kangaroo
Like all modern animals, modern kangaroos originated in the Middle East and are the descendants of the two founding members of the modern kangaroo baramin that were taken aboard Noah's Ark prior to the Great Flood.

Iraq
A Middle-Eastern country, currently occupied by U.S. Troops.

Fox News
Fox News was started in 1996 in response to the other cable news channels which all had obvious liberal biases. Because of this, Rupert Murdoch decided to start a real new channel which would tell the truth. The success of Fox news over every other news channel is because it is fair and balanced. It has many people on it who work to spread truth such as Sean Hannity who is a great American. Fox News is best because instead of just telling you what to think, they only report the news unbiased and then allow the viewer to decide.

Atheism
Atheism is the disbelief in the existence of any supernatural deity. This disbelief can take a number of forms, such as the assertion that deities do not exist, or the absence of any belief in any deity. Since atheists have no God, as a philosophical framework atheism simply provides no logical basis for any moral standard. They live their lives according to the rule that “anything goes”. In recent years, this has led to a large rise in drug use, pre-marital sex, teenage pregnancy, paedophilia and bestiality.

Stalin
Josef Stalin was an atheist communist Russian dictator during World War II. He was defeated by Adolf Hitler, despite Hitler also being an atheist.

Anything Goes
Anything Goes is the title of a 1934 musical production written by Cole Porter. Popular songs from the musical include You’re the Top, I Get a Kick Out of You, and Anything Goes. Because Porter was a homosexual, we can conclude that ‘anything goes’ was also his philosophy of life. Many atheists have adopted the song as a description of their “moral” code.

Sex
1. The process by which offspring are conceived.
2. Another term for gender.

Liberal
A liberal in the early 1800s in Europe was one who favored more powerful elected assemblies. The term was common in France shortly after the French Revolution. Modern liberals are treasonous and generally hate America

Falafel
A falafel is a Mediterranean dish made with spiced Garbanzo Beans. It should not be confused with a loofah which is a bath sponge.

Some say the whole website was an amusing joke, but I fear not. Wikipedia states that the project was founded by Andrew Schlafly, son of conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly, in response to a claimed anti-Christian and anti-American bias in the articles of Wikipedia. According to a FAQ on Conservapedia, it originated from a project for homeschooled children, and its creator believes it could eventually evolve into a “reference for teachers”. It is obvious that some of the entries were written by children, and it is frightening to think that there are children in the United States being fed this sort of stuff.

* Later in March: Conservapedia is back again, and as perky as ever!
Its article on Sex, which I quoted in full above, has disappeared and now there is just a note : This page has been deleted, and protected to prevent re-creation. This was probably because the definitions given were considered too explicit, and might have evoked ungodly thoughts in the young. The deletion will be disappointing, however, to those who look up the word with prurient intent: they will never know how informative and titillating the original page was.

It’s not the way that they say it

It’s a great mistake to assume that the kind of language in which an opinion is expressed is always some sort of guide to the value of that opinion. It is true that an urbane, well-thought-out, moderate piece of writing often indicates that the view being put forward is one which any reasonable man might be inclined to accept, but sometimes such a piece can be written by someone who has acquired a skill with words but who is actually a bigot of the vilest kind. Many a clever politician or preacher can speak with what sounds like a voice of sweet reason—unless you listen carefully to what he is actually saying; not all people who ought to be locked up give themselves away by foaming at the mouth.

Of course rabidly right-wing commentators do often express their views in illiterate, intemperate, abusive and obscene prose. This is not a political statement, for such prose is by no means confined to right-wing polemic, but most left-wing comment tends to be gentler in style: in America, right-wingers would say that this is because what they call “liberals” are mealy-mouthed wimps who have no real convictions to shout about.

The lie to this is given by a website called Annotated Rant. I cannot give extracts from it here because everything it contains is couched in language which would be utterly unacceptable to my readers, most of whom grew up in the days when swear-words were used sparingly. Also, I know that my posts are regarded fondly by many Catholic Mothers’ Reading Circles, and I would be sorry if Other Men's Flowers were to be blacklisted: I give top priority to decorum, propriety and simple decency in all my writing and try hard to use only words which will not offend even the most sissy-arsed of pisswits.

I will not observe my usual principle of making posts self-contained, and will give only the link above. But most people who follow it will see at once that in spite of the heavy sarcasm and foul language these are witty and salutary comments and that the general viewpoint of the writers can only be heartily endorsed by any sensible person.

Subjects covered to date are of interest mainly to Americans. They are: The South, Christmas, The New York Times, The State of the Union, South Dakota, Tax Day and President Bush.