Saturday, April 14, 2007

FREE or "Fair" ???

"Fair" is in the eye of the beholder.

"FREE" is the verdict of the market.

(The word "free" is used three times in the Declaration of Independence and once in the First Amendment to the Constitution, along with "freedom".
The word "fair’" is not used in either of our founding documents.)


It will be well for all of us to remember these words
written by the late Milton Friedman in the Wall Street Journal in 1998.

During the next few weeks, months and, as Andy Griffith used to say, "I don’t know
WHUT-ALL!!", we will be hearing a lot about "fairness".

It is nearly a year until the first presidential primaries/caucuses... And no facet of "fairness"will be left unexamined or unplumbed.

The first shrill cry will be for a return to the "fairness doctrine" which has been (thank the Lord) dormant---not only out of style but out of practice--- since the late 1980s.

The fairness doctrine required that if anyone anywhere made a paid-for political statement on radio or television then an opponent to that opinion would be entitled to free air time to express opposition..

My reaction to this? Does Pope Benedict invite Satan to St. Peter’s?

Vachel Lindsay once wrote a poem wherein the Mexican communist painter Diego Rivera splashed Stalin’s and Lenin’s faces on the sacred walls of Rockefeller Center. In the last stanza of the poem, John D.’s grandson Nelson whimpered to Rivera:

"After all, it’s MY wall !!"

"We’ll see if it is!!" Said Rivera.

What I’m predicting is that the spiritual and political inheritors of Rivera are going to hammer the American people... with the robust conspiracy of the mainstream media... in a veritable cataract of "Fairfairfairfairfairfair !!!!" In a cacophony of kindergarten mewling and puking the likes of which Billy Shakespeare never saw or dreamed.

Brace yourself. You’re going to be shocked at how many people do not know the meaning or the proper utility of the word "fair". (Baseball, marbles, hpscotch, spelling bees and so on).

I wouldn’t be surprised if the Islamo fascists asked for equal time on Bishop Ted Jakes’ Sunday presentation.

Not to belabor the point too much but stop and consider the thought, and depth, and a the sculptured meaning of that old phrase:

"All is fair in love and war".

Tuesday, April 10, 2007

Lost in Surreal Horror

The New York middle-school teacher saw a thoroughly objectioable object on the fifth grader's metal desk, and demanded the child remove it and hide it or "face consequences".

The child burst into tears, and the tears did not stop until she was home in her mother's arms.

"I don't understand", the little girl said.

I don't either," her mpther said.

In the subsequent uproar...or in its aftermath...the teacher and the principal and the superintendent and the teachers' union representative all agreed on remedial action:

NO MORE "OBJECTS" other than work materials will be tolerated on students' desks. A safe deal, see?

The "offending object?

It was a "refrigerator" magnet saying "SMILE ! JESUS LOVES YOU ! "

Now, let us look in at the Disney Corporation and the American Broadcasting Company, where Rosie O'Donnell is free to call one entire political party butchers and / or killers and enabled to accuse the Unites States government of blowing up the World Trade center and the Pentagon on Sepotember 11, 2001 for "political advantage".

Is there anything wrong with this picture ?

Are Lewis Carroll and Bram Stoker collaborating on the script for appropriate behaviour and tolerable, sensible personal expression in 20007?

Write me and tell me what YOU think....