(no subject)

The local free newspaper published a not-very-complimentary review of Serenity today. Two and a half stars and a snotty comment about how this was a grade B movie that would've been grade C if the actors hadn't been so comfortable and at home in their stock parts.

I only mention this because the review was printed on page 19.

(no subject)

Dear Mr. William J. Bennett:

Get out of my genetic group. You're making us all look like assholes.

If you had followed up your statement that "if you wanted to reduce crime, you could -- if that were your sole purpose -- you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down," with a statement that 'you could abort every white baby in the country and your crime rate would go down,' or something similar, I might have forgiven you. Granted, that would be going counter to your own belief that the legalization of abortion has nothing to do with the reduction in national crime rates over the past few decades, but it would have indicated that you grasped the situation. But all you went on to say was that "That would be an impossible, ridiculous and morally reprehensible thing to do, but your crime rate would go down. So these far-out, these far-reaching, you know, extensive extrapolations are, I think, tricky."

Singling out the black population of the country as the only suggested way of reducing the American crime rate, however, indicates only that you grasp that black people are more likely to be criminal than white people, and to the best of my knowledge there is slightly more scientific backing for the existence of the Flying Spaghetti Monster than for that particular thesis.

M'sieu Bennett, if I hear that you didn't really mean 'abort', I'm going to put it in the same category as Pat Robertson not really meaning 'assassinate'. If I hear you protesting that you have lots of black friends or that you're good friends with Colin Powell and so you can't possibly be racist, I'm going to assume you're a moron, because what you say in that situation amounts to 'kill all of them before they're born and crime goes down, but there are one or two good ones, specifically the ones I know'.

I really hope for your own sake that you have a frelling good explanation for this, like brain injury or Oxycontin overdose or something, but right now, you're making anyone who shares your ethnic, racial, or genetic background look bad. Stop it.

And apologize like you mean it, not like you're sorry if you gave any offense. That's weasel words and you know it.