the Bleeding Heart Capitalist

There have been some news stories lately on the insensistive and flat out bigoted names given to customers by restaurant servers on their receipts. One of them was documented at a Papa Johns, where the receipt said “lady chinky eyes” and the company did the right thing and publicly apologized on Facebook. 

Of course, when I clicked on the Papa Johns Facebook page, I saw that some guy thought that it would be funny to pile on to the original offense and add not one, but two more asian jokes in the comment section. Dustin Ehrlich, of Lincoln, Nebraska, apparently thought that the jokes, in the screenshots attached, would be hilarious enough to post for all the world to see. 

Now, perhaps this is just youthful intemperance. Or maybe someone posted under his name on an open laptop at his house just for kicks. Maybe. But if that happened, the joke is in the revelation, not the secret, and he never removed the remarks 11 months later. And take one look at his home page wall and you’ll see more racist and sexist timeline photos and group “likes.”  

Perhaps someday Dustin will google his name and find this page and learn a valuable lesson in social media. Perhaps a girl he asks out or perspective employer will do the same. That will be another lesson. My wife is 100% American. She was raised in Queens and is of Korean descent. She has borne the brunt of these jokes for years. So, as the father of children who are not 100% caucasion, and the husband in a marriage that might be considered illegal in some places a few generations ago, I find Mr Ehrlich’s jokes to be really not funny, and those that know me know that I love a good laugh. 

I want my children to grow up in a better world than one where someone like Dustin can get a cheap laugh at their expense. 

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Awful.

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Listening to radio broadcasts of Yankee baseball games has become intolerable because of John Sterling’s awful “trademark” calls for home runs and other common events on the field. 

Back in the 90′s, Sterling’s “It is high, it is far, it is gone!” was tolerable. The team was finally winning, so what the hell. But now every damn thing has an awkward catch phrase like some lame sponsor were paying him to plug them. The only problem is that it is just Sterling trying to be Sterling, and it is ridiculous. That “Yankees win” after victories schtick was bad; an “A-Bomb…from A-Rod!” is awful. 

Now, the man has sunk to a new low with a 2 sentence abomination every time Mark Texiera hits a dinger. I won’t even tell you what he says, suffice to say it is a grandpa pun on steroids. 2 sentences! Back when he was teamed with Michael Kay, broadcasts were like eavesdropping on two friends watching the game with random interruptions for Sterling to cut the mustard. Now it is no far past the boundary of good taste it is noise pollution. When you root for your own guy to whiff just to be spared another John Sterling whackadoo utterance, you know it is bad. 

Mr. Sterling, just announce the game and stop trying to be Red Barber and Harry Carey’s love child  about every random event.

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A judge who was widely vilified for giving a child molester a 60-day jail term imposed a new sentence Thursday, increasing the man’s prison time to three to 10 years.

Judge Edward Cashman said he felt he could now impose the longer sentence because the state had agreed to provide treatment to the man while he is behind bars. The state had initially said such treatment would not come until after the man served his time.

I’m sure that public pressure is not at all directly related to Judge Cashman changing his mind, but it may have factored in to the state’s offering treatment while the molester was in prison. Personally, I think three years is still a slap on the wrist for what this man did, but 60 days was beyond absurd.

I believe that light has been shed on a corner of the system that does not serve the citizenry. I hope Vermont passes Jessica’s Law, and soon. I hope New York does as well.

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Judge Alito Proves a Powerful Match for Senate Questioners

If Senate Democrats had set out to portray Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr. as extreme on issues ranging from abortion to government surveillance of citizens, they ran up against an elusive target on Tuesday: Samuel A. Alito Jr. For nearly eight hours, Judge Alito was placid, monochromatic and, it seemed, mostly untouchable.

Unlike the testimony of John G. Roberts Jr., who had often declined to answer questions on various grounds, among them that certain issues might come before him as chief justice or that his older writings did not necessarily reflect his current views, Judge Alito’s default impulse frequently seemed to be to try to give a direct response to the senators’ often rambling questions.

Failing that, he offered what he presented as clarifications of earlier statements or writing, sanded of any rough edges, or said he simply could not recall details about some past chapter of his life that had raised concern among senators. Only in one exchange did he appear rattled, refusing to give a direct answer when Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York asked him if he still held a view, expressed in 1985, that there was no constitutional right to abortion.

For the most part, his handling of questions from Democrats had the effect of leaving his questioner shuffling through papers in search of the next question.

Judge Alito was not Judge Roberts, to be sure – far less personable, rarely smiling and struggling to draw even the occasional burst of laughter. But he came across as far less ideological than Democrats have suggested, undercutting their efforts to stir public opposition by portraying his writing as outside the American mainstream.

This is quite accurate. Ted Kennedy prefaced his questions with long-winded preambles, resplendent with incredulous presuppositions that read like they were lifted from a moveon.org script, only to have the Judge deflate the whole thing in about three even keeled, civil sentences. It was obvious that for the past few months Democratic researchers have cherry picked his entire career for any case they could Bork him with, and they came up empty. It will become clear in the coming days that the Joe Bidens and Ted Kennedys of the world will not only fail to undermine Alito’s worthiness to replace Justice O’Connor, they will also be exposed as being comparative lightweights.

Alito’s only crime is that he is a Bush nominee.

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Schieffer: Let me shift to another point of view, and it comes from another Democrat, Joe Lieberman of Connecticut. He takes a very different view. He says basically we should stay because, he says, real progress is being made. He said this is a war between 27 million Iraqis’ freedom and 10,000 terrorists. He says we’re in a watershed transformation. What about that?

Kerry: Let me–I–first of all, there is so much more that unites Democrats than divides us. And Democrats have much more in common with each other than they do with George Bush’s policy right now. Now Joe Lieberman, I believe, also voted for the resolution which said the president needs to make more clear what he’s doing and set out benchmarks, and that the policy hasn’t been working. We all believe him when you say, ‘Stay the course.’ That’s the president’s policy, which hasn’t been changing, which is a policy of failure. I don’t agree with that. But I think what we need to do is recognize what we all agree on, which is you’ve got to begin to set benchmarks for accomplishment. You’ve got to begin to transfer authority to the Iraqis.

And there is no reason, Bob, that young American soldiers need to be going into the homes of Iraqis in the dead of night, terrorizing kids and children, you know, women, breaking sort of the customs of the–of–the historical customs, religious customs. Whether you like it or not–

Schieffer: Yeah.

Kerry: –Iraqis should be doing that.

Hat tip to Tom Faranda’s Folly

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