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Photo by Jay Hagan,
7/12/08 Burbank, CA
A Thought for Today
Habit is our worst enemy until we learn
to make it our best friend.
TO BEGIN WITH
I know mine is not the only e-mail box this week that has been stuffed
with ‘pass it alongs’ concerning John McCain’s choice of The Divine
Sarah as his running mate. How to select a few choice items from so many
. . .not easy, I promise you. Still, here are my picks before pressing
the delete button on a couple of dozen others.
Does she frighten me? You bet. Should the thought of her sitting in The
White House near an Oval Office filled with upturned banana peels scare
you? Uh huh. Forewarned is forearmed or whatever . . .
NOBODY ASKED ME BUT . . .
SARAH, SARAH HOTTER THAN FARAH
The sexist headline above is my own, after all there were “Sarah is Hot”
buttons at the convention and no less an authority on such matters as
Rush Limbaugh termed her “a real babe” so who am I to differ.
Wade alerted me to this first item and wondered “How did you escape the
list...why, in the film Big Eden (which took place in Alaska) a copy of
Listen to the Warm was prominently displayed behind the actors in
several scenes, so Alaska IS McKuen territory! Although it was a gay
film so maybe "Madame" missed it.”
THE HEIR PRESUMPTIVE & HER TASTE IN BOOKS
From <Nuts2cast@aol.com>
Forwarded by Stuart Howard via J. Foster in Berlin
The comments are by Mr. Howard: Browse the list of books Mayor Sarah
Palin tried to get town librarian Mary Ellen Baker to ban in the lovely,
all-American town of Wasilla, Alaska. When Baker refused to remove the
books from the shelves, Palin tried to fire her. The story was reported
in Time Magazine and the list comes from the librarian.net website.
I'm sure you'll find your own personal favorites among the classics
Palin wanted to protect the good people of Wasilla from, but the ones
that jumped out at me were the four Stephen King novels (way to go
Stephen, John Steinbeck only got three titles on the list), that
notorious piece of communist pornography "My Friend Flicka," the usual
assortment of Harry Potter books, works by Shakespeare, Walt Whitman,
Kurt Vonnegut, Mark Twain (always fun to see those names together),
Arthur Miller, and Aristophanes, as well as "Our Bodies, Ourselves"
(insert your own Bristol Palin joke here), and the infamous one-two
punch of depravity: "To Kill a Mockingbird" and "Little Red Riding
Hood." But the cherry on the sundae, the topper, is Sarah Palin's
passionate, religious mission to clear the shelves of the Wasilia Public
Library of that ultimate evil tome: "Webster's Ninth New Collegiate
Dictionary." That's the one with "equality," "free speech" and "justice"
in it.
Go over to your bookcase and take down one of the books you'll find on
the list (I know you've got a couple) and give it a read in honor of the
founding fathers. Then tell me I'm not the only voter who doesn't want
this woman within thirty feet of the United States Constitution.
“As mayor she asked the library how she could go about banning books.
The librarian was aghast – John Stein, Palin’s predecessor as mayor of
Wasilla” (from Time Magazine dated 9/15/08)
SARAH PALIN'S BOOK CLUB
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle
Annie on My Mind by Nancy Garden
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
Blubber by Judy Blume
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
Canterbury Tales by Chaucer
Carrie by Stephen King
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
Christine by Stephen King
Confessions by Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Cujo by Stephen King
Curses, Hexes, and Spells by Daniel Cohen
Daddy's Roommate by Michael Willhoite
Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Peck
Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
Decameron by Boccaccio
East of Eden by John Steinbeck
Fallen Angels by Walter Myers
Fanny Hill (Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure) by John Cleland
Flowers For Algernon by Daniel Keyes
Forever by Judy Blume
Grendel by John Champlin Gardner
Halloween ABC by Eve Merriam
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Prizoner of Azkaban by J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling
Have to Go by Robert Munsch
Heather Has Two Mommies by Leslea Newman
How to Eat Fried Worms by Thomas Rockwell
Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
Impressions edited by Jack Booth
In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak
It's Okay if You Don't Love Me by Norma Klein
James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
Lady Chatterley's Lover by D.H. Lawrence
Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
Little Red Riding Hood by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
Love is One of the Choices by Norma Klein
Lysistrata by Aristophanes
More Scary Stories in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz
My Brother Sam Is Dead by J Lincoln Collier & Christopher Collier
My House by Nikki Giovanni
M y Friend Flicka by Mary O'Hara
Night Chills by Dean Koontz
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
On My Honor by Marion Dane Bauer
One Day in The Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn
One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Ordinary People by Judith Guest
Our Bodies, Ourselves by Boston Women's Health Collective
Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy
Revolting Rhymes by Roald Dahl
Scary Stories 3: More Tales to Chill Your Bones by Alvin Schwartz
Scary Stories in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz
Separate Peace by John Knowles
Silas Marner by George Eliot
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
The Bastard by John Jakes
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
The Color Purple by Alice Walker
The Devil's Alternative by Frederick Forsyth
The Figure in the Shadows by John Bellairs
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine Paterson
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
The Headless Cupid by Zilpha Snyder
The Learning Tree by Gordon Parks
The Living Bible by William C. Bower
The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare
The New Teenage Body Book by Kathy McCoy and Charles Wibbelsman
The Pigman by Paul Zindel
The Seduction of Peter S. by Lawrence Sanders
The Shining by Stephen King
The Witches by Roald Dahl
The Witches of Worm by Zilpha Snyder
Then Again, Maybe I Won't by Judy Blume
To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare
Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary by the Merriam-Webster
Editorial Staff
Witches, Pumpkins, and Grinning Ghosts: The Story of the Halloween
Symbols by Edna Barth
In an apparent oversight she failed to include “The Dick & Jane Reader”
on her list of books to banish. In my own case I found the characters
riveting (especially Spot) but the dialog repetitive.
Ms. Palin must be a veracious reader; certainly such an eclectic list
couldn’t be assembled by hearsay. I mean how many times have you seen
“Leaves Of Grass” on a suggested list of books to ban or burn? Oh, never
mind. (RM)
TO PREY OR PRAY
Not that anyone should be in the least surprised about The Far Out
Right’s view of Church and State but still, how about adding a prayer
that no more of our brave men and women in THOSE WARS be maimed or
killed?
Oh, and does this item beg the question just which, if any, mortals get
to decide what jobs are truly “Tasks from God?”
CHURCH PRAYER FOR IRAQ WAR
By CLEMENTE LISI Published: 9/3/08 New York Post
US soldiers battling terrorists in Iraq are "striving to do what's
right" and are part of "a task . . . from God," Sarah Palin told
worshippers at a conservative Pentecostal church earlier this year.
The Alaska governor addressed parishioners at Wasilla's Assembly of God
Church in June and likened the war to a messianic mission.
"Pray for our military men and women, who are striving to do what is
right," she urged. "Also, for this country, that our leaders - our
national leaders - are sending [US soldiers] out on a task that is from
God.
"That's what we have to make sure," added Palin, an evangelical
Christian. "That's [what] we're praying for -that there is a plan and
that plan is God's plan." Her oldest son, Track, 19, enlisted in the
Army last year.
Palin, 44, delivered the speech at the church where she has attended
services for most of her life. During the speech, she asked those in the
audience to pray over another controversial issue - a $30 billion
national gas pipeline project she wanted built in Alaska.
"I think God's will has to be done in unifying people and companies to
get that gas line built, so pray for that," she said.
DO NOT PASS GO, DO NOT COLLECT $200
Ed Kalnins - the church's senior pastor since 1999 - has preached that
critics of President Bush will go directly to hell. Although the church
took its Web site down yesterday, Kalnins' sermons are widely available
on Google video.
During the 2004 election, Kalnins - who originally hails from New Jersey
- praised Bush, and offered this message: "I'm not going tell you who to
vote for, but if you vote for [John Kerry], I question your salvation.
I'm sorry."
In another eyebrow-raising development, voter records revealed that
Palin's husband, Todd, twice registered as a member of the Alaskan
Independence Party, a fierce state's-rights group that has advocated for
secession from the nation.
ROGER WIKIPEDIA, OVER & OUT
Hey Gang, loosen up, it’s not as though we’re dealing with fact here.
Fiction can be illuminating too, especially when it overrides or ignores
fact.
DON’T LIKE WIKIPEDIA’S STORY? CHANGE IT
By NOAM COHEN Published: 8/31/08 New York Times
In the 24 hours before the McCain campaign put the finishing touches on
its surprise announcement Friday that Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska would
be the Republican vice presidential candidate, one Wikipedia user was
putting the finishing touches on her biography on the site.
Beginning at 2 am Eastern time on Thursday, a Wikipedia user with the
name YoungTrigg began an overhaul of the article, adding compelling
stories about her upbringing, including that “she earned the nickname
‘Sarah Barracuda’ because of her intense play” as point guard for her
high school basketball team and that she and her father “would sometimes
wake at 3 a.m. to hunt moose before school.”
Many details were culled from, and footnoted to, the book “Sarah: How a
Hockey Mom Turned Alaska’s Political Establishment on Its Ear,” by
Kaylene Johnson.
Soon enough, YoungTrigg pivoted from the biographical to the political,
adding that Ms. Palin had high approval ratings as governor and that, as
mayor, she had “kept her campaign promises, reducing her own salary, as
well as reducing property taxes 60 percent.”
As governor, YoungTrigg wrote, her “tenure is noted for her willingness
to take on oil companies” and that she has been called “a ‘politician of
eye-popping integrity.’ ” Both of those statements were attributed to a
profile in the conservative Weekly Standard magazine.
In total, YoungTrigg — whose user name is a reference to Ms. Palin’s
infant son, Trig — made 30 “edits” to the article, all positive and
largely unnoticed, since they came at a time when few were discussing
her as a possible running mate of Senator John McCain’s.
The coincidence of the user’s name, and the sudden spurt of activity
just before news broke of Mr. McCain’s choice, has raised suspicions
that YoungTrigg was a campaign operative tasked to make sure that her
Wikipedia article was ready for prime time, much as handlers have been
assigned to do the same for the candidate.
While ethically suspect, the idea that a politician would try to shape
her Wikipedia article shouldn’t come as a surprise. In modern politics,
where the struggle is to “define” yourself before your opponent
“defines” you, Wikipedia has become an important part of political
strategy. When news breaks, and people plug a name into a search engine
to find out more, invariably Wikipedia is the first result they click
through to; it is where first impressions are made.
GIVE NET READERS WHAT THEY WANT
The daily page view totals for even well known candidates are striking.
For example, according to a site that tracks the traffic to Wikipedia,
the John McCain article had 645,000 page views in June. That month,
Barack Obama had 1.35 million page views. Henrik Abelsson, who tracks
the traffic, said that on Friday there were 2.4 million page views for
Gov. Palin’s Wikipedia article.
Last year, a graduate student, Virgil Griffith, created a clever Web
site, Wiki- Scanner that made it easy to detect where anonymous editors
of Wikipedia were accessing the site. In the process, companies,
government agencies and, yes, politicians were caught in the act of
spiffing up their Wikipedia entries, even as many assumed that anonymity
would make them safe. (Wikipedia, incredibly and mercilessly, keeps a
record of every change made to every article.)
YoungTrigg made the last edit Friday morning, hours before the news of
the Palin selection became official. But in the wee hours the day
before, when no one was really paying attention, YoungTrigg did contact
other Wikipedians, who were initially impressed by the rapid
improvements to the article.
YoungTrigg was given a virtual unit of praise, the Barnstar, for the
effort. When another Wikipedia contributor asked gently if YoungTrigg
could include page numbers to his footnotes from “Sarah,” YoungTrigg
wrote back excitedly: “Thank you! I’m afraid I didn’t use the page
numbers when I did the edits, so I don’t have them now. The book has a
pretty good index, though, and I can look something up if anything I
added was controversial. I apologize if I misunderstood the format.”
Also, YoungTrigg reached out to an anonymous editor who had changed the
Palin article on Thursday night, without any evidence, to say that she
was Mr. McCain’s choice. In a public note to the anonymous editor,
YoungTrigg wrote: “Where did you hear that Palin was the VP nominee? I
can’t find anything online.”
Whether this pokes a hole in the idea that YoungTrigg had inside
information, or rather confirms that the user had an unusually acute
interest in whether the news had leaked out, is hard to tell.
Or maybe it was dumb luck. When news outlets like National Public Radio
and Washingtonpost.com reported on the editing on Friday, they
classified it as another example of Wikipedia’s mysterious ability to
predict about-to-break news, if we only knew to look there. When the
liberal Web site Daily Kos, enmeshed in the rough-and-tumble of the
presidential election, picked up on the news in a highly read post,
commenters were quick to raise the specter of dirty tricks.
EDITING THE EDITOR
Oddly enough, as YoungTrigg began to tackle editing the Palin article,
another editor happened to be working there too. This user, Ferrylodge,
a lawyer who has contributed to Wikipedia for years and describes
himself as an independent-minded Republican, was interested in examining
the accusations that Ms. Palin had used her position to get a trooper
dismissed for personal reasons.
He ended up editing YoungTrigg’s edits, toning down entries that seemed
biased, removing material that seemed extraneous, like the exact unit
that Ms. Palin’s son is serving in that will be going to Iraq. “A lot of
stuff was useful — like citing a biography of her,” he said in a
telephone interview, speaking under condition of anonymity to avoid
tipping off his clients that he spends time on Wikipedia. “Some was
questionable stuff.” In general, he said, the editing “indicates a very
close familiarity with Governor Palin.”
The lawyer said that when YoungTrigg linked to government documents on a
government Web site related to the trooper case, it seemed like this
editor was not exactly a political naïf.
But, he says, this person may be Wikipedically naïve. “They didn’t quite
know what they were getting into — they got a lot of
conflict-of-interest notes,” he said. And much of that original,
flattering material has been overwritten.
By Sunday morning, YoungTrigg came forward, still anonymous, on his or
her Wikipedia user page: “It’s not true that ‘all of my edits made Palin
look better.’ ”
The user narrowed down YoungTrigg’s identity: “I am not Sarah Palin. I
think it is obvious that I am not the five-month-old Trig Paxson Van
Palin. I am not a member of Sarah Palin’s family, or even Michael
Palin’s family.”
YoungTrigg was a user name picked for this task; for other editing, he
or she chooses other names: “I will acknowledge that I volunteer for the
McCain campaign, one of thousands of people nationwide who are working
to elect the best candidate for the job. Palin was not the nominee when
I made my edits, though I am certainly excited about the selection. I
don’t believe I have a conflict of interest problem.”
That said, nobody will be hearing from YoungTrigg again anytime soon. On
the bottom was a black-bordered box surrounding the word “retired.”
RM 9/6/2008 First Publication
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