Victory Soap v. 2.0

Yes, I really can't think of a better title than that lame thing. Maybe I'll set up my blog to not show titles -- after all, Glenn Reynolds does it, and he gets fifty kajillion hits an hour, which I gather is important in the bloggerverse.

Okay, that was Thought Number 1. Thoughts Number 2 through whatever are prompted by some posts on Kathy Shaidle's site. I'll start with these guys:

Blah blah blah blah Kathy's not funny blah blah blah blah I've got the Logical Fallacies website at the top of my "favorites" list blah blah blah blah mean bitch.

Okay, I'll admit that's a bit of a paraphrase. But it's pretty funny -- well, amusing -- to read accusations of non-funniness coming from people who probably have to keep sites like this one bookmarked right underneath that Logical Fallacies site.

Thought number 3: I never really got into Dick Cavett. I'm not sure if it was because he was over my head (this is a possibility -- I was not a precociously ironic and self-aware teenager), or because his show was on at a time I couldn't watch it. I think it was on in the afternoon, when I was home from school but when I was too busy listening to my favorite rock radio station (album rock!) and reading science fiction and fantasy. I think, though, it was mainly because, unlike all my other adolescent peers, I was uninterested in the little people inside the tv. I quit watching tv altogether in the mid-seventies, and didn't go back to seriously watching anything until Quincey ME started airing. Well, there was The Rockford Files, but sad to say I preferred the gravel-voiced performer of autopsies for the people. I did watch The Late Show with Johnny Carson, but it was more of a habit thing, and occasionally they had a funny comedian. Of course, now I feel like adding all the available dvds of the above shows to my Netflix queue.

A final thought on the high crime rate among black people: I should think that it goes without saying that most black crime is not committed by blacks with good jobs, stable lifestyles, and an outlook not based on blaming everyone else but themselves for their problems. In other words, black criminals are like criminals everywhere: people with more energy than sense who combine an oversized sense of entitlement with a collective shoulder-chip the size of Manhattan. Despite this obvious fact, black criminals in America have champions willing to overlook all their faults because "their ancestors were dragged here as slaves." And of course, the white man still wants to keep the black man down, because, because... well, because it's just fun to have a seething, resentful, uneducated and underpaid underclass about the place.

One more thing: the aforementioned champions of the downtrodden and oppressed black criminal like to say things like how hard it is to "break free from the cycle" of poverty and criminal behavior and whatever else they can pull out of their grab-bag of clichés. But there's another population in a far country who are descended from people who had a hard time "breaking free" of anything, mostly because they were criminals who had been shipped away from their home countries. Yet the majority of the descendants of those crime-cycle-trapped thieves and so on seem to have broken free from their criminal past, and even prospered. I am of course talking about Australia. Their criminal ancestors were white instead of black, but I doubt mere skin pigmentation had anything to do with it. I note that I have never heard of an Australian claiming that the fact that his nth-times ancestor had been dragged to his country's shores in chains (and may even have been as innocent as the West African peasants who were nabbed and put on slave ships, because no justice system is perfect) is reason for Australians to wallow in self-pity, victimization, and blame-throwing. Could it have something to do with the lack of this sort of "he did it not me!" culture that made the difference?

So what should be done? I don't know -- maybe we should throw Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, et al on a ship bound for Australia and leave them there. In the middle of the outback with a toothbrush and a spare change of underwear.

(Syntax note: I use the term "black" throughout because I am not going to type "African-American" ten thousand times. I grew up in the Seventies when "Black Is Beautiful" was the slogan, so the PC-tards can bite me.)

Update: hah hah, Steve and I have mind-melded! Oh wait -- I mean, gross, make it stop! Now I have this urge to make my own curry from scratch and buy a parrot. Won't my cats be surprised.