The new bigotry?

So this guy is bellyaching to an advice columnist about his family signing the Florida Marriage Protection Amendment petition. She tells him he shouldn't condemn his family based on their names being on a website, that their names might have been put there fraudulently, that they might have misunderstood what the petition is all about, etc., etc.

Notice what she doesn't say?

She doesn't say that, if his family did sign the petition and did understand what it was all about, that this is their own valid point of view and their right to express it freely. The implication is clear: that such an action would be wrong on their part.

Think I'm exaggerating? I think this attitude has been developing for a long time -- you see signs of it all over the place -- and we're going to see more and more of it. Once homosexuality was declared an inborn and unchangeable trait (even for those who would like to change), it was inevitable that one day people who sign petitions against same-sex marriage would be placed on the same level as those who wouldn't let black people sit at lunch counters or at the front of buses. And that, of course, would mean that the petition-signers' views have no place and no right to be considered among decent people.

Superwuss (or, Is it really THAT hard to write a good superhero?)

Two excellent writers, whom I'm lucky enough to call acquaintances, help explain why Superman Returns has been something of a superflop this summer. I'm not sure quite why or how this happened, but somehow our culture has lost the ability to create or to sustain a decent hero. First, the creators of Smallville, in the space of five years, manage to turn the perfectly nice teenage Clark Kent they started with into a lazy, selfish brat who's better at getting people killed than saving them. Now we get a dour movie with little of the joy or hope you'd expect from a Superman story, instead providing us with a heaping helping of superhero angst.

Which is why I ditched plans to see it and ended up going to the second Pirates of the Caribbean movie instead. It wasn't nearly as good as the first, but at least, thanks be to God, Captain Jack hasn't yet taken to whimpering that he's all alone in the world and nobody wuvs him. Right now that fact alone is worth quite a few points in my book, and apparently in a lot of other people's books as well.

Reason #3,417

. . . why I want to be James Lileks when I grow up. (Scroll down and you'll know which section I'm referring to.) Nothing gets my goat quite as much as the fathomless contempt of the tolerant class for their inferiors. And no one skewers the tolerant class quite like the inimitable (sadly for me) Mr. Lileks.

You don't say

"In-home eating 'rules' may improve teens' diet"

Wow.

I suppose the next headline will be, "Housebreaking keeps puppies from pooping on floor."

You've got to be kidding me

So the Emmys were supposed to have this new "blue-ribbon panel" that were going to make the award nominations so much better and more well-rounded and more fair. And that means HUGH LAURIE GETS NO NOMINATION FOR HOUSE??

The Emmy people didn't upgrade their nominating process. They just started smoking a stronger brand of crack.