By Zack Adams, RP Staff, on Thu Jan 5, 2012 at 3:00 PM ET
The Politics of Tech
After the lengthy fundraising by Wikipedia, characterized by the personal appeal from Jimmy Wales, they ended up raising $20 million. [Venture Beat]
A Dehli, India court has ordered 22 social-networking sites to remove all “anit-religious” and “anti-social” material contained on them in 90 days. The most notable websites listed are Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and Yahoo. [Hindustan Times]
Internet Explorer use continues to slide as it loses more and more of the market share it once dominated. It is predicted that by March Microsoft’s internet browser could fall below a 50% market share. [Computerworld]
In the wide world of censorship – it is now illegal for citizens of the Republic of Belarus to access foreign websites. [The Next Web]
For hackers, what is the best way to combat censorship in America? Could it be to launch their own satellites? [PC World]
By John Y. Brown III, on Thu Jan 5, 2012 at 12:30 PM ET
It’s not a medical breakthrough to reverse memory loss.
Consider it more of a coping mechanism. And a darned good one at that.
Maybe memory loss is inevitable with the aging process….but don’t despair. Don’t cede anything to our younger colleagues! Instead, finesse!
You don’t need to know a whole lot in this life to be profoundly effective, successful and fulfilled. We really need only to kno…w “a little.”
The trick is to have some attitude about the little we still retain. And sometimes, if need be, ratchet up a little more attitude to drive the point home.
Afraid you’ll have trouble remembering all this? Don’t. Watch the video–repeatedly–until it becomes second nature. It says it all. And with the attitude.
But due to overwhelming popular demand (OK, mostly because I was sick and bored at the end of the holidays), I offer my latest half-Letterman: The Top Five Medical Afflictions I Learned About Via TV Comedies:
5. Shrinkage
I need to be a little delicate here, being that the RP Nation is a family audience, but until I saw the particular Seinfeld episode I post below, I had never heard of the much-too-common malady that plagues millions of American men (and disturbs many more millions of American women), called “shrinkage.” I just have never been the type of guy who looks down in a communal shower. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that!) While I knew and understood that uromysitisis (a Seinfeldian compulsion for public urination) was real, spectacular, troubling… yadda, yadda, yadda; as a Jewish guy, I’ve never had to worry about the shrinkage syndrome. (Hellooooooo!). But for all of you Gentile men (and Jew-ish Gentiles such as George Costanza), to truly become the master of your domain, watch the following public service announcement, and always remember, NO COLD POOLS FOR YOU:
4. Fetal Resorbtion
Like most Americans, I rely on Dwight Schrute of “The Office” for most of my medical and health care advice. (What does Dr. Oz really know anyway?) Whether it is his enlightened views on “female issues” such as the menstrual calendar and yeast infections, his perspicacious insights about infant circumcision, or his well-versed policy analysis on health care reform and the animal kingdom, there is no scientific expert more astute than Schrute. So, it was quite touching when on a special espisode of “The Office,” we learned of a medical affliction that affected Dwight personally; in fact, one that made him that man-and-a-half that he is. Yes, fetal resorbtion. Watch below:
3. Male Puberty-Onset Voice Shrieking
As I approached my Bar Mitzvah — the biggest moment of my pre-adolescent life, the very day that I would become a MAN — I lived in constant fear that my voice would change. My rabbi, Bernard Schwab, a truly holy man who had been blinded by diabetes, who had memorized the Torah (the first five books of the Bible) in HEBREW, had painstakingly worked with me for four years so that I would not only read my assigned portions with perfection but that I’d also hit the prescribed musical notes as mandated by the Torah scribers thousands of years before. I was scared to death that I would dishonor him — while blaspheming my faith and desecrating my people — by shrieking like a wounded frog. Because everyone knew that when a boy hit puberty, he immediately became a laughable, cacophonous clown, a shrill fool who, when singing, disturbed the peace, shattered mirrors, and made young girls cry. At least everyone who had watched the following episode of my very favorite childhood TV comedy, The Brady Bunch. (Turns out, I was the exception — my voice naturally transitioned down an octave. Also, unlike Peter Brady, I didn’t marry and then divorce a much-much younger winner of America’s Top Model, who now is offering to tweet a topless picture of herself if she acquires 300,000 Twitter followers: NSFW link)
Read the rest of… The RP: The Top 5 Medical Afflictions I Learned About Via TV Comedies
William Faulkner once wrote that in the South, the past isn’t dead — it isn’t even past.
His words seem eerily appropriate as two Southern Republican presidential candidates are confronted with the racial skeletons in their closets.
First it was Texas Gov. Rick Perry and “Niggerhead,” the alleged name of his family’s hunting camp. Now, it’s fellow Texan Ron Paul’s sundry offensive statements about blacks, arguing among other things that in the wake of the Los Angeles riots, “order was only restored when it came time for the blacks to collect their welfare checks,” and that “95 percent of black men in Washington are semi-criminal or entirely criminal.”
As Perry and Paul probably know, the modern Republican Party has its rhetorical roots in George Wallace and Barry Goldwater’s states’ rights rhetoric from the 1960s. Wallace laid the foundation for a generation of Republican hegemony in presidential elections via deft manipulation of racial and cultural issues; Richard Nixon and his guru Kevin Phillips studied Wallace’s tactics closely. Nixon’s 1969-’72 strategy, which focused on appealing to the 10 million Wallace voters from ’68, heralded a partisan realignment that would shape American politics for the next half-century, as Phillips himself predicted in 1969’s “Emerging Republican Majority.”
So when Ronald Reagan went to Philadelphia, Miss., where three civil rights workers were brutally murdered in 1963, to kick off his 1980 general election bid and proclaimed that “the spirit of Jefferson Davis lives in this year’s Republican Party platform,” it was no accident. Rather, it was a rare statement of the Republican Party’s fundamental strategy since 1964.
Read the rest of… Jeff Smith: From Wallace to Paul to Perry
By Jonathan Miller, on Thu Jan 5, 2012 at 10:00 AM ET
The story of Kentucky politics lost a legendary character yesterday in the passing of Gatewood Galbraith.
While Gatewood never recovered from the political bug — nor did he ever want to — his candor, aversion to hyper-partisanship and extraordinary sense of humor certainly reflected the values of this Web site.
Accordingly, tomorrow (Friday), we are dedicating this site to his memory, and opening it up to the RP Nation to share their remembrances.
That’s you!
Please share with us your stories, anecdotes and memories of the one-of-a-kind man. Send them to Staff@TheRecoveringPolitician.com by 7 PM EST tonight, and as long as they are family-friendly, we will post them sometime tomorrow.
Thanks, and share with us tomorrow a day of fun remembrances of a Kentucky original.
There is a perception that OJ Simpson in his vintage years, the mid seventies, was the last cultural icon who wore a football jersey. In contrast, it is said that the modern football era has yielded an array of physically gifted, prodigiously skilled athletes who have shattered records and redefined the limits of the game, but have made no deep imprint on the society that reveres their talent.
The last part is a true enough description of the largely impact free zone of the contemporary football star. The first observation, however, is flawed memory. It was not Simpson, for all his California glitter and celebrity, who was the last of a kind—it was a Mississippian who migrated north named Walter Payton. Jeff Pearlman, in his 2011 biography of the Chicago Bears Hall of Famer, “Sweetness”, reminds us that for about a decade, well beyond the normal career span of an NFL back, Walter Payton was the exemplary star who resonated well beyond his sport–especially if you were a Chicagoan eager for a hero in the aftermath of that city’s dismal decade of the seventies; an African American who relished the style of a charismatic HBCU grad effortlessly crossing racial barriers; or a lover of an underdog story who understood the depths in the South from which Payton ascended.
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Even for Americans who only dimly knew the fine print of Payton’s athletic feats, he was the 80s sports celebrity who died too early and through no fault of his own, and his demise in 1999 from a rare liver cancer at 46 provoked tributes fit for the civic legend he had become.
“Sweetness” is a minutely researched, powerfully written narrative that gives the iconic side of Payton its due, but may be the most controversial sports biography of the past year. The football side of the account is not in dispute; to a degree not well remembered today, Payton was uncommonly good for an astonishingly long time. From 1976 to 1986, Payton amassed over 1200 yards each full season, topped the NFL record books for career rushing yards (and still ranks second, behind only Emmitt Smith), and at one point held the record for single game yards and consecutive 100 yard games. In a sport where the brutality of contact erodes skills quickly, Payton’s prolonged brilliance still arguably makes him the finest running back the NFL has produced.
By John Y. Brown III, on Wed Jan 4, 2012 at 12:30 PM ET
Post Election Final Thoughts:
I applaud yesterday’s chaotic, surprising, and uniquely American process leading to the narrowest of narrow victories by the front-runner and a near shocking underdog upset–accompanied by a respectable third place finish from an independent and brainy gadfly.
It reinforces my belief in our democratic system. And however messy and unpredictable, it’s still a thing of beauty to behold. And to be grateful for.
Finally, if I had to pinpoint a regret it is that the race didn’t last one more week and have one more candidate with one more wise admonition. The extra week may have allowed Sen Santorum’s sensational surge to run its course ….and see the final candidate I would like to have seen in the mix peak and prevailed at just the right moment, Chance Gardner. And in his acceptance speech, in my fanciful ending, candidate Gardner would admonish Americans in Iowa and beyond by quoting Voltaire from Candide (discussing Chance’s favorite topic, gardening). “Let us cultivate our own garden.”
But I’m a romantic. And it was a Republican primary. Let’s be real. A French quote (even a self-reliant quote) to summarize the moment’s electoral message, was probably too much to ask.
By Michael Steele, on Wed Jan 4, 2012 at 11:24 AM ET
Did you see what happened last night?! My oh my! How close can you get? Back and forth, tension building with every tick of the clock, running late into the evening. But in the end, Michigan won!
Oh, you thought I meant the Iowa caucuses? Michigan vs. Virginia Tech was to be expected. Romney vs. The Field was just exasperating!
How is it Romney’s team spends the last two years playing down his Iowa chances, then undoes it all over the weekend by declaring they expect a win, effectively turning what should have been a solid victory into a perceived loss? That is a massive strategic blunder that handed Santorum added momentum heading into NH, and makes Newt effectively Santorum’s straw man. This is NOT how one defeats Obama in the fall.
