J.D. Rhoades's Blog, page 32

The Hand-Me-Down Hubbles

Latest Newspaper Column:It's no secret that the people at NASA have had problems lately. They've suffered cuts in funding, the space shuttle had to be retired with no viable replacement ready, and their next generation "Constellation" rocket program got canceled. One of their signature achievements, the Hubble Space Telescope, is getting old and creaky, and there's really no good way to maintain it without the shuttle or something like it.NASA got some good news recently, however, when the folks from the National Reconnaissance Office rang them up.You may never have heard of the NRO. They don't go out of the way to promote themselves, because, as we shall see, they really don't need to. They're the agency, working under the aegis of the Department of Defense, that's "in charge of designing, building, launching, and maintaining America's intelligence satellites," to quote their website.Their motto is "Every Breath You Take We'll Be Watching You." (Actually, I made that up. Their real motto is "Vigilance From Above," which is slightly less creepy.) To carry out their mission, they've got lots and lots of cool gadgets and gizmos.So many, in fact, that they apparently haven't gotten around to using them all, as NASA discovered when the NRO called and said, "Hey, we've got a couple of space telescopes we aren't using. They're sitting in the warehouse, still in the original shrink wrap. You want 'em?"Apparently, the Spooks in Space have these satellites with telescopes at least as powerful as Hubble's. You know, the type of high resolution lenses that may not be able to read your newspaper over your shoulder like in the movies, but which can pick out an object the size of a baseball from hundreds of miles above the Earth. This will be very useful if the Chinese ever want to field a World Series contender.The truly amazing (and somewhat frightening) thing is: Those are the ones that they let sit in the warehouse because they're already using better ones. Lord knows what those things can do. Probably count the change in your pocket.So it occurred to some bright boy or girl at the NRO (a place, one assumes, that has no shortage of bright boys or girls) that if you turned a high tech spy satellite around and pointed it at the stars rather than at the Rooskies or the Chinese or whomever, you'd have a couple of Hubble-level scientific instruments.The NASA people, of course, immediately accepted the unexpected gifts. Although they're not completely sure how they're going to use them yet, they're happy to have them, and I'm happy for them. But I have to confess to a certain amount of annoyance as well.Think about it. The Hubble cost, at last estimate, $2.5 billion. Considering the amazing discoveries scientists have made and continue to make about the universe using this device, I'd argue that it was well worth it. Still, NASA had to lobby hard for funding, and it's having to hunt even harder trying to find the cash for the Hubble's planned replacement, the $5 billion James Webb Space Telescope (named after a NASA administrator, not the Virginia senator).Some scientists are worried that the Webb telescope will eat NASA's entire astronomy budget. Meanwhile, the Department of Defense has two Hubble-level telescopes it never even bothered to use.Look, I'm all for a strong defense. And I think keeping an eye, electronic or otherwise, on the people who would do us harm is a great idea. I'm glad the fact that there's an organization like the NRO means that a massive, bolt-from-the-blue strike like Pearl Harbor can never happen again (although as the catastrophes of Sept. 11, 2001, showed, an attack doesn't have to involve fleets or armored divisions to be devastating).Still, there's something wrong with our priorities when science goes begging and the DoD has high tech wonders just lying around. That's not fully funding defense, that's wastefully overfunding it in a time when the rest of us are being told that what we peons need is austerity, austerity, and more austerity, and when the men and women who do the actual fighting are scandalously underpaid.But, hey, maybe we should ask the NRO to poke around in the warehouses some more. Who knows? Maybe there's another shuttle in there somewhere. Or even a Millennium Falcon. It'd be one wild garage sale, that's for sure.

Don't Bother Them With the Truth

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One of the online spots I visit regularly is the blog of Dr. David Brin. Dr. Brin is not only a crackerjack science fiction writer who's won every award in the genre, but also an honest-to-goodness rocket scientist in his day job, with degrees in astrophysics, applied physics and space science. His blog topics run a fascinating gamut from musings on our future in space to appreciation of the "metaphysical irony" of Three Stooges films. Clearly, this fellow is no dummy.However, I had to respond to a recent post in which Dr. Brin proposed what he called the "wager challenge" as a way to deal with wingnuts, science deniers and other infuriating yay-hoos of the "ignorant and proud of it" school.Dr. Brin's solution? "Make it a matter of money." In other words, demand that wingers back up assertions like "illegal immigration is worse under Obama" or "abstinence-only policies are the way to prevent teen pregnancies" or "we're being taxed worse than ever" by pulling a Mitt Romney: demanding that they bet on it, like Mitt did when debating poor, hapless Rick Perry.Unlike Romney, most of us aren't vulture capitalists who can afford to put up 10 grand, but you get the idea. In fact, it's been shown that because of the slowing U.S. economy, Mexicans returning to their country, beefed-up funding for the Border Patrol, and other factors, illegal immigration has balanced out and is now at "net zero."It's also a fact that states with abstinence-only education policies have the highest rates of teen pregnancy and STDs, and that most Americans, particularly the wealthy, pay less in federal taxes than they have in 60 years. These are provable facts.So you'd think asking people who blithely assert the opposite to put up or shut up would be a way to make them, well, shut up. Sadly, no. As I responded in the comments to Dr. Brin's post, there's one problem with the plan, namely that there's no way to settle the wager. Right-wingers steadfastly refuse to accept any source that contradicts them as valid because anyone that contradicts their narrative is, ipso facto, part of the "liberal conspiracy."For example, a recent article in USA Today reports that President Obama leads Mitt Romney 5-1 in campaign contributions from people identifying themselves as service members or Department of Defense employees, and a wingnut who clings to the fiction that "our troops hate Obama and love the GOP" will simply ignore the fact that the story is based on actual analysis of campaign finance reports and dismiss it out of hand, since it comes from the "lamestream media."Of course, if you're a Republican in the N.C. legislature, you could simply use your majority to try to enact laws to actually make science that disagrees with you illegal. As reported in The News & Observer, when a state-appointed science panel warned that sea levels could rise as much as a meter by the year 2100 (a change which would flood many coastal counties), Republican legislators decided to try to "win" the scientific debate by legislating it out of existence.They circulated a bill that would require scientists to use only "historical data" and "linear projections" to predict rising water levels. In other words, they're required by law to make calculations based only on the way things have always been, ignoring the fact that changes don't often move in straight line - they increase faster and faster, like a snowball getting bigger as it rolls downhill.This, as an article in the online Scientific American points out, "is exactly like saying, do not predict tomorrow's weather based on radar images of a hurricane swirling offshore, moving west toward us. Predict the weather based on the last two weeks of fair weather."Facts, it's often been said, have a liberal bias. It's meant as a wry joke. But wingnuts have apparently taken it to heart, but in the wrong way. Rather than adjust their world view to fit the facts, they choose to dismiss and mock any factual source that disagrees with them - or kill politically incorrect (and economically inconvenient) theories via legislation.The Republican-led North Carolina legislature is acting like the church hierarchy that tried to suppress Galileo's idea that the Earth moves around the sun by fiat and intimidation, because it didn't fit the established narrative. And we all know how well that worked. I'd like to believe that actual science might prevail in this case, too. But I'm not betting on it.

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The Birthers Are Back!

 Latest Newspaper Column: There's no link because the Pilot has, once again, forgotten to put my column up on the web site. But I'm getting crazy people e-mailing me about it (we'll have more on that soon), so I know it ran.

If you thought the ridiculous movement known as "birtherism," which holds that Barack Obama has not sufficiently proven his U.S. citizenship, was dead, then think again.



A person of normal intelligence might think that the whole kerfluffle had been put to rest by the long-demanded release of the President's  "long form" birth certificate, a document which I'll wager 99% of Americans never knew existed before the birthers asserted that that was the only proof they'd accept (except as it turns out, that didn't make them happy either). But if  you think that, you've forgotten one of the basic tenets of the right wing: if something fails miserably, then it's just because we didn't do it enough. If the economy tanked despite eight years of tax cuts under The President That Must Not Be Named, then the solution is clearly more tax cuts. If poorly regulated investment houses lost billions of their clients' money and/or failed to disclose risks to their clients, then clearly what we need is less regulation. And so on.

And so, apparently on the theory that that  birtherism failed because they just weren't crazy enough, it returns, this time in the presence of no less an august personage than The Honorable Ken Bennett,  Secretary of State of Arizona, a state which is apparently trying to supplant Florida as the nuttiest one in the Union. (I heard Dave Barry is thinking of relocating there because of the wealth of material). Mr. Bennett recently called up a deputy attorney general in Hawaii and requested "verification" of the President's birth record. After a few days (and, one imagines, a fair amount of eye-rolling), Deputy AG Jill Nagamine e-mailed Bennett back, apologizing for taking so long while pointedly noting that she had "been tied up with some legislative deadlines that take precedence." She then provided Bennett with the sort of links any half-bright person with access to Google could find, links to official websites that covered the whole issue. In short, Deputy Attorney General Nagamine told Bennett: "look, pal, I got a lot of stuff on my plate here, we've been over this a hundred times, look it up yourself." But politely.

Unable, apparently, to take a hint, Bennett e-mailed back, again requesting verification of the President's American birth. He did not, it should be noted, ask for a similar verification of the birth records of Millard Mitt Romney. Maybe Mitt had already given him one in person, since Bennett is the co-chair of Romney's campaign in Arizona. I'm sure that's  just a coincidence, right?



Nagamine's e-mailed response was a classic: she turned the tables and demanded verification that Bennett  was eligible to make the request. She also asked a slew of other questions, such as what list he was updating and  if he was asking any other candidate this information. He would also, of course, need to send verification of all of that.

Bennett sent back references to various Arizona statutes, which he claimed gave him the right.  Nagamine, displaying the sort of mulishness that would make a birther proud, said "nope, not good enough." (Politely). None of those cites, she said,  "establish the authority of the Secretary of State." But, she said, Hawaii  "stands willing to provide you with the verification you seek as soon as you are able to show that you are entitled to it."

 Later that day, Bennett went on AM talk radio and suggested that, if Hawaii didn't do as he asked, President Obama may not appear on the Arizona ballot this year. Meanwhile, just to add in an extra dollop of lunacy, Maricopa County Sherriff Joe Arpaio  dispatched a deputy from his "threat unit" to Hawaii's Department of Health on the taxpayer's dime. Arpaio refused to identify the "threat" or to explain exactly why a division of the state government of Hawaii should do anything for a county Sheriff's deputy from another state except show him the door. Politely,  of course.

Finally, Bennett gave up and  pronounced himself satisfied that the President was, indeed, born in the USA and would appear on the ballot. That is, until the next opportunity arises for the right wing lunatic fringe to drag that poor dead horse out of the barn and flog him again. Because in the land of Wingnuttia,  if a dead horse won't run, it's because you didn't beat him hard enough.  

27 Percenters: Still Crazy After All These Years

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There's been a lot of talk lately about the 1 percent versus the 99 percent. But there's another number that's at least as important in American political discourse these days. That number is the "crazification factor": 27 percent. 

The crazification factor was first noticed by, of all people, television writer John Rogers. He first wrote about it as far back as 2005 on his blog, titled "Kung Fu Monkey." He'd observed the 2004 Illinois Senate election, in which Barack Obama ran against Alan Keyes. Keyes, as you may remember, was trotted in from out of state a mere 86 days before the election after the campaign of the Republican nominee, Jack Ryan, imploded because of a bizarre sex scandal.
Keyes was clearly a sacrificial lamb, a guy no one expected to win; not only did he have no base in Illinois, but he was also, as Rogers put it, "plainly, obviously, completely crazy ... head-trauma crazy."Both candidates were black, so race wasn't a factor. And yet, Rogers noted, Keyes still got 27 percent of the vote in Illinois.

"They put party identification, personal prejudice, whatever, ahead of rational judgment," he said. "Even 5 percent of Democrats voted for him. That's crazy behavior. I think you have to assume a 27 percent crazification factor in any population."

It seemed like a joke to me at first. But then I noticed that that 27 percent figure kept cropping up more and more, in poll after poll. Give or take a couple of percentage points, pollsters often find about 27 percent of Americans who believe in things that are against their own self-interest or that are just mind-bendingly ridiculous.

For instance, in the darkest days of the 2008 economic meltdown, after the bankruptcy of Lehmann Brothers, the federal bailout of AIG and the collapse of Merrill Lynch, approval ratings for President George W. Bush were still at 27 percent, and hovered around that figure for quite some time before taking their final nosedive.

(Yes, He Who Must Not Be Named, and not Barack Obama, was president when the economy tanked, with his beloved tax cuts firmly in place, something you probably won't learn from watching Fox News.)

After Sarah Palin flamed out in spectacular fashion and took John McCain's presidential campaign into the ground with her, 27 percent of people surveyed in one poll still thought she would have made a good president.

A poll in January of this year on the subject of gridlock in Congress found that 60 percent of those polled believed that President Obama was trying to work with Republicans; 27 percent believed that Republicans in Congress were trying to do the same. In January, an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll found that 27 percent of people still supported the tea party.
Give a couple of points margin for error, and crazification becomes more obvious. After the 2008 election, 26 percent of those polled believed that it had been stolen for Barack Obama by ACORN, even though there wasn't evidence of a single fraudulent vote actually being cast as a result of a few registration workers boosting their paychecks by signing up nonexistent voters. (No, Mickey Mouse did not try to vote, something you probably won't learn from listening to Rush Limbaugh.)

During the health care debate, when polled as to what kind of reform bill should pass, 26 percent of respondents told a CBS poll "no bill at all."

Note well: We aren't talking about people who simply don't agree with the administration. That figure is, of course, higher than 27 percent. We're talking about people who do so for reasons that are completely and incurably crazy, people wedded to "facts" that simply aren't true and opinions with no support in reality.

They're immune to persuasion. They're aided by right-wing media outlets that reject the idea of objective facts and objective proof; any evidence you care to provide that does not fit their narrative is, to them, the product of "bias" or an "agenda," no matter how unimpeachable the source. That's one of the hallmarks of true delusional thinking: It's immune to reality, and so are the 27 percenters.

So what can you do? Well, if you're one of those people who roll their eyes at the idea that President Obama is going to send federal agents to check on your light bulbs, or who shake your heads in disbelief when people, after all this time, still put up billboards and bumper stickers asking "Where's the Birth Certificate?" - then you need to get out and vote.

Because the crazies surely will.

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"Every bit as good at writing legal thrillers as Michael Connelly, you will not be disappointed by reading any of JD Rhoades' novels." -Reader review by "Jenni". 
"His characters are full and deep and real." -S. Malley 

"Your client being found in the presence of a dead body is widely regarded as a bad thing among the defense bar."- Andy Cole 


Andy Cole has a problem. Local crime boss Voit Fairgreen has just dropped a bag full of cash on his desk and hired him to defend Voit's brother Danny on a murder charge. Andy's one of the movers and shakers in the small southern town of Blainesville, and Voit figures Andy's the kind of inside guy that can cut a deal to get his baby brother out of the jam. 


The problem is that Danny just might be innocent. But someone powerful needs this case buried, and if an innocent man dies for that, so be it. 


Andy Cole is a guy who's made a good living by going along to get along. He's been willing to bend every rule, except Rule One--always get paid. But this case will cause him to re-examine his life and push him and his lover, beautiful newspaper editor Elizabeth Sinclair, to risk everything--including their lives-- for the truth. 

Only In Wingnuttia: "Forward" Is Now A Suspicious Word

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F orward. It seems like such a nice, positive word. We call someone with foresight "forward-thinking." When you repay a good deed done for you by doing a similar favor for someone else, we call that "paying it forward." When traveling, moving forward is a good thing. So you'd think no one could have a problem with an upbeat word like "forward."You'd think so, but you'd be wrong. Because in the dark and scary thicket of paranoia that is the right-wing mind, there is no word that cannot be turned into something fraught with secret and sinister meaning, especially when that word is used by or on behalf of the man they regard as the embodiment of pure evil, President Barack Obama.So when the Obama campaign revealed that its slogan for 2012 was, simply, "Forward," the reaction was predictable.See, the right wing realizes that the president is a better campaigner than their guy, Lord Mitt "Etch a Sketch" Romney. Obama's more natural, is a better speaker, and connects better with people than Mitt, who often seems like an alien trying to get the hang of acting like a human being.So they're going to gripe and whine and complain whenever the president campaigns at all, as if it's somehow unseemly of him not to graciously step aside and let their guy win by default. Every campaign speech will be denounced as "divisive" regardless of content. Every appearance will draw howls of outrage over the cost of transportation and security. Every commercial is going to be treated like some sort of affront to the very idea of democracy.Their reaction to the slogan is no different, and neither is their usual scattershot, muddled and generally crack-brained reaction to it."Communist leaders frequently used - and still use - the word 'forward," blogger Joel Pollak of Breitbart.com pointed out. The word "has a long and rich history with European Marxism," said The Washington Times.On the other hand, Jim Hoft of Gateway Pundit, who can be reliably counted on to exceed your wildest dreams of sheer lunacy, claimed that "Forward" had been a "marching song of the Hitler Youth" and emphasized the point by posting a picture of marching Nazis wearing Obama pins so that his dumber readers (which is to say, all of them) wouldn't miss the point.So let me get this straight. By using one common English word, the president demonstrates that he's both a communist and a fascist, even though those two ideologies spent a big chunk of the 20th century at each other's throats.It's too bad they couldn't have come up with some quote from the Quran that uses the word "forward" so they could claim the wingnut trifecta, in which the raging right insists that Obama is a fascist, a Godless communist, and a fanatical Muslim jihadist all at the same time.But wait! It seems that "Forward" also is the state motto of Wisconsin, whose current governor is right-wing union-busting hero Scott Walker, at least for the time being. Does this mean that Walker is a fascist or a communist, or both, for not immediately having the slogan changed?I read that the slogan hung on banners at Richard Nixon's 1969 inauguration was "Forward Together." So maybe Nixon was a Marxist, too. Sort of throws the whole China trip into a whole new light, doesn't it?George Bush the Elder's 1987 campaign autobiography was called "Looking Forward." Before that, even St. Ronnie Reagan titled a famous speech in 1986 "Forward to Freedom."OMG, as the kids say on the Internet! The entire Republican Party has, for years, been riddled with Marxists! Or fascists! Or something.Mitt Romney, on the other hand, started his campaign with the slogan "Believe in America." If that sounds familiar, it's because it's been used before, by Democrat John Kerry.Which makes sense, since Romney is the John Kerry of the Republican party: a rich, entitled Massachusetts moderate trying to convince his party's skeptical base he's one of them, despite having once supported the thing that base purports to despise most (the Iraq War in Kerry's case, the individual mandate in Romney's). Both are running against a controversial incumbent on a platform that amounts to "I'm Not Him." And we all know how that turned out.Romney would be well advised to drop a slogan with such negative historical baggage for something more appropriate to him. Like "Backward." After all, that's where he and his party want to take us.

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"The book reads as though Stephen Hunter wrote an episode of Justified"- Dana King

"Rhoades slaps this supercharged crime-fiction debut into overdrive in the first paragraph and never lets up through nearly 300 pages of non-stop action."--Booklist (starred review)


"A fine example of redneck noir. Nicely crafted…if you hail from certain dark corners of the sunny South, it's the next best thing to a trip home."--Washington Post


"Enjoyable…Rhoades seems to have observed and remembered all the seedy details of life outside the centers of urban and suburban life as we know it. Nobody could totally invent this stuff."--Chicago Tribune


"The Devil's Right Hand blasts right out of the chute and keeps up the pace until the final paragraph. Steeped in Southern sense of place, the reader can feel the heat and humidity and smell the cordite hanging in the air. J.D. Rhoades writes action as well as anybody in the business, and bail bondsman Jack Keller is a winner."--C.J. Box, author of Trophy Hunt 


"Spare, tense and violent, this is a debut that will turn other writers green with envy. Jack Keller is a sure-fire star of the new generation of hard-boiled heroes."--Stephen Booth, author of Blind to the Bones


"Riveting as the rack of a sawn-off shotgun, The Devil's Right Hand is a novel of pace and power, locked and loaded from the start. Bail enforcer Jack Keller, a damaged gulf war veteran, moves the heart in unexpected ways. Keller's quarry Raymond, a drug dealer bent on revenge, pledges 'no more water, but the fire next time'--and it's the fire we get on almost every page of a book that is positively aflame with action. Let's hope that J.D. Rhoades and Jack Keller are due to deliver more of the fire and soon."--Ken Bruen, author of The Guards

Your Weird Vacation Guide 2012

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Since we have a primary coming up, along with a hotly debated referendum on the so-called "Amendment One," the powers-that-be here at The Pilot generally ask us pixel-stained wretches to steer clear of "blatant electioneering," whatever that is, on the last Sunday before the election.

So, since we're taking a momentary vacation from politics, and since the warmer weather so often causes the collective fancy to lightly turn to thoughts of putting on the Ray-Bans and getting the heck out of Dodge for a few days, this would seem an opportune time for our annual look at wild, wacky, and downright weird vacation spots. Such as:

*Gnome Countryside, in Pennsylvania, bills itself as "a breathtaking paradise and gnome biome nestled in the rolling hills of Amish farmland in southern Lancaster County." I'm not sure exactly what a "gnome biome" is, but I can tell you it's loads of fun to say. Try it. The place appears to be run by one Richard Humphreys, who looks like he could be Wilford Brimley's younger, much fitter brother, and who wears (according to his photo on the website) short britches, suspenders and a Sherpa hat.

Perhaps Mr. Humphreys thinks this is how gnomes dress, because there's one thing I can tell you, this dude loves him some gnomes. Your 10 bucks a head buys you a three-hour nature walk, beginning, of course, in the "Gnomery," and winding its way past the "Labyrinth of Gratitude," a waterfall dubbed the "Gnome Gniagra," and the terrifying "Valley of the Shadows of Litter," while Mr. Humphreys talks about nature, environmentalism and, of course, gnomes. True, it sounds a little weird, but also kind of sweet. If I'm ever up that way, I may check it out myself. But if he wears that hat, I'm going to bust out laughing.

*On a long road trip, do you ever turn to your spouse and go, "Honey, you know what I could really go for right now? A game of tic-tac-toe with a live chicken"? Me neither. But if that's your thing, then Rockome Gardens, a few hours south of Chicago, is the place for you.

Like Gnome Countryside, Rockome Gardens is located in Amish country, but this Amish country is in Illinois. (For people who don't use cars, those Amish sure do get around.) Built around a set of decorative rock gardens built during the Depression by a manufacturer who decided to put his idled employees to work building stuff for him rather than lay them off, Rockome Gardens also features museums, shops and a restaurant. But I suspect it's the tic-tac-toe-playing chicken that's the big draw.

*When Georgian Howard Finster was 60 years old, he looked at a paint smudge on his finger, saw a human face, and heard the voice of God telling him "make sacred art." Not being one to argue with the Almighty, Howard proceeded to do just that. He created what critics call "outsider art": sculptures, paintings, and what-have-you by unschooled and untrained artists, works that often tread the fine line between the divinely inspired and the completely loopy. Finster created more than 48,000 works that ended up in places that ranged from the Library of Congress to videos by the rock band R.E.M. But many of them stayed in his four-acre yard, which he dubbed "Paradise Garden." People came from all over to get married in his "Folk Art Church," which he built by hand to resemble a wedding cake.

When Howard died, the place fell into disrepair. But in 2010, the state of Georgia marked it as a landmark worthy of preservation, and in 2012, it was finally placed on the National Register of Historic Places and opened to the public. Now you can see the "Bicycle Tower" where R.E.M.'s "Radio Free Europe" video was filmed, as well as many other pieces of Finster's art.
What you do not get to see, alas, is Howard himself. Despite his wishes to be placed in a casket he built by hand and set up in the chapel (next to a statue of a Coke bottle), his relatives buried him in the local churchyard, then moved him a few years later to a graveyard in Alabama. Some people just lack vision, I guess.

Gnomes, tic-tac-toe-playing chickens, and coffins of eccentric and possibly insane artists - is this a great country or what? Hope you get to get out and see some of it this summer.

Now, THIS Is The Way To Respond To a Bad Review

One Goat, on AccountTo the Editor:I had the great pleasure of reading your unsolicited critique of the "Ch-Check It Out" music video ["Licensed to Stand Still" by Stephanie Zacharek, May 16]. It took some time to get to me, as it had to be curried (sp?) on goatback through the fjords of my homeland, the Oppenzell. And in the process the goat died, and then I had to give the mailman one of my goats, so remember, you owe me a goat.Anyway, that video is big time good. Pauline Kael is spinning over in her grave. My film technique is clearly too advanced for your small way of looking at it. Someday you will be yelling out to the streets below your windows: "He is the chancellor of all the big ones! I love his genius! I am the most his close personal friend!"You journalists are ever lying. I remember people like you laughing at me at the university, and now they are all eating off of my feet. You make this same unkind laughter at the Jerry Lewis for his Das Verruckte Professor and now look, he is respected as a French-clown. And you so-call New York Times smarties are giving love to the U2 because they are dressing as the Amish and singing songs about America? (Must I dress as the Leprechaun to sing songs about Ireland so that you will love me? You know the point I make here is true!)In concluding, "Ch-Check It Out" is the always best music film and you will be realizing this too far passing. As ever I now wrap my dead goat carcass in the soiled New York Times — and you are not forgetting to buy me a replacement! Please send that one more goat to me now!NATHANIAL HORNBLOWERManhattanThe writer, whose real name is Adam Yauch, is a member of the Beastie Boys. He directs their music videos under the pseudonym Nathanial Hornblower.
R.I.P. Mr. Yauch. You were one fun guy.