There is no demographic group in the nation, among all the racial and ethnic affiliations, which ever features nudity, half-nudity and simulated sex acts in their parades. -- Catholic League President Bill Donahue on gay people

Dear Mr. Donahue:

Here's footage of Brooklyn's West Indian American Parade:



Next time you speak publicly, please generalize about all black people from it.

Thanks very much,
RomanHans

The Wall Street Journal: When In Doubt, Lie

Peggy Noonan has an impeccable resume. She's written eight books on religion and morality, served as special assistant to Ronald Reagan, and now writes for numerous publications including the Wall Street Journal. When she writes, people listen.

What does Peggy think is the greatest threat facing America today? Take a wild guess:

(1) The economy
(2) Global warming
(3) Terrorism
(4) Adam Lambert

Well, it sounded hard before I wrote it down.

Peggy invents something called "The Adam Lambert Problem." And it's not what you'd think it is: putting on mascara while wearing a bondage jacket.

Sure, Americans are worried about long-term debt and endless deficits. We're worried about taxes and the burden we're bequeathing to our children, and their children.

But we are concerned about other things, too, and there are often signs in various polls that those things may dwarf economic concerns. Americans are worried about the core and character of the American nation, and about our culture.

I must know a ton of homeless people whose primary complaint is that clerks in stores today say "No problem!" instead of "You're welcome."

It is one thing to grouse that dreadful people who don't care about us control our economy, but another, and in a way more personal, thing to say that people who don't care about us control our culture. In 2009 this was perhaps most vividly expressed in the Adam Lambert Problem.

Sadly, Peggy didn't initiate a series a few years back:

2008: The George W. Bush/Dick Cheney Problem
2007: The George W. Bush/Dick Cheney Problem
2006: The George W. Bush/Dick Cheney Problem
2005: The George W. Bush/Dick Cheney Problem
2004: The George W. Bush/Dick Cheney Problem
2003: The George W. Bush/Dick Cheney Problem
2002: The George W. Bush/Dick Cheney Problem
2001: The George W. Bush/Dick Cheney Problem

[T]he big broadcast networks are for everyone. . . . The whole family's watching. Higher, stricter standards must maintain. . . . This was behind the resentment at the Adam Lambert incident on ABC in November. The compromise was breached. It was a broadcast network, it was prime time, it was the American Music Awards featuring singers your 11-year-old wants to see, and your 8-year-old. And Mr. Lambert came on and -- again, in front of your children, in the living room, in the middle of your peaceful evening -- uncorked an act in which he . . . performed "faux oral sex" featuring "S&M play," "bondage gear," "same-sex makeouts" and "walking a man and woman around the stage on a leash."

The Adam Lambert Problem fades next to the Peggy Noonan one: lying. Since when is 10:55 p.m. "prime time"? And unless that 8-year-old is still partying at 3 a.m., it's not the "middle" of her evening.

People were offended, and they complained. Mr. Lambert seemed surprised and puzzled. With an idiot's logic that was nonetheless logic, he suggested he was the focus of bigotry: They let women act perverse on TV all the time, so why can't a gay man do it? Fifteen hundred callers didn't see it as he did and complained to ABC, which was negligent but in the end responsive: They changed the West Coast feed and apparently kept Mr. Lambert off "Good Morning America."

"Apparently"? What, did you run to the bathroom while it was on and suspect that secretly he might have turned up? That, class, is how the right wing uses bullshit words when they don't have actual arguments.

Needless to say, Ms. Noonan doesn't address Mr. Lambert's question, and doesn't explain why it took a gay male to get her to write this up. As for idiot's logic, I don't see how people complaining affects a fact. I know half a million women who hate gravity but my furniture hasn't started flying yet.

Mr. Lambert's act left viewers feeling not just offended but assaulted. Again, "we don't care what you do in New York," but don't include us in it, don't bring it into our homes. Our children are here.

And you can't stop them from watching a music awards program at eleven at night? See if you can convince them to tune into Super Nanny for a week or two.

[I]ncreasingly people feel at the mercy of the Adam Lamberts, who of course view themselves, when criticized, as victims of prudery and closed-mindedness. America is not prudish or closed-minded, it is exhausted. It cannot be exaggerated, how much Americans feel besieged by the culture of their own country, and to what lengths they have to go to protect their children from it.

Why, sometimes they have to reach over to the remote and actually hit a button.

And "the" Adam Lamberts? How many, exactly, have there been? On the other hand, I can name eighty Pinks.

It's things like this, every bit as much as taxes and spending, that leave people feeling jarred and dismayed, and worried about the future of their country. . . . I'd like to see a poll on this. Yes or no: Have we become a more vulgar country? . . . Do you sense, as you look around you, that each year we have less or more of the glue that holds a great nation together?

Do you think our government torturing people who weren't convicted of any crime played a part in this?

Is there something called the American Character, and do you think it has, the past half-century, improved or degenerated?

If the latter, do you think George W. and his cronies make Adam Lambert look Bush league?

Do you think standards of public behavior are rising or falling?

Did Ronald and Nancy Reagan's daughter being born exactly 7 1/2 months after their wedding affect this opinion at all?

So much always roils us in America, and so much always will. But maybe as 2010 begins and the '00s recede, we should think more about the noneconomic issues that leave us uneasy, and that need our attention. Not everything in America comes down to money.

Okay, babe. You convinced me.

Let's talk about marriage, and equal rights.

The Free Republic people seem awfully squeamish for foil-helmeted nut jobs. I registered at their site and posted a simple comment in the Folsom Street Fair thread.

"Come to my website and tell me your thoughts about another parade," I said. In retrospect, though, maybe I shouldn't have added "so I can narrow down exactly down kind of crazy you are." Still, it didn't hold a candle to such pithy bon mots as "San Fagcisco," "San Fransicko," and "San Fags4!tscum," which looks less like an intelligent thought than evidence that somebody's Ripple bottle rolled across their keyboard.

I waited for the comment to clear the moderator, then went back to their website and found this:


Sigh; as usual, I like them even more now that they've had the sense to throw me out. They scream and holler and piss and moan and don't worry for a second about making sense. Freedom! To agree with all of us!

Dudes, that was short but sweet. I honestly wish you well in your political endeavors, if only because I'd love to see an American Constitution with more fine print and asterisks than a Shoot the Monkey & Win an Ipod! ad.

A Soap Opera Time Line

1973: All My Children: Fertility doctor Greg Madden takes Erica Cane's fetus and implants it into his own wife.

1991: The Young and the Restless: David Kimble tells his plastic surgeon to make him look like David Hasselhoff, but instead the doctor carves the word KILLER! into his forehead.

1995: Days of Our Lives: Satanic possession turns Marlena into a panther.

1998: Guiding Light: Michael clones Reva, fearing she is dead, but she isn't -- and she takes her clone hostage!

2002: Passions: The witch Tabitha animates her doll Timmy, then Angel Girl turns him into an actual boy.

2009: One Life to Live: Patricia Mauceri refuses to play an "unbelievable" scene where her character, a Latina mother, is gay-supportive.

Discovery #1: If you try to save water by eating all your meals in restaurants, people may say you're mentally impaired.

Discovery #2: If you proudly declare that you always buy green cleaning products -- but let your maid buy whatever she wants -- people might call you an idiot.

Discovery #3: If you proclaim that driving a car is bad for the environment so you start taking taxis wherever you need to go, people will call you a hypocrite.

Well, the blitz is beginning. The book comes out this week, followed by the movie. Honestly, this dude's hurt our cause more than helped it. He says "guilty liberal," but in reality he means "idiot." He'd have helped our side more if he'd bitchslapped a pregnant panhandler and then wrote a book called My Life As A Plain Old Right-Wing Conservative.

This post is a pointless whine. Don't bother reading unless you've found it by Googling "Time Warner Cable" AND sucks OR "Your call is like a gnat's buzz to us."

On Tuesday I got my cable bill and was surprised to see it was past due. Not because I'm prompt about paying my bills, but because it's on auto-pay. Months ago I gave them a credit card number, and they've been charging it ever since. Until this month, apparently.

I called customer service -- in the future when I mention calling Time Warner Cable (NYSE: TWC), just assume it took twenty minutes and eighteen repetitions of Pachelbel's Canon before I got connected to a person -- and they told me they tried to charge my card on August 17, but it was rejected as expired. My fault! I asked the man how, if the payment was due on August 17, I could be thirty days past due on August 27, but he launched into some explanation that included August 7 and September 7 and December 7, a day that will live in infamy. Couldn't make heads or tails of it, so I thanked the guy and went online to fix my credit card.

Which, I discovered, expires in November, 2011.

I called Chase, and they assured me the card was fine. And nobody'd tried to charge anything.

Over the next two hours I spoke to nearly everyone at Time Warner and heard Pachelbel's Canon 1,274 times. Leticia, Paulina, and the supervisor Shahida might as well have been speaking Klingon for all the sense they made, but a few points were crystal clear: The Chase credit card people were liars, my bill was thirty days past due, and I had to do three things immediately to fix it:

1. Make a one-time payment to catch up and avoid a late charge.
2. Cancel the automatic payment on the expired card.
3. Sign up for automatic payment on a working card.

Now, one of my bad qualities is that I want things to make sense before I blindly follow along. I asked Shahida to connect me with her supervisor. She said he was busy, but he'd call back before seven. I should stay off the phone and wait for his call.

This was at noon.

Seven came and went, and yesterday morning when I called Time Warner they said Shahida's supervisor had tried to call at 7:16 but my line was busy.

Because, you know, at seven I started making all the phone calls I'd put off during the day.

Jennifer said all the supervisors were busy, but she'd have one call me back. Is there a time period when I can expect this call? I asked.

"We don't give callbacks after seven," she said.

With, you know, a straight face.

"But yesterday I got a callback after seven," I replied.

"A few minutes after," she snapped, like I was the Chronology Police.

Anyway, I said fine, because I don't have to think people are intelligent to agree with them. And, believe it or not, a supervisor called me back ten minutes later. He was smart and sensible and gave me a believable explanation. I won't use his name so Time Warner can't fire him for violating company policy.

Just about everything I'd been told the previous day had been a lie. See, Time Warner Cable outsourced its automatic billing to the CyberSource Corporation (NASDAQ:CYBS). Unfortunately, CyberSource had a small flaw in their software: they frequently charged expired credit cards. They wrote a fix and installed the upgrade, but it too had a tiny flaw.

It kicked out most of the valid credit cards.

Oops!

Mr. X also explained the past-due story. My billing cycle starts on the 7th of every month, and on that date the payment is due. Automatic payments are taken out on the 17th. How could I be thirty days past due on August 27? Because that wasn't an August 27 bill that was dated August 27 that I received on August 30. That was a bill for the September 7 cycle. And on September 7, I'd be thirty days past due.

Voila!

I felt like a 21st century Hercule Poirot, finally discovering the truth. Time Warner never tried to charge my credit card. When they automatically charge cards, they're allegedly ten days overdue, and their "30 days past due" notice is sent out two weeks in advance.

Yet they accuse credit card companies of incompetence.

But if I just go in and cancel the existing recurring billing, Mr. X said, and then restart it --

No, thanks. Had enough. Automatic payments are supposed to make life easier, not force me to spend two hours on the phone with bad classical music and idiots. I'll mail the checks in, thanks.

Because compared to the folks at the post office, these guys are totally incompetent.

Former Miss California Carrie Prejean is suing state pageant officials for libel, slander, and religious discrimination.

While the Miss California organization says Ms. Prejean was fired for missing scheduled appearances and making unauthorized ones, she claims that she was fired for espousing her religious beliefs, which many found offensive.

Actually, her main defense seems to be ignorance. As a professional spokesperson, she thought she was being paid by the word.

Protesting Donald Trump's decision to let a topless model keep the Miss California USA crown, Shanna Moakler resigned her position as the Miss California Pageant Director.

Hopefully uttering the words we've been longing to hear since the moneygrubbing Apprentice first made it hit American TV:

I quit, asshole.


Meanwhile, rumor has it there are some Carrie Prejean photos that are even racier than the ones where the wind supposedly blew her blouse open. Trump himself lended credence to this story by calling a press conference this afternoon and asking, "You know how you can eat a couple burritos and then fart your underwear off?"

THEN: Sure, some of the plot twists are a little puzzling, but don't worry -- there's a rational explanation. Years from now, when we wrap things up, it'll all make perfect sense.

NOW: See, the island has free will, and there's this company that makes giant polar bears, and all these people jump back and forth in time. . . .

Well, I just got a nice note from Carrie Prejean, the disgraced Miss California USA. She realizes she's made some mistakes, but she thinks if the gay community really knew her then they wouldn't be quite as mad. So, as a one-shot deal, I'm turning the website over to her.

Hi guys! My name is Carrie Michelle Prejean and I'd like to be your friend. Why don't I show you some pictures from my photo album so you can learn a little more about me?


Last year I volunteered at the Olympics. I was soooo surprised when they came to my hometown! Here I am trying to give these cute swimmers some moral support. I've got my tiniest suit on but they won't even look at me! Honestly, I think there's something wrong with them.


Here I am with a few members of my church. We're trying to explain to Perez Hilton that we're just following the Word of God, is all. Left to right that's me, Hortensia and Bathsheba. Hortensia never smiles, even though her husband Ezekiel is a nice-looking guy.

I keep trying to convince them to get implants but I can't even get Bathsheba to pluck that unibrow.

By the way, I usually wear a bit more than this to church, but my halter top was at the dry cleaners.


Last but not least, here's my congregation building a house for a poor heterosexual family. I know Jesus wants me in the kitchen with the womenfolk, but I'm not happy unless I'm with the guys.

I'd be working a little harder but my star keeps slipping off.

C'mon, Hosea! Keep on pounding. C'mon, Theophilus! Slap up that drywall. Hey, Ezekiel -- let me grab that little screwdriver you got in your pocket!

Oops. Sorry.

I guess that's why Hortensia never smiles.

Anyway, thanks Roman! This is Carrie Michelle out. Sorry I called you an abomination, but that's Jesus talking, not me.