Freud Strikes Again
Mood:  incredulous
So last night on Fox News Watch, host Eric Burns was reading viewer letters to his guests and audience and made a comment that forced me to do a double take. One man had sent a letter pasted with pictures of the guests: Jim Pinkerton, Cal Thomas, Neal Gabler, and Jane Hall. Oddly, there were three large pictures of Jane Hall and one small picture of each of the men. The writer said this was because Hall was "The Halle Berry for the 45-and-older set."

Everyone laughed, and in the background one of the men (I think it was Thomas) mock-whined about how small his picture was. Burns said, as the camera turned to focus on him, "You don't even have a set!"

Um, what?

Did he just say that?

It wasn't just me. Both my parents were watching and had the same initial response: Eric Burns just told Jane Hall she wasn't "well-endowed" enough to be the Halle Berry for the over-45 crowd. Astonishing. I know it's Fox, but this is ridiculous.

Thank the powers that be for Tivo. After watching it about five times, we concluded that Burns (a) was actually talking to the male guest, not Jane, and (b) he meant "set" in the sense of "45-and-older set." But jeez. It was pretty ambiguous.

-T.

Ginger's Roots
The word gingerly seems to bear no etymological relation to the word ginger. The noun derives from a Sanskrit word meaning "horned body," due to the antlerlike shape of the root. The adverb "gingerly" most likely comes from Old French.

Donkeys in Arms
I suppose I missed the boat (naval pun not intended) in terms of covering the Democratic National Convention, so I'll just summarize the event. First of all, I'm appalled that the TV networks only broadcast an hour of the convention per night -- and on Tuesday, which I thought was chock-full of powerful speeches, nothing at all. Bill Maher writes a to-the-point opinion piece on this in Friday's L.A. Times. I was watching C-SPAN, which spared its audience (such as it was) no moment of the drawn-out formalities and buildup that take up much of the convention. As such, I got to watch speeches in their entirety without the droning of Wolf Blitzer, the full-spin-cycle of Fox, or the relentless unpleasantness of Chris Matthews.  Convention bashers are half-right in their assesment of the event as pure pagentry and preaching to the choir, but for undecided voters, every night of this convention had something to offer. Monday, of course, Bill Clinton delivered a much-anticipated speech, rife with "us vs. them" rhetoric but with a smile instead of venom. I can't believe the ridiculous insistence by some Republicans that the Clintons are hoping for a Bush victory to pave the way for Hillary's candidacy in '08. Clinton might have lost some sincerity points during his last term, but his belief in John Kerry rang true. Tuesday night, supossedly the "weak" night that networks ignored, was actually one of my favorites. We had Ted Kennedy, whose address was good if not stellar, and Howard Dean, who still holds a place in my heart and received a long, rousing opening cheer. Most of the night's hype surrounded the keynote speaker, Illinois State Senator Barack Obama, who was truly inspiring in his call to unite the United States. I was disappointed in how little attention was given to Teresa Heinz Kerry, who came across as witty, wordly, and warm. Everyone knows John Edwards is either a "smooth talker" or a "gifted speaker," depending on their political leanings. His Wednesday speech was strong, but he sounded tired, and there was very little new ground broken. But he and his family, who introduced him, are just so likeable. How can you not love and trust a guy with the charm and brains of Clinton minus the scandals? "Hope is on the way" indeed. And then there was Kerry. People say that the Democrats hate Bush, but nobody loves Kerry. Well, I'm nobody, but I love this man. He's not a comedian, but he's a thoughtful, heroic, determined intellectual, and he's even kind of cute in an Entish way. Anyway, he needed to nail the speech to convince voters he was, in fact, neither mineral nor vegetable, and he did. It was evident to me that the previous speakers (Al Sharpton not withstanding) had deliberately kept their Bushwhacking to a minimum to let Kerry do the heavy hitting. He delivered at a pleasantly quick pace lines such as "I will be a commander in chief who will never mislead us into war. I will have a vice president who will not conduct secret meetings with polluters to rewrite our environmental laws. I will have a secretary of Defense who will listen to the best advice of our military leaders. And I will appoint an attorney general who actually upholds the Constitution of the United States." Whoa there! Kerry was introduced by his articulate and personable daughters, a seamless biographical film, a host of veterans, and finally Max Cleland, whose touching and firey intro packed a true emotional whallop. Congratulations to the Dems for a job well done. Here are the Golden Donkey Awards for 2004: -Best Speaker: Barack Obama -Best Speech: John Kerry -Best Comeback from Unfair Press: Teresa Heinz Kerry: "My only hope is that one day soon, women, who have all earned the right to have their opinions, instead of being labeled opinionated, will be called smart or well-informed, just as men are." -Sportsmanship Award: (Tie) Al Gore and Howard Dean -Most in Need of Volume Control: Al Sharpton -Most Overused Rhetoric: Naval puns. -T.

Now come the days of the Blog.
And Trailhobbit said: Let there be Blog -- and lo! there was Blog. And Trailhobbit saw that it was good.

Mission (...quest...thing...) statement
Why does a 19-year-old, liberal, Tolkien-loving, nature-worshipping anthropology student need a blog? I am not especially well-informed or interesting. Nor am I particularly humorous, at least not intentionally. Nobody will learn anything from reading this blog. Actually, nobody will probably read this blog.

But I digress. I love writing, and my New Year's resolution was to write every day. This seems like a way to ensure that I write on a regular basis, even if what I'm writing seems incredibly irrelevant. We'll see how long it lasts.

- T.