Item #1: A few years ago, Rolling Stone magazine ran a series of brilliant ads in other trade publications, to educate potential advertisers as to who really reads Rolling Stone. They were two-page spreads – on the left showed someone dressed as a classic, 1960’s-era hippie. The headline read “Perception.” On the following page the same guy was dressed in a Brooks Brothers 3-piece suit, with a briefcase. The headline on that page read “Reality.” The body copy stated some demographics for the magazine, pointing out that a majority of their readers were affluent and held real jobs.
Item #2: My daddy used to impart a number of pearls of wisdom to me, two of which were “you can’t throw mud without getting some on you,” and “the guilty dog barks first.”
Keep these items in mind as I share with you some bon mots from the campaign trail… [Read more…] about Bias, with a side of mud.
As a reader of this blog, you know that I come at things from a conservative point of view. Note that I didn’t claim a Republican point of view, as the GOP has managed to largely divest itself of the Conservative position over the last eight years or so. I long for a leader that will bring back the principled convictions and decisive action of Ronald Reagan. I think I’ve found such a leader. And it has the left positively apoplectic. I’m loathe to quote Al “I invented the Internet, and the Global Warming ScareFest, too!” Gore, but he did say something quite revealing (or at least it’s been attributed to him – you can never really tell with a liberal if it’s a real quote, or just more plagiarism): 
When I was a kid, my father (who had turned pro at the age of four, and literally grew up in show business) used to tell me that the biggest stars (or at least the ones who’d been in the business the longest) were the nicest people. He attributed this to the fact that “you meet the same people on the way down as you do going up,” and therefore the successful artists were the ones who were nice to everybody, and made few enemies on the way up. I’ve seen that hold true in my own experience. I’m not talking about the “overnight success” types – poptarts like Britney Spears. I’m referring to people that start in the business when they’re young, usually with either a parent (or two) in the business, or a mentor that has years of show business experience. These are the people that, regardless of their fame or fortune, remain “real” – genuinely nice people, who treat everyone well, without regard to who they are or how they can benefit from a kindness. I recently had the privilege to exchange a couple of emails with one such person, and I’d like to tell you about it. 
Giving young actors a budget of a couple of million dollars and telling them to go make a movie is a lot like giving a four-year-old a pair of scissors and telling them to practice those naiscent running skills…the results are not gonna be pretty. Allowing some actors a budget to make the political equivalent of potty jokes (in one case, quite litterally) is just completely irresponsible.
It’s been seven years. As we approach the anniversary of 9/11, that’s the first thing that sticks in my head. I can’t believe it’s been seven years. Back when we ushered in the new millennium, I really thought that the most momentous milestone in time that I’d live through would be the change from the 20th century to the 21st. Turns out, I was wrong. We don’t really measure time today as in “before the millennium” and “after the millennium.” We live in a post-9/11 world, and long for the way things used to be, before that fateful day in September. 
I’ve always loved to read. It’s relaxing. I read a lot – mostly tech books, but I try to read some recreationally, both to relax and to expand my horizons. I was watching Glenn Beck on Headline News a couple of weeks ago, and he had author Andrew Klavan on, pitching his latest, Empire of Lies. Sounded interesting, so I filed it away to a slot on my list of “books I want to read.” This past week, I thought about the book, but had a hard time remembering the name or the author. It finally dawned on me that I could use Amazon’s “if you like this book you might also like” feature to find it. Sure enough, I was able to remember the general look of the cover. I’m not always into instant gratification, but for some reason, I really wanted to read this, and I had some time on my hands, so… 