Pun Salad

Well, not really "du jour". More like, "over the past few days." But they're good, I promise.

• At Cato, Jason Bedrick sums up a recent GAO report that checked up on the performance of Your Federal Government as it sought to bring the bright socialist future to school lunch programs.

  In other words, the so-called “Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act” actually resulted in some kids being served less healthy food while other kids went hungry.

  Fearless prediction: this experience will not teach the "reality based" community anything.

• Kevin D. Williamson notices something about left-wing Jon Stewart fanboys (but I repeat myself):
  Here is a selection of recent headlines: “Jon Stewart Destroys Megyn Kelly,” “Jon Stewart Destroys Fox News’ ‘Spite-Driven Anger Machine,’” “Jon Stewart Destroys What’s Left of Peggy Noonan’s Credibility,” “Jon Stewart Destroys Fox News Over Syria Coverage,” “Jon Stewart Destroys Glenn Beck’s Utopia,” “Jon Stewart Destroys Bill O’Reilly” — there are about 520,000 more — and, not to be missed, “Jon Stewart Destroys Chicago-Style Pizza.”

  The sound of terrors is in his ears at 11 p.m. on Comedy Central, and in prosperity the destroyer cometh upon him.

  The left is out of ideas; all that remains is cheap ridicule and phony laffs. And fantasizing that you've "destroyed" someone thereby.

• Have you heard of the new effort to expunge the adjective "bossy" from our vocabulary? At least when we're applying it to females? Treacher says all that needs to be said:

  Facebook CEO Sheryl Sandberg clearly doesn’t understand how thoroughly she’s undermining her own premise. She was called “bossy” as a kid, and it motivated her to become rich and powerful enough to start a media campaign to tell other people what they should and shouldn’t say. Um… hello? So it worked!

• I will quote a post from Viking Pundit nearly in its entirety. First, the NPR puzzle:

  Take the first name of a nominee for Best Actor or Best Actress at Sunday's Oscars. You can rearrange these letters into a two-word phrase that describes his or her character in the film for which he or she is nominated. Who is this star, and what is the phrase?

  VP's answer:

  Of course the actor is Christian Bale and in "American Hustle" he was not a chair. "Isn't chair." Boom.

  I laughed more at Ellen Degeneres, but not much more. (You can click over for the "official" answer, which is kind of lame.)

• As I type, Arthur Chu is piling up the cash on Jeopardy!; he's incredibly knowledgeable and relentless about stomping his opponents into the ground. Some people find him off-putting, which is sad. (There's some racial animosity too.) All is covered in his interview with Ken Jennings.
  [Ken:] I remember being surprised at how wounded I got with random drive-by Internet abuse when I was on Jeopardy!. Like, it shouldn’t hurt to have StewieGriffinFan46 say “This guy on Jeopardy IS THE WORST”…but somehow it does.

  [Arthur:] It’s natural and human to care what other people think about you. If I’d not been playing for enormously high stakes on Jeopardy! my natural instincts to try to be nice and make a good impression probably would’ve taken over, I’d've been shy and reticent and afraid to speak up, and as a result I would’ve lost horribly in my first game. As it was a ton of my “training” was just getting myself into the head-space where winning the game and taking home lots of money mattered more to me than what people might think seeing me on TV.

  He's not supposed to reveal any details about shows that haven't aired yet. But from the interview, it sounds as if he finally lost. Hard to believe.

• Durham, New Hampshire's own pro baseball player, Sam Fuld, is a fine athlete. But he's also a decent writer, and you could do worse than to catch his review of John Feinstein's new book about minor-league baseball, Where Nobody Knows Your Name.

  Sam is in the Oakland A's organization this year, and I'm pulling for him. (Unless he's in the lineup against the Red Sox, sorry Sam.)

  The article is behind the WSJ paywall, but you can probably pierce it via the Google.