Pun Salad

• Sunday brought forth an LATimes op-ed column from one Michael Skube criticizing bloggers, and lionizing "old-fashioned gumshoe reporting." Later that same day, one of the bloggers specifically mentioned in the op-ed, Josh Marshall, contacted the author to object and out came the author's admission that he had never actually read Marshall's blog. Comments Marshall:

  … it seems Skube's editor at the Times oped page didn't think he had enough specific examples in his article decrying our culture of free-wheeling assertion bereft of factual backing. Or perhaps any examples. So the editor came up with a few blogs to mention and Skube signed off. And Skube was happy to sign off on the addition even though he didn't know anything about them.

  Is that irony? I can never tell. [Via Prof Althouse. Another blogger mentioned, Matthew Yglesias, offers additional corrections and advice.]

• My employer (the University of New Hampshire) is held up for ridicule at Phi Beta Cons. Probably deserved. At the same blog, David French weighs in—heh—with his previous experience with UNH.

• Your tax dollars at work rescuing America's Subways from consequences of terrorist attacks. Also, America's Dunkin' Donuts.

• Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders bills himself as a "democratic socialist." A perspicacious editorial writer at the St. Johnsbury VT Caledonian-Record notices just what that means when he examined the clientele at a recent "listening session" held by Senator Sanders:

  Presumably, Sen. Sanders intends to listen to the people he has professed to represent since he became an office holder - the dispossessed, the disenfranchised, the poor and low income people, blue collar people, generally, who aren't heard and don't understand the machinations of capitalists. The trouble with Tuesday's gathering was that there wasn't a poor person, or a dispossessed person, or a dirt farmer, or a frayed blue collar worker within a mile of the place. Who was there? The president of Jay Peak Resort, the mayor of Newport, state senators and representatives, selectmen from several towns, and many representatives of and from agencies that live off federal tax dollars.

  … all with their hands out for more, of course.

I'm in agreement with the general consensus that The Simpsons was a great TV show in its first few seasons, then underwent a long decline into its current painful-to-watch state. But, based on the fond memory of those early days, we traipsed off to our local cardboard-box movie theatre to check it out before it vanished.

My expectations were low, and I was mostly pleasantly surprised. Many chuckles, and a few laughs, all the way through. Fans will see just about all the characters from the series, although many just have brief cameos. The overall feel is also the same as the TV show: the plot bounces from one random occurrance to the next, until it settles on one: Homer causing an ecological catastrophe, prompting the a power-mad EPA lunatic to drop a huge plastic dome over Springfield. Just another typical adventure for the Simpsons.

I was especially tickled by Homer holding his new pig (don't ask) upside-down on his living room ceiling, singing to the tune of the Spider-Man theme:

Spider-Pig, Spider-Pig.
Does whatever a Spider-Pig does.
Can he swing
From a web?
No he can't
Cause he's a pig.
Look out
He is the Spider-Pig

But as I type, it's number 239 on IMDB's top 250 movies of all time. Please.