After my first flight, I get stalled in Minneapolis, as of course the connecting flight has been delayed. Once I got the news, I roamed around the terminal to find that Fox News has a freakin’ store here. They had nice postcards, but I’m not going to buy postcards at a Fox News venue. But then, perhaps I should have, as the extra revenue might work towards making it possible for actual researchers to find facts on which to base their claims. Significantly, the store was within 100 feet or so of the restroom made world famous by that Idaho senator, Mr. Tappy McWidestance (I wish I could claim credit for the nickname, but other bloggers have used it before me). While looking at the wares (in the Fox News store, not the restroom), I found that the illustrious Glenn Beck has a book out. this surprised me, as Mr. Beck has been a standout in exulting in his own stupidity on almost every subject and acting snidely toward intellectuality, sounding all the while like a third grader. It was on the same table as Keith Olbermann’s new book. Over the course of the past 5 years or so I’ve noticed that those who most vocally identify themselves with the Neo-Conservative faction have particular disdain for literateness. Purdue, for some reason, has a more conservative newspaper, the Purdue Review, filled with enough Fox News/DickCheney/O’Reilly parroting to satisfy those who have a hatred of all things liberal, and filled otherwise with enough grammatical hilarity, misspellings, and misinformation (most of you may be unaware that AnnaNicole Smith died of pneumonia this year) to keep actually-intelligent folks howling in their grad offices. Their arguments are frothy, with holes you could drive a Hummer through. I looked at Beck’s book and wondered if he actually wrote it. The cover seemed to credit him as the writer. How much, I thought, does it cost to buy off ghost-writers? Surely if there were other people involved, the book would haveto acknowledge it. What furthered my suspicion was the title page. Sure enough, Beck is shown there to be a co-editor, and the book is written by at least three other people (the publishing info inside the title page even went so far as to put “et. al.” after the other authors). I looked then at Olbermann’s book. Olbermann’s book was written by…Olbermann. Perhaps having the brains to write his own book is considered by Beck to be too snobbish and elitist. After all, the Liberals think themselves better than even the most compassionate of conservatives. Ann Coulter (whose books were noticeably absent even in the Fox News store) may actually write her own books, but her argument gets subsumed by her stupidly inflammatory language. But that is another discussion for another day.
I arrived at Seattle over three hours late, the bus was packed in ways only those who have been in the Moscow or Tokyo subways during rush hour can imagine. It is dark and raining heavily. Pez's directions were quite helpful and soon I was in a seat at the Jolly Roger with a much-appreciated beer. Much appreciated.
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