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Sports journalism is often a pretty conservative field, especially when it comes to talk radio. Tank McNamara, the sports-themed comic strip — I say “the.” Maybe there’s another one, I dunno, but it’s the only one I know about. Anyhow. The current storyline is about Tank McNamara infiltrating the Minutemen, that charming anti-immigration group that’s walking the thin line between citizen activism and vigilante activity. Cause the biggest threat to the United States today is illegal Mexican immigration. ...

The Massachusetts Legislature rejected an amendment banning gay marriage by the resounding margin of 157-39 yesterday. The margin is partially because the extreme right voted no as well — the amendment would permit civil unions, and some of the reps think that’s wrong too. But it’s mostly because gay marriage hasn’t ended the world here in the Bay State. There’s been an election cycle between the court order allowing gay marriage and now, and gay marriage was an election issue. The opinion of the courts matches the opinion of the legislature, and the opinion of the legislature reflects the opinion of the people. Done and done, as they say.

Tacitus, when all is said and done, is honest. Do I disagree with him? Lots. Do I respect his integrity? Generally, yeah. He’s not perfect. Neither am I. Who is? The world needs more Republicans like him and John Cole, and more Democrats who can tell the difference between John Cole and John Derbyshire.

For my birthday, I got the amazing Kino Buster Keaton boxed set. 11 DVDs, 11 movies, 20 short features, and a ton of archival material. Much of yesterday was spent in front of the television basking in it. And lemme tell you, Keaton was one ironic fellow. The Playhouse has him playing every single role in a stage company, plus the audience, with as many as nine Keatons on screen at once. Being Buster Keaton, indeed.

Coyote says don’t be a dick. Are you gonna listen to him, or what? (Via felisdemens.)

Baen’s taken that final step over the edge; they’re now publishing a book which goes beyond right-wing military fiction to embrace the Patriot movement. A State of Disobedience, by Tom Kratman, opens with a gem of a screed: For the Republicans, however, the Democratic dream was a nightmare: thought control through linguistic control, micromanagement of the economy by those least suited to economic power, social engineering under the aegis of the most doctrinaire of the social engineers, disarmament of the population and the creation of a police state to rival that of Stalin or Hitler, at least in its scope if not by design in its evil. ...

House of Flying Daggers is the latest movie from Zhang Yimou, the guy who directed Hero. Depending on how much you counted on Zhang Yimou to keep making beautiful art movies, it’s either the final step in his commercialization or a slam-bang action movie without all that complex flashback stuff. Either way, those who complained about the politics of Hero will hopefully be relieved to find that House of Flying Daggers is light on the political subtext. ...

The ways in which this is not perfect are very few, very few indeed. P’raps my favorite thing is the comment back in the original post. “When I was really into Buffy I remember thinking everything in The Waste Land secretly applied — it’s good to know it can shift fandoms so well.” “Well, I was thinking that, more to the point, the poem doesn’t apply — the essence of the parody is in mapping possibly the most influential poem of the 20th century, with its World War themes and excessive literary references and multiple phrases in foreign languages, onto a children’s book series written by a woman who can’t even conjugate her pseudo-Latin…” ...

TiVo will be providing video on demand (original) soon. That’s cool; it’s another step in the process that leads to the question, “Why do we care about scheduled TV programs at all?” Doesn’t look like it’ll cost more than the usual subscription. That probably won’t last, though; the free stuff is from IFC, which needs to promote its programs. Someone like (say) HBO doesn’t need the same publicity — we already all know about The Sopranos. ...

You must condemn X. You must condemn Y. “Islam is proven evil by the failure of mainstream Islam to condemn terrorism.” (Never mind that this is untrue to begin with.) The problem is fairly obvious; the question is how to get ouf of the trap. How do we avoid falling into the belief that failure to condemn implies approval? Everyone does it.