Not a Day for Levity

Crankyjewishguy (CJG) had another post leavened with levity ready to go this morning, but he can't post it in light of yesterday's grim news out of Arizona. Sometimes what makes CJG cranky is too serious.

We don't know yet whether the shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was politically motivated or not, but regardless, we need to take a moment and think about the poison in our political discourse because there's been plenty of incitement out there and it's not coming equally, not by a long shot, from both sides of the political spectrum. There's been a lot of over-heated rhetoric in this country for the past few years, and it greatly intensified when President Obama was a candidate. His opponents in that race, Arizona's John McCain and the woman CJG won't name, tried strenuously to tie Obama to a 60's radical named Bill Ayers who they called a terrorist. The implication wasn't at all subtle and was even stated explicitly: Obama "pals around" with terrorists. What's the message there when the nation is waging a so-called "War on Terrorism?" Since his election, GOP leaders such as Newt Gingrich have tried to plant the idea that Obama isn't one of us saying that one can only understand Obama's world view through the lens of a Lao Tribesman of Kenya, a reference to Obama's father's tribe. A majority of Republicans, according to polls, believe Obama is a foriegn-born Muslim; a quarter think he's the Antichrist. That should take your breath away. Senate candidates like Sharon Angle and many congressional candidates hinted darkly at "Second Amendment remedies" if the "right" candidates weren't elected in November. And 24/7 FOX News throws garbage into the public discourse, most of it targeted at the President. Yeah, there's some overheated rhetoric on both sides but there is no rough equivalency here, none. It's like comparing the Empire State Building to a two-story condo in Van Nuys.

Now, yesterday, the former half-term governor of Alaska issued a statement about the shootings, one filled with sympathy for the victims and so forth. But take a good look at the poster below that her Political Action Committee produced before the 2010 mid-term elections, and note that one of those in the crosshairs is none other than Congresswoman Giffords (fourth name down in the first column). Now, CJG wants to be clear here. The shooter may never have seen this poster. It may have played no role in yesterday's tragedy. But is this really appropriate, especially from someone aspiring to be president? CJG hopes that somewhere today the former governor is feeling just a little bit of regret about this poster given what happened yesterday, maybe even regretful enough to come out and say it. When this poster first came out it was defended with words like, "no sane person is going to take this as an invitation to go hunting." But that's the problem. There are too many insane people out there and far too many of them have easy access to guns. This poster and similar rhetoric isn't going to be the tipping point for a sane person, but for any one of a large number of unbalanced people consuming this poison it might well be. CJG's point is that whether yesterday's shootings were politically motivated or not, we are playing with fire and the grownups need to tell the children to stop.

P.S. By the way, Congresswoman Giffords is the first Jewish woman to represent Arizona in Congress.

Mazel Tov, Miss Massachusetts!

A fan of crankyjewishguy's (CJG) in Tampa wrote him a couple of days ago to ask if he knew that a Jewish woman was in the running to be named the next Miss America this year, which would make her only the second Jewish Miss America in the 89-year history of The Miss America Pageant. (The first was Bess Myerson in 1945.) CJG knows a lot, though probably not as much as he thinks he does, and he didn't know this. So, naturally, despite a hugely demanding schedule, CJG spent the better part of a day getting up to speed.

The contestant is Loren Galler Rabinowitz, the reigning Miss Massachusetts. Since CJG lives in Massachusetts he is especially excited and if the Miss America Pageant conflicts with a New England Patriots playoff game he plans to watch the pageant. Not!

Loren Galler Rabinowitz, Miss Massachusetts,
 Harvard grad and nice Jewish girl.

Unfortunately, aside from being Jewish, there is little to distinguish Ms. Rabinowitz from the other 52 contestants. Fifty-two? Yes, CJG knows there are forty-nine states in the United States, he just refuses to count Alaska. But Miss District of Columbia, Miss Puerto Rico and Miss U.S. Virgin Islands each get a shot, too. (Take that Miss Guam.) Anyway, as CJG was saying, Ms. Rabinowitz is just your typical beauty pageant contestant: her parents are both physicians, her grandparents are Holocaust survivors, she's a world class competitive figure skater, an accomplished poet and a recent magna cum laude graduate of Harvard. (If she'd applied herself she no doubt could have graduated summa.) With a resume like that how can she hope to compete with the likes of Beth Dennison, Miss North Dakota, a former University of North Dakota (UND) dining service employee, UND grad, farm hand and nanny? Or Alyse Eady, a former Miss South Central Arkansas and the reigning Miss Arkansas, whose official bio includes this little item: she once met George W. Bush in the Oval Office. Wow. So did Tiger Woods and we all know how that turned out. Now, if she'd met Bill Clinton in the Oval Office that might have been worth mentioning because then we all could have had fun speculating about what went down during the meeting or, perhaps more to the point, who. But what could Miss Arkansas and W possibly have discussed during their little visit? Waterboarding? And did she wear that hat?

Alyse Eady, Miss Arkansas, and former
 advisor to President George W. Bush.

So, CJG is rooting for Loren Galler Rabinowitz to prevail over Alyse, Ashley, Kelsi, Kylie, Courtney, Brittany and Whitney (yes, they are all names of real contestants this year) and all the other shiksas in the running for the title of Miss America 2011. Let the swimsuit competition begin!

Starbucks Unveils New Logo: Company Collapses

People lacking crankyjewishguy's (CJG) sense of perspective probably thought the big news story this week was the Republican takeover of the House of Representatives, or maybe the impending start of a new season of American Idol. But those people would be wrong because the big news this week, and it really is HUGE, is that to celebrate its fortieth anniversary Starbucks has unveiled a new logo! It looks like this:

Just kidding. It actually looks like this:

No, the new logo isn't four coffee cups lined up on the bar at a Starbucks indicating a ten minute wait for your drink; it's the one to the far right. See the difference? The mermaid, which Starbucks calls the Siren, is no longer imprisoned in a ring that says "Starbucks Coffee." CJG thinks this means she's free to swim away. Maybe all the way to a Peet's. Somehow, though, this depiction of the evolution of the Starbucks logo reminds CJG of this:

As fans of CJG know, CJG has a love/hate relationship with Starbucks. First, he is a major shareholder in the company with about five shares, give or take. Second, he is the proud owner of the Starbucks equivalent of the frequent flyer card, a gold credit-card type thingee with his very own name on it. This means that every time he racks up fifteen drinks as Starbucks, or roughly every other day, he gets a coupon for a free drink. Third, though he frequents Starbucks with alarming frequency he is always at a low boil that the company doesn't take steps to discourage cell phone use in the stores which means his fellow patrons are always bringing him to the brink of a full boil. So, the news that Starbucks was changing its logo hit CJG right in the solar plexus, the region between Mercury and the sun.

Changing a corporate logo, especially one as ubiquitous as Starbucks', is no small proposition. They no doubt paid some consulting firm millions of dollars to come up with something as brilliant as simply removing part of the old logo and changing the mermaid from black and white to white and green, not coincidentally, CJG suspects, the color of money. Now they have to spend untold millions more to change all that stationery and all those business cards, toss about eight billion cups with the old logo and make fifteen billion of the new ones, and change the signage in every one of their seven million stores in the Milky Way Galaxy and on and on and on. The whole thing probably cost more than the gross national product of Canada. All this begs a simple question: could it possibly be worth it? Is CJG's decaf mocha latte with whipped cream going to taste any better as a result? CJG guesses he'll find out soon. Personally, CJG would have preferred a major investment in heavily upholstered furniture so he could sleep more comfortably at Starbucks, a matter he plans to raise at the next shareholder meeting.

Cry, Baby!

Speaker of the House John Boehner
upon learning that he is now in charge.

Crankyjewishguy (CJG) is crying today, too, because this man, and his fellow Republicans, have taken control of the House of Representatives. What CJG can't wrap his head around is how the party whose resurgence was bankrolled by a small group of hedge fund managers manages to persuade the average American that Republicans have the answers to what ails those who are struggling.

Now, CJG has no problem with grown men crying, even grown men who are Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives and, thus, third in line to the presidency. But, CJG does have a problem with grown men who cry at the wrong times, like Purim parties.

John Boehner seems to break down and cry whenever he's talking about himself and his rise from a large working class Ohio family to the pinnacles of power. This strikes CJG as self-indulgent. He thinks Boehner should be crying when Republicans in Congress block $7 billion for health care for  9/11 first responders who are suffering serious medical problems related to their heroic work (they eventually were shamed into shifting gears and agreed to $4 billion), especially when the tax cuts for the rich they fought so hard for are going to add trillions to the national debt. (By the way, tax rates for the rich are at historic lows.)

CJG also thinks Boehner should be crying when Republicans block $108 million to help reduce child marriage around the world, a practice that sentences many children to lives of abuse and slavery, especially when Congress approved, without debate, another $160 billion for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. (Blame both parties for that one.) He thinks Boehner should cry when Republicans fight an extension of unemployment benefits for the working class at Christmas, the very people paying the price for Republican economics of the Bush years, but fight tooth and nail to keep the estates of multi-millionaires from being taxed.

Boehner has a lot to cry about, alright. He's just crying about the wrong things. Tomorrow, CJG will try and return to his usual levity, but today was a tough day for him and Nancy Pelosi.

Captain (Dis)Honors: SOS!

In light of recent news that the current captain of the USS Enterprise produced and broadcast over the ship's internal television station system lewd, raunchy videos featuring simulated lesbian sex, anti-gay slurs and offensive comments about women, crankyjewishguy (CJG) wants to know if maybe, just maybe, we might be able to trim our defense budget just a wee bit. CJG is all for entertaining the troops who put their lives on the line for us, but maybe a subscription to Netflix would be more appropriate and less expensive than movies produced in-house. It's nice to know that while this aircraft carrier, just one of eleven in the entire fleet, was deployed in the Middle East to support combat missions in Iraq and Afghanistan, Captain Owen Honors (you can't make up names like that in stories like this), then second in command, now first, found the time for such leisurely pursuits. CJG's guess is that he logged the time as "building troop morale," or "Honors honors the troops." CJG would like to get a peek at the ship's log and maybe even review those video tapes for himself.

Carnival Cruise Line's new party ship, the USS Enterprise.

But, CJG's concerns go way beyond the terrible message this behavior sends. There are millions of Americans who may not immediately grasp the difference between the USS Enterprise and the Starship Enterprise and for that reason, Captain Honors has done a great disservice to the good men and women of Starfleet Command. Now, there's no doubt that Captain James T. Kirk had a thing for the ladies, but CJG defies anyone to point to a single instance when his conduct could be deemed inappropriate. And CJG has replayed every episode of Star Trek in his head over the last three minutes and can summon not a single incident of anti-gay or homophobic behavior. Yet, now, Captain James T. Kirk, who served his galaxy so well, will forever be lumped together with Captain Owen Honors. This is terribly unfair to the Jewish people, too, since James Kirk was played by actor William Shatner, who is Jewish. Leonard Nimoy, who played Mr. Spock, is also Jewish, proving that while we may not control the media as Rick Sanchez thinks, we did, in the late 1960s, briefly control the galaxy. In any event, in an effort to minimize this travesty, CJG is urging that his huge international audience not confuse this man

The Honorable James T. Kirk

with this man, who, quite frankly, doesn't look the least bit Jewish.

The dishonorable Owen Honors

By the way, Captain Honors was relieved of his command yesterday. CJG is sure he will find gainful employment in the porn industry or, if he is allowed to remain in uniform, as a replacement for Alex of The Village People.

Raining Cats and Dogs (and Sometimes Birds)

Crankyjewishguy (CJG) doesn't know if you saw this story on the news the other day, but just four days into the new year and CJG thinks we can safely say it is going to be Number 1 on every list of the top ten weird news stories of 2011. In the little town of Beebe, Arkansas, on New Year's eve, 5,000 red-winged blackbirds suddenly dropped dead. Literally. That's right, they just fell out of the sky. People woke up to find dead birds littering the streets, sidewalks and lawns in a one square mile area. Wildlife officials have ruled out disease and poisoning and are focusing on three possible causes: a lightning strike, high altitude hail and New Year's Eve fireworks that may have stressed the birds to death. Whatever the cause, CJG would say this was not a good omen for the people of Beebe as they started the new year. On the Town of Beebe web site, Mayor Mike Robertson calls Beebe, "Your Dream Hometown." CJG would say...no, it's not.

Now, CJG doesn't think birds dying is funny; he loves birds, just like the guy in the picture below. But he does note the irony that they rained down on a town called Beebe. As if this weren't bad enough, a few days before the birds dropped dead, between 80,000 and 100,000 dead fish were found floating in the Arkansas River, which, you won't be surprised to learn, is also in Arkansas.

John James Audubon poses with two feathered friends.

Now, if CJG lived in Arkansas, which he doesn't because (a) he's Jewish, (b) he doesn't play the banjo, and (c) he despises NASCAR, he'd be giving serious thought to fleeing the state. Clearly, something is amiss in Arkansas and it isn't just Mike Huckabee.

In light of these twin disasters, CJG decided to visit the Arkansas Department of Tourism web site. As you may know from ads in various travel magazines, Arkansas bills itself as "The Natural State." Well, they certainly seem to have a lot of wildlife based on recent casualty statistics. And they sure make it easy to find since it's easier to see fish when they are on the water instead of in it and birds when they are on the ground instead of hiding in trees or flying at high altitude. CJG also checked out the official web site of the State of Arkansas and was interested to read that, "We proudly live up to our motto -- The Natural State -- by showcasing clear, clean lakes and magestic mountain ranges for exploration or relaxation." They also apparently like to live up to their reputation for being bad spellers. When he finishes writing this post, CJG is going to e-mail the Arkansas Department of Education, point out that "majestic" is spelled with a "j" and not a "g," and tell them they are embarrassing themselves. By the way, the Department of Tourism web site has an entire section called "Moving to Arkansas." CJG doesn't think so.

At least they spelled the name of their state right.

Ask Crankyjewishguy: Go Ahead, He Dares You

Because he is a font of knowledge on many subjects ranging from politics and rocket science to sex and household cleaning products (Lestoil for oily stains followed by a hot water wash), people within crankyjewishguy's (CJG) rectangle of friends often ask for his advice. (For some reason they refuse to form a circle.) And CJG is more than happy to give it. Now, readers of this blog can avail themselves of this opportunity, too, because today CJG announces a new, regular feature on his blog called, "Ask Crankyjewishguy." Readers are invited to submit their questions on any subject, except badminton, by e-mailing CJG at crankyjewishguy@gmail.com and CJG will answer some of them on the air. If he's not too busy reading the paper at Starbucks he may even answer two.

Today's question comes from Rachel in Weehawken, New Jersey who writes:

"In badminton, why do they call it a shuttlecock?"

OK, next question. Apparently, Rachel can't read. This one is from Mark in Boynton Beach, Florida.

"My 17 year-old son sits in front our 42-inch HDTV all day long playing violent video games like Call of Duty: Black Ops and Grand Theft Auto. He wears nothing but black, his hair is cut in a purple mohawk, he has about 80 body piercings and his arms, legs and neck are covered with grotesque tattoos. His room is decorated with posters of heavy metal bands and reeks constantly of pot smoke. He dropped out of high school, has no friends, is 6'3" tall and weighs 119 pounds, and refuses to get a job, bathe, or light the Hannukah candles. He lets his pet iguana run all over the house and I think he's stealing money from us. What should we do?"

Well, lucky for you, Mark, this one is right in CJG's wheelhouse and the answer is very simple. You need to go out and buy a 60-inch set. Your son can't possibly take full advantage of the amazing graphics in Black Ops on the puny 42-inch thing he's using now. CJG recommends the Panasonic.

The North American Green-Belted Shuttlecock.
 What else could you possibly call it?