mid-week round-up

Sally Kern of Oklahoma was bad enough, but now we've also got Gary George of Oregon. I'm showing my Pacific Northwest bias here, but I have to admit I expected better of Oregon. Maybe this is only because I've got family there, and my brother and his gyrl will be moving to Portland this summer, and I want them to be moving to a place of tolerance, not to a place that welcomes people like George.

SCOTUS had a big day yesterday, hearing arguments on the Washington, D.C.'s right to ban handguns within city limits. Justice Kennedy, our swing vote these days, "insisted that the amendment’s framers wanted to assure the ability of 'the remote settler to defend himself and his family against hostile Indian tribes and outlaws, wolves and bears and grizzlies and things like that,' as he phrased his concern with self-defense at one point."

I'm still trying to figure out how fear of hostile Indian tribes, wolves, bears, and grizzlies (and here I always thought grizzlies are bears) plays out in the 21st Century, but that's just me. I mean, does DC really have a wolf problem? An Indian problem? (Which Republican was it who went down over his macaw comment, anyway? Could this be Kennedy's reference? Indian problems for the new century?) A bear and grizzly problem?

On a somewhat happier note, Saudi Arabian women may soon be given the groundbreaking, earth-shattering, right to drive! With, of course, certain restrictions. The family of Laura Bush's first boyfriend might have appreciated these types of restrictions, so I suppose there's a certain elegance in her husband's family being in bed with the people enforcing them, but still, these are our allies in the Middle East? God help us.

And on a much more pleasing note, I just discovered this morning that Karen Green, fellow Columbian and librarian extraordinaire, has taken on the formidable task of crashing the world of comics and graphic novels into the world of ivory tower academia. And not only that, but she's writing about it! Check out Comic Adventures in Academia at comiXology.

Last, my friend Chris Mark has been somewhat obsessed recently with the video of George W. Bush doing a little dance for the press corps while waiting for John McCain to arrive. I've had to watch said video a couple times in the last week or so, and mention of said video resulted in one of my all-time favorite letters-to-the-editor, from the wife of the late Gene Kelly, dancer extraordinaire:

To the Editor:
(March 16, 2008)
Re “Soft Shoe in Hard Times” (column, March 16):

Surely it must have been a slip for Maureen Dowd to align the artistry of my late husband, Gene Kelly, with the president’s clumsy performances. To suggest that “George Bush has turned into Gene Kelly” represents not only an implausible transformation but a considerable slight. If Gene were in a grave, he would have turned over in it.

When Gene was compared to the grace and agility of Jack Dempsey, Wayne Gretzky and Willie Mays, he was delighted. But to be linked with a clunker — particularly one he would consider inept and demoralizing — would have sent him reeling.

Graduated with a degree in economics from Pitt, Gene was not only a gifted dancer, director and choreographer, he was also a most civilized man. He spoke multiple languages; wrote poetry; studied history; understood the projections of Adam Smith and John Maynard Keynes. He did the Sunday Times crossword in ink. Exceedingly articulate, Gene often conveyed more through movement than others manage with words.

Sadly, President Bush fails to communicate meaningfully with either. For George Bush to become Gene Kelly would require impossible leaps in creativity, erudition and humility.

Patricia Ward Kelly
Los Angeles, March 16, 2008