Out on a limb
AP Photo/CareerBuilder.com
Budweiser’s Clydesdales, Coca-Cola’s polar bears and CareerBuilder.com’s chimpanzees have all achieved fame through Super Bowl commercials. If Chicago’s Lincoln Park Zoo were in charge of casting, however, the suit-and-tie-clad chimps would be in danger of losing their starring role. The zoo is campaigning to stop CareerBuilder from airing its scheduled commercial Sunday, claiming that the anthropomorphized portrayal of the endangered species will make viewers less concerned about wildlife conservation. The company has been featuring chimps in Super Bowl ads since 2005, but a new Duke University study has added fuel to the critics’ fire. The study’s leader, assistant professor of evolutionary anthropology Brian Hare, is especially worried that Africans will be misled and attempt to capture and sell the wild primates to Westerners as pets. We’ll go out on a limb and say that television viewers around the world are highly evolved enough to recognize the entertainment value of a commercial without going bananas, unlike the researchers.
Not mincing words
The criticism continues to roll in over President Obama’s decision last week scuttling (for now) construction of the Keystone XL pipeline. The 1,700-mile pipeline would move crude oil from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico and would produce thousands of jobs along the way, including here in Oklahoma. In a memo to employees, Bill Klesse, CEO of Valero Energy, shared the statement that the company had issued to media after the decision. The statement called rejection of the plan “absurd” and said the administration’s policies would force companies such as Valero (which has a refinery in Ardmore) to buy more oil from sources outside the United States and Canada. It also said the decision “throws dirt into the face of our closest ally and largest trading partner.” In an aside to his employees, Klesse said the administration’s decision wasn’t about pipelines in potentially sensitive areas of the country. Instead, “This is politics at its worst.” Well said.
Photo by Paul B. Southerland, The Oklahoman
Have a nice trip? Yuk, yuk, yuk
Is it really news when a big-name politician takes a prat fall — on stairs, boarding planes, etc.? Think about it: What is the “news” in Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stumbling as she boarded her plane in Yemen the other day? That she’s clumsy, perhaps clumsier than the average person? Please. London’s Daily Mail newspaper had a full report on Hillary’s trip (har!), with several photographs — and, of course, video. Yep, Hillary ended up on her knees alright. So what? Most people can’t fathom how many flights the secretary takes, and most of the time she boards them using the old-fashioned mobile staircase instead of the passenger-friendly jet ways most people use — for the obligatory photo of her smiling and waving. Or in Yemen, stumbling. Hillary will have to be more careful. Back in the 1970s, President Ford had a run of missteps, caught on cameras, that fed into a media-driven perception that Ford was a klutz. No matter that Ford, a former University of Michigan football player, actually was well-coordinated. A few more false steps from Hillary and she’ll be peppered with cracks like the one from someone in Texas, logged into the Mail’s comments section: “She probably tripped over her ego.” Hilarious.
P.U.
Actual headline, seen on a national cable news network: “United Nations evacuated for suspicious odor” (Eye roll.) Next!
Richard Holbrooke
The U.S. foreign policy community suffered a shocking blow Monday with the death of super special envoy Richard Holbrooke from complications related to weekend surgery to fix a torn aorta. Holbrooke was a 45-year diplomatic veteran and one of America’s ablest emissaries. He was ambassador to the United Nations during President Clinton’s second term. He was the Obama administration’s diplomatic point man for Pakistan and Afghanistan. Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., said Holbrooke’s work saved lives all over the world. He’ll be missed.
Asleep no more
Remember the little band of Russian “sleeper” agents arrested on the East Coast and deported to the motherland in July? The New York Times reports they received top government honors from Soviet — er — Russian President Dmitri Medvedev on Monday. The story of the deep-cover spies, their use of fake names and invisible ink, recalled the Cold War era while evoking images of Maxwell Smart’s running battle with KAOS. One, Anna Chapman, was fond of Bond girl cocktail dresses and posted saucy photos on Facebook when she wasn’t passing encrypted messages to Russian officials from a Manhattan bookstore. Back home, Chapman and the others were regaled as heroes at a Kremlin ceremony. From the ashes of defeat …
USS Cole, 10 years later
Ten years ago today crew members aboard the USS Cole were getting ready for lunch in the destroyer’s galley when a small boat packed with high explosives rammed the ship as it refueled in the Yemeni port of Aden. Seventeen sailors died, 39 more were injured and the stricken Cole, with a 40-by-40-foot hole in her port side, was saved only through the heroism of surviving crew members. Military blogger Susan Katz Keating has a tribute video by the Navy on her site, as well as a link to reflections by the Cole’s commander at the time, Commander Kirk Lippold. The suicide attack on the Cole wasn’t al-Qaida’s first on a still-slumbering United States, but it was one of the boldest — a harbinger of an even bolder, more deadly assault less than a year later. Lest we forget.
Prized possession
Talk about a study in contrasts. On Friday jailed Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for trying to bring greater personal freedom and human rights to his homeland — efforts that currently have him serving an 11-year sentence in a Chinese jail. Liu has been in and out of prison over the years for his activities. He’s just the third Nobel winner to receive the award while imprisoned, and Chinese officials welcomed the news by implementing a blackout on his selection inside the country. Now the contrast — the one between Liu, recognized for a life of self-sacrificial (and dangerous) work for individual liberty, and last year’s winner, President Obama, recognized for … well, the potential to do great things.
For tolerance
New York Times columnist Tom Friedman has taken some lumps here, but today, a little praise. Friedman weighed in on the ground zero Islamic center/mosque controversy on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” the other day. While stressing the right for the center to be built a couple of blocks from where the Twin Towers stood, he added the real place tolerance needs to grow is in the Middle East — pointing to strife between differing Muslim sects. Friedman didn’t call for greater tolerance of Christians and Jews in the Muslim world. But still, he rightly redirected attention to a part of the world that’s distinctly intolerant, as far as most Americans can tell. Bottom line: Americans who’re lectured on tolerance quite often would feel a lot better about it if they felt it was a two-way street.
Delay on the inbound
Folks in Los Angeles, Chicago and Washington, D.C., complain all the time about traffic. They can just stop it right now. Chinese officials report a 62-mile traffic jam on the outskirts of Beijing that makes snarls on the I-5 in LA and the Capital Beltway look like joy rides. Road construction is being blamed for hanging up all those Chinese cars and trucks. The jam began Aug. 13, and one official said things might not be normal until Sept. 17, when the road work is scheduled to be finished. As much as it may disappoint The New York Times’ Tom Friedman, who has opined on the Chinese government’s efficiency in dealing with problems, even a dictatorship apparently is no match for one of the byproducts of last year’s globe-leading 13.6 million auto sales to Chinese buyers.
