Wired for unsound
Heard the joke about the Chevy Volt? It was subjected to a battery of tests and all of them came out negative. The electric car, a darling of the fossil fuel-averse Obama administration, didn’t quite go the way of Solyndra, another administration flight of fancy, but it has been put in neutral. General Motors suspended sales after a rash of bad news over battery fires and slumping sales. Not to worry: America’s first plug-in vehicle is a hit in Europe, where it was recently named Car of the Year. “Battery-operated cars are electrifying environmentalists, progressives and award-givers,” noted the New York Daily News. “The only ones who aren’t juiced about them, it seems, are autobuyers.” The Volt is so politically correct that you can legally drive one solo on California freeway lanes restricted to cars with multiple passengers. Thus you can beat the fossil fuelers to any fire sales disposing of Solyndra’s assets.
NATE BEELER/THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
Respect (just a little bit)
The verdict is in: The red M&M is not a bully. In case you weren’t aware of the controversy, Australia’s Advertising Standards Bureau has been looking into it for the past two months. Viewers had complained that said candy character’s treatment of his colleagues in TV commercials promoted bullying among children, but the bureau ruled that the ads were merely humorous. Back in this hemisphere, New Hampshire’s House rejected a bill this week that would’ve made bullying among state lawmakers illegal, punishable by a $2,500 civil fine. Rep. Susan Emerson had filed the bill in response to a confrontation with the House speaker last year. “If he was one of my sons, I would have washed his mouth out with jalapeno peppers, you bet,” Emerson said. Well. Both episodes remind us that attempts to stop bullying, a valid concern, can get a little out of hand.
Gone far too soon
AP File Photo
Anthony Shadid never shied from a dangerous assignment, indeed he felt compelled to report to the rest of the world what he was seeing in places such as Baghdad or Libya or Ramallah. That nearly cost him his life a few times — Shadid was wounded in 2002 in Ramallah while working for The Boston Globe, and last year he was among four New York Times journalists held captive for several days in Libya while covering clashes between the government and rebels. This week an asthma attack claimed Shadid, 43, in Syria where he was reporting about the uprising against its president. An Oklahoma City native, Shadid twice won the Pulitzer Prize for international reporting. John Daniszewski, senior managing editor of The Associated Press, worked with Shadid in Baghdad during the U.S. invasion in 2003. “He was … the most admired of his generation of foreign correspondents,” Daniszewski said. Shadid’s father, Buddy, said his son “died doing what he wanted to do. He lived and breathed journalism.” Anthony Shadid will be sorely missed.
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.
