NBC anchor Brian Williams is already on a six-month suspension without pay for falsely claiming his helo was hit by hostile fire in Iraq and his New Orleans hotel was surrounded by floodwaters during Katrina. Now, CNN has unearthed video of Williams, right after the bin Laden raid, claiming to have ridden into Baghdad with SEAL Team Six and later, in January of 2013, claiming to David Letterman that one of his SEAL buddies sent him a piece of the chopper that crashed in bin Laden’s compound. A spokesman for Special Operations Command had a whole raft of reasons why neither of those claims could be true.
Of course, Indians know that Brian Williams originally made his bones by reporting the Greasy Grass Fight up close and personal and at great risk to his person. Did you know that Williams has a key chain made from a spent rifle cartridge gifted to him by Crazy Horse? That’s a high honor when he started out his report embedded with the Seventh Cavalry.
It did take Williams a while to walk home. On his way back, he claimed to have paused in Sturgis, South Dakota and made a proposal for a motorcycle rally.
My cousin Ray Sixkiller said he heard that Brian Williams came to Indian Territory on the Trail of Tears, “but there’s no truth to the rumor that he carried Chief Ross’s bag the whole way.”
I recalled Mitt Romney claiming on the stump in Michigan that he witnessed the Golden Jubilee of the Automobile in Detroit on June 1, 1946. Romney was born March 12, 1947. “You wouldn’t understand,” Cousin Ray claimed. “It’s a Mormon thing.”
Inside Higher Ed reported that the Clemson University Board of Trustees has turned back a recommendation by the Faculty Senate and graduate student government to rename the building named for racist and white supremacist Ben Tillman. Chairman David Wilkins was quoted, “Some of our historical stones are rough and even unpleasant to look at, but they are ours and denying them as part of our history does not make them any less so. For that reason, we will not change the name of our historical buildings.”
Seems to me that if universities in the Confederate States would strip the names of white supremacists off campus buildings, they could double their endowments overnight selling all the naming rights that would be freed up.
The Lexington Dispatch ran a correction of a headline printed over a letter to the editor from one Boyd Thomas. It turns out Mr. Thomas “does not believe President Obama is the Antichrist, who will come after seven kings, according to Revelation. He thinks Obama could be the seventh king.” While Cousin Ray was glad to hear that cleared up, he had to notice that ISIS also believes the End Times are upon us and they need to bait “Rome” into a military confrontation. Since the Pope no longer has an army, there is disagreement about who is going to be Rome, but the U.S. is a hot possibility.
The latest bait to come and fight is a mass beheading video. It’s not the first mass execution video by ISIS nor the first beheading, but the first combination of the two and the first attack on Coptic Christians from Egypt. The immediate result was to suck the Egyptian government into the fight just like the burning alive of a Jordanian pilot aroused Jordan.
Back in the U.S., where religious extremists are less deadly, the Orange County, Florida school board has backed off consent to allow evangelical Christians to distribute Bibles to school children when the local Satanic Temple produced a coloring book they wanted to distribute.
Montana Republican state Rep. David Moore’s bill to ban yoga pants has been tabled. According to the Great Falls Tribune, Rev., I mean Rep. Moore also opined that speedos should be illegal. “Our mullahs,” Cousin Ray mumbled, “keep trying to protect us.”
Speaking of our mullahs, the American Family Association, headquartered in Tupelo, Mississippi, has been leading the moral jihad against the movie version of 50 Shades of Grey, a piece of abominable writing that sold obscene numbers of books by wedding a Harlequin romance novel plot to explicit rough sex. AFA called it “50 shades of evil.”
In an outcome the Jackson Clarion-Ledger called “50 shades of irony,” Fandango reported record advance ticket sales for an R-rated movie and that the leading state in scooping up tickets was…get ready for it…Mississippi. The first city to sell out? Tupelo. Cousin Ray decided he’s too old for soft-core porn, but he still found the AFA’s comeuppance “50 shades of hilarious.”
Rachel Maddow ran tape of an AFA spokesman arguing that all immigrants to the U.S. should be required to convert to the indigenous religion, Christianity. While the remarks were aimed at Jews and Muslims, I expect American Indians were wishing to give that mullah a history lesson.
TMZ reported that rapper Vanilla Ice was arrested by Lantana, Florida police and charged with burglary and grand theft for allegedly stealing furniture, a pool heater and bicycles from a vacant home. The police claimed that he swiped the stuff for use in a home he was renovating on his reality TV show, The Vanilla Ice Project. Cousin Ray was amazed that Ice finally got busted for stealing “after all those years of stealing from black artists.”
The Crewe, Virginia Police Department posted the following on their Facebook page:
On 2/17/15 we were called to Super Dollar for narcotics that had been found in the store. We are now in possession of a white substance that appears to be cocaine. If you mistakenly dropped your cocaine today and were at the Super Dollar, please contact us. We would like to talk with you further about your property.
According to The Washington Post, the police were forced by numerous public comments to clarify that they did not intend to return the cocaine to the owners.
The Federal Aviation Administration has issued draft regulations covering operation of drones. The regulations will be open for public comment before being adopted as is or amended. Businesses are not happy, particularly with the requirement that drones remain within sight of the pilot and not be flown at night. These would be big barriers to commercial applications, since there’s little reason to automate delivery to any customer who is close enough to see.
With a nod towards the difficulties with statistical proofs of causation, The New York Times reported an extensive analysis of the Arizona State University Sun Devils’ “Curtain of Distraction,” an ongoing and ever changing show put on by the students seated behind the basket when visitors attempt a free throw. The Times reached the opinion that that visitors to Tempe miss 5 to 10 percent more free throws, amounting to one or two points in a typical game and probably accounting for the Sun Devils’ recent upset of their arch-rivals, the No. 6 ranked Arizona Wildcats.
Laurie Garrett, writing in Foreign Policy, recalled living in Zambia in 1979, when measles was the number one killer of children under age five. Lest we gloat about the backwardness of Africa, before the measles vaccine was perfected in 1963, the disease killed 500 people a year in the U.S. For Indians in early contact with colonists, measles was second only to smallpox as a killer. Garrett’s title memorializes the pandering outbreak in U.S. politics: “Good Thing Chris Christie Isn’t the Governor of Congo.”
While the panders to anti-vaccine superstition have so far been in the GOP primary contenders, there is also significant anti-vaccine superstition among the people my grandkids call “granolas,” who are more likely to vote in the Democratic Primary if they vote at all.
I had the misfortune to be in Europe right after the great uproar involving Bill Clinton’s consensual sex with an adult intern and so, naturally, I got razzed big time by Europeans who did not understand the workings of U.S. politics. Over time, I came to view that kind of thing as a price we pay for democracy.
Israel is paying a similar price right now. Surrounded by hostile Arabs and facing what Benjamin Netanyahu terms “an existential threat” in Iran’s nuclear program, Israeli media are going to town on a state comptroller report criticizing the Netanyahus for billing the taxpayers $24,000 in 2011 for takeout food “even though there was a chef in the residence.” Further, the Israeli First Couple pocketed about $1,000 in refunds paid by stores for recycling bottles paid for by the taxpayers in the first place, meaning that the funds should have gone back to the treasury.
In other election news, a Netanyahu campaign spot had to be pulled off the air after the Election Committee ruled the use of children illegal. Netanyahu had played a kindergarten teacher and used the kids to resemble his unruly coalition partners.
Cousin Ray wondered if the Israelis had been watching American Indian tribal elections for pointers?