The runaway bride.

I think I mentioned before that the royal wedding in Monaco sort of snuck up on me. I didn’t know the deed had been done until yesterday, but fortunately we live in the age of the amazing internet, when no detail is too small to report, including that the bride allegedly tried to flee Monaco — three times! — in the days before the ceremony, and was prevented from doing so by Prince Albert’s goon squad, who actually confiscated her passport rather than let her get on that plane back to Johannesburg and the chance to have a happier life.

The precipitating incident?

It followed confirmation by palace sources that Albert, 53, was due to undergo DNA tests because of claims by at least one unnamed woman that he has fathered another illegitimate child.

He already has two he acknowledges. The “at least one” became two in some reports, for an even four. I think, as we are obviously dealing with a man with a severe allergy to latex, we can assume there could easily be more. One is said to be a toddler, which means he’s been stepping out on his beautiful blonde broodmare for some time. I don’t often feel pity for women who are richer, taller and that much better-looking than me, but my heart is not made of stone: Poor Princess Charlene.

There are 63 photos in this slide show, and I beseech you to view them all, if you can. It’s the usual royal freak show, but if you can only hit the highlights, well, start with Grand Duchess Maria of Russia, who picked up her outfit at a Target white sale. Princess Charlotte Casiraghi found a far nicer dress at Chanel — it really is a wow — and Auntie Steph has real balls to stand next to her, now that a lifetime of Mediterranean sun and smoking has taken its toll on her once-lovely face. Note, also, Stephanie’s tattoo, which demonstrates she certainly favors the commoner’s side of the bloodline. Like the Middletons, the bride’s family looks perfectly nice and presentable, and probably behaved better at the reception, off in the corner table reserved for the non-Francophone guests. Charlene got a little emotional during the ceremony, and closeups taken in the church showed a tear rolling down her cheek. I have to say, I’ve never seen a more miserable bride.

Sometimes you can see a couple’s whole life in how they kiss. You certainly can with this one.

But man, a spectacular dress. Although, with that bod, she could probably make Grand Duchess Maria of Russia’s outfit look good. He looks awful. I assume we’re headed for the usual marital denouement, followed by a swift annulment from Rome, to keep those tithes coming from the li’l principality that could.

Another zillion pix from the WashPost.

So, how was your weekend? Mine was quite nice. I made an effort to do little work and mostly succeeded. Went for a fast bike ride on a blisteringly hot Saturday and nearly died, but recovered in time to spin the evening away at a venerable biker bar in Detroit called the Stone House. We sat on the front porch while an enormous thunderstorm mostly missed us, then rode home in that yellowy-bruise light that only midwestern thunderstorms bring. Went to the Eastern Market. Barbecued ribs. Cleaned Kate’s room. The usual.

A lot of bloggage piled up over the weekend, so let’s get to it:

Christopher Hitchens filets Michele Bachmann as only he can, or rather, the particular vote-for-me-I’m-from-Podunk attitude she represents:

Where does it come from, this silly and feigned idea that it’s good to be able to claim a small-town background? It was once said that rural America moved to the cities as fast as it could, and then from urban to suburban as fast as it could after that. Every census for decades has confirmed this trend. Overall demographic impulses to one side, there is nothing about a bucolic upbringing that breeds the skills necessary to govern a complex society in an age of globalization and violent unease. We need candidates who know about laboratories, drones, trade cycles, and polychrome conurbations both here and overseas. Yet the media make us complicit in the myth—all politics is yokel?—that the fast-vanishing small-town life is the key to ancient virtues. Wasilla, Alaska, is only the most vivid recent demonstration of the severe limitations of this worldview. But still it goes on.

“All politics is yokel” — that’s a good one.

Jane Scott, the Cleveland Plain Dealer’s legendary rock critic, died Monday. She was a legend because she started covering rock ‘n’ roll when she was already middle-aged, at a time when pop music writers were nearly always among the youngest in the newsroom, and because she stuck with it for decades. She was 92 when she died, 83 when she retired, 45 when she covered the Beatles’ first appearance in Cleveland, in 1964. She wasn’t much of a prose stylist, but she was enough of a reporter to know news when she saw it:

“I never before saw thousands of 14-year-old girls, all screaming and yelling,” she recalled later. “I realized this was a phenomenon. . . . The whole world changed.”

The Plain Dealer obit, linked above, contains several links to her past pieces. I get the feeling that by the end, being the senior citizen with a backstage pass was part of her brand, as they say. I grew up in a different city, and didn’t know about her until I got to college, where all the journalism students from northeast Ohio worshipped her. One of my classmates took a chance one day, and showed up at Swingo’s, the hotel where all the rockers stayed when they were passing through Cleveland (seen in “Almost Famous”). She swallowed hard and told the desk clerk, “I’m here to interview Bob Marley.” She was a pretty little peach, and they waved her right up, no doubt used to this sort of thing. She still had to clear the road manager in the hallway, though. She told him she was there to interview Bob for the newspaper.

“You must be Jane Scott,” he said.

“Yes, I am,” my classmate said, walked in and shared a spliff and a conversation with the reggae star, and that’s how the student newspaper from Ohio University snagged an interview it likely wouldn’t have gotten otherwise. She was in and out before the real critic, then 60, showed up. I bet that was a funny scene.

Another good appreciation, from the L.A. Times.

And I guess that’s it for me now. Tuesday is now Monday, so I best get rolling. Have a swell short week.

Posted at 12:15 am in Current events, Media, Popculch |
 

52 responses to “The runaway bride.”

  1. Linda said on July 5, 2011 at 4:07 am

    You’re out early today–the weekend was busting with bloggable things. My eye went to the little flower girls in the wedding, who look like they wandered out of a Gilbert and Sullivan opera. But Maria’s dress and matching headpiece look like a muumuu somebody’s aunt would have worn in the 70s.

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  2. ROGirl said on July 5, 2011 at 7:20 am

    I want to be called Princess Maxima.

    The bride’s clenched jaw is another indicator of her joylessness over this grand occasion. And Princess Stephanie is looking like her years of rebellious living have started to catch up with her.

    “I’m from Podunk” is code for I’m not a big city big spending liberal, or a suburbanite seduced by the good life or with kids who are exposed to the wrong influences and ideas, and perhaps most importantly, I’m not a minority or a Muslim, I’m white and Christian.

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  3. coozledad said on July 5, 2011 at 7:45 am

    ROgirl: Exactly. It’s code for “I ain’t rubbed elbows with no Jews except real white-looking ones.”
    It’s telling that Michelle Bachmann’s religious awakening occurred in pubescence, and she married the closest thing she could find to the church organist.

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  4. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on July 5, 2011 at 8:00 am

    Nice closer in the Telegraph piece — “One well-placed Monaco observer said that in the tiny enclave, “rumour and malice (are) held up as a national sport”.”

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  5. Suzanne said on July 5, 2011 at 8:52 am

    ROGirl and Coozledad, you are correct. I live in rural ‘merica. Yes, hardworking and God-fearing people for the most part, but also narrow minded and parochial. They don’t often know what is going on in the rest of the world, and don’t care. The way they live is the way everyone should live.

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  6. coozledad said on July 5, 2011 at 8:52 am

    Proposed designs are already flooding in for a theoretical pairing of Bristol Palin and Kid Rock, but this one has Gaga written all over it: NSFW?
    http://js-kit.com/blob/FPKKCq0UvC4BZh8puAqKQy.jpg

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  7. Peter said on July 5, 2011 at 9:00 am

    Linda, I thought they recruited the von Trapp grandchildren for the flower girls.

    I would agree on Princess Stephanie, but that Swedish princess would get my Lutefisk swimming, you betcha.

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  8. Dorothy said on July 5, 2011 at 9:06 am

    More than the clenched jaw, I found the bride’s eyes to be the most telling feature of her attitude. Sad and lonely are the words that came to mind.

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  9. brian stouder said on July 5, 2011 at 9:54 am

    Well, but honestly – if she really wanted OUT – she’d be out. But the money, and comfortable lifestyle, and money, and all the interesting people one meets, and (of course) the money; I think the Prince and Princess have a merger which, even if it ends up like AOL/Time-Warner, looks like the best thing to both parties, at the moment.

    Aside from them, the whole rube-versus-city slicker attempt at a shortcut to the “Real America” strikes me as parallel to the attempt to shortcut to a “Real Snow White” (which is what the dufus in Monaco would have us participate in, and wherein he gets to be Prince Charming).

    And aside from THAT, I confess that, during a 4th of July lull, the Casey Anthony trial pulled me in. The thing had no attraction for me all these weeks, as my brothers and others would discuss in great detail this or that moment; but as it wrapped up, it got me. And now, we await the verdict…(my bet is – 3 pm today we get the BREAKING NEWS that the jury “has questions” – and then the tea-leaf readers on cable news can spend the evening chatting away about nothing, like those Nancy birds we learned about recently)

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  10. Deborah said on July 5, 2011 at 10:06 am

    I watched a video of the royal couple saying their vows, he kept turning to look at her as he spoke but it seemed that she could barely bring herself to look at him at all. Power and money, the best aphrodisiacs.

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  11. Connie said on July 5, 2011 at 10:08 am

    Thanks for the picture link, I enjoyed seeing Prince Willem of the Netherlands, for whose Queenly mother I once got to do the receiving line thing. My daughter is named after his grand mother, and when I was a kid I thought she was our queen as my grandmother talked about the queen in the old country.

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  12. Jeff Borden said on July 5, 2011 at 10:47 am

    Hitchens was terribly and viciously wrong about the war in Iraq, but overall, he’s a greatly needed corrective to our wimpy public discourse as his takedown of Lady Crazy Eyes underscores. Unlike $heWho, who is a lazy, undisciplined spotlight whore, Crazy Eyes actually knows how to work the levers and pulleys of campaigning. She won’t go far, but that’s probably not her goal. The real push is on the eventual candidate, who Crazy Eyes and the other misfit toys will push even further to the right. Richard Cohen is a douchebag of the highest order, but he nails it today with his assessment of the GOP as a cult, not a political party.

    I’ve lived in Chicago now for 22 years. I’ve found my fellow city dwellers no less helpful and accommodating than those neighbors in the small towns and smallish cities where I spent my youth. When we had 22 inches of snow this winter, one of the young men who rents a place a couple of houses down from me joined me in clearing the sidewalk and steps of the older lady who lives next door. Teams of two and three worked together to dig out cars. It was actually a rather merry day, where we worked our asses off to clear the snow, but shared beers and shots for a job well done. I fail to discern any difference in how we reacted from how those in small town ‘Murica would react.

    Then again, I’m not a homophobic Christianist lunatic with a shaky understanding of American history.

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  13. Dorothy said on July 5, 2011 at 10:49 am

    It was actually a rather merry day… Love this sentence! I wish we all had merry days more often!

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  14. Suzanne said on July 5, 2011 at 11:10 am

    Exactly, Jeff. When my daughter was nigh unto leaving for college at a Big Ten campus, I was amazed at the number of people in my rural/small town area who took me aside, and with terror in their eyes, asked me if I KNEW what went on at those big, secular college campuses and did I reallyl want to send my daughter there. Never mind that nearly every family has somebody in it with a drinking problem, or that Cousin Bob is on wife #4, or that the crime blotter of the local newspaper is full of DUI arrests or assault charges. When we’ve visited Chicago, I’ve always found people extremely friendly and helpful, a fact that I relay at home, and find people quite surprised to hear.

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  15. Sue said on July 5, 2011 at 11:28 am

    I dunno, I would have liked to be a fly on the wall during the negotiations that occurred between fleeing attempts number one and number three, and just after. Poor Princess Charlene – I think not. If she’s done any research at all on Princess Diana, she must realize by now that to a rather large extent, if she plays her cards right she controls the situation, not the other way around. Has it occurred to anyone that the poor miserable bride, who just could not escape her fate in spite of the fact that the world knows about her attempts, might be as manipulative of her image as Diana, and for exactly the same reasons?
    But what would I know? I’m so far out of the Monaco loop that I still thought Albert was gay.
    Best of all American worlds is a location about 45 minutes to an hour away from a largish city. My kids had the idyllic childhood along with access to an urban area, so that when they hit 18 and there was nothing left for them at home but bars they had lots of choices within a larger metro area. Of course if you drive 45 minutes out of a really large city like Chicago, for all practical purposes you are still in Chicago, but smaller metro areas really do offer an excellent buffet of experiences. Assuming you’re willing to take the opportunities, that is; where I live an unfortunate number of people wouldn’t go into scary Milwaukee if you offered them a police escort.

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  16. Connie said on July 5, 2011 at 11:44 am

    I agree with Sue, while I had issues living in a southern Indiana small town, we loved living just under an hour from both Louisville and Indianapolis. Currently we are in the far west end of metro Detroit, 45 minutes from downtown, and it’s like living in the country out here, with lakes and public land all around us. My husband’s favorite trail is at Haven Hill State Rec Area which used to be Edsel Ford’s summer home.

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  17. Julie Robinson said on July 5, 2011 at 12:02 pm

    We took a merry ride on a train being pulled by a restored steam locomotive this weekend, although given the heat I was happy that the cars were not authentic but had AC. Our dear daughter was visiting which made it that much merrier.

    After spending a week with Iowa family I would say Suzanne’s description was on the mark. What news they do get is filtered through the hateful/racist Focus on the Family people and their ilk. One uncle says he is proud that the only book in their house is the Bible.

    Sue, I grew up 70 miles west of Chicago and wholeheartedly agree with you. We lived in the country, the next town had a university, and we could easily get to Chi-town for all its glories. Clean air and peace when we wanted them; museums, theatre & concerts when we wanted them. But many of my friends never went to the city except for school field trips. I always thought it was sad that they were missing so much.

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  18. beb said on July 5, 2011 at 12:35 pm

    We went to the air conditioned Henry Ford Museum to beat the heat. It was packed with visitors so finding a parking spot was a challenge. As we drove around we marveled at the license plates from Colorado, Arkansas, New Jersey, California, Kentucky, and Tennessee. Those people did some serious driving to get to Detroit!

    Then Sunday night neighbors three doors down from us started setting off fireworks from around 9 PM to after 11. Lots and lots of fireworks. Big boomers, skyrockets. I doubt that any of it was legal. Around ten one neighbor told him to kock it off because they were trying to get their children to bed. He was told to “F”-off. Cute.

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  19. Dave said on July 5, 2011 at 12:57 pm

    Jane Scott. Nancy, I, too, never heard of Jane Scott until I found myself living in Northern Ohio and reading the Plain Dealer, this on and after 1972. I’d read her reviews and think that they hadn’t been written by anyone anywhere near my age but, of course, back in those days, there weren’t many ways to learn anymore about her.

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  20. Bitter Scribe said on July 5, 2011 at 1:38 pm

    OK, that Monaco stuff is just weird. They confiscated her passport? How is that even legal? Aren’t passports the property of the governments that issue them? You’d think representatives of a head of state would have more respect for the law.

    Which leads us to Question #2: Why is Monaco an independent nation in the first place? Isn’t it just basically a snobby Euro Vegas?

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  21. brian stouder said on July 5, 2011 at 1:57 pm

    Well I am wrong once again! Yes, there is BREAKING NEWS on the Casey Anthony trial, but it’s not jury questions, but instead the verdict is back!*

    So the Nancy-birds will have lots and lots to twitter and squawk about, tonight.(and indeed, I’ll be awatchin’ it!)

    Aside from that, I love-love-loved the Henry Ford Museum, and Dearborn. I think the young folks and I shall have to head back there

    *my guess – conviction on the lesser murder charges; who has the stomache to kill her; to impose a death sentence on such a lost soul? I think the young lady killed her baby; and while I could vote for a death sentence in some cases, not this one.

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  22. Connie said on July 5, 2011 at 2:16 pm

    I for one will be glad to have Casey Anthony off the news, and could care less what the verdict is. What made this one case worth multiple years of national news? Hear me Nancy Grace?

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  23. brian stouder said on July 5, 2011 at 2:23 pm

    Connie – you’re right, of course….but NOT GUILTY!!!???

    wow.

    I mean, really –

    wow.

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  24. ROGirl said on July 5, 2011 at 2:28 pm

    Monaco has been a principality since the 13th century, back when Europe was full of small principalities, kingdoms, independent states, etc. A treaty with France recognizes its sovereignty. The Grimaldi princes have to produce heirs to prevent the sovereignty from reverting to France, hence Grace Kelly and now her almost doppelganger La Princesse Charlene.

    The death of a young child is tragic, but I really don’t care about the Casey case. It’s a sad story and all, and that’s about it.

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  25. Jim G said on July 5, 2011 at 2:35 pm

    They should have retired the “Princess of Monaco” position after Grace Kelly. It could only go downhill after her.

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  26. Peter said on July 5, 2011 at 2:36 pm

    WHOA, Not Guilty?

    I guess Blagojevich should have tried for a change of venue.

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  27. nancy said on July 5, 2011 at 2:38 pm

    I have paid precisely zero attention to this case. Can anyone brief me in a paragraph? I understand a Bad Mother was involved, and that’s pretty much all I know.

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  28. Bitter Scribe said on July 5, 2011 at 2:40 pm

    I thought the prosecution in Casey Anthony’s case was all over the map. She chloroformed her daughter, no wait, chloroform is a byproduct of human decomposition, but either way it was her fault. I know if I were a juror, that kind of sloppiness would make me nervous.

    Methinks the true living victims here are her parents. I remember how agonized her mother was after giving incriminating testimony. And how she returned to the stand for the defense and lied through her teeth about conducting computer searches from home during a time period when, the prosecution proved, she was at work.

    Bad, sad business all around. I hope Casey learned a lesson from this experience, but she probably didn’t (or learned the wrong ones).

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  29. brian stouder said on July 5, 2011 at 2:57 pm

    This strikes me as pretty much an OJ flashback.

    I recall THAT jury taking lots and lots of derision for “jury nullification” (or whatever they called it BACK THEN)

    It will be interesting to see how this jury gets treated

    (I recall hearing some Nancy bird media courtroom observer chatter about “Juror #5” – and also “Juror #4” – who were said to be showing passive contempt for the prosecution, whenever they were presenting their case….I will be interested to hear more about that. Presumably this comprehensive rejection of the state’s case bespeaks a general contempt by the jury for that prosecution effort)

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  30. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on July 5, 2011 at 3:21 pm

    Party girl had a baby, loved it, but not as much as her independence. PG’s parents indulged both daughter and granddaughter, while trying to sporadically push for restraint & discipline on the part of their child to which they’d applied neither. Evidence indicates that said PG had used a common tactic to work around lack of babysitter availability by dosing child with Benadryl, then when it became less effective, moved on to amateur chloroforming of child to get her to sleep through the night, soundly, when Mom/PG was out of the house. Either a dose worked too permanently, or PG upped the dose & added duct tape to permanently solve the babysitter problem. In either case, the child’s body was missing, somehow, for weeks, then when forced by family inquiries, PG produced a series of poorly conceived stories explaining child’s whereabouts, changing up to the point where the body was found long after, decomposed, with duct tape still around face. My horseback opinion is that the death was culpable, but unintentional, so a conviction wouldn’t have struck me as an entire miscarriage of justice. When brought to trial, PG threw parents under the bus, not implausibly with their awareness & consent, possibly including the accusation of molestation of PG by her father. Enough dust was thrown in the air during the trial to obscure the sun, and the prosecution did not keep in mind they needed one sharp beam of light and a steady hand to shine it; lights out now for all involved.

    Until PG appears in a reality show, or in the altogether, or in her own tragic obituary. That made a second paragraph, but it’s a separate subject.

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  31. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on July 5, 2011 at 3:25 pm

    Qualification: most of my knowledge of the case is double-filtered, given by various people in our juvenile court & childrens services offices who have been taking a professional, if mildly prurient interest in the details of the case. We sort out conflicting stories like this every day (this am, post-4th weekend family fiascos, oy), but not with children so young, or so dead. But we can sniff the scent of death down the road if we’re not careful, so learning from others’ errors is always attractive.

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  32. nancy said on July 5, 2011 at 3:27 pm

    Thanks, Jeff. That crystallized it nicely.

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  33. beb said on July 5, 2011 at 3:31 pm

    A contributing factor, I suspect, was that the AG was going for the death penalty and nothing else. They miht have won on Manslaughter but murder in the first degree may have been a little stark for the jury.

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  34. Bitter Scribe said on July 5, 2011 at 3:38 pm

    beb–IIRC, the jury had the option of manslaughter but rejected that too.

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  35. Bitter Scribe said on July 5, 2011 at 3:43 pm

    I just wonder if the judge is going to throw the book at her over the minor obstruction charges she was found guilty of.

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  36. Dexter said on July 5, 2011 at 3:45 pm

    That Jane Scott story is precious. I moved to Ohio in 1977 so I missed her earlier writings, and my main Plain Dealer rock critic was Michael Heaton, who I still love to read.
    I also got to the Marley party a little late, discovering him in the mid-1970s, but then I started buying his albums and I became a big fan. Blink my eye…*poof* dead of brain cancer at an early age.
    Here’s Michael Heaton’s column on Tom Waits’s H.O.F. induction.
    http://www.cleveland.com/ministerofculture/index.ssf/2011/03/tom_waits_the_poetking_of_cool.html

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  37. Marc G said on July 5, 2011 at 4:09 pm

    Julie at 17 – “proud that the only book in their house is the Bible”? WTF? I know that people like this still exist, and it scares me that they may soon have control of the most powerful country on earth. The question is – what is the difference between them and the Taliban?

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  38. Dorothy said on July 5, 2011 at 4:19 pm

    This story hit the airwaves here on Friday evening so I guess we’ll have this to digest now that Casey Anthony is all sewn up. http://www2.nbc4i.com/news/2011/jul/05/charges-filed-after-fatal-shooting-crash-knox-coun-ar-589323/

    Mike and I were driving home from seeing a play in Westerville Friday evening when we saw a helicopter pointing a very bright light down on Route 586. We were on a nearby road, and wondered what this was about. They called it a “domestic disturbance.” The call went out to police just after the Mount Vernon fireworks display ended. Oy what a night.

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  39. Linda said on July 5, 2011 at 5:29 pm

    Marc G–You silly, silly man. The difference is, the Taliban’s only book would be the Koran. Author Jon Krakauer (Under the Banner of Heaven) once interviewed a Mormon sect member who murdered a couple members of his own family in a religious dispute, and asked him, “What’s the difference between you and Osama bin Laden?” And he said, “I’m right.”

    What else do you need to know?

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  40. MarkH said on July 5, 2011 at 5:31 pm

    Jeff(mmo) @30 – What Nancy said. Very nicely played.

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  41. prospero said on July 5, 2011 at 6:39 pm

    Ououchhh. Bike accident. Asshole turned on his left turn signal right in front, raised his hand, of me and turned right, right in front of me.. I know, I’m supposed to stop at the bikepath stopsigns, but when an ahole does something like this, sorry. How is this my fault? If the ahole did the same thing to me and I was driving, he is toast. Bike’s but the front wheel looks like it came from Hanover. Luckily, it’s aluminum, so I was able to limp home with it. I can fix the bike. At my age, the collateral damage might be harder to get over. I used to incur injuries I could put aside quickly. Now, who knows. This bastard was entirely at fault. If the dickhead hadn’t signaled, I would have been more circumspect. I know, I should always assume giving the right of way, but you can’t ride anywhere with a heavy load and get anywhere. This ahole broke four bottles of Sam Summer Ale I was carrying, and went off on the deputy that showed at the scene and claimed it was my fault. I wa breatholyzered, the driver wasn’t. I’ve hit the turn signal in the wrong dimension before, but immediately whacked it back in the other direction. Didn’t happen. This asshole endangered my life. Y’all that ride bikes. Do you stop at every stop sign, or do you make eye contact with drivers for noblesse oblige? I don’t want to have some shitheel that doesn’t know how to drive ruin his life by running over me. What the hell did I do wrong?

    Linda, so far as Mormons are concerned, What I know has to do with information about the Sons of Dan, which I have second=hqnd through the brilliant John Gardner novel Mickelsson’s Ghosts. Seriously, those who haven’t read that book, it’s almost as good as Sunlight Dialogues which is about as good a novel as any American wrote in the last century. What makes a great novel? Can Tom McGuane write a great novel? Nobody will admit it. Is it Ninety-two in the Shade? Nobody will admit it, though it is clearly everything Hemingway ever attempted and not close to as good. Y’all that expressed doubts about Faulkner: As I Lay Dying? Truly horrible. Raymond Chandler is an absolute favorite of mine. The cocktail onion on the banana split analogy is so fucking brilliant we have to be kidding. Y’all know that one? Raymond Chandler is so much better than Hemingway, it’s just not worth considering. And his spectacular mastery of the way people actually talk, for a fact. We all want to be smarter than everybody. Raymond Chandler understood that. And he thought . Ca plan pour moi? Not in a million years. Emily

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  42. MichaelG said on July 5, 2011 at 6:42 pm

    I haven’t followed the case of the young woman in Florida who was accused of killing her daughter and don’t have an opinion as to her guilt or innocence. The story I just read does say that she has been in jail for the last three years. I’ve always seen lying to the cops as a kind of bullshit charge (heh, heh). If there’s any justice, she’ll be sentenced to time served on the lying charges and cut loose.

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  43. prospero said on July 5, 2011 at 6:46 pm

    Ououchhh. Bike accident. Asshole turned on his left turn signal right in front, raised his hand, of me and turned right, right in front of me.. I know, I’m supposed to stop at the bikepath stopsigns, but when an ahole does something like this, sorry. How is this my fault? If the ahole did the same thing to me and I was driving, he is toast. Bike’s but the front wheel looks like it came from Hanover. Luckily, it’s aluminum, so I was able to limp home with it. I can fix the bike. At my age, the collateral damage might be harder to get over. I used to incur injuries I could put aside quickly. Now, who knows. This bastard was entirely at fault. If the dickhead hadn’t signaled, I would have been more circumspect. I know, I should always assume giving the right of way, but you can’t ride anywhere with a heavy load and get anywhere. This ahole broke four bottles of Sam Summer Ale I was carrying, and went off on the deputy that showed at the scene and claimed it was my fault. I wa breatholyzered, the driver wasn’t. I’ve hit the turn signal in the wrong dimension before, but immediately whacked it back in the other direction. Didn’t happen. This asshole endangered my life. Y’all that ride bikes. Do you stop at every stop sign, or do you make eye contact with drivers for noblesse oblige? I don’t want to have some shitheel that doesn’t know how to drive ruin his life by running over me. What the hell did I do wrong?

    Linda, so far as Mormons are concerned, What I know has to do with information about the Sons of Dan, which I have second=hqnd through the brilliant John Gardner novel Mickelsson’s Ghosts. Seriously, those who haven’t read that book, it’s almost as good as Sunlight Dialogues which is about as good a novel as any American wrote in the last century. What makes a great novel? Can Tom McGuane write a great novel? Nobody will admit it. Is it Ninety-two in the Shade? Nobody will admit it, though it is clearly everything Hemingway ever attempted and not close to as good. Y’all that expressed doubts about Faulkner: As I Lay Dying? Truly horrible. Raymond Chandler is an absolute favorite of mine. The cocktail onion on the banana split analogy is so fucking brilliant we have to be kidding. Y’all know that one? Raymond Chandler is so much better than Hemingway, it’s just not worth considering. And his spectacular mastery of the way people actually talk, for a fact. We all want to be smarter than everybody. Raymond Chandler understood that. And he thought . Ca plan pour moi? Not in a million years. Emily. I remember climbing the tree to get your cat. I tried talkink the cat down. I actually liked that cat. You can make me out to be some qsshole. I’m supposed to say I loveyou. Thewe people qre wpectqqculqrly liqrw

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  44. Jolene said on July 5, 2011 at 7:43 pm

    Jeff (tmmo), I am constantly amazed by the details of your stories. I never dreamed that anyone would drug a baby to get it to sleep. Maybe on a flight to Australia, but to make a club date? Sheeesh.

    Like Nancy, I’ve made a point out of not learning the details of this case, but today they were hard to escape. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that someone who would fail to report a missing child for 31 days might have previously tried to avoid the troublesome burdens of parenthood.

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  45. velvet goldmine said on July 5, 2011 at 8:01 pm

    Jeff — Great summary, but you forgot the “canister of death.” The prosecution proposed using the bottled smell (?) of the car trunk of Casey Anthony’s car, which apparently reeked of human decomposition. That kind of gimmick does not bode well. If I were a juror, I would have done jail time to have avoided smelling that, not to mention overturned several chairs on my flight from the courtroom. I think the judge turned down the motion, so I don’t know if the jury was even aware that evidence was on the table, so to speak.

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  46. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on July 5, 2011 at 8:59 pm

    Plus I didn’t mention the tattoo, which is from a certain angle the best argument she actually intended to kill her child. At a point just days, maybe 2 weeks after the death — whether found by accident in the grandparents’ pool, found on return from a night of clubhopping dead and covered up, or willfully executed with duct tape & drugs, these being the only 3 options on the table by anyone — the Party Girl gets a tattoo saying “Bella Vita.” Whether you buy her story of a death at the grandparents with paternal manipulation to “force” her to cover up, or even if you found your child dead at home for reasons you knew you’d be blamed (rightfully) over . . . to then get said tattoo while your child is either in your trunk or wrapped in plastic in your parents’ tool shed . . . she’s either truly detached from reality, or she had gotten what she wanted for a “beautiful life.”

    But yes, Dorothy, let’s look closer to home, and the Knox/Licking County border in east central Ohio — and if you think it’s not too important exactly where the deaths occurred on one side of a county line or another, you don’t know how jurisdictionally anal-retentive our county governments are here. A nighttime chase down a rural road, shots fired from the passing lane, and all you need is the oncoming Amish buggy to complete the opening scenes from a Hollywood thriller.

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  47. Dexter said on July 5, 2011 at 11:42 pm

    http://www.rgbstock.com/cache1p7QUC/users/k/kr/krayker/300/mFgFpz6.jpg

    casey’s reaction at verdict’s reading

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  48. Dexter said on July 6, 2011 at 12:41 am

    prospero: Exactly to the day seven years ago a man named Sean Fitzpatrick of the Darby-Chester area of Pennsylvania wrote this in his primitive blog:
    “Bicyclists’ ability to flout the letter of the law—OK, flagrantly disdain every scintilla of order and constraint–—–depends on automobiles’ adherence to the law. We can run red lights and ride between the lanes because we know that drivers wait for the green and keep in their lanes. In turn, we mustn’t do anything that inconveniences or startles a driver. We don’t interrupt their traffic flow; they let us ride to our own rhythms. Viva USA!”
    This man had the spirit of “The Urban Deer”, a term I read for the first time in Bicycling Magazine about thirty years ago. I never forgot it.
    About seventeen years ago our local Police sent three cops out for Cop-Bike training. When they returned, fresh from schoolin’, I was immediately pulled over while cycling and I had the verbal book thrown at me; I was told I had just run seven stop signs and three red lights and I had ten separate tickets coming to me. He never wrote even a warning.
    And this guy was in a cruiser, not on his bicycle. He told me that adults needed to educate the youngsters on bikes by example, and obey all the laws…blah blah blah
    Fuck that shit.
    Like early messenger service bicyclists in NYC, I quickly learned that we indeed are urban deer, and we need to bend rules to survive. I break rules daily; I run stop signs, I blow through traffic lights when the road is clear, I ride on sidewalks when the road is too dangerous for many reasons, such as narrow shoulderless lanes or deep grates or potholes in my little lane.
    I don’t live in Berkeley, California, where bicyclists are taken care of with bike lanes, and even though my little city of Bryan, Ohio has done a great job with park pathways to ride on, I still must be vigilant on the streets at all times.
    I am prudent, and I watch for cops, and that first traffic stop was my last, except for the speed trap in Waterville, Ohio, but that was in my Volvo.
    So did prospero do wrong? I would say it is just a case of missed communication and assumption. I encounter this scenario as prospero described it many times, and I just sit and wait for all the cars to clear out before I attempt to cross or turn right, because very few car drivers give a shit.
    Of course,turn signals might mean something, and may not.

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  49. Jolene said on July 6, 2011 at 12:45 am

    Jeff (or anyone): How did Caylee’s absence come to the attention of the police? That is, after the long reporting delay, who brought them in? Was it the parents? And what was their explanation for the delay?

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  50. velvet goldmine said on July 6, 2011 at 1:27 am

    Jolene, I’m still catching up on this myself, but felt compelled to watch a special tonight after getting scolded on FB for my detached reaction. Casey and her daughter were living with Casey’s parents. Apparently Casey was moving in with a man, so she and Caylee left her parents’ house during the day, according to the parents, but the man said she moved in with him alone that night. The grandparents kept asking to speak to their granddaughter on the phone or visit with her, but were put off with various stories. At some point they went to pick up their daughter’s car (I missed why they were the ones to do this) and were appalled by the smell of death. That’s when they called the police.

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  51. James said on July 6, 2011 at 8:57 am

    Dexter:

    You’re not prudent. You’re a scofflaw.

    You shouldn’t be on the road if you don’t intend on following the rules.

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  52. Dorothy said on July 6, 2011 at 9:14 am

    Jeff @ 46: We might have actually been on that same road, just a few minutes behind the shooting/car accident, if we had driven the way we sometimes do coming back from Westerville. Mike prefers turning onto 657 (Sycamore Road) but I prefer staying on 36. I’m really glad we stayed on 36 that night. What a year it’s been in Knox County! The November murders got it all started. Here’s hoping the remainder of 2011 is boring.

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