Happy Christmas, the war is over.

Thank you, George W. Bush, et al, for this suckhole of American blood and dollars. It took as long as World War II and the Civil War laid end-to-end. (Not as long as Vietnam, though!) We removed a dictator, killed tens of thousands of civilians and tried to impose Maryland’s motor-vehicle codes on Baghdad traffic jams. We made millions more for Blackwater, er, Xe, er, Academi. Sent a few more items onto the underground antiquities market. Inspired some truly awful pop music. Spread our special kind of American magic, broke a few pots, and now, we’re outta there.

God bless Pottery Barn, for giving us the central metaphor for this particular adventure.

Many great books have come out of this war, I’ll say that. Fiasco, The Good Soldiers, and the one from which I learned that wonderful detail about Maryland traffic laws, Imperial Life in the Emerald City, which I highly recommend. Just the first chapter will cross your eyes and boil your blood, detailing how we went into a Muslim country on the grounds of helping them shed a dictator and establish democracy, then set up our command center with imported workers who dreamed up Barbecue Night in the mess hall. Yes, a celebration of pork in a Muslim nation. So the Americans don’t get too homesick.

I recall relocating to Ann Arbor in late summer 2003. Fort Wayne was dotted with yard signs, provided by the local GOP office, reading GOD BLESS OUR TROOPS. In A2, the signs read NO WAR. A useful reminder that I was not alone in thinking this as a bad idea from the get-go.

What are your war memories, from early-middle-late stages of it? I recall friends who stopped speaking, a few who simply grew obsessed. Alan put himself on the shit list for saying, in a story meeting, that it was dumb to pretend the war was over just because GWB had pronounced mission accomplished; we’ll be there for years, he said. Scowls from the managing editor.

I recall being hopeful this idea would work, but believing it would likely not go anywhere near as well as we were promised. When the only guy who’s actually been a wartime soldier says we shouldn’t be hasty, I’m inclined to believe that guy. Not Dick Cheney.

OK, time for some bloggage:

In keeping with our war theme, a short film that I worked on is doing a Kickstarter for festival entry expenses. There’s a 5-minute video at this link, which includes a trailer with a lot of the visual FX our very talented team created, as well as stills from the production. This was a micro-budget deal, in the very low four figures, most of which went for a two-day insurance policy so we could use SAG actors. (You might recall our lead, Scott Norman, in his gripping part as That Guy Who Got About Three Lines in a “Detroit 187” cold open.) Worth watching for the fabulous-ruins shots alone.

Perhaps security cameras will make stealth campaigns like this beside the point, but who cares, because I love them anyway: The yarn bomber of Ann Arbor.

Last week I queried my Facebook circle about what is an appropriate holiday-season tip for a newspaper carrier. I guess now I should make sure I’m dealing with the right people, eh? (I think I am. None were this tacky about sticking their hands out.)

And now Thursday awaits. Enjoy yours.

Eight-thirty in the morning, looks like another all-day rain, and if you’re shopping for Murk, well, we’re selling Murk today, cheap. I just raised the blinds all the way, and I can still hardly see across the room. The earth needs its rest this time of year, and we shouldn’t argue. We should all go back to bed, but that’s not the way the world works. Whimper all you want. No one is listening.

I’m thinking I’m going to make gingerbread later today. Not for gingerbread houses, but Nick Malgieri’s basic gingerbread, a tea cake that goes great with applesauce. Recipe’s in one of his books and not online, where the archive is cluttered with gingerbread men and cookies and other Christmas-y stuff. I should get with the program, but I choose not to.

What a great discussion you guys had yesterday about the Fuqua School. Like Kim, the era of Massive Resistance was mainly unknown to me, too, and the principal’s we-wuz-robbed letter on the school website is laughable. The psychology of racism — or any other shameful matter — is interesting to me. For years here in the Grosse Pointes, a system of institutionalized racism carried out by real-estate agents effectively kept the area not just white, but the right kind of white. There was a story about it in a 1960 edition of Time magazine, on the web but only fully available to subscribers, or you can read a summation at the bottom of this story by yours truly. Private investigators were employed by something called the Grosse Pointe Property Owners Association to vet potential homebuyers:

The three-page questionnaire, scaled on the basis of “points” (highest score: 100), grades would-be home owners on such qualities as descent, way of life (American?), occupation (Typical of his own race?), swarthiness (Very? Medium? Slightly? Not at all?), accent (Pronounced? Medium? Slight? None?), name (Typically American?), repute, education, dress (Neat or slovenly? Conservative or flashy?), status of occupation (sufficient eminence may offset poor grades in other respects). Religion is not scored, but weighed in the balance by a three-man Grosse Pointe screening committee. All prospects are handicapped on an ethnic and racial basis: Jews, for example, must score a minimum of 85 points, Italians 75, Greeks 65, Poles 55; Negroes and Orientals do not count.

The Time story went on to note that the Pointes were already home to several of the Detroit area’s more prominent Italian-American gangsters; maybe they squeaked through on the “sufficient eminence” clause. And in 1960, the system had its defenders:

The questionnaire and scoreboard, says Grosse Pointe Realtor Paul Maxon, “have been very successful, have kept property values up, and are approved by at least 95% of the people out here.” The whole idea of the system is to keep out people who tend toward “cliqueishness,” “Old World customs,” and “clannishness,” e.g., “an Italian fruit vendor.” Furthermore, real estate men point out that Grosse Pointe has a number of Polish, Greek and Southern European people scattered throughout the suburbs. Says Realtor Maxon: “I am sure Albert Einstein would have been accepted here.”

This was 50 years ago, and the Realtor’s comments are true today, although I’d hope the percentage of approving residents has fallen. But there are still many who would, in their heart of hearts, love to see some sort of screening system that would guarantee them better neighbors, like one of those infamous New York City co-op board that pokes through all your financial statements and club memberships before granting you the privilege of buying an apartment.

But racism persists, here and everywhere, sometimes in shocking displays. The local newspaper will sometimes note, in crime stories, that “the 16-year-old juvenile, a Detroit resident, was released to his 32-year-old mother.” A story last year about a teenage girl, “a Detroit resident,” who stole a car at knifepoint from another girl her age, a Grosse Pointer, outside her father’s office, was illustrative. Of course they didn’t need to note that the thief was black and the victim white, but just in case the reader was particularly dumb, the reporter quoted extensively from the thief’s written statement, a tragedy detailed in run-on sentences, misspelled words, and incorrect declension of the verb “to be.” I’m sure many readers had a yuk over that one.

Running a little late on time here, so let’s hop to the bloggage:

A sneakily seductive essay from Salon in which the author details his term selling high-end housewares in Los Angeles, naming names all the way through:

Bridget Fonda, who had married film composer Danny Elfman and had stopped appearing in movies, shopped there compulsively. I have vivid memories of loading cumbersome decorative pots into the trunk of Elfman’s Maserati. Zach de La Rocha, the former frontman of Rage Against the Machine, apparently had a lot of time on his hands, too, because he drove his cool Mercedes over all the time and drank coffee at the cafe attached to the store by himself. He looked desperately bored and was always alone. Nicole Richie was not alone when she came to the cafe, nor was Kevin Costner. Victoria Beckham wore her sunglasses indoors, throughout lunch. David Schwimmer came a few times, alone, and was precisely as bitter and patronizing as you’d expect him to be. Gary Oldman was completely banal, just a middle-aged man shopping for furniture with his impossibly gorgeous 20-something lady friend.

But that’s not what makes it. It’s the sly observations on how you sell to these folks.

Damn security cameras! Why we need tabloids in the world.

How do you hold a job with the same company for 65 years? A retiring 83-year-old offers some tips:

“You do the best you can,” Simler says. If you can’t get something done today, she continues, make sure to finish it tomorrow. Don’t give up. Enjoy the people you work with. And if you find a job you like, keep it.

Words to live by. Whether it’s murky or sunny where you are, I hope your Wednesday is a good one.

Mother-frackin’ WordPress. I just completed a 925-word entry, thinking it was autosaving all along, went to add a headline and got my log-in screen. No amount of backing out could find the draft, which I assume just went down the drain for reals.

So here’s one link, and here’s another. I had a few things to say about both, but it’s gone now. And right now I want to take a shower.

If you have time for only one, read the second. It’s amazing.

But I’m headed for the shower. Let’s hope for better luck tomorrow.

If any of you are looking for a good way to make green beans — and who isn’t? I ask you, who isn’t? — you can’t do much better than Mark Bittman’s spicy-sweet take on this most mundane vegetable. I know I’ve mentioned it here before, but I just made them for the third time, and was reminded again how good they are. They do depend on you being the sort of person who has almonds on hand, and dried chilies, but if you’re not, it’s worth adding both to your shopping list. They’re that good.

(And if you don’t have almonds around but you do have pine nuts, try the garlicky variation using pine nuts. I plan to, next time, now that I’ve used up the last of the almonds.)

And that is today’s installment of What Did You Have For Dinner, which I was reminded last week is perhaps a too-common topic around here. Well, hell. I can’t sparkle every day, and sometimes that’s the most interesting thing to happen in my rather sedate life. I’m writing this Sunday night to get a jump on Monday’s grind, and for now, at least, all is right with the world, which is a trite way to say I got the laundry done, Sunday dinner made/served/cleaned up after, and I more or less know what the week to come will bring. Plus, the full moon is rising in a clear sky, and I can see it from where I sit. Little things.

Oh, and while we’re on the subject, I made that French pork stew BobNG suggested last weekend, and it was great. I liked the prunes, Alan didn’t, but we both agreed it was the fresh tarragon that put it over the top. Again, not something most people keep on hand, but worth a trip to the fresh herbs section of your grocery. It’s a very good recipe.

Which then reminds me that the poobahs at Cook’s Illustrated — where the French pork stew came from — were on “Fresh Air” last week, and gave a delightful interview about what it’s like to run a test kitchen. They said the biggest challenge is people who don’t follow the recipe, substituting this for that and then complaining it didn’t work. There was an anecdote about a man who whined about a chicken recipe that had required about half an hour of heat — the worst chicken he’d ever had, he said, before adding that he hadn’t had any chicken, and had substituted shrimp. Oh. Well. Cook’s is known for testing recipes dozens of times to get the very best one, and I’m indebted to them for solving my au gratin potatoes problem once and for all. Mine always turned out runny, but not anymore. The secret: Half-and-half, and start them on the stovetop before they go into the oven. Yum.

Have I bored you senseless yet? Good. Then let’s go to the bloggage:

I listened to Hank regarding “All-American Muslim,” and haven’t been watching:

Though there will be occasional arguments and mini-crises that come along whenever you put any human beings on TV and then tell them to pretend the camera crew is invisible, “All-American Muslim” is mainly an act of public relations, going out of its way to avoid becoming “The Real Housewives of Dearborn.”

What I said up there about having a rather sedate life applies to most people, and you don’t have to live here, or in any metro area where Muslims reach critical mass, very long before they start to blend into the scenery. But that wasn’t enough for the Florida Family Association, which started an email campaign to lean on its biggest advertiser, Lowe’s, which folded like a cheap tent, although now that there’s been some loud pushback, they’re doing the dither, in a Facebook statement:

“Lowe’s has received a significant amount of communication on this program, from every perspective possible. Individuals and groups have strong political and societal views on this topic, and this program became a lighting rod for many of those views. As a result we did pull our advertising on this program. We believe it is best to respectfully defer to communities, individuals and groups to discuss and consider such issues of importance.”

How special. How respectful. In my winding path through the web many days, I’m amazed at how the Islam-exists-to-destroy-us meme flourishes on right-wing sites, and there’s simply no doubt in my mind that a North Carolina-based corporation is a particularly ripe target for the various “family associations” out there stirring the pot. Too bad, as they led the way with bilingual signage, and seem to at least acknowledge a rapidly diversifying nation, although maybe they think it only exists among contractors.

Oh, and speaking of bigotry, the case of the gay-hatin’ Troy mayor seems to be finding another gear. She’s already showing signs of fatigue — she’s tired, and she doesn’t feel well — and the Chamber of Commerce, generally the squarest, dullest people in any town, does not like this woman, especially now that gay groups are calling for shopping boycotts. (Troy is home to the area’s swankiest mall, which may be too big to dent, but maybe not restaurants and smaller stores.) One of their leaders was on a local radio show this week telling listeners the voters were victims of their own apathy, and elected a tea party ignoramus because they didn’t do their homework. The one quoted in the linked story is similarly dismissive. This woman may crumple yet.

And as always, when I read stories like this, I reflect that I never thought I’d live long enough to see gay people throw weight around like this, but whaddaya know? Progress is possible after all.

Among the many things I feel no obligation to pay the first bit of attention to, I’d put pro football in the top five. However, I understand that there’s this quarterback out there named Tim Tebow, and he’s doing something newsworthy? In matters like this, I rely on the guys at LGM, and of course TBogg.

OK, time to get out of here. The week lies ahead of us. Let’s embrace it.

Thanks for your patience this morning. Evidently we had a server crash, but it’s fixed now, and y’all are free to move about the cabin.

This is one of those mornings where I feel like I’m living in a parallel universe than the one I woke up in yesterday, one where I can open the newspapers and read several different takes on the Jon Corzine grilling before Congress yesterday, and not read the following line:

At several points during the questioning, members of the committee leaned across the table and hissed through clenched teeth, “Where is the money, Mr. Corzine? WHERE IS THE GODDAMN MONEY?!?”

Because this is where I am simply in over my head. Maybe I don’t read closely enough. I certainly don’t understand finance at this level, other than the banal observation that it has a lot in common with a casino, only with computer screens instead of slot machines but the same hookers.

How does…I think the figure is up to $1 billion now, according to that NYT DealBook story linked above. How does $1 billion in customer money just up and walk away? WHERE IS IT? Because you tell me a billion dollars is missing, and my first thought is of the “Die Hard” movies, the last one of which featured Jeremy Irons stealing all the money in the world in a parade of dump trucks. Is Simon Gruber sitting on a beach in Tahiti, digging his toes in the sand and cackling over the unbelievable score sitting in his Swiss bank account?

And yet, scrolling through the stories about the implosion of MF Global, I read passages like this:

“I simply do not know where the money is, or why the accounts have not been reconciled to date,” said Corzine, 64, in his first public comments since his resignation was announced four days after the bankruptcy filing.

Or this:

When pressed by lawmakers at the House Agriculture Committee about whether he authorized a transfer of customer funds to firm accounts, Corzine said: “If I did, it was a misunderstanding.”

Or this:

“I’m not in a position, given the number of transactions, to know anything specific about the movement of any specific funds,” said Corzine, who took over as CEO more than a year and a half ago.

So, there were a “number of transactions” that siphoned off $1 billion? And now it’s gone, and no one knows where it went, and presumably a team — hell, an army — of forensic accountants are going to be billing a lot of hours for months on end, but for now, sorry, no one knows where it is?

I’m in the wrong business. And Simon Gruber, you sly dog.

I don’t always participate as fully in comment threads as I’d like — frequently I’m reading them on my phone while running errands, or otherwise can’t get to a keyboard, but I read every one, and I’d like to call a couple to your attention, if you don’t usually dip into the comments. One is MMJeff’s experience in dealing with Richard Cordray, which you should read if you haven’t yet, and the other was an offhand remark made by Basset, to the effect that his wife is a nurse and occasionally sees young women who make the living workin’ a pole, so to speak, with terrible skin infections. I’d like to know more about that, Basset. Also, don’t look at this picture.

Also, don’t read this story, although the headline is great: Castrating lambs with your teeth may make you sick. This must be a Spanish technique. I’m sure Cooz knows more.

I remember when Tim McVeigh was executed, his last statement was the text of “Invictus,” which my friend Lance Mannion, a former English professor, explained was kitsch, a killer going down with some bad 19th-century he-man poetry. It would appear he has a spiritual brother, Rod Blagojevich, who is fond of quoting Rudyard Kipling. Fortunately, Neil Steinberg found a more appropriate poem than “If,” the one Blagojevich likes to wave around.

One for you grammar nerds, from Nancy Friedman.

Excuse me. I seem to have something in my eye…

I’ll leave you with that. Let’s get this weekend under way, shall we?

I have a system whereby I gather links for this space. Early in the day, I open a “new post” window on WordPress and copy/paste things I find in my perambulations, and then sort ’em out when I write the day’s post, usually in the morning. Some days I’m busier than others, and find less of note. Today there was only one waiting for me, a YouTube link; I can’t remember what it was and the link gives no clue. So let’s just embed it and be surprised, shall we?

Oh, right. That one.

I love high-def video; it’s fun to pause it randomly and see where I can capture the most unflattering facial expression. And that’s pretty much all I have to say about Rick Perry 2012 and his Carhartt jacket.

Something else I learned and can’t post a link to: Michigan congressman John Dingell was a page on the floor of the U.S. House when President Roosevelt asked them to declare war on Japan. Yes, we have a YouTube of that, too:

A number of immediate observations we can draw:

1) Those Carhartt jackets just don’t look right unless they’re a little dirty. Squeaky-clean like that, they resemble a Lincoln pickup truck. Twee.

2) Still, Perry could step in for one of the Village People in a pinch. The construction worker.

3) John Dingell will outlive us all.

(Pause.)

As you can probably tell, my morning has not exactly been a-brim with inspiration. In fact, I was just sitting here thinking it might feel good to do some yoga. I never do yoga. But I need a lot of stretching today, and maybe some lean, protein-rich foods. Yesterday I took myself out to lunch at a little middle eastern joint in Midtown, and got the grilled falafel sandwich. (Yes, it exists.) The proprietor was yakking it up with some of his regulars in guttural Arabic, or at least I assume it was; what other language sounds so much like extended throat-clearing? Hebrew does, a little, which suggests a connection between their delicious food, with its various nutty pastes, and those hacking consonant blends. Like most bilingual people, they scattered their conversation with English words, and the most common one in this chat was “chicken.” Puzzling, because surely there’s an Arabic word for that. (There is: dajaj. Thank you, internet.) I ate most of the falafel and got a go-box for the rest. As I rose to go, the proprietor asked, in perfect un-accented English, “Did we give you enough of a headache yet?” Ha ha, don’t be silly, I said, and as I left, the usual l’esprit de l’escalier flooded in:

You should have a doctor look at that throat.

As you can see, I wasn’t at my best yesterday, but I’m glad I had enough presence of mind not to say anything that witless. And that was one tasty sammich.

I love eavesdropping on people speaking Spanglish, or Arablish, or whatever. The last time was in one of my fave Mexican places, and the woman talking on her phone looked a wee bit street. Blah blah blah in Español and then, And I’m like, gurl, you don’t need to put UP with that shit blah blah blah. It suggests there is no satisfying translation for that concept, which makes me proud to be a native English speaker.

Good lord, it’s time to pull the plug on this mudbath, isn’t it? On to the bloggage:

I have much love for my Wisconsin friends and readers, and I say this with great affection: Wisconsin, you are NOT a mitten. Michigan is a mitten. Stop trying to be something you’re not.

Newt Gingrich has only 106,055 Twitter followers. The rest of the 1.3 million his site claims are fakes. Well, who understands the internet, anyway?

Obviously I don’t, or I wouldn’t be about to hit “publish.” Have a great Thursday.

It’s December, and time for the nation’s newspapers to clear the decks of any Pulitzer-worthy material they might have hanging around, but trust me on this: The three-part series the New York Times just concluded, about Derek Boogaard, a recently deceased hockey goon, is worth the time it takes to read it beginning to end.

Part 1 is here, with links to the rest of the series at the top of the page. I know some of you might have difficulty accessing NYT material, so it’s worth a Google to see if a non-restricted newspaper is running it off the NYT wire service. It’s really that good, a heartbreaking look at a boy who rose in the NHL by… well, this sums it up pretty well:

There is no athlete quite like the hockey enforcer, a man and a role viewed alternately as noble and barbaric, necessary and regrettable. Like so many Canadian boys, Boogaard wanted to reach the National Hockey League on the glory of goals. That dream ended early, as it usually does, and no one had to tell him.

But big-time hockey has a unique side entrance. Boogaard could fight his way there with his bare knuckles, his stick dropped, the game paused and the crowd on its feet. And he did, all the way until he became the Boogeyman, the N.H.L.’s most fearsome fighter, a caricature of a hockey goon rising nearly 7 feet in his skates.

Boogaard’s death was from an overdose of the prescription painkillers he took to live with his many injuries, although he had crossed the line into addiction some time before, and was in fact just out of rehab when he swallowed the pills that killed him this past May. The package has many links to supplemental materials, including YouTube videos of his most infamous fights. I’m not a hockey fan, but it reminded me of this two-year-old piece, most likely also behind a paywall, called “Why the Red Wings Don’t Fight,” about the Detroit team’s rise to greatness on the Russian model of the game, emphasizing well-rounded players in every position, rather than the stars-plus-enforcers North American lineup:

Fights have always broken out during physical hockey games, but in the 1960s it became a strategy. The Boston Bruins and Philadelphia Flyers used intimidation to win Stanley Cups between 1969 and 1975. Without players who specialized in fisticuffs, a team’s star players would be beaten to a pulp.

…Since the bloody ’80s, the NHL has been struggling to scale back fighting. It instituted penalties for coming off the bench for a fight and extra penalties for instigating. After the lockout season of 2004-2005, the league made strides to speed up the game by increasing enforcement of hooking and interference penalties. These measures further decreased the need for “enforcers.” Fighting plummeted in the 2005-2006 season. The Red Wings had 28 fights in 2003-04 and only six in 2005-06. This season the team has so little need for fisticuffs that it opted to populate its fourth line with skill players, leaving enforcer Darren McCarty in the minors for most of the season.

The bomb lurking inside Boogaard was the brain damage he sustained in all those throwdowns; he was one of the growing number of athletes whose brain was left to science to study, and what the pathologists found was sobering:

Boogaard had chronic traumatic encephalopathy, commonly known as C.T.E., a close relative of Alzheimer’s disease. It is believed to be caused by repeated blows to the head. It can be diagnosed only posthumously, but scientists say it shows itself in symptoms like memory loss, impulsiveness, mood swings, even addiction.

More than 20 dead former N.F.L. players and many boxers have had C.T.E. diagnosed. It generally hollowed out the final years of their lives into something unrecognizable to loved ones.

And now, the fourth hockey player, of four examined, was found to have had it, too.

But this was different. The others were not in their 20s, not in the prime of their careers.

The scientists on the far end of the conference call told the Boogaard family that they were shocked to see so much damage in someone so young. It appeared to be spreading through his brain. Had Derek Boogaard lived, they said, his condition likely would have worsened into middle-age dementia.

The NHL’s response? “Not enough evidence” to draw a link between repeated concussions and CTE. Keep digging, boys.

As I said, I’m not a hockey fan, but there sure are a lot of them here, and the Wings are probably the first or second most-beloved team in a city full of them. I’ve never heard a fan complain that the team doesn’t fight enough, and the few people I recommended that WSJ column to nodded in agreement, and said the team doesn’t need to fight, because they play so well.

So why are hockey teams still fighting? One of you who knows better will have to ‘splain that one.

Anyway, a truly sad story still worth reading.

So let’s turn on a dime, shall we? We need a little funny up in here:

Tom & Lorenzo take on a few of the truly astonishing outfits worn to the premiere of “W.E.,” the new Madonna movie, which I am PISSED has not dropped a trailer yet, so I can laugh and mock it. Oh, no, wait: It has. And it looks just about as awful as promised. That Madonna — so transgressive!

One of those roundups of a dozen or so helpful household hints, most of which I’d never heard of before, many of them pure genius.

And to come full circle, a great read from Deadspin on another figure from the sporting world who likely had brain damage, but the more conventional, self-inflicted kind. Never heard of George Kimball before. Thanks, Cooz.

And that’s it for me. Happy Wednesday, all.

The newly elected mayor of Troy, a suburban community here in the Metro, presided over only her third city council meeting last night, but the first one to be packed to the rafters with angry residents and, no doubt, a fair number of outside agitators. Over the weekend, a Facebook status update from earlier in the year, when she was Private Citizen Janice Daniels — and may I just say, that would be an excellent business card to have, don’t you think? “Private Citizen (Your Name Here)?”

Anyway, here’s what P.C. Daniels wrote:

I think I am going to throw away my I Love New York carrying bag now that queers can get married there.

As you might expect, attention has lingered on the “queers” part, but I’d like to consider the rest of this simple declarative sentence for a bit. I know nothing of her background, although we can certainly assume she was at least considering a run for office in June, when this appeared. She should have been measuring her comments at the very least, but this is Facebook, and if there’s one thing that social network does, it’s winnow. I have hundreds of friends, but it’s fair to say that the ones I see in my daily stops there are pretty much like me. I see a million versions of the hot viral video being promoted by people like me. I know what the hot story being pushed on PeopleOfMyPoliticalPersuasion.com. After a while, I could be lulled into believing the whole world agrees with me, and before you know it, I’m posting about the queers.

Daniels is a political novice and a favorite of the local tea party, so it’s fair to say she’s maybe not totally sophisticated about these things, and her half-assed, unenthusiastic walkback has only made it worse:

She’s pointed out that the offensive Q word is “in the dictionary,” and that she still has the tote bag (“It was a joke”), all the while clinging to her “principle” — that “marriage should be between a man and a woman.”

Although Daniels has apologized weakly several times, always with caveats, she has yet to suggest she actually understands how she offended real people who live, shop and work in Troy and who are her constituents.

…Maureen McGinnis, the mayor pro tem, said City Council members had received hundreds of emails, including those from people who said they wouldn’t shop in Troy stores or eat in Troy restaurants.

Daniels received them, too, she said, “but I also heard from people who said they want to move to Troy.”

But let’s get back to the original statement; gays can get married in New York, and the only thing you can come up with as a protest is to throw away a branded “carrying bag?” And you actually own one in the first place? That’s sort of embarrassing. It’s like saying you’re protesting Arizona’s immigration laws by boycotting Road Runner cartoons, and then, when called on it, protesting that there are cacti in the background, so, y’know, get it? GET IT?

On the other hand, this is a Facebook posting. What hath Sarah Palin wrought?

It should be illegal to be this dumb, let alone hold public office.

OK, the hour is growing late, and I have some work to do. A little bloggage:

Longtime readers know I like to use Bob Greene as a punching bag, but he actually did do a few pieces I liked, almost all of them for Esquire magazine. (Whenever I meet an otherwise bleh writer with one great platform, I always assume it’s the editor’s credit.) In one, he signed up to take the Scholastic Aptitude Test. It turns out anyone can take the SAT, if they pay their money and otherwise follow the rules. As I recall, he aced the verbal and tanked the math. I’d like to see more school board members, policymakers and other civilians try something like that, or, even better, take their state’s own standardized test, which one brave-but-anonymous soul did, described in this WashPost column. His report?

I have a wide circle of friends in various professions. Since taking the test, I’ve detailed its contents as best I can to many of them, particularly the math section, which does more than its share of shoving students in our system out of school and on to the street. Not a single one of them said that the math I described was necessary in their profession.

Y’don’t say.

Time to cut things short and get moving. The week is now fully under way. Hope yours is going well.

I hope you guys are having a better Monday than I am. Funny how a gloomy morning after an all-night rain means one thing on Sunday — brew a bigger pot of coffee, read the entire newspaper front to back, maybe make gingerbread because we won’t be doing yard work today — and something else entirely on Monday. That is to say, ich.

But this is the Monday we have chosen, and as usual — AS USUAL — it intends to be difficult. So let’s go to the bloggage, eh?

You know how we can make education SO much BETTER? Turn it over to the American businessman, with his endless ingenuity and his new perspectives, unencumbered by the oldthink of the education establishment! Take it from this sadder-but-wiser student at something called Brown Mackie College in Fort Wayne, an institution that didn’t exist when I left town seven years ago. I think the deal was sealed for me when I learned this about the school’s corporate parent:

Goldman Sachs owns 41 percent of the company.

Say no more!

Seriously, though, it’s a good read. When I went to the TED conference last year, I ran into a guy who was a Knight-Wallace Fellow at Michigan, my brother in fellowship. He was a beat reporter for the AP, and was planning to spend his year studying this exploding field of for-profit education. It’s not that the schools are all as bad as this one — which has students with felony convictions enrolled in the criminal-justice program, a field they will never be able to enter — but they are mostly far more expensive than community-college options. In this particular case, 3X more expensive.

I don’t know how I missed this on the health beat when it was new, but its warning is timeless: Men who have sex with animals have a higher risk of developing penile cancer. The gems are in the last two paragraphs, in which we learn about the length of these relationships and, of course, the preferred species. Whinny!

JeffTMMO posted this on his Facebook, about the Kindle Fire:

Amazon seems to have learned a lesson from the late Steve Jobs, who derided the original Kindle: “It doesn’t matter how good or bad the product is, the fact is that people don’t read anymore.” The company’s business model for the new tablet reflects the fact that Americans prefer to juggle a wide variety of games, apps, and videos rather than sit and focus on a book or essay. The case of the Kindle Fire demonstrates that today’s consumers embrace a lifestyle of interruption, multitasking, and limited focus. Unless we use the Fire and devices like it to read more books, our society may be driven to distraction.

I’ve embraced e-books, but not wholeheartedly. I think my one-word New Year’s resolution (a tradition introduced to me by Laura Lippman) will be: Focus. In other words, I’m going to be reading more paper books.

But I won’t be reading anything unless I get moving. So I am.

I bet this is great after dark.