Pun Salad

Once upon a time, there was a beautiful princess. Her husband was mean to her, so she took the kids and moved in with her parents in the cold and dark land in which they lived. But her parents weren't very supportive, and she was forced to work in the mines. And the men there were really mean to her and the other women who worked there.

So she got a lawyer, and made the men be nice to her. The End.

Well, it wasn't quite that bad. A lot of acting talent (Charize Theron, Frances McDormand in another Minnesotan role, Sean Bean, Woody Harrelson, Sissy Spacek) is employed here in service of a script that is mainly concerned with hitting all the right buttons. Sean Bean is especially good in playing a heckuva decent guy, which is a relief from his usual slimeball roles.

• So I woke up this morning with the bright idea to change the title of yesterday's post about Massachusetts' out-migration from "Fleeing Mass" to "Mass Exodus". Heh!

  But I first asked the Google about that clever wordplay, and it turned out that Jeff Jacoby had already used it for the same purpose back in January. Can I claim retroactive plagiarism? Nah, guess not. Here's Jacoby's conclusion:

  This is a state in which a tax cut can be decisively approved by the voters yet never go into effect. In which grocers can be prosecuted for pricing milk too low. In which archaic blue laws decree when shops may and may not open for business. In which local officials have been known to heatedly object to opening town meetings with the Pledge of Allegiance. In which a $2 billion Big Dig ends up costing $14 billion. In which Ted Kennedy keeps getting reelected.

  Is it really any wonder so many people are fleeing Massachusetts? Maybe the real mystery is why so many of us stay.

  Pun Salad's new slogan: a mere three months behind the MSM!

• As the academic year winds down, University employees are apparently itching to demonstrate their devotion to supressing free expression. Today's example is Penn State. Only a few days ago, their administration was recently half-cheered at the Torch blog for issuing a press release explaining their refusal to shut down College Republicans' "Illegal Immigration Awareness Day". Yes, there was a lot of tut-tutting about the event being "unproductive" and "offensive". And the Torch went on to point out that Penn State still had blatantly unconstitutional speech codes in place.

  No kidding. Via David Bernstein at Volokh, it's apparent Penn State's brief fling with the First Amendment was not the beginning of a meaningful relationship after all. An article from the Penn State Digital Collegian:

  For Penn State student Josh Stulman, years of hard work ended in disappointment yesterday when the university cancelled his upcoming art exhibit for violation of Penn State's policies on nondiscrimination, harassment and hate.

  Three days before his 10-piece exhibit -- Portraits of Terror -- was scheduled to open at the Patterson Building, Stulman (senior-painting and anthropology) received an e-mail message from the School of Visual Arts that said his exhibit on images of terrorism "did not promote cultural diversity" or "opportunities for democratic dialogue" and the display would be cancelled.

  Stulman's real crime was apparently his art's blunt honesty about Palestinian antisemitism and terror. Charles Garoian, professor and director of the School of Visual Arts, is quoted as saying that kind of thing runs afoul of "Penn State's Policy AD42: Statement on Nondiscrimination and Harassment and Penn State's Zero Tolerance Policy for Hate."

• Sharp-eyed Jonah Goldberg points out:
  1. Al Gore is fond of decrying fear-mongering. For example, here, he accuses the administration of "consistently resorting to the language and politics of fear". Here he claims Republicans are "especially proficient in the use of fear as a technique for obtaining and holding power." Here the claim is the administration "seems determined to use fear as a political tool to consolidate its power and to escape any accountability for its use." Get it? Al thinks fear is icky.

  2. But if you go to the website for Gore's new "documentary" about global warming? The very first thing you see is
     By far the most terrifying film you will ever see.

  Well, it's not icky when we do it. Hypocrisy, thy name is Al.

• And while I'm at it, the second thing you see at the above website is a Mark Twain quote:
  It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so.

  Is it just me, or isn't that a damned odd witticism to use for a movie titled An Inconvenient Truth? Twain's quote should encourage prudent skepticism; a quality entirely absent from the movie (specifically) and the Global Warming cheerleaders (generally) on their pet topic.