I've got time for Tom, Dick and Harry Foolery too!!!!

Last year I uncovered evidence of nefarious goings on among the castaways on Gilligan's Island. Long thought to be a family friendly sitcom, I believe that the show is much more subversive than it's given credit for.

The other day I was watching the show with my kids and found further support for my theory. Gilligan is walking along when the Professor, hiding in nearby bushes, shoves a bamboo stick out and trips our hapless hero. After he falls you can clearly see the butt of a cigarette in the sand by his hand.

Obviously the castaways aren't the happy-go-lucky innocents (except Ginger) they pretend to be. Smoking weed. Cigarettes. Booze. What else is going on behind the scenes? Attempts to raise Ry'leh. Crossbreeding with the Deep Ones? Having their bodies switched around by a mad scientist? The mind boggles.

(Evidence of subversive castaway activity.)

Taste is not the same as appetite, and therefore not a question of morals.

One more thing regarding the Sotomayor nomination...

I noticed yesterday that the Wall Street Journal and other conservative mouthpieces had taken up the cry against "empathy" which Sotomayor had at one point argued is an important trait for a judge to embody. The general argument is trying to use pigeonhole Sotomayor into the larger conservative frame that liberal judges are wishy-washy emotional basket cases while conservatives are cold, rational purveyors of the rule of law.

I find the argument against empathy kind of puzzling. The opposite of empathy isn't objective reason. Consider that the most famous people who lacked empathy were guys with names like Ted Bundy, Charles Manson, David Berkowitz and Jeffrey Dahmer. In our society those that lack empathy for other living things could generally be classified as "sociopaths," not brave defenders of reason above emotion.

There might be something to saying that all conservatives are sociopaths to a greater or lesser degree. That's not an argument I'm making here. I'd point out for example that conservatives have occasionally demonstrated great shows of empathy towards others, although usually it's finely focused on the rich, powerful or only those that they share direct personal experience (James Brady.)

On the other hand there's the example of the conservative Dick Cheney. It's clear to me that other different circumstances, were he not to have had the mechanisms of the federal government at his disposal to torture and maim others, Dick Cheney would have amassed a body count one way or the other. Had he been a video store clerk instead of a Secretary of Defense and Vice President I don't doubt for second that he would've eventually made the national news due to a horrific discovery in the freezer of his apartment. Cheney is quite clearly a sociopath.

Empathy is that which separates man from animal, christian from gentile, liberal from conservative and decent Supreme Court justice from Antonin Scalia. The idea that a judge that actually understands the implications of how she rules to all the citizens of this land would somehow be a bad something is the greatest form of lunacy.

On an unrelated note I have a review of "Drag Me To Hell" up at Swiney's place.

Has the planet gone mad? My brother, passion's hostage. I seek justice - denied! I shall not submit! I shall conquer! I shall rise!

Regarding the Sotomayor nomination-

Good. She looks like an excellent choice IMHO. I love that she chose law as a career because, in part, she was inspired by watching Perry Mason.

Conservatives have already thrown themselves on the floor and begun their tantrum. So far they're focusing on this.

"I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life," said Judge Sotomayor.

At the risk of offending my friends of faith I do have to admit that I'm occasionally dumbstruck when I step back and consider that fairly benign observations like the above referenced Sotomayor views are considered "crazy" in that they might inform her judicial philosophy, but the idea that the views of a judge based on the words contained in a 2000-year old book stuffed full of what rational people might consider the stuff of fantasy are somehow beyond reproach when it comes to potentially informing the decisions of such a judge.

It's a weird, weird, world.

If you want to survive out here, you've got to know where your towel is.

Happy Memorial Day!

Besides commemorating our brave vets lets not forget that today is also Towel Day. Don't let any strag or Bugblatter Beast catch you without your towel.