I had no idea a writer for the NY Post could be this hilarious:

July 29, 2003 — Dead men tell no tales – except at the New York Times.

The obituary of comedian Bob Hope, who died Sunday, carried the byline of Vincent Canby – a Times writer who has been dead himself since 2000.

If there are any mistakes, obviously don’t call the writer.

In fairness, the Times Web site, which posted the story last night, did say that the writer had died in 2000.

Was it a post mortem obit? If not, was Canby able to collect a kill fee before he left?

Joe Lelyveld, the Times interim executive editor – who passes the baton to William Keller tomorrow – said it is not the first time that a writer has “predeceased the subject.”

We all want to give our colleagues – and fellow working stiffs – their due, but isn’t the practice a little unusual?

Usually when an editor sends someone to the morgue, he means the area where long-ago clippings are stored. “He wrote the piece and we don’t take his name off it,” said Lelyveld. “Notice our dead reporter did not report that Bob Hope had died Sunday.”

“He wrote the piece a few years ago,” said Lelyveld, “and not much has happened in Bob Hope’s life since.”

That ends that mystery. At least he didn’t bury the lead.

If you haven’t seen this yet, be sure take a look. The public defender who presented this legal brief all about the word Fuck is going to have a bright future ahead. Ingenious.

[Via Daypop]

I always felt the argument that the significance of what a president (or anyone else) says is proportional to the number of words used to say it is patently absurd. This little cartoon drives the point home.

[From Bush for Dummies, via Idle Days]

I hope my last post on President Bush didn’t come across as too critical. My sole criticism (in that post) was in regard to his public speaking abilities when he can’t lean on a script. I was truly amazed at his incoherence yesterday, three years into this presidency.

From everything I have heard, I believe if I met George W. I would truly like him. Apparently he comes across as amiable, compassionate and empathetic, at least when the meeting is on a one-to-one basis and he’s out of the public spotlight. And there’s no doubt he is intelligent. That doesn’t alter my opinion about his (in)ability to think and speak on his feet.

I just watched a newsclip of Bush answering questions at a rare press conference yesterday. I am not exaggerating when I say I wanted to cover my face in embarrassment.

I think of the way Tony Blair, through a contagious passion and the confidence of a born orator, can inspire a crowd. I think of Clinton and Reagan, the two greatest American communicators of my lifetime. I think of Churchill. And Hitler (the man could talk, I’ll give him that).

Then we come to Bush. As he coughs and sputters and stammers and stutters, trying to decipher his torturous syntax becomes an exercise in sheer futility. He is fine when he has a prepared speech in front of him. But when he’s on his own, forced into spontaneous dialogue, all we see is this fat head with two frightened eyes swimming helplessly in their sockets, an obvious “fight-or-flight” dread emanating from his pores; he clutches at phrases, for some banal platitude that will be uncontroversial enough to get him out of the vice alive. When he isn’t uttering incoherent gibberish, he’s spewing out the tritest and blandest of cliches. It is painful watching him flounder to keep afloat.

More than anything else the president is a communicator. In this regard, Bush gets the lowest marks ever. He is the anti-communicator, the Great Obfuscator, the tongue-tied village idiot. That’s the best I can say for him. Watching him simply makes one’s skin crawl, in several different directions at once.

About a month ago I complained that Andrew Sullivan was unfairly singling out Hillary Clinton for being “against gay marriage.” I wrote at the time:

Politicians know that their critics hang on their every word and, wishy-washy as it seems, they have to measure what they say carefully, especially when it comes to super-charged issues — and Sullivan knows it. Would he apply the same litmus test to George W. on gay marriages? Because if he did, I suspect he would be mighty disappointed.

Looking at what he has to say about this very topic today, it appears I was right:

It seems clear to me that we are now headed toward a terrible and possibly definitive tempest on the issue of gay equality. President Bush said yesterday, in so many words, that he is considering amending the constitution to deny gays legal equality in their relationships – indeed to enshrine second-class citizenship for gays in the sacred words of the founding document. It is very hard to think of any act any politican could endorse that would alienate and marginalize gay citizens and their families more.

What bothers me but certainly doesn’t surprise me is that his tone throughout this very long post is one of guidance; he is offering his friend George counsel on how to deal with the issue.

When Hillary Clinton was put on the spot on the same issue, Sullivan was far less charitable; in fact, he lashed out at her, and sneered, “”So there you have it. The Senator from New York State is opposed to equal rights for gays and lesbians.”

Bush went way further than Hillary did, and actually suggested he had legislators working on an amendment to ban gay marriages. Yet Sullivan makes no such pronouncement, no categorical condemnation, no “So there you have it….”

An glaring example of double standards.

To keep them from breeding out of control, horny koala bears are put on the pill.

Those irrepressible psychopaths of the Jemaah Islamiah terrorist network are apparently preparing another Bali-sytle massacre to show the world they are still alive and well.

An article in today’s Straits Times paints a vivid picture of just how nasty these guys can be and how Indonesia sits in the epi-center of Southeast Asian terror. Reading it, one comes to the depressing conclusion that no one in the region is safe.

It’s almost funny, that on the very day I received that warning from the US embassy on increased threats of terrorism, the US government announces it will be cutting back on air marshalls on many flights. This represents a major disconnect.

You simply have to ask, “What were they thinking?” Grist for the Democrats’ mills.

So tell me, is this a joke, or a hoax put out by the Dean people? Can it possibly be for real?

[Courtesy Silt.}