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The Frisky Mole Boy of Groton

Norman Rogers recounts the summer he spent hiding from the stern love of his father and living as the world-famous “frisky mole boy” in the Groton, Connecticut sewer system. The Frisky Mole Boy of Groton seduced the women of the town and solved crimes, all while subsisting on a steady diet of depravity and confusion.

Rampage of the Innocents is my unfinished but brilliant Historical Romance Novel (now, with more sex and violence for my teenaged readers)

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    Entries in Etiquette (17)

    Monday
    Jul192010

    Tim McCarver is One of the Great American Jackasses of All Time

    DateMonday, July 19, 2010

    History's Greatest Fraud in the Broadcast Booth, Tim McCarverYears ago, we had a rule in our home.

    If there was a baseball game on, the sound would be turned down if Tim McCarver was doing color commentary. And that was a tough thing, because I like Joe Buck. I think Joe Buck does a great job. But I cannot abide Tim McCarver. I also cannot abide Joe Morgan. So, does that make me biased against announcers who played on National League teams in the 1970s? Of course it does. But it also makes me a man of taste.

    It's a rare thing for me to be able to talk about my great disgust with all things Tim McCarver:

    It doesn't happen very often, but Tim McCarver actually said something interesting during the Yankees-Rays game on Saturday. Too bad it wasn't interesting in a good way. Here's what he said,transcribed by Lisa Swan over at Subway Squawkers (Note: NY Stadium Insider had it first, with video):

    You remember some of those despotic leaders in World War II, primarily in Russia and Germany, where they used to take those pictures that they had ... taken of former generals who were no longer alive, they had shot 'em. They would airbrush the pictures, and airbrushed the generals out of the pictures. In a sense, that's what the Yankees have done with Joe Torre. They have airbrushed his legacy. I mean, there's no sign of Joe Torre at the stadium. And, that's ridiculous. I don't understand it.
     Not surprisingly, this has created a great deal of ire across the Internets since Saturday. And I understand why.  What he said was really, really stupid. Only I don't think the Nazi/Communist comparison -- in and of itself -- is what makes the comments stupid.

     

    Uh huh. Really, they're all just about the same thing, aren't they? Baseball franchises, terroristic regimes that killed millions. You simply cannot make a cheap comparison there, can you? Of course not.

    Anyway, McCarver beats this drum because he and Torre are buddies. McCarver wants to walk into Yankee Stadium and sit down at the microphone and bash the franchise because of how the exit of Joe Torre was handled. Well, Joe Torre was forever playing the martyr on a team that has, since anyone can remember, been required to win championships. Never mind that the late George Steinbrenner paid too much for those championships and should have signed Torre to a lifetime contract; Tim McCarver has an axe to grind, and no one is going to stand between him and the grinder.

    I'm all for Yankee bashing, but the sad fact is, I despise McCarver more than I despise the Yankees. I don't care if he's being fair or unfair; I think he's a fraud. I think his criticisms (and non-criticisms) of the Yankees are ridiculous and without any historical scholarship.

    As a Red Sox fan, that's telling you something, isn't it?

    AuthorNorman Rogers | tagged , , , , , , , | in , , , , , , , , ,
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    Thursday
    Jul012010

    Nation Building and the Need for Legitimate Governance

    DateThursday, July 1, 2010

    U.S. Military Special Operations Plane, AfghanistanIt's been a while since I talked about the futility of nation building, but here goes:

    It’s always interesting and a little frustrating to talk to the Brits about the disasters in Iraq and Afghanistan. Having established long and tragic histories in both countries during the 19th and 20th centuries, they took the stunning decision to follow the United States back into both those quagmires in the 21st, and now they’re stuck.

    Yet they are full of pith-helmet wisdom from their old colonial days. Thus one rather senior diplomat, who asked to remain anonymous, told me recently that in Afghanistan, “What you [the Americans] need is a civilian viceroy there.” Another equally influential British civil servant started a discussion of Afghanistan’s potential mineral wealth by saying, “If you were a 19th-century empire builder, you would identify the areas with the most resources and put a massive blanket of security there.”

    Well, we Americans are not 19th-century empire builders, or at least we never intended to be. But as we struggle to extricate ourselves from the ill-conceived imperium left over by the George W. Bush administration, we might as well admit there are some important lessons to learn from the Britain’s unhappy experiences. No, we don’t need a viceroy. No, we don’t need rapacious industrialists scarfing up mining concessions.

    The author goes on to talk about the Rudyard Kipling book Kim. I know, yawn.

    This is not a new sentiment. Nation building was discredited as a practice under the Clinton Administration. Some of us have been consistent in our opposition to such nonsense. Do-gooders and feel-gooders and greedy neoconservatives have never been able to figure out that nation building does not work. Here we are, circa 2010, and we have a government paralyzed with good intentions and hell-bent on spending our way into an oblivion I'm already tired of talking about.

    This piece from what was cited continues the wildly delusional idea of Afghanistan as a place where natural resources abound:

    you would identify the areas with the most resources and put a massive blanket of security there.”

    There's no infrastructure in Afghanistan to exploit such things. The idea that a country that has virtually no mining sector and little or no capability of developing one free of corruption is laughable. I love the idea that there are British civil servants out there who are that clueless. It makes leaving Afghanistan easier, and it makes mocking them something I can sink my teeth into. The entire British Army could deploy to Afghanistan next week and it wouldn't have the capability of securing a route from the Kabul airport to the nearest strip mine full of goodies. There's no such mine. There's nothing there to mine the materials with. There are few, if any, serviceable roads to the areas where such riches are found. There's no one qualified to work it. There isn't enough bribe money to buy off the Afghans who would allow such a thing to exist. There's no there there.

    You cannot establish a "viceroy" because, within the framework of NATO and the United Nations, no illegitimate potentate can survive the bureaucracy created by bringing in coalition partners. You can wish for a viceroy; you can then go explain to whoever Ban Ki-Moon has sent as his flunky that the viceroy is running things. Good luck getting through that meeting. When that winds down, go sit with the Brits, the French, the Germans, the Dutch and the Italians (and whoever else is wearing a NATO hat) and then explain to them that the alliance we have with them really isn't a partnership since that would impinge on the need for the viceroy to be an unquestioned source of power.

    If the rest of the world sees a top-down illegitimate government imposed by American will, they'll continue doing what they're doing because what we already have is a top down illegitimate government kept in place by American contractors and an expeditionary force that is worn out from repeated use. What thwarts our goal of getting out of Afghanistan is a legitimate government. Without it, nothing goes forward.

    I applaud the idea of getting things done. The problem is, we've transplanted American democratic practices to a tribal part of the world where business is done by tribes, families, and through complex social interactions. Formal meetings transpire over a pot of tea and not over secure phone lines or in the hazy presentation of the leaked newspaper item. We're still ramming the round peg into the square hole, and no viceroy can fix that.

    AuthorNorman Rogers | tagged , , , , , , , | in , , , , , , , ,
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    Monday
    May312010

    Who Thought That This Would Be Appropriate?

    DateMonday, May 31, 2010

     

    Pardon me for saying this, but the President of the United States should never be seen with an umbrella, holding an umbrella, or under an umbrella.

     

    It's bad enough that he is not allowed, by the fashions of our so-called modern times, to wear a hat, but to see the President standing there holding his own umbrella on his shoulder is utterly ridiculous. It would make sense to me if the President wore a hat in public; hat sales would go through the roof if he did; and a time-honored American tradition would return.

     

    This was an utterly forgettable appearance and I blame his handlers. If you can't plan properly and set something up for the President to stand under, get out of the business of politics and advance organization.
    AuthorNorman Rogers | tagged , , , , , , , | in , , , , , ,
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    Monday
    May242010

    A Gentleman's Row Between Australia and Israel

    DateMonday, May 24, 2010

    Here's the latest development in the strained relationship between Australia and Israel:

    Australia on Monday called for the expulsion of an Israeli diplomat over fake passports used in the assassination of a Hamas operative in the United Arab Emirates.

    An investigation had confirmed that Israeli agents were behind the forgery of Australian passports used in the January 20 killing of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, a founding member of Hamas' military wing, Foreign Minister Stephen Smith said.

    The four Australians whose passports were used were victims of passport fraud and had nothing to do with the killing, he said.

    Smith did not elaborate whom Australia wanted expelled from the Israeli diplomatic mission in Canberra but said diplomat has to leave within the week.

    He briefed parliament on the results of the investigation Monday morning and said the forgeries were so sophisticated, only a state intelligence service could have carried them out.

    If this was really serious, I would think that the Israeli Ambassador would have been thrown out, at a minimum, and that the Australian Embassy in Israel would have been emptied out in protest. This seems like a scaled-down protest, and a very similar reaction to what the British did several months ago:

    Britain expelled a high-ranking Israeli diplomat Tuesday in retaliation for alleged misuse of British passports by Israeli agents suspected in the assassination of a senior Hamas commander two months ago in Dubai.

    Foreign Secretary David Miliband said the decision was made after consultations with his Israeli counterpart. The expelled official was not identified, but the BBC and the Times of London reported that he was the head of the Mossad intelligence agency in the Israeli Embassy.

    The expulsion follows an investigation by Britain's Serious Organized Crime Agency, or SOCA, into the Jan. 19 slaying of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh at a luxury hotel. Officials in the Persian Gulf emirate have alleged that the killing was carried out by an Israeli hit squad using forged European and Australian passports, 12 of them cloned from documents belonging to British citizens living in Israel.

    The assassination operation may have been uniquely successful, and embarrassingly so. It's pretty obvious that none of the nations who have expelled Israeli diplomats are that upset. They cannot be seen doing nothing, or expressing approval, so they're throwing a few sacrificial lambs out there to maintain a little plausible deniability. Yes, they may be angry. They're angry their own security apparatus can't pull off such an operation. It's assassination envy.

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    Friday
    Mar262010

    Never Let a Head of State Feel Snubbed

    DateFriday, March 26, 2010

    The White House, as photographed by Norman Rogers

    I don’t know if this is really true, but, if it is, then someone forgot basic diplomatic courtesy and should be fired:

    For a head of government to visit the White House and not pose for photographers is rare. For a key ally to be left to his own devices while the President withdraws to have dinner in private was, until this week, unheard of. Yet that is how Binyamin Netanyahu was treated by President Obama on Tuesday night, according to Israeli reports on a trip viewed in Jerusalem as a humiliation.

    After failing to extract a written promise of concessions on settlements, Mr Obama walked out of his meeting with Mr Netanyahu but invited him to stay at the White House, consult with advisers and “let me know if there is anything new”, a US congressman, who spoke to the Prime Minister, said.

    “It was awful,” the congressman said. One Israeli newspaper called the meeting “a hazing in stages”, poisoned by such mistrust that the Israeli delegation eventually left rather than risk being eavesdropped on a White House telephone line. Another said that the Prime Minister had received “the treatment reserved for the President of Equatorial Guinea”.

    Left to talk among themselves Mr Netanyahu and his aides retreated to the Roosevelt Room. He spent a further half-hour with Mr Obama and extended his stay for a day of emergency talks to try to restart peace negotiations. However, he left last night with no official statement from either side. He returned to Israel yesterday isolated after what Israeli media have called a White House ambush for which he is largely to blame.

    How much of this is because of politics, and how much of it is because the White House has been in turmoil since practically day one, unable to host and accommodate visitors and guests? The demise of the White House Social Secretary could have played a part in this; I would also wonder about a State Department that is still suffering from years of neglect. But, never forget that, sometimes, a message sent with great intent and importance is delivered in the form of a room with closed doors and an absent host. Letting Netanyahu feel snubbed might have been the intent all along.

    AuthorNorman Rogers | tagged , , , , , , , | in , , , , , ,
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    Friday
    Feb262010

    Another Obama Administration Aide is Thrown Out the Door

    DateFriday, February 26, 2010

    The White House, 12 July 2009, Norman Rogers

    Not a surprise, but not exactly a great thing for the office of the Presidency, either:

    Desiree Rogers, the White House social secretary, plans to step down, three sources familiar with the situation told CNN Friday.

    Her office came under scrutiny after a couple who lacked an invitation showed up at President Barack Obama’s first state dinner.

    Officials with the White House and the administration, as well as a colleague of Rogers, told CNN of her plans to leave.

    UPDATE:In an e-mail to CNN’s Suzanne Malveaux, Rogers said she is headed back to the private sector.

    “It has been incredible setting the foundation for the WH for this historical Presidency,” she wrote.

    At least they didn’t trot out that old saw, “I want to spend more time with my family.”

    Have you met my family? I’d gladly accept a Federal position just to get out of having to spend any time at all with them. I wish I had gotten that Ambassadorship to Gambia in 2001; my life might have been so different. Oh well.

    What I take away from the incident with the Salahis is this—it got to the point in this country where someone thought they could crash the White House for a reality television show, thereby cheapening the highest office in the land. Something had to happen to snap things back in line, and this incident might have been it. Allowing Miss Rogers some time to serve and then leave was graceful, even if the handling of the incident was anything but.

    AuthorNorman Rogers | tagged , , , , , , , | in , , , , , ,
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    Friday
    Feb262010

    Gaddafi's Swiss Derangement Continues

    DateFriday, February 26, 2010

    Bern, Switzerland

    This won’t end:

    Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi has called for a jihad, or holy war, against Switzerland, as an ongoing diplomatic row between the two nations heats up.

    He criticised a recent Swiss vote against the building of minarets and said Muslims must boycott the country.

    There have been tensions between the nations since 2008, when one of Mr Gaddafi’s sons was arrested in Geneva, accused of assaulting two servants.

    A Swiss foreign ministry spokesman declined to comment on the jihad call.

    The Libyan leader made his comments while speaking at a meeting to mark the birthday of the Prophet Muhammad.

    “Let us wage jihad against Switzerland, Zionism and foreign aggression,” he said.

    While that all might sound like harmless talk, it’s hardly what we need to be hearing from Libya. In exchange for some measure of normalcy and improved economic ties to the West, Libya had to agree to certain things. This derangement against Switzerland was not one of those things. 

    AuthorNorman Rogers | tagged , , , , , , , | in , , , , ,
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    Thursday
    Feb252010

    The Most Awkward Handshake of the Year

    DateThursday, February 25, 2010

    Indian Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao, left, shakes hand with her Pakistani counterpart Salman Bashir before the start of a delegation level meeting, in New Delhi, Thursday, Feb. 25, 2010.

    It looks cordial, but it probably isn’t:

    India and Pakistanheld their first official talks Thursday since the 2008 Mumbai siege, with both sides saying they wanted to rebuild trust shattered in that attack but acknowledging that the meeting was just a first step toward a renewed peace process.

    The four-hour meeting between the nuclear-armed rivals ranged from shared water resources to the status of the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir. But terrorism was the focus of the discussions - an emphasis Pakistan quickly made clear would only slow further talks.

    “The only way forward is to engage meaningfully across the board, and not hold the relationship hostage” to the issue of terrorism, Pakistani Foreign Secretary Salman Bashir told reporters after the meetings. India has long argued that Pakistan has not done enough to rein in militants operating from its soil, an accusation that Pakistan denies.

    Expectations were extremely low for Thursday’s talks, which were seen as little more than a symbolic first meeting and which India had billed as “talks about talks.” Both sides indicated little of substance had been achieved.

    I’m still stunned by the Mumbai attack, and I have to pay tribute to the restraint of India. I really believed that, when Mumbai happened, we were going to see an all-out shooting war along the Kashmir frontier at a minimum and much, much worse at the maximum.

    Well, diplomacy always helps. I do think the lady does show a bit of skin here, however. Is that an accident or is that rubbing salt in a fundamentalist wound? Somewhere, a Taliban flunky is looking for a fainting couch after being shown the short sleeves of a professional woman in public.

    AuthorNorman Rogers | tagged , , , , , , , | in , , , ,
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    Wednesday
    Dec092009

    Are They Really Incensed? How Can You Tell?

    DateWednesday, December 9, 2009

    Norwegians are a pretty even-keeled folk. How can you tell if they’re really mad about something? I don’t get this at all:

    Barack Obama’s trip to Oslo to pick up his Nobel peace award is in danger of being overshadowed by a row over the cancellation of a series of events normally attended by the prizewinner.

    Norwegians are incensed over what they view as his shabby response to the prize by cutting short his visit.

    The White House has cancelled many of the events peace prize laureates traditionally submit to, including a dinner with the Norwegian Nobel committee, a press conference, a television interview, appearances at a children’s event promoting peace and a music concert, as well as a visit to an exhibition in his honour at the Nobel peace centre.

    He has also turned down a lunch invitation from the King of Norway.

    According to a poll published by the daily tabloid VG, 44% of Norwegians believe it was rude of Obama to cancel his scheduled lunch with King Harald, with only 34% saying they believe it was acceptable.

    “Of all the things he is cancelling, I think the worst is cancelling the lunch with the king,” said Siv Jensen, the leader of the largest party in opposition, the populist Progress party. “This is a central part of our government system. He should respect the monarchy,” she told VG.

    The Norwegian Nobel committee, which awards the peace prize, dismissed the criticism. “We always knew that there were too many events in the programme. Obama has to govern the US and we were told early on that he could not commit to all of them,” said Geir Lundestad, secretary of the committee.

    Although Obama will not lunch with King Harald, he will see him on a visit to the royal palace.

    See? They “were told early on” that President Obama could “not commit to all of them.” So where is the outrage, then? If the Obama Administration told the organizers early on that he couldn’t make all of the traditional events, why are they up in arms in the first place?

    Ideologically opposed elements inside of Norway have seized upon something in order to make an American president look bad. That’s wrong. That’s a kneejerk response. President Obama has done nothing wrong, and this sort of thing should unite Americans. I realize that liberals would never say the same thing about President Bush, but still. Allow me to say that President Obama has every right to decline certain events and maintain his schedule. No foreign political intrigue need sully the reputation of our President.

    AuthorNorman Rogers | tagged , , , , , , , | in , , , , , , , ,
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    Sunday
    Nov152009

    Amy Alkon is Still Peddling Her One Claim to Fame

    DateSunday, November 15, 2009

    I’m speaking, of course, about America’s most celebrated insane bag of nuts blogger, one Amy Alkon, who seems to be interviewed here for her ability to be crazy and credibly so:

    Amy Alkon, a syndicated advice columnist and self-described “manners psycho,” certainly thinks so. Just ask “Barry,” a loud cellphone talker she encountered recently at a Starbucks in Santa Monica, Calif.

    “He just blatantly took over the whole place with his conversation, streaming his dull life into everybody’s brain,” Ms. Alkon recalled in a telephone interview.

    Among the personal details Barry shared that day — errands to run, plans for the evening — was his phone number, which Ms. Alkon jotted down.

    “I called him that night and said, ‘Just calling to let you know, Barry, that if you’d like your private life to remain private, you might want to be a little more considerate next time,’ “ she said.

    Alkon has no ethics, and I call bullshit:

    Someone who doesn’t tolerate inconsiderate public behaviour is Amy Alkon, the famous Advice Goddess columnist in the US who is also known as a blogslapper of ‘assclowns’. Recently, Amy was so annoyed by a ‘cell phone shouter’ in a LA café, she immediately posted personal details of the assclown’s conversation to her weblog. The icing on the cake was the assclown receiving calls directing her to Amy’s post, using the phone number she’d haplessly broadcast to all and sundry. Fittingly, one of Amy’s mottos is -revenge is the best revenge.

    Indeed, shaming websites catering for pissed-off victims of public arseholes are springing up with a vengeance. Check this Wall Street Journal article, inspired by Amy’s experience for a list of blogslapping websites. One potential site not yet created could cater for the common problem of locals and families terrorising the neighbourhood.

    Notice anything?

    That same incident happened in 2006, and Alkon continues to “peddle” the incident as something recent. So far, the Wall Street Journal and now the New York Times have passed off a single incident (and I’m guessing she’s dressing up the same incident and peddling it around—I could be wrong) as being something Alkon has done to unsuspecting people in the name of some sort of morally superior attempt at enforcing “ethics” and here’s what she did:

    Eva Burgess Is Getting Glasses!
    And she’s picking them up Saturday after 4pm! I know this because she was bellowing into a cell phone about it next to me in a café. Apparently, she’s not only inconsiderate, she doesn’t seeem to mind giving a lot of personal information, starting with her full name, to a total stranger.

    She continued, Eva and Ken Hashimoto “have insurance there,” she said…”under a flexible spending account.” “We just have to pay by the end of the year,” she said. And then she most helpfully bellowed her phone number — [REDACTED] — perhaps because she’s lonely and wants total strangers to call and ask how her glasses are working out for her.

    Hey, Eva, can I have your bank account number and your log-in so I can transfer a few bucks to my account? I’d like to get a pair of noise-canceling headphones in case you sit next to me again.

    On a positive note, the little girl with them, probably Eva’s (and maybe Ken’s) daughter, was very quiet and well-behaved.

    Hey, Eva, I know it’s kinda cold in NYC, where you’re apparently from (according to the area code you helpfully dispensed), but here in sunny southern California, at the moment you were talking, it was 58 degrees. Next time, you might take your business outside –- as exciting as I found it, on a morning I would normally have relaxed to the classical music while eating my breakfast and thinking my own thoughts, to instead be a part of your eyecare needs.

    Nice going, New York Times. That uncanny similarity is a little too uncanny for my tastes. If she’s been running around, doing this sort of thing for years, well, all well and good. But let’s not give her a pass on being the unethical-blogger-who-posts-someone’s-phone-number nonsense. I don’t care how offended someone is—posting their personal information crosses into Michelle Malkin territory.

    Sorry, @DQuenqua over there on Twitter. You’ve been punked by one of the least ethical human beings alive.  Cue 2011, and a rousing story in the Washington Post about how Amy Alkon smacked down someone by publishing their phone number on her blog…

    AuthorNorman Rogers | tagged , , , , , , , | in , , ,
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