A Curious Little Blog

I regret, in a way, that Terry Jones did not go through with his plan to burn the Koran on the anniversary of 9/11.  I normally prefer to avoid provocative gestures, but the overreaction to his announcement was so thorough that I found myself rooting for him to complete it.  It was hard, I imagine, for liberals to condemn him in good conscience, since they have such an absolute ideal of free speech that includes, even promotes, provocative gestures against Christianity; nevertheless, they did so.  Conservatives have long advocated positions of "you have a right to say it, but I don't think it a good idea" (along with "I don't think the government should fund you"), so I wasn't surprised to see them objecting.  I was surprised, however, at seeing Jones condemned so uniformly in such drastic language.  National Review was all over him, including editor Jonah Golberg, who called it "stupid, irresponsible, and repugnant." Let's think about i

I don't try to be disagreeable, but I seem to come out on the minority side of issues an awful lot.  Two such issues came up in the past week, so I thought I would give my side of the story in both of them. The first is the article Portis voices ugliness in NFL culture by Dan Wetzel.  The issue concerns comments made by Redskins running back Clinton Portis about having a female sports reporter in the Redskins' locker room after a game.  After playing football for 3 hours and getting sweaty and dirty, the first thing players do in the locker room is get a shower and change into regular clothes.  Male reporters have been going into locker rooms for years to get interviews right after the game, but when female reporters started to enter the scene, some players objected.  This is not a new issue:  there was an incident back in 1990 involving the New England Patriots' locker room and tight end Zeke Mowatt .  Some Patriots' players complained that reporter Lisa Olson was