Intel Insider

Carrying a Beijing dateline, the influential Borowitz Report noted yesterday that China will soon begin dismantling its widely envied domestic intelligence network in favor of Facebook.

Contacted by this column for corroboration, a high-level PRC government spokesman revealed that the Ministry of Public Security's elaborate intelligence-gathering apparatus has become a "runaway monster", diverting revenue that could be more productively used to buy U.S. Treasury bonds.

"It's astonishing to us that people will voluntarily put their most private thoughts and activities up for public scrutiny in order to be perceived as being 'with it'", noted the spokesman. He went on to say that "the amount of personal information available on Facebook staggers the imagination. As long as self-involvement remains the 21^st Century's most defining human trait, our office need only sit back and mine the data."

There are unconfirmed reports that other intelligence agencies around the world, including our own NSA, CIA and FBI, are closely following developments, lest the Chinese run away with advanced Western technology, yet again.

Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, was unavailable for comment, according to a publicist newly hired to cope with recent Zuckerberg-connected media excesses.

Queries to the Xinhua news agency and the Chinese search engine Baidu seeking further corroboration met only with the usual oriental inscrutability, an irritating cultural artifact rapidly being undermined by the internet. But, coupling the ministry's frank statement with Borowitz .com's usual reliability, we've decided to run with the story anyway.

See http://www.borowitzreport.com

The Ortolan and the Omnivore: A Tale of Gluttony

I see by the London Telegraph that France's League for the Protection of Birds hopes to have French authorities pronounced guilty of flouting a European ban on hunting the endangered ortolan (emberiza hortulana), a tiny bobolink-like songbird that – force-fed and drowned in Armagnac — has long been coveted by gastronomes of the Gallic persuasion as an exquisite delicacy; all the more enticing because its trapping is forbidden.

Traditionally, ortolans are eaten with one's head covered by a napkin because: [1.] (sensual) the exotic aroma is thereby captured, concentrated and savored, and/or, [2.] (spiritual) God cannot see you engaging in such flagrant gourmandise (French for gluttony), one of the Seven Deadly Sins.

Ortolans occupy a storied place in the culinary history of La Belle France (see Mitterrand, François: Last meal of), and – as I am reminded by the Telegraph article — at least once in America as an object of the appetite and pen of the late New York Times restaurant critic, and mid-20^th Century doyen of food writers, Craig Claiborne.

Back in 1975, when people were still reading newspapers, Claiborne bid $300 at a public television charity auction and, having won, got his pick of a restaurant meal for two anywhere in the world, with no limit on the cost, courtesy of American Express. He chose to eat (with his friend Pierre Franey as his guest) at the Parisian establishment, Chez Denis. Their 31-course dinner took five hours to consume and was washed down with copious quantities of Chateau Pétrus and other legendary-label wines. Claiborne wrote about the meal in The New York Times of November 14, 1975 under the title, "Just a Quiet Dinner for Two in Paris: 31 Dishes, Nine Wines, a $4000 check"; a paean to conspicuous consumption seldom equaled in the annals of gastronomy.

Ortolan – need I note —was on the bill of fare.

The article ran on the Times' front page and created an instant international sensation, the gist of which was best summed up by Pope Paul VI, who pronounced it "scandalous". But the payoff came four days later when Times columnist Russell Baker wrote a scathing send-up of Claiborne's review called "Francs and Beans". It is near the top of my list of favorite parodies of all time.

So side-splittingly funny was it, that, as I read it on an early morning breakfast flight from LaGuardia to Toronto, tears were rolling down my cheeks and I was choking on my scrambled eggs, much to the puzzlement of the other suits on board who were unused to seeing someone cracking up while reading anything in "the old gray lady", especially at 7am.

You can (and should) read it at http://studentweb.hunter.cuny.edu/~murrayj/humor/francsandbeans.htm.

For a couple of bucks you can also read Claiborne's review in the NYT archives at http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F30713F7355D137B93C6A8178AD95F418785F9&scp=6&sq=craig%20claiborne%20chez%20denis&st=cse

 

TAKING BACK THE CAPE

Hyannis, Ma. -- Faced with the unnerving prospect of the Cape being overrun yet again this summer by hordes of mainlanders, some coveting our legendarily lucrative service jobs and others the perfect tan, the Cape Cod Commission today announced a series of preemptive countermeasures.

Recognizing that the recent reconfiguration of the Sagamore Bridge approach has largely failed to achieve its primary goal of discouraging visitors, the commissioners proposed that:

1. Stimulus Fund money be used to construct a 25-foot-high fence along the mainland side of the Cape Cod Canal. Existing fish ladders exceeding 25-feet in length would be dismantled lest they be used to climb over the fence. Regrettably, the barrier would effectively disenfranchise Cape Cod acolytes like Buzzards Bay, Onset and Wareham, but, the commissioners noted, collateral damage to innocent bystanders is often an unintended consequence of hostilities.
   
2. Reminded by a BHS intern that the Cape is entirely surrounded by water, the Commission hastily voted to engage the services of the Israeli Defense Forces to intercept blockade runners camouflaged as Provincetown quahog trawlers.
   
3. The Barnstable County Pothole Producers Association, coming off of a highly productive winter season, has contracted with the CCC to pock the tarmac at Barnstable Municipal Airport in order to interdict unauthorized landings during July and August.
   

The Chamber of Commerce, upon learning of the Commission's actions, reacted predictably, blasting the commissioners for their "knee-jerk anti-business stance and politically tone-deaf attitude". Further opposition came from Save Our Sound whose spokesperson rebuked the Commission for having endorsed the dumping millions of gallons of Coppertone into Cape waters in order to create a massive protective oil slick.

A more positive response came from the Tea Party, whose history of harbor-dumping is the stuff of legend. "The Commission's recommendations", said party Chairperson Samantha "Sam" Adams, "are a clarion call that it's not too late for Cape Codders to take back our Cape from Washington, Wall Street, Beacon Hill, and washashores. God bless America!"

An earlier version of this post ran in the My View column of the Cape Cod Times on June 21.

Economics Made Easy

Cotuit's Stew Goodwin is a colleague of mine at the Academy for Lifelong Learning. He is also a skilled editorialist who pens a regular column for The Barnstable Patriot. A moderate Progressive, Stew's op-eds are invariably models of common sense. To wit: this week's column, "The Good Old Days", takes a conservative premise, "This country will not endure more extensive government-sponsored social welfare networks, " and proceeds to elaborate on that contention so convincingly that even those well to Stew's left -- unless ideologically ossified -- will find it persuasive.

Read it at: http://www.barnstablepatriot.com/home2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=21062&Itemid=112

Citizens United v. "Citizens United"

Although Mike Capuano (D-MA) is the bluest congressman from the bluest district of the bluest state in the Union, he was unable to wrest the 2009 Democratic Senatorial nomination away from bluestocking Martha Coakley.

In retrospect, Bay State Democrats may have made a mistake.

Be that as it may, Capuano has now sponsored The Shareholder Protection Act of 2010 (H.R. 4790) which, if passed, will go a long way toward mitigating the effect of the egregious Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. FEC, a decision that bids fair to flood the political landscape with corporate dollars.

No matter that the Court has deemed corporations legal persons (and therefore entitled to free-speech protection), corporations are not people. But shareholders are, and that is the thrust of Mike’s bill.

Historically, shareholders have not had a way to know, or to influence, the political activities of corporations they own. They and the public have a right to know how corporations are spending their funds to make political contributions or expenditures benefitting candidates, political parties and political causes.

The Shareholder Protection Act would:
· Ensure that shareholders’ political interests are accurately represented by their corporation.
· Require an authorizing vote of a majority of shareholders before general treasury funds can be spent on political activities.
· Require quarterly notification to all shareholders on corporations’ contributions.

For those who would wish to see labor union—and other—contributions similarly scrutinized, Senators Schumer and Van Hollen have jointly proposed legislation to that effect.

Such a combination of political initiatives should satisfy virtually the entire ideological spectrum, with the possible exception of those who view any restraint on the purchase of political influence as a threat to liberty.

I urge you to contact your Representatives in support of this bill.

The Supremes Redux

Readers may recall that I have previously lamented the Supreme Court’s unfortunate decision in Citizens United v. FEC as being—to use the most charitable animadversion that comes to mind—less than sound.

No lawyer myself, I am nevertheless supported in such heterodoxy by Justice John Paul Stevens, whose eloquent dissent is a model of jurisprudential common sense. Even more eloquent is the outrage of the American public, which—according to a recent ABC News/Washington Post poll—opposes the decision by an 80% margin.

The facts of the case are by now well known and have been debated in the press and the blogosphere ad nauseam, so I won't rehash them herein. What is new, however, is that Citizens United, a self-declared lobbyist, having convinced the Court’s conservative majority that CU's corporate underwriters are persons (and therefore subject to the free speech provisions of the 1st Amendment), is now asking the FEC to declare CU a media company of the sort entitled to the special latitude granted to the news media under the Federal Election Campaign Act and McCain-Feingold.

Americans are all too well aware of the sins against accuracy, fairness and objectivity committed by the press over the past couple of centuries, but, for a propaganda-film producer like Citizens United, whose sole purpose is to manufacture and distribute agitprop, to claim to be a practitioner of legitimate journalism, is sophistry run amok.

One can only hope that the FEC is more cognizant of the perniciousness of money-driven political corruption than is the current Supreme Court, and will, consequently, turn down the Citizens United petition.

The Mailbag

Got an email this morning that I'd like to share, especially with those of you old enough to recognize the name of the sender.

Dear Citizen:

What’s all this I keep hearing from conservatives about tart reform? Some guy was going on about it on talk-radio the other day as having some connection to the health care bill, claiming that, without tart reform, healthcare would bankrupt the country!

Now, I’m a senior citizen and in good health despite a slight hearing problem, but even I know that tart reform just doesn’t work. The [always non-partisan] Congressional Budget Office crunched the numbers recently and concluded that the expense of sending all those hookers to the Virgin Islands to be recycled cannot be reconciled to the budget. The cost-to-benefit ratio doesn’t compute.

Furthermore, you’d never get it through Congress. So many of its members are whores, they would never vote to reform themselves, despite the allure of an all-expense-paid trip to St. Croix.

One can only despair of our Constitution, but, never mind.

Sincerely yours,


Emily Litella