Fraters Libertas

A Dash Of This And That

Random musings:

* The Fraters Library has been updated thanks to some insights from reader JP. If you have a suggestion for the shelves, drop me an e-mail.

* Tonight the final episode of Sex And The City airs. I've never watched the show and frankly don't give a damn. Much of the media has been babbling about this finale for the last two days, and to me it is yet another sign of how out of touch many elements of the media are with "mainstream America".

First off the show was only on for six years so it is hardly an institution. Secondly it was on HBO so many people never even had a chance to see it. Thirdly the television market is now so segmented with so many niches, that there no longer is such a thing as the program that everyone talks about around the water cooler. The closest that we have these days is probably Friends, but with the decline of network television ratings, even that is only watched by a small percentage of overall viewers. The days of everyone discussing the last episode of M*A*S*H, Cheers, or even Seinfeld are over and they ain't coming back.

Finally consider whether Sex In The City would be getting so much attention if it didn't have a titillating title?

* First in war. First in peace. First in the whiskey glasses of his countryman? Interesting piece on efforts to restore a distillery built by Washington, that was once one of the largest in America. We raise our cups to you tonight George.

* Over the last few months we've run a series of posts with the title 'The Sky Is Falling'. The purpose of these efforts was to expose the doom and gloom mongering in the wake of last year's decision not to raise taxes to solve Minnesota's budget deficit. If you were to believe many in the local media, the state was going to hell in a handbasket because Governor Pawlenty and the House Republicans had the temerity to exercise a little fiscal restraint.

The Strib has been a leader in this area, and today's paper featured yet another editorial bemoaning the greedy, short sighted attitudes of those who oppose raising taxes. After laying out its usual laundry list of depredations that the people of Minnesota have suffered in the last year because the nanny state wasn't there to lend assistance, the Strib editorialistas claim:

These are not Chicken Little predictions.

Chicken Little eh? Isn't the that fellow we usually link with panicky "the sky is falling" hysterics? Hmmm...

* Now we know who's really behind the right wing shock jocks.

* Speaking of Hugh Hewittt, I can't wait to see how he uses this one tomorrow:

True story: While I was covering a Wizard of Oz festival in Grand Rapids, Minn., several years ago, an 80-year-old Munchkin hit on me.

Geez James, why don't you just pour gas all over yourself and hand Hugh a lighter? You're making it way too easy for him.