I love HBO, but...

I am so mad at them for cancelling "The Comeback." I thought they were known for giving a show the chance to catch on, and "The Comeback" was notorious for the way people didn't get it at first. (Chez Althouse, we got it, but for some reason, people found it hard to get.) But only 1 million viewers saw the finale. I guess there's a limit to what is worth supporting.

What's wrong with people? The low popularity of that show makes me feel so lonely!

"Parents mourning their children in uniform lost in Iraq, and uncountable families motivated for first time to protest."

That's language found in an AP report about today's antiwar protest in Washington. How can that pass as professional journalism? The U.S. did not send "children" to Iraq. I get the poetic aspiration entailed in combining "parents," "lost," and "children," but save it for an opinion piece. And if the "families" are "uncountable," how do you manage to know what their motivations are and whether they have protested on prior occasions? How do you even know they are "families"?

"Surface"/"Invasion"/"Threshold."

Tung Yin watches all three new alien invasion TV shows. They all sound really bad. Though maybe if you get really excited about fractals, you'd like "Threshold."

Webpage design.

Have you ever stopped reading a webpage because the design changed? I used to check Memeorandum several times a day. It was my favorite place to go to see what news stories people were blogging about. Now, I have to force myself to go there, and I feel frustrated as soon as I see it. I mourn the loss of the old design. That page, to me, used to look like the conversation about the news. Now, I feel that I might be able to get a sense of the conversation if I studied the page for a while. But I can't stand to look at it, because it just rubs it in how much I miss the old Memeorandum.

"The real question - putting it baldly - is whether there is going to be a revolution."

A BBC opinionwriter muses about the American response to Hurricane Katrina:

Will the American social and economic system - which creates the wealth that pays for billionaires' private jets, and the poverty which does not allow for a bus fare out of New Orleans - be addressed?

It has been tinkered with before of course, sometimes as a result of natural disasters. There were for instance plenty of buses on hand for this week's Rita evacuation.

But the system's fundamentals - no limit on how far you can fly and little limit on how low you can fall - remain as intact as they were in the San Francisco gold rush.

The headline for this unbelievably smug piece is "Katrina prompts charity not change."

UPDATE: This post got a strange link from Andrew Sullivan:

ALTHOUSE ON THE BEEB: Picked up by Instapundit and the Corner as more evidence of wretched BBC anti-American bias, I read the piece assailed by Ann Althouse. It's an opinion piece, not news reporting, so obviously a little more lee-way for bias should be allowed. And yes, there's a bizarre assumption that there is no welfare net in America - or that we haven't just expanded it to cover millions of wealthy seniors, or that welfare rolls haven't been reduced by almost a half in a few years, and so on.

Was my post about the BBC being biased? Did I somehow not perceive that the writer I called a "BBC opinionwriter" was "writing an an opinion piece, not news reporting"? You'd think my use of the term "opinionwriter" would have nailed that down rather hard! But thanks for the ridiculously inappropriate patronizing, Andrew! Check out the title of my post! It's awfully damned obvious that I'm writing about the stupidity of this one writer's notion that the United States may be headed for a revolution, which Sullivan completely agrees with in his post, even though for some reason he writes as if he's taking issue with me. It's quite apparent that Sullivan is mainly concerned with things that Glenn Reynolds and Jonah Goldberg said at their sites when they linked to me, but he didn't bother to write accurately about me. I think if Sullivan is going to use my name in his post title, he ought to take care about acting as if he's got a problem with me, when, in fact, he doesn't. But Sullivan doesn't read my blog, I'm almost sure. He just reads Instapundit and the Corner. To him, I'm just an empty link found there.

"An overly compliant personality."

The psychologist explains Lynndie England. Does that description make her seem any less responsible for her actions? I'd say being "overly compliant" is one of the character flaws, like having a hot temper, that might lead a person to commit a crime. Slapping "personality" onto it doesn't impress me.

"I’m like, totally in love with Rush Limbaugh right now! This is awful!”

The Anchoress has a solution for the terrible divisiveness in American politics. If only you could have a sexy dream about some political figure you feel quite hostile toward.

"It feels like icepicks, almost."

Says FoxNews's Shepard Smith, suffering in the wind in Beaumont, Texas. Sometimes, I'm laughing at him, but I also feel awfully sorry for him. And kind of worried.

IN THE COMMENTS: Lots of talk about Smith's hat and underlying is-it-real hair, which we got to inspect when the hat blew off.

An old song comes to mind.

I'm watching the news reports, talking about Hurricane Rita aiming straight at Lake Charles, Lousiana. Maybe like me, you've got this song running through your head:

When I get off of this mountain, you know where I want to go?
Straight down the Mississippi river, to the Gulf of Mexico
To Lake Charles, Louisiana, little Bessie, girl that I once knew
She told me just to come on by, if there's anything she could do.

How is TimesSelect doing?

The NYT now requires online readers to pay to get to the op-ed columnists, and the paper hasn't written any articles about the new program since last May. What indication do we have of how well it's doing? I notice that the new "Most Emailed Articles" list is nearly bereft of the columns. Only one, by Paul Krugman, makes the top 25 in the last 24 hours list, way down at #14.

The columnists in the past were usually prominent on the list. Check the last 7 days list, which at the moment covers the period before the program began. It's got 7 of the columnists you now have to pay for in the top 25, with only one being from the pay-to-read period, down at #14. And 3 of the top 5 are from the regular columnist, from back when they were free. And look at the last 30 days. The top 4 are all by the regular columnists. 16 of the top 20 are. None of these are pay-to-read articles.

Isn't this squandering their popularity?

Me, as interviewee.

Remember that interview I referred to back on August 12th? Well, if you do, you are a strangely intense reader of this blog! Anyway, the interview is finally available: here.

Comments?

Art, sex, and Scalia.

Antonin Scalia gives a talk about law and art at the Juilliard School. One topic: the 1990 statute -- brought on by Mapplethorpe and the "Piss Christ" -- that required the NEA to take decency and values into account as it made its arts grants. Scalia's apt comment:

"I can truly understand the discomfort with government making artistic choices, but the only remedy is to get government out of funding."

Another topic was law and pornography, about which Scalia opined:

"The line between protected pornography and unprotected obscenity lies between appealing to a good healthy interest in sex and appealing to a depraved interest, whatever that means."

What is less sexy than Scalia, et al, deciding what is "a good healthy interest in sex"?

And now, for a new entitlement.

A reader sends this link to an article (which Eugene Volokh linked to a few days ago):

Danish activists for the disabled are staunchly defending a government campaign that pays sex workers to provide sex once a month for disabled people.

Opposition parties call the program, officially known as ''Sex, irrespective of disability,'' immoral.

''We spend a large proportion of our taxes rescuing women from prostitution. But at the same time we officially encourage carers to help contact with prostitutes,'' said Social-Democrat spokesperson Kristen Brosboel.

Responded Stig Langvad of the country's Disabled Association: ''The disabled must have the same possibilities as other people. Politicians can debate whether prostitution should be allowed in general, instead of preventing only the disabled from having access to it.''

So, really, what was the first question that came into your mind? Wasn't it: How disabled do you have to be? (At the Roberts hearings Teddy Kennedy made a reference to 50 million as the number of Americans With Disabilities.)

I think it's creepy for the government to be deciding how often people ought to have sex and to be keeping official records about the persons participating in this program.

Opinions?

IN THE COMMENTS: A coinage. You've heard of the Nanny State. This is the Poonanny State.

"It's like looking at a murder... The first time is bad. After that, you numb up."

Watching the re-flooding of New Orleans. "[A] waterfall at least 30 feet wide poured over and through a dike that had been used to patch breaks in the Industrial Canal levee," and Rita has not yet arrived.

"It's Armageddon."

Said Orrin Hatch, referring to the upcoming confirmation battle over whomever George Bush picks to replace Sandra Day O'Connor. But aren't the Democrats hoping they've signalled to Bush that he must pick someone more moderate than John Roberts for this next slot? Hatch seems to already know that he won't: "I don't think the president is going to be bullied into putting somebody up that he doesn't believe in."

Ridiculous comparison blocks entry to article I want to read.

I love "Curb Your Enthusiasm," and as I eagerly await the premiere of the new season, I jump at the chance to read an article in the NYT about the terrific comedian who plays Larry's agent. But the article starts this way:

Just as there has never been another lead character on television quite like Larry David - it would be hard to imagine Ralph Kramden or Ray Barone picking up a prostitute to qualify for the carpool lane to Dodger Stadium - there has never been a sidekick quite like Jeff Greene, the fictional Mr. David's fictional manager.

All right. I have no interest in Ray Barone (and, in fact, have to guess at who he is -- he's the one "everyone" supposedly loves, I presume). But what the hell are you saying about Ralph Kramden?

Quite aside from whether Ralph was the kind of guy who would enlist a prostitute in one of his ridiculous little schemes (maybe he was) and whether such a plot could have run on TV in the years 1956 and 1957 when "The Honeymooners" was made: Dodger Stadium did not open until 1962 (and the Dodgers were still in Brooklyn in '56-'57), there was no such thing as a carpool lane back then, and Ralph Kramden did not have a car, he didn't even have a sofa.

As to "there has never been a sidekick quite like Jeff Greene": well, I love the character Jeff Greene, but if you want to bring up the question of great sidekicks and you've already mentioned Ralph Kramden, respect must be paid.

For a "Honeymooner" era traffic-beating scheme:

Ralph: It's rush hour. We'll never be able to get across town in this traffic.

Ed: Trust me. We'll go by sewer.

Now, let me go read that article.