Greetings loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader should explain why he has suddenly taken to writing short blogs, generally focusing on one topic. First, it is oftentimes better to read something quick and focused; rather than long and rambling. (Although your Maximum Leader is sometimes prone to rambling.) But the second (and perhaps more honest) reason is, the Google toolbar. Yes my minions, the Google toolbar. Your Maximum Leader recently changed some settings on his Google toolbar and decided to add the deadly (yet beautiful) “Blog This!” button. So now, when he is reading something on the internet, and the moment is upon him; he can press the “Blog This!” button and blog away…

Of course, the nasty side effect of this is that sometimes his thoughts wind up being accidentally posted to the Poet Laureate’s site. So, your Maximum Leader will try to be careful out there. Lest he blog about something that is not topical to the Big Hominid’s site.

Carry on.

Greetings loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader was just trying to catch up on his reading of various websites he enjoys. It has been hard for your Maximum Leader to keep up his reading, because of his constant plotting and behind-the-scenes manipulation of the world.

Your Maximum Leader read over Jonah Goldberg’s most recent NRO column. Hummm… Your Maximum Leader was a little shocked to read this DNC Chairman Terry McAuliffe quotation in the first paragraph:

“Our Constitution, a sacred document ‚ÄövÑvÆ you know, our forefathers knew what they were doing. This wasn’t a rough draft. And let’s not try to continually do amendments to it as we move forward. I would like the states to make the decisions on what they think is right in their individual state. It shouldn’t be up to the federal government.”

This quotation was, as you can imagine, concerning the current gay marriage debate. But really… Did he say that? For a hot second there your Maximum Leader thought that Terry McAuliffe was finally coming around.

But then your Maximum Leader realized that somehow the spirit of John C. Calhoun must have possessed McAuliffe. The Democrats can only hope that they have a good Exorcist somewhere in the party…

Carry on.

Greetings loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader laughed and laughed at this. That Frank J. is one funny guy. Your Maximum Leader’s only question is… Why is it that Condi Rice was so anxious to get the ring? Humm…. Your Maximum Leader would have guessed Colin Powell.

Carry on.

Greetings loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader asks rhetorically, “How excited are the Democrats for nominating Kerry?” Well, here is one who is obviously overjoyed.

Thanks to Conrad for the link. And while your Maximum Leader is thanking Conrad… Many thanks! You’re a pal.

Carry on.

Poor Kilgore Trout writes about his very bad day here.

When I say I know how he feels, it is not an empty statement. When I bought my very first new car, I signed the documents, drove off the lot with the brand spankin’ Geo Metro, and was promptly rear-ended ONE BLOCK from the dealership.

Here is hoping that this will be the end of Kilgore’s bad luck. Perhaps the Maximum Leader’s matchmaking will pay off. If not, the Propaganda Minister, who met Denver Girl at my engagement party, may be willing to step in.

First I grab a dwarf and flail you with him, then I squeeze the dwarf hard enough to shoot doodie at your head, then I say, “You’re forgiven,” and then I attach the dwarf to a leash and we trot off into the sunset.

Yours in Christ,

BigHo

_

The Foreign Minister writes:
“And by the way, give Leni a break, she said she was sorry”

The Maximum Leader advocates forgiving past transgressions if the transgressor becomes socially useful.

This gives me an opportunity to bare my soul about something that has been troubling me, because I have transgressed to.

FM and ML, I confess that as part of my Darwinian strategy to maximize the spread of my genes, I have seduced your wives and foisted my bastards on you, my cuckolded friends. Air Marshal, I am the one that convinced Leonisis to raise ticket prices. Propaganda Minister, I’m the one who applied the “Oliver North for Senate” bumpersticker to your new car. Big Hominid, I am the father that abandoned you so many years ago.

I’m sorry.

But I have been socially redeeming. I have been teaching in public schools and producing healthy organic beef.

Am I forgiven?

UPDATE FROM THE MAXIMUM LEADER: No.

Greetings loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader received this link from the AirMarshal this morning. It is a clear statement of that which has been said time and time again in this space and throughout the blogosphere. Islam must defeat their militant strains. Your Maximum Leader hopes that Iraq will show the way for other Islamic states.

Carry on.

I was a little premature and have edited this post… it was the assult gun ban thing.

The Supreme Court is is refusing to decide if the right to bear arms is in the constitution!
I know the M of A thinks that gun groups do not want this to come up but here it is! Now when you have the National Rife Association, the Pink Pistols (a group of gay and lesbian gun owners); the Second Amendment Sisters; Doctors for Sensible Gun Laws; and the Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership how can you be wrong????

We could handle all of our Boar problems if they would just overturn the fricken assult gun ban!

And by the way, give Leni a break, she said she was sorry.

Back to the trenches……

Greetings loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader, a little while ago, posted a series of articles concerning mischievious wild boar in urban areas. It seems that Berlin, which he learned last time he blogged about this story was a haven for wild boar, is the site of another boar attack. From this article it would seem as though the boar came out on the dead side of this encounter. Lucky Herr Meyer had a hunting knife on his person… To bad he couldn’t have had a gun.

Carry on.

Greetings loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader is shocked by this photo. Yahoo! News - World Photos - AP Perhaps he is not as religiously tolerant as he should be.

Carry on.

The Maximum Leader asks:

‚ÄövÑv Should Werner Von Braun not have been honored for his contributions to the American Space program? (For the Ballistic Missile program?)‚ÄövÑvp

Werner Von Braun?
I think our attitude
Should be one of gratitude
Like the widows and orphans
Of old London town,
Who owe their fine pensions
To Werner Von Braun.

Should we have used the Rocket Nazi to bolster our arms race with the Soviets during the Cold War? Hell, yes. Should we praise him and honor him? Hell, no.

(Though I am willing to praise and honor individuals whose grandfathers worked with Von Braun)

The Foreign Minister tells me Leni became a humanitarian after the war. The Maximum Leader minimizes the leadership role that Leni played in the Third Reich. And he quite correctly hit me for a factual misstep I made when I called her an important player in the rise of the Reich.

But we have an important question here ‚ÄövÑv¨ should we as society forgive past errors and allow people the grace to become better members of society?

Werner Von Braun certainly was useful. Would I honor him? No. He may have been narrowly focused on the technical aspects of rocket flight (‚ÄövÑv Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down ‚ÄövÑv¨ that‚ÄövÑv¥s not my department says Werner Von Braun‚ÄövÑvp). But he did so with the knowledge that his technical innovations would be used for terrorist attacks that had no military value. Smallholder does not object to the targeting of civilians if such targeting shortens a war (military value), saves more lives than is lost, and is technologically unavoidable. For example, I would protest vociferously if we started indiscriminately carpet-bombing Tehran. We don‚ÄövÑv¥t need to do that to defeat the mullahs. In 1945, I‚ÄövÑv¥m waving my hat at the departing Superfortresses and taking grim satisfaction at the firebombing of Tokyo.

Certainly one has to believe in the possibility of redemption. Are there activities that are so heinous that redemption is impossible?

Imagine Joseph Mengele escaping to Africa and running vaccination clinics. Would they lives he saved, no matter how many, excuse his hideous atrocities?

Leni is a harder case. She didn‚ÄövÑv¥t actually shoot anybody. But she evidently used concentration camp inmates to make ‚ÄövÑv Tiefland.‚ÄövÑvp Half of her cast was executed after the completion of the movie. While she didn‚ÄövÑv¥t pull the trigger or order the deaths, she can hardly claim that she didn‚ÄövÑv¥t know what was going on (German denials of knowledge are kind of like French avowals of membership in La Resistance ‚ÄövÑv¨ everyone makes them, but the facts contradict their claims). Is her enthusiastic support for Hitler enough to disqualify her from future praise?

This seems to be a gray area. We have all done things of which we are not proud. I would hope that all of my life‚ÄövÑv¥s work is not remembered with the caveat ‚ÄövÑv Yeah, but he insensitively dumped two girls in high school.‚ÄövÑvp I hope we won‚ÄövÑv¥t remember Mike‚ÄövÑv¥s life with the caveat that ‚ÄövÑv Yeah, but he led the Foreign Minister down the path to alcohol abuse.‚ÄövÑvp

I‚ÄövÑv¥m not sure where to make the call. But if I were a member of the Academy, honoring the auteur of ‚ÄövÑv Triumph of the Will‚ÄövÑvp would be troublesome.

SUBNOTE:
I wrote an essay a while ago about how I tend to be attracted to people who know their Python. I have found that a person‚ÄövÑv¥s knowledge of and enjoyment of Lehrer‚ÄövÑv¥s music is also a reliable gauge of how much I will enjoy that person‚ÄövÑv¥s company. I have very fond memories of drunkenly performing lascivious Lehrer songs with my high-school co-pilot, to the great delight of out adoring female fans. Okay, fan singular. Whatever.

Greetings loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader is very pleased with himself. It is not everyday that he gets to use Tom Lehrer lyrics in his blog. In case you missed the reference here is the song to which your Maximum Leader refers.

Why the lyrics? Well, your Maximum Leader finds nothing wrong with honouring Leni Riefenstahl at the Oscars last night. While “Triumph of the Will”, as the Minister of Agriculture points out, did glorify the Nuremburg Party rallies of 1934; your Maximum Leader hardly thinks that the film “helped usher the Nazis into power and provided an emotional underpinning for the Third Reich.” Check out her filmography here. Not a very long list. And really it includes two noteworthy films. “Triumph of the Will” and “Olympia.” Your Maximum Leader has seen both. And he will say that “Olympia” is the best sports documentary he has seen. Really. Is it propaganda? Surely. Does it also capture the esprit of the 1936 Berlin Olympics (which themselves were one big propaganda event)? Sure does. (Think back to the Atlanta Olympics. Wasn’t there an undercurrent of pro-American propaganda going on there? Sure. Do you think that the impending Athens Olympics will not be filled with subtle - and not so subtle - pro-Greek propaganda?)

“Triumph of the Will” is the greatest propaganda film ever made. (If only all propaganda films were so well done.) Did it help usher the Nazi’s into power? No. It wasn’t made until after the Nazi’s came to power in 1933. Honesty, the Nazi’s had many other directors cranking out many more films than Riefenstahl did. Sure Htler liked her. But she played him. She wanted control to do her films her way. Without interference from anyone. Only one man could give her that control. And it didn’t hurt that the man with the money could be charmed… And she charmed him. She was a trailblazer in cinema. It is really too bad that her patron was an evil, EVIL, man. (Many of the great Renaissance artists had patron who were not particularly nice people…)

Her post-war work was tinged with the shadows of “Triumph” and “Olympia.” Your Maximum Leader has seen only parts of “Tiefland.” So perhaps he shouldn’t comment too broadly on it. But he has seen much of her photography with the Nuba people of Africa. Detractors can say that she is glorifying the Nuba the way she glorified the Nazi’s. Your Maximum Leader tends to believe that she just liked the beauty of the human body, and thought to do what she could to accentuate it.

Should Leni Riefenstahl have been honoured at the Oscars? Yes. Your Maximum Leader can’t think of a female director who predates Riefenstahl. Were her cinematic techniques groundbreaking for their day? Yes. Has her style been copied by others? Surely. Is your Maximum Leader shocked at her inclusion in the Oscars? No. (But he was shocked at the poor treatment of Elia Kazan when he received his lifetime achievment Oscar.)

Your Maximum Leader will close the circle of this post and pose a question to the Minister of Agriculture. Are the fruits of an evil regime themselves evil? Should Werner Von Braun not have been honored for his contributions to the American Space program? (For the Ballistic Missile program?) His association with Hitler, and Hitler’s evil, is surely more close than was Riefenstahl’s.

Carry on.

Was anyone else shocked by the inclusion of Leni Riefensthal in the Academy tributes last night?

I don’t know what she has been up to, post 1945, but she used to be Hitler’s pet cinemetographer. Her “Triumph of the Will” and other films helped usher the Nazis into power and provided an emotional underpinning for the Third Reich.

Link

She may have reformed her ways in the 58 years after the war, but I would think that her close association with the EVIL of 1933-1945 Germany would preclude public honors, particularly in a generally liberal organization.

Does anyone know more about her postwar career? Do you think she should have been honored last night?

Greetings loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader was over catching up on recent posting by the good Dr. Burgess-Jackson. Dr. Burgess-Jackson writes an excellent blog and your Maximum Leader commends it to you. But, your Maximum Leader must take issue with two recent postings. In this post the good Doctor is sad to see that Christopher Hitchens is engaging in name-calling and innuendo. Your Maximum Leader loves reading Hitchens’ stuff, and really enjoys seeing him on the telly. (And thanks to the Poet Laureate, even owns one of Hitchens’ books.) But really… Hitchens has always been in the name-calling business. He does quite a bit of name-calling in “Missionary Position,” his book on Mother Teresa. And he is not above calling people names in interviews.

The thing about Christopher Hitchens is that he tells you exactly what he thinks about something. Which is refreshing and aggrevating. Your Maximum Leader doesn’t always agree with Hitchens, but he always finds Hitchens engaging. If your Maximum Leader and Hitchens were introduced, your Maximum Leader would buy dinner and drinks and have a great time. Hitchens is the rare journalist/commenator who believes that you are listening to him because you want to hear about what he knows, and what he thinks about something. He has a point of view, and vigourously defends it. There is no feigned objectivity. Hitchens is great at what he does. But what he does often involves name-calling.

The next item on the good Doctor’s blog that interested your Maximum Leader was this. Your Maximum Leader will quote in full:

Joanna Lucas brought this site to my attention. I had never heard of the Vegan Vixens. I’m wondering what scantily clad women have to do with sparing animals pain, suffering, deprivation, confinement, and death. I’m not saying the women in question were coerced into participating, but aren’t they being objectified–aren’t their bodies being used–to make a point, and isn’t that objectionable? Does the end of liberating animals justify sexist means? Would it justify racist or anti-Semitic means? Shouldn’t one argue for liberation rather than appeal to people’s emotions?

Now to remind you, in case you’ve forgotten. Your Maximum Leader is not a vegan, or a vegetarian. He eats (and enjoys) meat, fish, and poultry. But your Maximum Leader is concerned about excessive pain, suffering, and privation inflicted on animals. Having reminded you of this, allow your Maximum Leader to state that what he wanted to comment upon was objectifing women.

As the good Doctor said, these women are all willing participants in this site. They have all chosen to be scantily clad on the internet. Is it possible to objectify yourself through your own free will? Frankly, in American society, using an attractive body to “pitch” or “sell” and idea is an effective tactic. We run (as anyone who has traveled to Europe knows) a little on the Puritanical side when it comes to sex. So long as it s voluntary, is it really objectionable? If seeing these attractive women cause me to think, even for a moment, about the cause for which they speak; isn’t that a good thing? Perhaps there is something in the good Doctor’s comments (or underlying the good Doctor’s comments) that upsets your Maximum Leader. There is a free will element to the women’s participation (and frankly any woman’s participation) in showing off their bodies for a cause (or just for money). If a woman freely decides to wear a revealing swimsuit, or be naked, or have intercourse, or do other things to advance a cause or get a paycheck is she really doing something objectionable? The woman is free to choose another course.

It is something to think about further.

And in case your mind started to wander… Your Maximum Leader has said before, he is troubled by pornography. (The site in question, by the way, is not a porn site and is work safe - provided you can look at attractive (scantily clad) women at work.) He would like to see pornography on the internet segregated into a “virtual red light district” so to speak. Give all porn sites extensions like “.xxx” or “.sex.” This change of extension would give people who do not want to see (or prevent minors for whom they are responsible from seeing) porn an easy way of blocking those sites. This is not a censorship issue. It is a means of assuring that unwilling, or unwitting, individuals don’t accidentially visit sites that they really don’t want to see. 

Carry on.

UPDATE FROM YOUR MAXIMUM LEADER: Dr. Burgess-Jackson has written a short post on your Maximum Leader giving him a little hell on Christopher Hitchens and scantily clad women. Your Maximum Leader agrees that smart people shouldn’t have to resort to name-calling. But that is part of Hitchens’ schtick. He has created a persona, and lives up to it. Your Maximum Leader is quite sure that if Hitchens were allowed to smoke in his television interviews he would. That would add to the effect of the persona.

Carry on.