Tasteful Vs. Teletart

Aesthetics, Gender, Pop-Culture

When everywhere, on TV and in real life, badly dressed, over-exposed women and girls assault the eye—it doesn’t hurt to be reminded what class looks like. Fifty three seconds into this touching interview conducted with Kim Campbell, wife of Alzheimer’s-stricken musician Glenn Cambell, the camera pans out to reveal Mrs. Campbell’s elegant attire. She is wearing black, knee-high boots, and a long, grey, well-tailored skirt nipped in high at the waist.

Opposite Mrs. Campbell sits Fox News’ coarse-looking Gretchen Carlson. She is dressed in a cheap-looking turquoise slip hitched almost as high as her thighs. This is the standard-issue outfit (and behavior) on Fox News. Too awful.

On BBC News and RT one can still find the odd intellectual, who knows a thing or two about a topic. But in markets catering to American tastes—that includes Al Jazeera America—it’s teletarts all the way.

Ashoka (And Mother) Mukpo’s Quest For Exotica

Africa, Canada, Critique, Healthcare, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Multiculturalism

OK, I’ll say it. He’s a lily white Canadian-American with the name Ashoka Mukpo. Mr. Mukpo loves Liberia almost more than life itself. This is how his family aggrandized Ashoka’s Liberian pursuits:

Mukpo was a researcher for the Sustainable Development Institute, a Liberia-based nonprofit shining light on concerns of workers in mining camps outside Monrovia. And “was into the culture. … He seemed to have a lot of passion for it.”

(CBC)

Days before his infection with Ebola became public, Mukpo was hired by NBC as a cameraman in that country. (Wasn’t he a “researcher” of sorts?)

Instead of assuming the name of his “birth father, a prominent Rhode Island doctor,” Ashoka and brother “took the name of his mother’s first husband, who founded the Shambhala Buddhism community”—upon a cursory read of this Wiki entry, Shambhala seems like a cult of sort, primed to ensnare a certain type of westerner.

The quest for exotica trumps honoring thy father.

Throughout the interview this married couple gave Sean Hannity, Mother Mukpo came across as pretentious, uppity and worse. Ashoka’s stepfather, Mitchell Levy, seemed perfectly nice; an affable fellow.

Still, Ashoka’s mother was referred to as Diana Mukpo, and not Diana Levy. The infected cameraman’s sullen mom clearly preferred to take on the name of her former husband than assume the name of the man at her side: Dr. Levy, “director of intensive care at Rhode Island Hospital.”

Oh, Ashoka Mukpo is said by the faithful to be “a tulku, the reincarnation of a Buddhist master teacher.”

“Ashoka Mukpo (center) with his mother, Diana (third from left) and birth father Mitchell Levy (far right) during a visit to Tibet in 2002. (Konchok.org)”

The D’oh* Factor In D.C. & ‘The Washington Compost’

Barack Obama, Intelligence, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim

OMG, Dana Milbank of “the Washington Compost” (radio Mouth Mark Levine’s apt moniker) has written a column titled “Obama, the Pariah President.” Not that you’d know it from this column, but it would appear that the love-fest is over. Paraded under the “opinion banner,” the Milbank column is a simple report, the sum total of which is, “Obama went here to campaign and then this bad thing happened to him, and then he went to another place where more shit happened, and ‘people began to trickle out’ on him, but this could have been because they were running to catch a shuttle.”

Pretty much.

The news here is not the diminishing support for the president, which is, presumably, the veiled message embedded in Milbank’s unprepossessing piffle, but, rather, it is that a prestigious newspaper not only mislabels Milbank as an “opinion” writer, when he writes reportage festooned with a suggestion or two.

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal is a tad more creative on Twitter, following the New York Times’ report today “that Obama is seething about the Ebola response.” What Jindal calls the Barack Obama School of Crisis Management is better termed BHO’s Standard Operating Procedure (SOP), because the president’s pattern is all sleight of hand; nothing but a self-serving production.

Stage 1: Don’t worry, I got this.
Stage 2: I’m so mad.
Stage 3: More money will fix it.
Stage 4: Republicans are obstructing.

* “Doh is an exclamation popularized by the fictional character Homer Simpson.” (Wikipedia)

Bob & Carol Dawson’s Parrot Paradise

Environmentalism & Animal Rights, Ethics, Human Accomplishment, Morality

An uplifting couple of hours were spent today, Sunday, at the “Macaw Rescue and Sanctuary,” a magical parrot oasis, built and operated by the best of Western Washington, Bob and Carol Dawson. (Make that the best of the best.) Not since Sean and I visited Christy Hensrude’s Zazu’s House Parrot Sanctuary have we been so inspired. (We endorse both rescues unequivocally.)

In preparation for the first of many such future volunteer visits, we made toys galore from non-toxic wood Sean had cut in the garage. (Reluctantly, Oscar-Wood donated some of his colorful stash of beads.) Mounds of fresh, organic greens, assorted vegetables and fruits were washed (very thoroughly) and tossed with organic seed (pumpkin, sunflower, hemp and flax) as well as nuts, smashed in-shell with a meat pounder, so that the smaller birds could enjoy Brazil, pecan and walnut.

The food we served in Bob’s high-quality dishes, which required hardly any scrubbing. Yes, down to the smallest detail, these people are driven by devotion. So too were the toys hung. But most inspiring was taking in the totality of Bob and Carol’s creation, all 22 acres of it. Situated in beautiful rural western Washington and ranked #16 of 290 charities in the region; “Macaw Rescue and Sanctuary” is a glorious, well-kept and smartly run haven—a home to hundreds upon hundreds of free-flying flocks of happy, thriving parrots.

“Macaw Rescue and Sanctuary” is truly a labor of love.

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With Bob Dawson in front of the small-bird enclosure: