An apology, and then something to take my mind off of it

In my last post, I quoted Oklahoma state congresswoman Sally Kern saying that homosexuality is a bigger threat to the U.S. than Islam. She did say that, but I pulled and emphasized "Islam" instead of emphasizing "terrorism", which she also used, and which was what I meant to point to with anger and outrage.

I wrote the post in haste, but that's no excuse for conflating an entire religion with a few fanatical members of that religion's recent acts of violence. You know I didn't mean it and I know I didn't mean it, but I did it, and I'm pretty fucking ashamed of that.

I've since changed the word in the post to "terrorism", but I am also leaving this post up as a standing apology for my mistake. Using the term "Islam" to evoke "terrorism" is so pervasive in the American zeitgeist right now that it's all to easy for even the most aware of us to make that error in haste or in distraction. It's still no excuse.

If you were offended, I'm terribly sorry. And if you weren't offended, I'm still terribly sorry.

Moving on -- and now for something completely different.

Thomas Friedman's book The World is Flat was a New York Times bestseller and is currently ranked at #124 at Amazon. It's always been one of those "Huh, maybe I should give that a look" books for me. And I still may page through it at the local Borders, but when a review makes me laugh this hard while it savages a book, I have a feeling that the review is all I'll need when it comes to Friedman's piece. Sometimes, I just love reading a good tirade. It's why Your Movie Sucks by Roger Ebert is my latest bedside table book.

Take this bit from the review, for example:

Friedman spends the rest of his huge book piling one insane image on top of the other, so that by the end—and I'm not joking here—we are meant to understand that the flat world is a giant ice-cream sundae that is more beef than sizzle, in which everyone can fit his hose into his fire hydrant, and in which most but not all of us are covered with a mostly good special sauce.

How can you resist?