I love this quotation.

It’s in response to Rep. Christopher Shays’s (R-Conn) statement(s) about how he’d like to see the resignation of crooked House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Satan).

Christopher Shays said, “Tom’s conduct is hurting the Republican Party, is hurting this Republican majority, and it is hurting any Republican who is up for reelection,” he said.

Ready for the amazing part?

Check out this response, as quoted in the L.A. Times, by a “House Republican leadership aide, speaking on condition of anonymity.”

The anonymous aide says, “Chris Shays is watching his backside in a very tough district — he’s the first person anyone would suspect who would distance himself from Tom DeLay, and the only one who has spoken on the record.”

Shazam! The anonymous aide is essentially saying, “Chris Shays is in one of those districts that neither we nor the Democrats have had a chance to gerrymander yet. Therefore, Rep. Shays actually has to try to appeal to a broad spectrum of voters in his district, not just the extremists in his own party.”

A Congressman trying to appeal to a large cross-section of voters in his district? What’s next, a President who can speak English?

In a single, run-on sentence, Mr. Anonymous has clearly summed up why voter districting reform (a.k.a un-gerrymandering) is so important.

I spotted this sign in nearby College Park, Ga.

They’re trying to say “Celebrating 10 Years,” which is in fact what the other side of the sign says, in English.

However, there’s a problem. N and Ñ are different letters in Spanish. Because the sign doesn’t have an accent over the “n” in ano, the sign in fact says:

“Celebrating 10 anuses”

He’s buried now, so I can say this without being “disrespectful” in a time of mourning, right?

1. Pope John Paul II did contribute to the fall of Communism. Polish labor leaders like Adam Michnik and Lech Walesa contributed a lot more though. Remember that when they die.

2. JPII’s AIDS policy was this: Dying of AIDS is awful, but using condoms to keep from getting it, that’s even worse. That policy will result in tens of millions of deaths and destruction of African nations that, in a generation, will populated by hundreds of millions of poor, angry, young adults who have never had parents. Family values, my ass.

3. Under JPII’s leadership, it became apparent that the Catholic Church actually has mixed feelings on, of all subjects, child-rape. When American bishops met during the media-coverage height of the church child-rape scandal, they actually had to argue about whether they would tolerate child-rapists in the church’s midst.

And when it became absolutely clear that Boston Cardinal Bernard Law was an accomplice to hundreds of child-rapes (He repeatedly reassigned rapist priests to new parishs without notifying the law, or the parishes. In essence, Law was handing prey to predators), Pope JPII didn’t try to get Law to step down, nor did he encourage him to cooperate with Boston legal authorities. Instead, old JPII promoted Law, giving him a cushy church job in Rome. Law is actually one of the people who will pick a new Pope.

So good riddance, Pope JPII. Great people make mistakes, yes, but not mistakes as big as 2&3.

Papal infallibility, my ass.

This week’s Scene & Herd features a short review of last Friday’s Guitar Wolf at The EARL. Sadly, the show was Guitar Wolf bassist Billy Guitar’s final show before his death this morning in Japan.

I’ve posted some of my photographs from the show on my Flickr page.

Have you ever wondering what exactly a journalist is?

Harry Shearer answered the question last weekend on his Le Show radio broadcast (for some reason, he did it in the voice of Casey Kasem).

What Is A Journalist? by Harry Shearer.

The following is a list of my favorite headlines from stories pertaining to Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice’s recent official visit to China

Rice arrives in China
Rice had complicated agenda in Asia
Rice suits tastes of changing Asia
Rice: Ball in North Korea’s court on nuke talks
Rice appeals to China to engage in NKorea together
China head warns Rice on Taiwan
Rice sends mixed signals in Asia

My cousin Mahdad e-mailed some family photos from Iran yesterday.

Here’s a fun headline from last week’s Washington Post

Abuse Review Exonerates Policy: Low-Level Leaders and Confusion Blamed

In other words, top Pentagon officials investigated themselves and say that they didn’t do anything wrong.

In a related story, “Andisheh is the coolest, awesomest, bestest person in the world,” says Andisheh.

I’ve put a couple of new posts on MonkeySars, one on a 1942 musical called “Iceland,” the other about Jerry Orbach. Read them if you’d like.

Have you seen the commercial for the birth control pill ORTHO TRI-CYCLEN LO. (If not, you can watch it here.)

The commercial depicts beautifully lit, attractive women walking around pretty settings in slow motion. Underneath the narration about the pill’s effects and side-effects, a pixie woman sings a the main hook from “There She Goes” (originally by The La’s.)

“There she goes. There she goes again.”

The song and the visuals artfully deliver a clear, pro-woman, pro-sex message (“There she goes, having premarital sex and not getting pregnant. Hey, check it out, there she goes again!), but in a way that slides past the literal-minded Virginity Cultists who’d bury the FCC under a mountain of auto-generated e-mails if a commercial spokesperson stood in front of a camera and said, “Hey, young women, this drug makes sex more fun and less risky.”

Maybe this commercial is a glimpse at the potential upside of the ascendant Christian Conservative movement’s censorship movement. To get messages out, creative people are going to have to be more artful. Maybe the crackdown on so-called broadcast indecency is, as we speak, birthing a dozen new Cole Porters. We can only hope.