Author: Kim du Toit

Karma Smiles

Marketing / Advertising, Sports

Two headlines that had me chuckling, when seen one after the other:

…and then:

So their lesbians beat our lesbians.  (I know, this whole Lesbo World Cup is of little interest over in this corner of Teh Intarwebz, being a) soccer and b) womyns’ sports, but stay with me here.)

This whole non-singing of the national anthem — when you have been chosen to represent your country — has stuck in my craw since Day One.  By not singing the anthem, what you’re saying is that this is not a momentous privilege but just another thing you have to do before signing that lucrative endorsement deal.

And then kvetching when you don’t get that lucrative endorsement deal.

I know, I know:  it’s their First Amendment right and all that, but people need to understand that sometimes there are consequences to actions, and this would be one of those times.

I’m no longer an executive in this business but if I were, there is absolutely no way I would sign up one of these unpatriotic and ungrateful assholes and pay them some large sum of money, because in all good faith I couldn’t show them wearing the Team USA shirt (on the Wheaties packet, for example) when they’ve basically indicated that wearing said shirt is anathema to them.

Enjoy your stay in Oblivion City, shitbirds.

But Of Course

Good Stuff, Legal Stuff

You will remember last week’s post wherein we all giggled upon seeing some shoplifting scrote getting his just deserts at the hands (stick?) of a shop owner who was fed-up by having said scrote stealing from him for the third time.

Well, because this happened in Cali-fucking-fornia, we now have this development:

Apparently, while many California cities have no desire to actually enforce the laws against people who steal from business owners and put them in financial peril, they are interested in enforcing battery laws involving the protection of said businesses. According to a new report, the Sikh man is now facing criminal charges as local police investigate the incident.

My own modest suggestion would be to borrow the man’s stick and beat the shit out of whoever actually charges this hero, but no doubt somebody’s going to have a problem with this.  (Just nobody, I suspect, among my Readers.)

But here’s what gets the RCOB moving:

Some are making the argument that the force used on the shoplifter in the video was excessive, and as a purely legal matter, that may be true. The shoplifter was begging for mercy while the store owner continued to swing back and strike him. The question is at what point the store owner is expected to disengage, and he likely passed that point.

The store owner “disengaged” before breaking any bones or causing any lasting damage to the asshole.  All he did was deliver a sound beating, and only in today’s pussified society could this be termed “excessive”.   Nobody cares if the scrote was “begging for mercy”, especially after the store owner tried his best to stop the overt shoplifting in a non-violent manner before resorting to the stick.

I am so glad I’m going to the range this afternoon with the Son&Heir…

Classic Beauty: Colleen Moore

Classic Beauty

Silent / talkies star Colleen Moore, I think, typifies both the look and the ethos of that most interesting era.

And when she moved away from the “flapper” look:  still more beautiful.

One last note about Colleen Moore:  unlike so many actors and actresses of her (or any) era, she actually learned how to keep and grow her income through careful investment.  She even wrote a book about it.  Gorgeous and intelligent, by golly.

It’s just a tragedy that most of her movies, like so many of the early stars, have been lost so we can’t appreciate them fully.

Highly Recommended

Heroism, History

I just finished reading Lynne Olson’s Citizens Of London, and all I can say is I wish I’d read it before Tony Judt’s Postwar (which I recommended earlier).

Of course, as a keen student of 20th-century European history, I’m very familiar with the WWII period — or at least, I thought I was.  In fact, I’ve always been more interested in the military history thereof rather than the diplomatic side… and Citizens Of London  took care of that for me, in spades.

Oh, good grief:  how could I have been so ignorant?  Of course I knew about Edward R. Murrow (“the voice of the Blitz”), and Averill Harriman (more so for his post-war career).  But Gilbert Winant?  All I knew about him was that he was successor to the horrible-in-every-way-imaginable Joe Kennedy as U.S. Ambassador to Britain, and I vaguely remember him as one-time governor of New Hampshire.

Olson’s book has set me straight on that, and if you are similarly ignorant about this period and these characters, it will do the same for you.  Run, don’t walk, to your favorite bookstore or to Amazon, and buy this book because it will change your perspective on WWII completely.

I should point out in passing that in this history, Franklin D. Roosevelt does not come out well (not that this is a Bad Thing, of course), and nor does his successor Harry S Truman.  And I have never read so personal and compelling a story about not just Winston Churchill, but also the entire Churchill family during this period.

It is clear that but for Murrow, Harriman and Winant — with an excellent assist from Dwight D. Eisenhower — there may well have been a completely different outcome to the events of 1939-45.

And if that doesn’t get you to read Citizens Of London, we can’t be friends.