It was enormously disappointing to watch Jon Stewart fluffing Mau Mau Mike Huckabee on Wednesday’s Daily Show. Oh, Stewart gently nibbled at him about his support for right-wing fundamentalist David Barton, but he didn’t challenge any of his evasive answers. He didn’t mention Huckabee’s advocacy of religious indoctrination at gunpoint, nor did he bring up Huckabee’s Mau Mau Kenyan birther statements from a few weeks back. The more I watch Stewart’s show, the more I realize what a villager he is at heart.
Wow, that’s some link-laden despair, ain’t it? Truth is, I’m heartsick over nearly everything going on in politics these days. Republicans are operating from a template of pure racism and assholishness, Democrats are too pussy to call them on it, Obama wants to pretend he’s helplessly stuck in the middle, and average Americans seem to care more about another nation’s royal wedding than their own well-being and future.
Times like these, it’s important to remember the words of Theodore Parker: “I do not pretend to understand the moral universe; the arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways; I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight; I can divine it by conscience. And from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice.”
I do believe morality bends toward justice, just as I believe long-term political trends in the USA bend in a progressive direction. It’s just real hard to discern the curve.
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God, on to something happier: I’m several notches closer to starting my checkout as a docent and tour guide at the Pima Air Museum. Yesterday I audited two more tours, including the bus tour of the famous Boneyard. Next week I’ll motorcycle down to Green Valley to audit the Titan Missile Museum tour, and then I can sit down with the volunteer coordinator and decide which tour or tours I want to specialize in.
Just in time, too … our friends Frank and Sue have a large crown of Europeans coming over in May for their daughter Holly’s wedding, and they want me to lead them around the air museum during one of the days they’re here. Several, Frank says, are German. It’ll be interesting taking them through the WWII hangers.
During my boneyard tour yesterday, my mind went blank on the F-111’s official USAF name. I know we called it the Aardvark, and indeed that’s what the tour guide called it, but that’s an unofficial name. What the hell did the USAF call it? I couldn’t remember. Last night I googled it, and according to everything I can find the F-111 never had an official name until the day the USAF retired it, when the USAF bowed to the crews who flew it and made the name Aardvark official. The USAF is rarely cool, but they were cool to do that.
I can’t think of any other USAF aircraft that didn’t have official names, can you?
Not all aircraft are known by their official names, of course. The A-7 was the Corsair II, but everyone who flew it called it the Sluf, for short little ugly fucker … just as the B-52 Stratofortress is called the Buff (big ugly fat fucker). The B-1 Lancer is the Bone, derived from B-one. The F-16 Fighting Falcon is called the Viper. No one has ever called the A-10 by its official name, the Thunderbolt II … it is and will always be the Warthog.
An exception is the F-15 Eagle, which everyone calls the Eagle, but the F-15E Strike Eagle is more often called the Mud Hen and sometimes the Beagle … well, maybe not by Strike Eagle aircrews, but certainly by Eagle pilots. So far everyone calls the F-22 Raptor by its official name. The F-35 is apparently the Lightning II, but it’s so damn ugly I’m willing to bet it picks up an unofficial name very quickly once it becomes operational.
Can you tell I’m practicing my tour guide patter on you? Thanks for your patience. You can expect to hear much more of this stuff in the future. And don’t worry … when I talk to the public, “fucker” will become “fellow” (accompanied by a wink).
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We’re quickly becoming addicted to the FX Channel’s Justified. So far we’ve TIVO’d and watched all the season two shows, and realizing how much we must have missed, recently ordered the DVD of season one from Amazon.
Donna and I are also recording and watching the new Tom Selleck series Blue Bloods. Like NCIS, CIS, and Law & Order, the episodes come out of a cookie-cutter (ever noticed that every single NCIS episode begins with the discovery of a body?), but hey, Tom Selleck, right?
Speaking of whom, Donna and I wish they’d hurry up and make some more of those wonderful Jesse Stone movies. I think they were all made for TV, first for HBO and now for CBS, but they stand on their own two feet, and hey … Tom Selleck, right? The next one (according to this) is Innocents Lost, and it’ll air on May 22nd.
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We’re going on a long bicycle ride tomorrow morning, followed by a long Hash House Harrier trail Sunday. Reason enough to eat red meat tonight, and I was just about to run to Safeway for steaks when I remembered Donna’s observing Lent. That’s okay, I have a backup plan.