First Looks category archive

Family matters.

My local rag’s David Hall writes of the funeral of Carl Long, a man of many firsts (“he helped break the color barrier in the Carolina League in 1956 . . . .became Kinston’s first black Trailways bus driver, its first black deputy and its first black detective”). The column is worth a read, but this bit leapt out at me.

Long remembered, clear as day, riding on a team bus over the segregated South’s back roads and seeing black men hanging from trees, their lives taken in the name of an accepted hatred.

One more time: When next you hear someone romanticizing “the Lost Cause,” ask him or her to specify out loud for all to hear just precisely what cause was lost.

Every year, there is a spate of stories about words added to various dictionaries.

In my local rag, Bernadette Kinlaw points out that, every year, words are also dropped from dictionaries. Here are a few of this year’s casualties:

Cyclogiro

This is an aircraft that flies because of its rotating blades.

Deliciate

When you deliciate, you indulge in feasting. I’m going to use that word starting today.

Frigorific

A frigorific thing causes or creates cold. The polar vortex is like that.

Read her list. Several of them are words I’ve actually heard of (alienist, for one). I have heard somewhere gyrocopter, but not cyclogiro.

Via Classic Arts Showcase.

Read more here.

Bernadette Kinlaw slings some slang at my local rag.

One of the saddest sights in the American political landscape is a Republican of good will who tries to pretend that a vestige remains of his fantasy “traditional” Republicanism. One such is Wisconsin’s Austin Given, who laments in part

If only the RNC had not implemented the Southern Strategy, Republicans might still be the party of civil rights. If state’s rights conservatives had not infected the party founded to stop them, Republicans would be fighting for minority rights, not majority comfort and supremacy.

Real Republicans recognize the party’s cancer. The growing state’s rights conservative movement has mutated the Republican message from empowering individuals to overpowering them.

Do read the rest. His faith in the existence of “real Republicans” somehow separate and apart from the actions of the Republican Party is touching and sweet in a sad puppy dog way.

“Unliked” by the Gray Lady.

Chris Honore looks back:

Already a distant memory: The Olympic Winter Games held in Sochi, Russia, where V. Putin medaled in all events – shirtless. And speaking of Vladimir, who can forget Rudy Giuliani’s bromance with Vlad, Rudy waxing poetic, so impressed by the Russian’s decisiveness and lack of concern for public opinion (like, say, the electorate). This is a man ready to charge ahead and get stuff done. You know, like quasi-dictators can do. Rudy was breathless in his praise.

Via Classic Arts Showcase.

I got nothing.

Our closing number is dedicated to Bill-O and all the boys and girls at Fox News.

In related news of excess, nothing whatsoever can get me to watch Sony’s The Interview short of extreme duress.