The Volokh Conspiracy

Give your ID card to the Border Guard, Your Alias says you're Captain Jean-luc Piccard, of the United Federation of Planets, but he won't speak English anyway..

saw the White Stripes perform this song at Coachella a few years ago. probably the best song i've *ever* seen performed live....by any band.

Vitale’s story on NPR was wonderful; I almost had to pull over I was laughing so hard. There’s a cross-cultural, ageless sense of who and what outsiders are, and what needs to be done with to them.

When some gullible student traveled halfway around the world to ask the locals ‘how do you all have, uhh, you know, uhh, have relations’ they instinctively knew, they sensed immediately that “we all have sex whenever we meet” was the only answer, the answer she truly needed to hear. They were so right.

Strangers begging to be defrauded awaken the inherent human sense of grift.

On this occasion, Dolly Parton sensed what Vitale would fall for –what Vitale really wanted deep inside, what he needed to hear— and spoon fed him line by honeyed line. He swallowed Parton's story whole; regurgitating it later for his rapt NPR listeners. It was magnificent.

No Paul Harvey, Vitale's effort gives no detail, no scrutiny, no light in the darkness. The story is pabulum; a mess of words that are vaguely comforting and filling to a certain class of people.


I do not know the woman, but 25 years ago Parton said:

"This is a story about an old redheaded girl that was trying to steal my husband back in the late sixties. You know women do that sort of thing, right? But I want you to know she didn't get him. I fought that redheaded woman like a wild cat. She jerked my wig off and almost beat me to death with it. She beat the tar out of me, but I kept my husband. I got that sucker home, and I beat the tar out of him. Her name was Jolene."

Thank you Samoans, and now, thank you Dolly Parton. There are not many simple, lasting pleasures in the world, but some are priceless.

...and as to "Frank Rich Versus Reality" above this post, Frank is merely laying blame to conservatives before the fact**. That way he can claim firsties on it. They do a lot of that s**t over at the NYT editorial office... that and count Maureen Dowd's hot flashes. Frank is envious.

**He saw it in a play, once, and had a simply divine sandwich at the Cafe Madelaine afterward.