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[Music clip: From Haydn's Derbyshire March No. 2, organ version]
01 — Intro. He-e-e-eeere's Johnnie. That would be John No-middle-name Derbyshire, your exquisitely genial host for another weekly roundup of the news from Radio Derb. A broad selection this week: Judge Sotomayor, Carrie Prejean, Nancy Pelosi, … Why, what did you think I meant when I said "broad"? Also cowboys, Norks, antisemites, and … What's that, Lassie? What's that you say? Timmy's fallen in the well? Oh, not again … |
02 — Sotomayor on affirmative action. The nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the U.S. Supreme Court is giving us a glimpse into the crooked little world of affirmative action. From the New York Times, June 10, quote: Judge Sonia Sotomayor once described herself as a product of affirmative action who was admitted to two Ivy League schools despite scoring lower on standardized tests than many classmates, which she attributed to "cultural biases" that are "built into testing." End New York Times quote. Hm. Wouldn't it be interesting to hear what those higher-scoring classmates have to say? And what a curious thing to tell us! It is a well-known fact, amply documented, that students of East Asian ancestry, even those who do not have English as a first language, average better scores on any kind of academic test than students with other kinds of ancestry. So presumably the evil designers of these tests, the people introducing those "cultural biases" into them, must be Chinese and Korean. How did they get hold of the testing process? What a mystery! More from the Times article, quote: The clips include lengthy remarks about her experiences as an "affirmative action baby" whose lower test scores were overlooked by admissions committees at Princeton University and Yale Law School because, she said, she is Hispanic and had grown up in poor circumstances. End quote. So if you have a Spanish last name and your people are poor, Princeton and Yale give you a break on test scores? How about if you're Vietnamese and your people are poor? How about if you're Scotch-Irish and your people are poor? Where is the evidence for this supposed "cultural bias" in academic testing? This pro-Asian bias? If you can bias a test one way, you can bias it another, surely. Has anyone come up with a test biased towards people with Spanish last names? If not, why not? How hard can it be? Would Judge Sotomayor like to give us an example of a test question that would be more difficult for a poor Puerto Rican kid to answer than it would for a poor Korean kid? If she can't, then what the hell is she talking about? Will any of the senators on the judiciary committee tackle her on these matters? [Laughter.] |
03 — Nationalism rising in Europe. Just as Radio Derb predicted last week, nationalist parties did well in the elections to the European parliament. In the Netherlands, Geert Wilders' Freedom Party got 17 percent of the vote, coming a close second to the mainstream Christian Democrats. Wilders is refusing to take his seat in the parliament though because he objects to the European Union's influence in the Netherlands' domestic issues, especially immigration laws. He is also against his country's taxpayers' money being paid to the European Union, and to Turkey's entry into the Union. Next door in Denmark, the Danish People's Party, which is the third largest in Denmark's own national parliament, and which ran on a platform of "Give Us Denmark Back," increased its vote by eight and a half percent. They now have two seats in the Euro parliament. Party leader Pia Kjærsgaard credited the party's long-time Euro-scepticism for the gain. In Austria, the nationalist party there, also called the Freedom Party, won 13 percent of the vote and will send two members to the Euro Parliament. Next door to them, in Hungary, a new party called the Movement for a Better Hungary, which campaigns on the slogan "Hungary belongs to the Hungarians," was the third-place finisher with 15 percent of the vote. In Britain, the British National Party won two seats, with eight percent of the vote in one district and ten percent in another. (The Euro elections are decided by proportional representation.) What is one to make of all this? In the first place, it's hard to repress a smile at all the sobbing and shrieking from the mainstream parties. The point of multiparty democracy is to give voters a choice. What choice has been offered to the citizens of, for example, Denmark in the matter of European integration or mass Muslim immigration? None, from the mainstream parties. They have all been on board with those policies for years. Not just on board, either: In the matter of multiculturalism, they have struck lofty moral poses, denouncing as wicked and cruel anyone who objects to his town being swamped with foreigners. They have promoted a blatant double standard, declaring ethnic pride among their own people to be shameful and horrible, while smiling indulgently on the ethnic pride of favored minorities. Well, guess what: When the major parties offer no alternative, and people want an alternative, sooner or later an alternative will show up. Didn't this ever occur to the smug elitists of Europe's mainstream parties? Apparently not. On the other side of the coin, some of the nationalist victors in these elections don't bear very close examination. This is particularly the case in Hungary, where the nationlist party — it's called "Jobbik" in Hungarian — brings a strong whiff of antisemitism to the political scene. Still, I say again, if the major parties are in lockstep, intent on transforming their country's population in a way that ticks off a lot of people, these fringe parties will come to fill the vacuum, and they will bring some unsavory types with them. The solution is for major, established, respectable parties to offer genuine alternatives to the voters on topics like globalization and multiculturalism. I hope there are at least a few people in our own major parties who are thinking about this. |
04 — Antisemitism strikes. Antisemitism was on open and brazen display in the United States this week, too. An 88-year-old lunatic named James von Brunn showed up at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. A security guard, 39-year-old Stephen Johns, seeing the old geezer approaching, opened the door for him. Johns was shot dead for his trouble, as it turned out the geezer was carrying a .22 rifle. Two other security guards then opened fire on von Brunn, seriously wounding him. Now von Brunn's looking at a murder rap, and life in prison — which, at age 88, probably isn't going to bother him much. His ex-wife told the New York Daily News on Wednesday that von Brunn planned to, quote, "go out with his boots on." Von Brunn's written and self-published an antisemitic book, and done six years in prison after trying to hold Federal Reserve officials hostage in 1981. After the Holocaust Museum shooting, police found a note in his car saying, quote: "The Holocaust is a lie. Obama was created by Jews." Von Brunn isn't alone in his opinion there. Our old pal the Reverend Jeremiah Wright escaped briefly from the tiny island in the Aleutians where the Democratic Party has had him confined since last Spring to tell a conference of clergymen, in a taped interview, that he hasn't spoken to his former parishioner Barack Obama lately because, quote: Them Jews ain't going to let him talk to me — They will not let him talk to somebody who calls a spade what it is. End quote. Of course, that isn't the Jeremiah Wright Obama knew for twenty years, no Sirree. No way. Absolutely not. To suggest otherwise would be nothing short of despicable. Oh, late news item just come in, translated from Hungarian by my lovely Hungarian assistant, Zsa Zsa. It says … the Reverend Jeremiah Wright has been offered honorary membership in Jobbik. |
05 — Norks sentence U.S. journalists. North Korea reported on Monday that two American journalists they had kidnapped somewhere near the China-North Korean border had been sentenced to twelve years hard labor. The journalists, Euna Lee and Laura Ling, had been found guilty of, quote, "hostile acts," said the Norks. They didn't tell us what those acts were, and of course there were no observers at the trial. As faithful Radio Derb listeners know, we are proponents of pulling our troops out of South Korea and letting the Souks, the Japanese, the Chinese, and the Russians deal with this regional problem they have over there in northeast Asia. When the Norks kidnap our people to use as bargaining chips, though, and sentence them to hard labor on unspecified charges after a secret trial, I think it's time to make plain that we don't like our citizens being mistreated. My own preference would be to air-burst a couple of well-placed neutron bombs over North Korean military installations, killing a few ten thousand Nork military without kicking up a lot of nasty fallout. If that's too strong for you, how about we mine North Korea's harbors? The U.N. is already urging member nations to stop, board, and inspect North Korean ships. Well, if we mine their harbors, the ships won't go anywhere, will they? If even that's too much to ask, let's at least have some vessels on hand to shoot down any missiles the Norks put up. It's disgraceful we haven't done this yet. Wishful thinking aside, what is the actual approach of the Obama administration to these kidnappings? Quote from Stephen Bosworth, the administration's point man on North Korea, at a senate hearing this week, quote: "the administration's strong preference is to engage in serious, effective diplomacy." Oh right. That's worked so well in the past, hasn't it? I think we can fairly translate Mr Bosworth's statement as: "We'll read the ransom note when it arrives, and pay what they ask." That'll get the journalists freed, and after that the Norks won't be any more trouble, right? Right. Of course. Wonderful stuff, this diplomacy. |
06 — Timmy's fallen in the well! Our Treasury Secretary, 14-year-old Timmy Geithner, went to Peking to talk up our economy. This proved to be a tough assignment. The problem here is fundamentally cultural. China's economy is backward and primitive, based on factories making stuff and then selling it. Our economy is much more sophisticated, based as it is on buying and selling each other's houses, community organizing, playing the lottery, competing in American Idol, suing each other, and selling bits of paper marked "full faith and credit of United States government" to gullible foreigners like, well, like the Chinese. That last was the main point of Timmy's trip — to persuade the ChiComs to buy more of our bonds so that the Obama administration can continue its drunken sailor act. It's a sound investment, Timmy told an audience at Peking University: the 800 billion dollars worth you've already bought are in safe hands. That got a good laugh. When he told them that the administration is planning a colossal new open-ended entitlement program, they didn't laugh; they just looked puzzled. You could see them thinking: How are you going to afford THAT? Similarly when Timmy promised them that Americans will save more. Why would Americans want to save, Timmy's audience was thinking, when everyone knows the U.S. is headed for hyperinflation? Doesn't he know that hyperinflation wipes out savings? Well, no, he doesn't. The President has not yet let Timmy in on his plan for dealing with next year's 14 trillion dollar deficit, which is, to just print the damn money. The Chinese are wise to it, though. A leading finance official of the People's Republic last week suggested the same thing that a leading Japanese official suggested two weeks ago, as reported by Radio Derb. If you want to sell us bonds, he said, we're fine with it; just make sure they're denominated in our currency, not yours. Then, in the event your currency collapses, it's you that's on the hook, not us. Timmy pretended not to hear that, and the administration made no comment, but that's what the man said. Ah, if only we could get the Chinese to stop making things and trade houses and lawsuits like civilized people! |
07 — Cowboy winner. Happy story of the week concerned Neal Wanless, a South Dakota cowboy who was so broke he'd had his trailer repossessed. I mean, that's broke. If you get your house repossessed, you move into a trailer. If your trailer's repossessed, where do you move? Photographs of Neal's 200-acre ranch suggests that the answer is a large packing crate. Neal isn't broke from feckless irresponsibility either. He's a hard worker and an honest citizen. He just happens to live in a poor county and favor a line of work that doesn't pay worth a damn — that is, raising livestock — cattle and sheep. He doesn't belong to any protected minority, so Princeton and Yale aren't interested in him. Since he can't get into law school, and never thought to apply for an internship at Goldman Sachs or a job with one of the big K Street lobbying firms, poor Neal was just a hopeless loser, stuck out there on his ranch simply miles from the nearest Starbucks. I said "was" because last week 23-year-old Neal came up with a winning lottery ticket, for a payout of $232 million. There he was in my New York Post in his cowboy hat and shirt, a big happy smile on his face. I showed the story to my 16-year-old daughter. Nellie said: "Hey, he's cute!" "He's also single," I said, "so don't just stand there — write him a letter!" I then went to the phone and cancelled our summer vacation package to Hawaii. Vacation for the Derb family this year will be in South Dakota. [Cowboy music.] |
08 — Uighurs deported to palm-fringed beaches. Uighurs. No, nothing to do with Eminem — that was last week's broadcast. Concerning which, incidentally, a person wise in the ways of show business has told me that the whole incident with Sacha Baron Cohen dropping glutes-first on to Eminem's face at that awards show, was all staged. I find this difficult to believe. You mean not everything that happens in showbiz is real and spontaneous? That's hard to swallow … as perhaps Eminem said at the occasion in question. Anyway, I'll leave you to make up your own minds — back to the Uighurs. These are a Turkic people, speaking a variety of the Turkish language, living in Central Asia. The actual place where they live, and have lived since time immemorial, is now occupied by the Chinese army, though nobody bothered to ask the Uighurs if they'd mind. Some of them do mind, and object rather strongly to their homeland being colonized by the Chinese. Their capital city, Kashgar, is right now being bulldozed by the ChiComs, fine old Persian-style courtyard buildings being swept away to make room for concrete apartment blocks covered in cheap white tiles. Well, you'd be ticked off, too, and it's not very surprising that an element among young Uighur males has taken up extremist Islam and found itself in Guantánamo Bay along with the Pakistani and Saudi wackos. They were apparently picked up on the battlefield. I suppose it's fair enough; but the administration long ago determined they weren't a menace to us, and ought to be released. Released where, though? If we sent them back to their homeland in Eastern Turkestan, the ChiComs who occupy that place would just torture and kill them. Turkey doesn't seem to want them, probably for fear of offending China, though there is a Uighur independence movement based in Turkey. Well, this week we heard that four of the seventeen Guantánamo Uighurs have been released and sent to Bermuda for settlement. The remaining thirteen are to be released and sent to Palau, an island nation in the South Pacific, as soon as arrangements can be finalized. So let's see: Bermuda … the South Pacific … are we sure we're not dealing too harshly with these Uighurs? We couldn't get Zimbabwe to take them? Somalia? And why didn't anyone follow up on my suggestion to just cut a hole in the perimeter fence and let them wander off into Cuba? I mean, Bermuda? South Pacific? Is this a humane way to treat our enemies? |
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Welcome to Tami Farrell, the new Miss California. You'll recall that Miss California was, until this week, the lovely Carrie Prejean, who lost her shot at ascending to Miss U.S.A. when she declared in public that she believes the same thing a majority of Californians believe, the same thing Barack Obama believes, and the same thing I believe: to wit, that men can't marry men and women can't marry women. Also that men can't marry dromedaries and women can't marry aardvarks. Also that a gal can't marry the New York Yankees and a guy can't marry the Dixie Chicks. Also that … well, you get the idea. Anyway, Carrie Prejean was relieved of her duties this week by Donald Trump, her boss, not, the Donald insisted, because of the political incorrectness on homosexual so-called marriage, but because she hadn't been showing up to things. If that leaves Carrie Prejean broke and homeless, there's a spare room chez Derb she's welcome to use. Isn't that right, honey? [Gunshots.] Item: Having killed the Kazakhstan tourist trade stone dead for a hundred years, comedian Sacha Baron Cohen is all set to do the same to Austria with his new movie about Bruno, a gay Austrian fashion designer he's invented. "I want to be the most famous Austrian since Hitler," explains Bruno. And: "I want to live the Austrian dream of finding a partner, buying a dungeon and starting a family." Having seen Baron Cohen's first movie, Borat, and then read this, you don't have to be a genius to figure out that what he's really taking on is uncouth antisemites in godforsaken backwater places like Kazakhstan and Austria. Fair enough, I guess; but it sure would be fun to see Sacha direct his anti-antisemitic mockery at some harder targets: Saudi Arabia, perhaps, or the Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Item: Still in show business news: America's Sweetheart, Nancy Pelosi, has changed her mind about the release of pictures showing American troops being unkind to terrorist suspects. The Senate had put an amendment into the latest military funding bill to block release of the pictures. Nancy says that amendment has got to go. This is all part of Barack Obama struggling to maintain his credibility with the far left of his party. They're mad as hell at him for not having retired the Border Patrol, given ACORN a seat in the cabinet, announced federal reparations for slavery, submitted a Hate Crimes Bill criminalizing use of the word "homosexual," and putting the country's laundromats under federal control. Nancy wants to help get the message to Obama that if he doesn't do something to hurt the U.S.A. real soon, he'll be kicked out of the Ramsey Clark Appreciation Society. Obama himself is trying to straddle the issue, declaring that he doesn't want the pictures made public, while politely declining to classify them so that they can't be. What will happen next will be, the darn pictures come out, all the foreigners will scream blue murder, somebody in some Islamic sinkhole country will kidnap an American and hack off his head, Nancy and Barney and their lefty friends will chuckle and crow, and the President will click his tongue in phony disapproval. That's what's going to happen, you can take it to the bank. Item: Here's a report from that fine magazine Diversity, Inc., dateline June 10. Headline: Can Racism Lead to Weight Gain? I'm just going to read you a précis of the story without any comment, mainly because I just don't trust myself to comment in a way that would meet the high standards of propriety and multicultural sensitivity for which Radio Derb is renowned. OK, here's the story. Opening quote: Can racism — whether real or perceived — be the cause of high obesity rates in Black women? End quote. A team of epidemiologists at Boston University's Slone Epidemiology Center have been investigating this extremely important and vexing question … for eight years. (Epidemiologists study how diseases spread through populations.) These scientists monitored 43,000 Black women between the ages 21 and 69 from 1997 through 2005. They grouped the women into four categories based on how frequently they said they experienced racism. The scientists then observed their weight and waist-line fluctuations every two years. At the conclusion of the experiment, all of the women gained weight; but those who said they experienced racism most frequently gained more weight and had the biggest waist lines. That's the story, on which, as I promised, I have absolutely no comment at all. None at all. Nope, not gonna say a word. Some stories just … speak for themselves. Item: Here's a story from the old country that will tug at your heartstrings. Seventy-one-year-old George Herridge of Reading, west of London in the Thames valley there, is blind and stricken with cancer. To help him get about he has, like many other blind people, a trained guide dog. Well, Mr Herridge was apparently not paying full attention when the sensitivity police came round to give him his multicultural training course. He thoughtlessly got on a bus with his guide dog. There was a Muslim lady on the bus — a Muslima, I guess Judge Sotomayor would say — with her children. As everybody surely knows, dogs are unclean to Muslims, so the woman and her children all began screaming. Then the Muslima shouted at George in Urdu. An Urdu-speaking fellow-passenger kindly translated, telling George: "She wants you and your dog off the bus." The bus driver said: "Look, mate, can't you get off." To his eternal shame, the despicable Mr Herridge defied the multicultural proprieties and stayed on the bus with his guide dog. Think how that poor Muslima and her helpless children — Muslimites? — think how they must have suffered! Remember this story next time you hear someone claim that there is no need for hate crime laws. I hereby name George Herridge Radio Derb's Hate Criminal of the Week. |
10 — Signoff. That's your lot for this week, boys and girls. A few minutes ago I glimpsed Candy through the studio window wheeling her massage table in the direction of my office, so by now she should be all set up for my afternoon rub-down. Oh, she just came back, and she's gesturing to me through the glass. Hmm … Not … quite sure what that gesture means … Oh, I see. Right. I'm off, then. Tune in again next week for more of what's good for you from Radio Derb. |
[Music clip: More Derbyshire Marches.]