Someone with a lot of time on his hands has compiled a 10 minute video purporting to be “A selection of the top 100 quotes from The Wire, the greatest TV show ever made.”

Not surprisingly, virtually all of them contain NSFW language, with the F- and N-words being especially well represented.

via Jason Kottke

Megan McArdle points me to this amusing video about which  Gizmodo’s John Herrmann gushes, “I’ve read the articles, watched the instructional videos, and gotten an invite, but nothing—nothing—has done more to explain to me how this mind-melting Internet Thing works than Pulp Fiction, spectacularly adapted for Google Wave. (Warning: Tarantino language ahead)”

It’s an entertaining illustration but, frankly, not one that makes me pine for an invite.  Yes, Wave would seem to combine several existing tools in a streamlined way.  And it might be extraordinarily useful way of doing certain kinds of collaborative work.  Mostly, though, it looks like a big time-waster.

Missouri native Rush Limbaugh has been dropped from membership in a group seeking to buy the St. Louis Rams and keep them in the city.  This speeds up the inevitable conclusion fo the NFL’s owners refusing to let the controversial pundit join their ranks.

Limbaugh was to be a limited partner in a group headed by St. Louis Blues chairman Dave Checketts. Checketts said in a statement Wednesday that Limbaugh’s participation had become a complication in the group’s efforts and the bid will move forward without him.

Checketts told the Associated Press he will have no further comment on the bid process.

Three-quarters of the league’s 32 owners would have had to approve any sale to Limbaugh and his group. Earlier this week, Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay predicted that Limbaugh’s potential bid would be met by significant opposition. Several players have also voiced their displeasure with Limbaugh’s potential ownership position, and NFL Players Association head DeMaurice Smith, who is black, urged players to speak out against Limbaugh’s bid.

A Limbaugh spokesman told ESPN that Limbaugh would have no comment on Wednesday. Earlier, on his syndicated radio show, Limbaugh was defiant, holding on to hope that he still could be part of the ownership group that buys the Rams. “This is not about the NFL, it’s not about the St. Louis Rams, it’s not about me,” Limbaugh said. “This is about the ongoing effort by the left in this country, wherever you find them, in the media, the Democrat Party, or wherever, to destroy conservatism, to prevent the mainstreaming of anyone who is prominent as a conservative. “Therefore, this is about the future of the United States of America and what kind of country we’re going to have.”

I’m sympathetic to Limbaugh here, in that he’s been smeared by made-up quotes and vilified for making perfectly reasonable and legitimate political arguments in a provocative manner.  Conservatives are frequently branded as “racists” and “sexists” and “homophobes” as a tool of stifling debate. While I long ago got tired of his shtick, I still think he’s a decent guy who’s made a lot of enemies with his act.  Given that he’s been doing three hours of live radio five days a week just about every day for nearly twenty years, he’s bound to have said quite a few stupid things.

Further, there’s an argument to be made that he’d be good for the NFL.  He’s a true fan of the game and loves his boyhood home, so he’d bring a lot of passion to his minority stake in the Rams.  And this bid is the best chance to keep the team in the city.   He could be an NFL version of Mark Cuban, which the No Fun League could use.

Among those making pretty powerful arguments against Limbaugh’s bid, ironically, is Mark Cuban.

The problem with Rush is that its his job to take on all of life’s partisan issues and problems.  Not only is it his job to take on these issues and problems, its key to his success that he be very opinionated about whichever issues he feels are important to him and/or will cause his very large audience to tune in.  Given that we will never know what the “next big issue ” in this world that Rush will be discussing on his show is,  its impossible for the NFL to even try to predict or gauge the impact on the NFL’s business if something controversial, or even worse yet, something nationally polarizing happens. There is an unquantifiable risk that comes with the size of Rush’s audience.  The wrong thing said on the show, even if its not spoken by Rush himself,  about a sensitive national or world issue could turn into a Black Swan event for the NFL.

Thats a huge risk that is not commensurate with the value a minority investment in a franchise brings.

This isnt about Free Speech. Its about the NFL protecting their business.  There is no reason to put it at risk.  If Rush were to retire from his show, or become a local DJ in Sacramento, or just about anything else he may want as a vocation, then I dont think they would have any problem with him being an investor in a team.

And, frankly, in the Age of YouTube, even a local shock jock would have the same issue.

Steven Taylor points out that the NFL is institutionally conservative on such matters:

First, the NFL is extremely image conscious and Rush makes a living going out of his way to say things that make somewhere between 30%-60% of the population mad on a daily basis (depending on what he is talking about).  As such, it is hardly a shock that some NFL owners are a bit skittish about welcoming him into their ranks.

The second business point I would make is that this is a case of pure capitalism at work:  private owners making decisions concerning with whom they are willing to do business.  Conservatives really have no ideological grounds to object if the NFL owners have found Limbaugh too controversial for their business tastes.   Heck, if Major League Baseball thinks Mark Cuban is too controversial, it is hardly a shock that there was pushback on Limbaugh from the NFL.

All of this does boil down, however, to the voting rules, as institutions do matter.  To wit:  for a purchase to be approved, 75% of the league’s owner have to agree on the sale.  There are 32 teams, meaning 24 had to say yes, but much more importantly, only 9 had to say no.   One of the simple facts that is often ignored by casual observers about super-majority rules is that they empower the minority substantially.

Add to that, by the way, that the League is about to enter into serious labor negotiations that are already extremely contentious.  No way are the owners, who need serious concessions from the players to realign the business model, going to antagonize the union — which is overwhelmingly comprised of African Americans — by accepting an owner that many players deem racist.  (Now, if Limbaugh were the majority bidder and offering to substantially overpay for the Rams, it might well be a different story.)   Fair?  No.  But not much about the business of professional sports is.

Now, as Doug Powers and others point out, the NFL has some shady characters in its midst already.  But there’s a much higher tolerance for thuggish behavior on the part of great athletes than for prospective owners. Rick Moran notes, too, that the NFL has always been way behind the other leagues in minority hiring. But that’s really all the more reason for owners to be cautious.

Sean Hackbarth argues that Limbaugh has done himself no favors, either.

Rush failed to treat his quest as a campaign with the end goal being a stake in an NFL team. He played the politics wrong and lost this chance to be an owner. With better preparation the conservative giant would have better anticipated the attacks against him and eased the worries of certain owners during the firestorm.

As soon as he had an inkling to want to own an NFL team Rush needed to start laying the groundwork to make sure there wouldn’t be nine opposing votes. He should have started a process years in advance to soothe owners’ fears that he wouldn’t be an annoyance as an owner. Owners are businessmen who love football, so they would prefer to focus on improving their teams and growing their fan bases instead of dealing with the distraction of the latest fake-controversy created by Rush’s opponents. Running a business is partially about managing risks. Controversy is a risk that can be avoided, so it’s not a surprise NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said what he said.

Finally, as Tom Maguire observes, “Rush, love him or hate him he has made fabulous living being controversial and (that awful word) divisive.  That has opened some doors to him and, unsurprisingly, closed others.  Quel surprise.”

For as long as I can remember, comedians have been having fun with the fact that hot dogs come 10 to a pack whereas hot dog buns come 8 to a pack.  Via Chris Lawrence’s Google Reader, I see that one intrepid gentleman has done his best to solve this dilemma:

The woot’s at the end have me wondering whether this is a legit call or an elaborate set-up but, either way, rather amusing.

A well-done Star Trek – Monty Python mashup:

via Glenn Reynolds

Matthew Moore marks the 40th anniversary of the Internet with a list of “50 things that are being killed by the internet.” My favorites:

1) The art of polite disagreement
While the inane spats of YouTube commencers may not be representative, the internet has certainly sharpened the tone of debate. The most raucous sections of the blogworld seem incapable of accepting sincerely held differences of opinion; all opponents must have “agendas”.

Because I make a living writing things on the Internet, I’m especially aware of this. There’s no matter sufficiently trivial that it can’t spark a nasty flame war.

2) Fear that you are the only person unmoved by a celebrity’s death
Twitter has become a clearing-house for jokes about dead famous people. Tasteless, but an antidote to the “fans in mourning” mawkishness that otherwise predominates.

Both a good and a bad thing, as Moore suggests. While some respect for the recently departed’s loved ones is nice, the Internet is a welcome alternative to the hagiographies of the weird but famous to which we’re otherwise treated.

3) Listening to an album all the way through
The single is one of the unlikely beneficiaries of the internet – a development which can be looked at in two ways. There’s no longer any need to endure eight tracks of filler for a couple of decent tunes, but will “album albums” like Radiohead’s Amnesiac get the widespread hearing they deserve?

I owned hundreds of cassette tapes and probably still have 300-odd CDs. I rarely listen to them anymore and haven’t bought a new album in perhaps a decade.

17) Watching television together
On-demand television, from the iPlayer in Britain to Hulu in the US, allows relatives and colleagues to watch the same programmes at different times, undermining what had been one of the medium’s most attractive cultural appeals – the shared experience. Appointment-to-view television, if it exists at all, seems confined to sport and live reality shows.

As I’ve noted previously, I tend to watch non-sports and news programming well out of phase, often catching them a year or two after they’ve gotten going and sometimes waiting until the entire run is complete. When I saw the bold headline, though, I thought he was going somewhere else: The fact that having a notebook computer in the living room often means that we’re looking something up and only half paying attention to the television, much less others in the room.

50) Your lunchbreak
Did you leave your desk today? Or snaffle a sandwich while sending a few personal emails and checking the price of a week in Istanbul?

I’m quite guilty of this. Even when I “go out” for lunch, I usually grab something to eat in front of my computer.

The always-provocative Mark Cuban argues that the television networks should do something about a situation where pay for content in order to sell advertising whereas online players like YouTube sell advertising for content others paid for.

I think the real approach is for the broadcast networks to “Game” Youtube. There is nothing that says that they cant use Youtube to audition their pilots. By putting pilots on Youtube and Hulu as well, its a chance to see what the level of interest is for the pilots. This “crowdsourcing” approach, when combined with some traditional research and analysis could allow broadcast networks to be smarter in choosing which pilots to put on TV.

Not only would it allow broadcast and cable networks as well to be smarter, but it also would allow them to get paid to promote the show. Its in Youtube’s financial interest to promote the pilots heavily. Its the most professionally produced content available to it to promote. So why wouldn’t they ? More promotion means that pilots would actually generate revenue in addition to awareness prior to a network scheduling decision being made.

From a bigger picture perspective, unless youtube can reach a position where it generates more advertising revenue online than a slot on a broadcast network schedule, this approach would cement Youtube’s position as the “minor leagues” for broadcast network content. Pilots would be auditioned online and then possibly get “called up” to the major leagues, also known as the network schedule. Those pilots that didnt warrant a call up can get polished up for a 2nd audition, or the production company could choose to stay on Youtube and produce future episodes, working with in the revenue levels earned online.

At least one commenter fears that this would lead to even more dreck on television, since non-formulaic shows sometimes take several episodes to build an audience. That’s perhaps true; if “Mad Men” had been a one-episode pilot, it would have failed because the characters aren’t instantly likable.

At the same time, though, this could conceivably improve the chances of quality shows getting aired. Pilots that would fail before a focus group could slowly build buzz online, particularly if it’s serialized in short segments.

I’m not the target audience for this. Instead, I’m part of a totally unrelated trend that’s making it harder for the networks: the Netflix generation. I seldom start watching a show until it’s in its second or third season and the word-of-mouth is so strong that I decide to jump in.

Now this is pretty cool:  The folks at Kottke.org are bringing Walter Cronkite’s live, real-time coverage of the Apollo XI moon landing as originally broadcast starting at 4:10 Eastern.

Just leave this page open in your browser and at the appointed times (schedule is below), the broadcast will begin (no manual page refresh necessary).

Schedule:
Moon landing broacast start: 4:10:30 pm EDT on July 20
Moon landing shown: 4:17:40 pm EDT
Moon landing broacast end: 4:20:15 pm EDT
Moon walk broadcast start: 10:51:27 pm EDT
First step on Moon: 10:56:15 pm EDT
Nixon speaks to the Eagle crew: approx 11:51:30 pm EDT
Moon walk broadcast end: 12:00:30 pm EDT on July 21

Presumably, you can just go directly to YouTube and watch the segments you’re interested in whenever you want.  But watching it unfold over the course of hours in real time (give or take 40 years) is cool idea.

Andrew Sullivan writes that “No Recognition Of Ahmadinejad” must be considered “the first and absolute requirement of all Western governments.”

In my New Atlanticist post “Negotiating with Iran without Preconditions,” I recall this famous exchange from the July 24, 2007 CNN/YouTube debate:

More commentary and analysis at the link.

A month ago, we debated whether rock music died in 1980.  While we decided that it did not, we concluded that it has changed quite a bit since then.  Writing at Slate, music critic Simon Reynolds writes of “Grunge’s Long Shadow” and “In praise of in-between periods in pop history” as periods of transition in the dominant styles.

Regular commenter anjin-san recommended “making music/audio a more hefty part” of the repertoire here as a chance to “have a friendly discussion with guys you are typically trading gunfire with.” In that spirit, it strikes me that it could be fun and informative to discuss and come up with a list of the best rock songs of every year.  If the discussion goes as expected, it’ll create quite a bit of debate as well as introducing both myself and my readers to songs they hadn’t heard before or had forgotten about.

We’ll start with 2008, the most recent finished year and work our way back until either the idea fizzles out or we hit 1954 or so.

Here’s how it’ll go:    Readers will suggest songs in the comments below, preferably linking a YouTube or GoogleVideo or other place where others can hear the songs for free.    Songs should be confined to the broad rock genre, meaning no rap or hip-hop or country.  (I despise the first two and the last is a different category, albeit one I’d consider doing a similar feature with at some point if this goes well.) Think: guys with electric guitars.

Over the course of a week or so, I’ll update this post with my choices, probably ending up with a Top 10 list.  Songs may move down or even off the list as new suggestions come in.

Judging will be entirely subjective based on my musical tastes, which were formed circa 1979-1989.  A song may have held down the top spot on every Billboard chart for all 52 weeks of the year, won 17 Grammys and a Nobel Prize and not make my top 10.

UPDATE:   Thus far, “The ‘59 Sound” by Gaslight Anthem and “3 Dimes Down” by Drive-by Truckers, neither of which I particularly like, are in the lead by the virtue of being not so awful that I managed to get past the first minute.  Any sings that don’t include singing are hereby ruled ineligible.  Apocalyptica’s “I Don’t Care” had possibilities but they seem not to have mastered recording technology; the song sounds like it was surreptitiously captured with an incredibly crude device.

So far, it’s looking like rock and roll might have died by 2007 . . . .

UPDATE: Ray LaMontagne’s “Let It Be Me” is thus far the best of the nominees.  It’s got a Joe Cocker meets MoTown vibe.  I also don’t hate Dodd’s submission, “Check Yes Juliet” by We The Kings.  Sum 41’s “With Me” doesn’t totally suck, either.  Gomez’ “Get Miles” has a Jim Morrison vibe. Haven’t decided if that’s a good thing.

Also, several submissions were from 2007 or 2009 and were summarily dismissed from consideration.

UPDATE: Both About.comand Rolling Stone have “Best Rock Songs of 2008″ compilations. There’s some overlap between songs suggested below but quite a number that haven’t been mentioned.

UPDATE: Incubus’ “Love Hurts” doesn’t suck, although I far prefer the unrelated Nazareth song of the same name.

Photo by Flickr user Stephen Poff under Creative Commons license.  Originally posted  29 May.

Members of Congress are flooding YouTube with scads of amateurish, unwatchable videos, The Telegraph’s Mark Coleman reports.

Two months ago, the website added an official Congress channel, inviting Democrats and Republicans to share quirky political messages with voters.  But analysts say the move has been hampered by politicians’ inability to adapt to an online audience.

Andrew Rasiej, founder of the political technology site Personal Democracy Forum, said too many messages consist of warbling monologues that miss the point.

Other postings, including one by Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House, were said to be too eccentric or random to resonate.  In a minute-long video, Mrs Pelosi showed footage of her life behind the scenes in the Capitol Building through the eyes of two pet cats. Making matters more bizarre, the minute-long film was captured to the strains of Rick Astley’s disco hit, Never Going To Give You Up.

Mr Rasiej said: “The problem for Nancy Pelosi, or anyone who tries to do this, is that you can’t fake authenticity. “The more you try to make the video authentic, the more inauthentic it becomes. And Nancy Pelosi’s cat video is the perfect example of overdoing it, and watching one’s head disappear in a pool of quicksand.”

In another video, Democrat Tim Ryan promoted the virtues of driving an environmental car by referring to the vehicle as a “chick magnet”.

This is amusing on a lot of levels.  But, um, wasn’t this the whole idea behind YouTube?

Any idiot can upload any video that they own and anyone can search the site to watch whichever of said videos catches their fancy.  Almost by definition, virtually every video will be amateurish dreck that few people want to watch except in a “Mystery Science Theater 3000″ sort of way.

With few exceptions, the truly good videos on YouTube and similar services are either 1) professional videos posted in violation of someone else’s copyrights, 2) professional videos purporting to be amateur videos until the actual source is ultimately revealed, or 3) pornographic.

via Stephen Green

The gang at Online Colleges Blog have compiled a list of “The 15 Strangest College Courses In America.”  They concede that these courses “sound like lots of fun” but wonder “with tuition costs skyrocketing is it really worth it to spend thousands of dollars on fun diversions?”  Among the offerings:

Arguing with Judge Judy: Popular ‘Logic’ on TV Judge Shows (University of California, Berkeley)

Not quite what one would expect, the professor of this course emphasizes repeatedly in the course listing that this class is “NOT a course about law or “legal reasoning.” It is instead an exploration of logical fallacies that are often presented by defendants and plaintiffs on court television shows like Judge Judy and The People’s Court. Seems right up the alley of most college students, as they are squarely in the demographic of afternoon television programming (which also targets the elderly and unemployed).

Learning From YouTube (Pitzer College)

This college course literally involves watching YouTube videos to study the impact on culture that the video sharing site has had. Students also upload their own videos to the class YouTube channel. The teacher started the course after being “underwhelmed by the quality of the video content on the site”.

Philosophy and Star Trek (Georgetown University)

Philosophy classes often use pop culture to start discussion, there are even plenty of books out there with similar themes as this college class (here’s Seinfeld and Philosophy for instance), but still, when it comes down to it, this course and the philosophical under trappings are just being used as an excuse to talk a little Star Trek. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

The Science of Superheroes (University of California at Irvine)

Students at UC Irvine can learn about physics by using familiar superhero icons such as Spider-Man, Superman, Wonder Woman and Batman. The professor teaches the physics of flying and fluid dynamics using Superman as his example, and the students also learn about super strong spider silk as used by Spider-Man. The professor explains it saying “It gives me a chance to talk about real science but in a context that is very familiar to the students”.

And so on.  Tyler Cowen takes the counterintuive position of being “impressed at how sensible the offerings were.  ‘Learning from YouTube’ strikes me as more valuable than 80 percent of what is currently on tap.  I also think it is often useful to teach science through the medium of a TV show or to teach philosophy through The Simpsons.  It fosters personal involvement and if you don’t, most of the students aren’t learning anything anyway.”

I tend to agree.

Reading the comments on Cowen’s post, it turns out that a goodly number of the 15 listings aren’t even “college courses” in any meaningful sense in that they don’t earn credits toward a degree.  Still, there’s no reason they couldn’t.

Figuring out how to utilize subjects already interesting to students and turn them into teachable moments is a classic teaching technique.  I often used discussions about current events, clips from Monty Python films or George Carlin routines for that purpose.   Why not build whole classes around the idea?

This is apparently making the rounds on YouTube:

It’s apparently funnier than I think it is.

Two Americas

Sarah Palin caused a bit of a flap earlier in the week when she told a North Carolina crowd that she loved visiting the “pro-America” parts of the country, leading WaPo’s Juliet Eilperin to quip, “No word on which states she views as unpatriotic.”

The campaign circulated a longer report, courtesy of WSJ’s Elizabeth Holmes, putting the remarks in context, which Eilperin posted:

“We believe that the best of America is not all in Washington, D.C. We believe” — here the audience interrupted Palin with applause and cheers — “We believe that the best of America is in these small towns that we get to visit, and in these wonderful little pockets of what I call the real America, being here with all of you hard working very patriotic, um, very, um, pro-America areas of this great nation.”

She continued: “This is where we find the kindness and the goodness and the courage of everyday Americans. Those who are running our factories and teaching our kids and growing our food and are fighting our wars for us. Those who are protecting us in uniform. Those who are protecting the virtues of freedom.”

Eilperin’s take:

The upshot? The District is neither “real America” nor “pro-America.” Other parts of the nation? It’s unclear, but if you live in a small town, you’re probably patriotic from Palin’s point of view.
The campaign says, no, “She was reinforcing the message that the best of our America isn’t confined to our nation’s capitol.”

The controversy continued last night, when Eilperin’s colleagues Matthew Mosk and Christopher Twarowski passed on a remark by a McCain staffer nobody had ever heard of on a show nobody watched:

McCain senior adviser Nancy Pfotenhauer, a self-described “proud resident of Oakton, Virginia,” said on MSNBC that “Democrats have just come in from the District of Columbia and moved into Northern Virginia, and that’s really what you see there. But the rest of the state, real Virginia, if you will, I think will be very responsive to Senator McCain’s message.”

Program host Kevin Corke asked Pfotenhauer if she wanted to retract the comment, prompting her to reply, “I mean ‘real Virginia’ because Northern Virginia is where I’ve always been, but ‘real Virginia’ I take to be the — this part of the state that is more Southern in nature, if you will. Northern Virginia is really metro D.C.”

I’ve now lived in Northern Virginia a little over six years, easily the longest I’ve lived consecutively in any state as an adult and soon to surpass any place I’ve lived consecutively in my lifetime.  I categorically agree with Pfotenhauer that it isn’t “Real Virginia” — let alone the “Real South” — but rather a suburb of Washington, DC.  This isn’t an insult but rather a cultural judgment.

Northern Virginia is much more affluent. It’s much more congested and thus has far different political priorities than the rest of the state.  People generally don’t have Southern accents here as they do just a few miles south and west.  It’s hard to get sweet tea in a restaurant here.  There are actually quotas making it harder for kids graduating schools in these parts to get into the University of Virginia, otherwise it would be overwhelmed by students from a handful of affluent counties.

As to the “Real America” nonsense, it’s a really annoying relic of the pre-24/7 communications era, when candidates could stump in localities and say things that wouldn’t get heard elsewhere.  In some ways, it’s as benign as rock bands traveling the country and telling each crowd that this is their favorite venue and that this is the best crowd, ever.

It’s more than that, of course.  There is in fact a cultural divide in the country that animates politics, especially at the presidential level.   It’s not quite rural-urban, as relatively few people leave in rural areas these days even in the reddest of Red States.  No, it’s between “cosmopolitan America” and the rest of the country.  People who live and work in big cities and college towns tend to have a different set of attitudes than those who live everywhere else.

We’ve seen it in the internecine debate among conservatives over Sarah Palin.  She’s adored by a wide swath of conservatives from the South, West, and Midwest but viewed quite skeptically by those of us who live in Cosmopolitan America.  South Park Republicans are different from Wal Mart Republicans, even though we wind up voting for the same people.

David Brooks captured this divide brilliantly, if somewhat inaccurately, in his various “Bobos in Paradise” writings.  In a 2003 followup in the Atlantic, he observed,

Human beings are capable of drawing amazingly subtle social distinctions and then shaping their lives around them. In the Washington, D.C., area Democratic lawyers tend to live in suburban Maryland, and Republican lawyers tend to live in suburban Virginia. If you asked a Democratic lawyer to move from her $750,000 house in Bethesda, Maryland, to a $750,000 house in Great Falls, Virginia, she’d look at you as if you had just asked her to buy a pickup truck with a gun rack and to shove chewing tobacco in her kid’s mouth. In Manhattan the owner of a $3 million SoHo loft would feel out of place moving into a $3 million Fifth Avenue apartment. A West Hollywood interior decorator would feel dislocated if you asked him to move to Orange County. In Georgia a barista from Athens would probably not fit in serving coffee in Americus.

At the macro level, there’s a longstanding scorn between these “Americas” that goes back to the days of the Founding Fathers.  Whether it was Hamiltonians vs. Jeffersonians, North vs. South, Country Club vs. Cloth Coat, or Blue vs. Red, the former have tended to look down on the latter while the latter resented the former.  Successful politicians have long mastered pushing the buttons to use these sentiments to their advantage.

However real the differences are, however, fanning the flames of resentment is a dangerous game for those aspiring to the presidency (or vice presidency).  Not only is it now impossible to play it and not get caught in the age of blogs and cell phone videocameras and YouTube — it brought down the very promising career of George Allen, for example, with the Macaca incident — but it’s impossible to govern effectively after waging that sort of campaign.  This is especially true now that campaigning for office is a never-ending cycle and the concepts of a “honeymoon” or a “governing mandate” now seem quaint.

Image: Canadian Red

A new John McCain ad belittles Barack Obama’s legislative achievements on education reform and includes this gem:

Obama’s one accomplishment? Legislation to teach “comprehensive sex education” to kindergartners. Learning about sex before learning to read?

TPM’s Greg Sargent finds the charge “false” and “pernicious.”  He cites this passage from the bill, as circulated by  McCain’s staff:

“Each class or course in comprehensive sex education offered in any of grades K through 12 shall include instruction on the prevention of sexually transmitted infections, including the prevention, transmission and spread of HIV.”

Sargent notes that Obama camp’s explanation that the bill “would simply add instruction on disease prevention to already existing Illinois sex-ed standards.”   Indeed, Team Obama is calling the charge “perverse.”

“It is shameful and downright perverse for the McCain campaign to use a bill that was written to protect young children from sexual predators as a recycled and discredited political attack against a father of two young girls – a position that his friend Mitt Romney also holds. Last week, John McCain told Time magazine he couldn’t define what honor was. Now we know why,” said Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton.

Taking legislative language and votes out of context to exploit cultural divides is so routine that it’s hard to get particularly excited by this. Indeed, the ad’s not totally unfair.

While I’m generally pro-sex ed, it strikes me as bizarre to mandate teaching kindergartners about STDs.  Making them aware of sexual predators is, sadly, probably necessary.  But are six-year-olds really having unprotected sex and sharing hyperdermic needles?