- When I see a good trend getting started, I feel compelled to throw my weight behind it. This is one of those trends and one of those times. For too long, the kooks and hatemongers of the Kansas-based Westboro Baptist Church have trucked their brand of bizarro-Christian hate around the country to “protest” at the funerals of soliders, civil rights leaders, children and any other memorial service where they could spread their message of hate and intolerance. Along the way, their fundamental concept hasn’t wavered: God hates homosexuality and is punishing America for tolerating it by allowing soldiers and others to die. It’s an asinine take even for real Christians, who oppose homosexuality but don’t oppose it through hate and soulless protests against innocent people who have nothing to do with the matter. Towns where the Westboro ass hats have planned to protest have taken to forming human barriers to shield mourners at affected funerals, but residents in Louisville, Ky. kicked matters up a notch Sunday. More than 400 people from all over the city protested Sunday afternoon against the presence of four members of Westboro Baptist Church who were in town. The Westboro contingent was led by chief hatemonger Jonathan Phelps, who channeled the most hateful and despicable thoughts of church leader Fred Phelps when he said, "This country is going to hell. This nation is going to wake up into hell and it's not (going to be) long now. This is His message. He sent us to preach it. What we expect is that it will be universally rejected by hardened hearts." No Johnny, this country isn't going to hell because it’s too tolerant of homosexuality and if your true feelings are the ones you’re representing in your despicable protests, then the ones going to hell are you and your fellow Westboro crackpots. See, the feelings and beliefs you’re expressing aren’t rooted in the Bible or anywhere else other than your own hateful, twisted psyches. Just because the United States Supreme Court ruled in your favor last Wednesday, stating that funeral picketing is a form of free expression protected by the First Amendment, doesn’t mean you should be saying what you’re saying. But go ahead and condemn anyone who doesn’t find the nearest gay person and immediately stone them to death and don’t listen to the viewpoint of normal, non-ass hats like Louisville resident Donnie Russell, who attended Sunday’s protest. "I believe without the First Amendment, they wouldn't be able to protest. But without our troops, they wouldn't have that amendment," Russell said. According to Louisville police, the four Westboro tools were only in Louisville for 30 minutes and the protest broke up immediately after they left without any no arrests made……….
- Not that the opera world isn't known for a certain amount of diva behavior, but even by opera’s standards, soprano Angela Gheorghiu is out of control. Gheorghiu has pulled out of the Metropolitan Opera's new production of Gounod's "Faust" next season, just weeks after her withdrawal for an entire run of "Romeo et Juliette" that began last week. Those two episodes of quitting followed the Lyric Opera of Chicago firing her in September 2007 from Mimi in Puccini's "La Boheme” after general director William Mason claimed she missed six of 10 rehearsals. She and then-husband Roberto Alagna, a fellow opera singer whom she married on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera in April 1996 with then New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani presiding, were once dubbed opera's "Bonnie and Clyde" by director Jonathan Miller. The couple battled with then-La Scala music director Riccardo Muti and left a production of "Pagliacci" he was conducting in Ravenna, Italy and also canceled a planned engagement in Vienna because Gheorghiu saw the production on television and hated it. But wait…….there’s more. In 1998, Met general manager Joe Volpe withdrew the couple's contract to perform in a Franco Zeffirelli production of Verdi's "La Traviata," over the couple’s alleged demands to approve the production's concept and designs. Gheorghiu then withdrew from the title role in a new production of Bizet's "Carmen" for the 2009-10 season because she “needed more time to prepare for the role.” Are you starting to get the impression that the Gheorghiu and Alagna are massive divas who believe that the world and anything in which they deign to involve themselves revolves around them and only them? It’s hard to see how their marriage didn’t work out, what with these two humble, cooperative and self-sacrificing personalities involved, no? If you read between the lines of the Met’s official announcement about Gheorghiu’s departure, you can almost see the sarcasm dripping off the page as it is explained that Gheorghiu pulled out of the Des McAnuff "Faust" for "artistic reasons." Perhaps she wasn’t down with the tweak to the production that updates the action to the nuclear age. Marina Poplavskaya, who had been scheduled to sing Marguerite later in the run, will take over for Gheorghiu when the staging opens Nov. 29. All of this drama is enough to make a person legitimately ask themselves why any director in his or her sane mind would offer Gheorghiu any role in any production at all…………
- Do you want them back or not, North Korea? Your all-or-nothing return strategy for citizens who accidentally cross over into South Korean waters on fishing boats is perplexing, to say the least. South Korea attempted to repatriate 27 of the North Koreans on Friday, but the North rejected them because of four defectors who decided remain behind in South Korea. North Korea has demanded the return of the whole group of 31 -- including the defectors, which is something of an unfair request of South Korea because it is not their fault if four (extremely smart) North Koreans want to defect from a communist hellhole ruled by one of the world’s worst and most oppressive dictators. To hear the North explain the situation, South Korea should bind and tie the four would-be defectors, cram them into cages and ferry them back across the border by any means necessary. The Red Cross, which is also involved in the matter, confirmed that South Korea would attempt a second time to send the group of North Koreans back to the communist North on Monday. The defections are merely the latest flashpoint between the Koreas, which have been teetering on the brink of military conflict for years. But if the North sinking a South Korean war ship last year wasn’t a tipping point for war, then 31 navigationally challenged North Koreans in a fishing boat probably won't be either. Figuring out why the four would-be defectors refuse to return to North Korea isn't difficult once you know that defection is a crime in North Korea that carries the death penalty. North Korea on Monday proposed Red Cross talks regarding repatriation and South Korea has accepted the proposal for talks but rejected the accompanying demand that the North Korean Red Cross be allowed to bring three family members of the four North Korean defectors to the meeting and that the South Koreans bring the four defectors to the meeting with them. The South Korean government steadfastly refuses to repatriate the four North Korean defectors. "There is no change in our basic position that a decision made based on the free will of a person must be respected," said South Korean Unification Ministry spokesman Chun Hae-sung. The South appears confident that the four defectors are legitimate in their stated intentions and its intelligence agency questioned them for nearly a month after they crossed over. Ultimately, the South Korean government decided to release the four individuals and in their minds, the matter is closed. Free will has no place in North Korea, of course, which goes a long way toward explaining why there are currently more than 20,000 North Korean defectors in South Korea and the number of annual defectors has risen dramatically since the turn of the century. The one rule of defecting from North Korea, whether it is to South Korea, China, Mongolia or elsewhere, remains: Do not get caught under any circumstances. Those forcefully repatriated to the North after attempting to cross over into other countries are typically sent to prison camps as a punishment. Sounds like a wonderful place to live………….
- Samsung has high aspirations, if nothing else. Well, either that or it crafts its aspirations while high on any number of illegal substances, but one or the other. Say what you will about its plan, but the tech giant has dually set its sights on both Research in Motion’s BlackBerry smartphones and Apple’s iPad and expects to compete favorably against both in the months to come. The first step in that process came Monday when Samsung debuted the Galaxy Pro, an Android smartphone that combines a full QWERTY keyboard and a 2.8" touch-screen display. The phone will begin shipping to the United Kingdom later this month and will extend across Europe, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia shortly thereafter. Based on its design and tech specs, the Galaxy Pro appears to be targeted at both the business market and average users, who will undoubtedly enjoy its Flash support and included 3-megapixel camera. The Flash support stands in stark contrast to Apple’s iPhone, with Steve Jobs and Co. having made it clear that Flash has no role in their future plans for smartphones or any of their other technology. For the business-focused user, the Galaxy Pro will include Exchange and tethering capabilities along with Samsung's TouchWiz user interface, a custom GUI which boosts functionality above the standard Android interface. The device has been a work in progress as Samsung rushed to address concerns that arose in early beta testing. Reviews of the phone has been more positive of late, leading Samsung to green light its release to the public. Meanwhile, a company spokesperson made it clear Monday that Samsung’s commitment to the 10.1-inch version of the Galaxy Tab tablet computer remains strong despite recent comments from Samsung's mobile chief Lee Don-joo, who said last week that Samsung would need "to improve the parts that are inadequate" in order to successfully compete with the iPad 2. The first edition of the Tab has done better than any other tablet in competing with the iPad, having sold about two million units since its debut. But with the upgrades Apple made to the iPad for its second incarnation, Samsung will need to step its game up if it wishes to hold onto or expand its market share in the tablet field…………
- And that’s why the world believes that the American legal system is a complete joke. People like Princeton, N.J.-based lawyer Carl Mayer are the reason other nations take one look at our judicial system, laugh and keep moving. Mayer, known for filing legal actions against New Jersey politicians, turned his attention to something apolitical two years ago and that something was an important topic affecting the life of each and every American in a real, visceral way: the New England Patriots' 2007 "Spygate" scandal. I certainly don’t need to explain how an NFL team videotaping the defensive signals of opposing coaches impacts us all, so I won't waste time on that endeavor. Instead, let’s focus on Mayer’s class-action lawsuit against the Patriots and coach Bill Belichick. Mayer, a Jets season ticket-holder, wanted millions of dollars from the Patriots and Belichick, claiming they deceived customers by secretly videotaping Jets coaches' in-game signals. In the suit, Mayer claimed that the Patriots taped the Jets' signals in their twice-yearly contests for seven years and thus, fans paid large amounts of money for tickets to see games whose outcomes were predetermined. It was a stretch when Mayer filed the case with the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia, it was a stretch when he appealed the court’s dismissal of the case to a federal appeals panel and the biggest stretch of all came when he appealed the panel’s rejection to the Supreme Court. Given that the high court hears a small percentage of the many cases appealed to it each year, the odds that the justices would waste a shred of their time hearing some publicity starved, attention whore of an attorney looking to make a quick buck off of a claim that had no real merit were low. For the record, Mayer sought $185 million in damages for Jets fans alone. What math he used to come up with those figures, I’m still not sure. Mayer must have taken the ticket price for every seat sold at every Jets-Patriots game for the past seven years, tripled it (which he actually did) and then thrown in $60 million or so for good measure. Or perhaps he just factored in an extremely high rate of inflation……but either way, the Supreme Court said Monday it won't review the decision to throw out the lawsuit. The NFL long ago closed the case on “Spygate,” fining the Patriots for videotaping the Jets’ signals and stripping them of a first-round draft choice. Should you want to review Mayer’s ill-reasoned lawsuit for yourself, the case is Mayer v. Belichick, 10-867. Have at it…………
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