A few of Jason's favorite things...

I can't really explain how much it hurt Jason to be away from this blog for so long, and as such, I feel a certain responsibility to post Jason-type material. Clearly, I don't write in that Feiferian style so beloved by everyone who comes here every day, but I can pick on some themes that I know stirs Jason's gravy.

Like 24! Jason's such a Bauer fan that he actually had personalized 24 t-shirts made. So I'll bet a fiver that Jason would have been extremely interested in this Salon piece about how everything in 24 is pretty suspect, but even defense and intelligence experts love the show.

Jason also hates stupidity, so he'd love to hate Larry Summers. After getting excoriated for making what was really not a sexist comment at all*, he's apologized like 40 times and now is throwing $50 million at a program clearly designed to quell cranks on campus. It's just the newest bullet on the long, long list of reasons to hate Harvard University.

I certainly support efforts to diversify staff and faculty on campus, but to do it under duress like this is craven. Why weren't these efforts in place before? Either the program was needed, and Harvard turned a blind eye to the problem until it was politically expedient to do so, or it's not really needed, and this is $50 million worth of window dressing to save Summers' ass. Either way, this sucks.

Jason also loves Oil Can Boyd, and wholeheartedly supports his independent-league comeback!

Ok, that's not true. But I love Oil Can Boyd, and I wholeheartedly support his independent-league comeback! Boyd (who's real name is Dennis) was one of my first favorite baseball players when I was a kid, no doubt because he had the same nickname as the bad guy from Mighty Mouse.

--Berto

*If I were to believe the shorthand that news outlets use when talking about Summers, I would believe he said something awful and sexist. But I bothered to read the news stories, and found that he asked his hypothetical question about women in science in the context of hard, unpopular things universities must examine, if only to prove they aren't true. There's a huge difference there, and since America has divorced itself from all things subtle, no one bothers to understand that difference.

Posted by Happyscrappy Guest Blogger at May 17, 2005 07:45 AM