1. MAN IN BUSHES. This one’s my favorite. As you know, there’s nothing better than a good “man in bushes” story. This one, reported yesterday, even includes the Bible:
Wednesday's Blotter: Man in bushes stares down Bible reader
A caller [to Huntington Beach Police] said he was sitting in his truck parked in a parking lot on Gothard Street reading his Bible when he noticed a man hiding in some bushes. He said the man was "staring him down."2. ASSHOLE & MERC GET SMASHED. Some guy in San Juan Capistrano tried to cross barriers and tracks to beat a train. He lost. He’s an asshole. But there’s something seriously goofy about this story:
Driver walks away with cuts after train strikes Mercedes-Benz
…[Allesandro] Sabatino tried to drive his car across the tracks … at Oso Road even though the barriers had already come down, said Lt. Hal Brotheim of the Orange County Sheriff's Department. About a mile away, a northbound Amtrak train had just left the San Juan Capistrano station. ¶ As the older model Mercedes crossed the tracks, the train rammed into it. ¶ "His vehicle was demolished," Brotheim said. ¶ Sabatino was transported to the trauma center at Mission Hospital. He was conscious at the time.This just doesn’t add up. Sabatino starts to cross the tracks. Meanwhile, a mile away, the train starts toward him. You gotta figure it’ll take it 60 seconds—more like 90—to get to Sabatino.
—I know, I know. It depends on how you understand "train ... just left the ... station." In my family, "the other day" could mean a month ago. Maybe a family member wrote this story. Could be.
3. FULLERTON COLLEGE: THEY DIDN’T HAVE A “PLAN C.” Evidently, Fullerton College’s commencement was mucked up first by rain & thunder, then, apparently, by poor planning. Re the latter, you be the judge:
Fullerton College won't reschedule rained-out graduation
Fullerton College won't reschedule last week's rained-out commencement ceremonies, despite requests from disappointed students, the college president said today.
¶ "If they want to be recognized and have the full celebration, they will be invited to participate in next year's ceremony," college President Kathie Hodge said.
¶ Pouring rain and lightning from thunderstorms led college administrators to hastily switch the location of last Thursday's graduation ceremony from the Fullerton Union High School Stadium to the new College Center, where a reception has been planned to follow the event.
¶ But the center wasn't big enough to hold all the people attending, leading to crowds and disappointment as some students sent their families home.
¶ The replacement venue also didn't lend itself well to the planned speeches, which were hard to hear, including keynote speaker Terrence Roberts, one of the Little Rock Nine who desegregated Little Rock Central High School in Arkansas. And graduates didn't get to hear their names called nor walk up to a dais. … [Denise] Collins and other students complained that the college hadn't planned for the rain, even though it was forecast….
¶ College president Hodge said that officials had two backup plans, but they relied on a forecast that showed the rain clearing by the time of the ceremony. The thunderstorm, with lightning that made it unsafe to hold the ceremony outside, was an unwelcome last-minute surprise, she said. …
¶ "People were able to pick up their diploma covers and pins, we had food for them and they could have their pictures taken," Hodge said. "It wasn't the best, but it did have elements of the ceremony."
4. SHE TAUGHT LAMBCHOP TO SING. This, too, was reported yesterday:Emeritus teacher from Village named Saddleback Part Time Teacher of Year
At recent commencement exercises in Mission Viejo, Saddleback College announced that it had named 94-year-old Mildred Landecker its Part-Time Professor of the Year. … According to the college, her students, find her teaching style "inspiring" and enjoy her "wonderful sense of humor."
¶ Landecker attended the Juilliard School of Music in New York City and earned both a Bachelor of Science degree and a Master of Arts degree from New York University.
¶ She taught at the High School of Music and Art in New York for 30 years gave voice and piano lessons in her private studio at Carnegie Hall to celebrities like Shari Lewis, Hal Linden and Diahann Carroll.5. IT WAS A SETUP! I suppose you heard about the Fullerton high school teacher who was “framed.”
Framed teacher: ‘It turned out better than I thought'
A history teacher arrested and then cleared in what authorities now describe as an elaborate gun-and-drugs setup said that his mood had swung from paranoia and fear to gratitude for the support he received. … ¶ Police arrested Abbott on Tuesday after finding an unloaded shotgun and marijuana in his Jeep Cherokee in the parking lot at Sunny Hills High School in Fullerton. Authorities now say Abbott was the victim of a plot to bring him down. ¶ Police have named Abbott's wife, Devon E. Abbott, and a male acquaintance of hers as persons of interest in the case….6. KNOWING STUFF IS “ELITIST.” Author Susan Jacoby—recently interviewed by our own Red Emma (KPFK)—has a guest editorial in the NY Times:
Best Is the New Worst
PITY the poor word “elite,” which simply means “the best” as an adjective and “the best of a group” as a noun. What was once an accolade has turned poisonous in American public life over the past 40 years, as both the left and the right have twisted it into a code word meaning “not one of us.” But the newest and most ominous wrinkle in the denigration of all things elite is that the slur is being applied to knowledge itself.
¶ Senator Hillary Clinton’s use of the phrase “elite opinion” to dismiss the near unanimous opposition of economists to her proposal for a gas tax holiday was a landmark in the use of elite to attack expertise supposedly beyond the comprehension of average Americans. One might as well say that there is no point in consulting musicians about music or ichthyologists about fish. … Conservative intellectuals who rose to prominence during the Reagan administration managed the neat trick of reversing the ’60s usage of “elite” by applying it as a slur to the left alone. “Elite,” often rendered in the plural, became synonymous with “limousine liberals” who opposed supposedly normative American values. That the right-wing intellectual establishment also constituted a powerful elite was somehow obscured. … All the older forms of elite-bashing have now devolved into a kind of aggressive denial of the threat to American democracy posed by public ignorance. … Another peculiar new use of “elitist” (often coupled with “Luddite”) is its application to any caveats about the Internet as a source of knowledge. After listening to one of my lectures, a college student told me that it was elitist to express alarm that one in four Americans, according to the National Constitution Center, cannot name any First Amendment rights or that 62 percent cannot name the three branches of government. “You don’t need to have that in your head,” the student said, “because you can just look it up on the Web.”
¶ True, but how can an information-seeker know what to look for if he or she does not know that the Bill of Rights exists? … America was never imagined as a democracy of dumbness. The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were written by an elite group of leaders, and although their dream was limited to white men, it held the seeds of a future in which anyone might aspire to the highest — let us say it out loud, elite — level of achievement.7. EDITORIAL BLASTS FACTORY FARMING. From this morning’s New York Times . Check it out:
The Worst Way of Farming
