• “Would Jerry Sr. of had mr morman at graduation?” [Nate Johnson]
• “I’m a native of Lynchburg and I just want to say, I cannot believe a Christian University is having governor Romney speak at your commencement. It’s hard to believe a conservative Christian School would support an obvious moderate/liberal. I knew Jerry Sr and I am sure he is turning over in his grave at the decision.” [Donna Driskill Keyser]
• “Yes, he is not a Christian, but we also had Ron Paul and other poiticians come that were not christians as well. Commencement is not church.” [Audrey Hammond]

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We used to live in awe of our recent ancestors. To have lived a life encompassing the Wright Brothers and Apollo 11 was to have witnessed Humanity’s Great Leap Upward. We were lucky enough to have caught the tail end of that era, but really, watching the first moon landing at ten is to lack all the context. Pretty cool, but so was Batman.

We lived in awe, but not resentment. We also missed a couple of world wars and an influenza pandemic, and benefited from the polio vaccine. It all evens out.

And besides, the future wasn’t done yet. We’ve lived the computing revolution, from mainframes to minis to micros to Macs to modems to cable modems to no modems to iPhones to iPads. Only twelve men have walked on the moon. More than two billion people travel through cyberspace. We’re writing this on something we would have seen on Star Trek growing up.

And maybe we’re luckier than we thought. There’s a quarter-century gap between Apollo 11 and the Web. That’s a long time to marinate, if you lived from ten to thirty-five during those years — a lot of context stored up for the Big Cyberbang. If, on the other hand, you’ve just turned thirty, you might find yourself posting something like this:

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Our guest columnist is the Catholic League’s Bill Donohue, who thought it was “hilarious” when South Park depicted him taking over the Church and being killed by Jesus with a throwing star.

Jon Stewart refused to apologize last night for the unprecedented assault on Christian sensibilities he launched on April 16. In that episode, “The Daily Show” featured a naked woman with her legs spread and a nativity scene ornament placed between her legs; with the picture on the screen, Stewart laughed at what he called the “vagina manger.”

Our effort against Stewart includes asking his most consistent sponsors to pull their advertising (if necessary, we are not ruling out a boycott of their products), and a lengthy public relations campaign. The goal? To get him to apologize. If that doesn’t work, we can guarantee that his reputation will never be the same.

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We enjoyed as much as anyone the recent spate of satiric penis-regulation bills, concocted (ahem) in response to the recent spate of all-too-nonsatiric vaginal-ultrasound bills. But we have to give the award to the first Mommy Wars bill in the nation:

Under current law, raising children does not count toward the required “work activity” that must be performed by recipients of Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, the federal program that emerged from the 1996 welfare reform. Some states make an exception for mothers with children less than a year old.

The Women’s Option to Raise Kids (WORK) Act, a copy of which was provided to HuffPost in advance of its introduction, would allow mothers with children ages 3 and under to stay at home with their children and continue receiving benefits.

The act is a response to Mitt Romney, who knows the value of wealthy white Mormon mothers, but considers non-horsey poor moms a bunch of deadbeat slackers who don’t understand the “dignity of work” because they can’t afford live-in nannies to demonstrate it for them.

Credit goes to John Lewis, Gwen Moore, Barbara Lee, Jim McDermott, Lynn Woolsey, Jan Schakowsky and Rosa DeLauro, who will introduce the bill in the House. Demerits go to HuffPo, for not posting the draft bill itself, and for insisting on calling itself “HuffPost”.

Image: 52 Job Titles A Mom Holds [Life Without Pink]

Apparently Gawker is changing its commenting system. Again. We know this, not because we read Gawker — it’s been a few years — but because the news reached some distant source that we follow these days.

So we dropped in to sample the anguished cries of the herd. Nothing worth compiling a list from, but the usual bewailing of Denton selling out because Gawker no longer publishes the linkbait that originally drew the reader to the site, and now publishes lesser-quality linkbait. None of which we recognized, because we were drawn to the high-quality linkbait that Gawker dumped in order to publish the utter crap that attracted its current readership.

And we had a star, muthafuckaz. Back when it meant something.

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Aside from the Inherent Mild Amusement to be gained from watching a Corgi being vacuumed, we’d like to note the position and behavior of said Corgi’s tongue.

We grew up with dogs; we see dogs every day outside the coffehouse; our parents still have a barrel-chested Husky who will crush you with his love.

Yet not once — not once — have we ever seen a dog whose tongue flaps like a Warner Bros. cartoon. It’s like moving to Sandy Eggo and discovering Dr. Suess trees in the wild. These things exist. And once again, reality trumps imagination.

[via WaPo]

Virginia Foxx is one of those people we tend to ignore, because Virginia Foxx tends to say stupid things so frequently that we would need to create a spinoff blog to deal with her, along with spinoff blogs for Louie Gohmert, Allen West, and half the House Republican Caucus.

But every so often, Virginia Foxx catches our attention despite ourselves, usually because we can’t find an Existential Cat Video to distract us. And so it was that while speaking on Friday to G. Gordon Liddy — Remember, kids, don’t buy books from crooks! — Virginia Foxx dropped this well-polished turd:

I went through school, I worked my way through, it took me seven years, I never borrowed a dime of money… I have very little tolerance for people who tell me that they graduate with $200,000 of debt or even $80,000 of debt because there’s no reason for that.

Virginia Foxx, in case you were wondering, is 68. She graduated from UNC-Chapel Hill in 1968. If you’re a North Carolina resident, as she was, UNC will charge you $7,008 this fall for annual tuition and fees. If you’re from out of state, it’s a cool $26,834.

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