Odds and ends, 9/5/07

(Langauge alert in this first item).

Jerry Lewis is drawing criticism for an offhand comment he made during this year's Labor Day telethon. He as joking with someone in the audience and referred to him as an "illiterate faxxx - NO!" He caught himself, but the word had come out and the damage was done. (The video is easy to find if you want to see and here it for yourself).

I'm not going to defend Lewis here, and I'm not going to criticize him. All I will say is that I feel for anyone who makes a mistake like that on live TV or radio. There is no DEL key the way there is on a keyboard. Plus it goes on YouTube almost immediately to live in infamy forever.

I do wonder if Lewis was repeating something he often said in jest in private to this particular person, and it caught up to him.

Anyway, that's why I tend to be wary of going on the air live. Plus the fact -- as I have said before -- I have the perfect face and voice for print.

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There was a collision this morning on the Tolsia Highway between an SUV and a coal truck. Remember when this type of accident was much more common? The downturn is either because there are fewer coal trucks on the road or people are driving more sensibly around them. I am not in position right now to pass judgment on either possibility.

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We gripe a lot about schools in West Virginia, but it could be worse. In fact, it is worse in Washington, D.C. This is the opening paragraph of a recent New York Times editorial on the Washington, D.C., public school system:

Mayor Adrian Fenty of Washington embraced a Herculean challenge when he convinced lawmakers to give him direct control of the city’s corrupt and dysfunctional school system. The mayor and his new schools chancellor, Michelle Rhee, are working hard to reassure nervous parents and to get the schools up and running for the new year. But remaking the schools will inevitably mean dismantling a central bureaucracy that has shown a disturbing talent for subverting reform while failing the city and its children in every conceivable way.

Let's segue to this: It's long past time to get rid of the District of Columbia. Let it be absorbed by Maryland. If I remember my history correctly, both Maryland and Virginia surrendered land to form the District, with Virginia taking its part back. Let Maryland have the nation's capital. Congress sure can't run it. (That should tell us something about giving Congress more national control of local affairs, shouldn't it? Those guys might do okay from a distance, but don't let them get too close.).

Now, if Maryland doesn't want the District, we'll have to drop back seven (or eight or nine or however many it is) and punt.