Abusive language

Wouldn't want these young Memphisites to get the wrong idea about George Washington, would you? From the Memphis Commercial Appeal.

 1. Tennessee Tea Partiers are concerned about the way slavery is presented in local history textbooks:

what's in your kid's textbook may be giving them [sic] a negative opinion about our nation's founding history....  "My biggest concern is that important information is being omitted, which creates a negative light on our Founding Fathers," said Tea Party activist Brian Rieck. (WYCB Television, Bristol, VA; h/t Great Lakes Liberal at Kos)

So they'd like the state legislature to do some editorial work on the texts, just [jump]
to show how deeply committed they are to liberty and small government and all that. And what information exactly is being omitted?

"Slavery is of course portrayed in the textbooks nowadays I'm sure as a totally negative thing. Had there not been slavery in the South, the economy would've fallen," Rieck said. Rieck told News 5 without offering that balance, the Founding Fathers, many of whom were slave owners, could be slighted for their contributions in the eyes of students.

Now, I don't think the textbooks would be denying that slavery had an economic function, with the implication that George Washington owned slaves simply because he was a mean man. Of course I haven't looked (it looks like Mr. Rieck hasn't looked either, with his "nowadays I'm sure"). But is he really calling for them to assert that the enslavement of and trafficking in human beings was like the curate's egg, "good in parts"? (I guess it kept down the wage-price spiral by not having any wages...) Is he really afraid that they are being cruelly unfair to slavery, giving it a bad reputation and hurting its feelings? And here I thought that Tea Party was all about our sacred Freedom.

2. Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov warned that

"The Western draft Security Council resolution on Syria will not lead to a search for compromise," Interfax quoted Gatilov as saying. "Pushing it is a path to civil war."

Civil war? That sounds awful. You might have people getting killed in the streets! Oh, wait...

Mr. Gatilov had better be telling the truth, because if he's not, these guys could be in danger! Photo by Anissa Helou.

3. You may have heard about the New York City Deputy Commissioner of Police for Public Information, Paul Browne, who has been saying some things about the anti-Muslim propaganda film The Third Jihad: that only a few officers ever saw it (over a three-month period it was shown at a site for counterterrorism training, on a continuous loop, where it could have been seen by some 1,500 officers); and that footage in the movie of Commissioner Raymond Kelly must have been ripped off an old interview, because the commissioner never spoke to the film makers (Browne himself arranged a 90-minute interview for them).

It seems that this has been going on for a long time, and it's not just Browne, either—it's becoming a departmental habit (Browne is still very much on the leading edge, though). Councilman Jumaane Williams, who was handcuffed and arrested at last September's West Indian Labor Day parade (Browne said force was necessary because a cop was punched, but no cop was in fact punched—just making it up once again), had something to say:

"This is far from the first time that he has displayed his penchant for questionable judgment, continual misrepresentation of events or blatant lying," Williams, a freshman Democrat, said in a public statement. "If this is the standard that the deputy commissioner wants to continue to represent to the taxpayers that afford him his salary, then it is time for him to be removed."

 And our mayor? What did he say?

"Anybody that knows Paul Browne knows he gives you the facts always as he knows them at the time, and later on, if he finds the facts that he gave you are wrong, he's not shy about standing up and correcting himself," Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Monday. "He is as good as you could have representing the city or representing the police department. We're lucky to have him."

Which is so pathetic it doesn't even deserve to be called a lie. It's just a reflex.