Cheap shots and copycat things

Dylan Byers contemplating the Boston Marathon in Politico has a rare moment of self-knowledge (via TenGrain):

We’re standing on the verge of a very important national conversation about something, and we have no idea what it is.

It's that recurrent nightmare where you're about to go on Stephanopoulos and an assistant comes into the green room to tell you McCain can't make it and you look in the mirror and your hair is like totally weird...

Politico staff ID.

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Former governor Mark Sanford explaining why he was caught trespassing in his ex-wife's house, cited in The Caucus:

Mr. Sanford said Wednesday he had been watching the Super Bowl with his 14-year-old son that night, while Ms. Sanford was out of town. “As a father I didn’t think he should watch it alone,” he said in a statement through his campaign. “It’s an unfortunate reality that divorced couples sometimes have disagreements that spill over into family court.”

It wasn't the violence of the game itself he was worried about as much as the Beyoncé. You don't let a dumbass court order stand in your way when you have to protect your child from dealing with something like that on his own.

Photo by Terry Richardson for GQ.

Lousiana representative Louie Gohmert warning against los terroristitos:

The Tea Party favorite said he feared people entering the country illegally or posing as undocumented Hispanic immigrants could carry out “copycat things.” “We know Al Qaeda has camps on the Mexican border,” he said. “We have people that are trained to act Hispanic when they are radical Islamists.” 

You'd love the Qa'eda camp when they're practicing for their quinceañeras!

Yemeni militants preparing to invade Gohmert's district.

Pervez Musharraf scratching his head. (They don't like me! They really don't like me!)

Under the Occasional Triumphs of Justice and Second Time as Farce rubrics, Pakistani ex-president Pervez Musharraf was apparently quite astonished when the high court judge in Islamabad refused to extend his bail—I'm not quite sure for which particular case, there are more than one treason charge, conspiracy to commit murder, and various odds and ends—and proposed to put him under arrest right there in the courtroom, like a—gracious, like a common criminal I suppose. After all, he'd come back to "take the country out of darkness"!

So, with that cool decisiveness that made him such an effective ruler back in the day, he looked around, assessed his chances, and ran off down the hall, outdoors, and to the fleet of black lux trucks that would whisk him away to his nearby estate where, as he is so difficult to put under arrest, the authorities have declared the villa a "sub-jail", effectively putting arrest, as it were, over him.

What the well-dressed military dictator is running away in this season, a simple blazer and no tie. I think the color of the trousers is regrettable, though. 

There he languishes, complaining that the judge's decision is "seemingly motivated by personal vendettas". I like that plural. Around 180 million vendettas, I'd guess.

New York Times correcting:

An article on Thursday about Caroline Shaw, who won the Pulitzer Prize for music this week, referred incorrectly to a vocal technique explored by a group she has sung with, Roomful of Teeth. It is Tuvan throat singing — a tradition of the Tuvan people of Siberia — not “tooth and throat” singing.