Posted 5:40 PM by Floyd

We Can't Have Ballplayers Wearing Flags on Their Caps. The Next Thing You Know, There Will Be Movie Paraphernalia on the Bases!

Former Athletic Keith Foulke was told by Major League Baseball to stop wearing an inch-wide flag on his cap:

After a personal letter from commissioner Bud Selig, plus talks between the players' union and baseball management as the Fourth of July approached, Foulke reluctantly packed away his Boston cap that featured a patch of the American flag.

...

Foulke was the only player in the majors with his own such hat. The son of a U.S. Air Force man, he wore it most of the season to show his support for the American troops in Iraq.

"It's not like I was trying to call attention to myself," he said. "I'm a patriotic person, and it's just a personal thing I wanted to do. It was only about an inch square, on the left side, and a lot of people didn't even notice it."

...

About two weeks after Foulke found out baseball planned to put Spider-Man 2 ads on the bases -- "that really chapped me," he said -- he sent a letter to Selig explaining his position. The commissioner wrote back in a note dated June 3.

"I agree with and admire the patriotic sentiments expressed in your letter," Selig wrote. "While I cannot imagine anyone having an objection to our American flag on a player's hat, we feel it is crucial that we maintain this across-the-board policy.

You can't imagine anyone having an objection to a flag on a hat, Bud? You're the one objecting to it.

Thank you, Keith Foulke. And screw you, Bug Selig.

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Posted 2:43 PM by Floyd

Google rented four showings of Spiderman 2 at a theater in Sunnyvale so its employees could see the movie on opening night. Sherry and I will see it this evening.

Instead of Spiderman, why not Sliderman? His lair could be several stories aboveground, and he could emerge to fight crime via a giant slide.

He would dispatch villains by throwing things at them which would appear to miss, but at the last minute tail off to the left or right and then smack them. Sliderman, who is left-handed, would be great at fighting left-handed villains, but not so effective against righties.

Or what about Ciderman? Originally an ordinary man, he ate a partially fermented radioactive apple which gave him superpowers of ... okay, I'll shut up now.

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Posted 1:49 PM by Floyd

Is it fair to make fun of Michael Moore's girth? Jeff Goldstein explains why he does so -- though on AndyMatic's blog, not his own:

You may not believe me (and hey, that's cool, I'll live with the shame and disappointment), but when I aim a fat joke at Michael Moore, I believe myself to be answering him back in the same language he uses to attack his subjects -- unserious, broad pandering. Moore is a decent humorist, but his lazy collage of elliptical "arguments" do not make him a serious critic of the Bush administration. They make him a crank with a camera and budget and an opinion. When Moore makes a serious argument, I'll happily debate him on the merits. But he's not making a serious argument; and so he doesn't deserve a serious response. Worse, he intentionally plays fast and loose with the facts, and then when he's called out on his errors, suddenly he's a "satirist" rather than a documentarian. I try to reinforce Moore's unseriousness every day by ignoring his "arguments" altogether and instead harping on his girth. It's my way of showing that I don't take him seriously. And to my way of thinking, it's even more important to do so now, when his premieres are attracting the who's who of the Democratic party. Like it or not, Moore is becoming tied to the Dems. Terry McAuliffe seems to want to make the tether official. Fine by me. But I'll continue belittling more for being unserious, in the hope that the same stigma gets attached to McAuliffe, et al.

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