Two of the Great Religions of the World: Apes and Pigs, Says a London Muslim

Ari L. NoonanSports

I can hardly wait for Culver City’s next major civic promotion — Take a Muslim to Lunch (Before He Kills You) Day. I am as certain it is coming as I am that my great-grandchildren will wither and waffle of old age before City Hall gets around to building anything other than castles of dreams on Parcel B. But, on the way to making a critical point about what passes in leftist circles for “embraceable Islamic logic,” I digress. As sensible readers have come to learn in the last 5 1/2 years, all a nutty Muslim anywhere on earth has to do is threaten to kill Americans or Jews, and liberal representatives from both groups will sprint to smother him in kisses.

In Wartime, Let Me Give You a ‘Peace’ of My Mind

Ari L. NoonanSports

With a traveling Peace Exhibit formally opening this afternoon at 2:45 in the School Library on the Culver City High School campus, peace, that elusive little elf, occupies seat 1-A in my warlike mind.

Diane and I caught up with Clint Eastwood’s masterful “Letters from Iwo Jima” yesterday afternoon in Santa Monica — powerful, memorable, thoughtful,realistic, innovative. The theatre is barely two blocks away from where my friend Jerry Rubin, the peace activist, sells his imaginative peace-first stickers. As you may know, I am inordinately fond of Mr. Rubin, the most sincere person I ever have met in the peace movement. One reason we have remained friends is that we skirt discussions about the radioactive areas where we disagree. He undoubtedly would have been appalled at the scene we witnessed at the end of the “Iwo Jima” film. The appreciative movie-going audience in Santa Monica — home of America’s zaniest political extremists — actually applauded Mr. Eastwood’s epic chronicle of a decisive World War II battle. The “peace” crowd would have plotzed and dived under their seats in embarrassment.

Odious ‘Living Wage’ Puts the Outfoxed Voters on Life Support

Ari L. NoonanSports

When I was studying the Holocaust as a very young man, I brought a slender world outlook to my task. I was constantly baffled by what seemed like the incomprehensible blindness of the Jews of Germany — and America — throughout the 1930s. Why didn’t the German Jews flee while there was still time? Why didn’t we in America clue them in, help them? Hitler’s unsubtle motives were as obvious to me as a schoolboy as if an elephant were dining at my table in a restaurant. In the greenness of youthful wisdom, I reasoned that if a mere kid, albeit years later, found Hitler and his henchmen transparent, why didn’t the sophisticated grownups? The hour in my life would be much later before I became belatedly convinced that dreadful acts are carried out regularly by the bright but deceptive light of day. I am reminded of the redhanded husband who tells his angry wife, “Are you going to believe your eyes or what I am telling you?” Since most people are neither cynical nor suspicious, the public reasons that if a despicable act occurs in the daylight, it can’t be as bad as it looks. Otherwise, the perpetrators would not have dared to behave so brazenly. Perpetrators count on that reaction.

The Role P.R.Plays in Attacking L.A.’s Gangs

Ari L. NoonanSports

I am fascinated by the prospect of crawling inside the heads of home-ordained geniuses who claim to hold in their sweaty little palms balm for vast problems that have plagued man since two weeks after the Garden of Eden. A couple years ago a scam artist whom I believe is a professor at Columbia earned fat paydays and miles of media exposure for a few months with a grand vision for his gullible audiences. He was going to end worldwide poverty. Next came the global warming scam. Around every corner are a million rubes waiting out there, thirsting for the next round of titillating scammary. They don’t require evidence, just a pitch that will inflame their hungry hearts. Which brings us back to Connie Rice, the civil rights attorney. Her career no doubt has been revived by the recent storm of publicity over her solutions for gang problems. Unlike the men mentioned above, Ms. Rice is no scam artist. She is sincere. This, however, is very different from being a realist, which Ms. Rice does not appear to be.

A Few Distractions Before, During Speech by Mommy Messiah

Ari L. NoonanSports

Standing in a thickly peopled side aisle in the crowded auditorium of a Buddhist temple last Thursday afternoon, it was difficult not to be impressed by the passion and by the dense research of the civil rights attorney Connie Rice. She has been designated by Mayor Villaraigosa as the Mommy Messiah of the gangs movement. She is to be the ayatollah of Einsteins who holds — somewhere inside her huge crop of massive, not to mention frizzy, hair — the exotic secrets to killing off all 729 gangs and all 39,000 gang members plaguing Los Angeles.

Time for a Commercial

But first, a word from our sponsors. Before the effusive Ms. Rice explained how the usually clunky but soon-to-be-fine-tuned machinery of government was going to magically cure what is wrong with gangs, she introduced her three-girl staff. Without them, she said, swatting hyperbole on the tush, she could not function. Since Ms. Rice is a c-i-v-i-l r-i-g-h-t-s attorney, don’t you think it is appropriate that the three girls — protecting, of course, their civil right to be hired — appear to hail from three different cultures? Nah, she could not have planned it this way. Probably just an accident, don’t you think?

Grandma Bad News Drops Another Stink Bomb on the Board of Sups

Ari L. NoonanSports

[Editor’s Note: See earlier essay, “Burke Stumbles and Falls Again: She Is Promoting ‘Hire a Felon Year,’” Nov. 21.]

A memorable quote from someone definitely not named Yvonne Brathwaite Burke: “What a tangled web we weave when first we set out to deceive.”

Wasn’t she supposed to retire and sign herself in at the Old Broads Who Have Lost It And Won’t Admit It Nursing Home? Grandma Bad News, County Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke, aching to be voted The Gal Most Convicts Would Like to See Remain in Office the Rest of Their Lives, has returned to her role of acting like a modern-day, gang-leading Ma Barker. She was scheduled to present to her fellow Supervisors today a proposal that would allow ex-cons applying for county jobs to hide their criminal backgrounds – until it was virtually too late in the process to do anything about it. Here is the thrust of what Ms. Burke proposes: “Establish a new human resources policy that would reposition the criminal conviction disclosure requirement from the front end of the application process to the post-screening stage, but preceding the interview and any subsequent offer of employment.” She has been in office so long that her brazenness has spilled over the borders of decency. There must be crust a foot thick around her chair. But she is loyally supported by an Amen Chorus. In the eyes of nearly everyone in her Westside district, she is a goddess incapable of any but the most miniscule error. Former City Councilman Albert Vera sold her image to Culver City constituents as the feminine face of God.

Do You Suppose the Much-Praised Senator Can Top This?

Ari L. NoonanSports

I was not prepared to say that I am looking toward state Sen. Mark Ridley-Thomas’s first term in office. But I am. If I had not attended last Friday’s swearing-in ceremony in Council Chambers — a month and a half after he officially took the oath of office in Sacramento — I would not have reversed my field and my conviction about the former City Councilman and state Assemblyman. If Mr. Ridley-Thomas is not genuinely made of the right political stuff, I don’t believe there is a chance that he could have enticed 200 vaguely to very important people to participate in an immensely impressive and drop-dead sincere tableau. They dressed in their finest, they drove to Culver City from all points of the compass to arrive at City Hall by 10 o’clock on a workday morning. It would not be hyperbolic to say everyone I noticed in the crowd was attired for presentation to the Queen. That will grab you around the eyes.

Attorney Rice and Her Gangs Solution — The Lady Is Joking, Isn’t She?

Ari L. NoonanSports

A better bet than sunrise over Culver City is that the amateur members of the Dim Bulb Society – subscribers to the Los Angeles (Dishonest) Times — will react with their favorite emotion, outrage, after they read Heather MacDonald’s excellent essay this morning on the root cause of the ubiquitous gangs problem in Los Angeles. Most gangbangers, she notes, come from broken homes, single-parent homes that routinely slide into moral chaos. Legitimate births in the gangbang culture scarcely are a blip[ on the screen. Ms. MacDonald’s most cogent observation was: “When the norm of marriage disappears from a community, furthermore, the pressure for young men to become socialized evaporates as well.” While it may have been courageous for Ms. MacDonald to blame poor black and Hispanic families living a single-parent existence, it is a truth that liberals habitually deny. Instead, they blame “global; warming” and the lack of universal healthcare coverage.

Seduction 101 — ‘King Days’ Really Referred to Kings in the Middle East

Ari L. NoonanSports

The only way the organizers of Culver City’s Martin Luther King Days celebration could have improved on the Five Mistakes they selected for last Sunday’s panel discussion would have been to invite David Duke, Shamu and the world’s oldest Eskimo. Every other circus sideshow already was in the room.

Besides the graceless, hotheaded Muslim, there was:

The wrenchingly obsequious white guy,

The sincere but mismatched Muslim student who had no reason to be there,

The teacher who advocated peace at any price, and

The Data Girl from the Los Angeles Human Relations Commission. She was like the commercial between drama segments. She must have gotten lost on her way to an Ex-Wives Conference.

Dear Culver City: Who Goofed? The Wrong Shaquille Came to Dr. King’s Birthday Party

Ari L. NoonanSports

As a fair-minded gentleman of low intensity who attempts to live by the strict principles of moderation, little disturbs my tranquil way of life.

Except when hotheads pop off. Frequently, the hotheads are dubiously qualified to expound on the subject in question beyond the walls of the smallest closet in their home.

It is the more irritating when the hothead in question is an immigrant — legal or illegal — who has failed to come close to mastering the language of his adopted country, his host country.