Scorched Earth in Gaza. The Israelis are doing exactly what I anticipated they would do: destroying the buildings in the Jewish settlements they are evacuating, so that Palestinians cannot occupy them and finally get some decent housing. That is inexcusably evil, but why would we expect anything else from Israel, the most evil country on Earth?
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Tho there are certainly some Palestinians who want every trace of the Jewish settlements destroyed, there are a great many Palestinians who have had decades of bad housing in wretched, overcrowded refugee camps, and they should have been offered decent housing in the newly Jew-free towns on Palestinian land. If the Palestinians were to decide, after unemotional and rational consideration, that they want to destroy such housing because it is ecologically inappropriate or for some other defensible reason, then the Palestinian Authority, with Israeli Government or U.S. aid, could itself destroy such housing. But Israel didn't give the Palestinians a choice. They destroyed housing built with American money (because everything in Israel is dependent upon American money) so that Arabs couldn't live well. That is detestable.
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Will they remove the debris, or leave it as a permanent stain on the landscape, and constant reminder of Israel's will to ravage anything they can't have? We'll see.
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Brilliant Ad Campaign. Have you noticed the preposterous but winning series of commercials for Kellogg's Raisin Bran Crunch and now also Honey Nut Crunch? These are the spots in which a young guy in an office cubical ("Johnson") is eating cereal at his desk when a supervisor ("Smith") tries to fire him, but the guy is unable to hear what Smith is saying because his cereal is too crunchy.
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In the first (not on the website) and second, the supervisor is alone when he tries to fires him. In the third, Smith brings a higher-level supervisor with him, who says that Smith has fired him 15 times but he keeps showing up. Why? Johnson hears nothing but crunching. The manager then says he understands him. He doesn't take no for an answer! and turns to the lower-level supervisor to say "Smith, be more like Johnson." In the fourth commercial (not yet on the website), there's a second guy sitting alongside Johnson, also eating cereal — his intern! Smith reacts indignantly, and suggests sarcastically, 'Why don't you take my corner office while you're at it?', to which the manager responds that that's a good idea, it will give them more room!
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Commercial TV can be draining, especially now when there are so many ads, several times as many as there were 30 years ago. But brilliant commercials can briten one's day. Kudos to Kellogg's.
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 1,862.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 7:29 PM