My television is a 33-year-old Sony

UPDATE: I humbly thank Michelle Malkin and other bloggers who have linked to my little takedown of the TV Lady. It’s been a big 24 hours for the Revolution 21 website. Geez, I’m not even a conservative . . . except when it comes to social issues.

But while you’re visiting Revolution 21’s Blog for the People, I beg you to read this and this — a pair of entries far more consequential than anything I might have to say about someone so petty and, ultimately, unimportant as the TV Lady. Until and unless the TV Lady comes to love Jesus more than she hates whitey, there’s not much that can be done for her.

LIKEWISE, until and unless all those in New Orleans like the TV Lady get a clue and get some perspective — and this goes double for all those who use the TV Lady as cover for hating the poor, African-Americans or both — there isn’t much hope for a beautiful and once-great city. In that case, history will take care of them all. And all our outrage and witty takedowns of ungrateful morons really won’t change anything and, thus, are unimportant.

In the grand scheme of things, for each one of us and for the good society we wish to build, what’s important is this. And this.

We need to encourage young men and women to be like what I write about here. And here.

And we must mourn when the good die young. What once were important pieces of our hope suddenly aren’t there anymore.

While cutting loose on scoundrels like the TV Lady can be important and instructive, cursing the darkness isn’t nearly so important as lighting candles. Before you read my post about the TV Lady, I beg you . . . go here. And here.

Help people — especially young people of every color, gender, class and ethnicity — become good men and good women. Celebrate them.

And, as I do now, weep bitter tears when we lose them. God bless you, and merry Christmas.

This is rich. The public-housing Don Quixotistas down in New Orleans are chaining themselves to buildings scheduled for demolition and blockading federal offices to keep The Man from tearing down any more housing projects.

THEY CITE the need for affordable low-income housing post-Katrina but, the thing is, hundreds of rehabbed public units are going begging for tenants, according to local housing authorities. And the poverty petri dishes scheduled to come down got that kiss of death long before New Orleans got swamped.

From The Times-Picayune:

As housing activists continued to protest the proposed demolition of four public housing complexes, federal housing officials provided new details Tuesday about hundreds of public housing units available across New Orleans, with dozens of units ready for occupants in the B.W. Cooper, the former Desire and the Guste developments.

Housing officials said hundreds of private apartments where disaster or Section 8 vouchers can be used are also available to help meet the needs of displaced public housing residents, both in the short and long term.

Meanwhile, activists staged a protest on the steps of City Hall, saying procedural snags, as well as extra costs for utilities and security deposits, put those options out of reach for many poor people. Furthermore, some alleged “slum” conditions at those properties, and they have said they don’t trust housing officials to make good on promises of mixed-income redevelopments that will welcome the poor.

Federal Department of Housing and Development officials said the local public housing supply outstrips demand. Currently, 1,762 public housing units are occupied and nearly 300 are available or within weeks of being ready at eight Housing Authority of New Orleans complexes and at scattered housing authority sites.

Another 802 public housing units across the city are being repaired and will be put to use in the coming year, housing officials said.

(snip)

If the council approves demolition, mixed-income developments would open at the St. Bernard, B.W. Cooper, C.J. Peete and Lafitte sites within months. In addition to the total of 900 public housing units, the three complexes would include 900 market-rate rental units and 900 homes for sale at the four long-standing public housing sites, according to current proposals. Many of the homes for sale would be reserved for first-time home buyers, with financial subsidies designed to allow former public housing families to become property owners.

But the target of 3,343 public housing units in New Orleans is a flashpoint because it represents a drop of about one-third from the 5,100 units occupied before Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

As the city repopulates, housing officials say, other demands for housing can be met through use of vouchers that can be used for private apartments, the quality of which is in dispute. HANO officials say they inspect private units, more than 500 of which are listed on the housing authority’s Web site, but activists say poor conditions in many units deter renters.

SO WHAT GIVES? Apart, of course, from the existential angst of spoiled white kids for whom wearing Che Guevara T-shirts is not enough.

Beats me. It must be a New Orleans thang. Poor folks up here in Omaha want the projects gone.

Then again, maybe the core of lifelong public-housing tenants the Don Quixotistas seem to be advocating for have developed a taste for dungheaps, and they demand to live in dungheaps in the old ‘hood, and they further demand that taxpayers pay for them to live in dungheaps in the old ‘hood.

Or else.

If this woman interviewed in the Picayune is any indication, affordable housing is not the biggest problem here:

Sharon Jasper, a former St. Bernard complex resident presented by activists Tuesday as a victim of changing public housing policies, took a moment before the start of the City Hall protest to complain about her subsidized private apartment, which she called a “slum.” A HANO voucher covers her rent on a unit in an old Faubourg St. John home, but she said she faced several hundred dollars in deposit charges and now faces a steep utility bill.

“I’m tired of the slum landlords, and I’m tired of the slum houses,” she said.

Pointing across the street to an encampment of homeless people at Duncan Plaza, Jasper said, “I might do better out here with one of these tents.”

Jasper, who later allowed a photographer to tour the subsidized apartment, also complained about missing window screens, a slow leak in a sink, a warped back door and a few other details of a residence that otherwise appeared to have been recently renovated.

At the City Hall protest, a crowd of people railed against “privatization and gentrification of the city,” saying it would be a mistake to raze well-built public housing at a time when so many people need affordable housing. One of their leaders, Loyola University law professor Bill Quigley, said it’s appropriate that advocates for the poor from across the country have gathered in New Orleans to help fight the demolitions.

“This is a national scandal,” he said.

THESE ACTIVISTS ARE NUTS. See the picture above this post? Sharon Jasper sitting in her “slum house.”

With her 60-inch, high-definition TV.

I think that apartment looks pretty good. I wish my house looked that good. I wish I had a 60-inch HDTV, too.

This is a picture of a TV just like the one we have in our living room, a 1974 Sony KV-1203:

I MUST ADMIT, this is our small television. The “big” television in the basement family room is a 1984 Sony 19-inch stereo model. We were so proud that we had the scratch to buy such a nice TV back in the day.

Maybe we ought to have demanded that the citizens of Springfield, Mo., (where we lived then) just buy a fuggin’ Sony stereo television for us. And pay for our apartment — which was NOT as nice as Sharon Jasper’s — while they were at it.

I’ll tell you what. If the “slum lady” really thinks she’d be better off living in a van down by the river — or in a tent across from City Hall . . . whatever — don’t let your slum apartment’s warped door hit you in the ass as you hightail it to Nirvana.

And I’ll take your “slum house.” I’ll even fix the faucet and hang a new door.

ALL I NEED is for somebody in New Orleans to hire me and my mad language and radio-production skillz for a fair wage — enough to make rent, eat food and pay my bills.

Oh . . . while I’m thinking of it, Sharon, could you leave the big-ass TV for the wife and me? I mean, after all, there ain’t no electricity down there at the homeless encampment.

You wouldn’t even be able to watch your stories.

Mother of the Year

Pity poor Lynne Spears. She might have to work for a living now that one showbiz kid is a chemical-dependency spokesmodel — so whacked out that she neither can hang on to her kids nor her drawers — and the other gravy train is with child.

At 16.

And on top of all that, the hootchie-mama mama has seen the Thomas Nelson publishing house, which used to be known for Bibles, shelve her guide to good parenting, Pop Culture Mum.

Yes, all this is true. Even Brit Brit doesn’t have big enough of a stash for me to go on that wild a flight of fancy. Ditto for the news sources cranking out the stories on what happens when you move a south Louisiana trailer park to Malibu.

Actually, it’s pretty much the same thing that happens when the trailer park stays down on the bayou. Only with more paparazzi and fewer pickup trucks.

THIS SOUNDS MEAN, I know. Thing is, though, having grown up in Britneyland, I’ve seen this tired act for as long as I can remember from people different only in that nobody wants to buy their CDs or watch them on TV — unless, of course, they turn up on an episode of COPS.

And just to what, pray tell, do you liken such as this:

Jamie Lynn is the star of Nickelodeon’s hugely successful “Zoey 101,” and her future there — and income — are up in the air. Nickelodeon issued a statement to TMZ on Tuesday saying, “We respect Jamie Lynn’s decision to take responsibility in this sensitive and personal situation. We know this is a very difficult time for her and her family, and our primary concern right now is for Jamie Lynn’s well being.”

As for whether she’ll return to the show, Jamie Lynn told OK!, “I don’t know, I don’t know.”

“I don’t know how she can go back,” said the family friend. “And, what’s worse for the Spears is Britney doesn’t want to be a part of that Spears gravy train any more. That’s part of why Britney is freaking right now. With Jamie Lynn to focus on, she [Britney] was no longer the family’s only focus, and their only hope for income.”

At the end of the day it also doesn’t help the Spears image that the father of the baby is Casey Aldridge, 19, who met Jamie Lynn in church and started dating her when she was only 13½. “Lots of people have been worried that this relationship was moving too fast. I guess there was a good reason to worry,” said a friend of the Spears family.

LET’S SEE. Not only did Lynne Spears let her 13-year-old daughter date — a recipe for trouble right there, and I don’t give a damn that they met in church. No, she let her barely-teen-age daughter go out with a 16-year-old.

Who had Jamie Lynn good and knocked up less than three years later.

If the pattern holds once Jamie Lynn moves back to Louisiana for a “normal life” — read: “I want me a pickup and a pack of Marlboro Reds” — the girl could be one hot grandmama at age 32.

She could fellowship after church with all the other grammaws and complain about “the niggers down in New Orleans.” Irony often is lost on the folks back home.

YES, AS SOME PEOPLE much holier than I am have said, it’s good Jamie Lynn isn’t going to kill her baby. Then again, there are lots of ways to kill a kid — only a few of which actually involve physical death.

Maybe that’s one way Thomas Nelson can retool that book by their Mother of the Year. Package it with a carton of hot-pink WWJD condoms.

Trust me, it’ll be big.

Ah reckon it runs in the fambly

I just went to confession Monday. I must be Christian about this.

This happens all the time, and I must take the beam out of my own eye before I. . . .

AW, HELL! I just can’t hep it! I gotta post this. And, alas, I must note that it would appear that the Bud Light empties don’t fall far from the double wide.

KnowwhatImean, Vern?

At least according to the MSNBC story:

Another Spears baby is reportedly on the way — and it’s not Britney’s.

Jamie Lynn Spears, the 16-year-old “Zoey 101” star and sister of Britney, told OK! magazine that she’s pregnant and that the father is her boyfriend, Casey Aldridge.

“It was a shock for both of us, so unexpected,” she said. “I was in complete and total shock and so was he.”

Spears is 12 weeks along and initially kept the news to herself when she learned of the pregnancy from an at-home test and subsequent doctor visit, she told the celebrity magazine, which hits stands in New York on Wednesday and the rest of the country by Friday.

What message does she want to send to other teens about premarital sex? “I definitely don’t think it’s something you should do; it’s better to wait,” she told the magazine. “But I can’t be judgmental because it’s a position I put myself in.”

(snip)

Another person who might not be so thrilled by the news? Britney. A source close to the pop princess told TMZ.com that Jamie Lynn’s older sister is “frantic” over the news. The Web site reports that Britney may not have been aware of the news until today.

Jamie Lynn plans to raise the baby in her home state of Louisiana — “so it can have a normal family life.”

A republic . . . if you can keep it.

From the New York Times, which the usual suspects will trash as being partisan and unreliable, somehow working the name Jason Blair into the rant no more than three sentences in:

At least four top White House lawyers took part in discussions with the Central Intelligence Agency between 2003 and 2005 about whether to destroy videotapes showing the secret interrogations of two operatives from Al Qaeda, according to current and former administration and intelligence officials.

The accounts indicate that the involvement of White House officials in the discussions before the destruction of the tapes in November 2005 was more extensive than Bush administration officials have acknowledged.

Those who took part, the officials said, included Alberto R. Gonzales, who served as White House counsel until early 2005; David S. Addington, who was the counsel to Vice President Dick Cheney and is now his chief of staff; John B. Bellinger III, who until January 2005 was the senior lawyer at the National Security Council; and Harriet E. Miers, who succeeded Mr. Gonzales as White House counsel.

It was previously reported that some administration officials had advised against destroying the tapes, but the emerging picture of White House involvement is more complex. In interviews, several administration and intelligence officials provided conflicting accounts as to whether anyone at the White House expressed support for the idea that the tapes should be destroyed.

One former senior intelligence official with direct knowledge of the matter said there had been “vigorous sentiment” among some top White House officials to destroy the tapes. The former official did not specify which White House officials took this position, but he said that some believed in 2005 that any disclosure of the tapes could have been particularly damaging after revelations a year earlier of abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

Some other officials assert that no one at the White House advocated destroying the tapes. Those officials acknowledged, however, that no White House lawyer gave a direct order to preserve the tapes or advised that destroying them would be illegal.

The destruction of the tapes is being investigated by the Justice Department, and the officials would not agree to be quoted by name while that inquiry is under way.

Spokesmen for the White House, the vice president’s office and the C.I.A. declined to comment for this article, also citing the inquiry.

The new information came to light as a federal judge on Tuesday ordered a hearing into whether the tapes’ destruction violated an order to preserve evidence in a lawsuit brought on behalf of 16 prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. The tapes documented harsh interrogation methods used in 2002 on Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, two Qaeda suspects in C.I.A. custody.