Tom Horgen Can't Write

I want to punch Tom Horgen in the face. His writing is pathetic and his articles are a joke, but his picture in the paper--with that impish smirk--settles it for me. He must be punched in the face. Preferably by my fist.

In his most recent article he wrote about places to go during the week, and he wrote something to the effect of, "You've heard of weekend warriors. Well now you can be a weeklong warrior." I mean, like, wow. That is one impressive turn of phrase. It puts Shakespeare to shame. It humbles Byron. Langston Hughes is totally kicking himself for not having thought of it first.

With the unemployment rate as high as it is, it irks me that people who are bad at their job still have jobs. If I were an employer and I had an employee who wasn't turning out stellar work, I'd be interviewing. There's a vast pool of incredibly talented people out there right now, so I don't understand why people who can't write well, or (in the case of the receptionist at my dentist's office) can't figure out how to file an insurance claim, or don't perform well still have jobs.

I think that this would be the perfect time for the Star Tribune to reinvent itself. Unload some of the people who aren't the best writers, let Kim Ode get back to writing columns (please!), and bring on some people who can do better than "weekend warrior...weeklong warrior".

The one good thing about Tom Horgen's articles is that they let me know where NOT to go. It's obvious that he's the type who likes to party with the frat boy, "let's take over Mayslack's and run down the street barking" kind of crowd. I'll forego the priviledge.

Rickety Claims

I'm back. I admit I'm a lazy-ass blogger. Moving on...

In today's paper there's a piece in the Op Ed pages titled "Over there, gays get less respect" by Charles Lane of the Washington Post. He argues that gays actually have it better here in the United States compared to Europe, and cited Sarkozy's France, Italy and Latvia as examples of European countries where gays get less respect. (Too bad for all those gays who were planning building settlements on the outskirts of Riga and turning it into gay Mecca.)

The subtext of the article is that gays should quit complaining already, since they actually have it pretty good, and that Europe isn't all it's cracked up to be. Too bad the foundation of Lane's argument is more rickety than...a person with rickets (sorry, I'm out of practice). He cherry picks the countries in Europe that are behind on gay rights and extrapolates it to all of Europe, while ignoring all the countries in Europe that give gays rights. Gay adoption is legal in Spain, the UK, Norway, Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands, and gay individuals can adopt in most of Europe except for Latvia, Lithuania and Italy. Gay marriage is legal in Belgium, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, and...what's that country between France and Italy...? oh, that's right SPAIN. And civil unions are legal in Denmark, Finland, Germany, Greenland, Hungary, Czech Republic, Iceland, Luxembourg, Slovenia, Switzerland, the UK and...could it be...FRANCE?

Well, I'll be.

That's still better than the majority of the United States.

What frustrates me about articles like these is that they ignore certain facts in order to make the claim that they want to make. An argument like this wouldn't hold up in a high school debate tournament, so why is it in the Washington Post?