'Tis the season

Take a deep breath. Can you smell that? Yes... it's the sweet aroma of Religious Boycott Season.

Not to be outdone by the Catholic Hierarchy's call for a boycott of Ron Howard's movie adaptation of The Da Vinci Code, the Church of England is calling for a boycott on Madonna's current tour. In her show, Madonna appears on a gigantic glam-rock cross to kick things off.

If you listen closely, you can hear human brains all over the world liquefying. Frontal lobes are collapsing into pools of grey goo and oozing into the sinus cavities of people everywhere.

This must be the case, because no other phenomenon could possibly explain why people need to be told that, say, not everything you read in popular books is true, or that maybe a pop artist who calls herself "Madonna" is going to do something to piss off Christians. This is the same artist, many of you might recall, who pantomimed sex on a stage to her tune "Like A Virgin" and later released a photo album (mostly of herself) titled "Sex." This latest caper is not exactly jaw-dropping.

And the call for a boycott is probably so much wasted hot air. I think it's probably safe to say that anyone who's willing to take the Church of England's advice on what to boycott probably wouldn't be interested in going to a Madonna show, anyway.

Speaking of English, how's about this current debate over the effort to make English America's "National Language?" This is where stupid political compromises get entertaining. Our nation's senators have a capability for mental gymnastics that is second only to the supporting cast of "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest."

Sen. Ken Salazar (D-Colo.) said the idea of English as the national language is "needlessly divisive."

Senate minority leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) agreed and added that it is "mean-spirited." Oh, and also "racist."

In the face of this faultless logic, a deal was struck. Instead of calling English the "national language," we're going to call it the "common and unifying language." What's next? A referendum on whether or not it sucks to step in dog poop on the way to a job interview?

The really amusing thing here is that the differentiation between "official, national" and "common and unifying" as regards the language is almost a non sequitur. Arguing for one side or the other is just that absurd. Calling the prevalence of English "racist" or "divisive" is basically just an advertisement to the rest of the world that you are insane, and have no grasp of the language you're talking about.

On a third note, also unrelated from my initial subject, Glenn Reynolds has penned a paper examining the dearth of libel litigation in the Blogosphere (which the Instapundit deems capitalizeable). Take heart, those of you who gravitate toward the ad hominem! Chances are, you won't be prosecuted.

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