The Slippery Slope: Downloading Music > Murder

Ipod Used In Domestic Homicide - Mar. 05, 2004

Okay, it's a parody. I was buying it until I realized how similar the page looked to a CNN page. And then you see that all the links, every one of them, go to liquidgeneration.com.

This is how you do newspage parodies. You take the time to develop your own dang logo. You remove all real reference to the original page - but just enough design elements to suggest your source. That way, no one can actually be confused as to where the information is coming from.

Plus, it's a funny parody. That's bonus points. People will forgive anything that makes them laugh.

Worth the Day Pass: Saudis and the 9/11 Great Escape

Salon.com Books

In the days following the 9/11 attacks various members of the Saudi royal family and Osama bin Laden's birth family were flown out of the United States, while all other air traffic was suspended. This excerpt from the new book House of Bush, House of Saud explains how it all went down.

How did the Saudis go about getting approval? According to the Federal Aviation Administration, they didn't and the Tampa flight never took place. "It's not in our logs," Chris White, a spokesman for the FAA, told the Tampa Tribune. "It didn't occur." The White House also said that the flights to evacuate the Saudis did not take place.

According to [the pilot who picked up three Saudi students in Tampa], about one hour and 45 minutes after takeoff they landed at Blue Grass Airport in Lexington, a frequent destination for Saudi horse-racing enthusiasts such as Prince Ahmed bin Salman. When they arrived, the Saudis were greeted by an American who took custody of them and helped them with their baggage. On the tarmac was a 747 with Arabic writing on the fuselage, apparently ready to take them back to Saudi Arabia. "My understanding is that there were other Saudis in Kentucky buying racehorses at that time, and they were going to fly back together," said Grossi.

In addition to the Tampa-Lexington flight, at least seven other planes were made available for the operation. According to itineraries, passenger lists and interviews with sources who had firsthand knowledge of the flights, members of the extended bin Laden family, the House of Saud and their associates also assembled in Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Dallas, Houston, Cleveland, Orlando, Washington, D.C, Boston, Newark, N.J., and New York.

Arrangements for the flights were made with lightning speed. One flight, a Boeing 727 that left Los Angeles late on the night of Sept. 14 or early in the morning of Sept. 15, required FAA approval, which came through in less than half an hour. "By bureaucratic standards, that's a nanosecond," said a source close to the flight.

Payments for the charter flights were made in advance through wire transfer from the Saudi embassy. A source close to the evacuation said such procedures were an indication that the entire operation had high-level approval from the U.S. government. "That's a totally traceable transaction," he said. "So I inferred that what they were doing had U.S. government approval. Otherwise, they would have done it in cash."

Lots more in the excerpt, including a rundown on Prince Bandar's contacts in Washington - did you know that he and Colin Powell were tennis buddies back in the seventies? I didn't...

Instapundit: Missing the Point

New York Times Parody Page

Glenn's wrong. This isn't the same as the Fox News suit against Al Franken. Al was using one element alone - the phrase "Fair and Balanced". If the guy had built a Times correction page from the ground up and put the phrase "All the Corrections That's Fit To Print", then the case would be like the Fox News fiasco.

The parody New York Times page is using many copyrighted elements of a New York Times web page. It's using the actual logo. It's using the sideboxes intact. That's why the Times has a link to their copyright page on every webpage, which the National Debate guy reproduces intact. The man is going to be introduced to some serious financial troubles if he doesn't pull the page and change some formatting and graphics.

The Passion of Martha Stewart

USATODAY.com - Lie may cost Stewart her freedom

Had the morning off from rehearsal, so I slept in and then made a nice breakfast. I flicked on the TV and there was Martha in Puerto Rico, toasting coconut, going to a mango farm, and hawking Puerto Rican rums.

I've seen some other coverage of this story, and one ABC News video stood out. It almost gleefully compared Martha's former life to shots of prison life - the industrialized food lines, the tiny cells, the basketball courts.

Well, it's a bad thing she's been convicted of doing, and she'll very likely serve prison time. But watching her program today made me realize something: Martha has a way of taking what she has and turning it around. Her business was all about making lemonade. There's absolutely no reason to believe that this event will change such a deep rooted part of her soul.

She's not going in for life, people. She's looking at 10 to 16 months. Most of her money-making potential has been stripped away, so she's looking for a career change. And for ten to sixteen, she'll be staring at the conditions of prison life in America. She'll be dealing every day with the other half of America, the ones who can't afford fresh coconut to toast. What will Martha make of all this raw material?

I don't think we're witnessing the end of Martha Stewart, but the midpoint. I believe we're witnessing the creation of a powerful advocate for prisoner's rights and other social ills in this country. With her talents for organization and communications, with her eye for detail, she's going to make one hell of a media-savvy American populist. And the prison time will only give her street cred and a motivation for justice that she's not going to be familar with.

She's got a few more steps of grief before she's close to accepting this possible new direction of her life, but I'm willing to bet that she gets there. This is Martha Stewart we're talking about, who was one of the most successful businesswomen ever. All the personal reasons for that success remain a part of her arsenal, and she's being given a new focus for that power and talent.

And it will be a good thing.

Well, Cabaret rehearsals are upon me. I will be doing very little blogging during the next two weeks. If you're in the Nashville area, come on down and see us at Chaffin's Barn.