Olio

• Haggard Pronounced ‘Completely Heterosexual’ New York Times February 6

DENVER (AP) -- One of four ministers who oversaw three weeks of intensive counseling for the Rev. Ted Haggard said the disgraced minister emerged convinced that he is ''completely heterosexual.''

Haggard also said his sexual contact with men was limited to the former male prostitute who came forward with sexual allegations, the Rev. Tim Ralph of Larkspur told The Denver Post for a story in Tuesday's edition.

''He is completely heterosexual,'' Ralph said. ''That is something he discovered. It was the acting-out situations where things took place. It wasn't a constant thing.''

Ralph said the board spoke with people close to Haggard while investigating his claim that his only extramarital sexual contact happened with Mike Jones. The board found no evidence to the contrary.

See, this is why the Times doesn't need to run comics.

And aren't these the people who keep insisting that homosexuality is something to be cured? And the ones always talking about the evils of moral relativism? Except when it's a major embarrassment for themselves, is that it?

It's beyond laughable; it's quintessentially how the world works for these people, at least when anyone's watching.

• Gregg Easterbrook, TMQ February 6

I've long thought the multitude of ways in which human beings can experience delight is one of the proofs of the existence of God. Natural selection did not need to make sex or food or wine or music or art or beauty pleasurable, yet they are.

Y'know, I'm not an Easterbrook hater, for all his excesses; his football writing, while not always quite as smart as he pretends it is, is at least generally about the game of football rather than the slumber-party cattiness that passes in so many other places. But that is just stupid.

Natural selection does not "make things pleasurable". Pleasure (the human emotion and the human judgment) taken in music or art is strongly determined by culture. I don't believe it's possible for most Westerners to hear Japanese music as the Japanese do, nor vice versa; I defy anyone with a rudimentary aesthetic sense to take a tour of Graceland and come away thinking he and Elvis inhabit the same universe of pleasure. I don't know what it means to say food and wine "needn't give pleasure", since one, such pleasure is entirely subjective and two, what would we do if it weren't? Children are drawn to sweet things; in the wild, poisons are bitter. Score one for natural selection. The voluptuary's diet is not necessarily the healthiest one.

But sex? What if sex weren't pleasurable? We can't know if it is for most species. Female chimpanzees experience orgasm, so far as we call tell, but for most mammals it's a matter of the rut (funny how God gave the pleasurable experience to us and our cousins). There are plenty of explanations for the salient features of human mating--most notably the lack of estrus, but also female orgasm--with their basis in natural selection. Now, if we all hated to eat, drink, and fuck, but we were still around after a half-million years, that might suggest some Big Sky Fairy (© Norbizness Enterprises) was pulling a Cosmic String or two. Jesse Winchester was there twenty-five years ago:

It's a good thing/ To be young and strong
Such a good thing/ We're not old for long
What a good thing/ That making love is fun.

• Morgan's Bozeman charged with misdemeanor assault

By Paul McMullen
Sun Reporter
Originally published February 5, 2007, 10:26 PM EST
DOVER, Del. // Morgan State men's basketball coach Todd Bozeman will return to Farmville, Va., to respond to misdemeanor assault charges after an argument there Saturday over a post-game meal....

In an incident first reported by the Richmond Times-Dispatch, Farmville police were called to Mulligan's restaurant near Longwood University, west of Richmond, where the Bears had lost a non-conference game.

In the aftermath, Bozeman was charged with assault and battery, a first-class misdemeanor, and curse and abuse, a third-class misdemeanor....

Carlos Holland, the manager of the restaurant, told The Sun that Bozeman reacted angrily after Morgan State's order for 52 Philly cheese steak or chicken sandwiches, which was made by an assistant coach, was not filled to his specifications.

"I told him that we couldn't accommodate that order," said Holland, who could not identify the assistant coach. "He told us to make what we could. I took the order to Longwood College; I personally delivered it to the assistant coach at the bus. People were exiting the game, and I was two or three minutes late. I guess he [Bozeman] was upset about that."

Some of the sandwiches included ham, which would violate the religious beliefs of some Morgan State players.

Holland said that 10 to 15 minutes after making the delivery, Bozeman entered his restaurant, used a string of profanities and placed his hands on Shreck....

Athletic director Floyd Kerr said that he had been instructed not to comment and directed inquiries to Morgan State spokesman Clint Coleman. Coleman said that "we believe that this whole incident appears to have grown out of a terrible misunderstanding, and of course we regret that it occurred. We are taking a wait-and-see approach to this."

A "terrible misunderstanding" is when your wife leaves you after you come home smeared with lipstick because you gave artificial respiration to an elderly heart attack victim. It's when your best friend kills himself because his brokerage statement mistakenly reported he'd lost everything. It's not when you manhandle a woman because you got the wrong damn sandwich. Unless she had it comin', that is; let's all wait and see.

• I leave it to sz to decide whether last night's Law & Order CI with its "Gee, is that supposed to be Hilary?" storyline was worthy of the World O'Crap treatment, but I do have to say that when you decide to use a slimy Nancy Grace-esque tabloid reporter and you can't sham being as slimy as the real Nancy Grace I think America has learned something important about itself.