When a famous person such as a sports figure demonstrates that he doesn’t take himself too seriously, it can be disarming. When Bob Uecker was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame, his legendary speech killed, as comedians say, because of the way he took the mickey out of himself. As a player, he quipped, he would be told to “grab a bat and stop this rally;” he’d sent to the plate without a bat and told to “try for a walk.”
When powerful political figures take the mickey out of themselves it can be a reassuring sign that confidence and humility are in appropriate balance, but there’s no such upside to being a good sport by participating in your opponents’ stereotyping of you. When Sarah Palin appeared on Saturday Night Live last week, she was in a nest of vipers, a participant in an uncomfortable spectacle that only abetted her opponents. When Alec Baldwin told her how “hot” she was, he was arrogant, preening and entirely disingenuous — he didn’t even look at her, instead chewing the horizon of his own significance. Palin’s appearance on the show ended up being an open display of political dominance by entertainment industry Dems.
Barrack Obama will not play the fool for anyone. Last Thursday, at a comedy roast in New York, Barrack Obama performed a routine of sorts that earned him plaudits for being a good sport. What largely escaped notice was that, far from taking the mickey out of himself, he was using the superficial form of a self-roast as an excuse to bring up, and display his pleasure in, his own popularity and success. When he said, addressing the question of what is his greatest weakness, “it’s possible that I’m a a little too awesome,” he was visibly tickled by his own mention of his own awesomeness, in a way that’s inappropriate in decent company, and he was similarly pleased with his vicious ad hominem shot against Rudy Giuliani.
It’s a cultural thing, really. Compare Obama’s and Uecker’s references to their Christlike beginnings: When Uecker recalled “a nativity-type setting…an exit light shining down” and three truckers, one bearing frankfurters, it was akin to a fat old comedian joking about his underwear modeling career — ironic self-deprecation, in other words. When Obama said “Contrary to the rumours you have heard, I was not born in a manger,” the laughs were about power in the room; his unprecedented position as a messiah of sorts to millions of people is the end-result of his lifelong effort to be in that position, so his “joke” was a nod to his own success even as it superficially co-opted the outward form of a good sport engaging in self-deprecation.
When Obama addressed a topic that didn’t provide an opening for him to pay homage to himself — his association with domestic terrorist William Ayers — the chosen one went missing from the punchline, and was replaced: “There was a point in my life when I started palling around with a pretty ugly crowd. I’ve got to be honest, these guys were lowlifes, unrepentant, no-good punks. That’s right, I’ve been a member of the United States Senate.”
John McCain laughed too hard, in a discomfiting way that suggests capitulation as much as good humour. Barrack Obama has arrived, apparently, in all his awesomeness, and everyone is now being called on to be a good sport.

The narcissist is dead serious about himself. He may possess a subtle, wry and riotous sense of humour, scathing and cynical, but rarely is he self-deprecating. The Narcissist regards himself as being on a constant mission, whose importance is cosmic and whose consequences are global.

I cannot provide a better example of how an honest soul’s desire to do good has been corrupted/brainwashed by the educational/media/government complex to achieve the opposite.
If you click on his comics you’ll see just how confused he is, which I think is representative of many confused youth in our societies.
Regardless, all hat tip Tatsuya.

Fellow SDA’ers, as I am merely a humble guest writer, I thought it would be appropriate that instead of deluging you with stories from the US, I try to pull some interesting statistics and charts about Canada so that we may all take home an exciting and interesting education in Canadian economics.
My goal was simple; compare health care expenditures as a % of GDP and the budget over time to provide all those interested a measure as to just how much of your budget goes to the health care system as well as what percent of your income goes to health care.
I found a great site called Statistics Canada that had all the data a budding economist could ever want. I quickly found the database where I could pull all the necessary information and upon clicking the “enter” button, received this little notice;

What in the name Puff the Magic Dragon is this?! I have to PAY to get what should be public information? Is this some kind of attempt to keep economic information from the poorer masses or some bureaucrat’s idea of a power trip?
Nothing like keeping vital information that would empirically disprove socialism away from the population.

You can see the video excerpts here.
For some reason I watched the rest of the show last night. Trust me, just watch the excerpts at the link, you didn’t miss much in the rest of the show.

For the Quebec Labour movement:

A union’s celebration of the first contract with a Wal-Mart outlet in North America turned out to be short-lived. The giant retailer announced Thursday it has closed the Tire and Lube Express centre located in a Wal-Mart department store on Maloney Boulevard in Gatineau.

I wonder who will eventually give up first. Will Quebec workers finally decide it’s not productive to unionize at Wal-Mart or will Wal-Mart give up entirely on doing business in Quebec?

As any poker player knows, when the other players run out of chips it’s time to go home.
Read the full letter of a hedge fund manager who sent his clients’ money back because he figured the “idiots” at the banks taking the other side of his trades were no longer sure to pay up.