All's Quiet on the Western Front

I don’t know exactly why or how this happened, but I watched ABC’s Nightline in its entirety last evening. I never watch this show, never. I don’t even know why I happened to be tuned to ABC in the first place. I was pleasantly surprised. The show wasn’t all that bad, or I have very low expectations regarding network news, or a combination of the two.

As might be expected, the lead story was the new South Dakota abortion law. I thought the piece concentrated way too much on the current state of abortion in South Dakota (one clinic in Sioux Falls serves the entire state; doctors fly in to SD from Minnesota to perform the procedures; no SD doctors will perform abortions) rather than the Roe v. Wade implications. The blogs are surprisingly quiet on this issue this morning, at least according to Memeorandum. I expected to see a lot of gnashing and thrashing from the Left (and there is some) and muted huzzahs from the Right (virtually none). Personally, I think the government should stay the Hell out of people’s private lives, period. While I would never be a party to abortion and believe it is wrong (in most circumstances), that’s just one man’s opinion. I cannot, and will not, presume to speak for anyone else.

Nightline also had a bit of a puff-piece on how the British government has mobilized Britain’s birdwatchers to assist in identifying possible avian victims of bird flu. Legions of birders scoured Britain’s entire south coast looking for dead birds this past weekend, all this because of an outbreak of bird flu across the Channel in France. Birdwatching, which I’ve always considered to be mildly eccentric (at best), has finally come into its own. Now if they could only find a good use for train spotters…

Leno was pretty good last night, with a boatload of Oscar jokes. The only ones I remember (and they were coming fast and furiously) are Leno’s reference to the Oscars as “…or, the Gay Super Bowl, as we call them here in West LA,” and the fact that “…rioting broke out in West LA when Crash beat out Brokeback Mountain for “Best Picture. Pottery Barns were looted, Volvos over-turned and Liza Minelli records were smashed!” Now I’m all confused. I thought Olympic figure-skating was the Gay Super Bowl… (Full disclosure: I did not watch the Academy Awards. I’d sooner watch a cat show, and “I don’t like cats” would be a gross understatement for me.)

It’s gonna be another Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood. We’ve had a three-day run of magnificent weather, and those first warm days of Spring are always SO welcome after Winter. “Winter” on the High Plains being very relative, of course. I expect to see the trees budding out next week, if this keeps up at its current pace…

Not much else to report: All’s quiet on the Western Front. But I already said that, didn’t I?