Where C-SPAN is the local TV news
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| The Washington Canard Where C-SPAN is the local TV news |
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Monday, January 31, 2005
AN OPEN-BLOG QUIZ I've just made some changes to the template. Can you guess them all? First one to name the changes correctly gets one ride's worth ($1.35) of Metro fare.* C'mon, it'll be fun! _____ * Note: That's $1.35 spread across nine used cards. METRO CONFIDENTIAL W/r/t this post — I have it on good authority that Isikoff is "a Red Line man all the way." WILL THE REAL IRAQ PLEASE STAND UP? After spending a year in the sandbox, E-Rocky-Confidential doesn't know any better than the rest of us what the real Iraq is. But it may be somewhere in this list: The Sunnis, the Shias, the Baathists, the Communists, the Wahabbis, the Kurds, the Turks, the Persians, the tribal defenders, the nationalists, the opportunists, the suckers, the doves, the hawks, the neoconservatives, the liberal idealists, the historians, the futurists, the religious conservatives, the secular humanists. The strivers for Pulitzer Prizes, Purple Hearts, Valhalla, a respectable currency, national pride, or another night at home with one's family. The sand storms, the deep hum of multiple overhead Apaches, explosions that don't concern you if they don't concern you, the long wait for a stream of water (cold in the winter, warm in the summer), the long wait for a few hours of electricity, the flushing faces of people in argument, the laughter of people joking because they have to. The good smell of the dirt after a hard rain, the stench of latrines being emptied or sewage that only flows backward. The decay of old things. Physical monuments older than history, political documents younger than your last email. Seeing the face of a photographed child who is learning his father will not come home and wondering what you have to do with it. Feeling that democracy may be just as much a question as an answer.And he's had more firsthand knowledge than most of us ever will. Sunday, January 30, 2005
IRAQI ELECTION DAY  Well, I'm snowed in up here in Northwest DC — the white stuff has been coming down in showers since midday yesterday. Meanwhile, it's a big day in Iraq. If even the reliably pessimistic Washington Post and New York Times say the Iraqi election was a success, then it must be so. It sounds as if participation has bested all but Andrew Sullivan's most wildly optimistic and shifting expectations (scroll to "A Rock in Troubled Times"), while the death toll is far below his lowest standards. There's still a lot of hard work to be done, but today provides good reason to be hopeful.
On a related note, I'm extremely pleased to report that E-Rocky-Confidential is being updated once again. The blog is written from Baghdad Airport by a very good friend who has been serving there for over a year now. I had assumed his superiors frowned upon his blogging — though he takes utmost care to respect mission secrecy — but it turns out he was just having computer troubles. Here's hoping he keeps posting regularly, and that he gets rotated out soon. He's earned it. One more thing: I get regular e-mails from an Iraqi-American named Haider Ajina, who still has family there. Haider has been optimistic about the future of his native country, more so than most; you can imagine how he must be feeling today. Power Line usually posts his comments, but because they haven't done so today (at least not yet), I'll post here what he sent early this morning, EST. It's verbatim, so excuse the minor errors: I just called my father in Baghdad to see if he and the rest of my Iraqi family over there have voted yet. He said we were all just heading out the door, but we ill wait and talk to you (chuckling). I heard a strength and joy in his voice and could hear the rest of my relatives in the back ground. It sounded like a family reunion. My 84 year old Iraqi Grandmother will be voting for the first time in her life. My father (a naturalized U.S. Citizen) said we are all getting ready to go vote in a school near by. This school was just being built when I left Iraq in the late 70's. I know where it is and I can picture my father, uncles aunties and cousins along with the rest of the family walking through my old neighborhood to that school and vote. My father said "For the first time in my life I voted in the U.S. and now I can vote in Iraq. We want our voices to count, we want to decide our future and we want the world to know we have a voice in our future and in our government, this will give the Iraqi government true legitimacy, just like in America". Saturday, January 29, 2005
GAME, SET, MATCH Late yesterday, former potential DNC chair candidate Harold Ickes endorsed Howard Dean for that position. Considering that Ickes is the Clintons' guy, and the Clintons are said to be the wailing wunderkind's main opposition — not to mention that he has double the support of the next-most endorsed candidate, ex-Rep. Martin Frost (who did all he could to disguise his Democratic affiliation in his failed re-elect bid last year) — isn't the contest over? I guess Dean did have another seeming sure thing fall apart this time last year, but don't count on a repeat. THE DAY THE NORMALZ TOOK OVER It's Saturday morning and I'm somehow still awake. This is bound to be trouble later, for sure. I'm supposed to go shoot hoops this afternoon — chances are I won't make it. But so long as I'm up, I want to expand on my post about Snoop getting old and lame:  The comments to that entry quickly brought up Ice Cube (that's "Cube" — don't you dare add the "Ice," even though that's how he's still registered with SAG; you'd think he could change it if he really wanted to.) There's no use arguing that Snoop and Cube have not both lost their "edge." Of course they have. But for their own longevity, if not their "cred," it's good that they did. As Dre said on "2001": "How much Tupac in you, [do] you got?" The gangsta lifestyle is unsustainable, and each of them figured that out some time ago. Living that way for very long gets you AIDS (Eazy), shot (Tupac, Biggie*), overdosed (ODB) or otherwise dead.
Not that their fans care to hear that point of view: They pine for the days of "Death Certificate." But I say Cube and Snoop (and Dre) should be commended for escaping their hard-living pasts. Snoop apparently coaches (or at one time coached) his son's Pop Warner football team. Dre's just another top-shelf producer. Cube is making family films. They didn't "lose" what made everyone get into them in the first place. They consciously shed all of that. Does that make them role models? Despite their success, I don't think so — not unless you're already standing on a corner with a strap on your back. Their stories begin on the wrong side of the law, either in deed or boast. It's admirable that they've grown beyond that, but anyone looking to their career track for guidance would start out in a gang, selling drugs, pulling drive-bys, et cetera. They're lucky to have escaped that; most can't/won't/don't. Unfortunately, it's their winking-at-criminalism early years that made them famous. Would people have rushed to buy "Doggystyle" in the numbers they did (first rap album to hit #1 in its first week of release) if Mr. Calvin Broadus hadn't been an ex-Crip charged with murder? (Would I have it playing in the background right now, twelve years later? Perhaps — it is a terrific collection of songs, one of the defining albums of the decade.) For these artists, there is a precarious balance between authenticity and going soft (as there is for virtually every popular recording artist, though with less deadly results if, say, Isaac Brock chooses wrong). Most would say Snoop, Cube and Dre have tilted further toward the latter state. I say that's a good thing, even if it makes them "lame." To paraphrase another Dre line from the same song referenced above: They moved out of the hood for good, [can] you blame them?  P.S. Much of this pertains to what's wrong with the NBA today. But that's too big to get into now, much less at this hour. I'd like to hear Bill Cosby weigh in on the above, but I'd especially like to hear more from John McWhorter on this. He's the best on this subject (this post owes a lot to him; hold all calls, reschedule previous engagements, and read this now), but he hasn't written much about it recently. And so far as I know, he's never said a thing about the NBA.
P.P.S. — Did you know that Cube's cousin is Del Tha Funkee Homosapien? I didn't until just now. I suppose that's common knowledge for anyone who follows hip-hop. So I'm officially out of the loop. But I'm pretty sure I knew Cube (née O'Shea Jackson) was schooled at the Phoenix Institute of Technology. P.P.P.S. Apparently the German title of "8 Mile" is ... "8 Mile." Thanks, IMDb! (By the way, I think all of the above applies equally to Eminem; he's good evidence that rap/hip-hop cred ultimately is more about class than race.) _____ *If you've never seen Nick Broomfield's Biggie & Tupac, by all means queue it up on Netflix. It's much superior to Broomfield's also-interesting (and largely Portland-based) "Kurt & Courtney," simply as a documentary. But the interviews with Biggie's mother (a great lady), Tupac's biological father (interesting) and the jailhouse sit-down with Suge (very interesting, not to mention scary) alone make it worthwhile. Broomfield's a mixed bag as a documentarian, but he stumbled onto a great story with this film. Friday, January 28, 2005
FOR YOUR VIEWING PLEASURE
WELL, SONNY BONO WAS A MEMBER Have I missed something, or does the Church of Scientology have a seat on the board of the Washington Post Co.? How else to explain this wholly credulous account of Scientologists working in tsunami-devastated areas? Thursday, January 27, 2005
BEAT THE PRESS This afternoon after my customary laps around the pool downtown, I headed over to the Cato Institute at 1000 Massachusetts for a not-quite-a-panel discussion on the New York Times scandals. Mayhaps you've heard of them. Speakers were former Newsweek writrer Seth Mnookin, whose new book "Hard News" occasioned the event, and Slate press critic Jack Shafer, whose (favorable) take on the book can be found here.  I was woefully underdressed for the event, as I usually am for such things. Mnookin grinned through the intro as Cato's David Boaz listed his affiliations with Salon, Slate, Spin, New York, the New Yorker, etc. and quipped: "This is the bluest bio I've ever read." Polite laugh from the audience on that, as does any comment that can be dismissed as a quip, but Mnookin seemed to be quite amused to have written a book with so much interest potential to the red-minded. (Not that Cato can really be called "red" &mdash a quick glance at their foreign policy recommendations should disabuse you of that notion.) Mnookin spoke briefly on the Times' history and his interpretation of what went wrong in the newsroom. To wit: Howell Raines let the success of their post-9/11 coverage — "I won seven Pulitzers!" he apparently thundered at one staff meeting — go to his head, and stopped building relationships with his staff. Even the Times newsroom couldn't see why Raines wanted Augusta National's men-only policy on the front page. When Jayson Blair and Judith Miller aroused suspicion and skepticism, respectively, no one wanted to question him.
When it was Shafer's turn, he stood up and announced that he had a slightly different take on things … and then proceeded to back up Mnookin's account, while adding thoughts of his own. Mnookin said the press had "lost its air of authority"; Shafer, looking at least a little like a Dean Stockwell-bullfrog hybrid, explained how the new media made this possible. He described his own role in Slate's infamous "monkeyfishing" expedition, wherein a young reporter "wrote himself out of the industry"  by making up a story about using bananas on string to bait and harass local rhesus monkeys. Shafer told him no one would believe it unless he added details. The writer fabricated some good ones. Before long, readers of James Taranto's online WSJ column had called out the story as a hoax.
Shafer did go further, arguing the scandals emanating from all this "incompetence and malfeasance" are a good thing: This sort of thing has happened in every era of journalism, but only recently have we been able to catch them. The second point is inarguable, and I'm inclined to agree with the first as well. As he put it, the rise of blogs are sending a message to the media: "Watch your ass." Mnookin said he'd found story ideas on blogs — specifically, his 2003 Newsweek article debunking a Rolling Stone report on so-called "bug chasers," via Andrew Sullivan. Shafer — who just yesterday added a few caveats to the blogging "revolution" — even copped to looking himself up at Technorati on a near-daily basis to see what the blogs were saying about him. So if you're reading this, Jack, I take back the bullfrog comment. NUTTIN' BUT A GERIATRIC THANG Snoop Dogg (née Snoop Doggy Dogg) is on tour in Colorado this week. His appearance garnered a op-ed eulogy to a gangsta in yesterday's Greeley Tribune, addressed to Snoop himself: You got yourself that MTV show two years ago, "Doggy Fizzle Televizzle," and since then, you've been in some goofy movies, such as "Soul Plane" and "Starsky and Hutch," and you've been in some even goofier T-Mobile commercials with pop icon Wayne Newton and Paris Hilton, who is famous just because, and in one of those commercials, you ask them when you add fabric softener. You are even in an animated film, "Racing Stripes," where you play ... a dog.How's having an affectionate column written about you in a family newspaper to reinforce your softness? Well, everyone gets old and lame eventually, according to Sick Boy's "unifying theory of life" — even "true gang-banging hard-core" rappers. As the author points out, Snoop's career should have been over a long, long time ago. Instead, he's more famous than ever. Would that we all, in our old age, be 32-year-old fat stack-smoking multi-millionaires. Wednesday, January 26, 2005
GREATLY EXAGGERATED By now you've surely heard that ace abs authority John Basedow, ubiquitous thanks to his "Fitness Made Simple" ads all over cable television, was lost in Phuket, Thailand in the Indian Ocean tsunami. The commercials have continued to air and there were no news stories (how much of a mention would he rate, anyway?), but this highly professional press release went unrebutted — so I figured it was real. Until today. Here's a special announcement from Basedow's website:  FUNNY HA HA REDUX The Post's "gossip columnist" Richard Leiby ran an item this morning on the Hotline Comedy Show I wrote about yesterday: He's no Darrell Hammond, but Rep. Brian Baird (D-Wash.) had the crowd in stitches with his President Bush imitation at the Hotline's post-inaugural comedy review Friday night at the Warner Theatre -- a taped performance now available for wider public consumption at C-SPAN.org.I neglected to mention the shoulder-shake in my previous write-up, but that alone got as much of a laugh as any joke save for the closing bit. Tuesday, January 25, 2005
I'M UNSTOPPABLE Rarely a month goes by where I don't have to call the customer service line of some company and politely demand they rescind the most recent charges to my account because of one error or another. This month it happened twice. First, Audible charged me for an account I'd supposedly closed late last year. In fact, this was the second time they'd charged me on the apparently-not-closed account. It didn't take them long to initiate a refund and fix it ... or tell me they'd fixed it. I'll find out in early February. But I got two free audio books. Today it turned out Sprint was charging me for a second line I never asked for — doubling my monthly bill. To remove the charges, they either needed me to pay a $150 disconnect fee or wanted back my new phone, which they'd recently sent me as part of an agreement to reup for a few more years. I refused both options, expressomg my dissatisfaction while making it clear I didn't hold the operator accountable. She wanted to file a case and have a supervisor get back to me within five business days. Instead, I held out and got a supervisor on the line within five minutes. Not only did that supervisor rescind the charges, she even knocked five percent off my monthly bill. I'm as big a booster of capitalism as the next guy (and often bigger) but this sort of thing drives me nuts. It's almost as if they make routine errors with the hope I won't notice and will just sign off and not get inquisitive about the extra charges. Well, I do. And not only do I obtain justice, I usually wind up ahead. Come on, Corporate America. You want to a piece of me? I dare you. FUNNY HA HA  On Friday, the day after the inauguration, I pulled myself out of a hangover cloud to catch a comedy show at the Warner Theatre near Metro Center, sponsored by National Journal's Hotline -- once described by Wonkette as a "self-serious, enormously expensive, unlinkably elitist, faxed political summary," despite its irreverent headlines and non-faxedness -- and the Will Rogers Institute.
The lineup primarily consisted of congressmen, political writers and a couple of pros. As it goes with comedy nights performed mainly by non-comedians, there were moments of unbearable silence, but I was surprised (and disappointed) at how few true wipeouts there were. Worst of all was the last-minute addition of a couple of College Republican types who filled in when Walter Shapiro didn't show (still bitter about USA Today, perhaps?). Timing? They had none. A routine? If that's what they called it. Maybe they were both too concerned about playing the "straight man" to bother being funny. When they promised to get off the stage soon, the audience clapped. Best of all, believe it or not, was Rep. Brian Baird (D-WA), who walked out in character as George W. Bush, and held it the whole way. His vocal impersonation wasn't quite as good as a professional comic like Jim Morris (also present), but his mannerisms were dead on, and his material was pretty strong. He even had a mysterious bulge on his back. The finale was "Bush's" promise to outdo his mission to Mars plan and launch Operation Solar Landing. Huge laugh. But don't worry, he reassured: "We'll go at night." The next best performance of the night was a properly soused Christopher Hitchens, who staggered out to the microphone, sat down on the stool available, and rattled off a number of joke-book jokes impressively. And stopped in the middle to take a swig from a flask in his coat pocket. No cigarette, though. Better still, he told funnier blowjob jokes than Ana Marie Cox of Wonkette. In fact, Wonkette tanked. Or as a friend said to me at intermission, "Did you see Wonkette tank up there?!" Though Baird's impersonation was generally good-spirited, partisanship ruled. The Nation's David Corn, Bob Somerby from the Daily Howler and Americans United for the Separation of Church and State's Barry Lynn made Bush or the Republicans in general the target of their jabs. But former Daily Show correspondent A. Whitney Brown wasn't just partisan: he was purposefully unfunny for great stretches, ruminating on Abu Ghraib and declaring: "We're the bad guys!" I've seen bad comic timing, but he was off by hours. There wasn't much from the other side; there just weren't that many Republicans on stage. Even so, there wasn't much anger to be had -- hard to complain when you've just won everything, again. Fox News' Tony Snow emceed, but didn't really make any jokes. Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) focused on her Southern origins, and VRWC charter member Grover Norquist saved most of his barbs for the French. And who doesn't like to make fun of the French? Bonus tidbit — Newsweek's Michael Isikoff was at the comedy show -- although not performing. Later that night, transferring to the Green Line at L'Enfant Plaza, I came across him once again. Nothing interesting happened. I just wanted you to know that Michael Isikoff rides the Metro. Monday, January 24, 2005
PLUG Political dynasties seem to be the "in" thing these days, and my latest post at DCist tries to ride this particular bandwagon. DC ON FILM: "BROADCAST NEWS"  Yesterday brought me Broadcast News, the 1987 James L. Brooks dramedy on life in a network news bureau. As the subject line of this post betrays, "Broadcast News" is set in DC, something hitherto unknown to me.
The newsroom I work in only does television part-time, but I can tell you things have changed. Heck, even if you work at Baskin-Robbins, you can probably tell the same thing. Cell phones weren't in yet — even the bricks everyone carried around in the early days. And everyone used typewriters, just as they did in "All The President's Men" a decade earlier (another "DC on Film" post waiting to happen). The main argument of the film, if it really has one, is that TV journalism is in danger of being threatened by entertainment values. Brooks makes it clear that established bureau bigs Holly Hunter and Albert Brooks care very much about the integrity of their James L. Brooks doesn't know that much about the news business, or how to satirize it, though it is fun to watch him get a few things right and a few things wrong. But as a movie about people and relationships, it's right on the mark. Everybody in it is good — especially Hunter, in the role that made her career. And you can't beat an unbilled Jack Nicholson as the New York anchor who is the focus of everyone's hopes and fears. As a DC movie, there's actually not much DC — the best we get of outdoor visuals is a wide pan across George Washington Square above Foggy Bottom. Nor is there much politics — the best we get is a shootout with the Sandinistas, covered by Brooks and Hunter, plus the passing inclusion of the annual correspondents dinner. The IMDb Goofs page doesn't include any city-related goofs, so let me add at least one. Leaving Dulles Airport near the end, Hunter's character Jane tells the cab driver not to take the Beltway back to DC, because it's busy this time of day. Better to take New York Avenue, she says. Hello?! New York Avenue runs from Northwest DC into Maryland. And it's movies like this that make you think Dulles is just a short drive up the river from Washington. It's not. It's 30 miles outside of town. A bonus note for my audience in the NW — The denouement has Brooks resigning his position and moving to ... Portland! Now, he doesn't actually say it's Portland, Oregon. But Washington isn't nearly close enough to Maine for them to assume it's the smaller, if nearer, one. Extra bonus for the NW folks — According to the Willy Week, William Hurt is probably moving to Portland. Oregon, that is. Update, 11:32 a.m., Tues. — Hmm. The IMDb Filming Locations page says the airport was BWI, not Dulles. Oh well, her traffic directions still don't make any sense. And I'm pretty sure neither airport has the bus-on-stilts peoplemover thing, because there aren't any terminals disconnected from the main building. Sunday, January 23, 2005
FRENCHMEN, MUSHROOM CAVES, WOOD AND CLAY AS FOOD, PLUS LABOR STRIKES — THIS STORY HAS EVERYTHING! Sure, you could make this kind of story up: A Frenchman lost in a labyrinth of disused mushroom caves said he had survived 35 days by eating rotten wood and clay, after being rescued only thanks to a teachers’ strike.But who would believe it? INAUGURATION WEEK The temperature in Washington, DC has been subarctic since George W. Bush's first term. Lucky for us (depending on whom you ask) the bitter cold has been sweetened a bit by the first (and possibly last) decisive snowfall. After snowing through Saturday afternoon, the precipitation has abated and the sun has even re-emerged. Sounds like we missed the best/worst of it. Before the snow hit, DC had already endured a different, more perfect storm: tourism and the tourists it brings. Not just any tourists: die-hard red-staters, invading this bluest of blue zones. The Daily Show's annoying new correspondent did a segment (apparently not available online) featuring angry District residents, but the few interactions I saw between the two groups were friendly. When I was in NYC for the RNC last summer, I found residents all over town wearing anti-Bush slogans on shirts in silent protest. I mentioned then that one never sees the same thing in DC, and that held true this week. This is a company town, and the dress code reflects that. This didn't stop the ANSWER-led fringe elements from turning out full-force on Inauguration Day in drab green cargo pants and corduroy rasta hats, armed with a supreme sense of self-righteousness and signs ranging from clever to hateful. And I mean hateful:  I had tickets to view the inaugural (from a standing section way in the back), and got out of work a bit early (on an already shortened day of a very short week) to make sure I had plenty of time to get through. Naturally, the two Metro stops closest to my approved entrance point were closed for the day, so I had to get off at the Chinatown stop and start walking south. Three blocks later, I hit the line. Well, not a line. A crowd in an intersection. Two crowds: Republicans and anarchists, pressed together by more Republicans and anarchists.  The protesters chanted the usual slogans, including the trusty "Im! Peach! Bush!" and tried to strike up arguments with the Republicans. One elderly fellow kept asking a particularly obnoxious high schooler if he was signing up for the military. His "yes" answer wasn't too persuasive.  This Zack de la Rocha-looking troublemaker climbed up on a barrier and proceeded to lecture first the crowd, then individual GOPers underfoot, on the evils of George W. Bush in particular and Western civilization in general. The high schooler shouted back at him to no effect other than to hurt the ears of everyone around him, me included. He finally scored a hit, taking the suggestion of a white fur coat-wearing, self-identified libertarian woman to yell: "Nice extensions!" That got a laugh. I assumed the protesters were purposefully trying to slow the admittance of ticket-holders by fighting their way to the front. If so, they succeeded. I arrived an hour before the scheduled noon oath and speech, where I was approximately 50 feet away from the entrance. By noon, I was 30 feet away. Half an hour later, I was 20 feet away. I called a friend to find out if the swearing-in was (fingers crossed) behind schedule. No such luck, not under this president. My reason for standing in that crowd in the first place had already passed, and yet it still took me a moment to decide it was time to give up. There were other noteworthy events throughout the week. Kid Rock was originally supposed to play at some concert purportedly arranged by the Bush daughters, but with him booted, others took up the slack. The singer for one briefly popular rock band yelled, "Welcome to the greatest FUCKING country in the world!” But he apologized, and at least he didn't rap about "pimping Barbara Bush." Another event was a decidedly less-controversial musical show at the Ellipse south of the White House, featuring the NYPD's singing cop, country-western semi-stars, Patti LaBelle, plus two examples of American Idolatry, Ruben Studdard and emcee Ryan Seacrest. I didn't attend, but I did snap a few shots of the fireworks show from my balcony at home:   Longtime readers will note that this is not the first time I've taken pictures of fireworks from this angle. This time I had a real digital camera, but I'm afraid it still leaves something to be desired (the blurriness owes something to the fact that I was standing outside in 5-degree weather in boxer shorts). And there was the pre-inauguration "Black Tie and Boots" ball, which sounds exactly like the kind of party you'd expect of Texans in Washington. A former colleague of mine, a Republican congressional aide, sold his tickets to John Elway's family for $4,000. That's the best story from the week that I've got. And that's pretty much all I've got. Next week things should return to normal. Any questions? Saturday, January 22, 2005
THE FUTURE WAS WIDE OPEN It's been a busy January, but I think I'll be able to update more frequently from now on. As some or (let's not kid ourselves) all readers are aware, I've decided to close my original, more combative and once-primary blog, Armed Prophet. I'll say no more about it here, as I've said plenty about it over there. What is relevant about that back here? Just the question of how much this blog will change. At Armed Prophet I was a center-right pundit; at the Canard I've been writing a narrative. So, will I become more political here? Perhaps. But not much. This has always been an opinionated blog (a redundant phrase) but not a very partisan or argumentative one. I think that will remain the case. But I reserve the right to change course from this policy, at any moment, as I see fit. And I reserve the right to reinstate that policy once again. The Canard will also undergo a minor facelift in coming days or weeks, or whenever I get around to it. As you can already see, the Capitol dome that's graced the upper-left hand corner of this page for the better part of a year has been replaced by a version of the photograph that used to occupy the same space at the Prophet. But it won't be permanent; I intend to rotate pictures on a basis to be determined later. I think that's all there is to say. Welcome back. |
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"On the education front, we're going to launch Operation Easier Grammar. [Big laffs.] You see, there is way too many rules in grammar. ... This will help my daughters pass the No Child Left Behind test."
