The first full week of classes is ending, and football season is beginning. Is everyone else looking forward to a sweltering 12:21 p.m. kickoff Saturday? On the serious, Gators, remember to stay hydrated — no one likes that sloppy friend stumbling around with heat exhaustion.
What a week: Tensions have reached a boiling point in the Middle East, and Miley Cyrus shook her pancake butt at the VMAs for the world to behold. Without further ado, here’s your welcome-to-football-season edition of Darts & Laurels.
Our first LAUREL goes to the U.K. Parliament and, more importantly, the British public.
The New York Times reported Wednesday that Britain opted to delay a parliamentary vote to authorize British participation in an American-led attack on Syria. The vote will be postponed until the results of a United Nations investigation into the suspected use of chemical weapons in an attack that killed hundreds last week are finalized, most likely sometime next week.
President Barack Obama can still authorize an attack without Britain, but we’re hoping he’ll take a cue from British Prime Minister David Cameron and hold off a few days so Congress may have more time to consider the matter and schedule a vote approving military action.
“This was really a success for the public, not the politicians,” The New Yorker writer John Cassidy wrote in a blog post yesterday. “On all sides of the political divide in Britain, there is profound disquiet about lining up behind the U.S. government in another military strike on a Middle Eastern country.”
Cassidy reported that voters have been flooding the members of Parliament with phone calls and messages, urging them to vote against joining an attack against Syria. And they’re not alone in their beliefs: 59 percent of Americans also believe the U.S. should stay out of Syrian conflict completely.
So three cheers to our friends across the pond for taking a stand! Here’s to hoping Washington takes notice.
Columnist Doug Larson once said, “If the English language made any sense, lackadaisical would have something to do with a shortage of flowers.”
On Wednesday, Oxford University Press announced a series of strange updates to its free online English dictionary. The additions include dumb, zeitgeist-y words like “selfie,” “emoji,” “srsly” and “twerk.”
Sorry, Oxford, you get a DART. Stop trying to edge in on Urban Dictionary’s territory! Until you start including definitions of outlandish, made-up sexual terms, you need to stick with words like “sesquipedalian” and “milquetoast.”
Finally, we award a LAUREL to the U.S. Health and Human Services Department. Yesterday, the department took initial steps toward complying with the Supreme Court’s ruling striking down part of the Defense of Marriage Act.
HHS will now extend key Medicare benefits to same-sex married couples, including nursing home care for couples in Medicare Advantage — because everyone deserves the chance to grow old with their spouse, prunes and Depends and all, regardless of sexuality.
Happy Friday, Gators!
A version of this editorial ran on page 6 on 8/30/2013 under the headline "Darts & Laurels"
