How to not write a story about assaulting someone

Reuters writes a lighthearted "oh those wacky celebrities!" piece on, umm, a celebrity physically assaulting a woman.

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - Omar Sharif sure is a stickler for manners.

The 79-year-old "Lawrence of Arabia" star got a little too hands-on with a female fan Thursday morning at the Doha Tribeca Film Festival in Qatar, slapping the woman when she cut in line for a photograph with him, TMZ reports.

The exchange occurred after the woman approached Sharif on the red carpet and asked for a photograph -- despite the fact that there were other people waiting before her. Sharif didn't like it, and instead of rocking the Casbah he yelled at her in Arabic to wait her turn before letting fly with a hearty slap.

Amazingly, the fan not only didn't flee in terror, but stuck around to have her picture taken with the actor, plastering a smile on her face as if she hadn't just gotten pummeled by one of the foremost actors of his generation.

Maybe she was collecting evidence?

Sharif has a history of hot-headed physical exchanges with strangers. He attacked a police officer in a Paris casino in 2003, and copped to misdemeanor battery in 2007 after brawling with a parking attendant in Beverly Hills.

So... umm.... the story is that a man just hit a woman. He hit a woman. In the face. Why are there attemps at jokes in this article?

I'm trying to figure out if Reuters just passed this off so lightheartedly becuase Sharif is a legendary celebrity, which of course means they are "allowed" to slap women or if it's becasue the woman was Arab, which of course means she's "allowed" to be slapped. Seriously, go ahead and read this article to yourself and imagine it was a black celebrity slapping a white American. Fox News would be wondering why there isn't a warrant out for him.

"The Conservative Choice"

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Because there remains a spectacularly high number of people who think Herman Cain could actually be president, there remains an obligation on my part to point out that they are spectacularly high.

This week's installment pays homage to Cain's recent attempt to pretend that he doesn't actually want to make abortion completely illegal, because that would upset sane people, by acknowledging that there are understandable exceptions to being against abortion in the real world, which upsets very crazy people. This is especially problematic for Cain since his core demographic is the very, very crazy, as evidenced by their belief he will be president.

But it's also about a larger and more frequent aspect of conservative thought, which is that actually being a true conservative requires you to be a monster and most people actually aren't. And so conservative voters have to go out of their way to pretend that they aren't actually "pro-choice," because that's what awful liberals think: they just think government shouldn't have the right to, umm, control people's lives or something.

Cain later struggled to defend his total, 100% "end of story" opposition to abortion by insisting that there should be a Constitutional amendment banning it, which he would happily sign. You know, in a parallel universe where presidents actually signed Constitutional amendments. Your frontrunner, half of America.

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