Free Republic

Charles Perrault, author of Little Red Riding Hood, Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella was born 388 years ago, and has been commemorated with a Google Doodle. Perrault was born in Paris in 1628, and was a lawyer before turning his hand to the written word. While the Brothers Grimm are widely credited with creating the fairy tale as we know it, Perrault actually wrote stories called Le Petit Chaperon Rouge, La Belle au bois dormant and Cendrillon a full 200 years before. In 1695, aged 67, he wrote Tales and Stories of the Past with Morals, a series of moral tales...

The Google Doodle today is about a Frenchman who apparently preceeded Hans Christian Andersen and the Grimm Brothers in the Fairy Tale genre. "Charles Perrault [(1628-1703)], author of Little Red Riding Hood, Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella was born 388 years ago, and has been commemorated with a Google Doodle." - Rhiannon Williams, "Who was Charles Perrault? Why the fairy tales you know may not be as they seem" Google's Doodle today is not linking to their own servers, or WikiMedia Foundation, but directly to the reactionary, patriarchal (though distinctly not "homophobic") servers of Telegraph.Co.UK. Here is the Doodle. Here is...

Fox News host Bill O'Reilly responded again Friday to allegations made by "Mother Jones" that he lied about his coverage of the Falklands conflict in 1982. Thursday night, shortly after the allegations were published, O'Reilly came out blasting, calling David Corn, one of the authors of the piece, a "pig" in an interview with The Sun. Friday in his "Talking Points" memo, which was to be broadcast at 8 p.m. during his show, O'Reilly quoted from internal CBS memos that he says he found last night, which back his version of the coverage he provided for the network 33 years...

This is a funny voice mail: http://mfile.akamai.com/5022/wma/coast.download.akamai.com/5022/clips/05/02/020305_incident.asx

<p>Southwest Airlines is always trying to be funny. Now a case in which its trademark humor apparently failed is turning out to be the funniest story of all.</p> <p>This week, a judge in Kansas City, Kan., has cleared for takeoff a discrimination lawsuit against the airline. But Southwest's sin is not about overweight or undertall stewardesses, or even about the racial profile of their pilots. Southwest is in trouble over a children's rhyme. And it could cost them nine, ten, a big fat hen.</p>