the fog of war

This exchange on Andrew Sullivan's blog illustrates something most of us find very hard to confront:

from a servicemember:

I saw your statement about how one reader can longer read your blog because it is too depressing. I agree that you are not in denial and believe that you're a fantastic writer. But as I could tolerate your views on Iraq when I was in the U.S., now that I am here, I too find your blog difficult to read. You are co-dependent with the vast majority of journalists who hang around the Green Zone and eventually try to figure this country out by riding in a convoy or going from camp to camp. Just like any experience, you must work to achieve full understanding and the stories you parse together as indicative of what is going on in Iraq is just flat out wrong.

That you have missed the true story here in Iraq and don't realize it is perfectly understandable to me. I was blissfully ignorant while back in the US a few months back, gorging on the Green Zone press menu of car bombs and massacres. Of course these are news-worthy stories, but do little to show how the overall war effort is going here. Al Anbar has changed dramatically just since I have been here and not for the worse, but just different. I wish I could recount to you how things have changed, but for operations security reasons, I can't. But, I shouldn't have to. There is enough information about what is going on here that I think you should be able to look at all of the sensational stories that play so well in New York, but also do a little bit of digging and find the true story.

I have tried hard to inform you about Afghanistan, but you don't seem to get that struggle either. I even told you prior to this spring that the Taliban regularly stir things up this time each year by sending groups of 100 down from the mountains to fight near Kandahar. I also told you that these fighters die by the score and are finished by July if the past yearly pattern is any indication.  Each year, the press jumps on the story and uses "resurgent Taliban" to describe the rag-tag forces that cross the border from Pakistan not knowing most will be dead in a few months.  Again, go back and read stories from 2004 when everyone predicted the Taliban were back until they were all dead by July.  Of course they will be back next spring in limited numbers to attack poor farmers around Tarin Kowt and you will all get depressed again because you think everything is lost.

And the response from a reader

I would ask your erstwhile military reader that if a car bomb in Detroit today killed five policemen, as happened today in Mosul; if the president was forced to declare a state of emergency in Dallas because 140 people were kidnapped and killed this month, as was the case in Basra; if a priest was gunned down in Washington D.C., as was the case today in Baghdad where a Shiite muazzin was killed; if the major of a Westminster, Md., was killed by a bomb hidden in his air conditioner, as was the case in a city 60 miles north of Baghdad today; if jittery police forces fired upon and killed two women, one of them pregnant, north of the capital - if all of these related events happened in the United States this day, May 31 - a day after another 54 were killed by a car bomb in Washington - do you think the news media would, or should, report that despite the violence, all was well in most of America?

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senator sanitorium

Pennsylvania, please vote this asshole out of your government this fall:

Before every election, the Post-Gazette routinely sends letters to the candidates seeking material for the Voters Guide. Back in March, as part of that process for the primary, the newspaper sent a letter to Rick Santorum at his home address, at least the one that he claims. Back from Penn Hills came the letter with a sticker from the U.S. Postal Service checked as "Not Deliverable As Addressed -- Unable To Forward."

That is all you need to know about the nasty dispute between the Republican Sen. Santorum and his Democratic opponent, Bob Casey Jr., in the November election. The whole thing is rooted in one inconvenient fact for Sen. Santorum: He doesn't live here anymore.

This is not to say that he doesn't visit Penn Hills from time to time. But while he may meet the legal requirements for residency, his home is in Virginia with his wife and children. This is well-known and it has been for quite a while. Indeed, it was at the heart of the objection by some Penn Hills residents to the local school district paying for the senator's children to be enrolled in a cyber charter school. The theory was that -- let us emphasize it again because it is central to the current problem -- he doesn't live here anymore.

In furtherance of that objection, two local Democrats, Ed and Erin Vecchio, tried to revive the residency issue on primary election day, which was covered by a subsequent KDKA-TV report. A radio ad for Sen. Santorum flagrantly distorts that report, suggesting that "operatives" for the Casey campaign had trespassed on the Santorum property. (It also sneeringly calls Mr. Casey "Bobby" -- as if the Democrat wore short pants.)

First, the couple criticizing Sen. Santorum have denied a connection to the Casey campaign, an assertion confirmed by Mr. Casey. (Perhaps Sen. Santorum thinks that just being a critical Democrat makes people "operatives.")

Second, no one has admitted to trespassing on the Santorum property or peering through windows. The KDKA report merely quoted Mr. Vecchio as saying the house was vacant, with no curtains or furniture. But you wouldn't have to be a trespasser to find that out; you could ask neighbors -- or the local mail carrier. After all, the senator's absence is not in serious dispute because he doesn't live here anymore.

Mr. Casey described Sen. Santorum's claims as "weird" and "bizarre." Actually, they are beyond weird and raise serious questions about the senator's ethics that go beyond the residency question. In a letter to Mr. Casey, he speaks of his "outrage" regarding the actions of the Casey campaign "which have put our six young children at a serious safety risk."

Though that suggestion is far-fetched to the point of absurdity, it would be a potential source of fear only if the senator actually lived in Penn Hills, but -- let us repeat one last time -- the Santorum family is at no risk because he doesn't live here anymore and the family is in Virginia most of the time. So what we have is the senator making untrue and outrageous comments while seeking to hide behind his wife and kids in order to get around an inconvenient fact.

We have a feeling that those who do live here may have something to say about this cowardly tactic at the November polls.

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what kind of a world?

From Ezra Klein:

Quick thought experiment: if a martian landed on this planet, and you explained to him that there were these two types of cigarettes, one that was violently addictive and increased your susceptibility to a deadly disease by 2000%, and another that was pleasant, non-addictive, and protective against the killer ailment, which do you think our friendly neighborhood martian would theorize we keep legal?

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more television blogging

Ok, I'm back from a fabulous vacation in Crete. A totally random and wonderful trip...pictures of which may be viewed here.

Since coming home from a cramped delayed red-eye to find out that today is a holiday and no buses are running or stores open, I have had the time and inclination to catch up on various shows and whoa, finally another great episode of the Sopranos after a few ho-hum ones. But first I would have to say how impressed I was with the season finale of CSI:Miami. I think this show suffers a bit from 'middle child' syndrome when compared to the original CSI and the younger CSI:NY. Really, I think it is probably the most style-conscious show on television, the set alone being the police station of the future. Of course, I'm fairly certain the real Miami-Dade PD isn't holed up in the same luxury, who knows? It certainly has plenty of jaw-dropping location shooting, even if those locations are crime scenes. I was surprised that Boa Vista was the mole, because they made it such an obvious red herring that when the real perpetrators were unveiled and said dismissively "Boa Vista was useless!" in regards to being an imformant, that was a neat surprise. Also I didn't get the artistic choice of the subtitles for the big bad guy, but they were tres arty for prime-time. I've also noticed some great dialogue and line readings, especially from my fav character, Calliegh Dusquene, especially in the sunset denouement. But lastly, umm...CSI:Brazil? Well I'm down with that, only if we get to see some hot Brazilians.

As for the Sopranos, I really enjoyed 'Cold Stones', the penultimate episode in this year's 10-episode mini-season. It brought everything full-circle, leading poor gay Vito off a cliff. To bring everyone up to speed, Vito Spatafore was a captain in the Soprano family who in addition to being a sociopath, was also in the closet. After an uneasy exile to NH, his love of the made life sends him careening drunkenly down one of our charming NE forest roads, colliding with a truck, whose owner he shoots, of course symbolically killing his potential life there. He ends up dead in a motel room, at the hand of his brother-in-law, with a pool cue shoved up his ass. A gruesome ending like Jack Twist's in Brokeback Mountain, but remarkable for its restraint: reportedly, they filmed a few versions of Vito's demise, so presumably that includes a more graphic scene. One of them involves Vito being ambushed by Carlo Gervasi and some other New Jerseyites, who knock him out and dump him in a trunk. Vito's kids reading the newspaper account of their father's murder, especially when the girl asks, 'so daddy wasn't in the CIA?' the boy's no just broke my heart. I loved Ro and Carm's Excellent Adventure...it allowed for a reasonably spontaneous philosophy from Carmela, some great cracks by Ro and spectacular use of location, like the bust above the Guerlain shop. Although there was one very halting scene with Tony and Melfi, she totally got him good by telling him that he resented AJ because AJ's mother treats AJ like Tony wished his mother had been. It was great how he calmly smashes AJ's windshield after that and says "Don't test me." I loved how Tony rationalized it all in business terms in front of the crew but was bullshit to alone Sil. Most significant was all the hints towards Phil having his own homosexual tendencies in Vito's death scene: he literally comes out of the closet to confront the beat-down Vito, whose mouth has immediately been taped. Then Phil taunts Vito by cupping his ear and saying what was that? as Vito struggles to talk, an unusual taunt, begging the question about twenty years in prison.

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wonders never cease

Science works in strange yet consistent ways: Tectin is a pain reliever being developed from one of the most poisonous toxins in the world, the tetradotoxin of the pufferfish. The Japanese ingest the pufferfish raw as sashimi, braving a torturous death from sloppy preparation. The viscera of this fish (and other animals such as octopus, frog and salamander species), including the liver and sex organs, teem with this concentrated poison. Pufferfish also have the shortest recorded genome of any vertebrate.

Tetrodotoxin binds to sodium channels, preventing sodium influx into nerve axons. It also acts on vascular smooth muscle and skeletal muscle. Symptoms of tetrodotoxin occur rapidly after ingestion and include weakness, dizziness, paresthesias of the face and extremities, nausea, and loss of reflexes. With higher doses there is severe hypotension and, in some cases, general paralysis. Death can occur due to respiratory failure and hypotension. It is not unusual for the patient to remain conscious while paralyzed.

Western medicine records the first case of poisoning on Captain Cook's voyage, when local tropical pufferfish were fed to the ship's pigs. Smaller amounts of tetradotoxin can cause a state of total paralysis which has been utilized for centuries in conjunction with folk superstitions to make people into 'zombies'.

But following in the success of zicontide(Prialt(R)), the pain reliever made the venom of the cone snail, researchers started looking at other natural venoms to see if they could be tamed as pain relievers. These new pain relievers is touted as a non-addictive pain reliever 1000 times as powerful as, and possibly a replacement for, morphine. These are various peptides, targeting each a specific nerve channel or receptor. This venom also contains a pain-reducing component, first pacifying the victim, before immobilising and then killing it.  Many peptides produced by the cone snails show prospects for being potent pharmaceuticals, such as AVC1, isolated from the Australian cone shell Conus victoriae. This has proved very effective in treating post-surgical and neuropathic pain, even accelerating recovery from nerve injury. Other drugs are in clinical and preclinical trials, such as compounds of the toxin that may be used in the treatment of Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, and epilepsy.

Personal Note: I will be in Crete next week! In case anyone has wondered why the decrease in posts, it is because Blogger's post editor sucks my balls and gives me a 'failure to connect message' every time I finish a post with pictures. Then it won't connect. Of course, I could write Blogger, but so far all the douchebags at the Help Desk seem to want to do is chastize me for not reading the technical FAQ in detail. So hey, fuck you guys for all your non-help.

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a world without walls

Why is the Mexican border such a political problem for America at this moment? One answer is that nowhere else in the world do two countries with such different standards of living and relative wealth sharre such a massive border. The only way we are going to get people to stop moving from Mexico to here is the same way the European stopping their population from migrating to America, by imporiving the quality f life so that the Mexicans (or the Salvadoreans or the Chinese or anyone else) can find a good job, buy a home and raise a family at home. But although liberals may pay lip service to inequality as a root cause, the more they go along with inequitable laws and notions like guest worker programs that are vague on how and if our guests will need to be escorted back home.

Militarizing the Mexican border will not keep terrorists from crossing the totally undefended Canadian border or legally through Europe. It would send a signal to one of our biggest trading partners that we don't trust them. And then there are the arguments for deportation, one of which was made using the Holocaust as a proof-of-concept. This is the bitter fruit of the Southern strategy of the GOP: years of aligning themsleves politically with people who hold extremist racist visions and fears for America. Now, when the President has seen his policies fully repudiated, the conservatives excuse their exit from the Crawford consensus on the pretext of 'amnesty for law-breakers'! Even as the AG has possibly illegal grandparents, illustrating the tenuous skeleton of the modern Republican party. Now Saint W has become Jorge Arbusto, as they claim that Holocaust analogy was only meant to show logisitcs and not the morality of ripping families and businesses apart for some hysterical perception of cultural doom.

I'd like to say its all reactionary paleoconservatives, but then I read this article about a paleoliberal environmentalist who started this current wave of Know-Nothingism by founding the anti-immigration group FAIR in 1979 based on a specious Malthusian view of Zero Population Group, John Tanton. A retired opthamologist from Petoskey in the upper peninsula of Michigan, Tanton and his wife left the original ZPG group to found the Federation for American Immigration Reform. Tanton also helped to found the talking points factories NumbersUSA, U.S. English and the Center for Immigration Studies. He is also co-author of the Immigration Invasion with Wayne Lutton, from the white nationalist Council of Conservative Citizens.

The thing I find the most ridiculous is the rhetoric about law-breaking and how it makes illegal immigrants more likely to commit a truly heinous criminal act. Does that mean if I am jaywalking rather than waiting for the crosswalk sign to light up, that I am more likely to throw a brick at a baby carriage once I get to the other side. \but particularly offensive to me as a descendant of Pilgrim, is the argument that starts: well, my ancestors came here legally, Ellis Island, etc. This is a naive view of the history of immigration law in the US. When some of my ancestors immigrated there were no laws to cover immigration and no one to enforce them. This is not even to mention the millions who were forced to immigrate aginst their will to serve as slaves. Before 1965 anybody could cross the Mexican border at will. Good fences don't always make good neighbors. But keep making the 'National Socialist' comparison by all means. It will be good to talk to watch the Southwest of America turn Blue. For people trying to encourage assimilation, please note you can't kick someone in the ass and shake their hand at the same time.

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the huntress

In Greek myth, hunters who stumbled upon the Goddess Diana in her bath would be transmogrified into a stag themselves, only to be hunted down by their former colleagues.
The wrath of the professor of gender studies at USC, Dr. Diana York Blaine, may not be divine, but it as sharp as lightning: in response to a cadre of conservative gadflies who have appointed themselves keepers of public morality, releasing her photos of her breats taken without permission from her Flickr stream. The final comment:

So exactly who is "concerned"? The news never makes that clear because what's really happening is the manufacture of a scandal, for all the reasons detailed above. The obfuscating language permits them to do this. Meanwhile over 2400 United States citizens have been killed in Iraq. But while I saw repeated televised images of my wonderful personal life and pixilated pictures of my breasts on television all day yesterday, I didn't hear those dead men and women discussed once.

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Dutch courage?

I love the Netherlands, although more and more I see the changes taking place in Dutch society. Like in the US, they are coming to grips with the practical limitations of their national romantic myths.

One such myth for the Dutch is their place as haven for the politically dispossessed, a tradition which they will proudly tell you, goes back to Jews during the Inquisition. One of the most prominent politicians in Holland is the parlimentarian Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Although a Dutch citizen, Ms. Ali was originally born in Somalia, where she was forced into having her genitals mutilated at age 5 and into an arranged polygamous marriage as a teenager. After a torturous exodus from the Horn of Africa to the Netherlands, she misrepresented herself on some of the byzantine forms needed for asylum. While here she made a partly biographical film regarding her experiences as a woman in an Islamic society called Submission, with the director Theo Van Gogh. Van Gogh was stabbed to death on an Amsterdam street in 2004 by a young mentally-disturbed radical Islamist.

Since then, Ms. Ali has been under constant death threat. First they drive her out of her house – now they are apparently trying to drive her out of her country. She admitted she had lied in her refugee application when she ran for Parliament in 2002, so this is not news to anyone, and now her political opponents want her stripped of her Dutch citizenship and deported. Others say she should be expelled from Parliament. Personally, I would go to Canada if I were her. This European idea of arbitrarily revoking citizenship should be troubling to anyone who is against fascism.

This is needlessly vicious politicking of nationality largely by naively pro-Islam Dutch socialists has so painfully hypocritical to watch. Especially since it seems progressives are trying to assume one of the right's favorite rhetorical tactics: the Trojan horse argument, where you appeal to the values of your opponent by arguing that actually you are on the same side. Here we see the 'conservative' argument (The law must not make exceptions, and similar arguments which drive people to join the Minutemen in Arizona) and wrapping them into a rationale for sending someone to be beheaded as an apostate because they think she is getting 'uppity'? Criticism of a religion should not be considered racist. Of course, its ironic that the party which is most in favor of immigration restrictions has a member with less than spotless paperwork. But this is a reprehensible devolution in tactics.

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i've been saying it for years

From Sam Anderson in Slate:

The best part about rewatching He-Man, after the initial
nostalgia-burst, was tracking the show's hilarious accidental
homo-eroticism—an aspect I missed completely as a first-grader. In the
ever-growing lineup of "outed" classic superheroes, He-Man might be the easiest target of all. It's almost too easy: Prince Adam, He-Man's alter ego, is a ripped Nordic pageboy with blinding teeth and sharply waxed eyebrows who spends lazy afternoons pampering his timid pet cat; he wears lavender stretch pants, furry purple Ugg boots, and a sleeveless pink blouse that clings like saran wrap to his pecs. To become He-Man, Adam harnesses what he calls "fabulous secret powers": His clothes fall off, his voice drops a full octave, his skin turns from vanilla to nut brown, his giant sword starts gushing energy, and he adopts a name so absurdly masculine it's redundant. Next, he typically runs around seizing space-wands with glowing knobs and fabulously straddling giant rockets. He hangs out with people called
Fisto and Ram Man, and they all exchange wink-wink nudge-nudge dialogue: "I'd like to hear more about this hooded seed-man of yours!" "I feel the bony finger of Skeletor!" "Your assistance is required on Snake Mountain!" Once you start thinking along these lines, it's impossible to stop. (Clearly, others have had the same idea.) It's a prime example of how easily an extreme fantasy of masculinity can circle back to become its opposite.

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"Vessel" (Smallville)

I haven't been blogging much on the joys of
television. Even last week's Sopranos failed to sway me, although it
was better than the prior week's show. This week's Prison Break
episode, where Team Escarpara finally breaks out was intense. But what
really brought me out was this week's penultimate episode of
Smallville. After several seasons of mediocre, I was stunned. Of
course, my general barometer for Smallville quality is based on the
level of John Glover. Loved how quickly he went from Dad to 'do what
ya gotta do'. But to leave off, the forces of good are in sorry-ass
shape: Clark is imprisoned in the Phantom Zone; Ma Kent and Lois Lane
are on a plane to oblivion; Chloe and Lionel are trapped in the riots,
Lex is 100% evil now with a hot Zod injection; and Lana is his
love-slave. But whoa...Clark in the Phantom Zone. That is a whole
'nother cliffhanger altogether. It's good next season will be the last
cuz that is hard to top in a pre-Superman show. Brainiac was
Superman's deadliest enemy and always seemed to have him by the balls,
unlike hapless human multitrillionaire Lex. It's best not to think of
how much unbelievable there is, like Lana being the tougher street
fighter than Chloe; that no guns go off during the riot; the need for
the riot at all etc. Chloe seemed not her usual wunderkind self, but
her kiss at the end was totally in character and spectacular. I loved
John Glover's line about the Devil always coming ot collect on his
deals, a hat tip to his turn as Satan in Brimstone. Was interesting to
see Lex with super-powers, even if they made him a complete asshole,
chucking Lionel into his SUV. And hasn't Lana become the character to
hate...say what you will about motivations but still she was letting
Chloe get raped as she walked by. I think Papa Luthor to the rescue is
the only way to resolve this.

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Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

Did anyone believe President Bush when he said that his 'terrorist surveillance program' would only be for international calls where one party is a suspected terrorist? After he has broken over 750 of our nation's laws which he doesnt believe apply to him. After he has abandoned any sense of limits in governmental power and appended dicatorial signing statements to the laws he's willing to break but unwilling to veto. After his recent suggestion that his brother JEb further the dynasty. No, there is little left to be drawn from that well. Now we find out that it is the 'world's largest database' storing perfect digital copies of tens of millions of Americans' phone calls that the NSA has.

This gigantic program, operated without oversight by members of the administration, would have been kept a secret until the War on Terror ended if the White house got its way, which is to say never. Again, why should we believe that this is not invasive? A simple cross-reference of the IRS Db could produce a very complete dossier on just about anyone. Suddenly, the man running this scheme, Gen. Hayden, is the new nominee for CIA chief. Of course, he does have access to what must be a trove of intentional blackmail info: what congressman is having an affair, who is really gay, etc. Already he is cancelling meetings with senators.

The more ironic aspects include the fact that the Justice department was denied security clearance to investigate. Saying that no 'mining or trolling' goes on is ludricrous considering that this information would not be gathered if it was not going to be analyzed. Of course, the President immediately invoked 9/11 to justify these egregious acts. Someday the American people will tire of the claim that that day gave the president unlimited power to snoop on the lives of average Americans.

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quite contrary

John Aravosis of AmericaBlog has another screed pointing out the byzantine layers of hypocrisy in the words of Mary Cheney, the lesbian daughter of the Vice President. In his polemic, John elucidates a commonly observed facet of sexual politics: the self-hating reactionary tendencies of the 'newly gay'. When people are just coming out of the closet and especially if they come from a conservative background, internalized homophobia tends to bubble up when they encounter other GLBT people. Thus, in political discourse, the newly gay will utter things like:

1. I'm not one of those "activists." (I.e., I don't do anything to defend my rights, so I belittle people who do in order to make myself feel better.)
2. Sure I'm gay, but it's not all I am, I'm other things
   too. (I.e., I'm still a bit embarrassed about who I am and about the fact that I'm not an activist).
3. Why can't gay people be more "normal," like
   me? (Normal means hiding out in the suburbs.)
4. I'm not a single-issue voter. (I.e., I still vote Republican and the only issue I DON'T take account when voting is "me.")
5. Republicans don't really hate gay people, they just "have" to vote the way they do for politics. (I.e., I still vote Republican.)
6. Democrats, sure they vote FOR gay people, but they're not perfect either. (I.e., I know Republicans trash gays 90% of the
   time and the Dems help gays 90% of the time, but I still need to justify why I vote for a party that hates me.)

The hypocrisy is apparent in Mary's descriptions of President Bush, strong supporter of the Federal Marriage Amendment, as someone who just hasn't 'caught up' yet. While his last opponent was a 'son of a bitch' for mentioning her already-public sexuality in a debate. Not to mention the farce of her mother crying for the discrimination she would face when she came out to them. It sure sounds like someone has a guilty conscience. Mary said she responded to Kerry using her as an example of the hypocrisy of Republican values-mongering by mouthing the words 'Go Fuck Yourself'. This, of course, was what her father said on the Senate floor to Patrick Leahy and serves as a fitting epitaph for the Cheney family in politics.

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Colbert and the Reporters

Colbert's roughest line(IMHO)?

I stand by this man. I stand by this man because he stands for things. Not only for things, he stands on things. Things like aircraft carriers and rubble and recently flooded city squares. And that sends a strong message, that no matter what happens to America, she will always rebound -- with the most powerfully staged photo ops in the world

Joan Walsh(Salon): Colbert's deadly performance did more than reveal, with devastating clarity, how Bush's well-oiled myth machine works. It exposed the mainstream press' pathetic collusion with an administration that has treated it -- and the truth -- with contempt from the moment it took office. Intimidated, coddled, fearful of violating propriety, the press corps that for years dutifully repeated Bush talking points was stunned and horrified when someone dared to reveal that the media emperor had no clothes. Colbert refused to play his dutiful, toothless part in the White House correspondents dinner -- an incestuous, backslapping ritual that should be retired. For that, he had to be marginalized. Voilà: "He wasn't funny."
James Walcott:
Colbert was cool, methodical, and mercilessly ironic, not getting rattled when the audience quieted with discomfort (and resorting to self-deprecating "savers," as most comedians do), but closing in on the kill, as unsparing of the press as he was of the president. I mean no disrespect to Jon Stewart to say that in the same circumstances, he would have resorted to shtick; Colbert didn't. Apart from flubbing the water-half-empty joke about Bush's poll ratings, he was in full command of his tone, comic inflection, and line of attack. The we-are-not-amused smile Laura Bush gave him when he left the podium was a priceless tribute to the displeasure he incurred. To me, Colbert looked very relaxed after the Bushes left the room and he greeted audience members, signed autographs. And why wouldn't he be? He achieved exactly what he wanted to achieve, delivered the message he intended to deliver. Mission accomplished.Lance Mannion: I'm not surprised that many members of the Club are tut-tuting over Colbert's performance, calling it "inappropriate," suggesting that Colbert crossed some line of common decency, taste, and tact. He violated the Club rules. He came there and told them that what happens in Washington matters. He told them that they aren't playing a game or watching one. Lives are in the balance.

It'd be amusing to ask the Club members what they think someone like Mark Twain would have said if he'd come to their chummy little hoedown. I'll bet most of them admire Twain. Many of them probably read him and sigh out their wish to write like him with a pen warmed up in hell. It doesn't seem to occur to them to act on the wish, but nevermind. Think Twain would have made a couple good natured cracks about President McKinley's bald pate and called it a night?
"The problem is that this black tie underscores the notion that journalists are part of a wealthy elite, completely out of touch with ordinary Americans -- their audience."John Rogers: If Colbert "bombed", it was because the audience didn't like him. And you know what -- they WEREN'T SUPPOSED TO. We have been treated to toothless feel-good comedy for so long, we have forgotten what the court jester's job was: he was the only guy who could mock the King. And, seeing as we now have a President who acts like a King, it's only fitting that Colbert revive the tradition in its truest form. If I remember correctly, the toady court followers were also fair game for the Jester, and we could hardly call the modern media anything less these days, can we?

As for Colbert crossing the line -- how? Did he make remarks about the President's wife? About his children? His sex life? His draft dodging, his drinking and drug use before he found the Lord? No. Every joke used a well-known fact of public-record. Does anyone deny the poll numbers cited? Does anyone deny that the government response to previous crisises have been deficient? Does anyone deny that Administration officials outed Valerie Plame (hell, even the Administration officials now have to rely on he idea it was accidental)? Does anyone deny that the Administration has actively opposed global warming discussions? Listen -- if the President could do a long routine about not finding WMD's and laughing about it, while US soldiers died in the resultant war ... then to be frank I think he set the bar. Oddly, I think that if Colbert had done the routine the President did a couple years ago, THAT would have been crossing the line for me.Dan Froomkin: What Colbert was saying about the guy sitting a few feet away from him -- and I think this is what made so many people in that room uncomfortable -- was: Don't believe a word he says

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Second impressions

I've changed my mind about something quite contentious to me. I like the recent Aeon Flux movie starring Charlize Theron. It was hard, considering how dismissive I was when it first came out. I adored the original shorts and the television series. After all, Aeon Flux resisted easy translation to screenplay: it was relentlessly nonlinear, viciously amoral, and had a serious foot fetish.
Some Hollywood script cliche gives both Aeon and Trevor siblings and worse a rationale for why they are soul mates. Some decried the loss of the fetish aesthetic to a relentless technocratic minimalism. In retrospect, the film is in the curious position of having to make an action movie based on a series of animated shorts designed to parody the action movie genre. The first time, I saw only the differences between the original and the source, how there are two different states in the original and how different the costuming was, superficial deviations. Most of these deviations themselves result from the anti-continuity standpoint of the original. But I also noticed telling allusions and homages to the television series, such as Schizandra's hands for feet. They kept the reality-bending gadgets, such as one that warps the wearer between different dimensional frequencies within the same room Acrobatics can seem unrealistic enough without trying to make stunt people perform in bondage gear.
The movie both solves and explores the essential mysterious question about Aeon. How can she keep appearing when she shows up dead after every mission? Cloning, although the duh answer, is quite intelligently handled.The climax is a little weak, employing strangely conventional weapons, but its social implications are relevant. Although we could damn AF with faint praise by saying that the theme of the social consequences of cloning was addressed fair better in comparison to Michael Bay's overwrought the Island, also of the same year.Ultimately, taken on its own it stands as an example of pure science fiction. Aeon Flux the movie is saved by its crisp, wholly original retro-futuristic aesthetic, which is both contained within Silver Age (1960-1975) design and contemporary understanding of molecular biology and genetics. The exquisite taste and truly impressive real-world buildings and settings used in the film, and the delicious minimalist nature of the artificial environment are captivating in the grand filmic sense. There is a recurring motif of plant life as a living threat and backdrop in many critical scenes in the film &— plants as life force and plants as weaponry. The walls of Bregna frequently spray a chemical acid to keep the jungle from moving in and destroying the city. Wireless communication is now chemically-induced. The conception of biotechnology of the future being incredibly pervasive is also perhaps one of the finest hallmarks of the film, with an imagination based on real molecular biology and chemistry being very evident. Ae†on Flux is perhaps the most significant film to have as its centre genetics, cloning and disease since the trio of the Jurassic Park franchise, Outbreak and Gattaca in recent years. Also the film rejects the amorality and fetishism of the original movie, which caused some fans to call for a Lynch/Cronenburg surrealistic remake which would be a mistake.

It is pure cerebral science fiction, coherent with the post-cyberpunk movement away from such unrealistic literary devices as time travel, extraterrestrial beings, and other attempts to creatively misunderstand scientific knowledge. Identity and the existential dilemma are brought out by several honest and solid performances. The film also suffered from the politics of the critic/studio relationship, when the weak-willed producers selling this cerebral action sci-fi film in the middle of a holiday season between Harry Potter and Narnia, refused to let critics screen the film until two hours before its release. I predict Aeon Flux will be a sleeper cult classic in the years to come.

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in a nutshell

Lawyers, Guns and Money hath wrought the wingnuttiest statement possible:

Can we continue to have public schools if they lead to all this multiculturalism, teenage sex, the attack on public displays of religion, sympathy for the homosexual agenda, and increased property taxes, which are dangerous without the adoption of the gold standard, which places us at risk economically and militarily with China's stockpiling of gold, and since China is connected to North Korea, which is part of the Axis of Evil with Iran, which will use our southern borders to smuggle in a dirty bomb, public schools cannot be allowed to continue to exist unless we have a wall keeping illegal immigrants from Mexico out of the United States.

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starstruck

Quibbling over stars refers to a practice of linguists critizing another's work. Rather than maing a substantive criticism of methodology or theory, the argument is based on the acceptability judgements made by the author, which are marked by stars. The starred sentences indicate that they are impossible sentences by the rules of the grammar set out in the paper. Thus the quibble is whether this is really impossible at all, and thus the whole distinction of the grammar to other possible grammars is lost. Likewise, a tendency to make these strong prouncements about the possibilities of language is a necessary weakness in the theory of language. Thus people get stars wrong all the time and its low-hanging fruit.

The same thing happens in all arenas of debate. Just look at the recent semantic scuffle between Juan Cole and Christopher Hitchens: Hitchens said that President Ahmadinejad of Iran said that Israel was to be wiped off the map, a metaphor to be sure, but Cole argued Hitchens misquoted Mahmoud about the intent as well, further arguing that the occupying regime referenced in the original Persian referred to the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza following the 1967 war and not Israel itself per se. Nevermind that this conference was a World Without Zionism. This proved to be disastrously wishful thinking by Cole, when the entire context of the quote is considered. Hitchens:

Esrail ghiyam-e mossalahaane bar zed-e mamaalek-e eslami nemoodeh ast va bar doval va mamaalek-eeslami ghal-o-gham aan lazem ast.

My source here is none other than a volume published by the Institute for Imam Khomeini. Here is the translation:

Israel has declared armed struggle against Islamic countries and its destruction is a must for all governments and nations of Islam.

This is especially important, and is also the reason for the wide currency given to the statement: It is making something into a matter of religious duty. The term "ghal-o-gham" is an extremely strong and unambivalent one, of which a close equivalent rendering would be "annihilate."

Professor Cole has completely missed or omitted the first reference in last October's speech, skipped to the second one, and flatly misunderstood the third. (The fourth one, about "eliminating the occupying regime," I would say speaks for itself.) He evidently thinks that by "occupation," Khomeini and Ahmadinejad were referring to the Israeli seizure of the West Bank and Gaza in 1967. But if this were true, it would not have been going on for "more than fifty years" now, would it? The 50th anniversary of 1967 falls in 2017, which is a while off. What could be clearer than that "occupation regime" is a direct reference to Israel itself?

Ouch. I wish all my rhetoric could be that sharp when discussing phonemes and aphasia.

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Free Pfc. Pornstar!

So I have had the worst case of writer's block this month, thinking about potential posts only to have them suffer from a lack of words. But I'll just pull one amazing story from BoingBoing: the military made San Francisco into a gay mecca.

Wha? is I'm sure the reaction many of you might first have to Ask Yahoo!(them?) and this pearl of logic, but it fits. Consider the current don't ask, don't tell (DADT) policy of the American military. This of course has nothing to do with the boot-on-the-ground reality of, as Tony Soprano said a few weeks ago,

"This is 2006. There are fudge-packers in the Special Forces."

Nevertheless, it is considered an improvement in civility from days when inquistory tactics towards GLBT servicemembers had a more punitive aspect. Even so, we need look no further than to find members of the 82nd Airborne convicted of consensual sodomy, something no longer a crime in America thanks to the case of Lawrence vs. Texas. Yes, he was getting paid for doing it, but there is no other job in the US that would send him to jail for doing such a thing with another adult behind closed doors. And they get railroaded into prison time while in the same state everyone fusses over those lacrosse-playing douchebags who sexually assaulted a stripper and then subjected her to racist taunts. That's not even to mention the two boys in Arizona that got away with violently sodomizing younger boys under their watch as camp counselors.

Watching the video which implicated the paratroopers, Bareback Recruits 2, its easy to see why this stuck out and got those involved noticed: it's hot. What I mean by that is that despite low production values, the enthusiasm and vigor of the participants is strikingly natural and without internalized homophobia. You see, usually there is in gay porn a strong power dynamic linked to the gay-for-pay phenomenon, where you are see men who never get penetrated and men who are exclusively penetrated, the former considered more masculine compared to the latter. But all the men in the video perform both roles, without reservation or prophylatics. In a sense, they were too good at being porn stars for their own good.
During and following WWII, San Francisco was a major point of departure. Most of the man dishonorably discharged would be processed and released from bases in the Bay City. Gay men already in the armed forces also began to retire their after completing their service. In the 1960's, activist groups gained in membership and prominence. Today San Francisco has the highest concentration of gay men, gay women and same-sex couples in the world. I wish some of the people who say they love their country could love that fact.

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