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Saturday, March 16, 2002
French Intellectuals to be Deployed in Afghanistan to Convince Taliban of Non-Existence of God Click here.
Now featuring New! Improved! Permalinks!! Many of you have been asking for this since the blog went online. So here you are, and let the joyous festival of linkage begin. (The archive page isn't as purty as it could be--seems to be some trouble with the template right now--but the words are there, and that's what matters.) -------------------- Friday, March 15, 2002
Insert clever title here What an exciting morning I have had, running the various Norton Utilities diagnostic and defragging programs, trying to figure out why my computer has suddenly decided to take the day off today. Seems to be running now, so we'll keep our fingers crossed. So, two quick notes and I'm going to get back to work. First, Paul Krugman's column in today's NY Times (I'm going to be lazy and let you track down the link yourself) references an article I missed--which probably ran on the morning the mysterious Newspaper Thief once again struck my building, and I was too busy to buy another copy--the point of which was that the oil companies aren't even particularly interested in drilling ANWR--they're just not going to make that much money off of it, and they know it. The real driving force, according to Krugman? It's a "red meat" issue--a way to keep the conservative base happy by pissing off liberals. It's pure symbolism. And isn't that just more pathetic than you even imagined possible?  Secondly, since Alan Keyes has recently become a topic of discussion in this space, I wanted to post a picture of this canvas tote bag, which is probably my most prized souvenir from the 2000 Republican Convention. Okay, I'm outta here.
Rall redux For several years after my mother was killed by a drunk-and-stoned driver on a lonely stretch of interstate near her Arkansas home, I was a walking bundle of exposed nerves, easily set off by any offhand remark or innocuous reference. And it never goes away entirely--to this day, I can't watch that HBO series about the funeral home, because it just stirs up too much for me, too many memories of the appalling process of selecting a coffin model ("mahogany's very popular, or perhaps you'd prefer this lovely pink model"), and a style of grave liner (I believe the choices were plastic or steel)--all of this as if you are talking about remodeling the damn kitchen or something...and then the wake, and the many discussions of the mortician's competency at his craft--it's tough for me to write about this, even now, and it's been nearly a decade. The sudden finality of an unexpected loss rips you apart in a way you can't possibly imagine until it happens to you. And in my case, it was the loss of a parent--surely the pain must be magnified a hundredfold for those who lose a spouse. Making it through a single day becomes an ordeal of balance and composure in the face of overwhelming grief, like walking a long tightrope with a full glass of water in each hand--never knowing what might set off the next cascade of unwelcome emotion, sending you into a dark spiral with no safety net to break your fall. And when it is happening, the world seems divided into two camps--those who have shared your experience, and those who have not. The former understand the extraordinary importance of a simple kind word, while the latter too often simply have no idea what you're going through or how to deal with it. I am not entirely comfortable discussing this stuff here, but I'm doing so because I need this to be clear: when I support Rall's right to draw an offensive cartoon, I do not do so out of any lack of empathy for the families of the victims, to whom that cartoon must have felt like a blow to the midsection. I wish he hadn't drawn it, I wish his editors had had the sense not to run it. I didn't even want to address the topic in this space--it seemed to me that it was getting more than enough attention already--but then Keyes added his unfortunate two cents, and I felt that I had no choice but to speak up. Because I also believe this: freedom of speech means nothing if it does not apply to those with whom you vehemently disagree. But it works both ways, as I discussed in the previous post. This is a response to the cartoon from one of the widows. -------------------- Thursday, March 14, 2002
The Rall thing First, two relevant facts. One: Ted Rall's a drinking buddy of mine. Two: I thought the "Terror Widows" cartoon was a huge misfire. I haven't talked to Ted since this whole brouhaha began (that's a fun word, isn't it?--go on, say it a few times: brouhaha, brouhaha, ha, ha, ha!), but I don't intend to say anything here I won't say to his face the next time I see him. Which is, essentially: the cartoon was a mistake. I don't imagine that Rall was sitting around his studio thinking to himself, hey--I've got an idea! I'll publish a callous, ad hominem attack on the widows!--but, as everyone who follows these things is aware by now, that's pretty much how it turned out. And I'll be honest here: it angered and disgusted me when I read it. But, hey--it's a Ted Rall cartoon. Yes, he went over the line on this one. But it is a line he frequently steps right up to, and dangles a toe over while standing precariously on one leg, and this time he just happened to lose his balance and actually touch ground on the other side. And it has inspired an impassioned debate, mostly among bloggers discussing whether he's really, really a jerk or really, really, really a jerk. And that's all well and good, a cycle of provocation and response as old as the art of political commentary itself, without which online discourse--or any public discourse-- would surely wither up and die on the vine. But people, people-- let's try to keep everything in perspective, shall we? This has been all over the net, all over the news--there have even been newscasts here in New York on which Ted Rall's unpleasant cartoon was the lead story. There are battles raging in Afghanistan, we're clearly headed for Iraq, and the admistration won't rule out the use of nuclear weapons--and our top story tonight is about a cartoon that made people mad. I suppose, as a cartoonist, I should consider this a Good Thing, proof that my chosen profession is not as irrelevant as it often seems. Except that it's proof of no such thing--all that's really been proven here is that--news flash!--very few people consider the widows of 9/11 fair game for the satirist's pen. And as long as this all stays in the realm of public discourse, that's fine--there's no censorship involved that I can see, Ted's been given ample opportunity to elaborate on his work on various news programs, the critics have their blogs, everybody seems to be getting their say. But now Alan Keyes has decided to ratchet up the rhetoric, matching Rall note-for-note in the cacophany of outrageousness, to call him and then raise him--suggesting that the likes of Ted Rall should be supressed by any means necessary. I kid you not: But this brutal and inhuman comic strip was not debate — it was an assault on the decent national sensibilities crucial to the war effort. Such assaults are a kind of pornography in civic discourse. And like our response to pornographers, our toleration of Mr. Rall, and our means for dealing with him, are matters for prudential consideration. A free people should normally suppress such activities through private moral judgment and association. Pornographers should be shunned by all, and likewise Mr. Ted Rall should have been fired immediately by those with professional authority over him, or in contractual relations with him. Such action in defense of the decent judgment of this people in regard to 9-11 would be more than sufficient to keep such as Mr. Rall from subverting our national resolve. But it is worth remembering that when serious and sustained attempts to undermine public opinion on a matter genuinely essential to national life cannot be resisted by other means, governmental action may be necessary. For governmental action is also the action of a free people. Such was the case, despite all the continuing petulant complaints of superficial "civil libertarians," when President Lincoln was obliged to suppress rebellion in some northern citizens (some of whom happened to be newspaper editors), so that the rebellion of many more southern citizens could be effectively ended, and our great Civil War to maintain the Union brought to a victorious conclusion. Then, as today, assaults on the decent judgment of American citizens regarding the just and noble character of a national struggle are, literally, attempts to poison the sovereign. We, the people, are that sovereign. And we should not tolerate those who seek to debase our judgment and destroy our unity and resolve. Gosh, it's hard to know where to start with that. First off, let's acknowledge that Keyes is most likely doing the same thing many have accused Rall himself of doing--pursuing controversy for its own sake, being deliberately provocative to draw attention to himself. But having said that, let's look at his argument: through his expression of a controversial opinion, Rall seeks "to debase our judgment and destroy our unity and resolve." Yes, of course. I don't know what it's like where you live, but the streets of Brooklyn are just full of people who read about the cartoon that made fun of the widows and set out immediately to riot and pillage, because their unity and resolve had been so decisively undermined. And then there's the really disturbing suggestion that "governmental action may be necessary." What, exactly, would Mr. Keyes suggest? A new Sedition Act? Cartoonists hauled before military tribunals to defend their work? "You think this is funny, Mr. Rall?" Correct me if I'm wrong, but I was under the impression that Alan Keyes was one of those let-the-marketplace-work-its-magic, get-the-government-off-our-backs kind of conservatives. And he is also, I believe, a political pundit whose ideas are frequently--how shall I put this?-- not exactly splashing around in the swimming pool of mainstream opinion, peeing surreptitiously along with all the other societally-sanctioned talking heads. If he wants to write a column trashing Rall, that's fine, that's part of the whole process of public discourse. It is, you might say, the invisible hand of the marketplace of ideas at work. But for someone as controversial as Keyes to suggest that an expression of an unpopular opinion necessitates government intervention...I almost wrote that it "leaves me speechless," except that it obviously does not. But you get the idea. It's not the freedom of speech battle I would have chosen, but neither was Serrano's Piss Christ (a work that frankly left me cold). But that's what freedom of speech is about--the right to mock widows, or to dip crucifixes in urine, or whatever the hell idiotic thing you want, and, conversely, the right to denounce those who mock widows and dip crucifixes in urine. Bitch and moan about Rall all you want--and nothing I've written here should remotely be construed as a defense of the cartoon itself--but remember: when his right as an American to draw a cartoon you don't like is in question, your right to denounce him is not far behind. As Molly Ivins once said, the antidote for misuse of freedom of speech is more freedom of speech. To which I would only amend the obvious: not less.
Today is the first day of the rest of the week The Fox News telephone poll of the morning: Who do you think is more dangerous, Saddam or Osama? Why does this make me think of pimply fanboys arguing about supervillians? "Come on, the Green Goblin could kick Lex Luthor's ass!"--"No way!" * * * Also on Fox this morning, a rundown of a report taking Clinton to task for those last-minute pardons. My point here is not to defend Clinton's pardons--any honest person must acknowledge that there was a peculiar odor there, especially in the case of Marc Rich--but to keep things in perspective. I'm sure many of you will correct me if I am wrong (which is, of course, a constant possibility), but I don't remember similar investigations into George Bush the First Senior's highly questionable last minute pardons of the various Iran-Contra figures. This is not exactly a shockingly original observation, but the sheer hypocrisy of Republicans is an extraordinary thing to behold. As many of you know, I do not exactly have a surplus of respect for Democrats, but man, those Republicans are something else. Like Trent Lott's recent harassment of Daschle for daring to question a President during wartime--when Lott himself said in 1999, "I cannot support President Clinton and this military action in the Persian Gulf at this time. Both the timing and the policy are subject to question." Oh, and while I'm ranting--what about Bush at his press conference yesterday, comparing himself to General Tommy Franks, because they are both products of Vietnam--well, not Vietnam exactly, but, you know, the Vietnam era. (Franks went to Vietnam; Bush got a cushy gig at home flying jets for the National Guard, from which, incidentally, he went AWOL for about a year at one point.) Here's the transcript: Q I wanted to ask about the second phase of the war. As a member of the Vietnam generation, do you worry as you send these military advisors all over the world, typically to chaotic places, that they may get involved in direct conflict and the situation could escalate? And are you prepared to do that? THE PRESIDENT: Interesting question. Hutch, let me tell you something, I believe this war is more akin to World War II than it is to Vietnam. This is a war in which we fight for the liberties and freedom of our country... ...And, Hutch, the idea of denying sanctuary is vital to protect America. And we're going to be, obviously, judicious and wise about how we deploy troops. I learned some good lessons from Vietnam. First, there must be a clear mission. Secondly, the politics ought to stay out of fighting a war. There was too much politics during the Vietnam War. There was too much concern in the White House about political standing. And I've got great confidence in General Tommy Franks, and great confidence in how this war is being conducted. And I rely on Tommy, just like the Secretary of Defense relies upon Tommy and his judgment -- whether or not we ought to deploy and how we ought to deploy. Tommy knows the lessons of Vietnam just as well as I do. Both of us -- he was a, he graduated from high school in '63, and you and I graduated in '64. We're of the same vintage. We paid attention to what was going on. And so -- I think it was '64, wasn't it? Q No, sir. THE PRESIDENT: Oh. (Laughter.) You're not that old. You're not that old. I'll give you an interesting fact -- I don't know if you all know this or not, speaking about Tommy. But Tommy Franks went to Midland Lee High School, class of '63. Laura Bush went to Midland Lee High School, class of '64. That's an interesting thing for the social columns. (Laughter.) For those of you who allow for your news-gathering to slip into social items. (Laughter.) Or social gossip, which sometimes happens -- it doesn't happen that much. Q Did they know each other? THE PRESIDENT: No. (Laughter.) * * * I haven't had much time to read lately, but in that half hour or so at the end of the day, when the work is either done or I'm just too tired to do any more, and the household chores are finished and the dog has had his final walk of the day, when I finally have a little time to read--and I don't even have kids; I honestly don't know how parents get it all done, though I suppose I will find out for myself eventually--anyway, I've been working my way through former vast-right-wing-conspirator David Brock's book, Blinded by the Right, and I just wanted to say that it's definitely a must-read for anyone who wants to understand what the hell happened during the nineties. -------------------- Wednesday, March 13, 2002
As I write this... ...a woman on Rush Limbaugh is arguing that the effort to raise fuel efficiency standards--or, as she describes it, to "outlaw SUVs"--is actually a deliberate, underhanded attempt on the part of the Democrats tolimit population growth, because, as she reasons it, if people can't buy a large enough vehicle to transport their families around, they'll opt to have fewer children. Somehow this makes me think of the Matthew Arnold poem: And we are here as on a darkling plain Now I have to stop procrastinating and get back to work.
The endless treasure trove of the internet Reader Kevin Shay forwards this link to another toe-tappin' John Ashcroft composition, posted by the Smoking Gun. It's apparently from the 1995 cassette release "Gospel (Music) According to John," and, as Kevin notes, features alarmingly anti-capitalist lyrics: Now there's lots of folks acquiring -------------------- Tuesday, March 12, 2002
Good news After six months, the Office of Homeland Security has made a substantive step toward ensuring our safety--with a system of color-coded threat assessments! You can just imagine Tom Ridge staying up late, poring over tapes of old Star Trek episodes. "Okay--red alert is more serious than yellow alert, right?" At least now, the next time there's a threat they don't tell us about, it will have a corresponding color which we probably won't know about either.
Soaring eagles, and stranger things You've probably already seen this dispatch from those darned anti-American types at the Guardian of London. (And you know, maybe we ought to think about making room for one more spoke on the old Axis of Evil--this incessant carping and whining on the part of our British cousins isn't helping us defeat our enemies, now is it?--and you're either with us or against us, right?) Anyway, the article details the various reported, um, quirks of our Attorney General--who was, let us remember, defeated by a dead man the last time he ran for elective office--and has been emailed to me repeatedly, so I'm mainly posting it here to let everyone know, yes, I've seen it, thank you. (Don't let that discourage you from sending me tips and links, though--I'd rather have something like this show up in my inbox a couple dozen times than risk missing it.) In it, we learn--or, more likely, are reminded --that Ashcroft has had himself annointed with cooking oil "in the manner of King David" each time he has been sworn into office...had the statues representing the Spirit of Justice and the Majesty of Law covered up so that he would no longer have to give press conferences in front of Justice's naked boobie (you certainly read about that already, but who can resist such an unwittingly perfect metaphor?)...that he may or may not believe that calico cats are emissaries of Satan... And, best of all: Mr Ashcroft, a devout Christian and a grittily determined singer, went public with one of his works last month, when he surprised an audience at a North Carolina seminary with a rendition of Let the Eagle Soar, a tribute to America's virtues, which continues: "Like she's never soared before, from rocky coast to golden shore, let the mighty eagle soar," and so on for four minutes.... Mr Ashcroft's staff are complaining that printed versions of the song are being distributed at meetings so that they will be able to join in. When asked why she opposed the workplace singalong, one of the department's lawyers said: "Have you heard the song? It really sucks." A group of Hispanic justice department employees were recently summoned to see the attorney general, and went along hoping that their boss might be making a special effort to promote diversity in the department's higher ranks. Instead, they were asked to provide a hasty Spanish lesson to give the secretary a few phrases to use on a foreign delegation the next day. The Hispanic staff were then handed printed copies of Let the Eagle Soar and asked for volunteers to translate it. A video of the AG singing his uplifting composition can be seen here. Warning: it may induce a strong urge to stay in bed with the covers pulled tightly over your head until the Bush Administration leaves Washington. * * * A note: some of you took umbrage--in the friendly and cordial manner that is the trademark of thismodernworld-dot-com readers, of course--at my comment yesterday that it has been six months "since the world changed." You know, nothing has really changed, the U.S. is still an imperial superpower imposing its will, blah blah blah. To be honest with you, I'm not interested in debating this one. The world turned upside down the morning that vile cloud of ash rose in the wake of the twin towers and three thousand people whose only crime was making it to work on time that day were callously executed, and anyone who argues otherwise is just playing semantic games. And with the Doomsday Clock closer to midnight than it's been in more than a decade, with an Orwellian permanent war well underway, and with every sentient New Yorker wondering each day, in at least some small part of his or her mind, if this is the day that something new and even more terrible will strike our city--you'll have to forgive me, but I just don't have the patience to play such games. * * * I went up to my neighbor's roof deck last night to see the towers of light come online. Unfortunately, they are situated so that from this vantage point, they merge into a single beam, making it look more like Commissioner Gordon needs to get ahold of Batman than anything else. But even at that, it made me think, as I stood up on the darkened roof, where I have spent almost no time whatsoever since the collapse of the towers, about memorials, and gravestones, and the pain they invoke, and how necessary they still are. If you've ever lost anyone--especially violently, suddenly, senselessly--you probably understand this, and if you haven't...well, you are very lucky, and would be well advised to appreciate your innocence while it lasts. -------------------- Monday, March 11, 2002
Six months... ...since the world changed. So, let's talk about evil for a second. The president has used the term so often and so clumsily that it has begun to lose meaning, become part of the background noise of the culture, easily tuned out. And that's unfortunate, because it was an act of evil. This is what the patriotically correct crowd doesn't understand: you can try to understand how such a thing could have happened, what factors could drive men to such extremes--and still consider their acts evil, beyond redemption. No rational person would be so foolish as to pretend that the Holocaust was not evil, and yet no one would argue that the Nazi party simply sprang into being fully formed, unaffected by historical context. But you know what? Let's switch gears and talk about heroism instead. This is another term that has been used quite a lot over the past six months, and rightly so, but there is also a danger with this one, that the word can ultimately lose its underlying meaning. It's like when you go on vacation and take a bunch of photographs, and at first the memories of the vacation itself are sharp and vivid, but eventually, over the years, you've spent more time looking at the photographs than you spent travelling, and the memories of the experience itself are slowly subsumed by the photographic record, and when you think back on the trip, you find yourself calling up images of the photos. (At least, this happens to me--I have no idea if it's a universal phenomenon, but for the sake of argument, let's pretend it is.) It's important not to let this happen, to remember the firemen (and cops and all the rest of the emergency service personnel) who headed toward the scene and into the buildings--not to turn them into some sort of abstraction, but to remember them as real people whose duty and impulse it is to help, even at the cost of their own lives. Watching that 9/11 film last night (and yes, it's a photographic record, which sort of undercuts what I was saying above, but we'll let that slide) drove that home once again for me. Of course, any reflective person is grateful that there are men willing to accept this duty even in normal times--and I can tell you from personal experience, there's nothing like standing on the sidewalk in your bathrobe at midnight watching the building next to yours burn, watching the walls of your own home blacken with flame and smoke, as I once did, to drive this gratitude home in a way you will never forget. The firefighters who died on September 11 were not an abstraction, they were men with wives and children and hopes for the future, and we need to remember that, and remember how much each of them lost that day--because it was their job to help the rest of us. Their names and faces can be seen here. -------------------- Sunday, March 10, 2002
Speaking of Seinfeld A few weeks from now, the winners of the Pulitzer Prize will be announced. I don't expect to be on the list, though I do send in a submission every year, on the off chance that the judges will have a few too many scotch-and-sodas one evening and say to themselves, hey, wouldn't it be crazy to give it to the weirdo alternative guy, just for the hell of it?--and the next morning they wake up with splitting headaches and clothes strewn about the room and find that the announcement has already been made, and they cry out plaintively, my god--what have we done? I will win a Pulitzer on the same day that snow flurries fall in hell, I understand--and yet, I participate in this hopeless ritual each year, like some cargo cultist who believes the plane he has built out of bamboo stalks and palm fronds will actually somehow fly, if his faith is only strong enough. Go figure. And while it theatens to carry this train further off track, perhaps derailing it completely, sending it sliding into a stalled prison bus and allowing an innocent man wrongly accused of murder to escape and, against overwhelming odds, track down the mysterious one-armed killer, I want to pause here and explain to the non-journalists among you how the submission process works. Usually entries are submitted through a newspaper or a syndicate, but since I am a freelancer, a loner, a rebel--you don't want to get mixed up with a guy like me, Dottie--I have to send in the submission myself--in effect nominating myself. The point is, any journalist or editorialist can do this, so when you read in someone's bio that they have been "nominated" for a Pulitzer Prize, you can immediately discount that person as a disingenuous blowhard--they're just counting on the fact that you probably don't understand the distinction between being nominated and being a finalist, the difference being that the latter actually means that the person came close to winning, that victory was within his or her grasp before being cruelly snatched away by capricious and uncaring fates...while the former carries as much prestige in the real world as a mail-order doctorate. (And here's another digression, ensuring the previously-discussed derailment and guaranteeing that the one-armed man will be brought to justice, though of course only after many hair-raising adventures and exciting chase scenes: my wife's step-grandfather, long since passed away, was a Pulitzer prize-winning political cartoonist. What are the odds? I mean, there are just aren't that many political cartoonists out there, you know?) So. I was thinking about the Pulitzer after reading Maureen Dowd in the Sunday New York Times this morning (you know--the paper all those yuppies in that incessantly repeated cable commercial are so eager to have delivered to their homes). Maureen Dowd is, of course, a winner of that prestigious prize, and I guess what makes Maureen Dowd worthy of her Pulitzer is her endless capacity to surprise and amaze--which is to say, you never know quite what pop culture reference she's going to pull out of her bag of tricks in any given column. Will she compare the Bush Administration to the characters in The Sopranos, or will she somehow spin an extended riff out of the current story arc of The West Wing? Or maybe it'll be Sex in the City, or Bridget Jones' Diary, or the Lord of the Rings--or, if she's feeling really wacky, The Simpsons. (D'oh!) Who can ever predict what this Mozart of metaphor, this Picasso of the printed word--who knows what she'll come up with next? Well, the obligatory Maureen Dowd Pop Culture Metaphor on this particular morning revolved around the difficulties the Seinfeld cast have had in their post-Jerry careers--which, as it turns out, are very similar to the difficulties various Clinton administration officials are facing in thier post-Bill careers! Janet Reno is Kramer! Robert Reich is George Costanza! We know there is a Curse of Seinfeld, she writes. But is there a Curse of Clinton? And before we've even had time to wrap our minds around this delightfully provocative premise, Dowd carries the riff off into uncharted territory, with the finesse of Coltrane or Charlie Parker. touching base with the melody line but improvising fearlessly, daring us to keep up if we can. Mr. Reich won't ask Jane Swift to lick campaign envelopes to bring about her demise, in the manner of George's fiancee. But he's eager to ice her... Like Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Hillary Rodham Clinton overcame predictions of doom to become a fledgling success. Both had their husband's' help off camera... Given Bill Clinton's antagonism to him, Al Gore must play the pudgy tattletale civil servant Newman... The reader can only sit, dazzled and amazed, mind reeling at this reinvention of a world that seemed so familiar, only moments ago. Bill Clinton--as Jerry Seinfeld! It is as if a conceptual logjam has broken, and a raging torrent of clarity surges forth, flooding the town and leaving the survivors clinging to the rooftops of their discarded paradigms, gasping for breath as she delivers her closing line, the stunning finale of this column-length tour de force: Not that there's anything wrong with that. And that, my friends, is what it takes to win a Pulitzer prize.
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