Refresh Your Outrage

This extraordinary post by Jeanne d'Arc comes from her blog Body and Soul, the winner for Best Writing in the 2004 Koufax Awards. It refreshed the horrors of the Abu Ghraib scandal for me. Aside from being an excellent piece on the subject of torture and our tolerance for it, d'Arc's piece is a far better example of the value of blogging in my mind than any number of blogs nitpicking over the mainstream media's every utterance. It's the difference between the mob effect and Ms. d'Arc's clear expression of concern for humanity.

When it became clear that the "boys will be boys (and sometimes even girls will be boys)" spin had frozen mid-pirouette, the new story was introduced: Damn those idiots who make the rest of our brave men and women look bad. This is, I must admit, a definite improvement over the argument that torture is no big deal, but it's still immoral. The damage done at Abu Ghraib was done to Iraqi prisoners, to their friends and families, and to all Iraqis, who were sent a clear message about how our country treats their country. They are the ones who have endured, and will continue to endure, the pain. The "damage" to our military is secondary at most. After all the times we've seen the pictures, we still have a distorted view of who the victims are.

The most important thing to remember about the crucifixion of Jesus is not that it sullied the reputation of all the good Roman soldiers.

(Via Relentlessly Optimistic.)

"If America were Iraq, What would it be Like?" by Juan Cole won the Koufax award for best post and proves a must read also.

What would America look like if it were in Iraq's current situation? The population of the US is over 11 times that of Iraq, so a lot of statistics would have to be multiplied by that number.

Thus, violence killed 300 Iraqis last week, the equivalent proportionately of 3,300 Americans. What if 3,300 Americans had died in car bombings, grenade and rocket attacks, machine gun spray, and aerial bombardment in the last week? That is a number greater than the deaths on September 11, and if America were Iraq, it would be an ongoing, weekly or monthly toll.

Then there's this fascinating article about millionaire John Gilmore, who refuses to show ID when traveling within the United States. His point: the U.S. law which prevents you from doing so is a secret. That's right. You're not allowed to know about the law, which prevents you from traveling without an ID within the United States as a U.S. citizen. That regulation is described as "Sensitive Security Information."

"Are they just basically saying we just can't travel without identity papers? If that's true, then I'd rather see us go through a real debate that says we want to introduce required identity papers in our society rather than trying to legislate it through the back door through regulations that say there's not any other way to get around," Gilmore said. "Basically what they want is a show of obedience." ...

To some, Gilmore's argument is redolent of the conspiracy theories from the black helicopter crowd.

"That's the problem. How it sounds," Gilmore said. He waved his hands like some Cassandra: "They have all these secret laws! The UFOs are coming! They have guards at every airport!" Yes, he said, there is a certain odd flavor to the notion that someone shouldn't have to show ID to board a plane, but with magnetometers at the gates, guards with security wands, fortified cockpit doors and sky marshals abounding, Gilmore is asking just how much citizens are giving up when they hand their driver's licenses to a third party, in this case an airline, where it is put into a database they cannot see, to meet a law that, as it turns out, they are not allowed to read.

Interesting point, isn't it?

(Via Boing Boing.)

Mock Mini

My buddy Jon directed me to the Counter Counterfeit Commission, yet another sneaky and entertaining marketing ploy from the folks at Mini.

Remembering the Duke

The Nation reprints this sympathetic 1965 article by Hunter S. Thompson on the Hell's Angels. Thompson effectively demonstrates that the bikers were minsunderstood and misrepresented at the time they were first entering the national consciousness.

Also, via Ann Althouse here's a Tom Wolfe tribute to Thompson, which mentions the book that arose out of the above Nation article.

Wolfe also shares this hilarious story about the first time he met Thompson:

We were walking along West 46th Street toward a restaurant, The Brazilian Coffee House, when we passed Goldberg Marine Supply. Hunter stopped, ducked into the store and emerged holding a tiny brown paper bag. A sixth sense, probably activated by the alarming eyes and the six-inch rise and fall of his Adam's apple, told me not to ask what was inside. In the restaurant he kept it on top of the table as we ate. Finally, the fool in me became so curious, he had to go and ask, "What's in the bag, Hunter?"

"I've got something in there that would clear out this restaurant in 20 seconds," said Hunter. He began opening the bag. His eyes had rheostated up to 300 watts. "No, never mind," I said. "I believe you! Show me later!" From the bag he produced what looked like a small travel-size can of shaving foam, uncapped the top and pressed down on it. There ensued the most violently brain-piercing sound I had ever heard. It didn't clear out The Brazilian Coffee House. It froze it. The place became so quiet, you could hear an old-fashioned timer clock ticking in the kitchen. Chunks of churasco gaucho remained impaled on forks in mid-air. A bartender mixing a sidecar became a statue holding a shaker with both hands just below his chin. Hunter was slipping the little can back into the paper bag. It was a marine distress signaling device, audible for 20 miles over water.

Drawing out the Night

Just stumbled across this poem I wrote a while back, and it seemed to fit:

What do you do to draw out the night?

Is it muted voices swimming in the elastic blue flicker, quivering against your shadowed walls?

Is it wandering city streets, the buildings’ crystalline hive, watchful, the occasional pedestrian hurried?

Is it a dark and indifferent dive, thick, sweating glass resting against the curve of your palm?

Or a bright, clean station, redolent of meat and caffeine, cool enamel beneath your waiting palm?

Is it driving, driving swiftly through silent suburban streets, yellow streetlamps flitting overhead?

Is it your bed, your head inclined against a pillow cool, eyes slanted, the soft periodic shuffle of switching paper?

Why the long wait to turn out the light?

What do you do to draw out the night?


--Robert Stribley, 01/02

Out the Light

Anonymoses directs us to these scary right-wing t-shirts.

Interesting how one design replaces the Statue of Liberty's illuminating torch with a machine gun. An appropriate change for this administration, I suppose, replacing reason with violence.

Angel, Come from Way Above

Angel is the latest show to fall prey to the culture police. Something about heavy breathing and neck-biting. Never seen the show, but that does make me wanna watch.

The killjoys over at the Parents Television Council lost this round, thankfully. You'll be relieved to know Because of Winn Dixie gets their Seal of Approval, though "small or sensitive children might be upset by the discussion of Opal's mother leaving her and a thunderstorm that has Winn-Dixie very scared."

I've seen the previews for Winn Dixie, and, somehow, if I had kids, I don't think I'd need to consult with PTC before taking the littluns to see it.

Seeing Chris's Smile

Some of you may have been following my brother's recovery on the blog I started for him. I've updated it with the above X-ray and some new info. Thanks for keeping him in your thoughts and prayers.

Tangentially, a Google image search for "x-ray" serves up some pretty fascinating results.

Feelings! Nothing More Than Feelings!

As TNR's Noam Scheiber points out, Republicans are being told to trust El Presidente on Social Security because of his "practical experience," which tells him privatization "is good politics and policy." Aw shucks, I feel so much better about the whole thing now that you've explained that the Prez's confidence is rooted in his feelings. Never mind what those silly diversions like economic studies, statistics, American history, and common sense might teach us. Bor-ring!

Scheiber goes on to cogently explain why he thinks privatization may backfire on the Repubs. One can live in hope!

An affluent voter knows he's going to retire in relative comfort whether or not Social Security is privatized; for a voter who sees Social Security as his main source of retirement income, the prospect of exchanging private accounts for benefit cuts is pretty alarming. Recall here the political price congressional Republicans paid when they merely flirted with "slowing the growth" of Medicare in the mid-'90s. Put it all together, and it seems possible, even likely, that the practical effect of Social Security privatization would be to reverse the now-familiar trend of working-class voters ranking social issues above economics--a trend essential for maintaining a Republican majority in Congress.

Makes sense to me.

And just for the record, we all understand that many of the Republicans in favor of privatizing Social Security aren't at it with the intention of helping old folks in retirement, right? They want to privatize it because they want to privatize everything they can. Some of them would privatize government all together if they could.

Come to think of it . . . maybe they already have.

Free Mojtaba and Arash

Today is "Free Mojtaba and Arash Day." The BBC's Carke Boyd writes about the dangers of blogging in Iran.

Rock Scissors Oscars

Chris Rock's advice to Oscar winners:

Don't thank God. God's busy working on the tsunami, so leave him alone.

Works on multiple levels. And these folks complaining about Rock's dissing the Oscars--surely, they don't think the Academy didn't see that coming. All publicity is good publicity, folks.

RIP Hunter S. Thompson1937-2005

When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro. - Hunter S. Thompson

According to his son, Hunter S. Thompson shot himself at his home in Aspen, Colorado today. The writer, raconteur, mentor to Johnny Depp, and godfather of gonzo journalism was 67 years old. For some reason, I wouldn't have pegged him the type to go that way. On the other hand, he lived his life with such abandon, I supposed it's fitting that he should go out with a bang. You never do know the demons folks are wrestling with.

ESPN's Page Two has an homage and links to the Doctor's first and last "Hey Rube" columns. His last column details a 3:30 a.m. phonecall to Bill Murray (who portrayed Thompson in the 1980 flick Where the Buffalo Roam) to tell him his newly invented sport, shotgun golf. On the other hand, I can't believe Rolling Stone doesn't even have a mention of Thompson's death on their homepage, especially considering all the writing he did for that mag. Very sad indeed. Guess that's what happens when you have a strictly controlled, marketing-oriented web site representing your mag. Guess you hafta get a "package" together, put it out there when it's been all scrutinized by the right marketing and legal folks and such. Aaaagh!

On a personal note, I guess I was never a rabid fan but more an entranced spectator of the Duke. He was such an iconoclast, and I'm sure that's what I found compelling about him.

Finally, here's a fitting quote often attributed to the old boy:

Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside, in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming, "Wow! What a Ride!"

Update 2/22: MTV's Kurt Loder writes a decent, balanced obit, and includes this great Thompson quote which shows that even the Duke understood that booze and drugs alone do not a writer make:

One day you just don't appear at the El Adobe bar anymore: You shut the door, paint the windows black, rent an electric typewriter and become the monster you always were — the writer.

And Rolling Stone finally adds a piece--which they link to unobtrusively from their homepage. Better than nothing, I guess. . . . And finally (later today) they add their "package." Toldja.

Oh yeah, Christopher Hitchens offers this Thompson obit and manages to insert this subtle but lame dig in those who opposed the war in Iraq in the second sentence:

The meeting was to be enlivened by the announcement of the forcible annexation of Kuwait by Saddam Hussein, who would go on to trouble our tranquility for another 13 years.

Sorry, Hitch. Hussein wasn't troubling our tranquility for 13 years. On the other hand, this guy--you may have heard of him--Osama Bin Laden, he severely troubled our tranquility back in 2001. It's hard to believe that Hitchens has become such a one-string banjo that he has to insert a thumbs-up to the war in Iraq in an obituary for a guy he no doubt knows full well opposed said war.

The Next Time It Happens

I just drove back to Charlotte from seeing family down in South Carolina, and I was thinking a lot about 9/11 on the way, probably because I was listening to Springsteen's The Rising for a good part of the way.

I was thinking this: when (rather than if) another attack such attack takes place on American soil, what are people going to think about this war in Iraq? Will they think the effort was worth it? Will they think it's had any impact upon the war on terror? I'm not trying to engage in preemptive schadenfreude here. And I don't mean to be needlessly pessimistic either. I'm just being realistic. We've gone down a road that probably only ensures that another massive attack on the United States will take place, and we've diverted a lot of energy towards Iraq that should have been focused on Al Qaeda like a laser beam.

Anyway, listening to the Boss, I noticed that on "Lonesome Day," he repeats the phrase "It's alright" over and over again like a mantra. Boy, we needed that mantra after 9/11 and we still need it's seemingly unjustified optimism now. You might also note that the redemptive theme of rising again after misfortune appears in lyrics across the whole album.

Bruce sounds like a father tending to a wounded child: "It's all right. Everything's going to be OK." Part of you knows it quite likely will not be all right. Part of you still appreciates the comforting words and the good intentions.

Hell's brewin' dark sun's on the rise
This storm'll blow through by and by
House is on fire, viper's in the grass
A little revenge and this too shall pass
This too shall pass, I'm gonna pray
Right now all I got's this lonesome day

It's alright ... It's alright ... It's alright ...

Thanks Bruce.

Beware of Friends Bearing Recording Devices

Well, well, well. This little development confirms a lot of what I've suspected about Bush. He's constantly jockeying between his secular and more religious constituents in order to please both parties. An old friend recorded conversations they had before W was elected the first time and in their conversations, he admitted to the following conflict:

The tapes show Bush crafting a strategy for navigating the tricky political waters between Christian conservative and secular voters, repeatedly worrying that evangelicals would be angered by a refusal to bash gays and that secular Americans would be turned off by meetings with evangelical leaders.

On one tape, Bush explains that he told one prominent evangelical that he would not "kick gays, because I'm a sinner. How can I differentiate sin?"

People say they like Bush because he takes a stand. That doesn't sound like much of a stand to me. Sounds like trying have your cake and eat it, too. Now, you could argue that all politicians do the same thing and I wouldn't disagree. In fact, it appears that the Bush administration has come up with a policy on gay marriage that strikes a fine if in my mind immoral balance. (By "fine" I mean "careful," not "good".) They get to make a nod towards the anti-gay conservatives, knowing full well that such a despicable amendment would likely never come to pass. Lynne and Dick Cheney even get to go on air repeatedly and say they're against such an amendment (but that in the VP's case, he'll "support the President") and that the states should have the right to handle the matter in whatever manner they see fit. But you'll notice what they very carefully avoid: they never, NEVER come anywhere near close to saying homosexual behavior is OK. That's the taboo. That's the thing that would infuriate their religious right.

So, even though Dick and Lynne Cheney's own daughter is gay and even though this powerful couple have a tremendous and historic opportunity before them to teach all of America a powerful lesson in decency and tolerance, they will remain silent on the matter. (John Kerry couldn't resist pointing out this hypocrisy, and he paid mightily for the awkward fashion that he did so.) A recent illustration: Lynne Cheney interviewed this past week by Terri Gross on Fresh Air. Gross asked her repeatedly to share he rpersonal thoughts on gay marriage and Cheney kept saying it's a states rights issue. She sounded angry as she repeated herself, but she never gave her personal opinion. She just parroted off the safe and distant answer again and again. I really believe Dick and Lynne Cheney are not personally anti-gay, but because of their behavior, they may as well be.

Bush and company may have gays in their administration, have gay friends and family, may even anoint gay men to be mouthpieces for the administration, but you're not going to hear them come out and say that, hey folks, all this anti-gay sentiment is wrong. We need to move along as a society and accept the fact that science and reason have comprehensively determined that this sort of sexual behavior is quite natural (of course, Bush himself may not believe that latter part, but I susepct the Cheney's do.) And that's not going to happen because that will lose the administration too many votes and too much support. So it's not taking a stand that all this is about; it's preserving support. That's not behavior possessing of any integrity, regardless of which party it's coming from. I long for a President--from either (or any) party who'll stand up and say, this sort of discrimination is wrong and here's why. Who'll educate the American populus. Guess, we'll be waiting a long while for that candidate. Kerry certainly didn't have the spine to come out that clearly on the subject.

In the recorded conversations, Bush also admitted he smoked pot. Who cares? His genuflecting before the religious right has done far more harm to his fellow Americans than any spliff toking he did all those years ago.

Household Pseudonym

Heh. That's what Joe Conason is calling "Jeff Gannon" over at Slate in a piece that reveals more of that so-called journalist's dastardly exploits.

Also Talon News has this content-lite statement on their site about the resignation of their best and brightest. All other mentions of him have been meticulously removed from the site. Try Googling "Jeff Gannon" on the site and you get about 356 results. Try clicking on any link and you'll just get one "File Not Found" message after another.

And here's Bill Maher on Gannon tonight: "I get no joy out of saying that the White House has ties to gay prostitution."

Update 02/25/05: He's baaaack.

Strangefeld

Rumsfeld in full-blown Strangelove mode.

Amusing WaPo article on how Rummy's alienating friends and foes alike. He tried quitting twice. Maybe he's hoping third time lucky?

Here's a classic Rumsfeldian exchange from the article:

When the ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, Rep. Ike Skelton (Mo.), asked about the number of insurgents in Iraq, the secretary said, "I am not going to give you a number for it because it's not my business to do intelligent work." (He presumably meant to say "intelligence.") Ultimately, Rumsfeld admitted he had estimates at his fingertips. "I've got two in front of me," he said.

"Could you share those with us?" Skelton inquired.

Not just now, Rumsfeld said. "They're classified."

I do have to say: at least, he's entertaining.