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Roy
March 21, 2003
12:05 a.m.
Bad News, Good News

In the run-up to war, a lot of nonsense on the subject was published, but from the looks of things the war itself is driving some people out of their skulls. Josh Marshall points out this bit of madness from Daniel Pipes, entitled "Why The Left Loves Osama (and Saddam)." The article is a veritable massacre of straw men. Pipes even points out that the Left's alleged love of terrorists is inconsistent with with its alleged love of Karl Marx. One wonders why he didn't posit a love of Satan while he was at it.

Meanwhile Sgt. Stryker weighs in on the Salam Pax weblog. SP is an alleged resident of Baghdad who does not love Saddam but understandably does not endorse the bombing of himself. Even war fans such as Matt Welch and James Lileks have referred sympathetically to SP, but Stryker ain't buying it: "God forbid war should cut-off Mr. Oppressed Person's Internet access. I've often wondered how someone who lives in such an oppressed country could afford all he describes...The Good Days are about to end, Salam. Your patron will be gone shortly and a settling of accounts will take place."

It sounds as if he considers the poor pinned-down schnook worthy of death-- and, in a series of intemperate responses to readers who, despite their general sympathy with the war, think SP should catch a break rather than a Tomahawk missle, he at first does little to counteract this impression: "No, it will be Baghdad that will have to face the consequences of its choices of obedience and submission... if Mr. Peace Peace lives through this, he better be thankful the U.S. Army is there to keep the northerners and southerners from exacting a more personal level of revenge against those who grew fat from the suffering of their brothers." He finally allows that "I don't want the guy to die. I want him to live and perhaps one day realize what his countrymen went through while he and others enjoyed the good life and did nothing." That is, SP must suffer, if not die, because he did not rise up against Saddam preemptively--which would be a short route to an acid bath, as one respondent points out, but Stryker is unforgiving ("Salam is not actively engaged in trying to bring down Saddam's government so why should he be subject to the same punishment of those that are and are caught?").

Stryker wants not just a land fit for heroes but a world fit for them. And he's not above using threats to get it. There's a word for this, and it's not "liberation."

But there is good news. At Alicublog on January 22, I observed that Rod Dreher had been making noises about how awful he found life in New York. (Something about noisy kids on the subway.) I dared hope this was a sign that he would soon get the hell out. The insufferable former film critic and native Louisianan has frequently peppered NRO's The Corner with news of his terrorism-induced panic attacks, and he is exactly the sort of Nervous Nellie we don't need around here. So I am pleased to read that he is indeed getting the hell out. He will remove to the corporate cowtown of Dallas, which deserves him, as is shown by this parting swipe at the Big Apple--the first of many, one suspects. Careerism draws many like Dreher to New York despite their contempt for the place. When we who love New York get a little weary of them, it is helpful to remember that they never stick around. We've seen 'em come, as the old saying has it, and we've seen 'em go. Here's hoping the next rube off the bus has a better time of it.

Roy
March 20, 2003
12:09 a.m.
Day One

The New York streets I saw tonight were quiet. In the West Village sparse clumps of people moved along; a fellow standing outside a club on Bleecker muttered "free comedy show tonight, no cover," his voice drained of all trace of hope than anyone would take him up on it. Downtown Brooklyn was even more desolate, and Williamsburg doesn't quite seem itself either. It may be the mild chill in the air after several days of a warm spell. Or maybe everyone's home watching the empty skies over Baghdad on TV for some shock-and-awe fireworks. (Fox News just showed such a vista, inviting us to "listen to the sounds" of bombardment, which resembled thunder but did not light up the sky. Human forms were noticeably absent)

There are cops and troops at the expected places, like subway and bridge entrances. (A livery driver told me this afternoon that the BQE had been slowed to a crawl by random stops-and-searches.) Between this and the complete occupation of TV broadcast space, the atmosphere here recalls the days after September 11. Only now the explosions are half a world away.

The warblogs are "reporting" on the action. Instapundit gives the impression that we are at war with France. NRO's The Corner follows a war against paleoconservatives. Somewhere I'm sure someone is following the continuing assault on the Dixie Chicks. This is as it should be, as none of these guys are seeing anything in Iraq that we're not seeing as well, or have anything on that score to offer but variations on "hooray."

Not that we'll get much from the actual, embedded press. The Times reported yesterday that a dozen Congressmen sent a letter to Donald Rumsfeld, asking him "to explain why he was not imposing 'censorship.'" And, "Network executives said they had a wealth of vivid images to show and that realized they would have to be careful in how they presented the material. 'Pictures can sometimes mislead,' the president of ABC News, Donald Westin, said."

At the moment my neighbor has just shut off her stereo, as she always does at this time of night. Turn off the TV, and it's like any other night. Only thinking about it makes the silence eerie.

Roy
March 19, 2003
12:31 a.m.
Rite of Spring

One good thing about this war finally starting: now that the nation's business is incontrovertably in the hands of lunatics, I can stop worrying about it and enjoy the warm weather. The past few days in New York have been a blessing. Everyone's got a bit more spring in their step. On St. Mark's Place, I saw a youthful white hipster do a stutter-step, and a black girl sang out to him, "Awright! You go, baby!" Said the hipster to his companion, "I guess she thought I was dancing, but I really just lost my balance on the curb."

The nice weather persisted unto St. Patrick's Day ("Short sleeves on St. Paddy's Day!" marveled the egregiously Irish commentator on local TV). I walked along Fifth Avenue and took in the Parade for the first time in a while. I notice that the young men go in for caps, sideburns, and T-shirts that say things like MILLION MICK MARCH, while the young girls go in for absurdly tall foam top hats and t-shirts that say things like KISS ME I'M DRUNK. Green plastic derbies haven't gone out of fashion, I am pleased to say, nor have middle-aged Sons of Erin in white sweaters and red faces. The pipers and drum-and-bugle corps still march proudly along, and the spectators are still polite and cheerful toward the marchers when they pay attention, which most of them do only very sporadically, prefering to yak on the sidelines and sneak sips of hooch.

One thing I did see for the first time was an evangelist clad entirely in green, passing out pamphlets on a St. Patrick's Day theme. Here is an illustration from his pamphlet:

Seems weird, doesn't it? That's because Catholics aren't really Chick Tract material. Those of us raised in the Faith are supposed to be more "wet" than the Protestants--one thinks of Basil Rathbone and John Carradine in "The Last Hurrah," dining quietly in their club while Spencer Tracy and his Hibernian rabble caper without--but Catholics pour their seriousness into domestic quarrels, bar fights, and college football, not doctrinal disputes. Leprechauns don't say "Jesus died on the cross for you!"--they say "Catch me lucky charms!" or "I want me gold!" or "When I'm Not Near The Girl I Love, I Love The Girl I'm Near!" That's one of the Church's saving graces: its rules are impossible, and its child-rearing techniques are abusive even in the absence of sexual molestation, but it is an ancient creed and knows better than to take its own theology seriously.

Tuesday's mildness was supposed to be the last pre-Spring manifestation for a while, and about 400 NYU students and other such types celebrated appropriately with a jolly anti-war demo in Union Square Park. There were lots of signs, speeches, cops, and little beads tied into beards. About two dozen ANSWER functionaries frantically pushed pamphlets at all comers. ANSWER, like Jesus, is just alright with me (yeah, I know about their commie pedigree, and I don't give a shit--call me when the Spartacist League gets the third line on the ballot). But I declined the proferred propaganda. Spring is more or less here and the moon is full. Though death is in the figurative air, let us at least momentarily attend to the more literal rebirth all around us.

Roy
March 14, 2003
12:52 a.m.
Discoarse

Andrew Sullivan is troubled by a grotesque anti-gay illustration in an ad appearing in the Weekly Standard: "The imagery is truly shocking. It's out of Der Sturmer. It's portraying a gay priest as an animal, a wolf or a dog...And yet the Standard's editors seemed to have no problem with it. How depressing."

Funny, I've been thinking of Der Sturmer (an infamous Nazi rag that pictured Jews as rats, etc.) myself lately, mostly in connection with the New York Post, which portrays Frenchmen as weasels in altered photographs. And it forces me to ask: why is Sullivan depressed that the Standard ran the ad? This is, after all, the level of our discourse today: the triumph of the "politically incorrect." We are often directed to lighten up about stereotyping--in some cases by Sullivan himself, who elsewhere on his site directs us to some "jolly frog-bashing" in his Letters section. If he delights in seeing the French portrayed as vermin and amphibians, why does he balk when gays are pictured as canine and feral?

One can make too much of this--or too little. One could also argue that gay folks have it rougher than Frenchmen. Well, maybe not for long. At the aforementioned Post-Sturmer, one Ralph Peters takes the freedom-fries shit a bit further than usual by declaring that "the government of France is fighting an undeclared war with the United States." Along with the customary slurs ("crumbly as Roquefort cheese," etc.), Peters says that "The more Americans Saddam manages to kill, the greater President Chirac's satisfaction will be"--pause to wonder where this key piece of intelligence is coming from--and that "We cannot allow a French betrayal in so important a matter to go unpunished." He even adds, in what is normally the author's credit at the end: "Ralph Peters has canceled his orders for 2000 Bordeaux. And he will cancel his support for the Bush administration if it does not punish France for its betrayal."

Instapundit defends the current anti-French wave as "silly" but "harmless." Well, a French hotel chain doesn't think so, and is taking down its French flags stateside "so no American guest will feel unwelcome." I suspect they're really doing it so no American yahoo will feel like throwing a brick through their window.

I'll be glad when this war's over. Oh, wait, I forgot--it never will be.

Roy
March 12, 2003
12:12 a.m.
Neo-Sovereignty

One of the benefits of reading Right-wing commentary on the war is that some of those guys tell you the stuff our Administration soft-pedals or simply neglects to mention. At TechCentral Station, one Lee Harris explains that the invasion of Iraq is only the start of a long-term project to, essentially, reamke the world. The essay is very long, so let me break it down: The Arabs are nuts because they didn't come by their wealth honestly, like us. "What Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein have in common is that they became rich," says Harris, "because the West paid them for natural resources that the West could simply have taken from them at will, and without so much as a Thank You, if the West had been inclined to do so."

This, Harris believes, was foolish on our part, but we're going to fix the situation by doing away with the mad Arabs' capacity for self-rule ("neo-sovereignty," Harris calls this). "Our aim is simple," he says. "It is to make the Islamic fantasists respect the dictates of reality...in order to achieve our end of heightening their grasp on reality, no means should be ruled out."

Bush has been telling us that we're going to "liberate" the Iraqis, but Harris, not needing to move any polling meters, lays it on the line: "It is equally critical that we are not misled into trying to win the hearts and minds of the Islamic fantasists...as if we were trying to sell Western values as if it were a consumer product." If they come around, fine; if not, we'll still be running the show.

The funny/sad thing is, Harris' POV makes more sense than Bush's--it has a certain mad logic, whereas Bush's mix of scary Saddam stories and national-greatness uplift is hard to understand or explain (as the comical efforts of his operatives demonstrate), let alone believe. True, Harris does a little song-and-dance about how this isn't imperialism because we're doing it for everyone's sake, not just our own ("For in its role as neo-sovereign the United States, in pursuing its selfish policy, is also forced to increase the general level of security throughout the world"), but he is in the main very candid about the breathtaking, "world-historical" scope implied by our current course of action. It's not just Iraq, and it's not just Saddam--it's a fat slice of the planet over which America will be "neo-sovereign." And Harris is unafraid to admit that this will change the very nature of America--"We must take a hard look at every idea we hold dear and ask, Does this idea even fit any more?"--which is a refreshing change from Bush's portrayal of a "High Noon"-style encounter with an international bad actor that reenforces, rather than significantly changes, the American mission.

The reason for that characterization is obvious. Americans understand and largely approve the showdown scenario--but they might quail if they sensed that we are about to become "neo-sovereign" over millions of hostile foreigners. They might even wonder if that course might not lead to more resentment and more terrorism, and that the cost of maintaining this not-an-empire over the long term might ultimately pervert and destroy what used to be a really terrific republic.

Of course, we're going to find out about it sooner or later anyway, God help us.

Roy
March 10, 2003
12:12 a.m.
More Fun in the New World Order

"Afghanistan will officially activate its .af Internet domain name on Monday for Afghan e-mail addresses and Web sites, officials and the United Nations said...'Afghanistan is officially planting its flag in cyberspace, gaining full legal and technical control of the ".af" Internet domain,' the organization said..." Wired News, March 9, 2003.

www.burkaless.af

GIRLS GONE WILD--KABUL! Wreckage, armed gangs, infighting--it's like Mardi Gras 24-7! Post-invasion Kabul is one of the wildest towns in the world, and the newly-liberated Kabul lovelies could teach the girls of New Orleans something about out-of-control behavior! You don't have to throw beads--cash and chocolate bars will do, and you'd be surprised what a green card can buy! Lots of burka-lifting (though few butts--they're weird about that, but wait'll next year!) plus romps that often end in fully-clothed revelers being pushed into mass graves!

www.kabulhotel.af

WELCOME TO THE KABUL HOTEL! Your boarded-up windows protect you from gunfire, and the water in the pool is so relatively clean you could drink from it (many natives do, late at night)! The journalists crowding the hotel bar are full of interesting stories, and when authorities make an arrest the house buys a round! And our Honeymoon Suites are perfect for sex tourists!

www.abc.af

MARRIED BY AFGHANISTAN! The wildest reality show in the newly-free world! One lucky maiden will be matched by phone, internet, and smoke-signal vote with a strapping Afghan cleared by a special war-crimes tribunal! This ultimate dream-date includes a visa--thanks, State Department! At the special fan section, read testimony by contestants' families ("He is good boy! Please send my son far from this hell-hole!"), and watch a video of Afghanistan's leading pop sensation, Lesbian Internet Pokemon, singing our theme song, "Better Married By Afghanistan Than Buried By Warlords!"

www.afghanistan.gov

WHO WANTS TO BE A CABINET MINISTER? Afghani-Americans, -Europeans, or -whatever, consider an exciting career in the newly cobbled-together government of Afghanistan! We'll fly you and your family to Kabul for a sitdown with President Karzai and, possibly, an exciting high-level position! Looking for a challenge? Literate? Don't mind wearing a little Kevlar to work? Imagine the thrill of building (practically from scratch!) America's new strategic partner in the region (and, soon, competing head-to-head for foreign investment dollars with the post-invasion government of Iraq)! New openings daily as ministers leave the government to take better-paying non-nation-building jobs with Halliburton and McDonald's! Send us your resume (Word format only) today, along with a 500-word essay on why you wouldn't dream of selling us out to Pakistan, Turkey, etc.

Roy
March 7, 2003
1:44 a.m.
TV Eye

Now I've got Good Morning Miami on the box and the vaguely Garofaloean chick has ditched her glasses and is going out with the lead guy. I take it the show's in trouble. Maybe the lead guy should go out with Suzanne Pleshette next. Well, at least then they'd have a fan base.

I also see Will & Grace is on at 11 pm. I've noticed that the nets are switching programs around like a poker novice trying to figure out his hand, but 11 pm? Maybe they think their target audience all went to a 7:30 pm show of Gods and Generals, and will want to decompress with some Charles Busch Lite before Wifey rubs on the Man-Tan and Hubby hauls out the bullwhip and they get into a little "Civil War reenactment."

I also see there's a Meet the Folks spinoff called Date My Mom. What's next? Date My Mom And My Dad (While I Watch)? Come On To My Sister While I'm In The Bathroom? They're running out of innuendo-based themes; Are You Hot? kind of dropped a marker way out in the deep water that's gonna be hard to pass without totally revamping Standard and Practices. Maybe then we'll see How Do You Like My Tits? (and HDYL My Ass? or HDYL That String Under My Tongue? and other variants).

I watched a little of the President's press conference, also called Sleepless in Washington. There's one reason for Bush to start making his AA meetings: they serve coffee. To be fair, his comportment is the least of our worries, but among the chatterers it's an obsession. These guys think it's all part of some ingenious plan. Who knows? I would prefer to think that there's nothing more to this than Bush missing a nap, but after all the Presidential photo ops and insincere theatrics of the past several dozen years, it's difficult even for devoted operatives to believe something so important was left to chance. That's what we're really reacting to, after all: calculated effects, not real human characteristics. It invites unseriousness. Myself, I was wondering why Condi Rice and Ari Fleischer were sitting in the cheap seats with the press rabble. Maybe they planned to tackle Helen Thomas if she came charging up the aisle.

One of these days I have to get cable.

Roy
March 5, 2003
1:44 a.m.
Some Friends

At Opinion Journal, Robert Bartley writes to a "European Friend." At National Review Online, Rod Dreher also writes to a "European Friend." Both letters are supposed to convince these Friends that the coming war is a good thing. One wonders what the bases of these friendships are, as both letters are extremely condescending: "Across the Atlantic you didn't live the same experience, and don't share the same feelings," writes Bartley. "Still, we'd hope for a little understanding, at least from those of you who've lived among us." "The world could do a lot worse than an American cowboy right now," writes Dreher. "It is my hope that you will come to see that. It is my great fear that the Islamists will force you to, at God knows what price."

Both Bartley's and Dreher's letters are built around long descriptions of the horror of September 11. Bartley: "Nor did The Wall Street Journal suffer casualties that day, though the blast blew the windows out of our offices and permeated them with asbestos. We were in temporary quarters for a year." Dreher: "My mobile phone wasn't working, so I had no way of letting Julie know I hadn't been killed...When she saw me coming, she ran down the street holding Matthew, sobbing. She had to live for nearly an hour anticipating that the Islamic terrorists had killed me too." (Dreher was in Brooklyn the entire time.)

Neither Bartley nor Dreher mentions the fact that the Towers were attacked on the orders of Osama bin Laden, who is not the president of Iraq. There is much talk of funereal bagpipes and the absolute solidarity of the American people in favor of invasion (a few weeks after millions of citizens marched against it). It may be that Bartley's and Dreher's "Friends" do not read newspapers, or possess common sense. Otherwise I cannot imagine what they will make of these letters, which double (or, let's face it, only exist) as column fodder for Right-wing web publications.

Also at Opinion Journal, Peggy Noonan offers equally friendly advice to the Democratic Party on the invitation of Andrew Cuomo, who pussied out of last year's Democratic gubernatorial primary because he knew he would lose. In a collegial, believer-to-agents-of-Satan way, Noonan tells the Democrats that they are "profoundly unserious," have a "win-at-any cost mindset," and are "snobs"; she suggests, in a friendly way, that the Democratic Party embrace gun rights, oppose abortion, and above all denounce Bill Clinton, the only Democratic two-term president since the Second World War.

With a quarter-million American troops massed in the Middle East for an invasion of Iraq, it would seem the Right has largely decided that arguing for the war is a waste of time--that war will come, willy-nilly. So in their private chambers they deliver speeches to absent "Friends," telling them how depraved and perfidious they are. These encounters go better for them, they may have decided, when the other party isn't around.

Roy
March 4, 2003
12:14 a.m.
The Cornice of America

The Downs Family visited their old hometown, Chicago, this weekend, and I took the opportunity to see the Windy City myself with knowledgable devotees. I'd only been a few times before, once in childhood (big hotel, big town, is all I recall), and once in bandhood, on which occasion I learned that by "tall boys" Chicagoans meant 40- rather than 16-ouncers--an admirable commonality with Memphis--and that a scratch on the 8-ball does not mean the end of the game in at least one bar with a very menacing clientele.

I learned a little more this time. To wit:

1.) Lake Michigan is an awesome sight. It's a lake, categorically, but looks more like an ocean, and absolutely rules its horizon. It was largely frozen this weekend, and its whiteness merged with mist and sky to create a spectacularly desolate vista. Some couples sat on benches by Lake Shore Drive and contemplated the vast blankness. This seems Midwestern to me--like making friends with the Big Sky of the Great Plains in order not to be driven mad by it.

2.) Chicago is largely horizontal. Aside from the downtown collosi, most buildings are only a few stories tall, and sprawl over a huge area. You can travel miles through the city with only the distant skyline to remind you that you are not in Waterbury, CT, or Springfield, MA--in fact, many of the residential neighborhoods reminded me of those in New England, with canopied wooden fire escapes like tiered porches and more clapboard than I expected. I saw very few ugly buildings. The old, scarred ones are noble, and the new ones are by and large at least decent architecturally. They seem to care about that sort of thing here, and that's a stark contrast to New York, where construction is heedless in every sense.

3.) Michigan Avenue beats Fifth Avenue and Broadway. It doesn't achieve the canyon effect of the big New York thoroughfares, but the city fathers took good advantage of their larger available space to make navigation easier and to give pedestrians a more complete view of its best buildings, like the filigreed Tribune and Wrigley and the crystalline Prudential. It's like a giant gallery of architecture.

4.) Wicker Park is a fine bohemia. We spent an afternoon at Earwax, drinking strong coffee, reading alt-papers and watching the young hipsters traipse through. They sported disheveled hairdos, thrift-shop coats, and well-thumbed dollar books. I wanted to hug them, they were so cute. And, like most Chicagoans, they were pretty low-key. The natives generally seem less wound up than we do. The New York kind of assertiveness creates in any common space, even on weekends, an electrically-charged miasma that seems to accelerate time or at least tempo. In Chicago the clock tocks as well as ticks.

5.) ATMs are "cash stations" and there are many "Public Self Parks," which I first assumed meant not unmanned car garages but storage facilities for public selves. Given the general lack of pretension, maybe it does mean that. I would not be surprised to learn that the average Chicagoan spent less annually on clothes than we do, or carried five to ten more pounds.

6.) The mayor has a thick Chicago dialect which makes him sound more like a 60s union boss than the usual puffed, pomaded modern big-town mayor, or the corporate dweeb currently mismanaging New York. Chicago's current mayor is the same-named son of the infamous ward-heeler Richard Daley, and gets vote totals like his old man's--he just won his fifth term by a 5-to1 margin. No one seems to mind this, or that the mayoral elections are held in the dead of winter (about a third of eligible voters turned out). Chicago's long history of fruitful municipal corruption seems to make the public more forgiving of machine politics, and the machine seems fairly efficient and even somewhat responsive to public need. That must be nice.

7.) Chicago has two large dailies, the Tribune and the Sun-Times. Both are decent papers, but each has spawned a daily "youth" edition; each costs a quarter, is laid out like a large-type edition of Entertainment Weekly, and sucks dog dick journalistically. The main free paper, the Reader, is the best read in town, thick with substantive features and knowledgable arts coverage.

8.) I saw several good public statues and friezes, including a tribute to Goethe (contributed in the early 20th Century by "the German citizens of Chicago"--imagine any group in a modern city contributing a tribute to their greatest poet!), a bust of Sir Georg Solti, and a free-standing effigy of the Mexican leader Juarez.

9.) Martin and I went to pick up a six-pack at a liquor store on Diversey at around 3:30 in the morning. The place was bustling. People were in a fine mood (that is to say, drunk) and in no hurry to get out. You can buy whiskey and wine in grocery stores. Some bars close at 3 am, some at 4 (and some of the latter advertise the fact, e.g., "McCloskey's Till 4"). Chicagoans like to drink. On the other hand, I saw very few people smoking on the streets or even in the bars.

10.) There is a cable TV program called "Chicago Works," created by the Mayor's office and devoted to municipal matters: recent developments in traffic management, education, mass transit, etc. The program is crudely made and has a bright, chirpy air: a segment I saw on reading programs was hosted by two garish nerds who seemed absolutely tickled to death to represent the public school system. I have no idea how many watch it, but I was surprised that it existed at all, and that it was so homemade and friendly.

11.) No city over a certain size, and maybe that size is not very big, is to be comprehended in a weekend tour, just as no person is to be comprehended in a brief encounter, though writers, of course, will convince themselves otherwise and maybe convince some readers too. I went to the top of the Hancock Building and looked over the town, which is appalling in its physical size, more so than even New York whenever I viewed it from the observatory of the World Trade Center. On those occasions Manhattan was a cluster of stalagmites, and the boroughs great inchoate smears on the horizon; Chicago has some stalagmites, but in the main it is a smear that runs off in all directions but that of the Great Lake, and dwindles eventually into the mists and topography of America. Dan Quayle once referred to "the great state of Chicago," and here the poor dunce's confusion would be forgivable, but that states are just cuts in the land, whereas Chicago is a small civilization with its own history, dialect, culture, immigration patterns, and mythology. But it is not, to be sure, a foreign civilization. New York is built around an island, and still resists its ties to the country of which it is supposed to be a part, and seems ready, as Barry Goldwater once urged, to float away toward Europe; Chicago sits comfortably right on top of America, almost like a cornice; it rejects nothing of it--chain stores seem as natural here as saloons and union halls--and at certain junctures and in the right light could be any other American town. So maybe this is, as people say, the great American city, and maybe that's why I found it easy to like, and hard to feel a part of.

Roy
February 27, 2003
12:04 a.m.
How Many Fingers, Winston?

An article by Jonah Goldberg defending McCarthyism--not putative McCarthyism, but real, Tail-Gunner Joe, "I have in my hand a list" McCarthyism--has drawn some comment on the web, naturally. The discussion can and will go on, but to little effect, I imagine. Goldberg's gambit is more interesting than his argument, such as it is, and represents a little-noticed trend on the Right.

Goldberg says that McCarthy was a "lout" but essentially justified because Communist agents were afoot in America. He brushes off the prosecutions, official or otherwise, that disemployed many citizens who had committed no crimes. "When they denounce McCarythism," he writes, "they are working on the clear assumption that McCarthyism victimized only innocent people. That is a lie. And it also a lie that the USA Patriot Act is being used solely to punish innocent people."

This is a breathtaking switcheroo: a complaint against the prosecution of innocents is answered by the fact that some people are not innocent. It is easier to see the barbarism of this idea when it is removed from the context of Goldberg's article, which is mostly an indictment of Communism. This context suggests, though Goldberg is too clever to say it out loud, that Communism is so bad that the ruination of a few innocents in the course of hunting it down is a paltry concern.

Careful readers may notice a similarity between this approach and that taken by writers in favor of invading Iraq. Saddam is very bad, it is explained, so questioning a war against him makes the questioner "objectively pro-Saddam" or "pro-terrorism." Meaningful argument ends here, for what is the point of arguing with an advocate of evil dictators and suicide bombers?

This ploy has worked out well for the war advocates, so it is little wonder that Goldberg would venture back in time to apply the same method to those who fought McCarthy. He and his colleagues must believe they have been writing history, as events careen along their pre-ordained path; why not take a moment to rewrite some history while they're at it?

Getting back to McCarthy, it is interesting that no one much questions another large, unspoken idea here--that being a Communist made one fair game even if no espionage or other crime had taken place. McCarthy's whole schtick was enabled by the notion that there could be such a thing as a thought crime--that if you thought Marx was right, you could be taken down, whether you collaborated in espionage or merely believed in the widespread redistribution of wealth. Even CalPundit, in his generally thoughtful consideration of Goldberg, says, "It is not McCarthyism to accuse a communist of being a communist." It's actually something much worse, because our freedoms aren't worth much if we do not have the right to be wrong.

Goldberg quotes Orwell near the beginning of his article. Well, I'll say this for him: he's got nerve.

Roy
February 24, 2003
1:04 a.m.
Grammies in 2000 words or more

So many questions, preeminent among them: Why watch this crap? The next big question: Why Dustin Hoffman? What is the demographic for this? Why Simon & Garfunkel? Does NARAS have a special deal with nursing homes? Why do I get such lousy reception when I'm watching CBS? Why have I never noticed before? Why didn't S&G rehearse? (Silly question.) "And the people bowed and prayed/to the neon god they made"--could this be someone's commentary on the parlous state of popular music (besides mine, I mean)?

Dustin does his boomer bit by refering to "Simon and Garfunkel, who defined a generation" and making a lame Justin Timberlake joke. Claims the show is being hosted by "the people of New York"--so where's my VIP ticket? Why is he reading so slow? NARAS doesn't have stage monitors?

No Doubt's on--time to get some beers... hey, they won something! Did they beat anyone good? Well, it's early yet to get mad -- I just got these beers.

Tony Bennett and a guy from the Sopranos--well, OK, I see where this is going, but since they can't talk for more than thirteen seconds it's a shittier idea than they even dreamed, and that, my friends, is saying something. Norah Jones--this sounds like it would be good if you were at a $200 table at a supper club, or if you wanted to close your eyes and think you were at one. Well, at least it's a tune, and tunes are scarce these days... And hey, she wins something too! "I never thought this was popular music"--well, who knows what is anymore? She doesn't write her own tunes, it appears. Somewhere in the songwriter boiler room, a sweaty scribe gets a bonus.

Justin Timberlake and Kylie Minogue--and another shitty joke. That's the thing about the cavernous venues in which these music things are held nowadays--the speakers can't relate to their audiences with anything subtler than HELLO NEW YORK!

Marc Anthony--his dialect spikes when he says "salsa" and "Tito Puente." But so does mine.

Faith Hill--her silhouette comes in extreme long shot: now I know why people buy those big TVs. This is like watching a letterboxed Stanley Kubrick DVD on one of those night-security-guard televisions. Camera moves in: why does this make me think of boudoir photography in Lansing, MI?

You can take the boy out of advertising, but... McDonald's: This'd be a lot better if "Aunt Tiffany" shoved her tongue down the kid's throat. Head of State: between this and Bringing Down the House it looks like we're back to black people as bringers of lessons in life 'n' love for white folks. Budweiser: I guess the folks who "didn't do what they were supposed to do" still have a little money for beer after they pay out everything else from their shitty jobs. I know I do!

Paul Shaffer: ah, the real spirit of the Grammies. He's amusingly insincere. And he gives a shout-out to the boys in the boiler-room! Here come the singer/songwriters!

Vanessa Carlton--I had to write the name fast cause I've never heard of her... oh, SHE wrote that thing with the Marlboro-theme sample. I think she should have cut the strings--a voice as imprecise as hers sounds better without an orchestra. John Mayer--Case in point. Cute-and-knows-it is in, cute-and-doesn't-know-it is out, I guess. Hey, he finger-picks. Wonder if he's ever played the Anti-Hoot? James Taylor and Yo-Yo Ma--ha ha. But wait, stop. I used to hate this guy (punk rockers had to, it was in the by-laws), but lately I think he's great. He sings beautifully, cold and clear like river water. Miles Davis told him he sang like a blind man. Knowing Miles, he might have meant that he was awkward on stage, but I like to think he meant that he sang as if sound were everything in life. But let's not think about execellence tonight.

Kim Cattrall and P. Diddy--this is awful on so many levels. John Mayer gets an award! Think it's fixed? He's almost eloquent, but he's 16--he'll lose that soon enough. Eminem gets an award! Aw, look, he's namechecking! But he left off Al B. Fresh!

Queen Latifah--"my girl, Stevie Nicks," ha ha. Dixie Chicks--Well, it's nice that they play, but you know what? Dolly Parton didn't do much with a guitar except look good holding it, and she's still the queen. Maybe I'd like 'em better if they were sitting on milk crates and wearing flour sacks.

Martina [unintelligible], [unintelligible], and Herbie Hancock--announcing a country award. Hmm. Dixie Chicks win an award! Folks, I see a pattern! Check the wreckage of Ron Brown's plane!

John Leguizamo--"Now here I am center stage and still broke"--and he's not even a musician. Kinda funny. The New York Philharmonic play Bernstein--oh, Leguizamo should be dancing to this shit! That'd be the Soy Bomb! Twenty seconds for Glenn Miller. More John Leguizamo! More Philharmonic! With Coldplay! Makes me miss Procol Harum, but not Metallica.

Rod Stewart and Harvey Fierstein--they're mildly amusing. Robin Williams won and he didn't perform! (Oh, wait, he performs later. Check Paul Wellstone's wreckage!) Say, I just noticed, not many crowd shots this year...remember when

Jamie Lynn Ziegler and Busta Rhymes--who's in charge of program theme? Bring back Michael Greene! Johnny Mathis? God bless. Avril Levigne--Give her a guitar or something. Some singers are interesting standing there or jumping up and down or flicking back their hair. She's not. Flashpots! Lots of flashpots! Call Great White! Check their wreckage, too!

Traditional supers for awards no one cares about: Doc Watson got one, bless him. Tom Chapin won Best Spoken-Word Album for Children for "The Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly." Folk music lives--as spoken-word for children!

Whoa, Nelly. Whoa in the sense of "stop," I mean. More stage flames--well, no one can say they're over-sensitive. Maybe that's what sweated off his band-aid. And I'm not feeling the unseen-backup-singer thing, especially when Nelly gets all these people onstage to just look weird and flail.

Eve and Fred Durst--"hard rock was forged back in the 70s"--appreciate the gesture, dood, but don't they give history lessons at Rock and Roll Camp? Well, at least Dave Grohl thanked Kurt. (No, he didn't. I typed that in case he did. But he did thank his girlfriend/model/actress.)

Robin Williams--"Posh Pit," ha ha. No, that's really funny. But stop talking black, Robin. Really, just stop. I know you got a right but--just stop. Broooce--OK, I can't help it. I actually saw him at the Meadowlands twice, years ago. And he's got it. You know, it. He looks like he's talking about something. Ms. Levigne probably isn't watching, but she should. I love when he plays lead, and it takes guts to use an old-fashioned whammy bar without a locking nut on national TV. Those things can go out of tune easily, you know. Nice after-performance shot of Lou Reed sharing a laugh with a guest.

Erykah Badu, B. B. King, and [unintelligible]--Nice 'fro, Erykah. Nice 'tude. [unintelligible] looks soooooo out of place. Alan Lomax! Shit! He gets less props than Glenn Miller!

Songwriter award: I see Jones brought her boiler room slave to the party. And he wins! He talks like he has a gun to his head. As well he should. Camera catches Norah squawking about something. "More meat for the boiler room slave!" perhaps.

Traditional supers for awards no one cares about II: lotta awards for Charley Patton, but he's dead, so a lot of white people pick up the statuettes. The Blind Boys of Alabama are still around, so they came in for their statuettes instead of letting a bunch of white people pick them up for them.

Ja Rule and Kevin James--Introduced as "two Kings of Queens." Michael Greene! Michael Greene! Michael Greene! Ashanti--the little kids, the little kids: we do it for the children! Does this just sound like Stevie Wonder? Yeah? Well, you know what--you could sound like much worse.

This. Sucks. But I hear there's a Clash tribute later so...

Ed Bradley--"Since the 1960s, the Bee Gees have been a three-man harmonic convergence"--when I came to, the tribute film was almost over. N'Sync--this ain't a bad idea. No, not bad at all. I hope they're all thinking, "Where do we get boiler room slaves like this?" But they're probably not. Barry and Robin Gibb--Don't stand and clap for them, they're not dead! Well, they're cooler than the youngbloods anyway. "There's the measure of the man, right there"--you know, I do give points for class. Class is real. You don't have to be a celebrity to have it. In fact, it helps not to be one. But it's nice to see the stars showing a little, regardless.

"New York's Own" Willem Dafoe--Mr. Creepy introduces Mr. Creepier. That's not a cut on either side: Eminem looks like he's talking about something, too--and he does it all with his voice and body, since his face is a mask. You know what else helps? The words. Now, Bill O'Reilly, you know why we all cooperate with this alleged psychopath--he can write. But who's YaYo?

Aretha Franklin and Bonnie Raitt--Why did Aretha dress as a Sacher Torte? Because she can! She gives Norah Jones a total air kiss as the winning chanteuse claims her Best Record award. Well, of course. I recall Sydney Pollack accepting a Best Director Oscar from John Huston, Akira Kursosawa, and Billy Wilder years ago. He looked more embarrassed than Jones looks now. Singers are morons.

Vince Vaugh--Royal Blakeman, lawyer, Trustee Award, keep going. Sheryl Crow and Kid Rock--I like 'em okay, but why are they on? It's 11 pm and I'm waiting for the Clash tribute. Oh, yeah--they fuck. Onstage? No such luck.

Cyndi Lauper and Alicia Keyes. Just don't talk at all. Best New Artist: I like Michelle Branch's tight high-school-grin, but the winner is Norah Jones. OK, now I know why Dustin Hoffman and Simon and Garfunkel started this show. She said "shit." They bleeped it. Next season: Eminem and Norah Jones. Fashizzle.

Traditional supers for awards no one cares about III: I see the Pat Metheny Group was honored, as were Stevie Wonder and Chaka Khan. I wish I was at their party.

Michael Bloomberg--WHY AREN'T YOU BOOING THIS PIECE OF SHIT? THIS FUCKING NAZI RICH ASSWIPE! WHERE'S THE JOE STRUMMER THING? WHATNeil Portnow----WHY AREN'T YOU... shit, out of beer. Can I get to the store without missing whatever piece of shit is next? What the hell difference does it make? Stop it, Roy, this is journalism. In fact, you should be covering this Michael Greene wannabe's bullshit. But he's not saying anything. "Troubled times, brilliant and talented artists, blah blah, blah..." Then, film of dead guys. Cavern of out-of-sync applause. No one applauds for Adolph Green. Adolph Green, lyricist of On the Town! Goddamnit! Did they paper the house with retards? Are you all sheep? Why don't you rise up out of your seats and tear this

Clash tribute: That's IT?

Traditional supers for awards no one cares about IV: FUCK YOU! SUCK MY DICK! I LOVE THE STANLEY BROTHERS! FUCK YOU! YOU GODDAMN UGLY STUPID PIECE OF HSIT! MUSIC IS REAL! YOU PEOPLE ARE MONSTERS! YOU LIE ABOUT THE THING THAT GIVE LIFE TO YOU AND EVERYTHING ELSE! MOTHERUFJCKERSCX! FUKC YHJ

E;lvis COstleo, Michelle Branmch,anf [untilmenme]: Youi such,. The recomd of the years foes to Norajj Jones who cammnuc cjc my dick. Whathna a dfnucn of shit :"When tis wokd is reslkl weirkd tiyu": sjcn my cock ykui sytupd sit cunty old cunt gbs cnn

(Before his breathing went shallow and halting, the author made it known that he is disappointed, though never had reason not to be, that the Grammy Awards once again celebrated the slick and shallow over that substantive, and that he dedicates this column to Lester Bangs.)

Roy
February 21, 2003
12:04 a.m.
The Final Paycheck

I have in my record collection a copy of Johnny Paycheck's Greatest Hits, Volume II. "Take This Job and Shove It" is on it--it's probably on Volume I, too. The cover shows Paycheck's ragged face in extreme close-up, under a cowboy hat; his eyes are mobbed by tiny creases, and he's trying to light a bent cigarette. The song I like best on it is "Colorado Cool-Aid," a mostly-spoken shaggy-dog story ("Wh-what's that? You say you never heard of Colorado Cool-Aid?") in which some loudmouth gets his ear cut off: "I said how you doin' big man/Aw, hell, he can't hear/not on this side anyway--he ain't got no ear!"

Paycheck, who passed on Wednesday, was a tough guy who sang very old-fashioned country songs, many of which had jokey, mordant titles like "She Got the Gold-Mine, I Got the Shaft" ("While she's out there spendin' my alimony/I'm livin' in a trailer and eatin' baloney") and "(I Drank) Fifteen Beers" ("Well, that's an awful lot of brew"). They're kind of funny and kind of sad, in the good old tradition of sensitive he-men who knew life is a bitch and all you can do is laugh.

Paycheck knew it. He'd played bass and sung backup with George Jones, and run up and down the country charts a few times on his own, before hitting the skids in the late 60s. Billy Sherrill, Jones' longtime producer, dug him up and got him making hits again in the 70s. Then he got pinched on a check-forging rap. That sentence was suspended, but later on he had tax trouble and even shot a guy in a bar fight (all the reports I've seen said the sumbitch had it coming), adding a few prison years to his resume. In later years he sobered up and advised young up-and-comers to "stay away from the drugs and alcohol" at his official website. (This site also lists Paycheck's favorite places as "the hills of West Virginia and Disneyland.") His most recent pictures show the sharp, quarrelsome features of his youth--chin poking out like it was daring someone to swing at it, eyes ablaze--softened and almost avuncular. He died in a VA hospital; in the 50s Paycheck had served in the Navy before earning a discharge for striking an officer.

His voice was, like a young Merle Haggard's, shouting but musical. He made the notes (you'd have to know how, backing the Possum) but often gave the impression of making them by force. In this he was like the hell-raiser David Allen Coe, who wrote "Take This Job," but Paycheck had a much better, gentler sense of humor. He seemed amused by his own twang, and played with it. And when he announced that she got the gold-mine and he got the shaft, you never felt as if, once he got offstage, he would be coming after the bitch with a steak knife. He laughed at his own bad luck, which is a sign of superior spirit.

A band I used to play in covered one of his spookier songs, "Pardon Me, I've Got Someone to Kill," in which the protagonist calmly explains to a bartender that his friend and his woman have run off and his pride demands that he murder them as soon as he's settled his tab. "I know I'll surely die for what I'm about to do," he tells the presumably distressed mixologist, "But it don't matter--I'm a dead man anyhow." He explains before he goes that "by the time you tell the sherriff, it'll all be over," and thanks the man for listening to his story. Paycheck's recorded version is quiet, sincere, and hung with endless sorrow; he's at the place where a good laugh won't cut it anymore, which is of course the end of the line. Maybe Paycheck was thinking about the times he thought he'd gotten there, before Billy Sherrill or Jesus or whomever pulled him back.

He went out clean and sober, and good for him, but tonight I'm drinking cheap whiskey from a water-glass in honor of Johnny Paycheck. I have no one to kill, and for all my shaftings my sense of humor is still intact. I don't know if that's luck or if that's grace, but I do know that I am both lucky and graced to have had Johnny Paycheck's music and his example.

Roy
February 17, 2003
12:04 a.m.
Life in a Blender

I note with horror that there were two Michael Jackson exposes on network TV tonight. "Holy crap!" cried America, "who knew he was such a freak? We never before noticed his structurally unsound nose, his Zacherle pallor, and his Sgt. Pepper-goes-to-Mardi-Gras wardrobe, not to mention his tendency to frolic abed with little boys. Thank God he is now unmasked and banished, and we can enjoy normal-looking stars like Christina Aguilera and Pink!"

As I've said before (in an AlicuBlog post that I'm just too lazy to find--go through the archives and read through thousands of my deathless commentaries to find it, would you?), MJ's high weirdness has been part of Jay Leno's heavy rotation for years. Everyone knew what he was. This current, extraordinary public shaming is, like a lot of stuff these days, economic in origin: Jackson lost the protection of Sony Music when, as Fox News reported in June, he refused to accept their last contract offer. And he hasn't forged another alliance that compares with it (Al Sharpton clearly doesn't count). Jackson had been tabloid fodder for years, but when journalists no longer had to worry about pissing off a huge music conglomerate if they went after him in earnest, the floodgates opened.

One phrase from that Fox report says a whole lot about the economics of the music business: "With the failed sales of Invincible (2 million)..." A business in which two million units sold represents a failure! That's the kind of power that can change what you see on your tabloid TV, and make the difference between naughty giggles over Wacko Jacko and the present pitchfork-and-torch parade.

My girlfriend recently gave me a copy of Maxim's Blender because it had Mariah Carey on the cover. I feel about Mariah like Oliver Willis feels about Britney--ever since I saw the former Mrs. Mottola singing outside the NBC Studios in some kind of a halter top and a down jacket, I haven't been able to stop thinking about her. The press has been rough on Mariah of late, owing to the failure of Glitter ("It went only platinum," notes Blender), her alleged nervous breakdown, and, last but not least, her departure from Virgin, but she's got a new album out now on Monarc/Def Jam, and Blender gives her a nice spread, in which she disputes that she went bughouse last year:

"When Blender brings up a story about her travails that was published in the New York Post, she explodes--'At this point, in my opinion, any paper is a crock of lies!'--then, without drawing a breath, she continues: 'For the most part, I mean. No offense to the Post or any paper.'"

Sell it, girl.

Roy
February 16, 2003
1:55 a.m.
Hippies, Lesbians, Citizens

If you want to read about how the recent protest in New York was conducted by hippies, lesbians, and other enemies of freedom, go on over to National Review Online's "The Corner" and get a load of that. The NROers strongly make a point I had been meaning to address. I was working all day Saturday, but saw many erstwhile protestors in the subways, and of course the signs they carried were generally strident in tone. But with every news outlet reporting on the war as a done deal (not to say an absolute necessity), and all opposition denounced as racist, violent, stuck in the 60s, motivated by "hysteria, ignorance, and belligerence," an act of cruelty to "Iraq's democrats" (and, of course, motivated by Goddess worship), why wouldn't they be strident? They've been shut out of the national discourse on the subject, and the May 15 demos in New York and several other American cities were their chance--probably their last chance--to let anyone know that there were actually some citizens who weren't going for it.

I think that was what motivated the large turnout as much as any procedural point the protesters may have had against the war. As unwieldy and, in their own way, politically tainted as the United Nations discussions on the war have been, they have at least been discussions. The U.S. Congress offers nothing like them. Joe Lieberman and Hillary Clinton are not going to put any hard questions into the public record. The bombers will fly without a demurrer raised anywhere that matters.

Not only, notoriously, the government of New York City, but apparently also the Bush Administration, tried hard to scuttle Saturday's protests (per Atrios). And now war supporters (with rare, gracious exceptions) treat the protests as beneath contempt, not as the statements of fellow citizens with a grievance.

Yesterday the Administration sent Condoleezza Rice onto the talk shows to tell protestors that Saddam Hussein would not allow his own people to demonstrate, so there. This ancient tactic, picked up from (or by?) the blogbrethren who label any dissent "objectively pro-Saddam," suggests that the Administration's newfound concern for the people of Iraq, whom the same Administration proposes to bomb into "shock and awe," is genuine. It also suggests that the protesters are as concerned with the Iraqi people as the Administration pretends to be. I suggest that they are more concerned with the rights of people here at home--primary among these the right to be given a respectful hearing. Their numbers alone should give them that much, but from the top down they are dismissed as treasonous rabble.

The imminent invasion of a country that has not attacked us is explained by our leaders as a response to that country's breach of a resolution by the United Nations, an organization our leaders traditionally treat with contempt. If our leaders can pretend, now that it's convenient, to respect the U.N., why can it not show at least a shred of respect for hundreds of thousands of its own citizens?

Roy
February 14, 2003
2:55 a.m.
How Dare They Try To End This Beauty?

I like online tests, though most are lame. This one is mildly amusing, but the scale of results is hilarious, and I am proud to have received the "15% percent Republican" rating, which puts me up there with Jon Stewart.

Speaking of percentile Republicans, InstaPundit (I "Heh," You "Indeed") makes a great deal of this Earth First! protest gesture, without addressing its key attribute: that is, it's fucking brilliant. Good placement, good creative: David Ogilvy would have been proud. It beats holy hell out of IP's own idea of a guerilla-marketing joke. But then, when a guy goes "heh" that often, you know he's got a poor sense of humor.

I also got some laffs from a caption in Tuesday's Health & Fitness section of the Times: "A scene from Marseille during its plague epidemic in 1720. It has not been unusual for doctors to flee during such epidemics." Nice, goofy pic with it of Galen (who "quit Rome in A.D. 166 at the onset of an epidemic that might have been smallpox"). "Heh," "indeed"! This is especially risible in light of today's Times story about the sometimes long wait for treatment under Canada's socialized medicine scheme. (What liberal media?) Brings up the point: do doctors have a responsibility to society? Hippocrates thought so; Canada thinks so. Here in America, of course, their responsibility is parcelled out among the insured. Our President says we'll bring "medicines" to Iraq. How much to fly there? Can I bring my oxygen tank?

All yesterday long, and into this Valentine's Day, for some reason a song from the original Broadway soundtrack of "Hair" ran through my mind. The song is "Walking in Space," a celebration of the effects of hippie drugs on consciousness. I have not had such experiences for years, but recall them well enough to appreciate their evocation in the song ("All the clouds are cumulus/Walking in space/Oh my God your skin is soft/I love your face"), and the spirit of the line which haunted me, a feeling that seems to both celebrate the psychedelic state and step out of it to protest an ugly reaction to its avatars that persists to this day: "How dare they try to end this beauty?" You can laugh at the stoners; I do; we all do. Laugh, too, at the retreat into cosmic consciousness. At the present moment--no more fraught with peril than the turbulent Sixties out of which the song came--we all seem to volunteer for a useless vigilance that makes even the sight of a blue sky or the song of a bird occasion for terror. We are encouraged to live in fear of a death that could come to any of us for the most mundane reasons, and to turn our faces from life lest we encounter its opposite. How dare they try to end this beauty? See you at First Avenue and 49th Street.

Roy
February 12, 2003
2:35 a.m.
Till Then, Reading Mailer

Found myself on West 18th Street, by the marvelous Skyline Books, and had to stop in to see what I could find. I found Norman Mailer's Of a Fire on the Moon for three bucks.

I've read most of Mailer, but this one always eluded me: I was less interested in the subject than those found in Armies of the Night, Miami and the Siege of Chicago, The Executioner's Song, et alia. But dipping into this one has been a great pleasure. I've just read his account of a pre-flight press conference for the Apollo 11 crew. Mailer sifts every gesture, utterance, and silence for meaning, and comes up with a panful of gold every time. Consider his first impression of premier moonman Neil Armstrong:

"He would have been more remarkable in fact if he had been just a salesman making a modest inept dull little speech, for then one would have been forced to wonder how he had every gotten his job, how he could sell even one item, how in fact he got out of bed in the morning. Something particularly innocent or subtly sinister was in the gentle remote air. If he had been a young boy selling subscriptions at the door, one grandmother might have warned her granddaughter never to let him in the house; another would have commented, 'that boy will go very far.' He was apparently in communion with some string in the universe others did not think to play."

Mailer knows the old injunction, that writers should speak of salient particulars rather than of bland generalities, and so digs for them in circumstances engineered to be (as a NASA press conference would be) as blandly general as possible.

No wonder he is now hated by war cheerleaders. Putting his contempt for Bush and the war in the artistically minor form of letters and interviews, he is still more focussed in his thoughts and words than any of the sneerleaders attacking him.

If there is any good omen in our awful times and manners, it is that Ron Rosenbaum, lately a bit of a sneerleader himself, has lately praised Mailer as one of our great writers. This is encouraging because at least one war fan acknowledges that someone who disagrees with him has yet something important to offer us.

In this mean, low time (about which more later, in a ripping Crank Watch!), it is a blessing that anyone can see the value in a contradictory intellect. I should like to do the same, but the specimens presented to me are vastly inferior. Take Richard Brookhiser, who labors on the same pages as Rosenbaum, but to far lesser effect, as he attempts to extract meaning from our current tenterhook suspension:

"The anxious, censorious voice comes from fear of freedom. The minute we take our eyes off the task at hand, the spectacle of everyone else engaged in their own tasks looks like witlessness and confusion. Dare we enjoy it? Dare we act in the defense of such folly? The poet, the philosopher and the scientist--freedom's ancient rivals whenever they are given an inch--are too ready to say, 'Stop doing all the crap you're doing; do what I say instead.' I have only two thoughts for the anxiety. First, do your task; when you can, make sure it is worth doing. This is possible; after all, it's a free country. Second, don't worry about the brave men and women on the front lines. The front lines now are everywhere. New Yorkers don't need Tom Ridge's color-coding to tell us that. If the moment comes, we will do our best."

How to parse this dog's Sunday Brunch of gibberings? That Brookhiser assumes all of us suffer from the miasmic fear that conservatives of a certain sensitivity are expected to experience (as a signal of solidarity with us rabble, one imagines) is insult enough; we work our long hours to pay for our overpriced lives and worry about meeting that requirement, all the while "doing our best," without wondering whether our bravery stacks up to that of the Gulf troops. That what we are doing is "worth doing" is monthly acknowledged by our billing statements. And poets are not foremost or even numbered among the ranks of "freedom's ancient rivals"--not in the era of Patriot Act II (this time it's personal -- and what were you saying about this being "a free country"?). And, if we don't need Tom Ridge, we surely don't need Richard Brookhiser to amplify (while incompetently pretending to assuage) the fears that his friends in this Administration gin up to distract us from the ruination of our country.

The War Party has yet to find an artist who can read the entrails of our current state in a way that convinces. Call me when one turns up. Till then I'll be reading Norman Mailer.

Roy
February 11, 2003
12:15 a.m.
Right Down Their Street

The New York Daily News headline read "Sharon Olive Branch," but the Israeli Prime Minister's quote, directed at "moderate and dovish" Knesset members, seemed like something entirely different: "Whoever wants peace must either enter the government or take responsibility for his refusal...Those who say 'no' to unity defy the will of the Israeli public."

Meanwhile in Munich, at an international Secuirty Conference, Senator John McCain was also showing some of what's under the increasingly thin velvet glove to our allies in Germany and France. "I speak bluntly today, and with perhaps less tact than a skilled diplomat," said the former Presidential aspirant, before warning that "France and Germany will have to answer to those who argue that Iraq could be to NATO what Abyssinia was to the League of Nations." He added, for good measure, "The United Nations Security Council risks that same fate should it not hold Iraq to account for its defiance." McCain also hinted (very skillfully, for one who is not a trained diplomat) that F&G's lack of cooperation with its more compliant neighbors would be bad for the European Union--and stated outright that "a distinct minority of Western European leaders appears to engage in America-bashing to rally their people and other European elites to the call of European unity." He also imputed anti-Zionism, at least ("reflexive hostility toward Israel as the root of all problems in the Middle East") as a motivating force in this rabble rousing.

This is odd. Our most forthright European ally in this conflict is Great Britain--or, rather, Tony Blair, as British public opinion runs so strongly against the war that a new poll shows Blair's once-mighty "New Labor" running neck-and-neck with the moribund Conservative Party. Not just the "elites," but a wide cross-section of Britons are opposing the war, and they certainly haven't been riled to it by any "America-bashing" from their national leadership.

None of this is an argument against the war, nor is it an impediment to it; the United States will invade Iraq and depose Saddam in any case. But it should be observed that a lot of arm-twisting is going on now, and threats that we would normally expect to occur off-stage in some diplomatic antechamber are trumpeted for general consumption. We are prepared to go it alone in Iraq, yet we insist of the cooperation of all our allies, every man Jack of them, or there will be repercussions, and we want not only the bureaucrats to know, but also the peoples of those uncooperative countries. In a sense we are going over the heads of the recalcitrant European leaders by addressing the voters that put them in power (which may explain the soft treatment of Russia in McCain's speech, despite its agreement with F&G--no one is likely to get between Putin and his subjects, so the effort would have been wasted). Indeed, McCain referred to "European politicians [who] speak of pressure from their 'street' for peaceful solutions." Well, McCain (no practiced diplomat) pitched it right down their street.

This would fit nicely with the Bush doctrine of offering liberation to citizens of countries deemed hostile to ourselves. But while Bush offered "food and medicines and freedom" to the Iraqis, to the French and Germans John McCain offered instead a warning: "There is an American 'street,' too, and it strongly supports disarming Iraq, accepts the necessity of an expansive American role in the world to ensure we never wake up to another September 11th, [and] is perplexed that nations with whom we have long enjoyed common cause do not share our urgency and sense of threat in time of war..."

And, as history shows, perplexing Americans is just a hair shy of pissing them off.

Roy
February 10, 2003
2:05 a.m.
Vidal Signs

Today I finished Ford's The Good Soldier and found it excellent. This sent me the Gore Vidal essay on Alan Judd's Ford biography. That was also excellent, not only on Judd and Ford but also, perhaps primarily, on literature and politics in general--to wit:

"The British can recognize irony only when it is dispensed with an old auntie-ish twinkle, like that of E.M. Forster, while Americans have yet to discover that there is such a thing. Once we do, the national motto will produce gargantuan laughter from sea to shining sea. E pluribus unum indeed!"

This led me to re-read several Vidal essays from the collection United States, which belongs in, as the old Penguin Books slogan used to have it, the library of every civilized person. The collection provides an excellent concordance to the aesthetic and ideological fads of the past fifty years, as well as an opportunity to wallow in wit of a caliber unseen and practically unimaginable in our current low, mean discourse.

Speaking of low, mean discourse, Vidal has lately been under heavy fire for his comments on our War on Terror. He has particularly questioned the actions of our government on September 11, 2001. That essay, "The Enemy Within," is a harrowing read; Vidal lays aside his easy wit for harsh jeremiad, suggesting American complicity in the 9-11 attacks. Given his longstanding suspicion that Pearl Harbor was also engineered by our government (and his tenderness toward Oklahoma City bomber Tim McVeigh), this makes him an easy target for folks like Andrew Sullivan ("moral idiocy") and Happy Fun Pundit ("putz"). Vidal's near-conclusions are a bridge too far for me, but I still think it fair to ask why, 16 months after the attacks, we've put so little effort into investigating them.

That essay may be Vidal's inarguably more attention-getting way of asking the same question. Nonetheless, he is widely reviled, even on the supposedly treasonous Left. That is no surprise. Vidal long ago lost any use for both the Tweedledees as well as the Tweedledums of American politics:

"I was once placed between two waxworks on a program where one of the pair was solemnly indentified as a 'liberal'; appropriately, he seemed to have been dead for some time, while the conservative had the vivacity of someone on speed. For half an hour it is the custom of this duo to 'crossfire' cliches of the sort that would have gotten them laughed out of the Golden Brach Debating Society at Exeter. On air, I identified the conservative as a liberal and vice versa. The conservative fell into the trap. 'No, no!' he hyperventilated. 'I'm the conservative!' (What on earth they think those two words mean no one will ever know.)"

Vidal in this mode is easier to take, as his world-weariness tickles our own, though his is in most cases (certainly those of his critics) vastly better earned. I still take him seriously, even in his rages. Years ago, when Norman Podhoretz and Midge Decter accused him of hating America, he asked how that could be, since he was "its current biographer." Notice that he didn't say chronicler, or historian, but biographer. Vidal's view of America is a long-term examination of its most powerful people, and the way they have dealt with the opportunities bequeathed them by the Founders. It is not surprising that this view is less than heroic. That he can still rise to anger about it shows how much he cares. I have more trouble interpreting the willful historic inattention of his critics--or, at any rate, interpretting it charitably.

It comes down to trust. My store of faith in our current rulers is small, as they seem mostly devoted to corporations, large contributors (these first two are usually one and the same), and fringe groups of evangelical Christians whose concern for our life on earth may be, given their belief in deliverance via rapture, much less compelling than that of the rest of us. Vidal may be wrong, but his belief in America, Lincolnian warts and all, is obviously real.

Roy
February 8, 2003
12:05 a.m.
21st Century Blues

Normally distinguished by his notorious slurs of various kinds, National Review Online's John Derbyshire has gone apocalyptic, confessing a dread that "we are heading, in Kevin Myers's memorable phrase, into the realm of chaos."

To comfort himself, he notes that many other good people (e.g. Peggy Noonan) have fantasized similarly since 9-11. But the homeland manifestations of international terror are not all that roil his soul. Spurred by news of a young woman despondent over the recent theft of her car, he treats us to this aria: "Look at the gross vulgar overflowing fat wealth we live amongst! Look at the great cars that 20-year-old kids drive 400 yards to the mall, to buy things they don't need, gadgets to pack into houses already overflowing with gadgets, clothes to cram into closets stuffed with clothes. Look at the work we do, sitting in humming cubicles scrolling through screens full of numbers, numbers that measure our wealth..."

(He is quickly seconded by his evangelical colleague Rod Dreher: "It was an entirely secular case for apocalypse now...One doesn't have to believe in an eschatological vision to recognize, as Derb does, that the world might or might not be ending, but a world certainly is." Dreher seems rather happy for the company. I wonder how Derbyshire feels.)

Recently, inspired by his rather late appreciation of Hank Williams, Derbyshire also lamented the passing of "the old, weird America" (he attributes the phrase to Bob Dylan--odd to see his name in a Derbyshire column--though I believe it was originally coined by Greil Marcus). That America was, Derbyshire moaned high and lonesome, "a place where 'multiculturalism' was not an empty cant phrase mouthed by social-engineering bureaucrats, but a daily reality of white, red, and black, hillbilly and cajun, bluegrass and blues, all jostled together--bickering, fighting and oppressing, to be sure, but also working, drinking, singing, and coupling. That America has now gone for ever, paved over with strip malls, industrial parks, community colleges, and trimmed suburban gardens..."

Why should unbridled materialism, and the inevitable homogenization that accompanies it, depress Derbyshire so? It is the natural product of the gleeful, unfettered capitalism of our trickle-down times. A brisk jaunt through the back pages of National Review Online and its sister supply-sider publications will show that this has been the selling point of modern conservatism. Vouchers, unlimited gun ownership, and an overturn of Roe v. Wade may be red meat to the Right's important but limited base constituents, but the crucial swing votes have been swung by the promise of money--money from entrepreneural opportunities, higher dividends, and tax cuts. That this promise is financed by massive deficits means little to a populace now accustomed to large debts of their own.

Derbyshire's comrades have been remarkably successful with this, but the acceptance of financial wealth as the centerpiece of human life leads inevitably to disappointment, and to frenzied attempts to fill the void with greater and more ingenious uses of money, as the 400-yard drive to the mall shows. That this should have also reduced our interactions to transactions, and turned many of us away from the search for noble purposes, and toward the search for the perfect home entertainment center, was foreseeable, indeed forseen by a lot of people on the other side.

Derbyshire may have worse nightmares soon. Elsewhere on the web Glenn Reynolds explains the necessity of government lies in war- and near-wartime--though, scrupling just enough to distance himself from the barbarity of his own thoughts, adds that lying to American citizens is very bad, though not so bad that it shouldn't be done. Less delicately, Ralph Peters asserts that the sovereignty of national borders is a "con" and an "antiquated scam," and that America must "revolutionize international relations" by disregarding them. If Derbyshire laments the loss of American folkways, he will probably miss truth and nationhood, too.

I wonder if it has ever occured to him that, given his stated values, he might have spent all these years assisting in the demolition of everything he holds dear.

Roy
February 7, 2003
12:05 a.m.
Q & no A

Does anybody here know whether satellites that can take pictures from space of trucks removing "materiel" from "missile assembly buildings" could also follow those trucks to see where they're taking the stuff?

Does anybody here know why, on the day of Secretary Powell's speech, our local network news shows led with reports on the finances of Martha Stewart?

Does anybody here know why the most labor-intensive writing, assisted by secretaries and fact-checkers and highly polished brass lamps (as seen weekly on The West Wing and daily in workplaces all over the country), yields the most dreary, obfuscatory product?

Speaking of hackwork, is this what our government considers consensus? (via Atrios)

If the New York Times is, as National Review Online has it, "Iraq's paper of choice," and, given its circulation, USA Today is America's paper of choice, should we apply to Iraq for educational assistance, since its people are obviously more literate than our own?

When are we going to invade the Ivory Coast?

Am I cynical in here, or is it just everybody?

Roy
February 5, 2003
12:01 a.m.
TV Dreams

The TV networks are missing something. Take "Joe Millionaire," for example. I'm sure we can all endorse the rank cynicism of it. But why didn't they take it to its logical end, and make the putative rich guy 50+, bald, and paunchy, dress him in Aristotle Onassis shades and ermine running clothes from SeanJohn, and have him say things to the suitresses like "Eh, you nice girl, ah? You have beautiful teeth! So clean!" and "Eh, you wax my ass for two grand, ah?" The women's behavior toward him would probably remain unchanged, but their conferences in his absence would be ever so much more entertaining:

"He has that manly assurance that comes from insane wealth!"

"Yeah, but he smells like Paco Rabanne and tetracyclene!"

"You're just jealous because he says I have nice teeth!"

I also wonder about "Hack," the avenging-angel show with David Morse. Morse is wonderfully worry-faced and carries the pained nobility of his ex-cop cabbie do-gooder well. But here, too, I see a failure of imagination. So far they've been giving him only the dreariest vengeance fantasies to indulge. Haven't these guys ever seen Taxi Driver?

"You're Senator Lieberman, aren't you? I'm voting for you, man. I tell everyone who comes into this cab that they have to vote for you!"

"Why thank you... (reads license) Mike. Tell me, Mike, what's the one thing that bugs you the most about this country?"

"Well, the first thing you should do is clean up this economy. Because it stinks like an open sewer. I get headaches from it, its smells so bad! So that's what you should do, sir--just flush these tax proposals right down the fucking toilet!"

"Well, Mike, I know what you mean. But it isn't going to be easy..."

Then we could have David Morse in a mohawk, David Morse staring at Alka-Seltzer, David Morse rescuing the Olsen Twins from a pimp... I'm telling you, it would turn that show right around.

I'd tell you about the wonderful A&E Biography I've envisioned for Jerry Colonna, but I imagine you can do this as well as I can.

Roy
February 4, 2003
12:01 a.m.
Metroscapes and the Final Frontier

I found myself down by City Hall yesterday. In the adjoining park were several installations under the collective name "Metroscape." These were piquant little art doodads of the sort I'd seen in subway stations and at Brooklyn's Metrotech Plaza: fun, unobtrusive, meant to give passers-by a spot of whimsy, I guess, on their way through the day. Among these bagatelles was an oversized wooden wind-up propeller plane, a brick fireplace with a twisted chimney, and a brassy, craggy little mountain (under ten feet in height) capped by a tiny human figure.

Normally this kind of thing makes me feel grateful. In the grim quest for solvency, any little tweak is welcome. I enjoy more often the naturally-occuring absurdities of city life: like tonight, in the train station, a couple of drummers pounding away while a skinny, beatifically-grinning young Spanish guy in a white sweater and white pants danced. His dance was really just a full-body twitch--he displaced very little airspace, but he had every muscle snapping and stretching to the beats we all heard and the microbeats perhaps he alone was hearing. His arms flapped and his knees pistoned. He looked as happy as a man could be. And this on a small patch of concrete between dark currents of commuters rushing toward home.

The park dinguses are less spontaneous, and certainly cost more to realize and have less mad genius than the twitching man. But, as I said, any diversion is welcome, and normally I can give this stuff at least grudging appreciation.

But so close to our center of Government, the geegaws on this day provoked in me something like dismay. I have no strong feeling against public art. It's often ridiculous but I have a strong appetite for the ridiculous. One almost has to, these days. I got a great kick out of Serra's nearly universally hated "Tilted Arc." That someone saw fit to challenge the ugliness of the surrounding commercial and government buildings with an even uglier, rusted mega-shard of metal--tilted, no less, so that even the formal majesty of its mass was vitiated--and that he got someone to pay out a huge commission for it, seemed to me a great joke. And I love the civic insanity of Joe Louis' Fist in downtown Detroit. Some such items are so absurd as to remind us, in a negative but harmless way, of the magnificence of human ambition: that someone went to so much trouble and expense to mount this eyesore is a perverse testament to our industry and ingenuity.

But these new ephemera have been mounted at a time of severe trouble for our City. I might have found it a brave gesture, if I thought it were a conscious affront to bad fortune--go ahead and do your worst, we will yet muster our creative energies and romp and play in the fields of the Lord. But not now. The sense of drift in New York today is appalling. Our mayor, whose workplace overlooks the Metroscape, seems dazed, busying himself with little uplift projects like his smoking ban while the economic floor collapses under us. The installations themselves are tired and have a make-work feeling about them. They are small, opaque twiddlings, and they seem like objective correlatives for our government at this time.

Bring back graffiti, I say. That shit had some edge, and it had something to do with the place it adorned. Or create something new and equally outrageous. Maybe Spike Lee's Ego, hanging from hooks in Fort Greene.

In other world news, my attention was directed to this plaint by a young blogger. It is inspired by the Columbia disaster, but devolves quickly into one of those generational laments that we get like clockwork every five years (generations ain't what they used to be) since Ginsberg's "Howl," though with less and less poetry in each iteration. A sample: "We take astronauts for granted, space travel is supposed to be easy; we're going to live on the moon. Today's discoveries and feats are made through computers, how can I make that my hero? The people most effecting my generation are the computer programmers, the game makers, and those who brought us Napster and Kazaa...Generations before have explored many of the conceivable frontiers. We have no New World, no Oregon Trail, no gold rush, no Alaska, and no man on the moon. You've left us to do the almost impossible...To go further then you we have to establish human life beyond the confines of our home."

This is meant in part as plea for space exploration, I guess, and that's not a bad idea, but he makes it sound as if a Mars colony would be first and foremost a means toward building self-esteem for Generation Whatever-Letter-They're-Using-Now. In fact, quite of bit of what's been written over the past few days about the space program has a similar tone. Rages James Lileks at the very idea that we would send robots instead of men to Mars, "Are we less than the men who left safe harbors and shouldered through cold oceans?" Well, I should hope not. But there other ways in which generations can prove themselves, and we aren't doing so well at those at the moment. Literature, architecture, music, politics, public works, and several other areas of human endeavor could use some of our young friend's moxie. And they wouldn't cost billions to realize, either.

Again, nothing against the space program. But I'm genuinely puzzled at the many recent roars against our alleged lack of national purpose in this regard. Our nation is gearing up for a war; there's your national purpose, in spades. If you want to put your shoulder against that wheel, God go with you. But a lot of the things by which generations are remembered for good or for ill are still left for us, or whatever subset of "us" with which you choose to identify, to achieve. If you think it's all been done, the frontiers you need to explore are not in outer space, but in your own imagination.

Roy
January 31, 2003
12:00 a.m.
Do You Remember President Nixon?

Do you remember President Nixon?/Do you remember the bills you have to pay?/Or even yesterday?--David Bowie, "Young Americans."

I've been thinking about the gulags. For over seventy years, the Soviet Union relied upon monstrous coercion to keep itself together. Millions of citizens were broken under a cruel and barbarous system, involving official murder, torture, blacklist, blackmail, and reversals of human feeling and even logic that the world came to know by the name "Orwellian." Seventy years of this, countless lives shattered or lost.

And we never invaded the Soviet Union.

The first, obvious argument is that they were too large and powerful to attack. In the rickety first days of the Soviet Union, Europe was rebuilding from the First World War and America was only beginning to devise its global mission. Something was always in the way. At the end of the Second World War (a war during which some Americans thought we had taken the wrong side, and should have been fighting the Communists), there was a little window within which the United States might conceivably have been able to conquer the Soviets with the atomic bomb. Certainly the Soviets gave us no end of provocation. Why didn't we take that opportunity, do you suppose? Because Harry Truman, exploder of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, was a secret pacifist? Because the prosecution of World War III was too much to ask of an alliance that had decisively won World War II? Or because it was, in the judgment of our leaders, not the better way to go about it?

Time passed. The Soviets got the bomb. We engaged their and China's proxies in Korea and Vietnam, negotiated treaties with them, used them as talking points in elections while sending our Presidents to dicker with their First Secretaries and Premiers over the number of allowable warheads in this or that region of the world. And meantime people suffered and died.

Were we wrong to wait for the Soviet Union to implode? At an affair for Ronald Reagan some years back, Richard Nixon, of all people (as recalled by Edmund Morris in the New Yorker), referred to his "kitchen debate" with Krushchev in the 1950s. Krushchev had said that Nixon's children would live under Communism, and Nixon had rejoined that Krushchev's children would live under democracy. "I knew at the time that he was wrong," Nixon recalled, "but I did not know at the time whether I was right." This is one of the few instances in which I find the disgraced President perfectly trustworthy. Is it not fascinating that this most credentialed of anti-Communists had, apparently, contented himself to deal with his sworn enemies by the most roundabout means of containment? Or that Reagan, whose devotion to Realpolitik was far less obvious than Nixon's, contented himself to fight Communism, not in Moscow or Beijing, but in the Seychelles and Grenada, and by grinding down the Soviets economically rather than militarily?

It puzzles me that for several long decades we coexisted with a dictatorship that was, by every description, as depraved as Saddam Hussein's, and that had (we were constantly told) nuclear missiles--not mysterious aluminum tubes, but fully-armed missiles--trained on all our great cities. And that our allies flirted with and feted these enemies (I recall, in 1970 I think it was, a state dinner held for Brezhnev in Paris by the Pompidous--a glittering affair covered in Life magazine). And that this went on for so long, with so little effect on our daily lives, that many Americans ceased to take it seriously anymore, and dared to say that the war in Vietnam was not worth the American blood spilled--and that time seemed to prove, when the Berlin Wall fell, utterly unopposed, under sledgehammers wielded not by armed American liberators, but by German citizens, that they were right.

And capitalism--a more purely Darwinian capitalism than even our own country would presently countenance--is a done deal in the new Russia, the new Ukraine, and all the formerly Soviet Socialist Republics.

It puzzles me because we are now assured that America can only be saved by the conquest of Iraq. We are told that Iraq has ties to Al Qaeda (a charge that can be more reliably made against our allies, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan). We are told that Iraq has deadly weapons, but even in the most lurid accounting of them, these fledgling weapons of mass destruction seem puny compared to those WMDs the Soviets used to faithfully parade around Red Square every May Day.

We are also told that our liberation of Iraq will be an act of mercy on those citizens forced to live in mad Saddam's nightmare state. So might a liberation have benefited Solzhenitsyn, Sakharov, and millions of nameless others in the years before Perestroika. But we waited instead.

Is Saddam worse than Stalin? Are his stockpiles of nerve gas (a substance peviously approved for American production on the strength of a tie-breaking vote in the Senate by our President's father) more of a threat than was the accumulated might of the erstwhile Evil Empire?

Will another September 11 be prevented by this invasion? Will another September 11 be exacerbated by it? Does September 11 have anything, really, to do with it?

Were were wrong to wait for the Soviets to fall? Would we be wrong to wait for Saddam to fall?

Does anyone in power now ever consider such questions as these, even for a second?

Roy
January 29, 2003
12:00 a.m.
And SOTU War

For the first time, I'm watching this on PBS. The reception seems quieter than on network--is it? Do the nets use a white-noise filter to increase anxiety and interest? Boy, that Sergeant-at-Arms has a nice job. And he looks like he could take a guy out if he had to.

Bush looks tan, rested, and ready, as always. "Reform domestic programs vital to our country"--mm, sounds ominous. "We will answer every danger and every enemy that threatens the American people"--this in a very, very calm voice. The whole thing is calm: he's working on reasonable. "We can be confident...our faith is sure, our resolve is firm, and our union is strong...We will not deny, we will not ignore, we will not pass along our problems to other Presidents and other generations...focus and clarity and courage."

Now to the bills of particulars: "Historic education reform...so that every child in America can read and learn..." Yeah, that's a done deal. "Homeland Security... largest tax relief in a generation..." The last gets a big hand, but still sounds hollow. That well's about dry. "Holding corporate criminals to account." Nice try. "An economy that expands fast enough to employ..." Uh huh. "Our economy is recovering, yet it's not growing fast enough... the economy grows when Americans have more money to spend." Yep, tax cut, that oughta do it. "Permanent" cuts, at that. "Money will start showing up in worker's paychecks... marriage penalty... tax relief for everyone... Americans will keep 1,100 more of their own money..." 1.1 grand? If only we had jobs... "Treating investors equally... not fair to again tax the shareholder on the same profits..." Hard to get sympathy for investors. "Ten million seniors who receive dividend income.." Ah, that's how you do it. "The best way to attack the deficit... spending discipline in Washington, D.C." Does anyone beating their palms there believe that?

"A budget that increases discretionary spending by 4% next year, about as much as the average family's income is expected to grow...Budget growth should not rise any faster than the paychecks of American families." Wait, my income is going to grow? Oh, wait: I'm not family. "Social Security... individual retirement accounts...High-quality, affordable health for all Americans..." Democrats' turn to cheer. "These problems will not be solved by a nationalized health care system..." 'Course not. "Good insurance policy..." I'd like one of those! "Instead of bureaucrats and trial lawyers..." Uh huh. "Medicare..." Democrats again. "Seniors access to preventive medicine..." Maybe experimental? Acupuncture? "All seniors...perscription drugs." All cheering, Eli Lilly too. "Additional $400 billion dollars." Whoa. "This year." Whoa again. We must be rich! "Prime causes of higher cost...physicians and hospitals unfairly sued." Haw haw! Take that, John Edwards! "Energy independence while dramatically improving the environment." Neat trick! How? "Produce more energy at home." You mean Alaska? "Power plants." Oh. "Not by regulations, but by technology and innovation...hydrogen-powered automobiles.... a simple reaction between oxygen and hydrogen.." The water engine! Bush: The Man and His Dream! Does Halliburton hold the patent?

"Compassion of America...there's power, wonder-working power in the idealism and faith..." How much will this cost? "Faith-based, and the Citizen Service Act...Freedom Corps...$450 million initiative... mentors." Money for training, nothing about pay offered. Sigh. "Addiction to drugs... reduces all the richness of life to a single destructive desire." Good line. "For those already addicted... $600 million." Can we have it in cash? "Healing Place Church in Baton Rouge..." No one's gonna stand up a take a bow? That's a relief. "A more welcoming society... we must not overlook the weakest among us...partial-birth abortion." And? And? "High standard for humanity... a law against all human cloning." And? "Flag stands for more than our power... human dignity...confound the designs of evil men." Ah, here we go! The money shot!

"Afghanistan... liberated...educate all their children, boys and girls." Well, why not? We've done so well on education here, and all it took was a bill. "Continue to seek peace...a secure Israel and democratic Palestine." Confused applause. "Africa...AIDS..." Abstinence education? "Antiretrovirals...cost of those drugs has dropped...tremendous possibility...emergency plan for AIDS relief, a work of mercy beyond all international efforts." Those Texans, always one-uppin' you. "$15 billion over the next five years." That's not so much. Anyone watching the deficit meter? "The man-made evil of international terrorism.." Okay, here we go!

"Never a day when I do not learn of another threat... scattered network of killers... the war goes on and we! are! winning!" Evidence: a list of operatives put to paid: "Put it this way: They're no longer a problem for the United States and our friends and allies." Yee-haw! Another list, this one of terror nests, ending in Buffalo, New York. "Keepin' 'em on the run, one by one the terrorists are learning the meaning of American justice." I imagine we'll all learn about it, sooner or later.

"Federal screeners in airports... smallpox... censors." Ooops, sensors he said. "Defense against ballistic missles." More money. "Project Bio-Shield... $6 million.. anthrax, botulin toxin, Ebola... act before the dangers are upon us." $6 million? Can't be too serious. "FBI improving its ability..." Thank God. ""Our war against terror is a contest of wills in which perseverance is power... this nation made a pledge...whatever the duration of this struggle...free people will set the course of history." Big applause. "The gravest danger...outlaw regimes that possess..." HERE we go!

"Give or sell those weapons to terrorist allies...this threat is new...throughout the 20th Century, small groups of men.. set out to dominate the weak...in each case, the ambitions of Hitlerism, militarism, and Communism... defeated by the might of the United States of America." Militarism? "Once again this nation and all its friends are all that stand between..." Yeah, and you can't trust them friends neither. "We accept this responsibility...call on the United Nations to fulfill its charter..." Pansies. "We're asking them to join us and many are doing so. Yet the course of this nation does not depend upon the decisions of others." Did George Washington get this much applause, do you think? "I will defend the freedom and security of the American people!" He's perkin' up now.

"Iran..." Iran? "Citizens... speak out for freedom...supports their aspirations to live in freedom." In what way? "Korean peninsula... starvation... negotiated framework... regime was deceiving the world... America and the world will not be blackmailed." In what way? "Will find respect in the world...only when it turns away from its nuclear ambition.." Like they care. "Lessons of the Korean penisula...not allow an even greater threat to rise up in Iraq." Here we go!

"Brutal dictator...ties to terrorism...wealth.. will not be allowed to dominate a vital region and threaten the United States." No doubt. "12 years ago...Saddam...To spare himself...promised to disarm." Who wouldn't? "Utter contempt for the United Nations and the opinion of the world." Well, that could be anyone. "108 UN inspectors...a country the size of California..." We'll bomb them next. "Up to Iraq...lay those weapons out for the world to see and destroy them...nothing like this has happened." No doubt. "Anthrax... enough to kill millions of people...botulin toxin...death by respiratory failure." Mad scientist time. "Sarin, mustard, and VX nerve agent...could kill untold thousands...no evidence that he has destroyed them." Whispering now. Lots of numbers. Building a case prosecutorially, drawing the jury in. "Mobile biological weapons labs...evade inspectors...advanced nuclear weapons program, had a design for these weapons...uranium from Africa...high strength aluminum tubes...He clearly has much to hide." Sounds like a voiceover on Cops.

"Sanitizing the inspection sites...intimidate witnesses...blocking U2 surveillance flights requested by the United Nations...scientists coached by Iraqi officals..." Waiting on close now. "But why? The only possible explanation, the only possible use, is to dominate, intimidate, or attack...resume his ambitions of conquest in the Middle East...aids and protects terrorists including members of Al Qaeda." Wow! You think he knows where Bin Laden is? Can he tell us when he's dead?

"Believed Saddam Hussein could be contained...imagine those 19 hijackers...armed by Saddam Hussein. One vial, one cannister, one crate... a day of horror like none we have ever known." If you want this, vote Democratic. If you don't, follow me.

"Some have said... must not act until the threat is imminent...when have terrorists...politely putting us on notice before they strike... it is not an option." "Some" is a great word in these cases: let the listener fill in his own damning names. "Iraqi refugees have told us how confessions are obtained...torture chambers of Iraq...dripping acid...tongues cut out...electric drills...rape. If this is not evil, then evil has no meaning." We're in Count Floyd territory now. "A message for the people of Iraq: your enemy is not surrounding your country, your enemy is ruling your country. The day he and his regime is removed from power will be the day of your liberation." Wonder how this will sound to them?

"We will ask the UN Security Council to convene on February 15..." And then? "We will consult but let there be no misunderstanding..." No chance of that. "We will lead a coalition to disarm him." War, then. As if there were any doubt.

"A message for the men and women who will keep the peace... many of you are assmebling in or near the Middle East.... your training has prepared you. You believe in America and America believes in you." Thus the safest applause line, and thereby the best observed, of the night. "The most profound decision a President can make...no victory can be free from sorrow...we seek peace, we strive for peace. But sometimes peace must be defended...if war is forced upon us we will fight a just cause in a just way...we will fight with the full force and might of the United States military, and we will prevail." Who, again, is to argue?

"We will bring to the Iraqi people food and medicines and supplies and freedom." It seems like we only have one enemy in all of Iraq: Saddam Hussein. Didn't Bush's old man run the CIA? Why don't we send in Jennifer Garner?

"Many challenges...have arrived in a single season...bitter divisions in small matters to unity in great cause...this call of history has come to the right country...adversity has revealed the character of our country...honorable in the use of our strength, power without conquest...freedom is the right of every person...not America's gift to the world but God's gift to humanity. Faith in ourselves, but not in ourselves alone... placing our confidence in a loving God... may he guide us now, and may God continue to bless the United States of America."

The President's task here is to make the citizens feel as if his mission is theirs--that his nature is as generous as theirs, as reasonable as theirs, and that any American would do as he is doing at this moment. For good or for ill, he has probably succeeded.

Roy
January 27, 2003
12:00 a.m.
Stupor Bowl Wrapup

The game, first half: The Bucs have a player named Simian. That's the most interesting thing about this match--besides the apparent upset in the making. The Bucs just look less hurt and hobbled than the Raiders. Tampa Bay is flying around the field, while Oakland seems stuck in the blocks. During the regular season, the Raiders had the number one offense in the league--what the hell happened? Gannon is scrambling great, throwing well--and Oakland still ends the half with less than 100 yards. Jerry Rice has zip. You go to the toilet after the punts, and return to find Tampa Bay inside the Oakland 20.

Ads, first half: Hey, I've worked in the business, so I'm gonna play expert here. Some spots are very funny, like the FedEx one (which mainly recycles their big score in Cast Away). But no compelling case is made for any of the offered products and services (except for Quiznos and, to some extent, Computer Associates). Advertising is badly fucked these days--fucked on budgets, fucked on mission--and the Super Bowl highlights the problem. Once a great wide-coverage marketing opportunity for brands struggling to find the sweet spot, the Supe has become a bizarre industry party for rich admen, and the spots are just jokes among friends. This works best for the fat and happy megabrands like Budweiser that don't need to justify their expenditures (interestingly, I haven't seen anything from loss-leading McDonald's this year)--but eventually someone's gotta ask if these effusions are worth $5 million a pop even for the big boys. Next year the prices will go way down.

The dominant theme of the spots seems to be homosexual panic. Examples: The Bud Light commercial where guy dressed in an upside-down clown outfit pours beer down his apparent anus. (Clown: "Can I get one of those hot dogs?" Bartender: "I don't think so.") The "I love" commercial modified to fast-forward through everything but the bits with the hot chicks. "You must be Brad. I'm Alex." The Butchification of America proceeds apace, and Madison Avenue shows its only smarts of the night by appealing to the sexual insecurities of office workers in the age of Joe Millionaire and The Bachelorette.

Halftime show: Shania Twain dressed as a "Matrix" character reimagined as a Pennsylvania suburbanite out on the town. But, Lord, how her sequined tits bounce! Her band is dressed "punk." (Bass player's got a Firebird. Had a chance to buy one of those five years ago for $200. Poverty's a bitch.) Is this woman actually singing?

No Doubt: "Whatchoo lookin' at?" asks Gwen Stefani. Oh, nothin', cept you lookin' like Anna Nicole Smith after a few months at the gym and a virus that has eaten the "class" part of your brain. Ohboy, more punkrock looks: Broadway gypsies dressed in ragged-ass cheerleader outfits. Look familiar? Here we are now; entertain us. First time as tragedy...

Sting: Bellowing. I sympathize. The stage sound must be awful in that great, yawning space, and he is actually singing. But he looks like Aquaman. Of course it is magical, in a watch-me-pull-an-epiphany-out-of-my-hat schtick that only Dan Aquilante could fall for, when Gwnn backs him up. They're both very musical people. Too bad they have been discouraged from making any actual music.

Corporate rock still sucks.

After the interval, a long shot of dry ice from the stage steaming out of the stadium. Forget the kneeling Clydesdales of last year: this is the Super Bowl 9/11 tribute.

Ads, second half: the "Rainbow Connection" ad for Hotjobs only proves what we already knew--that America is sick at heart and wants regime change. Why else would the sight of becalmed, unhappy workers claiming common cause with "lovers" and "dreamers" be so painfully poignant? Given that environment, Reebok has stepped in a big pile of shit with its ugly, anti-worker ad. Oh, and, yo, Bud Light? Some of us like big butts. Heh, they gave Jared a girlfriend. Only they haven't put him in bed with her. Guess the rumors will persist. THE CADILLAC "SUBWAY" AD WINS! or would, if the new Caddies weren't such ugly pieces of shit. W.B. MASON WINS! No, really! It's shabby, silly, and vaunts this moribund office supply company into the forefront of public consciousness. (Aren't you sounding a little like Mickey Kaus right now?--ed. Except I'm not a right-wing poseur blowhard obsessed with car companies whose ads are lamer than ever tonight! Advantage: Alicubisphere!)

ESPN gets points for an elegant coda to their excellent wait'll-next-year campaign. Of course, I like losers. So unAmerican.

By the way, Are You Hot? If you think so, ABC is obviously your network. You insecure, shallow asshole.

Movie ads, in general: If I hadn't finally seen the first "Matrix" this year and loved it, the "Reloaded" ad might have looked to me much like the other, hyperkinetic "Hulk" and "Daredevil" and "Charlie's Angels" ads. But because I have, I'M STOKED! WOO HOO! Maybe I'd be a better American consumer if I saw more crappy movies. On the other hand, I've admired some Ang Lee movies in the past, and while I liked the big green guy swinging a tank by the nozzle, I'm not ready to line up for that piece of shit.

Game, second half: Madden is discouraged by the Raiders' play: "I mean, they're playing for the championship of the world!" Well, they're obviously tired. Now we're waiting to see if maybe the Raiders have scored their first touchdown in the third quarter.(They have. Stripey-face man cheers! Though "Simian" sacks Gannon on the attempted conversion.) But hold on... Eric Johnson runs in a blocked punt in the fourth quarter! Send out for more beer! And Lord, what a pass to Jerry Rice, and what a catch! And... why am I still watching? Two Dwight Smith pickoffs, apparently. TB, 48-21.

Post-game show: Who the fuck cares?

Roy
January 24, 2003
12:00 a.m.
Airy Generalizations

Everyone thinks that InstaPundit guy is so smart, but get a load of this, at the end of a lengthy and otherwise unremarkable post about John Kerry:

"In the interest of nauseating full disclosure, I once served as an adviser to the Heinz Family Foundation. They didn't give me any money. Or even any free ketchup."

He worked for Heinz and didn't get paid for it? For a self-admitted Good Ol' Boy (albeit the law-professin' kind), he cain't be too bright. Why, even Miz Noonan made a pile offen Enron.

Speaking of the unbright, check out this latest clarification from Andrew Sullivan of the Administration's aim in murdalizing Saddam: "It will reassert the global hegemony of the United States and its Anglosphere allies." (September 11 is also mentioned, minus the salient, increasingly and maddeningly unmentioned fact that this is not the guy who attacked us.) We Anglo-Saxon Peoples have done pretty well with our enemies since the Second World War, thanks to the influences of our arts, commerce, and diplomacy (our Southeast Asian adventures notwithstanding). The former Soviet Union, our sworn enemy for several decades, is now a vast, pro-Western marketplace, albeit a piratical one, and we didn't have to blow them up to make them so. A phalanx of Starbucks, Barnes & Noble, and Tower Records outlets would certainly do more lasting good to our relations in the region than carpet-bombing. Besides, hegemony begins at home, and Sullivan's daily swipes at Anglo nonjoiners such as Harold Pinter ("The poison of anti-Americanism is spreading far and wide") and other poets, singers, etc., indicate that Sullivan's vaunted fifth column is, by his standards, more of a threat than Saddam and his empty missle casings. Why not bomb Islington and the East Village first?

In observance of the rule of three, I must note that I had my TV on tonight with the sound off, but could still follow the essential narrative of