Meanderings of a Cabana Boy

2002-11-24T18:46:00.000-08:00

Sometime in the ungodly hours of Sunday morning, November 24, I found myself drawn to C-SPAN, once again. (What better way to cap off a dissolute night of revelry with ravenous young beauties?) This time, what caught my attention was a debate between Bill McGowan, author of Coloring the News, and Juan Gonzalez, president of theNational Association of Hispanic Journalists.

The debate was called at the behest of the NAHJ after McGowan’s book won a National Press Club Award, much to their chagrin. It seems that Mr. Gonzalez and his organization have made a bit of a crusade of challenging the assertions put forth in McGowan’s book. Apparently, it’s chapped many a minority buttock.

The premise of Coloring the News is that the slavish devotion to diversity at any price has brought about a diminution in journalistic integrity among major news outlets. According to McGowan, as a result of pressures being brought to bear on editorial boards and newsrooms by minority groups and journalistic groupthink, facts are being omitted, stories are being passed over, and voices are not being heard. To illustrate his point, he provided an anecdote not included in the first edition of his book, but to be included in the upcoming paperback edition.

A Philadelphia daily tabloid (the name of which eludes me) had run a story covering the number of fugitives being sought on murder warrants, and had included photos of some of the fugitives. As it turns out, all of the photos were of minorities, which (predictably) brought about threats of boycott and protest from local minority groups unless the paper apologized for its “error”.

Never mind the fact that all of the fugitive murder suspects were minorities. It didn’t matter, apparently. The advocacy groups in Philadelphia (one of whose leaders happened to be a relative of the mayor) accused the paper of implying that all black males were murderers by printing their photos. Despite the fact that the objective truth backed up the story, the daily issued an apology, saying that it was a mistake to print the photos.

So, we’ve come to the point where the facts may only be published provided they meet the standards of pressure groups. Even though publishing the pictures of dangerous criminals in a daily newspaper could lead to increased safety within the black community by getting suspected killers off the streets, the newspaper was forced to capitulate to pressures brought upon it by groups whose sole concern, it seems, is the way in which blacks are portrayed in the media. Obviously, the activists feel that sacrificing the lives of innocent people isn’t too high a price to pay in the pursuit of positive portrayal of minorities in the media.

At another point during the debate, McGowan brought up a couple of incidents of double standards where minority journalists are given a pass with regard to the content of their writings. Once such incident included a black journalist who took exception to a white woman’s description of a Colin Powell news conference. She’d been marveling at Powell’s abilities to handle the press, remain calm, and explain things in a straightforward manner. Unfortunately, she ended the soliloquy by pronouncing Powell to be the kind of black man that most whites wish all black men could be. (Again, my memory fails, but you get the gist.)

The black journalist had written a book in which he recalled this incident and professed that, at the time, he wanted to grab the woman by the throat and bash her head against the wall – specifically noting her “whiteness” in the passage – and McGowan had cited this passage in his book. Mr. Gonzalez took issue with him over its inclusion, stating that he’d failed to mention the fact that the woman had made a racist comment, thus inducing the rage that the black man had felt. Gonzalez felt that the woman’s comments were somehow proof that McGowan’s thesis was off base, as it showed that racism still existed in the newsroom.

The other incident was somewhat similar, in that a black journalist professed a desire to rip a white colleague’s lungs out due to his racial insensitivity.

Gonzalez, however, misses the entire point of McGowan’s citation of these incidents. After all, the fact that subtle racism still exists in certain newsrooms does nothing to disprove the notion that cultural diversity trumps objective fact in news coverage. The fact is, McGowan makes a very strong point, and Gonzalez’ challenge misses the mark completely, in that he was arguing a point that McGowan had not attempted to make in the citation.

What McGowan sought to illustrate was the fact that minorities are allowed to write things that, if said in the same context by a white person, would find him or her out of a job and with little hope of ever writing for a major publication in any capacity, ever again, for the rest of his or her life.

Just imagine George Will writing about William Raspberry, following an incident in which Raspberry said something about Bill Clinton being the kind of white man that blacks wish all whites could be, “I wanted to grab the first chair I could get my hands on and beat that black man until my arms were too tired to swing anymore.” The very idea is absurd.

But, there’s something bothersome about this, beyond the inequality inherent in the double standard. It seems to me that to accept this sort of writing from minority journalists, while labeling it as simple-minded racism when it comes from whites, does an extreme disservice to minorities. To blithely write it off as an expression of “black rage”, to me, seems patronizing at best, and racist at worst.

To me, it seems no better to accept this sort of writing from a black man, just because he is black, than it is to explain away Mike Tyson’s behavior as a consequence of his blackness.

A little later on in the debate, Gonzalez addressed the section of McGowan’s book that deals with the coverage of illegal immigration. He did so by pointing to writings from the Texas independence struggle, in which prominent Mexican writers noted the flood of Anglos moving across the border and wreaking havoc on their nation and its culture. I never quite figured out what his point was in bringing it up, though.

As best I can figure, there are only two reasons to point to these writings: (1) to point out that Anglos were, at one time, just as guilty as Mexicans when it comes to illegal immigration, and (2) to illustrate that Mexico once faced the same set of problems that the United States face faces today.

Case number one misses the point entirely, as it has nothing whatsoever to do with journalism and the coverage of immigration issues. If that was Gonzalez’ point, it was likely a throwaway line meant to elicit nods of agreement from the minorities in the audience, and give them something to chuckle about afterward. And, case number two only serves to bolster McGowan’s argument, in that Mexicans felt free to discuss the immigration problems openly when they were faced with the challenge of unsecured borders. It’s clear that the mainstream press in America isn’t as free to discuss the issue quite so frankly.

Eventually, the discussion turned to audience questions (which were written on cards and submitted to the moderator), and one stood out a little more than the rest. The question, directed to McGowan, asked whether a book could not be written from the exact opposite point of view, substituting “white” for “minority”. McGowan’s response, that the evidence to bolster that view wouldn’t fill a book, drew derisive laughter from the crowd and mockery from Mr. Gonzalez. Yet, when challenged by McGowan to cite any evidence to support the notion, Gonzalez was clearly at a loss.

The entire debate was indicative of the nature of left-leaning multiculturalists’ tactics in confronting criticism. Gonzalez’ argument was based on a presumption that hadn’t been proved: that McGowan is opposed to having more minority participation in the media. And, as McGowan said on a couple of occasions, that simply isn’t the case. What he opposes is the compromise of journalistic integrity for the sake of getting more minority influence in journalism, and Gonzalez & the NAHJ never bother to address that premise.

What the NAHJ seem most bothered by is the fact that McGowan decided to compile research in this vein at all. Gonzalez made the point that, of all the problems in the mass media today, the trends inherent in the overzealous push for minority recruitment make up only about 10% – 15%. I (and McGowan, incidentally) don’t really have an argument for that point. The truth is, the media have bigger problems, but I highly doubt that the NAHJ and I agree on what those problems are.

Still, that misses a big point. After all, does the fact that McGowan chose to focus on a problem that isn’t “the biggest one” make him wrong? In fact, numerous books have been published in recent years that cover various areas in which the media are deficient. Why would McGowan want to set about writing a book on subjects that had already been covered in great detail? One of the objects of writing a book is to get it published in the first place, and that’s what writers seek to do, isn’t it?

Furthermore, even when Gonzalez got around to attacking the substance of the book itself, instead of the author, he pulled facts that were meant to illustrate a point and attempted to refute them as though they were presented to illustrate something entirely different. The head-bashing and lung-ripping passages were prime examples.

All of this is nothing new, however. In truth, these tactics could be found in a Stalinist guidebook for controlling opposition. Underneath all the details of the NAHJ’s attacks against McGowan’s work lies a questioning of his motives. And, given the right atmosphere, that’s enough to convince the vast majority of a target audience that dissenters are not to be paid attention.

I wish McGowan all the luck in the world. It seems he’s awakened the dragon he seeks to slay.

2002-11-21T01:57:00.000-08:00

He’s Come Undone. Or, has he?

Sen. Tom Daschle (D-South Dakota) finally got around to deflecting the blame he’d been shouldering for the single worst run off-year Congressional campaign in modern political history. Of course, given the state the Democrats find themselves in at the moment, palming off responsibility is a delicate matter, considering the amount of finger pointing and backstabbing already underway.

Too much more infighting could fracture the party further than it already is, so the blame shift needs to tilt toward an entity that all Democrats can agree upon. Behold the Right Wing Media! Purveyor of lies, peddler of intolerance, and pilferer of retirement funds, the politically conservative punditry stands as the wellspring of all miscreancy. And Tom Daschle wants you to know it.

Speaking to reporters on his last day as Senate Majority Leader, the diminutive South Dakotan waxed conspiratorial on the myriad ways in which his life, and the lives of countless other Democrats, have been transformed into a Kubrcikean nightmare with Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Brit Hume recreating “Singing in the Rain”, wingtips afoot, on their collective ribcage.

According to the Billy Barty of the Badlands, there was an alarming increase in physical threats to him, his family and, presumably, other prominent Democratic figures. Of course, he declined to lay out any specifics – who made the threats, of what nature they were, who (besides himself) had received them, when they were made, whether or when they were reported, or how many arrests had been made. But, aside from all of that, he made a case that the conservative media, or more specifically, talk radio, and more specifically still, Rush Limbaugh should be held responsible.

"What happens when Rush Limbaugh attacks those of us in public life is that people aren't satisfied just to listen," Mr. Daschle said. "They want to act because they get emotionally invested. And so, you know, the threats to those of us in public life go up dramatically and — on our families and on us in a way that's very disconcerting."

Rush, it seems, is guilty of injecting entertainment into politics, according to the Wee Willie Winky of the once Wild West. And, as he sees it, people just aren’t capable of making the distinction between the high-flying rhetoric of entertainers and reality.

"If entertainment becomes so much a part of politics," he said, "and if that entertainment drives an emotional movement in this country among some people who don't know the difference between entertainment and politics and who are then so energized to go out and hurt somebody, that troubles me about where politics in America is going."

Of course, it’s hard to argue that point. Especially when Alec Baldwin has provided us with memories such as this:

"We should go to Washington and stone Henry Hyde to death. And then we should go to his house and kill his family."

One might be tempted to think that Daschle has, as the British are fond of saying, “gone ‘round the bend.” But, I’m not convinced. Actually, I’m not totally convinced that he’s merely trying to avoid being blamed for the November 5 losses suffered by his party under his leadership. In fact, I think this is a deliberate, concerted effort. I think we’re seeing the hatchling stage of a strategy put in place the day after the returns came in.

As many will recall, the months following the Republican takeover of Congress in ’94 were a slow, steady procession towards an eventual government shutdown for which “extreme right wing Republicans” were widely blamed. Until that shutdown, the idea that Bill Clinton would be a one-term president was conventional wisdom. He’d just lost both houses of Congress after a legislative session, which saw item after item of his agenda resoundingly voted down.

But, what remained of the Democratic caucus rallied around him. And, once Dick Morris was brought aboard, his fortunes slowly started to turn. Suddenly, Democrats all seemed to be reading from the same book, having memorized the same lines. The words “radical,” “extreme,” and “mean-spirited” were almost pervasive, and every Republican would have to face charges that they had careened away from the mainstream in American politics.

The next thing conservatives knew, they were responsible for the terrorist attack on the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, in Oklahoma City. It was Rush Limbaugh’s relentless attacks on the government that drove Timothy McVeigh to kill over two hundred American citizens, they said. The conservative disdain for bureaucracy had dehumanized government workers, reducing them to nothing more than a potential body count for would-be anti-government radicals. And, Rush Limbaugh was the prime source for that disdain.Two years after taking over Congress for the first time in over fifty years, the Republicans lost to Bill Clinton, who had at one time been considered a prematurely lame-duck president.

Then came the Lewinsky affair. Clinton had been caught in a perjury trap, had influenced grand jury witnesses, secured a job for a 21-year-old intern with whom he “did not have sexual relations,” and settled a sexual harassment suit for $50,000. The independent counsel had plunked down a gigantic report, detailing crimes and misdemeanors in excruciating, exacting detail. The House of Representatives would eventually impeach him, and he would face possible expulsion by the Senate.

Yet, over the period of time that the investigation went on, there was a steady stream of attack on Kenneth Starr. He’d be called everything from a puritan to a pervert by the time he’d release his report. James Carville and Paul Begala would appear on every talk show that would have them, proclaiming that the whole matter was “just about sex”. Carville would eventually rail against Starr, calling for his kneecaps to be broken.

Hillary would soon go on the Today Show, and claim that she and her husband were the victims of a “vast right wing conspiracy” that had been out to get them from day one. “Four Years and Forty Million Dollars” would be the cadence, and the Democrats would march to it, all the way to victory in the ’98 mid-term elections. They’d managed to convince the public that the Republicans were out to overturn the ’96 presidential elections, and would ruin the lives of anyone who dared try to stop them.

Bill and Hillary Clinton had, yet again, halted the evil, mean-spirited Republicans and their vast right wing conspiracy to take over the government, with a little help from their friends. And, guess who’s in charge of shaping the message for the Democrats, now that they’re in trouble again?

2002-11-18T20:51:00.000-08:00

Sometime earlier in the year, something grabbed my attention while watching C-SPAN. (I only watch it when I’m tired of partying ‘til dawn with hot, sexy coeds and generally living The Good Life, though.) It was one of those sparsely attended debate forums with question-and-answer periods at the end you always see on the weekends, and late at night, during the week. Not that I’m particularly familiar with the C-SPAN schedule, or anything. I heard about all this through my less socially adept friends.

Nevertheless…

This particular debate concerned the Cuban economic embargo, and occurred between a gentleman named Dennis Hays, who supports the embargo, and a man whose name I can’t recall, but who vehemently opposes it. It was one of the best point-by-point demolitions of pro-Castro propaganda I’ve ever had the pleasure to watch. I’ve been an admirer of Mr. Hays’ ever since.

Hays, who now holds the title of Executive Vice President with the Cuban American National Foundation has a distinguished history with the U.S. Foreign Service and eventually served as the Ambassador to Suriname during the Clinton administration. Prior to that, he held the position of Coordinator for Cuban Affairs at the Department of State, but asked for reassignment after the administration ended the policy of welcoming Cuban refugees upon arrival in the United States, according to his Bio.

What brought all this to mind for me? Well, today’s Palm Beach Post has the story of eight Cubans who flew a Soviet-era crop duster to Key West in order to flee Castro’s oppressive regime and seek freedom in America. And, so far, it looks like they’ve found it.

But, the fact is, not every American is happy about these people finding safe haven on our shores. There are those on the right, as well as the left, who find this development objectionable, albeit for completely different reasons. On the surface, they seem to have similar positions. But, if one were to dig beneath the rhetoric and unearth the motivations, the true story becomes much clearer.

The objections on the right generally have to do with immigration policy. Undoubtedly, some of it has to do with racial issues, though most of it, I suspect, is an honest desire for consistency in the nation’s enforcement of immigration standards. “Why,” they ask, “are these people allowed to enter this country without being invited?” There’s a sense among some conservatives that Cuban refugees show up and claim benefits without ever having contributed in the way of taxes, as well as a belief that they take jobs away from American-born citizens who need them.

Part of me says, “fair enough.” People do have a right to expect their government to establish and defend their nation’s borders. If not, a nation like America, with all its wealth and opportunity, could soon find itself overrun by illegal immigrants seeking a piece of our abundant, but hard-earned, affluence. Left unchecked, illegal immigration can overwhelm a government’s ability to provide services for its citizens, as the people in California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas can undoubtedly testify.

The objections from the left, while nominally the same, have a completely different tenor. Sure, they mouth the same questions. But, if you listen closely, there are always notes of underlying resentment and accusation. When they ask, “why are these people allowed to come into the United States,” it’s always followed by, “but not Haitians or Dominicans?”

The insinuation is clear, if not spoken. With the question comes the implication that Cubans are allowed in this country because of two things: (1) They aren’t as “black” as Haitians and Dominicans, and (2) they vote Republican. Nothing delights the left more than an opportunity to accuse conservatives of racism and hypocrisy, so the question is always asked with a smirk. (That’s right. The “smirk” is not the sole property of “dumb” Republican presidential candidates.)

But, aside from the fact that it’s an opportunity to tar conservatives with the hypocrisy brush, why do leftists find Cuban immigration preferences so objectionable? Why is it that, of all the people fleeing foreign nations under economic and political pressures, Cubans make up the only group that doesn’t meet liberal standards for welcome? Is it only because they tend to vote Republican, or is it something even deeper?

I submit that it’s the latter. After all, Elian Gonzales wasn’t even old enough to vote, but look at the energy they left expended on getting him on the first plane headed south from Miami. And, has anyone heard the words “fathers’ rights” come out of the mouth of a liberal at anytime when Elian wasn’t here? Janet Reno was in less of a hurry to get the kids out of the Davidian compound than she was in getting Elian out of Disney World.

And, wasn’t the trip to the Magic Kingdom the one thing that really sent the left over the edge? “You’re indoctrinating him!” they wailed. “It’s so cheap and sleazy!” But, those cries exposed everything one needs to know about the left’s position on Cuba. It reveals the very basic, most deeply held beliefs of those who call for “equal treatment” for all nationalities seeking refugee status.

You see, every time a Cuban lands on our shores, it’s an indictment of leftism. And, despite its protestations to the contrary, the American left has a huge, bulging soft spot in its heart for communism. Though they’re quick to say, “I have no love for Castro, or what he does to his people,” the fact remains that they have very few qualms with shipping back those who manage to escape his police state. But, is there any doubt that a child who managed to make his way into the US, fleeing Pinochet’s Chile would have been fashioned into a hero beyond the magnitude of Mumia Abu-Jamal?

Of course, the left has been quiet lately. Chances are, it’s not going to stick its neck out in an attempt to deport the eight Cubans who made it to Key West. They’ve got more trouble than they want in Florida, right now, after the double-digit victory for Jeb Bush in the gubernatorial race. The Cuban-American community is essentially rock-solid Republican, now that liberals have shown where their allegiances lie with regard to minority groups and immigration. And it’s not happy about the way it was treated in the months while Elian was still here.

To those on the right who are concerned, for whatever reason, about the consistency in enforcement of immigration policy, I’d only submit one argument: The tendency of conservatives to embrace Cuban refugees to the exclusion of so many others is, indeed, inconsistent. It’s hardly debatable. But, while the treatment may be uneven, it is symbolically important.

Our continued welcoming of these refugees is as much a slap at communism as their fleeing Castro’s Cuba. It also serves as a much-needed illustration of the differences in allegiances between the American right and the anti-American left. It’s a display of support for the ideal of freedom, and a stark reminder of just what it is about America that the left despises. After all, only a liberal could possibly see something unseemly in Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck.

2002-11-06T19:46:00.000-08:00

I had a very late night, last night. Actually, I didn’t get to sleep until sometime after 8:00 this morning. I wasn’t out doing anything so noble as getting out the vote, or even paying particularly close attention to the election returns. The truth is, I was having a few drinks with a few friends, playing a little pool and, eventually, eating breakfast at the Waffle Hut (the best peanut butter waffle you ever had, a couple of eggs over-easy, and a half-order of biscuits n’ gravy).

That’s not to say I wasn’t concerned about the elections, mind you. In fact, I found myself in a shouting match fairly early on, with a dedicated, rabble-rousing, union Democrat. And, to be honest, I started it all. Seems I was gloating over the victory of Bob Leeper, my State Senator who’d switched to the GOP not long after his last election. His opponent was a local union leader who’d received overwhelming labor and party support, since Leeper’s party switching had led to giving control over the State House to the Republicans. The Democrats were angry and highly motivated at the prospect of defeating him.

I just happened to be looking at the television screen at my local watering hole when the results popped up, showing him with a little over a hundred-vote advantage with 100% of precincts reporting. I just had to call it to his attention, and let him know that I was one of the hundred-plus votes that gave Leeper the victory. Not very good sportsmanship, I know. And, not at all a very wise thing to do, considering the man outweighs me by more than fifty pounds, now that I think about it. But, then, union members have counted on the intimidation factor in politics for years.

The shouting match lasted a couple of minutes, and consisted mainly of standard talking points. “Democrats are going to take your gun, kill babies in the womb, marry off your brother to someone who ought to be a drinking buddy, raise your taxes, and lose the war on terrorism.”

“Oh, yeah? Well, Republicans are just going to screw you out of your life savings and give it to some guy in a Brooks Brothers suit!”

Admittedly, the actual discourse wasn’t nearly so civilized and obscenity-free. But few real-life discussions on politics are. I’ve never had a political “debate” with anyone in a bar…or anywhere else, for that matter. They always seem to degenerate into invective, and often run right up to the line of fisticuffs. I don’t know if it’s my nature, or the nature of politics, but for some reason, things tend to get heated whenever the subject comes up.

In any case, Leeper’s victory was the first indication I had that the Republicans were going to have a big night. It was also the last indication I’d have before stumbling in at almost 5:00, this morning. For about a week, I’d had an inkling that it would be a good night for the GOP, and the sense that the Wellstone memorial pep rally would turn out to be largely responsible for it. That doesn’t exactly make me a modern day Nostradamus, and it’s far from clear that the “funerally” was a decisive factor. In fact, some have suggested that the Baghdad Three’s little junket to the House of Hussein was the point at which the Democrats began to sink in the public’s esteem. That seems at least as plausible, if not more so.

But, in all candor, I had no idea that it would turn out to be as big a victory as it did. I don’t exactly feel as though I missed the boat on that one, though. I never heard anyone predict anything approaching what happened last night. Not even Newt, of hyper-inflated projection fame.

But I sensed the mood. There was something about the coverage leading up to the election that planted a seed of optimism in my mind, which had grown gloom-wracked after the experiences of the last few election cycles. There seemed to be a distinct absence on television of video of charged-up hoards of the Democrat faithful, with the exception of the Minnesota ghoul-a-rama.

Instead, we were treated to various attempts by Al Gore to put a new shine on the turd that is his current political career. However, this is the only instance in memory where I can’t find fault with the ham-handed has-been. He really didn’t have a choice, other than to try to rally a base radicalized by the disingenuous effort to claim vote rigging victim status after an electoral loss. It was Al and his band of weasels who created the monster that jerked his party further to the left than wisdom would dictate. So, it was up to him to bind the tattered fringes of a rag-tag collective of the chronically indignant.

Now, the Democrats are paying the steep price of demagoguery. In trying to hold together the minority coalition that makes up the base of the party, the DNC ceded the crucial right-of-center independent vote to the Republicans. It seems almost as if their every move has been specifically geared to that end since the 2000 Presidential election was finally brought to a close. Why else on earth would the DNC have permitted David Bonior and Jim McDermott to trek off to Iraq without making the slightest attempt dissuade them for going or, at least, get out if front of the story in some way.

Of course, it’s highly dubious that the Democrats would intentionally undercut their chances so as to assure the Republicans both houses of Congress. I, for one, can’t imagine the Dems piling into a room and working to find a way to get themselves out of power because, deep-down, they know that Republicans are better at running the country during times of war. I suspect it was an honest (not a word I tend to use in reference to the Democrats) mistake on behalf of the more idealistic elements in the party.

Most probably, the Democrats have been getting a lot of armchair campaign direction from their friends in Hollywood and the publishing business. The tack taken by some members of the party bears a strong resemblance to the course of action suggested by the likes of Barbra Streisand, Michael Moore, and Bill Maher. For some time, the entertainment and media wing of the party has been shaking its finger in the DNC’s face, chiding it for not being more confrontational with the President.

After drifting in oblivion for a year and a half, it seems some of the party’s figures got sick of the lack of attention being paid them. Just about the same time Saddam’s favorite visiting Congressional delegation was singing his praises for honesty and forthrightness, Bill Clinton was in the UK, railing against Bush’s legitimacy, foreign policy and the economy. Meanwhile, Al Gore was saying the same things, here on our shores. You could practically hear the Hollywood crowd nerdily woof-woofing and pumping its fists in the air like a crowd of idiots still waiting outside to get into the long-since cancelled Arsenio Hall Show.

Now, they’re sitting around in stunned silence, rationalizing away the disaster that resulted from getting what they wished for. It’s the corporate media, they’ll say, and the stifling of dissent that brought down their heroes. It was Bible-thumping rednecks and wild-eyed gun owners scaring away meek blacks and the elderly with the help of the brown-shirted local police. They’ll manage to convince themselves that the Democrats’ loss was the result of anything but what it really was – their own idiocy.

2002-06-03T13:18:00.000-07:00

I'm looking out the window behind my computer desk at a bright sunny day. The occasional bird flies by, lighting in the tree in my back yard for a moment, and then swoops down toward the mostly mowed lawn in order to gain lift to send him back upward, on to the next tree. Of course, he relieves himself on my truck as he passes. And, I'm not really bothered by it. What bothers me is the "mostly" mowed lawn. You see, I have to make it into a completely mowed lawn. And, it's hot out there.

Fortunately, there's a cooling period coming later in the week. That should be just enough to get me accustomed to the mild temperatures before it gets back up in the 90's. Ahh, but that's western Kentucky. We import our weather from east Texas through most of the summer. We're fortunate enough to have a few degrees knocked off the top by the time it gets here, but the humidity stays. It won't be long before I find myself reconsidering whether or not the Kyoto treaty was a good thing. Western Kentucky summer is enough to turn me into a raving greeniac, which is no mean feat.

With the possible exception of my plentiful hair and muscle tone, the love of summertime is the thing I miss most about my youth. No day was too hot, as long as it wasn't spent in school or on yardwork. Even into my twenties, I could work in an un-air conditioned factory for ten hours, come home wringing wet with sweat, hop in the shower and be ready to drink beer in the evening heat within twenty minutes. Then, I'd stay out 'til 3 a.m., partying like a nine-year-old Drew Barrymore, and be up and at it, ready to start work at 7 a.m. And I'd do the same thing all over again, when I got home.

Nowadays, as soon as the mercury starts into the upper eighties, I feel a sense of dread. I know that, at some point, I'm going to have to step outside and experience the swelter. Whether it's helping a friend run his concession stand on the weekends, or simply stepping outside to retrieve a muddy shoe dragged from the porch into the yard by a neighborhood hound, I know I'm going to suffer. It feels as though I've been ripped from my comforting, climate-controlled womb of a home, and cast into the infernal pits of hell itself.

At precisely what point in my life did I become such a sissy? When did I cease to glisten in the sun, and begin to wilt?

Well, I finally felt guilty enough about sitting in the cool, crisp air of my abode to make my way outside and position myself behind the mower. It wasn't the eternal stroll through hades I'd expected, since the humidity didn't seem quite as stifling as it usually is this time of year. I hear the neighbors' mowers humming in the background as I write this entry, and it makes the indoors seem all the more friendly a place. I'd like to make my way across the street with a pitcher of iced tea and a stack of tumblers, doling out refreshment to all the miserable souls in my vicinity, but you know how it is. Besides, none of my neighbors are bikini-clad coeds, home for the summer.

Don't get me wrong. I'm capable of the odd neighborly gesture to even the crustiest of retirees. Hell, I tilled a flower bed for an elderly man who lived two doors down on the other side of the road, once. He passed on years ago, and didn't leave me any money, though. So, now I restrict my gratuitous acts of philanthropy to a pretty narrow temperature range - usually between 70 and 72 degrees. And only on Sundays...when I feel like it.

I might be a little more community-minded if Voyeur Dorm would open a satellite residence in one of the houses on my street. There's one for sale, right next to the house of the old guy with the flower garden. And there's one right across the street from that one, and it happens to be right next door to a deacon at the local Baptist church, who scowls at me when I wave. What I wouldn't give to see a bevy of busty, exhibitionistic babes move in next to that house. I'd host a fundraiser for their top-dollar stereo system and paint the place pink for free, if it meant getting rid of that sactimonious skidmark.

(Don't get the impression that I'm anti-religious, anti-Christian, or even anti-Baptist. I've known many, and liked them plenty. The man in question just strikes me like a three-day-old cup of room temperature mayonnaise on a stomach full of lemon juice.)

Summertime, it seems, makes me cantankerous and disagreeable. Think I'll hit the shower and mosey on down to the club for some fellowship and suds.

2002-05-29T18:50:00.000-07:00

Back on the obesity front, I caught the re-airing of a C-SPAN "Washington Journal" roundtable featuring Margo G. Wootan, from the Center for Science in the Public Interest and John Doyle, from the Center for Consumer Freedom. While I didn't catch the entire segment, what I saw was a near-perfect illustration of the difference between the worldviews of conservatives and liberals.

The current point of contention between the two groups, as demonstrated on the show, is a push to federally mandate the publishing of nutritional information on food served in restaurants. Now, being on a diet myself, this doesn't sound like such a bad idea, at first. But, as Mr. Doyle was quick to point out, there's more behind this "attempt to inform" than the desire to better serve the health needs of the public. It's also a great opportunity to fatten the wallets of trial lawyers out of the deep pockets of major restaurant chains.

It works like this: First, they lobby for, and eventually push through, a piece of legislation with a name like the Nutritional Information and Consumer Empowerment, or "NICE" Act. This requires that all restaurants make readily available and easily accessible the amount of fat, calories, carbohydrates and sodium in each of their entrees. What a great idea! I could haul my fat, bloated self into any restaurant across the country, study the information, and make an informed decision about my dietary needs before ordering the Super-Sized Triple Bacon Three Cheese Pizza Burger with Hot Fresh Pork Rinds and Maple Syrup Milk Shake Extreme Value Meal.

Once they pass it to me through the drive-thru window, it's off to my local assault lawyer, who makes arrangements with the dietetics department at the nearest liberal arts college to have the meal analyzed. Once it turns out that there's more fat than advertised, it's Fat City, baby. Johnny Tort, Esq. contacts the corporate headquarters of the restaurant in question, threatens a multi-million dollar lawsuit, unless they settle out of court and save everyone a lot of money, time, and bad publicity. The legal department at the corporate headquarters informs the CEO that it would be easier to just go ahead and write out the check. I'd get about two-thirds of the settlement (before taxes), the attorney gets his third, makes a hefty donation to the Center for Science in the Public Interest, as well as the American Trial Lawyers Association, who then turn around and write big checks to Democrat candidates across the country.

Those Democrats are then lobbied by the recently enriched Center for Science in the Public Interest to push through even more stringent regulations on the fast food industry. And before you know it, we're all stuck eating raw broccoli, which is suddenly a choking hazard for children under three, and thus, should be processed into a fine powder and mixed with water before serving, lest there be more lawsuits and further enrichment of lawyers, public interest groups, lobbyists, and politicians.

But, to the hard-bitten, anti-corporate, trust fund hippy, this sounds pretty good. After all, it's a well-known fact that Applebee's beats its servers for underselling black market steaks. But, this doesn't only cover the major chains. Maw and Paw's Kettle takes it in the shorts, too. Maw and Paw are notoriously careless about their serving sizes and figuring the fat/lean ratios in their hamburger steaks when patting them out. Not to mention the high school drop-out they just hired because they're getting too old to run the kitchen themselves.

Mr. Doyle tried valiantly to point this out to Ms. Wootan. Of course, her response was that this could be legislated in a way that gave flexibility to the restaurants. Perhaps a margin of error could be written in to protect the restaurant industry against overly strict regulations. But, as Mr. Doyle said, we already have the basic sense of how fattening foods are, as well as the choice to patronize restaurants which already voluntarily make the information available. And, it was at this point where Ms. Wootan's position laid itself bare. She made the case that it would be nice if we could go to any restaurant we wanted to visit and have full knowledge of what the food consists of, nutritionally.

Well, of course it would be nice. It would be nice if I could go to any casino and know beforehand how much money I would lose that night. It would also be nice if I could go into a bar knowing ahead of time that I wouldn't end up buying drinks for some hot young chick all night, only to get a "thanks for the drinks, my friend is here, so I have to go" at the end of the evening. How wonderful it would be if I could go to a baseball game, secure in the knowledge that my team is going to win. And, wouldn't it be great if I could go to any public establishment with the promise of a nice, fat settlement if I don't feel completely and utterly catered to?

In my feud with portliness, I have to face the fact that there are some places I can't go and expect to be served belly-friendly fare. Part of the benefit of dieting is that it builds self-discipline and asks the dieter to look out for his own self-interest. I've come to accept the idea that I have to eat at home and choose my meals with the waistline in mind if I expect to wear 32w/34l jeans. I can't expect Outback Steakhouse to change the way it does business under the threat of a lawsuit, just because I ate too many Whoppers from the Burger King across the street last week. They weren't the ones who made me fat. That was me.

And, for what it's worth, my diet's going just fine, no thanks to the Center for Science in the Public Interest. I'm a living testimony to the righteousness of the Center for Consumer Freedom.

2002-05-27T12:27:00.000-07:00

For some reason, I've put off writing about the demise of Politically Incorrect ever since I heard about it, weeks ago. It's not like I don't have any opinions on the show, or its host. To the contrary, I'm almost bursting with them. It's just that they tend to change.

One minute, I think Bill Maher is an ass and his show is nothing more than a nation-wide mooning. The next, I think Bill Maher's an ass who happened to be right about something and the show is an occasionally entertaining nation-wide mooning. But, Politically Incorrect isn't completely without merit. Anne Coulter is a guest now and then, and she's consistently enjoyable.

Maher, though, has to be one of the most grating personalities ever to be hired to a position with more contact with the public than a strip club disc jockey. When caught up in heated disagreement, his demeanor isn't so much hostile and intimidating as it is childish. His debate technique calls to mind Nellie Oleson from Little House on the Prairie.

But, I do have mixed feelings about the cancellation. The reasoning behind it - his supposed anti-American statements - seems at least a little dishonest. I'm as conservative as they come, and just as patriotic as all the folks who jumped at the chance to pillory Maher over the "we've been the cowards" remark. But, as far as I was concerned, the statement was just another provocative utterance from a man whose livelihood depends on polemic. I certainly didn't take it as, in any way, an attempt to paint the United States as the bad guy in the 9/11 terror attacks.

That's not to say that I don't have a beef with what he said. I take issue with just about half of everything that comes out of his mouth. In this case, I happen to think that the charge of cowardice was leveled at the wrong offender. When he said "we" were the cowards, it exposed one of the many faults I find with him. The fact is, had George W. Bush been in office at the time that the cruise missiles were launched into bin Laden's camp, he wouldn't have painted the yellow stripe down the back of the American people in the collective sense. No. He would have said, "the true cowards are this administration."

But, since Bill Clinton occupied the Oval Office at the time that the long distance retribution took place, he couldn't bring himself to be as specific. That, after all, would have been one small affirmation of everything that conservative Republicans said about Clinton for the entire eight years he held power. And, of course, Bill Maher is loathe to acknowledge the righteousness of the folks who went after Clinton for so long, and were proven correct so often.

Granted, he does occasionally make attempts at fairness, if only for the sake of appearances, toward the Bush administration. The "what did he know, and when did he know it" flap is one instance, as well as the DUI conviction gaffe, back in the campaign. (And, to be honest, there are probably other instances where he made fair-minded gestures that I haven't seen.) But Maher soiled his nest with conservatives, long ago.

Since the "cowards" controversy started, I've had the theory that he would have found many more Republican and conservative defenders had he shown George W. Bush some semblance of respect. But, when he spent the better part of the months leading up to the elections calling him "Drinky McDumbass" and insinuating that he was a cokehead, he used up about 90% of his credit with the right. He showed that he was either incapable of (or, unwilling to) extending a hand in fairness to their candidate.

One of the things he likes to point toward as an indication of his high-minded principles is the fact that he doesn't make jokes about Michael Jackson's rumored pedophilia and child molestation. Maher makes the case that he's never been convicted of anything like that, and since he's such a high-profile personality, he's an easy target for charges like that. That said, I can't help wondering where he's hiding his information about Bush's cocaine bust and conviction. I also wonder why it is he would insist on perpetuating the notion that Bush is a lush when, by all accounts, he's put his drinking days behind him. Bush's past drinking problems are at least as irrelevant to his leadership capabilities as Clinton's trysts with Monica are to the national debt. And why didn't Maher ever call the past president "Jerky McSink", or "Stogie McThong"?

Leaving all of this behind, I still find a good deal of fault with Maher's take on the war on terrorism, and the way America should react in the years following the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks. He seems convinced that we, as Americans, can better ourselves by considering what we do that makes the bad guys hate us so. To Bill, this is the golden opportunity to better ourselves. He feels their hatred is, at least in part, justifiable. He hates some of the very same things about Americans that they do. Particularly, gluttony and ostentatiousness.

And, I suppose he is correct in the sense that Americans are growing fatter and shallower with each generation, and that these aren't good things. But, is terrorism a good reason to change these things? It seems to me that it would be somewhat akin to handing over your lunch money to the schoolyard bully, just because your mom gives you more than you really need, and he really resents that. Or, more applicably, it would be like a fat kid going on the Slim-Fast diet to keep from being picked on at school, rather than eating as much as he wants and hitting the weights when he gets home.

I say this is more applicable because one of Maher's points of mockery was Bush's exhortation to America to get back to the mall in order to show the terrorists that we've not been defeated. Despite Bill's dismissal of it as shallow and greedy, it makes a lot of sense, considering that we live under a system wherein our defense is paid for by tax revenue generated by shoppers. When you buy that handbag, lady, you're buying a welding rod to be used on the next armored personnel carrier built for the Army. Sir, go ahead and get that angle grinder. That's a rivet in an F-14.

All that aside, it seems Maher is pretty selective about the things he sees as justifiable reasons for the Islamic extremists to hate us, and thus, attack us. There are plenty of reasons, not the least of which are the strippers and scantily clad women for which Bill professes such an affinity. They're not crazy about the drinking and drugs, either. Nor, the rock music and porn flicks. Ah, but those aren't legitimate reasons for them to hate us, I guess.

So, today, I'm going to pick up a six-pack, a vial of crack, a copy of Hustler, take them home and listen to Marilyn Manson while I flip through the satellite porn channels. If I don't, then the terrorists win.

2002-05-20T18:59:00.000-07:00

Having dealt with the troublesome ants of the recent past, I have yet another springtime problem to deal with. That is, the basic spring/summertime business that keeps me away from the computer, unable to blog. It's either a club function, work, parties, or some other fairweather diversion, one day after another, all summer long.

Which isn't really a bad thing, I guess. It gets me out in the sun and keeps me from developing the myriad illnesses associated with vitamin D deficiencies, none of which are particularly attractive. Unfortunately, I still have to deal with a rather unattractive consequence of a winter spent indoors in close proximity to all manner of vitamin D-rich consumables. I've gotten fat.

This isn't exactly news to me. I've noticed my general shift toward pudginess over the past couple of years, but somehow managed to convince myself that I was the only person who realized it. That came to an abrubt halt the other night when, as I was leaning against a beer cooler down at the club, one of the members told me to "suck it in"...for the first time. It was a command I'd hear several times over the duration of the evening.

Luckily, I'm a man, so I'm not prone to psychic damage as a result of comments like that. Still, it's bad news whenever you find out you're not getting away with midnight Pop-Tarts and day-long Cheez-it binges anymore. It means a loss of freedom, dammit. Well, it will if I'm to have any hope of snagging the winsome and lithe Anna, from down at the watering hole. In all honesty, if she asked me if I thought she ought to go out with a guy who had a gut like mine, I'd say, "What the hell!? Are you crazy!? Look at that hamburger hamper!" So, staying in the shape I'm in and asking her to disregard it would be more than a little hypocritical.

So, I've taken up eating smaller quantities and put aside the radical epicureanism of my twenties. So far. I'm not exactly a tower of will power, though. I've made several half-hearted lunges at the smoke-free lifestyle only to find myself seriously contemplating burglary in the wee hours, just to get a fix. "Maybe the neighbor left a pack in the car! Does he even smoke? Hey! Long butt in the ashtray!!"

Fortunately, I've got a powerful ally in my war on the waistline. Senator Edward Kennedy (last item on the page) is set to convene hearings on obesity standards. I haven't had this level of confidence in the idea that government is looking out for my best interests since Clinton ruined Laden's day with a cruise missile and disrupted the Sudan's headache remedy infrastructure for good measure.

Knowing that I've got the svelt Massachusetts legislator on my side should help me get through the crucial first days of my new dietary regimen. When that 1:00 a.m. call to the Kraft singles and Zestas comes, I'll imagine the scowling visage of the lanky liberal lion upbraiding me from the well of the Senate, and seeking unanimous consent to revise and extend his remarks, just in case I should decide to stage another late night raid on the pantry. Come to think of it, it would probably do me a lot of good if he'd empanel a blue-ribbon, bipartisan committee on alcohol consumption, as well. Perhaps I'll drop him an email with that suggestion when I finish this entry.

Of course, this newfound concern with my weight is a biproduct of a fact of life I lament even more than the sudden, drastic change in my eating habits: the fact that I'm getting older. Not that I needed a reminder. My fifteen-year class reunion is coming up in July. And it's bad enough that I'm having to contend with the gradual, but relentless, loss of my once-flowing flaxen locks. I really don't need the added indignity of entering the room to a crowd of one-time classmates, searching themselves for the most euphemistic way to say, "Don't worry. You don't look that bald and fat."

Granted, there will be people there who got a lot balder and fatter than I have at this point. But, who's to say I won't catch up? Maybe they just got a head start and I'm gaining on them in the tortoise-and-hare tradition. How can I feel smug and superior to anyone with that hanging over my high forehead?

I've truly placed myself in an awful position by letting myself get in the shape I'm in. I'm not so much concerned about my health as I am about my ability to dismiss others from the sure-footed position that superficiality provides. Say what you will about shallowness and pretension, but I can't see myself having a good time knowing that someone in the room might be saying, "Boy, Walter sure let himself go, didn't he?" And, if they're right about it, what can I say?

I suppose I could just skip the reunion and get drunk with some fatter, balder people who don't know me and have no point of reference as to how I looked all those years ago. Smuggling a bottle of liquor into a nursing home is a guaranteed way to get compliments, and you can swap stories from the past with people who haven't heard them a thousand times, already. They're always appreciative of company, and very few of the women can drink me under the table, unlike the ones I went to high school with.

But, that would be the easy way out. And, if there's one thing I'm known for, it's doing things the hard way. Well, except for graduating from high school, toward which I put very little effort, as my classmates and transcripts will tell you. In any case, I feel somewhat obliged to go, since I skipped the ten-year. After all, I can't have everyone asking, "What's he got to hide? Did he get old, fat and bald, or something?"

2002-05-17T16:23:00.000-07:00

Not long ago, Terry McAuliffe was quite fond of the word “despicable”. It seemed there was no political activity that the GOP engaged in that couldn’t be described as such. Now, we’ve come upon some behavior that truly qualifies for that description and, not surprisingly, it’s coming from McAuliffe’s own party. They’ve plummeted to a dark, dank, dirty low in the past couple of days.

It all began with the uproar they whipped themselves into over the use of a picture of George W. Bush as a gift to political donors. That’s right. For the small price of $150, you too can have a photograph of our President talking on the phone on the most important day of his life, and yours.

No, it’s not a photograph of President Bush standing amid the ruins of the World Trade Center. It’s not even a photograph of him speaking to the joint session of Congress in the days afterward, consoling the nation and urging us to pick ourselves up and move forward from the terrible loss we collectively feel. It’s just a picture of a man doing his job when we needed him most.

But, to listen to the Democrats wailing in the media, you’d think he was travelling around the country wearing a fireman’s uniform. “This is an outrage!”, they said. “He’s exploiting 9/11 for political gain!”

And then came the next big story: When the White House disclosed that it had received warnings about the possibility of upcoming terrorist attacks, and that Osama bin Laden’s name had been specifically mentioned in a memo from an FBI field office in one of the warnings, the hard left couldn’t contain its glee. It seized upon the opportunity to pin the attacks on the Bush administration. Calls for investigations came within hours, with Sen. Hillary Clinton leading the charge. Nevermind the fact that the warnings were too vague to call for the shutdown of the entire civil aviation system.

Now, even taking seriously the Democrats’ charges that, by offering the photo to political donors, Bush is exploiting one of the worst tragedies in the nation’s history for political gain, you have to wonder what they must be thinking? How can they possibly justify their attacks on him as using the September 11 attacks for political gain while they’re doing the same thing, only in a much worse way? They’re laying the bodies of the victims at his feet.

It’s one thing for a politician and leader to promote himself using photographs that call to mind his performance in the days following a tragedy for which he was unanimously praised for his leadership and connection to the voters. It’s something else entirely to attempt to smear the blood of the dead on the shirt of the leader in order to discredit and undercut his connection with the voters in hopes of lowering the esteem in which he is held by the public. What the Democrats are doing is the most contemptible example of attack dog politics conceivable.

Given the potential damage they could do to themselves with accusations like this, you have to question why they’d try such a stunt. The only time anyone takes a risk of this magnitude is when they feel they have nothing to lose by doing so. That indicates that they’ve gotten some very bad internal polling data in recent weeks.

The sort of rhetoric they’re putting out these days appeals to only one segment of the population – their hardcore base. This suggests desperation. As I’ve said before, on many occasions, rank-and-file Democrats have become radicalized since the 2000 elections. They’re still so extremely angry that they’ll entertain any theory that holds George W. Bush responsible for any evil.

Unfortunately for the DNC, they have to face up to the fact that their core constituencies are angry in no small part due to the sense that their party has ignored them in recent years. This makes them very susceptible to overtures from folks like Ralph Nader, as exemplified in Florida. And the only way to make them feel like they’re being listened to is to talk to them. Naturally, they want to hear “the right things”. However, “the right things” are very often far removed from the beliefs and inclinations of mainstream voters.

I predict at least a five-point spike in Bush’s next set of approval ratings as a result of their pandering.

2002-05-13T15:06:00.000-07:00

Today, the LA Times published an editorial assailing the Bush Administration's snowmobile policy in the Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks. Apparently, the writer doesn't like the adminstration's science, policy or politics. Well, actually, it seems the writer doesn't like snowmobiles because of their noise and pollution.

But, these same people are the ones who rail against Bush's emissions policy which is absolutely sound science and damn fine policy. It lays out a plan whereby companies can share the burden of regulations through emissions trading. The way it works is pretty simple, if you think of it as if it were taking place on your block.

Say, for example, you live in a city that has established an ordinance that only allows each household to have a set amount of garbage picked up by the city in a given year. Any amount over that will result in a fine, either payable at the end of the year, or through an extra premium tacked onto their garbage collection bill. Since not all households have the same number of family members, they'll produce different amounts of trash. Therefore, a family of six will most likely end up paying a fine at the end of the year, while the retired couple next door will be able to live under the restrictions with no difficulty at all.

Sooner or later, the neighbors will strike a deal. "George, the garbage bill is killing me. Especially after Christmas, when we have to throw away all the packaging from the childrens' gifts. Do you suppose it'd be alright if we put some of our garbage at the end of your driveway? We'll pay half your garbage bill, since it'll be cheaper than paying the fines and premiums if they pick it up at our house."

Neighbor George comes out pretty good in this scenario, as his refuse collection fee is essentially cut in half. The family of six is able to get its garbage hauled away with less of a burden. All the garbage gets picked up, and there's no increase in the overall output. Everyone's a winner, except for the city, which loses out on the revenue it would have made on the back of the family.

It's all based on the reasonable assumption that between production and consumption, waste is inevitable. There's no such thing as total efficiency. When you bake a cake, you're going to have egg shells to throw away. When you make pottery, there's going to be leftover clay. When you refine oil, there's going to be smoke and pollution.

Now, if there are some industries that can cut their emissions more feasibly, and can profit from doing so, why not allow them to do so if it results in an overall reduction in pollution? If Smokey Joe's Oil Refinery can avoid fines and, thus, control the cost of producing gasoline by paying Consolidated Crematories to clean up their act, the air doesn't get any dirtier as a result, and gas doesn't go up in price. How is this a bad thing?

Of course, we all know that the biggest part of the environmental movement isn't so much about actually cleaning up the air as it is about punishing big corporations. To environmentalists, it's perfectly OK for companies to pollute unnecessarily, so long as it doesn't cross their perceived line of decency. But when a corporations steps over that line, look out. Somebody's going to pay.

That "somebody", or course, is anyone who consumes energy. More specifically, everybody. In the meantime, the Bob's silicone implant factory down the street is still using his old coal-fired generator, even though John's Lead Paint Inc. would have been more than happy to pay him enough money to upgrade to a converted alcohol-burning funny car engine.

Unfortunately, market based solutions will never be accepted by the red-green alliance. To them, capitalism is nothing more than a collection of white men in suits gathered around a mahogany table with pie charts depicting the most efficient ways to create poverty and asthma among women and minorities.

2002-05-11T10:01:00.000-07:00

Spring has arrived, here in western Kentucky, and with it comes seemingly incessant rains. And, with the rains come ants. Indoors. More specifically, on my computer desk. And lots of them. I'm talking about a week-long, full-on case of the heebie-jeebies.

I made the mistake of leaving an empty chocolate milk glass sitting in front of my monitor overnight, a few days ago. I awoke to find the glass quite literally covered in the tiny black insects. It was enough to swear a three year old off chocolate milk for the rest of his life.

I'm not sure what to do with a glass like that. My first inclination was to take it out in the yard, fill it with gasoline and pitch a match in it, but there wasn't time. So, what did I do? Probably the dumbest thing I could have. I took it out to the utility room sink and rinsed the ants down the drain. I'm not sure how the ants are affected by running water, but I figure a good number survived to come back in search of more tasty beverages.

In the meantime, I decided it would be best to use some kind of ant control poison, and a product named "Terro" came highly recommended. You're supposed to place put a few drops on a piece of cardboard and place it where the ants will find it, eat it, and take it back to the nest where all the other ants will be poisoned. So, being the meticulous instruction follower that I am, I did just so, placing a little square piece of poisoned cardboard on the corner of my computer desk where I saw the line of ants making their way toward my most sacred place.

OK. So, now I've set the trap. Now, how do I get rid of the strange sense that I'm getting a little extra protein in my coffee every time I take a drink? How do I convince myself that I'm not having a hungover aardvark's breakfast with every sip of coffee? What sort of poison do I use to get rid of the sensation of bugs crawling around in my hair? How do I stop myself from slapping at phantom creepy-crawlies on my legs?

What's worse, after about three days of poisoning the little monsters, they're still coming back. I'm beginning to wonder if this whole "Terro" thing is nothing but a practical joke. They don't seem particularly bothered by the stuff. Every time I put some down it gets consumed, and yet, the ants return. Is what I'm doing effectively throwing a keg party for the insect world?

Or am I creating a species of super ants? Am I laying the foundation for a world ruled by six-legged sweet-eaters who subjugate humanity with the threat of acute willies and thrive on, in the words on the container, sodium tetraborate decahydrate (borax)?

I've watched a few nature shows about ants, and they truly are fascinating. They're not nearly as discomfiting when they're enlarged for an up-close look at their lives. The mandibles and skittering legs are actually kind of wondrous to behold in detail. Seeing them go about their daily lives, driven to move some stuff and take other stuff back to the queen almost causes one to believe there's intelligence at work. Unfortunately, it's not nearly as charming when it's going happening on your computer desk. You have the feeling that, as they pass each other handing off chemical signals that instruct one another on what to do, where to go, and pick up some bread on the way home, their plan involves you and your hair.

"Hey, Jack! Forget about the Terro. Check out that guy over there. We'll wait 'til he falls asleep and go to work on his scalp. Come on! Let's go hide in one of his shirts!"

The things seem harmless enough when they're in their element, and you just happen to be picnicking on their turf. You simply put a lid on whatever it is they seem interested in, and go about your feast. If you find one crawling on your arm, give it a whack or a flick. Done. But, when they're in your home, it's a completely different story. Personally, I can't help feeling that they're out for revenge. Maybe one of the chemical signals they're passing around is a DNA sample from my uncle, who torched a nest in his back yard a few years back, and they're out for some familial blood.

Maybe I'm being a total pansy about this. After all, one of the time-honored traditions for kids is the "ant farm". Supposedly so, anyway. I've never actually seen one, except on sitcoms. And they always manage to get out of the farm in that case, much to the chagrin of moms and sisters. But in real life, I've never known a kid who owned one. None of my friends did growing up. I vaguely remember wanting one after that Brady Bunch (or was it the Partridge Family?) episode, but it was a fleeting desire. Mostly, that was based on the hope that I'd drop it in my sister's vicinity, eliciting the hair-pulling pee-pee dance.

If nothing else, I've learned a valuable lesson about slovenliness. There's a good reason not to leave consumables lying about, uncovered. And it's not the first time I've learned a lesson in such an alarming fashion. Last time, I learned not to let my beer sit on the ground at my feet for too long on summer nights, when garden slugs are making their rounds. I was fortunate enough to notice them before I put the beverage to my lips. Otherwise, I'd be a teetotaler today.

2002-05-08T21:40:00.000-07:00

I lost a great friend today. Ernie, my Italian Greyhound, was hit by a car and killed. I didn't have any pictures of him to post, and I can't write at the moment. Sorry. I'm hurting too badly.

2002-05-07T11:43:00.000-07:00

First off, I've been an Ozzy Osbourne fan for years, going back to my childhood. The first album I ever owned, given to me by an older cousin who'd just happened to have three copies, was Black Sabbath's "Master of Reality". I think I might have been eight years old at the time. The coughing sound in the opening of "Sweet Leaf", and the bizarre "Children of the Grave" and "Orchid" made an impression on me that would dictate my taste in music all the way through my teens and deep into my twenties. Even in my thirties, I still listen to Sabbath and Ozzy's solo work. I just have a wider ranging sense of appreciation these days, though I'm still not cultured enough to feel driven to listen to opera, Philistine that I am.

And, just as I wrote weeks ago in this blog, I still haven't seen The Osbournes. I've been told by everyone that I just have to watch it. And I have no doubt it's a great show. But, after all the urging and wildly enthusiastic word of mouth, I've grown afraid to watch it. I'm afraid it won't quite live up to its advance billing. I've had that kind of experience before. Last time, it was "Pulp Fiction".

I'd heard from friend after acquaintance after stranger in a bar "dude, man...dude! You've got to see that movie!" And, even though I'd been told this (in less frat-boyesque words) by people whose opinions I respect in matters of cinema and other pop culture fare, I resisted for months after its release on video. Then, when I finally relented (because of an extreme lack of options), I was disappointed.

Don't get me wrong. I thought it was a great film. But all the buildup led me to expect some sort of life-changing experience. The letdown was similar to what I suspect it must be like for N'Sync groupies who manage to score with one of the boys. All the anticipatory squeals and squirms seem a little misplaced in retrospect.

I've always been suspicious of near universal praise, no matter what the object. And even though I found "Pulp Fiction" entertaining, my contrarian nature was hardened by the months of being told that I was stuck in Nowheresville, man, for not having seen it, only to be merely impressed rather than enthralled. The movie's acolytes came on like a Tarantino-industrial complex.

As I said before, though, I suspect that The Osbournes is a great show. I'm actually more than willing to give it a chance. I'd love to, as a matter of fact. Unfortunately, I have a passive-aggressive tendency working against the whole idea. I've got MTV's channel (35) deleted from the selection list on my television out of complete disgust at what has passed for entertainment on the network for the past decade. And even though I’ve been meaning to tune in to catch it, I always forget that it’s on. Without that constant reminder of being forced to acknowledge MTV’s existence as I click through my viewing options, I find myself living in a world free of its influence. Missing out on Ozzy’s travails seems a small price to pay in that context.

Sooner or later, I’ll end up seeing the show. And if past is prologue, it’ll be the worst episode of the entire season. I’ll be drinking beer at a friend’s house when someone jumps up and says, “Ozzy’s on!” A hearty “hell yeah!” will ring in the occasion, all will settle into their seats and we’ll be treated to the one where Ozzy has just returned from his anger management classes with a new outlook and the necessary skills set for maintaining domestic harmony in the face of day-to-day tribulations.

That’s what hype does to everything it touches. It diminishes the impact of the actual event. Imagine if the Boston Tea Party had been given the same treatment. “Dude! You’ve got to be at the docks tonight! We’re gonna get all in the King’s face about this tax stuff! Citizen Steve’s talking about, like, taking all the tea off the ships and dumping it into the harbor! King’s gonna be pissed, dude! It’s gonna be the greatest protest ever! And there’s gonna be tons of chicks there, from what I hear. I’m talking like the biggest, hottest quilting bee, ever!”

Then, everyone shows up, Steve chucks a few crates into the drink and Citizen Jeremiah turns to his bro, and says, “Dude, I’m outta here. I don’t see any chicks, and the ‘coats are gonna be here any minute. I ain’t going to jail for a sausage fest.”

Some things manage to live up to their hype, though. “South Park” managed to exceed my expectations. But it didn’t have quite the level of promotion that Ozzy has gotten. We’ve reached the point of saturation already. Watching Leno (which is rare for me, and very much worthy of hype) a couple of weeks ago, Ozzy did a brief walk-on to herald his appearance on the show a week later. When you make an appearance to promote an appearance, things are out of hand.

Of course, I watched his second appearance. It did very little to make me want to catch him on MTV, though. In fact, other than the numerous dirty-word bleeps, and the one left uncensored, it appears Ozzy’s gone mainstream. He did the same old, run of the mill type of talk show appearance you see everyday on Leno. Well, he was a bit more incoherent than your average Hollywood stooge. Unfortunately, he was incoherent in an attempt to be charming and witty, which isn’t as funny as the entertaining listlessness of a drug addled Farrah Fawcett.

I don’t know. Maybe my expectations are being colored by my notion of what Ozzy’s supposed to be all about. After all, the better part of my pre-to-post-adolescence had created an image of him as the anti-everything. He’s supposed to be seen being carted off in handcuffs after having peed out JFK’s eternal flame, and not carping about dog crap in the bathroom. The only time I want to see him in Washington is when he’s defending himself before Congress and not at the White House Correspondent’s Dinner. It’s like watching Johnny Rotten receive his knighthood.

Now it’s too late. He’s gone Spice Girl. Being accepted by tuna salad on white America is a death sentence to rock stars. This year’s Ozzfest tour will feature something hitherto unseen in previous incarnations; father-son attendees in matching golf shirts and Dockers khaki shorts. “Son, I think your mother would prefer that you get one of the shirts without the f-word. Do you think the beer vendor has O’Doules?”

Of course, there’s a better than even chance that I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about. I am, after all, giving a pre-emptive critique based on a show that I’ve never seen. But, just sitting back and witnessing the wave of adulation from corners normally associated with the button-down world makes me a little suspicious of what’s being sold. And if I’m suspicious in my near-geriatric thirties, imagine what the hep cats are thinking. I’m afraid Ozzy is about to become a derisive adjective – as in, “She made you watch the “Friends” marathon with her? Dude, that’s ozzy!”

I hope I’m wrong. I’ll just have to watch the show to find out, I suppose. It would be nice if I thought MTV’s producers could pull off something like this without completely dulling what little edge the man has left in his golden years. But the fact remains, we are talking about MTV, here. Nothing they get their hands on remains cool for more than a year.

Ozzy should keep that in mind when they approach him with an offer for the next run. Either get all their money, or get out. If he goes for the money, though, he’d better make this the year of his farewell Ozzfest. And, unlike the Rolling Stones, he’d better mean farewell.

2002-05-06T09:50:00.000-07:00

I haven’t had time (or motivation, for that matter) to make any entries over the past week. The news, what I’ve managed to see and read of it, hasn’t seemed all that noteworthy, anyway. Hopefully, I’ll be able to get something done late tonight, or tomorrow. Between work and going to parties and trying to get things done in the yard in the brief breaks between rain showers, it hasn’t been easy. But I’ve managed to get all that caught up and will have the next couple of days off to do some blogging.

This week has had me busier than a one-legged man in a butt-kicking contest, as the old saying goes. But, assuming I won’t sleep for the next two days, there should be a couple of fairly long entries over the next couple of days.

2002-05-01T17:05:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, in the Washington Times, there was a report that generated some breathless praise from the uninitiated on the right. Michael Eric Dyson did the one thing that every Republican has been praying for since the early days of 1993, so their haste in piling on the plaudits is somewhat understandable. He said something bad about Bill Clinton! Even the relatively hard-right Newsmax was quick to hail the heresy as if it were an upheaval in racial politics. The reaction, though, is something like going Corvette shopping because the lottery drawing is tonight, and you bought a ticket.

For Michael Dyson to step forward and state that he believes Bill Clinton exploited blacks isn't big news, my friends. The fact is, it was bound to happen. Sooner or later, it was going to dawn on Dyson and his fellow black Marxists that Clinton is out of power, and thus, of very little use to them. And it just wouldn't do to have a white man, no matter how "connected" with the black community, be its titular leader. Why, if Bill Clinton were to become the voice of justice for impoverished, put-upon blacks in America, what would become of Dyson, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Louis Farrakhan and Tavis Smiley? As well known as they are, there's no way they could ever carry the sort of clout that, in the words of Toni Morrison, "Our First Black President" possesses.

The last thing any of these men want is to become "incidental" to the black cause. There's too much money and fame still to be ill-gotten to allow some interloper to step in and soak up all the fruits of their tireless labor and self-promotion. For Dyson and Co. to stand aside while Clinton drinks the champagne would be akin to a pimp letting his whores moonlight with the vice squad.

It's hard to fault conservatives for getting their hopes up at this kind of news. Some even like to think of it as the inevitable outcome of years of exploitation by the left. It's hard not to be optimistic when you hear the very words you've been shouting from every rooftop echoed back to you from one of the most listened to voices in the neighborhood. In the end, however, it's just so much wishful thinking. But, it should also serve as a warning. One of the sad truths about conservatives is that we're woefully uninformed about black culture and politics, and the ready embrace of Dyson is a wonderful demonstration of that fact.

While I've never been a particularly apt student of the subject, I did have a passing familiarity with Dyson's politics through simple absorption, having seen his appearances on C-SPAN-covered functions and brief pauses on BET while channel surfing. Wherever there's a forum in which to expose how rich, powerful whites are serving black baby soup to the hounds that guard the perimeters of their gated mansions, you can count on Michael Dyson to be front and center. "No more will the pale-skinned plantation owner run our children through his commercial grade food processor for the nourishment of his hell hounds! We will resist his drive to finely mince our young into a paste with the consistency of the potted meat on which we, as a people, are all too often forced to subsist!"

Or, maybe it's Tavis Smiley who says things like that...

Nevertheless, I've decided to cull a few representative passages to demonstrate the direction in which leftist black leaders are taking their public. While I'm sure these aren't the most outlandish examples of the things written or said by Michael Eric Dyson over the course of his career, they do offer some insight into his political and social belief system and worldview. What's more alarming than the words themselves is the number of people who would affirm them, or simply accept them without question.

The first examples come from Africana.com, a mere ten days following the terror attacks on the World Trade Center and The Pentagon. The opening paragraph of the article describes Dyson as, "A hip hop intellectual, a street fighter in a suit, and one of the pre-eminent black thinkers of today," which would be funny if it weren't so damnably true. Even Congressman John Lewis, (D-GA), is hesitant about singing Dyson's praises. The interviewer for the piece, Lee Hubbard, quotes Lewis as "[dismissing] Dyson's scholarship as 'a fad'", and having said "I heard him on C-SPAN comparing Dr. King to one of these rappers, Doggy Doggy or somebody. I think it is a disgrace. It’s shameful for him to put Dr. King on that level."

Of course, when an event as horrific as the terrorist attacks occurs, one of the first things I want is the input of a "hip-hop intellectual". Thankfully, Lee Hubbard provides us with that input in the interview.

What if a state was behind this act — would war be justified?

No. We can have economic sanctions on a state, negotiation and imposing limits and restraints on states. I am still a Baptist preacher, and even in international relations a principle of peace must be pursued as first, second and even third recourse, rather than the embrace of war.

That's right. Economic sanctions. Nothing like cutting off the cheese deliveries to put the fear of God into terror-sponsoring nations. "Look Abu...I'm with you on the whole 'imperial hegemon-Great Satan' thing, but we've got thirty tons of American slices, Real Seal and all, on the line here. Couldn't you think of something less drastic? Burn an Uncle Sam effigy downtown, or something."

I'd like to see Dyson mediate a turf war between the Bloods and the Crips. Perhaps restrictions on the sale of crack and weed between rival gangs would be an effective way to combat drive-bys.

But, it's not really a stretch to think that a Baptist preacher might be opposed to war. Christianity has a long, albeit somewhat complicated, tradition of opposing violence, particularly if it's unjustified. So, it's important to understand his reasoning before you attack his statements. Hubbard does a good job of drawing it out, after pointing out that Afghanistan was already economically sanctioned to the point of starvation. So, Dyson replied thusly:

Haven’t there been sanctions on Afghanistan for years?

My point is this: There are other ways to try and flush out this act of aggression and punish bin Laden and the terrorists that are in his core. I am not against this. What I am against is the hypocrisy of a nation that would help train bin Laden by funneling millions from the CIA to Afghan rebels to put down the Soviets, and now switching sides to funnel money to the Soviets to stop the spread of fundamentalism. I am not against responding. I am against indiscriminate aggression.

Aside from the fact that Dyson offered no other "ways to try and flush out this act of aggression and punish bin Laden and the terrorists that are in his core," he reveals a common tactic used by black ultra-leftists when not permitted to take off on a cadenced, run-on sentence of a diatribe meant to impress an audience more by force of show than substance. He changes the subject. You see, it's not really Afghanistan or bin Laden who are the problem. It's us and our hypocrisy.

To professor Dyson, it's not important that at the time the US was funneling money to bin Laden, he happened to be fighting, and beating, the single greatest threat to human freedom on the face of the earth at the time. But, it's not unusal for leftist academics to gloss over the brutal repression of the regime they lionized for years as the ideology of the future.

By the by, Dyson seems not to have been told that "the Soviets" no longer exist. Or, maybe he has been told, but it's just taking time to sink in. Perhaps the Soviet Union is an ideological phantom limb for the learned minister. Whatever his reasons, it seems at least unfair, if not delusional, to accuse the US of funneling money to a regime that ceased to exist over a decade ago.

With that aside, now we come to the meat -- the very reason that it's so important to have folks like Dyson around to consult:

How would Tupac have reacted to this?

I think that Tupac would say, “What business do we have being in Arab nations when the tentacles of colonialism and capitalism suck the lifeblood of native or indigenous people?” He actually said something about Bosnia and what is America doing over there. He would have had questions about who really was the thug. He would have said that America has ignored the vicious consequences of its imperialistic practices across the world. America ignores how millions of people suffer on a daily basis throughout the world, except in isolated spots that involve so-called national interests. Thirdly, that America has forfeited its duty as global policeman, by virtue of its own mistreatment of black people.

Don't you just love it when highly educated college professors engage in activities like putting words into the mouths of dead gangsta rappers? For some reason, I have a hard time imagining those utterances emanating from Tupac's mouth. In fact, just about the only things I can imagine issuing forth from his maw are a mixture of Philly Blunt/hydroponically grown marijuana smoke, a birdbath-like column of Old English 800, and a series of rhymes not printable in the Readers' Digest's "Quotable Quotes" section.

Which leads me to what I suspect is Dyson's greatest source of pride: being the world's best-known "hip-hop intellectual". He demonstrates his peculiarly vast knowledge of the subject in an interview with Brian Lamb for C-SPAN's Booknotes, while promoting his book, Holler If You Hear Me: Searching for Tupac Shakur.

Being at the top of his field in this particular discipline has given Dyson some keen insights that can only be achieved through years of extensive study in the culture of hip-hop. Lamb discusses some of the deepest, most intellectually stimulating aspects of the art in the following paragraphs.

LAMB: What's a ho?

Prof. DYSON: A ho is, in--in many ways in hip-hop discourse, a derisive term referring to a female of loose sexuality. That's its specific and technical term. More loosely, it's used for young black women or Latino women perhaps within the hip-hop and ghetto culture who are viewed to be easily accessible sexually.

Future linquistic anthropologists will owe the professor a huge debt of gratitude, no doubt. But, we're just getting started.

LAMB: What's a bitch?

Prof. DYSON: A bitch is a woman who is viewed as--that's interesting--a--a woman who is viewed as not only a ho, but a person who will be quite nasty and temperamental in the aftermath of whatever sexual transaction might take place. On the other hand, given the kind of patriarchal culture that is--that is just endemic to so much hip-hop, a bitch may be a woman who refuses to engage in sexual exchange and liaison with a--with a young man or one who since--has a sense of her own dignity and possesses a sense of her own identity who doesn't give in easily to the whim and caprice of a man. So bitch is a pejorative term, a nasty term, a derisive term, used for a wide variety of women. Unfortunately, even in this, quote, "positive songs"--think of the Notorious B.I.G.'s "Me & My Bitch," he didn't mean that derisively. He meant it as a term of endearment. Some women in--in hip-hop call themselves bitches, each other bitches. And many of the men who call women bitches don't mean anything negatively by it. That's the kind of terminological twists that have gone on in hip-hop culture that are very controversial.

Talk about an education in high art! Fascinating...utterly and simply engrossing!

Prof. DYSON: Well, I think that there's something sensual and something earthy about the--the F-word, the MF-word, in particular. Technically, of course, F-U-C-K, fornicating under consent of the king. So it's a kind of twist of a King James terminology into the--the transience black culture. What's interesting is that there's a sensual characteristic--it--it's a--it's a catch-all term. It can be something negative, it can be something positive. `Hey, you my MF,' or, `Watch out, MF.' So it's an all-purpose term that has allowed a wide range of emotion to be condensed into its--into its use. And so I think that--that many African-American so-called ghetto-centric youth--that is people who are attached to the ghetto, to the inner city and not just there, by the way--find a kind of verbal release kind of--an erotic attachment to this very sensual and very charged terminology.

Someone please email me and let me know in what way this makes sense. I'm already lost. But I digress...

The same way with the other word; that is the N-word. And Tupac used that word quite frequently. In--in the larger white supremacist discourse, it's called nigger. But Tupac and many African-American youth--and not only youth--talked about it as nigga, N-I-G-G-A. Now he said in one of his songs, "Words of Wisdom," N-I-G-G-A meant for him never ignorant, getting goals accomplished. Some black people don't buy that. They see altogether negative connotations associated with the word, no matter how many black people try to transform it into something different. That's why in my book, I talk about those who are reservationists, who have reservations about the term, and those who are revisionists, those who say, `No, we can do something with it.' Like gay and lesbian people take the word `queer,' which is meant as a pejorative and something negative, and say, `You're darn right I'm queer,' and use it as a term that is positive. Black people have attempted throughout their own history to take and seize the term nigger and turn it around to make it something positive.

The next time I find myself walking through Compton, I won't be nearly as offended at the words yelled out the windows of the passing cars as I dive behind the bullet-riddled bench for cover from the gunfire.

Come to think of it, I wonder if there's a particular usage for "exploited" that may not carry the same connotations one would normally pick up from the word. I wonder what kind of "MF" George W. Bush would be? Is Hillary a "ho" or a "bitch", and what kind? And, just what is Al Gore? What was so "ghetto" about him that drew so many blacks to the voting booth in his favor?

Clearly, I've got more hip-hop research to do. I find the whole culture baffling. Perhaps a kind reader will take the time to lead me by the hand through this strange and wondrous world, where perjoritives aren't perjoritive, and yet, they really are.

I'll have more to say about professor Dyson in future entries. His notion of culture and politics beg for analysis, and I plan to become very well-versed in the days ahead.

Thanks for reading, bitches.

2002-04-29T09:04:00.000-07:00

In one of those "careful what you wish for" incidents, someone pulled off The Big Heist in the form of cigarettes. Anybody who's paid for a pack of smokes in the past five years saw this coming, and they're going to see it happening more and more often, as cigarette taxes have just begun to rise.

And, in cigarette smuggling news...

In what ought to be deemed an ecological disaster, a truckload of canned chili was spilled on I-80, in Wyoming. On the brighter side, the road shouldn't need to be paved again for another 13,000 years. But the question remains. If the FDA is providing a necessary and valuable service to Americans, why on earth is this stuff allowed to exist?

On the feminist/trial lawyer axis front, a lawsuit filed all the way back in 1995 has already cost the Chevron Corp. $2.2 million (link requires registration). Just about the time Bill Clinton was getting settled in at the White House, along comes a sexual harrassment suit against a major corporation over emailed jokes about "Why Beer is Better than Women".

#26. Beer won't haul you into court, ruining your whole life, for having a laugh at its expense.

There was always something about Aaron Brown of CNN that made me wonder if there was some kind of seething ambition underneath his weirdly placid demeanor. His aww-shucks, isn't-that-something delivery of the news struck me as masking a secret plan to rule the world. Now, I can't help but picture him swiveling around in his chair after everyone has left the studio and having a hearty, ominous laugh to himself. "It's mine! All mine!!! Mu-hu-hu-wa-hahaha!!! Ha-hahahahah!!!"

Sorry for the lack of any real content today. I'll once again be heading out the door in a frenzy and won't be back util nearly 11:00 PM tonight. Hopefully, I'll have thought of something to write about in the interim. Please email any interesting links and ideas. I feel a block coming on.

2002-04-26T15:57:00.000-07:00

Alterman's back again. And so soon! This time, though, he's playing the role of "International Crusader for the Bedwetting Left", for MSNBC. The column appears to have a two-track agenda: (1) allay the fears of his fellow travelers that there's anything of significance to be read into Jean-Marie LePen's recent showing in the French presidential elections, and (2) scare the hell out of his fellow travelers over the supposed break-neck, rightward careening of the government here in the United States.

He begins by pointing out that some of LePen's critics have bemoaned the election results as a sign of some resurgence of European fascism, and seeks to dispel the notion (rightly so) by pointing out that there are vast differences in the systems of the United States and France. He correctly states that LePen has essentially won nothing more than the right to run for second place, since he hasn't demonstrated an ability to attract more than a consistent, if sizable, minority vote.

But then things start to veer off into a feckless attempt at juxtaposition between the current situation in France and the most recent US elections.

Keep in mind that Le Pen did not win the election (he finished second), will not win the election, and his 17.8 percent (up from his usual 15 percent, or less) is not expected to go any higher than 22 percent in the final run-off against incumbent Jacques Chirac. That’s not much better than Ross Perot did here in 1992 and most people think he’s nuts. Perot was a protest vote that ended up not mattering.

Untrue. Perot's protest vote ended up dictating the direction of American politics immensely, and never more so than in 1994, when the GOP took over Congress. Clinton had promised a middle class tax cut (never delivered), a balanced budget (after twelve, ten, seven and five years, depending on the amount of pressure he felt to get a move on) and welfare reform (signed with a political gun to his head), all because of the influence the disaffected throng who'd voted for the crazy Croesus two years earlier. You can bet that Chirac will feel a tug from his right once the elections end, and he'll respond if he's smart.

Ralph Nader garnered barely more than a tenth of what Le Pen or Perot got and he ultimately determined the course of the election, something Le Pen will not be able to do.

Gore got as many of Nader's votes as he was ever going to get, thanks to an aggressive, eleventh-hour push by his people to peel them off. While most of Nader's supporters are more closely matched to Gore's politics, the truth is, much like Perot's supporters, they were only energized by the man they voted for, and would have stayed home had he not run. A good percentage of them, in fact, deeply loathed Gore, and were elated to have a way to vote against him, as evidenced by the fact that as many as a third of them stated that they would have voted for Bush were he the only other alternative.

Still, all of this completely ignores the fact that Gore would have run a completely different campaign had Nader not been running on his left. Without his influence, Gore would have been a much more conservative candidate, which would likely have depressed Democrat turnout.

However, it's nice to see Alterman reliving his nightmare for the second time in two days. It's a virtual screaming advertisement of the absence of substance in the left's current offerings to the public.

While the U.S. and French election systems have almost nothing in common, the predicaments facing each society’s political system are similar. Both are characterized primarily by apathy. In both cases, the forces on the left are so divided that they are allowing a far-right minority to define the terms of the debate in the larger society while internecine arguments and self-recriminations dominate their thoughts and energies.

While I take issue with the characterization that the "far-right" are dictating public policy, I appreciate the acknowledgement that the far-left is "a house divided against itself". The thing is, it's not the self-recriminations and internecine squabbling that's holding back the movement, as Alterman likes to think. It's a stubborn refusal to accept that America can't stomach the notion of the European-style leftism that Eric and his cohorts would foist upon her.

After all, if there was any real market for left-wing ideals, Al Gore would have made tax increases, gun control, and abolishing the death penalty key parts of his campaign. Hell, even Nader chose to downplay the part of the Green Party platform which calls for a 100% tax on all income over $110,000 dollars. If the Democrats ever want to make a genuine distinction between themselves and the Republicans, one can be sure that the GOP would welcome it the way a grandmother welcomes a newborn baby girl.

The spokespeople for these allegedly liberal parties are terrified of saying anything of substance for fear of alienating any of these combative constituencies as well as the precious centrist or “undecided” voter. The result is that the base remains unmotivated, except on the fringes, and when apathy rules on the left, the right is able to steal not only elections, but also the entire political discourse.

What Alterman fails to acknowledge is that the "undecided voter" isn't really undecided at all. Centrists are really conservatives, and that's why Democrats can't afford to put their true believers out front. If you want an indication of where the American center actually resides on the political spectrum, distribute essays written by William F. Buckley, Noam Chomsky, Christopher Hitchens, and George Will. Then ask them which writers fall more closely in line with their own personal beliefs.

Either the far right is stronger in France than it is here or it is dumber. In the United States, our right-wing extremists are better disciplined than those in France and our own Naderites. As the failure of the Buchanan campaign demonstrates, they were smart enough to work through the Republican Party in exchange for future concessions from the Bush campaign, rather than challenge their natural allies with the prospect of being a spoiler. They were ultimately rewarded when John Ashcroft - a far-right ex-senator who was so extreme that he managed to lose an election to a dead man - was named U.S. attorney general.

Gosh. That hurts. Another conspiracy theory from the in-need-of-a-bogeyman left. The clever Republicans worked a deal to get Pat Buchanan to run a lackluster campaign in exchange for putting the rabid Ashcroft (who somehow managed to get elected to the Senate in his previous runs, despite the jackboots and brown shirt) in the Attorney General spot. Let's all hope that The Enforcer resolves all the personal issues left over from his loss to the grieving widow of a sitting governor before he lets loose the dogs of war on members of a religious sect and allows them to burn to death in their own earthbound hell.

The rest of the column is a series of questions, but the most pointed one follows:

Does [LePen] represent the return of the respectable face of fascism, as we have had now, for nearly a decade in nearby Italy and Austria? Is his support an endorsement of anti-Jewish violence and traditional French anti-Semitism in light of the Israeli invasion of the West Bank? Or is it an endorsement of anti-Arab violence, as frequently occurs in the suburbs of Paris where Le Pen’s supporters also use the term “invasion?”

One option that a clear-thinking analyst might consider, though which is absent here, is that perhaps his support is a measure of the fear that people feel in the mnnths following the terrorist attacks in the United States and Israel. Perhaps some of the French people see the growing presence of Islamic fundamentalism in their nation and suspect that it might, in some strange coincidence, spill over into their nation in the form of attacks against their own citizens, Jewish or not. Maybe they noted that one of the terrorist involved in the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon was a French national of North African origin, and suspect that there may be more. Might it be that they're a little alarmed at the growing tension between the middle east and the western world, and they're hoping to head it off by keeping it outside their borders, at least as much as possible?

Of course, to the average leftist, strictly enforced immigration policy in the west is inherently evil as it seeks to identify people who would cause problems for the average citizen, and works to restrict the free exercise of their anti-western will. The idea that conservatives would seek to protect their sovereignty out of self-preservation, rather than racism or xenophobia is never entertained by the liberal. Whether or not there is merit to the anti-immigration argument is of no consequence to left-wingers, for the motives are always impure in their eyes.

It is worth noting, however, that Alterman is quick to tie anti-Semitism to right-wing sentiment. The American left has always been eager to lionize the French and all their sophistication, never seeming to notice that anti-Semitism existed under more liberal governments. And, whenever the time comes for the US and its allies to act against Iraq (the most ardently anti-Israel nation on the planet) there's no lack of handwringing from leftists over the idea that France might not go along with it due to economic ties and generally friendly relations. So, why is it that anti-Israeli feeling is only now becoming a problem worthy of alarm?

Another hastily thrown together entry before a very busy weekend...please excuse the lack of editing

2002-04-25T17:47:00.000-07:00

Eric Alterman. Even when I think of the name there's an inflection. It rolls through my mind the way the words "Carrot Top" loll out of Dennis Miller's mouth. Yet, when I see his name attached to a hyperlink, I can't help running the mouse pointer over and clicking it. Sometimes, I click it two or three times, as I have to close the window and do the intellectual equivalent of kegel exercises due to the brain atrophy I feel coming on.

Today, Alterman is angry at Frank Bruni, and he pours it all out in the American Prospect. Poor Frank. He must be hugging his knees, rocking back and forth, repeating the words "writer wrong, right or wrong, hahahah" to himself, for hours at a time. One can only hope he's being looked after by his friends at The Old Grey Mare. I'm sure he'd welcome cards and letters of encouragement.

And, since Frank's currently incapacitated, I figure I'd address some of the more insipid attacks in his stead. It's liable to take some time for him to fully recover from the stark terror inherent in receiving a bad book review from Eric The Red. This one's for you, Frank. Pretty soon the monsters will be gone, so don't you worry.

He first complains of the lack of issue-oriented material in Bruni's book, Ambling into History: The Unlikely Odyssey of George W. Bush:

As difficult as it may be to imagine, this Times reporter has written an account of the 2000 presidential campaign that contains nary a word about health care, Social Security, tax cuts, the Middle East conflict, missile defense or, God forbid, global warming.

I suppose that would be a valid criticism, but not from Alterman, since he never found the energy write up a slash and burn piece on Joe Klein for his transparently partisan take on the 1992 campaign, Primary Colors. One can't help but wonder if Alterman would have been so kind if Klein had written something similar on behalf of George H. W. Bush. Actually, no one really wonders at all. It's pretty self-evident, and Eric's not even moderately ashamed of the double standard.

But, if I were to stop pointing out Alterman's duplicity, this would be a short entry. And, between you and me, I've been "mailing it in" the past couple of days, so I need to do something with a little more heft. So, I'll go ahead and direct your attention to the following passage:

Candidate Bush puts his arms around "Panchito" Bruni and coos, "You know we love you." He looks across a crowded room at the author and mouths, "I love you, man." Rarely in political history have the sounds of sweet seduction been so richly rewarded.

What Alterman is worked up over in this case was done to the press corps as a whole by Bill Clinton, over and over. When they weren't marvelling at his ability to "work a room" they were completely cowed by him. All you have to do is take a look at his interview with Jim Lehrer in the days following the revalation of his tryst with Monica Lewinsky where he is allowed to skate on question after question without a hint of challenge. Remember the weird old lady with the technicolor hair who stood up and asked him how he felt about the radical Republicans who were out to get him at every turn? And Carole Simpson, for pete's sake.

I suppose a case could be made that Bruni's book isn't exactly a blunt assessment of the issues that concern everyday Americans. But, the fact remains that what he set out to write was a campaign diary of sorts. Doesn't it stand to reason that a person who is seeking to cover the events of a presidential campaing would write about what actually happened during the campaing instead of what some left-wing hatchet man would like to read about? If George W. Bush turned out to be a charming man with a genuine like for people, wouldn't it be dishonest to ignore it?

But that seems to be what really bunches Alterman's pink underwear. Here's the rest of the previously referenced paragraph:

The Bush team got what it wanted from the national media in 2000, which would be amazing if we had not been somehow complicit in allowing it to happen. The Bush campaign boiled down to a single message that went something like this: "Forget all that stuff about qualifications, experience, intelligence, politics, records, issues, etc. Ignore the fact that these two candidates represent significantly different political philosophies and have, on many key issues, conflicting views on how to approach our problems as a society, or on just what constitutes a problem. And especially forget the fact that on most of these you agree with Al Gore. Remember only this: Our guy may be a little bit of a moron when it comes to the serious policy stuff, but if he came over to your house for dinner, he wouldn't bore everybody at the table trying to prove that he was smarter'n you were…."

Alterman doesn't seem cognizant of just what he's asking us to forget. Namely, that Al Gore proved over the course of his tenure as second fiddle to be nearly Clintonian in his dishonesty. How many lies did he tell during the campaign? How many times did he pad his resume with seemingly inconsequential inflations just to make himself seem somewhat palatable to the public?

But, it wasn't just the campaign that brought out the liar in Al Gore. Time after time he was called upon to account for his actions as a government official, only to resort to evasions like, "I was out of the room at the time" because he'd "drank too much iced tea." Then there was the Buddhist temple fundraiser that he didn't realize was actually a fundraiser. Then there was the "no controlling legal authority" cop-out. Then there was the "one of our greatest presidents" line that he wouldn't reiterate when asked about later on.

It wasn't the notion that people "agreed with him". People were wary because they knew that Al Gore was agreeing with them. At least for the time being. Al Gore had shown himself to be very pliable to public opinion over his political career, and the public was all too aware of it. They were also aware that he wasn't above silly grand gestures in the effort to make himself look like something he wasn't. The idiotic and ofay attempt at the puffed-up chest bump on Bush during the second debate told a great many Americans all they needed to know about him - that he was nothing more than a dandy trying on a leather jacket.

Alterman then goes on to say:

All that was necessary for this strategy to succeed was for the most prestigious American news outlets to treat the race for the most important -- and potentially most dangerous -- job in the world as if it were a race for prom queen.

Does it really need to be pointed out that the Gore campaign begged for this to happen? When his handlers are giving him clothing advice on how to look like the "Alpha male" and telling him to make a huge display of his manly love for his wife, what do you expect the press to cover? What Alterman is really angry about is not so much that the press turned the whole thing into a beauty pageant. He's angry because Gore didn't get the crown and is lashing out at the people who voted.

In Al Gore the Democrats had chosen one of the most singularly stuck-up stiffs that Harvard, with its considerable standards, had managed to produce. But Gore knew what he was talking about when discussing the problems of the presidency, as Bush did not. What's more, his views happened to coincide with a significant majority of Americans'.

Leaving aside the fact that Gore can't show us a Harvard MBA (unlike his opponent), Bush had spent a considerable amount of time in the inner workings of his father's administration, acting as a sort of loyalty enforcer. The truth is, Al Gore's experience in the Executive Branch was largely responsible for his loss. Had he not been so intimately involved in the scandals and general miscreancy, he probably would have won. And, the fact that his views "coincided" with a significant majority of Americans is as blatant a misstatement as can be made. Gore's views were anything but coincidental. They were tailored to fit from day one, and every bit as susceptible to change as the public's fashion sense.

The Bush team's "message discipline" is, indeed, its most impressive characteristic. A close second is its ability to turn a healthy percentage of supposedly independent-minded observers, consistently accused of exhibiting unreconstructed liberal bias, into little more than ventriloquists' dummies.

Oddly enough, I don't recall any part of Bush's message having to do with any candidate's affability, so the blame for the press' seeming unconcern with "issues" can't be placed on him. As I recall, Bush's message was centered on tax cuts, military readiness and education, though the opportunities to highlight his opponent's outright lies and exaggerations were seemingly endless. For Alterman to imply that Gore's bad coverage had anything to do with a conservative bias simply laughable. Both campaigns used the press to get their messages out. Unfortunately, the Gore campaign had to contend with silly behavior and outright dishonesty. When that's what you give the press, they have no choice but to report it.

But of the press's responsibility to cover the race independent of what the candidates want -- to ignore the irrelevant and focus on what informed citizens need to know -- we hear not a word in this book. If Bush wants to spend his day traveling from one misleading photo-op to another, well then Bruni, you can be assured, is going to feel compelled to tell us how the candidate looked and pretended to feel as he did it.

To give the press a little credit, it must be pointed out that Gore wasn't exactly open to frank discussions of the issues. He was burned quite badly in an interview with Tim Russert, and even though he'd issued a challenge for Bush to appear on the program before the three debates, he decided it would be best for him to avoid tough questions. In fact, had the press covered the race as it should have, it's quite likely that Bush would have won in a landslide popular victory. Unfortunately for the public, a great many questions about Gore's experience as vice president went unanswered. And, lest one get the impression that deceptive photo-ops were the sole property of the Bush campaign, it should be pointed out that one of Gore's biggest P.R. debacles was a campaign stop which was intended to show him as a friend to the environment, but ended up showing him to be its exploiter as he had millions of gallons of water released in a drought-stricken area, just so he could be seen in a canoe.

Bruni quotes from Bush's ghostwritten campaign autobiography as if it actually reveals something about the man's inner life. He cites Bush's feigned anger that Chris Matthews, the host of NBC's Hardball and a known Winston Churchill buff, thought Bush studied up on Churchill just to impress an interviewer: "Do you think," Bush complained, "that I'd take time out of my life to research what the hell you like?" Does it really tax anyone's belief that one of the thousands of people whose labor, paid or otherwise, was available to Bush might have taken the time to research a famous Matthews passion and pass it along to the candidate?

Well, of course it doesn't tax one's belief to consider such a thing might happen. Then again, it does tax one's belief that a man of Alterman's considerable scholarship would get worked up over something as meaningless as this. It's also hard to believe that a man of Alterman's stature would honestly think that the fact that Bush had read a book on Churchill was the thing that pushed Matthews over into the crowd of admirers, or that he could be so petty as to utterly dismiss the idea that a Yale graduate with a post-grad degree from Harvard would be too much of a simpleton to read a biography on one of the greatest leaders of the past century.

Bruni decides that contrary to popular belief, Bush "was, in fact, a pretty steady consumer of books." His evidence? Bush was able to name a few.

Yes, Eric. Sometimes people do read books without someone looking of their shoulders. In fact, most people do prefer to do so. Maybe it hasn't occurred to him that Bush might have discussed to some degree the books he'd read with Bruni or other members of the press corps. Or, maybe Eric's just an insolent little prig who can't be bothered to give the benefit of the doubt on something so minor as a reading list to anyone with whom he doesn't find himself in lock-step agreement on public policy matters. Maybe he's shell-shocked, still living the war. Whatever it is, psychopharmacology has made great leaps in recent years, and he'd be wise to look into it. The bottle clearly isn't helping.

Later, Bruni seems mightily impressed that Bush is aware of a book by neoconservative intellectual Gertrude Himmelfarb, who happens to be the mother of William Kristol, a key Republican strategist who worked in the Bush-Quayle administration. It is inconceivable to Bruni in any of these instances that a well-briefed candidate is spinning him silly.

It seems not to occur to Alterman that Kristol was fairly solidly in the McCain camp from day one, and that dropping his mom's name was unlikely to pull him over to Bush. It also seems not to have dawned on Alterman that the campaign is over, so all the spin is a little late, coming after the fact and all. Again, this seems beneath a man of Eric's supposed intellect. His obsessive focus on Bush's intelligence is the stuff of small minds and should have been overcome by the end of his high school debate club days. When a man questions another's mental abilities to himself, it's fair game. When a man continues to relentlessly discuss it in public, it's childish. When a man trashes others for not saying the same thing, it's time to relegate him to the status of "playa-hater", or "punkass beyatch". That seems to be the appropriate level of discourse.

The style in this book, moreover, is unfortunately appropriate to its meandering message. Bruni is a newspaper writer trapped in a form that demands more, and the results can be cruel. I didn't think it particularly clever of Bush to call out "Hello, Landslide" to Tony Blair during the 2001 NATO meeting in what Bruni, in the newspaper and then again in the book, calls "a towel-snapping" reference. I really cannot imagine why he thinks it a line worth repeating, practically verbatim.

This is not unlike placing a partisan political hack and leftwing screed scrivener in the role of book reviewer. The results are typically frothy and completely predictable. Did anyone really entertain the thought that Alterman would give an even-handed review of any book that didn't document rumors of cocaine use and break the news that Bush has a taste for raw guinea pig flesh?

And perhaps a perceptive reader might be generous enough to enlighten me as to the meaning of Bruni's description of Barbara Bush as "benignly malicious or was it maliciously benign?" Because, reading it over and over, it strikes me as meaningless nonsense (or is it nonsensically meaninglessness?).

A little lighthearted vitriol from a retarded intellectual.

But, then he goes on to mount his patented defense of the Clinton era by drawing comparisons to the Reagan-Bush era. This is always done because Clinton's record of lies can't stand on its own. So, what they do is go down through history collecting stories and anecdotes that, taken as a collective, make Clinton look like not so bad a figure. However, it never seems to dawn on them that they have to collect the misdeeds of twenty past presidents in order to rationalize away the illegal and unethical behavior of just one.

Someone at his publisher's office, at least, might have mentioned that the Clinton-era Whitewater investigation resulted in a grand total of zero indictments, and that only two members of the Clinton administration were ever indicted.

This would be a telling detail, if it didn't leave out the fact that most of the convictions, and there were upwards of thirty of them, were handed down to Clinton cronies who weren't serving in the administration. It also leaves out the fact that a great many of the people who were involved in the various and sundry scandals of the Clinton era left the country in order to evade prosecution. And, it's strange that you never read anything about the folks with Clinton ties who asserted fifth amendment protections. Self-incrimination indicates criminality. Ignoring it indicates sophistry.

The Reagan-Bush administration, meanwhile, managed to rack up a full 32 indictments, many of which were disposed of by presidential pardons. (A few of these very same scandal-free figures, including Elliott Abrams, Otto Reich, and John Poindexter, are currently serving in the Bush administration.) It was Bush's role in the Iran-contra scandal, as revealed by Caspar Weinberger's notes, that seemed responsible for pushing Bill Clinton over the top in 1992 -- something Bush seemed to acknowledge when he pardoned some of the evildoers immediately after the election.

Of course, leave it to Alterman to fail to point out that the indictments were for actions that contradicted the Boland Amendment, which was later found to be un-Constitutional. Nevertheless, one can't help wondering what this all has to do with the 2000 Presidential elections. One suspects that maybe Eric's engaging in a little more "lighthearted vitriol".

Nowhere, moreover, do we get a sense of the significance that G.W. Bush actually lost the popular vote in 2000 and would have lost Florida but for the incompetence of Gore's lawyers before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Really, now? I've still yet to see a study published that makes a credible case that Gore would have won the elections under any recount. As a matter of fact, the most reputable sources all indicate that Bush would have won, no matter what remedy was given. Whatever the case, it seems unfair to blame Gore's lawyers for the incompetence of Gore's voters. The ballot was simple enough. The people were too simple.

But, not only is Alterman willing to shift blame on a group of lawyers who did the best they could with a really, really bad case, he moves in to blame Bruni, himself:

He even takes cognizance of his own agenda-setting role, as a Times reporter, to shape the rest of the coverage in the media. When, in the final moments of the campaign Bush's drunken-driving episode is revealed -- revealing that he had indeed misled reporters on a matter of fact about himself, something that "liar" Al Gore had not been proven to do -- Bruni decided to minimize its importance. "You're a good man," Bush told him. Perhaps, but readers and citizens both would have been better served by a skeptical reporter.

Rather than list the lies attributed to Gore, which would take up an incredible amount of space in an already long blog entry, I'll just point them out here. That is, if the reader can stop laughing long enough to click the link.

Alterman makes a valiant effort of it, but enough time hasn't passed to allow him to rewrite history. But that day will come, and you can count on Eric and his friends at the American Prospect to be there, white-out in hand, ready to do the bidding of the DNC. Until then, we can all continue to thank God that Gore wasn't the Commander in Chief when those planes hit the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. And you can curse the eight years of limp-wristed preventative "action" that allowed it all to happen.

2002-04-24T12:34:00.000-07:00

Last night I stopped my favorite watering hole with a friend of mine from high school. When we got there, there were a couple more of my high school friends sitting at the bar, so we all grabbed a table and proceeded to "have some beers" (for some reason, I find that phrase regrettable). Actually, I proceeded to have a dirty martini and a couple of gin & tonics while they drank beer.

As one might expect, the conversation soon turned to a running commentary on the quality of the female contingent in the house, and it wasn't bad at all. But, there was a certain pair of young ladies playing pool, both of whom I'm moderately acquainted with, who really blew the curve; Anna and Susanna.

(I know. If I hadn't already known both of them separately, I wouldn't have believed it either. But it's true.)

Susanna is a busty blonde of the eye-catching variety. She's the kind of beauty you'd expect to see in a garage calendar. Not quite the super-slick, top-shelf tool manufacturer type. Susanna's more like the custom aftermarket auto-body parts calendar model with the indiscernible imperfection that indicates that it's all natural. No surgical enhancement here.

She's a damn good pool player (no need for the "for a chick" qualifier) who likes Bud longnecks and smokes Marlboro Lights, not quite in a chain. And, I actually saw her doing calculus homework a few years ago. How do you like that?

Then, there's Anna. Or, as people tend to refer to her when they see her for the first time, "Dayum!" She's a borderline case for Calvin Klein. Once you get over the initial reaction to her appearance, and start searching for the proper word, something makes you want to say "lithe".

And until last night, I found her almost contemptible. The few actual encounters I'd had with her were marked with sneering dismissal, save for a couple which found us grudgingly sitting at the same table with a couple of mutual acquaintances, more or less talking past one another.

The first conversation I had with her, which she apparently doesn't remember, was a particularly petulant exchange that happened after I bumped into her while trying to reach for the cueball after a scratch shot. It seemed like the gentlemanly and sporting thing to do, putting the ball on the table for her. I just happened to do it at the same time she was reaching for it and nearly knocked her down. I apologized, but she dismissed it and said, "I can get my own cueball, you know."

After that snub came a back-and-forth in which she inserted a "whatever", which I proceeded to mock and deride in a completely ass-like manner.

Perhaps it's a consequence of my inflated sense of self, but I would have thought she'd remember an encounter like that. Granted, she was pretty sloshed at the time. I might have been, but I'd never admit it.

But, oddly enough, I can't help feeling a little disappointed that I didn't make a bigger impression. I mean, if I'm going to go to the trouble of behaving so fatuously, I'd like to think I'd evoke something more than ambivalence in the person at whom it's directed. Throw me a bone!

I guess I could take some solace in the fact that I'm not totally forgettable, since the first thing she said to me was, "haven't see you around here in a while. Where've you been?" After that, we played a two games of pool (won one, lost one) and had some laughs. As it turns out, she's not the snotty little daddy's girl I had her pegged for.

But, just as I was thinking the ice was beginning to break, and that I ought to ask for her number, I got hit with the deathblow. "Your name's Marvin, isn't it?" I replied the only way one can. I laughed like hell, and said, "do I look like a Marvin to you?"

And, when it came time to leave, I bought her two drinks and had the waitress deliver each one compliments of "Walter". I'll get her number next time.

2002-04-22T22:20:00.000-07:00

Today, as far as I can tell, was an incredibly slow news day. Of course, I spent the better part of it mowing the lawn and making some CD's for a friend of mine, and not watching or reading much news, so I really couldn't say.

And, you know what? The world's still spinning. Who would have believed it?

Of course, I still checked in on Drudge and Lucianne, periodically, looking for the giant headlines in bold red letters, or something to indicate that the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse were allowing their steeds to graze in the field behind my house. But, there was nothing like that.

So, I've figured out the secret to sanity that the newsmedia didn't want me to know. As it turns out, the crazy stuff doesn't always happen the minute I turn my back. I can get out in the sun and actually accomplish things without the fear that Osama bin Laden will turn himself in to the proper authorities when I'm not looking. I can engage in some of the necessities in life and not necessarily have to worry that I'll be the only person in the world who doesn't know that Pamela Anderson is dating Ariel Sharon. Today, I gave my yard a manicure worthy of a putting green and, so far, Rosie O'Donnell hasn't gone straight...yet. I'm still checking in.

Don't get me wrong. I spend far more time on the internet than would be considered healthy by most psychogists in a nation-wide study sponsored by the big three networks. And a good bit of that time is spent perusing news sites and blogs. But, being new to the blogoshpere, I'm struck by just how much time some people devote to this - what is it, pastime/hobby/job/career/diversion? I mean, check out Vodkapundit, sometime. How does he do it? There must be thirty insightful entries on his blog everyday. I have to pinch my nose, seal my lips, and pressurize my skull once an hour just to get a couple hundred words' worth of readable content.

And, don't get me started on Lileks. The man writes a column for the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, which is plenty for one man, and then turns around and creates some of the funniest stuff on the web - all between laps around the den with his child, "Gnat". And he can usually be counted on to produce a minimum of five hundred high quality, error-free words that'll drop your jaw, at times. Not to mention his collection of bad comics and a book.

So, I'm kind of torn as to how to react to all of this. On the one hand, I could be smug and try to convince myself that these other guys have no lives outside of the internet. But the fact is, if you read their blogs, you'll see they're always writing about the stuff that they're doing when they're not writing. Vodkapundit just got back from vacation, this week. Lileks' entry for today talks about how he managed to go to Target, catch up on the whole Robert Blake saga, and listen to some audio from a pro-Palestinian rally in Washington. What'd I do? I mowed the lawn, burned CD's, ate a couple of roast beast sandwiches, slept through "The Osbournes" (which I still have yet to see, unlike Lileks), and am now writing this. And eating some Ramen noodles. I don't want to hear it.

...and just when I thought there was no news today, I found out Linda Lovelace is dead. Am I the only person alive who didn't know she'd become an anti-porn activist?

Oh, yeah...and I got a much-needed haircut today, too.

2002-04-21T23:01:00.000-07:00

Good Lord! I had no idea that the rebuttal to the Roanoke Times piece was going to be so long. So, tonight, I'm in Hemingway mode. That is, drunk and terse.

2002-04-20T16:56:00.000-07:00

Just added a new hit counter from Beseen, a service from Looksmart. And, if all goes well, I haven't destroyed my blog in the process of trying to alter the template, yet again.

2002-04-20T13:39:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, in the Roanoke Times, there was an editorial by a man named L. Milton Hankins, desribed as "a retired Southern Baptist pastor living in Giles County". The title, All the country's ills cannot be blamed on Bill Clinton, is a pretty good indication of what's inside. It amounts to sleight of hand in black and white. A few grand gestures over here to distract while the real business is taking place over there.

You know you're in for a re-education attempt when you read the first sentence of the piece: "A presidential aficionado and, to the best of my ability, a nonpartisan, I think it's time we gave Bill Clinton a rest." To the best of my ability? The man's non-partisan abilities are about as good as my non-smoking abilities. But, hey, I'll give it a shot. It's up to you to decide whether or not I'm a smoker. In the meantime, I'll blow smoke in your face. Just like the good reverend, here. (tchik, puff, whheeeww)

With a degree of regularity I discover little ill-advised and uninformed snippets suggesting that many of the ills of the current administration lie at the previous administration's, or the Democrat-controlled Senate's, feet.

Which "ills" is he talking about? If he's referring to Dick Cheney's heart or the president's tendency to flub lines in his speeches, I'm inclined to agree. Maybe I'll have to dig a little deeper into the article.

These observations are always somehow tainted by the reminder that, during the Clinton administration, every positive advance was credited to the Republican-controlled Congress.

Credited by whom? I don't recall Dan Rather, Peter Jennings, Tom Brokaw, Katie Couric, Bryant Gumble, Chris Matthews, Bernard Shaw, or Judy Woodruff lavishing praise on the Republicans as they submitted one balanced budget after another, only to be met with Clinton's veto pen. I don't recall a great deal of credit being doled out to the GOP-led Congress as they stuck to the principles of the balanced budget to such a degree that the government was (somewhat) shut down at serious political cost. I can't help wondering where all these laurels were coming from, because I sure didn't see them being handed out.

For more than 40 years, I've been reading about the presidents. I recently finished three Bush, two Carter and one Ford books, and just laid down David Maraniss's "First in His Class," which covers the Clintons up to his election as president. Nearly all of my reading binges are presidential biographies or memoirs, so I come to this essay with considerable knowledge of presidential history.

"Considerable knowledge," he says. Well, for the past six years, I've read article, after column, after report, after case ruling, so I come to this reply with considerable knowledge of just what went on during the Clinton years, myself. I've spent many days in debate and crosstalk with people like the good reverend, so I come to this rebuttal with considerable experience in destroying pro-Clinton arguments, as well.

First, the economy. How ludicrous, in the second year of the Bush administration, to suggest that we are experiencing the results of Clinton's failed economic policies. We need to be reminded that we are functioning under President George W. Bush's budget and we are living with President George W. Bush's policies. When the Clinton administration gave us a booming economy with record low unemployment levels, how unfair and shortsighted to blame Bush's unfortunate downturn on Clinton.

Perhaps we should also be reminded that Bush's "unfortunate downturn" began under Clinton's watch, and that a great deal of the economic success during the Clinton administration turns out to have been based on inflated economic growth numbers which had to be revised downward after he left office. We might also remember that the downturn actually occurred while we were still operating under Clinton's budget, and that it wasn't until Bush's economic and tax policies began to be implemented that the flood of bad news started to subside.

It might also be instructive to the good reverend to consider the fact that Clinton inhereted a growing economy, and that it wasn't until he lost both houses of Congress to the Republicans that the true "boom" began in earnest. How unfair for Clinton to take credit for an economy that began under his predecessor and was helped along by his adversaries. You know, if it weren't for Dennis Springer's knuckleball, Barry Bonds wouldn't have hit 73 homers last year. "So, Dennis, you're a part of history. How's it feel?"

When I was in the military, whoever was on watch took the lumps.

One suspects that when the good reverend was in the military, Clinton was busy calling him a babykilling biblethumper among his friends and classmates at Oxford, when he wasn't writing letters to his ROTC commander to tell him that the service he promised turned out not to be politically smart, and thus, he must beg off.

To be fair, Clinton left office with the strongest economy in our nation's history.

That "strongest economy" was weakening with every day that passed over the final six months of his tenure. But, let's not quibble over minor details like the tumbling stock market and shrinking growth numbers. I hope the good reverend will be as understanding when one of his former flock dies from internal bleeding because the doctor didn't have time to give him a blood transfusion and still make his tee time. "Hey, he was alive when I left, and now I'm off the clock. Fore!"

The federal budget went from huge deficits to huge surpluses under Clinton, and the number on welfare rolls in this country dropped dramatically.

And that had absolutely nothing to do with the five-time vetoed balanced budget, nor the Welfare Reform Act that Clinton resisted signing until Dick Morris finally made it clear that, if he didn't sign it, he could kiss his presidency good-bye in a year.

We have just come through a cyclical economic downturn and, hopefully, we're on the mend, but to blame it on Clinton is shamefully irresponsible.

Cyclical? But, I thought it was a result of "George W. Bush's budget" and "George W. Bush's policies". And, yes, we are on the mend. Just as that budget and those policies are taking root. Of course, the good reverend will likely see this as mere coincidence. Republicans, after all, have to take lumps no matter what happens on their watch, good or bad.

And, what's so damned "shamefully irresponsible" about blaming Clinton? Is that going to cause an increase in drunk driving fatalities, the wholesale slaughter of 4-H animal husbandry projects across the nation, and a general decline in the quality of programming on PBS?

Incidentally, he left office with a higher public approval rating than either of his predecessors.

And, incidentally, he now lags near Jimmy Carter in the nation's esteem, and much lower than either of the his two immediate predecessors in those very same ratings. And, the Ayatollah Khomeini invented crowd surfing after he died, so beloved was he.

Let's give Bill Clinton a rest!

A recurring theme, kiddies! Jot it down and start a chant at the pep rally.

During their campaigns, both candidates Bush and Al Gore clearly stated that they were unequivocally pro-Israel (read "on Israel's side"). What a mistake! With that avowal, how could either hope to have negotiated any kind of settlement between the Israelis and the Palestinians?

That operates on the assumption that it's a good thing to negotiate with terrorists. As things stand right now, Israel has come very close to bringing a halt to suicide bombings by not negotiating with the terrorists. When the bombings halt, that's the time for negotiation. Not until.

It's also noteworthy that the bombings didn't begin until after the negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians failed, due in no small part to intense pressure exacted upon the parties by Clinton's team who, not coincidentally, were in desperate need of something to point to as a legacy, while unabashedly lobbying the Nobel Committee for a Peace Prize.

President Jimmy Carter taught us the value of maintaining neutrality and giving oneself credibility with both sides in the Middle East conflict. Results: the Camp David Accords. It was on Carter's watch that the two sides actually shook hands and smiled at one another. But Clinton is not without tribute in this regard. He worked tirelessly to maintain an equilibrium in the region, and stability prevailed, for the most part, following the Gulf War.

And just look at how peace has prevailed as a result of the efforts of these two men. Look how terrorism has ceased to be the weapon of choice by radical Islamic fundamentalist forces. Negotiating with terrorists. Works every time.

I don't recall anything remotely like what we are currently experiencing in the Middle East during Clinton's eight years in the White House.

I also don't recall anything remotely like what we are currently experiencing in the Middle East under Netanyahu's tenure as Prime Minister of Israel, to which Clinton worked feverishly to bring an end. It wasn't until he got the more pliable Ehud Barak elected with the help of his own campaign team that the suicide bombings and other terror attacks began. And, it wasn't until Netanyahu refused to go along with Clinton's designs on the The Prize that Ehud Barak became the preferred vehicle for negotiation with terrorists.

Let's give Bill Clinton a rest!

There it is again. And, for the sake of brevity and my own sanity, I'll just go ahead and tell you that this battle cry appears five more times in this herculean effort at non-partisanship.

Recently, the Clinton administration took some vicious and thoughtless punches over terrorism. Terrorism is as old as Genghis Khan. How incredibly naive to suggest that the Clinton administration "didn't take care of the terrorists," implying that he somehow had something to do with the bombing of the World Trade Center towers.

It's naive to think that when given a chance to have Osama bin Laden delivered into his custoday by the Sudanese government, Bill Clinton should have jumped at the chance? It's naive to think that the man responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Americans and the destruction of American assets throughout the world since 1993 should have been caught by now? What's naive is the belief that President Clinton actually made even a modest effort at capturing or killing him, despite his promises to relentlessly pursue him. "We will not rest," he once said. But, someone was surely napping until Monica Lewinsky testified before a grand jury. And someone slept a little easier knowing what would dominate the headlines and the television news cycle the night those cruise missiles obliterated a tent and a pharmaceutical plant in the Sudan.

Am I off base?

Just a little, I'd say.

Was it Clinton or was it George Bush the elder who left Saddam Hussein in power in Iraq?

Was it Saddam Hussein or was it Osama bin Laden who directed those planes into the World Trade Center towers? Was it Bill Clinton or George Bush who tried to pursue bin Laden through the Justice Department, even thought he'd attacked our people and assets numerous times during his tenure?

Just a few weeks back, I read where the Whitewater investigation (read that Kenneth Starr) cost taxpayers $73 million. Seventy-three million dollars to prove that not a single Whitewater wrongdoing, not even a simple misdemeanor, could be laid at the feet of Bill and Hillary Clinton.

Simply untrue. The fact is, the investigation turned up numerous crimes that could have been laid at the feet of both Clintons, and the final report said as much. Alas, and to my great chagrin, the then-acting independent counsel decided that the situation had been remedied to his satisfaction. Perhaps a $50,000 out of court settlement of a sexual harrassment suit, a $90,000 fine for knowingly giving false testimony, and the stripping of a law license occur everyday to completely innocent people...I don't know. But, I can't imagine hiring someone with that kind of record to monitor the halls of an elementary school, much less run the country.

If anyone is really interested in presidential financial scandals, perhaps they ought to read about the administrations of Ulysses S. Grant, Warren G. Harding, Richard M. Nixon or Ronald Reagan.

Think of how long these previous presidents have been out of office, and how long it took to even begin to unearth the depth of their corruption, and consider the fact that Clinton isn't even two years gone. If we know what we know now, I shudder to think what we'll know in years to come. Interestingly enough, though, the good reverend doesn't protest Clinton's guilt. He merely points to the transgressions of Clinton's predecessors in order to minimize the impact of the obvious.

but what about the Clinton-Lewinsky affair? Well, I'd be the last person to excuse scandalous behavior, but it seems to me we've reacted a bit late. President Woodrow Wilson's wife, Ellen, died in the White House on Aug. 6, 1914. By April 1915, the president was writing love letters to Edith Galt. In fact, a popular joke at the time was: "What did Mrs. Galt do when the president asked her to marry him?" The answer was: "She fell out of bed."

But what about the Juanita Broaddrick rape? What about the Kathleen Willey grope? What about the Gennifer Flowers affair? What about the Paula Jones assault? What about the fact that Clinton showed no hesitation whatsoever in tarring a sitting Supreme Court Justice with the charge of sexual harrassment on national television, when he so proudly proclaimed, "I believe Anita"? What about the fact that Bill Clinton signed the executive order that would eventually cause him to settle the Paula Jones case by allowing the past sexual behavior of defendants to be admitted in sexual harrassment lawsuits? If you're going to muddy Woodrow Wilson's good name, at least do it by comparing him to someone with a little better track record. Maybe Emperor Caligula.

aside from his adulterous romp with Mary Hurlburt Peck in Bermuda while poor, sickly Ellen stayed home and looked after his teenage daughters. The sexual frolics of Warren Harding, Franklin D. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy (in the White House, by the way) are legend. It is said that Lyndon B. Johnson, not to be outdone by JFK, once bragged that he had more women by accident than John Kennedy ever had on purpose.

How many of those men ever lied about those "sexual romps" in a court of law, or were ever accused of engaging in anything other than consensual acts? How many of them waited in hotel rooms the way some men hide in bushes, waiting for someone to come along, and suddenly pounce on them? Again, how many of them were ever credibly accused of rape? And how many of them ever leveled such charges against others while doing themselves exactly what they'd accused the other of? How many of them were willing to subject the average American to a standard of behavior they were not willing to uphold themselves, in the case of the executive order?

How many of them urged their "romps" to lie in court? How many of them arranged jobs in the private sector in order to buy the silence of their "romps"? How many of them arranged high-level security clearances in the Pentagon for their "romps"?

..."lifting" a few things on moving day. Few people have had the pleasure of moving in and/or out of the White House. I understand it's some operation - accomplished in about 24 hours...

Of course, when you document the existence of the gifts, list their values, and sign off on the origins of the gifts, it seems you'd have some idea of what was going where, and where they came from. But, I like the term "'lift' a few things". It's a lot like saying Bonnie & Clyde "dipped into the till a few times", or Dan Rostenkowski "borrowed a few postage stamps".

I'm dead certain neither Bill nor Hillary, nor any other president for that matter, did the packing or the loading.

And I'm just as certain that they gave detailed instructions on what goes and what stays, aside from signing off on the values of the gifts in question. These are people who write off charitable underwear donations and keep files of correspondence from staffers seeking employment help from years back, after all.

And how did they know what was to go and what was to stay?

It's called being two Yale-trained lawyers with plenty of experience in government, having never held private sector positions, and an obsessively meticulous White House Counsel's office. Outside of that, the rule of thumb would seem to be, "when in doubt, ask".

As I understand it, the United States has more gifts from foreign dignitaries (given to, and intended for, the presidents) than anybody knows what to do with.

So, by all means, help yourself, Mr. President. As I understand it, local savings & loan directors once had more money than anyone knew what to do with, too. But, that didn't mean they were entitled to use it to purchase personal property and round-the-world, chartered trips on the Concorde.

For goodness' sakes, the Reagans had to pay for an engraved silver cigarette box Queen Elizabeth gave them for an anniversary present. Since the White House is our house, if the aides inadvertently threw in a piece of furniture, as far as I'm concerned, the Clintons were welcome to it. If I'm not mistaken, a few of the presidents sold White House furniture at auction.

Yes, they had to pay for it. And, since the White House is "our" house, that means it belongs to the the good reverend and me, and lots of other people. And "me and a lot of other people" say they're not welcome to it. Whether or not past presidents auctioned off White House furniture, it was illegal for the Clinton to take it when he did. Why not admit that, rather than change the subject? Since the time when "other presidents" felt it was their right to take whatever they wanted, there have been financial scandals, corruption scandals, campaign scandals, kickback scandals, and all manner of improprieties that necessitated the imposition of the restrictions on what a government official is allowed to accept in the way of gifts. And for good reason. I'm sure the good reverend would agree...if it were a Republican official doing the taking.

Those pardons. Well, like it or not, the facts are that presidents, governors and, I suppose, judges are given the privilege of granting pardons.

Exactly. It's a privelge, and as such, shouldn't be abused, or sold off.

It's a perk. Actually, as far as I can tell, there aren't any restrictions on who can be pardoned or for what. Most executives seek guidance from the Justice Department or parole boards, but they are not bound by the advice they receive.

But they are bound by ethics. Selling pardons in exchange for contributions and blocks of votes is highly unethical and most certainly illegal.

Nearly all of the presidents since George Washington have exercised the privilege. Washington pardoned the Whiskey Rebellion rebels. In some cases, the names of those who received clemency or were pardoned are fairly familiar, i.e., Eugene Debs, Marcus Garvey, Jimmy Hoffa, George Steinbrenner, Armand Hammer, Caspar Weinberger, Dan Rostenkowski and such. Many were largely forgotten by the day of their release. President Woodrow Wilson granted clemency to 623 persons in his last year as president. In the last year of his first term, President Richard Nixon pardoned 204 people in one day.

What sorts of crimes are forgiven by the presidents? Well, President Carter commuted Patricia Hearst's sentence for armed robbery. President Reagan commuted Gilbert Dozier's sentence for extortion and racketeering. George Bush the elder pardoned Edwin L. Cox Jr. for bank fraud, and granted clemency in at least one case of heroin trafficking. Tokyo Rose got a pardon, but not from Bill Clinton; so did Watergate burglar G. Gordon Liddy, but not from Bill Clinton.

And not one of the above presidents has ever been shown to have solicited, or accepted contributions to library slush funds from the people they pardoned in exchange for their clemency. None have been implicated in targeting their pardons in order to garner votes for their wives' Senate campaigns. None of them bemoaned a $73 million investigation (made more costly by their own legal maneuverings) as a waste of taxpayer money, and then turned around and pardoned an individual who was in trouble for failure to pay $40 million in would-be taxpayer money, as well as buying oil from a nation which was holding American hostages and, oh by the way, whose wife raised a lot of money for their respective libraries.

Yes, bad people have been pardoned in the past...generally out of principle, or some sense of compassion. But, as far as I or the good reverend know, they didn't have to give 'til it hurt.

Please forgive the typos, bad grammar, and whatever other errors you might find in this reply. It was hastily thrown together and I'll get around to editing it when I have time.

2002-04-20T09:54:00.000-07:00

Saw the bad news when I crept in during the wee hours that Layne Staley is dead. Sad loss. They made some great tunes, and I'll miss that voice.

I Feel So Alone,
Gonna End Up a Big Ole Pile o' Them Bones

2002-04-20T08:47:00.000-07:00

Well, I was going to do an update yesterday, but I got called in to tend bar at the club. I should have another update sometime today, if I can manage to stay in one place long enough to do it.

2002-04-18T23:18:00.000-07:00

On a lighter note, here's a neat little puzzler of a picture. See if you can figure out what's wrong with it. (From different_shadow's blog.)

2002-04-18T21:14:00.000-07:00

All you need to know about the Israel-Palestine conflict, in pictures. Warning: Graphic!!!

2002-04-18T18:16:00.000-07:00

A couple of months after the 2000 elections, I noticed that the Democrats were becoming radicalized, and it looks like they're not getting any better. The past week has seen one idiotic statement after another coming from Democrat candidates, and the Republicans can only contain their glee by expressing "outrage". You have to wonder what the Dems are hearing from their pollsters. Is someone telling them that they're in danger of losing their core constituencies if they don't start throwing the raw meat, and the bloodier the better?

It all started last Friday, with Rep. Cynthia McKinney (D-Ga.) implying that President Bush knew in advance of the attacks of September 11, and did nothing about them in order to ensure that his family and close friends would profit from the inevitable military buildup that would follow. This is the kind of rhetoric one might expect to hear from a member of the Michigan Militia, but from an elected official? A United States Representative?

You can't help wondering what else is going on inside this woman's head. My guess is patchy fog with intermittent showers of gumdrops, a talking sea otter on a big red donkey, and some shortwave transmissions from Machu Pichu.

Then, on April 14, we get word from David Yepsen in the Des Moines Register that Robert Kennedy Jr. made an ass of himself by equating large-scale hog farmers to Osama bin Laden. Actually, he didn't equate them with the evil mastermind behind the attacks on September 11. He made them out to be even worse.

Apparently, little Bobby has had some bad experiences with trichinosis. It would take one hell of a case of intestinal worms to make me want to say something so incredibly stupid. I wonder if he equated Yepsen to Sirhan Sirhan when he finished reading this editorial equivalent to a bullet in the head of his political influence in Iowa.

Also on April 14, came the most stark reminder of what's wrong with the Democrats, and one more reason why they won't win the White House in 2004. In Orlando, Florida, a creepily sweaty Al Gore took the stage and delivered his version of a firebrand stump speech to around 2,500 Democrat activists. Despite efforts to hype the event, everyone knows how weirdly plastic Gore appears when he attempts to deliver rousing oratory. Whenever I see and hear him in this mode, I can't help thinking of the rock bands who'd stop into Carbondale, Illinois after six months on tour, proclaiming to the audience that "we heard Carbondale knows how to rock! We heard that Carbondale is a party town!!! C'mon, Carbondale! Show us what you got!!!!!"

Of course the crowd always goes wild, and there's really no harm in going along with it. But, after all the yelling and fist-pumping ends, and you're walking through the parking lot looking for your car, you know they almost said "Carbonville".

Al Gore is political Spinal Tap, and the 2000 elections are his plastic pods.

Now comes Andrew Cuomo's moronic attack on New York Governor, George Pataki as a sideline figure in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks that brought down the World Trade Center. The state is still bleeding, not to mention the city itself, and Cuomo decided that this is the time to label its highest officeholder as something akin to a professional wrestling manager, letting Rasslin' Rudy Giuliani do all the work while he grabs the bad guy's leg when he's on his back, near the ropes.

The beauty of the way New York coped with the human disaster that was dealt to it was the fact that there was no swarming of politicians around the dead bodies for the purpose of theatrics. Before NYC was hit and hurt so badly, Giuliani and Pataki had merely managed to coexist in the same party, but with very public hostility toward one another. They'd managed to downplay the animosity, but only for appearances. Everyone knew it was there, but it was important to show that it wouldn't detract from their respective abilities to get things done.

Then, when it happened, not a hint of the personal grudge could be seen or felt by anyone observing. Pataki was smart enough to let Giuliani handle as much of the matter as he personally could, knowing his deep, abiding attachment and sense of duty to the city he grew up in and loved. He made sure that resources were made available, and provided the space that local leaders need in order to bring calm to the people that elect them in times of calamity.

The very last thing New York needed was precisely what Andrew Cuomo offers; flash and bombast. Not coincidentally, those qualities are abundant in Cuomo's father, Mario, whom Pataki defeated on his way to the Governor's mansion. The elder's fine speechmaking ability was never in doubt. His ability to lead is, however. And that's why Pataki is where he is today.

Cuomo obviously has no idea of the meaning of "leadership" if he seriously believes that Pataki is lacking in it. (One of, if not the most important qualities in a leader is knowing how to let others lead where they're most needed.) Either that, or he is desperate to hang the deep sadness felt by the people of New York around the neck of his opponent in order to get a leg up in the polls. Whatever the case, the man deserves to be elected about as much as Mariah Carey deserves the "Best Actress" award at next year's Oscars.

Thanks to Blogsnob for emailing me to let me know that I'm all set up. I'm looking forward to getting more page hits as a result of signing up with them.

2002-04-18T02:19:00.000-07:00

Still trying to get my site set up on Blogsnob, which seems like a pretty good service, though I still haven't been approved. When I went to check my user details at the web site, I noticed that most of the fields were blank, for some reason. Maybe that has something to do with it. Hopefully, I have it straightened out now.

2002-04-16T14:23:00.000-07:00

While picking up a bag of ice at Wal-Mart, yesterday, I finally remembered to pick up a CD that I'd been intending to buy for years, but for some reason had eluded my thoughts whenever I found myself in a record store. I'd had it on cassette, and listened to it so often that the little piece of felt that supports the tape as it passes over the heads had finally fallen off, causing it to fade in and out and become generally unlistenable. Well, my mental music muse happened to be playing Van Morrison's "Jackie Wilson Said..." as I passed through the front doors, so I went straight to the electronics department before grabbing the ice.

Now, like almost everyone else on the planet, I keep a good deal of my music collection on my computer hard drive so I can listen to it while I'm writing, blogging, or scanning the day's news. I have Winamp playlists for my varying moods, and "The Best of Van Morrison" has something to cover every one of them. From "Sweet Thing" when I have a twinge of melancholia, to "And it Stoned Me" on my head-bobbing, have-a-cold-one-you've-earned-it-this-week days, to "Cleaning Windows" when I feel like feeling good, and to hell with the rest of the world.

I know, I know...there are music purists out there who see "Best Of" and "Greatest Hits" compilations as cop-outs which don't capture the essence of the music as written in the original album form, with flow and transition. Just cut me some slack on this one. I'm a late-comer to Van Morrison, having only just come into the world when he was catching on with the public. "The Best of" was my first exposure to his music, outside of the few tracks I'd heard on the album oriented radio stations of my youth. I'll get around to buying "Astral Weeks", eventually. I promise.

Speaking of AOR stations, I think it's high time they made a comeback. Of course, they never will, but wouldn't it be great? Today, the closest thing you can get to it are the "Classic Rock" stations, which are essentially the "Best of" and "Greatest Hits" version of AOR. It would be nice to turn on the radio on a Thursday night and hear the entire copy of Steely Dan's "Aja" with maybe a few commercials between album sides, or possibly an overplayed Cheap Trick, "Live at Budokan" with all the pops and clicks between tracks.

(I can't help wondering what the "Killer Classics" stations [assuming "stations" still exist] will play twenty years from now. There's no music being produced today that has broad appeal, quality, and memorability...at least none that leaps to my mind. Consarn it!)

But, I guess there's no reason to bewail it. Techonology is leading us away from the whole concept of mass marketing and broad appeal, anyway. Everything's tailored to the individual. As I type this, I'm listening to a Denon receiver with so many available AM and FM presets that I'd have to live on a space station, right next to a major communications satellite to fill them all...and I don't even have an antenna hooked up to it, because I've got about twenty gigabytes of my own damn music, thank you very much, on my hard drive. I don't even listen to the radio in my truck because I've got an mp3 player in it, and I can listen to one disk for weeks without having to change it. The only time I do listen to the radio is when I happen to be in someone else's car, or out in the garage where a CD player doesn't last long because of dust, paint overspray, and hurled tools.

The one bad thing about this trend toward the individual music consumer is that it doesn't do what the old AOR stations did so well. That is, it doesn't force good music on people. When I was a kid, and only had two rock stations to choose from in my area, there was a good chance on some Thursday night that I'd have been introduced to "Pet Sounds" or "Physical Graffiti" by WPAD-FM, instead of watching Byron Allen and Skip Stephenson, on "Real People". These days, kids have a choice of either watching Shakira on MTV, or listening to Shakira on the radio, listening to Shakira on the coomputer, or visiting Shakira's website. With choices like that, what kid's going to sit through one of rock music's finest moments?

Unlike the days of my youth, there's no mellow-voiced, ugly guy burning strawberry incense in a control booth to tell us what a great album this next one is. You're more likely to hear how good the latest fifteen-year-old songslut looks in hip-huggers, or who has the best abs in Tand n'Toned 4U. But, maybe now that there are so many options, and word of mouth gets around at light speed, good music will creep back into the public and establish another foothold among all the crap-pop.

Or, maybe the image makers don't have as strong a grip on the music business as I suspect, and another Nirvana will come along to shake it all up again. It's long overdue.

...and for the funny bone:

I stumbled across this site the other night, looking around for some classic "Actual Items" from Conan O'Brien. It's a regular feature on the show and, unlike Leno's "Headlines", it's gut-bustingly hilarious most of the time. There's a few more on the homepage, too.

2002-04-14T18:12:00.000-07:00

Despite its general decline, SNL still has its funny moments. Most of them come from Will Ferrell, like last night's Neil Diamond/Bigfoot duet skit with The Rock. Ferrell's Diamond is so off-kilter and far removed from anything resembling a serious attempt at impersonation that I can't help burtsting out in gales of laughter whenever I see it, and chuckling several times the next day when I think about it.

I've seen some interviews and talk show appearances of Neil's over the past few years, and he's always comes across as a complete gentleman with a sense of humor and humility. When Ferrell takes off on him, though, what you get is an image of a burned-out, unstable, drug-crazed man, barely able to function in society. One of the funniest things I've seen in recent memory.

Here's a link to the transcript from the first time Ferrell did this bit as a send-up of VH-1 Storytellers. I'll post a link to the latest one when the transcript is available and I can track it down on the 'net. Enjoy.

2002-04-14T15:22:00.000-07:00

In honor of Christopher Hitchens, I thought I'd post this link to some humor that offends as only the British can. Credit to Gina Snowdoll's blog. Don't click if you're easily offended, or have an unabiding love for the Queen Mum and can't tolerate irreverence.

2002-04-14T13:48:00.000-07:00

The Observer has a nice, long biographical piece on Christopher Hitchens today. The man conservatives hate to love has had an interesting life, and the piece unearths some details I hadn't known before. It's a little on the gushing side, but still well worth reading.

Like anyone else, Hitchens is better at spotting the proverbial splinter in the eye of another than the log in his own when it comes to hypocrisy. I witnessed this one morning, a couple of months ago, when he appeared with Andrew Sullivan on C-SPAN's Washington Journal. He delighted in chiding Sullivan over his attachment to the Catholic Church and belief in God, calling himself an "anti-theist". Apparently, he feels that to subjugate people to a supreme being is to patronize all of mankind as being unable to function without a figurehead to which to aspire. The notion that any being is above human criticism is completely abhorrent to The Hitch.

Yet, when asked about his criticism of Noam Chomsky for his views concerning the war on terrorism, and his lack thereof for Ralph Nader, who holds the very same views, all he could manage was to heap praise on Nader for being such a wonderful man. He had similar things to say about Katrina van den Heuval (Dutch for "trust fund", I think), who didn't know who her own U.S. Representative was until she got home after being called on it by Chris Matthews on Hardball. Can you imagine the misanthropic field day he would have had with President Bush had he not known who represented his district in Crawford, Texas?

Still, whether you call it simple partisanship or hypocrisy, it's a human failing we all strive to overcome. All of us have a God to emulate in that pursuit. Hitchens' god just happens to be Christopher Hitchens.

I got a nice email from Eagle, a fellow blogger, this morning. She strikes me as my kinda gal. That is, a married, two-fisted drinking one. If you're reading this, give her a click and look around on her site for the Bloghop link, on the left-hand side of the page. Give her a vote on the green side of the meter, too. She's good people with a good blog.

Well, it's Sunday, and I have nothing better to do than have a beer. Drop me an email with some advice, suggestions, or even constructive criticism. Even if you think my blog bloze, go ahead and email me. I'll be more than happy to post your suggestions and reply with a few of my own.

2002-04-13T23:46:00.000-07:00

Just added a few links to favorite websites and blogs. I'll add more as I discover them. Also signed up with a couple of blog promotion services, to direct a little traffic to my site.

Blogsnob and Bloghop.

2002-04-13T23:17:00.000-07:00

Whew! Looks like I didn't do too badly. Just trying to add an email link somewhere near the top of the page, I managed to past a whole lot of bad html into my blog. For a brief, yet eternal moment, I thought I'd rendered my "edit" buttons useless and was going to have to delete the whole damned thing!

Now, if I can just get the link to come up correctly, people won't have to scroll all the way down to the bottom of the page to contact me and tell me how much I suck.

2002-04-13T22:43:00.000-07:00

I really hope this works! I think I may have skrood my whole blog up! LOL

2002-04-12T21:32:00.000-07:00

Well, yesterday was one for the history blogs. I found out that I emanate some sort of musk that attracts married women. I know it has nothing to do with any kind of signals I might be giving off. I do not flirt with married women, and I'm not a womanizer in general. I don't leer, I don't pounce, and I don't grab. It's just not my style.

So, how to explain the events of last night?

I'm sitting at the bar at the Eagles Club when the bartender asks me to take care of things while she goes back to the kitchen to cook an order of hot wings for one of the customers. I oblige, and off she goes.

After going down the bar and refilling drinks as needed, I'm summoned by one of the members of the Ladies' Auxiliary. When I get to her, she immediately asks me, "where's my birthday kiss?" I explained that I'd given her one on her birthday, as is generally the tradition, but she claimed not to have remembered it - quite plausible, given her condition that day. So, rather than get involved in a chronology of my activities on that particular evening, I decided to go ahead and give her a belated, if redundant, smooch.

When I leaned forward, I felt a hand grab the back of my head and pull me forward as if being stuffed under the door frame of a police cruiser. It was at that moment that I felt something was going wrong, but I remained calm. I mean, it's just a peck on the lips, right? No big deal.

Then, there was contact. I soon found out that this wasn't your average, innocent, platonic smackeroo. It was a full-on romance novel ravishing. It seemed to last half a minute, but was actually probably no more than five seconds, and it was full of bad intent. I knew this when I walked back around the bar to take my seat and saw her looking at me. Then, looking at my zipper, and back at me.

I managed to avoid the woman for the rest of the evening, although I had to put up with the loudly expressed rave review of my kissing ability for about five minutes. I really didn't think I'd done that great a job. After all, the only effort I had invested was being in the room at the time.

Not long after this little exchange I asked the designated driver, another married woman, to take me home. (I'd had a couple of gin & tonics prior to the oscular invasion, and needed another couple afterwards.) It's just a three-mile drive from the club, but why take a chance?

All was going well, and then we got to my driveway. Unless I'm mistaken, it's not customary for a designated driver to pull all the way in and turn out the headlights. What followed was, if not as blatant as what had happened to me an hour earlier, just as discomfitting.

After the typical polite banter, thanks-for-the-ride, here's-your-tip, gosh-I'm-glad-to-have-a-D.D., she asked, "what did you think of that kiss so-and-so laid on you?" But, the question was asked with the unmistakeable, sing-song lilt that women use to indicate that they have a follow-up question.

I artfully answered the question in run-on fashion and managed to steer her away from what I knew was going to be "a better offer". She then went on a dissertation about how the other woman was much more than a kissing bandit, how she'd been burglarlizing more than smooches from more than one man around the club for quite some time, and "I only say this because I'm afraid she's going to catch something".

But, she then turned the subject back in the direction she'd plotted the course for when she pulled into the driveway. I listened as she explained how she's messed around on her husband, "but he has a pretty good idea that I have, and doesn't seem to care". And, I heard how she "hasn't messed around with nearly as many men" as the mouth-plundering strumpet who'd just encroached into my gullet an hour earlier.

She finally wound down her monologue, which I'd punctuated with several "yeahs" and "uh-huhs" and "reallys", with "so, do you think you'd ever sleep with a married woman?" The question came with a grin, and not a coy one at all, as she spun herself in her seat to face me directly with an unavoidable gaze.

For some reason, I felt the need to qualify my "no" answer with a long explanation of why I was about to say no, before I ever said it. I guess it's my desire not to make anyone feel bad. Or, maybe it's the fact that I'll be needing a designated driver again in the future. But, for whatever reason, I didn't take the opportunity to expound on how it's wrong to screw around on one's husband, whether or not he knows, suspects, or even condones it.

Now, I'm not a prude...at least not by local standards. But, for some reason, I just can't bring myself to become that worldly. Aside from the fact that I haven't discussed the matter with the woman's husband myself, to make sure "this is OK" with him, I just don't see how it could be rewarding.

I just wonder why I don't have this effect on single women...

2002-04-09T14:57:00.000-07:00

Today, on Lucianne.com, there's a story about the Today Show's upcoming "Book Club". Of course, the regular posters, myself included, offered up their suggestions for featured books. Check it out for a good laugh.

Here are my suggestions:

"Rolling Over...and Other New Tricks to Teach Your Old Dog" by Web Hubbell

"Kneepads to Handbags: How Accessorizing Changed My Life" by Monica Lewinsky

"Jane Goodall Stalked Me: The True Story Behind 'Gorillas in the Mist'" by Janet Reno

"I Thought You Were Laughing With Me" by Michael Moore (introduction by Al Franken)

"When the Common Cold Kills" by Henry Waxman

"Never Blink: Establishing Credibility in the Media" by Gary Condit

"Well...Maybe Just One More" by Jerrold Nadler

"Dude, Where's My Car?" by Edward Kennedy

"Sighs Does Matter: A Debate Primer" by Al Gore

"Cellulite and Spider Veins? Black Pants Suit!" by Hillary Clinton

"It Fell Off a Truck" by Robert Toricelli

"Spelunking in Manhattan" by Katie Couric

"Leg or Lagacy: Making the Tough Calls" by Bill Clinton

"Robot Whisker Burn: Life After Loss" by Tipper Gore

"Selling the Jewish Soul at Retail" by Joseph Lieberman

"Mega-What?" by Grey Davis

"The Serendipitous Bladder" by Al Gore

"Lamps, Ashtrays, and Other Household Projectiles" by Hillary Clinton

"My Boyfriend's Back: The Secret to a Smooth Shave, Every Time" by Barney Frank

"Can't Get 'em in The States: A Guide to Mexican Pharmacology" by Molly Ivins

"Watch Me Shrink: The Dangers of Glycerin Suppositories" by Paul Begala

Enjoy!

2002-04-07T20:53:00.000-07:00

I don't encounter many of them, and there may not be many of them out there to encounter, but rabid anti-smoking zealots have grown to be an incredibly powerful segment of society. As a smoker, I figure they've to a right to clean air and all that, but they've gotten to a point where they feel like they can say or do anything to the smokers of the world with impunity. What once was resolved with a polite, "would you mind not smoking?" has developed into an excuse to excoriate, demean, degrade, and dehumanize a large, but shrinking, segment of the population.

City after city has fallen into the clutches of clean air despots, establishing laws that ban an otherwise legal activity in public places. When it started, it seemed reasonable enough. After all, there are places where people take their children, many of whom are asthmatic and shouldn't be exposed to second-hand smoke. Fine. You won't see me lighting up in the game room at Chuck E. Cheese, or the neonatal ward. That seems fair enough.

Still, this push to protect the rights of non-smokers has reached the absurd point where one can be ticketed, fined and even arrested for smoking outdoors. Walking down the street puffing on a Camel in some cities can land you in the clink - most likely a non-smoking facility. Sneak a drag in an airport bathroom and you'll find yourself in handcuffs, sitting next to a twenty-something male of middle-eastern origin waiting to be processed by Tom Ridge himself. And you'll have priority.

And, it's not enough to simply shame smokers into hiding their habit. The state feels obliged to tax them into completely giving it up. Actually, that's not true. The state feels obliged to finance new sports stadiums and high school GLAAD chapters on smokers' backs because, well, it knows they'll never give it up, and no one will come to their defense. Smokers are the the state's new endentured servants. Second class citizens in every sense.

The most bothersome aspect of it all is that the government has gone after smokers under the guise of compassion. It first went after the tobacco industry, or Big Tobacco, as it prefers to call them, under the auspices of consumer protection. They hauled the tobacco company representatives before Congress and proceded to berate them for victimizing the public. "You have poisoned untold numbers of people and made them need the poison!", they cried. By "spiking" cigarettes with higher levels of nicotine, the tobacco executives caused people to become intractably addicted to a product that was killing them, according to the taxpaid honchos.

Then, they proposed a solution. "Give us some money right now, and we won't let smokers' families sue you when they die." Out came the checkbooks, and "Who Do I Make This Out To" became the new slogan for R.J. Reynolds and Phillip Morris. In the meantime, the financial offices of the tobacco companies were busy figuring out how much they'd have to increase the price per pack in order to cover the check.

Of course, all this was done with the approval of the public, on the assumption that the money was going to defray the cost of to Medicare as well as lost revenue due to the loss of productivity and man hours, and increased auto insurance rates due to children being killed by truck drivers trying to drive while looking for the burning cigarette rolling around in the floor board. All is going to be made right, finally, by the caring hands of the legal system.

After the lawyers get their cut, that is. One law firm in Texas has raked in hundreds of millions of dollars in consulting fees for work on behalf of the state Attorney General. I don't even know what the other states have done in this regard, or how many have done it. Looking will sure lead to my untimely death from massive stroke, which won't be compensated, and will probably be blamed Big Tobacco.

But, now that I've reached my thirties, I've grown prematurely curmudgeonly - which is fine, since it suits the lines in my face drawn after years of dragging on cigarettes and squinting to keep the smoke out of my eyes while I type. My newfound contrarianism has caused me to want nothing more than to stick it to the anti-smoking Man. I want to smoke and avoid the heavy taxes and passed-on cost inherent in the habit. And, it's a lot easier than I ever thought it would be.

I've taken to making my own smokes. And, although I don't actually hand-roll them the way all the cool guys in the movies always did, I do get to carry them in a neat tin. While it's not as James Dean-esque as licking the gummed paper of a neatly rolled cancer stick, it does have the advantage of looking relatively James Bond-esqe, as compared to flipping the top on a hard pack of Camel Filters and fumbling around for the last one in the (four-dollar-plus) pack.

Apparently, there's a big tax loophole in buying loose tobacco, because it's dirt cheap by comparison. And, I'm sure the state will eventually get around to remedying that little bit of freedom. But, let the guys in the taxpayer subsidized Armanis be warned: I'm not above two-bit scofflaw behavior when it comes to circumventing efforts to finance the salmon mousse for the lobbyist lounge on my dime. I'll happily buy my smokes from some guy with an adjective in front of his vowel-laden name who sells them out of the trunk of his car, if I have to. And, I'm sure there are plenty of Indians out there who are eager to take my money and invest it in a new smoker-friendly casino property.

Either way, I'm not going to bail the government out of its budget shorfalls just because I've got a bad habit. If it comes down to it and I eventually have to quit, I'll just pick up another bad habit that doesn't cost quite as much, or carry the stigma that smoking does. OxyContin, or maybe Meth. In the meantime, I'm going to smoke like nobody's business. And, if somebody wants to chew me out for lighting up in a bar, I won't feel nearly as indignant about it, since I'm no longer paying for the Medicare costs of a liver transplant resulting from their years of heavy drinking.

2002-04-01T20:02:00.000-08:00

OK...I'm a redneck. Believe me. I didn't set out to become one. In fact, I fought the whole concept for years, never realizing it was just below the surface. I guess it was latent. Either that, or I contracted it through social contact.

You might think it's a traumatic thing to find yourself confronted with the fact that you're the very thing you despised for the better part of your life, but the truth is, it's kind of freeing. No more pretending to enjoy cultural phenomena that I really don't understand. No more hiding my enjoyment of things considered countryfied. I am what I am.

Now that I'm in my early thirties, I look back on the person I strove to be for so many years, and can't help feeling a little pity for the person I really was. Imagine Gomer Pyle at a rave. Picture Merle Haggard playing guitar for Metallica. Bo Duke the Deadhead. I was the proverbial fish out of water, still swimming somehow.

But, just like everything else, redneckery comes in degrees. For instance, a first degree redneck chews tobacco, makes fun of the "different people", and owns a Cledus T. Judd box set because it's the funniest damn thing he ever heard in his life. I'm closer to a third, maybe forth, degree redneck. I have a camouflaged four wheel drive pickup, listen to Dwight Yoakam, and drink beer out of a can, if I have to. I try to mitigate these factors by keeping up with pop culture, to some extent, and picking up a book now and then.

I'm a trustee at my local Fraternal Order of Eagles, where you'll find the whole range of rednecks. From 1st degree Tommy, who is perpetually barred from the premises because he can't hold his liquor and valium at the same time, to 4th degree Jim, the transplanted Chicagoan (or, f***in' yankee, as higher-order rednecks put it), we cover the whole spectrum. That's not to say that all the members are rednecks, but it helps to be one if you plan to become a member.

As a trustee, I'm in charge of keeping peace between the various stripes. It's at those moments when I'm most thankful that the club doesn't allow bottled beer. Despite its depiction in "Roadhouse", I don't think having a longneck Bud shattered across the back of my head is something I'd bounce back from all that quickly. I'll take my chances with a thrown aluminum can, or even an uppercut from a ham hock of a fist. But even superficial cuts on the head tend to bleed profusely, and the nurses at the local hospitals aren't so gorgeous and nurturing as to make it worth the costly ambulance ride and resulting sutures, just to get close enough to them to impress them with my rough-and-tumble exterior and contradictorally tender heart.

But, barroom brawls are a lot less common that the non-redneck population would ever believe. In fact, over the period of time that I've been a trustee at the club, I've yet to see one. The closest thing to an outright row that's happened during my trusteeship was when a bona fide first degree hit the son of another first degree in an attempt to hit, yet, another first degree with a crutch. I wasn't even there, but my presence wasn't really necessary. How hard is it to break up a fight when one of the combatants is on crutches, after all?

It is instructive to consider that the trouble happened between two of the upper-level rednecks, though. They're the type that immediately leap to the minds of those not privy to the complicated world of redneckery. Being one of them, I don't so much "take offense" at being lumped into the same pile as I feel encumbered by the legacy of the more high-profile members of my ilk. Sometimes I can't help wondering if I'll ever be able to walk out of the shadow cast by Jerry Springer's guests.

I guess it would be futile, if not counterproductive, to create a movement aimed at improving the image of the redneck. Any attempt to raise the level of esteem in which we're held among the general populace will undoubtedly bring out the most vocal elements of our kind. And, believe me, I don't want them doing the talking. They do enough damage when the camera crew finds them after the tornado erases the trailer park.

All I can do is be as good a redneck as I know how to be. I'll listen to the occasional college radio station, watch The Learning Channel instead of the tractor pull nationals, and read Entertainment Weekly so I won't be embarrassed when someone asks me if I've seen "Prozac Nation". But I'm keeping my truck.

2002-03-31T17:35:00.000-08:00

Looks like Bill Clinton's on an image rehabilitation blitz. He's got a fawning write-up about his fawning overseas receptions, by the fawning Eric Alterman, in this week's edition of Newsweek. And, today, he managed an AP wire report on the Newsweek article, in which he attempts to justify his pardon of billionaire tax-cheat Marc Rich as a knee jerk reaction to his own experiences with "prosecutorial abuse".

The more telling tidbit in the AP article is his professed regret for granting the pardon, and the admitted cause of his misgivings. According to Clinton, it's no so much the substance of the act that causes him to question his decision. Rather, it's the political damage he suffered as a result. "It was terrible politics. It wasn't worth the damage to my reputation," he's quoted as saying. "But that doesn't mean the attacks were true."

Well, no. That doesn't mean the attacks were true. Common sense dictates that. Marc Rich's ex-wife, Denise, had contributed a rather healthy sum to Clinton's library, as well as hosting fundraisers for the DNC at her home. Couple that with the fact that Clinton had built a career on supposedly "leveling the playing field" for those who had "worked hard and played by the rules", and you have yourself a bit of a contradiction. After all, it's fairly clear that Clinton provided a very tilted track toward absolution for a man who broke rules all over the world, including one that forbade buying oil from Iran while they were holding American hostages.

Of course, it's pretty easy for Clinton to skate on the obvious conflict between his words and reality when people like Jonathan Alter provide the slick surface. The most egregious example comes in the form of a complete whitewashing of the final report of the Whitewater investigation, issued by Robert Ray. Alter, rather predictably, asserts that it "turned up no evidence of criminal wrongdoing by the Clintons".

The only way that could possibly be less true is if, after the report was released, the Clintons were hauled away in orange jumpsuits to the Marion SuperMax Correctional Facility. Obviously, they weren't, but the fact remains that there was a lot of evidence to show criminal wrongdoing. What Ray's report stated was that, while there was probably enough evidence to obtain an indictment and conviction - particularly where Hillary Clinton was concerned - he felt that the remedies already undertaken were sufficient to address the issues. I wholeheartedly dispute that notion, but I'm biased.

(It seems Mr. Alter could use some instruction in acknowledging his own biases.)

Later on in the Newsweek piece comes one of those moments that wiseacres like me agonize over. Alter quotes Clinton as having dubbed the magazine he works for "the house organ of Paula Jones." I mean, do you go for the obvious joke, or just let it hang there? (Come to think of it, that question might have struck Paula on that fateful night in Little Rock. But that's neither here, nor there.)

Still, you'd think after all these years, Clinton would figure out a way to stop doling out the ammunition that folks like me (radical, extreme right-wingers) use against him. But, not amazingly, he manages to do so, as is noted in the AP article.

At the end of the piece, there's an attempt to lighten things up a bit with the news that "Clinton said he is getting a chocolate Labrador puppy, a descendent of his late dog, Buddy." How sweet! A reminder of the old pal he lost to traffic, who will hopefully inherit the same spark and love for life. Except, there's a hitch.

You see, Buddy was neutered in 1998 in an operation that was comic fodder on late-night television. You can make this stuff up, if you want to. But, why?

2002-03-29T18:02:00.000-08:00

Clicking around at Lucianne.com, today, I came across Paul Krugman's latest column for the New York Times, titled "The Smoke Machine". Despite the fact that there's a well-documented slapfest going on between Krugman and Andrew Sullivan, and that Andrew is more than capable of holding his own, I can't resist getting in a few solid smacks of my own. The column is just that bad.

"The Smoke Machine" is, essentially, a defense of David Brock's new book, "Blinded by the Right", and the thesis that the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy of Hillary Clinton lore is an actual and thriving entity. And, Krugman doesn't stop there. He goes on to make a case for the notion that the left is somehow morally superior because it doesn't engage in the politics of smear and scandal to the degree that the right does. He seems convinced that there's a cabal of billionaires whose drive to malign the Clintons' good name is second only to their love of poking the soft spots on the heads of newborn minorities.

He begins by lamenting the idea that Rev. Sun Myung Moon and Richard Mellon Scaife, billionaire fanatics, financed the "witch hunt" for the Clintons, and that the typical news consumer bought into it because they had no idea who was bankrolling the investigations. Unfortunately, he doesn't disclose the amount of money these men invested in the investigations, nor to what extent they exacted control over their direction. Just like he didn't disclose how much money Enron paid him as a do-nothing consultant who eventually happened to write columns lauding Enron's approach to capitalizing energy delivery services, or just what sort of consultation they got from him.

But, that's OK. Krugman insists that there was no cozy relationship between himself and Enron, and I'm willing to take him at his word. I just wish he'd give that benefit of the doubt to the people he lambastes on the pages of the "paper of record", even though he doesn't agree with them on tax policy or abortion.

Not content to smear the anti-Clinton right with mere financial malfeasance, he goes on to assert that the entire Whitewater investigation turned out to be nothing more that a $73 million waste of time...as if the scores of convictions, guilty pleas, and fines, resulting in prison time for the sitting Arkansas governor and long-time Clinton protegé, Jim "Guy" Tucker were minor events that happen in every state, to every politician, every other day. That may be the case in post-Clinton Arkansas, but elsewhere such things are at least noteworthy.

After dismissing the string of convicted fixers and confidence men in Clinton's cadre, he goes on to profess the cherubic innocence of the left where scandal hunting is concerned. Old Scratch himself, Richard Mellon Scaife, was supposedly blowing his vast fortune on scoundrels and hoods in an effort to undermine democracy, though Krugman never offers an explanation as to how that would benefit Scaife, other than the pleasure he would receive from "getting" Clinton. Why, according to Paul, leftist billionaires spend all their time spreading money throughout the world, lifting up the little people. They don't have time to dig up dirt on conservatives.

But, somehow dirt gets found. Perhaps some of the little-guy lefties do their work free of charge, because they managed to find a decades-old DUI conviction, empty spaces in National Guard logs, seemingly unpalatable relationships in the oil industry, allegedly undue influence in the funeral home industry, and bogus allegations of cocaine use on George W. Bush in the months leading up to his election to the Presidency. They also managed to get their hands on video rental records for Clarence Thomas, the diaries of Bob Packwood, and grand jury material (thanks to Jeffrey Toobin) from Lawrence Walsh's investigations into Iran/Contra, the results of which were the heavily plunked-down indictment of Cap Weinberger in October of '92, just before the elections. You can't buy serendipity like that. At least, not without government money.

Of course, the private sector kicked in its share of anti-conservative cash, too. While not a billionaire, Larry Flint holds a vast fortune thanks to extreme close-up shots of pink flesh, and he's not afraid to spread it around if it'll get him the satisfaction of embarrassing Republicans. The odd truth is, though, that most conservative voters agree that the men exposed deserved the embarrassment they got. They hate Flint to their very cores, but that wasn't a sudden development. They hated Flint well before he started handing out money for dirt with the tacit approval of the White House.

Then the Times columnist goes on to insinuate that Scaife has managed to plant his right-hand men at every level of the Executive Branch and claims that the Washington Times has been turned into the White House propaganda sheet. It apparently doesn't occur to him that the people in the White House are there because they have credentials and expertise, along with a political philosophy that makes it more likely that they'd serve in a Republican White House. And, how anyone can imply that the Washington Times has had anything other than a right wing editorial stance until George W. Bush became President is beyond this particular writer. Perhaps Krugman's world has been shaken so badly by his daily beatings that he has to reshape reality to fit his suspicions in order to maintain sanity. It's a battle he's clearly losing, by the way.

2002-03-29T10:07:00.000-08:00

Already, I'm falling into the old pattern of not doing a damned thing on the blog. Yesterday, I spent the whole day in front of this thing, browsing news sites, and I still couldn't bring myself to comment on anything. I could be that all the news was pretty bad and I couldn't muster the energy to rant and ramble on about things that just make me angry or sad. Or, it could be that I'm congenitally lazy. It could be a whole host of things, I suppose, but I'll just blame it on good old writer's block.

2002-03-26T00:43:00.000-08:00

Well, as I fully expected, my first stab at blogging was fitful, at best. For some reason, I ran into some serious writer's block (or was it laziness?) about three posts into it. Hopefully, I'll get back into a little more disciplined groove this time around. That's always been my biggest shortcoming, aside from the lack of talent, when it comes to writing. I figure if I have enough discipline, I can rewrite my way into a decent piece, now and then. Lately, though, I've been having trouble coming up with topics.

Then, it dawned on me. Most of the other blogs I read are essentially smackdown affairs. You know, somebody writes something that somebody else disagrees with, so that somebody else writes a scathing blog to point out the flaws in the thing that was written about that certain somebody. (See what I mean about the lack of talent?) Maybe that's what I'll do. Then again, maybe I'll just let the whole blog page go to hell, like I did over a month ago.

In any case, I'll give this another shot. Probably a few more, actually. I'm hit-and-miss about this sort of thing. 'Til then...

Regards,
Walt

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