Orson Scott Card vs. the "Bush Haters"

Scathing editorial in today's Wall Street Journal by one of my favorite science fiction writers, Orson Scott Card, a Democrat taking issue with the predominantly anti-war/anti-Bush platform of his party's presidential campaign(ers):

". . . their platforms range from Howard Dean's "Bush is the devil" to everybody else's "I'll make you rich, and Bush is quite similar to the devil." Since President Bush is quite plainly not the devil, one wonders why anyone in the Democratic Party thinks this ploy will play with the general public. . . ."

It's a long article but well worth reading, and his conclusion is one which is probably shared by many other Democrats:

I can think of many, many reasons why the Republicans should not control both houses of Congress and the White House. But right now, if the alternative is the Democratic Party as led in Congress and as exemplified by the current candidates for the Democratic nomination, then I can't be the only Democrat who will, with great reluctance, vote not just for George W. Bush, but also for every other candidate of the only party that seems committed to fighting abroad to destroy the enemies that seek to kill us and our friends at home.

And if we elect a government that subverts or weakens or ends our war against terrorism, we can count on this: We will soon face enemies that will make 9/11 look like stubbing our toe, and they will attack us with the confidence and determination that come from knowing that we don't have the will to sustain a war all the way to the end.

"The Campaign of Hate and Fear"
Wall Street Journal Dec. 16, 2003

The Capture of Saddam Hussein!

• The original announcement by Iraqi ambassador L. Paul Bremer this morning.
• Comments by President Bush.
• The Command Post: Iraq is providing an ongoing roundup of news and reports on various responses (and, via Tim Blair, mixed reactions of Dean supporters and Democrats).
• From Jeb Babbin and the NRO's commentary:

  To deny the Iraqis ability to try and punish Saddam is to deny the legitimacy of their process of forming the new government. The proper way to handle Saddam is for the Iraqi Governing Council to appoint its own tribunal and apply to Saddam the basic laws against murder. . . . The Allies set up war-crimes tribunals to try Nazi and Japanese criminals, and we didn’t need the U.N. or some international court to do it for us. Dust off the Nuremberg rules, convene a panel, and get on with it. We cannot allow the Iraqis to do less. (NRO Dec. 14, 2003)

• News and an amusing security notice from John Gault, from Baghdad's Coalition Provisional Authority:

  "There will be an unusually heavy amount of [celebratory] gunfire during the next 24 hours. This is due to the report of the possible capture of Saddam Hussein in Tikrit. All CPA members need to take the following measures to protect themselves. Stay in a hardened facility with overhead cover . . .

• Iraqi blogger Ays (Iraq at a Glance) is "happy"^x10 ("I don't know what to say.. I am confused.. no … I am very happy.. I am very happy.. .. I am very happy.. .. I am very happy.. .. I am very happy.. .. I am very happy.. .. I am very happy..")

Liquid Courage

Years ago I developed a standardized measurement for the agony involved in reading and reviewing tendentious books. I call it the "Donaldson Scale," after Sam Donaldson of ABC News, whose book I once had to suffer. "One Donaldson" means that a full bottle of scotch or its equivalent is necessary to grind out a review.

Hitherto few books have rated more than a Half-Donaldson, though the occasional effort of a French literary critic, or any John Irving novel, comes close to rating a Full-Donaldson. The memoirs of Hillary Rodham Clinton and Sidney Blumenthal have shattered the Donaldson Scale. To paraphrase one of Hillary's previous offerings, these books take a whole distillery.

Steven F. Hayward, "Hillary's Makeover"
Claremont Review of Books, Fall 2003

"neocon"

Dean Esmay on the slur "neocon", which has become quite popular among liberals as of late.

More on the history of the term here.

Academics say the most ridiculous things.

"In the West, fortunately, [anti-semitism] scarcely exists now, though it did in the past."

Noam Chomsky

"Bush, Saddam Hussein, Bin Laden, they are all terrorists."

Howard Zinn

Geez . . .

Many of the left-wing students who nearly toppled the French government during the mass demonstrations of May 1968 absorbed their radical politics from the writings of Sartre, but repaid the debt with condescension. When he tried to speak at a rally to express his support for the movement, someone handed him a note that read, "Keep it brief."

Sartre Redux, by Scott McLemee.
Chronicle of Higher Eduction Nov. 21, '03.

Iraq tied to Al Qaeda

In the article "Case Closed" (Weekly Standard 11/24/2003, Volume 009, Issue 11) Stephen F. Hayes reports:

OSAMA BIN LADEN and Saddam Hussein had an operational relationship from the early 1990s to 2003 that involved training in explosives and weapons of mass destruction, logistical support for terrorist attacks, al Qaeda training camps and safe haven in Iraq, and Iraqi financial support for al Qaeda--perhaps even for Mohamed Atta--according to a top secret U.S. government memorandum obtained by THE WEEKLY STANDARD.

The memo, dated October 27, 2003, was sent from Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas J. Feith to Senators Pat Roberts and Jay Rockefeller, the chairman and vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. It was written in response to a request from the committee as part of its investigation into prewar intelligence claims made by the administration. . . .

You would think more television networks and media publications would pay attention to this. But so far I've only heard it on FoxNews (who mirrored the article after the Weekly Standard's servers went down due to an overwhelming number of hits via a link from the Drudge Report) -- but actually I haven't noticed a great deal of chatter.

Almost as if those who said the U.S. had no case for the war are deliberately ignoring this story? . . . Naaaaaaaaaaaah.

Close brushes with fame . . .

Gotta love NYC. How neat to grab a slice of pizza and walk across the street to watch David Duchovny direct Robin Williams ("House of D").

However, my brother Nathan, serving as an x-ray technician in the Navy, reports:

"Yesterday, at work, I got a chance to see Master Chief Carl Brushear. He came in for an appointment. I got to shake his hand and meet him. For those of you who don't know, He is the man the movie Men of Honor is about. Pretty cool huh?"

Pretty cool, indeed! Men of Honor (starring Cuba Gooding Jr. and Robert DeNiro) is a good movie about an incredible person: in 1970, Carl Brashear struggled against the prejudices of his age to become the the first African American Deep Sea Diver in the history of the U.S. Navy.

Even after losing a leg during the recovery of a nuclear warhead in the Mediterranean in 1966, he refused to retire. He remained on active duty, proving his skills and earning the rank of Master Diver in 1970 -- the highest level one can attain in the diving community.

Now that is even cooler than watching Robin Williams film a movie across the street.

Neil Postman 1931 - 2003.

Neil Postman died of lung cancer on Sunday, October 5, 2003. He was a professor at New York University, specializing in the theory of communications and known for his perceptive criticisms of media and technology. I really enjoyed some of his books (readers will probably recognize Amusing Ourselves to Death, a powerful critique of the television industry).

There are some who dismiss him as a Luddite, and although he did not deny an appreciation for the historical movement he did not identify himself as one of them:

I am not at all a Luddite. I have, for example, no hostility toward new technologies and certainly no wish to destroy them, especially those technologies, like computers, that have captured the imagination of educators. Of course, I am not enthusiastic about them, either. I am indifferent to them. ¹

Rather, Neil Postman devoted his life to the practical assessment of the costs of humanity's use of technology. He was motivated by a concern for the influence of media upon the cognitive and moral development of children, and media technology's debilitating effects upon literacy, language, religion and education. Conscious of technology's "Faustian bargain", he was a skeptic who couldn't help but question those who embraced the conveniences of technology with overwhelming enthusiasm (or what he might call a rash optimism). I'm just going to cite two passages helpful in understanding his perspective. First, in regards to visual media, specifically television, he said:

I am not against visual forms of communication except when they become so dominant that they displace the function of discursive or linguistic expression. Language by its nature is slow moving and hierarchical. It lays out a path of illumination to be followed step by step. It permits reflection.

You can evaluate the meaning of a sentence and say no to it. You can't say no to a picture.

When literacy declines and people repair to television for their news and political or religious views, analytic capabilities decline, as does the capacity for sustained reflection - that is, attention span. The capacity to comprehend context and continuity diminishes.

Language is always about context. When someone says "I was quoted out of context," they mean that if you knew the circumstances and conditions in which the words were imbedded, you would arrive at the correct interpretation.

Television always decontextualizes simply by presenting pictures. Pictures can't present historical background or psychological disposition. Images are a crude epistemology, stressing simultaneity and the instant without framework.

If television were a supplement to reading, the problem would not be serious. When television replaces reading it becomes a cultural catastrophe.

Secondly, responding to an audience of computer enthusiasts, he reminded them:

The computer and its information cannot answer any of the fundamental questions we need to address to make our lives more meaningful and humane. The computer cannot provide an organizing moral framework. It cannot tell us what questions are worth asking. It cannot provide a means of understanding why we are here or why we fight each other or why decency eludes us so often, especially when we need it the most. The computer is, in a sense, a magnificent toy that distracts us from facing what we most needed to confront -- spiritual emptiness, knowledge of ourselves, usable conceptions of the past and future.²

Given Neil Postman's writings, it may seem ironic to pay tribute to him by way of a blog. But perhaps he would approve, in that by conveying his words to a broader audience on the web it may provoke us to further reflect on our everyday use and interaction with technology.

---

1. From "Of Luddites, Learning & Life". TECHNOS Quarterly Winter 1993 Vol. 2 No. 4.
2. From Amusing Ourselves To Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Showbusiness. Viking Press (November, 1986).
3. "Informing Ourselves To Death" given at a meeting of the German Informatics Society (Gesellschaft fuer Informatik) on October 11, 1990 in Stuttgart (sponsored by IBM-Germany).

The Execution of Terry Schiavo

The court-ordered execution of Terry Schiavo by forced starvation began at 2PM today, on the feast of her patron saint, St. Teresa d'Avila. In a desperate attempt to prove that she is not in "a persistent vegetative state," her parents released a video (defying court orders) showing Terri laughing with her mother some 24 months ago. In reaction, her husband's attorney's have revoked the parents' visiting privileges unless her husband is present.

I've seen a number of the videos on the parent's website -- Terri is extremely incapacitated, but judging by her reactions to stimuli I personally cannot see how one could describe her as being in a "persistent vegetative state." Especially considering that from the moment her husband Michael Schiavo assumed control of a Medical Trust Fund (consisting of money she received from a malpractive suit) he denied her any kind of rehabilitation treatment and confined her in a nursing home where she is "maintained," contravening the purpose of the funds (which he will inherit when she dies).

It will take between a week to ten days for Terry Schiavo to die by starvation -- something to contemplate as you go about your week.

Conspiracy

I just finished watching the HBO film Conspiracy, about the Wannsee Conference, a meeting of 15 Nazi generals, SS officers and government ministers at a villa on the shore of a Berlin lake Wannsee on a cold winter's afternoon, Jan 20, 1942. Organized by Chief of Security Reinhard Heydrich and Adolf Eichmann, they would politely discuss and determine over wine and dinner the "the final solution" to the "Jewish question." The meeting lasted only 90 minutes. According to the Holocaust Memorial Museium, the Wansee Conference

. . . did not mark the beginning of the "Final Solution." The mobile killing squads were already slaughtering Jews in the occupied Soviet Union. Rather, the Wannsee Conference was the place where the "final solution" was formally revealed to non-Nazi leaders who would help arrange for Jews to be transported from all over German-occupied Europe to SS-operated "extermination" camps in Poland.

The minutes of the meeting were taken by Adolf Eichmann and edited by Heydrich. It never explicitly mentions the killing of Jews, or the methods used to do so -- according to Eichmann's testimony, all 15 attendees of the meeting were quite aware of what was meant by the euphamism "evacuation", and discussed the use of gas chambers and crematoriums in the process. Of the 30 copies that were made only one remained, found by American investigators in the Reich Foreign Office in 1948 and became the "smoking gun" during the Nuremberg war crimes trials.

Conspiracy is an excellent film, with a first-rate cast and script (based on the minutes of the conference). It is very well done -- and chilling to the bone. If I ever chose to rent it again, I would most likely do so in conjunction with Spielberg's Schindler's List: the calm and collected dialogue of the conference room juxtaposed against the screams of the gas chambers and the stink of the ovens is something to think about. There are many cases of genocide in human history, but Conspiracy reinforces the dreadful uniqueness that was the Holocaust.

• Germany Marks a Dark Anniversary, Jan. 18, 2002. CBSNews.com.
• Protokoll der "Wannsee-Konferenz" vom 20. Januar 1942. The actual notes of the meeting themselves.
• House of the Wannsee Conference, now a Memorial and Educational site for the Holocaust.
• Conspiracy - HBO Movie website.

Wittgenstein's Poker

Just finished Wittgenstein's Poker: The Story of a Ten Minute Argument between Two Great Philosophers -- specifically, Karl Popper and Ludwig Wittgenstein, with Bertrand Russel intervening at one point, in a small room in Cambridge, England on Oct. 25, 1946, as chronicled by BBC reporters David Edmonds and John Eidinow. It's not so much an account of the argument itself as the contentious personalities and lives of the participants and the conflict of ideas they represented. For those who are interested, here's a brief review from the Guardian to fill you in on the details. Amazing how they can get 300 pages worth from a mere ten-minute encounter, but they managed to hold my attention throughout. Altogether a fascinating and enjoyable book, even for those who don't particularly enjoy philosophy.

Michael Moore - Bowling for Journalistic Integrity?

I haven't read Michael Moore's Stupid White Men, nor have I seen the movie "Bowling for Columbine" -- although I expect I'll rent the movie (simply because a good number of my friends or co-workers have raved about it ), and will undoubtedly never get around to reading the book (more substantial things to read than one man's tirade against America). At any rate, Michael Moore apparently has a tendency of playing fast and loose with the facts.

Back in April 2002 Ben Fritz's blog "Spinsanity" documented some of Moore's errors in Stupid White Men, the cause of which he believes is "Lazy cribbing from media outlets and the Internet." (Just so you're aware, Spinsanity goes after the lies and distortions of those on the ideological left and right). On November 19, 2002 and Nov. 25, 2002, Fritz exposed additional errors and/or deliberate misrepresentations in Moore's "hard-core analysis" in the movie "Bowling for Columbine", including Moore's altering of a Bush/Quayle campaign advertisement by inserting a caption which did not appear in the original version, the staging of a scene in a bank handing out guns to new customers, and some slick editing/splicing of two separate speeches by Charleton Heston at an NRA convention.

According to Spinsanity on 9/23/03, Moore has apparently admitted the false caption, which he corrected in the DVD release, defending himself in his latest column. However, a quick surf of the web reveals enough critiques on Moore's film that makes me more than a little wary of believing anything "Bowling for Columbine" suggests:

• "Michael Moore and The Awful Truth:" Volume One,
• Volume Two and Volume Three, by Anthony Zoubek, "a series examining ‘Bowling for Columbine’and what it implies of truth in the documentary film genre."
• Bowling for Columbine: Documentary or Fiction?, by David T. Hardy -- focusing on Moore's misrepresentation of Charleton Heston and deceptive use of footage from various NRA rallies.
• BowlingForTruth.Com - scene-by-scene analysis of "Bowling for Columbine."

P.S. I'm not disputing the fact that Michael Moore may have some legitimate concerns about various social issues -- but his attempt to convey those concerns in what appears to be a shoddy "documentary" seems to be counter-productive.

Opus The Penguin Returns!

Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! -- boy, this just made my day. I'm so happy that Berk Breathed, creator of Bloom County (my absolutefavoritist comic strip as a kid) is returning with a new comic strip featuring Opus The Penguin!!

THE SUNDAY-ONLY STRIP, to be called “Opus,” begins Nov. 23, the Washington Post reported Tuesday.

It will be syndicated by The Washington Post Writers Group.

A 1987 Pulitzer Prize-winner for editorial cartooning, Breathed stopped drawing the daily “Bloom County” in 1989 when it was running in nearly 1,300 papers.        

He began a Sunday strip, “Outland,” with many of the same characters — including the penguin’s hairball-hacking sidekick, Bill the cat — but quit that in 1995.        

Partly chalking it up to artistic burnout, Breathed said at the time that cartoonists “die and go to cartoon hell for working beyond that magic intersection of art and fun.”        

He has since written children’s books and sold the rights to an Opus movie that could start filming by the end of the year. [MSNBC News.com]

• Interview with The Onion A.V. Club
• A Great Returns, by Radley Balko. National Review Sept. 25, 2003.

American Ingenuity

"Even so, we endure. The Iraqis are suspect of this. They cannot imagine that we can operate in our battle gear and armored vehicles in the August sun and therefore another explanation must be given other than our toughness and willpower. Since we are Americans, we must have made some technology that allows us this freedom of movement. Iraqis ask us about our air-conditioned helmets and how they are powered. They talk on the street of our cooling vests and air-conditioned underwear. Despite all our efforts we cannot find these for purchase."

"More from the Front", posted by Porphyrogenitus

The Fight for Terry Schindler Schiavo

Judge Greer has ordered the forced starvation of Terry Schindler Schiavoto begin on October 15, 2003, at the request of her husband, Michael Schiavo.

Terri has been confined to a nursing home in what has been called a 'persistent vegetative state' due to brain damage from a "sudden collapse" in 1990. (This charge is disputed by videotaped evidence that Terri responds to stimulus, such as her presence of her parents).

Terri was awarded $750,000 from this suit and an additional $250,000 from a separate malpractice lawsuit. The money was awarded to Terri for her care and rehabilitation and to be placed in a Medical Trust Fund.  Terri’s husband received his personal award money and Terri’s medical fund money in early 1993. From the date he received the award money in 1993, Michael Schiavo has denied Terri any rehabilitation treatment. Michael Schiavo has confined Terri to a nursing home (currently, Terri is in a Hospice facility) where she is 'maintained.' ¹

Michael Schiavo claims his wife would not want to live this way and has been petitioning to have the feeding tube removed since 1998. He is currently living with another woman to whom he has announced his engagement -- because Terri has no will, in the event of her death he would inherit what is left of Terri’s $750,000 medical fund, which he currently uses to pay for his legal bills.

Terri's parents are fighting to save her life. Their efforts are impeded by the fact that her husband has withheld all medical and neurological information and will not permit any doctor to examine Terri other than the doctors he selects.

Even more disturbing is the fact that there appears to be criminal play behind Terri's "collapse." According to this article:

But Terri's parents have questions about the circumstances of the reported heart attack that caused Terri's brain damage, questions they believe should cast doubt on Michael Schiavo's fitness to be Terri's guardian. They point to an emergency room "admitting summary" from the night the brain damage occurred, which noted that Terri had a "rigid neck." One physician reviewing the records stated that the only other patient he had treated with a similarly "rigid neck" had been the victim of strangulation.

The parents also believe a bone-scan report supports their theory that Terri's brain damage is the result of an assault and not a heart attack. The parties in the dispute hotly contest the bone scan, which was completed 53 weeks after the event that led to the brain damage.

Three physicians have testified that, based upon the bone scan, Terri appeared to have been physically assaulted. The injuries they identified included "trauma to her ribs, her pelvic area, L1 vertebrae, spine, both knees and both ankles...a broken femur and a broken back." ²

According to a petition to Governor Bush, Terri's husband has recently petitioned the court to have Terri’s body cremated immediately following her death. The Schindler Family believes Terri’s cremation is a maneuver her husband will utilize to destroy evidence of his criminal acts.

[Thanks to Michael Dubruiel by way of Times Against Humanity for the news].

Additional Links:

• Interview Bob Schindler, Jr. Terri's brother.
• Terri Schiavo’s Life and Death. National Review Sept. 16, 2003.
• Not Dead Yet, people with disabilities opposed to euthanasia and assisted suicide, have joined in the fight for Terri's life.

1. Source: http://www.terrisfight.org.
2. Florida Woman to Be Allowed to Die Despite Family's Wishes, by Jeff Johnson. CNSNews.com August 05, 2003

Windtalkers

Just saw Jon Woo's WindTalkers, about the Navajo Code Talkers during World War II. The U.S. Navy employed the Navajo language in battlefield communications. The complexity of the language proved extremely frustrating to the Japanese (who were quite skilled in cryptology), and the Navajo code remained unbroken.

The Code Talkers -- between 375-420 in all -- were part of every major Marine assault in the Pacific. Some say that the U.S. might never have won the war in the Pacific without them. "Windtalkers" has the look and feel of a traditional World War II action movie. Personally I wished they had focused more on the code itself and less on hand-to-hand combat, but all in all it was a fitting tribute. Here's another page I came across by the son of a CodeTalker with a lot of background information.

Johnny Cash - 1932-2003.

I discovered Johnny Cash relatively late in his life, my first introduction being in 1991, when he sung with a punk band called One Bad Pig on a cover of 'Man in Black'. I thought that was pretty cool, although I didn't care much for country music at the time and associated 'Johnny Cash' with all the other old musicians my mom listened to.

My second encounter with Johnny Cash's music happened in 1993, by way of U2's album Zooropa, when he sang with Bono on "The Wanderer", a truly amazing and deeply spiritual song. And he kept re-appearing after that. In the summer of 1994 I recall browsing a friend's record collection and discovering his American Recordings, which stood out in sharp contrast to the rest of his albums (we listened to Slayer, Scorn, Godflesh, The Melvins). But in a way, it kind of made sense. Cash was hard and gritty and real as they came -- and one couldn't help but be impressed by his cover of Danzig's 'Thirteen' (or his subsequent cover of Soundgarden's "Rusty Cage".

A little while afterwards I started listening to his country albums, bought Live at Fulsom Prison and enjoyed his " God, Love, Murder collection, hand-picked by Cash himself.

As he said in the liner notes for American III: "On the question of youth and old age, I wouldn't trade my future for any one's I know . . . The Master of Life's been good to me. . . . Life and love go on. Let the music play."

I'm just a poor wayfaring stranger, traveling through this world below. There's no sickness, no, toil, nor danger in that bright land to which I go. I'm going there to see my Father and all my loved ones who've gone home. I'm just going over Jordan, I'm just going over home. I know dark clouds will gather 'round me, I know my way is hard and steep. But beauteous fields arise before me, where God's redeemed their vigils keep. I'm going there to see my mother, she said she'd meet me when I come. So I'm just going over Jordan, I'm just going over home. I'm just going over Jordan, I'm just going over home. Johnny Cash. 1932-2003

"Obfuscation in a time of terror."

What happens to our passion for literature when any "text" qualifies as literature, when theory is elevated above poetry and the critic above the poet, and when literature, interpretation, and theory alike are said to be indeterminate and infinitely malleable? What happens to our respect for philosophy -- the "love of wisdom," as it once was -- when we are told that philosophy has nothing to do with either wisdom or virtue, that what passes for metaphysics is really linguistics, that morality is a form of aesthetics and that the best thing we can do is not to take philosophy seriously?

And what happens to our sense of the past when we are told that there is no past save that which the historian creates; or to our perception of the momentousness of history when we are assured that is is we who give moment to history; or to that most momentous historical event, the Holocaust, when it can be so readily "demystified" and "normalized," "structuralized" and "deconstructed"?

And what happens when we look into the abyss and see no real beasts but only a pale reflection of ourselves -- of our particular race, glass, and gender; or, worse yet, when we see only the metaphorical, rhetorical, mythical, linguistic, semiotic, figurative, fictive simulations of our imaginations? And when, looking at an abyss so remote from reality, we are moved to say, like Trilling's students, "How interesting, how exciting."

Gertrude Himmelfarb
On Looking Into the Abyss: Untimely Thoughts on Culture and Society

* * *

EXERCISE: Consider this in relation to a dialogue with Jacques Derrida on the subject of 9/11.

"I became the profane pervert Arab blogger"

Salaam Pax writes about browsing and blogging under Saddam Hussein. I wonder if this is the first time a blog has ever been published in book format?

Scraping the bottom the barrel

You know somebody's hard-up for attention-getting spam subject lines when you're greeted with: "Oppressed Arab Women Going SEX-CRAZY!"

Reading and its discontents

You know how it is for employees at a restaurant -- after a couple of weeks you get tired of the (same old) food. I wonder if some librarians undergo a similar "loss of appetite"? At least, that's what flashed through my mind this afternoon as a teenager with a vacant expression swiped the barcode on my books and barely stifled a yawn when she handed it to me . . . would it have made any difference had she known just how long I'd waited to read Brink Lindsey's Against the Dead Hand: The Uncertain Struggle for Global Capitalism? (I'd heard an interview with the author on NPR back in 2001 which I was utterly fascinated by and, not being able to afford a brand new copy, had been anxiously waiting for the New York Public Library to acquire a copy ever since.)

I had to wonder how many teenagers feel that delicious thrill that I do every time I get a book from the library, the experience of encountering new authors and exploring new worlds of thought that had me hooked from the time I was a little boy. Some of my most vivid memories from childhood are my visits to the libraries in Pennsylvania & North Carolina, and the many books I discovered there.

Anyway, I'd like to hope that it was just the weather (high 90's and humid), or that she had a long day and couldn't wait to get out of there . . . or perhaps she just didn't give a damn about the struggle for global capitalism.

On a similar note, I'd like to know who determines the acquisitions of the New York Public Library -- this book was first published in December 2001 and I had to wait nearly two years before it was added to the library's collection. And yet, Joseph Stiglitz's Globalization and Its Discontents, also of the same genre, was published in April 2003 and appeared almost instantly on the library bookshelves. What's up wit' 'dat?

Relocating.

The New Criterion threw a great part -- ahem, book sale -- this evening, cleaning out their offices in preparation for a move to new digs downtown. It's not often you go to a book sale where they provide wine, beer & munchies (Thank you to the nice girl who coerced another employee into providing me with their last beer -- much appreciated!) The staff were very friendly, although I admit I did feel slightly out of my element. However, I did walk away with Allen Ginsberg's Collected Poems, Christopher Lasch's The True & Only Heaven, Gertrude Himmelfarb's On Looking Into the Abyss, Gary Dorrien's The Neoconservative Mind (a study of Irving Kristol, Norman Podhoretz, Michael Novak & Peter Berger) and last but not least The Art of War in the Western World -- the latter which I'll probably never read, but it was a steal at $2.00 and does look rather impressive on one's bookshelf.

I already know what I want for Christmas . . .

Harold Bloom vs. The School of Resentment

Harold Bloom (literary critic, lover of Hamlet and mortal enemy of Harry Potter) on the infiltration of "cultural studies" in academics in a delightful interview with Jennie Rothenberg of The Atlantic:

". . . To a rather considerable extent, literary studies have been replaced by that incredible absurdity called cultural studies which, as far as I can tell, are neither cultural nor are they studies. But there has always been an arrogance, I think, of the semi-learned.

. . . we have this nonsense called Theory with a capital T, mostly imported from the French and now having evilly taken root in the English-speaking world. And that, I suppose, also has encouraged absurd attitudes toward what we used to call imaginative literature.

. . . the wave of French theory was replaced by the terrible mélange that I increasingly have come to call the School of Resentment—the so-called multiculturalists and feminists who tell us we are to value a literary work because of the ethnic background or the gender of the author. . . . I have sometimes characterized these people as a Rabblement of Lemmings, dashing off the cliff and carrying their supposed subject down to destruction with them."

"Ranting Against Cant"
The Atlantic Unbound, 8/16/03

Reassuring News from Iraq

The author of Porphyrogenitus.Net posts a reassuring letter from his uncle in Iraq:

. . . For the first time in decades, public executions, the torture of children in front of their parents and the killing of people who might disagree with the Iraqi government are no longer taking place. The rape of school girls as young as thirteen are no longer conducted in the son's palace and the oil for food program is actually going for food for the population, rather then the palaces for a select few. I can tell you from being in one of [Saddam's] reported 70 palaces, (seventeen just in Baghdad) that the amount of money spent just in marble for the floors would have fed and clothed hundreds if not thousands. . . .

Medical supplies, food aid, employment, free press, representative government and schools opening back up are things that are going on over here but for what ever the reason those very good things are under reported in Western news papers. I guess, "Thousands getting clean drinking water" which happens to be a frequent occurrence, doesn't sell as many newspapers as "soldier being killed" which is a much less frequent happening.

What I did when the lights went off

Like many commuters in NYC, I was -- to put a positive spin on things -- blessed with the opportunity to take a scenic walk home across the Queensborough Bridge and along Queens Blvd. ¹

A few vendors eager to exploit the panic for profit immediately jacked up the prices on essential materials (water, flashlights, candles). Thankfully, we encountered many benevolent souls along the way who provided free water -- including a touching scene of two little kids manning a table all by themselves (with a large supply of plastic cups and gallon jugs from their parents), and a fire station which kept a hose running to cool people in the sweltering 90+ heat.

I walked this very same route on 9/11, so I was familiar with many of the spots where we rested -- I even recognized one of the people offering free water and bathrooms as the same person who did so two years ago.

One time while we stopped to rest we noticed a young woman having a lot of trouble with her shoes (high heels) -- her co-worker (boyfriend?) took off his own shoes, gave them to her, and walked alongside her barefoot.

The experience was not without humor -- In Forest Hills I passed by a liquor store selling shots for $1.00, and a sushi restaurant attempting to clean out its stock (just what you really want on a hot day with a blackout: RAW FISH!)

As it grew dark there were many families sitting on the steps of their apartments with candles -- one little boy (getting into the capitalist spirit) decided to try and sell his to passers-by for 25 cents, but the decision was quickly vetoed by his mother.

I walked in the door around 9:30pm. Residents of our apartment were hanging out front with candles and incense and had a radio tuned in to the news. It was nice to look up and see the stars for a change (a rare sight for those living in New York).

What I've learned from this experience -- besides the importance of being prepared for emergencies -- is that New Yorkers are an especially resilient bunch, especially after 9/11. (As one radio announcer commented, we're "90% scar tissue"). ² I was particularly impressed with the way (mostly) everybody pulled together over the last couple of days, both on the walk back to Queens and in general.

Although a transplanted Tarheel from North Carolina, I have to say I'm very proud to live here.

---

1. Now that we have power again I charted my route on Mapquest and, although not mathematically certain, it appears to be btw/ 9-10 miles. Quite a trek!
2. Still, we're practically wimps compared to the Iraqis, who've been living under similar conditions for months!

Additional Links

• New York City Blackout - Gothamist Extended Edition
• New York City Blackout as Photographed by John Wehr

The Founding Fakers

In "The Founding Fakers" (The New Republic 8/11/03), Franklin Foer tackles what I consider a glaring and persistent flaw in the conduct of recent Republican administrations: namely, the willingness of some within the GOP to cloak some morally repugnant characters who would otherwise fall into the category of criminals or terrorists in the mantle of democracy when it is politically expedient to do so -- i.e., "the foreign opposition leader romanticized beyond reason."

Liberals did this with Stalin and Fidel Castro; Reagan with the Nicaraguan Contras (or as he called them, "the moral equivalent of our Founding Fathers"); the Bush (senior) administration with the Afghan mujahedin . . . and now, says Foer, the spotlight may be turning towards militant groups in Iran such as the Mujahedin-e-Khalq, a militant organization based in Iraq which, although currently classified as a terrorist organization, may be useful should the U.S. extend its "war on terrorism" into Iran.

Extolling the virtues of cults like the Iranian mujahedin doesn't simply cheapen rhetoric about liberal democracy, it cheapens conservatism itself. Ever since Edmund Burke, conservatives have made skepticism about revolutions and revolutionaries a central tenet of their politics. As Irving Kristol rephrased the classic complaint in a 1972 essay, "to think we have it in our power to change people so as to make the human estate wonderfully better than it is, remarkably different from what it is, and in very short order, is to assume that this generation of Americans can do what no other generation in all of human history could accomplish." This rigid traditionalism has been sometimes deployed to justify turning away from injustice. But it was also a source of humaneness, a bulwark against rash plans for social upheaval, a vital warning about the violent excesses of ideological fervor, a reminder that revolutions often end in tears. In this new era, with grand plans for remaking the map and new heroes being born, we could stand to be reminded of these old dictates, which add a touch of realism to right-wing idealism and offer a salutary dose of conservatism for conservatives.

Whether the MEK will occupy the same pedestal as the Contras remains to be seen, but I do think Foer has a good point: it's one of those blatant utiliatarian political decisions that can only turn around and hurt us in the end.

. . . oops.

Exactly how this will play out in church situations is unclear, judging from a press conference Wednesday in Minneapolis. There, Wendy Griffith, a reporter with the Christian Broadcasting Network, asked presiding Episcopal Bishop Frank Griswold about Bishop-elect V. Gene Robinson, who was confirmed Tuesday as the first openly homosexual Episcopal bishop. He is divorced and lives with his male partner.     

If, the reporter asked, a divorced male bishop could live with a man to whom he was not married, what about a divorced heterosexual male bishop living with a female lover?     

"Or," she added, "is being outside marriage only OK if you are gay?"     

"The Episcopal Church honors holy matrimony," Bishop Griswold said, "and certainly if a male were elected bishop and was living with a woman without benefit of clergy, that would be a significant problem."     

"So there's a double standard, then?" Miss Griffith asked, at which point church spokesman Jim Solheim abruptly ended the press conference.

Washington Post August 8, 2003.

"The Internet is Shit"

The Internet is Shit.

Kinda makes you feel thankful, don't it?

Reflections upon returning from a visit to America, by a young Iranian blogger:

Saturday mornings people go to the mall and spend their morning and part of their afternoon shopping.
The road is clear. Not too many cars. Not too much traffic. It is a joy to drive.
At home music can play loudly.
At the movies people quiet down when the film starts.
People are not allowed to smoke in public places.
Choosing a comfortable outfit is not a problem.
Writing is not a crime.
Speaking is not wrong.
Dreaming is allowed.
Success exists.
Freedom is a word.
Love is a reality.

High Stakes in the Marriage Debate

Gay marriage is not some sideline issue, it is the marriage debate. Losing it means losing marriage as a social institution, a shared public norm. Marriage will become (as it is in Sweden) a religious rite, with little public or social significance. As a legal institution, marriage will lose its coherence. By embracing gay marriage the legal establishment will have declared that the public purposes of marriage no longer include anything to do with making babies, or giving children mothers and fathers. Legitimating same-sex marriage amounts to an official declaration that "What counts is not family structure, but the quality of dedication, commitment, self-sacrifice, and love in the household." Family structure does not count. Marriage in this view is merely expressive personal conduct, a declaration of love between two adults. As such there is no reason for the state to be involved in preferring marriage as a family form.

The question is not whether this is a battle we can win, but whether it is a battle we can afford to lose.

Maggie Gallagher
"The Stakes: Why We Need Marriage"
National Review Online. July 14, 2003.

It's all part of the IMAGE, man . . .

From an interview with EyeHateGod [date: ???]

You got a new bass player? The same as on the tour in April?

JB: Yeah, his name is Danny Nick, but he had to go home early because had his lip bitten off by a pitbull, it’s fucked up, now it’s funny but it was crazy when it happened. It happened in Germany, I can’t remember the name of the town. We went to this guy’s home to buy some hash and Danny was petting the dog and he bit him. It was fucked up, they had to sow his lip back on. It was rough, so he went home but the guitarplayer from Soilent Green helped us out for the rest of the tour. I think he might even try to sell his lip on eBay...

How much would he get for it?

JB: Hahaha, I don’t know, hahah first bid: twenty bucks on his lip, it’s crazy,

But it fits into the concept of EyeHateGod . . .

JB: Yeah right, tough shit!

(And the rallying cry will be 'Democracy! Whisky! Sexy!')

In the latest issue of The New Criterion, historian Paul Johnson delivers a fascinating explication of the meaning of 'empire' and proceeds with a vigorous defense of America's 'New Awakening':

[I]n the twentieth and still more the twenty-first centuries, the forms of moral, commercial, and cultural imperialism emanating from the West are essentially secular. We no longer speak of “Christianizing the world,” a phrase in wide use up to 1914. But “democratizing the world,” whether spoken or not, is our aim. Behind this lies the belief that when functioning democracies become the norm, international law is more likely to be observed, free trade to spread, real incomes to increase, and the world to become a freer, healthier, more secure, and contented place. In the creation of this oikumene, or ecumenical world of Western-style civilization, America is allotted the prime role by geography and history, economics and demography, culture and philosophy.

. . . it is worth recalling that up to 1860 “empire” was not a term of abuse in the United States. George Washington himself spoke of “the rising American Empire.” Jefferson, aware of the dilemma, claimed that America was “an Empire for liberty.” That is what America is becoming again, in fact if not in name. America’s search for the security against terrorism and rogue states goes hand in hand with liberating their oppressed peoples. From the Evil Empire to an Empire for Liberty is a giant step, a contrast as great as the appalling images of the wasted twentieth century and the brightening dawn of the twenty-first. But America has the musculature and the will to take giant steps, as it has shown in the past.

From the Evil Empire to the Empire of Liberty
The New Criterion Vol. 21, No. 10. June 2003.

On a related note:

• Democratic Imperialism: A Blueprint, by Stanley Kurtz. Policy Review April-May 2003.
• The Liberty Doctrine, by Michael Mcfaul. Policy Review April-May 2002.

Nausea, however, is interesting compared with the actual symptoms of going-through-the-motions sickness induced by Living History. The book does not contain even a dog-worthy return to the vomit of the Lewinsky scandal. And the stingy-mama-bird regurgitations of Whitewater excuses and evasions will leave the most adoring Hillary chick wanting more worm.

P.J. O'Rourke reviewing Hillary Clinton's Living History
Weely Standard Vol. 8, No. 42

The Hazards of being a Radical Academic

So I'm reading The Passion of Michel Foucault, by James Miller -- a biography about a philosopher I really didn't get the opportunity to study back in college. Miller portrays Foucault as perpetually obsessed with getting the upper hand on Sartre, desperately vying for academic recognition and lashing out in vehement opposition to the French existentialist's humanistic philosophy of free will and responsibility.

I'm very much amused by Foucault's love-hate relationship with the political radicals he courted -- embracing them in the thick of conflict with the establishment, 'sticking it to the man', so to speak, as when he joins his pupils in a uprising against his fellow colleagues at the university of Vincennes:

[January 23, 1969] That afternoon at Vincennes, Foucault joined a handful of other professors and some five hundred students and militants in occupying the administration building and amphitheater of the new campus, which had opened for classes just days before. The seizure was ostensibly a show of solidarity with students who had occupied the rector's office at the Sorbonne earlier that day . . . but to paraphrase a good slogan from the American student movement in those days, the issue was not the issue. The main point, one suspects, was to explore again, the creative potential of disorder. . . .

The occupation lasted less than a day. The police began their assault on the administration building in the predawn hours of January 24. Those still inside, including Foucault, fought back fureiously. . . . Some surrendered. Others, including Foucult, fled to the roof. There, they set about hurling bricks at the police gathered below. Witnesses recall that Foucault exulted in the moment, gleefully lobbing stones -- although he was careful not to dirty his beautiful black velour suit.

Foucault himself was in a position of authority at the university, having personally been charged with assembling the faculty of the department of philosophy. Of course, hiring the most revolutionary among them wasn't the brightest idea:

. . . Foucault, like Dr. Frankenstein, had to cope with the monster he had created in the form of Vincennes philosophy department. Offering countless coures with titles like "Cultural Revolutions" and "Ideological Struggle," Foucault's department naturally attracted dissidents of every conceivable type. Many of his militant colleagues were swept up in the enthusiasm of the moment: in 1970, Judith Miller, a professed Maoist (and Jacques Lacan's daughter), handed out certifications of course credit in philosophy to total strangers on a bus, explaining afterward in the pages of L'Express that "the university is a figment of capitalist society."

The president of the Republic was not amused. The minister of education fired Miller, and moved quickly to decertify the department as a whole . . . in public, Foucault staunchly defended the program, and also the continuing rebellion in the universities: "We have tried to produce the experience of freedom . . ."

In the end, however, Foucault finds his fraternization with the oppressed student minority counterproductive:

. . . the campus was constantly in an uproar, roiled by strikes, marches, and classroom demonstrations. Following the time-honored radical precept that "my closest friend is my own dangerous enemy," militant students targeted Foucault's lectures for disruption.

His patience wore thin. It was one thing to express solidarity with the left in interviews, or by pitching stones from rooftops -- that was fun! But it was quite another thing to have to put up with, day in and day out, with the insane harangues of the various ultra-left sects that stormed through his classroom.

Foucault had begun to feel, as he once suggested, like Sade at Charenton: staging subversive plays in the asylum, and then having the inmates rise in rebellion against the master himself.

Foucault's solution was simple: He spent as little time as possible on campus . . .

Trying to read (much less understand) Foucault can be daunting, but James Miller provides a decent introduction to the philosopher, flavored with his wry sense of humor. (From what I've heard David Macey's The Lives of Michael Foucault is the better of the two biographies, so I might tackle that somewhere down the line).

---

Excerpted from: The Passion of Michael Foucault, by James Miller. Harvard Univ Pr; (April 7, 2000). pp. 176-181.

With the disappearance of the idea of Original Sin, with the disappearance of the idea of intense moral struggle, the human beings presented to us both in poetry and prose fiction today, and more patently among the serious writers than in the underworld of letters, tend to become less and less real...If you do away with this struggle, and maintain that by tolerance, benevolence, inoffensiveness, and a redistribution or increase of purchasing power, combined with a devotion, on the part of the elite, to Art, the world will be as good as anyone could require, then you must expect human beings to become more and more vacuous.

-- TS Eliot

Sweet . . .

As Lenin and Hitler recede into history, the idea that a civilized nation can descend so deep into a totalitarianism maintained by fear seems less and less plausible. Huxley’s dystopia, by contrast, is all too plausible. Indeed, the unsettling thing about Huxley’s imagined future is that it is not easy for a modern reader to say what, exactly, is so bad about it. To be sure, we maintain our democracy, religion is still alive, and our inclination to join up in pairs and raise our own children seems to be ineradicable. In many other respects, though, we have settled happily into the infantile hedonism of Brave New World. Re-reading that novel recently after many years, I suddenly realized why it is that I find the current hit TV show Friends so unwatchable. In the World State of the year 632 After Ford, would not Phoebe, Chandler & Co. be model citizens? In the terms of that great Dostoyevskian exchange between the Savage and the Controller at the end of Chapter 17 in Huxley’s masterpiece, we have come down pretty firmly on the side of the Controller, and trust to science to cope with whatever unpleasant consequences may attend our choice.

“What?” questioned the Savage, uncomprehending. “It’s one of the conditions of perfect health. That’s why we’ve made the V .S. treatments compulsory.”

“V.S.?”

“Violent Passion Surrogate. Regularly once a month. We flood the whole system with adrenalin. It’s the complete physiological equivalent of fear and rage. All the tonic effects of murdering Desdemona and being murdered by Othello, without any of the inconveniences.”

“But I like the inconveniences.”

“We don’t,” said the Controller. “We prefer to do things comfortably.”

So do we, so do we.

What Happened to Alduous Huxley, by John Derbyshire
The New Criterion Vol. 21, No. 6, February 2003.

Back in London, I was having dinner in the Groucho Club—this week’s in-spot for what’s left of Britain’s lit gritz and nouveau rock riche—when one person started in on the Stars And Stripes. Eventually he got, as the Europeans always do, to the part about “your country’s never been invaded.” (This fellow had been two during the Blitz, you see.) “You don’t know the horror, the suffering. You think war is...”

I snapped.

“A John Wayne movie,” I said. That’s what you were going to say, wasn’t it? We think war is a John Wayne movie. We think life is a John Wayne movie—with good guys and bad guys, as simple as that. Well, you know something, Mister Limey Poofter? You’re right. And let me tell you who those bad guys are. They’re us. WE BE BAD.

We’re the baddest-ass sons of bitches that ever jogged in Reeboks. We’re three-quarters grizzly bear and two-thirds car wreck and descended from a stock market crash on our mother’s side. You take your Germany, France and Spain, roll them all together and it wouldn’t give us room to park our cars. We’re the big boys, Jack, the original, giant, economy-sized, new and improved butt kickers of all time. When we snort coke in Houston, people lose their hats in Cap D’Antibes. And we’ve got an American Express card credit limit higher than your piss-ant metric numbers go.

“You say our country’s never been invaded? You’re right, little buddy. Because I’d like to see the needle-dicked foreigners who’d have the guts to try. We drink napalm to get our hearts started in the morning. A rape and a mugging is our way of saying ‘Cheerio.’ Hell can’t hold our sock-hops. We walk taller, talk louder, spit further, fuck longer and buy more things than you know the names of. I’d rather be a junkie in a New York City jail than king, queen, and jack of all you Europeans. We eat little countries like this for breakfast and shit them out before lunch.”

Of course, the guy should have punched me. But this was Europe. He just smiled his shabby, superior European smile. (God, don’t these people have dentists?)

P.J. O’Rourke - Holidays in Hell

Who says I despair? That is to say, I would reverse Kierkegaard's aphorism that the worst despair is that despair which is unconscious of itself as despair, and instead say that the best despair and the beginning of hope is to be conscious of despair in the very air we breathe, and to look around for something better. I like to eat crawfish and drink beer. That's despair?"

Walker Percy
"Surviving His Own Bad Habits".
DoubleTake Magazine. Previously unpublished.

The Hypocrisy of Noam Chomsky

Keith Windschuttle critiques the moral hypocrisy of Noam Chomsky's role as a leading apologist for the Pol Pot regime during the Cambodian genocide, and his condescending stance towards American casualties in 9/11:

Chomsky has declared himself a libertarian and anarchist but has defended some of the most authoritarian and murderous regimes in human history. His political philosophy is purportedly based on empowering the oppressed and toiling masses but he has contempt for ordinary people who he regards as ignorant dupes of the privileged and the powerful. He has defined the responsibility of the intellectual as the pursuit of truth and the exposure of lies, but has supported the regimes he admires by suppressing the truth and perpetrating falsehoods. He has endorsed universal moral principles but has only applied them to Western liberal democracies, while continuing to rationalize the crimes of his own political favorites. He is a mandarin who denounces mandarins. When caught out making culpably irresponsible misjudgments, as he was over Cambodia and Sudan, he has never admitted he was wrong.

Today, Chomsky’s hypocrisy stands as the most revealing measure of the sorry depths to which the left-wing political activism he has done so much to propagate has now sunk."

The Hypocrisy of Noam Chomsky, by Keith Windschuttle The New Criterion Vol. 21, No. 9, May 2003

So this is my new blog . . . at least, a fresh start.