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 More from New Orleans
8/31/05 18:30:37
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WWL-TV in New Orleans has set up a Katrina blog. The city has devolved into a Day After Tomorrow/Lord of the Flies hellhole - and it ain’t over yet.
Dc Media Girl Permalink
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Heartbreaker
8/31/05 08:51:21
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It’s extremely difficult to read through the Lost and Found on Craigslist - the loss and desperation caused by this hurricane are simply unimagineable - but if you want to help the Katrina survivors or have relatives you want to track, you might want to check here.
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Question on the left wing blogosphere’s minds: Are you f*****g kidding me??
8/31/05 08:40:50
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From the racist Malkin’s blog:
Question on many readers’ minds:
Where are Hollywood and the Live Aid people?
Answer: Nowhere to be found yet.
Is this a joke? I mean seriously. Is this supposed to be funny? Because when there’s a natural disaster of this magnitude, don’t MOST people call for help from Hollywood and Live Aid?
Answer: No they don’t, Michelle, apart from idiot readers of right wing Web sites, apparently. Rational people look to the military and the federal government for help. I know it hurts you to face this reality, but you’re going to have to confront the fact that the Gulf Coast has not gotten the resources they need, not even close, this DESPITE the fact that Mississippi’s governor used to run the RNC. As a matter of fact, while mayhem and chaos escalate, the President is attending birthday parties and playing the guitar.
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Message to Republicans in Congress: All is not well
8/31/05 08:23:56
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But Dems shouldn’t get on high horses just yet. Message from the public to Dems: LEAD, for God’s sake. More WaPo:
Rising gas prices and ongoing bloodshed in Iraq continue to take their toll on President Bush, whose standing with the public has sunk to an all-time low, according to the latest Washington Post-ABC News poll.
The survey found Bush’s job approval rating at 45 percent, down seven points since January and the lowest ever recorded for the president in Post-ABC surveys. Fifty-three percent disapproved of the job Bush is doing...
What may have pushed Bush’s overall ratings down in the latest poll is pervasive dissatisfaction over soaring gasoline prices. Two-thirds of those surveyed said gas prices are causing financial hardship to them or their families. Gas prices stand to go even higher after Hurricane Katrina’s rampage through the oil-rich Gulf of Mexico.
More ominously for the president, six in 10 Americans said there are steps the administration could take to reduce gas prices. Slightly more than a third say the recent run-up has been due to factors beyond the administration’s control.
The poll numbers paint a portrait of national frustration with the direction and leadership of the country, which, if not reversed in coming months, is likely to color the environment for next year’s midterm elections, putting incumbents in both parties on the defensive.
Dissatisfaction is not limited to the president. Fewer than four in 10 Americans -- 37 percent -- approve of the way the Republican-controlled Congress is doing its job, the lowest rating for lawmakers in nearly eight years.
The survey also provided bad news for Democratic leaders, who are judged as offering Bush only tepid opposition. Slightly more than half of those surveyed expressed dissatisfaction with congressional Democrats for not opposing Bush more aggressively.
Self-identified Democrats were particularly impatient. More than three in four said congressional Democrats have not gone far enough to oppose Bush on Iraq or on administration policies in general.
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The chickens come home to roost
8/31/05 08:20:03
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WaPo:
With thousands of their citizen-soldiers away fighting in Iraq, states hit hard by Hurricane Katrina scrambled to muster forces for rescue and security missions yesterday -- calling up Army bands and water-purification teams, among other units, and requesting help from distant states and the active-duty military.
As the devastation threatened to overwhelm state resources, federal authorities called on the Pentagon to mobilize active-duty aircraft, ships and troops and set up an unprecedented task force to coordinate a wider military response, said officials from the Northern Command, which oversees homeland defense.
National Guard officials in the states acknowledged that the scale of the destruction is stretching the limits of available manpower while placing another extraordinary demand on their troops -- most of whom have already served tours in Iraq or Afghanistan or in homeland defense missions since 2001.
More than 6,000 Guard members were mobilized in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida when the storm struck on Monday, with the number rising to 8,000 yesterday and hundreds more expected to be called to active duty, National Guard officials said yesterday.
"Missing the personnel is the big thing in this particular event. We need our people," said Lt. Andy Thaggard, a spokesman for the Mississippi National Guard, which has a brigade of more than 4,000 troops in central Iraq. Louisiana also has about 3,000 Guard troops in Baghdad.
Mississippi has about 40 percent of its Guard force deployed or preparing to deploy and has called up all remaining Guard units for hurricane relief, Thaggard said. Those include the Army band based in Jackson, Miss. "They are mustering transportation to move them south," he said. Soldiers who have lost their homes are exempt, he said.
Mississippi has requested troops and aircraft from about eight other states -- including military police and engineers from Alabama, helicopters and crews from Arkansas and Georgia, and aircraft-maintenance experts from Connecticut, who are filling in for a Mississippi maintenance unit that is heading to the Middle East.
"This is the biggest disaster we’ve ever had, so we’re going to need more aircraft than we’ve got," said Col. Bradly S. MacNealy, the Mississippi Army National Guard’s aviation officer. Mississippi has had to borrow from Arkansas UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters fitted with hoists, using them together with the Coast Guard to pluck to safety several dozen people stranded by floodwaters, he said.
Chinook helicopters from Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi are flying the equivalent of 18 large truckloads of critical supplies -- including ice, water, food and chain saws for road-clearing crews -- to Mississippi’s coast, he said.
In Alabama, all the major Guard units activated for the disaster have already served in Iraq, and some still have contingents there, said Alabama Guard spokesman Norman Arnold.
Capt. Richard Locke of the Guard’s 1st Battalion 167th Infantry headed toward Mobile yesterday with a force of 400 soldiers cobbled together from four units because the rest of the battalion is in Iraq.
Carrying M-16 rifles and 9mm pistols, the soldiers are assigned to control traffic at unlighted intersections, and patrol in Humvees and on foot to prevent looting.
Recruiting and retention problems are worsening the strain on Guard forces in hurricane-ravaged states. Alabama’s Army National Guard has a strength of 11,000 troops -- or 78 percent of the authorized number. "We’re just losing too many out the back door," Arnold said.
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Worse and worse
8/30/05 21:28:45
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Mayhem:
Inmates at a prison in hurricane-ravaged New Orleans have rioted, attempted to escape and are now holding hostages, a prison commissioner told ABC News affiliate WBRZ in Baton Rouge, La...
A deputy at Orleans Parish Prison, his wife and their four children have been taken hostage by rioting prisoners after riding out Hurricane Katrina inside the jail building, according to WBRZ.
A woman interviewed by WBRZ said her son, a deputy at the prison whose family is among the hostages, told her that many of the prisoners have fashioned homemade weapons. Her son had brought his family there hoping they would be safe during the storm.
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How to help
8/30/05 18:13:38
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Here’s a partial list of organizations accepting donations for flood victims. I’d be happy to post any others:
American Red Cross, 800-HELP-NOW (435-7669) English, 800-257-7575 Spanish.
America’s Second Harvest, 800-344-8070.
Adventist Community Services, 800-381-7171.
Catholic Charities USA, 800-919-9338.
Christian Disaster Response, 941-956-5183 or 941-551-9554.
Christian Reformed World Relief Committee, 800-848-5818.
Church World Service, 800-297-1516.
Convoy of Hope, 417-823-8998.
Lutheran Disaster Response, 800-638-3522.
Mennonite Disaster Service, 717-859-2210.
Nazarene Disaster Response, 888-256-5886.
Noah’s Wish, www.noahswish.org, (530) 622-9313
Operation Blessing, 800-436-6348.
Presbyterian Disaster Assistance, 800-872-3283.
Salvation Army, 800-SAL-ARMY (725-2769).
Southern Baptist Convention Disaster Relief, 800-462-8657, Ext. 6440.
United Methodist Committee on Relief, 800-554-8583.
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Nightmare
8/30/05 16:10:31
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The water won’t stop:
Authorities along the Gulf Coast used boats and helicopters to reach residents stranded by Hurricane Katrina and search for survivors on Tuesday, as New Orleans residents fought to stem the flow of water rushing into the low-lying city.
The storm ripped ashore in Louisiana Monday morning with winds topping 140 mph before scourging Mississippi and Alabama....
While Louisiana officials have not confirmed any deaths there, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin said there have been reports of bodies floating in the floodwaters. Two storm-related traffic fatalities were reported in Alabama.
Katrina caused widespread flooding across the region, and floodwaters were still rising Tuesday in New Orleans after a hole opened in a levee protecting the city.
Water poured into New Orleans from Lake Pontchartrain after a two-block-long breach opened overnight in a section of a levee that protects the low-lying city.
Nagin had said that about 80 percent of the city was flooded and that some areas were under 20 feet of water.
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After the flood
8/29/05 21:38:25
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I truly love and respect this woman’s spirit. God bless the Big Easy:
NEW ORLEANS - Gail Henke could think of no better way to celebrate the French Quarter’s survival of Hurricane Katrina than to belly up to a bar on Bourbon Street with a vodka and cranberry juice. Call it a libation to the storm gods.
“You know what? There’s a reason why we’re called the Saints,” the 53-year-old tour booker said Monday as she communed with 20 or so other survivors. “Because no matter what religion you are, whether you’re a Catholic, whether you’re voodoo, whether you’re Baptist or so on, so on, and so on we all pray. We all pray.
“I’m not a religious fanatic. But God has saved us.”
And how great is it that after one of the biggest natural disasters on record you can still get a drink in New Orleans? Rock on, Nawlins. Rock on.
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Possible Katrina outcome
8/29/05 10:25:10
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Horrible:
As Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans on Monday, experts said it could turn one of America’s most charming cities into a vast cesspool tainted with toxic chemicals, human waste and even coffins released by floodwaters from the city’s legendary cemeteries.
Experts have warned for years that the levees and pumps that usually keep New Orleans dry have no chance against a direct hit by a Category 5 storm.
That’s exactly what Katrina was as it churned toward the city. With top winds of 160 mph and the power to lift sea level by as much as 28 feet above normal, the storm threatened an environmental disaster of biblical proportions, one that could leave more than 1 million people homeless.
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CNN reports "total structural failure in the New Orleans area"
8/29/05 10:07:33
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Follow the track of the storm here. And for God’s sake, someone please get Anderson Cooper to a safe place. The poor guy’s standing on what looks like either a pier or a bridge in the middle of a hurricane. Amazing that the CNN crew can continue broadcasting pictures.
Dc Media Girl Permalink
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People’s people, Sept. 5 edition
8/28/05 19:47:42
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I picked these two letters from People’s Mailbag to single out for special scorn this week.
I’m so proud of Jennifer Aniston. She has the world’s spotlight on her while coping with her divorce from a self-absorbed man, and she’s handling it with courage and grace. I’m happy to read she hasn’t soured on marriage. There’s an amazing man out there who will prove to her that husbands can be faithful and that marriage is a lifelong commitment.
-- Laurel Motal, Houston, TX
So America’s sweetheart takes the first potshot? Brad has been using his celebrity to bring attention to the horrible conditions in Africa. Jennifer’s having pity parties for herself. Just who is missing the sensitivity chip?
-- Alecia Flores, Penryn, CA
Speaking of People, maybe I’ve just ODed on pop culture over the past couple of weeks, but here’s a brief list of what and who I think is suffering from an extreme case of media overexposure:
- Anyone with the last name Simpson. Go away.
- Celebrities, authors and other notables who insist on "keeping it real" by being photographed in their bare feet. For the love of God, put on some shoes.
- Angelina Jolie, "humanitarian" and "mother": She hauls those kids around like Fendi baguettes. What other celebrity have you seen whose every image in a magazine happens toinclude their children? Think hard. Yeah, thought so.
- The Black Eyed Peas. Just because.
Dc Media Girl Permalink
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On a 1 - 10 cuteness scale, this little guy’s an 11
8/27/05 22:57:52
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Nothing to add. I think the image speaks for itself.
Dc Media Girl Permalink
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Another stroll down memory lane
8/27/05 21:41:41
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Who said this, and when?
"This administration had to build up a certain amount of support for the_ for the administration’s position and they drew in all sorts of people to talk about the aggression of the Iraqis and how horrible they were, the same sort of thing that we saw in every previous war. And they weren’t too careful about checking the credentials and the credibility of the people that they were enlisting".
Give up?
The quote comes to us by way of Bernard Trainor, author of The General’s War, from a 1997 Frontline special about the Gulf War. But the similarities don’t end there.
Remember the dramatic testimony of 15-year old "Nayira", who in October of 1990 told the Congressional Human Rights Caucus about atrocities she’d witnessed while volunteering at a Kuwaiti hospital? Here’s what she said:
"While I was there, I saw the Iraqi soldiers come into the hospital with guns, and go into the room where . . . babies were in incubators. They took the babies out of the incubators, took the incubators, and left the babies on the cold floor to die."
It turned out that this "witness", whose full name was being kept confidential to prevent the Iraqis from "taking revenge" on her family in occupied Kuwait, was actually the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the United States. The "group" she was supposed to be representing, the Citizens for a Free Kuwait, was actually a front group created by the public relations firm Hill & Knowlton at the behest of the Emir of Kuwait. Not only had the girl lied before a congressional committee, she had been coached on what to say by Hill & Knowlton’s then-vice president Lauri Fitz-Pegado.
Three months elapsed between "Nayirah’s" testimony and the start of the war. During that time, the incubator story was repeated dozens of times. President George H.W. Bush himself told the story. It was thought that the girl’s testimony had turned the tide of public opinion in favor of the war.
Keep in mind that the difference between then and now is that Saddam Hussein had actually perpetrated an act of aggression against neighboring Kuwait, so at least then there was tangible proof of his bad intentions. Still and all, the public wasn’t gung-ho to send American troops to defend Kuwait, whose ruling oligarchy brutally suppressed the country’s democracy movement, intimidated and censored journalists, and hired desperate foreigners to supply most of the nation’s physical labor under conditions of indentured servitude and near-slavery. So desperate measures had to be undertaken. PR juggernauts. Lying "witnesses". The Washington press corps asleep at the switch (not one reporter recognized this girl?). Plus ca change, plus la meme chose, right?
Dc Media Girl Permalink
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Bernard Goldberg = "old fashioned liberal"?
8/27/05 10:53:58
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Amazing. Read the whole thing:
Jefferson City, Mo.: Mr. Goldberg...
Why do you not include our current president? If ANYONE has done more to "screw up" America, Mr. Bush has got to be at the top of the list.
Ask the nearly 2000 Americans who have died in this "optional" war.
Bye purposely omitting the president, your conservative BIAS is showing. Even though you claim to be a democrat.
Bernard Goldberg: I’ve dealt with this one several times in this chat. Check it out. For what it’s worth, I still consider myself an old fashioned liberal, which I suspect is not good enough for you or others on the Left these days. But thanks for writing.
Dc Media Girl Permalink
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More madness from O’Reilly
8/26/05 21:31:44
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This is the sort of blather that batshit insane TV personalities usually reserve for their beleaguered producers and bookers (and when that fails, there’s always the interns). Most aren’t insane enough to actually blurt something this obviously false on the air. That is, except for Bill O’Reilly:
Bill O’Reilly must have been uncomfortable with Greta Van Susteren nipping at his heels this summer. Why else would he say this on Wednesday’s Factor?:
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It looks like the ’The Factor’ will win this week in the cable news ratings war. More than a million viewers ahead thus far. And if that lead holds, we will have won the ratings race an amazing 200 weeks in a row.
| Then O’Reilly proceeded to inaccurately describe his ratings:
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Now, to put ’The Factor’s’ total audience, at 8 and 11 p.m. ET, in perspective, we are about tied with Jay Leno for viewers and far ahead of the other late-night programs.
| "About tied?" No. For the week of August 15, The Tonight Show with Jay Leno averaged 5.4 million viewers. O’Reilly averaged ROUGHLY 2.6 million viewers at 8pm and ROUGHLY 1.2 million viewers at 11pm. That’s a total of less than 4 million for the week. Additionally, HUT levels are higher at 8pm than they are at 11:35pm.
Strangely enough, later in his comment, he admits that he isn’t tied with Jay: "We’re about two million viewers behind "The CBS Evening News," and they have 20 percent more homes than we have. So does Leno. My goal is to get close to them, CBS News, next year."
> Update: 5:57pm: "O’Reilly did not later admit Jay had more viewers, he was referring to the fact that Jay has access to 20% more homes when he said ’So does Jay.’ So if you adjust for access, Jay would be 20% lower, or a drop from 5MM to 4MM -- the same as O’Reilly." Fair point -- but networks don’t sell ads based on access to homes, so it’s still a fact that Leno has more viewers, despite lower HUT levels.
OK, so Bill wants to compare his cable shoutfest’s ratings to those of a network talk show? Apples and oranges, maybe? OK, so while we’re at it, let’s remind Bill that on an average night his show gets beaten quite soundly in the ratings by Law & Order repeats. Bill, please don’t make me remind you again. Oh, and you still get lower ratings than Leno. So shut your gob.
Dc Media Girl Permalink
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Groovy optical illusions
8/26/05 21:10:48
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Friday night fun. And you don’t even need to dip into Randall Cunningham’s 400 lb. marijuana stash!
Dc Media Girl Permalink
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A note about hypocrisy
8/26/05 19:00:41
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I should have known that as soon as I posted that item about Duke Cunningham’s kid the e-mails would start coming in. "But..but..but...you’re supposed to be a liberal! You’re supposed to understand drug addicts! You only care when the addicts are right-wingers, or related to right wingers! Hypocrite!!"
Fair enough. Let’s discuss this question of drug addiction and hypocrisy.
Let’s begin with the example of Randall Cunningham, the congressman’s hapless son. Given the description of his behavior while on bail, there’s no question the guy has a substance abuse problem. But the point of the post is that he was arrested in possession of 400 pounds of marijuana. Now, I’m willing to go out on a limb and speculate that a person holding that much dope probably doesn’t intend to keep it for recreational purposes. In fact, I think there’s strong evidence to support the theory that the kid was a trafficker. So while the cocaine in the guy’s system is interesting, it’s not the issue.
Then there’s Rush Limbaugh. Many journos and Rush apologists have made the case that he was addicted to "prescription" medications, among them OxyContin, which is true enough; the problem in his case was that these medications were not prescribed to him. In fact, unless his maid carried a prescription pad with her and operated a pharmacy out of the Denny’s parking lot, Rush’s purchase of these drugs was illegal. Period.
So why pick on them? Simple. Because it’s people like Duke Cunningham and right-wing cheerleaders like Rush Limbaugh who are responsible for the drug laws we have. It’s not progressives and liberals advocating and voting for mandatory minimums and the death penalty for drug infractions. It’s not the progressives and liberals who have scorned people with drug problems for abdicating their "personal responsibility" and self-control. It’s not the progressives and liberals who have criminalized drug addiction. It’s the conservatives. So when they or their kids find themselves on the wrong side of the law, and then use their standing to try to get around the laws they have written, voted and advocated for, let’s just say I’m not terribly sympathetic.
Dc Media Girl Permalink
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More Duke Cunningham fun
8/26/05 12:44:41
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So now it’s bribery, is it? Well, why not? Is it so hard to believe that a throw-the-book-at-’em, law and order guy may have stuck his foot in it, or, god forbid, flip-flopped on his "hang ’em high" stance when the law came after one of his? Consider the case of Duke’s son, whose lifestyle choices are somewhat at odds with dad’s suggestions of how to deal with the drug problem:
Randall Todd Cunningham: The son of Duke "Death Penalty for Drug Kingpins" Cunningham (R-Calif.) was convicted for possession of 400 pounds of marijuana. In court, the congressman cried and pleaded for mercy, explaining that his son "has a good heart. He works hard. He’s expressed to me he wants to go back to school." While out on bail, the hardworking son tested positive for cocaine use three times; when an officer tried to apprehend him following the third positive test, Randy hurled himself out a window and broke his leg. Still, the congressman -- who has denounced Clinton’s "soft-on-crime liberal judges" and railed against "reduced mandatory-minimum sentences for drug trafficking" -- won for his son the mercy denied so many others. Randy got 30 months -- half the federal "mandatory" minimum sentence.
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O’Reilly goes batshit insane on TV
8/25/05 22:35:04
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Problem? He goes after Manchester Union Leader publisher Joe McQuaid, who doesn’t put up with O’Reilly’s bullshit. I particularly love the "you’re a tinhorn" comment. This is one helluva video clip. Thanks, as always, to Crooks&Liars.
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Pat Lang
8/25/05 22:26:21
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I strongly urge you to peruse Col. Pat Lang’s fascinating blog, Sic Semper Tyrannis. You may not agree with each and every one of Pat’s opinions, but Lord knows the man’s an expert on the Middle East and the military. Look, you know that things in Iraq are getting progressively worse when the administration loses people like Pat and Larry Johnson, who under normal circumstances would be their most obvious and enthusiastic constituency. Here’s Pat on the pathetic attempts to impugn Chuck Hagel’s expertise of combat and other military issues:
I am not a big fan of Senator John Kerry. His behavior in the US after his return from duty in VN eliminated any possibility that I would ever support him for anything.
Nevertheless, the process of relentless, remorseless, cruel denigration of his character, military record and general "style" which was carried on by the friends of the president was despicable. They attacked his wife for her "foreignness." They attacked him for being able to speak French and being comfortable with his French relatives. They seem not to have known of Mr. Jefferson’s opinion that "every civilized man speaks two languages, his own, and French." The assault on Kerry was reminiscent of the kind of fascist manipulation of the opinion of the masses that George Orwell warned us of in "1984." Now it comes again.
Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska is a Republican from a state filled with conservative, (not fascist) responsible citizens. Senator Hagel was once Sergeant (E-5) Hagel of the First Battalion, Forty Seventh Infantry Regiment, Ninth Infantry Division. He was a "grunt," i.e., a Rifleman and a leader of Riflemen in a war in which Riflemen spent an average of 240 days in actual combat out of a year’s tour of duty. By contrast to this, Riflemen in the Pacific Theater of WW2, spent, on average, 40 days in combat during the whole war. In most wars, over 90% of all casualties (killed, wounded and missing) are absorbed by the Infantry. This was true in VN. The artillery does most of the killing in war, but it is the Infantry with their rifles and exposure to fire who are the great majority of the killed and maimed. Senator Hagel served with his brother in the same Rifle Platoon (44 men when I led one). I do not think that should have been permitted but there they were, together. The chance of their being killed together was considerable. Senator Hagel was wounded and decorated for his service and came home to continue to devote his life to the service of his countrymen.
Not surprisingly, Senator Hagel is still, and in some sense will always be, in Vietnam. An experience like that does not "go away." It becomes an enduring part of the fabric of life. Senator Hagel still lives, every day, with his comrades of long ago. I saw a C-Span progran recently in which a couple of people from the Library of Congress were interviewing him for his "oral history" of the experience of war. It was evident from watching his carefully controlled responses just how much it still means to him.
Senator Hagel has made it clear that he questions the wisdom of the strategic conception of the Iraq intervention, the decision to intervene and the execution of the war. It would seem to me that he has earned the right to have an opinion in this or any other matter.
What has been the reaction from the Republican Party and its "flacks?" The Kerry character assasination machine has evidently been re-activated. Yesterday I watched as a pretty boy 35ish yuppy political hack from the crowd of sycophants with whom the president has surrounded himself described Hagel (with a sneer) as "someone who has lost his way." He (the yup) went on to say that Hagel has no ideas worth listening to in the matter of the possible resemblance of the Vietnam War to the mess in Iraq. Actually, he said, Hagel no longer knows what the war in Vietnam was about.
Now, consider that. This kid was still crapping in his pants and crying for the pacifier when Hagel and his brother and Hagel’s "boys" were fighting to defeat the VC/NVA in the outskirts of Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City) but he, from the depths of his marvelous intellect knows better what VN was "about." You can see where this is going. Are these swine going to spread the rumor that Senator Hagel was an agent and informer for the communist enemy in VN? That’s what they did to McCain in South Carolina.
The Yups should be careful. Senator "Grunt" has friends.
Dc Media Girl Permalink
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Outfoxed fans like Nazis and terrorists
8/25/05 21:01:36
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According to Bill O’Reilly, of course:
Fox News host Bill O’Reilly, in his "Talking Points Memo," lumped together as "extremists" those "who think that documentary Outfoxed tells the truth" about Fox News with those who "admire the philosophy of the Third Reich." O’Reilly defined an extremist as a "someone who rejects facts and holds on to opinions no matter what," which he said was a "neurosis," and then provided a "short list of indicators." Those who believe that Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism "tells the truth about this [Fox News] network" took their place alongside those who "agree with Reverends [Jerry] Falwell and [Pat] Robertson that gays and abortionists caused God to allow 9-11"; those who "agree that Allah is OK with slaughtering civilians"; and those who "admire the philosophy of the Third Reich."
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More Ledeen
8/24/05 22:52:13
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Faithful commenter OrangeSoda scolds me for having neglected to include the following detail in my anti-Ledeen rant:
You forgot to mention the Ledeen doctrine - the idea that every ten years or so america has to take some little country and throw it up against the wall to show we mean business. That’s what he is known for.
Right you are, Orange. Thanks.
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Larry on getting out once and for all
8/24/05 22:44:10
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As Gilliard points out, it’s simply ridiculous for the right wing to characterize those who oppose the war in Iraq as the "anti-war left". For one thing, as Kos writes, just because you oppose this war doesn’t make you anti-war, full stop. Then there are people like Larry Johnson, who’s looked at the options facing our leaders and finds there’s only one that makes sense. Here’s what he has to say:
WHY WE MUST LEAVE IRAQ
by
Larry C. Johnson
Sometimes in life there are no good options. It is part of our nature to always assume that we can fix a problem. But in life there are many problems or situations where there is no pleasant solution. If you were at the Windows on the World Restaurant in the North Tower of the World Trade Center at 9 am on September 11, 2001 you had no good options. You could choose to jump or to burn to death. Some choice.
A hard, clear-eyed look at the current situation in Iraq reveals that we are confronted with equally bad choices. If we stay we are facilitating the creation of an Islamic state that will be a client of Iran. If we pull out we are likely to leave the various ethnic groups of Iraq to escalate the civil war already underway. In my judgment we have no alternative but to pull our forces out of Iraq. Like it or not, such a move will be viewed as a defeat of the United States and will create some very serious foreign policy and security problems for us for years to come. However, we are unwilling to make the sacrifices required to achieve something approximating victory. And, what would victory look like? At a minimum we should expect a secular society where the average Iraqi can move around the country without fear of being killed or kidnapped. That is not the case nor is it on the horizon.
We may even be past the point of no return where we could impose changes that would put Iraq back on course to be a secular, democratic nation without sparking a major Shiite counteroffensive. Therefore the time has come to minimize further unnecessary loss of life by our troops and re-craft a new foreign and security policy for the Middle East.
The Current Situation:
Iraq has devolved into a tri-partite state, split among the Kurds in the North, the Shias in the South, and Sunni tribes in the middle. While things are relatively peaceful in the North and South, the central part of Iraq is in the grips of a defacto civil war. Most of the trained and deployed Iraqi police and military forces are Shia. Most of their operations are directed against Sunni targets. The Sunnis do not feel that they have a legitimate voice in the political process. As a result they have decided to fight.
The Shia majority, long oppressed in Iraq, are not willing, nor likely, to relinquish their new status as the tops dogs. They are receiving significant intelligence, economic, and political support from the Islamist government in Iran. The Shia also are well positioned to control a significant portion of Iraq’s vast oil resources. They are not likely to share this wealth with the Sunnis.
There is no effective national government in Iraq. The current group meeting inside the Green Zone to draft the constitution has no real clout. True power is held by tribal chieftains and religious leaders scattered around country. Those leaders are playing both sides of the fence—keeping a toe in the political negotiations in Baghdad while providing money and protection to insurgents.
The insurgency in Iraq is comprised of at least 20 groups. Some of these are Baathists, some are Sunni Islamic extremists, and a few are Shia. They agree on one thing—the United States is an invader and must be expelled. While there is no single leader who can claim the status or mandate as did Ho Chi Minh during the Vietnam days, the insurgents in Iraq are as firm and serious as those we faced in Vietnam.
The continued presence of U.S. combat forces and our operations against Iraqi civilians is recruiting new jihadists from around the Muslim world. Notwithstanding U.S. efforts to win the “hearts and minds” of the Iraqi people, the sectarian strife and the images of U.S. soldiers kicking in the doors of peoples’ homes while searching for insurgents is creating more anger rather than support.
The Sunni insurgents have control of the battlefield in the central belt of Iraq. Even today the United States military cannot keep a six mile stretch of highway open that runs from downtown Baghdad to the International Airport. U.S. diplomatic personnel and many key Iraqi Government officials live inside a security ghetto known euphemistically as the Green Zone. Even during the bleakest days of the war in South Vietnam, U.S. diplomats and soldiers could travel freely around Saigon without fear of being killed in bomb blast or kidnapped. We don’t have that luxury in Baghdad.
Options?
We could potentially defeat the Sunni insurgents if we were willing and able to deploy sufficient troops to control the key infiltration routes that run along the Tigris and Euphrates river valleys. But we are neither willing nor able. It would require at least 380,000 troops devoted exclusively to that mission. Part of that mission would entail killing anyone who moved into controlled areas, such as roadways. In adopting those kinds of rules of engagement we would certainly increase the risk of killing innocent civilians. But, we would impose effective control over those routes. That is a prerequisite to gaining control over the insurgency.
We cannot meet the increased manpower requirements in Iraq without a draft. We do not currently have enough troops in the Army and the Marine Corps to supply and sustain that size of force in the field. But, even with a draft, we would be at least 15 months away from having the new batch of trained soldiers ready to deploy. More importantly, there is no political support for a draft. In other words, we’re unwilling to do what is required to even have a shot at winning.
While the insurgency is not likely to acquire sufficient strength to fight and defeat our forces directly in large set piece battles, they do have the wherewithal to destroy infrastructure and challenge our control of lines of communication. The ultimate test of a government’s legitimacy is whether or not it can protect its citizens from threats foreign and domestic. Thus far the Iraqi Government has made scant progress on this front. Today’s attack in central Baghdad, by a uniformed unit of masked insurgents, represents another disturbing milestone in the continued growth of the insurgency. One of these days we should not be surprised when an insurgent force breaches the Green Zone and takes some U.S. diplomats hostage.
An ideal, but unlikely outcome, is that the secularists, who are trying desperately to craft a legitimate government, will persuade a sufficient number of Shia and Sunni leaders to turn their back on a religious-based government. Unfortunately, they don’t control weapons or militia. Force remains the ultimate means for deciding a country’s fate. In this case the guns are in the hands of those who favor an Islamic state over a secular nation.
If the United States tries to intervene now to compel power sharing on behalf of Sunni interests we are likely to trigger a backlash by the Shia majority. Mullahs like Moqtada al Sadr have demonstrated that they can mobilize combat units to kill Americans when their interests are challenged.
There are some indications that once we are out of the picture that the insurgency will turn on itself. As noted earlier a significant portion of the insurgents are not Islamic extremists. There is evidence that the different groups will fight each other. Sunni tribal chiefs are not likely to cede control of their territory to foreign Islamists once the United States is no longer on the scene. Our departure will likely lead to a brutal civil war, but such a war creates opportunities for the United States where it can rebuild its credibility with those forces who represent modernity and secular progress.
So What’s Next?
Staying the course and enduring further casualties while the insurgency grows stronger is an insane policy. If we persist on that front we will end up strengthening the hand of Islamic extremists and their role within the Iraqi insurgency.
Our choice is simple either we invest in the military resources and personnel required to defeat the Sunni insurgents and allow the Shia and Kurds to consolidate power or we withdraw and let the Shia, Sunni, and Kurds find their own solution. We cannot ask our soldiers and Marines to give their lives and sacrifice their bodies for a new Islamic state. It is true that our withdrawal will create a major vacuum and damage our prestige. But the alternative, i.e., that we stay and try to train up sufficient Iraqi forces and help the fledgling Islamic Government get on its feet, will leave us the favorite target of insurgents and terrorists. And after we have shed the blood of our sons and daughters in trying to create a new government that will be controlled by Islamists, those Islamists will ultimately insist that we leave Iraq and no longer meddle in their affairs.
Rosy scenario does not live in Iraq. Until we come to grips with this truth American soldiers will continue to be killed and maimed for no good reason.
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Not in our class
8/24/05 20:10:45
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We all know about Operation Yellow Elephant, the General’s wildly popular recruitment drive. But how are actual recruiters facing the challenges of staffing the armed forces? Wouldn’t you think a nice young person whose parents sport a "Support the Troops" magnet on their car would be a ripe target? Not so fast soldier. You see, while many support the troops, whoops, I mean "support the troops", there’s no need to assume that "support" equals actual sacrifice - particularly if the kid in question is affluent and white:
There was an eye-opening article in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette a few days ago that explored the increasing difficulty the military is having recruiting young people to enlist. As has been well reported in many newspapers, including The Washington Post, the Army and Marines are having a particularly tough time meeting recruitment objectives, in part because of Americans’ concern about the war in Iraq.
When you dig deeper into the reason for this phenomenon, it turns out that parents of potential soldiers and sailors are becoming one of the biggest obstacles facing military recruiters. Even top military officials acknowledge this and unveiled a new series of ads this spring targeted at "influencers" such as parents, teachers and coaches.
But the Post-Gazette raises another issue. There has been much talk about the relationship between race and ethnicity and military recruitment. But what about social and economic class? Are wealthier Americans, who are more likely to be Republicans and therefore more likely to support the war, stepping up to the plate and urging their children and others from their communities to enlist?
Unfortunately, there has been no definitive study on this subject. But it appears that the affluent are not encouraging their children and peers to join the war effort on the battlefield.
The writer of the Post-Gazette article, Jack Kelly, explored this question in his story that ran on Aug. 11. Kelly wrote of a Marine recruiter, Staff Sgt. Jason Rivera, who went to an affluent suburb outside of Pittsburgh to follow up with a young man who had expressed interest in enlisting. He pulled up to a house with American flags displayed in the yard. The mother came to the door in an American flag T-shirt and openly declared her support for the troops,
But she made it clear that her support only went so far.
"Military service isn’t for our son," she told Rivera. "It isn’t for our kind of people."
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The General speaks
8/24/05 19:35:06
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On a typical day, the General is merely brilliant. Today he surpasses himself. Enjoy!
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McCain joins the circus clown brigade
8/24/05 18:50:21
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Can you feel it? The first breeze of autumn is in the air, bringing a little stir of madness along with it. 2008 seems so far away, yet John McCain brings the next presidential election home to us...and so soon! (Damn, didn’t we just have one of those??) Gas up the Pander Bear Express!
..McCain has a generally consistent conservative voting record but forged a national reputation after a series of notable breaks with fellow Republicans.
On Tuesday, though, he sided with the president on two issues that have made headlines recently: teaching intelligent design in schools and Cindy Sheehan, the grieving mother who has come to personify the anti-war movement.
McCain told the Star that, like Bush, he believes "all points of view" should be available to students studying the origins of mankind.
The theory of intelligent design says life is too complex to have developed through evolution, and that a higher power must have had a hand in guiding it.
Message to John McCain: The fundies hate you, man. No need to whore yourself out to a group that’s not buying what you’re peddling. All you have to lose are your dignity and self-respect.
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Awful
8/24/05 18:45:19
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With a story as tragic as the war in Iraq, it can be hard to pick one moment or one story that tips you over the edge; there’s so much tragedy to choose from, after all. Today, this story did it for me. After reading it I just cried and cried. This poor, poor man:
On the roof of an old airplane hangar outside Fallujah, spelled out in sandbags arranged as crude letters, is the Marine Corps credo, NO ONE LEFT BEHIND. In all wars, U.S. Marines take extraordinary risks to get their dead and wounded off the battlefield. Inside the hangar, the mortuary unit tries to honor that spirit as they carefully reassemble the bodies of dead Marines ripped apart by roadside bombs or shot up in fire fights.
It is grim work. Before they do their best to clean up the dead, they must find them, or what’s left of them. Traveling into combat zones, the Marines of the mortuary unit must crawl along, sifting through the dirt and blood-soaked debris of blast areas to find every piece of their fallen comrades. It takes a strong man or woman to do this work night and day. By many accounts, among the steadiest, most conscientious and duty-bound was Sgt. Daniel Cotnoir...
..last week Cotnoir stood in a Massachusetts courtroom accused of attempted murder. He was charged with firing a shotgun out his apartment window at some unruly late-night partyers, wounding two of them. After pleading not guilty to armed assault with intent to murder, he is undergoing a psychiatric evaluation.
Why did Cotnoir snap? According to his lawyer, he was defending himself and his family. One of the revelers threw a bottle at him, and his home (just across a gas-station parking lot from a nightclub) has been shot at before. But his lawyer says Cotnoir is considering claiming that he is suffering from posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a condition that may affect up to a quarter of recent combat veterans, maybe more. As more veterans return from Iraq, PTSD is sure to bring the war home in some tragic ways. Few stories could be sadder than Cotnoir’s.
Enlisting in the Reserves in 1999, Cotnoir’s specialty was fixing weapons. But when the Marine death toll began spiking up in Iraq in 2003, Cotnoir—a mortician in civilian life—was tapped for the Corps’s first mortuary unit. Marines can request to decline mortuary duty, but Cotnoir accepted. "Nobody wants to be doing that kind of job," Cotnoir’s brother, John, told NEWSWEEK. "But at the same time, Dan always said there’s honor in it. You’re taking care of a brother."
The Marine morticians are advised to keep their emotional distance: to cover the faces of the dead, to avoid perusing old letters or photos found in wallets, to not chatter about "what a great guy or girl" the dead man or woman was. There is no joking around: the unit’s motto, also written on the hangar roof with sandbags, is HONOR, REVERENCE, RESPECT. Cpl. Garth Troescher, a buddy of Cotnoir’s in the unit, told NEWSWEEK that Troescher always referred to dead Marines as "remains." "There’s no soul there. That’s all there was," says Troescher. But other Marines call the dead "angels."
A gruff martial-arts expert, but a softy on the inside, Cotnoir had trouble letting go, according to his brother, John. The father of two girls, he was hit hard by finding the sonogram of an unborn child on the torso of a Marine who had been torn into many pieces. He saw some horrific sights: according to his brother, Cotnoir helped cut down the charred bodies of the four contractors who were murdered and hung from lampposts in Fallujah in March 2004. (Cotnoir’s e-mail to his brother began, "You’ll never guess what I did today ...") He brooded over the unrecognizable remains of a Marine killed in a bomb blast. "He was telling me he was looking at it and thinking, This is a Marine, this could be somebody I know ... this is one of our guys and it looks like hamburger on the floor," recalled John Cotnoir.
My heart literally aches for John Cotnoir. How many others are there just like him? What kind of help are they getting? What can WE do to help THEM?
Dc Media Girl Permalink
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How about a nice, hot cup of STFU?
8/24/05 16:45:04
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I hate it when this happens. I hate it when Fox’s flunkies at their Ministry of Proganda say something I agree with. I just hate it:
The Holloway story has been less prevalent - though not absent - on CNN. In early July, Mr. Klein pulled CNN’s correspondent out of Aruba and dropped the subject from most CNN shows in the absence of new developments.
"It’s easy and it’s brainless," Mr. Klein said in a telephone interview, explaining why cable news outlets have gravitated to it. "They’re looking for an ongoing drama" along the lines of the NBC crime show "Law & Order," he said, adding "Except ’Law & Order’ doesn’t do the same plot every night."
Mr. Klein said that the audience that sought out news all day on the Internet was not clamoring for a rehash of the Holloway case every night. Besides, Mr. Klein said, there has been ample other news to cover.
He said that on the day earlier this month when 14 marines were killed in a roadside bombing in Iraq, Ms. Van Susteren, who was in Aruba that night, stuck with the Holloway case. "Fourteen Americans dead, and they have Natalee Holloway on," Mr. Klein said. "And they’re supposedly America’s news channel."
Fox executives accused CNN of flailing with holier-than-thou criticisms because the channel is falling farther behind Fox in the ratings. Fox’s margin in viewers over CNN has grown 57 percent since Mr. Klein took over last December.
"If Jon performed as well as he talks he wouldn’t have to explain his network’s dismal ratings," said Irena Briganti, a spokeswoman for Fox News.
Irena Briganti is absolutely right. Jon Klein is a hypocrite whose chief talent is talking and blowing smoke rather than doing what should be his job, which is elevating CNN. He’d feed himself to a shark; uh, correction, he’d feed Rick Sanchez to a shark on live TV if it meant higher ratings.
For too long, too many industry journos have allowed Klein a free pass, dazzled by the shiny objects he dangles before them ("storytelling!") rather than reporting what’s abundantly clear. The ratings suck, and Klein’s insistence on aping Fox’s formula is largely to blame. Who gave us the Runaway Bride for what seemed like an eternity? Who popped his cork over the BTK maniac? And then who blabs to the press about how stories "are overplayed", after he’s ordered his people to, uh, overplay them?
What Jon Klein needs to learn (and it’s about time he figured this out, considering that he RUNS A CABLE NETWORK) is that he can match Fox story for story, but in the end not one Fox viewer will defect and CNN’s ratings will still be in the dumper. Why? Because it’s not just the types of stories Fox covers, it’s how they cover them. Fox’s viewers enjoy tuning in to watch O’Reilly make some Aruban official squirm. Aaron Brown could invite O’Reilly’s entire roster of guests on and his ratings wouldn’t come close, because Aaron isn’t a bully and a namecaller like O’Reilly. Mr. "No Spin’s" viewers enjoy watching Bill engage in character assassination, empty threats and bully boy posturing. Aaron’s viewers would never tolerate similar behavior on his show, and indeed, he’d only lose whatever audience he has already. Fans of Fox’s primetime lineup have invested in the personas of Hannity, O’Reilly, Greta and Shep. Not only that, viewers of Fox’s primetime probably watch Fox during the day as well, because they like Fox’s slant and presentation of the day’s events (notice I didn’t say "news"). In other words, Fox has branded itself effectively, while CNN, like an old dowager, is going under the knife for the thousandth time to compete with her younger rival. After all, when faced with the challenge of how to draw more viewers, Klein’s solution was to give us 5 more hours of Wolf Blitzer per week.
Enough already. Save CNN. Someone please save CNN.
Dc Media Girl Permalink
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Blame the media, or own up to it?
8/24/05 16:22:30
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Robertson says remarks "misinterpreted":
Conservative religious broadcaster Pat Robertson said Wednesday that his remarks about the removal of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez were taken out of context and that he never called for the killing of the Latin American leader.
"I didn’t say ’assassination.’ I said our special forces should ’take him out.’ And ’take him out’ can be a number of things, including kidnapping; there are a number of ways to take out a dictator from power besides killing him. I was misinterpreted by the AP [Associated Press], but that happens all the time," Robertson said on "The 700 Club" program.
Here’s what Robertson said on the 700 Club:
There was a popular coup that overthrew him [Chavez]. And what did the United States State Department do about it? Virtually nothing. And as a result, within about 48 hours that coup was broken; Chavez was back in power, but we had a chance to move in. He has destroyed the Venezuelan economy, and he’s going to make that a launching pad for communist infiltration and Muslim extremism all over the continent.
You know, I don’t know about this doctrine of assassination, but if he thinks we’re trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it. It’s a whole lot cheaper than starting a war. And I don’t think any oil shipments will stop. But this man is a terrific danger and the United ... This is in our sphere of influence, so we can’t let this happen. We have the Monroe Doctrine, we have other doctrines that we have announced. And without question, this is a dangerous enemy to our south, controlling a huge pool of oil, that could hurt us very badly. We have the ability to take him out, and I think the time has come that we exercise that ability. We don’t need another $200 billion war to get rid of one, you know, strong-arm dictator. It’s a whole lot easier to have some of the covert operatives do the job and then get it over with.
This is hardly the first time that Robertson has been caught making batshit insane statements. So why can’t our liberal media call this man an "extremist cleric"? I think he’s worked hard for that upgrade.
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More tales from the front
8/23/05 21:16:10
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You all may wonder why it is that some of us who blog from the left do recon missions in the rightwing blogosphere. Part of the reason is to follow the wise counsel of Don Corleone, "keep your friends close and your enemies closer". Yes, there’s a bit of that. There’s also some satisfaction in being there when one of our counterparts to the right, so self-riteous and unable to admit error, falls in a pile of dung and flails in it for a bit. When that happens, I think it’s our obligation to point and laugh.
Jim Wolcott’s forays into NRO’s The Corner have yielded a bumper crop of hilarity. Witness how he does a compare and contrast of Chickenhawk Extraordinair with a Wingut Cluster Michael Ledeen, as he squares off against Senator Chuck Hagel. Ledeen doesn’t appreciate any guff when it comes to Iraq; he likes his opinions straight up with no reality chaser. Which is why Jim’s discovery of Ledeen’s shameless flip-flopping on the appropriateness of launching an attack on Iraq, which Ledeen calls "the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time" but which not so long ago he was cheering to the point of pulling a hamstring, is particularly fun. Ledeen also quarrels with the idea that a military man is best suited to judge the best time to wage war. Funny how it’s the chickenhawks who tend to make this argument. Consider Chuck Hagel’s decorations:
Hagel is a highly decorated Vietnam War veteran, receiving the Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry, Purple Heart, Army Commendation Medal and the Combat Infantryman Badge.
Now read what he experienced in Vietnam. It’s enough to make your hair stand on end:
By a freakish coincidence, Chuck and his kid brother, Tom, ended up in the same unit and the same armored personnel carrier, fighting in the 9th Infantry Division south of Saigon in 1968, the bloody year of the Tet Offensive. The two of them nearly died together -- twice.
The first time, their unit was on patrol and the man who was walking point, in the lead position, triggered a Vietcong booby trap, blowing himself to smithereens and leaving Chuck with a gaping wound in his chest that spewed blood until Tom could stanch the bleeding with bandages. Only then did Tom find shrapnel in his own left arm. The company captain had rotated the Hagel boys off the point only minutes before the booby trap exploded.
On another occasion, a Vietcong mine blew up under their APC, setting Chuck on fire. His burned face looked as if it was covered in bubbles, and both his eardrums were ruptured. Tom was knocked out cold. Chuck managed to drag his brother out of the APC, where they both came under machine gun fire. Alert comrades ahead of them heard the blast, and returned to save them. Tom was 19 at the time; Chuck, 21.
Michael Ledeen’s military bona fides:
Michael Ledeen’s decorations:
OK. So let’s move on.
I’ve decided to scrutinize last week’s Ann Coulter "column". The charming Ann has decided aim her pointy rapier-like "wit" straight at the groin of New York City. To wit:
As Republicans were saying repeatedly – captured on Lexis-Nexis for a year before it showed up in a Frank Luntz talking-points memo in 2004 – the savages have declared war, and it’s far preferable to fight them in the streets of Baghdad than in the streets of New York (where the residents would immediately surrender). That strategy appears to be working. Then again, maybe it’s just that it’s so damnably hard to find parking in New York ...
But why am I drawn to this graf in particular, you may ask? After all, it’s no more demented or mean-spirited or false than the swill she spews out on a weekly basis, right? What’s interesting to me about this paragraph is that it made me think back a few years when Ann was singing the praises of New York, a city she was about to decamp to, leaving Washington D.C. behind. According to an excruciatingly embarrassing too-much-information piece in George magazine (sorry, I can’t find it, otherwise I’d link to it), Ann was leaving D.C. because she couldn’t get any. Sex, I mean. She was going to New York, where the manly roam free, and if she got really lucky, she wrote, her moving man would be a hunka meaty rough trade. Ol’ Ann was looking forward to slumming, you see.
My first reaction was to snort with derision. After all, when you’re about six feet tall, model thin, blonde, rich and on TV and you still can’t get laid, I don’t think pulling a geographic is the solution.
Someone else who read the article had a totally different reaction to it. Writing in Salon, a young wag named Thor Hesla wrote Ann a helpful checklist to aid her in her quest for a little sumpin’ sumpin’. To this day, this article remains one of the funniest and meanest ever published in Salon. And now it’s my gift to you.
Remember: Every rose has its thorn, just like every night has its dawn. These wingers make us pull our hair out and grind our teeth, but every now and then one will do or say something so outrageous and sickening that their behavior will motivate a young talent to bud and bloom. Ain’t it grand?
But you know what? Truth be told, I’d rather the wackos kept their mouths shut.
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The wisdom of Hendrick Herzberg
8/23/05 14:56:18
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Every week he hits one out of the park. EVERY. DAMN. WEEK. I just realized that I didn’t read last week’s New Yorker, so when I finally got around to reading it I knew I had to post the Hertzberg piece. Brilliant. What he said:
I.D.—whose central (and easily refuted) talking point is that certain structures of living things are too intricate to have evolved without the intervention of an “intelligent designer” (and You know who You are)—enjoys virtually no scientific support. It is not even a theory, in the scientific sense, because it is untestable and unsupportable by empirical evidence. It is a last-ditch skirmish in a misguided war against reason that cannot be won and, for religion’s sake as well as science’s, should not be fought. If the President’s musings on it were an isolated crotchet, they would hardly be worth noting, let alone getting exercised about. But they’re not. They reflect an attitude toward science that has infected every corner of his Administration. From the beginning, the Bush White House has treated science as a nuisance and scientists as an interest group—one that, because it lies outside the governing conservative coalition, need not be indulged. That’s why the White House-sometimes in the service of political Christianism or ideological fetishism, more often in obeisance to baser interests like the petroleum, pharmaceutical, and defense industries-has altered, suppressed, or overriden scientific findings on global warming; missile defense; H.I.V./ AIDS; pollution from industrial farming and oil drilling; forest management and endangered species; environmental health, including lead and mercury poisoning in children and safety standards for drinking water; and non-abstinence methods of birth control and sexually-transmitted-disease prevention. It has grossly misled the public on the number of stem-cell lines available for research. It has appointed unqualified ideo_logues to scientific advisory committees and has forced out scientists who persist in pointing out inconvenient facts. All this and more has been amply documented in reports from congressional Democrats and the Union of Concerned Scientists, in such leading scientific publications as Nature, Scientific American, Science, and The Lancet, and in a new book, “The Republican War on Science,” by the science journalist Chris Mooney.
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Hate to be a pest, you know..
8/23/05 14:50:02
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...but please don’t forget to donate. Paypal address is dcmediagirlmail@gmail.com. Thanks in advance - every contribution is greatly appreciated.
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Another Air America appearance - fuck yeah!
8/23/05 14:34:47
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I’ll be joining the effervescent Sam and Janeane tomorrow (Wednesday) at 9:22 p.m. ET. Check it out.
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Larry Johnson on the Sheehans
8/22/05 22:16:42
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Nothing to add to this:
by
Larry C. Johnson
There are some things that George Bush should know about Casey Sheehan should he choose to sit down and talk with his mom. One thing he could discuss is the fact that a distant relative of his was wounded at Casey’s side. That boy, Brian Emmett, also is my second cousin. But more about that later.
Perhaps the conversation ought to start about the other seven men who died on April 4, 2004 in Sadr City.
From the Army’s 2nd Battalion, 5th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Cavalry Division, Fort Hood, Texas were:
Sgt. Yihjyh L. Chen, 31, of Saipan, Marianas Protectorate.
Spc. Robert R. Arsiaga, 25, of San Antonio, Texas.
Spc. Stephen D. Hiller, 25, of Opelika, Ala.
Spc. Ahmed A. Cason, 24, of McCalla, Ala.
Spc. Israel Garza, 25, of Lubbock, Texas.
From the Army’s 2nd Battalion, 37th Armor Regiment, 1st Brigade, 1st Armored Division, Ray Barracks, Friedberg, Germany was Sgt. Michael W. Mitchell, 25, of Porterville, Calif.
And, from Casey’s unit, the 1st Battalion, 82nd Field Artillery Regiment, 1st Cavalry Division, Fort Hood, Texas was Cpl. Forest J. Jostes, 22, of Albion, Ill.
Maybe George Bush could clarify why these men died. According to several press reports, they were attacked and killed by forces loyal to Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. And where is al-Sadr today? He’s a player in the Shiite community in Iraq which is on the verge of installing Islam as the basis of government in Iraq. In effect, Casey and his comrades were killed by people whose leaders are on the verge of taking control in Iraq. It would be one thing if George Bush could tell Casey’s mom and the moms of the other boys who died that their sons gave their lives to create a secular Iraq. But we now know that is not true. They gave their lives in a cause that is allowing some Islamic extremists loyal to Iran to play a major role in the "new" Iraq.
I don’t know if Casey Sheehan’s mom is specifically angry about that fact, but my cousin, Kathy Emmett-Meek, is furious. Her son, Brian, was in Alpha Company of the 2-5 Cavalry on April 4, 2004 when Charlie Company from the same Division were ambushed. Brian and his buddies were alerted and entered Sadr City to rescue their comrades. As they lept from their vehicle they were hit with a hurricane of bullets and RPGs. One bullet shattered Brian’s left tibia. An RPG exploded nearby and peppered his right ankle with shrapnel. Brian fired several clips at the enemy and only stopped shooting when he passed out from loss of blood. My cousin and his buddies were and are warriors.
Brian survived. He received a purple heart from George Bush himself during his Easter 2004 visit with wounded troops at Fort Hood. But Brian has not fully recovered. Brian’s mom ratted on him, telling me about Brian’s current state. Then, only after I badgered him did Brian himself admit his difficulties to me. Brian is trying to handle things quietly and bravely, just as he did that day in Sadr City. Yet, he still faces more reconstructive surgery. What is really tragic is that he battles the demon of survivor’s guilt. His mom tells me that, on bad days, he wonders why he was allowed to live and his buddies died. The good news is he still loves his country and is getting on with his life. What really sucks is that he is fighting the VA Bureaucracy to get his benefits. They still have not assigned him a disability status. He described his separation from the Army as a boot in the ass and good luck.
Brian and the other wounded vets deserve more than best wishes and good cheer. They have shed their blood in service to their country and deserve our full commitment.
The ultimate irony of this story is that Brian is a distant relative of George W. Bush (his mother tells me she learned of it while doing genealogical research). Well, at least there is some good news--George W. Bush can now claim he may have a relative who was wounded in combat in Iraq.
Dc Media Girl Permalink
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The REAL threat to the institution of marriage
8/22/05 18:49:20
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Sorry, Rick Santorum, but it ain’t dogs. Nor, as the right wing would have you think, is it gays, married or single. What actually destroys hetero unions is the horny rampaging amongst the marrieds. And hey, if the marriage destroyer happens to be a monsignor who’s on the record as believing that homos and liberals are undermining the Church and the institution of holy matrimony, well, just let the ironies pile up, and enjoy the schadenfreude! Thanks, Mike Signorile:
When last we heard from the rector at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Monsignor Eugene Clark, it was April of 2002, when he made headlines amid the priest sexual abuse scandal, practically calling for a new Spanish Inquisition, this time directed solely at homosexuals.
Standing in one Sunday for the befuddled and hiding Cardinal Egan – under attack for having ignored abusive priests – Clark, rector at what is arguably the seat of the Catholic Church in America, ranted that homosexuality is a "disorder" and said it was a "grave mistake" to allow gays into the priesthood, blaming them for the sex abuse scandal. Clark has long upheld the Vatican belief that homosexuals – and the liberals who support them – are bringing down society, and, of course, want to destroy the institution of marriage. He also attacked those who are critical of celibacy.
Now here is Monsignor Clark, three years later, at the age of 79, exposed last week as engaging in an adulterous affair with a married women 30 years younger, proving that the greatest threat to marriage is in fact pompous, hypocritical, heterosexual men who can’t keep their dicks to themselves even as they become octogenarians.
There is a God!
Dc Media Girl Permalink
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Star Struck giveaway
8/21/05 23:27:25
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So just in time for the Labor Day weekend, I’m giving away two copies of Star Struck, which features a very alluring picture of Pamela Anderson on the cover. The rules are simple. Write to me at dcmediagirlmail@gmail.com and convince me that you deserve to win. Get as creative as you want. Please DO NOT post your essay in the comments section; all comments will be excluded from entry. Your entry MUST BE e-mailed.
Once I’ve chosen the two winners, I’ll publish their entries on the blog.
The deadline is 5 p.m. ET this Wednesday the 24th.
Dc Media Girl Permalink
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Review: "Star Struck" by Pamela Anderson and Eric Shaw Quinn
8/21/05 23:17:56
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It’s difficult to decide which approach to take when reviewing Star Struck, the latest installment in the Pamela Anderson/Eric Shaw Quinn canon. So let’s get the basics out of the way first.
Star Struck is the story of Star Wood Leigh, internationally lusted after mactress (mactress = model/actress), star of a hugely popular show about lifeguards, who wakes up from a drug and booze induced stupor to find herself married to rock star Jimi Deed, whom she’s married in a drunken beachside ceremony. She and Jimi adjust to marriage by shagging like rabbits, all the while filming their exploits. Shockingly, these chronicles of the couple’s most intimate moments are leaked to the press, leading to anger, embarrasment and a plot twist reminiscent of Thelma and Louise.
Stop me if this sounds familiar.
The point, though, is not the book or the plot. Hell, if you’re looking for a beach read you could probably do worse; this read could certainly give Jackie Collins a run for her money, and Pam/Eric have no problem whatsoever writing blue. And riddle me this: How many new fiction books on the main table at Barnes and Noble feature a helpful, detailed guide on how to introduce anal sex into a relationship, and the rewards that await the cooperative woman who allows her man to live out his backdoor fantasy? (OK, so there’s Washingtonienne’s book. You got me). What’s really interesting is that this book is yet another indication that Brand Anderson is alive and well. And what longevity that brand has had.
What is it about Pamela Anderson that allows her to thrive where others have fallen by the wayside? After all, if enormous, fake boobs, hair extensions, clear heels and barely-there outfits were the secret to success in Hollywood, there would be hundreds of other women waiting for their turn in the limelight. How does a woman who’s had not one, but TWO videos of her gettin’ jiggy with paramours not find her career taking a nosedive?
I think part of the answer is that Pamela Anderson embodies everything that we find alluring and disturbing about Hollywood. The fake, Barbie doll appearance. The giggly party girl lifestyle. The cheesy career. She’s immensely irritating and oddly sweet at the same time. Forget Jenna Jameson; it’s Pamela Anderson who’s done more to mainstream porn - the look, the wardrobe, all of it - than any actress in recent memory. And yet how can you begrudge her success? Against all odds, she’s managed to hold the attention of the most ADD professions around: show business and the tabloid press.
So Star Struck is a glimpse into the over-the-top, melodramatic, blessed life of Pamela Anderson, the luckiest blonde in Hollywood. Consider it the Pam Inc. Quarterly Report, with updates to follow.
Dc Media Girl Permalink
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Frist bows down to Master Dobson. Harvard Medical School wonders "WTF??"
8/21/05 21:43:24
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Frist must have gotten slapped around by the fundies over his stem cell apostasy. He’s back to his old faith-based tricks:
NASHVILLE, Tenn. - Echoing similar comments from President Bush, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said "intelligent design" should be taught in public schools alongside evolution.
Frist, R-Tenn., spoke to a Rotary Club meeting Friday and told reporters afterward that students need to be exposed to different ideas, including intelligent design.
"I think today a pluralistic society should have access to a broad range of fact, of science, including faith," Frist said.
Frist, a doctor who graduated from Harvard Medical School, said exposing children to both evolution and intelligent design "doesn’t force any particular theory on anyone. I think in a pluralistic society that is the fairest way to go about education and training people for the future."
Fascinating. I’d love to know whether "Dr." Frist, in his pursuit of "fairness" in education and desire to provide access to "a broad range of fact, of science, including faith", will call up his alma mater and suggest that they include classes in alchemy to balance out the chemistry offerings? Or how about requiring that the undergraduates take courses in astrology to complement their astronomy studies?
Dc Media Girl Permalink
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John Gibson is a thickwit, part, oh, I’ve lost count
8/20/05 21:41:10
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So apparently John Gibson is a little touchy about having been the target of
criticism from the leftie blogosphere and other troublemakers, for having titled
a recent "My Word" column "Five In the Noggin", in honor of the British police
shooting that went horribly awry. An excerpt from that offering:
So for the moment, alls well. Just
catch the four bombers. Five in the noggin is fine. Don’t complain that sounds
barbaric. We’re fighting barbaric.
But - doh! - the man they killed turned out to be, uh, innocent. And
oh, he wasn’t wearing a heavy coat, or carrying a suspicious bag, or running, or
anything. He was just a guy who was killed by mistake. No connection
whatsoever to terrorism.
So now Gibson has written a grudging
followup. After getting some defensive nonsense out of the way, here’s what he has to
say:
Bombers set off their bombs with the movement of a finger.
Just putting two fingers together is enough to detonate.
So what are we supposed to do? Ask them to put down their bomb and
kindly stand trial for terrorism?
Seriously, all you people blaming me for the innocent young man
getting shot because I approve of the tactic, what is your
alternative?
It’s not enough to shout, "You don’t kill an innocent man!" We all
know that.
But what do you do with a real bomber if you have managed to chase
him down?
What is the tactic you would employ, all you justice experts who so
self-righteously decry the killing of an innocent man? You all take the time to
write to me to tell me I should be ashamed of myself and how can I live with
myself, etc. because I so callously titled the column that day, "Five in the
Noggin." So, you’re all so smart. What exactly is the solution to a man with a
bomb wrapped around his chest and the detonator in his hand?
I await your wisdom.
That’s My Word.
OK, since you asked. Listen, you bloody fool, no one is saying that
the police shouldn’t take down a guy with a bomb strapped to himself, ready to
detonate. I think we all agree that such a maniac needs to be taken
out. (As an aside, I love the "self-riteously decry the killing of an
innocent man" part. You couldn’t find such a whiny, self-serving and
idiotic phrase anywhere other than at a Murdoch-run organization). The point,
Mr. Thickwit, is that the man the police shot WAS NOT CARRYING A BOMB. HIS
FINGER WAS NOT ON A DETONATOR.
Classic, classic Fox. Set up straw
man, take down straw man, conclude nothing that is of any use to anyone.
What a dingbat John Gibson is.
Dc Media Girl Permalink
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New weekly feature
8/20/05 15:13:40
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Ugh, it’s been such an awful week, hasn’t it? I think that what we need here at DCMG’s virtual casa is a cleansing to wipe away that nasty Freeper aftertaste.
To that end, I hereby announce my new weekly feature, "What are people telling People?", which will highlight some of the stupidest reader letters printed in this week’s magazine.
What’s so interesting to me about the "reader" letters that appear on the Mailbag page is that I can’t make up my mind which option is worse: Whether the heartfelt notes have been planted by clever publicist, or if they are indeed written by actual readers; if the latter is true, then these letters open a frightening window onto America’s wierd infatuation with celebrities, and our bizarre presumptions that the famous people we idolize are our friends.
Anyway, here are this week’s choices. Real or fake? You decide:
I appreciated your Scoop coverage of Clay Aiken’s visit to Uganda for UNICEF. His voice may have been what initially caught our attention, but it’s his heart and compassion for others that make us so proud.
Wendy Nash, Cicero, NY
It was a dream come true to see your Scoop item about Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban. I’ve been secretly wishing they would hook up. Nicole deserves the love of a good man and Keith is wonderful. I hope they explore the possibility of a relationship and wish them the best.
Ify Eguna, Clemmons, NC
Then there’s Britney Spears, who is either so greedy or whose need for attention is so bottomless (or both) that she sold the photos of her baby shower to the press; er, excuse me, that would be "she shares her thoughts and photo album from her Moroccan-themed shower". Thanks for letting the fans see "what touched your heart", Brit.
Dc Media Girl Permalink
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Cindy Sheehan has an answer
8/20/05 13:26:10
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Batshit insane bigot, hater and wife/child abuser, the "Reverend" Fred Phelps, helpfully fills Cindy Sheehan in on why her son died in Iraq:
Why did your son die in Iraq? Because you raised him for the devil and Hell. You hated him. You taught him "It’s OK to be gay," and other God-rejecting lies, that brought the wrath of God Down upon this evil nation.
Why did your son die in Iraq? Because God hates America and has purposed to destroy her. They turned America over to fags; they’re coming home in body bags.
Please call the Westboro Baptist "Church" at (785) 273-0325 and let them know what you think of this style of "ministry".
Dc Media Girl Permalink
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Giveaway
8/20/05 12:33:14
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A nice publicity person, who was wise enough to figure out the mighty reach and marketing power of this blog and my influence over millions, has sent me some copies of Pamela Anderson’s new novel Star Struck, which I plan to review soon. Watch this space.
I’ll be giving one - or maybe both! - books away once I devise a cunning contest plan. Even if you don’t like to read, you might be interested in entering to win, since the front and back cover art consists of a photo of a naked Pam; a centerfold, if you will, which DCMediaboy has been scrutinizing with great interest. Again, watch this space. Contest details coming soon.
Dc Media Girl Permalink
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Costas refuses to anchor the lastest installement of MWWTV
8/20/05 11:46:11
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..for the uninitiated, that’s "Missing White Woman TV". Good for him for refusing
to pander:
While some cable TV hosts are making their living off the
Natalee Holloway case this summer, Bob Costas is having none of it.
Costas, hired by CNN as an occasional
fill-in on “Larry King Live,” refused to anchor Thursday’s show because it was
primarily about the Alabama teenager who went missing in Aruba. Chris Pixley
filled in at the last minute.
“I didn’t think the subject matter of
Thursday’s show was the kind of broadcast I should be doing,” Costas said in a
statement. “I suggested some alternatives but the producers preferred the topics
they had chosen. I was fine with that, and respectfully declined to
participate.”
Dc Media Girl Permalink
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Who do they attack?
8/20/05 11:25:03
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There’s a consistency in the targets of the right wing attack machine. It would seem that Karl Rove and his merry band of minions at Fox "News" are eager to heap a big serving of extra-special venom sauce on one particular group of people: Patriotic Americans. Let’s see who’s been in the crosshairs lately:
John McCain: McCain’s naval honors include the Silver Star, Bronze Star, Legion of Merit, Purple Heart and Distinguished Flying Cross. Spent 3 of his 5 1/2 years as a POW in solitary confinement.
Max Cleland: Captain, U.S. Army 1965-68. Awarded the Silver Star and the Bronze Star. Lost both legs and an arm in Vietnam.
John Kerry: Lieutenant, U.S. Navy 1966-70; Awarded the Silver Star, Bronze Star with Combat V, and three awards of the Purple Heart for his service in combat.
Joe Wilson: Acting U.S. ambassador in Iraq in 1991. Shielded 800 Americans at the embassy in Baghdad during Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait. Gave a press conference wearing a noose around his neck, later explaining that the message to Saddam Hussein was "If you want to execute me, I’ll bring my own (expletive) rope".
Why does Karl Rove hate those who served in the military and the foreign service with such great distinction? Why do they show their gratitude by donning nasty Purple Heart bandaids? Why does the right wing noise machine hate America?
Dc Media Girl Permalink
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More on the racist Malkin
8/20/05 10:44:30
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My father had an expression he loved to use: "Tell me who your friends are, and I’ll tell you who you are". Let’s apply those words of wisdom to Michelle Malkin, shall we? Who does she consort with? Who does she say she admires?
First off, she defends fellow weirdo racist Steve Sailer, enthusiastic contributor to the extreme right anti-immigration Web site VDARE.com. Check out his index here. She also calls Peter Brimelow a "friend" - after reading his contributions to VDARE, judge for yourself whether you’d want to associate with the likes of him. The Southern Poverty Law Center has labeled VDARE a hate group, prompting VDARE to label SPLC a "treason group" and "a crackpot shakedown operation preying on rich, paranoid old liberals".
For the record, the SPLC’s office was burned down by the Ku Klux Klan in 1983. Over the years, several plots to bomb the center and kill the SPLC’s co-founder Morris Dees were thwarted.
VDARE.com’s contributors are also fond of using the "scientific" method to arrive at their "conclusions", a la Bell Curve, which not surprisingly tend to find that brown people are far less intelligent, far more primitive, and more inclined to criminal behavior than are whites. And white paranoia is alive and well among VDARE’s contributors - consider the entry titled "Report from Occupied America: CT Congregational Minister Wants Witch Hunt For Immigration Patriot".
This is a site Malkin is proud to contribute to, whose writers she defends on her blog. Draw your own conclusions.
Here’s the thing. Malkin has been given a pass for way, way too long, because she’s an extremely useful messenger of extreme right beliefs and propaganda. First of all, she’s good-looking and telegenic. Then there are the obvious advantages of her background. Who could be more effective as a critic of immigration than the daughter of immigrants? Or a proponent of internment of the Japanese than a fellow Asian-American?
From where I sit, I don’t care what her race is, or what her background is. A racist is a racist. I’ve seen who her friends are, and I know who she is.
UPDATE: Media Matters has more information about VDARE.
Dc Media Girl Permalink
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I heart Jack Cafferty
8/19/05 13:57:39
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He was hired to be CNN’s resident curmudgeon. But something very special happened to Jack Cafferty yesterday. Like Jerry Maguire, Cafferty apparently "fell asleep and woke up with a conscience", leading him to realize that a) he couldn’t take one more second of enabling Jon Klein’s lousy ideas, b) he’s supposed to be a journalist, not a sensationalist ghoul, c) he doesn’t work for Fox "News" Channel, and d) best of all, he was on live television with a live microphone clipped to his lapel. And what he had to say, much to the chagrin of the hapless Wolf Blitzer, was this. Check out the video version, courtesy of Crooks & Liars.
JACK CAFFERTY, HOST, "IN THE MONEY": How you doing? It’s like the world’s gone mad, Wolf. I mean, what a charade. The BTK killer actually shed a tear or two during this sentencing hearing, this circus today. That was on the outside. He had to be laughing hysterically on the inside. We, the news media and the criminal justice system played right into his hands: A two-day sentencing hearing that was televised live around the world after he’d already confessed.
We ought to be ashamed of ourselves. Publicity is this monster’s gasoline. It’s what kept him going during the years he was playing cat and mouse with the cops and murdering innocent people. He loved being the BTK killer. He loved reading about himself in the newspapers, watching the television stories on the local news in Kansas, on the nights before he got caught.
Doesn’t anybody get this? This thing should have been sentenced in a closed courtroom in 30 seconds and thrown into a hole to rot. I’m a little embarrassed to be a part of the media on a day like this. The question is: How should Dennis Rader have to spend his days? If I was a betting man, and I’ve been known to be one on occasion, my guess is he’d better get busy writing that book, because I’ll bet you in six months he’s no longer with us. I’ll be the lads over there at El Dorado take good care of him and it won’t take them long.
BLITZER: Would you be surprised, once we take a look and see how many viewers were watching, not only CNN, but the other cable networks, Court TV, all the networks that were taking this live, would you be surprised, Jack, tomorrow, if you discover that, you know what, a lot more people were watching this that would have been watching CNN and the other news networks had we been doing just the normal course of the day’s news?
CAFFERTY: That’s got nothing to do with anything, Wolf, as far as I’m concerned. This is a ghoulish exercise on the part of the news media and if ratings are the reason, then I’ll say it again, we ought to be ashamed of ourselves. There was no reason to give this guy a platform to talk to everybody in the country about thanking the cops and all this garbage that he spewed.
I watched it for two hours. It’s nonsense. It doesn’t belong on television. Nobody needs to watch this stuff. All it does is inspire other nut cases out there that may be they can get themselves famous by doing this kind of -- it’s terrible and I don’t care how many people were watching.
BLITZER: Now, I’m not suggesting it was because of the ratings. I’m suggesting there’s a lot of interest around the country in this case and that viewers are interested. And remember, we didn’t only put Dennis Rader on the air and air what he had to say. The victims’ families, we allowed all of them to explain their side of the story -- heart-wrenching stories that we all heard, as well. Should we have not put them on the air either?
CAFFERTY: I don’t think any of it should have been put on the air. The guy confessed to the murders. Sentence him in a close courtroom and lock him in jail. Why give him a platform. I’ll say it again: We ought to be ashamed of ourselves. I just think it was absolutely the wrong decision to put this person on live TV and allow him to once again abuse the public and enjoy the spotlight. That’s what these clowns get off on. This is -- that’s their deal. That’s why he invented this BTK nonsense. That’s why he was, you know, playing games with the cops, so he could read about himself in the paper. We’re playing right into his hands. Does anybody get that?
BLITZER: All right. Well, I think you make an excellent point and we’ll hear what the viewers have to say. You’ll be getting their e-mail in the course of the next several minutes. And we’re anxious to hear what they have to say, as well. I suspect, Jack, you have a lot of people who are going to agree with you.
CAFFERTY: There probably might be one or two, Wolf.
BLITZER: I’m sure there’s a lot of people. Jack Cafferty, the "Cafferty File."
Dc Media Girl Permalink
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Everybody have fun tonight!
8/19/05 13:45:00
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Judy Miller is Wang Chunging away her Dance Hall Days in jail:
Jason Epstein continues to find odd ways of showing support for his jailed spouse, Judith Miller. The esteemed book publisher is currently telling friends that his wife "is having the time of her life" in prison.
..Friends of the couple said earlier reports of Miller’s suffering in jail are dated now that she’s settled in at the Alexandria Detention Center in Virginia. The hip-hop and bad food, coupled with a parade of important visitors have, they said, made the experience a novel and interesting one for her. Too, Miller is evidently enjoying all the attention she’s getting in the press and is likely to have her pick of book deals if she emerges from the ordeal with her reputation intact. In the same way Martha Stewart’s time at Alderson initiated her comeback, Miller’s internment has burnished an image tarnished by months of controversial reporting leading up to the war in Iraq. (Indeed, one Times source said recently, "She thinks she’s Martha Stewart.")
This isn’t the first time Epstein has done or said something potentially embarrassing to his wife during Plamegate. After Miller requested house arrest in lieu of jail time, Epstein joked at a dinner party that having her home 24 hours a day, seven days a week "wouldn’t be very good from my point of view," according to a July 7 piece in The Times. Now, he’s living a bachelor’s life with the cockapoo puppy Miller gave him last spring to prepare him in case she had to "go away."
The New York Sun also reported last month that Epstein was cruising around the Mediterranean just three weeks after Miller was jailed. Not mentioned in the Sun piece: Epstein was a guest of Shirley Lord, a longtime beauty director of Vogue, who is now an adviser to Silversea luxury cruises. Lord is married to A.M. Rosenthal, former executive editor of the Times.
Even if Miller isn’t enjoying herself in lockdown, Epstein certainly seems to be having a ball this summer. The Times and Miller’s agent did not respond to requests for comment.
Dc Media Girl Permalink
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You know you’re a wingnut when..
8/19/05 12:46:01
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Phyllis frickin’ Schlafly takes
offense at your comments about women. Someone set the spin cycle to
"high", please:
Previously released documents, from slightly earlier in the
Reagan era, when (Supreme Court nominee John) Roberts was a special assistant to
Attorney General William French Smith, have established that the young lawyer
was immersed in the civil rights issues of the time, including school
desegregation, voting rights and bias in hiring and housing. The new batch
provides the most extensive insight into Roberts’s views of efforts to expand
opportunity for women in the workplace and in higher
education.
His remark on whether homemakers should become lawyers
came in 1985 in reply to a suggestion from Linda Chavez, then the White House’s
director of public liaison. Chavez had proposed entering her deputy, Linda Arey,
in a contest sponsored by the Clairol shampoo company to honor women who had
changed their lives after age 30. Arey had been a schoolteacher who decided to
change careers and went to law school.
In a July 31, 1985, memo, Roberts noted that, as an
assistant dean at the University of Richmond law school before she joined the
Reagan administration, Arey had "encouraged many former homemakers to enter law
school and become lawyers." Roberts said in his memo that he saw no legal
objection to her taking part in the Clairol contest. Then he added a personal
aside: "Some might question whether encouraging homemakers to become lawyers
contributes to the common good, but I suppose that is for the judges to
decide."
After the White House, Arey went on to run for
Congress, serve on presidential advisory committees, work as an attorney at a
major law firm in the West, serve as vice president for congressional relations
for a Washington lobbying firm, and was eventually appointed in 2002 as a senior
associate commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration. She has
retired.
Roberts’s comment about homemakers startled women
across the ideological spectrum. Phyllis Schlafly, the president of the
conservative Eagle Forum who entered law school when she was 51, said, "It kind
of sounds like a smart alecky comment." She noted that Roberts was "a young
bachelor and hadn’t seen a whole lot of life at that point."
Schlafly said, "I knew Lyn Arey. She is a fine woman."
But she added, "I don’t think that disqualifies him. I think he got married to a
feminist; he’s learned a lot...."
For its part, the White House
defended its nominee. "It’s pretty clear from the more than
60,000 pages of documents that have been released that John Roberts has a great
sense of humor," said Steve Schmidt, a spokesman for Bush. "In this memo, he
offers a lawyer joke."
This is fun too:
In internal memos, Roberts urged President Ronald Reagan to refrain
from embracing any form of the proposed Equal Rights Amendment pending in
Congress; he concluded that some state initiatives to curb workplace
discrimination against women relied on legal tools that were "highly
objectionable"; and he said that a controversial legal theory then in vogue --
of directing employers to pay women the same as men for jobs of "comparable
worth" -- was "staggeringly pernicious" and "anti-capitalist."
Dc Media Girl Permalink
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Now it turns out she was AGAINST internment before she was FOR it
8/19/05 10:14:15
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Keyboard Kommandos, attack! It turns out the right wing’s new favorite Heather is a big ol’ flip-flopper!
The government has apologized and provided cash compensation to victims who were forced into camps. There is no denying that what happened to Japanese-American internees was abhorrent and wrong.
I’ll be waiting for Drudge, O’Reilly and Limbaugh to point out this inconsistency, then start going through her legal and financial records to prove some other irrelevant, allegedly "incriminating" point; after all, shouldn’t Fox "News" contributors and celebrity wingnuts be held to the same standard they apply to a private citizen whose son died in Iraq?
**crickets**
Dc Media Girl Permalink
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Let’s let Steve Gilliard to the talking
8/19/05 09:51:07
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Gilly has this to say about how the conservative momement could destroy itself by completely caving in to its bottomless nastiness, and how the racist "Heather" Michelle Malkin has become the right’s head harpy in charge. Gilly also engages in some, uh, speculation of his own. Shoe, meet other foot.
Note to wingnuts: I know that the Malkin’s first name is not Heather. I’m referring to a movie called Heathers, in which a group of nasty, mean-spirited bitches run their high school’s social scene with an iron fist and much malice.
Then you have Michelle Malkin, who for some reason, feels free to slander the Japanese Americans who served in WWII.
Now I wonder what side her Filipino relatives fought on? Were they collaborators with the Japanese? Huk rebels? Supported MacArthur? I mean, she’s been awfully silent about getting benefits for Filipinos who fought with the US Army in WWII. I mean, this is a big issue within the US Filipino community. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe she has been an advocate for these people. But if not, might the reason be that her relatives were working for the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, like Marcos did, then lied about it Or maybe they were communist rebels? Who knows?
I mean, her relatives could have easily collaborated with the Japanese, maybe rounded up comfort women for their masters. Or they could have been heroes. Who knows?
That’s as well founded as her charges that internment was justified.
Japanese-Americans were so loyal, they were drafted from internment camps. Japanese-Americans were in intelligence, artillery and infantry. Serving in the Battle of Casino, the invasion of Southern France and finally, the liberation of northern Italy. They also served as translators in Asia and the Pacific. 22 Japanese-Americans won this nation’s highest award, the Medal of Honor. Malkin not only questions their patriotism with her awful book, she stains their honor and bravery, which is unparalleled in the history of the US Army.
She writes her cruel, cheap words about people she’s never met.
If someone asks in future years, when the Conservative movement started to die, well, this would be the moment. When politics trumped human decency.
Dc Media Girl Permalink
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Pithy packs a powerful punch at the Post
8/18/05 22:14:00
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Sorry, I hate alliteration, but I just couldn’t help it...this post at the
HuffPost got me all excited. Great,
great stuff:
Perhaps, like defenders of our
strutting "bring it on" president, we should take solace in the positives. The
four hours of daily electricity. The prospect of running water equaling the
amount of open sewage. How we are fighting them in Falluja and King’s Cross, so
we don’t have to fight them over here. Yes, freedom is marching in Iraq, behind
thick concrete walls while trying to avoid crowds.
So the Left rallies
around Cindy Sheehan...a grieving mother doing noble work. She will accomplish
exactly what? "BUSH MEETS WITH SHEEHAN, PROCLAIMS HIMSELF FOOL, ORDERS TROOPS
HOME." If we came home tomorrow, we’d be celebrating...what? Witness the fetid
cockroach that is James Dobson. Multiply the power of his insanity by access to
real power and you have the madness of Shariah law. Such will be the parting
gift from our occupation.
Dc Media Girl Permalink
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Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?
8/18/05 19:24:37
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Arianna and Salon have great pieces up about the uncomfortable disconnect between the New York Times’s management’s whole hog defense of Judy Miller, which is somewhat offset (ahem) by the fact that the paper’s staff aren’t exactly taking to the barricades on her behalf.
I’m reminded of the hapless "Bluto" Blutarsky, who, after blurting out the phrase that I chose to title this post, goes running out of the Delta house expecting to lead the rest of his frat brothers in an act of willfull disobedience. Instead, he finds he’s running out alone. Somehow, his rousing speech, comparable to the "we happy few" monologue from Henry V, didn’t quite motivate his band of brothers to get with the program.
(Note to wingnuts: Yes, I realize that the Germans didn’t bomb Pearl Harbor. The phrase comes from the classic movie Animal House, which is a comedy. Just wanted to make sure you’re following along).
So here we have the rather squirm-inducing sight of NYT management publicly putting the paper’s reputation on the line by vehemently defending their incarcerated Pulitzer winner, while ordering that the paper’s legal department leave no stone unturned in defending her.
This all sounds so familiar. I’ve worked with insane bullies and crappy practitioners in many newsrooms, but as long as they had the o.k. from management these nightmare coworkers would continue their reigns of terror unabated. It usually takes a pretty colossal fuckup to get the bosses to wake up to the danger posed by these colleagues. There’s been speculation that had Judy not ended up in the slammer, her job may have been in jeopardy due to her crappy WMD reporting and her obvious "I heart Chalabi" spin, which was pretty embarrassing once ol’ Ahmed was exposed as a double dealer and a shakedown artist. I’m not sure I believe that the bosses were ready to give her the old heave-ho - getting rid of a Pulitzer winner is pretty hard to explain - but all the same, it’s interesting that the editors are so tone-deaf to the complaints against their prize pony.
Let’s see what happens when she gets out, shall we?
Dc Media Girl Permalink
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Larry Johnson enters the no-sanity zone
8/18/05 11:42:09
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So today Michelle Malkin is outraged - outraged! - at Larry Johnson for his
intemperate remarks
directed at Charles Krauthammer. Here’s what Charles K had to say:
She says she wants to ask the
president why her son died. She already knows her own answer, and her answer is
-- and she’s said this openly -- to enrich the president’s friends, meaning oil
companies and contractors. There are a lot of honorable reasons and thoughtful
reasons to oppose the war in Iraq. That’s not one of them. And to advance the
idea, as she has also, to the press of the entire world that we are in Iraq as a
matter of imperialism is to demoralize our troops, encourage our enemies, and to
encourage those who say that we are there as conquerors and not as liberators,
which can only endanger our troops, which I think is a disgrace.
Here’s Larry:
Well, well. What does Charles say about President Bush’s
multiple misrepresentations of why he took our nation to war? Nothing! In fact,
according to Krauthammer’s reasoning, to even challenge the President over what
we now know to be as patently false reasons for going to war, you are disloyal
and demoralizing the troops. The same specious reasoning has been echoed by
rightwing apologists like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Michelle Malkin and Ann
Coulter.
These apologists for Bush’s war ignore the lapses in
leadership by George Bush and his Department of Defense that truly demoralizes
the troops; things such as inadequate force strength on the ground in Iraq to
control the battlefield; insufficient supplies of body armor; lack of fully
armored vehicles for conducting patrols; and lack of a plan for victory in Iraq.
George Bush, with the acquiescence of a pliable Congress, has sent our men and
women to war in Iraq that he chose to start. Whether Cindy Sheehan’s explanation
for why Bush took us to war is correct is irrelevant. What we know for certain
is that George Bush lied to the American people and continues to lie about the
reasons we are at war....
If her son had died during an operation to kill Bin Laden
than Cindy would at least have the peace of mind to know that her son died
trying to make America safer. Instead, her son died in Iraq in an operation
whose rationale still remains unclear. But we now know for certain that at least
one of the President’s claims, i.e., that we are "fighting them over there so we
don’t have to fight them here", is no longer true. Instead of a safer America
the President has made America at greater risk of a terrorist attack by the
Islamic extremists who struck our shores almost four years ago. Since 9-11 the
number of international terrorist attacks have soared to unprecedented levels.
Last year, for example, there were almost 700 separate terrorist attacks in
which someone was killed or wounded. This marks the highest level of terrorist
activity since data was first recorded in 1968.
So, as of today, Cindy Sheehan’s son is dead along with the
sons and daughter of almost 1900 other families. The insurgency in Iraq is
growing in strength and level of international terrorism is growing. That Cindy
Sheehan is angry should not surprise us. That all Americans are not up in arms
over the recklessness of George Bush should.
Yes, all those facts can be pretty upsetting to a rank propagandist
like Malkin. I’m not surprised she’s upset. I AM a bit surprised,
however, that the chip in her head that keeps returning to talking points ("We
need to stay the course....If you oppose the President you oppose the
troops....everything in Iraq is GREAT, I tell you, just GREAT! Remember
those blue fingers? Wasn’t that just GREAT???") hasn’t overloaded, causing
a massive system crash.
And no, I’m not linking to her nonsense. If you want to read it, I’m
sure you can find her Web-based bedlam on your own.
Dc Media Girl Permalink
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Michelle Malkin stars in...
8/17/05 23:35:50
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..the brand new installment of the Poor Man’s Keyboard Kommandos. Brilliant.
Dc Media Girl Permalink
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WaPo too scared to hire Wonkette
8/17/05 23:26:47
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Told you
so. See if what Harry
Jaffe wrote sounds, uh, familiar:
The Post is notoriously conflicted about
having a “gossip column.” Whereas New York tabs revel in their many forms of
gossip, the Post considers itself too serious a newspaper to exult in bare
gossip—thus the title of its column.
Changes will take place:
“I think we’re going to make a conscious
effort to broaden the column,” says (new Reliable Source co-reporter Roxanne
)Roberts. “More local gossip, more Washington personalities in the column. When
Britney pulls another ‘oops,’ it will be in the column. But when someone closer
to home pulls an ‘oops,’ that will make the column, too.”
Riiight...unless that "oops" is a little too "oopsy" for the Post’s tastes,
like, you know, a House Speaker who takes money from the Christian Coalition and
vows to mention the name "Monica Lewinsky" at every opportunity while conducting
a 7-year adulterous relationship with a staffer (not HIS staffer, mind you, but
a staffer nevertheless).
I hope it’s a new day, gossip-wise, in my hometown paper, but somehow I doubt
it.
Dc Media Girl Permalink
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What’s past is prologue
8/17/05 20:06:06
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Remember Muhammed Saeed al-Sahaf? No, you say? Actually you do -- he’s otherwise known as "Baghdad Bob". Ah, the good old days, when day after day on CNN we’d watch the hapless Iraqi Information Minister blather out spin and disinformation so preposterous that it was actually kind of endearing. Oh, how we laughed and laughed at Baghdad Bob’s statements, so divorced from reality...he became so popular that Herobuilders turned him into an action figure (mine is sitting on a bookshelf, wedged in between Jeannie, James Dean and Cher).
What made the Iraqi Information so unforgettable was his absolute adherence to the message of the day, regardless of the rude intrusions of reality. Yes, we found it so ridiculous. How could any sane human being continue to prevaricate, clearly ignoring what everyone could see as plainly as the nose on one’s face? One would have to be living in cloud coockoo land, or totally wedded to a particular political belief, to be able to tell such whoppers day in and day out.
Which brings me to this brilliant Harold Meyerson piece in The American Prospect online. Guess what people? We have our very own versions of Baghdad Bob right here in the good ol’ US of A, and they’re not about to let the facts get in the way of a good story:
For its war in Iraq, the Bush administration relied on and benefited from the cheerleading of a group of pundits and public intellectuals who, at every crucial moment, subordinated the facts on the ground to their own ideological preferences and those of their allies within the administration. They refused to hold the administration’s conduct of the war and the occupation to the ideals that they themselves professed, or simply to the standard of common sense. They abdicated their responsibilities as political intellectuals -- and, more elementally, as reliable empiricists.
They went far beyond just making the kinds of mistakes that pundits make … In the information age, wars are not made by governments alone. This is especially true of wars of choice. When America has been attacked -- at Pearl Harbor, or as on September 11 -- the government needed merely to tell the people that it was our duty to respond, and the people rightly conferred their authority. But a war of choice is a different matter entirely. In that circumstance, the people will ask why. The people will need to be convinced that their sons and daughters and husbands and wives should go halfway around the world to fight a nemesis that they didn’t really know was a nemesis.
The delusions for which they were apologizing weren’t only the administration’s; they were their own as well. There was an odd sort of integrity to their dishonesty; they believed (most of them did) all the theories that justified the war. But they didn’t present these theories as theories. They presented them -- misrepresented them -- as facts.
Yet by some curious code of Beltway etiquette, the war hawks are still sought out for their judgments on war and peace, geopolitics, and military and political strategy. They are, in varying degrees, the journalistic equivalents of Donald Rumsfeld -- authors of disaster, spared from accountability, still bewilderingly in place.
What’s particularly galling about this group is not only that you can scarcely turn on the TV, read the paper or open a magazine without seeing their bylines over some particularly wrongheaded bit of nonsense. That’s bad enough. What really bothers me is that their "stature" is perpetuated by many people who know better. Take Bill Kristol, for example. If he wants to express his views on Fox "News", or talk radio, or in the pages of his low-circulation magazine The Weekly Standard, who really cares? What bothers me is when NPR adds him to a roundtable as if he were actually a journalist, which he most definitely is not. Indeed, as the article states, Kristol was one of the architects of this failed neocon experiment. So why aren’t the Diane Rehms and other oh-so-fair NPR hosts calling him on his culpability in this disaster? Because he’s a member of the club, of course. How and why he’s accepted as such is a whole different question - I guess there’s still a freak value in thinking that for all those years the exquisitely educated Kriston was "Dan Quayle’s brain". But whatever the reason, it’s time to vote him off the island.
You’d think that at some point, some of the green eyeshade types who review these pundits’ grossly inflated salaries would clear their throats and have a little sitdown with their editors. At some point, people who get the facts so spectacularly wrong over such a long period of time should have their pay docked, don’t you think?
Read the whole thing - it’s a keeper.
Dc Media Girl Permalink
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More for the Malkin crowd
8/17/05 10:16:43
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I know some of you Malkin fans are very poorly educated, mouth-breathing,
knuckledragging morons, and since I feel sorry for you I’d like to explain a
thing or two.
When I use the word "war" I meant that I intend to battle her over the
Internet, not that I’m literally going to form an army and march to her
home. Sorry, I know that metaphors can sometimes be confusing to the
literal-minded, so for those of you who took what I said at face value, allow me
to reassure you that I don’t start real wars. That would
currently be the province of Freepers, wingnuts and neocons, who love to talk
tough and engage in much chest-thumping while sending other
people’s poorly equipped, expendable kids to get killed and
maimed in order to establish a "democratic government" which - whoops! - ends up
as a Muslim theocracy due to horrible planning and a complete misunderstanding
of the region.
Some of you have complained about the racism of the "liberal" commenters. I
agree. I don’t accept or tolerate racism on this blog. But at some
point you’ll be forced to come to terms with the fact that your girl Malkin is
herself a racist. Deal
with it, if you even care, which I suspect you don’t.
I leave you with the following thought, left by my friend Steve Gilliard in
the comments section:
So if Cindy Sheehan was married to her high school sweetheart, when,
exactly, was that divorce and remarriage. Oh yeah, fuck Michelle Malkin. Her
retroactive call for stealing Japanese land, er rounding up the Japanese in
concentration camps, where they were then drafted into the US Army and won 22
Medals of Honor is as unpatriotic as can be. Tell the remaining survivors and
descendents of the 442nd RCT’s members that they were unpatriotic Americans who
shirked from the service of this country. Malkin is an awful person and the
people who defend her slur against patriotic Americans who served this country
with distinction are little better than Al Qaeda supporters. They hate America
and those who would defend her.
Dc Media Girl Permalink
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And now on to Hindrocket
8/17/05 08:01:41
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They make it so easy. Thanks, TBogg.
Dc Media Girl Permalink
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More on the Malkin presence
8/17/05 07:49:47
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I’ve been of two minds as to whether to leave some of the comments written by Michelle Malkin’s fans up on this site.
Some writers are genuinely confused, posting comments asking why I’m picking on her. These are the people who ignore her blatant racism and find her "interesting". Fine; we agree to disagree. But most of what her fans have had to say has been pig-ignorant, misinformed pap. Not surprising, considering the sources. One guy, in his zeal to expose my identity, did some sort of search and came up with information from my Web hosting company. Unfortunately, he found the registration information of a complete stranger, which he then posted in the comments section. Doh! Needless to say I took it down.
But there are other comments that are particularly cruel and foul; I specifically refer to the following from "zee":
A shame that Sheehan’s son had to live in that diseased womb for 9 months. Resisting her sick soul probably made him strong enough to be a soldier. Of course, if Sheehan were true to the liberal cause, she would have aborted him and none of this would be an issue. I hope that you also aren’t the usual liberal hypocrite but that you assiduously tend to the rites of your religion and practice abortion regularly. A continuation of your DNA is an unhappy thought.
I’ve decided to leave those comments up to educate readers who haven’t had the pleasure of getting a good look at the inner workings of the wingnut/Freeper mind. Take a good look and get a load of the hatemongering, the evil, and the racism these people spew. I’m sure Michelle is very proud to be represented by a bunch of half-witted, inhumane sickos.
Lastly, it’s pretty clear that many of these idiots think they’re supporting the troops by befouling my blog. Here’s my alternative.
Dc Media Girl Permalink
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Stroll down memory lane
8/16/05 10:02:12
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I’d forgotten about this: Andrew Sullivan’s Michelle Malkin Award.
Dc Media Girl Permalink
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Welcome Michelle Malkin fans!
8/16/05 09:51:12
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Wow, you’ve certainly turned out in full force. I’m sure you’re just
frustrated by the fact that you can’t post your comments at her blog, or at
Powerline, or any of those other fine right wing establishments, where freedom
of thought is allegedly appreciated. Clearly she couldn’t care less about what
you think, but I do! So keep posting here and boost my pageviews!
I’ve rounded up some of my favorite rants; you know, the ones I think
epitomize the sharpness of the right wing mind at work. Enjoy!
Oh, and what in the world is a "moonbat", anyway? Is it supposed to be
an insult? If so...ouch!
From BryanP:
Honestly, you’re insane, illiterate and blind. Insane because you’re
calling for a blogger war? What the heck is that? It’s funny, that’s what it is.
You’re going to invade her blogger territory and maybe enforce some blog trade
sanctions? hehe And illiterate because obviously you can’t comprehend simple
sentences. If you read the story about what Ms. Sheehan said immediately after
she met the President. You can see that she obviously changed her story with
political aims in mind. It worked, I mean all you sheep just go blindly where
all the big name lefties want you to go. Oh, and the difference between VP
Cheney’s daughter being mentioned and this woman’s divorce is that the Ms.
Sheehan put herself in the public eye for political gain, Ms. Cheney did no such
thing. You do know the difference between private and public, don’t
you?
From Scrapiron:
What’s the problem, did someone scoop the Media girl and get the
truth out before the lefties could come up with a lie. BOO Hoo Hoo, I feel so
sorry for the mentally retarded left wingers. Seems a study by Harvard
University reveals that 46 % of the American people need mental health care.
Let’s see, 46 % need mental health care, 2 % of the dim-wit votes come from the
graveyard. Hey, that equals the Percentage of leftie dim-wits that vote in
national elections. No problem to identify those eligable for the nut
house.
From erp:
"Michelle was pissed that Kerry stated the obvious: That Dick
Cheney’s daughter Mary is a lesbian." . . . and you and your merry band of
moonbats are in like mode because Rove stated the obvious that Valerie Plame
sent her husband on the rope-a-dope mission of Niger?
From
SonOfTheGodfather:
Wow, you lefties sure get your panties in a twist over the lamest
things. T-R-Y T-O K-E-E-P U-P... Traitor Kerry’s reference to Cheney’s daughter
is VERY different because: A) Cheney didn’t bring up his daughter (as Mrs.
Sheehan brought up her family, whom she said supported her, when they indeed DO
NOT) and B) Never claimed she was "straight" Are you kooks just so filled with
hate that it pushes all the sense out of your underdeveloped brains? Now STFU
and go get my mocha frappacino! SOTG
Dc Media Girl Permalink
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Ladies and gentlemen, the Rude Pundit
8/16/05 09:38:58
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Here he is.
Dc Media Girl Permalink
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The Talent Show humorously points out Michelle Malkin’s "inconsistencies"
8/15/05 22:52:59
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Enjoy! (Hat tip to Atrios).
Dc Media Girl Permalink
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What will Steve Gilliard’s reaction be?
8/15/05 21:40:33
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Armstrong Williams has
gone off the reservation in a big way:
When
President George W Bush unleashed hell on Iraq he no doubt had in mind visions
of global rebuilding. The administration thought that months after the invasion,
the streets of Baghdad lined with Iraqi citizens waving American flags. They
also thought that US inspectors would uncover weapons of mass destruction. This
is why they ducked their head and plowed through the international scorn. They
fully expected to supplant the horror of war with images so patriotic that they
would make the strong global opposition to the war seem short sighted.
It was a
grand idea. But somewhere along the way we were misled by the image of the
middle east we wanted, instead of the middle east that exists. Iraqi citizens
are not waving American flags. They are strapping bombs to themselves just for
the opportunity to detonate a few American servicemen with them.
The
deterioration of Iraq serves as an unmistakable reminder of the flawed manner in
which we carried out this mission. A global democracy works only when countries
trust one another. America�s insistence on burrowing into Iraq without
substantial proof that they possessed weapons of mass destruction frayed that
trust, and will inevitably sew problems into our foreign relations missions for
decades to come. It also served as a touchtone, uniting our enemies. The longer
we stay, the more people will come from all over the world to fight us�not to
fight for Iraq, but to fight against the United States.
Dc Media Girl Permalink
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It’s 7:20 p.m. on the east coast, and Michelle Malkin is still clueless
8/15/05 19:22:25
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Michelle writes that, shockingly enough, Cindy Sheehan does not speak for all soldiers’ parents, not that she ever claimed to, which I suppose is besides the point. The right wing attack kewpie doll titles her post "Parents For The War". Thanks for that remarkable insight.
Dc Media Girl Permalink
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Why Michelle Malkin must be destroyed
8/15/05 18:28:39
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I was going to do this in letter form, but I’m just not in the fucking
mood.
Michelle
Malkin has demonstrated, clearly and concisely, what I was trying to point
out below: That these wingnuts will say anything and stop at nothing to win,
while putting on a great show of taking offense when the shoe is on the other
foot.
Remember, this same bitch is responsible
for this:
"John Kerry stooped to the lowest of the low with the
shameless, invasive line that will be played over and over again on the news in
the next 24 hours."
Oh dear, what could have caused such distress? Kerry must have
really hit below the belt, right? Actually no. Michelle was pissed
that Kerry stated the obvious: That Dick Cheney’s daughter Mary is a
lesbian. Oh, and to that I’d like to add, a professional lesbian. A
lesbian who made nice coin as the professional lesbian at the hateful Coors
corporation. So remember, Kerry didn’t out her. Mary was proudly out
on her own. And why did the Cheneys, along with the right wing
blogosphere, Fox News and talk radio get all bent out of shape? Because someone
stated a commonly known fact? Or because they still have issues accepting
that the offspring of one of their pride and joy circus stallions is gay?
Remember, they just don’t care. Why Cindy Sheehan’s marital status
would in any way have anything to do with her anti-war stance escapes me, but
fair is fair.
Open war on the self-hating racist bitch Michelle Malkin. OPEN.
WAR.
UPDATE: Arthur chimes in with
this:
A few unpleasant words lie ahead. Sometimes no
others are appropriate, or just.
I was indeed astoundingly generous and unjustifiably kind when I
referred to Michelle Malkin as a vicious, lying, racist, hypocritical
bitch the other day. The truth is that she is a deeply
disgusting, unforgivable, and vile piece of
shit. We appreciate full and complete clarification on that
point, Malkin.
Dc Media Girl Permalink
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Appearance alert
8/15/05 18:16:01
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In case anyone’s hanging out near a radio on Thursday, I’ll be making a return appearance on Air America’s Majority Report at 9:22 p.m. ET (or thereabouts). And yes, I’ll be sure to wish Sam Seder a hearty "Mazel Tov" on becoming a new daddy.
Dc Media Girl Permalink
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Now here’s a guy who gets it
8/15/05 13:09:00
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Gee, why would anyone get upset that media outlets are sponsoring this Pentagon 9/11 march? Matt Mendelsohn explains what’s all to obvious to everyone except the decision makers at the aforementioned media outlets, whose signatures appear on the dotted line:
From MATT MENDELSOHN: Wow, how time flies. It was just a little over a year ago that we were snickering about some confused Illinois TV reporter who thought it appropriate to sign a Ronald Reagan tribute book, while on assignment covering a Ronald Reagan tribute. (And let’s not forget the fun part: she sicced the police on a member of the public who had the gaul to question, in that same tribute book, President Reagan’s record on AIDS.) Part of what made that story as comic as it was sad was how small market it all seemed. The reporter in question actually said in defense of her self-deputizing heroism, "Oh my gosh. He totally defamed Ronald Reagan about having no stand on the AIDS situation and HIV and all that."
Well, the Washington Post isn’t small market and its contributing sponsorship of a Pentagon march (on 9/11, of all days) doesn’t have a humorous underbelly. We’re not talking about sponsoring bobblehead night at the local AAA ballpark. There’s a war going on -- the Pentagon is in the midst of waging it and the Post is in the midst of covering it. That ought to be enough to cancel out any seemingly benign sponsorship deal dreamed up outside of the newsroom. Certainly you can go deeper and consider things like the fact that the war doesn’t seem to be going so well, or, say, that there appears to be yet another attempt here to connect the events of 9/11 with the war in Iraq, or even why an event called "Freedom March" requires participants to register their names with the Pentagon, but there’s no need to. The first argument should suffice.
Washington Post publisher Bo Jones told E&P, "If it turns out to be a political event, we would disassociate ourselves from it." How are you going to swing that? Are you going to take the banners down mid-event? His words were echoed by Post spokesman Eric Grant, who said, "The walk was never presented to us as a rally to support the war and we would be very disappointed if it took that approach." Well, here’s some due diligence: the headlining act of this upcoming affair is a faded country star who got himself back into the news with a song called "I Raq and Roll." The song manages, in one fell swoop, to deride anti-war protesters, glorify the use of smart bombs in Iraq, and make Lee Greenwood’s "God Bless The U.S.A." actually seem complex. So much for the no-connection-to-the-war argument and so much for a dignified tribute to the victims of 9/11.
Jim Farley, vice president for news at WTOP, another contributing sponsor of the march, defended his station’s support by saying, "They’re supporting American troops worldwide, supporting troops, not the policy, and they’re honoring people who died in the Pentagon attack on 9/11." Not the policy?? Um, the Pentagon is the policy. How can you separate the two? With major news organizations displaying such a staggering level of naivete, leave it to Joshua Huck, a junior anthropology major, to write a dead-on editorial Friday in The Daily Texan. He described the whole affair as "a scene that seems to have been taken directly out of Trey Parker’s and Matt Stone’s political satire "Team America."
In the coming weeks these organizations will spend more energy defending their misguided stance than probably went into the original decision to take part. Rather than take a page from the Miami Herald’s DeFede playbook ("Thou shall never admit to a decision made in haste") the Post et al. should simply admit that they were wrong and pull out.
Dc Media Girl Permalink
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24 hours after announcing commencement of Operation Reach-Out, Wolcott closes up shop
8/15/05 11:55:06
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I hope those of you who still harbor champagne wishes and caviar dreams about John McCain have read Jim Wolcott’s latest blog entry, in which he drives a dagger through the heart of the "McCain is secretly one of ours" foolishness. Writing about Senator Straight Talk’s latest Fox News Sunday appearance, Jim observes:
McCain will hear none of this defeatist talk (about U.S. troops leaving Iraq). "We can’t afford to fail," he emptily intoned, and then cleaved to Bush, claiming that Bush is no cold-hearted monster with no time for a Cindy Sheehan, no: "He cares, and he grieves."
Message: He cares. Bring ’em on. Watch this shot.
It was also clear from the tone of McCain’s remarks that he favors military action against Iran. It’s difficult to think of any military action he wouldn’t favor.
This man is too dangerous to let anywhere near the presidency. He’s simply Dick Cheney with a better backstory.
Maybe - just maybe - Jim’s blog entry is the pebble that starts the avalanche. Since 2000, way too many lefties, who would normally be smart enough to know better, have fallen under the spell of this "maverick" senator, secretly hoping he’d come along and rescue us from the wildnerness. Consider this article from The Nation, which nicely sums up the delusion that has gripped the Democratic party for low these many years:
...The best Democrat may be someone who’s no Democrat at all: Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). As a war hero who’s hawkish on foreign policy, he more than matches Bush on the military front. As a reform-minded foe of corporate welfare, Big Tobacco, and the Republican right, he is peerless. McCain is Bush’s most vociferous critic, voted against the president’s tax cut, forced his hand on campaign finance reform, and federalized airport security in the face of White House opposition. He has co-sponsored numerous bills with Democrats--many of them in the presidential-aspirant class--requiring background checks at gun shows (Lieberman), a patients’ bill of rights (Edwards), better fuel-efficiency standards in cars and SUVs (Kerry), and expanded national service programs (Bayh). He is even drafting a bill with Lieberman to reduce greenhouse gasses and mitigate global warming. As Ronald Brownstein remarked recently in the Los Angeles Times, "[McCain] has become the most hyphenated name in Washington."
Given the near hopelessness with which most Democrats view their 2004 prospects, it’s pretty easy, if you’re a Democrat, to make the case that McCain should switch parties outright to pursue the Democratic nomination. The difficult part is imagining McCain making the switch. He is, after all, a lifelong Republican. It’s not clear that he wants to run for president again. And it’s assumed that if he does, it will be as a Republican or, more likely, as an independent. McCain has said that he won’t leave his party sufficiently often that one feels compelled to take him at his word. But his rationale--that he’s a Teddy Roosevelt Republican--has remained fixed, even while he’s gravitated toward moderate Democratic beliefs. His protestations are beginning to ring hollow. He is keenly aware that the GOP is no longer the party of Roosevelt. That an unfailingly pro-business president embodies the party’s moderate wing only underscores the GOP’s drift to the right; there is no room in its ranks for a maverick like McCain. At the same time, McCain has made a dramatic shift leftward. As his vote against the Bush tax cut showed, he is no longer in any meaningful sense a contemporary Republican. It’s time he recognized this and that Democrats exploited it. Because if McCain truly desires to be president, his best chance of winning may be to run as a Democrat.
McCain, of course, rather than continue to be a straight talk hero and opponent of Bush, whose campaign spread rumors about McCain’s mental stability, his wife’s drug addiction and his "black" daughter, had gone back to supporting his party’s nominee in 2004. So it’s time to cut the cord. He’s not now, nor is he likely to ever be, a Democrat, so it’s time to let that go.
Dc Media Girl Permalink
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Review: "Four Brothers"
8/15/05 11:36:31
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DCMediaboy and I ventured out in the stifling heat last night to see Four
Brothers, which under normal circumstances I would have waited to rent from
Netflix, but the ’Boy’s insistence coupled with my being in the tank
for Marky Mark and Andre 3000, persuaded me to brave the heat.
Following are my impressions, starting with the previews:
- Get Rich or Die Tryin’: Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: A
guy growing up on the wrong side of the tracks pursues his dream of becoming a
famous rapper, with 50 Cent in the Eminem role.
- The Cave: A bunch of nobody actors find themselves in a truly
terrifying situation: Stuck right in the middle of an Alien
ripoff.
- Aeon Flux: The movie makers should have cut to the chase and named
this tired looking Matrix ripoff Charlize Theron In A
Catsuit, since as far as I can tell that’s the plot device the action turns
on. As an aside, back in the 80s I used to sport the exact same black
assymetrical bob Charlize rocks in this movie, yet I looked nothing at
all like her; as a matter of fact, she looks great while I looked
ridiculous. I wonder why that is?
- Jarhead: This one looks promising, even though it stars Jake
Gyllenhaal. I guess I missed the memo outlining how he’s supposed to be the Next
Big Thing.
As for Four Brothers, I really dug it, and not just because I get a
kick out of watching men engage in horseplay involving homophobic jokes, guns,
fists and good-natured roughhousing. One of the great things about this
film is that there’s a wonderful race-neutral quality to it: Black and white
characters love and hate each other, but for reasons having more to do with
power struggles than deep racial divisions. One particularly cool thing is
that the doting family man of the film is Jeremiah, played by Andre 3000.
It’s a film where black characters don’t exist merely to be over-the-top,
cartoonish criminals (there’s plenty of that to go around in this film) or to
edify white people with their wisdom. The downside of this film is that
there’s a stark Madonna-whore quality to the female characters; among the latter
category is one of my favorite stereotypes, the hot-blooded, oversexed
Latina. But whatever - who else plays rough trade as well as Mark
Wahlberg?
On another note: If I worked for the Detroit Chamber of Commerce, right about
now I’d be on the horn trying to woo a filmmaker to set a movie like
You’ve Got Mail in my city. Between Four Brothers and
8 Mile, the city comes off as a dirty, violent hellhole. Maybe a
good romantic comedy, lovingly filmed, could turn that image
around.
Dc Media Girl Permalink
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More on the "liberated" woman of Iraq
8/15/05 09:56:32
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Yes, it sounds like Iraq is certainly on its way to becoming a "flourishing democracy" in the Middle East, if by "democracy" you mean a sharia-based theocracy where mullahs rule and women are reduced to the level of chattel. Freedom is on the march!
Aug. 13, 2005 | War-ravaged Iraq will release a final draft of its constitution on Monday. Six months in the making, the document is supposed to serve as a blueprint of democracy and equal rights for all citizens. But the religious and ethnic power grab that, in the wake of Saddam, has fractured the country into Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish mini-states, does not bode well for women. Since the fall of the Baath regime to the Americans, practitioners of political Islam in both the Shiite and Sunni communities have risen to power, with Iran looming large in the background. Should their fundamentalist tenets dominate the constitution, say women’s rights activists in Iraq and the Middle East, individual rights for women may be nowhere in sight in the new Iraq.....
according to several women’s rights groups, current drafts of the constitution lack significant protections and rights for women that would be considered basic in any modern society. Most ominously, says Azam Kamguian, coordinator of the Committee to Defend Women’s Rights in the Middle East, Sharia, or strict Islamic law, threatens to overshadow the constitution. "Ever since 1990s, when Saddam Hussein brought Islamic elements into the legal system, education and the personal status code, and allowed polygamy, women still had basic rights," she says by e-mail. "Now in the aftermath of the occupation of Iraq, with the rise of Islamic currents, the issue of subordinating women’s rights to the Islamic Sharia law seems to be a matter of extent."
Iraq’s provisional constitution of 1970, at least until the 1990s, held a fairly progressive family law process. Iraqi women had access to education, the ability to refuse arranged marriages, and the right to full inheritance; their testimony counted in court; and they had a fighting chance to keep custody of their children if divorced or widowed. Islamic family law would change these rights, and not to women’s advantage. Activists say that, judging from drafts of the constitution revealed so far, a woman’s right to a divorce without her husband’s consent, custody of male children past a certain age, and inheritance would be diminished, and she would not longer be considered equal to a man in the law’s eyes.
"Previously, women, although politically oppressed, had their minimal rights, could marry [whom they wanted], not get killed for the honor of men, not [be] forced to wear [a] Hijab, and many things that will follow if the Shiite push enough for an Islamic constitution," Kamguian writes. "Islamists push for Islamisation, killing, genocide, etc., [and] then they say we are preserving Iraq’s Islamic identity. For many decades people were living their lives without an active role of religion in it, at least in the most important areas of their public lives."...
Today, in parts of Iraq controlled by Sunni insurgents, women are ordered to wear a veil; in the Shiite-dominated parts of Baghdad and the south, they face the same, albeit slightly less violent, pressures. And Western media and women’s groups have seen a rise of "honor killings" by men of female family members.
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"Books? I’ve never read one, says Posh"
8/15/05 09:47:10
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Shocker:
Victoria Beckham has her name on the cover of one autobiography while her husband has brought out two.
But the former Spice Girl claims she has never actually read a book.
She told a Spanish journalist that she prefers magazines and music.
"I haven’t read a book in my life," she said. "I haven’t got enough time. I prefer to listen to music, although I do love fashion magazines."
Dc Media Girl Permalink
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This article made me laugh
8/13/05 14:10:45
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But not in a "ha ha funny" way. The parts I find particularly interesting are highlighted in red. From the Washington Post:
The decision by the abortion rights group NARAL Pro-Choice America to pull an incendiary ad attacking President Bush’s nominee to the Supreme Court has produced a fresh round of recriminations within the Democratic Party and a return to a nagging question: Has the opposition lost its nerve?
When conservatives complained about the ad -- which suggested that nominee John G. Roberts Jr. condoned violence against abortion clinics -- a number of prominent liberals joined in the criticism and elected Democrats ran for cover rather than defend the ad, which was dropped.
Amid similar criticism against another controversial ad, most Republicans brushed aside demands to repudiate Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, a group that had taken aim at John F. Kerry’s war record. Some Democrats said the difference revealed on their side an ambivalence about modern political combat that helps explain why their party is out of power.
"Republicans don’t mind running an ad that’s entirely false, but Democrats have never learned, and I’m not sure many of them want to learn, how to play that kind of politics," said Robert Shrum, an adviser to several Democratic presidential campaigns. NARAL had to pull the ad, he said, because "they weren’t getting support from any substantial quarter."
Democratic strategist Chris Lehane, who like Shrum favors hardball politics, protested that "we Democrats bring a well-thumbed copy of Marquess of Queensberry Rules while the other side unsheaths their bloody knives, with a predictable outcome." Lehane said the NARAL ad "was great, and exactly the type of offensive that breaks through in the modern age."
Republican operative Greg Mueller, who advised the Swift boat group, said the NARAL ad was pulled not because of Democratic wavering but because "it was so false, so outrageously false, that they were hurting the Democratic Party." He said Republicans have done "nothing even close" to that level of dishonesty.
The NARAL case was the latest incident to provoke Democratic recriminations. In June, Democrats demanded that Bush aide Karl Rove apologize for saying that liberals wanted "therapy and understanding for our attackers." Rove refused to apologize, and Republicans leapt to his defense. Just before the Rove episode, Republicans demanded an apology from Richard J. Durbin (Ill.), the number two Democrat in the Senate, who likened U.S. treatment of prisoners in Guantanamo Bay to techniques used by Nazis. Democrats joined in criticizing Durbin, who eventually delivered a tearful apology on the Senate floor.
Republicans say that they have been no more severe or dishonest in their rhetoric than the Democrats, and that they are no more apt to circle the wagons than Democrats are. "They play as nasty and as dirty as you can," said GOP strategist Grover Norquist, who called the NARAL ad a success because "they got the cheap shot out there."
While both parties have participated in their share of nasty and dishonest politics over the years, a number of Democrats have come to the conclusion that they need to be tougher. "You can’t blame your opponents for applying a strategy that beats your brains out," former president Bill Clinton said in a speech last month, in which he mocked Democrats for responding to attacks like Pavlov’s dogs by saying, "Oh, how mean they are."
"You can’t ask them to stop being mean to us," the former president said. "You’ve got to be tough enough to beat it."
But the Democrats have had trouble shedding a tendency to complain. When GOP ads in 2002 showed images of Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein and portrayed Sen. Max Cleland (D-Ga.) as soft on terrorism, Democrats howled. But a version of the ad continued, and Cleland, who lost limbs in Vietnam, was defeated.
Democratic protests were similarly ignored in the 2004 campaign, when GOP ads said the president’s critics attacked him "for attacking the terrorists." More recently, Democrats have complained about conservative charges that their opposition to some of Bush’s judicial nominees means Democrats are anti-Christian -- but the accusations persist.
A number of Democrats still say the party’s best hopes are on the high road. "We have to define the reckless left of our party and differentiate ourselves," said former Clinton aide Lanny Davis, who denounced the NARAL ad. He said such "smear and innuendo" has caused his party to lose recent elections.
Still, there is evidence of Democratic punches pulled. In the 2000 campaign, some aides to Al Gore proposed an ad juxtaposing Gore’s service in Vietnam with photos from Bush’s days as a young sports cheerleader -- but the idea was dismissed as inappropriate.
Some Democratic operatives say their trouble is congenital. "The problem is our politically impractical insistence on always residing on the moral high ground," said Jim Jordan, who was a longtime adviser to Kerry. "A large part of our ethos goes to what we perceive to be moral superiority and the sad truth is in politics that’s sometimes inconvenient."
But if this is the case, it was not always. Few who remember the treatment of Robert Bork, Clarence Thomas or Newt Gingrich would assert that Democrats have trouble being mean. Nor are Democrats always inclined to eat their own: When Clinton was impeached, Democrats were almost unfailingly loyal, while Republicans have turned on party leaders such as Gingrich, Trent Lott and Bob Livingston.
David Sirota, a former congressional aide who is forming a group of liberal state legislators, said the behavior has been learned. "Washington Democrats are afraid of their own shadow," he said. "They’ve internalized all the Republican attacks and made it part of their psychology. It’s like if you’re a kid and you’ve been bullied you begin to think you’re a wimp."
Republicans, attacking the NARAL ad, trumpeted the finding of the nonpartisan FactCheck.org that the abortion group’s ad was "false" and "misleading." But that same organization had labeled the Swift boat ads "dubious" and found "a serious discrepancy in the account of Kerry’s accusers," which was at odds with military records.
But Mueller said he never considered pulling the Swift boat ads when Democrats reacted with fury and independent arbiters declared the ads to be misleading. "There was never any question in our minds," he said.
So there’s a lot going on here. This is what stood out for me:
- While it may be true that the Democratic establishment is still clutching the pearls and fighting off the vapors when in a dogfight, this is not true of the leftie blogosphere. It would have been nice if Dana Milbank had interviewed some left wing bloggers other than David Sirota (and why wasn’t he identified as a blogger in the piece?) to get another point of view, and a glimpse into the sea change that official Washington is going through.
- For Milbank to identify Shrum as someone who favors "hardball politics" almost made me shoot vitamin water out of my nose. Excuse me, as evidence by what, exactly? The way that the Kerry campaign sat on its hands a year ago during the Swift Boat assault, doing nothing? Let’s put it this way: As a campaign strategist, Shrum is a helluva speechwriter. It’s too bad that it took 7 losing presidential campaigns and millions of dollars before Shrum was run out of town.
- Notice Greg Mueller’s comment at the end of the piece. "There was never any question in our minds". Indeed, why should there be? Why drop a winning strategy? Hey, if they can sleep at night after smearing war heroes to promote chickenhawks (Mueller worked on Pat Buchanan’s presidential campaigns), then what’s the problem?
I don’t know about you, but I for one am sick and tired of having these people represent us and our candidates on television, in print, on radio and during campaign season. Quite frankly, I find these people pathetic. The fact that they enrich themselves while coasting on a record of failure is simply unacceptable, which is one of the main reasons they’re so terrified of the left wing blogosphere. Oh, and Chris Lehane, thanks for taking money from the Murdoch Death Star. Way to enhance your credibility, buddy.
Dc Media Girl Permalink
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On Cindy Sheehan
8/13/05 13:13:15
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Jeez. I turn my back for just one minute and what happens? A full scale argy bargy erupts, pitting John Cole, Erik Erickson at redstate.org, Michelle Malkin, Bill O’Reilly and Instapunk against TBogg, Atrios, Steve Gilliard, The Editors over at the Poor Man and the DKos crowd, not to mention the entire left wing blogosphere. At issue: Cindy Sheehan: Media Whore or not? Left wing puppet/tool or not?
I have to ask the Right: You’re all kidding, right? Because trying to use that bullshit "she was for President Bush before she was against him" argument is just absurd. The thought that a grown woman could - wait for it - change her mind about something isn’t all that shocking, is it, particularly since the woman in question lost her son in combat? And as far as Cindy’s argument becoming "politicized", or her willingness to be "used" by "left-wing groups", again, are you kidding? Because maybe the whole Schiavo mess has slipped the Right’s minds, but I seem to recall several political figures, right wing bloggers, and a whole slew of unsavory characters with criminal backgrounds hijacking that poor woman for political purposes, even to the point of accusing her husband of having tried to murder her years ago, or insisting that Terri was responsive and alert when she was neither. Oh, and as a special added bonus, we had the Senate’s self-appointed doctor, Bill Frist, making a mockery of his medical education by issuing faith-based diagnoses. Remember, his diploma reads "Harvard Medical School", not "Joe’s Medical Hut - Diplomaz While U Wait". Nice way to disgrace your profession and your alma mater, doc.
Let’s not think for a minute that Tom DeLay, for example, used Terri’s parents’ awful situation to distract attention from his own, uh, legal and ethical issues. Remember, this is the same Tom DeLay who spearheaded the impeachment of Bill Clinton, not for political reasons, mind you, but to "uphold the honor and integrity of the office of the presidency". Before the House voted to impeach in 1998, a Congressman friend of mine told me that Tom DeLay was making the rounds of the House office buildings, dropping in on Republican members to "talk about the constitution"; the member actually made air quotes with his fingers while telling me this and followed up with a wink in case I’d missed the irony. This guy was a right-winger and totally on the reservation, and even he was having trouble vomiting out that ridiculous talking point. Sure, DeLay was "talking about the constitution", if by "talking about the constitution" you mean arm twisting; threatening to pull committee assignments, campaign funding or to run a challenger in the primary; bullying and blackmailing in order to get his way, uh, I mean "persuade the member to vote his conscience". No, there’s nothing remotely political about that.
Spare us the rest. Stop infantilizing Cindy Sheehan and get over it.
Dc Media Girl Permalink
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Are you listening, Bob Somerby?
8/12/05 19:24:41
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For about the billionth time, IT’S NOT ABOUT JOE WILSON OR HIS CREDIBILITY.
It’s about the exposure of a COVERT CIA OPERATIVE. Jeez:
The
pundits say the law that protects covert agents’ identities won’t put anybody
away in this investigation. Here’s why they’re wrong.
By Elizabeth de la Vega
PUNDITS RIGHT, left and center have reached a rare
unanimous verdict about one aspect of the grand jury investigation into the
Valerie Plame leak: They’ve decided that no charges can be brought under the
Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982 because it imposes an impossibly
high standard. Christopher Hitchens, for instance, described
the 1982 act as a "silly law" that requires that "you knowingly wish to expose
the cover of a CIA officer who you understand may be harmed as a result."
Numerous other columnists have nodded their heads smugly in
agreement.
Shocking as it may seem, however, the
pundits are wrong, and their casual summaries of the requirements of the 1982
statute betray a fundamental misunderstanding regarding proof of criminal
intent.
Do you have to intend to harm a CIA agent or
jeopardize national security in order to violate the Intelligence Identities
Protection Act? The answer is no.
Before presenting any case, a
prosecutor like special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald in the Plame case has to
figure out "the elements of the crime." Parties can argue about whether the
elements have been proved beyond a reasonable doubt, but neither side can add,
delete or modify the elements even slightly to suit their arguments. Why?
Because they come from the exact wording of the statute.
This is what the
Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982 says:
"Whoever, having or having had authorized access to classified
information that identifies a covert agent, intentionally discloses any
information identifying such covert agent to any individual not authorized to
receive classified information, knowing that the information disclosed so
identifies such covert agent and that the U.S. is taking affirmative measures to
conceal such covert agent’s intelligence relationship to the U.S." shall be
guilty of a crime.
So what, exactly, does the prosecutor have to
prove about the defendant’s state of mind under this law? Simply break down the
run-on sentence. The defendant must "intentionally disclose" the information. To
determine what "intentionally disclose" means, you must follow some basic rules
of statutory construction. First, you look to see if the word is specifically
defined within the statute itself. For example, the term "disclosed" is defined
in the act to mean "communicate, provide, impart, transmit, transfer, convey,
publish or otherwise make available."
The word "intentionally" is not
defined in the statute, so you have to turn to the second rule of statutory
construction, which is to see if it is defined or interpreted in applicable case
law.
There is little case law on the statute itself. But there’s a wealth
of case law interpreting the term "intentionally" because it is a term of art
found in nearly every criminal statute. Its meaning is well-established and
straightforward. It simply means "on purpose, not by mistake or accident." So if
someone runs off the bus and accidentally leaves behind papers that expose an
undercover CIA agent’s identity, no crime has been committed because Element 2
can’t be proved.
Nowhere does this statute require proof that the
defendant "wished to harm" an undercover agent or jeopardize national security.
The reason why someone disclosed the information — whether for revenge, to
prevent the publication of a story or to harm the U.S. — is an issue of motive,
not intent.
Merely semantics, you say? In criminal law, it’s nonetheless
a key distinction. Motive is why someone acts; intent is the person’s
purposefulness while doing so. If you accidentally take home your neighbor’s
Gucci bag from the block party, there’s no crime because you didn’t act
intentionally. (You do have to give it back, though.) If you grab your
neighbor’s bag on purpose, you’ve acted intentionally and you could be guilty of
theft. It matters not a whit whether your motive was to get revenge on your
neighbor for making too much noise or to get extra cash to hand out to the
poor.
There are two other elements in the statute that relate to state of
mind: The prosecutor has to prove that the defendant knew the information he or
she was disclosing "identifies" the covert agent and that the U.S. was taking
affirmative measures to conceal that agent’s intelligence relationship to the
U.S.
What does "identify" mean in this statute? Well, there is no
specific definition and no case law to look to. So you turn to the third rule of
statutory construction, which simply says that you apply the everyday meaning of
the word. Perhaps, in a through-the-looking-glass world, someone could decree
that to identify means to "name" and nothing else, but the statute doesn’t say
that; nor is that how ordinary people would use the word. There are obviously
myriad ways to identify a person besides naming them, but unless a man were a
polygamist, a reference to his wife would certainly suffice.
NONE OF US
can presume to know the universe of facts that have been uncovered in the
Fitzgerald investigation. On the contrary, at the risk of sounding like Donald
Rumsfeld, we can be quite sure that there is much that we do not know, and that
some of what we think we know is wrong. It would be presumptuous to declare that
the Intelligence Identities Protection Act is definitely still under
consideration in the grand jury proceeding. But it is equally presumptuous — and
illogical — to declare that it is not under consideration, especially when the
opinion is based solely on mistaken assumptions about the requirements of the
law.
ELIZABETH DE LA VEGA recently retired after more than 20 years as a federal
prosecutor in Northern California. A longer version of this article is appears
on www.TomDispatch.com
Dc Media Girl Permalink
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And this is the same group that complains about affirmative action
8/12/05 16:59:35
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I almost forgot to post this little gem, which appeared in the Washington Post the other day:
There’s increasing chatter that the FBI is getting ready to name the head of its new super-spy agency, the National Security Service.
The NSS, which combines the FBI’s counterterrorism shop, the criminal investigations folks and the intelligence directorate, is part of the latest big reorganization at the FBI with the goal of improving its ability to deal with the post-Sept. 11, 2001, world of fundamentalist Islamic terrorism.
And so who’s most prominently mentioned for the job? Naturally it would be Gary M. Bald , now executive assistant director for counterterrorism and a man who has testified that he knows precious little about Islam or the Middle East and does not think it is important to know such things.
In his recent testimony in a job discrimination lawsuit, Bald said he got his terrorism training on the job when he went to the FBI headquarters two years ago, according to transcripts obtained by the Associated Press. When asked whether he had much knowledge of Middle East culture and history, he said: "I wish that I had it. It would be nice."
FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III and other top folks said it is leadership skill, not subject matter knowledge, that’s important.
Mueller defended the selection of Bald as counterterrorism chief because he had run the Baltimore field office, which had a terrorism program, and had run the Washington sniper shootings investigation. (They’ve stopped looking for that white van.)
"Running the office gave him some exposure to terrorism," Mueller testified in the lawsuit, according to the AP. "Yes, I think absolutely it would give, contribute to his ability to handle counterterroism."
Apparently he was not joking. National Director of Intelligence John D. Negroponte has sign-off authority over the appointment.
Well, it won’t matter much who gets the job. Most of these folks are said to spend the better part of the day in meetings, jousting over the budget and trying to figure out how to stick it to the CIA.
I feel safer already.
Dc Media Girl Permalink
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Because this time it’s true
8/12/05 16:18:49
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There’s an episode of Yes Prime Minister called "Conflict of
Interest", where Sir Humphrey is caught scheming to install his candidate as
head of the Bank of England. He implores the PM and his political director,
Dorothy, to believe him when he says "I am entirely on your side." The
political director, unconvinced, asks him how she can believe him.
Humphrey responds "Because this time it’s true!"
If you haven’t seen Yes, Prime Minister, I urge you to open a new
window this minute and order it from Netflix. Or better yet, just go ahead
and buy it. It’s the best damn show ever made about politics,
period. It’s totally cynical and features a cast of characters who are
alternately foolish, venal, selfish and manipulative. It ain’t no goody
two shoes West Wing, thank goodness.
But this post isn’t about YPM. It’s about Jack Shafer’s crusade to poo poo all the
scary stories about crystal meth, which he’s been posting on the pages of
Slate.
Look, I feel Jack’s pain. He’s absolutely right that drug reporting is
uniformly disgraceful (marijuana is "addictive" and a "gateway drug"? Come
on). It’s also true that most reporters who write about drugs and drug
addiction have probably never met an actual drug addict, or (God help us)
experimented with drugs themselves.
So based on Shafer’s series of critical stories about coverage of crystal
meth, I’m willing to bet he’s never met a tweaker in his life. Which is
why what he’s written about the crystal phenomenon is completely bogus.
Jack is right that much of what’s being written about crystal now is patently
ridiculous. There’s simply no way to estimate how many addicts there are
currently, or what causes "meth mouth", which Shafer insists doesn’t exist. Make
no mistake: it does. Why crystal users have such awful teeth isn’t much of
a mystery; it’s amazing what 24 hour tooth grinding, malnutrion and chain
smoking will do to one’s dental hygiene. There’s also no question that the
drug is almost instantly addictive, that the manufacture of the drug is
exceptionally dangerous (there’s no one I’d rather NOT have around chemicals and
open flames than a paranoid, twitchy tweaker), and that the drug causes
insanity, paranoia, elevated rates of suicide and premature death from heart
attack. In short, while some of the reporting may be bullshit, believe the
bottom line: Meth is one of the most dangerous drugs in circulation today.
If you’re skeptical about the press reports and are inclined to believe Jack
Shafer’s downplaying of said dangers, just remember that the press may be
incredibly ignorant about drugs, but even a blind pig can find a truffle.
Believe the hype because this time it’s true.
Dc Media Girl Permalink
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At last, Tara Reid finds a niche
8/12/05 15:49:58
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So while channel surfing during a late workout the other day, I caught a bit
of E!’s new Tara Reid showcase, Wild On Tara. And what a show
this is. It appears that some producer finally figured out a way to
showcase Tara Reid’s strengths, which consist of flaunting her enormously
inflated fake boobs and carrying on like a drunken whore. And indeed,
because viewers are probably tired of seeing Tara falling out of limos in
Hollywood and New York, Tara has suckered the network into flying her to
exotic ports of call to showcase her mad showbiz skillz. Here’s the
summary of the first show, comin’ at ya from Athens, Greece:
Buddy Pass: Two friends came along for
these Greeky good times: Alwyn, who worked with Tara on her recent movie
Incubus and Burt, one of Tara’s best friends since she was 15. Local
TV personality Yanna Daralis pitched in and showed the crew around town. Oh, and
Tara also hooked up with Paris Hilton and her fiancé, Paris Latsis. You may
have heard of them.
Daily Activities: During the day, there
was parasailing with Ms. Hilton. By night, it was all about the hot spots. The
paparazzi were in full force and followed the clubbing crew wherever they went.
However, everyone found time to relax over dinner, where Paris and Tara
reminisced about old times--and checked out Paris’ sweet engagement ring. Along
the way, Tara also got the five-star treatment at the Grande Bretagne
Hotel and enjoyed a rooftop dinner with its kick-ass view
of the Acropolis.
The Big Event: Um, hello, she was
hanging out with Paris ’n’ Paris! It doesn’t get much bigger than that, now does
it?
Now seriously, why did I go to college? Why? Had I known I’d be
rewarded for getting drunk and throwing up 7 nights a week, stuffing my chest
with silicone and appearing in z-movies (Incubus? What?), I may have
rethought my life plan.
Dc Media Girl Permalink
Comments (3)
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Quite the little cheap shot artist
8/12/05 15:18:07
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Not sure if you all caught this on CNN’s Situation Room yesterday, but the
following exchange
between Wolf Blitzer and President Clinton was quite something:
BLITZER: Right now, a SITUATION ROOM exclusive. The 42nd president of
the United States, Bill Clinton, is with us live from New York. We’re going to
speak at length about some of the big global issues and the hot political
topics, among other things. The president -- former president -- is preparing to
host world leaders in New York City next month in support of his global
initiative that was formed to tackle some of the toughest problems on the
planet, including the AIDS epidemic and more. The initiative helps hard-hit
places, such as Africa, expand for the disease and prevention. Twenty-five
million people in sub-Saharan Africa are living with HIV/AIDS right
now.
Mr. President, we’re going to get to all of that in just a moment,
but let’s talk about the biggest issue facing the United States, arguably right
now. That would be the war in Iraq. Looking back, with 20/20 hindsight, was it a
mistake?
WILLIAM CLINTON, FMR. PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Well, at
the time, Wolf, I thought that we should not have gone in there until we let the
U.N. inspectors finish their job. That was, after all, the understanding the
Senate had when it was asked to vote to Congress to give the president authority
to go in.
But that’s really not relevant anymore. We did what we did. We
are where we are. Fifty-eight percent of the Iraqis showed up to vote;
1,800-plus brave Americans have given their lives there. Thousands and thousands
of Iraqis have died in fighting the insurgency and trying to give their country
a future.
So I think where we are now, it’s important to try to continue
this effort to train the security forces and the military forces which the
administration and our military have undertaken. They are good people. They’re
trying to do a good job. And there will come a time when the Iraqis will want us
to go, and where we should go. But we got to try to make this work. I still
think there’s a chance it could work, and it’s the only strategy that will
work.
BLITZER: The reason I ask was it a mistake because in our latest
CNN/"USA Today"/Gallup poll, we asked this question, has the war in Iraq made
the U.S. safer from terrorism? Thirty-four percent said yes. Fifty-seven percent
said no. How would you answer that question?
CLINTON: Oh, I would agree
with that. I don’t think -- I never thought it had much to do with the war on
terror, except that we were looking to see if there were biological and chemical
agents there.
I thought we should have done that. I thought the U.N.
inspections were well-advised. But it was clearly not going to have anything to
do with al Qaeda. They had never been involved before and that was where our
focus, I thought, should have been.
So I would agree with that. But
independent of that, we are there now, and there now are terrorists operating
there. And there is a clear majority of people in Iraq who are supporting the
idea that their country should be free, independent and at peace. And they’re
trying to come up with a constitution and we’re trying to train the security and
the military forces.
So I think -- that’s what I hope we can do, and do
it successfully. And if we can do that, then our people can come
home.
BLITZER: So I assume that the answer is, yes, the war was a
mistake. Is that your answer? CLINTON: You’re trying to get me to make news, and
I’m trying to educate people. It doesn’t matter whether it was a mistake to go
in or not at the time. I thought we should have let the U.N. inspectors
finish.
We are where we are. We can’t undo what has happened. Fifty-eight
percent of Iraqis voted in the last election. That’s more than we had turn out
in 2004. And we’ve got a lot of good people there working hard to train the
security forces and the military forces.
My answer is, whether it was a
mistake or not, we are where we are and we ought to try to make this strategy
succeed, support that strategy. It’s the only option that will get us out in an
honorable way, having made these sacrifices mean something.
BLITZER:
That’s my job. I’m a newsman. That’s what I try to do, is make news. And you try
to avoid news. That’s your job.
OK, so let’s think about this. Clinton is convening a meeting of world
leaders to discuss HIV/AIDS and other global issues. Blitzer wants Clinton to
give his opinion on his successor’s fuckup of a war. Clinton offers his opinion,
but won’t allow himself to stoop to criticizing Bush, which would be
a major breach of protocol which we’d never hear the end of. And
excuse me, but when a person agrees to do an interview it can hardly be said
that he’s trying to "avoid news". Ah, whatever.
Dc Media Girl Permalink
Comments (8)
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More on payoffs
8/12/05 14:40:22
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You know, I’m not easily shocked, but I admit that this
revelation knocked me for a loop:
SACRAMENTO — Days after Arnold Schwarzenegger jumped into the race
for governor and girded for questions about his past, a tabloid publisher wooing
him for a business deal promised to pay a woman $20,000 to sign a
confidentiality agreement about an alleged affair with the
candidate.
American Media Inc., which publishes the National Enquirer,
signed a friend of the woman to a similar contract about the alleged
relationship for $1,000.
American Media’s contract with Gigi Goyette of Malibu is dated Aug.
8, 2003, two days after Schwarzenegger announced his candidacy on a late-night
talk show. Under the agreement, Goyette must disclose to no one but American
Media any information about her "interactions" with
Schwarzenegger.
American Media never solicited further information from
Goyette or her friend, Judy Mora, also of Malibu, both women said. The Enquirer
had published a cover story two years earlier describing an alleged seven-year
sexual relationship between Goyette and Schwarzenegger during his marriage to
Maria Shriver, California’s first lady.
On Aug. 14, 2003, as candidate
Schwarzenegger was negotiating a consulting deal with American Media, the
company signed its contract with Mora, who said she received $1,000 cash in
return. Goyette declined to say whether she received the $20,000 promised in her
contract.
So to review: A company which publishes a tabloid paid hush money to two
women to keep them quiet about a sexual relationship with a married
gubernatorial candidate, who was negotiating a "consulting deal" with the
company. Amazing.
Dc Media Girl Permalink
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Very small pity party
8/12/05 14:30:42
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So Judy
Miller’s getting frustrated in the slammer:
"It’s tough, but she is fine. She’s hanging in there," Lucy A.
Dalglish of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press said of Miller,
whom she visited last week.
"I know what’s bothering her more than
anything is she cannot read the Internet. ... People are telling her about some
allegations about her that are in the blogosphere and she has no way to fight
back," Dalglish said, referring to blogs, or Web journals.
I don’t know. While I suppose I understand her frustration at not being able
to surf the Web, I suppose that in her case ignorance is probably bliss; after
all, the blogosphere has turned into one big slam book with her as the
target. If I were Miller, I’d be more concerned wth the fact that apart
from Lucy Dalglish and some of the top editors at the New York Times,
Judy has no support from her NYT colleagues or her fellow journalists; indeed,
some of her co-workers were only too happy to leak embarrassing, incriminating
stories about her as soon as they smelled blood in the water. If I were
her, I’d use this time behind bars to think about that very hard. Rather
than wonder about what’s up on the Internets, she should be worried about
developments like
this one:
NEW YORK
The board of The American Society of Journalists and Authors
(ASJA) has voted unanimously to not endorse an earlier decision to give a
Conscience in Media award to jailed New York Times reporter Judith Miller,
E&P has learned.
The group’s First Amendment
committee had narrowly voted to give Miller the prize for her dedication to
protecting sources, but the full board has now voted to not accept that
decision, based on its opinion that her entire career, and even her current
actions in the Plame/CIA leak case, cast doubt on her credentials for this
award.
The group’s president,
Jack El-Hai, posted an explanation on an internal list-serve yesterday, noting
the opposition from the rank and file, and also mentioning two other reasons for
the unanimous vote:
* “A feeling that Miller’s
career, taken as a whole, did not make her the best candidate for the award”
* “Divided opinions on the board over whether her
recent actions merit the award.”
Dc Media Girl Permalink
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NYT "discovers" a "trend" even more retarded than the "man date"
8/11/05 16:16:42
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It’s
the "girl crush"!
THE woman’s long black hair whipped across her pale face as she
danced to punk rock at the bar. She seemed to be the life of the party. Little
did she know that she was igniting a girl crush. Susan Buice was watching, and
she was smitten.
Ms. Buice, 26, and the dancer (actually a clothing designer) happen
to live in the same Brooklyn apartment building, so Ms. Buice, a filmmaker, was
later able to soak up many other aspects of her neighbor’s gritty yet feminine
style: her layered gold necklaces; her fitted jackets; her dark, oversize
sunglasses; and her Christian Dior perfume.
"I’m immediately nervous around her," Ms Buice said. "I stammer
around her, and it’s definitely because I think she’s supercool."
Ms. Buice, who lives with her boyfriend, calls her attraction a girl
crush, a phrase that many women in their 20’s and 30’s use in conversation, post
on blogs and read in magazines. It refers to that fervent infatuation that one
heterosexual woman develops for another woman who may seem impossibly
sophisticated, gifted, beautiful or accomplished. And while a girl crush is, by
its informal definition, not sexual in nature, the feelings that it triggers -
excitement, nervousness, a sense of novelty - are very much like those that
accompany a new romance.
This is not a new phenomenon. Women, especially young women, have
always had such feelings of adoration for each other. Social scientists suspect
such emotions are part of women’s nature, feelings that evolution may have
favored because they helped women bond with one another and work cooperatively.
What’s new is the current generation’s willingness to express their ardor
frankly.
Dc Media Girl Permalink
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More exciting crime news
8/11/05 16:01:48
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Roll baby,
roll:
FBI agents were seeking to arrest a once-powerful Washington, D.C.,
lobbyist on Thursday after a Fort Lauderdale federal grand jury charged him and
a New York businessman with scheming to defraud two lenders in a $147.5 million
purchase of SunCruz Casinos.
Agents were to take Republican insider Jack Abramoff into custody on
Thursday afternoon in the Baltimore area. His partner in the controversial 2000
SunCruz acquisition, Adam Kidan, was expected to surrender to authorities,
according to sources familiar with the probe.
The South Florida indictment charging the duo with defrauding $60
million from two lenders that financed the sale instantly rocked the nation’s
corridors of power. Indeed, rumors of their imminent arrests circulated during
the past week.
Dc Media Girl Permalink
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Nothing to add
8/11/05 13:29:31
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Just loving this image. And yes, those would be handcuffs pinning Kenny Boy’s arms behind his back.
Dc Media Girl Permalink
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Attention must be paid, I tell you
8/11/05 11:34:10
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Over at the Huffington Post, Bob Cesca has posted a contribution that’s heartbreakingly
hilarious:
Referring to cable news as "right wing" is about as obvious these
days as calling it "televised." Sure it’s transparently biased and apologetic to
the Bush administration and the Republican party, thus extinguishing any notion
of the Fourth Estate. But perhaps some day in our lifetime cable news will
return to delivering investigative, insightful journalism which questions our
leadership rather than defending it --
Shut up. It could happen.
What’s become increasingly disturbing, though, is how the news
networks have simply run out of news. Or worse, they’re actively avoiding real
news. Sure. We get it. It’s hard work finding and saying all that elusive news.
What with a war on; an investigation into national security leaks from the
office of "The War President"; global warming; genocide; and those goddamn crazy
sharks. Why sift for pointed stories from all that noise when you can engage in
discourse which might appeal to, say, a six-year-old?
Wolf Blitzer: "Do you like tatertots, Mr. Rumsfeld?"
Donald
Rumsfeld: "The question is not whether I like tots. Do I like tots? Of course I
like tots as much as tots deserve my affection which is a lot in a broad stroke
description of tots with errrrmmmm... ketchup. So do I like tots? Of course I
like tots and ketchup. The question that needs to be asked about tots is
--"
Wolf Blitzer: "Mr. Secretary! I have to interrupt with breaking news. We
go now live to Bumpus, Virginia where some kid stepped on a bee!"
Here’s three actual CNN stories from the past several days. These,
sadly, are very real.
1) Wolf Blitzer, on Sunday, blew the lid off the Brad & Jennifer
split (old!) with an in-depth report on a newly invented marital issue called
"Emotional Cheating." Brad cheated on Jennifer... with his
thoughts.
2) Yesterday, CNN spent many precious broadcast minutes delving into
an issue which cuts to the very core of the Rove Leak investigation. The special
report: "Why do men have nipples?" Look it up.
3) And today’s top story? "Man forgets wife at gas station." Look,
unless the gas station is in the town of Wekillwivesatgasstations, Kentucky, the
wife will make it home with only minor cuts and bruises. Even if the husband
drove off and never returned, she’ll be okay. Besides, maybe she deserved it.
Did you consider that, CNN? Maybe she’s a stupid-head. Maybe she cheated on her
husband with her thoughts. You told me the other day that it’s wrong to
cheat with your thoughts, CNN.
Maybe... Yeah... Can we stop now and go back to talking about the
right-wing media? Because on second thought, reporting pointless news items is
bad enough, but now I’m literally reporting on the reporting of
thought-cheating, nipples, and abandoned wives.
Dc Media Girl Permalink
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Exhibit number one billion of why O’Reilly must be destroyed
8/11/05 10:44:02
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Michael Moore. Hillary Clinton. "Far Left Elements". Faux
Christianity. Fenton Communications. O’Reilly stops at
nothing when backed into a corner by a woman who lost her son in Iraq and
has the temerity to express her dissatisfaction with the Bush/Fox Iraq
policy. There’s too much going to on unpack here, so I’ll let you do the
analysis. But the bottom line is that this woman kicked O’Reilly’s ass, both
morally and factually, leaving him flailing. Good on you, Dolores
Kesterson.
I for one am curious to know how this woman managed to get on the
Factor. Supposedly she was brought on to counter the views of Cindy
Sheehan, but obviously she’s more in agreement with Sheehan than with O’Reilly.
So how did this happen? A
simple Google search of Dolores’s name shows that this woman has been
an outspoken war critic for some time. So was O’Reilly’s booker merely an idiot,
or under the gun, or actively involved in trying to undermine her boss by
slipping him a ringer? I’ll be watching events unfold with great
interest.
Dc Media Girl Permalink
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Kaplan kerfuffle
8/11/05 09:43:48
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So there’s apparently now a big stink over at MSNBC, pitting exec Rick Kaplan against on air personality Keith Olbermann.
Kaplan certainly knows how to make an impression. According to Vanity Fair, Rick’s former boss Ted Turner was so shocked by his size (Rick’s almost 7 feet tall), he said "Are you sure you’re a Jew? You’re the biggest goddamn Jew I have ever seen". And Kaplan has a temper too - just ask his former colleagues at ABC and CNN. They’ll fill you in on the yelling, the temper tantrums and other assorted delights.
Interestingly, this means that MSNBC now employs two of the most notorious behind-the-scenes terrors, the other being Hardball executive producer Tammy Haddad, another big person with a terrible temper and knack for making underlings cry and quit. I worked with people who had worked with Tammy who told me that even years after moving on to saner pastures, they’d still wake up in a cold sweat after having dreamt that they forgot to follow one of Tammy’s shouted orders.
Maybe Kaplan’s just worried. They’ve tried everything at MSNBC, hiring every kook and nutball to host a show (remember that Alan Keyes atrocity?), now trying to woo the Fox audience by packing primetime with conservatives, all to no avail. Things are so bad that even a CNN on air personality has pointed out MSNBC’s woes on the air. Behold Jack Cafferty’s foray into bitchiness:
Audiences for the three shows have been declining for several years, one the reasons, of course, the ascension of the cable news networks, from CNN, which is arguably the best of the lot -- I have to say that -- it’s in my contract -- to those wild-eyed miscreants over there at the F-word network, to the network with five call letters and no viewers. Wolf, you could be on the FBI’s 10 most-wanted list, host a nightly program on MSNBC and be perfectly safe. No one would have any idea where you were. Ask Tucker Carlson.
Dc Media Girl Permalink
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Madness alert
8/9/05 22:01:42
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So Katherine Harris just put in an exceptionally disturbing appearance on
Hannity and Colmes - boobs thrust out, big phony grimace, er, smile on her face,
weird boopsy tone of voice....almost like a weird Marilyn Monroe imitation,
being done by a very unappealing woman. DCMediaboy asked me if she was a
man, no kidding. Waiting for Crooks&Liars to put up the video.
It’s super bizarre, trust me.
UPDATE: Crooks & Liars comes through. See Harris’s odd
performance for yourself.
Dc Media Girl Permalink
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Bill O’Reilly exposes the most dangerous organization in America
8/9/05 19:42:55
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That would be the ACLU, bitches. Under the screaming headline
"Is the ACLU Bin Laden’s Best Ally?", this follows:
No surprise, a New York chapter of the ACLU (search) is
suing the police for searching bags in the subway system. We knew this would
happen because the ACLU has opposed nearly every anti-terror measure authorities
have come up with since 9/11.
Here’s how nuts this organization is: The ACLU opposes allowing the
feds to have floating wiretaps that would monitor cell phone conversations of
suspected terrorists. It opposes American civilians assisting the border patrol
— you remember the ACLU went to Arizona to monitor the Minutemen (search).
It opposes profiling of suspected terrorists. It opposes military tribunals to
try captured terrorists. It opposes coerced interrogations of captured
terrorists. It has demanded that more pictures of Americans abusing prisoners at
Abu Ghraib (search)
be released, knowing that would help Al Qaeda (search)
recruitment.
The ACLU opposes the sharing of information about suspected
terrorists and sued to stop New York state from participating in MATRIX, the
Multistate Anti-terrorism Information Exchange.
"Talking Points" could go on and on, but you get the picture. If the
ACLU ever wants money, it should contact the Al Qaeda fundraisers. No
organization in America enables terrorism as much as the ACLU, period. It is
putting your life in danger. And that is no exaggeration.
Unfortunately, there’s nothing we can do about it. No way to stop it.
The ACLU operates within the law and uses the legal system to oppose the war on
terror. And there are enough loony judges around to give that organization
power, especially here in New York City and in San Francisco.
The only thing we can do is hold people who raise and give money to
the ACLU accountable. In the weeks to come, "The Factor" will tell you who these
people and organizations are, so you can decide whether or not you want to do
business with them.
There are many issues I struggle with on this program, trying to
decide what’s right and what’s wrong so I can present a cogent analysis to you.
But the ACLU’s opposition to all anti-terror measures is not one of those
issues. This is a dangerous organization. The evidence of that is
overwhelming.
And that’s the Memo.
Dc Media Girl Permalink
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YR supports the troops and demonstrates his love for Christ...
8/9/05 19:07:11
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..by heartily quaffing some mead. Serving wench, water for the horses and more grog for my men!! And don’t forget to praise the Lord while you’re at it...
Dc Media Girl Permalink
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How now, USAT?
8/9/05 17:59:55
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Crooks and Liars has rounded up reax
to an anti-evolution op ed in USA Today written by Utah State Senator Chris
Buttars, which has led some in the reality-based blogosphere to ask, "What is
this doing in USA Today?"
To which I respond, hey, every now and then they like to throw the
flyover states a bone. Hence this column.
But it’s true that this editorial is unusually
thought-provoking for USA Today, which generally publishes pieces
that glorify consumerism, advance non-existent "trends" or are actually thinly
veiled commercials masquerading as "news" pieces. Here’s one of my
favorite examples of a piece that brings all three of these USAT staples to
bear. Ladies and gentlemen, courtesy of the April 1, 2002 issue of the
paper, behold the latest trend, the panic room. And no, this piece ain’t no
April Fool. It’s dead serious:
LIVERMORE, Calif. -- In the new movie Panic Room, Jodie Foster
holes up in a New York brownstone’s high-tech bunker while a trio of hoods
trained at the Three Stooges School of Burglary huff and puff their way
in.
Besides revealing our heroine in body-hugging sleepwear, this
tour de paranoia pokes a national sore spot that has grown more tender
since Sept. 11. How safe are you really in your home, sweet
home?
The simple truth, security experts say, is that if people are
intent on doing you harm, short of your pulling a Howard Hughes vanishing act,
they will succeed.
But that does not stop rational folks such as
Paula Milani from building personal panic rooms -- called "safe rooms" in the
industry -- in case of home invasion.
Not that she appears to need
one. To hate Milani, 38, you’d have to put some muscle into it.
She
has an inviting smile and a ya’ll-come-back-now attitude. Not to mention the
fact that she’s intent on dedicating her new 30-acre ranch, here in this
agriculture-meets-nuclear-research enclave east of San Francisco, to
rehabilitating children with autism and similar conditions.
But, as
she says, "I’ve got the Barbie thing going. I’m tall, blond and single. You
never know."
So should any demented Ken dolls try to attack Milani at
her house, they will quickly find that she has indeed disappeared.
Tucked behind a false wall is a roughly 3-by-5-foot room stocked
with a charged cellphone, a remote control that buzzes police and a bit of
backup in the form of a handgun and several loaded shotguns that get regular
exercise.
"To have a room like this, you have to have a confident
mind," says Milani, who grew up ranching in rough-hewn Nebraska. "Panicking just
isn’t an option."
While there is no evidence that Americans are
developing a bunker mentality in the wave of the terrorist attacks last fall,
few would dispute that a new sense of concern blankets the country.
As a result, builders of safe rooms are reporting increased
inquiries in recent months. Given that these enclaves can cost -- depending on
size and the high-tech equipment inside -- anywhere from $ 50,000 to $ 500,000,
only the wealthy need apply.
Then again, this may be one time when
being a member of the modest masses sounds pretty darned good. If you truly need
a room with Kevlar-reinforced walls capable of swallowing a 9mm slug and a
ventilation system designed to filter out airborne pathogens, then maybe your
life has spiraled just a wee bit out of control.
"I will say, I
don’t really get it," says Tom Murphy, president of upscale builder Coastal
Homes in Miami, whose clients have included Oprah Winfrey and Sylvester Stallone
(though he says they did not request safe rooms).
"Often there’s a
ton of security personnel on the property, but they still want multiple safe
rooms in their homes," he says. "In some ways, this is the bomb shelter for the
new millennium. I think many folks want one because the guy next door has one."
Safe room experts say this percolating trend is decidedly national,
given that high-net-worth individuals are scattered in all 50 states. But
perhaps there is no larger concentration of wealth and fame (a proven recipe for
often justified paranoia) than California’s glitzy City of Angels.
"There are a lot of safe rooms here, especially in Hollywood, where
good liberals need a place to protect themselves and their goods," jokes David
Koepp, who researched this realm for his Panic Room script. But he
acknowledges that for some, "these rooms can just represent a place where people
will leave you the hell alone."
No safe room for Jodie Foster
Jodie Foster -- once the subject of presidential shooter John Hinckley’s
obsession -- might have reason to want such a haven. But her five-month shoot on
the Panic Room set helped steer even her further in the opposite
direction.
"I think people who have these rooms are a bit paranoid.
They think there’s something they can actually do to protect themselves," she
says. "The best thing is, keep your eyes open, and live."
But for
the proudly paranoid, there’s always Bill Rigdon, vice president at Building
Consensus, a construction company that teams up with former FBI agents to design
custom safe rooms.
"You name it, we get it," he says with a laugh.
"You’ve got stars and their stalkers. And of course Third World bigwigs who are
living large while their people at home suffer. They’re not too popular."
Like most people involved in this line of work, Rigdon won’t divulge
many details. Clients demand utter secrecy; the various contractors and
architects working with his company all go through FBI background checks. All
information on each job is on a need-to-know basis.
What is clear,
however, is that these rooms are meant to serve as refuge for the duration of an
average attack -- in theory something that doesn’t go on all night as in the
film Panic Room.
"You’re not settling in there," Rigdon says.
"You’re just buying time until the police arrive, which is hopefully pretty
fast."
A few very public instances in which police may not have
responded quickly enough -- the school shooting at Colorado’s Columbine High
School and just about any recent workplace tragedy -- have led to perhaps the
most interesting new development in the safe room business.
Hospitals, libraries are interested
"We’ve had many calls
lately from hospitals, libraries, schools and big businesses, all wondering what
sort of secure rooms they can have built in order to herd people somewhere in
case of emergency," says Douglas Kane, a former LAPD SWAT team member now with
Executive Shield Inc. security consultants.
"Federal facilities,
including the White House, long have had the capabilities to do major lockdowns
in case of trouble. That’s really just a giant safe room," he says. "When you’re
vulnerable, it’s good to have a place to hide."
In case of
emergency, it would be tough to find a better place to hide than in a house in
the Hollywood Hills dreamed up by Al Corbi, president of The Designer, which for
years has specialized in upscale homes that incorporate elaborate safe rooms.
In this home, built for a TV executive, Corbi has constructed not
just a safe room, but also a larger safe "core," a 2,000-square-foot area that
includes the master bedroom, two bathrooms, dressing area and children’s room.
Corbi, a natural showman, likes to talk about his "30-minute
principle," which states that the goal of any proper safe area is to keep its
occupants alive for at least 15 minutes ("That’s when, if they want to kill or
rape you, it’ll happen," he says) and ideally half an hour, when police should
arrive.
But the truth is, Corbi wants to make sure his clients can
withstand a light infantry attack. His safe core makes the concrete vault in
Panic Room seem like a sieve.
"The walls, ceilings and
floors, all ballistics-grade material, bullets won’t get through. About $
10,000," he says during a tour.
He points at the doors, each some 4
inches thick with an intricate array of bolts: "Verona doors from Italy, $ 3,000
a pop."
He heads over to the master bed, with its 280-degree view of
Los Angeles. "Now, this may be a bit much, but hey," says Corbi as he lifts up
the mattress. "It’s lined with bulletproof material, in case the bullets pierce
the floor."
Then he heads to a small bathroom and shuts the
door.
"This is the safe room within the safe core," he says, like a
child showing off a Christmas present.
Inside: a monitor that can
display views from any one of dozens of cameras hidden throughout the
10,000-square-foot house; an oxygen tank connected to gas masks; a phone whose
lines are "almost impossible to find or cut."
Uh, anything
else?
"Sure," Corbi says. "What if I told you there were also some
offensive capabilities, too?"
And just as the conversation starts
veering into the realm of James Bond -- are there guns in the ceiling? lasers in
the walls? piranhas in the fish tank? -- Corbi flashes a grin and begs off.
"I can’t say," he says. "But think about this. If you, the intruder,
can’t get near the safe room, doesn’t that make it even safer?"
Call
him -- or his clients -- crazy. But this man not only loves what he does, he is
convinced his is a profession for our nervous times.
"You hear a lot
about homeland security these days. Well," he says, waving at the soaring,
bulletproof white walls around him. "This is as homeland as it gets."
And what does the paper run on its front page? None but the most serious
stories are displayed above the fold. Like the following 1A story from the April
26, 2002 issue of McPaper:
Cheerleading in the USA: A sport and an industry
Forget the American archetype of blond cheerleader in tight sweater
pining for the muscled quarterback. The world of cheer no longer means sideline
squads that exist solely to support other teams.
They are
teams in their own right these days, not so different in some respects from the
football and basketball teams for which they traditionally cheer. College and
high school cheerleaders compete for national championships. They risk terrible
injury. They get recruited for college scholarships. And, in some cases, they
put in more practice hours than the football team.
If that sounds
like the world turned upside down, consider this: In 2001, Varsity Spirit Corp.
sold its Riddell Group Division, a leading maker of football
helmets.
"Football is not growing," says Jeffrey Webb, president and
CEO. "Cheerleading is. We looked at it and decided we were better off
alone."
You can argue whether cheerleading is a sport -- as many as
20 state high school organizations say it is -- but not whether it is a
business. Shout this into the nearest megaphone: Cheerleading, that uniquely
American exemplar of earnest enthusiasm, is now an industry.
There
are about 3 million cheerleaders in the USA, and perhaps half as many more on
dance teams. Varsity Spirit, largest of about 50 companies catering to their
needs, had revenue approaching $ 150 million last year. American
Cheerleader magazine made its debut in 1994 and now boasts 200,000 in
circulation with readership of 1 million.
What’s going on? When baby
boomers were growing up, cheerleading was a quasi-athletic opportunity for girls
who had few full-fledged ones. Title IX changed that. One might have expected
fewer cheerleaders 30 years later. Instead, to borrow the word of a character
from the 2000 teen flick Bring It On, we live these days in a
"cheer-ocracy."
An estimated half-million cheerleaders attend cheer
camps each summer. The past 10 years has seen the rise of All Star programs, in
which kids as young as 6 begin intensive cheer programs with an emphasis on
gymnastics. All Star programs exist apart from schools, like AAU basketball
teams: They cheer only to compete. By the count of Gwen Holtsclaw, president of
Cheer Limited, there are about 1,500 All Star programs in the USA operating in
613 gyms.
These burgeoning programs feed high schools and colleges.
The University of Kentucky, which awards full in-state tuition scholarships, is
a 12-time national champ. Jokes cheer adviser T. Lynn Williamson, "We’re trying
to be an inspiration to the basketball team."
Hollered
alumni
Psst. Don’t look now, but we live these days in Cheer Nation. We
get morning news from Katie Couric (cheerleader, Yorktown High, Arlington, Va.,
circa 1970s). We elect George W. Bush (cheerleader, Phillips Academy; Andover,
Mass., circa 1960s). We watch Oscar winner Halle Berry (cheerleader, Bedford,
Ohio, High, circa 1980s).
Other former cheerleaders operate behind
the scenes. Corporate America often seeks ex-cheerleaders, especially for sales
jobs, where success goes to attractive, energetic and personable people who know
how to work a crowd.
"I’ve got a note on my desk right now from a
pharmaceutical company with a sales opening," Williamson says. "I get these
calls regularly. Cheerleaders know how to set goals and how to work hard to
attain them. They are competitive, and they understand personality and body
language."
Bush and Berry manned megaphones in a quainter time, when
cheerleaders pulled for their school teams, long before the notion of All Star
cheer squads for tykes. Traditional cheer teams at high schools and colleges
still exist primarily to root for school teams, but many also compete on their
own.
Holtsclaw counts 72 national or regional competitions for
college, high school or youth teams. That’s up from eight in
1988.
Male cheerleaders are indispensable at the highest level of
competitive cheer for catching and throwing. But in the wider world of cheer, by
Holtsclaw’s estimate, 95% are female, down from 98%.
Like boxing,
competitions are run by rival sanctioning bodies. The biggest, under the
auspices of Varsity Spirit, is the Universal Cheerleading Association (UCA),
whose competitions are staples on ESPN. Twelve broadcasts in 2001 were watched
by an average of 445,000 households, about the same audience drawn by billiards.
The Chick-fil-A Collegiate Cheer and Dance Competition, run by the
National Cheerleading Association (NCA), will air Saturday afternoon on CBS (2
ET). It was taped this month in Daytona Beach, Fla. There were 183 teams -- 110
cheer and 73 dance -- competing in eight cheer and three dance divisions. They
qualified by reputation or by sending a video.
She kept
dancin’
One particular dance routine you won’t see on TV, though it
already is the stuff of legend in cheer and dance circles. It had everything:
True grit, high drama -- and bare breasts.
Carla Sanchez calls
herself very modest, the most modest person she knows. "You have no idea," she
says. "Not even my mother has seen me naked."
Imagine the dilemma she
faced when she and 17 other members of the New York University dance team began
the 2-minute, 15-second routine they had worked on for months in hopes of
securing a national championship. All was fine for about 15 seconds -- until the
plastic snap on Sanchez’s spandex top inexplicably came undone.
Sanchez had an instant to make a very public decision: Quickly cover
up, as every fiber in her preacher’s-daughter body wanted -- or just keep
dancin’.
It is the kind of plot twist you might find on Fox’s
Boston Public: Sanchez danced those last two minutes topless in front of
astounded onlookers. She believed that if she were out of sync for even a
moment, her teammates would be assessed a major deduction, dooming their dream.
So she soldiered on, never missing a beat.
You can guess the rest.
NYU won its division, and Sanchez was acclaimed a hero. "That was very brave,"
said co-captain Carolyn Comparato. "She’s a rock star."
Most in the
audience were fellow competitors or parents, true believers in the culture of
cheer and dance, and they understood instinctively: She was taking one for the
team.
A few men hooted and tossed coins onstage. But the atmosphere
was more admiring than salacious.
"I can’t believe I just danced
topless!" Sanchez cried. She asked teammates if there would be a deduction for
her uniform coming undone. "We’ll get bonus points!" suggested one.
Michelle Allison, head judge for dance, explained there was no
deduction for the uniform failure. But neither would there have been a deduction
had Sanchez broken ranks and quickly righted her costume. Being out of sync is a
major deduction in almost every instance, Allison said, "but not in an extreme
case like this."
No one seemed to know the exception to the rule
because no one could remember anything like it happening before -- except in the
movies. The opening number in Bring It On , No. 1 at the box office in
late summer 2000, features a high-kicking cheer routine in which actress Kirsten
Dunst loses her top (demurely, in PG-13 fashion).
She wakes up
screaming: It is only a nightmare. Sanchez’s nightmare was real -- not so much
life imitating art as choreography trumping a teen movie script.
The
University of North Texas charges on stage. The music begins. Human pyramids
form as if by magic. Cheerleaders make tumbling passes and fly through the air.
One thing is missing amid all the radiant, raucous rah-rah.
Um, no
football teams. Or, as GQ writer Jim Nelson puts it, "Nothing to cheer
but cheer itself." This is off-putting only for the uninitiated. For believers,
it is as it should be.
’We cheer for us’
"We’re always
cheering for them," says Liana Sheintal, a senior cheerleader at George
Washington University in Washington, D.C., and by "them" she means GW’s
basketball teams. "This is the one time we get to cheer for
us."
Sheintal says this as she watches her teammates perform. She has
an arm in a sling; she broke her shoulder blade a day before during practice.
Cheerleading can be risky business: Some cheerleaders in Daytona Beach performed
with wrapped ankles and knees.
"I am the coach for cheer and adviser
for dance," says Jamie Bero of Clarion (Pa.) University. "If there is a conflict
in practice times, I go to cheer. You can’t get killed dancing. Safety is our
top concern."
Memphis coach Cheri Ganong-Robinson says it is
important that schools have the right equipment, like harnesses for learning
jumps safely. She runs a program in which cheerleaders get full in-state tuition
scholarships.
American Cheerleader lists 225 colleges and
junior colleges that offer full and partial scholarships -- from Penn State,
which awards $ 1,500 annually to cheerleaders who maintain a 3.0 GPA, to Three
Rivers Community College, Poplar Bluff, Mo., which awards a dozen full-tuition
scholarships.
Cheerleaders work hard for the money. At Memphis, they
practice three hours a day, five days a week. Add in games and appearances and
cheerleaders spend 20-25 hours a week at their craft -- and far more before big
competitions.
"The big joke on campus is that we practice more than
the basketball team," Ganong-Robinson says.
It’s no joke: NCAA rules
limit teams to 20 hours a week. But cheerleading isn’t an NCAA-sponsored sport.
It’s more like an odd hybrid of gymnastics and show biz -- Mary Lou Retton meets
Bob Fosse.
"College cheer is all about athletics," says Maryland
cheer coach Tina Simijoski, who directs the NFL’s Baltimore Ravens cheerleaders.
"The pros are more about glamour. They’re two different things."
Sporting pains
High school
The
number of catastrophic injuries to women resulting from participation in these
activities(1):
Cheerleading25
Gymnastics 9
Track
4
Softball 3
Swimming 2
Basketball 2
Ice hockey
1
Volleyball 1
College
Cheerleading17
Gymnastics
2
Field hockey 2
Skiing 1
Ice hockey 1
Lacrosse
1
1 -- 1982-83 to 1999-2000
But don’t despair - serious
business stories make it to 1A too. Like this gem from June 26, 2002:
Many CEOs bend the rules (of golf)
After
Enron, cheating at golf raises eyebrows "It’s guerilla warfare with certain
people."
-- Ken Winans, investment
research CEO Chad Struer has played golf with almost 20 Fortune 500 CEOs.
One in three cheats, he says.
Struer finds
that rather peculiar, because those same CEOs hire him and his Salinas, Calif.,
company, USA Diligence, to investigate the honesty of start-up companies so the
CEOs can decide whether to invest.
One
CEO, whom Struer calls "good-hearted," so habitually shaves strokes that he
consistently scores in the mid-80s when it is obvious he would never break 100.
Another, in the middle of a frustrating round, intentionally drove his cart over
Struer’s ball.
"They’re used to having
things their way," Struer says. "He who holds the gold makes the rules."
This might pass unnoticed in normal times,
but in these post-Enron days of rampant skullduggery and the taking of the Fifth
Amendment, it may be fair to wonder whether golf cheating is another symptom of
an anything-goes mentality.
Moreover, if a
survey being released today is any indicator, Struer might be low in his
estimate of one in three cheating. In that survey, commissioned by Starwood
Hotels & Resorts, 82% of 401 high-ranking corporate executives admit to
being less than honest on the golf course.
The margin of error in the survey is plus or minus 5 percentage
points.
Do executives cheat more than
other golfers? It appears so. When GolfDigest.com asked golfers earlier this
year if they thought more than three of four players cheat, only 21% said yes.
Nearly half said they believe fewer than 40% of golfers fudge.
A dozen CEOs interviewed by USA TODAY over the past month
say they personally bend the rules sometimes, but they say they witness other
CEOs doing it constantly. The other guys improve their lies, hit do-over shots
(called mulligans), seem to forget the whiff or the missed 3-foot putt, kick
their balls out of the rough or kick their opponent’s balls into the sand.
"Do I cheat? No," says Ken Winans, CEO of his
own investment-research firm in Mill Valley, Calif., who sometimes breaks 100.
But then he recalls intentionally stepping on a friend’s ball. "One time a guy
poured beer on a ball to make it sticky. It’s guerilla warfare with certain
people."
High-stakes wagering
While the score may not matter in a friendly game of golf,
executive golf often involves wagering, meaning that more than bragging rights
are at stake. Eighty-seven percent of executives wager on golf, according to the
Starwood survey. When asked what was the biggest bet they ever made on golf, the
average was $ 589; it was $ 1,947 for executives with incomes of more than $
250,000.
Jeff Harp, former president of
Summit National Bank in Fort Worth, says he has declined a loan or two after
seeing CEOs cheat on the course. Companies borrow money for two reasons, he
says. Either they have an opportunity, or they have trouble. It’s up to the
lender to get at the truth, and Harp says he is dumbfounded when CEOs cheat just
as he is weighing their honesty.
"When you
see what they’ll do for a $ 10 bet, it makes you wonder what they’d do on a
million-dollar loan," Harp says.
The most
blatant cheating is among duffers. No one is going to turn in a scorecard with a
130, even though there are many who are that bad, says Brian Sroub, former CEO
of Chipshot.com and now CEO of Aqui in Cupertino, Calif. "Cheating is very much
a part of the journey of golf," he says, and those with the highest scores have
the most opportunity to shave strokes.
"I
suspect that CEOs as a class of people have a need to appear competent at a lot
of things," says Tim O’Mara, a collegiate golfer who once considered going pro
and maintains a four handicap as CEO of MountainZone.com in Seattle.
Even before scandals at Adelphia, Enron,
Global Crossing, ImClone and Qwest, billionaire CEO Warren Buffett was drawing a
connection between golf and today’s environment of business ethics. Buffett
wrote in Berkshire Hathaway’s 1998 annual letter that non-recurring write-offs
were like reporting four rounds of 80 and one round of 140 rather than the
actual rounds of 91, 94, 89, 94 and 92.
The average comes out to 92 either way, but rich are those who can
drive up the stock price and cash in their stock options before reporting the
quarterly round of 140.
"In golf, my score
is frequently below par on a pro forma basis," Buffett wrote in his most recent
2001 letter. "I have firm plans to restructure my putting stroke and therefore
only count the swings I take before reaching the green."
Starwood CEO and golfer Barry Sternlicht says he doesn’t
see the survey as an indictment of executive character. Every foursome comes to
a silent understanding about the rules of the round, he says.
When it’s not tournament golf, it would be seen as poor
etiquette not to concede short putts to opponents or grant a mulligan or two.
It’s often simple courtesy to fill in the score of another player and forget a
stroke.
"Aren’t CEOs getting picked on
enough these days?" asks an e-mail from Sun Microsystems CEO Scott McNealy, once
named by Golf Digest magazine as the CEO with the lowest handicap: 3
(compared with an average 14 handicap reported by executives in the Starwood
survey). McNealy says he never sees other CEOs cheat.
"This is a social thing, not a corporate report card,"
Sternlicht says.
He says that explains
some very contradictory responses in the survey. Eighty-two percent of executive
golfers say they under-count strokes, improve their lie, or participate in other
activities considered cheating. Yet when asked in a separate question if they
are honest at golf, 99% said they are. And 82% say they hate it when others
cheat. Two additional questions found that while 67% believe that a person who
cheats at golf would probably cheat at business, 99% say they are personally
honest at business.
The disconnect doesn’t
surprise Ken Siegel, an organizational psychologist who has been interviewing
executives for 25 years. He says executives who lie do not consider themselves
liars. It’s not unlike all the CEOs who say their biggest strength is working
with people, when their subordinates almost always say it’s their greatest
weakness.
"They lose the ability to
distinguish what is honest and what is not," Siegel says. "Lies are getting
bigger and bigger. We’re seeing this played out everywhere now, from Tyco to
Enron."
Management consultant Barry Maher
says he was once golfing with two CEOs who were negotiating a deal worth
millions. One part of the negotiation was worth nearly $ 150,000, and Maher was
taken aback when the two agreed to wager $ 150,000 of company money on a round
of golf.
On the seventh hole, Maher says,
he saw one CEO kick his opponent’s ball twice, sending it into the underbrush.
His rival never found the ball and took a one-stroke penalty without ever
suspecting.
Later, when alone with the
ball kicker, Maher confronted him. "He said, ’That was worth about $ 75,000 a
kick. That’s probably more than the top kickers in the NFL make.’
"I speak and write on ethical management,"
Maher says. "I have no idea why he felt he could look me in the eye and tell me
this or why he thought I’d think it was clever."
Maher was doing consulting work for the cheater. "It put me in a
horrible position." On Maher’s insistence, the wager was reduced, and the
unsuspecting CEO was on the hook only for drinks.
Many CEOs play in country club and pro-amateur tournaments. That’s when
they say the cheating stops. It would be a disgrace to get caught, they say.
However, many try to boost their chances at
winning those tournaments by turning in higher practice round scores, says
Michael Putman, CEO of 11thHourVacations in East Greenville, Pa., and a
7-handicapper who plays 125 days a year. It’s a practice known as sandbagging,
and it drives up the executives’ handicaps to give them the equivalent of a head
start when the tournament begins.
Sandbagging is also used to give executives an advantage in golf
wagering, because a higher handicap portrays them as weaker golfers and lets
them negotiate better terms when making the bet.
"Sandbagging is accepted, like steroids in baseball," O’Mara says.
Carryover to business
Geoff Crawshaw, a 5-handicapper, a former CEO and now chief technology
officer at OpenAir Software in Boston, says he has noticed that those who
sandbag in golf will take advantage in business negotiations. "That’s someone
who will put a thumb on the scale," he says.
Golfers who exaggerate and say they are better golfers than they really
are can also be dangerous business partners, Crawshaw adds. These executives are
likely to predict a contract is worth $ 2 million when it’s really worth $
750,000, he says.
Twenty percent of
executives in the survey say they would play "client golf," or intentionally
lose to put a customer or boss at ease before heading for drinks and
negotiations at the 19th hole.
Left-handed
Robert Smith, CEO of Aligo in San Francisco, says he has a natural slice. When
he gets ahead of an important client, he positions himself on the tee so his
drives go into the woods.
Winans says he
once "obliterated" an old friend and client. "He didn’t call me for a year and a
half. I decided not to let that happen again."
Window to character
While CEOs differ about
whether golf cheaters are business cheaters, they are almost universally certain
that the way people handle golf frustration is a window to their character.
"It’s almost like life and death to men,"
says Young Kim-Epstein, a golfer and the female CEO of Manhattan Wealth Advisors
in Los Angeles, who usually winds up with three executive men in her foursome.
They have no sense of humor, throw temper tantrums, bend their clubs and cheat,
Kim-Epstein says. "If I play better than them, I become really unpopular," she
says. "They like to keep their own scores."
CEO Mark Fasciano of FatWire Software in Mineola, N.Y., says his radar
goes up when golfing partners blame poor shots on the sun or someone coughing.
Watch out for executives like that, he says.
But he’s unconcerned about routine cheating.
"I would be suspicious of a CEO who didn’t cheat," says
Fasciano, who plays about eight times a year. "If they have a (good) golf game,
they should be spending more time running the company."
So you see? USA Today hasn’t suddenly popped its cork or lowered its
standards. McPaper has a long history of pandering for circulation.
Don’t let the scary creationist worry you.
Dc Media Girl Permalink
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Gossip maven
8/9/05 15:22:18
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I’ve been meaning to post about this for a while, but haven’t gotten around to it until now:
Nothing like a hint of hot gossip to spice up the summer doldrums.
The Washington Post is close to deciding on a new gossip columnist—or two—to write its Reliable Source column. The prime property on page three of the Style section has been vacant since Richard Leiby left the column in May.
According to a slew of reliable sources inside the newspaper, the four final candidates are
- Roxanne Roberts, veteran Post Style writer who’s covered the social beat for 16 years;
- Mary Ann Akers, currently Roll Call’s Heard on the Hill columnist;
- Amy Argetsinger, a Post Metro reporter who has been detailed to the Los Angeles bureau;
- and Ana Marie Cox, founder and proprietor of the Wonkette Web site.
I have some words of warning and/or wisdom for Ana Marie Cox, the effervescent Wonkette.
Despite the popularity of her blog, official Washington is not a town that cottons to its gossip on the record. Oh sure, everyone loves a good natter, but big shots here in DC prefer to have their names kept out of the scandal sheets. It doesn’t help if, for example, a Congressman’s after hours behavior is exposed, particularly if that behavior is at variance with his on the record pronouncements. Don Sherwood gained precisely nothing when his extra-curricular activities were exposed, whereas a movie star or musician can ride a scandal to box office or chart gold.
Washington is also a town that takes itself very seriously, and the Washington Post is the perfect voice of the corridors of power: Serious, self-important, slow to jump on the new new thing, shamelessly suck-uppy to the powerful, embarrassingly dorky when trying to be cool, always a day late and a dollar short on the trend beats. Which brings me to the paper’s gossip column, "The Reliable Source".
The paper has long had an uncomfortable relationship with its gossip column (it’s not serious like, for example, a legislative calendar). Their ambivalence shows through in their hiring. Before Richard Leiby reluctantly took over the beat, the paper employed Lloyd Grove, who was likewise no Richard Johnson (although he’s giving it the old college try in New York these days). Some feisty ladies wrote the column before Lloyd, but they tended to find their spicier stories deep sixed. The column "succeeds" in so far as the competition is mighty slim; unlike New York, we don’t have a thriving tabloid culture providing lots of opportunities for the A.J. Benzas of the world (and no, the Washington Examiner’s "gossip" columns don’t count, unless you’re really, really interested in what’s up at the Saudi embassy). The column also sticks like a bone in the throat of various and sundry editors around the newsroom, who worry that a particularly spicy revelation published in the RS might lead an embarrassed lawmaker to cut off access to the congressional or White House beats, which are the paper’s bread and butter. As someone who used to write the column told me, the burden of proof for publishing an item in the Reliable Source is actually higher than for running a story in any other section (insert obligatory harrumphing joke here). That’s why the Post got scooped on the Gingrich-Calista Bisek story, which was the most well-known secret in Washington for years. The Reliable Source was also remarkably light on items about Michael Jordan, who for a while was Washington’s biggest celebrity inhabitant. You had to rely on word of mouth to find out that he liked to eat at Milano’s in Georgetown and drink at the Ritz Carlton bar on M street. God forbid you find out about that in the gossip section of the city’s paper of record. The bottom line is that the Post really doesn’t want the person writing the column to piss anybody important off, which means the column errs on the safe (and dull) side.
So Ana Marie, I understand that you’re interested in writing for a prestigious publication (and, considering Nick Denton’s slave wages, you’re probably looking for some extra cash as well). But you’re talented, funny and well-connected, which means that you’re ridiculously overqualified for the job. If you get it, don’t be surprised if you find yourself very frustrated very quickly.
Dc Media Girl Permalink
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The situation
8/9/05 14:20:30
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From CNN’s Web site:
ABOUT THE SHOW |
|
The Situation Room, anchored by Wolf Blitzer, assembles top CNN correspondents, analysts, contributors and guests for complete, up-to-the minute coverage of the day’s events. Modeled on the concept of the White House Situation Room, the program combines traditional reporting methods with the newest innovative online resources, making the entire process of newsgathering more transparent and placing the latest news and information at the viewers’ fingertips. The Situation Room airs weekdays from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. (ET) |
Silly me. I thought "The Situation Room" was what resulted from taking the two previous Blitzer weekday shows, smushing them together, adding an extra hour and broadcasting from a new set. But what do I know? Then again, if they want to make the newsgathering process "more transparent", they should show the producer meltdowns in the newsroom; interns/entry level employees running to the bathroom in tears after being shouted at/blamed for some infraction by one of said Type A producers; employees gathering around in small groups to gossip about which shows are about to be cancelled, who’s likely to be fired as a result of said cancellation, and complaining about how no one gets promoted apart from so-and-so, who everyone knows banged (fill in on-air personality’s name here); producers comparing their salaries to those of the cameramen and the ensuing bitterness; and finally, a very special "insider’s look" at the news business: mass firings. Then watch as Fox "News" Channel puts out a gloating, mean-spirited press release. Now THAT’S some transparent newsgathering!
Dc Media Girl Permalink
Comments (1)
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Weekend viewing
8/8/05 22:58:03
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So since my computer was on the blink this weekend, I had a chance to catch
up on belated movie viewing.
First up: The
Nomi Song
When I added this doc to my Netflix queue, I was interested to see a study of
New York’s new wave/punk/performance art scene in the late 70s - early 80s. The
problem was that I ignored the fact that this film is in fact a documentary
about Klaus Nomi, who may have been one of the most irritating performers of the
decade. An odd German who slathered on makeup that made him look like a
cross between a Martian and a demented version of the M.C. in Cabaret,
and whose sartorial selections included wearing capes that I’m sure were made of
shower curtains, Nomi was gifted with a pretty amazing falsetto which he chose
to showcase in toe-curlingly awful songs like Total Eclipse. Oh,
and remember how we thought we looked really cool in our skinny ties, pointed
shoes, flourescent makeup and bad attitudes as we danced the night away to the
Ramones and the Cramps in dive clubs? It turns out the joke was on us. We
actually looked ridiculous. But hey, most of the music was truly
great, Nomi notwithstanding. Oh, and the film looks like it cost about $2
to make. Only for the true fan.
Alexander
I chose to ignore the vehemently negative reviews, thinking that
the critics were just a bunch of Oliver Stone playa haytas, but this movie is
seriously terrible. Horrendous script, actors who affect ridiculous
accents and absurd props (I’m talking to YOU, Angelina Jolie - put the damn
snakes down), and, oh, whatever. I only got through 15 minutes before
realizing that the film was unlikely to improve; as a matter of fact, given that
I had ordered the Director’s Cut, I had almost 3 hours of badness crammed on one
disc, not an experience I was inclined to pursue. Avoid at all costs.
Seriously, this movie isn’t bad-good, it’s bad-sux hard.
Dc Media Girl Permalink
Comments (12)
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And what do you know..
8/8/05 22:39:36
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..just as I finished posting my observations below, I came across a transcript of...a recent "Who Is A Journalist?" panel! What a remarkable coincidence!
Dc Media Girl Permalink
Comments (1)
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Again...and again...
8/8/05 22:30:35
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So as you can see, my computer has recovered, which means I’m raring to go with feisty posts.
Sadly, however, when I regained the use of my machine one of the first things I was confronted with was this: A Jeff Jarvis report in the Guardian about how old school media outlets are making peace with the Internets:
So newsrooms are at last getting serious about plugging into the internet. Last week, the New York Times announced it is merging its print and online news operations. In their staff announcement, executives said this ends a separation that "allowed our digital operation to flourish, to experiment", so now they can "raise digital journalism to the next level" - and, one hopes, so they can electrify old journalism as well. At the same time, CBS News has decreed that all its 1,500 journalists will now feed the internet. Take it from me: that’s easier announced than accomplished.
Sounds good, right? The problem is, this is about the one billionth time I’ve read this story, which pops up every few weeks or so in a slightly different form. Hell, I lived this story from 1999-2003, when I was working for the dot-com arms of well-known print publications. And the relationship between those mother ships and the Web side was always uncomfortable at best and outright hostile at worst.
Why? First of all, most of these traditional media outlets are functioning on pre-1996 business plans. The networks still haven’t absorbed the impact of new cable channels, while the cable nets are continually diving to the bottom of the barrel as they compete for smaller and smaller slices of the viewer pie. Print pubs have been crushed by loss of advertisers, who’ve migrated over to Craigslist.org. In short, there’s not one visionary who’s figured out how to solve this problem of shrinking viewership and ad revenue. So they’ve turned their business operations over to green eyeshade types, whose solution to this problem consists of one word: "Cut". Repeat that word roughly 500 thousand times and you’ll get a taste for what’s been done to newsroom personnel. Meanwhile, the bosses insist that the remaining employees continue to do their jobs, plus the jobs of the people who were "made redundant", AND tend to the Web side of the operation. Et voila! You’re now doing the work of 6 people. Welcome to the glamorous world of news.
So don’t let Jeff Jarvis’s erudition fool you. The newsroom bosses still have no idea of how to handle the Web, the blogosphere, or their falling readership/viewership; indeed, they tend to knee-jerkishly see the first two as the cause of the latter. And don’t expect any big changes anytime soon. Expect more pointless "Who is a journalist?" panels to convene, while the editors, publishers and network heads continue to rearrange deck chairs on the Titanic.
Dc Media Girl Permalink
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Larry’s advice to Ann Coulter
8/6/05 13:08:09
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Larry Johnson, overcome by fumes of idiocy
wafting from the direction of the O’Reilly Factor, recovers enough to make
the following suggestion:
After watching
the stupidity and arrogance of Ann Coulter on the O’Reilly Factor (thanks to
Crooks and Liars), it seems to me we ought to challenge Ann to put her body
where her mouth is. I’ll pay for her to travel business class to Baghdad
and stay there for a week, but on these conditions:
- When she arrives
at the airport she must take a public taxi.
- She cannot hire a
bodyguard or security detail.
- And, most
important of all, she must stay at a hotel outside of the Green Zone and eat at
a different restaurant everynight using public transportaton (i.e., a
taxi).
If she’s right,
that things are going well and are safer today than one year ago, I say go show
us. Maybe FOX News will assign one of their intrepid cheerleaders, oops, I
mean correspondents, to accompany Ann and show the world that a new day has
dawned in Iraq.
Dc Media Girl Permalink
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Shout out to Bob Brigham
8/6/05 13:04:32
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He’s the guy who pulled off "The Political Play of the Week", per Bill Schneider, and also managed to piss off a lot of Democratic establishment types in the bargain. This is what one would call a "two-fer".
Dc Media Girl Permalink
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Bob Novak’s CNN career screeches to a halt
8/6/05 13:00:05
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You may have heard that there was some unpleasantness the other day when
Novak did his Howard Beale
imitation on the air, leading CNN to put him into
an indefinite timeout.
This is undoubtedly deeply embarrassing for CNN’s chiefs, who not so long ago
were publicly
vowing to stand by their unpleasantly loudmouthed man. Last month, CNN head
Jon Klein said:
"No one really knows what’s going on in the investigation of the
Valerie Plame incident...It would be awfully presumptuous of us to take steps
against a guy and his career based on second, third, fourth-hand
reporting."
Not to be outdone, CNN News Group President Jim Walton said:
"When Bob Novak wrote that column he wrote it for the Chicago
Sun-Times. And I was not privy to who his sources were . . . that did not go
through the editorial process at CNN. He has broken no laws and he has
distinguished himself as a journalist for many, many years . . . He brings a
different voice to our air."
Nice.
The real issue, of course, is that Novak has a long history of bullying and
abusing lower-level employees, whom he terrorizes with his angry outbursts over
such vital areas of newsgathering as how to pop his popcorn just so, or like
when he reduced a former colleague of mine to tears when he asked here how many
Jews her family had transported to the death camps (this woman was of German
ancestry). So there’s been a "ding dong the warlock is dead"
reaction to Novak’s suspension, as hardworking underpaid producers at CNN can
finally exhale.
Dc Media Girl Permalink
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Light posting
8/6/05 12:46:54
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My computer, which had been hacking and coughing for a few days, finally just flopped over on its back with its legs in the air. While the poor thing is at the doctor being fixed, posting will be restricted to whenever I can muscle my way onto a friend’s machine or a work station at Kinko’s.
Dc Media Girl Permalink
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Liberal warhawks face reality
8/3/05 23:51:35
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From this week’s New Republic. Yeah, it’s not like we didn’t
try to warn you guys. But there’s zero satisfaction in coming out with a
well-deserved "I told you so" in this case - too much tragedy, too much
death..and those poor Iraqi women, now under the thumb of mullahs. What a
nightmare:
Given what we’ve learned in the past two years in
Iraq--years filled with disappointment, tragedy, and carnage--it would be naïve
to think the new constitution currently being drafted in Baghdad will resolve
that country’s deep sectarian and structural problems. After all, previous
events hailed by the Bush administration as "turning points"--the June 28, 2004,
transfer of "sovereignty" to a U.S.- and U.N.-anointed interim government and
then January’s election--have been historic, but they have done little to stop
the insurgency that threatens to tear the country apart. And, while Americans
must hope that Iraq’s new constitution, which is scheduled to be completed by
August 15, does not thrust Iraq toward theocracy and civil war, both of these
prospects now appear distinctly possible.
Leaked drafts of the constitution call for the application of Islamic
edicts, not civil law, in matters related to marriage, divorce, and inheritance.
This will mean stripping many Iraqi women of rights that, ironically enough,
they were afforded even under Saddam Hussein’s brutal dictatorship. The idea
that 1,800 American troops died so Iraqi women can enjoy the full blessings of
religious medievalism ought to disturb the Bush administration and the American
public.
Dc Media Girl Permalink
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Media critic? Not so much
8/3/05 23:16:59
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Some of my bloggie colleagues have drawn attention to Richard Posner’s long critique of what ails the contemporary media in this weekend’s New York Times. Most have focused on his criticism of the blogosphere. Fair enough. But here’s what caught my eye:
The current tendency to political polarization in news reporting is thus a consequence of changes not in underlying political opinions but in costs, specifically the falling costs of new entrants. The rise of the conservative Fox News Channel caused CNN to shift to the left. CNN was going to lose many of its conservative viewers to Fox anyway, so it made sense to increase its appeal to its remaining viewers by catering more assiduously to their political preferences.
LOL. Is he kidding? CNN is liberal? By whose standards? Does he mean that CNN steers to the hard left in the way that Fox veers to the right? I’d be curious to know how Posner came to this conclusion. Which CNN was he watching? I seem to recall that during the Schiavo story (just for example), CNN gave hours and hours of non-judgmental coverage to that parade of religious fanatics and criminals menacing the hospice whre that poor woman was housed with not as much as a disapproving downturn of the lip. Why didn’t the interviewers point out Shindler family spokesman Randall Terry’s more than 40 arrests? Or how this paragon of family values had some girl trouble in his past, so much so that the pastor of his previous church booted him out? Seriously, in order to find a guest extreme enough to balance out a lunatic like Terry, you’d probably have to get an advocate of China’s forced abortion policy. And what about prime time? How do Anderson Cooper, Paula Zahn, Larry King and Aaron Brown compare to Shepard Smith, Bill O’Reilly, Hannity and the other guy, and Greta? You can answer that on your own, thanks very much.
Then there’s this:
The latest, and perhaps gravest, challenge to the journalistic establishment is the blog. Journalists accuse bloggers of having lowered standards. But their real concern is less high-minded - it is the threat that bloggers, who are mostly amateurs, pose to professional journalists and their principal employers, the conventional news media. A serious newspaper, like The Times, is a large, hierarchical commercial enterprise that interposes layers of review, revision and correction between the reporter and the published report and that to finance its large staff depends on advertising revenues and hence on the good will of advertisers and (because advertising revenues depend to a great extent on circulation) readers. These dependences constrain a newspaper in a variety of ways. But in addition, with its reputation heavily invested in accuracy, so that every serious error is a potential scandal, a newspaper not only has to delay publication of many stories to permit adequate checking but also has to institute rules for avoiding error - like requiring more than a single source for a story or limiting its reporters’ reliance on anonymous sources - that cost it many scoops.
OK, fair enough. If you want to discuss the Times, let’sgo ahead and do that. In recent years, the Times has brought us: Whitewater and other assorted phony -gates, not to mention the Wen Ho Lee debacle (both Jeff Gerth’s writing, and the last time I looked he’s still quite employed there); Judy Miller’s WMD disaster; Jayson Blair, and the "man date". Please dismount and back away from the high horse, if you don’t mind. And yes, I’m well aware of the fact that when you run a paper as large as they NYT, mistakes will be made, but again, Jeff Gerth’s preposterous and damaging stories haven’t seemed to hurt his at the paper. The editors didn’t even mention Judy Miller by name when publishing their half-hearted, grudging "apology" for their WMD coverage. Indeed, with the exception of the Blair episode, during which the editors donned a hairshirt and publicly flogged themselves over a far less important scandal than those previously mentioned, the NYT has been notoriously defensive and thin-skinned when it comes to admitting mistakes (as are most media outlets, by the way).
Dc Media Girl Permalink
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More on Iraq
8/3/05 22:39:40
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The excellent Pat Lang, who unlike the "consultants" and other cheerleaders
on Fox "News" is a real expert on the Middle East, posts this excellent
observation on the deteriorating situation in Iraq. By the way, his blog,
Sic Semper
Tyrannis, is a must-read.
We have done our utmost to enable and create a government in Iraq
which is being built on the basis of "one man, one vote." There was a vote
in January. We were absolutely giddy about success in holding the event in spite
of the fact that the people fighting us in the insurgency did not vote and
neither did their underground supporters. The insurgency went on in spite
of the election and seemed to have accelerated. Now we have a constitution
drafting process in place. This process is having trouble resolving such
problematic issues as; women’s rights, federalism in a multi-national state and
whether or not a government brought into being by the United States should have
an official religion.
Now, these are tough questions.
!-Should women (half the population) be treated as
adults?
2- Should the Kurds be allowed self-government or should they be
ruled from Baghdad by a legislature inevitably dominated by Arabs?
3-Should the state be neutral in matters of religion or should some
citizens always be just tolerated in their religion? (There probably won’t be
any court cases over religious displays on government property in this new
state)
And now we have the fearless former exiles of the Iraq National
Congress (INC) under the stainless banner of that hero of democracy, Ahmed
Chalabi, stating in Teheran that there will be CLOSE, CLOSE, cooperation between
the Islamic Republic of Iran (world’s greatest state sponsor of Islamic
terrorism) and the new, Shia dominated government of Iraq. Now, THEY are
positively giddy over the prospects for military to military relations between
the two countries and are quick to revel in the idea that this demonstrates
"independence" from America, in other words from those who freed them from
Saddam.
War between the US and Iran grows and grows as a possibility over the
Iranian nuclear program. I wonder which side Chalabi and his
SCIRI and Dawa’ friends will take if it comes to that.
Dc Media Girl Permalink
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Bill O’Reilly, NOT the Science Guy
8/3/05 19:36:30
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Here’s some more
wisdom from the very big mouth of Bill O’Reilly:
Whatever your belief, it should be respected. But the
National Academy of Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of
Science both reject intelligent design and don’t want it mentioned in science
classes. That, in my opinion, is fascism. There is no reason the students cannot
be told that more than a few people, including some scientists, believe the
creation of the world, no matter how it occurred, involved a higher power. What
on earth is wrong with that?
It would be wrong to teach Genesis (search) in
a science class. That’s for a theology course. But it is equally wrong to ignore
the fact that evolution is not a universal belief. Just state the facts, whether
it be science or any other subject...
Now President Bush told the reporters that he favored an
exposition of intelligent design so, "people can understand what the debate is
about". It seems logical to me. But a Knight-Ridder reporter named Ron
Hutchinson spun it this way.
"Bush essentially endorsed efforts by Christian conservatives
to give intelligent design equal standing with the theory of evolution in the
nation’s schools."
Well, I didn’t hear anything about equal standing for the
president. Of course, the reporter spun the story that way to make it seem like
Mr. Bush is a fanatic under the spell of religious zealots. That’s what some in
the press do all day long.
This isn’t a complicated matter. Public schools have an
obligation to present all subjects in perspective. Again, "Talking Points" isn’t
advocating Adam and Eve in the science lab. But if you’re going to discuss the
biological procedure of abortion, for example, you have a responsibility to tell
students that half the country feels it’s morally wrong. Right? The same thing
with evolution. Of course it’s accepted science. It should be taught as such.
But there’s no downside to mentioning that many people of faith believe a
creator was involved in the process.
This infuriating bit of nonsense is emblematic of the O’Reilly
method. How people feel about abortion is totally irrelevant to this
argument. What "people of faith" believe is also irrelevant. We’re talking
about what should be taught in a science class, not while discussing
philosophy or comparative religion. As far as what "some people believe",
well, there are people who believe the moon landing never happened, and that
Neil Armstrong and NASA pulled the wool over our eyes by filming the "landing"
in a soundstage in Hollywood. Others believe in the lost city of Atlantis,
or pyramid power, or angels. And so what? Remember, it’s scientists
who are the bad guys; people of faith merely want a little equal
time. How did this guy get in to Harvard? White male affirmative
action strikes again.
Update: Sweet Jesus, I
hate Bill O’Reilly Intl. weighs in. Crooks & Liars has the
video.
Dc Media Girl Permalink
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Ohio 02 is the bellwether
8/2/05 23:44:42
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For a Democrat to lose by 4000 votes in a heavy Republican district in a special election is nothing short of remarkable. Keep your eyes peeled for next year’s results, and expect the netroots to play an even bigger role than in 2004. The days of complacency and endless bitching are over.
Dc Media Girl Permalink
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Ohio update
8/2/05 22:45:48
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Word out of Ohio is that this is going to be a fight, possibly a big one, maybe a recount..who knows? But it’s tough, a squeaker, fill in your own cliche.
Dc Media Girl Permalink
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Just broke my streak
8/2/05 22:27:30
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I had promised not to get stuck into this Natalee Holloway morass, if only because the story doesn’t interest me even one whit, but I just glanced at Fox "News" and heard the damndest interview. Greta was talking to some guy in an Aruban police uniform who said he thinks that a) Natalee is not on the island; b) Natalee is alive; and c) Natalee probably fled the island by boat and could be in Venezuela illegally. When asked why she would have left her passport in her room he didn’t seem to be too troubled. Boy, talk about the perfect Fox guest: No substance, somewhat cracked, 100% fact-free. Maybe they should give him his own show.
Dc Media Girl Permalink
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More on Rush Limbaugh
8/2/05 21:16:26
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Remember what I wrote about Limbaugh having no shame and no sense of compassion for fellow drug addicts? Howard Stern pulled and broadcast clips to rub Rush’s face in his hypocrisy and weakness. Cruel? So what? Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.
Dc Media Girl Permalink
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Even conservatives agree
8/2/05 21:12:00
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..that Bush’s remarks about intelligent design are retarded. Consider
John Cole’s take:
To have the leader of the country, the leader of the party, and the
person who proclaims that he wants to be known as the ‘education president’ to
state, even casually, that he thinks intelligent design should be taught
alongside evolution is lunacy of the first order. First, the facts:
1.) Intelligent design is not a theory. There is no theoretical basis
to it. It is not scientific theory, and it is not just bad scientific theory, it
is simply not theory. It is ascientific. It is a flight of fancy. It is a call
to discard mountains of evidence, throw up ones hands, and state: “This is
all too confusing and complex, and science is hard, so some ‘intelligent
designer’ must be behind all this.”
2.) Intelligent design is creationism. It may not be quite as
audaciously stupid as the nonsense peddled by the ‘young earth’ crowd, but it is
creationism. Just who do you think this ‘intelligent designer’
is?...
3.) Teaching ‘intelligent design’ as science, or as a viable theory,
or whatever you want to call it other than bullshit, is to assault science.
Criticism of evolutionary theory is always welcome, but attempting to replace
evolutionary theory with fanciful tales is to assault not only the senses, but
to attack the very manner science itself is conducted.
4.) People don’t want ‘intelligent design’ taught because it is a
viable scientific theory, they want it taught because it is tailored to fit
their pre-existing religious beliefs. The introduction of ‘intelligent design’
into the class room will be seen as a blow to the ‘evil secularists.’ It will be
just another step in ‘taking back the culture.’
The culture of stupid.
Dc Media Girl Permalink
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Special election link
8/2/05 21:04:16
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Follow the count of Ohio’s 2nd district special election here.
Dc Media Girl Permalink
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Fox "News", trendwatching
8/2/05 20:50:48
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Lord have
mercy:
Who would have guessed that stick figures with larger-than-life
craniums would become the hottest trendsetters in Hollywood?
Starlets like Mary-Kate Olsen (search),
Lindsay Lohan (search)
and Nicole Richie (search)
have been dubbed "Lollipop Heads" because of their tiny bodies and propensity
toward wearing disproportionately large designer sunglasses, such as the ones
made by Gucci and Marc Jacobs, as well as swimmingly oversized "boho"
clothing.
OK, so this lollipop head "trend" isn’t spreading like wildfire because it’s
cool, like paying a fortune for a velour sweatsuit with the word "JUICY" across
the ass. This lollipop head phenomenon is due to anorexia, bulemia, poor
body image and relentless pressure to conform to absurdly unrealistic standards.
In short, it’s a cry for help. Pathetic.
Dc Media Girl Permalink
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And speaking of Al Gore..
8/2/05 20:15:15
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..would someone mind explaining to me what the hell’s happened to Bob Somerby? And why does he have such a big, throbbing hard on for Josh Marshall? Seriously, I need to get an answer. That’s what the comments section is for.
Dc Media Girl Permalink
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Not so Current
8/2/05 20:12:02
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Back in 1996, I was working in the political unit of a major network.
You may recall that there was a presidential election that year, and the
Republican hopefuls were a particularly silly and alarming lot. One of my
colleagues was especially outraged at the candidacy of Phil Gramm. "What
is he thinking?", she fumed. "Do you mean to tell me that Phil Gramm wakes
up in the morning, looks at himself in the mirror and says ’I should be
president’? Where the hell does he get off? WHERE IS THE DEMAND FOR
A PHIL GRAMM CANDIDACY COMING FROM?" (emphasis mine).
Of course, the answer to the second part of that question was a
resounding yes. As hard as it may be to believe, just about every United
States (and a few Congressmen) wake up every day, look at themselves in the
mirror, and whisper "You could do this SO much better than that guy in the White
House." It’s an occupational hazard. Excessive ego + fawning staff +
nonstop blather about being a member of an exclusive club/the world’s greatest
deliberative body leads people to do very silly things. No surprise
there.
But the question is, where is the demand coming from, apart from
sycophants, former frat brothers, and greedy political consultants out to make a
buck? Are there actual people out there who want these clowns to
run? Where’s the clamor coming from?
I’ve asked myself the same question about Current TV, the brainchild
of Al Gore and zillionaire legal entrepreneur Joel Hyatt. My understanding
is that originally, the network was supposed to be a counterpart to Fox "News".
What we seem to have in actuality is a horse of a very different color.
I’d been anticipating the launch of this new channel with mounting
dread, and it seems my fears were not misplaced. Current appears to have
combined the worst of all worlds. It seems that the idea is to try to
appeal to the ADD crowd by making segments as eclectic and short as possible; it
also looks as though they’re trying to model the feel of surfing the Web on
television. But the question is, who’s your audience? Who was demanding
not only this type of content, but enough of it to fill a 24-hour channel?
Why would anyone want to watch amateur video for hours at a time? Is this
what young people want, really?
And another thing. All this cross-platform stuff doesn’t
work. Just ask MSNBC. Remember how for years they tried to recreate
a lively talk radio climate on their airwaves, either by simulcasting radio
shows (Imus, Mitch Albom), or by hiring talk radio show hosts to star in their
own shows (Savage, Kuby, Sliwa, etc. etc. etc.)? And guess what?
With the exception of Imus, every other show flopped hard. Why? Because who the
hell wants to watch radio on television?
Likewise with this Current thing. If you’re going to have a 24-hour
channel filled with empty content, formatted into bite-sized "pods" in order to
appeal to allegedly attention-challenged young people, how much time do you
expect the average viewer to linger on your content? And why would I turn
on the television to see something that’s the equivalent of Web surfing? If
I want to surf the Web, then by God I’ll surf the Web.
Look, I don’t wish the founders ill, but for God’s sake, is this all
there is?
UPDATE: Wolcott’s
take.
Dc Media Girl Permalink
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Richard Cohen, pantload
8/2/05 19:48:25
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What
a heroic defender of the First Amendment is Richard:
Before Judith Miller of the New York Times went to jail for not
revealing her sources, I offered her my services. I suggested that she
tell me her source and then, once she was in jail, I would reveal that I knew,
and the special prosecutor would jail me as well -- but not before I told
another journalist. After four score and seven of us were in the calaboose, the
prosecutor would -- like the British facing the indomitable Gandhi -- collapse
before our moral force and leave us to honor our solemn commitments as we have
done since time immemorial. I now know my plan would have failed. Apres
moi , as the late Louis XV once said, too much of the press would still be
writing about how Miller deserves her fate. It is a squalid sight.
Hmm, but he never quite managed to organize his colleagues to perform this
act of riteous civil disobedience. Oh well. It’s the thought that
counts, I guess.
But then, just when you’re scratching your head and wondering whether it’s
really OUR Richard Cohen offering to hoist himself up on the First Amendment
cross, he gets back to normal:
The fury at Miller is ugly and does journalism no good. Whatever her
politics, whatever her journalistic sins (if any), whatever the whatevers, she
is in jail officially for keeping her pledge not to reveal the identity of a
confidential source. (If that’s not the case, then we don’t know otherwise.)
That pledge is no different than the one Bob Woodward made to Mark (Deep Throat)
Felt or, if you will, the one I made to my sources back when I was revealing
some unsavory facts about Vice President Spiro T. Agnew. Only Agnew’s
unexpected, but deeply appreciated, resignation saved me from going to jail.
Like Miller, I thought my word was my word. Jail was something a journalist had
to endure on occasion. It is, to quote "The Godfather’s" Hyman Roth, "the
business we have chosen."
Yes Richard, thanks for reminding me. It’s about you. Every
story, every issue, every column, is always about you.
Dc Media Girl Permalink
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I guess it depends on what the meaning of "intentionally" is
8/1/05 22:41:26
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WashingtonPost.com:
"I am here to make it very clear that I have never intentionally used
steroids," Palmeiro said in a statement. "Never. Ever. Period. I am sure you
will ask how I tested positive for a banned substance. As I look back, I don’t
have a specific answer to give.
"Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to explain to the arbitrator how
the banned substance entered my body. The arbitrator did not find that I used a
banned substance intentionally -- in fact, he said he found my testimony to be
compelling -- but he ruled that I could not meet the heavy burden imposed on
players who test positive under the new drug policy."
Whoops:
... (Canseco) says he personally taught All-Star and potential Hall
of Famers Ivan (Pudge) Rodriguez, Rafael Palmeiro and Juan Gonzalez to use
’roids after he was traded to the Texas Rangers in 1992.
Canseco claims the team’s general managing partner at the time - an
aspiring politician named George W. Bush - had to have been aware that his
players were using performance-enhancing drugs but did nothing about
it.
Dc Media Girl Permalink
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Family values ... but which family?
8/1/05 22:12:06
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You all may have heard that Rupert Murdoch’s son Lachlan has given up his job
to "spend
more time with his family":
When News
Corp.
Chairman Rupert Murdoch married his third wife, Wendi
Deng, in 1999, all four of his adult children attended the twilight ceremony
aboard a yacht in New York harbor. But since then, the marriage has opened a
rift between Mr. Murdoch and his older children, one that throws into doubt who
will control the company after the media titan’s death.
The bitter battle has all the hallmarks of a classic
family drama. It pits the toddler children of Mr. Murdoch and Ms. Deng, a
Chinese-born woman in her mid-30s, against Mr. Murdoch’s children from his first
two marriages. One of the key debates: Who should inherit the family’s $6
billion fortune and Mr. Murdoch’s control of News Corp. Should it be just the
media titan’s adult children, as is now the arrangement, or also his two
youngest children by Ms. Deng?....
At the
heart of the strife tearing apart the extremely private Murdoch clan is tension
over Ms. Deng’s role in the family. Further complicating matters is stress
caused by the coming generational shift, especially as the older children become
more assertive about their financial interests, according to one person familiar
with the family’s thinking. Mr. Murdoch "has been alienated and isolated from
his older kids," says another person close to the matter.
So here’s the deal. I couldn’t care less about the Murdoch evil "news"
empire. I’m not a stockholder. I’m just enjoying the irony...basking in it. You
see, back when Rupe and his latest wife married, I was working at Fox "News"
Channel in D.C. The year was 1999. NewsCorp’s star had risen as a
result of the indiscretions of Bill Clinton, who was roundly criticized and
berated by Fox’s on-air personalities for abusing his position of authority by
having an inappropriate sexual relationship with a younger subordinate. What a
grotesque imbalance of power, railed the "news" personalities. What a
hideous betrayal of family values! But Fox "News" is an airtight ship, and
all observations about hypocrisy or double standards were strictly verboten,
totally off-limits. We were to be happy for Rupert; after all, things happen in
a marriage, and the heart wants what it wants. So just let me wallow in
this irony. I’ve been waiting for a while.
Dc Media Girl Permalink
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An insult to bags and douching alike
8/1/05 21:37:37
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My friend Larry Johnson is a tough guy. He’s all man. So when he refers to "a douchebag" in a disparaging way, he’s merely speaking metaphorically. He promises that in future he won’t use a feminine hygiene product to disparagingly describe a jackass like Robert Novak (my apologies to hardworking jackasses everywhere).
Dc Media Girl Permalink
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Mind the gap
8/1/05 21:10:07
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It always interests me when a particularly craptastic bit of propaganda hits the Internets and the reaction is...nothing. Well, relatively nothing. Such was the collective yawn that greeted last week’s Christopher Hitchens article in SLATE. The piece itself isn’t really that surprising, given the source; a proud, card-carrying member of the PNAC’s Bitch club, but still enough of an old Trot to reel out that "official secrets: boo!" conceit. What really caught my eye was the following graf:
A fairly senior CIA female bureaucrat, not involved in risky activity in the field, proposes her own husband for a mission to Niger, on the very CIA-sounding grounds that he enjoys good relations with the highly venal government there, and in particular with its Ministry of Mines. This government, according to unrefuted intelligence-gathering from British and other European intelligence agencies, is covertly discussing sanctions-breaking sales of its uranium to a number of outlaw regimes, including that of Saddam Hussein. The husband, who has since falsely denied being recommended by his wife, revisits his "good contacts" in Niger for a brief trip and issues them a clean bill. The CIA in general is institutionally committed against the policy of regime change in Iraq. It has also catastrophically failed the country in respect of defense against suicidal attack. ("I wonder," Tenet told former Sen. David Boren on the very first news of 9/11, "if it has anything to do with this guy taking pilot training." Wow, what a good guess, if a touch late. The CIA had failed entirely to act after the FBI detained Zacarias Moussaoui in Minnesota in August.)
Just take a look at that graf again for a sec. Really take a look at it. A diligent Plameophile could go through it, line by line, and go blind enumerating the inaccuracies, distortions, spin and lies contained within. It’s a graf straight from the maw of the RNC propaganda mill.
What this graf represents to me, however, is the end of all hope that Hitchens will some day awaken from this ugly spell he’s fallen under and will once again be the immensely erudite, acerbic voice of the Left. OK, so call me a crazy dreamer, but I’ve always thought that Hitch was just too smart, too well-educated and too cynical a guy to keep on buying the neocon Fool’s Gold by the pound, that some day he’d wake up and really see what he and his PNAC buddies had created: A country that makes Mad Max look like a Merchant-Ivory film, where newly "liberated" women will now be forced to live under the horrors of sharia law and where despair reigns. I thought that at some point, he’d shake off the insanity of his Clinton hatred,the catalyst that made him what he is today, and would just.stop.this.nonsense.
Obviously, I’m the one who needs an intervention, because watching Hitchens’s descent into whoredom and delusion has been as nausea-inducing as observing some hapless prey go down an anaconda’s gullet. Hitchens as we knew him is gone, has been gone, and will never return. He joins David Horowitz in the wingnut gallery. And for you youngsters following along, you’d never know it by perusing Hitch’s
suprisingly crappy Web site, but he used to be a fantastic, iconoclastic, no-bullshit, awe-inspiring writer. The fact that he was a heavy drinker only added to the fascination; how the hell could he be so soused all the time and manage to compose such amazing work? many asked.
So now if we want truly great, acerbic writing, we must turn our lonely eyes to James Wolcott. Luckily he’s still around in one piece.
Dc Media Girl Permalink
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My content’s jnot gone..
8/1/05 07:01:48
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..just archived. Please check out the archive links in the left hand nav to read old stuff.
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